New Zealanders should ask themselves: do they want our GCSB providing vital intelligence information to torturers and murderers? Because this is exactly what the GCSB has been doing.
Since 2004 the GCSB has been the “lead” Five Eyes agency providing the Bangladesh security forces with intelligence on suspected terrorists, according to GCSB documents analysed by Nicky Hager and Ryan Gallagher in today’s New Zealand Herald. It is likely that when such suspects are detained they are tortured, and even killed.
Reputable human rights agencies agree that political prisoners are regularly mistreated. The Amnesty International report on Bangladesh for 2014/15 says that “dozens of people were forcibly disappeared” [that is executed] and that “police routinely tortured detainees in their custody. Methods included beating, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks to the genitals and, in some cases, shooting detainees’ legs. At least nine people died in police custody between January and July 2014, allegedly as a result of torture.” Human Rights Watch said in January that “the Bangladesh government [has] failed to prosecute security forces for serious abuses including killings, disappearances, and arbitrary arrests.”
The GCSB’s definition of a Bangladeshi terrorist will be pretty broad, if the Bangladesh entries in the Global Terrorism Database (supported by the US Department of Defence) are anything to go by. Most entries relate to anti-government street protesters, commonly attacked by Police, responding with Molotov cocktails and the like. There have been quite a lot of street battles between security forces and activists from the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Ironically, the Snowden documents show that at the same time as GCSB is passing on information to the main Bangladeshi “counter-terrorist” torture unit, the Rapid Action Battalion, it is also spying on that same battalion’s communications, presumably at the behest of the US National Security Agency.
Not only Bangladesh has been a focus of GCSB attention. “Extremists” in Burma have also been a target, according to a 2003 NSA briefing paper. Did these “extremists” include political opponents of the ruthless Burmese military junta, which would brook no opposition at that time?
In today’s Herald the Prime Minister’s office repeats the spin that the documents referred to by Hager and Gallagher “could be fakes” – even when the PM knows they are not because the original copies of the documents would be in the GCSB files.
Green co-leader Russel Norman sums up the significance of the latest revelations by saying: “John Key has always justified the GCSB on the basis that it is there to protect the good guys, but these documents reveal that it is helping the bad guys.”
Jong Kee , John XKEYscore or even FJK ……call him what you will.
The man is a mentally unbalanced compulsive liar.
You would have to be to want to be a petty stooge of the NSA. Therefore it makes perfect sense he would say such things.
Your far better off disbelieving anything he says and whatever he DOES say , – interpreting the truth of any one matter as precisely the opposite of his statements.
It is tragic that our security service is engaged in this sort of thing. What is every bit as tragic is that most kiwis will not be outraged by this and the story will not gain any traction. I would love to be proved wrong, but when you have a government as shamelessly corrupt as ours is retaining huge public support, very few people will get worked up about some Bangladeshi lives.
There was a time when OUR MEDIA reported on just these things.
Do any of you remember when OUR MEDIA reported on what happened in East Timor?
We are indeed living under an extremely ruthless , viscous and evil regime.
That’s right – regime.
Its no longer good enough to say its a democracy.
Not any more.
We live in a modern day dictatorship, have you not noticed? As of recent, TVNZ, TV3 and Radio Live have changed their “music”, their tunes, to make themselves “appeal” more to modern style “media”, being about “hits” and “thumbs up” and not “thumbs down” kind of feedback.
The modern day media are geared now, more than ever to respond to “ratings”, as self fulfilling commercially driven prophecies, send certain messages, get them reinforced, and if there is any question or dissent, kill it!
It is immediate response, reaction, emotion, no considerate thoughts, please, that only raises questions, we do not want.
Long live our Great Leader, for Eternity, Kim John Key! I am LOYAL, do not kill or persecute me, please, I am a “good Kiwi”!
I don’t think Key is retaining huge public support. That’s another one of the lies. Northland was the first glint of hope.
Unfortunately Labour needs to get serious on the hard questions that they have been Mum about. Kiwis don’t want to replace National with NationalLite and what are Labours views on mass surveillance, occupation in Iraq, TPP etc. They need to have a serious think about what Northland means and why they are hanging onto some very unpopular foreign polices that are NationalLite.
Even the rural conservatives have had enough of the Nats.
Thanks Keith – to expect a proven liar to all of a sudden stop lying and not be self serving and have some integrity is beyond what is possible right now. In our good name, John Key and his govt are sending more brainwashed young men off to a war zone and then he continues lies about the GCSB. What about impeachment type hearings over his promise to resign ? Why can we not hold him to his flimsy word ?
Psychopaths have very little conscience and even less compassion and ethics. Makes my blood boil that they are in charge and making decisions that negatively effect so many as he lies in Obamas lap licking up all the crumbs and photo ops his huge ego can manage.
The Glenn Greenwalds and Snowdens and Chelsea Mannings and many others are the real unsung heroes.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2014/09/15/gordon-campbell-on-the-glenn-greenwald-revelations/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140915/06175828518/snowden-greenwald-reveal-pm-john-key-lied-about-kiwi-mass-surveillance-key-hits-back-calling-greenwald-loser.shtml
@Blake totally agree!
So much for New Zealand being a peacekeeping nation! FJK (must get that on a shirt).
The “ordinary” Kiwi does not care, or have you heard any “outcry” of sorts? It was also not mentioned on the TV news of either main channel. The dictatorship is “working”, make no doubt about it!
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