17 October 20
Sound like a remarkable statement? It’s not. We hear that sentiment expressed in one form or another all the time.
Guess what? That’s not going to cut it. I hate fundraising. I do it because of what we are able to achieve with the funding you provide.
You can add and subtract as well as we can. You know what it takes to produce community-based news. It’s not much.
How about it?
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
17 October 20
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Charles Pierce | Meanwhile, the Current Supreme Court Justices Have Been Busy Little Beavers
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "While we all were watching the slow construction of a relatively permanent 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the members of the current 5-3 conservative majority have been busy little beavers."
There is no good reason to stop the Census count—or the investigation into whether the president is violating the Emoluments Clause.
From NPR:
Last-minute changes by the Census Bureau and its skirting of an earlier court order for the count have left local communities and the bureau's workers across the country unsure of how much longer they can take part in a national head count already upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Lower courts previously ordered the administration to keep counting through Oct. 31, reverting to an extended schedule Trump officials had first proposed in April in response to delays caused by COVID-19 and then abruptly decided to abandon in July. More time, judges have ruled, would give the bureau a better chance of getting an accurate and complete count of the country's residents, which is used to determine how political representation and federal funding are distributed among the states over the next decade.
In short, the administration* can pull the plug on the 2020 census, pandemic be damned.
Given the current circumstances, there is no good reason for the Court to step in here. The pandemic has circumscribed the ability of census-takers to go door-to-door. The exigencies of the pandemic alone should be enough to loosen up any previously announced deadline. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent of the Court's decision:
Meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the Census is not a cost worth paying...The harms caused by rushing this year’s census count are irreparable. And respondents will suffer their lasting impact for at least the next 10 years.
Up until now, the Court has been skeptical of the administration*'s attempts to monkey wrench the Census to its own advantage. Chief Justice John Roberts just about laughed out loud at the administration*'s attempt to add a citizenship question. But this decision reverses a federal judge's decision to let the field workers continue until the end of this month which, estimates indicated, would push the results into next April. Now, it seems, the Court wants to make sure that the results can be delivered to this president* by the end of the year. I am not convinced that there isn't some chicanery at work here.
Oh, yes. The current Court majority also dealt the death blow to the case brought against the president* for violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, an issue that was made clear in the latest installment of the New York Times's exploration of the president*'s finances. Chicanery, chicanery...
A Thurston County Sheriff's Deputy wears a mask as he stands near crime scene tape, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020, in Lacey, Washington, at the scene where Michael Reinoehl was killed. (photo: Ted S. Warren/AP)
Trump Boasts About Federal Task Force Killing Antifascist Wanted for Murder in Portland
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes: "In chilling remarks at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Thursday, the president of the United States boasted about federal agents killing an anti-fascist activist suspected of murdering one of his supporters in Portland, Oregon this summer, calling the suspect's death without trial an example of his leadership."
READ MORE
People wait in line to get groceries at a pop-up food pantry. (photo: Erin Clark/Boston Globe/Getty Images)
'I'm Still Unemployed': Millions in Dire Situation as Savings Start to Run Out
Scott Horsley, NPR
Horsley writes: "When the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring, government relief payments provided a life raft to millions of people who had been thrown out of work."
That life raft, however, is now losing air, threatening to leave the unemployed in a perilous situation just as Washington leaders struggle to clinch a new package of aid ahead of the November election.
New research from JPMorgan Chase Institute and the University of Chicago focused on 80,000 unemployed people shows savings built up when the government provided aid is now rapidly running out, leaving people like chemist Kate McAfee fretting about their futures.
"I'm still unemployed," said McAfee, who was laid off from her job outside Cleveland back in April. "I've now exhausted my 26 weeks of unemployment here in Ohio and have moved on to the additional 13 weeks of extended benefits from the federal government."
Millions of Americans are in a similar situation as the pandemic downturn drags on.
The downtown Denver coffee shop where Terrah Burton used to work tried to reopen during summer, but with little foot traffic from vacant offices nearby, it temporarily closed its doors again.
"I hang onto that word, 'temporarily,' " Burton said. "To see so much slipping through our fingers in this community is hard."
Throughout the spring and early summer, Burton and her partner got by financially, thanks in part to the extra $600 a week in jobless benefits that Congress approved back in March.
Burton recalled her surprise when she received her first unemployment check. It was almost twice as much as she'd been making at the coffee shop.
"I'll accept it because I've worked hard all my life," Burton said "We were able to put a little bit extra in savings and pay off a couple of low bills. Our going out budget was zero. Our going-to-the-bar budget was zero."
But for the unemployed, the picture changed abruptly once the extra $600 a week ran out at the end of July.
McAfee, the Cleveland-area chemist, saw her jobless benefits cut by more than half, putting a strain on her husband and their two kids.
"We're slowly eating away at our savings that we have from the good times of earlier this year and it's getting challenging now," McAfee said.
Researchers at JPMorgan Chase Institute, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, found many of the unemployed managed to sock away extra money between March and July while the government was spending freely to cushion the downturn. Median family savings roughly doubled during that period.
But the researchers found that the jobless started to drain their savings in August, burning through roughly two-thirds of the money they'd squirreled away during the four previous months.
"The cushion has worn thin, and we haven't yet regained all the jobs that we lost," said Fiona Greig, director of consumer research for the JPMorgan Chase Institute. "This is a critical time for jobless workers."
Job growth has slowed in each of the last three months. And with layoffs continuing, almost 1.3 million people filed new claims for unemployment last week.
Jobless workers are spending less now than they were early in the summer. And their spending is likely to fall further as their newfound savings are exhausted.
Kelly Griffin, an IT worker in Massachusetts, saw her income drop by about two-thirds once the extra $600 a week benefit ran out.
"It was hard," Griffin said. "You don't go out to eat. You don't spend things unnecessarily. I scrimped and saved and started to panic. 'Am I ever going to get a job again?'"
Fortunately, Griffin did get a job offer, and she's set to start next week. But many others have not been as lucky.
"I hate it when people say the extra $600 was keeping us from working," McAfee said. "It was never keeping me from working. I want to be back to work and I would love to have a job again."
McAfee has been trying to earn some extra money sewing facemasks. But it's no substitute for a regular paycheck.
"It's not a situation I would wish on anybody, to be constantly stuck in this with no foreseeable end to it," she said. "I don't know when I'm going to get a job again. Hopefully it will be soon. But until then it's just constant stress for everybody."
A Standing Rock protest. (photo: Arindambanerjee/Shutterstock)
How Native Americans' Right to Vote Has Been Systematically Violated for Generations
Nina Lakhani, Guardian UK
Lakhani writes: "Voter suppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we've heard little about the 5.2 million Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a US president." VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
In the new book Voting in Indian Country, Jean Reith Schroedel weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts as the election nears
oter suppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we’ve heard little about the 5.2 million Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a US president.
The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
In a new book, Voting in Indian County: The View from the Trenches, Jean Reith Schroedel, professor emerita of political science at Claremont Graduate University, weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts.
Is the right to vote struggle for Native Americans distinct from the wider struggle faced by marginalized groups in the US?
One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and Native Alaskans were the last group in the United States to get citizenship and to get the vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said indigenous people could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.
Why didn’t the American Indian Citizenship Act 1924 nor the Voting Rights Act (VRA) 1965 guarantee Native Americans equal access to the ballot box?
The motivation for the VRA was the egregious treatment of black people in the south, and for the first 10 years there was a question over whether it even applied to American Indian and Native Alaskan populations. It wasn’t really discussed until a civil rights commission report in 1975 which included cases from South Dakota and Arizona that showed equally egregious discrimination and absolute denial of right to vote towards Native Americans – and also Latinos.
When voter suppression is discussed by politicians, advocates and journalists, it’s mostly about African American voters, and to a lesser degree Latinos. Why are Native Americans still excluded from the conversation?
Firstly they are a small population and secondly most of the most egregious abuses routinely occur in rural isolated parts of Indian Country where there is little media focus. But it’s happening – take Jackson county in South Dakota, a state where the governor has done little to protect people from Covid. The county council has just decided to close the legally mandated early voting centre on the Pine Ridge Reservation, citing concerns about Covid, but not in the voting site in Kadoka, where the white people go. Regardless of the intent, this will absolutely have a detrimental effect on Native people’s ability to vote. And South Dakota, like many other states, is also a very hard place for Native people to vote by mail. In the primary, the number of people who registered to vote by mail increased by 1,000% overall but there was no increase among reservation communities. In Oglala county, which includes the eastern part of Pine Ridge, turnout was about 10%.
The right to vote by mail is a hot political and civil rights issue in the 2020 election – could it help increase turnout in Indian Country?
No, voting by mail is very challenging for Native Americans for multiple reasons. First and foremost, most reservations do not have home mail delivery. Instead, people need to travel to post offices or postal provide sites – little places that offer minimal mail services and are located in places like gas stations and mini-marts. Take the Navajo Nation that encompasses 27,425 square miles – it’s larger than West Virginia, yet there are only 40 places where people can send and receive mail. In West Virginia, there are 725. Not a single PO box on the Navajo Nation has 24-hour access.
Preliminary data from my new research shows that all the mail sent from post offices off-reservation arrived at the election office within one to three days. Whereas around half sent from the reservation took three to 10 days. Rural whites are doing a whole lot better than rural Native Americans. This isn’t the only challenge: South Dakota requires mail ballots to be notarized but there are no notaries on reservations. And the level of trust in voting is generally low among Native Americans, but drops dramatically when asked about voting by mail.
Are Native Americans denied the right to vote because of ID requirements mandated by some states, supposedly to curtail voter fraud?
It can make it very difficult for people who live on reservations where many roads don’t have names or numbers – so-called non-standard addresses, which are very problematic in states requiring IDs with residential addresses. A number of states like South Dakota have chosen to make it a felony offense with prison terms and fines if someone votes using an address different to the one given to register, even though unstable housing is a big issue on reservations, and people crash in different places all the time.
Will Native Americans who only have tribal ID be refused the vote?
Tribal ID has not been accepted in a number of states in the past, including North Dakota and Minnesota. In some places the problem is that the tribal ID may not have a residential street address, because those do not exist on many reservations, or that government entities have in their records an address that was arbitrarily assigned to people with non-standard addresses, and that address does not match another assigned address on a different government list. But with respect to the upcoming election, we honestly won’t know how big an issue it is until people try to vote.
We’ve heard about felony disenfranchisement in black communities, especially in states like Florida. Does this impact Native Americans too?
It’s a major unstudied issue but what we do know is that laws passed after Reconstruction and the VRA specifically to disenfranchise African Americans were also passed in places which didn’t have black people. For example, Idaho put in place felony disenfranchisement around when it became the state, at a time when census data shows there were only 88 black people – it was designed to disenfranchise Native people. Half the states with harshest felony disenfranchisement don’t have many black people, but have big Native Americans or Latino populations.
Why are the Dakotas so important in the struggle for equality at the ballot box?
The Dakotas are the heart of what was the great Sioux Nations, who put together a cross-nation resistance to the incursion by Europeans, US military and militias. It’s a flashpoint where some of the worst massacres took place and it’s been one of the worst places for suppression of the Native American vote. North Dakota has passed one law after another that made it harder and harder for people to vote, which I think [most recently] was a retaliation to further disenfranchise Native people for standing up against the Dakota Access pipeline.
In South Dakota, more than a quarter of the 2016 registered voters in Todd county – which is the Rosebud Sioux – had been purged by 2020. This is huge. Todd county is an unorganized county, so the administration of elections is handled by an adjacent white county. These are red states, so little donor money goes into voting rights, but the white population is ageing, and younger whites are leaving the state. It’s going to be fascinating to watch how the Dakotas deal with the much larger Native American voting populations over the next 10 years.
Which are the states to watch in this election for potential voter suppression of Native American votes?
Arizona because it is a swing state and has all of the above issues; Montana, which can be considered a success story with regards to Native American representation in recent years, but where a lack of in-person voting could have a big impact. Alaska and Nevada have issues, and of course the Dakotas.
Undocumented immigrants wait to be loaded onto an Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter jet. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Trump Administration "Surreptitiously" Deported Venezuelans Through a Third Country
David C. Adams, Univision News
Adams writes: "The Trump administration secretly deported an unknown number of Venezuelans through a third country, possibly in violation of U.S. laws, according to a letter released on Friday by U.S. Senator Bob Menendez."
“New documents provided to my office confirm that U.S. deportations to Venezuela continued via third countries at least until March 2020" - U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, in a letter to the State Department, delivered on Friday.
The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the State Department had confirmed in writing late last month that it “surreptitiously” deported an unknown number of Venezuelans from the United States through the Caribbean countries of Trinidad and Tobago. This was after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed despite a flight ban on travel to and from Venezuela in May 2019.
The so-called “stealth” deportations only ceased after the outbreak of the coronavirus this year, he said.
“New documents provided to my office confirm that U.S. deportations to Venezuela continued via third countries at least until March 2020, while the Trump Administration has offered little assurance that it will not continue to forcibly return Venezuelans to a regime the United Nations recently stated has committed crimes against humanity,” Menendez wrote.
The Cuban-American senator who represents the state of New Jersey, is demanding that the State Department now provide detailed information on the dates of the flights and how many Venezuelans were deported. He cited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained through a non-government database showing that over 100 Venezuelans were deported between October and February, including 95 with no criminal conviction.
The embassy of the interim government of Venezuela, headed by Juan Guaidó, told Univision that it had no information on deportations to the South American country this year. "The information handled by our Consular Affairs office is that there have been no deportations," said a spokesman.
"There are no flights to Venezuela at this time. If there are no flights to Venezuela, there can be no deportations," he explained. "There may have been a few very specific cases of people who voluntarily asked to be deported because they no longer wanted to be in legal proceedings here," he added.
There are currently 274 Venezuelans in U.S. immigration detention, down from 1,200 a year ago, the embassy spokesperson said. Of those 726 were released on parole.
The State Department and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Telemundo previously reported in March that 130 Venezuelans were deported since the beginning of the fiscal year in October, via third countries.
"Troika of tyranny"
While the Trump administration has condemned the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, labeled as the “troika of tyranny”, it continues deporting their citizens.
Experts say that deporting foreign nationals via a third country is almost unprecedented, especially when it involves countries which the United States has accused of major human rights violations, including lack of legal due process and torture.
“U.S. law forbids the forcible return of refugees to a place where their lives or freedom would be threatened, U.S. regulations have suspended all air travel to Venezuela, and U.S. foreign policy should be to counter the Maduro regime’s systematic abuses of human rights,” Menendez wrote in the letter , dated October 16, addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Transportation Secretary Elaine Chau and acting Homeland Security Secretary, Chad Wolf.
“The administration’s continued deportation of Venezuelan nationals appears to undermine these policies,” he added.
TPS
Democrats and human rights groups have been calling on the Trump administration for months to grant Temporary Protected Status to the thousands of undocumented Venezuelan who have sought refuge in the United States since the South American country fell into a political and humanitarian crisis after two decades of corrupt socialist misrule.
“While the President refuses TPS for Venezuelans … the Trump Administration has been going to extraordinary lengths to continue deporting Venezuelans, this time deporting them through Trinidad and Tobago because of the absence of direct flights,” a Democratic Senate aide told Univision.
Venezuela, once an oil- rich nation, is also is the grips of a stunning economic collapse that has seen millions of its 30 million citizens flee the country. On top of the that its’ public health institutions are struggling to cope with basic needs, including 85,000 covid-19 cases that have claimed 714 lives, according to official statistics which are widely considered to be woefully undercounted.
These newly-revealed incidents follow press reporting last year indicating that U.S. deportations to Venezuela continued on Copa Airlines flights via Panama in spite of the FAA’s suspension. The FAA fined Copa Airlines in June 2019 for violating the flight ban.
U.S. officials recognized earlier this year that the deportation of Venezuelans had continued, though they provided no details. On February 6, 2020, the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said, “I wouldn’t say there is a complete freeze on the deportation of Venezuelans, but the number of deportations is extremely low.”
In August, Abrams testified publicly that it would not be safe to deport Venezuelans back to Venezuela and that the Trump Administration “currently is not doing so.”
Several Democratic senators, including Menendez, last month called on the Trump administration to stop “egregious” policies denying asylum and sending people fleeing dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua back to their countries to face retaliation.
“The Administration’s policies to expel and endanger refugees and asylum seekers from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other countries send a message of callousness, cruelty, and disregard for human rights that feeds our adversaries’ agenda to cast doubt on the United States’ exceptional role as a beacon of freedom and democracy,” the senators wrote.
Between October last year and March 2020, the latest data available, 64 percent of the asylum claims made by Cubans and 61 percent of the claims made by Nicaraguans were denied, according to data from the immigration courts obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
About 45 percent of those made by Venezuelans fleeing the largest humanitarian crisis in the region were also denied.
A man waves a Nigerian flag at a protest against police brutality. (photo: Benson Ibeabuchi/Getty Images)
Nigeria Is Fighting Its Own Battle Against Police Brutality
Tolu Olasoji and Leah Feiger, VICE
Excerpt: "Abdullah Abdulsalam was on his way home from a writing workshop in Oyo State, Nigeria in May when an unmarked car pulled his bus over. The car, he quickly learned, was occupied by police officers in Nigeria's Special Anti-Robbery Squad, also known as SARS."
As the youngest passenger, the 23-year-old was singled out. “They checked my phones, Gmail, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Freelancer,” he told VICE News. “They didn’t find anything incriminating.” According to Abdulsalam, the officers then told the driver to leave. Though Abdulsalam “told them [he was] a writer and media person,” they insisted that he was a “cybercriminal.”
"One officer said that if I don't bribe my way, he’ll kill me and nothing will happen,” Abdulsalam said. He eventually acquiesced, and they drove him to an ATM nearby, where the officers subsequently drained his bank account. (SARS unit spokespeople did not reply to requests for comment.)
Despite the theft and resulting trauma, Abdulsalam knows that he was lucky. “I might have been killed,” he said. He’s not wrong: What happened to Abdullah has happened to many other Nigerians. Over the last three years, Amnesty International has documented 82 cases of torture, abuse, and extrajudicial executions conducted by SARS officers. In 2016, Amnesty International documented 143 complaints made against SARS officers in less than six months. According to their most recent report, survivors of run-ins with the unit, usually youths, have experienced “mock execution, beating, punching and kicking, burning with cigarettes, waterboarding, near-asphyxiation with plastic bags, forcing detainees to assume stressful bodily positions and sexual violence.”
After years of abuse, young Nigerians are speaking out against SARS and police brutality through Nigeria’s largest demonstrations in almost a decade. Protests began on October 5 after a young man was shot and killed by SARS officers the day prior in Ughelli, a town in the southern state of Delta, and accounts of the shooting reawakened national outrage. Since the shooting, protests have continued throughout the country in Lagos, Abuja, and other major cities.
On Sunday, in response to the protests, the Nigerian government announced SARS would be “dissolved.” The following day, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari promised in a speech on national television that “the disbanding of SARS is only the first step in our commitment to extensive police reforms,” and added that the government would “ensure that all those responsible for misconduct are brought to justice.”
However, this isn’t the first time Nigerians have protested against the SARS unit, and this isn’t the first time the government has promised reform. Protests regarding police brutality have caused the government to say it would disband the SARS unit in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The unit was never disbanded, though, and protestors say SARS officers continue to act with impunity.
Issues with modern day policing in Nigeria can actually be traced back to British colonial rule. “Policing in contemporary Nigeria is indeed rooted in a colonial policing philosophy that aims to dominate space, intimidate communities, and mete out exemplary punishments to serve as deterrents,” Moses Ochonu, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, told VICE News. He noted that since colonial police engaged in military operations against Nigerians and the emphasis was on the “suppression of revolt” rather than protection, “brute force was the primary operating philosophy of the police.”
According to Ochonu, the Nigerian Police Force has not evolved past these colonial methods. “After independence in 1960, the postcolonial Nigerian police force was never reformed or decolonized to protect communities rather than treat them as potential criminals and insurgents against state supremacy” said Ochonu. “The police continued to treat Nigerians as people who must be intimidated into submission … Now, as in colonial times, the Nigerian police are an instrument of the state rather than an institution dedicated to protecting and serving the Nigerian people.” This, he said, explained the SARS unit’s brutality.
Formed in 1992, the origins of the SARS police unit actually harkens back to a dispute between the Nigerian army and the Lagos police force. While sitting in a traffic jam at a Lagos checkpoint, army colonel Israel Rindam got out of his car to check on the delay. He was shot by police officers at the checkpoint, and the officers, after realizing he was an army official, abandoned their posts.
Soldiers in Lagos were incensed, and stormed police barracks throughout the city. The police, in turn, went into hiding. “During this period, the incidence of robbery swelled and there was an urgent need for intervention,” Abimbola Oyarinu, a lecturer in history at Oxbridge College in Lagos, told VICE News. SARS was then founded by Simeon Danladi Midenda, a now-retired police commissioner, as a covert unit within the Nigerian Police Force. While there were other anti-robbery units, SARS could operate while the rest of the force was in dispute with the army. After the police and army reconciled, the unit was officially commissioned.
Beyond the disagreements in law enforcement, SARS began during a moment of turmoil for Nigeria: “The falling and failing economy after the oil boom, depreciating naira, the Nigerian civil war, Structural Adjustment Programme and poor leadership,” Oyarinu said. “All these factors culminated in creating an environment ripe for insecurity and violent crimes.”
“Major Nigerian cities, especially the ones of the southwest [like] Lagos, Ibadan, and Benin were riddled with crimes such that armed robberies were happening during the day,” Ikemsit Effiong, a senior researcher at Nigerian geopolitical intelligence group SBM intelligence, told VICE News. “So SARS was created [as] a specialist hit squad that could metaphorically think the way the enemies think, operate the way the enemies operate, and address that sharp rise in armed robberies.” As a result, SARS officers were given allowance to operate outside of the system.
The unit started small, working as a 15-person team that traveled on two buses. Unit members didn’t wear name tags, or even uniforms, and their anonymity was supposed to help them address crime. “The secret behind the successes of the original SARS was its facelessness and its mode of operation,” Midenda told Nigerian newspaper Vanguard in 2017. “We were fully combatant and combat ready at all times … We never stood on the road looking for robbers. We met them in their beds.”
However, the unit did not experience any oversight. “The police unit was let loose on Nigerian communities with little or no accountability and with tenuous control from the central police hierarchy,” Ochonu said. “They became law unto themselves, and began to act as accusers, judges, and executioners.”
With the rise of cyber crimes, the SARS mandate changed. In 2018 alone, cybercrime in Nigeria cost citizens $800 million dollars, and instead of dealing with heavily-armed suspects in person, SARS units were forced to contend with tech-savvy Nigerians who, said Effiong, resemble “average Nigerian youth, entrepreneur, a tech guy, or a freelancer who does a significant amount of work on his computer.” Ostensibly in search of these suspects, the SARS unit, Effiong added, profiled "everyone that works, talks and appears like those people.”
The unit then became known for “extortion, road blocks, extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape,” said Oyarinu. Founded after police brutality led to a national dispute, SARS became the very thing it was supposed to counteract.
“One thing that is clear to me is that they have deviated from the original concept,” said Midenda in 2017. “The controversies engulfing SARS today will not disappear unless they return to the original concept. They should undergo reorientation and thereafter, disappear from public view and remain faceless.”
The announcement from Buhari about accountability for SARS officers, Ochonu said, “is a face-saving gesture by the government.” But, he added, “the entire Nigerian police needs to be decolonized, not just SARS.”
Beyond the SARS unit, policing in Nigeria has long been controversial. In 2016, the World Internal Security and Police Index ranked Nigeria’s police force last of the 127 countries surveyed. The Nigerian Police Act, which was repealed last month, was passed in 2004 and for years did not hold officers accountable for misconduct.
“The ideal thing would be to have a new generation of police officers that are significantly incentivized to do their jobs well,” added Effiong. “We need to be empowered with a modern approach of policing and the fact is a lot of the current crop of police officers would simply not make the cut, so that’s why reorienting the current crop of police officers is an insufficient means of addressing the systemic and generation-long deficiency.”
Faith Moyosore, a 24-year-old poet, was on her way home from the Lagos International Poetry Festival on November 2, 2019, when her Uber driver was asked to pull over by SARS officers.
"They started searching the car and my phone,” Moyosore told VICE News. She said they asked her where she was coming from, and insinuated that since she was out late at night, she must be a prostitute. "I told them it's a poetry festival, and they were still not having it,” she said. “It's mentally draining.”
While young women are frequently accused of prostitution by SARS officers, young men like Abdulsalam are accused of cybercrime and their electronics are confiscated or examined. Abdulrasheed Buhari told VICE News that he was biking to work in February when he was accosted by SARS officers. “One of them rough-handed me, literally wrestled me off the bike,” he said. “I was asking them what's going on but they asked me to get in their car so I didn't argue with them.”
Buhari, 22, said they then interrogated him, and pointed a gun at his face. “So I complied and unlocked my phone and gave it to them. They started ransacking my phone, they started checking my Whatsapp messages. They invaded my privacy, [and] checked my mail. Even my music.” While they didn’t beat him, Buhari said that he watched as they attacked two other men the SARS officers stopped. They asked him for money, and Buhari said they “showed us some body bags and told us that they can kill us here and nobody will know, nothing will happen and they will throw our body away.” Finally, he was released when he withdrew 50,000 naira, or $130, from an ATM nearby.
On Monday, Vandefan Tersugh James, a former SARS commander, justified these kinds of searches in a televised interview on AIT, a national broadcaster. “No matter what you say, SARS deals mostly with the youth because 90% of suspects you have in your cell are always those who are young men and women that are there,” he said. “If I stop you on the road and I want to look at your phone and I want to see your facebook I don't think I'm committing any crime … I’m only asking you a simple question.” His attitude isn’t that different from other Nigerian politicians: Lai Mohammed, Nigeria's minister of information and culture said in January that the Nigerian government has not targeted human rights, nor have they covered up “damaging evidence” with regards to SARS. Just last week, the president of the Nigerian Senate Ahmad Lawan said that he did not support the disbanding of SARS, and added that not all SARS officers acted inappropriately.
Regardless of the unit’s intent, its methodology can have devastating results. In April, Oluwaseyi Akinade, 23, died by suicide after leaving a note that detailed his extortion and torture at the hands of SARS. No inquiries were made into the unit’s methods after Akinade’s death, but even when the SARS unit is held accountable, justice is seldom served.
In 2015, Afam Nriezedi was arrested by SARS in Lagos, Nigeria. He was first accused of stealing four AK47 rifles, then later of participating in a kidnapping. Over three years later, in October 2018, a judge on the Federal High Court of Nigeria found SARS guilty of detaining Nriezedi without an arraignment or court trial, and awarded 20 million naira, or $52,000, in damages, and one million naira, or around $2,500, for illegal detention. The judge, according to court documents obtained by VICE News, also ordered “that [SARS] shall either arraign [Nriezedi] before a court of law within 24 hours from the date of this ruling or release him immediately.” This ruling took place over two years ago, but Nriezedi has yet to be released.
“We got a judgement,” Collins Okeke, a criminal reform advocate and Nriezedi’s lawyer at Human Right Law Services, told VICE News. Okeke said that the court has been unable to get SARS to “provide an explanation of what happened to the boy… It’s a very sad case. It’s an accountability problem.” Okeke said that he was told indirectly by a police commissioner that Nriezedi died in custody after being tortured, though his family has still not been given his body.
Torture is illegal in Nigeria, and while some politicians have endeavored to hold SARS accountable, they have largely been unsuccessful. In December 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari passed the Anti-Torture Act, which states that an offender “is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding Twenty-Five (25) years.” The law is a “very beautiful piece of legislation,” Okeke said. “Unfortunately both the police and the public are not aware of the law and its consequences.”
Research from Amnesty International shows that torture remains a routine and systemic part of SARS investigations, and is used as both a means of punishment and as a tool for questioning detainees. There are even designated torture chambers in SARS offices, and the reigning officer, according to Amnesty International, is known informally as “O/C Torture,” or the Officer in Charge of Torture.
“It is the most notorious security agency as far as security is concerned," Isa Sanusi, media director at Amnesty International in Nigeria, told VICE News. "We have documented all their misconduct for so many years and we have been advising them on what to do to improve and make their operation smooth and be more people-friendly, more human rights-friendly, but they've refused, they didn't change.”
SARS officers accused of torture have, in some cases, been reportedly transferred to other stations, or promoted. According to Effiong, SARS officers are usually tried in an internal police justice system that reports directly back to the police. The Police Service Commission, set up by the federal government, has powers to discipline and dismiss SARS officers and other police officers. However, the commission cannot refer cases to external courts for prosecution, as complaints made to the body have to be referred to the police for further investigation. As a result, perpetrators tend to walk free.
If SARS officers are ever to be held accountable, “the system has to be radically changed," said Effiong.
And that change, protestors hope, will come from the people. Since the demonstrations began last week, the #ENDSARS hashtag has continued to trend on Twitter, and celebrities like actor John Boyega, Wizkid, and Cardi B have all voiced their support of the movement. Anonymous, the international hacking organization, claimed that they infiltrated the Nigerian government’s websites in support of the protestors.
But even following government announcements of reform, SARS is still operating covertly in unmarked vehicles, searching through the mobile phones of protestors to check for the use of the #ENDSARS hashtag. Footage has also shown police officers shooting at protestors, and since the demonstrations began last week, 10 Nigerians have died during the protests.
Despite the danger, youthful protesters, full of energy and defiance in the face of bullets, water cannons, teargas, violent arrests, and possible death have been clear about their goal: #ENDSARS.
Elephants walking through tall grass. (photo: Nick Brandt)
Vermont Becomes the 12th State in the US to Ban the Sale of Elephant Ivory and Other Parts of Imperiled Species
Lauren Lewis, World Animal News
Lewis writes: "Governor Phil Scott signed H.99 (ACT 169) into law last week, making Vermont the 12th state in the nation to ban the trade of imperiled wildlife parts. The new law goes into effect on January 1, 2022."
State bans are critical to ending demand in the United States, one of the largest importers of imperiled wildlife parts in the world. Federal law only restricts import, export, and interstate trade. If there is no state law, the trade is free and clear once the item arrives in the state.
The new law will stop trade within the state of Vermont of imperiled wildlife parts from 15 of the world’s most at-risk species, including: elephants, rhinos, cheetahs, giraffes, hippos, jaguars, leopards, lions, pangolins, rays, sea turtles, sharks, tigers, primates, and whales. This also includes elephant ivory that is poached and disguised as ancient ivory from Wooly Mammoths and Mastodons.
As per the new bill, people are allowed to keep ivory that they already possess, pass it down, or give it away, they just cannot sell it. Exemptions include musical instruments.
“This legislation is vitally important because any sale of ivory, whether new or old, fuels demand,” Brenna Galdenzi, Co-Founder and President of Protect Our Wildlife said in a statement. “As long as we, right here in Vermont, place a monetary value on endangered animal parts, it fuels wildlife trafficking and poaching.”
Protect Our Wildlife has been working with Vermont for Wildlife’s Co-founder Ashley Prout McAvey, making this effort a focus of their work since they first started their nonprofit in February of 2015.
“My hope is that Vermont’s latest action will encourage the remaining 38 states to act swiftly to close their markets in these imperiled animal parts,” shared McAvey. “When all 50 states take a stand, the nation will be making a resounding impact in the battle against extinction.”
States that have enacted similar legislation include: New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, California, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, Nevada, Illinois, Minnesota, and New Mexico.
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