March 26, 2020| By Sikh Siyasat Bureau

Surrey/Brampton: The British Columbia Gurdwaras Council (BCGC) and Ontario Gurdwaras Committee (OGC) are very concerned over the recent attack and mass incident of violence that occurred at Gurdwara Guru Har Rai Sahib in Kabul, Afghanistan. This attack has resulted in the murder of dozens of Sikhs from an already very vulnerable and marginalized minority community in Afghanistan and again shows the need for Canada and the world to step in and protect minority communities in Afghanistan that have been continuous targets of oppression, intimidation, and murder for almost 3 decades.

Reports have been coming in regarding a gunman firing on Sikh worshippers inside the Gurdwara. About 150-200 Sikhs were trapped inside the Gurdwara Sahib at the time of the attack which later the Islamic State claimed responsibility for. The Islamic State has targeted Sikhs and other religious minorities before in Afghanistan. In June of 2018 the Islamic State carried out a bombing targeting the Sikh community where 19 Sikhs were killed and dozens injured. After this recent attack and the ongoing persecution of Sikhs within India, the question of religious freedom and the safety/security of the Sikh community internationally is in the minds of Sikhs across the world.

Images of Sikhs killed in attack on Gurdwara Sahib in Kabul

The threat Afghan Sikhs face is all too real and we need to work with the Government of Canada to have the marginalized minority community of Afghan Sikhs resettled in Canada before more are killed. The Canadian Sikh community is prepared to cover the costs related to resettlement and to ensure a successful integration into Canada through resources, education, and a sense of community said Amarjit Singh Mann, Spokesperson of the OGC.

For many years now, Gurdwaras across Canada along with other organizations including the Manmeet Singh Bhullar Foundation have been actively lobbying the Government of Canada to quickly process the refugee claims of Afghan Sikhs so that they may come to Canada and live their lives in peace. Although a dozen or so families have been resettled, more needs to be done as the Sikh community of Canada has repeatedly made this request but the process is proving to be slow and inefficient especially when the preservation of lives is concerned.

Moninder Singh, Spokesperson for the BCGC, stated Sikhs have long been targeted with violence, oppression, and intimidation in India and we are seeing the plight of our community in countries like Afghanistan deteriorating steadily over several decades. The number of Sikhs in Afghanistan continues to dwindle due to these types of attacks and daily harassment and intimidation forcing Sikh families who have lived in Afghanistan for hundreds of years to rethink their future and flee as refugees. As a proclaimed leader in furthering the cause of human rights in the world, we again call upon the Government of Canada to expedite the refugee claims process of Afghan Sikhs so horrendous acts of violence like this can be avoided.

The BCGC and OGC ask that the Government of Canada strongly condemn this attack on the Sikh community in Afghanistan and ask the same from their international partners as the ongoing murder, oppression, and forced migration of Afghan Sikhs over the last several decades is a crisis that must be dealt with urgently. We urge all federal political parties to see this as a joint humanitarian issue and all jointly move it to the immediate resettlement of Afghan Sikhs to Canada and the Sikh community is prepared to work with you every step of the way.

Related Topics: Attack on Sikh Gurdwara Sahib in Kabul (Afghanistan), Gurdwaras in Ontario, Ontario Gurdwaras Committee, Ontario Gurudwara Committee, Sikh Diaspora, Sikh News Afghanistan, Sikh News Canada, Sikhs in Afghanistan, Sikhs in Canada

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Canadian Sikhs Demand Action Following Attack on Sikhs in Kabul - Sikh Siyasat News

Do you have something to say? Send us a letter by clicking here!THINKING OF YOU

As a senior, I am writing to encourage our seniors to know that they are loved and not forgotten. Not being able to get out or see family and friends is very hard. Every day we need to be thankful for so many blessings. We have time, so lets pray for each other, our first responders, service people, government, doctors, nurses, care workers, cashiers, grocers, truckers, pastors, news people and so many more doing so much to look after all of us. Lets be the encouragers for the younger people to let them know its okay, we will get through this if we all do our part. To everyone else out there, lets not only wash our hands but let us wash our hearts to think of others instead of complaining. No one is more important than the other. Lets all pray for comfort, peace and healing and realize we are so blessed to be living in such a great country as Canada.

B. ALEXANDER

(Thanks for sharing the positivity.)

Thank you Andrew Scheer for refusing to give the Trudeau government emergency taxing and spending authority which would have amounted to taxation without representation, an affront to our very democracy. Shame on Trudeau for incorporating this into the $82 billion COVID-19 relief Bill, as well as the Bloc Party that was ready to agree. I cannot imagine anything scarier than giving Trudeau/Morneau the ability for uncontrolled taxation and fettered discretion to spend. Canada is already buried under a mountain of debt a Direct result of Trudeaus reckless spending? How we ever dig out of the huge fiscal mess after COVID-19 is a big question on Canadian minds, without any answers.

Larry Comeau

(Thankfully, the process worked, and the opposition was able to hold the governments feet to the fire.)

With his failed attempt to subvert our democracy and legislate dictatorial powers for himself, Trudeau has only continued his legacy of failure on every issue. He is the classic weak leader, frozen by indecision and indifference, then finally over reacting. Will this weakness of Justin Trudeau now plunge our nation into years of anarchy, oppression and poverty?

Iain G. Foulds

(It certainly was a stumble.)

Re: Fourth horseman. I like your response to Al Willeys letter. Too bad we couldnt have that horseman committed before he does more damage.

MURAY McANDREWS

(Only time will tell.)

Re: Notley reiterates call for UCP to ban evictions days before rent payments due. And, of course, Rachel Notley and her NDP have a far better plan than that of Premier (Jason) Kenney and the UCP provincial government. Just like all the great plans she had for the province during the NDP reign for four very long years.

DONALD K. MUNROE

(Shes trying to help Albertans during a time of great stress. Cant fault that.)

Sign of the times for the grocery stores: You touch it, you buy it! Please leave our precious young ones at home or youll go broke.

RICK RHEU BOTTOM

(We all need to stop that horrible habit.)

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Letters March, 26: No one is more important than the other - Edmonton Sun

malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power

Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium.[a] Oppression may be overt or covert, depending how it is practiced.[2][3] Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets specific groups of people.

No universally accepted model or terminology has yet emerged to describe oppression in its entirety, although some of the scholars cite evidence of different types of oppression, such as social oppression, institutional oppression, and economic oppression.[citation needed]

The word oppress comes from the Latin oppressus, past participle of opprimere, ("to press against",[4] "to squeeze", "to suffocate").[5] Thus, when authoritarian governments use oppression to subjugate the people, they want their citizenry to feel that "pressing down", and to live in fear that if they displease the authorities they will, in a metaphorical sense, be "squeezed" and "suffocated", e.g., thrown in a dank, dark, state prison or summarily executed. Such governments oppress the people using restriction, control, terror, hopelessness, and despair.[b] The tyrant's tools of oppression include, for example, extremely harsh punishments for "unpatriotic" statements; developing a loyal, guileful secret police force; prohibiting freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press; controlling the monetary system and economy; and imprisoning or killing activists or other leaders who might pose a threat to their power.[6][7][8][9][10]

Oppression also refers to a more insidious type of manipulation and control, in this instance involving the subjugation and marginalization of specific groups of people within a country or society, such as: girls and women, boys and men, people of color, religious communities, citizens in poverty, LGBT people, youth and children, and many more. This socioeconomic, cultural, political, legal, and institutional oppression (hereinafter, "social oppression") probably occurs in every country, culture, and society, including the most advanced democracies, such as the United States, Japan, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Canada.[c][d]

A single, widely accepted definition of social oppression does not yet exist, although there are commonalities. Taylor (2016)[11] defined (social) oppression in this way:

Oppression is a form of injustice that occurs when one social group is subordinated while another is privileged, and oppression is maintained by a variety of different mechanisms including social norms, stereotypes and institutional rules. A key feature of oppression is that it is perpetrated by and affects social groups. ... [Oppression] occurs when a particular social group is unjustly subordinated, and where that subordination is not necessarily deliberate but instead results from a complex network of social restrictions, ranging from laws and institutions to implicit biases and stereotypes. In such cases, there may be no deliberate attempt to subordinate the relevant group, but the group is nonetheless unjustly subordinated by this network of social constraints.

Harvey (1999)[13] suggested the term "civilized oppression", which he introduced as follows:

It is harder still to become aware of what I call 'civilized Oppression,' that involves neither physical violence nor the use of law. Yet these subtle forms are by far the most prevalent in Western industrialized societies. This work will focus on issues that are common to such subtle oppression in several different contexts (such as racism, classism, and sexism) ... Analyzing what is involved in civilized oppression includes analyzing the kinds of mechanisms used, the power relations at work, the systems controlling perceptions and information, the kinds of harms inflicted on the victims, and the reasons why this oppression is so hard to see even by contributing agents.

Research and theory development on social oppression has advanced apace since the 1980s with the publication of seminal books and articles,[e] and the cross-pollination of ideas and discussion among diverse disciplines, such as: feminism, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and political science. Nonetheless, more fully understanding the problem remains an extremely complicated challenge for scholars. Improved understanding will likely involve, for example, comprehending more completely the historical antecedents of current social oppression; the commonalities (and lack thereof) among the various social groups damaged by social oppression (and the individual human beings who make up those groups); and the complex interplay between and amongst sociocultural, political, economic, psychological, and legal forces that cause and support oppression.

Social oppression is when a single group in society takes advantage of, and exercises power over, another group using dominance and subordination.[14] This results in the socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group of individuals by those with relative power.[15] In a social group setting, oppression may be based on many ideas, such as poverty, gender, class, race, or other categories. Oppression by institution, or systematic oppression, is when the laws of a place create unequal treatment of a specific social identity group or groups. Another example of social oppression is when a specific social group is denied access to education that may hinder their lives in later life.[16] Economic oppression is the divide between two classes of society. These were once determined by factors such slavery, property rights, disenfranchisement, and forced displacement of livelihood. Each divide yielded various treatments and attitudes towards each group.

Social oppression derives from power dynamics and imbalances related to the social location of a group or individual. Social location, as defined by Lynn Weber, is "an individual's or a group's social 'place' in the race, class, gender and sexuality hierarchies, as well as in other critical social hierarchies such as age, ethnicity, and nation".[17][pageneeded] An individual's social location often determines how they will be perceived and treated by others in society. Three elements shape whether a group or individual can exercise power: the power to design or manipulate the rules and regulations, the capacity to win competitions through the exercise of political or economic force, and the ability to write and document social and political history.[18] There are four predominant social hierarchies, race, class, gender and sexuality, that contribute to social oppression.

Lynn Weber,[17] among some other political theorists, argues that oppression persists because most individuals fail to recognize it; that is, discrimination is often not visible to those who are not in the midst of it. Privilege refers to a sociopolitical immunity one group has over others derived from particular societal benefits.[19] Many of the groups who have privilege over gender, race, or sexuality, for example, can be unaware of the power their privilege holds. These inequalities further perpetuate themselves because those who are oppressed rarely have access to resources that would allow them to escape their maltreatment. This can lead to internalized oppression, where subordinate groups essentially give up the fight to get access to equality, and accept their fate as a non-dominant group.[20]

Race or racial oppression is defined as: " ...burdening a specific race with unjust or cruel restraints or impositions. Racial oppression may be social, systematic, institutionalized, or internalized. Social forms of racial oppression include exploitation and mistreatment that is socially supported."[21] United States history consists of five primary forms of racial oppression including genocide and geographical displacement, slavery, second-class citizenship, non-citizen labor, and diffuse racial discrimination.[22]

The first, primary form of racial oppressiongenocide and geographical displacementin the US context refers to Western Europe and settlers taking over an Indigenous population's land. Many Indigenous people, commonly known today as Native Americans, were relocated to Indian Reservations or killed during wars which were fought over possession of their land. The second form of racial oppression, slavery, refers to Africans being taken from their homeland and sold as property to white Americans. Racial oppression was a significant part of daily life in which African-Americans routinely worked on plantations and performed other forms of labor without pay or freedom to leave their workplaces. The third form of racial oppression, second-class citizenship, refers to some categories of citizens having fewer rights than others. Second-class citizenship became a pivotal form of racial oppression in the United States following the Civil War, as African-Americans who were formerly enslaved continued to be considered unequal to white citizens, and had no voting rights. Moreover, immigrants and foreign workers in the US are also treated like second-class citizens, with fewer rights than people born in the US. The fourth form of racial oppression in American history, non-citizen labor, refers to the linkage of race and legal citizenship status. During the middle of the 19th century, some categories of immigrants, such as Mexicans and Chinese, were sought as physical laborers, but were nonetheless denied legal access to citizenship status. The last form of racial oppression in American history is diffuse discrimination. This form of racial oppression refers to discriminatory actions that are not directly backed by the legal powers of the state, but take place in widespread everyday social interactions. This can include employers not hiring or promoting someone on the basis of race, landlords only renting to people of certain racial groups, salespeople treating customers differently based on race, and racialized groups having access only to impoverished schools. Even after the civil rights legislation abolished segregation, racial oppression is still a reality in the United States. According to Robert Blauner, author of Racial Oppression in America, "racial groups and racial oppression are central features of the American social dynamic".[22]

Class oppression, sometimes referred to as classism, can be defined as prejudice and discrimination based on social class.[23] Class is an unspoken social ranking system which is based on income, wealth, education, status, and power. A class is a large group of people who share similar economic or social positions based on their income, wealth, property ownership, job status, education, skills, and power in the economic and political sphere. The most commonly used class categories include: upper class, middle class, working class, and poor class. A majority of people in the United States self-identify in surveys as middle class, despite vast differences in income and status. Class is also experienced differently depending on race, gender, ethnicity, global location, disability, and more. Class oppression of the poor and working class can lead to deprivation of basic needs and a feeling of inferiority to higher-class people, as well as shame towards one's traditional class, race, gender, or ethnic heritage. In the United States, class has become racialized leaving the greater percentage of people of color living in poverty.[24] Since class oppression is universal among the majority class in American society, at times it can seem invisible, however, it is a relevant issue that causes suffering for many.

Gender oppression is carried out through gender norms society has adopted. In some cultures today, gender norms suggest that masculinity and femininity are opposite genders, however it is an unequal binary pair, with masculinity being dominant and femininity being subordinate. "Many have argued that cultural practices concerning gender norms of child care, housework, appearance, and career impose an unfair burden on women and as such are oppressive."[citation needed] According to feminist Barbara Cattunar, women have always been "subjected to many forms of oppression, backed up by religious texts which insist upon women's inferiority and subjugation".[25] Femininity has always been looked down upon, perpetuated by socially constructed stereotypes, which has affected women's societal status and opportunity. In current society, sources like the media further impose gendered oppression as they shape societal views. Females in pop-culture are objectified and sexualized, which can be understood as degrading to women by depicting them as sex objects with little regard for their character, political views, cultural contributions, creativity or intellect. Some argue that feminism, or struggles for women's cultural, political and economic equality, has challenged gender oppression. Others, such as Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia, argue that modern "fourth wave" feminism is holding women back by cementing them in a culture of victimization. Gender oppression also takes place against trans, gender-non-conforming, gender queer, or non-binary individuals who do not identify with binary categories of masculine/feminine or male/female.

Dominant societal views with respect to sexuality, and sex partner selection, have formed a sexuality hierarchy oppressing people who do not conform to heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is an underlying assumption that everyone in society is heterosexual, and those who are not are treated as different or even abnormal by society, excluded, oppressed, and sometimes subject to violence. Heterosexism also derives from societal views of the nuclear family which is presumed to be heterosexual, and dominated or controlled by the male partner. Social actions by oppressed groups such as LGBTQI movements have organized to create social change.

Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of individuals because of their religious beliefs.[26] According to Iris Young oppression can be divided into different categories such as powerlessness, exploitation, and violence.[27] The first category of powerlessness with regards to religious persecution exists when a group of people who follow one religion have less power than the followers of the dominant religion. An example of religious powerlessness existed during the 17th century when the Pilgrims, who wanted to escape the rule of the Church of England came to what is now called the United States. The pilgrims created their own religion which was another form of Protestantism, and after doing so they eventually passed laws in order to prevent other religions from prospering in their colony. The Pilgrims and the leaders of other communities where Protestants were in the majority used their power over legislatures to oppress followers of other religions in the United States.[28] The second category of oppression: exploitation, has been seen in many different forms around the world when it comes to religion. The definition of exploitation is the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.[29] For example, during, and particularly after, the American Civil War, white Americans used Chinese immigrants in order to build the transcontinental railroads. During this time it was common for the Chinese immigrants to follow the religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, because of this the Chinese were considered different and therefore not equal to white Americans. Due to this view Chinese workers were denied equal pay, and they also suffered many hardships during the time which they spent working on the railroad.[30] The third and most extreme category of oppression is violence. According to the Merriam Webster's dictionary, violence is "the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy". Acts of religious violence which are committed against people who practice a particular religion are classified as hate crimes. Since September 11th, 2001 the number of hate crimes which have been committed against Muslims in the United States has greatly increased. One such incident occurred on August 5, 2017 when three men bombed a Mosque because they felt that Muslims "'push their beliefs on everyone else'".[31] Acts of religious violence are also committed against practitioners of other religions in addition to Islam.

Young people are a commonly, yet rarely acknowledged, oppressed demographic. Minors are denied many democratic and human rights, including the rights to vote, marry, and give sexual consent. Society as a whole also tends to discriminate against young people and view them as inferior.[32]

Addressing social oppression on both a macro and micro level, feminist Patricia Hill Collins discusses her "matrix of domination".[33] The matrix of domination discusses the interrelated nature of four domains of power, including the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains. Each of these spheres works to sustain current inequalities that are faced by marginalized, excluded or oppressed groups. The structural, disciplinary and hegemonic domains all operate on a macro level, creating social oppression through macro structures such as education, or the criminal justice system, which play out in the interpersonal sphere of everyday life through micro-oppressions.

Standpoint theory can help us to understand the interpersonal domain. Standpoint theory deals with an individual's social location in that each person will have a very different perspective based on where they are positioned in society. For instance, a white male living in America will have a very different take on an issue such as abortion than a black female living in Africa. Each will have different knowledge claims and experiences that will have shaped how they perceive abortion. Standpoint theory is often used to expose the powerful social locations of those speaking, to justify claims of knowledge through closer experience of an issue, and to deconstruct the construction of knowledge of oppression by oppressors.

"Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systemically reflect and produce inequities based on one's membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions."[34]

Institutionalized oppression allows for government, religious and business organizations and their employees to systematically favor specific groups of people based upon group identity. Dating back to colonization, the United States implemented the annihilation of Native Americans from lands that Euro-Americans wanted, and condoned the institution of slavery where Africans were brought to the 'New World' to be a source of free labor to expand the cotton and tobacco industry.[35] Implementing these systems by the United States government was justified through religious grounding where "servants [were] bought and established as inheritable property".[35]

Although the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments freed African Americans, gave them citizenship, and provided them the right to vote, institutions such as some police departments continue to use oppressive systems against minorities. They train their officers to profile individuals based upon their racial heritage, and to exert excessive force to restrain them. Racial profiling and police brutality are "employed to control a population thought to be undesirable, undeserving, and under punished by established law".[36] In both situations, police officers "rely on legal authority to exonerate their extralegal use of force; both respond to perceived threats and fears aroused by out-groups, especially but not exclusively racial minorities".[36] For example, "blacks are: approximately four times more likely to be targeted for police use of force than their white counterparts; arrested and convicted for drug-related criminal activities at higher rates than their overall representation in the U.S. population; and are more likely to fear unlawful and harsh treatment by law enforcement officials".[35] The International Association of Chiefs of Police collected data from police departments between the years 1995 and 2000 and found that 83% of incidents involving use-of-force against subjects of different races than the officer executing it involved a white officer and a black subject.[35]

Institutionalized oppression is not only experienced by people of racial minorities, but can also affect those in the LGBT community. Oppression of the LGBT community in the United States dates back to President Eisenhower's presidency where he passed Executive Order 10450 in April 1953 which permitted non-binary sexual behaviors to be investigated by federal agencies.[37] As a result of this order, "More than 800 federal employees resigned or were terminated in the two years following because their files linked them in some way with homosexuality."[37]

Oppression of the LGBT community continues today through some religious systems and their believers' justifications of discrimination based upon their own freedom of religious belief. States such as Arizona and Kansas passed laws in 2014 giving religious-based businesses "the right to refuse service to LGBT customers".[38] The proposal of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (EDNA) offers full protection of LGBT workers from job discrimination; however, the act does not offer protection against religious-based corporations and businesses, ultimately allowing the LGBT community to be discriminated against in environments such as churches and religious-based hospitals.[38] The LGBT community is further oppressed by the United States government with the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act which states, "Protecting religious freedom from Government intrusion is a Government interest of the highest order."[39] This act essentially allows for institutions of any kindschools, businesses, hospitalsto deny service to people based upon their sexuality because it goes against a religious belief.

The term economic oppression changes in meaning and significance over time, depending on its contextual application. In today's context, economic oppression may take several forms, including, but not limited to: serfdom, forced labour, low wages, denial of equal opportunity, bonded labour, practicing employment discrimination, and economic discrimination based on sex, nationality, race, and religion.[40]

Ann Cudd describes the main forces of economic oppression as oppressive economic systems and direct and indirect forces. Even though capitalism and socialism are not inherently oppressive, they "lend themselves to oppression in characteristic ways".[41] She defines direct forces of economic oppression as "restrictions on opportunities that are applied from the outside on the oppressed, including enslavement, segregation, employment discrimination, group-based harassment, opportunity inequality, neocolonialism, and governmental corruption". This allows for a dominant social group to maintain and maximize its wealth through the intentional exploitation of economically inferior subordinates. With indirect forces (also known as oppression by choice), "the oppressed are co-opted into making individual choices that add to their own oppression". The oppressed are faced with having to decide to go against their social good, and even against their own good. If they choose otherwise, they have to choose against their interests, which may lead to resentment by their group.[41]

An example of direct forces of economic oppression is employment discrimination in the form of the gender pay gap. Restrictions on women's access to and participation in the workforce like the wage gap is an "inequality most identified with industrialized nations with nominal equal opportunity laws; legal and cultural restrictions on access to education and jobs, inequities most identified with developing nations; and unequal access to capital, variable but identified as a difficulty in both industrialized and developing nations".[42] In the United States, the median weekly earnings for women were 82 percent of the median weekly earnings for men in 2016.[43] Some argue women are prevented from achieving complete gender equality in the workplace because of the "ideal-worker norm," which "defines the committed worker as someone who works full-time and full force for forty years straight," a situation designed for the male sex.[42]

Women, in contrast, are still expected to fulfill the caretaker role and take time off for domestic needs such as pregnancy and ill family members, preventing them from conforming to the "ideal-worker norm". With the current norm in place, women are forced to juggle full-time jobs and family care at home.[44] Others believe that this difference in wage earnings is likely due to the supply and demand for women in the market because of family obligations.[45] Eber and Weichselbaumer argue that "over time, raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially. Most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females".[46]

Indirect economic oppression is exemplified when individuals work abroad to support their families. Outsourced employees, working abroad generally little to no bargaining power not only with their employers, but with immigration authorities as well. They could be forced to accept low wages and work in poor living conditions. And by working abroad, an outsourced employee contributes to the economy of a foreign country instead of their own. Veltman and Piper describe the effects of outsourcing on female laborers abroad:

Her work may be oppressive first in respects of being heteronomous: she may enter work under conditions of constraint; her work may bear no part of reflectively held life goals; and she may not even have the: freedom of bodily movement at work. Her work may also fail to permit a meaningful measure of economic independence or to help her support herself or her family, which she identifies as the very purpose of her working.[47]

By deciding to work abroad, laborers are "reinforcing the forces of economic oppression that presented them with such poor options".[41]

Although a relatively modern form of resistance, feminism's origins can be traced back to the course of events which led up to the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923. While the ERA was created in order to address the need for equal protection under the law for both men and women in the workplace, it spurred a rise in feminism which has come to represent women's search for equal opportunity and respect in patriarchal societies, across all social, cultural, and political spheres.[48] Demonstrations and marches have been a popular medium of support, with the January 21, 2017, Women's March's replication in major cities across the world drawing tens of thousands of supporters.[49] Feminists' main talking points consist of women's reproductive rights, the closing of the pay gap between men and women, the glass ceiling and workplace discrimination, and the intersectionality of feminism with other major issues such as African-American rights, immigration freedoms, and gun violence.

Resistance to oppression has been linked to a moral obligation, an act deemed necessary for the preservation of self and society.[50] Still, resistance to oppression has been largely overlooked in terms of the amount of research and number of studies completed on the topic, and therefore, is often largely misinterpreted as "lawlessness, belligerence, envy, or laziness".[51] Over the last two centuries, resistance movements have risen that specifically aim to oppose, analyze, and counter various types of oppression, as well as to increase public awareness and support of groups marginalized and disadvantaged by systematic oppression. Late 20th century resistance movements such as liberation theology and anarchism set the stage for mass critiques of, and resistance to, forms of social and institutionalized oppression that have been subtly enforced and reinforced over time. Resistance movements of the 21st century have furthered the missions of activists across the world, and movements such as liberalism, Black Lives Matter and feminism are some of the most prominent examples of resistance to oppression today.

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Oppression - Wikipedia

If you think the coronavirus pandemic is the worst thing you have experienced, you havent experienced the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which has been far more brutal and lethal than any virus could ever be.

I was in occupied Palestine during the First Intifada, writing on the resilience and strength of the Palestinian people in the face of Israeli military oppression. My family lives in East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Beit Jala, Beit Hanina and Beit Sahour. I know what they are forced to experience every day by Israels oppressive government.

For many, the words and phrases most associated with the coronavirus outbreak lockdown, stay at home, and shelter in place may be new, but they arent to the Palestinians. They have lived with curfews, lockdowns and severe restrictions, and often been unable to buy groceries, get medical attention or even visit relatives for more than 70 years. They know what it is like to go without food, without schooling, without celebrations or events.

Israel has adopted more than 65 laws that discriminate against the Palestinian people simply because they are Christian and Muslim, rather than Jewish. One of the first grants immediate citizenship to any Jew from any country around the world and of any nationality or origin, but denies that same privilege to the Palestinians, who have been living on that land since time immemorial.

My family name, Hanania, is a Hebrew Word not Israeli, by the way. It means God has been gracious. My family, we believe, originated from the Hebrews and converted to Christianity in the first century, while even some converted to Islam in the seventh century. We have Christian, Muslim and Jewish relatives, so our history and rights are clear to everyone, except the Israelis. As heavily armed Israeli soldiers wandered through Palestinian cities and villages, we hunkered down eating mujaddara, the rice and lentil dish that became the symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israels brutality.

As I watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urge unity with his political rivals, I wonder where that has been in the countrys dealings with the Palestinians.

There have been so many Palestinian deaths over the years that the world has become desensitized to them

Ray Hanania

So far, there have been more than 420,000 cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and there have been about 19,000 deaths. But those numbers continue to change so, by the time you read this, they will be less than what is reality. And yet the Palestinians have seen even worse statistics that continue to increase daily. The deaths have been staggering over the years. Tens of thousands died during the war of 1947-49. More than 20,000 were killed during the Israeli assault on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, including the civilians massacred under Ariel Sharons terrorist direction in Sabra and Shatila. Another 2,000 Palestinians were killed during the First Intifada, during which I secretly walked the streets at night with my cousins, collecting rubber bullets that were in reality lethal metal balls covered in a thin plastic coating. More than 2,300 were killed during Israels invasion of Gaza in 2014.

There have been so many Palestinian deaths over the years that the world has become desensitized to them. Palestinian deaths are little more than numbers in a news report, usually presented in such a way as to defend Israels extremist government. But those deaths are dwarfed by the injuries to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, maybe even millions.

This week, Israels government and the Palestinian Authority it controls issued orders to lock down citizens, block immigration and travel, and close all cultural and educational activities and events to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. But, when it is over, life will return to normal for the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis will be free to live a fantasy life of happiness, blocking the trauma they cause from their eyesight with an 8-meter-high concrete wall. The Palestinians will return to being oppressed, brutally beaten, and arrested by Israeli soldiers and the Shin Bet. They will continue to scramble for food, any work, and see power outages, restrictions on their movement, and punishments that range from beatings to killings for actions involving protest and militancy, which Israel labels as terrorism.

Pandemics are not as bad as occupation. If you want to know how to survive this coronavirus pandemic, take a look at how the Palestinians have managed to survive Israeli brutality. And why not take a minute to eat a plate of mujaddara with your family to show some solidarity.

What Palestinians have been forced to go through over the years under Israels oppression is no different than what the world is now going through as a result of the coronavirus. Although the truth is that Israels oppression has been far worse and there still is no antidote for that virus.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at http://www.Hanania.com. Twitter: @RayHanania

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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Palestinians all too familiar with oppression of lockdowns - Arab News

Sudan, a place that's seen genocide, war, and persecution for as long as some can remember is finally coming out of the dark. The nation's new transitional government is making real reforms that allow the Sudanese people to live and worship more freely.

On a recent trip to Sudan, American observers witnessed something that hasn't happened in decades, Sudanese Christians worshipping freely without fear of persecution.

It's a relief after years of suffering under Islamic Sharia Law.

"Christians in particular could see their places of worship destroyed, they would be arrested and there were charges of apostasy and blasphemy that were leveled because these are in the penal codes," Dwight Bashir tells CBN News. He's the director of outreach and policy at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Last year President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown and now faces charges of genocide before the International Criminal Court.

The new transitional civilian government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, is transitioning Sudan out of the dark.

"The worst of the persecution no longer exists. There's no more attacking of churches," Bashir says.

He recently traveled to Sudan with two USCIRF commissioners to meet with Hamdok and the delegation agrees it's clear he's intent on enacting real reforms.

The State Department has downgraded Sudan from a major violator of religious liberty to a watch list, but for Hamdok, change isn't coming easy. Just this month he survived an attempt on his life.

"For him to succeed he needs to be protected. His cabinet needs to be protected. He's brought in two Christians into his cabinet which would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago," Bashir explains.

Much work remains, like changes in zoning laws so Christians can build churches, along with other reforms that will allow the people of Sudan to worship more freely as their conscience dictates. However, for the first time in a long time there's hope against many odds those changes are coming.

Presently Sudan is listed as number 7 of the world's top persecutors of Christians on Open Doors USA's 2020 WorldWatch List.

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'The Worst of the Persecution No Longer Exists': Sudanese Christians See the Light After Years of Oppression - CBN News

New Delhi: The All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) has expressed disappointment over the Supreme Courts decision to reject anticipatory bail to AIFRTEs presidium member professor Anand Teltumbde for a case registered against him under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

The AIFRTE has called on over 80 member organisations across 22 states, and other democratic organisations and individuals across the country to register their protest and demand the repeal of the draconian UAPA, which allows the government to violate the constitutional rights of citizens with impunity. The forum has also announced its decision to launch a massive and continuous campaign of public awareness against the harassment of Prof. Teltubmde.

Teltumbde, who is an alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad, an IIT professor, the current senior professor and chair of Big Data Analytics at Goa Institute of Management (GIM) and a noted scholar caste-class and public policy issues, has been charged with having links to banned Maoist organisations.

The statement released by AIFRTE said that NDA-led government had used the outbreak of violence during the protest by Dali organisations on the 200th anniversary of the battle against the Peshwas at Bhima-Koregaon in 2018 to target activists.

Also read: Why We Must Defend Anand Teltumbde

The statement pointed out that reactionary forces had attacked the gathering, while the police looked on but did nothing and clearly established the administrations complicity in the violence. The Pune police then hatched a conspiracy theory to protect the leading agent provocateurs while alleging that violence was instigated by speakers at the Elgaar Parishad meeting.

From June 2018 onwards, a number of civil liberties activists and human rights lawyers were arrested for being Maoist sympathisers and continue to remain imprisoned to this day. Professor Teltumbdes name was added to the supplementary chargesheet after it was alleged that evidence in the form of a letter was found on the computer of one of the arrested.

The statement by AIFRTE also noted Teltumbdes professional achievements including his rank amongst the top 20 professionals to have influenced the development of IT in India by DataQuest. Teltumbde had also received several prestigious awards and has written more than 27 books, contributed 50 chapters to books edited by eminent authors, and written widely in newspapers, magazines and popular journals.

Emphasising Teltumbdes personal background, the statement made a reference to his humble beginnings and commended his quest to remain involved in the struggles of the oppressed and the downtrodden as a leading civil rights activist and theoretician of sources of social injustice and oppression.

The entire text of the statement has been reproduced below.

AIFRTE is shocked, outraged and deeply disappointed by the Supreme Courts rejection of anticipatory bail to its Presidium member Prof. Anand Teltumbde, an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, IIT Professor, and currently Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics at Goa Institute of Management (GIM). Prof Teltumbde is also a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, and a Leading Public Intellectual and Democratic and Educational Rights Activist. The case registered against him under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) alleges that he has links with banned Maoist organizations.

The BJP/RSS-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Central government had in 2018 used the outbreak of violence during the powerful protest by Dalit organizations marking the 200th anniversary of the battle against the Peshwas at Bhima-Koregaon to target leading civil liberties and human rights peace activists.

Reactionary forces had attacked the massive gathering at the memorial on January 1, 2018, with stone pelting, beating people and burning stalls. As is now becoming increasingly common, the police looked on but did nothing and clearly established the administrations complicity in the violence. Videos on WhatsApp showed saffron flag bearers shouting slogans in the name of Ekbote and Bhide chasing and beating Dalits who were caught unawares. Many were injured, their vehicles damaged, and stalls burnt down.

To protect the leading agent provocateurs, Milind Ekbote of Samastha Hindutva Aghadi and Sambhaji Bhide of Shiv Chhatrapati Pratishthan who are out on bail and against whom proceedings have not moved, the Pune police concocted a conspiracy theory alleging that the violence was incited by speakers at the Elgaar Parishad meeting held in Pune the previous day. The meeting had been convened by Justices Kolse-Patil and P.B. Sawant but the police claimed to have evidence that the organizers had a nexus with banned Maoist organizations. Consequently, from June 2018 onwards a number of well-known civil liberties activists and human rights lawyers were arrested as `Maoist sympathizers and they remain imprisoned even today under the UAPA.

Prof. Anand Teltumbdes name was added to the supplementary chargesheet in the case which was filed in February 2019. He had not even attended the Elgaar Parishad. The evidence against him is said to be a letter found on the computer of one of those arrested earlier. Cyber forensic analysis of the hard disk of the computer has shown the presence of malware which allows remote access to the computer and casts grave doubts about the so-called `evidence found. Now the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the National Investigation Agency (NIA), to whom the case was handed over last month after the new Maharashtra government promised a review of the police case against the human rights lawyers and civil liberties activists, has claimed that custodial interrogation of Prof. Teltumbde has become `highly necessary.

It is necessary to emphasize Prof. Teltumbdes professional achievements as an expert in frontline technologies. He has been ranked amongst the top 20 professionals to have influenced the development of IT in India by DataQuest for three consecutive years, received several prestigious awards and has a proven record of over three decades in conceptualizing, designing and implementing innovative systems in all spheres of the oil and gas sector. CEO of a holding Company, and member of the Boards of its subsidiaries for 7 years, Prof. Teltumbde has been member of the Strategy, Executive, IT Strategy and Retail Councils of a Fortune 500 company (BPCL) for 12 years. He has written more than 27 books, contributed 50 chapters to books edited by eminent authors, and writes widely in newspapers, magazines and popular journals. He has published more than 20 Research papers in foreign journals and served as a leading Referee and member on their boards, besides having presented papers at international conferences. He is and has been visiting professor at leading institutions in India and abroad.

Born in a family of landless labourers in Maharashtras Yavatmal district, Anand Teltumbde, despite his outstanding professional successes, continued to empathize with and remain involved in the struggles of the oppressed and the downtrodden as a leading civil rights activist and theoretician of sources of social injustice and oppression. He is married to the grand-daughter of Baba Saheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

His role as a leading member of the Presidium of AIFRTE over the past ten years has been of enormous value to the organization and has attracted large numbers of activists to the cause of a free and compulsory Common School System providing education in the mother tongue. This is the only way to ensure social justice and equality in education.

AIFRTE calls upon its more than 80 member organizations across 22 states, and other democratic organizations and individuals across the country to register their protest against this blatantly anti-democratic action and demand the repeal of the dictatorial UAPA which allows the government to violate the constitutional rights of citizens with impunity. AIFRTE has decided to launch a massive and continuous campaign of public awareness against the harassment of Prof. Teltubmde.

Prof. Jagmohan Singh, Punjab; Prof. Wasi Ahmed, Bihar; Sri Prabhakar Arade; Maharashtra, Prof. G. Haragopal, Telangana; Ramesh Patnaik, Andhra Pradesh; Prof. Madhu Prasad, Delhi; Prof. K. Chakradhar Rao Telangana; Prof. Anil Sadgopal, Madhya Pradesh; Prof. K. M. Shrimali, Delhi; and Prof. Zhatsu Terhuja, Nagaland

AIFRTE Presidium

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Forum for RTE 'Disappointed' by SC Decision on Anand Teltumbde's Anticipatory Bail - The Wire

At the height of their power, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now referred to as Daesh, operated in 18 different countries and had an annual budget of $1 billion with an estimated 30,000 members. They conducted ground attacks on both government forces and any other force that opposed them. Their goal: to establish a so-called caliphate in the region. On Aug. 7, 2014, the U.S.-led coalition launched airstrikes against Daesh. On March 23, 2019, the Pentagon announced the physical defeat of the Daesh caliphate in Syria. Over 110,000 square miles were liberated. Approximately 7.7 million people were freed from Daesh oppression. In Baghouz, Syria, where the final battle took place, a yellow flag was flown atop a building by U.S.-backed Syrian forces as they celebrated their victory over Daesh.

Founded in 1999 under the name Jamat al-Tawd wa-al-Jihd and changing to Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, and with an allegiance to al-Qaeda, the oppressive presence of Daesh in the region grew once Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi came to power in 2010. Al-Baghdadi became involved with Daesh while detained in Camp Bucca in the early 2000s. When released from detainment, he quickly rose in prominence by being directly involved in the violent atrocities conducted by Daesh.

Throughout the next several years with al-Baghdadi as head, Daesh seized control of several major cities in Iraq. Kidnappings, mass murder, and extortion were common crimes committed by Daesh members. By declaring the creation of a so-called caliphate, Daesh gave al-Baghdadi self-proclaimed authority over the Muslims of the world. Their declaration as a caliphate was criticized and disputed by Middle Eastern governments. They were officially declared a terrorist organization by both Iraq and Syria, along with many other nations of the world.

Coalition troops were sent into Iraq to support the defeat of Daesh. In October 2014, this combined effort was given the name Operation Inherent Resolve. Along with Iraqi and Syrian forces, over 30 countries combined together for the sole mission of defeating Daesh. The Combined Joint Task Force- Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) worked with partner forces to free the nearly 8 million people under the control of Daesh. By mid-2015, Kurdish fighters expelled Daesh out of towns in Syria and reclaimed military bases that had fallen under Daesh control. In late 2015, Iraqi forces took control of Ramadi from Daesh and then Fallujah just six months later. After several years of combined assaults, Daesh was quickly losing control of central Iraq.

Mosul was retaken from Daesh control toward the end of 2016. Mosul was considered by Daesh as their capital city in the two years since it fell under their control. By early 2017, Daesh had lost all control of central Iraq. At the end of July 2017, it was reported that Daesh had lost an estimated 73% of the territory they had once controlled in Iraq. By the end of the year, the Iraqi Army announced all of Iraq had been liberated and their people freed from Daesh oppression.

On March 23, 2019, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced that Daesh had lost its final stronghold in Syria, bringing an end to their so-called caliphate. On Oct. 26, 2019, during a raid conducted by U.S. forces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in Northwest Syria.

CJTF-OIR continues its pursuit of Daesh remnants to this day under the command of Lt. Gen. Pat White, III Corps and Fort Hood commander. The remains still linger, but with few resources and the inability to project power to the same degree as they did in 2012, they have very little influence in the region. The continued training of partner forces within the scope of the Defeat Daesh mission is now the focus of Operation Inherent Resolve, along with preventing Daesh from re-emerging in the region and recruiting members to fight for them once again.

Iraq is working hard to establish a stable, unified government. After being devastated by the threat of Daesh, the Iraqi people are primed and ready for this transition, moving closer to being a free and sovereign nation withstanding against any third-party interference. Its military is ready to take a more active role in the safety and security of Iraq, and demonstrate its ability to protect the people and interests of Iraq.

The last of Daeshs territory in Syria crumbled at the battle of Baghouz. The SDF were the critical land force in this offensive, and through their significant sacrifice, eliminated the last territorial stronghold held by Daesh. By taking a disciplined, incremental approach to the battle the SDF were able to spare the large civilian population that Daesh fighters used as human shields in the densely populated area. The tactical effectiveness of their approach mixed with the fair treatment of civilians showed the SDF to be an honorable and powerful fighting force. After more than a month of fighting, the SDF declared final victory over Daesh on March 23, 2019, marking the end of Daesh controlled territory in Syria. Their legacy: millions of people have been liberated from Daeshs barbaric cruelty and fear, and over 900 Daesh fighters surrendering by the end of the battle.

In the last year, the role of the Coalition has been to work alongside partner forces in Iraq and Syria in preventing the remnants of Daesh from returning to power, and to keep the extremist ideologies of Daesh suppressed. The destruction of Daesh provides partners the space and time to recover from the physical and emotional damage that has been left behind in their wake.

The lessons of the rise and fall of Daesh have shown the international community the need to remain vigilant and prepared, to swiftly respond to any threat by third-party actors or violent extremist organizations. The fortitude of the Iraqi and Syrian people and the continued Coalition support of our partner forces, what was once darkened by Daesh, is rejuvenated with the aspirations of a free people.

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The defeat of Daesh: One year after the liberation of the physical caliphate - The Killeen Daily Herald

I dont want to get things out of proportion. Events of far more importance are being lost, put off and cancelled than my, by comparison, little concern. But it is still a loss and one you might be interested in, not because it didnt happen but because it might have done and still will, sooner or later.

We at the Commonwealth Jewish Council were planning a model seder. Were not alone in that. Around now, usually, schools and churches here and abroad run such events. Indeed, I wrote and produced the original Seder Handbook for such model seders when I worked at the Board of Deputies in the 1980s.

But few would have been so colourful and diverse a gathering as that which we were anticipating.

We invited all the High Commissions of the Commonwealth. Thats 54 countries. We added folk from the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to our list. The response was instant and enthusiastic.

We would have had people from Pacific Island nations, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Asia: a glorious multi-cultural gathering at which we would have showcased and shared our traditions while exploring Pesakhs relevance for today: modern slavery is still a thing, oppression and discrimination are common across the world, and refugees still flee unacceptable lives, just as our ancestors did more than three millennia ago.

Doing a seder with non-Jews present is salutary. You cant just settle into familiarity, taking refuge in this is how weve always done it, but must ask openly or often be asked by our guests! what does this all mean to us? just like the four children in the Haggadah.

Why did our invitees respond so readily and warmly? I think its because many expect Jewish tradition, so ancient, so rich, to have something wonderful to say, and theyre right. It does. A model seder never fails to impress.

But what of our real seders? Jewish communities throughout the Commonwealth, like us, are having to grapple with Covid 19. When I was in Singapore and Hong Kong back in February, the shape of things to come was only just starting to emerge. People there are used to the restrictions we are only now getting our heads around. India, with over a billion people, as yet has only a few cases, but if the pandemic takes hold there, their health service simply cant manage. Recently, their government imposed a curfew to keep people indoors. But what of the hundreds of thousands or more who live on the streets? Here, we still dont know what to do with our small but persistent band of street dwellers. In India, its an established fact of life.

What of the Caribbean islands which rely utterly on tourism to keep their heads above water? (I mean financially. Soon, due to the adverse impact of climate change, many small islands will simply be unable to keep their heads above water literally!) The Jewish communities in the Caribbean are small but long established. Many have got used to communal seders and have lost the habit of domestic practices. What will Pesakh look like to them if they cannot gather? Who will know what to do?

In Africa, most countries are currently hardly touched. But that is unlikely to stay the case. Like India, but more so, their health systems, sometimes very rudimentary, will buckle easily under the strain.

So as we sit in our small Sedarim this year or even on our own lets remember that Pesakh is supposed to finish with us looking to the future, speculating on the coming Messianic Age and what we must do to bring that forward. Spare a thought for the really helpless, the refugees, those trapped in slavery, the homeless who cannot self-isolate. Give thanks as the Seder instructs us dayenu, count our blessings.

Difficult though it may seem, Pesakh this year will be another opportunity for most of us to remember how lucky we are and concentrate on those who do not share our good fortune in our own Jewish community, in the wider community around us and in the Commonwealth of Nations of which we are a part.

Hag Sameakh!

Clive is CEO of the Commonwealth Jewish Council

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Seder, Covid 19 and the Commonwealth | Clive Lawton | The Blogs - Jewish News

Our ability to collect and record information in a digital form has exploded as has our adoption of AI systems, which use data to make decisions. But data isnt neutral, and sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are showing up in our data products. Catherine DIgnazio, an assistant professor of urban science and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argues we need to do better. Along with Lauren Klein, who directs the Digital Humanities Lab at Emory University, she is the co-author of the new book Data Feminism, which charts a course for a more equitable data science. DIgnazio also directs MITs new Data and Feminism lab, which seeks to use data and computation to counter oppression.

What is data feminism and why do we need it?It is data science with an intersectional feminist lens. It takes all inequality into account at every stage of the data processing pipeline, including gender discrimination but also other forms of intersecting discrimination like racism, classism and ableism. And the reason we need it is to stop producing harmful racist and sexist data products.

We shouldnt be surprised about the sexist results coming out of these algorithms with the flawed data we are feeding in

When you look at data and AI this way, what kind of problems do you find?We find some people are winning and some people are losing. The benefits and harms are not being equally distributed. And those who are losing are disproportionately women, people of colour, and other marginalised groups. One way they are losing is that data most of us would think is important isnt being collected. We have detailed datasets on things like the length of guinea pig teeth and items lost on the New York City subway. But, in the US, missing data includes maternal mortality data, which has only started being collected recently, and sexual harassment data. And so much of our health and medical understanding is based on research that has been done exclusively on the male body.

How do people with less privilege show up in datasets?Weve had facial analysis software that is much less accurate for dark-skinned women and algorithms that disadvantage female applicants. Weve also had child abuse prediction software that over-targets poor families and predictive policing software like PredPol that disproportionately targets neighbourhoods of colour. The former pulls data from state health and welfare services, which poor people are more likely to access, while the latter is based on historical crime data; only US policing practices have always disproportionately surveilled and patrolled neighbourhoods of colour. We shouldnt be surprised about the racist and sexist results coming out of these algorithms with the deeply flawed data we are feeding in.

If our data and algorithms are all so flawed, how do we change things to make them better?First we need to be tuning in to the ways that oppressive forces might be insidiously inserting themselves into the data pipeline. More understanding is particularly needed among the technical folks who are making these systems. It is rarely the case that the discrimination in products is intentional; its just that nobody has ever taught them that it is a problem or emphasised that it is important. University data-science courses should include more than just a single ethics class.

Then we have to actually use data and computation to challenge inequality. We have to collect counter-data. Take for example the comprehensive dataset on Mexicos femicides gender-related killings of women and girls that has been compiled for the past five years from media reports by Mara Salguero, a citizen activist in that country. She is filling a vacuum because the Mexican government is not collecting the data. Now of course data alone is never enough. But if the data is used in concert with organising, lobbying and building political will, it can be very effective. In the US, we do have organisations working to call out injustice and produce their own counter-data, including Data for Black Lives, the Algorithmic Justice League and The Markup. We need to fund more of this kind of work.

Is there such thing as neutral data?There is a naive assumption that if you see numbers in a spreadsheet, they are real somehow. But data is never this raw, truthful input, and it is never neutral. It is information that has been collected in certain ways by certain actors and institutions for certain reasons. For example, there is a comprehensive database at the US federal level of sexual assaults on college campuses colleges are required to report it. But whether students come forward to make those reports will depend on whether the college has a climate that will support survivors. Most colleges are not doing enough, and so we have vast underreporting of those crimes. It is not that data is evil or never useful, but the numbers should never be allowed to speak for themselves because they dont tell the whole story when there are power imbalances in the collection environment.

Would data sciences bias problems be solved if there were simply more data scientists, coders and computer programmers who were women or from minority backgrounds?More diversity is an important part of the solution. As a group, data scientists are more likely to be male, white and highly educated. They have never experienced sexism, racism or classism so it is hard for them to see it. We call this the privilege hazard in the book and diversity can mitigate it.

But only including more women or people of colour is not going to solve everything. We need to put communities who will be impacted by the information systems into the process of making them. Because inevitably designers and programmers are going to be building systems for life experiences that they havent had. If everyone that builds a welfare application needs to have lived on welfare, that would be a high bar. Because I am a woman doesnt mean Im going to understand how to build an application for domestic workers. But there are participation strategies from other fields like urban planning and how we incorporate those in data science is an area ripe for exploration.

In the book you talk about Big Dick Data. What is it and should we just reject it outright?We coined it to denote big data projects that are characterised by masculine fantasies of world domination. Big Dick Data projects fetishise large size and prioritise it, along with speed, over quality, ignore context and inflate their technical capabilities. They also tend to have little consideration for inequalities or inclusion in the process. Mark Zuckerberg aiming to supersede human senses with AI might be considered one such project, along with software company Palantirs claims about massive-scale datasets. Big Dick Data projects arent necessarily wholly invalid, but they suck up resources that could be given smaller, more inclusive projects.

What would you most like people to think about or ask themselves when they encounter data or a graph in the media?A good general strategy and feminist practice is to ask what we call who questions. Who made this? Who collected the data? Whose lives are embodied in the data? Who is it serving? Who is harmed potentially? Asking these questions allows us to start to see how privilege is baked in.

How is privilege being baked into the coronavirus data we are collecting?The US governments response to coronavirus has been a case of missing data. There has been community spread, but the numbers are completely unreliable because kits are in short supply and people are having a hard time getting tests. And then poor people, which include many from immigrant backgrounds, will be less likely to seek tests because of lack of insurance, lack of ability to afford insurance co-pays and lack of paid sick time if they test positive.

Data Feminism by Catherine DIgnazio and Lauren F Klein is published by MIT (25)

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Catherine DIgnazio: 'Data is never a raw, truthful input and it is never neutral' - The Guardian

This piece is a commentary, part of The Appeals collection of opinion and analysis.

More than 42,000 people in the U.S. have been confirmed to have COVID-19, and over 500 people have died from the illness. Those are frightening numbers, particularly given the speed at which the numbers have grown.

Yet the continuing disregard that government officials, the media, and society writ-large seemingly have for disabled people like methose at heightened risk of severe illness from COVID-19remains alarming.

The people most at risk of contracting the coronavirus are the elderly and those with certain pre-existing health conditions. Forty-nine million adults in the United States are age 65 and over, says the Census Bureau. And among non-elderly adults in the United States, 50 million to 129 million have a pre-existing condition, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

But as someone with arthrogryposisa disability that affects my joints and musclesand a history of blood clots, I have two conditions that raise my vulnerability. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a list of 10 conditions that increase the risk of severe illness from the virus.

Far too many people are entirely ignoring the gravity of COVID-19, believing that they are young and healthy and, therefore, not at risk. College students headed to the beaches in Florida this month for spring break. Until states began implementing recent stay-at-home restrictions, people were filling bars and restaurants.

Believing that we should just stay at home while others continue on with their lives is ableist.

But younger people can carry the virus and pass it on to a disabled person, older adult, or our caregivers. Young people are also not immune to the virus: 53 percent of people with COVID-19 in New York are 18 to 49 years old.

Some people are suggesting that rather than require all people to stay at home, only those most at risk of contracting the virus should be confined to their homes. In fact, believing that we should just stay at home while others continue on with their lives is ableistdiscriminatory or prejudiced against people with disabilities, perpetuated by a belief that disabled people are inferior to nondisabled people. Ableism takes many forms. On an individual level, ableism is attitudes, assumptions, or stereotypes about people with disabilities. Institutional ableism, conversely, is marked by systemic and pervasive policies and practices that negatively affect people with disabilities. Like all types of oppression, ableism can be implicit or explicit.

Although it seems we cannot count on society to look out for those of us most vulnerable, we would like to believe that our government is taking steps to ensure everyone in the U.S. is safe. Yet, that also does not seem to be the case. Although President Trump has finally acknowledged that the U.S. is in crisis, his indifference toward people like me has remained constant. For example, he regularly discusses older people during these briefings but has never mentioned how the virus is affecting disabled people.

More troubling, the administrations messaging around COVID-19 has been entirely inaccessible to many people with disabilities. While governors typically have sign language interpreters next to them when speaking to the public about emergencies, the White House daily COVID-19 press briefings have never once included a sign language interpreter, and their videos shared on social media usually lack captioning. The National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on disability policy, recently issued a letter to the White House concerning the lack of sign language interpreters.

Disability organizations have begun developing information about the illness in plain language so that people with intellectual disabilities or low literacy levels are informedsomething the government has also failed to do.

The Trump administration is not alone, however, in ignoring our needs during these difficult times. Disabled people have taken to Twitter to express their frustration at the Senates failure to include people with disabilities in its proposed COVID-19 legislation.

Although people with disabilities have many of the same needs as our nondisabled peers, we also have distinct needs that need to be considered. For example, if there is a complete lockdown, like in Italy, will my personal care assistants still be able to come to my house? Without them, I am unable to eat, bathe, or even get out of bed. Last month, a disabled person in China died after his caregiver was quarantined and unable to get to him.

Institutionalization is also a concern among disabled people. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) just recently waived rules that prevented the unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities and older adults. Now, it will make it easier for people to be placed in nursing homes. Far too often, disabled people are placed in institutions during emergencies and then remain stuck there long after the incident has ended, according to research. What is being done to ensure people with disabilities are not being institutionalized because of COVID-19?

Homelessness also disproportionately affects people with disabilities, with some estimates finding that 24 percent of the homeless population have disabilities. Are there accessible shelters available to serve disabled people, including those who contract COVID-19? What is being done to prevent the spread of the virus to those living in shelters? How are the needs of homeless individuals being addressed in cities with lockdowns?

Similarly, incarcerated disabled people have an increased risk of contracting the virus. Some prosecutors have pledged to reduce the number of people in jails, prisons, and courtrooms to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. But what other efforts are being implemented to ensure that those incarcerated are protected while also not being further isolated?

Further, how are we ensuring healthcare is widely accessible, including for people with disabilities and older adults? In Italy, for example, hospitals are beginning to ration healthcare, denying it to those who are older. Just last week, the New York Times published an opinion piece from medical professionals that discussed similarly needing to ration care in the United States.

If there is a complete lockdown, will my personal care assistants still be able to come to my house? Without them, I am unable to eat, bathe, or even get out of bed.

In fact, some states Crisis Standards of Care protocolswhich detail how medical care is provided during catastrophes if there are shortagesexplicitly allow for people with certain disability types to be denied life-saving care. On Monday, disability advocates filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights against Washington State concerning such plans. They say that rationing medical care violates federal disability rights laws.

Eugenics-based ideologies should never be used to determine who deserves life-saving measures and who doesnt.

Other issues also remain that need to be urgently addressed. Insurance companies, as well as Medicaid and Medicare programs, need to change their rules so people can stockpile their medications. Schools and universities need to ensure that disabled students are still receiving reasonable accommodations as they move to online instruction. Accessible transportation must be available. And, all emergency management efforts must comply with federal and state disability rights laws.

Furthermore, disability advocates were concerned that the coronavirus stimulus bill, which Congress just failed to pass, might weaken protections for students with disabilities. For example, some drafts of the bill have included a provision that would allow the secretary of education to waive portions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law, which has existed for 45 years, entitles students with disabilities to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. Proposed waivers could weaken states obligations.

Above all, government officials must consult with the disability community as they continue to develop and implement plans. We know our needs better than anyone else.

Nothing about us without us isnt just a mantra, its how cooperative governing works. Members of the disability community need to be engaged as advisors and experts as every level of government works on #COVID19 rapid response, Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said on Twitter.

People vulnerable to the virus are everywhere. We are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles. We are students, teachers, lawyers, retail associates, doctors, and chefs. We are your neighbors and your friends. If the U.S. is going to get through this pandemic with the least amount of fatalities possible, we must work together to protect everyone. Ableism has no place now or ever.

Robyn Powell is an attorney, researcher, and proud disabled woman who lives outside Boston.

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The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Brought Out Society's Alarming Disregard for People With Disabilities - The Appeal

During the most recent military escalation by Syrian government forces and their allied militias in northwest Syria, which led to the displacement of more than one million people, media outletsmostly opposition-leaningreported that the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fought alongside the Syrian government forces. The SDF, however, has denied these claims.

Nevertheless, Aisha Hasso, the co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which forms the backbone of the SDF, did not rule out the possibility of joining government and Russian forces in northwest Syria in the future. She, however, told Syria Direct reporter Mohammad Ibrahim, that such a scenario is conditional on an agreement with Damascus regarding the SDFs position within the Syrian armed forces, admitting at the same time that Damascus has not been freed from its mentality from before 2011.

Hasso, who is originally from Balbala district in the northern countryside of Aleppo, was born in 1978. She was a member of the Star Union of Women, known now asKongreya Star, before being elected as c0-chair of the PYD with Shahouz Hussein in September 2017, to succeed Salih Muslim and Asia al-Abdullah. She was re-elected as co-chair for a second tern with Anwar Muslim in February 2020.

The PYD was founded in 2003 under the guidance of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey (PKK). After Ocalan and the Turkish government reached an agreement to dissolve the PKK and withdraw its fighters from Turkey, four of its affiliated parties were established in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. In 2013, the PYD, with the participation of other Kurdish political parties, announced the formation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AA).

How does the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria view the recent military escalation in northwest Syria?

What is happening in Idlib is linked to the Astana process, which represents the agenda of Turkey, Russia, and Iran in Syria, while the role of the Syrian regime is just an implementation tool, as it had no direct presence in the Astana talks.

The critical situation in Idlib showcases the failure of the Astana process from the onset, and the conflicting interests of Russia, Turkey, and Iran interests in the region.

Concerning the position of the AA, we represent a third option. We are not on the side of the regime, nor on the side of the opposition that became hostage to the Turkish leadership. We have always been against the militarization of the Syrian crisis and in favor of a peaceful solution focused on Syrian-Syrian dialogue.

We see that the situation in Idlib is of a terrorist nature, because of the presence of terrorist entities, specifically Jabhat al-Nusra (the old name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), and we repeatedly questioned Turkey's ability to control the situation there. We predicted its failure, and the result is now clear.

We expect changes regarding Idlib to affect the existing agreements, such as the Astana process. But the question regarding Turkey and Russias ability to control the current geographical map has yet to be addressed. We imagine that the situation in Idlib, both previously and currently, might become violent and affect the entire situation in Syria.

Its well-known that Damascus follows a strategy of concentrating its military effort on each area outside of its control one at a time. Do youexpect government forces to attack AA territory once the battle in Idlib is over?

The Syrian State has always had its unique approach that is based on exclusion, whether regarding military operations or governance. Concerning the possibility of the Syrian Army starting military campaigns in our areas, we are always in a position to defend ourselves and preserve our lands. At the same time, we emphasize the importance of dialogue and specifically Syrian-Syrian dialogue as I mentioned before. Everyone knows that there have been Russian efforts on more than one occasion to be the guarantor of talks between the Syrian government and the Autonomous Administration, but this role has not been effective.

Damascuss mentality of exclusion has become clearer after the AAs statements on practical steps concerning future meetings between the Regime and the AA.

In the case of any attacks [by government forces] in northeast Syria, SDF would be on the front line, as it did in response to the Turkish occupation. This is a natural and legitimate right, as we are the ones who ended terrorism in Syria, specifically ISIS. All international and regional powers know even as the Syrian state tries to downplay this fact.

Do you expect that the SDF will enter into an agreement with Damascus, supported by Russia, to fight the opposition and Turkey in Idlib? And if this happened, what do you expect in return?

Any agreement with Russia and Damascus concerning the SDFs participation in fighting against Turkey and the opposition armed groups in Idlib must be accompanied with an agreement regarding the position of the SDF in the Syrian armed forces, especially since the SDF is now considered the most effective military force on the ground, as it is the one that actually fought the oppression of ISIS.

If the regime accepted to discuss this subject, then the decision to participate in the battles of Idlib would rest on the SDF.

What are the possible effects of the battles in northwest Syria on the negotiations between the Kurds [SDF] and Damascus?

As I said in the previous answer, Damascus has not been freed from its pre-2011 mentality and it always wants to return to the pre-2011 approach.

The regime must accept changes [that took place since 2011], as well as the current situation in Syria. Since 2011, Syria has witnessed changes in all respects including politics and military affairs. Damascus must recognize the struggle of the AA, which has become the real project in Syria. We are always open to a Syrian-Syrian dialogue.

The interview was conducted and originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Nicholas Shafer and Nada Atieh.

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Co-chair of the PYD: SDF could join government forces in Idlib after an agreement on role in Syrian Armed Forces - Syria Direct

From a report by Judicial Watch

Open borders groups are demanding that all illegal aliens be immediately released from custody and into communities throughout the United States. The movement, known as FreeThemAll, was launched this month by a coalition of nonprofits.

The immigrant community is at grave risk, according to the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). The public is encouraged to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to demand that the agency release all immigrants in detention, because detention is no place for a family, and no place for a family to be during a pandemic.

In aletter to ICE San Antonio Field Director Daniel Bible, RAICES Executive Officer Jonathan D. Ryan asks for the release of detained illegal immigrant families and individuals due to COVID-19.

He also urges ICE to suspend all deportation activity, citing reports that illegal aliens deported from the U.S. have presented the first cases of COVID-19 in their countries of origin.

ICE should not participate in the spread of this dangerous virus around the world, Ryan writes. This is a public health emergency. It is critical that ICE detention centers and jails be prepared to respond appropriately to the crisis.

He criticized ICE, asserting that the U.S. government has a woeful history of addressing pandemics in ICE detention.

We are concerned about the health and safety of our clients who, with their liberty restricted in detention, cannot practice recommended social distancing from other detained persons or from detention center staff, the RAICES chief writes.

The group is part of a movement in the U.S. that seeks to release all illegal immigrants housed in federal detention centers.

Hundreds of immigrant rights advocates, human and civil rights groups and other organizations are pressuring federal authorities to release illegal aliens in federal custody via the Detention Watch Network, which aims to abolish immigration detention in the United States.

Detention Watch Network imagines a world where every individual lives and moves freely and a society in which racial equity is the norm and immigration is not criminalized, according to the groups website. The abolition of immigration detention is part and parcel of struggles against racism, xenophobia, discriminatory policing, and mass incarceration and our aims coincide with these broader struggles against racialized oppression.

In aletter signed by 763 groups, Detention Watch Network has demanded that ICE Director Matthew T. Albence release all people currently detained in immigration detention, cease all local enforcement operations and eliminate ICE check-ins and mandatory court appearances.

The coalition requests that the federal government make phone and video calls free for detainees and that fees be waived for all costs associated with soap, sanitizer and other hygiene products.

If the government declines to release all detainees, the letter asks for a commitment that at no point will a facility be locked down or closed off to outsiders or be considered in its entirety as a place of quarantine so that family members and attorneys maintain access to the incarcerated.

Jails, prisons and detention centers are sites where people are acutely vulnerable to health complications and the impact of outbreaks, the letter states. Choosing to deprive people of their freedom contributes to the already lethal conditions of mass confinement.

Signatories include: Abolish ICE Denver, Allies to End Detention, Asians 4 Black Lives Portland, California Sanctuary Campaign, CASA-Maryland and Compaeros Inmigrantes de las Montaas en Accin.

ICE currently has 37,311 illegal immigrants in detention facilities, according to agency figures. More than half19,526have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, records show.

As of March 14, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that administers the nations lawful immigration system, determined that 5,867 of the illegal aliens in ICE custody have a persecution or torture claim.

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Coalition Demands All Illegal Immigrants Be Freed from Custody and Released Into the USA Over Coronavirus - Frank Report

Looking for work. Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

THE Jamuna TV report was disturbing. The CNG drivers are desperate. Rikshaw driver Nazrul from Kurigram waits forlornly for a passenger. Another waves the 30 taka he has earned. Face taut, eyes glazed he stares from his perch. Will this 30 taka feed me or feed my wife? he asks angrily. The roadside shopkeeper doesnt have customers, but there is no respite from the rent, or the chanda (protection money) he has to pay the local ruling party thugs. Roadside restaurants feed these workers. Yes, close contact is risky, and the far from ideal washing arrangements, signals a high risk of contagion. But they have little choice. Death by starvation is no better a choice than death by virus. God will save us, one of them says, what other hope do we have? The kids who work in the restaurants get food for work in a very literal sense. They draw no wages. When there is work, they get fed. Hes a plucky kid. Putting up a brave face to the fact that today hell go hungry. No promises for tomorrow. Lockdown, hand wash, drinking lots of water, social distancing. I recognise the importance of these fancy terms. But what does that mean for the 67 million day-labourers of Bangladesh to whom water itself is a luxury?

Concerned about the health of the construction workers at our almost-completed building in Panthapath, we consulted our nearly resident doctor Zafrullah Chowdhury. His answer was simple. Close it down if you can. This had serious implications. We had already extended the rental of our current premises, and there was a hard stop in terms of when we had to move out. If the building wasnt ready in time, Drik would effectively be homeless. Serious though this was, it couldnt override the risk to workers lives, so the difficult decision to close down the construction site was taken.

That led to other complications. The boundary wall had been taken down recently, opening up the facade of the building to a wider vista. Now, security had become a factor. A new wall had to be built. The building needed to be boarded up. Someone mentioned the word looting. Yes, with millions out of work and facing starvation, looting was an unpleasant but likely outcome.

I remembered the stoic face of the kid who would go hungry. This was just the beginning. The sunken eyes. The harried look. The angry faces. Something has to give. Prices are already rocketing. Stores are getting empty. This is a famine in the making.

I listen to the debates on Al Jazeera where Trump talks of bailing out the airlines and the other fine industries which needed to be saved. At least in the US there were also dissenting voices who talked of bailing out the workers. What is going to happen to Bangladeshi workers? Who is going to bail them out? Where are the gruel kitchens? What meaning do words like social distancing have when hunger gnaws away. What rationale do you give to a child with an empty bowl?

Seen from Gaza, or Syria, or Kashmir, or any refugee camp, the hypocrisy of the international community stares one in the face. Further sanctions against Iran, a government which has released its prisoners after the coronavirus spread. Sanctions against Cuba, sheltering ships unable to dock elsewhere, and sending doctors to provide succour to citizens in faraway lands, fail to shame governments happy to abandon any pretence of human rights. Sanctions continue. Prisoners are sacrificed. Refugees are forgotten. Amassing troops are prioritised over saving lives.

The news of garment orders worth 1.5 billion dollars being cancelled worried our business community. The ultra-rich of Bangladesh would no doubt also feel the pinch. They might even have to do with one less fancy car. The holiday to the Bahamas deferred to a better time. One less diamond in Moosa Bin Shamshers shoes. With no car or house to his name, poor Salman Rahman might need to camp out at the Radisson. At the lowest end of the pecking order, the lost orders mean more hungry garment workers. Earning less than the minimum living wage, they live on the threshold. No wages means more than hunger. Death stares in the face.

Rumours about playing down the threat of the virus until after 17th March, might well be unfounded. The slow response and the woeful unpreparedness since, might just be incompetence. Denial could just be the force of habit. But when the government asks the ordinary citizen to stay off work, without providing any cushion, one has to ask why they are there in the first place.

Facing stiff resistance at home, the cancellation of the Modi trip was an embarrassment that the virus did help avoid. The impending financial meltdown might now be blamed on the virus too. But face saving aside, there are lives to be saved.

Where will the money come from? has been the governments refrain. Boasts of reaching middle income status sound hollow when the lives of ordinary citizens are no longer a matter of concern for the government. Their rights have long ceased to be a matter of concern. Robbed at the National Elections, voters had abandoned meaningless polls anyway. The farce of demanding physical distancing due to the virus, while staging meaningless by-elections, was another way of looting the electorate. The 5 per cent turnout glossed over by a pliant election commission.

Yes, looting was on the cards.

But the looting began a long time ago. The illicit capital outflows from Bangladesh of US $81.74 billion during the period 2006-2015, has since paled with the more recent looting of the financial institutions. A nation where MPs can buy luxury cars each worth 9.3 million taka, where watches worth crores are sported by MPs with no other income to show but their government salaries, when the most expensive real estate in faraway lands are owned by Gulshan and Baridhara residents, where banking laws are amended to aid further looting, and the liability of financial institutions are brought down to ridiculous levels, it is not the looting at the grocery store that we should be worrying about. It is the treasury itself that has been hijacked.

Do we sit back and accept that this is how it will be? The ordinary Bangladeshi needs to step up to the plate. They united during the road safety and the quota movements. Now it is time to take on the bigger challenge of bringing food to the table. Our corrupt regimes (civil and military bureaucracy included), and the business elite have long had their fingers in the till. It is futile to expect them to change. The movement for emancipation that began nearly fifty years ago remains unfinished. It is time to smash the chains of oppression. Time to demand that the loot be returned. Time to challenge the validity of a regime that has propped up a parasitic elite that continues to suck the nation dry. The time is now.

Shahidul Alam is a photographer, writer and curator.

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Looting in the time of Corona - newagebd.net

Guest Writer x Mar 23, 2020

By Lavanya N

I think I have hit the backspace key more times while writing this than any other piece. I write it with a meandering hesitation. I write it with the realization of losing the last stray remnants of my cultural identity. Most importantly, I write it in awe of how Riz Ahmed has encapsulated the rampant Islamophobia being faced by Muslims, especially in post-Brexit and Johnson-governed Britain, in his latest project The Long Goodbye.

Ahmed released The Long Goodbye on March 6 this year in three parts: a short film, a 15-track album, and an upcoming live stage show to be performed in the UK and US. The album charts Ahmeds allegorical breakup with Britain, reimagined as a person named Britney, and tells a deeply personal story of the end of an abusive relationship through a combination of songs and voice messages from key Muslim and South Asian figures like Hasan Minhaj, Mahershala Ali, Mindy Kaling, and even Ahmeds mother.

In a recent BBC interview, Ahmed made it a point to stress that the project is personal rather than political, with the intent to inform and educate people who are privileged enough not to face systemic Islamophobia-rooted racism. What really got to me was seeing the short film and its mirroring to the February 23 North East Delhi pogrom. It is unequivocally horror; more specifically the real-life horror of Muslims being targeted and shot dead without hesitation by white supremacists, as neighbors look on from behind the curtains in their windows.

However, what Ahmed has really done, for me, is inadvertently echo the feelings of conflict in identity for a South Asian, specifically Indian, millennial from the diaspora and the challenge in understanding my place in the geopolitical mess of a world we live in. The outcome of the CAA, and the actions of the Modi-Shah government in general, have made me question my relationship with India and dissociate from my Indian identity entirely.

The coronavirus pandemic may have recently taken over the news, but Indians have been witness to, and at many times complicit in, the horrific realities of the CAA since December last year. There have been more than 65 deaths, 175 people injured, and over 3000 arrests. This is excluding the revoking of Section 370 in Kashmir (which granted it special status) and the subsequent internet shutdown that lasted nearly half a year, the fee hike at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the passing of the Transgender Persons Bill (which serves as erasure rather than the protection of the communitys rights).

As a former, yet permanent member of the South Asian diaspora, I can confidently back up the conflict-in-identity notion Ahmed explores in the track Where You From. This is not just because of the challenge to identify with a single culture or a harmonious combination of each one youre attached to (a whole other can of worms), but also because it is muddling to understand my level of sociopolitical privilege at a time when the actions of my ancestors and family members have led to what has been predicted and dreaded for years: the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from India.

I grew up in the UAE; a country where the government is exclusive to royalty, media and freedom of expression are tightly controlled, being queer or trans is illegal and subject to imprisonment and deportation (I am both), and blue-collar workers are regularly subject to mistreatment and illegal employment practices.

One might assume I feel this way because of the UAE, but there is another reason. Savarna diaspora members are largely complicit in the Hindu nationalist agenda, given that most of them raise their children in a bubble that accommodates caste and class erasure. It allows them to control the choices being made by their children, and ultimately get them to conform to bigoted patriarchal practices that propagate that caste and class erasure. Any second-generation member, who is not a cis able-bodied male, breaking out of that mold means them facing fear, public shaming, and eventual blackballing by community members.

If I had to describe my upbringing in Ahmeds words from the song Any Day, it would be, Youre toobusy tryna control me to ever love me.

For me, coming back to India burst that bubble quicker than you can say, Aap chronology samajhiye. Understanding my caste and class privilege both filled me with disgust and made me work towards trying to dismantle these systems that have been in place for centuries. The truth? It will never be enough.

The unfortunate reality is that second-generation Savarna diaspora members generally tend to conform to this ableist bigoted view of perfection. They either decree themselves as apolitical (dismissing Indian politics as corrupt) or completely distance themselves from their Indian identity until it is something they can use to describe themselves as the oppressed race.

India as a nation was built to benefit cis able-bodied Savarnas and its enablers, no matter where they live in the world. While centuries of erasure cannot be undone, Savarnas (and Brahmins in particular) need to take a stand against Brahmanism and use their privilege to protect Muslims, Dalits, trans and queer folk, and other minorities from oppression, as Dalit scholar Suraj Yengde has put forth. At the same time, while my privilege is indelible, I cannot associate with my Indian identity anymore. It represents everything I stand firmly against. And so like Ahmed leaving Britain, I am ready to break up with India.

Lavanya (xe, xem, xyr) is a writer, actor, and editor who once had a penchant for irreverent bios. Xyr writing examines the intersections of entertainment, culture, politics, gender and sexuality, mental health, and society. You can find xem on Instagram and Twitter.

Every single dollar matters to usespecially now when media is under constant threat. Your support is essential and your generosity is why Wear Your Voice keeps going! You are a part of the resistance that is neededuplifting Black and brown feminists through your pledges is the direct community support that allows us to make more space for marginalized voices. For as little as $1 every month you can be a part of this journey with us. This platform is our way of making necessary and positive change, and together we can keep growing.

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Riz Ahmed's 'The Long Goodbye' And Why I'm Breaking Up With My Indian Identity - Wear Your Voice

Elite depravity is only one side of Nigerias story. Every Nigerian must accept some responsibility for his largely unhappy condition and the sorry state of his country. Point one:Nigerian leaders emerge from among us, they were once upon a time, like us but suddenly changed for the worse by power and wealth. Can it be that, given the chance, we will behave similarly?Point two: leaders fail in their duty to lead by example and followers fail to condemn, even ostracize, their corrupt leaders. Instead, they encourage corruption in high office by their inappropriate expectations and demands. Only to complain, in unashamed hypocrisy, of corruption in high places.

We remove the organ and demand the function, we make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful writes C.S. Lewis. That cannot happen. Nigerians are guilty of the attitude and behavior that we accuse most of our leaders of self-seeking, hypocrisy, dishonesty, lawlessness, instant gratification, and mediocre standards. In a tragic aping of the values, attitude, and behaviour of a corrupt-and corrupting- elite, we pride in vain ostentation, host wasteful parties, and engage in conspicuous consumption of products from other lands. Pity the nation saysKhalil Gibran (1934),that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats bread that it does not harvest, and drinksa wine that flows not from itsown wine-press.

Mediocrity in various ways is tolerated to the point it is a way of life in this land. We are thankful for such small mercies assix-hours a day supply of electricity; handouts that are mere crumbs from the politicians tables, we do not demand with confidence from our governments what we legitimately, reasonably, deserve.In the presence of the very leaders, they elected, Nigerians behave like a people subjugated and under oppression. No wonder that French diplomat and philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) said that every country has the government it deserves. If de Maistre is right, then it is because we are not good enough, nor great enough, to deserve a good government and great leaders. We would rather be nice and politically correct than be truthful and right.We accept from our politicians muddled thinking and insincere motives packaged in platitudes and empty promises and phrased in what Robert H. Fiske (2006) terms dimwitticisms.

For goodness sake, Nigerians even fail to do their duty in their own interest. Two examples of this: governments erect overhead pedestrian bridges across expressways.Many Nigerians will rather dash dangerously across the lanes of fast-moving vehicles than using the safe bridge. Governments designate and construct specific places like bus stops. Many Nigerians will not walk the short distance to the nearest bus stop but stand in front of their homes to be picked up by an equally irresponsible commercial bus driver. In an accident, that jaywalker will certainly lose much more time in the hospital than he hoped to gain.

Politicians will be politicians; they will promise a bridge even where there is no river says Khrushchev. But a political leader elected into government is no more a mere politician.Thenceforth, he ought to stop playing politics and start to lead and govern. He is elevated unto a leadership role to respond to the legitimate yearnings of his constituency. His position and role impose upon him thedutyto pursue the common good defined as the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily (Catechism of the Catholic Church,Art.1906).Nigeria operates a representative, constitutional democracy in which the elected government derives its authority and powers from We the People.It is our shame therefore, that we fail to exercise our power to enthrone responsive and responsible governments. Instead, we complain aboutad nauseam.

To the electorate who whine about bad leaders, Nanette L. Avery berates, Talk is cheap, voting is free; take it to the polls. I think that is how it should be.Imagine that in the last elections, Nigerians voted into government more new and younger persons in the new political parties. That would send a strong message that the electorate is dissatisfied with the unsatisfactory performances of the two major parties. It is crying shame that we failed to do the needful. If we want our political leaders to do what theyought lead, govern, provide good governance, and deliver the dividends of democracy we the people have the power to make them shape up, or we ship them out. Nigerians did it in 2014; they can do it again. The change we desire can come, indeed shall come,if Nigerianswillit.Every man must do his duty, be a good man, and play by the Golden Rule.Is it that simple? I think it is.And it is up to us.

Nigeria at 60 is in debt to better governed, more productive countries.According to the Debt Management Office, it was $26.941 billion (N8.271trillion) as of September 2019. For those who have ears, Thomas Sankara (1949 -1987) warned not too long ago that debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa.Endowed with educated and skilled manpower, nearly one million square kilometers of land littered with numerous varieties of minerals, plants and animals, our country should be a lender, not a borrower. If those who live on the riverbank wash their hands with saliva, it is a bad omen says an African proverb. The present condition of Nigeria and its people is indeed a bad omen. Notwithstanding this chronicle of disappointments, I am hopeful for my country because, as Maxime Lagace puts it, it is through the hope that you will change things.In spite of much that I still see around, I have chosen (you may term it a coping strategy) to not submit to undeniable failures,to not look back in anger and brood over past losses, and, given the power of both thought and tongue, to avoid confessing negative about my country. I have chosen to look forward with hope, to dream of and for a great Nigeria that attains its long-awaited leadership of the Black world.

Walking by faith than by (physical) sight, I have chosen to dream that by October, something will have happened to re-direct my country on the path of its delayed greatness. My spiritual education tells me that if I have faith enough, miracles do happen for those who believe.Youll See It When You Believe Itwrites Dr. Wayne Dyer (1989).Granting that the making of a great nation is ever work in progress, by faith I know that sooner than later, this country will be great. However, we must not be deceived into unearned miracles. Miracles, it is said, start to happen only when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears. We are not to just sit on our butt all day waiting on the Lord. Nothing good and worthwhile will miraculously come to you. Well, except what nobody else wants.

English author, George Eliot, advises that We must not sit still and look for a miracle, up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything. Mao Zedong is even more succinct: Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.In sum, Nigerians must assiduously do what they ought, character, attitude, and more in order to bring to pass the greatness we believe that our country deserves, and is indeed destined for.

Then leave the rest to the higher powers. Duty is ours, event is Gods. Mr. Segun Mathematical Odegbami, exhorted recently inThe Guardianthat, in the New Year of a new decade, Nigeria must change its attitude to the past failures and eliminate the spirit of despair. [It] must journey into the future with renewed determination, a new spirit of fresh ideas, a new approach, new leaders with new paint and brush in hand, ready to artisticallycreate a new and better country. I cannot agree more.

As I dream of a Nigeria that is great in every consideration, I accept that No nation can be really great, unless it is great in peace, industry, integrity, honesty. Skilled intelligence in civic affairs and industrial enterprises alike; the special ability of the artist, the man of letters, the man of science, and the, man of business; the rigid determination to wrong no man and to stand for righteousness all these are necessary for a great nation said Theodore Roosevelt.So, we the people must standfor righteousness as well asliveby it. Righteousness? In this generally sinful world?Oh yes! For, it is the righteousness that exalts a nation says the Holy Book.I restate: the first step that Nigerians must take on the path to Nigerias greatness is a spiritual one, a spiritual awakening. Not a religious awakening; we have enough of religion and religiosity. Not tomouthrighteousness from the religious pulpit, the political podium and the lecture room. The test of religious belief is not in pious platitudes and cautious charity, but in positive and creative action says former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings. Nigerians must seek righteousness,live it and stand for it.

Our country is today enmeshed in a moral degeneracy rooted in the spiritual. Spiritual darkness envelops this country, foisted upon it and its hapless citizens by powerful forces that thrive only in the dark when, as Shakespeare would put it, evil is most free. The intractable shortage of electricity in Nigeria creates an environment of darkness and is, in fact, a physical manifestation of spiritual darkness. I have written on this in another essay titled Light, the Bible, and Nigeria (seefrankyekan@blogspot.com). Nigerias human quality problem manifests as spiritual emptiness, moral depravity, integrity deficit, and unbridled materialism. If our country will be great, we the people must solve that defining flaw spiritual debility that holds us and our country down. But we can redeem it. If we have thewillto stand for righteousness. It is up to us, now.

To be continued tomorrowThe full paper can be accessed at frankyekan@blogspot.com

Continued here:

The Nigeria of my dream at 60: It is up to us, now Part 3 - Guardian

On March 23, United Nations Secretary-General Antnio Guterrescalledfor "an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world."

Guterres highlighted, "Let's not forget that in war-ravaged countries, health systems have collapsed. Health professionals, already few in number, have often been targeted. Refugees and others displaced by violent conflict are doubly vulnerable."

He pleaded, "The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes."

It would appear Guterres also needed to also say stop war production and the arms shows where weapons are marketed and sold.

Even with 69,176 cases of coronavirus and 6,820 deaths in Italy (as of March 24), the assembly plant in Cameri, Italy for F-35 fighter jets was closed for just two days (March 16-17) for "deep cleaning and sanitization."

And despite 53,482 cases and 696 deaths in the United States (as of March 24), Defense Onereports, "the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas, which builds F-35s for the U.S. military and most overseas customers, has not been affected by COVID-19"and continues with the production of warplanes.

What is being built in these factories?

In itssales pitchto Canada, which is considering spending at least $19 billion on new fighter jets, Lockheed Martin boasts, "When the mission doesn't require low observability, the F-35 can carry more than 18,000 pounds of ordnance."

Furthermore, on March 23, the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)tweeted, "@GouvQc [the Government of Quebec] has confirmed defence manufacturing & maintenance services are considered essential services, may remain in operation."

That same day, CADSI alsotweeted, "We are communicating with the Province of Ontario & the Gov't of Canada regarding the critical role of the defence & security sector with respect to national security during this unprecedented time."

Meanwhile, this country's largest arms show, CANSEC, which is scheduled to take place on May 27-28, still has not been cancelled or postponed.

CADSI has said it will make an announcement about CANSEC on April 1, but there's no explanation from them why a weapons show that boasts about bringing 12,000 people from 55 countries together at an Ottawa convention centre wouldn't have already been cancelled given a global pandemic that has claimed 18,810 lives to date.

To encourage CADSI to cancel CANSEC, World Beyond War has launchedan online petitionthat has generated more than 5,000 letters to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, CADSI President Christyn Cianfarani and others to cancel CANSEC.

The UN secretary-general highlighted in his plea, "End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world."

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)reportsthat world military expenditures totalled $1.822 trillion in 2018. The United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India and France accounted for 60 per cent of that spending.

It doesn't take much to imagine what $1.822 trillion could do to boost public health-care systems, care for migrants fleeing violence and oppression, and income supports for the wider public so vital during a pandemic.

Brent Patterson is the executive director of Peace Brigades International-Canada. This article originally appeared on the PBI-Canada website. To follow PBI-Canada on Twitter @PBIcanada.

Image: Defence Images/Flickr

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United Nations calls for peace during the coronavirus pandemic, but war production continues - rabble.ca

Maybe we are going to have to start calling it something else.

To some people, the very word government conjures up an image of jackboots and oppression.

Listening to debates on such issues as taxation, homelessness, abortion and health care not just in Utah you get the impression that a great many people, some of them holding political power or social influence, believe that government is, by its very nature, evil. Perhaps a necessary evil, but evil just the same.

A belief that seems to hold quite a bit of influence in many places is that the purpose of government is to be mean to people. And that the Constitution of the United States, the state constitutions and other basic laws exist to be sure that government is only mean to the people who have it coming you know, poor, brown, female and leaves the rest of us blissfully alone to make our own way in the world without the yoke of oppression.

Until something happens. Like the banks needs to be bailed out. Or the fossil fuel industry needs more subsidies and fewer regulations. Or even rich people start worrying about global pandemics.

Then, our government is Dudley Do-Right to the rescue. Unless hes lost his pistol and just fired his third horse.

State officials in Utah pretty much ignored the growing homelessness problem in Salt Lake City until, a couple of years ago, it was suggested to them that they could basically militarize the problem, crack down on those smelly people, march a bunch of them off to jail and make the Rio Grande neighborhood safe for gentrification.

Since then, theres been a lot of work and money put into a more humane approach involving better services provided in cleaner and safer buildings. But it continues to be like pulling teeth to get the state to fund human services with a fraction of the amount that it was willing to spend for billy clubs.

For several years now, it has been an all-hands-on-deck effort of people who care to drag first the United States, then Utah, toward building a First World health care system, one that allocates resources based on how sick you are, not on how wealthy you or your insurance-providing employer happen to be.

Not only does the purpose of government instantly shift from humanity to misogyny, some lawmakers and activists get to savor the possibility of imprisoning doctors and women for long stretches in retaliation for providing or availing themselves of a medical procedure that, in civilized nations, is a basic human right.

Even those the anti-abortion movement claims to help, the unborn, are only eligible for government assistance when the process includes being deliberately cruel to the women involved. Otherwise, wheres the fun in that?

Oh, and once those children are born? Sorry, kid. No government assistance for you. That would be oppressive. Dont you see that weve set you free? Now, go away and dont bother us. Were busy giving tax cuts to the rich and repealing environmental standards.

And now, almost four years after we elected to the highest office in the land a buffoon who showed no stomach for the hard work of governing, it may be becoming more obvious that deliberately disempowering the federal government by racking up towering debt and chasing away all the competent adults and best brains in favor of toadies and grifters, wasnt such a good idea after all.

The sudden resurgence of Joe Bidens political fortunes are likely to be based on the feeling that, while Ol Uncle Joe may have lost a step, and may have some really embarrassing male supremacy artifacts in his closet, he at least knows where the Centers for Disease Control is. And that he will find, or find someone who can find, competent people and adequate funds to run it.

Yes, we have constitutional protections, a free press and elections because we know that government strong enough to help us is also strong enough to hurt us, if we dont pay attention. The watchdog can slip the leash.

But, like the authors of our nation, the ones who tossed out a self-serving government to install a public-serving one, we know that freedom from crime, invasion, disease and want doesnt come from a lack of government. It comes from people willing to the work of good government.

And, if that still sounds too oppressive, lets call it by its other name.

George Pyle, editorial page editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, has been more of a bother to government than it has ever been to him.

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George Pyle: Maybe just stop calling it 'government' and we can have a good one - Salt Lake Tribune

Recently, we published an article by one of our writers on the rail blockades in opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline taking place in solidarity with the Wetsuweten people. This article was published in the interest of allowing a platform for varied and diverse voices, however due to our mission statement to be an agent of constructive social change and thanks to the independence we are privileged with as student journalists, we recognize we have a duty to fight against oppression and mainstream voices. The Martlet would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to our community for our failure to support our mission statement. We acknowledge that this articles perspective contributes and perpetuates a narrative that is inherently racist and privileged, and enables a system that has contributed to hundreds of years of genocide against Indigenous peoples in Canada. For the role we have played in perpetuating these systems, the Martlet is sincerely sorry. After much consideration, we have decided to remove the article from our website. Our team must be held accountable for our actions and we will not attempt to hide from our choices. The opinions conveyed by this writer do not reflect the beliefs and actions of our staff as a whole, and the racist views within the article are not supported by the Martlet.

In publishing this opinion piece, we veered from the Martlets mission statement to act as an agent of constructive social change and work to eliminate forms of oppression. The arguments and the premise of this article were rooted in antiquated, racist principles surrounding land ownership, and did not acknowledge the role of the RCMP and police in colonialist Canadian legal authority. The country of Canada and these systems, after all, only exist because of colonialism. We appreciate those that have reached out to us and offered their thoughts on the piece. This has given us a lot to think about, and we commit to a more critical approach to our choices in the future.

I would like to make it clear that the views and narratives expressed in this opinion article are not indicative of the beliefs and principles held by myself and the Martlet as a collective. As a team, weve spoken out against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline under construction without Indigenous consent and the hundreds of years of colonial violence that has led to the current Wetsuweten solidarity movement. Individually, our staff has written op-eds about the RCMP as a force for colonial bigotry and why disruptive demonstrations are the most effective. Weve been covering the frontlines of the Wetsuweten solidarity movement in Victoria since the start the blockade of the BC Ferries terminal, the arrests of Indigenous youth at the Ministry of Energy, both occupations of the B.C. Legislature, the recent arrests of Indigenous youth at the legislature, and looked deep into the Wetsuweten Matriarchal Coalition and benefit agreements with Coastal GasLink and the province. For over a year, we have featured a column authored by the Native Students Union called News Unsettled, which has been incredibly impactful in shaping conversations on campus, in the community, and in our newsroom. Through publishing this column, we hope to assist in minimizing the effects of colonialism on campus.

As a publication, we will do better. Trust has been broken, and we will work hard to earn it back. This effort begins now. We want to continue to be a force for positive social and cultural change and for critical journalism, particularly on issues impacting Indigenous peoples in our community. We hope you will continue to trust us to do that.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | Re: Government and law enforcement, please do your jobs - The Martlet

Chelsea Manning, photographed in Washington, D.C., in January 2018.

Photo: Jesse Dittmar/Redux

The ruling itself is striking in what it fails to recognize. The court finds Ms. Mannings appearance before the Grand Jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose, the judge noted. The fact that the coercive purpose of Mannings detention had long been shown to be absent Manning has proven herself incoercible beyond any doubt was not mentioned. Nor was the fact that on Wednesday, Manning attempted suicide. It was the most absolute evidence that she could not be coerced: She would sooner die.

She endured months of extreme suffering, driving her to near death, but never wavered on her principled refusal to speak.

While Mannings release is vastly long overdue and most welcome, the framing and timing of the decision are galling. On Friday, Manning was scheduled to appear at a court hearing on a motion to end her continued imprisonment, predicated on her unshakeable resistance proving coercion to be impossible, and her incarceration therefore illegal. She endured months of extreme suffering, driving her to near death, but never wavered on her principled refusal to speak.

The day before this hearing and the day after she made an attempt on her own life the judge ruled that Manning is no longer needed by the grand jury. The court did not recognize that she is incoercible, nor that her detainment had become punitive. Indeed, a profoundly punitive element of her treatment will remain, even after her release: The judge denied a motion to vacate the exorbitant fines Manning faces. She owes the state $256,000, which she is expected to pay, even though the fines were only accrued on the condition that they might coerce her to speak.

Again and again, Manning and her legal team showed that her imprisonment was nothing but punitive, and thus unjustifiable under the legal statutes governing federal grand juries. Yet for nearly a year, Manning has been caged and fined $1,000 per day. Ever since she was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, which is investigating WikiLeaks, Manning has also insisted that there was never anyjustifiable purpose to asking her to testify.

As her support committee noted in a statement last May, Chelsea gave voluminous testimony during her court martial. She has stood by the truth of her prior statements, and there is no legitimate purpose to having her rehash them before a hostile grand jury.

For the court to admit, after nearly a year of torturous treatment, that further testimony from her is unnecessary adds insult to very real injury.

The governments treatment of Manning has been putrid and continues to be especially as she remains under the yoke of state-enforced financial ruin. For her unwavering resistance to government oppression, in the name of social justice struggle and press freedom, Manning is owed our deepest admiration and all the support we can muster.

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Chelsea Manning Ordered Free From Prison but Will Still Have to Pay Massive Fines - The Intercept

The Falklands War was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands, but while the war was raging in the archipelago, the prime minister of the UK fumed at the BBCs coverage and branded it treacherous. Margaret Thatchers political future depended on the result of the war, but the relationship between the Corporation and the government turned sour over its reporting.

The prime minister accused the BBC of assisting the enemy by discussing possible military developments before they happened. The BBCs coverage of the Falklands War was perceived to be significantly less supportive as Mrs Thatcher thought the BBC was questioning her decision to even go to war at the time. The BBC refused to refer to British troops as our boys during the conflict, to the chagrin of the Iron Lady. She wanted the BBC to refer to the troops using us or ours. She expected the press to give a report favourable to the government, but the British media, including BBC, reported the war objectively. The prime minister thought the BBC had let down the Army, the country, and had exaggerated the case of a few dissidents. The BBC angrily denied the allegations of bias.

Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw was under tremendous pressure to take control of BBC and to direct what it broadcast, intending to boost the morale of the country and the troops. During the campaign, BBC was determined to maintain its editorial independence, declaring, it is not the BBCs role to boost troops morale.

The Falklands War was not the first case where the government of the day wanted the press to report wrongly to keep up the morale of the public. That also happened during the 1971 war between Pakistan and India. During the war, a military junta ruled Pakistan. General Yahya Khan declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on 25 March 1971, and immediately imposed strict censorship on newspapers throughout Pakistan, forcing a complete blackout of news that differed from the official point of view. As a result, it was not possible to broadcast accurately and professionally.

Pakistan media kept the Pakistani public in dark during the war. The army lied to the people of Pakistan throughout the war and projected imaginary military victories

State-controlled electronic media, Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Televisionbroadcast news and programmes made to boost the morale of the public. They blared nationalistic anthems and patriotic songs, extolling heroics of the army. Half of the newspapers were owned by the government and followed government instructions. Journalists who criticised the government were denounced as traitors. Neutral reporting was dubbed as Indian propaganda. Anthony Mascarenhas was a Pakistani journalist who risked his life to report on the atrocities being committed in 1971. He knew he couldnt publish the story without risking his life, so he got it published in the UK.

All the foreign journalists were expelled from the erstwhile East Pakistan. According to the Pakistan government regulations, anybody sending inappropriate or hostile news could be imprisoned for up to two years. The military censor checked all newspaper articles. Information that reached masses was based on handouts of the government or the Ministers statements. The public was fed with misleading and biased information in the national interest and to instil a spirit of nationalism.

Pakistan media kept the Pakistani public in dark during the war. The army lied to the people of Pakistan throughout the war and projected imaginary military victories. It forced the media to report outrageous lies about the outcome of the war. The news considered to have the potential of causing subversion and disruptions were suppressed. The wholesale, planned defection of the Bengali soldiers from the Pakistan Army in the early weeks of the war was not reported.

The Morning News even editorialised that the armed forces were saving East Pakistanis from eventual Hindu enslavement. The government-controlled press played down the civil war as an uprising sponsored by the Indian government. During the period of active combat starting from late November, Morning News and Pakistan Observer projected an image of Pakistan as being in complete control of the situation. Both newspapers, till the very end of the war, kept on reporting on the advances of Pakistans troops, and the huge losses incurred by the Indian military.

While the Pakistan army surrendered on 16 December 1971, the daily Jang published a statement of Yahya Khan on 17 December, declaring that the war will continue, and we shall fight till victory is achieved. He had the gall to announce that the programme to form a representative government will not be affected and that a new constitution will be declared on 20 December 1971. On 18 December 1971, Pakistan Times brought out a scandalous lie that Pakistan accepted the Indian ceasefire offer.

Although the Pakistani press highlighted atrocities committed by Mukti Bahni against Biharis and non-Bengalis, brutality perpetrated by the Pakistan army was completely blacked out. No information about the massive migration of the Bengali population to India was reported.

The Pakistani press did not report the destruction of the Karachi harbor, the sinking of PNS Ghazi in the Bay of Bengal, and enforcement of the naval blockade of the Arabian Sea. However, the destruction of Indian ship Khukri by Pakistani submarine Hangor received prominent coverage. By maintaining the naval blockade, the Indian army was able to prevent dispatching reinforcements or evacuating by sea.

After the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, the US State Department asked the US-funded Voice of America not to air an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said that broadcasting the voice of the Taliban was not right. However, the VOA charter also calls for accurate, objective and comprehensive news and a broad spectrum of American thought and institutions.

Truth is the first casualty of any war. Other victims are suppression of freedoms of press and expression, and right of free assembly. In some sense, this is understandable because war breeds fear and fear breeds oppression in the corridors of power. Rulers strongly believe, especially in times of war, that freedom of press is subservient to patriotism and nationalism. The tension between patriotism and free press is neverending, but it is heightened during war or crisis. It is believed that censorship is necessary to protect the public from the effects of enemy propaganda. Besides, they think that the morale of the public must be boosted, even at the cost of stifling the press and allowing broadcast of misleading and biased information. Reporters are expected to hide inconvenient truths and always portray the country in a positive light. It is only over the past forty years that the civilised world has embraced the notion that the press can openly and freely criticise the government in peace or wartime.

History sheds light on the experiences of journalists who opposed the war or dictatorial regimes. During World WarI, The Masses, a revolutionary journal, took an anti-war stance, so the Postmaster General of the US stopped its circulation. The publishers and editors of The Masses were prosecuted and sentenced to prison for their criticism of the war. Moreover, among the 2,000 individuals and organisations prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts were dozens of editors and publishers.

Bertrand Russell and others openly opposed the WWI from the beginning; in 1916, Russell authored a pamphlet opposing conscription. He was subsequently sentenced to prison under the Defence of the Realm Act and fined 100. That conviction led to Russells dismissal from his lectureship at Trinity. Later, he spent nine months in Brixton prison for his outspoken pacifism.

William Dudley Pelley, journalist and activist, accused Roosevelt of being a warmonger and advocated isolationism. He opposed WWII and was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

The political future of governments depends on the victory or defeat in war. In Argentina, the military government led by General Galtieri was suffering criticism for its oppressive rule and economic mismanagement. In a desperate attempt to prop up his beleaguered government, General Galtieri planned the invasion of Falklands. After the humiliating defeat against Britains armed forces, Galtieri was forced to resign in the wake of a large-scale public protest. Elections were held, and a civilian rule was restored.

On the other hand, the military victory gave a clear fillip to British patriotic feeling and national pride that had dwindled since the failure of the 1956 Suez campaign. Margaret Thatchers popularity soared after the conflict, and her Conservative Party won a landslide victory in 1983 parliamentary elections. She felt empowered to press ahead with her economic readjustments popularly known as Thatcherism. After the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops in East Pakistan, and the creation of the new state, Bangladesh, a group of angry army officers forced General Yahya Khan to resign and hand over power to Bhutto. He was then stripped of his service honours

and put under house surveillance for most of the 1970s. After being released from those restrictions in 1977, he died in Rawalpindi in 1980 in disgrace.

The writer is Chest specialist in San Francisco

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Patriotism and freedom of press - Daily Times