Nothing typifies the brutality & targeting of young people under the Indian occupation more than the use of pellet munitions which disfigure, disable, demoralize, & kill. Pellet guns were also used against the Bahraini Arab Spring uprising in 2011. An international campaign against their use is necessary in the same way as the campaign against land mines lest their use become legitimized against protesters in other countries. This new FB page is a good source of information on the criminality of pellets against protesters whether they engaged in stone pelting or not. Please like & share it as part of a campaign against the use of pellet guns.

https://www.facebook.com/pelletvictimswelfaretrust/?hc_ref=ARSyVvAB44T9cTydDXZxysY50TNBCb0N8jejELJU5qGQtkjfql-sXuB2Drj-ZxwgDyg&fref=nf

On the Trump administration’s kidnapping of small children

McAllen June 30 Families belong together rally (Al Jazeera) July 16 2018

The most important US news, other than its several wars, is the Trump policy of kidnapping small children & jailing their parents. There were at least 2,551 children put in detention centers, not including the 10,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border. The government is under court order to reunite those children with their families & what has become clear in Trump’s continuing defiance of the court order is that they were separated from family with no accounting for future reuniting. Some were sent to detention centers several states away from where their parents were detained. Now DNA tests are required to know where the children are & who their parents are. Some have been handed off to human traffickers & will not be found. Such is the criminality of US immigration policy.

On June 30th, hundreds of thousands marched at the Families Belong Together marches across the US. There were only several hundred here at ground zero in McAllen, Texas. The immigration rights movement here is very much mortgaged to the Democratic Party which keeps public protest to a minimum level. The largest protest was 1,500 people called by the ACLU in Brownsville, about one hour east of McAllen. Whilst tens of thousands could be mobilized, the main immigration rights group here is calling for a 24 hour fast & 24 days of prayer in place of public protests. In human history, prayer has seldom been considered sufficient, even by the most religious political leaders & activists, against the predations of political power. God helps those who help themselves.

The Trump “zero tolerance” policy was not defeated by the court order on reuniting children with their families. Still in the works are attempts to hold refugees indefinitely with or without their children. The only acceptable policy is open borders for all refugees. No human being is alien to us.

(Photo of McAllen Families Belong Together rally from Al Jazeera)

Gaza child July 2018 (alQuds on Twitter) July 16 2018
A Palestinian child injured in current Israeli bombing assault on Gaza. Not a peep about the bombing in US media.

(Photo from al Quds on Twitter)

UN report on human rights crisis in Kashmir

Cover to Terrorized on children in Kashmir July 17 2018

Quite predictably, the Indian government has gone ballistic over the 49-page report issued last month by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the human rights crisis in Kashmir. Indian government defenders call it fallacious, tendentious, mischievous when most of the information in the report is beyond dispute & has sometimes been reported in Indian media. What the report details is the scale & statistics of the human rights crimes by Indian forces occupying Kashmir. India & Pakistan denied OHCHR investigators access to the country because it would only have added force to the condemnations. This is the first UN human rights report on Kashmir in seven decades of Indian rule. It likely would not have been produced were it not for the investigatory work of Kashmiri human rights groups like the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) & the campaigning of Kashmiri activists on social media.

This is a copy of the OHCHR report: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInKashmirJune2016ToApril2018.pdf

This is the website of JKCCS which has several reports on human rights in Kashmir: http://jkccs.net/

This is an important recent report by JKCCS investigators on the impact of the occupation on Kashmiri children:  http://jkccs.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Impact-of-Violence-on-Children-of-JK-JKCCS.pdf

Loved the protests against Trump in London & Scotland. If the British moochocracy didn’t already have enough going against it, Betty’s tete a tete with Trump should have done it in.

July 16th

Don’t know a thing about soccer & don’t give a damn which team wins but I share in the gloating by so many that France won because the majority of its team are African & Muslim. It’s on a level playing field the oppressed can show the stuff they’re made of. Equal to the best of humanity.

Ju;y 16th

“Sorry, France, Belgium, England, Croatia football teams for not watching your FIFA World cup Quarter final success against your respective opponents for I along with millions in KASHMIR were detained in our homes with no electricity and Internet and hundreds of Indian military forces in closed military zones keeping an constant eye on us.”

–Zafar Iqbal

Ju;y 16th