Statement in Support of Operation: Hard Drive By : QC IMC

The Quezon City Independent Media Center (QC Indymedia) stands in full solidarity with the Operation: Hard Drive By activity that is being organized in protest against the Oct. 7 seizures of the hard drives of two Indymedia servers in London at the request of the US Justice Department, apparently in collaboration with Italian and Swiss authorities.

The seizures led to the closure of an Indymedia radio station and around 20 Indymedia websites including those serving Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille, Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen, Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, UK, and parts of Germany Indymedia. While the hard drives were returned on Oct. 13, the entire Indymedia community is still in the dark as to the legal reasons for the seizures, as there has been no explanation from the US, Italian, and Swiss authorities involved.

But one thing is for sure: the hard drive seizures had among their objectives the intimidation of a media network specializing in reportage and analysis exposing the canards behind the US-led war on “terror.”

The “borderless war on terror” launched by US President George W. Bush in 2001 has received increasingly stinging condemnation not only from the alternative media community but also from a growing number of mainstream media practitioners. Which is not surprising since the continuing attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, to this day, have nothing to show for themselves except the annihilation of non-combatants on a massive scale and the pointless destruction of infrastructures – including historical heritage sites – while at the same time oil companies with direct links to the Bush clique are cornering juicy business contracts in the two extremely oil-rich countries.

The US-led imperialist-terrorist war is not limited to the military arena. It has, as should be expected, also made itself felt in the media field, with US authorities harassing in various ways anti-war journalists and pro-war “think tanks” like the Project for the New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute pampering “media” sycophants of the US military-industrial complex.

From the start, the global Indymedia network has stood among the fiercest opponents of the US-led imperialist-terrorist war. It is thus not surprising that the US military-industrial complex would seek to silence it.

We in QC Indymedia condemn the US-led international genocidal war and its perpetrators in the Coalition of the Willing, among them Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In our particular capacity as media-makers, we stand against the suppression of press freedom led by a government that claims to defend democracy, especially in furtherance of a war that sheds blood for gold.

We support Operation: Hard Drive By and are committed to the defense of press freedom and democracy against imperialist terrorism.