My piece in Al Jazeera English today: It’s hard to think of a better example of the UN Human Rights Council’s failure. In early July, it decided to send monitors to South Sudan “to report on the situation of human rights and to undertake a comprehensive assessment of alleged violations and abuses of human rights,…
The important logic of BDS against Israeli occupation
There is increasing global pressure on Israel over its brutal treatment of the Palestinians. The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is thriving due to daily abuses and racism against Arabs in Israel proper and the occupied, Palestinian territories. The Israeli government is scared (see here and here) and even Hillary Clinton, in a transparent…
The daily trauma of a Sudanese man locked up in Israel
African migrants face countless struggles in Israel, from racism to discrimination to outright hatred. I’ve been reporting (for the Guardian and The National) on some of their lives when they leave the Jewish state and end up in South Sudan and across Africa. Israel houses many African migrants in the Holot detention centre in the…
Failing states in the modern world
My essay in literary journal Meanjin: “In Europe there are shelves of books dedicated to every war, archives full of documents, special rooms in museums. Nothing of the kind exists in Africa. Here, even the longest and greatest war is forgotten, falls into oblivion. Its traces vanish by the day after: the dead must be…
Resource curse alive and well in Afghanistan
My following investigation is published by the Guardian: Afghanistan faces an existential crisis over its untapped natural resources. After decades of war and insecurity, the Afghan government and foreign investors are pushing to exploit minerals under the ground but real dangers exist with little enforced regulation. Like Papua New Guinea and Haiti, two other nations…
What Somali pirates explain about imperialism
My following book review appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper: Imperialism still casts a dark shadow over modern Africa. Former colonial powers France, Britain, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Germany largely spend their aid dollars in nations they used to rule. Oxfam France’s Christian Reboul told The Guardian this makes sense for Paris “because the former…
The sordid connection between Israel and South Sudan
The National publishes my following investigative feature (PDFs of the cover story:… cover.sudan… and… spread.sudan): The squalid guest house sits alongside a main road in South Sudan. Every night migrants arrive but few of them stay very long. They’re mostly men from Eritrea or Ethiopia who have fled racism and imprisonment in Israel looking for a better future.…
Interview about my documentary-in-progress, Disaster Capitalism
I was recently interviewed by Green Left Weekly newspaper: Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein… has made a name for himself writing about war crimes, human rights abuses and corporate profiteering. For the first time, he is seeking to speak truth to power through the medium of film — with his first documentary… Disaster Capitalism now in…
Papua New Guinea must be more than mines to Australia
My weekly Guardian column: After years of uncertainty, the once-profitable copper mine on Bougainville, an autonomous province of Papua New Guinea (PNG), could well be reopened. The chairman of Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), Peter Taylor, told the Australian recently that “the Bougainville government seems to want the mine reopened, but we have to sit down…
African migrants kicked out of Israel, suffering in South Sudan
My Guardian… investigation… is published today: Robel Tesfahannes spends his days looking for work in Juba. An Eritrean who recently arrived in South Sudan after six years in Tel Aviv, Tesfahannes is one of a new wave of refugees forced out of Israel by the country’s increasingly tough stance towards migrants. He is covered in tattoos, including…