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Don’t Call the Cops If You’re Autistic, Deaf, Mentally Ill, Disabled or Old

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | October 24, 2017

“Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.”—Steve Silberman, The New York Times

Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on.

Here’s another don’t to the add the growing list of things that could get you or a loved one tasered, shot or killed, especially if you are autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffer from dementia, disabled or have any other condition that might hinder your ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order: don’t call the cops.

Sometimes it’s dangerous enough calling the cops when you’re not contending with a disability.

For instance, Justine Damond called 911 to report a disturbance and ended up dead after police dispatched to investigate instead shot the 40-year-old yoga instructor. Likewise, Carl Williams called 911 to report a robbery and ended up being shot by police, who mistook him for a robber in his own home.

Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.

Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

The Schrocks are not alone in this experience.

Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.

That’s according to a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation,  which reports that “disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated… Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.”

Trained to shoot first and ask questions later, police pose a risk to anyone with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces.

For example, in South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting “Shoot me!” Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position.

In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear—and thus comply—with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.

In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.

In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.

In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.

In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyd’s death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics.

In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position.

And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon.

These cases, and the hundreds—if not thousands—more that go undocumented every year speak to a crisis in policing when it comes to law enforcement’s failure to adequately assess, de-escalate and manage encounters with special needs or disabled individuals.

While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling.

Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours.

Among 124 police killings analyzed by The Washington Post in which mental illness appeared to be a factor, “They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.”

But there were also important distinctions, reports the Post.

“This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete — weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade. Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD. And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, as might be expected, has thus far continued to immunize police against charges of wrongdoing when it comes to use of force against those with a mental illness.

In a 2015 ruling, the Court declared that police could not be sued for forcing their way into a mentally ill woman’s room at a group home and shooting her five times when she advanced on them them with a knife. The justices did not address whether police must take special precautions when arresting mentally ill individuals. (The Americans with Disabilities Act requires “reasonable accommodations” for people with mental illnesses, which in this case might have been less confrontational tactics.)

Where does this leave us?

For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention.

A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team)-trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers.

As The Washington Post points out:

“Although new recruits typically spend nearly 60 hours learning to handle a gun, according to a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, they receive only eight hours of training to de-escalate tense situations and eight hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill. Otherwise, police are taught to employ tactics that tend to be counterproductive in such encounters, experts said. For example, most officers are trained to seize control when dealing with an armed suspect, often through stern, shouted commands. But yelling and pointing guns is ‘like pouring gasoline on a fire when you do that with the mentally ill,’ said Ron Honberg, policy director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.”

Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down, instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise).

After Ethan Saylor’s death in Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn “de-escalation tactics” for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient.

One officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “mental response teams” suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them.

Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as “a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.”

In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with disabilities, what we really need is to make encounters with police safer for citizens across the board, no matter how they’re packaged.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the problem is not that police officers are inherently bad—in fact, there are many good, caring officers in law enforcement—but when cops are trained to be military warriors instead of peace officers, we’re all viewed as potential threats.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at http://www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

October 25, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Report: 16 Palestinian Children Arrested, Beaten, and Confined to Cage By Israeli Soldiers

By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | October 22, 2017

“On October 13th, 2017, 16 children and 2 adults were ambushed and arrested by the Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade. The 18 arrested were initially detained in a cage in checkpoint 56,  cable-tied,  kicked, and hit. 2 were released, whilst the remaining 16 were transferred to an Israeli police station where they were subjected to further physical and psychological violence. All 16 were eventually released without charge, but not before threats were made to their families and the safety of their homes.”

The above is reported by Christian Peacemaker Teams, which maintains a team of international observers in the occupied West Bank…

The seizing of the children took place in the West Bank city of Hebron. The report goes on to describe arrests of minors as “a consistent reality of the occupation and tactic of the Israeli occupation forces,” and it also cites a report from a human rights organization showing that 130 children were arrested in August of 2017 alone.

One of those detained in the October 13 roundup was 12-year-old Abdullah Dwaik. That’s Abdullah in the brown sweater being led away in the photo above. You can also see him in the video below giving an account of what took place after he was taken into custody. Following the initial arrest, he and the others were transported to a military base where they were handcuffed and blindfolded.

I’m not sure exactly where Abdullah’s grandparents live–I’m not familiar with the place name–but Bab Al Zawyeh, the place he calls “home,” is a neighborhood in central Hebron.

I also do not know who the “Ofer the settler” Abdullah refers to (and who he says hit one of the boys) is, though possibly he’s the man profiled in the following video…

In any event, the Christian Peacemakers report goes on to make some additional crucial  points:

  • Children should never be blindfolded, hooded or painfully restrained;
  • Children should never be subjected to violent, threatening or coercive conduct;
  • Children must be able to consult with a lawyer prior to interrogation;
  • Children should have a parent or guardian present prior to and during their interrogation;
  • Children should not be arrested at night;
  • Children should be properly informed of their right to silence;
  • All interrogations should be audio-visually recorded;
  • No child should be transferred out of the West Bank in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel has violated all of these principles.

And this is the country so loved by Dickinson, Texas that its officials deny hurricane relief assistance to people based upon whether or not they support a boycott of it.

Mayor and city council members of Dickinson, Texas

October 23, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel is pushing its luck with the EU

By Professor Kamel Hawwash | MEMO | October 20, 2017

When it comes to the various stakeholders in the Israeli Palestinian conflict Israel has guaranteed American support in almost whatever it does. Other stakeholders, including the EU, have consistently criticised Israeli government policy but consistently failed to back it up with any action. That is, possibly, until now.

The Obama administration was castigated by the pro-Israel lobby for its supposed lack of support for Israel despite granting it a 10-year $38 billion military aid package, the likes of which no other state could dream to secure. In fact, over half the aid the US hands to other states goes to Israel.

Obama missed a trick on not making the aid package conditional upon any progress in the talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, or a halt to settlement construction, which the US sees as “illegitimate”. Neither Netanyahu’s brazen snub to Obama when he addressed the US Congress without coordination with the White House, nor the humiliation of American Vice President Biden – who while on a visit to Jerusalem in 2010 was met with an announcement that Israel planned to build 1,600 home for Jewish Israelis in units in the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo which is attached to Jerusalem – was enough to trigger such conditioning.

The US is a member of the Middle East Quartet now renamed the ‘Office of the Quartet,’ which brings the EU, Russia and the United Nations together. It describes its mandate as “to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution-building in preparation for eventual statehood”. The Quartet’s last key report was published in 2016. The report focussed on violence and incitement, Gaza and Palestinian governance and settlement expansion, land designations, and denial of Palestinian development.

In the area designated C under the Oslo Accords, Israel maintains full control over both security and planning. The denial of Palestinian development is enacted mostly through the denial of permits for building construction. The Quartet noted that “only one permit for Palestinian housing construction in Area C was reportedly approved in 2014, and there do not appear to have been any in 2015. In the five-year period from 2009 to 2013, only 34 building permits were approved for Palestinians in Area C, out of at least 2,000 submissions”.

The report further noted that there were over 11,000 demolition orders pending against Palestinian structures, three quarters of which are on private Palestinian land. The report acknowledged that “as Palestinians are consistently denied permits to build legally, they are left with few options but to build without permits”.

There was a significant increase in the number of Palestinian structures demolished across the West Bank in the first four months of 2016, with some 500 demolitions of Palestinian structures by the Israeli authorities and nearly 800 Palestinians displaced, more than what was carried out throughout the entire year of 2015. Although many of these were not dwellings, the loss of structures such as water wells, solar panels, and animal shelters has impacted the livelihoods of over 2,500 people in the first half of 2016. The trend continued in 2017 and to this day.

Israeli security forces gather around as a Palestinian home is being demolished in Jerusalem on 14 March 2017 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

Israel makes no distinction between structures it considers to be illegal that are funded by Palestinians and those that are funded by non-Palestinians, those built without planning permission or those agreed upon in bilateral agreements with the Palestinians.

Gaza’s International Airport, which opened in 1998, was destroyed by Israel in 2001. It was built with funding from Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Germany. To this day the airport remains in ruins and no sanctions were ever taken against Israel by either Germany or Spain.

In January of this year Israeli forces demolished some 15 structures in Khirbet, including homes and the only school in the small hamlet, which is located on the outskirts of the village of Beit Furik in the Jordan Valley in the north-eastern occupied West Bank.

In July the Dutch government lodged a protest with Israel over the confiscation of electricity equipment, which was said to be a hybrid power system of both diesel and solar power. The electrification project in the southern Bethlehem region was donated by the Dutch government and cost about 500,000 euros ($590,806), 350,000 euros ($413,564) of which went to Jubbet Al-Dhib, according to the report in the Israeli daily Haaretz. The Dutch Foreign Ministry requested Israel return the equipment and is “currently assessing what next steps can be taken,” the ministry’s statement to Haaretz said.

In August Israeli troops dismantled a structure built for a nursery for 25 Palestinian children in the village of Jabal Al-Baba near Jerusalem claiming it was built without a permit. This followed the demolition a few days earlier of a small primary school in the southern West Bank and the removal of solar panels used to power another school. This drew criticism from the EU which expressed “strong concern about the recent confiscations of Palestinian school structures undertaken by Israel in Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank,” adding that “every child has the right to safe access to education and states have an obligation to protect, respect and fulfil this right, by ensuring that schools are inviolable safe spaces for children”.

But has Israel pushed its luck too far with the EU?

Despite Israel’s destruction of facilities funded by the EU, history shows it has protested to Israel but has not taken action. However, this could be about to change.

Reports have emerged that eight EU countries, led by Belgium, have drafted a letter to be delivered to senior Foreign Ministry officials demanding compensation amounting to €30,000 ($35,456) for confiscating and demolishing structures and infrastructure built by them in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control. This follows Israel’s refusal to return the confiscated equipment as demanded by the eight countries which are members of the ‘West Bank Protection Consortium,’ a body through which they coordinate humanitarian assistance to Area C.

The letter stresses that “the demolition and seizure of humanitarian equipment, including school infrastructure, and the interference in the transfer of humanitarian assistance contravenes Israel’s obligations under international law and causes suffering to the Palestinian residents”.

However, Israel claims that European activity in Area C is not humanitarian assistance but “illegal development that is being done without coordinating with Israel and with the aim of strengthening the Palestinians’ hold on Area C”. This claim was previously made in 2015 by Benjamin Netanyahu who ordered the demolition of some 400 Palestinian structures built in the West Bank with European funding.

While the international community has often talked the talk about Israeli crimes, this is a rare example of action that could at least make Israel think twice before acting. While this is a small step by eight EU countries it could mark a significant and necessary change in policy from condemnation of Israeli policies to tangible action. EU citizens should be outraged that contributions from their taxes to alleviate Palestinian suffering and build peace, are being wasted by Israel while goods from illegals settlements continue to make their way to EU supermarket shelves.

If the EU is serious about peace and its support for a two-state solution then it can use existing instruments to exercise its influence. This includes suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement for Israel’s failure to adhere to a clause which states that “relations between the parties, as well as all the provisions of the agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles”.

Israel’s clear failure to respect Palestinian human rights should finally trigger a suspension of this agreement.

Read more: Israel advances 1,300 new settlement homes for second day in a row

October 20, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Indonesia Massacre’s Historic Message

By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | October 19, 2017

Fifty-four years after the assassination of President Kennedy, historians are still waiting to see whether President Trump will approve the final release of secret records related to that crime by the Oct. 26 deadline set by a unanimous Congress in 1992 with the JFK Records Act.

Senior Republicans in both the House and Senate have called on the President to “reject any claims for the continued postponement” of declassification. “Transparency in government is critical not only to ensuring accountability; it’s also essential to understanding our nation’s history,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Just days before the scheduled release of JFK records, the National Archives — with much less fanfare — declassified nearly 30,000 pages of documents from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta from 1964 to 1968. That might seem in contrast like an obscure matter of interest only to a handful of specialists, but the period covers what the CIA once called “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century”: the massacre of half a million Indonesians, and the arrest of a million more, by the country’s army and its supporters in the name of wiping out Communism.

Whether and how the U.S. government abetted that bloodbath is as “essential to understanding our nation’s history” as learning what transpired two years earlier on the streets of Dallas. Indeed, the two events are related, as the murder of Kennedy prompted a hardline shift in U.S. policy to support a military coup in Indonesia. Yet despite the worthy new release of documents, Washington has been neither transparent nor accountable when it comes to the Indonesia massacre of 1965-66.

In particular, the U.S. government has yet to declassify any but a handful of operational files from the CIA or Defense Department. As a result, “we have only the barest outlines of what covert campaigns the CIA was undertaking and what assistance the United States was providing,” historian Bradley Simpson, founder and director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project, told me.

The Prelude to a Slaughter

The frightful massacres in Indonesia followed years of growing social, economic and political strife. Following a disastrously botched CIA coup attempt in 1958, Indonesia’s leader and independence hero, Sukarno, treated Washington with deep suspicion. All through the early 1960s, Sukarno adopted an increasingly strident nationalist stance. He flirted with Soviet Russia and even with Communist China while he threatened military confrontations with the Dutch and British, legacy colonial powers. At home, he encouraged the rising influence of Indonesia’s communist party, the PKI.

President Kennedy tried to work with Sukarno. One of JFK’s first acts as president was to invite the Indonesian leader to the White House. Kennedy’s assassination, however, “unquestionably changed the direction of U.S. policy toward Indonesia,” writes Simpson in his authoritative account of U.S.-Indonesia relations, Economists With Guns. Whereas Kennedy was willing to expend political capital to work with Sukarno, President Lyndon Johnson dismissed him as a “bully” who, if appeased one day, would “run you out of your bedroom the next night.”

Administration leaders increasingly looked to Indonesia’s U.S.-trained-and-supplied army as a political alternative to Sukarno.

In the fall of 1964, as relations with Jakarta soured, the CIA proposed a covert action program to “build up strength” among anti-communist groups and instigate “internal strife between communist and non-communist elements.” The Agency raised the possibility of fomenting riots or other disorders that “might force the Army to assume broad powers in restoring order.”

U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies began planting stories about PKI plots to assassinate army leaders and import weapons from Communist China, elements of a “strategy of tension” that the Agency would later use in Chile to provoke the 1973 military coup.

The Johnson administration curbed economic aid — intensifying the country’s economic crisis — while continuing to train and assist the military. “When Sukarno leaves the scene, the military will probably take over,” one senior State Department official told a congressional committee in executive session. “We want to keep the door open.”

Bitter Fruit

In the fall of 1965, Washington’s strategy bore fruit when several junior Indonesian military officers, apparently with the support of certain PKI leaders, killed six Indonesian army generals in a bungled power play that remains poorly understood. The military struck back decisively. It rounded up the alleged plotters, accused them (falsely) of sexually mutilating the murdered generals, and then unleashed a nationwide campaign to murder PKI cadre and sympathizers.

The U.S. ambassador, Marshall Green, was thrilled by the opportunity to crush the communists. “It’s now or never,” he told Washington.

Green proposed fanning anti-communist violence by a covert propaganda campaign to “spread the story of PKI’s guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most-needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).”

He instructed to U.S. Information Agency to use all its resources to “link this horror and tragedy with Peking and its brand of communism; associate diabolical murder and mutilation of the generals with similar methods used against village headmen in Vietnam.”

As reports filtered in of the execution or arrest of thousands of PKI supporters by the army and allied Muslim death squads, Green said he had “increasing respect for [the army’s] determination and organization in carrying out this crucial assignment.”

The killings occurred on such a vast scale that “the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh,” reported Time magazine in December 1965, in one of the first U.S. stories on the massacre.

“Travelers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at places been seriously impeded.”

Previously classified documents from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta released this week add details to this story.

We learn, for example, from one cable that as prison overcrowding became a problem, “Many provinces appear to be successfully meeting this problem by executing their P.K.I. prisoners, or by killing them before they are captured, a task in which Moslem youth groups are providing assistance.”

By December 1965, the embassy was reporting on the “striking Army success” in taking power, noting its killing of at least 100,000 people in just 10 weeks.

Yet we also learn that U.S. officials had reliable information that the PKI as an organization had no advance knowledge of or involvement in the murder of the six generals that triggered the nationwide bloodbath. A senior embassy officer also reported on the army’s “widespread falsification of documents” to implicate the PKI in various crimes.

We owe these and other revelations to the persistent efforts of human rights activists, scholars, and politicians like Senators Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, to promote full disclosure of U.S. involvement in Indonesia’s mass killings.

Following in their footsteps, Steve Aftergood, head of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, contacted the National Declassification Center (established by President Obama), to urge the release of more Indonesia records. Historian Bradley Simpson and the non-profit National Security Archive then teamed with the U.S. National Archives to digitize 30,000 pages of decades-old embassy files to facilitate public access to the documents.

But without CIA and military operational files, the full, ugly story of Washington’s complicity will remain obscured. Previous administrations have released deeply troubling CIA files on coups in Chile, Guatemala and Iran. Those files cast a terrible stain on our history but their release powerfully demonstrated the commitment of at least some American leaders to learn from the past. In that spirit, the time has come to open up our history with Indonesia as well.

Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international relations and history.

October 19, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Colombian Social Leader Assasinated Weeks After 7 Campesinos Were Killed

Jose Jair Cortes

Jose Jair Cortes | Photo: UN
teleSUR | October 17, 2017

A Colombian social leader, Jose Jair Cortes, was murdered in a rural area of Tumaco municipality located in the southwest department of Narino.

Jair Cortes, a member of the local council of the Alto Mira and Frontera Community, was killed in a sector called Y, located in the heart of the city of Tumaco. The social leader was one of seven community leaders to receive death threats in recent months.

The governor of Narino, Camilo Romero Galeano, denounced the murder that occurred just weeks after a massacre that left seven people dead in the village of El Tandil, in the same municipality.

The state government has urged the authorities to investigate the exact details of the community leader’s murder.

“We have once again resisted accepting that the war will continue to make its mark on the Narino pacific,” Romero said. “Our voice of solidarity for the family of Jose Jair Cortes in this painful moment that keeps the mourning in our south.”

“We are profoundly affected by this death, just days after we met in Tumaco with him and the other members of this Junta de Gobierno, corresponding to the territory where the painful events that six peasants and dozens of wounded and still remain of research,” the official statement said.

The community council in the area has repeatedly denounced human rights violations against the Afro-Colombian, Mestizo and Indigenous peasants in the region. The campesinos in the area have been protesting against government’s plan to reduce the production of Cocoa crop, an important means of livelihood for many in the region.

In the western department of Cauca, over 40 campesinos have been injured and one journalist killed in clashes between the Indigenous community members and the Colombian police.

The Indigenous community members who began their protests 10 days ago are demanding the property in the Coconuco Indigenous Reservation, a rural area of Purace municipality, where the government had promised them land in 2013.

The Mobile Anti-Riot Squads (ESMAD) accused the natives of encroaching private property. ESMAD member, Capt. Edgar Garcia, told Caracol, a local radio station that the natives threw “immense rocks that destroy sticks and all around, equally, they shoot us with artifacts, stones, bottles, and explosives to intimidate us, while we are defending the private property.”

Whereas, a spokesman for the protesters quoted by the local radio station, said that “about 10 ESMAD trucks, two tanks and all the artifacts against the indigenous peoples, entered the community.”

October 18, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian children beaten, tortured under Israeli interrogation

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – October 13, 2017

Several Palestinian child prisoners in Ofer prison revealed their experiences with torture and mistreatment to Palestinian lawyer Wael Awakah, including beatings and threats by Israeli occupation soldiers and interrogators from the moment of their arrest.

Awakah reported that Waleed Riyad al-Dali, 14 years old, a tenth-grade student and a resident of the village of Biddu in the Ramallah district, was seized on 28 September 2017 at 5:00 pm from the center of his village by undercover Israeli occupation soldiers disguised as Palestinians. He was assaulted and beaten by the soldiers, punched in the head and left bloody by their attack.

Waleed was then taken to a settlement while shackled and blindfolded in a military jeep. He reported being beaten by the soldiers rifle butts and kicked by them during the travel to the settlement. At the settlement military base, Waleed was interrogated; the interrogator threatened to break his hands, refused him food and directed curses and obscene insults at him.

Yazid Akram Humaidan, 15, also a resident of Biddu, was also seized on 28 September from the center of town by undercover Israeli occupation soldiers, who threw him to the ground, punched and slapped him. Yazid said that one of the undercover occupation soldiers stomped on his neck so hard that he feared for his life as he was beaten on the head and face with sharp blows.

Yazid also said that he was screamed at and cursed by interrogators at a nearby settlement and that he was physically weak and tired during interrogation as he had had surgery only two months before.

Hamada Jamal Abu Eid, 16, was also seized by occupation forces operating undercover in Biddu on 28 September. He said that one put a gun to his head before shooting in the air, causing him to fall to the ground where he was beaten on the body and head. He said that he was hit and slapped while being taken to interrogation at a nearby settlement, and that during interrogation himself he was subject to insults and curses.

Awakah said that Hamada continued to appear tired and ill during the interview, with severe and ongoing pain in his head. The three are among approximately 300 Palestinian children held in Israeli jails, mostly in Ofer and Megiddo prison, as well as 10 minor girls held in HaSharon prison.

In addition, the practice of sending children – especially Jerusalemite children – to house imprisonment, highlighted in the September 2017 report of Palestinian prisoners’ human rights associations, has continued. House imprisonment denies children the right to leave their homes, even for study or medical treatment in many cases, and forces parents and adults around them to become jailers at the threat of further punishment and imprisonment.

On 12 October, Jerusalemite teen Bilal Khalil Ghatit was ordered to home imprisonment with the imposition of an “electronic monitoring bracelet” on his ankle. He has already been held under house imprisonment since May, and has been unable to leave his home, go to school or visit relatives. His parents have also become prisoners; one of them must stay at home with him at all times. Bilal was seized in April 2017 by occupation forces who invaded the family home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem; he was released in May but ordered to house arrest. A ninth-grade student, he has been denied the ability to go to school.

Bilal’s father reported that he pays NIS 180 ($55 USD) for the electronic monitoring device; in the event of any malfunction of the device or even a loss of electricity in the home, the house is subject to violent raids by occupation forces, he noted, recalling the day of Bilal’s arrest, when his room was invaded as he slept and his brother beaten when he tried to intervene.

Another Palestinian child, Adam Hamdan, 14 from Ras al-Amud neighborhood of Silwan in Jerusalem, was also ordered to house imprisonment on 12 October; he was arrested on Tuesday, 10 October as he walked to school and accused of “throwing stones,” one of the most popular charges used by the Israeli occupation to criminalize and imprison Palestinian children and youth.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network denounces the ongoing imprisonment, torture, mistreatment and abuse of Palestinian children at a systematic level by the Israeli occupation. We demand the immediate release of all Palestinian child prisoners in Israeli jails and urge greater international mobilization to support the hundreds of Palestinian children who are jailed each year, subject to solitary confinement and cruel and inhumane treatment, traumatic pre-dawn violent arrest raids and invasions of their homes, confiscation of their right to health and education – all as part of a systematic web of oppression at the hands of the Israeli settler colonial project. 

samidoun@samidoun.ca

October 14, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Guantanamo death penalty case in limbo after defense lawyer mysteriously quits

RT | October 13, 2017

The key defense attorney of the man alleged to be behind the USS ‘Cole’ bombing has quit, citing an ethical conflict which he’s not allowed to reveal. The suspect, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, is in detention at the US Guantanamo military base.

Death-penalty counsel Rick Kammen, along with two members of his legal team, quit Friday, saying that they cannot disclose the reason because it is classified.

Nashiri, 52, is accused of orchestrating Al-Qaeda’s suicide bombing of the US warship off the coast of Yemen on October 12, 2000, which killed 17 American sailors.

“We have mixed emotions about this,” Kammen said in a statement Friday afternoon. “We are angry about being placed in an ethically untenable position, disappointed in not being able to see the case through, and devastated to leave Mr. Nashiri, whom we genuinely like and who deserves a real chance for justice.”

By law, a capital trial cannot go forward without a seasoned death-penalty counsel, which will likely cause a delay in what was on track to be the first death-penalty trial held at America’s Guantanamo prison in Cuba.

The attorneys withdrew on the belief that the government was listening in on their legal meetings, creating an ethical conflict, McClatchy reported.

“We’re in a position where we cannot meet with our client, and we cannot tell him why we can’t meet with him,” Kammen said, referring to an order by a military judge. “That’s an ethically untenable position to be in,” he added.

Nashiri’s Pentagon lawyers filed a complaint at the US Supreme Court over the case.

Throughout nearly six years of pretrial hearings at the military court, the government and Nashiri’s civilian defense attorneys had been litigating over what evidence Nashiri or his lawyers can see, how to substitute for destroyed CIA evidence, and how much damage Nashiri suffered while in CIA custody from 2002 to 2006.

Unclassified documents show he was waterboarded, abused rectally, confined to a coffin-sized box and subjected to other “enhanced interrogation techniques” to break him during interrogation, McClatchy reported.

The Saudi national is one of 41 captives who remain at Guantanamo.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US had detained around 800 individuals suspected of ties to Al-Qaeda, but instead of trying them at US courts, held the suspects for years without trial at Guantanamo. Most inmates were subsequently cleared for release. The UN ruled that the practices at Guantánamo, including arbitrary detention without trial, blatantly violated international law.

President Donald Trump has vowed to keep the infamous prison open and “load it up with some bad dudes.” However, no detainees have been transferred in or out since he took office.

October 13, 2017 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The backdrop of Palestinian reconciliation

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 13, 2017

With a deal for political reconciliation having been reached by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, attention should shift to the humanitarian impact of Mahmoud Abbas’s collective punishment of the people in the Gaza Strip. The punitive measures, blatantly visible, were primarily an exercise in deprivation for political gain.

On Wednesday, Wafa and Alray reported that re-establishing adequate electricity supply to Gaza is dependent on whether “the Palestinian Government of National Consensus can assume its duties and responsibilities in the Strip.” The statement is open to several interpretations, the most dangerous for Palestinian civilians being additional delays beyond the signing of the reconciliation agreement.

According to the Palestinian Energy Authority’s acting director, Thafer Milhem, electricity was one of the issues discussed during the reconciliation talks in Cairo. While describing the process through which electricity supply for Gaza would be restored gradually, Milhem asserted that there is no timeframe for implementation, thus once again demanding that the civilians should remain as pawns in the political game designed by Abbas. It should be recalled that the precondition imposed upon Hamas by Abbas in return for lifting the collective punishment was the dissolution of the administrative committee of Gaza; this was duly done by the Islamic Resistance Movement.

However, the initial requirement turned out to be the first step in bringing about a situation whereby Hamas would agree to relinquish control of Gaza in the name of political unity. It remains to be seen how much this gesture, which entails a considerable measure of compromise, will reflect upon both Hamas and the civilian population of the enclave.

It could be argued that necessity, on several levels, constituted a form of political, social and ecoomic coercion. Gaza has navigated a fine line in attempting to retain the connection between the three sectors. Although different, each struggle reflected anti-colonial resistance. Necessity diluted this framework, and resistance was thwarted into survival, courtesy of collaborative efforts by Israel, the PA and the international community under various guises. For the people, it became a matter of successfully staying alive despite the harsh conditions.

Hamas, on the other hand, has fluctuated between resistance and diplomacy, the latter mired in a lack of clarity, particularly as the movement’s political statements appeared to be in conflict with its aims of liberation. This is not to say that the PA and Hamas have identical aims. However, it is the latter that has been required to compromise, despite the former’s irregular governance.

While the focus is now on the reconciliation agreement, there is a backdrop against which this is taking place; people who have suffered the humanitarian consequences of political contempt. For the PA to continue playing the bureaucratic game is unacceptable. By not providing a timeline for the resumption of adequate services with regard to electricity, or establishing access as a priority, Palestinians are once again expected to sacrifice health, education and life for a political gamble concocted by the PA. The least that could have been done was the immediate lifting of Abbas’s punitive measures, unless the plan is to expand authority in the name of reconciliation, with the aim of having better access to the exploitation of a precarious humanitarian situation.

October 13, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Catalan Police in Israel: repression courses #TestedInCombat

October 9, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Army Abducted 400 Palestinians, Including 55 Children, In September

IMEMC News – October 5, 2017

The Palestinian Center for Detainees’ Studies has reported that Israeli soldiers have abducted more than 400 Palestinians, including 55 children and eight women, in September.

Researcher Riyad al-Ashqar said the soldiers, and navy, have abducted seven fishermen close to the shore in the Gaza Strip, in addition to abducting Ramzi ‘Abed, who teaches at the Islamic University in Gaza, when he tried to cross Erez Terminal on his way to a conference in Italy.

In addition, the soldiers abducted a patient, identified as Fadel Mazen Abu Haseera, 27, also at Eretz Terminal, as he was in his way to receive treatment in the al-Makassed hospital, in Jerusalem, even though Israel granted him an entry permit.

Three more Palestinians were abducted by the soldiers while trying to breach the border fence, in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, in search for work in Israel due to extreme poverty rates in the besieged coastal region.

In the West Bank, the soldiers invaded the home of legislator Abdul-Rahman Zaiden, in Deir al-Ghusun village, near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, and ransacked it for several hours.

The legislator was interrogated for several hours at a military base, before the soldiers eventually released him.

Al-Ashqar added that September also witnessed a serious escalation in the abduction of women and children, as the army detained 55 children, including Mohammad as-Sa’ou, only 10 years of age, who was taken prisoner from his home, in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, in occupied East Jerusalem.

The soldiers also abducted eight women, including a child identified as Sally Mohammad Shawwa, 14 years of age, from Jerusalem, and released her later after imposing a high fine.

In addition, the soldiers abducted three girls, identified as We’am Hamada, Hadeel Sob Laban and Hiba al-Joulani, from Jerusalem, and released them later under the condition of not entering the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, for fifteen days.

Al-Ashqar added that the army also issued 100 arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, holding the detainees captive without charges or trial. 33 of these orders were issued against the detainees for the first time, and 67 others were renewals of existing orders.

The Administrative Detention orders that were issued in September vary between two and six months, and one of these orders was against Professor Essam Al-Ashqar of the Najah National University in Nablus.

The army also escalated its violations against the detainees, including repeated invasions and violent searches of their rooms, arbitrary transfers to various prisons, in addition to forcing many detainees into solitary confinement.

October 7, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Egyptian army starts third phase of buffer zone plan on Gaza borders

Palestine Information Center – October 5, 2017

CAIRO – North Sinai Governor Abdel Fattah Harhour announced Thursday that the third phase of the buffer zone plan along the border areas with Gaza Strip has started.

Buildings and facilities located in the area of the buffer zone have been completely surveyed in preparation for evacuation and demolition, he added.

The first and second phases have been completed, with each phase covering 500 meters. It is believed that the third phase will cover an additional 500 meters.

The first phase involved the displacement of more than 1,000 families, whilst the second phase involved the evacuation of 2,044 families from the area. The third phase will involve approximately 1,215 houses and 40 governmental facilities, according to Harhour’s statements.

The buffer zone is amongst the security measures taken by the Egyptian armed forces in 2014 in order to destroy smuggling tunnels connecting North Sinai with the Gaza Strip. The tunnels were used to smuggle “terrorists and weapons” into the restive Sinai Peninsula, according to Egyptian authorities.

October 5, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Catalonia: Rajoy Moves Towards Extreme Measures

By Craig Murray | October 4, 2017

Things have taken a much more sinister turn in Catalonia, without sufficient notice being paid internationally. The leader of the Catalan regional police force has been formally arraigned for sedition by the Spanish attorney general, for refusal to comply enthusiastically with the beating up of old women. That carries a minimum jail sentence of four years. It is the first step towards major imprisonment of Catalan leaders. It is also extremely significant that this first step is aimed at decapitating the only disciplined and armed force under some measure of Catalan government control. What does that tell you about Rajoy’s next move?

This extreme action against Major Trapero is precisely in line with last night’s ultra hardline address by a man with the comic opera name of Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Grecia. It is hard to take seriously anyone named after a whiskey, but we live in such a strange world that this unelected, far right and immensely corrupt, inbred buffoon could spout about democracy and accuse anyone who did not bow the knee to him of disloyalty and sedition. That precisely prefigures the legal action taken against Major Trapero. It can only be a precursor to a Spanish attempt to impose physical control on Catalonia and imprison its leaders. Having rejected both dialogue and mediation, I see no other direction Rajoy will take.

The Catalan government has said it will declare Independence within days. I am not, and have never been, a pacifist. A vital duty of any state is the defence of its citizens. Once Catalonia declares Independence it will be in a different position as a state than as a movement for Independence within Spain. The highly impressive and disciplined non-violence of the Independence movement will no longer be appropriate. But physically, I am not aware of any capacity to defend itself against the Spanish forces which there is every sign Rajoy will unleash immediately after any Declaration of Independence. Catalonia will also need to move instantly to dismantle any parts of the state fabric, and particularly the judiciary and prosecutorial service, which may remain loyal to Madrid,

The EU failed to draw a line in the sand when Rajoy’s Francoist paramilitary thugs beat up old ladies, en masse, before the eyes of the whole world. Rajoy will be certain to calculate that if he now invokes article 155, seizes Catalonia by force, and imprisons all the Catalan leadership for 30 years for rebellion, that the EU will continue to back him. Following the “royal” address yesterday and the extreme charges against Major Trapero today, the Francoist solution seems to me to be where we are heading, with nobody in any position of authority in Europe making the slightest effort to stop it.

October 4, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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