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Clinton & the Coup: Amid Protests in Honduras, Ex-President on Hillary's Role in His 2009 Ouster
In Honduras, as many as 25,000 people marched Friday demanding the resignation of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. The protests come six years after a coup ousted Honduras’s democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. In an exclusive interview, Zelaya talks about the new protest movement, the fallout from the 2009 coup, and Hillary Clinton’s role in his ouster. "On the one hand, [the Obama administration] condemned the coup, but on the other hand, they were negotiating with the leaders of the coup," Zelaya said. "And Secretary Clinton lent herself to that, maintaining that ambiguity of U.S. policy to Honduras, which has resulted in a process of distrust and instability of Latin American governments in relation to U.S. foreign policies." While the United States publicly supported Zelaya’s return to power, newly released emails show Clinton was attempting to set up a back channel of communication with Roberto Micheletti, who was installed as Honduran president after the coup. In one email, Clinton referenced lobbyist and former President Clinton adviser Lanny Davis. She wrote, "Can he help me talk w Micheletti?" At the time, Davis was working for the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, which supported the coup. In another email, Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Honduras talks, refers to Manuel Zelaya as a "failed" leader.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. We turn now to Honduras, where as many as 25,000 people marched Friday night to demand the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernández. Thousands carried torches during the protest, which is the latest in a months-long campaign to demand an independent investigation into a $200 million government corruption scandal.
The protests come six years after a coup ousted Honduras’s democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. At the time of the 2009 coup, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was serving as U.S. secretary of state. While the United States publicly supported Zelaya’s return to power, newly released emails show Clinton was attempting to set up a back channel of communication with Roberto Micheletti, who was installed as Honduras president after the coup. In one email, Clinton referenced lobbyist and former President Clinton adviser Lanny Davis. She wrote, quote, "Can he help me talk w Micheletti?" At the time, Davis was working for the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, which supported the coup. In another email, Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Honduras talks, refers to Zelaya as a "failed" leader.
Well, Juan González and I recently interviewed Manuel Zelaya from a studio in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I began by asking him about Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2009 coup.
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] I interacted with Secretary Clinton publicly on several occasions, especially when she was here in Honduras in 2009, one month before the coup d’état, and sanctions against Cuba that the OAS had imposed 40 years earlier were lifted. The decrees against Cuba were repealed, and that was the beginning of getting rid of the blockade. It began in Honduras. Secretary Clinton had many contacts with us. She is a very capable woman, intelligent, but she is very weak in the face of pressures from groups that hold power in the United States, the most extremist right-wing sectors of the U.S. government, known as the hawks of Washington. She bowed to those pressures. And that led U.S. policy to Honduras to be ambiguous and mistaken.
On the one hand, they condemned the coup, but on the other hand, they were negotiating with the leaders of the coup. And Secretary Clinton lent herself to that, maintaining that ambiguity of U.S. policy toward Honduras, which has resulted in a process of distrust and instability of Latin American governments in relation to U.S. foreign policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what’s happening in your country today? The massive protests, unprecedented. Why are people in the streets?
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] Really, in summary, we can say that Honduras today is a country without reconciliation and without justice. The historical problems have worsened instead of being worked out. The United States is supporting—and this is a complaint—a repressive government, a government that assaulted public funds for its own campaign. And the president himself has now acknowledged it, that he used public funds that were earmarked for the health of the elderly, pregnant women, children, sacred funds; his party has used them for its election campaign.
His victory was seriously questioned, and even so, he has recognized this crime, pressured, logically, by a journalist, David Romero, who published the checks made out to his party and channeled directly to the president himself in the political campaign. It appears that this was like a plot, like a conspiracy, to pillage these funds, $300 or $400 million—no one has the exact figure. But this has caused indignation in the people who are taking to the streets for the first time in the history of Honduras, almost 200 years of wanting to be independent. They are taking to the streets to ask the president to be accountable, to submit to an investigation and to resign, as he himself has recognized the crime.
And this has brought about another position on the part of the Honduran people, who are desperate: The people are calling for the involvement of the international justice mechanisms in Honduras, specifically an International Commission Against Impunity under the direction of the United Nations, which has had good results in Guatemala.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Zelaya, do you have no hope that the justice system in Honduras itself can resolve these problems and bring charges against the president, given that he’s admitted the wrongdoing here?
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] Very good question. Justice in Honduras, judicial officers, have lost all credibility since the coup d’état and to this day, first of all, because they are practically the same ones who conspired to bring about the coup d’état in the first place, in which I was the first victim. In this sense, the justice system is totally manipulated by the current president. A short time ago, he removed five members of the Supreme Court and installed the persons he considered suitable for maintaining his system of corruption in the country.
Similarly, he removed two prosecutors, and in their place he put his friends, who, logically, answer to his orders. He has created a military police force, and we regret that the United States is supporting policies of repression of a government that assaults the state, that the U.S. is recognizing it and remains silent regarding this situation. He has created a police force for himself, and he has changed all the country’s laws. Today, people can be arrested, they can be taken to prison without respecting the presumption of innocence, due process and, moreover, the guarantees enshrined in our constitution. The justice system in Honduras, with very rare exception, because there will always be honest judges and honest prosecutors—with those rare exceptions, it is totally politicized. It is not impartial, but rather acts with political sectarianism. It goes after the opposition. And it is true that the president today is sacrificing key parts of his administration to cover himself, so that he is not investigated. It’s like a smokescreen.
AMY GOODMAN: Manuel Zelaya, you clearly see this as a continuation of the coup that goes back six years, when you yourself were ousted. Can you explain what happened in June of 2009, how you ended up being forced from office?
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] Well, when the international right-wing movements—because this is the conservative restoration of the right-wing movements as of 2009, which was supported by the hawks in Washington, who made the decision to use arms, to use force—there was a coup attempt in Ecuador, a coup d’état in Paraguay, and the first one was the coup in Honduras. This process, well, the same right-wing movements thought it was going to improve the situation of our peoples, of our countries, to bolster trade, industry, to improve the levels of poverty. And what has happened was exactly the opposite. These coups d’état have destroyed the scant institutional framework that we had. The debt has grown. Our poverty has grown. Corruption has grown. And crime and violence have expanded.
And the problem is that the United States doesn’t want to hear these calls of protest from our peoples who are our in the streets, just like the people of Guatemala. Today, the people of Honduras—this is not being directed by anyone. There is no political party leading these citizen demonstrations. It’s spontaneous. This spontaneity—well, the State Department is deaf and mute in response to the voice of protest, and I would like to draw attention to this. The coup d’état was a failure. And the policies of repression that the United States is supporting in the current administration also provoke indignation in the people in light of this reality. The people demand a historic rectification of the international positions of the United States vis-à-vis Honduras.
Recall the human trafficking, trafficking of children, trafficking of women who go to the United States and pressure the U.S. borders, indeed bringing pressure to bear on the stability of the United States, precisely because of the failure of the policies here in Honduras. I could say the same of the new initiative of President Obama, who is talking about $1 billion in financing for the northern triangle, for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. I told the senator who visited last week, the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, I told him, "Senator, money alone is not enough. Dollars alone won’t do it. We need a government that respects the rule of law. We need justice in Honduras. We need respect for a democracy in our country, so that our people can have jobs, can generate wealth, can attract national and international investors. We need juridicial security and citizen security. One must be concerned, Senator, with the internal legal situation in our countries."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, President Zelaya, you mentioned the mothers and children that have been fleeing across the border into the United States. And here, we only hear in the media about the rise in crime and violence in Honduras. What is your—the government there failing to do about the flight of so many people to the United States?
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] In this regard, measures of repression have been adopted—that is, closing the borders, militarizing the borders, preventing persons from exercising their right to migrate. Because migrating is a right. It is a human right. All of our countries emerged from migration, the United States itself from European migration. Yet it must be regulated. It must have a legal framework. Instead, you see soldiers simply stopping children who are looking for their mothers in the United States, or young people who are looking for a job, because this capitalist, neoliberal, exclusionary and highly exploitive society doesn’t offer them opportunities. Recall that these societies are run by large transnational corporations: large transnational banks, large transnational commercial concerns, large transnational oil companies. These are governments of the transnationals. Here, the state is very small, corrupt, and doesn’t provide the people with any responses. Rather, it creates problems for the neighboring states, at the borders, such as we are seeing. The government today, rather, has increased poverty and corruption, and has been unable to control the very high levels of violence, due to the mistaken policies being implemented in our countries.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Manuel Zelaya, you’ve talked about the movement of opposition by the people in your country. You’ve talked about what you would like the United Nations to do to step in and to investigate the corruption there. What would you like the United States and the Obama administration to do at this moment in the crisis your country is facing?
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] Perhaps Honduras is not one of President Obama’s priorities, but events in Latin America should draw the attention of the Democratic Party in the United States, which has President Obama at its helm. He came into office in 2008, and the coups began, the attempts to destabilize began. We recognize that President Obama has acknowledged the blockade of Cuba as a 55-year-old genocide, that instead of isolating Cuba, it had isolated the United States from Latin America. That was a very good gesture for Latin America. But we don’t accept him supporting policies such as those that are unfolding in Honduras, those of a repressive government, a government attacking public health institutions, attacks that have not been investigated. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption—social security; the funds of the National Congress that have not been investigated; the funds of the Ministry of Finance and the presidency that have not been investigated; everything that they used for their election campaign to stage a fraud and defeat Xiomara Castro, who was the favorite in opinion polls, and on election day things came out the other way around because of the fraud they perpetrated.
President Obama has not wanted to hear our peoples. He has turned a deaf ear on the cry of the people. First we protested in the opposition. A few months ago, they physically removed me from the Congress, the National Congress, because our party mounted a peaceful protest. The military removed us, using tear gas in the Congress. They expelled us, beating us with batons, beating us into the street. This is the government that President Obama supports, a government that is repressive, a government that violates human rights, as has been shown by the very Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. It has shown this to be the case.
AMY GOODMAN: Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. To see the whole interview, go to democracynow.org. Special thanks to Charlie Roberts, Steve Martinez, Mike Burke and our Spanish team, Igor Moreno, Clara Ibarra and Andrés Conteris.
In Ethiopia, Obama Hails Democracy Despite Recent Election Where Ruling Party Won 100% of Seats
On Monday, President Obama made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit Ethiopia. But he is facing criticism after twice describing Ethiopia as having a democratically elected government despite the fact human rights groups have denounced Ethiopia’s democracy as a "sham." In a recent election, for example, Ethiopia’s ruling party won 100 percent of the country’s 547 Parliament seats. Human Rights Watch criticized the government in a recent report, writing, "Authorities use arbitrary arrests and politically motivated prosecutions to silence journalists, bloggers, protesters, and perceived supporters of opposition political parties." We speak with Horace Campbell, professor of African-American studies and political science at Syracuse University. He has written extensively on African politics. His new piece for CounterPunch is called "Obama in Kenya."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to President Obama’s historic trip to Africa, where he’s set to become the first U.S. president to address the African Union. On Monday, Obama made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit Ethiopia. But he is facing criticism after twice describing Ethiopia as a democratically elected government despite a recent parliamentary election when Ethiopia’s ruling party won 100 percent of the country’s 547 Parliament seats. Obama made the comment Monday during a news conference in Addis Ababa alongside Ethiopian President—Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are very mindful of Ethiopia’s history and the hardships that this country has gone through. It has been relatively recently in which the constitution that was formed and the elections put forward a democratically elected government. And as I indicated when I was in Kenya, there’s still more work to do, and I think the prime minister is the first to acknowledge that there’s more work to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Human rights groups widely criticized the recent Ethiopian parliamentary elections as a "sham." In a recent report, Human Rights Watch said, quote, "Authorities use arbitrary arrests and politically motivated prosecutions to silence journalists, bloggers, protesters, and perceived supporters of opposition political parties."
During Monday’s press conference, Obama also praised Ethiopia’s fight against the Somali-based militant group al-Shabab.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Our security cooperation is pushing back against violent extremism. Ethiopia faces serious threats. And its contribution to the African Union Mission in Somalia have reduced areas under al-Shabab control, but, as the prime minister noted, yesterday’s bombing in Mogadishu reminds us that terrorist groups like al-Shabab offer nothing but death and destruction, and have to be stopped. We’ve got more work to do. This past week, Ethiopian troops have helped retake two major al-Shabab strongholds. We have to now keep the pressure on.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the significance of President Obama’s visit, we go to Syracuse to speak with Horace Campbell, professor of African-American studies and political science at Syracuse University. He has written extensively on African politics. His new piece for CounterPunch is called "Obama in Africa."
Overall, Professor Campbell, can you start off by talking about the significance of President Obama’s Africa trip, the first time a U.S. sitting president has gone to Ethiopia, the first time a U.S. sitting president has gone to Kenya, which also happens to be his father’s birthplace, and the first time a U.S. president is addressing the African Union?
HORACE CAMPBELL: Well, thank you, Amy, and thank you for having us on the program.
I think this was a liberating trip for President Obama. And from the news coverage of his trip to Kenya, one could see that this was truly liberating for him. He called himself an African American for the first time that I heard him say. He called himself a Kenyan American. He was dancing, and there was genuine joy that he was having on this trip.
But one could see all around that President Obama was compromised. He was compromised because of the footprints of the United States in eastern Africa, especially in Kenya and Ethiopia and Somalia, in this mission that the United States has been on since 2001, which is what they call counterterrorism. And this counterterrorism operation that the United States has been involved with, that was called the war on terror, has led to the militarization of eastern Africa, with the epicenter of this war against the peoples of Somalia. And now the peoples of Kenya have been brought into this war.
And one of the things that the people of Kenya have called for is for complete demilitarization of this region. Yesterday—on Sunday morning, when President Obama met members of the opposition, they called for the withdrawal of Kenyan troops from Somalia. And I think this is something that the left in this country should agree on, that in every aspect of the relationship with the United States and the governments of Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan, we have the United States having the history of its military involvement and the history of counterterrorism unleashing forces that cannot be controlled.
So, yesterday morning, when Barack Obama sat down with the African Union, with the troika—Norway, United States and Britain—and with IGAD, all of the leaders of IGAD that were sitting at the table with Obama—the foreign minister of Sudan, the prime minister of Ethiopia, the president of Uganda and the president of Kenya—all have been involved in this militarization of the region. And we need conscious, clear guidelines and pathways how we’re going to bring peace to this region.
And I’m glad you pointed out in the lead-up to this segment about the compromise of the U.S. government with the Ethiopian leadership. The Ethiopian leadership is particularly despicable. It is a leadership that has violated the rights of the millions of Ethiopian peoples. Nearly one million Ethiopian women are sold or are sent as domestic slaves to Saudi Arabia. And the relationship of the Kenyan government to the majority of the—I’m sorry, the relationship of the Ethiopian government to the majority of the people is one of unbridled repression. So Obama was compromised by his relationship with those leaders of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Sudan.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Obama talked about the ongoing conflict in South Sudan.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Ethiopia has also been a key partner as we seek to resolve the ongoing crisis in South Sudan. Later today, the prime minister and I will meet with leaders from across the region to discuss ways we can encourage the government and opposition in South Sudan to end the violence and move toward a peace agreement. ... The situation is deteriorating. The humanitarian situation is worsening. The possibilities of renewed conflict, in a region that has been torn by conflict for so long and has resulted in so many deaths, is something that requires urgent attention from all of us, including the international community.
AMY GOODMAN: The Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, also addressed the situation in South Sudan.
PRIME MINISTER HAILEMARIAM DESALEGN: As regards to South Sudan, I cannot agree more with the president. But we should also recognize that this process has taken a long, long negotiation period. And on the other hand, the people are suffering on the ground, and we cannot let this go unchecked. And I think the meeting which we are making this afternoon has a strong signal and message that has to be passed to the parties in South Sudan, to see that [inaudible] first.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Professor Horace Campbell, your response?
HORACE CAMPBELL: Here we have a government that blocked the report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry into the situation in South Sudan. One of the tragedies of the South Sudan situation has been the way in which the international organizations, NGO and people around Barack Obama himself, like Gayle Smith, people from the Enough Project, Susan Rice, have been involved in this disaster from the beginning. And so, what one needs is to step back from the hype about how to go forward, and look concretely at the role of the African Union and the deliberations of the African Union Commission of Inquiry into the South Sudan situation.
This report that was done last year by the African Union was supposed to be tabled at the African Union summit in June in South Africa. The Ethiopians blocked the report. It was only last week, Friday, on the 24th, before the meeting of Obama with IGAD, that the report was presented to the Peace and Security Council of the African Union. And it was not presented to the heads of state as it was supposed to be. It was presented to the foreign ministers, downgrading the importance of this report, which has far-reaching recommendations about how to demilitarize South Sudan; end the support of the United Nations, the NGOs and the troika for the military factions; that they need a transition government in South Sudan; they need at least five years of peace; and that we should not have this false dichotomy between sanctions and military intervention by the African Union. Of all the persons sitting at the table yesterday with Obama, the only person who was not compromised was the head of the African Union, Nkosazana Zuma.
We need to get this Commission of Inquiry, the information out there, debated at great length in Africa, because it comprised of the best brains in Africa. Even the member of the leading left force in East Africa was a member of this Commission of Inquiry. So we need to have a clear roadmap of how to demilitarize the situation in South Sudan. Unfortunately, President Obama, his advisers, like Gayle Smith and Susan Rice, will not be in a position to give the kind of advice that can lead to the demilitarization of the situation in South Sudan.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Campbell, we have less than a minute, but can you compare the U.S. presence in Africa with China’s presence?
HORACE CAMPBELL: I think it’s very difficult to compare, because the case of the Chinese, the Chinese are bringing real, concrete support for infrastructure development, and the Chinese have the capacity at the financial level to invest in infrastructure. What the United States has invested in, and the United States and the West has the upper hand, is at the cultural and ideological level, at the level of ideas, about how to organize society, at the level of language, and, most importantly, the role of the church, the role of religion. The Chinese can never compete at the cultural level with the investment of the Western religious institutions, especially the born-again religious forces. And these born-again religious forces are the forces that are spewing hate around Africa and spewing hatred for same-gender-loving persons. So what one needs is for the progressive forces in the United States to be able to push an agenda so that the United States and China and the progressive forces can work for the rights of women, the rights of youth and for the rights of what Obama said he was working for, entrepreneurs, that this is not for the entrepreneurs of private equity, but for the ordinary businesspersons in Africa who want to uplift the standard of living of the African people.
AMY GOODMAN: Horace Campbell, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of African-American studies and political science at Syracuse University. We will link to your new piece at CounterPunch headlined "Obama in Africa."
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we speak with a journalist who was recently released from an Ethiopian jail and wrote a book, 438 Days: How Our Quest to Expose the Dirty Oil Business in the Horn of Africa Got Us Tortured, Sentenced as Terrorists and Put Away in Ethiopia’s Most Infamous Prison. Stay with us.
438 Days Imprisoned in Ethiopia: Journalist Recounts Facing Arrest, Mock Execution & Terror Charges
While President Obama visited Ethiopia on Monday, he made a passing reference to press freedom, calling on the Ethiopian government to "open additional space for journalists, for media, for opposition voices." The Committee to Protect Journalists has described Ethiopia as one of the leading jailers of journalists on the continent. At least 11 journalists and bloggers are currently in prison. Six others were released just before Obama’s visit. We look at the remarkable story of two Swedish journalists who traveled to Ethiopia in 2011 to report on the actions of the Swedish oil company Lundin Oil in the Ogaden region, where there has been a fight for independence since the 1970s. Five days after crossing the border from Somalia to Ethiopia, the journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson were shot and captured by the Ethiopian army. "We were both shot during the arrest. We were kept in the desert,” Schibbye said. "They brought in some Steven Spielberg figure, who turned out to be the vice president of the region, who made a mockumentary about what happened when we were arrested. They brought in fake rebels, who they gave guns, and it was a total surreal episode where we, under gunpoint, had to participate in the movie that was supposed to be shown on Ethiopian state television and also used in court to sentence us for support of terrorism." Schibbye and Persson ended up spending over a year in prison, which they chronicle in their book, "438 Days: How Our Quest to Expose the Dirty Oil Business in the Horn of Africa Got Us Tortured, Sentenced as Terrorists and Put Away in Ethiopia’s Most Infamous Prison."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. While President Obama visited Ethiopia Monday, he made a passing reference to press freedom, calling on the Ethiopian government to, quote, "open additional space for journalists, for media, for opposition voices." Well, the Committee to Protect Journalists has described Ethiopia as one of the leading jailers of journalists on the continent. At least 11 journalists and bloggers are currently in prison. Six others were released just before Obama’s visit.
Today, we turn to the remarkable story of two Swedish journalists who traveled to Ethiopia in 2011 to report on the actions of the Swedish oil company Lundin Oil in the Ogaden region, where there has been a fight for independence since the '70s. Lundin Oil is well known in Sweden in part because one of its past board members is Carl Bildt, Sweden's former prime minister and foreign secretary. Five days after crossing the border from Somalia to Ethiopia, the journalists, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, were shot and captured by the Ethiopian army. They ended up spending over a year in prison, which they chronicle in their book, 438 Days: How Our Quest to Expose the Dirty Oil Business in the Horn of Africa Got Us Tortured, Sentenced as Terrorists and Put Away in Ethiopia’s Most Infamous Prison.
I had a chance to interview Martin Schibbye last year in Sweden at the Almedalen political festival in Visby, an island off of Sweden. I asked him to describe what happened to him.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Well, the short version is, I was jailed for doing my job as a journalist in a country where journalism is criminalized. The longer version goes that me and the photographer, Johan Persson, were supposed to investigate a Swedish oil company active in the Ogaden region. And in this oil company, the Swedish foreign minister had been on the board. And they were exploring oil in a region which is war-torn, in a region where refugees are fleeing in numbers, and in a region where there are reports of gross human rights abuses. So there were two sides to this story: The oil company would say that, well, exploring oil will benefit the region; the refugees were saying, no, the oil companies make the situation worse. And we didn’t want to do a on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand-and-then-time-will-tell story. We wanted to see for ourselves what is true or not, and kind of use our feet more than Google and wanted to go into this region and see how was the situation there for the civilian population.
AMY GOODMAN: Especially for an American audience, I don’t think the conflict in Ethiopia is very well known. Can you explain what the Ogaden region is?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: The Ogaden region is in the east of Ethiopia, and it’s a region inhabited by ethnical Somalis. So it has longtime been debated and fought over between Somalia and Ethiopia. And currently the region is within the borders of Ethiopia. But the inhabitants feel colonized. They feel they are misrepresented within the Ethiopian political system. So there is a guerrilla movement fighting for independence, attacking foreign oil companies. And the problem is also that the region is closed. Ethiopia doesn’t allow any journalists to enter. The U.N. are not allowed to enter. The Red Cross has been kicked out. Doctors Without Borders have been kicked out. So it’s an area which it’s kind of a white area on the map. Few reports get out of what is really happening there. So that’s why it was crucial as a journalist to go there and give people living in this area a voice and see what they have to say about oil exploration and about foreign companies coming together with the Ethiopian military to explore oil.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain further, Martin, who the oil company was and its connection to the current foreign minister, Carl Bildt, of Sweden.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Well, Lundin Petroleum is the name of the big company, and they had a daughter company called Africa Oil. And Carl Bildt has been on the board of Lundin Petroleum. So that was the connection. At the time, 2011, when we went to do this story, he was no longer on the board.
AMY GOODMAN: Why was he on the board of Lundin, of this oil company?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Well, after his—many people believed that he had left politics. He went into business, and he became a board member. I think you’ll have to ask him about that. It’s a very special company, and it’s known for kind of being non-ethical. They did business with South Africa during apartheid. They were kicked out of Congo by the U.N. They were doing business with Assad’s Syria. So it’s an oil company that goes to areas where no other oil companies enter, so it’s a very special company to be in the board of.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what happened to you.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: So, basically, what Ethiopia did when they arrested me and Johan in the Ogaden region was to violate every international rule there is. They didn’t take us to an embassy. They didn’t give us medical care for our gun wounds. We were both shot during the arrest. We were kept in the desert. And instead, they brought in some Steven Spielberg figure, who turned out to be the vice president of the region, who made a mockumentary about what happened when we were arrested. They brought in fake rebels, who they gave guns, and it was a total surreal episode where we, under gunpoint, had to participate in the movie that was supposed to be shown on Ethiopian state television and also used in court to sentence us for support of terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, go back a step. Describe how you were arrested, how you were captured, how you came into the country and what happened next.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Well, we entered into the region with a smuggler from Somalia, and we met up with a guerrilla group that were supposed to be our guides and take us to the oil fields, so that we could interview civilians there. And the first days and nights when we walk in the Ogaden desert are quite eerie. We pass refugees who are fleeing on their way to the refugee camps in Kenya. We pass surrendered huts, where people have lived until recently. We pass people who have been subjected to torture from the Ethiopian military. And we feel that this is really—the conflict level here is very, very high. There’s really a story to tell.
But after three days of walking, we are ambushed by the Ethiopian military, and we are immediately shot. I am shot through the shoulder, and the photographer is shot through his arm. So, we have no other option but to raise our hands in the sky and shout, "Media! Media! International press!" And then we are arrested. And at that point, we believe that we will be kicked out, because that happened to New York Times when they were arrested in Ogaden. It has happened to several other journalists who have been arrested in this area.
But Ethiopia wants to make an example and to scare off other foreign journalists from entering the region, and also—and I think most importantly—send a message to their own journalists: "Look what we can do to these two Swedish guys; imagine what we can do to you." So they wanted to inflict fear in the Ethiopian society.
So, then we are led through these four or five horrible days in the desert, when they fabricate evidence against us under gunpoint, and to make us cooperate, they also arrange a mock execution, which is arranged by the vice president in the region, and he’s a member of the Ethiopian Parliament. He arranges a mock execution where we are forced to walk towards the horizon, and there is a firing squad behind us. And I’m told to stop, to turn around, and he says, "This is your last chance. Admit that you are cooperating with the terrorists, or you will be shot." And then they fire in the bush next to me. And from the sound, I kind of fall down. And then I get up, and I brush the dust off. And then a film camera comes up, and another interrogation takes place. So, it was really a violation of all the legal protocols that you could think of.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you say what they wanted you to say?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: No, they wanted us to basically say that we were there to support the rebels. No, we never said that. We said that we are Swedish journalists, and we are here to do our job. But just being there, just talking to this group, was enough, according to the Ethiopian terrorism law, to sentence us. And it was very clear when we were brought to the federal police station, and we found out who was in the neighboring cell, who was in the cell to the left or to the right and in front of us. It was no criminals. They were young journalists, activists, bloggers, politicians, different community leaders. And then we really could feel that we had ended up in something that was just bigger, that was much bigger than two Swedish journalists just violating some visa.
AMY GOODMAN: This mockumentary, as you call it—
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —this fake documentary, when they were filming you and said they would shoot you if you didn’t say you were working with terrorists—
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —did you then say, "I am working with terrorists."
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: No, no, no.
AMY GOODMAN: You wouldn’t say it.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: No.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what did they do with this film?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: They made a long mockumentary about it. And first of all, they showed it in court, and they said that the people on this film are the people that you walked with, which they were not. All the rebels we walked with ran away, so they were kind of fake rebels. And they also sentenced these fake rebels to 17 years in prison. So it was basically used as a fabricated evidence in court, and it was also used the Ethiopian state television to kind of show Ethiopia that these were two Swedish terrorists who had entered their country to support terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to you in prison?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: I mean, the first—the first month, before we were charged, were the most difficult, when we were kept in solitary confinement, and we were interrogated and threatened with the death sentence or with life in prison. And it was kind of a—you had to win a battle against yourself every day and kind of take a teaspoon of cement every morning and just to try and think that, well, they may take my physical freedom, they may take my shoelaces, even my shoes, my belt, my pen and paper, but there is one thing they can’t take from me, and that is to decide, I mean, who I am. And I am a journalist. So it’s just another day at the office. I tried to live in that bubble, and kind of, "OK, how big is this cell? How would I describe this cell in my future writing?" and try to start communicating with the other prisoners, and try to never give up that core thing within you, who you are. They could never take that from you, even though you were handcuffed and in a dark room. So, by thinking as a journalist, I mean, I survived mentally and was able to communicate with the other jailed journalists, the local journalists. And they gave me a lot of strength and kind of explained what was going on in Ethiopia.
We have to remember that this was also 2011. I mean, the Arabic Spring was raging in Egypt. I mean, you had Tunisia. You had Syria. Gaddafi hadn’t fallen yet in Libya. And, of course, a country which has 99.6 percent of the seats in the Parliament, they will look to North Africa with fear, and decided to rather act than being acted upon. So, we ended up in a major crackdown against free speech. And all of the local Ethiopian journalists and politician that were arrested at this time, they are still in jail. They are still in the prison.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you able to communicate with your cameraman?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: During the time you were in solitary?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: No, no.
AMY GOODMAN: So you had no idea what was happening to him.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: No. And they tried to, of course, play us against each other.
AMY GOODMAN: You were both shot.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: We were both shot.
AMY GOODMAN: So you were both dealing with your injuries.
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Yes, yes. We were denied also proper medical care. We had a way to communicate after a while, and while knocking on the door through a certain kind of Swedish way of knocking, we could—I could understand that he was there and that he was alive.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the Swedish way of knocking?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: I don’t know. It was something like this. [knocks, Swedishly] And then he would answer in the same way, and I would know that, "Whew! He’s alive. I’m not alone."
AMY GOODMAN: The video that was made to falsely implicate you, that was shown in Sweden, as well?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What was the response here?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: I think, in the beginning, it was a lot of confusion. I mean, journalists kind of quoted—they had this one-hand-on-the-other-hand perspective, so they would kind of see the minister of information in Ethiopia as a reliable source, in the beginning. After a while, these things changed, and they definitely changed when one of the people responsible of making this video—his name is Abdullahi Hussein—he felt that this is wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: Who was he working for?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: He was working for the president of the region and for the vice president, and he was head of the kind of the communications department. He decided to become a whistleblower. So he took the original film from us in the desert, together with a lot of other material which shows atrocities, torture, the Ethiopian military committing atrocities in the region, and he left with—risking his life, left everything and went to Kenya and managed to get in contact with a journalist at the Swedish Television. So, after our release, the whole kind of material was shown. And in this, when the whole material was shown, you could see how everything was rigged.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Martin, about when you learned you were going to be freed and what that release was like for you?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: We were called up in the loudspeaker, and, yeah, the Swedish ambassador was there to meet us and to take us out of prison. And there was just one hurdle left, and that was that the Ethiopian state television wanted us to make an interview, the interview they didn’t succeed in doing in the desert. And, basically, we had—we could have said no to that and go back and take our 11 years, and we wouldn’t survive that, or we would say to the Ethiopian journalist that we apologize and accepted guilt. And then we were—they checked the interview with their information department, and then we were released and sent back to Sweden.
But, I mean, I’m—I’m free from the prison, but I’m not—I will never be free from the memories. I’m not free from the sounds. It doesn’t go a day that I don’t think of all the colleagues who are there. I mean, especially the sounds, the screams, when people—kind of the first screams, you really remember, because those were always the worst. And then, eventually, the abused prisoner was always silent. But the first scream before the first stroke hit, those screams you never forget. And those will haunt me for the rest of my life and be a part of me.
But it also—I think that also this experience makes me a better journalist. I mean, usually, you go and you do a story, and then you go to a hotel and you take your beer and that’s it. Now, we went and we did a story, which was supposed to be about oil, but it turned out to be about ink, about press freedom, and we slept on the concrete floor with—in a prison with 8,000 inmates, and we didn’t go home the next day. We stayed, and we stayed, and we stayed. And we stayed for 438 days. And, of course, we were always somehow tourists in that environment. We had our embassy. We had our Swedish passports. But still, I went from just being someone who’s standing and looking at something, and also I was, I mean, participating in something. And those experiences and really seeing the conditions of those prisoners and talking to them and sharing life stories with them, that makes me a better journalist.
AMY GOODMAN: And here at Almedalen, we have passed the foreign minister, Carl Bildt, several times, just walking down the street. Since you were freed, have you spent time with the foreign minister?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: I met him briefly, and we have been—our message to him has been to learn the name of the jailed that are still in the Kaliti prison and to work for their release—I mean, especially Reeyot Alemu, Woubshet Taye, Eskinder Nega and many others, colleagues who are still there. We have been encouraging him to raise that issue.
AMY GOODMAN: And they were doing what as journalists? What were they investigating?
MARTIN SCHIBBYE: Their crime is just writing about their reality. It doesn’t take an investigative report to get you in jail in Ethiopia. It just takes some criticism of the government. And especially one of them, Reeyot Alemu, she’s suffering from cancer in one of her breasts in the prison. And I remember, at one point, she—I was able to read a small note that she sent us, and she wrote that her name was Reeyot Alemu. She wrote why she became a journalist, that she wanted to write about the injustice she saw in Ethiopia, and that that decision had led her to prison. And she said that, "Please, please, Martin, if you’re released before me, tell the world I’m a journalist, I’m not a terrorist." And, I mean, doing that is kind of the only way to live with this experience, I mean, to try and put the searchlight on that prison and on Ethiopia and on the colleagues that are still there and still suffering just for doing their job. I mean, their only crime is courage. And I’m proud that there are such colleagues in the world who’s prepared to pay the highest price for this profession.
AMY GOODMAN: Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye. He and Johan Persson wrote about their jailing in Ethiopia in the book titled 438 Days: How Our Quest to Expose the Dirty Oil Business in the Horn of Africa Got Us Tortured, Sentenced as Terrorists and Put Away in Ethiopia’s Most Infamous Prison. I interviewed Martin last year in Sweden. Earlier this month, Reeyot Alemu, the Ethiopian journalist Schibbye mentioned during the interview, was released from prison after four years in jail on terrorism charges. In an interview with The New York Times, she said about the Ethiopian government, quote, "They just want to pretend in front of Obama and the international community that they are democratic and trying to improve human rights conditions." Special thanks to Cassandra Lizaire and John Hamilton.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Stay with us.
Headlines:
Report: U.S.-Backed Saudi-Led Airstrikes in Yemen May Be "War Crime"
In Yemen, the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition launched a new wave of airstrikes Monday, despite the five-day humanitarian truce that went into effect Sunday night. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has said Friday’s Saudi-led bombings of the western port city of Mokha, which killed at least 120 people, appear to be a war crime. The continued fighting comes as Oxfam warns Yemen is facing "the highest ever recorded number of people living in hunger."
Libya: Gaddafi’s Son Sentenced to Death for War Crimes from 2011
In news from Libya, Muammar Gaddafi’s son and eight others have been sentenced to death for committing war crimes during the crackdown against the 2011 revolution, which ultimately toppled the Gaddafi regime. The former prime minister and head of intelligence are also facing the death penalty.
Turkey: Police Execute Mass Arrests as NATO Backs Military Escalation
In news from Turkey, the police have detained more than 1,000 people in the ongoing crackdown on suspected militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, as well as members of the dissident Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK. Meanwhile, at an emergency meeting in Brussels today, NATO offered support for Turkey’s escalating military actions, which include airstrikes against ISIL in Syria and attacks on PKK camps in northern Iraq. The New York Times editorial board has called Turkey’s assault on PKK camps a "dangerous development that will create even more turmoil in the region."
Germany: Explosion Hits Car of Pro-Refugee Politician in Dresden
In Germany, an explosion in Dresden struck the car of a leftist politician who has been advocating for refugees. The explosion comes one day after Dresden residents smashed windows in a hotel that is being converted into refugee housing. Asylum applications to Germany are expected to double this year as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee Syria, Iraq and the Balkans. No one was hurt in Monday’s explosion.
Boy Scouts of America End Nationwide Ban on Gay Adult Leaders
The Boy Scouts of America has ended its nationwide ban on gay adult leaders. The move follows the Boy Scouts’ decision to open its ranks to gay scouts two years ago. Monday’s policy shift, which takes effect immediately, still permits local church-sponsored troops to discriminate against gay leaders.
Judge Rules Detention of Immigrant Mothers and Children "Deplorable"
A federal judge has issued a harsh condemnation of the mass detention of immigrant women and children, calling it "deplorable." The ruling by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee gives the Obama administration 90 days to either release the more than 2,000 women and children being held in two Texas facilities or to show just cause to continue holding them. Immigration lawyers say the ruling has already had a "groundbreaking" impact as Texas judges have started ordering women and children’s release without bond.
Independent Lawyers to Assist in Investigation of Sandra Bland Death
In the latest news from Waller County, Texas, a team of outside lawyers will be assisting in the investigation of the death of Sandra Bland, who was found dead in a jail cell two weeks ago. Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia forcibly removed Bland from her car after she objected to putting out her cigarette when he pulled her over for allegedly failing to signal a lane change. Authorities say Bland killed herself in jail, a claim her family disputes. The lawyers will have access to evidence, the ability to subpoena witnesses and the power to recommend criminal charges to Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis. If Mathis fails to take up any possible recommended charges, the committee of lawyers can instead present their recommendations to a grand jury. So far, two lawyers have been appointed to the panel. Both are African-American.
Bree Newsome’s Trial for Removing Confederate Flag Set for November
Bree Newsome, the African-American woman who scaled the flagpole and removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state Capitol grounds after the shooting of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, has been scheduled for a trial in November. Newsome and Jimmy Tyson, the white activist who helped her, have been charged with defacing state property, which can carry three years in prison and a $5,000 fine. They had their first appearance in court Monday, and a trial date was set even though South Carolina lawmakers have voted the flag down, and it no longer flies on the grounds of the state Capitol. To see our hour-long interview with Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson, you can go to democracynow.org.
Malaysia: U.S. Upgrades Human Trafficking Rating Ahead of TPP Talks
The U.S. State Department has upgraded Malaysia’s human trafficking rating, despite protests from human rights groups and lawmakers who say the step was taken to ease passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Monday’s announcement came one day before the start of a fresh round of TPP talks in Hawaii. Malaysia, one of 12 countries in the secretive trade pact, was previously given the worst trafficking rating, but a new measure bars the United States from negotiating trade deals with the worst-ranked countries. In response to a reporter’s question, Under Secretary of State Sarah Sewall denied the TPP influenced Malaysia’s rating.
David Brunnstrom, reporter: "This is something that’s been questioned by rights groups and quite large numbers of members of Congress. Did that come into play at all?"
Under Secretary of State Sarah Sewall: "No, no, no. The annual TIP Report reflects the State Department’s assessment of foreign government efforts during the reporting period to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons, established under U.S. law, under the TVPA. And those standards, as I articulated, are quite well spelled out in the legislation, and those are the standards that are applied based on the factual reporting that is gathered during the course of the year."
The United States also upgraded the human trafficking rating of Cuba.
Mexico in "Crisis" as 129 Bodies Found amid Search for 43 Students
Amnesty International says Mexico is facing "a crisis of enforced disappearances." The statement came after the Associated Press reported authorities have found at least 60 mass graves with 129 bodies in the southern city of Iguala since the disappearance of 43 students there 10 months ago.
Anti-Choice Activists Allegedly Hack Planned Parenthood Website
Anti-choice hackers have reportedly released Planned Parenthood’s website databases and employee email addresses in a targeted attack. The hack comes after anti-choice activists released edited videos that appear to show Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the practice of sharing fetal tissue with researchers. In an interview on ABC’s This Week, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said the donations are never for profit, and any charges cover only the cost of transmission to researchers.
Cecile Richards: "Doctors repeatedly said — it’s all been edited out — Planned Parenthood does not at all profit from fetal tissue donation, which is an important proven element of healthcare research in this country. I think what’s not told is that, of course, these [videos] are highly, selectively edited. The folks behind this, in fact, are part of the most militant wing of the anti-abortion movement that has been behind the bombing of clinics, the murder of doctors in their homes and in their churches, and that’s what actually needs to be looked at."
Report: Donald Trump Was Accused of Rape by Ex-Wife
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who called Mexican immigrants "rapists," has been accused of rape in the past by his ex-wife. The Daily Beast reports Ivana Trump made the accusation about the 1989 incident in a deposition and later softened her language, saying she felt "violated" during an encounter where Trump reportedly held back her arms and pulled out fistfuls of her hair. The assault was described in the 1993 book "Lost Tycoon." Michael Cohen, an attorney at the Trump Organization, incorrectly told The Daily Beast, "You cannot rape your spouse," and then threatened the outlet, saying, "what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting." (He actually used the word.)
Hillary Clinton Outlines Climate Plan Despite Fossil Fuel Ties
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has outlined her plan to address climate change, calling for a sevenfold increase in solar panels and for a third of the nation’s electricity to be produced by renewable sources by 2027. The announcement comes after The Huffington Post revealed earlier this month nearly all of the lobbyists bundling contributions for Clinton have worked for the fossil fuel industry.
U.S. Olympic Committee Drops Boston 2024 Bid amid Mass Resistance
And the U.S. Olympic Committee has dropped Boston as its proposed bid city to host the 2024 Olympics, following mass resistance by city residents. Amid protests over the high cost to taxpayers and the mass displacement seen in other Olympic host cities, the Olympic Committee acknowledged in a statement, "We have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 [Olympics]."
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