Category Archives: Government Oppression

Amnesty International paid tribute today to one of the worlds dedicated human rights champions, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu. Tutu passed away on 26 December 2021 at the age of 90.

The death of Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu leaves a big void in the struggle for human rights and freedom around the world. He dedicated his entire life to the fight to create a world where people could be free to claim and exercise their freedoms, without being prejudiced or persecuted for who they are.

The world has lost a dedicated human rights champion. Archbishop Desmond Tutu refused to sit and watch injustice meted out against the people of South Africa by the apartheid government at the time when it was costly to stand up against the regime. He also stood up for the oppressed people elsewhere around the world, ensuring that he spoke out for their freedom.

He will be remembered for standing up for the oppressed people of South Africa during the apartheid governments segregation and oppression of black people, denying them basic human rights such as freedom of association, movement and assembly.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been a fervent supporter of Amnesty Internationals human rights work. He supported the organizations Arms Trade Treaty campaign, an international treaty that sets out robust global rules to stop the flow of weapons, munitions and related items to countries when it is known they would be used to commit or facilitate genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious human rights violations.

He also worked with the organization to campaign to free political prisoners in Burma in August 2012, including Aung San Suu Kyi.Archbishop Desmond Tutu devoted his entire life to ensuring justice for all. He wanted to see a world where all co-existed in peace and harmony, without any prejudice. He is a true example of a selfless human rights fighter,

He also worked with Amnesty International to champion the rights of LGBTI people. He also supported the organizations campaign against death penalty, putting pressure on countries still using it as punishment for crime to bring an end to the cruel and inhuman practice.

Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu leaves a remarkable human rights legacy. It is for us to continue where he left off, to demand better from our governments and to create human rights respecting societies.

Background

Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born in Klerksdorp on 7 October 1931, but later moved to Johannesburg at the age of 12 with his parents.

He studied theology at Kings College in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and later became the Archbishop. He was appointed as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churchesin 1978. He became Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and in 1986 the Archbishop of Cape Town, the most senior position in southern Africas Anglican church hierarchy.He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984.

He was appointed a patron of the World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa in 1994.In 1995 President Nelson Mandela appointed him the Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up to probe gross human rights violations that occurred under apartheid.

During the 2008-2009Gaza war, he called the Israeli offensive war crimes. He retired from public life in October 2010, but he continued speak out on social justice, freedom and human rights. In September 2012, he called for former US president George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried for their role in the Iraqi war by the International Criminal Court. Since his retirement, Tutu has worked as a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights.

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Amnesty International pays tribute to Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu - Amnesty International

Abide by forest land rights laws and implement the National Green Tribunals (NGT) orders to remove any construction already made on forest land, demanded the Anti- Jindal & Anti-POSCO Movement on December 27, 2021.

Dhinkia villagers in Jagatsinghpur district have been protesting for years against the Odisha administrations attempts to hand over more than 2,900 acres of fertile agricultural land to the Indian steel major Jindal Steel. Around 2016, the land was given up by South Korean company POSCO and handed to the JSW Utkal Steel Ltd. The company planned to build a 13.2 MTPA crude steel, 900MW captive power and 10 MTPA cement along with 52 MTPA captive jetty. However, villagers questioned the state governments authority in doing so when local gram sabhas hadnt even given their consent for a development project in their area.

Since 2018, the JSW Utkal Steel has repeatedly attempted to get an environmental clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). However, as per the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006, the document requires the permission of the affected people via gram sabha consent.

For this, authorities called for a public hearing that was allegedly hijacked by the District Collector Sangram Mohapatra, who was the Land Acquisition Officer of IDCO during the earlier POSCO project in 2005. Under his watch children and elderly people were allegedly physically assaulted during land acquisition. More than 15-20 platoons of police arrived at the spot and allowed only those individuals who were in support of the project to leave.

In retaliation, villagers called for a palli sabha (Village meeting) and passed a resolution rejecting the proposed project of JSW Utkal Steel Ltd by thousands of people. Further shortcomings and false information in its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Management Plan (EMP) report have kept the company from availing the clearance.

However, since the EC request is yet to be dismissed, nervous villagers urgently demand the completion of their individual and community forest rights claims on land. Doing so will ensure that the land belongs to the villagers, and is not transferred to a land bank.

Villagers demanded that the process of fresh land acquisition and fencing be suspended as there is no environment clearance for the proposed project of JSW. Yet, the police continue to deploy personnel around the village.

In recent weeks, villagers have decried and demanded the withdrawal of the heavy police deployment around their houses. These security checks into and away from the village have persisted since the recent conflict in December 2021.

On December 20, villagers, decrying the administrative repression at Mahala village border, suffered beating by police. Personnel arrived in seven Bolero vans and arrested rights leader Debendra Swain. They also took away his uncle, Ayodhya Swain, who is a paralysis patient, and his daughter Mili Swain and charged all three persons under various sections of the IPC.

Our villagers are facing hardships due to the police action. The situation has come to such a pass that the villagers are being asked to show their Aadhaar cards to go out and enter their village. The police have been raiding the village, breaking into houses, attacking the villagers causing injuries, implicating people in false cases and restricting them to their houses, said movement spokesperson Prashant Paikray.

He condemned the local administrations attempts to forcefully demarcate the Mahala revenue village. Residents opposed this, calling it an illegal move. On December 6, they even erected bamboo barricades and guarded the same to keep any police, government officials from entering.

Prior to the Mahala incident, the district administration called for a public hearing on November 21, to discuss the thermal power plant project. Activists Goutam Das, Bikram Das and other human rights defenders attended the hearing and objected to the presence of JSW company officials on the dais while speaking at the programme.

On the same day, the Abhayachandpur Police Station registered an FIR against Goutam Das, Bikram Das, Manas Bardhan, Prabhat Biswal, Kuni Mallick, Shanti Sethy, Shanti Das, Latika Parida and nine other unnamed persons for criminal intimidation and other sections of the IPC.

Condemning the incident, the Human Rights Defenders Alert forum said, We believe that the police acted with malafide intentions to target Das and other HRDs in reprisal for their opposition to the JSW Utkal project and as reprisal for their activities as environment activists. Though no one has been arrested in the case yet, Das and others in the area fear they might be illegally detained and arrested arbitrarily and illegally.

As such, it directed the Director General of Police to look into the attempted abduction and fabricated case against the HRDs and submit a report within two weeks. However, all of this could have been avoided if the government acknowledged their forest rights.

According to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) of 2013 land acquired and possession taken over but not utilized within a period of five years from the date of possession shall in all cases revert back to the original land owner. Yet, ignoring this provision, the Odisha government on February 7, 2015 declared, land acquired but not utilized within a period of five years from the date of possession shall in all cases revert back to the state and be deposited in the Land Bank automatically.

This notification goes against the Forest Rights Act 2006 as well that recognizes legal rights of local communities over forest land and community forest resources. Three different official committees i.e., the Saxena Committee, the POSCO Enquiry Committee and the FAC found that the law was violated in the proposed POSCO area.

The Movement demanded that the administration acknowledge that there is no provision which provides for land acquisition for any land bank. As such, the land must return to the original inhabitants.

The government must respect the unanimous resolution passed by over 2,000 people at a Gram Sabha held in October 2012 that the land used for betel cultivation was under the rights provided to the Gram Sabha under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, said Paikray.

He warned that continued state conflicts will also violatethe IPC and the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989 and the amendments done in 2016.

After years of protest, Dhinkia folk have nowadays voiced an additional demand that the government replant the trees in the coastal area that lost more than two lakh trees when the land was handed over to POSCO.

Similarly, they asked for a committee consisting of sensitive jurists, human rights advocates, activists, ecologists and ecological economists to keep a watch on what the government is doing in our area.

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Dhinkia: A Story of Perseverance Against Administrative Oppression - NewsClick

When faced with oppression, whether it comes from the government, or from an individual, it can be tempting to fight back using the same weapons.

In some cases this could be with violence, while in others it could be with politics. However, when we use the weapons of our enemies, we are often much less successful and our efforts backfire on us.

In the case of St. Thomas Becket, he resisted the unjust edicts of the king, but he did not use violence or political favors to win his way. Instead, he humbly laid down his life for the truth.

The St. Andrew Daily Missal has a powerful commentary on how St. Thomas Beckets example can inspire us.

Against those who seek to enslave the Church, let us neither employ the craft of politics nor the weapons of warfare, but after the example of the glorious Thomas who fell by the swords of the wicked in the defense of the Church (Collect) let us know how to withstand them resolutelywith all the moral strength that the defense of the rights of God inspires.

This type of opposition may not see an immediate resolution in our lifetime, but often it will pave the way for a brighter future.

St. Thomas Becket, pray for us!

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St. Thomas Becket shows us the key to overcoming tyranny - Aleteia EN

Chief Advisor of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) Samujjal Bhattacharya accusing the police of harassing AASU members said that they will not tolerate oppression by the Government.

He demanded that all AASU members who were arrested in Dibrugarh should immediately be released and the people behind the harassment should be punished.

He alleged that the AASU members were beaten by the police even in the police station.

Also Read:Assam Assembly Speaker only controls opposition: Akhil Gogoi

We will not tolerate any oppression or harassment by the government. This is not governance, this is misgovernance, he added.

Bhattacharya further warned the government against such acts and have demanded immediate actions against the persons involved in such acts.

If the government thinks we will be scared by such incidents, we warn Dispur that we are not afraid of anything, he added.

Also Read:Assam CM should first give up his PSO before asking others: Abdul Khaleque

Dibrugarh superintendent of police Shwetank Mishra on Sunday served a legal notice to All Assam Students Union (AASU) general secretary Shankar Jyoti Baruah for calling 24-hour Dibrugarh bandh.

Stating that calling of bandh has been declared as illegal and unconstitutional by various judgments of the Supreme Court of India, Kerala High Court as well as Gauhati High Court, the SP drew the attention of the AASU leader to the specific order passed by the Gauhati High Court in Case No. W.P.(C) 7570/2013 dated 19/03/2019.

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We will not tolerate oppression by the Assam Government: AASU - Northeast Now

Former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Monday alleged that incidents of oppression against Kannadigas had increased after the BJP came to power at the Centre.

Speaking to reporters in Bidadi near here, Mr. Kumaraswamy condemned the episode of 90 of the 100 questions in the question paper on Kannada optional page for UGC-NET, conducted by National Testing Agency, being in Hindi.

Taking serious exception to this, Mr. Kumaraswamy asked the Centre not to belittle the self esteem of Kannadigas.

He alleged that such incidents of imposing Hindi had increased after the BJP came to power at the Centre.

Urging the State Government to think about the issue seriously, he said even the people of Karnataka had to fight such a trend of imposition of Hindi.

Such a measure was needed to safeguard Kannada, he said, while accusing the BJP of trying to ignore Kannada.

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Incidents of oppression against Kannadigas have increased after BJP came to power at Centre: HDK - The Hindu

China has appointed the governor of coastal Guangdong province as the new Communist Party secretary of its far-western Xinjiang region, replacing Chen Quanguo, considered the architect of the brutal crackdown on Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

Ma Xingrui, 62, who has governed economically dynamic Guangdong since 2017, will become party chief of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the official Xinhua news agency said Dec. 25.

Chen, 66, has been in his current position since August 2016 and has been accused by the West of spearheading the repressive policies and severe human rights abuses against the 12 million Uyghurs who live in Xinjiang.

During his stint as Xinjiangs party chief, China built up a network of detention camps in which as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been held since 2017 in the name of preventing religious extremism and terrorism.

Though Chen has denied widely documented and credible reports of abuse in the camps, he became the highest-ranking Chinese official to be sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2020 in connection with rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The U.S. government and the legislatures of several European countries have declared that Chinas actions in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

On Dec. 23, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, blocking the import of goods into the U.S. from Xinjiang without clear and convincing evidence that they were not made with Uyghur forced labor.

In early December, the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent peoples tribunal in London, determined that China has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

The tribunal also found that Chen, Chinese president Xi Jinping, and other senior government officials in the Chinese Communist Party bore primary responsibility for the repression and abuses.

Adrian Zenz, a German researcher who provided crucial evidence to the Uyghur Tribunal about the Chinese governments atrocities against the Uyghurs and efforts to decrease the mostly Muslim population in Xinjiang, said that Chen had been transferred to Xinjiang because of his ability to quickly build up harsh measures against the Uyghurs.

He was the ideal person to very quickly ramp up the police apparatus, very quickly ramp up the internment campaign for re-education from existing initial small scale re-education efforts, and to ramp up all the other measures, he said.

Chens replacement is a change from the high impact, high pressure mode into more of a long-term maintenance mode that will continue to employ oppressive policies in a long-term way, said Zenz, an independent researcher with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

[With his] replacement by the governor of Guangdong, we can see Beijings strategy of long-term economic development of the region while maintaining the high-impact oppression, assimilation, population optimization, and costs of labor that will all be maintained in a way that is kind of like a slow, slow genocide, he said.

I think this was already mostly planned, added Zenz.

Prior to his appointment in Xinjiang, Chen served as party secretary of the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region, another ethnic region considered sensitive but not as restive as Xinjiang, from 2011 to 2016.

Chen Quanguo was known for his hard-line approach in Tibet before Xinjiang where he reinforced assimilation by building a security architecture that enabled surveillance, control, and oppression, said Kunga Tashi, an expert on Tibet-China relations.

The change in leadership in Xinjiang would not bring any changes in the repression of the Uyghurs, he added.

Ma Xingrui, who will replace Chen Quanguo as the Xinjiang party chief, has promised to uphold the current state of supervision in Xinjiang as it is now, the Tibetan said. So, I believe this replacement just has to do with a wider reshuffle ahead of next years 20th [National] Party Congress and nothing to do with ending the harsh policies in Xinjiang.

Translated by RFAs Uyghur and Tibetan services. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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China's appointment of new Xinjiang chief will not change repression of Uyghurs - Radio Free Asia

Last summer, while the world watched in horror as a police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed father of five, my communitys gaze turned toward another atrocity unfolding right before our eyes. COVID-19 has disproportionately devastated the African American community, as Black people in the United States are twice as likely to die as a result of contracting COVID-19, and people of color constitute a significant portion of the frontline workers who bear the brunt of exposure to the virus. The whirlwind events of 2020 including the pandemic, George Floyds murder, and the subsequent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement brought the topics of institutionalized discrimination, racism, and oppression to the forefront of national discussions regarding equality, causing the subject of reparations to dominate public consciousness like never before.

For example, as the novel coronavirus preys especially on individuals with underlying conditions, the outbreak has revealed the large-scale impacts of structural racism on the health of African Americans nationwide. According to a peer-reviewed study conducted by Harvard researchers, if the United States had paid reparations to the descendants of enslaved Black Americans, the risk of severe illness and death from the virus would be far lower, in some cases even diminishing statewide coronavirus transmission by up to 68%. This studys findings reinforce the burgeoning evidence-based philosophy that reparations can significantly combat systemic racism in the United States. However, despite intense national conversations and public demonstrations in recent years surrounding anti-racist messaging, progressives have yet to pursue meaningful legislative solutions to the systemic issues they denonce, particularly by neglecting the idea of reparations.

Will financial restitution eradicate prejudice or pervasive racial hatred in American society? Certainly not, but it will undoubtedly aid in closing the enormous divide between Black and White American wealth, and in turn, diminish racial gaps in education, health care, employment, and housing access. Implementing comprehensive reparations would not only guarantee compensation for the unpaid, forced labor that Black people supplied for over 200 years, but also diminish the wealth gap between White and Black Americans facilitated by discriminatory U.S. government laws. It would also atone for the moral debt owed to Black Americans after centuries of plunder and oppression.

In the wake of Americas recent racial reckoning, the United States government has taken several significant steps to confront its legacy of racial hatred, discrimination, and oppression. Some of these measures have been largely symbolic, such as establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, while others including the drafting of legislation to address police brutality remain more actionable. Yet still, reparations remain a contentious topic in Congress and American society at large, eliciting tensions from both sides of the aisle.

Some legislators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (whose ancestors owned slaves), argue that since no Americans alive today bear any direct responsibility for slavery, the government cannot justifiably ask taxpayers to fund reparations. However, non-Black Americans have benefited tremendously from the economic advantages granted to them by slavery, even if their ancestors did not own slaves. For example, regression analysis research comparing census data from 1860 and 2014 demonstrates that modern-day White populations in regions that once had high levels of slave ownership are financially better off today as a result of their slave history, even if their ancestors had no direct ties to slave ownership or related industries. Therefore, reparations would aid in leveling the socioeconomic playing field between Black and White Americans. If generational wealth can be inherited, so can generational debt.

As an African American woman living in Southern California, a region well-known for its prevalence of liberal sentiment, I have often been disappointed to witness my own local governmental officials parroting McConnells argument to deflect responsibility for instituting reparations. For instance, when Manhattan Beachs violent history of stealing waterfront property from its Black residents came to light in the summer of 2020, the city refused to even offer an apology. Manhattan Beach City Councilmember Steve Napolitano said in a statement, For those demanding reparations, these are typically considered by levels of government much higher than citiesThe issue of reparations for historic wrongs against any group of people is much bigger than Manhattan Beach, and not the sole responsibility of our current residents. Napolitanos assertion that cities do not generally consider reparations is fallacious, as demonstrated by the reparations policies of major metropolitan areas like Evanston, Illinois, Providence, Rhode Island, and Asheville, North Carolina. Furthermore, although most Americans including Manhattan Beach residents would likely prefer to only pay taxes for issues they solely bear responsibility for, taxation requires that all American citizens finance a broad collection of efforts that often extend far beyond their personal interests.

While many Southern California residents pride themselves on their liberal, forward-thinking attitudes, the topic of reparations has revealed a stark divide between how White progressives portray themselves and the level to which they are actually willing to take action to address the social problems they decry. It is easy to performatively declare that Black lives matter and that racism is bad, but it is seemingly much harder for them to acknowledge that they have personally benefited from racist policies that have disadvantaged Black Americans, and in turn, must take steps to rectify that injustice. Therefore, the root of the local and national dispute regarding reparations does not truly concern whether or not America should pay for the sins of its past, but rather whether or not Americans possess the sufficient courage to assume their obligation to grant Black Americans the restitution they deserve.

As such, its time for White progressives to start bridging the gap between their fervent rhetoric on racial equality and their stagnant inaction on reparations policy implementation in order to reduce racial disparities in generational wealth that still impact Black Americans today. By financing Black reparations, the federal government has the opportunity to diminish the persistent economic disadvantages that African Americans face as a direct result of slavery and subsequent racially discriminatory legislation imposed by the United States government.

White Americans should not regard reparations as a source of guilt, but instead as an opportunity to provide Black Americans with restitution for not only the unparalleled cruelty that their ancestors endured, but also for the continued social, political, and economic restrictions that slavery has brought upon them and their descendants. Without any form of reparations, America will never even begin to truly repay the tremendous debt it owes to its Black citizens for centuries of devastation and exploitation.

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A Debt Owed: The Case for Reparations in the Wake of COVID-19 - Harvard Political Review

The death of Joan Didion steals from the United States not only one of its best literary artists, but also one of its most astute political analysts.

Because Didion was so prolific and accomplished, it was always inevitable that certain aspects of her oeuvre would overshadow others. In this case, her political commentary and journalism fails to elicit attention equal to her cultural correspondences, novels, and the harrowing personal writing she published after the deaths of her husband and daughter. Given the ideological and mercurial biases of the corporate press, there are ground for suspicion that book critics, journalistsand obituary writers have reason to overlook Didion's political work that goes beyond popular reputation.

RELATED:Joan Didion for Salon: "Election by Sound Bite,"commentary on the 2008 election

There was no fog on the sightline of Didion. When she analyzed the absurdities of American politics, she identified and accurately described the racism, corporate restraints, self-serving mythsand lack of ambition that paralyze the political system, rendering it unable, despite the country's inordinate wealth and educational resources, to adequately address the needs and concerns of the electorate. The inert process, Didion wrote in the foreword to a compendium of her political essays aptly called"Political Fictions," "proceeded from a series of fables about American experience."

With her brutal chronicle of the fictive nature of political debate, she committed a cardinal sin of the American press: She exposed the overwhelming failures of the boysclub that was, and to a large extent, still is the New York-Beltway nexus of credentialed reporters. "Boys" is the best word, because of the patriarchal gender bias of the press corps, but also because, like children, mainstream pundits are often the most gleeful prisoners and propagators of political fable.

The story of Didion's entry into political journalism is all the more remarkable for her reluctance. In 1988, Robert Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books,requested that Didion, a frequent contributor, write a lengthy essay on that year's presidential campaign. He promised to acquire a press pass that would allow her to attend campaign events with insider access. She wrote that she was flattered, but largely disinterested. Domestic politics failed to capture her enthusiasm, and she worried that she lacked the political expertise of other NYRB writers, like Gore Vidal. Eventually, she relented and produced a series of essays of far greater clarity, insight, and ethical force than most comparably seasoned male and milquetoast writers of theNew York TimesandWashington Postschool could ever muster. Didion's essays, like Vidal's, not only capture the reality of their time, but also undress ugly truths of the American experience, and the use of power more broadly, that make them, unfortunately, timeless.

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Almost immediately as a political writer, Didion was able to slice through the layers of foolishness and insulation that keep average Americans from seeing the truth of their democracy. This passage comes approximately 1,000 words into her first political essay, the cleverly titled"Insider Baseball":

When we talk about the "process," then, we are talking, increasingly, not about the "democratic process," or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and those who attend them; to the handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life. "I didn't realize you were a political junkie," Martin Kaplan, the formerWashington Postreporter and Mondale speechwriter who was married to Susan Estrich, the manager of the Dukakis campaign, said when I mentioned that I planned to write about the campaign; the assumption here, that the narrative should be not just written only by its own specialists but also legible only to its own specialists, is why, finally, an American presidential campaign raises questions that go so vertiginously to the heart of the structure.

Didion saw clearly that the structure, in the institutional sense, was under strict control of capital, writing about how it did not seem to concern most politicians or reporters that over half of the public did not vote, as long as commercial sponsorslike Merrill Lynchwere confident that the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention would score high ratings with "an upscale audience." The "structure," in the more metaphorical sense the vocabulary and discourse that dominated the political imagination passed through the "upscale audience" filter. The filter, as Didion painstakingly argued, created a fictional narrative so vast that few could escape it.

RELATED:The meaning of words: Orwell, Didion, Trump and the death of language

As a writer, not a "political junkie," Didion crashed the party by exposing the fictive status of the popular story. The prevailing obsession, then and now, with the personal biographies and foibles of the candidates prohibits other writers, and more importantly, politicians from doing the same clarifying work of her journalism. Didion wrote in "Insider Baseball" that "All stories, of course, depend for their popular interest upon the invention of personality, or 'character,' but in the political narrative it is to maintain the illusion of consensus by obscuring rather than addressing actual issues."

It is important to note that Didion is using "narrative" not as a synonym for argument or theory, as many dense pundits currently employ the term, but to mean an intentionally crafted story with heroes, villains, a setting, a problemand a proposed resolution. The story of 1988 bears strong resemblance, despite the dramatic difference in circumstances and crises, to the story of 2021.

The 1988 race was the first in three election cycles that the smiling reactionary Ronald Reagan would not dominate. On the Republican side, Didion saw the influence and proliferation of "reactive angers" illustrating a "quite florid instance of what Richard Hofstadter had identified in 1965 as the paranoid style of American politics." Anyone minimally lucid can understand Didion's assertion fear of Black people, immigrants, the poor, uppity women, and the "radical left" creates an extreme anti-government and antisocial form of anti-politics on the right, which has only intensified and grown more dangerous in the past three decades. Invocation of "law and order," as Didion and other analysts have well understood, is the Republican technique of telling their frightened voters that racial minorities, especially those who are poor, will not cut in on their action.

Democratic Party politics were and are more complicated. They are also more indicative of the middle class complacency that often inhibits societal transformation, and plays into the devilish hands of the Republican Party. There was one candidate in the 1988 race who Didion believed would present the U.S. with a profound opportunity to elevate itself out of the miasma surrounding systemic racism, oligarchic oppression, and the ongoing sabotage of democracy: Jesse Jackson. When I conducted research for my latest book, "I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters," Didion was nearly alone in the mainstream press as treating Jackson with the respect and attention that his groundbreaking candidacy deserved. Demonstrating her keen political insight and her rare gift for literary flare, she wrote that Jackson "rode on a Trailways bus into the sedative fantasy of a fixable imperial America."

RELATED:Democracy vs. fascism, part 1: What do those words mean and do they describe this moment?

While all the other candidates in the race, including the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis, could offer nothing more than buffering of America's hard and often deadly edges, Jackson advocated for Medicare for All, tuition free public universities, a national public development bank, full employment through infrastructural programs, subsidized childcare, and paid family leave. He was the only candidate to articulate support for Nelson Mandela, and call for a reduction in the Pentagon budget and a withdrawal of American military from overseas bases and installations. He also was the first candidate, in American history, to make gay rights a major campaign plank. His policy platform was accessible in his soaring oratory, featuring rhetorical gems like, "We must leave the racial battleground to find economic common ground. Then, we can reach for moral higher ground."

Bringing together a "rainbow coalition" of Black, Latino, Native American, Asian Americanandprogressive white voters, from family farmers in Missouri to beleaguered manual laborers in Milwaukee and Detroit, Jackson nearly won the nomination, scoring, at the time, the closest second place finish in the history of the Democratic Party.

Didion wrote that Jackson offered an alternative to "what had come to be the very premise of the process, the notion that the winning and maintaining of public office warranted the invention of a public narrative based at no point on observable reality." As part of his campaign, Jackson registered six million new voters. For his trouble, an unnamed Democratic superdelegate, while talking to Didion, likened Jackson to a "terrorist." Then vice president and eventual president, George H.W. Bush, called him a "Chicago hustler" and "con man." Didion, with the notable exceptions of Norman Mailer and Vidal, was the only mainstream white writer to identify the racism at the heart of opposition to Jackson, and the cruelty that those with power were showing not only to Jackson himself, but more important, the voters for whom he spoke. Bush's racially-coded ridicule shows that the supposedly "decent" forebears of Donald Trump were not innocent on the charges of using bigotry to provoke white hostility in the favor of reactionary politics.

Didion's most famous line is probably, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Her political writing had captured the real story of the "process." When she covered the 1992 campaign, she offered a perceptive examination of how the Democratic Party's compromises, while perhaps setting themselves up for short term victory with an undeniably charismatic Bill Clinton at the top of the ticket, would poison the long term public interest. Jackson and former president Jimmy Carter were relegated to "losers' night" at the Democratic National Convention, meaning the night that convention planners expected the lowest ratings, to make way for Clinton, running mate Al Gore, and a slate of corporate personalities to articulate a series of bromides: "forgotten middle class," "character and values," "an end to division," "big government is over." Gone was Jackson's language of justice, and so too had his platform of peace, equality, and working class economics vanished.

In its place was a hierarchal agenda with white suburban anxieties at the top, and the concerns of all other voters competing for placement at the bottom. The "political narrative" of 2021, with its fixation on suburban parents, rising crime rates, and backlash against Black Lives Matter and Me Too in the form of whining about "cancel culture," is a sequel to the story of 1988.

Didion's conclusion was grim, but should resonate in the present, as progressives in the House and Senate struggle to pass relatively moderate social reforms against the corruption of Joe Manchin and the timidity of Joe Biden: The Republican Party, "standing for ideology and interest" and "not compromise," is the only real political party in the United States. The progressives, or what Howard Dean called the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," have grown more powerful and influential in the past three decades, and much of the future of America rides on whether they can transform their party into a force more united and authentic.

Before studying and writing about politics, Didion explained that she was a "Goldwater Republican," whose reflexive political instincts were the consequence of spending her childhood and early adulthood in the almost exclusive company of California conservatives. Her experience and brilliance enabled her to accurately identify the self-preservation of power, wealthand majority status that motivated the American right. She cast her discerning eye not only on the machinations of presidential contests, but also the violent mechanisms of American power.

In 1990, Joan Didion wrote a pamphlet-length essay on the Central Park jogger case the miscarriage of justice that occurred when five Black and Latino teenagers were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for the assault and rape of a white woman after the police coerced confessions from the teens, violated their civil rights, and ignored any evidence that contradicted their assumptions of guilt. The prosecutor's abusive behavior was arguably worse. Eventually, all five were exonerated, when the actual rapist confessed to the crime. After their release from prison, the five wrongly-convicted men filed a lawsuit against New York, and settled for $41 million as recompense for "malicious prosecution," "racial discrimination" and "emotional distress." Because Donald Trump took out a psychotic advertisement in the New York Timescalling for the execution of the teens, even before opening arguments, and Ava DuVernay directed an acclaimed miniseries about the trial and aftermath for Netflix, the Central Park Five story has become emblematic of systemic racismand the culture of paranoia and hatred that scaffolds it.

Hindsight makes the injustice painfully clear, but at the time, few white writers or political figures were willing to defend the teenagers without equivocation or apology. Joan Didion wrote the first major essay arguing that the boys were innocent, and that the rush to prosecute and punish them was indicative of a dark undercurrent charging beneath the city, and the entire country. With references to the literature of slavery and the autobiography of Malcolm X, Didion connects the case and, in her then-correct but minority opinion, the persecution of the teenage suspects to the myths and mechanisms of white supremacy. At work in the case and coverage surround itwere the same institutional and cultural evils responsible for immeasurable suffering throughout the United States and around the world, as well as the perpetual suffocation of democracy. At the center of the white supremacist mythology, from the slave fields to the Emmett Till case, Didion identified "a special emotional undertow that derived in part from the deep and allusive associations and taboos attaching, in American Black history, to the idea of the rape of white women."

Didion's essay not only castigates the racist criminal justice system, but also makes clear how the liberal establishment of New York, including then mayor David Dinkins and governor Mario Cuomo, contributed to the noxious atmosphere of hostility toward the boys. Eventually, the U.S. would learn that a single rapist committed the ghastly crime, but the press, from the New York Timesto the Wall Street Journal,did not hesitate to run wild with headlines and reports on the "wolf packs" terrorizing Central Park after sundown. The predatory "animals," of course, always have dark skin, and prowl out of the poorest neighborhoods. Almost in isolation did Didion state the obvious that such language, comparable to Ku Klux Klan propaganda, strips Black criminal suspects of their humanity in a society that is supposed to afford them legal protections, and can morph into a lethal weapon against all people of color.

"The attack upon the jogger," Didion wrote with contempt for conventional opinion," became "an exact representation of what was wrong with the city, of a city systematically ruined, violated, raped by its underclass." It was also convenient as a "frame in which the actual social and economic forces wrenching the city could be personalized and ultimately obscured."

The "law and order" reactionaries made predictable calls for the police to, in essence, occupy New York, but Didion shows that leading feminists, supposedly progressive, did not dramatically differ in how they chose to "frame" and "seize upon" the problem. Quoting Anna Quindlenand other mainstream feminists, Didion attacks the "abstraction" and "sentimentalization" of the case. Because the suspects were named, but the victim was not, the press and political class were able to cast the white victim as a symbol of the city's "inspiration," to use the word Didion most frequently quotes as descriptive of the jogger, and the suspects as its "defilement" and "endangerment."

Not only was the nameless victim able to quickly achieve "favored victim status," Didion wrote, because she was "white and middle class professional," but the case arrived in the nick of time perfect for exploitation from politicians who gain advantage by making interpersonal crime the main story in the life of a city, even the life of a country. The crime story, according to Didion, is "devised to obscure not only the city's actual tensions of race and class but also, more significantly, the civic and commercial arrangements that rendered those tensions irreconcilable."

The blunt force thesis that Didion posits complements her reading of presidential elections as theater in which nearly any topic is fair game, except scrutiny of the sociopolitical crises that collectively act as mockery of the Bill of Rights and patriotic verse:

Stories in which terrible crimes are inflicted on innocent victims, offering as they do a similarly sentimental reading of class differences and human suffering, a reading that promises both resolution and retribution, have long performed as the city's endorphins, a built-in source of natural morphine working to blur the edges of real and to a great extent insoluble problems.

The horrific development of the tabloid fascist who wrote the ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five becoming president of the United States, even after he continually refused to apologize for that offense and his myriad other misdeeds, confirms Didion's argument that the inequities of racism, white panic, and class oppression extend far beyond bad cops, prosecutorsand judges.

Joan Didion was a genius of story. Throughout her life, whether she was writing about the mourning of her husband and daughter or the failures of American democracy, she understood and was able to articulate, like few others, how the cultivation of narrative is an inescapable part of the human experience, and how it simultaneously liberates and shackles both individuals and communities. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live" is an equally promising and frightening summary of humanity.

With more sophistication, brilliance, and honesty than most American writers, she possessed a clarity of insight regarding U.S. inequality and injustice: For genuine reform to transpire, Americans must collectively change the story they tell themselves about their country, and its people.

Joan Didion's flaw was her cynicism. She often dismissed the idea of progress, and even questioned the notion of trying to "make the world a better place." As the United States faces an unprecedented threat against its already fragile democracy, and as the "tensions of race and class" continue to manifest in poverty and violence, it is essential to remember the faith that Didion's work, no matter how cynical, offers to readers. Telling the truth, especially in a society of political fictions, always requires courage. It is always an act of hope.

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Joan Didion exposed political stories America is still telling itself in order to live - Salon

Kim Jong Un is looking slimmer than ever in new photos released by state media yesterday.

The North Korean leader, 37, appearednoticeably trim in the photos released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which were taken during a key ruling party meeting - a forum he has previously used to make major New Year policy announcements.

The meeting, in which government officials discussed 'guiding the struggle of our Party and people to the next stage of victory', comes as North Korea grapples with compounding economic crises caused by Covid lockdowns, sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme and natural disasters.

It also comes as North Korea marks the 10th anniversary of Kim assuming supreme command of the military after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011.

Government authorities have insisted the despot is eating less 'for the sake of the country' as it grapples with severe food shortages and claimed Kim is healthy, after speculation about Kim's health started earlier this year amid news he had shed over 40lbs.

It comes after state TV said Kim's 'emaciated' condition was 'breaking our people's hearts', despite many of North Korea's 25 million inhabitants battling countrywide starvation and systemic oppression.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pictured looking noticeably slimmer during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party in this photo released on December 28, 2021 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks considerably larger in these photos (left, dated January 1, 2019 // right, dated March 6, 2020)

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, attends a meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government

South Korea's spy agency reported Kim (pictured in 2018) had bulked up to 285 pounds, having piled on considerable weight since taking power in 2011 'binging on food and drink'. State media attributes his weight loss to 'eating less to help the country'

KCNA said Tuesday that leader Kim Jong Un presided over a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party, but did not give any remarks made by Kim at the meeting from which journalists were barred.

'The plenary meeting is to review the implementation of main Party and state policies for the year 2021,' the report said.

The meeting would also discuss and decide on strategic and tactical policies and practical steps for 'dynamically guiding the struggle of our Party and people to usher in a new period of the development of socialist construction to the next stage of victory,' KCNA said.

The impoverished, nuclear-armed country has been hit by severe flooding in recent years which has left families without homes and is currently tackling a food crisis as the nation struggles to feed itself amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kim in October told his citizens that they must expect to eat less food until the country re-opens its border with Chinain 2025, despite the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization estimating that North Korea is short around 860,000 tons of food this year alone.

A North Korean resident, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: 'Telling us to endure hardship until 2025 is the same as telling us to starve to death'.

A second source claimed that the North Korean government is attempting to spin the food shortages as a result of their effective Covid-19 strategy, which they say has worked well.

The government has blamed external factors for their food shortages though, citing sanctions imposed on them, natural disasters and the global coronavirus pandemic.

State media and government officials have said that Kim Jong Un's apparent weight loss is symptomatic of his desire to 'eat less to help the country' amid the food shortages, and in August banned citizens from discussing it, labelling gossip as a 'reactionary act'.

Analysts say the remarks showed authorities were seeking to use the change to Kim's weight to reinforce loyalty to the regime in desperate times.

Rumours that his weight loss could be a result of an illness were sparked earlier this year, but reignited in November after a slimmer Kim made his first public appearance in over a month - the longest absence in seven years from public glare.

An undated photo shows a severely overweight Kim Jong Un smiling as he is surrounded by hysterical female soldiers

Kim in October told his citizens that they must expect to eat less food until the country re-opens its border with China in 2025, despite the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization estimating that North Korea is short around 860,000 tons of food this year alone (undated photo of Kim Jong Un)

People bow during a three minutes silence to pay their respects towards portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, to mark the ten year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong Un, at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang on December 17, 2021.

Last year, North Korea suffered severe flooding which damaged vital crops and left hundreds of families without homes. This year, crops were also damaged by droughts and subsequent flooding.

It remains to be seen whether the country's dire food shortages will factor into any decisions taken at this week's plenary meeting, which could last for days.

Kim has often made major policy announcements around the New Year, including in 2018 when he announced a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea, and in 2019, when he discussed his desire to continue talks with then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

Since his father and longtime ruler Kim Jong Il's death in December 2011, Kim Jong Un has established absolute power at home and fortified North Korea's nuclear and missile arsenals.

The harrowing testimony of an escaped North Korean reveals the torment women face in Kim Jong Un's army including sexual abuse, abortions without anaesthesia and starvation rations.

The former soldier, who gave her name as Jennifer Kim, said female fighters also had to use soggy footwraps as sanitary pads, and endured cruel and unusual collective punishments.

One punishment involved dipping the hands in freezing water, then having to hang from an iron bar which froze on to the palms, causing the flesh to tear off when released.

She estimated that 70% of women in North Korea's army had been victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment including herself.

Surviving on no more than three of four spoonfuls of corn a day, Jennifer was so malnourished that her period came only once every four to six months.

The former soldier, who gave her name as Jennifer Kim, demonstrates a punishment where women were forced to dip their hands in freezing water before being made to hang on a cold iron bar

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Kim Jong Un looks slimmer than ever addressing North Korean officials on 'next stage of victory' - nation.lk - The Nation Newspaper

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews."

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.

READ: Veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Tutu dies aged 90

The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred.

Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or I hope to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.

We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land?

My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: "I am not pro- this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- injustice, anti-oppression."

But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.

Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission. This address was given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston, Massachusetts, in April 2002. Published by The Guardian on April 2002.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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Apartheid in the Holy Land Middle East Monitor - Middle East Monitor