Category: Human Rights
Dismantling Hindutva with Islamophobia?
The so-called radicality of this Conference did nothing but further contribute to the erasure of Indian Muslims and Indian brand of anti-Muslimness. It carried out Hindutva’s goal. Genocide of Muslims is an aesthetic project for Hindutva. Genocide of Muslims is an aesthetic project for this seemingly anti-casteist but clearly and always anti-Muslim left.
By Shaista Aziz Patel
At the conference on Dismantling Global Hindutva and its violence held in September 2021, I had a difficult time scanning the conference program to see where Muslims were as organizers, speakers, and as sites of critical discussion. I could find only a few instances of Muslim presence and not always in ways that would encourage us to actively think about the core place of anti-Muslim violence –as it appears at various intersections of the dominance of Hinduism, caste, gender, and sexuality in the formation of right-wing Hindu nationalism in India and diaspora. This conference claimed to present “multidisciplinary perspectives,” and yet, the reality that most of the speakers and organizers were caste-dominant Hindus really worried me as a caste-oppressed Muslim scholar of Critical Muslim Studies. At this conference, Interdisciplinarity, which is about the critical work of connecting the streets to academia, and also centering the people who are the actual targets of violence, seemed to have been co-opted by South Asian academics in the US who are comfortably situated in terms of caste, class, and citizenship. The organizers and presenters of this conference received several threats from Hindu nationalists in India and diaspora, and I genuinely appreciate the efforts of mostly graduate students and untenured faculty who carried the burden of organizing this conference. However, it was troublesome that the actual subjects targeted by Hindutva forces in India, the Dalits, the Bahujans (lowered-caste people), Indian and Kashmiri Muslims and other religious minorities were displaced from the positionality of those constantly under the threat of death and incarceration in India. These are the people(s) who have been targeted for centuries, for millennia, and regardless of Hindutva in power.
Continue reading “Dismantling Hindutva with Islamophobia?”Kashmir Under Indian Settler-Colonialism in The Times of Covid: Myriad Ways to Annihilate A People
By Huma Dar
July 3, 2021
Official figures rank India as second only to the United States at 30.50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 401,050 deaths, with a mere 3.9% rate of full vaccination as of July 3, 2021. The New York Times reports a much graver situation, including an intensive study of three different antibody tests, called serosurveys, which convincingly demonstrate the utter gravity of Covid-19 pandemic in India. The in-depth scientific analysis of the serosurveys by NYT indicates that at the most conservative the estimated number of deaths in India is at least 600,000, with a more likely estimate of 1.6 million deaths, and a worst case scenario of 4.2 million deaths. Post-August 5, 2019, when India unilaterally derogated Articles 370 and 35A, after dismissing even the façade of the elected assembly in 2018, the Indian State has even more vigorously discriminated against the people of Jammu & Kashmir, particularly its Muslim population, especially in the form of explicitly prejudicial new land laws aimed at full-blown settler-colonialism. In a frightening feedback loop, the Indian state violence draws upon and abets Islamophobic violence against Muslims of Jammu & Kashmir at large, and includes a rising number of lynchings, the latest on June 21, 2021. The pandemic situation in Kashmir is thus exacerbated by a settler-colonialism aimed at “drowning Kashmiris once and for all.”
Continue reading “Kashmir Under Indian Settler-Colonialism in The Times of Covid: Myriad Ways to Annihilate A People”Progressive Surge Propels Turning Point in US Policy on Yemen
This article appears in The Fight For Yemen, the Winter 2019 issue of Middle East Report, the magazine of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)
The US House of Representatives passed a potentially historic resolution on February 13, 2019, calling for an end to US military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in Yemen that began in 2015. Although the US government has never formally declared its involvement in the war, it assists the coalition with intelligence and munitions and supports the aerial campaign with refueling and targeting. The United States is therefore complicit in the myriad atrocities the coalition has committed against Yemeni civilians, which Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have characterized as war crimes. [1]
What is already historic about the resolution (introduced by Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin) and its Senate counterpart (introduced by Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Republican Mike Lee of Utah and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut) is their invocation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which restrains a president’s capacity to commit forces abroad. Aimed to prevent “future Vietnams,” the act gives Congress the authority to compel the removal of US military forces engaged in hostilities absent a formal declaration of war.
The House resolution was the first time Congress flexed its War Powers muscle in the 45 years since that resolution’s passage. The Senate passed a parallel resolution in December, but the measure died when the Republican leadership refused to bring it to a vote. These congressional moves not only register opposition to US involvement in this war but also strike a major blow against unlimited executive power when it comes to launching war. This long overdue Congressional action to constrain executive war-making, however, would not have been possible without a tremendous grassroots mobilization against US involvement in this disastrous war and the surging progressive tide that is raising deeper questions about US foreign policy.
Continue reading “Progressive Surge Propels Turning Point in US Policy on Yemen”
Statement by the civilian block in eastern Ghouta
In response to the fierce campaign launched on eastern Ghouta by the forces of the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran and the sectarian militias which resulted in killing, destruction and the deterioration of the humanitarian situation of the population of East Ghouta. The regime used in this campaign all kinds of weapons including those prohibited internationally such as the chlorine gas, napalm, phosphor and cluster bombs.
This campaign resulted in mass massacres and more than one 1300 victims in 30 days most of them are civilians, including children and women. These acts amount to war crime resulted mainly because of the Russian violation of UNSC resolutions.
We representatives of institutions, CSOs activists, humanitarian workers, local councils’ members, and media activists announce the formation of a civilian block in East Ghouta to represent the civilians and their will and aspirations in the situation of their absented voice about what is taking place in East Ghouta.
This civilian block aims at: Continue reading “Statement by the civilian block in eastern Ghouta”
Two Upcoming Screenings of SYRIA’S DISAPPEARED in Chicago
The film Syria’s Disappeared has been called “brilliant and sickening” and a “must-view can’t-look documentary…about the 200,000 people arrested and detained after the Arab Spring took hold in Syria.”
Amnesty International is partnering with the filmmakers on a series of screenings and panel discussions around the world. Amnesty International – UK recently hosted one in London.
Amnesty International – Chicago is hosting two screenings: one at Loyola University’s lake shore campus on Wednesday October 25 at 6pm; one at DePaul University’s downtown campus on Thursday October 26 at 6pm. Following both screenings, Sara Afshar, the film’s director and co-producer, will discuss the film and take audience questions. At DePaul, she’ll be joined by Elisabeth Ward, executive director of the university’s International Human Rights Law Institute. Both screenings are free of charge and open to the public.
Want to organize a screening in your city? Want to review the film? Get in touch with Sara Afshar.
Highly recommended reading:
‘Please don’t forget us’: the hellish search for Syria’s lost prisoners (Nicola Cutcher)
The Syrians Campaigning for Justice for Those ‘Disappeared’ by Assad (Nicola Cutcher and Sara Afshar)
“Syria’s Desaparecidos“ (Budour Hassan)
“Syria’s Disappeared” (Bente Scheller)
Greece is no place for refuge
It has been nine months since the introduction of the EU-Turkey deal, under which refugees arriving on Greek islands face the threat of deportation back to Turkey. Since then, thousands of refugees have been stuck in inhumane conditions, in camps lacking basic resources like heat and electricity, as they await to have their asylum requests processed. With the arrival of winter, the situation continues to deteriorate.
Meanwhile, UNHCR and the EU’s aid department (ECHO) have been accused of mismanaging millions in emergency funding earmarked for upgrading shelters, leaving thousands sleeping in freezing conditions in camps across Greece. On Chios, refugees have begun to protest against these intolerable conditions. ‘We all are fighting this battle with the leaders of Europe’s non-humanists. Yes, we are now one team fighting the lies and hatred, racism and the enslavement of human beings and the imprisonment of freedom,’ writes Mohammed, a refugee from Deir ez-Zor.
The following commentary, originally published in Politico last week, was written in response to the European Commission’s proposal to resume ‘Dublin transfers’ back to Greece.
By John-Mark Philo & Ludek Stavinoha
In the same week as the world marked Human Rights Day, the European Commission announced its plans to resume the so-called “Dublin transfers” of refugees back to Greece. If the recommendation is adopted at Thursday’s meeting of European leaders in Brussels, EU member countries will be able to start returning refugees who arrive on their territory back to the country of their first entry into the European Union, wherever that may be.
What I Saw on Oprius 10 (You’re Being Lied To)
I just got back from this “barbaric alien slave planet” and what I found was shocking: we’re not being told the truth.
Children as young as 14 hours are ripped from their mother’s tentacles and forced to work 37 cycles straight in underground Calbazarite mines until their tiny withered bodies, still bound together by Gregorothian emotion-stabilizing mobilityrays, are shoveled out by the kiloton and tossed in unmarked disposal modules that are fired into the suns. Meanwhile, we’re told, Leader Rahsab’s personal envoy dines at 7-star restaurants, his harem of Alphanian gendermorphs injecting him with the galaxy’s finest proteins while, beneath the soil, his army of Mechatrons blasts away so-called “moderate” resistance caves.
We’ve all heard these stories, just like we all heard the story about Itarkian security forces devouring humanoid offspring as they slept in their interdimensional space-time inhibitors. Only after the New Alliance of Coequal Aliens removed their Supreme Being did we learn that was a total lie, manufactured by a public relations planet enslaved the Kuwangians who — you probably didn’t hear — had been trying and failing to build a warp portal through Itarkian space.
First, let me be clear: I don’t believe Leader Rahsab is infallible. I, personally, believe this mild-mannered gaseous cloud has made mistakes. Destroying Oprius 7, the famed artist colony, was not ideal, in my opinion, only aiding the interplanetary campaign of defamation which, of course, never addressed what “peaceful” gammachord players were doing with Kuwangian shape-shifting technology. But I also understand why, amid a NACA-backed insurgency attracting mercenaries from around the cosmos, he felt the need to send a message. NACA would have done the same thing.
And what I really know for sure? That the last thing the Oreckians need is a change in Eternal Hierarchy imposed by a solar system 90 million light years away and sold on the basis of a corrupt, Earth-based opposition’s lies and the tales of Oprian “refugees” who claim they escaped the mineral deposits but, curiously, display none of the signs of Calbazarite Syndrome. That’s why I decided to accept Leader Rahsab’s invitation to spend five cycles touring Oprius 10. What I can say now You’re being lied to.
I expected the outrageous smears the moment I agreed to hear the perspective of a “brutal confederation,” but one doesn’t go into journalism expecting pleasantries and generous fiber rations. I wanted to hear their side; clearly, whether . Surely if dissatisfaction were as high as claimed by the mainstream news algorithms I would see it and those famed (but always conveniently “disappeared”) dissidents during my visit.
What I saw in the Historic Quadrant of Damackulous Y was instead, normal — disappointingly so for those believing NACA’s planted newsbytes about all that (manufactured) dissent. Intelligent lifeforms wore clothes that they bought on Amazon. Local injection labs had all the brands and flavors I knew from back home. Most of the people I saw were rather shy, seeking to shift the conversation away from politics and back to my drink order, but Oreckian system tribes are known for their wariness of strangers.
At an Irish pub, I heard from an Oprian female about how her husband had been tricked into fighting for confederation change, believing the same lies we Talangs have been told about the attractiveness of Northern sector-style “liberties” — to anti-socially fret over what to do with one’s consciousness, instead of having that rationally decided for you — and the unilateral consensus process laid out in the Leader’s Chartreuse Communication. Through a reconciliation deal offered by the confederation’s social justice minister, he agreed to be cremated in exchange for a small stipend off which she now lives. Yes, life can be hard, she confided, but — glancing nervously at my state-provided translator to make sure he was getting every word — life in the mines had given her and her children the structure they sorely lacked in “liberated” zones, where she wasn’t even allowed to work, much less required to.
While I would like to have seen more, after a drugged Orian male shrieked at me to take his identity chip without authorization — he was neutralized by security forces after a reading of his right — it was decided on my behalf that I should go. And that’s the Oreckian way: Capable superiors decide things like this for you, leaving more time for life. The Oreckians, like any other people, should be allowed to decide their system of governance, and Leader Rahasab has made that decision for them. We may not always understand their ways, but that doesn’t mean we should try to impose ours on them.
Remember Itark?
Charles Davis is a reporterbot from the Talang system. Their work is presented in 400 billion minds.
Theaters of Coercion: Iran at Home and Abroad
I have an essay in the new issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas in which I review Laura Secor’s excellent new book Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran and also examine Tehran’s role in the changing political landscape of the Middle East—especially in the Syrian catastrophe. You can read the essay here.
Syria’s White Helmets
Nagieb Khaja’s film for Al Jazeera’s Witness on Syria’s immensely courageous White Helmets.
Life under the bombs with a team of White Helmet rescue workers in Syria’s most dangerous city, Aleppo.
P U L S E 