Abdul Kareem carries his mother to refuge in Bangladesh. It is through such humanity that the Rohingya have won the respect & admiration of the world.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)

Just an aggressive reminder that gender-based insults (including in regard to Suu Kyi) are not allowed on my wall. Many, & I include myself, take great offense to words like bitch, whore, etc. Expand your vocabulary of abuse. Break out of an anti-social mindset & learn to see genocidaires in terms of their human rights crimes, not in terms of their gender.

Facebook censoring of news about the Palestinian & Kashmiri struggles has long been a problem, especially when they suspend or shut down the accounts of many activists. Now to read that they are censoring news from Rohingya activists–& just as the Mueller investigation is honing in on them for taking money from Russia to post racist, anti-immigration crap. We’ve got ourselves a free speech dilemma here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rohingya-activists-say-facebook-silences-them?source=facebook&via=mobile

Hard to even imagine the terror of small children fleeing military & nationalist death squads after witnessing genocide, especially the terror of those children who have lost their parents & are fleeing on their own. According to media reports, there are thousands of such children crossing the border into Bangladesh. With chaos in the refugee camps, these little kids are sitting ducks for predators posing as charitable organizations or parents.

We need to raise a hue & cry to demand thoroughly vetted child welfare providers be on hand to act as long-term guardians & to make sure no child slips into the hands of traffickers. That is a human right priority.

(Photo of little refugee at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

“The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives & him that takes.” –Shakespeare

It isn’t just mercy that refugees require because that has a sense of noblesse oblige & solidarity is a very different thing. But if you substitute mercy with solidarity in this beautiful passage from The Merchant of Venice, the message is the same.

Solidarity is not an act of charity nor a passive sentiment but a recognition that our human fates are tied together, that we are bound by economics, politics, colonialism & war–& that social transformation is forged only by active unity as brothers & sisters to end tyranny & make this world suitable for children to live & love in.

Photo is Rohingya mother & child refugees in the rain at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

(Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

{Reposted & slightly edited from September 18, 2015}

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on the UN Security Council, a bastion of big power realpolitik, to impose an arms embargo & targeted sanctions on Burma. It’s something of an empty gesture since of the five countries on the UNSC with veto power (China, France, Russia, the UK & US), China & Russia are the biggest sellers of arms to Burma & are not going to impose an embargo or sanctions of any kind. They are steadfast in preventing the UNSC from even shaking the naughty finger at the generals, let alone issuing a condemnation for genocide.

As for those targeted sanctions, they really don’t amount to a hill of beans. It means some Burmese government & military officials will have travel restrictions & asset freezes imposed. Even if they were enforced, they would not bring the generals to their knees. The targeted sanctions thing is justified by saying it would hurt those in power & not affect Burmese working people. Quite frankly, it shouldn’t be an issue to put the squeeze on those who support the generals in carrying out genocide.

The HRW call is worth supporting just to put pressure on China, Russia, India, Israel, & the other countries supplying arms & military equipment to Burma. It also puts pressure on European countries playing military footsie with the generals despite the EU arms embargo. There’s nothing to stop us from demanding our governments impose sanctions against multinationals investing in Burma since billions of dollars are made off the backs of the Rohingya people as well as other oppressed nationalities in that prison house of nations. We can find out which companies based in our countries are invested there & picket the hell out of them. Somebody has to be held accountable for this genocide; no one should earn a dime from the deaths & diaspora of the Rohingya people.

Text of HRW call: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/17/burma-targeted-sanctions-arms-embargo-needed

The poor little BRIC nations (that combined make up half the world’s population): Brazil, Russia, India, & China. “Breakout nations,” struggling against all odds to compete in the world economy with the US & Europe. That must be why they’ve turned to sweatshop economics, child labor, arms sales, & supporting dictatorships around the world. Moving ahead off the backs of working people & by arming genocide in Burma.

Some no-nonsense reporters need to get to the refugee settlements in Bangladesh & report what is actually going on with the delivery of humanitarian aid to the now 410,000 Rohingya refugees. All the big NGO operators are there–the Red Cross, Save the Children, MSF, UNICEF, UNHCR–yet media continue to report that after three weeks, refugees remain without shelter, food, clean water, medical care. Some of these operations use catastrophes to raise money that they don’t dispense for aid but some of them, like MSF, actually do deliver aid. So what is going on?

There have been reports, as there were in previous surges of Rohingya fleeing genocide (in 2012 & 2016 most notably), that the Bangladeshi government is obstructing NGOs from delivering aid. So how come a relatively small operation like Khalsa Aid is on the ground delivering food, water, & building shelters for the refugees?

We need to demand our governments airlift food, water, field hospitals, medical & trauma personnel, child protective services, prenatal & maternity care, & construction crews & have it delivered within the next 24 hours. Is Bangladesh refusing such assistance? Than Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has to be called out in no uncertain terms for endangering the lives of thousands of refugees. But before we start the condemnations we need to know exactly what is going on with the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Photo is an additional team from Khalsa Aid headed for Bangladesh.

(Photo from Khalsa Aid)

And here you have it! The partnership conducting the genocide against the Rohingya people at Aung San Suu Kyi’s induction March 30th, 2016. When she took office, media reported Suu Kyi finally had real power, that it was the end of military rule, that her moral standing as a champion of human rights was unimpeachable. By January 2017, media was reporting that the genocidal onslaught begun in October which sent up to 90,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives had “cast a pall” over her regime. Just a “pall” whilst Palestinian & Kashmiri youth throwing rocks are excoriated as terrorists?

In September 2017, she is being denounced around the world but her apologists claim now that she has no real power, that she does not control the military, that she’s got to play it cool because if she criticizes the junta she will lose her post in the civilian government. And in a monstrous switch & bait routine, they are now trying to put the onus for genocide on Saudi-backed Wahhabi Rohingya terrorists & exonerate even the military. It isn’t that such people can’t face reality–this is the apologetics of realpolitik, of defenders of genocide, of the most corrupt & supremacist political forces on the planet.

Stand with the Rohingya people against genocide & in their struggle for full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo from 2016 by Reuters)