On Sunday 28 February, a major conflict took place in the Chiapan community of Mitziton, when around one hundred members of the evangelical ‘Army of God’, widely seen as a paramilitary group, attacked Other Campaign supporters in the community. Over 200 police attended, in ten police lorries, and the road between San Cristobal and Comitan was closed for many hours. Each side took three members of the other side
hostage, and several people received bullet wounds from the guns of
the Army of God or were beaten up. Huge fires were lit, and
ambulances were prevented from getting in to treat the wounded.

A statement from the community assembly tells how Other Campaign adherents were tied to   poles blindfolded and left like this for twelve hours, “they were brutally beaten and tortured while they poured gasoline over them, saying ‘we are going to burn you alive’ ”. Agents of the State
Preventive Police “were already in place, but when they heard the
shots did nothing. They only approached when the aggression was
over”. Government officials who were present “did nothing, only gave statements to the press to confuse people”.

The incidents were grossly misrepresented in much of the press, despite the presence of human rights observers to monitor the situation. What had happened was presented solely as a conflict over timber, as it was
precipitated by one of the evangelicals illegally cutting down five
trees. He did this without gaining the permission of the community
authorities, necessary because trees are protected in Mitziton.

What the press did not say was that this action was clearly one of deliberate provocation, intended to incite violence and division, and to weaken and discredit the community assembly which represents the majority of the
population. Nor did they say that the paramilitary groups have the
full support and protection of the state government to attack with
impunity. Finally, they presented the events as a ‘mere
inter-religious conflict’, rather than a symptom of the struggle by
many indigenous groups to prevent the loss of their lands to the San
Cristobal - Palenque highway, which in Mitziton would destroy 40
hectares of pine and oak forest, 10 hectares of community farmland,
and two wells. Finally, they failed to indicate that this attack
demonstrates once again the government’s intention to put an end to
all the political and social struggles and movements connected in any
way to the Zapatista movement and its sympathisers.

Background

Mitziton is a Tzotzil community situated in a rural part of the municipality of San Cristobal, next to the headquarters of military zone XXXI Rancho
Nuevo. The origin of the community lies in the expulsion of over
30,000 residents from San Juan Chamula in 1976, when the
‘traditional’ Catholics broke with the ‘progressive’ Catholic
diocese of San Cristobal, which was then following the teachings of
Liberation Theology under Bishop Samuel Ruiz. Evangelical protestant
groups were also expelled.

As in many communities in Chiapas, therefore, there are political and religious differences. Approximately 500 residents of Mitziton are Catholics and adherents of the Other Campaign, while 98 are members of an evangelical religious organisation called ‘Eagle Wings’ (Alas de Aguila).
They oppose the Other Campaign, and are also members of the Army of
God (Ejercito de Dios), a branch of their church. The majority in
Mitziton call this group ‘the un-cooperative ones’
(non-cooperantes) because they do not take part in community work.
“These ‘soldiers of Christ’ are nothing more than a
paramilitary organisation”, they say.

The members of the Eagle Wings church are followers of Pastor Carmen Diaz Lopez, who was expelled from Mitziton in 2001, for the alleged trafficking of undocumented Central American migrants. He is said to have persuaded other evangelicals not to cooperate in community activities, and is alleged to be financing the Eagle Wings church.

The Army of God emerged from an armed group called ‘My Brother’s Keeper’. Its stated aim is to protect its evangelical members from expulsion, displacement or harassment, and to promote their development and advancement. It has a politico-military structure, and its
Commander-in-chief is Esdras Alonso Gonzalez. In June 2006, he, along
with the Eagle Wings and other local evangelical churches, presented
120 male and female members of the Army of God to a religious
ceremony in San Cristobal. They had had military and religious
training, wore military-style uniforms, and marched in military
cadence. Since then the organisation has continued to grow.

Resistance to the road

Construction of the San Cristobal to Palenque toll road was due to begin in 2009, as one of the first steps in the plan to develop the Palenque - Agua Azul area into a luxury paradise for ecotourism. In February, the Chiapas state government announced that it was to begin preparations for work on
the 8-mile stretch of road between San Cristobal and the Rancho Nuevo
military base, and engineers went to Mitziton, without asking
permission, and told local people they were measuring for the
super-highway, for which Mitziton was to be ‘kilometre zero’.

The community met together in assembly in March, and decided to reject the highway which would cut their ejido in half, destroying their homes, lands, forests and water sources. They issued a formal statement of
resistance in April. “The bad government has violated our rights as
indigenous Tzotziles, since at no time have they told us they want to
build the highway here, and they never asked permission to enter our
territory and take measurements…We will organise and defend
ourselves, we are not alone”. They explained that the highway would
destroy 10 family homes and 10 hectares of land where they grow
potatoes, beans, radishes and corn. The highway would also destroy 40
hectares of forest…. “The bad government clearly knows that our
community produces tree seedlings of different species, so we will
never allow the destruction of our land. We do not benefit at all
from building the highway, only big businesses benefit. The bad
government make promises and promises and all that happens is
imprisonment, torture, abductions and other violations of human
rights”.

The plans for the highway accentuated the differences between the two sections of the community; the evangelical group were in favour of the toll road passing through Mitziton lands, and were in support of, and supported
by, the PRD state government. “Ever since we adhered to the EZLN’s
Other Campaign, we saw that they began to publicly show off with
their uniforms so we can see them,” a Mitzitón spokesperson told
Proceso magazine.

Killing in Mitziton

On 21st July 2009, 30 Other Campaign adherents, following an agreement by the Mitziton assembly, went to measure their communal lands. They were attacked by 60 members of the evangelical group with machetes, slingshots, clubs and stones. A truck carrying five people, two of them armed with shotguns, was driven at high speed towards the group, running them over, killing Aurelio Diaz Hernandez and injuring five other men who
were taken to hospital. Witnesses had no doubt the killing was
intentional. The victims say that the Army of God members are heavily
armed, and that they use the truck involved in the killing for people
trafficking, and for transporting illegally felled timber. They say
that two pastors of the Eagle Wings church had seriously threatened
the Other Campaign members during the two days prior to the incident,
including shooting bullets into a truck.

The protests continue

Mitziton residents held a protest march soon after the killing, which was joined by people from many parts of the region. The protest, in the form of a mock funeral procession, demanded the cancellation of the highway from San Cristobal to Palenque, the self determination of communities, and
justice for Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. For six hours, they marched on
the Pan-American Highway, carrying a symbolic casket. Each hour, they
permitted the line of backed-up cars to pass in both direc­tions
and then blocked the highway for another hour. Details of the
killing, the demonstrations, and the background, were published in La
Jornada, Proceso, and by the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human
Rights Centre (Frayba).

Following this, the commander-in chief of the Army of God, Esdras Alonso, sued Frayba, the community leaders in Mitziton, and Hermann Bellinghausen from La Jornada, for defamation of character and blocking the highway. The Army of God had become more visible on the streets of San Cristobal, marching in military formation and military uniform and commanded by military officers, a symbol of force and power.

Soon after, Mitziton came together with two other affected indigenous communities, Jotolá and San Sebastián Bachajón, to campaign together against the planned new highway. A six-hour roadblock was held by over a thousand Other Campaign adherents, followed by a press conference.
Representatives denounced the current situation, “we are faced with
bad neoliberal projects that offer no benefit to indigenous people in
any way, and the plundering of our land, which threatens our very
presence on it”. Other Campaign members from Mitzitón condemned
the fact that after a month there had been no arrest made for the
murder of Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. They also reported that “the
paramilitaries continue to threaten us with their guns, firing them
often into the air during the evening and night” and that public
officials from the Ministry of Communication and Transportation had
“made new attempts to trick us into signing an assembly certificate
to give them permission to pass through our territory to build the
highway to Palenque.” They continued “the non-cooperative ones
from the Army of God, the ones who killed our comrade, continue to
arrive with their truck full of migrant brothers. We want to prevent
further smuggling in our territory, to make sure none of the people
of our community will ever be run over or attacked again”.

In conclusion, the representatives of the three communities explained that they had met on this occasion to defend their land, their rights and their
indigenous culture that “the bad government wants to destroy and
continue destroying like they did with our ancestors.” The three
communities demonstrated against the road together again later in the
year in San Cristobal.

The Chiapas state government continued to deny that the route of the road had been decided, while engineers visited communities seeking approval for the super-highway to pass through their lands. On August 18, after the
state government’s denials were published in the media, agents of
the Secretary of Communications and Transportation went to Mitzitón
asking them to sign a paper stating that the assembly had agreed to
let the toll road pass through their territory. Ejido members
refused. Threats continued, as when on August 24th, one month after
the murder, several members of the Army of God entered a house in
Mitzitón, brandishing machetes, and told a woman they were going to
kill her husband.

A visitor to the community in September commented: “Earth movers are at Mitziton’s door, ready to carve up their land for the new toll road to Palenque. Meanwhile, the heavily armed Army of God members continue to threaten violence. They beat up a 17 year old boy and cut down the
hand-painted signs proclaiming resistance to the toll road. The ejido
commissioners have denounced them as criminals who traffic in
‘undocumented brothers.’ The commissioners allege that the state
government has known about this human trafficking for 10 years and
has just covered it up”.

However, in a surprise move in October, the Chiapas government finally announced the route of the new road, which had previously been surrounded in secrecy. Instead of adopting the original plan drawn up by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, which would have cut Mitziton in half, the state chose an alternative route, which did not pass
through the community.

The state government had become notorious for spreading lies and disinformation, so people did not know what to believe, even more so in December 2009, when, in an astonishing press release the Chiapas governor, Juan Sabines Guerrero, said he had “suspended work on the San Cristobal - Palenque highway in response to the high tension in the area”. He went on to say, with stunning duplicity, “in Chiapas, the people
command and the government obeys. The people have the right to
self-determination”.

Events of February 2010
prior to the attack

The first statement issued in February by the Mitziton authorities denounced the theft of the ejido’s official seal, which had been given by the thief to the Army of God, enabling them to issue false statements as if from the ejido. The second denounced the fact that the killer of Aurelio Dias
Hernandez had been released from prison after four months ‘as the
killing was unintentional’, and was now organising paramilitary
activity.

The third statement, issued on 20th February 2010, denounced the fact that four heavily armed masked men wearing civilian clothes, assumed to be federal agents, had illegally attempted to kidnap one of the community
leaders on the outskirts of their community. Fortunately, people were
engaged in community work nearby and came to his assistance, leading
to the armed men retreating at high speed. They statement continues
by saying that they are well aware that state and federal ministers
are working in conjunction with the paramilitary group the Army of
God ‘Eagle Wings’.

“We want to say to the bad government that they should respect our community and our agreements, because here the people command, and if anything happens, it will be the government’s responsibility. We know very well that all the repression we are suffering is because we have defended our territory, but we will not allow our land to be destroyed by the
passage of the San Cristobal Palenque highway, because it is the only
land we have”.

The letter is signed  “from the organised people of Mitziton, adherents of the Other Campaign. The people united will never be defeated”.

IMPORTANT ISSUES ARISING

The spreading of disinformation and lies by the media, at the behest of all three tiers of government. “They represent us as savage Indians”.

The determination by the state authorities to push ahead with their
planned tourism and infrastructure developments whatever the cost,
and hence the use of any means necessary to destroy opposition to
their plans.

The increasing use of paramilitary groups, often disguised as evangelical
organisations, as instruments of counterinsurgency, to repress,
intimidate, torture, threaten, injure and attack social movements,
especially those connected in any way with the Zapatistas.

This is the second time this year when members of paramilitary groups appear to have deliberately shot members of their own side in an attempt to give the impression that Zapatistas or Other Campaign adherents are
using guns. This would give the Mexican army a pretext to attack and
destroy Zapatista communities – the undoubted aim.

Despite the horrific number of killings currently taking place on a daily basis
in Mexico related to the ‘drug wars’, despite the carnage that is
Ciudad Juarez and the explosion in organised crime, there are more
federal troops in Chiapas now than in any other state in Mexico.

This is not the end of the story. We are asked to write letters of support, and
remain vigilant.

NOTES

For more information on
the Army of God, see ‘the boots of God’ by Isain Mandujano.
This article tells how in August 2009, Esdras Alonso, his Eagle Wings church, and its Army of God, formerly PRD supporters, joined the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC). The PRI are, and have been, notorious for financing and supporting anti-Zapatista paramilitary groups. The CNC is closely connected with OPDDIC, one of the currently most
active groups.

Reprinted from Narconews

]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/07/frontline-report-mitziton-a-road-resisting-community-in-chiapas/feed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/%d8%a8%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b3%d8%a8%d9%88%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af%d9%88%d9%84%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%b6%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%86%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/%d8%a8%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b3%d8%a8%d9%88%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af%d9%88%d9%84%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%b6%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%86%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:03:10 +0000 nigel http://www.paxmundi.info/?p=563 بلعين الجمعة 5/3/2010

أصيب العشرات بحالات الاختناق عندما قمعت قوات من جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي المسيرة التي نظمتها اللجنة الشعبية لمقاومة الجدار والاستيطان في بلعين ضد جدار الضم والتوسع العنصري, حيث قامت قوات الاحتلال بإطلاق قنابل الغاز باتجاه المواطنين والمتضامنين الاجانب ومحبي السلام الاسرائيلين.

من جهتها نظمت اللجنة الشعبية لمقاومة الجدار والاستيطان في بلعين مسيرة شعبية بمناسبة الأسبوع العالمي ضد العنصرية في العالم تزامن مع العديد من الفعاليات الشعبية ضد العنصرية والاضطهاد ضد الشعوب المحتلة وخاصة الشعب الفلسطيني حيث جسد ثلاثة مشاركين ومتضامنين في المسيرة ثلاثة شخصيات بارزة في نضالها ضدا لعنصرية والاحتلال وهم مهاتما غاندي ونيلسون منديلا ومارتن لوثر الذين جسدوا بنضالهم ضد العنصرية نموذجا يحتذى به وتقدموا المسيرة التي انطلقت بعد صلاة الجمعة من مركز القرية باتجاه البوابة الغربية للجدار حيث شارك فيها العديد من المتضامنين الاجانب ومحبي السلام الاسرائليين والعشرات من المواطنين الفلسطينيين من قرية بلعين ووفد من جبهة النضال الشعبي ووفد من مسرح الحرية في مخيم جنين حيث رفعت الأعلام الفلسطينية وجاب المشاركون شوارع القرية مرددين الهتافات الوطنية والهتافات المنددة بالجدار والاحتلال و اتجهت المسيرة إلى موقع الجدار وعند وصولهم الموقع قوبلوا بزخات من قنابل الغاز والصوت والأعيرة المطاطية على أثرها اندلعت مواجهات بين المتظاهرين وجنود الاحتلال استمرت لساعات على أثرها قام الجنود باقتحام الجهة الغربية من القرية ومطاردة الشبان كما وتعمدت قوات الجيش بإطلاق قنابل الغاز باتجاه طواقم الصحافة والبث المباشر التابع لتلفزيون فلسطين ومحطات فضائية أخرى لثنيهم عن نقل ما يحدث من انتهاكات على الهواء مباشرة, وبمناسبة الأسبوع الدولي لمناهضة العنصرية ومن جانبها استنكرت اللجنة الشعبية لمقاومة الجدار والاستيطان في القرية الممارسات العنصرية واللا أخلاقية التي يمارسها الاحتلال ضد الشعب الفلسطيني ومقدراته ومؤسساته ومقدساته وشددت على ضرورة التلاحم والوحدة الوطنية والتكاتف والاصطفاف في خندق واحد وتغليب المصلحة العامة

لمشاهدة الفعاليات والنشاطات المناهضة للاحتلال والجدار الرجاء زيارة موقعنا الالكتروني

]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/%d8%a8%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b3%d8%a8%d9%88%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%af%d9%88%d9%84%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%b6%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%86%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a/feed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/news-from-the-frontline-global-week-against-racism/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/news-from-the-frontline-global-week-against-racism/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:37:52 +0000 nigel http://www.paxmundi.info/?p=562 On Friday 5th March in Bil’in dozens suffered from gas inhalation when troops suppressed a march against the Israeli occupation organized by the Popular Committee Against the Wall and settlements.

The demonstration was a manifestation against the wall being built on Bil’in’s land and the annexation and expansion of Israeli apartheid.

The occupation forces fired tear gas towards the citizens of Bil’in, foreign peace activists and peace-loving Israelis.

This week’s demonstration marked the Global Week against racism in the world and coincided with many popular events against racism and oppression against the peoples and territories - in particular the Palestinian people.

The demonstration begun after Friday prayers and marched from the centre of the village, then continued to the western gate of the wall.

Over one hundred people participated in the march, including a group from the PFLP (The Popular front for the Liberation of Palestine) and a delegation from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

The demonstration was headed by people dressed up as three prominent figures in the global struggle against racism and occupation: Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Palestinian flags were raised and toured the village streets as the participants chanted slogans condemning the wall and the occupation.

As the march reached the wall it was met with a shower of tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs, then clashes broke out between demonstrators and occupation soldiers.

The demonstration lasted for hours as troops deliberately fired tear gas towards crews of journalists from Palestine TV and other stations to discourage the footage from the International Week Against Racism -and the Popular Committee’s condemnation of Israel’s racist and immoral practices- from being broadcast.

In response, the Popular Committee stressed the need for cohesion, national unity and solidarity and highlighted that it was in the public interest for everyone involved in anti-racist stuggles to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other.

More information about events and activities against the Israeli occupation and the wall here.

]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/06/news-from-the-frontline-global-week-against-racism/feed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/01/mexico-city-drug-policy-conference-says-prohibition-has-failed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/01/mexico-city-drug-policy-conference-says-prohibition-has-failed/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:27:49 +0000 nigel http://www.paxmundi.info/?p=561

On Monday 22^nd and Tuesday 23^rd of February in Mexico City, political figures, academics, social scientists, security experts, and activists from at least six countries came together for the Winds of Change: Drug Policy in the World conference sponsored by the Mexico City-based Collective for an Integrated Drug Policy (CUPHID). Coming as Mexico’s war on drugs turns bloodier by the day, the conference unsurprisingly concluded that current prohibitionist policies are a disaster.

“The principal conclusion is that we need a more integrated drug policy based on prevention, scientific evidence, and full respect for human rights,” summarized CUPHID president Jorge Hernandez Tinajero. “It remains clear that, yes, there exist alternatives to the current strategy.”

In a press release after the conference, CUPHID emphasized the following points:

The so-called war on drugs has failed and, without doubt, we need “winds of change” to advance toward alternative policies to address the problematic of drugs across the globe.

The prohibitionist paradigm has been ineffective, and furthermore, for the majority of countries it has implied grave violations of human rights and individual guarantees, discrimination, and social exclusion, as well as an escalation of violence that grows day by day, ever broadening the scope of impunity for organized crime.

Drugs are never going to disappear. Thus, a more realistic drug policy should focus on minimizing the harms associated with drug use — overdoses, blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS, and violence. This concept is known as “harm reduction,” and must be the backbone of any drug policy.

Colombia Cesar Gaviria, former President of Colombia, on left The conference opened Monday morning by putting its star power on display. In its opening session, former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, who, as a member of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy coauthored a report a year ago with former Brazilian President Henrique Cardoso and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo denouncing drug prohibition as a failed policy, returned to the theme.

Noting that as president of Colombia in the 1990s, he had been a firm supporter of prohibition, Gaviria said he had changed his tune,”With the passing of time, prohibitionism, in which I believed, has demonstrated itself a failure,” he told an attentive crowd jammed into a conference room of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in upscale Colonia Napoles.

The attendant human rights abuses were a big reason why, he said. “You have to be very careful in the matter of human rights,” Gaviria said. “The issue of militarization is so risky because militarization of the struggle against the drug trade, even though it may seem necessary and imperative at a given time, almost always veers into violations of human rights.”

Militarization is an especially prickly issue in Mexico, where President Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers in the war against drug trafficking organizations. While the military has failed to stop the so-called cartels or reduce the violence — it has, in fact, increased dramatically since the military was deployed three years ago — it has generated an increasing number of human rights complaints. According to the official National Commission on Human Rights, more than 1,900 complaints alleging abuses by the military — ranging from harassment, theft, and illegal entry to torture, murder, and disappearances — were filed in Mexico last year.

Referring specifically to the Mexican situation, Gaviria added: “In the long run, one of the things that most delegitimizes public policies against drugs is when human rights are violated.”

Gaviria’s comments sparked a quick reply from Deputy Carolina Viggiano of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who called Calderon’s decision to send in the military “the worst mistake” of his administration and one that was likely to ruin the prestige of the Mexican military by the time his term ends in three years.

While arguing that organized crime must sometimes be fought with extreme measures, such as anti-mafia laws and integrated counterintelligence operations, Gaviria also said that at some point, governments have to bring the traffickers in from the cold, perhaps by agreeing to let them plead guilty to offenses with short prison sentences. “Not 40 or 50 years in prison, but maybe eight or 10, and then the person can say, ‘I’m done with this, I confess my crimes, I’ll do my time, and that’s that.’ That is a solution with the justice system, not through militarization,” he said.

If Gaviria was looking for reconciliation with the traffickers, his co-panelist former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda was a bit more provocative. He suggested that Mexico needs to go back to the “good old days” of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), at least when it comes to dealing with drug trafficking organizations.

The PRI, of course, ruled Mexico in a virtual one-party state for 70 years before being defeated by Vicente Fox and the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in the 2000 elections. It was widely (and correctly) seen as not fighting the drug trade so much as managing it.Given the bloody mess that is the Mexican drug war today, perhaps it is time to return to a quiet arrangement with the cartels, Castañeda suggested. “How do we construct a modus vivendi?” he asked. “The Americans have a modus vivendi in Afghanistan,” he noted pointedly. “They don’t care if Afghanistan exports heroin to the rest of the world; they are at war with Al Qaeda.”

Castenada’s comments on Afghanistan rang especially true this week, as American soldiers push through poppy fields in their offensive on Marja. The US has made an explicit decision to arrive at a modus vivendi with poppy farmers, although it still fights the trade by interdiction and going after traffickers — or at least those linked to the Taliban.

Casteneda also came up with another provocative example, especially for Mexican leftists in the audience. “We had a modus vivendi with the Zapatistas in Chiapas,” he noted. “We also pretended they were real guerrillas with their wooden rifles. We created a liberated zone, and the army respected it, and it’s still there. But it is a simulation — the army could eliminate it in 90 seconds.”

And in yet another provocative comment on the theme, Casteneda suggested that somebody may already have arrived at a modus vivendi with the Sinaloa Cartel — a suggestion that is getting big play in Mexican newspapers these days. “Why is it that of the 70,000 drug war prisoners in Mexico, only 800 are Chapo Guzman’s men?” he asked. “Many people think the government has made a deal with the Sinaloa cartel. I don’t know if it’s true.”

The Mexican government was forced Wednesday to deny such claims, a clear sign they are getting wide circulation.

Peruvian drug policy analyst Ricardo Soberon told the conference that while Latin America has been a loyal follower of the UN’s and the US’s prohibitionist drug policy discourses, it was time for something new. “The UN anti-drug paradigm is broken,” he said. “We have to change the paradigm. We have to offer something other than prohibition and the criminal justice system, but what? A regulated market? What does that mean? What we need in any case are policies that are fundamentally based on human rights and deal with it from a public health viewpoint.”

Human rights and the drug war remained a key theme of the conference on its second day, with Luis Gonzalez Placencia, president of the Federal District (Mexico City) Commission on Human Rights, and Monte Alejandro Rubido, Subsecretary for Human Rights for the Secretariat of Public Security, speaking and being grilled by the audience.

“The violent and militaristic policy against drugs generates more violence and has produced more dead,” said Placencia. “We have to consider whether this anti-drug policy has become counterproductive,” he added.

But Rubido, a federal functionary, stood fast, saying the Calderon government remained firm in its commitment to keep drugs criminalized. Far from being a failure, the strategy is working, he said, to hoots and groans from the crowd. “It is achieving good results,” he said.

During a question and answer session that followed the pair, Rubido was raked over the coals by questioner after questioner, but remained stolidly unshakable in his support for current policy.

“How many people has marijuana killed and how many has the policy of repression killed?” asked one conference-goer, but Rubido just smirked in silence.

“People have consumed drugs forever,” said Haydee Rosovsky, the former head of Mexico’s national commission on addiction, from the floor, as she called out the bureaucrats. “You functionaries have to come out like Gaviria and Zedillo, and not wait until you are ex-functionaries.”

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) researcher Luis Astorga presented graphs showing which party governs which Mexican states and which coastal and border municipalities and how they appear to be affiliated with different blocs of cartels. “The PRI governed states on the Gulf Coast are where the cocaine flows,” he said, “and the PRI controls most border municipalities.”

That is the province of a bloc of cartels consisting of the Gulf (los Zetas) and Juarez cartels and the Beltra Leyva breakaway from the Sinaloa cartel, Astorga suggested, while taking pains to say his research is only “a work in progress.” On the other hand, the ruling National Action Party (PAN) controls the northwest states of Baja California, Sonora, and Sinaloa, playground to the Sinaloa, and La Familia cartels, and breakaway factions of the Tijuana cartel. Echoing Casteneda, Astorga suggested it might be time for a “pax mafioso,” although he admitted it would be difficult to find political cover for such a move.

Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance briefed the crowd on the US medical marijuana experience at event organizers’ request, although he expressed bemusement at the issue’s relevance to Mexico and its drug war and labored to make a useful connection.

“Medical marijuana provided the angle of attack that broke the marijuana policy logjam in the United States,” he noted. “What Mexico needs is to find some sort of similar issue, some sort of similar angle. Perhaps the best approach is to argue that by legalizing marijuana we can deprive the cartels of a significant income stream,” he suggested.

The Mexico City conference this week is just one more indication that the cracks in the wall of drug prohibition in Latin America are spreading. But while the drug reform movement in the hemisphere has some big names behind it, it is still going to take on the ground, grass roots organizing in countries across the hemisphere to move forward. The conference in Mexico City helped lay the groundwork for that, at least in Mexico.

Reprinted from Drug War Chronicle

Frances Webber, human rights lawyer, examines Lord Carlile’s Report on five years operation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Next month sees the fifth anniversary of the control order regime, introduced in haste in March 2005 after the strategy of internment, which applied only to foreign terror suspects, was declared unlawful and discriminatory. Now, control orders too are discredited for their reliance on secret evidence and their devastating impact on those subjected to them.

The fact that there have been so few control orders in the five years of their operation - forty-four in total - gives the misleading impression that those controlled must be truly dangerous. But the small number of orders doesn’t necessarily mean that the intelligence behind them is accurate. After all, not many people were hanged for murder when the UK had capital punishment - but a significant proportion of those who were judicially murdered turn out to have been innocent. In the words of human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, ‘This may affect only a small group of people but in terms of its contribution to what one might call the folklore of injustice it is colossal.’

Inimical to justice

The procedure for their imposition is inimical to justice. The Secretary of State has to apply to a High Court judge for permission to impose a control order - but the judge cannot refuse unless the order and the grounds for it are ‘obviously flawed’. This means that advance judicial scrutiny of the order is extremely limited. This process takes place in the absence of and without the knowledge of the person who is the subject of the order, and the first he knows of it (all the subjects have been male) is being arrested, served with the order, and frequently moved to a new location (a process described by Lord Onslow of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights as ‘internal exile’).

Even when the controlled person can challenge the order, all the Secretary of State has to do to get the order upheld is to show that there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect that the person may be involved in terrorist activity.

The panoply of restrictions to which a controlled person is generally subjected is by now well known (12-to 16-hour curfew, electronic tag round the ankle, geographical boundary, no unvetted visits, no internet or mobile phone access, reporting to police and to curfew monitor, frequent subjection to search of premises, etc - some twenty-five separate restrictions in all).

Extraordinarily intrusive conditions which severely affect not just the men but their wives and children, preventing even midwives and district nurses from visiting without full Home Office vetting, their worst feature is their indefinite nature. Unlike conditions of bail, which apply until trial, these conditions apply indefinitely. They are imposed for a year at a time, but renewal tends to be automatic.

And the huge delays in bringing legal challenges to court mean that a full review hearing rarely takes place within the first year of the order. The cases drag on, as legal points are litigated and appealed, and even success in the Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords Judicial Committee) does not put an end to the orders - cases simply start again in the High Court. Litigation frequently takes years. And for all that time, the orders have been in place, and the controlled men need permission even to visit their lawyers.

As Gareth Peirce told the Joint Committee, ‘There have been victories won in the courts but the interminable back and forth, back to the High Court after the House of Lords has decided in your favour, in the end breeds bleak cynicism, that whatever happens the goalposts will be moved.’

Many people thought control orders were finished after the House of Lords’ Judicial Committee blew a hole in the regime in June 2009 by reaffirming controlees’ absolute right to be given enough information about the allegations founding the order to be able to challenge them effectively.

The government, however, isn’t going to let them go so easily. It has laid before Parliament an order seeking renewal of the legislation for a further year, and the Home Office has sought to justify the control order regime in a memorandum to the Home Affairs Committee on post-legislative scrutiny of the Act.

Lord Carlile’s review

In its efforts to save control orders, the government has the support of the ‘Independent reviewer’ Lord Carlile, who in his fifth annual report on the operation of control orders, covering their operation in 2009, says that nothing works quite so well for managing the risk of terrorism in Britain today. ‘The orders contribute to a tougher environment for putative terrorists’, he concludes, warning that, ‘In stark terms, the potential cost of losing control orders is that the UK would be more vulnerable to a successful terrorist attack’.

Of the forty-four people who have been subjected to control orders, there were just twelve under orders when he wrote his report. Three of them had been the subject of orders for over two years, one for over four years, and he tells us that ‘there is significant and credible intelligence that [the three] continue to present actual or potential, and significant danger to national security and public safety’. He agrees with the security services’ assessment of another controlee as ‘a dangerous terrorist who would re-engage with terrorism the moment he could’. Two other men are described as having been involved in ‘considerable terrorist planning and facilitation in the UK’ and remaining ‘active’.

We are not told about the men who are no longer subject to control orders, having had them withdrawn or quashed by the courts. They too were assessed as presenting significant dangers when their orders were imposed. In most cases, we - and they - will never know why. Was the original assessment flawed? We know that in one case, that of Cerie Bullivant, it appears to have been based on a drunken phone call by a friend of the young man’s mother (an informant whose reliability was apparently never queried). Bullivant went on trial for absconding from his control order (he gave himself up to police), and was acquitted after he told the jury how badly he was affected by it.

Psychiatric evidence showed he had a severe depressive illness. Then, the control order itself was quashed - the judge held that the suspicions leading to its imposition were not reasonable. (Read an IRR News story: ‘Living under a control order’)

This rare glimpse into the evidence behind one control order must give rise to serious doubts about the quality of the intelligence behind others. But the secret evidence regime means that generally, we have no idea. Lifting the veil of secrecy could enable the necessity for control orders to be taken more seriously. It’s hard to accept that they are vital when we do not know why they’re made and when, perhaps even more significantly, why they are lifted.

Continuing secrecy

But the June 2009 ruling, that those controlled must know enough of the case against them to be able to answer it, has not led to more transparency. Special advocate Helen Mountfield told the Joint Committee that ‘the Home Office has taken quite a minimalist view, headline allegations only … if you are going to say somebody has undertaken terrorist training you need to tell them when and where, and that is not the level of detail, as I perceive it, that is being given at the moment.’ When the Home Office refuses to give more detail, judges can (and have) quashed control orders, since the Home Office can no longer rely on unspecified allegations. Secrecy is thus more important to the government than retaining control orders - which must raise a doubt as to how necessary the orders really are.

But even when people are told the specific allegations against them, the evidence supporting those allegations, and its sources, still remains largely secret, concealed from the controlled person, who is thus unable to correct misapprehensions or challenge witnesses’ credibility (or reliability). In most cases, the evidence is ‘a mosaic’ of little bits of information or intelligence. But the problem with a mosaic is that you can make any pattern from the pieces. And the security services are trained to see terrorist conspiracies everywhere in Muslim communities - so a person with ‘extremist’ acquaintances, who attends a mosque which has a radical imam, may well find himself targeted if he decides to go to a Muslim country to learn Arabic, study the Koran or work for a charity. The security services put these three features together and conclude that the real purpose of the travel is terrorist training.

A number of those on control orders - or awaiting deportation to torturing states under ‘deportation with assurances’ programmes - allege that action was taken against them when they refused to act as informers for MI5. Gareth Peirce referred the Joint Committee to this ‘coercive and improper use’ of such orders to put pressure on young Muslim men. This suggests that it is not the most dangerous men who are being targeted, but sometimes the most vulnerable.

Prosecution

If those on control orders really are, as Carlile portrays them, ‘very high risk, continuing and determined terrorists posing a real risk to national security and the public in the UK and abroad’, it seems incredible that they cannot be prosecuted. As Lord Carlile concedes, prosecution has got easier - some 250 people have been convicted of ‘terrorism-related’ offences since 9/11, new offences have been introduced in the Terrorism Act 2006 (preparation, training, and the infamous ‘glorification’ offences), and procedures have been modified to enable more prosecutions. (In fact, many of those prosecuted and convicted of ‘terrorist’ offences cannot realistically be said to pose a ‘real risk’ to anyone except themselves.

Convictions under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, which criminalises ‘possession of an article likely to be useful for terrorism’, have been quashed on appeal. The self-styled ‘lyrical terrorist’ Samina Malik had her conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal after her graphic poetry put her in the dock, as did some who downloaded al-Qaida handbooks out of curiosity, or from other motives which did not involve wanting to emulate al-Qaida. Mohammed Atif Siddique likewise had his conviction under section 57 quashed by the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh in February 2010 after being sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in 2007 for downloading material from the internet.)

Carlile explains the legal and operational difficulties surrounding the use of intercept evidence in criminal trials, but says that even without those difficulties, prosecution just is not feasible in some cases; hence the need for control orders.

But what is the assessment of the men as dangerous terrorists based on, if it is not based on evidence which, in some shape or form and subject to appropriate safeguards, can be presented to a court? The trouble is that Carlile cannot tell us. He cannot tell us why men he describes as determined terrorists could not and cannot be prosecuted - all he can say is that intercept evidence would not help.

Astronomical costs

In her oral evidence to the Joint Committee, Gareth Peirce pointed out that almost none of the controlled persons she represents had ever been questioned by the security services - which might go some way to explaining why they have not been prosecuted. She asked why the control order regime cannot be replaced by more surveillance of those deemed really dangerous - particularly if such a label applies only to a handful of people. Her questions deserve to be taken seriously, particularly in light of the revelation that over £8 million - about three-quarters of the total Home Office spend on the orders since 2006 - is attributable to legal costs. And as the chair of the Joint Committee pointed out, this does not include legal aid for those subject to control orders, which would effectively double the legal costs, nor does it include the cost of judges’ time in deciding control order cases.

If these costs were added, it’s likely that total legal costs of the control order regime has exceeded £20 million. With a total of forty-four individuals ever on control order, each order has cost nearly half a million pounds in legal costs alone. (Compare this with the £656,500 spent by the Home Office over the same period for subsistence - which works out at £65 per week per controlled person.)

Clearly, the benefit of control orders, as against more surveillance, is that partial house arrest, travel and communications bans make surveillance and control a lot easier for the security services - at the expense of family life, private life and the mental health of controlees and their families. Carlile accepts the devastating effect on mental health and family life of those subjected to control orders, and has in previous years commented on the need to monitor this effectively. Two years ago, he expressed the view that there should be a recognised (and possibly statutory) presumption against a control order being extended beyond two years, save in genuinely exceptional circumstances. But the government rejected his recommendation.

Testing the effectiveness of orders

Carlile’s conclusion, then, was that control orders are still needed to plug the gap where neither prosecution nor deportation is possible: there is no viable alternative, he says. But how is the effectiveness of the orders tested? ‘The key test of … effectiveness … is whether control orders prevent or restrict controlled individuals from involvement in terrorism-related activity’, says the Home Office assessment, and judged by this criterion, Carlile believes they are effective.

But of course, such an assessment takes for granted that but for the orders, the men would engage in such activity - and it is precisely this assumption that is impossible to challenge. It is a closed system, and if you are not in the know, you have to take it on trust. And with the experience of Binyam Mohamed and the Chilcot Inquiry fresh in our minds, taking it on trust is something most responsible and sane citizens would rather not have to do.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, like the ‘independent reviewer’, annually reviews the control order regime, but from a human rights perspective. One member of the Joint Committee, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, expressed concern (according to the uncorrected minutes of evidence) that the independent reviewer might ‘go native’ after years of too close contact with the security services, and to avoid this danger, the post should have a fixed term. Her concern would not have been alleviated by Lord Carlile’s revelation in his report that, attending meetings of the Control Order Review Group (officials from the police, Home Office and security service) as an observer, he has ‘been able to contribute when matters of principle and relevance to the review process have arisen’.

The girl who shouts ‘fire’

Another problem with the control order regime, and with Lord Carlile’s review of it, is that nowhere does he question the government’s assessment that a ‘public emergency threatening the life of the nation’ exists in the UK. Most people would find such a view very difficult to accept, as we go about our business, working, shopping, engaging in community activities or watching TV at home. But it is a fact that the government still maintains this view, which enables it at any time (if it deems fit) to re-introduce internment (provided it does not discriminate on racial, religious or nationality grounds). Security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing minister David Hanson was quizzed by the Joint Committee in December 2009, and found himself unable to answer the point that, since it is decades since the terrorism risk was last assessed as ‘low’, the country is in a permanent state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation.

Lord Onslow pointed out that ‘if you use hyperbole like that it is like the little girl who shouts “Fire” the whole time; it loses its meaning’.

Nor does Carlile ever question the fact that it is always and only Muslims who are deemed sufficiently threatening to be put on control orders, despite the government’s own counter-terrorism website referring to the threat from right-wing extremists.

In her evidence to the Joint Committee, Gareth Peirce called for a reviewing body that is ‘independent, maybe bringing in psychiatrists or social workers who have an extended understanding of social control’. Her assessment is that the control order system is ‘a very impoverished procedure for such a restriction on a person’s life’. It is, she believes, ‘on the rocks, but the Home Office clings to the wreckage’.

References

Fifth report of the independent reviewer pursuant to section 14(3) of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, Lord Carlile of Berriew, February 2010. Download a copy here (pdf file, 1mb). Home Office: Memorandum to the Home Affairs Committee: Post-Legislative Assessment of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Cm 7797), February 2010. Download a copy here (pdf file, 384kb). Read the uncorrected transcript of oral evidence taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights: Counter-terrorism Policy and Human Rights on Tuesday 1 December 2009 - David Hanson MP here. Read the uncorrected transcript of oral evidence taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights: Counter-terrorism Policy and Human Rights on Wednesday 3 February 2010 - Gareth Peirce, Sean McLoughlin, Helen Mountfield, Angus McCullough and Thomas de la Mare here.The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

This will return half of the land that was stolen from our village. For those of us inOfer , imprisoned for our protest against the wall, this victory makes the suffering of being here easier to bear. After actively resisting the theft of our land by the Israeli apartheid wall and settlements every week for five years now, we long to be standing along side our brothers and sisters to mark this victory and the fifth anniversary of our struggle.

Ofer is an Israeli military base inside the occupied territories that serves as a prison and military court. The prison is a collection of tents enclosed by razor wire and an electrical fence, each unit containing four tents, 22 prisoners per tent. Now, in winter, wind and rain comes in through cracks in the tent and we don’t have sufficient blankets, clothes, and other basic necessities.

Food is a critical issue here in Ofer, there’s not enough. We survive by buying ingredients from the prison canteen that we prepare in our tent. We have one small hot plate, and this is also our only source of warmth. Those whose families can put money in an account for us to buy food, do so, but many cannot afford to. The positive aspect to this is that I have learned how to cook! Tonight I made falafel and sweets to celebrate the news about our victory. I cannot wait to get home and cook for my wife and children!

I was arrested in my slippers, and to this day my family has been unable to get permission to supply me with a pair of shoes. I was finally given my watch after repeated requests. For me this is an essential way to keep oriented; it was unbearable not being able to see the rate at which time passes. Receiving it, I felt so overjoyed, like a child getting his first watch. I can barely imagine what it will be like to have a pair of proper shoes again.

Because of our imprisonment, the military considers our families to be a security threat. It is very hard for our wives, children and extended family to visit. My friend Adeeb Abu Rahmah , also a political prisoner from Bil’in, cannot receive visits from his wife and one of his daughters. Even his mother, a woman in her eighties who is currently in bad health, is considered a security threat! He is afraid that he will not see her before she dies.

I am a teacher and before my arrest I taught at a private school in Birzeit and also owned a chicken farm. My family had to sell the farm at a loss after I was arrested. I don’t know if I will have my position at the school when I am released. Adeeb ’s family of nine is left without their sole provider, as are many other families. Not being able to care for our loved ones who need us is the hardest part of being here.

It is the support that I receive from my family and friends that helps me go on. I am grateful to the Palestinian leaders who have contacted my family, the diplomats from the European Union and to the Israeli activists who have expressed their support by attending my hearings. The relationship we have built together with the activists has gone beyond the definition of colleague or friend, we are brothers and sisters in this struggle. You are an unrelenting source of inspiration and solidarity. You have stood with us during demonstrations and court hearings, and during our happiest and most painful occasions. Being in prison has shown me how many true friends I have, I am so grateful to all of you.

From the confines of my imprisonment it becomes so clear that our struggle is far bigger than justice for only Bil’in or even Palestine. We are engaged in an international fight against oppression. I know this to be true when I remember all of you from around the world who have joined the movement to stop the wall and settlements. Ordinary people enraged by the occupation have made our struggle their own, and joined us in solidarity. We will surely join together to struggle for justice in other places when Palestine is finally free.

Missing the five-year anniversary of our struggle in Bil’in will be like missing the birthday of one of my children. Lately I think a lot about my friend Bassem whose life was taken during a nonviolent demonstration last year and how much I miss him. Despite the pain of this loss, and the yearning I feel to be with my family and friends at home, I think that if this is the price we must pay for our freedom, then it is worth it, and we would be willing to pay much more.

Abdallah Abu Rahmah

Ofer Military Detention Camp

Palestinian occupied territories

This case is emblematic not just as an example of the brutality suffered by civilians at the hands of the Colombian military and paramilitaries, but also of the Colombian state’s efforts to maintain impunity in such cases, particularly for those high in the chain of command. While the Peace Community always insisted that the army and paramilitaries committed the crime, the Colombian government tried to place blame on the Community itself.

Shortly after the massacre, President Uribe publicly accused the Community of guerrilla collaboration, backing up Army officials who claimed that the FARC had committed the massacre to punish the Community for collaboration gone awry. It has since been proved that army officials paid false witnesses to testify that the FARC committed the massacre.

Several former paramilitaries have admitted their participation in the massacre and described the military’s role. After being implicated by these testimonies, Captain Guillermo Gordillo, who commanded one of the companies involved in the military operation during which the massacre took place, pled guilty in exchange for a lesser charge. As a result of these testimonies, ten low-ranking soldiers have been charged with collaboration in the massacre. Nonetheless, there are over a hundred soldiers who participated in the operation, not to mention the superiors who ordered or had knowledge of it.

The evidence is quite damning against all of them, however. Seven former paramilitaries and Captain Guillermo Gordillo have confessed to planning and participating in the operation. The accused soldiers, however, maintain that the paramilitaries secretly infiltrated the army and committed the massacre without the soldiers’ knowledge – a claim that is hard to believe when, at the most recent hearing in the case, Gordillo and two paramilitaries testified that the army and paramilitary guides camped out together for three nights before the massacre. As the victims’ lawyer Jorge Molano said to me, “you don’t spend three nights with someone and not know he’s there.”

At the most recent hearing, which I attended, the public held its breath as paramilitary José Joel Vargas described how he killing the two youngest children. Though they have not yet taken the stand, three paramilitaries who participated in the operation have testified in written statements that it was Captain Gordillo himself who ordered the paramilitaries to murder of the two youngest children, who were just 18 months and 5 years old. One of the paramilitaries, Rober Darío Muñoz, says that he offered to a family member or a nearby house at which to leave the children, but that “the Army man said to another commander that that wasn’t acceptable because the girl was old enough to realize what had happened [to her parents].”

Of course, military operations don’t take place without an order from ranking officers. On February 4th, the first day of the most recent hearing in the case, Captain Gordillo confirmed the participation of General Mario Montoya in the planning of the operation and in ordering guides. At the time, General Montoya commanded the Army’s 7th Division, of which the 17th Brigade is a part.

General Montoya was later promoted to commander of the armed forces, and it was largely under his watch that the Army committed what has become known as “false positives.” In late 2008 it was revealed that the Colombian army had long been involved in the practice of kidnapping young men from poor neighborhoods, killing them, then dressing them up as guerrillas killed in combat in order to earn rewards like days off. Since this so-called “false positives” scandal broke, the Prosecutor General’s office has opened nearly 1500 investigations into such crimes. In the wake of the scandal General Montoya resigned, but was later appointed ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

A year later, the Defense Minister admitted that the practice continues. Just after the New Year the Army changed its rewards practices so that deaths in combat no longer result in days off; instead, rewards are now bestowed for captures or demobilizations. However, it appears that “false positives” continue. Instead of killing the young men they kidnap, members of the army are presenting them as demobilized combatants.

The case against ten of the soldiers involved in the operation that led the Peace Community massacre is a good first step. However, in order for such brutal practices to end, high-ranking officials like General Montoya need to be tried and punished so that the message is sent loud and clear that such behavior is not acceptable.

Moira Birss is working in Colombia as a Human Rights Accompanier with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. She blogs at One Peace at a Time.

http://1peaceatatime.blogspot.com/2010/02/five-years-after-massacre-true-justice.html#more

Bolivia and it’s ALBA allies, along with Tuvalu, Sudan, and a few other vulnerable nations, were the few countries who stood firm till the very end in Copenhagen when the unambitious Copenhagen Accord was being thrust upon delegates in the final hours. Without their courage and opposition
to the weak document, the Accord would likely have been adopted,
making it far easier for leaders like Barack Obama to call the summit
a victory. Instead, world leaders had to admit that this agreement
was not enough, and that we would have to keep working hard in 2010.
And what’s important is that the media reported this to the wider
public - while this may not seem like much solace, it’s key to
continuing the momentum of our movement that the general public
understand that we are not done yet.

Bolivia is leading in another major way as well - in April they will convene a major summit of progressive government leaders, social movement leaders, activists, and civil society to map out points of concensus and a
plan for shifting the international debate on climate change towards
an outcome that is fair and ambitious. While Bolivia and it’s ALBA
allies are often marginalized by the mainstream media, I have to say
that I have been very impressed with their openness and their
collaborative approach towards organizing this summit that reaches
far beyond the anti-capitalist, radical wing of the movement that you
might expect. They have been working hard to reach out to a wide
range of social movements and civil society, get invitations to
government leaders with positions clearly different than their own,
and map out an agenda that leads to open and honest conversations
about a positive way forward.

In a post-Copenhagen world, their commitment and drive to building a broader and more powerful movement in 2010 is one of the most hopeful and inspiring things I see to get involved with right now. The Bolivian government says: The Copenhagen Accord will cause the temperature to rise to between 3º and 4º Centigrade

David Choquehuanca, Foreign Minister for the Plurinational State of Bolivia, along with representatives from five campesino and indigenous organizations, declared at a press conference on February 8, that Bolivia is very concerned about the inadequacy of the greenhouse gas reduction
commitments made by developed countries in the Copenhagen Accord.

Choquehuanca stated: “The commitments, of the developed states, related to greenhouse gas emission reductions will result in more than three degrees increase in temperature above pre-industrial levels. Some experts
even say that the temperature could rise as high as four degrees
above pre-industrial levels. The situation is serious. An increase of
temperature of more than one degree above pre-industrial levels would
result in the disappearance of our glaciers in the Andes, and the
flooding of various islands and coastal zones.

For the Bolivian Minister, the demand made at the Copenhagen Conference was that the greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 40% or more below 1990 levels by 2020. However the emission reduction targets in the
Copenhagen Accord of the countries that have been historically
responsible for global warming only amount to 12% to 18 % by 2020.

“The way these commitments have been made in the badly named Copenhagen Accord shows that this is a backwards step from the Kyoto Protocol” exclaimed Choquehuanca. “In the Kyoto Protocol. everyone had to first define a common goal for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and then it was up to the developed states in Annex 1 of the Kyoto Protocol to make reduction commitments to arrive at this objective. Now the
methodology that is imposed by the Copenhagen Accord is that each
developed country notes what it is going to do without considering
the common target.”

“What is happening, in terms of greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments by the developed countries. reinforces the need for a World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights, that will be held in Bolivia, concluded the Minister. “This Conference will be a
transparent and inclusive event, in which no one will be marginalized. The conference will be attended by citizens, social movements, scientists. We have also been inviting all the governments and the organizations within the United Nations to participate as delegates and experts to discuss along with the peoples how to address the crisis that affects us all.

For more information
about the People’s World Conference on Climate Change, click here.

Reprinted from 350

]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/22/bolivias-global-climate-plan-for-2010/feed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/21/togo-2010-presidential-election-another-masquerade/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/21/togo-2010-presidential-election-another-masquerade/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:11:22 +0000 nigel http://www.paxmundi.info/?p=555 The Togo presidential elections are now due to be held on March 4 following protests from the main opposition parties. The election which was originally set for February 28 has now been delayed until March 4 following opposition protests.

A presidential decree read out on state television announced on Thursday “The date for the presidential election is fixed for Thursday, March 4. Polling stations will be open from 07:00 to 17:00 throughout the country.”

The delay comes in response to a request from the opposition during talks in Burkina Faso with President Blaise Compaore who is mediating inter-Togolese dialogue.

“With the aim of permanently seeking consensus and maintaining a peaceful climate during the electoral process, the head of state (Faure Gnassingbe), in consultation with Compaore, decided during a cabinet meeting to delay the election.”

Campaigning for the presidential election in Togo started on February 16 and will last until March 2, meanwhile Togo’s main opposition parties have quit the commission organising the presidential elections.

President Faure Gnassingbe of the Togolese People’s Rally, Gnassingbé was initially installed as President with support from the army following the death of his father Gnassingbé Eyadéma Doubts, whom was President of Togo from 1967 until his death.

Faure Gnassingbe’s unconstitutional accession was later confirmed by electora1 fraud, when following pressure from neighbouring African nations Faure Gnassingbé, resigned on February 25. He then won a controversial presidential election on April 24 and was sworn in as President again.

The 2005 Presidential election fraud was recorded in the film ‘Masquerade’ which documents the fraudulent presidential elections in the west African state of Togo in 2005, the film was edited and produced by Jaarice in Burkina Faso and released in 2007. The film Masquerade was the subject of a previous Paxmundi.info article here.

http://www.paxmundi.info/2009/02/08/togo-presidential-election-fraud-masquerade/

The opposition candidates in the current Togo Presidential election includes

Yawovi Agboyibo of the Action Committee for Renewal (CAR), The Action Committee for Renewal, the second largest opposition party in Togo, is continuing top aprticipate in the electoral process, although they are “far from being satisfied” with measures taken by the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI).

This decision was announced during a press conference held at the CAR headquarters in Lome in the presence of the party’s National President Dodji Apevon and the party’s presidential candidate, Yawovi Agboyibo.

CAR decided to suspend the participation of its two representatives in CENI and its candidate Agboyibo in the electoral process, saying their demands “for measures that will bring about a free and fair election ” had been rejected.

Hours after the opening of election campaigns on Tuesday, CENI decided to use serialized ballot papers, but said the principle of authentication of ballot papers will be done in the polling centers.

CENI announced, without elaborating, that the outlines of this principle will be defined and transmitted to the electoral clerks within the polling centers during their training.

“CAR is far from being satisfied with these partial solutions and is still waiting for convincing answers to all its demands,” the party said.

Jean-Pierre Fabre of the Union of the Forces of Change (UFC),

Five opposition parties in Togo have agreed to support the candidature of Jean-Pierre Fabre under the umbrella Republican Front for Change in Power (FRAC), which was presented to the media on Wednesday in the Togolese capital, Lome.

Kofi Yamgnane was disqualified from contesting the election, is the new body’s spokesperson. Patrick Lawson, the first deputy-chairman of Union of Forces for Change (UFC), was appointed the campaign manager of the Front.

FRAC comprises the Alliance of Democrats for Integral Development (ADDI) led by AimTchabour Guogu, the Alliance led by Dahuku Pere, the Socialist Pact for Regeneration (PSR) led by Tchessa Abi, Sursaut-Togo led by Kofi Yamgnane and the Union of Forces for Change (UFC) led by veteran politician Gilchrist Olympio.

Olympio was re-elected as National President of the UFC was originally chosen as the party’s candidate for the presidential election.

Bassabi Kagbara of the Pan African Democratic Party (PDP),

Gabriel Messan Agbeyome Kodjo of the Organization to Build Togo in Solidarity (OBUTS)

Jean Nicolas Messan Lawson of the Party of Renewal and Redemption (PRR).

Brigitte Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson of the African Peoples’ Democratic Convention (CDPA),

Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson,is Togo’s first female presidential candidate. But she has also withdrawn from the electoral process.

The current Togo Presidential elections

the current Presidential election will be decided in a single round of voting; the candidate with the highest number of votes—even if that number is less than 50%—wins the election without any need for a second round. The two main opposition parties, the Union of the Forces of Change (UFC) and the Action Committee for Renewal (CAR), strongly protested the single-round system.

UFC President Gilchrist Olympio insisted that the election should be held in two rounds, with the top two candidates in the first round proceeding to a second round. A two-round system could work to the UFC’s benefit; as the main opposition party, its candidate might expect to place second in the first round and then win in the second round by obtaining the support of other opposition candidates who were defeated in the first round.

In addition to its demand for a two-round system, the opposition sought a decrease in the deposit that candidates were required to pay and argued that the voter rolls needed to be revised.

On 25 January 2010, six opposition candidates and three parties called for a resumption of the revision of the voter rolls as well as a delay of the election; they also argued that Gnassingbé was conducting an unofficial campaign before the start of the campaign period.

Bodjoda dismissed the opposition concerns; he said that the voter rolls had been established prior to the 2007 parliamentary election and that it was up to CENI to decide whether to resume revising them. Regarding Gnassingbé’s alleged unofficial campaigning, Bodjoda argued that Gnassingbé, as President, was merely working for the people: “he will not starve the people because of the electoral process”. Bodjoda additionally argued that the opposition only wanted a delay because they were unprepared for the election.

In order to improve the voter rolls, CENI announced on 26 January that people could register to vote at a hundred points across the country on 31 January. RPT Secretary-General Solitoki Esso released a statement on 28 January in which he accused the opposition of using the issue of revising the voter rolls as a delaying tactic.

At talks in Ouagadougou, mediated by Burkinabé President Blaise Compaoré, the RPT and the two main opposition parties—the UFC and the CAR—were unable to reach an agreement on opposition demands, the foremost of which was the revision of the voter rolls. The opposition also wanted a delay in the election, although Compaoré felt that it was necessary to hold the vote “between 28 February and 5 March to stay within the constitutional timeframe”. A slight delay was announced on 11 February, however, as the date was pushed back from 28 February to 4 March.

Citing continuing concerns about the voter rolls and fears that the election would be a “masquerade“, the UFC notified CENI that its three representatives on CENI were suspending their participation on 11 February. When announcing the UFC’s decision, CENI stressed that “the electoral process is proceeding normally”.

In a declaration, the coalition has vowed to achieve the advent of change in Togo and will soon launch its campaign.

Togo’s presidential election is planned for 4 March.

The Union of Forces for Change said in a statement that it did not want to be associated with an “electoral masquerade,” charging that rules had not been followed in drawing up new electoral rolls.

The UFC claimed that a population census had been inadequate, minors and foreigners had been put on the roll in some areas and Togolese had not been properly made aware.

It is the responsibility of the international community, particularly of the regional powers, the African Union, particularly, the responsibility of the African Union who are sending send an observation team headed by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo to monitor the presidential election in Togo next month, to ensure that there is not another masquerade.

http://www.paxmundi.info/2009/02/08/togo-presidential-election-fraud-masquerade/

]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/21/togo-2010-presidential-election-another-masquerade/feed/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/21/a-response-to-hatred-and-another-agenda/ http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/02/21/a-response-to-hatred-and-another-agenda/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:24:24 +0000 nigel http://www.paxmundi.info/?p=554 By Moazzam Begg

In the Name of Allah Most Compassionate Most Merciful

I had not imagined that the poorly researched Sunday Times article last week with the suggestion that it promised to expose a tangible link between Amnesty International, the Taliban and I was actually a prelude to something far more sinister against Cageprisoners and I in the days to come.

What I’ve found most puzzling about this whole episode is the timing and what the argument claims to be about. So here I wish to point out some glaring facts that have been purposefully neglected by those leading the charge against me, including I’m afraid, Gita Sahgal, who I’d really hoped would have applied a little more wisdom before she began her crusade.

The first and only time I’ve ever met Ms. Sahgal was on a BBC Radio 4, Hecklers programme hosted by Mark Easton, in 2006. She made a presentation which alleged that the Blair government was pandering to fundamentalists in its fight against terrorism by engaging with groups like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) - who she alleged were linked to ’some of the most dangerous movements of our time’. Responding to her I joined a panel that included Daud Abdullah (MCB), Tariq Ramadan, Tahmina Saleem of the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) and Nazir Ahmad of the House of Lords.

Ms Sahgal now avers that Amnesty’s relationship is damaged through association with me but, her ideas seemed a little more paradoxically amenable when I suggested that her thesis was flawed because the MCB, ISB, Mr. Ramadan and Ahmed – with all due respect – were largely regarded as sell-outs by some of the very people we needed to engage. I gave her the example of the British government’s banning the BBC from broadcasting Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams’ voice during the Irish ‘Troubles’. I said, based on this experience that the government should in fact be speaking to people like Abu Qatadah, no matter how unpalatable that sounded. Ms Sahgal responded unexpectedly by saying she had no quarrel with my analysis.

So if Gita Sahgal in fact does not oppose dialogue with ‘extremists’ then why all this fuss now? I have been harking on about engagement for years. This seems even more bizarre because only a couple of weeks ago Gordon Brown met in London with Hamid Karzai and outlined a new policy to engage with the Taliban. How ludicrous it seems therefore that I am described the very next week as ‘Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban’. Does anyone really believe this? Surely if that was the case I’d have been invited to the discussions with Messrs. Brown and Karzai about talking to the Taliban, being their ‘most famous supporter’?

If this matter was not so serious I’d be rolling over in laughter. But it is – deadly serious. Over the past few days we have received numerous death threats at Cageprisoners – and this is just the beginning. No doubt, the police will be trawling through the copious hate-mongering posts on right-wing, anti-Muslim blogs but, I doubt that will solve anything.

I think much of it can be traced back to when Cageprisoners launched a report on the detention of terrorism suspects in the UK last year entitled Detention Immorality, which was hijacked by a seemingly unhinged lawyer-cum-blogger who has openly stated that he aims to destroy Cageprisoners and me – though I still don’t understand why. He regularly blogs and cross-posts attacks against Cageprisoners, Islamic organisations and me – amongst others – in an effort to ‘expose’ us. But that is only a part of the problem.

In a BBC discussion with my colleague, Asim Qureshi, last week Ms Sahgal said, “I feel “profoundly unsafe…talking to Asim Qureshi and Moazzam Begg, but I’m more than willing to meet them.” This sits very strangely with the fact that Asim was already seated next to her during the discussion and, that she expressed no such sentiment when she actually did meet me in 2006. In reality it is we who are and have been living in fear for a very long time. We are afraid not only of Britain’s anti-terror measures, which are amongst the most draconian in the world – that would see, for example, a girl convicted of terror offenses for writing poetry – but, we have to accept on a daily basis, the vilification of all things Muslim by certain politicians, a public that increasingly sees Muslims as a ‘fifth column’, fuelled by a media and blogosphere that vilifies us as a matter of routine. Still, I’d be more than happy to sit with Ms.Sahgal, safety permitting, and put to her some of the things I’ve written here.

I could insist that she first disassociate from the support and association she has from the pro-war lobby as they have cemented and justified, through the media, illegal wars of occupation which have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and created severe human rights abuses for many – not least women – or, her status as universal human rights advocate should be publicly called into question. However, it is my code of life that my oppressor does not become my teacher. And guilt by association does not mean moral bankruptcy. I am more interested in the work I do – and I had hoped the same of Ms. Sahgal, a lot of whose work she might be surprised to discover I would support.

In May last year I appeared alongside Colonel Tim Collins (famous for the stirring speech he gave to British soldiers on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion) on a televised panel discussion about Barack Obama’s attempt to censor the publication of photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which included images of apparent rape and sexual abuse of Iraqi women by US soldiers. Col. Collins opined that these pictures should be made public so that the world becomes aware of the abuses and that the culprits are brought to book. Again, there was a deafening silence on this issue – especially from the journalists who promoted the war, the same ones who now champion Ms.Sahgal’s work on women’s rights.

Sadly, Ms. Sahgal, and subsequent columnists and bloggers, have wilfully misled people into believing that I am somehow opposed to women’s rights. During the mid-90s I took several aid convoys to Bosnia, motivated to help the people there after genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rape was used as a weapon of war against women. Bizarrely, my decision to go there too has been described as part of a mindless ‘jihadist’ fantasy, overlooking completely that an entire Muslim population, in the heart of Europe, was being systematically put to the sword, under the noses and ‘protection’ of European nations.

It is by now public knowledge that I was involved in the establishing and running of a school for girls in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the rule of the Taliban. The Taliban did not give us a licence to operate but, neither did they impede us from having the school - openly - or from having the girls collected to and from the school in buses clearly marked with the name of the girl’s school. There is a deliberate attempt by my detractors to neglect this point each time I mention it – and I can only assume why: it doesn’t fit the stereotype, or the agenda. Then there is the repeated allegation that because I went to live in Afghanistan – with my wife and children – I deserve what happened to me because I chose to live under a regime that was known for abusing women’s rights – amongst other things. I have never denied the Taliban were guilty of abusing women’s rights, but my presence there should not be equated as an endorsement of their views regarding them. A similar charge however is not put to the numerous white, Caucasian and non-Muslim NGO workers who were living there during the time of the Taliban – sometimes with their families – well before I ever arrived. I wonder why?

It might come as a surprise to some that the executive director of Cageprisoners for over six years was a Muslim woman – someone who was regarded as the backbone of the organisation and an immense source of pride for us all. Since my return from Guantanamo Cageprisoners and I have been very closely involved in organisations which assist the silent victims of anti-terror measures (utilised against men detained without charge): their wives and children. These organisations help to empower women to face the harsh reality of life without a partner. Cageprisoners’ patron, Yvonne Ridley, has been the most active and vociferous in this regard whilst I am a patron of one of these support groups for women. But what support, if any, have this section of our population received from the great women’s rights defenders who claim to champion their cause?

I’m not sure why, after having spent years in Bagram and Guantanamo and being subjected to innumerable human rights violations and abuses - including witnessing two murders - I might be expected to be an expert on women’s issues, especially when almost every single prisoner I encountered was male, even though some of the abuses were carried out by female soldiers. There was however, one woman whose screams I still hear sometimes in my head. I was led to believe she was my wife being tortured in the next room while photographs of her and my children were waved in front of me as I lay tied to the ground with guns pointing at me and interrogators asking: “What do you think happened to them the night we took you away? Do you think you’re going to see them again?”

Several months later I received news via the ICRC that my wife and kids were, thankfully, safe but, I knew the screams had been real, that it had been somebody’s wife, sister, daughter or mother I had heard. After my return from Guantanamo I began investigating who that person might have been but have been unsuccessful in my findings. However, through my own investigations I discovered that there was a female prisoner once held in Bagram and her number was 650. After years of denial of the existence of women prisoners the US administration finally admitted that there had indeed been a female held in Bagram - but only after I’d asked a colleague to request the US administration’s official policy on detaining women in Afghanistan.

Shortly after his return from Guantanamo Binyam Mohamed told me that he believed prisoner 650 was in fact Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. This is the same Dr. Siddiqui that last week’s Times extraordinarily provides as evidence of Cageprisoners campaigns for convicted terrorists. (And while I’m making the point, Cageprisoners has not campaigned for anyone who has received a fair, transparent and appropriate sentence as a result of proper due process. As I’ve stated previously that Cageprisoners is an information portal which merely carries information and reports on the cases of all held as part of the War on Terror. In no place does Cageprisoners ever claim that some of these convicted prisoners are “innocent” or faced a “miscarriage of justice”. Cageprisoners has raised the cases of those held under control orders, deportation, detention without trial, US extradition – making them no different from other human rights organisations that similarly do not face the same accusations as a result. The people we do campaign for are highlighted clearly on our campaigns page on the site. But we also recognise that not everyone who is convicted of terrorism is always necessarily an ‘embodiment of evil’ – Nelson Mandela serves as the greatest reminder of that).

In October last year I attended a conference in Malaysia where I met survivors of the Abu Ghraib prison. Amongst them was a woman who told me about some extremely disturbing experiences she and others had gone through. She now runs a woman’s refuge in Syria for Iraqi refugees. Cageprisoners intends to do more work on the cases of such women and it is an issue I discussed with some Amnesty UK members who were very keen to bring her over and start highlighting issues related to sexual violence against women during incarceration. In fact, I discussed this issue at the Amnesty Human Rights Action Centre only in November on a panel with Professor Joanna Bourke, who spoke about ‘Sexual Violence in the War on Terror’. Ms. Sahgal, oddly, was nowhere to be seen. After countless events with Amnesty– or any of the 600 plus I’ve spoken at around the country – I’ve still never encountered Ms. Sahgal since meeting with her in 2006 when she had “no quarrel with my views”.

I may be no expert on women’s rights issues but I think I have a little idea and sympathy to some of their causes – as a husband and father. Take Johina Aamer for example, a 12 year old girl whose father, Shaker Aamer, has been held for over eight years without charge or trial in Guantanamo. Johina’s mother has undergone repeated psychiatric treatment since her husband’s abduction all those years ago. I went with Johina, Vanessa Redgrave, Victoria Brittain, Helena Kennedy, Gareth Peirce, Kate Hudson and Kate Allen to Downing Street so she could deliver a letter to the Prime Minister, asking that her father finally be allowed home. None of those who attack me now were there - from media or otherwise - to show their support for this innocent little girl. That really is shameful, because this is the sort of thing they are opposing when they address my relationship with Amnesty.

There is another charge implicitly laid against me (and Cageprisoners): that I am only concerned with the rights of Muslims. Just a few months after my release from Guantanamo I saw on the television images of four hostages in Iraq, dressed in orange Guantanamo-like suits, facing threats of execution. I contacted all the former Guantanamo prisoners I knew and issued a televised and written statement in all our names calling for their release: Sadly, the only American hostage was killed but, the others, a Briton, an Australian and a Canadian (all non-Muslims) all lived and are safely back home. All of them have written to me the warmest messages of support I’ve ever read. I told them it was the orange suits that did it.

I find incredible too that there a new re-reading of my book, Enemy Combatant, - after having been in print for over four years - as some kind of handbook for the propagation of the Taliban, fanaticism and a latent Islamic extremism. That sits very peculiarly with the fact that it has received very positive reviews from the likes of Tony Benn, Jon Snow, David Ignatius (Washington Post), Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (The Independent) and, ironically, Christina Lamb (Sunday Times). Did I fool them all? The book – and I – has been scrutinised at every literary festival I can think of, from Hay-on-Wye to Edinburg and Dartington to Keswick. The common response I get is that it (and I) lacks bitterness, is devastatingly reasonable, conciliatory in nature and as Desmund Tutu says: I feel that Enemy Combatant has the capacity to win hearts and minds.

Unfortunately some minds are not accompanied by hearts in order that they can be won. I would have thought that the pioneering work done by Cageprisoners and myself might also have served to create more understanding and less hatred by engaging in dialogue with former US soldiers and interrogators – but I seem to have been proved wrong. Up until now I have spoken all around the country addressing over 50,000 people with a view to educate, debate, understand and be understood so that hatred is eroded through interaction and knowledge.

The numbers of people who have told me they’ve been inspired to learn more, get involved, join human rights groups like Amnesty International, raise awareness and develop a new and nuanced understanding is countless. But, in spite of all the blatant anti-Muslim feeling and the rise of the far-right Islamophobic sentiments it is only now, after this episode with Ms. Sahgal and her protagonists, that I am reconsidering my entire approach towards engagement and dialogue to create understanding and acceptance. The fact is the climate of fear has just been raised a level – and I am no longer immune. I will continue to campaign for the men suffering in the concentration camps of Bagram, Guantanamo and the secret prisons. But withdrawal to a place of safety, my own Muslim community, seems to be the best option right now. It seems, at least to some, that engagement has its limits. Before I do though it is worth noting how we have reached this point.

The Times led the libellous charge straight after the failed Detroit bomb plot by suggesting that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had become radicalised by attending a couple of Cageprisoners’ lectures, without offering one shred of evidence, and once again, choosing to completely ignore Cageprisoners’ response. This charge was parroted again last week in David Aaronovitch’s contribution to the attack.

A quick look at how the Sunday Times has dealt with the latest issue almost beggars belief: an article written by Richard Kerbaj, who quotes almost nothing of what I say and uses language to suggest the Taliban is actually involved in the whole affair as a headline. I write an immediate response, registering a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission, his editor and my lawyers. The following Sunday another two articles appear in the same paper: the first, a more sober one by Margaret Driscoll, which actually uses my responses that Kerbaj had so deliberately omitted the week before. The second, by Kerbaj again, claims that ‘Second Amnesty chief attacks Islamist links’ showing clearly the Sunday Times sees the problem isn’t even about the Taliban anymore, rather it’s about having Islamic ideals. The only problem is that, Sam Zarifi, upon whom the article is based, also says Kerbaj has mischaracterized his views. It is strange that Mr. Kerbaj and the Sunday Times make careers out of this sort of thing calling it ‘news’.

The fuse, however, had been lit and out came the others, the way they had done before, demonstrating their credentials in supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and everything that came with that. This is what it comes down to in my estimation. The attacks have been very personal, questioning everything I’ve done in my life in the same way as the US/UK intelligence services had sought to when they colluded in my abduction, false imprisonment, torture and abuse. What no one had bargained for though, not even me, was what would happen after my release. The motto of Cageprisoners is ‘giving a voice to the voiceless’. That voice has echoed across the world and has even reached the ears of some very influential and powerful people, who recognise just how appalling this whole process has been.

Cageprisoners’ previous work on reports like Off the Record which details the cases of ‘ghost prisoners’ and enforced disappearance and the secret detentions network discussed in Beyond the Law illustrate the levels of criminality we have stooped to in the name of fighting terrorism . The extent to which our own government has been involved in this is quite breathtaking too. Our report last year, Fabricating Terrorism II, highlighted the cases of 29 individuals – one of them before September 11 - who had been tortured and abused with the complicity of British intelligence services, while Detention Immorality showed the extent to which prisoners are held without charge or trial in the UK under secret evidence.

The cases we, the former Guantanamo prisoners and torture victims, have against our own government for complicity in torture is so troubling that I have actually been questioned at UK airports if I had travelled abroad in pursuance of my case against the intelligence services.

Last week’s revelations that British intelligence was involved in the torture of Binyam Mohamed came as no surprise to me. It is something I’ve been saying publicly, at Amnesty meetings, in my book and my writings since my return. Cageprisoners and I have also led the campaign for Shaker Aamer who I believe was not only tortured in the presence of MI5 but, the government is very worried that revelations of complicity in his torture might be even worse than Binyam’s.

Ms Sahgal has, perhaps unwittingly, become a cause celebre for some of the pro-war (hence, pro-by-products of the wars: targeted assassinations, ‘collateral damage’, refugee crises, secret and military prisons, torture etc) hacks in this country – and around the world. A tool for the intelligence services or people like Paul Rester, the director of the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantanamo, who says, “[Begg] is doing more good for al Qaeda as a British poster boy than he would ever do carrying an AK-47.” I firmly believe this, more than anything else, is the reason why people want my voice and that of Cageprisoners silenced. But it won’t be –not as long as I can help it.

It has been my great pleasure to break many a stereotype one would assume of a Guantanamo terrorism suspect who believes in Islam as a way of life. As a child I had studied at a Jewish primary school and as an adult I married a Palestinian woman. Both have given me fond and loving memories.

Last week I was walking with a friend in the streets of Berlin, where Adolph Hitler had once created – and ultimately destroyed – the capital of his Nazi wonderland. My friend is an observant Jew whose family had fled the pogroms in Eastern Europe around the same time. The experience was surreal for both of us: for him, the knowledge of the sort of hatred that once spewed out on these very streets so many years ago changed the world; for me, the growing feeling that hatred of a comparable sort, albeit in a subtler guise, is on the march once again. I can’t help but to think now, as we passed what was once the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, what Joseph Goebbels once said about the truth: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

My God was he right.

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