Pakistan: new government must tackle police corruption and killings

Published: April 28, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION 

By the time Imran Khan’s government fell in late March 2022, it showed an an abysmal track record of unfulfilled promises, especially on badly needed reforms to address the problems of police corruption and extrajudicial killings.

Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), had a comprehensive agenda for changing the way the police operated, promising to eliminate “political influence on policing in all matters”, including recruitment and transferring officers for political gain.

Unfortunately Khan’s party appears to have performed no better than its predecessors on police reform. It’s now going to be a challenge that Pakistan’s new government, led by the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has to face.

With the change of government in Pakistan, political leaders must prioritise reforming the country’s police forces by taking localised approaches, curbing political interference and addressing the causes behind corruption and abuse.

Pakistani citizens often fear the police, and those without the right connections risk bribery and blackmail during interactions with officers, research has shown.

Despite Khan’s anti-corruption rhetoric, PTI did little to address police corruption. Even the police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province where police reforms are frequently hailed as a success story, reportedly came under investigation for embezzling funds. The officers were later acquitted. Meanwhile, in the city of Karachi alone, at least 27 people were killed in police “encounters” in the first four months of 2022.

A study from Lahore, Punjab, for the British Journal of Criminology, has found that corruption and lack of effectiveness undermines public trust in the police, as officers are seen to be “chronically corrupt, inefficient, ill equipped, and loyal to power elites of the society”. Although this work was carried out in 2014 the issues remain the same.

These institutional dynamics have also enabled routine occurrences of police abuse, including the notorious practice of “encounter killings” or extrajudicial killings that are staged to appear like shootouts between officers and criminals.

In the federal capital, Islamabad, the killing of a 21-year-old civilian Usama Satti by police officers from an anti-terrorism squad in 2021 appears to be another example of trigger-happy Pakistani police. Reports into the incident alleged police had intentionally killed the young man for failing to stop his car. Five officers were later arrested. They were removed from service and are now facing trial.
Policing influenced by the past

Many of these institutional and structural problems are rooted in Pakistan police’s colonial legacy and legal frameworks, such as the 1861 Police Act, which is still applied in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.

Even where this was replaced by new legislation, the Police Order 2002 (a much-touted outcome of reform efforts produced under the military regime of Pervez Musharraf (president 2001-2008), the framework is implemented through amendments in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that have diluted the essence of the original order.

In doing so, the legislation’s calls to enhance public accountability and reduce political control over the police have gone largely unheeded due to a lack of political will.

Read more: Kashmir: what happens after Imran Khan’s downfall?

The politicisation of policing has typically referred to the influence of politicians and their elite allies on the internal affairs and workings of the police.

PTI’s inability to move away from such politicisation is shown most starkly by the fact that during its first three years in office, the provincial police chiefs in Punjab were changed by the government seven times.

The politics behind the shuffling of key bureaucrats became clear when, faced with a no-confidence motion, Khan sought to again change police administrators in Punjab after they allegedly refused to follow orders to unlawfully prevent opposition parties’ members from voting against Khan. This allegation was denied by members of the PTI.

But interference is not only allegedly initiated by political leaders, but also by Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. In 2020, the kidnapping of Sindh’s police chief by paramilitary and intelligence officers exposed the growing influence of the establishment in civilian police work.

It also highlighted the political role of the Sindh Rangers, a paramilitary force that has been posted in the province for three decades, providing policing which has been central to security operations against domestic terrorists.

My own research finds that such a dual policing mechanism creates competition and confrontation between the paramilitary and the police, potentially compromising the legitimacy of the latter.

Paramilitary group Sindh Rangers police an independence day rally in Karachi in 2021. AsiaNetPakistan/Alamy

Future governments should pay special attention to how such policing by military forces can create barriers to police reform. Pakistan’s new leadership needs to consider the contributions of prior reform efforts – including some of the original tenets of the 2002 order, such as establishing commissions to improve accountability by prioritising public oversight on police transfers and abuse.

Local approaches needed

But these efforts must also be localised. Pakistan is a multi-ethnic, multilingual society. Each policing jurisdiction, rural or urban, has different dynamics and demographics that influence local politics and social relations. Future reforms must take such diversity and differences into consideration and avoid a one-size-fits-all formula to ensure implementation and sustainability of reform efforts.

Reform efforts must also secure the buy-in from rank-and-file officers. Previous efforts have typically included senior and retired police officers and bureaucrats, who belong to an elite cadre of officers recruited federally, not the rank and file, who are locally and provincially recruited, trained and deployed. These junior officers create a body of knowledge on policing that is inadequately harnessed.

Lastly, while public safety is key for sustaining police legitimacy, the satisfaction and security of police officers should not be neglected. Key enhancements in police budget, equipment and salaries can improve officer output, safety and wellbeing as well as strengthening their financial security and reducing incentives for engaging in petty corruption and courting political patronage.

These institutional and structural improvements could enhance the effectiveness of community policing models of reform, which, according to recent research, have thus far failed to be delivered in Pakistan.

Author

Zoha Waseem
Assistant Professor in Criminology, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick

He's running to be Colombia's 1st left-wing president. Here's what he plans to do

By John Otis
Published April 28, 2022 

NPR

Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro speaks during a campaign rally in Medellín, Colombia, on April 7. Petro is polling first ahead of the May 29 election.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Gustavo Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla and the front-runner in Colombia's presidential election next month, is promising to shake up Colombian society.

And to be sure, there's a lot that needs changing. About 40% of Colombians live below the poverty line and the country has one of the world's largest gaps between rich and poor, according to the World Bank.

"If we continue along this same path, the country will fall into the abyss," Petro said in a recent interview with NPR. "People are disillusioned, which is why I am at the top of the polls."

An opposition senator who is now in his third run for the presidency, Petro, 62, has spent his whole life challenging the status quo.
Entering politics from the left isn't easy

He grew up in Zipaquirá, a mining town just north of Bogotá, where he was dismayed by its poverty. But for decades, government repression as well as a power-sharing pact between traditional parties made it extremely difficult for leftists to break into politics.

That's why in 1978, Petro joined the April 19 Movement, or M-19, one of several Colombian rebel groups that formed in the wake of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba. His rebel nom de guerre, "Aureliano," was inspired by a fictional military officer constantly fighting losing battles in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

The M-19 carried out kidnappings, bank robberies and a disastrous 1985 siege of the Supreme Court that led to more than 90 deaths. But initially, the M-19 cultivated a Robin Hood image by assaulting supermarket trucks and distributing stolen milk in city slums.

Petro's main job was to stockpile stolen weapons and in 1985 was briefly imprisoned and tortured by the army. After his release, he also helped organize guerrilla cells in the cities and the impoverished countryside.

M-19 rebels carry the coffin of Mayor Afranio Parra, days after he was killed by police on April 7, 1989, in Colombia's Santo Domingo mountains before a burial ceremony. M-19 was one of several Colombian leftist guerrilla groups.

"I slept in the homes of poor farmers," he said in the interview, speaking via Zoom. "I hiked across mountains and Indigenous reserves. I was in daily contact with poor people."

Petro believes such close contact with average Colombians eventually made him a better politician. "I think a president should have these types of experiences," he said.
He led the capital through ups and downs

He would soon focus on electoral politics. Disillusioned with the war, Petro took part in peace talks that paved the way for the M-19 to disarm and form a left-wing political party in 1990.

However, running for office remained risky. Carlos Pizarro, who had been the M-19's top commander, ran for president in 1990 but was shot dead by an anti-communist gunman weeks before the vote. A month earlier, another leftist presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo, was assassinated.

Petro surrounded himself with body guards and made his way into politics. He served nearly two decades in Colombia's Congress, where he earned praise for denouncing close ties between politicians and right-wing death squads. He finished fourth in the 2010 presidential election, then was elected mayor of the capital, Bogotá, in 2011.

It was a chaotic four years in charge of the capital. Although crime and poverty fell, Petro went through nine chiefs of staff and, at one point, trash piled high in the streets during his bungled attempt to reform the city's garbage pickup.

In 2018, Petro again ran for president, losing to conservative Iván Duque. But under President Duque, drug-related violence has increased in rural areas, a national strike shut down major cities last year, and poverty has swelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (The Colombian Constitution bars the president from seeking a second consecutive term.)

"The government's lack of capacity to deal with a national emergency just left a lot of people angry and upset. And I think that's what gives Gustavo Petro a real chance," says Sergio Guzmán, director of the consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis.

Another factor opening the door for Petro is a more recent peace agreement, signed in 2016, that disarmed Colombia's largest rebel group known as the FARC. As the country's guerrilla conflicts have faded, Guzmán says, voters have become more willing to support leftist politicians who were previously viewed by some as rebels in disguise.

Should Petro win, he would become Colombia's first-ever left-wing president.
He wants to take on poverty and the environment

Many of his proposals have alarmed the country's business class.

Petro talks of raising taxes on the rich — and printing money — to pay for anti-poverty programs. To move toward a greener economy, he promises to stop all new oil exploration and to cut back on coal production, even though these are Colombia's two top exports.

"The fiscal accounts of Colombia depend on oil. It's as simple as that," Alberto Bernal, a Colombian economist, said on a video panel this month sponsored by the Council of the Americas think tank in New York. "What is Colombia going to do if you can't take oil out?"

Petro has outlined a 12-year transition period and says the country could replace the lost income from fossil fuels with a major boost to tourism, and improvements in agriculture and industry.

"I am proposing a path that is much better for Colombia," Petro told NPR, adding that his plan adheres to guidelines from last year's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Anti-narcotics police walk through a coca field in La Hormiga, Putumayo, Colombia, on April 9. The country's efforts in the U.S.-led war on drugs have played a key role in Colombia's close relationship with Washington.

He is a critic of the U.S.-led drug war

He also spoke in the interview of forging a new relationship with Washington. Petro is a strong critic of the U.S.-led war on illegal drugs in the Andean region — though he provided no specific alternatives — and he wants to renegotiate a 2006 bilateral trade deal that he claims has hurt Colombian farmers and manufacturers. He also wants more help from the U.S. to protect the Amazon rainforest, part of which lies in Colombia.

Since giving up on guerrilla warfare more than three decades ago, Petro has followed the democratic rules yet critics continue to question his commitment to liberal democracy. For example, Petro commented on the campaign trail that his first act as president would be to declare a state of economic emergency, allowing him to bypass Congress and enact laws by decree to tackle hunger and poverty.
Critics try to peg him as a Colombian Hugo Chávez

Petro has also insulted journalists and recently called a Colombian TV commentator who questioned his plans a "neo-Nazi."

Federico Gutiérrez, a conservative former Medellín mayor who is Petro's main rival in the presidential race, did some name-calling of his own. In a March TV debate, he compared Petro to socialist leaders who have brought authoritarian rule and economic ruin to neighboring Venezuela.

Federico Gutiérrez, a candidate with the Team for Colombia coalition, touches the shoulder of Gustavo Petro, candidate with the Historic Pact coalition, during a debate in Bogotá, Colombia, Jan. 25.

"Petro: You are Chávez and Maduro," Gutiérrez said, referring to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. He also said a Petro administration would expropriate private businesses, a claim Petro denied.

An April 21 poll gave Petro 38% of the vote — well ahead of the seven other candidates competing in the May 29 election. But that's below the 50% plus one vote he would need to avoid a June runoff between the two top vote-getters from the first round.
His running mate would be the first Black vice president

Arlene Tickner, a professor of international relations at Rosario University in Bogotá, chalks up some of the criticism of Petro to a Colombian upper class that's running scared.

"They stand to lose some of their privileges, as should be in a genuine democracy that values equality and participation," Tickner says. "Remember that Colombia is one of most unequal countries in Latin America and in the world and it's shameful that we have not yet had a more progressive president."

A large image of Francia Márquez is projected on a screen as she and presidential candidate Gustavo Petro stand on stage during a campaign event, March 23. Petro's running mate Márquez would be the first Afro-Colombian vice president if they win.

Rather than threatening Colombia's democracy, Petro says he would open it up to new voices. His running mate, Francia Márquez, is an Afro-Colombian human rights activist who, if elected, would make history by becoming the country's first-ever Black vice president.

Indeed, Petro's political movement is called the Historic Pact — which Guzmán, the consultant, calls "a brilliant bit of political communication, because: Who campaigns against history?"

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Emergency contraception marks a new battle line in Texas

Kaiser Health News
April 28, 2022

Young woman patient lying at hospital bed feeling sad (Shutterstock)

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — “Mysterious Dolphin” needed an emergency contraception pill dropped off on a porch outside of town.

Allison Medulan, a sophomore at Texas A&M University who had just come from biology class, saw the request on her cellphone via an anonymous text hotline. She gathered a box of the one-dose contraceptive, a pregnancy test, and a few condoms from her apartment and headed over. Inside a bewildering development of modest townhomes, Medulan tucked the plastic delivery bag next to the doormat.

Closing the car door, she stared ahead and took a breath. Medulan, 20, didn’t know the woman’s real name. It had been converted into a moniker by another volunteer operating the hotline.

“I’ve done what I can,” she said.

In this college town in farm country about two hours north of Houston, Medulan and other volunteers for Jane’s Due Process, an Austin-based nonprofit, are trusted allies for panicked young women scrambling for a solution after contraceptive failure or unprotected sex.

Sexual health advocates have long sought to expand access to emergency contraception — over-the-counter medications that prevent fertilization if taken within days of sexual intercourse — with the aim of preventing unplanned pregnancies that can derail educational and professional goals for women and teenagers. A bill that recently passed the Illinois General Assembly would require public universities to offer emergency contraception in vending machines, and volunteer distribution networks exist in numerous states, including Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Georgia.

But in Texas, these grassroots efforts in College Station, Lubbock, Austin, and the Rio Grande Valley have taken on heightened urgency after state lawmakers banned nearly all abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy. Demand for emergency contraception has skyrocketed. Nurx, an online prescription company, registered a 173% increase in orders from Texas in September 2021, the month the law took effect, compared with the previous month. Every Body Texas, an Austin-based group that awards federal birth control funding, received more than 200 requests for emergency contraception the first week its website began taking orders.

“There is anxiety around these laws and feeling like you’re going to be punished for having sex and pregnancy is that punishment,” said Graci D’Amore, 33, program and operations manager at Jane’s Due Process.

Jane’s Due Process reaches out to teens on Instagram and Facebook with digital ads that clear up fallacies about who can buy emergency contraception and where. Minors in Texas and nearly two dozen other states, including teen mothers already raising a child, must have their parents’ consent to get a prescription for hormonal birth control.

Emergency contraception, which is available without a prescription, is exempted from those restrictions. But the medication can be difficult to find in rural areas of Texas. And many pharmacies that do carry it keep it in locked cases or behind the pharmacy counter, requiring purchasers to ask for access. At a cost of $35 to $50 a pill, the medication is unaffordable for some young people.

The Jane’s Due Process “repro kits,” delivered free to those who request a pill via text message or phone call, include a booklet that lists the nearest abortion clinic, often hours away for Texans outside the state’s metropolitan areas.

“It is a Texas teen’s right to buy emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and condoms,” said D’Amore. “Not only are we trying to provide access but also education.”

In many ways, these groups operate in an educational desert when it comes to abortion, contraception, and even sex. In Texas, many Planned Parenthood and other sexual health clinics that helped an earlier generation of women are long gone, replaced by hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortion and do not offer contraception.

As Texas swerved sharply to the right in recent decades, anti-abortion politicians vowed to run Planned Parenthood out of the state, enacting a cascade of restrictions. In 2011, Republican lawmakers slashed funding for the state family planning program by 66%, and more than 80 family planning clinics closed.

The impact was swift. Researchers found that from 2011 to 2014 the number of women using the most effective forms of birth control — IUDs, implants, and injections — declined by a third in the counties that had been serviced by a Planned Parenthood affiliate, while births by poor women on Medicaid increased 27% in those counties. The state partially restored funding in recent years, but many clinics never reopened.

To fill that gap, enter a network of volunteer groups, nearly all made up of women — young and old. With the politics of abortion and contraception converging, they know they are the next target. Many of the people seeking to ban abortion entirely in Texas also want to ban emergency contraception. They contend that life begins at fertilization and that any medication that interrupts that process violates their religious beliefs.

Religious activists in Texas have been out front in this effort, harnessing the state and local governments in their mission. Texas is the only state that does not pay for any form of emergency contraception for low-income women and girls in its state family planning program. Local councils in at least 40 Texas towns have adopted an ordinance that declares them “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” The movement, which began in Waskom, Texas, along the Louisiana border, criminalizes abortion and bans emergency contraception.

Other states are making similar moves.

In Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi, and South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to dispense emergency contraception if it conflicts with their religious beliefs, and Arkansas and North Carolina exclude the medication from mandatory contraceptive coverage, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Alabama lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit the state health department from using state funds to pay for emergency contraception.

Many conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants contend that the pills — marketed under the brand names Plan B and Ella — and intrauterine devices are forms of abortion. But emergency contraception is entirely different from the medications prescribed to induce abortions.

Plan B is a hormonal medication that prevents pregnancy by delaying the release of an egg from the ovary or preventing fertilization. It does not harm an existing pregnancy. IUDs generally work by preventing sperm from reaching an egg, and some forms make the uterus lining inhospitable to attachment of a fertilized egg.

For Nimisha Srikanth, a public health major at Texas A&M in College Station, pushing back against that conservative tide has become an ethical crusade. “People have sex because they feel good, not because they want a kid,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table in her tidy off-campus apartment. “Taking that away from them is morally incorrect.”

A petite 21-year-old with hip-length black hair, Srikanth keeps boxes of donated Plan B, condoms, and pregnancy tests tucked under her bed. As president of Feminists for Reproductive Equity and Education, known as FREE Aggies, she operates an emergency contraception text hotline and delivers free pills to any A&M student who contacts her, usually meeting them at the student center and handing over a brown paper bag.

Since she began running FREE Aggies, she has rooted out spies from campus anti-abortion groups who crashed online meetings and switched to the private chat platform Discord. “If A&M requests our correspondence, Discord can’t give it to them,” she said.

The emergency contraception deliveries by volunteers with FREE Aggies and Jane’s Due Process are legal, but their clandestine nature fuels the stigma that young people caring for their sexual health is shameful, said Holly Musick, who attended Texas A&M in the late 1970s, a few years after abortion became legal nationwide.

“It was a much more liberal time,” she told Medulan when they met recently at the student center. “There was a Planned Parenthood on the north side of town, and students could walk to get birth control pills.”

Now, Musick, 64, volunteers for the Jane’s Due Process hotline, dropping off pills around town. The precariousness of women’s access to sexual health care scares her. She signed up for a delivery that had been requested during a narrow window of time at a specific place. “It got canceled right before I left my house, and I’m thinking, ‘This poor girl.’”

Medulan brims with anger. She was raised to think she could be anything in life but sees how abortion politics in Texas have circumscribed her world. Her boyfriend often accompanies her to make deliveries. He worries an anti-abortion radical will try to kill her. She’s been asked to leave the pills under a car, under a doormat, in a fake plant outside a house.

“It shouldn’t be shameful,” she said. “It shouldn’t be something you have to hide in a bush and make sure no one sees you grab this unmarked bag.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Warren introducing legislation to address civilian harm from military operations

BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 04/28/22 


Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is leading a new push to overhaul how the United States military investigates and mitigates civilian harm caused by its operations.

Warren plans to introduce two bills that would expand current civilian harm reporting and public transparency requirements, as well as moving investigations on civilian harm outside of the chain of command of the unit responsible for the strike.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are joining Warren in the Senate effort.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) will lead the effort in the House.

Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been outspoken about how military strikes harm civilians. She has said she plans to prioritize the issue for the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The issue of civilian harm from military operations was thrusted into the spotlight last year when a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 29, 2021 killed ten civilians.

The Pentagon initially said that it struck a vehicle in Kabul that posed an “urgent ISIS-K” threat, but it later admitted that the driver of the vehicle was a worker for a U.S.-based aid group.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in January ordered his agency to develop a “Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan” to improve how it prevents civilian deaths and responds to claims of civilians harmed by military operations.

Warren’s Department of Defense Civilian Harm Transparency Act aims to strengthen the annual reporting requirements that were first passed in the fiscal year 2018 NDAA. Under that legislation, the Pentagon is required to submit to Congress an annual report on the civilian casualties that occurred during the prior year.Pelosi after Zelensky meeting: ‘Do not be bullied by bullies’Ex-NATO commander: Loss of top Russian officers amid invasion unprecedented in modern history

The bill would specify that the report should include explanations on why the strike occurred and how the Pentagon determined whether its targets were civilians participating in hostilities, among other requirements. Crow will lead the introduction of this legislation in the House.

Warren also plans to reintroduce the Protection of Civilians in Military Operations Act with Khanna. The pair first introduced the legislation in 2020, and it would require that investigations into civilian harm be conducted outside of the immediate chain of command on the unit responsible for the attack.

The bill would also establish a Center of Excellence for The Protection of Civilians within the Office of the Secretary of Defense that would advise the federal government on mitigating civilian harm.

Navajo Nation hosts 'historic' meeting over uranium mines
Take uranium contamination off our lands, residents tell nuclear regulatory commissioners

NEW MEXICO IN DEPTH
APR 26, 2022

"Thank you, @NNPrezNez and Red Water Pond Road Community for hosting us at the Shade House to hear the painful stories of how uranium contamination from abandoned mines has harmed generations of Navajo. It is a shameful legacy of federal actions during the Cold War." (Jeff Baran via Twitter)

The gale-force winds that swept across New Mexico on Friday, driving fires and evacuations, gave Diné residents in a small western New Mexico community an opportunity to demonstrate first hand the danger they live with every day.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission members were in the Red Water Pond Road community, about 20 minutes northeast of Gallup, to hear local input on a controversial plan to clean up a nearby abandoned uranium mine.

It was the first visit anyone could recall by NRC commissioners to the Navajo Nation, where the agency regulates four uranium mills. Chairman Christopher Hanson called the visit historic, and the significance was visible with Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and other Navajo officials in attendance.

As commissioners listened to 20 or so people give testimony over several hours Friday afternoon, high winds battered the plastic sheeting hung on the sides of the Cha’a’oh, or shade house, making it hard for some in the audience of many dozens to hear all that was said

“This is like this everyday,” community member Annie Benally told commissioners, mentioning the dust being whipped around outside by the wind. “They say it’s clean, it’s ok. But we have more piles back there and you see it blowing this way.”

Benally was referring to piles of contaminated radioactive soil and debris at two adjacent abandoned uranium mines. One mine is near enough to the shade house that its gate is visible.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to move some of that waste to a mill site regulated by the NRC, where contaminated groundwater is still being cleaned up. To drive north of Church Rock to the Red Water Pond Road community is to appreciate how close that mill site is to the surrounding community. It sits one mile south of the shade house, on private land but right next to a highway driven every day by local residents.

Read the entire special report: ‘At the Crossroads’

Day 1
— ‘Stealth’ economy for tribes hides billions in rural jobs, growth and revenue
Day 2
— Tribes contemplate future beyond casinos
— Cleanup of abandoned uranium mines means jobs
— Sports team provides economic boost for OK tribe
Day 3
— Renewable energy: Jobs of the future
— ‘Reservation worthy’ cattle operation expands tribal enterprise
— Work Penalties: Why jobs can cost more than being unemployed
Day 4
— Boom or bust: Oil industry hits North Dakota
— Green energy’s hidden costs spark opposition+
— Working Together: Tribal partnerships bring regional jobs

After Friday afternoon’s listening session, the federal commissioners conducted a public meeting in Gallup in the evening where they heard from EPA officials. The NRC is expected to decide in June whether or not to permit the EPA to move the mine debris to the mill.

The swirling dust outside was a consistent theme during the Friday afternoon session as residents described a generational struggle with significant health risks from uranium contamination.

“I’m glad we don’t have air sampling going, because that might scare some people,” said Dariel Yazzie, head of the Navajo Nation EPA Superfund program.

Yazzie connected the swirling dust outside to historic uranium exposure experienced by residents. Prior to running water being made available to them, people used to haul water in open containers, he said.



“Guess what? You’re sitting there with a little bit of dust on you," he said. "Everything had dust on it. Where does that dust come from? Right behind us.”

Residents described growing up playing in contaminated landscapes, drinking water from mine sites, not told that it was dangerous. Commissioners heard about the worry parents feel about whether their children are safe playing outside. Others implored commissioners to help speed up the cleanup process, which has taken decades, as health impacts like cancer and lung disease, which have stretched across generations, continue.

“This is not right, it brings anger,” Benally said about decades of living with the contamination. “I’m 64 years old now, when they first came I was only 12. How long are we going to stay here, and plead and cry.”

She urged commissioners to save the dust on them so that when they’re back home they’ll remember.

The multiple hours of testimony concluded with remarks by Nez, who put a point on the message residents were sending: the mining waste should be moved completely outside of their community.

“This is what the Navajo people live with, just imagine 500 open uranium mines on a windy day,” Nez said. “The Navajo people in this area have lived with this for a very long time, so we plead with you, I plead with you, let’s get this waste, and get it way far away from the Navajo Nation.”

The EPA cleanup plan wouldn’t move the contamination far, though, just to the nearby mill site. At the public meeting Friday evening, NRC commissioner Jeff Baran asked San Francisco-based EPA Region 9 Superfund and Emergency Management Director Michael Montgomery whether there are other disposal locations outside Indian Country but still reasonably close.

Montgomery said current law only allows the EPA to go so far. It can’t site or create facilities for disposal, or ask a private party to do it either, he said. The agency is working to identify locations on federal land for other mine cleanups, Montgomery said, but for the Church Rock area there are no easy solutions for taking the waste out of Indian Country. Should the NRC not approve the current plan, the agency would be at an “impasse” that would take years to move beyond, he said.

Montgomery suggested that Navajo aspirations to remove all uranium mine waste from their land would be difficult to achieve by the EPA alone. “If the solution for all the mines is to take all the waste off of tribal land, it’s going to require a dialogue that’s possibly outside our authority,” he said.

Montgomery’s answers seemed to confound Baran. “Would EPA proceed with the mill site option if the community it is meant to benefit opposes it?” he asked.

“There are a lot of perspectives within the community,” Montgomery said. “You can’t always get everyone to agree.”

Nez challenged those remarks later in the meeting after Baran asked him if he wanted to respond to any of Montgomery’s comments.

“I’ve heard 100 percent of my Navajo relatives there say they didn’t want the waste. So I’m just wondering who are these individuals who can’t agree?” he asked.

Indigenous climate efforts vital to fight against environmental destruction

The Land Back movement has become a climate justice tool for activists.

ByKiara Alfonseca

28 April 2022, 

When the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, hundreds of thousands of acres of water were threatened.

The 1989 spill, considered one of the most devastating environmental disasters in U.S. history, destroyed the livelihood of local Indigenous fishermen, local food sources, as well as the natural habitats of local fish, whale and bird species.

"The thing about the oil spill that a lot of people don't realize is that was like climate change happening to us overnight," said Dune Lankard, the founder of the Native Conservancy. The organization was born out of the devastation that the spill caused to the local economy and ecosystem.

The group was created by Lankard to protect the region from further devastation by corporate development. He's just one of the many environmentalists who argue that Indigenous traditions and tools can turn the tide on climate injustice through the Land Back movement.

Indigenous people make up less than 5% of the world population, however, they have protected 80% of the Earth's biodiversity for centuries, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

However, climate change and environmental injustices continue to threaten vulnerable populations, including Indigenous tribes. To combat this looming threat, Lankard and his team have cultivated rich kelp mariculture farms, which Lankard calls the "waterkeepers" of the ocean.

Native Conservancy

Lankard and his team have cultivated rich kelp mariculture farms, which Lankard calls th...

He says kelp farming not only supplies a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but it has the ability to pull in and remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

According to a panel by the science research nonprofit Energy Futures Initiative, kelp farms can sequester up to nine billion metric tons of carbon per year, essentially reversion the effects of climate change.

It's become an exciting tool for climate activists and scientists alike in taking the fight against environmental destruction back into their own hands.

The more land and water Indigenous people can conserve and repair, the more they can implement climate-saving strategies such as kelp farming.

Native Conservancy

Kelp farming presents a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but...

"What people have to do is: they have to organize, we have to direct their energy, their time, money or love in whatever direction they may need to, in order to save the last of the wild places that are not only dear to them, but they need in order to survive," Lankard said.

What is the Land Back Movement?

The Land Back movement is a widespread, Indigenous-led effort to return land to Indigenous tribes to conserve, restore and revitalize important landscapes and biodiversity.

"We are calling for the return of land and putting it into indigenous land management or governance, so that we can really have indigenous-led conservation," Jade Begay, the climate justice campaign director at the Indigenous activist group NDN Collective, said.

99% of Indigenous lands have been taken from tribes over the development of modern-day America, according to 2021 findings in the Science Journal.

The research also found that the lands Indigenous people have been forcibly moved to are more likely to be at high risk to the ongoing effects of climate change.

The decentralized movement demands that tribes be able to manage environmental efforts on ancestral lands, efforts that can halt or reverse negative climate impacts.

Land Back has already begun to be successful. The government has begun to return and repatriate Native and Indigenous land to tribes.

The Rappahannock Tribe recently reacquired roughly 465 acres at Fones Cliffs in Virginia.

Native Conservancy

Dune Lankard, the founder of the Native Conservancy, runs a kelp farm. Kelp can seques...

Fones Cliffs is not only the ancestral land of the tribe, but also an important region for resident and migratory bald eagles and other birds. It's home to one of the largest nesting populations of bald eagles on the Atlantic coast.

Now that the land has been reacquired, they hope to create trails and a replica 16th-century village to educate visitors about Rappahannock history and conservation efforts, as well as train tribal youth in traditional river knowledge.

"We look at the Mother Earth as our mother, and what would you do to harm your mother?" said Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe.

"The work that I've done to get land back on the Rappahannock River is to teach the public how to think the way we think, how to utilize the incredible value systems that have kept our people sustaining on this land for 11,000 years."

The work of the Eyak people, the Rappahannock Tribe and more Indigenous groups seek to align with the goals of climate scientists as they continue the dire fight against a changing climate.

Climate fears grow

The most recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions will need to peak by 2025 at the latest, and steeply reduce thereafter, to prevent worsening impacts on the climate.

Right now, countries are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the conservative figure established by the Paris Agreement.

The report named a wide range of solutions to reduce global emissions, including reducing fossil fuel use; large-scale renewable energy resourcing; improving energy efficiency; and reducing methane and carbon emissions drastically.

Native Conservancy

Kelp farming presents a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but...

"If we wanted to really expedite and be efficient about decarbonization, honoring indigenous rights, honoring, calls to action for Land Back will really push us to meet those climate targets to meet that target of keeping temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees," Begay said.

Some of the efforts of the Land Back movement, which include water filtration, carbon sequestering and wildfire management can tap into the IPCC's recommendations.

"I love it when tribal values and traditions validate what the professional scientists have found," Richardson said. "It's important for the tribes to be in the care of and to be able to train and teach the public on how to really care for the land and all of our natural resources."

Much like the Eyak and Rappahannock Tribes, Indigenous groups across the country have already begun to do the work on the ground to save the planet -- one river, cliff, or forest at a time.

Land Back as a climate justice solution

The impacts of the oil spill into the Copper River have yet to be completely resolved more than 30 years later.

Lankard called the $2 billion cleanup effort by Exxon after the oil spill "a dog and pony show."

"Once the oil spill -- any oil spill -- hits the water, the war is over. You've lost. There's no way you can clean it up," said Lankard.

"The best thing you could possibly do is get environmental laws in place and preventive measures that will actually protect the environment," he said.

He says efforts like the Land Back movement can prevent such disasters. Following the spill, Alaskan Natives were able to take control of and preserve more than a million acres of wild salmon habitat along the Gulf of Alaska coastline.

In the meantime, kelp farming has helped bolster the local economy thwarted by the oil spill, as well as provided an environmental element.

Kelp farming is just one of many traditional practices used in environmental justice efforts, joining methods like oyster cultivation for natural water filtration or fire management methods of burning land to reduce grass fuel and limit wildfires.

"We want to figure out how we can be a part of this new emerging regenerative industry and we don't get owned by the corporations in this next 150 years," Lankard said.

"They're going to use all the fun words like conservation and restoration and mitigation and say that they're the ones that are helping save the ocean when they're the ones who got us into this mess in the first place," Lankard said.

The US Supreme Court Weighs Another Historic Shift on Tribal Sovereignty

The high court's ruling in a 2020 case upended Oklahoma's relationship with Indian country. Now, the justices are considering an even bigger step.

SCOTT J. FERRELL/GETTY IMAGES

Matt Ford/April 28, 2022
INDIAN COUNTRY

The Supreme Court often decides cases that affect everyday life for Americans. But few of its recent decisions have matched the real-world impact of McGirt v. Oklahoma, which recognized the continued existence of tribal reservations to the eastern half of the state after a century of abeyance; it was one of the most significant legal victories for Native Americans in recent memory. Now, the high court has another such matter to ponder: In its latest case on tribal sovereignty, the court may be poised to change who can prosecute crimes in Indian country through the entire United States.

Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta is a sequel of sorts to the court’s landmark ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma two years ago, as well as a wholly new dispute over the relationship between state and tribal sovereignty. In McGirt, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had never actually disestablished the reservations of Native American tribes in eastern Oklahoma in the years leading up to Oklahoma’s statehood. As a result, roughly half the state officially became Indian country once again. The 5-4 decision brought Justice Neil Gorsuch together with the court’s four liberals at the time.

Recognizing eastern Oklahoma as Indian country affected a wide range of legal questions. In McGirt, the question at hand was criminal jurisdiction. Jimcy McGirt, that case’s namesake, had been convicted by an Oklahoma state jury of committing serious sexual crimes. Both he and his victim were tribal members. Under federal law, certain major crimes committed by one tribal member against another tribal member in Indian country must be prosecuted by the federal government, not the states. McGirt received a new life sentence from a federal judge last year after the Justice Department took over his case.

Victor Castro-Huerta, the current case’s namesake, also found his own criminal case affected by the McGirt ruling. An Oklahoma state jury convicted him of child neglect for his maltreatment of his five-year-old stepdaugher, who is legally blind and has cerebral palsy. The Supreme Court decided McGirt while he was appealing his case on other grounds. After learning that Castro-Huerta’s stepdaughter was an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and that it had occurred in Indian country, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals vacated his conviction. Oklahoma unsuccessfully argued that it had concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute him, an argument it had explicitly disclaimed in the McGirt litigation, in addition to the federal jurisdiction. Castro-Huerta soon thereafter pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors for the same offense and received a seven-year prison sentence.

Top Oklahoma officials, including Governor Kevin Stitt, have argued that McGirt has upended the state’s criminal-justice system by throwing numerous state-court convictions and sentences into doubt. The state first asked Congress to intervene in its favor without success, then urged the Supreme Court to overturn McGirt. It would be virtually unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn one of its own decisions so soon after it was decided. Oklahoma officials have pointed to data that they believe would justify the court’s about-face: In their petition for review in Castro-Huerta, for example, the state claimed that the 2020 ruling that state prosecutors had lost jurisdiction over more than 18,000 prosecutions each year.

Those numbers, however, have come under scrutiny. Journalists Rebecca Nagle and Allison Herrera, writing earlier this month in The Atlantic, found a “gap” of only 1,000 prosecutions since the McGirt, which they said could be attributed to the pandemic’s general impact on arrests and prosecutions. In most other instances, federal and tribal prosecutors have brought new charges in their respective courts as those offenses shifted to their jurisdictions. Nagle and Herrera found only 33 instances where a state prisoner was released without further charges because of McGirt, a far lower number than state officials had hinted at in their public comments.

When it urged the justices to take up the Castro-Huerta case, Oklahoma also asked the Supreme Court to consider overturn McGirt. The justices declined to take up that question and instead stuck to the jurisdictional question. While McGirt focused on crimes in Indian country where both the offender and victim were tribal members, Castro-Huerta is about crimes in Indian country where the offender was non-Indian and the victim was a tribal member. (States have jurisdiction when both sides are non-Indian, even on tribal land.)

For the tribes and the Justice Department, the answer to this question is pretty straightforward: jurisdiction falls to the federal government under the federal General Crimes Act, which explicitly extends the prosecution of “general” federal crimes to Indian country. That law reflects a principle dating back to the Supreme Court’s 1832 ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, which stripped states of their jurisdiction over crimes involving tribal members in Indian country.

In everyday practice, criminal jurisdiction in Indian country is often the result of complex compromises struck between Congress, the states, and tribal governments over the past two centuries. In some states, the tribes allow state prosecutors to try cases on their lands rather than do it themselves. In others, the tribal governments exercise that power for most offenses and leave major crimes to the feds. “[Oklahoma] invites this Court to undo those choices, upend Congress’s scheme, and jettison an understanding settled for 75 years or more—all to create by judicial fiat sweeping criminal liability without precedent since the Founding,” Castro-Huerta told the justices in his brief for the court.

Oklahoma, for its part, cited two Supreme Court cases from 1882 and 1896 that suggested that the states could exercise criminal jurisdiction and argued that the federal government had not explicitly pre-empted it. “While the holdings in those cases were limited to crimes committed against non-Indians, their reasoning sweeps more broadly and supports the exercise of jurisdiction when the defendant is a non-Indian and the victim is an Indian,” the state claimed

The hiccup here is that the General Crimes Act appears to preempt state prosecution, stating that “the general laws of the United States as to the punishment of offenses committed in any place within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, except the District of Columbia, shall extend to the Indian country.” Oklahoma argued that when Congress said “sole and exclusive jurisdiction,” it actually just “identifies only the body of criminal law borrowed and applied to Indian country; it does not describe federal jurisdiction in Indian country itself.”

In Wednesday’s oral arguments, the justices who were members of the McGirt majority appeared unconvinced by Oklahoma’s claims, pointing to later rulings and long-established practice that belied the stance attributed to the two late-19th century cases. “This Court has indicated six times that you are wrong,” Justice Elena Kagan told Kannon Shanmugam, who argued on behalf of Oklahoma. “Congress has indicated that you are wrong given its consistent enactment of statutes that make no sense in light of your position, Public Law 280 and the state-specific ones. The executive branch has said that you are wrong in all but one decade. You know, you’re asking us to do a big lift on the basis of language that, as I say, seems to me more naturally read against you.”

Gorsuch, the author of McGirt, noted that state governments historically had a track record of “abusing Indian victims in their courts,” which shaped how the federal government structured the jurisdictional relationships. “George Washington wrote letters about this at the outset of the nation’s history,” he recounted. “In the 1920s, Oklahoma systematically used its state courts to deprive Indians of their property when oil was discovered on their lands. There’s a long history of this.” Gorsuch also noted that the treaties signed between the United States and the Oklahoma tribes had effectively promised them that they wouldn’t be placed under state jurisdiction because of the tragic history there.

The justices who dissented from McGirt, by comparison, appeared more sympathetic to Oklahoma’s stance. Justice Samuel Alito questioned Erwin Kneedler, who argued on behalf of the Justice Department in the tribes’ favor, why state and federal jurisdiction wouldn’t be more beneficial for crime victims than exclusive state jurisdiction. Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh also appeared to favor their interpretation of the laws and precedents.

Predicting outcomes from oral arguments is always tricky, and the remaining two justices did not help matters. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the only member who didn’t take part in McGirt, did not clearly tip her hand in her questions for the parties. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote a rare dissent in McGirt, implicitly chastised Oklahoma for invoking McGirt’s consequences so often in their arguments. “Really, at the end of the day, when you’re talking about McGirt, you’re really just waving a bloody shirt,” he told Shanmugam. “It doesn’t have any direct pertinence on the legal analysis here.” At the same time, some of his questions to Castro-Huerta’s lawyer appeared to suggest he might favor Oklahoma’s reading of the General Crimes Act.

In McGirt, the ruling’s impact was limited to Oklahoma and its unique relationship to Native American tribes. A victory for Oklahoma in Castro-Huerta, however, could have broader implications. By expanding state prosecutions on tribal lands, the court could upset the balances struck between Congress, the tribes, and the states for more than a century. In McGirt, it was the state of Oklahoma that wanted to maintain a long-standing status quo. In Castro-Huerta, it’s the tribes’ turn. When it comes to the court’s recent rulings on tribal sovereignty, the only constant thread might be change. A ruling is expected by the end of June.
In Wednesday's oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan did not mince words: “This Court has indicated six times that you are wrong,” she told the state of Oklahoma's attorney.

Matt Ford @fordm  is a staff writer at The New Republic.