What is unfolding right now in California—with hundreds of Marines deployed domestically; thousands of National Guard troops federalized; and military weapons, tactics and equipment on full display—is intended to intimidate, distract and discourage us from pulling back the curtain on the reality of the self-serving corruption, grift, graft, overreach and abuse that have become synonymous with his Administration.

Don’t be distracted. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be sidelined by the spectacle of a police state.

This is yet another manufactured crisis fomented by the Deep State.

When Trump issues a call to “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” explaining to reporters that he wants to have them “everywhere,” we should all be alarmed.

This is martial law without a formal declaration of war.

This heavy-handed, chest-thumping, politicized, militarized response to what is clearly a matter for local government is yet another example of Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and the limits of his power.

Political protests are protected by the First Amendment until they cross the line from non-violent to violent. Even when protests turn violent, constitutional protocols remain in place to safeguard communities: law and order must flow through local and state chains of command, not from federal muscle.

By breaking that chain of command, Trump is breaking the Constitution.

Deploying the military to deal with domestic matters that can—and should—be handled by civilian police, despite the objections of local and state leaders, crosses the line into authoritarianism.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

In the span of a single week, the Trump administration is providing the clearest glimpse yet of its unapologetic, uncompromising, corrupt allegiance to the authoritarian Deep State.

These two events—the federalization of the National Guard deployed to California in response to protests and the president’s lavish, taxpayer-funded military parade in the nation’s capital—bookend the administration’s unmistakable message: dissent will be crushed, and power will be performed.

Trump governs by force (military deployment), fear (ICE raids, militarized policing), and spectacle (the parade).

This is the spectacle of a police state. One side of the coin is militarized suppression. The other is theatrical dominance. Together, they constitute the language of force and authoritarian control.

Yet this is more than political theater; it is a constitutional crisis in motion.

As we have warned before, this tactic is a familiar one.

In times of political unrest, authoritarian regimes often invoke national emergencies as a pretext to impose military solutions. The result? The Constitution is suspended, civilian control is overrun, and the machinery of the state turns against its own people.

This is precisely what the Founders feared when they warned against standing armies on American soil: that one day, the military might be used not to defend the people, but to control them.

It is a textbook play from the authoritarian handbook, deployed with increasing frequency under Trump. The optics are meant to intimidate, broadcast control, and discourage resistance before it even begins.

Thus, deploying the National Guard in this manner is not just a political maneuver—it is a strategic act of fear-based governance designed to instill terror, particularly among vulnerable communities, and ensure compliance.

America is being transformed into a battlefield before our eyes.

Militarized police. Riot squads. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Stun grenades. Crowd control and intimidation tactics.

This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

This is the language of force.

This transformation is not accidental—it’s strategic. The government now sees the public not as constituents to be served but as potential combatants to be surveilled, managed, and subdued. In this new paradigm, dissent is treated as insurrection, and constitutional rights are treated as threats to national security.

What we are witnessing today is also part of a broader setup: an excuse to use civil unrest as a pretext for militarized overreach.

We saw signs of this strategy in Charlottesville, Virginia, where police failed to de-escalate and at times exacerbated tensions during protests that should have remained peaceful. The resulting chaos gave authorities cover to crack down—not to protect the public, but to reframe protest as provocation and dissent as disorder.

Then and now, the objective wasn’t to preserve peace and protect the public. It was to delegitimize dissent and cast protest as provocation.

It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the Deep State. The government wants a reason to crack down, lock down, and bring in its biggest guns.

This is how it begins.

Trump’s use of the military against civilians violates the spirit—if not the letter—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is meant to bar federal military involvement in domestic affairs. It also raises severe constitutional questions about the infringement of First Amendment rights to protest and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.

Modern tools of repression compound the threat. AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing software, biometric databases, and fusion centers have made mass control seamless and silent. The state doesn’t just respond to dissent anymore; it predicts and preempts it.

While boots are on the ground in California, preparations are underway for a military spectacle in Washington, D.C.

At first glance, a military procession might seem like a patriotic display. But in this context, it is not a celebration of service; it is a declaration of supremacy. It is not about honoring troops; it is about reminding the populace who holds the power and who wields the guns.

This is how authoritarian regimes govern—through spectacle.

By sandwiching a military crackdown between a domestic troop deployment and a showy parade, Trump is sending a unified message: This is about raw, unchecked, theatrical power. And whether we, the people, will accept a government that rules not by consent, but by coercion.

The Constitution was not written to accommodate authoritarian pageantry. It was written to restrain it. It was never meant to sanctify conquest as a form of governance.

We are at a crossroads.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Strip away that consent, and all that remains is conquest through force, spectacle, and fear.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we allow the language of fear, the spectacle of dominance, and the machinery of militarized governance to become normalized, then we are no longer citizens of a republic—we are subjects of a police state.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.

Officially titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this order is a “heil Hitler” wrapped in the goosestepping, despotic trappings of national security.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, cloaked in patriotic language and the promise of safety.

This is the language of every strongman who’s ever ruled by force.

The White House claims the order will “empower state and local law enforcement to relentlessly pursue criminals and protect American communities.” But under this administration, “criminal” increasingly includes anyone who dares to exercise their constitutional rights.

The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.

It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.

If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.

Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.

With the stroke of his presidential pen, he has laid the groundwork for a stealth version of martial law by:

• Expanding police powers and legal protections;
• Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
• Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
• Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
• Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
• Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.

All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.

For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.

However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.

This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.

This is martial law without a declaration.

Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.

And they are everywhere.

Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.

We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.

In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:

• Detain without trial;
• Punish political dissent;
• Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
• Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
• Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
• Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
• Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.

In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.

It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.

From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.

These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.

These so-called warrior cops, trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner, increasingly outnumber those who still honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public.

Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.

Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.

This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.

We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.

The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.

This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.

We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.

Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.

For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.

Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.

This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.

As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.

As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

We ignore these signs at our peril.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Yoon was impeached by the opposition-controlled National Assembly in mid-December on charges of violating the constitution and other laws by declaring martial law on Dec. 3. He ordered troops to the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting against the martial law decree and the arrest of politicians, evoking an earlier era of authoritarianism in South Korea.

At that time, Yoon defended the move as a necessary act of governance. He cited threats from North Korea and purported “anti-state activities” by the domestic political opposition.

He called the martial law declaration a “highly calibrated political judgment” aimed at protecting the nation and restoring the normal functioning of the state, which he said had been paralyzed by the opposition.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling means a snap presidential election will be held within two months.

The possible dates are between May 24 and June 3 because the law also requires 50 days advance notice of a presidential election. Analysts expect the vote would take place on the last day of that window.

Lee Jae-myung, leader of South Korea’s Democratic Party, or DP, is regarded as the top contender to succeed Yoon. The veteran politician lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election by the slimmest margin in South Korea’s democratic history.

Lee has offered limited details on his foreign policy agenda, but in recent media interviews he has advocated for a more balanced and pragmatic approach in managing South Korea’s relations with North Korea and with global powers, particularly the U.S., China and Japan.

(Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP)

On North Korea, Lee said he believed the current strategy has tipped too far toward confrontation. Relations between the two countries since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War have waxed and waned for decades between unremitting hostility and attempts at rapprochement.

While acknowledging the “hostile” nature of current inter-Korean relations, he argued in multiple media interviews that South Korea’s strong military and alliances – particularly with the U.S. and Japan – already provide sufficient deterrence.

Instead, he insisted on “communication and engagement” with the North, signaling a return to the approach of previous DP governments.

Yoon, who began his career as a prosecutor in 1994 and rose to become South Korea’s Prosecutor General in 2019, was elected president in 2022.

Throughout his term, he prioritized strengthening alliances with democratic nations, particularly the U.S. and Japan, while adopting a hard-line stance toward North Korea.

Under Yoon’s administration, South Korea imposed more than 10 sets of sanctions on North Korea and vowed to “punish and retaliate” decisively against any acts of aggression from the North.

He garnered significant support from conservative factions in South Korea, particularly among people concerned about national security threats from North Korea and China.

Critics of Lee, meanwhile, have accused him of adopting a “subservient” stance toward China.

Lee stirred controversy during his 2022 campaign by saying: “Why do we care what happens to the Taiwan Strait? Shouldn’t we just take care of ourselves?”

He later clarified that his point was about diplomatic pragmatism and that South Korea should avoid worsening relations with China.

Hanging over Lee is his indictment on charges of orchestrating unauthorized remittances to North Korea.

Prosecutors allege that between 2019 and 2020, during his tenure as governor of Gyeonggi Province, Lee directed the Ssangbangwool Group to transfer US$8 million to North Korea, including US$5 million intended for a smart farm project and US$3 million to facilitate a prospective visit by Lee to Pyongyang.

Lee’s former deputy governor, Lee Hwa-young, was convicted and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for his involvement in the scheme, which encompassed bribery and unauthorized fund transfers to North Korea.

Lee denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated. He contends that the prosecution’s case lacks merit and is an attempt to undermine his political career. The case is ongoing.

Edited by Stephen Wright.

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

The impeachment motion will now be sent to the Constitutional Court, which will determine whether to uphold the parliamentary vote and remove Yoon from office or to reinstate him.

Yoon declared martial law on the night of Dec. 3 to counter “threats from North Korea” and “anti-state activities” by the domestic political opposition. However, the National Assembly rejected the decree nearly three hours later as protesters gathered outside, prompting Yoon to lift the order.

The impeachment motion against Yoon passed with a vote of 204 in favor and 85 against, with three abstentions and eight invalid ballots, as all 300 lawmakers cast their votes.

Once the impeachment resolution is delivered to Yoon’s office, he will be suspended from his duties, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will assume the role of acting president.

“I will do my utmost to ensure the stable operation of the government operation,” said Han after the impeachment motion was passed.

A crowd of anti-Yoon protesters that media estimated at 200,000-strong welcomed the vote in favor of impeachment. Yoon’s conservative supporters held a smaller protest in another part of Seoul.

An initial bid to vote to impeach Yoon failed last week when most ruling party lawmakers boycotted the vote.

The second impeachment motion was introduced on Thursday by the main opposition Democratic Party and five other minor opposition parties, accusing Yoon of violating the Constitution and other laws by declaring martial law.

If the impeachment is upheld, Yoon will become the second president in South Korea’s history to be removed from office, following former President Park Geun-hye’s ouster in 2017 over corruption.

If the court rules to oust him, an election will be held for a new president.

RELATED STORIES

North Korea calls South’s martial law declaration ‘shocking’ in first reaction

South Korean opposition files impeachment motion against Yoon

South Korea’s president lifts martial law hours after declaring it

‘Protect the nation’

On Thursday, Yoon defended his botched martial law declaration as an act of governance.

In a televised address, Yoon said he used his presidential power to declare martial law “to protect the nation and normalize state affairs” against the opposition that paralyzed the government, calling it a “highly calibrated political judgment.”

“The National Assembly, dominated by the large opposition party, has become a monster that destroys the Constitutional order of free democracy,” Yoon asserted.

The main opposition Democratic Party controls 171 seats in the 300-member parliament.

In particular, Yoon said that opposition parties blocked a revision to anti-espionage laws despite two separate instances in which Chinese nationals filmed South Korean military installations and the National Intelligence Service.

He also said the opposition parties were “advocating” to lift sanctions against North Korea.

In response, China’s foreign ministry said Thursday it was “deeply surprised and dissatisfied.”

“We are deeply surprised and dissatisfied with the remarks made by the South Korean side,” Mao Ning, Beijing foreign ministry’s spokesperson, said during a regular press briefing.

“We firmly oppose the South Korean side linking its internal issues with factors related to China, making up false charges of so-called Chinese spies and disgracing normal economic and trade cooperation,” said Mao, adding that a verdict has not been reached yet in the mentioned cases and that China is maintaining related communication with South Korea.

She also urged South Korea to guarantee the safety and legal rights of the individuals involved.

Edited by RFA Staff.

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

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces impeachment after opposition parties in the country’s National Assembly introduced a motion to force him from office for his shocking declaration of martial law. The conservative Yoon made his announcement in a televised briefing Tuesday evening, accusing the liberal opposition of undermining the state and possibly colluding with North Korea. Thousands of Koreans massed at the parliament to oppose the move as lawmakers rushed inside to vote unanimously to overturn Yoon’s declaration, which he rescinded just hours later. Yoon’s ouster is now all but certain, either through impeachment or his resignation, and he also faces possible treason charges.

“We would never imagine — some of us, the younger ones — that we would have martial law called during our lifetimes,” says organizer Dae-Han Song from Seoul. He describes how “a lot of ordinary people came out” to oppose the power grab.

We also speak with longtime peace activist Christine Ahn, recently banned from entering South Korea by Yoon’s government. She says the “living memory” of life under dictatorship, which lasted into the 1980s, clearly inspired many ordinary citizens to fight back. “They will not tolerate that,” says Ahn. “It’s an extraordinary example of what Americans must learn from South Korea.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• South Korean President declares martial law, but later rescinds it after Parliament blocks him and protests emerge.
• A New York jury begins deliberations in the case of a military veteran who choked a homeless mentally ill man to death on the subway.
• Biden Administration looks to phase out program allowing companies to pay disabled workers below minimum wage.
• Santa Clara Supervisors introduce a measure to fund legal help for communities expected to be targeted by Trump.
• A San Francisco Supervisor faces a recall over support for a ban on cars on sections of the Great Highway.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 3, 2024 South Korean President declares martial law, but later rescinds it after Parliament blocks him and protests emerge. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

On the evening of May 12, in Uganda’s western Buhweju District, three men armed with sticks and machetes assaulted freelance reporter Kyarisiima while she was covering a public meeting on a land dispute pitting the local Catholic church and its parishioners against a businessman, according to media reports and the journalist, who spoke with CPJ via telephone.

The meeting, presided over by the local member of parliament Francis Mwijukye, had just concluded when a group of about seven men armed with machetes, hoes, and sticks came running towards the participants and started assaulting them, Kyarisiima said. 

Three of the men confronted Kyarisiima and one ordered her to hand over her camera and a bag containing her laptop and about 500,000 shillings (US$132); a second man slapped her in the face; and a third hit her with a stick on her right arm, she said. When she ran, the men threw stones at her.

“All too often, Ugandan journalists face violence in the course of their work and their attackers get away scot free. Holding such perpetrators to account is crucial so journalists can safely do their jobs without fear of reprisal,” said CPJ Africa Program coordinator, Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi. “Ugandan authorities must ensure a credible and transparent investigation into the assault on journalist Juliet Kyarisiima.”

Kyarisiima told CPJ that she did not sustain injuries that required medical attention, but she felt pain in her eyes and on her right arm. The journalist said she reported the incident to Burere Police Station in Buhweju District and officers recorded it as a “simple robbery” case.

Mwijukye, who was also injured during the attack, was quoted by the independent Daily Monitor newspaper alleging that the assailants were hired by an unnamed local resident involved in the land wrangle. Daily Monitor posted on X that Mwijukye was receiving treatment in hospital.

CPJ’s calls and text messages to Mwijukye went unanswered. Tito Kwesigabo, a member of the Rwanyamabare Catholic Church told CPJ in a telephone interview that that they are waiting for the police investigation to run its course.

Greater Bushenyi police spokesperson Martial Tumusiime, whose jurisdiction includes Buhweju District, told CPJ by phone that the police would investigate Kyarisiima’s assault and robbery and make arrests.

CPJ has documented several incidents where journalists covering public events in Uganda have been targeted with robberies, detention, and assault.

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

The junta has declared martial law in more than 60 townships across the country, including in Sagaing, Magwe, Tanintharyi and Bago regions, as well as in Chin state. The designation has been used as a justification by the military to impose heavy punishments on residents on the basis of suspicion alone. 

Observers say the junta had refrained from declaring martial law in Namhsan, Mantong and Namtu townships in northern Shan state with the hope the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, would join a ceasefire agreement. The declaration, announced Monday, is an indication that negotiations have stalled, they said.

The TNLA, the Arakan Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army together make up the ethnic Three Brotherhood Alliance, which in October launched an offensive known as Operation 1027 against the military in northern Shan state, which borders China.

Less than two months after the start of Operation 1027, the TNLA captured Namsan, Mantong and Namtu, on Dec. 15, 22 and 28. Since then, the ethnic army’s top leadership has regularly conducted public meetings with what they say is an emphasis on a “community-based governance system” in the townships.

In Namtu, municipal, healthcare and electricity services have been restored, according to residents, and inhabitants who fled earlier fighting have mostly returned home.

While the TNLA remains the de facto leadership in the three townships, the junta’s imposition of martial law technically transfers their administrative and judicial oversight to the commander of the military’s Northeastern Command, based in the region’s largest town Lashio.

Residents told RFA Burmese that the declaration of martial law came “just as the situation began to stabilize,” and said they now fear renewed clashes between the military and the TNLA.

"We are now under TNLA governance, and the junta no longer exists here,” said a resident of Namtu who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. Now that martial law has been declared, it’s as if they could attack us whenever they want.”

All three townships are within 160 kilometers (100 miles) of the Northeastern Command, the resident noted, which “adds to our unease.”

“We may need to prepare trenches and bomb shelters once again," she said.

‘Even less secure’

A resident of Namsan told RFA that while the situation in her township wasn’t safe before, “now it feels even less secure.”

“The use of airplanes to drop bombs and the indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry add to our concerns,” she said. “While some people have not yet returned to their homes, others have just come back.”

An official from the TNLA news and information department told RFA that the junta’s declaration of martial law in the three townships was no surprise.

“That’s just what they do,” he said. “During the height of fighting, the junta declared martial law in [eight northern Shan state] townships … now, post-battle, announcing martial law in these three townships aligns with their strategic approach.”

On Nov. 12, as Operation 1027 reached a crescendo, the junta declared martial law in the townships of Lashio, Kutkai, Kunlong, Hsenwi, Namhkam, Muse, and Chinshwehaw, as well as in Laukkai, in the Kokang Self-Administered Zone. A curfew remains in effect in the townships, with movement restricted between the hours of 6 pm and 6 am.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance captured 16 cities in Shan state, including Muse and Chinshwehaw, as part of the offensive before agreeing to a ceasefire in China-brokered talks with junta representatives on Jan. 11.

An ex-military official later said it was not sustainable and less than a week after the agreement, both sides were accused of violating it in a skirmish.

Last week, the two sides met again in the Chinese city of Kunming for talks that focused on reopening parts of the border with China that had been shut down during the fighting and preserving the ceasefire.

‘It’s clear they’ve given up’

But a political commentator and former military officer told RFA that peace in northern Shan state remains tenuous.

He said that while the junta had been holding out hope that the TNLA would join Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, or NCA, the declaration of martial law in the townships under its control indicates that the military leadership no longer sees that as an option.

"[The junta was] indecisive from the beginning, and even was vacillating [on how to deal with the TNLA],” he said. “Now, it’s clear that they’ve given up trying [to bring them into the NCA].”

The NCA was introduced in 2015 to end years of fighting over minority rights and self-determination. Since then, some 10 ethnic groups have signed the agreement.

The junta’s declaration of martial law in Namhsan, Mantong and Namtu follows a Jan. 28 declaration in the Shan state townships of Mongmit and Mabein. The two townships had earlier been seized by the Kachin Independence Army.

The latest declaration brings to 13 the number of townships under martial law in Shan state.

Township captured

The imposition of martial law on Namsan, Mantong and Namtu came amid reports on Tuesday that the Arakan Army, or AA, had captured Ponnagyun township in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where it continues to battle the military despite the Three Brotherhood Alliance ceasefire in Shan state.

In a statement, the AA claimed that Ponnagyun is under its “complete control” after 13 days of fighting, from Feb. 21 to March 4, culminating in the capture of the military’s Light Infantry Division 550 base there on Monday.

It said its fighters had seized “several bodies” of junta troops, including that of junta Tactical Commander Col. Myo Min Ko Ko, Light Infantry Battalion 208 Commander Col. Pyo Thu Aung and Light Infantry Battalion 550 Commander Maj. Saw Htwe.

The AA also claimed to be treating those who surrendered and their families “well,” and to have defended Ponnagyun from attacks by three junta naval vessels.

A resident of Rakhine confirmed to RFA that “the entire township of Ponnagyun lies under the AA’s control, with no trace of the junta.”

He said that after the AA assumed control of Ponnagyun, the junta targeted the area with a dozen air strikes and also attacked a nearby bridge because they were “concerned that the AA might advance toward Rathedaung township next.”

The junta has remained silent about the AA’s seizure of Ponnagyun. Attempts by RFA to contact Hla Thein, the attorney general of Rakhine and the junta’s spokesman for the state, went unanswered Tuesday.

In the three months since the AA ended a ceasefire in Rakhine state that had been in place since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat, the ethnic army has taken over the Rakhine townships of Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myebon, Taungpyo, and Ponnagyun, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state.

The AA is currently fighting for control of Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Maungdaw, and Ramree townships in Rakhine.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

"I have the great honor to be here today, to reward you, because you have such a difficult and decisive mission on your shoulders, to repel the enemy and win this war," Zelenskiy told soldiers on February 4 following his visit to Robotyne, a southern village in the Zaporizhzhya region that was one of the few successes by Ukrainian forces during last year’s counteroffensive.

The presidential office released video of Zelenskiy handing out medals to troops of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which led the advance on Robotyne, a village with a prewar population of about 450 people.

While there, Zelenskiy appointed Ivan Federov -- mayor of now-occupied Melitopol who was once abducted by Russia -- as head of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.

Fedorov was abducted in March 2022 when he refused to cooperate with Russians troops, triggering local protests and calls by Zelenskiy for his immediate release. He was released five days later.

Zelenskiy faces a growing political storm amid reports he is poised to push out the country’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy.

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.

Polls show that Zaluzhniy is as popular, if not more so, than Zelenskiy, and some experts fear that, were Zelenskiy to oust Zaluzhniy, it would demoralize some of Ukraine's troops and undermine national unity.

There has been no official word from Zelenskiy’s office about his intentions in regard to Zaluzhniy’s position, although numerous media reports have said the president has informed his U.S. allies of an impending move.

In remarks to Italian TV late on February 4, Zelenskiy said, without being specific, that he is considering “replacing a number of state leaders," not only in the military.

"It is a question of the people who are to lead Ukraine," he told told RAI television when asked about reports that he is about to fire Zaluzhniy.

"A reset is necessary. I am talking about a replacement of a number of state leaders, not only in the army sector. I am reflecting on this replacement. It's a question for the entire leadership of the country."

"I have in mind something serious that does not concern a single person but the direction of the country's leadership."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the search-and-rescue operation at the site of a deadly building attack in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk has been completed.

Rescuers early on February 4 recovered more bodies from the rubble of the building in eastern Ukraine that was hit by apparent artillery fire, bringing the death toll to 28.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said in a post to Telegram that a child was among the bodies recovered from the rubble of the building, which it said housed a bakery and a restaurant. Another 10 people were rescued.

Moscow-imposed officials in the Luhansk region, which is nearly entirely controlled by Russia, initially blamed a Ukrainian drone strike for the attack, but later shifted explanations, asserting it was actually Ukrainian artillery. The claim could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian officials have made no comment on the incident.

Russia took control of Lysychansk in July 2022 after months of fierce fighting.

Nearly two years into Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine, the battlefield along the nearly 1,200-kilometer front line stretching from northeast Ukraine to the south-central region of Kherson has largely frozen. After an unsuccessful counteroffensive last fall, Ukrainian troops have turned to rebuilding their forces, and shoring up defenses.

Russia, for its part, has continued to push forward in several, localized offensives: near Kupyansk in the north, and around the industrial city of Avdiyivka, to the south.

Both sides have also launched longer-range attacks this winter, using long-distance precision artillery, drones, and air-launched cruise missiles.

Ukraine has increasingly used its drone arsenal to target industrial sites within Russia itself. On February 3, an apparent Ukrainian drone strike hit one of the largest oil refineries in Volgograd, about 400 kilometers east of the Ukrainian border.

Firefighters put out the blaze after several hours, and it was unclear the extent of the damage at the refinery, which is owned by Lukoil, and is one of the largest in Russia. It produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, and fuel for ships.

In Ukraine’s Sumy region, the military administration there said Russian forces had shelled the region in 16 separate attacks the previous day.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian and Ukrainian services, Reuters, and AP

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

In a five-day military trial ending Monday, a tribunal sentenced the men for alleged acts of terrorism. 

The punishment is especially harsh because they were sentenced in an area under martial law, one lawyer said.

"If they can hire a lawyer for cases like these in civil courts, the maximum prison sentence is just 10 years,” he told RFA.

The Northwestern Military Command tribunal found them guilty of supporting their local People’s Defense Force and related activities prohibited under the country’s notorious counter-terrorism laws. 

The trial started on Thursday in Sagaing region in northwest Myanmar, where those accused include people from four townships. 

Pale township’s Zayar Myo and Than Zaw Linn, Shwebo township’s Min Khant Kyaw, Banmauk township’s Than Naing Oo and Indaw township’s Hein Min Thu and Zaw Myint Tun all live in areas under harsh military law.

Heavy punishments have often been imposed by the military just on suspicion after martial law was declared in Sagaing region, an official of the Yinmabin township’s People’s Defense Force said. 

"If anyone is even suspected of supporting the revolution without participating, severe punishments are handed down. They [the junta] are above the law,” he said.

Given the large presence of anti-junta groups in the area, some resistance soldiers say the military has begun arresting people without any due cause. 

In early September, seven people in Sagaing region were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life in prison. One People’s Defence Force officer said the accused had no connection to any local resistance group. 

In the seven months following the implementation of martial law, the Myanmar military arrested and imprisoned 30 Ayadaw township residents and sentenced 10 Indaw residents to death and life in prison. 

Calls to Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw seeking comment on the sentences went unanswered.

Fourteen townships in Sagaing region, including Pale, Shwebo, Banmauk and Indaw have been under martial law since February 2023, shortly after the military extended its emergency rule nationwide. 

Since then, military courts have sentenced 285 civilians to prison terms, according to pro-junta broadcast groups on the messaging app Telegram.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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

On June 14, troops arrested three residents of Ayadaw township in a restaurant before they planned to head to Yangon to attend a Korean language course.

On Aug. 31, a military tribunal sentenced one of them, 40-year-old Zaw Aung, to life in prison on three terrorism charges.

The Northern Military Command tribunal also sentenced 20-year-old Thiha Zaw and 19-year-old Pyae Sone Aung to seven years for terrorism.

The Information officer of the People’s Defense Force in Ayadaw township, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, told Radio Free Asia he was surprised such harsh sentences were imposed on ordinary villagers.

“Those who have been arrested and sentenced are not part of the revolution,” he said. 

“Many of the families here go to Yangon to attend Korean courses in order to go abroad because the economy has become difficult. I thought that they would be released as they did not belong [to a People’s Defense Force]. I was so surprised when this happened.”

He added that nearly 30 civilians from Ayadaw township have been arrested and imprisoned in the seven months since the junta imposed martial law there.

In a separate case on Sept. 2, a military court in Indaw township sentenced two men to life imprisonment, according to a statement by the Indaw Revolution anti-junta group.

They were with another man and a woman arrested at a checkpoint at the township entrance in July.

On Saturday, the court sentenced Zaw Myo Naing and Tin Maung Win to life imprisonment for terrorism and treason.

It sentenced Kyaw Thet and Thida Win to seven years for supporting local People’s Defense Forces.

An official of Indaw Revolution, who also declined to give his name, told RFA that despite the harsh punishments, the four had no ties to the group.

He added that more than 10 civilians have been sentenced to death or life imprisonment since the junta imposed martial law on Indaw township.

Calls to junta council spokesperson for Sagaing region, Tin Than Win, seeking comment on the sentences went unanswered.

A total of 14 townships, including Indaw in Sagaing region have been put under martial law by the junta since February, 2023.

Since then, 235 civilians have been sentenced to prison terms by military courts in Sagaing region, according to pro-junta Telegram messaging app channels.

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.

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, in Papers of Jefferson, ed.

The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16.  You need something else than just an AR-15.”

The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

A 2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

The events of recent years have all been part of a master plan to shut us up and preemptively shut us down: by making peaceful revolution impossible and violent revolution inevitable.

The powers-that-be want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law.

This is how it begins.

As John Lennon warned, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”

Already, discontent is growing.

According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, 7 out of 10 Americans believe that American democracy is “imperiled.”

Americans are worried about the state of their country, afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government, and tired of being treated like suspects and criminals.

What we’ll see more of before long is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.”

This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.

Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Brace yourselves.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Any time you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Any time you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And any time you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, yet that is no real recourse at all.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, what is unfolding before us is not a revolution. This is an anti-revolution.

We are at our most vulnerable right now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

France-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF) recently released its scores and rankings for international press freedom. In 2022, RSF gave Ukraine a score of 55.76 out of 100, placing it 106th out of 180 countries surveyed. In the most recent report, issued after over a year of war, Ukraine shot to 79th out of 180, with a new score of 61.19. This despite wartime measures that banned opposition parties, consolidated media under state control, and saw journalists’ speech chilled by unprecedented intimidation.

Wartime measures in any country often result in a loss of press freedom. To say that such restrictions are typical, however, does not mean that they are therefore not really happening. For RSF to change the standards it applies to Ukraine, as it apparently has, because the country has been invaded is to endorse the idea that freedom of the press ought to be limited in times of danger—an odd position, to say the least, for a group dedicated to protecting the rights of journalists to take.

Deteriorating democracy

Jacobin (2/25/23): Ukraine’s new media law “gives unprecedented powers to Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to fine and revoke the license of media outlets, block publications without a court order, and force social media platforms and search engines to remove content.”

By ordinary standards, the position of the press in Ukraine has not improved in the past year, but dramatically worsened. In an exhaustive article, Branko Marcetic (Jacobin, 2/25/23) thoroughly outlined how democratic institutions have deteriorated in Ukraine as a result of the war. Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, told Marcetic:

[President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy used the Russian invasion and the war as a pretext to eliminate most of the political opposition and potential rivals for power, and to consolidate his largely undemocratic rule.

This continues a trend since before the war. In 2021, Zelenskyy had banned the most popular news website in the country, then  banned media outlets affiliated with one of the most popular parties in the country. In a case that elicited international condemnation, Vasyl Muravitsky was forced to flee to Finland after being accused of “treason” and allegedly disseminating “anti-Ukrainian” materials. His prosecution began before the war, but has continued in absentia during the invasion.

The trial is happening against a backdrop of wider political repression. Among other wartime measures, Zelenskyy suspended, then banned, 11 opposition parties due to their alleged links with Russia. One of these parties had even held 10% of the seats in the Ukrainian parliament before the move. Journalists and anyone else with a political opinion are well aware of the consequences of speaking out, and the pressures have only intensified.

One Ukrainian scholar told Marcetic:

All Ukrainian journalists and bloggers who did not want to promote Zelenskyy’s version of “truth” had to either shut up (voluntarily or under duress) or, if possible, emigrate.

Consolidated TV

International Federation of Journalists president Dominique Pradalié Media (1/17/23): “Freedom and pluralism are in danger in Ukraine under the new media law.”

In July, Zelenskyy consolidated television organizations into a single, government-controlled channel. In a widely criticized move, Zelenskyy signed a law that expanded the ability of the state regulator, controlled by Zelenskyy and his party, to issue fines, revoke licenses and prevent publication for media organizations.

The top Ukrainian journalists’ unions opposed the law. The head of one union warned that

government officials will declare those who disagree with their vision to be enemies of the country or foreign agents. This perspective of state and political regulation of the media is in total contradiction with the desire of Ukrainian civil society for European integration.

The International Federation of Journalists called on the European Commission and Council of Europe to review the measure. The Committee to Protect Journalists repeatedly called on the Ukrainian government to drop the bill, warning that it “imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information.”

Unlike other international journalism-centered NGOs, Reporters Without Borders offered praise for the bill. In a blog post titled “RSF Hails Ukraine’s Adoption of New Media Law, Despite War with Russia” (1/11/23), it wrote that the law was “generally welcomed by Ukrainian journalists.” This praise was based on minor provisions that were required for Ukrainian admission to the European Union, as it “harmonize[d] Ukrainian legislation with European law.”

This was acknowledged  as a positive move by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), one of the unions opposed to the bill. But as NUJU made clear, journalists objected to the enormous control given to the state media regulators, not these less important provisions.

RSF acknowledged these measures, but euphemistically described them as “co-regulatory mechanisms that facilitate a dialogue between the media regulator and the media”; it wrote that the provisions “expand[ed] the media regulator’s powers,” but offered only muted criticism, suggesting that “to guarantee the regulator’s full independence…the process for its appointing members needs to be changed.” While it noted that this could be done by “amend[ing] the constitution,” it tellingly acknowledged that these changes were “impossible as long as martial law…is still in effect.”

Banning media—with improvement

RSF (2023): “Ukraine stands at the front line of resistance against the expansion of the Kremlin’s propaganda system.”

RSF’s obfuscation and whitewashing of the law carried into its 2023 Press Freedom Index report for Ukraine, which merely says of the law, “A new media law that was adopted in late 2022 after years of preparation is designed to bring Ukraine in line with European media legislation.”

In the report, RSF acknowledged some repression:

Media regarded as pro-Kremlin were banned by presidential decree, and access to Russian social media was restricted. This has intensified since the start of Russia’s invasion. Media carrying Russian propaganda have been blocked.

RSF even acknowledged that “the application of martial law sometimes results in reporting restrictions for journalists.” To RSF, however, this increase in censorship does not overshadow the improvements in Ukraine’s media environment, as embodied by the EU-compliant regulations, so it gave the country a higher score than last year.

Looking at previous years of RSF index reports, the language hasn’t changed much since the 2021 index, which reads:

Ukraine has a diversified media landscape…. Much more is needed to loosen the oligarchs’ tight grip on the media, encourage editorial independence and combat impunity for crimes of violence against journalists.

In the 2022 report, this changed to “Ukraine’s media landscape is diverse, but remains largely in the grip of oligarchs who own all of the national TV channels.”  The report criticized the Russian invasion for replacing the media in occupied areas with Kremlin propaganda. There was no criticism of the government’s consolidation of control, or the deteriorating political situation.

‘Front line of resistance’

RSF (2023): “No journalist is safe from the threat of serious charges under vaguely worded draconian laws that were often adopted in haste.”

The latest RSF report downgraded Russia’s already low standing, from 155th to 164th place (38.82 to 34.77). Its report on Russia began, appropriately, by noting what the Russian government had done to the press:

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media have been banned, blocked and/or declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations.”

The report on Ukraine, by contrast, began by talking about Russia:

The war launched by Russia on 24 February 2022 threatens the survival of the Ukrainian media. In this “information war,” Ukraine stands at the front line of resistance against the expansion of the Kremlin’s propaganda system.

This framing allows RSF to present the banning of “media regarded as pro-Kremlin” as an act of “resistance” rather than repression.

Rising score ‘a joke’

Political scientist Gerald Sussman called Ukraine’s rising score “a joke,” especially when the “US ranking dropped to No. 45 (from 42).” (RSF cited states’ efforts to restrict reporters’ access to public spaces, among other issues.) Sussman has extensively studied the role of seemingly independent international NGOs in pushing US-centric, market-oriented values around the world. He connected RSF’s Press Freedom score to other “Freedom” indexes, like Freedom House’s “democracy score,” which often judges “democracy” according to market standards. “Groups with the name ‘freedom’ in their title are almost always conservative,” Sussman stated in a statement to FAIR.

Freedom House has yet to release its 2023 democracy scores, though its 2022 report criticized Ukraine for pre-war repression, citing “imposition of sanctions on several domestic journalists and outlets on national security grounds, leading to three TV channels being taken off the air.” As we noted, RSF had no such critique.

Reporters Without Borders is a prestigious international institution, respected by many in the world of media and human rights. Unfortunately, like many in the media, it appears to have taken on the role of cheerleader for Ukraine in the proxy war,  abandoning the pretense of being an objective monitor.

In Ukraine, the past year has been devastating for a country already struggling with media repression. RSF’s denial of reality does nothing to actually help Ukraine, but downplaying these problems will only further imperil press freedoms.

The post Ukraine’s ‘Press Freedom’ Score Increases Despite Martial Law, Banned Media appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.

A West Papuan leader has accused Indonesia of imposing a “martial law” on the Melanesian region in response to the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot by rebels fighting Jakarta’s contested rule.

“It is clear that Indonesia is using the kidnap of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens as a pretext to strengthen their colonial hold on West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.

Mehrtens was taken hostage on February 7 in the Papuan Highlands and has featured in video demands for independence.

• READ MORE:  Search for NZ pilot taken hostage by Papua rebels extended, says Indonesia
• Other West Papua reports

“[Indonesian security forces] are creating and exploiting violence to further depopulate our villages and create easier access to our resources through corporate developments like the Trans Papua Highway.

“This is all part of a 60-year colonial land grab,” claimed Wenda in a statement.

He has appealed for international aid agencies to be allowed to treat victims of forced displacement.

He said that in Intan Jaya, Puncak Jaya, and Nduga, Indonesian soldiers were “roaming the countryside, conducting arbitrary house searches, beating Papuan civilians, and even murdering women and children”.

Papuan shot dead
Wenda said that near Wamena, a Papuan named Stefanus Wilil was shot dead at random while crossing a road.

Last month, a 12-year-old boy, Enius Tabuni, was killed by soldiers who then “mockingly videoed his dead body”.

“Merely days ago, a woman walking back to her village with her husband was stopped, beaten, and then he was shot dead.

“Women and young girls have been raped, churches have been burnt by soldiers, and 16 villages in the Intan Jaya Regency have been abandoned by terrified inhabitants.

“My people are living in mortal fear of the next beating, the next murder, the next massacre.

“Everyone is a target: whether it is because they have a beard or Rasta culture, wearing dirty clothes, or carrying an axe or shovel to tend their gardens — every Papuan is under automatic suspicion.

“Hundreds have been forced to flee their homes by roving military bands acting with total impunity.”

Taking refuge
Wenda said they were taking refuge in the forests, where they lacked food, water, and “basic medical facilities”.

“But even there they are not safe, with armed police occupying every corner of the Papuan countryside, transforming the land into a hunting ground for Indonesian troops.”

Wenda, who lives in exile, said there were parallels with his own childhood experience.

“Seeing my people abused in this way brings up memories of 1977-1982, when I was a child living in hiding in the bush,” he said.

“The Highland operations during this time have been described by the Asian Human Rights Commission as a ‘neglected genocide’.

“Indonesia killed us with guns and bombs dropped from helicopters, but also with malnutrition and crop destruction.

“Even as a child I knew that my life was worthless to the colonial forces. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua is still neglected, as the massacre of 10 Papuans in Wamena in February proves.”

Up to 100,000 displaced
According to UN figures, between 60,000 and 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced over the past four years.

Wenda said his movement’s peaceful demands to Indonesia were:

• Allow aid agencies to treat victims of forced displacement;
• Allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua, as had been demanded by more than 84 countries;
• Allow international journalists to report on the situation in West Papua;
• Draw back Indonesian troops to allow civilians to return to their lives; and
• Release all political prisoners — including 80 activists who had been arrested for handing out leaflets demanding political activist Victor Yeimo be freed, Victor Yeimo himself, and three students detained without charge last year.

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

Wong, 60, had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of "incitement to subvert state power" under Hong Kong's national security law, while he and his assistant Cheung Man-ji, 62, both pleaded guilty to one count each of "illegal possession of a firearm."

Wong's five-year jail term came after he was accused of trying to form an armed separatist movement, by recruiting people to his "Ghost Assassins training class" via Facebook.

But the initial charge of "sedition" and four other weapons charges didn't eventually appear on his charge sheet.

Instead, prosecutors applied to upgrade the charge to one under the security law at the District Court, ensuring he would face a heavier sentence of up to seven years in jail.

Police photos handed out to journalists at the time of Wong's arrest in March 2022 showed crossbows seized during a raid on his martial arts studio.

Police claimed the pair were training a clandestine force to overthrow the government and set up an independent state – armed with crossbows, airguns and their bare hands.

‘Combat tai chi’

The center had allegedly trained students in "combat tai chi," and police said they had seized an airgun, eight crossbows, 30 steel-tipped arrows and a collection of blades from the premises.

While the defense called for leniency due to a lack of prior convictions or previous psychological issues, District Court Judge Ernest Lin ruled out a customary one-third sentence reduction for defendants who plead guilty, saying Wong's actions represented a "serious" violation of the national security law.

Cheung was handed a 16-month jail term for the weapons charge.

Lin found that Wong's social media posts were "designed to rekindle dissatisfaction and disgust with the Hong Kong police, the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government, and to achieve the overthrow of the Hong Kong government by advocating martial arts skills and weapons training."

He said the fact that Wong had nearly 6,000 followers at the time of his Facebook posts meant that his posts would likely have gone viral.

Lin said Wong had made 39 "subversive" posts across a 21-month period, and had rented out a venue to hold his training class, as well as "hoarding weapons" to implement his plan.

The martial arts training center also housed a "shrine" to "martyrs and acts of insurrection," deliberately inciting hatred against the government among anyone who went there, Lin said, adding that around 20 people had signed up for Lin's martial arts classes.

He said there was no evidence that Wong's plan had affected society, but said that Hong Kong was in the aftermath of the 2019 protest movement -- during which police were widely criticized for their violence towards mostly unarmed protesters -- and that some people were still "irrational and gullible."

Wong's posts had "fueled long standing grievances" and tarnished the reputations of both Hong Kong and China, Lin found.

The national security law -- imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020 -- ushered in a citywide crackdown on public dissent and criticism of the authorities that has seen several senior journalists, pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai and 47 former lawmakers and democracy activists charged with offenses from "collusion with a foreign power" to "subversion."

Martial arts societies in southeastern China once acted as the seedbed of an attempt to overthrow the Qing Dynasty during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, which aimed to purge China of foreign colonial incursion and influence.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ng Ting Hong for RFA Cantonese.

Last week, the junta declared martial law in 37 townships across the country and authorized military tribunals to hand down life sentences and the death penalty for a wide range of offenses. 

The move came a day after military leaders extended their emergency rule over the country for six more months on the second anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2021, coup that ousted the democratically elected government.

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government dismissed the announcement as a bid to “save face,” telling RFA Burmese that all the towns where martial law was declared are actually under control of anti-junta forces.

On Friday, Chin National Front spokesperson Salai Htet Ni confirmed to RFA that one such township – Thantlang in Chin state – is actually under the control of local defense forces, aside from an area called “Tat Kone,” or military hill, where the junta’s Light Infantry Battalion 269 is stationed.

“Except for that area, the local defense forces have dominated the rest of the region,” he said.

However, Salai Htet Ni acknowledged that residents of Thantlang who fled fighting in the township are unwilling to return as junta troops remain at Tat Kone.

“It’s possible that the military would send their fighter jets to launch airstrikes after … the civilians return home, so it’s very risky for them,” he said.

Calls to Thant Zin, the junta’s Chin state spokesperson and social affairs minister, went unanswered Friday. But on Thursday, pro-junta media reported that an “overwhelming number” of CDF forces had raided the Thantlang Police Station, leading to a large number of injuries to police personnel as they fled the station under assisted strikes by the Air Force.

Risk of airstrikes remains

Thantlang township was the site of intense battles between the military and anti-junta armed forces in September 2021, resulting in several homes being razed and causing more than 10,000 residents to flee the area.

A displaced person from Thantlang, who declined to be named for security reasons, said that even with the CNF in near-total control of the township, it is currently impossible for civilians to return home.

“If the local defense forces are able to control the town, the junta might attack again in response,” he said. “For me, I am too afraid to stay in town. The town is not livable as the fighting has damaged the infrastructure, so there is no electricity or running water. Repairing the roads could take months.”

The military launched airstrikes on the head office of the Chin Defense Force in Thantlang on Jan. 10-11, killing five resistance soldiers and damaging a medical clinic and other buildings.

Another resident of Thantlang, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told RFA that people are “very nervous,” despite having dug bomb shelters and prepared for possible airstrikes.

“Recently, they dropped bombs on two villages,” he said. “There were no casualties, but we will have to flee into the forest if the fighter jets return."

“We have dug bomb shelters in case there is no time [to run]. We are still worried that the bomb they drop might hit right on the bomb shelter. Our lives are in danger now.”

Statistics from Chin human rights groups show that since the coup, junta troops have burned down more than 1,300 homes in Thantlang, including churches.

Salai Man Hin Lian, the administration officer of the Chin Human Rights Organization, told RFA that the military’s use of airstrikes against civilians is “a grave human rights violation.”

“The military has been relying on the Air Force since it has no capacity to launch ground operations,” he said, noting that bombing runs and other airstrikes have caused “massive damage” to civilian infrastructure.

According to the Chin Human Rights Organization, there are more than 100,000 displaced persons in Chin state since the coup.

Eight townships in Chin state are currently under martial law, including Mindat since 2021 and Thantlang, Hakha, Kanpetlet, Matupi, Tedim, Tonzang, and Falam since Feb. 2.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

Thursday’s move came a day after military leaders extended their emergency rule over the country for six more months. It marked the second anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2021, coup that ousted the democratically elected government.

All of the affected townships, scattered across eight states and regions, are in areas where anti-junta forces have a strong presence, from Sagaing in the north to Kayin in the south.

In fact, all the towns where martial law was declared are actually under control of forces opposed to the military government, said Defense Minister Yi Mon of the shadow National Unity Government, made up of members of the previous ruling party and other junta opponents.

“The military knows the actual situation – that they don’t control those areas but they declared martial law anyway just to save face,” he told RFA’s Burmese Service. 

Still, martial law gives military commanders and military courts full judicial and administrative powers in those areas, allowing them to hand out the maximum penalty under the law for 23 specific crimes, including discrediting the state, illegal association, and unlawful possession of a weapon.

Giving military courts such power has no precedent in Myanmar, said a lawyer who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“As lawyers, we have never seen such an order issued,” the lawyer said. “Direction from the administration that the highest punishments must be imposed for these cases is not in accordance with the legal system that has been operating in Myanmar for generations nor international law.” 

‘Like an ulcer that never heals’

Thein Tun Oo, executive director of Theyninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers, said that martial law had to be issued in order to crush rebel forces that have grown because the military had gone soft on them – a tacit acknowledgement that the military has faced serious setbacks.

“The military dealt with the armed resistance as softly as possible and avoided forceful attacks in some areas,” he said. “The military was giving them some time to think of peaceful ways in hope that they would join in on elections.

“But quite contrary to the military’s expectation, the resistance forces did not back down,” he said. “Armed resistance is like an ulcer that never heals as time passes. Now the martial law has been declared to crush them for the peace and security in those regions.”

Indeed, the 37 townships under martial law will likely be targeted for increased military hostility, said political analyst Than Soe Naing.

“Two years after the military coup, many people in several parts of Myanmar are going to fall into the hellhole of military aggression,” he said. “There will be no law or judicial court there. The military will attack, kill and commit genocide against our people in many ways.” 

The move will essentially allow the junta to unlawfully kill armed resistance fighters in the region, said a military officer from the Khin-U Support Organization, one of the resistance groups in the northern Sagaing region, who like many in this article insisted on anonymity for security reasons.

“They declared martial law only to unjustly kill our revolutionary forces. What is feared is that they might kill more innocent civilians for no particular reason,” the officer said. “Our regional defense forces will just fight them head-on and then move to safety as usual. There is nothing to worry about.” 

Elections not possible in these areas

The declaration also means that the junta is no longer capable of holding elections in those areas, Than Soe Naing said.

Junta chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has pledged to hold multi-party elections, but opponents have dismissed those efforts as a sham because they believe any election will be rigged to exclude parties ousted by the coup and keep the junta in power.

Publicly, the junta has tried to minimize the resistance. Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said in a Jan. 23 junta meeting that 198 of the 330 townships across the country were 100 percent peaceful, 67 had serious security issues, and 65 townships were in need of effective security measures. 

And yet the junta has expanded martial law from six townships around Yangon to 37.

Zaw Yan, a farmers’ rights activist, said the declaration will “lead to major bloodshed.” It was made so that the military could “kill everyone in their way to rule those regions by hook or by crook.” 

But it also shows that the junta is becoming desperate because the whole country is resisting it, he said.

The move will certainly boost the number of displaced people in the country, said security analyst Kyaw Saw Han. Already, fighting since the coup has uprooted at least 1.2 million people within the country, and many have also fled across borders into India or Thailand.

More arrests, killings and human rights violations are ahead, Kyaw Win, executive director of the London-based Burmese Human Rights Network said.

“According to martial law, they are going to act as judges, they are going to rule the cases in their favor openly in military courts,” he said. “They don't have the strength to fight all the resistance forces at the same time. Therefore, martial law was issued to help their forces cut the strength of the resistance.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

President Biden releases more oil from the strategic reserve to try to drive down gasoline prices

Russian President Putin imposes martial law on Ukrainian provinces he annexed

A United Nations official calls for more protections for climate migrants

Oakland Councilmembers want to open former army base to homeless residents

Embattled LA City Councilmember Kevin de Leon says he’s sorry about participating in a racist conversation but won’t resign

Image of Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de Leon: By California Senate

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday formally declared martial law in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, the Ukrainian regions that he illegally annexed last month.

Noting that martial law had already been in effect in the occupied Ukrainian regions prior to their annexation, Putin said in a nationally televised address that "we need to formalize this regime within the framework of Russian legislation."

"Therefore, I signed a decree on the introduction of martial law in these four subjects of the Russian Federation," the Russian leader said. "In the current situation, I consider it necessary to give additional powers to heads of all Russian regions."

Putin added that the decree "will immediately be sent to the Federation Council for approval."

Russia's military does not fully control the four annexed Ukrainian regions.

The Associated Press reported that Russian lawmakers are expected to "quickly seal Putin’s decision to impose martial law," which comes amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has forced Moscow's forces to retreat in several major areas.

It also comes as fears of nuclear catastrophe are rising as the war drags on with no diplomatic resolution in sight, with Western powers continuing to pump weapons into Ukraine and Putin lobbing nuclear threats and bombarding major cities.

AP noted that Putin "didn't immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law, but said his order was effective starting Thursday."

"His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals and orders the creation of territorial defense forces in the four annexed regions," the outlet added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Upon assuming the Philippines presidency on 30 June 2022, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr — the only son and namesake of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos — delivered an inaugural address that did not mention press freedom.

Press freedom also went unmentioned when he delivered his first State of the Nation Address before the joint Senate and House of Representatives on 25 July 2022.

His silence on the issue was notable given that the former press secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles, who stepped down on 4 October 2022 due to health reasons, had stressed that press freedom would be guaranteed under the Marcos Jr administration and that the administration would “work closely” with news media.

• READ MORE: Other Philippine media freedom reports

But as he pledged to protect press freedom on the campaign trail, certain journalists were pushed for getting too physically close to Marcos Jr.

It also remains to be seen whether his representatives will continue to evade critical questions during press briefings or if Marcos Jr will be more accommodating of interview requests. The normalisation of these practices would be a death knell for press freedom in the Philippines.

Media restrictions and abuse under Marcos Jr evoke memories of the Philippine media’s dark history under former Philippines president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law from 1972–86.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility identifies five similarities between the Marcos regime in the 1970s and the current Marcos Jr administration.

Distribution of propaganda
These are the distribution of propaganda through government agencies and social media, the ABS–CBN shutdown, attacks and threats against journalists, crony press and media selectivity and propaganda films.

There are chilling similarities between the two administrations despite Marcos Jr’s promise that he would not declare martial law.

For the current administration, “working closely” with journalists means putting them in touch with pro-Marcos Jr vloggers, content creators and influencers. Cruz-Angeles is prioritising the accreditation of pro-regime reporters to cover official functions.

But her claim that accreditation is open to those of all political beliefs rings untrue as pro-Marcos Jr vloggers recently established a new group (upon the suggestion of Cruz-Angeles herself) to help gain government accreditation.

Celebrity vlogger Toni Gonzaga was granted a one-on-one interview with Marcos Jr at the Malacañang Palace in September 2022, showing how the administration accommodates those who ask soft questions. That reminds many Filipinos of Marcos Jr’s non-participation in most presidential debates and interviews during the campaign, opting to accommodate events organised by his supporters.

During the 2022 election campaign, there were times when his handlers did not invite critical journalists, asking those invited to submit questions in advance to control the flow of press briefings.

By accrediting pro-administration, hyper-partisan non-journalists, the Marcos Jr administration gives them legitimacy as “truth seekers” even if there is evidence they proliferate disinformation. It is also a strategy to discredit critical journalists for peddling “fake news”.

Critical journalists harassed
Critical journalists and media organisations are harassed and intimidated under the Marcos Jr administration, just as they were under the 2016–2020 Duterte administration. Disinformation remains rampant even after the 2022 elections.

Red-tagging — the blacklisting of journalists and media outlets critical of the government — has continued.

Shortly after Marcos Jr assumed the presidency, the Court of Appeals upheld the “cyber libel” convictions of Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa and former Rappler writer Reynaldo Santos Jr.

While these convictions appeared to carry over the selective harassment and intimidation of the vengeful Duterte administration, the chilling effect on the media is real. Those targeted become grim reminders of what can happen if journalists and news media organisations incur the ire of the powers that be.

The date 21 September 2022 marked the 50 years since martial law was imposed. Marcos Jr repeatedly claims martial law was necessary to tackle communist and separatist threats, dismissing accusations that his father was a dictator.

Even the funding for the planned memorial for Martial Law victims was cut by 75 percent in the 2023 National Expenditure Programme.

Marcos Jr intends to rewrite history textbooks to include his family’s version of the truth. By silencing his critics, he can further engage in historical denialism. This is important not just to erase his father’s dictator image but to escape his family’s legal problems like the unpaid estate tax and his mother’s conviction for seven counts of graft.

Media repression ‘normalised’
Media repression continues to be normalised under the Marcos Jr regime. One of his allies in the House of Representatives blocked the return of ABS–CBN, whose franchise bid was denied in 2020. Rappler and its editorial staff, including Ressa, continue to face legal problems as well as the threat of closure.

The National Telecommunications Commission blocked 27 websites accused of having communist links in June 2022. It took a court order for the online publication Bulatlat Multimedia to be unblocked, while journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio remains in detention on questionable charges after being red-tagged and subjected to death threats.

The murder of broadcaster Percy Lapid on 3 October 2022 — the second journalist to be killed under the new administration — also reflects the dire state of press freedom in the Philippines.

That Marcos Jr did not mention press freedom in his inaugural speech and first State of the Nation Address reflects his disregard for critical journalism.

Although it is still early days, his efforts to whitewash the dictatorship’s dark past and continue his predecessor’s media repression indicate that his pre-election promise of a “free press” is long abandoned.

Danilo Arana Arao is associate professor at the Department of Journalism, the University of the Philippines Diliman, special lecturer at the Department of Journalism, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines Santa Mesa, associate editor at Bulatlat Multimedia and editor at Media Asia. This article was first published in East Asia Forum.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Karl Patrick Suyat, 19, has no personal experience of the tyrannical rule of late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. But memories of the atrocities and human rights violations committed during those dark moments have transcended time.

The year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law. But this year also saw the return of the Marcoses to power — Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now the President of the republic and spoke yesterday at the UN General Assembly.

Despite efforts of Martial Law survivors, human rights groups, and even academics to remind the Filipino people of the abuses of the Marcos family, Marcos Jr was still able to clinch the country’s top post.

• READ MORE: Networked propaganda: How the Marcoses are using social media to reclaim Malacañang
• Networked Propaganda: How the Marcoses are rewriting history
• Martial law brutality in ‘educational’ musical drama Katips touches raw nerve in NZ – David Robie
• Martial Law Day in the Philippines

Fueled by outrage and anguish, Suyat thought of a way to channel his energy and still fight back despite the Marcoses’ victory — he founded “Project Gunita” (remember) along with Josiah Quising and Sarah Gomez.

Project Gunita is a network of volunteers and members of various civil society organisations that aim to defend historical truth. They particularly push back against historical denialism and protect truths about the Martial Law years.

Through the project, the three founders and their members created a digital archive of all materials that contain information about Marcos’ Martial Law to preserve them.

Archiving is not new since other government offices and groups like the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation and the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission, under the Commission on Human Rights, have made efforts to preserve Martial Law materials.

But Project Gunita is born out of the spirit of volunteerism and nationalism among young Filipinos.

From old newspapers, magazines, and books — Project Gunita members seek and buy materials, and then scan them to be preserved in the archives. The project’s archiving started right after Marcos Jr’s victory.

“Having read through the history of dictatorships, from Benito Mussolini to Adolf Hitler to Ferdinand Marcos himself, lagi’t-laging ang unang hinahabol, ang unang-unang tinatarget ng mga diktador ay ‘yong mga silid-aklatan, libraries, at ‘yong mga arkibo – the archives (always, the ones being targeted first by dictators are libraries and archives),” Suyat told Rappler.

Suyat believes that the Marcoses won’t be content with just distorting and whitewashing the atrocities of the Marcos administration. They would eventually go after the archives to erase the truth, Suyat added.

“The only question is when, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And I don’t want to wait until that time happens before we start to scramble around to save the archives.

“Habang may panahon pa (while we still have time), while we can still do it, ‘di ba? (right?) Bakit hindi natin gagawin? (Why don’t we do it?).”

Even before Marcos Jr’s victory, journalists have pointed out that his family not only revises history, but also introduces an alternative history that favours them. The Marcoses also rode on various disinformation networks to disseminate falsehoods.

A two-part investigative story by Rappler showed how the Marcoses used social media to reclaim power and rewrite history to hide their wrongdoings.

Passing the torch
The personal experiences of Project Gunita founders fanned their desire to continue the fight of the generation who came before them. Suyat, who grew up in a family of Martial Law survivors, feels it is his responsibility to protect their stories.

“I cannot allow their stories, as well as the stories of people I had gotten acquainted with later in life who are Martial Law survivors to be erased by historical denialism, that we all know is being perpetrated by the Marcos family,” Suyat told Rappler in a mix of English and Filipino.

Josiah Quising, a co-founder of Project Gunita and a lawyer, believes that these stories should be preserved because true justice for Martial Law victims has yet to be attained.

“It’s very frustrating ‘yong justice system sa Pilipinas and how, for decades, ay wala pa ring totoong hustisya sa mga nangyari during the Martial Law era,” Quising told Rappler. (It’s very frustrating, the justice system in the Philippines, and how, for decades, there has been no true justice for everything that happened during the Martial Law era.)

On the inauguration of Marcos Jr, Martial Law survivors led by playwright Boni Ilagan pledged to continue guarding against tyranny.

In the same event, they had a ceremonial passing of the torch, which symbolized the passing of hope and responsibility from Martial Law survivors to the younger generation.

Suyat and Quising believe that their generation is equally responsible for guarding the country’s freedom — at least in their own way. They strongly believe that since the government is now being led by the dictator’s son, they cannot expect it to preserve the memories of Martial Law, so they have to step in.

Preserving truths from generation to generation

“Wala ka namang naririnig.
‘Di ka naman nakikinig
Parang kuliling sa pandinig
Kayong nagtataka
Ha? Inosente lang ang nagtataka,”
Inosente lang ang nagtataka by Bobby Balingit

(You hear nothing. But you are not listening. Like a chime to the ear. You who wonder. What? Only the innocent wonder.)

This song comes to Kris Lanot Lacaba’s mind whenever he hears people deny the atrocities of Martial Law. His father, Pete Lacaba, a poet and journalist, was tortured and arrested under the Marcos regime.

As a son of a Martial Law survivor, Lacaba has heard stories of torture and violence straight from the victims themselves. He recalled that it was on the pavements of Camp Crame, where his father was imprisoned, that he learned how to walk.

Even though decades have passed since those dark periods, he still vividly remembers how his father became a victim of Marcos’ oppressive rule.

“Ang ginagawa ro’n, may dalawang kama tapos pinapahiga ‘yong tatay ko, ‘yong ulo niya sa isang kama, ‘yong paa niya sa isang kama. At ‘pag nahulog ‘yong kama niya ro’n eh gugulpihin pa siya lalo (What they did to my father was, there were two beds and they would tell my father to lie down, his head on one bed, and the other, on the other bed. If he fell, he would be beaten further),” Lacaba told Rappler.

Aside from his father, his uncles Eman Lacaba and Leo Alto were both killed during Martial Law. It is extremely hard for Lacaba to respond to people who deny that human rights violations happened under Martial Law.

Now that he has his own children, Lacaba passes on the stories of Martial Law to them so the memories would be preserved.

“Mahirap eh, bilang magulang. Paano ba natin ikukuwento ito? Pa’no ba natin ipapamahagi ‘yong karanasan ng magulang nila at ng mga lolo’t lola nila?” Lacaba said. (It’s hard as a parent. How do we tell this story to the kids? How do we tell the kids about the experiences of their parents and grandparents?)

He even thinks of ways to make the stories appropriate to his children.

“So kinukuwento namin sa mga bata, ‘no? Hinahanapan namin ng paraan na maging appropriate sa age din nila ‘yong mga kuwento.” (So we tell the stories to my children. We find ways to make the stories appropriate to their age.)

Aside from his kids, Lacaba says he would always accept invitations by schools and universities to share the Martial Law story of his family. He believes that in this way, he will not only share the truths he learned from his father, but get to listen to other stories, too.

After all, Lacaba believes, conversation about Martial Law should reach everyone.

Republished with permission.

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

Seven weeks ago the Philippines truth-telling martial law film Katips was basking in the limelight in the country’s national FAMAS academy movie awards, winning best picture and a total of six other awards.

Last week it began a four month “world tour” of 10 countries starting in the Middle East followed by Aotearoa New Zealand today – hosted simultaneously at AUT South campus and in Wellington and Christchurch.

The screening of Vincent Tañada’s harrowing – especially the graphic torture scenes – yet also joyful and poignant musical drama touched a raw nerve among many in the audience who shared tears and their experiences of living in fear, or in hiding, during the hate-filled Marcos dictatorship.

• READ MORE: Two films duel for last word on brutal Marcos dictatorship in Philippines

The martial law denunciations, arbitrary arrests, desaparecidos (“disappeared”), brutal tortures and murders by state assassins in the 1970s made the McCarthy era red-baiting witchhunts in the US seem like Sunday School picnics.

Amnesty International says more than 3200 people were killed, 35,000 tortured and 70,000 detained during the martial law period.

Tañada has brushed off claims that the film has a political objective in an attempt to sabotage the leadership of the dictator’s son, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr, who won the presidency in a landslide victory in the May elections to return the Marcos family to the Malacañang.

He has insisted in many interviews — and he repeated this in a live exchange with the audiences in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch — that the film is educational and his intention is to counter disinformation and to ensure history is remembered.

Telling youth about atrocities
Tañada, from one of the Philippines’ great political and legal families and grandson of former Senator Lorenzo Tañada, a celebrated human rights lawyer, says he wanted to tell the youth about the atrocities that happened during the imposition of martial law under Marcos.

He wanted to tell history to those who had forgotten and those who aren’t yet aware.

The Katips movie trailer.

“You know, as an artist it is also our objective not just to entertain people but more important than that, we are here to educate,” he says.

“We also want to educate the young people about the atrocities – the reality of martial law.

“History is slowly being forgotten. We have forgotten it during the last elections and I guess we also have the responsibility to educate and let the youth know what happened during those times.”

It is rare that such brutal torture scenes are seen on the big screen, and before the main screening at AUT the organisers — Banyuhay Aotearoa, Migrante Aotearoa and Auckland Philippine Solidarity — showed two shorts made by the University of the Philippines and Santo Tomas University of Manila featuring martial law survivors describing their horrifying treatment  during the Marcos years to contemporary students.

Some of the students broke down in tears while others, surprisingly, remained impassive, sometimes with an air of disbelief.

The film evolved from the 2016 stage musical Katips: Mga Bagong Katipunero – Katips: The New Freedom Fighters, which won Aliw Awards for best musical performance that year.

Freedom fighter love story
In a nutshell, Katips tells the love story of Greg, a medical student and leader of the National Unions of Students in the Philippines (NUSP), who with other freedom fighting protesters stage a demonstration against martial law on a mountainside called Mendiola.

His professor is abducted by the state Metropol police, murdered and his body dumped in a remote location.

The protesters begin a vigil and the police brutally suppress the protest and arrest and kidnap other freedom fighters. They are subjected to atrocious torture and their bodies dumped.

A safehouse branded “Katips House” takes in Lara, a New York actress and the daughter of the murdered professor who is visiting Manila but doesn’t yet know about the fate of her father. Lara and Greg form an unlikely relationship and their lives are thrown into upheaval when the safehouse “mother” Alet is abducted and tortured to death.

Greg and another protester, Ka Panyong, a writer for the underground newspaper Ang Bayan, are forced to flee into the jungle for the safety and become rebels. Both get shot while on the run, but manage to survive.

When Greg returns to Lara at the “Katips House” during the Edsa Revolution in 1986, he finds he has a son.

The film has a stirring end featuring the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, a memorial wall to the fallen heroes struggling against martial law– a fitting antidote to the Marcoses and their crass attempts to rewrite Philippine history.

Ironically, the same month that Katips was released in public cinemas, another film, the self-serving Maid of Malaçanang, was launched in a bid to perpetuate the Marcos myths.

• Katips – The Movie, director Vincent Tañada (2022)

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by David Robie.

Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand today called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all military and security aid to the Philippines in protest over last month’s “fraudulent” general election.

At simultaneous meetings in Auckland and Wellington, a new broad coalition of social justice and community campaigners endorsed a statement pledging: “Never forget, never again martial law!”

“Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, was elected President in a landslide ballot on May 9 and will take office at the end of this month.

• READ MORE: How Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth as president
• Marcos Jr’s camp still evades issue of unpaid estate tax
• Robredo is number one victim of red-tagging, says ex-AFP spokesperson
• Other Philippine election reports

His father ruled the Philippines with draconian leadership — including 14 years of martial law — between 1965 and 1986 until he was ousted by a People Power uprising.

Marcos Jr – along with his mother Imelda – has long tried to thwart efforts to recover billions of dollars plundered during his father’s autocratic rule.

“Police and military forces should be investigated for their participation in red-tagging, illegal arrests on trumped up charges, extrajudicial killings, and all forms of human rights abuses,” the statement said.

“We call on the International Criminal Court to pursue investigation and trial of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte for massive human rights breaches in its drug war and systematic attacks against political activists, human rights advocates and anti-corruption crusaders.”

Call for ‘transparent government’
The statement called for “transparent government” and for all public funds to be accounted for.

“We specifically call for realignment of the national budget in favour of covid aid, public health and social services instead of wasting billions for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and other government machineries that aim to suppress critics of its corruption and human rights abuses.”

The statement urged the “dismantling” of NTF-ELCAC.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines was called on to “act on the petitions lodged by various persons and groups regarding the disqualification of Ferdinand Marcos Jr to run for office due to his conviction” for tax evasion.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue has confirmed that the court-ordered Marcos family’s tax bill remains unpaid and news reports say this is estimated to now total about 23 billion pesos (NZ$670 million).

The statement called on the Department of Justice and Supreme Court to provide for immediate and unconditional release of the unjustly jailed Senator Leila de Lima — an outspoken critic of Duterte — “following the recantation of the testimonies of three key witnesses”, and also freedom for more than 700 political prisoners “languishing in jail on trumped-up charges”.

The gathered Filipino community also sought an official Day of Remembrance and Tribute for all the victims of Marcos dictatorship to mark the 50th year commemoration of the declaration of martial law on 21 September 2022.

‘Truth army’ to monitor social media
“We call on all Filipinos to remain vigilant as a truth army, to tirelessly monitor and report social media platforms in serious breach of community standards, and to push for stronger laws in place for disinformation to be punished,” the statement said.

Filipinos in the two cities — Auckland and Wellington — pledged support for the Angat Buhay cause of defending Philippines “history, truth and democracy”.

Speakers included Filipino trade unionist Dennis Maga; Mikee Santos of Migrante Aotearoa; an unsuccessful Filipino Labour candidate in the 2020 NZ elections, Romy Udanga; Faye Bañares of AtinAngBukas; and speaking by Zoom from Manila, Senate candidate Luke Espiritu, who said the new Marcos regime would be able to achieve virtual “martial law” without declaring it.

“All Marcos needs to do is suppress dissent, and he has all the sophisticated technology available to do this that his father never had,” Espiritu said.

Northland Kakampink coordinator Faye Bañares said the new Angat Buhay NGO should not take over the responsibility of providing for the poor in the community, although the aim is to help them.

“The NGO should push the Philippine government to face their responsibility and be transparent about what they do,” she said.

Many speakers told how shocked they were in the general election over a “massive breakdown of vote counting machines and voter disenfranchisement” and the “incredibly rapid count of COMELEC transparency servers” to award the “unbelievable final tally” of 31 million votes in favour of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as president and Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter Sara as vice-president.

Social media troll farms
Denouncing the social media troll farms, the meeting critics said “all the worst lies, disinformation and red-tagging were committed against [outgoing vice-president] Leni Robredo, opposition candidates and parties who stood up against [Rodrigo] Duterte and the Marcos-Duterte tandem.”

In November 2021, the Philippines and New Zealand agreed to boost maritime security cooperation during the 6th Philippines-New Zealand Foreign Ministry Consultations hosted by the Philippines.

Both sides acknowledged the growing breadth and depth of Philippines-New Zealand bilateral cooperation, particularly in the areas of defence and security, health, trade and investments, development cooperation, people-to-people and cultural engagements.

Trade between both countries is worth about trade in goods and services is worth about NZ$1.15 billion.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by David Robie.

Children should not pay for the sins of their parents. But in some cases, a healthy suspicion of the offspring is needed, notably when it comes to profiting off ill-gotten gains.

It is certainly needed in the case of Filipino politician and presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, who stands to win today if opinion polls are to be believed.

Bongbong’s father was the notorious martial law strongman Ferdinand Marcos; his mother, the avaricious, shoe-crazed Imelda.

• READ MORE:  ‘Our blood is boiling’ – victims angry as dictator’s son edges closer to Philippine presidency
• Robredo’s plea to 412,000 in Pasay – 200 in Auckland: Fight fake news
• Other Philippine presidential elections

Elected president in 1965, Ferdinand Marcos indulged in murder, torture and looting. He thrived on the terrain of violent, corrupt oligarchic politics, characterised by a telling remark from the dejected Sergio Osmenã Jr, whom he defeated in 1969: “We were outgunned, outgooned, and outgold.”

In 1972, martial law was imposed on the pretext of a failed assassination attempt against the defence secretary, an attack which saw no injuries nor apprehension of suspects. It was only formally lifted in 1981.

Under the blood-soaked stewardship of the Marcos regime, 70,000 warrantless arrests were made, and 4000 people killed.

The Philippines duly declined in the face of monstrous cronyism, institutional unaccountability and graft, becoming one of the poorest in Southeast Asia. While Marcos Sr’s own official salary never rose above US$13,500 a year, he and his cronies made off with $10 billion. (Estimates vary.)

Garish portraits, designer shoes
When revolutionaries took over the Presidential palace, they found garishly ornate portraits, 15 mink coats, 508 couture gowns and more than 3000 pairs of Imelda’s designer shoes.

Fleeing the Philippines in the wake of the “people power” popular insurrection of 1986 led by supporters of Corazon “Cory” Aquino, the Marcoses found sanctuary in the bosom of US protection, taking up residence in Hawai’i.

Opinion polls show that Bongbong is breezing his way to office, a phenomenon that has little to do with his personality, sense of mind, or presence.

A Pulse Asia survey conducted in February showed voter approval at an enviable 60 percent. This would suggest that the various petitions seeking to disqualify him have had little effect on perceptions lost in the miasma of myth and speculation.

All this points to a dark combination of factors that have served to rehabilitate his family’s legacy.

For the student aware of the country’s oligarchic politics, this is unlikely to come as shocking. For one, the Marcoses have inexorably found their way back into politics, making their way through the dynastic jungle.

Imelda, for all her thieving ways, found herself serving in the House of Representatives four times and unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1992. Daughter Imee became governor of the province of Ilocos Norte in 2010, and has been serving as a senator since 2019.

Contested the vice-presidency – and lost
Marcos Jr followed a similar trajectory, becoming a member of congress and senator and doing so with little distinction. In 2016, he contested the vice-presidency and lost.

Bongbong has already done his father proud at various levels, not least exhibiting a tendency to fabricate his past. On the touchy issue of education, Oxford University has stated at various points that Marcos Jr, while matriculating at St Edmund Hall in 1975, never took a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics — as he claims.

According to the institution’s records, “he did not complete his degree, but was awarded a special diploma in Social Studies in 1978″.

A statement from the Oxford Philippines Society remarks that, “Marcos failed his degree’s preliminary examinations at the first attempt. Passing the preliminary examinations is a prerequisite for continuing one’s studies and completing a degree at Oxford University”.

The issue was known as far back as 1983, when a disturbed sister from the Religious of the Good Shepherd wrote to the university inquiring about the politician’s credentials and received a letter confirming that fact.

Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, whose own rule has been characterised by populist violence and impunity, has played his role in the rehabilitative process. In 2016, almost three decades after the former dictator died in Hawai’i, Duterte gave permission for Ferdinand Marcos to be buried with full military honours in Manila’s National Heroes’ Cemetery.

The timing of the burial was kept secret, prompting Vice-President Leni Robredo to describe the ceremony as “a thief in the night”.

‘Legitimising’ massive violations of human rights
A coalition of Jesuit groups claimed that the interring of Marcos in Manila “buries human dignity by legitimising the massive violations of human and civil rights… that took place under his regime.” Duterte would have appreciated the mirror-effect of the move, a respectful nod from one human rights abuser to another.

Under his direction, thousands of drug suspects have been summarily butchered.

Bongbong has also taken the cue, rehabilitating his parents using a polished, digital campaign of re-invention that trucks in “golden age” nostalgia and delusion.

Political raw material has presented itself. The gap between the wealthy and impoverished, which his father did everything to widen, has not been closed by successive governments. According to 2021 figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority, 24 percent of Filipinos — some 26 million people — live below the poverty line.

Videos abound claiming that his parents were philanthropists rather than figures of predation. The issue of martial law brutality has all but vanished in the narrative.

Social media and online influencers have managed the growth of this image through a coordinated campaign of disinformation waged across multiple platforms.

Gemma B. Mendoza of the Philippine news platform Rappler has noted the more sinister element of these efforts. Even as the legacy of a family dictatorship is being burnished, the press and critics are being hounded.

Robredo the only challenge
The only movement standing in the way of the Marcos family is Vice-President Robredo, who triumphed over Marcos Jr in 2016. Her hope is a brand of politics nourished by grassroots participation rather than shameless patronage.

The same cannot be said of the political classes who operate on the central principle of Philippine politics: impunity.

This, at least, is how political scientist Dr Aries Arugay, an associate professor of the University of Philippines, sees it: “We just don’t jail our politicians or make them accountable … we don’t punish them, unlike South Korean presidents.”

The opposite is the case, and as the voters make it to the ballot today, the country, if polls are to be believed, will see another Marcos in the presidential palace.

Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. 

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

Former political prisoner Cristina Bawagan still has the dress she wore the day she was arrested, tortured and sexually abused by soldiers during the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s brutal era of martial law.

Bawagan fears the horrors of Marcos’s rule would be diminished if his namesake son wins the presidency in Monday’s election, a victory that would cap a three-decade political fightback for a family driven out in a 1986 “people power” uprising.

Also known as “Bongbong”, Marcos Jr has benefited from what some political analysts describe as a decades-long public relations effort to alter perceptions of his family, accused of living lavishly at the helm of one of Asia’s most notorious kleptocracies.

• READ MORE: Other Philippines election reports
• More pictures from the NZ Kakampink rally for democracy today

As Philippine president, Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth

Rivals of the family say the presidential run is an attempt to rewrite history, and change a narrative of corruption and authoritarianism associated with his father’s era.

“This election is not just a fight for elected positions. It is also a fight against disinformation, fake news, and historical revisionism,” Vice-President Leni Robredo, Marcos’s main rival in the presidential race, told supporters in March.

TSEK.PH, a fact-checking initiative for the May 9 vote, reported that it had debunked scores of martial law-related disinformation it said was used to rehabilitate, erase or burnish the discreditable record of Marcos Sr.

No reply to questions
Marcos Jr.’s camp did not reply to written requests for comment on Bawagan’s story.

Marcos Jr., who last week called his late father a “political genius”, has previously denied claims of spreading misinformation and his spokesperson has said Marcos does not engage in negative campaigning.

Bawagan, 67, said martial law victims like her needed to share their stories to counter the portrayal of the elder Marcos’s regime as a peaceful, golden age for the Southeast Asian country.

“It is very important they see primary evidence that it really happened,” said Bawagan while showing the printed dress which had a tear below the neckline where her torturer passed a blade across her chest and fondled her breasts.

The elder Marcos ruled for two decades from 1965, almost half of it under martial law.

During that time, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3240 were killed, according to figures from Amnesty International — figures which Marcos Jr. questioned in a January interview.

Bawagan, an activist, was arrested on 27 May 1981 by soldiers in the province of Nueva Ecija for alleged subversion and brought to a “safehouse” where she was beaten as they tried to extract a confession from her.

“I would receive slaps on my face every time they were not satisfied with my answers and that was all the time,” Bawagan said. “They hit strongly at my thighs and clapped my ears. They tore my duster (dress) and fondled my breasts.”

“The hardest thing was when they put an object in my vagina. That was the worst part of it and all throughout I was screaming. No one seemed to hear,” said Bawagan, a mother of two.

‘No arrests’
In a conversation with Marcos Jr. that appeared on YouTube in 2018, Juan Ponce Enrile, who served as the late dictator’s defence minister, said not one person was arrested for their political and religious views, or for criticising the elder Marcos.

However, more than 11,000 victims of state brutality during Martial Law later received reparations using millions from Marcos’s Swiss bank deposits, part of the billions the family siphoned off from the country’s coffers that were recovered by the Philippine government.

Among them was Felix Dalisay, who was detained for 17 months from August 1973 after he was beaten and tortured by soldiers trying to force him to inform on other activists, causing him to suffer hearing loss.

“They kicked me even before I boarded the military jeep so I fell and hit my face on the ground,” Dalisay said, showing a scar on his right eye as he recounted the day he was arrested.

When they reached the military headquarters, Dalisay said he was brought to an interrogation room, where soldiers repeatedly clapped his ears, kicked and hit him, sometimes with a butt of a rifle, during questioning.

“They started by inserting bullets used in a .45 calibre gun between my fingers and they would squeeze my hand. That really hurt. If they were not satisfied with my answers, they would hit me,” Dalisay pointing to different parts of his body.

The return of a Marcos to the country’s seat of power is unthinkable for Dalisay, who turned 70 this month.

“Our blood is boiling at that thought,” said Dalisay.

“Marcos Sr declared martial law then they will say nobody was arrested, and tortured? We are here speaking while we are still alive.”

Republished with permission from Rappler.

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

Some say the Republican Party has gone nuts. In reality, they’ve simply reached the endpoint toward which they’ve been moving for 62 years: fascism.

Republican politicians since Barry Goldwater’s 1960 campaign have trash-talked “big government” in the United States. Like Reagan’s assertions that cutting taxes on rich people would “trickle down” benefits to poor people, or his claim that destroying labor unions would increase take-home pay for working people, this one’s just another lie.

Since the 1980s, in fact, the GOP has been the ultimate “big government” party.  And now we’re learning that Republicans in Congress were, just three days before Joe Biden was to be sworn in as president, calling for the ultimate big government power: martial law to prevent Biden‘s inauguration.

When they started, it was just another grift. But now it has built a strong foundation for martial law and fascism in the United States should another Trumpy Republican win the White House.

There’s no provision in either the Constitution or US law for a president to specifically invoke martial (or, as Marjorie Taylor Green calls it, “Marshall”) law, although a series of statutes under Sections 251-255 of Title 10, passed between 1792 and 1871 and generally referred to collectively as the Insurrection Act, can produce the same result.

They give the president extraordinary powers, allowing him to shut down or seize control of communications systems like cell phone providers or social media companies, freeze or seize the assets of individual citizens or organizations including nonprofit corporations like political parties, and to create a federal police force he can deploy nationwide that is answerable only to himself.

(If all of this sounds familiar, it’s almost step for step what Hitler did; we remember its most famous artifact, the Schutzstaffel or SS.)

And that’s exactly what members of the GOP’s Insurrection Caucus in Congress were asking President Trump to do as recently as January 17th, 2021, all to keep Trump in power for another four years.

Making it all even more shocking, this newly-revealed coup attempt happened months after Joe Biden won the election, the states and Congress had certified that win on January 6th, and the world was preparing to welcome Biden to the White House at noon, January 20th.

The Big Lie isn’t just that Trump had an election stolen from him: the GOP has been running a longer con, preparing the ground for Trump, for three generations.

When they started, it was just another grift. But now it has built a strong foundation for martial law and fascism in the United States should another Trumpy Republican win the White House.

It was 58 years ago that Barry Goldwater proclaimed:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”

I remember this ad playing on my parents’ black-and-white TV during that 1964 election contest between Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson:

The GOP’s proclaimed opposition to “big government” was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. They’re quite happy to both expand and use government, so long as it’s used to benefit themselves and their rich friends.

It’s been, however, a very useful lie for Republicans:

• When their donors from the fossil fuel and chemical industries wanted to keep pumping poisons into our air and water rather than pay to dispose of them properly, Republicans claimed shrinking the role of government through pollution deregulation was the solution.

• When their donors in the lumber industry wanted to continue to rip out old-growth forests and achieve maximum profits by clear-cutting everything else, “limiting government overreach” became a useful canard.

• When their donors in the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital industries wanted to use their power of life-or-death over Americans to extract maximum prices and profits, “Keep your government hands off my healthcare!” became the GOP mantra.

• When their donors in the banking and finance industry wanted to use depositors’ money to gamble with stocks and mortgages, “ending oppressive big government regulations” that were “suppressing innovation” was the Republican rallying cry.

• When their billionaire friends wanted to monopolize media and put over 1500 rightwing radio stations on the air to flip the politics of an entire generation toward tax cuts for the morbidly rich, “ending limits on free speech” through the Fairness Doctrine and media ownership rules was going to “restore fairness.”

• When Big Airlines, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and dozens of other giant industries wanted to either buy out or crush their smaller competitors, Republicans stepped up to the plate to end enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust and other anti-monopoly laws in 1983, leaving the rest of us with the bill.

Small government was never the goal of the Republican Party or the conservative movement. It was always all about raw political power and the wealth that comes with it.

Small government was never the goal of the Republican Party or the conservative movement. It was always all about raw political power and the wealth that comes with it.

The Trump presidency finally and for all time pulled the mask off their “we oppose big government” lie. There is no conceivable way a government could be “bigger“ than for it to establish martial law.

The truth is that Republicans only oppose “big government” when it restricts their ability to make obscene amounts of money at the expense of working people. Or when government tries to help out the environment, those who’re down on their luck, or the victims of historic discrimination.

Republican advocates of “small government,” in addition to trying to pull the ultimate big government trigger of martial law in January of 2021, now also brag that they want to use the power of the governments they control to:

• Narrow your right to vote

• Imprison women seeking abortions

• Ban books

• Block efforts to green our energy sector

• Harass gay and trans kids

• Prevent minorities from having full representation in Congress

• Turn school boards into inquisitors

• Let utilities rip off solar customers

• Trash public health

• Put more guns in the hands of deranged mass shooters

• Purge voting rolls of Democrats and minorities

• Preempt local communities from protecting their own environment

• Reduce the accountability of police for violent behavior

• Ban gay marriage

• Allow state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters in elections

• Keep students in debt

• Hand Medicare over to the big insurance companies

• Increase hundreds of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry

• Terrorize refugee children

• Eliminate or turn most national parks into drilling and mining sites

• End environmental protections

• Thwart enforcement of food safety laws

• Destroy workers’ rights to union representation

And now we find that a sizable number of congressional Republicans actually wanted Donald Trump to end democracy in America once and for all, replacing our system of checks-and-balances with a strongman oligarchy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, texted Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that she’d talked with other members of Congress and they agreed that:

“[T]he only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall [sic] law” and the President should pave the way for her and her colleagues, who’d already incited an insurrection, to now “go after Biden and anyone else!”

And Republican Congressman Scott Perry was calling on Trump to replace the attorney general with a toady who would void the election by declaring it fraudulent.

All this was still going on just three days before Joe Biden was to be sworn into office and move into the White House with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

At the same time the Sedition Caucus was doing their work, the Trump Administration itself was outright refusing to participate in handing government agencies over to incoming Biden administration officials.

Over at the Pentagon — the agency Greene and her colleagues wanted Trump to use to overthrow our government — Trump loyalist Kash Patel was reportedly blocking the normal handover processes that precede a new president taking over.

As Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee reported for NBC News a month before the constitutionally scheduled January 20th transition:

“A Trump loyalist who was recently appointed as Pentagon chief of staff is controlling the Biden transition's team access to Pentagon officials, even blocking some career officials and experts from giving information about key defense issues to the transition team and telling political appointees to take the lead instead, say two current and two former U.S. officials.”

As you can see, Trump and his fascist followers have no problem breaking both custom and law to seize and hold power. They nearly got away with it in 2020, and might have if they had been able to follow Marjorie Taylor Greene’s advice.

Such an order by Trump may have provoked demonstrations, incited riots across America, or possibly even triggered a civil war.

In the end, a group of patriotic Americans, most of them Republicans, succeeded in blocking Trump’s plans. We’ll be learning more about them as the January 6 hearings go public this summer.

Trump- and insurrection-supporting Republicans should be in court for sedition, rather than pontificating about “big government” on Sunday talkshows.

But the GOP still has the plan in place, and could easily use this fascist “big government” strategy to seize control of our government to declare martial law in the future, unless Congress acts.

As the past six years have shown the entire world, Republicans won’t be satisfied until the American government is big and oppressive enough to keep them in power indefinitely.

And that’s regardless of how elections go, regardless of who tries to vote, and with the ultimate power — if future elections don’t go their way — to simply sic the US Army on the people using the martial law powers Representative Greene was so enthusiastic about on January 17TH.

Congress must act.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

Some say the Republican Party has gone nuts. In reality, they’ve simply reached the endpoint toward which they’ve been moving for 62 years: fascism.

Republican politicians since Barry Goldwater’s 1960 campaign have trash-talked “big government” in the United States. Like Reagan’s assertions that cutting taxes on rich people would “trickle down” benefits to poor people, or his claim that destroying labor unions would increase take-home pay for working people, this one’s just another lie.

Since the 1980s, in fact, the GOP has been the ultimate “big government” party.  And now we’re learning that Republicans in Congress were, just three days before Joe Biden was to be sworn in as president, calling for the ultimate big government power: martial law to prevent Biden‘s inauguration.

When they started, it was just another grift. But now it has built a strong foundation for martial law and fascism in the United States should another Trumpy Republican win the White House.

There’s no provision in either the Constitution or US law for a president to specifically invoke martial (or, as Marjorie Taylor Green calls it, “Marshall”) law, although a series of statutes under Sections 251-255 of Title 10, passed between 1792 and 1871 and generally referred to collectively as the Insurrection Act, can produce the same result.

They give the president extraordinary powers, allowing him to shut down or seize control of communications systems like cell phone providers or social media companies, freeze or seize the assets of individual citizens or organizations including nonprofit corporations like political parties, and to create a federal police force he can deploy nationwide that is answerable only to himself.

(If all of this sounds familiar, it’s almost step for step what Hitler did; we remember its most famous artifact, the Schutzstaffel or SS.)

And that’s exactly what members of the GOP’s Insurrection Caucus in Congress were asking President Trump to do as recently as January 17th, 2021, all to keep Trump in power for another four years.

Making it all even more shocking, this newly-revealed coup attempt happened months after Joe Biden won the election, the states and Congress had certified that win on January 6th, and the world was preparing to welcome Biden to the White House at noon, January 20th.

The Big Lie isn’t just that Trump had an election stolen from him: the GOP has been running a longer con, preparing the ground for Trump, for three generations.

When they started, it was just another grift. But now it has built a strong foundation for martial law and fascism in the United States should another Trumpy Republican win the White House.

It was 58 years ago that Barry Goldwater proclaimed:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”

I remember this ad playing on my parents’ black-and-white TV during that 1964 election contest between Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson:

The GOP’s proclaimed opposition to “big government” was a lie then, and it’s a lie now. They’re quite happy to both expand and use government, so long as it’s used to benefit themselves and their rich friends.

It’s been, however, a very useful lie for Republicans:

• When their donors from the fossil fuel and chemical industries wanted to keep pumping poisons into our air and water rather than pay to dispose of them properly, Republicans claimed shrinking the role of government through pollution deregulation was the solution.

• When their donors in the lumber industry wanted to continue to rip out old-growth forests and achieve maximum profits by clear-cutting everything else, “limiting government overreach” became a useful canard.

• When their donors in the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital industries wanted to use their power of life-or-death over Americans to extract maximum prices and profits, “Keep your government hands off my healthcare!” became the GOP mantra.

• When their donors in the banking and finance industry wanted to use depositors’ money to gamble with stocks and mortgages, “ending oppressive big government regulations” that were “suppressing innovation” was the Republican rallying cry.

• When their billionaire friends wanted to monopolize media and put over 1500 rightwing radio stations on the air to flip the politics of an entire generation toward tax cuts for the morbidly rich, “ending limits on free speech” through the Fairness Doctrine and media ownership rules was going to “restore fairness.”

• When Big Airlines, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and dozens of other giant industries wanted to either buy out or crush their smaller competitors, Republicans stepped up to the plate to end enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust and other anti-monopoly laws in 1983, leaving the rest of us with the bill.

Small government was never the goal of the Republican Party or the conservative movement. It was always all about raw political power and the wealth that comes with it.

Small government was never the goal of the Republican Party or the conservative movement. It was always all about raw political power and the wealth that comes with it.

The Trump presidency finally and for all time pulled the mask off their “we oppose big government” lie. There is no conceivable way a government could be “bigger“ than for it to establish martial law.

The truth is that Republicans only oppose “big government” when it restricts their ability to make obscene amounts of money at the expense of working people. Or when government tries to help out the environment, those who’re down on their luck, or the victims of historic discrimination.

Republican advocates of “small government,” in addition to trying to pull the ultimate big government trigger of martial law in January of 2021, now also brag that they want to use the power of the governments they control to:

• Narrow your right to vote

• Imprison women seeking abortions

• Ban books

• Block efforts to green our energy sector

• Harass gay and trans kids

• Prevent minorities from having full representation in Congress

• Turn school boards into inquisitors

• Let utilities rip off solar customers

• Trash public health

• Put more guns in the hands of deranged mass shooters

• Purge voting rolls of Democrats and minorities

• Preempt local communities from protecting their own environment

• Reduce the accountability of police for violent behavior

• Ban gay marriage

• Allow state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters in elections

• Keep students in debt

• Hand Medicare over to the big insurance companies

• Increase hundreds of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry

• Terrorize refugee children

• Eliminate or turn most national parks into drilling and mining sites

• End environmental protections

• Thwart enforcement of food safety laws

• Destroy workers’ rights to union representation

And now we find that a sizable number of congressional Republicans actually wanted Donald Trump to end democracy in America once and for all, replacing our system of checks-and-balances with a strongman oligarchy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, texted Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that she’d talked with other members of Congress and they agreed that:

“[T]he only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall [sic] law” and the President should pave the way for her and her colleagues, who’d already incited an insurrection, to now “go after Biden and anyone else!”

And Republican Congressman Scott Perry was calling on Trump to replace the attorney general with a toady who would void the election by declaring it fraudulent.

All this was still going on just three days before Joe Biden was to be sworn into office and move into the White House with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

At the same time the Sedition Caucus was doing their work, the Trump Administration itself was outright refusing to participate in handing government agencies over to incoming Biden administration officials.

Over at the Pentagon — the agency Greene and her colleagues wanted Trump to use to overthrow our government — Trump loyalist Kash Patel was reportedly blocking the normal handover processes that precede a new president taking over.

As Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee reported for NBC News a month before the constitutionally scheduled January 20th transition:

“A Trump loyalist who was recently appointed as Pentagon chief of staff is controlling the Biden transition's team access to Pentagon officials, even blocking some career officials and experts from giving information about key defense issues to the transition team and telling political appointees to take the lead instead, say two current and two former U.S. officials.”

As you can see, Trump and his fascist followers have no problem breaking both custom and law to seize and hold power. They nearly got away with it in 2020, and might have if they had been able to follow Marjorie Taylor Greene’s advice.

Such an order by Trump may have provoked demonstrations, incited riots across America, or possibly even triggered a civil war.

In the end, a group of patriotic Americans, most of them Republicans, succeeded in blocking Trump’s plans. We’ll be learning more about them as the January 6 hearings go public this summer.

Trump- and insurrection-supporting Republicans should be in court for sedition, rather than pontificating about “big government” on Sunday talkshows.

But the GOP still has the plan in place, and could easily use this fascist “big government” strategy to seize control of our government to declare martial law in the future, unless Congress acts.

As the past six years have shown the entire world, Republicans won’t be satisfied until the American government is big and oppressive enough to keep them in power indefinitely.

And that’s regardless of how elections go, regardless of who tries to vote, and with the ultimate power — if future elections don’t go their way — to simply sic the US Army on the people using the martial law powers Representative Greene was so enthusiastic about on January 17TH.

Congress must act.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

I remember that day — February 25, 1986. I was then a teenager. My family stood outside the iron gates of Malacañang Palace among a massive wave of people armed with yellow ribbons, flowers and rosaries.

After a four-day uprising, we heard on the radio that the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his family had fled the country.

Ramming through the gates of the now forlorn presidential palace, people found signs of a hurtled retreat. Hundreds of pairs of shoes, gowns and other evidence of the Marcoses’ profligacy had been abandoned. Documents and bullets were scattered on the floor.

• READ MORE:  Covid tames race to replace Duterte as Philippine president
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• Other Philippine elections reports

They’re gone, the Marcoses!

People burst into song. The poignant “Bayan Ko” (My Country) — the metaphor of a caged bird that yearns to be free — was the anthem of the EDSA revolution: People Power.

The Marcoses had been obliterated from our lives.

Or so we thought.

My generation — we were called “The Martial Laws Babies” — is beginning to realise now that only the glorious part of Philippine history is being obliterated.

‘Bongbong’ Marcos the frontrunner
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., only son and namesake of the late dictator, is the frontrunner in the Philippines’ upcoming presidential election in May. Polls in January and February show Marcos Jr. ahead in the race with 60 percent of the national vote.

He was 29 when the family was ousted and sent into exile in Hawai’i. He had since returned to the Philippines, where he served as governor of Ilocos Norte, as congressman and senator.

Now he is aiming to go back to his childhood playground — the Malacañang Palace.

His campaign has revived “Bagong Lipunan” (The New Society), the anthem of martial law. I shudder. It summoned the dark years.

Now as an adult, watching how North Koreans live now gives me a perspective of how we were brainwashed into subservience during the martial period when the media was controlled by the regime.

Political opinions had no place in the public sphere. Dissidents disappeared, plucked out of their homes by military men, never to be seen ever again. Those who had heard of these stories of desaparecidos had to zip their mouths. Or else.

The government slogan “Sa Ikakaunlad ng Bayan Displina Ang Kailangan” (For the Nation’s Progress Discipline is Necessary) was forever stuck in our heads.

Marcos family’s extravaganzas
My generation lived through different political eras. We grew up watching the Marcos family’s extravaganzas. They acted like royalty.

Imelda Marcos paraded in her made-for-the-queen gowns and glittering jewelry, suffocating Filipinos with her absolute vanity amid our dystopian society.

“People say I’m extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?” she said.

“Bagong Lipunan” was constantly played on the radio, on TV and in public places. It was inescapable. Its lyrics were planted into our consciousness: “Magbabago ang lahat tungo sa pag-unland” (Eveyone will change toward progress.)

Marcos created a fiction depicting his purported greatness that fuelled his tyranny.

During the two decades of media control, the brainwashing propaganda concealed what the regime represented — world-class kleptocrats, murderers and torturers.

Marcos Jr. gave no apology, showed no remorse and offered no restitution. And why would he? Maybe no one remembers after all. None of the Marcoses or their cronies ever went to jail for their transgressions.

Marcos rewarded many times
Marcos Jr. has been rewarded many times, repeatedly elected to various positions. And now as president?

It’s perplexing. It’s appalling. And for people who were tortured and the families of those killed, it’s revolting.

Marcos Jr. appeals to a fresh generation that doesn’t hear the shuddering beat of “Bagong Lipunan” the way my generation does.

The Philippines’ median age is 25. Their lack of a personal link to the martial law experience perhaps explains their historical oblivion.

But history is still being written. Pre-election polls are just polls. The May 9 ballot will decide a new chapter in history.

As Filipino journalist Sheila Coronel said, “A Marcos return is inevitable only if we believe it to be.”

Mar-Vic Cagurangan is editor-in-chief and publisher of the Pacific Island Times in Guam. This article is republished with permission.

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

It said showed that the 2019 protest movement -- which it referred to as 'black riots' in a reference to the black clothing worn by protesters -- hadn't died out, but rather gone underground.

It accused instigators of "subliminally indoctrinating followers with various anti-government, violence-inciting messages."

The pro-CCP Wen Wei Po said the center had set up "death squad" class to teach like-minded students how to use weapons until the time was right, and they would "urge the people of Hong Kong to ... overthrow the CCP by force."

It said the center had also held ceremonies to pay tribute to people killed during the 2019 protests.

Li said police are focusing on identifying people who may go on to commit violent acts.

"With this vicious cycle, we are very worried those radicalized will go one step further and commit terrorist attacks," he said, but declined to disclose how many students Wong had managed to attract so far.

Police also accused the pair of calling on the public to resist the government's attempts to contain the current outbreak of COVID-19, including the LeaveHomeSafe tracking app and the vaccination drive.

The arrests come after Hong Kong singer Tommy Yuen and two other people were arrested after allegedly calling on people to resist the current COVID-19 restrictions on social media.

Martial arts societies in southeastern China once acted as the seedbed of an attempt to overthrow the Qing Dynasty during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, which aimed to purge China of foreign colonial incursion and influence.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Yuk Yue.