The forcible deportation of Rohingya refugees is scheduled to begin this week. Everything about this scheme is nothing but a continuation of the persecution & genocide of the Rohingya people. They are still crossing the border with the Burmese army & vigilante death squads behind them hunting them down like animals & now the Burmese genocidaires & Bangladeshi army want to force them back to concentration camps they haven’t finished building.

The estimates of Rohingya refugees just from this genocidal offensive are between 655,000 & 800,000 all living in makeshift camps near the squalid official camps registered with the UNHCR. Four Rohingya elders told Reuters they were among 70 camp leaders called together by Bangladeshi army officials & told to prepare lists of families from their camps for deportation. This is to give a semblance of democratic decision-making to an entirely arbitrary barbarism. In such conditions where most people have no papers, they’re likely to just pick people up randomly & transport them like livestock back to the killing fields of Burma.

The Burmese genocidaires & Bangladeshi government of Sheikh Hasina are providing no transparency to the process at all because it will be handled as ruthlessly as they handled the refugees. Keep in mind that even before this offensive, the Hasina government was making plans to deport thousands of Rohingya refugees to an uninhabitable island flooded out most of the year. The UN, which has anyway been entirely useless throughout the genocide, has been refused a role in the process of forced deportation & media & humanitarian aid groups will still be barred from Arakan state. Nothing good can come of this because it is a continuation of genocide.

The Rohingya refugees know better than anyone what is being planned for them, just how dangerous this forced repatriation plan is, & many are protesting it in the camps. We cannot stand by & allow them to be treated like livestock. There should be rallies & vociferous campaigns on social media to demand asylum for the refugees with full refugee rights in whichever country they choose for refuge.

Photo is little kids at refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar. It’s their lives & futures that are at stake.

(Photo by AJ Ghani/FRC)

This happened today: an Indian occupying soldier is frisking a man in the Sopore area of north Kashmir. Frisking him for what? Do they think he’s hiding a machine gun in his armpits? Or is this just part of the daily harassments & humiliations of military occupation?

This also happened today: Indian troops shot unarmed 17-year-old Shakir Ahmad Mir to death in the Shopian district during one of their hunt to kill operations.

May young Shakir Rest In Peace. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Mohammad Abu Bakar)

MSNBC got a retired admiral to come on & discuss US ties to Israel. He said the US & Israel have “profound cultural affinities.” If that’s true, & it probably isn’t, it’s only because so many Israeli politicians & citizens were born & raised in the US. You can’t really call extermination of the native population, racism, & apartheid ‘cultural affinities’. The only affinity the US has with Israel is as a military fortress against democracy in the Middle East.

Indian officials of Kashmir report they have imposed a curfew 188 times in different districts of the valley in the past two years. Curfews are repressive measures usually imposed to prevent public protests but also to throw military weight around. It is basically house arrest, collective punishment, & psychological warfare that threatens public safety, welfare, & every standard of democracy.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

You know all that blither about the Kashmiri freedom struggle being riddled with “Wahhabi/Salafi jihadists”? Well the truth about terrorism in Kashmir is quite the contrary because this is the time they commemorate several massacres of unarmed civilian protesters by Indian occupying forces, just in the month of January. January 21st, 1990 was the first of many massacres of unarmed civilian protesters by Indian paramilitary forces. On that day, several thousand Kashmiris violated a curfew which India had no right to impose & peacefully marched through Srinagar to protest incidents of police brutality & violence during search operations. When the front of the protest was halfway across the Gaw Kadal bridge, CRPF paramilitary troops opened fire with machine guns from three directions & reportedly continued indiscriminate firing for three hours. The casualty & injury figures from this incident differ considerably (from 52 to 280), probably because some were killed on the spot, some of the injured were executed as they lied on the ground, others died at the hospital, & others died later from their injuries–& also because the Indian Army calculates loss of Kashmiri life very differently than Kashmiris who witness the carnage or lose loved ones.

According to one report, as the protesters scattered for safety, Indian troops went through the bodies lying on the ground to finish off any survivors among the injured & kick bodies near the edge of the bridge into the river. The soldiers than piled bodies into a convoy of trucks, covered them with tarpaulins, & drove around Srinagar before dumping them at police headquarters. Only then were they taken to the hospital. Fearless against the threats of military violence, unarmed civilians in Handwara came out on January 25th, just four days after the massacre at Gaw Kadal bridge, to protest Indian Army violence. Again, fatality figures conflict, but at least 26 protesters were shot dead by paramilitary troops. Protesters who ran for safety to the nearby home of a local politician were denied entry & fired on by his security guards. After these incidents, foreign journalists were banned from entering Kashmir for several months.

There have been other massacres in January, most notably at Sopore on January 5th, 1993 when Indian paramilitary troops killed 55 civilians & torched 600 houses. According to one report, Kashmiri civilians sought safety in shops which were fired on & then torched.

If you have to ask why Kashmiris are still commemorating the massacres at Gaw Kadal & Handwara 28 years later, it’s because humanity has a long memory for mass murder, indiscriminate shooting of unarmed civilians, the loss of beloved family, friends, & neighbors to massacre, especially when such violence is still going on & when there hasn’t been a modicum of elementary justice for the executions of so many Kashmiri protesters. It is also a way to remember & honor those who died in the struggle for freedom & to commit to continuing the struggle they gave their lives for.

(Art work depicting Gaw Kadal massacre by Mir Suhail)

This is 8-year-old Asifa Bano, a child from the nomadic Gujjar and Bakerwal community in the Jammu area of Jammu & Kashmir. Gujjar & Bakerwal nomads are an oppressed caste categorized legally (if not also ignominiously) as Other Backward Class in some parts of India & as Scheduled Tribe in Jammu. Her family was camping near Kathua, about 88 kilometers from Jammu when the little girl was abducted on January 10th. Her body was recovered on January 17th dumped in a forest. She had been raped, tortured, mutilated, & burned in the most gruesome & unspeakable ways.

The father went to the police on January 11th when she did not return from watering the horses but they took no action to find her or investigate what happened to her. After what appears to be a mockery of forensics & criminal procedure, police arrested a 15-year-old boy who they claim confessed to the abduction, rape, torture, & murder. The family believes little Asifa was murdered by locals, by a group of youth from the village. Police inaction gave the perpetrators a week to cover their tracks or even flee. They also assaulted protesters demanding justice for Asifa with tear gas & arrested nomad community leader Choudhary Talib Hussain at one of the protests.

The rape & murder of women & children cannot be considered only a personal crime because it is primarily a political one which sustains impunity throughout the world. As a political crime, it involves class, caste, ethnic & gender oppression. Every time a child or a woman dies at the hands of monsters in their families, their neighborhoods or schools, the world shifts a little on its axis. Ending every form of violence against women & children is a primary concern to women & men of good will everywhere while being the object of considerable misogynist contempt.

Our heartfelt condolences to the family & community of Asifa Bano. May this dear child Rest In Peace. May the protesters in Jammu & Kashmir bring her justice by forcing the police to investigate & bring all the perpetrators to prosecution.

#JusticeForAsifa

(Photo of Asifa Bano from Greater Kashmir)

Senior feminists take on the #MeToo mansplainers in our most diplomatic style. You don’t want to test us to see our kick-ass style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpwLIdScdrc

We always must remind ourselves of what humanity is capable of, especially when it seems barbarism is gaining the upper hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs-p1oEvuGg

Bill Cosby is now back working as a stand-up comedian after 60 women accused him of sexual assault. Only one case could be prosecuted because of the weakness of rape laws & lack of due process. Has a single mansplainer & opponent of the #MeToo movement posted a single article or even a whimper of protest against the lack of due process for women & children victims of rape?

This is a quite cogent & no-nonsense commentary by Kashmiri Mir Laieeq on the Bollywood Khans, three unrelated actors with the same last name being feted on social media for boycotting the Hindutva Bollywood meets Zionism agitprop selfies event with the Netanyahus:

“It is probably a fake news that Bollywood Khans “boycotted” Netanyahu. When and who invited them to meet? If they refused to meet what reasons did they put forward? Did they give their busy schedules as the reason to not meet him? We haven’t heard anything categorical by Khans about this. Boycotts should be unambiguous and categorical to have any impact. These Khans have maintained criminal silence about lynchings of Muslims in india, not to speak of the atrocious occupation of Kashmir by india. One of the Khans who murdered four people under his wheels was among the first to endorse Modi, the mass murderer, in his run up campaign for Prime Minister. Khans are nothing but the selfish bunch of elite Muslims who don’t give a shit about their own communities, they standing up for Palestinians is simply unimaginable!”

(Photo is Bollywood Khans)