The sexual assault of hundreds of minor athletes in US gymnastics once again exposes the complicity of sports, medical, political officials at the highest levels of power. This could not have gone on for 30 years without many of them knowing & winking it away as a boys will be boys thing. A great big salute to the women athletes coming forward so fearlessly & powerfully to testify & denounce.
#MeTooSisters
Kashmir Life journal has an article titled “Chaigund Encounter: The Complete Story” about the Indian Army operation on Wednesday. To suggest that ‘indiscriminate firing’ by two militants was responsible for the death of a 17-year-old teenager, bullet wounds in the head to two young girls, & serious head injuries to a young boy is not so much the “complete story” as apologetics for Indian Army hunt to kill operations. According to form in these operations, the occupying army set up a cordon around a village where informants told them militants were hiding. The article claims the army ordered residents out of their homes but it’s far more likely that residents came rushing out to protest & obstruct the army from shooting up the neighborhood.
Even if the young men were militants, the Indian occupying army has no rights to usurp due process in their apprehension. Since when is it allowable under the rule of law to set out to kill rather than apprehend? How is it legal to use such a massive arsenal against two inexperienced, poorly trained, & ill-equipped young militants maybe with two rifles between them? Since when is it legal to endanger hundreds of civilians in the process of executing two militants? Where does the law allow soldiers to destroy the entire structure of homes just to kill two militants who were barely out of their teens.
Both young men were killed. But so was 17-year-old Shakir Ahmad Mir who lived nearby. Eighteen-year-old Saima Wani was shot in the brain & remains in critical condition, 20-year-old Bhat Sami were shot in the head, & 12-year-old Najar Mushaira Fayaz sustained head injuries, damage to both eyes, & internal hemorrhaging from a live shell explosion. One of the young girls was a resident of the house that was besieged & destroyed. Was she in the home when Indian soldiers started shelling it? Is that where she was killed? The other girl was a sister of one of the militants who was killed so perhaps their injuries were not so random as reported.
The two militants killed were Sameer Ahmad & Firdous Ahmad, both very recent recruits to militancy. Their funeral prayers were attended by thousands as was the funeral of Shakir Ahmad Mir. May they Rest In Peace.
This photo shows a woman looking through the damaged walls of the destroyed home. Consider what kind of arsenal was used to do such damage against two young men who maybe each had a rifle.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
(Photo by Aasif Shafi)
On the one hand, accusing activists like me of pandering to Muslims or supporting Islamic terrorists is amusing. On the other hand, it isn’t amusing one whit because of the force of Islamophobia as a political weapon & battle cry in war, occupation, & genocide. Part of the issue is the outright persecution of Islam but the heart of it today is that Muslims have been in the forefront of struggle for democracy from Palestine & the Arab Spring uprisings to Kashmir to Arakan state to the massive military counterrevolutions in Syria & Yemen.
If you don’t recognize that harsh glaring reality, then it’s likely you don’t understand much at all about what’s going on in the world & that you will, like so many well-meaning lost souls, end up supporting Syrian, Russian, or even Saudi coalition & US coalition bombing of civilians. Is it a coincidence do you think that anti-Semitism often combines with Islamophobia, especially in Syria? If you don’t recognize these orchestrated nationalist & racist hatreds, you end up on the side of holocausts as in Germany & now in Syria, Yemen, Arakan state.
“Ask common people about the sufferings under Indian rule, not a single day passes without somebody being killed. This day only reminds us of oppression.”
Photo is Indian paramilitary trooper standing guard in Srinagar on January 25th.
(Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP)