Kashmiri friend Zulkarnain Banday has posted an important caveat about using Wikipedia to research anything about Kashmir. I could not agree more & have also posted such cautions. Wikipedia is run by a Zionist awarded a few years ago by the State of Israel for services rendered propaganda. Wikipedia takes a wrecking ball to truth on any entries involving Israel, Palestinians, Kashmir, the Rohingya, or most issues about Muslims. It’s impossible to unravel reality from propaganda & Islamophobia. The way Wikipedia’s lying-assed entries can be used is on geography & statistics & sometimes it’s useful to go through the links provided where there is information at odds with the Wikipedia entries.

In general, the caveat about Wikipedia applies to all research: vet & double-check every source & never talk through your hat. So many have ended up supporting Assad’s dictatorship & Russian & Syrian bombing of civilians precisely because they did not bother to do elementary homework of the kind considered de rigueur for an honest 7th grade book report.

Children are not accidentally harmed but are directly targeted in war, occupation, & genocide

Man grieving child Nov 2017

Palestinian children & youth are under siege in the West Bank with hundreds being manhandled & arrested by Israeli occupying troops. In Palestine, as in the Kashmiri occupation, as in the Rohingya genocide, children are not accidentally harmed in action against adults but are directly targeted in the most unspeakable ways, including beating, shooting, disabling, disfiguring, beheading, burning, & bombing.

This wrenching photo of a father grieving his dead child was posted on Twitter in a post about the current Russian bombing of civilians in Syria. In fact, it’s from the seven-week Israeli carpet bombing siege of Gaza in 2014 where Palestinians & several human rights organizations claimed Israeli bombers directly targeted children. The horror is that this could also be the West Bank, Kashmir, Arakan state, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan.

As the oppressors see it, terrorizing, disabling, or killing children is a way to end future defiance & resistance of the oppressed. Their terror of & violent obsession with children is a phenomenon witnessed also in the apartheid (Jim Crow) era of Black oppression in the US. Our response must be to oppose war, occupation, genocide because the protection & defense of children is the most elementary human decency. There are no exceptions or mitigations to our opposition such as those introduced by Assadists, fascists, nationalists.

Kofi Annan & delegation from The Elders ask Pope Francis to be a weasel & not use the name Rohingya when he visits Burma

Pope Francis with Elders Lakhdar Brahimi, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson and Ricardo Lagos meet Pope Francis in November 2017. (Credit- Servizio Fotografico L'Osservatore Romano) Nov 16 2017

On November 6th, Pope Francis had a private meeting with a delegation from The Elders, a group of retired diplomats & politicians led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The Vatican delegation included Annan, Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile, & Lakhdar Bramini, a former Algerian politician & UN diplomat.

The Elders, a group initiated by Nelson Mandela in 2007, are an active group of globetrotters who show up in trouble spots all over the world. But age has not brought them political wisdom & they remain stuck in the UN-super powers approach to conflict resolution which often puts them at odds with justice for the oppressed. Their failings are most apparent in regard to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing where they promote the two-state bantustate solution for Palestinians & actively oppose BDS. A bantustate solution is not just compromised politics; it’s LaLaLand stuff.

Kofi Annan was operating on his own, not representing The Elders when he was hired by Suu Kyi in August 2016 to head a commission to come up with ‘reconciliation & development’ proposals for Rakhine/Arakan state. Media reported it as an independent human rights investigation into persecution of the Rohingya but they weren’t really hearing Annan who talked in ambiguities to confuse them. He told a Yangon press conference, “We are not here to do a human rights investigation or to write a human rights report” but to make recommendations “toreduce tension & support development” in Arakan state–whatever the hell that means.

Annan told reporters that during the couple days he spent in Arakan he personally did not witness persecution of Rohingya–even though he was brought to one of the 36 Rohingya concentration camps. He cancelled a visit in October 2016 after the genocidal offensive began against the Rohingya that sent up to 100,000 fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh. If he had gone to Arakan, he would have seen the military occupation. He would have seen whole villages torched & heard reports from Rohingya residents of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, forcible disappearances, mass rape by soldiers & nationalist death squads. But our man Annan didn’t want to see that because he was commissioned by Suu Kyi & the generals to produce a whitewash of genocide.

Annan’s 63-page report came out almost on the eve of the August 25th genocidal offensive & has now been rendered useless even as a whitewash. What’s most despicable about the report is that Annan obliged the racism, social hatred, & genocidal impulses of Suu Kyi & the generals by refusing to use the name Rohingya & referring to them as “Muslims in Rakhine state”–not just denying genocide but stripping them of every vestige of dignity.

So what was Annan’s mission at the Vatican on the eve of Pope Francis’ visit to Burma on November 27th? Following the lead of the Burmese generals, Suu Kyi, Catholic Cardinal Charles Maung Bo & the bishops of Burma, The Elder delegation urged the pope to refrain from using the name Rohingya because it is “incendiary” & “so emotional.” How low can you go after genocide has sent close to one million Rohingya fleeing from mass rape, executions including the beheading & burning of infants & children, & the torching of hundreds of villages?

These are dignitaries so we’re supposed to show a little deference. What they deserve is scorn, contempt, & possibly prosecution for obstruction of justice. One hopes Pope Francis will rise above such cesspool politics to stand forthright with justice & the Rohingya people.

(Photo from Servizio Fotografico L’Osservatore Romano)

Tribute to Kashmiris Toib Majeed Mir & Muzamil Ahmad executed by Indian occupying forces

Funeral of Toib Majeed Mir (Kashmir Reflector) Nov 15 2017

About the same time that I posted a tribute to Ashiq Ahmad Bhat, my Facebook friend Ahmad Shabir posted a tribute to 25-year-old Toib Majeed Mir who was killed by Indian occupying forces in the same gruesome incident as Ashiq. One doesn’t have to agree with armed militancy to recognize the courageous spirits of these young men in the face of monstrous brutalities & criminalities by the Indian army. Thousands of Kashmiris attended the funeral prayers of both men to honor them. This is a quite moving eulogy for young Toib in Kashmir Reader; http://kashmirreader.com/…/…/sopore-mourns-over-toibs-death/.

There was also a tribute posted to Twitter for Muzamil Ahmad, an engineering student killed by Indian occupying forces, but there is not yet biographical information about him although thousands also attended his funeral prayers at Badroo Yaripora in the Kulgam district.

How do Kashmiris cope with so much loss & sorrow? We honor the lives of these young men as we honor the intransigence & courage of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. May these young men Rest In Peace. May we honor them by committing ourselves to building active solidarity with the Kashmiri struggle for the end of occupation & for freedom.

(Photo is the funeral prayers for Toib Majeed Mir from Kashmir Reader)

Funeral of Muzamil Ahmad ITwitter) Nov 15 2017

(Photo of funeral prayers for Muzamil Ahmad)

Torture & dismemberment by Indian occupying army in Kashmir

Nazir Ahmad Sheikh (Dar Tawseef) Nov 15 2017

Nazir Ahmad Sheikh, 46, a torture victim from Handwara says he was picked up & tortured by the Indian army’s 14 Dogra Regiment in December 1994. Although he had no militancy or criminal record, Sheikh says the Indian army soldiers pushed his left hand into a charcoal oven, & rolled his legs over with a steel rod in order to extract a false confession of being a Pakistan trained militant & having a gun to surrender. He lost four fingers & both legs in the torture, & had to sell a piece of ancestral paddy land to buy artificial limbs.

–written by Kashmiri Dar Tawseef