For the oppressed Valmiki Dalits in Jammu and Kashmir, the abrogation of Article 370 had brought freedom and domicile status. For the first time in three generations, they became eligible for government jobs. However, one year on, Valmikis await a government package to uplift them out of decades-old state-approved slavery.

We need a quota for jobs and education, to make a beginning. Domicile certificate has arrived, we are now formally residents of J&K. But the start is not as easy. Reservation may benefit us to prepare for future opportunities, said Eklavya, a graduate and law aspirant.

Eklavya had given up on his dream of becoming a lawyer, after realising that the lack of domicile status will bar him from pursuing legal practice.

Despite my graduation degree, I am employed as an assistant at a university. I deserve a better chance at employment, he observed.

HOPE AFTER FREEDOM FROM OPPRESSION

When India Today TV met with the community in August 2019 in Jammu, members were teary-eyed and thankful. Distributing sweets, they had shared hope of watching their children pursue dreams.

Most Valmikis, brought to J&K from Punjab in 1957 to clean streets, were restricted to odd jobs including sanitation. They were not provided Permanent Resident Certificate despite political assurances amid special status.

Due to the failed promises, even three generations later, the community struggled for a job opportunity, that is, until Jammu and Kashmir's special status was revoked and they were granted domicile status.

Also read | J&K starts issuing domicile certificates; suffering finally ends, says Valmiki community

Aware about recommendations sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) regarding the need for additional compensation, community leader Gharu Bhatti said they hope for a positive outcome.

We met Lieutenant Governor (LG) Murmu on May 23 and requested for compensation like announced for refugees. We deserve to be compensated to recover from the past 63 years. Many of our youth are already over-age for government jobs. We hope that the government will at least announce reservation in jobs for Valmiki Dalits, just like 4 per cent reservation announced for International Border residents," Gharu Bhatti said.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Radhika has spent her young life with broken dreams. She trained hard to join the Border Security Force (BSF) and cleared the initial examination. However, her name was rejected due to Article 35A, that denied resident status required for government employment in J&K.

Heartbroken, she had quit her studies and gave up on the dream.

I have received the domicile certificate and can now apply for jobs. That is a huge relief. But I am not sure, anymore. I did not have the heart to resume studies, after facing dejection, for no fault of mine, she said.

Radhika is contemplating graduation in physical education, till then, she will work with a private company.

Radhikas hope is to bring her father out of despair, who still works as a sanitation worker. Famished but hopeful, the man had accompanied her to the examination centre but was left in tears when told her name got rejected due to Article 35A.

GROUSE AGAINST POLITICIANS

No local politician has yet approached the community to discuss a further plan or hinted at a special package, according to community members. Despite Home Minister Amit Shah mentioning their story in the public domain, Valmiki Dalits await further political interest, expected from J&K-based leaders.

Most youngsters have started to apply for employment opportunities, anticipating to be the first in three generations to get a chance at a brighter future. They hope not to be relegated to cleaning sewers, anymore. But they need the government's help to do break the cycle.

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Anniversary of Article 370 abrogation: One year on, Valmiki Dalits in J&K await government package - India Today

What could a movie about fire spewing mutants and a show about Beastmen playing baseball have in common? Well, they're both made by Studio Trigger, are a lot of fun to watch, and get a little messy with their metaphors. In 2019, Studio Trigger gave the world Promare, the studio's first feature length film and the world responded with love and adoration. Audiences being introduced to the Burnish, flame-powered people who appeared 30 years ago and have faced discrimination ever since due to fear of their immense power. 2020 saw Trigger follow up this theme with the release of BNA: Brand New Animal, a series about the lives and struggles of an all-beastman city as it fights against worldwide oppression.

Both works show some of Trigger's best qualities. We are treated to colorful, vibrant palettes as we go on an action-packed ride with over-the-top characters that are hard not to love. The comedy and writing are solid and the soundtracks? Phenomenal. But while I can definitely say that I enjoyed both of these works, the mishandling of their oppression based metaphor left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Promare is the worst offender of the two in regards to it's messiness. When the Burnish first appeared, they were discriminated against and feared and the world set up tools like segregation to oppress them, of course ignoring the voices of the oppressed people and others saying it was not the solution. Jump forward 30 years and the world has adapted to the presence of the Burnish. Fire hydrants are everywhere. Special rescue teams are dispatched to deal with Burnish-based fires. And anyone discovered to be a Burnish is arrested and carted away to a maximum security facility, far from the public. Everything's lovely.

While many loved Promare, I found myself frustrated the first time I watched it. This is not to say that I don't enjoy the movie. The enjoyment just had to be found beneath the frustration. Far, far beneath it. A significant cause is due to the fact it was lauded as this cute, fun, ride, and, while it is all those things, no one decided to mention that it was a movie that is primarily about state violence and discrimination and opens with a montage of oppression, riots, and violence.We are shown news clips of proposed Burnish segregation. We see Burnish getting attacked in the streets by crowds of people. The Burnish riot against their oppression and they are met with resistance from those who fear their flames. And it all feels eerily relevant in light of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests going on right now. The Burnish are fighting for their right to exist on equal footing in a world that sees them as little more than dangerous and deserving of their persecution. None of this is exactly what I expected when I got on this "cute, fun, ride."

Brand New Animal didn't carry such a sparkling clean image going in, though I was aware that it was an allegory for racism (though I was wary of any more racism allegories from Netflix after the disaster that was Bright) and that made the ride much smoother. Beastmen are hated and discriminated against, to the point of people advocating for the deaths of all Beastmen. Luckily, there's Anima City, a place full of nothing but beastmen, where they can live free of oppression and discrimination. Well, in theory.

BNA's world, and by proxy, its discrimination, is much more fleshed out than what is seen in Promare. There is a long history to the beastmen, including ancient cities and even a god and religion, and beastmen are diverse and multifaceted, filling a multitude of societal roles and having varying personalities, something we did not get to see in Promare with the Burnish. The discrimination against beastmen is just as developed, not reducing it to one form of heinous illegality, but rather the results of leaving an oppressed group unprotected. Humans can hunt beastmen down without fear of persecution. Beastmen children are trafficked for reasons I'd rather not think too deeply on. Migrant bird beastmen are shot out of the skies for border violations. As the show goes on, Michiru, a girl who turned into a beastman under mysterious circumstances, discovers several different aspects of Beastman discrimination and the effects it has on them.

Spoiler warning. I'm going to be talking about heavy spoilers for both Promare and BNA past this point, so heads up if you haven't seen them yet.

One of the aspects Michiru discovers happens to be a government conspiracy to eradicate all Beastmen. Alan Sylvasta, head of Sylvasta Pharmaceuticals, has been pulling the strings for ages. He has been manipulating Beastmen with the approval of the Japanese government to make the Beastmen in Anima City go through Nirvasyl Syndrome, a reaction to too many Beastmen being gathered in one place, causing them to transform and become incredibly violent. This would cause Anima City to be deemed a failure, beastmen to appear violent, and Sylvasta and the government to push a drug that would transform beastmen into humans, solving the beastman problem once and for all. It should be noted that these drugs will be delivered through the use of military grade robots. Well, when they're not in the middle of using live ammunition on everyone in the vicinity.

Promare has a similar plot point as we discover that the Earth is in danger. The molten core will soon overflow, leading to heavy devastation across the planet. Unlike BNA, surely Governor Kray, a powerful government official and likely billionaire, will choose to work with the many resources at his command to stave off this disaster and save humans, Burnish, and the planet as a whole, right?

Of course not. He makes a space Ark that can only fit 10,000 people that will take him and his giant terraforming robot to a new planet that won't explode. But the real kicker is, to power this spaceship, he uses a warp drive engine that will instantly transport them to this new planet. But a warp drive is going to need a power source. If only there was an energy-spewing- no, a fire-spewing fuel source nearby that he could use until it burned itself out! Kray uses captured Burnish to power his warp engine through a process that very rapidly kills them. Burnish are seen as a resource and a nuisance and little else. Though they are not even allowed to exist in peace, their very bodies are taken and are put to work for a world that does not love them.

And luckily, it's easy for Kray to get Burnish. Their very existence is deemed illegal. Any discovered Burnish are arrested by the Freeze Force, a not at all vague parallel for ICE. This is regardless of whether they harm anyone or are actively using their powers. And anyone who knowingly harbors them is arrested as well. After their arrest, they are immediately taken to a maximum security prison that is as cold as it is inhumane. As we enter the cell, we are met with freezing temperatures and bandaged Burnish, all wounded either from their encounters with the Freeze Force or from having their limbs frozen whenever they produce the smallest flame. And as two Burnish lay dying amongst all these injured people, not a single finger is lifted to provide aid to them.

Not that any aid would be expected from the Freeze Force. They don't care about the Burnish. They are simply the collectors. To capture the Burnish, they can do as they please. The means do not matter. They may beat them down. Destroy their homes. They can even crush them underfoot, though that is frowned upon. Not because the Freeze Force shouldn't have the right to kill another human being, but because that would be a waste of precious fuel for Kray.Speaking of Governor Kray, as his plan is on the cusp of failing, it is revealed that he is a Burnish, and a powerful one at that. It's already disgusting that the Burnish must bear witness to genocide and human experimentation, but for the orchestrator of it all to be a Burnish himself feels like a slap in the face. Brand New Animal does the same thing in revealing that Alan Sylvasta is actually a beastman, and a pure blooded one at that, spouting hate for the lesser beastmen. While these things don't negate the horrible bigotry perpetuated by humans in the respective works, it's insulting to portray members of these groups as grand orchestrators of so much oppression. One could easily argue that both of these characters could be metaphors for the self hate that is ingrained in oppressed groups after decades of discrimination, but making them the ringleaders obscures the fact that oppressors are the ones with the true power to oppress.

Another issue I have is with how these works handle resistance to oppression. Promare almost posits the Burnish discrimination as if it was their own fault. Their flames are dangerous and they are not using them properly. And, of course, the actions of Mad Burnish are seen as wrong. How dare they burn things down after they are attacked and discriminated against?

And how dare Lio still try and kill Kray, the orchestrator of his people's genocide? Lio is stopped and his own words are thrown back at him. "Burnish don't kill for no reason," he's told by Galo, even after Galo discovers the heinous acts committed against the Burnish and the plans laid out by Kray. Is the Burnish experimentation not reason enough? Does genocide not fill all the requirements for Galo, someone who's not directly affected by this Burnish oppression? It is reminiscent of James Baldwin's response when asked how to get Black people to cool it. It is not the black people who have to cool it, because they won't We are the ones who are dying fastest.

BNA adds a justification to its discrimination with Nirvasyl Syndrome. Just like the Burnish, Beastmen are dangerous down to a biological level and in a way that makes them a danger to everyone around, including themselves. And just like with Lio, when it's discovered that Sylvasta is developing a drug that could wipe Beastmen from existence, Shirou is stopped and treated as if his rage is wrong and unwarranted.

Michiru, someone who has been a Beastman for less than a year and learns a new facet of the culture everytime the sun rises, can neither see what's wrong with a (seemingly) human man making a drug that could eradicate Beastmen across the globe nor can she see fully grasp why Shirou's rage is valid? Both works continue a long tradition of telling oppressed people what qualifies as good rebellion and how they should act against oppression through the mouths of people who actively uphold the systems that oppress them. I should also add that, as a Black person, hearing thoughts on resistance from a character who has been suddenly transformed into a beastman is more than a little weird when I live in a world of Rachel Dolezals, Shaun Kings, and blackfishing.

However, when it is all said and done, BNA does not go down the route of eradication. The evil plan is stopped and Nirvasyl Syndrome is treated without changing Beastmen to humans. Beastmen are still Beastmen, including Michiru, who decides to continue in her Beastman form. Anima City decides to open up, realizing that Beastmen being cooped up in a city does not actually address the problems at hand and leads to more issues. The ideas here aren't necessarily revolutionary but they're more of a step in the right direction. But how much longer until significant societal change comes? Are we doomed to an infinity of baby steps that do not solve the actual problems or directly respond to the outcry?

On the other hand, Promare's attempt to wrap everything in a bow reveals it's lack of revolutionary imagination. No, its solution is to completely erase the identity of the Burnish. Undercutting the entire idea that the discrimination against the Burnish is bad, it simply takes away the reason for the discrimination. There is no eradication of discriminatory practices or destruction of ghettos. We see nothing indicating that Kray will be held responsible for his crimes against humanity. No, Promare's solution to oppression is for the oppressed to homogenize. I love to see marginalized people with superpowers as stories of freedom, and not stories of erasure, so the eugenics in Promare's final moments don't sit right on my spirit. Both Promare and BNA use the struggles of real life people as a staging ground for a show on discrimination and, even in the midst of all this fantasy and fiction, they continue to give piecemeal attempts at positive change that lead to nothing and, in Promare's case, completely eradicate the oppressed's identity.

There are no worthwhile solutions to be found. Only half-answers and eradication.

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Promare, BNA, and the Outrage of the Oppressed - Anime News Network

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday that saving unarmed Kashmiris from the oppression of Indian forces is a challenge posed by the Modi government to the whole world.

"Modi has challenged the world, the way he has aggressively taken over control of Kashmir," Shehbaz said, while addressing the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.

He said Pakistan will have to move past "empty rhetoric" and fight for Kashmir with practical steps.

"We will have to expose India before the world at the diplomatic level," he added.

The PML-N leader said that the abrogation of Article 370 by India on August 5, 2019, was a tragedy for the region.

Earlier in his speech, Shehbaz thanked the AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider for inviting the opposition to Muzaffarabad.

The visit comes two days after Prime Minister Imran Khan visited the region's capital to show solidarity with Kashmiris on Youm-e-Istehsal.

Youm-e-Istehsal was marked in Pakistan and all over the world on Wednesday to observe the one-year anniversary of August 5, 2019, when the Indian government illegally annexed occupied Kashmir into two union territories by revoking Article 370 of its constitution.

See the rest here:

Shehbaz says oppression of unarmed Kashmiris Modis challenge to the world - Geo News

When Jerry Grey, a British-Australian living in Guangdong, China, went on a cycling holiday to Xinjiang in the late summer of 2019, he was blown away by the regions spectacular scenery and architecture. A particular highlight of his trip was visiting Turpan, the ancient oasis city in the east of the region, where he admired an 18th-century mosque with the tallest minaret in China.

Grey, 62, who visited Xinjiang as a tourist, said he couldnt find any traces of the sprawling concentration camps he had read about in the press. I never saw one, he said. That doesnt mean they arent there. Its a huge place, but we did cycle down some very, very long stretches of open road.

Grey, who is a former London Metropolitan police officer, admitted that he found Xinjiangs surveillance network and continual police checks oppressive. It was a pain in the butt, he said. But at no stage were they ever abusive.

I asked him if he would willingly live under a draconian regime of surveillance and arbitrary detention like the one that operates in Xinjiang, controlling the regions Muslim population under the guise of combating terrorism.

Would I like it? Course not. I wouldnt like it at all, he said. But would I move? Probably not. If they said to me, You cant use a VPN and you cant use your Twitter account, and things like that, then I might consider it. Because my lifeline to the outside world is through the internet.

Despite Greys acknowledgement of heavy surveillance in Xinjiang, he has devoted the past five months denying the existence of detention camps in the region, citing his bike ride as evidence.

In March, he was in quarantine after returning home from a trip to Thailand. It was six months on from his visit to Xinijiang. I was bored silly, so I opened up my Twitter account and thought, I know what Ill do. One of the things I can do is I can start tweeting about the bike ride.

Grey began with two followers and now has more than 4,000. Many of them are Chinese users, living both within the country and abroad. His Twitter page is a relentless rehashing of his camp-free cycling tour. We didnt see any concentration camps, but the days and nights in Xinjiang require a lot of concentration to get through, he quipped in one July 15 post.

Grey has, inevitably, attracted the attention of Chinese media. On the day we spoke, he was scheduled to speak with the state TV channel CGTN directly after.

Their propaganda department absolutely sucks. And I think maybe Im being used, but Im being used to deliver a message that I believe in, he said. Theyre not telling me what to say.

Other Beijing-based news outlets have already featured interviews with Grey: Australian offers candid observation of Xinjiang distinct from Western characterizations, ran one headline on the website of the Global Times newspaper in June.

Though Greys individual reach is modest, he is part of a network of users that all share a similar message. He calls them his comrades in arms.

Carl Zha, a Chinese-American Twitter user with 43,000 followers, spends his mornings surfing in the turquoise waters of Bali, Indonesia, before returning to his fiancee, three puppies, and his job as an influencer posting and broadcasting about China. Zha, 43, was born in China a month after Mao Zedongs death and left for the U.S when he was 13. Over the past two years, he has become known for his content about Xinjiang. His posts are devoted to attacking Western reports of human rights abuses in the region and painting coverage of Uyghur oppression as an influence operation designed to incite tension between the U.S. and China.

The US government is pushing Cold War propaganda to get us involved in another war, he told me in a Skype interview. Despite the content of his Twitter account, he said he doesnt deny that China has inflicted human rights abuses on its Uyghur population.

I feel very conflicted about what the Chinese government is doing, because it is very heavy-handed, it is a massive social engineering project, he said. I asked him whether he had spoken to any Uyghurs about the issue. He said that he has been a member of a WeChat group of Uyghur and Han people from Xinjiang in 2015. Its pretty much defunct now, he said, explaining that it went quiet when Xinjiang authorities cracked down on communication two years later.

Since then, despite extensively posting about Xinjiang, Zha told me he had not had a conversation with any other Uyghurs, either living in Xinjiang or abroad. Nobody has reached out to me, he said. The Uyghurs living in exile there are actually plenty of outlets for them right now. I mean theres many all the news channels, all the mainstream news. Im a small shop. Im a one-person channel.

Zhas podcast about China, titled Silk and Steel, hosts mostly like-minded guests, including Jerry Grey. Zha said he wasnt opposed to speaking with Uyghurs and told me that he had featured a Hong Kong protester on the show.

Im not just a shitposter that posts a lot my podcast is my income stream. Thats whats supporting me to live in Bali, he said.

Zha and Grey are part of a group of bloggers, YouTubers and social media personalities backed by legions of automated accounts who seek to play down Uyghur oppression in Xinjiang. They see reports of Uyghur human rights abuses as attempts to attack Beijing, and believe that Western coverage of the Xinjiang crisis forms part of a state-funded offensive against China.

Though the accounts of Zha and Grey are run by real people, there are hundreds of accounts within their network which appear to be inauthentic. These coordinated accounts, seen by Coda Story, all spout Chinese propaganda content claiming Xinjiang is happy and thriving. Some claim to be run by Uyghurs. If they were authentic Xinjiang Twitter accounts, their users would require a VPN to access them a practice that can mean instant arrest in the region.

Over on TikTok, the top-ranking videos on the Xinjiang hashtag bring up beautiful images of the region, interlaced with videos claiming the camps in Xinjiang are a conspiracy theory. A top result comes from an American user called @vagdentata. I keep seeing people post about the Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, claiming there are concentration camps there that is not true, its fabricated by the CIA. On Friday, President Trump banned dealings with Chinese tech giants TikTok and WeChat and announced he would bar both apps from operating in the U.S, unless they were sold to a U.S. buyer within 45 days.

Mamutjan Abdurehim, 42, is a Uyghur father living alone in Sydney. He has spent a great deal of time on social media, trying to find out more about the situation in Xinjiang. He is troubled by the presence of the denialists he encounters on the internet.

Thats the most painful part of being online, he said. Seeing somebody denying openly denying whats going on there and trying to portray activists as agents of the West or agents of Western propaganda. Thats very, very painful.

Abdurehim believes his wife, Muherrem Ablet, is currently imprisoned in Xinjiang. She and their two children were separated from him after they had to return to China to replace her passport. In April 2017, Abdurehims wife was rounded up and sent to a camp. The family was told she would be entering a brief period of study. Except for a short message when she was allowed out on day release in late May 2017, Abdurehim has not heard from his wife since.

Abdurehim said he is often kept awake at night after reading conspiracy theories denying Uyghur oppression. I get tempted to respond to them and fight them over Twitter, he said. But I calm myself down. No, no, no, no need for that.

Alongside Abdurehim, there are thousands of Uyghurs around the world who have testified about their missing family members in Xinjiang. Since 2016, the region has been subjected to a brutal crackdown, corralling Uyghurs into a sprawling network of detention centers, camps and prisons.

Researchers and journalists have unearthed overwhelming evidence of Xinjiangs surveillance and detention programs. As a result, they are often targeted by bots, trolls, and pro-Beijing influencers. Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who published a report exposing Xinjiangs forced labor system in March, is one of them.

There have been a lot of attacks against me and my family on the internet, she said, explaining that her critics are not interested in seeing evidence of oppression in Xinjiang.

They have decided that if we publish material that appears to be criticizing the Chinese government, then we must have been paid by a foreign government; we must have secret agendas. But, no matter how strong the research is, no matter how much evidence we have, theyre not going to be persuaded otherwise.

One Twitter account that frequently targets Xu is run under the name Xi Fan. Its owner says she is a young Chinese woman living in Victoria, Australia, who grew up in Xinjiang. Her tweets are typical of pro-Beijing channels: TikTok videos showing Chinas tourist attractions, mixed with political content often justifying the Chinese governments crackdowns on Tibetans, Hong Kongers, the Falun Gong religious movement and Xinjiangs Muslim minorities.

On the day that the new Hong Kong security law was passed, giving Beijing sweeping powers to clamp down on dissent, she tweeted: Ive been looking forward to this day for a long time. I was in the street when I heard the good news, and jumped for joy. Hong Kong is finally stable.

When I contacted Xi for an interview, she would only answer my questions publicly on the platform. Our back and forth lasted a whole day. When I joined Twitter, I saw articles here about Xinjiang, I was shocked and angry, she said. These articles are complete distortions of reporting, which is why I am speaking out.

I asked her what her response was to the thousands of Uyghurs around the world who have spoken out about abuses in Xinjiang. They are liars. They are trying to subvert China, incite ethnic hatred and split China. Paid by CIA, to attack China. And u stupid idiot believe that, she said. She added: U believe what u want to believe. And Uyghur are still living a stable and happy life in China. Soon after, she stopped responding to my questions.

Illustration by Sofiya Voznaya

Excerpt from:

Pro-Beijing influencers and their rose-tinted view of life in Xinjiang - Coda Story

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday took center stage at a ceremony laying the foundations for a temple at a flashpoint holy site exactly a year after imposing direct rule on Muslim-majority Kashmir twin triumphs for his Hindu nationalist government.

The site at Ayodhya, and Kashmir, have been two of the most divisive communal issues of the past 30 years in India, and Modi has attempted to draw a line under both.

For his fans, both steps confirm Modi elected to a second-straight term in a landslide victory last year as a decisive, visionary and heroic leader, and Indias most important in decades.

His critics see him as remolding the officially secular country of 1.3 billion as a Hindu nation at the expense of Indias 200 million Muslims.

Modi has certainly been Indias most transformative leader in recent memory, making him wildly popular, but also highly controversial and quite divisive, said Micheal Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

The holy city of Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh has long been a religious tinderbox, providing the spark for some of its worst sectarian violence.

In 1992, a Hindu mob destroyed a centuries-old mosque there that they believed had been built on the birthplace of Ram, an important deity. This triggered religious riots that killed 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.

A lengthy legal battle ensued, but in November last year in a major victory for Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Indias top court awarded the site to Hindus, allowing a temple touching the sky to be built.

Yesterdays elaborate religious ceremony was shown live on television and was reportedly set to be beamed in Times Square in New York City. Small celebrations also took place across India.

A masked Modi, 69, shared the stage with the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a militaristic hardline Hindu group that is parent to the BJP and which Modi joined as a young man.

Not only mankind, but the entire universe, all the birds and animals, are enthralled by this golden moment, the main priest chanted.

Modi is going to make his position permanently in history purely on the strength of this temple, his biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said.

Further cementing Modis place in his countrys annals is Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan since 1947 and the spark for two wars and the source of much bloodshed.

The BJP had long seen the special status enjoyed by the part of Kashmir controlled by India as a historical wrong, and on Aug. 5 last year, Modi abolished it.

An accompanying security operation turned the region into a fortress for weeks, with telecommunications cut and thousands taken into custody.

Even now, India has maintained stifling restraints on Kashmiris in violation of their basic rights, Human Rights Watch has said.

Fearing protests ahead of the anniversary, thousands of Indian troops on Tuesday imposed a tight curfew in Kashmir.

In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan who on Tuesday released a new map showing all of Kashmir as part of Pakistan led a protest march in Muzaffarabad.

We will never accept, and neither will the Kashmiris, the illegal Indian actions and oppression of the Kashmiri people, Khan said in a statement.

Comments will be moderated. Keep comments relevant to the article. Remarks containing abusive and obscene language, personal attacks of any kind or promotion will be removed and the user banned. Final decision will be at the discretion of the Taipei Times.

Originally posted here:

Modi government enjoys twin triumphs -

Zarah Sultana, PoK-origin UK MP/ Official Twitter account  |  Photo Credit: Twitter

London: A Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK)-origin Labour MP has sought UK's intervention in the Kashmir matter. In a letter which brazenly refers to Kashmir as 'Indian occupied Kashmir', the MP, Zarah Sultana has said that 'Britain had laid the groundwork for the oppression that Kashmiris face today' by executing the partition of India. She also said that the UK has a moral obligation to 'right these wrongs'.

In a tweet on August 5, Sultana had said, "1 year ago today the Indian government unilaterally revoked the semi-autonomous status of Indian Occupied Kashmir.Human rights abuses, repression & brutal lockdown ensued. I've written to the Foreign Secretary, urging him to honour Britain's obligations to the Kashmiri people."

On the day coinciding the anniversary of Indian government's decision to revoke Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, Sultana, in her letter, claims that human rights organisations have reported 'human rights violations, including torture, rape, extrajudicial execution and illegal detention' in Kashmir.

"As you know, in 1947, acting as a colonial power the British government oversaw the partition of the Indian subcontinent. This laid the groundwork for the oppression that the Kashmiri people face to this day. Britain, therefore, has a special obligation to right the wrongs," the letter states.

The move may be viewed against the backdrop of several attempts by Pakistan to internationalise the Kashmir matter. Most recently, Turkey had claimed that India's decision to abrogate Article 370 did not contribute to peace in the region. India hit back at Turkey and urged that country to refrain from commenting on India's internal matters.

The rest is here:

Right these wrongs: PoK-origin Labour MP wants UK to intervene in Kashmir - Times Now

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After Ram Mandir bhoomi pujan, Article 370 and triple talaq, many Bharatiya Janata Party observers are asking, What next? The clue to the BJPs future agenda lies in two factors: one is in the past, in how the partys politics changed after the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid; and two, in how Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees his own role.

After the demolition, the BJP faced what political scientist John McGuire described as a moment of crisis. It had reaped the political gains of the Ram temple movement, but now that the issue was over, it had to redefine itself.

The BJP would do so over the next four years, remaking itself from a hard Hindutva party to a party of governance a national alternative to the Congress. When the 1996 Lok Sabha election came, Lal Krishna Advani was on a surajya (good governance) yatra and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was emphasising the BJPs commitment to pluralism and tolerance.

There are some optimists who hope that the successful completion of the BJPs Right-wing projects under Modi Citizenship (Amendment) Act, Article 370, triple talaq and now Ram Mandir would similarly precipitate another move to the centre. Now that the BJP has reached the limits of the potential gains from cultural nationalism, it will finally focus on issues of governance.

This view is deeply mistaken. In an article last year, I had argued that while Modis first term was defined by the soft Hindutva mixed with social welfare of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, its second term would be defined by hard Hindutva of V.D. Savarkar and the remaking of the Indian nation. The first term was used by Modi to patiently redefine the centre and mainstream of Indian politics, while holding off on the implementation of core issues. From this redefined centre, Modi has finally unleashed his transformative cultural nationalism agenda and this would likely last for the remainder of his second term. The next big political issues are likely to be UCC (Uniform Civil Code) and NRC (National Register of Citizens).

The BJP under Modi is remaking both Hindu identity and national identity, a project that is still a long way away from completion.

Also read: In his second term, Modi govt has moved from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya to Veer Savarkar

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During the mid-1990s, the BJPs expansion was predicated on political moderation. In 1996, its coalition government led by Vajpayee fell in 13 days because no major party, except the Shiv Sena, Samta party and Shiromani Akali Dal, wanted to ally with it owing to its communal image. As political scientist Michael Gillan noted in his study Assessing the National Expansion of Hindu Nationalism: The BJP in Southern and Eastern India, 1996-2001, the BJP aggressively sought coalition allies in this phase on the basis of a common anti-Congress platform and reconfigured Hindutva to suit regional contexts, as opposed to big national Hindutva issues. In fact, the BJPs 1999 manifesto, astonishingly, had no mention of Ram Mandir.

The BJP is now in its phase of dominance, and is freed from the constraints of regional allies. The compromises have to be made by regional parties, recently seen with the AAP and BSP, in line with the BJPs ideological agenda, not the other way around.

Also read: Why the Modi government gets away with lies, and how the opposition could change that

Hindutva is now the pathway to the BJPs consolidation and expansion. In West Bengal, the political fight is between BJPs Hindutva and Mamata Banerjees Bengali pride resisting the suzerainty of Delhi. In Telangana, the BJP accuses the TRS of appeasing Asaduddin Owaisis AIMIM, celebrates the day of the states accession as liberation from Muslim oppression, and its state president promises the UCC. In Assam, the BJPs entire politics is based upon the fear of the Bangladeshi Muslim. These state-level communal agendas have to be necessarily packaged within a national narrative.

Hence, the BJP would likely push the UCC before the 2021 election in West Bengal, challenging Mamata Banerjees TMC to defend special protections for minorities, a charge on which she is politically vulnerable. This will be supplemented in Bengal (and other key states) by what political scientists Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar have described as the Uttar Pradesh model of riot. Rather than instigating major and violent state-wide riots as in the earlier phase, the BJP-RSS have attempted to create and sustain constant, low-key communal tension together with frequent, small, low-intensity incidents out of petty everyday issues that institutionalise communalism at the grass roots, to keep the pot boiling, the authors wrote in their book Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh.

In fact, we are already seeing this model at play in Bengal, the latest example being the Telinipara riots. In Uttar Pradesh, we might see the completion of the Ram Mandir just before the 2022 assembly election, rekindling Hindu consciousness.

Also read: Modi faces no political costs for suffering he causes. Hes just like Irans Ali Khamenei

The widespread Hindu consolidation under Narendra Modi is still in its infancy. Caste and regional identities are still potent under the surface. If the BJP relaxes on its cultural nationalist agenda of us versus them (Muslims), these regional and caste identities will regain political salience and hamper the party. Indeed, backward caste identities are being progressively integrated in the Hindutva project, a phenomenon known as subaltern Hindutva. The PMs reference to Raja Suheldev a backward caste icon who supposedly resisted Muslim aggression in his Ayodhya speech is just the most recent instance of this careful strategy.

Modi hardly ever names Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rajiv Gandhi because he is not competing with them. The competitor he sets up for himself is Jawaharlal Nehru, the pre-eminent architect of modern, secular India who defined the country for its first four decades of Independence.

Modi presents himself in similar historical terms, not as an economic reformer or a social welfare populist, but as a nation builder or rebuilder a saffron Nehru. The former politicians might be held accountable in one or two terms, but people understand that remaking the nation is a long drawn-out affair. Much like the country gave Nehru three terms to complete his project, Modi implicitly asks Indians to trust him with a similarly long time-frame.

Also read: Bhoomipujan 2020 is like Balakot 2019, the surgical strike that washes all sins

People seem to have bought into this framing of politics. In states they might punish the BJP for failure on economic issues such as farmer distress and unemployment, which we saw in Maharashtra and Haryana but national politics has been delinked from economic issues. As India slides into its worst economic recession since Independence, Modis popularity is at an all-time high.

This is helpful for the BJP since the economic recession means almost certainly that the Modi government will not go into 2024 with any major economic achievements. It takes many years for the economy to recover from such a deep recession. Since a lot of fiscal space will be taken in ameliorating the impact of the public health/economic crisis, theBJP wont have the space to launch any new big social sector schemes or expand the welfare state.

The fact that Modi now almost never talks about India by 2022 a set of ambitious targets in the sectors of housing, electricity, internet, and drinking water among others is an indicator that those targets wouldnt likely be achieved. Neither it is likely that Modi would spend much political capital on big economic reforms, lest economic issues come back to the centre of political debate.

If the opposition is waiting for the cultural nationalistic issues to subside of its own accord and material issues to become salient again, it will have to wait for a long time. It is almost predetermined that the BJP will go into 2024 on the plank of Hindu nationalism, because it is not just the most potent option but also, in many ways, its only option.

Mao had described his system of rule as permanent revolution. In making revolution, one must strike when the iron is hot one revolution must follow another, the revolution must continually advance. This was how the new Chinese nation would be created after centuries of feudalism and imperialism.

In the Hindutva ideology espoused by Modi, Indian is emerging after centuries of Muslim/British/secularist rule of Hindu oppression 1200 years of slave mentality, in Modis words. Article 370, CAA, and Ram Temple bhoomi pujan are just one cycle of the new permanent revolution many such cycles of revolution await to play their part in the building of New India.

The author is a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Views are personal.

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Art 370, CAA, triple talaq, Ram Mandir are just one cycle of Modis permanent revolution - ThePrint

School will look a little different in the coming years for students across Ontario, due to some major curriculum changes in response to COVID-19 and international action addressing systemic racism within institutions and beyond.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, school boards have been trying to adapt to online teaching. Now, with the knowledge that the threat of coronavirus will still be present come September, the Ministry of Education said it has advised boards to plan for multiple scenarios.

Conventional delivery with enhanced safety protocols, adapted delivery that may include blended models of in-person and remote learning and full remote learning, the implementation of these scenarios are dependent on health advice at any point in the school year, wrote Ingrid Anderson, senior media relations coordinator for the Ministry of Education, in an email.

Kristen Clarke, dean of teaching and learning at Bishop Strachan School, says that BSS will be switching its high school students to a semestered schedule rather than full-year courses. Most courses will be semestered, with the exception of math in Grades 9 and 10, activity-based health and physical education courses, and a few others that are better suited for full-year learning.

Its about manageability. Usually students in our school have eight courses Thats a lot to carry as a full load throughout the course of the year, so this way we can make sure they have fewer topics to focus on, she says. Clarke notes that Grade 9 and 10 students carry eight courses a year, and most Grade 11 students also have eight courses, whereas most Grade 12 students have seven courses.

Clarke also says the school learned from student responses to online teaching in the spring of this year.

Were moving into a blended environment where kids will be learning online and face to face, and we noticed that prioritizing positive, descriptive feedback, versus a whole bunch of evaluative grades, was really helpful, she explains. It sustained many students when they were experiencing stressors and kept them above water in many cases.

For those with students in elementary school, be prepared for a revamped math curriculum that will now include coding and financial literacy.

Our government is modernizing our schools, our curriculum, and the delivery of learning, to ensure students are set up to succeed in an increasingly changing world, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce said according to a press release on July 23.

The curriculum changes also mean that students in Grade 3 and 6 will not be taking the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessment in the 20202021 school year, as the ministry works on adjusting the math component of the test to align with the new curriculum.

At TFS-Canadas International School, there will be a large focus on the use of technology as both a medium and a tool for effective teaching and learning, says Khalid El-Metaal, the deputy head of teaching and learning.

The educators will lever the use of Google Classroom as a teaching and learning platform in order to deliver curriculum content whether students are taking part in-person, online or through a hybrid class, he says.

Students at TFS will have the option to remain at home and learn through a distance learning model, and other students will take part in in-person sessions with teachers with small class sizes and hybrid classes that take place in online learning spaces on campus.

While the school is focused on delivering the curriculum effectively, we are also focusing on student wellness, and our first priority for the first few weeks will be forging strong teacher-student relationships, embedding routines and practices that are important in this new learning context, and helping students make sense of the changes, and what is happening around them, says El-Metaal.

There has also been a push for curriculum changes that better address issues of systemic racism within the school system and more broadly throughout the country.

Since international protests and discussions about racism were sparked after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, advocates have been calling for better and earlier education around race and racism within the classroom.

In response, the Ontario government has looked at some common practices within the current school system that contribute to racism.

The government recently announced plans to end academic streaming [grouping students by ability] in Grade 9 in response to concerns that the practice has disproportionately affected educational outcomes for Black, Indigenous and low-income students. The government has also proposed a ban on suspending younger, elementary-school students, a practice that also disproportionately affects Black students, wrote Anderson.

Theyve also promised to strengthen sanctions for teachers who make racist remarks or perform racist actions.

Although that is a start, Karen Murray, the centrally assigned principal of equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression on the Toronto District School Board, says that the board is still working to do more in terms of the curriculum and the school environment for racialized students.

The intentional work has to happen within the classroom and not in just one specific subject, she says. If youre going to be culturally relevant and responsive, it embeds in all subjects.

She notes that, in her experience, students are more comfortable talking about racism than teachers, and thats something Murray says the board will have to work on.

What [kids] do is they bring their life into the classroom; they talk about what they see, what they lived through. So its the adults that have to push against our own hesitation.

Carl James, a York University professor whose research has focused on the experiences of racialized students in the education system, says bringing those lived experiences of students into the classroom is a necessary step to address some holes in the curriculum.

It [the education system] is very centered on the European experience, he says. Teachers must pay attention to the backgrounds of their students, whether thats race or gender or where the students come from, in order to prepare and effectively reach their students.

Murray says shes seen a positive response from many teachers so far.

More educators are willing to really begin to have those conversations in their classrooms. Before the year ended, you could see that, heightened requests to help support teaching and talking about race and racism as a result of the things kids are seeing in the news.

But the curriculum is provincially mandated, meaning Murray has to work within the wiggle room to incorporate more diverse content. The provincial government has yet to make any changes to the curriculum to directly add anti-racist requirements, though the Ministry of Education has said its proposing anti-racism and anti-discrimination training by the end of 2020.

Continued here:

How the major events of 2020 are changing education in Ontario - Post City

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By Reneva Fourie

South Africa should not be struggling to overcome its current challenges of underdevelopment and corruption as there is an entire generation of remarkable women that is under-utilised.

The women that led anti-apartheid struggles inside the country during the 1980s are hardworking, selfless, highly knowledgeable and competent, with impeccable integrity. They possess a unique capacity to motivate and lead people because they acquired the skill by convincing many to risk their lives (and livelihoods) for a cause. Empowering others is inherent in this cohort of women; for having a second layer of leadership to replace them in the event of detention or death, was imperative.

As we celebrate the brave actions of women who on August 9, 1956, marched to the Union Buildings and demanded the abolishment of the Pass Laws, we honour too on this day, the women activists from the decades before, and from the decades thereafter.

I want to share some of the contributions made by women from my hometown, Grassy Park, to our fight against apartheid in the 1980s. I do so because younger women activists always challenge me about the lack of material on women activists from the 1980s.

Secondly, it is hoped that their rich experiences will motivate even more women of younger generations to become emboldened social activists.

And thirdly, but most importantly, I seek to highlight that South Africa does not have a shortage of women leaders. I focus only on my area, for if I were to focus on the Western Cape, or even just the Southern Suburbs Region, the stories would amount to volumes.

Grassy Park is a beautiful suburb in the Western Cape that is home to three scenic lakes - Princess Vlei, Zeekoe Vlei; and Rondevlei Nature Reserve. Now densely populated (and even viewed as mildly dangerous by some) the apartheid designated coloured area, had a mixed class composition - the largest portion of whom were professionals.

Grassy Park has a rich history of anti-apartheid activity. Sam Kahn still resides there. Many known leaders from the area like Dr Neville Alexander and Imam Gassan Solomon have now passed. Other contemporary leaders who hail from the area include the first Director-General of Trade and Industry, Dr Alistair Ruiters; former Sactwu General Secretary and current Minister of Trade and Industry, Ebrahim Patel; and former Cosatu Deputy President and Minister of Human Settlements, Connie September. The area has produced too many leaders for me to list.

What is less known is that the leaders in Grassy Park during the 1980s were mostly women. And here I am not just referring to members of the local branch of the United Womens Congress (UWCO). Women led in the branches of the student movement (Lotus River/ Grassy Park Students Action Committee-Logsac), the Cape Youth Congress (Cayco), the civic movement (Lotus River/ Grassy Park Residents Association-Logra), and the church youth movement (Inter-church Youth - ICY).

It was women who ran the Congress-aligned local Advice Office and it was a woman who led the local ANC underground cell.

In addition to political work, women activists ran soup kitchens, childrens groups, and adult literacy classes. Leadership extended beyond Grassy Park to include regional and provincial levels.

Experiences such as these enabled the development of extraordinary organisational, management and interpersonal skills among all activists from that era, which should be drawn upon, to get our country out of its current quagmire.

The powerful women activists from my hometown include Norma Gabriels; Lorna, Anthea and Beulah Houston; Aisha and Madeniyah Slamang; Cindy and Zenda Woodman, Fatima, Rabia and Suleila Ismail; Hilary Oostendorp; Blanche Paulse; Crystal and Dee Dicks; Carlette and Margo Johannissen; Marcella, Danielle and Celeste Naidoo and their mom, the late Willemina Naidoo; Farida Khan; Pamela Harris; Sherine Franz; Vanessa Calvert; Donna Miller; Carol-Anne Davids, Barenise Weeder, Chrissie Francis and the late Carmen Hefele. These women are all educated professionals who remain social activists, albeit in a far more subdued manner (or they apply their skills internationally).

Sure, the Peter Mokabas and Blade Nzimandes of this world have undoubtedly influenced me, but I cannot help but feel overwhelmingly blessed to have been surrounded by phenomenal women, all my life in my family, in my community, and throughout my career.

I profile only Julie Jaffer, Ghairo Daniels, Sara Ryklief, Natalie McAskill and Charlene Houston. I thank them for permitting me to publish some of their stories; for the enormity of their contributions can never be captured in one short article. Reading their stories gives insight into our hidden history, and highlights that there are capable, ethical leaders who continue to serve.

Julie Jaffer

There are few people who are as deeply loved in Grassy Park as the peoples doctor, Dr Zuleiga (or Julie as she is fondly known) Jaffer. In addition to serving the community as a health practitioner; she treated our bruises after run-ins with the police and special branch; and was a pillar of reason in meetings of UWCO and, post-unbanning, meetings of the African National Congress and its Womens League.

Her assertiveness emanated from her parents instilling a rejection of societal boundaries in her from an early age, emphasising that she should accept no label other than that of her being a human being. She became politically active as a 14-year old and underwent a gradual process of conscientisation until being recruited to do community work as a means to raise political awareness in the area.

Her determination to fight for a united, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa was deepened by the murder of Iman Haroon in detention, during her time as a university student and her experiences later, as an intern at Somerset Hospital during the 1976 uprisings. Organising in conditions of severe repression was dangerous, but she and her fellow intern, Sophie, started organising workers at Somerset Hospital and subsequently facilitated a successful march in solidarity with the students. She was also among the first who called for free healthcare for all and was one of the people who contributed to the formation of the UDF.

One of the earliest campaigns that Logra (led by Julie and others) mounted was the Lower rates and rents Campaign, which combined different class issues. She recalls being scared at the goals of the campaign, but they did it anyway. One of the achievements was taking the officials of the Divisional Council on a tour of the area to see the poor conditions of peoples homes and the environment. It was the first time the authorities saw the area that they made decisions about.

Julie also had a wonderful way of organising women around issues that interested them and then using the event to create awareness around racial, sexual and class inequalities. Once our democratic government was in place, she contributed to building the local ANC branch and the Womens League branch. More recently she was part of a small group of women deepening democracy through a loose network that brings decision-makers into closer connection with ordinary women, thereby contributing to the sharing of accurate information on service delivery.

Julie was also involved at St Lukes Hospice until she took up a post at UCT teaching palliative medicine. At the same time, she hosted book readings promoting local authors, especially women. Donations collected at the events were used to upgrade communal areas at public hospitals. Julie and her team wanted these spaces to look as beautiful as private hospitals and give patients a more dignified experience. Later the funds were used to support the Grassy Park branch of St Luke's. Currently, Julie is considering new ways to address the very basic and urgent need for food security in the community.

Sahra Ryklief

Sahra Ryklief does not view herself as an activist but rather as an empowerer of activists. Indeed, while she was never at the forefront of resistance, her compassion, diligence, wise guidance and constant presence in every activity of resistance in the area of Grassy Park in the 1980s, and thereafter her services in the labour movement, have contributed to the building of many strong activists and leaders.

She is an autodidact and has a lasting love, respect and allegiance for informal learning spaces, individual and group, specifically public libraries (and more recently, online resources) and the learning which occurs in social, cultural and workplace associations. She worked as a public librarian for the first decade and a half of her working life, which got many a young person, including myself, to visit the library daily. She developed an internal training programme for rural and urban librarians, ran a youth drama group and halfway through her tenure as a municipal librarian became the trade union representative for the amenities and cemeteries sector of the municipal union.

She began working at the Trade Union Library in 1990 and spent the next 20 years doing information provision, research and education for trade unions and developing programmes, projects and publications for what is now the Labour Research Service. In 1996, she joined the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Worker Education Associations (IFWEA) and was elected General Secretary of IFWEA at the 20th General Conference held in Ahmedabad, India in 2007. She stood again for election at the 2011, 2015 and 2019 General Conferences. This will be her last term before retiring.

Sahra holds a Master of Arts degree in political science from the University of Liverpool and is an adjunct instructor for the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department of the School of Management and Labour Relations at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. She has produced research for the department and teaches a course for their labour studies degree on Social Movements, Social Change and Work.

Ghairo Daniels

No single event motivated Ghairo Daniels to become politically active, though singular events were key factors. The consciousness into which she was born, predisposed her to participate in correcting social injustice. She was aware of the inequalities and injustices between her mother and father; within her extended family; and within the community of District Six, before she could speak.

Forced removal from District Six to the barren Hanover Park on the Cape Flats, based on colour, made an enormous impact on her young mind. This became the transition point from a sad, frustrated child-observer of wrongs to an ardent and hardworking activist. Being teargassed and baton-charged and finding solace in St. George's Cathedral during 1976, then her later detention and torture under Section Six of the Terrorism Act, added fuel to fire. The experience of solitary confinement and interrogation in prison cells gave her an opportunity to understand the minds of the oppressors better. This, in turn, led to her belief that the organisation of groups of people acting in a rational, disciplined and consensual way was crucial in confronting oppression.

As a student activist in the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), the Azanian African Students Organisation (Azaso the precursor to the current Sasco); in the Committee of 81, which spearheaded the 1980 student insurrection; and her continued community activism in Grassy Park/Lotus River, the area which she moved to in her later years, she gained awareness of her skills in coordination, administration and communication. She also possessed talent in seeing the macro-picture and translating this into feasible strategies, objectives and plans. Throughout her life as a political activist, as well as within her professional career, those were the skills most used, besides her inherent strong intuition.

As a young mother, it also saddened her that her young daughter was tagged along to all kinds of political meetings at all hours of the day and night. She was brought home from hospital into a house which harboured MK cadres and where they lived without electricity. Though, on the upside, her daughter could sing "The Internationale" at two years old.

Professionally, she worked in large national non-governmental organisations, notably SACHED Trust and Idasa, at the executive level, before joining Parliament post the 1994 elections to set up the Office of the Leader of Government Business, being instrumental in developing the legislative flow system and controlling the parliamentary programme. Serving the first Parliament under Madiba was both a privilege and a humbling experience. She left national Parliament both by default and divine design to commence an awesome journey of soul-searching. This included community work on farms in small towns, solitary meditation for a couple of months in the Knysna forest and her training as a healer, peace consultant and meditator.

Natalie McAskill

Natalie McAskill has been a life-long community activist. Her ambition has always just been to serve. She is committed to social justice and believed that apartheid was wrong. Accordingly, she sought to do her bit to get rid of it, using every platform that she could, focusing on media and campaigns to ensure that the voices of the marginalised were heard.

Preferring to remain in the background, she applied her astute mind and warm personality, to precisely assessing a situation and firmly guiding us on strategy, tactics and even self-correction during the most dangerous periods of our liberation struggle. Her quiet reserve was certainly not an indicator of weakness, for her courage in those times were immeasurable and her resolve as solid as steel.

Her principles unflinching and her course steadfast, she remains as committed to social development as she did in during the days of her fight against apartheid. Her interest remains communications and using the medium of film to empower young people, particularly those from low-income communities, to elevate their voices, tell their stories, and to let their needs be known. Environmental justice and food sovereignty are also among current her priorities.

Charlene Houston

Though not much older than us, Charlene Houston was the role model for every young militant activist who had the privilege of being in her presence. Having been taught to think critically, or as they said back then think for yourself from a young age; being exposed to the racism that emanated from a simple trip to Kalk Bay beach, labelled non-white, via St James beach, labelled whites-only, and inevitably being chased off; reading Anne Franks Diary; and accompanying her mom to meetings of the Garment Workers Union, formed the backdrop to the makings of a dynamic revolutionary.

Her boundless passion and energy to end injustice, inequality, racism and sexism, saw her initially becoming active in Cosas, raising awareness amongst students, arranging alternative education activities during the 1980s school boycotts, and organising solidarity campaigns around schools who had poor or no resources. She also facilitated the formation of a Cosatu local in support of workers fighting injustices and was active in the formation of the UDF.

Areas like Grassy Park were neglected by national and regional leaders who prioritised working-class areas with resources like pamphlets and the deployment of charismatic speakers. They mistakenly viewed the Grassy Park community as less likely to be mobilised because they were not as oppressed as those living in council flats or township hostels.

This led her to develop a range of community service programmes that filled the gap where local government was not delivering as a member of the Logra Advice office and the Logra civic association, an affiliate of the Cape Housing Action Committee (CAHAC). The programmes were designed to bring people together in groups to learn about rights and justice and to promote action in the form of projects or campaigns. Most of the activities were illegal even when they were not political.

In response to the state brutality that was unleashed with the State of Emergency, she joined uMkhonto weSizwe in 1985, at the age of 19. She operated in deep secrecy because she already had a public profile due to her political work in the community but coordinated a small group to continue mobilisation in schools, among youth and within the religious sector. She also led a womens group which was the forerunner to the unbanning of the Womens League and assisted in setting up ANC and Womens League branches when the organisation was unbanned.

As the political atmosphere post-1990 was shifting dramatically, she immersed herself in transitional politics. She facilitated the establishment of the Western Cape Youth Forum which brought youth from the right and left of the political spectrum together to explore the future. As part of the secretariat at the Consultative Business Movement, she supported dialogues towards building social compacts post-apartheid. In 1994 she set up the Western Cape chapter of the independent observer network for our first democratic elections.

She also worked in the Western Cape Government, where she led some transformation initiatives in the museum sector. Of note is the development of the first provincial policy on sacred human remains held in museums. She also led the very first reburial of remains to happen in the country where remains from 3 museums were returned to associated indigenous communities and reburied in 2018.

Since then, various projects related to good governance and poverty alleviation strategies dominated her time. She has also developed her passion for storytelling into a skill of film making and is currently developing a documentary about Coline Williams with a grant from the National Film Foundation. She is also currently on the Human Remains Working Group of Iziko Museums of South Africa. Having been expelled from high school due to her political work, she has since completed her studies and is now a PhD student.

Conclusion

The few women profiled are just a sample of the innumerable competent women that exist in South Africa. The collective possesses knowledge and skills in public and corporate management, accounting, legal affairs, technological and natural sciences, and many more.

It should not be difficult to locate these skilled women activists from the 1980s; to compile a database of their competencies; and to deploy them once again to serve our country, this time for reconstruction rather than resistance.

It can be assured that they will serve as diligently and honestly today as they did back then, without costing us an arm and a leg.

* Reneva Fourie is an analyst specialising in governance, development and security and currently lives in Damascus, Syria.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL.

View original post here:

South Africa needs the skills of the women who led resistance in the 1980s - IOL

In the closing days of the Belarus presidential election campaign, opposition candidates are holding mass rallies and incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko is visiting businesses, giving speeches to the Security Council and government and lashing out at the news media.

During a meeting with campaign staff, Lukashenko railed at local and international media, saying the Belarussian edition of Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda will soon turn into a tabloid and accusing foreign outlets, including the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of being biased and calling for riots.

Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, asked the Foreign Ministry to intervene.

There is no need whatsoever to wait until the end of the election campaign. Get them out of here if they do not comply with our laws and call people to Maidans, he said on July 23, referring to mass protests in Ukraine in 2013 over the countrys move away from the European Union.

In the months leading up to the August 9 vote, journalists and bloggers in Belarus have been arrested, harassed and even deported as Lukashenko faces an unexpectedly tough election amid discontent with the economy and his poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The president, who says he tested positive for the virus, kept the country open and early on recommended fighting the virus with saunas and vodka.

Opposition presidential candidates were also forced out of the race, with two detained and a third Valery Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to the United States forced to flee to Russia, fearing arrest.

Media in Belarus already work under repressive conditions, with strict accreditation rules and access to independent news websites blocked. The country ranks 153rd out of 180 countries, where 1 is the most free, according to the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

In Belarus, the situation with freedom of speech is traditionally bad, Alexander Klaskovsky, head of analytical projects of the BelaPAN news agency, told VOA. During election campaigns this situation becomes aggravated.

Klaskovsky said journalists were bearing the brunt of a difficult presidential campaign for Lukashenko.

On August 5, police arrested a freelancer for the German agency Deutsche Welle twice in one day. And after a July 31 rally for opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in the city of Maladzechna, police detained a crew for the independent Belarusian-language station Belsat TV.

Tikhanovskaya stepped in as a candidate after the arrest of her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular video blogger who runs the YouTube channel Country to Live In, and who was registered to run.

Earlier in the campaign, Sergei Tikhanovsky was the main irritant for authorities, said Klaskovsky.

He traveled all over the country," Klaskovsky said. "In small towns, he would give the microphone to disadvantaged people blasting the authorities. And the authorities felt that it was dangerous, because their biggest fear is the street, since the election commissions are staffed with loyal people and the counting of votes is completely under state control.

On May 6, authorities charged Sergei Tikhanovsky and seven others with organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order.

Boris Goretsky, deputy chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, said arrests and oppression of journalists have increased, with over 60 incidents recorded during the campaign.

The authorities are afraid of freely disseminated information, as evidenced by the recent arrests of journalists after rallies, Goretsky told VOA. Authorities try to detain the maximum number of journalists so no one is there to provide video coverage and distribute it on the internet.

After all, information is what motivates people to act, he said.

In addition to the arrests, authorities are beating journalists at rallies and obstructing live broadcasts, said Natalya Radina, editor-in-chief of the news website Charter97.

Klaskovsky, of BelaPAN, added that bloggers and administrators of public and Telegram channels working under the Country to Live In brand have been hit hard, but the pressure is also felt by independent news websites, news agencies and publications whose editorial offices are abroad.

These journalists are often not invited to press conferences or other official events, where the priority is given to state-owned press. And those covering mass gatherings risk being arbitrarily detained, having equipment broken or confiscated and, if they lack accreditation, being fined for illegal fabrication of mass media products.

The rest of the press finds itself in an information vacuum, Klaskovsky said.

The Belarus Embassy in Washington told VOA on Friday to send questions via email. The embassy did not respond to VOAs emailed questions.

Under supervision

Independent media in Belarus are still tightly controlled. Journalists need accreditation to access official events, and the State Security Committee still known as the KGB, its Soviet-era name regularly monitors the press, with officials calling reporters to discuss their work.

Because of these officials described by some journalists as supervisors it is very difficult to determine the degree of independence of a local outlet, said Irina Khalip, a Belarus correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russia paper known for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs.

All foreign journalists need to be accredited with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And this accreditation comes with lines you cannot cross, Khalip said. One step over and your accreditation is revoked."

In May, the Foreign Ministry stripped a Channel One correspondent of his accreditation and deported him to Russia. The ministry did not state the reason, but Channel One, a Russian state broadcaster, said it came one day after a segment on Belarus coronavirus cases.

Khalip works without accreditation, but says it comes at a cost.

I cannot attend any press conference of a government official because no one will let me in there. But in this case, the editorial board decided, Well, to hell with those officials! Khalip said. There are streams, there are news agencies, if you need to quote somebody. Better to have a free correspondent.

Internet freedom

With a stifled media, Telegram channels and video blogs are increasingly popular and coming to Lukashenkos attention.

Lukashenko at all his meetings says that it is they who are to blame for everything, Khalip said, adding that authorities at first did not know how to address it. You can revoke the accreditation of a journalist, but what do you do with a YouTube channel?

Authorities have stepped up the arrests and harassment of bloggers. But Khalip believes its a losing battle.

It is possible to oppress a certain number of journalists located in Belarus, but it is impossible to fight the internet. Therefore, in my opinion, they have already lost this war.

The journalist was convicted of rioting after the 2010 election and authorities jailed her husband, Andrew Sannikov, who ran as an opposition presidential candidate.

News websites based outside Belarus are a key source of information. Despite attempts by authorities to block the sites, readers are finding ways to access them online.

The Charter'97 website has been blocked for over two years, editor-in-chief Radina said. But people have learned to bypass the blocking via virtual private networks [and] anonymizers, and still read us because they need accurate information.

It is impossible to completely cut off information, because these days not only journalists but everyone can record videos on their mobile phones and post them on the internet. Information on what happens in Belarus on August 9 and 10 will appear anyway, Radina said.

Goretsky, deputy chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, said the internet, along with social media and Telegram channels, makes it faster and easier to share or access objective information.

People no longer watch TV day and night; they watch YouTube channels. This gave birth to the phenomenon of Sergei Tikhanovsky, who created his own channel, which was popular with the older generation as well, he said.

While the government has been fighting all these years for print runs and compulsory subscriptions, independent publications have de facto taken over the internet," Goretsky said. And although many of them do not have accreditation and cannot attend official events, they have several advantages, including the internet.

This article originated in VOAs Russian service.

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Lukashenkos Biggest Election Opponent: the Internet - Voice of America

387 international leaders including human rights authorities, NGOs and religious communities are calling on South Korea to stop suppression on a minor religions group named Shincheonji Church of Jesus for COVID-19.

After the outbreak, a district court is investigating under suspicion of intentional spread of the COVID-19 arresting 6 church authorities including President Lee Man-hee of Shincheonji church. And the Seoul city government canceled a permit for a foundation of the HWPL, an international peace organization which Mr. Lee established.

In United Kingdom, Chairman of International Human Rights Committee, Iftikhar Ayaz said The brutal persecution of the members of the Shincheonji church in Korea and the inhumane denial of unregistering their corporation is a horrible negligence of State Responsibility which must treat all citizens equally without any discrimination whatsoever.

He added The Government must honor in practice the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which emphasizes the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

Franklin Hoet Linares from Venezuela, Former President and Honorary Life President of the World Jurist Association, stated If the comments that are being broadly spread are true, I would not hesitate to describe it as national and human shame, in addition to turning such nefarious attacks into discrimination against the freedom of religion. We do not understand why, in a country where freedom of religion is enshrined, the Government can allow the Korean Constitution to be violated, whereas it clearly states in Article 20, Clauses 1 and 2 All citizens will enjoy freedom of religion and religion and state will be separated.

Willy Fautre, Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), said that the recent attack on Shincheonji can be viewed as an attempt by the fundamentalist Protestant groups in South Korea to weaken and destroy the competitor in the religious market.

Last month, 11 NGOs including European Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience (CAP-LC) submitted a report for annual report for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to the UN Secretary General at the 44th session in the UN Assembly Human Rights Council. The report is titled scapegoating members of Shincheonji for COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea.

The report stated, The virus cannot be an excuse to violate human rights and religious liberty of hundreds of thousands of believers. Intolerance, violence, and discrimination against Shincheonji should be put to an end.

Up to date, 512 members of the Shinchonji Daegu Church donated their blood plasma for development a new treatment for COVID 19. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to produce corona-related drugs with plasma donated by members of the Shinchonji Daegu Church and conduct clinical tests from this September.

The church official said. The members recovered from COVID-19 donate their blood plasma as reward for treatment offered by government. We want to support the development of a vaccine."

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International Leaders And Human Rights Ngos Call On South Korea To Stop Oppression On Minor Religion For Covid - The Nigerian Voice

Japan has once again found itself entangled in a recurring skirmish with South Korea over wartime labor a seemingly intractable row with no end in sight.

On Tuesday, a South Korean district court completed the process of serving the Japanese side with documents ordering the seizure of Nippon Steel Corp. assets, including around 81,000 shares it had acquired through its joint venture with the Korean firm Posco.

The action pushes the liquidation of the assets closer to reality, following through on a 2018 decision by South Koreas Supreme Court ordering the Japanese firm to provide about 40 million in compensation to four Koreans who said they were forced to work against their will for the steel-makers predecessor during Japans colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Although the two neighbors have squabbled over history for years, compensating for wartime labor by liquidating Japanese assets, at least for Tokyo, is more than merely an instance of Seoul rehashing the past. In the Japanese governments view, South Korea is attempting to sabotage a 1965 economic pact that not only settled the wartime labor issue but also constitutes the cornerstone of the two countries 55-year postwar relationship.

On the other hand, Seoul, and in particular President Moon Jae-in, driven by a sense of justice and a desire to gain public approval, has placed the will of the victims and their families above the landmark bilateral agreement that normalized ties.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, driven by a sense of justice and a desire to gain public approval, has placed the will of victims of wartime labor and their families above a landmark bilateral agreement that normalized ties. | BLOOMBERG

With growing mutual distrust between the two countries and their leaders constrained by publics that have grown increasingly skeptical of each other, there is little prospect of ending the deadlock any time soon. A feud of this type could further erode mutual trust, jeopardizing future economic and national security cooperation.

The issue of wartime labor hasnt been able to be solved in a bilateral discussion or through politics or diplomacy so as the legal framework of Japanese-South Korean relations is challenged, the relationship is put on trial, said Yuki Asaba, a professor of Korean studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto. Right now, history is being put on a trial. In other words, historical issues are points of contention in (an actual) court.

Even 75 years since Japan surrendered, ending World War II, Tokyos 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and its deeds during that period remain sore subjects and a key source of anti-Japan sentiment among many Koreans to this day.

Japan systematically brought in heavy numbers of male workers from the Korean Peninsula between 1939 and 1945 to relieve labor shortages during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

After the conflicts ended and Korea was liberated, Seoul demanded compensation for its laborers, alleging they had been forced to work in Japan under harsh conditions. Through 14 years of negotiations, Japan and the newly formed South Korea agreed to settle all post-colonial compensation issues by concluding an economic cooperation fund that was used to turn around the frail Korean economy and pay wartime compensation to individual laborers.

Nearly six decades later, however, the South Korean Supreme Court determined in 2018 that four wartime laborers were entitled to receive compensation, concluding the pact did not deny the individual right of laborers to ask for consolation money for their suffering under Japans colonial rule.

Until this ruling, all South Korean leaders had agreed that the wartime labor issue had been legally settled as explicitly stated in the pact.

However, Moon, who leads the left-leaning Democratic Party and is a former human rights lawyer, refused to intervene after the ruling.

Instead, he insisted on a victim-centered approach to the individual claims in the lawsuits, with his administration taking the view that the court decisions should reflect the desires of the victims and their families, something his government argued is an internationally recognized legal principle.

The Moon administration took over after a disaster by Parks government and emphasized justice and morals, Junya Nishino, a political science professor who studies Japan-South Korea relations at Keio University, said in reference to the conservative former President Park Geun-Hye, who was impeached in 2017 over political scandals.

Many of those who serve in the Moon administration have a strong opinion that the start (of bilateral relations) in 1965 was a mistake and there should be a redo, Nishino said.

South Koreans chant slogans during an anti-Japan rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in August last year. The banners read Condemn Abe regime. Make an official apology to victims of wartime forced labor. | REUTERS

In the years since the first democratically government came to power in 1988, South Korea has been undergoing a self-examination of its past and uncovering political oppression and human rights abuses by authoritarian leaders, including around the time when the pact with Japan was established in 1965.

Hypersensitive to public sentiment, Moon has opted to side with the ex-laborers to gain public approval and cement his political base. In a major shift away from the conservatives, who long held power after the war, Nishino said liberals now have more control across a broader swath of mainstream Korean society.

Still, Moons emphasis on justice and morals is facing growing scrutiny amid a litany of scandals.

Former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, a longtime advocate of womens rights who was widely believed to be a potential successor to Moon, committed suicide last month after being accused of sexual harassment by his secretary. And on Friday, six of Moons aides, including his chief of staff, offered to resign following revelations that senior officials were found to own more than one home even as the administration attempts to halt surging home prices.

Fearful of further antagonizing the public, Moon is expected to maintain his tough stance on wartime labor, Nishino said.

The mutual skepticism is reaching a critical level.

In a joint opinion poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Chosun Ilbo newspapers in early June, 84 percent of respondents in Japan and 91 percent in South Korea described relations with the other as bad. The ratio of Koreans who view Japan negatively also marked a record high.

The South Korean Supreme Courts 2018 ruling and subsequent stalemate have prompted ties between the countries to unravel further, including in trade and security.

In July last year, the Japanese trade ministry tightened rules on chemical exports to South Korea and subsequently ended its exemption on a plethora of trade regulations. Although Japanese officials adamantly denied having a political motive, the South Korean government viewed the move as retaliation for the 2018 ruling.

Just over a month later, South Korea struck back, this time on the national security front, unilaterally declaring it would not renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a bilateral pact governing exchanges of sensitive information primarily on missile threats from North Korea. Seoul reversed the decision at the eleventh hour after intense pressure from the United States, but has said the door still remains open to scrapping the deal at any time.

Nippon Steel Corp. on Friday filed an appeal against the seizure of its assets in South Korea that were earmarked for liquidation to compensate wartime laborers, in a move sure to put the two nations on a diplomatic collision course yet again. | REUTERS

Following Tuesdays ruling in the compensation case, Nippon Steel filed an appeal. Now, the South Korean court must decide whether to accept it, a process that could take months, buying the company time, Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified legal sources. But even if the appeal is rejected there, the company could take it to a higher court.

Due to the complexity of the process, the actual liquidation of the assets is expected to be months away.

In the meantime, observers say there remains little incentive for Moon or Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to back down.

Its impossible to compromise unless both leaders take a different stance than theyve taken and shown to their citizens which would be a tremendous blow to them, said Asaba. They are in a situation where they know theyll collide head-on if nothing is done, but no one can take the wheel and avoid the looming damage.

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'History on trial': Why Japan's wartime labor dispute is more than another tit-for-tat with South Korea - The Japan Times

Ava Homas powerful debut novelDaughters of Smoke and Firetells the story of Leila Saman, growing up in Mariwan, Iran, a mainly Kurdish city of 90,000 people about 15 km from the Iraqi border.

The book opens on the day five-year-old Leilas brother Chia is born, which happens to be March 16, 1988 - the day Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a chemical attack on Halabja, killing thousands of people, mostly Kurds, and injuring thousands more with nerve agents and mustard gas in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war.

Halabja happens to be the hometown of Leilas father, who ends up weeping on the day his only son is born. Immediately the reader gets the sense that few moments of joy in this world will go unsullied by darkness.

One of the things you learn as a Kurd is that even when you have a little bit of joyful time, happy time, some freedom, it is going to crash, Homa told Ahval in a podcast.

Since its publication in May, Homas novel has received mostly rave reviews. The Independent described it as blisteringly powerful and named it one of the best books of May, while former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith called it one of the best books to come out of the Near East in a long time.

Grief and suffering are as regular as the sunrise in Homas Kurdistan. Leilas grandfather watches Iraqi authorities wipe out his family. Then Leilas father sees friends and relatives hung in prison, before finally Leila herself sees the person shes closest to executed.

Homa, who fled Iran at age 24, has written thatgrowing up Kurdish in Iran she learned at a young age that being alive was an act of subversion, that her life meant next to nothing to the state or the police - the very people whose responsibility it was to protect her.

Its a question that you deal with from the moment you learn your name, you know that you belong to this group that has been targeted for annihilation, she said. You are wondering, Why? How can I make meaning out of it? Why am I so hated? How can I be strong?

Homas novel examines how the four members of the Saman family - Leila, her brother Chia, her father Alan and her mother Hana - grapple with being a Kurd in Kurdistan in different ways, and how their reactions to their world ripple out to affect others.

Daughters of Smoke and Fire is one of the first novels written in English by a Kurdish woman, and as the book opens five-year-old Leila recalls her father explaining to her that women are worth half as much as men under Iranian law. Years later, after a desperate teenage Leila throws herself in front of a speeding car, her mothers main concern when she visits her in the hospital is not her daughters physical and mental well-being - both of which are seriously compromised - but whether her virginity is intact.

The generation of Kurdish women born in the 1950s and 1960s sometimes accidentally served as agents of the patriarchy, believing they were protecting their daughters even as they kept them from living. When not writing, Homa helps organise and run suicide prevention workshops for Iranian women, and shes found they are often driven by their parents to seriously consider the most drastic measure possible.

The people who are supposed to shelter and protect you become in a way agents of the state by bringing that oppression inside the home, said Homa. You cannot be a hypocrite. If you want justice and freedom, then you want to bring justice and freedom to your own house first.

Shiler, one of the novels most compelling characters, finds her own sort of freedom. Born in prison, she rebels all through childhood and ends up going to the Qandil mountains to join the Peshmerga. She represents the sort of 21st century Kurdish woman who might lead a battalion of militants into battle against the Islamic State or oversee Turkeys main pro-Kurdish party, the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Yet even these women face issues of identity and empowerment.

On the one hand, yes you are fighting side by side with your man to protect Kurdistan, she said. On the other hand you are fighting something within yourself - the voice that told you from the moment you are born there is a ceiling to how much you can achieve.

This type of Kurdish woman wascrucial to the creation of Rojava, the autonomous region of northeast Syria founded in late 2013 amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war, which Homa sees as a sort of beacon.

Everything we dreamed for and fought for was finally possible, she said, pointing to the regions famed gender equality and bottom-up power structure, its prohibition on under-age marriage, forced marriage and polygamy. It wasnt perfect, wasnt beyond criticism, but it was really the best thing to happen to Kurds.

The existence of Rojava has brought Kurds closer together, underscoring the potential of their struggle and the fact that Kurdish solidarity stretches beyond borders.

The happiness and achievement of Rojava was for all of us, the same way the Dersim massacre or Halabja massacre was everyones pain, regardless of borders, said Homa.

In Dersim, or Turkeys Tunceli province, Turkish authorities killed tens of thousands of Kurdish people in 1937-38, an event that made it crystal clear Kurds were unlikely to ever feel comfortable in any of the four states Western powers placed them in the wake of the First World War, setting them on the path to violent rebellion.

That it happened in Turkey may help explain why Turkish Kurds have in many ways led the fight against Kurds oppressors. The fact that Turkey is home to the worlds largest Kurdish population - an estimated 17 million Kurds, compared to some 10 million in Iran, 7 million in Iraq, and 3 million in Syria - likely also played a role.

Homas novel at one point mentions the Kurds in "Bakur, the north in Kurdish, whose villages were burned and whose women were raped by the Turkish army. This is a clear reference to the states response to the insurgency launched by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the early 1980s, and which continues today. Earlier, Leilas father describes Kurds in Turkey as hopeless.

We look up to them, said Homa. We are amazed by how much they have been able to accomplish not only by standing up to state oppression but also by changing their society.

She pointed to the women co-leaders of the HDP, the influence of jailed former HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirta and the way Kurdish leaders in Turkey stand up not just for Kurdish rights, but for human rights, for diversity and democratic plurality.

Their ability to move beyond nationalism, their ability to organise themselves, even in the diaspora there is a sense of deep admiration and respect for Kurds from Bakur, she said. There is a real sense of aspiring to them, not just today but even in history, they have always been more advanced in womens rights and they have been braver in standing up for their own rights.

Thanks to their brutally painful and difficult history, Homa believes Kurds have become masters of rising from the ashes - a sentiment that nicely sums up Leilas story. Despite the Turkish incursion launched last year, Rojava still exists today.

Despite Turkeys recent military offensive, the Peshmerga and the PKK remain headquartered in the Qandil mountains.

And despite the vast and continuing crackdown by the Turkish government, the HDP continues to fight for the rights of Kurds and all oppressed people in Turkey.

The lesson might be that Kurdish oppressors tend to use similar methods and tend to fail in silencing their foes.

When you look at Machiavellis instructions, they are the same things the Iranian government or the Turkish government are applying today, said Homa. In this sense they are not original. We are capable of rising above these things if we believe we dont deserve the way we are treated.

Original post:

The unbearable weight of being Kurdish - Ahval

President Donald Trump wants to ban WeChat, dramatically escalating tensions with China. But what is WeChat, and why is it so controversial?

The popular Chinese messaging app is used across the Chinese diaspora but may be unfamiliar outside of those circles.

WeChat, called Weixin in China, functions like Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber, Instagram and several other apps all at once. For many Chinese people, WeChat is an indispensable app for staying in touch across the world.

Some of that success has been aided by the government. China blocked many American apps including Facebook, Google and Twitter, so state-sponsored apps have become the norm.

WeChat is owned by Tencent, China's biggest tech company and the world's largest gaming company. In March, Tencent reported that WeChat has nearly 1.2 billion monthly active users. The company does not disclose user numbers by country, but industry analysts say the vast majority of them are in China.

The app has been subsidized by the Chinese government since its creation in 2011.

WeChat has a lot more functionality in China than it does in the United States. While in America, you can hail a cab, play mini games, post to your "story" and send money.

By comparison in China, where stores regularly accept WeChat Pay as a form of payment and QR codes are all over cities, the sky's the limit. Inside WeChat, you can pay bills, check out restaurant menus, find local hangouts, book doctor appointments, reach out to new business contacts, file police reports, read the news and access bank services.

President Donald Trump issued executive orders late Thursday night that would ban WeChat and TikTok, the short-form video app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, from operating in the United States in 45 days if they are not sold by their parent companies.

According to the order, a ban would apply to "any transaction that is related to WeChat" made by any person or "any property" subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

Trump wrote in his executive order, "Like TikTok, WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information."

He continued, "The United States must take aggressive action against the owner of WeChat to protect our national security."

WeChat has a reputation for being heavily monitored. That's despite Tencent's attempts to convince users to "rest assured, respecting user privacy has always been one of WeChat's most important principles," as the company wrote in a 2018 blog post.

In an 2016 Amnesty International report on user privacy, Tencent scored a zero out of 100 for WeChat's lack of freedom of speech protection and lack of end-to-end encryption. Tencent doesn't disclose when the Chinese government requests user data and gives no detail about the kind of encryption, if any, it employs.

The hit to Tencent so far would be mostly symbolic, given the small market share WeChat has in the United States. But if it expands into gaming apps, a massive part of the company's business, that could be a big problem.

Tencent owns Riot Games, the maker of the world's biggest PC game "League of Legends," and has a stake in Epic Games, parent company of "Fortnite." It also has a huge mobile games business and is working with the Pokmon Company to make what looks to be a cross between "Pokmon" and "League of Legends," called "Pokmon Unite." The game was announced in June and has no release date yet. It would arrive on Nintendo Switch and mobile.

Tencent has dealt with government restrictions before, when the Chinese government stopped approving new games for nine months in 2018. Tencent stock lost 25% of its value in that the time period.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said it "firmly opposes" the executive orders targeting WeChat and TikTok.

"The United States is using national security as an excuse and using state power to oppress non-American businesses," ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a daily press briefing, accusing the United States of "political manipulation and oppression."

A Tencent spokesperson said the company "is reviewing the executive order to get a full understanding."

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What is WeChat and why does Trump want to ban it? - WKTV

LAHORE: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi Saturday met Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar at the CM's Office here where matters of mutual interest, political situation, and Southern Punjab Secretariats affairs came under discussion.

Punjab Minister Dr. Muhammad Akhtar, Chief Whip National Assembly MNA Aamir Dogar, MNA Zain Qureshi, Principal Secretary to the CM Punjab and officers concerned were also present on the occasion.

The meeting decided to take prompt administrative steps to make Southern Punjab Secretariat fully functional.

Qureshi said the government was fulfilling all its promises made to the people. He said establishment of Southern Punjab Secretariat would bring relief to the people and their problems would be solved at the grassroots level.

Qureshi, Usman Buzdar and other members of the assembly strongly condemned the worst military siege and oppression of Modi government in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Qureshi said Pakistan was incomplete without Kashmir adding that Modi had orchestrated Muslims genocide in IOJ&K and set a new history of oppression on Kashmiris.

Buzdar said the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan had been highlighting Indian atrocities at all levels and the entire nation observed Youm-e-Istehsal.

One road in every division of Punjab, including Lahore, would be named after Srinagar, he said, adding, the government paid tribute to everlasting struggle of the Kashmiri people against the illegal Indian occupation.

He termed Kashmir a jugular vein of Pakistan and said Pakistan could not back off from the core issue of Kashmir cause. He said Modi had blatantly violated the UN resolutions on August 5, 2019. He said Pakistan would continue to expose Indias stubbornness and illegal steps at every level.

Usman Buzdar said the secretaries of different departments would soon be posted in Southern Punjab Secretariat and the secretaries would be fully empowered.

The Southern Punjab Secretariat would be given administrative and financial autonomy so that affairs related to Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions could be dealt with locally, the chief minister stated.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Saturday said Pakistan remained steadfast in support of an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan.

Good to speak (with Mike Pompeo) and to reiterate Pakistans continued stand for regional peace and security. We remain steadfast in support of an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan, he said on Twitter. He was referring to his Fridays telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wherein in the two sides discussed the bilateral and regional matters including Kashmir dispute as well as Afghan peace process.

Qureshi said Pakistan looked forward to strengthening bilateral relationship with the US and to continuing as anchors of stability.

The foreign ministers tweet came in response to an earlier tweet by Pompeo saying, Productive call with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi today about continued cooperation on Afghan peace and the importance of supporting regional stability. I look forward to advancing our shared goals and increasing partnership.

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Modi sets new history of oppression in Kashmir: Qureshi - The News International

Seth Rogen was right to say there there were people in Palestine before 1948 (Pic: Palestine Solidarity Project/Flickr)

All it took was one comment from actor Seth Rogen for one of Israels leading politicians to spring into action.

Rogen said on a podcast that as a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel. Referring to the Israeli states founding in 1948, he added, They never tell you that, Oh by the way, there were people there.

Shortly afterwards Isaac Herzog tweeted that Rogen had apologised for his commentsa claim the actor denies.

Herzog is an Israeli Labour politician and chairperson of the Jewish Agency, set up in 1929 to promote Zionism among Jewish people and colonisation in Palestine.

This fragility in the face of criticism shows the Israeli state is worried about the worldwide outcry against its oppression of the Palestinians.

In the US, in particular, Israel is facing a crisis of support among left wingers and liberals, including many younger Jewish people.

Annexation

There is opposition to Binyamin Netanyahus right wing government, such as its annexation of Palestinian land and embrace of Donald Trump and Europes far right.

But it also includes a questioning of Israels founding ideology of Zionism.

This response to antisemitism in Europe argues for an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, and justifies Palestinian dispossession and oppression.

One poll in San Franciscos Bay Area found that only40 percent of Jews aged 18 to 34 were comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.

Rogen is by no means an anti-Zionist.

But what he said questioned one of Zionisms main mythsthe claim that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land. Israels was built on the ethnic cleansing of more than 800,000 Palestinians, a process known as the Nakba or catastrophe.

Paramilitary forces that went on to become the Israeli army drove Palestinians from villages and towns through massacres and terror.

Since its foundation, Israel has grabbed more Palestinian land and brought more Palestinians under its rule.

In 1948 Israeli forces conquered land beyond what was stipulated in the UN partition plan for the Britishruled Mandate of Palestine. Then in 1967 Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But Israeli politicians are obsessed with maintaining a demographic majority. Israels first prime minister David Ben-Gurion said, Only a state with at least 80 percent Jews is a viable and stable state.

So what happens to the Palestinians under its rule?

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, US and Israeli leaders have talked of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. But throughout this time Israel further cemented its control in the Occupied Territories.

Today more than 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, their vast settlements connected to Israel with exclusive roads.

And some 3 million Palestinians live as Israeli subjects while the Palestinian Authority acts as a subcontractor for the occupation.

Solution

The idea that the USwhich supports Israel to safeguard its interests in the Middle Eastwould deliver a twostate solution was always a sham.

But Donald Trumps peace deal has further exposed this.

It would make formal the apartheid that Palestinians already live under.

This situation isnt just down to the policies of the Netanyahu government. Occupation and apartheid flow from the logic of the settler colonial project.

One state is inevitable. The question is whether it will be the Israeli apartheid state or a democratic state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews.

Herzogs reaction shows how concerned the Israeli government is about the sense of unease about its foundations and actions.

As more people question Israeli occupation, its time for the left to stand up and make the argument.

Winning liberation means supporting the Palestinian struggle against colonialism and apartheid.

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Israeli state is worried about questioning of its history - Socialist Worker

Amongst the bleakest in the history of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), these past 12 months beginning with the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A on August 5, 2019 have witnessed unprecedented violations of the human rights to health and life.

Decades of oppression and humiliation of the people of J&K were escalated further through indefinite curfews, unconstitutional arrests and detainment, unprecedented military presence, and the clampdown on democratic and public institutions. The imposition of an indefinite lockdown among the longest in J&K, as early reports by media and civil society (August to December 2019) flagged impacted every dimension of life in Kashmir. People were deeply affected by the arrests and detentions, shelling and pellet injuries, economic distress, health problems, and breakdown of public services including education and health. Inevitably, the impact on peoples physical and psychological health and access to healthcare was severe.

Life-saving medicines were in short supply and stock-outs were evident. The lack of transport caused pregnant women to travel long distances on foot for delivery and created barriers for reaching the hospitals in time. Patients suffering from cancer, those requiring dialysis were unable to reach hospitals or access healthcare, andpatients discharged from hospitals were unable to return home due to lack of transport. Roadblocks and the communications shutdown had also affected healthcare providers and frontline health workers like ASHA workers, and prevented them from providing regular health care services due to restrictions as well as fears with regard to their safety.

Hospitals had to use ambulances to ferry hospital staff to and from their homes because private vehicles were not allowed in some areas. Doctors were stopped repeatedly at multiple barricades for identity checking and interrogated about the purpose of their travel, delaying them from reaching health facilities. Peoples experiences of severe distress, trauma and high levels of psychosocial stress were seen to worsen.

Despite narratives of normalcy that began gradually emerging, a visit to Kashmir in February 2020 by a group of activists and academics witnessed a far-removed reality of widespread experiences of distress, fear, anger and violations. Interactions with people in Kashmir during the visit exposed the facade of normalcy, reiterating the huge daily challenges including access to health services, particularly due to the continued restrictions on movement, curfews, absence of transport and communications, as well as the fear of violence.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The lockdown had precipitated a public health crisis evident from, for instance, the significant increase in numbers of stillbirths, foetal distress and severe postpartum anaemia because pregnant women could not come for regular check-ups. Moreover, the exponential rise in mental health problems reported since August 2019 provided more clues about the effects.

Further, the shutdown of internet, landlines and mobile phones disabled the functioning of health systems and programmes for the benefit of people, especially for the poorest. The narratives of daily humiliation and distress due to the sway of absolute power, control and disruption of all aspects of their lives, was a constant refrain.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the health situation in J&K

By the end of March 2020, the feigned rhetoric of normalcy was further shattered by the imposition of a sudden and total lockdown by the Central government in all states as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While most parts of the country experienced this for the first time, for J&K, the pandemic lockdown deepened the implications of the pre-existing lockdown since August 2019.

The response to this unprecedented global health catastrophe of COVID-19 has been an authoritarian lockdown implemented by an aggressive state, creating an severe humanitarian crisis. For the people of J&K, this has further exacerbated the trauma and impact of the ongoing clampdown as well as the fractures in the health system, and its consequences for the health and lives of the people. The COVID-19 lockdown has provided legitimacy for further repression under the garb of a public health necessity.

The lockdown not only continues to limit movement but also suppress the ground realities, including conditions of work of healthcare providers and barriers to access healthcare in the pandemic. For instance, on April 1, 2020, the Directorate of Health Services in Kashmir issued a circular threatening strict action against government servants who criticise the governments efforts to combat the pandemic on social media or in the press. This was to challenge the prerogative of healthcare providers to flag concerns about the unavailability of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, the lack of safe working conditions or the absence of response by relevant authorities.

Watch | Economic Damage to Kashmir Is Worse Than What Is Being Reported: Former Srinagar Mayor

Whether the senior cardiologist in Srinagar who was detained and beaten up by the police and later lodged in a police station in Srinagar, the three gynaecologists of the Lal Dedh Hospital who alleged harassment by the police deployed outside the hospital, or the ambulance driver who was beaten up by police personnel in Pulwama district while transporting patients, the harassment and violence against healthcare providers preventing them from carrying out their healthcare duties have raised serious concerns.

As has been seen in other parts of the country, the pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of the public health infrastructure and human resources even in J&K. Given the non-availability of primary health care, patients develop secondary symptoms and need advanced health care including critical care involving ICUs, ventilators and oxygen supply. With merely two multi-specialty hospitals in the Kashmir Valley, patients are deprived of timely treatment.

Doctors have also called for increased home quarantine and for the home quarantining of asymptomatic patients to reduce the burden on the healthcare system. ASHA workers, who were engaged in contact tracing and door-to-door surveys, also reported the non-availability of surgical masks and sanitisers.

Although the J&K high court, in April 2020, sought a report from the Department of Health and Medical Education on the availability of safety equipment for healthcare professionals and on the provision of care for the families of healthcare and government employees or officials engaged in the fight against COVID-19, concerns about safety of healthcare providers has been most visible in the context of the pandemic located in the larger context of surveillance, violence and control.

The prolonged blockade of 4G internet services is one such example. With only low-speed 2G services available, especially in areas of South Kashmir, the functioning of doctors and patients accessing healthcare have been severely affected. The absence of fast-speed internet can affect the health of the entire community in general and particularly in a pandemic context, where immediate communication and widespread outreach are critical public health imperatives.

Women in J&K continue to experience trauma because of their inability to access timely health services for delivery due to lack of transport, stigmatisation and delays and denial of maternal healthcare, which have resulted in morbidities or even in the death of women. There were reports about a full-term pregnant woman who was denied services, allegedly on the pretext of waiting for her COVID-19 test results.

Also read | Excluded from Law-Making for Two Years, Kashmiris are Angry and Alienated

In July 2020, a PIL was filed in the J&K high court, on the basis of which the court directed the health authorities of all districts to maintain separate maternity hospitals for pregnant women and children, equipped with all facilities and trained staff. This ruling mandates a magisterial enquiry into all incidents of medical negligence resulting in the death of a child or a pregnant woman, and compensation to be deducted from the salary of the employees guilty of medical negligence.

Furthermore, the anxiety and distress of day-to-day survival, financial uncertainty, job loss, isolation, fear of illness or violence, grief, inability to access health services, inability to pay medical bills, lack of communication with relatives outside Kashmir, and many other psychological effects are increasingly evident.

Undoubtedly, there is an urgent need to address these issues through immediate as well as sustained strategies, given their potential social and economic impact. However, despite the overwhelming current focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, the narrative in Kashmir cannot be isolated from the more deep-seated, fundamental factors that determine the health and lives of the people here clampdown and violence that have created constant fear and humiliation, surveillance and control of every aspect of their lives.

The unlock process in J&K limited merely to the pandemic would be a travesty of justice, public health and human rights. This public health crisis will eventually pass, but is likely to leave a trail of social and economic devastation. In Kashmir, this is linked to the violation of peoples health and their rights as citizens.

The author acknowledges Roshmi Goswami, Kalpana Kannabiran, Navsharan Singh and Pamela Philipose, who were a part of the five-member team that visited Kashmir during February-March 2020. A few parts of this essay has drawn from the report Interrogating the Normal: Report of a Visit to the Valley.

Special thanks to Deepa V. and Ranjan De for their valuable inputs, and Abhiti Gupta for research support.

Sarojini Nadimpally is a public health practitioner and National Co-Convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.

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The 'Unlock' in Kashmir Has to Take Into Account Human Rights Violations - The Wire

By Siboniso Mngadi 4h ago

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SIBONISO MNGADI

Durban - Businesswoman Zanele Mbokazi-Nkambule has called upon women to unite, like those who did in 1956, to fight the scourge of gender-based violence and to resuscitate the country's ailing economy.

As the country will embrace the power of women on Sunday, August 9 in honour of fearless women who marched against the apartheid governments the pass laws in 1956, she was on a mission to spread her words.

The date resembles the power of women who staged a march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in 1956 to protest against the proposed pass laws.

Women from all parts of the country came together for a common purpose.

Mbokazi-Nkambule, a founder of Crown Gospel Awards said she would be hosting a "Woman to Woman" online Conference, to discuss the empowerment of women in different sectors including entrepreneurship and the role of women in a fight against Gender-based violence.

We need to come together like the women of 1956, their common mission regardless of their position, profession and age.

This years commemoration comes at the time when the world is facing a Covid-19 pandemic which is causing havoc on our economy. The country is also facing a scourge of gender-based violence, we need to take initiative and find a solution.

I urge all women in their formation, maybe it churches, stokvel, workplace or society to come together to transform one another.

We have different expertise and capabilities, we need unity and courage to change our challenges.

We can draw strength and courage from our heroines, they rose against all the odds which we can also do, she said.

Mbokazi-Nkambule also reflected on the fact that the countrys workforce was dominated by men.

She called on women in high positions not to distance themselves from communities, where women are hopeless, unemployed and victims of violence.

It's time to stop relying on men on issues affecting us and our children. We have many women in business and some are occupying senior positions in government. We need to work as a collective. We are capable of great things and we can defeat gender-based violence if women of 1956 fought against the oppression, she added.

Mbokazi-Nkambule online conference will take place on Sunday on social media platforms.

Sunday Tribune

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A call to unite against the scourge of gender-based violence - IOL

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis. At its core is a global public health emergency on a scale not seen for a century, requiring a global response with far-reaching consequences for our economic, social, and political lives.

The emergency imposed extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, both dictatorships and democracies curtailed civil liberties on a massive scale.

Guaranteeing human rights for everyone poses a challenge for every country around the world to a differing degree. But, the measures of emergency to face the pandemic affected peoples livelihoods and security, their access to healthcare, work, education, the movement inside and outside of countries, as well as to leisure.

The impact of the pandemic poses fundamentals questions: How will the pandemic impact human rights and democracy?

Impact of COVID-19 on human rights

The COVID-19 pandemic legitimately prompted countries to take drastic measures to protect public health. These measures are restricting a number of individual rights and liberties enshrined in constitutions and in international conventions on human rights.

The effects of the pandemic were not only limited to the global economy but extended to the rights and freedoms of citizens due to the imposition of emergency laws, exceptional laws, curfews in a number of countries, and the isolation of specific cities or regions.

The measures taken by governments have increased concerns about governments exploiting these exceptional circumstances to abort principles of democracy and human rights.

In this regard, we can cite many examples.

The pandemic allowed China to have more control over the population. China resorted to quarantining the entire city of Wuhan. Foreign journalists, including journalists from the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal were expelled.

The pandemic suspended public gatherings and social protests in a number of countries such as Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq, where the authorities persuaded street protesters to end their mass protests that might exacerbate the health crisis.

The exceptional measures also restricted the freedom of the press. Journalists were not allowed to report on developments on the ground except with the permission of authorities.

The spread of the pandemic led to economic stagnation in most countries, due to the closure of a number of factories and industrial and commercial institutions, which caused the loss of jobs for many workers, which raises the issue of social rights, including the right to work.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin seized the opportunity to expand the already tremendous apparatus of oppression in the Kremlin in the form of thousands of facial recognition cameras that would enable the police to locate and target people participating in street demonstrations.

Moscow police had caught and fined people who violated quarantine and self-isolation using facial recognition.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now giving Russian authorities an opportunity to test new powers and technology, and the countrys privacy and free-speech advocates worry the government is building sweeping new surveillance capabilities.

Journalists, bloggers, and those covering the COVID-19 response have been targeted. In Venezuela, journalist Darvinson Rojas was arrested by security forces for his reporting on the pandemic. Similarly, there are numerous reports of journalists and human rights activists being arrested, placed under house arrest, harassed, and threatened for the criticisms of their governments handling of the pandemic. These countries include China, El Salvador, Iraq, Turkey, Serbia, Egypt, Iran, Belarus, and Vietnam.

Protecting individuals from the pandemic is necessary, but international human rights laws provide a framework to guide government actions, as states have an obligation to protect a range of rights such as the right to work, to housing, to education, and freedom of expression.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on democracy

Some countries have employed exceptional measures to achieve political goals. For example, Egypt announced the extension of the state of emergency throughout the country, and the goal of the emergency is not necessarily confronting the pandemic, but rather facing the opponents of the political system.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbn took advantage of the pandemic to dismantle democracy in the country.

On March 30, Hungarys parliament passed an emergency law granting the government indefinite, sweeping powers. The new statute goes well beyond those emergency statutes passed elsewhere in Europe.

The Hungarian law enables rule by decree, bypassing the legislature on any law, as long as the crisis lasts. All elections until then will be suspended.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte acquired complete legislative power, with no time limits, and issued a law against false news, and gave orders to the police to impose a state of emergency. Thousands of people have been arrested for violating curfews.

The war on coronavirus has given extraordinary powers to governments at the expense of laws and various constitutions, which draws attention to the fact that democracy and human rights are subject to a difficult test.

COVID-19 constitutes a major stress test for societies, states, and international order. When it comes to the human rights dimension, many countries are failing this test. Neoliberal economic policies, austerity, and hostile environmental policies have left social protection threadbare.

They have undermined public services, social security, and workers rights, and exposed ever more people to their harmful consequences.

States have an obligation to protect, promote and give effect to human rights for all groups under their jurisdiction, first and foremost the most vulnerable, such as children, older people, refugees, migrants, and persons with disabilities.

States are obligated to fight the pandemic by exceptional measures, but they must respect the fundamental values of democracy, rule of law and human rights.

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The Impact of COVID-19 on Human Rights and Democracy - International Policy Digest

It is an intriguing, but by now hardly surprising, fact that on June 24, the Ministry of Human Resource Development finalised a loan with the World Bank as the culmination of a process allowing for its third and final intervention in determining the structure, content and governance of the entire system of school education, from pre-nursery to Class 12, through its Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) programme. (The earlier interventions were the District Primary Education Programme or DPEP of 1993-2002 and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan since 2002.)

Just a month later, on July 30, Ramesh Pokhriyal, the Minister for Human Resource Development, told mediapersons in New Delhi that the Central Cabinet had passed for immediate implementation the long-delayed New Education Policy or NEP 2020. Both events occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic that is showing no signs of abating across the nation. A series of lockdowns, in various stages in States, districts, cities, towns and urban localities, has brought the economy to a halt. Lakhs of migrant workers, deprived of even the barest incomes, returned to their home towns and villages in the most atrocious conditions.

Schools, colleges and universities have been closed since March and examinations have either not been held or are being held or are threatened to be held online, creating confusion and panic among the majority of students.

The last thing one would have expected is the Cabinet to pass the NEP without presenting and debating it in Parliament at a time when the people are concerned only with getting their lives back on track and coping with the unprecedented health and economic situation.

But it comes as no surprise, since the Government of India has been utilising the COVID-19 crisis to great advantage by passing several of its reform programmes without observing democratic niceties or permitting any democratic resistance.

It has abrogated protective labour laws and collective bargaining, disinvested in the public sector and the Railways, allowed privatisation of the electricity sector, reorganised banks, and cleared environmentally sensitive projects at breakneck speed.

NEP 2020 states that its priority, like that of the World Bank, is ensuring that quality education be made accessible to all children from pre-nursery to Class 12. So, one would be justified in assuming that the World Bank must be providing a hefty grant, or at least a significant loan, to assist in realising this laudable goal.

However, the finalised loan constitutes a mere 1.4 per cent of the total investment required for the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan of which the STARS programme is a part. The Centre and the governments of States and Union Territories would be contributing 98.6 per cent.

Yet, the STARS programme will focus on the whole school approach and teacher education in the Samagra Siksha Abhiyan in the selected high performance States of Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan and the learning States of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. It will thereby allow the World Bank to acquire an overarching role in influencing the teaching-learning content, practices and outcomes of the entire system of school education; training and monitoring faculty for implementing it; setting up merit-based learning assessment systems to measure achievement based on the above; and formulating and implementing governance reforms to cover the training of educational officials and function as an extensive outreach to train parents to participate in implementing the programme.

This raises the next obvious question. Is the World Bank an international educational institution? If not, why is it being asked to design such a comprehensive programme for quality school education in India? Further, what has been the banks experience of earlier interventions in Indias school education system?

The World Bank as an international financial institution creates, regulates and safeguards markets for advancing the interests of international finance capital. It is neither concerned with the educational rights and pedagogical concerns of providing quality education to the majority of Indias children who are deprived of the benefits of such education, nor equipped for that.

From the 1980s onwards, the World Bank has concentrated, particularly in former colonies, on persuading governments to withdraw public resources from education and encourage the entry of private investors and a variety of non-state actors.

As NEP 2020 itself advocates, this omnibus term may include multinational corporations and corporate investors, non-governmental organisation (NGOs), civil society, charitable and/or religious organisations and even volunteers.

Under the garb of being philanthropic rather than merely private partners, the NEP promotes and commends their initiatives and role in sharing resources as well as in synergising the interaction between the public system and private agencies.

To further enhance cooperation and positive synergy among schools, including between public and private schools, the twinning/pairing of one public school with one private school will be adopted across the country, so that such paired schools may meet/interact with each other, learn from each other, and also share resources, if possible. Best practices of private schools will be documented, shared, and institutionalized in public schools, and vice versa, where possible, states the NEP. (7.10)

However, it has become more than evident that with the collaboration of these players, governments can neither be held effectively accountable nor remain responsible for the state of the education system.

The experience of the DPEP, designed and sponsored by the World Bank, should have made this clear already. Implemented in 18 States and nearly half of Indias districts, it incorporated low-cost solutions in government schools to fill the need for greater accessibility and quality. The rapid deterioration of state-funded primary schools (Classes I-V) and the loss of credibility among those who depended most on the system, such as the Scheduled Castes (S.Cs), the Scheduled Tribes (S.Ts), members of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Muslims and other impoverished sections, resulted in the privatisation and commercialisation of school education with the mushrooming of low-budget fee-charging private schools at a faster pace than ever since Independence.

This damaging experience was systematically ignored and the World Banks intervention in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan from 2002 onwards only carried it further. The Right to Education Act, 2009, which legislated a quota of at least 25 per cent for students belonging to the Economically Weaker Sections in admissions to private schools, functioned as a Trojan horse that set up privately funded school education as a desirable option and failed to emphasise its inherently defective pedagogical character that fuses quality in education with the capacity to pay.

Yet, the Centre has finalised the third intervention with the World Bank.

Therefore, the governments claim that it has embarked on a path-breaking direction 34 years after the 1986-92 NEP is misleading. It is only advancing the same strategy as previous governments that followed the perspective and approach of the World Bank model after the adoption of the neoliberal reforms policy in 1991.

Public-private partnership (PPP) strategies, which lie at the core of the World Banks approach, do not provide better quality education. They increase the exclusion of the deprived and the marginalised, exploit a highly discriminatory multi-track system of education promoted by the play of market forces and divert from the constitutional goal of establishing a nationwide system of quality education for all.

Although the NEP states that the aim of the public school system will be to impart the highest quality education so that it becomes the most attractive option for parents from all walks of life for educating their children (8.9), and the document opens with the assertion that substantial investment in a strong, vibrant public education system as well as the encouragement and facilitation of true philanthropic private and community participation will determine government policy, the hackneyed solutions offered by it belie the claim. It says: To facilitate learning for all students, with special emphasis on socio-economically disadvantaged groups (SEDGs), the scope of school education will be broadened to facilitate multiple pathways to learning involving both formal and non-formal education modes.

Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Programs offered by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and State Open Schools will be expanded and strengthened for meeting the learning needs of young people in India who are not able to attend a physical school.

It adds: NIOS and State Open Schools will offer the following programmes in addition to the present programmes: A, B and C levels that are equivalent to Grades 3, 5, and 8 of the formal school system; secondary education programmes that are equivalent to Grades 10 and 12; vocational education courses/programmes; and adult literacy and life-enrichment programmes. States will be encouraged to develop these offerings in regional languages by establishing new/strengthening existing State Institutes of Open Schooling (SIOS). (3.5)

According to the document, .... various successful policies and schemes such as targeted scholarships, conditional cash transfers to incentivise parents to send their children to school, providing bicycles for transport, etc., that have significantly increased participation of SEDGs in the schooling system in certain areas.... must be significantly strengthened across the country. (6.4)

The NEP also declares that to make it easier for both governments as well as non-governmental philanthropic organisations to build schools, to encourage local variations on account of culture, geography, and demographics, and to allow alternative models of education, the requirements for schools will be made less restrictive. The focus will be to have less emphasis on input and greater emphasis on output potential concerning desired learning outcomes. (3.6)

Does the much-needed inclusion of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme as an integral part of the school system offer any new directions? For universal access to the ECCE programme, it offers the old idea of strengthening anganwadi centres and equipping them with high-quality infrastructure, play equipment, and well-trained anganwadi workers and teachers.

State governments would be responsible for training those educated up to 10+2 for six months while those with lower educational levels would receive training for one year. Anganwadis would be fully integrated in school complexes. (1.5) There is nothing new here, for they would continue to remain under several Ministries such as Education, Women and Child Development, and Health. Their separate functions are still not conceived of as integral parts of a significant and cohesive stage of the education system.

An unexamined proposal for establishing ashramshalas and alternative schooling for tribal areas earmarks them for targeted attention. The document mentions a plan for Special Educational Zones only once and does not elaborate. It is not clear if these are zones, with large populations of the underrepresented (a euphemism for the deprived/marginalised) sections, that will be separated from the rest of the system or if they will receive special attention and support.

The World Banks strategy since 1994 has been based on the promotion of a model of knowledge adjusted to the requirements of corporate job markets and a market model of education delivery that involves the privatisation, commercialisation and corporatisation of education. The latter model places the entire burden of education on the individual family and fee-paying parents or students. They are the consumers who make it profitable for the investor or provider to enter the education market. PPP strategies encourage the transition to a market where edu-businesses strengthen their hold over public assets through government reimbursement and voucher schemes.

Governments indirectly further the process by starving and dismantling state-funded education systems through budgetary fund cuts, with subsequent rationalisation proposals for the merger and/closure of crisis-ridden schools. NEP 2020 repeatedly endorses these strategies, which will continue to lead to a massive exclusion from education of backward communities that constitute almost 85 per cent of the population. These strategies leave neither access nor agency for S.Cs, S.Ts, OBCs, Muslims, Denotified Tribes and girls, transgenders and the disabled within these already disempowered categories. The proposed creation of inclusion funds for them will neither change the commercialised character of the system nor even provide meaningful relief to individual recipients.

NEP 2020 also shares the main features of the World Bank approach to the model of knowledge. It approves of and promotes a perspective that is detrimental to establishing an equitable system of quality education in India. The contemporary merchandisation of education requires it not only to conform more closely to the needs of the job market, but also to initiate its own transformation into a new and highly lucrative market. Knowledge as a resource for critically comprehending the contemporary world, societies and value systems is now treated as being too heavy for current teaching-learning methodologies and curricula to handle. The skills approach, a functional assembly of performance-oriented qualities that signal their own desired level of achievement, now defines the basic unit, module, and topic of learning.

The learning outcome too is predetermined. The teaching-learning process is reduced to acquiring procedural competencies that can be appropriately graded for different levels. NEP 2020 is firmly committed to classroom transactions shifting towards competency-based learning and education. It says: The assessment tools (including assessment as, of, and for learning) will also be aligned with the learning outcomes. (4.6)

The proposal for multiple exit and entry points from pre-nursery to Class 12, which begins early with the re-introduction of examinations at classes 3, 5 and 8, is based on the identification of skill levels.

It says: Specific sets of skills and values across domains will be identified for integration and incorporation at each stage of learning, from pre-school to higher education. (4.4)

However, depriving students of the content of formal learning, which not only develops fundamental disciplines, critical thinking and the creativity to innovate and conceptualise opposition to social injustices and all forms of discrimination, makes a mockery of learning as it cultivates conformism in thought and produces citizens only fit to be cogs in the economic and technological machine.

Regulatory centralisation, as achieved through the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI), has been a long-standing demand of private investors.

The loss of democratic freedoms and academic autonomy, with supreme authority being granted to boards of governors of institutions that must compulsorily become autonomous, is a painful reality.

The vision of NEP 2020 is to instill among the learners a deep-rooted pride in being Indian, not only in thought, but also in spirit, intellect, and deeds, as well as to develop knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that support responsible commitment to human rights, sustainable development and living, and global well-being, thereby reflecting a truly global citizen.

To this end, the entire curriculum and pedagogy, from the foundational stage onwards, will be redesigned to be strongly rooted in the Indian and and ethos.... in order to ensure that education is maximally relatable, relevant, interesting, and effective for our students. (4.29)

The document repeatedly makes such exhortations but the idea of India and Indianness that is endorsed appears to be quite distinct from what is usually associated with the plurality and diversity of India.

India has always been identified with being open to absorbing and negotiating with philosophical, religious, cultural and technological knowledge from other parts of the world. NEP 2020 states that the knowledge of India will include knowledge from ancient India and its contributions to modern India and its successes and challenges, and a clear sense of Indias future aspirations. (4.27) This leap across centuries misses the changing experiences of numerous tribal communities; the powerful anti-caste cultural ideologies, monotheistic movements and cults; and the philosophical contestations within various sects of Hinduism.

The political, cultural and technological impact of the exposure to central Asia, the arrival of Islam and the richness and complexity of its intellectual, cultural and sociological consequences that surround us in our daily lives, are also absent.

Equally surprising is the neglect of the period of colonial domination and the decades-long struggle of the people, who, united as a nation, survived the tragedy of Partition and emerged as an independent, constitutional republic. India is far greater, far more expansive, far richer in detail and far deeper in its experience of inequality and oppression than the Sanskrit knowledge systems (4.17), theory and literature that NEP 2020 attempts to confine it to.

The policys failure to recognise the worth of the totality of our subcontinental history, culture and lived experience immeasurably diminishes the very idea of India.

An education policy that is unable to reflect this sweep of history does itself and the youth of India a grave injustice.

Madhu Prasad is with the All India Forum for the Right to Education.

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Education at the mercy of the market - Frontline