Allan Nairn

File:Allan Nairn.jpg

Allan Nairn (born 1956) is a left-wing U.S. investigative journalist. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala, Indonesia, and East Timor.

Nairn was born in Mobile, Alabama to a Puerto Rican mother. In high school, he got a job with Ralph Nader and worked for him for six years.

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. About his investigation, he claims, "I interviewed U.S. corporate executives there. They endorsed the death squads." The military government of Guatemala at the time was known to have at times relied on right-wing paramilitary groups to kill and intimidate suspected guerrillas in the country. After such interviews, Nairn decided to investigate the matter further.

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 Dili Massacre. He was beaten with the butts of M-16 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 in 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 an article published in The Nation in 1994, Nairn claimed to have found a definitive link between the CIA and the establishment of FRAPH, a notoriously brutal death squad that terrorized supporters of deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide with approval from the military regime that ruled from 1991-1994. As the U.S. was instrumental in restoring Aristide to power in Haiti and forcing the resignation of the junta, Nairn's allegations are controversial, as they run contradictory to the stated policy and actions of the Clinton administration. His claims rely heavily on the testimony of Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, FRAPH's founder, who is currently serving time in a Florida jail.

Quote

• "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." [1]

External links

• Allan Nairn page (Linnks to various articles by Nairn)
• "US Complicity in Timor" (The Nation, September 27, 1999)
• "Witness to the Santa Cruz Massacre" (excerpt from Nair's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on February 17, 1992 regarding the Dili massacre)
• Interview with Allan Nairn (Mobile, Alabama, April 25, 2000)
• Interview With Allan Nairn (Z Magazine, June 1995)