In a post-9/11 world, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are expected to strike a delicate balance between conducting aggressive, swift intelligence gathering and adhering to constitutional privacy protections. But in a digital age, private information can sometimes be obtained easily and without an individual’s permission or knowledge, compromising civil liberties. How does the U.S. government reconcile the need to provide security to its citizens without overstepping privacy laws, which are seen as fundamental rights in a democracy?
Judicial Issues Forum
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Event Information
When
Thursday, March 11, 2010
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Where
Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map
Event Materials
Reuters/T. Korol
Contact: Brookings Office of Communications
E-mail: events@brookings.edu
Phone: 202.797.6105
Also in this Series
No. 25
The 2009-2010 U.S. Supreme Court Term
The Brookings Institution, October 07, 2009
No. 24
Guantanamo Detainees: Is a National Security Court the Answer?
The Brookings Institution, March 17, 2009
No. 23
Immigration and the Courts
The Brookings Institution, February 20, 2009
View All »
On March 11, the Brookings Institution will host a Judicial Issues Forum discussion on The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State (Penguin Press, 2010), a new book by National Journal intelligence and homeland security correspondent Shane Harris. Harris will discuss the rise of the American surveillance state over the past 25 years, as well as offer his views on how our government’s intelligence strategy has made it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on everyday citizens.
Following Harris’ remarks, Ben Wittes, Brookings senior fellow, and Kim Taipale, founder and executive director of the Stilwell Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, will provide reaction and offer their views on protecting individual privacy in an era of invasive technology.
After the program, participants will take audience questions.
Participants
Featured Speaker
Shane Harris
Homeland security and intelligence correspondent, National Journal
Moderator
Benjamin Wittes
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies
Discussant
Kim Taipale
Founder and Executive Director, Stilwell Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy
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Friday, March 5, 2010
Is this government getting mad? Why arrest Civil Society Leaders for Speaking Out?
I laughed at the news that government agents had arrested some CSO leaders for speaking out against an 'innocent matter'. Well, that is nonsense.
I think this government is getting mad! Do we have medical institutions that treat mentally-ill governments and institutions. I think Malawi qualifies for a case!
I think this government is getting mad! Do we have medical institutions that treat mentally-ill governments and institutions. I think Malawi qualifies for a case!
Bingu wa Mutharika's government is failing Malawians on passport fee
Look at the passport fee; chamba eti? Ndalama zake zichokera kuDPP kodi?
Inu mukudya mabwinobwino ndivimaallowance koma mukufuna mlimi wakuMalawi ngati Orchestra Kamanga ndianzake alipire Passport moduma akagulitsa fodya wawo!?
Do you pay for your passports you, anthu adyera.
Koma DPP guys and guyesses!
Should we subsidise your failures you government Yes Bwanas? Nonsense. I will not pay the new fee.
Bola John Chilembwe yemwe uja!
Inu mukudya mabwinobwino ndivimaallowance koma mukufuna mlimi wakuMalawi ngati Orchestra Kamanga ndianzake alipire Passport moduma akagulitsa fodya wawo!?
Do you pay for your passports you, anthu adyera.
Koma DPP guys and guyesses!
Should we subsidise your failures you government Yes Bwanas? Nonsense. I will not pay the new fee.
Bola John Chilembwe yemwe uja!
Voice of America news broadcasts jammed in Ethiopia
Voice of America (VOA) reported today that its transmissions to Ethiopia are being electronic jammed. The Ethiopian government denied responsibility.
VOA cited “international shortwave radio monitors” and complaints from listeners in Ethiopia since February 22 about static the U.S. government-funded station’s daily, hour-long shortwave broadcast from Washington in Amharic—the country’s main official language. CPJ independently collected widespread local accounts of interference exclusively on the Amharic service. VOA’s half-hour broadcasts in the other two local languages, Afan Oromo and Tigrigna, were broadcasting normally, the sources said. David Borgida, a VOA spokesman told Bloomberg News the station had not identified the source of the interference.
“The Ethiopian government has long had a hostile relationship with VOA and that is why we view their denial of responsibility with some skepticism,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “We note that the Ethiopian government has neither offered to investigate nor fix the problem.”
In media interviews today, government spokesman Shimelis Kemal denied any government involvement. “This is absolutely a sham,” he told CPJ, adding that “the Ethiopian government does not support the policy of restricting foreign broadcasting services in the country. Such practices are prohibited in our constitution.”
Kemal was the government prosecutor who charged 21 journalists, including five Washington-based VOA journalists, with anti-state crimes over their coverage of the aftermath of disputed elections in May 2005. Under his leadership, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority, the governmental authority responsible for issuing print and broadcast licenses, in 2009 ordered private station Radio Sheger to drop VOA newscasts and briefly revoked the accreditations of two VOA stringers, according to CPJ research.
Kemal told CPJ the allegations were part of a “smear campaign” by “opposition Web sites in the diaspora” ahead of general elections in May.
VOA is one of a handful of foreign-based independent stations, including Deutsche Welle and Addis Dimts Radio, a station operated by the banned opposition movement Ginbot 7, that have reported ongoing or recurring interference of their broadcasts, according to CPJ research. Also in 2009, Meleskachew Amaha, a VOA stringer, was thrown into prison for three weeks on false tax charges that were later dismissed.
VOA cited “international shortwave radio monitors” and complaints from listeners in Ethiopia since February 22 about static the U.S. government-funded station’s daily, hour-long shortwave broadcast from Washington in Amharic—the country’s main official language. CPJ independently collected widespread local accounts of interference exclusively on the Amharic service. VOA’s half-hour broadcasts in the other two local languages, Afan Oromo and Tigrigna, were broadcasting normally, the sources said. David Borgida, a VOA spokesman told Bloomberg News the station had not identified the source of the interference.
“The Ethiopian government has long had a hostile relationship with VOA and that is why we view their denial of responsibility with some skepticism,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “We note that the Ethiopian government has neither offered to investigate nor fix the problem.”
In media interviews today, government spokesman Shimelis Kemal denied any government involvement. “This is absolutely a sham,” he told CPJ, adding that “the Ethiopian government does not support the policy of restricting foreign broadcasting services in the country. Such practices are prohibited in our constitution.”
Kemal was the government prosecutor who charged 21 journalists, including five Washington-based VOA journalists, with anti-state crimes over their coverage of the aftermath of disputed elections in May 2005. Under his leadership, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority, the governmental authority responsible for issuing print and broadcast licenses, in 2009 ordered private station Radio Sheger to drop VOA newscasts and briefly revoked the accreditations of two VOA stringers, according to CPJ research.
Kemal told CPJ the allegations were part of a “smear campaign” by “opposition Web sites in the diaspora” ahead of general elections in May.
VOA is one of a handful of foreign-based independent stations, including Deutsche Welle and Addis Dimts Radio, a station operated by the banned opposition movement Ginbot 7, that have reported ongoing or recurring interference of their broadcasts, according to CPJ research. Also in 2009, Meleskachew Amaha, a VOA stringer, was thrown into prison for three weeks on false tax charges that were later dismissed.
The Five Principles of Islam in Focus
The Five Principles
Islam’s Trilogy of three sacred texts is the Koran and two books about the life of Mohammed. When the Trilogy is sorted, categorized, arranged, rewritten and analyzed, it becomes apparent that five principles are the foundation of Islam.
All of Islam is based upon the Trilogy—Koran, Sira (Mohammed’s biography) and Hadith (his Traditions).
Most of the Islamic doctrine is political, not religious. Islam is a political ideology.
Islam divides the world into Muslims and unbelievers, kafirs.
Political Islam always has two different ways to treat kafirs—dualistic ethics. Kafirs can be abused in the worst ways or they can be treated like a good neighbor.
Kafirs must submit to Islam in all politics and public life. Every aspect of kafir civilization must submit to political Islam.
These Five Principles can be put in five words—Trilogy, politics, kafirs, dualism and submission. These five words bring clarity and ease of learning about political Islam.
Up until now Islam has been hard to understand because it seemed complex and contradictory and did not make sense. But, once you see how the Five Principles work, everything falls into place. Complexity becomes simplicity. Chaos becomes order.
All CSPI books are based on these Five Principles.
1. trilogy
The Trilogy contains three books—
The Koran is what Mohammed said that the angel Gabriel said that Allah said. But the Koran does not contain enough guidance for one to be a Muslim. The Koran repeatedly says that all of the world should imitate Mohammed in every way. Mohammed’s words and deeds are called the Sunna. The Sunna is found in two different texts—the Sira and Hadith.
The first source of the Sunna is the Sira which is Mohammed’s biography. The most authoritative version is by Ibn Ishaq.
The other source of the Sunna is the Hadith, the Traditions of Mohammed. There are several versions of Hadith, but the most commonly used is by Bukhari.
So the Trilogy is the Koran, Sira and Hadith.
2. political islam
Political Islam is the doctrine that relates to the unbeliever, the kafir. Islam’s relationship to the kafir cannot be religious since a Muslim is strictly forbidden to have any religious interaction with them The religion of Islam is what is required for a Muslim to avoid Hell and enter Paradise.
The Trilogy not only advocates a religious superiority over the kafir—the kafirs go to Hell whereas Muslims go to Paradise—but also its doctrine demands that Muslims dominate the kafir in all politics and culture. This domination is political, not religious.
As mentioned earlier, the Koran has 61% of its text devoted to the kafir. The Sira (Mohammed’s biography) has about 75% of its text devoted to the kafir and jihad.
Islam’s success comes primarily from its politics. In thirteen years as a spiritual leader, Mohammed converted 150 people to his religion. When he became a political leader and warrior, Islam exploded in growth, and Mohammed became king of Arabia in ten years.
Islam has a complete doctrine of how to treat the kafir that is found in the Trilogy.
3. kafirs
Non-believers are so important that they have several names. Christians and Jews are called People of the Book or infidels. Other religious names for non-Muslims are atheist, polytheist, and pagan. But the Koran uses one word that includes all of the religious names. That name is kafir, an Arabic word.
Kafir is usually translated as unbeliever, but that translation is wrong. Unbeliever is a neutral word. The Koran is very clear about the kafir. Indeed, the Koran defines the kafir by how it speaks of them. Kafirs are the lowest and worst form of life. Kafirs can be robbed, murdered, tortured, enslaved, crucified and more. Later in this chapter, more of the Koran’s doctrine of the kafir is given in some detail. But the key point is that a kafir is not only a non-Muslim, but also a person who falls under a different moral code from the Muslim.
The Koran is devoted to the division between those who believe Mohammed, Muslims, and those who do not, kafirs. This grand division of the Koran means that there are two points of view of the Koran—the view of the Muslim and the view of the kafir.
4. dualism
The third principle is duality, and is unique to Islam. As an example, here is a verse from the Koran:
109:2 I do not worship what you worship, and you do not worship what I worship. I will never worship what you worship, and you will never worship what I worship. You to your religion, me to my religion.
This sounds very tolerant, but this verse was written later:
9:5 When the sacred months are passed, kill the kafirs wherever you find them. Take them as captives, besiege them, and lie in wait for them with every kind of ambush. If they submit to Islam, observe prayer, and pay the poor tax, then let them go their way. Allah is gracious and merciful.
Now we have absolute intolerance. This contradiction is normal for the Koran and is even addressed in the Koran. The solution to contradiction is called abrogation where the later verse is better than the earlier verse.
The logic here is very important. Since Allah is perfect and the Koran is the exact words of Allah, then both contradictory verses are true, but the later verse is better or stronger. This leads to dualistic logic where two contradictory facts can both be true.
5. submission
Islam means submission and Muslim means one who has submitted. It is clearly stated in the Trilogy that all kafirs and their civilizations must be annihilated. Mohammed’s success depended on violence to persuade kafirs that he was the prophet of Allah.
Submission is political, as well as religious. Islam demands that kafirs submit in every aspect of public life. Every part of kafir culture is an offense to Allah.
Islam’s Trilogy of three sacred texts is the Koran and two books about the life of Mohammed. When the Trilogy is sorted, categorized, arranged, rewritten and analyzed, it becomes apparent that five principles are the foundation of Islam.
All of Islam is based upon the Trilogy—Koran, Sira (Mohammed’s biography) and Hadith (his Traditions).
Most of the Islamic doctrine is political, not religious. Islam is a political ideology.
Islam divides the world into Muslims and unbelievers, kafirs.
Political Islam always has two different ways to treat kafirs—dualistic ethics. Kafirs can be abused in the worst ways or they can be treated like a good neighbor.
Kafirs must submit to Islam in all politics and public life. Every aspect of kafir civilization must submit to political Islam.
These Five Principles can be put in five words—Trilogy, politics, kafirs, dualism and submission. These five words bring clarity and ease of learning about political Islam.
Up until now Islam has been hard to understand because it seemed complex and contradictory and did not make sense. But, once you see how the Five Principles work, everything falls into place. Complexity becomes simplicity. Chaos becomes order.
All CSPI books are based on these Five Principles.
1. trilogy
The Trilogy contains three books—
The Koran is what Mohammed said that the angel Gabriel said that Allah said. But the Koran does not contain enough guidance for one to be a Muslim. The Koran repeatedly says that all of the world should imitate Mohammed in every way. Mohammed’s words and deeds are called the Sunna. The Sunna is found in two different texts—the Sira and Hadith.
The first source of the Sunna is the Sira which is Mohammed’s biography. The most authoritative version is by Ibn Ishaq.
The other source of the Sunna is the Hadith, the Traditions of Mohammed. There are several versions of Hadith, but the most commonly used is by Bukhari.
So the Trilogy is the Koran, Sira and Hadith.
2. political islam
Political Islam is the doctrine that relates to the unbeliever, the kafir. Islam’s relationship to the kafir cannot be religious since a Muslim is strictly forbidden to have any religious interaction with them The religion of Islam is what is required for a Muslim to avoid Hell and enter Paradise.
The Trilogy not only advocates a religious superiority over the kafir—the kafirs go to Hell whereas Muslims go to Paradise—but also its doctrine demands that Muslims dominate the kafir in all politics and culture. This domination is political, not religious.
As mentioned earlier, the Koran has 61% of its text devoted to the kafir. The Sira (Mohammed’s biography) has about 75% of its text devoted to the kafir and jihad.
Islam’s success comes primarily from its politics. In thirteen years as a spiritual leader, Mohammed converted 150 people to his religion. When he became a political leader and warrior, Islam exploded in growth, and Mohammed became king of Arabia in ten years.
Islam has a complete doctrine of how to treat the kafir that is found in the Trilogy.
3. kafirs
Non-believers are so important that they have several names. Christians and Jews are called People of the Book or infidels. Other religious names for non-Muslims are atheist, polytheist, and pagan. But the Koran uses one word that includes all of the religious names. That name is kafir, an Arabic word.
Kafir is usually translated as unbeliever, but that translation is wrong. Unbeliever is a neutral word. The Koran is very clear about the kafir. Indeed, the Koran defines the kafir by how it speaks of them. Kafirs are the lowest and worst form of life. Kafirs can be robbed, murdered, tortured, enslaved, crucified and more. Later in this chapter, more of the Koran’s doctrine of the kafir is given in some detail. But the key point is that a kafir is not only a non-Muslim, but also a person who falls under a different moral code from the Muslim.
The Koran is devoted to the division between those who believe Mohammed, Muslims, and those who do not, kafirs. This grand division of the Koran means that there are two points of view of the Koran—the view of the Muslim and the view of the kafir.
4. dualism
The third principle is duality, and is unique to Islam. As an example, here is a verse from the Koran:
109:2 I do not worship what you worship, and you do not worship what I worship. I will never worship what you worship, and you will never worship what I worship. You to your religion, me to my religion.
This sounds very tolerant, but this verse was written later:
9:5 When the sacred months are passed, kill the kafirs wherever you find them. Take them as captives, besiege them, and lie in wait for them with every kind of ambush. If they submit to Islam, observe prayer, and pay the poor tax, then let them go their way. Allah is gracious and merciful.
Now we have absolute intolerance. This contradiction is normal for the Koran and is even addressed in the Koran. The solution to contradiction is called abrogation where the later verse is better than the earlier verse.
The logic here is very important. Since Allah is perfect and the Koran is the exact words of Allah, then both contradictory verses are true, but the later verse is better or stronger. This leads to dualistic logic where two contradictory facts can both be true.
5. submission
Islam means submission and Muslim means one who has submitted. It is clearly stated in the Trilogy that all kafirs and their civilizations must be annihilated. Mohammed’s success depended on violence to persuade kafirs that he was the prophet of Allah.
Submission is political, as well as religious. Islam demands that kafirs submit in every aspect of public life. Every part of kafir culture is an offense to Allah.
Political Islam: Talking about Islam
Claude Salhami was 'aghast' at a recent politicalislam.com newsletter-Is a Nice Muslim a Good Muslim? He replied to the newsletter with his Scourge of 'Islam Experts', but he missed my point.
The point of the Nice Muslim newsletter is that the doctrine of Islam is inhuman, not that Muslims always practice the Islamic doctrine at all times. A Muslim can be a fine person in dealing with a kafir when they are not practicing Islam. A summary of the Nice Muslim argument is:
The Koran defines the kafir, a non-Muslim. A kafir is hated and plotted against by Allah. Kafirs can be killed, tortured, crucified, raped, insulted, enslaved and deceived. Kafir is the worst word in the human language. A kafir does not have any positive attributes.
There is no Golden Rule in Islamic ethics. The Koran repeats 12 times that a Muslim is not the friend of a kafir.
Mohammed repeatedly said that it is good to deceive the kafirs, if it advances Islam.
Mohammed destroyed each and every kafir neighbor. It is Islam's purpose to make all kafirs submit to Islam.
A Muslim can only be a true friend to a kafir by the use of the Golden Rule, a non-Islamic principle.
The conclusion is that there is no good in Islam for the kafir. Sure there are those 2.6% of the Koranic words that seem to be good, but in every case the so-called good verses are abrogated later.
Anyone who implements the doctrine of Islam is not the friend of a kafir. If they are actually a friend, it is because of the power of the Golden Rule, not Islam. There is no good in Islam for the kafir. Note that this result was reached without the use of a single verse of the Koran (no cherry picking), but uses the systemic nature of its kafir doctrine.
Mr. Salhami makes these points in his reply:
On many occasions Christians have acted badly and Muslims have acted well.
So? Christians and Muslims are people. You can prove anything you want by choosing the right member. He also has some remarks about Christianity. To which I reply: I only discuss Islam, not comparative religion.
There are good Muslims and bad Muslims and we should not confuse the two.
What is meant by 'good' Muslims? Do we judge by the Islam of Medina or by the Golden Rule? If we judge by Islam of Medina, then Osama bin Laden is a good Muslim. Of course, by the Golden Rule he is not so nice. Stay with the doctrine of Islam in judging Muslims. A good Muslim is one who follows Islamic doctrine, not one who is likable.
Mr. Salhami uses his personal experience with Muslims to learn about Islam.
This confuses cause and effect. Islam is the cause and Muslims are the effect. A nice Muslim does not prove a nice Islam. Learning from Muslims is Muslim-ology,a sociological personal endeavor. Learning about Islam from the Koran, Sira, Hadith and Sharia law is learning about Islam.
He criticizes my use of the coined term, kafir-Muslim.
I will grant him this criticism and thank him for it. A much better term is Golden-Rule Muslim. Muslims, like all humans, have an innate sense of the truth of the Golden Rule and use it at times. However, this is an un-Islamic act since Islam does not have a Golden Rule.
All of the nice Muslims Mr. Salhami meets in the Middle East will not teach him anything about the suffering of their kafir ancestors during the jihad invasion and the centuries of being dhimmis living under the horror of Sharia law. He won't learn how the native civilization has been annihilated and replaced with the civilization of Islam. They will not tell him about the murder of millions of innocent Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, animists and Hindus to create the Islamic civilization.
His nice Muslim friends will not instruct him in the vision, strategy and tactics of jihad to annihilate all kafir civilizations. Nor will his nice Muslim friends ever explain Islam's dualistic ethical system, with one set of ethics for kafirs and a different set of ethics for their Muslim brothers.
Mr. Salhami is aghast at the self-taught scholars in Islam. There is a good reason for their appearance. The university- trained 'experts' are apologists for Islam. They are trained in denial and justification and produce the type of scholarship that allows the army to investigate Major Hasan's jihad at Fort Hood and never refer to Islam.
The 'experts' give us the history of Islamic conquest and imperialism and praise it as the glorious rise of Islam. The 'experts' teach courses in women's studies and ignore Sharia law and Mohammed's treatment of women. They lecture on slavery and never mention the Muslim wholesaler who sold the slaves to the white man on the wooden ship or the Islamic slave trade in North Africa, East Africa, Europe and India. The denial goes on and on as the 'experts' drive our university policy. Is there a course in any American university system that is critical of Islamic political ideology? Indeed, the 'experts' argue that such a course would be bigotry.
It is the media 'experts' that give us jihad at Mumbai, India and never mention Islam. It is the 'experts' that give us the Official Islam that Bush and Obama talk about. Nice stuff-Official Islam. Too bad it does not exist.
So, it is no wonder that when we have such dhimmified professors, university trained 'experts' and media that professionals from other fields start reading the Koran, Sira and Hadith to see for themselves what the ideology actually is that drives the contradictions between current events and what we are told.
When you understand that the entire doctrine of Islam is found in Koran, Sira and Hadith, you realize that Islam is simpler than the 'experts' told us. All three texts have been made readable today and any disciplined person can become well informed. The 'experts' have failed us, and we must teach ourselves.
It is easy to be an expert. Know Mohammed and the Koran (the book he brought about). If what you say agrees with the Koran or Mohammed, then you are right. If it does not agree with Mohammed, then it is wrong, no matter who you are.
Mr. Salhami, buckle your seatbelt and prepare to be aghast again. It is a war between the university-trained dhimmi 'experts' and the self-taught kafir scholars who stand on the doctrine found in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. We will use critical thought on the doctrine and history of political Islam.
The 'experts' will talk about nice Muslims, criticize Christianity and the West, while not holding Muslims responsible for their ideology. Every Muslim must be held accountable for Islamic political doctrine and its bloody history.
Bill Warner,
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink
copyright (c) CBSX, LLC
politicalislam.com Use and distribute as you wish; do not edit and give us credit.
The point of the Nice Muslim newsletter is that the doctrine of Islam is inhuman, not that Muslims always practice the Islamic doctrine at all times. A Muslim can be a fine person in dealing with a kafir when they are not practicing Islam. A summary of the Nice Muslim argument is:
The Koran defines the kafir, a non-Muslim. A kafir is hated and plotted against by Allah. Kafirs can be killed, tortured, crucified, raped, insulted, enslaved and deceived. Kafir is the worst word in the human language. A kafir does not have any positive attributes.
There is no Golden Rule in Islamic ethics. The Koran repeats 12 times that a Muslim is not the friend of a kafir.
Mohammed repeatedly said that it is good to deceive the kafirs, if it advances Islam.
Mohammed destroyed each and every kafir neighbor. It is Islam's purpose to make all kafirs submit to Islam.
A Muslim can only be a true friend to a kafir by the use of the Golden Rule, a non-Islamic principle.
The conclusion is that there is no good in Islam for the kafir. Sure there are those 2.6% of the Koranic words that seem to be good, but in every case the so-called good verses are abrogated later.
Anyone who implements the doctrine of Islam is not the friend of a kafir. If they are actually a friend, it is because of the power of the Golden Rule, not Islam. There is no good in Islam for the kafir. Note that this result was reached without the use of a single verse of the Koran (no cherry picking), but uses the systemic nature of its kafir doctrine.
Mr. Salhami makes these points in his reply:
On many occasions Christians have acted badly and Muslims have acted well.
So? Christians and Muslims are people. You can prove anything you want by choosing the right member. He also has some remarks about Christianity. To which I reply: I only discuss Islam, not comparative religion.
There are good Muslims and bad Muslims and we should not confuse the two.
What is meant by 'good' Muslims? Do we judge by the Islam of Medina or by the Golden Rule? If we judge by Islam of Medina, then Osama bin Laden is a good Muslim. Of course, by the Golden Rule he is not so nice. Stay with the doctrine of Islam in judging Muslims. A good Muslim is one who follows Islamic doctrine, not one who is likable.
Mr. Salhami uses his personal experience with Muslims to learn about Islam.
This confuses cause and effect. Islam is the cause and Muslims are the effect. A nice Muslim does not prove a nice Islam. Learning from Muslims is Muslim-ology,a sociological personal endeavor. Learning about Islam from the Koran, Sira, Hadith and Sharia law is learning about Islam.
He criticizes my use of the coined term, kafir-Muslim.
I will grant him this criticism and thank him for it. A much better term is Golden-Rule Muslim. Muslims, like all humans, have an innate sense of the truth of the Golden Rule and use it at times. However, this is an un-Islamic act since Islam does not have a Golden Rule.
All of the nice Muslims Mr. Salhami meets in the Middle East will not teach him anything about the suffering of their kafir ancestors during the jihad invasion and the centuries of being dhimmis living under the horror of Sharia law. He won't learn how the native civilization has been annihilated and replaced with the civilization of Islam. They will not tell him about the murder of millions of innocent Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, animists and Hindus to create the Islamic civilization.
His nice Muslim friends will not instruct him in the vision, strategy and tactics of jihad to annihilate all kafir civilizations. Nor will his nice Muslim friends ever explain Islam's dualistic ethical system, with one set of ethics for kafirs and a different set of ethics for their Muslim brothers.
Mr. Salhami is aghast at the self-taught scholars in Islam. There is a good reason for their appearance. The university- trained 'experts' are apologists for Islam. They are trained in denial and justification and produce the type of scholarship that allows the army to investigate Major Hasan's jihad at Fort Hood and never refer to Islam.
The 'experts' give us the history of Islamic conquest and imperialism and praise it as the glorious rise of Islam. The 'experts' teach courses in women's studies and ignore Sharia law and Mohammed's treatment of women. They lecture on slavery and never mention the Muslim wholesaler who sold the slaves to the white man on the wooden ship or the Islamic slave trade in North Africa, East Africa, Europe and India. The denial goes on and on as the 'experts' drive our university policy. Is there a course in any American university system that is critical of Islamic political ideology? Indeed, the 'experts' argue that such a course would be bigotry.
It is the media 'experts' that give us jihad at Mumbai, India and never mention Islam. It is the 'experts' that give us the Official Islam that Bush and Obama talk about. Nice stuff-Official Islam. Too bad it does not exist.
So, it is no wonder that when we have such dhimmified professors, university trained 'experts' and media that professionals from other fields start reading the Koran, Sira and Hadith to see for themselves what the ideology actually is that drives the contradictions between current events and what we are told.
When you understand that the entire doctrine of Islam is found in Koran, Sira and Hadith, you realize that Islam is simpler than the 'experts' told us. All three texts have been made readable today and any disciplined person can become well informed. The 'experts' have failed us, and we must teach ourselves.
It is easy to be an expert. Know Mohammed and the Koran (the book he brought about). If what you say agrees with the Koran or Mohammed, then you are right. If it does not agree with Mohammed, then it is wrong, no matter who you are.
Mr. Salhami, buckle your seatbelt and prepare to be aghast again. It is a war between the university-trained dhimmi 'experts' and the self-taught kafir scholars who stand on the doctrine found in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. We will use critical thought on the doctrine and history of political Islam.
The 'experts' will talk about nice Muslims, criticize Christianity and the West, while not holding Muslims responsible for their ideology. Every Muslim must be held accountable for Islamic political doctrine and its bloody history.
Bill Warner,
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink
copyright (c) CBSX, LLC
politicalislam.com Use and distribute as you wish; do not edit and give us credit.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
A Zimbabwean freelance journalist was arrested today for the third time this year—this time for taking footage of prisoners outside a courthouse in the capital, Harare, according to local journalists.
Officers of Zimbabwe’s Prison Service arrested Andrison Shadreck Manyere, an award-winning photojournalist and videographer, after he filmed the arrival of several men imprisoned since 2007 on allegations of plotting to overthrow the government, members of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) told CPJ. The prison guards accused Manyere of taking footage “without the permission of the Commissioner of Zimbabwe’s prison service.” Manyere was questioned by officers of the Law and Order unit of the police and was detained in Harare Central Police Station pending a formal charge, according to ZLHR spokesman Kumbirai Mafunda.
“This is the third time in five weeks Anderson Shadreck Manyere has been detained on insubstantial accusations,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “The constant harassment of this photojournalist must cease.”
Beatrice Mtetwa, a human rights lawyer who won a CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 2008 and witnessed Manyere’s arrest, told CPJ several reporters had gathered outside Harare’s Magistrates’ Court as journalists were barred from entering the building with their cameras. After seizing Manyere’s camera, prison guards warned other journalists not to take any pictures or footage of the suspects who were held in leg irons and handcuffs, she said.
On February 24, members of the ruling ZANU-PF party abducted Manyere and forced him to delete footage of their demonstration held last week, according to local news reports. Previously, on January 18, Manyere spent six hours in Harare Central Police Station after covering a civil society march, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa Zimbabwe.
Manyere is the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of his December 2008 arrest, which led to pending charges of banditry, insurgency, and terrorism, defense lawyer Alec Muchadehama told CPJ. Manyere resumed work after four months of imprisonment and was fighting to recover camera equipment seized by the police in December 2008.
Officers of Zimbabwe’s Prison Service arrested Andrison Shadreck Manyere, an award-winning photojournalist and videographer, after he filmed the arrival of several men imprisoned since 2007 on allegations of plotting to overthrow the government, members of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) told CPJ. The prison guards accused Manyere of taking footage “without the permission of the Commissioner of Zimbabwe’s prison service.” Manyere was questioned by officers of the Law and Order unit of the police and was detained in Harare Central Police Station pending a formal charge, according to ZLHR spokesman Kumbirai Mafunda.
“This is the third time in five weeks Anderson Shadreck Manyere has been detained on insubstantial accusations,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “The constant harassment of this photojournalist must cease.”
Beatrice Mtetwa, a human rights lawyer who won a CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 2008 and witnessed Manyere’s arrest, told CPJ several reporters had gathered outside Harare’s Magistrates’ Court as journalists were barred from entering the building with their cameras. After seizing Manyere’s camera, prison guards warned other journalists not to take any pictures or footage of the suspects who were held in leg irons and handcuffs, she said.
On February 24, members of the ruling ZANU-PF party abducted Manyere and forced him to delete footage of their demonstration held last week, according to local news reports. Previously, on January 18, Manyere spent six hours in Harare Central Police Station after covering a civil society march, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa Zimbabwe.
Manyere is the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of his December 2008 arrest, which led to pending charges of banditry, insurgency, and terrorism, defense lawyer Alec Muchadehama told CPJ. Manyere resumed work after four months of imprisonment and was fighting to recover camera equipment seized by the police in December 2008.
Jack Up NBS Bank!
ATM Card application process mpaka 13 weeks munthu akudikira?
The other thing: Customers, who bring you money, are waiting for too long on never ending lines!
The other thing: Customers, who bring you money, are waiting for too long on never ending lines!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Even the US can be wicked to journalists; so why blame Yoweri Museveni?
U.S. journalist John Weston Osburn was detained by homeland security on his way back in to the States after being twice denied by Canadian Border Officials on his way into Canada to cover protests at the 2010 Olympics. While in the area between border posts, Osburn was told that he was in a “no mans land,” and was denied the right to speak with a lawyer.
“I repeatedly told the officers that my rights were being violated and that I wished to be released. I felt humiliated, powerless and have rarely felt so unprotected,” said Osburn.
“The supervising officer made reference to making sure i had no weapons of mass destruction and that I wasn’t a terrorist, when it was obvious i have nothing to do with those things. This was all after i was thoroughly questioned and searched on the Canadian side which was two hundred yards away at most,” he said.
Osburn travelled 2000 miles to Vancouver from Salt Lake City, Utah, with the aim of documenting protests to the 2010 Olympics. He has worked with Indymedia and the Glass Bead Collective in the US.
Related Links
•Independent/crowd-sourced Olympics protest coverage can be followed at http://2010.mediacoop.ca/
Interview with Wes by Vancouver Media Cooperative
VMC: Another independent journalist was turned away at the US-Canada border Tuesday on his way to Vancouver to cover protests at the 2010 Olympic Games. John Weston Osburn, a long time indymedia activist, drove 2,000 miles from Salt Lake City to cover Games with the Vancouver Media Cooperative. He was interrogated and denied entry into Canada, making him the second US journalist to be denied entry in the last four days.
After he was turned around, he went back to the US and tried to re-enter Canada, this time at the truck crossing, where he was again denied entry due to past convictions for misdemeanors. This time, he flipped on his video camera to record the experience. Stopped by homeland security, Osburn was again interrogated about the Olympic protests. When he told homeland security that he wanted to speak to a lawyer,
OSBURN: They told me I didn’t have that right, and I wasn’t in US or in Canada, I was in no mans land, as the officer described it. I asked again for my lawyer and he replied that he “owned me,” he said “I own you,” I was told to spread my legs and I was searched, then the put me in a holding cell, I was in the holding cell for about two hours, at one point I asked to use the bathroom, which they later allowed me to do but only, uh, they did so watching me.
VMC: In a disturbing pattern of recent interrogations of journalists coming to Vancouver, border guards seized Osburn’s computer and notebooks.
OSBURN: Basically they ransacked my truck, they went through and they took my journals, my sketchbooks, my computer, my digital camera, they thumbed through that, I’m assuming they made copies but that I don’t want to speculate on that, but they did definitely go through it. Then I was fingerprinted and I was photographed, when I asked if I had a choice of being fingerprinted and photographed I was told no, my tape of filming being turned away, they erased the tape.
VMC: Osburn says he was prepared to have to deal with some issues at the border, but he was surprised by his experience.
OSBURN: I was kind of expecting, I was expecting to get kind of shook down, but I wasn’s expecting the type of just, the animosity and just the humiliation. Even though it was only two hours, it was a really unsettling experience, because they made me well aware that I had no rights, they made me well aware that I had no rights and there was no one there to protect me.
VMC: Though Osburn is the first to be interrogated by US homeland security, his experience shadows that of other independent journalists trying to enter Canada on the eve of the 2010 Olympics. Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman was interrogated about the games in November. Last Saturday, US journalist Martin Macias Jr was turned away at the border. At least two other independent journalists were subjected to lengthy interrogations at the US-Canada border on their way to Vancouver to cover resistance to the 2010 Games.
“I repeatedly told the officers that my rights were being violated and that I wished to be released. I felt humiliated, powerless and have rarely felt so unprotected,” said Osburn.
“The supervising officer made reference to making sure i had no weapons of mass destruction and that I wasn’t a terrorist, when it was obvious i have nothing to do with those things. This was all after i was thoroughly questioned and searched on the Canadian side which was two hundred yards away at most,” he said.
Osburn travelled 2000 miles to Vancouver from Salt Lake City, Utah, with the aim of documenting protests to the 2010 Olympics. He has worked with Indymedia and the Glass Bead Collective in the US.
Related Links
•Independent/crowd-sourced Olympics protest coverage can be followed at http://2010.mediacoop.ca/
Interview with Wes by Vancouver Media Cooperative
VMC: Another independent journalist was turned away at the US-Canada border Tuesday on his way to Vancouver to cover protests at the 2010 Olympic Games. John Weston Osburn, a long time indymedia activist, drove 2,000 miles from Salt Lake City to cover Games with the Vancouver Media Cooperative. He was interrogated and denied entry into Canada, making him the second US journalist to be denied entry in the last four days.
After he was turned around, he went back to the US and tried to re-enter Canada, this time at the truck crossing, where he was again denied entry due to past convictions for misdemeanors. This time, he flipped on his video camera to record the experience. Stopped by homeland security, Osburn was again interrogated about the Olympic protests. When he told homeland security that he wanted to speak to a lawyer,
OSBURN: They told me I didn’t have that right, and I wasn’t in US or in Canada, I was in no mans land, as the officer described it. I asked again for my lawyer and he replied that he “owned me,” he said “I own you,” I was told to spread my legs and I was searched, then the put me in a holding cell, I was in the holding cell for about two hours, at one point I asked to use the bathroom, which they later allowed me to do but only, uh, they did so watching me.
VMC: In a disturbing pattern of recent interrogations of journalists coming to Vancouver, border guards seized Osburn’s computer and notebooks.
OSBURN: Basically they ransacked my truck, they went through and they took my journals, my sketchbooks, my computer, my digital camera, they thumbed through that, I’m assuming they made copies but that I don’t want to speculate on that, but they did definitely go through it. Then I was fingerprinted and I was photographed, when I asked if I had a choice of being fingerprinted and photographed I was told no, my tape of filming being turned away, they erased the tape.
VMC: Osburn says he was prepared to have to deal with some issues at the border, but he was surprised by his experience.
OSBURN: I was kind of expecting, I was expecting to get kind of shook down, but I wasn’s expecting the type of just, the animosity and just the humiliation. Even though it was only two hours, it was a really unsettling experience, because they made me well aware that I had no rights, they made me well aware that I had no rights and there was no one there to protect me.
VMC: Though Osburn is the first to be interrogated by US homeland security, his experience shadows that of other independent journalists trying to enter Canada on the eve of the 2010 Olympics. Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman was interrogated about the games in November. Last Saturday, US journalist Martin Macias Jr was turned away at the border. At least two other independent journalists were subjected to lengthy interrogations at the US-Canada border on their way to Vancouver to cover resistance to the 2010 Games.
From Brookings: Fractionalized, Armed and Lethal: Why Somalia Matters
For the last few years, Somalia has held strong onto the top spot in both the Index of Failed States and the Fragile States Index. And this country—if one can use that term—is likely to maintain its lead for the foreseeable future. But this is nothing to brag about.
Gunmen from Hizbul Islam head for Somalia's southern port of Kismayu.
View Larger
Reuters/Feisal Omar
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9:30 AM to 11:00 AM
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African Growth and Opportunity Act: A Case of Vanishing Benefits
Mwangi S. Kimenyi, The Brookings Institution, July 30, 2009
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By definition of a failed state, Somalia has no single legitimate governing authority and is divided among numerous constituent factions that are relatively strong and have control of some lucrative sources of revenue. These factions are well organized and function more or less as independent states. Yet no single faction has a monopoly on violence, which explains why Somalia has remained a failed state for so long. In essence, the various factions have no interest in a well organized sovereign state. As such, the failed state is in a precarious equilibrium, resulting in what may appear as paradoxically both a functional and stable, stateless society.
Probably because of its fragile nature and the fact that it is small and poor, the international community has grossly underestimated the capacity of this country to destabilize the region and to engage in extremely costly activities to the international community. At present, there are no well-coordinated international efforts to rebuild this state. Yet this country—or better, its various factions—possesses the potential to inflict major global damage and could be the next hotbed for international terrorism. Ignoring Somalia would be a huge political and humanitarian mistake. But the Somali state may also have degenerated beyond the stage where marginal interventions can be beneficial; thus the focus should shift to building a new state. As the events of the last two decades have shown, the Somali state was not consensual and focusing on reverting to the same structure is likely to be futile.
Fractionalized Society
A number of factors make Somalia an increasingly volatile country. The first of course is the presence of numerous factions that lay claim to a specific territory or strong mass of supporters. Some factions have established control of a sizeable part of the country while others consist of small warring groups. Of these factions, many have a claim to illegal enterprises and have established themselves as legitimate tax collectors or traders. With the vacuum created by the absence of a state sovereign, each faction has established its own organized “government” and possesses substantial capacity to impart violence. The factions include the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, both of which have been able to control a significant section of the country and are able to maintain some degree of peace. Other notable factions are the warring groups in the central region, including the Federal Transitional Government, Al-Shabab, Hizbul-Islam and Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Then of course there are other groups like the Islamic courts that control most of South-Central Somalia, and the infamous pirates, whose sole interest is monetary gain (and which may support some of the other insurgent groups).
With all of these groups competing for control, it is not surprising that some of these factions have connections or are sympathetic with terrorist groups. Some Somali factions have accepted financial support from terror organizations in order to settle clan disputes.
The absence of a central authority combined with its general lawlessness makes Somalia an ideal haven for terrorists.
Illegal Arms Market
Not only is Somalia heavily fractioned, but these factions are well-armed. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 placed an arms embargo on Somalia, reports indicate that the number and variety of small arms available in Somalia is greater than at any time since the early 1990s. Private businesses, nation states, arms dealers, Somalis in the Diaspora, and local clans/militia all contribute to the growing number of smuggled weapons in the country. In fact, small arms are so prolific in Somalia that they are a form of currency in most parts of the country.
The Somali arms market, based in Mogadishu, is a key hub for arms trading in East Africa and weapons are constantly being transported along its porous border to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the DRC. The Kenyan government estimates that thousands of small arms are smuggled across the border every year. In fact, the Kenyan government is finding it difficult to fight crime as a result of the large number of illegal arms smuggled from Somalia. The presence of such a high number of guns poses a threat to security in Northeast Africa and beyond.
Drug Economy
Where there are guns, there are often drugs; and in Somalia the trade is in khat—a narcotic leaf that is traditionally consumed in parts of Africa and in Arab countries for its stimulating properties. Although khat is considered legal in many countries, it is an addictive drug. Khat is the most common drug in Somalia and it is estimated that approximately 75 percent of all males in Somalia use it. The khat trade is fairly lucrative, with a significant proportion of the drug originating from the Kenyan highlands and exported freely to Somalia. Kenya exports about $250 million of khat annually, beating out tea as one of the county's most lucrative exports, with a majority bound for Somalia. The Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse estimates that Kenya exports about $300,000 worth of khat to Somalia daily. Despite the negative consequences of a stateless Somalia that Kenya is experiencing, there has not been any attempt by the Kenyan government to curtail this trade, because local interests benefit a great deal.
With no central government to regulate the trade, warlords in Somalia have extended their power and now collect taxes and customs duties on khat. Many clans and regional administrations rely on import tax from the drug as their main source of revenue. In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on Somalia reported that many warlords now control the khat trade and use the proceeds to buy weapons needed to maintain control of their territory. This highly addictive substance even allows warlords to keep their troops loyal since otherwise troops suffer the consequences of withdrawal. Accordingly, khat is often included as part of troop salaries.
Diaspora Support of Factions
Evidence shows that civil wars are likely to last longer and be more intense in countries that have large populations outside of their own, due to support that members of the Diaspora provide to warring factions. Somalia is a case in point. Although the Diaspora can and has played a critical role in facilitating peace building and local reconciliation in some cases (especially in Somaliland and Puntland), in other cases the Diaspora has also provided financial support to warring clans facilitating conflict. Without financial support from the Somali Diaspora, many clans lack the resources to wage war against each other. Estimates show that at least 1 million Somalis—approximately 13 percent of the population—live abroad, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, the U.K., Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The UNDP estimates that annual remittances (or Hawala) from the Somali Diaspora are about $1 billion (about 18 percent of GDP). Although it is impossible to measure the exact amounts, the available data shows that the flow of remittances is substantial. On balance, the Diaspora is contributing to the further degeneration of the state.
Piracy
In the past couple years, Somalia has been making headlines with its infamous piracy. Some Somali factions that have specialized in piracy appear to be gaining influence, evidenced by the increasing number of international incidents. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reports that there were 111 reported piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden in 2008. This resulted in the seizing of 49 vessels by pirates and the kidnapping of more than 600 crew members for ransom. Preliminary estimates reveal that piracy rose at an even greater rate in 2009, with 217 pirate attacks off the Somali coast, which resulted in the seizing of 47 ships and the hostage of 867 crew members. It is estimated that pirate activities in Somalia brought in between $50 to $100 million in 2008, making it the most lucrative industry in Somalia. Piracy has proved to be a low-cost, high-profit industry for those seeking to control territory and maintain power in Somalia. In January 2010, over $5 million in ransom was paid to the Somali pirates.
Allowed to prosper, revenues from piracy fuel local economies and add to the chaos and fractionalization of Somali society. There are well established formulas for sharing the profits from the pirates involved in the hijacking with the ground militia who control the territory, the local community elders and officials, the financier/investor who supply weapons and equipment, and the sponsors. Evidence suggests that local businessmen sometimes even invest in hijackings in exchange for a share of the final ransom. With a coastline of about 1,880 miles, opportunities for piracy are great.
One way or another, piracy money is laundered and finds its way into other parts of Africa and the Middle East, increasing the possibility that funds will support terrorism. Piracy earnings are also impacting neighboring economies, such as the distortion of the real estate market in Kenya. There is even a high probability that Somali piracy will soon attract the attention of international crime syndicates. The fact that piracy is now considered a lucrative investment opportunity further demonstrates how the disintegration of the state can benefit so many.
Reconstituting a New State
As the conflicts between factions continue unabated and human suffering increases exponentially, warlords thrive in their economic exploits, accumulating foreign assets and further investing in violence. For those who control the various aspects of the economy, statelessness is a highly-valued institutional asset. Combining economic and political interests has resulted in an equilibrium “state of statelessness” whereby factions have little interest in moving towards reconciliation. Why give up their power when they are profiting from the current situation?
In addition to the warlords and territorial factions that frustrate peace, a number of neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea also support some factions and in the process intensify the divisions. Furthermore, statelessness has benefited many in the international community—including some developed countries. There are credible claims that European firms have exploited the lack of governing authority and signed contracts to dump waste off the Somali coast. There are also vast international commercial interests that frustrate peace in Somalia. They include fishing, trade in military hardware (mainly former communist states), and market access to the Middle East. It is well documented that foreign trawlers owned by companies in Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Yemen and Egypt have been illegally fishing in Somalia. All these interests are better served under a stateless Somalia.
After years of lawlessness and the current state of organized chaos, it is unrealistic to expect the factions to negotiate a settlement and revert to the previous unified Somali state. From the perspective of individual factions, there are no gains that would arise from an agreement that removes their capacity for violence and thus eliminates their control over economic rents. Yet, it is folly for the international community not to invest in an aggressive strategy to deal with the situation in Somalia. This strategy therefore must not focus on rebuilding the old state, but rather on building or constituting a new state or states. While the African Union (A.U.) must be involved in designing a way forward, the task calls for a broader international mandate.
The United States and other developed countries should lead an international effort aimed at the reconstitution of the Somali state. After the unsuccessful Operation Restore Hope, the U.S. literally withdrew from direct engagement, preferring to act through surrogate front-line states such as Kenya and Ethiopia, and giving token support to A.U. peace keepers. The humanitarian dimension was sub-contracted to civil society groups such as CARE and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), among others. These approaches have limited success and will not work because they only treat symptoms. Thus far, efforts by African nations including the African Union have not yielded fruit. In fact, hardly any militarily strong African country has contributed forces and equipment to support the peace mission.
In tandem with destroying terror networks, a prudent approach must focus on a long-term solution that not only leads to peaceful co-existence of the Somalis, but also improves the quality of life and creates opportunities to engage in productive activities. At the core of such a strategy must be the progressive weakening of the factions’ capacity to engage in violence and to undertake illicit activities. Achieving these objectives require a strong military presence for an extended period of time. Sources of illicit wealth must be curtailed, especially the trade in guns, drugs and piracy. In this respect, the United Nations must take an expanded role and should have the mandate to occupy the country until factions are sufficiently weakened and willing to negotiate peace. In essence, the monopoly on violence must be consolidated in an international body such as the U.N. probably together with the A.U. The outcome of negotiated peace is likely to be a new state, with different structures of governance. It is also conceivable that the outcome could be more than one state.
Finally, the strategy must involve a broad development agenda. As already noted, statelessness has many concentrated benefits, which motivates factions to invest heavily so as to retain the economic rents derived under statelessness. The military agenda must therefore be complemented with an internationally coordinated development agenda including investment in productive activities, building infrastructure and the provision of social services, especially investment in human capital-education and health. Today, investments in human capital are extremely low because alternative investment in illicit activities has much higher returns.
Somalia is a small country. But like a tick that kills a big animal, this small country can destabilize an entire region and endanger the international community. Dealing with the crisis will involve substantial costs, but failure to act now raises future costs that the world will pay exponentially. And the future might not be that distant.
Gunmen from Hizbul Islam head for Somalia's southern port of Kismayu.
View Larger
Reuters/Feisal Omar
RELATED CONTENT
Contemporary Development Challenges in Kenya
Thursday, October 01, 2009
9:30 AM to 11:00 AM
Washington, DC
Four Ways to Help Africa?
Mwangi S. Kimenyi, The Brookings Institution, September 08, 2009
African Growth and Opportunity Act: A Case of Vanishing Benefits
Mwangi S. Kimenyi, The Brookings Institution, July 30, 2009
More Related Content »
By definition of a failed state, Somalia has no single legitimate governing authority and is divided among numerous constituent factions that are relatively strong and have control of some lucrative sources of revenue. These factions are well organized and function more or less as independent states. Yet no single faction has a monopoly on violence, which explains why Somalia has remained a failed state for so long. In essence, the various factions have no interest in a well organized sovereign state. As such, the failed state is in a precarious equilibrium, resulting in what may appear as paradoxically both a functional and stable, stateless society.
Probably because of its fragile nature and the fact that it is small and poor, the international community has grossly underestimated the capacity of this country to destabilize the region and to engage in extremely costly activities to the international community. At present, there are no well-coordinated international efforts to rebuild this state. Yet this country—or better, its various factions—possesses the potential to inflict major global damage and could be the next hotbed for international terrorism. Ignoring Somalia would be a huge political and humanitarian mistake. But the Somali state may also have degenerated beyond the stage where marginal interventions can be beneficial; thus the focus should shift to building a new state. As the events of the last two decades have shown, the Somali state was not consensual and focusing on reverting to the same structure is likely to be futile.
Fractionalized Society
A number of factors make Somalia an increasingly volatile country. The first of course is the presence of numerous factions that lay claim to a specific territory or strong mass of supporters. Some factions have established control of a sizeable part of the country while others consist of small warring groups. Of these factions, many have a claim to illegal enterprises and have established themselves as legitimate tax collectors or traders. With the vacuum created by the absence of a state sovereign, each faction has established its own organized “government” and possesses substantial capacity to impart violence. The factions include the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, both of which have been able to control a significant section of the country and are able to maintain some degree of peace. Other notable factions are the warring groups in the central region, including the Federal Transitional Government, Al-Shabab, Hizbul-Islam and Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Then of course there are other groups like the Islamic courts that control most of South-Central Somalia, and the infamous pirates, whose sole interest is monetary gain (and which may support some of the other insurgent groups).
With all of these groups competing for control, it is not surprising that some of these factions have connections or are sympathetic with terrorist groups. Some Somali factions have accepted financial support from terror organizations in order to settle clan disputes.
The absence of a central authority combined with its general lawlessness makes Somalia an ideal haven for terrorists.
Illegal Arms Market
Not only is Somalia heavily fractioned, but these factions are well-armed. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 placed an arms embargo on Somalia, reports indicate that the number and variety of small arms available in Somalia is greater than at any time since the early 1990s. Private businesses, nation states, arms dealers, Somalis in the Diaspora, and local clans/militia all contribute to the growing number of smuggled weapons in the country. In fact, small arms are so prolific in Somalia that they are a form of currency in most parts of the country.
The Somali arms market, based in Mogadishu, is a key hub for arms trading in East Africa and weapons are constantly being transported along its porous border to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the DRC. The Kenyan government estimates that thousands of small arms are smuggled across the border every year. In fact, the Kenyan government is finding it difficult to fight crime as a result of the large number of illegal arms smuggled from Somalia. The presence of such a high number of guns poses a threat to security in Northeast Africa and beyond.
Drug Economy
Where there are guns, there are often drugs; and in Somalia the trade is in khat—a narcotic leaf that is traditionally consumed in parts of Africa and in Arab countries for its stimulating properties. Although khat is considered legal in many countries, it is an addictive drug. Khat is the most common drug in Somalia and it is estimated that approximately 75 percent of all males in Somalia use it. The khat trade is fairly lucrative, with a significant proportion of the drug originating from the Kenyan highlands and exported freely to Somalia. Kenya exports about $250 million of khat annually, beating out tea as one of the county's most lucrative exports, with a majority bound for Somalia. The Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse estimates that Kenya exports about $300,000 worth of khat to Somalia daily. Despite the negative consequences of a stateless Somalia that Kenya is experiencing, there has not been any attempt by the Kenyan government to curtail this trade, because local interests benefit a great deal.
With no central government to regulate the trade, warlords in Somalia have extended their power and now collect taxes and customs duties on khat. Many clans and regional administrations rely on import tax from the drug as their main source of revenue. In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on Somalia reported that many warlords now control the khat trade and use the proceeds to buy weapons needed to maintain control of their territory. This highly addictive substance even allows warlords to keep their troops loyal since otherwise troops suffer the consequences of withdrawal. Accordingly, khat is often included as part of troop salaries.
Diaspora Support of Factions
Evidence shows that civil wars are likely to last longer and be more intense in countries that have large populations outside of their own, due to support that members of the Diaspora provide to warring factions. Somalia is a case in point. Although the Diaspora can and has played a critical role in facilitating peace building and local reconciliation in some cases (especially in Somaliland and Puntland), in other cases the Diaspora has also provided financial support to warring clans facilitating conflict. Without financial support from the Somali Diaspora, many clans lack the resources to wage war against each other. Estimates show that at least 1 million Somalis—approximately 13 percent of the population—live abroad, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, the U.K., Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The UNDP estimates that annual remittances (or Hawala) from the Somali Diaspora are about $1 billion (about 18 percent of GDP). Although it is impossible to measure the exact amounts, the available data shows that the flow of remittances is substantial. On balance, the Diaspora is contributing to the further degeneration of the state.
Piracy
In the past couple years, Somalia has been making headlines with its infamous piracy. Some Somali factions that have specialized in piracy appear to be gaining influence, evidenced by the increasing number of international incidents. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reports that there were 111 reported piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden in 2008. This resulted in the seizing of 49 vessels by pirates and the kidnapping of more than 600 crew members for ransom. Preliminary estimates reveal that piracy rose at an even greater rate in 2009, with 217 pirate attacks off the Somali coast, which resulted in the seizing of 47 ships and the hostage of 867 crew members. It is estimated that pirate activities in Somalia brought in between $50 to $100 million in 2008, making it the most lucrative industry in Somalia. Piracy has proved to be a low-cost, high-profit industry for those seeking to control territory and maintain power in Somalia. In January 2010, over $5 million in ransom was paid to the Somali pirates.
Allowed to prosper, revenues from piracy fuel local economies and add to the chaos and fractionalization of Somali society. There are well established formulas for sharing the profits from the pirates involved in the hijacking with the ground militia who control the territory, the local community elders and officials, the financier/investor who supply weapons and equipment, and the sponsors. Evidence suggests that local businessmen sometimes even invest in hijackings in exchange for a share of the final ransom. With a coastline of about 1,880 miles, opportunities for piracy are great.
One way or another, piracy money is laundered and finds its way into other parts of Africa and the Middle East, increasing the possibility that funds will support terrorism. Piracy earnings are also impacting neighboring economies, such as the distortion of the real estate market in Kenya. There is even a high probability that Somali piracy will soon attract the attention of international crime syndicates. The fact that piracy is now considered a lucrative investment opportunity further demonstrates how the disintegration of the state can benefit so many.
Reconstituting a New State
As the conflicts between factions continue unabated and human suffering increases exponentially, warlords thrive in their economic exploits, accumulating foreign assets and further investing in violence. For those who control the various aspects of the economy, statelessness is a highly-valued institutional asset. Combining economic and political interests has resulted in an equilibrium “state of statelessness” whereby factions have little interest in moving towards reconciliation. Why give up their power when they are profiting from the current situation?
In addition to the warlords and territorial factions that frustrate peace, a number of neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea also support some factions and in the process intensify the divisions. Furthermore, statelessness has benefited many in the international community—including some developed countries. There are credible claims that European firms have exploited the lack of governing authority and signed contracts to dump waste off the Somali coast. There are also vast international commercial interests that frustrate peace in Somalia. They include fishing, trade in military hardware (mainly former communist states), and market access to the Middle East. It is well documented that foreign trawlers owned by companies in Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Yemen and Egypt have been illegally fishing in Somalia. All these interests are better served under a stateless Somalia.
After years of lawlessness and the current state of organized chaos, it is unrealistic to expect the factions to negotiate a settlement and revert to the previous unified Somali state. From the perspective of individual factions, there are no gains that would arise from an agreement that removes their capacity for violence and thus eliminates their control over economic rents. Yet, it is folly for the international community not to invest in an aggressive strategy to deal with the situation in Somalia. This strategy therefore must not focus on rebuilding the old state, but rather on building or constituting a new state or states. While the African Union (A.U.) must be involved in designing a way forward, the task calls for a broader international mandate.
The United States and other developed countries should lead an international effort aimed at the reconstitution of the Somali state. After the unsuccessful Operation Restore Hope, the U.S. literally withdrew from direct engagement, preferring to act through surrogate front-line states such as Kenya and Ethiopia, and giving token support to A.U. peace keepers. The humanitarian dimension was sub-contracted to civil society groups such as CARE and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), among others. These approaches have limited success and will not work because they only treat symptoms. Thus far, efforts by African nations including the African Union have not yielded fruit. In fact, hardly any militarily strong African country has contributed forces and equipment to support the peace mission.
In tandem with destroying terror networks, a prudent approach must focus on a long-term solution that not only leads to peaceful co-existence of the Somalis, but also improves the quality of life and creates opportunities to engage in productive activities. At the core of such a strategy must be the progressive weakening of the factions’ capacity to engage in violence and to undertake illicit activities. Achieving these objectives require a strong military presence for an extended period of time. Sources of illicit wealth must be curtailed, especially the trade in guns, drugs and piracy. In this respect, the United Nations must take an expanded role and should have the mandate to occupy the country until factions are sufficiently weakened and willing to negotiate peace. In essence, the monopoly on violence must be consolidated in an international body such as the U.N. probably together with the A.U. The outcome of negotiated peace is likely to be a new state, with different structures of governance. It is also conceivable that the outcome could be more than one state.
Finally, the strategy must involve a broad development agenda. As already noted, statelessness has many concentrated benefits, which motivates factions to invest heavily so as to retain the economic rents derived under statelessness. The military agenda must therefore be complemented with an internationally coordinated development agenda including investment in productive activities, building infrastructure and the provision of social services, especially investment in human capital-education and health. Today, investments in human capital are extremely low because alternative investment in illicit activities has much higher returns.
Somalia is a small country. But like a tick that kills a big animal, this small country can destabilize an entire region and endanger the international community. Dealing with the crisis will involve substantial costs, but failure to act now raises future costs that the world will pay exponentially. And the future might not be that distant.
From Brookings: (Re)Introducing the African Union Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons
This article will be published in a forthcoming issue of International Legal Materials of the American Society of International Law.
An internally displaced Somali woman holds her daughter outside their makeshift shelter at a camp in the outskirts of Mogadishu.
View Larger
Reuters/Ismail Taxta
RELATED CONTENT
An African Solution to Internal Displacement: AU Leaders Agree to Landmark Convention
Andrew Solomon, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, October 23, 2009
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Sermid D. Al-Sarraf, Esq., International Network to Promote the Rule of Law, USIP, February 28, 2009
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More than seventeen million individuals, including at least eleven million internally displaced persons (IDPs), are uprooted and on the move in Africa at the present time. Virtually all of these people have been forced or obliged to flee their homes and communities as a result of conflict, situations of generalized violence, human rights violations, natural disasters, and environmental degradation. Many of the displaced, both refugees and those who remain within the borders of their own countries, exist on the margins of society and are vulnerable to significant human rights abuse as a result of their displacement. Situations of mass displacement, like those confronting approximately twenty countries in Africa, can also put considerable stresses on affected communities and negatively affect how states are governed and develop. Displacement may also give rise to conflict or undermine peace building efforts. Solutions to displacement therefore require complex frameworks and responses that take into account the humanitarian, human rights, development, and security dimensions of this phenomenon.
The African Union Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons is one such framework. It was adopted by African heads of state and government to address the root causes and challenges of forced displacement on the continent at a Special Summit in Kampala, Uganda on October 22-23, 2009. Based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the Convention seeks to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of internally displaced persons, facilitate durable solutions to their displacement, and ensure that these individuals have an opportunity to lead dignified and productive lives. It also establishes a legal framework for cooperation among states, international and regional organizations, and civil society and other non-state actors to combat displacement and it consequences.
The Convention affirms the leading role and responsibility of national governments to protect and assist IDPs and prevent situations of internal displacement in the region and within their individual countries. As such, the Convention strengthens the principle of “sovereignty as responsibility,” which asserts that national sovereignty includes the responsibility of a state to provide for the welfare of its citizens and to relieve the humanitarian consequences of conflict. In addition, those who have endorsed the Convention have also explicitly recognized the link between promoting peace, security, and development on the continent and the need to mitigate the plight of the displaced. In this sense, the Convention contributes to Africa’s overall security and development architecture in addition to serving as the centerpiece of regional responses to one of the continent’s most pressing humanitarian and human rights crises.
The Convention is significant for a variety of other reasons. It is the first instrument intended to legally bind an entire region on matters related to preventing situations of mass displacement and to resolving the vulnerabilities and needs of those who have been displaced. While other regional organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States, have adopted resolutions calling upon their member states to protect the rights of the internally displaced, these instruments are non-binding. Although another binding instrument related to IDP protections exists in Africa—the Protocol on the Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons, adopted by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in 2006—it is only binding on the eleven ICGLR member states at a sub-regional level.
Another ground-breaking aspect of the Convention is its formal recognition of displacement triggers other than armed conflict and situations of generalized violence. The Convention recognizes and embraces a much more comprehensive list of factors that force people to flee their homes and communities. Specifically, the Convention obligates state parties to protect those who have been displaced as a result of both natural and man-made disasters. Displacement caused by development projects, including exploration and exploitation of natural resources, is also prohibited by the Convention.
Moreover, the Convention makes a significant contribution to the law of internal displacement by recognizing the rights of IDPs and the obligations states have toward them during all phases of displacement—from prevention, to treatment of persons while they are displaced and through their return, local integration, or resettlement. Among its many provisions, for instance, the Convention affirms the panoply of rights enjoyed by IDPs as individuals under human rights and humanitarian law. These include the right of all persons to be protected from arbitrary displacement and the right of those displaced to humane treatment, non-discrimination, equality, and equal protection under the law during their displacement. The Convention also recognizes the right of displaced persons to make informed decisions to return to their original homes or to resettle elsewhere in the country.
As a protection instrument, the Convention is focused first and foremost on elaborating the obligations of state parties. In this respect, the Convention sets forth a number of concrete measures to be taken by national authorities to prevent displacement and protect and assist those who are arbitrarily displaced. These measures range from complying with international human rights and humanitarian law, to developing and implementing early warning and disaster management systems to deal with complex emergencies that can forcibly displace people from their homes. In addition, the Convention obliges state parties to prohibit displacement and its use as a means of warfare, i.e. ethnic cleansing. Similarly, it requires that state parties criminalize acts of arbitrary displacement and prevent discrimination, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, and sexual and gender based violence. Notably, those bound by the Convention are also obligated to ensure that individuals who commit acts of arbitrary displacement are held accountable. This obligation extends to holding non-state actors, such as insurgents and rebel groups, private military contractors, and multinational corporations, accountable for arbitrary displacement.
In the same vein, the Convention requires armed groups not affiliated with the state to protect and assist internally displaced persons in areas under their effective control. Moreover, non-state actors and armed groups—like formal state parties to the Convention—are called upon by the Convention to provide humanitarian organizations with access to the displaced and facilitate the delivery of relief supplies to those in need. Assistance to local communities that host internally displaced persons is also mandatory under the Convention.
The Convention also requires that national authorities make funding available to assist IDPs and designate institutional focal points in each of their countries to facilitate coordination among relevant government agencies and with local and international partners on issues related to internal displacement. National authorities may, for instance, designate an existing government ministry or agency to take responsibility of IDPs or create a special commission or working group to coordinate government activities. The Convention also obligates governments to provide compensation and other reparations to remedy the harm suffered by persons as a result of their displacement.
No multilateral legal instrument is perfect, and the Convention does have limitations. Concerns over the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms and insufficient guarantees for equality, non-discrimination, and other human rights have been raised. Similarly, there is some question regarding the extent to which non-state actors and armed groups called upon by the Convention to protect IDPs can be bound by its provisions. Nevertheless, the Convention, which has benefited from the input of international experts, is considered to be generally consistent with international standards and a potentially effective instrument to address displacement and its consequences in Africa.
The Convention will enter into force as a legally binding instrument once it has been ratified by fifteen states of the African Union. At the present time, however, none of Convention’s seventeen original signatories, including the three states that signed the Convention after the Special Summit in Kampala, have completed ratification in accordance with their national law and procedures
An internally displaced Somali woman holds her daughter outside their makeshift shelter at a camp in the outskirts of Mogadishu.
View Larger
Reuters/Ismail Taxta
RELATED CONTENT
An African Solution to Internal Displacement: AU Leaders Agree to Landmark Convention
Andrew Solomon, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, October 23, 2009
Forced Displacement and Housing, Land, and Property Ownership Challenges in Post-Conflict and Reconstruction
Sermid D. Al-Sarraf, Esq., International Network to Promote the Rule of Law, USIP, February 28, 2009
Andrew Solomon
More Related Content »
More than seventeen million individuals, including at least eleven million internally displaced persons (IDPs), are uprooted and on the move in Africa at the present time. Virtually all of these people have been forced or obliged to flee their homes and communities as a result of conflict, situations of generalized violence, human rights violations, natural disasters, and environmental degradation. Many of the displaced, both refugees and those who remain within the borders of their own countries, exist on the margins of society and are vulnerable to significant human rights abuse as a result of their displacement. Situations of mass displacement, like those confronting approximately twenty countries in Africa, can also put considerable stresses on affected communities and negatively affect how states are governed and develop. Displacement may also give rise to conflict or undermine peace building efforts. Solutions to displacement therefore require complex frameworks and responses that take into account the humanitarian, human rights, development, and security dimensions of this phenomenon.
The African Union Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons is one such framework. It was adopted by African heads of state and government to address the root causes and challenges of forced displacement on the continent at a Special Summit in Kampala, Uganda on October 22-23, 2009. Based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the Convention seeks to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of internally displaced persons, facilitate durable solutions to their displacement, and ensure that these individuals have an opportunity to lead dignified and productive lives. It also establishes a legal framework for cooperation among states, international and regional organizations, and civil society and other non-state actors to combat displacement and it consequences.
The Convention affirms the leading role and responsibility of national governments to protect and assist IDPs and prevent situations of internal displacement in the region and within their individual countries. As such, the Convention strengthens the principle of “sovereignty as responsibility,” which asserts that national sovereignty includes the responsibility of a state to provide for the welfare of its citizens and to relieve the humanitarian consequences of conflict. In addition, those who have endorsed the Convention have also explicitly recognized the link between promoting peace, security, and development on the continent and the need to mitigate the plight of the displaced. In this sense, the Convention contributes to Africa’s overall security and development architecture in addition to serving as the centerpiece of regional responses to one of the continent’s most pressing humanitarian and human rights crises.
The Convention is significant for a variety of other reasons. It is the first instrument intended to legally bind an entire region on matters related to preventing situations of mass displacement and to resolving the vulnerabilities and needs of those who have been displaced. While other regional organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States, have adopted resolutions calling upon their member states to protect the rights of the internally displaced, these instruments are non-binding. Although another binding instrument related to IDP protections exists in Africa—the Protocol on the Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons, adopted by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in 2006—it is only binding on the eleven ICGLR member states at a sub-regional level.
Another ground-breaking aspect of the Convention is its formal recognition of displacement triggers other than armed conflict and situations of generalized violence. The Convention recognizes and embraces a much more comprehensive list of factors that force people to flee their homes and communities. Specifically, the Convention obligates state parties to protect those who have been displaced as a result of both natural and man-made disasters. Displacement caused by development projects, including exploration and exploitation of natural resources, is also prohibited by the Convention.
Moreover, the Convention makes a significant contribution to the law of internal displacement by recognizing the rights of IDPs and the obligations states have toward them during all phases of displacement—from prevention, to treatment of persons while they are displaced and through their return, local integration, or resettlement. Among its many provisions, for instance, the Convention affirms the panoply of rights enjoyed by IDPs as individuals under human rights and humanitarian law. These include the right of all persons to be protected from arbitrary displacement and the right of those displaced to humane treatment, non-discrimination, equality, and equal protection under the law during their displacement. The Convention also recognizes the right of displaced persons to make informed decisions to return to their original homes or to resettle elsewhere in the country.
As a protection instrument, the Convention is focused first and foremost on elaborating the obligations of state parties. In this respect, the Convention sets forth a number of concrete measures to be taken by national authorities to prevent displacement and protect and assist those who are arbitrarily displaced. These measures range from complying with international human rights and humanitarian law, to developing and implementing early warning and disaster management systems to deal with complex emergencies that can forcibly displace people from their homes. In addition, the Convention obliges state parties to prohibit displacement and its use as a means of warfare, i.e. ethnic cleansing. Similarly, it requires that state parties criminalize acts of arbitrary displacement and prevent discrimination, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, and sexual and gender based violence. Notably, those bound by the Convention are also obligated to ensure that individuals who commit acts of arbitrary displacement are held accountable. This obligation extends to holding non-state actors, such as insurgents and rebel groups, private military contractors, and multinational corporations, accountable for arbitrary displacement.
In the same vein, the Convention requires armed groups not affiliated with the state to protect and assist internally displaced persons in areas under their effective control. Moreover, non-state actors and armed groups—like formal state parties to the Convention—are called upon by the Convention to provide humanitarian organizations with access to the displaced and facilitate the delivery of relief supplies to those in need. Assistance to local communities that host internally displaced persons is also mandatory under the Convention.
The Convention also requires that national authorities make funding available to assist IDPs and designate institutional focal points in each of their countries to facilitate coordination among relevant government agencies and with local and international partners on issues related to internal displacement. National authorities may, for instance, designate an existing government ministry or agency to take responsibility of IDPs or create a special commission or working group to coordinate government activities. The Convention also obligates governments to provide compensation and other reparations to remedy the harm suffered by persons as a result of their displacement.
No multilateral legal instrument is perfect, and the Convention does have limitations. Concerns over the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms and insufficient guarantees for equality, non-discrimination, and other human rights have been raised. Similarly, there is some question regarding the extent to which non-state actors and armed groups called upon by the Convention to protect IDPs can be bound by its provisions. Nevertheless, the Convention, which has benefited from the input of international experts, is considered to be generally consistent with international standards and a potentially effective instrument to address displacement and its consequences in Africa.
The Convention will enter into force as a legally binding instrument once it has been ratified by fifteen states of the African Union. At the present time, however, none of Convention’s seventeen original signatories, including the three states that signed the Convention after the Special Summit in Kampala, have completed ratification in accordance with their national law and procedures
The United States of America and Canada can be evil, too
A variety of measures were taken by both Canadian and U.S. authorities against independent jounrnalists attempting to cover the protests around the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.
Listen to the report:
The 21st Winter Olympics are being held from February 12th–28th, 2010, in Vancouver and Whistler, in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Host cities use the Olympic Games as a means to attract corporate investment in a similar way as with large-scale events such as the Republican and Democratic political conventions and global financial gatherings such as the World Trade Organization, G-8, and G-20 meetings.
Canada won the bidding process to host the Winter Olympics in July 2003. The following year, the operational cost was initially estimated to be $1.35 billion.
By the beginning of February 2010, the estimated total cost of the Games—including required infrastructure improvements—had risen to at least $6 billion, including a staggering $1 billion spent on security preparations, to be headed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, five times the initial security budget estimate.
The Olympics themselves are a massive brand. According to the official website of the Vancouver Olympic Committee, or VANOC:
One of the key conditions of being awarded the right to host the 2010 Winter Games was a commitment to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the Olympic Brand would be protected in Canada.
VANOC took this quite literally, copyrighting lines from the English and French versions of Canada’s national anthem—which it will use on official merchandise—and managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons in 2007—the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act—that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law.
These include the number “2010” and the words “games” and “winter”—phrases which normally could not be trademarked because they are so generally used.
VANOC proceeded to take small local businesses to court for using the word “Olympic” in their names, including those in existence long before the Games were awarded to Vancouver.
VANOC’s often bizarre court forays included trying to prevent the non-incorporated “Eco-Tourism 2010 Society” from using 2010 in its name, and to target cheeky yoga-wear retailer Lilu-lemon—which launched a December 2009 clothing line called:
“Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011 Edition.”
With 7 years preceding the Olympics, a unprecedented resistance movement has grown up, based out of Vancouver. Harjap Grewal, from the Olympic Resistance Committee, explains why anyone would protest what was on the surface, a simple sporting event:
“It’s a unique moment in history because a call for a convergence normally happens at the G-8, WTO and World Bank summits that happen around the world, and this time organizers have actually called for a demonstration against the Olympics Industry.
We don’t see the Olympics Industry as being that much different than these other institutions that are unaccountable to the people of the world. The IOC is like the WTO, the IOC is like the IMF, is like the World Bank, and it encourages the transfer of wealth from public hands to private pockets.”
As early as 2007, over 70 percent of Vancouver citizens polled by Robbins SCE Research did not support the cost of the Olympics, and a January 2010 Canadian Press/Harris Decima poll found that 84 percent of Canadians believed the Games would end up in the red.
Harsha Walia, from the Olympic Resistance Committee, stated:
“We see that the Games have been overrun with a budget of over $7 billion, indigenous lands continue to be exploited and stolen, with ski resort developments all across British Columbia, increasing poverty and criminalization of the poor in the Downtown Eastside, a massive cutback in public spending and an increasing budget for policing and militarization here in Vancouver. We have $1 billion that are being sunk into a military police state in the lead-up to the Olympics.”
The most visible slogan of the anti-Olympic protest movement has been “No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land”. In an interview with the Vancouver Media Coop, First Nation artist and activist Gord Hill explained why many members of Canada’s indigenous population oppose the games which are taking place on land whose status is uniquely unresolved in Canada:
“Well here in BC in particular, it refers to the history of colonialism here in the province, and the lack of treaties that the government was required—by its own laws—to make in its western expansion across Canada. So when they got to BC, which was forming itself as a colony at that time under the British, they started to make treaties.
The first ones were known as the Douglas Treaties, after the first governor, and he made a number of small treaties on Vancouver Island, and after that they just stopped the process and just imposed government control over all these indigenous lands here in the province. It’s illegal and it’s actually immoral because they were bound by their own laws to make treaties before they settled on any land or any business took place on sovereign indigenous land.”
Radical sports writer Dave Zirin is quick to point out that the Olympics are a destructive force wherever they go. Speaking to Submedia.tv’s Franklin Lopez in Vancouver this January, Zirin explained his position:
“My beef with the Olympics is that everywhere they go you see the same three things—you see police repression, you see budget-busting graft, and you see hardcore gentrification and displacement. And that’s true no matter where the Olympics go.
Most people know about how this went down in Beijing—but it’s not a China issue, it’s not a Beijing issue, it’s an Olympics issue. Wherever they go they make these demands of a given community and I don’t think any community should have to deal with that to host a sporting event.”
After filming the January 20th interview with Zirin, Lopez got a little taste of where the $1 billion security budget for the Olympics was being spent:
“I produce a radical television/web show where I have been very critical of the Olympics for over a couple of years now. I’m also supporting Vancouver Media Coop, which is a local, independent, news-gathering cooperative that is very sympathetic to the views of the Olympic Resistance Network and the anti-Olympic movement. And thirdly I produced a video exhorting people to come to Vancouver to protest.
I was videotaping Dave Ziron, who is a radical sportswriter for The Nation—and he also writes for Sports Illustrated Online, and wrote A People’s History Of Sports In The United States. The place where he spoke was very close to my office. That event was put on by the Olympic Resistance Network and, as expected, the police were probably there undercover.
About an hour after the event was over, I get a call from one of my workmates [to say] that the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit—that is basically a special police force put in place to protect the Olympic Brand—had visited me and insisted that they ‘knew’ that I was in the building, and that they just wanted to talk to me for five minutes.
The folks were in plain clothes, and not just in plain clothes but plain, kind of hipster, grungy clothes, and they left their business cards with their Royal Canadian Mounted Police logos and their Vancouver Integrated Security Unit logos.
The only thing that I can think of is that it’s not that it’s hard to find anybody in this day and age, but that somebody followed me from the event, reported back to them, and once they were done gathering their intelligence at the event, they came and saw me, or tried to look for me at least.”
VIVO is an artist-run center in Vancouver that had planned a number of media, arts and activist-focused public events during the Olympics—both at its space and on the airwaves.
Armed with a 12-watt radio transmitter that had been used previously without incident in several art installations across British Columbia, it didn’t take long for VIVO to find out that the Olympics were not the time to get creative with your dissent.
I spoke with Kristen Roos from VIVO:
“We had only just been on the air not even for 24 hours. Normally I know that other pirate radio stations, they come and give you a warning, and if you keep broadcasting they give you another warning, but they came right in with, ‘Okay, if you keep broadcasting you’ll get a $25,000-a-day fine.
I’ve done projects like this, small scale stuff, before, and it’s kind of under the radar. It’s just a really particular time right now. Industry Canada doesn’t usually come knocking on your door with Olympic jackets on, you know? They all had Olympic jackets and VANOC passes to get into places. Not normal activity.
They’re supposed to be checking out things based on complaints but whether we would have got a complaint for such a small project like this if the Olympics weren’t here? I doubt it.”
Martin Macias—a student, radio host on Chicago Public Radio, and activist who worked on Chicago’s successful campaign against the 2016 Olympic bid—arrived in Vancouver airport on February 6th, prepared to spend a week documenting resistance to the 2010 Games.
Macias was turned away by Canadian immigration after being interrogated and having his belongings searched:
“They looked at my notebook, they looked at my newspapers, looked in the phone books that I had in my bag, and they found a number in there which is from the conference, and it’s a support number, I guess in case you need something while you are in Vancouver, if you need food of shelter or if you have problems with the authorities, any issues with them, you can call that number.
The customs agent, she saw that as a sign that I came to Vancouver with the intention of being involved in some kind of activity where I would possibly need support, in case I was arrested or in case I had issues with the authorities. And she saw that as reasonable grounds to refuse my entry.”
In an interview with radical sportswriter Dave Zirin at The Nation magazine, Macias chillingly reported what is becoming a clear conflation by security services policing protest at national and international events:
“I kept telling them,” said Macias, “[that] I wasn’t going to Vancouver to protest but to cover the protests but for them that was one and the same.”
Less anticipated than the Canadian crackdown was the interest that U.S. authorities would have in those turned away by its northern neighbor.
Following his denial of entry by Canada, on the grounds of misdemeanor convictions in the U.S. from several years ago, U.S. Indymedia journalist John Weston Osburn—a veteran of documenting both the 2008 Republican National Convention and 2009 G-20 protests—was interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security after he was sent back from the Canadian border:
“They took me inside their substation and basically started interrogating me. They asked me why I was heading for Canada, and I told them I was going to film a protest. And they asked me what the protests were about and they seemed like they wanted me to admit that it was an anti-Olympic protest.
And when they started asking me about the specifics of the protest, I basically got defensive because I didn’t feel like it was any of their business. It was my right to go film whatever I wanted to film and I didn’t feel I owed them any explanation for that.
So I asked them to speak to a lawyer, and they told me that I didn’t have the right to a lawyer, and that I was not either in Canada or in the United States but that I was in—as one officer worded it—that I was in ‘no man’s land’ and that I belonged to him. I found that really troubling.
As I was in there and they were telling me this, there was an American flag hanging and a big wooden eagle and I was thinking to myself, ‘If this isn’t America, then where the hell am I?’
He said, ‘So you want to plead the fifth then?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do’ and he said, ‘Well you can plead it in here’ and he put me in a holding cell. While I was in the holding cell, it was basically a degrading experience because they completely ignored my demands to be released.
I asked multiple times if I was being detained and on what grounds. One time when I asked, ‘Am I being detained?’ and they said ‘No” but then I said ‘Am I free to go?’ and they said ‘No.’”
Meanwhile, on the streets of Vancouver, independent journalists were finding that the police were not making much effort to discriminate between protesters and reporters.
I spoke with Chris Bevacqua, a photographer working with the Vancouver Media Cooperative about what he witnessed covering Friday protests in downtown Vancouver.
Following the breaking of a few windows of corporations—who were official sponsors of the Olympics—the police moved into action:
“At that point, police knew we were coming, so riot police came from around the building and at that point we were penned in on either side. And still taking photos at that point. I don’t know when the call was made but then the police suddenly attacked. It seemed as though it was without warning to me. I didn’t hear anything. Maybe there was, I don’t know.
And people just started getting tackled and pulled to the ground and just hit with clubs and stuff, and I’m just clicking away, just trying to get in there and take photos. And then I realized that I got pushed back—not super hard but I was pushed back—and I kind of realized that the police were sort of attacking everybody and looked around and in particular—there’s a video of him on the Vancouver Media Coop’s site—who was most definitely a photographer who had a camera in his hand. He didn’t have a bandana over his face or anything like that and was basically beaten up by police. I think it would be safe to say he was pushed around pretty hard.
The cop in front of me swung his club and hit the protester’s leg next to me but it could easily have been either of us, he wasn’t really aiming for anyone in particular. I think he was just swinging his club.”
I asked Indymedia reporter John Weston Osburn why he thought it was important to drive 2,000 miles to report—unpaid—on what was happening outside the Olympics.
“Well I think when corporate media comes and covers them I think there’s a really obvious conflict of interests. If there’s people vocalizing opposition to policies of corporations and the actions of these corporations then the corporations aren’t going to cover them.
It’s been a really common thing during these protests that they’ll go largely uncovered or there’s a lot of misinformation that’s usually put into them.
In this country, if we really want to maintain free speech and freedom of the press, then we have to become the press. And that’s why I’m so committed to citizen journalism.”
Listen to the report:
The 21st Winter Olympics are being held from February 12th–28th, 2010, in Vancouver and Whistler, in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Host cities use the Olympic Games as a means to attract corporate investment in a similar way as with large-scale events such as the Republican and Democratic political conventions and global financial gatherings such as the World Trade Organization, G-8, and G-20 meetings.
Canada won the bidding process to host the Winter Olympics in July 2003. The following year, the operational cost was initially estimated to be $1.35 billion.
By the beginning of February 2010, the estimated total cost of the Games—including required infrastructure improvements—had risen to at least $6 billion, including a staggering $1 billion spent on security preparations, to be headed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, five times the initial security budget estimate.
The Olympics themselves are a massive brand. According to the official website of the Vancouver Olympic Committee, or VANOC:
One of the key conditions of being awarded the right to host the 2010 Winter Games was a commitment to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the Olympic Brand would be protected in Canada.
VANOC took this quite literally, copyrighting lines from the English and French versions of Canada’s national anthem—which it will use on official merchandise—and managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons in 2007—the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act—that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law.
These include the number “2010” and the words “games” and “winter”—phrases which normally could not be trademarked because they are so generally used.
VANOC proceeded to take small local businesses to court for using the word “Olympic” in their names, including those in existence long before the Games were awarded to Vancouver.
VANOC’s often bizarre court forays included trying to prevent the non-incorporated “Eco-Tourism 2010 Society” from using 2010 in its name, and to target cheeky yoga-wear retailer Lilu-lemon—which launched a December 2009 clothing line called:
“Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011 Edition.”
With 7 years preceding the Olympics, a unprecedented resistance movement has grown up, based out of Vancouver. Harjap Grewal, from the Olympic Resistance Committee, explains why anyone would protest what was on the surface, a simple sporting event:
“It’s a unique moment in history because a call for a convergence normally happens at the G-8, WTO and World Bank summits that happen around the world, and this time organizers have actually called for a demonstration against the Olympics Industry.
We don’t see the Olympics Industry as being that much different than these other institutions that are unaccountable to the people of the world. The IOC is like the WTO, the IOC is like the IMF, is like the World Bank, and it encourages the transfer of wealth from public hands to private pockets.”
As early as 2007, over 70 percent of Vancouver citizens polled by Robbins SCE Research did not support the cost of the Olympics, and a January 2010 Canadian Press/Harris Decima poll found that 84 percent of Canadians believed the Games would end up in the red.
Harsha Walia, from the Olympic Resistance Committee, stated:
“We see that the Games have been overrun with a budget of over $7 billion, indigenous lands continue to be exploited and stolen, with ski resort developments all across British Columbia, increasing poverty and criminalization of the poor in the Downtown Eastside, a massive cutback in public spending and an increasing budget for policing and militarization here in Vancouver. We have $1 billion that are being sunk into a military police state in the lead-up to the Olympics.”
The most visible slogan of the anti-Olympic protest movement has been “No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land”. In an interview with the Vancouver Media Coop, First Nation artist and activist Gord Hill explained why many members of Canada’s indigenous population oppose the games which are taking place on land whose status is uniquely unresolved in Canada:
“Well here in BC in particular, it refers to the history of colonialism here in the province, and the lack of treaties that the government was required—by its own laws—to make in its western expansion across Canada. So when they got to BC, which was forming itself as a colony at that time under the British, they started to make treaties.
The first ones were known as the Douglas Treaties, after the first governor, and he made a number of small treaties on Vancouver Island, and after that they just stopped the process and just imposed government control over all these indigenous lands here in the province. It’s illegal and it’s actually immoral because they were bound by their own laws to make treaties before they settled on any land or any business took place on sovereign indigenous land.”
Radical sports writer Dave Zirin is quick to point out that the Olympics are a destructive force wherever they go. Speaking to Submedia.tv’s Franklin Lopez in Vancouver this January, Zirin explained his position:
“My beef with the Olympics is that everywhere they go you see the same three things—you see police repression, you see budget-busting graft, and you see hardcore gentrification and displacement. And that’s true no matter where the Olympics go.
Most people know about how this went down in Beijing—but it’s not a China issue, it’s not a Beijing issue, it’s an Olympics issue. Wherever they go they make these demands of a given community and I don’t think any community should have to deal with that to host a sporting event.”
After filming the January 20th interview with Zirin, Lopez got a little taste of where the $1 billion security budget for the Olympics was being spent:
“I produce a radical television/web show where I have been very critical of the Olympics for over a couple of years now. I’m also supporting Vancouver Media Coop, which is a local, independent, news-gathering cooperative that is very sympathetic to the views of the Olympic Resistance Network and the anti-Olympic movement. And thirdly I produced a video exhorting people to come to Vancouver to protest.
I was videotaping Dave Ziron, who is a radical sportswriter for The Nation—and he also writes for Sports Illustrated Online, and wrote A People’s History Of Sports In The United States. The place where he spoke was very close to my office. That event was put on by the Olympic Resistance Network and, as expected, the police were probably there undercover.
About an hour after the event was over, I get a call from one of my workmates [to say] that the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit—that is basically a special police force put in place to protect the Olympic Brand—had visited me and insisted that they ‘knew’ that I was in the building, and that they just wanted to talk to me for five minutes.
The folks were in plain clothes, and not just in plain clothes but plain, kind of hipster, grungy clothes, and they left their business cards with their Royal Canadian Mounted Police logos and their Vancouver Integrated Security Unit logos.
The only thing that I can think of is that it’s not that it’s hard to find anybody in this day and age, but that somebody followed me from the event, reported back to them, and once they were done gathering their intelligence at the event, they came and saw me, or tried to look for me at least.”
VIVO is an artist-run center in Vancouver that had planned a number of media, arts and activist-focused public events during the Olympics—both at its space and on the airwaves.
Armed with a 12-watt radio transmitter that had been used previously without incident in several art installations across British Columbia, it didn’t take long for VIVO to find out that the Olympics were not the time to get creative with your dissent.
I spoke with Kristen Roos from VIVO:
“We had only just been on the air not even for 24 hours. Normally I know that other pirate radio stations, they come and give you a warning, and if you keep broadcasting they give you another warning, but they came right in with, ‘Okay, if you keep broadcasting you’ll get a $25,000-a-day fine.
I’ve done projects like this, small scale stuff, before, and it’s kind of under the radar. It’s just a really particular time right now. Industry Canada doesn’t usually come knocking on your door with Olympic jackets on, you know? They all had Olympic jackets and VANOC passes to get into places. Not normal activity.
They’re supposed to be checking out things based on complaints but whether we would have got a complaint for such a small project like this if the Olympics weren’t here? I doubt it.”
Martin Macias—a student, radio host on Chicago Public Radio, and activist who worked on Chicago’s successful campaign against the 2016 Olympic bid—arrived in Vancouver airport on February 6th, prepared to spend a week documenting resistance to the 2010 Games.
Macias was turned away by Canadian immigration after being interrogated and having his belongings searched:
“They looked at my notebook, they looked at my newspapers, looked in the phone books that I had in my bag, and they found a number in there which is from the conference, and it’s a support number, I guess in case you need something while you are in Vancouver, if you need food of shelter or if you have problems with the authorities, any issues with them, you can call that number.
The customs agent, she saw that as a sign that I came to Vancouver with the intention of being involved in some kind of activity where I would possibly need support, in case I was arrested or in case I had issues with the authorities. And she saw that as reasonable grounds to refuse my entry.”
In an interview with radical sportswriter Dave Zirin at The Nation magazine, Macias chillingly reported what is becoming a clear conflation by security services policing protest at national and international events:
“I kept telling them,” said Macias, “[that] I wasn’t going to Vancouver to protest but to cover the protests but for them that was one and the same.”
Less anticipated than the Canadian crackdown was the interest that U.S. authorities would have in those turned away by its northern neighbor.
Following his denial of entry by Canada, on the grounds of misdemeanor convictions in the U.S. from several years ago, U.S. Indymedia journalist John Weston Osburn—a veteran of documenting both the 2008 Republican National Convention and 2009 G-20 protests—was interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security after he was sent back from the Canadian border:
“They took me inside their substation and basically started interrogating me. They asked me why I was heading for Canada, and I told them I was going to film a protest. And they asked me what the protests were about and they seemed like they wanted me to admit that it was an anti-Olympic protest.
And when they started asking me about the specifics of the protest, I basically got defensive because I didn’t feel like it was any of their business. It was my right to go film whatever I wanted to film and I didn’t feel I owed them any explanation for that.
So I asked them to speak to a lawyer, and they told me that I didn’t have the right to a lawyer, and that I was not either in Canada or in the United States but that I was in—as one officer worded it—that I was in ‘no man’s land’ and that I belonged to him. I found that really troubling.
As I was in there and they were telling me this, there was an American flag hanging and a big wooden eagle and I was thinking to myself, ‘If this isn’t America, then where the hell am I?’
He said, ‘So you want to plead the fifth then?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do’ and he said, ‘Well you can plead it in here’ and he put me in a holding cell. While I was in the holding cell, it was basically a degrading experience because they completely ignored my demands to be released.
I asked multiple times if I was being detained and on what grounds. One time when I asked, ‘Am I being detained?’ and they said ‘No” but then I said ‘Am I free to go?’ and they said ‘No.’”
Meanwhile, on the streets of Vancouver, independent journalists were finding that the police were not making much effort to discriminate between protesters and reporters.
I spoke with Chris Bevacqua, a photographer working with the Vancouver Media Cooperative about what he witnessed covering Friday protests in downtown Vancouver.
Following the breaking of a few windows of corporations—who were official sponsors of the Olympics—the police moved into action:
“At that point, police knew we were coming, so riot police came from around the building and at that point we were penned in on either side. And still taking photos at that point. I don’t know when the call was made but then the police suddenly attacked. It seemed as though it was without warning to me. I didn’t hear anything. Maybe there was, I don’t know.
And people just started getting tackled and pulled to the ground and just hit with clubs and stuff, and I’m just clicking away, just trying to get in there and take photos. And then I realized that I got pushed back—not super hard but I was pushed back—and I kind of realized that the police were sort of attacking everybody and looked around and in particular—there’s a video of him on the Vancouver Media Coop’s site—who was most definitely a photographer who had a camera in his hand. He didn’t have a bandana over his face or anything like that and was basically beaten up by police. I think it would be safe to say he was pushed around pretty hard.
The cop in front of me swung his club and hit the protester’s leg next to me but it could easily have been either of us, he wasn’t really aiming for anyone in particular. I think he was just swinging his club.”
I asked Indymedia reporter John Weston Osburn why he thought it was important to drive 2,000 miles to report—unpaid—on what was happening outside the Olympics.
“Well I think when corporate media comes and covers them I think there’s a really obvious conflict of interests. If there’s people vocalizing opposition to policies of corporations and the actions of these corporations then the corporations aren’t going to cover them.
It’s been a really common thing during these protests that they’ll go largely uncovered or there’s a lot of misinformation that’s usually put into them.
In this country, if we really want to maintain free speech and freedom of the press, then we have to become the press. And that’s why I’m so committed to citizen journalism.”
Russia is a murderer of journalists
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface by Kati Marton
About this Report
1. Summary
2. A Record of Impunity: Seventeen Deaths
Secrecy, indifference, and conflicts mar investigations into journalist deaths. Moscow has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. Its international partners have an obligation, too.
SIDEBAR: Roadmap for the International Community
3. High Profile, Low Success: Two Cases Fall Apart
Assassins targeted internationally known journalists Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya two years apart in Moscow. Despite promises, arrests, and trials, no one has been brought to justice.
SIDEBAR: In Defense of Jury Trials
4. Local Journalists at Risk: Profound Impact, Grave Dangers
Enterprising young reporters tackling sensitive local topics are often isolated and vulnerable to reprisals from powerful forces. Eduard Markevich and Pavel Makeev paid the ultimate price.
SIDEBAR: A Federal System to Investigate, Prosecute
5. No Foul Play: Brushing Aside Suspicious Deaths
Yuri Shchekochikhin and Ivan Safronov were energetic journalists, expert in their fields, fair in their reporting. They died in suspicious circumstances that have not been fully investigated.
SIDEBAR: When Everything Is ‘Top Secret’
6. Investigating the Investigators: When Police Are Suspects
Can President Medvedev halt attacks on the press without moving against corruption in law enforcement agencies? The slayings of Maksim Maksimov and Magomed Yevloyev show how the issues are intertwined.
SIDEBAR: Public Apathy Hampers Press
7. The Robberies: Reaching for a Dubious Motive
Investigators are quick to classify slayings as street crimes rather than examine more sensitive motives. The murders of Natalya Skryl and Vagif Kochetkov were mischaracterized—and then botched.
SIDEBAR: In Their Words
8. The Togliatti Murders: ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’
Valery Ivanov and Aleksei Sidorov were friends and colleagues, a pair of crusading editors out to expose crime and make a splash in Russia' car-making capital. They were murdered 18 months apart.
SIDEBAR: No Place for Justice
9. The Deadly Caucasus: Reporting at Extreme Risk
Journalists have been silenced for covering Chechnya and its neighboring republics, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Opaque investigations into the killings of Vladimir Yatsina, Magomedzagid Varisov, Telman Alishayev, and Anastasiya Baburova have fed deep skepticism.
SIDEBAR: 'Who Needs Your Truth?’
10. A (Limited) Success: Landmark Convictions Won
Guilty verdicts in the killing of Igor Domnikov show that persistence can lead to justice. But critics say the case, successful as it has been, remains far from complete.
Preface by Kati Marton
About this Report
1. Summary
2. A Record of Impunity: Seventeen Deaths
Secrecy, indifference, and conflicts mar investigations into journalist deaths. Moscow has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. Its international partners have an obligation, too.
SIDEBAR: Roadmap for the International Community
3. High Profile, Low Success: Two Cases Fall Apart
Assassins targeted internationally known journalists Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya two years apart in Moscow. Despite promises, arrests, and trials, no one has been brought to justice.
SIDEBAR: In Defense of Jury Trials
4. Local Journalists at Risk: Profound Impact, Grave Dangers
Enterprising young reporters tackling sensitive local topics are often isolated and vulnerable to reprisals from powerful forces. Eduard Markevich and Pavel Makeev paid the ultimate price.
SIDEBAR: A Federal System to Investigate, Prosecute
5. No Foul Play: Brushing Aside Suspicious Deaths
Yuri Shchekochikhin and Ivan Safronov were energetic journalists, expert in their fields, fair in their reporting. They died in suspicious circumstances that have not been fully investigated.
SIDEBAR: When Everything Is ‘Top Secret’
6. Investigating the Investigators: When Police Are Suspects
Can President Medvedev halt attacks on the press without moving against corruption in law enforcement agencies? The slayings of Maksim Maksimov and Magomed Yevloyev show how the issues are intertwined.
SIDEBAR: Public Apathy Hampers Press
7. The Robberies: Reaching for a Dubious Motive
Investigators are quick to classify slayings as street crimes rather than examine more sensitive motives. The murders of Natalya Skryl and Vagif Kochetkov were mischaracterized—and then botched.
SIDEBAR: In Their Words
8. The Togliatti Murders: ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’
Valery Ivanov and Aleksei Sidorov were friends and colleagues, a pair of crusading editors out to expose crime and make a splash in Russia' car-making capital. They were murdered 18 months apart.
SIDEBAR: No Place for Justice
9. The Deadly Caucasus: Reporting at Extreme Risk
Journalists have been silenced for covering Chechnya and its neighboring republics, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Opaque investigations into the killings of Vladimir Yatsina, Magomedzagid Varisov, Telman Alishayev, and Anastasiya Baburova have fed deep skepticism.
SIDEBAR: 'Who Needs Your Truth?’
10. A (Limited) Success: Landmark Convictions Won
Guilty verdicts in the killing of Igor Domnikov show that persistence can lead to justice. But critics say the case, successful as it has been, remains far from complete.
Global Campaign Against Impunity
Murder is the ultimate form of censorship. One reporter is killed, and hundreds are sent a message that certain topics are too dangerous to be discussed. Since 1992, more than 500 journalists have been murdered in direct relation to their work, CPJ research shows. While hundreds more have died in combat or other dangerous circumstances, murder is the leading cause of work-related deaths.
Video: CPJ's MarÃa Salazar-Ferro describes the scourge of impunityJustice is served in less than 15 percent of these murder cases. Our research suggests that the absence of justice promotes a higher incidence of murder.
Now, with support from the Knight Foundation, CPJ is launching a global campaign to combat impunity. We will focus initially on Russia and the Philippines, two very different countries that share two traits: They are among the world's deadliest nations for journalists, and they are among the worst in solving these crimes.
Video: CNN's Christiane Amanpour discusses impunityCPJ's efforts seek to build on the success of the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA), which in 1993 launched a campaign against impunity in journalist murders in Latin America. Over this period, the justice rate in Latin America improved markedly, according to CPJ's independent analysis. There are many factors, but IAPA's campaign undoubtedly made a difference.
Please take a few moments to watch the accompanying videos, which outline the implications of impunity and our plans to combat it.
Other links on this page will take you to our special reports on unsolved journalist murders, CPJ's ongoing coverage of the Philippines and Russia, our database and statistical analysis of journalist deaths since 1992, and, perhaps most important, how you can get involved.
We will be tracking progress in the Philippines and Russia in the years ahead and hope to see impunity levels decline in both countries. Concerted action on a global scale and collaboration with our colleagues and supporters, we believe, is a prescription for success. We ask for your help in making this possible.
Joel Simon
Executive Director
Video: CPJ's MarÃa Salazar-Ferro describes the scourge of impunityJustice is served in less than 15 percent of these murder cases. Our research suggests that the absence of justice promotes a higher incidence of murder.
Now, with support from the Knight Foundation, CPJ is launching a global campaign to combat impunity. We will focus initially on Russia and the Philippines, two very different countries that share two traits: They are among the world's deadliest nations for journalists, and they are among the worst in solving these crimes.
Video: CNN's Christiane Amanpour discusses impunityCPJ's efforts seek to build on the success of the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA), which in 1993 launched a campaign against impunity in journalist murders in Latin America. Over this period, the justice rate in Latin America improved markedly, according to CPJ's independent analysis. There are many factors, but IAPA's campaign undoubtedly made a difference.
Please take a few moments to watch the accompanying videos, which outline the implications of impunity and our plans to combat it.
Other links on this page will take you to our special reports on unsolved journalist murders, CPJ's ongoing coverage of the Philippines and Russia, our database and statistical analysis of journalist deaths since 1992, and, perhaps most important, how you can get involved.
We will be tracking progress in the Philippines and Russia in the years ahead and hope to see impunity levels decline in both countries. Concerted action on a global scale and collaboration with our colleagues and supporters, we believe, is a prescription for success. We ask for your help in making this possible.
Joel Simon
Executive Director
Museveni accuses two Ugandan journalists of libel
An opinion column in Uganda’s leading independent newspaper suggesting parallels between President Yoweri Museveni and former Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos led to criminal libel charges against two journalists today, according to local media reports.
A magistrate in the capital, Kampala, charged Angelo Izama, a senior reporter, and Henry Ochieng, editor of the Sunday Monitor news magazine, based on a complaint from Museveni, who claims he was defamed in a December 19 column, Monitor Publications lawyer Anne Abeja Muhwezi told CPJ.
Izama’s column, quoting opposition figures and academics, largely discusses the risk of political violence during next year’s general elections. But the complaint focuses on a portion of the piece that draws similarities between Museveni’s Uganda and the Phillipines under Marcos, according to CPJ research. Museveni, who took power in Uganda a few months before Philippine protests ousted Marcos in 1986, is expected to seek a fourth term in next year’s general elections.
Izama and Ochieng were released on bail of 100,000 Ugandan shillings (US$50) pending trial on February 25, according to Muhwezi. Criminal libel is one of several Ugandan penal code statutes, including sedition and the promotion of sectarianism, whose constitutional basis is under review by the country’s highest court. Ugandan courts have typically postponed action in such cases while the Supreme Court case is pending.
“If anything proves that a government is authoritarian, it’s jailing journalists who raise questions about the government,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “It’s regrettable that the magistrate charged Angelo Izama and Henry Ochieng with criminal libel. It’s time for Uganda to join the ranks of democracies by eliminating criminal defamation statutes.”
Izama told CPJ he was first interrogated about the column on December 22 and was subsequently told to report to the police “media crimes” division at least once a week. Ochieng was first summoned on January 11. Both journalists spent two hours at the media crimes division today before being driven to court in a police vehicle, Muhwezi said.
Izama and Ochieng are among several Monitor journalists facing criminal charges in connection with their coverage, according to CPJ research. Sedition charges also hang over radio journalists Robert Kalundi Sserumaga and Betty Nambooze, while a government ban remains on popular debate programs and Central Broadcasting Services, the station of the traditional kingdom of the Baganda, Uganda’s largest ethnic group, since last September.
A magistrate in the capital, Kampala, charged Angelo Izama, a senior reporter, and Henry Ochieng, editor of the Sunday Monitor news magazine, based on a complaint from Museveni, who claims he was defamed in a December 19 column, Monitor Publications lawyer Anne Abeja Muhwezi told CPJ.
Izama’s column, quoting opposition figures and academics, largely discusses the risk of political violence during next year’s general elections. But the complaint focuses on a portion of the piece that draws similarities between Museveni’s Uganda and the Phillipines under Marcos, according to CPJ research. Museveni, who took power in Uganda a few months before Philippine protests ousted Marcos in 1986, is expected to seek a fourth term in next year’s general elections.
Izama and Ochieng were released on bail of 100,000 Ugandan shillings (US$50) pending trial on February 25, according to Muhwezi. Criminal libel is one of several Ugandan penal code statutes, including sedition and the promotion of sectarianism, whose constitutional basis is under review by the country’s highest court. Ugandan courts have typically postponed action in such cases while the Supreme Court case is pending.
“If anything proves that a government is authoritarian, it’s jailing journalists who raise questions about the government,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “It’s regrettable that the magistrate charged Angelo Izama and Henry Ochieng with criminal libel. It’s time for Uganda to join the ranks of democracies by eliminating criminal defamation statutes.”
Izama told CPJ he was first interrogated about the column on December 22 and was subsequently told to report to the police “media crimes” division at least once a week. Ochieng was first summoned on January 11. Both journalists spent two hours at the media crimes division today before being driven to court in a police vehicle, Muhwezi said.
Izama and Ochieng are among several Monitor journalists facing criminal charges in connection with their coverage, according to CPJ research. Sedition charges also hang over radio journalists Robert Kalundi Sserumaga and Betty Nambooze, while a government ban remains on popular debate programs and Central Broadcasting Services, the station of the traditional kingdom of the Baganda, Uganda’s largest ethnic group, since last September.
Latin America takes steps against criminal defamation
In an encouraging development, three courts in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Chile have recently followed the growing regional consensus against criminal defamation by dismissing criminal penalties against journalists accused of libel and slander.
The newsweekly magazine Semana reported that a piece written by Alfredo Molano, at left, in the op-ed pages of the Bogota-based daily El Espectador in February 2007 described how the members of a family in Cartagena and Valledupar had undue influence in private businesses and public offices in the country’s Caribbean region.
The newsweekly magazine Semana reported that a piece written by Alfredo Molano, at left, in the op-ed pages of the Bogota-based daily El Espectador in February 2007 described how the members of a family in Cartagena and Valledupar had undue influence in private businesses and public offices in the country’s Caribbean region.
Three Rwandan journalists sentenced to prison
Three journalists were sentenced to prison on Monday in Rwanda over a story reporting on an extramarital affair between the mayor of the capital, Kigali, and a government minister, according to local journalists and news reports.
Magistrate Fidele Bazihana of Nyarugenge Court in Kigali convicted former Editor Charles Kabonero, Acting Editor-in-Chief Didas Gasana, and reporter Richard Kayigamba of the Kinyarwanda-language private weekly Umuseso in absentia of invading the privacy of Cabinet Affairs Minister Protais Musoni and Kigali Mayor Aisa Kirabo Kacyira under Rwanda’s 1977 penal code and Rwanda’s 2009 Media Law, defense lawyer Christopher Niyomugabo told CPJ.
The magistrate sentenced Kabonero to one year in prison and gave six-month prison terms to Gasana and Kayigamba. The three were also ordered to pay damages of 1 million Rwandan francs (US$1,700) to the two officials. (The lawyer was unable to clarify yet whether the amount was a total figure or would be paid to each official.) The magistrate dismissed the prosecution’s requests to ban the newspaper and imprison the journalists upon conviction, according to Niyomugabo. The journalists are free pending an appeal, he said.
“These prison sentences are deeply disturbing because they reveal a pattern of using criminal defamation to silence critical journalism in Rwanda,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “We urge the court of appeals to overturn this ruling.”
Umuseso, known for its critical coverage of the government, was the first to report the allegations in November 2009, according to local journalists. Kabonero told CPJ today that the story was a matter of public interest because Rwanda’s 2008 Law on the Leadership Code of Conduct criminalized offenses like adultery for public office holders. Both Mayor Kacyira and Musoni, who is also the interim information minister, publicly denied the accusations.
Kabonero and Gasana are already appealing a suspended two-year prison term from a 2008 conviction for slander over a story about tax evasion charges against businessman Tribert Rujugiro in South Africa, according to CPJ research. Rujugiro was later detained in London on a South African arrest warrant on the charges reported by Umuseso, according to news reports.
Magistrate Fidele Bazihana of Nyarugenge Court in Kigali convicted former Editor Charles Kabonero, Acting Editor-in-Chief Didas Gasana, and reporter Richard Kayigamba of the Kinyarwanda-language private weekly Umuseso in absentia of invading the privacy of Cabinet Affairs Minister Protais Musoni and Kigali Mayor Aisa Kirabo Kacyira under Rwanda’s 1977 penal code and Rwanda’s 2009 Media Law, defense lawyer Christopher Niyomugabo told CPJ.
The magistrate sentenced Kabonero to one year in prison and gave six-month prison terms to Gasana and Kayigamba. The three were also ordered to pay damages of 1 million Rwandan francs (US$1,700) to the two officials. (The lawyer was unable to clarify yet whether the amount was a total figure or would be paid to each official.) The magistrate dismissed the prosecution’s requests to ban the newspaper and imprison the journalists upon conviction, according to Niyomugabo. The journalists are free pending an appeal, he said.
“These prison sentences are deeply disturbing because they reveal a pattern of using criminal defamation to silence critical journalism in Rwanda,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “We urge the court of appeals to overturn this ruling.”
Umuseso, known for its critical coverage of the government, was the first to report the allegations in November 2009, according to local journalists. Kabonero told CPJ today that the story was a matter of public interest because Rwanda’s 2008 Law on the Leadership Code of Conduct criminalized offenses like adultery for public office holders. Both Mayor Kacyira and Musoni, who is also the interim information minister, publicly denied the accusations.
Kabonero and Gasana are already appealing a suspended two-year prison term from a 2008 conviction for slander over a story about tax evasion charges against businessman Tribert Rujugiro in South Africa, according to CPJ research. Rujugiro was later detained in London on a South African arrest warrant on the charges reported by Umuseso, according to news reports.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thumbs up to Privation Commission
Thanks guys for making your Annual Reports accessible to everyone; you are doing a good job.
Zachimalawi is happy with your performance, though you are busy selling our companies.
Zachimalawi is happy with your performance, though you are busy selling our companies.
More indicators on Malawi
Demographics (United Nations Population Fund):
Population: 12,884,000
Population aged 15-59: 6,185,000
Urban population: 2,211,000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under 5 mortality per 1000 births: 184
Male life expectancy: 41 years
Female life expectancy: 41 years
Combined average life expectancy: 41 years
Combined average life expectancy 1975-1980: 43.8 years
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Education (UNESCO, 2004):
Males with secondary education as percentage of secondary school-age youths: 32 percent
Females with secondary education as percentage of secondary school-age youths: 26 percent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Literacy rates (UNESCO, 2004):
Percentage of literate males aged 15 or older: 75.5 percent
Percentage of literate females aged 15 or older: 48.7 percent
Combined literacy rate for aged 15 or older: 61.8 percent
Population: 12,884,000
Population aged 15-59: 6,185,000
Urban population: 2,211,000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under 5 mortality per 1000 births: 184
Male life expectancy: 41 years
Female life expectancy: 41 years
Combined average life expectancy: 41 years
Combined average life expectancy 1975-1980: 43.8 years
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Education (UNESCO, 2004):
Males with secondary education as percentage of secondary school-age youths: 32 percent
Females with secondary education as percentage of secondary school-age youths: 26 percent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Literacy rates (UNESCO, 2004):
Percentage of literate males aged 15 or older: 75.5 percent
Percentage of literate females aged 15 or older: 48.7 percent
Combined literacy rate for aged 15 or older: 61.8 percent
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