Many are asking “why is the international community silent on the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar”? If by ‘international community’ we mean phalanxes of human rights activists actively engaged in defense of the Rohingya, the answer is that Rohingya activists are working tirelessly on social media, by organizing rallies & protests where they are in exile, & by holding public tribunals on Myanmar’s human rights crimes to build that movement. But it has a long way to go.

If by ‘international community’ we mean governments around the world, the answer is that the most powerful of them have vested economic interests in Myanmar, human rights issues in their own countries, & don’t give a damn about genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

The economy of Myanmar is controlled by the military, making the capitalist class indistinguishable from the political apparatus. In the past decade, in order to enrich itself even more off the backs of Burmese working people, the military junta initiated a program of neoliberal economics & actively courted foreign investors in oil & gas exploration, manufacturing, mining, hotels & tourism, transport, telecommunications, real estate, livestock & fisheries, agriculture, construction & services. For manufacturing companies (i.e., sweatshop operations), low wages of about $70 a month is the compelling attraction. Other than providing a human rights face to genocide, the primary presidential responsibility of Aun San Suu Kyi seems to be drumming up foreign investment. In fact, the military may have installed her phony civilian regime primarily as a means to attract investment.

The scale of foreign investment is immense: as of about two years ago, 3,032 foreign companies & 32 foreign-invested joint ventures from 36 countries operated in Myanmar. Some of the top investors include China, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, India, Canada, the Philippines, the UK & several other European countries, the US. Do you think the leaders of any of those countries will speak out against genocide in Myanmar when they all have billions of dollars at stake?

Arakan (Rakhine) state is involved in several neoliberal projects because of its resources & key location as a coastal state. These projects include land grabbing from Rohingya farmers. That is a strong motivating factor in the genocide of Rohingya but the primary cause is rooted more in the legacy of English colonialism. As we know from the struggles in Kashmir & Myanmar, the legacy of colonialism is not yet decisively uprooted & defeated.

We stand in full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle to stop the genocide & for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo is protest in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 from Green Left Weekly)

Facebook asked if I’d like to mark myself safe in Hurricane Harvey. I’d really like to do the drama thing & make you think fortune has pulled me back from the brink of death but all it did here was blow my garbage cans around. So yes, I’m safe from Hurricane Harvey because it didn’t come within 100 miles of here.

Myanmar army raided village & Rohingya’s houses are being burnt down. Vulnerable women with kids are taking shelter in the forest.

#Need_Your_Solidarity.

–from Imran Mohammed, Rohingya refugee

August 21, 1959 is the date the US tried to render the theft of Hawaii legitimate by declaring it a state. There is no media coverage of the Native Hawaiian independence movement & no honest history taught in US schools of the forcible acquisition of Hawaii by the US military in league with plantation owners & agribusiness companies. Following the overthrow of Hawaiian rulers in 1893, the entire archipelago was annexed by the US. In 1959, statehood was fraudulently created in a popular vote on the question, “Shall Hawaii immediately be admitted into the Union as a State?” Those qualified to vote were US citizens who had resided in Hawaii for at least one year.

Since the US occupation & annexation in 1893, thousands from the US mainland had migrated to Hawaii, many stationed with the US occupying army. Any Hawaiians who took up US citizenship while under occupation were eligible to vote but those who refused to adopt US citizenship & instead declared themselves Hawaiian citizens were ineligible. That’s how Hawaii became the 50th state of the US–through fraud, chicanery, & theft.

Though Hawaiians continue to fight for self-determination & against the unlawful occupation, they are now less than 10% of the population, with many forced into diaspora on the mainland & replaced by affluent interlopers. Since the Hawaiian language is one of the cultural devastations of the occupation & diaspora, there is no way to say in Hawaiian, “the struggle continues”, la lucha continúa!

(Photo of Hawaiian independence protest from Zinn Education Project)

(This was originally posted in 2012 but has been slightly edited)

The very evening Kofi Annan’s commission issued its final 63-page report on violence in Arakan (Rakhine) state, Myanmar (where per government demand, it did not use the proper name Rohingya) Rohingya activists have been putting out emergency notice of renewed military violence against Rohingya across the state, including aerial siege. Rohingya activists report the military in league with Buddhist nationalists have torched hundreds of homed in several villages, forcibly evicted hundreds, & executed at least 200 so far.

The government claims what set off the murderous rampage is that a Rohingya resistance group raided dozens of border guard & military bases. They used the same claim last October 9th to unleash a reign of terror that forced 87,000 Rohingya to flee for their lives to Bangladesh. They in fact have not investigated & have no idea who carried out the raids on border guards in October–if they weren’t military operatives.

To follow this important development, Rohingya Blogger on Twitter can be accessed at: https://twitter.com/rohingyablogger; Burma Task Office at https://twitter.com/BurmaTaskForce; or Rohingya Vision at https://twitter.com/RohingyaVision

We stand in full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle for human, democratic, civic, & refugee rights.

Despite massive political repression, hundreds of Bahrainis from several villages took to the streets last Friday (August 18th) with placards & chants condemning the US & UK-backed, Saudi-led war on Yemen & demanding it be ended. The antiwar movement is not dead nor is the Arab Spring. The intransigence of Bahrainis, Yemenis, Syrians against dictatorship, war, & aerial bombardment must be reproduced in those countries supplying & dropping the bombs.

Long live the Bahraini revolution. US, UK, Saudi-led coalition out of Yemen. Stop the bombing.

(Photo of protest in one village from AhlulBayt News Agency)

For those who have long-since written postmortems on the Arab Spring uprisings, this was the scene in Sana’a, Yemen today where the entire range of political forces (including Houthi rebels & supporters of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the dictator ousted in 2012 by the revolution) united against the US & UK-backed Saudi war.

Consider the scale of opposition after nearly two & a-half years sustaining carpet bombing & a naval blockade since March 2015. Over 12,000 people have been killed & 70-percent of of the country’s 27 million people are in need of food, humanitarian & medical care for the worst cholera outbreak in the world.

Long live the Yemeni revolution against dictatorship.
US, UK, Saudi-led coalition out of Yemen. Stop the bombing.

(Photo from AhlulBayt News Agency)

The Kofi Annan Advisory Commission on Rakhine State issued its final report yesterday. From the time last year when Aung San Suu Kyi & the military junta commissioned this report, its mission was primarily a whitewash of ethnic cleansing & shaking the naughty finger at the military for some excesses. Annan himself repeatedly said it was not to investigate human rights crimes in Arakan (Rakhine) state but media just ignored that.

It will take me a few days to study the final report although the preliminary was nothing to write home about. It isn’t promising that the report begins “Unless concerted action–led by the government & aided by all sectors of the government & society-– is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence & radicalisation.” Our man Annan is a smooth operator & was likely paid big bucks to get even oilier but that is unmistakably a formulation to deny ethnic cleansing of Rohingya & make it sound like Rohingya violence & political resistance is the source of the problem. The military will be accused of going a little overboard in their response.

It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that about the report but give me a few days to document the treachery of Kofi Annan.

(Photo is Annan handing the final report to Suu Kyi yesterday)

You wouldn’t recognize this handsome young man after he was murdered in New Delhi. From photos taken at the hospital, it appears he was beaten to death. You probably won’t be able to read about him either since he’s a stateless Rohingya refugee & was under a deportation order in India. His name is Anayad Ullah from Buthidaung in Arakan (Rakhine) state, Myanmar, & like all of us, especially the young, he had hopes for his life, dreams of love, travel, adventures, freedom.

May he Rest In Peace. May he inspire thousands to support Rohingya in winning human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Tweeted by The Stateless)‏

The dangers–& courage–of photojournalism in the occupied West Bank & East Jerusalem:

(Tweeted by Remember Qana)