Category Archives: Government Oppression

Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen speaks during a news conference in the foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa on June 6.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Laith Marouf tweeted about Jewish White Supremacists as loud mouthed bags of human feces, on Aug. 10, 2022, after Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen had been alerted to Mr. Maroufs penchant for sharing his petulant, antisemitic screeds on Twitter. And yet, Mr. Hussen did nothing; it would take nearly two weeks (and a handful of mainstream news reports) before the minister would announce the government was cancelling the $133,000 grant it had awarded to the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC), which lists Mr. Marouf as a senior consultant.

In fact, Mr. Hussen knew about Mr. Maroufs tweets for a month before he even acknowledged the situation, which was confirmed when he appeared before the House of Commons heritage committee last week. For weeks, Mr. Maroufs tweets about how the Zionist establishment globally mobilized media and the bullet to the head owed to Jewish White Supremacists went unacknowledged by the federal government (along with select mentions of francophone frogs and Black house slaves), even as more and more murmurs began to circulate online about Mr. Maroufs ties to the Canadian government.

Mr. Hussen explained the delay as a procedural one: that it took time to consult with the legal department in order to cut off the funding. Do I wish that weve been able to move the process along more quickly? Absolutely, but it was also important that we got this right to ensure accountability for this organization, he said.

Notably, the federal government was somehow able to announce it would be freezing funding for Hockey Canada a mere two days after its executives testified before the heritage committee in June (Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge specifically cited that very testimony in announcing the governments decision). It also announced that it was ending its partnership with WE Charity back in July, 2020, just one week after the arrangement to administer the since-cancelled Canada Student Service Grant was announced.

During Mr. Hussens committee appearance, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman asked why, even if he had to wait for legal approval to cancel funding, Mr. Hussen took as long as he did to simply put out a statement about Mr. Maroufs toxic tweets. Mr. Hussen didnt actually respond, saying merely that, at the time, he had much less information than we do today.

It is difficult to imagine the timeline playing out the way it did had Mr. Marouf targeted any other minority group the way he did the Jewish people. Indeed, if the government had been informed that someone on its payroll was tweeting about, for example, Indigenous people as bags of human feces and ugly inbred wanderers, it is unlikely they wouldve stayed mum for an entire month, if only out of a practical concern that its silence might be viewed as tacit tolerance (or worse, tacit endorsement). But because Mr. Maroufs tweets were fixated on Zionists and so-called Jewish White Supremacists, Mr. Hussens office apparently needed weeks to figure out how to say: This is bad.

Perhaps the government was fooled into believing that Mr. Maroufs deranged rants were mere commentary on Israeli politics not antisemitic ravings by someone using the thin veil of anti-Zionism to demean and bemoan a particular group of people. This veil works so effectively, particularly in progressive circles, because it uses the language of mainstream anti-oppression activism to attack those perceived to be at the top Zionists, Jewish White Supremacists who are seen to use their power and influence to marginalize other people. Diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives are all about calling out those responsible for injustice, and who could be more responsible for injustice, according to this view, than Zionists and white supremacists?

Perhaps, then, the government viewed Mr. Maroufs tweets as kosher (excuse the reference) because his language was weirdly in line with other activist language abhorring colonialism and oppression. And perhaps thats why thinly veiled antisemitism, masquerading as anti-Zionism, often finds a home in progressive circles.

One would hope, however, that a Minister of Diversity and Inclusion, whose portfolios entire reason for being is to root out bigotry and oppression, would be better able to recognize the difference between political commentary and contempt for the Jewish people particularly when Mr. Marouf did the government a favour by hauling out all the regular antisemitic tropes about Jews as inbred, greedy and controlling of governments and the media. He also made a point of saying in one tweet that he deliberately does not share works by Jews, even if anti-Zionist/anti-imperialist, which should have dispelled the illusion that Mr. Maroufs obsession was about Israel, not Jews.

Yet government officials remained stumped for a whole month over just what to do with this supposedly anti-racist contractor. Ideally, it would have taken them all of 10 minutes to craft a statement deploring Mr. Maroufs toxic tweets. Instead, it took weeks of navel-gazing, a slew of media reports, and a public pressure campaign for the government to clue into the obvious: This is bad, and we should say so.

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Opinion: Why was the government silent on Laith Marouf's antisemitic tweets for an entire month? - The Globe and Mail

By MARK PRATT

BOSTON (AP) Ilya Silchukou was a cultural icon in his native Belarus, the lead soloist at the State Opera Bolshoi who represented his nation at official government functions at home and abroad and performed at opera houses across Europe.

He lived a privileged and comfortable life in his homeland.

And he gave it all up.

Silchukou dared to speak out against Alexander Lukashenko, who has led the former Soviet republic with an iron fist for nearly three decades.

He's now living in suburban Boston with his wife and three children and teaches music to middle school students while he tries to revive his singing career in the U.S., where he remains relatively unknown.

I am known in Europe, but I've never performed in the States, and it was like a blank piece of paper for me, just a new page," he said during a recent interview in Boston. We had to start from scratch here."

When Lukashenko won a sixth term in office in 2020 in an election regarded by his opposition and the West as fraudulent, Silchukou joined tens of thousands of Belarusians at election protests that were violently suppressed and resulted in the arrests of thousands.

It was so evident to all of us that we could not keep silent any more, he said.

He renounced three awards that he had received personally from Lukashenko.

His friends warned him of the risks.

They said, What is the problem with you? You have everything you need, he said. I was well paid in Belarus and I had all the benefits from that. I said, Yes they pay me, but they dont own me.

His public opposition to Lukashenko got him fired from the opera for an act of immorality and he was black-listed, he said. In response, he had one more act of defiance using his baritone voice in a video of the traditional Belarusian hymn, Mahutny Bozha, which means Mighty God," and has become a signature anthem of the opposition to Lukashenko.

Still, it wasn't until March 2021 when the police came after his wife, Tanya, and accused her of defrauding the nation's state-sponsored child support system and threatened her with two years in jail that he knew he had to get out. He took it as a thinly-veiled threat to break up their family.

Lots of kids in Belarus have both parents in prison," he said.

When his children finished school in May of that year, the family packed four suitcases with some vital documents and photos and flew from Belarus to the nation of Georgia, then on to Seattle, where his parents live.

The family came to the East Coast about a year ago at the suggestion of Marina Lvova, who runs the nonprofit Belarusians in Boston, drawn by Boston's cultural scene, proximity to Europe and vibrant Belarusian expatriate community.

Lvova and her husband first saw Silchukou at one of his last public performances in Minsk and fell in love with his voice, she said.

But she was also impressed with his bravery for standing up to Lukashenko.

Ilya is a real patriot of Belarus," she said. You cannot be successful in a country that is a prison, and unfortunately our country is a prison right now."

Silchukou is making ends meet teaching 5th through 9th graders at the private Star Academy school.

It's pretty incredible that he's able to share some of the experiences he's had at some of the best opera houses in Europe," said Margarita Druker, Star Academy's co-director.

The school has many students of Eastern European descent whose families have similar stories of fleeing oppression.

It was very courageous for someone of his stature to walk away from all he had into so much uncertainty," Druker said.

Silchukou has returned to the stage, collaborating with pianist Pavel Nersessian, an associate professor at Boston University, for two recent concerts in Boston and New Jersey.

For both, he put together a retrospective of some of his personal favorite pieces spanning his career from his first singing lessons to his time at the national opera, including Papageno" from The Magic Flute" and Cavatina Figaro" from the The Barber of Seville." He capped off the shows with what he called the jewel of the concert, a duet with his mezzo-soprano wife.

He recently had an audition with the Boston Lyric Opera and is trying to secure auditions with other opera houses in the U.S., and he's in negotiations with U.S. agents.

I am looking forward with hope, he said.

One of those hopes is a return to his homeland.

He remains in touch with friends and colleagues in Belarus who are working in fear, afraid of speaking out against Lukashenko.

We hope to see them again, and for sure we will sing our songs on the squares on our true independence day," he said.

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Opera singer flees Belarusian oppression to revive career - Daily Independent

On left: Poster of Bobby Onco, a Kiowa and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), holding up a rifle after a ceasefire agreement between AIM forces and federal marshals at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, 1973 (Photo: Library of Congress) On right: Armenian freedom fighters led by fedayi leader Dikran Deroyan (Photo: Public Domain)

It is widely known that the Armenian Diaspora in America faces the existential threat of assimilation into American society. We typically view this assimilationist crisis through the angle of loss of culture and identity; that is to say, in what ways we cease to engage in Armenian identity-affirming traditions cultural, political, etc. What we dont often focus on is what superfluous and negative beliefs we acquire from the culture of our host country.

Specifically, one factor to focus on is the political assimilation that occurs within the American school system and society. After years of conditioning within pro-American classes, most Armenian-Americans develop the same attitude as their peers toward the American state and Indigenous rights in America, despite the fact that the mainstream narrative is counter-productive and harmful for the Armenian people.

At best, our people learn about the oppressive policies of the American government, but associate such heinousness and the existence of Indigenous Americans in general with the past; even the most truthful and in-depth of settings does not even dare to question the legitimacy of the existence of the American state. Most people, however, learn a narrative that entirely absolves the United States of culpability in past and present crimes and not only legitimizes, but glorifies that institution.

We must first establish that the United States government is responsible for the genocide of the Indigenous people of America. This is a fact that is accepted by the vast majority of historians and proven by the immense decrease in the Indigenous population of the United States since its founding (a decrease in the scale of hundreds of thousands). The United States government engaged in the wholesale massacre of non-combatant innocents, forced relocations and death marches, as well as breaking treaties with and occupying the lands of Indigenous nations. The criminal US regime, which has been founded upon and continues to occupy stolen land, now has created a settler-colonial state to force Indigenous people to assimilate into or be marginalized within American society.

Armenians are no strangers to these sorts of crimes against humanity. For over a millennium, we have faced the genocidal and settler-colonial regimes of the Turkish fascist state in its various forms: the Seljuk Empire, Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic. Most of us do not speak our ancestral dialects, live in our ancestral villages and cities, know the location of our forefathers homes and graves, and so on. Those Armenians who still live in the Turkish state are subject to extreme discrimination and are prevented from fully expressing their culture and identity out of fear of reprisal from the racist government.

Coming from a similar background as Indigenous Americans, we must then, as Armenians, stand against the genocidal American regime, in solidarity with other oppressed Indigenous peoples, marching forward against the force of settler-colonialism. Morally speaking, why should we victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism stand with the perpetrators of such heinous crimes, rather than the victims? Each Armenian who actually supports even the idea of the American state legitimizes an institution which inflicts upon the original peoples of this continent that which the Turks have done and continue to do to us. Moreover, our great eternal enemy, the Turkish fascist state, is part of the same Western coalition of genocidal murderers that is, the so-called Free World of which the United States lauds itself as being the leader and representative.

For those faithful to the ideology of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF/Tashnagtsutiun), the reasoning is even simpler and the necessity is even more imperative. The ARF Program posits that Every nations natural and inalienable rights include its homeland its historical, territorial habitat as its distinct environment, vital to creativity, survival, and development. And yet, the Indigenous nations of this country do not have this inalienable right, because they have been victim to the very capitalism, imperialism, totalitarianism, and colonialism that the ARF Program wholeheartedly condemns.

This line of logic even flows from the national (azkayin) ideology of our party, rather than ARF socialist ideological thought, through the lenses of which one could examine the role of capitalism in creating and encouraging the development of settler-colonialism in the Americas and the solutions to it within the socio-economic, rather than national-revolutionary sphere.

Why, then, should we have a state in our homeland, as opposed to other stateless Indigenous peoples? After all, to side with the American government on the issue of its legitimacy is to tacitly admit that the Indigenous peoples of the United States are not deserving of a state on their united homeland. This can only be based on two potential suppositions: either a) that we, unlike other peoples, are deserving of a state, or that b) the Indigenous people of America, specifically, are not deserving of a state. Either way, both suppositions are unacceptable because the first is chauvinist, while the second is racist: the Armenian Revolutionary Federation is neither of these things and actively eschews both in its program.

With all this said, our path as Armenians, guided by the moral-ideological values of our forefathers (revolution, socialism, democracy and nationalism), must be to strike against, rather than support, those who inflict suffering and oppression upon others. It is a lamentable fact that we view ourselves within a vacuum as a people, alone and afraid, without the help of others, and thus, not compelled to aid others. Instead, we must view ourselves as ideological fighters in the global struggle against imperialism and capitalism. As soon as we have reframed our mindset, we will find that others will help us in our struggle; unfortunately, only we can be the ones who take the first steps of solidarity, as we are a small, relatively unknown nation whose interests conflict with those of Western powers and have not perpetrated any recent radical actions surrounding our just cause to catch the worlds attention.

The future to which we look forward must not be a vignette centered solely around Armenia, but a world in which we have taken back Western Armenia and all of our historic homeland from cruel oppressors, in which the illegitimate American occupier government has been overthrown by the solidarity of oppressed peoples, in which the Indigenous people of America once again rule their own homeland, and in which the workers of various countries have taken back their just rights, allowing us to coexist in an international brotherhood of socialist peoples, with the utmost respect for both national independence and individual rights.

our ideological and moral support should be with the oppressed peoples of the world

Of course, we need not be involved in all struggles (whether based on class or national rights) as active participants (indeed, we scarcely have truly committed fighters in our own struggle); yet, our ideological and moral support should be with the oppressed peoples of the world, not the oppressors. Though this path may be long and arduous, it begins with breaking the shackles of (love of America) that have been forced upon our people by the chauvinist, hyper-American attitudes and pressures of the mid-to-late 20th century.

It is only once we begin to be Armenians, rather than Armenian-Americans, that we are ready to participate in this international anti-imperialist struggle by sincerely fighting against the fascist Turkish-Azeri oppressor and completing our duty of leaving the Diaspora and returning to our ancestral lands. In this grand struggle, there is only victory or martyrdom, freedom or death.

Aram Brunson is a freshman at the University of Chicago from Newton, MA. He is a proud member of the AYF-YOARF Greater Boston Nejdeh Chapter and serves on the AYFs Central Educational Council. In addition, he dances with the Hamazkayin Sardarabad Dance Ensemble and is a member of the Armenian National Committees of Eastern Massachusetts and Illinois.

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Armenians must side with indigenous land rights against the occupier US government - Armenian Weekly

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Images of anti-government protests continue to pour out of Iran, with women chopping off their hair and burning their hijabs in demonstrations. Protests started after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her apprehension by the morality police mid-September and have spread to 40 cities across the country. At the same time, western media has frenzied around these images, seeming to drum up international calls for interference in Iran; and, the U.S. has increased sanctions on the country already debilitated by decades of economic distress, much of which has contributed to existing unrest.

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This is happening despite less overall coverage of previous Iranian protests, and one cant help but ask why. Of course, the tone of these protests can be seen as unique in that they have a feminist flavour to them, while also being women-led. My suspicions, however, are that something more sinister is happening related to protest depictions and how those are being weaponized in the public sphere.

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As a religious studies scholar committed to fostering critical conversations around religion and politics, I am inviting Canadians to think deeply about what we are subscribing to in adopting smugness and the anti-Islamic rhetoric developing around the situation in Iran. We know that the economy is tough in Iran because of sanctions. We know that the political situation is corrupt. We know that calls for change are obstructed and brutally oppressed. Iranians have been protesting about these issues for years now. And yet, because these factors are coalescing in this moment on hijab practices and due to the western disproportional fixation on them, all that is really centred here are western cultural assumptions about religion.

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In the West, where religion is assumed to be a personal, private set of beliefs (rather than an entire way of life), the elevation of the hijab (as a religious practice) to the centre of these protests has been painted as being against Islam itself. Popular discussions conjure up alarming echoes of the western lead-ups to the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003. In both cases, just as we see in Iran today, the trope of the veiled, oppressed Muslim woman is used to justify the rhetoric around western saviourist interventions in Muslim countries. At the same time, the voices of actual Muslim women protesting are drowned out and their nuance is lost, objectifying them for the self-interested desires of non-Iranian forces.

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Even if pundits and keyboard warriors are not calling for outside intervention, the conflation of protestors anti-government violence as a validation of anti-Islamic rhetoric is both troubling and misses the point. The politicization and enforcement of the veil in Iran is oppressive and rightfully protested, but it is also inherently un-Islamic. We must unequivocally stand with Iranian women and other protestors who are outraged at the violence and oppression they are experiencing at the hands of law enforcement and their government without seeking to automatically replace their cultural system and religious ways of being with ours.

It does not follow that we should view the form their protests have taken as an affront to the religion in totality. Protesting the weaponization of religious symbols by a regime is the target of protestors, not Islam in its entirety a point that far too many western sources get wrong and which creates a stunning ironic hypocrisy for Canadians in particular.

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Why?If the weaponization of religious symbols sounds familiar, it should. Here in Canada, where Bill 21 reigns in Quebec and women wearing the hijab are literally banned from public service and employment, we have our own examples of state oppression and overreach, this time under the guise of neutrality. And yet, where are the protests? If we want to stand with Muslim women, we must listen to them, wherever they are found; we must stop objectifying them for dubious ends; and we must stop construing their protest as being anti-Islam. Authoritarianism of all varieties is worth our attention; its time we paid it.

Dr. Joseph Wiebe is associate professor of Religion and Ecology at the University of Alberta Augustana, and the interim director of the Chester Ronning Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life.

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Opinion: What Canadians are getting wrong about the hijab protests in Iran - Edmonton Journal

The crusade for civil rights has once again been globally recognised with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize 2022.The term civil society goes back to Aristotles phrase koinna politik in his politics, where it refers to a political community commensurate with the Greek city-state (polis) characterised by a shared set of norms and ethos, in which free citizens on an equal footing lived under the rule of law.The telos or end of civil society, thus defined, was eudaimonia often translated as human flourishing or common well-being, as man was defined as a political (social) animal. The concept was used by Roman writers such as Cicero, who referred to the ancient notion of a republic (res publica). It re-entered the Western political discourse following one of the late medieval translations of Aristotles politics into Latin by Leonardo Bruni who first translated koinna politik as societas civilis.One may or may not like it from the political point of rulers everywhere, but the Peace Prize is a victory for civil society, particularly in the home country of the person or persons awarded. Be it Ukraine or Russia, humanist values are trampled every day and millions become victims of militarism and dictatorship. The 2022 Peace Prize, honouring the Nobel vision of peace and fraternity between nations, has been announced for human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties.Through their consistent efforts in favour of humanist values, anti-militarism and principles of law, this years laureates have revitalised and honoured Alfred Nobels vision of peace and fraternity between nations. This noble vision is most needed in the world today. We all sense the ever-present corruption, the centralised power, and the empty slogans. But very few among us are fearless enough to stand up and fight.The individual winner, Bialiatski has been detained without trial in Belarus since last year. He founded the human rights organisation Viasna in 1996 after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko rammed through constitutional changes that gave him broad authority to dissolve parliament, leading to mass protests.Until the mind is free, the body is enslaved. Martin Luther King Jr. said, You dont have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. Viasna, or Spring, supported the jailed demonstrators and their families. A quarter-century later, the organisation continues to defend free speech and liberty. It has kept a spotlight on thousands of protesters and dissidents in Belarus, who have been jailed and beaten since Lukashenko stole the 2020 presidential election and forced the true winner, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya into exile.Also honoured was Memorial, the human rights organisation synonymous with the democratic hopes of the late 1980s and 1990s in the Soviet Union and Russia, and which the Russian authorities forced to close. In addition to tracking human rights abuses, Memorial created a vast and treasured archive on the victims of Joseph Stalins repression, out of the conviction, as the Nobel Prize announcement put it, that confronting past crimes is essential in preventing new ones. In the same spirit, the award also went to Ukraines Centre for Civil Liberties, which has attempted to identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population.Reports have emerged that three Indians, AltNews co-founders Pratik Sinha, Mohammad Zubair and Harsh Mander, have been nominated. According to Time, the co-founders of fact-check site AltNews, Sinha and Zubair, are among those who could be considered to win the prize based on nominations that were made public via Norwegian lawmakers, predictions from bookmakers, and picks from the Peace Research Institute, Oslo. The two have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India amid accusations of discrimination against Muslims and have methodologically debunked rumours and fake news circulating on social media and called out hate speech, the publication said.There were about 343 candidates 251 are individuals and 92 are organisations in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022.Although the Nobel Committee did not announce the names of the nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates, a Reuters survey found Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, broadcaster David Attenborough, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, Tuvalus foreign minister Simon Kofe, and Myanmars National Unity Government are among those nominated by Norwegian lawmakers.The chosen few Peace Prize laureates have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy. The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbouring countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, said the committee.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Memorial grew to become the largest human rights organisation in Russia. In addition to establishing a centre of documentation on victims of the Stalinist era, Memorial compiled and systematised information on political oppression and human rights violations in Russia.The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Nobel Committee, announces on October 7 the winner of this years Peace Prize in Oslo. By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 to Bialiatski, Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wished to honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbour countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.With the rise of a distinction between monarchical autonomy and public law, the term civil society gained currency to denote the corporate estates (Stndestaat) of a feudal elite of landholders as opposed to the powers exercised by the prince. It had a long history in state theory and was revived with particular force in recent times, in Eastern Europe, where dissidents such as Vclav Havel as late as in the 1990s employed it to denote the sphere of civic associations threatened by the intrusive holistic state-dominated regimes of Communist Eastern Europe.The first post-modern usage of civil society as denoting political opposition stems from the writings of Aleksander Smolar in 197879. However, the term was not in use by the Solidarity labour union in 19801981.After conferring the Nobel Peace Prize this year to civil society activists, the term will get a new lease on life. It will encourage the fight against injustice and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and this is what the Nobel Committee recognised this year.(Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee is a senior academician and columnist)

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Nobel Vision of Civil Society - The Shillong Times

Saturday, 15 October 2022, 7:55 pmPress Release: PAN Asia Pacific

On International Rural Womens Day, the Asian RuralWomens Coalition (ARWC) stands in solidarity with allrural women across the world in defense of land, rights,sovereignty, dignity and justice against worsening attacksof fascist, exploitative and patriarchalpolicies.

Today, rural women and advocates cometogether to resist all schemes to perpetuate corporatecontrol over agriculture and assert the call for a globalfood system anchored on rights to land and resources, womenand community-led agroecology and peoples foodsovereignty.

Rural women are main food producers ofsocieties. They toil and work to feed the peoples of theworld, yet live in abject poverty and hunger. Neoliberalglobalization has brought upon the rural sector anunprecedented multiple crises that aggravated thedisempowerment and discrimination of rural women. Corporategreed and capitalist control of food and agriculture drivenby the G8, WTO, IMF-World Bank and other bilateral andregional trade agreements have only served to benefit bigdespotic landlords, elites, oligarchs and TNCs. These havefurther perpetuated patriarchy and worsened rural womensconditions of oppression, violence andexploitation.

Monopoly corporations control andexploit rural womens local knowledge, endanger theirlives and livelihoods, destroy their resources, poison theirlands and waters, and wreak havoc to rural communities. Landgrabbing and land inequality have resulted in increasedhunger and malnutrition, poverty and landlessness, genderinequality, social injustice and strife.

Theseconditions have further worsened the rural crisis andexacerbated the forced migration and trafficking of ruralwomen. As migrants and workers, they are doubly subjected toincreased gender violence, abuse, exploitation,discrimination and criminalization. Neoliberal exploitationcontinues to attack formal and regular work worldwidethrough wage slavery, labor flexibilization, union-bustingand repression. More and more rural women are being pushedinto informal work and unemployment.

Governments arecomplicit with land-grabbers and exploiters. State fascismis showcased in the intensified militarization of thecountrysides, various forms of harassment against womenpeasants and advocates and the criminalization andsuppression of peasant movements and struggles. Rural womenare being targeted, resulting in unending cases of humanrights violations, illegal arrests, political persecutionand extrajudicial killings of rural women andadvocates.

One hotspot is the Philippines, where humanrights group Karapatan has documented at least ten victimsof extrajudicial killings in rural communities, includingnine-year-old Kyllene Casao, within the first 100 days ofMarcos Jr. At least four victims of enforced disappearanceswere documented, among them womens rights advocates Ma.Elena Pampoza and Elgene Mungcal who were abducted inTarlac, and peasant couple Geral Ganti and Dalen Alip-on whowere abducted from their home in Himamaylan City in NegrosOccidental.

The Philippine military has beenconducting intensive military operations, indiscriminatebombings and strafing with artillery and machine gunfire inthe areas bordering the rural villages of Carabalan andMahalang in Himamaylan since October 6. Starting October 9,the military declared a one-week lockdown in the area, withthe Himamaylan City Social Welfare and Development Officedeclaring as many as 15,024 evacuees as of October 10, oralmost 14% of the Himamaylans population. As a result,residents have gone hungry and children are in dire need ofmilk and diapers. Villagers who were allowed to return totheir homes found their livestock slaughtered by themilitary. Houses and belongings of rural women leaders andadvocates being red-tagged by the government were ransacked,according to Karapatan-Negros.

Meanwhile, Marcos Jr,son of the former dictator, had appointed himself Head ofthe Department of Agriculture, a government agency thatholds power over billions of pesos worth of importationand smuggling of agricultural goods and is the centralrecipient of foreign loans and investments from the WorldBank and other financial institutions.

Elsewhere inAsia, last October 8 in India, Dalit women agriculturallaborers, including a pregnant Dalit woman, were assaultedand locked up in a workers colony at Husanehalli inChikkamagalaru district of Karnataka after protesting thebeating up of a woman rural worker over an alleged loandispute.

In Indonesia, women agricultural workers inoil palm plantations owned by large landowners continue toexperience various forms of physical violence, sexualviolence and discrimination. Ancestral lands of women fromthe national minority Sakai in Riau Province of SumatraIsland were seized for the development of big palm oilplantations, big timber plantations and oil mining. As aform of resistance to landlords and as a means to survive inthe midst of extreme poverty, they continue to assert andharvest Fresh Fruit Bunch of palm oil in the said lands,facing oppression and violence from the plantation securityunit, the police unit (POLRI) and the Indonesian NationalArmy (TNI). Similar conditions are faced by rural women wholive near or work in big plantations of landlords throughoutIndonesia. President Joko Widodo Administrations AgrarianReform and social assistance programs have weakened thepower of the people to live and continue to cause disunityamong rural women.

But fascism begets resistance.Rural women are organizing and asserting their rights inAsia and all over the world. They continue to defypatriarchal traditions and boldly resist caste and genderviolence and brutal attacks. They fight for freedom fromoppression and discrimination.

Together with othersectors of society, they uphold human rights, womensrights and the rights of all marginalized groups. They havechallenged governments, corporations and landlords. Theyhave tirelessly campaigned against development aggression,corruption, violence on women, trafficking, and militarism.They have joined strikes and protest actions to fight forhigher wages, food security, and basic services such aswater, health and education.

Rural womens movementsare advancing and in various levels of mass movements toresist patriarchy, local feudal-capitalist forces andimperialism.

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The split verdict in the Supreme Court on the hijab issue currently leaves little impact in real time. A tug of war which started out in pre-university collegesand surmounted the streets, finally came to the courts for adjudication, on whether a government order prohibiting the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in pre-university colleges is legal or not. The Karnataka High Court upheld this ban on the prohibition by the government. The petitioners who challenged it argued that the hijab is essential to Islam; the High Court said it is not.

On October 13, 2022, a decision on the appeal to the High Court judgement was reached; however, the Supreme Court bench did not agree on whether the hijab should be allowed in these educational institutions or not. Instead, Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia passed a split verdict, with the former ruling that insistence on wearing any dress is not conducive to the pious atmosphere of schools while the latter held that hijab should be a matter of choice.

With the hijab controversy reeling in India in the background, a 21-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, was murdered by the moral police in Iran because her hair was visible. Reports suggest that she was, in fact, wearing the hijab, just not in a manner she was expected to a practice often called bad hijab in Iran. The murder of Mahsa Amini made the bad hijab a symbol of resistance in Iran. The Islamic headscarf, thus, came to the centre stage of discourse across the world.

While many argue that the hijab should be a matter of choice and thus the determination of whether a girl should be allowed to wear it to school should be left to her, the argument conveniently brushes aside the paradox of how the hijab is a patriarchal practice which is often imposed on Muslim girls at a very young age, as most patriarchal practices are, under the pretext of choice.

In the split verdict, Justice Dhulias ruling that the hijab should be simply a matter of choice and that disallowing it inside schools would curb the girl child from the benefits of education, doesnt seem to be the correct understanding of the controversy. It mandates the practice of wearing hijab by a constitutional court, thereby endorsing a practice that has time and again proven to be oppressive and exploitative for women and girls.

The Supreme Court of India, in all its constitutional sobriety, should not lose sight of the evils of a practice, which is a double-edged sword indeed, for what may be projected as a choice might as well be the only one available.

In fact, in his dissenting view, Justice Dhulia has elaborated on a South African court judgement, in which the court came to the rescue of a girl who was asked to remove her nose stud at school, an item symbolic of her Tamil Hindu culture, to substantiate why the hijab should be allowed in schools in India.

This comparison between the nose stud and the hijab may be ill-founded as, firstly, they are two distinct symbols worn for completely different reasons. And checked the last time, no girl or woman has been killed for not wearing the nose stud or for wearing it incorrectly.

While Justice Dhulia is conscious of the problems faced by the girl child in India in his dissent and intricately describes the impediments she faces in the journey from home to the school gate, where the doors of education finally open for her and she can realise her dreams, he ignores the fundamentalism that may have fuelled the gates of the school when the protests unravelled in India.

Interestingly, while the judgement has elaborated on several foreign court pronouncements, it has not delved deep into the earliest cases vis--vis the hijab controversy that came up in Trinidad & Tobago in 1994, whereby an 11-year-old student was told by a Catholic school that she would not be allowed to wear the hijab while attending the Catholic-run but state-supported Convent school. Though the girl was allowed to wear a modified uniform, the judgement did not make a sweeping statement about the practice and the judges chose not to close their eyes to the social polarisations and interplay of politics in a constitutional court.

Many experts at the time have deemed the push for hijab at school by fundamentalist groups in the islands as an advancement of the newly constructed image of Muslim womanhood in schools as a means of pursuing their larger goal of adding a distinct Islamic identity to the national social context.

The judiciary in India cannot and should not close its eyes to the rising resistance against symbols of oppression and divisive politics that has picked up in the contemporary world. For, this would indeed be a travesty of justice and the larger goal of securing the rights of women may eventually be lost in the long run.

Sanya Talwar is Editor, Lawbeat. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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Opinion | Adjudicating on Centuries of Subjugation: Hijab, Fundamentalism, And The Girl Child - News18

The head of the international union that forced Qatar into groundbreaking labour reforms ahead of the upcoming football World Cup vowed Wednesday that other Gulf states will become the next target.

Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (IUTC) chief said Qatar has made "incredible progress" in its treatment of foreign workers to become a country fit to host World Cup.

The football tournament starts on November 20.

Qatar has agreed to increase its minimum wage and tougher labour inspections during the World Cup, ITUC said in a statement.

Qatar, which expects more than one million visitors during the first World Cup in an Arab state, has faced heavy criticism over rights issues concerning foreign workers, women and the LGBTQ community.

The death toll on construction sites, punishing hours, grim living conditions and workers deported for protesting unpaid wages have caused controversy.

Burrow, whose group claims to represent 200 million workers worldwide, said the changes were hard fought.

But she was convinced they would last well beyond the football final on December 18, and that neighbouring states should take note "because now they are our target".

Burrow said a legal union in Kuwait needs "reform" and labour groups in Bahrain need "much more freedom".

"There's still a level of government oppression in Saudi Arabia," shetold AFP in an interview.

"They've gone half the distance. They do have an impressive labour court, but the freedoms are not there yet that we'd like to see."

Burrow told of an atmosphere in which Qatari ministers at first refused to talk, but that the two sides had gone from "worst enemies" to "valuable friends".

"We said in 2015 there should be no World Cup without workers' rights," Burrow told AFP.

"I can honestly say now that my advice to fans is go to the World Cup, have fun."

Fans must do their own "due diligence", added Burrow, who will step down as the confederation leader next month.

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"It's going to be a great environment but keep your eyes open. There will be human rights monitors. And if you see issues of exploitation or concern, report them."

While Qatar still has to make progress on implementing new laws, Burrow said claims that more than 6,000 workers had died on construction sites in the decade after the state was awarded the tournament were "a myth".

She said there had been a large number of unaccounted deaths before the reforms.

"If you walked around this city in 2012 or 2013, and you saw no scaffolding, no harnesses, no protective equipment, then it was obvious that injuries and deaths were going to be massive," said Burrow.

But since ITUC launched an International Labour Organisation complaint against Qatar in 2016, there had been a reversal with reform laws, improved salaries and living conditions, she said.

Burrow hailed Qatar's law regulating working in extreme heat as one of the best in the world.

Qatar had been a major battleground in the ITUC's campaign against "modern slavery", but Burrow said Doha had performed a "10-year turnaround".

After a meeting with government officials, ITUC said Qatar had agreed to review the $250 a month minimum wage -- on top of food and accommodation -- in coming months. It was the first Gulf country to introduce a minimum wage.

Qatar has also agreed to increased labour inspections for hotels and conditions for security guards during the World Cup, the ITUC said.

The government also agreed to boost protections for domestic workers, who rights groups say are at risk of physical and sexual abuse.

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After reforming World Cup host Qatar, union targets other Gulf states - Yahoo Sports

The destruction of historical memory is a central element of fascist politics. In our own time, the attempt to erase history continues with Donald Trump's efforts to claim executive privilege to keep secret various government documents related to his stoking of the Jan. 6 insurrection and his retention of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago. As the New York Times reports, the legal question regarding whether he has the power to claim executive privilege to retain these documents is unclear:

President Biden is not backing Mr. Trump's attempt to use that power, and many legal scholars and the Justice Department have argued that he is stretching the narrow executive privilege rights the Supreme Court has said former presidents may invoke. But there are few definitive legal guideposts in this area, and the fights could have significant ramifications.

Independent of the legal questions at stake here, there are deeper substantive concerns for democracy if we empower a former president in his efforts to erase history. Over the last year and a half, Trump has consistently portrayed the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as patriots who sought to overturn a fraudulent election outcome in 2020, and as victims of federal government oppression. In an Orwellian effort to annihilate historical facts, the late Rush Limbaugh, when he wasn't celebrating the insurrectionists, baselessly claimed that they were fueled by antifa and "Democratically-sponsored instigators."

The impact of GOP propaganda on the party base has been pronounced. About three-quarters of Republicans say they believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, thereby perverting the outcome and throwing the victory to Joe Biden. In a recent Times-Siena poll, 69 percent of Republicans said that in the wake of the 2020 election Trump was "just exercising his right to contest the election," while only 21 percent agreed "he went so far that he threatened American democracy." The former sentiment seeks to exempt Trump from culpability for the Jan. 6 attack, despite his clear incitement of the insurrectionists before they stormed the Capitol, despite his refusal to mobilize the National Guard to stop them (or his claim that he tried to mobilize the National Guard but that Nancy Pelosi stopped him), despite Republicans' groundless claim that the FBI was responsible for Jan. 6, and despite Trump's subsequent efforts to celebrate and defend the insurrectionists. Also consistent with Republican disinformation, most Republicans believe "the riot was led by violent left-wing protesters," rather than by Trump supporters.

A majority of Americans don't want Trump to run again in 2024 but among Republicans, he's far and away the frontrunner. In that context, the popular vote won't prevent him from stealing the election.

The Republican effort to invert reality, utilizing the rhetoric of democracy as a weapon to undermine democracy, looms over future elections and their perceived legitimacy. While a majority of Americans more than six in 10 believe that Trump should not run again in 2024, Trump polls far and away as the frontrunner among potential Republican primary candidates. About half of Republicans say they want him to be the 2024 nominee, double the support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and five times that of Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley or Mike Pence. With Trump and other Big Lie Republicans in unquestioning control of the party, a majority popular vote against Trump no longer appears sufficient to stop him from potentially stealing the 2024 election. As has been recently reported, about a third of Republicans running for various state offices now embrace Big Lie election-fraud propaganda. Other estimates suggest the threat is much higher, with 60 percent of Americans voting in elections this fall where an election denier is running as a Republican.

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It would only take a few of these Big Lie Republicans in major political positions ratifying crucial counties in battleground states or serving in legislatures or as secretaries of state to overturn popular majority votes going forward that favor Democratic candidates based on bogus claims of voter fraud. The easiest path to pulling off that kind of electoral coup would be by nullifying Democratic majority votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia. Looking at the election map in 2020, Trump lost the electoral vote to Biden, 306-232. Hypothetically, if the 2024 election turned out the same as 2020, Trump could prevail over Biden or another Democrat by stealing Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Wisconsin (16) and Georgia (16), overturning a Democratic majority vote through nullification efforts by Republican state operatives. That would produce a Trump "victory" in the Electoral College of 284 to 254.

Republicans could also cause a constitutional crisis with a lot less monkey-wrenching. If even one state were to nullify a popular majority vote and hand its electoral votes to Trump in defiance of the voters, that would set a dangerous precedent in which election outcomes are untethered from popular majorities and instead become prizes to be divvied up by partisan operatives and saboteurs. (Admittedly, this was pretty much the situation in some 19th-century elections, most notably in 1876: Who actually "won" that notorious contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden remains an unsettled question even today.)

Depending on who one talks to these days, the above scenarios are either written off as paranoia of the "it can't happen here" variety, or are seriously entertained by those who perceive Trump and his party as a looming threat to democracy. But they cannot be dismissed as outlandish, considering Trump's obvious strategic efforts to stage a successful political-electoral coup the next time around. The fact that Americans live in such radically different political universes, where for some Trump is the savior of democracy and for others he represents its doom, is testament to the overwhelming power of propaganda and the war on historical memory, evidence-based reasoning and truth.

Without question, online, cable, and talk radio echo chambers bear much of the blame for allowing Republicans to retreat to alternate realities, where the QAnon-embracing ex-president is really a heroic liberator. But the problem's much larger than the media. The Republican Party in total has been taken over by Big Lie election propaganda and now overtly works to subvert democracy. But those efforts can only prevail through or alongside a successful effort to declare war on historical memory and political facts.

Those who hope that time has sobered up Trump's base must face the fact that nearly half of Republicanscontinue to believe that "strong, unelected leaders are better than weak elected ones."

There's ample evidence of deep rot in American political culture, where democracy itself is increasingly in question. Tens of millions of Republicans apparently long for a strongman-style leader who creates his own political realities. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans conceded before the 2020 election that there was nothing Trump could do that would undermine their support for him. That sort of personality cult is a classic warning sign of rising fascism: the mass embrace of a larger-than-life demagogue who is empowered to create and dictate his own realities, facts be damned. Those hoping that time has sobered up Trump's base must face the fact that nearly half of Republicans 42 percent continue to believe that "strong, unelected leaders are better than weak elected ones." It's difficult to divorce that sentiment from Trump's political fortunes, considering his large loss in the 2020 election coupled with his efforts to impose himself for a second term via a quasi-constitutional coup attempt.

For those Americans who look at their country with clear eyes, the stakes are increasingly clear. The GOP's war on truth and historical memory has a clear goal: the demise of political agency for any majority that relies on voting alone to defeat it. We desperately need to reinvigorate the American educational system, prioritizing the teaching of information literacy, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, particularly as applied to the social world. If we want, that is, to have any chance of rolling back fascist efforts to destroy electoral politics and republican governing principles as we know them.

U.S. education, while traditionally stressing scientific reasoning when it comes to studying the natural world, has performed badly in prioritizing scientific, evidence-based reasoning to help students better understand the social world. Repairing our broken education system is admittedly made more difficult by the bipartisan focus on infantilizing American youth, treating them as neoliberal consumers and future drones in the corporate workforce and stressing the vocational uses of "education" over critical thought and active citizenship. In this context, students and parents willing to fight back against the dismantling of education become all the more vital.

Rolling back the war on history and truth won't happen simply by prosecuting Trump for any one of the many laws he's broken. It requires building a better America by re-socializing young people to value democracy rather than indulging in efforts to destroy it. It demands a return to teaching vigorous critical thinking, the only tool that can beat back post-truth propaganda and preserve the damaged ideals of an informed citizenry and a legitimate democracy.

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Trump's long game: Executive privilege and the assault on historical memory - Salon

Robert Keith Packer, a 57-year-old Virginian, achieved a measure of infamy at the January 6 Capitol riot when he was photographed wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones along with the words Camp Auschwitz. Work Brings Freedom, the front said, a translation of the notorious motto Arbeit macht frei that appeared on the gates of Auschwitz and several other Nazi concentration camps. On the back was the word Staff.

Packer was sentenced to 75 days in prison on September 16, 2022, for his role in the riot he was tried for his actions, not his clothing. But his sweatshirt was far from the only Holocaust reference on January 6 or in its aftermath.

Rioters have compared their arrests to the persecution of Jews, and commentator Candace Owens compared January 6 to the Reichstag fire, which Adolf Hitler used as pretext to consolidate power in 1933. It is a reminder of something that is all too apparent to scholars of the Holocaust, like myself: Americans are willing to trivialize the genocide by turning it into a tool for their own political goals.

As a historian who has written about the American role in liberating concentration camps at the end of World War II, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about how Americans have and have not talked about the Holocaust in the decades since. There is little evidence that outright denial of the Holocaust is widespread. Instead, the problem is a poor understanding of the tragedy, including this countrys response the focus of a remarkable documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust, which recently premiered on PBS.

Forgetting exclusion

The contemporary American story of the Holocaust focuses on the U.S. role in helping to bring the Nazi regime of terror to an end. A more nuanced understanding of Americas reaction is less comforting.

The PBS series, produced by acclaimed filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, traces what Americans knew about the vast and murderous campaign against civilians in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s, as a flood of Jewish refugees attempted to flee Hitlers Germany.

The U.S. did not enter the war to stop Nazi persecution of Europes Jews. In fact, a majority of Americans opposed entering the war at all until 1940, a year before the Pearl Harbor attack brought the U.S. into the conflict.

Many Americans had no interest in protecting the rights of religious or ethnic minorities at home or abroad. Antisemitism and anti-foreign prejudice was a core element of American society in the early 20th century, just as white supremacy was. These forms of hatred and exclusion drew from the same well of supposedly scientific beliefs about racial hierarchy.

While the U.S. allowed almost 125,000 Jewish refugees to enter the country during the years between Hitlers rise to power and the start of the war, many more were denied entry or left in limbo.

Remembering liberation

This part of the countrys response has been largely forgotten, in favor of a story where the U.S. plays a more heroic part. The liberation of the concentration camps in the spring of 1945 plays a central role in public memories of the war today, along with the Allied landings in Normandy on D-Day in 1944. The hall through which millions of visitors have entered the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is lined with flags of the liberator divisions of the U.S. Army.

There is no question that the arrival of American forces at Buchenwald, Dachau and other camps across western and southern Germany saved thousands of prisoners facing murder or death by starvation and sickness. In reality, however, the systematic murder of Europes Jews had largely concluded, and primarily took place hundreds of miles to the east in what is today Poland, Ukraine, Russia and the Baltic states. By the time American forces landed in western Europe, Europes Jewish population had already been reduced to a few small pockets.

Within weeks of the arrival of American troops at Buchenwald, Americans saw images and newsreel film of the horrors of the camps. However, it took decades for the story of camp liberation to become the most important act of the war in Europe in Americans minds. It would not be until the 1980s, when the liberators and survivors were entering old age, that the Holocaust was firmly entrenched in American school curricula and popular culture.

One important consequence of this long wait was that the stories told by and about liberators changed in the intervening decades. As Americans became more familiar with the events of the Holocaust through television and films, liberator stories began to grow more similar to each other and merged into a general story of the Holocaust, which increasingly focused on the horrors of the death camps in German-occupied Poland. Liberators of Buchenwald describing the event decades afterward, for example, thought they remembered gas chambers at the camp, when in fact there were none at that location.

Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland the most infamous camp facility, with its gates saying Arbeit macht frei came to represent all concentration camps in American memory, and even in family stories. In 2008, for example, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told a crowd about his great-uncles participation in the liberation of Auschwitz. Auschwitz was actually liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945. Obamas campaign later clarified that his great-uncle, Charles Payne, participated in the liberation of Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald.

Talking about the Holocaust today

The centrality of camp liberation to the American story of the Holocaust has real consequences. It turns the Holocaust into a story of American triumph over evil and overlooks the countrys refusal to do more to save the victims.

This simplistic version of a complex history has allowed many Americans to use the Holocaust and Nazism as shallow symbols for any kind of government action they oppose and deem oppressive, particularly public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Opponents have compared infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci to SS physician and torturer Dr. Josef Mengele. Representative Marjorie Greene has compared face mask rules to forcing Jews to wear Star of David badges, and Capitol police agencies to the Nazi-era Gestapo.

As Burns documentary emphasizes, the U.S. is once again in a time of national reckoning about race, discrimination and histories of oppression. In the final minutes of The U.S. and the Holocaust, viewers see marchers in Charlottsville, Virginia, chanting Jews will not replace us, television pundits opining about the threat of cultural decline through immigration, the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, and the January 6 riot. There in the crowd, wearing his sweatshirt, is Robert Keith Packer.

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Politics and the Holocaust: America faces a reckoning about race, discrimination, and history of oppression - Milwaukee Independent