Watched “Legally Blonde” with Reese Witherspoon who played a brilliant law student who looked & acted like a Barbie Doll. I’ve known working class women like that in my life. First impression, they fool you & you judge them by style. Then you get to know them & they’re sensitive, intelligent, insightful, kind, rich in character. The good thing about the movie is that it wasn’t mean-spirited toward any of the women characters & showed us in a positive light. It was a fun movie & I don’t want to hear any trashing. So don’t go trying to bust my illusions about it.

Some of you may be interested in something my book club read titled “Hidden Figures” about the Black women mathematicians who were essential to the US space program. Actually they were the geniuses behind it even though white guys with crew cuts in NASA control rooms get all the glory. We all thought the book was dry reading & too much like a graduate school dissertation but the movie with the same title based on the book was a marvelous dramatization because it focused on three of the leading women who put those rockets in space. Personally I detest the militarization of space exploration but was fascinated by these women & the role they played despite the racism, sexism, & lack of recognition.

Indian nationalists have gotten so much mileage out of the narrative of a Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) genocide & forced migration in 1989 that they’re now using it against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state. According to India Today & repeated by Reuters, the Daily Mail, & other media, masked men dressed in black presumed to be Rohingya are executing Hindus & burying them in mass graves, marching the women into the woods, removing their sindoor & bangles, forcing them to wear burqas & convert to Islam, then forcing them to marry Rohingya Muslims. All that while Rohingya are running from military & nationalist death squads. They’re taking time out from genocide to force Hindus to convert.

Even after Burmese Hindus flee to Bangladesh refugee camps, India Today & the Daily Mail claim Rohingya Muslim overseers keep them under close supervision to enforce the religious conversion–while at the same time standing in line for food, trying to get medical care for their infirm & injured, & trying to build shelters with tarps against the monsoon rains.

This is where Islamophobia shades into derangement. Burmese dissident in exile Maung Zarni said that “What is really scary is the Burmese military’s attempt to expand the circle of enemies against the Rohingya.” That’s exactly what’s going on here. That circle of enemies now includes Hindutva nationalists, fascists & Assad supporters, Bangladeshi officials, other government officials, & several media sources. But just as the circle of lies & enemies expands, so does the breadth of solidarity which can see through the idiocy & malignancy of these lies to stand with the Rohingya all over the world. When you recycle slanders used against Kashmiris for use against Rohingya, chickens can come home to roost. But the worst part of this is that the junta is given impunity for executing Hindus & blaming it on Rohingya.

Photo is Rohingya refugee arriving in Bangladesh. But is she really a Rohingya or a Hindu forced to convert?

(Photo from AP)

Trump says it’s too hard to get relief supplies & aid to Puerto Rico because “it’s an island in the middle of the ocean”…

But we were able to get supplies & 100,000 troops to Afghanistan….no problem!

–Bob Lindsey

“Media if you are “disappointed” with Suu Kyi, take Valium or meditate. But let’s talk about the real thing: Myanmar GENOCIDE.”

–Maung Zarni

This photo is from a 2010 garment workers’ strike in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The boy is a striking sweatshop worker. A second photo shows him being kicked while on the ground. Why should Rohingya refugees entrust unaccompanied children, already traumatized by losing parents in the genocide, to the care of a government which allows child labor & assaults them when they strike for their rights?

(Photo by Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)

Same little boy moments later getting kicked by police officer.

Another small boy among striking garment workers being assaulted by police.

Just as a UN agency warns that Rohingya refugees, the majority women & children, are at risk of human trafficking, the Minister for Social Welfare Nuruzzaman Ahmed announced the Bangladeshi government will “rehabilitate” about 6,000 orphaned Rohingya children. It will provide them national ID cards (he didn’t specify what rights, if any, come with the card) & will provide services “per the standard of Sheikh Russel Destitute Children Training & Rehabilitation Center for Children” (he didn’t specify what those standards are). The children will be isolated from the rest of Rohingya refugees & separated by age into different camps on 200 acres of land which the government has requisitioned (but not yet received) specifically for that purpose. Children up to seven years of age will be placed in one camp & those between eight & 18 years of age will be placed in another. This has all the smell of a Trojan Horse.

A government which administers a sweatshop economy based on the exploitation of women & child laborers & which has proposed deporting Rohingya refugees to an uninhabitable island subject to monsoons & regular flooding cannot be trusted with the welfare of Rohingya children. Why do orphaned kids have to be isolated from the rest of the Rohingya community? The minister expressed concern that “they may get involved in unrest if they remain amongst the rest of the Rohingya” & that separating them was for their own good. What kind of nefarious influences among refugees is the minister talking about? He’s blowing smoke. Isolating them takes them away from oversight by their own community with vested interests in protecting their kids, even if they are without parents or guardians. Why would the minister separate children by age & ignore that many older children are now the sole caretakers for their little siblings & that separating them would be extreme trauma from which many would not recover?

There does need to be a database of orphaned Rohingya refugees; there do need to be thoroughly vetted professional staff to deal with their special needs & advocate for their safety & care until homes & asylum can be found for them. But this should not be left to a ministry of the Bangladeshi government which very well may feed these little kids into a pipeline of sex & labor trafficking. Whatever happens to the kids must be monitored by Rohingya refugees & their representatives.

(Photo of unaccompanied minor children from Al-Fatiha Global‏ @AlFatihaGlobal)

This is a thoughtful article about the right of return to Burma for Rohingya refugees & forced repatriation. Clearly, it is not safe for refugees to return to apartheid & genocide in Arakan state so the demand must be for asylum with rights to education, work, health care, social services, free movement–along with demanding the end of genocide in Burma.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/natalie-brinham/breaking-cycle-of-expulsion-forced-repatriation-and-exploitation-for-r

Brisbane, Australia stands with the Rohingya at a rally on September 17th.

Facebook has such delicate sensibilities that when I posted this photo of a Kashmiri pellet victim they covered it with a caution notice that it might show violence & gore. That it does. But if this is so gruesome that it requires warning notices, perhaps Facebook should stop censoring news from Kashmir about the occupation which involves all sorts of human rights horrors. Perhaps it should allow Kashmiris to show exactly what is happening to them at the hands of the Indian army.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.