Suu Kyi & Kissinger, two Nobel Peace Prize winners & genocidaires, during her 2012 visit to the US after picking up her belated 1991 Nobel Peace Prize: here they are at the award ceremony of the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizen Award which they both received. Just like Modi was picking up all sorts of human rights awards after he launched the genocide in Kashmir.

Neither of them is likely to face prosecution in their lifetimes. But we can use the ICJ proceedings along with mountains of other documented evidence against the two to make sure history places them appropriately along side Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, Pinochet, Modi, Trump, Assad, Putin, Karadzic, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Bush, Clinton, Obama, & legions of other monsters who made life on earth for billions of human beings a living hell. Meanwhile, while their sorry asses are still alive, we should continue our efforts to expose their crimes, hold them accountable, & bring them to justice.

(Photo by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

Suu Kyi is denying genocide against the Rohingya. Her presentation & that of other defense counsel refused to use the proper name Rohingya which should be a red flag to the judges. Burma’s lead defense counsel argued that what happened in Arakan/Rakhine state cannot be defined as genocide but rather as crimes against humanity or war crimes which the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate & that the Burmese Army should deal with it. If Burma wins this definitional dispute, the case will be closed.

These legal definitional disputes between genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, & war crimes are a detestable evasion of responsibility. As Kashmiri activists have maintained, it is the people subjected to these monstrous crimes who have the right to designate what is happening to them & international law needs to catch up with that reality to stop allowing war criminals & genocidaires to escape prosecution. Using that measure, at least half the political leaders in the world would be under indictment & the whole capitalist world order would be challenged.

The fate of this little guy & millions of other Rohingya refugees is at stake so the decision the ICJ makes about defining genocide for what it was is of great consequence.

(Photo is screenshot from an RFI video in October 2019)

Satyadeep Satya says CAB & NRC, which require ethno-religious profiling of Muslims, is to fill India’s detention camps. He calls them “the gulag road to Auschwitz & the gas chamber.”

#NoCAB #NoNRC

This is 23-year-old Deepanjal Das, the first martyr of the anti-CAB movement in India. He worked in a market & is the son of a rickshaw puller in Assam. May he Rest In Peace.

#OpposeCAB

(Photo & info via Nayan Jyoti via Satyadeep Satya)

Since I have more than once been abused & called a racist & other outrageous epithets by liberal Indian Brahmins for defending Muslim women’s right to wear the hijab, it is an honor & a vindication to share these photos of women students in New Delhi protesting against the new citizenship law (CAB).

131 days of Kashmir cage: this is an iconic photo of a young Kashmiri boy being humiliated & forced to do a painful punishment by Indian soldiers in Srinagar.

Since the Indian Supreme Court has more than once denied the claims of Bhopal victims in favor of Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical), we should not be surprised by its malignant denial that Kashmiri children are being abducted, tortured, & held in prisons both in Kashmir & hell hole prisons in India. Third generation children in Bhopal continue to suffer extreme neurological problems, physical disfigurement & disabilities, & a range of other health problems from the 1984 toxic gas leak while US & Indian courts allowed the company to walk away scot-free.

Proving beyond dispute that courts & the law are entirely wedded to politics (in the case of India to Hindutva ideology & colonial politics & of course, capitalism) the Indian Supreme Court just rejected a lawsuit brought by a Kashmiri activist & ruled that no minor children are being held in detention in Kashmir. That ruling was based on the testimony of the police chief in Kashmir Maybe the police did not participate in arresting children; maybe it was solely the Indian Army that kidnapped, tortured, & imprisoned the children in Indian prisons.

Where was the testimony of Kashmir parents? Of released children who reported on their treatment in video testimony? Were Army officials called for interrogation? Were journalists who covered the story called as witnesses? Why does the testimony of one police chief with vested interests in the outcome outweigh that of thousands of parents whose children were abducted in the middle of the night & sent to prisons in India?

Demand the immediate release of all Kashmiri political prisoners & an accounting of every child abducted & jailed so they can be immediately returned to their families.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-throws-out-plea-alleging-minors-illegally-detained-in-kashmir-valley/article30299684.ece?

Who could have imagined that in the 21st century, freedom of religion would become one of the central issues in world politics? Of course it has been for a long time, for example, for Jews historically facing persecution everywhere, for Christians in their early days, for Jews & Muslims in the former Soviet Union, for Palestinians under Zionist occupation, for Kashmiris under Indian occupation, for Rohingya disenfranchised for several decades, & for many others. But these seldom made banner headlines & were mostly followed by human rights activists, if at all. The struggle for religious freedom was preempted by the ubiquitous & brutal nature of ethnic oppression although religious & ethnic oppression are most often completely integrated.

The struggle for religious freedom presents a threat to the current rightwing thrust of political regimes since Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Christian-only states are a direct threat to democracy, not to mention immigration & refugee rights. It’s a more complex matter than most of us have always understood & needs to be analyzed fully to understand its relations with ethnic oppression. It’s a hard way to learn things & the only worthy thing derived from the immense suffering of so many but we must oppose religious persecution whatever our level of understanding. Human beings have to right to their religious & political beliefs & to practice them if they do not involve the oppression of others.

There are protests like this all over India, especially in Assam, the state most immediately effected by legalizing the marginalization, disenfranchisement, & persecution of Muslims by the NRC & the passage of CAB. One Indian friend reports that she witnessed many protests before the passage of CAB but they were not reported in media. There are also solidarity protests called for cities outside India because of the momentous character of these laws internationally. What would happen to the million of Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, & other religious faiths living in the US if the US Congress ruled the US a Christian country? It only exposes the monstrous character of Israel as a Jewish-only colonial state, of Iran under a corrupt theocracy, of Burma’s genocide against Rohingya Muslims, & now India as Hindutva fascism.

The few companies of Indian troops pulled out of Kashmir are deployed now in Assam where they are shooting at unarmed protesters. The struggles against CAB are inextricably linked to the struggle against occupation in Kashmir. What happened in Kashmir will not stay in Kashmir. What happens in India will not stay in India so this is a matter of concern to all of us.

(Photographers  not identified)