John Beadle (Screenshot)

February 24-25 :: International Days of Action in Solidarity with Ukraine

On the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, activists throughout the world will be mobilizing for protests and education events in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and their struggle to liberate their country.

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) will be organizing actions and events.

Connect with us!

https://linktr.ee/ukrainesolidaritynetwork

Solidarity with Ukraine!

Ukraine Solidarity Network Mission Statement

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) reaches out to unions, communities, and individuals from diverse backgrounds to build moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s criminal invasion and their struggle for an independent, egalitarian, and democratic country.

The war against Ukraine is a horrible and destructive disaster in the human suffering and economic devastation it has already caused, not only for Ukraine and its people but also in its impact on global hunger and energy supplies, on the world environmental crisis, and on the lives of ordinary Russian people who are sacrificed for Putin’s war. The war also carries the risk of escalation to a direct confrontation among military great powers, with unthinkable possible consequences.

It is urgent to end this war as soon as possible. This can only be achieved through the success of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Ukraine is fighting a legitimate war of self-defense, indeed a war for its survival as a nation. Calling for “peace” in the abstract is meaningless in these circumstances.

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) supports Ukraine’s war of resistance, its right to determine the means and objectives of its own struggle—and we support its right to obtain the weapons it needs from any available source. We are united in our support for Ukraine’s people, their military and civilian defense against aggression, and for the reconstruction of the country in the interests of the majority of its population. We stand in opposition to all domination by powerful nations and states, including by the United States and its allies, over smaller ones, and oppressed peoples.

We uphold the following principles and goals:

1. We strive for a world free of global power domination at the expense of smaller nations. We oppose war and authoritarianism no matter which state it comes from and support the right of self-determination and self-defense for any oppressed nation.

2. We support Ukraine’s victory against the Russian invasion, and its right to reparations to meet the costs of reconstruction after the colossal destruction it is suffering.

3. The reconstruction of Ukraine also demands the cancellation of its debts to international financial institutions. Aid to Ukraine must come without strings attached, above all without crushing debt burdens.

4. We recognize the suffering that this war imposes on people in Russia, most intensely on the ethnic and religious minority sectors of the Russian Federation which are disproportionately impacted by forced military conscription. We salute the brave Russian antiwar forces speaking out and demonstrating in the face of severe repression, and we are encouraged by the popular resistance to the draft of soldiers to become cannon fodder for Putin’s unjust war of aggression.

5. We seek to build connections to progressive organizations and movements in Ukraine and with the labor movement, which represents the biggest part of Ukrainian civil society, and to link Ukrainian civic organizations, marginalized communities and trade unions with counterpart organizations in the United States. We support Ukrainian struggles for ensuring just and fair labor rights for its population, especially during the war, as there are no military reasons to implement laws that threaten the social rights of Ukrainians, including those who are fighting in the front lines.

Click here to read the complete list of USN Endorsements:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRbP5raef3Aq8-g61fPXUaA_mM_Ymf3HRRPzYDD1XWfEGJLZB082eWPuKDvedQQ4FbhhEsrCT9d8igm/pub

Please sign below to add your endorsement:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-ihmachMueK2DKP-lRmPoxURY_xXoG6NyjWi4AfBCbs/viewform?edit_requested=true&fbzx=-9116349616547434088

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SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE

Spring Action Week: April 15 - 22, 2023

Holloman AFB, Southern New Mexico

Co-sponsored by CODEPINK & Ban Killer Drones

Mark your calendars & Join Us!

Come for all or part of the week!

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Dear friends and supporters of Kevin Cooper,

We are horrified by the terrible report put out by the Morrison Foerster (MoFo) law firm who were assigned to conduct an independent investigation of Kevin Cooper’s case. As Kevin’s chief attorney, Norman Hile, says: "In short, Mofo did not do an innocence investigation. Instead, they simply looked at the evidence the prosecution used and then hired some of their own experts to affirm what the prosecution said.”

Attached is a brief press statement issued by Kevin’s defense law firm. If you would like to receive the link to the MoFo report (over 200 pages) let me know and I will email it to you.

More analysis and information will follow soon.

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

Orrick

January 14, 2023

Kevin Cooper has suffered imprisonment as a death row inmate for more than 38 years for a gruesome crime he did not commit. We are therefore extremely disappointed by the special counsel’s report to the Board of Parole Hearings and disagree strongly with its findings. Most fundamentally, we are shocked that the governor seemingly failed to conduct a thorough review of the report that contains many misstatements and omissions and also ignores the purpose of a legitimate innocence investigation, which is to independently determine whether Mr. Cooper’s conviction was a product of prosecutorial misconduct. The report failed to address that critical issue. The evidence when viewed in this light reveals that Kevin Cooper is innocent of the Ryen/Hughes murders, and that he was framed by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.

The special counsel’s investigation ordered by Governor Newsom in May 2021 was not properly conducted and is demonstrably incomplete. It failed to carry out the type of thorough investigation required to explore the extensive evidence that Mr. Cooper was wrongfully convicted. Among other things, the investigation failed to even subpoena and then examine the files of the prosecutors and interview the individuals involved in the prosecution. For unknown reasons and resulting in the tragic and clearly erroneous conclusion that he reached, the special counsel failed to follow the basic steps taken by all innocence investigations that have led to so many exonerations of the wrongfully convicted.

In effect the special counsel’s report says: the Board of Parole Hearings can and will ignore Brady violations, destruction of exculpatory evidence, planted evidence, racial prejudice, prosecutorial malfeasance, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel; since I conclude Cooper is guilty based on what the prosecution says, none of these Constitutional violations matter or will be considered and we have no obligation to investigate these claims.

Given that (1) we have already uncovered seven prosecutorial violations of Brady v. Maryland during Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, (2) one of the likely killers has confessed to three different parties that he, rather than Mr. Cooper, was involved in the Ryen/Hughes murders, and (3) there is significant evidence of racial bias in Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, we cannot understand how Mr. Cooper was not declared wrongfully convicted. The special counsel specifically declined to address ineffective assistance of counsel at the trial or the effect of race discrimination. We call on the governor to follow through on his word and obtain a true innocence investigation.

Anything But Justice for Black People

Statement from Kevin Cooper concerning recent the decision on his case by Morrison Forrester Law Firm

In 2020 and 2022 Governor Newsom signed in to law the “Racial Justice Act.” This is because the California legislature, and the Governor both acknowledged that the criminal justice system in California is anything but justice for Black people.

On May 28th, 2021, Governor signed an executive order to allow the law firm of Morrison Forrester (MoFo) to do an independent investigation in my case which included reading the trial and appellant transcripts, my innocence claims, and information brought to light by the 9th circuit court of appeals, as well as anything else not in the record, but relevant to this case.

So, Mr. Mark McDonald, Esq, who headed this investigation by Morrison Forrester and his associates at the law firm, went and did what was not part of Governor Newsom’s order, and they did this during the length of time that they were working on this case, and executive order. They worked with law enforcement, current and former members of the L.A. Sheriff’s department, and other law enforcement-type people and organizations.

Law enforcement is the first part of this state’s criminal justice system. A system that both the California legislature, and the Governor acknowledge to be racist, and cannot be trusted to tell the truth, will present, and use false evidence to obtain a conviction, will withhold material exculpatory evidence, and will do everything else that is written in those two racial justice act bills that were signed into law.

So, with the active help of those pro-police, pro-prosecutor, pro-death penalty people working on this case to uphold my bogus conviction we cannot be surprised about the recent decision handed down by them in this case.

While these results are not true but based on the decisions made in 1983 and 1984 by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, these 2023 results were not reached by following the executive orders of Governor Newsom.

They ignored his orders and went out to make sure that I am either executed or will never get out of prison.

Governor Newsom cannot let this stand because he did not order a pro-cop or pro-prosecutor investigation, he ordered an independent investigation.

We all know that in truth, law enforcement protects each other, they stand by each other, no matter what city, county, or state that they come from. This is especially true when a Black man like me states that I was framed for murder by law enforcement who just happened to be in the neighboring county.

No one should be surprised about the law enforcement part in this, but we must be outraged by the law firm Morrison Forrester for being a part of this and then try to sell it as legitimate. We ain’t stupid and everyone who knows the truth about my case can see right through this bullshit.

I will continue to fight not only for my life, and to get out of here, but to end the death penalty as well. My entire legal team, family and friends and supporters will continue as well. We have to get to the Governor and let him know that he cannot accept these bogus rehashed results.

MoFo and their pro-prosecution and pro-police friends did not even deal with, or even acknowledge the constitutional violations in my case. They did not mention the seven Brady violations which meant the seven pieces of material exculpatory evidence were withheld from my trial attorney and the jury, and the 1991 California Supreme court that heard and upheld this bogus conviction. Why, one must ask, did they ignore these constitutional violations and everything that we proved in the past that went to my innocence?

Could it be that they just didn’t give a damn about the truth but just wanted to uphold this conviction by any means necessary?

No matter their reasons, they did not do what Governor Gavin Newsom ordered them to do in his May 28, 2021, executive order and we cannot let them get away with this.

I ask each and every person who reads this to contact the Governor’s office and voice your outrage over what MoFo did, and demand that he not accept their decision because they did not do what he ordered them to do which was to conduct an independent investigation!

In Struggle and Solidarity

From Death Row at San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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Ruchell is imprisoned in California, but it is important for the CA governor and Attorney General to receive your petitions, calls, and emails from WHEREVER you live!

SIGN THE PETITION: bit.ly/freeruchell

SEND DIGITAL LETTER TO CA GOV. NEWSOM: bit.ly/write4ruchell

Call CA Governor Newsom:

CALL (916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer (Mon. - Fri., 9 AM - 5 PM PST / 12PM - 8PM EST)

Call Governor Newsom's office and use this script:

"Hello, my name is _______ and I'm calling to encourage Governor Gavin Newsom to commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison. Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long. In the interests of justice, I am joining the global call for Ruchell's release due to the length of his confinement and I urge Governor Newsom to take immediate action to commute Ruchell Magee's sentence."

Write a one-page letter to Gov Gavin Newsom:

Also, you can write a one-page letter to Governor Gavin Newsom about your support for Ruchell and why he deserves a commutation of his sentence due to his length of confinement (over 59 years), his age (83), and the health risks of an elderly person staying in California’s prisons.

YOUR DIGITAL LETTER can be sent at bit.ly/write4ruchell

YOUR US MAIL LETTER can be sent to:

Governor Gavin Newsom

1303 10th Street, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

Email Governor Newsom

GOV.CA.GOV/CONTACT

Navigation:

Under "What is your request or comment about?", select "Clemency - Commutation of Sentence" and then select "Leave a comment". The next page will allow you to enter a message, where you can demand:

Commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison.

He was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence. Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long.

Write to District Attorney Gascon

District Attorney George Gascon

211 West Temple Street, Suite 1200

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Write a one-page letter to D.A. George Gascon requesting that he review Ruchell’s sentence due to the facts that he was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence. Ruchell’s case should be a top priority because of his age (83) and the length of time he has been in prison (59 years).

· Visit www.freeruchellmagee.org to learn more! Follow us @freeruchellmagee on Instagram!

· Visit www.facebook.com/freeruchellmagee or search "Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee" to find us on Facebook!

· Endorse our coalition at:

· www.freeruchellmagee.org/endorse!

· Watch and share this powerful webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5XJzhv9Hc

WRITE TO RUCHELL MAGEE

Ruchell Magee

CMF - A92051 - T-123

P.O. Box 2000

Vacaville, CA 95696

Write Ruchell uplifting messages! Be sure to ask questions about his well-being, his interests, and his passions. Be aware that any of his mail can be read by correctional officers, so don’t use any violent, explicit, or demoralizing language. Don’t use politically sensitive language that could hurt his chances of release. Do not send any hard or sharp materials.

~Verbena

of Detroit Shakur Squad

The Detroit Shakur Squad holds zoom meetings every other Thursday. We educate each other and organize to help free our Elder Political Prisoners. Next meeting is Thurs, Jan 12, 2022. Register to attend the meetings at tinyurl.com/Freedom-Meeting

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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In the past year, we've learned that dozens of Federal Correction Institution Dublin employees sexually abused countless incarcerated people at the facility. Survivors' stories make clear that FCI Dublin staff specifically targeted immigrant women for abuse, and that ICE has knowingly detained and deported survivors and witnesses of sexual abuse by federal prison employees. Advocates have spoken with seven women who were sexually assaulted by prison staff and have already been deported, and at least 15 who are currently facing deportation (including at least six who are indefinitely detained by ICE).

We are writing to ask you to sign on to an open letter to the ICE leadership, demanding that they cease detaining and deporting noncitizen survivors and witnesses of prison staff sexual abuse, and release those currently in immigration detention.

Sign on here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEl28RpaOIF0oXgSWlt4bZXbACH_2LGt96EPt27z-cLTK-aA/viewform?fbzx=-5740546259545124690

You can read the full text of the open letter, and you can sign your organization on to the letter here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UA7iLtH0jdnUZeZMnb5pNayzHl2kPwUZouGzf1PFGuo/edit

Thanks for your consideration.

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The Diabolic Intent to Murder: Medical Professionals’ & Prisoncrats’ constant delay game of untreated Cancer of Kevin Rashid Johnson

By Peter "Comrade Pitt" Mukuria

Kevin Rashid Johnson is the Minister of Defense for the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party (RIBPP). He is someone that I've been honored to have known for over a decade. I've learned quite a lot from him over the years. In fact, he played a critical role in my political consciousness & growth.

Prior to knowing Rashid personally or through his political work, my political awareness was rather undeveloped. To know Rashid, is to learn from him. One of the qualities about Rashid, which separates him from most, is that he practices what he preaches.

By reviewing his work, it’s conspicuous to note, that, he is someone who advocates for the voiceless, poor, & oppressed, those dubbed, The wretched of the earth. His advocacy for his incarcerated peers isn't limited to writing about the horrible conditions of confinement. He also involves himself in direct action.

In countless cases, he has placed himself in direct conflict against the pigs, by advocating for his peers. As a result of his political consciousness and his courageous spirit intertwined, he has been Interstate transferred to 8 different state prisons. In each of these prisons, he has encountered much of the same inhumane conditions of confinement & abuse of prisoners. Each time, he adamantly spoke out against it. Exposing the prisons & if needed, he implemented physical actions in defense of other prisoners.

As a result of his unbroken spirit and activism, he has actively, politically awakened his peers. He transformed their lumpen mentality into a revolutionary mentality. He, thus, became a nightmare to the prisons.

In October 2021 , Rashid, had blood tests conducted, however, he wasn’t made aware of the results in a timely manner. No news is usually an indicator of good health.

A year later, he learned the results of the October 2021 bloodwork. The findings revealed that he had prostate cancer. Given the amount of time that had passed, the cancer had spread and metastasized. I'm no medical professional, but it is a well-known fact that prostate cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in men & can only be cured if detected & treated early. It's quite conspicious that it was a deliberate act for prison officials to be aware that he had prostate cancer & intentionally delayed notifying him for a year.

Furthermore, they then played games with his scheduled appointments. The latest one was to have a PET Scan. They intentionally transported him there hours late to ensure that he wouldn’t receive his treatment & a new appointment would have to be scheduled. This same transportation delay tactic actually transpired on multiple occasions.

Their sinister, diabolical intent is obviously to prolong his treatment to ensure the spread of the cancer & lead to a fatal outcome. In the case of political & politicized prisoners, medical neglect is a common retaliatory response from the prison officials & this current medical mistreatment is an example.

All in all, it is of utmost importance that public protests continue. We must demand that Rashid receives proper treatment as his life is truly in danger.

For decades, Rashid has stood up against violent guards in defense of other incarcerated people. He has risked his own comfort, advocating for his peers countless times. Even those he didn’t know. He has exposed the dire & inhumane conditions the incarcerated are subjected to. The abuse & the constant mistreatment.

Prisons tend to act if pressured by the public or if actions are court ordered. Given the urgency of this matter- literally life or death-Public involvement would be far more effective as the courts would surely take too much time, which is a luxury we can’t afford as too much time has already passed. As much as Rashid has fought for others, we must now reciprocate & fight for our brother & comrade. For updates on his health & conditions visit www.Rashidmod.com

Dare To Struggle

Dare To Win

All Power To The People!

Comrade Pitt

Peter Kamau Mukuria #5194931

JCI

PO Box 534

Jessup, MD 20794

Minister of Labor ~RIBPP

Instagram@Pittpanther_art

Urgent support needed for cancer-stricken, imprisoned writer/artist, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson’s Legal Fund!

Fundraiser for an attorney to represent Rashid’s struggle for medical care
A campaign is underway to hire an attorney to represent Kevin Rashid Johnson’s struggle for medical care. The prison has denied this care to him, despite a cancer diagnosis discovered over one year ago for which no treatment has yet been provided.

Here is the donation link for Rashid’s legal fund:
https://fundrazr.com/025tu2?ref=ab_6BrbV1
Please be as generous as you can.

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

If extradited to the United States, Julian Assange, father of two young British children, would face a sentence of 175 years in prison merely for receiving and publishing truthful information that revealed US war crimes.

UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has ruled that "it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America".

Amnesty International states, “Were Julian Assange to be extradited or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, Britain would be in breach of its obligations under international law.”

Human Rights Watch says, “The only thing standing between an Assange prosecution and a major threat to global media freedom is Britain. It is urgent that it defend the principles at risk.”

The NUJ has stated that the “US charges against Assange pose a huge threat, one that could criminalise the critical work of investigative journalists & their ability to protect their sources”.

Julian will not survive extradition to the United States.

The UK is required under its international obligations to stop the extradition. Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty says: "Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense."

The decision to either Free Assange or send him to his death is now squarely in the political domain. The UK must not send Julian to the country that conspired to murder him in London.

The United Kingdom can stop the extradition at any time. It must comply with Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty and Free Julian Assange.

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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here.

As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger.

Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality.

As the Sam Adams Associates note:

“Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.”

We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support!

Jesselyn Radack
Director
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR)
ExposeFacts

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems:

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

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Screenshot of Kevin Cooper's artwork from the teaser.

“In His Defense” The People vs. Kevin Cooper

A film by Kenneth A. Carlson

Teaser is now streaming at:

https://www.carlsonfilms.com

Posted by: Death Penalty Focus Blog, January 10, 2022

https://deathpenalty.org/teaser-for-a-kevin-cooper-documentary-is-now-streaming/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=1c7299ab-018c-4780-9e9d-54cab2541fa0

“In his Defense,” a documentary on the Kevin Cooper case, is in the works right now, and California filmmaker Kenneth Carlson has released a teaser for it on CarlsonFilms.com

Just over seven months ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an independent investigation of Cooper’s death penalty case. At the time, he explained that, “In cases where the government seeks to impose the ultimate punishment of death, I need to be satisfied that all relevant evidence is carefully and fairly examined.”

That investigation is ongoing, with no word from any of the parties involved on its progress.

Cooper has been on death row since 1985 for the murder of four people in San Bernardino County in June 1983. Prosecutors said Cooper, who had escaped from a minimum-security prison and had been hiding out near the scene of the murder, killed Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 10-year-old Chris Hughes, a friend who was spending the night at the Ryen’s. The lone survivor of the attack, eight-year-old Josh Ryen, was severely injured but survived.

For over 36 years, Cooper has insisted he is innocent, and there are serious questions about evidence that was missing, tampered with, destroyed, possibly planted, or hidden from the defense. There were multiple murder weapons, raising questions about how one man could use all of them, killing four people and seriously wounding one, in the amount of time the coroner estimated the murders took place.

The teaser alone gives a good overview of the case, and helps explain why so many believe Cooper was wrongfully convicted.

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February 6, 2023

Statement from Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier released this statement from his prison cell to mark the 48th anniversary of his unjust incarceration.[1]

Greetings my friends, supporters, loved ones. I know I’ve probably said this, or things like this, many times. Every time I say it, it is as heartfelt as the first time. From the bottom of my soul, I thank you for your support. Living in here, year after year, day after day, week after week, plays on your concepts of time and your process of thought beyond what you can imagine.

Every day, I have to say a prayer in the morning, about keeping my spirit up and the spirits of our people.

The struggles of the American Indian Movement, which are the struggles of all of us, have never ended for me. They go on, week after week, month after month, year after year.

When I speak, sometimes I think I may sound a bit too sensitive, but my love for my people and the love supporters have shown me over the years is what keeps me alive. I don’t read your letters with my intellect. I read them with my heart.

My imprisonment is just another example of the treatment and policies our people have faced since the arrival of the first Europeans. I’m just an ordinary man and I come from a live-and-let-live society, like all our people. And yet we have had to live in a state of survival ever since Columbus landed.

There is nothing about my case, nothing about the Constitution, which is a treaty between the American people and the government, that warrants my continual imprisonment.

They have historically imprisoned or killed our people, taken our land and resources. Any time the law was in our favor they ignored the law or changed the law to benefit their agenda.

After they have gotten what they wanted, a generation later, some politician would apologize. They have never negotiated sincerely with us unless we had something they wanted and could not take, or we were an embarrassment before the world, or we were some sort of opposition. The opposition has always been the dominant reason for them making treaties with us. I could go on and on about the mistreatment of our people and on and on about my case, but the United Nations said it.

That the United States has kept me locked up because I am American Indian. The only thing that really makes me different from other American Indians who have been mistreated, had land taken, or been imprisoned by our government, is that it is all a matter of court record in my case. The violation of my Constitutional rights has been proven in court. The fabrication of every piece of evidence used to convict me has been proven in court.

The United Nations itself, comprised of 193 nations, has called for my release, noting I am a political prisoner. In my case as a political prisoner there does not have to be a prisoner exchange. The exchange they need to make is from their policy of injustice to a policy of justice.

It does not matter what your color and ethnicity are. Black, red, white, yellow, brown—if they can do it to me, they can do it to you. The Constitution of the United States is hanging by a thread. Again.

I want to say, from my heart to your heart, most sincerely—do your best to educate your children. Teach them to defend themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. Make them aware of our history. Teach them to plant a food forest or any plant that will provide for them in the future.

Again, from my heart to yours, plant a tree for me.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

Doksha,

Leonard Peltier

—Liberation, February 6, 2023

https://www.liberationnews.org/statement-from-leonard-peltier/

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

[1] To learn what his case is about click here:

https://www.liberationnews.org/today-marks-48-years-of-leonard-peltiers-unjust-imprisonment-free-leonard/

A Plea for the Compassionate Release of

Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Screen shot from video.

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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The Moment

By Margaret Atwood*

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

*Witten by the woman who wrote a novel about Christian fascists taking over the U.S. and enslaving women. Prescient!

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

Posted on August 6, 2020

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

Know Your Rights Materials

The NLG maintains a library of basic Know-Your-Rights guides.

Know Your Rights During Covid-19
You Have The Right To Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Encounters with Law Enforcement
Operation Backfire: For Environmental and Animal Rights Activists

WEBINAR: Federal Repression of Activists & Their Lawyers: Legal & Ethical Strategies to Defend Our Movements: presented by NLG-NYC and NLG National Office

We also recommend the following resources:

Center for Constitutional Rights

If An Agent Knocks
English | Spanish | Urdu | Arabic

Civil Liberties Defense Center

Grand Juries: Slideshow

Grand Jury Resistance Project

A Few Facts About Grand Juries

Katya Komisaruk

What You Should Know About Grand Juries

Movement for Black Lives Legal Resources

Tilted Scales Collective

A Tilted Guide to Being a Defendant

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Articles

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1) At Least 10 Palestinians Killed During Israeli Raid in West Bank

An hourslong gunfight broke out between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen during an Israeli operation to arrest Palestinian fighters. The violence left the region braced for further unrest.

By Patrick Kingsley, Feb. 22, 2023

Reporting from Jerusalem

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/world/middleeast/west-bank-nablus-palestinians-killed.html

Top photo—rocks being thrown by Palestinians at Israeli military truck. Bottom photo—injured Palestinian being carried to ambulance. (Screenshots)

At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others wounded on Wednesday, Palestinian officials said, in an hourslong gun battle between Israeli security forces and armed Palestinian groups in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The firefight occurred during an operation to arrest Palestinian gunmen based in the city of Nablus, the Israeli military said.

Three armed Palestinian groups said that six of the casualties were fighters in their movements. Others appeared to be noncombatants: Time-stamped CCTV footage from late Wednesday morning that circulated on social media seemed to show the shooting of at least two unarmed Palestinians as they ran away from gunfire.

A spokesman for the Israeli Army, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said that the bloodshed on Wednesday began after its forces entered Nablus to arrest members of the Lions’ Den, a local armed group that was planning imminent assaults and that was also responsible for an attack that killed an Israeli soldier in October while he was patrolling a nearby part of the northern West Bank.

Asked for comment, the Israeli military said that it was looking into the video. The military acknowledged that Israeli forces had killed three gunmen and fired at other armed Palestinians during riots that followed the raid.

The violence left the region braced for further unrest in the coming days, with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, warning that the killings would not pass “without a response.”

Militant groups in Gaza often fire rockets into Israeli airspace after violence in the West Bank, actions that typically then prompt Israel to strike Gaza, raising the risk of a full-scale air war in the blockaded territory. Israeli raids are also often followed by reprisals from lone Palestinian gunmen; in January, a Palestinian shot dead seven Israelis in Jerusalem, the day after an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin killed 10 Palestinians.

The deaths on Wednesday brought the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year to nearly 60, most of them during shootouts that the Israeli military says began during operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen.

That toll marks the deadliest start to a year for Palestinians in the West Bank in the past decade and a half, prompting comparisons with events at the start of this century, when a Palestinian insurgency known as the second intifada left roughly 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead.

At least 11 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians since the start of the year, including the seven in the mass shooting on Jan. 27 by the Palestinian in East Jerusalem — the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.

Colonel Hecht said that a four-hour gun battle broke out when three suspects started firing on Israeli forces who had come to apprehend them from a safe house in central Nablus.

He said that one of the three was killed after emerging from the building, while the two others were killed inside. During the exchange, Israeli soldiers fired anti-tank missiles at the building, Colonel Hecht said.

In a recording circulated by Palestinian media outlets on Wednesday morning, a man identified as one of the cornered Palestinian gunmen vowed to go down fighting. “I will not surrender myself,” the man in the recording said. “Please don’t abandon the gun after us,” he added, “and complete the path.”

Unrest also broke out across the center of Nablus on Wednesday, video and photographs showed, with Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli military trucks and Israeli forces firing tear gas. The Israeli military and the police both separately said that their forces had shot at other armed people who approached them during the operation.

Video suggested that at least two people were shot with their backs to gunfire. Four of the casualties had no known affiliation with any armed faction. One was 72 and another 61, according to a statement by the Palestinian health ministry.

Three Palestinian armed groups issued conflicting statements that competed to assert connections with some of the slain fighters. The Lions’ Den claimed responsibility for six of the 10 victims, while the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, another armed group affiliated with Fatah, the dominant Palestinian movement in the West Bank, said that three of those six were members of its group. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a third armed group, claimed responsibility for two of the six.

Jockeying for influence, Palestinian groups sometimes issue competing claims over people killed during clashes with Israel, while Lions’ Den is known to contain fighters who originated from both Fatah and Islamic Jihad.

The raid on Wednesday was the second in less than a month to end in the death of at least 10 Palestinians — two of the deadliest such incidents in years.

Palestinians attribute the unusually high death tolls to an increased readiness among Israeli soldiers to shoot to kill. But Israeli officials say that the army’s rules of engagement have not changed, instead attributing the toll to a proliferation of guns within Palestinian society and an increased readiness among Palestinian gunmen to fire on Israeli soldiers instead of surrendering without a fight.

Analysts also believe that the rare Israeli decision to raid Nablus and Jenin after sunrise — instead of during the night, when the army usually conducts its operations — heightened the risk of escalation. During the day, there is a higher chance that nearby residents will get caught in the crossfire or join the clashes themselves.

The involvement of Lions’ Den, a group founded only last year, reflects a growing willingness among some young Palestinians to engage in armed resistance to Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank. Roughly 2.7 million Palestinians live under varying degrees of Israeli control in the territory, where Israel has created a two-tier legal system in which Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts and Israelis in civilian ones.

Frustrated at the failures of the aging Palestinian leadership, dozens of young Palestinian men have joined new armed movements that operate independently of traditional Palestinian chains of command, like the Lion’s Den in Nablus or the Jenin Brigade in Jenin.

Some members of these groups come from families affiliated with Fatah, but have distanced themselves from the movement because of its association with the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous institution that administers parts of the West Bank and which cooperates with the Israeli security forces to curb violence in the territory.

Analysts say that groups like the Lions’ Den resent the Palestinian Authority almost as much as they resist Israel. In parallel, the authority is reluctant to clamp down on the dissidents to avoid further denting its own popularity — a decision that Israeli officials say leaves Israel with little option other than to combat the groups itself.

Hiba Yazbek and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

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2) Justice Dept. Struggles to Carry Out Early Release Program for Abused Inmates

Prison officials and judges have been reluctant to support “compassionate releases” unless an inmate is ill, dying or incapacitated by age.

By Glenn Thrush, Feb. 22, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/us/politics/federal-prisons-inmate-abuse.html

The Federal Correctional Institution is shown in Dublin, Calif.

Aimee Chavira, a federal prisoner currently incarcerated in Arizona, claimed she was repeatedly sexually abused by male staff at the Dublin women’s prison, near Oakland. Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Bureau of Prisons has rejected the early release of a female inmate who said she had been sexually abused by male employees at a notorious California penitentiary, reflecting a broader struggle by the Justice Department to free inmates abused in federal custody, when appropriate.

In late January, the general counsel of the prison bureau denied an application filed by Aimee Chavira, 43, who claimed her experience at the Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, near Oakland, Calif., made her eligible for immediate release on humanitarian grounds. She is among a number of women who have detailed pervasive misconduct during their incarceration at Dublin, and five former employees, including the warden, have been charged with sexual abuse.

Ms. Chavira’s case — the first of its kind to make its way through the system — is seen by prisoners’ rights groups as a key test of the department’s commitment to use so-called compassionate release protocols for victims of abuse.

But doing so represents a shock to an institution more focused on locking up inmates than letting them go. Prison officials, and judges — who are the ultimate arbiters — have been reluctant to support early release unless an inmate is ill, dying or incapacitated by age, and more than four-fifths of compassionate release requests are rejected in court.

The department’s senior leaders fear provoking a backlash that will undermine the policy shift, and have moved slowly to incorporate a departmental system to investigate abuse claims on applications — so that judges will not have to conduct unpredictable mini trials to determine the veracity of those accusations, according to people familiar with the situation.

James B. Wills, the bureau’s counsel, acknowledged that Ms. Chavira’s assertions of being groped and forced to disrobe by male staff members were “extremely concerning,” but described her documentation of those claims as insufficient.

Privately, officials familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, do not dispute her allegations. They believe that Ms. Chavira, who was convicted on a drug charge and is currently being held at a federal prison in Arizona, does not pose a public safety threat if freed. She is scheduled to be released in 2026.

They characterized the rejection as temporary, although they did not say what factors would lead to an approval or offer a timetable for instituting the new system of internal reviews. Dublin is a particular point of focus for the Justice Department, which is investigating a culture of abuse there.

“There are some cases they should be agreeing to immediately, if this policy is really about justice at all,” said Erica Zunkel, Ms. Chavira’s lawyer, who represents clients through a law clinic at the University of Chicago, where she is a professor.

“The department’s leadership had promised they would reconsider the policy, so this was an important decision that sends a big signal,” she added.

The allegations of widespread sexual abuse at Dublin have increased pressure on the bureau, which is responsible for about 160,000 inmates around the country.

Last year, Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, instructed Bureau of Prisons officials to prioritize applications from victims of sexual misconduct, the first time the department had formally made such a request. Colette S. Peters, a former Oregon state prison official tapped to lead the bureau in July, has backed the initiative.

In November, a working group convened by Ms. Monaco made a series of recommendations, including expansion of early release programs “to better protect the safety and well-being of those in B.O.P. custody and better hold accountable those who abuse positions of trust.”

But taking this relatively modest step has proved more difficult than anticipated.

The path to early release is a complex tangle of laws and regulations intended to prevent violent criminals and repeat offenders from taking advantage of the system by falsely claiming maladies or hardships.

Under current rules, the Bureau of Prisons initiates the process of requesting a compassionate release, filing a formal motion with the judge who presided over the original trial.

Rank-and-file prosecutors and prison officials play a vital role — their support, or ambivalence, about an application can often be the deciding factor — and many have been resistant to free anyone, even an inmate in the final stages of a terminal illness.

Department officials are still exploring ways to fortify and repurpose internal administrative procedures to help verify the hundreds of sexual abuse claims filed by prisoners each year, according to a draft letter of a proposal to a judicial policy panel outlining possible changes.

Without reliable internal investigations, sentencing judges are more likely to reject compassionate release requests after conducting their own fact-gathering efforts, department officials say, unless a prison official is criminally charged with abusing a particular inmate.

In his letter, Mr. Wills encouraged Ms. Chavira to submit a new request “upon receipt of a final adjudication of her allegations,” without offering further explanation.

That was an apparent reference to an open federal criminal investigation into a male employee who is believed to have abused Ms. Chavira and other inmates, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the meantime, the delays are taking their toll. Thus far, only a handful of the women at Dublin have applied for compassionate release, but many others are waiting to see the outcome of the requests from Ms. Chavira and others before taking action.

“B.O.P. releases — or should release — people who have a diagnosis of impending death, and they take an expert’s word on it,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a prisoners’ rights group in Washington.

“If B.O.P. believes a woman, after talking to her, has been sexually abused, why is that not the same thing?” he added. “Why make the standard so high for someone who risks so much retaliation and hardship in making a complaint to begin with?”

Ms. Peters has said that addressing prisoner abuse, along with the overreliance on restrictive housing units, are among her top priorities. Last week, she ordered the closing of a troubled special detention unit in Illinois where inmate deaths, suicides and reports of sexual harassment by guards have been rampant.

For the past year, several working groups in the Justice Department have sought to determine how to fix a system long plagued by health and safety problems, corruption, staff turnover and physical and sexual abuse that has disproportionately targeted female inmates and prison workers.

Ms. Monaco has pushed federal prosecutors to crack down on sexual abuse at federal facilities, even though proving such crimes is often time-consuming and difficult.

The department is also taking other steps. Ms. Monaco’s aides support a proposal before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that creates guidelines for federal judges, to carry out a law that gives inmates and their lawyers the right to directly petition courts for compassionate release without having to go through the Bureau of Prisons.

The commission is expected to hold public hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss a range of potential changes, including to the compassionate release rules.

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3) Biden Administration Announces New Border Crackdown

A tough new immigration measure could disqualify the vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border.

By Miriam Jordan, Published Feb. 21, 2023, Updated Feb. 22, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/us/biden-asylum-rules.html

Migrants were apprehended in December at the border in Eagle Pass, Texas. Credit...Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

In a bid to prevent a surge of migrants at the southern border when a pandemic measure is lifted in May, the Biden administration on Tuesday announced its toughest policy yet to crack down on unlawful entries.

The proposed rule, which has been opened for 30 days of public comment before taking effect, would presume that migrants are ineligible for asylum if they entered the country unlawfully, a significant rollback in the country’s traditional policy toward those fleeing persecution in other countries.

It would allow rapid deportation of anyone who had failed to request protection from another country while en route to the United States or who did not notify border authorities through a mobile app of their plans to seek asylum.

Administration officials said the policy would take effect on May 11 with the expected termination that day of Title 42, a Trump-era health emergency rule that has allowed border authorities to swiftly expel migrants back to Mexico. The new rule would then remain in place for two years.

President Biden took office vowing to restore a humane approach to the border crisis after his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, introduced a series of harsh immigration policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents. But as the Biden administration has struggled to quell a surge of migrants fleeing economic ruin in their countries, including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it has turned to more restrictive measures.

The decision, announced jointly by the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, was sharply rebuked by human rights advocates who said the policy mirrored an earlier, much-criticized restriction under Mr. Trump that denied asylum to most migrants who had not first applied for it in Mexico or another country along their way. That policy had been struck down by several federal courts.

Many migrants do not apply for asylum in Mexico, preferring to try their luck in the United States. The new policy was expected to erect a formidable barrier to those hoping to submit U.S. applications.

“The Biden administration’s proposed rule would send asylum seekers back to danger, separate families, and cost lives, as human rights advocates have been asserting for weeks,” said Jane Bentrott, counsel at Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights nonprofit.

“It is in direct contravention of President Biden’s campaign promises to reverse Trump’s racist, xenophobic immigration policies, and give all folks seeking safety a fair shot at asylum,” she said.

On a call with reporters, administration officials said that failure by Congress to pass an overhaul of the nation’s outdated immigration laws and a spate of lawsuits from Republican-led states had prevented the government from effectively managing the southern border. The lifting of Title 42 in May could lead to large crowds attempting to cross the border, they said.

The regulation is designed “to help ensure secure, orderly, and humane processing of migrants once Title 42 eventually lifts,” said one official on the call, whose organizers spoke on the condition that they not be identified.

The officials said that the “new standards” were intended to discourage people without a legitimate need for U.S. protection from coming to the border while allowing others to seek asylum “outside the United States or in a country they are transiting through,” one official said.

The demographics of border crossings have shifted in recent years with the arrival of ever-greater numbers of non-Mexicans who are far more likely to make asylum claims. Because it can take years to process and deport those ultimately found ineligible to receive U.S. protection, applicants have been allowed to remain in the country and receive employment authorization, a situation that incentivizes even more people to come.

Border authorities last year registered more than two million encounters with migrants, a record number. Many of those they intercepted were repeat crossers, who had already been expelled under Title 42. And chaotic scenes of migrants wading across the Rio Grande in Texas prompted fierce criticism from Republican governors, who said the Biden administration had lost control of the border.

The administration’s plan to eliminate Title 42 drew legal challenges from Republican-led states that argued its demise would cause a spike in crossings and mayhem in border communities.

In the meantime, the government has increasingly made use of the emergency health policy to contain the recent influx of migrants.

While still pledging to end the measure, the administration extended it to cover migrants from more countries. In early January, it unveiled a plan to use it to turn back a new flood of crossers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, while simultaneously establishing a program that enabled nationals of those countries to apply for parole to enter the United States from their countries of origin if they had a financial sponsor.

Since that program’s inception, overall unlawful crossings have plummeted by 97 percent. On the call with reporters on Tuesday, administration officials said that the decline proved that pairing a humanitarian program with punitive measures that have consequences for illegal crossers was effective.

In its proposed rule, the administration said that projections suggested that lifting Title 42 could lead to an increase in border crossings to 13,000 encounters a day, from last year’s high of about 7,000 a day, absent policy changes and a mechanism to quickly remove those who arrive without authorization.

It cited the growing impact of climate change on migration, political instability in several countries, the evolving recovery from the pandemic, and uncertainty generated by border-related litigation among factors that are pushing migrants to try to cross into the United States.

Under the proposed rule, asylum seekers who arrive at an official port of entry and claim asylum would be allowed to enter if they met the initial criteria and used a mobile app, known as CBP One, to schedule an appointment with U.S. authorities to review their application. But those who cross illegally between ports of entry, if caught, would have to prove that they were denied safe haven while in transit to the United States, such as from Guatemala or Mexico, to be allowed in.

The mobile app, intended to provide an orderly, streamlined system of processing asylum seekers, has been in use since January, but the system has been overloaded by huge demand and plagued with glitches since tens of thousands of migrants staying in shelters on the Mexican side of the border began using it.

Migrants have been rising before dawn to go online, hoping to maximize their chances of securing an appointment through the app. The vast majority fail to get a spot in the virtual queue that opens at 6 a.m. and offers appointments for exactly two weeks later, several immigrant advocates said.

At a shelter in Tijuana, across from San Diego, 150 families recently tried unsuccessfully to make an appointment, said Lindsay Toczylowski, an immigration lawyer who was on site.

“With lives on the line, they got pop-ups,” said Ms. Toczylowski. Screenshots reviewed by The New York Times read, “Time Slot Full,” “System Error,” or “Unable to Verify Location,” even though the migrants were on the border where applicants must be to apply. The messages appeared over and over again, she said.

At another shelter the lawyer visited, only two out of 240 people had managed to secure an appointment when they tried early that morning.

“It’s almost like a lottery,” said Ms. Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit law firm in California that serves asylum seekers. “You have to win a ticket to be able to seek protection in the U.S.”

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4) Turkish Builders Come Under Intense Scrutiny Over Shoddy Construction

More than 43,000 deaths in Turkey from an earthquake have raised painful and angry questions over whether some of those fatalities could have been avoided with better building standards.

By Ben Hubbard, Elif Ince and Safak Timur, Feb. 23, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/world/middleeast/turkish-builders-come-under-intense-scrutiny-over-shoddy-construction.html

Rescue workers in Adiyaman, Turkey, this month.

Rescue workers in Adiyaman, Turkey, this month. Credit...Emin Ozmen for The New York Times

ISTANBUL — Two dozen student volleyball players, four teachers and 12 parents visiting Turkey for a competition this month checked into the Grand Isias Hotel in the southern city of Adiyaman. When a powerful earthquake struck on Feb. 6, the building collapsed and killed dozens of people including everyone in the entourage except for four adults.

A university engineer who examined the wreckage found indications of weak concrete and insufficient steel reinforcements, he and his colleagues wrote in a preliminary report, concluding that shoddy construction had left the building vulnerable, even to smaller quakes.

In the weeks since, the Turkish authorities have arrested three men connected to the hotel on unspecified charges as part of a wide-ranging dragnet targeting hundreds of building contractors and owners among others suspected of criminal negligence that contributed to deadly building collapses.

The suspects — some nabbed at the airport with stacks of cash or perp-walked on national television — have become the focus of public rage, with many now questioning whether they padded their profits by flouting the codes put in place over the last two decades to make buildings more quake resistant.

Construction industry experts say that contractors responsible for flawed buildings should be punished. But they also caution that targeting only them obscures gross negligence throughout the system meant to make buildings safe, which may have contributed to thousands of deaths. During most of the past decade, contractors could freely choose which private companies to hire to inspect their buildings, an arrangement that the government eventually concluded had led to “illegal commercial ties.”

“Putting the blame only on the contractors would be the easy way out,” said Ali Ozgunduz, a former state prosecutor who investigated collapsed buildings after another catastrophic earthquake in Turkey in 1999.

Since the 7.8-magnitude quake struck in early February, more than 100,000 buildings have been damaged and more than 43,000 people have been killed in southern Turkey; more than 5,500 have died in Syria.

So far, the Turkish government has investigated 564 people suspected of connections to flawed or collapsed buildings, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Wednesday. Of those, 160 have been detained pending trial; 175 are on probation; and arrest warrants have been issued for dozens more. Many of them are contractors and builders.

The government has released few specifics about who is being investigated and why, but flaws in some buildings that fell were well documented before the quake. In some cases, buildings so new that they should have followed updated seismic standards toppled over. In others, contractors paid fines for violating building codes, but no steps were taken to evacuate or strengthen the vulnerable structures, according to lawyers involved in the cases.

Cemal Gokce, a former president of Turkey’s Chamber of Civil Engineers, a professional organization, accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and his ruling Justice and Development Party of fostering a lax regulatory environment that left cities more vulnerable to earthquake damage.

“The government is trying to avoid responsibility by dumping it onto engineers and architects,” he said. “But the main culprit is the government because they put profits over the public interest.”

During visits to the disaster zone over the past few weeks, Mr. Erdogan seemed to suggest that Turkey should improve its earthquake preparedness.

All Turks “have lessons to learn from the disaster we lived through,” he said on Tuesday. “It is highly important that we eliminate our shortcomings and fortify our strengths in light of past experiences.”

A seismically active country with a history of quakes, Turkey has upgraded its building codes since a powerful tremor near Istanbul in 1999 killed more than 17,000 people. But according to a 2021 parliamentary report, more than 7.8 million buildings constructed before the year 2000 are highly vulnerable to earthquakes.

For newer buildings, construction professionals say the strengthened building codes are technically good. But builders sometimes fail to adhere to those codes.

Mr. Ozgunduz, the former state prosecutor, pointed out weak links at various levels: local officials who greenlit poorly designed projects; inspectors who overlooked flaws during construction; and the Parliament’s passing of a blanket amnesty in 2018 for building code violations in millions of units.

“The political authority is liable too,” he said.

Hoping to broaden the scope of accountability, professional associations are preparing lawsuits against government officials they accuse of complicity.

“We will make sure it is not only the contractors who are held accountable, but also the municipalities, the ministry, the ruling party and all other authorities who are responsible for so many lost lives,” said Eren Can, a lawyer with the Istanbul Bar Association whose parents were killed when their apartment collapsed in the quake.

“I promise my mother and father that we will never let them get away with this.”

Mr. Gokce said problems with the inspection regime let bad practices slip through. So far, at least two building inspectors are among the suspects under scrutiny, suggesting that the government could broaden its inquiry.

Many inspectors lack experience. And from 2011 to 2019, when contractors were allowed to select and pay the private companies that inspected their buildings, it encouraged builders to hire low-cost inspectors who would “give them the least amount of trouble,” Mr. Gokce said.

Some contractors even went as far as setting up their own inspection companies, which they would then pay to effectively inspect themselves.

The government changed the system in 2019 and began assigning inspectors, eliminating what it called “the system’s biggest problem.”

For some buildings that collapsed, signs of trouble were clear before the quake.

In the southern city of Antakya, one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquake, Ebru Ulas and her husband, Gorkem, both lawyers, had filed 51 court cases over the last few years alleging code violations against a single contractor, Omer Cihan, Ms. Ulas said in an interview.

The complaints covered at least seven buildings and experts found problems with at least three of the structures, according to court documents. One of them was the Kule Apartments, a residential tower.

Ms. Ulas said that last year, a judge convicted Mr. Cihan on charges of violating construction regulations there, first sentencing him to a year in prison, then reducing his punishment to a fine of about $650.

On Feb. 6, the building came crashing down, and it is not yet clear how many people died there.

“I had fought as much as I could,” Ms. Ulas said of her legal efforts.

The authorities arrested Mr. Cihan last week. He testified that he had done all the necessary inspections and didn’t know why the building collapsed.

Some people arrested since the quake had connections to political parties, both government and opposition, although it was not immediately clear what role, if any, that may have played in their business practices.

The men arrested in connection to the Isias Hotel, where the volleyballers from Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus died, had ties on both sides of Turkey’s political divide — the government and the opposition.

One of them, Mehmet Fatih Bozkurt, had served as an Adiyaman City Council member in 2014 for Mr. Erdogan’s ruling party, but resigned from the party when his father, Ahmet Bozkurt, ran for Parliament for the largest opposition party the following year, according to Turkish news media.

The elder Mr. Bozkurt told the authorities that he had built the hotel in 1995 and could not remember who had inspected it, according to his testimony reported by Sabah, a pro-government newspaper. He denied accusations that he later modified the building in ways that would have weakened it.

Sahin Avsaroglu, the builder of a large and newly constructed residential project called Badi Saba, which collapsed in the city of Kahramanmaras near the quake’s epicenter, served as a district head for Mr. Erdogan’s party.

He filled his Instagram account with photos of himself with top officials, including Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law, who was a former finance minister; Mr. Erdogan’s chief spokesman; and other former ministers from the party.

The authorities have since arrested Mr. Avsaroglu, and Turkish news media reported that the party removed him from his position. Representatives of Mr. Avsaroglu could not immediately be reached for comment.

Other projects were so new that they should have followed the more recent buildings codes, last updated in 2018.

Tezcan Karakuş Candan, chairwoman of the Ankara branch of Turkey’s Chamber of Architects, said the onus was on the government to ensure that regulations were followed.

“This is a major earthquake for sure, but this is not the first earthquake in Turkey,” she said. “The legislation does not mean anything on its own: There must be a public authority to inspect it,” she added.

“The system is broken.”

Gulsin Harman contributed reporting.

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5) At Sing Sing, Prisoners’ Charges of Brutal Beatings Prompt U.S. Inquiry

Dozens of inmates sued after the November incident, which sent seven to the hospital. They described systematic abuse by special teams of correctional officers.

By Benjamin Weiser, Feb. 23, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/nyregion/sing-sing-beatings-investigation.html

According to affidavits, the violence unfolded over two days in the prison as teams forced prisoners to strip before attacking them. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Shamel Capers, wrongly imprisoned, said he absorbed a beating without resisting so as not to endanger his release. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that corrections officers at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., orchestrated beatings during a prisonwide search in November, sending at least seven prisoners to the hospital and more than 20 others to a medical unit.

A flood of officers, including special teams from other prisons, converged on cells over at least two days, ordering prisoners to strip to their boxer shorts and then punching and kicking them and slamming their heads against walls or floors, according to affidavits by 26 inmates who are part of a lawsuit filed Jan. 31 against New York State.

The allegations are buttressed by hospital records and a separate interview with Shamel Capers, a former Sing Sing inmate who is not part of the lawsuit and gave a firsthand account of violence that occurred just days before he was released.

The prisoners in their sworn statements describe one officer holding a man’s arm against a radiator, burning him, and another officer twisting a prisoner’s wrist and thumb and threatening to break his hand. Another prisoner describes how he was blinded for days after being pepper-sprayed while he was handcuffed.

“Every part of my body was burning, like nothing I ever experienced,” the prisoner, Vincent Poliandro, says in his account.

Bruce A. Barket, a lawyer whose firm filed the lawsuit in the State Court of Claims, said it reported the allegations to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which he said was investigating along with the F.B.I.

Mr. Barket said federal investigators have interviewed at least seven prisoners represented by the firm.

“This was nothing short of a planned attack on incarcerated men by correction officers,” said Mr. Barket. “Worse, it was approved of and overseen by high-ranking officials in the prison.”

He added, “In our view, staff and supervisors engaged in criminal conduct, and should be held accountable. The suit seeks $1 million in damages for each prisoner.

The U.S. attorney’s office and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the investigation.

Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prisons, said in a statement that the agency cooperates with all investigations, but does not comment “to ensure the integrity of those investigations.”

The department said it has 21 of the special Corrections Emergency Response Teams, known as CERT, based in correctional facilities around the state that conduct facility searches, among other tasks. Many of those officers who participated in the incident at Sing Sing wore black tactical gear with visors, according to the affidavits and Mr. Capers.

A spokesman for the union for state corrections officers said the organization had no comment.

Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison opened in 1825 on the Hudson River, is about 30 miles north of New York City and holds about 1,400 inmates, the corrections department said. The facility is perhaps best known as the former home of the state’s execution chamber, where more than 600 people went to their deaths in the electric chair.

According to the affidavits, the beatings occurred largely on Nov. 9 in a housing area known as A block, and the next day in B block, when the prison was on lockdown.

Most accounts begin the same way: A prisoner is ordered to strip and carry his mattress out to be scanned for contraband. The prisoner is then directed to return to his cell and face the back wall, with his hands touching the wall above his head.

Then the beatings begin, the affidavits say.

Brian Johnson says five officers entered his cell about 8 a.m., kicking and punching him and causing him to fall. As one grabbed his genitals, another put his head against the rim of the toilet, with his dreadlocks inside the bowl. An officer then grabbed him by the hair, he says in the affidavit.

Mr. Johnson was taken to Montefiore Mount Vernon Hospital, where he received pain medication, a CT scan of his back and an X-ray of his heel, his affidavit says.

Six other inmates were taken to the same hospital, the affidavits say.

One, Anthony McNaughty, says four officers entered his cell and one placed him in a chokehold. He was then pinned face down on his bed, with an officer placing his knees on Mr. McNaughty’s back, making it hard for him to breathe. The officers punched his head and face and one pulled on the fingers of his left hand.

“I started screaming,” Mr. McNaughty says.

He says that after being escorted to the medical unit, an officer again pulled on his fingers.

Hospital records show Mr. McNaughty had a chip fracture to his left hand.

Prisoners say they were accused of disobeying orders even though they say they never resisted.

Aaron Jackson says he stripped and faced the wall. “I complied. I said nothing,” he says.

Officers then began punching his head, back and genitals — “It felt like they were all trying to get blows in,” Mr. Jackson says. “They kept saying, ‘Stop resisting’ and ‘This is our house.’”

Later, as he was led in handcuffs to the medical unit, CERT officers “took turns” punching and kicking him, he says.

Other prisoners had similar accounts of being punched as they were led through a gantlet of officers.

“As they walked me down the gallery,” Travis Matthews says, “CERT officers took turns punching me in the face.” He says he saw officers “do the same thing” to three other inmates.

Danielle Muscatello, a lawyer at Mr. Barket’s firm, said some 20 prisoners who signed affidavits were cited for infractions in connection with the incident. Of those, she said, nearly half were found guilty and transferred to other facilities, including two near the Canadian border.

In the case of one prisoner, Sean Davis, a hearing officer did not believe the allegations.

Mr. Davis says three officers hit him with fists, feet and batons. He was cited for infractions like “assault on staff” and “refusing direct order,” records show. At a hearing, a sergeant testified he had observed Mr. Davis in his cell and in the medical unit, and that the allegations were untrue.

“The evidence and testimony provided clearly shows that the incident that is described in misbehavior report is not accurate,” the hearing officer wrote on Nov. 18.

Ms. Muscatello said she first learned of the beatings at Sing Sing from the mother of Anthony Grigoroff, a prisoner whose appeal she is handling.

When she visited Mr. Grigoroff a few days after the incident, she found him with a black eye and still appearing shaken.

He had heard that 60 to 70 prisoners were assaulted in the incident, Ms. Muscatello recalled. She asked him to provide her name to any prisoner who wanted to contact her, and soon she was hearing from the mothers and relatives of other prisoners with similar accounts. “Family members just kept calling,” Ms. Muscatello said.

She and a colleague began visiting Sing Sing and taking sworn statements from the men. They also attended their clients’ interviews with federal authorities investigating the incident.

“Today I got a visit from 2 federal prosecutors and 2 special agents from the F.B.I. and with them was my lawyer,” Mr. Poliandro, the prisoner who says he was pepper-sprayed, told his mother in a recent email. Ms. Muscatello confirmed Mr. Poliandro’s meeting, but declined to discuss it.

Many of the prisoners who have joined the lawsuit still have years to go on their sentences.

But Mr. Capers, 25, is represented by different lawyers and said his assault occurred just days before he was ordered released by a Queens judge who found he was wrongly convicted in a murder case for which he had already served eight years of a 15 years-to-life sentence.

“He was an innocent kid trapped behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit,” said Elizabeth Geddes, a lawyer with one of the firms representing him. “When he finally reached the end of that very dark tunnel, officers decided to brutally beat him for no reason.”

Mr. Capers, in the interview with The New York Times, said he complied with orders to strip to his boxers and place his hands high on the back wall of his cell before four officers and started beating him, and stomped on him after he fell. One, he said, bent his hands back.

“One officer is screaming, ‘Break something — break something on him,’” Mr. Capers recalled.

He said that as he was led handcuffed behind his back to the medical unit, he was punched again, in the face, upper torso and stomach.

Mr. Capers said he did not try to defend himself, so that he would not incur a new charge that would imperil his release, which happened Nov. 17.

“I really wanted to get home,” he said. “I didn’t move an inch to even resist.”

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6) Doctor Describes and Denounces C.I.A. Practice of ‘Rectal Feeding’ of Prisoners

In a hearing at Guantánamo Bay, an expert gave a graphic public depiction of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

By Carol Rosenberg, Published Feb. 24, 2023, Updated Feb. 25, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/us/politics/cia-torture-guantanamo-nashiri-doctor.html

Dr. Sondra S. Crosby, an expert on torture and trauma, testifying in a Connecticut court in 2009. “This was a very, very distressing painful, shameful stigmatizing event,” she said of the C.I.A. torture practice. Credit...Pool photo by Bob Child

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Over the years, the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in its secret overseas prisons after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been revealed in government leaks, testimony and a damning Senate investigation.

But an expert’s testimony this week in pretrial hearings at Guantánamo Bay offered some of the most graphic details made public about the C.I.A.’s shadowy use of rectal feeding on its prisoners, a discredited practice kept secret long after other torture methods had been exposed.

Dr. Sondra S. Crosby, a court-approved expert on torture and other trauma, testified in a long-running defense effort by lawyers for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. The lawyers are seeking to suppress from his eventual trial admissions he made to federal investigators as tainted by torture.

She held up a tube that is designed to be put in a patient’s windpipe and said that — according to the agency’s once-secret records —C.I.A. prison staff inserted one just like it into Mr. Nashiri’s anus in May 2004. Agency personnel then used a syringe to inject a protein enriched nutritional shake into his body.

She testified that at Guantánamo Bay in 2013, Mr. Nashiri confided that, years earlier, C.I.A. personnel grabbed him from his cell, stripped him naked, shackled him at the wrists and ankles, bent him over a chair and administered the liquid.

He asked that she never again speak to him about it. And he did not attend the court session when she discussed it at length on Thursday.

“This was a very, very distressing painful, shameful stigmatizing event,” Dr. Crosby testified. “He experienced it as a violent rape, sexual assault.”

Another year would pass before Dr. Crosby found corroboration of the account. In December 2014, the Obama administration released a 500-page summary of a classified Senate study of the C.I.A.’s so-called black site program. It revealed the agency’s practice of using “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding” to punish prisoners.

At the time, the C.I.A. defended it as a sound medical procedure. The group Physicians for Human Rights then condemned the practice as “sexual assault masquerading as medical treatment.”

But this week the agency declined a request for a comment on the descriptions that were attributed to the C.I.A. in open court. Nor would an agency spokeswoman respond to Dr. Crosby’s testimony that Mr. Nashiri also told her that he was sodomized with a broom stick while the C.I.A. held him in a cell, nude with his wrists shackled above his head.

The testimony emerged in pretrial hearings in which the judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., is being asked to decide which evidence can be used at Mr. Nashiri’s eventual capital trial. Mr. Nashiri, 58, is accused of orchestrating Al Qaeda’s Oct. 12, 2000, suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole destroyer that killed 17 U.S. sailors during a refueling stop at the port of Aden, Yemen.

Defense lawyers argue that the testimony, in tandem with other litigation, should persuade the judge to exclude statements the prisoner gave to interrogators in 2007, soon after he was transferred to Guantánamo for trial — or, alternatively, to remove the possibility of a death sentence.

Dr. Crosby is a Boston internist who has been evaluating and treating torture victims since the 1990s. She is paid by the Pentagon to serve as a consultant to Mr. Nashiri’s legal defense team and was granted a security clearance.

In preparation for her testimony, Dr. Crosby said, she was given access to C.I.A. materials. She related the facts that she found in a clinical fashion.

“They left the tube in for an additional 30 minutes ‘to aid in colonic absorption,’” Dr. Crosby said, dismissing the procedure as bogus. The liquid nutritional supplement “would have acted just like an enema, and it would been expelled.”

Daniel Jones, who led the research for the Senate investigation, hailed the testimony as consistent with the findings of his team, which consulted medical experts and found the practice of rectal feeding or hydrating to be anything but health care.

“C.I.A. officers consistently discussed it as a technique to punish or manipulate detainees — writing that it was done to gain ‘total control over the detainee’ or to help ‘clear a person’s head,’” he said. “No medical personnel or C.I.A. officers were ever held accountable for these actions.”

In court, Dr. Crosby held up a breathing tube, 7 millimeters in diameter, that she said was like the tube the C.I.A. used for Mr. Nashiri’s “rectal feeding.” She offered an explanation of how human beings process foods through the stomach — “it cannot be done in reverse” — and then offered a history lesson.

In battlefield situations, medics have forced fluid into the rectum of gravely wounded soldiers to rehydrate them, she said. But an experiment carried out on medical students in the 1930s showed that the practice of trying to nourish people that way was ineffective. “There is no medical benefit ever to administering any form of nutrition through the rectum,” she said.

The testimony was the most detailed public accounting of the procedure, from a medical perspective.

In October 2021, the since-released prisoner Majid Khan told his sentencing jury that C.I.A. agents used “green garden hoses” connected to a faucet to force water inside his rectum. His descriptions of what the C.I.A. did to him so troubled a military jury that they urged the Pentagon to grant Mr. Khan clemency.

At a hearing in 2018 in the Sept. 11 conspiracy case, a prosecutor read aloud from a C.I.A. cable that described something similar being done to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in March 2003, his first month of detention, for twice refusing an interrogator’s order to drink a glass of water.

Mr. Mohammed was taken to another room, “placed on a plastic sheet” and a C.I.A. “medical officer” carried out the procedure. “When he was returned to the interrogation room, he then complied and drank water.”

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7) Urgent Statement Condemning the eviction of Mr. Takao Shito from his farmland

Sanrizuka-Shibayama United Opposition League against Construction of the Airport

https://www.sanrizuka-doumei.jp/wp/

Japan. February 16, 2023

The Sanrizuka-Shibayama United Opposition League against Construction of the Airport strongly condemns the violent eviction that destroyed and robbed the farmland and buildings of our member Takao Shito, as well as the tower and signs owned by the League.

The Narita International Airport Corporation (NAA) and Chiba Prefectural Police’s riot unit have taken away with physical violence Mr. Shito’s habitat and land, which his family has cultivated since his grandparent’s generation for 100 years and yields a bountiful harvest. They have also destroyed the tower and signs that have shown farmers’ unyielding will to fight against the state brutality to construct airport for nearly 60 years. We will never forgive the NAA, the police and Chiba District Court, which legal-washed their criminal act.

On February 15, the NAA and the police riot unit carried out this enforcement action at night in a despicable manner, like a nighttime burglary. This shows how unjust and anti-people this enforcement measure is.

Late last year, the NAA stated its intention to enforce compulsory seizure under court order. The Opposition League, determined to take on the enemy assault, created a decisive fighting structure, and has continued to block enforcement through daily sit-ins, protests, and gathering signatures on street against the planned seizure. Being afraid of people’s struggle, the NAA and the state power resorted to trickery, their usual tactic in the construction of Narita Airport.

Upon receiving the news of the “enforcement on February 15,” the League and its supporters gathered and prepared the counteraction from early morning on the same day. The number of supporters exceeded 100, and as the sun was setting, everyone thought that there would be no enforcement on that day, and many of them started to head home. However, at 8:00 p.m., when darkness fell, hundreds of the police with riot gear—helmets, shields, batons, pistols, and even water cannons—appeared, blocked the road in front of Shito’s house, and rushed into his fields, workshop, and detached house, and surrounded them with iron fences.

On that news, however, the League’s supporters rapidly came back. Once again, 100 people gathered there, stood arm-in-arm, confronting the police. But the riot police used their concentrated force to remove the League and the supports one by one and heavy machinery entered the fields and yard to destroy and rob them.

Where is a “rule of law”! Where is a “democracy”, “protection of people’s lives and livelihoods”! What has actually taken place in this enforcement action is the destruction of the life and livelihood of a farmer by a blatant and brutal state force, a very robbery.

Why has the state power, the NAA and the court decided to carry out the violent seizure, breaching their promise of “no forcible measures”? The bent taxiway cannot be straightened by this land seizure. Passenger numbers have plummeted because of the Covid-19 pandemic. There are no economic reasons for this forcible eviction.

The real reason of it is the necessity to crush the League and its supporters, which has been violently fighting state power, calling the Narita Airport “a military airfield”, while the U.S. and Japanese governments are accelerating their push for aggressive war on China since the outbreak of the Ukraine war. The CSIS, U.S. imperialist think tank, recently published The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan, which reads, “Although local political opposition may obstruct peacetime and possibly wartime access to Japanese civilian airports, the significant payoff justifies a strong effort.”

The Japanese government evicted a farmer from his land in the name of “national policy,” “national interest.” The war is a continuation of such politics. Now is the time to shout more loudly than ever the slogan, which the opposition alliance has advocated from the outset of our struggle, “Smash the Narita Military Airport!”

The League and its supporters shared Mr. Shito’s raging fury throughout the night, confronting the riot police blockade line that attempted to seize the farmland and engaging in a fierce battle on the tower and the rooftops of the detached house. From the young students to the older generations in their 70s engaged in the action and strengthened their solidarity. The common motto of the Sanrizuka Struggle, “Defend farmland to the death! Hold firm! Direct action!” has been consolidated. Let’s take back three students who were unjustly arrested immediately!

They forcefully executed the eviction. Nevertheless, the League and supporters are getting stronger, and the justice of the Sanrizuka struggle is shining brighter and brighter. The League fiercely denounces the latest outrage of the state power and the NAA and is determined to continue to fight until the airport is closed. We will defend Mr. Shito’s farm and livelihood and pledge to fight until we get back the farmland that was taken away from him.

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8) Their Hair Long and Flowing or in Ponytails, Women in Iran Flaunt Their Locks

Defiant resistance to Iran’s mandatory hijab law has exploded across the country after nationwide protests that erupted last year.

By Farnaz Fassihi, Feb. 25, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/world/middleeast/iran-women-hijab-hair.html

Varying degrees of head coverings in Tehran. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

An engineer strode onstage at an event in Tehran, wearing tight pants and a stylish shirt, and clutching a microphone in one hand. Her long brown hair, tied in a ponytail, swung freely behind her, uncovered, in open defiance of Iran’s strict hijab law.

“I am Zeinab Kazempour,” she told the convention of Iran’s professional association of engineers. She condemned the group for supporting the hijab rules, and then she marched offstage, removing a scarf from around her neck and tossing it to the floor under a giant image of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The packed auditorium erupted in cheers, claps and whistles. A video of Ms. Kazempour went viral on social media and local news sites, making her the latest champion for many Iranians in a growing, open challenge to the hijab law.

Women have resisted the law, uncovering their hair an inch or a strand at a time, since it went into effect two years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

But since the death last year of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of the country’s morality police, women and girls have been at the center of a nationwide uprising, demanding an end not only to hijab requirements but to the Islamic Republic itself.

Women are suddenly flaunting their hair: left long and flowing in the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at schools and on university campuses, according to interviews with women in Iran as well as photographs and videos online. While these acts of defiance are rarer in more conservative areas, they are increasingly being seen in towns and cities.

“I have not worn a scarf for months — I don’t even carry it with me any more,” said Kimia, 23, a graduate student in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, in western Iran, who, like other women interviewed for this article, asked that her surname not be used for fear of retribution.

Kimia said that many female students at her college did not cover their hair even in classrooms in the presence of male professors. “Whether the government likes to admit it or not,” she said, “the era of the forced hijab is over.”

Iran’s hijab law mandates that women and girls over 9 cover their hair, and that they hide the curves of their bodies under long, loose robes.

Many women still adhere to the rule in public, some by choice and others from fear. Videos of the traditional bazaar in downtown Tehran, Iran’s capital, for example, show most women covering their hair.

But videos of parks, cafes, restaurants and malls — places popular with younger women — show more of them uncovered. Many prominent women, including celebrities and athletes, have removed their hijab in Iran and while representing the country abroad.

The state has long promoted the hijab law as a symbol of its success in establishing the Islamic Republic, but enforcement has varied, depending on which political faction was in power.

After the election in 2021 of Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner, as president, the rules have been increasingly enforced, and with a strictness and brutality that have enraged Iranian women, many of whom were fined, beaten or arrested by the morality police after they were said to be in violation.

But anger over the law boiled over in September, when the young woman, Ms. Amini, 22, died in the custody of the morality police, and as the street protests that broke out across Iran quickly morphed into broader calls for an end to being ruled by the country’s clerics.
The protests have largely fizzled amid a violent crackdown by the authorities that has included mass arrests, death sentences and the executions of four young protesters.

But many acts of civil disobedience continue daily, including chanting “death to the dictator” from rooftops, writing graffiti on walls and tearing down and setting ablaze government banners.

And women have been going out in public without their hijabs.

Officials said in December they had disbanded the morality police, and they have not been seen on the streets since. For the moment, the authorities are only occasionally enforcing the hijab rules, according to women and activists in Iran.

The authorities recently shut down two pharmacies, one in Tehran and another in the northern city of Amol, after female employees were reported for not wearing a hijab. And in the religious city of Qum, they reprimanded the manager of a bank for catering to clients without hijabs. The judiciary has also opened a case against Ms. Kazempour, the engineer, according to Iranian news reports.

Officials say they are reviewing the enforcement rules and plan to announce updated measures. One conservative lawmaker has said that alternative enforcement methods are being considered, like warning women by text message, denying them civic services or blocking their bank accounts.

“Head scarves will be back on women’s heads,” the lawmaker, Hossein Jalali, was reported as saying in December on Iranian media.

But the defiance remains too widespread to contain and too pervasive to reverse, women’s rights activists say.

“The core and heart of this movement is really the revolutionary act of these women turning their head scarves into the most effective and most powerful weapon against religious dictatorship and deep layers of misogyny and patriarchy,” said Fatemeh Shams, a women’s rights activist and an assistant professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

The women who have stopped covering their hair say that they are determined to do as they wish, but that they are in favor of a “voluntary hijab.” They also say that they respect the rights of women who choose wear scarves.

Leila, 51, who lives in Tehran, said she and her teenage daughter had been dressing in public as they did in private and when they traveled abroad — in dresses, skirts, skinny jeans and tight sweaters.

“I recently had to travel and struggled over whether I should wear the hijab at the airport because there are a lot of security agents, but decided against it,” Leila said in a telephone interview. She was stunned to see the majority of the women at the airport that day had also ditched their hijabs. “We all got through security and passport control with our hair uncovered, and they said nothing. Our power is in numbers.”

Hathis, 25, who reviews books and movies online, posted a photograph of herself on Instagram in December sitting, hair uncovered, with a friend at an outdoor cafe in Tehran. “Is this what it feels like to feel the cool fall breeze blow through your hair? And for 25 years I was denied this?”

Even many religious women who wear a hijab by choice have joined the campaign to repeal the law. A petition with thousands of names and photographs of women is circulating on Instagram and Twitter with the message, “I wear the hijab, but I am against the compulsory hijab.”

Maryam, 53, who observes the hijab law and lives in Tehran, recently traveled with her daughter to the holiday island of Kish in the Persian Gulf. They were surprised to find most women wearing short-sleeved sun dresses, sandals, capri pants and T-shirts. “Are we in Turkey or Iran?” asked her daughter, Narges, 26.

Shortly after the trip, Narges changed all of her social media profile photos to one in which her long brown hair was flowing over her shoulders and her fist was raised in the air. It announced to her religious conservative family that she was taking off her hijab.

“I will never bring down my fist until freedom, even if we have to wait for many years,” Narges wrote on her Instagram page.

Maryam said in an interview that she was flooded with messages and calls from relatives and friends, some supportive and some critical of her daughter.

“I told them that times have changed,” she said. “I respect my daughter’s choice and so should you. It’s nobody’s business.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

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2/25/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, February 25, 2023

Solidarity with Ukraine!

Ukraine Solidarity Network Mission Statement

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Orrick

January 14, 2023

Anything But Justice for Black People

Sign the petition:

Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

“In His Defense” The People vs. Kevin Cooper

A film by Kenneth A. Carlson

Teaser is now streaming at:

https://www.carlsonfilms.com

Posted by: Death Penalty Focus Blog, January 10, 2022

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February 6, 2023

Statement from Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier released this statement from his prison cell to mark the 48th anniversary of his unjust incarceration.[1]

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.infoAddress: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

Emergency Hotlines

State and Local Hotlines

National Hotline

Know Your Rights Materials

Center for Constitutional Rights

Civil Liberties Defense Center

Grand Jury Resistance Project

Katya Komisaruk

Movement for Black Lives Legal Resources

Tilted Scales Collective

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https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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