Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is set to be sworn in as the country’s next president in October, after having resoundingly won elections in February. VOA’s Virginia Gunawan reports on what this means for U.S. relations with Southeast Asia’s largest country. Ahadian Utama, Hafizh Sahadeva contributed to this report
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Month: June 2024
Thai courts to hear politically sensitive cases next week
Bangkok — Thai courts will convene on a trio of politically charged cases next week, including one that could potentially lead to the prime minister’s dismissal, increasing the prospect of more government instability in the Southeast Asian country.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Constitutional Court said it would hear a case against Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on June 18. It stems from a complaint by 40 military appointed senators in May, who alleged that he breached the constitution by making a cabinet appointment. The court also said it would hold a hearing next Tuesday in a case brought by the country’s election commission that is seeking to disband the opposition Move Forward Party.
The party was the surprise winner of last year’s general election, but failed to form a government after it was blocked by the conservative-royalist establishment.
The court has yet to set a date for the verdicts in both cases.
Meanwhile, influential former premier Thaksin Shinawatra – who returned to Thailand last August after 15 years of self-imposed exile is scheduled to be formally indicted in a criminal court for allegedly insulting the royalty and computer crime on Tuesday.
The court cases have ramped up political uncertainty in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy and roiled its markets.
Srettha, Thaksin and the Move Forward Party deny any wrongdoing.
A government spokesperson declined to comment on the court proceedings.
Decades-long struggle
Thailand’s politics has been defined for decades by a struggle between the powerful conservative, royalist camp and their rivals, which initially centered around Thaksin and his political parties but now also includes Move Forward.
A real estate tycoon, Srettha entered politics with the Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai party and has struggled to implement election promises, including firing up the country’s laggard economy and a cash handout scheme for 50 million Thais.
Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters on Tuesday that Srettha was continuing to work in “full capacity.”
“There is no problem at all,” he said.
The main opposition Move Forward party is also under scrutiny from the same court that is considering Srettha’s case for a campaign to reform the country’s royal insult – or lese majeste – law.
The law, which protects the monarchy from insult and defamation, carries a punishment of up to 15 years jail for each perceived offense. It has been applied to prosecute over 270 people since 2020, according to a legal aid group.
Move Forward won massive youth support with its lively progressive agenda that was amplified by a sophisticated social media campaign, brushing aside military-backed parties in the 2023 polls and securing 30% of the seats in the lower house.
If it is found in breach of the constitution, the party could be dissolved and its executives banned from politics for a decade.
A party spokesman did not respond to a call seeking comment.
In January, the Constitutional Court ruled in an earlier case that Move Forward’s plan to amend lese majeste laws was a hidden effort to undermine the monarchy. The court ordered the party to stop its campaign, which Move Forward did.
In 2020, the Move Forward’s predecessor party, Future Forward, was dissolved over a campaign funding violation.
Future Forward’s dissolution was among the factors that triggered massive anti-government street protests in 2020, calling for the removal of then Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and reform of the monarchy.
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Verdict due in Dutch crime reporter’s killing
The Hague — A Dutch court will on Wednesday hand down a long-awaited verdict over the 2021 assassination of high-profile crime journalist Peter R. de Vries, a killing that shocked the country.
De Vries was gunned down in broad daylight on a busy Amsterdam street in July 2021, sparking an outpouring of grief and spotlighting the country’s drug gang underworld.
Authorities believe gunmen targeted De Vries, 64, due to his role as advisor to a key witness in the case of drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi.
Police arrested two suspects, identified only as Dutchman Delano G. and Kamil E. from Poland, shortly after the shooting. Prosecutors have called for a life sentence.
Prosecutors believe Delano G. pulled the trigger and Kamil E. drove the getaway car and carried out surveillance prior to the shooting.
Seven men suspected of organizing and facilitating the killing have been added to the trial.
All nine suspects either denied the charges or invoked their right to silence. Hearings have taken place in an extra high security “bunker” at the court in Amsterdam.
A video showing De Vries seriously injured circulated after the attack. Partly because of this, prosecutors charged the suspects with “murder with terrorist intent.”
Thousands of mourners filed past his coffin in Amsterdam following his death, paying respect to a journalist described as a “national hero.”
‘Narco-state’
De Vries first shot to prominence as an intrepid crime reporter for the daily newspaper De Telegraaf — writing a best-selling book about the 1980s kidnapping of beer millionaire Freddy Heineken.
The book was later turned into a 2015 movie “Kidnapping Freddy Heineken”, starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role.
The celebrity journalist then moved into television, where he ran his own crime program called “Peter R. de Vries, Crime Reporter.”
De Vries won international renown in 2008 after winning an Emmy Award for his coverage of the disappearance of US citizen Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
From 2020, he was an advisor and confidant of Nabil B., the main prosecution witness in the case against Taghi, described as the country’s most wanted criminal.
De Vries revealed in 2019 that authorities had informed him he was on a hit-list drawn up by Taghi, who in February received a life sentence over a series of murders committed by his gang.
Nabil B.’s brother Reduan was killed in 2018, and his lawyer Derk Wiersum was shot dead in 2019.
Together with the assassination of De Vries, the three killings together sparked warnings that the country was becoming a “narco-state.”
The threat touched the top levels of Dutch society.
Crown Princess Amalia, the daughter of King Willem-Alexander, was forced to move to Spain for her studies due to fears of an attack from an organized crime group.
Both the royal and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were mentioned in messages by organized crime groups, raising fears of plans to kidnap or attack them.
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North Korea’s Kim boasts of ‘invincible’ ties amid talks of Putin visit
Seoul, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said his country is an “invincible comrade-in-arms” with Russia in a message to President Vladimir Putin, state media KCNA said on Wednesday, amid speculation over Putin’s impending visit to North Korea.
Marking Russia’s National Day, Kim said his meeting with Putin at a Russian space launch facility last year elevated the ties of their “century-old strategic relationship.”
The message came after Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper on Monday reported Putin would visit North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks.
An official in Vietnam told Reuters the Vietnam trip was planned for June 19 and 20 but has not yet been confirmed. The Kremlin has said Russia wants to foster cooperation with North Korea “in all areas” but has not confirmed the date of the visit.
Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East last September, touring the Vostochny Cosmodrome space launch center, where Putin promised to help him build satellites.
Kim also lauded Russia for achieving results from its efforts to build a strong country by “suppressing and crushing all the challenges and sanctions and pressures of hostile forces.”
Pyongyang and Moscow have increasingly stepped up diplomatic and security relations, hosting government, parliamentary and other delegations in recent months.
A group of North Korean officials in charge of public security was set to visit Russia this week.
Officials in Washington and Seoul have accused North Korea of shipping weapons to Russia to support its war against Ukraine in exchange for technological aid with its own nuclear and missile programs.
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Analysts see rising war threat in China’s new South China Sea policies
washington — Military experts are warning of an increased risk of war with China following recent announcements by Beijing providing for more aggressive enforcement of its claims to disputed regions of the South China Sea.
Late last month, China announced its coast guard will be empowered to investigate and detain for up to 60 days “foreigners who endanger China’s national security and interests” in the disputed waters. The policy will take effect on June 15.
And on June 8, it announced it would permit the Philippines to deliver supplies and evacuate personnel from an outpost on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, which has been determined by an international tribunal to lie within Philippine waters, only if it first notifies Beijing.
The Philippine National Security Council replied that the country will continue to maintain and supply its outposts in the South China Sea without seeking permission from any other country.
In a formal statement under the council’s letterhead, national security adviser Eduardo Ano dismissed the suggestion as”absurd, ridiculous and unacceptable.”
According to a June 10 report in the South China Morning Post, a survey released by independent polling agency OCTA Research showed that 73% of Filipinos support further military action to safeguard the Philippines’ territorial rights, including expanded naval patrols and the dispatch of additional troops.
Philippine media believe the new procedures will empower the Chinese coast guard to “arbitrarily” arrest Filipinos in their own waters. China’s claims to almost the entire sea reach into the internationally recognized economic zones of several Southeast Asian countries.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. called the new rules “totally unacceptable” and said he will take all necessary measures to “protect citizens” and continue to”defend the country’s territory.”
In his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore on May 31, the president pointed out that if a Filipino was killed in a South China Sea conflict with China, it would”almost certainly” cross a red line and come “very close” to what the Philippines defines as an act of war.
John C. Aquilino, former head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, testified before the U.S. Congress last month that Manila could invoke the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty in such a case.
Bob Savic, head of international trade at the Global Policy Institute in London, said last week that this could bring the United States and China into a direct conflict.
“The trigger for the First World War occurred on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in a country in Southeast Europe. This time, the trigger could be the death of a Filipino sailor in the tropical waters of Southeast Asia,” he wrote in an article published in the Asia Times.
He believes if Manila is forced to request U.S. assistance under the Mutual Defense Treaty, it is conceivable that China Coast Guard ships would quickly confront U.S. warships maintaining freedom of navigation in the region. “The U.S. and China must ensure they don’t sleepwalk into a repeat of the 1914 tragedy in the second half of June 2024 or, indeed, at any point in the future,” Savic wrote.
‘It might trigger escalation’
Andrea Chloe Wong, a nonresident research fellow at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs, told VOA at a June 6 seminar hosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research that if the Mutual Defense Treaty is invoked, “it might trigger escalation or conflict between the Philippines and China.”
The safety of Filipino personnel has become the focus of recent rounds of South China Sea disputes. On June 7, the Philippines accused a Chinese coast guard ship of ramming a Philippine ship, deterring the evacuation of a sick soldier from a grounded warship which serves as a Philippine military outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal.
Romeo Brawner, chief of staff of the armed forces of the Philippines, told reporters June 4 that Chinese coast guard officers had seized some food that a plane dropped for Philippine naval personnel aboard the aging warship. He also released video of the incident, AP reported.
Despite the rising tension, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, told VOA that the possibility of World War III breaking out in the South China Sea is not high.
She believes that China will not choose to fight a war in the South China Sea at this time because they know they would lose.
“They can’t project power across those kinds of distances yet. When I talk to the PLA [People’s Liberation Army, China’s principal military force], they say the only reason they haven’t declared internal waters in the Spratly [chain] is because there’s no way they can enforce that.”
US promises assets, say reports
The United States Coast Guard has promised to send assets to the South China Sea to help Manila uphold sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone, ABS-CBN News said Tuesday, citing the Philippine Coast Guard.
In a statement, the Philippine Coast Guard said the U.S. Coast Guard will deploy its North Pacific Coast Guard following a proposal by Philippine Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan. Gavan called for a “greater deployment” in the high seas “to address the forthcoming threat” posed by China’s threat to arrest foreigners inside what it claims as its maritime boundaries.
In a research report released last month by the National Bureau of Asian Research, Michael Shoebridge of the Strategic Analysis Australia pointed out that collective action by the Philippines and its allies could effectively reduce risks in the South China Sea.
“The risk of such collective action escalating into conflict is real. However, it could be mitigated by the militaries clearly acting within international law and coordinating a united political response to demonstrate and communicate this,” he wrote. “That would counter Chinese efforts”to intimidate others and cast such lawful action as aggression.”
Shoebridge, who also attended the National Bureau of Asian Research’s June 6 seminar, said at the meeting that “unless we cause Chinese policy and action to fail, we are leaving all the leverage with Beijing, and we are waiting for our servicemen and women to be killed by the PLA. And that’s not the future that I want.”
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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At G7, Biden to push plans for frozen Russian assets, Chinese overcapacity
At the Group of Seven summit this week, U.S. President Joe Biden will seek agreement on using interest from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine’s war effort. He will also push for unity in tackling global challenges such as infrastructure funding, artificial intelligence, and Chinese overcapacity in green technologies. However, as White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports, a shift right in the European political landscape could complicate his plans.
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UN Chief puts Israeli military, Hamas on blacklist for harming children
united nations — The United Nation’s secretary-general has included Israel’s military and Hamas on the annual blacklist of perpetrators who harm children.
“I am appalled by the dramatic increase and unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children in the Gaza Strip, Israel and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” Antonio Guterres said in the report, which was sent to U.N. Security Council members on Tuesday but has not yet been published.
The annual Children and Armed Conflict report names and shames those who recruit, kill, maim or abduct children, commit sexual violence against them, deny them humanitarian assistance, or attack schools and hospitals. Guterres’ special representative Virginia Gamba is mandated by the Security Council to work to prevent and end these violations.
In the report, obtained by VOA, the United Nations said it has verified 8,009 grave violations against Israeli and Palestinian children, but the process is ongoing and slow due to the conflict. Of them, 113 were against Israeli children, and the rest were against Palestinian children in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The report says most child casualties in Gaza from October 7 to the end of last year were caused by “the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by Israeli armed and security forces.”
In addition to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was also listed. Both groups are listed for the first time, accused of killing, maiming and abducting children.
The report covers the period from January to December 2023. Hamas carried out its terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering the war that is now in its ninth month. The report covers only the casualties reported or verified in 2023.
This is the first time either Israel or Hamas has been included on the report’s blacklist, despite the killing and maiming of hundreds of children in at least three previous wars in Gaza.
Israel’s armed and security forces are listed for the killing and maiming of children and for attacks on schools and hospitals.
“The inclusion of Israeli forces on the U.N.’s ‘list of shame’ is long overdue and reflects overwhelming evidence of grave violations against children,” Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA in an email.
Israeli officials have expressed outrage at being included on the list, which also includes the Taliban and terror groups al-Qaida and Islamic State.
A U.N. spokesperson said last week that Israel was notified of its inclusion “as a courtesy.” The country promptly sought to get ahead of the report’s publication, dismissing it as more anti-Israel action by the United Nations.
“Today, the U.N. added itself to the blacklist of history when it joined those who support the Hamas murderers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday. “The IDF is the most moral army in the world. No delusional U.N. decision will change that.”
His United Nations ambassador went further, publishing the video of part of his phone call with Guterres’ chief of staff.
“I’m utterly shocked and disgusted by this shameful decision of the secretary-general,” Gilad Erdan said in the call on Friday, adding that it would reward Hamas and extend the war.
Russia makes blacklist again
Last year, Russia’s armed forces landed on the blacklist for their war in Ukraine. This year, they remained listed despite a significant drop in the number of violations attributed to them. The United Nations verified the killing of 80 children and the maiming of 339 others attributed to Russian forces and affiliated groups.
A senior U.N. official said a decrease was not enough. Russia must continue this trend for at least a year and also sign a joint action plan with Gamba’s office to be delisted.
No party previously on the list was delisted this year.
Both sides in Sudan conflict make list
The situation in Sudan, which devolved into brutal violence in April 2023 when two rival generals went to war in a power struggle that continues today, has seen the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces both land on this year’s blacklist.
The report found a dramatic increase in 2023 in the military recruitment and use of children in Sudan, as well as their killing, maiming and sexual abuse. Attacks on schools and hospitals were also reported.
“I urge all parties to take preventive and mitigating actions to avoid and minimize harm and better protect children, including to refrain from the use of explosive devices,” Guterres said in the report.
The 2023 report verified nearly 33,000 grave violations committed against the world’s children in several countries experiencing conflict — an increase of 21% over the previous year. There were 11,649 confirmed child killings and maimings. Recruitment is again on the rise, after trending downward for the past two years.
Grave violations were reported in countries including Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo, Myanmar, Somalia and Syria, among others.
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Nigerian military denies maltreating Boko Haram survivors
abuja, nigeria — A new report by rights group Amnesty International accuses Nigeria’s military of inhumane treatment toward women and girls who survived Boko Haram. Nigerian defense authorities reject the report’s findings, saying that military personnel operate within the scope of international laws of conflict.
A statement said the military has “self-regulating mechanisms to address any proven case of misconduct” by its operatives.
The report from Amnesty International, titled “Help Us Build Our Lives,” said women and girls who survived Boko Haram captivity were subjected to further suffering, including prolonged, unlawful detention by the military and inadequate support by authorities for them to rebuild their lives.
“We still stand by what we have said,” said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s Nigeria director. “We believe that if somebody is saying that what you’re saying is not true, he should provide evidence. This research took more than a year and it is based on interviews with over 126 people.”
The Amnesty report said girls who were not detained were left to fend for themselves in camps where they sometimes reunite with former or so-called “repentant” Boko Haram husbands — putting them at risk of continued abuse from the men.
“These girls were picked when they were children,” said Sanusi. “They didn’t give their consent, they were forced. And what they went through is more or less human trafficking and abduction, therefore it is completely based on illegitimacy and it is unacceptable that they will be kept in government-run camps and pretend that they’re married or something. Even if the girls say that they want to live with them, an investigation should be done in a free atmosphere without coercion.”
Nigerian troops have been fighting Boko Haram insurgents in northeast Nigeria since 2009. The group’s rebellion has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced millions, according to the United Nations.
The Nigerian military’s approach and tactics have often sparked criticism.
Nigerian authorities said the military will engage with Amnesty International but said authorities were “unperturbed by such self-serving statements targeted at dampening the morale of troops.”
Security analyst Senator Iroegbu says the matter is a delicate topic and must be treated with caution.
“Anything associated with Boko Haram is a sensitive matter, there are a lot of misgivings over this so-called rehabilitation and reintegration of Boko Haram terrorists,” said Iroegbu. “For the military, they’re also in a very delicate situation. Once these survivors are rescued there’s a detention facility where they’re being vetted. Now the challenge is how long are they being vetted? The military in the first place are not even trained for the role they’re playing.”
Last year, a Reuters news agency investigation accused the military of secretly running a mass abortion program for girls and women rescued from Boko Haram.
Authorities set up an investigation into the matter but Amnesty International says the findings are shrouded in secrecy.
Iroegbu says sometimes overzealous personnel are to blame for the misconduct.
“The military as an institution might have committed to observing human rights but there are some individual soldiers that might have committed rights violations in their own actions,” said Iroegbu, the security analyst. “What I expected the military [to do] is say, ‘Okay, we’ll investigate.'”
Amnesty says before releasing the report, it presented Nigeria’s federal and state authorities as well as the United Nations with its findings.
The military referred to Amnesty International’s sources as “intrinsically unreliable.”
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For a Ukrainian former POW, recovery is slow and painful
Russia says it is holding more than 6,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war. For many of those released, liberation is the start of a painful process of recovery. From Kyiv, Lesia Bakalets brings the story of one former prisoner of war. Videographer: Vladyslav Smilianets
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Chinese police say man under arrest in stabbing of US college instructors
BEIJING — Chinese police have detained a suspect in a stabbing attack on four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College who were teaching at a Chinese university in the northeast city of Jilin, officials said Tuesday.
Jilin city police said a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking in a public park on Monday when he bumped into a foreigner. He stabbed the foreigner and three other foreigners who were with him, and also stabbed a Chinese person who approached in an attempt to intervene, police said.
The instructors from Cornell College were teaching at Beihua University, officials at the U.S. school said.
The injured were rushed to a hospital for treatment and none was in critical condition, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing Tuesday. He said police believe the attack in Jilin city’s Beishan Park was an isolated incident, based on a preliminary assessment, and the investigation is ongoing.
Cornell College President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the instructors were attacked while at the park with a faculty member from Beihua, which is in an outlying part of Jilin, an industrial city about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Beijing. Monday was a public holiday in China.
The State Department said in a statement it was aware of reports of a stabbing and was monitoring the situation. The attack happened as both Beijing and Washington are seeking to expand people-to-people exchanges to help bolster relations amid tensions over trade and such international issues as Taiwan, the South China Sea and the war in Ukraine.
An Iowa state lawmaker posted a statement on Instagram saying his brother, David Zabner, had been wounded during a stabbing attack in Jilin. Rep. Adam Zabner described his brother as a doctoral student at Tufts University who was in China under the Cornell-Beihua relationship.
“I spoke to David a few minutes ago, he is recovering from his injuries and doing well,” Adam Zabner wrote, adding that his brother was grateful for the care he received at a hospital.
News of the incident was suppressed in China, where the government maintains control on information about anything considered sensitive. News media outlets had not reported it. Some social media accounts posted foreign media reports about the attack, but a hashtag about it was blocked on a popular portal and photos and video of the incident were quickly taken down.
Cornell spokesperson Jen Visser said in an email that the college was still gathering information about what happened.
Visser said the private college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, partners with Beihua University. A college news release from 2018, when the program started, says Beihua provides funding for Cornell professors to travel to China to teach a portion of courses in computer science, mathematics and physics over a two-week period.
According to a 2020 post on Beihua’s website, the Chinese university uses American teaching methods and resources to give engineering students an international perspective and English-language ability.
About one-third of the core courses in the program use U.S. textbooks and are taught by American professors, according to the post. Students can apply to study for two years of their four-year education at Cornell College and receive degrees from both institutions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has unveiled a plan to invite 50,000 young Americans to China in the next five years, though Chinese diplomats say a travel advisory by the U.S. State Department has discouraged Americans from visiting China.
Citing arbitrary detentions as well as exit bans that could prevent Americans from leaving the country, the State Department has issued a Level 3 travel advisory — the second-highest warning level — for mainland China. It urges Americans to “reconsider travel” to China.
Some American universities have suspended their China programs due to the travel advisory.
Lin, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said China has taken effective measures to protect the safety of foreigners. “We believe that the isolated incident will not disrupt normal cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries,” he said.
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China’s Premier Li Qiang to visit Australia this week
Sydney — China’s Li Qiang will arrive in Australia Saturday, the first visit by a Chinese premier since 2017, in a sign of improving ties, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday.
During the four-day visit Li will visit the city of Adelaide city, the capital Canberra, and Australia’s mining state Western Australia.
Both leaders will meet with Australian and Chinese business leaders at a roundtable in Western Australia, Albanese said at a media briefing in Canberra.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner, with Australian resources and energy exports dominating trade flow.
Australia is the biggest supplier of iron ore to China and China has been an investor in Australian mining projects, though some recent Chinese investment in critical minerals has been blocked by Australia on national interest grounds.
Albanese said foreign investment has a role to play in Australia and is considered on a case-by-case basis.
“Chinese engagement, including with the resources sector, has been important for growth,” he said.
China imposed trade restrictions on a raft of Australian agricultural and mineral products during a diplomatic dispute in 2020, which has now largely eased.
Albanese said he would like to see the remaining Chinese trade impediments on lobsters and seafood removed.
In his meeting with Li next week in Canberra, Albanese will raise the case of Australian writer Yang Hengjun who was given a suspended death sentence on espionage charges in February, as well as an incident last month where a Chinese military jet dropped flares near an Australian defense helicopter, which Albanese said “was dangerous and should never had happened.”
“Welcoming the Chinese premier to our shores is an opportunity for Australia to advance our interests by demonstrating our national values, our people’s qualities and our economy’s strengths,” he said.
“Australia continues to pursue a stable and direct relationship with China, with dialog at its core.”
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Rev. James Lawson Jr., civil rights leader who preached nonviolent protest, dies at 95
Los Angeles — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, has died, his family said Monday. He was 95.
His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor.
Lawson was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”
Lawson met King in 1957, after spending three years in India soaking up knowledge about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s independence movement. King would travel to India himself two years later, but at the time, he had only read about Gandhi in books.
The two Black pastors — both 28 years old — quickly bonded over their enthusiasm for the Indian leader’s ideas, and King urged Lawson to put them into action in the American South.
Lawson soon led workshops in church basements in Nashville, Tennessee, that prepared John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, the Freedom Riders and many others to peacefully withstand vicious responses to their challenges of racist laws and policies.
Lawson’s lessons led Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown, on May 10, 1960, after hundreds of well-organized students staged lunch-counter sit-ins and boycotts of discriminatory businesses.
Lawson’s particular contribution was to introduce Gandhian principles to people more familiar with biblical teachings, showing how direct action could expose the immorality and fragility of racist white power structures.
Gandhi said “that we persons have the power to resist the racism in our own lives and souls,” Lawson told the AP. “We have the power to make choices and to say no to that wrong. That’s also Jesus.”
Years later, in 1968, it was Lawson who organized the sanitation workers strike that fatefully drew King to Memphis. Lawson said he was at first paralyzed and forever saddened by King’s assassination.
“I thought I would not live beyond 40, myself,” Lawson said. “The imminence of death was a part of the discipline we lived with, but no one as much as King.”
Still, Lawson made it his life’s mission to preach the power of nonviolent direct action.
“I’m still anxious and frustrated,” Lawson said as he marked the 50th anniversary of King’s death with a march in Memphis. “The task is unfinished.”
Civil rights activist Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she began attending Lawson’s Nashville workshops, which she called life-changing.
“His passing constitutes a very great loss,” Nash said. “He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.”
James Morris Lawson Jr., was born on Sept. 22, 1928, the son and grandson of ministers, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became ordained himself as a high school senior.
He told The Tennessean that his commitment to nonviolence began in elementary school, when he told his mother that he had slapped a boy who had used a racial slur against him.
“What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked.
That simple question forever changed his life, Lawson said. He became a pacifist, refusing to serve when drafted for the Korean War, and spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, sponsored his trip to India after he finished a sociology degree.
Gandhi had been assassinated by then, but Lawson met people who had worked with him and explained Gandhi’s concept of “satyagraha,” a relentless pursuit of Truth, which encouraged Indians to peacefully reject British rule. Lawson then saw how the Christian concept of turning the other cheek could be applied in collective actions to challenge morally indefensible laws.
Lawson was a divinity student at Oberlin College in Ohio when King spoke on campus about the Montgomery bus boycott. King told him, “You can’t wait, you need to come on South now,‘” Lawson recalled in an Associated Press interview.
Lawson soon enrolled in theology classes at Vanderbilt University, while leading younger activists through mock protests in which they practiced taking insults without reacting.
The technique swiftly proved its power at lunch counters and movie theaters in Nashville, where on May 10, 1960, businesses agreed to take down the “No Colored” signs that enforced white supremacy.
“It was the first major successful campaign to pull the signs down,” and it created a template for the sit-ins that began spreading across the South, Lawson said.
Lawson was called on to organize what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sought to organize the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of students who began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South.
Angry segregationists got Lawson expelled from Vanderbilt, but he said he never harbored hard feelings about the university, where he returned as a distinguished visiting professor in 2006, and eventually donated a significant portion of his papers.
Lawson earned that theology degree at Boston University and became a Methodist pastor in Memphis, where his wife Dorothy Wood Lawson worked as an NAACP organizer. They moved several years later to Los Angeles, where Lawson led the Holman United Methodist Church and taught at California State University, Northridge and the University of California, Los Angeles. They raised three sons, John, Morris and Seth.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Lawson taught Southern California activists and organizers “and helped shape the civil rights and labor movement locally just as he did nationally.”
“Today Los Angeles joins the state, country and world in mourning the loss of a civil rights leader whose critical leadership, teachings, and mentorship confronted and crippled centuries of systemic oppression, racism and injustice,” Bass said in a statement.
Lawson remained active into his 90s, urging younger generations to leverage their power.
Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, called Lawson “the ultimate preacher, prophet, and activist.”
“In his senior years, I was privileged to spend time with him at his church in Los Angeles,” Sharpton said. “He would sit in his office and tell me inside stories of the battles of the 1950’s and 1960’s that he Dr. King and others engaged in. Lawson helped to change this nation — thank God the nation never changed him.”
Eulogizing the late Rep. John Lewis last year, he recalled how the young man he trained in Nashville grew lonely marches into multitudes, paving the way for major civil rights legislation.
“If we would honor and celebrate John Lewis’ life, let us then re-commit our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our strength to the continuing journey to dismantle the wrong in our midst,” Lawson said.
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Malawi medical workers stage strike over allowances
Blantyre — Medical workers in Malawi’s public health facilities started a nationwide sit-in strike Monday to push the government to meet their longtime grievances, which include special allowances and improved conditions of service. The strike forced patients in many hospitals to return home without receiving medical care. Strike organizers said some medical workers could treat patients with critical conditions.
In some public health facilities medical workers were seen singing and dancing outside the hospitals.
While some patients like Nelia Banda of the M’bwatalika area returned home without receiving attention.
She said “Medical workers told me that they will not attend to me because they are not working today. They said I should come again on Monday next week. I am pregnant and yesterday I fell because of high blood pressure but I haven’t been assisted here.”
The strike is a result of the failure of negotiations between the medical workers and government authorities on worker demands dating back to February of this year.
The government had told the medical workers that it would increase their allowances and improve their working conditions instead of meeting the 15% salary increase that medical workers were demanding.
The increase was meant for risk allowance, top-up allowance and professional allowance. Put simply, this is income that medical workers receive for working overtime or for performing duties outside their normal schedule.
Daniel Nasimba is the general secretary for the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi (PAUM), one of the organizers of the strike.
He said some staff members at the hospital were allowed to attend to patients with emergencies.
He said, “At least we have people. Every department has someone who can attend to any emergency that can come in. What is happening now is called a sit-in. It’s not a complete shutdown of the health service. We are all at work, nobody is at home.”
Nasimba said the workers will not return to duty fully — until the government honors its promise.
However, the Malawi government has obtained an injunction stopping the strike.
Organizers of the strike, the National Organization of Nurses and Midwives and the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi, said in a statement released Monday evening that they were consulting their legal team about the matter.
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