Philippine Authorities Violently Crackdown on "People"s State of the Nation March"

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Philippine Authorities Violently Crackdown on "People"s State of the Nation March"

Prostitution crackdown expands nationwide

The Ministry of Public Security on Sunday urged police nationwide to crack down on prostitution, gambling and drug crimes after the recent exposure of widespread prostitution in Dongguan, Guangdong province.

The ministry urged police to use Dongguan as a lesson and intensify their campaigns against prostitution, gambling and drugs to improve people’s sense of security and satisfaction.

“The ministry attaches great importance to the issue and will resolutely investigate, severely punish and firmly attack the organizers, operators and ‘protective umbrellas’ behind prostitution crimes,” Wen Guohui, a ministry press officer, said on Sunday.

The ministry’s statement followed a report by China Central Television on Feb 9 about prostitution in Dongguan. The report said local police turned a blind eye to the widespread prostitution.

The report triggered a massive crackdown in the city. More than 6,000 police officers swept through hundreds of hotels, saunas and karaoke bars in Dongguan on Feb 9, arresting at least 67 people, shuttering 12 venues and suspending two police chiefs.

The ministry, which sent a panel to Guangdong to supervise the raid, said it will investigate malfeasance and other illegal behavior of any officials involved and punish them no matter who they are.

On Friday, Yan Xiaokang, vice-mayor of Dongguan and head of the city’s public security bureau, was sacked for dereliction of duty.

On Sunday, Party leaders of four local townships in Dongguan — Humen, Houjie, Huangjiang, and Fenggang — also made open apologies. They admitted loopholes in the management and said they will learn from this lesson and fully perform their duties in fighting crimes.

Since the crackdown in Guangdong, police in many other provinces, including Jiangsu, Heilongjiang, Hunan and Shandong, have mounted large-scale campaigns against prostitution and the sex trade.

On Thursday night, 200 police in Nantong, Jiangsu province, raided local karaoke clubs and nightclubs, arresting 100 people suspected of providing sex services.

On the same night, 300 Leiyang police in Hunan province raided hotels, entertainment venues, saunas and websites in a crackdown on sex trade and gambling.

Leiyang police arrested 79 people suspected of their involvement in prostitution and gambling. Police also shut down 22 entertainment venues and seized and destroyed 25 gambling machines.

Earlier on Tuesday, authorities in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, dispatched 4,800 police officers to investigate 2,700 hotels, bathhouses and entertainment places in a similar crackdown.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

Prostitution crackdown expands nationwide

Hagel adds urgency to push for ethics crackdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — Concerned that ethical problems inside the military might run deeper than he realized, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered service leaders Wednesday to add urgency to their drive to ensure “moral character and moral courage” in a force emerging from more than a decade of war.

Almost a year into his tenure as Pentagon chief, Hagel had been worried by a string of ethics scandals that produced a wave of unwelcome publicity for the military. But in light of new disclosures this week, including the announcement of alleged cheating among senior sailors in the nuclear Navy, Hagel decided to push for a fuller accounting.

Last month the Air Force revealed it was investigating widespread cheating on proficiency tests among nuclear missile launch officers in Montana, and numerous senior officers in all branches of the armed forces have been caught in embarrassing episodes of personal misbehavior, inside and outside the nuclear force. The Air Force also is pursuing a drug use investigation, and a massive bribery case in California has ensnared six Navy officers so far.

At the same time, hundreds of soldiers and others are under criminal investigation in what the Army describes as a widespread scheme to take fraudulent payments and kickbacks from a National Guard recruiting program.

The steady drumbeat of one military ethics scandal after another has caused many to conclude that the misbehavior reflects more than routine lapses.

“He definitely sees this as a growing problem,” Hagel’s chief spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, told a Pentagon news conference Wednesday after Hagel met privately with the top uniformed and civilian officials of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

“And he’s concerned about the depth of it,” Kirby said. “I don’t think he could stand here and tell you that he has — that anybody has — the full grasp here, and that’s what worries (Hagel) is that maybe he doesn’t have the full grasp of the depth of the issue, and he wants to better understand it.”

Hagel’s predecessor, Leon Panetta, had launched an effort to crack down on ethics failures more than a year ago, and the matter has been a top priority for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, for even longer.

Kirby said Hagel has come to realize that he needs to investigate as well.

“We don’t fully know right now what we’re grappling with here and how deep and serious it is,” Kirby said. “And I think, you know, for a leader at his level with the responsibilities that he carries every day, not knowing something like that is something to be concerned about. And he wants to know more.”

Hagel believes that the vast majority of military members are “brave, upright and honest,” and he is encouraged by efforts already under way to curb misconduct, including sexual assaults, Kirby said.

But Hagel told the service leaders Wednesday that he “also believes there must be more urgency behind these efforts” and that all Pentagon leaders must “put renewed emphasis on developing moral character and moral courage in our force.”

Kirby was asked whether Hagel believes ethics lapses are a symptom of over-use of the military for the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“He believes that that is a factor that should be looked at,” the spokesman said.

A significant portion of the concern about military misbehavior is aimed at two segments of the nuclear force: the Air Force’s land-based nuclear missile corps, and the Navy’s training program for operators of nuclear reactors used as propulsion systems for submarines and aircraft carriers. Neither of those fields was directly involved in significant ways in either of the wars since 2001.

The Navy announced on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into cheating allegations against about 30 senior sailors representing about one-fifth of its instructors at a Charleston, S.C.,-based school for naval nuclear power reactor operators.

Unlike an Air Force cheating probe that has implicated nearly 100 officers responsible for land-based nuclear missiles that stand ready for short-notice launch, those implicated in the Navy investigation have no responsibility for nuclear weapons.

The Navy said its implicated sailors are accused of having cheated on written tests they must pass to be certified as instructors at the nuclear propulsion school. A number of them are alleged to have transmitted test information to other instructors from their home computers, which if verified would be a violation of restrictions on the use and transmission of classified information.

The matter is being probed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Separately, Kirby announced that the Pentagon has picked two retired officers to lead an independent review of personnel problems inside the Air Force and Navy nuclear forces. They are Larry Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff, and John Harvey, a retired Navy admiral and nuclear-trained surface warfare officer.

Associated Press

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Four more China activists on trial in gov"t crackdown

AFP
January 28, 2014, 12:10 am TWN

BEIJING–Four members of a Chinese rights movement went on trial Monday, a day after its founder was jailed in what has been seen as an escalating government crackdown on activists.

The proceedings bring the total number of New Citizens Movement members tried on charges of disrupting public order to 10, seven of them since last Wednesday in Beijing.

At least 20 members of the group, which is estimated to involve a few hundred people, have been detained over the past year.

At Monday’s trials three of the activists, Ding Jiaxi, Li Wei, and Zhang Baocheng dismissed their lawyers, the attorneys told AFP, in a move previous activists have used to delay proceedings for 15 days.

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Four more China activists on trial in gov"t crackdown

Egypt widens crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood

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Egypt widens crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood

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What’s News: The iPhone 5C and 5S hit stores in Asia and London. Thirteen injured in a late-night shooting on Chicago’s southwest side. China tightens its grip on social media controls, and cereal makers struggle as Americans go for low-carb breakfasts. Sara Murray reports. Photo: Getty Images

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UAE aids Egypt violent crackdown: Ex-PM

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has provided Egypt’s army with warfare and military equipment to be used against supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, a former top official says.

“The (interim) Interior Minister (General Mohamed Ibrahim) had asked me to mediate military support from UAE to the security forces,” Ahmad Shafiq, who served as the last prime minister under ex-Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, said earlier this week.

“I did and the UAE immediately sent arms and equipment to fight terrorism. The UAE has contracted more arms to support the Egyptian Interior Ministry,” he added.

Shafiq also said, “The minute they (UAE officials) felt that the Egyptian Interior Ministry was changing and might be in need of assistance, they called me to affirm they would make every assistance available.”

Shafiq also confirmed that Saudi Arabia assisted Egypt following the ouster of Morsi, the first democratically elected head of state in the July military coup d’état, saying, “Despite all Saudi assistance, the UAE has done more, even more things than people know.”

Meanwhile, on September 9, Shafiq said he would support Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — who ousted Morsi — if he runs for president in an election expected to be held in 2014.

On July 5, the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie said the move against Morsi was illegal and millions would remain on the streets until the reinstatement of the ousted president.

The army-appointed government has launched a bloody crackdown on Morsi supporters ever since his ouster and arrested more than 2,000 Brotherhood members, including Badie, who was detained on August 20.

About 1,000 people were killed in a week of clashes between Morsi supporters and security forces after police dispersed their protest camps in a fatal crackdown on August 14.

The massacre sparked international condemnation and prompted world bodies to call for an independent investigation into the violence.

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UAE aids Egypt violent crackdown: Ex-PM

Mursi backers call for marches to foil Egypt crackdown

1 of 4. A poster with a caricature depicting Egypt’s army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that reads ”Butcher worship”, is seen as Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi walk at Rabaa Adawiya Square, where they are camping, in Nasr City area, east of Cairo August 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

By Yasmine Saleh

CAIRO | Sun Aug 11, 2013 11:01pm EDT

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian police are expected to start taking action early on Monday against supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi who are gathered in crowded protest camps in Cairo, security and government sources said, a move which could trigger more bloodshed.

The sites are the main flashpoints in the confrontation between the army, which toppled Mursi last month, and supporters who demand his reinstatement.

Western and Arab mediators and some senior Egyptian government officials have been trying to persuade the army to avoid using force against the protesters, who at times can number as much as tens of thousands.

“State security troops will be deployed around the sit-ins by dawn as a start of procedures that will eventually lead to a dispersal,” a senior security source said on Sunday, adding that the first step will be to surround the camps.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who toppled Mursi, has come under pressure from hardline military officers to move against the protesters, security sources say.

Almost 300 people have been killed in political violence since the overthrow, including dozens of Mursi supporters shot dead by security forces in two incidents.

Any further bloodshed would almost certainly deepen Egypt’s political crisis and keep the government from dealing with vital issues such as the fragile economy.

Another security source said the decision to make a move on Monday, just after celebrations following the holy month of Ramadan, came after a meeting between the interior minister and his aides.

“The first step towards ending the sit-ins will start at dawn when protesters will be surrounded,” a government official said.

Mursi’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement on Sunday criticizing any plans by “coup makers” to interfere with their right to protest and calling on international rights groups to visit their camps to see how peaceful they were.

Egypt has been convulsed by political and economic turmoil since the 2011 uprising that ended 30 years of autocratic rule by the U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak.

It is now more polarized than any time for many years.

There is deepening alarm in the West over the course taken by the country of 84 million people, a pivotal nation between the Middle East and North Africa and recipient of $ 1.5 billion a year in mainly military aid from the United States.

FORTRESS-LIKE CAMPS

Mursi’s supporters, mainly from the Brotherhood, have turned the camps into something resembling fortresses. Sandbags and piles of big rocks have been set up all over.

Guards with sticks wear motorcycle helmets in anticipation of a raid that would require security forces to crack down in a heavily congested area that includes children.

Egyptian authorities have warned the protesters to leave the camps or face the consequences. Some Mursi supporters are growing increasingly nervous, fearful that police could storm their gathering at any minute.

“They cut off the electricity,” said one protester by telephone. The government later issued a statement saying the blackout at the largest camp in northeast Cairo was unintentional.

Most Mursi supporters remain defiant, and spend their time at the camps reading the Koran and listening to Brotherhood leaders and clerics deliver lectures in the stifling heat.

Responding to the news that police were expected to storm the gatherings early Monday, protester Mustafa Al-Khateeb said: “We are staying and are psychologically prepared for anything and have secured the protests areas and their entrances and exists.”

Mursi took power as Egypt’s first democratically-elected president in June 2012. But concerns he was trying to set up an Islamist autocracy and his failure to ease economic hardships led to mass street demonstrations which triggered the army move.

Top leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood have been sentenced to jail on charges of inciting violence. Mursi is being held in an unknown location.

The camps are widely seen as the last card in the Muslim Brotherhood’s hands now that the leadership has been weakened and become highly unpopular on the streets.

The Brotherhood emerged from decades in the shadows to win every election since Mubarak’s fall but then struggled to tackle Egypt’s growing economic and social woes.

Thousands of supporters marched from their camp near Cairo University through the centre of the city to the other camp at Rabaa al-Adawiya on Sunday.

“Yes, yes for our president Mursi,” they chanted, waving the Egyptian flag and posters of their deposed leader.

(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Mursi backers call for marches to foil Egypt crackdown

Twitter vows crackdown on twits

“It comes down to this: people deserve to feel safe on Twitter.” Source: The Australian

TWITTER says its time people stopped using it to abuse others and has promised to crack down on social network nasties.

The company has updated its rules to make it clear that abuse will not be tolerated, and has put extra staff in place to handle reports of abuse, it said today.

The move comes as police in England revealed they are investigating allegations by eight people of abuse on the microblogging site.

Scotland Yard said its e-crime unit was looking into the claims.

Twitter found itself in the spotlight after three female journalists said they had been the subject of bomb threats on the site and two had received threats of rape.

The revelations sparked a backlash online, with an online petition calling for Twitter to add a “report abuse” button to tweets attracting more than 120,000 signatures.

In a message posted on its blog, Twitter’s senior director for trust and safety, Del Harvey, and UK general manager Tony Wang said it has updated its rules in light of feedback from customers.

“It comes down to this: people deserve to feel safe on Twitter,” they said.

The company has updated its rules, clarifying that it will not tolerate abusive behaviour, they said, adding that an “in-tweet” report button has been added so people can report abusive behaviour directly from a tweet.

“We want people to feel safe on Twitter, and we want the Twitter rules to send a clear message to anyone who thought that such behaviour was, or could ever be, acceptable,” they wrote.

They said additional staff are being added to the teams which handle abuse reports and the company is working with the UK Safer Internet Centre, which promotes the safe and responsible use of technology.

“We are committed to making Twitter a safe place for our users,” they said, adding: “We’re here, and we’re listening to you.”

The bomb threat tweet was sent to Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent and Europe editor of Time magazine Catherine Mayer, which Dent took a screen grab of and posted for her Twitter followers to see.

The message was also sent to a number of other women, including Sara Lang, a social media manager at US campaign group AARP.

In separate incidents, Labour MP Stella Creasy and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who successfully fought for a woman’s face to appear on banknotes, were threatened on Twitter with rape. Two arrests have already been made in relation to those threats.

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Twitter vows crackdown on twits

FBI arrests 150 in child prostitution crackdown

• The Bay area and Detroit have the most arrests and child rescues


• The FBI says the three-day undercover operation is its biggest to date


• 105 children across the country are rescued in the nationwide operation


• The ages of the children involved range from 13 to 17

Washington (CNN) — They are mostly teenage girls, often from broken homes where no one misses them. Their world is one of drugs and abuse — emotional and physical — in which they are forced to sell their bodies.

In announcing the FBI’s latest crackdown on child prostitution, officials Monday described a dark underside of society that has grown through Internet sites that provide pimps easy access to johns in hotels, motels, at truck stops and just about anywhere else.

The nationwide operation over the weekend resulted in 150 arrests, with 105 children between the ages of 13 and 17 rescued, according to Ron Hosko, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division.

Overall, the three-day undercover Operation Cross Country took place in 76 cities and involved 230 law enforcement units, Hosko told a news conference.

It was the largest such sweep to date, he said, with 28 searches and 129 seizures of cash, drugs, vehicles and firearms. Those arrested face a variety of federal and state charges, including pimping.

This seventh iteration of Operation Cross Country also was the most successful, with a 30% to 40% increase in “identifying both victims and pimps” compared with previous operations, Hosko said.

He credited the success in part to an expansion of the probe to websites such as www.backpage.com, which he called a forum “where pimps and exploiters gather.”

Watch: Fighting sex trafficking in the U.S.

Authorities also have learned more about how the market thrives. For example, Hosko explained that major sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four attract tens of thousands of visitors with money who want to party, and pimps with prostitutes ready to cash in.

“We have had children recovered from each of those events, multiple children from each of those events in the past,” he said.

While technology has changes methods of procurement, the underlying demographics of the child victims of the prostitution industry remain little changed — young girls around 13 to 16 years old with few or no family ties.

“That tends to be the age that many of us as loving and caring parents occasionally find some differences with our teenage daughters, and exploiters will exploit that gap,” Hosko said.

A breakdown of cities where the latest arrests took place, and where child prostitutes were recovered, reveals some unexpected findings.

The San Francisco-Oakland region in California had 17 arrests and 12 recovered child prostitutes, while Detroit, which just declared itself bankrupt, had 18 arrests and 10 rescued children.

Meanwhile, New York City had none of either, Las Vegas had one of each and New Orleans had five arrests and four recovered children, compared with 13 arrests and three child prostitute rescues in Oklahoma City.

“This operation serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere,” Hosko said.

Opinion: Sex trafficking, an American problem too

Operation Cross Country is part of the FBI’s Innocence Lost National Initiative, which seeks to identify children lured or forced into prostitution and remove them from risk, according to Hosko.

The circumstances of the situation make finding victims especially difficult, he explained.

“Commonly some of these children have stepped away from their families,” he said, adding that “there is no one to call and report ‘my daughter is missing.’”

Other major problems are the culture of abuse, both physical and emotional, and the drug use prevalent in child prostitution.

“We have victims whose new normal is abuse and is drug-infected,” Hosko said, explaining there is an environment of instability in which “the expectation of somebody who cares about them may last for 30 minutes or an hour before the abuse starts again.”

Read about the fight to end modern-day slavery with CNN’s Freedom Project

CNN’s Virginia Nicolaidis and Bill Mears contributed to this report

CNN.com – Politics

FBI arrests 150 in child prostitution crackdown

Egypt braces for rival rallies, army signals crackdown

CAIRO (Reuters) – A deeply polarized Egypt braced for bloodshed on Friday in rival mass rallies summoned by the army that ousted the state’s first freely elected president and by the Islamists who back him.

Reuters: Top News

Egypt braces for rival rallies, army signals crackdown

Turkish Unions Hold National Strike as Protesters Face Worst Crackdown to Date

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In these last few minutes, we turn to Turkey, where a nationwide strike called by several of the country’s leading unions is underway now with calls to end the police crackdown on demonstrations. The Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions and the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions are among those filling the streets. Other groups representing doctors, engineers, dentists have also joined the action.

Today’s strike comes as riot police continued their violent crackdown on protesters, using tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. The anti-government protests have swept the country for more than two weeks and were renewed this weekend following the forced eviction of protesters at Gezi Park, which was occupied for 18 days by people protesting against plans for its redevelopment. The prime minister has defended the crackdown, saying he did his duty as prime minister.

For more, we go to independent journalist, also speaking to us from Istanbul and from Express magazine, Çiğdem Öztürk.

Can you describe what’s happening now?

ÇIĞDEM ÖZTÜRK: Well, hello. Can you hear me?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we hear you fine.

ÇIĞDEM ÖZTÜRK: OK, so, hello to everybody.

Actually, what’s happening at the moment in Instanbul is we are waiting a little bit tensely about the 4:00 rally, which is for the general strike declared by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey and Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions. So, at 4:00 normally, the people will march in Taksim Square, but the Instanbul governorship declared that this is not a legal act, and they will not let the people walk. So, there is just a few minutes, and the people are gathering, not just in Istanbul; as this is a general strike, it’s all over Turkey and in other parts of Turkey, as well. The people, the civil servants and the workers are on strike, and they are walking. So we’ll see what’s going to happen.

Maybe I could tell you a little bit about what happened last night. Last night, Instanbul had to face one of the most brutal police attacks—and not just the police, actually, also the AKP, the ruling party, supporters were some—in some groups, were on the streets with sticks and knives, trying to attack the demonstrators. And yesterday, again, according to the bar association, here at least 400 people were detained. But the problem is there is no real numbers. So, they only get news by phones and by interviewing people, so we don’t know the exact numbers, and we don’t know the names of the people who were detained. Well, that’s the situation, in short.

AMY GOODMAN: Çiğdem Öztürk, we just have about 30 seconds, independent journalist, also speaking to us from Instanbul and from Express magazine. The significance of where these protests go from here?

ÇIĞDEM ÖZTÜRK: Well, actually, what’s going to happen, the main problem is the governor and the political parties are not so in the protests. Opining by the political parties is only the Justice and Development Party in the protest. The least is the people, I would say. I mean, they did [inaudible] on the prime minister naming the protesters as some workers and some, you know, terrorists. But, anyway, these are people. Just a part of it is from organizations. So this is a moment for the people.

AMY GOODMAN: Çiğdem Öztürk, we’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you very much for being with us. We’ll continue to cover Turkey.

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Turkish Unions Hold National Strike as Protesters Face Worst Crackdown to Date

In Gaza, Hamas Targets Palestinian Informants In Crackdown

Enlarge image i

Palestinian gunmen drag a man from a motorcycle in Gaza City on Nov. 20. He was one of six men killed that day on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip denied responsibility, though it has executed others judged to be working with Israel’s security forces.

Hatem Moussa/AP

Palestinian gunmen drag a man from a motorcycle in Gaza City on Nov. 20. He was one of six men killed that day on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip denied responsibility, though it has executed others judged to be working with Israel’s security forces.

Hatem Moussa/AP

Life was already grim in the Gaza Strip when fighting raged between Israel and Hamas last November. Then Khulud Badawi got unexpected bad news about her husband.

“I was at home when my son came in and said, ‘Mom, they killed Dad.’ I said, ‘Who?’ He said, ‘Hamas.’ I asked him, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘Next to the gas station,’” she recalls.

Badawi’s husband, Ribhi Badawi, was in prison in Gaza City. He was supposed to go to court that day for a final appeal of charges that he had collaborated with Israel against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

But Ribhi Badawi was taken from prison and executed in public, along with five other inmates. They were all accused of being collaborators, or informants, working for Israel.

“In this case, what was remarkable was that these men were not executed in anything resembling legislative authority or the penal authority of the Hamas government, but by armed men,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, who directs the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch.

“How they managed to get these men out of prison, and then how they managed to shoot them dead in broad daylight and drag their corpses around the street is a very big question mark,” she adds.

Israel’s Informant Network

For decades, Israel’s security forces has relied heavily on Palestinian informants to track and keep tabs on wanted Palestinians. The standard practice is for Israel to pay the informants in exchange for the information. But if uncovered, the informants are treated as traitors to the Palestinian cause and can expect to face harsh judgment in the Palestinian courts, or in some cases, through vigilante justice.

Parallels

Young Gazan Men Get Unwanted Haircuts, Courtesy Of Police

Hamas, which has been in control of Gaza since 2007, has executed people judged to be collaborators. But in the six deaths last Nov. 20, the Hamas-run government said it was not responsible.

Parallels

U.S. Tourists Become Israeli Commandos For A Day

“What happened was against the law,” Islam Shawan, a spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Ministry, says. “We had a high-level committee investigate, and it handed down tough punishments to security officials who failed to do their jobs.”

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Shawan won’t name names, give ranks or offer any other information, but he claims that four people working in the prison system were punished. One was fired, one was transferred, one was jailed and one lost any chance at promotions.

He has no progress to report on tracking down the people who actually did the killings, but he does claim progress in cracking down on collaboration.

Hamas’ Campaign Against Collaborators

Three months after those accused collaborators were killed, Hamas started an anti-collaboration campaign in Gaza.

TV ads played scary music with pictures of a young man being dragged to the gallows by Hamas security forces. The video storyline shows he was coerced into collaboration by doing things that could set him up for blackmail — drinking, taking drugs, searching for sex online.

Shawan says this campaign was aimed at everyone in Gaza.

“This was a national campaign — not just directed at collaborators,” he says. “It was designed to educate and protect society by showing people how Israelis recruit.”

People were offered a chance to turn themselves in. Shawan won’t say how many did, but claimed one example: an engineering student who allegedly gave Israel information about his neighbors, his professors and student politicians. The young man wasn’t punished, Shawan says, but quietly re-educated.

There was no “re-education” offered by Hamas in the case of Khulud Badawi’s husband, who was a member of a rival militant group.

“I don’t believe in this campaign,” she says. “My husband used to tell me that people who were collaborators would confess immediately, but people who weren’t would be tortured for months and never confess because they were innocent.”

Just last week, two accused spies were given death sentences, suggesting that tough punishment is just as important in Hamas’ efforts to crack down on collaboration as education and amnesty.

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In Gaza, Hamas Targets Palestinian Informants In Crackdown