At only one point in his story did Naji Hamdan cry. Sitting in an office chair as he recounted how he was arrested, tortured and ultimately convicted of terrorism charges in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), his voice barely wavered. Only when he described how Emirati interrogators threatened to rape his wife in front of him if he did not confess to charges of supporting Al Qaeda did he lose control, pausing to accept a fistful of Kleenex before he continued his story.
"For two weeks I could not stand on my feet. I had to use the help of a Nepali guard to drag me to the bathroom," he said of a period following a particularly brutal beating, around three weeks into his two-month detention.
Hamdan, 43, was born in Lebanon and moved to the United States in 1984. He studied aerospace engineering, worked at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) as an aircraft mechanic, then for Northrop Grumman, and eventually opened his own auto parts business, HondAcura Palace. In his downtime, he played soccer, camped and hiked, and as of 1992 began raising his son, Khaled. A few years later he became a naturalized citizen. A devout Sunni Muslim, he was active in the Muslim community and helped to found the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, in Southern California.
In 1999 the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited him at home, inquiring about a possible millennial terrorist attack. The bureau also interrogated others in the local Muslim community, asking whether they knew of any imminent plots.
"They asked if I knew any terrorists, would I go and tell them," said Hamdan. "Of course I would. My kids were going to school there. I have businesses there."
Hamdan's brother Hossam, who goes by the name Sam, got a visit too. At the time, he recalled, "We were like, What the hell are they talking about?"
The FBI kept Hamdan on its radar for the next ten years, contacting him, he estimates, on six occasions. Officials asked about his business, his political beliefs and whether he knew Osama bin Laden (he knew bin Laden as well as anyone else did at the time, "from the media," as he put it). During this time, air travel became increasingly difficult for him; he was often stopped and questioned for hours, on one occasion missing a flight out of LAX.
Hamdan moved his family to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in 2006, where he hoped to expose his children to Islamic culture and the Arabic language, as well as the American culture of business and entrepreneurship. There, he thought, they could have "the best of both worlds." He had heard it was "more modern and developed" than the rest of the region.
"And peaceful," added his wife, a look of pained irony on her face.
Even after relocating, he continued to face harassment at airports and particularly on trips back to the United States, where he and Sam continued to operate the auto parts business. On one visit in March 2007, he says, he was interrogated at LAX for more than four hours, followed by SUVs with tinted windows and repeatedly photographed. He cut his trip short.
"They were kind of pushing me out of the country as if I'm not an American citizen anymore," he said. "And that is sad."
That treatment was gentle compared with the reception he got from the government of the United Arab Emirates. At noon on August 26, 2008, six weeks after FBI agents had summoned him for about four hours of interrogation at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, he got a call saying his car, parked downstairs from his apartment, had been in an accident. The sun shining, he went downstairs in shorts and a T-shirt (he had been napping) to check his vehicle. Emirati officials arrived on the scene, handcuffed and blindfolded him, and drove away in custom-made SUVs with tinted windows.
Held incommunicado for one month and twenty-three days, Hamdan says he was subject to near-daily beatings and torture for the first few weeks, after which the beatings slowed to every few days. In between he was left in total isolation.
"I don't know if it's a tactic or not," he said, "but it was painful also to leave me without even the guard talking to me."
The beatings were intended to elicit a confession of in- volvement with a rotating cast of terrorist groups that would change from one day to the next. Initially, Hamdan protested his innocence. But the threat against his wife was too much, and he broke down.
"The interrogator said, You're going to sign a confession that you're with Al Qaeda and put your fingerprint on it," Hamdan remembers. But a few days later, he was taken from his cell to another interrogator, who said he'd received information "from a friendly country" that Hamdan was supporting the Gaza-based Palestinian group Hamas.
"He said, You have to change your confession," said Hamdan. Still fearing for his wife, he told them, "Listen, I'll do whatever you want."
Hamdan quickly came to believe that his Emirati interrogators were acting at the behest of the United States; at one point they questioned him about his recent interview with the FBI at the embassy, asking him why he was tense during their meeting.
"I didn't think of it when I first got detained, but when the beatings started, I knew right away," he said.
During one interrogation, Hamdan said, he believed an American interrogator was present in the room. He identified the man by his accent and his dress, which differed from the rest of the interrogators, who were wearing either white robes, a traditional men's dress in the Gulf, or the uniform that high-ranking military officers wear.
"From underneath my blindfold, I could see feet. He had on gray suit pants and black dress shoes," said Hamdan, "and he had a pure American accent. I encountered the FBI several times before. I have no doubt he was FBI."
As UAE agents introduced him to their full spectrum of torture techniques (a freezing cold isolation room, an electric chair they sat him in and threatened to turn on, kicks and punches to his already frail liver), his family searched in vain to discover his whereabouts. His wife says she went to the State Security offices and was told they'd never heard of her husband. She also says she called the US Embassy and the State Department, where staff claimed they were unaware of his case. Hamdan's brother Sam said he called Joshua Stone, an FBI agent who had interviewed Hamdan in Abu Dhabi.
"They weren't interested in talking about him," Sam recalled. "If he really didn't know what was happening to Naji, he would have been more interested. He'd want to know more," he concluded. At one point, he suggested to Stone that perhaps Naji was suspected of stealing cars, since he dealt in used automobiles.
"The guy laughed and said, 'Criminally? It's not that,'" Sam said.
The Hamdan family reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a habeas corpus suit in a Washington, DC, district court in November 2008. Although the judge dismissed the case in August 2009, finding a lack of jurisdiction, the suit shone light on Hamdan's predicament for the first time and highlighted the responsibility of the US government to attend to the detention of one of its citizens.
"One month and twenty-three days," said Hamdan incredulously of the time he was held incommunicado. "Normally if [Abu Dhabi authorities] detain a US citizen, they should report it to the embassy right away. But they did not."
After that period, Hamdan met with Sean Cooper, the consular chief for the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Three days before they met, his captors took his measurements, and on the day of the meeting gave him a brand-new outfit--shoes, pants, a shirt, underwear and socks--and a warning: "You better behave, because if you tell them anything, you're coming back to us, and you know what's going to happen." Looking spiffy, he arrived to find three Emirati officials, who would be present throughout the interview. He tried to use body language to indicate to Cooper that all was not well.
"He asked if I was being mistreated," remembered Hamdan, "and as I said no, I would turn my face to the side. Later, when I saw him, he said he had no idea something was wrong."
After their meeting, the beatings stopped, although another month passed before Hamdan was transferred to criminal custody. According to his lawyer, Jennie Pasquarella of ACLU Southern California, instead of helping the Hamdans secure Naji's release, the US government put up "major roadblocks at every turn." She and her colleagues were unable to persuade lawmakers to take up Hamdan's case publicly (she imagines they were "skittish" about "championing the case of someone labeled a terrorist") and got "the runaround" both in Washington and the Emitates.
"Even Congress has had little success at obtaining information about people the US has asked other countries to detain. Although our government is responsible for their detention, there is a black hole of information about those cases," she said.
In April 2009 Pasquarella and her colleagues obtained a nugget of information about a prior case that shed light on the possible circumstances of Hamdan's arrest and detention. A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the British House of Commons All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition turned up an e-mail from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that read, "At this time [redacted] is the only one we can get to. He is currently being held by the UAE pending our ability to do a Extraordinary Rendition." This e-mail, and America's historically warm economic and diplomatic relationship with the UAE, suggests that collusion in the field of counterterrorism would not be unheard of. Hamdan, who was not being held by the US, could not have been subject to extraordinary rendition--in which suspects are transferred from US to foreign custody--but his arrest fits the profile of a "proxy detention," in which the United States requests that someone be taken into custody in a foreign country.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington, the United Arab Emirates office of the State Department, the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and an Abu Dhabi government spokesman all declined to comment on the case. Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles field office, said that the bureau does not confirm or deny investigating Hamdan, but she added that the US government did not request a proxy detention in Hamdan's case.
With Hamdan's trial approaching in Abu Dhabi Federal Supreme Court last year, the FBI continued to investigate his businesses in America. It subpoenaed Daniel Sieu, 49, a former customer of Hamdan's who is the executive director of the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific Revolving Loan Fund. Sieu had made several small loans to Hamdan as he expanded his business and bought small parcels of real estate. In January 2009 the FBI asked Sieu for everything in his files on Hamdan, which he says consisted of "a few basic loan applications." He was never called in for questioning and has not gotten back any of the material he submitted.
"Naji is a very nice guy," he said. "I consider him a friend."
The FBI also pursued another friend of Naji's, Jehad Suliman, beginning in 2002 with interrogations at HondAcura Palace, where Suliman is the manager. In July 2009, as Hamdan's case was playing out in Abu Dhabi, Suliman estimates that roughly a dozen agents entered his home with a search warrant relating to MediCal fraud. They seized a number of possessions, including documents unrelated to MediCal that referred to Hamdan and HondAcura Palace.
On January 29 of this year, Pasquarella filed a FOIA request for further information on the government's activities related to the Hamdan brothers and Suliman, but she expects it will take substantial litigation before anything comes to light.
Ultimately, after five hearings in front of Abu Dhabi's Federal Supreme Court, Hamdan was convicted of support for and spreading of terrorism. The prosecutor's case relied on Hamdan's signed confessions and a transcript of a chat-room conversation from a jihadi website in which Hamdan says he was not even a participant. According to Hamdan, in the course of the trial, he was accused of membership in six different terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam of Iraq and Fatah al-Islam.
Sitting in their living room in his eighth-floor apartment in Mar Elias, a busy commercial neighborhood in Beirut, and discussing his verdict, Hamdan and his wife still have trouble accepting it. "How could he have had the time" to be involved with all of these groups, his wife wondered aloud, while running an international auto parts business?
"They're six different organizations that are against each other," pointed out Hamdan.
Pasquarella, who was barred from attending one of the sessions on the pretext that the trial chamber's air-conditioning was broken, called the trial "a facade for political processes." A respected human rights lawyer in the UAE, who did not wish to be identified because of previous government harassment, said that while the UAE Supreme Court is generally independent, on national security issues it toes the government line.
According to Hamdan, the prosecutor had sought four counts of the death penalty and four counts of life imprisonment, which he was eligible for under the UAE 2004 anti-terrorism legislation. Instead, the court gave him an eighteen-month time-served sentence, essentially setting him free despite a finding of guilt.
"I knew I was not going to be acquitted, because it would show their guilt, but I was still hoping they would go back to their conscience and acquit me," he said resignedly. "I wasn't relieved at the sentence, though, because now I'm considered a terrorist."
After nine days and a bit of paperwork, he was deported to Lebanon.
Now he mostly spends his days with his wife, mother and son, relaxing and looking after his health. His father died in October 2008; Hamdan said he died of a heart attack upon hearing of his son's detention. Recently his brother Sam received a notice addressed to Naji that his aircraft mechanic's license was being rescinded by the Transportation Security Administration. Hamdan still suffers pains in his wrists, neck and shoulders from the beatings, and he is taking medication for his liver and kidneys. But it is the mental scars that most stubbornly refuse to heal.
"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, just thinking about it," he said. "What bothers me the most is the unfairness of it all.... I got beaten, tortured and forced to sign something I didn't even read. I left all my wealth over there in that country, and I'm here, empty-handed, with these memories that are eating me alive."
About Anna Louie Sussman
Anna Louie Sussman is a freelance writer based in Beirut and New York.
Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
(Johann Hari's piece takes mainstream environmental groups to task for selling out their principles, often in exchange for money from the worst polluters. We invited a range of green groups mentioned in the article to respond to Hari's arguments in this special online forum.)
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."
While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path--one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.
Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair--president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995--was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.
Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world's pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilizing the climate--the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn't make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for "environmental stewardship."
Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw it as valuable "reputation insurance": every time they were criticized for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green awards, purchased with "charitable" donations, to ward off the prospect of government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled--so they, too, started to take the checks.
Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, "About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organization's media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country.... But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren't supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were 'helping' us, and that was it."
She soon began to see--as she explains in her whistleblowing book Green Inc.--how this behavior has pervaded almost all the mainstream green organizations. They take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation. To take just one example, when it was revealed that many of IKEA's dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company's defense, saying--wrongly--that IKEA "can never guarantee" this won't happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a "marketing partner" with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?
Likewise, the Sierra Club was approached in 2008 by the makers of Clorox bleach, who said that if the Club endorsed their new range of "green" household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The Club's Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest--but took it anyway. Executive director Carl Pope defended the move in an e-mail to members, in which he claimed that the organization had carried out a serious analysis of the cleaners to see if they were "truly superior." But it hadn't. The Club's Toxics Committee co-chair, Jessica Frohman, said, "We never approved the product line." Beyond asking a few questions, the committee had done nothing to confirm that the product line was greener than its competitors' or good for the environment in any way.
The green groups defend their behavior by saying they are improving the behavior of the corporations. But as these stories show, the pressure often flows the other way: the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core. As MacDonald says, "Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them."
It has taken two decades for this corrupting relationship to become the norm among the big green organizations. Imagine this happening in any other sphere, and it becomes clear how surreal it is. It is as though Amnesty International's human rights reports came sponsored by a coalition of the Burmese junta, Dick Cheney and Robert Mugabe. For environmental groups to take funding from the very people who are destroying the environment is preposterous--yet it is now taken for granted.
This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming. We have emitted so many warming gases into the atmosphere that the world's climate scientists say we are close to the climate's "point of no return." Up to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, all sorts of terrible things happen--we lose the islands of the South Pacific, we set in train the loss of much of Florida and Bangladesh, terrible drought ravages central Africa--but if we stop the emissions of warming gases, we at least have a fifty-fifty chance of stabilizing the climate at this higher level. This is already an extraordinary gamble with human safety, and many climate scientists say we need to aim considerably lower: 1.5 degrees or less.
Beyond 2 degrees, the chances of any stabilization at the hotter level begin to vanish, because the earth's natural processes begin to break down. The huge amounts of methane stored in the Arctic permafrost are belched into the atmosphere, causing more warming. The moist rainforests begin to dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon they store into the air, and causing more warming. These are "tipping points": after them, we can't go back to the climate in which civilization evolved.
So in an age of global warming, the old idea of conservation--that you preserve one rolling patch of land, alone and inviolate--makes no sense. If the biosphere is collapsing all around you, you can't ring-fence one lush stretch of greenery and protect it: it too will die.
You would expect the American conservation organizations to be joining the great activist upsurge demanding we stick to a safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm), according to professor and NASA climatologist James Hansen. And--in public, to their members--they often are supportive. On its website the Sierra Club says, "If the level stays higher than 350 ppm for a prolonged period of time (it's already at 390.18 ppm) it will spell disaster for humanity as we know it."
But behind closed doors, it sings from a different song-sheet. Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in Arizona, which refuses funding from polluters, has seen this from the inside. He told me, "There is a gigantic political schizophrenia here. The Sierra Club will send out e-mails to its membership saying we have to get to 350 parts per million and the science requires it. But in reality they fight against any sort of emission cuts that would get us anywhere near that goal."
For example, in 2009 the EPA moved to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which requires the agency to ensure that the levels of pollutants in the air are "compatible with human safety"--a change the Sierra Club supported. But the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to take this commitment seriously and do what the climate science says really is "compatible with human safety": restore us to 350 ppm. Suckling explains, "I was amazed to discover the Sierra Club opposed us bitterly. They said it should not be done. In fact, they said that if we filed a lawsuit to make EPA do it, they would probably intervene on EPA's side. They threw climate science out the window."
Indeed, the Sierra Club's chief climate counsel, David Bookbinder, ridiculed the center's attempts to make 350 ppm a legally binding requirement. He said it was "truly a pointless exercise" and headed to "well-deserved bureaucratic oblivion"--and would only add feebly that "350 may be where the planet should end up," but not by this mechanism. He was quoted in the media alongside Bush administration officials who shared his contempt for the center's proposal.
Why would the Sierra Club oppose a measure designed to prevent environmental collapse? The Club didn't respond to my requests for an explanation. Climate scientists are bemused. When asked about this, Hansen said, "I find the behavior of most environmental NGOs to be shocking.... I [do] not want to listen to their lame excuses for their abominable behavior." It is easy to see why groups like Conservation International, which take money from Big Oil and Big Coal, take backward positions. Their benefactors will lose their vast profits if we make the transition away from fossil fuels--so they fall discreetly silent when it matters. But while the Sierra Club accepts money from some corporations, it doesn't take cash from the very worst polluters. So why is it, on this, the biggest issue of all, just as bad?
It seems its leaders have come to see the world through the funnel of the US Senate and what legislation it can be immediately coaxed to pass. They say there is no point advocating a strategy that senators will reject flat-out. They have to be "politically realistic" and try to advocate something that will appeal to Blue Dog Democrats.
This focus on inch-by-inch reform would normally be understandable: every movement for change needs a reformist wing. But the existence of tipping points--which have been overwhelmingly proven by the climate science--makes a mockery of this baby-steps approach to global warming. If we exceed the safe amount of warming gases in the atmosphere, then the earth will release its massive carbon stores and we will have runaway warming. After that, any cuts we introduce will be useless. You can't jump halfway across a chasm: you still fall to your death. It is all or disaster.
By definition, if a bill can pass through today's corrupt Senate, then it will not be enough to prevent catastrophic global warming. Why? Because the bulk of the Senate--including many Democrats--is owned by Big Oil and Big Coal. They call the shots with their campaign donations. Senators will not defy their benefactors. So if you call only for measures the Senate could pass tomorrow, you are in effect giving a veto over the position of the green groups to the fossil fuel industry.
Yet the "conservation" groups in particular believe they are being hardheaded in adhering to the "political reality" that says only cuts far short of the climate science are possible. They don't seem to realize that in a conflict between political reality and physical reality, physical reality will prevail. The laws of physics are more real and permanent than any passing political system. You can't stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, "Sorry, the swing states don't want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years."
A classic case study of this inside-the-Beltway mentality can be found in a blog written by David Donniger, policy director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit. The summit ended with no binding agreement for any country to limit its emissions of greenhouse gases, and a disregard of the scientific targets. Given how little time we have, this was shocking. Donniger was indeed furious--with the people who were complaining. He decried the "howls of disaster in European media, and rather tepid reviews in many U.S. stories." He said people were "holding the accord to standards and expectations that no outcome achievable at Copenhagen could reasonably have met--or even should have met."
This last sentence is very revealing. Donniger believes it is "reasonable" to act within the constraints of the US and global political systems, and unreasonable to act within the constraints of the climate science. The greens, he suggests, are wrong to say their standards should have been met at this meeting; the deal is "not weak." After fifteen climate summits, after twenty years of increasingly desperate scientific warnings about warming, with the tipping points drawing ever closer, he says the world's leaders shouldn't be on a faster track and that the European and American media should stop whining. Remember, this isn't an oil company exec talking; this is a senior figure at one of the leading environmental groups.
There is a different way for green groups to behave. If the existing political system is so corrupt that it can't maintain basic human safety, they should be encouraging their members to take direct action to break the Big Oil deadlock. This is precisely what has happened in Britain--and it has worked. Direct-action protesters have physically blocked coal trains and new airport runways for the past five years--and as a result, airport runway projects that looked certain are falling by the wayside, and politicians have become very nervous about authorizing any new coal power plants [see Maria Margaronis, "The UK's Climate Rebels," December 7, 2009]. The more mainstream British climate groups are not reluctant to condemn the Labour government's environmental failings in the strongest possible language. Compare the success of this direct confrontation with the utter failure of the US groups' work-within-the-system approach. As James Hansen has pointed out, the British model offers real hope rather than false hope. There are flickers of it already--there is an inspiring grassroots movement against coal power plants in the United States, supported by the Sierra Club--but it needs to be supercharged.
By pretending the broken system can work--and will work, in just a moment, after just one more Democratic win, or another, or another--the big green groups are preventing the appropriate response from concerned citizens, which is fury at the system itself. They are offering placebos to calm us down when they should be conducting and amplifying our anger at this betrayal of our safety by our politicians. The US climate bills are long-term plans: they lock us into a woefully inadequate schedule of carbon cuts all the way to 2050. So when green groups cheer them on, they are giving their approval to a path to destruction--and calling it progress.
Even within the constraints of the existing system, their approach makes for poor political tactics. As Suckling puts it, "They have an incredibly naïve political posture. Every time the Dems come out with a bill, no matter how appallingly short of the scientific requirements it is, they cheer it and say it's great. So the politicians have zero reason to strengthen that bill. If you've already announced that you've been captured, then they don't need to give you anything. Compare that to how the Chamber of Commerce or the fossil fuel corporations behave. They stake out a position on the far right, and they demand the center move their way. It works for them. They act like real activists, while the supposed activists stand at the back of the room and cheer at whatever bone is thrown their way."
The green groups have become "the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, regardless of how pathetic the party's position is," Suckling says in despair. "They have no bottom line, no interest in scientifically defensible greenhouse gas emission limitations and no willingness to pressure the White House or Congress."
It will seem incredible at first, but this is--in fact--too generous. At Copenhagen, some of the US conservation groups demanded a course of action that will lead to environmental disaster--and financial benefits for themselves. It is a story buried in details and acronyms, but the stakes are the future of civilization.
When the rich countries say they are going to cut their emissions, it sounds to anyone listening as if they are going to ensure that there are fewer coal stations and many more renewable energy stations at home. So when Obama says there will be a 3 percent cut by 2020--a tenth of what the science requires--you assume the United States will emit 3 percent fewer warming gases. But that's not how it works. Instead, they are saying they will trawl across the world to find the cheapest place to cut emissions, and pay for it to happen there.
Today, the chopping down of the world's forests is causing 12 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases, because trees store carbon dioxide. So the rich governments say that if they pay to stop some of that, they can claim it as part of their cuts. A program called REDD--Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation--has been set up to do just that. In theory, it sounds fine. The atmosphere doesn't care where the fall in emissions comes from, as long as it happens in time to stop runaway warming. A ton of carbon in Brazil enters the atmosphere just as surely as a ton in Texas.
If this argument sounds deceptively simple, that's because it is deceptive. In practice, the REDD program is filled with holes large enough to toss a planet through.
To understand the trouble with REDD, you have to look at the place touted as a model of how the system is supposed to work. Thirteen years ago in Bolivia, a coalition of The Nature Conservancy and three big-time corporate polluters--BP, Pacificorp and American Electric Power (AEP)--set up a protected forest in Bolivia called the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project. They took 3.9 million acres of tropical forest and said they would clear out the logging companies and ensure that the forest remained standing. They claimed this plan would keep 55 million tons of CO2 locked out of the air--which would, in time, justify their pumping an extra 55 million tons into the air from their coal and oil operations. AEP's internal documents boasted: "The Bolivian project...could save AEP billions of dollars in pollution controls."
Greenpeace sent an investigative team to see how it had turned out. The group found, in a report released last year, that some of the logging companies had simply picked up their machinery and moved to the next rainforest over. An employee for San Martin, one of the biggest logging companies in the area, bragged that nobody had ever asked if they had stopped. This is known as "leakage": one area is protected from logging, but the logging leaks a few miles away and continues just the same.
In fact, one major logging organization took the money it was paid by the project to quit and used it to cut down another part of the forest. The project had to admit it had saved 5.8 million tons or less--a tenth of the amount it had originally claimed. Greenpeace says even this is a huge overestimate. It's a Potemkin forest for the polluters.
When you claim an offset and it doesn't work, the climate is screwed twice over--first because the same amount of forest has been cut down after all, and second because a huge amount of additional warming gases has been pumped into the atmosphere on the assumption that the gases will be locked away by the now-dead trees. So the offset hasn't prevented emissions--it's doubled them. And as global warming increases, even the small patches of rainforest that have technically been preserved are doomed. Why? Rainforests have a very delicate humid ecosystem, and their moisture smothers any fire that breaks out, but with 2 degrees of warming, they begin to dry out--and burn down. Climatologist Wolfgang Cramer says we "risk losing the entire Amazon" if global warming reaches 4 degrees.
And the news gets worse. Carbon dioxide pumped out of a coal power station stays in the atmosphere for millenniums--so to genuinely "offset" it, you have to guarantee that a forest will stand for the same amount of time. This would be like Julius Caesar in 44 BC making commitments about what Barack Obama will do today--and what some unimaginable world leader will do in 6010. In practice, we can't even guarantee that the forests will still be standing in fifty years, given the very serious risk of runaway warming.
You would expect the major conservation groups to be railing against this absurd system and demanding a serious alternative built on real science. But on Capitol Hill and at Copenhagen, these groups have been some of the most passionate defenders of carbon offsetting. They say that, in "political reality," this is the only way to raise the cash for the rainforests, so we will have to work with it. But this is a strange kind of compromise--since it doesn't actually work.
In fact, some of the big groups lobbied to make the protections weaker, in a way that will cause the rainforests to die faster. To understand why, you have to grasp a distinction that may sound technical at first but is crucial. When you are paying to stop deforestation, there are different ways of measuring whether you are succeeding. You can take one small "subnational" area--like the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project--and save that. Or you can look at an entire country, and try to save a reasonable proportion of its forests. National targets are much better, because the leakage is much lower. With national targets, it's much harder for a logging company simply to move a few miles up the road and carry on: the move from Brazil to Congo or Indonesia is much heftier, and fewer loggers will make it.
Simon Lewis, a forestry expert at Leeds University, says, "There is no question that national targets are much more effective at preventing leakage and saving forest than subnational targets."
Yet several groups--like TNC and Conservation International--have lobbied for subnational targets to be at the core of REDD and the US climate bills. Thanks in part to their efforts, this has become official US government policy, and is at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill. The groups issued a joint statement with some of the worst polluters--AEP, Duke Energy, the El Paso Corporation--saying they would call for subnational targets now, while vaguely aspiring to national targets at some point down the line. They want to preserve small patches (for a short while), not a whole nation's rainforest.
An insider who is employed by a leading green group and has seen firsthand how this works explained the groups' motivation: "It's because they will generate a lot of revenue this way. If there are national targets, the money runs through national governments. If there are subnational targets, the money runs through the people who control those forests--and that means TNC, Conservation International and the rest. Suddenly, these forests they run become assets, and they are worth billions in a carbon market as offsets. So they have a vested financial interest in offsetting and in subnational targets--even though they are much more environmentally damaging than the alternatives. They know it. It's shocking."
What are they doing to ensure that this policy happens--and the money flows their way? Another source, from a green group that refuses corporate cash, describes what she has witnessed behind closed doors. "In their lobbying, they always talk up the need for subnational projects and offsetting at every turn and say they're great. They don't mention national targets or the problems with offsetting at all. They also push it through their corporate partners, who have an army of lobbyists, [which are] far bigger than any environmental group. They promote their own interests as a group, not the interests of the environment." They have been caught, he says, "REDD-handed, too many times."
TNC and Conservation International admit they argue for subnational accounting, but they claim this is merely a "steppingstone" to national targets. Becky Chacko, director of climate policy at Conservation International, tells me, "Our only interest is to keep forests standing. We don't [take this position] because it generates revenue for us. We don't think it's an evil position to say money has to flow in order to keep forests standing, and these market mechanisms can contribute the money for that."
Yet when I ask her to explain how Conservation International justifies the conceptual holes in the entire system of offsetting, her answers become halting. She says the "issues of leakage and permanence" have been "resolved." But she will not say how. How can you guarantee a forest will stand for millenniums, to offset carbon emissions that warm the planet for millenniums? "We factor that risk into our calculations," she says mysteriously. She will concede that national accounting is "more rigorous" and says Conservation International supports achieving it "eventually."
There is a broad rumble of anger across the grassroots environmental movement at this position. "At Copenhagen, I couldn't believe what I was seeing," says Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, an organization that sides with indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin to preserve their land. "These groups are positioning themselves to be the middlemen in a carbon market. They are helping to set up, in effect, a global system of carbon laundering...that will give the impression of action, but no substance. You have to ask--are these conservation groups at all? They look much more like industry front groups to me."
So it has come to this. After decades of slowly creeping corporate corruption, some of the biggest environmental groups have remade themselves in the image of their corporate backers: they are putting profit before planet. They are supporting a system they know will lead to ecocide, because more revenue will run through their accounts, for a while, as the collapse occurs. At Copenhagen, their behavior was so shocking that Lumumba Di-Aping, the lead negotiator for the G-77 bloc of the world's rainforest-rich but cash-poor countries, compared them to the CIA at the height of the cold war, sabotaging whole nations.
How do we retrieve a real environmental movement, in the very short time we have left? Charles Komanoff, who worked as a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council for thirty years, says, "We're close to a civil war in the environmental movement. For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing.... We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals."
Some of the failing green groups can be reformed from within. The Sierra Club is a democratic organization, with the leadership appointed by its members. There are signs that members are beginning to put the organization right after the missteps of the past few years. Carl Pope is being replaced by Mike Brune, formerly of the Rainforest Action Network--a group much more aligned with the radical demands of the climate science. But other organizations--like Conservation International and TNC--seem incapable of internal reform and simply need to be shunned. They are not part of the environmental movement: they are polluter-funded leeches sucking on the flesh of environmentalism, leaving it weaker and depleted.
Already, shining alternatives are starting to rise up across America. In just a year, the brilliant 350.org has formed a huge network of enthusiastic activists who are demanding our politicians heed the real scientific advice--not the parody of it offered by the impostors. They have to displace the corrupt conservationists as the voice of American environmentalism, fast.
This will be a difficult and ugly fight, when we need all our energy to take on the forces of ecocide. But these conservation groups increasingly resemble the forces of ecocide draped in a green cloak. If we don't build a real, unwavering environmental movement soon, we had better get used to a new sound--of trees crashing down and an ocean rising, followed by the muffled, private applause of America's "conservationists."
About Johann Hari
Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent in London and a contributing writer for Slate. He has been named Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International for his reporting from the war in Congo.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, a bunch of small companies in Silicon Valley thought the future of television was theirs. Soon, the thinking went, TV would be everywhere. Frequent fliers would tune in on laptops and vacationers on tablets from the beach. If so inclined, you'd be able to watch Glee on a cell phone in a tree house. The network suits and the cable guys just didn't have the digital chops to make it happen. Fueled with venture money, tech companies with names like Boxee, Roku, and Sezmi pursued their dream of untethering viewers from their TV sets—and owning a piece of the advertising revenue.
As the big picture comes into focus though, it looks like the cable guys are playing the lead roles, using the $32 billion they pay content providers each year as leverage. The alphabet soup of newbies is still waiting in the wings for a moment that might never come.
What happened? Part of the answer is TV Everywhere, a service in its infancy, conjured up in quiet strategy sessions by Jeff Bewkes and Brian Roberts, the CEOs of Time Warner (TWX) and Comcast (CMCSA). They took a lesson from the music labels, which looked up one day to find that Steve Jobs and Apple (AAPL) had taken control of their inventory. The cable guys came up with a quick fix, one so technologically simple that you don't have to be a geek to get it: Viewers can watch shows for free, but only if they're cable subscribers first. In other words, as long as you tap a subscription code into your device—any device—you can watch anything you want, whenever you want.
It's worth hitting pause here for a moment. Right now, Time Warner is offering the service in only a few markets. Comcast has rolled out a trial, or beta, version to about 80% of its subscribers. There are plenty of kinks to be sorted out. And as usual when it comes to show business, nothing is quite as simple as it appears. For TV Everywhere to work, the behemoths of the business must stand together and stamp out the rampaging weed called free. After all, if you can get programing for free—real free—why would you ever pay a cable bill?
SELF-PRESERVATION
That's what was worrying Time Warner's Bewkes in the fall of 2008. Back then, Time Warner ran the country's second-largest cable operator (spun off in March 2009) and was also a content provider. Bewkes had previously been in charge of the company's HBO unit, turning the premium cable channel into a profit machine with 30 million subscribers.
Bewkes watched with growing alarm as Hollywood stampeded online to offer TV shows and movies for free, say two Time Warner executives. At the time, Hulu, a video site operated by Fox (NWS), NBC Universal, and Disney, (DIS) was about a year old. For TV addicts, Hulu was a near miracle. Miss the latest episode of Damages on the FX channel? If so, you could watch Glenn Close play a conniving lawyer on Hulu 24 hours later for free. Hulu's owners shared the advertising revenue from the site, but everyone knew it wasn't making money and there was no clear path to profitability. As he watched one entertainment company after another put their TV shows and movies online for free, say the executives, Bewkes began to fear that the pay TV industry would eventually find itself in the same untenable position as newspapers.
That's when the scene shifts to Wisconsin, where HBO was running an experiment in Milwaukee and Green Bay. HBO was letting people watch its programing online as long as they could prove they were HBO subscribers. The results of the test were unexpected: Viewers who tuned into Big Love on their laptops didn't spend any less time watching HBO on their TV sets. Bewkes was buoyed by the possibility that the same model might work more widely and that his cable properties might be able to keep subscribers from gravitating elsewhere, says a Time Warner executive involved in the discussions. Bewkes told his team: "We can't just talk about it, or play the victim. We need to build a model," the executive recalls. The Time Warner CEO was unavailable for comment.
It wasn't the first time the cable industry had found itself in danger of being outflanked by tech-savvy rivals. In 1999, TiVo began selling a handy little box that allowed people to record dozens of hours of TV shows on a hard drive. After a certain amount of handwringing, the cable guys struck back with overwhelming force. They figured out the technology and marketed their own digital video recorders, for which they charged subscribers an extra $10 or so a month. Next came Apple. Along with Amazon.com (AMZN) and others, Steve Jobs began renting TV shows online. The cable companies beat back that onslaught by beefing up their video-on-demand offerings and giving subscribers a bunch of free shows with a few clicks of the remote. "The cable industry has been very good at not jumping too early on a technology, and watching it play out first," says Colin Gounden of Grail Research, which advises companies on new products. "They have a knack for getting the timing right."
The new attack from Silicon Valley was the most serious yet, because it threatened to permanently cut the coaxial connecting the cable companies and their subscribers. "We wake up every day and there is some new competitor out there—a Roku or a Boxee," says Melinda Witmer, Time Warner Cable's programming chief. "People like to think of cable operators as monopolists, but we face a lot of competition just to keep the business we have." Technically there was nothing too complicated about Bewkes' plan to expand the Milwaukee experiment.
The new service would need a way to automatically confirm that people were paid-up subscribers. Other than that, TV Everywhere, as Bewkes called it, would mostly use existing online infrastructure and established user interfaces.
"FRIEND, NOT A FOE"
Far more daunting was the prospect of persuading the rest of the industry to join up. Unless most of the pay TV and content players banded together, TV Everywhere wouldn't work; viewers could simply flock to sites that didn't require a cable subscription. Bewkes, say two Time Warner executives, decided to float his proposal with Roberts, the chief of Comcast, the largest cable system in the U.S., with 24 million subscribers. In early 2009, Bewkes began wooing Roberts, traveling from his New York City office on Columbus Circle to Comcast's imposing 57-story headquarters in Philadelphia.
Roberts long ago realized that online video was important to the future of his company. In 2006, Comcast had created an interactive media unit that poached heavily from Silicon Valley. The company's first major development project was Fancast, a video site like Hulu that offered hundreds of shows free to all comers. Roberts, who declined to be interviewed for this story, had unveiled Fancast at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early 2008. Before long, says one Comcast executive, he began thinking about a service that would offer much more content—but only to Comcast subscribers. When Bewkes came calling he didn't have to convince Roberts of the importance of preserving the subscription model online. And like most everybody in the cable industry, Roberts was aware of HBO's online experiment in Wisconsin.
Roberts and Bewkes initially disagreed on one big point, say two Time Warner executives who say they can't speak on the record because the discussions were sensitive. Roberts believed subscribers should be required to go to a central site operated by their pay TV provider in order to view cable shows. Bewkes, true to his divided soul as a content creator and distributor, felt users should be allowed to tap into any cable channel's Web site as long as it was part of the TV Everywhere ecosystem. Bewkes, say the executives, reasoned that letting individual channels keep their own sites would allow them to maintain their brands. Eventually, Roberts agreed.
WINING AND DINING
The Time Warner executives say Roberts and Bewkes saw the cable industry's annual convention, held last April in Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to proselytize about TV Everywhere to the rest of the industry. During one panel discussion, Roberts told his audience that online video was "a friend, not a foe" and that for Hollywood it represented a new way to make money "in this horrific advertising environment."
In Hollywood, studios and cable channels were hearing a very different message from the Silicon Valley upstarts who wanted to cut deals for their programing. Netflix's (NFLX) Ted Sarandos pushed studio executives to give his company the latest movies for its online video service. Steve Jobs proposed launching a stripped-down cable service that would cost consumers $30 a month. Boxee founder Avner Ronen says he traveled to Los Angeles from his base in New York so many times that his "plane knew the way."
Phil Wiser, founder of Sezmi, an online TV subscription service, says his goal was simple: to "replace cable and satellite." He flew executives from NBC Universal, Sony (SNE), the Discovery Channel, and others to Sezmi's offices in a converted horse barn in Northern California, where he wined, dined, and pitched them. Sezmi wanted the content creators to allow him to use their movies and TV shows for an à la carte service that would give customers the freedom to pay for only what they wanted to watch. The studios declined, so he decided to borrow the industry's subscription model. Owners of Sezmi's $299 set-top box would receive network and cable shows for $19.99 a month, about a third the cost of a typical cable subscription.
Wiser told the studios that he would match what cable was paying for episodes of such shows such as The Real World, Top Chef, and Damages. It was an unprecedented offer for a startup, but only one company initially agreed to make its content available: NBC Universal, which is already available on Hulu. Wiser says it took another 18 months to lure more content providers, including Turner Broadcasting (TWX) (owned by Time Warner) and Discovery Networks. What's more, Wiser acknowledges he had to pay the content guys more than they get from the big cable companies. When Sezmi boxes went on sale in Los Angeles in February, the service was missing ESPN, The History Channel, The Food Network, HBO, and other popular channels. "Trying to do this is not for the faint of heart," says Wiser, a former Sony (SNE) executive. "These firms see dozens of new pitches every week, so they're skeptical."
Skeptical—and satisfied. The makers of movies and TV shows are attached to the billions they receive from cable companies and are understandably reluctant to engage in grand experiments with upstarts touting unproven business models. Joshua Sapan runs Rainbow Media Holdings (CVC), which controls AMC, IFC, the Sundance channel, and others. He says tech companies have approached him about licensing AMC shows, but, he asks: "Why would I license my channel to someone and give them Mad Men the day after it shows up on AMC?"
Back at Time Warner Center in New York and One Comcast Center in Philadelphia, the cable operators began to realize they had the studios locked down. As Frank Biondi, former president of the media giant Viacom (VIA), puts it: "Why would [the studios] make a deal with a competitor to their largest customer and risk angering them?"
In summer 2009, Bewkes and Roberts joined forces to take the TV Everywhere model out for a spin with 5,000 Comcast subscribers across the country. Those viewers were able to tap into programing provided by cable channels TNT and TBS, both owned by Time Warner. The speed with which the industry moved on from that trial balloon is a measure of just how important locking in subscriber revenue is to cable's future. In December, Comcast rolled out a beta version of the new service, now christened Fancast XFinity TV. Time Warner Cable has a trial going with nearly 10,000 customers in Syracuse, N.Y., New York City, and Columbus, Ohio. Verizon Communications (VZ) is testing a service nationally, and DirecTV, the satellite operator, plans to as well.
Comcast's service is the furthest along and provides a window on where TV Everywhere is headed. Only subscribers who pay for digital cable—and take Comcast's broadband service—are eligible. (The company is still working out how to bring XFinity TV to the third of its subscribers who get broadband from other companies.) Subscribers can tune into two dozen channels, from CBS to Animal Planet, and view 19,000 full-length TV shows and movies. They can use it on as many as three PCs and get most episodes 24 hours after they first air on TV. Much of that was available on Comcast's free site, but now shows on HBO and the Discovery channel have been added to the lineup. Eventually, Comcast aims to let subscribers access XFinity on their smartphones and tablets.
TV Everywhere has a ways to go before the cable guys can declare victory. There's a ton of stuff to figure out—how the ad model will work, devising a new ratings system with Nielsen. And then there's the question of profits. The cable guys like them, and they're not real comfortable with free. So chances are, down the line, the costs of the new free will probably sneak onto subscribers cable bills. And you know what? We'll all keep paying.
Grover covers the media and entertainment industry for Bloomberg Businessweek in Los Angeles. Lowry is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York. Edwards is a correspondent in Bloomberg BusinessWeek's San Francisco bureau.
Ahmed Al-Omran, a 25-year old Saudi blogger, must contend with ultra-conservative clerics and ongoing restrictions in a kingdom with 'no real political culture.'
For Ahmed Al-Omran, a 25-year-old Saudi blogger, this has been a particularly frustrating week.
To begin with, an ultra-conservative cleric issued a fatwa concluding that people who oppose segregating Saudi men and women should be killed. Then Al-Omran was forced by death threats to remove pictures he had posted on his Web site of university women clad from head to toe in their black abayas, the shrouds they are required to wear in public.
And finally, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abd al-Aziz al Sa'ud not only banned women and men from mixing together at the Riyadh book fair but also the display of books deemed "incompatible with religion and values."
"This country is so f—-ed up" Al-Omran tweeted, referring thousands of loyal fans to his latest postings on these and other topics on his English-language blog, Saudi Jeans.
Ahmed Al-Omran is not a household name outside of Saudi Arabia. Neither is Eman Al Nafjan, a 31-year-old mother of three, whose Saudi Woman's Web Blog in English has a solid, growing base of 500 visitors a day. And few outsiders may have heard of Basma Al-Mutlaq, whose English-language blog, Saudi Amber, advocates an end to what Eman Al Nafjan calls the kingdom's "gender apartheid," the religious- and cultural-based laws and traditions that have kept Saudi women both separate and unequal in their own land for decades.
But within the kingdom, such bloggers are Internet stars. Their readers and fans flood the Internet with spirited, supportive and angry commentary that is expanding the limits of what can be spoken about in this conservative, traditionally closed and painfully diplomatic society.
While the Saudi Ministry of Interior sees the Internet mostly as a threat — the nation's top venue for the recruitment of young, impressionable Saudis to the ranks of Al Qaeda and its affiliated and inspired violent groups — thousands of open-minded young Saudis have embraced the blogosphere to shatter the silence about problems long considered taboo — the separation of the sexes, sexual abuse of women and children, child marriage, the lack of democracy in the kingdom, the repression of the minority Shiite Muslim community, and even corruption among the nation's senior officials, if not yet the royal family.
While the kingdom's 15 daily newspapers and many magazines are created by royal decree and subject to government censorship, the World Wide Web offers Saudis a vast, relatively unregulated new frontier of self-expression about sensitive political, economic, and social topics. While most Arab newspapers tend to follow the lead of their state-run news agencies on whether to publish stories on sensitive issues, the estimated 5,000 Saudi blogs have given the more than 6 million Saudis who are online an outlet not only to vent their considerable frustrations, but a place to press for political and social change.
Initially, the Saudi government responded with force, apparently panicked by the implications of the technology. In December 2007, the government detained blogger Fouad al-Farhan for "violating the kingdom's regulations." But Ahmed al-Omran and other Saudi bloggers pummeled the government online. Protests from human rights groups and Western governments, publicized by the mainstream media, led to al-Farhan's release four months later. Since then, the government has invested heavily in security systems that can block access to Web sites it deems offensive. From time to time, such sites are shut down. But as in Iran, where government critics find alternatives to blocked sites, Saudi bloggers are also finding ways to get their message out, frustrating Riyadh's episodic efforts to reign in debate.
The government's blocking of sites is often arbitrary, Al-Omran said. For instance when his site was blocked for a few days in the summer of 2006 -- "by mistake," a government official later told some of his relatives and friends -- other sites that had nothing to do with politics were blocked as well. "One of them was a web site dedicated to donating goats to drought-ridden African countries," he said.
"The government is finding that censorship just doesn't work anymore," he said. "We've all become reporters without borders. The red lines of our society are slowly crumbling."
According to a Harvard University study last year, Saudi Arabia ranked second only to Egypt in the number of Web sites in Arab countries. But the kingdom's blogosphere is a decidedly mixed universe, one that devotes "far less attention to domestic political leaders" and issues than sites in other countries. Plus, 46 percent of bloggers are female, a higher ratio than in other Arab countries, perhaps because there are so many restrictions on their movement and activities.
Eman Al-Nafjan, for instance, said over coffee on the "all-female" second floor of the Kingdom Mall in Riyadh that she began blogging in English two years ago, after she returned from studying in the United States, in an effort to "break through stereotypes" about her country at home and abroad. "I believe in the Saudi monarchy," she said. "And I don't hate Saudi Arabia. But restrictions that people think are religiously based are actually rooted in our culture, not our religion. They must change. But I'm not optimistic that they will."
Many Saudis say that the ruling family — and King Abdullah and his daughters, in particular — are promoting the integration of women in society and what is known as "gender mixing." Indeed, hardly a day passes without an article appearing in the press about another breakthrough for women. In Jeddah, the nation's first "mixed" university has opened, and not without controversy. The king has appointed a woman to the post of vice minister for women's education, the only high-ranking woman to serve in government, and he has taken a woman financier on a trade delegation to China. The justice minister announced late last month that his department was drafting a law that would allow female lawyers to argue cases in court for the first time. Women may be permitted to vote in municipal elections, which have been postponed for two years.
But each action prompts a strong reaction from the powerful, entrenched conservative forces of the country. Last week, Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Barrak issued his infamous fatwa threatening death to those who advocate the mixing of the sexes, presumably including the king, in response to what conservatives see as a collapse of moral order in the kingdom. The liberal blogosphere promptly savaged the sheik. Ahmed al-Omran called him a "caveman," and Eman al-Nafjan denounced him as the "last living member of the traditional, misogynist ... rat pack of sheikhdom."
But even she acknowledged that 27 other reactionary sheiks signed a petition supporting his view. And when the government blocked his Web site due to the incendiary nature of his ruling, al-Barrak simply stole a page from the liberal bloggers' rulebook and popped up on another site.
"In Saudi Arabia, it is two steps forwards and ten steps backwards," said Basma Al-Mutlaq, whose "Saudi Amber" Web site is among the kingdom's most sophisticated English-language advocates for women's rights.
The majority of Saudi blogs dwell on personal and lifestyle issues, avoiding contentious political issues that many Saudis still feel uncomfortable debating in public. The English-language bloggers also agreed that blogging in English gave them greater leeway, and generated less government scrutiny, than an Arabic-language blog might create. Al-Omran noted that though he writes most often about the need for greater political freedom in Arabia — his "noble goal," he called it — many of his most popular postings have little to do with politics. For instance, he said, 3,000 people view his blog daily, but a satiric feature he composed on "how to wear a Ghotra" — the checkered headdress worn by Saudi men — drew 20,000 viewers, his most popular recent posting.
"It's a little discouraging at times," he said.
Fawziah Al-Bakr, a Saudi feminist who led the public protest over the ban on women driving 20 years ago — a prohibition that still prevails in the kingdom — called the Internet "the structure for non-governmental change in the kingdom."
But since most change in Saudi Arabia seems to come from the top down — often against the will of a more conservative majority of Saudis — Al-Omran and other bloggers say they are disappointed that the greater freedom of expression of the Internet has not resulted in the political change or enhanced accountability they seek.
"In Saudi Arabia, there are no elections, no real political culture, so venting and blogging is about all we can do," he said.
Still, he says, he won't stop blogging. "My family would like me to stop," he said, a sentiment echoed by Eman Al-Nafjan and other liberal bloggers. "They would like me to be one of those quiet Saudis. But I can't do that. We need to reform the kingdom. And we need voices who will
You Can Die Any Time: Death Squad Killings in Mindanao
Witnesses won't come forward if there is a ‘second Maguindanao massacre' of witnesses and their families.
Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch
(New York) - Philippine authorities should act swiftly to protect eyewitnesses to the November 2009 massacre of at least 57 people in Maguindanao province on Mindanao, and to protect their families as well, Human Rights Watch said today.
Concerns for the safety of witnesses are highlighted by the killings of two relatives of witnesses and the shooting of a third; the large number of police, military, and paramilitary personnel implicated in the massacre who remain at large; and lax security measures that allowed one suspect to escape detention, Human Rights Watch said.
"Witnesses won't come forward if there is a ‘second Maguindanao massacre' of witnesses and their families," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to act quickly to protect witnesses and their relatives, and to arrest and securely detain the remaining suspects."
On November 23, 2009, in the town of Ampatuan, Maguindanao, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, dozens of gunmen stopped a convoy that was en route to file Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael "Toto" Mangudadatu's candidacy for the upcoming Maguindanao gubernatorial elections. The gunmen summarily executed at least 57 people, including Mangudadatu family members and supporters, bystanders, and more than 30 media workers.
Those charged with the killings include members of the local governing family, the Ampatuans, together with police, military, and paramilitary personnel. Andal Ampatuan Jr., mayor of Datu Unsay and son of the Maguindanao governor, Andal Ampatuan Sr., is the lead suspect in the case. He was charged on December 1, 2009; he is in custody while his bail hearing continues.
Several eyewitnesses have come forward to testify about the massacre.
On February 21, 2010, the elder brother of one suspect-turned-witness, Police Officer 1 Rainier Ebus, was shot multiple times in Datu Piang and severely wounded. According to credible sources that could not be confirmed, Ampatuan's men had offered Ebus 5 million pesos (over US$100,000) to recant his witness statement. The brother was shot after he refused to do so.
Credible sources also told Human Rights Watch that another witness was offered 25 million pesos (over US$500,000) to recant his signed witness statement. He refused. Within weeks of testifying in court, two of his family members were shot dead. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) told Human Rights Watch that local police were investigating these crimes.
A member of the Ampatuan paramilitary forces told Human Rights Watch that the Ampatuans have placed a bounty on the heads of those who cooperate with investigators to testify against the Ampatuan family. He said that in late 2009, men linked to the Ampatuan family ordered him to kill one of the men involved in the massacre. The paramilitary force member said he escaped the Ampatuan fold after hearing that he was the next to be killed. He said he has learned that there is a 2 million peso (over US$40,000) bounty on his head.
Human Rights Watch urged the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to thoroughly and transparently investigate these killings and acts of intimidation against witnesses. To the extent that jailed Ampatuan family members are implicated, the NBI should investigate the Philippine authorities responsible for their custody.
The Justice Department, on February 9, filed charges against 197 people for 57 counts of murder on February 9, 2010. Arrest warrants have yet to be issued due to judicial delays, though some of those implicated are in custody charged with other crimes.
Of the 197 charged, 63 are police officers. Forty-nine of these police officers are under "restrictive custody"; the remaining 14 are "absent without leave." A Criminal Investigation and Detection Group spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that firearms are confiscated from police officers under restrictive custody and the officers are largely restricted to the police camp, though they can leave under guard. They remain on active duty and can be assigned administrative tasks.
Human Rights Watch questioned the effectiveness of this custody status since at least one police suspect, Anwar Masukat, escaped restrictive custody in late December or early January, reportedly swore an affidavit recanting his witness statement, and is now missing. Masukat had initially provided a signed statement implicating Ampatuan Jr. as the leader of the Maguindanao massacre. In his new statement, he pointed instead to another police witness as the massacre's mastermind. The Investigation Group spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that Masukat escaped restrictive custody while en route from Camp Crame, in Manila, to his unit in Maguindanao.
The threat to witnesses is highlighted by the government's lax detention of a suspect in custody, Human Rights Watch said. Retired Police Superintendent Piang Adam, the former Maguindanao provincial police director, escaped from the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Jail in Tacurong City between February 16 and 17. The Sultan Kudarat provincial police director, Senior Superintendent Suharto Teng Tocao, is a relative of Adam, and his jail guard, Taha Kadalum, was his cousin and has since been charged in relation to the escape.
Following this escape, the Philippine police chief, Director General Jesus Verzosa, ordered tighter security on all jail facilities and noted the need for a review of security systems and procedures. Human Rights Watch called on Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno to carry out an urgent review of the detention arrangements of all those implicated in the Maguindanao massacre and publicly report on the findings and measures taken.
Human Rights Watch stressed the need for stronger witness protection measures to ensure, in keeping with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's statement of November 25, 2009, that "the perpetrators [of the Maguindanao massacre] will not escape justice."
The United Nations special envoy on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, recommended in 2007 that the government ensure protection for persons who testify in killings for as long as they are at risk, and that they be provided housing and other assistance to ensure their security and well-being. Human Rights Watch made similar recommendations in its 2007 and 2009 reports about extrajudicial killings. None of these recommendations have been implemented.
Human Rights Watch called on the Arroyo administration to provide sufficient funding to ensure adequate protection for witnesses and their families, and urged the government to promptly investigate acts of witness intimidation and killing, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Security forces and the Justice Department should take the measures needed to protect their physical safety, including relocation where necessary, and ensure that witnesses and their families are afforded appropriate housing. Witnesses who are themselves implicated in the killings should be appropriately - and safely - detained prior to trial.
Human Rights Watch also urged the Philippine Congress to increase significantly the penalties for intimidating or assaulting a witness. Currently, intimidating a witness incurs a fine of not more than 3,000 pesos (US$65) or imprisonment of six months to one year, or both. Offenses against intimidating witnesses should also be expanded to include offenses against their relatives.
"President Arroyo has a long way to go to live up to her promise that the perpetrators of the Maguindanao massacre do not escape justice," Pearson said. "The legacy of her administration will depend in great measure on the outcome of this horrific case."
Soldiers at Checkpoint Shot at Truck Carrying Burmese Migrants
March 5, 2010
A bullet-ridden pick-up truck after it was shot by Thai soldiers in the southern province of Ranong when the driver tried to smuggle 13 migrants from Burma through a security checkpoint on February 25, 2010. Three migrant children were killed and five adult migrants were injured.
The government needs to carry out an immediate investigation into why and how the army opened fire on this truck. Shooting into a truck apparently without concern for who could be killed or wounded is not acceptable. Those responsible need to face the consequences.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch
(New York) - The Thai government should promptly investigate the use of lethal force by Thai soldiers against Burmese migrants, which resulted in the death of three children, Human Rights Watch said today.
The army said soldiers fired on a pick-up truck carrying 13 undocumented migrant workers from Burma on February 25, 2010, after the driver failed to heed a signal to stop for inspection. Human Rights Watch has obtained photos showing that the truck was riddled with bullet holes.
"The government needs to carry out an immediate investigation into why and how the army opened fire on this truck," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Shooting into a truck apparently without concern for who could be killed or wounded is not acceptable. Those responsible need to face the consequences."
The shooting in Pak Nam sub-district, Ranong province, involved soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division under the overall command of Col. Pornsak Punsawad. The soldiers opened fire with assault rifles at about 5 a.m. on February 25, when the driver failed to heed a signal to stop for inspection near a fishing pier, the army said. The children killed were a three or four-year-old boy, a six or seven-year-old girl, and a 16-year-old boy. Five others in the truck were wounded.
Human Rights Watch urged both the Thai government and the National Human Rights Commission to conduct transparent and thorough investigations immediately into the shooting. If excessive or illegal force is found to have been used, all those responsible, including those at the officer level who gave orders or were otherwise involved, should be prosecuted or disciplined in an appropriate manner, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch said that Thai soldiers, when performing law enforcement duties, should strictly abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. The Basic Principles require that law enforcement officials shall as far as possible apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force. Whenever the use of force is unavoidable, they must use restraint and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense. The legitimate objective should be achieved with minimal damage and injury, and with respect for the preservation of human life.
Human Rights Watch also called on the Thai government to provide unfettered access for investigators to the survivors and to ensure that none of the survivors are deported to Burma while investigations are conducted. The Thai government should also provide humanitarian assistance to the surviving victims and ensure that appropriate compensation is paid to the families of the three dead children.
"This episode shows that the government needs to rethink its approach to border security," Adams said. "What is needed are well-trained civilian border police, who are less likely to be trigger-happy than soldiers. The government should act urgently to avoid a repeat of such a horrific human tragedy."
Eighty percent of migrant workers in Thailand are from Burma. Millions of these workers and their families have fled repression and poverty in Burma, only to find abuse and exploitation in Thailand. Apart from the deadly risks at heavily armed checkpoints along the border areas, migrants who manage to find their way into Thailand also suffer at the hands of corrupt civil servants and police, unscrupulous employers, and violent thugs. Local police and officials frequently ignore or fail to investigate complaints effectively.
Human Rights Watch's recent report, "From the Tiger to the Crocodile: Abuse of Migrant Workers in Thailand," detailed the widespread and severe human rights violations faced by migrant workers in Thailand - including killings, torture in detention, extortion, sexual abuse, and labor rights abuses. The perpetrators of those abuses have little fear of consequences, Human Rights Watch said, because they know that undocumented migrants fear deportation if they complain through legal channels.
The vulnerability of undocumented migrants has increased as a result of the Thai government's decision requiring all migrants to enter a process to verify their nationalities by March 2, or face arrest and deportation.
"Migrant workers make huge contributions to Thailand's economy, but receive little protection from abuse and exploitation," Adams said. "It is time for the Thai government to do the right thing by showing migrants that the state will provide justice for them when they suffer abuse."
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