16 March 22
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Chat logs reveal that members of the Conti ransomware gang repeated Putin’s lies about Ukraine — and bemoaned their inability to buy Apple products.
The logs were leaked late last month, reportedly by a Ukrainian security researcher, after Conti publicly announced its support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and threatened to retaliate against any cyber warfare targeted at the Russian-speaking world. The logs span two years and multiple chat services and were released alongside training documentation, hacking tools, and source code.
The Intercept reviewed the most recent month of logs, focusing on those originating from RocketChat, a group-chat system similar to Discord or Slack, that Conti hosted on the anonymity network Tor. The messages are full of typos, slang, and a heavy use of mat — vulgar Russian profanity. We translated these messages using Google Translate and DeepL, and then a native Russian speaker manually corrected them. As with any translations, there are sometimes multiple possible interpretations, so we are making the original Russian available here. All time stamps from chat messages are in Coordinated Universal Time.
Logs of only some chat rooms appear to have been leaked. Most of the recent messages are from the #general channel, a room where the hackers candidly discussed non-ransomware topics like drug use, pornography, cryptocurrency, an obsession with investigative journalist Brian Krebs, and occasionally technical topics. While the #general channel had 160 users — Conti is a very large criminal enterprise — only a handful of these users actually posted messages during the monthlong period.
The conversations quickly turned political on February 21 when Putin announced that Russia recognized the separatist territories Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent nations, and on February 24 when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The Russian hackers openly repeated Putin’s falsehoods as fact, such as that Ukraine is run by a “neo-Nazi junta” and that its government is seeking nuclear weapons. Members of the chat continually shared news updates that exaggerated Russia’s success so far in the war.
The chat logs also include a heavy dose of misogyny, including discussions of child sexual abuse content and jokes about rape, as well as antisemitism aimed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Also on February 21, Conti announced internally to its employees that the leader of the criminal enterprise had gone into hiding. While it’s unclear exactly what happened, the announcement said that “close attention to the company from the outside has led to the fact that the boss apparently decided to lay low.” It added that Conti did not have enough money to pay everyone’s salaries and asked that they take two to three months of vacation. While Conti’s active operations had ceased, the server hosting RocketChat was still up, so the conversations after that were purely about Russia’s war in Ukraine. CyberScoop this week quoted sources saying Conti recovered from the leaks and is operational.
The Conti Ransomware Gang
Conti is the most successful ransomware gang in operation today. As Check Point Research has reported, the gang appears to operate much like a large corporation, with twice-monthly payroll, five-day workweeks, staggered shifts to ensure around-the-clock operation, and even physical offices. According to a 2022 report on cryptocurrency crime from the company Chainalysis, Conti extorted at least $180 million from its hacking victims last year.
Many of the victims have been in the health care sector, including, Ireland’s public care system. In May 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Conti encrypted data on 85,000 Irish health care computers and demanded a $20 million ransom payment in exchange for the decryptor, according to a report in CPO Magazine. Ireland’s Health Service Executive refused to pay the ransom, but it’s still costing Ireland 100 million euros to recover from the attack. The FBI also warned that Conti ransomware attacks targeted at least 16 health care networks in the United States.
Conti employees appear to be active during work hours in the Moscow time zone and all internal communication is in Russian, though some people involved don’t live in Russia. One frequent poster in the chat rooms, who goes by the username “Patrick,” appears to be a Russian citizen living in Australia. An older member of Conti is a 55-year-old Latvian woman, according to reporting by Krebs. Based on these chat logs, Conti appears to be an independent criminal enterprise without formal ties to the Russian government.
But it appears that Russian intelligence reached out to members of Conti on at least one occasion. After the ContiLeaks were published, Christo Grozev, executive director of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, tweeted that his organization had been warned that “a global cyber crime group acting on an FSB [Russia’s security agency] order has hacked one of your contributors,” and they were looking for information about Alexey Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader. In 2020, FSB agents were implicated in a poisoning attack on Navalny.
Chat logs in ContiLeaks, from a chat service called Jabber, seem to indicate that Conti was this cybercrime group, acting on an order from the FSB. A user called “Mango” told a user called “Professor” that he had encrypted chat messages from a Bellingcat journalist but didn’t know how to decrypt them. Mango pasted a snippet from a separate chat that he had with a user called “Johnnyboy77,” who told him about targeting a Bellingcat journalist and mentioned “NAVALNI FSB.”
2021-04-09 18:13:13 mango: So, are we really interested in such data?
2021-04-09 18:13:24 mango: I mean, are we patriots or what?)))
2021-04-09 18:13:31 professor: Of course we are patriots
2021-04-09 18:13:49 mango: I understand. if they decipher it there – I will beacon
2021-04-09 18:14:23 mango: and I also wrote there the other day to you about the auction, but as I understand it, you are still busy and did not delve into)
2021-04-09 18:31:25 mango:
[21:21:02] <johnyboy77> in short, there is a person’s mail from bellingcat
[21:21:06] <johnyboy77> who specifically works in the RU and UA direction
[21:21:06] <johnyboy77> say so
[21:21:08] <johnyboy77> and all his passwords are
[21:21:17] <johnyboy77> and she’s still valid
[21:30:56] <mango> well, pull the correspondence, at least screen them
[21:31:05] <mango> need specifics bro what to talk about
[21:31:07] <johnyboy77> now download files
[21:31:12] <johnyboy77> NAVALNI FSB
[21:31:13] <johnyboy77> even this
[21:31:18] <johnyboy77> right now
2021-04-09 18:31:26 mango: :)
2021-04-09 18:35:42 professor: why not just dump the whole thing
The day after Russian troops began their invasion of Ukraine, Conti posted a statement on its website, a site normally used used for publishing data from companies that refuse to pay ransom. Conti announced its “full support of Russian government,” and warned that if anyone attacked Russia, cyber or otherwise, they would use “all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures of an enemy.”
Hours later, they tempered their statement, but many had already noticed their unequivocal support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Repeating Putin’s Conspiratorial Lies
When Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine on February 24, people in Conti’s #general channel began discussing the war. One member of the chat, Patrick, was by far the most swayed by Putin’s lies about Ukraine. Patrick insisted that war was inevitable because Ukraine was attempting to obtain nuclear weapons. This is false, but this conspiracy theory made up a large part of a speech Putin gave on February 21 just prior to the invasion.
2022-02-24 09:53:54 patrick: war was inevitable, ukraine made an application for nuclear weapons
2022-02-24 09:54:37 patrick: in their possession
2022-02-24 09:55:00 weldon: monkeys don’t explain things, they climb trees
2022-02-24 09:55:02 elijah: @patrick well done and done. Still, no one will ever use it. Yes, just to scare
2022-02-24 09:56:38 elijah: Look, missiles from North Korea periodically arrive in the territorial waters of the Russian Federation. But no one cares. And they have nuclear weapons, by the way. But somehow no one was alarmed
2022-02-24 09:56:47 patrick: old man, you’re wrong, there is no doubt about north korea now
2022-02-24 09:58:42 patrick: no one is happy about the war, brothers, but it is high time to put this neo-Nazi gang of Canaris’s foster kids on trial
In his speech, Putin also falsely claimed that Ukraine’s democratic government is a neo-Nazi dictatorship. Throughout the first days of fighting, Patrick repeatedly insisted that Ukraine is run by a “neo-Nazi junta.” It’s not. Ukraine does a have a legitimate Nazi problem (so does the United States and Russia), but Ukranian neo-Nazis are a small minority and don’t hold any positions in government.
Zelenskyy is Jewish. His grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelenskyy, fought the Nazis during World War II. All three of Zelenskyy’s grandfather’s brothers were shot and killed by Nazi soldiers occupying Ukraine.
2022-02-24 10:01:33 patrick: Putin will answer all questions today, I hope that by the evening Kyiv will be ours
2022-02-24 10:02:47 biggie: what’s the point
2022-02-24 10:03:02 elijah: `by the evening kiev will be ours` – and??? What is the profit in this, well, besides boosting the guy’s ego and an additional reason for the quilted jackets [patriots/nationalists] to fap on the king?
2022-02-24 10:03:07 biggie: only people will die and that’s it
2022-02-24 10:05:11 patrick: the neo-Nazi junta will be liquidated and prosecuted, civilians will not suffer
In another message, Patrick says he’s not fighting in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine because he’s in Australia, donating money to “the victims of the genocide of the neo-Nazi junta.” Putin accused Ukraine of committing genocide against Russian-speaking civilians in Donbas—this also isn’t true.
2022-02-24 11:02:25 kermit: and why are you here and not a volunteer in the DNR or LNR?
2022-02-24 11:03:34 patrick: I’m in australia helping the the victims of the genocide of the neo-Nazi junta with money
2022-02-24 11:03:45 kermit: you’re hiding far away
2022-02-24 11:04:24 kermit: in any such movement you have to back it up with deeds. right now you’re just another spectator and instigator
2022-02-24 11:04:33 kermit: money is bullshit in a matter like this
2022-02-24 11:04:58 patrick: Zelia [Zelensky] is the one hiding, it’s his last day, our people are already in the suburbs of Kiev
Zelenskyy and Antisemitism
Although Putin has justified his invasion by framing it as a war on Nazi ideology, numerous discussions in the chats point toward antisemitic sentiment within Conti. Such bigotry has been a prominent part of an ascendant far-right movement throughout the U.S. and Europe, including in Russia and Ukraine. On February 21, a user named “Weldon” pointed out that Zelenskyy is Jewish. Several others joined in with antisemitic jokes.
2022-02-21 13:03:18 weldon: Zelensky is a jew
2022-02-21 13:03:24 kermit: oh fuck
2022-02-21 13:03:26 kermit: Jews
2022-02-21 13:03:28 kermit: great
2022-02-21 13:03:31 kermit: my favorite
2022-02-21 13:03:39 weldon: that’s right, not Jewish, but a Jew
2022-02-21 13:04:26 kermit: fuck, I wish I was a jew
2022-02-21 13:04:55 kermit: just be born Jewish and you’re considered a member of a secret society and you mess up the Russians’ life
2022-02-21 13:05:46 weldon: come on. A Tatar was born – a Jew cried :joy:
2022-02-21 13:06:58 kermit: a Crimean Tatar?
2022-02-21 13:08:07 gelmut: black Crimean Tatar born in Odessa, who received Russian citizenship :-D
2022-02-21 13:09:11 weldon: obama?
2022-02-21 13:19:39 gelmut: A Jewish boy approaches his parents and says – I want to be Russian. To which the parents reply: – If you want to be Russian, you go to the corner and stand there all day without food. Half a day later, his parents ask: “How do you live as a Russian? And the boy answers: – I’ve only been Russian for two hours, but I already hate you Jews!
After Russia’s invasion was in full swing, the topic of Jews appeared again. This time, Patrick suggested that Jews ruined the Russian empire, and a user named “Biggie” said that it’s necessary to “de-Jewishize” Israel by force. “Pindo” is a slightly pejorative term for an American, and “Pindostan” is slang for the United States.
2022-02-25 09:10:45 patrick: everyone, up to and including the pindostan [America], must answer for the destruction of my homeland – the USSR, so be it
2022-02-25 09:11:53 patrick: Vinnytsia is surrounded
2022-02-25 09:14:19 biggie: that’s how sovok [Soviet Union, or Soviet nationalists] responded to the breakup of the Russian empire
2022-02-25 09:14:41 biggie: All’s fair
2022-02-25 09:15:52 angelo: wait Soviet factories were built by Americans and Europeans with the hands of our comrades. The empire was ruined by Jews with English money
2022-02-25 09:15:59 angelo: I’m getting confused who got what for what and why.
2022-02-25 09:16:38 angelo: we need Jesus, only he will judge and tell the truth, who God is for!
2022-02-25 09:16:55 angelo: @jesus !
2022-02-25 09:17:18 biggie: yeah, that means we have to conduct a military operation in Israel for de-Jewishization
Earlier in the month, the user named “Thomas” joked with the user “Angelo” that he’d be sentenced to eight years in prison for “anti-patriotism” but quickly said he was kidding. Angelo said, “I know you’re kidding. We are brothers!” Thomas made a casual Nazi joke about being Aryan brothers, adding that “the skinhead theme is my favorite.”
2022-02-16 08:43:42 angelo: we are brothers!
2022-02-16 08:43:48 thomas: Slavs?
2022-02-16 08:43:51 thomas: or Aryans?
2022-02-16 08:44:01 thomas: Ooh, the skinhead theme is my favorite.
2022-02-16 08:44:05 thomas: whoever has cleaner blood
“It’s Gonna Be Sad Without” Zhirinovsky
In early February, the 75-year-old ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a demagogic politician and leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, was reportedly hospitalized for Covid-19 and in critical condition.
Zhirinovsky is a far-right authoritarian populist known for decades of controversial views. According to a 1994 article in the New York Times, Zhirinovsky called for “the preservation of the white race” in a 1992 television appearance to the U.S., which he warned was being turned over by the white population to black and Hispanic people. In 2016, Zhirinovsky strongly supported the election of Donald Trump for U.S. president over Hillary Clinton, telling Bloomberg, “Trump and I could impose order on the whole planet. … Everyone would shut up. There wouldn’t be any extremists, no Islamic State, and white Europeans could feel at ease as we’d send all the immigrants home.”
The Conti hackers seem more than just Putin-supporting Russian patriots — they identify with Zhirinovsky’s far-right, authoritarian, racist politics. In the chat room, they discussed Zhirinovsky’s condition, as well as conspiracy theories about why he’s really in the hospital and if he’s even really sick.
2022-02-16 13:59:48 kermit: everything is okay in the kremlin
2022-02-16 14:00:00 thomas: how’s Zhirik [Zhirinovsky] doing?
2022-02-16 14:00:03 thomas: is he alive?
2022-02-16 14:00:07 thomas: It’s gonna be sad without him.
2022-02-16 14:00:09 kermit: I don’t know, he’s sick
2022-02-16 14:00:15 kermit: he’s not in the kremlin
2022-02-16 14:00:32 thomas: there was a video that said he is not being treated for covid, his lovers poisoned him
2022-02-16 14:00:35 thomas: and on the news
2022-02-16 14:00:42 kermit: lol
2022-02-16 14:00:43 thomas: not mistresses but male lovers
2022-02-16 14:00:46 weldon: :joy:
2022-02-16 14:00:52 kermit: yeah that’s a known fact
2022-02-16 14:01:31 weldon: *Petrosyans *fuck with Stepanenkas :rofl:
2022-02-16 14:01:36 kermit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aDxfJ-eCxw
2022-02-16 14:07:11 gelmut: By the way, everything is bullshit about Zhirik. Their party man said that everything is fine with him, it’s just hype and journalist faggots. In fact he is just lying in the hospital just in case and working there, feeling fine. They bring him documents to sign right there.
2022-02-16 14:09:18 kermit: Trust the party members from the LDPR
2022-02-16 14:09:22 kermit: That’s just the way it is.
2022-02-16 14:10:01 kermit: They’ll tell you that Volfovich [Zhirinovsky] is dying out there and people don’t know what to do
Feeling the Sanctions
On February 24, at the very beginning of the West’s sanctions against Russia, members of Conti were clearly already feeling squeezed, including by their inability to buy digital gear from Apple. After urging from Ukraine, Apple had quickly cut off sales of products like iPhones and MacBooks to Russia. The value of Russian’s ruble had plummeted to 85 rubles for each U.S. dollar (by March 7, each dollar cost 150 rubles).
2022-02-24 07:04:43 angelo: I take it now the latest model iPhone and Macbook are the ones you have now and that’s it
2022-02-24 07:05:22 weldon: so it is
2022-02-24 07:10:26 biggie: as long as the dollar is 85
2022-02-24 07:11:09 weldon: screw GDP on the dollar
2022-02-24 07:11:25 biggie: What about the iPhone?
2022-02-24 07:12:07 weldon: Shove your iPhones up your ass
2022-02-24 07:12:58 biggie: what about macbooks
They joked about Russia joining NATO so they could switch from the free-falling ruble to the euro. Angelo said he couldn’t even buy a brand of juice because it’s American.
2022-02-24 07:17:23 biggie: we should join NATO, then the euro would replace the ruble and nothing would drop
2022-02-24 07:17:34 angelo: I even couldn’t buy Dobry Juice now – it’s American
2022-02-24 07:18:31 angelo: you should take Viagra, nothing will drop.
2022-02-24 07:19:20 weldon: @biggie you shouldn’t miss the shitter when you piss
2022-02-24 07:19:44 biggie: :smiley:
2022-02-24 07:43:20 biggie: “In half an hour, a quarter of Russia’s stock market is like a cow lapped it up… MOEX index -28,8%”.
2022-02-24 07:43:41 biggie: we’re broke.
2022-02-24 07:45:42 biggie: on the other hand we could soon be stocked up
2022-02-24 07:46:12 angelo: but
2022-02-24 07:46:15 angelo: but
2022-02-24 07:46:19 angelo: I haven’t fucking figured it out yet
2022-02-24 07:46:48 weldon: close up before they close you down
The Conti members even discussed a rumor that PornHub, the major American pornography site, would block Russian users. This was false; PornHub didn’t actually block Russians from using its service.
2022-02-24 22:02:38 thomas: Some American senators suggest blocking PornHub in Russia in addition to social networks!
2022-02-24 22:02:44 thomas: That’s it, we’re done)
2022-02-24 22:02:49 thomas: They will take away our last joys!
Obsession With Brian Krebs
In late January, during a conversation about drug use, the user “Kermit” said, “We should send our correspondence to Krebs.” Angelo replied, “The worst that can happen.” They’re referring to Krebs, the investigative journalist who covers cybercrime groups like Conti. This is especially interesting because since ContiLeaks was published, Krebs has, in fact, been analyzing the group’s correspondence.
2022-01-28 20:01:08 kermit: we should send our correspondence to krebs
2022-01-28 20:01:10 angelo: the worst that can happen
2022-01-28 20:02:03 angelo: I come back once in the evening,
Stoned on hash.
Life becomes beautiful
And it’s madly good.
2022-01-28 20:02:17 angelo: going….. smoking…
2022-01-28 20:02:26 angelo: he’s freaking out, he’s gonna say the Chelyabinsk delinquents
2022-01-28 20:02:48 stanton: Cannabis is supposed to be good for your head.
2022-01-28 20:03:04 angelo: everything is relative
2022-01-28 20:03:24 angelo: if you’re prone to schizophrenia you might end up in a mental hospital
2022-01-28 20:04:30 kermit: or join the KPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation]
It’s clear that members of Conti read Krebs’s work. They frequently mention him when they’re talking about anything particularly inappropriate. For example, on February 2, in a conversation about porn, masturbation and articles about performing oral sex on yourself, Kermit posted, “that’s the kind of correspondence krebs won’t leak :/”.
2022-02-02 20:56:41 elliott: :rofl:
2022-02-02 20:57:01 kermit: that’s the kind of correspondence krebs won’t leak :/
2022-02-02 20:57:08 angelo: he was reading something about giving himself a blowjob
On February 16, Conti members discussed how to remain anonymous using different Jabber clients, chat programs that can be used to connect decentralized chat servers. They discuss Jabber clients called Pidgin, Psi+, and MCabber, how cool and hackery using them looks, and how well their encryption plugins work. They also discuss how their different anonymous Jabber accounts could get linked if they lose internet access and disconnect from multiple accounts at once. Thomas described his technique for mitigating this threat as “Krebs level.”
2022-02-16 08:34:19 thomas: i have each Jabber account on a different client or in a different sandbox
2022-02-16 08:34:22 thomas: and turn them on manually
2022-02-16 08:34:27 thomas: so there could be no timing attacks
2022-02-16 08:34:34 thomas: no autostarts
2022-02-16 08:35:00 thomas: in short, the security is krebs level
Misogyny, Homophobia, Child Sexual Abuse
The messages in this RocketChat channel #general include the sort of misogyny, casual sexism, and crude anatomical references that have historically been endemic among certain groupings of young computer hackers. In one message, Angelo explained that the #general channel was for “pussy and boobs” and the #announcements channel and private messages were for work.
2022-02-08 14:56:47 angelo: you see, in general, pussy and boobs and announcements, in PM work
In one conversation on February 3, Angelo joked with others about raping a girl in her sleep. The replies included “iconic move” and “no, don’t touch them, they’re for meat when the pigeons and bums run out.”
Members of Conti also frequently used homophobic slurs in the chats. Human rights groups have denounced Russian prohibitions, under Putin, of so-called gay propaganda — acts considered to promote homosexuality — saying it contributes to an increasingly homophobic environment where acts of brutality against gay people are common.
On February 25, Patrick posted about how the Safe Internet League, an internet censorship organization in Russia, was going to declare Yuri Dud a foreign agent after a video he published about Ukraine. Dud is a well-known Russian journalist and YouTuber who identifies as Ukrainian. Patrick ended with “Kill the faggots!”
On February 28, Angelo and Kermit discussed child sexual abuse videos (what Kermit openly referred to as “child pornography”) and the ages of girls they liked to watch.
“The Boss” Is Missing
On February 21, the user “Frances,” who had only posted twice before that month strictly about work, posted a long and surprising update in the #general channel.
The “boss” of the Conti ransomware gang apparently disappeared and couldn’t be reached, probably because of “too much attention to the company from outside” and because of internal leaks. Conti didn’t have enough money in emergency reserves to even pay everyone’s salaries. Frances asked everyone to send him up-to-date contact information, take two to three months of vacation from work, and erase their tracks and clean up their accounts used for hacking in the meantime.
It’s unclear why Conti didn’t have enough money to pay salaries. John Shier, a senior security adviser at the security firm Sophos, told CyberScoop that Conti reportedly has a bitcoin wallet with $2 billion in it. And despite the request for employees to take vacation, there have been nearly two dozen news posts with hacked documents from ransomware victims on Conti’s extortion website since February 21.
2022-02-21 13:30:25 frances: @all
Friends!
I sincerely apologize for having to ignore your questions the last few days. About the boss, Silver, salaries, and everything else. I was forced to because I simply had nothing to say to you. I was dragging my feet, screwing around with the salary as best I could, hoping that the boss would show up and give us clarity on our next steps. But there is no boss, and the situation around us is not getting any softer, and pulling the cat by the balls further does not make sense.
We have a difficult situation, too much attention to the company from outside resulted in the fact that the boss has apparently decided to lay low. There have been many leaks, post-New Year’s receptions, and many other circumstances that incline us all to take some time off and wait for the situation to calm down.
The reserve money that was set aside for emergencies and urgent team needs was not even enough to cover the last paycheck. There is no boss, no clarity or certainty about what we will do in the future, no money either. We hope that the boss will appear and the company will continue to work, but in the meantime, on behalf of the company I apologize to all of you and ask for patience. All balances on wages will be paid, the only question is when.
Now I will ask all of you to write to me in person: (ideally on Jabber:))
– Up-to-date backup contact for communication (preferably register a fresh, uncontaminated public Jabber account
– Briefly your job responsibilities, projects, PL [programming language] (for coders). Who did what, literally in a nutshell
In the near future, we, with those team leaders, who stayed in line – will think how to restart all the work processes, where to find money for salary payments and with renewed vigor to run all our working projects. As soon as there is any news about payments, reorganization and getting back to work – I will contact everyone. In the meantime, I have to ask all of you to take 2-3 months off. We will try to get back to work as soon as possible. From you all, please be concerned about your personal safety! Clean up the working systems, change your accounts on the forums, VPNs, if necessary, phones and PCs. Your security is first and foremost your responsibility! To yourself, to your loved ones and to your team too!
Please do not ask about the boss in a private message – I will not say anything new to anyone, because I simply do not know. Once again, I apologize to my friends, I’m not excited about all these events, we will try to fix the situation. Those who do not want to move on with us – we naturally understand. Those who will wait – 2-3 months off, engaged in personal life and enjoy the freedom :)
All working rockets and internal Jabbers will soon be off, further communication – only on the private Jabbers. Peace be with you all!
The destruction following shelling in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv. (photo: Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden in Philadelphia, on Friday, March 11, 2022. (photo: Getty Images)
The package of military assistance will include anti-tank missiles and more of the defensive weapons that the US has already been providing, including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, officials familiar with the plans said. The assistance, however, will stop short of the no-fly zone or fighter jets that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said are necessary to sustain Ukraine's fight against Russia.
News of the additional assistance, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as the White House continues to face intense pressure from Congress and Zelensky to find new ways to aid Ukraine. The Ukrainian President, who remains in his country, will address US members of Congress remotely at 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday, where he is expected to renew his calls for more assistance.
Biden will deliver his own remarks later Wednesday.
Given that Zelensky is expected to be specific in his requests, officials say to also expect Biden to be specific about what assistance the new $800 million will go toward in Ukraine, including potentially the armed drones that Zelensky has called for.
Officials have declined to confirm whether armed drones will be included in Biden's remarks or whether a decision was finalized.
The $800 million in security assistance comes from the massive spending bill the President signed into law on Tuesday, which includes $13.6 billion total in new aid to Ukraine.
The Biden administration will look to get these hundreds of millions in new aid to Ukraine as quickly as possible, with the President noting Tuesday that it is becoming "exceedingly difficult" to get new supplies into Ukraine, though they are still able to do so.
In a sign of the speed with which US officials are looking to move the aid, the administration has sent about $300 million of the $350 million Biden recently authorized for Ukraine in a little over two weeks.
As Russia's invasion has raged on, Zelensky has pressured Biden and NATO to do more, expressing frustrations over Western allies' concerns about provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader called Article 5, the principle that enshrines that an attack on one NATO country is considered an attack on all NATO countries, "weak."
"Some states of (the) alliance have intimidated themselves, saying that they can't answer. That they cannot collide with Russian missiles and planes in the Ukrainian sky. Because this, they say, will lead to escalation, will lead to the third world war. ... And what will they say if Russia goes further to Europe, attacking other countries? I am sure the same thing they say to Ukraine," he said. "Article 5 of the NATO treaty has never been as weak as it is now. This is just our opinion."
A Starbucks barista in Buffalo, New York, helps out the local Starbucks Workers United in Mesa, Arizona, in February. (photo: Ross D Franklin/AP)
Labor strategists hope wins will turn into a larger trend but acknowledge it won’t be easy as corporations fight fiercely against unionization
This is an unusually promising moment for unions, labor strategists say, as they strain to figure out how best to build a larger wave, although they acknowledge it won’t be easy because US corporations fight so fiercely against unionization.
Union strategists are debating whether there are ways to transform the wins at Starbucks – workers at six Starbucks have voted to unionize so far – into a wave of unionization at McDonald’s and other fast-food companies, and whether the REI victory could be a springboard to victories elsewhere in retail, perhaps at Walmart or Whole Foods.
“We have a moment right now,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the union that the REI workers voted to join. “I think that success breeds more success. When people see what’s happened at some Starbucks in Buffalo, they ask, ‘Why can’t we do that, too?’”
His union is campaigning hard to win a rerun union election at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, but labor experts say it’s much easier for unions to win at a Starbucks with 30 employees or an REI store with 100 than at an Amazon warehouse with perhaps 5,000 workers and management running an all-out, anti-union campaign.
“You have thousands of people who are standing up at Amazon wanting to be part of this movement,” Appelbaum said. “It relates to how people feel they were treated during the pandemic. Their contributions were not being rewarded sufficiently, and the risks they took were not being recognized sufficiently. Workers felt the callous indifference of too many employers. Plus, workers were concerned about the profiteering that was going on and the exponential explosion of income inequality. That we have such a pro-union president is helpful, too.”
Moreover, workers feel unusually empowered because of the low unemployment rate and record number of job openings.
It is a moment when many workers are making inquiries about unionizing (beyond the well-known efforts among grad students, adjunct professors and museum workers). Organizers say workers at McDonald’s, Target and Trader Joe’s are asking about unionizing. That first union victory at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, in December has led to workers at 140 Starbucks in 27 states petitioning for unionization votes. What is happening at Starbucks is the wildfire that union organizers dream of – an organic, bottom-up, fast-spreading effort.
Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, said all this worker energy is great. But acknowledging how fierce anti-union campaigns can be, she said: “The pressure is on us as a movement to help move this forward. It’s really an uphill battle.”
The recent string of lopsided union wins was impressive and inspiring: 88 to 14 at REI in Manhattan, 25 to three at Starbucks in Mesa, Arizona, 404 to 88 among New York Times tech workers, and 142 to 44 at the Art Institute of Chicago. These victories came despite vigorous anti-union campaigns by management.
“We’re in a moment when we are questioning how effective traditional union-busting tactics are,” said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers. “Traditional union-busting tactics like scaring immigrants and dividing workers by race – how effective they are has been brought into question.” Givan said workers at Starbucks stores that have unionized speak with workers at other Starbucks to inoculate them against anti-union efforts by telling them what anti-union message and tactics to expect.
While the recent union wins fuel optimism, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that just 10.3% of US workers are in unions and just 6.1% in the private sector. In the 1950s, more than one in three private-sector workers were in unions, in the 1980s, more than one in five. Now it’s just one in 16.
Tefere Gebre, who recently stepped down as executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said unions were doing far too little to seize the moment and unionize workers. “Workers want unions, but the question is, do unions want workers?” Gebre said. “If you talk to any labor leader, they’ll tell you, “That’s what we’re really for. We want members.’ How you mechanize that is a different thing.”
Gebre said far too many union leaders don’t want to stick their necks out and spend members’ dues money on unionizing more workers. “Right now we have fiefdoms that people think are big enough,” Gebre said, warning that if union membership continues to decline, unions will inevitably lose clout.
“For far too long our growth strategy has been entirely attached to politics, but that has failed us over and over,” Gebre said. A Republican filibuster has blocked Joe Biden’s push to enact the Pro Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize.
Gebre said the nation’s unions should send far more organizers and money to back the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon. “The rest of the labor movement should be willing to lend a hand,” even if they don’t get any of the members, said Gebre, who was recently named Greenpeace’s chief program officer. “That’s what solidarity means.”
Unions have often balked at organizing small workplaces like restaurants with a few dozen workers, preferring to focus on larger workplaces. In addition to seeking a $15 wage, the Fight for $15 – which was largely financed by the Service Employees International Union – sought to pressure McDonald’s to agree to remain neutral and not oppose unionization. That might have allowed efforts to unionize dozens of McDonald’s and hundreds of McDonald’s workers at once, but McDonald’s rejected pressures to agree to neutrality.
Workers United, the union that is organizing Starbucks, is an Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate, but has taken a different approach. “It’s better to organize 10,000 workers at a time than 25,” said Erik Loomis, a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. “But the more 25s you organize, the more people will see that success and gain confidence to take action themselves. You’re seeing that with Starbucks.”
Givan said the Starbucks victories might inspire workers at McDonald’s, Chipotle and other fast-food companies to seek to unionize, and if just one or two of those restaurants unionize, it could spur many workers at those chains to seek to do likewise, especially in union strongholds like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
“We don’t have the luxury as a movement to be picky on strategy,” said Smiley of Jobs with Justice. “At this moment, we have to let every flower bloom – not in a way that will burn the future, but in a way that will crack open the door to allow us to think a little differently.”
Stephen Lerner, architect of the SEIU’s groundbreaking Justice for Janitors campaign, said it was exciting that Starbucks workers are organizing and winning elections. But he said that even when workers win union elections, corporations often drag their feet for years before ever reaching a union contract, that is, if they ever agree – a strategy that hugely frustrates workers.
“That’s why to beat giant corporations, you need comprehensive campaigns,” Lerner said. “We need giant campaigns to pressure giant companies at multiple levels to make sure they negotiate and reach good contracts.”
Seeing how intense anti-union efforts can be, many labor leaders resist calls that they do more organizing if unions are ever to grow larger and stronger. “Organizing at any place is too hard,” Gebre said. “In the entire history of the labor movement, it’s never been easy. But that’s what unions are there for: to do the hard work.”
The Stop Asian Hate movement. (photo: Christina Animashaun/Vox/Getty Images)
In the year since the Atlanta shootings, the Stop Asian Hate movement dramatically changed awareness of anti-Asian racism. Where does it go from here?
These shootings — which occurred at three Atlanta-area spas — took the lives of eight people, including six Asian women. The victims included Daoyou Feng, 44, Hyun Jung Grant, 51, Suncha Kim, 69, Paul Andre Michels, 54, Soon Chung Park, 74, Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49, Yong Ae Yue, 63, and Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33.
“Seeing people who look like me being targeted and people not recognizing that they were clearly targeted because of what they looked like was hard,” Cea, who identifies as Thai, Korean, and Chinese American, told Vox.
Initially, both police and the media appeared to accept claims that the shootings, carried out by a white man, were not racially motivated, even though the attacks focused on Asian-run businesses, and the rationale he gave was that it was a way to reduce sexual “temptation,” a statement that speaks to the longstanding objectification of Asian women. The fact that people wouldn’t acknowledge the racial aspect of the attacks only added to the trauma of the shootings, Cea emphasizes.
“To me it was compounding that feeling of constantly feeling invisible, reckoning with that in the media and in the workplace,” says Cea, who serves as the president of the Asian American advocacy group OCA-New York and the executive director of GenVote. “In the face of this tragedy, you still go back to this narrative of erasure.”
For Cea and a number of other Asian Americans, Atlanta was a breaking point amid two years of growing anti-Asian violence that took the form of brutal attacks on older people, vandalization of businesses, and assaults on the street. Fueled by xenophobic sentiment tied to the coronavirus’s origins in Wuhan, China, and former President Donald Trump’s use of racist terms like “China Virus,” anti-Asian harassment soared in 2020 and 2021. According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization tracking instances of violence and verbal abuse, there were more than 10,900 incidents reported between March 2020 and December 2021.
The devastation of the Atlanta shootings compelled many Asian Americans to speak out in a new way. In the weeks that followed, rallies erupted across more than 50 cities, and hundreds of thousands of people participated in trainings, petitions, and crowdfunding efforts to support victims and condemn anti-Asian violence. Cea was among those to host a vigil in New York City, which sought to memorialize the victims. The use of hashtags like #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate took off on Twitter and Instagram as well.
What began as a tagline on social media ultimately evolved into a national movement, spurring a reckoning across different industries, prompting new policies at the federal and state levels and transforming broader awareness of anti-Asian racism.
Approaching the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta attacks, the Stop Asian Hate movement is at a crossroads.
While it’s had significant achievements — including shepherding the passage of a federal hate crimes law, emboldening a new generation of Asian American activists and sparking a dialogue about anti-Asian discrimination — it also faces major questions of where to go next.
Organizers view the policies that have passed as insufficient — and worry that the focus on policing, which some have taken in response to anti-Asian violence, could harm communities of color. As more horrific attacks make headlines, many are still searching for new ways to address the biases that are tied to such violence as well.
“It can’t just be about raising awareness and visibility,” says Turner Willman, the social media director for the progressive advocacy group 18MillionRising. “It needs to be coupled with structural change.”
The origins of the Stop Asian Hate movement
In the spring of 2020, Manjusha Kulkarni, head of the AAPI Equity Alliance; Cynthia Choi, the co-director of Chinese for Affirmative Action; and professor Russell Jeung, head of the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State started noticing a concerning trend. Increasingly, they were hearing from friends, colleagues, and news reports about a spike in anti-Asian incidents.
After Kulkarni held a press conference about an Asian American middle schooler in Los Angeles County who was badly beaten by a classmate, the three came together to launch Stop AAPI Hate, a website where people could submit incidents they’ve experienced.
“We needed firsthand data to prove what was happening in the lived experiences of Asian Americans,” Jeung says.
Since its launch, Stop AAPI Hate has seen a steady influx of reports. And other sources have seen a similar uptick: A study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino found a 339 percent increase in hate crimes toward Asian Americans across several major cities between 2021 and 2020.
This year, the attacks have continued. In recent weeks, Christina Yuna Lee was murdered in New York City’s Chinatown, and multiple Asian women were assaulted by the same person in New York City.
“That’s a reason we started Stop AAPI Hate. We did not want this to be minimized, we wanted to have the numbers. We didn’t want there to be denialism,” Choi previously told Vox.
The movement, meanwhile, built slowly. Across the country, people — including the Stop AAPI Hate team — had been raising the alarm about growing anti-Asian sentiment for months, though it didn’t get more attention until a series of videos capturing brutal attacks against elderly people went viral in February 2021.
These videos, including one calling attention to the killing of 84-year-old Thai American Vicha Ratanapakdee in San Francisco, were amplified by activists like Amanda Nguyen, a longtime activist against sexual violence, and celebrities including actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu, who questioned why there wasn’t more coverage and focus on these attacks.
As frustration about these incidents grew, the Atlanta shootings marked an inflection point, unleashing a wave of protests, demonstrations, and public outcry.
The Stop Asian Hate movement changed awareness of anti-Asian racism
One of the biggest achievements of the Stop Asian Hate movement is that it raised awareness about the pervasiveness of anti-Asian racism.
“There has been this narrative over the last many, many years that so many parts of our community don’t face marginalization that we know we’re impacted by,” says Mohan Seshadri, the executive director of the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance of Pennsylvania. “We are seeing folks outside of our community waking up to the fact that anti-Asian violence and anti-Asian racism has been baked into our system and our government.”
For decades, the discrimination that Asian Americans have faced — including everything from exclusionary immigration policy to outright erasure — has been rendered invisible. In large part, that’s been due to the “model minority” myth. First popularized in the 1960s, it implies that all Asian people are successful and well-off, obscuring both the diversity within the group as well as the disparities that people experience.
But public perception of the problem of anti-Asian racism has changed rapidly.
According to a UCLA-led survey, between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of people who believed Asian Americans experienced significant discrimination more than doubled. The survey, analyzed for Vox by Baylor University’s Jerry Park and Seattle Pacific University’s Joshua Tom, found that 23 percent of people across demographic groups said they believed Asian Americans faced a lot of discrimination in 2021, compared to the 10 percent of people who said the same in a similar poll done after the 2016 election.
In May 2021, following media coverage of anti-Asian attacks, as well as a surge of Stop Asian Hate rallies and protests, 60 percent of people surveyed in an AP-NORC poll also said they believed discrimination against Asian Americans had increased in the last year.
These polls were conducted shortly after interest in the Stop Asian Hate movement took off. And though they don’t prove the movement alone was responsible for changing public opinion, other data points speak to the reach of Stop Asian Hate. As NBC News has reported, Google searches for the term “Asian American” were up 5,000 percent in 2021, and searches for the term “Stop Asian Hate” and “Stop AAPI Hate” also increased. Per tracking by the social media analytics firm Zignal Labs, the #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate hashtags were used on Twitter more than 8.4 million and 2.5 million times, respectively, in 2021.
It’s also forced a new dialogue across industries. Congress, for the first time in three decades, held a hearing focused explicitly on discrimination toward Asian Americans. Former late-night host Jay Leno apologized for jokes he’d made about Asian people eating dogs, which followed years of ignored complaints. And new attention has been placed on how underrepresented Asian Americans have been in film, television, elected office, and leadership roles relative to their presence in the US population.
There have been policy wins, too
The movement has fueled some policy wins, though activists are divided on whether certain bills actually address the source of anti-Asian discrimination.
At the federal level, Congress approved the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act last May, which designated an official at the Justice Department to focus on Covid-19-related hate crimes, provided more funding to law enforcement for hate crimes reporting, and bolstered training resources to help police address hate crimes.
At the time of the bill’s passage, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said that the legislation offered “an important signal that Congress is taking anti-Asian racism and hatred seriously.”
Some activists, like Stanley Mark, the senior staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, have also celebrated the law as an important first step. “There is funding there to promote more reporting and strengthen community-based organizations. I do think it’s a beginning,” Mark says.
Others, however, have been more critical, concerned that the legislation doesn’t confront the root causes of bias against Asian Americans, like xenophobic political rhetoric, gaps in education, and a lack of resources across communities. Many worry that it won’t deter future hate crimes and that it could lead to unintended problems, such as the overpolicing of Asian American communities and other communities of color.
“The real question is what do we do with that data [the bill collects]? Is it to reinforce a certain narrative that we need more policing?” Jason Wu, co-chair of GAPIMNY-Empowering Queer … Trans Asian Pacific Islanders, one of over 85 Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy groups that opposed the bill, previously told Vox.
At the state level, several bills have gained more momentum in the last year. In Illinois and New Jersey, lawmakers passed bills requiring schools to teach Asian American history after groups including Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago pushed lawmakers to take up the legislation.
“We’re reaching out to school districts all across the state to make sure that this happens and that it’s taught well,” says Grace Pai, the executive director of AAAJ-Chicago. “That requires an army of people paying attention.”
In California, the state legislature also passed an API Equity Budget, which allocates $166.5 million in funding to community-based organizations, including those working to help hate crime victims and to collect demographic data about the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in the state.
Moving forward, organizers — including a coalition called Make Us Visible — are continuing to focus on legislation that will require the teaching of ethnic studies and Asian American history in schools, with states including Florida, Ohio, and Connecticut also weighing such curriculums. Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) has also introduced federal legislation aimed at requiring the teaching of Asian American history in schools, while the White House has reestablished its initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, which is dedicated to improving language access and data collection.
Asian American organizations have seen a surge in engagement
Another effect of the Stop Asian Hate movement has been a surge of engagement and participation in Asian American organizations in the past year.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice has seen more than 130,000 people participate in bystander trainings it’s held via chapters across the country. And according to a rough estimate from Candid, an organization that tracks funding for nonprofits and foundations, $112.4 million was committed in grants to AAPI organizations in 2021, a 16 percent uptick from the $97.2 million committed in 2020.
“The world of philanthropy for many years had neglected Asian American communities,” says University of California Davis Asian American studies professor Robyn Rodriguez, whose research focuses on Asian American activism. “There’s been a new investment in Asian American communities that hasn’t existed before.”
A host of new organizations providing mutual aid and local resources have cropped up as well. In New York City, Soar Over Hate is among the new mutual aid organizations that have launched to help provide everything from public safety resources to health care screenings. In Los Angeles, a new group called Seniors Fight Back offers free self-defense classes to elders.
Nationally, a number of new coalitions have formed between Asian American groups, including the Asian American Leader’s Table, which sought to help organizations around the country respond to anti-Asian violence in different regions.
“Where community exists now but didn’t exist before, that’s an immense accomplishment,” says Tuấn ĐinhJanelle, the director of field at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.
The movement has also spawned a new generation of organizers. Grace Xia, 17, and Nathan Duong, 18, are among those who organized their first protests last year in, respectively, San Mateo, California, and Seattle, Washington. Xia says her protest centered the voices of AAPI women leaders and was attended by 300 people. Duong’s rally focused on passing out safety supplies, including emergency whistles and face masks. Both have said they intend to keep up this activism moving forward.
The Stop AAPI Hate movement has strengthened Asian Americans’ affinity with AAPI as a political identity as well. Polls have shown a growing number of AAPI adults are now identifying as members of the broader AAPI community.
There are a lot of paths forward for the movement
Sustaining the energy of the movement, and maintaining a cohesive coalition, are the next hurdles that organizers face.
“The challenge is that you have so many Asian and Pacific Islander organizations out there. To get them to collectively work together and share the same voice is very challenging,” says Connie Chung Joe, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles.
Among the most common goals of what’s still a decentralized movement: pushing more education about Asian American history, which activists see as key to changing perceptions and combating the erasure that AAPI people have faced.
But issues like policing are still a source of division. The Stop AAPI Hate organization found that 53 percent of Asian Americans and 58 percent of Pacific Islanders named education as an effective solution to address anti-AAPI sentiment, while 30 percent of Asian Americans and 21 percent of Pacific islanders favored more law enforcement.
“There are some who believe we need to double down on policing and there are some who are very skeptical and vehemently opposed to a solution that focuses on law enforcement because it undermines what we know about the role of policing in Black Lives Matter,” says University of Maryland Asian American studies professor Janelle Wong.
There’s also a push to broaden the focus of the movement beyond individual incidents of hate that have predominantly affected East Asian and Southeast Asian people to confront structural racism that different Asian American groups have faced. This includes the deportations of Southeast Asian people and the racial profiling of South Asian people as national security threats in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
“What kinds of incidents count is sometimes very narrow, and it ends up leaving people out,” says Willman.
To step up the fight against systemic racism, some activists hope that the Stop AAPI Hate movement can develop its own detailed policy agenda, and point to the BREATHE Act — legislation drafted by the Movement for Black Lives and endorsed by progressive lawmakers such as Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — as a source of inspiration. Among other things, that act would shutter the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency, while divesting federal funds from local law enforcement.
“The Movement for Black Lives has the BREATHE Act, a North Star piece of legislation. I think we need one as an Asian American movement, a North Star,” says Sarath Suong, the national director of the Southeast Asian Freedom Network.
Many organizers also believe that working in solidarity with other communities of color is vital to combat a broader system of white supremacy and collectively build political power.
Doing so will require acknowledging biases within Asian American communities — and countering them. Some experts, like UC Davis’s Rodriguez, fear media reports that have focused on anti-Asian incidents by Black attackers could activate anti-Blackness among some members of Asian communities.
For now, different groups are approaching next steps in unique ways. The Stop AAPI Hate organization is backing California legislation that would track data about street harassment near public transit, and study it as a public health issue. 18MillionRising is supporting the VISION Act, a California bill that addresses how incarcerated immigrants and refugees are often sent to ICE detention after their release from prison. And organizers in Connecticut have ramped up advocacy for a bill requiring Asian American history in the state’s schools.
Certain activists also aim to harness the energy of this movement to mobilize more Asian American voters during the 2022 elections after the group saw sharp increases in turnout in 2020.
“Despite common assumption that Asian Americans don’t care about politics, or that they are apolitical, what 2021 has shown us is that’s not true,” says Indiana University Asian American studies professor Ellen Wu.
Cea, the voting rights activist, and others ultimately hope the energy from Stop Asian Hate can fuel affirmative expressions of Asian Americans’ strength and political power.
“It did provide a unified rallying cry for folks, but a year later, it’s important that we change the narrative,” she says. “If we continue this idea of stopping Asian hate, that perpetuates this idea that we are constant victims of hate. We need to have a more empowering narrative that we are speaking out and fighting back.”
The new victims of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, March 15, 2022. (photo: Twitter/KuffiyaPlus)
"These crimes against our people will not go unnoticed and our battle is open against the Zionist occupation," Islamic Jihad Movement leader Ahmad Al-Mudallal warned.
One of the killings occurred in Nablus City's Balata refugee camp, where Nader Haytham Rayan (17) was shot multiple times in the head, chest, stomach, and hand. In the same place, three young people received gunshot wounds and were taken to a nearby hospital.
Later, justifying what had happened, the Israeli Border Police said that the deceased youth was armed and opened fire on the security forces, which were carrying out an operation in the area to arrest a possible suspect of terrorist activities.
The second violent incident occurred in the Qalandia refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, where the Israeli occupation forces carried out another raid that left six youths wounded by gunshots and caused the death of Alaa Shaham (20).
The third deadly incident occurred in Rahat City, where an undercover Israeli police killed Sanad Salem al-Harbed, a 27-year-old father of three children. "The police said they found a gun and ammunition, and published a photo of what they said was a pistol in al-Harbed's possession," Al Jazeera reported.
"These crimes against our people will not go unnoticed and our battle is open against the Zionist occupation," Islamic Jihad Movement leader Ahmad Al-Mudallal warned.
According to the WAFA news agency, the latest raids carried out by the Israelis in multiple West Bank cities have left at least 20 Palestinians detained and dozens of people injured as a result of clashes between the population and Israeli soldiers and police.
A Ka'apor woman and her child on a fishing expedition in a newly occupied and heavily deforested area of their Indigenous territory in the Brazilian state of Maranhao. (photo: Andrew Johnson/Mongabay)
Amid government inaction, the Ka’apor have taken matters into their own hands, creating an autonomous Indigenous territory that doesn’t require the presence of the state. Pioneers in the strategy of self-defense, they’ve inspired other Indigenous groups in the region. But while the Ka’apor people have succeeded in repelling the “aggressors,” they continue to live under the constant threat of violence while the authorities charged with protecting them do nothing.
The name Ka’apor means “people of the forest” in their language, so the rainforest is core to their very identity. Without one, the other simply wouldn’t exist. For decades, the region’s environment and its original inhabitants have suffered the consequences of illegal logging, mining, and agricultural expansion, often orchestrated by well-financed and politically connected criminal organizations. To the Ka’apor, the forest is like a life-giving relative; to the invaders, it’s money. Now, simply leaving their home means risking their life.
After leaving their ancestral lands some 150 years ago, the Ka’apor embarked on a journey of hundreds of kilometers on foot in an attempt to distance themselves from an expanding settler society pushing deeper into the interior of the former Portuguese colony. They eventually settled in what is now one of the last remaining tracts of rainforest in the state of Maranhão, the poorest in Brazil.
Their isolation was only temporary; by the 1900s, outsiders were once again encroaching on their territory. The combination of guns, germs and steel devastated the Indigenous population. The government’s Indigenous affairs agency of the time thought it best to “pacify” the Ka’apor by imposing on them the Portuguese language, settler customs and, consequently, diseases like measles. By 1975, their population had fallen to less than 500.
While the population has since recovered, to about 1,800 today, the people and their forest remain under constant threat. Today, more than 76% of the original Amazon rainforest in Maranhão has disappeared. Nearly a quarter of what remains, some 531,000 hectares (1.3 million acres), belongs to the Ka’apor of the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Territory, officially recognized by the government in 1982.
Seen from high above, the reserve is an island of deep green in a sea of cattle pasture. While the Brazilian Amazon has lost about 20% of its original forest cover over the past 50 years, in the Alto Turiaçu reserve the figure is less than 10%, thanks largely to the actions of the Indigenous inhabitants.
Throwing out Funai
More than a decade ago, the Ka’apor had become increasingly concerned about the growing danger of outside influence on their land and culture. They also became increasingly skeptical of the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, known as Funai by its Portuguese acronym. The agency, which has historically maintained posts within Indigenous territories throughout Brazil, was seen as being complicit in the sale of timber logged illegally within Ka’apor territory.
In 2013, things came to a head when the community of Gurupiuna inside the reserve was attacked by loggers. While the men were away, the armed invaders descended on the village, beating the women and children. Frustrated with the government’s inability or unwillingness to protect them, the Ka’apor decided to take matters into their own hands.
They did away with the one-chief system imposed by Funai and revived the traditional council of chiefs, or Tuxa ta Pame, consecrating a pact between the leaders of their various communities. Decisions would now be taken collectively within a decentralized, more democratic system.
One leader, who asked to remain anonymous due to repeated threats to their safety, said that “Funai didn’t do their duty, whether it was with education, health care or our language. They should be protecting us, not dividing us.”
The council kicked Funai out of the reserve and set up their own education program prioritizing the Ka’apor language over Portuguese. The next year, in 2014, they created the Ka’apor Training and Knowledge Center (Jumu’e ha renda Keruhu), an Indigenous-run program to train and educate future leaders while preserving the ways of their ancestors.
In response to the threat of illegal invasions, the council formed the Ka’apor Self-Defense Guard (Ka’a usak ha), companies of Ka’apor warriors who seek out and expel invaders — by force, if necessary. Often armed with only clubs, bows and arrows, they do what the government could not. But getting rid of trespassers, they understood, required a permanent solution.
Frontline defense posts
“We kept pushing loggers out but they kept coming back,” the Ka’apor leader told Mongabay. So the strategy of setting up “protection areas” was created, the first being inaugurated in 2013.
Previously accustomed to living deep within the forest, the Ka’apor had to adapt by moving entire families and communities to the borders of their territory to live in “self-sustaining agroforestry communities.” Built on the site of reclaimed logging camps or access roads, these settlements form a string of lookouts and defense posts against any further incursions into their territory.
On Jan. 18 of this year, the 11th protection area was created in a heavily deforested corner of the Alto Turiaçu reserve. Loggers had reportedly been active in the area as recently as two weeks before the Ka’apor took back control. While there was fresh evidence of their activity, the area is now back in the hands of the people of the forest.
The strategy is bearing fruit: between 2013 and 2016 the Ka’apor burned 105 trucks and closed 14 logging roads, practically halting the advance of the illegal loggers. According to data from Global Forest Watch, tree cover loss dropped from 2,700 hectares (6,670 acres) in 2018 to 600 hectares (1,480 acres) by 2020 — a decline of nearly 350%.
This sharp decrease corresponds with an increase in the number of protection areas and the Ka’apor’s expanded monitoring of their territory. In some of the first areas retaken, residents have even observed the return of wildlife in the absence of heavy machinery and the sound of chainsaws.
Threats and murders
The aggressors, for their part, have not gone quietly into the night. Since 2015, five Ka’apor have been killed and many more threatened in what leaders claim are acts of revenge for protecting the land, rivers and forest. Brazil is still among the most dangerous countries in the world for land defenders.
With the establishment of each new protection area came an act of reprisal. Eusébio Ka’apor, a chief, was ambushed and murdered by gunmen in 2015. The next year, a member of the Self-Defense Guard, Sairá Ka’apor, was stabbed to death in the nearby logging settlement of Betel, in the municipality of Araguanã. In 2019, Kwaxipuru Ka’apor was beaten to death and, in 2021, Jurandir Ka’apor was shot and killed by loggers.
Mongabay spoke with several Ka’apor who had survived targeted acts of violence. One man had a bullet graze his scalp, while another had been shot in the back. A third had been thrown off a fleeing logging truck and was run over by another truck following behind. He suffered brain damage and spent weeks recovering but has since returned to his duties with the Self-Defense Guard.
While setting up the latest protection area, a Ka’apor leader and a supporter said they were surrounded and threatened by suspected gunmen in the town of Santa Luzia do Paruá. They fled to the civil police station for safety, only to find it shut. They only made it back to their territory after alerting the Maranhense Society for Human Rights (SMDH) and the Protection Program for Human Rights Defenders (PPDDH), which alerted the State Public Safety Secretariat, which arranged a police escort hours later.
In February, Ka’apor leaders reported that Indigenous people traveling by road outside the Alto Turiaçu reserve were being stopped by unknown men and threatened. They suspect the men are looking for Ka’apor leaders, four of whom are ostensibly under the protection of the PPDDH, a state agency, but who, according to them, receive little to no protection.
Political interests
As in the rest of the country, threats and violence against Indigenous people go largely unpunished, as the perpetrators are often connected to powerful business interests or criminal organizations that often enjoy the protection of corrupt public officials and law enforcement. To date, no one has been found guilty of any of the crimes mentioned above. In some cases, police haven’t even opened an investigation.
While these issues long preceded him, the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president meant plans to open up Indigenous territories to resource exploitation now have support at the very highest level of government. A number of local public officials, many of them members of Bolsonaro’s right-wing party or his coalition in Congress, are suspected of involvement in illegal activity on Indigenous territory.
In December 2021, at an entrance to Ka’apor territory near the non-Indigenous settlement of Tancredo Neves in the municipality of Nova Olinda do Maranhão, Self-Defense Guards approached a group of loggers. After questioning, the men reportedly named the mayor of the nearby municipality of Araguanã, Flávio Amorim, in a deal to provide them with trucks. In another instance, local councilman Bené do Tancredo was said to be found with loggers, where he reportedly told the Ka’apor that “everyone works illegally in this town.”
In October 2021, Júnior Garimpeiro, the mayor of the nearby town of Centro Novo do Maranhão, was arrested for illegal mining and toxic chemical dumping after a Federal Police operation in the region. Released in December, he has reportedly been seen entering the Alto Turiaçu reserve by way of the Gurupi River on hunting expeditions and potentially prospecting for minerals, both illegal activities. According to the Ka’apor, in March 2021, Garimpeiro arrived in a truck with armed gunmen and threatened leaders in the community of Gurupiuna.
One example of how local corruption goes national is Josimar Maranhãozinho, two-time mayor of the neighboring town of Maranhãozinho. In 2014, he was accused of orchestrating an illegal logging operation in Ka’apor territory, but the charges were dismissed. Today, he’s a federal congressman — albeit one who is currently under investigation after being caught embezzling public funds.
Mining companies have also continued to advance, with four gold exploration requests illegally being made within the limits of the Alto Turiaçu reserve. Three of these were submitted by MCT Mineração Ltda, a company based in Centro Novo do Maranhão and which is the subject of several ongoing civil suits related to environmental crimes. The fourth mining application was made by Vale, Brazil’s biggest miner and No. 5 in the world. At home, Vale is notorious for two catastrophic collapses of mine tailings dams in the state of Minas Gerais in 2015 and 2019, among other incidents. All four mining requests are currently pending. Mining in Indigenous territories is banned under Brazil’s Constitution, but a bill introduced into Congress by Bolsonaro, known as PL 191/2020, would make it legal.
To this day, local, state and federal governments refuse to recognize any initiatives being taken by the Ka’apor within their own territory. Mongabay reached out to Funai as well as both the federal and state secretariats of public safety, requesting comment on recent reports of threats being made against the Ka’apor and any information regarding ongoing investigations into the above-mentioned crimes. We received no response from any of those contacted as of the time this article was published.
More than three years into the Bolsonaro presidency marked by its anti-Indigenous rhetoric, and with no change in the long-standing inaction of the authorities, the culture of impunity threatens to get even worse, making future violence even more likely. According to a supporter who works closely with the Ka’apor council of chiefs and who has received multiple death threats, “We live under permanent pressure. Even though we are doing the right thing, we have nobody on our side. We live under tension from everyone and everything just for defending the forest and its people.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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