Under national security laws, Australians' telecommunications metadata must be retained by service providers for two years. Credit: Stephen de Tarczynski/IPS

By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Nov 24 2016 (IPS)

For Australian activist Samantha Castro, it was her association with the non-profit publishing organisation Wikileaks that brought her to the attention of the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

She says she’s been followed, her car has been searched, and that the AFP has filmed and photographed her, along with her children, at protests. She believes that authorities have hacked her email account and computer and are responsible for wiping contacts from her phone.Without public scrutiny, without our eyes, as citizens, on what’s being done in our names, then that’s what authoritarianism looks like." -- Associate Professor Sarah Maddison

“They are putting all this time and effort into psychologically disrupting me in the hope that I will stop doing what I’m doing,” says Castro, an operations coordinator at Friends of the Earth who co-founded the Wikileaks Australian Citizens Alliance in 2010 to support the work of Wikileaks.

Wikileaks works to disseminate official and censored documents and files related to war, spying and corruption. While it has won a range of media freedom awards, its release of sensitive material has raised the ire of governments around the world, including Australia’s.

Castro explains that working with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – an Australian who remains holed-up in Ecuador’s London embassy, fearing extradition to the United States – resulted in significant attention from authorities.

It was these links with Assange’s organisation which, she believes, led to her house being broken into in 2014. She is adamant that the AFP was behind the break-in.

“The reason for that was information and knowledge from when I was with Wikileaks,” Castro, who did not report the matter to police, told IPS.

She says that although nothing was taken from the house, her keys were lined up on the kitchen table alongside a phone that had been opened up. She took the carefully displayed items to mean that she was being monitored.

“I knew straight away. It was a very clear symbol that they wanted me to know that they knew,” says Castro, adding that she spent “a lot of time” searching her house for bugs.

While the AFP does not comment on ongoing operations, a warrant is required to place a person under surveillance. IPS understands that further court approval is needed to enter a premises to covertly plant a listening device.

“I have felt the wrath of the surveillance state since we founded WACA,” says Castro, whose group changed its name in 2014 to Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance in recognition of a broadening movement.

It is not only activists from non-governmental organisations like WACA who are feeling under pressure. There is a growing sense here that space for the broader civil society to express dissent or call out abuse is being squeezed. Those who speak out risk public vilification, financial loss and jail time.

On his visit to Australia in October, the United Nations special rapporteur, Michel Forst, expressed surprise at the situation. “I was astonished to observe mounting evidence of a range of cumulative measures that have concurrently levied enormous pressure on Australian civil society,” he said.

Among the issues Forst pointed to were the defunding of environmental and indigenous bodies in response to litigation or advocacy work, anti-protest legislation and intensified secrecy laws, “particularly in the areas of immigration and national security.”

Attorney-General George Brandis last year took aim at environmentalists using legal action to further their cause, labelling them “radical green activists” who “engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects.”

The island state of Tasmania has, according to Forst, “prioritized business and government resource interests over the democratic rights of individuals to peacefully protest”. Similarly, legislation passed in March in New South Wales state means that protestors face up to seven years in jail for interfering with mining operations.

Mandatory data retention laws were introduced just over a year ago, purportedly for national security reasons, under which service providers must retain the metadata of Australians’ telecommunications activities for two years.

Twenty-one government agencies can access the data and all can apply for a Journalist Information Warrant in order to identify a reporter’s confidential source.

Paul Murphy, CEO of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance, a journalists’ union, says the profession’s ethics require journalists to protect the identity of their sources.

“Journalists must work smarter to ensure that brave people can tell their stories in confidence and public interest journalism can continue to play its vital role in a healthy, functioning democracy,” he argues.

Those in the higher levels of statutory bodies have not been spared.

Professor Gillian Triggs, President of Australia’s independent Human Rights Commission, has faced ongoing criticism from government ministers since the release in 2015 of her report into the mental and physical health of children in immigration detention.

Then-prime minister Tony Abbott called the report politically motivated and said the commission “should be ashamed of itself”, while Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said that much of the content was “either dated or questionable”.

In October, another cabinet minister urged Triggs “to stay out of politics and stick with human rights”, while Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed on Nov.16 that Triggs’ contract will not be renewed when it expires in mid-2017.

Despite the vitriol, Triggs has continued to fight back, a fact that Professor Brian Martin, a long-time whistleblowing activist, says may well inspire others “who might want to resist.”

But there’s a flipside: “You could say that overt attacks, like on Gillian Triggs, provide a warning to others that they better be careful,” says Martin.

Last year also saw the implementation of the controversial Border Force Act, legislation that Forst describes as “stifling”.

In June, a psychologist with extensive experience in the offshore processing centres on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and Nauru had his contract immediately cancelled after speaking out on the atrocious conditions in the camps.

Although no charges in relation to the Act have been laid, the secrecy provisions of the law allow for a two-year prison term for any immigration and border protection worker who discloses “protected information”, covering all information a worker obtains in the course of their employment.

Some exceptions apply, such in cases of child or sexual abuse, although whistleblowers are responsible for ensuring that any abuse is serious enough to warrant disclosure.

And in what is being seen here as a significant step for transparency into the plight of asylum seekers held indefinitely in the offshore centres, an amendment to the legislation was quietly posted on the website of Australia’s immigration department in mid-October.

The amendment frees doctors and other health professionals, including nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists, from the law’s secrecy provisions.

The government’s concession “is an enormous democratic win,” says Associate Professor Sarah Maddison, co-editor of the 2007 book ‘Silencing Dissent’.

“Without public scrutiny, without our eyes, as citizens, on what’s being done in our names, then that’s what authoritarianism looks like,” she adds.

Julian Assange in one of his rare public appearances in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been in hiding since June 2012. Credit: Creative Commons

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jan 30 2015 (IPS)

There is a window of hope, thanks to a U.N. human rights body, for a solution to the diplomatic asylum of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the embassy of Ecuador in London for the past two and a half years.

Authorities in Sweden, which is seeking the Australian journalist’s extradition to face allegations of sexual assault, admitted there is a possibility that measures could be taken to jumpstart the stalled legal proceedings against Assange.

The head of Assange’s legal defence team, former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, told IPS that in relation to this case “we have expressed satisfaction that the Swedish state“ has accepted the proposals of several countries.

The prominent Spanish lawyer and international jurist was referring to proposals set forth by Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Slovakia and Uruguay.

The final report by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), adopted Thursday Jan. 28 in Geneva, Switzerland, contains indications that a possible understanding among the different countries concerned might be on the horizon.

The UPR is a mechanism of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine the human rights performance of all U.N. member states.

The situation of Assange, a journalist, computer programmer and activist born in Australia in 1971, was introduced in Sweden’s UPR by Ecuador, the country that granted him diplomatic asylum in its embassy in London, and by several European and Latin American nations.

The head of the Swedish delegation to the UPR, Annika Söder, state secretary for political affairs at Sweden’s foreign ministry, told IPS that “This is a very complex matter in which the government can only do a few things.”

Söder said that in Sweden, Assange is “suspected of crimes, rape, sexual molestation in accordance with Swedish law. And that’s why the prosecutor in Sweden wants to conduct the primary investigation.

“We are aware of Mr. Assange’s being in the embassy of Ecuador and we hope that there will be ways to deal with the legal process in one way or the other. But it is up to the legal authorities to respond,” she said.

Assange’s legal defence team complains that Sweden’s public prosecutor’s office is delaying the legal proceedings and refuses to question him by telephone, email, video link or in writing.

Garzón noted that parallel to the lack of action by the Swedish prosecutor’s office, there is a secret U.S. legal process against Assange and other members of Wikileaks, the organisation he created in 2006.

“The origin of the U.S. legal proceedings against Assange was the mass publication by Wikileaks of documents, in many cases sensitive ones, which affected the United States,” said Garzón.

Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and other classified U.S. documents revealed practices by Washington that put it in an awkward position with other governments.

Assange sought refuge in the embassy after exhausting options in British courts to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning related to allegations of rape and sexual molestation, of which he says he is innocent. He has not been charged with a crime in Sweden and is worried that if he is extradited to that country he will be sent to the United States, where he is under investigation for releasing secret government documents.

If the legal process in Sweden begins to move forward, there would be a possibility for him to be able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy, where he took refuge on Jun. 19, 2012, and give up the diplomatic asylum he was granted by the government of Rafael Correa on Aug. 16, 2012.

In the UPR report, Sweden promised to examine recommendations made by other countries and to provide a response before the next U.N. Human Rights Council session, which starts Jun. 15.

Garzón has urged the Swedish government to specify a timeframe for the legal action against Assange, as the delegation from Ecuador recommended in the UPR.

“The Human Rights Committee, another specialised U.N. body, stipulates that precise timeframes must be established for putting a detained person at the disposal of a judge,” he pointed out.

Söder told IPS that Sweden’s legal system does not set any deadline for the prosecutor to complete the pretrial examination phase, as reflected in the Assange case.

Garzón is also asking Sweden to introduce, as soon as possible, “measures to ensure that the legal proceedings are carried out in accordance with standards that guarantee the rights of individuals, concretely the right to effective judicial recourse and legal proceedings without undue delays.”

He also called for the adoption of administrative and judicial measures to make investigations before the courts more effective. With respect to this, he mentioned “the practice of measures of inquiry abroad, in line with international cooperation mechanisms.”

In addition, the international jurist demanded measures to ensure that people deprived of their freedom are provided with legal guarantees in accordance with international standards.

The Swedish delegation agreed to study a recommendation by Argentina to “take concrete measures to ensure that guarantees of non-extradition will be given to any person under the control of the Swedish authorities while they are considered refugees by a third country,” in this case Ecuador.

These should include legislative measures, if necessary.

This is important because Assange is facing the threat that the Swedish or British authorities could accept an extradition request from the United States for charges of espionage, which carry heavy penalties.

In his comments to IPS, Garzón said he was “disappointed” that the Swedish state has not accepted one of Ecuador’s recommendations.

He was referring to the request that Sweden streamline international cooperation mechanisms on the part of the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office in order to ensure the right to effective legal remedy, specifically in cases where the person is protected by the decision to grant asylum or refuge.

It was stressed in the UPR that the right to asylum or refuge is considered a fundamental right, and must be respected and taken into account, making it compatible with the right to legal defence.

The director-general of legal affairs in Sweden’s foreign ministry, Anders Rönquist, argued that there is no international convention on diplomatic asylum.

The only one referring to that issue is the inter-American convention, he said, adding that the International Court of Justice in The Hague does not require recognition of diplomatic asylum.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

In the stalemated talks between the six powers and Iran over the future of the latter’s nuclear programme, the central issue is not so much the technical aspects of the problem but the history of the Middle Eastern country’s relations with foreign suppliers – and especially with the Russians.

The Barack Obama administration has dismissed Iran’s claim that it can’t rely on the Russians or other past suppliers of enriched uranium for its future needs. But the U.S. position ignores a great deal of historical evidence that bolsters the Iranian case that it would be naïve to rely on promises by Russia and others on which it has depended in the past for nuclear fuel.

Both Iran and the P5+1 are citing the phrase “practical needs”, which was used in the Joint Plan of Action agreed to last November, in support of their conflicting positions on the issue of how much enrichment capability Iran should have. Limits on the Iranian programme are supposed to be consistent with such “practical needs”, according to the agreement.

Iran has argued that its “practical needs” include the capability to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant as well as future nuclear reactors. Iranian officials have indicated that Iran must be self-sufficient in the future with regard to nuclear fuel for Bushehr, which Russia now provides. It announced in 2008 that another reactor at Darkhovin, which is to be indigenously constructed, had entered the design stage.

Former senior State Department official on proliferation issues Robert Einhorn has transmitted the thinking of the Obama administration about the negotiations in recent months. In a long paper published in late March, he wrote that Iran had “sometimes made the argument that they need to produce enriched uranium indigenously because foreign suppliers could cut off supplies for political or other reasons.”

The Iranians had “even suggested,” Einhorn wrote, “that they could not depend on Russia to be a reliable supplier of enriched fuel.” This Iranian assertion ignores Russia’s defiance of the U.S. and is allies in having built Bushehr and insisting on exempting its completion and fuelling from U.N. Security Council sanctions, according to Einhorn.

Einhorn omits, however, the well-documented history of blatant Russian violations of its contract with Iran on Bushehr – including the provision of nuclear fuel – and its effort to use Iranian dependence on Russian reactor fuel to squeeze Iran on its nuclear policy as well as to obtain political-military concessions from the United States.

Rose Gottemoeller, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, described the dynamics of that Russian policy when she was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from early 2006 through late 2008. She recounted in a 2008 paper how the Russians began working intensively in 2002 to get Iran to end its uranium enrichment programme.

That brought Russia’s policy aim in regard to Iran’s nuclear programme into line with that of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009).

Russia negotiated an agreement with Iran in February 2005 to supply enriched uranium fuel for the reactor and to take back all spent fuel. Later in 2005, Moscow offered Iran a joint uranium enrichment venture in Russia under which Iran would send uranium to Russia for enrichment and conversion into fuel elements for future reactors.

But Iran would not gain access to the fuel fabrication technology, which made it unacceptable to Tehran but was strongly supported by the Bush administration.

Bush administration officials then began to dangle the prospect of a bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation – a “123 Agreement” – before Russia as a means of leveraging a shift in Russian policy toward cutting off nuclear fuel for Bushehr. The Russians agreed to negotiate such a deal, which was understood to be conditional on Russia’s cooperation on the Iran nuclear issue, with particular emphasis on fuel supplies for Bushehr.

The Russians were already using their leverage over Iran’s nuclear programme by slowing down the work as the project approached completion.

A U.S. diplomatic cable dated Jul. 6, 2006 and released by WikiLeaks reported that Russ Clark, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safety official who had spent time studying the Bushehr project, said in a conversation with a U.S. diplomat, “[H]e almost feels sorry for the Iranians because of the way the Russians are ‘jerking them around’.”

Clark said the Russians were “dragging their feet” about completing work on Bushehr and suggested it was for political reasons.

The IAEA official said it was obvious that the Russians were delaying the fuel shipments to Bushehr because of “political considerations,” calculating that, once they delivered the fuel, Russia would lose much of its leverage over Iran.

In late September 2006, the Russians changed the date on which they pledged to provide the reactor fuel to March 2007, in anticipation of completion of the reactor in September, in an agreement between the head of Russia’s state-run company Atomstroyexport, and the vice-president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation.

But in March 2007, the Russians announced that the fuel delivery would be delayed again, claiming Iran had fallen behind on its payments. Iran, however, heatedly denied that claim and accused Moscow of “politicising” the issue.

In fact, Russia, with U.S. encouragement, was “slow rolling out the supply of enriched uranium fuel,” according to Gottemoeller. Moscow was making clear privately, she wrote, that it was holding back on the fuel to pressure Iran on its enrichment policy.

Moscow finally began delivering reactor fuel to Bushehr in December 2007, apparently in response to the Bush administration’s plan to put anti-missile systems into the Czech Republic and Poland. That decision crossed what Moscow had established as a “red line”.

Obama’s election in November 2008, however, opened a new dynamic in U.S.-Russia cooperation on squeezing Iran’s nuclear programme. Within days of Obama’s cancellation of the Bush administration decision to establish anti-missile sites in Central Europe in September 2009, Russian officials leaked to the Moscow newspaper Kommersant that it was withholding its delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems for which it had already contracted with Iran.

Iran needed the missiles to deter U.S. and Israeli air attacks, so the threat to renege on the deal was again aimed at enhancing Russian leverage on Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, while giving Moscow additional influence on U.S. Russian policy as well.

The Russian attempt to exploit Iran’s dependence on Moscow for its reactor fuel for political purposes was not the first time that Iran had learned the lesson that it could not rely on foreign sources of enriched uranium – even when they had legal commitments to provide the fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactor.

After the Islamic revolution against the Shah in 1979, all of the foreign suppliers on which Iran had expected to rely for nuclear fuel for Bushehr and its Tehran Research Reactor reneged on their commitments.

Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, sent an official communication to IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano on Mar. 1, 2010, stating that specific contracts with U.S., German, French and multinational companies for supply of nuclear fuel had been abruptly terminated under pressure from the U.S. government and its allies.

Soltanieh said they were “examples [of] the root cause of confidence deficit vis-à-vis some Western countries regarding the assurance of nuclear supply.”
The earlier experiences led Iran to decide around 1985 to seek its own indigenous enrichment capability, according to Iranian officials.

The experience with Russia, especially after 2002, hardened Iran’s determination to be self-reliant in nuclear fuel fabrication. The IAEA’s Clark told the U.S. diplomat in mid-2006 that, if the Russians did cut off their supply of fuel for Bushehr, the Iranians were prepared to make the fuel themselves.

It is not clear whether the Obama administration actually believes the official line that Iran should and must rely on Russia for nuclear fuel. But the history surrounding the issue suggests that Iran will not accept the solution on which the U.S. and its allies are now insisting.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book “Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare”, was published Feb. 14.

Illegally logged timber seized by the Ayun villagers in Pakistan's Chitral district. A ban on trade in illegally harvested timber, wildlife and fish is omitted from the current fast-track legislation in the U.S. Congress. Credit: Imran Schah/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 16 2014 (IPS)

An accord that would be the largest trade agreement ever negotiated appears to be rolling back environmental safeguards that have been a key part of U.S.-led trade deals for much of the past decade.

For four years, negotiators for 12 proposed Pacific-area member countries have been trying to come to agreement on a sweeping deal for what is being called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While few details of the talks have been made public, WikiLeaks on Wednesday released a negotiating text for the environment chapter as well as a round-up of related country-level positions.“We’ve been pushing for safeguards around three things – fish stocks, wildlife trafficking and illegal logging – and the current draft falls short." -- Jake Schmidt

The documents allow the public a first-time glimpse of where talks stand on green issues, and some of the details have worried civil society. WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange suggested Wednesday that the environment chapter is little more than a “toothless public relations exercise”.

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) “may be forced to back down from historic negotiating positions on environmental protections,” Larry Cohen, president of Communications Workers of America, a trade association, told a Senate hearing on Thursday, referring to media analysis of the leaked documents.

“At this point in our history, we should be making improvements, not negotiating a retreat on global environmental issues.”

Cohen appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to offer testimony on new legislation that would transfer significant power, known as “trade promotion” or “fast track” authorities, to President Barack Obama to move the TPP into its final stages. While such authorities have been a key component of past U.S. trade deals, critics say that they are undemocratic, barring the Congress from tweaking any eventual agreement.

On Thursday, Cohen told lawmakers that the new legislation would do nothing to ameliorate concerns about the TPP’s weaknesses on environmental safeguards. (Thus far, almost all Democratic members of Congress have refused to formally support the new fast track authorities.)

“Key negotiating objectives that would help ensure that natural resources are protected, such as a ban on trade in illegally harvested timber, wildlife and fish, are completely omitted from the current legislation,” he warned.

“It also does nothing to protect our environmental and climate policies from attack by foreign corporations or to put less stress on our scarce natural resources. More must be done to ensure that trade agreements don’t become a global race to the bottom on the environment.”

Unenforceable

The newly leaked environment chapter likely dates to November, and so may have changed by this week. If not, however, it appears to fail to include strong enforcement provisions – in a way that could directly contravene U.S. law.

The issue goes back to a 2007 agreement between the Congress and then-President George W. Bush, which set out a series of minimum standards for future trade agreements, including for the environment.

Congress stipulated that countries signing trade agreements with the United States would need to fulfil any international treaties they had signed. It also moved to ensure that agreed-upon environmental safeguards were not afterthoughts, requiring that such obligations be fully legally enforceable.

Green groups and others saw the agreement as an important step, and these requirements have been in place in subsequent trade accords between the United States and Panama, Colombia, South Korea and Peru. Yet while this U.S. law has not changed since then, the leaked TPP environment chapter contains weak requirements that critics say would be unenforceable.

“We’ve been pushing for safeguards around three things – fish stocks, wildlife trafficking and illegal logging – and the current draft falls short on all of these principles,” Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a watchdog group, told IPS.

“The current obligations for each of these give lots of wiggle room for countries not to enforce them. Effectively, there’s a reporting requirement for countries to say that they’re not enforcing these provisions, but no ability to actually apply trade sanctions. That’s like say it’s illegal to speed but then not funding any cops.”

(On Wednesday, NRDC and two other environment groups released a full analysis of the leaked TPP chapter.)

The leaked chapter, for instance, stipulates that member countries “recognize the importance of taking measures aimed at the conservation and the sustainable management of fisheries”. But governments are not required to do so.

Similarly, each country “shall seek to operate a fisheries management system … designed to prevent overfishing”. But, again, members are not required to do so.

“If passed without the proper enforcement, the current draft would be a major step back form previous trade agreements, even those passed by George Bush,” Schmidt says. “We know from lots of previous experience that if you have good laws on the books but no strong enforcement mechanisms, they don’t have any meaning.”

In fact, experience from the four trade agreements that have included the post-2007 environment safeguards has been mixed, as the USTR has never formally imposed sanctions on a country for failure to comply with environment-related provisions. Yet supporters note that the mere threat of trade repercussions has offered an important diplomatic tool in behind-the-scenes talks.

U.S. demands

As the TPP talks have progressed, the Obama administration has been roundly criticised by civil society groups who feel they have shut out of the negotiations, even as major multinational corporations have reportedly been given access to both the talks and certain negotiating texts.

On the environment chapter, however, the sense is that U.S. negotiators have indeed been working to ensure that the congressionally mandated safeguards are ultimately in place. In the aftermath of the leak, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative took the rare step of directly addressing the issue.

“The United States’ position on the environment in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations is this,” the USTR stated in the first sentence of a blog post released Wednesday, “environmental stewardship is a core American value, and we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP or we will not come to agreement.”

Yet NRDC’s Schmidt notes that the TPP remains a U.S.-driven agreement, and thus Washington negotiators have a key opportunity to insist on strong enforcement.

“They may be pushing hard,” he says, “but we’ll see if they now follow through and signal to other countries that this is a requirement that must be met before they can bring home any trade agreement.”

New technologies make it easier than ever for spy agencies to invade privacy. In the photo, students at the Campus Tecnológico in Guatemala. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 3 2013 (IPS)

Governments of countries that engage in large-scale electronic espionage, like the United States, and companies that develop spying software could theoretically face legal action for violating the Convention on Cybercrime.

The Convention, adopted in Budapest in 2001 and in force since 2004, is the first international treaty seeking to address Internet and computer crime, and has a provision that aims to protect the right of privacy of data communication from unauthorised interception.

The treaty, also known as the Budapest Convention, requires member states to criminalise four kinds of conduct against confidentiality or the integrity and availability of computer systems or data: illegal access, illegal interception, data and system interference, and misuse of devices for the purpose of committing these offences.

These are precisely the practices engaged in by the U.S., British and other governments, according to documents leaked to the media in June by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

Cyber surveillance “violates the Convention, and perpetrators can be sued” under the Cybercrime Convention Committee, Lorena Pichardo, a law school professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.

The Convention was adopted by the Council of Europe, which was set up to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe. But the treaty has also been signed by non-member states, like Canada, the United States and Japan. The United States ratified it in 2006.

So far, 51 states have signed the Convention and 40 have ratified it.

It is possible to file a complaint with the Cybercrime Convention Committee, but any action taken is based on the national laws that its members must approve in order to live up to the Convention. Complainants can also turn to the European Court of Human Rights.

A complaint “can be successful, but it would be partial, because among the countries that are party to the Convention, there are interests at stake. The law can be bent and accommodated to national legislation,” Enoc Gutiérrez, a professor of information and communications technology (ICT) at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, told IPS.

In a 2012 study that analysed Mexican, U.S. and EU laws, Gutiérrez and his colleagues Lucio Ordóñez and Víctor Saucedo argued the need for special legislation and a special court on computer crime.

The problem is that the Convention does not take into account that cybercrimes can include espionage by a state. The general impression is that when a government seeks cross-border access to computer data, it is doing so to investigate crimes and pursue criminals.

Article 32b of the Budapest Convention introduced an exception to the principle of territorial sovereignty:

“A Party may, without the authorisation of another Party [..] access or receive, through a computer system in its territory, stored computer data located in another Party, if the Party obtains the lawful and voluntary consent of the person who has the lawful authority to disclose the data to the Party through that computer system.”

The Cybercrimes Convention Committee held its ninth full session Jun. 4-5 – one day before the Guardian and the Washington Post published the first leaks by Snowden. In the meeting, the Committee did not debate anything related to cyber espionage.

But in a recent report, the Committee’s ad hoc sub-group on jurisdiction and transborder access to data said that new developments, such as cloud storage of data and the activities of law enforcement authorities, made it necessary to revise the reach of article 32b.

“Current practices regarding direct law enforcement access to data as well as access via Internet service providers and other private sector entities…illustrate that law enforcement authorities of many States access data stored on computers in other States in order to secure electronic evidence. Such practices frequently go beyond the limited possibilities foreseen in Article 32b and the Budapest Convention in general,” the sub-group says.

This poses risks to human rights, they warn.

“Personal data are increasingly stored by private entities, including cloud service providers. Access by law enforcement to, or the disclosure to law enforcement authorities of personal data stored in a foreign jurisdiction by such private sector entities may violate data protection regulations,” they add.

The NSA and other intelligence agencies use software that enables them to intercept private communications around the world.

Mexico, for example, acquired software from U.S. and European companies to monitor telephone calls, email, chats, Internet browsing histories and social networks.

Of the at least 95 corporations that develop and distribute this kind of software worldwide, 32 are in the U.S., 17 are British and the rest come from some two dozen other nations, according to confidential documents from intelligence contractors published by Wikileaks in December 2011.

The list mentions 78 different products, including Trojan viruses, audio transmitters, audio and video recorders, and tracking tools.

“Any technology with such a huge potential for the violation of fundamental rights should be the focus of the highest level of legal protection, especially if it’s in the hands of private corporations that operate according to purely business objectives,” two officials from Spain’s Interior Ministry, Miguel Ángel Castellano and Pedro David Santamaría, wrote in a December 2012 article, “El control del ciberespacio por parte de gobiernos y empresas” (“Control of cyberspace by governments and companies”).

Pichardo, the law professor, said national legislation tends to take precedence in cases that invoke international principles.

“If we already have a charge of espionage, the serious problem of asking for data from other states is redundant,” she said.

Gutiérrez believes the existing international legal frameworks do not protect citizens, and specific laws are necessary. His studies focus on how to move from ICTs to technologies of learning and communication.

“When citizens are active in a social network like Facebook, by the simple act of accepting the terms of the contract they are saying their information can be shared with banks or government institutions,” he said. “They steal information from us and we don’t even realise it.”

What was Mostapha Maanna of Hacking Team, an Italian surveillance company, doing on his three trips to Saudi Arabia in the last year? A new data trove from WikiLeaks reveals travel details for salesmen like Maanna who hawk electronic technology to track communications by individuals without their knowledge.

Wikileaks suspects that Hacking Team technology is used to snoop on activists and dissidents.

Julian Assange, the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, says that the information came from a special counter-intelligence unit that his organisation created “to protect WikiLeaks’ assets, staff and sources from hostile intelligence operations and to reveal the nature of intelligence threats against journalists and sources more broadly.”

According to research conducted by the Kaspersky Lab, an anti-virus company, Hacking Team sells technology that can be used to create emails to target suspects by inviting them to click on a link or attachment that then installs a spy tool called Remote Control System (RCS) on the target’s computer.

RCS (also known as DaVinci) can then copy the Web browsing history of its targets, turn on their computer microphone and webcam to eavesdrop on them, as well record their conversations on computer applications like Skype.

Wikileaks documented the travels of two Hacking Team salesmen to countries with a poor record of human rights.

The first was Maanna, whose LinkedIn profile confirms that he works for Hacking Team in Milan. He came to work for the company in January 2011 after completing high school in Tyre, Lebanon, and an undergraduate and graduate degree in telecommunications engineering from Politecnico di Torino in
Turin, Italy.

In addition to three trips to Saudi Arabia, Maanna’s travel profile places him in Egypt three times in 2013. He also made two trips each to Malaysia and Morocco in the last three years, among other countries, including United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey, according to the documents released by WikiLeaks.

The second individual is Marco Bettini, a sales manager for almost 10 years at HackingTeam whose LinkedIn profile says he studied at the Instituto Radiotecnico Beltrami. Bettini is also identified as traveling to Morocco and UAE in February 2013.

Three of these countries – Morocco, Turkey and the UAE – are nations in which Hacking Team has come under fire from groups like Privacy International and Reporters Without Borders for the alleged use of its software.

For example, Mamfakinch, a Moroccan citizen journalist group that was created during the 2011 Arab Spring, believes that it was targeted with a “backdoor” attack by software that is identical to Hacking Team’s RCS system, according to an analysis by Dr. Web, an anti-virus company.

Slate Magazine described how the Mamfakinch’s computers were infected by spy software after members opened an email titled “Dénonciation” (denunciation) that contained a link to what appeared to be a Microsoft Word document labeled “scandale (2).doc” alongside a single line of text in French, which translates as: “Please do not mention my name or anything else, I don’t want any problems.”

Wired magazine recently published details of an attack on a U.S. activist who was sent an email about Turkey that appeared to come from a trusted colleague at Harvard that “referenced a subject that was a hot-button issue for the recipient, including a link to a website where she could obtain more information about it.” Although she did not click on the email, Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensics company, analysed the link and discovered that it, too, contained RCS attack software.

And Citizen Lab, a computer security research group in Canada, identified emails sent to Ahmed Mansoor, a UAE human rights activist, which were also allegedly designed with Hacking Team software. Mansoor was a member of a group of activists who were imprisoned from April to November 2011 on charges of insulting an Emirati royal family. He told Bloomberg that he was identified and then beaten after he clicked on an email that contained a Microsoft attachment that infected him with the spy software.

Company response

A spokesperson for Hacking Team says the company strictly follows applicable export laws and other regulations and only sells its products to governments or government agencies.

“The point that is generally missed in discussions like this is that the world is a dangerous place, with plenty of criminals and terrorists using modern Internet and mobil technologies to do their business, and that threatens us all,” Eric Rabe, the general counsel of Hacking Team, told Corpwatch via email.

“We firmly believe that the technology we make available to government and law enforcement makes it harder for those criminals and terrorists to operate.”

Rabe says that Hacking Team understands the potential for abuse of its products, so it reviews customers before a sale to determine whether or not there is “objective evidence or credible concerns that Hacking Team technology provided to the customer will be used to facilitate human rights violations.”

He noted that his company’s products have an auditing feature that cannot be turned off so that government agencies can check how and when surveillance occurs.

“Of course, HT cannot monitor the use of our software directly since clients must have the ability to conduct confidential investigations,” Rabe added. “Should we suspect that abuse has occurred, we investigate. If we find our contracts have been violated or other abuse has occurred, we have the option to suspend support for the software. Without support, the software is quickly rendered ineffective.”

Rabe says that Hacking Team did investigate “the Morocco and UAE assertions” but he was not able to comment since the company “does not share the results of such investigations nor do we publish whatever actions we may subsequently take.”

But activists still say that they are very concerned about details in the travel logs released by Wikileaks.

“The evidence and timeline does give credence to the idea that the discovery of Hacking Team software in Morocco and UAE corroborates with their sales team visit to those countries,” Kenneth Page, a policy officer at Privacy International, told Corpwatch.

“This is clearly not an ad-hoc process within a small industry, but a calculated and considered business deal in a global trade with profits made off the suffering of individuals,” says Page. “As the Wikileaks release today has shown, the business procedure behind the sale of surveillance technology is as well laid out as any other international trade – including proposals and presentations, site and country visits, contracts, and costing packages.”

Page said that the companies that develop and sell surveillance technology to such regimes should not be allowed to abdicate responsibility for freely selling this technology to just any government regardless of their human rights record.

“Companies know full well how their products work and, after tailoring to their specific clients’ need, know how they will be used,” added Page.

*A longer version of this story originally appeared on Corpwatch.org.

Bradley Manning, the army private whose leaks of classified information and subsequent prosecution have been the subject of fierce international debate for over three years, was sentenced to 35 years in military prison Wednesday, but his legal team and supporters say they will fight the sentence.

Bradley Manning. Credit: public domain

“It’s tragic,” Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network told IPS minutes after the sentence was read. “It sends a terrible message for holding government accountable.”

Colonel Denise Lind, the sole judge in the case, read Manning’s sentence at the courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland, near the location where he was being held during trial. She took one day to reach her decision after adjourning a three-week sentencing hearing on Tuesday morning.

In early 2010, Manning handed over a trove of classified data from U.S. Army computers to WikiLeaks, the radical pro-transparency group. The latter made the data public, causing scandals for the U.S. and some of its allies.

Manning’s supporters argue that he released the information believing he would better society, and they protest that he was unfairly held for an extended time prior to being tried.

Manning was arrested in May 2010 and has been detained since. Lind announced that this time will be subtracted from his sentence, effectively reducing it by nearly 1,300 days.

The judge convicted him on Jul. 30 of six violations of the federal Espionage Act, as well as 14 other charges of theft and fraud. The maximum sentence Manning faced would have been 90 years.

Kevin Gosztola, a blogger for firedoglake.com who supports Manning and covered his trial, told IPS that the possibility remains open that the 25-year-old soldier could be freed before he turns 40. By regulation, he is eligible for parole after serving 10 years of his sentence, minus the discounted pre-trial confinement days.

“I think this shows that the judge was responsive to the defence’s plea to allow [Manning] a life after prison,” Gosztola says.

Manning’s attorney, David Coomb, questions the severity of the sentence. Speaking with reporters after the sentence was handed down, he noted that he has seen lighter punishments for military clients he has defended who have murdered people or molested children.

Fuller says the next step for those who oppose Manning’s imprisonment will be to lobby Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, the military commander in charge of the district, to reduce the sentence. According to Fuller, Buchanan has “full latitude” in his ability to soften the sentence, if he chooses.

If the effort to sway Buchanan fails, Manning’s legal team will pursue the military appeals process and take advantage of available yearly sentencing reviews by a military parole and clemency board.

His support network will also try to convince U.S. President Barack Obama to commute the sentence.

A demonstration outside the White House is planned for Wednesday evening.

“There are several battles left to fight,” Fuller told IPS. “People will be angry.”

Leaks

The data Manning leaked included 470,000 battlefield reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables.

Perhaps most notorious of the data released was a video titled “Collateral Murder”, which contained footage taken by a U.S. Army helicopter crew as it gunned down a group of Iraqis standing on a Baghdad street and continued firing as passers-by attempted to rescue them. In the video, U.S. soldiers engaged in the killing can be heard laughing.

Manning’s actions divided popular opinion in the U.S., as some praised him as a hero and others excoriated him as a traitor.

“He was really hoping to change the world for the better,” Deborah Van Poolen, an artist who attended Manning’s trial and claims to have been “inspired” by his actions, told IPS.

Others disagree.

“He is not a whistleblower or a hero. [His leaks] tarnished the image of the U.S. at a sensitive time,” Steven Bucci, director of the Foreign Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank here, told IPS, adding that Manning should be considered the “biggest spy [the U.S. has] ever had”.

Sympathy for Manning was more widespread outside the U.S., coming especially from those critical of U.S. policy, and over the past three years movements around the world have advocated for his release.

A campaign has even been started promoting Manning as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, and last week a U.S. human rights group delivered a petition with 100,000 signatures to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which decides the winner.

Defence attorneys for Manning did not attempt to argue that their client acted as a hero, however, portraying him instead as naïve and telling the court that he was a “young man capable of being redeemed”.

“Perhaps his biggest crime was that he cared about the loss of life that he was seeing and couldn’t ignore it,” defence attorney David Coombs, who will remain as Manning’s attorney, told the judge during the sentencing hearing.

In his own testimony, Manning said he regretted his actions.

“I’m sorry that my actions hurt people,” he told the judge. “I’m sorry that they hurt the United States.”

“In retrospect I should have worked more aggressively inside the system, as we discussed during the … statement, I had options and I should have used these options.”

The prosecution argued that Manning’s leaks strengthened enemies of the United States and put at risk the lives of U.S. soldiers and diplomats living abroad.

“There may not be a soldier in the history of the army who displayed such an extreme disregard [for his duty],” prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow argued.

Before the conviction was handed down, the prosecution had argued that Manning was guilty of “aiding the enemy”, a crime which could have resulted in a life sentence for the young soldier, and, many feared, an extreme precedent for punishing information leaks.

The judge did not convict Manning of “aiding the enemy”, but still some believe Manning’s case is intended to serve as a warning to future whistleblowers.

“Manning’s treatment has been intended to send a signal to people of conscience in the U.S. government who might seek to bring wrongdoing to light,” Julian Assange, a founder of WikiLeaks, said in a statement.

“[T]he Obama administration is demonstrating that there is no place in its system for people of conscience and principle.”

By Johan Galtung
ALFAZ, Spain, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

THESIS ONE: The leaks are not about “whistle-blowing”, but about a nonviolent, civil disobedient fight against huge social evils.

Whistle-blowing presupposes that somebody can be warned, in fact wants to be warned, and is in a position to do something.

Obviously those who can do something about U.S. foreign policy, who have the power – legislative, the Congress, particularly the Senate; executive, State Department-Pentagon-White House; judiciary, the Supreme Court; economically, the giant banks; culturally, the mainstream media – know perfectly well what is going on: these are all efforts to hang on to imperial economic, military, political and cultural power.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

But they do not want change. And those who want a change – a major part of the
U.S. population, allied populations and most of the rest of the world – have been warned, but are to a large extent powerless. So they believe; but see thesis five.

THESIS TWO: The basic thing is not the media-political focus on Julian Assange–Bradley Manning-Edward Snowden, but on what they revealed.

Manning revealed the video of a helicopter attack in Iraq on mostly unarmed non-combatants, including two Reuters journalists.

Result: the Iraqi parliament said No to the George W. Bush administration’s wish to keep a base in the country (the U.S. military withdrew Dec. 31, 2011).

Manning revealed the full extent of the corruption of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali, adding fuel to the youth revolt.

Manning revealed that Yemen dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh acquiesced to the U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, a factor in his removal from power.

Manning revealed that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered United Nations diplomats to spy on their U.N. counterparts, wanting detailed intelligence on the U.N. leadership, with passwords and encryption keys.

Manning revealed that John Kerry pressed Israel to be open to the return of the Golan Heights to Syria as part of peace negotiations.

Manning revealed Afghan government corruption was “overwhelming”.

Manning revealed the authoritarian, corrupt nature of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt.

Manning revealed that U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates was against striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing it would be counterproductive.

Manning revealed the Israeli policy “to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”.

Manning revealed that Syria’s Bashar Assad and wife bought jewelry and had a gilded style of life in Europe while his artillery killed in Homs.

Take Snowden as another example: his revelations, the U.S. spying as much on their allies as on Afghanistan, threaten U.S. plans for the two big Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific trade blocs to exclude BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

Should that happen, then this is world history indeed – with the U.S. now bidding for time.

THESIS THREE: Diplomacy in general was revealed, not only U.S.

When Assange’s first WikiLeaks were published, I wrote:

“The emperor unclothed. But not only the U.S. emperor, also the Diplomacy emperor. What kind of ridiculous discourse is this, so focused on the negative, on actors, usually elite persons, in elite countries? Gossip, puerile characterisations, the kind of “analysis” of power typical of immaturity. Where is the analysis of culture and structure, light years more important than actors who come and go?

“Where are positive ideas? Where are ideas about how to convert the challenges from climate change into cooperation for mutual and equal benefit? Like water distillation projects at Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Palestine, fuelled by parabolic mirrors? Like positive U.S.-Iran cooperation on alternative energy?

“Democracy dies behind closed doors. WikiLeaks opens those doors; an enormous service to democracy.”

What Manning and Snowden revealed are the death throes of the U.S. empire; what Assange et al. revealed are the death throes of the state system as we know it. Both processes will take time, the former less than the latter. But make no mistake: the three made history.

Three names that will be remembered after some U.S. presidents recede into an oblivion so well deserved. Who knows the top English in India, like viceroys and their crimes – roys of vices? Mahatma Gandhi looms larger. Who knows the names of the English who tried to keep the “Atlantic Seaboard” colonies? George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin overshadow them all.

They may even contribute to the reduction of standing armies and, if the U.S. changes, to understanding among nations. A shared Nobel Peace Prize to all three? (Not very likely, from Norway, a U.S. client country.)

THESIS FOUR: U.S. allies comply out of fear, not out of agreement. Quite concretely: they comply to avoid that one day the U.S. Air Force will land on the many bases at its disposal “as the government is unable to protect its own population”.

The Americans are coming, not the Russians, not the Muslims. And the more likely it becomes, the further the U.S. slides down the well-greased totalitarianism incline: next step, probably FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps for suspects -for categories, metadata! – like the Japanese during World War II.

THESIS FIVE: Everybody, and the media, can speed up the processes. Rotten apples should fall from the tree; a little shake will help.

The key star media, with Anglo-America’s The Guardian and The Washington Post playing major roles, deserve our praise. Then, let millions surround foreign ministries and embassies, demanding an end to spying, changing their servers away from the Big Traitors in the U.S., suspending further cooperation, degrading diplomatic relations. Till credible dis-spying – the equivalent of dis-armament – takes place.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Private Bradley Manning. Credit: U.S. Army/public domain

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Jul 30 2013 (IPS)

A U.S. military judge ruled Tuesday that Private Bradley Manning, the young soldier who shared a mountain of classified data with the rogue pro-transparency group WikiLeaks, is not guilty of “aiding the enemy”.

He was found guilty, however, of a host of other charges which together could carry a punishment of up to 136 years in prison.

The verdict was read at 18:00 GMT by Colonel Denise Lind, the judge who presided over the trial held in a military court in Fort Meade, Maryland. It was met by ambivalence on the part of those who support Manning.

“I’m greatly relieved that Bradley was found not guilty of aiding the enemy…but I am completely outraged that he may be condemned to what could be tantamount to a life sentence for making government abuses known,” Nathan Fuller, who works with the Bradley Manning Support Network, told IPS.

The crimes Manning was found guilty of include five espionage charges and five theft charges.

Manning’s convictions stem from his decision to download a trove of classified data from U.S. Army computers and share it with WikiLeaks. The latter made the data public, causing a scandal which reflected poorly on U.S. military and diplomatic apparatuses.

“[Manning] is not a whistleblower or a hero. [His leaks] tarnished the image of the U.S. at a sensitive time,” Steven Bucci, director of the Foreign Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank here, told IPS.

Bucci said that Manning acted illegally in releasing the data and this negates his claim to be a whistleblower.

Most notorious of the data released was the video file titled “Collateral Murder”,  which contained footage taken by a U.S. Army helicopter crew as it gunned down a group of Iraqis standing on a Baghdad street and continued firing as people nearby attempted to rescue them with a van.

Two of the initial targets turned out to be journalists working for Reuters. The van used for the rescue attempt also held two children, who suffered injuries.

Narration by soldiers engaged in the attack makes it sound as if they are enjoying the killing.

“On the video you can hear soldiers laughing about children being brought into battle,” says Fuller.

Fuller says that Manning released the unclassified video after learning that Reuters’ attempts to access it had been blocked.

Whistleblower or traitor?

In addition to the video, the data leaked by Manning included 470,000 battlefield reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables.

Prosecutors argued that in illegally offering up the data, Manning acted as a “traitor” and knew he would be making crucial information available to enemies of the U.S.

Of the 22 crimes he was charged with, Manning pleaded “guilty” to 10 of the lesser ones but “not guilty” to the most substantial charge of aiding the enemy.  This most serious charge can be a capital offence, but prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty in Manning’s case, settling instead to pursue a life sentence.

There was never much chance that Manning would get off scot-free. The charges to which he pleaded guilty alone carried penalties of up to 20 years prison time.

His defence presented him as a naïve whistle-blower who broke the law in order to serve what he believed to be the greater good. It denied the prosecution’s assertion that he acted as a traitor out to undermine U.S. war efforts.

A message sent by Manning was cited as evidence of his noble intent.

“If you had free reign over classified networks over a long period of time,” Manning wrote in an internet chat with the man who would eventually turn him in, “if you saw incredible things, awful things, things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C., what would you do?”

At the pre-trial hearing where he made his pleas, however, he was asked by the judge if he knew what he had done was wrong.

“Yes, your honour,” he replied.

Hoping to change the world

Despite the illegality of Manning’s actions, many in the U.S. protested for his release. Some activists advocating on his behalf believe the overall effect of his leaks was positive.

Outside the U.S., as well, demonstrators in scores of cities voiced their support of Manning.

“The people who have come out in support know he did something brave and selfless to inform them about corrupt U.S. policies. It had an effect on the entire world,” says Fuller.

One of those supporters, Deb Van Poolen, an artist who attended the trial and sketched Manning, says she is “inspired” by him.

“He was really hoping to change the world for the better,” Van Poolen told IPS.

The artist was dismayed by the fact that Manning had been held for three years prior to his trial, saying it violated his right to a speedy trial and calling it “completely ridiculous”.

Sentencing for Manning will take place during the month of August and is expected to take at least two weeks. The range of prison time Manning could receive is vast, and the possibility remains open that he will escape with little prison time.

After his sentencing the case will remain open to appeals.

Heritage’s Bucci, who believes Manning to be the “biggest spy [the U.S. has] ever had”, believes that a harsh sentence will do much to dissuade people with inside access from making similar illegal leaks.

“People have to understand,” Bucci explained to IPS, “that if you accept a top-secret clearance you have to abide by the rules, and, if you don’t, there is going to be a price that has to be paid.”

But the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange in the U.S., said in a a statement Tuesday, “Manning’s treatment, prosecution, and sentencing have one purpose: to silence potential whistleblowers and the media as well.

“While the ‘aiding the enemy’ charges (on which Manning was rightly acquitted) received the most attention from the mainstream media, the Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning.”

Just five countries grow nearly 90 percent of all biotech crops. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 14 2013 (IPS)

A consumer protection group here is accusing U.S. diplomats of engaging in a concerted and at times forceful advocacy campaign on behalf of genetically modified seeds and even specific biotechnology companies, particularly aiming to influence governments in developing countries.

In a report released Tuesday, Food & Water Watch (FWW) offers new research suggesting that the U.S. State Department over the past decade has offered centralised directives to U.S. embassies to promote biotech products and respond to industry concerns.“Biotech is such a controversial policy...why would this be a central tenet of U.S. development and foreign policy?” -- Darcey O’Callaghan of Food & Water Watch

U.S. diplomats were reportedly told to work to change negative public perceptions on biotechnology – going so far as to target high school students in Hong Kong – and to push governments in developing countries to create laws friendly to the industry.

“Between 2007 and 2009, the State Department sent annual cables to ‘encourage the use of agricultural biotechnology,’ directing every diplomatic post worldwide to ‘pursue an active biotech agenda’ that promotes agricultural biotechnology, encourages the export of biotech crops and foods and advocates for pro-biotech policies and laws,” the report notes.

“The State Department views its heavy-handed promotion of biotech agriculture as ‘science diplomacy,’ but it is closer to corporate diplomacy on behalf of the biotechnology industry.”

The conclusions come after researchers looked through a sampling of diplomatic cables from 113 countries dating from 2005 to 2009, released as part of the WikiLeaks 2010 data dump. According to a survey of nearly a thousand cables, FWW reports that the number of diplomatic missives discussing biotechnology rose each year, from 106 references in 2005 to 254 in 2009.

“Biotech is such a controversial policy – even here in the United States, where campaigns are currently underway in over 20 states to require labelling of foods with genetically modified ingredients,” Darcey O’Callaghan, the international policy director at Food & Water Watch, told IPS.

“In such a situation, why would this be a central tenant of U.S. development and foreign policy?”

She notes that little change in policy took place after President Barack Obama’s administration took over.

Feeding the future

More than a decade and a half after genetically engineered (GE) crops were first introduced in the United States, during the mid-1990s, by last year just five countries are said to have been growing nearly 90 percent of all biotech crops. That’s a potentially lucrative market for the industry.

“Although the U.S. commodity crop market is nearly saturated with biotech seeds, most of the world remains biotech-free,” the report states. “The seed companies need the power of the U.S. State Department to force more countries, more farmers and more consumers to accept, cultivate and eat their products.”

The State Department says it has not yet reviewed the new report.

“It is important to note that the State Department works to ensure market access for all U.S. agricultural products, including organic, conventional and GE crops,” a spokesperson told IPS. “We work in partnership with agencies across the federal government to promote biosafety regulatory systems in developing countries to enhance access to new agricultural technologies.”

The department says it supports the adoption of transparent and science-based regulations in other countries, which it suggests works to increase market access for U.S. products while also promoting innovation in developing countries.

In addition, U.S. policy currently sees biotechnologies as an important tool for making strides against global hunger.

“Agricultural production will need to increase by 60 percent or more by 2050, as the global population goes from seven billion to nine billion people,” the spokesperson said.

“New technologies are critical to achieving this goal in a more sustainable manner, using less land, less water, less fertiliser and fewer pesticides. The challenge is enormous if we are to feed a growing world with fewer inputs in the midst of climate change.”

Yet critics have long held that the use of genetically modified seeds yokes farmers to agribusinesses, requiring ongoing purchases of company-specific inputs.

“An overwhelming number of farmers in the developing world reject biotech crops as a path to sustainable agricultural development or food sovereignty,” Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, an advocacy group, said Tuesday.

“The biotech agriculture model using costly seeds and agrichemicals forces farmers onto a debt treadmill that is neither economically nor environmentally viable.”

In addition, FWW points to evidence that GE products do not necessarily deliver on the promises made by their promoters.

“Biotech agriculture is uniquely unsuited to the farmers of the developing world,” the report states. “[But] there are a host of promising, lower-impact agricultural approaches that have been shown to increase productivity, maximize economic return for farmers and enhance food security.”

Aid firewall

None of the WikiLeaks cables used in the FWW research were secret. Further, the State Department’s focus on biotechnology is already fairly well known, while the agency’s mandate to promote U.S. interests abroad is an inherent responsibility.

Rather, critics’ concerns revolve around the seemingly forceful use of U.S. diplomatic strength to push narrow interests on an issue that not only has potentially lasting implications but also remains under intense debate. Consumers in the European Union, for instance, have been repeatedly found to oppose genetically modified crops, and E.U. countries have been at the forefront of requiring the labelling of foods with GE ingredients.

Indeed, FWW points to a State Department memo that specifically aimed to attempt to “limit the influence of EU negative views on biotechnology.” (In 2006, the World Trade Organisation backed the United States in ruling that an E.U. ban on the import of GE foods was illegal.)

Further, while legislative action has lagged in most developing countries, broad-based civil society opposition has been widely documented. Late last year, Peru and Kenya both imposed bans on the import of genetically modified foods, while Nigeria was reportedly considering following suit, citing lack of scientific consensus on the long-term impact of GE materials.

In November, some 400 civil society organisations urged the African Union to impose such a ban on a continent-wide basis.

FWW’s O’Callaghan says the new evidence highlights a “conflict of interest” in the State Department, which is tasked with promoting U.S. interests abroad while simultaneously housing USAID, the government’s main foreign aid agency.

“USAID is ostensibly a development organisation,” she says. “But when you put those two interests – development and corporate priority – side by side, which do you think will win out?”

FWW is urging the imposition of a “firewall” around U.S. development efforts, warning that pushing a “pro-corporate agenda in the guise of foreign policy is misguided and undermines the U.S. image abroad.”

The Associated Whistle-blowing Press (AWP) seeks to provide impartial news based on wikileaks' raw data. Credit: Bradley Manning Support Network/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Sep 24 2012 (IPS)

With the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and detainment of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is effectively on hold. But that does not mean that leaks and whistleblowing activities have stopped.

GlobaLeaks lists a large number of leak sites, which are active to different degrees. Soon The Associated Whistleblowing Press (AWP) will be added to the list.

“One of the main motivations for the AWP is to unite journalists around the world and bring stories to light,” says Brazilian journalist Pedro Noel, one of the main people behind the initiative. “WikiLeaks used to analyse and report on the files they released, but they don’t do that any more.”

Noel perceived a gap in the whistleblowing community, between raw data – documents that conclude wrongdoing – and newsmaking in an impartial way, free of political and economic agendas. He decided that a new platform was needed.

“If the data does not get explained and treated in a way that people can understand, there’s no point in releasing it.”

Noel is currently based in Reykjavik, where he is setting up an office, and building links worldwide. He and his colleagues intend to launch the new whistleblowing site in the last week of September.

Noel was once a volunteer with WikiLeaks, so he knows how the system there works. He says there a number of differences between the AWP and WikiLeaks.

“First, there are structural differences. We’ll have a decentralised framework. With AWP, editors and staff will swap positions: we don’t want to have an ‘icon’. We’ll work with journalists and activists in different centres, and all the working groups will have their own platforms to receive documents and the like,” he tells IPS.

On the other hand, “WikiLeaks all goes through one website, which is in English only. Also, WikiLeaks publishes files of global interest, especially those related to the U.S. AWP wants to correct wrongdoings on a local basis and thus help local communities.”

Noel says it is important to have teams working in different countries and in different languages. “We want to emphasise the local scale as well as the international.

“Another important difference is that WikiLeaks gives exclusivity on the files it discloses, such as to the British newspaper The Guardian and others in the release of Cablegate.” Cablegate refers to the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that had been sent from its consulates and embassies around the world.

“AWP is building a team of researchers and analysts who will themselves publish stories, using local websites.” The main website will have links to the local websites, which will come online when the site is launched.

Anonymity is ensured as AWP uses open-source GlobaLeaks technology, which is specifically designed for whistleblowing, and is accessed with the TOR browser –that builds in anonymity. This means that AWP will not be able to trace the sender of the files. In addition, AWP encourages encryption of email.

AWP will keep a leaked document offline until they have determined it is genuine. Although the sender cannot be traced, Noel is optimistic that this should not be a problem.

“Electronic information tells a lot about the source. A photo gives certain electronic information, and the same goes for a scanned document. It is also possible to see whether a scanned document is genuine or whether it is composed of several different documents,” Noel says.

Iceland may seem a strange place to house a whistleblowing service, but Noel says one of the main reasons for the decision is the Iceland Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) parliamentary resolution that was passed unanimously in 2010 by the Icelandic Althingi (parliament) with the aim of giving safe space to whistleblowers and investigative journalists.

The resolution also wants the Althingi to introduce a new legislative regime to protect and strengthen freedom of expression, allowing Iceland to become an international transparency haven.

Initiated by activist and parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, the IMMI resolution pulls together the best sections of transparency legislation from all over the world. To become law, it now has to be put through the legislative process. This has suffered some setbacks, but is progressing slowly.

Various drawbacks have come to light. One is that various specialists have pointed out that Internet security is substantially inadequate in Iceland. Will this have an effect on AWP?

Smari McCarthy is the director of IMMI and sits on the steering committee that has been set up to investigate issues that need to be looked into in greater depth concerning the implementation of IMMI. He says that the security considerations are real but are being dealt with.

“This year, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) was established in Iceland to serve as a coordination and incident management centre for Icelandic network security issues. In addition, the foreign ministry of Iceland has appointed a national security committee, consisting of members of parliament, to whom I testified a month ago on issues regarding network and information security in Iceland.”

At the moment, McCarthy says “it cannot be said that the situation in Iceland is markedly worse than in most European countries.”

The existence of IMMI is instrumental in the setting up of AWP in Iceland, Noel says, “but we have the same relationship with them as with any other individual or media initiative based in Iceland.”

Two months after he sought refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy, WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange was formally granted asylum by Quito on Thursday.

Julian Assange. Credit: Espen Moe/CC BY 2.0

But with Sweden and the United States pursuing him for potential criminal charges, Assange is unlikely to make his way out of the U.K., which has threatened to break in to the embassy to arrest him.

Assange has been avoiding extradition to Sweden for months, where he is to be questioned over sex assault claims, a mere “attempt to get (him) into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite (him) to the U.S.,” he told the Sun in December.

The Ecuadorean government said that the decision was taken after the UK, Sweden and the U.S. refused to guarantee that once extradited to Sweden, Assange would not be sent to Washington to face additional charges.

The three countries “would not provide any guarantees that he would not be sent to the U.S. to be tried for political crimes,” Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) told IPS.

“So (Ecuador) had no choice under international law but to grant him asylum,” Weisbrot said.

“We believe (Assange’s) fears are legitimate and that he could face political persecution if the measures are not taken,” Ricardo Patino, Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs, said Thursday at a press conference in Quito.

The famous hacker, once called a “hi-tech terrorist” by the Barack Obama administration, fears that he would then face other charges for having leaked top-secret information, including 400,000 documents about the Iraq war and U.S. torture of detainees.

He has thus far found refuge in the premises of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been sleeping on an air mattress since June. If he sets foot outside of the building, he will be arrested by the British police, sent to Sweden, and possibly the United States.

Thursday, applause from many of Assange’s supporters could be heard outside of the embassy as news came that Ecuador had granted diplomatic asylum to their Australian refugee.

“I am grateful to the Ecuadorean people, President Rafael Correa and his government. It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation,” Assange wrote on WikiLeaks before posting “Gracias a Ecuador y ustedes” (Thanks to Ecuador and to you) on his Twitter.

If extradited to Washington, the famous whistleblower would likely face heavy charges.

“Assange would risk the severest penalties – life imprisonment or even the death penalty – if he were tried in the U.S.,” Reporters Without Borders’ Delphine Halgand told IPS.

“The resources deployed by the U.S. authorities to track down WikiLeaks activists and supporters and obtain their personal data can only reinforce these concerns,” she said.

But while the announcement of asylum came as good news for Assange and his numerous supporters, it did not change his situation in any way, with the U.K. police now surrounding the embassy in a “menacing show of force”, according to WikiLeaks.

Should Assange attempt to leave his safe haven, he would be arrested before reaching the airport.

“We will not allow Mr. Assange safe passage out of the U.K., nor is there any legal basis for us to do so,” the British foreign secretary said in a statement released Thursday.

“The U.K. does not accept the principle of diplomatic asylum,” the statement read.

London had previously threatened to enter the Ecuadorean embassy to arrest Assange. However, such a move would blatantly infringe on the inviolability of diplomatic premises as defined under the Vienna Convention, according to Michael Ratner, a legal adviser to WikiLeaks.

“The fact that the British – and I was as shocked as anybody – said yesterday that they might invade the embassy to get their hands on Julian Assange is an incredible violation of international law that is unheard of,” he told Democracy Now.

“I mean, think about the Chinese going into the U.S. embassy to get Chen out in China… This is unheard of in law, it’s unheard of in diplomacy, and it’s an outrageous and egregious undermining of the right of a country to give asylum,” Ratner added.

Other legal experts doubt the UK would actually follow through on such threats.

“(The UK) mentioned revoking diplomatic status for the embassy… Too legally risky in my view,” Carl Gardner, a former lawyer for the British government, told IPS.

If he still refuses to surrender, Assange has two options – holing up in his hideout or trying to reach an airport via an embassy vehicle, which would very likely lead to his arrest.

“I’d be tempted to advise him to go to Sweden and defend himself if there’s a trial. I think that’s inevitable in the end. I don’t think I could offer him any hope of a way out,” Gardner told IPS.

But Gardner adds, wryly, that there’s yet another possibility: “Ecuador could name Assange its representative to the United Nations. That would make him immune from arrest while traveling to U.N. meetings around the world.”

After Colombia’s attorney general announced that she was bringing charges against a former government peace commissioner for his role in a staged surrender of a fake guerrilla unit, he called for an investigation of her husband – which she promptly ordered.

Saying she “cannot be blackmailed,” attorney general Viviane Morales launched an investigation of her husband, former guerrilla and former senator Carlos Alonso Lucio.

She had announced on Monday that her office would seek the arrest of Luis Carlos Restrepo, a former high peace commissioner under then president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

According to Restrepo, Morales “lashed back because I know a secret story about her husband.”

Restrepo will face charges for the case of Cacica Gaitana, which according to military intelligence was a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) unit that operated in the central province of Tolima.

The Cacica Gaitana unit demobilised with great fanfare on Mar. 7, 2006 in the middle of the campaign for the re-election of Uribe, and even surrendered a plane that was supposedly used by FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, who died in 2008.

A U.S. embassy cable leaked by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, dated Mar. 22, 2006, raised doubts about the “veracity” of the demobilisation, and said Restrepo “was warmly congratulated by senior military officials.”

The Cacica Gaitana unit in fact never existed. The demobilisation of some 70 purported guerrillas was a farce that received wide media coverage. Around 15 of them were FARC deserters, and the rest were unemployed or homeless people recruited for the fake surrender operation.

The “leader” of the false unit, alias Saldaña, had been in prison for two years. Part of the weapons surrendered apparently came from a cache of the far-right paramilitary militias, and the plane had been in government custody since 2003.

“Unemployed people were picked up, armed, given military supplies and instructed about FARC ideas, and then they ‘surrendered’,” José Alfredo Pacheco, a former FARC insurgent who took part in the farce told La FM radio station in 2008. “Demobilisations of this kind have always been carried out in coordination with the army.”

After a 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office plans to issue an arrest warrant for Restrepo on Jan. 20 and charge him with fraud, conspiracy to commit a crime, and trafficking of arms.

Army colonels Hugo Castellanos and Jaime Ariza will also be accused, along with Pacheco and other participants, and drug trafficker Hugo Rojas – now in prison in the United States, where he was extradited – who reportedly financed the sham with between 500,000 and one million dollars.

Retired Colonel Castellanos was the liaison officer between then peace commissioner Restrepo and the defence ministry, to deal with the demobilisations of paramilitaries and guerrillas that were frequent during the Uribe administration. And Colonel Ariza was regional head of military intelligence in Tolima.

Restrepo said military intelligence informed him in 2006 of the imminent demobilisation of the Cacica Gaitana unit, and added that the report was “confirmed by then army chief (General) Mario Montoya,” who assigned a helicopter to carry reporters to cover the event.

He also said “the high command were there. What were they doing in that area? Several top generals were in the area where the demobilisation occurred.”

Without going into detail, he said the defence ministry “knows that it was a military operation whose results are secret. Since it involves documents pertaining to national security, they cannot hand them over,” Restrepo said, adding that the classified documents are necessary for him to defend himself in court.

“Why do they insist on keeping that information classified? Why do they deny it? Tell us everything,” Restrepo said in an explosive interview Monday night with the RCN radio station.

He declared himself “opponent number one” of President Juan Manuel Santos, who was Uribe’s defence minister, and asked “What is Santos afraid of? That maybe one of his brilliant officials who are now in the presidency and who were involved with the Cacica Gaitana case until well into 2010, under his ministry, will end up being implicated?

“Yes, there were many military operatives with them,” he added, referring to the fake guerrillas who surrendered with Cacica Gaitana, “and there were high-level defence ministry officials working with them.”

Restrepo urged the government to reveal who in the defence ministry “worked with these gentlemen after and during the ministry of Santos, and what they were involved in.” He also did not rule out the possibility that military intelligence was “deceived.”

Former government minister Camilo González, director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), said the Cacica Gaitana demobilisation was not the only sham.

According to the Uribe administration, some 52,000 armed fighters laid down their weapons in eight years.

That total includes 32,000 members of the far-right paramilitary militias who surrendered in collective demobilisation ceremonies after controversial negotiations with the Uribe administration.

But only 15,000 people actually handed over weapons in these high-profile ceremonies: 10,000 armed combatants and 5,000 people close to them, who were recruited for the purpose, according to a civil society monitoring committee of which INDEPAZ formed part.

“There were 17,000 false paramilitaries who ‘demobilised’,” said González.

“The demobilisation of Cacica Gaitana was a total parody,” he told IPS. “But that was not the main problem. The big sham was (the paramilitary demobilisation) which was of such dimensions that it was impossible for the highest spheres of government not to know.”

In González’s view, the Uribe government “formed part of the entire farce.”

The demobilised paramilitary chiefs confessed to the prosecutors that the militias “had training schools where the people who showed up at the last minute put on uniforms, got haircuts, and learned to describe where they patrolled, what paramilitary front they were in, and what they did.”

Restrepo, meanwhile, argues that attorney general Morales, to whom he sent a letter containing his accusations, should herself be investigated because she took part in a public forum in Santa Fe de Ralito, where the government and the paramilitaries negotiated the demobilisation agreement.

He also maintained that it was a crime for her husband to be an adviser to paramilitaries and guerrillas, in the search for reconciliation. He alleged that Lucio was involved in negotiations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez – who helped broker releases of hostages by the FARC – and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In response to his letter, Morales ordered the investigation of her husband, in which she said she would not take part. She also wondered why Restrepo only called for an investigation of Lucio after the attorney general’s office announced that charges would be brought against the former high peace commissioner.

Workers arrive early in the morning at the One World Apparel factory in Port-au-Prince to assemble garments for export from Haiti. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 20 2011 (IPS)

“Haiti is open for business.” That’s what President Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly said at a recent ceremony as he and former U.S. president Bill Clinton laid a cornerstone for a giant industrial zone being built in northern Haiti.

Across the country and abroad, Martelly, his government, and their advisors – like Clinton – have been pushing the island nation as a foreign investor’s dream come true.

They have good reason to say Haiti is “open for business”. With 15- year tax holidays and – in some cases – massive subsidies, there are deals to be had. Airplanes and hotels are full of foreign investors looking to get in on the ground floor of the post-earthquake reconstruction. Hundreds poured into the capital at the end of November for a two-day conference.

Apparel makers, especially, want to set up shop, according to factory owner Georges Sassine, head of the Association of Haitian Industries.

“I remember somebody saying a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Sassine told National Public Radio in 2010. “It is true, the opportunity has been thrust upon us.”

The new government’s showcase project is the Caracol Industrial Park, being built with 124 million dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds, and another 55 million dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank. [See story #2]

“This is the kind of change we want,” Martelly said the Caracol ceremony last month. “This is what they call ‘sustainable development.'”

But a new report from Haiti Grassroots Watch shows that the focus on assembly industries does not represent a big “change”, nor will it necessarily deliver “sustainable development”.

Despite the many pitfalls, disadvantages and risks, major Haitian and foreign media have been unanimously supportive of the new park and of Martelly’s focus on foreign investment, using unqualified terms like “hope”, “good news” and “progress”, without even raising questions.

But there are definite winners and losers in the gambit.

In a new seven-part series, produced after four months of interviews and the review of dozens of studies, the investigative journalism partnership exposed the challenges, risks and arguably erroneous thinking behind the new park and the gamble of betting Haiti’s development on five-dollar a day wages and “the race to the bottom”.

“Sweatshop” wages by any standard

“I have a problem with my country, Haiti – I’ve been working in factories here for 25 years, and I still don’t have my own house,” Evelyne Pierre-Paul told HGW.

Pierre-Paul, 50, whose name was changed in order to protect her from reprisals at the hands of her boss, doesn’t even rent a house. Before the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, she and her three children rented two rooms for 10,000 gourdes (about 250 dollars) a year.

But the building was destroyed in the earthquake and she hasn’t been able to save up a year’s rent yet. Twenty-three months after the catastrophe that killed hundreds of thousands, she and her children are still living under a tent in one of the capital’s hundreds of squalid refugee camps.

Pierre-Paul’s average daily take-home wage is actually more than Haiti’s minimum factory wage of 150 gourdes, or 3.75 dollars, a day. She earns about 236 gourdes, or 5.90 dollars a day. But that doesn’t cover even one-quarter of what would be considered a family’s most basic expenses.

A study by HGW of assembly workers’ expenses in the capital and at the Haiti-Dominican Republic border revealed that on an average day, workers spend more than 50 percent of an average day’s wages just getting to work and back and eating their midday meal.

A recent study by the U.S.-based Solidarity Center, which is linked to the AFL-CIO trade union federation, determined that a “living wage” for a worker with two children is 749 dollars a month – almost five times the average monthly wage.

Pierre-Paul’s wage – about 150 dollars a month – is far from “living”. She can’t afford to send all her children to school. She can’t even afford to move out of the squalid camp.

Indeed, in buying power, Pierre-Paul earns less than workers did during the assembly factory boom in the 1980s. At that time, the daily wage was worth about three dollars. Today, measured in 1982 dollars, the minimum factory wage is worth 1.61 dollars. The average wage of 236 gourdes a day – as determined by the HGW study – is worth only 2.53 in 1982 dollars.

“The salary question is a veritable scandal,” economist Camille Chalmers told HGW in an interview. “The salary has gotten lower and lower. (Workers) get paid in gourdes but in fact (because almost half of food eaten in Haiti is now imported), they consume in dollars.”

“It’s a big error to bet on the slave-wage labour, on breaking the backs of workers who are paid nothing while (foreign) companies get rich. It’s not only an error, it’s a crime,” he continued.

Pierre-Paul’s boss, One World Apparel owner Charles Baker, admits that he doesn’t pay his workers enough.

“If a person is honest, it’s clear that it’s not enough,” Baker, a two-time presidential candidate, told HGW. “If I could give a worker 1,000 gourdes a day, I’d pay that. But the conditions in Haiti don’t permit us to pay 1,000 gourdes.”

Baker and other factory owners claim they can’t pay more because of they did, their international clients – like Gildan Activewear, Hanes, Levis, GAP, Banana Republic, K-Mart and Wal-Mart – would pick up and move out. And so the Haitian government – with the full backing of the U.S. government, as recent Wikileaked cables revealed – remains the lowest wage in the hemisphere-wide “race to the bottom”.

But Baker insists the assembly industry phase of Haiti’s development is just a “step”.

“Yes, it’s a race to the bottom… if you count on it!” Baker said.

Baker claims that low-wage, low-skilled assembly industries are temporary, and that they will be a big part of the Haitian economy for only about “10 or 15 years”.

“It’s a step. We’re going up the stairs and it’s one of the steps,” he said.

Haiti has been on the same step for almost 30 years. [See story #4]

The “race to the bottom” pits Haitian workers against workers in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

CODEVI, a free trade zone industrial park in Ouanaminthe, in the Northeast Department opened on the Dominican border about eight years ago, after salaries got “too high”, CODEVI director Miguel Angel Torres told HGW.

“In the early 2000s, clients told Dominican companies that the salaries were too high. They said they couldn’t pay. What happened? CODEVI appeared,” Torres said, proudly. “The benefits in Haiti are better than in other countries… We can compete with any company in the Dominican Republic!”

In the meantime, Baker and other Haitian factory owners remain vehemently anti-union, according to workers like Pierre-Paul and according to a recent study by the United Nations-affiliated International Labor Association/Better Work programme.

In an April 2011, report, the Haiti branch of the agency noted, “very significant challenges related to the rights of workers to freely form, join, and participate in independent trade unions in this industry in Haiti.”

Indeed, five months later, about a week after textile workers in the capital registered a union, all five union leaders suddenly lost their jobs. Better Work recently ruled the factories should reinstate all union officers but as of Dec. 12, most of the owners had not complied.

*This story is the first of a two-part series on the pitfalls, disadvantages and risks of a major new industrial park and the Martelly government’s focus on luring foreign investors to Haiti. It was adapted from a longer investigative series by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW).

HGW is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti, and community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media.

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