JUNE 2004
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Wednesday, 30th June,2004
ENTIFAD QANBAR INTERVIEW
The man originally expected to be installed as leader by the Americans was missing in action this week. Ahmad Chalabi, reportedly a major source of flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the CIA. Until a few months ago he was the favoured son, today he is firmly out in the cold. But does he have any future in Iraq? Mark Davis spoke earlier with his spokesperson Entifad Qanbar from Washington.
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Wednesday, 30th June,2004
PAUL MCGEOUGH INTERVIEW
The story of this week, of course, is the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis. Against the expectations of America’s critics, the US met the June 30 deadline. Two days into a sovereign Iraq, Mark Davis spoke with Fairfax journalist Paul McGeough for his view on how ordinary Iraqis are responding to these events.
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Wednesday, 30th June,2004
JOHN RUMBIAK INTERVIEW
John Rumbiak is West Papua’s most prominent human rights investigator. He led a 2-year investigation of the Freeport killings, in close cooperation with the FBI. Rumbiak now lives in exile after reports emerged of death threats being made against him by the Indonesian military. Yesterday, Rumbiak made contact with the accused man, Anthon Wamang, who is still in hiding in West Papua.
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Wednesday, 30th June,2004
WEST PAPUA
Two years ago three teachers, two American and one Indonesian, were gunned down in the mountains of West Papua. Suspicion about Indonesian military involvement in the killings has been a constant thorn in the side of the Indonesian -US relationship. Last Friday, in a surprise development, the US Attorney-General indicted a West Papuan man with the murders. Mark Davis will be speaking about this surprising development with John Rumbiak, a West Papuan investigator, but first this backgrounder from Anthony Balmain.
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Wednesday, 30th June,2004
CHAD-CRISIS IN THE DESERT
Yesterday the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, met with the Sudanese President over the continuing tragedy in that country’s Darfur region. With the government being accused of acts of genocide it was by all accounts a very blunt exchange. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled into the deserts of neighbouring Chad, largely unseen by the Western media. Geoff Parish reports on a crisis that has stretched relief efforts to breaking point.
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How to help
UNHCR
1300 361 288 or www.australiaforunhcr.org.au
Red Cross
1800 811 700 or www.redcross.org.au
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad
1800 008 110 or www.oxfam.org.au
Care Australia
1800 020 046 or www.careaustralia.org.au
Medecins Sans Frontières
1800 063 496 or 1800 063 496 or www.msf.org.au
World Vision Australia
13 32 40 or www.worldvision.com.au
UNICEF Australia
1300 884 233 or www.unicef.org.au -
Wednesday, 30th June,2004
BOB GELDOF - WHERE ARE YOU?
On Wednesday, June 30 at 8.30pm on SBS Television, DATELINE reports from the deserts of Chad – where a humanitarian crisis the world knows little about is taking place.
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200,000 refugees, fleeing ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur region, have trekked into neighbouring Chad. This exodus, in one of the world’s most inhospitable regions, is placing intolerable strain on the meagre resources of the Chadian government. The United Nations and other relief agencies are now battling to keep the refugees alive.
The rainy season is imminent – but far from providing relief in the parched desert, the rains will make already bad roads almost impassable, further threatening food and water supplies to the refugees. The UN is racing to pre-position enough food for the refugees before the rainy season begins.
Cinematographer David Brill captures the efforts of relief workers to maintain this perilous supply chain; dilapidated trucks struggle across sand dunes, harassed refugee camp workers try to cope with a daily influx of new refugees, and technical staff wonder aloud how trucks bearing much needed water drilling equipment could have gone “missing.”
Most importantly, the story details the privations of the refugees themselves. Although some are located in camps, many have simply stopped in the desert, too exhausted to move any further. They face a perilous future. The program includes their testimony as survivors of ethnic cleansing. These are eyewitness accounts of the slaughter currently underway in the Darfur region in Sudan - atrocities which the international community has largely ignored.
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Wednesday, 23rd June,2004
PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE INTERVIEW
Saudi Arabia is a problematic ally for the US, to say the least. Despite being of enormous economic value, it’s a country that gave rise to al-Qa’ida, the bulk of the September 11 hijackers and a host of terrorist organisations throughout the world, often funded by the Saudi elite, knowingly or not, through benignly named Islamic charities. In recent months terrorism has begun to strike home in Saudi Arabia, with an unprecedented wave of brutal attacks against the government and foreigners throughout the kingdom. How serious a threat do these al-Qa’ida attacks pose to the Saudi regime? And what are the consequences of further instability in that country? Mark Davis spoke earlier to George Joffe, Professor of International Studies at Cambridge University, and one of the world’s leading authorities on Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.
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Wednesday, 23rd June,2004
A BLIND EYE TO THE ISLAMIC BOMB
According to the world’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, it’s now just a matter of time before terrorists strike with a nuclear weapon. Earlier this week, the agency’s head, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that the danger of terrorists acquiring nuclear capability was now imminent. If ElBaradei’s horror scenario unfolds it may be thanks to Pakistan. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Pakistan had been leaking nuclear technology and expertise to some of the world’s most unstable and dangerous regimes for years. As Nick Lazaredes reveals, the West, consumed as it was with Iraq, largely turned a blind eye to this trade and is still showing remarkable patience in uncovering how much damage was done.
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Wednesday, 23rd June,2004
HOW SAUDI ARABIA BANKROLLED THE ISLAMIC BOMB
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On DATELINE, screening on June 23 at 8.30pm, Nick Lazaredes reports on the connections between Pakistan’s nuclear black market, the nuclear ambitions of Saudi Arabia and their links to terrorists.
Pakistan stands accused of establishing a virtual pan-Islamic nuclear supermarket with an underground network that spreads from the Middle East to Malaysia and Europe. Pakistan, now a key American ally, has blamed the network’s existence on its nuclear scientist hero Abdul Khan and deflected any punishment for what is clearly a serious development in the heightening of nuclear tension.
In this report -
DATELINE is shown some of the thousands of top secret Saudi intelligence documents which were copied by Mohammed al Khilewi, a first secretary to the Saudi mission to the United Nations before he defected to America. The documents show Saudi Arabia’s backing of nuclear proliferation and have been certified by the FBI. Despite that, the author of many of the documents, former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal tells DATELINE that the documents do not exist.
Mike Pilgrim, a counter intelligence expert claims US agencies had evidence that Saudi money was also directly involved in Pakistan’s nuclear network in the late 90s. Leonard Weiss, an expert on nuclear proliferation, has followed Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s relationship and says that the Saudis helped pay for Pakistani nuclear weapons so that they could come under the protection of its nuclear umbrella.
When the nuclear network was made public earlier this year Pakistan claimed it was closed down. But Leonard Weiss thinks the changes persist; I think we are now in a very dangerous situation, because the network is still out there, the materials and the equipment is out there and it is only a matter of time it seems to me before some terrorist group gets hold of some of this. -
Wednesday, 16th June,2004
TED RILEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM
Throughout southern Africa, population pressure and rampant poaching is decimating the continent’s wildlife. The tiny nation of Swaziland is bucking the trend and the big beasts are thriving thanks in good measure to the efforts of one man, Ted Reilly. But his zero-tolerance approach to protecting his animals has made him a controversial figure. Emily Scanlan has more.
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Wednesday, 16th June,2004
KEVIN RUDD INTERVIEW
It’s been a tough week for Kevin Rudd, Labor’s Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs - his leader and his party’s foreign policy being bucketed by George Bush, Colin Powell - and in case there was any doubt about the message getting through - Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage, as well. Mr Rudd returned yesterday from a week of discussions in Washington, as the debates about tortured prisoners, Australian troops in Iraq and our commitment to the US alliance continued. Mark Davis spoke with him a short time ago in Canberra.
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Wednesday, 16th June,2004
KRUE SE MOSQUE MASSACRE
Five months of conflict in the mainly Muslim region of southern Thailand have left more than 200 people dead. Sporadic violence escalated into a bloodbath in late April when more than a hundred young militants were killed after launching a series of attacks against security outposts and government offices. Ginny Stein arrived on the scene just hours after the attack - and began making this story about the uprising, the army’s response and the ongoing problems there for the Thai government. And a warning, there are scenes that may be distressing to some viewers.
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Wednesday, 16th June,2004
THAILAND\’S KRUE SE MOSQUE MASSACRE
A special report from Dateline’s Ginny Stein
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On April 28, across Southern Thailand’s Muslim provinces, more than 100 mainly young men, died at the hands of the nation’s security forces.
On Wednesday June 16 at 8.30pm, DATELINE’s Ginny Stein reports on the country’s biggest domestic security challenge in 20 years.
At Thailand’s ancient Krue Se mosque, 32 men were killed after a brutal eight-hour siege where soldiers fired rocket-propelled grenades and tear gas into the mosque.
In the provinces of Yala, Songkla and Pattani, more than 200 lightly armed militants launched simultaneous raids at 11 different locations, killing six security force members.
The military has since admitted it had been warned about the uprising but Senator Kraisak Choonhaven, Chairman of the Thai Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, has demanded to know why the security forces used extreme force to put down the uprising. He warns that the Thai government must be careful about demonising Islam. The current unrest has fuelled anger amongst Muslims at home and abroad in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Although very little is known about the uprising, one thing that is clear, the young militants had drawn their inspiration from the worldwide rise in Islamic extremism.
Thailand’s Minister for the Interior was the first senior government figure to inspect the damage at the Kre Se mosque. He stands behind the military’s actions. But many Thais question the military’s heavy-handed approach, especially when 19 members of a soccer team were killed near a police checkpoint. Human rights investigators are checking claims that they were summarily executed. -
Wednesday, 9th June,2004
AFGHAN EXPRESS
For many Australians, Afghans are known for little more than being boatpeople or Taliban terrorists. It’s this image that the current Afghan Ambassador, Mahmoud Saikal, is determined to change. Afghans, he says, aren’t outsiders. On a journey through the centre of Australia, he retraces the long history of Afghans in this country and tries to rename the train that bears their name. Olivia Rousset joined him.
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Wednesday, 9th June,2004
IRAQ WAR DEBATE
For many opponents of the Iraq War, the invasion was always seen as a war crime. But that accusation has become more substantial in recent weeks with the revelations of torture and killing of prisoners at the mercy of US forces. The notion of a war crime prosecution is a hypothetical one for the Americans. They never signed the International Criminal Court statutes, which would bring them under its jurisdiction. But both Britain and Australia did.
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Tonight’s guests, both experts in International Law, thrash out the legal implications of recent scandals in Iraq. Professor William Schabas is the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland. Earlier this year he prepared a brief urging the ICC to prosecute members of the British Government for offences in Iraq.
Lawyer David Rivkin, a former member of the US Justice Department, was and still is a fervent supporter of the war in Iraq. He was one of a group of international lawyers who prepared a joint opinion arguing that the invasion was legally sound. Mark Davis spoke with them from Galway and Washington. -
Wednesday, 9th June,2004
THE FIVE RINGED CIRCUS
After the success of the Sydney Olympics, Australians have taken a keen interest in the preparations for the Athens Games - too close an interest, as far as some Greeks are concerned. When the Australian Government increased its security and travel risk assessment for Greece last month, Greek authorities were shocked and angry. As David O’Shea reports, many of them suspecting an ulterior motive by Australia.
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Wednesday, 9th June,2004
GREEK OLYMPICS
"Athens will probably be the safest city to be in, in August 2004".
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Athens Mayor, Dora Bakoyani.
“We think the Australians are kind of jealous. They don’t want these games to be better than theirs. This is the joke that we keep telling ourselves.”
Commentator, Alexis Papahelas
David O’Shea reports on the countdown to the Greek Olympics. Athens’ organisers are disappointed that Australia has not recognised their achievement in preparing for a Games with a far greater security risk than existed when the Sydney Olympics took place. The Greek government is deploying the army, navy and air force, as well as its police, to provide security and NATO will enforce a no fly zone over the country. Colonel Eleftherious Ikonomou’s Ministry of Public Order holds ultimate responsibility for the security of the Games and says the ministry will spend one billion euros - three times more than was spent on security in Sydney.
Given this level of preparation the Greek organisers were deeply unhappy and openly critical of an Australian government decision to issue a travel warning after three small homemade bombs were recently exploded in Athens. This type of attack is not uncommon in Athens and the majority of Greeks believe the same people were responsible for the latest attack - local anarchists wishing to discredit the Games.
Dateline 8.30pm Wednesday 9th June 2004 -
Wednesday, 2nd June,2004
ALADDIN UPDATE
And finally tonight, there was a twist this week to the story of Aladdin Sisalem, the Palestinian refugee whose plight we reported on back in March.
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Wednesday, 2nd June,2004
YUDHOYONO’S RUN
Next month, Indonesians go to the polls to elect a new president. With approval ratings for the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, plummeting, Indonesia’s next president is likely to be a man that Australians know little about - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Currently leading the opinion polls, Yudhoyono is a retired army general and a senior figure from the Suharto regime. David O’Shea with this report
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Wednesday, 2nd June,2004
MAJOR MIKE MORI INTERVIEW
Prime Minister John Howard is now on his way to meet with US President George Bush. On the agenda, amongst other matters, is the continuing incarceration of two Australians, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, at Guantanamo Bay. Mr Howard declared this week that he has been pushing for David Hicks to be charged after two and a half years of imprisonment and interrogation. In recent weeks, reports have been circulating from former prisoners who claim to have witnessed severe physical and psychological abuse of the two Australians. David Hicks’s military defence attorney, Major Mike Mori, does not have permission to discuss any issues of abuse or mistreatment but on Friday was finally given clearance to discuss such matters confidentially with the Australian Government. Mark Davis spoke with Major Mori earlier from Washington.
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