Category Archives: Government Oppression

On 20 October 2019, the Relief and Repatriation Commissioner of Bangladesh, Mahbub Alam Talukder, declared that the country will start relocating Rohingya Muslims to the flood-prone island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, as part of a plan to solve the problem with overcrowded border camps in Coxs Bazar, which Bangladesh is currently experiencing following the influx of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Numerous human rights watchdogs have expressed concerns regarding the move, considering the islets remoteness and predisposition to flooding and devastation from cyclones. Nevertheless, the government of Bangladesh has stated that the repatriation will take place only in accordance with the will of the people and that the island is equipped with all the necessary facilities, including cyclone shelters, food warehouses and flood protection embankments.

A Muslim minority ethnic group in Buddhist dominated Myanmar, the Rohingya constitute about 4 percent of the countrys population. They inhabit the northern part of the Rakhine (formerly Arakan) State of Myanmar, one of the least developed parts of the country. Persecuted for decades by the Burmese State, their numbers inside Myanmar have diminished steadily over the years from well in excess of a million to a few hundred thousand. Denial of citizenship, religious persecution, killings, rape, massacres and refusal to provide even the most basic of human rights by subjecting them to forced labor, seizure of their land and property, extortion, denial of the freedom to travel to find work, and placing restrictions on marriage and the number of children they can have, has led to hundreds of thousands of impoverished Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring countries, especially Bangladesh, over the course of the last seven decades. Currently, more than 1 million Rohingyas live in Bangladesh, as a result of Myanmars brutal crackdown on the ethnic group, which reached its apogee in 2017 and has only exacerbated since then.

As a response, in March 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) established a Fact-Finding Mission in order to determine the facts and circumstances of the alleged human rights violations and abuses by the military and security forces in Myanmar against the Rohingya. Despite the fact that in 2017, Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed on a repatriation plan as per which Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh would be taken back to Myanmar under the condition that the latter provides them with equal citizenship and their basic human rights, no refugees have yet agreed to return voluntarily, due to safety concerns. And indeed, as the findings of a report issued by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre further prove, currently the government of Myanmar has embarked on the systematic destruction of human settlements and the construction of highly securitized camps and military bases in the Rakhine state, demonstrating how the conditions there are not conducive for the safe return of the refugees.

During the 42nd Session of the UNHRC in Geneva, Marzuki Darusman, Chair of the Fact-Finding Mission in a Report stated that the estimated 600,000 Rohingya remaining inside Myanmar experience systematic persecution and live under the constant threat of genocide. Myanmar is failing in its obligation to prevent genocide, to investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation criminalizing and punishing genocide, Darusman argued. The Report describes how the Rohingya Muslims remain a subject of torture, killings, rape, forced displacement and numerous grave human rights violations, which constitute the agenda of the government of Myanmar of erasing their identity and removing them from the country. Considering the almost complete absence of accountability at the domestic level for those serious violations, the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar in its report, encourages concerted international efforts in bringing the perpetrators to justice, promulgating institutional reforms and providing forms of reparation.

However, certain legal boundaries might obstruct the course of justice. Myanmar is not a signatory party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction of prosecuting individuals responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression. The ICC does not have any power over the territory of Myanmar; yet, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) could still refer the case to the ICC, which is visible from the UN's Special Rapporteur on the situation in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee's move on 24 October of calling upon the UNSC to bring the situation in Myanmar to the attention of the ICC in order to establish an ad hoc tribunal, which will ensure justice for the Rohingya. Lee during a press briefing at the UN General Assembly in New York, further urged for targeted sanctions against the country's military-operated businesses and governmental authorities, which have been culpable of gross human rights abuses against the ethnic minority. However, the scenario of the UNSC initiating an international tribunal appears highly unlikely considering Myanmars ally, China, which holds a veto power and has been opposing and boycotting numerous probes into the Rohingya issue, reiterating that it understands and supports Myanmars stance in the conflict, while denouncing any international intervention.

Recognizing those deficiencies, earlier in June, the presidency of the ICC sought authorization from the Pre-Trial Chamber III to investigate crimes committed by Myanmar, which have occurred on the territory of Bangladesh, that is a party to the Rome Statute. However, such investigation will not be entirely comprehensive, since it is restricted by the fact that the allegations of violence must have partially taken place in Bangladesh; those would include deportation, violating the right to return home in safety and persecution on ethno-religious grounds. It still remains to be seen whether the authorization will be given and the Bangladeshi-Myanmar border will come under investigation.

Meanwhile, Myanmar is a signatory party to the UNs Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which provides the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with the jurisdiction of prosecuting States culpable of genocide, if put forward by another State that believes that the country in question has breached its obligations. During the UN General Assembly in New York at the end of September, the Republic of Gambia announced that the country is ready to take and delegate the Rohingya issue to the ICJ on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), calling other stakeholders to support and join this process. If the proposition is passed, it will establish an exceptional precedent considering that the UNSC until now has remained silent on the issue and constrained by veto-wielding members such as China and Russia.

According to an analysis published by the Security Council Report, the UNSC has been particularly reluctant in resorting to other UN bodies since it does not have necessarily control over their actions. From the perspective of the P5, when it comes to the Court more specifically, the Courts jurisprudence has, at times, been perceived as hostile to their interests, the article explains.

That has been particularly visible in the case of China, which has been widely supporting a non-interventionist approach in internal affairs in Myanmar by any international legal body. Beijing has been wary of having the Rohingya issue internationalized for numerous reasons; first, the country does not want the Rohingya crisis to jeopardize its investments in Myanmar, which constitute a vital element of Chinas Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and its String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean; second, the Burmese State is an essential market for Chinese military arms and equipment, many of which have been used by the security forces in perpetration of human rights abuses; and most importantly, China fears that an investigation into the Rohingya crisis will set up a pattern and possibly allow for an enquiry into the situation in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, where more than a million ethnic Muslim Uyghurs are currently detained in camps, designed to eradicate their identity, echoing the bitter plight of the Rohingya people.

EFSAS Study Paper Chinas String of Pearls exhibits The Dragons Great Game of Loans and Debts, describes how, situated on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, the Rakhine State provides China with a strategic location for the development of its Maritime Road. Chinas aim in developing maritime infrastructure in the deep-sea Kyauk Pyu Port is to turn it into a major hub and entry point for an oil and gas pipeline, which could provide an alternative route to the Strait of Malacca for the provision of energy fuels and a land corridor could then link Kyauk Pyu Port to Chinas own Yunnan Province. The Kyauk Pyu Port is part of a plan to create a special economic zone that is estimated to cost approximately $10 billion. For China, the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, which the Myanmar armed forces the Tatmadaw broadly justify under the pretext of counter-insurgency and counter-extremist operations, is fostered and welcomed since Beijing does not want to risk the investments it has made in its resource-rich neighbor. Furthermore, by extending its support to the Burmese country, which has been facing worldwide ostracism, China pulls Myanmar closer to its sphere of influence, making it dependent on its funding, since many other international players have left. This is further substantiated by the fact that China is the major supplier of military hardware to Myanmar, part of which has been directly utilized in the repression and persecution of Rohingya Muslims, as a Report issued last month by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar explains.

Another reason for Chinas outright support for the suppression and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas by the Myanmar government is that the country itself deploys a similar practice in its handling of the Uyghur Muslims. As Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghur political activist and former President of the World Uyghur Congress argues, China uses the Rohingya as an example to influence those within and outside of its borders by showing that China isnt the only iron fisted state. By ensuring the oppression of people outside of its borders China cements it authority to oppress within its borders. By promoting the security efforts of the Myanmar military, Beijing succeeds in justifying its own actions and diverting international attention from its own ethnic cleansing campaign.

The latter seems to be a very successful strategy, since the Muslim world has remained deafeningly silent on the plight of its brethren in Xinjiang. Although, commendable for its endeavours to bring the Rohingya crisis to an end by engaging with the ICJ, the OIC has failed to raise the issue of the Uyghurs to the international fora. Yet, that does not come as a surprise when one notices the economic loans for infrastructural projects extended to Muslim countries by China, as part of its BRI. For those countries, speaking about the situation in Xinjiang is not in their interest since that might put in peril their dealings with Beijing. Thus, the hypocrisy of OICs members who are all preaching slogans of championing Islam clearly gets exposed in the shadow of China, since they are currently queuing up for a pay roll and economic investments from China, while conveniently forgetting the hardship of the Muslim Uyghurs.

As Alip Erkin, an activist at the Uyghur Bulletin network, has spoken for the Business Insider Nederland, ...the principle of Muslim brotherhood has become a selective foreign policy tool that has more to do with the international politics of Muslim countries and less to do with its true message of solidarity.

As a relevant example, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where thousands have rallied in solidarity with the Rohingyas and its Prime Minister Imran Khan, has trumped himself as a global defender of Islam by condemning world powers of Islamophobia at supranational platforms such as the UN, has remained completely numb on the detention of millions of Uyghur Muslims under concentration-like conditions. The Pakistani leader on numerous occasions in interviews with international news channels has stated that he lacks enough knowledge on the topic and is unaware of the issue, highlighting the countrys double standards regarding the protection of Muslims and its succumbing to the wishes of Beijing. Considering that Pakistan shares a border with the region of Xinjiang, which is also the starting point of its joint infrastructural project with China, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Khans ignorance not only seems unlikely, but manifests itself as willful amnesia.

As Andrew Gilmour, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights has stated, ...the Rohingya, and indeed the entire world, owe an immense debt of gratitude to the Government and people of Bangladesh for their generosity in hosting and providing for such a large refugee population. All international humanitarian and grass-root organisations should also be commended for their efforts in addressing the Rohingya crisis, yet what is also crucial to be recognised is how countries such as China brazenly take advantage of such human tragedy in order to pursue its egregious agenda, while making a mockery of the international community.

Chinas oppression of the Muslim minority and silence of the Islamic world have established a reality where once a country becomes a client to the monetary bids of the rising Asian superpower, any proclamations of a sacred Muslim Ummah (Community) are unceremoniously discarded.

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EFSAS Commentary: Boisterous outcry over the Rohingyas and deafening silence on Uyghurs, exhibits the brutal price of China's Belt and Road Initiative...

Climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion (XR) received intense criticism after enraged commuters in east London dragged activists from atop a Tube carriage during rush hour.Katie Tarrant speaks to Zion Lights, editor of XRs Hourglass magazine, to find out what can be learned from this episode which senior figures in the movement now admit was a mistake.

On Thursday (17 October), two days before their Autumn Uprising was scheduled to come to a close, XR made headlines for a move which intensely split supporters.

A small group of protesters stood on top of Tube carriages in Stratford, Canning Town, and Shadwell all historically working-class and ethnically diverse areas of east London preventing platforms full of commuters from getting to work. In a viral video of the incident, one bystander can be heard shouting: I have to get to work too I have to feed my kids. At Canning Town station, members of the public took justice into their own hands and dragged protesters from the roof.

There is a growing consensus that we could have as little as 18 monthsto take decisive action against global heating, so it is unsurprising that a majority of the public are labelling climate destruction as the most important issue facing our times, as shown by a poll conducted across eight countries by Hope Not Hate.

With XRs two-week Autumn Uprising having now reached its conclusion, it is a crucial time for the movement to reflect on its methods of addressing this crisis.

Climate models are indicating that areas of London will go underwater, so if people are that reliant on the Tube, what will happen when it doesnt work?

Extinction Rebellion has three demands: that the government tell the truth and declare an ecological climate emergency; that it adopts a target of zero carbon by 2025; and for the creation of a citizens assembly to decide future policy on the environment.

Source: Rebellion.earth

When protests began on 7 October, XRs disruption tactics targeted Westminster and converged on six government departments, as seems coherent with the groups calls for the government to take action.

But targeting east London commuters does not seem logically conducive to achieving their demands. MPs and CEOs of companies in the most polluting industries are most likely not catching trains in working-class east London, are they?

Zion Lights,editor of XRs newspaperHourglass,was among73% of XR activistswho voted against Thursdays action in Canning Town station, which was carried out by a fringe affinity group ofsix people.

I think we should apologise and distance ourselves from that action, she toldRightsInfo. But, explaining XRs reasons for targeting the Tube in general, she said it shows how easily things can fall apart climate models are indicating that areas of London will go underwater, so if people are that reliant on the Tube, what will happen when it doesnt work?

Over the last two weeks we protested outside Downing Street, the Ministry of Justice, the BBC, the Bank of England Too many actions to recount, but they barely made the news. When a small group did the same DLR action back in April, that news went global. And so it was again Just remember that these people care very deeply for the health of the planet and the safety of their children.

However, the controversy strikes deeper than placing methods and demands at loggerheads, with action not seeming to target those crucial to achieving their aims. The disruption-as-metaphor notion becomes unfavourably ironic when protests disadvantage those who will suffer first and most at the hands of climate breakdown which will be the case if XR continue to target working-class areas of London.

In June, UN special rapporteur Philip Alston toldRightsInfo that in the UK, as elsewhere, the poor will suffer by far the most as a result of the climate crisis. It may be that this widespread disruption is a metaphor for the reality we could soon face due to the decline of the planet. But that doesnt change the fact that ordinary people need to work and earn their livelihood.

The arrest of more than 1,800 XR activists in London has raised questions about the groups inclusiveness. Should the group idolise being arrested as the greatest sacrifice when this is simply not viable for black and minority ethnic (BME) and working-class members groups at risk of harsher treatment and lacking access to legal advice and support?

The notion of XR being out-of-touch with the BME groups has been compounded by instances like activists delivering flowers toBrixton police station,where at least three young black men have died in custody. Over the weekend, XR activists in Scotland released a statementdistancing themselves from this gesture.

This sacrifice of being arrested has been justified by figureheads of the movement such as Guardian columnist and climate activist George Monbiot, who defends the controversial tactic as the only real power climate protesters have. Pointing to its effective[ness] for democracy and rights movements of the past, he says he has a moral duty to use [his] privilege.

Also, if XR continue to adopt a tactic of major disruption, how can they ensure that action does not disadvantage anyone but decision-makers and key contributors? Neither the group nor the planet cannot afford to alienate people from the cause.

Human rights and laws are constantly evolving to keep up with new eras of social change and acceptance. Should the right to protest now come with a new set of responsibilities in a movement where people are fighting not only for every human alive, but for the planet?

What I will say though is that we are well aware that structural oppression and inequality is a societal issue and that XR is not somehow immune from it. What we want to do it work out how to unpick it.

Zion suggested to RightsInfo that its a minority of people who idolise arrests, and explained that many members take responsibility to make sure that all volunteer roles are generally recognised as equal. However, as a woman of colour herself and the daughter of migrants, she acknowledged the issue of racial imbalance as applicable to the green movement as a whole.

Last week, at a journalism conference a woman of colour told me that we should platform diverse voices more, she said. But women of colour spokespeople who we have put forward have had death threats and awful trolling comments.

Its hurtful and requires serious resilience, which many marginalised groups simply dont have. I have also been recognised from TV, which worries me at times. So, I am hesitant to agree that we should platform these speakers just to appear less visibly white there is a rise of fascism in this country and putting them in the firing line is not right.

What I will say though is that we are well aware that structural oppression and inequality is a societal issue and that XR is not somehow immune from it. What we want to do it work out how to unpick it.

With the structure XR currently has in place, it may be impossible to ensure such conditional responsibilities are fulfilled. XR defends their post-consensus organisation as an important part of what has made us such a dynamic, fast-growing and vibrant movement, but ultimately it means that disagreeable action can be placed under the banner of XR.

Not everyone in the movement is in favour of the current organisation of the movement, Lights told RightsInfo.

We are in constant talks about issues like this, she said. In all honestly, the movement has grown so rapidly, so unexpectedly, that its often a case of learning from mistakes and laying foundations after the fact. Remember that we are all volunteers!

The Hourglasseditor suggested that some kind of structure may be needed to approve actions, but worries that it would be difficult, time-consuming, and potentially draconian.

Campaigning for governmental action to reduce climate breakdown requires unity, and after the events of Thursday the movement seems currently to be causing confusion and apathy.

EDITORS NOTE: Updated 21 October 5pm to further clarify Zion Lights opposition to Canning Town action.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rightsinfo

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Extinction Rebellion: What Can Be Learned From Canning Town? - RightsInfo

Saturday October 26

The Austrian national Edmond Sichrovsky arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on October 24, Thursday, 7:45AM from Amman, Jordan. At immigrations and passport control, he was detained by Israeli authorities and questioned by two separate officers. His luggage was searched and he was forced to hand over his mobile phone to Israeli intelligence officers, who searched his private messages, chats, social media, phone contacts, photo gallery, and browsing history, as well as subjecting him to a body search. He was accused of volunteering in Palestine, which is not prohibited under Israeli law. Their claim was based on the finding of several missed calls on his phone from unsaved numbers registered in Palestine. Sichrovskys interrogator then informed him that he was banned from entering Israel and would be forcibly deported. Authorities demanded he admit to volunteering in Palestine and sign a document accepting his deportation due to illegal immigration considerations, which he refused to sign. After 6 hours in detention, he was released to the airport departure zone. After being forced to wait in the airport for almost 17 hours, he was deported to Amman, Jordan at 00:30 on October 25. Israeli authorities initially told him the deportation flight would be paid for by the Israeli government. After boarding, Sichrovsky was informed that he had to pay $500 USD for his own deportation flight, which he was forced against his will to board, or face legal action from the airline for unpaid fees.

Sichrovsky had previously volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), documenting and reporting on human rights abuses by Israeli forces in Occupied Palestine. He wasviolently assaulted in Wadi al-Hummusby officers from the notorious Israeli riot police unit Yassam while opposing demolitions of Palestinians homes. The 22-year-old is the grandson of Harry Sichrovsky, a renowned Austrian Jewish writer and journalist, and nephew of Peter Sichrovsky, two-time European Parliament member and former head of the far right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO).

Sichrovsky said: Growing up, my grandparents being some of the only ones in their entire family to survive the Holocaust in Austria,Never again is something I heard a lot and resonate strongly with. To me, Never again isnt just for Jews, it means never again should anyone in the world have to suffer because of their religion, race, or what they were born into. Thats why I came to volunteer in Palestine. Israel claims to be a homeland for Jewish people around the world, yet by banning and deporting me and other Jews with differing political opinions, they have shown that Israel is a home for Jews only if they dont question or speak up about the governments apartheid policies. My ban and deportation from Israel only confirms what I have seen again and again in Palestine: that the Israeli government will do anything to keep people from seeing its brutal Occupation, ethnic cleansing, and daily violations of Palestinians basic human rights.

Sichrovsky also called on Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Schallenberg to make a public statement on Israels detention and deportation of an Austrian citizen who had not violated any Israeli law. He called the Austrian embassy in Tel Aviv while being held in Ben Gurion airport, but was told that they could not provide any assistance.

An ISM spokesperson gave the following statement: ISM strongly condemns the Israeli governments banning and deportation of an international volunteer. By forbidding entry to its those with differing political viewsIsrael is acting like the anti-democratic state it really is. Governments whose citizens have been banned must call out Israel on these blatant attempts to hide its crimes from the world. To not do so is to condone Israels abuse of human rights and silencing of those who speak about them.

Note to journalists:

Israel controls all borders and entrance points (land, sea, and air) into Palestine, except a small land border between Gaza and Egypt, meaning virtually anyone intending to enter Palestine must enter through Israeli immigration authorities. Israel routinely bans and deports volunteers, activists, human rights observers, and academics suspected of anti-Occupation views or of activities in anti-Occupation or Palestinian organizations. Prominent Jews banned from Israel due to their political views include CODEPINK co-founder Ariel Gold, and American-Jewish academics Normal Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

In 2017, Israel passed a law permitting foreign nationals to be banned from Israel for calling for the boycott of Israel or Israeli illegal settlements. There is, however, no law prohibiting volunteering in Palestine or association with legal organizations active in Palestine.

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles.

Jews banned from Israel for political reasons:

Ariel Gold:https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/deports-activist-supporting/

Noam Chomsky:https://www.haaretz.com/1.5121279

Norman Finkelstein:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/26/israelandthepalestinians.usa

Others banned from Israel for political reasons in 2019:

British activist Garry Spedding:https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-denying-entry-to-left-wing-british-activist-for-second-time-since-2014-1.6844179

US Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-usa-ban/israel-will-not-let-u-s-congresswomen-visit-deputy-foreign-minister-idUSKCN1V51

For more details contact Edmond Sichrovskyat

Phone: +20 0127 983 4929

Email: edmond.sichrovsky@gmail.com

Or contact ISM at:

Phone: +44 7757 616902

Email: palreports@gmail.com

See the original post here:

Grandson of Holocaust survivors deported from Israel for volunteering - International Solidarity Movement

Narendra Modi has embarked on his second term as Indias prime minister, following a convincing victory in Mays elections. In this article, a leading specialist on South Asian affairs argues that Japan is wrong to focus exclusively on economic cooperation in its relations with India, and should no longer turn a blind eye to the dangerous side of Modis Hindi supremacist project.

Against most expectations, Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party won a convincing victory in the general elections in India in May this year. The response from the Japanese government and business leaders has been overwhelmingly positive, and Prime Minister Abe Shinz lost no time in sending his congratulations, becoming the first foreign leader to do so. A report in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on May 24 quoted a senior figure involved in Japans foreign policy as saying that the next five years promised to be an ideal period for building a closer relationship between Japan and India in fields such as national security and economic cooperation.

Personally, I predict that the BJP government is settling in for a long period (Nakamizo 2019). In this essay, both as a Japanese citizen and as a specialist in Indian studies, I want to consider the relations between the BJP government and Japan and to examine some of the questions affecting how Japan should position itself in relation to the BJP government.

The first thing we need to do is to understand the essence of the BJP. It is a right-wing religious party whose aim is to make India into a Hindu Rashtra (nation). Its parent organization is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which can be loosely translated as National Volunteer Organization; the RSS, along with other, similar right-wing religious volunteer organizations, are collectively known as the Sangh Pariwar. Their philosophy is inspired by the idea of Hindutva, or Hinduness, as defined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in a book published in 1923. He describes Hindus as a people of a common nation (rashtra), common race (jati), and common culture (sanskriti) for whom India (Sindhusthan) is their fatherland (pitribhu) and holy land (punyabhu). For this reason, those who have converted to Islam or Christianity cannot be Hindus, even though they share the same fatherland and culture with the Hindus, because their holy land is outside of India.

India has been rocked by a succession of violent attacks on Muslims since Modis re-election. This violence is a manifestation in extreme forms of the partys central claims that it will make India into a Hindu Rashtra.

Prime Minister Modi is a product of the RSS and a true believer in this supremacist creed. Realizing the Hindu Rashtra is a key part of his political faith. In Japan, there is a tendency to see him simply as a leader who has introduced a barrage of economic reforms, but to emphasize this side of him alone paints a distorted and misleading picture. Modis political engine is driven by the twin cogs of economic growth and Hindu supremacy; it cannot move forward on one of these alone. During the recent election campaign, he strongly attacked Pakistan for terrorist incidents, a move that actually was aimed at hiding his governments own miserable failures in solving the unemployment problem. This approach of laying the blame on terrorism and Pakistan can be fairly described as emblematic of his approach to politics.

Modi first showed his political acumen in the context of communal violence and riots. After being all but wiped out in the 1984 elections for the lower house, the BJP successfully revived its fortunes and considerably increased its number of seats in the 1989 elections by using religious mobilization and related communal violence. Not long after this success, the BJP organized the Ayodhya mobilization (Rath Yatra) marshalling right-wing religious forces to oppose the presence of a mosque on a site regarded as sacred by Hindus. This was in part carried out to counter the mobilization of backward castes through the 1990 declaration of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report, which sought to redress caste-based discrimination. More than 600 people were killed in the riots related to the Ayaodhaya mobilization in 1990, exacerbating tensions between the Hindu and Muslim communities (Nakamizo 2012: 249257).

Communal violence reached a new nadir not long after Modi assumed office as chief minister of Gujarat state in 2001, with the Gujarat carnage of 2002 (Nakamizo 2015: 219243). Government statistics say 1,180 people lost their lives in the violence. Modi was widely believed to have been complicit in the killings, and although he was later absolved of legal responsibility, he was roundly criticized by international society. Famously, he was barred for a time from entering the United States. Achin Vanaik, a former professor at the University of Delhi, has argued that Modis travels as prime ministermore than 60 visits to foreign countries in his first three years in officehave had much more to do with Modi wanting to overcome his international pariah status after the Gujarat pogrom (where, despite his command responsibility, he has gone unpunished) and to pose as a global statesman, than with having to make diplomatic deals at the very highest levels with all the countries visited (Vanaik 2017: 369).

At the state assembly elections held in December 2002, nine months after the massacres, Modi won an overwhelming victory by fanning the flames of communal feelings. After securing his power base, he shifted his focus to economic development, eventually achieving economic growth above the Indian average and boasting of what he called the Gujarat model. Hopes for wider economic growth were the biggest factor behind his victory in the 2014 general election, and during the five years of his first term, he claimed to achieve average economic growth rates of 7% a year, although some doubts remain about the methodology used to measure this growth.

But his government was not all about the economy. He did not fail to put the Hindu supremacist project into practice as well, and his first term in office saw new strategies unleashed for oppressing Muslims and other religious minorities. One example is the rise of, and implicit encouragement for, vigilante groups of cow protectors, who have terrorized Muslims in many parts of the country. Although there have not yet been any major religious riots on the scale of those in Gujarat in 2002, vigilante violence has spread across the country and has become even more common since Modi was re-elected in May 2019.

The sudden announcement on August 5, 2019, that Jammu and Kashmir would be stripped of their special status and placed as union territories was another aspect of his Hindu supremacist policy. Now that it has achieved the first of the three main agendas of the BJP , by getting rid of Article 370 of the Constitution, the government is likely to push ahead with the remaining two, namely drawing up a uniform civil code (abolishing separate personal law for Muslims), and building the Ram temple at Ayodhya. I am of the strong conviction that the overt and direct repression of Muslims is likely to become more intense, and Indo-Pakistan relations are going to get worse.

How should Japan deal with Modis government, given these characteristics? As I said at the outset, the personal relationship between the two prime ministers seems to be extremely cordial. Modi chose Japan as the destination for his first overseas trip outside South Asia after becoming prime minister. The reason is not difficult to discern. In a context where the United States and other Western countries were continuing to ask awkward questions about his responsibility for the Gujarat carnage, Japan did not make it an issue at all. On the contrary, Japan continued to invest in Gujarat, and thus supported Modis bid to become prime minister. It is only natural that he should have felt a debt of gratitude.

Abe Shinz and Narendra Modi visit the Central Technical Center of Fanuc, a leader in the field of industrial robotics. Taken on October 28, 2018, in Oshino, Yamanashi Prefecture. ( Jiji)

Abe also feels a personal affection for India. The most important strategic reason for wanting a strong relationship with India is to help build a coalition capable of containing China. But in Abes case, the significance of India goes beyond this. For him, India is a country that has shown its friendship and loyalty by supporting the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere ideology he is fond of. In Abes view, it was the Indians who above all else responded to the promises of Japanese propaganda to smash Western colonial rule in Asia during the "Greater East Asian War". Indians helped form the Indian National Army and fought alongside the Japanese in the Imphal operations, and it was an Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, who declared all the Class A war criminals not guilty at the Tokyo trials after the war.(*1)

In fact, Japans war caused catastrophic suffering in India, albeit indirectly. Nevertheless, India renounced any claims against Japan, and Kishi Nobusuke, Abes grandfather, later became the first Japanese prime minister to visit India (Horimoto 2017: 1415). In light of this, it is not difficult to understand why Abe went out of his way during his first visit to India as prime minister in 2007 to visit Pals eldest son despite an illness. In his speech to the Indian parliament, he said: Justice Pal is highly respected even today by many Japanese for the noble spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.(*2)

Is it really true that India supported the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" ? In fact, leading figures including Gandhi and Nehru were strongly critical of Japanese imperialism and militarism (Takenaka 2017: 302), and the Indian National Congress took Chinas side throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War. It is true that some members of the independence movement supported Chandra Bose, who led the Indian National Army, but they were a minority far removed from the mainstream of the independence movement. The idea that India as a whole was sympathetic to the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" is a nothing more than a myth.

Another myth holds that no historical problems exist between Japan and India relating to the Second World Warunlike those that continue to bedevil Japans relations with China and Korea. In fact, Japans war caused huge suffering to Indian society. The Battle of Imphal, in which Japan attempted to launch an invasion of British India, is well known in Japan, because many Japanese soldiers lost their lives there. Less widely remembered today is the fact that after the Japanese occupied British Burma in 1942, they carried out air raids and bombing attacks on major cities along the Bay of Bengal in India and Ceylon, including Calcutta.

When I visited Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, one of these sorties was still remembered by a signboard marking the site of a Japanese suicide attack. But the most serious consequence of the war in India was the Bengal famine of 194243. In preparation for an expected Japanese invasion, the British colonial government imposed a series of denial policies designed to deprive invading forces of food and other useful materiel, including boats. The policy resulted in the seizure of many boats and ships crucial to commerce in the Bengal region, making transport of grain impossible. An estimated 3 million people died in the resulting famine.(*3)

A signboard in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, commemorates an attack by a Japanese fighter plane during World War II. (Photo by the author)

This figure, almost equal to the number of Japanese war dead, leaves no room for doubt that Japans war caused catastrophic losses in Indian society, albeit indirectly. Similar denial policies were implemented in Orissa, where farmers apparently appealed to Gandhis disciple Mirabehn, asking: Do we all have to be killed before the Japanese invasion? (Nagasaki 1989: 192)

If I ever mention this in my lectures, it is clear that almost none of the students have ever heard anything about it. My guess is that most Japanese people would be the same. When discussing our relations with India, people often refer back to the positive exchanges the country had with cultural figures like Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore before the war. But if we are going to go back that far, I believe, it is important to be aware of the serious suffering that Japanese militarism brought to Indian society as well.

In light of the points I have made so far, how should Japan deal with India as it exists today, dominated by a party driven by a Hindu supremacist philosophy? I would like to make two propositions.

The first is that the discourse of shared values that seems to receive obligatory lip service at summits and similar occasions should not be simply window-dressing. Presumably these common values are supposed to be things like liberty, democracy, and respect for human rights. It is hard to say that these values are being respected in India today, where Muslims and other religious minorities find themselves oppressed and persecuted. The violence perpetrated against Muslims by the cow protection vigilante groups is no secret: it is described in considerable detail not only in the Indian media but in the annual reports on religious freedom published by the US State Department, among other sources.(*4)

In a high-flown speech during his first visit to India as prime minister, Abe made the following statement: I would like to emphasize today to the people of India that the Japanese people stand ready to work together with the Indian people so that this spirit of tolerance becomes the leading principle of this century.(*5) I strongly urge Abe to carry out his word. In fact, the United States, Japans most important alliance partner, not only expresses deep concern about the oppression against religious minorities, but also maintains contact with the leaders of religious minorities and NGO activists. The Japanese government should convey serious concern about the violation of human rights in India and urge a stop to them at top-level meetings. Regarding the Indo-Pakistan relationship, the Japanese government should strongly urge self-restraint.

It remains difficult, however, to imagine that the Abe government will put any pressure to bear on Modi with regard to human rights. The key will be solidarity between the citizens of Japan and India. The Modi government has taken steps to cut off funding from overseas for NGOs working in India that have been critical of the government. A personal acquaintance of mine who operates an NGO in India has been forced to reduce the scale of the organizations activities for this reason.

In this situation, solidarity between citizens across national borders is not easy, but it is important and crucial to let people who are facing discrimination and human rights violations in India know that they are not alone. It is not always easy to obtain enough information about India in the Japanese media, but reports are gradually increasing. I hope the media will report more information about what is actually happening in India, and that readers in Japan will stop regarding themselves as mere bystanders and become more engaged in learning more about what is happening. These are important first steps toward resolving the current crisis facing democracy worldwide.

The second point I would make is that we should be cautious with regard to widening the frame of military cooperation. Military cooperation is currently expanding across a multilateral framework encompassing many countries, including India, in the name of securing sea lanes for oil, and ensuring free and open navigation across Indo-Pacific. The reality is that this is part of a strategy of military containment designed to fight back against Chinas apparent string of pearls strategy to develop a series of strategic military and commercial centers from the South China Sea to the Horn of Africa.

A major point of debate in Japan at the moment concerns the extent to which the Self-Defense Forces can be allowed to operate outside the parameters of homeland defense. The reality is that the definition of what is permissible is widening all the time. We have already reached a situation in which military cooperation is cited alongside the economy as a priority area for the Japan-India relationship. It is essential to be prudent in the years ahead and to make sure we discern carefully what the true objectives of both governments are.

Japan and India are two Asian countries that pride themselves on having followed a democratic system since the end of World War II. India now finds itself on the front lines of a widening global democratic crisis, and freedom of expression is under serious threat in Japan too. In this context, citizens can play a significant and important role. I hope the people of Japan and India will pool their collective wisdom and cooperate to build a better world together: This would be the best way to protect the democracy that both countries have valued more than anything else in the years since the war.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at Kansai International Airport on June 27, 2019, to attend the G20 Summit in Osaka. Jiji.)

(*1) ^ See Nakazato (2011) for an excellent study that uses historical documentary evidence to show the fictitious way in which the Pal myth was created in Japan. Nakazato (2016) covers the subject in English.

(*2) ^ Confluence of the Two Seas. Speech by Abe Shinz at the Parliament of the Republic of India, August 22, 2007. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/pmv0708/speech-2.htmlaccessed on August.2, 2019

(*3) ^ The number of victims is normally put at 3 million, but a government investigation team estimated the number as between 1 million and 3 million people. See Nakazato (2007: 190).

(*4) ^ US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, India 2018 International Religious Freedom Report. https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-report-on-international-religious-freedom/india/ (accessed on August 2, 2019.)

(*5) ^ Confluence of the Two Seas, referred to in footnote 2.

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Japan and India: Looking Beyond the Economy - Nippon.com

This month, China celebrates 70 years of Communist party rule. They marked the occasion in Beijing with painstakingly choreographed military parades and displays of new weapons, such as hypersonic drones and intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in Hong Kong, long-suffering protests turned violent and worked directly against Chinas power show of unity and strength.

Protests in Hong Kong have been marching on since late last March, originally fighting against an extradition bill which would have allowed for criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China, according to the BBC. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and, eventually, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said the bill would be suspended indefinitely. Protesters werent having it and demanded the bill be permanently withdrawn. It eventually was in September.

But the response of Hong Kongs police force and the hardening response from mainland China have only bolstered protesters. Protesters have demanded many things, from the withdrawal of the riot description given to protesters, universal suffrage for the elections of Hong Kongs parliament or the resignation of Lam. The protests came to a head last week when a protester was shot with a live round for the first time.

Celebrating a false, demoralizing sense of unity in China and its territories is nothing short of barbaric. Its the pan and circus of the modern era, distracting society from their overbearing death and destruction with carefully programmed, ready-for-public demonstrations of might and power.

People have been marching for months on end, suffering shots from rubber bullets, tear gas, losing their jobs and, in the worst cases, being arrested and thrown in jail; all while the political and wealthy elite celebrate the corrupt system that placed them in those positions of power. They demonstrate that power with military and police, showing off their overwhelming might with monstrous force.

President Trump wrote an off-color tweet congratulating China on its 70-year celebration, going to show how backward and divided opinion has become about Chinas Communist party and treatment of its citizens. Americans, and specifically Republicans, have been against the very notion of communists for more than half a century, especially when there is overwhelming evidence of that Communist nation cracking down on personal freedoms and expression.

China is better at nothing than the repression of personal freedom, from outlawing images of ghosts and homosexuality on screen, to the repression of its Muslim citizens and the protests still in full swing in Hong Kong, which only continue to grow more violent.

The birth of Chinas communist nation bore only sorrow and death. None [of all the planned utopian economies of the 20th century] was more deadly or dehumanizing no government has murdered, tortured, imprisoned and terrorized more of its own people than communist China, according to the New York Post. Its economic status may be on the rise and its GDP second only to the United States, but Chinas demonstration of old fashioned, 1950s era military power and crackdown of personal freedoms is nothing short of reprehensible.

The only silver lining here is the fact that the extradition bill which sparked these protests in the first place has been officially withdrawn. Maybe there can be a future in China where peoples voices are heard; where change can be made. For now, that change is regulated to Hong Kong, where the laws of China are shaky, and its citizens wary of their oppressor.

Maria Pawlak is a political science and English double major freshman who was always the penultimate runner when she did high school cross country.

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Celebrations in communist China hide realities of violence and oppression - Lamron

President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday stressed the importance of the role the public played in the countrys democracy and promised the governments support in achieving better democracy.Speaking at a ceremony in Busan to commemorate the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests of 1979, Moon also stressed the need for the governments power organizations not to lose sight of democracy, an apparent barb aimed at the prosecutors office.

Our democracy has ceaselessly improved, and grows ever larger. Every time democracy faced a crisis, the people revived democracy through action, Moon said, adding that the democratic processes are now spreading to the workplace and homes.

The Busan-Masan Democratic Protests began Oct. 16, 1979, sparked by a series of events that began earlier that year. At the protests, students and citizens called for an end to political oppression and to the dictatorial rule of the Park Chung-hee regime, and on Oct. 18 former President Park Chung-hee responded by declaring martial law in the region. In the process of suppressing the protests, more than 1,500 people were arrested and more than 100 citizens tried in military court.

Last year, Oct. 16 was designated as a national day of commemoration, and this years ceremony was the first national event to remember the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests.

The Busan-Masan Democratic Protests were a great struggle that opened the dawn of democracy by overthrowing the Yushin dictatorship, Moon said, describing the period as the longest and harshest dictatorship in Korean history.

The Yushin dictatorship refers to the latter part of Parks rule, from 1972 until his assassination in 1979. Under the Yushin Constitution imposed by Park, the president had sweeping powers.

In his speech, Moon also stressed the need to reform government organizations.

No authority can rule over the people as long as we have the great history of democracy movements, Moon said, going on to list various democracy movements of the past, including the candlelight rallies that led to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye.

Saying the public is demanding better democracy, Moon went on to stress the importance of reform within the government.

All power organizations must bear in mind that they exist not for the sake of the organization but for the people, Moon said. The term power organizations refers to government bodies that wield power over the public, including the prosecutors office.

Moons comment has been taken by some as being directed at the prosecutors office, which has been accused of wielding unbridled power. In recent weeks, the prosecution has also been accused by some of using its powers to attack former Minister of Justice Cho Kuk.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)

Link:

Moon stresses peoples role in democracy - The Korea Herald

(Pixabay)The governor of Tennessee has issued a proclamation. Approximately 49 other governors would do well to follow his example.

Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has proclaimed today a day of prayer, humility, and fasting. There are, by my count, approximately 49 other governors who would do well to follow his example. A president, too.

And 327.2 million Americans.

The proclamation reads, in part: We seek forgiveness from our transgressions; from acts of discrimination, oppression, and injustice; and inaction caused by greed, pride, and indifference; for these and many more we ask forgiveness. ... The people of Tennessee acknowledge our rich blessings, our deep transgressions, and our complex challenges, and further acknowledge the need to give thanks to God Almighty, to turn from our transgressions and ask for Gods forgiveness, and to humble ourselves and seek Gods wisdom and guidance.

The carefully ecumenical wording of the document (insufficient to prevent predictable and predictably stupid criticism) is modern in its sensibility, but the governors proclamation is connected to an ancient tradition, an honorable and intelligent one one that is of particularly urgent relevance at this moment in our national history. Humility is a rare commodity in the halls of power. So is wisdom, even the modest wisdom necessary to comprehend the need for greater wisdom.

In the Bible, God from time to time threatens His people with bad political leadership, known as a curse then just as it is here in our own time. God threatens to deprive His people of the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient ... the honorable man, and the counselor. Instead, He thunders: I will give childrento betheir princes, and babes shall rule over them. The following lines contain a word that recurs throughout Scripture: oppressed. The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.

Oppressed in this usage often means the domination of the weak by the powerful: The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble; He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry; He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor. The good man is commanded: Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. The oppressed are the poor, the orphans, and the widows those who have no friend to plead their cause for them and no strong hand to secure justice and their rights. The Bible foreshadows a certain strain of modern libertarian rhetoric by characterizing the treatment of the oppressed as robbery. No doubt the robbery of that time was more direct and literal than the softer modes of oppression experienced in modern democratic states. But the way in which, for example, certain municipalities use the poor as cash cattle, plaguing them with excessive court fees and fines for relatively petty violations (and charging them high interest rates on payment plans) fits snugly into the pattern of oppression that Isaiah condemned.

Perhaps it is the case that God has made good his ancient threat not on the original Israelites but on us, the little startup republic that had the temerity to model itself on their kingdom. If we are governed by children, they are very bad children, indeed. (Bad, bad, elderly children.) It is not the case, as the proverb insists, that in democracies the people always get the government they deserve. But we do get the kind of government we will tolerate. Our dueling partisanships are intoxicating in both senses of that word: pleasurable and poisonous. But like any other addiction, it holds power over us only to the extent that we permit it to do so. Addictions can be very difficult to break getting over them may be hard, but it is not complicated: You put the plug in the jug.

We are a strangely ungrateful people. We talk about the carnage of the American condition as we live lives of wealth and ease that John D. Rockefeller could not have imagined. If you want to see carnage, fix your eyes, if you can stand to, upon the Kurdish allies we have just abandoned to massacre at the hands of the Turkish dictator in an act of shockingly dishonorable cowardice.

Theyre doing penance in Tennessee today. So should we all.

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A Day of Prayer and Fasting - National Review

Sometime ago, before Turkey chosefirstto lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamismand later under the growing dictatorship of Recep Tayip Erdogan, I received a plea from ahighly educatedKurdish friend who was supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He was devoted to the Jewish people for he knew ofboththe sharedvalues and evenethnicities existingbetween Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.

Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letterfrom ten years ago, whichwas in reply to my American Thinker article of June 2010 titled,Israeli and Kurdish victims of Turkey.In his reply, heuncannily warned againstthe thenalliance of Israelwith Turkey:

"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?

in 1966, Mustafa Barzani, told a visiting Israeli emissary, Arieh Lova Eliav, that. In truth, only the Jews cared about the Kurds."Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust - VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.

He went on to add the following:

"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.

"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same anti-Jewish pestilence that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.

"I remember your moving article (Who truly deserves a state? The Kurds or the Palestinians?American Thinker, February, 2012) in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people's oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel's advantage.

"Israel's cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel's credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East."

Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warningthoseten years agowas.Erdogan has sought every opportunity to break Turkeys erstwhile friendship with the Jewish state and now he seeks a veritable caliphate in the Islamic world while garnering to himself those, like Hamas, who harbor deep hostility towards Israel.

Turkey is an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people.Returning to ten years ago, my friend was writing asTurkish troops were invading Kurdish territoryand jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages. At that time,just as now, Turkish tanks were rolling into Kurdish held territory and Kurds were dying. (Erdogans Not-So-Sublime Porte.American Thinker, September 2011).

He wrote withmore pointed criticism of the Israeli leadership's shortsightednessduring that period often years ago.He defended without question what he called Israel's cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands - now partially occupied by thefraudulentArabswho call themselves Palestinians. But he also pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change...."

And as todays events are taking place, with Turkey onceagain invading Kurdish territory, this time in northern Syria, things do look black. During Menchem Begins premiership, military humanitarian aid was given by Israel to the Kurds for several years from 1965 and the United States also provided such aid. But suddenly the U.S. Government proscribed any further such assistance from both the U.S. and Israel in 1975.

Indeed, from 1961, the Jewish state was the only nation to actively support Kurdish aspirations. According to Mordechai Nisan in his booke, Minorities in the Middle East, published by McFarlane in 2002, the Kurdish leader in 1966, Mustafa Barzani, told a visiting Israeli emissary, Arieh Lova Eliav, that. In truth, only the Jews cared about the Kurds.

During the period when a succession of left-leaning Israeli governments were in power, Israel supplied Turkey with UAVs, which were used against the Kurds. This was admittedly before the increasingly Islamized Turkish regime turned on Israel. Under leftist Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni, the Jewish state had sadly copied the mendacious policies of other mostly European nations namely putting political and commercial expediency above morality. These leftwing leaders should have known of the agony the Kurdish people were enduring, then as now, not only from Turkey but also from Iran, Iraq and Syria.

I remember an article by the wonderful Ruth King condemning Turkeys appalling decision in 1941 during the height of World War 2. The Struma, which wascarrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, wasforbiddento landits terrified men, women and childrenin Turkey. Instead the ship was cruellyforced to remain as a rotting and leaking hulk drifting off the Turkish coast. It was eventually torpedoed, presumably by a Russian submarine,with appalling loss of life.

With the reality of Israel's reconstitution as a sovereign nation inherancestral andBiblical homeland has come the equal reality ofheruniqueness within an oftenhostile world.Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even thoughIsraellives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends,shemust neverevadeherunique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors -byIran, Syria,Iraqand,last but not least,byTurkey.

Ialsoremember an article in theNew York Sunon 6 July,2004 titled "The Kurdish Statehood Exception," in which Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood. He wrote:

"The Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. Kurdish people have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinian Arabs do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinian Arabs have never had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinian Arabs have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs."

During the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were gassed and slaughtered in large numbers. They suffered ethnic cleansing by the Turks and continuedto beoppressedby thethenTurkish government, whose foreign minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoglu, had the gall to suggest, at a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Turkey supports the oppressed of the world. He ignored his own government's oppression of the Kurds,but predictably named the anti-JewishHamasthugs in Gaza as "oppressed." On the basis of pure realpolitik, the legality and morality of the Kurds' cause is infinitely stronger than that of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

In contrast,after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom.How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israels Ariel Sharon, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have addedtunnels andthe imposition ofIslamic Sharia law, with its attendant and barbaric denigration of women and non-Muslims.

The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Jewish statemust now, more than ever, not ignore the35-40 millionKurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries,nay millennia,but have been denied;an independentKurdishstate of their own.

According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in theAmerican Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests - like survival."He realized that with the stark realityof a profoundlyunfriendly Obama Administrationtowards the Jewish state,creating facts on the ground was moreimportant than ever. He wrote:

"If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances."Fortunately that is what Prime Minister Netanyahu successfully and largely has achieved. Since then Israel enjoys the friendliest American President it has ever experienced, but there is never any guarantee that a president will succeed to a second term.

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip.Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that isquitedesolating. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7thcentury mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

Israel shouldadvancethe restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan.An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.

Victor Sharpes four volumes ofPoliticde: The attempted murder of the Jewish state,areavailable at LuluPress or on Amazon.com

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Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages. - Arutz Sheva

The US has blacklisted 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies over Beijings treatment of Uighur Muslims and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. (Reuters file)

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In July 2009, days after violent riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighurs, Chinese authorities took the drastic move of shutting down the Internet and all other communications. For 10 months, the entire regionlarger than Texas and home to more than 20 million residentswas cut off from the world.Ad Policy

A decade later, just across the border, Indian authorities cut Internet, mobile, and even postal communication in Muslim-majority Kashmir as they stripped the state of its special autonomy. Despite their allowing, on October 14, a limited number of mobile phones to function, Kashmir for the most part remains isolated to this day, and no one knows when communication will be restored.

The current Kashmir shutdown, and in particular the turning off of the Internet and communications, is awfully similar to the one in Xinjiang post-2009 riots, James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert in Central Asian history, said. One wonders if [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is taking a page from the Chinese book there.

In fact, Kashmir and Xinjiang, which are separated by the Himalayas, share many worrying similarities. The 2009 Xinjiang shutdown was just the start of a series of horrors for Uighurs. Under the guise of anti-terrorism after a series of attacks and, notably, a 2008 incident that killed dozens Chinese policeman in Kashgar, the space for Uighurs expression and freedom has gradually shrunk, as all aspects of their cultural, social, and religious lives have come under the control of Chinese authorities.

Today, the region is host to a techno-digital dystopia, with massive surveillance policing nearly every aspect of Uighur lives. Since 2017, the repression has taken an even darker turn, with the building of massive concentration camps hosting upward of 1.5 million Uighurs, few of whom have been charged with any crime.

Kashmir and Xinijang have many parallels, Ovais Sultan Khan, a human rights activist and director of Future Council, a Delhi-based think tank, said. Uighur Muslims are facing genocide by the Chinese state, and both India and China are using their own tactics to oppress Uighur and Kashmiri people.

It was unfortunate quirks of colonialism and history that led each Muslim majority region to become an unwilling part of a larger neighbor. Kashmir became part of India in 1947 in a move that remains contested, while Xinjiang became part of the newly founded Peoples Republic of China in 1949, after a military invasion that ended a short-lived independent Turkic Muslim state. Neither have had referendums or any form of self-determination, making them de facto modern colonies.Current Issue

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They are both Muslim-majority places that have, through the processes of the 20th century, ended up in nonMuslim majority countries, and that identity has been a source of some of the problems, Millward said.

Not surprisingly, over the past decades, both regions have seen waves of militarism, conflict, and repression. More recently, though, it is the rise of global ethno-nationalism, a phenomenon seen in the West too, that is driving more fierce state-led oppression.

There is a broader, global parallel to whats happening in Xinjiang and Kashmir, the global nativist trend, Millward said, pointing to the rapid rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the shift, under Xi Jingping, away from multiculturalism and toward a unified singular Chinese identity, meaning forced assimilation for ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

In fact, Islamophobia and online hate against Muslims has been rising in both countries. India has been seeing rising hate crimes, including the growth of vigilantes and lynch mobs, targeting Muslims across the country. In China, you cannot find discussions about topics like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, photos of the Dalai Lama, or even photos of Winnie the Pooh because of censorship, but you can find plenty of anti-Muslim content.

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Underpinning this identity rhetoric in both regions is an emphasis on national security and counterterrorism. Like in Xinjiang, terrorism has played a role in Kashmir. The current crackdown is linked to the March 2019 attack on a convoy by an Islamist suicide bomber in Pulwana, which killed 40 police personnel.

In Kashmir, surveillance technology, some of it possibly sourced from the very companies enabling Chinese repression in Xinjiang, are creeping in. While the Xinjiang model is still the cutting edge of the digital authoritarian state, Kashmir may not be that far behind. Hikvision, a Chinese state-controlled company and one of the worlds largest developers of sophisticated CCTV surveillance systems, had contracts with Chinese police in Xinjiang, and is now exporting technology to India, according to a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment. Alongside CCTV systems, the use of drones and other aerial vehicles to monitor mosques and the movement of Kashmiris has become pervasive, and theres even a smart border that resembles Chinese efforts to limit the movement of people along the Xinjiang and Tibet borders. Limited access to Indian police and military procurement documents means it is difficult to directly connect Chinese surveillance giants to Kashmir. The shutdown only makes this harder.

In Kashmirwe dont know all the technology and what theyre deploying there, Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director at Access Now, said.

Beyond the shutdown and the growing surveillance network, there is also worrying rhetoric from Modis far-right Hindu nationalist government. There is talk about moving Hindu migrants to Kashmir and allowing Indian and foreign businesses to exploit the resource-rich region, enabled by the removal of laws that forbid non-Kashmiris from owning land in Kashmir. This echoes what has happened in Xinjiang. Encouraged by state policies in the 1950s and 60s, and by economic opportunities in more recent years, Han Chinese now nearly equal the Uighur population in the region, and vastly outnumber them in the capital, Urumqi. Chinese businesses have invested billions in exploiting natural resources.

There is even chatter on Indian social media about Hindu men marrying fair-skinned Kashmiri womenmimicking the increasing number of stories about forced marriages between Han Chinese men and Uighur women in Xinjiang.

For now, the best hope for Kashmir lies in the fact that India has not yet gone as far down the authoritarian path as China. There remains a civil society, albeit one under increasing pressure, some free press, and a supposedly independent judicial system; there are several cases going through various stages of the court system that seek to force the government to end the shutdown, and respect Kashmiri human rights. But none of them will come to fruition overnight, and some worry that the courts are slowing things down deliberately, perhaps because of pressure from the Modi government.

Just a few years ago, the Indian Supreme Court said that Indias fundamental right to free speech applies online, and any government restrictions had to pass strict constitutional tests, Chima said. The fact that the courts have been slow in providing relief on this have is extremely concerning.

If Indias courts do not limit the Modi governments use of national security to cut off an entire region, it could embolden them to further implement draconian, tech-driven surveillance to repress Kashmiris and cement Indian control over the region. Then, other parts of India, which has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, could follow.

The bigger danger is that this new normal in Kashmir becomes the new normal for the rest of the Indian republic as well, the idea that if you believe you have a national security justification, you can do anything you want, Chima added.

As Chinas other ethnic minorities, such as the Hui, Tibetans, Kazakhs, and even Hongkongers are seeing, repression and authoritarian technology does not stay in once part of a country, or even region. Rather, it expands and spreads. Ten years ago, it was Xinjiang. Today, its Kashmir. Tomorrow, it could be whatever remains of Indias democracy.

Link:

China Is Exporting Its Anti-Muslim Strategy to India - The Nation

The embarrassing spectacle of the NBAs millionaire players and billionaire owners doing the bidding of Chinas communist rulers, and even attacking the United States in the process, has forced Americans to ask questions about our national culture.

Many have asked if the case for free trade was a fable, and that instead of us exporting American liberties, we are importing Chinese oppression. Others have pointed to the hypocrisy of woke NBA celebrities, such as Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, brave when defending elite morality in America but abject cowards when faced with actual cases of oppression that potentially conflict with their financial interests or contractual obligations.

But theres a subtler point that it's easy to miss: The censorious arguments from Beijings defenders sound like they could come from the mouths of campus leftists or appear on the pages of America's liberals magazines.

Take the letter from Joe Tsai, the billionaire who owns most of the New Jersey Nets. The first part of the letter conflates, again and again, the demands of the Chinese state to silence opposition with the demands of "fans."

Chinese fans have reacted extremely negatively to a tweet put out by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey," Tsai begins. "The Rockets are now effectively shut out of the Chinese market as fans abandon their love for the team," he adds later. "Fans in China are calling for an explanation," Tsai goes on.

Tsai then adopts a stance that is very familiar to those who have tried to host a conservative speaker or even a debate on a liberal campus: Free speech isnt for sensitive topics that affect certain cultures.

[T]he NBA has been very progressive in allowing players and other constituents a platform to speak out on issues, Tsai writes. The problem is, there are certain topics that are third-rail issues in certain countries, societies and communities.

Supporting Hong Kong independence is out of bounds for all citizens in China, Tsai claims. This issue is non-negotiable.

He writes as if increasing Hong Kongers rights or, by implication, granting independence to Taiwan would demolish Chinas territorial integrity.

This echoes the specious left-wing tactic of declaring opinions as intolerable if they deny or question my right to exist. This argument is constantly rolled out against arguments that certainly do not deny or question anyones right to exist.

Tsai also justifies this censorious mindset by telling the timeworn tale that China's government uses to justify its current belligerence. It all goes back to colonial oppression and China's "century of humiliation," with the blame mostly falling on the British. The Chinese communists use this as their sob story when trying to win sympathy for their own illiberal behavior.

Thankfully, it doesnt seem to be working. The American Left is no warmer to China's strong-arm efforts than is the American Right. American liberals who cheered the political activism of NBA celebrities are now audibly lamenting their silence, and good for them.

There's plenty of reason to worry that parts of the American Left are abandoning the principles of pluralism, tolerance, and free speech. Here's hoping that some censorious intolerance from China is stirring up these old principles and putting the liber- back into American liberals.

Original post:

Censorious Chinese talk the language of US campus liberals, hopefully horrifying them - Washington Examiner