A call to action to defy Internet shutdowns and suppression of online political opinion on West Papua

----- Forwarded message from GreenNet Support -----
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 18:07:56 +0000
Subject: A call to action to defy Internet shutdowns and suppression of
political opinion online

   
GreenNet

Dear Friends,   

*Thursday 5 December 2019*
We'd like to ask you to share this report
    
<http://www.papuansbehindbars.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PBB-Jan-2018-Oct-2019-Nov2019.EN_.web_.pdf> as far and wide as possible, here's why:

On Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd November 2019 GreenNet's website and most of our online services, including most of our customers' websites, went offline for several hours on two occasions. Our technicians became aware of the outage on Friday lunchtime and worked remotely and at our data centre until the small hours of Saturday morning to identify the fault and restore access to websites and emails.

By about 2AM on Saturday things were coming back online, but they went down again later that day. By then we had revised our initial diagnosis of a hardware problem, and as we checked though our logs and discussed with our upstream provider LDEX, we became aware that the outage was caused by a deliberate attack on our infrastructure. We tweeted updates as we worked to bring back our services at https://twitter.com/GreenNetISP


The attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) which basically hammers away at our servers with millions of requests until they run out of capacity and become unavailable. The volume of traffic at one point was equivalent to our Data Centre's entire traffic with Google, which gives an idea of the scale of the DDOS - the impact on the Data Centre was significant enough that they also had to block access or "blackhole" a large amount of traffic.

Once we had got everything back up the and dust had settled we were able to carry out some forensic examinations of our servers and logs. We were able to glean strong circumstantial evidence that we believe shows that the target was an organisation that was publishing new research that weekend https://www.papuansbehindbars.org.

*This is the report that the attack was aimed at blocking:
**http://www.papuansbehindbars.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PBB-Jan-2018-Oct-2019-Nov2019.EN_.web_.pdf**
Now we'd like you to please disseminate it as widely as possible! *

We've been in contact with TAPOL https://www.tapol.org and SAFEnet
https://safenet.or.id/2019/08/keepiton-in-papua-and-west-papua, who work closely with PBB and in the region to promote human rights and to highlight the plight of political prisoners, as well as to challenge internet shutdowns.

Please promote their important work! We will be tweeting about this over the next few days, please retweet, boost and amplify the message, and #keepiton <https://twitter.com/hashtag/keepiton>!

Thanks from all of us at GreenNet, we'd also really like to say a big thank you to our customers for all your patience and support during and after the attack.

GreenNet, The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA.
Tel (UK): 0330 355 4011 Tel (int'l): +44 (0)330 355 4011
Email: info@gn.apc.org <mailto:info@gn.apc.org>


----- End forwarded message -----

[Please note that ETAN is a supporter of Papuans Behind Bars (PBB). And as of the time we prepared to forward the message below, the PBB website was slow. If you cannot reach the PBB website, you can read the text of the PBB Jan-2018-Oct-2019-Nov2019 report here: https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/reg.westpapua/2019-11/msg00035.html - or download the PDF here: http://etan.org/etanpdf/PBB-Jan-2018-Oct-2019-Nov2019.EN_.web_.pdf --John for ETAN]

ETAN needs you!

Please donate

ETAN needs your support!

UPDATE: As of October 8, we have raised $5017 of our goal of $8500.

ETAN's ability to carry on our work - much less expand it - very much depends on support from people like you. Please donate today.

Contribute here and thank you for your support.

Read our full appeal here.

East Timor and Indonesia Action Network

______________

Picture: MKOTT - Movimentu Kontra Okupasaun Tasi Timor/Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea - thanks international solidarity activists for their support of their efforts to acheive a fair maritine boundary between Australia and Timor-Leste. Photo by Maubere Gusmao via Facebook.

See also

ETAN: Timor-Leste Honors President Bill Clinton: Setting the Record Straight

U.S. National Security Archives: U.S. sought to preserve close ties to Indonesian military as it terrorized East Timor in runup to 1999 independence referendum

Invitation to the public to Solidarity Conference and Exhibition about Maritime Boundaries - Dili

Invitation to the public to Solidarity Conference and Exhibition about Maritime Boundaries

2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the Popular Consultation (referendum), in which the people of Timor-Leste bravely voted to force the Indonesian military occupation to leave. At last, Timor-Leste achieved independence after a long struggle and much suffering.

Civil Society groups and the Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (MKOTT) will commemorate the Popular Consultation and celebrate the victory in the struggle for a maritime boundary.

There will be a Solidarity Conference on 28 August and a march on 29 August, with discussion of essential issues related to self-determination and social justice.

MKOTT is also holding an exhibition to celebrate the victory and reflect on the long struggle through which the people of Timor-Leste achieved a maritime boundary between Australia and Timor-Leste. We encourage everyone to participate in the conference and to visit MKOTT's exhibition at the HAK Association in Farol, Dili.

MKOTT is also selling T-shirts to express solidarity with our good friends Bernard Collaery and Witness K. You can buy them for $20, as a contribution to MKOTT which will help pay for the exposition and other work.

Thank you very much.

Tetun version here


__________________

Support justice and accountability for Timor-Leste. Please sign East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) petition today.

Sign ETAN's petition! #Justice4Timor

Sign ETAN's petition!

To the Governments of the United States, Australia, China, Great Britain, France, Indonesia, Japan, Portugal, and Russia: Support Justice for Timor-Leste 

We urge you to respond to and implement the recommendations of the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR), including the call for the establishment of an international tribunal to try those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the people of Timor-Leste during Indonesia’s invasion and occupation. 

#justiceforTimor #Justice4Timor

SIGN NOW: #MAKEWESTPAPUASAFE. Hold Australia Accountable

SIGN NOW: #MAKEWESTPAPUASAFE. HOLD THE AFP ACCOUNTABLE

We therefore ask the Australian Senate to call on the Government to:

• Condemn human rights violations everywhere, including in West Papua;
• Vigorously raise concerns about human rights violations committed in West Papua with the Indonesian Government;
• Take action at the United Nations to hold the Indonesian Government fully accountable for human rights violations committed by its security forces in West Papua;
• Ensure that Australian Government aid does not enable human rights violations anywhere, including in West Papua;
• Initiate an independent audit of the effectiveness and human rights risks associated with all programs involving Indonesian police and military receiving Australian Government funding.

Sign here: https://wagepeaceau-beyondwarau.nationbuilder.com/make_west_papua_safe_petition

New report from Allan Nairn on Prabowo's post-election plan to betray allies, democracy

New from Allan Nairn

Breaking News: Prabowo strategy session planned mass arrests of political opponents, Islamist allies; behind-the-scenes effort to please US includes Prabowo order to kill lawsuit v Freeport-McMoRan, pledge to "crush" FPI, HTI, PKS; SBY's Demokrats also targeted; plan to return Army to "New Order" role

Prabowo Subianto, a retired general now seeking the presidency of Indonesia, has made plans to stage mass arrests of political opponents and his current allies.
According to minutes of a strategy session he held with fellow generals and others last December, Prabowo — a longtime US protege who has been implicated in mass killing,abduction, and torture, has also made plans to restore Indonesia’s army to the role it played in the Suharto dictatorship.
 [For full scrollable text of Minutes see link, and bottom of this piece]
At the meeting, held last December 21 at a Prabowo home in Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta, he and his team made specific assignments for "putting on trial as many political opponents as possible," but also for "crippling" the Islamist groups that now propel his campaign, after he assumes the presidency.

Read the full article here:  https://www.allannairn.org/2019/04/breaking-news-prabowo-strategy-session.html