As we think about the ways we can stand with Kashmiris during this violent siege, we should keep in mind that despite pellet guns & all the other threats they face from the occupying Indian Army, they have long stood in public protests & rallies with Palestinians, Rohingya, Syrians, Central Africans, little Asifa. They are playing a leading international role in the fight against forcible disappearance & the use of rape as a weapon of war. They have taught us the long-forgotten ways of solidarity & it is time to respect them in kind.
Daily Archives: August 4, 2019
Kashmiri activists are asking us to show red in solidarity. They are also expressing immense anxiety about the current siege. Showing red is a public way to put India on notice that human rights activists around the world are standing with Kashmiris against the Indian occupation.
According to J&K state officials, the internet will be snapped (it reportedly already is in large parts of Kashmir), mobile phone service will be cut off, schools will be closed, protests will be banned, curfews are being imposed, activists & independence leaders will be arrested. The intention, of course, is an information blackout to prevent the world from knowing what human rights crimes India is committing against the Kashmiri people. Mir Laieeq says Kashmiris are facing an “existential threat.”
If solidarity means anything, it means that we must stand with Kashmiris during this merciless siege, pursue every avenue to obtain accurate information, educate about their struggle, organize rallies where we can, continue to expose the occupation & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of Indian troops.
Our fullest solidarity with Kashmiris in word & in deed as they stand on the front lines of oppression. We cannot let them stand alone.
Did you know that according to Assadist hacks we’re living in an era of “manufactured McCarthyite hysteria” against Putin & Russia? But what about Russia arming & defending the genocide of Rohingya Muslims? What about nearly three years of Russia testing barrel & high-tech bombs on Syrians? What about Putin’s massive repression of democratic rights & protests in Russia? What about its intervention in the Ukraine? What’s so ‘manufactured’ about all that? Where’s the hysteria when there hasn’t been a single protest outside Russia against its war, human rights, & genocide crimes?
The targeting of children remains a primary tactic of Israeli genocide, either to kill or disable them, as reported by several human rights agencies, including the UN. Young Palestinian protesters are directly targeted by Israeli snipers to create hundreds of amputees just as Indian troops target young Kashmiris with pellet guns to blind, disfigure, & disable them. Standing against the occupations is a stand for the rights & welfare of children & against the disabling of youth to destroy Intifada & resistance to occupation & colonialism.
(Photo via Basem Naim)
Only Bill Browder (the son of Earl Browder, a leading US Stalinist, Bill Browder turned financier to cash in on the collapse of the USSR) is reporting that Putin’s police are threatening to cut off the fingers of arrested protestors who refuse to be fingerprinted. Until there is other verification of that, we can be skeptical. But there is also video footage of Putin’s police ganging up on & beating the crap out of unarmed protesters.
Let’s be frank, at this point it doesn’t matter if Russia interfered in US elections that got Trump elected since Clinton was the unsavory alternative. It was a lose-lose election. But at some point, those who weep buckets over the persecution of Putin & Russia have to pull their noses out of the nether regions of tyranny & face the facts. Or is hero worship & regime-change rubbish their new modus operandi?
It does not serve Palestinians to counterpose their struggle to that of Kashmiris, Syrians, Afghans, Rohingya, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somalis, Uyghur, refugees, or others standing on the front lines of oppression, especially of the so-called ‘war on terror’. It is all of a piece & of the incitement against Muslims & should be presented as such in order to build a truly united movement of opposition. Otherwise, it does not appear to be so much solidarity with Palestinians as fetishization of Zionism which often masks anti-Semitism.
Some vignettes from the occupation of Kashmir & of the struggle against it.
Go back India, go back!
In response to the massacre at the El Paso Walmart by an avowed white supremacist, Texas governor Greg Abbott said: “The bottom line is mental health is a large contributor to any type of violence or shooting violence.” As Abu Adam said, “Not a terrorist until proven Muslim.”