Rollie Mukherjee’s art works were part of the Srinagar Biennale in Basel, Switzerland from April 12th to 15th. Not only is her work due such honor, but because the motif is the occupation of Kashmir, her presence in the exhibit will bring an understanding of the occupation that only art can bring. When her work was shown in Srinagar last year & honored by Kashmiris, that is the honorific most valuable.
Several years ago, I saw an exhibit at the Boston Fine Arts Museum by Hawaiian artists. Until that exhibit, I knew nothing about the violent US colonial conquest of Hawaii, the diaspora of dispossessed Hawaiians, or the ongoing struggle against the conquest. Because art is so powerful, the criminality against the Hawaiian people portrayed in the works was overwhelming & I began studying the US conquest. So like the Hawaiian artists, the honor accorded Rollie’s work demonstrates the role of the artist in political movements.
The Great Return March is a nonviolent campaign demanding the right of return for millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps. The only weapons Palestinians have are slingshots to return tear gas canisters & tires to burn so they cannot be seen by snipers. Against unarmed protesters, Israel is using an American manufactured rifle used for deer hunting in the US & an Israeli-made rifle with bullets which fragment, fracture bones, & cause very large exit wounds.
Israel has its own arms industry which is one of the big arms suppliers to India for the occupation of Kashmir & against its own dissidents. It also sells arms to Burma for the genocide against the Rohingya people. So the US commitment of $38 billion in military aid to Israel over the next ten years & the €370 million ($478 million USD) of military equipment licensed to Israel in 2016 by European countries is of a piece with the occupation of Kashmir & the genocide of the Rohingya people. The US & Europe would not bankroll Israel militarily & in other ways if it did not play a key role in US-European strategy to control the Middle East. Israel is in every way an extension of European & American colonialism which was the conflict motivating both WWI & WWII. This gives the lies to any claims that US militarism can play a progressive or humanitarian role in Syria–as if there weren’t overwhelming evidence bursting from the pages of colonial history.
A key demand of Palestinian solidarity is to stop arms sales to Israel, a demand which yokes Palestinian to Kashmiri & Rohingya solidarity.
Netanyahu says US-Israeli relation have never been stronger, especially after Trump’s decision to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem; an executive order keeps Guantanamo open; a more impenetrable wall is going up on the southern border against immigrants & refugees; the US has deployed more troops to Afghanistan & is saber rattling with North Korea; Iraq is now a completely shattered nation; Yemen is an international humanitarian crisis from over three years of bombing; social welfare programs in the US have been smashed to smithereens; racism, sexual violence, & the real stuff of fascism have been emboldened. From the point of view of America’s ruling elite, Trump’s tenure has been a political bonanza. Clinton wouldn’t have been one whit better but because of her populist rhetoric it might have taken longer to get to Armageddon.
https://www.facebook.com/QudsNen/videos/vb.163904570396800/1656753211111921/?type=2&theater
This is 25-year-old Palestinian Hadi Abu Libdah who was shot in the leg by Israeli snipers at the first Great Return March in Gaza on March 30th & then came to the Great Return March on April 27th on crutches. Moments after he gave this interview to Quds News, an Israeli sniper shot him in the face, directly in the mouth. There is no word on his condition.
This is what he told Quds News: “We came today Friday, the Friday of the revolting youth, to prove to the world & to all those who conspire against us & to the deceiver occupier that this land is ours & we will return, God willing. If we get our legs amputated & until the last drop of our blood, we will remain steadfast.”
Our heartfelt hopes for a speedy recovery for Hadi.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been in US custody at various CIA torture prisons since March 2003 & at Guantanamo since 2006 after the CIA arrested him in Pakistan as a collaborator of Osama bin Laden & the mastermind of 9/11. They’ve thrown the book at him, accusing him of–or rather claiming he confessed to–masterminding not only 9/11 but the shoe bombing, the Bali nightclub bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl, & several other such crimes. Now his defense attorneys claim he is suffering brain damage from the CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques like waterboarding. That invalidates all charges against him, whatever his actual culpability. He is a broken man after 15 years of torture & it is criminal to continue holding him or pursuing the death penalty. The real terrorists are those who have broken his spirit.
In January, Trump signed an executive order keeping Guantanamo torture prison open. In April, some anti-Assad activists are calling on him for a humanitarian intervention into Syria? What’s wrong with that picture?
Prior to the recent visit of a UN Security Council delegation to Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, an “international analyst” said that Bangladesh needs to provide “strong & unassailable evidence” backed up by documents to make a case for ethnic cleansing before the delegation. What idiocies are we expected to swallow like guppies & accept from officials? There are over a million Rohingya refugees with over a million stories of genocide & they are not unassailable enough? Don’t their voices matter? What kind of documents does the UNSC require for proof? Burmese passports from a regime that refuses to call the Rohingya by their own name & considers them illegal immigrants? A written declaration of genocide from the Burmese genocidaires who claim they don’t know why the Rohingya are fleeing? Genocide isn’t just trying to exterminate human beings but includes every attempt to pretend they don’t even exist so that their voices won’t be heard.
(Photo of Rohingya kids is a screenshot from 4 News)
These are the repatriation demands of Rohingya refugees which were displayed on placards when a UN delegation recently visited refugee camps in Bangladesh. They contrast completely with the repatriation agreement signed between the Burmese genocidaires & Bangladeshi government which would return refugees to barracks in concentration camps in Arakan/Rakhine state. These are the essential conditions laid down for their voluntary return & not a one of them is likely to be honored. The only politically problematic demand is #1 calling for the deployment of UN troops to Arakan state. Given the violent history of blue-helmeted UN “peacekeepers,” it would be inadvisable in the extreme to trust in them for security against military & nationalist death squads in Arakan. The Rohingya could only give such trust if UN troops were put under the control of the Rohingya community in the state which is a mandate not likely to be forthcoming from the UN. If the UN still plays stupid about the character of this genocide & has done nothing to stop it, it can hardly be trusted to put lives on the line to stop violence against the Rohingya.
What’s most important about these demands is that Rohingya refugees are asserting their right to be central to the repatriation process & not excluded from decision-making. The Rohingya people are not just victims of genocide but are demanding agency in opposing it. To think that only six years ago the 2012 genocidal onslaught against the Rohingya was drowned out by the spectacle over Suu Kyi going to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize. The question is no longer “Who are the Rohingya?” because the Rohingya take their place as one of the most important political & freedom struggles of our era.
(Photo of placard from Anayet Ullah Arman & Shakira Banu)
