Monthly Archives: January 2013

In The US, Mass Child Killings Are Tragedies. In Pakistan, Mere Bug Splats

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, The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012
 
A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan 'have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears'. [A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty.]

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why. Continue reading →

The barbaric comprador monarchy of Saudi Arabia defends beheading

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[That barbarism, feudalism, monarchism, and imperialism present an undivided front of arrogant impunity–of acting like nothing’s wrong–is shocking and disgusting, but expected, given their history and nature.  But that the story is so hidden, in the highly touted “information age,” is a shameful crime of media who claim, falsely, that they are objective, the basis for an informed democracy.  No, they are premeditated co-conspirators with the barbaric powers-that-be. — Frontlines ed.]

Charlotte Rachael Proudman, The Independent (UK), Tuesday 15 January 2013

The beheading of a housemaid in Saudi Arabia highlights slave-like conditions

In 2010, 27 migrant workers were executed in Saudi Arabia and, according to Amnesty International, more than 45 foreign maids are currently on death row

A young Sri Lankan woman was beheaded with a sword last Wednesday in a Dawadmi, a small town in Saudi Arabia. Rizana Nafeek was found guilty of murdering her employers’ child – a crime she vehemently denied until death.

Rizana is not the only migrant worker to have been executed in Saudi Arabia – at least 27 were executed in 2010 and more than 45 foreign maids are facing execution on death row according to Amnesty International. Rizana’s deadly fate highlights the plight of migrant workers all around the world.

Like many migrant workers’ Rizana’s story began when she left her home country Sri Lanka in 2005 for Saudi Arabia to work as a housemaid where she could earn enough money to support her relatives. In the same year she was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to death for murdering her employers’ four-month-old son, Kayed bin Nayef bin Jazyan al-Otaibi. Rizana said the child choked on milk and died. The child’s family believed Rizana had strangled the child after attempting to bottle-feed him.

Once arrested Rizana battled with an unjust Saudi legal system. “Defendants are rarely allowed formal representation by a lawyer and in many cases are kept in the dark about the progress of legal proceedings against them,” Amnesty International said. The Sri Lankan government and human rights organisations campaigned for Rizana to have a fair trial.

Rizana did not have legal representation prior to her trial – and – she was physically assaulted and forced to sign a confession under duress, which she later retracted. Under international law Rizana at the age of 17 was too young to receive the death penalty. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is prohibited from sentencing a child under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offence to death. It is unlikely Saudi Arabia will be subject to any stringent sanctions for violating international law, which led to the death of a young woman. Continue reading →

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Intifada

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A Leap of Faith Toward Freedom
by RAMZY BAROUD, Counterpunch

If Palestinian leaders only knew how extraneous their endless rounds of “unity” talks have become, they might cease their enthusiastic declarations to world media about yet another scheduled meeting or another. At this point, few Palestinians have hope that their “leadership” has their best interests in mind. Factional interests reign supreme and personal agendas continue to define Palestine’s political landscape.

Fatah and Hamas are the two major Palestinian political factions. Despite Hamas’s election victory in 2006, Fatah is the chief contender. Both parties continue to play the numbers game, flexing their muscles in frivolous rallies where Palestinian flags are overshadowed with green and yellow banners, symbols of Hamas and Fatah respectively.

Historically there has been a leadership deficit in Palestine and it is not because Palestinians are incapable of producing upright men and women capable of guiding the decades-long resistance towards astounding victory against military occupation and apartheid. It is because for a Palestinian leadership to be acknowledged as such by regional and international players, it has to excel in the art of “compromise”. These carefully molded leaders often cater to the interests of their Arab and Western benefactors, at the expense of their own people. Not one single popular faction has resolutely escaped this seeming generalization.

This reality has permeated Palestinian politics for decades. However, in the last two decades the distance between the Palestinian leadership and the people has grown by a once unimaginable distance, where the Palestinian has become a jailor and a peddling politician or a security coordinator working hand in hand with Israel. The perks of the Oslo culture have sprouted over the years creating the Palestinian elite, whose interest and that of the Israeli occupation overlap beyond recognition of where the first starts and the other ends. Continue reading →

Petition in support of Dr GN Saibaba

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[We have received the following petition in support of Dr. GN Saibaba, who is threatened with eviction by Delhi University, where he is a professor.  Dr. Saibaba is disabled and wheelchair-bound, and an active leader in the people’s movements in India for revolutionary democratic rights.  We urge our readers to sign, and circulate further, this petition to the DU administration, to stop the threatened eviction.  For more information, see internationalistjustice.blogspot.com.  —  Frontlines ed.]
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Please sign the following petition in support of GN Saibaba, which can be found by clicking the link given here:
https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/dr-m-m-pallam-raju-union-minister-for-hrd-government-of-india-prevent-eviction-of-a-disabled-teacher-dr-g-n-saibaba-by-delhi-university?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=url_share&utm_campaign=url_share_after_sign#

Please sign the petition and also forward the link to your contacts who might be interested in signing the petition.

Regards
Hany Babu.
Associate Professor
Department of English
University of Delhi
hanybabu@gmail.com

The text of the petition is reproduced below:

Dr. M. M. Pallam Raju
Minister of Human Resource Development
Government of India

Dear Dr. M. M. Pallam Raju,

We the undersigned are astounded to know that the University of Delhi is
withdrawing a facility provided to a severely disabled teacher of its
College. Taking recourse to technicalities as the benchmark to forcefully
evacuate a disabled teacher ignoring further national and international
developments in law pertaining to the differently-abled is a sad state of
affairs of one of the leading universities in India. Any future perusal by
the university authorities of the question of special accommodation at the
warden’s flat, Gwyer Hall accorded to Dr. G. N. Saibaba cannot ignore the
specific grounds of his 90 percent disability.

Universities should be centres of excellence, where cutting edge ideas are
discussed and deliberated towards building a future which is humane and
compassionate. University of Delhi is witness to a comparatively sizeable
increase in the intake of differently-abled people as faculty, students
and non-teaching staff. Given the fact that there are few Universities in
the country with such intake it becomes imperative that Delhi University
also be a model in providing a humane and dignified space for the
differently-abled. And this demands urgently a disable-sensitive
administration which is humanely conversant with the new developments in
jurisprudence pertaining to the differently-abled. Continue reading →

London: A Call to Boycott India’s 63rd Republic Day and stand against sexual assaults on women

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 DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE INDIA HOUSE IN LONDON, Aldwych, WC2B 4NA.

11am to 1pm 26th January 2013

As India prepares to celebrate its 63rd Republic Day on 26 January 2013, Delhi is trying to come to terms with the recent gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus and her subsequent death. Such rapes have become rampant in the Indian cities and towns. Few months ago London Guardian commented India to be the worst country for women among the G20 nations. Indian rape laws are stringent enough; however, the executive and the judiciary are so much feudal and patriarchal that the conviction rate for rape cases in India between 2001 and 2010 was 26%. In the case of Muslim and Dalit women the rate of conviction is lmost nil as evident from the gang rape case of Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan.

However a bigger dimension to this is that the Indian state itself has proved time and again to be the biggest perpetuator of rapes and all forms of assaults on women. State violence is institutionalised through a culture of institutional impunity to the police, the paramilitary and the army. In June 1984, hundreds of Sikh women were gang raped in the sanctity of golden temple by the Indian Army during ‘Operation Blue Star’. In the village of Kuman-Poshpura in Kashmir valley, about 100 women were mass raped by the Indian Army in a single night of 23rd Feb 1991. Hundreds of Muslim women were gang raped by security forces during the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, as the Chief Minister Narendra Modi just watched. The brutal gang rape and execution of 32 year old Thangjam Manorama in Manipur in July 2004 is another example of Indian Army’s ongoing repression on women in the North-East. Continue reading →

Three Kurdish activists killed in Paris, France — statement of migrant workers from Turkey

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3kurdsWe abhor the murder of the three Kurds in Paris!

ATIK | 15.01.2013 | In the evening of the 9th January 2013 was a barbaric attack on the Kurdish Information Bureau in Paris, capital of France, by people that have still not been identified. Through this cold-blooded murder, the co-founder of the PKK Sakine Cansiz, the Paris representative of the KNK Dogan Fidan and the youth activist Leyla Söylemez were executed. This attack Sakine Cansiz and Dogan Fidan were killed by head shots and Leyla Söylemez with shots to the head and abdomen.

This attack was discovered on 10 January 2013. A journalist of Kurdish newspaper Özgür Politika could not reach Dogan Fidan, so he and some other people decided to go to the Kurdish Information Office. On entering the office, they were confronted with the bodies of three Kurds. As the office is located in a busy street, this murder was unnoticed, which could be a sign that this attack was planned and carried out by professionals.

Thousands of Kurds mourned the activists killed in Paris -- Funeral in Turkey, 16 January 2013

Thousands of Kurds mourned the activists killed in Paris — Funeral in Turkey, 16 January 2013

Sakineh Cansiz the women who was murdered in Paris, was born in 1957 in Dersim. In her youth, she was active in the pupils and students movement of Elazig. She is also one of the founders and a cadre of the PKK.  She was arrested during the 1980 military coup in Turkey in Amed, severely tortured and imprisoned for years in prisons in the fascist Turkish state. Since her first day of participation in the political struggle, she always led a revolutionary life and was therefore one of the first women cadres of the Kurdish national liberation struggle.

Dogan Fidan, was born in 1982 in Maras-Elbistan, emigrated in childhood with her family to Europe. Since 1999, she was active in the revolutionary struggle in Europe. Dogan had long been active as a Parisian representative in the National Congress of Kurdistan. Also murdered in the attack, Leyla Söylemez was an active member within the Kurdish youth movement.

It is well known that in the past many times such murders were carried out by the fascist Turkey. That the fascist Turkish government and its representatives, the current AKP try to portray this as an internal party dispute, is no coincidence. As long as the real perpetrators of this massacre are not found, France will have to bear the responsibility for it.

We as ATIK abhor this massacre and press the Kurdish national movement, its sympathizers and relatives of the victims of our sympathy. We call upon all democratic-minded people and our members to be on the side of the victims. The people will one day bring the murderer to justice.

Sakineh Cansiz, Dogan Fidan, and Leyla Söylemez are immortal!

ATIK-Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe

10th 01. 2013