As in Kashmir, so goes India: police brutality against protesters opposing the legalization of marginalizing & persecuting Muslims. ‘First they came for Kashmiris & I was not Kashmiri…then they came for Indian Muslims & I was not Muslim…then they came for Dalits & other oppressed castes…then they came for me.’

“Yesterday, the J&K UT government approved prosecution of my mother and her two associates, under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. She would now be sentenced to life imprisonment for raising “anti-national” slogans, creating disaffection towards India and encouraging the boycott of Indian elections. After seeing my father in jail for all my life, they’ve taken my mother as well. One feels dejected, but do they not know that the resistance shall live, even if we die?”

–Kashmiri Ahmed Bin Qasim whose mother & father are both Indian political prisoners

Johannesburg, South Africa protest against Indian apartheid, December 23rd, 2019.

)Photo via Bobby Marie)

Protesters at the Indian Consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa against Indian apartheid, December 23, 2019.

(Photo from Shabnam Mayet)

Following the lead of the Chinese Communist Party & Germany’s Nazi Party before them, the Indian government now has 35 concentration camps ready for ‘foreigners’–or who the rest of us call Muslims.

35 Detention Centres Ready In Karnataka, BJP Govt Tells High Court

https://thecognate.com/35-detention-centres-ready-in-karnataka-bjp-govt-tells-high-court/

Watched the movie “Torn” not knowing what it was about. In the intro I noticed a few names that were Kashmiri & in the first scenes there was the green Kashmiri flag. That was the highlight of a deplorable propaganda film against Muslims associating them & mosques with terrorism. It was a fictional story about a bombing at a shopping mall in the San Francisco area. A Pakistani teenager became the first suspect: as the FBI agent put it, “We have a bomb & a Pakistani.” It was filled with the cliches of Islamophobia & the ‘war on terror’. The parents of the Pakistani kid were played by a Pakistani actress & a Pakistani-American guy who should be scorned for playing in this wretched trash. At one point, the father talked about Pakistan as a place ‘where 20 million people are shitting in the streets’ & talked about his son hanging with the ‘radical elements’ at a mosque that authorities associated with terrorism. The film is not redeemed by authorities finding motive for the other kid & making him a second suspect.

In the end, we learn (though this is not revealed in the film) that neither boy had anything to do with the bombing. We don’t learn who the bomber was but by then the damage is done. Take some good advice & don’t watch it if you get the chance. It’s as cinematically boring as it is propagandistically disgusting.

December 23rd, 2019

The brutalization of Kashmiri children by Indian fascism.

https://caravanmagazine.in/conflict/indian-army-accused-assaulting-eight-year-old-brick-kashmir-bandipora?

You keep hoping a singer will come along who can make Christmas music palatable. Many try. Most fail. The hymns are good; the pop stuff insufferable.