A Kashmiri student preparing to throw a tear gas canister back at the occupying army during protests today in Srinagar:
On the one hand, this toughness is remarkable, extraordinary. On the other, it’s a monstrous crime against the youth of Kashmir that they have to fight for their very existence & freedom against 700,000 troops armed to the teeth with a shoot to kill or permanently disable mentality.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
(Photo by Basit Zargar)
Students clash with Indian police in Srinagar today.
How ever will Assadists & other Islamophobes explain this? How can they save women who will kick their asses?
(Photo by Faisal Khan)
For several years, the purple rain strikes of government workers in Kashmir received regular photojournalist coverage but little media elaboration of the issues at dispute–which remain unresolved. Workers were demanding payment of wages in arrears, that contract employees be made permanent, & that retirement age be raised by two years (because India has no social security).
What was striking about them was not just that none of the issues were resolved after years of protests & work stoppages but the extremes of violence against the strikers, especially the use of water cannons with purple dye. The dramatic imagery may be what attracted media coverage although there were also many photos of physical assaults on strikers.
During the recent horrific military siege in Kashmir, there was another round of this strike involving contractual medical staff in the national health service who are not part of permanent medical staff–creating a two-tier system of employment & conflict. The issues were important not just because of their labor ramifications but because of how they intersected with the occupation & emergency medical treatment for injured protesters especially in the more rural areas.
Because the military siege was so pressing, a post discussing the labor dispute became a low priority even though it related to emergency care for protesters. The strike issues have not been resolved so a later post will address them. There is also considerably more information available now about those issues.
I only bring this up because in that memory thing Facebook does, a post popped up about that strike on May 9th 2012. It was after Kashmiri activists were on my case to study their struggle & write about it but before I had actually done so & knew nothing about the occupation. So in that post & in others, I refer to “Srinagar, India” & reveal other similar ignorance. In the interest of veracity & not just to hide my ignorance I am correcting the posts.
This is one of the purple rain photos from that May 2012 strike where we can see how really aggressive the water cannon is as a weapon.
(Photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP)
This is an article by me titled “The Unpeople Rohingya: Expose The Duplicity Of Aung San Suu Kyi” which was published May 9th, 2016 in Countercurrents. The editor Binu Mathew told me it reached over 50,000 people.
Because of Suu Kyi’s many international awards as a human rights champion, her role was confused as silence rather than outright collusion & as a human rights facade for ethnic cleansing. Her human rights record is actually wholly fictitious, a construct serving the military junta. She has never had a damn thing to do with human rights.
Even she once made light of her 15 years of house arrest in her mansion on a lake in the swankiest section of Yangon attended by servants. Not quite a gulag like other Burmese dissidents, no torture, persecution, or ethnic cleansing.
At the time I wrote this article, it was becoming clearer internationally who Suu Kyi was politically: an image & no martyr for human rights. Though it was already entirely evident in 2012 when she traveled to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize & other honorifics whilst the military was on siege against Rohingya & she never uttered a peep about it, neither to acknowledge nor condemn.
Her public role denying & mocking the recent siege against Rohingya in Arakan state involving mass rapes, executions & massacres, forced disappearances, torture & beatings, torching of villages, & the flight of 75,000 as refugees to Bangladesh has removed the battered halo & made her an object of scorn. Hopefully, someday she will one day be the subject of prosecution for crimes against humanity.
This iconic photo is a man pleading with Bangladeshi border guards for asylum from the 2012 military siege against Rohingya. Tens of thousands were fleeing for their lives but being refused entry by Bangladesh. The same was happening to Rohingya refugees on boats. The Thai government was not just turning away boats of refugees but tugging them out to sea & abandoning them to certain death.
Rohingya refugees are organizing solidarity groups & networks, using social media to educate & build solidarity, rallying & picketing in countries where they have found asylum. The response to genocide by most governments has been to play dead or rant a little indignation but many governments & their agencies are baiting Rohingya resistance as associated with Middle East “jihadi terrorists.” To this we respond with an international hoot of derision. International solidarity is growing & it won’t be stopped by vilifying.
Je suis Rohingya. Their struggle is our struggle. No human being is alien to us.
This is the cover of a new book by Freny Manecksha about the Indian occupying army’s use of rape & sexual violence in Kashmir as a form of social control. It is not a matter of troops releasing sexual frustration but an orchestrated political & military tactic to subordinate & demoralize resistance.
Because of the nature of the violation involved in rape & sexual assault, how women, children, & often male (especially in torture) victims are interrogated for their legal defense or interviewed for political campaigns requires sensitivity, respect, & a profound grasp that any shame adheres only to the perpetrators.
Freny worked many years as a journalist for Indian publications, including the Times of India, but now is a freelance journalist focusing in the past few years on Kashmir, particularly women’s experiences under occupation.
It is of course more than apt that the cover art on her book would be by Rollie Mukherjee whose art has also highlighted the narratives of Kashmiri women & honored them for their role & leadership against occupation & as freedom fighters.
This article by Freny is an excerpt from the book titled “How does a Kashmiri woman tell the world her story of rape & sexual violence by security forces?”
http://www.dailyo.in/politics/kashmir-women-in-conflict-sexual-assault/story/1/16948.html
Could Michael Flynn be a Manchurian candidate? Or is he just a corrupt ass?