Regrettably, the Rohingya solidarity rally in Los Angeles did not come off for unknown reasons. It could be because the initiator was new to organizing rallies. If anyone would like to organize a rally & doesn’t know how to go about it, please let me know & I can give you some ideas based on over 50 years of doing so.
Monthly Archives: September 2017
In that wonderful interview with Rollie Mukherjee in Kashmir Life, she describes the role of Kashmiri activists on social media in her education about the struggle in Kashmir. That’s also how I came to my commitment to the Kashmiri struggle & there are legions of others just like us. Brilliant work, brothers & sisters of Kashmir.
Interview with Rollie Mukherjee
A fascinating interview with Rollie Mukherjee about her art, her feminism, & how she came to be such a committed champion of Kashmiri freedom.
International People’s Tribunal on Burma’s Crimes Against Humanity
The International People’s Tribunal on Burma’s Crimes Against Humanity will be held from September 18th to 22nd at the University of Malaya-Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Around the world, we will be able to follow the proceedings live stream.
Given the scale of this genocide, many feel that the destiny of the Rohingya living as a free people is a hopeless cause. On the contrary, Rohingya activists & their supporters have made their struggle one of the most important in the world. Five years ago, few even knew who they were. They are certainly facing enormous obstacles to freedom but they no longer face them alone. Hundreds of thousands around the world continue to march & rally against the genocide & in defense of Rohingya rights. Solidarity is the beginning of justice.
Jakarta, Indonesia stands with the Rohingya at massive rally yesterday:
https://www.facebook.com/henny.aryantini/posts/1578061515548555?pnref=story
Brilliant insight from Shaheed, Cape Town, South Africa :
“The world’s biggest supplier of tik (methamphetamine) is Myanmar. It is the second biggest producer of opium. Support for the Rohingya and other exploited and oppressed masses in Myanmar is not just a humanitarian issue but a life and death question for our own youth.
1 in 5 become addicts.
Stop the genocide.”
You know the Syrian revolution Assad supporters claim never took place? The one they claim was always jihadi head-choppers against the benign dictatorship of Assad? Here it is in a video from September 16, 2011. And despite claims that it never existed or has already been decisively defeated, it continues against all odds.
The Arab Spring is a misnomer for a revolutionary process that has just begun. Colonial control of the planet, including the Arab countries, was a primary force behind WWI & WWII, and that control is now being thrown off with a vengeance. Here the Syrian people show the intransigent spirit of their revolution.
At first I grieved when I broke with longtime allies from the antiwar, Palestinian solidarity, & socialist movements moving into the Assad camp, supporting his dictatorship against the revolution–grieving not just for the loss of old allies, but because their political corruption had weakened or destroyed those movements which need to be rebuilt on principles.
But then I see those old allies remaining dead silent on the genocide against the Rohingya people & not denouncing Assad ideologues, their new allies, who claim there is no genocide of Rohingya but only Saudi-backed Wahhabi terrorism. That grief turns sour & I really don’t give a damn. There are just some lines one does not cross, political mistakes one cannot make, principles one cannot flout. There’s no tragedy here, only shame.
The Irrawaddy: genocide promoter
The well-known Burmese news site Irrawaddy has been cheering on the Rohingya genocide in the most politically corrupt ways: (1) the “there’s two sides to this genocide” argument; (2) the ARSA terrorists provoked the military into scorched earth genocide argument; (3) the Aung San Suu Kyi remains the best hope of peace & reconciliation crap; (4) & by dragging out activists from the 1988 social uprising (those not in jail, executed, or in exile) who all look like whipped puppies to swear allegiance to the military & Suu Kyi & say the conflict has to do with immigration & “Bengali” terrorism. One of them said “They [self-identifying Rohingya] are not one of 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar.”
But how does Irrawaddy explain these images of entire families fleeing, people carrying injured & elderly on their backs, injured crawling to asylum on their knees, unaccompanied children running for their lives with baby siblings? How do they explain entire villages torched or the stories by refugees of men, women, & children burned alive, raped, beheaded, stabbed, tortured?
(Photo from Getty)
The bodies of a young boy & two infants all with bullet wounds washed up on the shores of the Naf river. Were they the Saudi-backed Wahhabi terrorists Suu Kyi & the most corrupt political forces in the world are talking about?