Category Archives: Government Oppression

Reviews & Culture

Ilham Tohti appeals for an end to the repression of the Uyghur Muslims in this unique insight, writes Simon Gilbert

Monday 27 June 2022

In the past few days, I have been under constant surveillance by police vehicles and national security police officers, wrote Uyghur intellectual Ilham Tohti in July 2013. I dont have too many good days ahead of me, it is necessary for me to leave a few words behind before I no longer have the ability to do so.

The Chinese government is trying to get rid of me this time. And so it did. One year later, Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment. His book, We Uyghurs Have No Say, presents some of those words he left behind, available for the first time in English.

Despite the extreme harshness of his sentence, Tohti is certainly no revolutionary firebrand. He describes himself as an intellectual who relies only on pen and paper to diplomatically request human rights, legal rights, and autonomous regional rights for the Uyghurs. He is at pains to reject any accusation of separatism, calling himself a Chinese patriot. But Tohti became increasingly frustrated at the regimes failure to implement its own legal commitments to Chinas minorities, or to give any substance to the autonomy they supposedly enjoy.

The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim people, living in Xinjiang in Chinas far north west, who have long been made to feel strangers in their own homeland. The US has used their plight to justify trade wars and sanctions in its imperialist clash with China. But, as Tohti makes clear, the Uyghurs oppression at the hands of the regime is horribly real.

At the heart of the book is an essay where Tohti lists nine grievances over the treatment of his people. To take a few examples. Uyghur children are the victims of a bilingual education that is really monolingualthey have to learn in Chineseand widely seen as part of a forced assimilation drive. After they leave school to look for work, they face significant employment discrimination, making their prospects far worse than those of Xinjiangs Han Chinese. This is despite an employment law that mandates government and state enterprises to give priority to ethnic minorities.

Uyghurs cannot even pray in peace. A strategy of opposing three forces, introduced to Xinjiang in 1997, has morphed into a policy of opposing religious tradition and suppressing normal expressions of religious belief. In the process, these forces of terrorism, religious extremism and separatism have been made virtually synonymous, justifying the imprisonment of Uyghurs.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese regime has intensified repression in Xinjiang. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw neighbouring central Asian republics, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, gain independence. The disintegration of another state capitalist regime was a shock to the Chinese Communist Party bosses, and raised hopes of Uyghur independence. The US war on terror, and wave of state-sponsored Islamophobia in the West, allowed the Chinese state to recast Uyghur repression as counter-terrorism. And, as Chinas turn to the market took off and inequality grew, the CCP relied more on crude nationalism to ensure social stability.

At the end of each section, Tohti recommends policy changes to improve the situation. But the regime under Xi Jinping is heading in the opposite directiontightening its grip across China, most severely in Xinjiang.

Yet if assimilation is the objective, increasing repression may be having the opposite effect. Tohti writes about Uyghurs adopting a form of silent resistance by privately turning back to traditional culture, religious worship, and a strengthened sense of ethnic identity. Suppression of open religious observance has allowed imported ultra-conservative and xenophobic strains of religious thought, which previously had little appeal to the Uyghurs, to be disseminated via the religious underground.

This book provides a unique record of a voice, whose critique of ethnic policy remains within the parameters set by the regime. But it could only counter that voice by silencing it. Throughout the book Tohtis humanity shines through. For instance, he rejects the idea that the international community can solve their problems and argues for dialogue between Uyghurs and Han Chinese.

His optimism is admirable too. Even on the verge of incarceration he remained convinced that China will become better and that the constitutional rights of the Uyghur people will, one day, be honoured. Making that a reality will certainly require the sort of unity across ethnic lines that Tohti advocates. But it will also require a much more radical political vision that challenges Chinas state capitalist rulers who exploit Chinas workers and oppress the Uyghurs.

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We Uyghurs Have No Say by Ilham Tohtitelling a story of oppression - Socialist Worker

Today, June 30, is considered the anniversary of the beginning of the six-month Santhal rebellion.

The struggle of man [humans] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting, wrote Milan Kundera in one of his works.

This powerful quote is reminder of many things, of which one is the act of remembering. The very act of remembering is not a neutral act but laden with ideological considerations and biases. This hold truer when we remember historical events and figures of political importance. How we remember past events and figures, what are the things and acts that we omit or leave out from remembering and what we remember is motivated by our ideological considerations and political projects.

One such popular act of ritualised remembering is that of the great Santhal rebellion that took place in mid-19th century in British India.

Every year the Santhal rebellion and its leaders Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu are remembered in ritualistic way by different political parties and communities, all from different perspectives. But beneath all these different ways of remembering there lies a unitary theme; that the Santhal rebellion was one of the first expressions of revolt against the British colonial regime.

This framework, though true but limited, has become so dominant that the Santhal rebellion is now merely seen as a part in a series of similar such events that took place in colonial India.

This dominant understanding is informed by a nationalist framework in which almost every revolt in British India is interpreted only as anti-British revolt while other aspects of them are totally omitted from public memory. A strict and only location of the Santhal and other similar Adivasi revolts within the framework of national liberation struggle also reeks of cultural imperialism as it seeks to erase the cultural or identity aspects of these tribal revolts.

Also read: Remembering Santal Hul, a 19th Century Struggle Against Imperialism

The Santhal rebellion began on June 30, 1855, and went on for almost six months before it was finally suppressed by January 3, 1856, leaving over 15,000 Santhals dead and over 10,000 of their villages destroyed. This great insurrection known as the Hul, was led by four brothers, namely Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav Murmu of village Bhagnadihi, under whom almost 60,000 Santhals mobilised with traditional weapons.

This rebellion in spite of it having largely been woven around the theme of anti-British revolt actually began as revolt against exploitation by Indian upper caste zamindars, moneylenders, merchants and darogas (police officials), collectively known as diku, who had come to dominate the economic sphere of Santhal life.

The Santhals who originally spread over regions of present-day Bihar and West Bengal were relocated by the Britishers in the Rajmahal hill region between 1790 and 1810 following the great Bengal Famine of 1770 which had killed between 7 to 10 million people and had affected 30 million.

A piece from the artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharyas well-known album of paintings of the Bengal Famine.

The reason behind the relocation of Santhal people was the demand for agricultural labour following the depletion of population in permanent settlement zones of Rajmahal and Jungle Mahal hills. Sponsored by the British and local landlords, Santhal people entered the area and began clearing the jungles. They were employed as agricultural labourers or got land on lease. The region in which the Santhals were relocated came to be known as Damin-i-koh.

The Damin region soon became a centre of Santhal socio-cultural life and attracted Santhals from neighbouring districts. As late Adivasi scholar has Abhay Xalxo noted, The formation of the Damin came as a great blessing to the Santhals. They thought that at last they would have a homeland of their own and would be able to live an independent life and preserve their culture and identity.

Also read:Remembering Birsa Munda, the Social Reformer and Revolutionary Leader

But this blessing did not last long as non-tribals from adjoining areas started to settle in the Damin and began to oppress and exploit the Santhals and other tribals groups of the region.

Giving a vivid description of the exploitation of Santhals by merchants, traders and mahajans who belonged mostly to the Hindu community William Wilson Hunter, a colonial bureaucrat wrote:

Hindu merchants flocked thither every winter after harvest to buy up the crop, and by degree each market-town throughout the settlement had its resident Hindu grain dealer. The Santal was ignorant and honest; the Hindu was keen and unscrupulous. Not a year passed without some successful shopkeeper returning from the hill-slopes to astonish his native town by a display of quickly-gotten wealth, and to buy land upon the plains.

The Santhals were exploited and robbed in and out, right and left without any remorse from merchants and traders. Hunter further writes:

The Santal country came to be regarded as a country where a fortune was to be made, no matter by what means, so that it was made rapidly hucksters settled upon various pretences, and in a few years grew into men of fortune. They cheated the poor santal in every transaction. The forester brought his jars of clarified butter for sale; the [merchants] measured it in vessels with false bottoms; the husbandman came to exchange his rice for soil, oil, cloth and gum-powder; the merchants used heavy weights in ascertaining the quantity of grain light ones in weighing out the articles given in return. If the santal remonstrated, he was told that salt, being an excisable commodity, had a set of weights and measures to itself.

The fortunes made by traffic in produce were augmented by usury. A family of new settlers required a small advance of grain to eke out the produce of the chase while they were clearing the jungle. The dealer gave them a few shillings worth of rice, and seized the land as soon as they had cleared it and sown the cropfrom moment the peasant touched borrowed rice, he and his children were the serfs of the corn merchant.

No matter what economy the family practiced, no matter what effort made to extricate themselves; stint they might, toil as they might, the [mahajans] claimed the crop and carried on a balance to be paid out the harvest. Year after year the Santhal sweated for his oppressor. If the victim threatened to run off the jungle, the usurper instituted a suit in the courts, taking care that the Santhal should know nothing of it till the decree had been obtained and the homestead were sold, omitting the brazen household vessels which formed the sole heirloom of the family. Even the cheap iron ornaments, the outward tokens of female respectability among the Santhals, were torn from the wifes wrist

In the wake of these varied forms of exploitation, there emerged two systems of bonded labour in Santhal territory, namely kamioti and harwahi. Under the first system, the borrower had to work for the mahajan till the repayment of the loan; under the second the borrower had in addition to personal services, to plough the mahajans field whenever required till the loan was repaid. The terms of the bond were so stringent that it was practically impossible for the Santhal to repay the loan during his lifetime.

Apart from oppression from merchants, mahajans and traders, the Santhal also faced oppression from the zamindars and capitalist agriculture. The zamindars and landlords extracted huge rents from the Santhal peasants while those Santhals who were employed in indigo plantation worked long hours and with extremely low wages. In such an extreme situation, the Santhals tried to petition to the British government and approached courts, but without any respite. Every time they went to the court or tried the official channel, they were met with disappointment.

This extreme form of oppression and neglect from British administration gave birth to social banditry in 1854 when a band of Santhals under the leadership of Bir Singh Manjhi, and others like Domin Manjhi and Kewal Pramanik, began to attack moneylenders and zamindars and distribute the loot among the poor Santhals.

Illustration: Saheb Ram Tudu from Ruby Hembroms Disaibon Hul (2014).

Bir Singh claimed to have been granted magical power by one their deities, Chando Bonga. The wide popularity of these bandits and frequency of attacks alarmed the moneylenders and zamindars who appealed to the royal family. This lead to police action and subsequent humiliation of those social bandits, as well as a few affluent Santhals who were accused of being robbers themselves. It was in this background that the Santhals raised the banner of revolt in 1855.

The brothers Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu claimed to have received word from Thakur Bonga, who urged them to revolt against the exploitative powerful. Prior to the decisive moment of revolt, the Santhal villages were replete with rumours derived from religious myths. Abhay Xalxo has listed four such rumours in his article The Great Santhal Insurrection (Hul) of 1855-56. These played an important role in developing communal solidarity among the Santhals just before the rebellion began.

On the night of June 30, 1855, some 10,000 Santhals gathered at Bhagnadihi where the orders of Thakur Bonga were read to them. Sidhu and Kanhu announced that god had directed them to: Slaughter all the mahajans and darogas, to banish the traders and zamindars and all rich Bengalis from their country, to sever their connection with the Damin-i-koh, and to fight all who resisted them, for the bullets of their enemies would be turned to water.

The rebels demanded that Britishers and native exploiters withdraw from the Damin-i-koh, and if not, they would declare a war on them sanctioned by god.

The rebellion, apart from acting against oppression and exploitation was also inspired by the political project of building and establishing an independent Santhal Raj. In the course of rebellion, the Santhal people developed their own infrastructure of governance. The leaders of the rebellion appointed themselves as governors of the region and many Santhals were appointed in the capacity of darogas, subordinate officers and naibs. The Murmu brothers promised deliverance from oppression and a utopian Santhal Raj free from exploitation, oppression and the diku.

This from of rebellion where a divine authority is cited by rebels who have a utopian vision, is labelled a millenarian movement by social scientists. As historian Michael Adas illustrates in his work Prophets of Rebellion (1979), millenarian movements were a consistent feature of colonial societies, especially among tribal societies all across the world during the colonial period. For example, the Pai Marie movement of the Maoris in New Zealand, the Cargo cult of Java islands, the Maji-Maji rebellion in east Africa, all displayed it. Even in India, the Munda rebellion and the Thana Bhagat movement have been described as millenarian movements. Invoking divine authority for the purposes of social transformation has been an important feature among oppressed and exploited communities throughout history.

Watch |Khunti: The Birthplace of Birsa Munda, and the Pathalgadi Rebellion

The Santhal rebellion began with the killing of a daroga on July 7, 1855. The policeman had gone to arrest the Santhal leaders. The police had been bribed by local mahajans, who had been ill at ease upon hearing about the huge Santhal gatherings. They asked the policemen to arrest the Santhal leaders under false changes of theft and dacoity. When the daroga, with his party, reached to arrest the Murmu brothers, Santhals attacked him.

This began the hul which spread like wildfire in neighbouring regions.

Santhals, along with local peasants, attacked local zamindars and moneylenders and looted their property and cattle. They also captured the treasuries of nearby royal families. Meanwhile, local zamindars and moneylenders helped the British forces quell the revolt by providing them with shelter and other daily provisions. The Nawab of Murshidabad even provided the British army with war elephants and trained soldiers.

On the other hand, the rebels were helped by a large number of non-tribal and poor mainly belonging to lower castes groups. Dairy farmers helped the rebels with provisions, while blacksmiths accompanied the rebels and helped them with their weapons. The Santhal rebellion also had a class component to it as oppressed groups united to fight against economic and cultural oppressors.

The British suppressed the movement with utmost brutality. Sidhu was hanged by the British army on August 19, 1855, while Kanhu was arrested on in February 1856. After this, the movement subsided. Even though this great insurrection lasted only for six months, it had a huge impact upon the Adivasi community and served as an inspiration for other Adivasi revolts.

Also read:Remembering Madari Pasi: The Uncelebrated Peasant Leader of the Eka Movement

Today the Santhal revolt along with Munda rebellion, Kol rebellion, Thana Bhagat movement and others are mainly remembered as anti-British revolts and while doing so the important component of internal colonialism is glossed over.

The British rule though extremely exploitative on economic fronts brought some respite for the lower castes by opening up opportunities for them under promises of liberal democracy. For the upper caste Hindus, the British rule provided an opportunity to reclaim their cultural and economic dominance over Indian society, which they had lost since the beginning of the medieval period. For Adivasis, the story of colonial and postcolonial rule has only been a story of continuous exploitation and erasure of their way of life.

Harsh Vardhan and Shivam Mogha are research scholars at Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU.

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Santhal Hul Wasn't Just the First Anti-British Revolt, It Was Against All Exploitation - The Wire

One of the most unsettling debates in contemporary India has been on sex markets and sex work.

Stemming from obscurantist sexual moorings of orthodoxy, the public impulse has been fragmentary. The premise underlying the internal contradiction is the delusive alienation of labour and sex.

There are three dominant paradigms to examine sex work. The first treats it as a deviant behaviour-anomie embedded in traditional stigma; the second considers it a quintessential type of gender relations subjected to oppression and violence against women; and the third focuses on the empowerment aspect of sexual commerce.

The historical evolution of the sex market is, according to historian Gerda Lerner, related to its relationship to sexual regulation of all women in archaic states and its relationship to the enslavement of females.

In ancient societies, poverty pushed womens sexual labour to rulers wealth and status. Hidden legitimacy was founded on the necessary fulfilment of the sexual needs of men, particularly when heterosexist marriage was required to preserve womens chastity. The origins of modern sex work are tied to the ascendancy of patriarchal kinship systems in which women were ritually exchanged as mere gifts among families.

In both contexts, masculinities were specific in structuring the conditions of vulnerability in sex work.

Public morality discourses sanction sexual relationships only in certain socially defined contexts, particularly marriage. Outside marriage, sex is perverse, immoral and sinful. It is a rupture of the misogynist link between sex, love and reproduction. Womens exercise of their sexuality itself is perceived as a threat to societal stability.

Corollary to this are the forbidden anxieties about the stigma and demonisation of sex work. Unless the core idea of sex as work is delinked from the normativities of sexual morality, it cannot be premised on the questions of legitimacy, identity, labour rights and decriminalisation.

Also read: SC Orders Police Against Abuse Of Sex Workers, Media From Publishing Their Pictures

Global legal approaches to sex work

Globally, there are broadly four distinct approaches to laws governing sex-work. The first is prohibition, which entails the criminalisation of sex work; the second is the abolition of sex-work; the third is regulation, which involves government licensing and regulating the sex-work business; and the fourth is decriminalisation, which removes all criminal prohibitions for the acts of consenting adults in either purchasing or selling sexual services.

Feminist dilemmas revolve around sex workers being subjected to systemic patriarchal exploitation. Obviously, sex work involves varying degrees of coercion, resistance and agency. While the inherent risk of violence and oppression cannot be dismissed, it is equally significant to recognise the need for the protection of rights. The danger of prosecuting women for selling sex lies in compounding their victimisation while criminalisation will force sex workers to go underground to protect customers.

The complex systems of regulation in Germany and the Netherlands have sought to reduce the harms of sex work rather than call for its elimination. New Zealand, on the other hand, has adopted the decriminalisation model.

Be it any model, the costs of the vulnerability of sex workers and their well-being must be legitimate moot-points of policy making.

Reimagining sex work

I argue that the conceptual shift has to be from regarding sex workers as merely exploited victims to sexual labour. Consensual sex work should be recognised as paid labour. A re-conceptualisation of sex work as a form of sexual labour will increase sex workers accessibility to resources, mobilise them for representation and participation, and challenge social exclusion.

A more conscious and non-discriminatory regulatory framework that protect the rights of sex workers through labour legislation; ensuring workplace health and safe working environments; and legal support for redressal in case of injury, abuse and unfair treatment are all needed.

According to government statistics, there are over two million sex workers in the country. Be it G.B. Road in Delhi, Sonagachi in Kolkata or Kamathipura in Mumbai, sex work is widely prevalent in both rural and urban areas. And in India, the Immoral Trafficking of Persons Act (ITPA) does not punish prostitution. What is punishable is sexual exploitation, commercial sex, the running of a brothel or seducing another person.

Also read: Why Sex Workers Organisations Arent Pleased With the Draft Anti-Trafficking Bill

Legal precedents

Judicial decisions on the rights of sex-workers have vacillated between empathy and contempt. Firstly, the discourse largely tilts towards portraying the sex worker as a victim rather than as an autonomous agent capable of decision making. Secondly, there is an apparent tension between fundamental Constitutional guarantees and the corporealities of extreme marginalisation for such women.

As early as 1997, in Gaurav Jain versus Union of India, the protectionist approach of the court exacted the right to equal opportunity, care and protection to children of sex workers. The court, in Manoj Shaw versus State of West Bengal, issued directions for sex workers to be considered victims. In several other decisions, the court backed the right to life and dignity of sex workers under Article 21 of the Constitution.

A faint idea of sex work-by-consent underlined the courts assertion of the fundamental right to carry a vocation of ones choice in Kajal Mukesh Singh and Ors. versus State of Maharashtra. There is a definitive disquisition in Delhi versus Pankaj Chaudhry and Ors that a womens character is unquestionable, even if she is of easy virtue or habitual of sexual intercourse. However, such a framework is rejected by the larger rectitude of the society. The condemnation dismisses any negotiation of the rights of women engaged in sex-work.

The recent order by the Justice L. Nageswara Rao-led three-judge bench Supreme Court is a historic reiteration of the Constitutional will towards every citizens right to live with dignity.

It unfolded a non-discriminatory humanitarian framework of entitlement to women who have been disadvantaged because of their profession. It is retributive in the sense that it redirects state intervention to be protectionist and welfare oriented towards sex workers. The role of the police is circumscribed to neither interfere nor take criminal action against consenting adult sex workers.

Significantly, it upheld the basic protection of human decency and dignity to both sex workers and their children.

Social respectability to sex work can be achieved only when social and legislative changes go hand-in-hand. Like Martha Nussbaum writes, there is a need for greater public engagement with the issue without either aristocratic class prejudice or fear of the body and its passions. Till then, Who says Sex is Work?

Anita Tagore is Associate Professor in Kalindi College, University of Delhi. She holds a doctorate in political science with a degree in law.

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Sex Workers Need to be Seen as Labour, Not Victims - The Wire

From the brutish and nasty state of the dark ages, societies have evolved and experienced growth and development according to the strength of their institutions. To achieve social order and peace, societies set cultural goals and rewards and create institutions through which people must progress to attain those goals. The medical profession is an example of a cultural goal since it has economic benefits and social prestige, but for one to join this vocation, one has to pass through rigorous trainings and be certified as competent by a medical college or related institutions.

However, when people fail to achieve the cultural goals despite the institutionalized means, illegitimate means invariably develop from a forceful configuration of the peoples survival instincts which leads to social crisis and a breakdown in the regulatory structure of society. This is anomie, a state of chaos or the recalibration of society into its brutish, nasty state.

In 1897, Emile Durkheim, a French classical sociologist, first used the concept of anomie in his book (Suicide) to describe the prevalence of suicide in Europe due to the breakdown of the collective values which led to a feeling of despair and hopelessness in the people. However, in 1954, Robert K. Merton, an American Sociologist, developed the concept into a model that analyses the five personality types that respond to anomic conditions in the society which include; the Conformist, the Innovators, the Ritualists, the Retreatist and the Revolutionary.

Registration for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 9 (Sep 12- Dec 3 2022) has started. Register here. Cost is N60,000 or $140 for the 12-week program.

According to Robert Mertons Strain theory, the conformists play by the social rules and invariably seek the politically correct means of achieving the cultural goals. The innovators identify the blind spots in the social system and develop unconventional means of achieving the cultural goals. The Ritualists abandon all hopes of achieving the cultural goals due to a repeated experience of failure but still adopt the institutionalized means. The Retreatists become completely disinterested in both the cultural goals and the institutionalized means; they often come off as sociopaths withdrawn to drugs, alcohol, and suicidal thoughts. And the Revolutionary seek to disrupt the existing system and replace it with a perceived better system.

In Nigeria, several conditions of anomie have evolved into social crisis which make major headlines on the news and the social media on a daily basis. Incidences of increasing inflation, poverty and youth unemployment contribute daily to a surge in crime and want of peace in the country. Thus, from banditry to kidnapping, cyber fraud to drug trafficking and social media bullying to ritual killings, Nigeria has been included in the league of unsafe countries to live in the world, with the country ranking 146th out of 163 countries in the 2021 Global Peace Index, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Consequently, there are a growing number of social innovators in the country who leverage technology and the new media to develop alternative means of economic survival. These emerging innovators are largely ensconced in the youth population and are mostly tech savvy with deep knowledge of the dark web. Cybercriminals such as the yahoo boys, the benefit boys, the black-hat hackers etc. belong in this disruptive cohort. Recently, a significant part of the cohort has developed political consciousness through an alliance with the revolutionary to influence a major upheaval in the country.

This played out during the End SARS campaign against the police brutality and oppression of the youth in October 2020. During the campaign, agitated Nigerian youths were able to massively mobilize and crowd-fund intellectual resources and foot soldiers through the social media platforms, especially Twitter, and the decentralized financial markets block-chain system. Thus, the innovators exhibited the cunning of the fox and the revolutionary engaged the bravery of the Lion to execute one of the most successful campaigns in the history of social movement in the world.

On the 11th of October 2020, the Nigerian government dissolved the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. However, this was followed shortly by a national ban on crypto-currencies which according to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, were being used to sponsor illegal activities in the country. More so, on 5 June 2021, Twitter was banned in Nigeria over a deleted tweet of the president of the country from the platform but on 12 January 2022 the ban was lifted after Twitter reached an agreement with the Nigerian Government. However, many believe that the twitter ban was a reprisal of the government on the #endsars movement.

There are also indications that the #endsars memories will continue to shape the political consciousness of the Nigerian youth. One veritable example is the #PVC campaign that currently floods the internet and the social media platforms to influence a great number of the youth to get their permanent voters cards towards the 2023 general elections in the country. Never before in the history of Nigerian politics have Nigerian youths shown this much political awareness and social will to power, analysts remarked.

There are many ways to conceptualize the myriads of problems with Nigeria. But for the strain theory analysts, two conditions are evidently insidious to social progress in the country one is the absence of accountability and the other is a crooked reward and punishment system which overtime have supplanted the moral fabric of the nation. These conditions are mainly due to the failure of the Government institution which determines and enforces the collective value system. The other social institutions such as religion, education and family can only struggle to perform their function of promoting the collective values where the Government institution has failed to enforce those values. Thus, social rehabilitation must be approached top-down that is, from the Government institution down to the family institution.

Contrary to many peoples belief that social and attitudinal change must be approached bottom-up or from the micro to the macro levels, the strain theorists consider such an approach utopian due to the effect of the law of social gravity. Hence, it must be stated that the Nigerian Government needs to prune itself of corruption and promote sanity across its agencies to build a society where accountability and fairness in reward and punishment determine the political and socioeconomic relations. Only afterward can the bottom-up approach yield significant results.

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Anomie and the Political Disalienation of the Youth Population in Nigeria - Tekedia

02 Jul 2022 | 07:38am ISTSurat, Guwahati, Goa-Mumbai-Goa-Mumbai-Government change needs cross-country pit stops, where the anti-defection law is an enabler of defection

SUJAY GUPTA

The contour of toppling politics continues to throw up different strands. But the strand that stands out is the one that binds the wrongs in our democracy together, to belittle our Republic.

The country-wide private charter crossings and landings in three different cities culminated in Goa becoming the last pit stop and camp for the final coup dtat, launched by the rebel Shiv Sena against their mentor Uddhav Thackeray, the son of their supreme leader Bal Thackeray; was the running soap across all channels. But the worry is different. The show at hand was another episode of using the anti-defection law as an enabler of defections and not the preventer.

The fundamental flaw, with the benefit of hindsight, is that the law punishes single MPs and MLAs from leaving their party and joining another. But it is no impediment if a group of MPs and MLA split, join and merge with another party or form a new party in the same legislature without facing the penalties in the anti-defection law. The law itself was a course correction to the manner in which government after government in the states got toppled by party hoppers after the Lok Sabha elections of 1967. But it has completely veered off its course.

But the core of punishment is that it has to be meted out at a speed that makes committing the crime a deterrent. Defections in Indian politics, even if you fall foul of the law are no deterrent.

Speakers, especially if they are from the party which is the beneficiary of defection, do not determine the cases of defecting MLAs who almost always become ministers till the end of their term. In 2020, the Supreme Court dismissed a minister in Manipur when the Speaker did not decide on his defection petition for three years.

The worry here is that the subjugation of the anti-defection law has been brutalised to such a worrying degree that when MLAs defect en masse and enter the bazaar, their shenanigans, jet setting, their card, and ludo games held at resorts in States ruled by friendly governments are like Instagram reels, watched, liked and shared even as democracy disseminates.

It is this normalisation which is the elephant that has brought the room down. Democracy is not about voting. Its about institutions keeping governments accountable and the institutions that frame and support check violations and punish the ones that get past the need to ask if they have done their job.

It is perhaps time to deep dive into the fundamentals of what the nature of governance in India entails. Shruti Gopalan, one of the scholars involved in the Brainstorm Project, where issues of importance are curated in a series of essays by critics, writers, and researchers in the Future of the Indian Republic series in her essay Democracy vs The Republic, writes: India is both a democracy and a republic, and they are not the same. A democracy and a republic have different functions and implications for the relationship between the individual and the state. A democracy is rule by the people, chosen by a majority of the group. While this is also true of the republican form of government, republicanism is more than merely the process of choosing the sovereign. The supreme republican values are individual liberty and independence from arbitrary power. A republican form of government, therefore, is intended to limit the excesses of democracy or majority rule. In India, however, democracy is cannibalizing republicanism. And within this chaos of tyranny and oppression is a new type of order. One where there is no room for republicanism, but instead different groups fighting for the top spot.

When this happens, there is a fundamental shift. Democracy no longer represents the will of the people but the will of some people.

Larry Flynt, otherwise known as a publisher of adult magazines who became one of the most influential defenders of free speech once said that majority rule only works if youre also considering individual rights. Because you cant have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.

The average citizen is like sheep. And so is the Republic when it gets cannibalized by democracy.

What just happened in Maharashtra is one more episode in the long-running seasonal OTT series. Lets call it the Not So Sacred Games. But the Maha topple took the twist to another level. Eknath Shinde, the Sena rebel, claiming to be the real Sena took a private charter to Mumbai from Goa to be sworn in as Deputy CM but returned to Goa about 8 hours later as CM of Maharashtra, becoming the first (perhaps) CM to spend the night of his swearing-in outside his State.

And then there was Devendra Fadnavis. He had prepped himself to be the CM even having received the new Police Commissioner as the CM in waiting. The wait continues as he was first asked to name Shinde as CM. And then after saying he would stay out of the Government, was directed to take a demotion and become a deputy to Shinde when he, as CM in his first term, was his boss.

While the institutions of the State are withering, the engine of politics runs with no limits to its authority. The founder of Indias constitution Babasaheb Ambedkar said: The purpose of a Constitution is not merely to create the organs of the State but to limit their authority, because, if no limitation was imposed upon the authority of the organs, there will be complete tyranny and complete oppression. The legislature may be free to frame any law; the executive may be free to give any interpretation of the law. It would result in utter chaos.

Ambedkars foresight and vision are being felt, with pain to the real sheep even as the wolves in sheeps clothing write the epitaph of the constitution.K

Sujay Gupta is the Group Editor Herald Publications and tweets @sujaygupta0832

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Politics of toppling: When wolves in sheep's clothing write the epitaph of our Constitution - Herald Goa

Kevin Ovenden reflects on the Stonewall riots of 1969, the historical dynamic that gave rise to it and the potential for struggle today

Fifty-three years ago tonight was the start of the Stonewall riot. Police in New York City raided a mafia-run bar where gays and street kids paid over the odds to get a drink, hang out and maybe hook up.

The mafia and police worked hand in hand and dollar for dollar. It was a routine raid. This time people erupted in resistance. Crucially, itcontinued for three days and nights sparking a wider movement.

There had been at least a dozen knownconfrontations with the police at gay bars in the US in the 1950s and 1960s. They included "unlikely" places, such as Milwaukee. Repressed and illegal it may have been, but homosexuality, both male and female, existed in the US at that time and so did a semi-underground culture. Stonewall went on longer than previous flashpoints, drew in wider numbers and came after the global eruption of 1968 and the radicalisation of the US civil rights movement.

Some of the efforts by the US state to demonise homosexuality in the post-war period had led to the creation of highly localised communities able to organise themselves socially and at points politically. Thus San Francisco's famous gay area arose from the US navy dumping sailors accused of same-sex activity onshore at that port in the 1940s and 1950s. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

There was already before Stonewall an important historical dynamic. Shifting post-war mass consciousness, particularly among young people, ran up against an archaic social and legal order, and against old conservative forces. The state drive to get women out of the factories and back to the home to make way for men returning from the war was a driving force of what became a new upsurge of the women's movement in the 1960s. In the US especially there was a female revolt against domesticity and the conservative view of women as dutiful wives making a nest for the family.

The 1950s was a period of state reaction in the US and in its western allies as the Cold War set in. But beneath that was a deep social shift: urbanisation, industrialisation and new horizons. All of this is explored in Chris Harman's great history of 1968.

The result was a kind of tectonic social and political pressure that would find a way to explode.

Crucially, there was the interaction between the revolutionary developments in what we now call the global south and the social struggles within the US, and in Europe. A pivot of that interaction was the struggle against colonialism abroad and against racism at home.

So even before Stonewall you had agitation for liberal reform by very brave activists, often connected to the left in a broad sense, and sadly too often forgotten today.

There were some sincere liberal political figures also.

The 1957 Wolfenden Report in Britain recommended legalising homosexuality, which was a criminal offence between men.

It took until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act for parliament to act on it. In the US the lobbying for change in the 1950s and 1960s is also interesting. There it especially ran up against the anti-Communist witch-hunting. You saw the fusion of the defence of racist segregation, of a conservative view of family relations, of the subordination of women, of anti-socialism and of violent oppression of lesbians and gay men.

A result of these contradictions in Britain was the socially reforming Wilson government elected in 1964. It sought modernisation of bothBritish capitalism (which included confronting trade unionpower) and its archaic institutions. There was also a reforming part of the capitalist class. Difficult as it is to imagine now, but Margaret Thatcher voted in 1967 for Labour MP Leo Abse's Bill on liberalising the law on homosexulaity, on her own capitalist-individualist grounds.

There was, of course, the agitation and campaigning. After that came the radicalisation into seeing the issue as revolutionary gay liberation in the 1970s. That came to Britain formally in 1971 with the creation of a British Gay Liberation Front echoing what had developed post-Stonewall in the US.

The "revolutionary" part had a huge range of meanings from versions of Marxism through to radical drag. That was men dressing as women, while being and identifying as men, in order to provoke bigoted reaction and thus create a moment in which to question sex role stereotypes. Gutsy, whatever its effectiveness.

Important gains were made. They survived the backlash of the 1980s, though not without major mobilisations under the hammer of the Aids pandemic.

If convservative reaction came from one direction, liberal-capitalist absorption came from the other.

We have had 25 years of corporate capitalist efforts to adopt a deradicalised parody of the politics of gay, LGBT and women's liberation. It is simultaneously testimony to the gains have been made but also to the capacity of this system to blunt and trivialise them.And so we have had for a couple of decades a period of what you mightcall liberal light-mindedness.

It has been a kind of political decadence in which we have had an indulgence of more and more absurd and splintering debates about language and privilege as opposed to defending and extending rights in the real world.

I mean in the US, Britain, Australia and the like. There are vast parts of the world where to march for gay or LGBT (or whatever term you use) rights is to be met by state violence. Turkey, for example.

So, many places have not had even the minimal liberal breakthroughs in law or in corporations and military bureaucracies displaying the right flag in the right month in the right place. The US embassy in Greece flies a huge "Progress Pride" flag this month. It doesn't in Saudi Arabia - why not, do you think?

Events in the US, Poland, Malta and elsewhere in the west over the throwingback of women's rights tell us that we don't have room for that luxury anymore. By luxury I don't mean taking up and fighting on the issues of specific social oppression. Far from it.

I mean the folly of substituting navel-gazing drivel for actually fighting over oppression and unifying struggles against the capitalist class, its state and the forces of reaction.

Stonewall was a wonderful event. We do not have to wait for such events. The years prior to it show that it is possible to organise and win things out of a system under strain.

Corporate brands will pretend to be responding to any and all of our personal branding as an individual. They are not. They are sucking the life out of the liberatory potential of half a century ago.

We should unite and get our lives and true individuality back - whatever flags states and billionaire-owned companies choose to fly.

Counterfire is expanding fastas a website and an organisation. We are trying to organise a dynamic extra-parliamentary left in everypart of the country tohelp build resistance to the government and their billionaire backers. If you like what you have read and youwant to help, please join us or just get in touch by emailing [emailprotected] Now is the time!

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Stonewall, the state and the struggle for liberation - Counterfire

BY FELIX NYERHOVWO JARIKRE

When the majority of the people see the government to be adversarial and insensitive, their disenchantment manifests.

So, addressing how the poor majority can be defended or protected from marginalisation and oppression is the only way to prevent their disenchantment. To prevent the disenchantment of the poor majority is the only sure way to achieve political stability and national cohesion in any society. To be neglectful of this nexus is a recipe for sure disaster.

From the story of how the Kingdom of Israel in the Bible fractured into full-blown secession, a nation can only hope to survive on a sustainable level when its defining focus is how to enfranchise and restore the productivity of its weak and vulnerable segments among the populace. A sustainable ecosystem must be deliberately built by the government to facilitate the creative impulses and production capabilities of the poor people that usually fall through the cracks of neglect.

Its delusional to think that mere zoning or power rotation among ethnic groupings or regional configurations can achieve political stability and national cohesion in Nigeria. And to conflate zoning and power rotation as a resemblance or extension of the constitutional Federal Character Principle, I dare say, is plain mischief. Utterly deceitful. Zoning or power rotation is a leadership issue, albeit political. On the other hand, the Federal Character requirement in the constitution is a management issue. The success or failure of a political leader who helps to form a particular government will be judged by the degree of his adherence to constitutional requirements like the Federal Character principle, for example.

Power rotation or zoning of political leadership and Federal Character are not the same. Its baffling sometimes how our self-serving politicians and intellectuals can conflate these issues without batting an eyelid in the public space. Itd be helpful to calm themselves down and back off from misleading the people. That way, the misplaced tension thrown up by unnecessary acrimony over zoning can be doused. The poor defenceless masses do not gain anything meaningful from these overheated debates on power rotation except confusion and perplexity. These debates are all part of an elaborate elitist game. A scam. A self-preservative decoy put up by elitist, disengaged politicians from being asked hard, probing questions concerning their stewardship by people they are supposed to represent and lead.

For too long, Nigerias elitist politicians have betrayed with impunity the trust reposed in them by their followers. So, if we must recover our bearings or regain some semblance of balance, we must learn to properly focus the debate on how to achieve justice, equity and fairness in the running of our society. Nigeria is a country with over two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, some in majority, many in minority. There can only be one President and C.I.C., thirty six governors during a four-year term limit. Not to mention the senators, House of Representatives members, or State Houses of Assembly members. Needless to say, there are millions of Nigerians who will never attain these stated positions, intentionally or inadvertently. That many do not occupy these exalted political offices on an electoral basis is not to say they live less fulfilling lives than the fortunate politicians. As long as all are participators and contributors to a functional democracy while striving to achieve political stability and national integration.

To achieve justice, equity and fairness in the clear aim for political stability and national integration, every government must be resolved in its determinant focus to remove the poor, the weak and the vulnerable from marginalisation and oppression. Government is not about catering to the aggrandisement of those with political strength and power, but it is about how to enfranchise and empower the poor majority to become productive citizens.

Its in this light that we must situate Peter Obis enthusiastic resolve to turn Nigerias economy from consumption to production.

We must turn around the concept of government for the general good. If not, many will perish in ignorance. Nigeria as a country still struggling for definition does not have enough electoral offices to go round and satisfy the craving of power-mongers among our ethnic and religious groupings within every four-year term limit. But we all, citizens and government officers, can have equal access to good roads, decent and reasonable education, adequate health care delivery system, decent housing, public pipe borne water system, adequate electricity supply, free markets to buy and sell, etc. We must be mindful that hunger does not respect the religion of anyone. Bad health is totally indifferent and disrespectful of the ethnic origin, majority or minority, of anyone. Many of our deathtraps masquerading as roads dont care whether you are Hausa, Itsekiri or Ijaw, etc. At any slight mistake, the bad roads are potential killers.

Yet, in all this, what we must not fail to emphasise is that keeping the populace ignorant and insecure is very destabilising. Education is a fundamental part of human rights. Perhaps thats why late Chief Obafemi Awolowo said: The most important aspect of the campaign of the Action Group was free education, life more abundant for the generality of the people etc, etc. Our manifesto was centred on the development of man.

Within context and without controversy, we can judiciously paraphrase this greatly enlightened politician the greatest President Nigeria never had to mean: Our manifesto was centred on the development of leaders.

Indeed, one jarring note that stands out in the debate over zoning or power rotation is a deliberate ignorance of the leadership role in nation-building. And its this deliberate ignorance of the leadership role that has made Nigeria to stumble and totter on the world stage. And why, shamefully, its the World Headquarter of Poverty.

Every politician today in Nigeria, to be taken seriously, must learn to encourage their followers to cultivate the leadership spirit, and understand for themselves the principles of leadership. They must realise that education will not only make their followers to be technically competent, it will also open their eyes to see the expansive possibilities of leadership. Now, you can relate to why Peter Obi as Labour Partys presidential candidate would confidently say to the youths: Take back your country. Without access to education, no youth can develop the leadership capacity to take back their country from rapacious sit-tight rulers.

Leadership is the willingness to use power to accomplish a purpose, an objective.

We all have the responsibility to install a government that should not presume to give or take away what we were created to be. Political leadership is the most powerful way to express that responsibility. Since a government can make it harder or easier for people to achieve their purposes or goals, it is not reasonable for people to pretend disinterested in how a particular government is installed. Democracy, therefore, is the necessary tool that requires the popular participation of every political leader within a sovereignty to install and maintain a government that is not adversarial or insensitive to the reasonable aspirations of the citizenry.

No man, therefore, should presume to proscribe, suspend or rotate leadership in any circumstance or clime. Because a wise man said: If the noble do not lead, the profane will. And if evil prevails in a time or place, it is because the initiative is seized while the good wavered.

As a function, political leadership is characterised by a combination of vision, courage, patience, resolve, purpose, initiative, internal motivation and humility.

To develop these indispensable characteristics of leadership comes with self-sacrifice and diligence. Its not a road many are eager to follow. The irresistible few like Peter Obi who come swinging from this road of discipline will cause a bloodless revolution.Concluded

Felix Nyerhovwo Jarikre, a leadership consultant and author of the successful book, How to be a Wealth Controller, lives in Lagos, Nigeria. He is the pioneer CEO, Perfect Report, a leadership training group.

business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com

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Assembly of the Cuban Resistance kicks off long-term public education campaign giving voice to the oppressed, setting the record straight on the island

Under the cover of COVID and the invasion of Ukraine, Cuba's regime has ratcheted up repression of its people

TORONTO, June 14, 2022 /CNW/ - Advocates of human rights in Cuba took to the streets of Toronto today to issue a plea to all Canadians reconsider your support of a totalitarian, undemocratic and fearful government that continuously abuses its people and denies them their freedoms. The call is part of a long-term public education campaign, #UnlockCuba, initiated today in France, Spain, Italy and Canada that will include a variety of facts-based activities aimed at shedding light on the realities of heavy-handed government action and injustices in Cuba. It also aims to increase awareness on how ordinary citizens from these and other northern countries can help Cubans achieve the basic human rights that should be afforded to every person, in every country. Visiting from the U.S. and Mexico, the activists also met with community leaders, human rights groups and media to discuss how Canadians, much to their surprise, have played an important role in funding a six decade-long military regime that has trampled on human rights and basic freedoms since coming to power in 1959.

"Cubans, like Canadians and everyone around the world, deserve universal rights and freedoms," said Dr. Orlando Gutirrez Boronat, one of the members of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, the coalition of human rights groups inside and outside Cuba that is leading the campaign. "We are convinced the timing is right for Canadians to consider the small but concrete actions they can take to help Cubans find freedom. Year after year, decade after decade, the regime has lorded over our people and has done so with the financial support of individuals, business and even governments that are not aware of the realities on the island."

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Through ad campaigns, social media, educational events and engagement with political and civic leaders, the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance will share accurate information a key element it believes is required to resist the intense form of communism that has a stronghold on the island.

Canadians represent more than 40% of tourists to Cuba. Trade between Cuba and Canada is at its highest levels in years, representing more than $1 billion per year.

"We see Canadians standing up firmly and valiantly in the face of injustice in places all around the world," said former Cuban political prisoner Luis Zuiga. "This is good. As your neighbours to the south, from our island that is so beloved by so many, we're asking you to take notice of how our people are suffering and to do something concrete about it, even if only a small gesture and to sustain it until we are freed."

On July 11, 2021, spontaneous non-violent protests broke out across the island. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans, especially youth, took to the streets in cities like Santiago de Cuba, Holguin, Cienfuegos and Camaguey chanting "Libertad" in response to the country's worsening state of human rights. To quell the movement, the government engaged in indiscriminate mass arrests, sentencing some protestors to nearly two decades in prison.

"How many rounds and decades of repression must the Cuban people endure?" said Ren F. Bolio, Chairman of the Mexican Commission for Human Rights who travelled to Canada to participate in the demonstration. "The regime in Havana has taken advantage of the current crisis in Ukraine and, before that, COVID, to summarily sentence in secret scores of young Cubans to decades-long prison terms simply for asking for their basic freedoms. It's time we shine light on what's truly happening."

Courageous Cuban nationals, both inside and outside of the island, are increasingly raising their voices to invite members of the international community of nations to see the continuous political injustices prevalent throughout Cuban society that are only intensified by tourist dollars, trade, and the many forms of capital investments Canadians direct to the island.

"Most Canadians do not know where their dollars are going when they vacation in Cuba or invest there," concludes Dr. Gutirrez Boronat. "The military almost exclusively owns the resorts and hotels and are the ones who see 80 90% of the money, not the Cuban people."

The campaign's first images include prisoners of the July 11, 2021, protests who were sentenced to jail time and hard labour for expressing their discontentment with the communist, non-representative and undemocratic government.

Spanish speakers in Canada are invited to listen to the group's online radio channel, Radio Republica, to be connected to facts and real stories from and related to the island and its people.

The delegation heads to Ottawa tomorrow for a first round of meetings with Members of Parliament.

The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance is a parliament in exile, made up of a host of non-governmental organizations working together to bring freedom to the oppressed people of Cuba.

The press event, delivered in Toronto, today, June 14, is available on the Facebook page of The Cuban Democratic Directorate (Directorio Democratico Cubano), or directly at https://www.facebook.com/directoriodemocraticocubano/videos/552480199808389/

Orlando Gutirrez Boronat, centre, from the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, stands in front of the Cuba Tourist Board of Canada in Toronto, June 14, with Ren Bolio, left, Mexican attorney and chairman of the Justice Cuba Commission and Luis Ziga Rey, human rights activist and a political prisoner who lived through 19 years of jail time in Cuba. The group travelled to Toronto to help promote freedom to the oppressed people of Cuba. (CNW Group/Assembly of the Cuban Resistance)

Orlando Gutirrez Boronat, centre, from the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, stands in front of the Cuba Tourist Board of Canada in Toronto, June 14, with Ren Bolio, left, Mexican attorney and chairman of the Justice Cuba Commission and Luis Ziga Rey, human rights activist and a political prisoner who lived through 19 years of jail time in Cuba. The group travelled to Toronto to help promote freedom to the oppressed people of Cuba.

SOURCE Assembly of the Cuban Resistance

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Advocates of human rights in Cuba launch campaign to inform Canadians, Western Europeans on realities of repression and oppression against the Cuban...

Imagine it with me: a free world, but you're not a part of it. A land full of opportunities, but you have no access to them. A nation with liberty and justice, but somehow you still feel imprisoned and caged.

This is why telling the story of Juneteenth is so essential to understanding our nation's history. It goes like this: Though the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, it wasn't until June 19, 1865, that roughly 2,000 Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas announcing that more than 250,000 enslaved Black Americans were free by executive decree.

They were already free, but they didn't know it, because they simply weren't told.

Freedom cannot be separated from knowing that our God-given liberties must be preserved against government intrusion. And that still isn't the case for so many Black people in our own country, even today, over 150 years since those Union soldiers arrived in Galveston.

If Black people are afraid to walk the streets of our own neighborhoods, are we truly free?

That question becomes even more stark when it comes to our criminal justice system and the death penalty. In Louisiana, the odds of a death sentence are 97 percent higher for those whose victims are white than for those whose victims are Black. In California, those convicted of killing white people are three times more likely to receive the death penalty than those whose victims are Black. In North Carolina, that likelihood is 3.5 times greater.

If government-sanctioned violence is so starkly unfair, are any of us truly free?

The state of Washington abolished the death penalty in 2018, mostly due to racial bias. "We are confident that the association between race and the death penalty is not attributed to random chance," the justices wrote in a majority opinion.

Other states should follow suit. But the death penalty is just the tip of the iceberg. The systemic racism that is embedded in our justice system resembles oppression and bondage, and it is difficult for us to fully celebrate Juneteenth without a full acknowledgement of that.

The tragic murder of George Floyd sparked universal outrage from people across the political spectrum. For Black Americans, it was another name added to a seemingly never-ending list of lives ended by police officers. The list of names includes: Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Breonna Taylor, and so many more. They are names that fuel pain, anguish, and trauma. Names that resurrect the wounds of history. Names that conjure the urgency to reevaluate how police officers interact with members of the community and the necessity for them to be held accountable.

Even Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a Black United States senator, is not immune to the injustice in policing. He expressed his frustration about his encounters with law enforcement bluntly, explaining how he has found himself "choking on my own fears and disbelief when faced with the realities of an encounter with law enforcement."

Meanwhile, in prisons across the country, incarcerated people work under threat of force for pennies an hour. In places like Angola Prison in Louisiana, wardens ride on horses through fields of mostly Black men picking crops in the heat. If that sounds like the pictures of slavery we learned about in school, that's because it is.

For this we can thank an exception in the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except for as a form of punishment. According to Right on Crime, states spend more than $50 billion per year on prisons. This excessive government spending is fueled by the idea that punishment is the only way to respond when someone makes a mistake. And it tends to disproportionately respond to Black peoples' mistakes. Does that make any of us more free?

But what if we as conservatives were to refocus our attention and resources on restoration, rehabilitation, services for victim's family members and equipping local communities to be best equipped to serve as violence interventionists and preventers?

As conservatives, we must ask ourselves this pressing question: Is freedom really a cornerstone of the American Dream if it isn't accessible to everyone? If people of color are still feeling victimized by our justice system, then the message of this Juneteenth cannot be a celebration of freedom alone. The message must also be we still have work to do to realize our dream.

Conservatives must become messengers of freedom and reformbecause there are some disturbing realities about our justice system that tell us that we're not really free.

Demetrius Minor is National Manager for Conservatives Concerned About The Death Penalty, a content creator for The Family Vision Media and a Project 21 Member.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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My Fellow Conservatives: Let's Truly Embrace The Spirit of Juneteenth | Opinion - Newsweek

Over the past few years, Chinese authorities have been purging the influence of folk religion, which it refers to as xijio, sometimes translated as evil cults.

Two years ago, local officials in the village of Baofeng in the Chinese city of Gaoyou in Jiangsu province destroyed some 5,911 temples of traditional folk religion.

In 2020, a video emerged showing statues of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, being destroyed, apparently because of the Chinese states concerns about folk religious practices. Huangdi is the deity of the material world and civility and is the great shaper of society. He is considered the prime initiator of Chinese culture and holds wu() or shamanic sorcery.

Temple of Xuanyuan Huangdi in Xinzheng, Henan Province [Blowing Puffer Fish, Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0]

Chinas oppression of folk religions stems from the implementation of Order No. 13, issued by the State Religious Affairs Bureau. Order 13 seeks to standardize the management of religious groups to promote their healthy development and actively guide religion to adapt to a socialist society. It is part of a plan to subjugate religious practices so they serve the state and ultimately produce and maintain social harmony.

As Cathy Sun notes inHarvard Political Review, Chinas persecution of religious minorities is part of a broader, systematic strategy to eradicate external influence in the social and political lives of citizens while harnessing aspects of religion that could serve the states interests. Its campaign of religious persecution is a not unprecedented effort to cement public recognition of the states authority and thereby generate political conformity.

Recently, the Chinese government has doubled down on efforts to limit religious expression and ensure that religious activity aligns with state interests. Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and Daoism, as regulated by organizations controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, constitute the religions sanctioned by the state in China.

Last year, President Xi Jinping lamented to national CCP leaders that prohibitions against using the Internet to advertise religion can be too easily circumvented. He noted that the government must do more to ensure that the Internet and social networks are not used as tools for religious propaganda.

In December, the State Administration of Religious Affairs, the National Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of National Security were collectively empowered by new Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information Services to promote the unity of safeguarding citizens freedom of religious belief and safeguarding national ideological security, the unity of safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of religious citizens and the practice of socialist core values, the unity of regulating Internet religious information services and the promotion of the healthy inheritance of religion.

The CCP suggests that the principles described in the measures will protect legality, prevent illegality, curb extremism, help resist infiltration, and combat crime. The measures also stipulate that online sermons should be organized by religious groups, religious schools, and temples and churches that have obtained the Internet Religious Information Service License.

The measures came into force on March 1, 2022.

In May, the Tibet Autonomous Region Cyberspace Administration (TARCA) announced that a special rectification work in the field of online live broadcasting and short videos in the whole region was needed to confront unspecified social threats. The new regulations ferret out activities undermining national religious policies, promoting harmful information about religion, and spreading xie jiao and feudal superstitions. These announcements are consistent with Order 13.

TARCA announced no religion or religious activity will be allowed in order to address the social threats now present in the region through the use of short videos and images. Those who do not have permission to send images or videos are subject to prosecution. The new measures effectively ban, for example, a personal post with the image of the Buddha. The CCP asks anyone coming to such illegal posts on the internet to report them immediately to protect the publics safety.

Temple of Confucius in Liuzhou, Guangxi [, Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0]

In Guangxi last month, the Chinese government increased its surveillance of ethnic Vietnamese groups who speak the Hmong-Mien languages, as well as the Thai-speaking Zhuang, because the state believes they are infiltrating their folk religion into Chinese society. They are part of a syncretic faith that includes the worship of the very popular folk hero, Nong Zhigao, who led a revolt for independence against officials, fought against the rich, and protected villagers. Nong Zhigao is now venerated for his willingness to resist aggression and unify his people. Though the Party is aware of his popularity and is cautious to outright eliminating Nong Zhigaos veneration, the CCP is concerned that such practices could lead to social unrest.

Finally, this week, the deployment of the measures evolved in a new direction. The CCP reportedly assisted elderly citizens in Guangzhou celebreating the 2022 Dragon Boat Festival by warning them against illegal religious activity, xie jiao, and the dangers of superstition. The CCP is concerned that elderly residents waste their money by making donations to religious organizations and temples, or by spending money on superstitious practices. The theme of the campaign was protecting your pension money.

In another event, the elderly were warned during a lecture against spending their money on psychic practices and the evils of illegal religion.

The CCP asked elderly participants to promise they would stay away from superstition, especially xie jijao and other illegal activities. Before sending them home, the participants were given pamphlets to study at their leisure.

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New government measures curtail folk religion in China - The Wild Hunt