Imagine that children have to flee & stand against genocide rather than be playing ball in schoolyards.

A Bangladeshi guy named Hamidul Haque Chowdhury, associated with the Awami League, the current governing party, said: “Rohingya are the main reason for all the troubles throughout the country, including Cox’s Bazar. They have been associated with criminal offenses such as killing, mugging, larceny & terrorism.”

That echoes Trump’s racist nonsense about Mexican immigrants being all rapists & criminals. Several studies going back decades show the crime rate among Mexican immigrants isn’t even close to that of native-born US citizens. The evidence in Bangladesh is also overwhelming of criminality toward Rohingya, including kidnapping & human trafficking, with no evidence & very little likelihood that traumatized refugees are engaged in crime sprees.

Photo is Rohingya kids learning how to read the Quran at
Kutupalang Unregistered Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

(Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

The Dhaka Tribune, a newspaper owned by a politician in the Awami League (Bangladesh’s current governing party) published an article about the reaction of Rohingya refugee camp leaders to the government’s proposed forced relocation of Rohingya to the uninhabitable island of Thengar Char. Abu Siddique, head of the Kutupalong refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, said “We would rather drown in the Naf River than move to Thengar Char.”

Since October 9th, when the military assault on Rohingya began, nearly 70,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, increasing the Rohingya refugee population to between 300,000-500,000 living in makeshift camps & already suffering severe malnutrition & poverty. Most live in unregistered camps which means the UNHCR provides no services. Most are prevented from registering by the Bangladesh government which does not want them to take up residence.

The new wave of refugees prompted the Bangladesh government to resurrect an old discredited plan & again threaten to move thousands of Rohingya to Thengar Char to wait out deportation back to Myanmar. Though the proposal is clearly deranged, government ministers insist they are going to carry out the plan, are seeking UN funding to implement it, & will build necessary infrastructures like roads & shelter to make it possible.

One official said the relocation would take place only after the infrastructure projects are completed. Reuters sent reporters to check out construction on Thengar Char & said as of a few days ago there was no sign of activity. It’s unlikely the Bangladesh government will be able to persuade construction workers to live in tents & work on a muddy island subject to flooding & cyclones, & with no cell phone reception to call home & beg to be airlifted out.

It’s more likely the Bangladesh government is pulling a fast one with this proposal–not that it shouldn’t be denounced since the level of derangement among capitalist politicians makes it a possibility. But the Thengar Char proposal might be something of a switch & bait maneuver to distract attention from the violence at the Naf river dividing Myanmar & Bangladesh. The real issue of concern is not forced relocation to that island but that Bangladesh officials have been preventing fleeing Rohingya from entering the country & are forcibly returning them to the killing fields they are fleeing. That’s what has to be exposed & denounced.

The article in Dhaka Tribune claimed Rohingya refugees are urging the Bangladesh government to pressure Myanmar to let them back. What the refugee leaders clearly said was that they would rather drown in the Naf river than be dumped like landfill on an uninhabitable island. They do not want to go back to the genocide they just fled from. They want sanctuary in Bangladesh as provided under international law to those fleeing genocide. Asylum from genocide is a right.

End the genocide in Myanmar. Full human & democratic rights for Rohingya in Myanmar & in exile.

The Amnesty report on monstrous torture & execution by hanging in Assad’s gulag is making headlines around the world. His dictatorship stands exposed.

No need for Assad supporters to go apoplectic nor for TeleSur, Counterpunch, or Global Research to write labored excoriations of Amnesty. All that is necessary to determine the integrity of the report is that Assad allow independent human rights monitors unrestricted access to his prisons. If he is falsely accused, he has a way to prove that.

We are fully assured Assad will decline Amnesty’s proposal & even more assured his propagandists & followers will find ways to justify whatever he does, including the crimes he commits in his gulag as they have done for those he commits against civilians in his killing fields.

The Amnesty International report published today titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings & Extermination At Saydnaya Prison, Syria” is 48 pages describing unspeakable tortures Syrian dissidents are being subjected to in Assad’s gulag, including the hanging of up to 13,000 dissidents & revolutionists between 2011 & 2015.

This damning exposé explains the pernicious campaign being waged by Assad’s paid coterie of propagandists denouncing Amnesty International as deceitful & biased against Assad. They were preparing their followers not to even read the report.

Amnesty is not a paragon of political virtue; there is often reason to excoriate their judgements including particularly its report on Gaza after the 2014 Israeli carpet bombing offensive. But this report exhibits investigative rigor which Assadists will attempt to discredit. There is a way for the Assad regime to rebut the conclusions of this investigation & that is to comply with Amnesty’s call for allowing independent human rights monitors unrestricted access to Saydnaya & other Syrian prisons.

Do those who support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians to defend Assad’s national sovereignty (i.e., dictatorial rule) believe these monstrous crimes are politically defensible by anyone other than fascists?

One can download the report from this site in either English or Arabic:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/5415/2017/en/

(Before & after photos of detainee at Saydnaya Prison)

(Both photos  from Amnesty)

Amnesty International has published “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings & Extermination At Saydnaya Prison, Syria,” a gruesome 48 page account of all form of torture & of up to 13,000 hangings of Assad’s political opponents in one of his military prisons.

The contrast of investigative rigor shown in Amnesty International’s report to the pathetic sycophancy of the US Peace Council delegation to Syria in July 2016 facilitated by paid Assad propagandists Beeley & Bartlett could not be more damning of the latter. The delegates who on their return spoke at the UN under the aegis of the Syrian ambassador make you cringe at their childlike credulity & willingness to believe whoever Assad’s propagandists stuck in front of them, including mostly government officials, businessmen, industrialists, & the Syrian Eastern Bunny. They swallowed every word they were told & never inquired about Assad’s gulag.

The delegates in this photo fawning during their audience with Assad are from left to right: Henry Lowendorf, Madelyn Hoffman, Judith Bello, Bashar Assad, Vanessa Beeley, Donna Nassor, & two unidentified jamokes. The delegation included Joe Jamison & Gerry Condon, neither of whom looks like these two guys.

If you can stomach listening to 45 minutes of political drivel, this video is members of the delegation reporting their findings at the UN on their return from Syria. Even ten minutes will serve to expose their shameful lack of judgment & investigative rigor in contrast to the Amnesty International report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc-RmAVK8Pg

Yesterday a friend & I talked about why they would allow Trump to take office after losing the popular vote, showing himself to be a vulgarian pig, & being financially compromised, maybe criminally implicated, in business dealings in several countries. They could have stopped it any number of ways.

Surely they were planning an abrupt rightward shift in US politics but he seems to be bungling even that & challenging institutions of capitalist rule along the way, like the judiciary. Clinton’s policies wouldn’t have been different but she was in the tradition of politicians promising the sky & delivering the opposite & wouldn’t have been so disruptive. With that coterie of vicious halfwits & racists surrounding him, he’s making the US presidency look like amateur hour at a maximum security facility for the criminally deranged.

Trump got a resounding welcome by special forces operatives at the US Special Operations Command yesterday. At least he’s still welcome among psycho killers who were no-show at the Bowling Green Massacre but have been involved in every other US treachery of the past 65 years.

If Trump refuses to release his tax returns how will they know he severed financial relationships in other countries that are conflicts of interest with being president? The details of Trump’s overseas business deals are secret & were not reported in his campaign financial filings with the Federal Election Commission. Why isn’t an oversight commission demanding access to that information? Is there an oversight commission?

How do we know his business dealings are legal in those countries? Most of his dealings are with international financiers & real estate developers who in almost every country are tied to illegal & criminal activities. What kind of money is he getting under the table?

In an interview he gave about his 2013 trip to Moscow he told an interviewer: “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs & generals, & top of the government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, & the relationship was extraordinary.” Russia isn’t called gangster capitalism for nothing–even in comparison to US gangster capitalism–so that oversight commission should find out what’s in the “further” secret part of that relationship.

What do the Russians have on Trump, by which we do not mean prurient matters? What kind of deals & what are the terms of those deals that Putin thinks will serve as blackmail? If all this secrecy does not require special congressional oversight or constitute grounds for impeachment, then what does?

Duterte appointed Trump’s business partner Jose E. B. Antonio as special Philippine envoy to the US. That business partner is tied to slum evictions & arsons for purpose of privatization & to Duterte’s death squads. Duterte operates like J. Edgar Hoover so what does Duterte have on Trump other than the ability to harm or advance Trump’s business interests?

A special Congressional investigative committee must be appointed to examine all of Trump’s business dealings in other countries & to sever all of them–which would require his resignation & likely prosecution. Not because his business dealings jeopardize the security of the US (US Pentagon dealings overseas already do that) nor to salvage the integrity of the presidency (which was already shot to hell before his presidency & now is in the toilet) but because the American people & people in those countries where he has deals have a right to know what kind of criminalities Trump is engaged in at our expense.

Aamir Nazir Lattoo, a 23 year old graduate student at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in India, was martyred by Indian Occupational Forces on July 12, 2016 while home on vacation. His family took him to the local hospital in Bijbehara where the doctors administered first aid & called an ambulance to take him to Srinagar.

His father Nazir Latoo reports that as the ambulance was about to leave occupying forces attacked & vandalized it, beat the driver forcing him to flee, assaulted family members & attendants of another injured person, tore out the IV tubes on Aamir’s arms, & detained the ambulance which delayed emergency medical care in Srinagar. Unable to receive critical care in time, he died the next day.
Aamir Nazir was known as passionate about Kashmiri freedom & thousands participated in his funeral prayers.

Kashmiri students at AMU, in an assertion of Kashmiri self-determination, are honoring Aamir by organizing an annual football tournament in his name. They said: “The tournament is aimed at reliving every single memory that we have of our beloved brother, Aamir Nazir. This event, to be played every year insha’allah, would keep reminding us of the cause that our martyrs like Aamir have laid their life for.”

Please like & share the Aamir Memorial Football Tournament page as an act of solidarity & in tribute to his life.

https://www.facebook.com/AMFT2016/?pnref=story

The Greater Kashmir posted this article about the gruesome assault on the ambulance:

http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/kashmir/story/229292.html

(Photo of Aamir Nazir)