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Guest: John Pilger, award winning journalist and film maker, author of “Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire”

In his new book, Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, award winning journalist and film maker John Pilger has examined the state of empire and people’s resistance in 5 different former, and current colonies: Afghanistan, the Occupied Palestinian territories, South Africa, India, and the island of Diego Garcia. Through eye-witness reporting and a crucial historical context, Pilger lays bare the promises of freedom and democracy yet to be fulfilled in all five cases. John Pilger began his career in his native Australia before moving to London in the 1960s. He started front-line war reporting in the Vietnam war in 1967. He has won Britain’s highest award for journalism, “Journalist of the Year,” twice. He is also a film maker and has made about 60 documentaries for Britain’s ITV. For the past 20 years he has been a freelance reporter, writing for the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the LA Times, The South China Morning Post, the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia and many more.

John Pilger is currently visiting Los Angeles on a rare trip. He will be at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center tonight, discussing his new book, Freedom Next Time, and screening his film Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (This film, set in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Washington, looks at President Bush’s “war on terror” and the “liberation” of countries where bloodshed and repression continue.)

DETAILS:
On Monday, June 11, at 7 PM. Doors open 6:00 PM.
Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, 244 S. San Pedro Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, just blocks away from the Los Angeles Music Center and the new Disney Hall. Followed by audience dialogue and a book signing.

For more information, visit www.johnpilger.com

Rough Transcript:

Sonali: First, your book was very very interesting; in an age of books that are covering Iraq, yours doesn’t cover Iraq, but it covers these other issues. I would like to start with the tragic and hidden story of Diego Garcia which is where you start, situated in the Indian Ocean, and given by the British to the US after it’s population of two thousand was forcibly deported in the sixties. How did you first come upon this story of Diego Garcia, hidden as it is from the world?

Pilger: Well, let me explain just a little about it. Diego Garcia is the main island of the Chagos Islands, which are halfway between Africa and Asia, right in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In the 1960’s, the government in Britain decided that the islanders would be either invited to leave, coerced to leave, or expelled, and the reason for that was that they had been in secret negotiations, conspiring with the US Administration to hand over Diego Garcia, the main island as a US base; and today Diego Garcia is the third biggest US overseas base from which Afghanistan and Iraq have been bombed. Though over a period of about ten years, people were tricked into leaving, they were prevented from coming back if they had left the islands, and finally they were bundled onto an old steamer, and sent to Mauritius, a thousand miles away, and dumped there in the slums of Mauritius. Now nothing was heard about these people and about what had been done to them, even though there was plenty of evidence available to media at the time. I remember at the time of the story was the setting up of this huge American base, and you will still here if you turn on the news in this country, B-52’s took off yesterday from the uninhabited island of Diego Garcia. Well, of course, it was inhabited. I found out about these when an extraordinary lawyer called Richard Gifford had gone to Mauritius on vacation, and discovered these people living in the slums. They were British citizens living in the slums of Mauritius, and he then went on to find a treasure trove of declassified documents in the public record office . . .

Sonali: In Britain.

Pilger: . . . in London, yes. And I’ve read almost all of them, and it is a narrative of conspiracy, of a crime really. It’s the expulsion of an entire people from their homeland, which of course goes to the very basic root of injustice. The people fought back over many years – after a terrible time, they were decimated living in the slums in Mauritius – they fought back, and their case reached the High Court in the UK. The High Court found for them, that they could go home. That was seven years ago; the British government defied the court. The people went back to the High Court; the High Court found again for them, describing what had happened to them as outrageous and repugnant – those were the words of the judges. And only a few weeks ago, the British government lost an appeal. So it’s been a very painful, extraordinary story, and people now have the right to go back to the outer island, but they still can’t go back to where most of them came from, and that’s Diego Garcia.

Sonali: What motivated the British to give this island to the United States? What did the British get out of it?

Pilger: The British got out of it – I can tell you exactly – fourteen million dollars off the cost of one Polaris Missile. That’s what the lives of the people of Diego Garcia were worth.

Sonali: Was it even sort of even maybe a handing over of empire? The British knew their time was up.

Pilger: Well, yes. I mean, I always find the fact that they were hidden in the records . . . in US documents it says, you know, we gave them a fourteen million dollar discount on a missile, but really it was much broader than that. Yes, it happened during a time when the British were, as you say, were quite literally around the world handing over to the United States empyreal responsibilities; and it was the height of the Cold War. The US wanted the base because they believed that the Russians were, the Soviet Navy was dominant in the Indian Ocean, which in fact it wasn’t, but like a lot of Cold War myths it took on a life of it’s own, and it justified the building of this base, and it justified – if you read these documents – the behavior of British officials towards their own people. In fact, what happened was the British Government effectively kidnapped their own citizens, and took them away and dumped them somewhere else. What’s important about this is yes the story – the terrible, painful story, and the extraordinary struggle of the people and what they’ve succeeded – but it’s much more of a metaphor that tells us . . . you mentioned Iraq at the beginning. You know, you can learn about Iraq, you can learn about Palestine, you can learn about a lot of other issues and situations around the world that have involved the imposition of power on people. You can learn about it by what happened to the people of Diego Garcia.

Sonali: Now Colin Powell just announced that he thinks the US prison at Guantanamo, Cuba should be shut down, but the Washington Post has reported that Diego Garcia may be home to Al Qaeda suspects that are being held and tortured there. Do we have a Guantanamo on Diego Garcia?

Pilger: It’s very interesting Colin Powell should say that when we had to endure his standing up at the United Nations, when was it February 2003, lying through his teeth to us all. I’m sorry I just have to say that because when I see the journey that these people take as they . . .

Sonali: When they’re out of office.

Pilger: . . . quickly scuttle away from their own responsibilities, and he played a major part in that. Look, there’s been rumors about this for a long time, about a mini Guantanamo on Diego Garcia. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that because we do know that these so called CIA rendition flights, we know from the logs that they’ve been stopping there; and they haven’t been stopping in the middle of the Indian Ocean for any purpose other than I’m sure the delivery of prisoners.

Sonali: So we just passed the fortieth anniversary of the Six-Day War. Let’s talk about the occupied Palestinian territories. You’ve been covering the Israeli occupation for many many years now, and I really found interesting the way in which you describe the justifications that early Israelis had towards the occupation of Palestinian territories, almost like the residents of Diego Garcia, as if they just didn’t exist. That these were an uninhabited place. Has that perspective changed over the years, or is this still the sort of myth?

Pilger: No, it hasn’t changed. It’s a very universal attitude towards indigenous people. It’s a universal attitude always implied by those who wish to dispossess them and take their land. In the country I come from originally, Australia, it used to be called terranulius, empty land, and yet it had had a thriving population of people for many thousands of years. The same is true in the Middle East and especially of Palestine. The Palestinians had been there a very long time, and the Palestinian-Arabs had been there a very long time, and a whole mixture of people had been there a very long time. It was a multi-ethnic society, and instead a mono-ethnic society was ordained for that society, for that part of the world; and the Palestinians were declared invisible. I mean it’s quite interesting when you think of what Golda Meir said – they didn’t exist, there’s no Palestine, it didn’t happen.

Sonali: But you also got this sentiment from ordinary Israelis.

Pilger: Yes, well it percolates down, doesn’t it. I mean to . . . it’s a huge injustice, it’s a huge wrong, and you don’t really have to understand too much about human nature, even those who run powerful structures, that in order to deny the obvious, to deny a wrong, you have to create a mythology; and the capacity for people to believe something is probably infinite if they’re told it long enough. I don’t want to be too negative about that. People also have a great capacity for understanding what’s really going on, and I think those . . . my experience with the Israelis is that they carry almost those two positions in their mind, and the dominant one perhaps – and I haven’t taken any personal surveys of this – the dominant one is motivated by fear; and it is a fear that is encouraged by their government, and especially by this extreme government in Israel at the moment.

Sonali: In your essay on the Occupied Territories, “Stealing a Nation,” you talk about the massacre in Jenin, and there’s been controversy over that here in the US with the mainstream media even refusing to call it a massacre. As a journalist, how do you respond to that?

Pilger: Well, it’s all manufactured controversy. It’s about numbers, isn’t it?

Sonali: What qualifies as a massacre?

Pilger: Yes, you know, it’s about how many were killed. The fact is that the Israelis, with American observers watching . . . interesting, just as in Iraq when the Americans attack, there are Israelis watching, and I say that because the attack on the Palestinians is an American war, perhaps the F-16’s have Israeli pilots. I think that’s really important to say in the United States. It’s not simply Israel versus the Palestinians. Without the armaments, without the huge financial backing, there probably never would have been an attack on Jenin because it wouldn’t have gotten to that stage. Israel would have had to deal with its neighbors in the Middle East. But what do I say to the controversy over massacre, it’s an exquisite distraction, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a play on words. Alright, technically what is it – a killing of a large number of people, the bulldozing of their homes, and of disabled, particularly in one case, one disabled person in their home – how do you describe that? All right, let’s not call it a massacre; let’s just call it an atrocity.

Sonali: You have a chapter in your book on South Africa. Before we turn to that, let’s talk about the links between South Africa and the Occupied Territories. Is this comparison justified, and is it as some say even worse in the Occupied Territories than it was in Apartheid South Africa?

Pilger: Well, according to those who should know – and that’s former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former president Nelson Mandela, a current minister in the South African Government Ronnie Casreals, himself a Jew – yes it is worse. And I know that Desmond Tutu, who has made several trips to the Occupied Territory, found himself shocked. And here is a man who has spent his whole life attempting to navigate his way through the Apartheid system. Yes there are differences. Of course, it’s a different part of the world, there’s a different history, but there are great similarities. Again, it’s about the imposition of power on an occupied people, and in South Africa there was in effect, the majority were an occupied people, and they were . . . a strategy, a plan, a design was created so that these occupied people could be controlled if not made to disappear. That’s exactly what’s happening in the Occupied Territories, and in Gaza, Gaza . . . for those who haven’t seen Gaza, I can tell you it’s a shocking spectacle. The only thing that’s free is the sky above. Yes, you can see the sea, but you can’t go anywhere. It’s a prison of one point four million people.

Sonali: Tell us a little bit about how the British press, the British elite, and British public opinion in general respond to your coverage of what’s happening in the Occupied Territories because here of course in the United States when journalists like you cover this issue with any kind of fairness, you come under attack constantly. And I know that you also have come under attack in Britain for in particular one documentary you made on Palestine.

Pilger: Well, I made two documentaries and they both have the same title, and that’s with a reason. The first one was made in the seventies, “Palestine is Still The Issue.” The next one was made in 2002, “Palestine is Still The Issue,” and the message was clear – it’s still the issue. The majority of the interviewees in the second film were Israeli. They were Israelis who were prepared to speak out about their government’s actions. I also had a long interview with a very senior member of the Israeli government, so voices from both sides were put in the film. It was very telling because I don’t think any fair-minded person could watch that film and see the people I’d interviewed, be they Israeli or Palestinian . . . particularly a man I interviewed, an Israeli architect, who lost his daughter to a Palestinian suicide bomber, and he regarded both the suicide bomber, his daughter and the suicide bomber as victims. He was a man of extraordinary humanity and generosity, but what he was saying had great power in that film, and I think that probably what upset the usual suspects – and the usual suspects when you make a film about Israel, they press buttons here in the United States. There’s one outfit called Honest Reporting, sort of an Orwellian term, it means the opposite of course, and they start firing emails like rockets across the Atlantic. They write a generic sort of email, and most of the people whose names appear on this have never seen the film, but in come these thousands of emails.

Sonali: So you get emails from the US?

Pilger: Oh, most of them, most of them. And from all over the world, from South Africa and Australia and so on, where no one had seen the film. So in they came, but also in the UK, and a lot of threats. I’ve received a number of death threats, my family did, abuse and all of that. But, you know, I’ve bee around for a while, I can stand up to that. It’s very difficult for somebody just starting out to do that, and it is a form of mass intimidation that perhaps it’s worked. Perhaps that’s why the so-called mainstream media in this country just seems to regard the Palestinians, as we were discussing earlier, as invisible.

Sonali: So you cover five former and current colonies in your book, I want to turn to South Africa, and why, as your essay title on South Africa suggests, do you say that Apartheid did not die?

Pilger: Well, because there were two Apartheids. There was the racial Apartheid, which was instigated by the Afrikaner government, the Ball government, in 1948, but underpinning this was an economic Apartheid, which was the more powerful of the two. The racial one was humiliating, was meant to control people. It, you know, signs ‘whites,’ ‘non-whites,’ on various public places, and the separation of people into these racial groups. But as I say, reinforcing this was an economic Apartheid that began at the early part of the twentieth century, and it was begun by the British with the expulsion of people from their lands, and the creation, I suppose, of a very profitable mining resource for the British Empire. Anglo-American, the world’s biggest gold miner was created then, and the black people of, the African people of South Africa became the fodder for this. So the die was cast in many respects that their separation was already worked out before the word Apartheid appeared some years later, and that economic Apartheid goes on. Since independence, there are more poor people in South Africa than there were before independence. There are, in fact, the majority of the majority are very poor indeed. There’s something like five million seriously mal-nourished children in South Africa, and the ANC government have long-decided to go down the path of economic liberalism, neo-liberalism, and give priority to that economic structure rather than to the needs of the majority of the people. So for people living in those townships around the cities of South Africa, for many of them, not much has changed. In fact, for some of them, it’s got worse.

Sonali: So this leads it seems directly into your essay on India, which has many similarities with what you just said. A former colony not having been independent for that many years, and I believe one statistic cited in your book, home to the world’s largest number of poor. It’s worse to be poor in India than in Botswana.

Pilger: Yeah, well a third of the world’s poor are in India, and most of the world’s seriously disadvantaged children are in India. I think that it’s important to have this perspective because the image-reporting of India these days is of the booming country, the new tiger, the new world economic power. Well, yes for a small group who call themselves middle-class when there’s no middle, and yes there is economic growth but economic growth which is often seen as the indicator of a country’s prosperity is not the indicator of the majority people’s welfare. So again, we started this conversation talking about invisible people, so there’s invisibility on a grand scale in India because most of the people are not benefiting from the consumer boom, the arrival of multi-national corporations, the boom that is celebrated in this country and is certainly influenced by I have to say the Indian ex-patriot community in the United States, some very powerful people in Washington who have lobbied this image to the Americans that India is going to be the powerhouse for the next few years, and competing . . .

Sonali: Competing with China.
Pilger: Competing with China of course, yes, competing with China the two of them.

Sonali: As the US watches and reaps the profits.

Pilger: Yeah, that’s right, reaps the profits and allows . . . in spite of the pressure that is being applied on Iran at the moment over the nuclear issue, then no such pressure is applied to India. In fact, India has been given a nod and a wink to go ahead and develop all the nuclear capability it wants to.

Sonali: John let’s tackle the last chapter in your book, speaking of invisibility at least here in this country. Afghanistan, a story that’s much more visible in Britain and Canada and other European countries than it is here in the United States even though the majority of the troops in Afghanistan are American today. You write in your book in great detail about the way in which the United States has put a lot of effort in to paying off and winning over warlords in order to gain some kind of peace if you will. What effect has that had on the ground there, where recently two journalists, women journalists were killed – one which was probably a political motivation?

Pilger: Well, you know, again there’s been a change to Afghanistan, but it’s a façade. If you go to Kabul, you see a lot of buildings going up and you see a lot of buildings blown up. There’s no real reconstruction at all, and this was promised of course by the US and Britain when they went in because the people running Afghanistan used to be called the Mujahadeen, of whom the Taliban were a sect of, and so one set of warlords, the Taliban, were exchanged for another set. For some people this has had advantages, certainly for making money it’s had advantages to foreigners. In the cities, the university has reopened – in Kabul the university has reopened. There are certain liberties that didn’t exist under the Taliban, but in the countryside there’s been almost no change whatsoever. The position of women is as dire as it was under the Taliban. In fact, when you talk to women and some of these extraordinary women’s groups, they will tell you that women look back rather nostalgically to the Taliban time when they could travel safely across the country. Now they can’t.

Special Thanks to Daniel Kolendowicz for transcribing this interview