Archives: Articles

25 August 2024

As we mark the seventh anniversary of the Myanmar military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, the world stands at a grim crossroads. On August 25, 2017, the military unleashed a campaign of mass murder, widespread rape, and the systematic destruction of Rohingya villages. Seven years later, these atrocities have not only continued but have intensified into a calculated campaign of extermination. The Myanmar military junta operates with unchallenged impunity, while the international community has failed to act decisively.

“Seven years into this tragedy, the Rohingya continue to suffer and die, abandoned by the international community,” said Kyaw Win, Executive Director of the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN). “The world’s inaction has not only failed to halt the genocide but has emboldened the Myanmar military and other armed groups to commit further atrocities with impunity. How many more lives must be lost before the world takes meaningful action?”

Approximately 600,000 Rohingya remain confined in Myanmar under dire conditions that amount to a state-enforced system of apartheid. Since the junta seized power in a coup in 2021, it has intensified its campaign of terror against the Rohingya, flouting international condemnation and defying orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) aimed at preventing further genocidal acts.

In the past year, the situation has been further aggravated by the Arakan Army (AA), which has escalated its attacks on Rohingya communities in a brutal struggle for control in Rakhine State. Trapped between the genocidal military junta and the violent AA, the Rohingya face escalating violence and displacement. Eyewitnesses have reported to BHRN that the AA has attacked Rohingya civilians with guns, rockets, and crude drone bombs. Many have been forced to flee, only to face closed borders and a global community largely indifferent to their plight. The ICJ’s provisional measures, intended to protect the Rohingya from further atrocities, are being flagrantly violated.

In Bangladesh, over a million Rohingya refugees have sought refuge, but their situation remains dire. The camps are overcrowded and suffer from severe shortages of basic necessities, healthcare, and security. As conditions worsen, the prospects for a dignified return home and the quest for justice become increasingly bleak.

Despite extensive documentation of the military’s genocidal actions, the international response has been alarmingly insufficient. The genocide of the Rohingya has been recognized by several countries, including the United States and Canada, and by international bodies such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). However, this recognition has not translated into meaningful action. The global community’s inaction sends a dangerous message: genocidal regimes can act with impunity, and the world will stand by as entire populations are exterminated.

The United Nations Security Council’s failure to act reflects a disturbing pattern of global inaction driven by geopolitical interests that shield Myanmar from meaningful consequences. Nations like China and Russia, with strategic interests in Myanmar, have blocked efforts to hold the military accountable. Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has proven ineffective, opting for weak diplomatic engagement rather than taking concrete steps to protect vulnerable communities in Myanmar.

In remembrance of the Rohingya victims and survivors of genocide, the Burma Human Rights Network calls on governments, international bodies, and civil society to take immediate and effective measures to protect the Rohingya. The international community must confront the ongoing crisis in Myanmar with the urgency it demands. The United Nations must take immediate action to hold the Myanmar military accountable for its crimes, including referring the situation to the International Criminal Court. The ICJ’s provisional measures must be enforced, and those responsible for violating them must be held to account. Countries must also impose targeted sanctions against the Myanmar military and its affiliates, cutting off the financial resources that enable their campaign of terror. Corporations with ties to the junta must be held accountable for their complicity, facing global sanctions and legal consequences for their role in supporting a regime that commits atrocities with impunity.

The relentless suffering of the Rohingya calls for urgent, decisive action from the international community. It is time to end the cycle of impunity and secure a future of justice and dignity for every Rohingya.

Organisation’s Background

BHRN is based in London, operates across Burma and works for human rights, minority rights and religious freedom in Burma. BHRN has played a crucial role in advocating for human rights and religious freedom with politicians and world leaders.

By Chris Hedges

There is only one way to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not through bilateral negotiations. Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.

The arguments against a boycott of the two ruling parties are familiar: It will ensure the election of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has rhetorically shown more compassion than Joe Biden. There are not enough of us to have an impact. We can work within the Democratic Party. The Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which owns most members of Congress, is too powerful. Negotiations will eventually achieve a cessation of the slaughter.

In short, we are impotent and must surrender our agency to sustain a project of mass killing. We must accept as normal governance the shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an apartheid state, the use of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel and the active obstruction of international efforts to end mass murder. We have no choice.

Genocide, the internationally recognized crime of crimes, is not a policy issue. It cannot be equated with trade deals, infrastructure bills, charter schools or immigration. It is a moral issue. It is about the eradication of a people. Any surrender to genocide condemns us as a nation and as a species. It plunges the global society one step closer to barbarity. It eviscerates the rule of law and mocks every fundamental value we claim to honor. It is in a category by itself. And to not, with every fiber of our being, combat genocide is to be complicit in what Hannah Arendt defines as “radical evil,” the evil where human beings, as human beings, are rendered superfluous.

The plethora of Holocaust studies should have made this indelible point. But Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.

The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil.

“Monsters exist,” Levi, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

To confront evil — even if there is no chance of success — keeps alive our humanity and dignity. It allows us, as Vaclav Havel writes in “The Power of the Powerless,” to live in truth, a truth the powerful do not want spoken and seek to suppress. It provides a guiding light to those who come after us. It tells the victims they are not alone. It is “humanity’s revolt against an enforced position” and an “attempt to regain control over one’s sense of responsibility.”

What does it say about us if we accept a world where we arm and fund a nation that kills and wounds hundreds of innocents a day?

What does it say about us if we support an orchestrated famine and the poisoning of the water supply where the polio virus has been detected, meaning tens of thousands will get sick and many will die?

What does it say about us if we permit for 10 months the bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, villages and cities to wipe out families and force survivors to camp out in the open or find shelter in crude tents?

What does it say about us when we accept the murder of 16,456 children, although this is surely an undercount?

What does it say about us when we watch Israel escalate attacks on United Nations facilities, schools — including the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where over 100 Palestinians were killed while performing the Fajr, or dawn prayers — and other emergency shelters?

What does it say about us when we permit Israel to use Palestinians as human shields by forcing handcuffed civilians, including children and the elderly, to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings in advance of Israeli troops, at times dressed in Israeli military uniforms?

What does it say about us when we support politicians and soldiers who defend the rape and torture of prisoners?

Are these the kinds of allies we want to empower? Is this behavior we want to embrace? What message does this send to the rest of the world?

If we do not hold fast to moral imperatives, we are doomed. Evil will triumph. It means there is no right and wrong. It means anything, including mass murder, is permissible. Protestors outside the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago demand an end to the genocide and U.S. aid to Israel, but inside we are fed a sickening conformity. Hope lies in the streets.

A moral stance always has a cost. If there is no cost, it is not moral. It is merely conventional belief.

“But what of the price of peace?” the radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, who was sent to federal prison for burning draft records during the war in Vietnam, asks in his book “No Bars to Manhood:”

I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans — that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs — at all costs — our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost — because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war — at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

The question is not whether resistance is practical. It is whether resistance is right. We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe. We must have faith that the good draws to it the good, even if the empirical evidence around us is bleak. The good is always embodied in action. It must be seen. It does not matter if the wider society is censorious. We are called to defy — through acts of civil disobedience and noncompliance — the laws of the state, when these laws, as they often do, conflict with moral law. We must stand, no matter the cost, with the crucified of the earth. If we fail to take this stand, whether against the abuses of militarized police, the inhumanity of our vast prison system or the genocide in Gaza, we become the crucifiers.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication.

16 August 2024

Source: chrishedges.substack.com

By Ranjan Solomon

Benjamin Netanyahu has called on mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt to “pressure” Hamas to accept a deal. Israel itself may not be looking for a long-lasting peace. It has taken some big hits in terms of army personnel. Sympathy in the region for its Israel is rock bottom. Its losses have come from several quarters. Reservists are deserting the army and new recruits are just not there. While regimes in the region have not been outspoken; their appraisal of the mood of their people is that it is irrevocably pro-Palestine. Given the ongoing genocide, which is deemed to be the worst in living memory, Israel is losing the support of even its own population- not in mass numbers. But the Peace Movement is capturing the moment and building up. Netanyahu is also a nervous man. He’s in a damned-if you-do, and damned if-you-don’t. An end to war would be a pathway to jail for crimes that have not tried and jailed him because he is constitutionally protected for as long as he is in powers It is hard to see how long he can sustain with the façade of confidence.

Even as he seeks a cease-fire, Hamas will want to read between the lines after the misstep of Oslo. Palestinians cannot afford another replica of Oslo. Any peace process must be just and permanent and guaranteed in ways that Israel and its Western allies do not construct ploys that will be conveniently against Palestinian interests.

Even as Israel seeks to talk peace, they are using Palestinians as human shields in booby-trapped tunnels. This is cowardice as much as it is immoral. Israel has further reeked so much havoc that the international humanitarian agencies are losing count of just how many people have died. The Gaza rubble likely conceals the horrific death toll of 40,000.

Alongside the pressure of pushing along peace talks and a cease fire, the US is playing its own arms trade games and has approved about $20 billion in new weapons sales to Israel over the next several years. This comes amid fading hopes that negotiations would lead to a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release.

Everything about the cease fire comes with a big IF. The pessimism supersedes the optimism. With the prospects of a regional war, prompted by Israeli killings of important adversaries, peace may be tough bargain.

In solidarity

18 August 2024

Ranjan Solomon
On behalf of MLN Palestine Updates

By Sunita Viswanath

(RNS) — This year’s India Day Parade in New York City on Sunday (Aug. 18), traditionally a celebration of India’s vibrant democracy and cultural diversity, will be marred with a float of a model Ram Mandir, the controversial temple to Lord Rama in Ayodhya, India. Organizers who included the float insist this is an expression of Hindu heritage in India, but this structure signals a divisive ideology that threatens the very values the parade seeks to celebrate.

India’s Ram Mandir stands on the site of the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old mosque that was illegally demolished in 1992 by a mob of Hindu extremists, sparking Hindu-Muslim riots that killed at least 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. This violence was the culmination of a campaign based on the unproven claim that the mosque stood on the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram — a claim rejected by historians, the Archaeological Survey of India and, until recently, the Indian judiciary.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which has promoted an increasingly authoritarian agenda in India, has recently faced setbacks, but the ideology of Hindutva — a Hindu nationalist movement — remains a potent and destructive force. This ideology’s threat to Indian society, particularly on Muslims and Christians, is profound and ongoing.

In the U.S., as Indian Americans become more visible in politics and public life, there is a growing need to reflect on the kind of legacy we are building. Our community must mature and take responsibility for the messages conveyed at events like the India Day Parade. The inclusion of the Ram Mandir float is not just a cultural statement. It’s a troubling emblem of exclusion and intolerance.

This marks a continuation of a disturbing trend that began in 2022 when the India Day Parade in Edison, New Jersey, featured a bulldozer — a symbol of the brutal tactics used by India’s current regime to demolish homes and lives, particularly those of Muslims. For many Americans, the inclusion of such symbols in a celebration of Indian heritage might seem perplexing. But this is more than just an internal issue for the Indian community; it’s an alarm for how dangerous ideologies can cross borders and influence communities far from their origins.

Yet, there are signs of hope that the days of Hindutva rule may be numbered. In a surprising turn of events, a BJP parliamentarian was recently unseated in Ayodhya, the very city where the Ram Mandir stands, replaced by Awadhesh Prasad of the socialist Samajwadi Party. Despite its predominantly Hindu population, Ayodhya chose to reject Hindu nationalism in favor of a Dalit candidate, signaling a desire for a more inclusive and compassionate vision of Hinduism. Prasad has spoken in the press as a devotee of Lord Ram: “No one can be a greater devotee of Ram than me. I am a native of Ayodhya, so who could be closer to Lord Ram than me?”

Swami Ram Das, the mahant (temple chief) of Sidh Peeth Mandir in Ayodhya, was among those who supported Prasad, even offering him his blessing along with other local Hindu religious leaders. Their cooperation sent a message that resonates far beyond India’s borders.

Speaking to me after the election, Swami Ram Das said: “Ayodhya is the land of Lord Rama, the supreme deity who accepts all people, especially marginalized people, and people of all religions and cultures. Real Hinduism teaches us love, unity and respect for other beliefs. Rama doesn’t belong to one person, one party or one religion. He exists in all of us.”

Swami Ram Das further highlighted the irony that despite the grand inauguration of the Ram Mandir being livestreamed in Times Square, he and most Ayodhya-based religious leaders were not invited. Laughing, he told me: “Why do I need to go? Ram is in my heart.”

The people of Ayodhya voted out the BJP and its divisive Hindutva politics. Instead, they embraced the inclusive Hindu faith that Swami Ram Das represents. New Yorkers can do the same.

The dangerous ideology that the Ram Mandir float represents has no place in a city known for being a refuge for the persecuted and marginalized. After all, the same Hindu nationalist regime that promoted the Ram Mandir has been credibly accused of assassinating its critics outside of India, including attempting to kill a New Yorker.

New York City, which proudly stood as a sanctuary during former President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban, must reaffirm its commitment to combating hate and Islamophobia. The Ram Mandir float in the New York parade is not a symbol of heritage. It is a symbol of hate. Indian Americans must ensure that our cultural expressions in public spaces reflect the diversity, inclusivity and democratic values central to both our Indian and American identities.

(Sunita Viswanath is the executive director of Hindus for Human Rights. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

16 August 2024

Source: religionnews.com

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

The situation in the Middle East has now deteriorated so far that the US could be dragged into a regional war. The Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, after the top Hamas leader had travelled to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, has sparked fears of retaliation. Earlier this week, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement calling on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacking Israel. “If the US and western countries really want to prevent war and insecurity in the region, they should convince this regime to stop the genocide and attacks in Gaza and accept a ceasefire,” Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

Israel carried out this assassination with the apparent intention of drawing the US into a war with Iran. The scale of Iran’s response will determine whether the US gets involved. President Biden does not expect Iran to carry out a retaliatory strike if a deal is reached to end the war in Gaza, but he has not exactly helped by selling $20bn worth of weapons to Israel, one of the largest military packages since the beginning of the Gaza war. Neither Israel nor the US truly wants a war with Iran but, as Biden said in a recent interview, there is “every reason” for people to think Netanyahu is deliberately prolonging the war in Gaza for political reasons. Netanyahu has lost support globally and within Israel. As soon as the war ends, he will probably be forced out of office and face trial for corruption.

Understandably, Iran needs its response to be significant enough that it’s seen as a deterrent. But in crafting its response, it must avoid sparking a war with the US. Both sides would suffer serious losses, and the region would become even more volatile. There is also Pezeshkian’s reputation to think of. He won support from Iran’s public on a reformist platform focused on improving the country’s social and economic situation and its foreign relations, including with the US and Europe. Netanyahu intended to eliminate his chances. Iran must not play into his hands.

Just as it should tread carefully around its domestic politics, Israel should also avoid disrupting America’s domestic political equations before the November election. Netanyahu views a second Trump presidency as a boon to his agenda. He convinced Trump to withdraw the US from the US-Iran nuclear deal, allowing Iran to position itself so that it could produce enough material for a bomb within a weeks instead of a year. Trump then designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation, and in a widely controversial move, chose to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The most important issue that is helping to drive the crisis in the Middle East is Palestine. Since the war began on 7 October, at least 39,677 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. More than 90,000 Palestinians have been injured and more than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their home by Israeli strikes. The true death toll could could eventually exceed 186,000, according to a study published in the Lancet. Martin Griffiths, former UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has described the war as “the worst in my 50 years of experience” – worse than the scenes he witnessed in Syria, worse even than the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

If Iran is to advocate for Palestinian rights, rather than launching a direct military strike on Israel as it did back in April, it should use the existing levers of international law, such as the recent UN security council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, and the historic ruling issued by the International Court of Justice. On 19 July, the ICJ declared that Israel must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory and evacuate all Israeli settlers as rapidly as possible. It also insisted that all states and international organisations, including the UN, are under an obligation not to give aid or assistance that would help maintain the continued occupation of Palestinian territory.

There are three major steps that would help secure peace in the region. The first and most important would be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The US is the only country with the leverage to push Netanyahu to accept a sustainable ceasefire, and it should use this. Rather than a direct retaliatory military strike on Israel, Iran should focus on how to hold Netanyahu accountable. In that way, its response to the killing of Haniyeh could strengthen international support for a free Palestine and an immediate ceasefire. And if the international criminal court issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, Iran can make every effort to have them brought to justice.

The second step is for Washington to welcome Iran’s election of a president committed to ending more than 40 years of hostility with the US. If the US elects a president with a similar commitment, the two sides should work together to revive the Iran nuclear deal, end decades of dangerous regional confrontations, and bring about a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Last but not least, an essential step would be to get the UN security council to establish a forum for dialogue and cooperation between Iran and its Arab neighbours around the Persian Gulf. Together, these three steps are the best way of de-escalating tensions, preventing a regional war and achieving lasting peace and stability in the region.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former head of Iran’s national security foreign relations committee.

16 August 2024

Source: theguardian.com

By Ramakrishnan

On 5 August Sheikh Hasinaof Bangladesh resigned from the post of prime minister and went to India. The next day the parliament was dissolved. On 8 August the interim government headed by Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus (aged 84) was formed.Requested to reurn from Paris Olympics,even before it closed, he did so on Aug 8. Yunus on Aug 11 said in Dhaka, Bangladesh is “experiencing a student-led revolution..There is no doubt about it..because the business of the whole governmment collapsed.” The Central Bank Governor and the Chief justice, and five other judges resigned. The CJ Obaidul Hassan was “just  a  hangman,”

said Yunus.

Five eminent personalities of three countries in a statement on August 10 Saturday called upon India to refrain from interfering in their respective polities in the wake of recent changes in Bangladesh.

The personalities are : Firdous Azim, professor of English, member of Naripokkho (a feminist organisation) in Bangladesh, Kanak Mani Dixit, writer and founding editor Himal Southasian in Kathmandu, Lakshman Gunasekara, journalist, social activist in Colombo, Manzoor Hasan, Centre for Peace and Justice, BRAC University in Dhaka and Sushil Pyakurel, former Commissioner, National Human Rights Commission in Kathmandu.

The statement is published verbatim:

We, five citizens of Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, come together in the context of momentous changes in Bangladesh, to demand that the government of India desist from interfering in our respective polities. Over the decades, intervention by New Delhi’s political, bureaucratic and intelligence operatives in Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu, has contributed to the unending political instability in our countries and has empowered autocratic regimes.

India’s interference weakens the neighbouring democracies and compromises their socio-economic advancement. It contradicts the Panchsheel principle of peaceful coexistence once advocated by India and belies the Narendra Modi government’s much-publicised ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.

Furthermore, it is beneficial to India’s own interest in seeing South Asia as a whole achieve political stability and peace, which will in turn benefit India’s own economy and enhance its international standing.

While Bangladesh’s citizens have been grateful for Indian assistance at the time of liberation in 1971, in the decades since, New Delhi has sought to guide Dhaka’s politics for its own purposes.

These include the diversion of river waters as the upper riparian state, access to the Indian Northeast through Bangladeshi territory, and the use of Bangladesh as a sizeable market for Indian goods. New Delhi actively worked to prop up the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina over the last decade and received political and economic concessions in return.

New Delhi actively worked to prop up the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina over the last decade and received political and economic concessions in return.

New Delhi’s interventionism in Sri Lanka peaked with the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s, meant first and foremost to protect India’s ‘national interest’ amidst the Tamil insurgency. Before and since the time of the IPKF, Sri Lanka has had to repeatedly wrestle with New Delhi’s encroachment in its politics. In addition, lately New Delhi authorities have been actively pushing Indian business conglomerates onto the island.

While India once intervened in Nepal’s politics through proactive politicians and diplomats, it now does so also through intelligence agencies and Hindutva activists of the RSS.

New Delhi has lately been engaged in manufacturing consent within Nepal’s polity in order to maintain control over Nepal’s water resources.

A significant coercive action was the blockade imposed on Nepal in 2015, even as the country was reeling from an earthquake, following the promulgation of the constitution that was not to New Delhi’s liking.

In each of our countries, there exist politicians and political parties that put self-interest before national needs and have been receptive to New Delhi’s interventionist moves.

However, we are perplexed by the inability of Indian policymakers to appreciate the fact that such interference creates layers of animosity against India that does not dissipate easily.

As has happened in the case of Bangladesh, these interventionist plans ultimately fall apart, but New Delhi will move from one folly to the next.

Mistakes are repeated in neighbourhood policy because New Delhi’s academia and media tend not to keep independent watch on their government’s assumptions and actions, unquestioningly following the dictates of the external affairs and home ministries.

A rigorous and introspective study of its South Asia policy, including an evaluation of past misadventures, would benefit India and the entire subcontinent.

India’s regional presence would be more benign if New Delhi were to view neighbouring countries through the eyes of its own border regions, peoples and economies.

Some of New Delhi’s sense of vulnerability with regard to each of our countries is based on geography: Sri Lanka’s strategic positioning south of the peninsula, Nepal’s placement along the Himalayan range, and Bangladesh’s location between the mainland and the Northeast.

None of these factors would be seen as problematic, however, if New Delhi’s policymakers understood that our societies wish only the best for India, its government and people.

 Much of the public acrimony directed at India is but a reaction to New Delhi’s interference in internal affairs.

New Delhi also seems to fear Chinese involvement in each of our countries, as if there were a coordinated plan at play to encircle India. To begin with, New Delhi must accept the sovereign right of each neighbour to deal with Beijing on its own accord, much as New Delhi does.

We find it incongruous that China has become India’s largest trading partner even as New Delhi seeks to prevent the neighbours’ links with Beijing.

We insist that Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are not and should not be in the sphere of influence of China, India or any other power, and that the alarm in New Delhi is misplaced.

We recognise that the Maldives and Bhutan too suffer from New Delhi’s efforts to be the decisive player in their internal and external affairs. The hostility between Islamabad and New Delhi has been distressing and constant, and it impacts not only the societies and economies of South Asia’s two largest countries but also holds hostage the agenda of upliftment across all our countries.

New Delhi can contribute to stable polities and long-lasting peace in South Asia by abandoning its overt and covert interference in the internal affairs of its neighbours.

India should be supportive of the democratic aspirations of South Asia’s peoples and let them build their individual paths to the future.

(Emphases added)

Courtesy : Prothom Alo English Desk

First published: 10 Aug 2024.

Ramakrishnan is a political observer, a regular contributor to countercurrents.org

15 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Latheef  Farook

Will the Arab dictators  face the same fate as  the Bangladesh former  Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who was forced  to flee, due to their shameful betrayal of Palestinians slaughtered by Israel with US- British, French and German supplied weapons and  support.

Iran led shiite Houthis and  Hisbullah  sacrifice their lives to   defend Palestinians while Saudi led Sunni regimes  side with Israel and facilitate the  genocide of Palstinians.

Despite   immense  wealth ,moral , religious and humanitarian obligations   Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan , UAE and other Arab  countries refused  to give even a bottle of water or a  parcel  of food  to Palestinians massacred by Israel almost on a daily basis for the past   eleven months . .

Most Arab dictators hail from families installed in power by British,French and Zionist Jews  in the aftermath of World War 1 when the Ottoman Empire was defeated to serve  their western masters. These dictators  are secular , hostile to Islam and Muslims , corrupt ,oppressive  and  cut away from their  people who remain voiceless.

They need US-European and Israel to  protect   their regimes from their own people. They maintains unofficial ties with Israel though they are quick to deny any official or covert ties with Israel. This include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates,Egypt Jordan,Oman. Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan.

For example Morocco  allowed an Israeli warship to dock in the port of Tangier to allow its crew to replenish fuel and food supplies en route from the US, after the Spanish government refused the vessel permission to use its ports.

In the same way United Arab Emirates, a Muslim country ,tried  for weeks to bribe     South Africa, a non Muslim country, to withdraw  its   case against Israel   in the International Court of Justice .

Due to their severe violations of international human rights law, Arab dictators would not face Israel before the ICJ or ICC to avoid facing similar charges.  This include Egypt, SaudiArabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, UAE, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, and the Palestinian Authority .

UAE has positioned itself as the primary regional ally of Israel.Media outlets and online platforms linked to the UAE have initiated a significant campaign backing Israel while seeking to vilify Palestinian resistance groups.

In another development Shites Houthis   blocked  Red Sea  route to Israel.  However Sunni regimes helped Israel   using the land route   that begins from Dubai and passes through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to transport cargo  to bypass the Houthi blockade in the Red Sea.”

The land corridor is a key concern for the US and European   powers. It is aimed at positioning the Israeli port of Haifa as a major gateway to Europe, altering the political and economic map of the region by bypassing the Red Sea and furthering Israel’s integration into the Gulf states’ economies.

Amid the gruesome Gaza war, passions are running high throughout the Arab world. Huge Palestine solidarity protests have been occurring across the region, and this terrifies many ruling elites who fear the Palestinian issue. They are hostile Islamically oriented Hamas   and   Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia  clamped down on pro-Palestine protests.

Most Arab states are generally allergic to popular protests,” said Marina Calculli, a Columbia University research fellow  . “They fear   allowing protests of solidarity towards Palestinians could encourage protests against the government and their policies in other fields.”

“Arab states today do not like Palestinian nationalism because Palestinian nationalism is a source of popular mobilization on the Arab street,”  said  Nader Hashemi, the director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University’.

Meanwhile diverting the world attenti0n from its genocide in Gaza, Israel has organized the worst ever anti Muslim campaign destablising Britain.  The deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King, was  accused of attempting to stoke far-right riots and tensions in the UK after posting repeatedly about the violence in recent days.

On Sunday 4 August, as anti-Muslim and racist mob attacks wracked cities and towns across the UK, King posted a cartoon image showing a brown Muslim-looking man with a beard and skullcap embracing a white British police officer, who has his arms around the Muslim.

Senior Conservative MP Robert Jenrick has been slammed by Muslim MPs and civil society groups for calling for Muslims who recite “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great”,  in loud to be immediately arrested. Jenrick served as immigration minister from 2022 to 2023 in Rishi Sunak’s government  which supplied weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians and destroy Gaza.

British columnist David Hearst said an unholy alliance between fascists and far right Zionists fuelled anti Muslim riots in UK. He added that for years, far-right politicians and commentators have dripped racist poison into the well of Britain’s public discourse, leading to this toxic moment

However up to date no Arab country, including Saudi Arabia, claiming to be the guardian of Islam and Muslims, condemned violence against Muslims and  tried  to   counter distorting  and  insulting Islam in Britain. These dictatorships managed to keep their people oppressed  for almost a century. The question is how long they will be able to   serve US-European and Israeli interests against  their own people.

Meanwhile US and Israel together with their Egyptian stooge   El Sisi , and perhaps other stooges, are  trying to  impose Palestinian stooge Mahmoud Abbas to rule Gaza once the  slaughter of Palestinian in Gaza stops.

However new Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar  warned  Arab countries friendly with U.S. and Israel against planned peacekeeping forces deployment in postwar Gaza and also made it clear that Hamas won’t cede the enclave to pro-West Israeli stooge  Palestinian Authority once the war ends. Sinwar sent a message to Egyptian mediators calling for complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and release of Palestinian prisoners as part of the potential ceasefire deal.

Latheef  Farook is a journalist from Sri Lanka

14 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Akbar E. Torbat

On May 19, 2024, Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, met the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, at the Giz Galasi Dam along the two countries’ borders to inaugurate the hydroelectric complex there. In his return en route to Tabriz, the helicopter carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and other companions crashed. While the Islamic Republic’s officials have refused to provide transparent information about the cause of the helicopter crash, speculations about it are still ongoing.

Some observers in Iran have hypothesized that Raisi’s helicopter possibly crashed in a “deliberate accident.” Government officials have indicated that the results of additional investigations will be reported soon. Yet, the spokesperson of the judicial branch recently dodged the reporters’ questions regarding the latest report of the crash.

A day after the inauguration of the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on July 30, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political office, was assassinated in Tehran. The official report by Tasnim News stated that Haniyeh was killed by a short-range projectile fired from outside the building. In contrast, on August 5, the Jewish Chronicle reported that Haniyeh’s assassination was managed by an explosive device placed under his bed. Two Iranians recruited by the Mossad from the Ansar al-Mahdi security unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planted the device.

After the assassination of Haniyeh, the possibility of an “intentional crash” of Raisi’s helicopter has once again been raised. We must be very naïve to believe that the crash of the Raisi helicopter was an accident and had not been carefully planned.

Some Iranians referred to the friendly relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Israel, claiming a possibility of Israel’s involvement in the crash. Israeli journalist Edi Cohen wrote about the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on X social media and warned the Iranian authorities: “Did you understand who targeted the helicopter?” The Iranian Intelligence minister is traditionally a mullah who is chosen by Leader Ali Khamenei and commonly lacks professional experience and knowledge of espionage in the digital age. In 2022, Ali Yunesi, a former Intelligence Minister, warned that Mossad had infiltrated many parts of the country. Cases of intelligence failure have been reported on a few occasions. In 2017, Catherine Shakdaman, a Jewish journalist disguised as a converted Shia, went to Iran and established friendly relations with some top government authorities in Tehran. She wrote some articles for the Iranian media and then left Iran. In 2022, it was reported that she had been a Mossad spy. Also, Ali Reza Akbari, a deputy defense minister, had been recruited by the British to leak certain sensitive information to them. Akbari was later convicted as a spy and was hanged in January 2023.

Even though most Iranians disliked Ebrahim Raisi for his role in the execution of about 5000 political prisoners in 1988, he succeeded in strengthening Iran’s relations with the East. That was after his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani’s rapprochement with the West and lifting of economic sanctions completely failed. Under the Raisi administration, Iran was admitted as a full member of SCO, and it joined BRICS. Masoud Pezeshkian, who succeeded Raisi, favors reviving rapprochement with the West.

Pezeshkian chose Mohammad Javad Zarif as the Strategic Vice President and Head of the Presidential Strategic Studies Center to select the nominees for his cabinet. By appointment of Zarif, reformists thought a cabinet could be formed in their favor to benefit from the possible removal of the sanctions. Zarif presented a list of the prospective cabinet nominees. However, only a few of those on the list were chosen after consultation with the Leader. Moreover, Zarif had become an ideal stooge of the American top Democrats who liked him to be a future leader in Iran. Fundamentalists (principalists) felt that Zarif’s presence in the government would weaken their power and pushed for his removal. They used an interpretation of a law regarding employment in sensitive government positions to pressure him to resign. Zarif’s children are American citizens, as they were born in the United States, which is related to that law. As a result, Zarif resigned from his position and said he would return to his university teaching job.

Currently, there is a power struggle between the two sides of the regime. The fundamentalists want to retaliate to punish Israel for the latest assassination, while the reformists insist on restraint and ask for the removal of the economic sanctions.

Akbar E. Torbat is the author of “Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran,” Palgrave Macmillan (2020).

15 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

As university and college students prepare to return to campus for the new school year, many find themselves in legal limbo for their participation in the anti-Genocide student encampments protesting Israel’s war in Gaza at the end of the last school year.

On August 14, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Palestine Legal held a press conference to discuss how universities are punishing returning students for their participation in the protests.

CAIR today named three universities as “institutions of particular concern,” ie. George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

As an example of punishment for their involvement in protests, some student protesters who were arrested at GW, according a Washington Post article on August 10, would have to agree to accept certain conditions in order to return and “…may be able to have their charges dropped — but only if they accepted a deal that would restrict their access to campus for six months.”

The list of strict conditions was reported as “not being able to enter dining halls, nor study sessions in the library. No meeting up with friends for coffee.” And that, “students would only be allowed to go to and from their residence and classes, with exceptions for accessing the hospital or using the metro.”

The conditions as set forth in the agreement constitute a form of “house arrest” while using the term “may” for the dropping of charges, still leaves students with no guarantee that will in fact be the case. Additionally, the condition of denying such access to educational resources for some students at the private university who pay tuition as high as $70,000 a year is both punitive and discriminatory in nature and without merit.

In disallowing access to those resources, the university has created two classes of students by discriminating against those who have participated in the protests.

Dylan Sabah, staff attorney for Palestine Legal, spoke of how “For years university administrations under pressure from donors and outside lobby groups have sought to suppress Palestine advocacy on their campuses.” And in so doing, he iterated how civil and constructional rights of students have been violated.

Going further, he told of how some universities have allowed “outside actors” to gain access to their campuses to harass and “dox” students and that some have banned entire student groups including Jewish and Palestinian as well as others for engaging in “protected political expression in demanding an end to the genocide and an end to support for Israel.”

Out of student frustration of not being heard by administrations, students began their protests in setting up encampments to demand a ceasefire and an end to the university’s complicity in the genocide.

Those actions in turn saw administrations respond by calling in police to break up the encampments, with police brutalizing and arresting students, faculty and staff. Sabah commented further noting that that reaction is a “profound embarrassment to these universities who pretend to support free expression and political engagement.”

In closing, he said the universities “…remain committed in silencing dissent and protecting the interest of the powerful against the righteous anger of the many.” He suggested that institutions should join in with their students to be “on the right side of history.”

Chris Godshall-Bennett, Legal Director of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, accused universities of a “disturbing phenomenon of students begin leveled with extreme discipline charges…prior to any hearing being conducted.” He named GW as a “particularly brutal example” of punishment where students were brought before student conduct panels having already had their housing revoked in advance.

He followed by describing those students engaged in the protests and encampments as the “Beating heart of American solidarity for Palestine.”

In closing, Corey Saylor, CAIR Research and Advocacy Director, announced that its  “Unhostile Campus Campaign,” titled “Hostile” concerning the “Targeting of Anti-Genocide protesters while enabling Anti-Palestinian Racism and Islamophobia” has been mailed to 600 university administrators across the country.

The analysis exposes the role that universities have played in targeting students protesting the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

He suggested that “While campuses welcome back students we should celebrate and protect such students, not focus on harsh punishments for protesters.”

Although today’s announcement covered only three universities, Saylor promised that in the weeks ahead CAIR would be adding other institutions of higher learning to their “institutions of particular concern” list.

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

© 2024 nuzeink all rights reserved worldwide

15 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli army has killed 2,100 Palestinian infants and toddlers under the age of two, out of the about 17,000 children it has killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of its genocide on 7 October 2023.

The number of Palestinian children—whether infants or children in general—killed by the Israeli army is horrifying, and the rate of their killing is unprecedented in the history of modern wars. It also represents a dangerous trend based on the dehumanisation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s military targets Palestinians and their children daily, methodically, and widely in the most heinous and brutal ways possible, and virtually without pause for 10 consecutive months.

Due to the Israeli bombing of homes, buildings, residential neighbourhoods, shelter centres, and displacement tents, many children have lost their heads and limbs. This is a flagrant violation of the rules of distinction, proportionality, military necessity, i.e. the legal and moral obligation to take the necessary precautions to minimise the deaths of civilians and children.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team documented today, Tuesday 13 August, the killing of four-day-old twins Aser and Aysal Muhammad Abu al-Qumsan. The twins were killed this morning, along with their mother Juman and their grandmother, in an Israeli bombing that targeted a residential flat in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

After leaving the apartment to obtain a birth certificate for his two newborn children, the father of the infants returned to discover that all of his family members—including the twins’ grandmother—had been killed in an Israeli attack on the building.

Despite its advanced technological capabilities, the Israeli army targets houses and shelter centres knowing full well that they house civilians, including women and children. Nevertheless, it bombs these targets with highly destructive bombs and missiles, aiming to cause as many civilian deaths and severe injuries as possible. This is demonstrated by the Israeli army’s systematic, widespread, and repeated targeting of civilians in the Gaza Strip, as well as its use of highly destructive and indiscriminate weapons, particularly against areas with dense populations of civilians.

The case of the two babies Aser and Aysal are not unique; daily reports of child victims, including infants, are made in the Strip.

One of the most notable testimonies has been from 42-year-old Abdul Hafez Al-Najjar, the father of a child named Ahmed, who was among the many victims of an Israeli massacre on 26 May. The massacre targeted displaced people living in tents in the Barksat area, west of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Ahmed, along with three of his brothers and their mother, was among a host of other victims that were all beheaded and killed. Ahmed’s father told the Euro-Med team: “My child Ahmed was very beautiful. He was a year and a half old. He was beheaded in the Israeli bombing. His head was separated from his body. When I saw him, I felt distressed. He was buried without his head.”

According to the Euro-Med Monitor team, an Israeli airstrike on Rafah’s Al-Salam neighbourhood, in the southern Gaza Strip, killed another set of twin infants on 3 March. Six-month-old Wissam and Naeem Abu Anza were killed by the strike, along with their father and 11 other family members.

The mother of Wissam and Naeem, Rania Abu Anza, stated that she struggled for 10 years to become a mother before eventually giving birth to the two babies. “They implanted three embryos in me, two of them remained, and there they were,” she explained. “They bombed the house, killing my husband, my kids, and the rest of the family in the massacre.” Ten days ago marked six months since the death of the twins.

Shaimaa Al-Ghoul, meanwhile, was nine months pregnant when her home in the southern city of Rafah was bombed on 12 February. Her husband and two sons, Mohammed and Janan, were killed, and she suffered injuries from shrapnel that entered her abdomen, pierced her uterus, and ultimately lodged in the fetus.

Al-Ghoul stated that prior to her husband and two children’s deaths, her husband, Abdullah Abu Jazar, had made her “dates, sweets, and a [gift] bag in celebration of his expected newborn”. She said that she did give birth to a child, whom she named Abdullah, after his father, but the boy only lived one day. Baby Abduallah died from the wound caused by the shrapnel that had entered his mother. Thus, Al-Ghoul lost her husband and three children.

Euro-Med Monitor notes that numerous unborn children have died in hospitals over the past 10 months due to a lack of oxygen and electricity, inadequate care, and hospital targeting.

Israel continues to kill thousands of Palestinian men and women in the Gaza Strip, most of them in their reproductive age, including pregnant women, and thousands of children, including infants and toddlers. According to the meaning contained in the description of genocidal acts under Article (2) of the Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, there is no doubt that Israel’s systematic and widespread killings of Palestinian civilians, who make up at least 92% of the total number of deaths due to the genocide, will have a negative impact on the population growth rates and reproductive capacity of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for generations to come. Approximately 50,000 Palestinians, including thousands trapped under the rubble for long enough periods of time that they are now presumed dead, have been killed by Israel since 7 October. In addition, 88,000 other Palestinians have been wounded by Israel since then. These deaths and injuries will undoubtedly affect the Palestinians as a national and ethnic group for several generations.

Every day, infant deaths in the Gaza Strip are reported as a direct result of Israeli crimes that are legally classified as acts of genocide, including starvation, thirst, blocking the entry of basic supplies like milk, and deprivation of medical care. The majority of these infant deaths are not included in the official victim count released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, as there is no specific system to identify such victims.

Due to Israel’s crime of genocide, ongoing for the past 10 months, Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip are being denied their fundamental rights and are not being protected in any way by international law. They have become primary, direct, and deliberate targets of the Israeli army, and have even been subject to premeditated killings and direct executions.

Aside from being arbitrarily detained, Palestinian children have also been the victims of crimes of sexual assault; forced disappearance; torture and other forms of inhumane treatment; starvation; siege; severe psychological harm; deprivation of education due to the widespread destruction of schools; and denial of access to healthcare and other necessities of life. Many Palestinian children are also victims of family dispersion, and have lost parental care.

One of the main objectives of Israel’s genocide is to leave a lasting legacy of these crimes that will affect the victims for the rest of their lives. The majority of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip have experienced psychological trauma that will likely be difficult to treat: Thousands of children have lost one or both parents; have had limbs amputated; have suffered severe burns or other serious injuries; and/or have suffered from hunger, malnutrition, and dehydration; all of which will have a detrimental impact on their physical and psychological development.

Most children in the Gaza Strip have lost their homes, their financial security, and members of their families, in addition to being deprived of an education. This will have serious, far-reaching consequences on their futures and their ability to enjoy their other rights, making them more vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, and exploitation. The Israeli military attacks on the Strip have caused the widespread destruction of civilian objects, including homes, private property, livelihoods, production, and the economic and commercial system, forcing Palestinians to migrate, whether directly or indirectly.

The international community must act swiftly and decisively to put an end to the crime of genocide, safeguard the lives of all Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, prevent Israel from converting the Strip into the world’s largest cemetery for children in modern history, and end the egregious double standards that are applied to Israel and its powerful Western backers and allies.

Israel and its backers must be held accountable for blatantly violating international humanitarian law by killing and targeting Palestinian children and denying them access to food, shelter, clothing, and medical assistance, including vaccinations, as specified in the Geneva Conventions and their two 1977 Protocols—protocols which should enable them to realise their rights.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

14 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org