Three staffers from Papua New Guinea’s peak anti-corruption body are embroiled in a standoff that has brought into question the integrity of the organisation.

Police Commissioner David Manning has confirmed that he received a formal complaint.

Commissioner Manning said that initial inquiries were underway to inform the “sensitive investigation board’s” consideration of the referral.

• READ MORE: Other ICAC reports

That board itself is controversial, having been set up as a halfway point to decide if an investigation into a subject should proceed through the usual justice process.

Manning indicated if the board determined a criminal offence had occurred, the matter would be assigned to the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate for independent investigation.

Local news media reported PNG Prime Minister James Marape was being kept informed of the developments.

Marape has issued a statement acknowledging the internal tensions within ICAC and reaffirming his government’s commitment to the institution.

Long-standing goal
The establishment of ICAC in Papua New Guinea has been a long-standing national aspiration, dating back to 1984. The enabling legislation for ICAC was passed on 20 November 2020, bringing the body into legal existence.

Marape said it was a proud moment of his leadership having achieved this in just 18 months after he took office in May 2019.

The appointments process for ICAC officials was described as rigorous and internationally supervised, making the current internal disputes disheartening for many.

Marape has reacted strongly to the crisis, expressing disappointment over the allegations and differences between the three ICAC leaders. He affirmed his government’s “unwavering commitment” to ICAC.

These developments have significant implications for Papua New Guinea, particularly concerning its international commitments related to combating financial crime.

PNG has been working to address deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) framework, with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) closely monitoring its progress.

Crucial for fighting corruption
An effective and credible ICAC is crucial for demonstrating the country’s commitment to fighting corruption, a key component of a robust AML/CTF regime.

Furthermore, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) often includes governance and anti-corruption measures as part of its conditionalities for financial assistance and programme support.

Any perception of instability or compromised integrity within ICAC could hinder Papua New Guinea’s efforts to meet these international requirements, potentially affecting its financial standing and access to crucial development funds.

The current situation lays bare the urgent need for swift and decisive action to restore confidence in ICAC and ensure it can effectively fulfill its mandate.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A fortnight after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam had killed 26 people, Indian Armed Forces hit nine sites in Pakistan and PoK from where attacks against India had been planned and directed. The Union ministry of defence described the action as “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, with no Pakistani military facilities having been targeted. Late on May 7, reports came in of heavy mortar shelling by Pakistan on forward villages along the Line of Control in Poonch and Rajouri areas of Jammu and Kashmir.

The video in question was shared, among others, by X user Dr Shama Junejo (@ShamaJunejo). The tweet garnered 1.1 million views. (Archive)

“Don’t bomb us please…”

Indian soldiers holding white flags and collecting bodies of their fellow soldiers killed at the LOC #IndiaPakistanWar

pic.twitter.com/cye0m60eCs

— Dr Shama Junejo (@ShamaJunejo) May 7, 2025

Another verified account, @Aadiiroy2, tweeted the same video with a caption in Urdu that translates to, “On the Line of Control, the Indian Army is waving white flags to retrieve the bodies of soldiers who have been sent to hell.” (Archive)

لائن آف کنٹرول پر انڈین آرمی سفید جھنڈے لہرا کر جہنم واصل ھوئےفوجیوں کی لاشیں اٹھا رہے ہیں۔ pic.twitter.com/GZz8N7IFbB

— صحرانورد (@Aadiiroy2) May 7, 2025

Several other X users also shared the video with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3)

Fact Check

Upon a relevant keyword search on Facebook, we found that the video could be traced back to September 2019. According to a Hindustan Times video report dated September 14, 2019, the video shows Pakistani rangers retrieving the bodies of their soldiers at the Line of Control after showing the white flag. Two Pakistani soldiers had been killed in retaliatory firing by the Indian Army on September 11, 2019. Pakistani troops retrieved the bodies after showing white flag.

The HT video report had the ANI watermark on it. We were able to find the ANI tweet from September 14, 2019, which also corroborated the HT report.

#WATCH Hajipur Sector: Indian Army killed two Pakistani soldiers in retaliation to unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan. Pakistani soldiers retrieved the bodies of their killed personnel after showing white flag. (10.9.19/11.9.19) pic.twitter.com/1AOnGalNkO

— ANI (@ANI) September 14, 2019

According to a The Hindu article dated September 15, 2019, the video was released by the Indian Army. Between September 10-11, 2019, one of the Pakistani soldiers killed by Indian troops was Ghulam Rasool of their Punjab Regiment. Rasool was a ‘Punjabi Muslim’ who belonged to Bahawalnagar in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Initially, Pakistani soldiers attempted to recover the body under the cover of intense ceasefire violations, but another Pakistani soldier was killed while doing so. Even after two days of repeated attempts, the Pakistani Army could not recover the bodies of their soldiers. Finally, on September 13, Pakistan’s Punjab Regiment soldiers raised the white flag and tried to recover the bodies. The white flag is raised to signal peace and truce. An Indian Express article from around the same time corroborates the chain of events.

The Press Bureau of India also released a fact-check debunking the viral claims about the video showing Indian troops waving the white flag.

Hence, a video from September 2019 of Pakistani troops waving a white flag as a truce to retrieve bodies of their soldiers is currently viral against the backdrop of the ongoing India-Pakistan conflict. Many pro-Pakistan accounts have shared the old video claiming that the Indian army was calling for a truce.

The post Indian Army waving white flag? No viral clip is from 2019; shows Pak army retrieving soldier’s body appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has quietly ended its body camera program barely four years after it began, according to an internal email obtained by Propublica.

On April 2, DEA headquarters emailed employees announcing that the program had been terminated effective the day before. The DEA has not publicly announced the policy change, but by early April, links to pages about body camera policies on the DEA’s website were broken.

The email said the agency made the change to be “consistent” with a Trump executive order rescinding the 2022 requirement that all federal law enforcement agents use body cameras.

But at least two other federal law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department — the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — are still requiring body cameras, according to their spokespeople. The FBI referred questions about its body camera policy to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

The DEA did not respond to questions about its decision to stop using the cameras, saying that the agency “does not comment on tools and techniques.” Reuters reported on the change as part of a story about budget cuts for law enforcement offices.

One former federal prosecutor expressed concern that the change would make life more difficult for DEA agents.

“The vast majority of times I viewed body camera footage is based on allegations from a defense attorney about what a cop did,” said David DeVillers, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. “And I would say 95% of the time it absolves the cop of wrongdoing.”

The Justice Department started requiring that its federal agents wear the devices in 2021 in the wake of the protests over George Floyd’s death the previous summer.

“We welcome the addition of body worn cameras and appreciate the enhanced transparency and assurance they provide to the public and to law enforcement officers working hard to keep our communities safe and healthy,” then-DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a Sept. 1, 2021, press release announcing the use of the cameras.

In May 2022, then-President Joe Biden issued an executive order expanding the use of body cameras to all federal law enforcement officers.

In January, the incoming Trump administration rescinded that order, along with almost 100 others it considered “harmful.”

In early February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, was one of the first agencies to get rid of its body cameras. Subsequent videos show plainclothes immigration agents making arrests with no visible body cameras.

The DOJ wrote in a 2022 Office of Inspector General management report that the cameras were a “means of enhancing police accountability and the public’s trust in law enforcement.” Studies have consistently shown that departments that use body cameras experience a drop in complaints against officers, according to the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum, though it’s not clear if the drop is due to improvements in officer behavior or to a decrease in frivolous complaints.

“Eliminating these videos is really taking away a tool that we’ve seen be of benefit to law enforcement practices,” said Cameron McEllhiney, executive director of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. “It’s also a great teaching tool, besides keeping community members safe from the potential misconduct that could occur.”

The DOJ put a lot of money into the body camera initiative. In August of 2021, it awarded Axon, the company that dominates the body camera market, a $30.4 million contract for cameras and the software to handle the evidence they created. The contract, according to Axon, remains active. But only about one-sixth of it has been paid out, according to federal contracting data.

The most recent publicly available version of the DEA’s body camera policy dates to December 2022. It only required agents to wear the devices when they were conducting preplanned arrests or searches and seizures that required a warrant. It also only required DEA officers to wear their body cameras when they were working within the United States.

Agents had 72 hours after the end of an operation to upload their video evidence, unless there was a shooting, in which case they were instructed to upload the video evidence as soon as possible. The policy laid out in detail how and by whom evidence from the cameras should be handled in the event officers used force, and it authorized the DEA to use the video evidence when investigating its own officers.

The DEA had planned to implement the policy in phases so that eventually its officers nationwide would be wearing the devices when serving warrants or carrying out planned arrests. In its 2025 fiscal year budget request to Congress, the agency asked for $15.8 million and 69 full time employees, including five attorneys, “to enable the DEA’s phased implementation plan of nationwide use of Body Worn Cameras.”

Records obtained via Freedom of Information Act request by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington show that the Biden-era DOJ had an ambitious plan to capture agencywide metrics and data about the efficiency and use of body cameras by its law enforcement officers.

Laura Iheanachor, senior counsel at CREW, said that before federal law enforcement started wearing body cameras, several local police agencies had declined to participate in federal task forces because doing so would have forced their officers to remove their cameras.

“It’s a protective measure for officers, for the public,” Iheanachor said. “And it allows state and federal law enforcement to work together in harmony.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Mario Ariza.

There’s always a period of really intense research for me. I usually read three to five books for a story. For this survivalism piece, I actually read seven post-apocalyptic novels by women because I was fascinated by how different cultures, both locally and globally, think about the end times. I probably watched three movies and maybe 20 hours of TV. In the end, all of this might just amount to a single paragraph in the story. It’s not something tangible, but I think it lives in my body. It puts me in that headspace. It helps me really inhabit what I’m trying to write about to experience it in a full way before I even begin. It’s almost like a premeditation before I actually get into the writing. I want to move into that space and be immersed in it so that when I finally sit down, it doesn’t feel like I’ve just landed in another country with no idea how to say hello or thank you. I’m already there.

How do you edit your own work?

Honestly, I wouldn’t be half the writer I am without editors. But I am trying to become more self-sufficient, both because I want to be able to do more and because I’m trying to trust myself more. I want to allow myself to be imperfect in public, which is really hard for me. I’m such a perfectionist. I instinctively see imperfection as a weakness. But I know that’s not true. Letting people see you in process, in progress, is a gift. But it’s also something that isn’t often afforded to Black people. I get why I feel guarded about it. But I’m also trying to release that—just to be a little more real in all ways.

In what other ways has that desire for “more” been coming up in your life?

I’m trying to do so much right now. I’m trying to write a TV pilot. I’m also trying to finish this science-fiction short story. And I really want to write a rom-com, like a full book.

I’m working on this big queer waterways film project. Next month, I’m heading to Duke for a month-long film fellowship. The people in this program are actual filmmakers. And then there’s me. I mean, I have made short films, but only in a class I took a few years ago. It’s worlds apart. So now I’m adapting this body of work, these oral histories I’ve collected about queer waterways and how they come into being. It’s such an interesting project, and it feels so right for me.

What does the map of your brain look like while you’re working on all of these different projects?

It is really just beautiful, organized chaos. One of my really good friends is the writer and artist Tamara Santibañez, who has an incredible newsletter that everyone should read. Once, when I lived in my old apartment in Bed Stuy, they called me in the middle of the day during pandemic times and I was cooking during a break from recording my podcast. The TV was on in the background, playing something I was watching. I had music on in another room. I was watercoloring in between. I was soaking beans for the weekend, meal prepping. They were cracking up. And I was like, “No, I’m in my bag.” I love doing a lot of things at once.

And honestly, getting diagnosed with ADHD earlier this year was a relief but also really hard to accept. There are so many pop-cultural narratives about what it means to have ADHD. And I was afraid of the stigma—of wanting a certain kind of stimulant or medication, or the fear of being perceived as lazy or incompetent I spend a lot of time trying to figure out where my brain is at and what state it’s in. If it’s not in a writing moment, maybe it’s a mood-boarding moment for the podcast, or maybe it’s time to go take a walk and try to untangle this part of the essay I can’t finish, or maybe I should dive into my book revisions. A lot of it is about listening to my brain—what it wants to do and what I’m feeling excited by, which feels like a real luxury at this point in my career.

How do you talk to yourself when you’re starting or working on a project?

I’m laughing because the beginning of a project is no problem. At first it’s all, “Anything’s possible! You’re a beast! You’re so smart! Go for it!” And then the second a project is greenlit or a book is sold I’m like, “What the fuck was I thinking? There’s no way I’m competent enough to do this.” And that continues, for the most part, until the end. But what I’ve learned in the process of making books—which I love; I want to make books forever—is that the book world offers a kind of freedom I don’t get anywhere else. The ability to experiment with form and genre feels so liberating to me.

That said, working on bigger, messier projects like books has pushed me to collaborate with people in ways I wouldn’t normally. When you’re writing a quick-turnaround story, you’re mostly on your own. But with books, I’ve had the chance to talk to writers I admire most—just straight up asking, “How do you get this done? How do you actually do this?”

How have you been doing it?

Little by little. And honestly, it’s not that different from recovery—it’s truly one day at a time, or one sentence at a time. Knowing that other people are figuring it out too has been huge for me. And understanding that the voice—that inner critic—is something I need to manage, not obey. That voice doesn’t just show up in writing. It can attack every part of my life. But I’ve come to see it as a protector. It doesn’t want me to experience the grief of failure. Except that most things that don’t work out aren’t failures. They’re just transitions. Shifting my perspective has been huge. A book will definitely teach you that. The thing about writing a book is that there’s no relief. Usually, you push, push, push, and then you publish—and you get the dopamine hit of feedback. But with books, there’s none of that for a long time.

If I’m spiraling, I don’t fight it. I just distract myself. If I’m thinking, “I feel stupid, I feel not good enough,” I’ll stop and ask, “Okay, do you need a nap? Do you need to eat something? Go for a walk? Dance around?” And that has really helped. Usually, after I do something that nourishes a different part of me, I feel better.

How do you balance rest and creative ambition? How do you think about those two things for yourself?

It’s hard. I have friends who wake up at 6 AM and start writing. That’s not me. In the summer, I am usually up early because I want to get my work done so I can go swim at the beach for a bit. But overall, I’ve had to accept that my body has very specific needs right now, and I can’t ignore them. At the same time, I’m entering a really ambitious period in my life. I don’t feel like I’ve done my best work yet. I don’t feel like I’ve created the work I really want to create. And it’s not coming from a place of anxiety or panic—it’s more about figuring out how to push myself.

I want to do more big investigative pieces. I want to write about the anti-trans backlash in the U.S. I want to write about incarceration. I want to write about issues that aren’t necessarily seen as part of my purview as a cultural critic. I want to have impact in this treacherous moment we’re living through and I want to do it in new ways. So every now and then, I take a moment to assess. Where am I? What am I doing? Does this align with my bigger goals? For a long time—and I think New York really encourages this—I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And then suddenly, I’d look up, and it was September, and I’d think, “Where did the year go?”

In the announcement for your book, you wrote, “About existing almost entirely in this space between my eyes and hairline, and the journey to relocate and remember the self since then.” When did Work of Body start murmuring inside of you, and how has the book-writing process brought you back to your body, if at all?

There was a period around 2015 when I decided I wanted to pursue creative nonfiction, not just be a reporter. I wanted to write for myself. So I started taking creative writing classes. I started applying for residencies and workshops and I got into most of them. That was a huge boost. It made me feel like people believed in me, that my work had promise. That was also when I started realizing how dissociative I was—how hard I was working to not feel my feelings, to adapt to a high-pressure job and a high-pressure lifestyle. And once I started articulating that to myself, the writing just flowed. At first, it was journaling. But as a reporter, I also have a kind of spidey sense, that gut feeling when you know you’re onto something. And when I started writing about my dissociation, I felt that buzz. I knew I needed to dig deeper.

I ended up taking a sabbatical and leaving New York for a while. I really struggle to feel my body here. I’m working on it now because I do live here, but at the time, I just felt more embodied in nature, in water, by the water. I started realizing that this other self I wanted to channel—this other history I wanted to tap into—was something I needed to be attached to. Being detached wouldn’t serve the work. And that was terrifying because it meant real lifestyle changes. It’s part of why I stopped drinking. I felt like drinking was getting in the way, like it was blocking me from myself. I’m not someone who comes by vulnerability easily. Being seen is mortifying to me. I have a friend who used to say, “I know it’s hard to be looked at, but I love what I see.” And that always made me so emotional because that’s the fear, right? The fear that people will really see you and reject you. That beneath all the persona—the makeup, the hair, the gold jewelry, the performance—you’re actually ugly or unlovable. And I think that’s why I wanted to write this book. It was really a push to accept myself as a writer and as a person.

What are some of the other ways you feel sobriety has impacted your creative practice?

Those big life transformations that so many people made during the pandemic weren’t available to me. I released a book. I sold a book. I made two or three seasons of the podcast. I worked nonstop, and then I went to Minneapolis, had a complete emotional burnout and breakdown, and realized, I am in danger of losing myself entirely if I don’t change my lifestyle completely. I was also coming out of a relationship. I just needed a reset.

I was invited by Hawaiians to stay [there], and was given housing. It’s not a place I ever thought I would visit because of colonialism, and because I always wanted to be respectful of the land and the needs of Hawaiians who live there. For the first time, I felt like I was in right relationship with the land. Like I could actually give something back in a way that felt nourishing, not extractive. I had my birthday there, and then it was Thankstaking. The day after the holiday, a bunch of people were in town visiting family, so my hosts and a few others decided to have a big karaoke night. We were all excited because people were bringing alcohol from the mainland—we were like, “Oh, they’re bringing natural wine and mezcal!” Because in Hawaii, drinking is so expensive. By that point, I had already experienced feeling better without alcohol. I was doing recovery work around being an adult child of an alcoholic—my dad was a drinker—so I was already in this space of emotional sobriety. But I wasn’t thinking, “This is the time I’ll stop drinking.” It was more like, “This just isn’t the most important thing to me right now.”

And I had started noticing something: I was experiencing a freedom of mind that I had never had before. I didn’t realize how much I was using substances to numb anxiety, and then using other substances to crank myself back up. I was so attuned to the experience of waking up groggy, or a little hungover, or under-slept, and then just chugging a cold brew—constantly trying to hack my body into some kind of functionality. Once I stopped doing that, I realized, “Oh. There’s actually a natural rhythm here that I’ve been suppressing and ignoring.” I was really excited for this boozy karaoke night. But then it didn’t hold the thrill I thought it would. I had this real moment of, “What am I doing?” And I just knew that was my last drink. I tried not to overthink it. I wasn’t like, “How am I going to feel in ten years?” I just focused on that day, and tomorrow.

Has your writing changed?

It’s a lot freer, a lot less inhibited. I don’t think I realized how much I drank to deal with my fear of “not enoughness.” My fear of inadequacy. Without those crutches, I had to actually look at those feelings and face them. I saw this TikTok where someone was asked, “What’s the hardest substance you’ve ever done?” and they just said, “Reality.”

Every morning, I make a gratitude list to start my day, and sobriety is always the first thing on there. Honestly, it’s easier than when I was drinking because when I was drinking, I was obsessing about it. Was I drinking too much? Did I say something weird? Did I embarrass myself?

I trust the timing of my life, but I do think about what I might have already accomplished if I hadn’t been hungover for a decade. The biggest shift is that I just don’t have the same self-doubt. Back then, I don’t think I was fully inhabiting the time I was living through. Now I’m like, “The life I’m living is beyond my wildest dreams.” I always wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to be in conversation with other writers, in New York, seeing art, seeing fashion, traveling for work and for pleasure. And these are things I never could have imagined as a little kid growing up the way I did in Virginia. No way. Sobriety allows me to appreciate that. To show up with gratitude, not entitlement. I don’t feel entitled to this life. It feels precious. And it can be gone in a moment. With drinking, I think I was just too numbed out to actually feel any of that.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Colleen Hamilton.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s highest-ranking United Front organization, enlists carefully selected and loyal delegates from among celebrities, the private sector, ethnic minority communities and “people’s organizations” under the party umbrella — including the All-China Women’s Federation and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.

It also hosts delegates from minority political parties, but only if they play a role that is narrowly defined and subservient to the ruling party.

The body, more colorful and visually diverse than the National People’s Congress that opens Wednesday, is portrayed by state media as proof of China’s consultative model of “whole process democracy,” as well as its inclusion of people from “all walks of life” in politics.

(Go Nakamura/Reuters)

The opening session plunged Beijing into strict traffic controls, with some roads closed to allow motorcades of limousines and official buses to approach the Great Hall of the People in time, with the general public warned not to try to drive in the area.

Police bomb disposal teams were out in force checking vehicles near the venue, according to news photos, while Beijing residents complained of city-wide congestion and security checkpoints.

“I was driving along the Second Ring Road today and came upon the delegates' motorcade,” Beijing resident Ye Jinghuan told RFA Mandarin. “The road wasn’t closed, but only one lane was left for ordinary vehicles [out of three].”

“Three groups of buses have passed by, and we’re now stuck on the viaduct, motionless,” she said from her vehicle. “We don’t know how far back this goes.”

“This was a drive that should have taken half an hour, but now I don’t know how long it will be,” Ye said.

Strict security checks

Meanwhile, any passengers entering Beijing are having their bags checked twice at railway stations, according to the X citizen journalist account “Teacher Li is not your teacher.”

The account posted video clips of security personnel at the Tengzhou High-speed Railway Station in the eastern province of Shandong checking every item of luggage belonging to Beijing-bound passengers, with people grumbling at the level of security.

Similar checks were conducted on luggage belonging to Beijing-bound passengers in the northeastern city of Shenyang, a separate video clip showed.

There are also security checkpoints on highways entering the capital, Shandong resident Zhou Gang told RFA Mandarin on Tuesday.

“There are police at every highway exit, and all cars entering Beijing are being checked,” Zhou said.

Additionally, police continued to detain anyone using the official complaints system, bussing them out of town and handing them over to “interceptors” from their hometowns.

“They’re detaining people on a daily basis,” a resident of Beijing’s Fangshan district, who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals, told RFA Mandarin. “There are police vehicles throughout the village and outside.”

“Petitioners are now basically being detained as soon as they are sent back home from Beijing,” she said. “Things are very bad.”

(Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Elsewhere in China, police are placing rights activists under house arrest until the CPPCC and the National People’s Congress, which starts Wednesday, are over.

“I can’t go anywhere right now,” Qingdao-based rights activist Zhu Le told RFA Mandarin. “The police told me that security for the parliamentary sessions will last until March 20, and I’m not allowed to leave my home before then.”

‘Just a formality’

Inside the Great Hall of the People, President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders attended the opening ceremony at 3 p.m., with Politburo Standing Committee member and CPPCC chairman Wang Huning delivering his annual work report to around 2,000 delegates.

Wang vowed to expand the Conference’s capacity to “bolster unity and friendship” and improve feedback and consultation.

“We need to improve the CPPCC consultation systems and mechanisms, and the mechanisms for adopting, implementing, and providing feedback on consultation outcomes,” Wang said.

While it does help to ensure loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the CPPCC isn’t widely expected to have much impact on policy.

(Andy Wong/AP)

A resident of Shanghai, who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals, said the meetings were just there for show.

“These meetings are just a formality, with no substantive content now,” he said, citing the ending of three decades of press conferences once given by China’s premier at the National People’s Congress.

“The premier has stopped giving press conference, and they’ve also been canceled at the People’s Congress and municipal CPPCC in Shanghai too,” Wang said. “They hold their meetings and don’t want the people to get involved.”

“They don’t care about the same issues that the people care about,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

A video showing a man’s still, lifeless body in a pool of water in the midst of a field is viral on social media. A group of people surrounding the body can be heard saying that his hands were tied.

Users on social media circulating this video have claimed that the deceased was a Hindu man named Sumon living in Bangladesh to insinuate that it was a case of persecution of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh.

X user @pakistan_untold shared the video alleging that the Yunus Mohammed-led Bangladesh government had opened the “floodgates of Hindu persecution”. At the time of this article being written, the post had over 10,000 views and has been reshared almost 900 times. (Archive)

Bangladeshi Hindu boy Sumon mu₹dered & his body dumped in river in Islamic Bangladesh.

Regime change in Bangladesh has opened floodgates of Hindu persecution.

VC: @avroneel80pic.twitter.com/UgVQ1a2k0a

— Pakistan Untold (@pakistan_untold) January 30, 2025

Aanother X user @avroneel80 shared a similar video alleging that student league leader Sumon was targeted and killed by “terrorists”. (Archive)

Chhatra League leader Sumon was brutally killed by terrorists. The terrorists left the bodies under the bridge in Langalbanda Brahmaputra river. pic.twitter.com/m6TIcnIMmx

— Avro Neel Hindu (@avroneel80) January 29, 2025

Verified X user @MithilaWaala also shared the video claiming he was killed by Islamists in Bangladesh. (Archive)

SHOCKING

Hindu Student Union leader Sumon has been brutally k!lled and his body dumped under the bridge in Langalbanda Brahmaputra river by i&lamists in Bangladesh. #HinduGenocideInBangladesh #SaveBangladeshiHindus pic.twitter.com/I2rr3CyOpG

— Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala) January 31, 2025

Meanwhile X account @@zamalhossain alleged that the minority Hindu population in Bangladesh is under threat and the country is full of corpses. (Archive)

The terrorists brutally killed Chhatra League leader Suman and left his body under the bridge in the Langalband Brahmaputra River. All around Bangladesh, there are only corpses and corpses!#UnitedNations#UnitedNationHumanRights#Amnestyinternational#BangladeshCrisis#CNN#BBC… pic.twitter.com/3UiFiuoTze

— MD Zamal Hossain (@zamalhossain) January 30, 2025

Fact Check

To understand the truth behind the viral video, we ran a reverse image search on some key frames from the video. This led us to a report by a Bangladesh news outlet Live Narayanganj.

The report said that the body of a man named Nayan Mia was recovered from the Brahmaputra river in Sonargaon upazila of the Narayanganj district on the morning of January 28. Mia was reportedly an autorickshaw driver and resident of the Sonargaon area. The police suspect a snatching gang was behind the killing.

We then did keyword search in Bengali and came across other articles by Bangladeshi news portals reporting the murder. Several of these carried the same visuals.

News outlet Jugantor cited Mahbubur Rahman, in-charge of the Baidyerbazar Naval Police Outpost in Sonargaon, saying that Mia left home in an auto in the afternoon of January 27 but did not return home. Police suspect that he may have been killed as robbers tried to seize his battery-powered rickshaw.

To sum up, the deceased in the viral video is of a Muslim rickshaw driver, Nayan Mia, and not of Hindu student leader Sumon. The killing was likely on account of theft and had no communal angle to it.

The post Muslim rickshaw driver’s body found in Bangladesh river; Footage falsely viral as Hindu student’s murder appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

The Australian government denies responsibility for asylum seekers detained in Nauru, following two decisions from the UN Human Rights Committee.

The UNHRC recently published its decisions on two cases involving refugees who complained about their treatment at Nauru’s regional processing facility.

The committee stated that Australia remained responsible for the health and welfare of refugees and asylum seekers detained in Nauru.

• READ MORE: Other asylum seeker reports

“A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state,” committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said.

After the decisions were released, a spokesperson for the Australian Home Affairs Department said “it has been the Australian government’s consistent position that Australia does not exercise effective control over regional processing centres”.

“Transferees who are outside of Australia’s territory or its effective control do not engage Australia’s international obligations.

“Nauru as a sovereign state continues to exercise jurisdiction over the regional processing arrangements (and individuals subject to those arrangements) within their territory, to be managed and administered in accordance with their domestic law and international human rights obligations.”

Australia rejected allegations
Canberra opposed the allegations put to the committee, saying there was no prima facie substantiation that the alleged violations in Nauru had occurred within Australia’s jurisdiction.

The committee disagreed.

“It was established that Australia had significant control and influence over the regional processing facility in Nauru, and thus, we consider that the asylum seekers in those cases were within the state party’s jurisdiction under the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights),” El Haiba said.

“Offshore detention facilities are not human-rights free zones for the state party, which remains bound by the provisions of the Covenant.”

Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul said this was one of many decisions from the committee that Australia had ignored, and the UN committee lacked the authority to enforce its findings.

Detainees from both cases claimed Australia had violated its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), particularly Article 9 regarding arbitrary detention.

The first case involved 24 unaccompanied minors intercepted at sea, who were detained on Christmas Island before being sent to Nauru in 2014.

High temperatures and humidity
On Nauru they faced high temperatures and humidity, a lack of water and sanitation and inadequate healthcare.

Despite all but one being granted refugee status that year, they remained detained on the island.

In the second case an Iranian asylum seeker and her extended family arrived by boat on Christmas Island without valid visas.

Although she was recognised as a refugee by the authorities in Nauru in 2017 she was transferred to mainland Australia for medical reasons but remains detained.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Sebastien, who leads the #FreeJimmyLai campaign, last saw his father in August 2020 — weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law that led to a massive crackdown on pro-democracy advocates and journalists. Among them Lai, founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.

After nearly four years in Hong Kong’s maximum-security Stanley Prison and multiple delays to his trial, the aging British citizen was due to take the stand for the first time on November 20 on charges of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces, which he denies.

Lai, who has diabetes, routinely spends over 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, with only 50 minutes for restricted exercise and limited access to daylight, according to his international lawyers.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for his release.

Responding to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred to a November 17 statement in which it said that Lai was “receiving appropriate treatment and care in prison” and that Hong Kong authorities “strongly deplore any form of interference.”

In an interview with CPJ, Sebastien spoke about Britain’s bilateral ties with China, as well as Hong Kong — a former British colony where his father arrived as a stowaway on a fishing boat at age 12, before finding jobs in a garment factory and eventually launched a clothing retail chain and his media empire.

What do you anticipate when your father takes the stand for the first time?

To be honest, I do not know. My father is a strong person, but the Hong Kong government has spent four years trying to break him. I don’t think they can break his spirit but with his treatment they are in the process of breaking his body. We will see the extent of that on the stand.

Your father turned 77 recently. How is he doing in solitary confinement?

The last time I saw my father was in August of 2020. I haven’t been able to return to my hometown since and therefore have been unable to visit him in prison. His health has declined significantly. He is now 77, and, having spent nearly four years in a maximum-security prison in solitary confinement, his treatment is inhumane. For his dedication to freedom, they have taken his away.

For his bravery in standing in defense of others, they have denied him human contact. For his strong faith in God, they have denied him Holy Communion.

We have seen governments across the political spectrum call for Jimmy Lai’s release —the U.S., the European Parliament, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Ireland, among others. What does that mean to you?

We are incredibly grateful for all the support from multiple states in calling for my father’s release. The charges against my father are sham charges. The Hong Kong government has weaponized their legal system to crack down on all who criticize them.

You met with the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently, who said Jimmy Lai’s case remains a priority and the government will press for consular access. What would you like to see Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government do?

They have publicly stated that they want to normalize relationships with China and to increase trade. I don’t see how that can be achieved if there is a British citizen in Hong Kong in the process of being killed for standing up for the values that underpin a free nation and the rights and dignity of its citizens.

Any normalization of the relationship with China needs to be conditional on my father’s immediate release and his return to the United Kingdom.

Your father’s life story in many ways embodies Hong Kong’s ‘never-give-up’ attitude. Do you think Hong Kong journalists and pro-democracy activists will keep on fighting? What is your message to Beijing and the Hong Kong government?

I think most of the world shares his spirit. Hong Kong is unique because it’s a city of refugees. It’s a city where we were given many of the freedoms of the free world. And as a result, it flourished. We knew what we had and what we escaped from.

My message is to release my father immediately. A Hong Kong that has 1,900 political prisoners for democracy campaigning, is a Hong Kong that has no rule of law, no free press, one that disregards the welfare of its citizens. This is not a Hong Kong that will flourish.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Beh Lih Yi.

That stratagem turned out to be correct about the Republican establishment but wrong about the electorate. In any case, Trump went on to not only capture the GOP but the archaic Electoral College as well.

The DNC reprised that strategy with the same suicidal results this year, putting all their deplorable eggs into the one basket of running on a platform of “not-Trump.”

Trump campaigned on the gambit of asking whether Americans felt they were better off now after four years of Joe Biden. The populace roared back a resounding “NO.” Pitching to a disaffected and dispossessed citizenry, he threw them reactionary red meat, scapegoating immigrants and others.

Kamala Harris flew the blue banner but her woke message that she was “not Trump” was less convincing. A red tsunami has swept the Democrats not only out of the White House but congress and many governorships. Trump is on track to win the popular vote.

This “triumph of the swill,” borrowing from the Dead Kennedys, will have consequences for the Supreme Court and the larger makeup of the US politics going into the future. MAGA has now firmly infected the body politic and threatens to metastasize. Hillary Clinton’s smug words in 2016, “Trump is the gift that keeps on giving,” turned out to be unintentionally prescient.

Would it have been any different had the DNC not rigged the 2016 presidential nomination for establishment candidate Clinton by sabotaging Bernie Sanders, who campaigned on issues of empowerment and economic benefit that also appealed to Trump voters? For them, the fear that Sanders could activate and organize genuine grassroots discontent into a social movement was greater than the risk of a Trump presidency.

But the faux independent senator from Vermont had a fatal flaw – “though shalt not do anything that harms the Democratic Party.” This was all the DNC needed to crush his campaign. His “Our Revolution” was domesticated, while Bernie shepherded progressives into the big blue tent.

Green Party campaign manager Jason Call, speaking personally on election night, said it was better to vote for a third party candidate who was opposed to the genocide in Palestine. Even if one accepts the bogus argument that doing so throws the election to Trump, in the larger picture, that would still be preferable to telling the Democrats, who are the party in power, that their conduct is acceptable.

Democratic Party supporters, of course, disagree. They claim that Trump is even more pro-Zionist than their candidate, which may be true. Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we will have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats spout a better line on some social wedge issues that don’t threaten elite rule, such as women’s reproductive rights, although their walk is not as good as their talk.

Yes, things will get worse under Trump. But things would also get worse under Harris. This is because the entire political discourse has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power.

In contrast, the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war. By any objective measure, Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign was middle of the road compared to her corporate party competitors.

The lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide. By unconditionally supporting the Democrats, progressive-leaning voters become a captured constituency to be ignored. They incentivize the Democrats to scurry even further to the right to try to pick up the votes of the undecided and to further cater to the class interests of their corporate funders.

Wednesday morning quarterbacks (election day is on Tuesday) are saying that the Democrats should have given more emphasis in their campaign messaging to economic issues affecting working people. This ignores the fact that Harris, and Biden before her, had claimed that they had turned the economy around.

The debate on how much better the post-Covid economy is and who benefited leads to a deeper question. The current incarnation of capitalism, what is popularly called “neoliberalism,” has failed to meet the material needs of working people. This structural problem, not simply a question of policy, begs for another economic model.

The now manifest failure of the Democrats to offer a platform beyond “not Trump” exposes their bankruptcy. They do not even pretend to have an agenda to address the underlying economic distress, because the limits of the economic system that they embrace provides no succor.

In fact, neither of the major parties offer an alternative to neoliberalism. Both duopoly wings tend to campaign on cultural rather than substantive economic issues precisely because neither have solutions to the erosion of the quality of life for most citizens.

The Republican’s capitalized on popular discontent with the incumbents. But come the mid-term elections in two years, the tables will be turned. This drama is being played out abroad with social democrats getting the boot in places like Argentina and Austria, part of a larger blowback filling the sails of an international far-right insurgence.

A major left-liberal concern is the supposed imminent threat of fascism. Their fear is focused on Trump’s dysfunctionality and his “deplorable” working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love. However, fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as people embrace rather than oppose the security state.

The New York Times reported: “US stocks, the value of the dollar, and yields on Treasury bonds all recorded gains as Mr. Trump’s victory became clear.” That is good for the ruling class but not so much for the rest of us.

Lesser-evil voting contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics at this time when structural change is needed. Absent a third-party alternative, the two-party duopoly doesn’t even recognize existential threats, such as global warming or nuclear annihilation, let alone address them.

Meanwhile, the US military launched a test hypersonic nuclear missile right after the polls closed on November 5. The scariest thing about their “reassurance” to the American public regarding this practice run for World War III was that it was “routine.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

Then came its first major decision on June 6. Pundits were on tenterhooks. What would this body, charged with enhancing the “integrity in the Commonwealth public sector by deterring, detecting and preventing corrupt conduct involving Commonwealth public officials” do about referrals concerning six public officials from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme? The spiritually crushing automated debt assessment and recovery program, had, after all, been responsible for using, in the words of Commission report, “patently unreliable methodology as income averaging, without other evidence, to determine entitlement to benefit”.  From its inception as a pilot program in 2015 till its conclusion in May 2020, a reign of bureaucratic terror was inflicted on vulnerable Australians.

The answer from Australia’s newly minted body was one of stern indifference. While the NACC was aware of the impact of the scheme “on individuals and the public, the seniority of the officials involved, and the need to ensure that any corruption issue is fully investigated” the commission felt that “the conduct of the six public officials in connection with the Robodebt Scheme has already been fully explored by the Robodebt Royal Commission and extensively discussed in its final report.”

In other words, there would be no consequences for the individuals in question, no public exposure of their misdeeds, no sense of satisfaction for victims of the scheme that their harms had been truly redressed. In refusing to act on the referrals, the NACC had, in the words of former NSW Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy KC, now chair for the Centre for Public Integrity, “betrayed a core obligation and failed to fulfil its primary duty.”

An absurd spectacle ensued. The inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness, found herself being called upon rather early in her tenure to investigate the very entity that had been created to expose maladministration and corrupt conduct after receiving 900 complaints about the NACC’s own alleged corrupt conduct.  In the mess of not pursuing the Robodebt officials, it also transpired that Commissioner Paul Brereton had delegated, rather than recused himself, from the process given a conflict of interest. By merely delegating the role of reaching the final decision to a Deputy Commissioner, however, Brereton had not entirely precluded his part in the drama.

Two recent incidents confirm how the NACC is intended to (mal)function – at least in the eyes of Canberra’s secrecy-drugged political establishment. Far from being effective, the body’s role is intended as impotently symbolic, an annexure of the corruption consensus that rots at the capital’s centre.

The first came in the defeated efforts of Senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie to introduce an amendment directing the NACC Commissioner to hold public hearings if “satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so.” As Pocock explained to the Senate, the committee process into examining the NACC Act revealed “evidence from commissioners from state integrity commissions that … there should be a presumption towards having public hearings.”  The current legislation, as shaped by Labor and the Coalition, was designed “in a way that we have no real oversight of what is happening in the NACC.” And that is exactly how that same unholy alliance hoped matters would remain, with both Labor and the Liberal-Nationals voting down the amendment.

In justifying that craven move, Labor Senator and Minister for Employment and Workplace relations Murray Watt held out feebly that the “appropriate balance” between holding public hearings, and considering whether they might “prejudice criminal prosecution, reputations, safety, privacy, wellbeing or confidentiality” had been struck.  Any attentive student of secrecy in politics will be mindful that any balance between public interests and exceptional circumstances will always favour the pathway of least transparency.  In Australia, public interest tests are almost always read down to favour opacity over openness.

In keeping with the disease of closed power, the second matter concerned revelations by the NACC about certain operational details regarding Operation Bannister.  The investigative effort was established to investigate whether a Home Affairs employee’s “familial links” to contracted service provider and Paladin founder Craig Thrupp, had instanced corruption.

Paladin Holdings has handsomely profited from the Australian taxpayer, raking in over half a billion dollars to manage the brutal Manus Island detention centre between 2017 and 2019. The senior executive in question, pseudonymised as Anne Brown, received $194,701.10 from Paladin for “management and consulting services” in 2017. The money was transferred to her home loan account to assist full repayment, though she denied undertaking any work for Paladin or assisting them with the tender to Home Affairs in securing the contract.

Browne’s partner, retired Home Affairs executive pseudonymised as Carl Delaney, directly aided Paladin in securing the lucrative tender. He joined Paladin’s board of directors in 2019 and was remunerated to the sum of $5,000 for his efforts.

Thrupp also purchased another apartment for Brown and Delaney in the same complex worth $920,000, along with accompanying furniture. Two months later, it was rented back to Paladin for $1,000 per week, though eventually sold in 2020, with Brown and Delaney pocketing the proceeds.

The question being investigated was whether the failure by Brown to disclose the aforementioned events (she thought she had no obligation to do so from April 2018 when she was on long-service leave pending retirement) had affected her suitability to hold a security clearance.  These included the evolving nature of her relationship with Delaney and the money and property lavished on them from Thrupp. Even Commissioner Brereton acknowledged that “she should have at least known that at least her relationship with Delaney ought to have been reported” though inexplicably thought the non-disclosure “understandable” and not actuated by intent, dishonesty or corruption.

The investigation had initially begun as a joint investigation by the Australian Commission into Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) and the Department of Home Affairs.  It then fell to the NACC from July 1, 2023 to finalise matters.  On October 9, the report by Commissioner Brereton was released. The allegation that Brown had abused her office as a Home Affairs employee “to dishonestly obtain a benefit for herself or to assist Paladin to secure the garrison services contract is unsubstantiated.” She had not failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest between herself and Thrupp (“a close relative”), and her partner Delaney, in their links to Paladin, “in accordance with Home Affairs procedures”.

The report does not find Brown’s failure to report the “change of her circumstances to Home Affairs and AGSVA [Australian Government Security Vetting Agency]” remarkable, as it “does not appear to have been intentional”.  Failure to do so was insufficient to “bring it to the notice of the head of the relevant agency.”

For a body that offered so much promise, the NACC has failed to impress.  Instead of restoring trust in the public service and politics, the Commission has shown a lack of appetite to pursue its broader remit, preferring a stymying caution. The status quo remains, distinctly, intact.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The decision follows the dissolution of a U.N. monitoring body six months ago due to a veto from Russia.

The new body, called the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, or MSMT, aims to ensure accurate and ongoing reporting on the implementation of sanctions against Pyongyang, the ministry said Wednesday. 

Members include the U.S., South Korea, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“Our government will closely cooperate with participating countries to ensure that the MSMT will serve as a major monitoring mechanism to enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea,” said First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun, announcing the launch of the framework at a press briefing.

“The MSMT is open to additional participation by other countries that are committed to the robust implementation of the sanctions,” Kim said.

The new body serves as a successor to the U.N. Panel of Experts on North Korea, which was disbanded in April, but it orates outside the U.N. framework and thus does not report directly to the U.N. Security Council, or UNSC.

The term of the UNSC expert panel, which had overseen sanctions enforcements against North Korea since 2009, expired at the end of April after Russia vetoed the annual renewal of its mandate in March. China abstained.

At that time, Russia’s move was heavily criticized, with the U.S. calling it a “self-interested effort to bury the panel’s reporting on its own collusion” with North Korea.

Since then, the U.S., South Korea and Japan alongside other countries have been working to apply different methods to continue sanctions monitoring, with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. saying they are exploring “some creative ways” and “out-of-the-box thinking” to ensure the continuation of monitoring activities.

The U.S. and its allies have speculated that Russia has already violated multiple international sanctions on North Korea through arms transactions, which intensified following a major military agreement signed with Pyongyang in June.

RELATED STORIES

US warns of Russia-North Korea refined petroleum trade

50 UN members eye alternative to disbanded North Korea monitoring panel

Russia’s veto on North Korea sanctions watchdog sparks international criticism

‘Hostile state’

On the same day, the vice foreign ministers of the U.S., South Korea, and Japan met in Seoul, where they discussed ways to step up coordination in response to North Korea’s provocations.

North Korea blew up the northern sections of two inter-Korean roads, the Gyeongui and Donghae roads, Tuesday, following its earlier announcement that it would cut all roads and railways linked to South Korea and reinforce its border.

On Sunday, North Korea said it had ordered its artillery units along the border to be fully prepared to open fire, citing threats from the South.

The North has also accused South Korean drones of dropping anti-regime leaflets over its capital Pyongyang on three separate occasions earlier this month, a claim that the South Korean military has said it cannot verify.

On Thursday, North Korea announced that its constitution clearly defined South Korea as a “hostile state,” the first time Pyongyang has confirmed the basic law had been revised in line with leader Kim Jong Un’s order to codify the South as an enemy, not a partner for reconciliation and unification.

The announcement came after the North convened a key parliamentary meeting last week to revise its constitution. It was not immediately clear whether the term “two hostile states” was included in the revision or if lawmakers removed unification-related clauses in line with Kim’s order.

The North Korean leader already described inter-Korean relations as those between “two states hostile to each other” during a year-end party meeting last December, adding that reconciliation or unification with South Korea was no longer a goal.

Under a 1991 inter-Korean accord, also known as the Basic Agreement, relations between South and North Korea were defined as a “special relationship” tentatively formed in the process of seeking reunification, not as state-to-state relations.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

I am interested in so many different things [and] I find it fun to learn how to execute several parts of a project. I don’t have the money to hire all these people, so I’m going to learn how to do it myself. It can be stressful but then by the end of the process, I’m grateful that I took the time and drilled myself into doing it. I like dipping my hands into every part of the process, almost to an annoying degree. Even when working with people, I have to have a piece of each part of it, especially for Body Meat. I started this project so that I could have control over every little piece, and I’m willing to do the work to maintain that. The circle of people I work with is small because they’ve had to learn to work with me and I’ve had to learn to trust them.

When you get in touch with a long-time collaborator, such as Daniel Brennan, what are your conversations like alongside maintaining creative control?

Dan and I have known each other for so long. Nowadays, I’ll send him [a couple] key points of what I’m seeing for [a music video], and he’ll fully get it. He and Rich Smith [understand] what my brain and music look like together [and] they’re good at deciphering what I like. It is years and years of friendship. And the visual aspect is important because of the experimental nature of the music. Although the music can be abstract at times, the visual is what you’re seeing and I get to be more direct [with what I am trying to say]. Dan and Rich get that flow. They know that the music can be chaotic and we want to be able to find the purpose of the song and put that in the visual, and not make the visual be a one-to-one of the music.

That’s why I love working with them. It ends up just being a couple of friends hanging out, making something cool. Sometimes we have money and get to do something interesting but then other times we have very little and that’s when the insane stuff happens.

Your latest album, Starchris, combines your love of video and computer games with your music. You even developed a video game as a companion to one of the songs, “North Side.” For you, how do these interests interact with and speak to one another?

It’s mostly in the design of how games are made. There’s a programming pattern called the Singleton pattern where everything has to speak to one script independent of itself. So things in the game or the program don’t know that the other things in the program exist. With the music, I wanted it to feel like each sound didn’t know the other one existed, and yet they’re working together based on this global script that controls the flow of [Starchris]. There are little Easter eggs I put in the album. For example, the last song on the record has bits and pieces of each song from before it within the song. It’s acting as the global script, so that’s why it’s called “Paradise.” I do a thing where I use the same scrubby effect in “Crystalize,” and I bring that in at the end, and then the same synth from “North Side,” plays, but at double time at the end of the song. Things like that are happening in that song that I’m hyped for.

Lyrically, the album leans on ambiguity to encourage various interpretations, mirroring role-playing games in how they leave room for the player to affect the gameplay and chart their own path. How did you factor in the agency of the audience when working on the album versus working on the game?

You have to relinquish some control of the technical aspect of making the music, just like you would relinquish it in video games. I’m trying to make an album where everyone can perceive something in the same way, but also get different outcomes from this thing just like in an RPG, right? I’m using sound palettes throughout the album that can sometimes sound confusing but if you’re familiar with odd time signatures, you’ll grab onto that throughline of the album. But if you’re maybe more of a synth person, you’ll grab onto that. Just like in an RPG where you’re choosing your character in the beginning.

One of the biggest things I have taken from [the video game director and writer] Yoko Taro and his work is that he always presents alternate ways to feel about a story, especially in NieR: Automata. He’s throwing your expectations out the window. I’m interested in concepts and technical adventures where you’re like, “How can I make it so that everyone can take their own path through this album?” Everyone’s going to hear something different anyway. I might as well just lean into that, right?

And this is the first record I’ve mixed with somebody. My friend Mike [Bloom] is an amazing mixing engineer. I’d never worked with someone [in that way] but I needed another ear. There was a month when I took the train to the city and was in his studio every single day [for up to eight hours].I had to relinquish full control over it because I knew it would be better for what I was trying to do. And he was patient enough to meet me in the middle. I was more interested in [executing] throughlines than making the most perfect-sounding thing. I spent more time just crafting the shape of [the album]. I think that’s more important.

In a [Game Developers Conference] talk that Taro [gave in 2014], he talked about world-building and player freedom in game design. I love his take on it because he’s saying you don’t give them everything at first. Imagine a circle, and then there’s people in the circle, and they see the wall and they’re like, “This is as big as the game is. Okay, that’s fine.” And then you [bring them to] a point in the game where they can break through that first wall and the circle gets a little bigger. So the player goes, “I could do that the whole time? Wait, what else can I do?” I was trying to do that with the music. I take someone from a song like “The Mad Hatter” to “High Beams” [to] expand the world dramatically. I’m trying to make you question what the hell the next song is going to be.

For the accompanying video game, you worked with playtesters who supported development by checking for glitches or bugs, right? What was that process like?

That was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time creating something, and the most stressed out I’ve ever been. At first, a lot of people couldn’t finish the game, so that was a little frustrating. But I wanted it to be a little confusing. Even on the first screen, I had friends being like, “How do I start the game?” because you’re just [placed] in a room with the orb. I wanted that to be part of the game. It was awesome because then people were in my Discord sharing information on how to figure it out.

That’s the whole point of everything I make. I want people to engage with each other and talk about it in that way. Through play testing, I realized how important it is to see the people’s reactions to the thing you’re making and how they communicate with each other, as well as getting feedback on what they like, what they don’t like, or what confuses them. I wish that [existed] more in music.

I enjoyed the [process]. I had gotten no sleep because I was trying to fix everything that was broken, but it cemented my desire to [continue to] make games.

The music video for “High Beams” tells a story of the programmer creating a game inside a cave while being shadowed by a copy of his own design. That made me think about the whiplash between the more solitary parts of the creative process juxtaposed with the public facing responsibilities that come with being an artist. How do you prepare to emerge from the allegorical cave to navigate the promotional part of the work?

I don’t know if I have the answer. I know there are a lot of people like me that create in a solitary confined space at home, where you’re not really getting a lot of feedback, just bouncing around in your head about things, and then you have to go to release it. I kind of have to diminish [the project] a little bit in my head or move on from it a bit before it comes out. When I’m releasing something, I tend to think that no one’s really going to like it and then try to release that pressure where I’m like, “It doesn’t matter.” I think you create a copy of yourself at that moment. You create this data structure that is meant to not feel things and not care, and you’re like, “I’m going to promote the thing. I don’t care what people think,” but that’s not you, because you do care. You do love it.

So when I build up that structure of me that doesn’t care and can crawl out of the cave of creating things to be this forward-facing artist, I also have to destroy that character so that I can go back to making something or go back to feeling what I feel after the rollout of a song. I am probably too emotional to be the person that doesn’t care what people think, and can just put things out. I care deeply [laughs].

The double life that comes with being an artist.

Social media can mess with your brain about the whole thing. I think that creates the copy faster. But then I do have to think sometimes, “Hey, it is my art. I do want to express it to people.” I go back and forth on that. That moment before releasing something, I love the things that I’ve made but then when it gets closer and closer, I create that copy to protect myself. There are moments where I’ve listened to my music, and I’m crying, dancing, so happy, [because] I know what it took to make it. The thought of having someone else judge it can take all that stuff away. Sometimes I make things [and] don’t ever release them. I don’t talk about them because I don’t want people to ask me to [share] them.

Listening to the album, I was reflecting on how streaming platforms have introduced more gamified elements to their platforms to boost engagement from algorithmic playlists to end-of-year listening statistics. It was refreshing to engage with video games and music, to have those mediums side by side, in a way that centers the artist.

To me, this is one of the most beautiful things about game design and I try to use it in music: when you’re making a game, you’re only worried about that thing and what goes into that. I like listening to music, making music, and playing music. I don’t like having to look a certain way or present a certain vibe. I hate it. You can ask anyone I know. In game design, no one cares what the developer looks like. That’s why I love Yoko Taro. He wears a mask on his face that he never takes off.

I think it can be cool that certain platforms are adopting this more of a gamified [approach] and making things more interactive but there is a bit of it that’s pretty malicious. They are trying to buy you, or buy your attention, right? They’re trying to steal your attention instead of inspire your attention, and you have to be very careful of those lines.

In past interviews, you’ve talked about having a more open-ended approach to making music. What does a typical workday look like when you’re working on a song with little to no expectation around where you will land?

It’s all feeling. I never try to plan any of it. I don’t really write off of song structure. I try to go from a rhythm that’s interesting to me, to an even more interesting rhythm, etc. Till the song’s done, till I say the song’s done. Sometimes the song ain’t done, but that’s it. It’s not that complicated. I go in and try to make some drums that sound fun. And if I can make the next part of the drum track sound even better, I run with it like that. It’s fun to make yourself move. It’s the same thing with the games. I want to make something that I want to listen to or I want to play.

You go in with an open mind, make whatever you’re feeling, and keep going from there. And then that’s when it can turn into a fight where you’re trying to finish this thing and you’re like, “What did I do? How can I make this a good song?” And maybe that’s the thing with me is I never really give up a track. I keep sculpting it, removing things, and shaping it to be something because I believe in that first feeling I got from the [initial] drum track. I probably have 50 different versions of the song, “Crystalize.” I hate that song, but I love it. It’s my favorite song and I hate it. It was maybe the hardest one to make.

Once again, those copies of yourself re-emerge. Your past self who started off that song bounces off of the versions that follow.

Exactly [laughs].

What lessons from your creative journey have you applied to other parts of your life?

You learn to build a home by making art. You get creative with your problem-solving. I can tell you right now, it has not been an easy ride at all. And I’ve had to be so creative with everything I do in every aspect. I’ve learned that from making the things that I make out of passion. How can I utilize every ounce of my being to figure out we can make that bill payment? How can we make that deadline? It’s the same thing with making music. I don’t have much and I need to make something out of [a] few pieces of sound.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jessica Kasiama.

Police body camera footage of Routh’s arrest following the attempted assassination on September 15, 2024.

In the end we know little about the latest assassination attempt against presidential candidate and career fraudster Donald J. Trump, who was playing a round at Trump International Golf Club when a member of the Secret Service opened fire on a fence running beside the sixth hole—a dogleg to the right that runs along South Congress Avenue and Summit Boulevard.

The post The Trump Assassination Body Count appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Stevenson.

As images and videos of the comrade’s last visit to the university surfaced online, several Right-wing influencers took to X (formerly Twitter) to claim that Yechury was a Christian. Rishi Bagree, who uses his social media handles to amplify misinformation and communal propaganda on a regular basis, was one of them. Quote-tweeting JNUSU’s tweet about the homage to Yechury, Bagree speculated that Yechury ‘hated Hinduism’ because he was a Christian. (Archive)

So Sitaram Yechury was a Christian, no wonder why he hate Hinduism.

By the way why they hide their religious identity in their active political life ??? https://t.co/1sXmDxPIn1

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) September 14, 2024

Verified Right-wing propaganda handle @wokeflix_ also tweeted the same claim. The tweet garnered 1.7 million views and close to 7,000 retweets. (Archive)

Name: Sitaram Yechuri
Religion: Christian

Imagine how many people he had fooled with his Hindu name while being a rice bag all along. pic.twitter.com/LOoWioyo9f

— Wokeflix (@wokeflix_) September 14, 2024

Several other users amplified the viral claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fact Check

During his farewell speech in Rajya Sabha back in 2017, Yechury spoke about his religious background. Below is a transcript:

I was born in the Madras General Hospital now called Chennai to a Telugu-speaking Brahmin family. My grandfather being a judge…goes to Guntur, so we shifted there in 1954, I was born in 1952. We shifted to Hyderabad in 1956. My school education is in an Islamic culture that was prevalent in Hyderabad under the Nizam rule in the early days of independence. Humari taleem toh wahi hui sir. Then I came to Delhi, studied here. I am married to a person whose father is a Sufi of the Islamic order, and whose surname is Chisti… Her mother is a Rajput but a Mysorean Rajput who migrated there in the 8th century AD. We’re now in the 21st Century…I am from a south Indian Brahmin family married to this lady, what will my son be known as, sir?… There’s nothing that can describe my son rather than being an Indian. That is our country. This is my example, how look at how many such people (have the same background)…

In 2017, while criticising a statement made by then Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Yechury had identified himself as an atheist.

Indians who are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs or Atheists (like me) are all Indian citizens. #NotCharity #Constitution

— Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) April 22, 2017 

Alt News reached out to Mohammed Salim, the state secretary CPI(M) West Bengal. Salim also referred to the aforementioned speech by Yechury and said, “In a toxic socio-political atmosphere in ‘New India’, everything is being sought to be identified with religion. Traditionally, religious beliefs are considered human and personal. Relationship between the ‘worshiper and worshipped’. Comrade Sitaram Yechury himself elaborated on this as an unparalleled wordsmith in his Rajya Sabha speech.” He further added, “Coffins have no particular religion but for those who want to divide everything on the basis of narrow beliefs.”

Why was Sitaram Yechury’s Body in a Coffin?

According to Dr Rima Dada, in-charge of media and a professor at AIIMS Delhi, Sitaram Yechury’s family has donated his body for medical research. This requires the body to be embalmed, where fluids are injected into the body to preserve it for teaching purposes. The decision by Yechury’s family was hailed by the AIIMS faculty as ‘noble’.

According to an article in The Hindu, no last rites were performed as his body was donated for medical research at AIIMS. A day after his death, his embalmed body was taken to Jawaharlal Nehru University and then to his residence. On Saturday, September 14, his remains were brought to the party’s headquarters at AKG Bhawan in Delhi.

To sum up, the claims on social media speculating that Sitaram Yechury was a Christian are false.

The post Sitaram Yechury’s body in coffin: Right-wing influencers conclude he was a Christian appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Pelumi, an intern at Gboah TV, was shot on October 24, 2020, while covering the #EndSARS protests in Ikeja, the capital of Nigeria’s southwestern Lagos state. The injured journalist was reported to have been seen in the custody of the police; his body was found in a mortuary a week later.

The statement said, “the continued refusal to release Pelumi’s body violates the family’s customary right” so they can provide a proper burial. “Without accountability, Pelumi’s case will add to several other unresolved killings of journalists in Nigeria, perpetuating a culture of impunity and promoting self-censorship,” the statement said.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In an interview with Barkha Dutt on Mojo Story published on August 16, a physician named Subarna Goswami claimed that 150 grams of white liquid that appeared to be semen was found in the body during post-mortem (PM) examination.

Around the 23-minute mark in the interview, Dutt asks Goswami if there could be more than one perpetrator. The doctor claims that the victim’s parents had shared the original post-mortem report with him. After talking about the various injuries mentioned in it, he adds, “They also collected white thick viscid fluid from deep inside the vagina which weighing 151 grams.. 151 grams. and even if it is mixed with some other body fluid like vaginal discharge or you know maybe mucus or some other tissues, but this much amount of semen.. it appears to be semen.. it is to be proved in the forensic lab only.. but this white thick viscid fluid appears to semen as penetration was there… it is clearly written hymen was ruptured at 10 o’clock position… and penetration was there. So it must be semen, nothing other than semen. So this much amount of semen.. it cannot come out from a single rapist. There is every possibility of the involvement of multiple rapists…” (sic)

Goswami is the additional general secretary of the All India Federation of Govt Doctors’ Association. The video has 44,000 views on YouTube. The remarks made by Goswami were carried by multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, India Today, Business Today, The Times of India, and Firstpost among others.

The claim was also made by the victim’s lawyer in the petition filed in the court. The concerned point in the petition reads, “The presence of 150 mg of semen in the hymen, a quantity suggesting involvement of more than one individual, further corroborated the suspicion of gang rape.”

The lawyer representing the family, senior CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya asserted in a video interview that the PM report said 150mg white liquid was found in the body. He adds that he never made the assertion that the liquid was semen.

The claim is viral on X (formerly Twitter). Here are some of the tweets which make the claim that 150 grams of semen was found in the victim’s body:

The claim is viral on Facebook as well. Here are some of the posts that mention it:

On Instagram, a template that was shared as ‘story’ over 3.4 million times made the same claim.

Fact Check

Alt News was able to access the post-mortem report of the victim through police sources.

The report consists of multiple rows corresponding to different sections of the body namely thorax, abdomen, cranium and spinal canal, and more. Each row, again, has multiple columns for different organs and parts such as brain, stomach, lung, kidney, and spleen. In many of these cells, the weight of the corresponding organ is stated using the abbreviation ‘Wt’. For eg, the weight of the heart is stated as “Wt- 212gm”, and the weight of the spleen is stated as “Wt- 90gm”.

In a cell titled ‘External and Internal Genitalia’, it is stated, “As noted. White thick viscid liquid present inside endocervical canal, which is collected as noted above. Wt-151gm.”

It would seem that those who initially claimed 150 grams of semen probably misconstrued the above sentence as suggesting that the weight of the thick liquid was 150 grams. However, the weight specified here is that of the ‘External and Internal genitalia’.

Alt News spoke with a forensic expert who on condition of anonymity told us, “Usually seminal liquid is measured in ml (volume), not gm (weight). The PM Report has weights of other organs in grams including the heart, liver, kidney, spleen etc. 151 grams is the collective weight of the internal and external genitalia. Nowhere in the report does it mention that 150mg of semen recovered as claimed”.

The Kolkata police also termed this claim to be false in a press briefing.

#WATCH | Kolkata: West Bengal Police Commissioner Vineet Kumar Goyal says, “Far too many rumours are floating which have no basis, and based on them, a lot of so-called experts are creating narratives…The case has now gone to the CBI and let’s have faith in the agency. In the… pic.twitter.com/vMIfh0B3SR

— ANI (@ANI) August 16, 2024

TMC MP Mahua Moitra in a video posted her X (formerly Twitter) account, also stated that, “This was the total weight of the internal viscera or the reproductive organs, it has got nothing to do with the bodily fluids found.”

Urging media to be responsible while reporting. Genuine concerns need to be addressed. Fake news needs to be busted. @MamataOfficial pic.twitter.com/nljhAbDMkk

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) August 16, 2024

Therefore, those on the victim’s side who floated this claim seemingly misread the post-mortem, and then this rumour gained a life of its own on social media leading to further theories of gang rape. The possibility of more than one accused cannot be ruled out, and the CBI is investigating this case. However, the claim that 150 grams of semen was found in the victim’s body is false.

The post 150 grams semen found in R G Kar victim’s body? No, post-mortem report mentions weight of genitalia appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Pratik Sinha.

The post The Body Bags of Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Officials in Uvalde, Texas, revealed on Wednesday that they failed to release some officer body camera and dashboard footage related to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting as required by a settlement agreement with news organizations that sued for access.

After the city released hundreds of records on Saturday to news organizations, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, an officer informed the Uvalde Police Department that some of his body camera footage from the May 24, 2022, shooting was missing, according to a news release from the city.

In response, police Chief Homer Delgado ordered an audit of the department’s servers, which turned up “several additional videos.” The city did not say which officers or cruisers the missing footage belonged to.

According to information that Uvalde police initially provided to Texas Department of Public Safety investigators, seven of the 25 responding officers had their body cameras turned on the day of the shooting. Records released on Saturday only included footage from five of the officers’ body cameras. Whether the city’s discovery of additional materials is limited to the two remaining body cameras or includes additional footage from more officers is unknown.

The department shared the newly discovered footage with District Attorney Christina Mitchell for review. Delgado also ordered an internal affairs investigation into how the error occurred. That probe will determine which department employees are responsible and what disciplinary actions may be warranted, according to the news release.

“I have ordered an immediate review of all footage collection and storage protocols within UPD and will institute a new process to ensure our department lives up to the highest standards,” Delgado, who joined the department last year, said in a statement. “The Uvalde community and the public deserve nothing less.”

It’s unclear whether Mitchell, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had access to the footage as she evaluated whether officers should be criminally charged for the flawed response to the shooting in which 19 children and two teachers died.

A grand jury in June indicted former Uvalde school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and officer Adrian Gonzales on felony child endangerment charges. Both men pleaded not guilty. No Uvalde Police Department officers have been charged.

News organizations, including the Tribune and ProPublica, sued several local and state governmental bodies more than two years ago for access to records related to the shooting. The city settled with the new organizations, agreeing to provide records that had been requested under the state’s Public Information Act, including body camera footage from all responding officers. Three other government agencies — the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office — continue fighting not to release any records.

City officials did not respond to requests for comment but said in a statement that they would evaluate the judge’s order governing the release of documents to ensure that they comply with the settlement terms reached with the news organizations.

Reid Pillifant, an associate attorney with Haynes Boone, a law firm that represents the news organizations, said he appreciated the Police Department’s “quick response in conducting an audit to ensure all relevant materials are shared with the public as soon as possible.”

The Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE independently obtained a trove of investigative materials through a confidential source. That trove includes the body camera footage of two Uvalde police officers — Jesus Mendoza and Joe Zamora — that was not released on Saturday. The newsrooms analyzed Mendoza’s 25-minute-long body camera footage and his interview with state investigators as part of an investigation into law enforcement’s botched response that included a documentary and revealed that while the children knew what to do when confronted with a mass shooter, many officers did not.

Zamora’s body camera footage, which is only about eight minutes long, appears to show him at the house belonging to the gunman’s grandmother, whom the teen shot in the face before going to the school.

In the footage, a crying woman can be heard saying, “I knew it was my nephew.” She adds, “he didn’t want to live anymore.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune, and Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

It was never my intent to have some kind of exciting innovative narration; I didn’t necessarily go into this being like, “I want to fuck with POV” or anything. I had started writing the book in a close third, and it was that way until about halfway through the process. But I felt as I was developing that draft in close third that there was something missing, some additional element that would gesture to the broader context of the book.

I wanted there to be some way for readers to understand that this isn’t just about two young contemporary queers named Bernie and Leah, but also about the connection to a generation of queer artists that came before. I was working on a substantial revision of the third-person draft, but I was still very open to the process and what could happen. It was woo-woo, and I’m not that woo-woo of a person, but it was magical. I was working on the draft and this first-person voice just started talking, it was talking in an “I” grammar, it wasn’t talking in a “she/they” grammar.

I was like, “What is this?” I was like, “Who are you?” But then I was like, “let me go with this first-person voice and see what happens.” At first I thought maybe it was a beyond-the-grave moment, I thought maybe it was a dead ancestor, queer artist ancestor, and then the more I listened to it I was like, “No, I think she has a body and I think she has her own grief, her own partnership that she’s trying to work out.” I’m really interested in time and generational shifts, and how things have changed for queer folks, particularly queer women trying to be in relationships with each other from 50, 100 years ago to now.

This story also began with a historical inspiration, so maybe that’s why. It just didn’t feel like it did the book justice to stay only in the present, and the first person voice just kept getting more and more. Then when I showed drafts to early trusted readers, they were going, “I’m excited about her, I just want to know more. Why is she here?” So I just kept developing the sense that she was trying to work something out via watching Bernie and Leah. I feel like hopefully that also takes the reader’s attention to the fact that watching them helps her find some, not closure exactly, but insight into why she feels so guilty about her own partnership and how it turned out.

That’s the effect that you had on me as a reader! You talked about having the historical influence, I know at least in part it was inspired by the relationship between photographer Berenice Abbott and writer/art critic Elizabeth McCausland. I’m curious how you came about them, finding them, and what inspired you to write something based on their story?

I saw an exhibit of Berenice Abbott’s photographs in Paris back in 2017, and it had a big impression on me. I found her work to be very modern, very surprising. I am from New York, but in her photographs the city looks so wildly different—so intimate, open and disorganized, like a small village. I was like, “This is not a city that I recognize.” It made me see New York in a new way, and I was like, “Who is this?”

Then this huge biography came out in 2018 by Julia Van Haaften and I learned that Abbott met her longtime partner Elizabeth McCausland because they exchanged fan letters. McCausland was a critic and she wrote Berenice this flirty note basically that was like, “I like your work. Do you ever want to meet up?” Very gay, and I was like, “This is cute.” There was a whole chapter in the book about a road trip that they went on in 1935, and it really changed the trajectories of both of their lives. They both left being single, confused about the kinds of art they wanted to make, and then they came back very much together and with a clear, shared artistic vision.

“What happened on that road trip?” I had to know, but I couldn’t know, it wasn’t really in the biography, though Van Haaften doesn’t hide that their relationship was romantic. Then I started to learn more about their partnership, and it was clear that they were each very important to the other in actualizing their careers. We often have this idea that gay life is always getting more rich and more public, and in the past, things were bad and sad. But it seemed like they actually had a very unique and very fruitful partnership where art was at the center in a way that feels hard now. Or maybe just really different. I was just fascinated by this idea of “how do you figure out how to be a queer woman artist in a relationship with another queer woman artist?” I feel like that’s a question that no time period really solved.

Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York was shot in 1929. The photos for your fictional Changing Pennsylvania were shot in 2019. Do you see a parallel between these time periods? Why this choice?

Abbott took the photos for Changing New York from 1929-1940, before, during, and after the Great Depression, and that sense of being in the middle of things, being on the precipice of change and then documenting the change you’d sensed was coming fascinated me. For Housemates, I was thinking about 2018, 2019, of being right in the Trump years, about how I felt that in my little corner of Philadelphia, some promise of hope had started to open up before 2016 but then been shut down real quick. There was something very “in the middle” about 2018 too, a sense that we were afraid of what was coming but we did not yet know how much worse it was going to get.

I was really interested in the idea of putting Bernie and Leah on the road during this time where things were tough, there were obstacles, but it wasn’t all completely broken, just smashed. In the novel, they experience America or Pennsylvania at this moment where things are in conflict, but alive.

Your descriptions of large format photography are so detailed and so specific. How do you approach research for your writing?

I’m a big believer in putting my body in the thing that’s going to give me insight. I teach a class from time to time called “Reporting for Creative Writers” that tries to bridge this artificial gap between work that we call journalism or nonfiction and work that we call literary or creative. I talk about a few different kinds of research, and I think it’s really important to pull from all of them, but in some ways the most important one is experiential research, because that’s what helps you create scenes and have insight into the characters.

For Housemates I did a fair amount of in-my-chair research, just trying to get the basics of the history of large format and the foundational practitioners in the field, photographers who show up in the novel, but I’m not a technical person. When I hear camera words I’m like, “I don’t understand.” I don’t understand how it works, I don’t know what an f stop is, I don’t know how light interacts with a surface.

So at some point I got frustrated, and I reached out to this really amazing large format photographer named Jade Doskow who was teaching at the International Center of Photography (ICP). She is the photographer in residence at Freshkills, the park in Staten Island that was once a landfill. I basically said, “Can I shadow you?” and offered to pay her to teach me one on one. She wouldn’t take my money, but was like, “Sure, come along.” So she let me follow her a bunch as she worked with her camera. I took a lot of the mechanics of the photography scenes from those trips. Watching Jade helped me answer questions like, “with that much equipment, what do you take out of the car when? Where do you put it? How do you touch it? How does the body interact with a big camera like that?” Without that experiential research, the scenes of Bernie and her professor Daniel Dunn would never have been possible.

You’re also a phenomenal short story writer. How did it feel different to write a whole novel instead of a short story?

It felt so different. I think a short story is like a mood or a question. It has its own momentum, and I’m not an outliner. I don’t outline, I don’t plan, I’m just really a fan of the sentence by sentence. I write the first sentence first and I write the last sentence last. I could do that to some extent with the novel, but there were so many more choices to be made. I feel like with a novel you write until you lose your way, and then you backtrack and go back to the last place where you felt like you knew what you were talking about, or the last place that you felt confident.

So there was a lot of moving forward and then backtracking, and then moving forward and then backtracking. That was a new feeling, I felt very lost and unmoored in many places. In stories, I usually know the voice and what the parameters of the idea are, but this didn’t feel like that. There were a lot of changes. I thought it was going to be Bernie’s story mainly, and then it was really Leah’s.

You explore class with Bernie and Leah. What interests you about this dynamic?

I think you have to talk about class if you’re going to talk about art, because making art is not rewarded under capitalism, so how do you then function and survive and persist in doing that work? It’s something that I’m very interested in as a human, and as a writer. Bernie’s a scrapper and doesn’t have a family to fall back on, and Leah does. I think there’s a fundamental difference in how you’re allowed to live and imagine when you have student debt, and when you don’t have a safety net.

I wanted to show that in any book that’s going to talk about art deeply, which I hope this book does, you have to talk about money because it’s an integral part. If what you make isn’t helping you live, where does that support come from? Where does that ability to imagine yourself as an artist come from?

You need someone to help you imagine that, and then you need someone to pay for it. Bernie’s ability to imagine herself came from this strange wild coincidence of getting to study with this genius who was also a tough force in her life, and that maybe without that encounter with her professor she might not have decided to become a photographer. She was going to study graphic design. I think that, for folks who come from backgrounds where you have to work to survive, being an artist makes no sense. Leah provides Bernie money at a crucial point, and I wanted to say, “It’s not always morally bankrupt to be someone’s patron or to pay for things in a way that feels unequal.” It can create a certain kind of equality. I think it’s important that Leah’s willing to bankroll Bernie’s work in some way.

Bernie’s original desire to be a graphic designer makes perfect sense, because that is what someone with artistic inclinations, who feels like they have to make money, would do. It’s like artistic marketing.

Exactly. I know a lot of people in spaces that I’ve moved in that are like, “Oh, I would have loved to be an artist, but I couldn’t do that. That makes no sense.” Bernie comes from that kind of family.

There’s a moment when the narrator sees Bernie on the porch and is so taken, so struck by her, that Leah disappears, and it’s alluded to throughout the book that this is the effect Bernie has on people, an effect that Leah does not have. What do you think makes Bernie more appealing to these other characters in the world of the novel?

One of the things that I kept coming back to was that someone told me: Bernice Abbott was quiet, but not shy, and Elizabeth McCausland was shy, but not quiet.

There’s something very appealing to many people about someone who doesn’t give it all away up front. Bernie keeps it close to the vest, she’s a little emotionally withholding, at least at the beginning. Maybe that’s her journey, but Leah is someone who tries hard and just wants to connect with people. She gives it all away up front.

As a culture, we value withholding. We want to crack the nut of tough personalities, and Leah doesn’t need to be cracked. I think that’s why a lot of people gravitate towards Bernie more. Bernie has a lot to say, but she doesn’t say it right away. There is a satisfaction to hearing her say it over the course of the book, I hope. But I also have a soft spot in my heart for Leah, because I like to just give it away on my sleeve too.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Shy Watson.

That’s cut off a lucrative source of income for the customs agents, suddenly making it difficult for them to repay high-interest loans they took out to weather the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down trade with China, the customs agent said.

“They borrowed at 100% annual interest, so their debt doubles every year,” a customs official, from the border city of Hyesan in Ryanggang province, told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The reason they cannot receive bribes is because of the tiny cameras attached to their bodies,” he said.

Prior to the pandemic, customs officials were able to pad their paltry government salaries with bribes from smugglers who either imported banned items or lied about the volume of imports to hide profits from the government. 

But when COVID hit, North Korea closed its borders to trade and the customs officials lost their livelihoods. 

To survive, many borrowed money from donju – North Korea’s wealthy class – promising to pay them back once trade with China resumed, the customs agent said.

Many border officials took out high interest loans of 30,000 yuan (US$4,100), and some borrowed as much as 150,000 yuan ($20,500). 

They were used to living the high life and did very little to reduce their spending during the time that the border was closed, thinking it would be relatively easy for them to repay, the official said.

Unexpected twist

In May, trade resumed, but the border officials never foresaw that authorities would require them to wear body cams – making it nearly impossible to collect bribes.

“The reason why cameras were installed on custom officials and security agents’ bodies was because there were many cases of illegal Chinese mobile phones and SIM cards being smuggled into the country through customs trade channels,” the customs official said. 

These Chinese cell phones allow people living near the border to access Chinese networks and call outside the country, potentially letting people pass along information North Korean authorities want to keep control of.

“This is fundamentally to block the path of internal secrets from being leaked outside the country through illegal mobile phones,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the loan sharks are pressing the officials to pay up.

“Hyesan customs officials and security agents are unable to go home at night,” he said. “This is because the donju come to the homes of customs officials and security agents and abusively demand repayment.”

A truck driver who used to drive through the border at Hyesan told RFA that it was easy for customs officials to spot smugglers and their smuggled goods.

“Customs truck drivers smuggled televisions from Chinese truck drivers until 2019,” he said.

He said that since the border reopened, all imported goods come on the backs of Chinese trucks, which are then unloaded into North Korean warehouses on the border.

North Korean workers who load and unload Chinese trucks used to be friendly with the Chinese drivers, sharing cigarettes and having casual conversations with them, but now they are told not to even make any verbal contact. 

“If they say a single word with them, they will be immediately taken to the State Security Department for an investigation and be kicked out of their work group,” the driver said.

In the more unusual cases where North Korean trucks export goods to China, they are allowed to go only 400 meters (yards) into Chinese territory, and once empty back out – and are followed by security guards, he said.

With body cams now a requirement, some of the customs officials are doing whatever they can to transfer to other departments where the bribes might be a little smaller but at more easily accepted, he said.

“Security agents who monitor trade cargo do not hide the fact that they have small cameras attached to their bodies,” the driver said. “They advise cargo loading and unloading workers not to create any problems, as the whole day’s work is being recorded.”  

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Moon Sung Hui for RFA Korean.

“One body, one people, one ocean, one Pacific” was Samoa’s powerful statement during the parade of nations at the official opening of the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC).

It was a sentiment echoed loudly and proudly by all other parading nations.

Rapa Nui’s delegation exclaimed, “we are all brothers and sisters, we are a family!”

• READ MORE: Other FestPAC 2024 reports

This strong spirit of unity connected the Pacific delegates who had all travelled across vast oceans to attend the 10-day festival hosted in Honolulu, Hawai’i.

“Ho’oulu Lahui, Regenerating Oceania” is the underlying theme of the event.

Festival director Dr Aaron Sala said the phrase is an ancient Hawai’ian motto from the reigning Monarch of Hawai’i in the 1870s, instructing the community to rekindle their cultural practices and rebuild the nation.

He saw how the theme could be embraced by the entire Pacific region for the festival.

‘Power of that phrase’
“The power of that phrase speaks to every level of who we are.”

He saw the phrase come to life at the official opening ceremony over the weekend.

Almost 30 Pacific Island nations paraded at the Stan Sheriff Center, flags waving high, and hearts full of pride for their indigenous heritage.

Indigenous people of all ages filled the arena with song and dance, previewing what festival goers could expect over the next two weeks.

Dr Sala was impressed by the mix of elders and young ones in the delegations.

“The goal of the festival in its inception was to create connections between elders and youth and to ensure that youth are connected in their culture.

“The festival has affected generations of youth who are now speaking their native languages, who are carving again and weaving again.”

‘It’s so surreal’
Speaking as she watched the opening ceremony, the festival’s operations director Makanani Sala said: “it’s so surreal, looking around you see all these beautiful cultures from around the world, it’s so humbling to have them here and an honor for Hawai’i to be the hosts this year.”

The doors to the festival village at the Hawai’i Convention Centre opened the following day.

Inside, dozens of “fale” allocated to each nation were filled with the traditional arts and crafts of the Pacific.

It is a space for delegates and event attendees to explore and learn about the unique cultural practices preserved by each nation.

The main stage is filled with contemporary and traditional performances, fashion shows, oratory and visual showcases, and much more.

The FestPAC village space invites the community to journey through the entire Pacific, and participate in an exchange of traditional knowledge, thus doing their part in “Ho’oulu Lahui – Regenerating Oceania.”

The Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture runs until June 16.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Bougainville Affairs Minister Manasseh Makiba has described the Post-Courier’s front page story yesterday regarding a meeting between Bougainville and national government leaders as “sensationalised” and without substance.

The Autonomous Bougainville Government (AGB) had warned it might use “other avenues to gain its independence” should the PNG government “continue to be mischievous” in dealing with the Bougainville independence agenda.

Makiba said the report was the work of individuals with vested interests and was designed to derail the progress made so far over the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA).

• READ MORE: Other PNG independence reports

He also announced that the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB) meeting scheduled for yesterday had been postponed until tomorrow because agendas had not been supplied on time by the joint technical team (JTT) headed by the Chief Secretary and his Bougainvillean counterpart Kearneth Nanei.

“The restoration development grants, Bougainville Copper Ltd shares, and fisheries revenue sharing agreement were matters being dealt with by the joint technical team due to the technical and legal nature of the process,” Makiba said.

“The joint technical team comprises departmental heads and technical professionals from both the national government and the Autonomous Bougainville Government [which] will conduct consultations before jointly drawing up agendas for the JSB to deliberate.”

Makiba said the system currently in place through the joint technical team was very transparent and allowed for constructive discussions from both sides before it got to the political level.

‘Sticky subjects’ resolved
“Any disagreement or issues relating to any sticky subjects are resolved at that committee level,” Makiba said.

“To suggest or imply that the government is bulldozing matters or turning a deaf ear to any issue is an understatement,” Makiba said.

He urged both parties to respect the peace agreement.

The Bougainville warning was sounded by ABG Attorney-General and Independence Implementation Minister Ezekiel Massat just as the ABG delegation headed to Port Moresby for the JSB meeting with the national government.

The Bougainville delegation, led by President Ishmael Toroama, is due to meet with the national government to discuss the ratification process outlined in the Bougainville Peace Agreement and the constitution.

Massat said that there had been events that had happened which Bougainville had not been consulted on by the national government, consequently defeating the purpose of the peace agreement.

He cited the appointment of Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Wagambie Jr and the current JSB meeting which had been called and changed by the national government without consulting ABG.

Resolution from last JSB
“While the ABG will be participating, it wants to see the two parties set into motion the resolution from the last JSB, for the parties to agree to call in a moderator to try to resolve the impasse over how results from the 2019 Referendum will be tabled and ratified by the National Parliament,” Massat said.

The ABG also demands that a bipartisan committee be established comprising national and Bougainville members to urgently communicate awareness about the Bougainville issue and independence agenda to all members of Parliament before the ratification vote.

Massat said the lack of consultation of the national government might create “suspicion and mistrust” and Bougainville might be forced to pursue other legal means to achieve the “Bougainville people’s dreams of independence” as shown in the overwhelming majority vote in the 2019 referendum.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation, or KKF, posted an open letter on the website change.org on April 4 to collect signatures. The letter said, " Vietnam's recent crackdown on the indigenous Khmer-Krom community has reached alarming levels, with widespread reports of arbitrary arrests, unjust imprisonment, and religious persecution."

Around 1.3 million Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They face discrimination in Vietnam and suspicion in Cambodia, where they are often perceived not as Cambodians but as Vietnamese. 

The Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF) pointed out that courts in several southern provinces sentenced four Khmer activists, Thach Cuong, To Hoang Chuong, Danh Minh Quang, and Dinh Thi Huynh, to prison different terms – there for the crime of "abusing democratic freedoms" under Article 331 of the criminal code. 

According to KKF, they were imprisoned simply for promoting rights by disseminating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and organizing people to celebrate International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10) and International Women's Day (March 8).

“Indeed, those books and documents should have been distributed by the Communist Government of Vietnam in ethnic minority areas and indigenous ethnic areas, but they did not do it. They hid it. They didn’t apply it. They just signed with the UN," Tran Xa Rong, Second Vice President of KKF, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) by phone from Italy on April 9:

The petition said that in addition to targeting activists, the Vietnamese government also arrested and defrocked Khmer Krom Buddhist monks at the end of March.

In this case, monk Thach Chanh Da Ra, abbot of Dai Tho pagoda, along with follower Kim Khiem, were arrested for “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 while four monks Duong Khai, Thach Qui Lay, Kim Sa Ruong, Thach Chop, and two followers Thach Ve Sanal and Thach Nha were detained under Article 157 of the criminal code.

The local government also sent excavators to destroy the lecture hall that was built by monk Thach Chanh Da Ra three years ago as a place of study for monks and followers.

"This act of cultural and religious desecration not only deprives the Khmer-Krom people of their places of worship but also constitutes a grave violation of their cultural heritage and identity,” said KKF in its open letter.

“These human rights violations are clear evidence of Vietnam's failure to uphold its obligations as a member of the UNHRC. 

By condoning and perpetrating such abuses, Vietnam has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the core values of the United Nations,” the petition said.Vietnam is a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the 2023-2025 term and is lobbying its supporters for reelection.

RFA sent emails to Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the UN Secretary General with a request for comments on KKF's allegations but did not immediately receive a response. 

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

Verified Right Wing X (Twitter) account @_treeni shared screenshots of the notice, including one with an English translation. According to the notice, the rate for converting a Brahmin woman is 3 lakh Taka, an Indian Bengali woman is 2 lakh Taka, a ‘Namashudra’ (scheduled caste) woman is 50,000 Taka and an entire family is 5 lakh Taka. The user also wrote that the “Bangladesh Cyber Team hacked a Facebook page run by Islamists of Bangladesh” and exposed a “sinister Islamist plan.” (Archive)

The tweet was later deleted.

The same notice was shared with the same claim by another Right Wing user @jpsin1, who is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Archive)

“हिन्दू ब्राम्हण लड़की को लव जिहाद में फंसाओ 3 लाख बांग्लादेशी टका पाओ”

“हिन्दू नामशुद यानी दलित लड़की को लव जिहाद में फंसाओ 50 हजार बांग्लादेशी टका पाओ”

“भारतीय बंगाली लड़की को लव जिहाद में फंसाओ 2 लाख बांग्लादेशी टका पाओ”

“पूरी हिंदू फैमिली को इस्लाम में कन्वर्ट करो 5 लाख… pic.twitter.com/XNEAI0IcEz

— Jitendra pratap singh (@jpsin1) April 3, 2024

Verified user @atsshow7 tweeted also tweeted the same notice. “By feeding you the bhaang of brotherhood, your downfall is being orchestrated, and you’re unaware of it. (Now recognize those who are opposing CAA in India)”, he wrote. (Archive)

ये होता है लव जिहाद. हिंदू लड़की पटाने का रेट लिस्ट

– नामशूद्र (दलित) लड़की के 50 हजार
– भारतीय बंगाली लड़की के 2 लाख
– ब्राह्मण लड़की के 3 लाख
– पूरे परिवार के 5 लाख

भाईचारे की भांग पिलाकर आपका पतन कैसे किया जा रहा है, आपको पता नहीं चल रहा |
(अब आप उनको पहचानिए जो CAA का भारत… pic.twitter.com/Y5B2rLwhhU

— The Abhishek Tiwary Show (@atsshow7) April 3, 2024

Several other users shared the purported notice, amplifying the viral claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3)

Fact Check

Upon a closer look at the notice, we observed that the date of the notice was February 6, 2022.

On the official page of Bangladesh Jamiyat Ahl-Al-Hadith, we screened through all the posts. We found that while nothing had been uploaded to the website on February 6, two notices had been posted on February 7, both of which were dated February 6. One of them matched the reference number on the viral image.

In the viral image, it can be observed that the phrase “বিশেষ বিজ্ঞপ্তি” (Special Notice) (circled in yellow) has been aligned with the salutation of the notice, a faux pas rarely seen in official letters. Additionally, the word “ধন্যবাদান্তে” (Thanking You) (circled in green) is also placed in the same line as the body of the letter, which is another rare oversight in official correspondence. In the original notice, one can clearly see that this word comes after the body of the notice. All of these flaws point to the fact that the content of the notice in the viral image, announcing rates of converting Hindus, had been morphed into the original notice.

The original notice found on the official site is a brief about the decisions made in the fourth meeting of the governing council of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Hadith on February 5, 2022, emphasizing the promotion of Quranic and Hadith education among Muslim citizens. It announced that regular Quran and Hadith classes would be initiated in the mosques of all branches within the organizational jurisdiction of the district, urging the recipients to make necessary arrangements for their respective areas.

Below is a Google-translated version of the original notice:

Hence, a notice from February 2022, taken from the Bangladesh Jamiyat Ahl-Al-Hadith website, has been morphed and amplified by Indian Right Wing users. The morphed image purportedly showed rates for converting Hindu women in Bangladesh when, in reality, the notice was about the initiation of regular Quran and Hadith classes in all affiliated mosques.

False claims about rate cards for converting Hindus into Islam have been amplified by the Right Wing ecosystem several times in the past. Alt News debunked these claims. A related report can be found here. In 2017, Times Now ran a primetime report on the topic based on a photoshopped image.

The post 2022 notice by Bangladesh religious body morphed to show rates for converting Hindus appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

On March 22, Vu Minh Duc was summoned to a police station in Long Thanh district, Dong Nai province, for questioning about his involvement in an October 2023 quarrel which escalated into what his family described as gang violence. He would be dead by the end of the day.

It’s the latest example of a person dying in suspicious circumstances while in police custody.

Duc, the primary breadwinner of his household and a father of two children, including a one-year old, was called into the interrogation room at 10:30 a.m. Two relatives who accompanied him to the station were asked not to enter, a relative, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told Radio Free Asia. He said that Duc had been in good health without any major illnesses or symptoms of disease. 

About 3:00 p.m, the investigator phoned Duc’s wife and asked her to sign some papers. When she went to the station, they explained that while they were taking Duc’s testimony, he fainted, so they took him to the hospital for emergency care.

One of Duc’s brothers told the Phap Luat Online newspaper that the police wanted Duc’s wife to sign papers related to his health. 

By the end of the day, Duc had been to another hospital. When the family arrived at the second hospital, the doctors told them that he died at about 9:30 p.m.

“We saw the corpse and took some photos,” said a family member who didn’t want to be named for fear of reprisals. “We saw bruises and signs of possibly bloody vomit in his mouth. The hospital concluded that the cause of death was multiple injuries, as there were bruises on the body. 

The photos shared with RFA showed injuries on the left leg, the neck, and the mouth with evidence of dried blood. Additionally the back of Duc’s left thigh had dark purple bruises.

At least 16 people died in police stations or detention facilities between 2018 and 2021, according to statistics collected by RFA from Vietnamese state-owned media reports. Many of those deaths have been publicized by relatives on social media. 

Since then several more have suffered a similar fate.

Most recently on March 8, villagers in Dak Lak province found the body of Christian preacher Y Bum Bya hanging in the local cemetery.

The Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, to which he belonged, released a statement on March 19 saying Y Bum Bya was murdered after being repeatedly beaten and threatened by local police.

The police had asked him to meet them in the cemetery saying they wanted to return his mobile phone, the church said.

An hour later villagers discovered his body. There was no suicide note. Police declined to discuss the case on the phone with RFA.

In the case of Vu Minh Duc, state media reported that his family requested the National Autopsy Institute to clarify the cause of death. They took his body home on Monday to prepare for a funeral.

RFA attempted to contact investigator Luu Quang Trung of the Long Thanh district police, whose name was on Duc’s summons paper, but he did not pick up the phone.

Officers at the station said that inquiries about the case could only be made in person.

Translated by An Nguyen. Edited by Eugene Whong and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

A disturbing video has surfaced of a female, alleged to be a rape victim, attempting to jump out of the Kuri Dom Lecture Building at the University of Papua New Guinea.

UPNG Students Representative Council (SRC) president Joel Rimbu has dispelled this allegation, saying that the female was not a student — she was an outsider visiting her boyfriend, who is alleged to be a staff member.

An argument broke out during their rendezvous where the frustrated female attempted to jump out of the building, while students filmed.

• READ MORE: Other UPNG security reports

Rimbu said he was at the location assessing the situation with Uniforce Security of UPNG.

“She was later dropped of at the nearest bus stop to go home,” he said.

“She refused to take the matter to the police.”

Speaking about the safety of female students on campus, the SRC female vice-president, Ni Yumei Paul, immediately raised the incident with the Campus Risk Group (UniForce) and they were assured that the group would investigate and report back next week.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A Russian metals tycoon's assets in a company that produces a key component in making steel have reportedly been nationalized days after President Vladimir Putin criticized his management of his company.

Yury Antipov, 69, the owner of Russia’s largest ferroalloy company, was also questioned by investigators in Chelyabinsk, the Urals industrial city where his company is based, and released on February 26, according to local media.

Earlier in the day, the government seized his shares in Kompaniya Etalon, a holding company for three metals plants that reportedly produce as much as 90 percent of Russia’s ferroalloy, a resource critical for steelmaking.

Russia’s Prosecutor-General Office filed a lawsuit on February 5 to seize Etalon, claiming the underlying Soviet-era metals assets were illegally privatized in the 1990s. It also said the strategic company was partially owned by entities in “unfriendly” countries.

While campaigning for a presidential vote next month, Putin criticized Antipov on February 16 without naming him during a visit to Chelyabinsk, whose working-class residents are typical of the president’s electoral base.

Putin told the regional governor that the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, the largest of Etalon’s five metals factories, had failed to reduce dangerous emissions as agreed in 2019 and the asset would be taken over even though the court had yet to hear the case on privatization.

“I think that all the property should be transferred to state ownership and part of the plant -- [where there is ecologically] harmful production -- should be moved outside the city limits,” Putin told Governor Aleksei Teksler.

In a closed hearing, a Chelyabinsk court approved the transfer of Etalon’s assets to the state, a move potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Antipov ranked 170 on Forbes 2021 list of richest Russians with a net worth of $700 million.

The nationalization of a domestic company owned by a Russian citizen is the latest in a series of about two dozen by the state since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Prosecutors have based their cases on illegal privatization, foreign ownership, criminal activity, or a combination of the three. A rare-metals producer whose owner had been critical of the war effort was among the other assets seized. l

The seizures contradict Putin’s repeated promises in the nearly quarter century he has been in power that he would not review the controversial 1990s privatizations. In return, businessmen were expected to be loyal to the Kremlin and stay out of politics, experts say.

That unofficial social contract had more or less functioned up until the war. Now businessmen are also expected to contribute to the war effort and support the national economy amid sweeping Western sanctions, experts say.

The current trend of state seizures has spooked Russian entrepreneurs and raised questions about whether that social contract is still valid.

U.S. Ties

Antipov began his business career in the 1990s selling nails, fertilizer, dried meats, and other goods. In 1996 he and his business partner plowed their profits into the purchase of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant and subsequently purchased four more metals plants in the ensuing years.

The plants sold some of their output in the United States, where the firm had a trading company.

Antipov received full control of the metals holding in 2020 when he split with his business partner. That year he put 25 percent of the company each in the names of his wife and two eldest sons, Sergei and Aleksei Antipov, according to Russian business registration records.

In 2022, the metal assets were transferred to the Etalon holding company, whose ownership was hidden. Ferroalloy prices surged in 2022 as the war triggered a spike in commodity prices.

A hit piece published by The Moscow Post in December -- six weeks before prosecutors launched the privatization case -- claimed Antipov paid himself a dividend of more than $300 million from 2021-2023 using a structure that avoids capital gains taxes. RFE/RL could not confirm that claim. The Moscow Post is a Russian-language online tabloid that regularly publishes compromising and scandalous stories.

According to public records, Antipov’s two sons own homes in the United States and may be U.S. citizens. Sergei Antipov founded the trading company around the year 2000 in the U.S. state of Indiana. If he and his brother together still own 50 percent of the company, prosecutors could potentially have grounds for seizure.

Russia has changed some laws regulating the purchase of large stakes in strategic assets since its invasion of Ukraine.

One is a 2008 law that requires foreign entities to receive state permission to buy large stakes in strategic assets. An exception had been made for foreign entities controlled by Russian citizens.

Under the change, a Russian citizen with dual citizenship or a residence permit in another country may be considered a “foreign” owner and must receive permission to own an asset.

Nationalization is among the punishments for failure to do so. Thus, if Antipov’s two sons are U.S. citizens or if they have U.S. residency permits, their combined 50 percent stake in the company could be seized.

This already happened to a Russian businessman from St. Petersburg. His business was determined to be strategic and seized after he received foreign residency.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Speaking in an interview with RFE/RL to mark the second anniversary of Russia launching its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the NATO chief said solidarity with Ukraine was not only correct, it's also "in our own security interests."

"We can expect that the NATO allies will do more to ensure that Ukraine prevails, because this has been so clearly stated by NATO allies," Stoltenberg said.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

"I always stress that this is not charity. This is an investment in our own security and and that our support makes a difference on the battlefield every day," he added.

Ukraine is in desperate need of financial and military assistance amid signs of political fatigue in the West as the war kicked off by Russia's unprovoked invasion nears the two-year mark on February 24.

In excerpts from the interview released earlier in the week, Stoltenberg said the death of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and the first Russian gains on the battlefield in months should help focus the attention of NATO and its allies on the urgent need to support Ukraine.

The death of Navalny in an Arctic prison on February 16 under suspicious circumstances -- authorities say it will be another two weeks before the body may be released to the family -- adds to the need to ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin's authoritarian rule does not go unchecked.

"I strongly believe that the best way to honor the memory of Aleksei Navalny is to ensure that President Putin doesn't win on the battlefield, but that Ukraine prevails," Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg said the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the city of Avdiyivka last week after months of intense fighting demonstrated the need for more military aid, "to ensure that Russia doesn't make further gains."

"We don't believe that the fact that the Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Avdiyivka in in itself will significantly change the strategic situation," he said.

"But it reminds us of that Russia is willing to sacrifice a lot of soldiers. It also just makes minor territorial gains and also that Russia has received significant military support supplies from Iran, from North Korea and have been able to ramp up their own production."

Ukraine's allies have been focused on a $61 billion U.S. military aid package, but while that remains stalled in the House of Representatives, other countries, including Sweden, Canada, and Japan, have stepped up their aid.

"Of course, we are focused on the United States, but we also see how other allies are really stepping up and delivering significant support to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said in the interview.

On the question of when Ukraine will be able to deploy F-16 fighter jets, Stoltenberg said it was not possible to say. He reiterated that Ukraine's allies all want them to be there as early as possible but said the effect of the F-16s will be stronger if pilots are well trained and maintenance crews and other support personnel are well-prepared.

"So, I think we have to listen to the military experts exactly when we will be ready to or when allies will be ready to start sending and to delivering the F-16s," he said. "The sooner the better."

Ukraine has actively sought U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to help it counter Russian air superiority. The United States in August approved sending F-16s to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands as soon as pilot training is completed.

It will be up to each ally to decide whether to deliver F-16s to Ukraine, and allies have different policies, Stoltenberg said. But at the same time the war in Ukraine is a war of aggression, and Ukraine has the right to self-defense, including striking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine.

Asked about the prospect of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House, Stoltenberg said that regardless of the outcome of the U.S. elections this year, the United States will remain a committed NATO ally because it is in the security interest of the United States.

Trump, the current front-runner in the race to become the Republican Party's presidential nominee, drew sharp rebukes from President Joe Biden, European leaders, and NATO after suggesting at a campaign rally on February 10 that the United States might not defend alliance members from a potential Russian invasion if they don’t pay enough toward their own defense.

Stoltenberg said the United States was safer and stronger together with more than 30 allies -- something that neither China nor Russia has.

The criticism of NATO has been aimed at allies underspending on defense, he said.

But Stoltenberg said new data shows that more and more NATO allies are meeting the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, and this demonstrates that the alliance has come a long way since it pledged in 2014 to meet the target.

At that time three members of NATO spent 2 percent of GDP on defense. Now it’s 18, he said.

"If you add together what all European allies do and compare that to the GDP in total in Europe, it's actually 2 percent today," he said. "That's good, but it's not enough because we want [each NATO member] to spend 2 percent. And we also make sure that 2 percent is a minimum."

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

European Union foreign ministers in Brussels provided strong public backing to the exiled widow of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, vowing additional sanctions against Moscow to hold it responsible for the death of her husband in a remote Arctic prison.

"The EU will spare no efforts to hold Russia's political leadership and authorities to account, in close coordination with our partners; and impose further costs for their actions, including through sanctions," the EU’s top diplomats said in a joint statement following their meeting with Yulia Navalnaya on February 19.

Navalnaya, who has become a vocal Kremlin critic in her own right over recent years, vowed to "continue our fight for our country" as she traveled to Brussels to seek backing from the 27-member bloc, whose leaders have expressed outrage over Navalny's death in custody last week and Russian authorities' refusal to allow his mother and lawyers to see his body.

"Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband, Aleksei Navalny," Yulia Navalnaya said in a two-minute video post on X, formerly Twitter.

Navalnaya, who along with their two children lives abroad, was already in Munich for a major international security conference when reports emerged on February 16 that Navalny had died at a harsh Arctic prison known as Polar Wolf, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for alleged extremism that Navalny and Kremlin critics say was heaped atop other convictions to punish him for his anti-corruption and political activities.

"I will continue the work of Aleksei Navalny," Navalnaya said. "Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand beside me."

She called for supporters to battle the Kremlin with "more fury than ever before" and said she longed to live in "a free Russia."

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell emerged from that meeting expressing "the EU's deepest condolences" and confidence that Russian President "Vladimir Putin & his regime will be held accountable for the death of [Aleksei Navalny]."

"As [Navalnaya] said, Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin," Borrell said, adding that the bloc's support is assured "to Russia's civil society & independent media."

An ally of Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, said in a post on Telegram that an investigator had stated that tests on Navalny's body will take 14 days to complete.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis insisted earlier that the EU must "at least" sharpen sanctions against Russia following Navalny's death.

The EU has already passed 12 rounds of Russian sanctions and is working on a 13th with the two-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaching later this week, with member Germany pressing for more.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had said Berlin would propose new sanctions on Moscow at the meeting with Navalnaya, but the outcome remained unclear.

The German Foreign Office said it was summoning the Russian ambassador over Navalny's death to "condemn this in the strongest possible terms and expressly call for the release of all those imprisoned in Russia for political reasons."

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's office called separately for clarification on the circumstances and for Russian authorities to release Navalny's body to the family.

The Kremlin -- which for years avoided mention of Navalny by name -- broke its official silence on February 19 by saying an investigation was ongoing and would be carried out according to Russian law. It said the question of when his body would be handed over was not for the Kremlin to decide.

It called Western outcry over the February 16 announcement of Navalny's death "absolutely unacceptable."

The Latvia-based Novaya Gazeta Europe said on February 18 that police were securing a local morgue in the Siberian city of Salekhard as speculation swirled around the location of the 47-year-old Navalny's body and whether it showed signs of abuse.

Navalny is the latest on a significant list of Putin foes who have ended up dead under suspicious circumstances abroad or at home, where the Kremlin has clamped down ruthlessly on dissent and free speech since the Ukraine invasion began.

Political analyst Yekaterina Shulman told Current Time that Navalny "possessed incomparable moral capital" in Russia but also well beyond its borders.

"He possessed fame -- all Russian and worldwide," Shulman said. "He had moral authority [and] he had a long political biography. These are all things that cannot be handed down to anyone and cannot be acquired quickly."

She cited Navalny's crucial credibility and "political capital" built up through years of investigations of corruption, campaigning for elections, and organizing politically.

"Perhaps this apparent political assassination will become a rallying point not for the opposition -- the opposition is people who run for office to acquire mandates [and] we are not in that situation -- but for the anti-war community...inside Russia," Shulman said.

Navalny's family and close associates have confirmed his death in prison and have demanded his body be handed over, but authorities have refused to release it pending an investigation.

Mediazona and Novaya.gazeta Europe said Navalny’s body was being held at the district morgue in Salekhard, although officials reportedly told Navalny's mother otherwise after she traveled to the remote prison on February 17 and was denied access.

A former spokeswoman for Navalny, Kira Yarmysh, claimed Navalny's mother had been turned away again early on February 19.

Yarmysh tweeted that Russia's federal Investigative Committee had told his mother and lawyers that "the investigation into Navalny’s death had been extended. How much longer she will go is unknown. The cause of death is still 'undetermined.'"

"They lie, stall for time, and don't even hide it," she added.

The OVD-Info human rights group website showed more than 57,000 signatories demanding that the Investigative Committee return Navalny's body to his family.

WATCH: Court documents examined by RFE/RL reveal that medical care was repeatedly denied to inmates at the prison where Aleksei Navalny was held. In one case, this resulted in the death of an inmate. The revelation comes amid questions over how Navalny died and as his body has still not been handed over to his family.

The group noted that a procedural review process could allow authorities to keep the body for at least 30 days, or longer if a criminal case was opened.

Since the announcement of his death on February 16, Russian police have cordoned off memorial sites where people were laying flowers and candles to honor Navalny, and dispersed and arrested more than 430 suspected violators in dozens of locations.

Closely watched by police, mourners on February 19 continued to leave flowers at tributes in Moscow to honor Navalny. Initial reports suggested police in the capital did not intervene in the latest actions.

The Western response has been to condemn Putin and his administration, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying there is "no doubt" that Putin is to blame for Navalny's death.

The British and U.S. ambassadors laid tributes over the weekend at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to repression that has emerged as a site to honor Navalny.

U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy said she was honoring "Navalny and other victims of political repression in Russia," adding, "His strength is an inspiring example. We honor his memory."

The French ambassador also visited one of the memorials.

With reporting by Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

"I was just speaking with [Ukrainian President] Volodymyr Zelenskiy and I think these are the two main priorities," Rutte said in an interview with RFE/RL on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on February 17.

Addressing the global security conference earlier, Zelenskiy urged allies to plug an "artificial" shortage of weapons that is giving Russian forces the upper hand on the battlefield and said stalled U.S. aid was crucial.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Ukraine faces acute shortages of ammunition and U.S. military aid has been delayed for months in Congress.

"Unfortunately, keeping Ukraine in an artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war," Zelenskiy said.

Asked about the delayed U.S. aid after a bilateral meeting with Zelenskiy, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, denounced "political gamesmanship" in Congress that has no place in such matters.

Republicans have insisted for months that any additional U.S. aid to Ukraine, and Israel, must also address concerns about border security.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he would ask European allies to reimburse the United States for around $200 billion worth of munitions sent to Ukraine.

"We should stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump," Rutte told the security gathering on February 17. "We do not spend more on defense or ramp up ammunitions production because Trump might come back."

Talk of a potential European nuclear deterrent that would not involve the United States is "not helpful," he told the conference. And it "would only undermine NATO in a time when we really need credible deterrence."

Speaking to RFE/RL, Rutte, who unexpectedly announced his departure from Dutch politics in July, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that U.S. military aid to Ukraine would be delivered soon.

Rutte said any delays by EU countries to deliver weapon supplies to Ukraine was due to the fact that they, along with Ukraine, "are all democracies."

"And sometimes these issues take a bit of time…. And now I know that there are still new discussions on new weapons systems. I think decisions can be made fairly soon," Rutte explained.

Rutte also said Dutch plans to transfer to Ukraine U.S.-made F-16 fighter were "basically on schedule."

"We hope to transfer them as soon as possible. Twenty-four of them, maybe more, but at least 24. We are working together with the Danes and others. So, things are progressing now," Rutte told RFE/RL.

Asked about alleged signals from the Kremlin that Russia could be ready for talks with Ukraine, Rutte said that decision rested solely with Kyiv.

"There's only one person who can ever decide to enter into peace negotiations with Russia. And that man is still the legally elected president of Ukraine," Rutte said, referring to Zelenskiy.

"And what we're doing at this moment is to help him to make sure all your brave men and women in Ukraine, the military and all the citizens, [are able] to free that country from the Russians. And the only one, again, who can decide on peace negotiations is Zelenskiy. Nobody else," Rutte added.

Rutte also commented on the death of Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died at a remote Arctic prison on February 16.

Navalny's spokeswoman confirmed on February 17 that Navalny had died and said he was "murdered," but it was unclear where his body was as his family and friends searched for answers.

"Aleksei Navalny is one person so brave, so enormous, impressive as he was, that this one person was a threat to the Russian state. That means how weak they are and how insecure they are about our own role and position," Rutte said.

Navalny's death at age 47 has deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power.

Asked whether Russia and Putin, whom Western leaders have blamed for Navalny's death, could face further Western sanctions, Rutte was not hopeful.

"I don't think it will in itself lead to extra sanctions," Rutte said, noting the EU was already preparing a 13th package of sanctions against Russia that it hopes to pass by February 24.

"New sanctions packages are important, but making sure that we close the loopholes in the existing packages is also important," Rutte said.

Rutte has emerged as a leading candidate to succeed NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who plans to step down in October after 10 years at the helm.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Aleksei Navalny's family and close associates have confirmed the Russian opposition politician's death in an Arctic prison and have demanded his body be handed over, but officials have refused to release it, telling his lawyers and mother that an "investigation" of the causes would only be completed next week.

"Aleksei's lawyer and his mother have arrived at the morgue in Salekhard," Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, referring to the capital of the region of Yamalo-Nenets, where Navalny's prison is located.

"It's closed. However, the [prison] has assured them it's working and Navalny's body is there. The lawyer called the phone number which was on the door. He was told he was the seventh caller today. Aleksei's body is not in the morgue," she added.

Yarmysh then said in a new message: "An hour ago, the lawyers were told that the check was completed and no crime had been found. They literally lie every time, drive in circles and cover their tracks."

But in a third message, she said, "Now the Investigative Committee directly says that until the check is completed, Aleksei’s body will not be given to relatives."

Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov, who currently resides abroad, said that Navalny's mother was told her son had died of a cardiac-arrest illness.

"When the lawyer and Aleksei’s mother arrived at the colony this morning, they were told that the cause of Navalny’s death was sudden death syndrome," Zhdanov said.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, who traveled to the Yamalo-Nenets region some 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow, was earlier informed that the Kremlin critic died at the "Arctic Wolf" prison on February 16 at 2:17 p.m. local time, according to Yarmish.

Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer who has represented Russian human rights activists, told Current Time that "what is happening is not accidental."

"The Russian authorities will do everything not to turn over the body in time or certainly not to conduct a forensic medical examination," Prokhorov told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

The penitentiary service said in a statement on February 16 that Navalny felt unwell after a walk and subsequently lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived to try to revive him but he died, the statement added.

Navalny, a longtime anti-corruption fighter and Russia's most-prominent opposition politician for over a decade, was 47.

His death sparked an immediate outpouring of grief among many Russians, while leaders around the world condenmed the death of Vladimir Putin's staunchest critic, blaming the Russian president directly for the death.

Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers meeting in Munich on the sidelines of a security conference held a minute's silence for Navalny on February 17. The G7 consists of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

In a joint statement released by Italy, the ministers expressed their "outrage at the death in detention of Aleksei Navalny, unjustly sentenced for legitimate political activities and his fight against corruption."

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that "for his ideas and his fight for freedom and against corruption in Russia, Navalny was in fact led to his death."

"Russia must shed light on his death and stop the unacceptable repression of political dissent," he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the death of Navalny showed that it is impossible to see Putin as a legitimate leader.

"Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone who seems like a target to him," Zelenskiy told the Munich Security Conference on February 17.

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe, told RFE/RL in Munich that Navalny will be remembered as someone who sacrificed his life for his country.

"Putin wants to be remembered as a ruler of Russia. But Navalny will be remembered in a different way because Navalny died for his country rather than for killing other people."

"He tried to show that other things are possible [in Russia] and we'll never know what kind of leader he would have been," he added.

Navalny's vision for change in Russia will be kept alive by his team, his spokeswoman Yarmysh said. "We lost our leader, but we didn't lose our ideas and our beliefs," Yarmysh told Reuters via Zoom, speaking from an undisclosed location.

Navalny's death was a "very sad day" for Russia, and must lead to international action, the wife of a former Russian agent killed by radiation poisoning said on February 17.

Marina Litvinenko, whose husband Aleksandr died of radiation poisoning in 2006, three weeks after drinking tea laced with polonium at a meeting with Russian agents at a London hotel, told AFP she had sympathy for Navalny's wife, Yulia.

The Kremlin, which Navalny said was behind a poison attack that almost killed him in 2020, has angrily denied it played any role in Navalny's death and rejected the "absolutely rabid" reaction of Western leaders.

Inside Russia, people continued to mourn the death of the anti-corruption crusader despite official media paying little attention to his death and efforts to remove any tributes to him.

At least 340 people have been detained in 30 cities and towns in Russia on February 16 and 17 after they came to pay tribute, include laying flowers, to the memory of Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia.

On February 17, police blocked access to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and detained several people there as well as in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info said.

In Moscow, people came to lay flowers at the "Wall of Sorrow" memorial on the avenue named after Soviet physicist and dissent Andrei Sakharov on February 17. Riot police immediately moved in and more than 15 people were arrested, the Sota news outlet reported.

In St. Petersburg, an Orthodox priest was detained on February 17 after he announced he would hold a memorial service for Navalny.

Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko was detained near his home as he was going to the Solovetsky Stone memorial dedicated to Soviet victims of political repression.

He was remanded in custody and was to be presented to a judge on February 19, the site 24liveblog.com reported.

However, a memorial service was performed by a different Orthodox priest at the site, in the presence of several people, some of whom were detained after the service was completed.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Investigators have said the clothing on the body matched that of Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a senior monk and male resident teacher at the Sravasti Abbey in Newport who was reported missing on Nov. 8 after he failed to show up for a prayer ceremony a day earlier.

Investigators said they are awaiting the results of the autopsy report to confirm the identity of the body, which residents of the abbey said had been frozen over with ice and had only recently thawed. 

Newport is the county seat of Pend Oreille County in the northeast corner of the state, bordering Idaho.

In a statement, the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office said they received a call on Jan. 3 from the abbey reporting that residents had sighted a body floating in a pond. Police retrieved the body, which was partially submerged in the cold water, using a canoe, the Sheriff’s Office said. 

“While walking around the pond on Abbey property yesterday, two monastics noticed that maroon-colored clothing was floating on the surface of the water,” according to a Jan. 4 statement by Sravasti Abbey.

“We contacted the Sheriff’s Department immediately. They came out, called for a boat, and retrieved a body which they think matches the description of Geshe Chodrak (the ordination name of Geshe Dadul Namgyal),” the statement said.

Namgyal was reportedly last seen wearing a maroon jacket over his monk’s robes when he went missing while taking a walk around the abbey’s 300-acre grounds. 

The sheriff’s office and the abbey didn’t immediately respond to Radio Free Asia’s requests for comments. 

Extensive search in November

“An autopsy was requested by the Coroner to determine an estimated time of death and possible cause,” the sheriff’s office said. “Also requested was a positive identity of the deceased person.” 

In November, the sheriff’s office, abbey residents and local search and rescue volunteers carried out extensive searches in the area surrounding the abbey’s grounds. 

Namgyal’s family also offered a reward of up to $25,000 in cash for any information that may help find the missing monk. 

Namgyal – who joined the abbey in May as one of its first male resident teachers – has been a practicing monk and a Buddhist practitioner, teacher, scholar and translator for over four decades.

He served as an English language translator for the Dalai Lama and as a speaker and interpreter at many Buddhist conferences that delve into the intersection of Buddhism with modern science, psychology and Western philosophy. 

Namgyal has also made significant contributions in developing a comprehensive bilingual science learning curriculum for Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns while working with the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative as one of the lead translators. 

Prior to joining Sravasti Abbey, he was the senior translator and interpreter with the Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics, while also serving as the senior resident teacher for the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta. 

“Geshe Dadul was a very learned scholar,” said Tsondue Samphel, assistant director for Emory’s Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning Program. “He understood and translated scientific terminologies and jargons with ease. This, in turn, was of great benefit to the scientists as well as the monks and nuns studying science.”

Namgyal also served for several years as the principal of the Monastic School for Modern Education at Drepung Loseling Monastery in south India, and later, as a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Sarnath in north India. 

He received his Geshe Lharam degree – the highest degree of learning in Tibetan Buddhism – from Drepung Loseling Monastery in South India in 1992.

Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tenzin Pema, RFA Tibetan.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

When Barbara and Belvett Richards learned that the police had killed their son, they couldn’t understand it. How, on that September day in 2017, did their youngest child come to be shot in his own apartment by officers from the New York Police Department?

Miguel Richards, who was 31, grew up in Jamaica and had moved to New York about a year earlier after coming to the United States through a work-study program. His father’s friend gave him a job doing office work, and he rented a room in the Bronx. But he started to struggle, becoming reclusive and skipping days of work. His mother, with whom he was particularly close, pleaded with him to return to Jamaica. “It’s as if I sensed something was going to happen,” she says. “I was calling him, calling him, calling him: ‘Miguel, come home. Come home.’”

His parents knew he had never been violent, had never been arrested and had never had any issues with the police. What details they managed to gather came from the Bronx district attorney: Richards’ landlord, who hadn’t seen him for weeks, asked the police to check on him. The officers who responded found Richards standing still in his own bedroom, holding a small folding knife. And 15 minutes later, they shot him.

Richards’ death marked a historic turning point. It was the first time a killing by officers was recorded by a body camera in New York. The new program was announced just months before as heralding a new era of accountability. Now, a week after the shooting, the department posted on its website a compilation of footage from four of the responding officers. The video, the department said in an introduction to the presentation, was produced “for clear viewing of the event as a totality.” And as far as the department was concerned, the narrative was clear. Sometimes “the use of deadly force is unavoidable,” the police commissioner at the time, James O’Neill, wrote in an internal message. The level of restraint shown by all officers, he said, is “nothing short of exceptional.” And, he added, “releasing footage from critical incidents like this will help firmly establish your restraint in the use of force.”

Richards’ parents were not convinced. Belvett watched footage at the district attorney’s office. What he saw, and what was released, did not, in fact, show that the use of deadly force was unavoidable. He later learned that the department had not released all the footage. What else didn’t they know about their son’s death?

When body-worn cameras were introduced a decade ago, they seemed to hold the promise of a revolution. Once police officers knew they were being filmed, surely they would think twice about engaging in misconduct. And if they crossed the line, they would be held accountable: The public, no longer having to rely on official accounts, would know about wrongdoing. Police and civilian oversight agencies would be able to use footage to punish officers and improve training. In an outlay that would ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the technology represented the largest new investment in policing in a generation.

Yet without deeper changes, it was a fix bound to fall far short of those hopes. In every city, the police ostensibly report to mayors and other elected officials. But in practice, they have been given wide latitude to run their departments as they wish and to police — and protect — themselves. And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments, including New York’s, with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. In turn, departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. They have frequently failed to discipline or fire officers when body cameras document abuse and have kept footage from the agencies charged with investigating police misconduct.

Even when departments have stated policies of transparency, they don’t always follow them. Three years ago, after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers and amid a wave of protests against police violence, the New York Police Department said it would publish footage of so-called critical incidents “within 30 days.” There have been 380 such incidents since then. The department has released footage within a month just twice.

And the department often does not release video at all. There have been 28 shootings of civilians this year by New York officers (through the first week of December). The department has released footage in just seven of these cases (also through the first week of December) and has not done so in any of the last 16.

Asked about the department’s limited release of footage, a spokesperson pointed to a caveat, contained in an internal order, that footage can be withheld because of laws or department policy. “The NYPD remains wholly committed to its policy of releasing such recordings as quickly and responsibly as circumstances and the law dictate,” the spokesperson wrote. “Though transparency is of the utmost importance, so too is the Police Department’s commitment to preserving privacy rights.” The department did not say which policies require the withholding of footage and did not address other questions about its record on the cameras. (Mayor Eric Adams’ spokesperson did not make him available for comment.)

For a snapshot of disclosure practices across the country, we conducted a review of civilians killed by police officers in June 2022, roughly a decade after the first body cameras were rolled out. We counted 79 killings in which there was body-worn-camera footage. A year and a half later, the police have released footage in just 33 cases — or about 42%.

This article is the product of more than six months spent investigating how the police have undermined the promise of transparency and accountability that accompanied the body-camera movement. We interviewed dozens of department insiders, government lawyers, policing experts and advocates and reviewed hundreds of pages of internal reports, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, and dozens of hours of surveillance-camera and body-camera footage, including some that the New York Police Department fought against disclosing. The reporting reveals that without further intervention from city, state and federal officials and lawmakers, body cameras may do more to serve police interests than those of the public they are sworn to protect.

To Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who is now a professor at the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina, body cameras represent the latest chapter in America’s quest for a technological fix to the deeply rooted problem of unchecked state power. “Dash cams were supposed to solve racial profiling,” he says. “Tasers and pepper spray were supposed to solve undue force. We have this real, almost pathological draw to ‘silver bullet’ syndrome. And I say that as a supporter of body-worn cameras.” He later added, “We just said to police departments: ‘Here’s this tool. Figure out how you would like to use it.’ It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re going to use it in a way that most benefits them.”

Jeff Schlanger, a former New York deputy commissioner who had an oversight role during the implementation of body-worn cameras and left the department in 2021, believes that the police have often failed to use the cameras for accountability and that political leaders need to do more. “Mayors, City Council members, all locally elected officials,” he says, “should be losing sleep over the lack of meaningful independent oversight of the police.”

When full footage has been released, often by prosecutors or after public pressure, it often contradicts initial police accounts. In 2015, a white officer in Cincinnati killed a Black man during a traffic stop. The officer said his life was in danger. But his body-camera video showed that was a lie, and he was prosecuted for murder. (Charges were dropped after two mistrials.) And in Philadelphia this August, an officer shot and killed a man after, the police said, he lunged at officers with “a weapon.” In fact, footage released by the district attorney — who charged the officer with murder — shows that the man was sitting in his own car.

In New York, Miguel Richards’ parents weren’t the only ones who had doubts about the department’s claims that the shooting was unavoidable. The footage the department released stopped right when the officers fired at Richards. It didn’t include the minutes after the shooting, and it didn’t include footage from other police units that responded.

Ruth Lowenkron, a disability rights lawyer who specializes in mental health issues, wanted to see it all. Working for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a legal-advocacy nonprofit, she and her colleagues, along with activists, had begun pushing the city to find an alternative to using the police as first responders to people in crisis. On her second day on the job, a sergeant shot and killed a 66-year-old woman who had schizophrenia and was holding a baseball bat in her Bronx apartment. The department’s own investigators concluded that the sergeant escalated the situation and caused the shooting.

Now, watching the video the department released of Richards’ shooting, Lowenkron feared that the same thing happened to him. The department’s edited footage showed the officers making a few attempts to connect with Richards early in the encounter. “What’s your name, man?” one officer asked. But they were also barking increasingly terse commands. “You are seconds away from getting shot,” one officer said. “Do you want to die?” A few minutes later, as one of them warned that Richards might have a gun, the officers fired.

Lowenkron filed a records request, certain that there was more to the story. In releasing the partial footage, the police commissioner had vowed that the “NYPD is committed to being as transparent as possible.” But nearly three weeks after her request, Lowenkron received a different message from one of the department’s records officers: “I must deny access to these records.”

Body-worn cameras were adopted by police departments across the country in the wake of widespread Black Lives Matter protests in 2014, sparked when Michael Brown was killed by the police in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer who shot Brown was not equipped with a camera, and there was a dispute about what happened in the last moments of Brown’s life. Amid deep schisms over race, justice and policing, there was at least agreement that police interactions should be recorded. Brown’s mother pressed for the technology to become standard equipment. “Please,” she begged Missouri legislators, “let police-worn body cameras be a voice of truth and transparency.”

President Barack Obama put the cameras at the center of his plans to restore trust in policing. Cities quickly began spending millions on the devices, expenditures that continue today for storage and software. Los Angeles has spent nearly $60 million since getting cameras in 2016. In Philadelphia, where footage is rarely released, the cameras have cost taxpayers about $20 million. New York City has spent more than $50 million. But whether citizens benefit from the cameras they’re paying for is often up to the police, who have often been able to keep footage hidden from the public in even the most extreme cases. In 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama, an officer unleashed his police dog on a burglary suspect without warning, severing the Black man’s femoral artery and killing him. The police and the city have refused to release footage for five years, arguing that it could cause “civil unrest” and that the officers could face “embarrassment.” But a lawyer for the man’s family, which is suing the city, got a copy of the transcript in the discovery process and entered it into the court record. “Did you get a bite?” an officer asked the one who had the dog, according to the document. “Sure did, heh, heh,” the K-9 officer responded.

The secrecy undercuts the deterrent effect on officer behavior that many had presumed body cameras would produce. Three years before the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, body-camera video caught him kneeling on the necks of others. In 2017, Chauvin dragged a handcuffed Black woman out of her house, slammed her to the ground and then pressed his knee into her neck for nearly five minutes. Three months later, Chauvin hit a 14-year-old Black boy at least twice in the head with a heavy flashlight, choked him and pushed him against a wall. The boy cried out in pain and passed out. Chauvin pushed a knee into his neck for 15 minutes as the boy’s mother, reaching to help him, begged, “Please, please do not kill my son!”

The footage was left in the control of a department where impunity reigned. Supervisors had access to the recordings yet cleared Chauvin’s conduct in both cases. Minneapolis fought against releasing the videos, even after Chauvin pleaded guilty in December 2021 to federal civil rights violations in one of the cases. A judge finally ordered the city and the police to release the tapes this April, six years after Chauvin abused the boy. “Chauvin should have been fired in 2017,” says Robert Bennett, a lawyer who represented both of the victims. If the police had done that, “the city never burns. We’d have a downtown still. It’s a parade of horribles. All to keep something secret.”

A Department of Justice report from this summer found that the secrecy and impunity was all part of a larger pattern in the Minneapolis Police Department. Shootings, beatings and other abuse had routinely been captured on video. But the department didn’t make the footage public or mete out punishment.

There was a similar dynamic in Memphis, Tennessee, where officers in a street-crimes unit regularly abused residents. They wore body cameras but faced no consequences until the case of Tyre Nichols, who was beaten to death this January by officers in the unit, attracted national attention. The footage showed that some of the officers took their cameras off. Others knew they were being recorded and pummeled Nichols anyway. It was only after public outcry that the department took the rare step of releasing footage, which contradicted initial police accounts and led to state and federal charges for five officers.

Some politicians have often quietly enabled obstacles to this kind of accountability. When South Carolina became the first state in the nation to require the use of cameras in 2015, Nikki Haley, the governor at the time, made the announcement with the family of Walter Scott standing behind her. Scott was a Black man who, two months earlier, was stopped by the police for a broken taillight and was shot in the back and killed when he tried to run away. A witness filmed the shooting, and that video contradicted official police accounts.

The way to true reform is through using body cams as an early-warning system, as a way to correct small mistakes before they become big mistakes.

“This is going to make sure Walter Scott did not die without us realizing that we have a problem,” Haley said as she signed the legislation. What the governor didn’t say was that the same law stipulated that footage from cameras is “not a public record subject to disclosure,” thus relieving police departments from any obligation to release it. And indeed, little footage has ever become public in South Carolina.

In 2021, York County sheriff’s deputies responding to a call for a wellness check found a young man sitting in his pickup truck with his mother standing next to him. They fired at him nearly 50 times. The sheriff, who refused to release body-camera footage, said the man pointed a shotgun at deputies. When the man, who survived, obtained the footage after suing, it showed no such thing. So far this year, the police in South Carolina have killed at least 19 people. The police have released footage in only three of those cases. When we asked one department, the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, why it had not, a spokesperson pointed to the law, writing, “We never release that footage.”

The pattern has become so common across the country — public talk of transparency followed by a deliberate undermining of the stated goal — that the policing-oversight expert Hans Menos, who led Philadelphia’s civilian police-oversight board until 2020, coined a term for it: the “body-cam head fake.” And there is no place that illustrates this as well as New York City, the home of the world’s largest municipal police force, some 36,000 officers strong.

New York’s adoption of body-worn cameras started with a moment of unintentional inspiration. In 2013, Judge Shira Scheindlin was hearing testimony in a federal lawsuit in which multiple advocacy groups claimed that the Police Department’s aggressive “stop and frisk” policy was racially biased and unconstitutional. One day during the trial, an expert witness for the city mentioned a new tool for accountability — body-worn cameras — in passing.

“My head snapped when I heard the words,” Scheindlin recalled this year. “I thought, ‘That could be a useful remedy!’”

Two months later, Scheindlin issued a historic ruling that New York’s stop-and-frisk practices were unconstitutional. She ordered the Police Department to begin piloting body-worn cameras, writing that they were “uniquely suited to addressing the constitutional harms at issue in this case.” Scheindlin laid out three ways the cameras would help: “First, they will provide a contemporaneous, objective record of stops and frisks.” She continued, “Second, the knowledge that an exchange is being recorded will encourage lawful and respectful interactions on the part of both parties. Third, the recordings will diminish the sense on the part of those who file complaints that it is their word against the police.”

But in a preview of obstacles that would follow, the department was slow to roll out the devices, even as they were becoming common in other cities. More than two years after Scheindlin’s ruling, the department hired researchers at New York University to conduct a survey about what residents wanted from a body-camera project. The community’s answers were overwhelming and clear: transparency and disclosure.

Officers, however, wanted the opposite. They were concerned that the recordings would “show a different side of the story than what would otherwise be told,” according to a separate NYU survey. To Scheindlin and the plaintiffs in the stop-and-frisk case, that was exactly the point.

When the department released its policy in April 2017, it was clear whose opinions held more sway. No video would automatically become public. Anyone that requested it would have to go through an opaque, often slow-moving Freedom of Information process — in which the department itself would be the arbiter of what would be released (though the courts could review that decision).

The policy blunted the technology’s potential for accountability in other ways. Officers could decide when to start filming, instead of at the beginning of all interactions as the public wanted. And while the public had little access to footage, the police had privileged access: Officers who were the subjects of complaints would be allowed to watch the footage before having to give any statements — something that could allow them to tailor their accounts to the video.

The policy was “so flawed that the pilot program may do little to protect New Yorkers’ civil rights,” Ian Head and Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote in a guest essay in The New York Times. “Instead, it might shield police officers from accountability when they engage in misconduct.”

Still, on April 27, 2017, Commissioner James O’Neill and Mayor Bill de Blasio held a news conference at a precinct in Washington Heights to celebrate the rollout of body-worn cameras. Stepping up to the lectern, O’Neill said he was initially skeptical of the cameras but had become a believer. “I’m totally convinced now that this is the way forward,” he said. “These cameras have a great potential to de-escalate.”

Then the mayor went to the lectern. Officers had long felt that de Blasio, a self-proclaimed progressive, was too supportive of Black Lives Matter protests and not sufficiently supportive of the police. That sentiment turned into rage when a man espousing hatred of the police murdered two officers in late 2014. Hundreds of police officers turned their backs on the mayor at the funerals. Ever since, de Blasio had been working to repair the relationship.

“This is an historic day for New York City,” de Blasio said, with O’Neill by his side. “This is the first day of the era of body-worn cameras, and that means we are going on a pathway of transparency and accountability that will benefit everyone.”

Five months later, officers killed Miguel Richards, making his case the first in which the potential of body-camera video would be tested. But Ruth Lowenkron, the public-interest attorney who filed a request for the footage, was getting little from the Police Department. After it rejected her initial request, she appealed the decision. The department sent her some redacted footage but again rejected her request for all of it.

Disclosing the full footage would be an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the department wrote. Whose privacy — the dead man’s or the officers’ — was not explained. Releasing the full footage, the department insisted, could “endanger the life or safety of any person.”

The letter came from the department’s legal unit, led by its deputy commissioner, Larry Byrne, who was known for his fierce advocacy for the department. From the outset of the body-worn-camera program, Byrne made it clear that he was resistant to widespread release of footage. “They are not public records in the sense that, because the officer turns the camera on, they are now in the public domain,” Byrne told NY1 in 2015. In fact, he insisted, “most of this footage” would never be made public.

Lowenkron kept requesting the Richards footage and kept getting rejected or sent redacted video. In July 2018, she and her colleagues decided to file a lawsuit in state court demanding the full footage. They even got a former Police Department lawyer, Stuart Parker, to help litigate the suit pro bono. The department’s various explanations for its denials “pissed me off,” Parker recalls. He retired from the department as an assistant commissioner in 2016, the year before cameras were widely rolled out. But he had been excited by their potential and was frustrated by the department’s kneejerk secrecy. “There’s a good side to the department,” he says, “but there’s always been a self-serving dark side to it too.”

In response to the suit, the department argued in legal filings that it had blurred the footage “in order to protect the privacy of both Richards and his family.” But Lowenkron and her team had obtained affidavits from Richards’ parents saying that the department never asked them whether they wanted the footage released or redacted. And what the Richardses wanted, they said, was for the full footage to be released to the public.

Public disclosure of footage isn’t the only path to hold officers in New York accountable for misconduct. For 70 years, the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board had been vested with the responsibility to investigate New Yorkers’ allegations against the police. From the start, though, its powers were weak. The agency was actually part of the Police Department, and its board consisted of three deputy police commissioners. The department fought efforts over the years to make the agency independent. In the face of a plan in the mid-1960s to include civilians on the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the head of the largest police union, then called the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said, “I’m sick and tired of giving in to minority groups with their whims and their gripes and shouting.”

The agency eventually became independent in 1993 after stiff opposition months before from off-duty officers. Thousands of them — along with Rudy Giuliani, then a mayoral aspirant after losing the previous election — staged a huge protest outside City Hall, with many of them going on to block the Brooklyn Bridge. After the changes, the review board still relied on an often noncooperative Police Department for records, and its investigations frequently petered out amid competing accounts. And like many civilian oversight boards across the country, in the rare cases when it substantiated misconduct, it could only recommend discipline to the police commissioner, who could and often did ignore it.

Many civilians, whom the board relied on to initiate complaints, had long grown skeptical of the agency’s ability to ensure that officer misconduct had consequences. But the advent of body-camera video promised to fundamentally change how the agency worked. For the first time, staff members would have an objective record of the incidents they investigated. That was Nicole Napolitano’s hope when she joined the review board as its new director of policy and advocacy in September 2017 — the same year body cameras were rolled out in New York and one week after officers killed Richards. “We talked about it in detail” at the agency, she says of the initial footage of the Richards shooting. “We thought, ‘Look at what body-worn cameras can show us.’”

Napolitano, who is married to a retired detective, knew it would be a challenge. As a senior policy manager in the Office of the Inspector General for the New York Police Department, she had seen how the department could simply ignore the recommendations in her reports. Napolitano hoped she would have more direct impact in her new, more senior position at the review board. But what she hadn’t appreciated was how much the police controlled the literal tools of their own oversight.

As with most civilian boards across the country, the agency did not have its own access to footage. Like the public, it, too, had to rely on the cooperation of the department. To try to obtain footage, the board had to navigate a baroque multistep process. Written requests were submitted to a department “liaison” unit, which in turn forwarded them to the legal unit for review. Then the department had to locate the footage, which was a significant undertaking because it wasn’t cataloging the footage in any systematic way. Unlike in many other cities, the department’s cameras had no GPS location data. If a civilian making a complaint didn’t know an officer’s name or badge number, investigators and even the department could have a hard time finding footage.

Perhaps most problematic for Napolitano, though, was the fact that the review board’s investigators had to agree to a strict set of conditions before watching videos of incidents. If they spotted other, unrelated misconduct, they were not allowed to investigate it. “If you were setting up a system to be shitty,” one agency insider says, “this is the system you’d create.”

At times, the department’s animosity toward the board was palpable. Napolitano remembers one meeting in 2017 between board officials and Kerry Sweet, then a top official at the department’s legal bureau who helped oversee the body-camera rollout. As other police brass shuffled in, Sweet said they had missed a chance to “bomb the room” when only board officials were there, which would have “solved everything.” (Sweet, who has since retired, says he doesn’t recall saying that, but added, “On reflection, it should have been an airstrike.”)

Napolitano and her colleagues noticed an even more troubling trend: The department would often tell the review board that the footage it requested didn’t exist — only for the civilian agency to later discover that wasn’t true. According to an analysis the agency put out in early 2020, this happened in nearly 1 of every 5 cases.

Napolitano thought there was a straightforward solution to the department’s stonewalling: The review board should be able to directly log in to the department’s system where footage is stored. That’s how it worked with civilian oversight boards in a few other major American cities, including Chicago, which revamped civilian oversight after Laquan McDonald was killed in 2014 and the city tried to withhold footage that contradicted officers’ accounts. Chicago’s oversight board now not only has direct access to videos but also regularly releases footage publicly, and its investigators have used it to successfully push for officers to be fired for misconduct. Napolitano didn’t see a reason for it to be otherwise in New York. So in her first semiannual report, at the end of 2017, she noted the challenges of getting footage — and called on the city to give the review board direct access. Both the department and City Hall, Napolitano says, “freaked” out.

“It was a rough time for de Blasio when it came to public safety,” Napolitano added, referring to the mayor’s tenuous relationship with the police. “In a dispute between CCRB and NYPD, City Hall always chose the NYPD. Always.”

“I don’t agree,” de Blasio says. “The tension between the CCRB and the NYPD is natural and built-in. I decided each issue on the merits and according to my values.” He went on, “The blunter truth is when a progressive challenges the police culture and the police unions and the status quo of American policing, the left is not going to have their back. You’re not getting that thank-you card. And the right will viciously attack.”

While the department fought Lowenkron and Napolitano on the release of body-camera footage, there was one group that had access to all of it and could use it to check for misconduct: the department’s own investigators. After every police shooting, detectives with the Force Investigation Division review the incident to see whether officers complied with department policy. The Richards case was the first time body-worn-camera footage could let them see what actually happened in a killing by officers. As investigators dug through the video and interviewed officers in the weeks and months after the shooting, they saw a far more complicated picture than the one the police commissioner painted.

As the tape began, one officer, Mark Fleming, beamed his flashlight into the far side of Richards’ nearly bare, unlit bedroom. Richards was standing perfectly still in the dark, seemingly catatonic, wearing a blue polo shirt and sunglasses and holding a knife in his left hand.

Department guidelines for dealing with people in crisis who do not pose an immediate threat say officers should try to “isolate and contain” the person. “The primary duty of all members of the service is to preserve human life,” department policy states. Officers are also instructed to wait for a supervisor’s permission before trying to subdue someone in crisis.

At first, it appeared that the officers who encountered Richards were following their training. “Look, we could shut the door,” Officer Redmond Murphy suggested to his partner. But Fleming, who had served more years in the department, quickly rejected the idea. He kept telling Richards to drop the knife, and he radioed for an officer with a Taser.

Two officers from the specially trained Emergency Services Unit, which deals with people experiencing mental health crises, arrived. Then Murphy said he thought he saw something, perhaps a gun, in Richards’ right hand, which was obscured behind a backpack on the bed. “Hold up,” one of the ESU officers told Fleming and Murphy before heading back downstairs to grab protective gear. “I don’t know if it’s a toy or a gun,” Murphy quickly added.

As the specialists went downstairs, the officer with the Taser, Jesus Ramos, went upstairs and joined Fleming and Murphy outside Richards’ room. “Do you want to take him down now?” Ramos asked them. “Yeah,” they both answered.

At nearly the same moment, a radio command came from headquarters, emphasizing department guidelines. “Isolate and contain,” the dispatcher told the officers. “Use nonlethal force whenever possible.” As Ramos lifted his Taser and stepped into the room, Fleming — who later said Richards was raising his arm — fired his gun. Murphy fired, too. It’s impossible to see that moment in the grainy, shaky footage. The clearest angle would most likely have been Fleming’s camera, but it was covered by his arm as he held his flashlight.

The shooting of Miguel Richards was the first to be recorded by NYPD body cameras. Police Commissioner James O’Neill wrote in an internal message that releasing footage would show officers’ “restraint in the use of force.” Below are clips from the videos the police initially released. They contain graphic content.

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Fleming and Murphy fired 16 times, hitting Richards seven times, including twice in the chest, rupturing his aorta. As gunshots rang out, the supervisor they were supposed to wait for arrived. (None of the officers responded to requests for comment.)

The internal investigators asked the officers to explain. “We kind of handle everything on our own,” Murphy offered. An internal investigator pressed Fleming about what had “situationally changed” and prompted the decision to “take him at that point.” Fleming said everything changed once his partner said Richards might have a gun. “I perceived that his intentions were lethal,” Fleming said. But his answers suggested that he hadn’t fully grasped Richards’ mental state. “Why would any sane person hide a fake gun?” Fleming asked.

When the investigators asked why the two officers did not broadcast that Richards was an “EDP” — or an emotionally disturbed person — with a knife, as protocol dictates, Murphy told them he and Fleming had handled people in crisis before. Asked why they made the decision to use force, Murphy simply said, “We wanted to, like, end it.”

While the Force Investigation Division ultimately concluded that the officers had been “justified” in shooting — because they were facing an “individual armed with a knife and an imitation firearm” — the investigators also said that Fleming and Murphy should still be punished. Richards, their September 2018 internal report noted, “was contained and posed no immediate threat of danger.” And the officers violated policy by not asking permission from their supervisor before they acted. The department’s full investigative record was first reported by the independent journalist Michael Hayes in his 2023 book, “The Secret Files.” The review recommended that the officers face disciplinary charges that could ultimately result in their firing.

But in New York, as in almost all cities in the United States, the police commissioner has absolute power over punishment. In March 2019, O’Neill, who had extolled the promise of body cameras just two years earlier, overruled his own investigators. He decided that neither Fleming nor Murphy would be punished for killing Richards. Instead, the commissioner docked them three vacation days for something else they did: stopping for pizza before responding to the call for the wellness check. (O’Neill did not respond to questions or requests for comment.)

It would be another three months before anyone outside the department would see the full footage. That June, a New York judge ruled that the “public is vested with an inherent right to know” and ordered the department to turn over the recordings to Lowenkron’s organization.

She received a package with a DVD a month later from the department. Bracing herself, she sat down to view it on her computer. The footage that the department publicly released cut off when the officers fired. Lowenkron now saw the aftermath: Richards collapsed to the floor, crumpled and bleeding in the same spot where he had been standing rigidly seconds before.

“He’s still alive,” Fleming said.

“Holy shit,” Murphy replied. “Just fucking cuff him.”

The officers then flipped over Richards, severely injured, so roughly that his head could be heard bouncing off the floor.

They searched around the room for the firearm they thought Richards had. Eventually, Fleming found a palm-size, silver-colored plastic toy gun. “It’s some fucking little thing,” he said. (The video does not show Richards holding the toy gun.) More than three minutes passed before anyone administered any type of aid to the dying man. It was an Emergency Services Unit specialist who retrieved medical equipment after hearing the shots.

Outside the apartment building, more video recorded other officers milling about. One told a colleague, “They were just hurling fucking shots.”

The NYPD initially withheld the footage of the aftermath of the Richards shooting. Below are clips from the videos that a state judge later ordered released. They contain graphic content.

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Watch video ➜

Lowenkron was shocked. Officers had shot a young man and roughly handled him as he bled to death. “The utter disrespect,” Lowenkron says. “It was a horror movie.”

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest would go on to share the footage with journalists. It would also use the footage in a webinar for mental health advocates in November 2020. “The point,” Lowenkron told me, “was to get more people engaged on this issue: transforming New York and this country’s response to people in crisis.”

But by then, for another man in distress, it was too late.

In April 2019, one month after O’Neill decided against punishing the officers for the Richards shooting, another officer shot and killed a man named Kawaski Trawick.

The circumstances were remarkably similar to those in the Richards case. Trawick was also a young Black man who lived in the Bronx and was experiencing a mental health crisis in his own apartment. He was also holding a knife when the police arrived. And he was also shot soon afterward. At the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Napolitano was immediately struck by the parallels: “I remember reading the headline on Trawick and thinking, ‘Didn’t I read this already?’”

This time, though, the victim’s family filed a complaint with the review board, providing an opening for civilian investigators to use body-worn-camera footage to make a case that the department and others couldn’t ignore.

But despite repeated requests over many months, the department wouldn’t share the footage — or any other records — with the review board, leaving the oversight agency effectively unable to begin its own investigation of the case. The refusal was in line with the department’s longstanding practice to withhold footage from the board until the department’s internal investigation was over, a process that often takes more than a year. Such delays can effectively torpedo the review board’s investigations: Under New York civil-service law, any disciplinary cases against police officers must be brought within 18 months of the incident.

In the Trawick case, the review board obtained the full body-camera video in January 2021 — more than a year and a half after the killing — and only after a state judge ordered the department to hand it over to Lowenkron’s organization, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which had sued for it. The judge determined that the department had been withholding the footage “in bad faith.”

What it showed was even more damning than what was captured in the Richards shooting. As the police entered his apartment, Trawick demanded to know, “Why are you in my home?” One officer, Herbert Davis, who was Black and more experienced, then tried to stop his white junior counterpart, Brendan Thompson, from using force. “We ain’t gonna tase him,” Davis said in the video.

Thompson didn’t listen. Instead, he fired his Taser at Trawick, sending roughly 50,000 volts pulsing through him. As Trawick started rushing toward the officers, Thompson lifted his gun and prepared to fire. “No, no — don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Davis said, pushing his partner’s arm down. But Thompson fired four shots, hitting Trawick twice and killing him almost instantly, 112 seconds after they arrived at the apartment. (Davis and Thompson did not reply to requests for comment.)

There was also troubling footage of the aftermath of the shooting. Officers swarmed outside Trawick’s apartment. “Who’s injured?” a sergeant asked. Two officers replied in near unison: “Nobody. Just a perp.”

With all that in hand, the review board completed its investigation in June 2021. The agency, through one of the few powers it had gained over the years, can file and prosecute disciplinary cases against officers — which triggers a Police Department trial, after which a departmental judge sends a provisional decision to the police commissioner, who makes the final call.

This September, the police judge overseeing the Trawick case recommended that there should be no discipline. Her reason had nothing to do with the shooting itself; in fact, the judge wrote that she had “serious doubts” about the decisions of the officer who killed Trawick. But the review board, she said, had failed to file charges within the 18-month statute of limitations, as outlined under state law. In the end, the department’s refusal to give the footage to the review board had effectively run out the clock on any chance the officers would be punished.

“That should not be tolerated,” says Jeff Schlanger, the former deputy commissioner. “Both CCRB and NYPD are city agencies. This is something the mayor needs to resolve.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, huge demonstrations for racial justice and against police brutality rolled across the country and the world. It was a global reckoning brought on by footage — the video, recorded by a teenager on her smartphone for more than eight minutes, showing Derek Chauvin ending Floyd’s life.

Napolitano and her team at the review board had collected data showing how footage could make a difference in New York too. Access to body-camera footage roughly doubled the likelihood that agency investigators would be able to decide a case on its merits rather than dismiss it as inconclusive. But the backlog was growing. That May, the board filed 212 requests with the Police Department for body-worn-camera footage — and the department sent only 33 responses. (While the pandemic slowed the work of all city agencies, the backlog predated it.)

“The withholding of footage stops investigations and prevents the CCRB from providing adequate and meaningful oversight of the NYPD,” an internal agency memo warned. “The situation for New York City oversight of the police has steadily grown worse during the duration of a BWC program intended primarily to aid oversight.”

We just said to police departments: ‘Here’s this tool. Figure out how you would like to use it’ It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re going to use it in a way that most benefits them.

Napolitano campaigned internally for a law that would take away the department’s absolute control over footage and give the review board its own access. That November, she was let go, along with three other staff members who had sent pointed emails and memos about the department’s withholding of footage. The four filed a lawsuit claiming that their firing violated their First Amendment rights and received an undisclosed settlement. A review-board spokesperson wrote in an email that the agency has “publicly and repeatedly called on legislators to support the fight for direct access. No employee has ever been fired for supporting direct access to BWC footage.”

This spring, the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, and the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, sponsored a bill that would give the review board direct access to footage so that it wouldn’t be beholden to the department for cooperation during investigations. “There are difficult split-second decisions that have to happen” in policing, Williams told me. “But if we’re not able to look at the same thing, if we have to take the word of the NYPD, that doesn’t make this conversation any easier.”

The Police Department has opposed the bill. A department official insisted at a City Council hearing in March that the department “does not fear transparency.” But the official argued that it would be an “insurmountable obstacle” to give the review board direct access while following state confidentiality laws. The bill has been stalled for months.

The city, meanwhile, paid out at least $121 million in settlements last year for lawsuits alleging misconduct by police officers — the highest total in five years.

With footage remaining in the control of the Police Department, body-worn cameras have made little difference to the public. This year, a federal court monitor wrote a scathing report about persistent problems with stop-and-frisk, the unconstitutional policing tactic that prompted Scheindlin to order the department to adopt body cameras a decade ago. The monitor found that contrary to Scheindlin’s expectations, police supervisors weren’t using footage to flag misconduct. In a sample of cases the monitor looked at, supervisors reviewing footage of stop-and-frisk encounters concluded that 100% of the cases they looked at were proper stops. The court monitor reviewed the same footage and found that 37% of the stops were unconstitutional.

“It was an experiment,” Scheindlin says, one that didn’t anticipate issues like control over footage. Scheindlin, who stepped down from the bench in 2016, says she now believes that the Police Department should no longer be the sole custodian of its own video. “That troubles me,” she says. “It should always be somebody independent.”

In interviews with a half-dozen former commanders and high-level officials, most of whom were involved in the body-camera program itself, they said that despite its public pronouncements, the department hasn’t committed to using footage for accountability. “Body cams are essential, if done right,” says a high-ranking commander who just retired and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in law enforcement. “They are a game changer.” He added, “If there’s a problem, you flag — and potentially there’s discipline. But that’s not happening in most cases.” Instead, he says, body cameras have become “an exercise in just work they have to do. It’s a culture thing.”

Rudy Hall has a particularly useful vantage point. He was part of the team that rolled out the body cameras, visiting police departments around the country to see how they were using the technology, and has gone on to work for the federal monitor overseeing the department’s compliance with Scheindlin’s now-decade-old order on stop-and-frisk. “I watch a lot of body-cam videos,” Hall told me. “I have absolutely seen supervisors approve problematic conduct.”

“Body-worn cameras have not been exploited the way they should be,” says Jeff Schlanger, the former deputy commissioner. “The way to true reform is through using body cams as an early-warning system, as a way to correct small mistakes before they become big mistakes. But there weren’t a lot of discussions about it. The NYPD needs to do a lot better.”

One of the most comprehensive studies of the use of body cameras, a 2019 meta-analysis led by researchers at George Mason University, recommended that police departments consider using footage the way sports teams use game tape, to regularly review and improve performance. That’s essentially what the New Orleans Police Department did after the U.S. Department of Justice put it under federal oversight about a decade ago in response to the police killings of several Black men and persistent police violence. Body cameras were a “critical engine for us to continuously evaluate performance,” says Danny Murphy, who ran a unit at the department overseeing compliance with the federal mandate.

Four auditors were hired to join the police force and comb through footage. They looked to make sure that officers were using their cameras and that supervisors were flagging any problematic behavior. “If officers know they’re being viewed, if supervisors know they’re being reviewed, it creates a pressure for accountability,” says Murphy, who left the department four years ago. A 2020 report from the city’s civilian oversight agency — which has direct access to footage — noted a reduction in both the use of force and citizen complaints, which the department attributed to “the use of the body-worn cameras and the increased scrutiny and oversight these cameras provide leadership.” The police in New Orleans also regularly and quickly release video from shootings and other major incidents. But in the end, it’s the police chief who has the final say on discipline.

During his tenure at the New York Police Department, Schlanger had, in fact, started a kind of internal oversight system similar to the one in New Orleans. Schlanger and other senior officials would meet with each of the department’s 77 precincts every six months and look at body-camera footage to identify problematic trends and officers. “It was CompStat for constitutional policing,” Schlanger says, referring to the department’s data-heavy program for tracking crime. “If we saw a precinct doing poorly, we’d work to help them. It made a difference.”

The department quietly ended the review program last year.

A civil suit on behalf of Miguel Richards’ estate was filed against the city in 2018. New York is seeking the dismissal of the case. A judge has been considering the request for two and a half years. “I want answers,” his mother told me, “and haven’t been able to get them.”

The three officers involved in the Richards shooting were honored in 2018 by the largest New York police union, the Police Benevolent Association, which gave them its Finest of the Finest award for “extremely brave and tactically sound action” in the Richards shooting, noting that “the officers had no choice but to open fire.”

The officers were later deposed in the lawsuit. One of them, Mark Fleming, said in his testimony in September 2020 that he had learned a lesson: that the Emergency Services Unit — whose help he told department investigators he didn’t need — is in fact better equipped and trained to deal with situations that involve people having a mental health crisis.

It’s not clear what, if any, lessons the department itself has taken in. Since Richards’ death in 2017, when cameras were widely rolled out, officers have killed at least 11 people in crisis. There is no evidence that officers have been punished in any of the cases.

On a Sunday morning in the Bronx this spring, there was another shooting. Santo de la Cruz called a city emergency line. His son, 42-year-old Raul de la Cruz, was in the middle of a schizophrenic episode and had posted a disturbing video on Facebook that morning. Wearing camouflage clothing and a hat with a patch of an Israeli flag, Raul complained about racist police officers. His father called 311, avoiding 911 because he was afraid of what would happen if the police showed up. “I thought they would send someone capable of dealing with a situation like that,” he says in Spanish. “Because I was calling for a sick person, not to send the police to shoot him up.” But it was the police who arrived, with body cameras rolling. And Raul was holding a knife.

The officers shot him 28 seconds after arriving. He was hospitalized for more than a month before being released, having lost a kidney and part of his liver. A department commander cited the body-camera footage when he gave a brief news conference the day of the shooting to describe what happened. “This situation was fast, volatile and dangerous,” he said. The officers’ “quick response saved at least one civilian and protected themselves.”

But the department has not released the footage or commented in the eight months since.

Lowenkron’s colleagues at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest have once again requested the video, so far to no avail. The department has also withheld the footage from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, per the practice of sharing records with the agency only after its own investigation is done.

On Dec. 5, weeks after we sent questions to the department about that practice, the department signed a memorandum of understanding with the board to send footage to it within 90 days of a request.

But for now, nobody outside the department knows exactly what happened in the de la Cruz shooting, including the family. They have not heard anything from the department. They want to see the footage.

Do you have a tip about policing or another subject? Eric Umansky can be reached by email at eric.umansky@propublica.org and on Signal and WhatsApp at 917-687-8406.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Eric Umansky, with additional reporting by Umar Farooq.

"Israel's repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza's healthcare infrastructure," said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch. "The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they're unable to receive proper medical care."

Over the past week, Israeli forces have surrounded and intensified their bombardment of several hospitals in northern Gaza including al-Shifa, the enclave's largest medical facility. Israel has also bombed ambulances and people desperately attempting to flee hospitals as they've come under attack.

"On November 3, the Israeli military struck a marked ambulance just outside of Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital," HRW said. "Video footage and photographs taken shortly after the strike and verified by Human Rights Watch show a woman on a stretcher in the ambulance and at least 21 dead or injured people in the area surrounding the ambulance, including at least 5 children."

"An IDF spokesperson said in a televised interview that day: 'Our forces saw terrorists using ambulances as a vehicle to move around. They perceived a threat and accordingly we struck that ambulance,'" the group added. "Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that the ambulance was being used for military purposes."

HRW similarly questioned Israeli assertions that Hamas is using Gaza's hospitals, including al-Shifa, for military operations.

Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law, but medical facilities can lose their protected status if they're used to commit an "act harmful to the enemy," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

HRW argued that Tuesday that "no evidence put forward" by the Israeli government thus far "would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law."

"When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, 'Our strikes are based on intelligence,'" HRW said. "Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate."

The group said Israel "should end attacks on hospitals" and urged the United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the International Criminal Court to investigate.

"Israel's broad-based attack on Gaza's healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients," said Ahmed. "These actions need to be investigated as war crimes."

The new analysis came amid horrific reports of the impact that Israel's assault is having on healthcare workers, patients, and displaced people seeking refuge from near-constant airstrikes.

Reutersreported that people trapped inside al-Shifa Hospital "plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound" on Tuesday "because the situation has become untenable." The World Health Organization said over the weekend that the facility is "not functioning as a hospital anymore" due to power outages and a lack of supplies, which have caused the deaths of a number of patients—including premature babies.

Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon at al-Shifa, told Reuters that "the bodies were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection."

"Unfortunately there is no approval from the Israelis to even bury the bodies within the hospital area," he said. "Today ... civilians started digging within the hospital to try and bury the bodies on their own responsibility without any arrangements by the Israeli side. Burying 120 bodies needs a lot of equipment, it can't be by hand efforts and by single-person efforts. It will take hours and hours to be able to bury all these bodies."

Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said that on Tuesday morning, "bullets were fired into one of three MSF premises located near al-Shifa hospital and sheltering MSF staff and their families—over 100 people, including 65 children, who ran out of food last night."

"Thousands of civilians, medical staff, and patients are currently trapped in hospitals and other locations under fire in Gaza City; they must be protected and afforded safe passage if they wish to leave," the group added. "Above that, there must be a total and immediate cease-fire."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The body of the man in his 30s was discovered Thursday near Ma Taunt Ta village after being tortured by the junta group Tiger Ogre, local residents told Radio Free Asia.  

“Go ahead, it won’t be so long until you can clearly see the ashes,” was written on a tarp near the corpse and signed by Tiger Ogre, according to a group helping war victims in the area.

“He was tortured and killed after he was captured while fleeing the fighting. He was found when the locals returned to the village after the column left,” said a member of the assistance group, asking to be kept anonymous for fear of reprisals. “His name and where he is from are still not known. The body was already mutilated when locals found it near Ma Taunt Ta village.”

The convoy, consisting of more than 300 soldiers and 17 military trucks, continues to arbitrarily open fire along their route. Locals report they also continue to raid villages, arrest members of local People’s Defense Forces, and take hostages.

The morning of Oct. 4, Tiger Ogre raided five villages between Salingyi and Yinmarbin townships in southern Sagaing region. The targeted villages included Baik Tha Yet, Ma Taunt Ta and Shwe Tha Min. 

After firing at villages from a helicopter for an hour, the junta troops left for Pale township on the morning of October 5. As the troops continue their raids across the region, more than 15,000 residents in Salingyi, Yinmarbin, and Pale townships have fled, aid workers and locals said. 

The troops have also killed and captured locals, as well as taken rations of rice, oil, and peas whenever they entered the villages, residents said. The number of casualties has not been confirmed by RFA. 

On Thursday morning, 10 locals were also arrested on suspicion of planting landmines near the entrance of Let Taung Gyi village in Pale township. A witness said there were about 20 military trucks reinforcing the column when the junta troops raided the villages in Pale township.

“Now the column has arrived in Kokko Kone village in Pale township,” said a witness asking to remain anonymous. “The 10 civilians who were arrested from Let Taung Gyi village were released in the night. They were released around 7pm when we received the information.”

He added that villages are still being targeted because of landmines planted by local resistance groups along the junta’s route. 

Tiger Ogre column is responsible for violent decapitations, torture and robberies in other townships in southern Sagaing earlier this year.

Calls by RFA to Sagaing’s junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw went unanswered.

More than 813,000 people have fled their homes in Sagaing due to fighting according to a United Nations report on Oct. 2.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

They said 30-year-old Ko Saw was a gold miner from Yae Le village.

Junta troops arrested him on Monday, after they arrived in the village in a fleet of warships.

One local said the man had a damaged leg and arm, injured in the gold mine, and bad eyesight.

He said the man was unable to run away and thought the troops wouldn’t arrest him because he was disabled. 

“When the soldiers found him, they searched his home and found the People's Defense Force uniform of his brother-in-law in a box. He didn’t even know he had that suit,” said the local, who didn’t want to be named for safety reasons.

“The troops immediately arrested him and stabbed him. His legs were beaten and crushed. Then he was burnt to death.”

Another resident said troops tied the man’s hands behind his back and beat him before taking him away.

The six warships that arrived Monday were attacked by a local People’s Defense Force the previous day, residents said.

On Sunday, the vessels moored at Toke Gyi and around 200 soldiers raided the village, shooting dead seven residents and burning down 45 homes.

The next day, troops torched around 10 rafts and several boats at Yae Le, used to prospect for gold in the river.

They accused locals of harboring People’s Defense Forces and ethnic Kachin Independence Army fighters.

More than 1,000 residents of Yae Le fled their homes ahead of the raid.

When RFA called the junta spokesperson for Kachin State, Win Ye Tun, seeking comment on the killings, he said security issues were not related to him.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Fiji’s Parliament has passed a motion for the coalition government to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission “to facilitate open and free engagement in truth telling” to resolve racial differences and concerns in the country.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka had announced in December 2022 after forming a coalition that the setting up of such a body “to heal the pains and scars left by the events of the 1987, 2000 and 2006 coups” was one of its top priorities.

On Wednesday, 28 MPs voted for the motion, 23 voted against while four did not vote.

• READ MORE: Threat of another coup still ‘one of biggest dangers’ for Fiji, says Ratuva
• Other Fiji coup culture reports

While tabling the motion in the Parliament, Fiji’s Assistant Minister for Women Sashi Kiran said people were still hurting from “political upheavals” and “many unresolved issues” from the past.

Kiran said the commission would offer “closure and healing” to individuals who were still affected by Fiji’s turbulent history.

In May, the Methodist Church of Fiji initiated a national prayer and reconciliation programme during the Girmit Day celebrations. Kiran said the participation of leaders and various faith groups at the event signalled that Fijians were ready for the healing process.

“Some may ask whether this is the time for it. Some may say we should focus on cost of living and on better public services and I understand [that],” she said.

‘Many unresolved issues’
“I know from many long years of personal engagement with our people a lot of people are hurting. There are many unresolved issues that need closure.

“Can we be a prosperous society if we live in fear and insecurity, if we do not trust our neighbours and carry wounded hearts.”

She said Fiji had been plagued by political turmoil for more than three decades with four coups.

“We are not looking deep inside ourselves to learn the lessons of the past. It is easier to look away from the painful events and perhaps pretend that they did not happen.

“But constant echoes of divide, narratives of the past remind us that there are deep rooted wounds in may hearts unable to heal.”

An emotional Rabuka said the commission would “remove the division between the two main communities that have co-existed since well before independence” in 1970.

He said the opposition did not have any reason to oppose the motion.

‘I am opening it up’
“I have, but I am opening it up. I would probably want to hide a long of things I know [but] none of you [MPs] has anything to hide so we should cooperate and work for this,” Rabuka said.

However, opposition MPs did not back the motion, saying a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would do more harm than good.

Tackle ‘deep-rooted problems’ – Naupoto
FijiFirst MP and former military commander Viliame Naupoto, in a teary intervention, said “the problem we have is the divide in our society”.

“The divide along racial lines, now there’s even a bigger divide along political lines. I think the big task we have is try and narrow the divide as much as we can and keep working on it,” Naupoto said.

“When we have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission you are opening wounds of the past. If it needs to be opened, it needs to be treated so that it can heal.”

Naupoto cautioned that political leaders needed to ensure they were not creating new wounds by opening wounds of the past.

“Equality that we strive for can be dealt with policies that unite us,” he said.

“When we see that most of the things that were put in place by the government of the past it means also that the 200,000 voters that voted for us are feeling bad . . . and so our divide widens now.

“I plead that if you want and work on that utopian dream of this country that is prosperous and peaceful and stable, we have to be tough and face the deep-rooted problems that we have.”

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

As the Papua New Guinea government continues its globe trotting, the Nonga Base hospital in Rabaul, East New Britain province, is facing a crisis with no morgue cooling chamber for the last five years.

The dead are piled on top of each other and are put into chest freezers that cannot hold more than four bodies at any given time.

The hospital’s morgue is currently the only mortuary in the province that caters for more than 400,000 people.

• READ MORE: Other PNG public health reports

Hospital manager Dr Osiat Baining confirmed the hospital’s dilemma, saying that the faulty cooling chamber forced the hospital into purchasing nine chest freezers to cater for the dead.

Dead bodies are put in body bags and piled on top of each other and stored in large chest freezers inside the morgue.

The PNG Post-Courier was informed that Health Secretary Dr Osborne Liko is in the process of getting appropriate information on the issue and a detailed response will be made later.

The newspaper understands that given the autonomy of the Provincial Health Authority (PHA), the chief executives of the hospital and the PHA are the appropriate people to speak to.

Faulty cooling chamber
Dr Baining confirmed with the Post-Courier yesterday that the hospital morgue’s cooling chamber had been faulty and was in need of new parts that could only be purchased overseas.

“It’s been faulty for more than five years already, so we have been using chest freezers,” he said.

“We have about eight to nine chest freezers. For capacity, one chest freezer can hold up to four dead bodies.

“We have been trying to get a new [cooling] chamber because we don’t have parts available in the country for the one we have. Its an old one too and needs to be replaced,” he said.

Dr Baining added that a cooling chamber of 12 cabinets could cost almost 1 million kina  (NZ$465,000) and plans are underway by the hospital to get new cooling chambers for its morgue.

“We are actually in the process of getting a new one but at the moment we need funding, as well a supplier for it.

Depends on state budget
“It really depends on the government, on what budget they give us.

“If they give us enough for what we ask for, otherwise we cannot really get most of the things we need.”

Meanwhile, the diener, or “morgue man” at Rabaul Provincial Hospital’s morgue, Kero Kalang, said the biggest challenge of his job was getting dead bodies every day at his doorstep.

He said he was constantly concerned about space and appealed to responsible authorities like the Provincial Health Authority if another mortuary, like Port Moresby and Lae’s Funeral Home, could be set up in the province.

Dianne Wilson is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In March 2021, I received a tip to look into the police killing of a Bronx man who was shot dead in 2017 while in the throes of a mental health crisis. The source suggested I request the investigative files from the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division, the internal unit that spent two years probing the case.

At the time, I was in the midst of reporting for a book on the NYPD’s secretive disciplinary system, in which FID plays an integral role. So I filed a records request under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, but it seemed to go nowhere. Every few months, the NYPD requested an extension while deciding how to respond. Roughly nine months passed with no records. I was not shocked by these delays. When former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio conducted an audit that gave grades to the city’s agencies for their public record responsiveness, the NYPD received an F.

But then, on the last day of 2021, an email from the NYPD hit my inbox. The department had provided not just the investigative report on the Bronx man’s death, but the complete record of audio interviews with the officers involved in the case and their body-camera footage as well. This reporting got me interested in learning more about FID, which investigates every incident where an NYPD officer fires their weapon. I decided to file additional FOIL requests for the internal investigative files for a number of fatal shootings by the NYPD.

One case involved the police killing of a man named Kawaski Trawick, who was shot dead in his apartment while in the grips of a mental health crisis. Another involved the deaths of Officer Brian Mulkeen and a man named Antonio Williams in a public housing complex. After about a year, the NYPD sent me hundreds of pages from the final FID reports for both cases. But unlike the first batch I had received, this one contained none of the body-camera videos or audio of the FID’s officer interviews. So I appealed and, to my surprise, won.

The NYPD soon sent me all the video and audio related to the Trawick investigation. Along with the files, a sergeant in the NYPD’s Records Bureau included a note explaining that the omission appeared to have been an administrative “oversight.” The records system, he wrote, was “glitchy,” and the investigator had simply “just missed the upload of the case file.”

The records enabled ProPublica’s Eric Umansky and me to publish a revelatory story that exposed how the FID failed to probe key moments in the Trawick incident, including when one officer tried to stop his partner from shooting the man in crisis.

From a media perspective, the episode illustrated a triumph of New York’s public records laws. Or so I thought.

Two weeks after publication, I got another letter from the NYPD, this time denying much of the outstanding part of my records request in the Mulkeen-Williams case, in which police killed a suspect as well as a fellow officer. After releasing the full audio and video footage for two prior cases, the NYPD now claimed that providing the same types of files in this instance would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” for its officers. The letter referred me to the edited video compilation the department had publicly posted to YouTube after the shootings. If I wanted to contest their records denial, I would have to file a lawsuit, the department said — a time-consuming and potentially costly proposition.

In spite of the setback, I kept reporting and soon spoke to David Rankin, an attorney for the Williams family who offered to share the records that he had obtained from the NYPD through his own FOIL request. I was stunned: The department had provided him with some of the exact records that I had been denied — most notably, the complete body-camera footage. Separately, Rankin gave me access to audio of FID’s interviews, which he had obtained from the city Law Department as part of ongoing litigation.

As with the Trawick case, the complete record allowed me to piece together a fuller — and ultimately, more damning — picture than the one the NYPD had presented publicly. Time and again, the records showed, FID investigators stopped short in their questioning of officers, even when the conduct at issue led to the death of a colleague. This type of accounting would not have been possible without the video footage of the shooting and the audio of FID’s interviews with the officers.

Of course, I can’t say whether that — or my prior coverage — played into the NYPD’s decision to withhold the records from me. Prior to publication, I asked the department why it denied my request while granting the attorney’s. The NYPD did not respond.

Mike Hayes is a freelance journalist and author of “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and The Broken Promises of Police Reform.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Mike Hayes for ProPublica.

Papua New Guinea’s opposition has called on Prime Minister James Marape to immediately recall Parliament to address the escalating killings in the upper Highlands provinces.

The opposition also wants the debate to include other law and order issues that have spiralled out of control in other parts of the country.

The call was made by Deputy Opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa following images of victims lined up along the highway in the Enga Province.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

“I strongly urge the Prime Minister to recall Parliament for us leaders to come together as one and discuss the possibility of passing an Emergency Act as allowed for by the Constitution to address this serious issue,” he said.

“These gruesome images of human beings been murdered, stripped naked and lined up next to the highway by their enemies or criminal elements, especially in the upper Highlands provinces of Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands, is becoming a regular activity and the government and elected leaders must not take this lightly, its human lives we are talking about.

“It’s a national emergency and I call on the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament for a bipartisan committee to be formed to address this issue,” Tomuriesa said.

He said parliamentarians were elected to lead and address such serious issues affecting citizens and the country as a whole.

‘Killings too frequent’
“We as elected leaders shouldn’t be taking long breaks — these killings are becoming too frequent and we should be addressing them head on during Parliament sessions.

“We just cannot ignore it as fake social media posts,” he said.

Tomuriesa said he was making this call as a concerned citizen, a Papuan leader and deputy opposition leader.

“The spillover effects of what is happening up in the upper Highlands region will be felt everywhere — in Mamose, New Guinea Islands and the Southern Region. So as mandated leaders we must do something.”

Republished from PNG Post-Courier with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Papua New Guinea’s opposition has called on Prime Minister James Marape to immediately recall Parliament to address the escalating killings in the upper Highlands provinces.

The opposition also wants the debate to include other law and order issues that have spiralled out of control in other parts of the country.

The call was made by Deputy Opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa following images of victims lined up along the highway in the Enga Province.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

“I strongly urge the Prime Minister to recall Parliament for us leaders to come together as one and discuss the possibility of passing an Emergency Act as allowed for by the Constitution to address this serious issue,” he said.

“These gruesome images of human beings been murdered, stripped naked and lined up next to the highway by their enemies or criminal elements, especially in the upper Highlands provinces of Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands, is becoming a regular activity and the government and elected leaders must not take this lightly, its human lives we are talking about.

“It’s a national emergency and I call on the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament for a bipartisan committee to be formed to address this issue,” Tomuriesa said.

He said parliamentarians were elected to lead and address such serious issues affecting citizens and the country as a whole.

‘Killings too frequent’
“We as elected leaders shouldn’t be taking long breaks — these killings are becoming too frequent and we should be addressing them head on during Parliament sessions.

“We just cannot ignore it as fake social media posts,” he said.

Tomuriesa said he was making this call as a concerned citizen, a Papuan leader and deputy opposition leader.

“The spillover effects of what is happening up in the upper Highlands region will be felt everywhere — in Mamose, New Guinea Islands and the Southern Region. So as mandated leaders we must do something.”

Republished from PNG Post-Courier with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Papua New Guinea’s opposition has called on Prime Minister James Marape to immediately recall Parliament to address the escalating killings in the upper Highlands provinces.

The opposition also wants the debate to include other law and order issues that have spiralled out of control in other parts of the country.

The call was made by Deputy Opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa following images of victims lined up along the highway in the Enga Province.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

“I strongly urge the Prime Minister to recall Parliament for us leaders to come together as one and discuss the possibility of passing an Emergency Act as allowed for by the Constitution to address this serious issue,” he said.

“These gruesome images of human beings been murdered, stripped naked and lined up next to the highway by their enemies or criminal elements, especially in the upper Highlands provinces of Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands, is becoming a regular activity and the government and elected leaders must not take this lightly, its human lives we are talking about.

“It’s a national emergency and I call on the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament for a bipartisan committee to be formed to address this issue,” Tomuriesa said.

He said parliamentarians were elected to lead and address such serious issues affecting citizens and the country as a whole.

‘Killings too frequent’
“We as elected leaders shouldn’t be taking long breaks — these killings are becoming too frequent and we should be addressing them head on during Parliament sessions.

“We just cannot ignore it as fake social media posts,” he said.

Tomuriesa said he was making this call as a concerned citizen, a Papuan leader and deputy opposition leader.

“The spillover effects of what is happening up in the upper Highlands region will be felt everywhere — in Mamose, New Guinea Islands and the Southern Region. So as mandated leaders we must do something.”

Republished from PNG Post-Courier with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Papua New Guinea’s opposition has called on Prime Minister James Marape to immediately recall Parliament to address the escalating killings in the upper Highlands provinces.

The opposition also wants the debate to include other law and order issues that have spiralled out of control in other parts of the country.

The call was made by Deputy Opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa following images of victims lined up along the highway in the Enga Province.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

“I strongly urge the Prime Minister to recall Parliament for us leaders to come together as one and discuss the possibility of passing an Emergency Act as allowed for by the Constitution to address this serious issue,” he said.

“These gruesome images of human beings been murdered, stripped naked and lined up next to the highway by their enemies or criminal elements, especially in the upper Highlands provinces of Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands, is becoming a regular activity and the government and elected leaders must not take this lightly, its human lives we are talking about.

“It’s a national emergency and I call on the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament for a bipartisan committee to be formed to address this issue,” Tomuriesa said.

He said parliamentarians were elected to lead and address such serious issues affecting citizens and the country as a whole.

‘Killings too frequent’
“We as elected leaders shouldn’t be taking long breaks — these killings are becoming too frequent and we should be addressing them head on during Parliament sessions.

“We just cannot ignore it as fake social media posts,” he said.

Tomuriesa said he was making this call as a concerned citizen, a Papuan leader and deputy opposition leader.

“The spillover effects of what is happening up in the upper Highlands region will be felt everywhere — in Mamose, New Guinea Islands and the Southern Region. So as mandated leaders we must do something.”

Republished from PNG Post-Courier with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Chinese University of Hong Kong President Rocky Tuan has been denounced publicly by a former city leader in recent weeks, and hasn't been seen in public recently due to reported "sickness," according to multiple media reports.

The city's Independent Commission Against Corruption said it is investigating allegations of "corruption and misappropriation of public funds" at a medical research center affiliated with the university.

The director of the center is Cecilia Lo, Tuan’s wife.

"ICAC officers today conducted an investigation and collected evidence at the CUHK, including interviews and searching premises in accordance with warrants issued by the court," the Commission said in a statement dated Aug. 11 on its website.

"No arrest has been made at this stage. As enquiries are ongoing, no further comment will be made," it said.

The Sing Tao Daily and the Ming Pao both reported that the center in question is the Cardiovascular Genomic Medicine Center, which is directed by Cecilia Lo, who is also a visiting professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Riot police seige

Tuan made international headlines when he got tear-gassed after riot police besieged the university campus on Nov. 12, 2019, pursuing fleeing students onto a sports field while unleashing a hail of rubber bullets and more than 1,000 rounds of tear gas.

A pall of smoke rose above the university after students set up barricades and threw petrol bombs to prevent riot police from entering the campus as Tuan and other senior members of staff tried to negotiate with police to stand down and defuse the standoff. He also broke down and wept during a meeting with students.

The investigation into Lo's medical center comes after former Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying has repeatedly criticized Tuan on Facebook in recent weeks, calling on his supporters to "explain" his conduct during the 2019 protest movement.

"Anyone who defends Rocky Tuan shouldn't beat about the bush – they must account for and take responsibility for his words and actions during the CUHK riot, for everything he did," Leung, who is currently vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, wrote on his Facebook page on Aug. 7.

"They must also take responsibility for this person's future words and deeds," he said.

In an Aug. 5 post, Leung wrote: "Uncle Tuan proved himself to be a useless and cowardly person during the [protests]."

Crackdown on dissent

Leung's denunciation of Tuan comes as authorities in Hong Kong continue to crack down on all forms of public dissent and peaceful political opposition after Beijing imposed a national security law on the city in July 2020.

It also comes as pro-Beijing lawmaker Tommy Cheung spearheads a bid to restructure the way the university is run. His fellow lawmakers have denied they are going after Tuan, who was further denounced for failing to turn up at a Legislative Council committee to defend his record earlier this month.

They want changes to the voting system for approval of vice-chancellors, with more government appointees on the governing body, according to an Aug. 10 report in the South China Morning Post.

"Each time Tuan failed to show up, he was criticized anew, with suggestions that he should go," the paper reported.

Current affairs commentator Sang Pu said Leung is acting as a "standard bearer" for public denunciation of Tuan, paving the way for his removal in a proposed "restructuring" plan initiated by Beijing-backed lawmakers.

"Some people thought there was enough room for checks and balances on the regime's mistakes, some way to reform a dictator from within," Sang said of the Chinese University of Hong Kong leadership. "Some of them tried to oppose the restructuring plan ... but then they seemed to obey the party, and change their attitudes."

"It's a lot like it was back in the Cultural Revolution."

"The dictator has said ‘no,’ and then they'll arrest the 'chief conspirator' Rocky Tuan," Sang said. "Their suppression of him will show everyone that this is the result of such soft confrontation."

‘Soft confrontation’

Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang has warned that the authorities could expand their use of the national security law to include "soft confrontation."

"Those who advocate 'Hong Kong independence' haven't completely given up, and they are still determined to continue to use the media, culture and art, for various forms of 'soft confrontation'," Tang said in comments quoted on the official government website in 2021.

Tang mentioned media documentaries, student politics and the sale of books, photos and other memorabilia as examples of "soft confrontation."

Current affairs commentator Johnny Lau said such denunciations often involved complex political struggles.

"Right now, things are very similar to the Cultural Revolution," Lau said. "Denunciations are only one similarity."

He said the Independent Commission Against Corruption appears to have become politicized under the current crackdown.

"Regardless of what its motives are, it has turned up the political pressure on society," he said. "People can't help but try to connect the dots and wonder who got reported, and whether they are going after the organization or an individual."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Siyan Cheung for RFA Cantonese.

The United Nations General Assembly has approved a resolution to establish an independent body to investigate what happened to more than 130,000 people who went missing during the conflict in Syria over the last 12 years. The Syrian government opposed the resolution, along with Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, Cuba and Iran. “This is one of the most painful chapters in the Syrian crisis,” says Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and CEO of the medical nonprofit MedGlobal, as well as a former medical school classmate of President Bashar al-Assad.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQIA community, and today we look at those represented by the “I” which stands for “intersex.” In a broadcast exclusive, we are joined by the filmmaker and three stars of a new documentary, Every Body, which follows their work as intersex activists who share childhoods marked by shame, secrecy and nonconsensual surgeries. We speak with actor and screenwriter River Gallo, political consultant Alicia Roth Weigel, scholar Sean Saifa Wall and Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning director Julie Cohen, who says she was able to document “a movement that’s in the midst of truly blossoming.” Roth Weigel adds, “There is no one way to look intersex. There is no one way to be intersex,” emphasizing that the movement for informed consent and body autonomy is broad and intersectional. The film will be released in theaters on June 30.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Twitter Blue user @shibbu87 shared the said image on June 2 with a caption in Hindi that can be translated as: “Dead body of a Hindu girl with om and trident tattoo found in a suitcase on the beach in Mumbai, the girl has only torso and head is missing. How mercilessly and barbarically another Hindu sister has been murdered. It is a matter of concern. #lovejihaad”. (Archive)

ॐ और त्रिशूल टैटू वाली हिंदू युवती का शव #mumbai बीच के किनारे सूटकेस में मिला, युवती का केवल धड़ है सर गायब है।
कितनी बेरहमी से बर्बरता से एक और हिंदू बहिन की हत्या की गई है,यह चिंतनीय है।#lovejihaad pic.twitter.com/cLKRfOQapg

— Sujeet Swami (@shibbu87) June 2, 2023

Another user, 𝗞𝗘𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗕 (@whitehorse809), quote-tweeted a tweet by a user named Mr Sinha. Claiming that a Hindu girl was murdered, @whitehorse809 added, “Girls what are you doing?? Stop yourself from falling in love with Muslim men..” He, thereby, suggested that a Hindu woman was murdered by a Muslim man. (Archive)

Bro wtf is happening ?? Why is it always on news that hindu girls are being murdered??
Girls what are you doing?? Stop yourself from falling in love with Muslim men.. https://t.co/ENs5hW2D8i

— 𝗞𝗘𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗕 (@whitehorse809) June 2, 2023

A number of other users used the ‘#lovejihad’ in their tweets while sharing the photograph, for example, @Anandkattarr and @sevendra_raja7.

‘Love Jihad’ is a conspiracy theory propagated by the Right Wing ecosystem, according to which Muslim men are trained to trap Hindu women and marry them to convert them to Islam.

Fact Check

To find out more on the case, we ran a keyword search, which led us to multiple news reports. We came across a report by Mid-day that carried an image of a woman with the same tattoo on her forearm as the one in the viral images. In the caption, the woman was identified as Anjali Singh.

According to the report, the body was discovered on Uttan beach on June 2 and the police arrested two men — Mittu Singh (victim’s husband) and Chunchun Singh (victim’s brother-in-law) — in this connection. The report also mentioned that police said the accused killed Anjali Singh (the victim), chopped her body into three pieces and packed the body into a suitcase.

We came across several other news reports that confirm the above information. A Times of India report mentioned that the accused told the police that they had committed the act because they suspected Anjali’s character. The report also mentioned that as per the senior inspector Dadaram Karande of Uttan Sagari police station, the two brothers killed Anjali on May 24. They severed the head and stuffed the torso in a bag and threw it in the sea. The bag washed ashore at Uttan on Friday. At the time of the filing of this report, police were yet to find out the severed head. SI Dadaram Karande also mentioned that no missing person’s complaint was filed by the victim’s family members.

Therefore, it is clear that the claim that this incident is a case of ‘Love Jihad’ is false. Both the victim and the accused here are Hindus and there is no communal angle to the alleged crime.

The post Body with Om & trident tattoo found: Woman killed by husband, brother-in-law; all 3 Hindus, no communal angle appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

The National Election Committee’s decision earlier this month to block the Candlelight Party from appearing on the ballot was deemed correct and based on the law, council spokesman Prum Vicheat Akara told reporters.

The ruling means Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party won’t have any major challengers on the ballot on July 23.

The decision is a setback for democracy in Cambodia and will disenfranchise thousands of people who have recently become supporters of the Candlelight Party, according to Rong Chhun, the party’s vice president.

The French foreign ministry echoed that, saying it was “a troubling signal that undermines the democratic nature of the vote.” 

“France calls on the appropriate authorities to take the necessary measures to allow the Candlelight Party to participate in this important democratic exercise,” it said in a statement.

The NEC said on May 15 that it wouldn’t accept a statement from the Interior Ministry confirming the party’s registration in 1998. The committee said it required the original certificate issued by the ministry, which was lost in 2017 when the offices of a previous opposition party were raided by government agents.

Candlelight Party members have cried foul because the party was allowed to compete in last year’s local commune elections. 

Public protest promised

Party officials had hoped the Constitutional Council, a judicial body that examines election disputes, might overturn the NEC’s ruling.

But the Constitutional Council – just like the NEC – was simply acting according to Hun Sen’s wishes, Finland-based political analyst Kim Sok said. 

“Hun Sen can’t find any solutions so he already threatened foreign diplomats,” he said. “He is afraid of a demonstration after the election results. He is afraid of the Candlelight Party and other social injustice issues.”

The Candlelight Party has two choices, said Australia-based social development researcher Seng Sary. One is to seek some kind of foreign intervention. Another is to persuade France-based opposition figure Sam Rainsy to return to the country for the first time since 2015. 

“The Candlelight Party can call for a small protest, but if Sam Rainsy returns, there will be a bigger movement,” he said. “If Sam Rainsy is in the country, there will be a bigger force.”

Party officials will organize a public protest of the Council’s decision soon, Rong Chhun said.

However, Hun Sen recently warned against holding any protest, saying a demonstration could lead to violence and mass arrests. He has ordered prisons to prepare their cells for opposition party members. 

Activists and party officials targeted

Authorities have arrested several top Candlelight Party officials in recent months. Some activists have complained of a campaign of intimidation, while others have been persuaded by the promise of a government position to switch their allegiance to the CPP. 

The Candlelight Party has attracted support over the last several years with a policy platform centered around improving social welfare benefits such as offering free check-ups and treatment at public hospitals and raising the minimum monthly wage for garment workers and civil servants.

Eng Sokha, a voter in Phnom Penh, said the CPP must be afraid of competing with the opposition’s popularity. It’s well-known that Candlelight’s paperwork was valid enough for it to compete in the 2022 commune elections, she said.

“So there is no reason that the party can’t join this election. I am disappointed,” she said, adding that she might not vote.

CPP spokesman Sok Ey San dismissed any concerns about the election’s validity. If Candlelight Party supporters don’t vote, then the CPP will continue to lead the country, he said.

Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The post Body Worn Cameras Don’t Prevent Police Violence appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Finesse Moreno-Rivera.

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior and was authored by Andrea Chalupa & Sarah Kendzior.

The region will miss all or most of the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless efforts are accelerated between now and 2030, said Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), releasing their annual “Progress Report” on Asia and the Pacific.

SDGs are 17 social, economic, and environmental goals adopted by the U.N. in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

“Progress towards climate action is slipping away,” the report warned. “The region is both a victim of the impact of climate change and a perpetrator of climate change, with a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Despite assumptions that COVID-19 lockdowns positively impacted the environment, the report said performance on climate action “is unequivocally worse” than any other goal for every region, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

There has also been an increase in deaths and missing persons attributed to disasters, the U.N. commission said.

UN-ESCAP’s report comes just days after another U.N. report on climate inaction warning that the world is approaching irreversible levels of global warming, with catastrophic consequences becoming inevitable.

Asia did well in providing affordable, clean energy  

In 2022, Asia-Pacific recorded the most robust progress in affordable and clean energy, as well as in industry, innovation, and infrastructure. 

Achievements in access to electricity and international support for clean and renewable energy primarily drove progress toward the energy goal, even though the report noted only a slight improvement in the share of renewable energy consumption.

Progress in clean energy and decline in climate action happened simultaneously, said Arman Bidarbakht Nia, the head of ESCAP’s statistical data management unit. 

“You can invest more energy and have wider access to energy. But at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions could go up, which is what is actually happening at the moment.” 

UN-ESCAP said 90% of people in Asia-Pacific countries now have access to electricity. 

Only in North Korea, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu do more than a quarter of the population still lack access to electricity.

Many experts say Asia’s appetite for power is its Achilles heel, giving example of how at the COP26 climate summit in 2021, China and India, two of the world’s largest carbon emitters, weakened their pledge to phase down, instead of phase out, coal. 

Earlier this month, another report by a group of environmental analysts said China rapidly accelerated plans for new coal power plants in the second half of last year, derailing the overall climate progress made globally.

Southeast Asia also performed worse in Life Below Water goals, primarily due to worsening marine pollution and the unsustainable use of marine resources, U.N. said.

Beachside pollution from land sources that wash ashore from the ocean increased from 3.36 million tons in 2019 to 3.92 million tons in 2021 in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

Myanmar and Cambodia perform well in SDG goals

Myanmar featured in eight of 17 SDGs as one of the top five countries progressing better than the regional average, including tackling poverty, reducing hunger, providing quality education, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and more. 

Bidarbakht Nia said the countries that were not expected to achieve the goal, like Myanmar and Afghanistan, “are the ones that have been making faster progress compared to the regional average. But it could still be far away from their 2030 target.”

“Also, this is all based on the data available, and those countries… there is very little data after the crisis in the country,” he added.

Cambodia was also among the top five in three of the 17 SDGs, including health, education, and clean water and sanitation. 

The report also lauded Cambodia’s “evidence-based clean air plan” launched last year to address the sources of emissions and reduce PM2.5 and black carbon by 60% by 2030.

Though air quality monitoring began in the Southeast Asian kingdom in 1999, the fine particulate matter PM2.5 monitoring equipment was installed only in 2017 when the annual average in Phnom Penh was 13.47 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3). 

In 2019, it increased to 21.12 μg/m3, more than double the World Health Organization’s guideline (10 μg/m3). Decades-old fuel-intensive vehicles, open burning of solid waste and crop residues, and a construction boom were identified as the main culprits.

Among other plans, Cambodia is raising standards for vehicle emissions and limiting the age of imported cars. Apart from PM2.5, the plan could decrease methane and carbon dioxide, key drivers of climate change, by 24% and 18% respectively by 2030.

Some progress, but overall slow

U.N. Under-Secretary-General Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, executive secretary of UN-ESCAP, said the region was facing a triple crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and geopolitics.

None of the countries in the region are on track to reach the SDGs by 2030, she added. 

The region should have made 50% of the progress by now but has achieved just 14% of the necessary progress so far, the report said. In 2017, it was just 4.4%. 

Based on current trends, Asia-Pacific would take another 42 years to reach the SDG goalpost, according to the U.N.

Climate action in the region needs “a complete trend reversal,” specifically in the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing states (SIDS), the U.N. commission said.

“We should leverage innovation to accelerate progress on climate action,” Alisjahbana told Radio Free Asia in Bangkok.

“Secondly, we should tackle this climate action to have the so-called co-benefits, to meet at the same time other objectives. For example, employment creation, doing climate-friendly business… so, you’re gaining revenue and contributing to climate action.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.

Again highlighting its tenacity, its resilience and its way with words, Ukraine marked last week's grim anniversary of Russia's invasion with a new postage stamp featuring an image from street artist Banksy's recent visit there: A small boy deftly flipping to the ground a man in a judo match. In one lower corner are the words, in Cyrillic, "FCK PTN." The "allegorical" image, says the post office, describes, "A year of resistance - painful, ragged, fierce, persistent," but above all "Ukrainian."

A bloody year on, Russia's war of aggression remains what one U.S. official calls "a grinding slog," with no swift, definitive victory in sight. After a spate of drone attacks he blamed on Kyiv, Putin has ordered the border be further tightened; the Kremlin says they're open to talks, but not to renouncing claims to four partly occupied Ukrainian regions widely deemed non-negotiable. President Zelenskyy says Ukraine is prepping for spring counter-offensives with the focus on fighting in eastern embattled Bakhmut, where soldiers remain under "insane pressure." To some international observers, today's "Great War" seems "a perverse continuation" of decades-long hostilities: Stalin's 1930s efforts to "starve the people of Ukraine into non-existence," Hitler's 1940s Einsatzgruppen murdering tens of thousands of Jews, Soviet 1960s flooding and landslides, the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea. In a recent visit to "bear witness (to) tales of trauma and humanity," members of a pan-European coalition of political, economic and faith leaders describe an ongoing war of "myth versus truth" against a Ukraine that "isn't meant to have existed"; the price of losing is "the eradication of memory and identity."

It's within that historic context that Ihor Smilianskyi, the head of Ukraine's Postal Service, announced the issuing of their new stamp on the first anniversary of the current war. "They wanted to make us afraid every day," he says. "So we now count the new year differently - from Feb. 24 to Feb. 24." For Smilianskyi, the David-and-Goliath image of the boy and man, clearly judo-aficionado Putin, symbolizes "our small country...pinning Russia to the mat." "We thought this exact painting would be the best representation of what every Ukrainian feels about our enemy,” he said. "This is the struggle between Ukraine and Russia." On the unequivocal message in the lower left corner: "Banksy’s mural, like Biden’s visit, sends a powerful message to Putin: “Go Fuck Yourself!” During a secret trip to Ukraine last fall, Banksy painted seven images in ravaged Borodyanka. The longtime political street artist - see here and here - also created 50 limited-edition prints to fundraise via Legacy of War Foundation for "our friends in Ukraine"; he felt it was "the least I should do" after he used one of the Foundation's ambulance to elude "an angry babushka" who found him painting on her building and called police.

Ukraine's post office issued 1,500,000 copies, or 250,000 sheets, of the Banksy stamp symbolizing what one resident called "a small Ukraine which defeats the big man, Russia," with about a quarter of proceeds going to humanitarian efforts, mostly rebuilding schools. It was initially offered inside an artful envelope that included a post card - with a hoodie available - and can be bought online. It's the third time Ukraine has used stamps as wartime posters to boost morale and funds: Last year a Ukrainian artist won a design competition with his image of the soldiers who defended Snake Island - another "Go fuck yourself" - and an 11-year-old girl drew a young girl flying alongside a Ukrainian plane. Meanwhile, the carnage drags on. "Every murderer, terrorist and torturer will be brought to justice," Zelensky vowed in last week's address. "Life and Ukraine will prevail." But for those who have fled, including to the U.S., the death and destruction feel "absolutely mad." "I have no safe," said one woman in halting English. "I have terrible." Many Russians seem to agree, mourning "what our country is turning into." "The whole world hates us now because of this...ghoul," laments an 82-year-old woman in one video. "Putin is war."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

A coalition of voting rights groups—including NAACP Florida, ACLU of Florida, Common Cause Florida, and the Brennan Center for Justice—submitted joint testimony opposing S.B. 4B on Thursday. In a joint statement issued after its passage on Friday, the coalition warned that the legislation "risks impacting people with past convictions who will continue to be arrested and prosecuted in the criminal legal system for honest mistakes about their voter eligibility."

"The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no."

"This proposal is a solution in search of a problem," the coalition said. "There is no legitimate need to waste taxpayer dollars and state resources by expanding the Office of Statewide Prosecution for these purposes. This bill is being heard and swiftly passed only because the governor desires to expand his prosecutorial authority over Floridians who are lawfully trying to exercise their right to vote."

S.B. 4B comes as DeSantis faces rebuke for using Florida's newly established Office of Election Crimes and Security to arrest 20 formerly incarcerated individuals who believed they were eligible to vote—thanks to Amendment 4, a voter-approved 2018 referendum re-enfranchising 1.4 million people with past felony convictions—for alleged "voter fraud" last year.

Most of the people who were arrested for improperly casting ballots had been approved by the Florida Department of Elections, which mailed them voter registration cards prior to the 2020 election. Despite this, all of them have been slapped with felony charges carrying prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $5,000. The arrests, unsurprisingly, have reportedly scared away many potential voters.

"While one of the cases has been settled, judges have in many cases dismissed charges and some local state attorneys have been reluctant to pursue charges," Florida Politicsreported Friday. "Democrats have questioned if the proposed legislation will allow the statewide prosecutor to take over cases that local state attorneys won't try."

Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-47) alluded to body cam footage showing that many of those arrested—and some of the police officers—were confused about the nature of the charges.

“We had folks in Orange County that, after that amendment passed, they called the Supervisor of Elections, they called the Division of Elections, and were told they could vote," she told Florida Politics. "There's a reason why these cases are being tossed out."

According to the news outlet, many critics of S.B. 4B view it as "an intimidation tactic to discourage many former felons from registering regardless, even if they are now eligible to do so."

Florida Rep. Yvonne Hinson (D-20) said that after "citizens served their time, they should be able to have their civil rights restored." She called the bill "an intentional act by the Legislature to manipulate the judicial process to fit a political position."

"This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what's been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy."

The coalition of voting rights groups opposed to S.B. 4B shared the Democratic lawmakers' assessments.

By increasing the OSP's power, this legislation "would remove cases from local prosecutors and prosecute minor occurrences of mistaken voters rather than having to prove a widespread voter conspiracy," the groups lamented. "It would also seek to circumvent three Florida courts' decisions which have rejected the OSP's argument for more expansive jurisdiction."

"The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no," the coalition continued. "We have grave concerns about the potential for this office targeting returning citizens for honest mistakes about their eligibility to vote in an effort to intimidate communities of color."

"All voters should have equal, meaningful, and non-burdensome access to the ballot box," said the coalition. "To date, Florida has failed to effectively and efficiently verify people's eligibility under the current system, and the state's failure has disproportionately harmed Black Floridians."

According to the rights advocates, the state has refused for years "to provide sufficient guidance to those looking to determine whether they can vote. At the same time, government officials have allowed and, in some instances, outright encouraged people with past felony convictions to register to vote without verifying their eligibility to do so."

"This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what's been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy," the groups warned. "Rather than trying to give unchecked power to prosecutors who report to the governor and his political appointees, state officials should instead find ways to fix the complex and unnavigable system for returning citizens to determine their eligibility and invest resources to solve current known problems."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Students at the Fiji-based regional University of the South Pacific have welcomed the announcement by the new coalition government to release $10 million in grants owed as Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka assured the region’s premier institution they were committed to restoring outstanding grant contributions totalling $78.4 million since 2019.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, along with Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad, had earlier said the reinstatement of Fiji’s grant contributions to the 12-nation USP was a promise they had made in their party manifestos during the election campaign.

USP Students Association (USPSA) secretary-general Emosi Vakarua said thousands of USP students were faced with new learning challenges brought about by covid-19 and exacerbated by the withholding of the obligatory grant payment by the former FijiFirst government.

• READ MORE: Other USP grants reports

“We appreciate the commitment made by the current government of Fiji in honouring its grant contribution with the latest installment,” he said in a statement.

“We thank the government of Fiji for restoring trust and confidence in the region and showing us the true meaning of our Pacific vuvale [family] partnership.”

He said the student body would continue to work closely with the USP Council and senior management in shaping Pacific futures.

Since 2019, the FijiFirst government remained steadfast in its decision to withhold grant contributions to USP until independent investigations into alleged mismanagement by current vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia were carried out, ultimately leading to Dr Ahluwalia and his wife’ being deported from Fiji.

Invitation by Rabuka
Professor Ahluwalia, who has since been operating in exile from USP’s Samoa campus, was offered an invitation by Rabuka last month to return to Fiji, a move that has gained widespread support from USP students and staff.

Early this month, Professor Ahluwalia congratulated Rabuka on being elected the new Fiji Prime Minister.

“The new government’s continued reassurance to resuming the payment of grants to USP is a great relief for staff and students and revives the longstanding relationship between Fiji and the regional institute,” he said.

“I look forward to working together with the new coalition government to strengthen the relationship between USP and Fiji.

“As a regional institution, USP will continue to serve its island countries, particularly Fiji and work hard to shape Pacific futures.”

Professor Ahluwalia also acknowledged Rabuka’s support and contribution towards the wholesome development of the institute over the past years through his chairmanship of the advisory committee appointed by the USP Senate to assist the Labasa campus with its various programmes.

It is understood a redeployment of funds from the 2022-2023 National Budget would allow the new government to release an initial $10 million to USP as Rabuka noted discussions were being held with USP about a repayment plan for grants owed alongside the restoration of the university’s annual grant, expected to be included.

Republished from Wansolwara News in collaboration.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The boy was declared dead on Jan. 4 but local officials vowed to continue efforts to recover the body from the hollow concrete pillar.

Two local police rescue team members went 24 meters (79 feet) down the hole wearing oxygen masks, according to the VietNews website. It took them nearly two hours to bring the body to the surface.

"Rescue work took a long time, but due to the surrounding soil in a closed environment, the decomposition process of Nam’s body took place more slowly than usual, so the boy’s body remained intact and will be buried based on his family wishes," Provincial Deputy Chairman Doan Tan Buu said.

The boy died from multiple injuries when he hit a hard wall and fell into water, according to a preliminary investigation at the scene, Buu said.

The boy was collecting scrap metal with friends on Dec. 31 when he fell down the hole. Authorities made the decision to pronounce him dead, even though no body had been recovered, after consulting with his father.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh ordered the Ministry of Construction to coordinate with other relevant ministries to inspect the site for violations of the law.

The provincial government will launch its own investigation to determine who was at fault after the boy is buried, Buu said.

Ho Chi Minh City Ferry Bridge Construction Joint Stock Company and T&T Transport Construction Service Trading Company are building the bridge.

Dong Thap Department of Transport and the provincial Traffic Construction Investment Project Management Board are managing the project with the Institute of Transport Science and Technology supervising construction.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Thai Ly Hao Nam was declared dead on Wednesday by the vice chairman of Dong Thap province’s People’s Committee. Doan Tan Buu said work would continue to remove the concrete pillar and cut the boy’s body out.

"In the past, we prioritized both the rescue and finding ways to save the child,” he said. “At this point, the conditions for sustaining the child’s life have ended. And there is sufficient evidence, it is clear that the baby has died. The dead body must be brought up as soon as possible to take care of the child's funeral." 

Work came to a halt Thursday morning, State media reported, because rescuers had reached a “special geological layer.”

Questions are now being asked about whether the boy should have been declared dead before his body was recovered.

“They say he is biologically dead to reduce pressure on the rescue workers,” lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan told RFA. “In reality I think they predicted the boy’s death from day one but now they’re announcing it. Legally that’s not correct, they just want to deal with it internally … they don’t want to bring it to the central government.”

In a Facebook post after the boy’s death was announced, lawyer Dang Dinh Manh wrote that the current law only accepts two states of death: biological and legal death.

He said biological death is “absolutely immutable” because there is a dead body, but legal death is a judgment based on the length of time a person has been missing. It is still not clear whether that person is dead, so legal death can be annulled if the person is later found alive.

“The case of "death" of the baby HN is not one of the two cases of death prescribed by the law. Therefore, the announcement by the [vice chairman] of Dong Thap province is only for temporary reference, or for the purpose of psychologically preparing the public only. Essentially, it has no legal value,” Manh wrote. 

He said, from a legal point of view, the boy must still be considered alive and local authorities are still responsible for making their best efforts to rescue him as a survivor.

With work halted, rescue teams are now consulting domestic and foreign experts on how to recover the body. The rescue method has changed from bringing up the whole pillar to removing the joints and bringing up sections one-by-one.

Doctor Dinh Duc Long told RFA it was wrong to declare the boy dead in order to allow the rescue teams to halt their efforts.

"To say the boy died is very strange because they haven't been able to prove that the boy is dead or not. They have no direct evidence. You have to have the boy's body to be able to say that,” he said. “Did they say that to finish the story so the public doesn't care anymore? That means no more day and night duty. No more time pressure. That's scientifically inconclusive.”

The decision has been approved by the boy's family, according to Vietnamese media. They reported that local authorities and forensic experts met with Hao Nam's father, who agreed the boy should be pronounced dead.

According to Vietnam’s 2015 Civil Code, if there is still no news that a person is alive two years after an accident a court must decide whether or not to declare them dead. 

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared during a speech last year that the United States must demonstrate that "our commitment to human rights begins at home."

That's how dozens of human rights experts and groups began a Thursday letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, director of the Domestic Policy Council, which "drives the development and implementation of the president's domestic policy agenda in the White House and across the federal government."

The coalition of 84 organizations and 37 individuals wrote that they "strongly support that sentiment and believe that this principle—that human rights begin at home—should be the basis for a bold approach to ensuring that everyone in the United States enjoys the rights and freedoms guaranteed by international human rights law."

As the letter details:

The United States has been a historic leader in the global effort to establish universal standards of human rights protection, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. At the same time, while state and local authorities have increasingly looked to human rights standards to improve the lives of people, the federal government has not comprehensively integrated the United States' human rights obligations into domestic law and policy and has resisted efforts to create domestic human rights monitoring, enforcement, and accountability mechanisms. Thus, as we mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration 74 years ago this month, we urge the Biden administration to make good on the president's words by reinvigorating that leadership and starting the process of establishing a national human rights institution ("NHRI").

In particular, we propose that the Biden administration establish a national committee of experts to study the creation of an American NHRI, with robust civil society participation, and make recommendations within a year of its establishment.

"When properly constituted and mandated, national human rights bodies can provide valuable oversight and means of implementing a country's international human rights obligations," said Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights at the American Jewish Committee, which signed the letter.

"An American NHRI can offer a meaningful path to encourage U.S. institutions, buoyed by civil society, to adhere to human rights commitments that our government has made and to which we routinely call on other countries to adhere," added Gaer, also a longtime former member of the U.N. Committee Against Torture.

The letter says the coalition stands "ready to support you in your efforts to launch such a process and take the first steps toward bringing human rights home," and directs the Biden administration to reach out to Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program, and David Kaye, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and a former United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression.

"Nearly all of the United States' democratic partners worldwide have national institutions to help them meet their human rights commitments," Kaye noted, echoing the letter. "But the United States stands as an exception; it has adopted treaties but done very little to implement them domestically. It's time to make human rights not just a foreign policy issue, as important as that is, but also a question of America's domestic practice."

Dakwar similarly asserted that "the United States is lagging behind other nations in translating its global human rights obligations into domestic policies, and an independent national human rights institution would help advance this goal."

"But such an institution must do more than monitor and implement U.S. human rights commitments," Dakwar continued. "It can educate and make human rights more visible. It can provide a platform for marginalized communities to uphold their human rights. And it can, in a near-term sense, reinforce the Biden administration's own priorities, especially under its Summit for Democracy and National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Residents of Nan Chaung village in Kale township identified him as 50-year-old Byat Za Lain and said he was unable to leave because of leg problems.

“He was left behind when everyone fled. I thought that nothing could have happened to him but only his charred body was found when the junta troops left,” said a resident who didn’t want to be named for safety reasons.

He said the body was so badly burned it was impossible to tell whether Byat Za Lain died in the blaze, or whether troops shot him and set fire to his body.

Nan Chaung has around 400 houses and almost 2,000 residents according to township authorities. Locals said most people fled their homes as a column of 70 soldiers descended on the village and occupied it on Monday and Tuesday. They discovered Byat Za Lain’s body when they returned on Wednesday.

RFA phoned the junta spokesman and social affairs minister for Sagaing region, Aye Hlaing, to seek comment on the attack but the calls went answered.

Junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has often denied his troops burn houses and repeated the claim during a meeting with the U.N. Special Envoy to Myanmar Noeleen Heyzer.

A total of 27,496 homes in Sagaing region were burned down by junta troops in the 22 months following the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup, according to a Dec. 10 report by Data for Myanmar, which compiles figures from a variety of online sources.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Several users have shared images of the body of a young woman found on the Yamuna Expressway, with the claim that she had been murdered by a person of Muslim identity.

Member of the Legislative Assembly, Om Kumar tweeted images of the body with the claim that the woman seen in the images was a victim of ‘Love Jihad’. He further suggested that a big campaign will have to be launched with the help of all the family members who are victims of Love Jihad. Kumar also made an indirect reference to the gruesome murder of Shraddha Walkar where the accused Aaftab Ameen Poonwalla is a Muslim. (Archive)

Senior Correspondent at Hindi Khabar and a former journalist of Sudarshan News, Aanchal Yadav, tweeted the same sets of photos and stated that there is a new Aaftab every day. This is also in reference to the Shraddha Walkar murder case. (Archive)

User @Shyamsrivastva1 also tweeted the images and stated that he was “100% confirmed” that the crime had been committed by a Muslim person whom he refers to as “Abdul”. (Archive)

Users @VlKASPR0NAM0, @RoyalKushwahaS and @PBSINGH14648043 also tweeted the images with the same claim. 

Fact Check

The body of a young woman was found stuffed inside a trolley bag on a service road of the Yamuna Expressway. She was found on November 18. The police say that the woman appeared to be in her early twenties. According to the police, she had blood on her face and injury marks all over her body.

Several journalists shared images of the body in order to identify the woman. According to journalist Sachin Gupta, she had a bullet mark on her chest.

The official handle of Mathura Police put out a video statement on November 20 wherein they said that the woman in the images has been identified by her brother and mother. The victim’s family hails from the Badarpur region in Delhi.

थाना राया क्षेत्रान्तर्गत एक अज्ञात युवती का शव के शिनाख्त होने के सम्बन्ध में अपर पुलिस अधीक्षक नगर, मथुरा की बाइट। pic.twitter.com/DhK9wJy97R

— MATHURA POLICE (@mathurapolice) November 20, 2022

Upon a keyword search on Google, we found several articles which state that the woman had been identified as 21-year-old Ayushi Yadav, by her mother and brother. She was a resident of Delhi’s Badarpur. The articles further state that Yadav had been murdered by her father.

According to an India Today article, a few days back, Ayushi went out without telling her father, Nitesh Yadav. After she returned home, her father lost his temper and shot her. He then wrapped her body in plastic, stuffed it in a trolley bag and dumped the bag on the Yamuna Expressway in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.

According to an Aaj Tak article, the teams sent by the police found only the girl’s mother and brother at the address that they received. The police eventually found the father. During a late-night interrogation, the father confessed to killing the daughter.

TV9, Amar Ujala and other news media outlets corroborate the same information.

Alt News contacted Additional SP Martand Prakash Singh who refuted claims of a communal angle to the case.

Mathura Police held a press conference on November 21, stating that upon interrogating the victim’s family, the police found that the victim had married somebody despite her parents’ disapproval. This caused tension in the family and as a result, the victim’s father shot her twice on November 17. The body was kept at the house overnight. At around 3 in the morning, the body was packed in a red suitcase and the parents drove to the Yamuna Expressway where they eventually discarded it.

लाल ट्राली बैग में अज्ञात बालिका की जघन्य हत्याकाण्ड (आनर किलिंग) का सफल अनावरण करते हुये बालिका के माता पिता को मय आलाकत्ल व घटना मे प्रयुक्त कार सहित गिरफ्तार करने के सम्बन्ध में अपर पुलिस अधीक्षक नगर,मथुरा द्वारा दी गयी बाइट । pic.twitter.com/nmHnbLuUHX

— MATHURA POLICE (@mathurapolice) November 21, 2022

On being asked about the motive behind the murder, Mathura Police further clarified that the victim, who was an adult, had married a man named Chhatrapal at the Arya Samaj Mandir despite her parents’ disapproval. Moreover, the victim would often leave her house without informing her parents.

Mathura Police also tweeted that the heinous murder of Ayushi Yadav had been successfully solved.

थाना राया व स्वाट टीम

लाल ट्राली बैग में अज्ञात बालिका की जघन्य हत्याकाण्ड (आनर किलिंग) का सफल अनावरण करते हुये बालिका के माता पिता को मय आलाकत्ल व घटना मे प्रयुक्त कार सहित किया गिरफ्तार¬- pic.twitter.com/aKbaY9kcKI

— MATHURA POLICE (@mathurapolice) November 21, 2022

Journalist Mamta Tripathi tweeted, “मथुरा सड़क किनारे सूटकेस में मिली आयुषी का कातिल उसका पिता है।पिता नीतेश यादव ने बेटी के सीने पर गोली मारी, फिर सूटकेस में पैक कर फेंक दिया.. आयुषी की मां और भाई ने आज पहचान की. मामला ऑनर किलिंग का है…फिलहाल पिता गिरफ्तार है” (Translation: The murderer of Ayushi, whose body was found in a suitcase on the Mathura road side is her father. Father Nitesh Yadav shot at the daughter’s chest, then packed it in a suitcase and threw it away.. Ayushi’s mother and brother identified today. The matter is of Honor Killing… At present the father is arrested).

Principal Correspondent ABP Ganga, Vivek K. Tripathi also tweeted that Ayushi had been shot by her father, who then packed her in a suitcase. He refuted the communal claims that were being associated with the case and said that the father had been arrested by the police. (Archive)

Hence the murder of 21-year-old Ayushi Yadav was given a communal spin. Several verified handles on Twitter shared images of her dead body with the claim that a person of Muslim identity had murdered her. Many users also implied that Ayushi was another victim of ‘Love Jihad’. Alt News found these claims to be categorically false.

The post A woman’s body discovered in a trolley bag in Yamuna Expressway is a case of honour killing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

The Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) wants to delay the next meeting of the Joint Supervisory Body with the Papua New Guinea government, claiming Port Moresby is “dragging the chain” on drawing up critical constitutional regulations..

The key focus of the ABG is on achieving independence by 2027 by the latest.

This latest dispute comes despite both governments committing last April to the Era Kone Covenant which lays out how the independence referendum results would be tabled in the national Parliament, and the manner in which that institution may ratify the results.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Bougainville independence

At that time Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama commended the national government for its unwavering support for the Bougainville Peace Process.

He said the Era Kone Covenant laid out a timeline and a roadmap for the ratification of the referendum results in the national Parliament.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape at the time reaffirmed his commitment to the outcomes, saying his government would continue to work within the spirit of the peace agreement.

“We’ve established a pathway that we should work towards and we on the national government side, I just want to assure Bougainville that it doesn’t matter who sits in this chair in 3 months’ time, the work for Bougainville has been set and the work we have set will continue on,” Marape said.

Failed to engage
But a national government’s technical team has since failed to engage with its Bougainville counterparts to develop a jointly agreed draft of the regulations.

ABG Minister Ezekiel Masatt said this week this lack of commitment from the national government has frustrated the ABG leadership and prompted its call for a deferral of the Joint Supervisory Body meeting.

The PNG government, and its technical team, have called for nationwide consultations on the Bougainville issue, but Masatt said the ABG’s position was that ratification of the outcome of the consultation on independence was for the national Parliament and not all the citizens of PNG.

He said there was no legal basis for such a proposed nationwide consultation.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A 53-second video clip of police officers investigating a suitcase stuffed with the dead body of a young woman dumped allegedly near Gurugram’s Iffco Chowk is going viral on social media. It is being claimed that the woman was a victim of ‘love jihad’, a conspiracy theory according to which Muslim men trap Hindu women for conversion to Islam.

Twitter user @shefalitiwari7 shared the viral clip and wrote, “Are the souls of Hindu girls dead? Don’t they have any attachment to their religion and culture? If it is like this we will continue finding bodies in suitcases such as this. One more Hindu girl was found in a suitcase who had trusted her Abdul. Near Gurugram Iffco Chowk. Search is on .” (Archive.)

It is pertinent to note that the word ‘Abdul’ is among the ever-growing list of words used by the Hindu Right Wing, as a proxy for Muslim men.

Another Twitter user, @ajaychauhan41, shared the clip and wrote, “yet another suitcase, yet another girl’s body same old case of love jihad. Gurugram.” (Archive.)

Anand Kalra, who according to his Twitter bio, is the BJP district social media head, Ghaziabad, tweeted the clip and wrote, “The body of a woman aged 20 to 25 years was found in a suitcase near Iffco Chowk. The woman’s arms and legs were also broken. Seeing the dead body, it seems that the murder took place a few hours ago. An FIR has been registered in the matter. Efforts are on to identify the body of the woman. It is being said that it could be a case of love jihad”. (Archive.)

Unlike others, Kalra did not make a direct claim that this was case of ‘love jihad’.

None of the users, however, explained why they suspected/concluded that there was a communal angle to the crime.

Fact-check

Taking note of the captions, we performed a Google search using relevant keywords and found several news reports related to the discovery of a body near Guruguram’s Iffco Chowk. On October 17, Hindustan Times  reported that the body of a woman was found stuffed in a suitcase at Iffco Chowk on Monday. It was found around 4 PM after an auto-rickshaw driver spotted the suitcase in the bushes along the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, and alerted the police.

The thumbnail of the report by Hindustan Times carried a photo that appeared to be of the location.

The reports also added that there were several burn marks on the body, which as per the police, looked like made with a cigarette butt.

Alt News also found a video report by Punjab Kesari. Speaking to the media, Deepak Saharan DCP (West) said that the woman appeared to be 20-25 years of age and the body had been sent for autopsy. The DCP also confirmed that the body was discovered by an auto-rickshaw driver.

Readers should note that neither in these reports nor in the DCP’s statement, was there any mention of a communal angle to the crime suggested by the use of the phrase ‘love jihad’ in the tweets.

Upon doing a subsequent keyword search, we found a news report by Navbharat Times published on October 19, where the deceased had been identified as Priyanka and the accused was named Sunil, her husband.

However, a local news media outlet, The Delhi Crown, reported that the name of the accused was Rahul. A report by Aaj Tak, too, mentions the name of the accused as Rahul.

For further verification, we watched the press conference of Gurugram Police led by ACP Crime Preetpal Singh. In this statement, the ACP clearly identified the accused as Rahul. The police also mentioned that the victim had married Rahul in 2021. It was a love marriage. Immediately after that, they started fighting with each other. The police also added that they have recovered the knife with which the accused tried to remove the tattoo of the deceased. [Watch from 2:28 / 7:15.]

Alt News also accessed a copy of the FIR pertaining to the case. Here, the name of the complainant is Sunil Kumar, the auto-driver who first discovered the suitcase in the bush. Additionally, Alt News spoke with SHO Haresh Kumar under whose supervision the FIR was filed. “To my knowledge, there’s no angle of love jihad. The FIR was indeed filed at my police station but the case was transferred to the CIA branch.”

We also reached out to a CIA officer who was part of the investigating team. The officer clarified that there was no communal angle to the case. The accused is a Hindu and hails from the Kushwah caste, and the victim, Priyanka, belongs to the Yadav caste.

To sum it up, the murder of a woman by her husband was given a communal spin on social media as a case of love jihad. This is not the first time that a crime was given the communal twist. Alt News has, in the past, debunked several stories where social media users bogusly communalized criminal acts.

The post Body found in Gurugram: Woman’s murder by husband falsely given communal twist appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kalim Ahmed.

At this year’s local government elections, average voter turnout was 36 percent. This is comparable to the 2019 figure. It compares with voter turnout of 81.5 percent at the last general election.

Local Government New Zealand says that a review into why people don’t vote should be carried out before the next elections in 2025.

We need to know how many people didn’t vote because they didn’t receive their ballot papers and what practical obstacles to voting might have occurred.

• READ MORE: Win for diversity in Wellington, defeat in Auckland as NZ votes local
• Local government elections: A new dawn or a false dawn?
• Don’t be so scared of a little self-determination when it comes to Māori
• Other NZ local government election reports

We also need to know how many people just couldn’t be bothered, and if some people made a conscious choice not to vote. A conscious choice is a legitimate democratic decision.

Wayne Brown’s campaign for the Auckland mayoralty may have succeeded partly because it targeted people who traditionally vote — property owners and people over 50. People who are less likely to be Māori.

However, positioning Māori as Treaty partners to the Crown may also be a factor, because it overshadows The Māori citizenship as a share in the Crown’s authority to govern.

Participating in the affairs of government is a greater political authority than partnership. The state is a large and powerful institution and always the senior partner in the relationships it forms. Its partners may have a voice, but they don’t have the right to help make decisions. Decision-making is the task of the participant.

Democracy requires complementary participation
While there are examples of council/Māori partnerships that work well, democracy requires that they complement participation, rather than take its place.

Te Tiriti wasn’t a partnership between races. It was an agreement over the distribution of political authority. Rangatiratanga, as an independent Māori authority over Māori affairs, on the one hand, and the right of the British Crown to establish government on the other.

Te Tiriti didn’t intend that the rights of government should override the rights of rangatiratanga. Indeed, it provided a check against this outcome by granting Māori the rights and privileges of British subjects.

In 1840 those rights and privileges were not extensive. But, in 2022 they have developed into the rights, privileges and political capacities of New Zealand citizenship.

Most importantly, citizenship means that everybody has the right and obligation to participate in public decision-making. They should expect that their contributions have the same likelihood of influence as anybody else’s.

Nobody should have reason to feel so alienated from the system that they can’t see the point of voting. Māori wards are supposed to guard against this possibility by supporting active participation and influence.

Influence means being able to participate with reference to culture and colonial context.

Yet, in 2019, the Iwi Chairs’ Forum commissioned a report on constitutional transformation, Matike Mai Aotearoa.

Ethnically exclusive Pakeha body
It comments on what rangatiratanga looks like, but it sees citizenship as the domain of its partner, the Crown. It sees the Crown as an ethnically exclusive Pakeha body governing only for “its people”.

In other words, government is for other people. It’s not for us because rangatiratanga is where our exclusive political authority lies. Our relationship with government is as Treaty partner.

Another view is that rangatiratanga and citizenship are different but complementary. While voting doesn’t matter if one is a partner, it’s essential if one is a participant. Participation means, as Justice Joe Williams, argued, that, there is a need for a mindset shift away from the pervasive assumption that the Crown is Pākehā [non-Māori], English-speaking, and distinct from Māori rather than representative of them.

“Increasingly, in the 21st century, the Crown is also Māori. If the nation is to move forward, this reality must be grasped.”

In 2022, I was commissioned by the Ministerial Review into the Future for Local Government to write a discussion paper on Māori and local government.

The review is required to consider Treaty partnership. But it has also decided to be “bold” in its thinking.

Boldness could mean strengthening Te Tiriti and democracy by thinking beyond partnership as a treaty principle, established by the Court of Appeal in 1987, to thinking about the real substance of rangatiratanga and citizenship.

Local government functions by iwi
Rangatiratanga could mean that not all local government functions need to be carried out by councils. There may be some that are more logically and justly carried out by iwi, hapu, marae, or other Māori political communities.

The ideal that decisions are best made at the point closest to where their effects are experienced is a well-established democratic principle.

Citizenship is different from rangatiratanga but especially important because if Māori are, like everybody else, shareholders in the Crown’s authority to govern, then they are entitled to make culturally distinctive contributions to council decisions.

They are also entitled to expect that councils’ powers and decision-making processes will work for them as well as they work for anybody else.

Increasing voter turnout depends on people believing that councils make a positive contribution to their lives.

Professor Dominic O’Sullivan (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu) is adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology’s (AUT) Taupua Waiora Centre for Māori Health Research, and professor of political science at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by Stuff and is republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Wellington’s Tory Whanau has convincingly won the mayoralty race for Te Whanganui-a-Tara in a triumph for diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand’s local government elections.

She said getting the call to say she had won was “pretty wild”.

Whanau ran as an independent, but was a Green Party chief of staff and digital director for six years before joining local politics.

• READ MORE:  NZ local elections: A Pacific mayor possible for biggest city Auckland?
• Other NZ local body election reports

She beat Andy Foster who was running for a second term as mayor after holding a seat on the city council since 1992. Foster finished second, Ray Chung came in third and Paul Eagle fourth.

In the other major cities, Phil Mauger was winning in Christchurch, Jules Radich prevailing in Dunedin and Wayne Brown claiming victory in Auckland, defeating the Pacific hopeful Fa’anānā Efeso Collins.

Paula Southgate is set to be re-elected as Hamilton’s mayor.

One-term councillor Jules Radich has won the Dunedin mayoralty off incumbent Aaron Hawkins. Radich garnered almost twice the number of first preference votes than any of his rivals.

Narrow lead
The Christchurch council said Mauger had a narrow 4000-vote majority over David Meates with 50,086 votes.

Brown is leading the Auckland mayoralty race with 144,619 votes, ahead of Efeso Collins by 54,808 votes. This progress result reflects about 85 to 90 per cent of votes counted after voting closed at midday today.

Progress results show Tim Shadbolt — who held the record for most elected terms as mayor, eight — losing heavily in Invercargill, with former deputy mayor Nobby Clark winning the top job in Invercargill, and broadcaster Marcus Lush conceding in a tweet.

Results also show Rangitikei mayor Andy Watson has won his fourth term in office, while Neil Brown has been re-elected Mayor of Ashburton by a large majority. Nigel Bowen looks to be re-elected as Timaru mayor and Kirsten Wise will return as Napier mayor for a second term.

Tania Tapsell has been elected as Rotorua’s new mayor. She takes over from Steve Chadwick, who was mayor for three terms. Vince Cocurullo is on track to win the Whangāreri mayoralty and Grant Smith has been releected as Palmerston North mayor.

Andrew Tripe will be the new mayor of Whanganui, beating incumbent Hamish McDouall by about 2000 votes, and Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy has been re-elected for another term.

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The 19-17 vote by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday drew an angry response from Uyghur and other human rights advocates, who accused governments in the voting majority of pandering to China.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic-majority country, was among council members that voted to block discussion of a United Nations report, which found Beijing’s abuses against the Uyghur community could constitute “crimes against humanity.”

Other nations rejecting the proposal included Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. The Gambia, Libya and Malaysia were among 11 countries abstaining.

Achsanul Habib, director of human rights and humanitarian affairs at Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the council should be “an inclusive forum for countries to have impartial dialogue” and “not [be] selective” in its approach to human rights issues.

“We voted ‘no’ because we don’t want the politicization of the Human Rights Council, [for it] to be used for the purpose of political rivalry,” he told a news conference.

“In this regard, Indonesia also cooperates, coordinates and consults with all parties, including with the countries that support [the proposal], with western countries and China.”

The call for discussion followed an August United Nations report that said China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

The report said “serious human rights violations” had been committed in XUAR in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies.

Chinese regional authorities are believed to have held close to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since early 2017.

Febrian Ruddyard, Indonesia’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, explained the “no” vote by saying the human rights council should focus on building an environment that encourages all countries to fulfill their human rights obligations.

“We believe the approach taken by the council today will not yield meaningful progress … especially because it does not enjoy the consent and support of the concerned country,” he told council members.

“Based on these reasons … we are therefore not in a position to support the draft decision … regarding the convening of a debate on the situation of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

Meanwhile, China accused Western countries of propagating “falsehoods,” insisting that issues related to Xinjiang “are about countering violent terrorism, radicalization and separatism.”

“For some time now, the U.S. and some other Western countries have been misinforming the public about Xinjiang and seeking political manipulation in the name of human rights simply to smear China’s image and contain China’s development,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement posted Thursday on its website. 

‘Refusing to stand on the right side of history’

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, alleged that China was using the pretext of religious extremism to carry out atrocities against the Uyghur minority.

“China has carried out its genocide against Uyghurs largely because of Uyghurs’ belief in Islam. … Basically, China has declared war on Islam and has been attacking Islamic beliefs and values,” he told Radio Free Asia (RFA), an online news service affiliated with BenarNews.

“For Muslim countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Qatar and UAE to vote at the U.N. in support of China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghur Muslims is not only an assault on Uyghur Muslims, but also an assault on Islam itself. To stand together with a regime that is committing genocide against a Muslim people is to be complicit in the same genocide.”

Human rights are universal, said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs.

“By refusing to stand on the right side of history and justice, governments that voted no or abstained have made it easier for China to carry out the ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, and hindered the progress toward real justice and accountability for the victims,” he told RFA.

Meanwhile, Greg Barton, an Indonesia scholar at Australia’s Deakin University, said Jakarta’s move was “disappointing, but not surprising.”

“It would have been good to see Indonesia being more bold, but at least, unlike a number of other countries, Indonesia did not simply rehash the propaganda of the Chinese government and deny that there is a problem of human rights abuses on a massive scale occurring in Xinjiang,” Barton told BenarNews.

Domestic political considerations also influenced the Indonesian position, he said.

“A ‘yes’ vote would have been used to argue that President [Joko Widodo] Jokowi was capitulating to pressure from his hardline Islamist critics,” he said.

It seems likely that a major factor was that Jakarta was facing intense pressure from Beijing and did not want to trigger a major falling out with the Chinese government, he said.

However, Taiwanese scholar Si Jianyu believes the lure of investment from Beijing is the reason Indonesia and some other Central Asian republics voted against discussing the Uyghur situation at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“The real reason for Indonesia to be against the motion is that China’s Belt and Road Initiative has big investment in Indonesia, and they won’t forget about the investments and focus on the human rights issues in Xinjiang,” Si, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, told RFA.

“Xinjiang’s human rights situations are not important to them. The human rights records in their own countries are not so good either.”

Rene Pattiradjawane, a scholar at the Center for China Studies in Jakarta, said Indonesia’s vote was in line with its non-alignment foreign policy.

“Indonesia should not be lured into a campaign to vilify China for the interests of other countries,” he told BenarNews.

“Indonesia in any context will not want to join anti-China bullying.”

Alim Seytoff of RFA Uyghur and Gao Feng of RFA Mandarin contributed to this report by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tria Dianti for BenarNews.

The race for the Auckland mayoralty ends this weekend in the Aotearoa New Zealand local elections and polls indicate that either Pacific contender Fa’anānā Efeso Collins or Wayne Brown will claim the chains.

RNZ News spoke to some prominent Aucklanders about who they believe should get the city’s top job.

Former world heavyweight boxing title contender David Tua said he was firmly in the corner of Efeso Collins.

• READ MORE: It’s never been easier to vote right up until Election Day
• Other NZ local body election reports

Tua believed Collins would be a mayor for all, in particular the youth.

“At the end of the day they are our future and I believe he is a man the youth can relate to.”

Tua said Collins had a humanitarian nature.

“What he’s standing for is for the people, all the people. It’s always about the people and I believe that’s what he’s about.”

The ‘man for the job’
Advocate Shaneel Lal believes Collins is the man for the job due to the past support he has shown to the LGBTQI+ community.

Lal said Collins had progressed in his views and proved he had a backbone when he offered help during their campaign to ban conversion therapy.

“We need to give people room for growth, he advocated against same-sex marriage in 2012, the bill passed in 2013, in those 10 years he has come on a long journey of learning, that was 10 years ago and to me he clearly has changed.”

Lal said Collins had the temperament for the job.

“I also think Efeso is calm and collected and open to ideas and change, he has always been respectful to me and spoken with kindness even when he has disagreed with me.”

Former North Shore mayor George Wood is backing Wayne Brown.

“Wayne has already run a district council I think that will give him good knowledge of what it is like to run a local government organisation.”

Wood said Brown did have some room for improvement, however.

“He does have a tendency to say things off the cuff without realising the significance of what he is saying and it is an area he will have to improve that communication.”

Getting the balance right
Prominent activist Lisa Prager said Brown would get her tick.

“Wayne has the experience in both the corporate environment and also understands small local businesses so he understands what this city needs and how to get that balance right.”

Prager said council needed restructuring which Brown could deliver.

“I think it is excessive in its spending and failing to deliver the essential services that we all need.”

Actor Oscar Kightley said as a fellow Samoan man, Collins was the clear choice.

“When you are Samoan you experience different aspects of life Aotearoa including prejudice and discrimination and when you’ve fought through that and succeeded it just gives you skills to see the bigger picture.”

Kightley said it was time for change.

“I love how he’s changed his approach from when he first entered council, I think he’s really listened to all the diverse voices out there.”

Making a difference
Well-known celebrant Ronny Franks is voting Brown.

“I think he would make a huge difference, I think there could be good changes, particularly with Auckland Transport and other areas that are sort of lagging behind at the moment.”

Franks believed Brown’s personality would serve him well in office, despite the occasional gaffe.

“He’s a no nonsense man, he probably does rattle a lot of feathers but when you have to get something done you have to get it done and there is a right way of doing it and he does things the right way.”

Monday was the last day to get votes in the post but there are vote boxes at supermarkets, transport hubs and council buildings around Tāmaki Makaurau.

Auckland has a population of 1.7 million.

• Voting closes at midday tomorrow – where you can vote

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

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Rachael Mario isn’t just any woman, she is special in that she hails from the idyllic South Pacific island of Rotuma.

And it is her love for social work which she hopes will propel her and her Roskill Community Voice and City Vision team onto the Mt Roskill board.

It is also the first time a Pasifika person has decided to stand for the Puketapapa Local Board in Mt Roskill, in the current Auckland local government elections that began today.

• READ MORE:  Mayoral debate cancelled after candidate withdraws from race
• Rotuman social justice advocate puts key bid for Roskill Community Voice

Having lived in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland for 33 years has given her a perspective on social justice and diversity for Auckland.

Much of that comes from time spent at the Whānau Community Hub in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill where her and her team do a sterling job in running different programmes for the good folk of Roskill.

For instance, every first Wednesday of the month they host a free seniors lunch, and it not just for Rotumans but for the diverse group of seniors who reside in Mt Roskill and who yearn for company and a “good old talanoa”.

Quite apart from that, Mario and her team would be out delivering groceries to the needy, or holding health and well-being, financial literacy and language classes for children.

Community doubles
That the community doubles as the Rotuman-Fijian Centre is a testament to her 30+ plus years of marriage to Auckland Fiji human rights advocate Nik Naidu and former journalist, who she met in Fiji when he was a budding radio personality at FM96 in Suva.

When you first meet Rachael Mario she greets you with big smile and utters charming Noa’ia (the Rotuman language greeting) and then she inquires about you with an inquisitive mind just to see how things are going for you.

As Mario explains, the Hub isn’t just for Rotumans but is used by a plethora of other groups, including the Moana-Pasifika Seniors. It is also home to the recently formed Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN), which publishes the Pacific Journalism Review at the behest of founder Professor David Robie.

With such a diverse bunch using the Whānau Community Hub it is small wonder that Mario would branch out and try to incorporate more diversity in her already busy lifestyle.

That is why the chair of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Inc. is now standing for her local Puketapapa Local Board in Mt Roskill.

But that has not been without social injustice challenges that her community has faced for many years.

Lack of language funding
Included in those is the housing crisis in Auckland but much closer to her heart was the lack of funding provided to Rotuman language programmes which was given a cold shoulder by local boards.

“The biggest challenge, which isn’t fair, is the discrimination against the Rotuman Community. The Ministry of Pacific Peoples choose to run a different language week against our community-led Rotuman language week programme,” she says.

Other issues she lists are climate change and the environment which she says are huge for Auckland and wider New Zealand.

What also occupies her mind is the city centre, economic and cultural development, better outcomes for Māori, wastewater and storm water, transport and parks and communities.

In a nutshell, Rachael Mario is all things to all communities.

Voting ends on October 8.

• Three fellow candidates from the Fiji Collective contesting the local body elections are: Anne DEGIA-PALA (C&R – Communities and Residents) –  Whau Local Board candidate
• Ilango KRISHNAMOORTHY (Labour) – Manurewa-Papakura Ward councillor & Manurewa Local Board candidate
  Vincent NAIDU (Labour) – Waitakere Licensing Trust – Ward 4 (Henderson) candidate

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Sri Krishnamurthi.

Arjón, the founder and editor of Facebook-based news outlet A Qué Le Temes, was found dead on Tuesday, August 16, in San Luis Río Colorado, a town in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on the U.S. border, according to news reports. According to an August 16 statement by the Sonora state prosecutor’s office (FGE), Arjón’s body was found near an expressway southwest of San Luis Río Colorado. In the statement, the FGE said the reporter appeared to have died from a violent blow to the head.

Arjón, 62, was first reported missing on social media on August 9, according to news reports, although the FGE said on August 15 on Twitter that no official missing person report had been filed. The FGE statement said the prosecutor had not yet ruled out any line of investigation.

On Wednesday, August 17, San Luis Río Colorado municipal authorities told local media that a suspect was arrested for his alleged involvement in the abduction and killing of Arjón and that the vehicle allegedly used while carrying out the crime had been located on August 3. According to the statement, the vehicle had been reported stolen in the U.S. state of California. No further details about the identity of the suspect of the motive for the killing were given.

Several telephone calls by CPJ to the FGE for comment on August 16 and 17 were not answered.

“The tragic and brutal killing of Juan Arjón López is only the latest in a year that is already one of the deadliest in recent history for the Mexican press,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Although some arrests have been made in earlier cases of press killings this year, an ongoing climate of impunity continues to fuel these attacks. Mexican authorities must conduct a swift and thorough investigation into Arjón’s killing and bring those responsible to justice.”

According to Humberto Melgoza, the editor of San Luis Río Colorado-based website Contraseña and a friend of Arjón’s, the reporter started the outlet on Facebook several months before his death. Melgoza added that Arjón had worked on and off as a journalist in the past and had been a collaborator for OmniCable, a now-defunct radio station, and that he combined his work as a reporter with delivering meals for a local restaurant.

According to Melgoza, Arjón had a troubled private life and lived in a substance abuse rehabilitation center in San Luis Río Colorado at the time of his death. “He was a good guy, though,” Melgoza told CPJ. “He was very lively, very sociable.”

Arjón reported on a wide range of subjects for A Qué Le Temes, including crime, local politics and the environment. The most recent articles were posted on August 2 and included two short news stories about the arrests of suspects of robberies and theft. Although his disappearance was not widely reported until August 9, CPJ was not able to verify whether he had stopped writing articles after August 2 or whether he disappeared on or shortly after that date.

Melgoza told CPJ that San Luis Río Colorado has recently seen a spike in violence, which he attributed to criminal gangs. “There is a lot of presence of drug traffickers here, lots of shootouts,” he said. According to local newspaper La Tribuna de San Luis, the municipalty had the fifth highest homicide rate in Sonora in 2021.

Mexico is the deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere for journalists. According to CPJ research, at least 11 reporters were killed in the country this year. At least three journalists were murdered in retaliation for their work, and CPJ is investigating eight other killings to determine whether they were work-related.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

There’s a temperature threshold beyond which the human body simply can’t survive — one that some parts of the world are increasingly starting to cross. It’s a “wet bulb temperature” of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. 

To understand what that means, it helps to start with how the human body regulates its temperature. Our bodies need to stay right around 98.6 degrees F. If that number gets too high or too low, bad things can happen. And since bodies are always producing heat from normal functions, like digesting, thinking, and pumping blood, we need a place for that heat to go. That’s why our bodies have a built-in cooling system: sweat. 

Sweat works by using a physics hack called evaporative cooling. It takes quite a bit of heat to turn water from a liquid to a gas. As droplets of sweat leave our skin, they pull a lot of heat away from our bodies. When the air is really dry, a little bit of sweat can cool us down a lot. Humid air, on the other hand, already contains a lot of water vapor, which makes it harder for sweat to evaporate. As a result, we can’t cool down as well. 

This is where the term wet bulb temperature comes in: It’s a measure of heat and humidity, essentially the temperature we experience after sweat cools us off. We can measure the wet bulb temperature by sticking a damp little sleeve on the end of a thermometer and spinning it around. Water evaporates from the sleeve, cooling down the thermometer. If it’s humid, it hardly cools down at all, and if the air is dry, it cools down a lot. That final reading after the thermometer has cooled down is the wet bulb temperature. 

In Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on Earth, temperatures often get up to 120 degrees F — but the air is so dry that it actually only registers a wet body temperature of 77 degrees F. A humid state like Florida could reach that same wet bulb temperature on a muggy 86 degree day. 

When the wet bulb temperature gets above 95 degrees F, our bodies lose their ability to cool down, and the consequences can be deadly. Until recently, scientists didn’t think we’d cross that threshold outside of doomsday climate change scenarios.  But a 2020 study looking at detailed weather records around the world found we’ve already crossed the threshold at least 14 times in the last 40 years. So far, these hot, humid events have all been clustered in two regions: Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. 

The warm water in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf makes the air above extremely humid. Inland, on the Arabian Peninsula, the arid continental heat causes temperatures to skyrocket. And when these two systems meet, they can tip the wet bulb temperature above that 95 degree F wet bulb threshold. 

In Pakistan, it’s a little less clear what’s driving these hot, humid extremes. But scientists think it’s caused by warm, humid air flowing inland during the monsoon season. As it passes over the Indus River, the air only gets more humid until it hits cities like Jacobabad, often referred to as one of the hottest cities on earth. To date, Jacobabad has crossed that deadly wet bulb threshold a whopping six times — the most of any single city on record. 

If we plot all these events over time, it’s clear these hot, humid extremes are increasing as the planet warms. Scientists expect these events to occur even more frequently in these regions going forward. Other places like coastal Mexico and a large portion of South Asia might soon be at risk of crossing these thresholds for the first time. 

Extreme heat is deadly at temperatures well below the 95-degree threshold. Healthy young adults can experience serious health effects at a wet bulb temperature of 86 degrees F. And even dry heat can be dangerous when people’s bodies simply can’t pump out sweat fast enough to cool themselves. 

Worldwide, extreme heat likely kills at least 300,000 people each year. But it can be notoriously difficult to track the death counts associated with individual heat waves. Heat often kills indirectly — triggering heart attacks, strokes, or organ failures — making it hard to determine whether those deaths were caused by the heat or an unrelated medical condition. 

Even relatively mild heat waves can be deadly when they occur in places where people are not prepared for those temperature extremes. For example, a 2010 heat wave in Russia, where summer temperatures rarely rise above 74 degrees F, killed an estimated 55,000 people despite only hitting about 100 degrees F.

Heat-related death counts are even harder to calculate in regions without accurate or timely death records. In Pakistan — home to many of the world’s humid heat records — the government doesn’t officially track deaths, said Nausheen Anwar, director of the Karachi Urban Lab, a research program that studies the impacts of extreme heat in Pakistan. Instead, her lab often relies on interviews with doctors, ambulance drivers, or graveyard owners to calculate the impacts of heat waves.

With every degree of global warming, these dangerous heat events are becoming even more likely. Stopping climate change may be our best chance to keep them as rare as possible.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The temperature threshold the human body can’t survive on Aug 17, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jesse Nichols.

Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you need others to support your movement and not erect walls and roadblocks. To change what does not work, you need others who are affected to accept the change.

Basically, freedom is a social relationship, where me having my freedom depends on you having yours. A system is required to secure this social arrangement.

Systems shape us

We create systems in order to make things happen. A system has three elements: a purpose or goal; a set of rules, policies, and procedures designed to achieve the goal; and relationships that are shaped by applying the rules, policies, and procedures.

The systems we create are not separate from us; they organize us. Consider competitive sports. There is a goal (to win). There are rules of the game and penalties for violating them. And there are participants, whose behavior and relationships are shaped by the game.

The goal of the capitalist system is to extract capital from human labor. Achieving that goal requires a system with rules, penalties, and social relationships that all support the goal.

This three-part essay examines how the capitalist system robs us of all three basic freedoms; what blocks us from claiming our freedom; and how we can create a social system that supports freedom for all.

Part 1. My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It?

It is commonly believed that we have little control over our work lives, but that life outside of work – family and social relationships – is ours to shape.

In reality, time outside of work is largely consumed with two things: replacing the energy we put out on the job so we can work again the next day, and raising the next generation of workers to replace the current one. Production depends on this reproduction of the worker.

The tight connection between production and reproduction is difficult to see because they are organized differently. Production is organized socially, with billions of workers linked in global chains of manufacture and distribution. Reproduction is organized privately, with individuals and families expected to replenish and reproduce themselves with no outside support.

Employers benefit from privatized reproduction. They can hire workers to produce while avoiding the cost of replacing them, even though their business depends on it. According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business,

Paid maternity leave is a totally ridiculous kind of demand to expect employers to pay. Those who want to have babies should pay for them.

Because production and reproduction are differently organized, it seems they exist in two different spheres: an economic sphere of work shaped by capitalism, where one has little control; and a personal sphere of friendship and family, not shaped by capitalism, where one is presumed to have total control.

In reality, work and life-outside-of-work are parts of a single capitalist system. Despite the relentless message that we make our own lives and ‘there is always a choice,’ it is impossible to have a personal life that is separate from, or exists outside of, the capitalist system. Lack of freedom on the job requires a lack of freedom outside it.

The more authorities restrict reproduction and individual behavior, the more the myth of two spheres breaks down to reveal only one sphere, capitalism, that dominates every aspect of life.

You cannot refuse, and you cannot leave

The goal of capitalist production is to produce capital. Capital is profit that is invested to extract more profit. Profit comes from paying workers less than the value of what they produce. The lower the wages, the higher the profit.

Jeff Bezos rakes in billions of dollars in profit by paying workers far less than the value of their work. He then uses this profit to purchase other businesses that enable him to exploit even more workers and make even more profit. Bezos is accumulating capital. The more capital he accumulates, the greater his power over society.

No one freely chooses to work all their life to produce capital to make others rich. The worker must be robbed of the freedom to say no, to leave, or to change the system. To maintain this social arrangement everyone, including the worker, must do their part.

Employers rely on the State to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. As Braverman explained in Labor and Monopoly Capital,

In the most elementary sense, the State is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever-more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about.

The State gives employers the legal authority to dictate the conditions of employment. Unionized workers can modify some of these conditions, but they have no legal right to challenge the nature of the work or how it is organized, to determine staffing levels, or to curb executive pay. All major work-related decisions fall under management rights. The State uses the legal system, the police, and the military to enforce those rights.

States allow employers to use, abuse, and discard workers as the cost of doing business. When hazardous working conditions cause sickness, injury, and death, the State sides with the employer. Workers’ claims for compensation are minimized or denied, fines levied against companies are too small to change anything, and no employer ever goes to jail for killing a worker.

States use legislation and monetary policy to prevent workers’ demands from cutting into profits. The legal minimum wage sets the bar so low that the average worker must go into debt to pay for basic essentials.

The only option for those who cannot work or refuse to do so is appeal to the State for support. Such support is notoriously difficult to get and kept miserably low to deter all but the most desperate. Ontario makes it easier to access euthanasia than to access social support.

States restrict travel in order to block workers from escaping to a better situation. Around the world, millions of people are incarcerated for the ‘crime’ of crossing a border in search of a better life.

Border restrictions trap workers in low-waged areas. Employers are free to move production in and out of these low-waged areas, giving them leverage to lower the pay of workers in higher-waged areas.

States use immigration controls to manage the size and composition of the workforce to benefit employers. Lower unemployment increases the pressure to raise wages, and importing more workers lowers that pressure. Denying equal rights to newcomers enables employers to underpay and overwork them, exerting a downward pressure on the pay and conditions of all workers.

All these measures ensure that, no matter how hard they labor or how much they protest, the worker is blocked from escaping their assigned role as a capital-producing machine.

What personal life?

The concept of ‘personal life’ ignores how much our lives are restricted outside work.

The modern family is a State-regulated institution. Laws dictate who can marry and who cannot, who is a family member and who is not, and how many unrelated people may live in a dwelling. Laws enforce gender norms, restrict access to contraception and abortion, and determine at what age a person may engage in adult activities.

One cannot leave a family at will. The State can forcibly return runaway youngsters to their families, place them in alternate families, or confine them in detention centers. Spouses who want to leave their marriages and parents seeking relief from childcare duties can be held financially responsible for ‘dependents.’

The State defines what it means to be a fit parent and can remove children from those it declares unfit. The State decides if families separated by national borders will be reunited or remain apart, and whether family members will be deported.

State laws compel young people to attend school, whether they want to or not, and parents are expected to enforce this law. In Jacksonville, Florida,

if a child has more than five unexcused absences [from school] in a calendar month or 15 unexcused absences in a 90-day period, parents can be arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to 60 days in jail.

Not free to be me

Organizing reproduction in family units demands distinct gender roles; men are cast as the primary producers, and women as the primary care-givers. Someone has to care for the young, sick, and infirm, and it’s typically the lower-paid woman who is paid less precisely because of her care-taking duties.

A family system based on reproducing couples allows no room for gender fluidity or for being intersex or trans. Those who do not conform to their socially assigned gender role risk punishment in the legal system or treatment in the medical system. As long as reproduction is rooted in the family, we cannot escape the pressure of binary gender roles and all the oppression they generate.

Capitalism favors standardized production, where large numbers of identical objects can be quickly produced with less labor and more profit. To produce uniform outcomes, the worker must make the same moves over and over again. This assembly-line model has been adopted in every industry, including hospitals and schools. As one principal instructed his teachers,

When I stand in the hallway, I should be able to hear all fourth grades saying the same thing. Do not deviate from the scripted program and do not fall behind in the pacing plan.

The demand for uniformity dominates every area of life. To maximize profit, the capitalist class engineer plants and animals to eliminate variation, reduce workers to the status of interchangeable cogs in a machine, and convince people of all nations to desire the same things and behave in the same ways.

Shut up and conform

Questioning makes progress possible; it invites us to examine what we are doing and why, and to consider different options. Capitalism makes questioning policies or those who make them a serious offense, even treasonous. We cannot speak freely or share vital information. The relentless persecution of whistle-blowers Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Steven Donziger serves as a general warning not to question authority or hold it accountable.

A system that demands conformity cannot tolerate dissent or diversity. In the past, people who thought, felt, or behaved differently were considered interesting, odd, eccentric, colorful, or characters. Today, such people risk being labeled ‘mentally ill,’ forcibly drugged, and confined to a psychiatric institution, possibly indefinitely.

The social power of modern psychiatry cannot be explained on the basis of its scientific validity or clinical effectiveness, both of which are highly contested. Its influence comes from its usefulness to the capitalist system.

Since slavery days, the State has partnered with medicine and psychiatry to enforce conformity and obedience. Today, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) catalogs unacceptable behavior in every area of life, with unacceptable behavior meaning protesting how things are, or disturbing others with your protest.

Being trapped in an oppressive social system is so painful that many people break down, lash out, use drugs, escape into fantasy, and so on. Mass misery cannot be acknowledged without bringing the entire capitalist system into question. Instead, modern medical systems practice damage control, where the sick and injured are patched up and returned to the same situations that harmed them.

Controlling fertility

States control reproduction to manage the size and composition of the workforce; minimize the cost of social support; and enforce social control. What the pregnant person wants or does not want is not considered.

To lower the birth rate, China imposed a limit of one child per family in 1980. Violators could be punished with fines, job loss, forced abortions, and loss of access to social services. As the birth rate fell, the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy in 2016, followed by a three-child policy in 2021.

To raise the birth rate, Nazi Germany outlawed all forms of birth control, including abortion, with stiff penalties for violators. ‘German-blooded’ women with large families were awarded the Mother’s Cross: bronze for up to five children; silver for six or seven; and gold for eight or more.

To increase the enslaved labor force in the US, Black women and girls were forcibly impregnated and compelled to bear their rapists’ children. When importing enslaved people was outlawed in 1808, forced reproduction became even more important to the slave economy.

Planters advertised for [Black women] as they did for breeding cows or mares, in farm magazines and catalogues. They shared tips with one another on how to get maximum value out of their breeders. They sold or lent enslaved men as studs and were known to lock teenage boys and girls together to mate in a kind of bullpen. They propagated new slaves themselves, and allowed their sons to [do so].

To minimize the cost of social support and reduce the risk of rebellion, States sterilize those they consider ‘surplus’ or socially unfit, including Black, Indigenous, imprisoned, addicted, disabled, and poor people.

During the Great Depression, the International Congress of Eugenics met in New York City to discuss the mass sterilization of unemployed workers. One speaker declared,

A major portion of this vast army of unemployed are social inadequates, and in many cases mental defectives, who might have been spared the misery they are now facing if they had never been born.

The US-funded program to sterilize Puerto Rican women had two goals: to reduce the number of poor people on the island; and to promote the migration of women workers to New York, which would be easier if they had no children.

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, approximately one-third of the female population of Puerto Rico was sterilized, making it highest rate of sterilization in the world.

In the US today, 31 states plus Washington, DC, legally allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities

Forced birth

When the US Supreme Court abolished the legal right to abortion, it shattered the belief that our bodies belong to us, and that life-outside-of-work is ours to shape.

When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. By doing so, state lawmakers force their bodies into the service of state interests.

States typically prioritize the welfare of the fetus over that of the parent. Prospective parents are bombarded with advice on how to produce a healthy child and can be penalized for behaviors that risk fetal health. In the US today, a miscarriage can get you charged with manslaughter or murder. In El Salvador, a women was sentenced to 50 years in prison after a stillbirth.

Protecting the pregnant person is not a priority. There are no public warnings that pregnancy can cause severe pain, traumatic injury, hemorrhage, sepsis, sterility, disability, and death.

Women in the US are 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. In Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times as likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to term than from an abortion. The United States is the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, ranking 55th overall in the world.

Because staying pregnant is more dangerous than having an abortion, a complete abortion ban in the US would increase the number of pregnancy-related deaths by an estimated 21 percent overall, and 33 percent for Black women. These figures do not include the rise in deaths from unsafe abortions.

The Supreme Court refused to consider these matters. Justice Alito wrote,

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.

It seems counter-productive for capitalism to restrict abortion. Women need to control their fertility so they can work outside the home. Denying this control has a devastating impact on their earning potential, as well as disrupting industries that depend on female labor.

The capitalist class are not united on all things. For some sections, social control is the highest priority. They rightly fear that people who are free to choose in any area of life will push for freedom on the job. To prevent that, they claim the right to dictate what people can and cannot do, and use the State to impose their beliefs on society.

Authoritarian

A tiny elite can only rule a large majority by robbing them of the choice to live any other way. By definition, such rule is authoritarian.

As the gap grows between the wealthy capitalist class and the impoverished working class, the risk of rebellion rises. To maintain social control, governments all over the world are becoming more authoritarian. Two recent US examples include the Trump insurrection and the proliferation of forced-birth laws.

In Canada, a seemingly liberal government has adopted an unprecedented number of Secret Orders-in-Council that are never published and cannot be accessed by Parliament or the public. Secret decision-making enables elites to enact policies that ordinary people would reject, such as exporting billions of dollars in weaponry to the US and Saudi Arabia. A genuine democracy has no need for secret policies.

Technological advances make it easier to enforce authoritarian control. A 2011 report warned,

Within the next few years, it will be technically possible and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.

Fear of majority rebellion has spurred increased funding for police and expanded police powers.

The budgets of modern police departments are staggeringly high and ever increasing, with no parallel in history, producing incarceration rates unseen around the world. If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history — but the opposite is true.

That is how afraid of us they are.

Fed Up

Having suffered through a lethal pandemic, most people are working harder and longer for less, while profits and executive pay soar. Inflation is rapidly rising, yet the modest demand that wages at least match inflation is rejected as excessive and inflationary. Corporate profiteers get no such criticism, even though fatter profits account for more than 50 percent of increased prices.

A US report found, “markups and profits skyrocketed in 2021 to their highest recorded level since the 1950s.” The average price markup was 72 percent higher than a company’s costs, pushing net profits to the highest value on record. The authors conclude,

Since markups are unusually and suddenly so high, there is room for reversing them with little economic harm and likely societal benefit, including lower prices and less inequality.

They must have missed the capitalist memo that profits are sacred and workers are expendable.

Instead of forcing corporations to lower prices or raise wages, officials are jacking up interest rates on loans and mortgages. This has the effect of undercutting wages, driving workers deeper into debt, and making it more difficult to pay for essentials, such as food, housing, and medical care.

Understandably, confidence in capitalist institutions is falling. Only 36 percent of Americans think the US system of government is sound, and only 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the US.

When the majority lose faith that the existing system can solve their problems, they look for alternatives. One result is a global resurgence of working-class rebellion with millions of people protesting their suffering and demanding fundamental social change.

Coming soon: Part 2. Why Freedom Cannot be Won Within the System that Takes it Away.

Image credit: The Jagged Word

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Susan Rosenthal.

We speak with Marxist economist Richard Wolff about how experts forecast another economic recession in the United States, with inflation at a historic high and a federal minimum wage that hasn’t changed for 13 years. The Federal Reserve plan to combat rising inflation by raising interest rates delivers a “body blow to a working class” already suffering from decades of upward wealth redistribution and a pandemic, says Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst and visiting professor at The New School. His latest book is “The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

An NLD member told RFA the troops had tried to hide Kyaw Myo Min’s body.

“He was tied up at his back and buried on the shore of the creek, but he was not buried well and his head was visible. It seems the body was dumped on the shore of the creek and covered with leaves. It was difficult to identify the body as it had decomposed. There were no visible bullet or stab wounds”, he said.

A member of Kyaw Myo Min’s family, who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said the family knew he was in danger because it was impossible to contact him after his arrest.

Last Saturday locals also found the bodies of the other two arrested NLD members, Pan Myint and Ko Ko Maung. The bodies were dumped in Hpa-An township close to where the MP’s body was found.

There are a number of infantry troops stationed in Belin township: the Thein Zayat-based Kha Ma Ya 207 brigade, the Kyaik Hto-based Kha La Ya , Kha Ma Ya 102 from Tha Hton, along with Military Battalion 33 and the Border Guard Force Brigade. It is not yet known which troops were involved in the arrests and killings.

Calls to the military council spokesman by RFA went unanswered and it has not released any statement on Kyaw Myo Min’s arrest.

One of his family members told RFA the local who was arrested with the NLD members managed to escape so the troops broke the other captives’ legs and critically injured Kyaw Myo Min.

“Now they are doing what the powerful do: anything they want without following laws regarding prisoners,” said an NLD source and colleague of the murdered MP.

“I will record their illegal activities so I can recall them during the [coming] revolution. People will know who committed the crimes and they will be made to suffer one day.” 

Kyaw Myo Min became an MP in 2011. He also served as chairman of the Belin branch of the NLD.

An NLD statement released in May said 917 NLD members had been arrested since the coup on February 1, 2021. It also said 18 party members, including MPs, died due to inadequate health care and brutal interrogations.

Many NLD members joined the mass protests after the 2021 coup and armed themselves to fight after junta forces launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

The post My Body, Myself appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Judy Gumbo.

The victim was identified as 30-year-old Sai Myat Soe. Residents said he was not from the village but came from Sa Don Gyi village, also in Salingyi township.

The junta forces guarding the copper project carried out raids on nearby villages, including Moe Gyo Pyin (North), Zee Taw, Sal Tel and Phaungkata (North) villages from June 21 to 24. The man went missing on June 24 when the junta forces set fire to his village, residents told RFA.

A Phaungkata villager told RFA they found the mutilated body at around 10 a.m. on June 26.

“The body was found near the school where he was arrested, locally called Phaungkata North village,” a resident told RFA. “The head, body and arms had been separated and scattered. Everything had to be collected and cremated.”

Locals said Sai Myat Soe may have been killed after he was arrested when the junta forces set fire to villages near Sa Don Gyi.

Calls to the military council spokesman by RFA went unanswered on Tuesday afternoon. 

On April 21, 16 local PDFs groups issued a warning that the Letpadaung copper project, a joint venture with the Chinese Government and operated by Wanbao Mining Ltd., would be attacked because it could provide income for the military junta..

Shortly after the PDFs’ announcement, the military council stepped up security at the mine. They started raiding nearby villages on June 21. Tensions remain high due to guerilla raids by the PDFs.

The military council spokesman earlier responded to RFA’s inquiries, saying the junta had to protect the copper mine because it is a foreign investment.

More than 20,000 residents from 25 villages near the mine have been forced to flee due to attacks on nearby villages and fighting between junta forces and PDFs.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

As U.S. President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia—a country he previously vowed to make a "pariah"—human rights advocates including Jamal Khashoggi's former fiancée on Wednesday demanded that the Saudi officials responsible for the journalist's 2018 murder and disappearance be brought to justice.

"Justice has not been served. Jamal's body is yet to be found.

In a statement read at Wednesday's unveiling of Jamal Khashoggi Way outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., Hatice Cengiz—who was engaged to Khashoggi when he disappeared in October 2018—urged Biden to "uphold your vow to bring all the perpetrators of this brutal crime to justice."

"President Biden, I know you have experienced the unimaginable pain of losing a loved one. But unlike your losses, the person I love was brutally murdered," she said. "And I've been forced to live in a world where his murderers have not only gone unpunished but have also been rewarded."

"As disappointing as this is, if you have to put oil over principles and expedience over values, can you at least ask, 'Where is Jamal's body?'" Cengiz asked. "Doesn't he deserve a proper burial? And what happened to his killers?"

Abdullah Alaoudh, Gulf research director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the son of Saudi political prisoner Salman al-Odah, lamented that the Biden administration "wants to effectively move on from the murder of Khashoggi in order to repair ties" with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and his repressive fundamentalist government.

"They know that justice has not been served. Jamal's body is yet to be found," he added. "And the prisoners of conscience including my father, who Khashoggi advocated for, are still in prison."

Khashoggi vanished while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents related to his planned marriage. Turkish officials said he was attacked, suffocated to death, and dismembered with a bone saw inside the consular compound. One Turkish investigator said Khashoggi was tortured in front the Saudi consul-general and dismembered while he was still alive.

Saudi officials initially denied that Khashoggi died in the consulate but later confirmed his death, claiming it resulted from a "fistfight" gone wrong.

In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five people to death and three others to prison terms in connection with Khashoggi's murder. However, the death sentences were later commuted.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency concluded that bin Salman ordered the assassination.

While campaigning for president in 2019, Biden said he would make Saudi leaders "pay the price" for Khashoggi's murder "and make them in fact the pariah that they are." Biden also vowed to "end the sale of material to the Saudis where they're going in and murdering children" in Yemen. He has broken all of those promises.

"Biden has abandoned his commitment to promote human rights around the world... [and] his commitment to punish Jamal Khashoggi's killers. This is a shame," Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni Nobel laureate and friend of Khashoggi, said at Wednesday's unveiling. "Shame on the Biden administration. Washington should punish Jamal Khashoggi's killers."

"Let me ask Biden: When you meet with MBS, will this serve justice for Jamal?" he asked. "Will this serve democracy in the Arab region as you promised? Will this serve peace in Yemen? Will this serve stability and security in the world? Absolutely not."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The personal, as they say, is political. And there’s nothing more personal than the right to control your own body.

So as a human with reproductive organs, the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade — and the constitutional right to abortion — is obviously personal to me. But it’s personal for another reason, too.

I come from a line of pro-choice advocates. My late grandmother, Eileen Alperstein, was on the board of a Planned Parenthood chapter. She fought to get an ad placed in The New York Times to shine a light on the issue, well before Roe v. Wade was settled.

She marched, too. At one of her last demonstrations before she passed away from breast cancer, she joined my mom and me — a toddler in a stroller — as our family marched on Washington to support the right to choose.

I’m proud to descend from brave people like these, who demanded reproductive freedom before women even had the right to open credit cards in their own name. Their hard work led to Roe, which Americans support upholding today by a 2 to 1 margin.

But thanks to an extremist minority, our right to bodily autonomy is on the verge of being dismantled. The results will be devastating.

Even if you don’t know it, you probably know someone who’s had an abortion. One in four women in this country have ended a pregnancy, whether because it was life-threatening, nonviable, unaffordable, or they simply didn’t want it.

Already, 26 states are likely to ban or restrict abortion once Roe is overturned. Each one could be more extreme than the last. Even now, a new Texas law offers a $10,000 bounty to anyone who reports someone they suspect has helped facilitate an abortion after six weeks.

Forget A Handmaid’s Tale — we’re at risk of going full Crucible: “I saw Goody Proctor at the clinic. Burn the witch!”

But Roe doesn’t just protect people seeking abortions. The rationale underpinning that ruling protects all of us from government interference in the most intimate areas of our lives: who we love, who we marry, and how and whether we choose to raise a family.

If Roe falls, the right to take birth control — something relied on by millions of people of childbearing age, including me —  could also become a thing of the past. So could the right to love or marry someone of the same gender, or a different race. All of these deeply personal decisions could end up falling under the purview of politicians.

So how can we protect the right to choose?

One hope is that Congress will step up. For decades, champions like Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) have fought for legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act, which codifies the right to choose and expands access to affordable reproductive healthcare for all Americans.

Failing that, Americans in individual states will need to fight hard to pass state-level legislation that protects the right to choose and so much else.

My mother and grandmother were born into a world where dangerous back-alley abortions were a reality for millions. Institutions like Planned Parenthood existed alongside hidden networks like the Jane Collective, which secretly assisted with access to abortion services.

It wasn’t so long ago. I’ve been in marches where I carried signs with the same exact slogans that my mother, her sisters, and my late grandmother carried. I’ve fought for the same rights and protections that they did. And I’m furious that their victories are under dire threat.

But like millions in our movement, I’ve been anticipating this moment. I’m going to fight like hell.

And this time, it’s personal.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Olivia Alperstein.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The personal, as they say, is political. And there’s nothing more personal than the right to control your own body.

So as a human with reproductive organs, the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade — and the constitutional right to abortion — is obviously personal to me. But it’s personal for another reason, too.

I come from a line of pro-choice advocates. My late grandmother, Eileen Alperstein, was on the board of a Planned Parenthood chapter. She fought to get an ad placed in The New York Times to shine a light on the issue, well before Roe v. Wade was settled.

She marched, too. At one of her last demonstrations before she passed away from breast cancer, she joined my mom and me — a toddler in a stroller — as our family marched on Washington to support the right to choose.

I’m proud to descend from brave people like these, who demanded reproductive freedom before women even had the right to open credit cards in their own name. Their hard work led to Roe, which Americans support upholding today by a 2 to 1 margin.

But thanks to an extremist minority, our right to bodily autonomy is on the verge of being dismantled. The results will be devastating.

Even if you don’t know it, you probably know someone who’s had an abortion. One in four women in this country have ended a pregnancy, whether because it was life-threatening, nonviable, unaffordable, or they simply didn’t want it.

Already, 26 states are likely to ban or restrict abortion once Roe is overturned. Each one could be more extreme than the last. Even now, a new Texas law offers offers a $10,000 bounty to anyone who reports someone they suspect has helped facilitate an abortion after six weeks.

Forget A Handmaid’s Tale — we’re at risk of going full Crucible: “I saw Goody Proctor at the clinic. Burn the witch!”

But Roe doesn’t just protect people seeking abortions. The rationale underpinning that ruling protects all of us from government interference in the most intimate areas of our lives: who we love, who we marry, and how and whether we choose to raise a family.

If Roe falls, the right to take birth control — something relied on by millions of people of child bearing age, including me —  could also become a thing of the past. So could the right to love or marry someone of the same gender, or a different race. All of these deeply personal decisions could end up falling under the purview of politicians.

So how can we protect the right to choose?

One hope is that Congress will step up. For decades, champions like Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) have fought for legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act, which codifies the right to choose and expands access to affordable reproductive healthcare for all Americans.

Failing that, Americans in individual states will need to fight hard to pass state-level legislation that protects the right to choose and so much else.

My mother and grandmother were born into a world where dangerous back alley abortions were a reality for millions. Institutions like Planned Parenthood existed alongside hidden networks like the Jane Collective, which secretly assisted with access to abortion services.

It wasn’t so long ago. I’ve been in marches where I carried signs with the same exact slogans that my mother, her sisters, and my late grandmother carried. I’ve fought for the same rights and protections that they did. And I’m furious that their victories are under dire threat.

But like millions in our movement, I’ve been anticipating this moment. I’m going to fight like hell.

And this time, it’s personal.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Olivia Alperstein.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Fong Tak Ho, Qiao Long and Raymond Chung.

Atrocities and total war are not pixilated or sanitised. They bring death with unimaginable brutality and obliterate lives with indifference. It is time to stop protecting the New Zealand public from these grim realities of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Our news media post warnings about disturbing images and then obscure them out of a long-held regard for the sensibilities of readers and viewers over portrayal of death. We see shapeless body bags while those lying in the street are given a dignified digital shroud.

Yes, we read and hear descriptions of what the innocent citizens of Ukraine have had to endure at the hands of Russian invaders. However, we are shielded from most graphic detail of what is being done in a mission to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” a democratic nation that posed no defence threat to its neighbour.

• READ MORE: Other Ukraine war reports
• More Gavin Ellis articles

How often do we see and hear the phrase “Warning: The following item includes disturbing images including dead bodies” when, in fact, we are left to imagine what the body looks like under its obscuring mantle?

I was moved to think about New Zealand media depiction of the victims of war crimes in Ukraine by an essay that appeared in The New York Times last Saturday. Written by long-time photojournalist David Hume Kennerly, it was headed “Photographing Hell”.

Kennerly was a combat photographer in Vietnam and was responsible for the iconic image of a vat of cyanide-laced Flavor Aid surrounded by corpses in the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana. He is no stranger to war and death and was reminded of Jonestown when he saw images of the bodies of civilians lying in the street when Bucha, on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, was retaken by Ukrainian forces.

Those images were denounced by the Kremlin as “fakes” and “provocations”, to which Kennerly responded: “The images of these atrocities were taken by trusted photojournalists. They are the truth, and a record of the mendacity and brutality of the Russian military. As accusations of war crimes mount, these photos are the documentation the world needs to finally understand what is really happening in Ukraine.”

‘Direct line to people’
He went on to describe photographs as “a direct line to people, over the heads of officials, pundits and disinformation” and said some photographs will always have the power to make us confront horror.

One of the images accompanying his essay had that effect on me. It was a photograph of a body bag. It had been unzipped far enough to reveal the side of a face staring resolutely ahead. In death, the man was telling us he was an eye-witness to the atrocity that had taken his life.

The photograph had been taken by Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who covered the conflicts in Kosova and ISIS-held Mosul. Her photographs taken following the liberation of Bucha are confronting and include bodies being exhumed from mass graves, charred corpses, and open caskets. Yet somehow it is the unseeing eye peering from a body bag that is truly iconic.

Kennerly’s essay recalls similarly iconic images from his time in Vietnam, such as Eddie Adams’ picture of a Vietcong suspect being executed in a Saigon street and Nick Ut’s image of a young girl running naked down a road after being burnt by napalm. They helped to change public attitudes to that war.

He could have added Ronald Haeberle’s photograph of a pile of bodies, victims of the My Lai massacre by American soldiers, that appeared on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and forced the U.S. military to confront its own crimes. And Malcolm Browne’s photograph of a Buddhist monk in the act of self-immolation in Saigon shook the United States and elsewhere. And Larry Burrows’ Life magazine cover story showing a helicopter gunner with a dying pilot at his feet.

Or he could have gone back further. Start with Goya’s depictions of the Peninsular War between 1810 and 1820, then move to Robert Capa’s moment-of-death image of a falling soldier in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and Margaret Bourke-White’s graphic portrayal of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp that appeared in Life magazine in May 1945. Our understanding of those events is rooted in what we were shown more than what we were told. As Kennerly observes in the essay: “Evocative images can affect policy, spur action, and every now and then alter the course of history”.

indelibly on the public record
Now we have Ukraine and Kennerly says many of the photographs from that war deserve to live as indelibly on the public record as the photos of Vietnam (and elsewhere).

But will they achieve that status if news media sanitise and, yes, censor them?

Kennerly ends by saying he’s getting tired of endless disclaimers (there is one at the top of his New York Timescontribution) that warn of “Graphic Material”.

“The best photographs of war might make us want to look away. It’s imperative that we do not.”

I agree, but I concede there is a strong tradition in this country (and in many other places) of shielding audiences from the visual depiction of death. I cannot recall, for example, seeing an unobscured image of the face of a dead person in our media, unless from a safe distance.

I certainly don’t recall publishing one during my editorship of The New Zealand Herald although I certainly saw many confronting images. News agencies observed the practice of sending the image and expecting editors to decide whether or not to publish it.

Jessica Fishman, in a very good US study of how the media censor and display the dead entitled Death Makes the News,notes that news organisations make a distinction between writing about death and portraying it visually. Much of her book is devoted to explaining why images are not published, including the dangers of “death pornography”.

Exceptions made by media
However, she identifies exceptions that media make. More often than not those exceptions are made for bodies somewhere else. Too often they are images of people “who don’t look like us”. Those are poor reasons for publication.

There are some good reasons for being extremely circumspect about publishing images from within your own country when there is a strong likelihood they will be seen by grieving relatives and friends. This is the principal reason New Zealand media do not publish pictures of bodies in fatal road crashes. It was one of the compelling judgements made by New Zealand media following the Christchurch mosque massacre when coverage concentrated on survivors.

Inevitably, however, there will be exceptions to this domestic reticence. For example, in 1972 the Daily Mirror in Britain ran a front page picture of a priest administering last rights to a protester, one of 13 killed by British troops in the Bloody Sunday incident. It is a picture I, too, would have published because it bore witness to demonstrably disproportionate use of state force.

Similarly, I would have published a photograph carried on the front page of The New York Times in 2013. It wasn’t local. It documented a war crime.

The image was of a row of bodies, four of them children, in white shrouds with only their faces visible. They were the victims of a Syrian chemical attack in Damascus.

The paper’s public editor Margaret Sullivan, in a column explaining the decision to publish, invoked the images from Vietnam that Kennerly is now resurrecting. She said they brought home the horror in a way that words never could, and the image from Syria was similarly “capable of changing the narrative, possibly affecting the course of history”. Tragically, that picture has not.

Now we have Ukraine and the strong likelihood that images captured by photojournalists in the war zone will contribute to mounting evidence of war crimes. There are precedents: Photographs taken by Ron Haviv in Bosnia played a material part in the conviction of Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić and a local warlord by the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

Images add to outrage
New Zealand publication and broadcast of explicit images of war crimes against Ukraine will not tip the balance of history or convict war criminals. However, as elsewhere, a New Zealand audience’s exposure to them will add to the weight of international public opinion against the perpetrators. Images will add to outrage.

Equally, or perhaps of even greater importance, verified explicit images of war crimes and victims may help to counter Russian propaganda still being freely disseminated in this country through the Daily Telegraph New Zealand website (no connection to the publications of the same name in London and Sydney). It carries, unquestioningly, both RT and Sputnik “news” services.

This is not to say that New Zealand media should declare open season on publishing pictures of the dead. Far from it. We are the better for not being exposed to recurring death pornography.

There are also limits to what the public can be expected the bear. In 1991, for example, Associated Press pulled from the wire an image of the charred corpse of an Iraqi soldier who had failed to escape from a burning truck on the Gulf War’s Highway of Death. One picture editor called it “the stuff of nightmares”. London’s Observer was one of only a handful of papers that ran it — and repeated publication in a book on the war. I vividly recall the image. Would I have inflicted it on a New Zealand audience? No.

Decisions on whether to publish defining images that capture far more than a moment are hard when the central focus is a corpse. It requires not only a determination of newsworthiness but also a self-examination of motives. Publication must serve a higher purpose than merely shocking an audience.

Sadly, pictures that serve that higher purpose will continue to emerge from Ukraine. I hope editors in this country publish them. They were paid for with the lives of innocents.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications – covering both editorial and management roles – that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a blog called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Economists and workers' rights advocates on Thursday condemned the latest setback for working people dealt by right-wing Democratic lawmakers, three of whom joined every Republican senator in opposing President Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division after being aggressively lobbied by business interests.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) voted against allowing Dr. David Weil's nomination to move forward Wednesday evening, several months after the former Obama administration official was first nominated for the top wage regulatory role.

Manchin and Sinema have obstructed much of President Joe Biden's agenda since he took office—opposing the elimination of the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation and rejecting climate and anti-poverty provisions in the Build Back Better Act.

"This is really infuriating," said Chirag Mehta of the grassroots group Community Change, accusing the senators of repeatedly "delivering body blows to working people on behalf of big business."

Weil led the Wage and Hour Division for two years under former President Barack Obama—and had Manchin's support when he was nominated for the job in 2014—and now serves as a dean at Brandeis University.

Despite previously backing Weil, Manchin expressed late last year that he had doubts about the academic's nomination. On Thursday he claimed he was concerned that Weil would enact policies that would harm small businesses.

"The more accurately you diagnose the American economy, the less likely you are to be confirmed to a position with any control over it."

Weil is the author of The Fissured Workplace, which examines large corporations that classify workers as subcontractors and rely on franchisees in order to cut costs and avoid responsibility for ensuring fair working conditions. He has harshly criticized companies like Uber and Lyft for classifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees, exempting them from benefits and workplace protections.

"The more accurately you diagnose the American economy, the less likely you are to be confirmed to a position with any control over it," said journalist Hamilton Nolan.

In the Wage and Hour Division, Weil would have overseen regulation and enforcement of overtime rules, minimum wages, and child labor laws, and could have advanced federal investigations into companies' classification of employees as independent contractors.

Right-wing groups including Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) lobbied Manchin, Sinema, and Kelly after Weil was nominated last year, casting him as a "radical" and complaining of Weil's opposition to so-called "right to work" laws which strip unions of collective bargaining power.

"If confirmed, Weil would use his power to implement the anti-worker PRO Act by executive fiat," ATR told Kelly and Sinema, referring to the legislation which would protect workers' right to organize their workplaces.

The senators' opposition to advancing Weil's nomination "shows the huge power of corporate lobbying," said former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse.

"David Weil is one of the most innovative, pro-worker, and ambitious policy thinkers we've got," said Jake Rosenfeld, author of You're Paid What You're Worth. "It was unfortunate his Obama administration initiatives didn't survive the Trump years; it's shameful that Democrats have sunk his chance to try them again."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Marking four years since the March for Our Lives demonstration—and memorializing more than 170,000 people who have been killed in the United States by gun violence since then—survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting used more than a thousand body bags Thursday to spell out the words "Thoughts and Prayers" on the ground outside the U.S. Capitol building.

Each of the 1,100 body bags represented more than 150 deaths, according to organizers, who based the numbers on data from the Gun Violence Archive. The phrase "thoughts and prayers" has infuriated gun control advocates in recent years, as the pro-gun lobby and lawmakers across the political spectrum have repeated the words after mass shootings, while doing little to stop gun violence.

"Four years of thoughts and prayers. Four years of broken promises. Four years without ANY federal action on guns," said March for Our Lives, the group formed by survivors of the Parkland shooting, in which 17 people were killed in February 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The group, along with family members of people killed in other mass shootings, are calling on Democrats to bring to the Senate floor legislation for universal background checks for gun purchasers—which is supported by 89% of Americans.

According to the Washington Post, at least 89,000 K-12 students have been exposed to gun violence at school since the Parkland shooting, and more than 292,000 schoolchildren have experienced gun violence since the 1999 Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

"If they continue to pursue a pathway of inaction, only more people are going to die."