Facebook Silences Supporters of Imprisoned FARC Leader
Posted by Tell No Lies on July 8, 2010
The Internet and major centers of social networking belong to the people — not the U.S. government, not to their Internet-capitalist collaborators.
We urge our readers to circulate this widely and actively: especially important: Post it on your facebook page, and share it with your friends on facebook. Join and promote the facebook protest page.
This repression is has long-term importance — we are facing a general trend to control and tame the internet. Police activity and censorship are rising and consolidating. Information is now routinely shared with government witchhunters — often without justification or warrant. And there is a general privatizing of public spaces — i.e. Facebook, which is now crucial to the social life of millions, is privately owned, and subject to the political ignorance and conservatism of its owners. This is dangerous for society, and for much needed social changes.
Solidarity.
The following first appeared on the new Facebook group that is protesting this political suppression.
* * * * * * * * * *
In a move to censor the voices of solidarity and human rights, Facebook shut down the “Free Ricardo Palmera!” page on June 30th, claiming it violates their terms of use. On July 7th, the profiles of the three administrators of that group, Josh Sykes, Angela Denio, and Tom Burke, were disabled by facebook with no reason given.
The June 30th Facebook message stated,
“The group ‘Free Ricardo Palmera!’ has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, groups that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not allowed. We also take down groups that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.”
Tom Burke, spokesperson of the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera responded to the attack, saying,
“By shutting us down, Facebook is taking the side of the death squads in Colombia. We will not be silenced – not by death threats from Colombian intelligence agents and not by Facebook. We will use every means available to express support for Professor Palmera and his just struggle for freedom. We reject Facebook’s claim that a campaign for human rights, for prisoners’ rights, and against the U.S. government’s violation of the sovereignty of the Colombian people is somehow anything other than peaceful.”
The “Free Ricardo Palmera!” group, with more than 700 members from all over the world, but especially Latin America and the U.S., existed for many months prior to the abrupt shutdown. The “Free Ricardo Palmera!” page was a valuable and important resource for getting the word out about the injustices done to the Colombian revolutionary Ricardo Palmera and the continuing U.S. attacks on the Colombian people.
Tom Burke said, “We, the administrators of the group “Free Ricardo Palmera,” never ‘attacked’ anyone. Our protests made a mockery of the U.S. Justice Department’s trials and railroading of Ricardo Palmera. The U.S. State Department is upset that their plans to criminalize Professor Palmera and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia failed. It is Ricardo Palmera and the Colombian people who are under attack here. The U.S. war in Colombia, known as Plan Colombia, has displaced over 4 million Colombians – made them landless and homeless. Every week Colombian government death squads murder a trade unionist. Now the U.S. government is building and ‘refurbishing’ seven new military bases in Colombia.”
Burke continues,
“We never posted anything hateful or threatening. It is Facebook that is revealing itself to be hateful towards and practicing censorship towards groups organizing for progressive social change. This is a political attack, it is meant to silence social justice in every way. This is an attack on Professor Palmera, a Colombian political prisoner extradited to the U.S., who suffers 23- hour solitary lockdown in Colorado’s Supermax Prison, the threat of electric shock torture and the forced kidnapping from his country by the U.S. It is obscene.”
The censorship of the “Free Ricardo Palmera!” page and the disabling of the accounts of Josh Sykes, Angela Denio, and Tom Burke, follows a series of recent attacks by Facebook on activist groups, including shutting down a group in solidarity with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the 800,000 member Boycott BP page. After a campaign opposing it, the Boycott BP has been reinstated. Apparently the U.S. government and big corporations have great influence over Facebook policies and decisions.
Tell Facebook that you are outraged:
Call Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, at (650) 543-4800
Tell him to:
- Stop the Assault on Progressive Causes!
- Reinstate the group “Free Ricardo Palmera!” Now!
- Reinstate the profiles of Josh Sykes, Angela Denio, and Tom Burke Now!
For more info on Palmera see here and here.
Greg McDonald said
bastards!
Mike E said
But holocaust deniers are OK for facebook:
Green Red said
Hi
The Face Book censorship at its own place, look at what they are doing with Human Rights supporting journalist:
US denies visa to Colombian journalist
By FRANK BAJAK
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 8, 2010; 10:59 PM
BOGOTA, Colombia — The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.
Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news program called “Contravia,” has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America.
The curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which has offered the mid-career fellowships since 1938, said Thursday that a consular official at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota told him Morris was ruled permanently ineligible for a visa under the “Terrorist activities” section of the USA Patriot Act.
U.S. Embassy and State Department officials refused to confirm the visa denial, citing privacy laws.
“We were very surprised. This has never happened before,” said the Nieman curator, Bob Giles. “And Hollman has traveled previously in the United States to give speeches and receive awards.” He said he had written the State Department to ask it to reconsider the decision.
Giles told The Associated Press by telephone that the only visa issues ever to arise with foreign Nieman Fellows have been over concerns they might try to remain in the United States – clearly not the issue in Morris’ case. Colombia’s President-elect, Juan Manuel Santos, was a 1988 Nieman Fellow.
“We’re frankly shocked. We feel it’s outrageous,” Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said of the visa denial.
He said the committee had discussed its concerns with State Department officials but was not provided with an explanation.
“They told us they discussed this with Hollman and that’s just not true,” Simon said.
The 41-year-old Morris, one of 12 foreign journalists admitted to the Nieman program for the 2010-2011 academic year, is among the most controversial chroniclers of Colombia’s long-running leftist insurgency.
Among international awards he has received is one from Human Rights Watch in 2007 in which he was praise by Executive Director Kenneth Roth for “courage, an unswerving commitment to justice and genuine concern for the rights of all victims.”
On various occasions, President Uribe has accused Morris of collaborating with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which killed Uribe’s father in a 1983 botched kidnapping.
On Feb. 3, 2009, Uribe called Morris “an accomplice of terrorism” posing as a journalist after Morris showed up with FARC rebels to cover the insurgents’ liberation of four Colombian security force members.
Morris was also among journalists, judges and opposition politicians whose phones were illegally tapped by Colombia’s DAS state security agency.
Nearly two dozen former DAS officials have been arrested on criminal conspiracy charges in the scandal and are awaiting trial.
Morris is listed in a 2005 DAS memorandum obtained by prosecutors someone being under surveillance for showing “opposition tendencies to government policies.”
Reached by the AP, Morris would neither confirm nor deny that he had been turned down for the visa.
“Things are in motion,” he said, adding that he had obtained a DAS document that described a campaign to discredit him internationally, including by stripping him of a visa.
Giles said the U.S. consular official cited Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Patriot Act as the reason for the visa denial. It renders ineligible for a U.S. visa anyone who engages in terrorist activities, belongs to a terrorist organization or endorses terrorist activities.
The FARC, Latin America’s last major guerrilla army, is listed as an international terrorist organization by the State Department. The United States has given Colombia more than a half billion dollars a year since 2000 to combat the FARC and drug trafficking.
E-mails written by Morris found on the laptop of a rebel commander slain in a March 2008 Colombian air raid indicate he served as an intermediary several years earlier between the FARC and French diplomats who were trying to negotiate the release of famed former hostage Ingrid Betancourt.
Colombian prosecutors opened an investigation into Morris but it was shelved without charges ever being filed, Hermes Ardila, Colombia’s chief anti-terrorism prosecutor, told the AP.
—
Associated Press reporter Libardo Cardona contributed to this report.
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Permanently not getting visa, hey? That is scary precedent.
Otto said
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.
The Marxist-Leninist said
Hey comrades,
How about posting this video?
Facebook Censors Free Ricardo Palmera Group
thanks for your support!