Tutemohuta - Fires burning

Related:

Party Calls for Iwi to Exercise Rangatiratanga
http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/06/maori-land-protests-to-go-on-after-13.html

Police accused of race attacks on Africans

"Police in the region are being awarded for multicultural policing while perpetrators of brutality and racism remain in their stations, or in other stations in the region — or are promoted."

Liz Porter

September 30, 2007

A LEAKED police report has questioned the future of a senior sergeant accused by lawyers of running a regime of "racially motivated police violence" against local African youths at Flemington police station.

The confidential Ethical Standards Department report, part of which has been obtained by The Sunday Age, recommended that Victoria Police call in "external agencies" to discuss whether the officer should stay at the station.

The officer was dubbed "Senior Sergeant X" in a recent VCAT judgement, which ruled that the report be kept secret. He was in charge of the station in 2005 and early 2006 but is on temporary secondment to the Victoria Police Centre, the tribunal heard. It was during X's time as the officer in charge of the station that lawyers from the Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre received a spate of complaints about police brutality, harassment and racism directed at young refugees from the Horn of Africa.

A secret "ethical health" review was conducted for the ESD last year by Inspector Mark Doney after the centre reported 13 complaints to the Office of Police Integrity.

Summaries of the complaints were presented to a VCAT hearing of the community legal centre's appeal against the police's refusal to release the report.

They included allegations of young people being "punched and kneed", punched while handcuffed, slapped and choked by police officers. One youth alleged he was forced to strip naked below the waist, in public and again at the police station, in the course of an unlawful search by police. There were also allegations of repeated racial abuse.

One youth alleged that he was punched twice in the head while his face was on the ground. His head was stood on while an officer told him he was a "black c---" and smoked. Another youth alleged that police hit him repeatedly on the head while he was seated and handcuffed, causing him to fall to the ground.

Tamar Hopkins of the Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre said she was appalled that the officer's possible return to the station was even being considered.

Although lawyers from the centre made a lengthy submission to the ESD review, police have so far fought successfully to keep its contents secret. First Victoria Police blocked the lawyers' Freedom of Information request for the report. Then, when the centre applied to VCAT for a review of that decision, the police fought them and won.

The lawyers have been told they have grounds for a Supreme Court appeal, but are reluctant to risk up to $30,000 of the centre's tiny budget to pay police legal costs should they lose.

The VCAT hearing about the report was told that two officers were moved from the station after the complaints were made to the OPI and before Inspector Doney began questioning police at the station.

One officer, referred to in the VCAT judgement, as "acting sergeant Z", featured in a number of the complaints and was transferred to another station afterwards. The other, "senior sergeant X", was not mentioned specifically in the complaints but was in charge of the station at the time of the complaints. But Inspector Nigel Howard, manager of the Moonee Valley Police Service Area, told VCAT that the move was at X's inititative, who was seeking promotion.

The hearing was also told that it was the redeployment of senior sergeant X and then acting sergeant Z that had enabled other officers to speak with greater candour to Inspector Doney. In ruling that the report be kept secret, the deputy president of VCAT, Mr M. F. Macnamara, noted Inspector Howard had said in evidence there was a culture of retribution against "those who ratted" to investigators about colleagues or superiors. He quoted Inspector Howard's evidence that publicising the report would enable others to work out "who the rat was".

Ms Hopkins called for the police to release the whole report and said the level of complaints about Flemington police dropped when a new senior sergeant introduced a "zero tolerance for racist comments" policy.

But she said that that senior sergeant had moved and the legal centre continued to receive complaints about racial harrassment and aggression by police from other stations, including Moonee Ponds.

She said that the centre now had 18 complaints awaiting investigation by OPI.

"Police in the region are being awarded for multicultural policing while perpetrators of brutality and racism remain in their stations, or in other stations in the region — or are promoted."

Complaints to the Office of Police Integrity

■March 2006, Flemington: Young man says he was punched in face by one officer. He was choked and punched in the lower back by another, and called a "black f---".

■March 2006, Flemington: A young man claims he was racially harassed and assaulted during a raid on his home. He was told: "I don't like you black guys around here. Go back to your country." At the police station, he was slapped on the face and threatened with serious injury.

SINCE THE DONEY REPORT

■February 2007, Moonee Ponds: One young man says he was bashed in the face with a torch while handcuffed. Another says he was repeatedly beaten with a torch and sprayed with capsicum spray while lying on his stomach on the ground.

■April 2007: A young man says he was punched repeatedly in the head, choked and kicked while being stood on and handcuffed by Footscray police

THE PRESENCE OF THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE IN THE PACIFIC REGION.

The AFP has had a presence in one form or another, in the Pacific for close to two decades. The initial entry into the Pacific Region was by way of the Defence Cooperation Program funding which enabled the AFP to place an officer in Vanuatu in an Advisory/Training capacity. That role today is a liaison role in keeping with other AFP officers posted overseas.

From an Operational perspective, the AFP has serviced the Pacific Island region from Canberra since the early eighties, by way of a South Pacific Island Liaison Officer, who travelled on a regular basis throughout the region. That role is now that of a Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands based in AFP HQ Canberra.

In 1994, the AFP, as a result of increasing transnational crime indicators such as drugs and guns, opened a liaison office in Port Moresby, PNG.

In August 2001, a successful cabinet submission to address the increasingly apparent transnational crime issues in the region saw the placement over a 6 month period, of two additional officers in Honiara in the Solomon Islands, an additional officer in Port Moresby, PNG and Port Vila, Vanuatu and the opening of a new post with two officers in Suva, Fiji Islands.

An additional AFP officer was also posted to the office of the Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands (formerly the South Pacific Liaison Officer) in Canberra. All AFP Pacific Island posts have various responsibilities when it comes to other countries in the region. For example, Fiji is responsible for all PIC’s east of Fiji and the AFP Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands retains responsibility for Micronesia and the French Territories, whilst PNG, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have enough responsibilities with their countries alone.

The boost in AFP personnel in the Pacific Region was also supported by approximately 2.4 million dollars in Law Enforcement Cooperation Program (LECP) funding support over 2.5 years. Many LECP interventions are under way or have been completed in the field of Intelligence, Investigations, Forensic, Border Control, officer exchange and attendance at various conferences, seminars and workshops
.
The AFP enjoys a high profile in the Pacific region and is intent on raising that profile
in the future. Considerable work is being generated through the placement of additional officers in the region, and this together with the LECP initiatives has enabled considerable inroads to be made into Pacific policing and other law enforcement agencies.

The AFP today, involves itself in close consultations with DFAT, Defence and AusAID on issues relating to policing in the Pacific Region. The AFP now provide advice to the Australian Government, the Australian Intelligence community and Australian overseas missions on a regular basis on policing and politics in PIC’s and more recently on AusAID Police Institutional Strengthening Projects in PNG, Solomon Islands and future projects in Vanuatu and Fiji.

The AFP has hosted a number of workshops in an effort to improve the outlook of Pacific policing and also works in close consultation with the Pacific Island Forum (Law Enforcement Liaison Officer - LELO) on matters of mutual interest. The most recent initiative to be placed before AFP management is the placement of a Training Enforcement Liaison Officer in Suva, Fiji Islands to coordinate all Pacific Law Enforcement Training, a well overdue and much anticipated initiative for the region.

The AFP is a regular attendee and contributor at the following:

The South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference (SPCPC)
The Australasian and South West Pacific Commissioners Conference (ASWPCC)
The (Pacific) Forum Regional Security Committee (FRSC)
The Oceania Customs Organisation (OCO)
The Pacific Immigration Directors Conference (PIDC)
The New Zealand Combined Law Agency Group Conference (CLAG)
The following are examples of the conferences attended.
South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference (SPCPC)

SPCPC is the South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference and consists of Police Commissioners from all Pacific Island countries from Saipan and Guam to French Polynesia and Australia and New Zealand. The SPCPC meets once a year in various member countries around the Pacific and is supported by a mid term SPCPC working group which addresses all resolutions arising from the conference.

This conference is the voice of policing in the Pacific. The AFP is very active within the SPCPC, both financially (providing travel funds) and representative wise, and together with two invited state police force representatives, attend each year. Representatives of the SPCPC attend other Pacific Island forums such as the Forum Regional Security Committee (FRSC) and the Oceania Customs Organisation (OCO).

Australasian and South West Pacific Region Police Commissioners Conference
(ASWPRCC)

The ASWPRCC is the Australasian and South West Pacific Region Commissioners Conference. This is a more Australian dominated conference with the AFP and all States and Territories represented. PNG and Fiji are the only other semi regular representatives at this Conference. The conference addresses issues of both a domestic and international nature.

THE AFP OVERSEAS NETWORK

The principal role and functions of the Australian Federal Police Overseas Network is
to:

• Establish a relationship of confidence with the police and law enforcement
agencies in the host country and other countries within the region of
responsibility, facilitating a flow of information to Australian police forces

• Initiate inquiries with relevant local law enforcement agencies on behalf of the
AFP, State Police, ABCI, etc, and pass on requests from local agencies to the
AFP for inquiries within Australia

• Coordinate and provide advice to host countries on joint investigations

• Assist the host country in the development and execution of controlled
operations

• Assist with the extradition of persons wanted in Australia or the host country

• Identify new developments in police training, equipment and practices,
especially in relation to drugs and organised crime

• Provide training and technical advice where appropriate to local law
enforcement agencies

• Cooperate, with the knowledge and agreement of the host country, with Third
Country law enforcement authorities

• Represent the AFP at international law enforcement conferences, including
those held under the auspices of the United Nations Drug Control Program
(UNDCP) and Interpol

• Facilitate visits by law enforcement officials to and from the host country

• Liaise with Department of Foreign Affairs-designated special purpose liaison
officers at Australian Missions where the AFP is not represented

• Strengthen the capability of foreign law enforcement agencies through the
provision of training programs through the Law Enforcement Cooperation
Program (LECP)

http://www.paclii.org/journals/fJSPL/vol08no2/9.shtml

“Policing the neighbourhood”—Australia’s new para-military police

Part 2

By Mike Head
28 September 2007

This is the conclusion of a two-part series on the Australian Federal Police. Part 1 was posted on September 27.

The AFP and the Honiara riots

The real face of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as a para-military arm of Canberra’s neo-colonial policy has nowhere been more graphically demonstrated than in the Solomon Islands.

The New Matilda online magazine has published fresh evidence about the AFP’s role in the April 18-19, 2006 riots in Honiara, the Solomons’ capital. These riots, which began outside parliament house and culminated in the burning down of the city’s Chinatown and other commercial and tourism buildings, provided the justification for the dispatch of more than 400 Australian, New Zealand and other troops and police, bolstering the ongoing security contingent of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) to more than 1,000.

The WSWS has previously reported evidence that suggests that Australian forces may have deliberately provoked the rioting to create the conditions for the Howard government to reinforce the RAMSI operation following a general election in which its favoured candidate, Prime Minister Allen Kemakeza, was defeated.

After newly-elected MPs defied the thrust of the election outcome by voting to install Snyder Rini, Kemakeza’s deputy, as prime minister, Solomon Islanders reacted with outrage, generally believing the parliamentary vote to have been rigged through corruption and bribery. An angry crowd converged on parliament to demand Rini’s resignation.

Luke Johnston, an Australian NGO worker who was at parliament, told New Matilda he had not spoken out before because of fear of retribution from Australian authorities. He said the crowd that gathered outside parliament to hear the announcement of the new prime minister was agitated but not violent. The people were willing to negotiate—until the AFP’s riot squad stepped in.

“These guys [the AFP’s Operational Response Group] came flying down the driveway at full speed, right towards the crowd. There were two or possibly three Land-cruisers full with all the kit: bullet-proof vests, big shields, lots of weapons. The crowd just scattered. That was the first turning point. The second one was when they cleared the driveway, they started manhandling people. The first physical contact was made by the AFP officers. They weren’t brutal, but they were shoving and pushing, and that’s when people got cranky,” Johnston told the magazine.

“Then they [the police] tried to bust the PM out. They rushed him out to the car under guard of the riot squad, and that’s when the first stone came. The police began firing stuff, and that really set the crowd abuzz, because it sounds and looks like guns. They started freaking, shouting ‘you’re shooting us’. They went mad, just hysterical, and they trashed every vehicle, and they ran down the hill and started burning things down,” he said.

The police then withdrew and seemed to allow the burning and looting to proceed. “So I had to stand on my verandah for two nights with a crowbar with the whole town abandoned to these mobs, which just grew and grew, and watch as [the police] dealt with the situation from the air. They put the helicopter over the house and they were firing tear gas out of the helicopter.”

The New Matilda series also drew attention to a World Vision submission to the current Senate inquiry into Australian “peacekeeping operations”. The submission included claims by serving AFP officers that International Deployment Group (IDG) members of the ADF used non-approved munitions during the Honiara riots, and were instructed to fire at people’s heads or shoot them in the back as they fled. World Vision’s submission welcomed the AFP’s participation in RAMSI as a “positive development”, while voicing concerns that these practices could undermine support for the operation.

According to World Vision, the munitions “included either 40 mm bean bag rounds or 40 mm foam rounds, 12 gauge bean bag rounds, CS Gas and possibly Stinger grenades containing rubber balls. We understand that these munitions were used by IDG members on 18th April 2006 in Honiara, despite them not being approved use of force options at the time under Commissioner’s Order 3 (CO3). We further understand that on 19th April, CO3 was retrospectively amended for a 28-day period to permit the use of previously non-approved munitions.”

World Vision said its sources reported that an IDG Team Leader had given chilling instructions to Australian and New Zealand police officers in the Solomon Islands. He “reportedly informed participants that, from his experience in PNG [Papua New Guinea], a person’s neck was a good place to aim with a 12 gauge bean bag round, since this would render the person unconscious, and that shooting people in the back as they were fleeing was also acceptable.”

During a Senate committee public hearing in Melbourne, World Vision representatives were admonished for attracting media attention to “specific grievances”, and the committee refused to pursue the claims. Justice Minister David Johnston said he was satisfied that the claims had been investigated internally, but a World Vision spokesman said no eye witnesses had been interviewed in the internal probe, including the officers who spoke to the organisation.

The Howard government and the AFP have insisted that the police conduct during the Honiara riots constituted an exemplary display of the AFP’s new role. In the June 2006 edition of AFP News, the agency’s newsletter, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said the response by AFP members “would be remembered as a very proud moment in the AFP’s history”. He described the “bravery and courage” shown by police officers as an “inspiration to us all at the AFP”. They “did an incredible job in extremely volatile circumstances, exercising enormous restraint and putting their own safety at risk to protect others”.

As the WSWS has documented, the Howard government has sought to block or derail the Solomon Islands government’s own commission of inquiry into the Honiara riots. Its campaign has included attempts to arrest and extradite the country’s attorney-general, Julian Moti, on trumped-up statutory rape charges (see “Solomon Islands government rebuts Canberra’s child sex allegations against attorney-general”).

The fresh evidence raises many further questions about the IDG’s part in the Honiara riots. Did AFP commanders provoke the disturbances and then stand aside while Honiara burnt, in order to give the Howard government a pretext to fly in more troops to fortify the RAMSI intervention? Were orders given to use potentially lethal force? Were those orders retrospectively authorised? Has a high-level cover-up taken place?

A domestic “gendarmerie”

Commissioner Keelty has referred to the AFP becoming a “pseudo-gendarmerie” of Australian foreign policy. The same could be said of its growing para-military and political role domestically.

As the Howard government has turned to military and police interventions in the Asia-Pacific regions, it has also dramatically escalated the AFP’s powers, resources and activity at home.

This was on display at the recent Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney. According to official sources, some 450 AFP officers were deployed, alongside 2,500 state police and 1,500 military personnel, who included Special Air Services (SAS) commandos on standby.

The AFP said its contingent included dog squads (“canine explosives teams”), heavily-armed bodyguards (“personal protection officers”), intelligence analysts and airport security personnel. Commissioner Keelty described it as “a huge deployment, the biggest we have had”.

Because many police personnel removed their name tags, it was impossible to determine how many AFP officers were among the squads of armoured riot police, equipped with pistols, mace spray, taser guns, batons, shields, armoured vehicles, water cannon and helicopters, that surrounded the 10,000 demonstrators protesting against the Iraq war and the policies of the Howard government and the Bush administration.

In the lead-up to the summit, police commandos joined SAS and other military personnel in “anti-terrorism” exercises, featuring helicopters whirring through the city, gunboats speeding up Sydney Harbour and simulated live ammunition shootouts at railway stations.

Over recent months, the AFP has also played a leading part, as an adjunct to the military, in the Howard government’s takeover of Aboriginal townships and camps across the Northern Territory. Police have been stationed in scores of communities to enforce such measures as welfare cutoffs, medical checks on children, crackdowns on truancy and the seizures of control over houses and land.

The Howard government clearly regards the IDG’s experiences overseas as valuable for its internal operations. That was illustrated by the initial appointment as Northern Territory taskforce commander of Shane Castles, the former Australian police chief of the Solomon Islands RAMSI operation. Castles subsequently declined the Northern Territory post, and was replaced by an army officer, Major-General David Chalmers.

The connection between the foreign and domestic work of the AFP was discussed with rare candour in a June 27 Canberra ABC radio interview with acting Australian Capital Territory (ACT) police commissioner Andy Hughes, another AFP officer with neo-colonial experience. He had been forced to leave Fiji, where he had been installed as Police Commissioner, after last year’s military takeover in Fiji.

ABC host Ross Solly asked Hughes whether AFP officers had the “special set of skills” needed to go into indigenous areas, following reports that local people feared and opposed the intervention. Hughes replied: “Look I don’t think anyone is doubting that it is a big job. No question of that. But, ACT Policing members and indeed AFP have had considerable experience in difficult environments including recently of course, East Timor, Solomon Islands, and other UN missions over time. We’re in Afghanistan, Sudan, so you know, the track record of AFP and Australian Policing generally in difficult circumstances is very good.”

The AFP was also centrally involved in the Howard government’s ultimately unsuccessful operation to frame-up Indian Muslim doctor, Mohammed Haneef, on terrorism charges. Haneef was detained for nearly two weeks without trial, and then stripped of his visa to block his release. Amid lurid media claims of a “doctors’ jihad network”—obviously fed by prejudicial police and government leaks—Prime Minister Howard and leading ministers declared that his arrest was a wake-up call to Australians that terrorists could strike on home soil.

Within three weeks the case collapsed. It emerged that prosecutors, acting on AFP information, had wrongly told a court that Haneef’s former mobile phone SIM card was found in the jeep that rammed into Glasgow airport in late June. Haneef’s lawyers released the transcripts of two AFP interviews with their client, providing a devastating picture of the AFP’s modus operandi: false, unsubstantiated and highly damaging allegations had been levelled against an innocent man and peddled to the media and the courts (see “Haneef police transcript exposes Australian government’s ‘terrorist conspiracy’ claims”).

The entire witchhunt was aimed at drumming up new public fears of terrorism in advance of the federal elections, due by the end of this year. As well, its aim was to justify the battery of unprecedented powers, such as detention and interrogation without trial, wide-ranging definitions of terrorism, the executive banning of organisations, semi-secret trials and the outlawing of urging support for resistance to Australian military interventions, handed to the AFP and its intelligence partner, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), since 2002.

Taken together, the scope and scale of the AFP’s “new paradigm of policing” amounts to the erection of the scaffolding of a police-state within Australia along with the para-military enforcement of Australian strategic and corporate interests throughout the region.

Concluded

See Also:
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 1
[21 February 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 2
[22 February 2007]

AFP Expansion: Don’t Mention the Riots

By: Marni Cordell
Wednesday 12 September 2007

After the extraordinary bungling of the Dr Mohammed Haneef case you’d think the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were having enough difficulty looking after their own backyard at the moment, let alone someone else’s. But by mid-next year our federal police force will be spending close to a third of its operating budget on policing other countries.

The AFP’s International Deployment Group is currently undergoing a rapid expansion into a 1200-strong paramilitary-style force that will cost $480 million over the next five years. The expanded IDG will be an all-singing, all-dancing peacekeeping and capacity building team; a highly equipped rapid response force who will then be required to turn their hand to aid work.

The expansion is a major shift in the AFP’s mandate — and globally, an unprecedented use of police power in what are essentially foreign policy objectives. Depending on who you talk to, it’s either an exciting opportunity or a terrifying precedent.

‘I know of no other police force in the world that has had to respond in such a way across areas which, if we are to be completely frank, are not just about policing,’ says Andrew Goldsmith, co-author of ‘Policing the Neighbourhood’, a three year study (jointly funded by the Australian Research Council and the AFP) into the AFP interventions in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. ‘These are big expectations, big shifts, that we are asking ordinary Australian police officers to undertake.’

Peacekeeping ain’t what it used to be. What was once strictly United Nations ‘blue helmet’ business is increasingly being undertaken through bi- or multi-lateral agreements in what have become known as ‘peace and stability operations,’ and Australia is at the forefront of the trend. According to Goldsmith, our use of police offshore — placing large numbers of officers on the ground in so-called ‘nation building’ roles — is virtually untried.

Rebuilding a nation is no small task — and one that has far-reaching implications if you happen to stuff it up. So is the AFP up to the job?

In August last year the Howard Government rubber-stamped the biggest single increase in staff since the AFP was established in 1979. By June next year the International Deployment Group will have a high capability, rapid response force of around 200 officers, a ‘missions component’ of 750, and an Australian-based support staff of 250. The Group will be equipped with the latest weaponry, armoured personnel carriers and the authority to dispense lethal force.

Photo by the author

‘It’s been a dynamic period for the AFP over the past few years,’ says Goldsmith. ‘There’s a prior history of involvement in international liaison on drug trafficking and other transnational crimes, but since 2003 with the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and more recently with forays into other parts of the Pacific [such as Nauru, Vanuatu and Tonga], it’s clearly a new, foreign policy focus for the AFP. [‘Policing the Neighbourhood’] comes out of the recognition that what Australia is doing is fairly unusual.’

The IDG is, for the most part, a regional deployment force. It was created around the same time that John Howard was crowned regional Sheriff by his friend George W Bush, and was telling Australians we had to take responsibility for ‘our patch.’ But since it was formed in February 2004, it hasn’t made a great name for itself in the region — particularly in the Solomon Islands, where the majority of the current Group is now deployed as part of RAMSI’s Participating Police Force (PPF).

Solomon Islanders have accused the policing arm of RAMSI of being everything from culturally insensitive to racist and just plain incompetent. A raid on the Prime Minister’s office by four White PPF officers in October last year had locals up in arms and prompted insiders to admit that the Force was becoming a liability to the rest of the RAMSI mission. Last month, a Solomon Islands Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 Honiara riots found that AFP officers in command of the country’s police forces at the time were asleep at the wheel.

‘Any kind of police reform strategy in any country is inevitably political in nature and will engender debate [and] controversy,’ says Goldsmith. ‘The transition from peacekeeping to capacity building [is] a shift from something which is relatively universally accepted locally to something which is more contestable at the local political level.’

Luke Johnston, an Australian NGO worker, was at Parliament House in Honiara on April 18 last year — the first day of the two-day riots that saw much of Chinatown razed. When I met him last October, he wasn’t keen to talk on the record about what he had witnessed that day because of fear of retribution — not from those responsible for the riots, but from Australian officials.

‘They don’t like anyone saying anything that goes against their version of events,’ Johnston told me. ‘I’m probably being a bit paranoid, but it’s the whole way that the regime in Australia has gone these days. They’re really targeting anyone who doesn’t fit their mould.’

On ‘Black Tuesday’ as Solomon Islanders have dubbed it, Johnston watched what he says was a rowdy but co-operative crowd turn into a raging mob directly because of PPF mishandling.

‘Of the AFP officers that were there, I reckon the average age was 21,’ says Johnston. ‘One young lady was literally on the verge of tears saying, “I’ve just arrived here, my mum’s gonna freak out when she sees the news.” They were kids, they really were.’

Johnston says the crowd that had gathered at Parliament that day to hear the announcement of the new Prime Minister was agitated but not violent — and was willing to negotiate — ‘until someone had the bright idea to bring the riot police in.’

‘The whole dialogue broke down at that point,’ he says.

‘These guys [the AFP’s Operational Response Group] came flying down the driveway at full speed, right towards the crowd. There were two or possibly three Land-cruisers’ full with all the kit: bullet proof vests, big shields, lots of weapons. The crowd just scattered. That was the first turning point. The second one was when they cleared the driveway, they started manhandling people. The first physical contact was made by the AFP officers. They weren’t brutal, but they were shoving and pushing, and that’s when people got cranky,’ says Johnston.

‘The crowd were saying “what are you doing? Who do you think you are to come and push us around in our own country?” Mainly in Pijin — and that’s another thing, so few of the Australian police here actually have an understanding of Pijin, they couldn’t understand what the crowd was saying.’

‘Then they tried to bust the PM out,’ says Johnston. ‘They rushed him out to the car under guard of riot squad, and that’s when the first stone came.’

‘The police began firing stuff, and that really set the crowd abuzz, because it sounds and looks like guns. They started freaking, shouting “you’re shooting us.” They went mad, just hysterical, and they trashed every vehicle, and they ran down the hill and started burning things down. That made it so much worse, because they dispersed everybody. I mean they had a little crowd that was peaceful and in the end they turned them into this raging mob. The place was littered with canisters, so they used a lot of things.’

‘But then, knowing that this situation had blown up, they didn’t take control of a single bridge, a single intersection or anything.’

‘So I had to stand on my verandah for two nights with a crowbar with the whole town abandoned to these mobs, which just grew and grew, and watch as [the police] dealt with the situation from the air. They put the helicopter over the house and they were firing tear gas out of the helicopter.’

‘It wasn’t until early Friday morning when the [Australian Defence Force] moved in that the situation finally calmed down,’ says Johnston. ‘The army is totally different — they’re cool-headed and professional, they don’t have these cowboy elements, and the people respect them.’

‘It looks to me like the police really stuffed up on this,’ says Johnston. ‘They gave control away — surely somebody should lose their job for that. But immediately [the PPF] spun it, saying: “it was a conspiracy, it was much bigger then we ever realised.” It was a bunch of kids with rocks. I’m sorry, but there wasn’t a single weapon and they’ve got a multi-million dollar police force here. It doesn’t make sense to me. The minimum you would say is that it’s a bad example of incompetence. They really were negligent.’

No one will admit it publicly but the Honiara riots severely embarrassed the AFP and the Howard Government — who like to hold RAMSI up as the poster boy of successful interventions. The official line is that there was an intelligence failure, that the PPF was caught by surprise, and anyway that they were only acting in an advisory role to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIP) at the time.

According to Mike Wheatley, who was Assistant Police Commissioner in command of the armed constabulary component of the RSIP from 1995 until 2000, if forces had been pre-deployed as per usual Solomon Islands procedures then there wouldn’t have been a Black Tuesday — and certainly no Wednesday.

‘Firstly, let’s get it clear that, in the Solomon Islands, there is no point asking the State for protection because the RSIP were disarmed, neutered and rendered innocuous by RAMSI,’ Wheatley wrote in NewMatilda.com soon after the riots.

‘Forces are usually deployed at Parliament House, on the approaches to Chinatown and other key locations on a direct route from Parliament House. Such a strategy allows one to block or deflect riotous assembly as opposed to the riskier strategy of following it into Chinatown, as one Indigenous officer noted in despair. This latter strategy is better suited to the Fire Brigade.’

‘The implications of this stuff up are region-wide,’ says Wheatley. ‘Every pacific country that is participating in RAMSI or could be subject to a RAMSI style intervention then began to ask: what’s the point, if a whole suburb can be destroyed even while foreign troops are there? It’s a command control issue — how do the AFP work with the locals? It calls into question a whole methodology.’

‘Where’s the stench of burning reputations to match the stench of burning Chinese stores?’

Next week: Police or Paramilitary? ‘Let’s get down to the definition of what a police force is. The AFP are fully armed with rifles and other weapons — they are operating overseas like a paramilitary force.’

AFP Expansion: Helping Friends or Helping Ourselves?

By: Marni Cordell
Monday 24 September 2007

article originally posted:

http://www.newmatilda.com

This is the second article in a three part series about the expansion of the AFP’s International Deployment Group (IDG). To read the first installment click here.

‘There is nothing off the shelf that says “this is what an [International Deployment Group] looks like,”’ says Commander Mark Walters, Manager of the Australian Federal Police’s IDG. ‘There is no one anywhere doing what we are doing, and to the extent that we are doing it, so we are right out there in front.’

The expansion of the International Deployment Group will see the AFP operating significantly outside its original mandate — in areas that would seem to be a more natural fit for the military, NGOs or aid agencies — and is attracting considerable global attention as the first of its kind.

As Australia prepares to pour millions of dollars into offshore police operations, the question needs to be asked: Who is scrutinising this shift? When the AFP can get off scot-free for a bungling as serious as the Mohammed Haneef case, Australians should rightfully be concerned about the accountability of our Federal Police Force.

‘The AFP has grown like topsy in recent years,’ says retired diplomat and avid AFP-watcher Bruce Haigh. ‘It’s evolved to its current structure without much thought and is operating to no real plan other than to meet the needs of John Howard’s agenda on terrorism.’

‘Nominally the AFP answers to the Justice Minister, but because of the War on Terror, it now for all intents and purposes answers to Howard, through the National Security Committee of Cabinet,’ says Haigh.

There is no doubt that the AFP has become Howard’s tool of choice in the War on Terror, and Australia’s forays into the Pacific can be viewed in the context of forward deployment in the fight against terrorism — but there’s also much more to the story.

Australia will soon be keeping a much closer eye on its neighbours. By June next year we’ll be in charge of a readily deployable police and paramilitary force — capable of everything from rapid responses in so-called failed States to the training and reconstruction of Pacific Island law and justice sectors. But are we really ‘helping friends,’ or merely helping ourselves?

‘One could be skeptical about some of the objectives behind capacity building because it’s really teaching police in these other countries to do things the way we want them to,’ says Andrew Goldsmith, co-author of Policing the Neighbourhood. ‘Criminal investigations and anti-corruption are the two things [that Australia is interested in influencing] . So there is self interest, there’s no question.’

‘There are [also] new players in the Pacific in which Australia might have a strategic interest,’ says Goldsmith. ‘There are big geopolitical games here.’

Goldsmith says the rapid expansion of the IDG has placed stress on key AFP staff members, who have done ‘a very difficult job in a very short time without a whole lot of guidance and with a whole lot of expectations being thrust upon them.’ ‘To a large extent we are in the dark, and that increases the likelihood of getting it wrong.’

Recent AFP interventions in the region have involved close collaboration with the Australian Defence Force, and the line between the two organisations is beginning to blur. The AFP is now expanding its own logistic capabilities — including acquiring armed personnel carriers — so that it will be able to deploy to regional hot spots independently of the ADF.

Associate Professor Jude McCulloch, author of Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia, says the War on Terror has seen the line between police and military become much less distinct — ‘and the international deployments are part of that because they are done largely under the banner of national security and the counter terrorism framework.’

‘The sections of the police that are paramilitary are expanding,’ says McCulloch. ‘These paramilitary units … train with the military, include former members of the military, use a wide range of military weapons and equipment, and use extremely high levels of force. In short, the units straddle the line between the [ADF and the AFP].’

‘Unlike the military, police are operationally independent from the Government,’ she says. ‘They get their funding from the Government, the Government can decide on policy, but in their day to day operations they are independent - and that’s so that nobody is above the law.’

As such, in a paramilitary unit, ‘Police command, rather than an elected Government, decide where and when this “military” force will be used.’

Claims made by a serving AFP officer in a recent Senate Inquiry into Australia’s role in peacekeeping have highlighted the lack of oversight of the AFP’s activities, and left some serious allegations about the Force’s conduct overseas unresolved.

The claims were made in a submission by World Vision to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.

World Vision’s Melanie Gow described meeting with a ‘highly respected AFP officer who was a team leader in one of Australia’s most elite policing units.’ The source claimed that an IDG team leader had instructed police serving in the Solomon Islands that a person’s neck was a good place to aim with a 12 gauge bean bag round, since this would generally knock the person out, and that shooting people in the back as they were trying to flee was also a good idea.

The source also told World Vision that non-approved munitions had been used during the April 2006 Honiara riots and that the AFP had retrospectively amended the Commissioner’s Order 3 — which outlines acceptable use of force — to permit their use for a 28-day period.

The AFP says it has investigated the claims and denies them. But according to World Vision’s Director of Policy and Programs, Paul Ronalds, the officer in question was not interviewed as part of the investigation, and nor were other key witnesses. Ronalds says the officer is now facing serious internal pressure not to take the issue further.

‘[We are] concerned by the possibility and the perception that use of force options are being approved for use in overseas deployments which would not be approved in Australia,’ says Ronalds.

World Vision was invited to present their case at a public hearing in Melbourne last month, but the committee’s response was not what they expected — they were told they’d come to the wrong place, and that the committee was not in the business of addressing specific grievances. The claims have been given no further scrutiny.

Bizarrely, during the public hearing, Gow practically apologised for exposing the matter, and for inadvertently attracting media attention to the allegations, saying that World Vision ‘did not go looking for these issues,’ but felt a ‘moral obligation to raise them’ once the source was established as credible.

‘We stand by our submission and further state that, to the best of our knowledge, some of these issues have not been thoroughly investigated,’ she said. ‘Such investigations would presumably, at a minimum, include interviews with the officer and his personnel and other witnesses to the alleged incidents.’

During the hearing, Gow offered to give the committee the name and contact details of the officer but they declined. Furthermore, the Justice Minister is satisfied that the claims have been investigated internally, and the Ombudsman’s office says they haven’t received a complaint.

Which is all kind of concerning in the context of the AFP’s submission to the same Inquiry, which says that the AFP is currently in the process of ‘revolutionising’ its approach to offshore operations: ‘The increasing likelihood of deployment to volatile environments has resulted in a shift, in the case of police, in the authority to bear arms and use deadly force,’ it reads.

Next week: Right Cop for the Job? ‘A police officer from Belconnen is not necessarily naturally well-prepared to do capacity development in Baucau, East Timor.’

Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device

"Suspect Device"

Inflammable material is planted in my head
It's a suspect device that's left 2000 dead
Their solutions are our problems
They put up the wall
On each side time and prime us
And make sure we get fuck all
They play their games of power
They mark and cut the pack
They deal us to the bottom
But what do they put back?

[Chorus:]
Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Don't be bitten twice
You gotta suss, suss, suss, suss, suss out
Suss suspect device

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

[Chorus]

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

[Chorus]

We're a suspect device if we do what we're told
But a suspect device can score an own goal
I'm a suspect device the Army can't defuse
You're a suspect device they know they can't refuse
We're gonna blow up in their face

KRS-One - Sound of da police (spx uk video)