One of the most horrifying images from the Rohingya genocide in September 2017: a small girl fleeing with her baby sister. They aren’t a whole lot safer now.

Stand with the Rohingya in their struggle for full human, democratic, & civil rights in Burma.

(Photo by Monirul Alam/EPA)

Stop Genocide is circulating a petition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation titled “Gates, Do Not Award Modi,”–appealing to what it calls “the world’s foremost philanthropic organization…which sets the moral tone for the global humanitarian community”–not to give Modi their highest honor this month when he tours the US.

The Gates Foundation is not politically naive. Bill Gates, Sr., who runs the foundation was a central figure in the Preston Gates & Ellis law firm (now K&L Gates), one of the top corporate lobbying firms in the world. We know what the Gates Foundation says it does, just as we know about the pro bono humanitarian work that K&L Gates says it does. But mostly we know about the population control/eugenics programs the Gates Foundation is involved in primarily in African & South Asian countries. Its racist & white supremacist eugenics programs, including in India, may not negate the work the foundation does to combat malaria but it brings everything they do under scrutiny & certainly eliminates them as ‘setting the moral tone for the global humanitarian community’.

(PS: I can’t bring myself to flattering the Gates Foundation by signing the petition but those who want to can find the damn thing on line.)

When Gil Scott-Heron recorded “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in 1970, it was an ironic anthem of the Black power movement in the US. Who knew it would become official Indian policy in its 2019 siege & telecommunication blockade of Kashmir? MC Kash, the troubadour of Kashmiri resistance, puts a rap spin on the irony.

Kashmiri activists on social media laid the groundwork for our understanding their struggle so that India’s propaganda about fighting terrorism in Kashmir rolls off us like water off a duck’s ass. That’s one reason they’re being silenced & one reason we must amplify their voices whilst they cannot speak for themselves.

#StandWithKashmir

(Meme by Salman Gour)

Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, September 9th, 2019:

This details Indian human rights crimes in Kashmir only from January 1989 to January 2019. There is no way in hell India wants to now ‘win the hearts & minds’ of Kashmiris. Some non-Kashmiris once thought genocide too strong a word to describe the Indian occupation. The current siege & blockade lays all such doubts to rest.

A recent video from Kashmir showing how ineffective Indian troops are at ‘winning the hearts & minds’ of Kashmiris by shooting live ammo at them: