Barotseland & Zambia Brace for War, Maori Cannibals, MILF Soldiers, Welsh & Galician Radicals, Lynyrd Skynyrd & the Confederate Flag, Tito Kayak, Johnnie Carson on Boko Haram, Richard Henry Bain on Montreal Separatism: The Week in Separatist News, 16-22 September 2012

Libosi Imwiko II, King of Barotseland, has a message for the Zambian government: “Bring it, motherfuckers.”

TOP STORY:
ZAMBIA ON BRINK OF CIVIL WAR AS BAROTSELAND GIVES DEADLINE;
THOUSANDS OF LOZI SIGNING UP TO DEFEND REGION;
PRESIDENT SATA SENDING IN TROOPS

Following the rounding up of anti-central-government activists in Zambia’s Western Province (as reported last week in this blog), Lozi (Barotse) leaders held what they called “dark corner” meetings on September 14th to discuss a 21-day ultimatum the organization Barotse National Youths has given Zambia’s president, Michael Sata, to completely withdraw from their province, which they call Barotseland.  One participant said afterward, “The people of Barotseland have resolved that they will take on the government of Zambia.  We have agreed to defend the people of Barotseland and ka-o-ngolo ka Nyambe the Litunga [king] and the entire Barotseland Royal Establishment cabinet.”  Meanwhile, Sata on September 17th dispatched at least five truckloads of troops to Mongu, the Western Province capital.  The youth organization’s spokesman, identified only as Liswaniso, said, “Now Mr. Sata wants to bomb us here. Let them come, and we are much ready because it’s better we die than suffering,” adding, in a reference to Sata’s ethnic origin among Zambia’s dominant Bemba ethnic group, “These Bembas and Nyanjas have made us suffer from being poor to poorer because they are greedy and jealous.”  Apparently over 3,000 Barotse have enlisted for battle.

THE REST OF AFRICA

Police Link Slitting of Kenyan Officer’s Throat to Mombasa Republicans.  In Kenya’s Coast province, police in Diani, a resort town near Mombasa, arrested nine suspects on September 14th in connection with the murder the day before of a police officer, whose throat was slit.  Authorities say that the suspects were found in possession of a Mombasa Republican Council (M.R.C.) flag, which would tie the death to the Muslim separatists who would like the province, including essentially all of Kenya’s coastline, to be its own country.  Then, on September 17th, police in Kwale arrested 18 young people after raiding what they claimed was an M.R.C.-linked oath-taking ceremony in the woods.  The M.R.C. denies any role in the killing.  Police this week were still searching for a “witch doctor” who presided over the ceremony.  The M.R.C. denies any connection to him or to those arrested.

The Mombasa Republican Council flag

Zanzibar Separatists Attack Civilians, Torch Buildings.  In Zanzibar, a formerly separate, predominantly-Muslim archipelago off the coast of Tanzania, an office building and a shop were set on fire by members of the separatist group Uamsho as they were on their way home from Friday evening prayers.  The militants, who were armed with traditional weapons, also attacked civilians.

The logo of Uamsho, Zanzibar’s Islamist separatist organization

Catholic Church Urges More Autonomy for Cabinda in Angola.  The Roman Catholic Church called on September 18th for more autonomy for Cabinda, an exclave of Angola which has its own independence movement.  The remarks were made by a Vatican spokesman, Manuel Imbamba, on Angola’s Catholic-run Radio Ecclesia.  “Dissatisfaction is growing,” Imbamba said, “in a form that no political party or politician should ignore.”

New Somali President Vows to Continue Talks with Somaliland Government.  President Hassan Sheikh Mahamoud, who took office last week to lead the new post-“transition” phase of the Federal Republic of Somalia’s emergence from chaos, said this week that he planned to continue the series of talks underway with the Republic of Somaliland, the northern third of the country which seceded from Somalia in 1991 but is not recognized by any other state.  He said that he wanted reunification but stressed that the way to achieve it was through “enticing” not “belittling” Somaliland.

Buhoodle Governor Resigns, Citing Tribal Rebellion against His Authority.  The recently appointed governor of the Buhoodle region, Harir Ahmed Gadweine, resigned this week, after only 49 days in office.  He blamed difficulties in “taming his tribesmen,” according to media in the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland, which administers the area.  Gadweine took office after this month’s peace deal between Somaliland and the rebel quasi-state—called alternately Khaatumo State or Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (S.S.C.) State—which had tried to establish itself in a region the world regards as part of Somalia but which is in reality ruled by Somaliland against competing claims by the self-governing Puntland State of Somalia.  But despite the peace agreement, strife has continued.  Gadweine also wondered aloud at a press conference, how, according to a news report, “these schemers would ever attain their never-ending quest to conquer Puntland, Ethiopia, and Somaliland.”  As if to prove his point, a mob in Las’anod, the S.S.C. region’s main town, on September 20th attacked with a hail of stones soldiers enforcing a gun ban.

Map of Somaliland, showing the location of Las’anod and Buhoodle in the Sool region.

6 Dead in Week of Boko Haram Violence.  Militants suspected of membership in the Islamist rebel group Boko Haram shot and killed the attorney general of Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria, in his home on September 17th, as well as the former prison commissioner for Bauchi State, just to the west.  The same day, authorities claimed to have killed two Boko Haram militants, including the group’s chief spokesman, Abu Qaqa.  On September 18th, in Owerri, the capital of Imo State, in the southern Niger Delta region, police acting on a tip regarding Boko Haram activity, stormed a public market and clashed with members of the Hausa, northern Nigeria’s main ethnic group, injuring several.  In Maiduguri, in Borno State, anti-terrorist forces killed two Boko Haram senior commanders on September 20th and arrested eight other Islamists. 

Boko Haram Chimes in on Protests over U.S. Anti-Muslim Video.  Meanwhile, on September 19th, a Boko Haram spokesman in Nigeria said the organization was joining the uprising against the United States and its interests throughout the Muslim world in the wake of a Coptic-produced American amateur video, Innocence of Muslims, parodying the Prophet Muhammad, made in 2011 but only recently distributed on YouTube.  “We will be firm in our belief,” the spokesman said, “that nobody can attack our faith and we hold the U.S. responsible for the film.”

U.S. Spokesman Defends Not Branding Boko Haram Foreign Terrorist Organization.  The United States’ assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Johnnie Carson—wait, really?? he uses the name Johnnie Carson? why not John Carson, or Jonathan? no middle initial? because when you’re trying to be taken seriously, you don’t want people to think of Ed McMahon and Carnac the Magnificent and Tiny Tim’s wedding when they hear your name—and spelling it -ie doesn’t really help at all—well, anyway, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, [rolls eyes] Johnnie Carson, explained on a visit to Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on September 20th the U.S. government policy of not classifying Boko Haram, northern Nigeria’s violent Islamist militia, a “foreign terrorist organization” (F.T.O.).  And now, in Carson’s own words on the subject at the press conference, heeeeeere’s Johnnie!: “We have not designated the entire organisation; we constantly keep that under review, but we have designated the three top leaders we believe to be out establishing broader terrorist networks.  They have a broader jihadist agenda that goes beyond simply discrediting the Nigerian government.  The issue of Boko Haram is not only of major concern to Nigeria, but to neighbouring countries.  Boko Haram, we believe, comprises several different kinds of groups.  We believe that the Boko Haram movement is trying to do everything in its power to show that the government is ineffective in the defence of its people and in the protection of government institutions.”  As he made the announcement, his co-host, just off-camera, clapped his hands heartily and laughed loudly.  Weird stuff.  Weird stuff.

Assistant secretary of state for African affairs Johnnie Carson
created a lot of suspense at this week’s press conference before revealing
why the U.S. is not designating Boko Haram a foreign terrorist organization.

BITS OF AFRICA THAT LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE

Moroccan Activists Claim to Retake 37-Acre Spanish Island near Gibraltar.  The Liberation Committee of Ceuta and Melilla, a group from Morocco which aims to retake Spain’s territorial possessions on the northwestern African mainland and just offshore, said September 16th that it had taken over a uninhabited island called Perejil, which is about 200 meters off the coast of the Moroccan side of the Straits of Gibraltar, and raised two Moroccan flags.  But Spain’s Civil Guard said its Maritime Service made a reconnaissance visit to the island and found nothing of the sort.  The island, which is called la Isla de Perejil (“Island of Parsley”) in Spanish but Tura (“Empty”) in Berber, is about 37 acres large and has belonged to the Kingdom of Spain since 1668.

EUROPE

Spain-Catalonia Talks Founder as King Juan Carlos Urges Unity.  The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy Brey, resigned himself on September 20th to failed talks with the separatist region of Catalonia’s head of state, President Artur Mas i Gavarró, who called it the loss of an “historic opportunity.”  At issue was tax distribution between federal and regional levels, on which their views seem to be irreconcilable.  Meanwhile, responding to last week’s millions-strong rallies in Madrid and Barcelona in support of independence for Catalonia (as reported in this blog), Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, on September 18th urged unity in the midst of Spain’s financial crisis.  “This is a decisive moment in which we can secure our ruin or our well-being,” said the king, in a statement on the royal website.  “The worst we can do is to divide forces, encourage disagreements, pursue illusions, deepen wounds.”

Spanish Police Arrest 4 Members of Galician Resistance Linked to Bombs.  The Kingdom of Spain’s ministry of the interior announced the arrest on September 15th and 16th of four who are members of a relatively new separatist group.  They were apprehended in Vigo, near the border with Portugal, in connection with bombs found in a car trunk.  They are believed to be members of the Galician Resistance, a group which was not known to police until November 2011.  Galicia, which includes Vigo, is an autonomous nationality within Spain where there is a movement for independence.

The location of Galicia within the Kingdom of Spain

Basque Militant Leader Otegi Apologizes to Victims in New Book.  The leader of Spain’s disarmed and mostly disbanded Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatusana, “Basque Homeland and Freedom”), Arnaldo Otegi, who is serving a six-year prison sentence, has apologized to victims of ETA violence over the years, estimated to number 800 over the past 40 years.  Otegi’s apology is in his new book, compiled from interviews, El tiempo de las luces (The Time of the Light), of which excerpts were published this week.  [Related article: “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” featuring a profile of the Basque warrior Idoia López Riaño, a.k.a. la Tigresa.]

Radical Socialist Scots Group Dropped from Official Rally after Unionist Criticism.  In a change of plans, a radical left-wing Scots movement will be barred from participating in a Scottish independence rally on the September 22-23 weekend in Edinburgh at which Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister and the head of the Scottish National Party (S.N.P.), is to speak.  The group, known as the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (S.R.S.M.), was dropped from the event after Better Together, a group which favors Scotland staying in the United Kingdom, distributed pamphlets criticizing the juxtaposition.  A 2010 YouTube video of the S.R.S.M. shows Scotsmen wiping their shoes on the Union Jack while a narrator explains, “We stand on the Union Jack because it’s a flag we despise, because it’s a bloody butcher’s apron that has been used to subjugate not only the Scottish people but peoples of all colours and creeds across the planet.  As Scots, we should say we want no more of this bloody Union.”

Party Leader Mocked for Taking Republican Oath while Queen Opens Welsh Assembly.  The leader of Plaid Cymru, Wales’s third-largest party and bearer of the banner of independence from the United Kingdom, is being criticized for a republican oath she took at a wine-bar in Cardiff in June of last year on the day Queen Elizabeth II opened the new session of the National Assembly for Wales, the country’s parliament.  The event, publicized this week on YouTube, shows the party leader, Leanne Wood, standing before the red, white, and green Welsh republican flag, saying, “We attest this flag is a symbol of Republican Wales.  We will fight for the truth against the world.  All nations are born of one people.  All laws are born of one justice.  All freedoms are born of one peace.  Is there peace?”  At which point, the audience chanted back, “Peace.”  The same meeting was also addressed by a radical violent separatist group, Balchder Cymru (“Pride of Wales”).  Plaid Cymru issued a statement dissociating itself from Balchder Cymru.  The original video has been taken down from YouTube.

Welsh republican radicals actually want to replace this, the bitchenest national flag in all Europe,
with a boring tricolor.  That tells you all you need to know about them.

Serbian Government Mulls National Referendum on Kosovo Question.  A newspaper in Serbia is citing unnamed government sources, as high as the office of the president, on the possibility of a national referendum on the question of whether Serbia should relinquish its claim on the de facto independent Republic of Kosovo as part of its efforts to eventually join the European Union (E.U.).  A similar referendum was held in April 1998, in which Serbs overwhelmingly agreed to reject all international attempts to mediate the dispute.

Belgrade War-Crimes Court Sentences 17 Kosovo Rebels for Torture, Execution.  Seventeen former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s so-called Gnjilane Group were sentenced by a national war-crimes court in Belgrade, Serbia, on September 19th to 5-15-year-long prison terms.  The defendants, members of the ethnic-Albanian rebel army that helped Kosovo secede from the Republic of Serbia, were found to have tortured at least 80 Serbs and other non-ethnic-Albanians to death between June and December 1999.  34 additional alleged victims of theirs are missing and unaccounted for, and 153 civilians were detained by them, tortured, then released.  (The following day, another court in Belgrade acquitted a 24-year-old Serb charged with torching the United States embassy in Belgrade in 2008, in anger over the diplomatic recognition of Kosovo.)

[For the latest news from the North Caucasus (including Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia), see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

BITS OF ASIA THAT LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE

[For the latest news from the South Caucasus, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

Tajik President Vows to Keep Order in Gorno-Badakhshan.  The president of the Republic of Tajikistan, Imomali Rakhmon, on September 19th visited the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (G.B.A.O.), a rebellious region that covers almost the entire eastern half of the country, for the first time since July’s brutal government crackdown in the wake of the beating death of a secret-police chief (as reported at the time in this blog).  Rakhmon, a Tajik, who has ruled Tajikistan with the backing of the Russian Federation almost since the fall of Communism, vowed to crack down on what he called criminal elements, a euphemism for insurgency by the oblast’s dominant Pamir ethnic group.  During the Tajikistani civil war of 1992-1997, Human Rights Watch (H.R.W.) documented ethnic cleansing and other atrocities against the Pamir minority.

[For more news from Turkey, including Turkish Kurdistan, see this week’s “Kurdistan Update.”]

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

[For more news from Syria, Iran, and Iraq, including the Kurdistan regions, see this week’s “Kurdistan Update.”]

Romney Caught on Camera Saying Palestinians Have “No Interest” in Peace.  The former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who is running for president of the United States on the Republican Party ticket, experienced a setback when a video was released this week in which the candidate privately tells supporters, among other embarrassingly candid things, that Palestinians “have no interest” in peace with Israel.  Romney said, in part, “You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem.”  He also called the two-state solution “the worst idea in the world.”  Romney has not yet attempted to defend his remarks on the issue.

Israeli Air Strike Kills 2 Militants in Gaza Strip; Mortars Fired into Israel Next Day.  Two militants in Rafah, in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip portion of the Palestinian Territories were killed on September 19th in an airstrike by the Israeli Security Agency (I.S.A., or Shin Bet), which said it did so to foil a planned terrorist attack.  One of the two men killed was on a wanted list, the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) said, but Palestinian authorities said the “martyrs” were simply border guards.  The next day, mortar shells were fired toward an I.D.F. patrol just over the border in southern Israel.  There were no injuries in that incident.  The shells landed and exploded on the Palestinian side of the fence.

Hamas Sentences 4 Gaza Militants for Murder of Italian Activist.  A Hamas court in the Gaza Strip portion of the Palestinian Territories on September 17th convicted four Palestinian men in the kidnapping and murder in Gaza last year of a pro-Palestinian activist from Italy.  Two of the defendants, both of them former employees of Hamas’s Gaza Strip ministry of the interior, received sentences of 35 years in prison with hard labor.  The two men linked less directly to the killing were given 10 and one year, respectively.  The Italian, Vittorio Arrigoni, who had been living in Gaza for three years, was abducted, then strangled to death in March 2011.  Videos of his beatings were later posted online.  Responsibility in the video was claimed by the group Monotheism and Holy War.

Palestinian graffiti honoring Vittorio Arrigoni

P.L.O. Cites 400 Palestinians Killed since Start of Syrian Civil War.  The head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s refugee office, Zakariya al-Agha, said September 20th that about 400 Palestinians had been killed to date in the civil war in Syria.  All, or nearly all, of the 400 were killed in the Yarmouk refugee camp, near the Syrian capital, Damascus.  About a half-million Palestinians live in refugee camps in Syria.  18 had been killed just the day before by Syrian government artillery fired at Yarmouk, and this week the government raided the camp and arrested 100 it accused of being anti-government militants.  Palestinians within and outside Syria are split on the issue of whom to support in the war.  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (P.F.L.P.–G.C.) supports the embattled Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and has been accused by the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) of trying to drag Syria’s Palestinians into the fighting.  Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria into Jordan complain that the P.A. is doing nothing to protect them.

Palestinian Hunger Striker to Be Freed Soon, Supporters Say.  Allies of a hunger-striking Palestinian dissident held in a prison in Israel said September 20th that he might be freed as early as September 23rd in exchange for halting his fat.  The prisoner, Zakarya Zubeidi, a former militant, theater director, and former resident of the notorious Jenin refugee camp, has been imprisoned since May and had been refusing food since September 9th and fluids since September 17th.

Zakarya Zubeidi, in happier times

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

1 Rebel Killed in Gun Battle in Kashmir.  One Kashmiri separatist guerilla was killed September 15th in the Baramullah district of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.  The death occurred as part of a larger gunfight between rebels and the government, which military sources say the rebels started.

Telangana Separatists in Andhra Pradesh Riot, Ransack Lawmaker’s Home, Torch Buses.  Those in Andhra Pradesh, in southeastern India, who would like the region of Telangana to form a separate state within India, marked Telangana Liberation Day on September 17th with rallies in Hyderabad in which police and university students faced off in the streets.  Later in the day, 24 or more members of the Telangana Advocates Joint Action Committee stormed the residence of a member of parliament for the ruling Indian National Congress party and ransacked the place, but only servants were home.  Two school buses were also set on fire.

ASIA—EAST ASIA

Rebels and Burmese Soldiers Battle in Eastern Kachin State.  Fighting raged on September 18th in eastern Kachin State between members of Burma’s military and the Kachin Independence Army (K.I.A.), with the army raining artillery shells on Kachin positions.  The battle continued through the night but had ended by dawn.  The K.I.A.’s political wing, the Kachin Independence Organization (K.I.O.), said that, as a result of the fighting, it was impossible for Kachin to participate in peace talks to be held in Naypyidaw.

American Kachin Skip Suu Kyi Award Ceremony, Angry over Civil War in Burma.  Activists from the Kachin ethnic minority in the United States boycotted the ceremony on September 19th honoring the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi with the Congressional Gold Medal.  The Kachin Alliance U.S.A., in a letter dated the previous day, notified the U.S. Congress and White House in an open letter that it would be “inappropriate for us to rejoice and celebrate” while the government in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) continues to make war against its Kachin citizens—a fact which Suu Kyi is considered by many to downplay in her attempt to end her country’s diplomatic isolation.

Aung San Suu Kyi receives the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington

Car Bomb in Southern Thailand’s Malay Region Kills 5, Injures 37.  Mere days after an historic cease-fire agreement between ethnically-Malay rebels and the Kingdom of Thailand’s military (reported on last week in this blog), a car-bomb on September 21st in the southern, predominantly-Muslim, Malay region that has been the center of the insurgency.  Four civilians and a paramilitary ranger were killed, and the 37 wounded included 25 civilians; 14 were in “serious condition.”

OCEANIA

Exiled Papuans in Britain Offer Bounty for Citizen’s Arrest of Indonesian President.  An exiled separatist group representing the peoples of West Papua province in Indonesia, but based in the United Kingdom, this week offered a £50,000 reward to anyone who places Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, under citizen’s arrest for “an ongoing genocide in West Papua where over 500,000 innocent people have been killed, including women and children.”  Yudhoyono will visit the U.K. from October 31st to November 2nd as part of celebrations marking Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee.  The organization, the Free West Papua Campaign, is able to offer the award because of a large donation it has received.

Philippines and Moro Rebels Nearing Deal on Autonomous Region.  The Republic of the Philippines announced September 17th that the government was “very close” to signing a deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), ending 14 years of negotiations and likely to include a “new political entity” to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), in the south of the country.  A spokesman said it may be renamed the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (B.J.E.) (though public-relations advisors may eventually recommend against having a “B.J. Entity” governed by something called the MILF).  However, Mohagher Iqbal, a MILF negotiator, did not predict an agreement, or an end to the Moro insurgency, for another three years.  To get regular updates on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, join the Facebook page “MILF Nation.”

A MILF soldier

Film Critics Sharpen Knives, Ready to Dig into New Māori Cannibalism Comedy.  In New Zealand, film critics and cinéastes are bracing themselves for controversy upon the release next month of the comedy film Fresh Meat, which depicts cannibalism by the indigenous Māori people in a light, um, vein.  In the plot, a gang of criminals takes a middle-class Māori family hostage, only to discover that they are cannibals.  The film stars Temuera Morrison, a Māori actor best known outside New Zealand for portraying Jango Fett in Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  In one of the film’s newly released trailers, Morrison utters the line, “We’re not Māori cannibals.  We’re just cannibals who happen to be Māori.”  (Watch a second trailer here.)  The Auckland University of Technology historian Paul Moon, who studies Māori history, predicts some controversy, adding, regarding the film, that Māori cannibalism “was a comparatively recent practice, so there may be a bit of”—wait for it—“rawness about that.”  Ouch.

Māori delicacy?  A scene from the upcoming comedy Fresh Meat

NORTH AMERICA

Grand Jury in Alabama Indicts “President” of Parallel U.S. Government for Tax Fraud.  In Montgomery, Alabama, a federal grand jury this week indicted a self-styled “president” of a radical-sovereigntist parallel government entity with tax-fraud charges that could net him 164 years in federal prison and nearly $2.5 million in fines.  The defendant, James Timothy “Tim” Turner, who calls himself “president” of the Republic for the united States of America (R.u.S.A.) (sic, including the lowercase u), is being charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, perjury, and other charges, some in connection with seminars he conducted training citizens in how to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.).  R.u.S.A. activists assert (as reported on detail earlier in this blog, regarding an Iowa politician who joined the movement) that around the time of Reconstruction the United States government became a corporate entity no longer tied to the original Constitution and that independent citizens have the right to set up parallel U.S. and state government structures in accordance with older ideals.

Maple-Leaf Flag Kerfuffle Rocks Quebec City as Separatist Premier Sworn In.  In Quebec City, Canada, Pauline Marois, head of the separatist Parti Québécois (P.Q.), took office as the 30th premier of Quebec on September 19th, and the first female one.  She heads a minority government but promises reforms to language policy and possible moves toward a referendum on independence from Canada.  Political observers in the media noted that the Canadian flag, which tends to adorn Quebec’s National Assembly (parliament) when Quebec nationalists are in power but not when they are the opposition, was absent during Marois’s swearing-in but later appeared alongside the Quebec flag as legislators from the P.Q.’s opponents took their oaths of office.

Shooter Arrested at P.Q. Victory Rally Wants Montreal to Split from Quebec.  In a radio interview on September 19th, Richard Henry Bain—the man charged with murder, attempted murder, and other charges for his shooting rampage at the September 4th Parti Québécois (P.Q.) election-victory rally—suggested that Montreal should be split from the rest of Quebec.  “My vision,” Bain said, “is that the island of Montreal separates to become its own province.”  In this, he raises a today mostly unpopular idea that gathered supporters in the early 1990s in the run-up to an (eventually narrowly failed) referendum on whether Quebec should secede from Canada.  According to the 2006 census, 13.2% of Montrealers, as against 7.7% in Quebec as a whole, call English their first language; plus, a large share of foreign immigrants to Quebec, who tend to concentrate in Montreal, speak English better than French.  Thousands of Montrealers live in neighborhoods that have been English-speaking as long as anyone can remember.  Bain did not discuss the shooting or his legal case in the half-hour-long interview.  Quebec’s new P.Q. minister for public security, Stéphane Bergeron, said he was investigating why Bain, currently under indictment, was allowed to give a phone interview from his jail cell at all.

The flag of Montreal, with a St. George’s cross subdividing Montreal’s four dominant ethnic groups:
French (fleur-de-lis), English (rose), Scots (thistle), and Irish (shamrock).
Some, like Pauline Marois and Richard Henry Bain, have a less inclusive vision for the city.

“Sweet Home Massachusetts”: Lynyrd Skynyrd Ditches Rebel Flag, Angers Fans.  In the United States, the last surviving original member of the quintessential Southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gary Rossington, told media this week that his band would no longer use the Confederate flag in its concerts.  Rossington explained, “Through the years, people like the K.K.K. and skinheads kinda kidnapped the Dixie or Southern flag from its tradition and the heritage of the soldiers, that’s what it was about.  We didn’t want that to go to our fans or show the image like we agreed with any of the race stuff or any of the bad things.”  What resulted was an tsunami of Southern outrage, including one online commenter who said, “Good luck with your next release, ‘Sweet Home Massachusetts.’  I am sure it will climb the charts with a bullet in Yankee-land.”  Another said, “This isn’t the real Lynyrd Skynyrd anyway.  They should have taken a name like Obama’s Politically-Correct Sell-Your-Soul Make-Believe Impostors or something.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd is in the market for a new backdrop.

Puerto Rican Kayaker D.C.-Bound, Raising Awareness of Political Prisoners.  A kayaker trying to raise awareness for a Puerto Rican political prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, arrived in St. Thomas, in the United States Virgin Islands, on September 14th, as part of his 1,400-mile paddling marathon, begun on June 21st, from Venezuela to Washington, D.C.  The activist, Tito Kayak, whose name at birth was Alberto de Jesus, discussed López—a 68-year-old member of the 1970s-era Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (the Armed Forces of National Puerto Rican Liberation, or F.A.L.N.) who is not due for parole until 2027—by acknowledging the F.A.L.N.’s violent tactics but adding, “But let’s get something clear.  The F.A.L.N. did not invade the U.S.  The U.S. invaded Puerto Rico.  Let’s make that the operating rule here.  ...  The U.S. invaded militarily and people have since been imprisoned and killed by the U.S.”  His aims include convincing President Barack Obama to pardon López—who turned down an offer of clemency from President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Tito Kayak, during an earlier stunt

[You can read more about these and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Catalonia, New Hampshire, Barotseland, Julian Assange’s Aboriginal Passport, Maori Wind Claims, Kosovo Moves Forward, Palestinian Statehood Application, Transitions in Horn of Africa: The Week in Separatist News, 9-15 September 2012

Photo of the week:  Thousands of Catalan thronged the streets of Madrid and Barcelona this week to push for independence from Spain, a nation devastated by Europe’s financial crisis.

TOP STORY:
HORN OF AFRICA IN TRANSITION:
ZENAWI’S DEATH RESHUFFLES ETHNIC DECK IN ETHIOPIA;
NEW PRESIDENT IN (WHAT’S LEFT OF) SOMALIA;
TENSIONS ALONG SOMALILAND–ETHIOPIA BORDER

Ethiopia and Ogaden Rebels Return to Negotiating Table.  The Ogaden National Liberation Front (O.N.L.F.), which controls much of the vast, desert border region between the Somali Republic and Ethiopia, announced September 8th that it recently began peace talks, in Kenya, with the Ethiopian government.  Addis Ababa also confirms the talks.  The Ogaden people are related linguistically and culturally to the Somali peoples.  It is not clear if the opportunity for détente was attributable to the death on August 20th of Ethiopia’s long-serving authoritarian prime minister, Meles Zenawi.

2 Swedish Journalists Imprisoned in Ethiopia for Ties to Ogaden Rebels Freed.  Two journalists from Sweden were pardoned and freed by the Ethiopian government on September 11th after being arrested in July 2011, then sentenced to 11 years in prison for crossing the Somalia–Ethiopia border illegally and supporting “separatist rebels.”  The two, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, a reporter and photographer respectively, were freed under an (Ethiopian) New Year’s Day amnesty signed by Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, shortly before his death on August 20th.  Charges against them included consorting with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (O.N.L.F.).

Somaliland Abuses of Oromo and Other Ethiopian Refugees Alleged, with 1 Dead.  The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (H.R.L.H.A.) this week issued an expression of concern and urge to action regarding Ethiopian refugees in the part of the Somali Republic which functions as an unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.  According to H.R.L.H.A., Ethiopians, most of whom are members of the Oromo nationality, were surrounded by Somaliland troops on an unspecified recent date in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital.  One refugee was shot in the leg and others beaten.  One Somaliland soldier was also killed in what seems to have been an all-out mêlée.  Some 56 refugees are, as of August 31st, reportedly still being imprisoned by authorities in Hargeisa.  The border between Ethiopia and Somaliland has been tense, with military build-ups on both sides (as reported in this blog), since the death on August 20th of Ethiopia’s long-serving authoritarian prime minister, Meles Zenawi.  There are also worries, especially among Oromos and others, that Ethiopia’s precarious ethno-political balance will be disrupted, since Zenawi was a member of a former Tigray separatist-army-turned-political-party that had become allied with the country’s traditionally dominant Amhara ethnic group.

Afar Militia Rampage in Somali Part of Ethiopia Kills 17; Injured Flee to Somaliland.  Elsewhere along the border between Somaliland and Ethiopia, a militia from Ethiopia’s Afar Regional State called the Liyuu Police—who were accused by Somaliland last month of conducting cross-border raids (as reported at the time in this blog)—conducted a violent rampage in the Ethiopian border town Harshin, which is in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, another regional state populated by Somali-speaking ethnic groups such as the Ogaden.  First the Liyuu Police killed four people in a violent crackdown and then, when they were chased out of the town by residents, they regrouped and re-entered the town September 11th with a column of armored vehicles, fired into crowds, and killed 13 more, mostly women and children.  28 people were injured.  The death toll may be higher: some of the at least 28 injured managed to flee across the border, where some were treated at a hospital in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital.  The town itself is deserted and may contain more bodies.  The central government in Addis Ababa has sent troops to Harshin to confront the Liyuu Police.  

Somaliland Congratulates Somalia’s New President, Won’t Retreat on Independence.  The president of the de facto independent but unrecognized Republic of Somaliland, Ahmed Mahmoud Silanyo, in a press release this week congratulated Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud on being unanimously appointed by parliament the new president of the Somalia, from which Somaliland seceded unilaterally in 1991.  Mohamoud inherits an office that is nominally in charge of the 44th-largest country in the world and the 19th-largest in Africa but in reality only administers the capital city, Mogadishu, and its outskirts.  Mohamoud’s accession ends the period of the Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), as the Somali Republic formally becomes the Federal Republic of Somalia.  Silanyo’s statement does not push the issue of independence, but mentions a “hope that the two neighbouring countries will partner in working for a better Horn of Africa.”

Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud

Somaliland Opposition Party Vows to Boycott November Elections.  The United People’s Democratic Party (UDUB), an opposition party in the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland, announced this week an intent to boycott the November 28th Somaliland local elections.  The party’s leader, Ali Mohamed Waran-Cadde, told a press conference that the boycott was in response to maneuvers against UDUB by the electoral commission, which last week voided his own candidacy in the election.  Somaliland’s former president, Dahir Rayale Kahin, has also written to the current president, Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo, asking him to postpone the election, citing similar irregularities.

2 Al-Shabaab Rebels Surrender to Authorities in Puntland.  In the Somali Republic’s fully self-governing Puntland State, two young rebels, aged 18 and 24, defected on September 6th from the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab militia based in the Galgala Mountains and turned themselves in to the Puntland government.  They had been with al-Shabaab in the mountains for 13 months.

Defectors from al-Shabaab

THE REST OF AFRICA

Talk of War in Barotseland Follows Rounding Up of Activists.  In Mongu, the capital of the Republic of Zambia’s Western Province, police have begun rounding up and interrogating members of the Lozi (Barotse) nationality which dominates western Zambia over an activist stunt on September 6th involving ripping up copies of a draft proposed national constitution seen as granting insufficient autonomy to Barotseland.  Nathaniel Mubukwanu, a member of parliament for Mongu, said that the stunt was criminal because the draft copies were government property.  Others have compared the acts to treason.  Fifteen people have been arrested, most of them reportedly minors.  This has prompted the Barotse litunga (king), Libosi Imwiko II, to declare that the Lozi people will do battle with the Zambian state if Zambia sends police and soldiers into Barotseland (though it of course already has, since it administers the area).  And the commander of the Barotseland Liberation Army (B.L.A.), Lt. James Mwiya, has ordered Lozi people in Western Province (formerly known as Barotseland Province) to wear red clothing to symbolize their readiness for coming bloodshed in the quest for independence.

King Libosi Imwiko II is ready for war.

Darfuri Rebels Claim Killing of 10 Sudanese Soldiers in South Kordofan.  In South Kordofan, a state that remained, mostly against its will, in the Republic of Sudan when the Republic of South Sudan seceded last summer, rebels from (north) Sudan’s southwestern Darfur region are said to be battling Sudanese government forces.  This bolsters suspicions by some that there are increasing links between Darfuri groups and rebels operating in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states under the banner of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement–North (S.P.L.M.–N), an offshoot of the S.P.L.M. at large, which became South Sudan’s military upon independence.  This week’s announcement, referring to 10 government soldiers killed, was made by the Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.), an anti-government (but itself not separatist) insurgent army from Darfur.  The Sudanese government denied any such battle had occurred.

7 Militants, 3 Christian Youths Killed in Northern Nigeria Boko Haram Violence.  Authorities in Nigeria claim seven Islamist rebels were killed in a gun battle that followed a suspected Boko Haram attack an army checkpoint in Maidiguri, capital of Borno State in far northeastern Nigeria, on September 7th.  Thirteen arrests were made, but there were no reported military casualties.  Boko Haram is also suspected in an attack the same day on the home of the mother-in-law of neighboring Yobe State.  Militants stormed into the residence, ordered the occupants out, and burned it down.  There were no reported injuries.  In Bauchi State in the north, three young Christian men were killed on September 10th by unidentified members of the Fulani ethnic group—a nationality which dominates Boko Haram—in a drive-by shooting, and on the night of September 11-12 authorities arrested 11 suspected Boko Haram members in Borno State and recovered a cache of weapons.  Nigeria’s Muslims also staged a demonstration in Jos, in anger over a low-budget American film parodying the Prophet Mohammed, similar to but milder than other demonstrations around the Muslim world.  The protesters, some of whom wore shirts with the words “To Hell with America, to Hell with Israel,” were dispersed with live assault-rifle fire by police.

Biafran Independence Activists Arraigned in Nigeria.  Five members of an outlawed Igbo separatist organization, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) were arraigned in Onitsha, in southeastern Nigeria, on September 7th on charges of belonging to an “unlawful society,” as well as other offenses such as the possession of Biafran flags.  The five include Chief Arinze Igbani, who was receiving medical treatment at a clinic when he was nabbed in the September 4th round-up (as reported on last week in this blog).

Mombasa Republican Council Accused of Inciting Tana River Violence in Kenya.  Villagers in the Tana River district of Kenya’s Coast Province are reportedly saying that “outsiders” with a political agenda are behind the latest wave of killings, ostensibly over grazing rights, between the Pokomo and Orma ethnic groups.  Dhadho Godhana, a member of parliament for Galole, at the mouth of the Tana, was charged with inciting violence on September 12th, then released, and he has lost his post as assistant minister for livestock for his presumed role in the conflict.  Over 100 people have been killed in the retaliatory raids between the two groups this month.  Some Orma also accuse the Mombasa Republican Council (M.R.C.)—based in the predominatly-Muslim city of Mombasa at the other end of Coast Province, which the M.R.C. wants to establish as a separate state—of being behind an attack on September 10th in which 38 were killed.  Some Pokomo, who are 90% evangelical Christian—are sympathetic to the M.R.C.

Spaniard Captured, Released by Ansar al-Dine in Northern Mali.  A citizen of Spain boating down the Niger River was abducted September 6th by Ansar al-Dine, one of the two al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militias that rule the northern two-thirds of the Republic of Mali as the Tuareg-dominated Independent State of Azawad, before releasing him the following day.  He was grabbed just outside the town Niafunké, in what the Malian government regards as the far south of its Timbuktu province.  From there he was brought south to the town of Mopti, capital of the multiethnic province of the same name, where Ansar al-Dine and other jihadists have recently extended their influence.  Elsewhere in Azawad, Nabil Sahrawi, an Algerian citizen and a senior military commander for the al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (A.Q.I.M.) who went by the nom de guerre Abu Olqoma, died in a car accident on September 9th in Gao.  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012), “Dream of a Tuareg State Fizzles: Is This the End of Azawad?” (July 2012), “Mali Becomes the 92nd Country to Formally Recognize Kosovo ... or Not” (Aug. 2012).]

Nabil Sahrawi

EUROPE

On Eve of Mass Independence Rally, Catalan Leader Gives Scots Separatists a Pep Talk.  On September 10th, on the eve of a major pro-independence rally in Madrid, Spain (September 11th marks a Catalan defeat at the hands of King Felipe V in 1714), the father of Catalonia’s separatist movement, Jordi Pujol, visited London this week and offered words of support to Scotland’s much younger independence movement.  He pointed out that successful independence movements often start out as a minority movement, giving the United States as an example, pointing out that when the American Revolution was begun, only a third of the population supported it.  That is about the same proportion of Scots today that favor independence from the United Kingdom.  But Pujol said that a successful secession relies on “not only the will of the population but also the skill of the leaders.”  Scotland is due to vote on separation from the U.K. in 2014.

Paying homage to Catalonia

Spaniards March to Protest Release of Dying Basque Prisoner.  In Spain’s Basque Country, about 100 members of the Victims of Terrorism Association marched to Zaballa prison in the town of Nanclares de la Oca on September 8th to protest an August 30th court ruling (reported on last week in this blog) ordering the release of a terminally ill convicted Basque terrorist.  The prisoner, Jesús María Uribetxebarria Bolinaga, is dying of cancer while he serves a prison term for kidnapping and murder and was the focus of a hunger strike (reported at the time in this blog) by hundreds of Basque prisoners in France and Spain last month.  He is a member of the disarmed and mostly disbanded rebel army ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatusana, “Basque Homeland and Freedom,”), which fought for an independent Basque state in north-central Spain and southwestern France.

The families of terrorism victims protest a Basque militant’s release

On National Day, Gibraltar’s Leader Says Rock “Will Never Be Spanish.”  The chief minister of Gibraltar, an overseas British territory whose status has been a thorn in the side of relations between the United Kingdom and Spain since the early 18th century, vowed on the occasion of its National Day on September 10th, “We will never concede one grain of sand, one breath of our air, or one drop of our waters.  Gibraltar will never be Spanish.”

Kosovo’s “Supervised Independence” Formally Ends, but NATO, E.U. Are Staying On.  On September 10th, the Republic of Kosovo—which is recognized by only just under half of the world’s sovereign states, and not at all by the Republic of Serbia, from which it seceded in 2008—ended its period of “supervised independence.”  This means that the International Civilian Office (I.C.O.), set up by the International Steering Group for Kosovo (I.S.G.)—a 25-member body consisting of the United States, the European Union (E.U.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia, and most E.U. member-states, plus Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, and Turkey—will disband.  The I.C.O. was empowered to step in and take over Kosovo’s governmental powers if human-rights abuses (against Serbs) or similar problems arose, but it never did.  NATO and the E.U.’s European Rule of Law Mission (Eulex) still maintain a presence in Kosovo.

Serbian Prosecutor Claims New Witness Can Testify to Kosovo War Organ-Harvesting.  In the Republic of Serbia, a public prosecutor said September 9th that he has detailed witness testimony of ethnically Albanian rebels harvesting organs from captured Serbs during the Kosovo War.  The harvesting allegedly occurred in northern Albania, during 1998 or 1999.  The general accusations are not new: in 2010 the Council of Europe reported on Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.) detention camps along the Albanian border and an organ-harvesting ring implicating the highest Kosovar and Albanian circles, all the way to Hashim Thaçi, the current prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo, a state Serbia and much of the world do not recognize.  The charges are being investigated by the European Union (E.U.) as well.  The Serbian prosecutor, Vladimir Vukčević, says the witness, a former K.L.A. member, is being kept under close guard.

Separatists Bomb of 7 Supermarkets in Corsica; None Injured.  Seven supermarkets were the targets of a wave of bombings on September 9th across Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea near Italy that has been administered for centuries by the French Republic.  There were no injuries and only minor damage to the buildings.  The Corsican National Liberation Front (F.N.L.C.), which seeks a separate Corsican state, claimed responsibility, saying it was a strike at “social and trade-union struggles of our people against the multiple outposts of French colonialism in Corsica.”

Corsica’s flag.  The original flag had the Moor blindfolded,
but Corsican separatists moved the bandana up a bit to symbolize liberation.

[For the latest news from the North Caucasus (including Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia), see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

BITS OF ASIA THAT LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE

[For the latest news from the South Caucasus, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

WikiLeaks Wires Tell of Possible of Karakalpak Separatist “Time Bomb” in Uzbekistan.  Diplomatic cables sent home in 2008 by the United States ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan and now released by WikiLeaks shed light this week on the separatist situation in the Republic of Karakalpakstan, an ethnically distinct autonomous region making up almost the entire western half of Uzbekistan, including its access to the Aral Sea.  Separatist momentum was weak, according to the cables, mostly because of emigration by the Karakalpak, who are a minority in their own republic, outnumbered by Kazakhs and Uzbeks.  Independence is being pushed by the Free Karakalpakstan National Revival Party, which accuses Uzbeks of genocide.  The Uzbek government was in 2008 denying that separatism was a problem, according to the then-ambassador, Richard Norlan, but other experts called the Karakalpak situation a “time bomb.”  Karakalpakstan has its own parliament and constitution and considers itself a sovereign state, according to the cables.

[For the latest news from Turkey, including Turkish Kurdistan, see this week’s “Kurdistan and Syria Update.”]

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

[For more news from Syria and Iraq, including the Kurdistan regions, see this week’s “Kurdistan and Syria Update.”]

Palestine to Apply for U.N. General Assembly Seat Again This Month.  The president of the Palestinian National Authority (P.N.A.), Mahmoud Abbas, in a press conference in Ramallah, the Palestinian capital, on September 8th, announced that this month the State of Palestine would again apply for admission to the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly as a member state.  The Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) has had U.N. “observer” status since 1998.  Palestine is diplomatically recognized by most of the world (133 sovereign out of, depending on how you count them, 193 sovereign states), and is treated as a member state by U.N. institutions such as Unesco, but it is effectively blocked from a General Assembly seat by veto powers wielded on the U.N. Security Council by Israel’s only ally, the United States.  The U.S. scotched a previous Palestinian application last year.  General Assembly membership would be consequential because it would make Israel’s brutal occupation and blockade of Palestine an unambiguous act of aggression by one state against another.

Basra Pushes for Unified Autonomous Southern Region in Iraq.  As the northern autonomous Kurdistan region solidifies its quasi-separate status and fighting between Shiite and Sunni Arabs reaches newer heights throughout Iraq, centrifugal forces have emerged in the far south as well.  This week Sabah al-Bazouni, who heads the Basra Provincial Council, in Iraq’s far south, says that the city of Basra, now on track to being declared Iraq’s “economic capital,” wants to form a unified Southern Region, with an autonomous status similar to Kurdistan’s, formed out of several provinces and with Basra, Iraq’s only port, positioned at the country’s tiny wedge of coastline, as its capital.  Southern Iraq is where most of Iraq’s Shiites are concentrated.

Map showing the proposed unified southern province for Iraq

Former Vice President Will Return to Yemen from Exile to Aid Southern Movement.  The former vice-president of the Republic of Yemen, Ali Salim al-Beidh, whose withdrawal from the coalition government in 1993 sparked the 1994 civil war over southern secession, said September 13th that he plans to return to Yemen to aid the Southern Movement in its quest for independence.  He has been living in exile since 1994, when he fled Aden, the former capital of South Yemen, as federal troops seized it.  He went first to Oman, but now lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Ali Salim al-Beidh

South Yemeni Separatist Leader Survives Car-Bombing on Day of Rally.  Thousands of supporters of independence for South Yemen, which was separate from Yemen until unification 1990, gathered at a stadium in the city of Daleh on September 10th.  Honoring the dead in the recent independence struggle, the crowds chanted “No unity—no federation—no colonialism!”  Meanwhile, the same day, the separatist leader Mohammed Ali Ahmed, who served as “interior minister” for South Yemen in a failed secession bid in 1994, survived an assassination attempt when a bomb planted in his car blew up while he was at a meeting in a nearby hotel in Hadhramaut province, in the eastern part of the former South Yemen.  Ahmed returned from political exile in March.

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

Set Back by Vote, Tamil Party May Yet Form Coalition Government in 1 Province.  Overall, Sri Lanka’s Tamil party came in third in this week’s provincial elections, but in one province may be able to hobble together a coalition.  The nation’s ruling party, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (U.P.F.A.), this week narrowly won, with 51.05% of votes, three out of three provincial council elections held September 8th.  At stake was the leadership in the Tamil-dominated provinces of North Central and Eastern and the south-central Sabaragamuwa province.  The United National Party (U.N.P.) came in second, with 27.67%, while the Tamil National Alliance (T.N.A.), which has pushed the Tamil-autonomy agenda since the end of the Tamil–Sinhalese civil war in 2009, trailed with only 9.63%.  However, in Eastern Province, the U.P.F.A.’s plurality was so narrow that the T.N.A. said September 9th it was working with the U.N.P. and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (S.L.M.C.) about forming a coalition provincial government.

Sri Lanka’s provinces

U.N. Team Arrives in Pakistan to Investigate Balochistan “Disappearances.”  A United Nations (U.N.) fact-finding team that focuses on “disappearances” arrived in Pakistan this week for a 10-day investigation of allegations that the government is abducting and disposing of troublemakers, especially in the separatist province of Balochistan.  The group, the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, arrived September 9th at the invitation of the Pakistani government.  It is headed by Olivier de Frouville, of France.

Parties in Pakistan Pick Sides over Sindhi Separatists’ General Strike.  In Karachi, the nationalist, traditionalist political party led by Pakistan’s former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (P.M.L.–N), threw its support behind separatists in Sindh state who are calling a general strike September 13th to protest a new local-government system in the state.  In reply, Altaf Hussain, the chief of Sindh’s ruling party, the centrist, secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (M.Q.M.), on September 8th called the P.M.L.–N “enemies of democracy” and “hypocrites,” adding that the party “is conspiring to break up the country, but this conspiracy will never be successful as long as the M.Q.M. is here.”

Village Chief, Policeman Killed, Soldier Hurt in Kashmir Violence.  In Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state, one Indian special-forces policeman was killed and a soldier was wounded by Kashmiri separatists in the town of Sopore on September 8th.  The rebel group Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed responsibility.  A manhunt was on for the perpetrators.  Then, on September 10th, a village chief in Kashmir’s Baramulla district was shot and killed by separatists, according to police.

Soldier Killed, 12 Wounded by Separatist Bombs in India’s Manipur State.  In Imphal, capital of the state of Manipur, in India’s ethnically diverse far northeast, a soldier and a civilian were hurt by a bomb planted by the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.)—which shares the name of the People’s Republic of China’s military but is in fact the armed wing of Manipur’s separatist Revolutionary People’s Front (R.P.F.).  The following day, also in Manipur, an Indian soldier was killed and 10 were wounded on September 9th by an improvised explosive device.  The P.L.A. or another rebel outfit, the United National Liberation Front (U.N.L.F.), is suspected in that incident.

ASIA—EAST ASIA

R.K.K. Leader in Southern Thailand Promises General an End to Insurgency.  A Thai military commander met with nearly 100 ethnic-Malay rebels from the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (R.K.K.) militia and their leader in Narathiwat province on September 11th and secured a promise to cease their insurgency in the predominantly-Muslim southern provinces of the predominantly-Buddhist Kingdom of Thailand.  The commander, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, hailed it as an historic step.  The separatist leader, a wanted insurgent named Wae-Ali Copter Waji (nom de guerre: Jeh Ali), turned himself in along with 90 rebels, but it was not clear if this was a formal surrender, let alone how much of the insurgency he actually commands.  The general added, “The talk had been prepared for a period of time but we could not reveal it to the public.  The coordination was done through their families and society.  The Army has always opened doors for them.”

General Chan-ocha and Jeh Ali bury the hatchet

Hong Kong Government Backtracks on Pro-Beijing School Curriculum.  The Beijing-leaning government of the People’s Republic of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region backtracked on September 8th from a controversial school curriculum which had sent thousands of protesters into the streets (reported on last week in this blog) to decry “brainwashing.”  The curriculum will now no longer be mandatory.  The curriculum touted single-party authoritarian rule as enlightened, as opposed to the decadent democracy and freedom characteristic of most of the rest of the world—and, incidentally, of Hong Kong, whose Western-style political system was guaranteed in the 1997 agreement that ceded the territory from the United Kingdom to the P.R.C.  The sudden decision is seen as an attempt to, as one political scientist put it, “relieve the pressure on the pro-establishment and the pro-Beijing candidates” in the elections for Hong Kong’s semi-elected, semi-appointed legislature the following day.

Indonesian Confesses to Terror Plot against Buddhists, Angry over Rohingya Issue.  A citizen of Indonesia surrendered to authorities in Jakarta on September 9th and confessed to plotting a suicide-bomb attack on Buddhists in the city, in protest over the treatment of the predominantly-Muslim Rohingya minority in Burma by that country’s Buddhist-majority government.  Police were led to the man, Muhammad Toriq, by smoke emanating from his apartment.  A subsequent raid yielded a cache of explosive supplies.

Civil War in Burma’s Kachin State Spreads to South.  Fighting in Burma’s Kachin State raged on September 10th along a remote rail line, according to the Kachin Independence Organization (K.I.O.), part of a cycle of ongoing violence.  This follows the destruction of a railway bridge by Kachin insurgents the week before and affirms the spread of violence between the government and rebels into the southern part of the state.  Meanwhile, in eastern Kachin State, Kachin Independence Army (K.I.A.) forces reportedly killed 26 government soldiers in two early-morning attacks on September 12th.  There were no K.I.A. casualties.

OCEANIA

New Zealand Māori Activists Plan to File Claim to Indigenous Ownership of the Wind.  It sounds like poetry, but it is intended to be serious.  An elder from the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand, David Rankin, plans to bring a claim before the Waitangi Tribunal—a sort of supreme court which makes non-binding interpretations of the country’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi—to file a claim to New Zealand’s winds.  This will mean that Māori would share automatically in any energy revenue from wind farms and would have a say in where wind turbines can be built.  Traditionally, according to Rankin, the wind was a deity in Māori culture, and the settler government has no right to use without consent from Māori people.  Given how coldly New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key, has greeted Māori claims for marine tenure, i.e. rights to energy from water resources (as reported on in this blog), air tenure is probably a non-starter.  As Key told a reporter who asked the question, “My view is pretty clear: no one owns water, no one owns wind, no one owns sunlight, no one owns the sea.  I could give you quite a long list if you like.”

Julian Assange to Be Awarded Australian Aboriginal “Passport” in Ceremony.  According to a September 9th press release by Australia’s Indigenous Social Justice Association, a planned September 15th ceremony in Sydney, New South Wales, to award over 200 “Aboriginal Land Passports” (reported on earlier in this blog) will now honor a celebrity recipient: Julian Assange, the embattled and wanted founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.  Assange’s father, John Shipton, will accept the passport on his behalf, since Assange is for the time being wanted on criminal charges and a virtual prisoner inside Ecuador’s embassy in London.  The point of the ceremony is to remind the public that Australia is aboriginal land, amid a series of controversies over the treatment of asylum-seekers by the Australian government.  But the I.S.J.A. announced on September 14th that several Aboriginal nations were seriously considering giving Assange “refuge and sanctuary.”

John Shipton with his son Julian Assange’s Aboriginal passport

Charles Pidjot, New Caledonian Separatist Leader, Dies at 50.  Anti-colonialists in Melanesia this week mourned the death this week of Charles “Charly” Pidjot, founder of the Caledonian Union, the oldest political party advocating independence of New Caledonia from the French Republic.  He was 50 years old and died on Tanna Island in the nearby Republic of Vanuatu “after complications from a traditional operation.”  Tribal healers were attempting to relieve him of back pain resulting from a car accident, but complications arose because, according to the director of the hospital where he was eventually taken, the healers did not know their patient was diabetic.

Charles Pidjot

NORTH AMERICA

Canada Government Keeps Wary Eye on Possible Changes to Quebec Language Policy.  In Canada, the federal Commissioner of Official Languages, Geoff Fraser, put the incoming Parti Québécois (P.Q.) minority government in Quebec on notice September 7th that he will be watching closely to ensure that toughening of the province’s language laws, as promised during the campaign of the new premier, Pauline Marois, do not run afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  A Quebecker himself, Fraser said, “The existing Charter of the French Language in Quebec has been tested by the courts and the current version is Charter-proof.  ...  I’ll be watching it to see: are they changing it in ways that might change that?”  Marois, who calls the decline of French in urban Quebec “at the heart of our concerns,” made campaign promises (as reported in this blog at the time) to expand the types of firms that must conduct all business in French and to require immigrants to receive higher education in French.  [Related article: “Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (Nov. 2012).]

Group Sex, Boozing, Born-Again Christianity Figure in Portraits of Quebec Gunman.  More details emerged this week about Richard Henry Bain, the 61-year-old (some sources say 62) man who disrupted the separatist Parti Québécois’s election victory rally September 4th (as reported in this blog last week) with a fatal shooting that authorities are treating as a possible assassination attempt on the incoming provincial premier, Pauline Marois.  A couple from London, Ontario, who had recently hired him as a fishing guide, described him as obsessed with Quebec politics and that he had claimed to have written Jean Charest, the premier, to press him on the issue of granting land rights to owners of rural cottages such as himself.  The wife in the couple, Anthea Rowe, said, “We were complaining to people after we got back, like, ‘Oh, this guide who was supposed to take us fishing just spent the entire time talking about Quebec politics.’  It just seemed inappropriate for someone who was running a business.  We got sick of it.”  They say he also bragged about heavy drinking, three-way sex on the eve of an iron-man race, and the acceptance of Jesus Christ into his heart 18 months earlier, which he said made him unafraid to die.  Bain is now charged with first-degree murder, arson, and 14 other offenses.

Richard Henry Bain

Tea-Partiers Found New Hampshire Separatist Party.  At a meeting in Keene, New Hampshire, by-laws and a five-plank platform were adopted for a new political party called the New Hampshire Liberty Party, which advocates secession from the United States, as well as all individuals’ “right to declare themselves independent from any government.”  It also advocates non-violence and the release of prisoners convicted only of victimless, non-violent crimes such as drug possession or prostitution.  The co-chairs of the party are Ian Freeman, co-host of the radio show Free Talk Live; Conan Salada, a television producer; and Darryl W. Perry, former chair of the Boston Tea Party National Committee.

New Hampshire’s spectacularly lame flag (just the state seal on a blue background, like so many lame state flags), which one hopes would be dispensed with if New Hampshire became independent.

North Carolina G.O.P. Lawmaker Appears on White-Supremacist Radio Show.  Rep. Walter Jones, who represents most of coastal North Carolina in the United States House of Representatives for the (you’ll never guess) Republican Party, appeared on a notorious white-supremacist radio show on September 8th to tout his newly proposed legislation for the impeachment of President Barack Obama.  Though he mainly talked about health-care and foreign policy, the show, Political Cesspool, broadcast from Memphis, Tennessee, has been cited as hate speech by groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.) and the Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L.).  Its co-host, James Edwards, has called African-Americans “subhuman ... heathen savages” and insisted that slavery was “the greatest thing that ever happened” to them.  The show’s mission statement calls the show “pro-White” and supports raising “the White birthrate” in order to “grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”  It also comes out in support of Southern secession.  Jones is also famous for having, in 2003, pushed the effort to rename French fries “freedom fries” as a response to the French Republic’s opposition to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, but he later split with much of his party by becoming an isolationist in the libertarian mold, opposed to foreign adventurism, and a supporter of Ron Paul.

A book by the neo-Nazi talk-show host James Edwards

PRACTICALLY BLOODY ANTARCTICA

Fewer than One-Third of Falklanders Call Themselves “British.”  New census results for the Falkland Islands reveal that fewer than a third of Falklanders consider themselves British.  59% reported their nationality as “Falkland Islander.”  The 2,563 Falklanders—only 1,973 of whom are “status holders,” i.e. Falklands citizens—are overwhelmingly British in ancestry and are nearly unanimous in their desire to remain an overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the face of aggressive territorial claims by the Argentine Republic.  The territory has also experienced zero population growth since the last census, in 2006.

SPORT

Mo Farah Was a Top Target of Foiled London Olympics Terror Plots.  British media revealed this week that, during this year’s Summer Olympics in London, the United Kingdom’s intelligence agencies foiled up to 30 terrorist plots, arresting suspects throughout Europe and the Middle East.  Near the top of the target list was Mohamed “Mo” Farah, the double-gold-medal-winning runner, who was born in the Somali Republic and raised partly in the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.  Apparently some Somali terrorists associated with al-Qaeda were angry that Farah was playing for Team Great Britain.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]