This is a report about 17-year-old Palestinian Ismail B. Ajjawi who was scheduled to begin classes at Harvard on a scholarship. After landing in Boston’s Logan Airport, he was interrogated for several hours & then immediately deported when immigration officials found social media posts on his mobile from his friends critical of US policy.
Monthly Archives: August 2019
“Dalits who seek the annihilation of caste must boycott Mayawati {an Indian politician & leading political figure for oppressed castes}, a champion of Brahminical-colonialism, and her BSP, a party of the Brahminical-colonial Indian ‘mainstream’. And Mayawati should start reading Ambedkar to understand concepts such as caste and the nation-state. Maybe one day she’ll learn her lessons and begin speaking the truth. #StandWithKashmir”
–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya
“And if someone says we are just romantics, inveterate idealists, thinking the impossible, that the masses of people cannot become almost perfect human beings, we will have to answer a thousand & one times: Yes, it can be done; we are confident that humanity as a whole can advance.”
–Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Amnesty reports are a mixed bag, often times blaming the oppressed for genocide against them. But this report on the denial of education to Rohingya children by the Bangladesh government is quite cogent.
(Photo is Rohingya refugee children in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, 2017 from Reuters )
It cannot be overstated how much the problems of Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, & so many others are attributable to British colonialism. Some problems from boneheaded idiocy & most from malignant intention. The world is still plagued by the savage influence of US & European colonialism which continually morphs into new forms. Our historic task is to play a role in destroying that legacy & creating a world free of its hateful, white supremacist influence.
Jaina Maina, who has been an ardent campaigner against the Indian siege & blockade of Kashmir, just received a 24-hour suspension for posting a protest in perfectly respectful language against Hindutva men who troll her & abuse her verbally or passively-aggressively use the laugh emoticon. So a woman protesting harassment is punished rather than those men harassing her. We stand in complete solidarity with her.
UPDATE: Some Facebook censor with an ounce of good sense just reviewed Jaina’s post & reinstated her.
Until the Rohingya have won full human, democratic, & civil rights in their homeland Arakan state, Burma, their struggle must remain one of our political priorities. When journalists report “pain misery, trauma” as the condition of Rohingya refugees, it is a call to action.
It was once thought that American politicians took the cake when it came to ‘the dumbest things politicians say’. The orange POTUS has made that his legacy. But Indian politicians trying to justify the siege & blockade of Kashmir are giving Trump & the other amoral halfwits a run for their money & if anything, they are many times worse. For both, it’s all in the service of war, occupation, persecution, injustice, genocide & inciting hate.
Some may think I take liberties when I criticize the lack of an anti-colonial movement for Kashmir in India. But as a builder & activist of the American antiwar movement since 1966, I understand the vital importance of an antiwar movement in staying the hand of US aggression. That’s why I am so lacerating & merciless about the corruption of the US antiwar movement into an Assadist & Stalinist cult supporting ‘self-determination for the Assad dictatorship’, cheering on Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians by claiming there are no civilians in Syria, & not holding a single protest against US wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya.
It’s a massive political problem for Indian democracy that there is no movement in defense of Kashmir & as an internationalist & supporter of Kashmiri self-determination, I don’t feel hesitancy about saying that. Because of the corruption of the international antiwar movement (it is not just a US phenomenon) & the daunting need to rebuild it, I well understand that the many Indian supporters of Kashmir cannot just will a mass movement into existence. But there needs to be an analysis by Indian activists of why this problem prevails. To overcome the problem, we first must understand it. That is not to deny the protests in India in support of Kashmiris but scattered actions do not a movement make.