MARCH 2005
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Wednesday, 30th March,2005
GARUDA'S DEADLY UPGRADE
In a week when Indonesia is desperately trying to come to terms with yet another natural disaster, the Government in Jakarta is also having to fend off a potentially disastrous man-made political one. The investigation into the death of the country's leading human rights activist is rapidly developing into a serious challenge for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who last year came to power vowing to clean up his country's tarnished human rights reputation.
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As tragic as it was, last September's bizarre poisoning of Munir Said Thalib actually reads like a grossly overwritten script for one of those international airport bookstand pot-boilers involving, as it does, Indonesian intelligence, the military, politicians and curiously, Garuda, Indonesia's national airline. Since the story broke, now nearly seven months ago, Dateline video journalist David O'Shea has been trying to unravel the mystery surrounding Munir's death. Appropriately, as you'll see, David has entitled his report "Garuda's Deadly Upgrade". -
Wednesday, 23rd March,2005
MORDECHAI VANUNU - FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL
Mordechai Vanunu would have to be one of the most intriguing characters on the international scene. 50-year-old Vanunu is the Israeli nuclear whistleblower released from prison 11 months ago after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing his country's atomic capabilities. Vanunu is said to have lifted the lid on the inner workings of Israel's nuclear plant at Dimona, in the Negev Desert - to the Israelis, espionage and treason. Last week he was indicted by the Israeli courts again, this time on 21 counts of violating the strict terms of his release by giving interviews to the foreign media without government authorisation. Vanunu converted to Christianity shortly before he was arrested back in '84 and, since his release, he's been living at St George's Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem. It was at St George's that reporter Liz Tadic quite literally bumped into Vanunu, and this interview with a man branded a traitor to the Jewish state came out of that unexpected meeting.
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Wednesday, 23rd March,2005
PAUL MCGEOUGH INTERVIEW
Internationally this past week has been one of those weeks. March 19 was the second anniversary of - depending on your point of view - either the invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition or the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Also earlier this week, Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled his master plan for the most radical reforms to the United Nations since its inception after the Second World War. Meanwhile, the debate about the real US motivation for the invasion of Iraq rages on, with much talk also this week of a so-called Arab spring - code for the flowering of democracy and freedom in the region. Also in the past week, Australian journalist, author and long-time Iraq-watcher Paul McGeough was named the 2004 Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year, mainly for his reporting on pre- and post-invasion Iraq. Earlier today, George Negus spoke with him here in the studio.
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Wednesday, 23rd March,2005
WILLIE SMITS - ENDANGERED SPECIES
If you would like more information on the Borneo Orang-Utan Survival Foundation visit the official website click here No transcript is available for this story.
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Wednesday, 16th March,2005
PUTIN'S MEDIA WAR
Right now, whether it's Lebanon, Iraq or Saudi Arabia, the world's press is full of US President George Bush's unapologetic foreign policy agenda to bring democracy and free speech to the Middle East and just about anywhere else he reckons hasn't yet got these things. Indeed, on his trip to Europe earlier this month, he lectured Russian President Vladimir Putin on the need for all nations to accept democratic values and a free press. Putin tossed away the Bush admonishment, replying that Russia didn't need any advice from outsiders - but, on the ground in his former communist country, the facts tell a very different story. Take Russian media freedom, for example. As Kim Traill's report tonight will reveal, it's not exactly all that free. In fact, it's dangerously unfree! And the result is that many Russian journalists are literally putting their lives on the line for their stories! In dissecting, in detail, the Russian media's coverage of the siege of Beslan, Kim provides us with a quite frightening insight into what many fear is the re-emergence of old-style Soviet era propaganda.
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Wednesday, 16th March,2005
ANWAR IBRAHIM INTERVIEW
Anwar Ibrahim is arguably one of South-East Asia's most celebrated jailbirds. Before his unexpected release last September, he had spent five years locked away in a Malaysian prison after being found guilty of corruption and sodomy. But the most astounding thing about all this is that at the time he was sacked and tried, he was his country's deputy prime minister and being widely touted to succeed his mentor, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, as Malaysia's next leader. Many observers, of course, still believe that Anwar was set up by the vocally anti-Western Mahathir. About 18 months ago, this program aired claims alleging links between Anwar and international Muslim organisations suspected of funding terrorism. George Negus recently caught up with him via satellite from the UK and put those allegations to him.
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Wednesday, 16th March,2005
WEST PAPUA MILITIA
These days, most Australians are well and truly aware of the suffering that the people of East Timor went through before they finally gained their independence from Indonesia back in 1999. Much of the repression and violence in that conflict, of course, was attributed to militia groups formed and backed by the Indonesian military. Now, it seems that history might be repeating itself in the Indonesian province of West Papua - or Irian Jaya - where the locals are also after independence from Jakarta. Of late, there have been serious claims that Indonesian army-backed militias and Islamic extremists are working in tandem, provoking some damning allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The report you are about to see has been put together here at Dateline, by Nick Lazaredes, from footage smuggled out of West Papua by human rights investigators. We should warn you, though, that you could find some of the pictures disturbing.
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Wednesday, 9th March,2005
THE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION OF MAMDOUH HABIB
Startling new claims from Mamdouh Habib. As espionage stories go, it sounds like something only the CIA itself could dream up – a fleet of jets delivers bound and gagged terrorist suspects to countries known to have no qualms at all about using torture to extract information. This notoriously secret US policy is known as extraordinary rendition. And it was reporter Bronwyn Adcock who first told us about it here on Dateline in July last year. Bronwyn’s story revealed Mamdouh Habib’s rendition how he was transferred from Pakistan, where he had been arrested, to Egypt and then to Guantanamo Bay, and tonight you’ll hear more on this ongoing saga from Habib himself.
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The former south-west Sydney café proprietor and devout Muslim maintains he was brutally tortured while he was held in Egypt and for its part, the Australian Government is sticking to its line that it didn’t know he was even in Egypt. But tonight Habib makes a number of dramatic new claims including that he was interrogated in Cairo by people using information that could only have come from this country, raising the politically and legally loaded question of whether Australia was, in fact, complicit in what happened to him. -
Wednesday, 2nd March,2005
LEBANON OUT OF THE CLOSET
So-called Middle East people power arriving first in Lebanon should come as no surprise. It's always been one of the most cosmopolitan corners of the Arab world. In fact, its reputation for being relatively open and progressive extends to matters sexual as well as political, despite its 70% Muslim population. As reporter Matthew Carney recently discovered, there are more than skeletons lurking in Beirut's colourful closet.
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Wednesday, 2nd March,2005
INTERVIEW WITH TERJE ROED-LARSEN
The great paradox of the amazing developments in Lebanon is that many observers are now seriously suggesting that Rafik Hariri's violent removal could turn out to be the lightning rod, a so-called tipping point for democratic reform, not just in Lebanon, but maybe the entire Middle East. Earlier today, from the UN in New York, George Negus spoke with an old contact, a man who deals directly, almost daily with all the major players. Terje Roed-Larsen was the architect of the aborted Oslo Peace Accord. For a decade, he was the UN Special Envoy in Israel and the Occupied Territories. He's now doing the same job for Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Syria and Lebanon - responsible for the implementation of UN Resolution 1559 aimed at getting Syria out of Lebanon.
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Wednesday, 2nd March,2005
LEBANON BACKGROUNDER
It Has been a momentous, possibly an historic couple of weeks in Lebanon, culminating in yesterday's en-masse resignation of the country's government.
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Wednesday, 2nd March,2005
ACEH'S MAN MADE DISASTER
John Martinkus visits Indonesia's troubled Aceh province, where recently he secured an extremely rare interview with a senior GAM rebel commander - in fact, the first in 2.5 years. John's tricky, even dangerous jungle meeting with the Aceh rebels is especially timely, given that this week Washington announced the resumption of military cooperation between the US and Indonesia 13 years after they'd banned cooperation over military abuses in East Timor. Observers, of course, argue that those Indonesian abuses didn't stop with Timor, they've simply been extended to Aceh and Papua. Despite the tsunami deaths of more than 250,000 Acehnese, the ongoing struggle between the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement goes on.
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