Category Archives: Government Oppression

Paramount is set to go to the future with2084, a sci-fi film fromThe Batman writerMattson Tomlin. The project is being described as a spiritual sister to George Orwells classic1984, whichreally just sounds like theyre adapting1984 but changing the year so its no longer dated. The script is also described as having a tone similar to bothThe Matrix andInception.

THR has the scoop on2084, which was just snapped up by Paramount.Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce. And just what is this movie about? Dont ask, because no one is saying. Instead, the quality of Mattson Tomlins script is being played up, with THR reporting that 2084 generated interest from filmmakers and talent who were eager to get involved before its pick-up, a testament to Tomlins writing prowess.

Beyond that, all we know is that the movie will be similar in tone toThe Matrix andInception, and that its a spiritual sister to1984.1984 is, of course, George Orwells classic about government oppression, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and a bunch of other stuff that all feels uncomfortably familiar to us saps here in the 21st century.1984 was previously adapted into a 1984 film starringJohn Hurt and Richard Burton. Its also served as partial inspiration for plenty of other films, includingEquilibriumand Equals. More often than not, the themes of1984 tend to get blended into movies along with books likeBrave New World andFahrenheit 451, which also deal withtotalitarian future societies. Its almost as if the writers of the past were all warning us that the future our present was going to be a constant waking nightmare.

Giving the film the title2084 and connecting it to1984 really makes me think this is going to end up being an updated, more futuristic take on Orwells tale, but well have to wait and see how that shakes out. Comparing the tone toThe Matrix andInception suggests there will be plenty of mind-bending elements at play, though.Tomlin has directed several short films and penned multiple scripts, but hes likely to become a big up-and-comer based on having worked onThe Batman with Matt Reeves. Tomlin is also responsible for a currently unproduced script based on the video gameMega Man.

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'2084': Paramount Making '1984'-Inspired Sci-Fi Film From 'The Batman' Writer - /FILM

The Pulitzer Prize has officially revealed the winners for 2020. The prize for Breaking News Photography went to the entire Reuters photography staff for their coverage of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, while the prize for Feature Photography was awarded to Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press for their striking documentary photos of life in Kashmir.

The entire Reuters photography staff was awarded this years prize for Breaking News Photography, for their wide-ranging and illuminating photographs of Hong Kong as citizens protested infringement of their civil liberties and defended the regions autonomy by the Chinese government.

In addition to the award itself, the Reuters staff takes home a $15,000 cash prize in recognition of their achievement. You can view the full gallery of winning photos with captions here.

The photography staff of @Reuters has won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for its coverage of last year's violent protests in Hong Kong. More images: https://t.co/uvENRgibZW pic.twitter.com/GIxpmSSZuW

Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) May 5, 2020

Congratulations to the @Reuters team, including @jamespomfret, @GregTorode, David Lague, @TomLasseter, @a_roantree, @QiZHAI, @DavidKirton_, @farahmaster, @clarejim & @stecklow for being a #Pulitzer Prize finalist in International Reporting for 'The Revolt of Hong Kong' series! pic.twitter.com/mMcLSjxQ7f

PR Team at Reuters (@ReutersPR) May 4, 2020

The prize for Feature Photography was awarded to three photographers from the Associated PressChanni Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasinfor their striking images of life in the contested territory of Kashmir as India revoked its independence, executed through a communications blackout.

As with the Breaking News Pulitzer, the photo agency will also receive a $15,000 cash prize in recognition of their Feature Photography award. You can view the full gallery of winning photos with captions here.

Associated Press photographers @daryasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand found ways to let outsiders see what was happening. Now, their work has been honored with the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography. https://t.co/0Nf4FMG4xn

AP Images (@AP_Images) May 4, 2020

Dear colleagues and friends I just want to say Thank you and that this award @PulitzerPrizes an honor for us. I could never have imagine in my life time. it could have also been impossible without my family both at home and AP Thank you for always sanding by us.

mukhtar khan (@muukhtark_khan) May 4, 2020

Thank you Colleagues, friends, brothers. I would just like to say thank you for standing by us always. Its an honour and a privilege beyond any we could have ever imagined. Its overwhelming to receive this honor.

Dar Yasin (@daryasin) May 4, 2020

Thankyou everyone https://t.co/4Sh4EP9s68

Channi Anand (@channiap) May 5, 2020

To find out more about the prizes or see the full galleries for each prize, head over to the Pulitzer website. And if you want to see how the 2020 winners stack up compared to last year, check out our coverage from 2019 here.

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2020 Pulitzer Prizes Won by Photos of Protests in Hong Kong and Oppression in Kashmir - PetaPixel

Two police officers from the mounted unit of NYPD are seen near the Emergency Service at NYU Langone Health-Tisch Hospital during the coronavirus pandemic, on April 23, 2020. (Photo by Selcuk Acar / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

EDITORS NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.

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A fringe benefit of the coronavirus lockdown is that this is the longest Ive gone as an adult without being harassed by, or fearing harassment from, the police. My home might as well be Wakanda during this crisis: a safe haven, with lots of toilet paper and no colonizers, from which I can watch, but am not directly subjected to, the oppression of white society.Ad Policy

The good times cannot last forever. I suppose Im lucky to have had any good times at all. Essential workers already have to leave their private sanctuaries and contend with oppression. So has everybody without the financial means to pay grossly inflated prices for groceries and other essentials via delivery services. Black people who just want to catch a bit of fresh air have already caught hell from the police. Im safe from the cops right now only because I can afford to be.

Eventually, the country will force all of us to reopen and, as it does, police will be more empowered than ever to stop and brutalize black and brown people. Thats because the cops will useare already usingsocial distancing enforcement as an excuse for more racially biased harassment. Reopening will force African Americans back into the crosshairs of two predators. On the one side, Covid-19 will be waiting to kill us in even greater disproportion to white folks than it is now. On the other? Our alpha predator, the American police officer.

Just this past weekend, as spring finally hit the East Coast, New York City was not a tale of two cities so much as a tale of two races. In the West Village, predominately white crowds gathered in blatant violation of social distancing rules. Friendly neighborhood police officers could be spotted handing out masks. Meanwhile, in the East Village, a black man was brutally beaten and arrested for allegedly not keeping social distance from a woman companion as they left a deli. After the beating, one of the plainclothes officers was photographed casually sitting on the mans head as he lay prone on the pavement.

This is the kind of unequal and brutal treatment African Americans can expect from police as were all forced to resume normal routines. Normal for black people is being in potentially mortal danger every time we are within six feet of a police officer, whether or not the cop has Covid-19.

The new normal for black people will include all of the old reasons cops use to harass us, plus new excuses that will be used to justify brutality in the name of public health, of all things.Current Issue

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Every time we give cops power to interdict citizens, they use that power in a racially biased way. Black people are 20 percent more likely to be pulled over while driving. Black people are more likely to be prosecuted for drug possession or use. Black people are more likely to be stopped for walking down the damn street.

A society committed to racial and social equality would be looking for ways to strip power from police forces that have so completely shown they are unable or unwilling to wield it fairly. Instead, the coronavirus has made this society eager to give even more power to law enforcement.

Consider New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He is one of the leaders in the response to the pandemic, but he has also been one of the leaders in talking tough about the need for penalties for people who violate social distancing guidelines. He wants large gatherings broken up. He wants people to wear masks. He said, at his daily press conference on Monday, that he wants to empower local governments to impose fines and penalties to help enforce social distancing rules in their community.

Well, who enforces those rules and guidelines? Who imposes the penalty for violating orders? In most situations, it will be a cop on the street who is empowered to determine who is violating social distancing, and what to do about them. Maybe Cuomo trusts the cops to use their newfound power reasonably and responsibly. Maybe Cuomo thinks were living in a post-racial utopia where the cops can be trusted to serve and protect all people equallybut Ive got 41 years of lived black experience to tell him hes wrong.

What is particularly maddening is that black and brown communities havent been the biggest violators of social distancing rules. Its been the Covid-loving Trump people. White MAGA confederates are the ones menacing state governments with guns. White MAGA confederates are the ones who have decided that wearing a mask is just like slavery and that being told to shelter-in-place is like being put in a concentration camp. White MAGA confederates have turned public health rules into grounds for a culture war. But when it comes time for cops to crack some skulls, you best believe that the police brutality well see will be visited upon black and brown communities.

We know whats going to happen, yet no government officials, be they in red states or blue, seem willing to do anything to stop the impending over-policing of places that black people occupy. We know white people will congregate at beaches without keeping appropriate distance from each other, while black people will be chased off courts and playgrounds by police zealously enforcing new rules. We know that white bars will exceed occupancy guidelines with impunity, while black clubs will be fined for packing too many people inside. We know white people who violently threaten police officers trying to enforce social distancing will get off with a warning, while black people who so much as talk back to a cop will get the snot beat out of them, or worse.

We know whats going to happen, because its already happening. Yet many white politicians will end up defending the police for the brutal measures they take to enforce new public health guidelines. And even the best white leaders will only manage to be performatively shocked and appalled when the thing they allowed to happen inevitably continues to happen.

Whenever the discussion of racially biased police brutality comes up, theres always a chorus of people who claim that cops wouldnt harass black people if black people followed the rules. Thats always a ridiculous argument, but the coronavirus is going to expose the weakness of that logic even more than usual. Thats because black people will be harassed for not following social distancing rules, but well also be harassed if we do. Earlier in the crisis, a video went viral of a black man being kicked out of a Walmart for, apparently, wearing a mask in the store.

I cannot emphasize this point enough: Every piece of advice Ive had scolded into me by my parents tells me to never, ever wear a mask or a scarf or any kind of face covering around white folks, even when its freezing. Ive owned maybe three hooded sweatshirts in my entire life, all of them emblazoned with my university insignia, which in my mind reads, Dont Shoot: I went to Harvard. And I still only wear one on the very coldest days. My 4-year-old son loves his little dinosaur hoodie, and I dread the day when I have to explain to him why he cant wear it anymore; I know that day is coming when he gets, not older, but merely taller.

I ordered N95 masks for my family back in February, long before the general public was properly concerned about the virus. I think the reason I was so quick off the mark with those was because I knew that wed need something with the prominent little air filter thingies to keep us safe, not from Covid-19 but from white store owners. Maybe this coronavirus changes white peoples reactions to black people wearing masks, but Im not willing to bet my life on it.

This is the reality I have waiting for me when the government forces me out of my cop-free quarantine. I will become vulnerable again. One cop could see me as a menace if I walk around with a mask. Another cop could see me as a lawbreaker if I stand too close to my wife. One neighbor might call the cops on me if I invite friends over for a barbeque. Another might call the cops on me if they see a masked black man taking a solitary walk near their home. No matter what I do, it will be my fault for inviting whatever harassment I get.

Its been wonderful to spend a few weeks worrying about how to survive a virus, instead of how to survive an encounter with police. Quarantine is probably as close as Ill ever come to living like a white person. I could get used to all this freedom and liberty the coronavirus has provided.

But it wont last. Our society wont open up without giving law enforcement additional excuses to put black people back in a choke hold.

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Covid Is About to Become the Newest Excuse for Police Brutality - The Nation

The first confirmed coronavirus infection in Yemen was identified in a 60-year-old man on Good Friday. No additional cases have been reported since then, but that can hardly be for lack of transmission, for its difficult to imagine a country more ill-equipped to fight COVID-19s spread. This small Middle Eastern nation has endured five years of violence, blockade, starvation, and epidemic, and its medical system was ravaged before the pandemic began. The United Nations considers Yemens condition the worlds worst humanitarian crisisand its a crisis to which our government contributes.

Located at the southern edge of Saudi Arabia and bordering the Red Sea, Yemen is thought to be the home of the biblical queen of Sheba, and perhaps only biblical language can adequately convey its confluence of miseries. The prophets mournful condemnations of violence and oppression all find expression in Yemen: The combatants feet run to evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways.The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths (Isa. 59:78, NRSV). Yemen illustrates all too well the way sin flows from sin (Ps. 7:1416) and how human and natural evil can conspire in our fallen world.

Yemen illustrates all too well the way sin flows from sin and how human and natural evil can conspire in our fallen world.

When Yemens civil war began in 2015, it was little noticed in the United States. Widely ignored too was the Obama administrations decision to support a coalition intervention led by Saudi Arabia to back the Yemeni government and oppose the Houthi rebels challenging its power. Then-President Barack Obama never obtained congressional authorization for US involvement in this war, as required by the Constitution, and President Donald Trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional resolution to end American involvement last year.

While neither administration permanently planted any significant number of US boots on the ground in Yemen, both backed the coalition even as it racked up credible accusations of war crimes. Washington sold the Saudi coalition weapons, including a bomb used in the Saudi school bus strike that killed 40 children. Our militarys intelligence sharing informed the coalitions air campaign as it bombed civilian targets like hospitals, schools, markets, refugee camps, weddings, funerals, food factories, and water treatment plants.

That damage to clean water sources fueled in Yemen the largest cholera outbreak on record in world history. Cholera is a waterborne disease in which diarrhea and vomiting cause catastrophic dehydration, and Yemeni cholera cases are estimated at more than 2 million in a population of 28 million. The same poor hygiene conditions that help cholera spread will spread COVID-19 too.

But the US-backed coalitions single most harmful tactic is its ongoing blockade of Yemens airports and seaports. Ostensibly intended to prevent the Houthis from obtaining weapons from Iran, it has produced famine conditions and severe shortages of medical supplies. Yemen is a desert nation that must import 90 percent of its food, so under siege, Yemen is starving. Photos of malnourished Yemeni children call to mind Holocaust victims. A Yemeni child of five years or younger dies of starvation and other preventable causes every 12 minutes.

Between war casualties, cholera, and starvation, Yemens medical system has long been overwhelmed. Only half its hospitals are functioning normally. Medicine and equipment are in short supply, and many doctors and nurses worked without pay until outside aid groups began to cover some salaries. There is no scenario in which Yemen can be prepared for the coronavirus. There is no scenario in which Yemeni COVID-19 patients will receive the care they need.

But there is a scenario in which the United States could stop adding to Yemens suffering: We could stop assisting the Saudi coalition. Politically, this should be an easy sell: It has bipartisan support in Congress and among Americans aware of the war. It would not jeopardize US securitythe Houthis have only local ambitions, and the power vacuum of civil war helps terrorist organizations rather than curbing them, most notably al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). (AQAP-linked fighters have even obtained American weapons and armored vehicles flowing into Yemen via coalition forces.)

US military withdrawal from Yemens conflict is no guarantor of peace. It will not rebuild hospitals or control epidemics. But it would make the coalition intervention impossible to continue, at least at its current scale. That could push Saudi Arabia and its allies to reach a peace deal or long-term ceasefire with the rebels after multiple failed negotiations. And it could well break the blockade, allowing in vital food and medical aid.

Open ports and a decline in violence in Yemen would give Christians an opportunity to serve the Yemeni people in ways that are now all but impossible. A NGO worker in Yemen told me few of the aid organizations that have managed to stay active in the country are affiliated with churches. That is partly because Yemen is a dangerous place for Christians, this worker emphasized. A mass shooting in 2016 included four nuns and a priest among its victims; international Christian aid workers were kidnapped and killed in 2009; and three Southern Baptist missionaries were martyred in Yemen in 2003. The Yemeni Christian population is extremely small and subject to persecution (conversion from Islam is prohibited). That likely wont change however the civil war concludes, as neither the Yemeni government nor the Houthi rebels respect religious freedom. Yemen needs spiritual care as much medical and economic aid.

In this pandemic and after, amid civil war and after, Yemen desperately needs the church. It needs Christians to imitate our God who will incline [his] ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more (Ps. 10:1718, NRSV). It needs us to embody Gods self-sacrificial care for the helpless. Yemen needs peace, and it needs our prayers.

Bonnie Kristian is a columnist at Christianity Today, a contributing editor at The Week, a fellow at Defense Priorities, and the author of A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (Hachette).

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The Virus Breaks the Camel's Back - ChristianityToday.com

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands inside the H-blocks of Long Kesh internment camp. On 5 May 1981, Sands laid down his life for his and his comrades right for recognition as political prisoners. On this day, we should remember the sacrifice he made for the cause of Irish freedom. But his struggle does not just provide an example that all anti-imperialists should follow. It also serves as an important reminder of the ruthless brutality of the British government in Ireland under the leadership of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. And that is equally something that we should never forget.

On 1 March, 1976, the British government announced an end to Special Category status for members of paramilitary organisations imprisoned for offences related to the conflict in Ireland. This formed part of a multi-pronged propaganda strategy to falsely portray the republican insurrection against British rule as some kind of aggravated crime wave.

In response, republican prisoners began a series of protests to regain the lost privileges, as well as the symbolic importance of prisoner of war status. This included the right to wear ones own clothes, free association and exemption from prison work. IRA volunteer Kieran Nugent began the blanket protest when he refused to wear a prison uniform. Thrown into his cell naked, he draped himself in the only thing available a grey, prison-issue blanket.

After suffering beatings from prison officers on their way to the shower areas, republican prisoners began the no wash protest, in which they refused to bathe, cut their hair or shave. When prison officers refused to empty their chamber pots, republican prisoners were forced to smear their own excrement on the walls, which marked the beginning of the dirty protest.

In 1979, their prospects became even bleaker with the election of the right-wing government of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. When it became clear that Thatcher wouldnt grant even the most modest of concessions, republican prisoners began a hunger strike in 1980. It ended without any deaths when her government appeared to concede some of the strikers demands. But the document containing the terms of the agreement turned out to be vague and open to interpretation, and the prison regime was quickly returned to a situation little better than how it was before.

Determined not to be double-crossed again, the new Officer Commanding (OC) of the republican prisoners, 27-year-old Bobby Sands, launched a second hunger strike with a crucial difference from the last. The strikers would stagger their joining of the fast one-by-one and two weeks apart so that each would near death one at a time. As OC, Sands volunteered to go first, making him the most likely to die. On 1 March, 1981, Sands refused his prison food, beginning the second hunger strike in Long Kesh just over two months after the end of the first.

On 5 March, less than a week into Sands fast, Frank Maguire, the independent nationalist member of parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving his seat in Westminster vacant. The republican leadership on the outside hatched a plan. They were forever getting dismissed by political opponents for not having a mandate, but if they stood Sands as a candidate in the resultant by-election and won, they could demonstrate to the British government and the wider world that the hunger strikers demands had popular support in the community.

On 9 April 1981, Bobby Sands won the election with over 30,000 votes almost 10,000 more than Thatcher had won in her home constituency of Finchley in the 1979 UK general election. The victory provided the republican movement with a powerful morale boost and demolished the British governments argument that they had no support.

But in spite of Sands victory, along with international pressure from the Irish diaspora abroad and others around the world, Thatcher refused to budge. On May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands died of starvation 66 days into his fast at 27 years of age. Over 100,000 mourners lined his cortege in one of the largest political funerals in Irish history.

Sands death led to international outcry at the treatment of the prisoners and Thatchers intransigence in meeting their demands. Critics pointed out that as members of a guerrilla army operating in contested territory, republican prisoners were entitled under the Geneva Convention to be recognised as prisoners of war. One letter, sent from one Bernard Sanders (then-mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the US), stated:

We are deeply disturbed by your governments unwillingness to stop the abuse, humiliation and degrading treatment of the Irish prisoners now on strike in Northern Ireland

We ask you to end your intransigent policy towards the prisoners before the reputation of the English people for fair play and simple decency is further damaged in the eyes of the people of Vermont and the United States.

In October 1981, the British government eventually conceded most of the prisoners demands; but not before nine more republican hunger strikers had followed Sands to the grave.

This episode perhaps shows more than any other the utter depravity, brutality, ruthlessness and lack of humanity that lurked within the twisted soul of Margaret Thatcher. All but one of the men were under 30 years old and left behind grieving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and, in some cases, children all for the crime of fighting back against foreign oppression and discrimination in their own country.

Sands brave sacrifice stands as an example that all anti-imperialists and advocates of justice can aspire to. But it also serves as a reminder of Thatchers sordid legacy of death and destruction in Ireland.

Featured image via Wikimedia /Flickr Levi Ramishvili

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We should never forget Bobby Sands, nor the brutality of the Thatcher government in Ireland - The Canary

India may be the worlds largest democracy, but it also has other claims to fame: according to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, it is the worlds second-largest importer of arms. With its allocation for defense almost five times as much as that for health, the country also spends a significant part of its budget manufacturing as many weapons as it can domestically.

The Indian authorities transport much of this weaponry to the northern valley of Kashmir, where it is deployed on the streets against unarmed protesters demanding their right to self-determination. Indian forces have experimented on the people of Kashmir with a whole range of weapons over the years.

They have used pellet guns which they claim are nonlethal to maim and blind tens of thousands of ordinary people. They routinely fire tear gas canisters of various kinds which have, along with many other casualties, resulted in the deaths of two schoolboys after military men shot them in the head at point-blank range. Indian forces have killed thousands with the weapons they consider nonlethal and countless more with the lethal ones. All with complete impunity.

On the streets of Kashmir, the excessive use of tear gas has predictably caused grave damage to the respiratory systems of the civilian population, who find their homes engulfed in smoke and pepper gas, even with the windows closed. A paper published by Turkish researchers showed that inhaling tear gas over a period of time can have a significant harmful effect on a persons lungs. The people of Kashmir have been breathing it in for decades now.

In this place of sadness and defiance, news of the first confirmed COVID-19 case in March spread like the smoke of a tear gas canister. It stoked up panic and chaos in the immediate vicinity, while in regions further afield, people initially scoffed at those who displayed signs of alarm.

Soon, however, people stocked up on rice, pulses, and potatoes and sat inside their homes, perhaps aware that no one in power would want to save a people under occupation if the pandemic took hold, and also conscious of the shortcomings of Indias malformed health care system.

Medical experts and health organizations have insisted that in most cases, only people with an underlying medical condition succumb to the virus: hypertension, diabetes, or respiratory problems. Unfortunately, this means that the people of Kashmir are especially vulnerable to this deadly virus, because of their ruined lungs and the hypertension caused by years of conflict.

Only last year, on August 5, when Indias far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government officially (but illegally) revoked what was left of Kashmirs autonomy, it also implemented one of the longest and most rigorous clampdowns in history throughout the region. Any space for dissent was eliminated. The authorities detained thousands of activists, academics, and journalists, including even politicians who are considered apologists for the Indian government; most of them are still locked up.

They also booked tens of thousands of ordinary people under draconian laws, including children as young as nine years old, many of whom were tortured. Life as we know it, already precarious in Kashmir, came to a standstill.

The government withdrew some of the restrictions on physical movement after months of international pressure. But the constraints on mobile communication have only recently been relaxed, and internet coverage is still limited to an ancient and tortoise-paced 2G.

Even in the midst of a global medical emergency, after eight long months, the Indian state is not allowing people access to reliable high-speed internet. Because of this, doctors and medical experts in Kashmir are unable to obtain the latest information about COVID-19.

Students, who have been out of school since August 5 last year, have no facilities to study online. Working from home for professionals is out of the question. People associated with handicrafts and the tourism industry the majority of the population in Kashmir have been out of work since August, too, not merely since the start of the pandemic. They are increasingly forced to take up odd jobs to make ends meet.

The never-ending conflict has left Kashmirs health care system in ruins, if it can even be said to exist at all. At a time when the World Health Organization has been urging states to carry out tests on a grand scale, fewer than 15,000 tests had been carried out in Jammu and Kashmir by April 27, for a population of 12.5 million.

There are just ninety-seven ventilators and a handful of functioning hospitals that are ill-equipped, as patients have repeatedly complained. A senior doctor warned Al Jazeera that if the pandemic takes root in Kashmir, we will die like cattle.

To add to the crippling shortcomings of the health care system, the Indian state has threatened the doctors and health care workers in Kashmir who had spoken out against poor management and the lack of proper equipment by telling them that strict action would be taken against anyone who publicly criticizes the efforts of the authorities to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. After this statement, the state-run media interviewed doctors and health care workers on a regular basis to back up an apologetic narrative, praising the authorities for doing an excellent job.

Outside, on the streets, the Indian forces have been harassing and beating up health care workers, even though they are exempt from the lockdown. A person who was on his way home from the hospital told a national publication that he was brutally roughed up and hit on the head with a rifle butt.

Soldiers stopped a journalist who works for a local magazine at a checkpoint and demanded that he open up his bag. When he tried asking questions, the Indian soldier cut him short: This is not the virus curfew, this is our curfew.

The Indian states approach to the COVID-19 outbreak in Kashmir reeks of its imperial and militaristic attitude. Further proof of this came when it issued a new set of domicile orders, taking advantage of the pandemic and the lockdown, in the full knowledge that popular resistance in a time of emergency would be minimal.

Indian military forces have already occupied thousands of acres of land in Kashmir for decades, but the new rules make it possible for any Indian citizen to own land or acquire a much-coveted government job in the region. This poses a serious demographic threat, as the BJP and its parent organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have vowed to turn India into a Hindu nation. This act of pulling Kashmir completely under the dominance of the Indian constitution also makes the question of self-determination yet more difficult.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, the Indian state still finds the time to persecute Kashmiri journalists. Only last week, the authorities booked a female photojournalist under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) which allows the government to designate any individual as a terrorist without evidence for sharing her previously published photographs on social media.

Within twenty-four hours, police had booked two more senior journalists, also using the UAPA in one case, for equally fatuous reasons. This brazen attempt to intimidate journalists who are trying to cover the Kashmir conflict is not a new development, but the fact that those journalists are now being branded as terrorists is deeply concerning.

Even scarier, perhaps, is the way that the Indian state is exploiting this opportunity to normalize a pervasive regime of surveillance, both physical and electronic, which will remain in place even after the pandemic is over. Although surveillance has long been a major tool for perpetuating the occupation of Kashmir, the authorities are taking such measures to a qualitatively higher level, with every action of every individual now being monitored.

A senior police officer said that he felt like he was chasing a militant while tracing peoples travel histories via call records and bank transactions. This comment underlines how the Indian state is building in the phrase of Edward Snowden the architecture of oppression.

This intensified surveillance regime is just one aspect of a broader reality: the Indian state has approached the task of containing the pandemic in Kashmir as if it were a military operation. In response, people have been trying to avoid being taken by the authorities to quarantine centers.

They distrust these state-controlled centers intensely, associating them with detention camps where torture is routine. The idea of a quarantine center evokes not hope, as it should, but fear: in the minds of Kashmiri people, it looks like a jail.

Meanwhile, in faraway villages of South Kashmir, the Indian forces continue to kill rebels fighting against the state (or as the Indian media likes to put it, they eliminate terrorists). On April 12, as the world was still preoccupied with the humanitarian crisis, Indian soldiers moved into a mountain village in North Kashmir and used the poor villagers as human shields, firing at Pakistani forces across the Line of Control (LoC).

The two countries, which dont have enough face masks to contain the virus, still had the resources for an exchange of heavy artillery fire, which resulted in the death of at least four people on both sides of the border, including two children aged eight and two.

This helps the Indian state in more ways than one: as well as driving home the message to the people of Kashmir that nothing, not even a medical emergency, can prevent the state from doing what it wants to do with them, it also diverts the attention of Indias Hindu majority from the countrys collapsed health care system and an economy whose condition is even worse, toward an enemy who wants to attack us.

In spite of these horrors, the Kashmiris are holding up with a sense of harmony, perhaps rooted in years of conflict and shared suffering. Many people from different organizations as well as individuals have come forward to provide money and supplies to people who might not be able to survive the lockdown without assistance.

Such groups took the initiative to provide thousands of doctors and medical workers with personal protective equipment (PPE). The administration has rewarded these efforts with constant harassment and attempts to regulate their work.

As much of the worlds population sits with their fingers crossed, hoping for the pandemic to disappear as unexpectedly as it arrived, they at least have the luxury of thinking that once this is all over, they will again be able to walk without fear on the roads, meet their loved ones, and lead a normal life.

However, the people of Kashmir know that the current lockdown is just the latest in a long series of curfews. Even if the COVID-19 pandemic is halted and life returns to normal elsewhere, for them, life is only going to get worse.

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Modi's Government Is Exploiting the Pandemic to Ramp up Repression in Kashmir - Jacobin magazine

The word karrabing, from which the Karrabing Film Collective takes its name, means tide out in the Emmiyengal language, invoking the northwest coastline of Australia that connects the members of the collective, an intergenerational group of around thirty artists and filmmakers, most of whom are indigenous to the Northern Territory of Australia. Their use of the word offers an immediate insight into their work. As Karrabing member Natasha Bigfoot Lewis puts it, We are all saltwater from the same coastconnected lands from the same coast.

Karrabings films are varied in style, but the group members have adopted an approach that they refer to as improvisational realism. Shooting with iPhones or handheld cameras, they typically begin with a loose idea rooted in their everyday experiences rather than a fixed script, developing the plot and dialogue as they go, incorporating input from each participant. While their immediate community and environment are the foundation of Karrabings films, often positioning viewers as fly-on-the-wall observers, these are not straightforward documentaries: realism is interwoven with alternative histories, speculative futures, and Dreaming narratives. As Nhanda and Nyoongar artist and curator Glenn Iseger-Pilkington explains, the Dreaming is the realm of ancestral spirits who formed Australia, giving plants, animals, language, lore, and law to the land. It operates beyond Western constructs of time, as a realm of cultural manifestation and unfolding that exists concurrently in our past, our present, and our future.

One main catalyst for the groups formation was the 2007 Northern Territory National Emergency Response, commonly known as the Intervention, a set of policies implemented by a federal government task force in response to a report commissioned by regional authorities on child sexual abuse and neglect in Aboriginal communities. The federal government enacted broad new legislation that gave it heightened control over Aboriginal communities, including restrictions on alcohol consumption, mandatory child welfare inspections, and a significant rise in policing.

The Intervention coincided with the fallout from a riot at the Belyuen settlement, a rural Aboriginal community where many of the Karrabing members lived. The riot had attracted the attention of mainstream media outlets, and the membersmany of whom had been left temporarily homelessdecided to produce their own accounts representing their perspective on issues affecting their communities. Along with American anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli, a professor at Columbia University who first visited Belyuen in 1984 and has maintained a close relationship with the community since, they formed the Karrabing Film Collective and made their first short film, Karrabing! Low Tide Turning, in 2011.

As a Mori person from Karrabings neighboring country, Aotearoa (New Zealand), I have certain historical commonalities with Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, Australias two distinct Indigenous groups. We are all also citizens of Commonwealth countries with a long and sustained relationship built on geographical proximity, and we share a head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. Indigenous communities around the worldwhat Mori refer to as iwi taketake, or the long-established peoplehave similarities in terms of our relationships to our environments, and how our cultures are sustained by intergenerational connection. Despite a sense of solidarity in these shared values and the dubious honor of having experienced colonization, however, we reject a simplistic view of global Indigenous homogeneity. We are not the same and cannot speak for one another; what we can do is speak with adjacency.

This is something I consider when approached to write about an Indigenous culture that I dont whakapapahave a kin connectionto: I mustnt oversimplify our similarities, nor overstate the closeness of our connections. Instead, I want to focus on what is most compelling to me about the Karrabing Film Collectives work: the way they tell their histories, unashamedly from their own perspectives. They have what I would call mana motuhake in their approach, mana motuhake being self-determination of your future.

Karrabings most recent film, Day in the Life (2020), charts a day, presumably like many others, in which the authoritative hand of the government is a constant, shadowy presence over the community. The film comprises five satirically titled vignettesBreakfast, Play Break, Lunch Run, Cocktail Hour, Takeout Dinnerillustrating the ways in which the communitys everyday lives are shaped by external influences and constraints, in the form of state agents policing their behavior or private mining companies stealing resources and polluting their lands. In the work, the perspectives of the Karrabing cast are always central, creating an empathetic viewing experience that flips mainstream assumptions about Aboriginal communities on their head.

The films dialogue is interspersed with a rap soundtrack composed by younger members of the collective and audio clips from radio and television programssourced predominantly from the Australian Broadcasting Corporationrepeating deficit statistics about Aboriginal communities. These samples mention community impoverishment, overcrowded housing, and, most tellingly, the amount of money provided by state and federal governments, illustrating how the mainstream media and Australian politicians perpetuate negative stereotypes about Aboriginal communities squandering government aid. The effects of one particularly damaging stereotypethat Aboriginal parents are unable to care for their childrenare highlighted in the Play Break segment of Day in the Life: two women enjoying an idyllic afternoon playing outdoors with their kids are abruptly interrupted by the arrival of government authorities.

It is in these mothers fear that the effects of governmental oppression are felt most keenly. Fear accelerates their movements as they seek to hide the children. The segment reveals the double-edged sword of living under a government that provides significant welfare: it also determines what good parenting looks like and will enforce that model accordingly. When the authorities ultimately take one womans children, she morphs from close kin to pariah. The fear and stigma surrounding her make her repellent to others: will the events that befell her rub off on the community? This is a victory for colonization: Indigenous families turning on each other in order to protect themselves.

The mothers fear is an inherited one, evident in a refrain repeated throughout the film: Were gonna do what our old people did, were gonna hide our kids. This is one of many references Karrabing filmmakers make to the Stolen Generations, the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families between roughly 1905 and the 1970s. The effects of these removals are everywhere in Karrabing films, regardless of whether they are explicitly mentioned. The consequences are seen in the dependence on welfare, the overcrowded housing, and the fear of government authorities. They are also evident in the quest to reclaim traditional knowledge and relationships to country. As Karrabing films increasingly circulate internationally, perhaps their focus on the social inequity experienced by Indigenous people will compel audiences around the world to examine how their own governments legislated the assimilation of dying Indigenous peoples into dominant settler power structures. After all, knowledge is a collective responsibility.

One Scene in Day in the Life follows a young man who wakes to find he is unable to cook breakfast and have a shower, as the utilities in his house have been cut off. As he walks from house to house along seemingly deserted streets, it becomes evident that other households are in the same impoverished predicament: pipes are blocked and the residents are waiting for assistance, or the electricity has gone out. A refrain from the accompanying rap soundtrack lodged itself squarely in my brain: Forward to the bush, but wheres he going to go? There is a popular belief, even among Indigenous people, that we know best how to live harmoniously, symbiotically, with the environment. Frankly, its a romanticized view. The reality is that as Indigenous individuals, we dont inherently hold that knowledge. Because of colonization, which systematically removed Indigenous people from their lands and subsequently stripped them of their languages and cultures, we dont all know how to survive on our own land. One of the most devastating pieces of legislation passed in Aotearoa was the Tohunga Suppression Act (1907), which outlawed Mori cultural and spiritual practices, dismantled our traditional wnanga teaching systems, and led to the eventual banning of our language in schools. As with the Stolen Generations in Australia, it is impossible to quantify how government interventions have contributed to shorter life expectancy, lower quality of life, and Mori overrepresentation in prisons. So, forward to the bush, but whats he going to eat, and wear, and wheres he going to live?

My iwi (tribe) are bush people from the Te Urewera mountains, and many of my family members are hunters, a role that feels completely entwined with who we are as Mori. However, the animals that we hunt in the twenty-first centurywild pigs, deer, tahrare all animals that were introduced by European settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are no mammals (apart from bats) endemic to Aotearoa: native birds, which would have traditionally been hunted, are now protected species. Knowledge of edible flora, another traditional food source, has eroded due to violent disruptions to our cultural well-being such as land confiscations, postwar migration from tribal homelands into urban centers, and the convenience of the supermarket. Meticulous crafting of bird snares and spears has been eschewed in favor of guns. As is likewise seen in Karrabing films, displacement from land and the removal of younger generations also disrupts another foundation of Indigenous life: intergenerational living. If this way of life is interrupted, so too is the ability to pass knowledge down.

This predicament is portrayed in the Takeout Dinner segment of Day in the Life, wherein an elder is taking a younger family member on country to teach him the ways of the land when they are distracted by the discovery of a lithium extraction site. Both the elder and his protg question how theyre meant to learn from and protect their land if its being dug up and poisoned by white people. As portrayed here, the health of the land and the health of the people are inextricably linked. But, as is often the case in Karrabing films, the rather depressing storylines in Day in the Life are saved when Indigenous peoples own stories and ways of life are asserted. In the films closing scene, the protagonists initiate a corroboree, creating a swirl of time in which the ills of the past are undone. Karrabing stories become powerful catalysts for survival itself.

One Karrabing film, Night Time Go (2017), addresses the past directly, posing as a documentary depicting an alternative history of Australias domestic experience of World War II. Combining archival newsreel footage with grainy, black-and-white reenactments staged by Karrabing members, the film narrates the wartime experiences of Karrabing ancestors who were forcibly relocated to inland internment camps in anticipation of an imminent Japanese invasion, lest their simple minds be manipulated by Axis influences to undermine the Australian government. The Karrabing ancestors escaped from the camp in September 1943 and returned to their homes on foot, a journey of more than two hundred miles. A title card at the beginning of the film states, No record of their journey, or others like it, exists in the settler archive.

This film is an intervention into what mandated truth looks like, speaking back to the settler governments portrayal of official history. Researching the Katherine internment camp depicted in the film, I came across the following description on the government-run Northern Territory Tourism website: The Mataranka Aboriginal Army Camp was established by late 1943 comprised of 350 Aboriginal workers who were supporting the war effort by working for the Army.4 Supporting the war effort and working for the Army is an interpretation of events far different from the one portrayed in Night Time Go.

The government voice in the film, represented through archival clips, presents a picture of Australia that is pastoral and patriotic: the government is the benevolent patron of Aboriginal peoples, who are enjoying their simple lifestyle . . . under the shelter of our great nation. But Karrabing subverts this government archive, bringing historic photographs to life in reenactments. Settler histories have often ignored the fates of the people depicted in these images, but the film shows them as fully fledged individuals on a mission to re-chart their futures. In the process, Karrabing members also rewrite history, imagining an alternative course of events in which their ancestors not only escape the internment camp but expel the whitefulla from their lands on their journey home. At the end of Night Time Go, the Karrabing Free Broadcast System announces: Australian North Falls. Army Retreats to Brisbane Line. Indigenous Peoples Celebrate Freedom. Though the film borders on mockumentary, its satire isnt done for the sake of humor. Rather, Karrabings re-creations elicit hope for what an alternative, mana motuhake, future would look like for Karrabing members and their families. It also illustrates that for Indigenous peoples living in settler states, participation in the World Wars meant turning attention to fighting external enemies at times when their own freedom was still under internal threat.

The Karrabing Film Collective has shown me that hope lives and dies on belief. For Indigenous peoples, this belief is tied to knowing our land, our kin, and our stories. To believe in ourselves is to unlearn much of what is told to us by the dominant media, and to escape all the tentacles of government that find their way into our schools and homes. The swirling circularity of history that Karrabing so deftly foregrounds in their work reminds us that our story has not yet ended.

1 Growing up Karrabing: a conversation with Gavin Bianamu, Sheree Bianamu, Natasha Bigfoot Lewis, Ethan Jorrock and Elizabeth Povinelli, UN Magazine, 2017, unprojects.org.au.2 Glenn Iseger-Pilkington, email to the author, April 6, 2020.3 Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism, Durham, N.C., and London, Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 2425.4 Katherine in WWII, Northern Territory Tourism, northernterritory.com.

This article appears under the titleSurvival Stories in the May 2020 issue, pp. 5053.

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Karrabing Film Collective Tackles the Cultural and Environmental Devastation of Settler Colonialism - ARTnews

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the daily lives of most Americans in ways we have never imagined. For Indian Country, this crisis has shined a bright light on problems that have long existed problems that not only make American Indian and Alaska Native communities particularly vulnerable to a health crisis of this scale, but are as old as the United States itself. It has laid bare the ways the United States has consistently failed its trust responsibility to tribes and Native people by chronically underfunding essential programs including health, housing and economic development.

Now more than ever, Native people are suffering the consequences of that systematic neglect.

American Indian and Alaska Natives are particularly at risk to the coronavirus due to the high rate of underlying health issues in the communities. These include diabetes as well as heart and respiratory disease. This, combined with a lack of resources, trained staff and necessary funding, ensure American Indian and Alaska Native people will continue to be hit hard with little ability to properly treat and control the spread of the coronavirus.

The United States has an existing federal trust and treaty responsibility to tribes. This obligation includes providing health care to American Indian and Alaska Native people through the Indian Health Service, tribal and urban Indian health facilities. The health care needs of Indian country continue to go unmet due to inadequate and short-term funding levels. Indian Health Servicehospitals, among the countrys oldest, have repeatedly failed to meet the most basic patient needs and health care standards. These facilities, perennially understaffed and overburdened, are now forced to deal with a pandemic thats overwhelming even the countrys best hospitals.

In addition to inadequate health care, insufficient resources in other areas of Indian country are making it difficult for tribes to prevent the spread of COVID-19, even when tribes implement stay-at-home orders. Where there is no access to clean water to wash hands, an inability to properly practice social distancing due to overcrowding in homes, and limited internet access to receive the latest pertinent information, there is little chance in combating a pandemic already ravaging communities with all those advantages.

So whats clear is Native America is not standing on equal ground. We are starting from a place of more than 500 years of oppression. We are set up to fail.

But there is another important Indian country element at risk: our elders and traditional values. With older Americans and those with compromised immune systems most at risk for serious coronavirus complications, we fear for our elders. They are often the carriers of our languages and cultural traditions as they practice and maintain them. We are also acutely aware of the isolation that comes with practice social distancing, which goes against our belief in the strength and importance of community living, especially during such difficult times. This virus, aided by centuries of systematic oppression, feels as if it is attacking us from all sides. But we have also raised our collective voice to call attention to our needs and our rights as indigenous people.

Tribes and Indian health organizations have, in theory, received emergency funding in the first three coronavirus stimulus packages. However, most tribes have yet to receive any funding. There is currently no mechanism to distribute funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionto the Indian Health Service and Indian health organizations. This has resulted in a dangerous delay in tribes ability to take action and provide care for their community.

Congress must make it a priority for tribes to be on par with state and local governments. This will remove many bureaucratic hurdles to receiving necessary resources and funding.

Most importantly, what Indian country needs at this time is maximum flexibility to determine how those funds are to be used. As sovereign nations, tribes are in the best position to determine what is right for their people. In a crisis, the federal government must do its best to aid, rather than hinder, those rights.

Kerri Colfer manages the Native American Advocacy Program, lobbying on legislation that affects Native communities. She is a member of the Tlingit tribe of Southeast Alaska.

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Coronavirus, red tape are costing lives in Indian country - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

COMMEMORATIONS will be held in honour of Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died 39 years ago on Tuesday after 66 days without food in the notorious Maze prison.

Vigils will be muted because of Covid-19, but people will pay their respects to Mr Sands, who led the 1981 hungerstrike protests demanding the reinstatement of political status for republican prisoners.

He was the first to start the action and was prepared to see his hunger strike through to the end in what became seen as a bitter struggle between the Irish republican movement and the government of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone during the campaign, dispelling the myth that the hunger strikers had no support in Ireland.

More people voted for him than did for Mrs Thatcher in her own Finchley constituency. His death led to international protests and condemnation of the callousness of thegovernment.

Iranian authorities changed the name of the road that housed the British embassy from Winston Churchill Street to Bobby Sands Street, and he continues to inspire oppressed people across the world.

Mr Sandss last diary entry was: Tiocfaidh ar la our day will come.

The legacy of the hunger strikers, 10 of whom died, paved the way for the emergence of Sinn Fein as a serious political party. Many credit their action for precipitatingthe 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Speaking in the latest issue of An Phoblacht, MLA for West Belfast Orlaithi Flynn said: Bobby Sands,like many men and women in our community, was an ordinary person who, as a result of British oppression, went on to do extraordinary things and leave an extraordinary legacy.

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Bobby Sands to be remembered on 39th anniversary of his death - Morning Star Online

In the wake of state-inspired sanctions that sparked off xenophobic campaigns against Africans in Chinas city of Guangzhou, I was not only shocked but also disappointed by snail-like speed by which the situation was handled.

While I am yet to get my head around how the Africans, who havent been able to travel for more than two months, can be feared to spark off the second wave of the Covid-19 in China, I have been disappointed by the dilly-dallying speed by which African states - Uganda in particular - have intervened to protect their citizens from oppression.

First, with the looming declines in donor funds from Western countries during the post-Covid-19 pandemic era, remittances from Ugandas diaspora are more than ever going to remain a crucial source of foreign currencies.

It is, therefore, an expression of a twisted mentality of priorities when Ugandans who are abroad cry out for help when in trouble and do not get the necessary and timely protection from the government.

Secondly, of all countries, China should be the last nation from where Ugandans, just like any other Africans, should face any form of xenophobic attacks. As the adage goes, those who sleep in glass houses cannot be expected to throw stones at other peoples houses.

What has happened to the affected Africans is purely a matter of racial segregation as those who are attacked are identified by the amount of melanin they have in their skin.

Considering that there are several Chinese who can easily be identified visibly, plus the vast amounts of investments China has in Uganda, common sense dictates that it would be in the best interest of China to ensure that no Uganda faces any unmitigated form of xenophobic attacks.

Yet, I understand that if someone is known for chewing live termites challenging them to eat white ants might seem like a waste of time. If what is happening to the Ugandans in China happens to even just one Chinese, the powers that be in Uganda will be summoned by the Chinese ambassador and get instructions to ensure that the injustice does not continue.

That would be followed by a deployment of all tribes of covert and overt security detail with armory in the affected areas to protect the rights and ensure the safety of the Chinese people who are facing any form of oppression.

The protection would be followed by a thunderous pronouncement from the president in the line of we will shoot to kill anyone who disturbs the peace of our good Chinese investors.

Needless to say, the whole world is going through so much pain right now due to the Covid-19 pandemic that the last thing one wants is to witness xenophobic attacks on innocent Chinese living in Uganda simply because both the Ugandan government and the Chinese government did not act early enough.

Interestingly, although the significance of learning other languages is a topic I can return to in the near future, I must state here that the willingness and commitment to learn other peoples language, without coercion, is perhaps the best expression of interest and admiration in and for those whose language is learned. It is, therefore, no secret that there is an ongoing cordial relationship between Ugandans and Chinese.

Uganda has even taken a bigger stop of integrating Mandarin in the new education curriculum and there are various institutions in Uganda that are offering crush lessons in Mandarin. If both the Chinese and the Ugandan government share a mutual acknowledgement of the importance of the ongoing relationship, any xenophobic attacks on either national should always attract immediate condemnation and actions to restore justice in the shortest period possible.

Also, when we talk of intervention, we do not hope that Uganda should always go to war with China - even if war were a plausible option - just because some Ugandans are being oppressed in China. Neither are we asking for the Ugandan government to immediately cut off economic ties with China.

Sometimes, all it takes to save people from oppression is the immediate publicity of the oppression and strong statements of condemnation from the powers that be.

Therefore, however toothless it would seem, a timely official statement of condemnation from the Ugandan government, with specific ultimatums would suffice. Perhaps, a visit to some of the affected Ugandans in China by any official from the Ugandan consulate in China would serve even better.

When facing oppression in a foreign land, it matters most to know that there is someone one out there who cares. And it is very reassuring if that timely concern comes from ones own government.

ssellwanga@gmail.com

The writer is a social worker in Alberta-Canada.

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Whose interests does the Ugandan embassy in China serve? - The Observer