This is a lovely story about Muslims in the area affected by rampaging Hindutva mobs forming a human chain around a Hindu temple to prevent it from being vandalized in retaliation. There are also scattered reports of Hindus reaching out to Muslims to offer assistance from the mobs. It is not communal violence but nationalist violence.
https://www.siasat.com/delhi-chand-bagh-muslims-protect-temple-forming-human-chain-1839117/?
Muslim marketplace vandalized by Hindutva mobs in Khajuri Khas, northeast Delhi.
(Photo by Javed Dar/Xinhua)
This Syrian boy is in a protest in Idlib city against Syrian & Russian scorched earth bombing in Idlib province. The caricature on his placard represents a weak Assad regime kept afloat by Putin’s troops & bombers.
(Photo from AFP, February 21st, 2020)
On June 7th, 2010, a 14-year-old Mexican boy named Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca who was on the Mexican side of the border between El Paso, Texas & Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was shot by US Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa. Although he was shot in the back, the Border Patrol alleged he was shot as a stone pelter. The FBI immediately became involved & justified his killing by saying he was a known immigrant smuggler & on their list of most wanted traffickers. It wasn’t long before politicians, in violation of international, human rights, & child welfare law, were attempting to associate all children refugees with human trafficking & prostitution as well. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, the El Paso media began spewing the same rubbish against young Sergio. I was so outraged at the killing & its justification that when I could not find others willing to protest his murder, I went out several times alone to the government building with a placard demanding justice & also sent venomous protests to media for their coverage. This was in the Obama years.
After nearly ten years of legal action (including several appeals & reversals) by the family who wanted the right to sue the agent & the Border Patrol, the US Supreme Court, at the behest of the Trump administration, ruled yesterday that Jesus Mesa & the Border Patrol are immune from prosecution because Sergio was shot on the Mexican side of the border & thus his killing by a US Border Patrol standing on the US side of the border is outside US court jurisdiction. The legalese they wrapped around that isn’t worth repeating but it was about resolving the murder diplomatically with the racist, xenophobic Trump administration holding chitchats with the corrupt Mexican government.
What’s alarming about this ruling is not just the monstrous lack of justice for Sergio & his family but that it makes undocumented immigrants & refugees attempting to cross the border open season for the Border Patrol. They can shoot to kill with impunity which is exactly what the Trump administration wanted & what the Supreme Court handed them.
Sergio would be 24-years-old now if he hadn’t been shot by a beast. We continue to offer his family our condolences for his loss. May he Rest In Peace.
(Photo of Sergio Adrian Henrandez Guereca is from his family)
This is Maria Guadalupe, the mother of Sergio Hernandez, near the site of her son’s killing after recently being interviewed by Reuters.
(Photo by Jose Luis Gonzales/Reuters)
If Satyadeep Satya were not on another 30-day suspension, he would be making extremely cogent commentary on the Hindutva pogrom against Muslims & he wouldn’t be pulling his punches.
Modi’s India: 54-year-old imam attacked by Hindutva mob in Shiv Vihar district of northeast Delhi.
Irony is the genre of the oppressed.
“Muslim women shouldn’t be required to act superhuman to avoid being seen as weak.” -Sidrah Ahmad-Chan
I recently read this article about how exhausting it is for visibly Muslim women to constantly feel the need to take part in “image management.” If we’re not calling out oppression, then we must actively be playing up our empowerment. UGH. I find myself doing it ALL the time. Constantly trying to prove that I’m not weak and helpless. I’m so tried y’all.
The purpose of my comics was always to dispel the idea that Muslims are a monolith. We are nuanced! We are complex! We hate the limited narrative that a Muslim women is either oppressed or empowered. We. Just. Want. To. Exist.
In conclusion: read the article. It’s good.
Like Hitler’s Brownshirts, Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Assad troops, & ISIS terrorists, HIndutva mobsters move into action with their own battle cry or dog whistle. ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (‘Victory to Lord Ram’) is what the Hindutva man shouted as he pointed his semi-automatic pistol at thousands of unarmed women & children protesters at Shaheen Bagh. It’s what they chant as they maraud through the streets hunting down Muslims, as they vandalize Muslim properties, as they desecrate Muslim cemeteries.
Some speculate this pogrom is an orchestrated campaign initiated at the highest levels of the Indian government to counter the movement against CAA/NCR & to drown out the voices of Kashmiri resistance. If it wasn’t initiated at the highest levels, it is certainly aided & abetted by agents provocateurs in the same way the Brownshirts served as a paramilitary force for Hitler & the Nazi Party. If we do not stand with Indian Muslims in international actions of protest, we will be fighting the barbarians at our own gates. Coming, as this does, in the wake of imminent defeat of the Syrian Arab Spring, our struggle against the rising forces of death & destruction will be made exponentially more difficult.
Notice how adroitly this NY Times article titled “New Delhi streets turn into battleground, Hindus vs. Muslims” turns the Hindutva pogrom against Muslims into a two-sided communal conflict, into Hindutva mobs facing off against Muslim mobs. As if Muslim self-defense against Hindutva assaults, killings, being hunted down, torching, vandalism is mob action.
Activists on social media cannot let media serve power by hijacking the narrative & misrepresenting reality in order to protect foreign investments & military alliances with India. In that way, Kashmiri activists compelled media to begin reporting the realities of India’s occupation of Kashmir.
NY Times article:
Photo is Muslim-owned shops torched by Hindutva mobs in the Bhajanpura area of New Delhi.
(Photo by Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
There is a video of Muslim residents from Mustafabad in northeast Delhi evacuating the area carrying their belongings with them like war refugees. Other videos from the same area show Hindutva mobs banging on Muslim homes with clubs. Another video shows Muslims gathering up burned pages of the Quran outside the mosque that was vandalized yesterday in Ashok Nagar. So reminiscent of the Nazi holocaust.