Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges on Sept. 14, and will cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.(Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)
First came George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who was arrested by the FBI when he stepped off a plane at Dulles International Airport and soon agreed to help the special counsel’s office as part of a plea agreement.
Then there was Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser who admitted he lied to the bureau and would now be cooperating with Robert S. Mueller III’s team to make things right.
Next to fall was Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman who conceded he conspired to defraud the United States and tried to deceive investigators looking into his overseas work.
One by one, the special counsel’s office methodically turned allies of President Trump into witnesses for its investigation — irking the commander in chief so much that he has suggested the commonplace law enforcement tactic “almost ought to be illegal.” But former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had long eluded Mueller’s team, with his resistance to a plea deal so intense that some in law enforcement figured he must know he would soon receive a pardon.
On Friday, though, the special counsel finally nabbed his white whale. Manafort, whose role in the Trump campaign and ties to a Russia-aligned strongman and a suspected Russian intelligence agent make him an enticing cooperator, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice. As part of his agreement with prosecutors, he said he would tell the special counsel’s office all that he knows.
Before he joined the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort made a name for himself in the D.C. lobbying world, but his past caught up with him.(Dalton Bennett , Jon Gerberg, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)
Manafort’s plea could be a key cog in pushing Mueller’s case toward its ultimate end. Legal analysts say Manafort must have something valuable to share with Mueller’s team, which agreed to drop five of the seven charges he faced and potentially urge leniency at his sentencing, if his cooperation is helpful.
Generally, those who plead guilty sit down with prosecutors to detail what they know in a “proffer” session, so the government knows what it will get in the bargain. Manafort’s plea makes reference to a written proffer agreement on Tuesday — showing he has been in talks with the special counsel’s office at least for several days.
Whether Manafort ultimately implicates the president remains to be seen. Manafort’s defenders and Trump’s lawyers have long insisted that the political consultant, who left the campaign in August 2016, had no information that would incriminate Trump.
“I think Robert Mueller’s real quest here is for the truth, and Paul Manafort can get him closer to knowing the truth,” former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade said.
Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani said Friday that it would be impossible for Manafort’s cooperation with Mueller’s office to imperil the president. That is because Trump and Manafort continued to have a joint defense agreement — an informal arrangement among lawyers to share information — which Manafort would have to cancel if he believed his cooperation could expose Trump to legal jeopardy, Giuliani said.
Inside the White House on Friday after the plea, the mood was “oddly calm,” said one Republican in frequent touch with officials there. A number of people had expected some sort of agreement, and Trump’s legal team recognized it couldn’t control Manafort’s desire to avoid a second trial after being convicted on eight of 18 counts in a related case in Virginia last month.
Trump himself has not yet addressed the plea directly.
The charges to which Manafort pleaded guilty had nothing to do with the president. Rather, they focused on Manafort’s personal money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent for work he did on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, and obstructing justice with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom prosecutors have linked to Russian intelligence.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted that point in a statement responding to the development.
“This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign,” she said.
But while the White House projected confidence about its position, some officials privately acknowledged that they could not be sure what Manafort might expose about the campaign or about interactions with Russians.
Manafort was a participant in the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sat down with a Russian lawyer thinking they would get damaging information on Hillary Clinton. He also was a part of the Trump campaign when the Republican Party platform was changed in a way viewed as more favorable to Russia because it did not include support for arming Ukraine.
“I think he potentially knows a lot of information, just in light of his role as the campaign chairman during that crucial time during the summer of 2016,” said McQuade, who watched much of Manafort’s first trial.
Manafort’s plea agreement short-circuited a trial in the District that was scheduled to begin in coming days with jury selection. He instead agreed to admit wrongdoing and cooperate fully with Mueller, turning over any documents that may be relevant to the special counsel’s investigation and testifying in any proceedings where that might be necessary. He also agreed to give up five properties and a handful of financial accounts.
Having already been convicted in Virginia, Manafort’s cooperation might be the best way for him to reduce his time in prison. He faces roughly 10 years in the D.C. case and perhaps another 10 in Virginia — though he would probably be able to serve those together, particularly if prosecutors urge judges to go easy on him.
So far, the special counsel’s office has charged 32 people, and six have pleaded guilty. Though Mueller has shrouded his probe in secrecy, he is pushing to wrap up a substantial portion of his investigative work soon and is referring cases to U.S. attorney’s offices that can handle prosecutions once the special counsel probe is disbanded, according to those familiar with Mueller’s work who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal deliberations.
A grand jury still seems to be actively investigating Trump associate Roger Stone, and the special counsel’s office is still negotiating with the president’s legal team over the possibility of interviewing Trump himself. Stone said in a statement after the plea: “I am uncertain of the details of Paul’s plea deal but certain it has no bearing on me since neither Paul Manafort or anyone else can testify truthfully that I am involved in Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other illegal act pertaining to the 2016 election.”
Trump and the special counsel’s office could come to a resolution at any moment on Trump answering questions, those involved in the discussions say, but remain at the same basic standstill. Trump’s lawyers don’t want their client to sit down for a face-to-face interview out of fear he would be accused of perjury.
In early August, Mueller offered to reduce the scope of questions he would pose, but Trump’s team ultimately rejected the offer, saying it considered questioning the president about possible obstruction of justice to be legally inappropriate. Just before Labor Day, Mueller notified Trump’s lawyers that he would accept written answers to some questions about the campaign and would delay making a decision for now about seeking answers from the president about his time in the White House. Mueller is interested in that later period as part of his probe of whether Trump tried to obstruct the Russia investigation.
While Manafort had previously seemed to be posturing for a pardon — the president praised him on Twitter as a “brave man” after he fought prosecutors at the Virginia trial — it was not immediately clear whether Manafort would be able to maintain that effort after his plea.
Earlier this summer, Trump had sought his lawyer’s advice on pardoning his former aides, including Manafort. But Giuliani said he counseled Trump that he shouldn’t consider such a pardon until after Mueller’s investigation was completed, and the president understood. “He agreed with us,” Giuliani told The Washington Post last month.
Giuliani declined Friday to say whether Trump is leaning toward pardoning Manafort.
“It’s not something to be considered during a pending investigation. The president shares that view,” he said. “That’s our advice to him, and there is no reason to believe he’s changed his mind on it.”
Fatou Bensouda’s announcement is a very courageous move to try the real culprits of CIA, American Establishment and their mango-twigs who have remained untouched for more than 73 years.
by Anwar A Khan-
( September 15, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organisation and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may, therefore, only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the Court. The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force. The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC’s foundational and governing document. States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC. Currently, there are 123 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore, members of the ICC.
The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has opened ten official investigations and is also conducting an additional eleven preliminary examinations. Thus far, 39 individuals have been indicted in the ICC. Last November The ICC’s Chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, said the investigation would focus on war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” and secret detention facilities in Afghanistan used by the CIA, particularly in 2003 and 2004. She said the Taliban and its affiliated Haqqani network, as well as the Afghan National Security Forces, would also be investigated. Bensouda said her office “has determined that there are no substantial reasons to believe that the opening of an investigation would not serve the interests of justice, taking into account the gravity of the crimes and the interests of victims.”
America has said it would refuse to cooperate in any way with the International Criminal Court in The Hague if it carries out a prospective investigation into allegations of war crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan. At the same time, Bolton announced that the US State Department is shutting down a Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington in response to Palestinian efforts to have the court prosecute Israeli actions and because the Palestinians have rejected direct negotiations with the Jewish state on a peace treaty.
The Trump administration initially announced it would close the PLO office last year for its efforts to get the ICC to investigate Israel, but later reversed its decision. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has asked the international court to investigate and prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said the Trump administration move to close the office will not deter his government from going to the ICC. “The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale, that we will not succumb to US threats and bullying,” he has said.
Bolton called the ICC fundamentally illegitimate and an assault on the constitutional rights of the United States. He said if the ICC carries out the investigation of US military actions in Afghanistan, the US would ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the country, freeze any funds they have in US financial institutions, and attempt to prosecute them in US courts.
The ICC as reported recently in the international media that it may soon formally announce an investigation of allegations of misconduct by members of the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency. The ICC is designed to be permanent and independent of national governments as it investigated war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But Bolton has said the ICC has been ineffective and unaccountable. But look at America’s National Security Adviser John Bolton’s temerity, he has called the American war criminals as “American patriots.” Bensouda said her office “has determined that there are no substantial reasons to believe that the opening of an investigation would not serve the interests of justice, taking into account the gravity of the crimes and the interests of victims.”
Amnesty International official Adotei Akwei immediately rebuked the US position, saying its rejection of the ICC’s legitimacy is an attack on millions of victims and survivours who have experienced the most serious crimes under international law and undermines decades of groundbreaking work by the international community to advance justice. Akwei has said the US should sign the Rome agreement creating the court and support — not impede — its investigations. The ICC prosecutes the most serious crimes under international law — genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. Akwei has also added, “Resuming attacks against the court sends a dangerous signal that the United States is hostile to human rights and the rule of law.”
The ICC Chief Prosecutor recently announced her decision to request an authorisation to open a formal investigation into possible international crimes committed in connection with the conflict in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. The outcome of her preliminary examination was long-awaited and expected to be significant because an investigation into the Afghanistan situation would cover all parties involved – that is, not only local actors but also the international coalition, including the US and US nationals would come under the jurisdiction of the Court if they committed crimes in Afghanistan or in any other State party to the Rome Statute.
The Chief Prosecutor’s choice to subject some aspects of the Afghan conflict to judicial scrutiny despite the pressures deserves to be praised as an act of bravery. Fatou Bensouda intends to prosecute acts of torture committed in CIA detention facilities located in Europe, in connection with the armed conflict in Afghanistan, as war crimes. If she does, the Afghanistan investigation may help highlight many overlooked aspects of war crimes, political killings… committed by CIA and American Establishments for more than 7 decades across the globe including the brutal murder of Bangladesh’s Founding Father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
In its public announcement, the ICC Chief Prosecutor has indicated that she will focus, in conformity with the ICC’s jurisdiction, solely upon war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed since 1 May 2003 on the territory of Afghanistan as well as war crimes closely linked to the situation in Afghanistan allegedly committed since 1 July 2002 on the territory of other States Parties to the Rome Statute.
War crimes closely linked to the situation in Afghanistan, but committed elsewhere like Iraq, Libya, Syria…allegations of torture and other forms of ill-treatment committed as part of the infamous CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. The programme implicated the rendition, detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, with the support of at least 54 States. Some of them, like Poland, Lithuania and Romania, hosted CIA-run secret facilities where detainees were allegedly ill-treated. These three States are parties to the Rome Statute, and as a result, the ICC’s jurisdiction extends to their territory. In her 2016 Preliminary Examinations report, the Chief Prosecutor has already mentioned her determination that there is a reasonable basis to believe that: “War crimes of torture and related ill-treatment, by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.”
Looking into the future – and acknowledging that the prospect of an indictment of CIA operatives is not distant, to say the least – if these crimes are ever to be prosecuted by the ICC. Indeed, the ICC has territorial jurisdiction in Poland, Lithuania and Romania. So, the American misdeed-mongers’ acts come under the material jurisdiction of the Court and qualify as war crimes. Because war crimes are serious violations of IHL under the Rome Statute and customary international law, this question preliminarily depends on whether IHL applied to these acts.
War crime courts have usually followed a two-prong inquiry to answer this question: 1) is there an armed conflict and 2) is there a nexus between the conduct and this armed conflict? That a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) involving the US (or two if the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are considered two distinct parties) existed at the time of the alleged acts of ill-treatment is beyond reasonable doubt. In addition, based on the nexus jurisprudence of the ICC and other international and national war crime courts, finding a sufficient nexus in this case should not raise any major issue. The Prosecutor would apparently focus on individuals captured in the context of the armed conflict in Afghanistan, such as presumed members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda transferred to these CIA-run sites. The victim’s affiliation with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda would indeed be sufficient to prove a sufficient nexus (actual membership would not be required; perceived support for one of the enemies of the US would be sufficient to meet the nexus requirement).
However, in deciding whether IHL applied to these alleged acts of torture, ICC judges would likely have to rule on a defence challenge that IHL did not apply there, beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The ICTY, ICTR and ICC (and other war crime courts) have had to decide on the geographical reach of IHL within the territory of States where a NIAC was taking place, but not beyond such territory and the ICTY’s jurisdiction extended only to the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the ICTR’s only to Rwanda and its neighboring States; the ICC, whose territorial jurisdiction is not so limited, has not had to rule on such a scenario yet. The prosecution of acts of torture committed in CIA-run sites in Poland, Lithuania or Romania would be the first time – to the best of our knowledge – a war crime court has to rule on the applicability of IHL to conducts linked to a NIAC occurring in another non-neighboring State. The same would be true if State courts decide to prosecute these crimes, acting under the catalytic effect of the ICC complementarity principle – on which Bensouda insists in her announcement.
Fatou Bensouda’s announcement is a very courageous move to try the real culprits of CIA, American Establishment and their mango-twigs who have remained untouched for more than 73 years. They have many hats and many faces while committing grievous acts in countries after countries according to their free-will. They must be brought to justice in no time and to do this the ICC has larger roles. We hope the ICC must show enough courage to show the bright light to the world. If they succeed, the names of ICC and its leaders will be inscribed in golden letters. And they would receive high commendation from all peace and freedom-loving people all over the world. The world will then be a better place for people for living in peace and harmony. It must happen sooner and then the whole world would come to know how much horrific crimes they committed to the mankind across the world since long. The writer believes that the court’s proceedings, once divulged, would shake the whole world! And people all over the world should extend their fullest support and cooperation to them in clear and louder tones to successfully carry out this sacred task for the greater good for us all in the world planet.
-The End –
The writer is based in Bangladesh and writes about politics, political and humanist figures and international affairs.
In 1981 on the editorial page of the New York Times I wrote a column showing that the mass atrocities against the Indian population of Guatemala were carried out under the direct orders of the then president, Fernando Lucas Garcia. His former vice-president, Francisco Villagran Kramer, had given me information that was incontrovertible evidence of the murders.
I also showed how close was the relationship, financially and militarily, between the Guatemalan government and President Ronald Reagan’s government. At the time Regan was considered to be the “Teflon President”. No scandal stuck to him. Certainly not the evidence of a column in the New York Times. The reaction in Washington was zero. A brief while later Amnesty International published a long report documenting an act of genocide.
After a number of changes of government in Guatemala, President Efrain Rios Montt came to power. Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Elliott Abrams, wrote that President Efrain Rios Montt’s rule had “brought considerable progress” on human rights. He also declared that the “amount of killings of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step”. In fact it was the reverse.
It was not until 1996 under President Alvaro Arzu that the death squads run by the army and the government were finally dismantled. Nearly 40 years later, in 2013, Montt was convicted in court of “genocide” and sentenced to prison for 80 years. It was the first time that a former head of state had been found guilty of genocide by a court in his own country. Prosecutors said that he had presided over the war’s bloodiest phase.
Under Reagan, embassy officials had trekked up to the scene of massacres and reported back to Washington the army’s line that the guerrillas were doing the killing. According to de-classified diplomatic cables, over the next two years US$15 million in vehicles, spare parts and arms from the US reached the Guatemalan military. There was military training too. Congress re-imposed the ban (the first was done by Jimmy Carter) in 1990 but clandestine aid continued unknown to President Carter. More military aid came from such allies as Taiwan, Israel, Argentina and Chile. (The latter two ruled by military dictatorships that were carrying out terrible human rights abuses themselves.)
Progress has been made, yet most of the time at a snail-like pace. The murder of Indians has stopped. However, other problems abound. Only last week President Jimmy Morales, who was not involved in the genocide, said that the head of a UN anti-corruption mission (partly funded by the US) would not be allowed back into Guatemala. For some time allegations of corruption have swirled around Morales’s family. As recently as this May seven human rights activists were murdered, although it is not suggested that Morales is behind them.
The first real turning point was the work of President Alvaro Arzu. The second was the appointment of Claudia Paz y Paz as Attorney-General, by President Alvaro Colom, the country’s first left-leaning president in 53 years. A former human rights lawyer, aged only 44, she was a no-nonsense woman who put a number of notorious drug dealers and human rights criminals behind bars, and indicted Rios Montt. Her rigorous policies helped lower the horrendous crime rate, one of the world’s three worst. Forbes magazine described her as “one of the five most powerful women changing the world.”
She was helped by the total turn around of Washington’s long-time policy, thanks to President Bill Clinton. In March 1999 on a visit to Guatemala Clinton made a public apology: “For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong.” It led the Washington Post to editorialize, “We Americans need our own Truth Commission”.
She was also helped by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that had ruled in 2004 that genocide had occurred and that the Rios Montt regime was responsible for it. Also an international arrest warrant had been issued by a Spanish judge in 2006. Both these events had helped change the political and judicial atmosphere.
Surprisingly, Rios Montt barely mentioned the United States when he put forward his arguments in his defence. But, as the New York Times reported , “Washington’s alliance with him was not forgotten in the giant vaulted room where the current American ambassador, Arnold Chacon, sat as a spectator in a show of support for the trial”. (Chacon was appointed by the Administration of Barack Obama.)
Under President Donald Trump very few appear to be concerned about Guatemala. That doesn’t mean nothing is going on between Washington and Guatemala. It just means that the media seemed to have lost interest until last week’s story. Will the Trump Administration support the cause of law and anti-corruption or will it just let things be?
Over the years, as a foreign affairs columnist of the International Herald Tribune, I have made four visits to Guatemala. Please see my website: jonathanpowerjournalist.com e-mail:jonatpower@aol.com
Abdulla Yameen takes his oath as the President of Maldives during a swearing-in ceremony at the parliament in Male November 17, 2013. REUTERS/Waheed Mohamed/Files
MALE/COLOMBO (Reuters) - The main Maldives opposition party said on Wednesday that President Abdulla Yameen’s government must ease “draconian” visa measures limiting the number of foreign journalists coming to cover a presidential election on Sept. 23.
Yameen is seeking a second five-year term in the Indian Ocean archipelago popular with tourists. But his main rivals have been jailed for charges ranging from terrorism to attempting to topple the government, leading to doubts abroad about the legitimacy of the vote.
The Maldives has been beset by political instability since a police mutiny forced its first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Nasheed, out of office in 2012.
The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said in a statement that visa rules were aimed at keeping foreign journalists out “in order to reduce scrutiny of (Yameen’s) unlawful and unconstitutional behaviour”.
It called for the regulations to be eased.
“The measures should be viewed as a pre-emptive cover-up of planned electoral fraud,” it said.
According to new measures, journalists must apply for business visas, for which they need a Maldivian sponsor, and submit forms giving details of previous employment, travel history,
qualifications, bank account details and a police clearance certificate, the MDP said.
Previously, the Maldives gave journalists visas on arrival.
Opposition presidential candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih called on Twitter for the authorities to “reverse restrictive measures against international journalists”.
The government has said that journalists who try to cover the election on tourist visas will face punitive measures. In February, it deported two Agence France-Presse journalists working while on tourist visas.
The ambassador of the Maldives to neighbouring Sri Lanka, Mohamed Hussain Shareef, said the visa process was changed after some journalists misreported the country’s moderate faith and about the security of tourists.
The Election Commission said in a statement it was committed “to afford the opportunity to any international media personnel to take part in observing the elections as long as the necessary requirements have been met”.
The opposition call for easier access for foreign reporters came two days after police said they had received information of an “organised conspiracy” to commit serious offences aimed at convincing “foreign stakeholders” that the upcoming election “is not independent and fair”.
On Friday, president Yameen’s administration accused the United States of intimidation after it called for the release of “falsely accused” political prisoners and threatened action if the island’s election is not free and fair.
Former leader Nasheed, who is based in Sri Lanka, fearing poll rigging, has urged the international community to examine the election result in consultation with all political parties before accepting any candidate’s victory.
Yameen’s government has rejected repeated requests by the United Nations, rights groups and Western countries to release the president’s rivals.
I wrote about Chinese oppression in a South African paper. Hours later, they cancelled my column.
The managing editor of China Central Television Africa, Pang Xinhua, shows a local journalist in Nairobi how the organization has expanded in different parts of Africa on June 12, 2012. (Simon Maina/AFP/GettyImages)
It is official. After more than a decade of planning, setting up, and bankrolling African media, the Chinese are finally ready to cash in on their investment.
Last week, I decided to dedicate my weekly column in a South African newspaper to discussing the persecution of more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province.
The column looked at the discrimination suffered by the Turkic-Muslim community and the inability of the more than 40 African leaders in Beijing for a historic China-Africa forum to seek clarity from their host. No more than a few hours after the piece was published by newspapers belonging to Independent Media, South Africa’s second-largest media company, I was told that the column would not be uploaded online.
A day later, my weekly column on neglected people and places around the globe, which I have been writing since September 2016, was immediately canceled. I was told the “new design of the papers” meant that there was no longer space for my weekly venting.
Given the ownership structure of Independent Media, with Chinese state-linked firms holding a 20 percent stake, I understood when I wrote the column that it might rattle the higher-ups. I didn’t expect the exorcism to be so immediate and so obvious. I had, it would appear, veered into a nonnegotiable arena that struck at the very heart of China’s propaganda efforts in Africa.
In 1999, China embarked on an economic and social outreach program to the continent, known as its “Going Out” policy, in which it injected millions of dollars of investment into the African media. To counter the rampant negative perceptions of China in Western media, the project looked to take back control of the country’s image in a continent where its interests were only set to grow.
This meant investing heavily in China’s own state media presence, including expanding bureaus; supporting privately owned Chinese media that set up offices on the continent; purchasing stakes in private African media; and conjuring up partnerships or organizing sponsored trips to China for cash-strapped African newsrooms.
As the soft diplomacy of China’s agenda has been propelled by the state-owned Xinhua press agency, China Global Television Network, the African edition of China Daily, and the monthly magazine ChinAfrica, based in Johannesburg, it is yet unclear whether African audiences have been accepting Chinese versions of their own reality.
It is private media companies that have most effectively become vehicles for forwarding the interests of the Chinese state, in cahoots with local elites.
So, in Kenya, press junkets at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation or special Beijing-sponsored seminars for Kenyan journalists have turned the Nation Media Group into a spectacle of press release rewrites promising an injection of Chinese collaboration into the continent.
In South Africa, Independent Media—partly owned by the China International Television Corporation and China-Africa Development Fund—is replete with sycophantic praise for Chinese investment, lacks critical engagement with the much-ballyhooed BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) project, and fails to ask basic questions on Chinese motives in Africa. Instead of holding power to account, it has become its most ardent cheerleader.
Meanwhile, the Chinese-owned StarTimes Group is now operational in 30 countries across the continent and describes itself as the “fastest growing and the most influential digital TV operator in Africa.” Though privately owned, StarTimes has benefited from a close relationship with the Chinese state, as Emmanuel Dubois notes, especially as a tool for exporting Chinese culture and services.
It’s true that the China-Africa story is one that has long been marred by false dichotomies. But what’s needed is clear-eyed coverage, not different distortions. In the Western press, the Chinese are either portrayed as aggressors or neocolonizers, while the Africans are described as weak or corrupt. In China-friendly media, the pattern is reversed; the Chinese are benevolent benefactors or partners, while the Africans are eager recipients.
And where the Western press has done its utmost to reveal African corruption and fiscal recklessness, Chinese media does its best to conceal them.
As it stands, there’s little coverage outside of either the Western portrayal of Africa as being overrun by resource-hungry and ruthless Chinese companies or the Chinese-sponsored media efforts that extol the Chinese development model or offer a projection of Africa in outlandishly positive terms.
A lack of nuance in reporting on China has allowed selfish business leaders to use the often unfair media portrayals of China and BRICS nations, or the global south, as an excuse to promote a more authoritarian, unaccountable business ethic on the continent under the guise of economic development.
This is precisely how former South African President Jacob Zuma justified his corruption, which culminated in the widespread use of the phrase “white monopoly capital” to dismiss all criticism of his business activities.
Some African governments have recognized the value of a media that toes the state line in lieu of a national agenda. The positive spin about the continent keeps African leaders happy (in a self-satiating bubble), and China establishes itself as a “true friend” of the continent.
Companies that take on Chinese ownership are likely to experience the Chinese model of censorship; red lines are thick and non-negotiable.
Given the economic dependence on the Chinese and crisis in newsrooms, this is rarely confronted. And this is precisely the type of media environment that China wants their African allies to replicate.
In 2015, Faith Muthambi, then South Africa’s former communication minister, went to Beijing to understand how the country’s state-owned broadcast media works. Media freedom in China is among the worst in the world. So it beggars belief that the minister traveled to learn anything other than how to control the news.
On the U.S. government side, though, the focus on the situation in Xinjiang comes after a spate of criticism of what is being described as China’s “debt-trap diplomacy.” As valid as these concerns may be, there’s a strong element of Western self-interest here. Many of the recent attacks have come off the back of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.
That the United States is among the first to threaten sanctions on China on account of the treatment of Uighur Muslims, while the Trump administration continues its ban on visits from citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, shows up the hypocrisies involved. The Uighurs, it would appear, only represent an opportunity to take a strike at the dragon.
For the Chinese, meanwhile, silence about a million people imprisoned without trial is golden. As non-Western powers such as Malaysia begin to raise the Uighur issue for the first time, potentially endangering President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road project, the battle for African public opinion is becoming particularly heated. The culling of my column came just as Xi pledged $60 billion to the continent, in the form of projects, assistance, investment, and loans, in an event described as the “largest and most high-profile diplomatic event” ever held in Beijing.
The timing to raise the plight of the Uighurs, it turns out, was wrong. And, evidently, just right.
President Rodrigo Duterte speaks after his arrival, from a visit in Israel and Jordan at Davao International airport in Davao City in southern Philippines, Sept 8, 2018. Source: Reuters
13th September 2018
PHILIPPINES President Rodrigo Duterte claims he has evidence of a plot to assassinate him in a sharp criticism against the country’s military which had refused to arrest one of his most vocal critics without a warrant.
On Tuesday, Duterte told a state-owned television network that he possessed a recording provided by a foreign country that a group of politicians from the opposition had banded together with Maoist rebels and former military officials to oust or kill him, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Someone said that’s their plan now. If they can’t achieve their goal through explosions, they will assassinate,” he said.
Earlier, the Duterte had called on the military to remove him in a coup if it saw him as unfit to be the president.
“If you want another president—fine,” he told soldiers.
Duterte said the group of plotters “were in constant communication”, adding the “connection will be shown, maybe any day now”.
His remarks come amid a tense political standoff with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, an opposition politician and former military official who was granted amnesty after attempted coups during previous administrations.
Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes speaks to the media at the Senate in Pasay City, Metro Manila, in Philippines, Sept 11, 2018. Source: Reuters
Last week, Duterte withdrew the 2010 amnesty granted to Trillanes, who was a junior naval officer who led two unsuccessful coup attempts 15 years ago, and ordered his arrest, according to Reuters.
While Duterte is known for his devil-may-care attitude and foul-mouthed tirades against his critics, his remarks were a departure from his usual temperament.
Duterte also called on the military to “declassify” information about the alleged plot.
“We have the evidence and we have the conversation provided by a foreign country sympathetic to us,” Duterte told Salvador Panelo, presidential legal counsel, in an hour-long conversation.
Congressman Gary Alejano, Trillanes’ party-mate who also took part in the failed coups, denied any plot to ouster, saying the opposition was merely ensuring “checks and balances” to the government.
Alejano added Duterte was attempting to “divert the attention of the people from the present economic woes they themselves have failed to address”.
Typhoon Mangkhut continued on its destructive path on Sunday as it hit the southern coast of China, killing two, after leaving at least 64 dead in the Philippines amid landslides and flooding.
The storm battered the heavily populated Guangdong region on Sunday afternoon with 100mph (160km/h) winds, after skirting 62 miles from Hong Kong.
In Guangdong, more than 2.4 million people have been evacuated. The storm made landfall in the the city of Haiyan around 5pm local time, according to China’s central meteorological observatory. China Central Television said the had typhoon triggered storm surges as high as 3 meters. By late evening, the Chinese state broadcaster said two lives had already been lost.
Schools have closed until Tuesday, the high-speed rail line has been suspended and hundreds of flights have been cancelled, according to China’s state news agency, Xinhua. In the southern province of Fujian, officials have ordered thousands of fishing boats to return to harbour and closed construction sites near the coast.
As the storm brushed passed Hong Kong, high winds smashed windows in the city, tearing off parts of buildings and roofs, while storm surges flooded hotels and restaurants with waters waist-deep. More than 100 people were injured. The neighbouring Chinese gambling enclave of Macau also closed all 42 of its casinos for the first time.
In the Philippines, the total death toll rose to 64. The heaviest casualties were in Benguet province, where 38 people died, mostly in two landslides, and 37 are still missing, the police said. Dozens of people, mostly small-scale miners and their families, are still feared to have been trapped by a landslide in the far-flung village of Ucab in Itogon town in the province, according to the local mayor, Victorio Palangdan. Supt Pelita Tacio said 34 villagers had died.
Four others – including two children – were buried in a landslide in Nueva Ecija, another person died in Kalinga, and one was killed by a falling tree in Ilocos Sur, said Francis Tolentino, an adviser to President Rodrigo Duterte. A pregnant woman was also among the fatalities.
The storm, the strongest in the region this year, was not as ferocious as feared due to the remote areas where the typhoon hit. However, the full death toll and extent of the destruction is still unknown
Dozens feared trapped as Typhoon Mangkhut death toll rises in the Philippines – video
On Sunday, Duterte and government officials flew to the heavily impacted area of Cagayan. He said in a televised briefing: “I share the grief of those who lost their loved ones. Those [are what] we call the unforeseen events. In insurance, this is an act of God. I don’t know how it can be an act of God, but that is the term used by the insurance.”
Tolentino said the search and rescue operation had ended and the focus would switch to rehabilitation and the restoration of power and water supplies.
The category five super-typhoon hit the northern end of the Philippine island of Luzon early on Saturday morning, with the high winds ripping roofs off houses and pulling down trees and electricity pylons, and the rains causing fatal landslides and flooding. More than 5 million people were in its path.
The island is a key agricultural area in the Philippines, producing most of the country’s rice, corn and other vegetable crops, which have been ruined a month before harvest, damaging the livelihoods of thousands in the region.
In Ilocos Norte where the typhoon made its exit, Juan Carlo Tabios, 22, and his family thought they could stay in their wooden bungalow home and ride out the typhoon.
They were forced to evacuate at the last minute when the howling winds started to shake the house at midnight on Saturday. They ran to a neighbour with a sturdier house, where they they heard the typhoon rip their home apart, piece by piece.
“The walls of our home flapped against the strong winds for hours and stopped only when they broke off,” said Tabio. “In the morning, we saw that our home was totally damaged. The kitchen was completely washed out. My room was split open and my clothes and books were soaked.”
Waves hit the shore at Heng Fa Chuen, a residental district near the waterfront in Hong Kong. Photograph: Bobby Yip/ReutersJerome Balinton, a spokesman for Save the Children who was in north-eastern Luzon, said: “The further north we travelled the more extensive the damage, particularly in Cagayan province. House after house had been flattened or badly damaged, with roofs or walls missing. Large trees have been uprooted from the ground and power poles bent right over, leaving power lines strewn across the ground.”
He added: “In some areas where the eye of the storm hit, it seems as if nothing has been left undamaged.”
The typhoon affected 250,000 people in Luzon, according to the government’s natural disaster council. Mangkhut, a Thai word for the mangosteen fruit, is the 15th storm this year to batter the Philippines.
Athletes competing in the just concluded Asian Games in Jakarta suffered from some of the worst air quality in a city hosting a major sports event in recent years.
Levels of PM10 and PM2.5, classes of particles in the air, exceeded World Health Organization guidelines for the duration of the Games, despite vehicle restrictions imposed by the Jakarta government.
Activists say officials are overlooking the fact that more than half the air pollution in Jakarta is caused by factors other than vehicle emissions, including several coal-fired power plants.
Officials in the central government have denied that there’s an air pollution problem, but those in the city administration have acknowledged the issue and called for a holistic approach to tackling the range of factors.
JAKARTA — Organizers of the recently concluded Asian Games in Indonesia had been braced for the worst-case scenario: forest fires flaring up and shrouding Palembang, one of the host cities, in a thick, choking haze.
Sure enough, air quality problems surfaced — but not in Palembang. Instead, it was in Jakarta, the other host city, some 430 kilometers (270 miles) away, where air pollution and high temperatures combined to make life miserable for some of the athletes taking part in Asia’s biggest sporting event.
“The race was so difficult — the hot weather, humidity, and not just the humidity but the pollution,” Indonesian racewalker Hendro Yapsaid after recovering from collapsing at the end of the men’s 50-kilometer event.
Hendro’s time of 4:32:20 was the slowest in two decades in the Asian Games; the fact that he was only one of five athletes to finish the race under those conditions, he said, was “a miracle.”
“Racing here is not easy. This is Indonesia,” he said. “This is a miracle for me I can finish. This is a miracle.”
He also told TheJakarta Post that he “could strongly feel the air pollution” during the race. The U.S. Embassy’s air monitoring station in Central Jakarta that day recorded high concentrations of PM2.5, a fine particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that is deemed harmful to human health.
The embassy recorded PM 2.5 levels of 80 micrograms per cubic meter during the Aug. 30 race — eight times higher than the “hazardous” threshold defined by the World Health Organization. Indonesian racewalker Hendro Yap douses himself with water during the men’s 50-kilometer event at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by M. Agung Rajasa/INASGOC.
‘Hard to breathe’
Hendro wasn’t the only Asian Games athletes hit by the air quality in Jakarta. 2017 world champion Rose Chelimo of Bahrain said the heat and air pollution in Jakarta affected her performance in the women’s marathon on Aug. 26, to the point that she almost gave up.
“I felt something in my throat too. The air here, you feel like it’s hard to breathe,” the 29-year-old told AFP.
While Chelimo won the race, her time of 2:34:51 was a good 10 minutes off her personal best. It was also seven minutes slower than her performances at the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London, where she won in 2:27:11, and at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where she finished eighth in 2:27:36.
Chelimo’s performance in Jakarta has been linked to the city’s toxic air. Concentrations of PM10 particles, which are smaller than 10 microns in diameter, in the capital during the Asian Games averaged 60 to 70 micrograms per cubic meter, according to organizers. For every 10 micrograms per cubic meter increase in PM10, the performance of female marathon runners can be expected to decrease by 1.4 percent, according to a 2010 study.
Daniel Kass, senior vice president for environmental health at the global health nonprofit Vital Strategies, said that given the air quality during the race, Chelimo’s time was to be expected.
“So you can see what happened in Jakarta, about 60 micrograms per cubic meter of PM10,” he told Mongabay. “Once you get into 5, 6 or 7 times that formula, you’re talking about 10 percent performance reduction.”
Bahrain marathon runner Rose Chelimo catches her breath after finishing first at the final of the Asian Games’ Women Marathon in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by vidio.com.
Toxic pollutants
Athletes are especially prone to the health impacts of air pollution because they breathe up to 20 times more than regular people during training and competition. This is especially true for marathon runners like Chelimo, who inhale and exhale about the same volume of air during a race as a sedentary person would over the course of two full days.
Athletes also inhale deeply, further increasing their exposure to toxic pollutants. And without an adequate oxygen supply, athletes cannot reach peak performance.
“The level of toxic pollutants is certainly high enough that it can influence the performance [of athletes competing in the Asian Games],” Greenpeace senior global campaigner for coal and air pollution Lauri Myllyvirta told Mongabay.
Throughout the Games, which ran from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, Jakarta had average PM2.5 level of 38 micrograms per cubic meter, nearly four time the WHO limit, according to Greenpeace figures. At several points, including during the men’s racewalk event, the PM2.5 level exceeded 75 micrograms per cubic meter, and sometimes went past 100 micrograms per cubic meter.
A graphic showing the hourly PM2.5 concentration level in Central and South Jakarta, Indonesia, during the 2018 Asian Games. Image by Greenpeace.As poor as Jakarta’s air quality was, it could have been much worse. The city administration had in the weeks before the games imposed vehicle restrictions that effectively cut the number of cars on key streets by half.
Jakarta’s average PM2.5 level throughout 2018 is 35 micrograms per cubic meter, according to a global PM2.5 dataset published by Dalhousie University in Canada. This is higher than any other city hosting a major sports event since 2011, with the exception of Beijing in 2015.
The Chinese capital’s average PM2.5 level that year was 88 micrograms per cubic meter. Ahead of its hosting of the 2015 IAAF World Championships, city officials took drastic measures to clean the air by closing down factories and restricting vehicles, sending the PM2.5 level far below Jakarta’s average.
That means the Asian Games in Jakarta were likely the most polluted major sports event held anywhere since 2010, when Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games and Johannesburg hosted the FIFA World Cup, according to Greenpeace’s Myllyvirta. He described running a race in Jakarta as “definitely an extreme sport” due to the city’s hazardous air.
Masih ingat sejak kapan Greenpeace menyuarakan bahaya polusi udara di Jakarta yang cukup tinggi?
Sampai sekarang hal mendasar seperti penguatan standar “udara sehat” yang mengacu pada kajian ilmiah dampak terhadap kesehatan manusia saja belum ada perubahan. #WeBreatheTheSameAirpic.twitter.com/uhn6oMAxWL
— Greenpeace Indonesia (@GreenpeaceID) September 1, 2018
Olympic dreams
That hasn’t fazed officials in Jakarta, however, who now want to host the biggest prize of all: the 2032 Olympic Games.
Indeed, the organizers, and the president in particular, were widely praised for what was a largely successful Asian Games with no major snafus to speak of, according to Greenpeace Indonesia climate and energy campaigner Bondan Andriyanu. But the higher profile of the Olympics should compel the government to do more about tackling air pollution, he said.
“Amid the euphoria of us becoming the host of this major sport event, we have to push the government to find real solutions on air pollution,” Bondan said in a press release. “The testimonies of these athletes are harsh criticisms for Indonesia as a host.”
The government spent some 30 trillion rupiah ($2 billion) preparing for the Asian Games, much of the funds going toward infrastructure such as stadium upgrades and the athletes’ village. But the government failed to provide clean air, one of the most important things athletes need, according to Margaretha Quina, head of environmental pollution at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).
“The Asian Games is the right momentum for the Indonesian government to show its seriousness and commitment in building a healthy Indonesia,” she said.
An aerial view of Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia. The recently-renovated multi-purpose stadium has been chosen as the main stadium for the 2018 Asian Games. Photo by M. Arisandy Rizky/Flickr.
‘Real threat’
The notion that air quality should be improved not just for a high-level event but for the long term is echoed by Vital Strategies’ Kass.
“It’s kind of routine at this point that air pollution in cities gets extra attention, particularly during sporting events,” he said. “[But] there’s a certain cynical element to paying attention to air pollution and trying to mitigate it only when international eyes [are] on the city.”
He said the government shouldn’t forget that millions of Jakarta residents suffer every day from breathing in the toxic air.
“And because the effect is cumulative, the ability of people to exercise, the efficiency of manual laborers, the willingness of [people to] go outside — all of these are affected,” Kass said. “So the real need is to mitigate air pollution [in the long term].”
Greenpeace’s Myllyvirta also shared the same concern, saying that while there was definitely a short-term impact for athletes exerting themselves amid toxic air, people living in a city with air quality as bad as Jakarta’s were at greater risk of health problems because they had to deal with it all the time.
“The biggest concern with PM2.5 is that when you live in cities with such high PM2.5 levels over a long period of time, it increases your risk of numerous diseases,” Myllyvirta said.
To remind the public that clean air is a right for everyone, not just visiting athletes, activists from Greenpeace took out a huge billboard near the main stadium with a mural showing a person wearing a gas mask and the message “#WeBreatheTheSameAir.” The mural also displayed Jakarta’s air quality index to warn Jakarta residents of the toxic air that they breathe on a daily basis.
“No matter who we are, whether we’re rich, the president or taxi drivers, we all breathe the same air,” Greenpeace Indonesia climate and energy team leader Hindun Mulaika told Mongabay. “So the impact of air pollution is very personal and everyone is affected.”
The damage that breathing toxic air inflicts goes far beyond the well-known impacts on physical health. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that high pollution levels significantly reduced people’s intelligence, equivalent to losing a year of education.
“So if I’m complaining about air pollution, it’s not because I’m a campaigner for Greenpeace,” Hindun said. “It’s because I’m a mother of two children. Children like mine are often have coughs, runny noses and sore throats, all of which are diseases often caused by pollution.”
A number of Greenpeace activists climbed the billboard to install Jakarta air quality with a message #WeBreatheTheSameAir located on Jalan Jend. Gatot Soebroto (Taman Ria Senayan). The air quality data taken from an average of 5 air quality monitoring devices belonging to several different institutions, BMKG in Kemayoran, the US Embassy in Central and South Jakarta and 3 other tools owned by Greenpeace Indonesia in Rawamangun, Pejaten Barat and Mangga Dua Selatan. Image by Jeri Kusumo/Greenpeace.
Beijing or Atlanta?
There are two ways Jakarta can proceed after the Asian Games, said Kass. First, it can follow in the footsteps of Beijing, which went to extraordinary lengths to improve the city’s chronic and notoriously poor air quality in the months leading up to and during the 2008 Olympics.
These efforts included an aggressive program to curtail traffic and reduce emissions by implementing strict restrictions on automobile and truck use, closing factories, halting construction projects,
spraying roads with water to reduce dust, and seeding clouds to induce rainfall.
In the years after the Olympics, the government actually ramped up its pollution control policies on the back of strong public pressure, Kass said. In 2014, the Chinese government declared war on air pollution, after unveiling an action plan to improve overall air quality across the country within five years.
The government also introduced a policy to switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas, forcing millions of homes and businesses to make the switch. As a result, PM2.5 levels in Beijing plunged by 54 percent last year, according to a Greenpeace report.
“I don’t think the [Olympics were] the driving effort there,” Kass said. “It’s the concern of the public, fear of dissent and relentless attention [to] the horrific air pollution level in the city.”
Alternatively, Jakarta could end up like the U.S. city of Atlanta, which hosted the 1996 Olympics.
During the event, the city of Atlanta took measures such as limiting traffic in an effort to reduce air pollution. And they worked, at least for a while: there was a 42 percent reduction in asthma hospitalization cases during the Games.
“But it returned to normal afterward, because none of the mitigations stuck,” Kass said.
A traffic jam in Jakarta, Indonesia. Lack of public transportation has forced people in Jakarta to use private vehicles, clogging the street with cars and motorcycles and polluting the air. Image by VasenkaPhotography/Flickr.
Not just cars
To emulate Beijing’s success in improving its air quality, Jakarta has to address all sources of air pollution, not just vehicle emissions, which is what it focused on for the Asian Games.
The vehicle restriction policy that was implemented, which only allows cars on certain main streets if their license plate ends in an odd or even number, led to a reduction in Jakarta’s legendary traffic jams during the two-week Games, according to an official assessment.
Average vehicle speeds on the roads in question increased by 37 percent, and commuting times decreased by 23 percent. At the same time, the number of passengers on the Transjakarta bus network rose by 40 percent.
And yet air quality in Jakarta was still poor.
“There’s a number of reasons for that,” Myllyvirta said. “For Jakarta, a lot of its pollution comes from outside the city, including from factories, power plants and transport. In order to get good air quality, you have to address many sources.”
Vehicles account for 47 percent of the air pollution in the capital, according to a study by the NGO Committee to Phase Out Leaded Fuel (KPBB). Next are emissions from factories, at 22 percent, road dust and households (11 percent each), waste incineration (5 percent), and construction work (4 percent).
In preparing for the Asian Games, the government essentially failed to address the factors responsible more than half of the city’s air pollution.
“No effort was made to reduce pollution from coal power plants,” Kass said. “These are likely very significant sources for Jakarta’s air pollution.”
Beijing, by contrast, shut down factories in the industrial clusters located outside the city, which contributed 50 percent of the metropolitan’s pollution, according to Myllyvirta.
There are eight coal-fired power plants within a 100-kilometer (60-mile) radius of Jakarta. Emissions from these plants wind up in the air in Jakarta and Tangerang, a densely populated satellite city on the capital’s western outskirts, according to a Greenpeace study using state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling.
A modelling done by Greenpeace showing how far air pollutants from coal-fired power plants could travel to Jakarta. Image by Greenpeace.With six more power plants planned for construction near Jakarta, the impacts on air quality would be dramatically exacerbated: the number of people exposed to PM2.5 levels exceeding WHO guidelines, solely due to emissions from coal power plants, would increase from 3 million at present to 31 million.
Emissions from the currently operating coal-fired power plants result in an estimated 5,260 premature deaths and 1,690 babies born underweight per year due to exposure to PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Taking future changes in population into consideration, the addition of the new plants would result in an extra 5,420 deaths and 1,130 babies born underweight.
“One thing that I was quite shocked to find is that Jakarta has more new coal plants being proposed within 100 kilometers than any other capital city in the world,” Myllyvirta said.
Another study, published in the journal Atmospheric Pollution Research in 2011, looked at the sources of air pollution in South Tangerang, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) from central Jakarta. It found that 26 percent of the pollution there came from oil and coal power plants.
Greenpeace’s Hindun said what’s differentiate between Jakarta and Beijing was that there was a lot of public pressure in Beijing for the government to act on the industry and power plants, something which was missing in Jakarta.
“The public here doesn’t even know where the coal-fired power plants are located in,” she said. “They could only see the cars and the traffic in Jakarta. But if we ask Jakartans whether they have seen a coal plant in real life or what’s a coal plant look like, they might not know.”
An aerial shot of a coal-fired power plant in Banten, West Java. A study by Greenpeace shows that air pollutants from power plants in Banten could reach Jakarta. Image by thisisinbalitimur/Flickr.
Official denials
The government, far from acknowledging the problems with air quality, insists there’s no issue. Air quality in Jakarta is “quite safe,” said Andoro Warih, head of the environmental impact assessment unit at the city’s environment agency. He pointed to the city’s PM10 level, which averages less than the central government’s safe limit of 150 micrograms per cubic meter over a 24-hour period.
But air quality standards in Indonesia, for both PM2.5 and PM10, are weaker than elsewhere in Asia as well as the WHO. The latter’s safe standard for PM10 exposure in a 24-hour period is 50 micrograms per cubic meter — a third of Indonesia’s threshold.
“It is our standards that are weak, not our air that’s healthy,” Greenpeace Indonesia climate and energy staffer Didit Haryo Wicaksono told Mongabay. “That’s why we’re pushing the government to strengthen our air quality standards, because many other countries have done that.”
The Indonesian government only requires the monitoring of certain parameters of air quality, including PM10. PM2.5 is not included in that list, and as such doesn’t feature on the daily notices published on the Jakarta administration’s website.
“We’ve always wanted to include PM2.5, but we’re prevented by the regulations,” said Thamrin, a city environmental official. “This year, we’ve built five monitoring units in Jakarta that can measure PM2.5. We’re calling for the regulations to be revised to include PM2.5 [information].”
Greenpeace Indonesia’s Bondan said it was time for the government to stop using the PM10 level as an indicator of Jakarta’s air quality because it masked the severity of the pollution problem. He said the government should start using the PM2.5 indicator, as suggested by the WHO, because these smaller particles could be inhaled and thus posed a more serious health risk.
“As long as the city keeps saying the air quality is good or moderate, we aren’t talking about the [real] problems, let alone finding any solutions,” he said as quoted by the Jakarta Post.
But more senior government officials insist there’s nothing wrong with Jakarta’s air quality. Dwikorita Karnawati, who heads the national weather agency, the BMKG, cited a recent report by the WHO that measured the annual mean PM2.5 levels in more than 4,300 cities around the world.
The top 10 most polluted cities on the list were mostly in India, with no Indonesian cities in the top 10, she said.
Another top official, Dasrul Chaniago, director of air pollution at the environment ministry, has even gone as far as to deny that power plants in neighboring Banten province contribute to the air pollution in Jakarta.
“Why would smoke from coal-fired power plants travel all the way to Jakarta? Do they want to go to the shopping malls here?” he told reporters in Jakarta. “Are you sure smoke from power plants in Banten can be carried by the wind to Jakarta? You’re given the ability to think by God. We have logic. We’re not animals.”
When reporters pointed out to him that air moved all the time, thus making it possible for emissions from power plants to reach Jakarta, Dasrul said “that’s bullshit. Why isn’t the wind going from Jakarta to Banten?”
Bondan said the government should carry out its own studies on the impact of the power plants instead of just issuing blanket denials of the problem.
“They should have responded to our study [on coal-fired power plants near Jakarta] with their own modeling,” he said, “not just saying there’s no way [it can happen].”
Bondan also urged the Jakarta administration to start conducting an official study into the sources of air pollution in the city. “They’ve never done an emission inventory,” he said.
Vital Strategies’ Kass agreed, saying that current efforts to tackle air pollution in Jakarta were undertaken with little understanding of where the pollution was coming from.
“I’m concerned that there won’t be a hard look [at] why the mitigation effort wasn’t effective,” he said.
A traffic jam in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by Joel Wiramu Pauling/Flickr.
‘Grand design’
That message is reaching some in the Jakarta administration, despite the denials from officials in the central government.
Oswar Muadzin Mungkasa, the deputy to the Jakarta governor for spatial planning and the environment, said he was aware that the city’s air pollution came from a wide range of sources. He said that made it important to have a policy addressing all these sources, and to work with the administrations of neighboring cities and provinces.
He said the city administration was currently working on a “grand design” to improve the air quality in Jakarta.
“Together we must realize that air quality management in Jakarta must be resolved regionally, involving the entire metropolitan area of Jakarta,” Oswar said.
Kass welcomed the “grand design,” in particular the administration’s acknowledgment that there needed to be better data on air pollution.
“One of the components of the grand design is recognizing not much is known [about air pollution in the city],” he said. “I think they understand that if they want to figure out how to mitigate it [air pollution], they have to know where it’s coming from.”
One particular event the government can capitalize on to improve its policies on air pollution and climate change is the upcoming WHO’s global conference on air pollution and health at the end of October, said Bondan.
The conference is the first of its kind and will bring together global, national and local partners to share knowledge and mobilize action for cleaner air and better health globally.
Greenpeace’s Hindun said any lessons learned from the conference would be in vain if the government refused to acknowledge the urgency of tackling air pollution. “It’s up to the government whether they want to accept the reality or keep denying,” she said.
Locals who are affected by coal power plants around Indonesia gather during a protest in front of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources office in Jakarta, Indonesia. They’re demanding the government to switch from coal to renewable energy. Image by Hans Nicholas Jong/Mongabay.
Climate impact
The same vehicle and power-plant emissions dirtying Jakarta’s air are also contributing to global warming. Indonesia is one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, with the energy sector on track to surpass the forestry and land-use sector as the biggest source of emissions.
The country maintains the outdated Euro II emissions standard for road-going vehicles, which allows the use of cheaper but more polluting fuels. It is among the last three countries in Asia not to have made the leap to Euro IV, which requires higher-quality and cleaner fuel.
In a pursuit of cleaner air and lower emissions, the government has announced it will implement the Euro IV standard across the country starting Oct. 7 this year.
But the move comes just as a weakening currency and rising oil prices combine to push consumers toward lower-cost, dirty fuel again. Indonesia is looking to buy 84 million barrels of cheap, lower-quality gasoline so far this year, more than the 62 million barrels it bought in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
This reliance on polluting fuels has made the road transportation sector a major source of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 12 percent of total emissions. Globally, the transport sector is the fastest-growing contributor to climate emissions, according to the WHO.
Jakarta is a major consumer of these cheap fuels, with nearly three-quarters of the city’s emissions coming from the energy sector, including private vehicles. Burning coal is a big part of that, and by 2030 the energy sector is expected to account for 50 percent of Indonesia’s emissions, up from 28 percent in 2010, as demand for energy increases.
The Indonesian government plans to meet the increase in energy demand by doubling the number of coal-fired power plants, adding 25 gigawatts of new power to the grid.
The World Bank says plans to build more coal plants in Asia, including Indonesia, will be a “disaster for the planet,” and overwhelm the Paris climate agreement, to which Indonesia is a signatory.
The Indonesian government says these new plants will feature clean-coal technology to reduce their impact on the environment. But climate and energy scientists have refuted the rationalization, noting that carbon dioxide emissions from the most technologically advanced coal-fired power plants today are double those from a natural gas plant, and 15 times higher than from a renewable power plant.
And while the most advanced technologies can, in theory, remove some 90 percent of carbon and harmful particulates from coal exhaust, they drive up the cost of building a coal-fired power plant by about 70 percent.
“What the Indonesian government is doing to mitigate climate change is to still use coal and justify it as clean technology,” Greenpeace’s Hindun said. “Meanwhile, other countries are mitigating climate change by transitioning from dirty fossil fuels to renewable energy.”
Even if the coal plants of the future are as “clean” as the government is advertising, there are still some 50 other coal-fired plants in operation today that will continue working on old and inefficient technology. The burning of coal accounted for more than 40 percent of Indonesia’s energy-related CO2 emissions in 2014. The emissions from the amount of coal it exported, meanwhile, exceeded total emissions from its domestic energy use.
Making the switch from coal to renewable energy would therefore not just reduce air pollution, but would also help slow the pace of climate change and related impacts on water resources, agriculture, weather extremes and health.
But the Indonesian government’s current energy policy still favors coal over renewables for foreseeable future. While the national energy blueprint calls for a boost in the use of renewable energy in the country’s energy mix from 12 percent in 2017 to 23 percent in 2025, coal will remain the primary source of energy, at 54.4 percent in 2025.
“If we’re looking at our country’s climate change pledge, the government’s commitment on renewable energy is still weak,” Hindun said.
There may be a bright spot, though. The government recently put several power plant projects on hold, particularly on Java, which is experiencing a supply glut. This could serve as a starting point to wean the country off coal power and onto renewables, Hindun said.
Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Ignasius Jonan recently announced the government would slow down an ambitious program to add 35 gigawatts of power to the national grid — mostly through coal-fired plants — and postpone the construction of plants supplying a planned 15.2 gigawatts of that total. The move came in response to a weakening rupiah, which has made the import of equipment for the plants prohibitively expensive and contributed to a ballooning current-account deficit.
“The current strengthening of the U.S. dollar proves the notion that coal is cheap, which the Indonesian government keeps repeating to justify its support for the coal industry, is wrong,” Hindun said. “Just the U.S. dollar strengthening is enough to render coal power no longer affordable because we still import a lot of the technology.”
Renewables, she said, have a higher capital cost, but over the long term work out much cheaper.
“It’s very possible to do transfer of technology for renewable energy, because renewable energy technology is not difficult to master,” she said. “It’s just that Indonesia doesn’t want to develop its renewable energy industry.”
Banner image: Indonesian speed walker Hendro Yap receives medical attention right after crossing the finish line during the final of speed walking race at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by INASGOC.
First came George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who was arrested by the FBI when he stepped off a plane at Dulles International Airport and soon agreed to help the special counsel’s office as part of a plea agreement.
In 1981 on the editorial page of the New York Times I wrote a column showing that the mass atrocities against the Indian population of Guatemala were carried out under the direct orders of the then president, Fernando Lucas Garcia. His former vice-president, Francisco Villagran Kramer, had given me information that was incontrovertible evidence of the murders. 
The managing editor of China Central Television Africa, Pang Xinhua, shows a local journalist in Nairobi how the organization has expanded in different parts of Africa on June 12, 2012. (Simon Maina/AFP/GettyImages)
: Sian Loh
