More than one study estimates that nearly 120 million eligible Indian voters were removed from voter lists in past elections & in the recent general election, nearly 70 million of whom were Muslims & Dalits. In the Gujarat state elections of 2017, the BJP (Modi’s party) won by just 258 votes in Godhra—the site of a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 that left almost 1,000 Muslim dead. Nearly 1.5 million Muslim voters in that state had been denied voting rights in that election. Voter suppression is common in the US for Black & Latino voters, including in the 2016 presidential election. That’s how democratic elections are for the marginalized & oppressed.
Monthly Archives: May 2019
In the category of ‘you can’t make this crap up’: at a recent press conference, the UN official for Humanitarian Affairs & Emergency Relief expressed deep appreciation to Saudi Arabia & the UAE for pledging $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid to Yemen whilst they are engaged in over four years of carpet bombing the civilian population, including with the use of white phosphorus.
The sane mind stands aghast.
Despite the scurrilous presentation of Palestinians as terrorists, this is a good article about Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel who for nearly 50 years has defended them in Israeli courts. In the mid-1970s, I managed the NYC townhouse of George Weissman, a socialist editor who had moved to New Hampshire. Prominent socialists from around the world frequently stayed at his home. As a young working class woman, feminist, & socialist idealist, I was appalled at the snobbery, elitism, & rudeness they exhibited, often treating me as a servant rather than a peer. (I then & now consider egalitarianism the ethos of socialism without which it is going nowhere.) But not Lea Tsemel. She was blunt-spoken, earthy, witty, warm-hearted, & didn’t have an ounce of arrogance or attitude toward me or toward others she dealt with while staying at the house. In politics, attitude matters so it is no surprise to me that nearly 50 years later she is still defending Palestinian activists. She would be the first to take issue with the portrayal of Palestinians in this article.
Tulsi Gabbard, the favored US presidential candidate of Assad supporters, says she would drop the charges against Julian Assange & pardon Edward Snowden. Bully for her. She’s got herself the Assadist vote. Being a rabid Islamophobe, anti-Semite, Zionist, & Hindutva nationalist, she would not distinguish herself in any way from current US policy regarding the ‘war on terror’, Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Uyghur in China, the Rohingya, or–despite her rhetoric–any of the US wars.
Rizwan Raheem has been suspended by Facebook for 30 days for the simple statement that a Kashmiri who he named “has been martyred.” When a young Kashmiri was executed by the Indian Army in July 2016, many who posted his name, photo, or comments about him were suspended, some permanently, but his funeral prayers in Kashmir were attended by at least 600,000 people. FB ‘community standards’ mean one thing to the oppressors, another to the oppressed. Those who continue to call for censorship on social media to silence the oppressors are actually legitimizing censorship of the voices of the oppressed.
We haven’t heard any news since April about Bangladesh’s plans to deport thousands of Rohingya refugees to the uninhabitable, monsoon-prone island of Bhashan Char that only emerged from the sea in 2006. Bangladesh went to quite an expense to build barracks on the island where people could ride out the monsoons & daily tidal flooding so fat chance that government officials will come to their senses. The hitch might be that the deportation was on a voluntary basis & they couldn’t find a single Rohingya dumb enough to volunteer deportation to an island in the middle of nowhere that you couldn’t get off after you got on & where you were likely to live a water-logged, brief miserable life.
All is not lost for that island however. It’s a good place to exile the government of Burma & all others who support their genocide against the Rohingya people.
The government of Bangladesh is installing barbed wire fencing around Rohingya refugee camps, ostensibly to prevent human trafficking but probably mostly to prevent any Rohingya from freely leaving the camps. How does that differ from the concentration camps the Burmese government of Suu Kyi had for Rohingya in Arakan state? As Ro Nay San Lwin points out in this article, there are other & better ways to fight human trafficking than to build concentration camps.
According to a UN agency, more than a million Palestinians in Gaza face malnutrition next month due to refugee aid cuts by the US under the Trump regime. Along with bankrolling the bombing attacks on Gaza & attempting to outlaw BDS in the US, the aid cuts are part of the US contribution to the genocide in Gaza. The fate of Palestinians is directly yoked to political life & freedoms in the US.
Kashmiris are grieving the death of Zakir Musa (Zakir Rashid Bhat), a deeply religious young man who was part of the armed resistance in Kashmir & who was executed yesterday in a gruesome 6-hour encounter with Indian troops. Today, thousands of Kashmiris came from all over the valley to pay final respects at his funeral prayers & they came despite heavy rains, a curfew, internet shutdown, & extra deployment of Indian troops. There were also protests against his execution all over Kashmir.
We do not have to agree with all of Zakir’s political ideas nor with the strategy of guerrilla warfare to honor his life & commitment to azadi, to freedom from occupation, & self-determination for Kashmiris who have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary. Musa’s execution is part of the brutal military campaign of hunt to kill operations being waged for the past few years targeting armed militants. But as we know from India’s use of pellet guns against unarmed protesters, from the arrest of hundreds of protesters, from the execution of relatives of militants, from the recent JKCCS & APDP report on torture, one does not have to be an armed militant to be brutalized & murdered by Indian occupying forces.
We stand with Kashmiris today in grieving the death of Zakir Musa & of all those who have given their lives to the struggle for freedom.
End the occupation of Kashmir! Self-determination for Kashmir!
(Photo is funeral of Zakir Musa today in Tral, Kashmir by Basit Zargar)
A synopsis of the JKCCS & APDP report on the forms of torture used by Indian occupying forces against Kashmiris. The full report can be read at jkccs.net, the Publications & Reports menu.