refugees
Corruption shows offshore detention is rotten to the core—Labor can’t hide
The long-awaited review of Australia’s offshore detention by former ASIO boss, Dennis Richardson, was finally made public on 12 February. However Labor’s Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has been sitting on Richardson’s report since October last year.
It is no coincidence that the report was only made public after PNG Prime Minister James Marape addressed the Australian parliament last week. Corruption remains endemic in the arrangements between Australia and PNG to provide services for the 55 refugees and their families still stranded in PNG.
Labor last made a payment to PNG in July 2022, but the refugees have been left destitute since services were cut off in October 2023. Refugees have no income, no food vouchers, no electricity, no access to health care and have been threatened with eviction. But Labor has done nothing to support refugees in PNG or evacuate them to safety.
The PNG Chief Migration Officer, Stanis Hulahau, has stood aside while an investigation takes place into manifest corruption of the PNG humanitarian program that has left refugee service providers owed hundreds of millions of kina.
Corrupt history
Corruption in offshore detention arrangements is not news. In January 2017, the government’s own National Audit Office issued a scathing report into the first five years of detention on Manus Island and Nauru saying the Immigration Department (now Home Affairs) had spent $2.2 billion without proper authorisation.
Spending of $1.1 billion was approved by departmental officers who did not have the required authorisation and for the remaining $1.1 billion there was no record at all of who had authorised the payments.
The 2017 report complained that contracts were signed, “in great haste to give effect to government policy decisions and the department did not have a detailed view of what it wanted to purchase”.
The report was also scathing of the conditions in the camps, saying the chief medical officer had drawn attention to, “increased risk of infections and disease due to vermin and pests; water pooling; extensive mould and inadequate cleaning of wet areas; inadequate food hygiene; and overcrowded accommodation.”
In January 2019, the Financial Review reported that Paladin Group was one of the biggest government contractors in Australia, having won tenders worth $423 million for its 22 months of work on Manus Island. The company’s registered headquarters was a beach shack on Kangaroo Island.
Five years later, the Richardson report shows that Paladin Group’s founding director, Craig Thrupp, is estimated to have personally made more than $150 million from contracts worth more than $500 million over four years to run offshore processing on Manus Island up to 2019.
Paladin is facing an Australian Federal Police investigation into allegations that it paid bribes in 2018 totalling $3 million to PNG officials to secure the contracts.
The Richardson report very carefully only blames public servants for the widespread corruption revealed by the inquiry. The “left arm did not know what the right arm was doing”, he said. But the corruption was public and well-known; the politicians, Liberal and Labor, did know.
Labor’s Home Affairs Minister is pointing the finger at Peter Dutton. He deserves to be condemned. But corruption is an inevitable part of offshore detention, just part of the price paid for entrenching human rights abuses.
Labor bribed both the governments of PNG and Nauru to establish offshore detention in 2013, paying PNG almost $500 million in increased foreign aid just to agree to open Manus Island.
Now Labor has turned a blind eye to the corruption and to the refugees left behind in PNG. Labor is paying MTC, a notorious US detention company, $420 million for just 30 months to keep offshore detention operating on Nauru. Fifteen refugees are being held on Nauru with no concern for their human rights after arriving on two boats in September and October.
Eight others who arrived with them, including a child, were sent back to their country of origin.
The Richardson report is damning but ultimately it lets the politicians off the hook. Labor can’t hide its responsibility for offshore detention.
The refugees in PNG must be brought to Australia. Those already in Australia on temporary bridging visas, after being medically evacuated from PNG and Nauru, must be allowed to settle here permanently.
By Ian Rintoul
The post Corruption shows offshore detention is rotten to the core—Labor can’t hide first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Israel’s UNRWA ‘tunnel’ smear collapses as ‘Hamas’ gear revealed as solar power kit
Yet another risible propaganda video falls apart almost as soon as it’s published – but ‘mainstream’ media parrot lies without checking
Israel’s appalling – and woefully inept – propaganda has been exposed again after the Israeli military showed reporters around what it claimed was a ‘Hamas tunnel’ under the Gaza HQ of UN aid agency UNRWA.
A video published by Fox News of the tour revealed green boxes on the walls of the supposed ‘tunnel’ – but as former diplomat Craig Murray pointed out, the boxes are not supposed ‘terror’ equipment. Instead, they are solar power converters kept in a cellar to keep them cool as they process energy from solar panels above – and the wires leading from them into the UNRWA building were there to send the converted electricity up into the HQ, as you’d expect:
Despite the ease of checking what the IDF claimed – and the IDF’s long record of ridiculous lies and smears – the so-called ‘mainstream’ media have tamely parroted the lie:
Israel’s attempts at propaganda have routinely been exposed almost as soon as they were uttered – from claims that five hundred refugees sheltering at the Al Ahli hospital were killed by a Hamas rocket, to lurid atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and severed breasts, to the burned bodies supposedly murdered by Hamas in the 7 October raid that were killed by Israeli military missiles, shells and bullets, and everything in between.
Just as routinely, western governments and media continue to regurgitate the lies without fact-checking, or just as likely in full knowledge that they are lies – and stubbornly ignore even the Israeli military’s admission that it killed ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis during the Hamas raid, despite this being freely discussed by Israeli media.
Israel has long wanted the end of UNRWA for the organisation’s support for Palestinians’ right of return to lands stolen from them. The arrogance that seems to underpin the lazy shoddiness of Israel’s propaganda attempts shows no sign of abating.
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Israel bombs Belgium’s offices in Gaza – UK media ignore
Belgium commits to funding UNRWA and has previously called for sanctions against Israel. Israel bombs Belgium’s representatives and ‘completely destroys’ office
Before and after: Belgium’s representative office in Gaza
Belgium has summoned Israel’s ambassador to give account to Belgium’s prime minister after an Israeli bombing ‘completely destroyed’ the country’s official representative office in Gaza. Despite the attack happening last night – and being freely covered by Israeli papers – the UK’s ‘mainstream’ media appear to have completely ignored the crime and Belgium’s response:
Earlier this week, Belgium committed to continuing to provide funding to UNRWA, the vital UN agency providing desperately-needed aid to Gaza’s two million starving and suffering people. The UK, US and several other nations have cut off funding to UNRWA, despite what appears to be a complete lack of evidence, after Israel claimed twelve of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees participated in the 7 October raid. Israel has for decades wanted an end to the agency because it maintains Palestinians’ hopes of exercising their right of return to land and homes from which they were driven at gunpoint.
Last November, Belgium’s deputy prime minister also called for sanctions against Israel for its war crimes against Palestinians, including frequent and deliberate bombing of refugee camps, hospitals and schools.
Israel has been ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a binding legal ruling, to stop and prevent the killing of Gaza’s people. If anything, it has accelerated the slaughter and continues to display its contempt for decency and international law.
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Pro-Israel lawyer group tries to threaten Tower Hamlets to take down Palestine flags
UK Lawyers for Israel waves criminality threat at mayor Lutfur Rahman and council with claim local Jews feel threatened – a tactic seen and discredited before – but police already said in October no offence had been committed
Right-wing pro-Israel pressure group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI) has tried to force Tower Hamlets council and its mayor Lutfur Rahman to remove Palestinian flags put up by residents in solidarity with people facing occupation and genocide in Gaza – by threatening Rahman and his colleagues with criminalisation if they do not.
The group has form. Manchester University – to widespread outrage in the art world – pressured its museum director to resign for daring to host a display by Forensic Architecture, the science group that has criticised the Israeli regime for extrajudicial killings and other illegal actions, after UKLFI claimed the display was provocative. Forensic Architecture is also known for having debunked Israeli military lies attempting to blame the bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of refugees sheltering there, on a misfired Hamas rocket.
UKLFI also pressured Chelsea and Westminster hospital into taking down a harmless display of plates painted by Palestinian children by claiming Jewish patients had said they were distressed by them – but a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that not a single complaint had been made by patients or visitors.
The group was criticised by Jewish human rights group Na’amod for inviting an Israeli right-wing extremist group to speak in the UK and has been accused of links with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. The European Legal Support Centre accused UKLFI of using ‘lawfare’ as a ‘politically motivated’ weapon and said that the group “has been attempting to smear and disrupt the work of Palestinian human rights groups and their partners for years”.
UKLFI paid an out of court settlement to a Palestinian children’s charity it had libelled by claiming the charity gave “financial or material support to any terrorist organization” and admitted that UKLFI supported the ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, an ‘Israeli black-ops department’ that tries to undermine the ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against the Israeli occupation and to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity actions globally. Broadcast regulator Ofcom rejected a UKLFI complaint that a Channel 4 video featuring Palestinian young people was unfair to it.
Tower Hamlets council appeared to call the group’s bluff. A council spokesperson said:
As one of the most diverse areas in the country, we are monitoring any community tensions closely with our tension monitoring group, which includes the police and representatives from a broad range of community organisations.
A number of Palestinian flags have been put up by the public in recent months. While we appreciate people want to express their support for Palestine, we have a routine responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. The situation is under regular review…
We are not aware of any criminal offences related to Palestinian flags not being removed, and we will continue to work closely with police partners to manage the situation.
And the council has reason to be confident. When attempts – not explicitly linked to UKLFI in reports – were made in October to us a similar tactic to force it to remove Palestinian, the Met Police said that as far as they were concerned, no criminal act had been committed.
Israel planning to transfer Palestinians to Congo
Ethnic cleansing plans outed further but still ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media
Image: ActionAid
Israel is negotiating with Congo – it is unclear from reports which of the two neighbouring Congos – and other African nations to transfer the Palestinian people, according to reports in the Times of Israel and its sister site Zman Israel.
Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) regularly see serious human rights violations, including massacres. A 2022 US Department of State report on human rights in the Republic, which is commonly known as Congo Brazzaville after its capital city to distinguish it from its neighbour – states that:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference
and more.
In the DRC, human rights groups have noted massacres and other human rights violations. Amnesty International said in 2022 that the DRC:
continued to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings in the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, a crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People from regions affected by armed conflict, including eastern DRC, were particularly affected amid mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis. The authorities continued to show a lack of political will to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The right to education was violated.
The Times quoted a ‘senior’ security cabinet source and comments by Israeli minister Gila Gamliel:
Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells [journalist] Shalom Yerushalmi.
Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
The UK government has disgraced itself by continued attempts to transfer desperate refugees to Rwanda, attempts continually blocked by the courts – but the Israeli regime was the first to do it, sending around 4,000 Black refugees fleeing war in Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda between 2013 and 2018 before discontinuing what it called ‘voluntary’ departure – similar to the ‘voluntary emigration’ euphemism it uses for its ethnic cleansing plan, alongside ‘humanitarian migration’.
Israel has an appalling record toward Black people, even Black Jews – and last year threatened to deport them, too. The SAGE Race & Class Journal notes that:
Ethiopian Jews who have been brought into Israel in several mass transfer operations, have found themselves relegated to an underclass. They are not only racially discriminated against in housing, employment, education, the army and even in the practice of their religion, but have also been unwittingly used to bolster illegal settlements.
Now, as well as the already-outed plan to force huge numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza into the Egyptian desert, Israel is actively working on plans to force more out of the Middle East altogether and into Africa. The Israeli regime’s war crimes continue to pile up.
Despite the similarities with the UK’s racist government, at the time of writing the UK’s so-called ‘mainstream’ media have not reported Israel’s plan – as has been the case with much of Israel’s racism and criminality.
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Unite activists sign letter to Graham after ban on union banners at Palestine demos
Alleged management ban on exec members marching under Unite banners leads to angry letter denouncing lack of action and solidarity with slaughtered Gazans
Unite banners at a Manchester Gaza demo – but executive members say they have been banned from formal representation
Unite members and activists have issued an outraged letter to union general secretary Sharon Graham, after members of the elected executive were told not to attend, under a Unite banner, demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The letter reads:
Dear Sharon Graham,
As a result of our letters of 30 October and 1 November and other representations, including from London and Eastern Region, you finally agreed, after nearly 4 weeks of an ongoing genocide by Israel, to issue a statement on November 3 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The statement was however pitiably weak. There was no mention of genocide or ethnic cleansing. There was no mention of the war crimes perpetrated by Israel – the bombing of hospitals, the targeting and murder of journalists, academics and doctors to say nothing of the bombing of residential areas or the murder of children, which now stands at over 8,000.
There was no mention of the fact that Israel has imposed a food, water and fuel blockade on the Gaza strip resulting in starvation according to the United Nations. Collective punishment of a civilian population is a egregious breach of international law yet the statement treats the Palestinians and the Israeli state as equally responsible.
It is not Hamas which possesses an air force but Israel. It is the Israeli state which is carrying out the carpet bombing of Gaza with the intent of forcing Palestinians out altogether.
The statement treats the genocidal attack on the people of Gaza as equivalent to the break-out from the world’s largest open air prison on October 7. Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip for 56 years imposing a suffocating siege on it since 2007.
This report from Vatican News of 16 December gives just one example of Israel’s war crimes:
‘Israelis have opened fire on Gaza’s Christians. Following heavy bombardment overnight of the area around Holy Family Latin parish in Gaza City, dozens are reported dead… and reports continue to arrive that shooting by Israeli snipers continues during these hours. A statement released by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem confirmed that an Israeli sniper murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish where the majority of Christian families have taken refuge since the start of the war.’
An even more horrifying massacre took place on 17 December. Al Jazeera reported that Israeli bulldozers have crushed Palestinians who were taking shelter in tents outside Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Dozens of Palestinians are reported to have been buried alive. These are Nazi-style massacres and yet you have said nothing and done nothing since issuing your statement. You were happy to wave the Ukrainian flag but you haven’t waved the Palestinian flag or expressed any sympathy with the thousands of murdered Palestinian civilians, not least children.
UN Secretary General António Guterres accepted that there was a context to October 7. Many Israeli civilians died at the hands of the Israeli military. See Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says.
Unite at its 2023 Policy Conference passed motions supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and affirmed that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid. That should have informed Unite’s statement.
The statement treats one of the world’s most powerful militaries and the resistance of the Palestinians as equal. Your claim that Israel’s goal is to eliminate Hamas is untrue. Why bomb homes, schools and ambulances if this was the case? Were the dead children also Hamas ‘terrorists’?
The statement says nothing about what Unite intends to do. You have done nothing to publicise all the previous national demonstrations. Are you going to ignore the one on January 13 too? There has been no national Unite presence on the marches to date.
We demand that you publicise all future demonstration, that you provide the resources necessary for Unite members to attend, that Unite nationally is present on the march together with its banner and that Unite has a speaker at the rally.
A leaked Israeli intelligence document makes it clear that Israel’s intention is to repeat the Nakba in 1948 when ¾ million Palestinians were expelled.
If Israel succeeds this will be a prelude to ethnic cleansing on the West Bank where there has been a reign of terror in the past 6 months. Over 250 people have died since October 7. Vast areas of Area C have been ‘cleansed’ as Israeli settlers and the army attack farmers.None of this is recognised in your statement. Netanyahu has compared the Palestinians to ‘Amalek’ whom God instructed the Israelites to exterminate yet Unite’s statement ignores this. Open calls in Israel for the extermination of the Palestinians are being made and Israel’s army is doing just that.
By blocking fuel, babies on incubators and people on dialysis machines have already died.
It is time for Unite to show that the situation in Gaza is an urgent one and to mobilise its members. We give the Labour Party over £1m a year. We should be demanding that Keir Starmer makes way for someone who is not a ‘Zionist without qualification’. At the moment he is nothing more than Sunak’s echo chamber.
Yours sincerely
Sharon Graham had already infuriated supporters of Palestinian rights by remaining silent for many weeks at the start of Israel’s latest genocidal assault on Gaza – then making a grossly asymmetrical statement appearing to treat Israeli deaths more seriously than Palestinian and allegedly having the exec railroaded into accepting only her preferred wording when the statement was eventually issued.
Graham was also exposed using proxies to order the cancellation of showings of the film ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn/The Big Lie’, which exposes the political abuse of antisemitism accusations against left-wingers in the Labour party, and discussion of Asa Winstanley’s forensic book Weaponising Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. Proxies were similarly despatched to try, unsuccessfully, to cancel a Unite ‘fringe’ event at Labour’s conference earlier this month in support of Palestinians.
At the time of writing, the letter is still open for Unite members to add their signature via Google Docs. It will be submitted shortly after new year.
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Exclusive: Greenstein arrested by anti-terror cops – for one tweet
Brighton-based Jewish human rights activist targeted for standing against genocide
Tony Greenstein in Wolverhampton
Jewish human rights – and therefore pro-Palestinian – activist Tony Greenstein has been arrested by police – for a single tweet supporting Palestinians against genocide and oppression.
In the 15 November post, Greenstein – responding to yet another right-wing attack on Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker – told the person baiting Walker that he supported Palestinians and preferred Hamas to the occupying Israeli army that is perpetrating genocide in Gaza:
The gaslighting pro-Israel troll was one of many attacking Walker for condemning Israel’s repeated bombing of hospitals in Gaza, war crimes that have taken hundreds and probably thousands of civilian lives and that Israel has invented evidence to try to justify:
Seized
Police arrived at Greenstein’s home at around 7am this morning, seized his phone and laptop and held him for around nine hours. His electronics were not returned on his release.
Greenstein was released around 4pm and has not, as yet, been charged with any crime. He was one of several Palestine Action supporters convicted of criminal damage against one of Israeli weapons-maker Elbit’s UK factories, despite no damage being done – and who received a suspended sentence at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
It seems the UK Establishment considers Greenstein to be supporting the wrong ‘terrorists’ against the ones who are actually perpetrating mass murder, including against their own Israeli citizens.
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Two Palestine Action activists acquitted by jury for putting ketchup on Balfour statue
Pair charged ludicrously with criminal damage for putting sauce on a statue have been found not guilty
Protestors who squirted tomato ketchup on to a Commons statue of Arthur Balfour, after whom the UK’s commitment to the creation of an Israeli state on Palestinian land is named, have been found not guilty of criminal damage by a unanimous jury decision.
The protest by the two women took place on the 105th anniversary of the ‘Balfour Declaration’ by the British Government in 1917:
Video released by Palestine Action
According to the defendants’ legal firm,
this case is thought to have been the first trial to take place in the Crown Court as a result of Section 50 of the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 – which amended the mode of trial for low value criminal damage to memorials.
Legal argument during the trial included whether the protest amounted to damage, whether the defendants had a lawful excuse in accordance with their right to freedom of expression protected under Article 10 of the EHRC, and also due to their belief that the public would consent to their protest as a form of expression and if they were aware of the history, consequence and legacy of the Balfour Declaration.
The pair were defended by Hamish McCallum of Garden Court North Chambers’ protest rights team.
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Video: IDF driver ‘slowed down to murder two children’ during West Bank refugee camp raid
Raid supposedly in pursuit of ‘terrorist’ pauses to shoot dead two young boys aged 15 and 8 in cold blood
Israeli soldiers slowed down their convoy so the driver of the lead vehicle could murder two young boys in cold blood as they played in the street after an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to witnesses. The clip was played today on Al Jazeera’s English broadcast:
Basil Abu al-Waf, 15, and 8-year-old Adam Samer al-Ghoul, were playing outside after the IDF raid finished, believing it was now safe – but were killed by a convoy of troops returning from the camp.
Basil’s father told Al Jazeera that the Al-Basateen neighbourhood where they were playing is ‘known as a very quiet area’. A horrific video of Adam’s shooting as he tried to run away, which took place at the end of November, went viral. Hamas does not operate in West Bank, but Israel has intensified its attacks on the Jenin refugee camp regardless.
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US Congress passes resolution declaring anti-zionism is antisemitism
Anti-zionist Jews among millions declared antisemitic by anti-humanity US lawmakers
The US Congress – of which many members are heavily funded by pro-Israel lobby groups – has passed House Resolution 894 ‘firmly’ stating ‘that anti-Zionism is antisemitism’. The House used as its excuse a supposed ‘drastic rise in antisemitism’ since the 7 October Hamas kibbutz raise – despite the fact that race-based violence since the raid has consisted of attacks on Muslims, including the shooting of three Palestinian-American friends that left one of them permanently paralysed.
The resolution was led by Republican members, but the Democrats were also guilty: the vote passed by 311 votes to just 14 – with 95 Democrats voting for the resolution and 92 ‘abstaining by voting present’. Only thirteen Democrats voted against it.
The motion had been promoted by a number of US pro-Israel pressure and funding groups.
Antizionist Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace Action described the anti-democratic resolution as dangerous:
Falsely stating that anti-Zionism is antisemitism conflates all Jews with the Israeli state and endangers our communities. It fuels deadly violence and censorship campaigns against Palestinians,
The resolution’s conflation of Jewishness and Zionism – which is a political ideology – has also rightly been condemned as deeply dangerous.
The vote came as Israel continued its slaughter of Palestinian civilians, with bombing of southern Gaza – where the apartheid occupation regime ordered residents of northern Gaza to flee – perpetrated daily.
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