Last year, Facebook blocked my post with this obituary of Thai king Pumipon by Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a dissident who fled Thailand after being threatened with lèse-majesté prosecution. They claimed it violated community standards. I appealed the censorship since it’s been posted by several other people. I was reported by a Thai nationalist who loved the king, the military junta, & applauded when they refused Rohingya refugee boats the right to land in May 2015. I write anti-obituaries myself but this remains my favorite anti-obituary of all time for its brilliant & merciless political treatment of Pumipon & the military.

https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/king-pumipon-of-thailand/

(Photo is Pumipon getting the servile treatment)

Today is the 25th commemoration of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. The mosque was built in 1528-29 CE at the behest of the Mughal emperor Babur & demolished in 1992 as a result of Hindu nationalist campaigning claiming it was originally a Hindu religious site. It resonates in the worst ways with Zionist claims & assaults on Al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Mughal Empire, ruled by a Muslim dynasty, covered most of the Indian subcontinent & parts of Afghanistan at its peak. I don’t pretend to any knowledge of the Mughal Empire, its historic period or how it came to be that Muslims went from ruling India to becoming subject to persecution & pogroms. The violent persecution of Muslims in India clearly makes that history important to study & understand.

This is a valuable article to begin that study. It’s titled “Too Painful To Remember Too Important To Forget” by Afreen Firdaus Idrees about the destruction of the mosque in 1992 & the violence it unleashed against Muslims, including her own family. Afreen is an Indian Muslim & a very cogent political writer, particularly on issues of Islamophobia, feminism, nationalism.

http://thecompanion.in/babri-masjid-demolition-too-painful-to-remember-too-important-to-forget/

Photo is Babri Masjid before it was demolished.

(Photo from Getty Images)

There was a special television report on the 1960 rape & murder in McAllen, Texas of Irene Garza by John Feit, a priest at her local church. Feit, now in his 80s & no longer a priest, is currently on trial here for her murder. The story is so much worse than has been generally reported & involves the social history of racism & segregation against those of Mexican ancestry.

In 1960, before the US civil rights movement, McAllen was completely segregated between whites & those of Mexican ancestry in housing & education. Her family lived in the Mexican-American district near the Sacred Heart church her family attended. (That church is now a center for providing assistance to mostly women & children Mexican & Central American immigrants.) Irene’s family encouraged their two daughters to defy restrictions imposed by segregation, particularly in education. Both girls became accomplished athletes & both attended college. She was a kind, unpretentious person who volunteered at a senior home to help the elderly do their hair for family visits & was a religious woman who attended weekly confession at Sacred Heart.

John Feit, the priest who murdered her, was assigned to Sacred Heart only 24 days after being found guilty of the attempted rape of a woman in another church (for which he paid a $500 fine but did not receive a jail term). Church authorities did not warn parishioners at Sacred Heart that Feit was dangerous & made no provisions to monitor him around women & children. When Irene went to him for confession, he persuaded her to move to the rectory where he tortured, raped & murdered her, later dumping her body in a canal.

The local police & Texas Rangers always knew he was their man but Catholic Church policy was to protect priests from criminal prosecution. The priests who served with Feit at Sacred Heart knew he was guilty but were under orders to lie for him. When police were unable to arrest him, church authorities moved him to a monastery in Missouri till things cooled down. The monastery knew they were protecting him from murder charges according to a monk who turned Feit in over 40 years later. When a priest from Sacred Heart & the monk, both eaten with guilt, came forward to McAllen police in about 2005, the district attorney refused to press charges saying the priest & monk were senile & not credible, & he sabotaged police efforts to get Feit (no longer a priest) prosecuted. No explanation was given for the DA’s criminal negligence but some possibilities come to mind, including collaboration with church officials. It wasn’t until a new district attorney was elected in 2014 that the Garza family was able to get the case reinvestigated. The McAllen police chief Victor Rodriquez played a major role in finally hauling in Feit from Arizona where he lived a respectable life as a father & grandfather.

Rape & murder of women & children is not just a personal crime. The case of this admirable young woman, who would be 83 years-old now, shows that these crimes against women & children are social & political forms of oppression. That is why they need to be politically addressed as such. Hopefully, a jury will find Feit guilty as charged & send his insolent, remorseless ass to jail for the rest of his life.

May Irene Garza finally Rest In Peace.

Kashmiri writer Mirza Waheed posted some photos from Rollie Mukherjee’s new book of art (explaining the irregular lighting in this photo of the work). This work is a wonderful tribute to the families of the forcibly disappeared who protest every month in Srinagar organized by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

This linked article by Afreen Firdaus Idrees titled “Painting against disremembering” is a beautiful elaboration of the interaction between Rollie’s artistic vision & the brutalities of the occupation.:

http://twocircles.net/2017feb23/405234.html

Reposting this again by Mir Laieeq because it such a moving, beautiful, & powerful statement:

“indian state despite its grave, unspeakable crimes against us, has not been able to kill our humanity, it has failed to make hatred the defining virtue of our struggle, despite its beastly behaviour we have not turned into beasts, instead we have retained our dignity and ethical fabric, despite being victims of an atrocious war imposed upon us we have maintained our moral compass, the humanitarian gestures like rescuing occupying soldiers even when most of them have been acting like savages is a reflection of who we are and what we aspire to be! In all this lies the biggest defeat of this oppressive state and our greatest victory, it also gives us hope that a free kashmir will not be built upon pathological hatred of the other, but upon the ideals of human fraternity, dignity and brotherhood. Kashmir today even in one of her most painful times has a lot of lessons to offer to Indians and world at large: we are willing to sacrifice our lives to achieve freedom but we won’t lose our morality in the process, we refuse to slip into savagery and hatred despite the cruelest provocations like killing and blinding of our children. As for us, Azaadi is not a mere destination but a means towards a more humane, just and ethical society.”

Image is digital work by Masood Hussain about the trauma of occupation on children.