January 2010
Vol 10, No.1
COPENHAGEN - HISTORIC FAILURE By Joss Garman
The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion. Then a Chinese premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Barack Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instad of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere. Late in the evening, the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs that they call a “deal”,
although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them signing it with great solemnity.
present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success.
Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global-climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball. Before we know it, The New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a “meaningful” accord.
A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a “shitty, shitty deal”. Quite so.
Meanwhile, a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 bloc of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises. By now, the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to
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This “deal” is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they will come about. There is not even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below C. Instead, leaders merely recognise the science behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal that anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now apparent that even this is largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so that poorer countries can go green and adapt to continued next page
ARTICLES CRUDE OIL POLITICS IN OCCUPIED IRAQ By Zafar Bangash
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PALESTINE: A TURNING POINT? ................. One day before the first
SWISS MINARET BAN VIOLATES BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS
anniversary of the barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza that massacred 1434 Palestinians, the Israeli armed forces killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents in Gaza and the West Bank ..............................P.3
T HE M AGUINDANAO M ASSACRE , THE B ANGSAMORO P ROBLEM AND THE P EACE PROCESS
By International Progress Organization ......... page 4
By Soliman M. Santos, Jr. ............................. page 5
BREAKING THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN SILENCE PART 2 By John Pilger
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climate change. I know our politicians feel they have to smile and claim success; they feel that’s the only way to keep this train on the tracks. But we’ve passed that point – we need to go back to first principles now. We have to admit to ourselves the scale of the problem and recognise that at its core this carbon crisis is, in fact, a political crisis. Until politicians recognise that, they’re kidding themselves, and, more than that, they’re kidding us too. Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard, on no sleep, for a better outcome; while Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change, and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it), while the
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United States offered nothing and China stood firm. Before the talks began, I was of the opinion that we would know Copenhagen was a success only when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as details of the agreement emerged last night, we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we didn’t get to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge amounts of ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that
MAIN ARTICLES the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound. I know we Greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we are facing, and you will hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But, really, it is no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as a historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds. And what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived. 20 December 2009 Joss Garman is a Greenpeace activist and cofounder of Plane Stupid. Source: The Independent(UK), reproduced in www.countercurrents.org/garman191209.htm
WHAT WAS AGREED AT COPENHAGEN: AND WHAT WAS LEFT OUT By Jonathan Watts National leaders and sleep-deprived negotiators thrashed out a text late last night that could determine the balance of power in the world and possibly the future of our species. The list below gives a breakdown of the key points: Temperature “The increase in global temperature should be below two degrees.” This will disappoint the 100-plus nations who wanted a lower maximum of 1.5C, including many small island states who fear that even at this level their homes may be submerged. Peak date for carbon emissions “We should co-operate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognising that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries …” This vague phrase is a disappointment to those who want nations to set a date for emissions to fall, but will please developing
countries who want to put the economy first. Emissions cuts “Parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 as listed in appendix 1 before 1 February 2010.” This phrase commits developed nations to start work almost immediately on reaching their mid-term targets. For the US, this is a weak 14-17% reduction on 2005 levels; for the EU, a still-tobe-determined goal of 20-30% on 1990 levels; for Japan, 25% and Russia 1525% on 1990 levels. The accord makes no mention of 2050 targets, which dropped out of the text over the course of the day. Forests “Substantial finance to prevent deforestation; adaptation, technology development and transfer and capacity.”
This is crucial because more than 15% of emissions are attributed to the clearing of forests. Conservation groups are concerned that this phrase lacks safeguards. Money “The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources amounting to $30bn for 2010-12 … Developed countries set a goal of mobilising jointly $100bn a year by 2020 to address needs of developing countries.” This is the cash that oils the deal. The first section is a quick financial injection from rich nations to support developing countries’ efforts. Longer term, a far larger sum of money will be committed to a Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. But the agreement leaves open the questions of where the money will come from, and how it will be used. Key elements of earlier drafts dropped continued next page
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continued from page 2 during yesterday’s negotiations:
An attempt to replace Kyoto “Affirming our firm resolve to adopt one or more legal instruments …” This preamble, killed off during the day, was the biggest obstacle for negotiators. It left open the question of whether to continue a twin-track process that maintains Kyoto, or
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whether to adopt a single agreement. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada are desperate to move to a one-track approach, but developing nations refused to kill off the protocol. Deadline for a treaty “… as soon as possible and no later than COP16 …” This appeared in the morning draft and disappeared during the day; it set a
S TA T E M E N T December 2010 date for the conclusion of a legally binding treaty. The final text drops this date, but small print suggests it will still be next year. 19 December 2009 Jonathan Watts is The Guardian's Asia environment correspondent. Source: The Guardian, reproduced in www.countercurrents.org/ garman191209.htm
STATEMENT PALESTINE: A TURNING POINT? One day before the first anniversary of the barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza that massacred 1434 Palestinians, the Israeli armed forces killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents in Gaza and the West Bank. The 1.5 million people of Gaza continue to be under one of the most inhuman, unjust sieges in recent times — a siege that began eighteen months before the assault on Gaza on 27 December 2008. From all accounts, everyday is a struggle to survive; the most basic necessities of life are not readily available to the vast majority of the populace. This Israeli imposed blockade will now be tightened through the construction of a bombproof steel wall by the Egyptian authorities along the Gaza border. The wall, demanded by Israel, is being built with the assistance of US money and the US Army Corps of Engineers. The situation in the West Bank is also grim. The multitude of checkpoints remains. For all intents and purposes, Israeli settlements are expanding and the Wall that attempts to separate Israeli settlements and West Bank aquifers from the Palestinians is as formidable as ever. To make matters worse, Fatah, in charge of the West Bank, and Hamas, dominant over Gaza, are still at loggerheads. If there is a silver lining, it comes in the form of the systematic expose of Israeli inhumanity and the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians contained in two highly regarded reports presented to the UN in the course of the last nine months. In March 2009, Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Occupied
Palestinian Territories described Israel’s Gaza assault as “ a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. Richard Goldstone who headed a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza criticized Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza during the 22-day assault in his September report. Though the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report, there has been no action against Israel at the international level. The reason is obvious. The United States government and its European allies are determined to ensure that the Israeli government will never be in the dock. Other powers with some clout, obsessed as they are with their own interests, are not prepared to stick their neck out for the Palestinian cause. Most Arab and Muslim governments — rhetoric and UN votes aside— are afraid to antagonize the US partly because they are so dependent upon the latter for their political survival or their economic well-being. This is why at the end of the day we have to rely upon elements within global citizenry to carry the Palestinian cause forward. After Gaza, groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Oxfam and Amnesty International have become much more vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s ruthless behavior in occupied Palestine. Individual journalists have also adopted a principled position in articulating the rights of the Palestinians. Malaysia’s Shahanaaz Habib is one such journalist. In Britain, the Sussex University Students’ Union has voted to boycott
Israeli goods. This is part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign directed at forcing Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. It is the first time that a student body in Britain has made such a move. Even in Israel, groups like Physicians for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence, comprising veteran Israeli soldiers, have accused their government of violating international law and transgressing the Geneva Conventions in the Gaza assault. However, the most significant citizens’ initiatives since Gaza have come from the Gaza Freedom March (GFM) and the Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza. The first comprising 1400 individuals from more than 40 countries plans to march to the Erez border-crossing between Israel and Gaza to demand an end to the siege. The second made up of 220 vehicles hopes to deliver ambulances, food, medicines and other supplies to the people of Gaza. Two brave, young Malaysians, Juana Jaafar and Ram Kathigesu, are part of the convoy. In both instances, the Egyptian government is proving to be a hurdle. Whether the two initiatives succeed or not, they may emerge as a critical turning point in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. They may set into motion an array of other moves aimed at mobilizing and galvanizing the people of the world behind one of the noblest causes of our time. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia. 28 December 2009.
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By Zafar Bangash The theft of Iraq’s oil by the West has picked up speed. In typical colonial style, the great robbery is being facilitated by former officials of the Bush administration that had served in Iraq. These include Jay Garner, first head of the US occupation administration in Iraq following the invasion. He is advisor to the Canadian company Vast Exploration, which has a 37% stake in an oilfield in the Kurdish north. Peter Galbraith, US foreign policy advisor close to Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry, advised the Kurds about their rights when the Iraqi constitution was being drafted. He pushed through provisions that granted Kurds exclusive rights over oil and gas, of which he is now the principal beneficiary. Galbraith received exploration rights to one of Kurdistan’s major oil fields in the Dohuk region in early 2004 after he negotiated a contract allowing the Norwegian oil company DNO to drill for oil there. These explosive revelations were made in the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv that discovered documents linking Galbraith to DNO. The paper wrote that when drillers struck oil in a rich new Tawke field in December 2005, no one but a handful of government and business officials and members of Galbraith’s inner circle knew that the constitutional provisions he had pushed through only months earlier could enrich him so handsomely. His potential earnings could top $100 million or more. Galbraith is not alone in this great theft. Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, has established his own
corporate consultancy firm in the Kurdish city of Irbil. Obviously, he is also looking for rich pickings. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney is an oil man; as are his cohorts. In early 2003, he stated unabashedly that Iraq has “our oil under their soil.” Now they are going after it. On November 5, Iraq awarded development rights over the huge West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq to Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. The “fruits” of the Iraq war at the expense of 1.3 million Iraqi lives and some $2 trillion in costs, are now being picked by Western, primarily US multinational companies, by gaining control of some of the largest oilfields in the world. West Qurna’s proven oil reserves are 8.7 billion barrels compared to Iraq’s total reserves of 115 billion barrels. Before the March 2003 US invasion, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Husain had awarded this contract to Lukoil, Russia’s major oil company. The USinstalled puppet regime in Baghdad tore up all such agreements and has signed new ones with Western multinationals under the watchful gaze of their American masters. Exxon-Mobil is the first US-based oil giant to sign a 20-year contract that together with Dutch company Shell plans to boost daily production at West Qurna from 300,000 barrels to 2.3 million barrels per day over the next six years. The Iraqi regime has agreed to compensate the companies for the cost of upgrading the field; it may run as high as $50 billion. Further, they will be paid $1.90 for each barrel extracted. Happy days are here again for Western multinationals. The spilling
of Iraqi blood is clearly cheaper than oil. The Exxon-Mobil/Shell contract followed a similar deal signed with British Petroleum (BP) and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), on November 3 giving them development rights to the massive Rumaila field and its reserves of 17 billion barrels. The deals are classified as “service” agreements enabling the regime to bypass parliament that may not have approved such deals. Other deals are in the pipeline, reversing nearly four decades of struggle to claw back control of the Middle East’s only and most precious commodity — oil — from rapacious multinational corporations. Iraq nationalised its oil industry in 1975 following a trend set up by Iran as early as 1953 that unfortunately led to its government being overthrown by a CIA-British led coup. A consortium made up of the USbased Occidental, Italy’s Eni and South Korea’s Kogas has signed a tentative agreement for the Zubair oilfield with reserves of 4 billion barrels. Japanese Nippon Oil, Eni and Spanish company Repsol are bidding for a field in Nasiriyah, which has similar-sized reserves. In Kirkuk (Iraqi Kurdistan), Royal Dutch Shell is negotiating a contract to develop untapped areas of a major oilfield, thought to have as much as 10 billion barrels in reserves despite being in production since 1934. Western multinationals are about to be awash in windfall oil profits. December 2009 Zafar Bangash is a Muslim thinker and activist living in Canada Source: Crecent International Dec. ‘09 issue.
SWISS MINARET BAN VIOLATES BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS By International Progress Organization (I.P.O.) In a statement issued yesterday, the President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), Dr. Hans Köchler, strongly condemned the amendment to the Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, which bans the
building of minarets. The provision of Art. 72, Par. 3 of the amended Federal Constitution – “Der Bau von Minaretten ist verboten” / “The building of minarets is prohibited” –
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abroad and violating one of the most basic rights at home.
June 1992) and of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (which Switzerland ratified on 28 November 1974). Art. 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966, provides that everyone shall have the “freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.” Art. 9 of the European Human Rights Convention contains an identical provision; Art. 14 of that Convention furthermore prohibits discrimination on the ground of religion. Because the minaret ban has been enacted by means of an amendment to the Federal Constitution – through Federal Popular Initiative and Referendum –, a judicial review within the Swiss constitutional system appears unlikely. The Swiss citizens have to be reminded, however, that even they – as the “sovereign people” and supreme political authority under the country’s Constitution – cannot abrogate basic human rights norms, which (a) form part of jus cogens and (b) are international treaty obligations of the Swiss Confederation. It makes no difference whether decisions have been made by way of direct or representative democracy: the principle of pacta sunt servanda applies in all circumstances.
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The President of the International Progress Organization appealed to the UN Human Rights Council to address, on the basis of its mandate as subsidiary organ of the United Nations General Assembly, the situation resulting from Switzerland’s violation of the right to freedom of religion. Dr. Köchler further stated that, by virtue of Art. 33 of the European Human Rights Convention, any State Party to the Convention may refer Switzerland’s breach of her obligations under Arts. 9 and 14 of the Convention to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Irrespective of individual applications by Swiss citizens whose rights have been violated by the ban, it is to be hoped that at least one Member State of the Council of Europe will raise the issue before the Court. He further said that the minaret ban has seriously damaged Switzerland’s reputation as host country of United Nations human rights bodies and as depositary State of the Geneva Conventions. Switzerland must not engage in a policy of double standards, preaching respect of human rights
The President of the International Progress Organization also condemned the incitement to hatred and the antiIslamic campaign that preceded the referendum in Switzerland. The blatant and discriminatory interference by the Swiss electorate into the Muslim community’s exercise of religious freedom not only threatens interreligious peace in Switzerland and Europe, but seriously undermines efforts at a better understanding between Christians and Muslims worldwide. Regrettably, the Swiss electorate’s decision has further emboldened anti-Islamic groups and politicians, and has strengthened racist and anti-foreigner sentiments everywhere in Europe. Domestic peace and political stability in the larger Europe will depend on how the peoples of the continent will deal with the multicultural realities of our time. Religious discrimination and double standards in the application of human rights may bring Europe one step closer to a “clash of civilizations” that will endanger the continent’s future, the President of the I.P.O. concluded. 3 December 2009
Source: International Progress Organization. Enquiries: info@i-p-o.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , phone +43-15332877, fax +43-1-5332962, postal address: A-1010 Vienna, Kohlmarkt 4, Austria
THE MAGUINDANAO MASSACRE, THE BANGSAMORO PROBLEM THE PEACE PROCESS
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By Soliman M. Santos, Jr. As a peace advocate who has considered Muslim Mindanao as my second region (after Bicol), I join so many others in their shock at and condemnation of what is now called the Maguindanao Massacre of 23 November 2009, likewise in expressing sympathies for the close relatives and friends of those who were killed,
especially two fellow human rights lawyers, and calling for speedy justice and other necessary measures of redress and reform. There will never be enough words to describe this almost unbelievably depraved and inhuman incident. A Philippine Problem
The Maguindanao Massacre has been rightly explained as the tragic, though rather extreme, consequence of the Philippine central government’s or the Arroyo administration’s well-known deliberate cultivation and patronage of the Ampatuan political warlord clan and dynasty as its main instrument for continued next page
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political control in Maguindanao province, if not also the rest of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Political control vis-à-vis political rivals or opponents of the Arroyo administration, and also vis-à-vis the main Moro rebel groups, notably the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whose main provincial and ethnic base is Maguindanao. Thus, the characterization by some analysts of the Ampatuan clan as “political entrepreneurs” who have become “Malacanang’s monster (or Frankenstein).” This has been a symbiotic central-local axis of power, with mutual benefits also extending to wealth. The analysts have situated such local warlordism, apparently becoming more voracious and brazen in its arrogance of power, in the context of a conversely ever-weakening Philippine state. The Maguindanao Massacre has again brought to fore, but more shockingly, the weaknesses of Philippine governance in the ungovernable “Wild, Wild West” of Muslim Mindanao. Among these weaknesses are “structural inequities in our political system, including control by an elite minority, traditional politicians and political dynasties, and enforcement of such control through private armies” – this itself already identified by the National Unification Commission (NUC) Consultations in 1992-93 as one of the root causes of the internal armed conflicts in the country. The NUC then had specific recommendations to address these root causes, including for establishing a regime of good governance, upholding respect for people’s rights and improving the administration of justice, and establishment of a pluralistic political society. But the ruling system has proven to be intractable and incorrigible to various on-and-off reform efforts. And so, the heinous crime of political violence which is the Maguindanao
Massacre is just the latest, though the most shocking, indictment of the Philippine political, electoral, security and justice system. The most immediate call or challenge is for justice and against impunity. Crime, esp. heinous crime, must be punished, but not necessarily with the restoration of the equally heinous death penalty. A criminal justice system deals properly not only with the offended and the offending parties but also with the witnesses – without whom there is no case, no due process, no establishment of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The willingness and safety of witnesses in the Maguindanao area in turn depend on a degree of protection, presumably mainly by the police, against threats to their lives from the private armies of the implicated political warlord clan there. Not only these private armies but also the Maguindanao police and their official auxiliaries (Civilian Volunteer Organizations or CVOs) as well as those of the military (Special CAFGU Active Auxiliaries or SCAAs) are part of the problem. Their dismantling and disarming (and not only those of the currently predominant Ampatuan clan) have become necessary to serve the ends not only of criminal justice and human security but also of the integrity of the coming 2010 electoral process – i.e. “ensuring free, orderly, honest, peaceful, and credible elections,” as constitutionally mandated. But deputization of law enforcement agencies and instrumentalities for election duties will not be enough for the reform of the political and electoral system. It again bears noting that the
A R T I C L E S second of three principles of the comprehensive peace process, as formulated out of the NUC Consultations, is that “It seeks to establish a genuinely pluralistic society, where all individuals and groups are free to engage in peaceful competition for predominance of their political programs without fear, through the exercise of rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, and where they may compete for political power through an electoral system that is free, fair and honest.” In addition, as far as the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to be deputized are concerned, there is also a great need for security sector reform. In short, the jolt that has come with the Maguindanao Massacre might as well be taken as an impetus not only for more effective immediate and shortterm measures but also for a more thorough-going strategic process of reform, if not overhaul, of nothing less than the whole state of Philippine politics and governance. A Bangsamoro Problem Thus far, we have dealt with only one level, which we might call the Philippine problem. Because the Maguindanao Massacre happened in Muslim Mindanao mainly between two Moro political clans, there is also the level of the Bangsamoro Problem – which the Mindanao Peace Process is supposed to solve. This peace process, in grappling with the solution to the Bangsamoro Problem, should now consider local political warlordism of the Moro variety (which has its specific characteristics compared to the mainstream Filipino Christian variety) as part of that problem. To put it more clearly or concretely, will it be any different or better under a future negotiated entity of Bangsamoro selfdetermination and self-governance? What will be the internal political continued next page
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system in “a system of life and governance suitable and acceptable to the Bangsamoro people,” as “the end in view” sought by the MILF in the peace talks? To the extent that the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) considers the Bangsamoro people as part of the Filipino people, that “internal political system” is a valid concern of the GRP which is constitutionally mandated to look after the welfare of its people. Stated otherwise, why turn over partial sovereignty if this will mean throwing its people to the wolves? So far, the main or key documents of the Mindanao Peace Process have not dealt specifically or concretely with Moro political warlordism, their private armies, intra-Moro political violence, clan grudge feuds called rido, and the “culture of the gun,” even though there have already been many incidents of intertwining or entanglement between the former and AFP-MILF armed hostilities. In the initialed but unsigned and aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), the closest reference might be the provision empowering the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) to build, develop and maintain its own institutions — inclusive of electoral, police and internal security force, legal and judicial system — necessary for developing a progressive Bangsamoro society, the details of which are supposed to be discussed in the negotiation of the Comprehensive Compact. This Comprehensive Compact is of course supposed to deal mainly with forging a better (because more just) structural relationship between the Philippine republic and the Bangsamoro people currently within this republic. But this should not mean waiting for this to be achieved first – whether in the form of higher (than ARMM) autonomy, federalism, or
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associative relationship – before being clear enough (at least having a blueprint) about the key internal affairs of whatever Bangsamoro selfdeterminative entity. It may in fact have to be the other way around, i.e. for all concerned (starting with the Bangsamoro people) to be fairly clear first about what we are getting into before getting into it. One question is, can this unfinished peace process be a source of hope for the sort of problem manifested by the Maguindanao Massacre? The finished 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) between the GRP and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and for that matter the supposedly implementing Organic Act for the ARMM, Republic Act No. 9054, likewise do not deal specifically or concretely enough with the aforementioned problems related to Moro political warlordism. Their respective relevant provisions on the Special Regional Security Forces (SRSF) for the ARMM, presumably for the maintenance of public order and security there, have been a perennial bone of contention between the GRP and MNLF up to the currently ongoing tripartite review process regarding the FPA implementation. But perhaps even more telling than the provisions is the practice as far as the helmsmanship of the ARMM is concerned. Three successive extended terms of MNLF governorship (first no less than MNLF Chairman Prof. Nur Misuari, then his former foreign minister Dr. Parouk Hussin) over the ARMM has been characterized, among others, as a failure of leadership for autonomy, peace and development (without absolving the culpability of the central government which established a low-intensity autonomy in the first place with the 1987 Constitution). And then this extended MNLF governorship could not prevent the eventual ascension of the traditional Moro political clan of the
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Ampatuans to the helm of the ARMM, but of course with the indispensible help of their friends in the Arroyo administration. The ARMM has since become the Ampatuan Regime in Muslim Mindanao. This kind of traditional Moro political leadership (just like the mainstream Filipino traditional politicians or “trapos”) and, sad to say, the failed MNLF leadership, do not at all inspire confidence as sources of hope for new and better politics and governance in Muslim Mindanao. Yet, they somehow have to be part of the solution to the Bangsamoro problem. Asec. Camilo Montesa of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) has a good sense of this which he calls “1 Bangsamoro Challenge” (note rather than problem). He says “We, in the Philippine government, are slowly moving towards the direction of a closer, integrated response to this single, yet multi-faceted, 1 Bangsamoro Challenge. We cannot continue to deal with the MILF peace process, the MNLF peace process, the challenge to make ARMM work, and the threats posed by extremist groups like the JI and Abu Sayyaf as if they are separate and unrelated…. While we engage these groups differently, we want to engage them in view of all our other efforts across the other tables. In the end, we are talking about the same people, the same aspirations, the same problems and probably the same solutions.”
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Some Problems for the Peace Process Assuming that the Philippine government or side, ever fractious especially with the coming “big bang” elections, can semi-miraculously get its act together, the other side of the coin which needs this, perhaps even more miraculously, is the Bangsamoro side. The dynamics of division between the MNLF and MILF has not helped their presumably common cause for better self-determination for the Bangsamoro people. On top of that, they have both been often opposed by the traditional Moro political leadership in the different provinces of the ARMM, not to mention the Christian majority provinces in the vicinity. It is really more for the Bangsamoro side, rather than the Philippine government, to work on at least a critical level of intraMoro unity. Perhaps, independent Bangsamoro civil society organizations and the ulama can help this unity process, as they have already been helping the peace process. The Maguindanao Massacre and the central government response to it, some of which has been asked for and lauded by certain Moro quarters, might also have some longer-term negative implications for Bangsamoro selfdetermination and the peace process. The conceivable and possible end of Ampatuan dominance may be of only short-term benefit, especially for its political rivals – the Mangudadatu clan (already anointed by the Lakas-KampiCMD ruling party for the governorship of Maguindanao, but not yet the ARMM), and the MILF. The central government’s coming in strongly, though a bit delayed, with a political, military and prosecutorial show of force to take control of the volatile Maguindanao situation was/is necessary in the immediate term from the point of view of preventing further lawless violence and asserting Philippine governance and some rule of law. What in the recent past has
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been treated by the local people as militarization by AFP occupation forces is now probably seen by some of them as a welcome assurance of deterrence or protection against being caught in the crossfire of a dreaded all-out rido (if there was none before between the long-time allied Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans, there certainly is basis for one now).
In the longer-term, what are the implications of all these for Bangsamoro self-determination and the peace process? One is that it will probably take longer not just because of current attention to and tension in the political clan situation in the Maguindanao area, also with the election period still to come in 2010. But also because of the more compelling need to tie together the various strands of the “1 Bangsamoro Challenge.” It is now in the context of this larger challenge that a different interpretation or application should perhaps be made of recent visitor U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s advice to “strike while the iron is hot.” Another longer-term negative implication of the Maguindanao Massacre and the central government’s necessary immediate taking control of the situation there is the question it raises about the merits of Bangsamoro self-determination and selfgovernance. The political violence was essentially between two traditional Moro political clans, thus something intra-Moro, but which has had to take the central government to restore some law and order into the situation. For some, even on the Bangsamoro side, it
A R T I C L E S seems that what is needed is stronger central government control – the antithesis of Bangsamoro selfdetermination. And if the central government can actually serve justice for the victims, which even the MILF is asking for, then this would be seen as a great service by the government to the Bangsamoro people. Why then not stick with this system of justice if it redeems itself in the Maguindanao Massacre case? The Maguindanao Massacre can only reinforce the centuries-old anti-Moro bias of the mainstream Filipino Christian majority, which bias has consistently been behind their often knee-jerk opposition to any better Bangsamoro self-determination. The majority will see mainly the two antagonist Moro clans of the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus, as well as the many Christian journalist victims. They will not see who has long protected the Ampatuans and the other warlords, who has armed them, who has tolerated their abuses, and who has imposed them on the Bangsamoro people. Not only the “Satanic” Ampatuans but the entire Bangsamoro people, those “terrible Moros,” will be demonized by the Filipino majority and the aggrieved media. Only Moros can counter-act whatever unfair image of them, and it will have to be by deeds more than by words. One Moro friend has said, “The best the Moro can do is to face the consequence of this heinous political crime.” These are times that call for Bangsamoro statesmanship as they also call for Filipino statesmanship. The latter is definitely not shown by those Filipino candidates for high office (from Senator up) who immediately opportunistically took advantage of the Maguindanao Massacre to project their political party (clue: they were among the most vocal against the MOA-AD). The MILF for its part took the continued next page
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opportunity to somewhat awkwardly call attention to the actually more heinous massacres of thousands of Moros by Philippine state forces like the Palimbang, Patikul, Pata, Manili, Kauswagan and Magsaysay Massacres for which justice has not been served to this day. So, perhaps one critical question in all these is, who can better serve justice? The MILF may not be in a position to serve justice in the Maguindanao Massacre case where the main protagonists are not under its “jurisdiction.” But the MILF certainly
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has several recent cases under its jurisdiction, particularly its 102nd, 103rd and 105th base commanders whom it had acknowledged to have committed unsanctioned indignation attacks against Christian civilian communities in Central Mindanao in August 2008, and more recently its 113 th base commander being implicated in the kidnapping of Irish priest Fr. Michael Sinnott last October. The MILF has yet to show convincingly, transparently and accountably that its own criminal or military justice system has served justice or even military discipline in these cases. When we often speak of “peace based
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A R T I C L E S on justice,” this could very well be one concrete application of this principle. The side that can and does act with justice, in both the criminal and political realms, must be the source of hope. 30 November 2009 Soliman M. Santos, Jr. is a Bicolano human rights and IHL lawyer; a peace advocate, researcher and writer; and the co-author of a forthcoming early 2010 book Primed and Purposeful: Armed Groups and Human Security Efforts in the Philippines to be copublished by his South-South Network (SSN) for Non-State Armed Group Engagement (www.southsouthnetwork.com).
GREAT AUSTRALIAN SILENCE By John Pilger
PART 2 Rupert Murdoch set the media war agenda shortly before the invasion of Iraq when he said, “There’s going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better get it done now.” More than a million people have been killed in Iraq as a result of that invasion - “an episode”, according to one study, “more deadly than the Rwandan genocide”. In our name. Are we aware of this in Australia? I once walked along Mutanabi Street in Baghdad. The atmosphere was wonderful. People sat in cafes, reading. Musicians played. Poets recited. Painters painted. This was the cultural heart of Mesopotania, the great civilisation to which we in the West owe a great deal, including the written word. The people I spoke to were both Sunni and Shia, but they called themselves Iraqis. They were cultured and proud. Today, they are fled or dead. Mutanabi Street has been blown to bits. In Baghdad, the great museums and libraries are looted. The universities are sacked. And people who once took coffee with each other, and married each other, have been turned into enemies. “Building democracy”, said
Howard and Bush and Blair.
“looking from the side”.
One of my favourite Harold Pinter plays is Party Time. It’s set in an apartment in a city like Sydney. A party is in progress. People are drinking good wine and eating canapés. They seem happy. They are chatting and affirming and smiling. They are stylish and very self aware.
I believe that if we apply justice and courage to human affairs, we begin to make sense of our world. Then, and only then, can we make progress.
But something is happening outside in the street, something terrible and oppressive and unjust, for which the people at the party share responsibility. There’s a fleeting sense of discomfort, a silence, before the chatting and laughing resumes. How many of us live in that apartment? Let me put it another way. I know a very fine Israeli journalist called Amira Hass. She went to live in and report from Gaza. I asked her why she did that. She explained how her mother, Hannah, was being marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen when she saw a group of German women looking at the prisoners, just looking, saying nothing, silent. Her mother never forgot what she called this despicable
However, if we apply justice in Australia, it’s tricky, isn’t it? Because we are then obliged to break our greatest silence – to no longer “look from the side” in our own country. In the 1960s, when I first went to South Africa to report apartheid, I was welcomed by decent, liberal people whose complicit silence was the underpinning of that tyranny. They told me that Australians and white South Africans had much in common, and they were right. The good people of Johannesburg could live within a few kilometres of a community called Alexandra, which lacked the most basic services, the children stricken with disease. But they looked from the side and did nothing. In Australia, our indifference is different. We have become highly competent at divide and rule: at promoting those black Australians who tell us what we want to hear. At professional conferences their keynote continued next page
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continued from page 9 speeches are applauded, especially when they blame their own people and provide the excuses we need. We create boards and commissions on which sit nice, decent liberal people like the prime minister’s wife. And nothing changes.
We certainly don’t like comparisons with apartheid South Africa. That breaks the Australian silence. Near the end of apartheid, black South Africans were being jailed at the rate of 851 per 100,000 of population. Today, black Australians are being jailed at a national rate that is more than five times higher. Western Australia jails Aboriginal men at eight times the apartheid figure. In 1983, Eddie Murray was killed in a police cell in Wee Waa in New South Wales by “a person or persons unknown”. That’s how the coroner described it. Eddie was a rising rugby league star. But he was black and had to be cut down to size. Eddie’s parents, Arthur and Leila Murray, launched one of the most tenacious and courageous campaigns for justice I’ve known anywhere. They stood up to authority. They showed grace and patience and knowledge. And they never gave in. When Leila died in 2003, I wrote a tribute for her funeral. I described her as an Australian hero. Arthur is still fighting for justice. He’s in his sixties. He’s a respected elder, a hero. A few months ago, the police in Narrabri offered Arthur a lift home and instead took him for a violent ride in their bullwagon. He ended up in hospital, bruised and battered. That is how Australian heroes are treated. In the same week the police did this as they do to black Australians, almost every day - Kevin Rudd said that his government, and I quote, “doesn’t have a clear idea of what’s happening on the ground” in Aboriginal Australia. How much information does the prime minister need? How many ideas? How many reports? How many royal commissions? How many inquests?
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How many funerals? Is he not aware that Australia appears on an international “shame list” for having failed to eradicate trachoma, a preventable disease of poverty that blinds Aboriginal children? In August this year, the United Nations once again distinguished Australia with the kind of shaming once associated with South Africa. We discriminate on the basis of race. That’s it in a nutshell. This time the UN blew a whistle on the so-called “intervention”, which began with the Howard government smearing Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory with allegations of sex slavery and paedophile rings in “unthinkable numbers”, according to the minister for indigenous affairs. In May last year, official figures were released and barely reported. Out of 7433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of four possible cases were identified. So much for the “unthinkable numbers”. Of course, child abuse does exist, in black Australia and white Australia. The difference is that no soldiers invaded the North Shore; no white parents were swept aside; no white welfare has been “quarantined”. What the doctors found they already knew: that Aboriginal children are at risk - from the effects of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world’s richest countries. Billions of dollars have been spent – not on paving roads and building houses, but on a war of legal attrition waged against black communities. I interviewed an Aboriginal leader called Puggy Hunter. He carried a bulging brief case and he sat in the West Australian heat with his head in his hands.
Kevin Rudd has made a formal apology to the First Australians. He spoke fine words. For many Aboriginal people, who value healing, the apology was very important. However, the Sydney Morning Herald published a remarkably honest editorial. It described the apology as “a piece of political wreckage” that “the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away... in a way that responds to some of its supporters’ emotional needs”. Since the apology, Aboriginal poverty has got worse. The promised housing programme is a grim joke. No gap has even begun to be bridged. Instead, the federal government has threatened communities in the Northern Territory that if they don’t hand over their precious freehold leases, they will be denied the basic services that we, in white Australia, take for granted. In the 1970s, Aboriginal communities were granted comprehensive land rights in the Northern Territory, and John Howard set about clawing back these rights with bribery and bullying. The Labour government is doing the same. You see, there are deals to be done. The Territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, especially uranium. And Aboriginal land is wanted as a radioactive waste dump. This is very big business, and foreign companies want a piece of the action. It is a continuation of the darkest side of our colonial history: a land grab.
I said, “You’re exhausted.” He replied, “Look, I spend most of my life in meetings, fighting lawyers, pleading for our birthright. I’m just tired to death, mate.” He died soon afterwards, in his forties.
Where are the influential voices raised against this? Where are the peak legal bodies? Where are those in the media who tell us endlessly how fair-minded we are? Silence. continued next page
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But let us not listen to their silence. Let us pay tribute to those Australians who are not silent, who don’t look from the side – those like Barbara Shaw and Larissa Behrendt, and the Mutitjulu community leaders and their tenacious lawyer George Newhouse, and Chris Graham, the fearless editor of the National Indigenous Times. And Michael Mansell, Lyle Munro, Gary Foley, Vince Forrester and Pat Dodson, and Arthur Murray. And let us celebrate Australia’s historian of courage and truth, Henry Reynolds, who stood against white supremacists posing as academics and journalists. And the young people who closed down Woomera detention camp, then stood up to the political thugs who took over Sydney during Apec two years ago. And good for Ian Thorpe, the great swimmer, whose voice raised against the intervention has yet to find an echo among the pampered sporting heroes in a country where the gap between white and black sporting facilities and opportunity has closed hardly at all. Silences can be broken, if we will it. In one of the greatest poems of the English language, Percy Shelley wrote this: Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep has fallen on you Ye are many – they are few But we need to make haste. An historic shift is taking place. The major western democracies are moving towards a corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor - and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food. How do we change this? We start by looking beyond the stereotypes and
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clichés that are fed to us as news. Tom Paine warned long ago that if we were denied critical knowledge, we should storm what he called the Bastille of words. Tom Paine did not have the internet, but the internet on its own is not enough. We need an Australian glasnost, the Russian word from the Gorbachev era, which broadly means awakening, transparency, diversity, justice, disobedience. It was Edmund Burke who spoke of the press as a Fourth Estate. I propose a people’s Fifth Estate that monitors, deconstructs and counters the official news. In every news room, in every media college, teachers of journalism and journalists themselves need to be challenged about the part they play in the bloodshed, inequity and silence that is so often presented as normal. The public are not the problem. It’s true some people don’t give a damn – but millions do, as I know from the responses to my own films. What people want is to be engaged – a sense that things matter, that nothing is immutable, that unemployment among the young and poverty among the old are both uncivilised and wrong. What terrifies the agents of power is the awakening of people: of public consciousness. This is already happening in countries in Latin America where ordinary people have discovered a confidence in themselves they did not know existed. We should join them before our own freedom of speech is quietly withdrawn and real dissent is outlawed as the powers of the police are expanded. “The struggle of people against power, “wrote Milan Kundera, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” In Australia, we have much to be proud of – if only we knew about it and celebrated it. Since Francis McCarty and Mary Palmer landed here, we’ve progressed only because people have spoken out, only because the suffragettes stood up, only because the miners of Broken Hill won the world’s
A R T I C L E S first 35-hour week, only because pensions and a basic wage and child endowment were pioneered in New South Wales.
There is no mystery about what has to be done. The first step is a treaty that guarantees universal land rights and a proper share of the resources of this country.
In my lifetime, we have become one of the most culturally diverse places on earth, and it has happened peacefully, by and large. That is a remarkable achievement – until we look for those whose Australian civilisation has seldom been acknowledged, whose genius for survival and generosity and forgiving have rarely been a source of pride. And yet, they remain, as Henry Reynolds wrote, the whispering in our hearts. For they are what is unique about us. I believe the key to our self respect and our legacy to the next generation is the inclusion and reparation of the First Australians. In other words, justice. There is no mystery about what has to be done. The first step is a treaty that guarantees universal land rights and a proper share of the resources of this country. Only then can we solve, together, issues of health, poverty, housing, education, employment. Only then can we feel a pride that comes not from flags and war. Only then can we become a truly independent nation able to speak out for sanity and justice in the world, and be heard. 5 November 2009
John Pilger is a world renowned journalist and documentary film maker. Source: http://www.johnpilger.com/ page.asp?partid=555 You can read Part 1 of this article in the December `09 issue of the JUST Commentary
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