Washington Backing Indonesian State Terror

This is clearly not about Indonesia at all, but is about a presently ongoing crisis that might not seem large to us, but which clearly is critical for Haitians, of whom 917 have already died from the cholera outbreak and over 14,000 Haitians medically treated for this disease that is evidently due to a UN "peacekeeping" base. The US is not the UN, but the US is in control and has the responsibility to make sure that the source of this spreading disease gets properly treated, that all Haitians affected by this disease get the necessary medical treatment, and that the river be decontaminated, if that's possible, which I think it probably is.

The US lead the Feb. 29th, 2009 act-of-war coup d'etat against the democratically [elected] government there and put thugs, violent criminals who had been justly imprisoned in charge of local and national "law" enforcement; and the US has done absolutely nothing to correct this, while Haitians badly struck because of last January's earthquake were promised financial aid that hasn't be received, "thanks" to the US, which remains responsible for the ongoing plight of the Haitians.

"Haiti cholera protest turns violent

Protesters clash with UN peacekeepers in second-largest city of Cap Haitien over epidemic that has killed more than 900"

by AlJazeera.net, Nov. 15, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=m71868

Clashes and gunfire have broken out between protesters and UN troops in Haiti, where a cholera epidemic has claimed over 900 lives in about three weeks.

Protesters, who hold Nepalese UN peacekeepers responsible for the cholera outbreak, threw stones and threatened to set fire to a base in the country's second-largest city of Cap Haitien on Monday, Haitian radio and eyewitnesses reported.

There are also unconfirmed reports that five protesters and one UN peacekeeper have been shot dead.

The UN disputes the claims against the Nepalese mission, but the suspicion persists.

Troubled relationship

Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, en route to Cap Haitien, said that the situation "has been brewing for a while" with "very tense relations" between the UN peacekeepers stationed there and the local community.

"Back in August, a 16-year-old boy was found dead - he was hanging from a tree. And the Haitians believed that he was killed by the troops up there," she said. But the troops claimed the boy had committed suicide, and there was never a formal investigation into the boy's death, she added.

"As you can see, this is really the next phase of this deadly cholera outbreak - this real frustration against the troops - and these people in this community also believe that the UN troops, particularly the Nepalese, are responsible for bringing cholera into this country."

There are Nepalese as well as Chilean troops in Cap Haitien.

This isn't the first protest in Haiti, where crowds have taken to the streets, expressing anger at the Haitian government and the UN for failing to contain the outbreak.

Spreading epidemic

There are now cholera cases in every part of Haiti and UN agencies expect a "significant increase" in the number of people affected, a top UN official said on Monday.

"We have cases in every department," Nigel Fisher, a UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, said.

The UN and Haiti government had started a review of the epidemic and Fisher said that officials "foresee a significant increase" in the number of cases. He also said it was not unusual for hundreds of thousands of people to be hit by cholera in such an epidemic but added that many would be mild cases.

The Haitian health ministry's latest figures put the number of dead at 917 with more than 14,600 people treated in hospitals.

I strongly doubt the Haitian boy hung himself. And the UN not investigating this death definitely is very suspect.

The above article provides a related link for the following video.

"UN investigates cholera spread in Haiti" (1:47)
AlJazeeraEnglish, Oct. 27th, 2010

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk-2HyQHUZ0

The Nepalese UN mission in Haiti could be the source of the cholera deadly outbreak there. Al Jazeera's Sebastian Walker reports from Haiti.

In that short report we learn that there was a cholera outbreak in Nepal before the Nepalese soldiers were sent to Haiti, where the sewage of a UN "peacekeeper" base there apparently is not being treated and is dumping, flowing into a river. People downstream from this base are being affected by cholera, while people upstream apparently are not.

Might the location of the base coincide with the location of a central bird shitting ground? I don't think so. Maybe other animals congregate to all shit in the river at this location? No, I don't think that that fantastical possibility, or theory, would be the explanation, either.

The following article and video report are also important.

"Haitian anger over cholera response
Haitians accuse government, the UN and aid workers of failing to protect them as water-borne disease claims 700 lives."

by AlJazeera.net, Nov. 12th, 2010

www.uruknet.info/?p=m71766

Residents of the largest slum in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince have been demonstrating over the country's response to the cholera outbreak.

The protesters in Cite Soleil said the government and the UN have failed to protect them, as the number of people killed by the highly contagious water-borne disease soared to 724.

They also vented their anger at NGOs operating in the country, where a devastating earthquake on January 12 killed more than 250,000 people and destroyed homes, forcing more than one million people to seek shelter in cramped makeshift camps.

Cath Turner, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Port-au-Prince, said several hundred people joined the demonstration in Cite Soleil, where many cholera deaths have occurred.

"They live near a rubbish dump which is normally a site for household and industrial waste, but for the last year human waste has been added to that," our correspondent said.

"Of course, with the cholera outbreak, human faeces and water mixed together is a sure way to get the disease."

"We saw a truck that was carrying human waste to the dump, but it was forced to turn around and retreat because the people started throwing rocks at it."

Crisis deepens

(snip)

The outbreak, Haiti's first in more than 50 years, erupted in the Artibonite river valley in mid-October and initially seemed contained to central and northern areas.

There have been roughly 1,000 new cases each day this week, and the death curve is getting steadily steeper - with 60 new fatalities on Wednesday and more than 80 on Thursday.

'Overwhelmed'

"If cholera cases continue to rise at this rate, we'll quickly be overwhelmed," warned Yves Lambert, head of infectious diseases at the main public hospital in central Port-au-Prince.

Most of the estimated 1.3 million internally displaced persons live in tent cities around the capital, and cholera could spread easily in filthy conditions where scarce water supplies are shared for cooking and washing.

Haitian authorities have been warned to expect an even larger scale of disaster if cholera continues to take hold in the capital, much of which was flattened by the earthquake.

(snip)

Hurricane Tomas, which claimed more than 20 lives in Haiti at the weekend, aggravated the situation, triggering heavy rains that caused rivers, including the believed source of the cholera, the Artibonite, to flood.

The Pan American Health Organisation, the regional office of the UN's World Health Organisation, has warned Haiti to expect hundreds of thousands of cases now that the disease appears to have taken hold.

Although easily treated, cholera has a short incubation period and causes acute diarrhoea that can lead to severe dehydration and sometimes death in a matter of hours.

The following roughly 12-minute interview is very good and very important even it is weeks old.

"Partners in Health Physician on Haiti: "Cholera Will Not Go Away Until Underlying Situations that Make People Vulnerable Change""

Oct. 26th, 2010

www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/partners_in_health_physician_cholera_will

The Haitian government says a cholera outbreak is slowing down, but experts are warning the disease could remain for many years. At least 259 people have died, and over 3,300 have been infected. We speak with Dr. Evan Lyon, a physician with the group Partners in Health who has spent years working in Haiti. In 2008, he helped lead a study on how the US undermined clean water projects in Haiti. [includes rush transcript]

Dr. Lyon says, among other things:

To describe the disease is pretty difficult. It’s a terrifying — it's a terrifying situation. The economic and social conditions in Haiti have left Haitians vulnerable to any manner of infectious diseases that are endemic there — typhoid, TB, malaria, HIV. But this is new. There hasn’t been cholera in Haiti for more than fifty years, so the population has little experience with it. It’s a very fast-moving disease. Often, from the first onset of symptoms, someone will die of dehydration, if they’re not given help within twenty-four hours. For the young, for the old, for vulnerable people, that’s often within twelve hours. So this is a very fast-moving disease. (my emphasis added) In a population where at least 70 percent of people have no access to improved water or sanitation, people cannot protect themselves. ... Their immune systems have no exposure, which will help the disease spread more rapidly. ... So it’s a terrifying situation, rooted, as you introduced, in the lack of infrastructure, lack of sanitation and clean water, which has been very clearly — very clearly slowed down and diminished by manipulation from the outside.

Dr. Lyon also speaks about a prison with 250 uncharged detainees and as of Oct. 26th, 30 of them already had contracted cholera from the water brought into the prison. These detainees are awaiting trials based on what evidently are unproven charges, so they're technically innocent and may very likely be innocent, but as Dr. Lyon says because of the lack of medical treatment for them, they've "now been handed a death sentence".

A Dem. Now! interview regarding financial pledges for Haiti (not viewed yet):

"France Urged to Pay $40 Billion to Haiti in Reparations for "Independence Debt""

Aug. 17th, 2010

www.democracynow.org/2010/8/17/france_urged_to_pay_40_billion

According to the UN-sponsored Haiti Reconstruction Fund, only two countries — Brazil and Estonia — have fully paid the pledged amount. The United States, France, Canada and many others have failed to send their pledged aid. A recent review by CNN found that just two percent of total pledges have been delivered to Haiti. Calls are now growing for another form of payment to Haiti: reparations. This week, a group of prominent academics and activists published an open letter calling on France to repay an "independence debt" it imposed nearly 200 years ago after Haiti successfully won independence from France. Haiti was forced to pay France around 90 million gold francs up until World War II, which after interest and inflation is valued today at up to $40 billion. [includes rush transcript]

If France is ever made to pay that $40bn, then its leaders then will definitely regret not having paid the $20bn that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was asking for for the same reason(s) not long before the act-of-war coup d'etat against him and Haitians' democratically elected government. The Haitians [never] owed France anything, so France definitely has the obligation to repay the Haitians and in today's equivalent amount, too.

France was unrighteously angry enough about the $20bn that it acted with the US and Canada, whatever hellish reason Canadian leadership had, against Haiti in Feb. 2004. So I doubt France would accept to pay the present value of what it owes to Haitians, $40bn.

Regarding crimes against Papuans due to mineral wealth and oil, this is learned in the John Pilger part further on in this post.

One thing is clear and it's that Obama merits to granted an honorary graduate degree in or for Master of Psychopathy or Psychopathic Conduct. It might be better to make it a Master of Arts, rather than an M.Sc., in Psychopathic Conduct, since real scientific doesn't seem to be fitting for Obama, for he's just another bought-and-paid-for politician, puppet. He's not the "brains" behind the crimes he's accepted to become guilty for, but he's guilty, as C-in-C. What a fool! He thinks there can be real reward from this for him and that takes a fool, a real sucker.

Quoting from Stephen Lendman's article:

(3) In 2001, Kopassus kidnapped and murdered Theys Eluay, Papua's most prominent leader. In 2004, four of its forces were convicted in a military court, got light 42 month sentences (likely shortened by early releases), and their superiors were absolved.

Can we be certain that they served any time at all in a real prison? They surely wouldn't have been placed in a civilian prison, which would permit us to have witnesses, if any civilians sentenced to prison in Indonesia are ever released anyway. If they were placed in military prison, then how can we be certain that they were?

It clearly is not a government that can be trusted about anything. And I'm not sure, but seem to vaguely recall having read an article over the past several years that said that some military criminals were officially sentenced to military prison, but, and secretly, they weren't and they were, instead, used for committing more violent crimes in covert ops. I don't recall what government that would've been about, but it's something that surely many governments could do.

See, my level of trust for most governments, most politicians, most military leaders, and most chiefs of large corporations and banks, is just so limited that there isn't any; it's NIL!

John Pilger:

Since the crimes that Stephen Lendman's article and those Allan Nairn and John Miller are presently about is for the Indonesian government's crimes against the Papuans and my above post, the second one, with John Pilger links regarding crimes of the Indonesian government, but not the crimes against the Papuans, I did some Web searching to see what would be found by him on the Papuan situation and found some links.

Stephen Lendman's article and what Allan Nairn in the Nov. 9th interview on Dem. Now! linked in my above post, f.e., tell us about the criminality of Kopassus and TNI, but they don't explain why these horrific crimes are committed, while John Pilger does. The crimes are committed to profit western corporations and the US, Australia and Britain evidently are primarily to blame for this.

"Let the bird of paradise go free

The theft of West Papua's mineral wealth must end. The province's courageous resistance movement deserves nothing less"

by John Pilger, Nov. 12th, 2009

www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2009/11/west-papua-pilger-in...

When General Suharto, the west's man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered "a gleam of light in Asia", rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million "communists" was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in South-east Asia".

In November 1967, the booty was handed out at an extraordinary conference in a lakeside hotel in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, the likes of David Rockefeller, and senior executives of the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, British American Tobacco, Imperial Chemical Industries, American Express, Siemens, Goodyear, US Steel. The president of Time Incorporated, James Linen, opened the proceedings with this prophetic description of globalisation: "We are trying to create a new climate in which private enterprise and developing countries work together for the greater profit of the free world. The world of international enterprise is more than governments . . . It is a seamless web, which has been shaping the global environment at revolutionary speed."

Suharto had sent a team of mostly US-groomed economists, known as the "Berkeley Boys". On the first day, salutations were exchanged. On the second day, the Indonesian economy was carved up. This was done in a spectacular way: industry in one room, forests and fisheries in another, banking and finance in another. The ultimate prize was the mineral wealth of West Papua, almost half of a vast and remote island to the north of Australia. A US and European consortium was "awarded" the nickel and gold. The Freeport company of New Orleans got a mountain of copper. Forty-two years later, the gold and copper make more than a million dollars profit every day.

What a carve-up

For the Indonesian elite, enrichment was assured. From 1992 to 2004, Freeport provided $33bn in direct and indirect "benefits", much of it finding its way to the Indonesian military, the real power in the land, which "protects" foreign investments in the manner of a mafia. The reward for the people of West Papua has been a rate of impoverishment double that of the rest of Indonesia, says a World Bank report. At Bintuni Bay, where BP is exploiting natural gas, 56 per cent of the people live in abject poverty. "More than 90 per cent of villages in Papua do not have basic health facilities," the report noted. In 2005, famine swept the district of Yahukimo, where virgin forests and gas deposits deliver unerring profit. The suffering of West Papuans is seldom reported; the Indonesian government bans foreign journalists and human rights organisations from the hauntingly beautiful territory known by its indigenous people as "the forgotten bird of paradise".

When the carve-up of its natural wealth took place, West Papua was not part of but merely claimed by Indonesia, whose former colonial masters, the Dutch, recognised no historical or cultural ties to Jakarta and began to prepare the territory for independence. The Indonesians were having none of it; neither were the Americans, the British and the Australians, who invented a cold-war tale that the Russians were coming. In 1962, the Dutch handed the colony to the United Nations, which promptly gave it "on trust" to Indonesia on condition that the West Papuans would vote on their future.

In 1969, an "Act of Free Choice" took place. The Indonesians hand-picked 1,026 West Papuan men and ordered them to vote for integration with Jakarta. Guns were pointed at heads. When two West Papuans escaped in a light aircraft, hoping to reach New York and alert the UN general assembly, they were detained by the Australian government after landing at nearby Manus Island. West Papuan villages wanting a genuine "act of free choice" were bombed by Indonesia's US-equipped air force.

Independence day

West Papua would have slipped into oblivion had it not been for a resistance, the OPM, or Free Papua Movement, whose endurance has defied almost impossible odds. The Indonesians have been unsparing in their oppression, aided by British-made machine guns and Tactica water cannon vehicles. When Suharto was deposed in 1998, the people on the island of Biak celebrated by singing hymns of thanksgiving and raising West Papua's Morning Star flag. For this, 150 of them were murdered by the Indonesian military. In 2004, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage were sentenced to 15 and ten years respectively for raising the flag, an immeasurable act of bravery in a territory effectively run by a Gestapo-style force known as Kopassus, which bears responsibility for much of the genocide in East Timor. The destruction of West Papuan society is also genocide.

The post-Suharto regime in Jakarta, which likes to regard itself as a respectable democracy, is vulnerable to pressure on West Papua. In Britain, the mining giant Rio Tinto, formerly a shareholder in Freeport, retains a joint-venture interest that has earned fortunes for the company. On the rare occasions that the Foreign Office is challenged about the behaviour of Jakarta in West Papua, officials drone about "respecting the territorial integrity of Indonesia", echoing decades of Foreign Office mendacious apologies for the slaughter in East Timor. And yet East Timor slipped Suharto's leash and is now free, thanks to the resilience of its people and an international network of support. The people of West Papua deserve nothing less. On 1 December, which West Papuans call their independence day, those exiled in Britain and their allies will assemble outside the Indonesian embassy in London to break the silence.

The Free West Papua Campaign website is freewestpapua.org. To help, email office@freewestpapua.org
Next week: Mehdi Hasan

"Secret war against defenceless West Papua"

by John Pilger, March 9th, 2006

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/secret-war-against-defenceless-west-p...

A Web search doesn't turn up the link, but searching the New Statesman's archive of his articles turns up a link for the copy of this article there. The two copies are differently titled and his Web site's copy says the article was first published at the New Statesman, but the date for that copy is March 13th, which is odd (so, huh?).

"Ghosts of indonesia won't lie

East Timor's history is repeating itself as Jakarta colludes with the west to crush another resource-rich land: West Papua. The world is watching as Australia decides the fate of 43 West Papuans seeking asylum"

by John Pilger, March 13th, 2006

www.newstatesman.com/200603130017

I'll quote from the latter and differently titled NS copy.

In 1993, I and four others travelled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete". Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in despatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community".

In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. ... If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document.

(snip)

And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenceless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province - stolen from its people, like East Timor - is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications", Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.

An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. ...

(snip)

When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognised the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state", but were bullied by the administration of John F Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land".

(snip)

The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia", as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize - the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold - went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report.

Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33bn between 1992 and 2004. ...

The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's special forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with Kopassus .... ... The files of human-rights organisations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. ...

However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). ...

(snip)

And just as this covert killing for the West's corporations to steal rich natural resources is disgusting and unreported in the West, we have the same thing in the DR Congo/Zaire, a topic for which Keith Harmon Snow is among the very best there is for investigating and reporting, www.consciousBeingAlliance.com and www.allThingsPass.com (many URLs need "Template/" to be removed at the latter Web site, which is the older one). If people don't believe it about the Congo, then all they need to do is to read articles like the above ones by John Pilger on the great mineral wealth of Papua or West Papua; and if that doesn't help, then it's because people are either awfully stupid, or they're racists, bigotted.