External resources relating to Equipment, training and tactics

In an extra-judicial execution crime, on Tuesday dawn, 10 January 2017, Israeli forces shot dead in cold blood a Palestinian civilian in al-Far’ah refugee camp, south of Tubas, in front of his mother.  The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) stresses that this crime was committed after the Israeli political and military leaders gave the Israeli soldiers the green light to shed the Palestinian blood and tolerated the soldiers for their crimes against Palestinian civilians.

This briefing updates the July 2016 report ‘Border Wars: the arms dealers profiting from Europe’s refugee tragedy’ . It shows that the European policy response to the refugee tragedy continues to provide a booming border security market for Europe’s arms and security firms, some of whom are involved in selling arms to the Middle East and North Africa and all of whom encourage European policies focused on keeping refugees out. It’s a win-win for the security corporations, but the cost is a deadly toll for migrants forced into ever more dangerous routes as they flee wars, conflict and oppression.

Police tactics at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest grew dramatically more aggressive last week, with law enforcement using tear gas, rubber pellets, sound cannons, and other controversial methods to clear activists from a road and a nearby encampment. The latest clashes followed a complaint from Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault, who warned of an “overall militarization of law enforcement” at the pipeline protest and requested an investigation by the Department of Justice...

Morton County, ND – Over two hundred multi-state law enforcement and National Guard personnel attacked water protectors gathered on unceded 1851 Oceti Sakowin treaty land just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the late morning of Thursday, October 27th.

Video below shows police attacking Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp with pepper spray, less-lethal rounds used at close range, batons, LRAD, and tasers (VIDEO).

From the Force Science Institute in Mankato, Minnesota to the ecological reserve outside Rio de Janeiro that houses Condor Non-Lethal Technologies’ police training center, the “use of force” industry has grown into a worldwide marketplace. Beginning on October 9, Hoffman Estates will host the five-day conference of the Illinois Tactical Officers Association, or ITOA. To greet them, a coalition of community groups and organizations from the Chicago area are assembling under the banner #StopITOA. These diverse groups, including AFSC-Chicago, CAIR-Chicago, Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter-Chicago, the Arab American Action Network and War Resisters League, argue that government officials should prioritize spending for human needs not for militarization and violence.

Donald Trump has pledged to build a ‘beautiful wall’ – but America’s frontier with Mexico is already aggressively defended by the drones and fences of the US border patrol. It’s a strategy that is causing ever more migrants to die in hostile terrain.

This report analyses political developments and human rights violations in West Papua by the Indonesian state in response to the West Papuan people’s aspirations for self-determination.  It covers the period between January 2014, when a delegation of Melanesian Spearhead Group Foreign Ministers’ visited the territory, and 15 July 2016, the day after Melanesian Spearhead Group Special Leaders meet in Honiara and decided to defer a decision on the United Liberation Movement for West Papua’s application for full membership. That decision will now be made by MSG leaders in Port Vila, Vanuatu before September.

PLEASANTON — A gathering of more than 5,000 law enforcement workers next week at the Alameda County Fairgrounds also is expected to draw about 1,000 protesters.

Urban Shield, billed as an emergency preparedness exercise, is set to take place Thursday through Sept. 12. at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office since 2007, will this year also include national police from Mexico and Taiwan, said Alameda County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly.

Israeli military companies such as Elbit Systems appear invincible, yet Israel’s arms industry is more vulnerable than it seems. Al-Shabaka guest author Maren Mantovani and Policy Advisor Jamal Juma’ examine both national and global trends and identify avenues for human rights activists to pursue to hold Israel accountable under international law.

Israel’s biggest military companies last year rang alarm bells over a decline in international contracts, citing smaller budgets, more competition, and less desire for Israeli-made products as among the reasons. Is this an indicator that Israel’s arms industry might not be as invincible as it seems? What led arms deals with Israeli companies to fall through? What was the role of the Palestinian-led movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which has called for military sanctions as part of its campaign to promote human rights? 1

In this Al-Shabaka policy brief, Maren Mantovani and Jamal Juma analyze some of the trends facing Israel’s military industrial complex with a particular focus on the campaign against Elbit Systems. The brief examines the tough times facing the industry, the myth of Israeli technological superiority, the industry’s local and global shifts, and the alliances emerging to reverse the militarization and securitization of societies. Based on this analysis, they draw valuable lessons and identify avenues for the global Palestine solidarity movement to pursue.

As an organization dedicated to peace, justice and nonviolent liberation, the War Resisters League stands firmly in solidarity with the Movement For Black Lives' newly released Vision for Black Lives Platform...

After sniper fire struck 12 police officers at a rally in downtown Dallas, killing five, police cornered a single suspect in a parking garage. After a prolonged exchange of gunfire and a five-hour-long standoff, police made what experts say was an unprecedented decision: to send in a police robot, jury-rigged with a bomb.

"We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a news conference Friday. "Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb."...

The refugee crisis facing Europe has caused consternation in the corridors of power, and heated debate on Europe’s streets. It has exposed fundamental faultlines in the whole European project, as governments fail to agree on even limited sharing of refugees and instead blame each other. Far-right parties have surged in popularity exploiting austerity-impacted communities in putting the blame for economic recession on a convenient scapegoat as opposed to the powerful banking sector. This has been most potently seen in the UK, where leaders of the ‘Leave EU’ campaign unscrupulously amplified fears of mass migration to successfully mobilise support for Brexit.   Refugees fleeing terrible violence and hardship have been caught in the crossfire; forced to take ever more dangerous routes to get to Europe and facing racist attacks in host nations when they finally arrive.

However there is one group of interests that have only benefited from the refugee crisis, and in particular from the European Union’s investment in ‘securing’ its borders. They are the military and security companies that provide the equipment to border guards, the surveillance technology to monitor frontiers, and the IT infrastructure to track population movements.

This report turns a spotlight on those border security profiteers, examining who they are and the services they provide, how they both influence and benefit from European policies and what funding they receive from taxpayers. The report shows that far from being passive beneficiaries of EU largesse, these corporations are actively encouraging a growing securitisation of Europe’s borders, with some willing to provide ever more draconian technologies to do this.

This image shows South American state-owned companies that produce law enforcement equipment, providing information on the goods they produce, transfers, commercial alliances and promotional activity.  Company ownership provides states with additional control over the manufacture and trade of law enforcement equipment, but also comes with human rights obligations.

#Boycott

It is time for European citizens to demand not a penny more of their tax money be spent on Israeli military and security corporations.

As a part of measures to increase security on its border with Syria, Turkey begins building smart military towers that can warn and fire automatically.

Who Profits Research Center and the Coalition of Women for Peace have joined together to publish this up-to-date position paper on Palestinian women’s struggle against the Israeli control of population, manifested in the checkpoint industry. The following paper sheds light on both government and corporate practices and their repercussions on the ground. This will also be reflected through recent testimonies of Palestinian women confronting checkpoints on a day-to-day basis.

While many Civil Society Organizations have been addressing the political context that governs women’s lives under occupation, the economic factors that engineer the political system and perpetuate the power relations at hand are still in need of greater attention. The Israeli checkpoints, as military structures, have been a symbol of the Israeli control of the Palestinian population. Yet, underneath these structures lies an economic infrastructure generated by corporate profit. The vast checkpoints industry includes the construction of checkpoints, security personnel and equipment provided by Israeli and international companies.

The following pages address the checkpoint industry in the occupied West Bank as a case study of the integral part played by corporate stakeholders in oppressing Palestinian population and women specifically.

Idomeni: Macedonian police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at refugees trying to break through Greek border (video).

Sales to Europe grew from $724 million in 2014 to $1.63 billion in 2015, presumably as a consequence of the refugee crisis and the rise in terror attacks on the continent. Sales to North America also climbed, to $1.02 billion...

Despite proposed increases in spending on personnel and equipment for border enforcement, the complex geography of border militarization and the violence it produces require further examination. We take a geographical perspective to determine the role of violence in both its official forms, such as the incarceration and punishments experienced by undocumented migrants, as well as through abuses and violence perpetrated by agents in shaping border and immigration enforcement. By drawing on the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), which is a unique data source based on 1,110 surveys of a random sample of deportees, as well as research with family members and return migrants in Puebla, Mexico, we provide an innovative and robust account of the geography of violence and migration. Identifying regional variation allows us to see the priorities and strategic use of violence in certain areas as part of enforcement practice. We assert that understanding the role of violence allows us to explain the prevalence of various forms of abuse, as well as the role of abuse in border enforcement strategies, not as a side effect, but as elemental to the current militarized strategies.

El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, a leading voice in Egypt's struggle against police violence since 1993, is facing imminent threat of closure by the government. According to the independent Egyptian website Mada Masr: 'The state justified the [closure] decision by claiming the center's clinic issues reports "condemning police violations against terrorist groups," said Suzanne Fayyad, a doctor at Al-Nadeem.' They are fighting the threat though telling Mada Masr: "Ideas don't have licenses," Magda Aly from the center said defiantly. "Even if the center is shut down, efforts to combat torture will never cease."

This interview with Executive Director Aida Seif al-Dawla of the El Nadeem Center was conducted over e-mail in the Fall of 2015 and originally published in January of this year in The Abolitionist, a publication of Critical Resistance.

King Abdullah II of Jordan is meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday, for working talks that the Jordanian Embassy describes as covering "the strategic partnership" between the two countries. In addition to discussing the flood of Syrian refugees into Jordan — there are now 750,000 of them — the Embassy also says that the two will "tackle global efforts to combat terrorism and extremism across the Middle East, Africa, and the world." The White House mentions the talks in the president's daily schedule, noting the two will discuss "efforts to counter ISIL (and) resolve the Syrian conflict," using the US government's favorite acronym for the Islamic State group.

But that's a very reductive description of what the monarch and the president are likely to talk about. There's a major war going on across the Hashemite Kingdom's northern and eastern border, and much about Jordan's military role in that war won't likely be the subject of press releases. But the border is undoubtedly somewhere buried in the briefing books. The Obama administration is spending close to a half a billion dollars to build a sophisticated electronic fence along Jordan's northern and eastern borders, a wall which US strategic planners hope will stem the flow of refugees and also wall off the increasingly important American base from the disintegration of Syria and Iraq.

Much is written about the illegal gun trade to Mexico – much less about the Mexican military’s sales to its own police and private security companies of weapons that are imported, mostly from the United States.

The Ugandan elections are scheduled for Thursday 18 February and demonstrations have been taking place in the capital, Kampala.... In the lead up to election day, the Ugandan police received 35 CS/VP3 personnel carriers   from the Chinese company, Poly Technologies. The vehicles were spotted at the Kenyan port of Mobasa on 4 February, preparing for transit to Uganda.

In this epoch of economic and security crises, Brazil has embarked on the enormous task of hosting the 2016 Olympic Games. To improve its security issues, and consequently draw foreign direct investment, Brazil has expanded its security forces. Over the last decade, these forces have carried out numerous extrajudicial killings. The increase in their numbers has therefore heightened the potential for more police brutality, and Brazil is neglecting its obligation to protect the lives of its citizens.