Physicians for Human Rights documented 573 attacks on health facilities in Syria since 2011. Syrian & Russian forces account for 516 of those attacks. At least 890 medical professionals have been killed in Syria between 2011 & 2018. There isn’t much point to calling out these attacks as illegal under international law when those laws are unenforceable & when they are only one among hundreds of human rights crimes that are the very nature of war.
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Internally displaced Syrians are protesting in the Aleppo countryside today demanding Syrian & Russian bombing cease, the downfall of the Assad regime, & rejecting another phony ‘truce’ Russia just signed but continues to ignore. In this placard, they honor Abdul Baset al-Sarout who was killed on June 8th in a confrontation with the Syrian army.
It’s been repeatedly reported that Syrian & Russian bombers are targeting those cities in Idlib, Hama, & Aleppo most prominent in the Arab Spring uprising & which have put up the stiffest political resistance to the Assad dictatorship. So it is an act of extreme courage & defiance that these protesters would go public rather than hide in bunkers or flee for their lives.
Stop the bombing! Stand with the people of Idlib, Hama, & Aleppo!
(Photo from SyriaCall_NEWS on Twitter)
This is a Syrian child, not a terrorist, now sustaining carpet bombing by Syrian & Russian warplanes in Idlib, Hama, & Aleppo provinces. Three million civilians live in the regions where the bombing is taking place, 1.5 million of them children. Today, there are massive protests of internally displaced civilians in the Aleppo countryside demanding the bombing cease & the downfall of the Assad regime.
There have been a few scattered protests of solidarity outside Syria but the now corrupted antiwar movement supports the bombing & is busying itself with that abandoned embassy in DC, the defense of Assange, & just generally pissing into the wind.
Stop the bombing! Stand with the people of Idlib, Hama, & Aleppo.
(Photo from protest today in Aleppo from Amenah Masri on Twitter)
“Make Syria great again.”
–Putin
(Artwork by Marian Kamensky)
How Kashmiri children experience the military occupation:
(Photo by Basit Zargar)
Fort Sill, an army post near Oklahoma City, will be used to incarcerate unaccompanied children arrested for crossing the US-Mexico border. It was built in 1869 after the Civil War with officers from the Union Army assigned to head the post & lead the wars of extermination against the many Indian tribes of Texas, the Southwest, & the US Plains states. The fort was used as a prisoner-of-war camp for Apaches & other tribes. In WWII, it was used as an internment camp for Japanese. It is also the site of what is called a ‘Boot Hill’ cemetery where gunfighters are buried along with soldiers who died in the wars of extermination–& likely many Indian & Japanese prisoners who died of natural & unnatural causes.
US officials claim only 1,500 children will be warehoused at Fort Sill out of the 11,507 they’ve arrested & stuck in concentration camps so far. But with 94,000 acres & no accountability by the US government, who’s to know exactly what will happen to those children!? There should be vigils & protests outside Fort Sill with people from around the US.
This is the Amnesty International India report titled ” Tyranny of a
‘Lawless Law’: Detention Without Charge or Trial Under the J&K Public Safety Act.”
https://amnesty.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PSA-Report_15-FINAL-LOW-Version-2.pdf?
Not only are young boys–stone pelters & other protesters–arrested & held under the PSA, but human rights activists like Khurram Parvez, who spent 76 days in jail in 2016 so India could obstruct his human rights work.
(Undated photo from FB wall of Stand With Kashmir)
A good article about the Indian government’s refusal to let Amnesty International India hold an event in Srinagar introducing their report on the Public Safety Act which allows the military to arrest & hold Kashmiris without charge:
This story of this small Palestinian girl resonates with me quite personally. At the age of four, my younger sister Yvonne had to be hospitalized for nephritis, a kidney disorder which had been improperly diagnosed. She was a stubborn child & resisted hospitalization by refusing to eat or speak to my parents or us. My parents promised her that if she ate, she would get better & they could bring her home but unknown to them she was at an advanced stage of illness & was dying. She was so distraught that she could not go home that she continued to refuse food & turned her head when any of us entered the room. I don’t tell this story to solicit sympathy since that was in 1952, a very long time ago, but to make the experience of this little Palestinian child–her sadness, anger, confusion, fear–more immediate, & the criminality of the Israeli state as detestable as it was.