Daily Archives: August 30, 2022

The United States has a history of racism and national oppression, according to an African American journalist and political analyst.

The United Nations has urged the United States to start the process of offering reparations to descendants of enslaved people as part of a larger need to provide redress for legacies of the past.

The Committee is concerned that the lingering legacies of colonialism and slavery continue to fuel racism and racial discrimination in the [US] undermining the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all individuals and communities, the UNs Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination wrote in a report, released on Tuesday. The committee is part of the UNs human rights office.

The UN body monitors the progress made by member states in enforcing the UNs Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which the US joined in 1994 with various reservations and caveats, The Independent reported.

This is an important development for the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) to issue such a scathing report citing the legacy of African enslavement, Abayomi Azikiwe said during an interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

The CERD report stemmed from work done by several environmental groupings in the state of Louisiana where toxic pollution in certain parishes has been labeled cancer alley. These conditions cannot be separated from the history of racism and national oppression inside the United States, added Azikiwe, the editor at the Pan-African News Wire.

The CERD report was in response to an investigation by the UN committee which widespread travel through impacted communities. Three of the Louisiana groups issued their own shadow report. A delegation from Louisiana traveled to Geneva to present first-hand testimony to the UN. This area in question lies along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where historically, the African people were enslaved for the social benefits and profits of the white ruling class, he said.

In 2022, over 200 petrochemical plants have taken the place of rice and corn plantations. The air has been poisoned along with the soil and water. Nonetheless, even with the UN report, it will take a mass movement in the US to force the government to pay reparations for the historical and contemporary problems facing African Americans, the journalist said.

The US continues to perpetuate racial inequality through police violence, gun violence, and environmental racism, according to the report. It recommended a reparations commission as a key strategy to begin the justice process.

The UN body praised Marylands Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first such body of its kind in the US, as well as Californias ongoing study of reparations for descendants of enslaved people.

The report urged Congress to adopt HR 40, a bill from US representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, which would establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.

Originally posted here:

US has a history of racism and national oppression: Journalist - Press TV

Editors note: To mark the one-year anniversary of the Talibans second takeover of Afghanistan,Just Securityis publishing aseriesof essays on the developments of the last year and the prospects for the future of Afghanistan. The series will continue over the coming weeks, and feature voices from Afghan civil society, U.S. national security experts, international human rights experts, and others.

Almost 7 million Afghans have been driven out of their homes and Afghanistan by the interconnected challenges of imposed conflicts, ongoing violence, and growing poverty. This is a lingering legacy of the 43-year wars that confronts the country where external aggression from its predatory neighborhood has resulted in non-stop violence and oppressive rule by the Taliban. Since August 2021 when they captured Kabul, the Taliban have continued to displace Afghans at home and drive others out of their beautiful homeland into far-flung places in search of protection and basic human security.

Harboring a large number of regional and global terrorist networks across Afghanistan, the Taliban are joined by these terrorist groups to violate the basic human rights of Afghans and target them indiscriminately. In its July 15, 2022, the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team warned the U.N. Security Council that the Taliban and al-Qaeda remain close with the latter both advising the Taliban leadership and expanding operationally across Afghanistan, enjoying greater freedom under Taliban rule.

This proved to be correct when the United States located al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul safe house that had been provided to him by the Talibans minister of interior Sirajuddin Haqqani, and killed him by two drone strikes on July 31, 2022. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), and their other terrorist affiliates persecute, torture, disappear, and extrajudicially kill innocent Afghan citizens due to ethnic, religious, sectarian, political, and ideological differences. Hindus, Sikhs, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, as well as nationalist and pro-democracy Pashtuns remain their primary targets. And in areas of growing anti-Taliban resistance in the northeast, east, and south of Afghanistan, terrorist groups continue committing war crimes, including forcible displacement of civilians, destruction of their properties and sources of livelihood, as well as other unspeakable scorch-earth measures.

In its July 20, 2022 report on Human Rights in Afghanistan: 16 August 2021 15 June 2022, however, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) overlooked the direct ties between the Taliban and regional and global terrorist networks and how they rely on each other operationally to oppress, terrorize, and silence Afghan citizens. And while the report did cover widespread human rights violations in Afghanistan, it obfuscated the Talibans deep-seated ties with major terrorist networks and their shared involvement in violating Afghans basic human rights.

In effect, the report failed to provide accurate qualitative and quantitative analyses of how the Taliban have brought about and are perpetuating the worsening human rights and humanitarian situation across Afghanistan. A lack of this critical information can negatively impact status determination by foreign immigration officials of Afghan refugees under the provisions of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its related protocols. In accordance with this refugee law, any Afghans seeking asylum in countries which are party to the 1951 Geneva Convention immediately should be granted refugee status. Moreover, Afghan refugees should be provided with adequate resettlement support that tangibly helps integrate them into their new society.

Unfortunately, Afghans fleeing the country due to well-founded fears of widespread persecution, torture, and extrajudicial killing under the Taliban and their terrorist affiliates are often denied refugee status in the first, second, and even third countries of asylum. They are placed through arduous national immigration processes that can hinder the implementation of the receiving countries obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention and its related protocols. And those who make it after months and sometimes years of waiting without any status at all often are not provided with the kind of basic social protection services that must be granted to any Convention-defined refugee.

This situation particularly impacts Afghan-refugee families with young children, delaying their local assimilation and thus preventing them from upward socioeconomic mobility in their country of new residence. When this happens, refugees are misperceived and discriminated against as backward, lazy, and dependent on welfare programs, which local politicians often oppose and politicize against win-win immigration policies that are consistent with the obligations of their countries under the 1951 Geneva Convention, as well as the provisions of the international human rights and humanitarian laws.

Indeed, the failure by UNAMA to cite in its latest report the United Nations own recent analysis concerning the mutually reinforcing ties between the Taliban and al-Qaeda since the former regained control of Afghanistan stems from UNAMAs deliberate prioritization of a strategy of continued engagement with the Taliban in order to facilitate humanitarian access. But it is the Taliban, led by some of the most notorious U.N.-sanctioned terrorists, who exploit the provision of humanitarian access as an effective and easy way to engage with the international community. They do so not only for gaining legitimacy and international recognition but they also need international aid resources to supplement operational budgets that finance their recurrent atrocities against suffering Afghans as a nation of diverse ethno-sectarian groups.

Tragically, these heinous crimes are aimed at erasing Afghanistans very identity, which historically has been grounded in its rich diversity. This identity stems from the countrys geography at the heart of Asia where peoples of different civilizations used to meet through commerce and cultural exchange. The Talibans misrule once again intends to wipe out this Afghanistan, as the world recalls from the destruction by the Taliban of the statues of Buddha in Bamiyan Province a few months before 9/11 in 2001.

Moreover, these atrocities are further compounded by the Talibans draconian policies that directly target and deprive Afghans of their most fundamental human rights. Today, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where education for girls and work for women are banned. This effectively condemns the country to an ever-widening humanitarian crisis and chronic poverty, which fuel conflict. And this worsening vicious cycle of human rights violations, conflict, impoverishment, and depleting resources drive the non-stop patterns of internal displacement and flight of Afghans in search of protection elsewhere.

Consequently, some 4.3 million Afghans have been internally displaced so far. This is the worlds largest internally displaced population, which includes about 1 million Afghans, who were displaced by the deadly offensives and attacks, which the Taliban and their regional and global terrorist affiliates jointly carried out throughout 2021 before the fall of Kabul. Besides this, some 2.7 million Afghans have been driven across Afghanistans borders and live as refugees in 98 different countries. Afghan refugees are the third largest displaced population in the world after Syrian refugees and displaced Venezuelans.

The Afghan people immensely appreciate the humanitarian assistance which various host countries have provided to refugees and asylum seekers over the past four decades. But pull factors such as the formation of an inclusive government acceptable to all Afghans, improved security, enhanced protection, reintegration assistance, and increased employment opportunities in Afghanistan should determine push factors in host states. In this light, countries hosting large numbers of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers should honor the principle of non-refoulement rooted in international and Islamic law to refrain from the forcible deportation of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers.

The United States can and should do more to help its Afghan allies, some 80,000 of whom have applied for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) since August 2021. But of these, only 10,096 have been approved. And those who have made it to the United States on humanitarian parole run the risk of losing access to work, health-care, and their legal right to reside in America once their two-year humanitarian parole expires. Congress owes it to Afghans and their families, who risked their lives working with the U.S. military and civilian institutions during their 20-year deployment to the country, to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, allowing Afghan refugees to adjust their status from temporary to permanent in two years.

This support shouldnt be withheld in a nation of immigrants with the promise of the American dream, which gave Afghans hope in the first place to endanger their lives to support U.S. military and civilian programs across Afghanistan under daily threats of violence emanating from the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISKP, and other groups that continue to destabilize Afghanistan and undermine international security. Indeed, passing the Adjustment Act would honor the memories of 2,448 fallen American forces, alongside whom the Afghan SIV applicants worked between 2001 and August 2021.

Almost 2,500 years ago, the Greek dramatist Euripides wrote, There is no greater sorrow on Earth than the loss of ones native land. For Afghans, too, the tragedy of losing their beautiful homeland to the medieval forces of terrorism and extremism is no less tolerable. Any short- and long-term measuressuch as the Afghan Adjustment Actto welcome and make Afghan refugees at home should give them a much-needed respite, one year since their unforgettably traumatic flight from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, Anniversary of the Fall of Kabul, asylum, displaced people, Geneva Conventions, humanitarian assistance, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), non-refoulement, persecution, Refugee Crisis, Special Immigrant Visa, Taliban, Targeted Killing, terrorism, United Nations, War Crimes

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The World Should Protect Afghan Refugees Fleeing the Taliban's Oppression - Just Security

Ella Tennant, Keele University

A woman in Suzhou, China, was reportedly detained recently for provoking trouble. Her alleged crime was being spotted outside wearing a kimono. The woman was dressed like a character from a manga (a Japanese comic). Arresting her might seem dramatic but there is more at play here than a simple fashion faux pas.

Clothing is a cultural identifier and, to many, a symbol of national identity and pride. When you think of the kimono you might think of Japan. However, the garment is rarely worn in Japan now, other than at traditional festivals or celebrations. As a result, the kimono industry, which experienced a boom in the 1980s, is currently experiencing a massive downturn.

The kimono worn today, however, is not an indigenous invention of the Japanese. It can be traced back to the 7th century when the Imperial Court began to wear garments adapted from Chinese styles.

Despite these Chinese origins, the kimono is a major cultural signifier of Japan globally. And, in many Asian countries, particularly those which were brutally colonised by Japan, the kimono remains a symbol of oppression.

There is a long history of sartorial similarities between Japan and China.

Chinese explorers in southern parts of ancient Japan around the 3rd century BC observed people wearing simple tunics, poncho-type garments and a type of pleated trouser and top. These were similar to clothes worn in parts of China at that time. Images of priestess-queens and tribal chiefs in 4th century AD Japan also show figures wearing clothing like those worn by the Han dynasty China.

The first ancestor of the kimono appeared in Japan in the Heian period (794-1185). Still often worn with Chinese-style hakama (pleated trousers or long skirts), this garment was made from straight pieces of cloth fastened with a narrow sash at the hips. By the Edo period (1603-1868), everyone wore a unisex garment known as a kosode, made from straight pieces of fabric sewn together like todays kimono.

In the early 1600s, Japan was unified by the Shogun Tokugawa into a feudal shogunate (a kind of military dictatorship) with Edo (now Tokyo) as the capital.

Japanese culture developed during this period with almost no outside influence, and the kosode, as a precursor to the kimono, came to represent what it meant to be Japanese.

Folk clothing and work clothes were also based on front wrapping (left over right), drop-sleeved tops and fastened with strings or cords following a basic kimono pattern. The role of kimono-making developed, and the value of some kimonos increased to the level of priceless works of art.

After previous eras of a closed Japan, the Meiji era (1868-1912) marked a period of rapid modernisation and foreign influence. The kimono, meaning the thing to wear had a proper name and officially came into being.

This was despite a new imperial edict that rejected old dress as effeminate and un-Japanese. As a result, men, government officials and military personnel were encouraged to wear western clothing, yfuku, rather than traditional wafuku.

But as Japan was undergoing fundamental change on multiple levels, the sight of women wearing kimono was reassuring and a popular symbol of Japaneseness.

Women started wearing more western-style clothes, specifically underwear for women, after the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. It was felt that a sense of shame in exposing themselves prevented many women from jumping or being rescued from the upper floors of buildings. The possibility that fewer women would have lost their lives in the disaster had they been wearing yfuku or at least underwear beneath their kimonos was a catalyst for general westernisation.

Japans Showa era began in 1926 when Emperor Hirohito ascended to the throne. This period spanned two world wars and the rise of strident cultural ultranationalism and has been described as the most momentous, calamitous, successful and glamorous period in Japans recent history.

For those with a belief in the idea of Japanese uniqueness (Nihonjin-ron), which became especially popular after the second world war, the kimono (along with other aspects of Japanese culture) was considered superior to the western alternative. While the actual wearing of the garment decreased, the kimonos symbolic status in Japan increased.

By the 1930s, Japan was a major colonial power, having transformed from a weak, feudal society into a modern, industrial, military power in the 1890s. As such, the nation had launched territorial conquests into neighbouring countries.

So, while people in Japan were dressing the part in a bold attempt to look powerful to the west, Japanese occupiers in Taiwan and Korea were actively encouraging local women to wear the kimono in order to display Japans superior role and greater east Asian co-prosperity in the region.

A study of how the kimono was perceived in Taiwan and Korea during the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945 showed that the Japanese kimono is clearly linked to Japans colonial control and war responsibilities. The weaponisation of such a beautiful and elegant item of clothing has clearly left its mark.

As the woman who was arrested in China recently was reportedly warned:

If you would be wearing Hanfu (Chinese traditional clothing), I never would have said this, but you are wearing a kimono, as a Chinese. You are Chinese!

The kimono remains a symbol of Japanese tradition and a reminder of the dangers of nationalism for countries of wartime occupation and atrocities. But as Japan is preparing to double its defence budget, raising questions over its pacifist identity since the post-war period, and China is flexing its muscles in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there should be more for officials to worry about than a woman clad in a kimono.

Ella Tennant, Lecturer, Language and Culture, Keele University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Is the kimono a symbol of oppression? - Qrius

Life under the Taliban is the worst womens rights crisis on the planet. When the Taliban returned to power last August, they imposed immediate and brutal restrictions, the harshest of which were reserved for women. They quickly imposed a ban on girls secondary education, which remains in place despite domestic and international demands to lift it. They also placed restrictions on womens movement, requiring women to be accompanied by a male family member while traveling, and womens dress, ordering women to cover their faces in public. Girls and women are also no longer allowed to play sports.

Afghan women working for the government, with the exception of those doing jobs in the education and health sectors, were told to stay home and not report to work. The Taliban have also dissolved the Ministry of Womens Affairs and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, an institution that I led until January. These moves have left female victims of domestic violence with no legal remedy or support at a time when there are reports of increased forced marriages, including child marriages. The Taliban have excluded women from appointments in government and participation in major national events, including a large political gathering in June to discuss the countrys future. When a reporter asked Abdul Salam Hanafi, the Talibans deputy prime minister, about the lack of womens participation, Hanafi said that women would be participating, in a way, because their sons would be attending. This kind of rhetoric, along with the new rules, promotes a demeaning narrative about women and their place in society and nullifies two decades worth of positive changes in public attitudes about the social and political roles that should be available to women.

The international communitys response to these events has been pitifully insufficient. Members of the UN Human Rights Council, as well as countries that have explicitly feminist foreign policies, such as Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden, have done little more than make statements of condemnation. The same is true for leaders in the Islamic world. Even imposing a travel ban on Taliban leaders has been a struggle, because Russia and China have blocked it at the UN Security Council. The UN Human Rights Council has yet to establish a strong, well-resourced accountability mechanism for Afghanistan despite repeated calls from the human rights community. Diplomats, including those from the United States, continue to engage with Taliban leaders at international conferences and in bilateral talks that exclude Afghan women and members of Afghan civil society. As a result, for the Afghan women at the forefront of the nonviolent resistance to the Taliban, a disturbing truth has sunk in: they are mostly on their own.

This total abandonment requires those working for womens rights in Afghanistan to question their assumptions about the will and influence of the international community to help. Understanding that foreign partners are not going to show up requires changing the approach of those working in diaspora and on the ground. The focus for the Afghan womens rights movement should be to strengthen its cohesion and prevent any divisiveness between the diaspora and activists inside the country. The Afghan womens rights movement also needs to cultivate new allies inside the country and in the region. These should include Afghan writers, cultural activists, and moderate religious thinkers. Afghan womens rights organizations need to strengthen their partnerships with organizations in Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, and other countries in the region to increase their engagement beyond the Western world. The womens rights movement should invest in long-term social and cultural change in Afghan society through producing and disseminating content about womens rights in local languages, strategic engagement with the Afghan media, and finding resources for educational and cultural exchanges for Afghan youth. Although the womens movement needs to maintain a degree of engagement with Western countries and international human rights bodies, expectations for the international community should be based on a clear-eyed assessment of its near-nonexistent response over the past year.

After the Taliban takeover last summer, Afghan womens lives changed dramatically. For young women across the country, the situation presents a complete absence of hope. I know teenage girls who are suffering severe depression due to the closure of secondary schools. Although universities have not been closed to women, the classes have been separated for women and men and womens clothing is policed. These restrictions have caused some female university students to abandon their studies. They have also lost their motivation to attend school because there are no employment opportunities waiting for them when they graduate. Households where the woman was the top earner now struggle as women have been sent home from their jobs or have had to shut down their businesses. Although the restrictions on womens clothing and movement are not always enforced, they have created an environment of intimidation and fear where the act of leaving ones house now requires immense courage.

As women confront this new reality, they are also reckoning with the severe humanitarian and economic crises that are threatening Afghanistan. An estimated 97 percent of households are unable to meet their basic needs. Tens of thousands of children are suffering malnutrition and being admitted to hospitals every month. Women and girls have been hit the hardest by the humanitarian crisis and lack of access to income, food, and health-care services as most women in the public sector have lost their jobs, and there has been an increase in reports of families selling their daughters into marriage.

Despite their anger, frustration, and loss, women are the only group inside Afghanistan consistently protesting the Talibans policies. Female activists have marched in the streets in Kabul and other cities, demanding the restoration of their basic rights. They have organized public events and spoken about the right to education and the need to reopen schools. Just as they did in the 1990s, when the Taliban were last in power, Afghan women have set up secret schools for girls so that they can continue to learn. The Talibans response to this civic activism has been a brutal crackdown. Female protesters have been violently dispersed, abducted, and held in illegal detention. They have also been subject to forced confessions. The Taliban have further tried to delegitimize female activists by claiming that they have staged their own abductions to seek asylum. Following the Talibans crackdown, the protests have become less frequent and now mostly take place in Kabuland only if participants can ensure that some international media will be present, in the hope that it will offer greater protection. On some occasions, women gather inside their homes and release protest videos from there.

Women in the Afghan diaspora have also mobilized, writing and speaking to shed light on the situation in Afghanistan and pressing Western officials and diplomats to take a variety of actions, including setting up independent monitoring mechanisms to make sure that humanitarian aid reaches Afghan girls and women, increasing political pressure on the Taliban to ensure girls access to education and womens right to employment, and keeping in place targeted travel bans on Taliban leaders. Sanctions placed on the Taliban by the UN Security Council in 2011 banned 135 members of the group from traveling outside the country. But 13 Taliban leaders were granted an exemption so that they could meet officials abroad and travel to talks with the United States in Doha during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. That exemption was renewed regularly until it finally expired in early August. Now, no Taliban leaders are allowed to travel outside the country. China and Russia are pushing to change this, but Western countries have argued that the number of leaders allowed to travel should be smaller and the approved destinations fewer.

Western support for the travel bans is heartening, but too often the international response to the plight of women in Afghanistan has been hollow condemnations. Although officials from the United States, the EU, and the UN have held many meetings with women activists, there has been little if any concrete follow-up. Womens rights activists have called for the UN Human Rights Council to establish an Afghanistan fact-finding mission, which would investigate human rights violations, but they have received only partial support from the council members. In October 2021, the council appointed Richard Bennett, a longtime human rights official at the UN, as a special rapporteur to monitor and report on the human rights situation in Afghanistan. Bennett traveled to Afghanistan in May and visited womens rights activists, families of victims of various attacks, and members of Afghan civil society. He has said that the Taliban is unparalleled globally in its misogyny and oppression. His report is expected to be released in September. The work of a rapporteur is important, but Bennett is not paid for his work and his team members are not UN staff. Given the ongoing and widespread violations of human rights in Afghanistan, much more is needed. A more robust response would require a fully mandated and resourced investigative mechanism, such as a fact-finding mission or a commission of inquiry, both of which would require mandates from the UN Human Rights Council.

This is not the first time that the demands of Afghan women are falling on deaf ears. Throughout the U.S.-initiated talks with the Taliban, which began under the Trump administration and lasted from 2018 until February 2020, Afghan women campaigned, wrote, and organized mass gatherings to demand an inclusive peace process. But their appeals went unheeded. I attended a round of talks with the Taliban in Doha and heard firsthand their worryingly vague and general statements on womens rights within Islam. Following this, in many interactions with U.S. officials, including Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy who negotiated the Doha deal, I raised concerns about the lack of participation of women and victims of war in the talks and the emptiness of the Talibans reassurances. None of these concerns or warnings were taken seriously. Instead, I and others in the womens movement were constantly told that the Taliban have changed.

Additionally, a convenient counternarrative took hold, pushed by male diplomats and male commentators, who claimed that the demands of Afghan womens rights activists were not representative of rural Afghan women, and instead represented a Western imposition and were therefore not legitimate. In the end, the Doha agreement excluded any references to womens rights, human rights, or civilian protection, key areas of concern for all Afghan people. Even while the United States and its allies made proclamations committing to protect the women of Afghanistan, they let the Taliban set the conditions of the talks. They participated in a process that would decide the fate of millions of Afghan women but that included zero Afghan women at the negotiating table.

This has meant that in addition to standing up to the Taliban and battling patriarchy inside Afghanistan, advocates for the rights of Afghan women have also had to contend with condescension, gaslighting, and marginalization at the hands of Western officials and alleged experts on Afghanistan. Women activists who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took control last summer have had to endure this while also navigating the bureaucracies of various Western countries as they try to gain legal asylum. Although Western leaders have talked for the last two decades about supporting Afghan women, at critical junctures, where womens rights activists rights and lives are on the line, Western countries have provided limited support for them or their cause, exposing a deep hypocrisy.

None of this is to say that the situation in Afghanistan is an easy challenge to solve. The Taliban won the war, and nobody wants to stand by and watch Afghans starve in a humanitarian crisis. So outside powers and organizations must deal with the Taliban regime in at least a limited way.

Afghan women protesting in Kabul, December 2021

Yet Western officials have exercised poor judgment in picking their Taliban interlocutors and in setting the public tone of their engagement. Consider, for example, how Western governments and even the UN continue to deal with Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistans acting interior minister and the leader of the Haqqani network, who remains on the FBIs most wanted list because of his involvement in some of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. The world was reminded of his ties to al Qaeda earlier this summer when a U.S. drone strike killed al Qaedas leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was living in Kabul in a house owned by a top aide to Haqqani, according to U.S. intelligence.

Western officials may have to meet with Haqqani, but they should be mindful of how their interactions further normalize him and whitewash his deeply problematic background. In June, in a tweet noting a farewell meeting between Haqqani and Deborah Lyons, the outgoing Afghanistan representative for the UN Secretary-General, the UN used the honorific term al hajj in referring to Haqqani, which is typically reserved for people who have completed a pilgrimage to Mecca and connotes a level of respect. The tweet referred to discussions between him and Lyons on issues including counterterrorism, which infuriated Afghan human rights activists who have worked with victims of the Haqqani networks terrorist attacks for years.

It is possible to deliver foreign aid through Afghan and international nongovernmental organizations without having to cozy up to some of the worlds most wanted terrorists. The EU is one of the biggest contributors of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, and EU Special Envoy Tomas Niklasson has continued to be outspoken about the human rights issues and violations by the Taliban. He also engages with Afghan women and men outside the Talibans leadership.

What has become excruciatingly clear is that Afghan womens rights activists should not assume that the leaders of the democratic world will stand with them; such leaders and the institutions they represent no longer have much ability to protect Afghan women, nor much interest in doing so. Afghan womens rights activists should also not assume that the leaders in Muslim-majority countries will pressure the Taliban into protecting even the most basic rights, such as girls access to education. It has been a year since the Talibans return to power, and not a single government leader from the Islamic world has issued a strong condemnation of the Talibans oppression of women, let alone applied any meaningful political pressure. Pakistani leaders, for instance, have continued engaging with the Taliban as if it is business as usual, while women in Afghanistan are imprisoned in their homes by the Talibans misogynistic and un-Islamic policies.

These are difficult realizations for the Afghan womens movement. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many American politicians spoke about the protection of Afghan women as part of the war on terror, and a great deal of the progress that Afghan women experienced in the two decades that followed depended on the United States. Afghan women leaders learned to put pressure on foreign embassies and Western politicians to push the Afghan government to improve legal protections for women and to enhance its own performance on gender equality. In some cases, Afghan women invested more time cultivating relationships with donors and allies in the West than in the communities they intended to serve. This is one of the dynamics that needs to change to ensure the movements continued effectiveness and relevance on the ground.

The weak international response to the plight of Afghan women also reflects the ineffectiveness of the global human rights system. Afghanistan is a signatory to many treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, but none of these commitments are serving the needs of Afghan women and girls under the Taliban regime. International agreements on human rights often rely on naming and shaming wrongdoers. But the current situation in Afghanistan exposes the limits of that approach, as the Taliban themselves admit to widespread violations of womens rights. They have no shame. Unless there are concrete punishments on them, such as banning their travel or excluding their leaders from regional and international platforms, naming them will do nothing.

Coming to grips with the international communitys limited commitment to human rights should not deter Afghan womens rights activists from carrying on with their struggle. They must continue to demand the worlds attention, seek increased humanitarian aid, and push for a sense of urgency in responding to the economic crisis. And they should continue to call out foreign leaders and countries who normalize the Talibans oppression of womens rights.

They must also remember, however, that this is only half the battle, and that little can be achieved without increasing regional and domestic pressure on the Taliban. Afghan women in the diaspora should align with and support the civil society in Afghanistan in that effort. Creating a broader domestic alliance in support of womens rights will require creativity and patience. Afghan women should mobilize civil society in the region and in Islamic countries to more forcefully stand in support of Afghan womens rights. This can be achieved by Afghan women leaders in the diaspora investing more time and resources in regional engagements and building strategic partnerships in the region. Women in the Afghan diaspora should act in solidarity with their sisters on the ground, amplifying their demands by providing platforms to activists in Afghanistan and facilitating their access to the networks and resources outside the country. The long-term strategic goal of the movement should be broader cultural and social change in support of womens rights among Afghans, not just exerting external pressure on the Taliban.

The Talibans systematic oppression of women will have devastating implications for generations to come. To change the situation in Afghanistan, activists must go beyond knocking on the same doors and hearing only the same halfhearted statements of support. Meanwhile, if the international community continues its desultory approach to womens rights in Afghanistan, it will lose its credibility on the issue across the globe.

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Afghanistan's Women Are on Their Own: How the International Community Turned Its Back - Foreign Affairs Magazine

By Jeffery Tram

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It has been a month since Pope Francis left Canada after apologizing for the Catholic Churchs role in residential schools after so many years of silence and denial, and there is still no concrete plan to make reparations or provide more resources to Indigenous communities.

Over the past few years, there have been many apologies to different communities, from the police brutality on the Black community to the Asian community for Asian hate crimes after hysteria behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

What did yet another apology without concrete actions really mean? Whats the path forward in a country that is undergoing rapid demographic change thanks to immigration?

The answer to whats next, advocates say, is dependent on continuing pressure on the church and other institutions to make real changes.

And that pressure should come, advocates say, through building strong solidarity among marginalized groups (including Blacks and immigrants of colour), to combat systemic oppression.

I dont believe a single word of his Pope Francis apology, says Trey Robinson, an Afro-Ojibwe photographer. Now all of a sudden, you care?

Kennedy Aliu, a Nigerian international development and law student at Oxford University, points to the headdress that Pope Francis wore as an example of how the apology is more a spectacle and symbolic, rather than a genuine attempt at reconciliation.

It is a way for them to protect their public image, Aliu says. That does not mean they truly believe in the message they are presenting.

Plan for change

An apology means nothing when there is no concrete groundwork to it. That is why many marginalized communities are tired of hearing it.

Aliu says that actions speak louder than words, and when there is inaction after the apology, or even a contradiction of the message by actions such as voting for policies that make it worse, the words become nothing but lies.

How can you say that you care about the issues when you are an active participant in my dehumanization? Aliu asks.

Vannary Kong is a member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee and the founder of the US-ASEAN Young Professionals Association. She talks about how these messages from politicians are just a publicity stunt.

You talk about how there needs to be change, yet you are in the position to make the change, says Kong.

She mentions how politicians and public figures use common talking points from the popular consensus to garner support, especially during a campaign for office. After, more times than not, the promises fall through, and marginalized communities continue to lose.

With the Asian hate crimes, there was a public declaration of solidarity through speeches and PR statements, but when it came to actually starting the conversation around making the change, it was absolutely silent, says Kong.

Robinson says rectifying the problems in the Indigenous communities has always been a talking point, especially during election time. He remembers watching debates where they would dedicate segments to the Indigenous issues, where political leaders would discuss what they would do to help. But as Robinson says, nothing came out of it.

I remember Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promising during the first election that he would be there for us, he says. A decade later, and things are still the same.

For Robinson, real plans would include reparations forresidential school survivors and resources for Indigenous communities dealing with poverty and mental health issues. He says both the Canadian government and the Catholic Church should work in conjunction to make this happen, as they have the funds.

However, Robinson has very little faith that this will happen.

Recently, Trudeau nominated Michelle OBonsawin, an Indigenous woman, to the Supreme Court of Canada. As historical and symbolic this milestone is, until there are plans that are actually being put in place to create change, the skepticism around the genuineness of the intentions of people of power will always be there.

Power to the people

With a constant cycle of inauthentic apologies and being misled with broken promises, how do we change it? Aliu says it starts with building unity among marginalized groups.

Even though each community goes through different experiences, there are parallels in the route of the issues.

When we look at the issues of marginalized populations, our oppression is often interrelated to each other, says Aliu. Our oppression is quite universal.

Kong says an important aspect in oppression is that it is deeply institutional.

When you trace the roots of oppression, it is clearly systemic, says Kong. It was made to deliberately create a better experience for some people than others.

Kong talks about how neo-colonialism is still evidently prevalent in the world today. She cites how Catholicism affects ASEAN countries in slowly eradicating traditional cultures and religions.

This was a way to control dominance and superiority that stems from white supremacy, and is a familiar theme to what happened to Indigenous people in Canada.

In understanding that the root of what caused oppression toward BIPOC communities in the past is still prevalent today, it evidently shows that there is still so much more work to do.

That is why it is instrumental for people to continuously apply pressure on institutions of power by using your voice.

Aliu makes the point that if a united group of people is large enough, it can apply pressure toward change.

It does not necessarily guarantee that change will come, but it will increase the chances, he says.

He references the public outrage around the tragedy of George Floyd that forced many institutions to take real accountability and look at policy reform that created a more inclusive environment for everyone.

It is unfortunate that it took an absolute tragedy like George Floyd for there to be change, but at least it is happening, Aliu says.

Aliu says that the Black Lives Matter movement helped inspire other communities to come together, despite feeling powerless in society.

Even though we come from marginalized communities, that does not mean that we have to be powerless, he says. That is what they want us to feel.

Through unity among marginalized communities, it will create a bigger sense of power than ever before, one that could possibly one day completely eradicate systemic oppression.

Jeffery Tram is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter who works for the

NEW CANADIAN MEDIA. The LJI program is federally funded. Turtle Island News does not receive LJI funding.

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Minority groups say they are tired of apologies that are more spectacle than action - Turtle Island News

No matter who you are or who you love, you should have every opportunity to succeed in Canada. The Government of Canada has taken historic action in recent years to build a better, more inclusive future for Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and additional sexually and gender diverse people (2SLGBTQI+), and we know there is more to be done.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, joined by the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien, today launched Canadas first Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan Building our future, with pride, a whole-of-government approach to achieve a future where everyone in Canada is truly free to be who they are and love who they love.

The Action Plan will:

Budget2022 committed $100million over five years to develop and implement the Action Plan to benefit 2SLGBTQI+ people. The Prime Minister today also announced that this includes:

The Action Plan was developed with community leaders, researchers, and organizations. It speaks to the concerns of diverse members of 2SLGBTQI+ communities across the country and uses an intersectional, holistic, and long-term approach to breaking down barriers and fighting the discrimination and oppression of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians.

Building on the historic action already taken, the Action Plan is an evergreen document that continues to celebrate Canadians for who they are. While it is a historical first, the work does not end here this Action Plan will continue to guide our work into the future. The Government of Canada will continue to work with provinces and territories, cities and towns, community organizations, and 2SLGBTQI+ people from all walks of life to build a better future we can all be proud of.

Canada gets a little bit stronger every day that we choose to embrace and to celebrate who we are, in all our uniqueness. We are a diverse nation enriched by the lives, experiences, and contributions of 2SLGBTQI+ people. Let us celebrate all the communities that make Canada such a diverse country, and work together to build a better future, with pride.

Canadas 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan is a historic collaborative effort that will help build a more inclusive country. Founded on the hard work of community members, organizations, and allies, this Action Plan will set an example for generations to follow. I can assure you that the work does not end here we will continue to partner with 2SLGBTQI+ communities and leaders to make sure were building a Canada that serves everyone.

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Prime Minister launches Canada's first Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan to continue building a more inclusive future, with pride - Prime Minister of...

WHEN is a crisis not a crisis? When it involves migrants illegally crossing the English Channel, apparently.

It is now four years since our then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the boatloads of illegal migrants crossing the channel to be a major incident.

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That year in 2018 from January to November at least 250 migrants were found crossing the Channel illegally. In the December, the situation was so serious that Javid cut short his holidays to do the usual political trick of looking at the water and getting photographed doing so. Which doesnt always solve the problem.

Well, fast forward to today and 250 people is now not even an average days crossing.

In 2022 so far, that figure is already a lot higher.

How much higher? Twice as high? Ten times? No, the figures for 2022 already are at least 100 times higher than that major incident figure from 2018.

As The Sun reported last week, the figures for 2022 to date are over 25,000.

In a single day last week, a record 1,300 people crossed the Channel illegally.

And I would say that is a crisis, wouldnt you? When the figures are 100 times that of a major incident? Yet there seems to be no sense in Westminster of this, and even less of a desire to do anything about it.

In part this is because of the lies about what is actually going on.

Various campaigning groups and left-wing politicians like to pretend that the people arriving are all fleeing the most miserable circumstances.

Their lives may well be worse than those of many people who are living in the UK legally. But they are not fleeing a war zone. They are fleeing France. It may be France is not the most hospitable country for migrants, but nor is it a hellhole.

By the international conventions that are in place, the migrants should have absolutely no business crossing the Channel. They are meant to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach in Europe, where their claim is then meant to be processed.

In reality, none of this happens. The European migrant system is so broken that people who come into Europe illegally are not processed and are then allowed to go anywhere in the continent including heading to northern France and trying to get a boat across to Britain.

The Europeans tolerate this because they are experts at pushing problems away. The Greeks push the problems on to the rest of Europe. So do the Italians.

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And while their streets are testament to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have settled in these countries illegally, for these countries the more people keep moving north the better.

Yet it is a lie to pretend that Britain is the only safe haven for these people. In order to get here the migrants must have gone through at least two perfectly safe countries.

Another lie that the Left tells about this crisis is that all of the arrivals are asylum seekers. In fact, as I have found on my own travels across the migrant camps on the continent, the vast majority of people are in fact economic migrants.

When the open-borders people even nod to this they tend to then say that economic deprivation is just as terrible as war. If that is the case then we better get ready. Because it means almost everyone in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East should have the right to illegally enter the UK.

But worst is the way in which the whole line between legal and illegal migration is made a mockery.

Those who tolerate the Channel crossings end up presenting the difference between these two things as being of little account. OK, some people come to the country legally, but others come by paying smuggling gangs and arriving by boat. Why should we be so obsessed about the difference?

Because the difference is the law. What is happening on the Kent coastline is law-breaking on an unbelievable scale.

Would we tolerate the line being broken on the law when it comes to other crimes? Burglary, rape, arson or murder for instance? Would we agree that there are times when it is justified and times when it is not? Of course not. Because that is why we have laws. To make it clear that there are some things that our country will not tolerate.

When it comes to borders, however, it seems that mass law breaking is allowed. And not just allowed, but encouraged.

Our border force and others actually meet the migrants at sea to help them to Britain more safely. Our agencies at home put the migrants up at hotels and make sure they have everything they need.

Yet while nobody should be treated inhumanely, nor should people be rewarded for breaking the law. If you dont respect the law then why should the country show such respect to you?

Since the major incident of 2018 we have had pronouncements, tough talk and thwarted policies. But one fact cannot be ignored.

That under this government things have got so much worse. I do not doubt that a Labour government would encourage a worse situation still.

But the blame now is on this government. Remember Take Back Control? It is high time this government did.

I FEEL sorry for Prince Harry. He really turned his life around a few years ago.

After some wasted years in nightclubs, he got it together, joined the Army, served in Afghanistan and was admired by the public.

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He would have had a great life and been a great asset to the Royal Family and this country.

Now he is in exile in California, giving the odd interview, dissing his family and otherwise doing what exactly?

In a new interview, his wife Meghan has revealed that Harry spends most of his time doing DIY around the house, helping neighbours with their sprinkler systems and fixing pipes in the couples LA mansion.

Thats quite a fall-off from Prince to DIY man.

Nothing wrong with DIY, of course. We all have to do it sometimes.

Perhaps Harry is one of those husbands who just really loves a spot of DIY.

But I cant help thinking that a day will come when he is going to regret his move.

FORMER US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned America is now at increased risk of a 9/11-style attack since leaving Afghanistan last year.

The botched withdrawal handed the country back to the Taliban after 20 years.

Meanwhile, supporters of extreme cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been storming Iraqs parliament building.

Al-Sadr was an enemy of Britain and America after the 2003 war.Are there any lessons to learn from this?

Yes to be limited in our ambitions on the world stage. Strike hard and take out enemies where we can.

But whatever its dreams, America clearly does not want to govern these countries, stay in them, or run an empire.

If you dont want to do the long haul, better to have limited aims. Mission creep is real.

POP star Lizzo accepted an MTV VMA award the other night.

On stage, the Good As Hell singer seemed to want to make herself the centre not just of attention, but of American democracy.

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Thanking fans for their backing, she said that voting means everything. It means everything to making a change in this country.I assume she was aware fans were voting on the award of Music video for good, not for President of the United States. She went on to call on fans to vote to make changes to laws that are oppressing us.

Strange. Lizzo does not come across as oppressed.

In fact, she comes across as very entitled.

Such as with her strutting acceptance speech, which peaked with her screaming out, Bitch, Im winning.

On social media, Lizzo can often be seen getting out of chauffeur-driven cars and swanning around on private jets.

If that is oppression, then a lot of us would like a piece of it.

THE scenes from the end of the Reading Festival were an embarrassment.

Tents set on fire, rubbish everywhere, people fleeing the site in a bid to get to safety.

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Why do these big music festivals so often descend into orgies of violence and mass littering?

On the Reading Festivals website, the organisers boast they are committed to making sure the event has a good impact on the environment, not least to preserve the live music experience for generations to come.

Tell you what, try to preserve the live music experience for this generation first, and dont organise events that leave parkland looking like a wasteland.

Link:

There are 100 times more migrants crossing the Channel than in 2018 so why wont government accept its a... - The US Sun

Commentary

What do you think virtue signaling is about? The point of it is to claim superiority for the speaker, and inferiority for the listener. It means I am a good person, and, if you do not agree with me enthusiastically, you are a bad person.

When the Canadian prime minister says that hes a feminist and demands of others that they implement feminist policies, and that hes anti-racist and that others must implement anti-racist policies, hes saying, If you agree with me and act as I ask, you are a good person. If you disagree with me, you are a wrong thinker, misogynist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, and probably an insurrectionist who should be in jail. This is exactly what Justin Trudeau said to the truckers striking in Ottawa instead of talking to them about their concerns.

When Hilary Clinton said that half of Trump voters were a basket of deplorables: the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and the audience of urban Democratic voters laughed and applauded, she and her audience were saying, They are bad people, very different from us, who are good people.

To support their virtue signaling, the elite has generated a series of massive lies about North American society. Specials interests such as feminists have claimed that all females are helpless victims of a brutal hierarchy, and all men are toxic oppressors of females. Some men have gone along with these misleading claims because they want to be on good terms with women, and feminist virtue signaling is the ticket to acceptance.

African American activists have claimed, in spite of the overwhelming contrary statistical evidence, that police kill blacks at will and in massive numbers, and that white racists do the same. Black Lives Matter (BLM) used this lie to justify widespread rioting, looting, arson, assault, and murder, and the destruction of inner cities across the country. Politicians such as Trudeau and U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), previously a Republican presidential candidate, virtue signaled by marching in demonstrations with BLM and endorsing this extremist organization.

Politicians were by no means alone in their expressions of solidarity with BLM. Major American companies made strong statements and sent tens of millions of dollars to the BLM organization. All of this was allegedly in aid of social justice and black lives.

BLM advocated rioting and defunding the police, which was carried out in most Democrat-led cities. During the riots, many small businesses owned by blacks were destroyed, and blacks, such as retired police captain David Dorn, were murdered. And the reduction of police, not favored by black communities according to opinion polls, resulted in the crime rate in black communities soaring, almost ten thousand blacks murdered, most all by other blacks. The BLM organization then reportedly took the donations given for black lives and bought a multimillion-dollar mansion. The leaders of the BLM organization, who are recorded as proclaiming that theyre trained Marxists, advanced the cause of BLM by making their own lives more luxurious.

However, the lies of BLM pale in comparison with the monstrous falsehood promulgated by no less than President Joe Biden, who claimed repeatedly that America was systemically racist. This claim rests on the travesty of an argument that certain census categoriesblacks and Hispanicsdo not do as well as whites, and therefore whites and whiteness are great villains holding down oppressed minorities. The technical claim is that these minorities are underrepresented statistically compared to their percentage of the population (blacks at 13 percent and Hispanics at 18 percent) in certain occupations and in income levels. Note that no actual racist prejudice need be demonstrated. Rather, the mere underrepresentation is deemed sufficient to claim racism.

Never allowing facts to confuse them, the anti-racists neglect the relevant facts that the most successful ethnic group in America is people of color Asians, who do better than whites, as do Nigerians (who are black the last time I looked) and black Caribbeans. How come these folks are not held back by Americas alleged systemic racism? There are prestigious fields in which whites, Asians, and Jews are underrepresented. In the highly lucrative National Football League, 58 percent of the players are black, a 400 percent overrepresentation, while in the National Basketball Association, 72 percent of the players are black. Is this a result of structural racism against whites, Asians, and Jews? Anyone claiming that would be laughed out of town. Unlike woke education, industry, and government selecting people on the basis of race, professional sports is too important to impose racial diversity; professional players are selected according to merit, skill, performance, and potential.

Political correctness has been a tool in other places and other times to determine who would be the elite and who would be the underclass. In more religious times, godliness has been a criterion separating the elite sheep from the pleb goats. Exactly which godliness was often critical. The English civil war of the 17th century broke out over church furniture, that which was sufficiently austere to reflect Protestantism, and that which hinted at Rome (paintings). Behind that was the fear that the Catholic queen would pull the country back to Rome. So too the thousand-year conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims over legitimate authority after Mohammed. Where one side was in charge, the other was treated as an underclass.

Virtue signaling is a component of status competition. Those who aspire to power and fame will strive to be seen as having more virtue than others, and thus worthy of special esteem and status. One way that they do this is to take more and more extreme positions on behalf of the alleged virtue. Today, this means showing ever greater solidarity with victims as defined by the intersectional grid of race, gender, sexuality, and ability/disability. Finding new victims to support is an innovation demonstrating great virtue. We have seen virtuous efforts to turn social arrangements upside-down on behalf of transsexuals. Now theres a push to recognize pedophiles, renamed as youth-attracted individuals, as an oppressed minority that deserves to be protected and given preferences.

In Canada and the United States, the majority of citizens, whites and males, Christians and Jews, are condemned as oppressors, and slated to be marginalized and excluded, with special preferences given to the marginalized and underserved minorities. In Canada, under the guidance of the Liberal government, Canadians of European derivation are designated colonial settlers who usurped the land and position of First Nations Indigenous Peoples, and engaged in genocide against them. Euro-Canadian citizens are thus not legitimately citizens, but usurpers.

Canada really belongs to the First Nations in the woke view, and the Liberal government sees its duty as returning the country to the First Nations. First Nations, at less than 5 percent of the population, have been given the veto on all development projects, which means they have been given control over the future life conditions of all Canadians. Universities have been directed to hire First Nations individuals to teach Indigenous folk subjects such as Indigenous science and Indigenous justice.

And to top it off, Canadas current attorney general has labeled the Canadian Supreme Court a colonial institution to which Indigenous individuals should be appointed and the Court modified by Indigenous practices, which would lead to a truly pluralistic legal system. This is hailed as decolonialization. In the view of the Liberal government, their commitment to First Nations supremacy makes them virtuous, while Euro-Canadian citizens are condemned as usurpers and criminal murderers.

Perhaps the ultimate example of virtue signaling was Trudeaus decision to fly all Canadian flags across the country at half mast for half a year, in honor of Indigenous children allegedly murdered and buried in mass graves on residential school sites. When some enthusiasts burned down a number of Catholic churches because some of the schools were run by Catholic orders, the prime minister said he understood the sentiments. No graves were ever verified; no bodies of children were ever found. But Euro-Canadians were branded, once again, as murderers.

Woke elites fain concern for minorities, even though their actions often harm the minorities, but what theyre really doing is claiming that theyre good people fighting oppression, while you are evil people advocating and perpetrating oppression. Its a dishonest and outrageous con job perpetrated by the elite to gain status and power.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Philip Carl Salzman is professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, fellow at the Middle East Forum, and president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

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'Woke' Ideology Is the Way the Elite Says They're Superior to You - The Epoch Times

Published: Published Date - 11:52 PM, Mon - 29 August 22

Hyderabad: Telangana armed struggle is an important topic that candidates should focus on. This article is in continuation to the last article focusing on Telangana armed struggle, which is one of the important topics in preparation for the State government recruitment examinations.

Komaraiahs martyrdom sparked off the conflagration and thus marked the beginning of the Telangana Peasant Armed Struggle. Then Communists claimed that by the end of July 1946 militant actions against landlords, Deshmukhs, and village officials spread to some 300 to 400 villages in Nalgonda, Warangal, and Khammam districts. At the same time, the Communist Party of India launched a massive propaganda campaign by raising the demands of Telangana peasantry and exposed the oppression and brutalities.

Akunur was a historic village in Jangaon taluq, which exhibited the fighting spirit of the peasantry (rich and poor) to defy and fight against the food grain levy policy of the government. The atrocities on the people of Akunur exposed the oppressive policies of food grain levy of the Nizams government. Similarly, the peasants of Machireddypalli in Bidar taluk raised against the highhanded behaviour of the government servants. By 1946, the Communists perfectly organised themselves from the district committee to the village cells in Nalgonda district to carry on their programme with a large number of party workers and sympathisers.

The Communists had gained much influence in the Taluks of Suryapet, Bhongir, Jangaon, Huzurnagar and Nalgonda. Thirty-five villages in Suryapet, 23 in Bhongir, 22 in Jangaon, 20 in Huzurnagar and 14 in Nalgonda came to be dominated by the Communists. Jatoth Thanu of Padamati Thanda in Dharmapuram village of Janagam Taluq in the estates of Puskuru Maktadars was the fourth son of Hamu and Mangli. He was a courageous young man and escaped from the repression of local doras, Razakars and police several times. The family fought against the Visnuru deshmukh, Razakars and police several times to protect their lands.

The Hyderabad State Congress began to mobilise people in favour of the struggle for the freedom of the Nizams State. It began to pressurise the Nizam of Hyderabad to join the Indian dominion in the event of the British granting Independence to India. But Nizam announced his desire not to join either the Indian union or Pakistan, and declared his Independence on August 27, 1947. People of all sections were deeply disappointed by the decision of Nizam, while all political parties supported the merger of the State of Hyderabad to the Indian Union, the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen was opposed to this move.

The Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen developed a cadre of volunteers who were called Razakars and these Razakars began to rouse the feelings of Muslims against Hindus. The growing militancy and power of the Majlis Ittehad ul-Muslimeen was evident in the activities of the Razakars, a paramilitary voluntary force organized by Kasim Razvi, the leader of the Ittehad. As the peasant movement spread in rural Telangana, the Nizam government sent batches of Razakars. Sometimes with or without the police or Army in order to deal with the revolutionaries and protect the frontiers as well as the distressed landlords and officials.

To be continued

Prof. Adapa SatyanarayanaRetired Professor

Department of History, Osmania University

Ph. 9573405551

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Fighting spirit of the peasantry - Telangana Today