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July
7, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
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to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
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Block
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Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
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Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
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Col. Dan
Smith
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Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
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Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
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Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
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Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
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Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
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Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
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Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
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June
27, 2003
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Vest
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Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
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Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
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Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
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June
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Wayne Madsen
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Said
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Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
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Cockburn
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David Krieger
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Maria
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Wire
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Civil Liberties
Watch
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
7, 2003
Torture 24/7 in Indonesia
Fear, Pain and
Shame in Aceh
By LESLEY McCULLOCH
In the police stations of Aceh, in Indonesia's
far northwest corner, fear is the daily diet of the detainees.
Not fear of the outcome of a due legal process, but fear of torture
by Indonesian police to force a false confession.
For several days now information has
been leaking from the Polres (local police) station in the provincial
capital Banda Aceh. The sources are varied, but most of the information
comes from a police officer who is disgusted by what he says
he is forced to participate in, and ashamed that he feels so
helpless to intervene on behalf of those held there.
Since the imposition of martial law in
Aceh on May 1, the number of detainees without access to lawyers
and charged with treason has increased exponentially.
Stories from various sources, all of
whom must remain undisclosed, tell of torture, intimidation,
sleep deprivation, overcrowding, and lack of food and water.
The torture is systematic and takes place at all hours of the
day and night.
This past Sunday evening, there were
37 prisoners in two cells in Polres, each cell measuring three
by four meters. Two small meals are provided daily but clean
water for drinking is in short supply. Lack of food, dehydration,
and the heat caused by the overcrowded conditions has resulted
in many becoming sick, but a doctor has yet to visit those held
in the Polres hell. The shared toilet has been blocked for several
days, many have open wounds as a result of torture by the police,
the risk of infection in such unsanitary conditions is very high.
In the past few days, Amiruddin, 16,
has been beaten so badly around the head that he now has sight
in only one eye. There are several detainees in custody under
the age of 18, all of whom have been beaten. These detainees
are, according to international standards, still classified as
children.
There are several elderly prisoners,
and their senior years have not spared them from torture. On
Monday, Tengku Wahab arrived in one of the cells, his rib already
broken from a beating he received while in detention at the Brimob
station. Brimob is Indonesia's elite mobile brigade whose reputation
for murder and violence is similar to that of the dreaded Indonesian
military. Tengku Wahab is 63 years old and, as with most of the
detainees, he has been charged with treason.
The Indonesian government has announced
that those suspected of supporting the separatist movement (GAM)
in the province will be charged with treason. On Monday, there
were 16 other inmates in Tengku Wahab's cell, 15 of whom had
been charged with the same offense. The fate of most of the 20
prisoners in the cell next to Wahab's is the same. There are
two, however, who have been detained at Polres for five months,
and to date no formal charge has been made against them. One
of the inmates is mentally ill; his charge is also treason.
At 9:30pm on Sunday a new prisoner arrived.
The police were angry, they were shouting: "You are a member
of GAM, do you think we are stupid? Say you are, say it!"
As they shouted, they slammed his head into the bars of the cell
- again and again. By telephone at 11:30pm, and obviously in
some distress, the police officer who had opened the door to
the Polres torture rooms said: "Please call the International
Red Cross, these people need help. God forgive me for what I
am part of, God forgive us all."
Information comes not only from this
police officer, but from several sources, including those who
have been released: "Yes, I was beaten, but I am OK. I don't
know why I was released, I guess I am just lucky. Please help
my brothers who are still in Polres." When asked to identify
the instruments of torture, recently released Saifuddin (not
his real name) said, "They use anything they can to torture
the prisoners. They beat people with guns, rattan poles, wood,
and even heavy books. They kick with their boots, in the ribs
and on the head, and they have burned so many with cigarettes
and with lighters. Sometimes they forced me to hold a ball pen
between my fingers and then squeezed my fingers together."
The international community is all but
silent on the issue of Aceh, but has given much more time to
the detention of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In fact, it is interesting to note that at a recent Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministerial Meeting, Indonesian
Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirayuda was one of the most
vocal critics of the Myanmar government. Hassan said of the detention
of Suu Kyi: "Myanmar is a setback for the country itself
and also a setback for the region." He was objecting to
her detention and the conditions under which she is being held.
But his words ring hollow when in May,
back home in Indonesia, the government of which Hassan is part
launched against the Acehnese the biggest military operation
since the 1975 invasion of East Timor. So many in Hassan's own
country are being detained in conditions that violate all norms
and conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners, and also
the rights of civilians in a war situation.
It is one thing to fight on the battlefield;
it is quite another for members of the national police force
to torture, maim and kill those detained under dubious laws.
The Indonesian government has interpreted the relative silence
of the international community on the issue of Aceh as support
for its actions in that remote province.
Why is the Indonesian police force torturing
and maiming children and the elderly in Aceh? Why, on Saturday,
was the body of one prisoner who succumbed to the ferocity of
the torture taken from the Polres at night? Where is the body
now?
Hassan said the Myanmar government cannot
ignore the calls of the international community to release Suu
Kyi. If this is so, then the solution to the problems in Aceh
described above is quite simple: the international community
need only request that the Indonesian government prevent its
police force from torturing civilians, including children and
the elderly. Could it really be this simple?
Lesley McCulloch
is a research fellow at the Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne,
Australia. This article originally appeared in Asia Times.
Weekend
Edition Features
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
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