Allan Nairn
Encyclopedia
Allan Nairn is an award-winning American
investigative journalist
who became well known when he was imprisoned by Indonesia
n military forces under United States-backed strongman Suharto while reporting in East Timor
. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti
, Guatemala
, Indonesia, and East Timor.
to a Puerto Rican
mother. In high school, he got a job with consumer activist Ralph Nader
, working for him for six years. His book The Reign of ETS: the Corporation That Makes up Minds, an investigation of the SAT I exam and its creators, the Educational Testing Service
, was printed as part of the Ralph Nader
report in 1980.
In 1980, Nairn visited Guatemala
in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist
guerrillas active in both urban
and rural
areas. He interviewed U.S. corporate executives there, who endorsed the death squad
s, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and in El Salvador
, also in the throes of civil war. Subsequently, Nairn became interested in East Timor and helped found the East Timor Action Network (ETAN), which was instrumental in bringing the independence movement in East Timor to international attention.
In 1991, covering developments in East Timor, Nairn and fellow journalist Amy Goodman
were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after they witnessed a mass killing
of Timorese demonstrators in what became known as the Santa Cruz Massacre
. He was beaten with the butts of M16 rifles and had his skull fractured in the melee. Nairn was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from East Timor, but he re-entered several times illegally, and his subsequent reports helped convince the U.S. Congress
to cut off military aid to Jakarta
in 1993. In a dispatch from East Timor on March 30, 1998, Nairn disclosed the continuing U.S. military training of Indonesian troops implicated in the torture
and killing of civilians. In 1999, Nairn was detained briefly by the Indonesian Army
in East Timor, where he had chosen to remain after most other media had evacuated following East Timor's independence referendum.
In an article published in The Nation in 1994, Nairn revealed the U.S. government's role in establishing and funding the Haitian paramilitary death squad, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti
(FRAPH).
On March 24, 2010 it was revealed that Nairn could be facing possible detention and criminal charges in Indonesia for revealing US backed Indonesian Military assassinations of civilian activists. An Indonesian Military spokesperson told the Jakarta Globe
that the military is considering legal actions against Nairn's publication.
received the Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial First Prize for International Radio award for their reporting on East Timor. In 1994, Nairn won the George Polk Award for Journalism for Magazine Reporting. Also in 1994, Nairn received the James Aronson
Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing on Haiti
for The Nation magazine.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
investigative journalist
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
who became well known when he was imprisoned by Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n military forces under United States-backed strongman Suharto while reporting in East Timor
East Timor
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...
. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
, Indonesia, and East Timor.
Biography
Nairn was born in Mobile, AlabamaMobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
to a Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
mother. In high school, he got a job with consumer activist Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
, working for him for six years. His book The Reign of ETS: the Corporation That Makes up Minds, an investigation of the SAT I exam and its creators, the Educational Testing Service
Educational Testing Service
Educational Testing Service , founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization...
, was printed as part of the Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
report in 1980.
In 1980, Nairn visited Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
guerrillas active in both urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
and rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
areas. He interviewed U.S. corporate executives there, who endorsed the death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and in El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
, also in the throes of civil war. Subsequently, Nairn became interested in East Timor and helped found the East Timor Action Network (ETAN), which was instrumental in bringing the independence movement in East Timor to international attention.
In 1991, covering developments in East Timor, Nairn and fellow journalist Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...
were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after they witnessed a mass killing
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
of Timorese demonstrators in what became known as the Santa Cruz Massacre
Santa Cruz massacre
The Santa Cruz massacre was the shooting of East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital, Dili, on 12 November 1991, during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.-Background:...
. He was beaten with the butts of M16 rifles and had his skull fractured in the melee. Nairn was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from East Timor, but he re-entered several times illegally, and his subsequent reports helped convince the U.S. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
to cut off military aid to Jakarta
Jakarta
Jakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Officially known as the Special Capital Territory of Jakarta, it is located on the northwest coast of Java, has an area of , and a population of 9,580,000. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre...
in 1993. In a dispatch from East Timor on March 30, 1998, Nairn disclosed the continuing U.S. military training of Indonesian troops implicated in the torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and killing of civilians. In 1999, Nairn was detained briefly by the Indonesian Army
Military of Indonesia
The Indonesian National Armed Forces in 2009 comprises approximately 432,129 personnel including the Army , Navy including the Indonesian Marine Corps and the Air Force ....
in East Timor, where he had chosen to remain after most other media had evacuated following East Timor's independence referendum.
In an article published in The Nation in 1994, Nairn revealed the U.S. government's role in establishing and funding the Haitian paramilitary death squad, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti
Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haïti
The Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti was a far-rightparamilitary group organized in mid-1993. Its goal was to undermine support for the popular Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served less than eight months as Haïti's president before being deposed, on 29 September 1991,...
(FRAPH).
On March 24, 2010 it was revealed that Nairn could be facing possible detention and criminal charges in Indonesia for revealing US backed Indonesian Military assassinations of civilian activists. An Indonesian Military spokesperson told the Jakarta Globe
Jakarta Globe
The Jakarta Globe is a daily English language newspaper in Indonesia, launched on November 12, 2008.The paper averages 48 pages a day, and publishes Monday to Saturday...
that the military is considering legal actions against Nairn's publication.
Awards
In 1993, Nairn and Amy GoodmanAmy Goodman
Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...
received the Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
Memorial First Prize for International Radio award for their reporting on East Timor. In 1994, Nairn won the George Polk Award for Journalism for Magazine Reporting. Also in 1994, Nairn received the James Aronson
James Aronson
James Aronson was an American journalist. He founded the left-leaning National Guardian. He was a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.- Work before the Guardian :...
Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing on Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
for The Nation magazine.
Quotation
- "The United States has no monopoly on the abuse of power. But since I am an American this is where I have some influence and responsibility."
External links
- Allan Nairn's blog - "News and Comment"
- Allan Nairn page (Links to various articles by Nairn)
- Allan Nairn's articles at The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
- "U.S. Complicity in Timor" (The Nation, September 27, 1999)
- Interview with Allan Nairn (Mobile, Alabama, April 25, 2000)
- "A discussion of the Guatemalan and the CIA" interview on Charlie Rose (talk show)Charlie RoseCharles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
with Elliott Abrams, Robert Torricelli and Allan Nairn, March 31, 1995 (video). - Interview on Democracy Now (Jan. 6, 2010)
- EXCLUSIVE…Indonesian Forces Tapped by Obama for Renewed US Aid Implicated in New Assassinations A phone interview with Allan Nairn on Democracy Now (March 19, 2010)
- EXCLUSIVE…Journalist Allan Nairn Facing Possible Arrest in Indonesia for Exposing US-Backed Forces Assassinated Civilians A phone interview with Allan Nairn on Democracy Now (March 24, 2010)
- Allan Nairn: U.S. Comparative Advantage is in Killing, And It’s Using It" - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...