Daily Archives: August 26, 2021

Watching Taliban insurgents seize power in Afghanistan in the wake of the withdrawal of U.S. troops left Nazanin Azizian in anguish over the future of her home country.

I have been emotional in a state of grief, panic, helplessness, and anger, said Azizian, a 2021 National Security Fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Like many Afghan nationals who watched up-close or from afar the swift downfall of the Afghan government and the Taliban return to power on Aug. 15, Azizian fears life under the Islamic fundamentalist group, which is known for the enforcement of strict Islamic law and repressive policies toward women and girls.

I am deeply concerned about the generations of Afghans who know nothing but war, said Azizian, whose family fled Afghanistan in 1993, when she was 8 years old, and settled in Northern Virginia.

Over the last two decades while the U.S.-backed Afghan government was in power, women there made gains in education, employment, and political participation. Azizian, who has a doctorate in systems engineering and now works at the Pentagon as a national security expert indefense and militaryintelligence, worries that all those hard-won advances could be lost.

I am deeply concerned about Afghans who will relinquish their educational and career achievement over the last 20 years under the oppression of a twisted, misogynist, authoritarian, fundamentalist Islamic regime that actually insults our faith, said Azizian. I am deeply concerned about public execution and humiliation of women, closings of girls schools, barring of women from work, increased domestic violence, and child marriages.

Azizians family experienced firsthand the rule of the mujahideen, the Islamic guerrillas who overthrew the pro-Soviet Afghan regime in 1992. The Taliban would eventually emerge from the ranks of that group and run the country.

Although Azizian was only 7 years old, she still remembers the violence and chaos of the day when a group she refers to as the terrorists took control of Kabul after the Soviets withdrew.

Bloodshed during the days that followed forced my family and me to take cover in a small bathroom, away from the windows, Azizian wrote in an email interview. For days we were without electricity and water while hearing around-the-clock bombs, rockets, and gunfire. Afghanistan changed from those days onward in a way that was unrecognizable for us, but unfortunately defined how the world came to know it under the Taliban

The terrorists banned concerts, music, and wedding celebrations, and we became habituated to the explosion of bombs, rockets, and other weapons raining death all around us. The terrorists committed brutalities such as breaking into peoples homes, killing innocent people, and abusing women.

There was political warring among mujahideen leaders. Eventually the Taliban movement, largely led by young ultraconservative seminarians, took control and established its own harsh version of Islamic law. That government was toppled by the U.S. invasion in 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the hunt in the region for Osama bin Laden.

Today, uncertainty is fueling concerns among Afghans and international observers about what life will be like under the new Taliban takeover. Azizian, who doesnt have any close family in Afghanistan, hopes for peace, stability, and a government for Afghans and by Afghans.

I hope for Afghanistan that it will someday be governed by a stable, inclusive, and democratic government that resists ethnic fracture, governs accountably, and upholds the rights of women, she said.

Unlike Azizian, Awnit Singh Marta 20 doesnt have memories of life in Afghanistan he was less than a month old when his family immigrated to The Netherlands in 1998, fleeing religious persecution. Martas family are practicing Sikhs, a minority religious group in Afghanistan. They hold memories of good times and hard times.

My mother always talks about how beautiful, open, and green Afghanistan was, and how people used to go to the temple in the mornings and how families cooked and shared meals together, said Marta, who graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. But it turned into a violent place, where people had to seek shelter from the bombs, either inside the temple or inside the house.

Under the mujahideen, who ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, ordinary life for Sikhs became increasingly hard in a Muslim country. When a neighbors home was shelled to the ground, Martas family decided to flee.

Marta and his family worry about the Sikhs situation under Taliban rule. In a video widely circulated in Afghanistan, Taliban militants assured Sikh leaders that they would be allowed to practice their faith without fear of punishment, but Marta said there is no certainty that will happen.

Sikhs who fear persecution might want to leave Afghanistan and they should be allowed to do so, Marta said. He hopes that the U.S. government and others will take in Afghan refugees, including those who didnt work for the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Like many Afghans and international observers, Marta is critical of the U.S. governments lack of a well-planned exit strategy from Afghanistan. He said he remains hopeful that the Taliban keep its pledge of setting up a moderate government, but he worries about the possible loss of 20 years of progress.

Were basically back where we were 20 years ago, except that the Taliban now is apparently taking a more moderate approach, said Marta. Plus, we have the rise of social media, which means that there could be slightly more accountability. But if the goal was to get rid of the Taliban 20 years ago, were basically back at square one.

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Two share their fear and anxiety for those left behind in Afghanistan - Harvard Gazette

The Taliban, who have a notorious history of oppression and violence toward women, are poised to seat a representative on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women should they form a recognized Afghan government, a former U.N. ambassador says.

After a swift takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban terror group, as well as deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's escape to the United Arab Emirates, the future of Afghanistan's leadership, and by extent its representation in global organizations, is uncertain, says John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

"You have a new crew that comes in, and the U.N. has to decide, 'Do we accept the credentials of a new ambassador?'" Bolton told the Washington Examiner Tuesday. "It's certainly possible to challenge that and deny them a seat. You can say they're not legitimate."

TALIBAN WORDS ON WOMEN BELIE DECADES OF ATROCITIES

However, incoming governments, even those that were established in less-than-diplomatic methods, typically inherit their predecessor's posts, the former ambassador added, noting rejection is rare.

"It's unusual and hasn't often been successful," Bolton, a controversial figure who served as U.N. ambassador under former President George W. Bush and national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, continued. "I think the most likely outcome is the Taliban gets seated."

Of particular concern is the Afghan seat on the Commission for the Status of Women. Afghanistan secured the seat in 2020, receiving a sufficient 39 votes.

The U.N. describes the Commission for the Status of Women as the "principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women." The commission's stated goal is to "agree on further actions to accelerate progress and promote womens enjoyment of their rights in political, economic, and social fields."

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The Taliban's treatment of women has attracted scrutiny internationally despite attempts to ease fears of Afghanistan's future as a fundamentalist, totalitarian regime. Though the Taliban promised on Aug. 17 that they are "ready to provide women with environment to work and study, and the presence of women in different (government) structures according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values," a senior Taliban leader indicated the next day that women's right to education is up for debate.

"Our scholars will decide whether girls are allowed to go to school or not," Waheedullah Hashimi, a senior Taliban leader, said on Aug. 18.

As the United States spent decades supporting the previous Afghan government in combating the spread of the Taliban, the group committed a series of terror attacks on girls' schools, which they targeted due to their belief that women should not receive education nor take roles in society outside the home.

Additionally, recent reports from Afghans in now-occupied districts describe forced marriages between local girls and Taliban leaders, as well as violent executions of combatant soldiers.

The current Afghan Mission to the U.N. has been vocal in its desire for an "inclusive" administration under the Taliban while seeking international support for a democratic state something the Taliban has been opposed to for decades.

"Today, I am speaking on behalf of millions of people in Afghanistan whose fate hangs in the balance and are faced with an extremely uncertain future," current Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the U.N. Ghulam Isaczai said on Aug. 16. "I am speaking for millions of Afghan girls and women who are about to lose their freedom to go to school, to work, and to participate in the political, economic, and social life of the country."

Isaczai urged the U.N. to stress that "the Council and the United Nations will not recognize any administration that achieves power through force or any government that is not inclusive and representative of the diversity of the country."

The ambassador additionally begged the U.N. to push the "immediate establishment of an inclusive and representative transitional government that includes all ethnic groups and women representatives; which can lead to a dignified and lasting solution to the conflict, bring peace, and preserve the gains of the last twenty years, especially for women and girls."

"As we face difficult times ahead, the Permanent Mission remains steadfast in supporting the principles of a free and democratic Afghanistan that respects the traditions and cultures of our diverse people and protects the hard-won human rights of all women and men in Afghanistan," the Afghan Mission to the U.N. said in a statement on Aug. 19, the 102nd anniversary of the independence of Afghanistan. "As a proud member of the United Nations, we are determined to remain united and work with our international friends and allies to achieve a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan."

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Following the Taliban's takeover of Kabul on Aug. 14, the U.S. has evacuated or helped facilitate the evacuation of approximately 37,000 people, and a total of roughly 42,000 people over the last month.

The situation has led to poignant images of those attempting to flee, including Afghan people plummeting to their deaths after clinging to departing U.S. planes, and one mother imploring President Joe Biden, who has vowed to evacuate all U.S. citizens who wish to be repatriated, to "help" those who are "stranded" in Afghanistan.

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Tags: News, Women's Rights, UN, United Nations, Afghanistan, Taliban, John Bolton

Original Author: Timothy Nerozzi

Original Location: EXCLUSIVE: Taliban seat on UN Commission on the Status of Women is 'likely,' John Bolton says

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EXCLUSIVE: Taliban seat on UN Commission on the Status of Women is 'likely,' John Bolton says - Yahoo News

Views expressed in opinion columns are the authors own.

The plight of the refugee is unfortunately common. Refugees all over the world strive to escape the violence and brutality of their own countries. They seek safe havens in which they can make a better life for themselves or even places where they can just stay alive. This is what is happening right now in Afghanistan, where many are suffering through no fault of their own.

After the recent end of the United States nearly 20-year military occupation, the Taliban, an Islamist militant group, has taken control of the country, causing many Afghan residents to face the threat of brutalization from Taliban rule.

The United States was in Afghanistan for so long that the Afghan government and people relied very heavily on us for stability. Since we made them so reliant on the us, we cannot simply turn our backs now.

While I agree the U.S. made the right decision in pulling our troops from Afghanistan, we still need to take responsibility for the repercussions of our actions.

These people need help, and they need a new home. It is now the responsibility of the United States to provide that for as many Afghan refugees as possible.

So far, many Democratic and Republican governors have said they will be accepting refugees and believe it is our countrys responsibility to do so.

For example, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has said the state has committed to taking in 180 refugees so far and believes we have a moral obligation to do so.

Hogan is right. Taking in these refugees is simply the right thing to do. If these people are forced to stay in Afghanistan, they can face horrible treatment from Taliban leadership.

This is especially true for women, as the Taliban would likely place women in a subjugated, submissive role. During their past regime, the terrorist government forbade women from attending schools, going to work or leaving the house without a man with them and many fear a return to systematic oppression, despite the Talibans claims of relative modernization. If the United States has any means to help save these women from oppression, we need to do it.

Furthermore, there are many Afghan people who are our allies and have helped us over the last two decades.Many Afghans served as interpreters for U.S. troops, diplomats and others. We have an obligation to help people who have served the U.S. in Afghanistan get out of the country as they are likely targets of Taliban retaliation.

It is frustrating that some people believe we have already done enough for Afghanistan, and we do not have a responsibility to help anymore. In the nearly 20 years the United States has been involved in Afghanistan, we have certainly had an effect on the conditions we see today.

Now, if the United States knowingly turns a blind eye toward those in need, including these women and allies, we would be ignoring the very values of freedom and liberty that we promote.

In recent remarks, President Joe Biden has pledged to consider every opportunity to help our Afghan allies get to the Kabul airport and out of Afghanistan. This is certainly a critical first step, but he needs to pledge to welcome them into the United States as refugees, too.

The U.S. is one of the largest, wealthiest countries in the world with one of the most successful economies. In order to hold ourselves accountable for the role we played in creating the current crisis in Afghanistan, we must allocate some of our money toward aiding these refugees even if that means housing them within our own borders.

Many of those who are clashing over the best policy for refugees seem more interested in winning bigoted political points than ensuring the protection of humanity. While several Republican leaders have expressed support for welcoming refugees, some Republicans have said Afghans pose a security threat and they will be replacing natural-born American citizens. This is simply racism veiled as legitimate concern for the wellbeing of our country and by no means counters the necessity of this American mission.

Afghan refugees need to be welcomed, and we should embrace the diverse cultures and traditions they will bring. Unity is what will help our world prevail through violence and terror.

Today, the focus is on Afghan refugees, but if the United States steps up now, we could set a precedent for future generations on the importance of taking responsibility, and of helping people around the world.

Courtney Cohn is a rising junior journalism and government and politics major. She can be reached at cncohn1@gmail.com.

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The US has a moral and political responsibility to help Afghan refugees - The Diamondback

Afghan refugees protest for rights outside UNHCR, others express solidarity at Mandi House

The Talibans takeover of Afghanistan has shocked the entire global community. The images of desperate Afghans at the airport trying to get out of the country have been etched in contemporary human history.

The plight and anger of and for the Afghanistan population were visible on the streets of Delhi.

On the 23rd of August 2021, the Afghanistan refugees came out to the streets outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi to demand asylum, security and recognition.

Afghanistan refugees demanded refugee cards, the option to be sent to other countries where they can get citizenship, security and protection from the Indian government and the global community at large.

They said they cannot go back to Afghanistan under the current Taliban regime.

On the other hand, several Indian students and political organizations protested outside Delhis Mandi House in solidarity with the Afghan nation and its citizens.

The protestors, mostly young women, raised their voices against the oppression of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

On the same date, a group of over 270 writers, activists and concerned citizens issued a public statement in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan in their struggle for freedom and democracy.

Today, the liberties and lives of Afghanistans feminists, human rights activists, care workers, welfare workers are all in especial danger from the Taliban. Refugees fleeing the Taliban are risking their lives in conditions that display their desperation. Among refugees hanging onto the wings of a place leaving Kabul, two men a 20-year-old football player and a 25-year-old doctor fell to their deaths. Refugees face apathy, as well as hostility and violence in countries where they are seeking refuge, the statement read.

The public statement condemned the USs actions in Afghanistan that enabled the Taliban forces to consolidate.

The US occupation actually enabled the Taliban to consolidate itself. The US, having decided to exit Afghanistan, set up unilateral negotiations with the Taliban, excluding its allies as well as the Afghan Government. This culminated in a US-Taliban pact which made it clear that for all purposes the US was transferring power to the Taliban, said the signatories.

Women came out in large numbers to express their discontent with the UNHCR. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

Women protestors said their lives will be in grave danger under the new Taliban rule, and hence all of them must be issued residence visas. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

The press release added, Refugees face apathy, as well as hostility and violence in countries where they are seeking refuge. The Government of India is yet to make its stand on the Taliban clear. Meanwhile, leaders of the ruling BJP and the Hindu-supremacist RSS have unleashed a hate campaign against Indias Muslims, equating all Muslims and Islam itself with the regressive and oppressive Taliban.

The Government has also shamefully referenced the CAA which goes against the Indian constitutions assurance of equal citizenship to all irrespective of faith or other factors, and announced that it will prioritise Hindu and Sikh refugees from Afghanistan.

Without any provisions for refugees in India, the protestors see no future for their children in this country. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

Many refugees have to struggle for the basic rights of health care and education. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

Considering the practices of the Taliban, the refugees are fearful and have asked the world to pay attention to their situation. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

Many Afghan refugees in India are living on long term visas which they have to renew every year. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

The UNHCR officers spoke to the protestors and heard their demands. Credit: Imaad ul Hasan

One of the demands in the signed press release is for the UNHCR to initiate a fact-finding mission to identify and bring to justice all perpetrators of atrocities and violence against Afghan civilians including the occupying armed forces as well as the Taliban and other armed groups.

Most of the protestors at Mandi House were women. Women were the most affected in the previous Taliban government. Credit: Fahim Danish

The protestors extended their support to the Afghan people and demanded womens rights in Afghanistan. Credit: Fahim Danish

The press release also highlighted the womens plight in a Taliban ruled state.

The Taliban has declared that it is their authorities who will decide how far women can study, what subjects they can study, what jobs they can hold; and what they must wear. Already reports are coming in of Taliban attacks on women. Displaying incredible courage, women are protesting with handmade posters on the streets of Kabul; and Afghan men and women all over the country are protesting the Taliban takeover with Afghan flags in their hands, facing Taliban bullets in the process. It is these fighting democratic people of Afghanistan who need us to extend solidarity and amplify their voice.

A number of Afghan girls spoke against the strict restrictions on clothing under the Taliban rule. Credit: Fahim Danish

Protestors got emotional as Afghans share their ordeal. Credit: Fahim Danish

Afghan students express their love for the country through the symbol of their flag. Credit: Fahim Danish

An Indian girl posing with the Afghan flag as an Afghan student clicks a picture. Credit: Fahim Danish

The press release demanded that the Government of India cease any attempt to distinguish between Afghan refugees on the basis of faith or identity, and instead open the countrys doors to offer safe refuge to any Afghan refugees in need.

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Voices of Afghan's Heard on the Streets of Delhi - The Citizen

by Nabaa Muhammad and Michael Z. Muhammad

Political prisoners in American prisons have been the source of debate for many years. And while the United States has denied their existence, Blacks, Native Americans and others who questioned, organized and fought the evils, genocide and bloody, deadly repression meted out by the government have found themselves locked away.

Today many of the freedom fighters from the days of the Black Power, civil rights movement and American Indian rights movements remain imprisoned, sick, some dying and the U.S. government refuses to release them.

The existence of political prisoners in the United States goes to the very heart of the racist nature of this society. To not deal with the issue of political prisoners in the U.S. is to not deal with the true nature of America, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former Black Panther, Black Liberation Army co-founder, and political prisoner targeted in New York and jailed for 19 years, once observed.

An Aug. 19 online discussion focused on the experiences and realities of current and former political prisoners while discussing a tribunal planned for October to again highlight their plight and increase organizing efforts around their cases.

The tribunal planned for New York is part of continued grassroots work underway to free political prisoners and continue the struggle against American imperialism, colonialism, racism, and war, according to Black Voices For Peace, which hosted the online discussion.

Veteran freedom fighter and former political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim, now 69 years old, talked at length about the 2021 International Tribunal On Human Rights Violations & U.S. Held Political Prisoners planned for October and spearheaded by the Jericho Movement, an organization devoted to obtaining freedom for U.S. political prisoners and exposing their existence.

This initiative appeals to the international community, including the International Commission of Jurists, to call for special hearings within the United Nations to review the cases of political prisoners and genocide, Mr. Muntaqim said. He first thought of the need for such a tribunal while locked in solitary confinement. He served 49 years in prison after conviction in the killing of two New York police officers. He was released in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. He was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He stayed politically active during his incarceration.

The enemy has an outpost in our minds. In many ways, we are duplicitous with Americas violent history because of our silence. This tribunal will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the call by William Patterson and Paul Robeson of genocide against the United States, Mr. Muntaqim added.

According to the Jericho Movement, among political prisoners on lockdown today is Ruchell Magee, who was denied parole again in June. He is the longest-held political prisoner in the United States and the world, serving time in California prison system for over 57 years. He is 81 years old.

He has served time related to the 1970 Soledad Brothers case and the attempt of 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson to free his brother George Jackson and others who were on trial and accused of killing a prison guard. Mr. Magee was also freed but San Quentin prison guards eventually shot three of the accused and critically wounded Mr. Magee survived. He was later convicted of simple kidnapping.

People have committed horrendous crimes and gotten much less time than Ruchell. Mention that Ruchell was very young when he was arrested and he should be able to enjoy the rest of his life outside of captivity. Add that we as taxpayers pay to keep this elderly man incarcerated instead of in his community, where he could make a positive contribution toward community development, said the Jericho Movement in an appeal for his release.

Others include Dr. Mutulu Shakur, who was sentenced to 60 years in prison and targeted by the FBIs now-infamous Counter-Intelligence Program as early as 1968. Dr. Shakur has served over 30 years in prison, and is currently suffering from multiple myeloma (advanced bone marrow cancer). He has been denied parole nine times and was recently denied a compassionate release, said the Jericho Movement. His family and friends are mounting a campaign to petition President Biden to grant clemency in the case.

Russell Maroon Shoatz, a 77-year-old political prisoner, is suffering from stage 4 cancer, said the Jericho Movement. His is another political activist jailed for his role in the Black liberation struggle say those who want him released.

Among political prisoners listed today by the Jericho Movement are Abdul Aziz, Haki Malik Abdullah (formerly Michael Green), Sundiata Acoli (formerly Clark Squire), Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown of the Black Panther Party and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), Joseph Bowen, Veronza Bowers, Kojo Grailing Brown, Muhammad Fred Burton, Byron Shane Chubbock, Bill Dunne, David Gilbert, Hanif Shabazz Bey, Alvaro Luna Hernandez, Kamau Sadiki, Larry Hoover, Abdullah Malik Kabah (formerly Jeff Fort), Maumin Khabir, Eric King, Malik Smith, Marius Mason, Leonard Peltier, Ed Poindexter, Rev. Joy Powell, Jessica Resnicek, and Mutulu Shakir. Not to be forgotten are those who fled America and remain in exile like Assata Shakur in Cuba.

There are hundreds of people who went to prison as a result of their work on the streets against oppressive conditions like indecent housing and inadequate or complete lack of medical care, lack of quality education, police brutality and the murder of people organizing for independence and liberation, the Jericho Movement noted. These people belonged to organizations like the Black Panther Party, La Raza Unida, FALN, Los Macheteros, North American Anti-Imperialist Movement, May 19th, AIM, the Black Liberation Army, etc., and were incarcerated because of their political beliefs and acts in support of and/or in defense of freedom.

A young vanguard of Black freedom fighters spoke during the From Black August to Black Liberation Commemorating the Struggle of Political Prisoners webinar convened by the Black Alliance for Peace.

The virtual event was hosted by Nnamdi Lumumba of the alliance.

Longtime activist Makungu Akinyela and a founding member of the New Afrikan Peoples Organization said over the years he realized everybody wasnt going to always be professional revolutionaries. So in 1990, we established the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement with the idea that the masses of our people needed a platform that they could organize under. That they could organize around principles of self-determination, human rights, fighting against genocide, fighting for the freedom of all of our people, regardless of gender, sexuality, or sexual identity fighting against sexist oppression.

And then, of course, we saw it as important to support our political prisoners, he said.

Black August is a month-long commemoration and prison-based holiday to remember Black freedom fighters and political prisoners and highlight Black resistance against racial oppression. It began to be popularized through hip hop concerts among young people.

A central element of Black August is to call attention to our freedom fighters still held captive as political prisoners and Prisoners of War. Some have moved into their fifth decade shackled as the longest serving political prisoners on the face of the Earth, observed the Black Alliance for Peace.

We believe Black August is about uniting the masses of our people with the idea that there are political prisoners. They are prisoners of war, brothers, and sisters who were willing to take up arms in self-defense of our peoples struggle, and they deserve to be supported and not run away from, said Mr. Akinyela.

A young voice on the scene is Philadelphia-based activist, scholar, and educator Krystal Strong, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She detailed the plight of the MOVE organization and the lessons learned. She noted that August 8, 1978, was the date Philadelphia police besieged the Black radical groups compound resulting in the arrest of 12 people, including the Move 9, members sentenced to prison for 30 to 100 years.

What is lost in all of the noise is histories untold and underappreciated in our Black revolutionary struggles, Ms. Strong said. We define this radical revolutionary work by stories of state bias. What we dont understand is the revolutionary work of these organizations. MOVEs protest against the Philadelphia school board against educational injustice, their protests at the Philadelphia Zoo against animal cruelty, the revolutionary vision for respect towards all life, food justice, exercise, to being in proper relationship with the planet.

And so one thing that I think MOVEs history makes very clear to us, particularly the history of political imprisonment, is that political incarceration detracts from our revolutionary strivings, she said. The fact that we know more about state violence against MOVE than what MOVEs radical visions were is a testament to the intended impact of political incarceration.

Another thing this illuminates for us is that political imprisonment creates further harm. It spreads harms even beyond our beloved community members and revolutionaries who are incarcerated, Ms. Strong pointed out.

Another young presenter was Saudia Durrant, a Philadelphia-based racial justice organizer with the Abolitionist Law Center and the Jericho Movement. She brought fire and intensity in her presentation reminiscent of old-time church religion. She talked about her work with young people, demands for police-free schools, sanctuary schools free of agents from the federal governments Immigration, Customs and Enforcement agency, and empowering young people to be community leaders.

Our mission is exposing, challenging, and dismantling the American punishment system. And we do this in solidarity with our comrades, putting down this grassroots effort with other cities. We fundamentally believe in doing this work to build the capacity to abolish these institutions and the social constructs that attempt to legitimize the presence of state violence. And believe our communities can create new methods of dealing with these issues while politicizing our communities for self-defense, self-determination, and independence, she said.

We say, educate, organize, agitate, liberate. The idea is clear that whatever we are attempting to do, it begins with education and it ends with liberation.

Many of the activists paid homage to Min. Malcolm X as the inspiration for their work. His teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, taught Min. Malcolm and others sparking a revolutionary mindset, a desire for full and complete freedom, and a nation for Black people. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad was also a political prisoner, jailed for his teaching against the wickedness of the American government during WWII.

His top student, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has continued to teach about the wickedness of America, warned of her destruction, and exposed her warmongering, lies and wicked foreign and domestic policy. He has also defended and supported political prisoners in the United States.

Sacrifice is the unselfish giving of what one needs for oneself to accomplish an end that is greater than oneself. The scriptures of the Bible and Holy Quran are full of examples of sacrifice, said Min. Farrakhan in an address delivered during a benefit for then-political prisoner Geronimo Pratt, a Black Panther Party leader who was eventually released after over 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

It is not enough to praise Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Nat Turner, Nobel Drew Ali or any of our brave freedom fighters. What we must do is take the principles that they lived and died on and be willing to sacrifice to see the end for which they lived and died. Then, and only then, will our living not be in vain and their sacrifice not have been in vain, the Minister said.

There never has been a teacher of valid principles for the liberation and survival of Black people in this country who has not been persecuted by the United States government, maligned, falsely accused, vilified by this system, he continued. Many criticized Elijah Muhammad, calling him counterrevolutionary, because they did not truly understand revolution, but romanticized about it. The root of revolution is light.

There is no motion without light. Light causes the motion of our planet. This planet makes its revolution around the sun by the power of light striking Earth at its equator, causing Earth to spin and producing the four seasons. The introduction of light and knowledge to a people who are asleep under the foot of oppression causes an idea of revolution to germinate in their minds. There is no revolutionary who is worth his salt or his sense that throws away his life. He wisely maneuvers in order that the revolution may live.

Malcolm X was not a revolutionary until he met the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He was like most of us, wanting something better, but not knowing how to go after it. Many of our people said the Muslims just want to talk and sell papers. But Muhammad was wise; he said, Yes, Brother, for now.

How can we build a revolution without the idea of that revolution in the heads, hearts and minds of the people? How can we get Black people to make a sacrifice for an idea when we do not trust each other? We have to build a record of trust among our people, which means you have to adopt principles that encourage and promote trust.

So the revolutionary that he was, he said, Let me direct your anger to something within you that is counterrevolutionarybut he did not call it counterrevolutionary. He simply said let me direct your anger to something in you that is against the rise and liberation of our people.

And Min. Farrakhan added, We encourage this suppression by our unwillingness to sacrifice, discipline and organize ourselves properly against an oppressor and for our own liberation.

Ms. Durrant put forth four strategies being used to free political prisoners, including clemency, commutation, parole, and overturning wrongful convictions.

Communities must be organized to demonstrate solidarity, be it through marches, rallies, community meetups, and cleanups, art in cultural performances, organizing media content, and many other tactics to publicize the movement, she said.

Ending her presentation, Ms. Durrant discussed the dire medical conditions facing political prisoners like MOVE member and former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal, former Black Panther Russell Maroon Shoatz, and Native American activist Leonard Peltier. These are the mentors and the leaders of our movements of our communities who languished behind bars. We know that our folks are suffering inside, and we must honor them and commit to not leaving them behind, she said.

During the question and answer segment, threats confronting organizers were addressed.

We do not have reserves for when the state inevitably targets us. We need to out-organize our enemy. We have to learn from these histories. We have to be a part of collective networking, particularly around the threat of political imprisonment. We need to develop and share protocols that exist. You know, many of us are on signal. Still, signal is not enough of a strategy to out-organize the enemy that is in our bedrooms, our living rooms, Ms. Strong observed. We need to up the ante around things like protocols and safeguarding to the extent that we can.

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Free Black political prisoners and prisoners of war! Online forum focuses on the plight and need to support, organize for freedom fighters -...

The reaction of Germanys main parties to the fall of the imperialist puppet regime in Kabul underlines once again that voters have no real political choice in the federal election due to take place on September 26apart from the Socialist Equality Party (Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei).

The political and military debacle in Afghanistan has led to fierce recriminations in Germany. In particular, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic PartySPD), who just a few days before the fall of Kabul dismissed the notion of such an event, has been singled out as a scapegoat.

In fact, all of the political parties represented in the German parliament have reacted in the same manner. From the Left Party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), they all emphasize the need to assist so-called local forcesAfghans who have worked for the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces)to leave the country.

The two leading candidates of the Left Party, Janine Wissler and Dietmar Bartsch, devoted an entire press conference to this issue on August 16.

The Left Party had always opposed the German military mission in Afghanistan, Wissler said. But now the main thing is to get as many people to safety as possible. The German government had simply abandoned people, and was responsible for endangering human lives in Afghanistan.

Bartsch stressed that the Left Party had moved a motion in the Bundestag (parliament) on June 23 calling for local Afghan forces who worked for the Bundeswehr and the German police to be admitted to Germany quickly and without red tape. The party supported a similarly worded motion moved by the Greens, which was rejected by a government majority. Now it was absolutely crucial to get as many out as possible.

The Greens have adopted the same line. We have to get people out now! It doesn't matter which German authority someone worked for and when, the party declares in an appeal calling for demonstrations in dozens of cities. It is first of all a matter for the international community to maintain control of the airport and secure its operation. To this end, the EU and the German government must use their foreign policy influence.

Green Party MPs Omid Nouripour, Jamila Schfer and Agnieszka Brugger demand in a supplementary paper, The USA must not withdraw its military contingent until evacuations by all NATO partners have been completed The German government must offer the US support in securing the airport and quickly present the Bundestag with a mandate for a rescue operation that meets requirements on the ground.

The German government has long since complied with this demand. At the start of last week, it deployed 600 soldiers to supplement the US contingent of several thousand soldiers in Kabul. On Wednesday, the Bundestag will vote to ratify the deployment of armed forces for military evacuation from Afghanistan.

Approval on the part of the Greens is considered certain. It remains to be seen whether the Left Party parliamentary group, which has so far rejected combat missions by the Bundeswehr, will also agree. But even if it decides to abstain or vote no in order to save its pseudo-pacifist face, the stance taken by Wissler and Bartsch makes clear that the Left Party also supports this dangerous deployment, even though it threatens to reignite and escalate the war raging in the devastated country.

Even the far-right AfD, which usually conjures up the downfall of the West every time a single refugee is admitted to Germany, supports allowing local Afghan forces to enter the country. Germany is obliged to do so, AfD leader Alexander Gauland told Deutschlandfunk radio. We have to make it very clear that we have a responsibility for those who are genuinely at risk because they worked for us, he said.

The sudden concern for the lives of local forces is utterly hypocritical. The Bundestag parties have not shed a tear for the vast number of Afghan casualties of American bombing and drone attacks, or the anti-terror operations of the Bundeswehr and the Afghan army. Not a word is said about the victims of the brutal war lords and drug barons with whom the Western powers collaborated. Instead, the official parties used every means at their disposal to ensure that no Afghan refugee could set foot on German soil and apply for asylumand in the rare cases where refugees succeeded, sent many of them back as quickly as possible.

The Left and the Greens are now making a huge fuss about the fact that the German government only recently stopped deportations to Afghanistan. But on every plane that repatriated refugees to Afghanistan there were refugees from states where the Left Party and the Greens are in government, or, as in Thuringia and Baden-Wrttemberg, hold the post of state premier.

In reality, the Left and the Greens have no sympathy for local Afghan forces. They are worried only that Germany will not find local collaborators in future wars if it ditches them so ruthlessly in Afghanistan. This is what Bartsch meant at his press conference when he called the disaster in Afghanistan a devastating foreign policy defeat for the German government.

As we pointed out in an earlier article, the Afghan war was from the beginning a dirty colonial war with everything that goes with it: massacres, torture, criminality and corruption. It was never about human rights and democracy, but rather about gaining influence in an oil- and gas-rich region of extraordinary geo-strategic importance.

The Greens are among the main perpetrators of this criminal war. It was an SPD-Green coalition government, with Green Party leader Joschka Fischer as foreign minister, which decided to participate in the war in Afghanistan. Fischer and the Greens defend their decision to this day, and now attack the German and American governments from the right.

He still stands behind his decision, Fischer said recently at an election campaign appearance with the current Green Party leader, Annalena Baerbock. In a radio interview, Fischer declared that at stake at that time were Germanys imperialist interests. It was about demonstrating solidarity with the Germans most important transatlantic partner, the Americans, he said. In addition, Afghanistan plays a major geopolitical role in the region. China is a direct neighbor and Russia is not far away.

Fischer claimed that no strategic mistakes had been made. The big mistake, he said, was the sudden withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan: It was always clear to me that you cant just pull out like that.

The Left Party, for its part, has always voted against the Afghanistan mission in the Bundestag--when it was clear that its votes would make no difference and would help to suppress opposition to the war. The party did not lift a finger to mobilize opposition against it. After tens of millions protested against the Iraq war worldwide in 2003, it did everything it could to stifle the anti-war movement.

Today, it says nothing about the criminal nature of the war in Afghanistan, but rather speaks of a historical fiasco and regrets the wars failure. A greater failure following 20 years of major armed deployment by the Bundeswehr is hard to imagine, the Left Party writes in one statement on the war.

The Left Party, like the Greens 23 years ago, is now preparing its open transition into the camp of militarism. Already eight years ago, Left Party MP Stefan Liebich participated in a working group, which, under the title New Power, New Responsibility, drafted a great power strategy for German imperialism in the 21st century. Since then, the Left Party has repeatedly signaled its willingness to support future war missions of the Bundeswehr if it is accepted by the SPD and the Greens as a coalition partner in a federal government.

This is the background to the Left Partys current campaign on behalf of local Afghan forces. The Greens and the Left Party are demonstrating to the ruling class and the current governing parties their willingness to take responsibility for German militarism.

In leading foreign policy and military circles, lessons have long since been drawn from the Afghanistan debacle. The tenor of commentary is that Germany must pursue its imperialist interests more autonomously, more vigorously and more independently of the Americans, and accelerate the process of military build-up that has already assumed enormous proportions in recent years.

One thing is certain, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Der Spiegel magazine, The result of this process must not be that we no longer take responsibility internationally. The question is how we undertake it. At times, he said, NATOs decisions are made in Washington, and NATO in Brussels hardly has a say. Therefore, it was necessary to strengthen the European pillar in NATO.

In the Financial Times, Bastian Giegerich of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who has worked as an adviser in the Ministry of Defence since 2012, called for Germany to develop a strategic mindset in security and defence policy. This is necessary and urgent, he wrote, because the rise of resurgent revisionist and repressive powersChina and Russiathreatens the international order on which Germanys post-war security and prosperity were founded.

He added that Germanys strategic goal should be to contribute to the defence of the Western international order against assertive, expansionist and authoritarian regimes, and in a way commensurate with its political and economic stature. Diplomacy and geo-economic statecraft would contribute to this defence, But German military power will be an indispensable component of Europes self-defence. Germany cannot afford for its political class to ignore this reality.

The Socialist Equality Party (Sozialistische GleichheitsparteiSGP) is the only party to uncompromisingly oppose German militarism and, as the German section of the Fourth International, fight for the international unity of the working class against social inequality, oppression, war and their root cause: capitalism. Those who support these goals should support the SGPs election campaign, vote for it on September 26 and join the party.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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What's behind the calls by the German Left Party and the Greens to support local Afghan forces? - WSWS

This article originally appeared in Workers World, Dec. 6, 2001.

Women village defense forces carry AK-47s during a ceremony in Kabul to mark the 10th anniversary of the communist revolution in Afghanistan, April 26, 1988.

As U.S. bombing and troop presence has intensified in Afghanistan, the mainstream media have issued a barrage of articles, photographs, opinion pieces and interviews claiming this war will liberate Afghan women. They present it as a collateral benefit that the war will reverse the Talibans cruel oppression of women and even give women a chance to get political rights under a new government.

Government officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell have addressed the same subject in news conferences, briefings and interviews.

Most dramatically, First Lady Laura Bush was in front of the microphone on Nov. 17, instead of her husband, for the presidents usual Saturday radio address, so she could testify about the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban.

This media blitz has been orchestrated through the governmental Coalition Information Center, set up to counter any criticism of the U.S. war. The

campaign is coordinated by spin-doctors like public relations industry legend Charlotte Beers, former chair of giant ad agency J. Walter Thompson. Four of the key gatekeepers of this campaign are women, including chief Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke and Mary Matlin, chief political adviser to Vice President Cheney.

Matlin said of these womens commitment to advocating for the war: I think we probably bring and I dont mean this to sound sexist but we probably have more of a subconscious outrage at these issues . . . This is something that crosses my mind every day: A third of these women in pre-Taliban days were doctors, lawyers and teachers. You cant help but be outraged. (New York Times, Nov. 11, 2001)

The real outrage

Which pre-Taliban days is she talking about? The outrage is ours if we look at the real history of womens liberation in Afghanistan. Yes, terrible things have been done to women under the Taliban rule. But how did the Taliban come into existence? And what was the role of the United States?

In 1978 a revolution created a secular government in Afghanistan that tried to liberate the workers and peasants from the grip of feudal landlords. The secular government was based on a young socialist movement, the Progressive Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The revolutionaries cancelled mortgage debts of laborers and tenants; these debts had been inherited over generations so that feudal warlords held land workers as virtual serfs. And the new government promoted the welfare and liberation of women.

The revolutionary government immediately moved to improve the terrible conditions women had endured. It set up literacy programs especially for women, whose illiteracy rate was 96%. It trained more teachers and published textbooks in local languages. It organized brigades of women to go into the countryside to provide medical services and by 1985 had increased hospital beds by 80%.

Decrees were issued, both abolishing the bride-price, so women could be free to choose their marriages, and prohibiting the punishment of women for losing their virginity before marriage. Women were able to train and then work as doctors, teachers and lawyers.

Did the U.S. government know of these things? These facts about the Afghan revolution can be found in a book published by the U.S. Department of the Army entitled, Afghanistan a Country Study for 1986.

Yet it was this enlightened government that U.S. President Jimmy Carter set out to overthrow by organizing a massive counterrevolutionary army of religious fundamentalists in 1979. A CIA-orchestrated war forced the Afghan government to call for Soviet military assistance. What followed was a bitter conflict that lasted more than a decade and eventually overthrew the progressive regime. More years of war followed, as the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and other factions all of which drew their power from the feudal landlord class fought for supremacy. (Workers World, Oct. 10, 1996)

The CIA had facilitated the formation of Osama bin Ladens organization in the 1980s to attack the progressive government in Afghanistan. As U.S. vice president, George Bush Sr. oversaw the operation. Subsequently, bin Ladens troops murdered teachers, doctors and nurses, disfigured women who took off the veil, and they shot down civilian airliners with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles. (Workers World, Oct. 4, 1996)

What the U.S. does care about

Now Bush and the generals claim to care about the rights of women living in the counterrevolution they financed and engineered. But the U.S. has consistently disregarded the plight and status of women in Afghanistan.

The White House and Pentagon knew the reactionary position of the U.S.-financed and trained fundamentalist groups toward women. But this was immaterial to the goal of the U.S. government to support the interests of oil corporations that have been trying to get a pipeline through Afghanistan for 10 years.

In a May 26, 1997, New York Times article, John F. Burns wrote: While deploring the Talibans policies on women and the adoption of a penal code that provides for the amputation of thieves hands and the stoning to death of adulterers, the United States has sometimes acted as though a Taliban government might serve its interests.

The Clinton administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would end a war that has killed 1.5 million Afghans, would act as a counterweight to Iran, whose Shiite Muslim leadership is fiercely opposed to the Sunni Muslims of the Taliban, and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.

For example, a proposal by the Unocal Corporation of California for a $2.5 billion pipeline that would link the gas fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan has attracted strong support in Washington, though human rights groups are likely to object to the plan. . . . The Afghan project, strongly endorsed by the Taliban, is part of a broader concept under which the vast mineral resources of the former Soviet republics would be moved to markets along routes that would offer these countries a new autonomy from Moscow.

In May 1998, Time magazine reported the CIA had set up a secret task force to monitor the regions politics and gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some of them well-trained petroleum engineers, had traveled through southern Russia and the Caspian region to sniff out potential oil reserves. When the policymakers heard the agencys report, [Secretary of State Madeleine] Albright concluded that working to mold the areas future was one of the most exciting things we can do.

Free to beg

As U.S. Marines dig in and direct air attacks near Kandahar, the U.S. continues to try to mold the future of Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Middle East but not out of concern for the future of women. On the first day of this war, U.S. bombs struck a Kabul hospital and killed 13 women in a gynecological hospital.

After weeks of bombing, U.S. newspapers enthuse that Afghan women are uncovering their faces, looking for jobs, walking happily with female friends on the street.

Yet, at the same time, Bush administration officials admit that they will not publicly insist women be included in talks about a post-Taliban coalition government. In fact, in the Bonn meeting scheduled by the U.S. and allies to arrange Afghanistans future, only three token women have been included: the widow of a mujahedeen commander killed fighting against the former secular socialist government and two backers of the long-deposed king. (New York Times, Nov. 26, 2001)

As the women of Afghanistan emerge into the horrifying destruction and chaos unleashed by U.S. bombing, what kind of freedom and what kind of rights will be theirs? A New York Times article, entitled Behind the Burka, focused on a 56-year-old woman with no schooling, eight children and a dead husband. (Nov. 19, 2001)

The last line of the article sums up her liberated future under imperialist subjugation: Now, at last, she is free to beg.

Stop the war!

That is a future this Afghan woman shares with many women in the United States women on welfare who soon will be free to beg under the so-called Welfare Reform Act.

Passed during the Clinton administration, it essentially eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children and set up a strict limit on the time length of benefits. The cut-off date of Dec. 1 is now fast approaching for thousands of already impoverished women. Some will be evicted in the middle of freezing winter. Others will be forced to place their children in foster care. Still others will be denied the most basic health care and reproductive services for themselves and their children.

And the astronomical economic cost of the U.S. war on Afghanistan will take an even greater toll on the poor in this country especially women and children.

The war against Afghanistan has never been about the liberation of women, not even as a collateral benefit. The war is about imperialist domination for capitalist profit. Opposition to this war, and this economic system, is the only thing that will help bring about the full liberation of women.

Minnie Bruce Pratt is an anti-racist activist, lesbian author and longtime leader in the struggle for womens liberation.

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Beware the siren song: Womens liberation and Afghanistan - Workers World

It was a 67-year-old woman in a simple white top, adorned in a sash and set behind a table of microphones, in Seoul on August 14th, 1991 who uncovered for the world a historical tragedy and set a movement in motion. Kim Hak-sun spoke of how, as a teenager during the Second World War, the Japanese military forced her into sexual slavery at a comfort station. This was the first time a woman, a member of a group now known as comfort women, publicly told her story. Further testimony from others followed, which set the stage for a movement of recognition and compensation that has since been marked by activism in a range of national contexts.

On August 14, 2021, groups in South Korea, Japan, and the United States commemorated the 30th anniversary of her testimony as International Memorial Day for Japanese Military Comfort Women. But this event comes at a time of historical revision and nationalist revival in Asia, as elsewhere. Denial of the comfort women, a questioning of the womens experiences, has become pervasive in Japan. And in recent months, J.Mark Ramseyer, a professor of contract law at Harvard Law School, incited controversy with the publication in the International Review of Law and Economics in March 2021 of Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War. The article, which focuses on the contractual dynamics of comfort stations, has been criticized by academics foramisuse of sources and ideological undertones, which, as one scholar put it, advocate a current Japanese political ideology.

In Japan today, the story of comfort women is contentious, a site of debate, a memory denied and questioned by a range of individuals and groups often with political and social influence; these actors, primarily on the far right, also dispute other acts of Japanese wartime aggression. But there is another side to the discourse: Japanese activists who fight and struggle for the voices of survivors. To understand the comfort women debates and activism in Japan, and the recent Ramseyer controversy, I spoke with Eika Tai, a professor at North Carolina State University who researches multiethnic Japan and colonial Taiwan. She is the author of Comfort Women Activism: Critical Voices from the Perpetrator State, published in August 2020, and one of the first to concentrate on what she has called comfort women activism in Japan.

It is hard to set words to paper when writing on the comfort women. I grew up with stories of the Holocaust, but I did not learn of the comfort women until I was older. There is, I believe, a degree of trivialization and desensitization at work with the Holocaust for me, as an American-born Jewish person, and a ready-made vocabulary to understand and write on survivor testimony. I learned of the stories little by little: I listened to the testimony of a Holocaust survivor at an assembly in high school, watched Schindlers List, and saw the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London. This is not true with the comfort women, a story that I only learned when I could realize the gravity of the trauma, which was as shocking as it was hard to comprehend.

SPENCER COHEN: Letsstart with a question on terminology, which is where you begin the book.When we use the term comfort women, to whom are we referring?

EIKA TAI: This is not a simple question, but opens up a question of the parameter of comfort women activism. The termianfu, the original Japanese expression, refers to those women who were taken from a dozen countries to comfort stations operated by the Japanese military and exploited as sexual slaves for soldiers.Ianfuis a euphemism and activists in Japan use quotation marks to indicate it. Some activists prefer to use sexual slaves, which has been used by the United Nations and the international community. The activists as a whole have decided to useianfufor the name of the nationwide association and for memorial days for victims because it was historically used. Some use the term in order to shed light on the cruel fact that while forcing women into slavery, the Japanese military labeled them as comfort women. I appreciate their stance on the term. I think this ironical effect of the use of the term is understood in the international community where people are aware that comfort women were sexual slaves. I use the term in this sense. In face-to-face communication with survivors, activists use the word grandma in each of their languages to express respect and affection. For example, they call Korean women halmoni and Chinese women from Shanxi Province daniang.

The comfort women movement is not just about victims who were called comfort women, but also about women victimized outside comfort stations. The official operation of comfort stations allowed soldiers to think it would be all right to build makeshift rape centers when finding no such station, and to rape women in streets and houses around the battlefield. That created the need to make more comfort stations. The rampant occurrences of sexual violence in warzones led to the creation of the comfort women system in the first place. There was a vicious circle of the forms of sexual violence. I would like to stress that the comfort women issue refers to all forms of sexual violence committed by the Japanese military, not just those that took place at comfort stations. This understanding of the termianfuis important because it captures the extensiveness of the Japanese empires sexual violence, and also because it makes clear that the issue is directly relevant to sexual violence in warzones in todays world. For these reasons, some activists insist on using the expression victims of Japanese military sexual violence. Yet, others say thatianfushould be kept to point to the particularity of the Japanese case.

Even with testimony by former comfort women and archival evidence, an array of far-right politicians, along with others, in Japan have advocated a view best recognized as historical denialism. They oppose the understanding of comfort women as sexual slaves, arguing that the women were volunteers, prostitutes who willfully chose such work; this view has become particularly fervent in the past two decades. Why do you believe there has been such pushback in Japan to the idea of these women as sexual slaves?

The question to ask is: what are they trying to protect or assert by denying the history of comfort women? It is their nationalism. Those politicians and others who deny the history must have diverse images of Japan, but they all seem to believe that, in the words of former prime minister Abe Shinz, Japan is or should be a beautiful country. Most of them support the emperor system, a system of hetero-patriarchy, and many believe the Asia-Pacific War (19311945) was a just war against the encroachment of Western powers. Japanese soldiers who fought for the emperor, for Japan should be respected.

They deny all kinds of historical facts about atrocities committed by the Japanese military in Asia and beyond, but the term sexual slaves has been particularly problematic to them. For them, it is an insult, defamation, disrespect to the Japan they love and admire. They know slavery is a crime against humanity. Their Japan would not have committed such a crime. The sexual act is an essential constituent of ethnicity. The idea of sexually abusing women of other Asian countries is a threat to the respectability of Japanese ethnicity. Their argument that comfort women were prostitutes and therefore not victims reveals their contempt and disregard not only for comfort women victims but also for prostitutes and sex workers. More fundamentally, it points to their assumption that women should provideian(comfort) for men, sexually or otherwise. This assumption is inherent in Japanese hetero-patriarchy.

So, then the comfort women issue is about the recognition of not only historical atrocities but also the rights of women. In Japan, how has this shaped activism and the movement in support of former comfort women?

I heard activists in Japan talking about two major perspectives for the comfort women issue: to see it as a redress issue for Japans past and as an issue about sexual violence and discrimination against women. At the beginning, activists and supporters often held one of the perspectives. As the movement evolved, they came to comprehend the issue from a multifaceted point of view, including the two perspectives. The transnational movement has revolved around two problems: the violation of womens human rights, especially in warzones, and Japans historical responsibility. In the international context, the gender perspective presented by activists in Japan is not only universal but particular, for thecrimes were committed by Japan.

That said, I want to note when encountering Kim Hak-sun and other survivors, many women in Japan heard the victims voices through their own experiences of gender-based discrimination permeated in their country. They saw the concatenation of what happened to the victims and what has been happening to themselves. For them, the encounter was deeply emotional. They hold themselves responsible for what Japan did to other Asian women as its citizens. This recognition is somewhat abstract. I think that their emotional attachments to the issue have been a driving force for them to continue fighting for three decades.

In the book, you write about how activists in Japan have a perpetrator consciousness (kagaisha ishiki) and identify as citizens of a perpetrator nation, which they see as responsible for wartime atrocities and aggression. Can you elaborate on how activists have reconciled with what appears a duality of self-identification: as both perpetrators of historical violence and victims of contemporary gender-based discrimination?

Such a duality materialized and troubled those who tried to tackle the Korean comfort women issueat the site of the womens liberation movement in the early 1970s. Because of their self-perception as victims of gendered discrimination within Japan, they could not fully develop a sense of perpetrators responsibility to take action on behalf of Korean victims. In the 1990s, women in Japan encountered victims face-to-face. I cannot stress enough how important that was. They were deeply moved by the victims courage to publicly tell the stories of sexual violence. They built interpersonal relationships with the victims, inviting them to Japan, visiting them in their home countries, and listening to their stories closely often in intimate contexts. Over time, the Japanese women witnessed many victim-turned-survivors becoming activists themselves. They learned from the survivors a spirit of fighting gendered discrimination. For them, there is little duality or contradiction between two positions: they fight as citizens of the perpetrator state for taking historical responsibility and as women discriminated against for eliminating sexual violence in contemporary Japan and beyond. They see themselves as fighters rather than as victims, like those survivors.

How do activists in Korea, for example, or elsewhere in Asia, view activists in Japan? Is there any animosity?

Over three decades, Japanese activists have built and maintained solidarity with activists in victimized countries such as South Korea. They have been able to gain trust from other activists because they have never forgotten that they are citizens of the perpetrator state Japan and because they have dedicated their lives to survivors.

That said, Japanese activists themselves do not think that they have worked hard enough because they have not succeeded in making the Japanese government apologize to victims sincerely with state compensation. Activists in other countries appreciate their dedication, as well as, I think, their humbleness. I remember the scene where a resident Korean praised Japanese activists efforts in front of other activists. As a resident Taiwanese, I shared her view. A Japanese woman standing next to me whispered she could never accept such a compliment.

That is an incredible and enlightening anecdote, which really reveals how activists in Japan understand and view their position within the movement.To conclude, lets bring the discussionto the US, particularly to the most recent controversy surrounding remembrance of comfort women. How should we understand the article written by Ramseyer and his views?

Activists in Japan first learned about Ramseyers article from the January 28, 2021 issue ofSankei Shimbun, a rightwing Japanese newspaper. They did not immediately take action, seeing it as yet another instance of the historical revisionist campaign. Witnessing concerted efforts in South Korea and the US to expose the problematic nature of the article and get it retracted, they became more involved. On March 10, historical associations issued a statement against the article. On March 14, Fight for Justice, an activist group, held in collaboration with other groups an online seminar,Sick and Tired of Hearing Comfort Women were not Sexual Slaves, inviting leading historians and reestablishing historical facts. The international movement against Ramseyer has also encouraged concerned citizens in Japan to publicly criticize him for having presented distorted views on Okinawa, resident Koreans, and Burakumin (people historically discriminated against). Ramseyers article has generated these criticalresponses. Yet, the left-leaning media in Japan has barely reported on it, limiting a social impact.

It has promoted the revisionist campaign.Sankei Shimbun, a newspaper which had been orchestrating history wars to spread revisionist views in the US, covered it several times. On April 24, Nadeshiko Action, a womens rightwing group, held a symposium, where Ramseyer, speaking in Japanese, called for freedom of speech in the academia and reiterated his arguments in the article. Revisionist politicians have grabbed the opportunity to reassert the need to revisethe 1993 KnoStatement, internationally recognized as Japans official position on the issue, rebuking it for admitting the use of coercion in treating women and thereby allowing for the criticisms of Ramseyer. Given that he is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies and was awarded in 2018 the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government for his contributions to Japanese studies, one could argue that the revisionist campaign had paved the way for his publication of the article.

The reactions to the article in Japan shed light on how deeply Japan as a whole is isolated from the rest of the international community on the history of comfort women. Activists in Japan have been struggling with this situation for three decades. I must say that they are committed not only to spreading historical truths that have been documented but also to keeping alive survivors individual histories they heard in person. Ultimately, it is the memories of survivors that have given them energy to continue fighting.

Read the rest here:

Eika Tai on Denying the Oppression of Comfort Women - BLARB - lareviewofbooks

:Busta Rhymes at the official grand opening party for Mohegan Suns new ultra-lounge, novelle, on Saturday, June 22, 2019, in Uncasville, Connecticut.Photo: Dave Kotinsky for Mohegan Sun (Getty Images)

Good evening and welcome to yet another episode of Celebrities Say the Dumbest Things! Im your host, One Tired Writer.

Amid the ever-growing bucket of famous people adding their two cents to the Piggy Bank of Pandemic Ignorance, our latest contributor is none other than hip hop icon Busta Rhymes.

In a recently resurfaced video posted to Twitter, the Whats It Gonna Be rapper can be seen going on a mini-rant over masks, government-mandates and lockdowns.

This is my second show in front of human life in the last 15 fucking months, COVID can suck a d-ck. All these little weird ass policies and mandates can suck a d-ck. They tryna take our civil liberties away. Feels good to be back outside. WE OUTSIDE FORREAL, Busta began.

G/O Media may get a commission

Umm, Im sorry butwhen have niggas not been outside during this pandemic? Folks have been traveling, going to Tulum, Santorini, the moon, and their neighbors backyard barbecues since last year. I mean, theyre even out here using milk crates as stair masters now because they just wanna be outside SO BAD. Folks have BEEN outside, okay? But I digress.

Instead, Id like to move onto a segment called Woo Hah! WTF Did He Just Say? How its gonna work is, when you hear something that doesnt make sense, cant believe or can easily be disprovedyou just blurt out Woo Hah! Got it?

Lets try it out with more of what Busta said:

Its called the God-given right to freedom, right? No human being supposed to tell you you cant even breathe freely. Fuck your mask.

WOO HAH!

Im sayin, some of yall might feel differently. Fuck your mask. I cant rhyme to you with a mask on. You cant eat food with a fucking mask on. You cant even see each others smile with a mask on. Damn, yo.

WOO HAH!

I come from a time to where before I even used to wanna holla at a chick, I used to have to do shit with my face to let her know Im into her.

WOO HAH!

Alright! It looks like you got the hang of it! Lets move on to my favorite part of the show now, Hip Hop Hotep. This is where we like to find different members of the hip hop community and blast them for their hotepian-esque beliefs and downright ignorant ass comments. Luckily for us, Busta also gave us some fodder to work with on that front, too:

All of that energy gets blocked when your mask is on. Energy is important and we are all conductors of good fucking energy. We also gotta be clear when a mothafucka tryna give you BAD ENERGY. You can tell from only the expression on they face. I wanna see your face, fuck your mask. Im sorry I got a little political and shit, I miss my people. We gotta talk. We can party but we gotta talk. We gotta communicate, we gotta establish new understandings.

Fuck that, I aint going through that shit again. And make sure yall prepared too. Cuz if anything came outta this mothafucka was a lot of learning. I learned so much shit in this little time off. One thing that came good outta this fucking shutdown, I have become more empowered. And this energy right here is un-fuckwithable. They cant fuck with us when we together like this.

*inhales deeply*

Because I really feel like my explanation should be done in true Busta form, just imagine everything Im about to say said at like 5x the speed, okay?

I dont know when we as a society decided to look at celebrities as experts on everything but I really need us to stop it. Its already bad enough trying to convince the ones you actually know and love in real life to do whats right and whats best for everyone by wearing masks, socially distancing, GETTING THE VACCINE. And it doesnt help when someone with mega influence starts spewing more ignorance and discouraging people to do the very shit that can help us all get out of this hellhole.

I honestly dont get it. Busta and people like him are really out here trying to equate a piece of cloth to serious oppression or an infringement on rights. NO ONE is telling you you cant breathe freely. Literally, no one has said that. Were trying to minimize the spread of a fucking deadly virus that has killed over 630,000 people nationally in the last year. Thats it. How TF do you understand the importance of telling kids to cough in their elbow so they dont spread germs to others around them but not covering up your own mouth to keep from doing the same thing? Make. It. Make. Sense.

Because right now, no matter how you put it down, flip it and reverse it: it just doesnt. Continuing to be and spread this type of ignorance at a time when cases are steadily rising and children are dying is starting to become just as dangerous as the damn virus itself. And I dont know about you, but I, for one, would rather not fight two pandemics at the same time. This one is bad enough.

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Put Your Mask Where My Eyes Could See It: Busta Rhymes Goes Off on Masks and Government Lockdowns - The Root

Despite a revived national focus on environmental injustice, one group remains largely ignored: disabled people, who make up more than 25% of the U.S population.

Even the definition of environmental justice provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn't currently include disability.

Yet, a recent study suggests that disability statusespecially in combination with race, ethnicity, and incomecan determine how much environmental harm one could be exposed to.

Pollution in the U.S. has never been evenly distributed. Our long history of discriminatory housing and zoning laws have forced marginalized groups to live in areas that disproportionately expose them to environmental hazardsthe effects of which are still present today.

In response, environmental justice researchers have spent decades trying to document these inequalities. What started out with a focus on Black and Brown Americans, has since expanded to include other marginalized groups, such as low-income households, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Few studies also consider disability. But in one of these rare studies, Jayajit Chakraborty, a professor of geography at the University of Texas at El Paso, observed that Houston neighborhoods located near pollution sourceslike Superfund sites and hazardous waste facilitieswere home to a significantly higher proportion of disabled people compared to the rest of the city. In addition, race, ethnicity, and age all further amplified these inequalitiesdisabled people of color and those aged 75 years or older both lived in even closer proximity to polluted areas, likely decreasing their quality of life.

These findings came as no surprise to Chakraborty. In his past work, he reached a similar conclusion when investigating how close disabled people lived next to toxic chemical spills, and again when looking at where disabled communities were placed relative to facilities that use hazardous materials.

"And that got me thinking, what about other kinds of environmental hazards?" he told EHN, adding that he wanted to look at more chronic pollution sources which "have traditionally received a lot of focus in previous [environmental justice] researchbut not so much with regards to disability."

He stresses, however, that these conclusions are specific to the Houston area and more work needs to be done to see how it translates across the country.

But expanding on this research will be difficult as work like Chakraborty's is uncommon.

"There are few studies of [environmental justice] and disability, let alone the intersection of race, class and disability," Arrianna Planey, an assistant professor of health and policy management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told EHN.

Yet, the disabled community has known about these types of issues "for forever," disabled youth organizer Daphne Frias told EHN. Researchers, she added, "have so much to do to catch up."

Dr. Jayajit Chakraborty (Credit: UTEP)

Part of the reason for this gap in environmental justice research is a lack of data on disability.

"I would prefer to do field work to get primary datasurveys or interviewsto understand the lived experiences [of this community]." Chakraborty said. However, due to time and funding constraints, this isn't always feasible. So, Chakraborty, like many other environmental justice scholars, relies on information obtained through other methods, such as through the American Community Survey (ACS).

Unfortunately, this can have several limitations. "The ACS has large margins of error and generally underestimates the prevalence of disability," said Planey, who was not involved with the Houston study.

That's because, for one, people in the disabled community face difficulty being counted by these surveys for reasons that range from inaccessible survey design to the distrust of government surveyors. Also, these surveys are self-reported. Stigma surrounding disability often leads people to forgo identifying as disabled, resulting in an underestimation of their numbers.

That said, despite its imperfections at least the ACS includes data about disability. Chakraborty has noticed that other research surveys often don't even inquire about disability status in the first place.

"There [are questions] for race, ethnicity, and housing status, and other kinds of stuff," he explained. "For a lot of these forms there's no identifier for people with disabilities."

Frias said the lack of available data is just a symptom of a larger problem: ableism.

"It's the idea that disabled lives are unimportant and disabled lives are invisible," she said. "It doesn't matter if where we live makes us even more unhealthy."

Disability is also rarely seen as a full-fledged identity, which is reflected on how it's often framed in environmental justice research. The "focus has generally been more on how environmental injustices cause disability," Catherine Jampel, fellow of the American Council Learned Societies (ACLS), told EHN, "but much less on the specific vulnerabilities of disabled people to environmental injustices."

It's likely this kind of framing that has led to terms like "disability-adjusted life year," which is a common metric used to determine "the years of healthy life lost due to disability" and has recently been used with regards to the health effects of environmental pollution.

But disability isn't just a negative state of being. It's a community who deserves access to a clean environment. Any opposing mindset can hinder developing solutions when it comes to protecting the disabled community from environmental issues, said Planey. "In the ableist cultural milieu, it's difficult to advocate to address both the social conditions that produce disablement and advocate for rights and protections for disabled people," explained Planey.

That's why Frias believes this framing needs to change. "Our community is beautiful and powerful, and I think that needs to be embodied instead of this doom and gloom narrative of how we're perceived."

Chakraborty's goal has always been to expand the scope of environmental justice research. He hopes that studies like his recent one in Houston will "lead to a better inclusion of people with disabilities in environmental justice research and environmental policy." He also believes that it's important that environmental justice uses an intersectional approach when looking at disability.

"We like to see disability as a monolithic system of oppression," said Frias, "But that is not necessarily true." Multiple marginalized identities can compound on each other to increase one's pollution exposure risk.

For example, "Disabled peopleespecially disabled people of colorare much more likely to be impoverished," said Planey, forcing them into low-income housing that is more likely to be built near pollution sites.

Still, there is hope. "With each study that's published, it creates more of a dialogue between [environmental justice and disabled] communities," said Frias, adding that moving forward, it's important that researchers begin reaching out directly to the community and listen to their lived experiences.

"It's the phrase that [disabled people] always say, 'Nothing about us without us.'"

Krystal Vasquez is a Ph.D candidate in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. You can reach her at kvasquez@caltech.edu or on Twitter @CaffeinatedKrys

This article was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

Banner photo: anjan58/flickr

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Environmental injustice and disability: Where is the research? - Environmental Health News