Tag Archives: citizens

Why Australia can no longer avoid responsibility for its citizens held in Syria

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Detention camps in Syria hold about 100,000 Syrian and foreign family members of IS suspects.
Murtaja Lateef/EPA

Anthony Billingsley, UNSW

The small number of Australians being held in prison camps in northern Syria has been an ongoing, albeit low-level, challenge for the Australian government. There are believed to be eight Australian fighters for the Islamic State in captivity, along with around 60 Australian women and children.

Despite its reluctance, the Australian government may eventually feel obliged to bring many or all these people home.

So far, the Australian public seems to have accepted the government’s line that it’s too dangerous to extract them from Syria. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison succinctly put it:

I’m not going to put any Australians in harm’s way.

An increasingly untenable position

The government believes there are valid security concerns in bringing these people back to Australia. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has claimed some of the women are “hardcore” and “have the potential and capacity to come back here and cause a mass casualty event”.

Identifying these people, gathering evidence about their crimes and managing domestic fears would be a big challenge.

However, the government’s position on extracting them from Syria has become less tenable after the Turkish invasion of northern Syria in October. This followed US President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of the American military buffer in the region.

The invasion added uncertainty to an already fraught situation. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, who were central to the defeat of the Islamic State, were compelled to reinforce their forces on the border with Turkey.



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Western states must repatriate IS fighters and their families before more break free from Syrian camps

Many of their forces have been engaged in controlling prison camps in northern Syria, where about 12,000 men and boys suspected of Islamic State ties, including 2,000 to 4,000 foreigners from almost 50 countries, are held. Some camps also hold about 100,000 Syrian and foreign family members of IS suspects.

The invasion focused attention on the state of the camps, which are overcrowded, unsanitary and experiencing considerable unrest. There have been some escapes from the camps, and many fear they are close to collapse.

The situation increases the possibility that young people in the camps will be radicalised.

Last week, the US government, which has repatriated some of its nationals, offered to help allies, including Australia, rescue their citizens from northern Syria. On the same day, Turkey called on Australia to repatriate its IS fighters and their families in Turkish custody.

Groups like Save the Children and Human Rights Watch have also called for the repatriation of women and children in the prison camps.

In Canberra, shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally has also argued Australia has a moral obligation to repatriate the women and children who were taken to Syria against their will.

Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria where eight Australian IS fighters and some 60 women and children are believed to be held.
Tessa Fox/AAP

Barriers to bringing detainees back

While Australia has not joined the Dutch in outright rejecting the US offer, the Morrison government has shown no enthusiasm for the idea.

Its position has been further undermined by the actions of other nations with citizens in the camps. Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, for example, have already repatriated hundreds of prisoners.

And Britain is considering options for repatriating its citizens. A government document reported on last month said,

While difficult, the practical challenges in arranging and implementing an extraction (of IS suspects) are likely to have solutions.

Australia, by contrast, has continued to focus on the difficulties of extracting its citizens from the area, rather than tackling the legal challenges associated with bringing them home. Our legislative framework is still not sufficiently robust to deal with returnees.

The government has had many years to figure this out. In 2014, the UN passed a resolution obliging all countries to adopt measures to deal with the issue of foreign fighters.



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Why is it so difficult to prosecute returning fighters?

There are ways to try those suspected of crimes committed in another country. The principle of universal jurisdiction, for example, would allow Australia to interrogate and prosecute those currently held in Syria.

Lower-level suspects who are desperate to escape from Syria could also be required to accept certain conditions, such as restrictions on movement and contacts and participation in re-education programmes. The Australian women in the camp have already indicated they are open to this.

But instead of looking at these options, Australia has endeavoured to keep out returning fighters and their families. Laws have been passed to strip some of their citizenship, running counter to several international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And the temporary exclusion orders bill passed in July gives Dutton the power to bar Australian citizens from returning home for up to two years if they are suspected of supporting a terror organisation.

There are few other options

Some governments have suggested that IS captives in Syria should be transferred to Iraq, where trials of suspected IS members have already been held. The problem with this idea is that Iraq’s justice system is deeply flawed and has imposed the death penalty after some highly dubious trials.

For example, France sent some suspects there only for them to be summarily sentenced to be hanged.



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Preventing foreign fighters from returning home could be dangerous to national security

Equally unacceptable would be to allow the Australian prisoners to fall into the hands of the Syrian regime.

In coming months, as conditions in the camps deteriorate and Syrian government forces expand their control of the area, we can expect mounting pressure on governments like Australia’s to repatriate their citizens.

In the long run, these are Australian citizens who should be entitled to the benefits that come from that, including due process of law. It is hard to see how the government can continue to deny their rights.The Conversation

Anthony Billingsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There’s no clear need for Peter Dutton’s new bill excluding citizens from Australia

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Sangeetha Pillai, UNSW

Yesterday, the government introduced a bill into Parliament that, if passed, would allow the home affairs minister Peter Dutton to temporarily exclude some Australian citizens – including children – from returning to Australia.

The bill is aimed at mitigating threats posed by foreign fighters coming back to Australia from conflicts in Syria and Iraq. It was first put before Parliament in February, and has now been reintroduced with some amendments.



Read more:
Why is it so difficult to prosecute returning fighters?

The bill draws on similar legislation in the UK and, if passed, would add to an arsenal of around 75 pieces of anti-terrorism legislation currently operating in Australia.

National security laws must continue to adapt to changing circumstances. But the government has not made it clear how the bill would fill an identified gap in Australia’s already extensive national security regime.

How would the bill work?

If passed, the bill will allow the minister to issue a Temporary Exclusion Order (TEO) preventing an Australian citizen who is overseas from re-entering Australia. These exclusion orders aren’t designed to exclude citizens from Australia forever, but rather to provide a system that manages their return.

A TEO can be imposed on a citizen outside Australia if they are at least 14 years old, and:

  • the minister reasonably suspects that issuing the TEO would substantially help prevent terrorism-related acts, or

  • ASIO has assessed the person to be a direct or indirect risk to security, for reasons related to political violence. ASIO doesn’t need to be satisfied to any standard of proof when making this assessment.

But neither of these criteria actually requires a TEO candidate to have engaged in any wrongdoing.

A person may not enter Australia while a TEO is in force against them. If they do, they can face up to two years behind bars. A TEO may also require the person to surrender their Australian passport.

Each TEO can be issued for a maximum of two years, but a person may have multiple TEOs issued against them. This means the actual period of exclusion from Australia can be much longer.

So how does a return to Australia work?

The return of citizens with TEOs against them is managed through “return permits”. This is designed to allow the government to monitor and control foreign fighters’ entry and presence in Australia. A return permit must be issued if the person applies for one, or if a foreign country moves to deport them to Australia.



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How can we understand the origins of Islamic State?

A return permit may prescribe various conditions. Significantly, it doesn’t guarantee an immediate right to return to Australia – a person may be prohibited from entering Australia for up to 12 months after the permit is issued.

Once in Australia, a range of post-entry conditions may also be imposed. These can include passport surrender, and requirements to report changes to residence or employment, contact with particular individuals and technology use.

Breaching the conditions of a return permit is an offence, punishable by up to two years in prison.

Are the proposed laws constitutional and compatible with international law?

The right to return to one’s country is commonly regarded as a core aspect of citizenship. And some experts have argued that a citizen’s right to return home is constitutionally protected in Australia.

But the High Court has never ruled on the question of whether a constitutional right of this nature exists, so it’s impossible to say for certain whether the bill, if passed, would be unconstitutional. Still, it’s likely to face constitutional challenge.

In any case, international law protects an individual’s right to voluntarily return to their country of citizenship. The government acknowledges that TEOs restrict a person’s capacity to do this, but says the bill is justified because it’s “reasonable, necessary and proportionate”. This, however, isn’t clear.

Does the bill contain adequate safeguards?

In April, when reviewing the original bill, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security recommended 18 changes, aimed at improving safeguards.

But the new bill only took on seven changes in full, including requiring the minister to consider specific criteria when imposing a TEO on a child, and providing independent oversight of decisions to issue TEOs.



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Importantly, some of the committee’s most significant recommendations have been ignored, such as narrowing the criteria for issuing a TEO. And others have only been partially implemented.

Given the significant impact a TEO has on a person, the bill should adopt the committee’s recommendations in full.

Is the bill even necessary?

In parliament, Dutton said national security agencies advise that many Australians who have travelled to conflict zones in Syria and Iraq to support extremist groups are “likely to seek return to Australia in the very near future”, and the bill is needed to keep Australians safe.

But the government hasn’t explained why Australia’s extensive suite of existing anti-terrorism mechanisms doesn’t already adequately protect against threats posed by Australians returning from conflict zones.

Australia’s 75 pieces of legislation provide for criminal penalties, civil alternatives to prosecution, expanded police and intelligence powers, and citizenship revocation.

And they protect Australia from the risks posed by returning foreign fighters in a variety of ways.

For example, a person who returns to Australia as a known member of a terrorist organisation can be charged with an offence punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Where the person has done more – such as fight, resource or train with the organisation – penalties of up to 25 years each apply.

Although gathering sufficient evidence to prosecute returning foreign fighters can prove challenging, there are mechanisms in our legislation that already account for this.

For instance, a control order may be imposed on a person in cases where they are deemed a risk but there is not enough evidence to prosecute. This restricts the person’s actions through measures such as curfews and monitoring requirements.



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Explainer: why some acts are classified as terrorism but others aren’t

Evidence shows the existing measures work effectively. Police and intelligence agencies have successfully disrupted a significant number of terror plots using existing laws, most recently just days ago.

Arguably, this suggests Australia has not only the capacity, but also the responsibility to use the full force of our laws to bring foreign fighters to justice in Australia, rather than leave them stranded in conflict zones where their only connections may be to terrorist groups, thereby weakening global security.

Of course, if it’s to remain fit for purpose, Australia’s national security framework must continue to adapt to changing circumstances. But with extensive, demonstrably effective mechanisms in place, the government must clearly explain what gap this bill would fill. This has not been done.The Conversation

Sangeetha Pillai, Senior Research Associate, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law School, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bellingcat’s report on MH17 shows citizens can and will do intelligence work

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Large groups inherently possess more diverse knowledge, expertise and perspectives.
Tim de Groot/Unsplash

Tim van Gelder, University of Melbourne

Amid the news last week that the perpetrators responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) will be put to trial next March, a report was released identifying further suspects responsible for escorting the missile to and from the launch site.

Who were the investigators behind the report? The CIA? MI6? No. It was Bellingcat, a large group of mostly volunteers working from laptops using only information available to anyone with an internet connection.

In February, Bellingcat also identified a third suspect alleged to have been involved in the poisoning of MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom last year.

Bellingcat describes itself as citizen journalists, but its activities illustrate a growing phenomenon my colleagues and I call “citizen intelligence.” This is work that would count as intelligence gathering or analysis within an intelligence organisation, but it’s undertaken by citizens operating outside the traditional intelligence ecosystem.



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How clever people help societies work together better

The rise of citizen intelligence

Citizen intelligence has been made possible by the internet in various ways.

Since its advent, we’ve seen an explosion of “open source” information. That is, data that’s accessible without any special organisational privileges. For example, just by opening Google Earth you can view satellite data of the kind only available to analysts in government agencies not many years ago.

There are now free new tools for gathering and analysing these vast troves of information, such as the analysis platform Maltego. Aspiring citizen analysts can now train themselves using resources available online or in workshops offered by various organisations.

Expertise in intelligence work is no longer the preserve of those hired and trained by traditional organisations. Powerful collaboration platforms, such as Google Docs, allow interested individuals to work effectively together, even when scattered around the world.

It could get even bigger

We’ve all seen how global, cloud-based marketplaces such as Amazon, Airbnb and Uber have transformed their respective domains. Citizen intelligence could grow even faster if a suitable marketplace is developed. At the SWARM Project, we’ve begun exploring the potential design of a platform where those seeking intelligence can transact with those willing to provide it.

What might that look like? A marketplace for citizen intelligence could be built on a “sponsored challenge” crowdsourcing model.

Imagine an organisation with an intelligence question. Say, for example, the organisation wants to identify potential threats to a proposed infrastructure development in an unstable region. The organisation pays to have the question posed as a challenge on the platform, with a prize for the best answer. Groups of citizen analysts self-organize and submit reports. When the deadline is up, the best report garners the prize – and bragging rights.



Read more:
We can’t expect intelligence services to prevent every terrorist attack

Why crowdsourced citizen intelligence could be effective

There are reasons to think that crowdsourced citizen intelligence could match, or outperform, traditional intelligence organisations on some kinds of tasks. Traditional organisations have advantages, such as access to classified information and highly trained analysts, but crowdsourcing has compensating strengths.

Scale

Many intelligence organisations are small and under-resourced for the number and complexity of issues they are supposed to handle. Crowdsourced intelligence can potentially draw from much larger pools of citizens. For example, the analytics crowdsourcing platform Kaggle has over a million people signed up, and it gets literally thousands of teams competing on big challenges.

Diversity

With scale comes diversity. Large groups inherently possess more diverse knowledge, expertise and perspectives. A question like the one in the example above might require fluency in an obscure dialect, or specific technical know-how. No intelligence agency can maintain in-house everything it might need for any problem.

Agility

Crowds can be more agile than agencies, which are risk-averse bureaucracies. For example, individuals can more quickly access and use many of the latest analytical methods and tools.

Passion

Perhaps most importantly, intelligence work by unpaid volunteers is driven primarily by passion. Passion certainly exists within agencies, but is often stifled in various ways.



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How popular culture gets Australian spy work wrong

The SWARM Project ran a tournament-style experiment in 2018 that illustrated how everyday citizens can sometimes beat the professionals. Teams tackled four tough, fictional intelligence problems over four weeks. Some teams were made up of analysts provided by organisations with intelligence functions, some of analysts recruited via Facebook, and some of citizens (non-analysts) recruited via Facebook.

On average, the citizen teams outperformed the professional analysts – and some of the citizen reports were astonishingly good.

How this could affect the intelligence industry

Citizen intelligence will likely create some headaches for intelligence agencies. For example decision makers might increasingly look to citizen sources over formal intelligence agencies – particularly where citizen intelligence delivers reports more quickly, or with more “convenient” findings.

On the other hand, citizen intelligence could have a lot to offer intelligence organisations. A suitably designed marketplace might enable the traditional agencies to take advantage of the power inherent in the crowd. Such a platform could be a “force multiplier”, at least for certain aspects of intelligence.

In view of these potential threats and opportunities, the Australian intelligence community should get on the front foot, shaping the future of citizen intelligence rather than just reacting to it.

This is a condensed version of a presentation given at the Technology Surprise Forum, Safeguarding Australia Summit, Canberra May 2019The Conversation

Tim van Gelder, Enterprise Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As responsible digital citizens, here’s how we can all reduce racism online

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File 20190409 2918 9q8zs6.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
No matter how innocent you think it is, what you type into search engines can shape how the internet behaves.
Hannah Wei / unsplash, CC BY

Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Queensland University of Technology

Have you ever considered that what you type into Google, or the ironic memes you laugh at on Facebook, might be building a more dangerous online environment?

Regulation of online spaces is starting to gather momentum, with governments, consumer groups, and even digital companies themselves calling for more control over what is posted and shared online.

Yet we often fail to recognise the role that you, me and all of us as ordinary citizens play in shaping the digital world.

The privilege of being online comes with rights and responsibilities, and we need to actively ask what kind of digital citizenship we want to encourage in Australia and beyond.



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How the use of emoji on Islamophobic Facebook pages amplifies racism

Beyond the knee-jerk

The Christchurch terror attack prompted policy change by governments in both New Zealand and Australia.

Australia recently passed a new law that will enforce penalties for social media platforms if they don’t remove violent content after it becomes available online.

Platforms may well be lagging behind in their content moderation responsibilities, and still need to do better in this regard. But this kind of “kneejerk” policy response won’t solve the spread of problematic content on social media.

Addressing hate online requires coordinated efforts. Platforms must improve the enforcement of their rules (not just announce tougher measures) to guarantee users’ safety. They may also reconsider a serious redesign, because the way they currently organise, select, and recommend information often amplifies systemic problems in society like racism.



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New livestreaming legislation fails to take into account how the internet actually works

Discrimination is entrenched

Of course, biased beliefs and content don’t just live online.

In Australia, racial discrimination has been perpetuated in public policy, and the country has an unreconciled history of Indigenous dispossession and oppression.

Today, Australia’s political mainstream is still lenient with bigots, and the media often contributes to fearmongering about immigration.

However, we can all play a part in reducing harm online.

There are three aspects we might reconsider when interacting online so as to deny oxygen to racist ideologies:

  • a better understanding of how platforms work
  • the development of empathy to identify differences in interpretation when engaging with media (rather than focusing on intent)
  • working towards a more productive anti-racism online.

Online lurkers and the amplification of harm

White supremacists and other reactionary pundits seek attention on mainstream and social media. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refused to name the Christchurch gunman to prevent fuelling his desired notoriety, and so did some media outlets.

The rest of us might draw comfort from not having contributed to amplifying the Christchurch attacker’s desired fame. It’s likely we didn’t watch his video or read his manifesto, let alone upload or share this content on social media.

But what about apparently less harmful practices, such as searching on Google and social media sites for keywords related to the gunman’s manifesto or his live video?

It’s not the intent behind these practices that should be the focus of this debate, but the consequences of it. Our everyday interactions on platforms influence search autocomplete algorithms and the hierarchical organisation and recommendation of information.

In the Christchurch tragedy, even if we didn’t share or upload the manifesto or the video, the zeal to access this information drove traffic to problematic content and amplified harm for the Muslim community.

Normalisation of hate through seemingly lighthearted humour

Reactionary groups know how to capitalise on memes and other jokey content that degrades and dehumanises.

By using irony to deny the racism in these jokes, these far-right groups connect and immerse new members in an online culture that deliberately uses memetic media to have fun at the expense of others.

The Christchurch terrorist attack showed this connection between online irony and the radicalisation of white men.

However, humour, irony and play – which are protected on platform policies – serve to cloak racism in more mundane and everyday contexts.



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Racism in a networked world: how groups and individuals spread racist hate online

Just as everyday racism shares discourses and vocabularies with white supremacy, lighthearted racist and sexist jokes are as harmful as online fascist irony.

Humour and satire should not be hiding places for ignorance and bigotry. As digital citizens we should be more careful about what kind of jokes we engage with and laugh at on social media.

What’s harmful and what’s a joke might not be apparent when interpreting content from a limited worldview. The development of empathy to others’ interpretations of the same content is a useful skill to minimise the amplification of racist ideologies online.

As scholar danah boyd argues:

The goal is to understand the multiple ways of making sense of the world and use that to interpret media.

Effective anti-racism on social media

A common practice in challenging racism on social media is to publicly call it out, and show support for those who are victims of it. But critics of social media’s callout culture and solidarity sustain that these tactics often do not work as an effective anti-racism tool, as they are performative rather than having an advocacy effect.

An alternative is to channel outrage into more productive forms of anti-racism. For example, you can report hateful online content either individually or through organisations that are already working on these issues, such as The Online Hate Prevention Institute and the Islamophobia Register Australia.

Most major social media platforms struggle to understand how hate articulates in non-US contexts. Reporting content can help platforms understand culturally specific coded words, expressions, and jokes (most of which are mediated through visual media) that moderators might not understand and algorithms can’t identify.

As digital citizens we can work together to deny attention to those that seek to discriminate and inflict harm online.

We can also learn how our everyday interactions might have unintended consequences and actually amplify hate.

However, these ideas do not diminish the responsibility of platforms to protect users, nor do they negate the role of governments to find effective ways to regulate platforms in collaboration and consultation with civil society and industry.The Conversation

Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Lecturer in Digital Media at the School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia offered to share citizens’ metadata with allies, report claims

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Gigaom

Australia’s intelligence services have been happy — at least in principle — to share raw data about the communications of Australian citizens with espionage partners in the U.S. and Britain, according to the latest NSA leak published by the Guardian.

Australia is part of the so-called Five Eyes alliance, which was set up in the turbulent 1940s as a way for a core group of English-speaking nations to share signals intelligence with one another and to avoid spying on one another. The other members are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.

The latest piece of surveillance-related information, brought to light by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, records a meeting held by the five countries’ intelligence services in 2008. At that meeting, the services discussed how comfortable they were with sharing metadata – the fragments of recorded information that tell the spooks who contacted whom and when.

It seems…

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Iran: Controlling Its Citizens on the Web

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The link below is to an article that reports on the way Iran controls the Internet in that country and what it allows its people to see.

For more visit:
http://mashable.com/2012/07/23/iran-citizens-freedom-web/

Religious Conversion Worst Form of ‘Intolerance,’ Bhutan PM Says

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Propagation of religion is allowable – but not seeking conversions, top politician says.

THIMPHU, Bhutan, April 13 (CDN) — In the Kingdom of Bhutan, where Christianity is still awaiting legal recognition, Christians have the right to proclaim their faith but must not use coercion or claim religious superiority to seek conversions, the country’s prime minister told Compass in an exclusive interview.

“I view conversions very negatively, because conversion is the worst form of intolerance,” Jigmi Yoser Thinley said in his office in the capital of the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Christian leaders in Bhutan have told Compass that they enjoy certain freedoms to practice their faith in private homes, but, because of a prohibition against church buildings and other restrictions, they were not sure if proclamation of their faith – included in international human rights codes – was allowed in Bhutan.

Prime Minister Thinley, who as head of the ruling party is the most influential political chief in the country, said propagation of one’s faith is allowed, but he made it clear that he views attempts to convert others with extreme suspicion.

“The first premise [of seeking conversion] is that you believe that your religion is the right religion, and the religion of the convertee is wrong – what he believes in is wrong, what he practices is wrong, that your religion is superior and that you have this responsibility to promote your way of life, your way of thinking, your way of worship,” Thinley said. “It’s the worst form of intolerance. And it divides families and societies.”

Bhutan’s constitution does not restrict the right to convert or proselytize, but some Non-Governmental Organizations have said the government effectively limits this right by restricting construction of non-Buddhist worship buildings and celebration of some non-Buddhist festivals, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 International Religious Freedom Report.

It adds that Bhutan’s National Security Act (NSA) further limits proclamation of one’s faith by prohibiting “words either spoken or written, or by other means whatsoever, that promote or attempt to promote, on grounds of religion, race, language, caste, or community, or on any other ground whatsoever, feelings of enmity or hatred between different religious, racial, or language groups or castes and communities.” Violation of the NSA is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment, though whether
any cases have been prosecuted is unknown, according to the State Department report.

Bhutan’s first democratic prime minister after about a century of absolute monarchy, Thinley completed three years in office last Thursday (April 7). While he affirmed that it is allowable for Christians to proclaim their faith – a practice commanded by Christ, with followers agreeing that it is the Holy Spirit, not man, that “converts” people – Thinley made his suspicions about Christians’ motives manifest.

“Any kind of proselytization that involves economic and material incentives [is wrong],” he said. “Many people are being converted on hospital beds in their weakest and most vulnerable moments. And these people are whispering in their ears that ‘there is no hope for you. The only way that you can survive is if you accept this particular religion.’ That is wrong.”

Thinley’s suspicions include the belief that Christians offer material incentives to convert.

“Going to the poor and saying, ‘Look, your religion doesn’t provide for this life, our religion provides for this life as well as the future,’ is wrong. And that is the basis for proselytization.”

Christian pastors in Thimphu told Compass that the perception that Bhutan’s Christians use money to convert the poor was flawed.

The pastors, requesting anonymity, said they prayed for healing of the sick because they felt they were not allowed to preach tenets of Christianity directly. Many of those who experience healing – almost all who are prayed for, they claimed – do read the Bible and then believe in Jesus’ teachings.

Asked if a person can convert if she or he believed in Christianity, the prime minister replied, “[There is] freedom of choice, yes.”

In his interview with Compass, Thinley felt compelled to defend Buddhism against assertions that citizens worship idols.

“To say that, ‘Your religion is wrong, worshiping idols is wrong,’ who worships idols?” he said. “We don’t worship idols. Those are just representations and manifestations that help you to focus.”

Leader of the royalist Druk Phuensum Tshogpa party, Thinley is regarded as a sincere politician who is trusted by Bhutan’s small Christian minority. He became the prime minister in April 2008 following the first democratic election after Bhutan’s fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, abdicated power in 2006 to pave the way toward democracy.

Until Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008, the practice of Christianity was believed to be banned in the country. The constitution now grants the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion to all citizens. It also states that the king is the protector of all religions.

Thus far, the Religious Organisations Act of 2007 has recognized only Buddhist and Hindu organizations. As a result, no church building or Christian bookstore has been allowed in the country, nor can Christians engage in social work. Christianity in Bhutan remains confined to the homes of local believers, where they meet for collective worship on Sundays.

Asked if a Christian federation should be registered by the government to allow Christians to function with legal recognition, Thinley said, “Yes, definitely.”

The country’s agency regulating religious organizations under the 2007 act, locally known as the Chhoedey Lhentshog, is expected to make a decision on whether it could register a Christian federation representing all Christians. The authority is looking into provisions in the law to see if there is a scope for a non-Buddhist and non-Hindu organization to be registered. (See http://www.compassdirect.com, “Official Recognition Eludes Christian Groups in Bhutan,” Feb. 1.)

On whether the Religious Organisations Act could be amended if it is determined that it does not allow legal recognition of a Christian federation, the prime minister said, “If the majority view and support prevails in the country, the law will change.”

Thinley added that he was partially raised as a Christian.

“I am part Christian, too,” he said. “I read the Bible, occasionally of course. I come from a traditional [Christian] school and attended church every day except for Saturdays for nine years.”

A tiny nation in the Himalayas between India and China, Bhutan has a population of 708,484 people, of which roughly 75 percent are Buddhist, according to Operation World. Christians are estimated to be between 6,000 to nearly 15,000 (the latter figure would put Christians at more than 2 percent of the population), mostly from the south. Hindus, mainly ethnic Nepalese, constitute around 22 percent of the population and have a majority in the south.

 

Religious ‘Competition’

Bhutan’s opposition leader, Lyonpo Tshering Togbay, was equally disapproving of religious conversion.

“I am for propagation of spiritual values or anything that allows people to be good human beings,” he told Compass. “[But] we cannot have competition among religions in Bhutan.”

He said, however, that Christians must be given rights equal to those of Hindus and Buddhists.

“Our constitution guarantees the right to freedom of practice – full stop, no conditions,” he said. “But now, as a small nation state, there are some realities. Christianity is a lot more evangelistic than Hinduism or Buddhism.”

Togbay said there are Christians who are tolerant and compassionate of other peoples, cultures and religions, but “there are Christians also who go through life on war footing to save every soul. That’s their calling, and it’s good for them, except that in Bhutan we do not have the numbers to accommodate such zeal.”

Being a small nation between India and China, Bhutan’s perceived geopolitical vulnerability leads authorities to seek to pre-empt any religious, social or political unrest. With no economic or military might, Bhutan seeks to assert and celebrate its sovereignty through its distinctive culture, which is based on Buddhism, authorities say.

Togbay voiced his concern on perceived threats to Bhutan’s Buddhist culture.

“I studied in a Christian school, and I have lived in the West, and I have been approached by the Jehovah’s Witness – in a subway, in an elevator, in a restaurant in the U.S. and Switzerland. I am not saying they are bad. But I would be a fool if I was not concerned about that in Bhutan,” he said. “There are other things I am personally concerned about. Religions in Bhutan must live in harmony. Too often I have come across people who seek a convert, pointing to statues of our deities and saying
that idol worship is evil worship. That is not good for the security of our country, the harmony of our country and the pursuit of happiness.”

The premise of the Chhoedey Lhentshog, the agency regulating religious organizations, he said, “is that all the different schools of Buddhism and all the different religions see eye to eye with mutual respect and mutual understanding. If that objective is not met, it does not make sense to be part of that.”

It remains unclear what the legal rights of Christians are, as there is no interaction between the Christians and the government. Christian sources in Bhutan said they were open to dialogue with the government in order to remove “misunderstandings” and “distrust.”

“Thankfully, our political leadership is sincere and trustworthy,” said one Christian leader.

Asserting that Christians enjoy the right to worship in Bhutan, Prime Minister Thinley said authorities have not interfered with any worship services.

“There are more Christian activities taking place on a daily basis than Hindu and Buddhist activities,” he added.

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org

India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution

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Karnataka, India, April 8 (CDN) — Four Christians, including a police constable, were beaten on April 1 in Madikeri district on allegations of “religious conversion abetment,” as if conversion were illegal in India. Daijiworld Media Network reported that K. Nidugane villagers were enraged when a Christian constable identified only as Prasanna, along with three others identified only as Diwakar, Lawrence and Dias, went door-to-door distributing pamphlets and books in Nandimotte village. A few enraged Hindu villagers beat them, tore their clothes half-off, and brought them to a police station. Hindu extremist leaders who found out rushed to the village, but before they could manhandle the four, policemen intervened and took the accused Christians into custody. Deputy Superintendent of Police J.D. Prakash said that a recommendation had been sent to the superintendent of police seeking Prasanna’s suspension from service, the Daijiworld report stated. Diwakar, along with his wife Telcy Diwakar, had also been arrested and released on bail when they visited Devastoor village on March 26. A police official told Compass that the Christians have been charged with “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.”

Karnataka – Police on April 1 arrested Christians after Hindu nationalists registered false complaints of “conversion” against them (religious conversion is legal in India) in Kodihalli, Bangalore. The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported that citizens identified only as Vincent, Johnson, Satyan and Naveenand Vinod were at a prayer and fellowship meeting in the home of a Christian when area Hindu extremists led by a person identified only Prashanth stormed the house, made the accusation and forced them to the Kodihalli police station. A GCIC coordinator told Compass that the intolerant Hindus shouted anti-Christian rants along the way, and that police were mute spectators as the extremists mocked the Christians at the police station. Police charged the Christians with “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.”

Himachal Pradesh – On March 17 at Rekong Peo in Kinnur district, Hindu extremists ostracized the Christian community and warned them under threat of violence to conduct no future worship meetings. The All India Christian Council (AICC) reported that Hindu nationalist extremists barred Christians from using a public road, collecting drinking water and entering a local forest. A group of 20 Christians filed a complaint at the Bhavannagar police station, but officials failed to protect the victims at the behest of the local Hindu extremists. AICC submitted a detailed report to the National Commission for Minorities, requesting an investigation.

Kerala – On March 31 on Kara Beach Road, Kodungallur, Hindu extremists attacked Pastor N.V. Eliyas and Pastor Milton George of New India Church of God as they were returning home with their families from a house dedication prayer service. The extremists shouted slogans against the Christians as they accused them of “forceful conversions,” reported the Global Council of Indian Christians. The Hindu extremists damaged the Christians’ vehicles. Pastor Eliyas sustained injuries on his head and ear and was rushed to the Kodungallur Government Hospital. Police arrested 35 Hindu extremists who were involved in the incident.

Uttar Pradesh – On March 20 in Lonianpurawa, Balrampur district, an irate mob of 60 Hindu extremists barged into the worship meeting of The Healing Church and beat those present. An earlier incident had taken place the previous Sunday (March 13), when Hindu extremists threatened the worship led by convert Gudgi Verma and his wife Saroja Verma, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI). Opposing their thriving ministry in the area, local Member of the Legislative Assembly Gorakhnath Baba allegedly had sent about 25 Hindu extremists to the church to deliver the warning to discontinue church services. The Christians continued, and on March 16 Baba and 50 Hindu extremists went to the site, urged the couple to stop all Christian worship meetings and restore Hindu idols to the house, give offerings to the temple and observe all Hindu festivals, according to EFI. Evangelists Abhay Kumar and Keshov Parsad went to Lonianpurawa on March 20 to lead worship, and the Hindu extremists suddenly barged in, verbally abused the Christians for their faith and beat them. The situation in the area is reported as tense, and local Christians are praying to be able to resume regular Sunday worship meetings.  

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org

Turkey Arrests 20 Allegedly Linked to Malatya Murders

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Suspects in Ergenekon network long sought in homicide case to be questioned.

ISTANBUL, March 18 (CDN) — In simultaneous operations in nine different provinces of Turkey, authorities yesterday arrested 20 people suspected of playing a role in the murder of three Christians in Malatya in 2007, according to local news reports.

Zekeriya Oz, chief prosecutor overseeing the investigation into a clandestine network known as Ergenekon allegedly aimed at destabilizing the government, ordered the arrests based on information that linked the suspects to both the network and to the Malatya murders, Turkish press reported after Istanbul Chief of Police Chief Huseyin Capkin announced the sweep at a press conference yesterday.

“This was an operation related to the Malatya Zirve publishing house murders,” Capkin said, according to online news agency Malatya Guncel. “They were just arrested. This is connected to the Zirve publishing house. That’s the framework.”

Those apprehended include Ruhi Abat, a Muslim theology professor from Malatya Inonu University, Mehmet Ulger, a retired commander of the Malatya Gendarmerie in service at the time of the murders, and other members of the military. Oz will question the suspects in Istanbul, according to reports.

Police also raided the guesthouse of the Izmir Gendarmerie, seizing computers and documents. News sources listed Malatya, Siirt, Mugla, Mersin and Izmir as some of the cities in which authorities conducted raids and arrests.

A plaintiff attorney in the Malatya murder case, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, told Compass that the names on the list of those arrested were suspects he and his colleagues have been trying to convince the Malatya prosecutor to pursue since the court received a tip in May 2008.

“They are all the usual suspects,” Cengiz said. “All their names were mentioned in the first informant letter. Unfortunately, despite all our efforts, we couldn’t find anyone to investigate these allegations.”

The letter was the first of many informant letters the Malatya court has received since it started hearing the case on Nov. 22, 2007. Penned by someone who identified himself by the pseudonym “Ali Arslan” but unsigned, the letter claimed that Ulger incited Emre Gunaydin, one of the suspects, to carry out the murders and that he communicated with Gunaydin through Abat and two gendarmerie officers, reported Turkish English daily Today’s Zaman.

Cengiz said that, though it was the duty of the Malatya prosecutor to pursue leads in the informant letter, the prosecutor deferred the investigation to the military court, which in turn refused to investigate, claiming that the name on the letter was fake and the letter was not signed.

“It was like a joke,” Cengiz said.

On April 18, 2007, two Turkish Christians, Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, and German Christian Tilmann Geske, were bound, tortured and then murdered at the office of Zirve Publishing Co., a Christian publishing house in Malatya. The suspects, Salih Guler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker, and Abuzer Yildirim, were arrested while trying to escape the scene of the crime, as was alleged ringleader Gunaydin.

From the beginning of the court hearings, plaintiff lawyers have brought evidence to the court showing the five young suspects were connected to a wider plot to kill the three Christians as well as other key Christian leaders across Turkey. Known as the Cage Plan, the plot is believed to be part of the alleged Ergenekon “deep state” operation to destabilize the government.

The Cage Plan centers on a compact disc found in 2009 in the house of a retired naval officer. The plan, to be carried out by 41 naval officers, termed as “operations” the Malatya killings, the 2006 assassination of Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and the 2007 slaying of Hrant Dink, Armenian editor-in-chief of the weekly Agos.

Cengiz told Compass that new evidence in the Ergenekon case might have convinced Oz to pursue those detained yesterday, and he called the move “a very big step” in shedding light on the Malatya case. He and colleague Erdal Dogan said their efforts – especially a request they sent to Oz on Jan. 18, 2010 asking him to investigate the allegations that Ergenekon members were behind the Malatya murders – surely helped to move the process along.

“I believe our efforts had a very big influence on this,” Cengiz said. “We submitted a petition and requested this from Oz last year. He is acting with the Malatya prosecutor on this.”

At the request of the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office, the Istanbul Police Department prepared a report last year revealing links between the Malatya murders and Ergenekon, according to Today’s Zaman. According to the report, Sevgi Erenerol, spokesperson for a bogus ultranationalist association known as the Turkish Orthodox Church, described foreign missionary activity as “spying” and “provoking.”

“A piece of evidence in the report was a conference on missionary activity given by Sevgi Erenerol … at the General Staff’s Strategic Research and Study Center,” reported Today’s Zaman.

Erenerol was arrested in connection with Ergenekon in 2008. Her suspected links with those thought to have masterminded the Zirve murders may have influenced yesterday’s arrests, Today’s Zaman reported.

She is also believed to be one of the key people behind false accusations against two members of Turkey’s Protestant Church, Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, who were arrested in October 2006 for insulting Turkishness and Islam because they openly shared their faith.

After four years of legal battle, a judge finally acquitted the two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge. The two men are in the process of appealing the fine.

The Turkish Constitution grants all citizens the right to speak about their faith.

Plaintiff attorneys in the Malatya murders case said they believe yesterday’s arrests bring them closer to their requests that the Malatya murders case file be joined to that of the Ergenekon trial.

“From now on, we can predict it is very possible that our case will be sent to Istanbul soon and that these two cases will be merged,” said Cengiz.

The next Malatya hearing is scheduled for April 29.

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org