Police block rioters in front of the Divisional Officers building in Kumba, Southwest Region, Cameroon, amid an ongoing political crisis in the country’s Anglophone region. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
YAOUNDE, Sep 26 2017 (IPS)

“For too long we have been afraid to speak out against injustices and all sorts of atrocities happening in Cameroon, thinking it [the silence] will protect us. If I were to repeat what I have done on Canal 2 English [television], I will do it again. I now stand ready for any eventuality,” says Cameroonian journalist Elie Smith.

The outspoken journalist told IPS he was forced to resign from Cameroon’s leading private media house following intense pressure from government. The CEO of the station had suspended a talk show, Tough Talk, Smith co-hosted with Divine Ntaryike and Henry Kejang. He said Prime Minister Philemon Yang and Justice Minister Laurent Esso wanted him fired.Journalist Tim Finian Njua was brutally attacked and taken away by unknown men in Bamenda. He only realised they were security officers when he was brought to Yaounde.

The trio were accused of being too critical of government, especially during reporting and analysis of an ongoing 11-month-long protest in English-speaking Cameroon. Protesters had adopted civil disobedience as their trump card, keeping schools and courts in the region closed since Nov. 21, 2016.

Smith, who had refused to travel from the financial capital, the port city of Douala, to Yaounde, the country’s political capital, to apologise to the prime minister for being too critical of government, was later told to stick to a program called World Views and refrain from any discussion of domestic politics.

“On Sep. 4 when schools were expected to resume in Cameroon, protests marred the resumption in English-speaking Cameroon. Yet, the CEO asked me to lie on air that resumption was effective in order to please government. I refused. That is when we both realised we can no longer work together,” he told IPS.

Despite losing his job, Smith is among the few journalists who have avoided prison in a government clampdown on reporters since the crisis erupted in English-speaking Cameroon. Others have been jailed and tortured, while some are currently in exile. For the most part, security forces target English-speaking journalists whom government accuses of supporting or sympathising with “terrorists”.

Journalists or terrorists?

Cameroon was first colonised by the Germans in 1884. After the defeat of Germany in World War I, France and Britain shared the territory under a mandate from the League of Nations, with Britain keeping one-fifth of it.  A federation of two states with equal status was declared in 1961, but was abolished in 1972 following a referendum – its conduct remains contested to this day.

Citizens of the former trust territory of British Southern Cameroons who have over the years, complained of marginalisation and lack of control over their assets, rose up in October 2016 in two ranks- some demanding a return to federation while others demand total independence. Both camps however agree on the same complaints; insignificant placements of English-speaking Cameroonians in administration, and inequality which they say led to impoverishment of their region and its population and subjugation of their educational and cultural heritage. At least 13 people have been shot dead since the crisis erupted.

A controversial law on the suppression of acts of terrorism in Cameroon enacted in December 2014 is being used to try citizens arrested in relation to the protests. Journalists arrested for reporting on the crisis are equally tried at the military tribunal under the same law which forbids public meetings, street protests or any action that the government deems to be disturbing the peace.

Tim Finian Njua, one of eight journalists arrested in relation to the ongoing crisis, says he is finding it difficult readjusting after spending over six months in jail. The editor of Life Time newspaper, Njua was freed from the Kondengui Prison in Yaounde alongside Atia Tilarious and two other journalists, and close to 50 protesters, following a presidential clemency in August.

Njua told IPS he was brutally attacked and taken away by unknown men in Bamenda. He only realised they were security officers when he was brought to Yaounde. “They said our newspaper reported an incident that may provoke or aggravate rebellion. I was charged with acts of terrorism, insurrection, secession and propagation of false information.”

Atia Tilarious, who had earlier been arrested and released for hosting a TV debate on the uprising, had gone to Kondengui after his first arrest, this time in the company of Amos Fofung, a reporter for The Guardian Post newspaper.

Fofung told IPS “I was let out of prison six months later. I was told the state attorney sent apologies for keeping me in jail without charge or evidence. I walked out and later travelled back to Buea. It made me bolder. I am still objective in my reporting.”

Meanwhile Fonjah Hanson Muki, proprietor of Cameroon Report, was arrested alongside five of his staff in the town of Bamenda, which is regarded as the epicentre of the uprising. They were accused by a military tribunal of propagatng false information. They were also accused of receiving money from secessionists abroad to push a separatist agenda through their reporting. The last of them, arrested on July 25, was released on Sept. 18. The media owner was ordered never to report on the ongoing crisis.

Skewed regulator

Before the clampdown on journalists reporting the crisis, the national communication council had issued a warning to journalists in the country, tacitly outlawing all media debates on the return to federation. Though the council’s decision preceded a speech by President Paul Biya making the topic taboo, French-language media organs continued the debate, while English-language tabloids piped down.

“You know we are not the same. There are things Le Messager or Le Jour can report and go free but The Guardian Post or The Sun will be sanctioned for doing same. The public does not understand, that is why you find citizens criticising us on social media, saying we are chicken-hearted,” a newspaper publisher who asked for anonymity told IPS.

The council has been criticised for siding with state officials and influential citizens. It meted out sanctions on Sep. 22, suspending some 20 media organs, publishers and journalists for periods ranging from one to six months. Most of the decisions were verdicts on complaints filed by government officials like the Minister of Forestry and influential citizens like Cameroonian football star and billionaire, Samuel Eto’o Fils.

Ten-year jail sentence for reporting on terrorism

Ahmed Aba, Cameroon correspondent for the Hausa service of the French international radio, RFI, is currently serving a ten-year jail term. He was found guilty of “laundering of proceeds of terrorism” and “non-denunciation of terrorism” by the military tribunal in Yaounde.

The verdict, handed down this year after two years of pre-trial detention, was appealed by his lawyer, Clement Nakong. Aba told IPS at the prison yard in Yaounde that he is innocent and hopes to be set free after the appeal. He said he was accused of working for the Nigeria-based Boko Haram terror group.

But the outcome of an appeal is uncertain as a government spokesman bluntly declared at a press conference that RFI supports terrorists. The appeal hearing was expected to begin among others in mid-August this year, but Aba’s name was taken off the list.

International and local institutions and activists have been advocating for his release. He was recently named one of the winners of the 2017 International Press Freedom Award by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Another journalist, Gubai Gatama, was placed under investigation and interrogated at the police headquarters for reporting on Boko Haram.

“Cameroon is clearly using anti-state legislation to silence criticism in the press,” said CPJ Africa Program Director Angela Quintal in a statement. “When you equate journalism with terrorism, you create an environment where fewer journalists are willing to report on hard news for fear of reprisal. Cameroon must amend its laws and stop subjecting journalists–who are civilians–to military trial.”

On Sep. 20, CPJ issued a report, written by Quintal, warning that in addition to detaining journalists, authorities have banned news outlets deemed sympathetic to the Anglophone protesters, shut down internet in regions experiencing unrest, and prevented outside observers, including CPJ, from accessing the country by delaying the visa process.

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Aug 17 2015 (IPS)

Egyptian authorities are already holding a record number of journalists behind bars, and a draconian new anti-terror law signed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday will further broaden the crackdown on dissent, press freedom groups warn.

It imposes heavy penalties on journalists who publish “false news,” including fines of up to 64,000 dollars for stories that contradict official reports on terrorist attacks. Critics say this will create a chilling effect on independent reporting, particularly on smaller presses.

On Monday, Said Benarbia, Director of the International Commission of Jurists, Middle East and North Africa Programme, said, “The promulgation of the Counter-Terrorism Law by President el-Sisi expands the list of repressive laws and decrees that aim to stifle dissent and the exercise of fundamental freedoms.

“Egypt’s authorities must ensure the law is not used as a tool of repression and, to this end, comprehensively revise it so that it fully complies with international human rights law and standards,” he added.

Mahmoud Sultan, chief editor of the pro-Islamist newspaper Al-Misriyun, Tweeted that, “The anti-terrorism law signed by Sisi clearly tells journalists and the media and anyone with an opinion: Very dark days ahead.”

The ICJ said the law also gives state officials broad immunity from criminal responsibility for the use of force in the course of their duties, including the use of lethal force when it is not strictly necessary to protect lives.

“[The new law] grants sweeping surveillance and detention powers to prosecutors, entrenches terrorism circuits within the court system (which have in the past frequently involved fair trial violations), and grants the President far-reaching, discretionary powers to ‘take the necessary measures’ to maintain public security, where there is a ‘danger of terrorist crimes.'”

Press freedom groups have strongly criticised the law since it first appeared in draft form, with an earlier incarnation (since softened, following international outcry) threatening to jail journalists who printed information that contradicted the official line.

In a letter to al-Sisi last month, Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), noted that “your government arbitrarily imprisons journalists using national security and anti-terror laws. In a prison census conducted on June 1, CPJ found that Egypt was holding at least 18 journalists in jail in relation to their work, the highest since CPJ began keeping records.”

Most of the imprisoned journalists are accused of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt, he noted. At least five other journalists have been arrested since then.

According to Al Jazeera, financing “terrorist groups” will also carry a penalty of life in prison, which in Egypt is 25 years. Inciting violence, which includes “promoting ideas that call for violence”, brings between five and seven years in jail, as does creating or using websites that spread such ideas.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Gossip and rumour based on secret intelligence sources may be all that is needed to deport a foreign national from Canada on national security grounds, legal experts say.

Secret evidence has been used “in a whole range of immigration procedures,” such as applications for permanent residence or citizenship in Canada, “which do not involve actual hearings but are simply administrative procedures,” says Sharryn Aiken, a Queen’s University law professor and immigration and refugee expert."It is next to impossible for the person concerned to mount a response to the allegations against them." -- law professor Sharryn Aiken

“What we are seeing is a stunning intensification of the use of secret evidence in a range of procedures,” she told IPS. “What we have seen, frankly even before 9/11, [but] a trend that has intensified in the aftermath of 9/11, is the increasing tendency of the federal government to criminalise and securitise non-citizens.

“And by that I mean to basically subject non-citizens – and in particular Muslim and Arab men, as well as other racialised non-citizens from certain parts of the world – to a disproportionate degree of suspicion and scrutiny.”

Toronto immigration lawyer Barb Jackman agrees, reporting that she has found 100 examples of Federal Court of Canada immigration and refugee cases where secret evidence has been applied against immigrants already in Canada or other foreign nationals outside the country who are arriving and sponsored by families or employers.

“The [Federal] Court has not generally questioned the secret evidence. It seems very comfortable with deciding cases on secret evidence without the assistance of counsel to challenge or question that evidence,” Jackman said.

One difficulty for the accused is that there is “a different threshold in terms of burden of proof required for the immigration proceeding” in Canada, says Mike Larsen, a criminologist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia.

Immigration officers and adjudicators consider “an objective reasonable suspicion or balanced probability standard, as opposed to a criminal proceeding [in Canada] where you have [beyond] reasonable doubt,” Larsen told IPS.

Jackman says her own client, Douglas Gray Freeman, faced “gossip” from U.S. intelligence files before the Federal Court.

Freeman is an African-American and U.S. citizen who fled to Canada in 1969 after shooting and wounding a police office in Chicago in what he described as an act of self-defence during a period of racial tension in the U.S.

Freeman (not his original name) married a Canadian woman, fathered children and worked quietly and illegally at the main reference library in Toronto. His presence was eventually discovered and he was extradited back to the U.S. where in 2008 he pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated battery, for which he served a 30-day jail sentence. Freeman also donated 250,000 dollars to a charity and was given two years probation.

His subsequent effort to immigrate legally to Canada and reunite with his family has been met with tough opposition from Canadian authorities. After a hearing before the Federal Court of Canada, Justice Anne Mactavish ruled in October that Freeman was denied “procedural fairness.” Despite the lack of evidence, the government had claimed that he had “terrorist” links with the Black Panther party.

Jackman says other federal court cases have popped up involving intelligence mistakenly released from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and based on unnamed informants.

“There may be cases where [the government authorities] have ‘hard’ evidence but in most I think it is soft intelligence, which is based on talking to people and constructing an image of the person from rumour and gossip,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Canadian courts have been wrestling with the constitutionality of the security certificate provision in the immigration and refugee protection act, which also allows for secret evidence.

It was not introduced by the current right-wing Conservative government but by the previous centrist Liberals in 2001, when the latter were in power and “overhauling” Canadian immigrant law, says Aiken.

Since 1991, Canada has issued security certificates against several foreign nationals on its territory on the basis that they are national security risks who should be deported back to their home country.

The security certificates allow authorities to indefinitely detain those who resist the removal process with a court challenge. One of them involves a successful refugee claimant from Egypt, Mohammad Mahjoub, who has been imprisoned without trial for 13 years while fighting deportation.

But Canadian authorities are running into resistance from the courts, which have ruled that foreign nationals cannot be sent back to countries known to practice torture in their criminal justice systems to elicit confessions for alleged crimes.

The Supreme Court of Canada in 2011 also ordered the cancelling of a security certificate against the Moroccan-born Adil Charkaoui and the amending of the security certificate system because it was unconstitutional in its then current form. The Canadian government followed through with new security advocate provisions in the legislation.

But Aikin calls the new provisions problematic because the accused person has limited access to the security advocate, who cannot disclose the secret intelligence information gathered on him or her.

“The general pattern of withholding contact after the special advocate has had access to the evidence means it is next to impossible for the person concerned to mount a response to the allegations against them,” she says.

Secret evidence is still being introduced in other immigration and refugee situations, not related to security certificates, where judges and adjudicators routinely deny people access to security advocates, says Janet Dench, the executive director of the Montreal based Canadian Council for Refugees.

Here, people are “worse off” because they often face the secret evidence against them without a lawyer present, Dench told IPS.

“What we are concerned is that …if the government stopped using security certificates because it may not be productive for them, they were not getting the results they wanted. So, [they] will just use the secret evidence in the other procedures,” Dench says.

Meanwhile, Melissa Anderson, a communications spokesperson for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, says an increasing number of refugee cases involving national security are being transferred from the IRB to the Federal Court.

In those circumstances, the Minister of Public Safety and the Canada Border Services Agency then become engaged in what turns into an admissibility hearing and a more “adversarial process,” to boot, Anderson told IPS.

“My understanding and I don’t have any statistics on it is that the Minister of [Public Safety] is participating in more refugee protection claims than ever before.”

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 2013 (IPS)

Eighteen days ago, Diane Wilson, a 65-year-old fisherwoman from Texas, decided to go on a hunger strike.

Diane Wilson protesting outside the White House. Credit: Ted Majdosz

Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Wilson has been protesting outside the White House gates for over two weeks now. Her demand: Shut down Guantanamo Bay prison.

U.S. President Barack Obama has come under heavy criticism for his failure to close down the facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Obama has blamed the Congress for not supporting the closure. But experts and activists suggest that Obama can at least start the process by transferring detainees who have been cleared of all charges.

The detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay opened in 2002. According to reports, 100 out of 166 prisoners are on hunger strike. Some of the prisoners are being force-fed. Human rights groups have strongly condemned this technique of force-feeding prisoners, labeling it a form of torture.

This is not the first time Guantanamo Bay prison has witnessed hunger strikes. The first one dates back to 2005 where close to 200 detainees were on hunger strike.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What do you want to achieve through this hunger strike? As you know, many prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison have been cleared of all charges, but some are still awaiting trial.

A: The facility should be closed down – this is what I want. I am fasting in solidarity with those prisoners at Guantanamo, simply because they want justice. It is pretty much well known that President Obama can shut down Guantanamo right now. He can do it. He should have done it yesterday.

Q: What would you do if your body just gives up, given that you are a 65-year-old woman surviving on water, a pinch of salt and a potassium tablet for 17 days now?

A: Whenever such thoughts cross my mind, I think about those men in Guantanamo."I am a constant reminder of the conditions under which the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay live." -- Diane Wilson

I get to lay down on a soft bed at night. I get to talk with people and I don’t have to sit in a cold, freezing room. I am not humiliated and tortured and I think if they can do it, I can do it.

Moreover, this is not my first time fasting for many days at a stretch. I had fasted for 30 days. The longest I had fasted was for 45 days when I was protesting to stop Valero from processing tar sands in Houston, Texas. I was little bit younger then, but age definitely takes its toll. This is early in the game though.

Basically, I am an optimistic person and I really believe that people can make a difference. In a way I have surrendered to the fast. I will take it as far as I can. I don’t mind collapsing. All I got to do is think of those men in Guantanamo. I know we can shut down the facility, and if required I am ready to go that far.

Q: Why did you choose the White House as the venue for your protest?

A: I am protesting directly in front of the White House. It is a strategic zone. A few days ago I locked myself to the White House gates. I wear an orange jumpsuit and makeshift chains round my legs and neck. I also wear a black hood over my face. This is my way of representing those men in Guantanamo in front of the Obama administration.

I am a constant reminder of the conditions under which the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay live. To propel any change, you have to be in their faces, and I am in their face.

Q: How do people react when they see you protesting outside the White House?

A: Sometimes people know that you are going to be there protesting. Sometimes people out of the blue come up and stand there. Sometimes people are just passing by and they agree with us. I would say almost 90 percent of the people that we speak to are in total agreement with our cause.

There are a lot of children who are brought to see the White House and they are always very curious. We got a huge poster of Obama with a statement that says Guantanamo is inefficient, expensive and in no way keeps America safe. In fact it is a recruiting tool because of the way the prisoners are being treated.

There are a lot of international guests and they are always curious and many people come and speak to us. We have had senators coming up and telling us that we were doing a good job. Actually some came up to us and shook our hands. They said that we should keep it up. In fact, it is a matter of keeping up. That is what it is.

Q: Who is your inspiration?

A: I take a lot of my inspiration from Gandhi. He is my man.

Q: What do you see yourself as – a political activist or an environmental activist or a fisherwoman?

A: When people ask me, I say I am a fisherwoman. I am a fourth generation shrimper. I did not do anything until I reached 40 and I am a really late bloomer.

I think there are a lot of problems with the recent movements – you got the environmental, you got the indigenous, you got the human rights and they tend to remain in separate camps. But there is a connection between all of them.

I guess because I am a fisherwoman and I lived my life on the bay and there is no sense of boundaries so my activism has flowed.

Q: What has been the reaction from your family?

A: I generally don’t tell them what I am doing and I let them find out. My family members are by and large Republicans and they love George Bush. They don’t like this kind of out there and in your face like action from me. So it is not fun.

Q: Diane, you are the author of book called “An Unreasonable Woman”. Do you think you are being unreasonable in your demands?

A: No, I am not unreasonable. I am asking for these men’s lives.

Excerpt:

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of Military Police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during in-processing to the temporary detention facility on Jan. 11, 2002. Credit: Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy/public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

Public debate here over the military prison at Guantanamo Bay heated up again following Monday’s surprise publication of a highly charged article by an inmate at the prison, one of dozens currently engaged in a months-long hunger strike over detainees’ “indefinite detention”.

The op-ed follows just days after the head U.N. official in charge of human rights, Navi Pillay, said the indefinite detention of Guantanamo Bay inmates runs counter to international law, and called again for the prison to be closed."The majority of people who are at Guantanamo right now have been cleared for release, and they have been cleared for up to six years." -- CCR's Susan Hu

“I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity,” Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni national who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for the past 11 years, wrote in the New York Times.

“I do not want to die here, but until President [Barack] Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.”

Moqbel is one of 43 prisoners at the U.S. military camp who are currently on a hunger strike.

His essay, which has received widespread attention, is not being interpreted as a plea of his innocence. Rather, many are seeing it as a testimony of the hopeless despair caused by the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The essay also adds to pressure on President Obama to close Guantanamo, a pledge he made during the first year of his presidency, in 2009. Obama is facing widespread criticism now that the Guantanamo Bay prison has surpassed the two wars his presidency inherited.

“President Obama ran on a platform that he would close down Guantanamo and bring the United States back in compliance with international human rights law – but none of this happened,” Susan Hu, a legal fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and advocacy group representing some of the Guantanamo detainees, told IPS.

“In fact, he signed an executive order in 2009 promising that he would close the prison, and he has done absolutely nothing since then to do so. Even though he has the power to transfer people out of Guantanamo right now, he hasn’t done that in the past two years and transfers have all but ceased. The men see Guantanamo as the place they will be living until they die.”

Hu says her clients have consistently said they are falling into despair, reaching a point that refusing to eat is the only way they can express their loss of hope.

She also is clear that the onus is on President Obama to act.

“I think there is widespread misconception that Congress is the obstacle to releasing the prisoners in Guantanamo, when in fact President Obama needs to be taken to task for not using his power,” Hu continues.

“The majority of people who are at Guantanamo right now have been cleared for release, and they have been cleared for up to six years. I think the only reason these men have not been released is because President Obama is not willing to risk his political capital to move toward closing Guantanamo.”

Back to Bush

Despite keeping related criticism relatively contained during his first four-year term, the situation has taken a dramatic turn following the president’s signing, in January, of a defence bill that critics claim all but abandons the pledge to close the facility.

That legislation, the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), barred the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States for any purpose, including for trial in federal court. It also required the defence secretary to meet rigorous conditions before any detainee could be returned to his own country or resettled in a third country.

“That bill requires certification from every agency that has a stake in the matter in order for a prisoner that was cleared for release to be transferred back to their home country or transferred out,” Hu told IPS.

“The bill also was used to prevent federal funding to be used to transfer prisoners into the United States – effectively barring them from federal courts. Obviously this makes it more difficult for Obama to transfer prisoners out of Guantanamo, and this has helped create the feeling of frustration among the prisoners that they will ever be transferred out.”

Previously, the U.S. government had been able to simply transfer a detainee who had pled guilty during military prosecution and served his time. But the NDAA provision effectively removed the ability to reach plea agreements or to push through promises already made to release inmates.

Yet Hu says it remains possible to transfer prisoners back to their home countries and close down the prison as Obama still has the authority to do so – despite having failed to exercise that power over the past two years.

“He is putting all the blame on Congress, when in fact he still possess the power to follow through with the his promise to close the prison,” Hu says.

“He closed the office in the State Department that was responsible for resettling the detainees, and he has not filled the White House position that is meant to oversee the closure of Guantanamo. These are all things that he could be doing right now, despite the restrictions created by the bill.”

Meanwhile, signs of the growing frustration on the part of detainees have manifested in a wave of hunger strikes in recent months, leading Guantanamo officials to engage in mass forced feedings. That process reached a new height last month when tensions escalated to become violent between detainees and prison guards.

“From what we’ve heard from our own clients there, the majority of the men in Camp 5 and Camp 6 are on hunger strike,” Hu told IPS.

“When the strike first began in Camp 6, it was all but two of the men, so that was 120 people, though now we are hearing it’s 43. We hear the guards are trying to retaliate against the prisoners on hunger strike by placing them in solitary confinement, like the conditions they were held in back in 2005.”

Guards are also reportedly moving prisoners out of communal areas and placing them en masse in solitary confinement.

“Its worrying to see that the conditions have worsened in such a way that it sort of like going back to the worse years under President [George W.] Bush, when prisoners were being abused and mistreated,” Hu says. “Today we are seeing this all over again.”

Zeki Gorbuz, a Turkish asylum seeker in Greece, who was arrested on Feb. 12, remains detained today due to an international warrant that was transmitted by Turkish authorities to Greece just one day before his asylum interview. Turkish media were quick to report the arrest, describing Gorbuz as a radical leftist and regional leader of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLCP), which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government.

On the same day that Gorbuz was detained, Bulent Aytunc Comert, who arrived in Greece as an asylum seeker in 2002, was also arrested. His request for asylum was approved in 2003 but was never cleared by the ministry of police.

Branded by Turkish authorities as a member of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), Comert is a fugitive. He was imprisoned in the notorious solitary confinement units known as the “White Cells” on what he says was a fabricated murder charge.

“Members of several civil society organisations and student groups [in Turkey] have been put into prison, often on flimsy evidence and based on the anti-terrorism law that can be used to charge pretty much any form of dissent as terrorism."
Having come here to escape persecution, Gorbuz and Comert, like many other Turkish political dissidents and Turkish Kurds, are now stuck in no-man’s land, suspended between the highly bureaucratic Greek immigration and asylum system, and an extremely hostile government in Turkey.

Indications of a secret deal to return asylum seekers in Greece to Turkey are surfacing, while human rights activists warn of the grave impacts of Greece’s plan to extradite persons in need of international protection against criminal charges that might be fabricated by Turkish authorities.

According to Turkish media reports, a Feb. 4 meeting between Turkish Chief of Police Mehmet Kiliclar and Greek Police Chief Nikolaos Papagiannopoulos ended with the Greek official’s promise to dismantle Kurdish as well as radical leftist “Turkish terrorist cells” here.

A month later, on Mar. 4, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited Turkey for a high profile meeting with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, where the two heads of state signed 25 cooperation deals covering areas such as health, tourism and fighting illegal migration.

That same day, the Ankara Strategic Institution pointed out that private Turkish investment in Greece has been used as a pressure tool in order to promote the deal on extradition. More reports followed referring to preparations for extraditions but the Greek government is yet to responded to any of them.

Besides Gorbuz and Comert, three more asylum seekers have been arrested since February, including Meric Serkan on Feb. 14, Fadik Adauman on Feb. 26 and Huseyin Cakil on Apr. 6. All are wanted by Turkish authorities for “terrorist activity” and, according to the Greek Council for Refugees, all five have been victims of torture during their detention in Turkey.

The activist group Movement for Freedom and Democratic Rights (KEDDE), which has been a whistleblower on the deal between Turkish and Greek authorities, says there is no guarantee of Turkish dissidents’ safety if they are forced to return.

“People arrested under the Turkish anti-terror law are subject to a long detention with an indefinite time limit and with no access to their case file until the beginning of the trial (which could be situated two years later),” according to a statement on the group’s website.

“It might also mean they become subject to the jurisdiction and judgment of special courts, for the operation of which Turkey has been several times condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, since these courts make use…as means of ‘proof’ confessions extorted through torture.”

Cakil’s case was tried in the Greek city of Thessaloniki and, given that his asylum claim has been informally accepted and is pending ministry clearance, the move to extradite him was denied.

Gorbuz and Comert who were apprehended in Patras, about 215 kilometres west of Athens, were also spared extradition but they will now have to face a court of second instance.

Given that most cases here take months or even years just to reach court, let alone a decision, this “rapid response by Greek authorities…is indicative of political interests (both Greek and Turkish) behind the cases,” lawyer Dimitris Sarafianos, member of the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH), told IPS.

He believes it “strange” that the prosecutor of the court of second instance appealed the decision in “absolute contradiction with the fact that the prosecutor of the hearing had pointed out that the charges were heavily unfounded, requesting for the continuation of the detention of one refugee (Gorbuz).”

“Given the persistent rumours referring to a secret agreement between the two Prime Ministers, Samaras and Erdogan, concerning matters of extradition of asylum seekers to Turkey, it is clear that the Greek government is prompt to violate the Geneva Convention,” the lawyer said.

According to Sarafianos, who participated in an ELDH fact-finding mission to Turkey, over 10,000 citizens of Kurdish origin are currently faced with charges, as are scores of Turkish unionist in the private and public sectors, professors, students and lawyers defending human rights.

The extradition deal currently being worked out the with Greek authorities appears to be part and parcel of this ongoing wave of detentions and arrests of political dissidents as well as suspected members of the DHKP-C – branded a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union — and members of Turkey’s Contemporary Lawyers Association (CHD).

Earlier this year, Erdogan rushed to connect the DHKP-C with the Feb. 1 bombing of the U.S embassy in Ankara.

Dr. Kerem Oktem, expert on contemporary Turkish politics and research fellow at the European Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, told IPS that although the detentions “caused a great outcry…many of the arrested people are intimately related to the DHKP-C, which took responsibility for the bombing of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters and the Justice Ministry in Ankara on Mar. 11.”

Although Oktem acknowledges that “members of several civil society organisations and student groups have been put into prison, often on flimsy evidence and based on the anti-terrorism law that can be used to charge pretty much any form of dissent as terrorism”, he believes it would be incorrect to characterise the crackdown as being directed solely against dissenting civil voices.

Often it is aimed at apprehending “groups and individuals that maintain relations with real terrorist groups”, he said.

(END)

Human rights groups, press watchdogs, and even the U.S. government have strongly denounced recent prison sentences meted out against journalists and opposition activists accused of violating Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism laws.

In an unusually tough statement against a close ally, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned about the trial, conviction, and sentencing of Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, as well as seven political opposition figures, under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation.”

It said the 18-year prison sentence for Eskinder and life imprisonment for opposition leader Andualem Arage Wale handed down by the high court in Addis Ababa Friday “are extremely harsh and reinforce our serious questions about the politicized use of Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law in these and other cases.”

The sentences are “emblematic of the Ethiopian government’s determination to gag any dissenting voice in the country”, charged Claire Beston, Amnesty International’s Ethiopia researcher.

She said both men, as well as Nathnael Mekonnen Gebre Kidan, another opposition leader who was convicted late last month in the same anti-terrorism case, were “prisoners of conscience – convicted and imprisoned because of their legitimate and peaceful activities. They should be immediately and unconditionally released.”

The prison sentences followed the Jun. 27 conviction by the Ethiopian high court of a total of two dozen journalists, political opposition leaders, and other activists for allegedly violating the controversial Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009 (ATP).

Of the 24, Eskinder, an influential blogger and journalist who has long championed basic freedoms in Ethiopia, is perhaps the most well known in the West, having just recently received the prestigious PEN America press freedom award. While he remains in detention, the other five journalists convicted by the court were tried in absentia.

Eskinder, who has been detained at least eight times since 1995, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), was charged with participating in a terrorist organisation, planning a terrorist act, and “working with the Ginbot 7 organisation”, a U.S.-based opposition group which the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi officially designated as a terrorist group last year.

The ATP is the latest in a series of laws that the Meles government has used to crack down on political dissent and suppress free speech, according to international human rights groups, including Amnesty International, HRW, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), among others.

In a joint appearance in February, several independent U.N. human rights experts, including special rapporteurs who deal with press freedom, counter-terrorism and human rights, and human rights defenders, also warned against the use of the ATP against individuals who were merely exercising their rights to free speech and association.

The ATP’s article on support for terrorism, for example, contains a vague prohibition on “moral support”, under which journalists have been charged and convicted. “Encouragement of terrorism,” under which all 24 defendants in the latest case were charged, includes the publication of statements “likely to be understood as encouraging terrorist acts”, a highly subjective definition that lends itself to serious abuse.

“Not only do (Meles’s) officials have zero tolerance for criticism, they consider people who either talk to or write about the opposition as abetting terrorists,” noted Tobias Hoffman, an East Africa expert at the University of California at Berkeley, in an op-ed published in the New York Times last week just before the prison sentences were announced.

As defined by the ATP, an “act of terrorism” is also vague and could include activities such as organising a peaceful march or assembly.

“The Ethiopian government is using every means at its disposal to shut down press freedom,” said HRW’s deputy Africa director, Leslie Lefkow. “The use of draconian laws and trumped-up charges to crack down on free speech and peaceful dissent makes a mockery of the rule of law.”

She urged Ethiopia’s donors to immediately call for the release of all those who have been unlawfully prosecuted under the law and for a revision of the Proclamation.

She was joined by several other organisations, including London-based Article 19 and the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), whose president, Omar Faruk Osman, called the prosecution of journalists under anti-terrorism laws “unacceptable”.

That position was echoed by the State Department whose strong denunciation of the prosecution and conviction of the defendants was particularly notable given Washington’s generally staunch support for the Meles government.

Indeed, Addis Ababa has been one of the three top U.S. aid recipients in sub-Saharan Africa over the last several years. In 2011, it received nearly 800 million dollars, more than any other African nation.

The European Union, which released a somewhat more subdued criticism of the trial, is also a major donor to Ethiopia, about a third of whose budget is provided by donor countries and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, according to Hoffman.

In a major 2010 report, HRW criticised the donors’ alleged failure to monitor how the Meles government uses the aid to support repression and consolidate its power and to take corrective measures.

“The West, most prominently the United States and the European Union, have concluded a strange pact with Meles Zenawi: So long as his government produces statistics that evince economic growth, they are willing to fund his regime – whatever its human rights abuses,” Hoffman charged last week.

In addition, Washington, in particular, receives the benefit of Ethiopian cooperation in counter-terrorism, currently targeted against al-Shabaab, the radical Islamist group in neighbouring Somalia. The U.S., for example, has been using a small base in Arba Minch to fly surveillance drones over Somali territory.

Similarly, Ethiopia has offered help on other regional security issues, most recently by providing 4,000 troops to separate Sudanese from South Sudanese forces in the contested border town of Abeye at a moment when war between the two sides loomed as a distinct possibility, according to David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Addis Ababa who now teaches at George Washington University.

He praised the State Department’s harsh rebuke of the court’s action, noting that it was “much stronger than anything they usually put out, and it was long overdue”.

But he also suggested that Washington had little leverage over Addis Ababa, noting that about 85 percent of U.S. aid to Ethiopia is earmarked for health programmes and food aid. Most of the rest is development assistance, and only a token military training programme of less than 100,000 dollars a year, he said.

“The question is, how far do you push it?” he told IPS. “Do you say (to the government), ‘If you go any further, we’re going to stop our humanitarian aid?’ The answer (from the Meles government) would be, ‘Okay.'”

“Humanitarian aid doesn’t give you much leverage,” he said.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.