NGOs Protest FBI Conference in KL

We the undersigned civil society organisations strongly protest the holding of the 13^th FBI National Academy Associates Asia-Pacific Conference from July 18 – 23 at the Garden and Residences, Mid Valley, Kuala Lumpur.  FBI or the Federal Bureau of Investigations is a militant arm of the United States government for imposing its hegemony on other countries.

 

It is a shame that our senior police officers are co-operating with the American police who are persecuting Muslims in the United States, killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and spying on Muslims who fight for justice and freedom.

 

The National Academy trains senior police officers from the United States as well as those from outside the U.S, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and others. While the training is avowedly for developing law enforcement expertise, it also imparts to the trainees the U.S perception of global issues.

 

For example, the trainees are brainwashed on the importance and need for the Global War on Terrorism. National liberation movements such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Resistance to U.S occupation in Afghanistan are categorised as terrorists.

 

According to the FBI website, trainees are taken on a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C as a ‘moral and ethical component to the training’. Of course, the hidden agenda is to create sympathy for Zionism, to legitimise the creation of Israel in the homeland of Palestinians, and to justify the pro-Israel policy of the U.S. The visit is done in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, a virulently Zionist organisation which demonises critics of the Israeli occupation and its atrocities as anti-Semitics.

 

The training of senior police officers at the National Academy is part of the U.S policy to influence people in key positions in important institutions – the police, military, judiciary, parliament, NGOs – who will serve American interests. In Iraq and Afghanistan the FBI is training hundreds of officers who would ensure that these countries remain client states of the U.S when its troops leave.

 

The U.S focus in this region now is on Indonesia which, with the largest Muslim population, is projected to play an important role in international affairs in the near future.  The Chief Justice of Indonesia recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the East-West Center in Honolulu for the training of judges, prosecutors, police and the National Human Rights Commission on how to improve the courts in Indonesia on issues of human rights.

 

Washington has gradually lifted military aid and sales restrictions imposed on Indonesia during the Suharto regime. Indonesia’s elite police anti-terrorism unit Detachment 88, trained in U.S, closely collaborates with the CIA, FBI and the Australian intelligence unit in tracking down ‘terrorists’. According to a Reuters report, around 2800 Indonesian military officials are currently being trained in the U.S.

 

Training of our senior police officers at the Academy began in 1964 with the participation of Senior Assistant Commissioner Kassim Ali. Since then, a total of 58 senior police officers have attended the course including former Inspector-General of Police Tun Haniff Omar. Sixteen of them are still in service.

 

After 9/11, the Royal Malaysian Police became a junior partner in the U.S Global War on Terrorism. During our former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir’s visit to the White House in May 2002, Malaysia and the U.S signed a joint declaration to fight terrorism in South East Asia.  On 1^st July 2003 the South East Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism was set up in Kuala Lumpur. Interestingly, former U.S President Bush announced the setting up of the Centre during the October 2002 meeting of APEC in Mexico.

 

On 3^rd May 2002, Prime Mininister Datuk Seri Najib, in his Heritage Foundation lecture in the U.S., revealed that Malaysia had allowed U.S military planes to fly over our airspace during its Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He also stated that Malaysia had assisted the U.S. in arresting and handing over suspected terrorists wanted by the U.S. The recent arrest and deportation of foreign Muslim students was, we believe, instigated by the U.S. and Australian intelligence agencies who are notorious for fabricating evidence against Muslim activists.

 

The Global War on Terrorism has been discredited to such a degree that U.S President Barrack Hussein Obama does not even mention it. But the policy and the arrangements and agreements made under it still continue. The time is ripe to abandon this policy and to treat terrorism as a crime to be dealt with under national and international laws.

 

Malaysia needs to re-evaluate its relations with the U.S in view of its policy of bringing about regime changes in independent Muslim countries, encouraging sectarianism, sowing dissension among Muslims and Muslim states, and opposition to the implementation of Shariah for Muslims.

 

The U.S has launched illegal wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Now, with Israel, it is threatening to attack Iran.   Since 2003, more than a million people have died in Iraq as a result of the war; over 2 million are refugees and almost 3 million internally displaced; 70 per cent of Iraqis lack potable water: unemployment hovers near 50 per cent; and sectarian cleansing has changed the character of individual neighbourhoods. Iraq, considered the most advanced nation in the Arab world with social security for all and good educational, cultural and social infrastructure, has been reduced to this penury state by the U.S.

 

In Afghanistan, women, children and the elderly are killed using pilotless drones. Pakistan has been destabilised and Somalia turned into a lawless country facing a humanitarian disaster by the U.S.  In Palestine the 4-year old genocidal Israeli blockade of Gaza still continues because of U.S obstruction to any effective action being taken to end the blockade.

 

The initiatives taken to implement the recommendations of the Goldstone Report on the war crimes and human rights violations during the November 2008 Israeli aggression on Gaza   and the setting up of an independent international committee to investigate Israel’s piracy of the Freedom Flotilla and the murder of nine Turkish humanitarian volunteers have been frustrated by U.S action to protect Israel.

 

We are shocked that the miseries and immense sufferings of our brothers and sisters do not touch the conscience of our senior police officers.  How can they co-operate and celebrate with those who are creating chaos in the Muslim world – the Dajjal?

 

We call on the government to stop the FBINAA conference and not to send any police officers or military personnel for training to the U.S. Instead they can be trained in other countries like India, Sweden, Iran and others who have no hegemonic agenda.