Category Archives: Government Oppression

KABUL, Afghanistan Farzana Ahmadi watched as a neighbor in her village in northern Afghanistan was flogged by Taliban fighters last month. The crime: Her face was uncovered.

Every woman should cover their eyes, Ms. Ahmadi recalled one Taliban member saying. People silently watched as the beating dragged on.

Fear even more potent than in years past is gripping Afghans now that U.S. and NATO forces will depart the country in the coming months. They will leave behind a publicly triumphant Taliban, who many expect will seize more territory and reinstitute many of the same oppressive rules they enforced under their regime in the 1990s.

The New York Times spoke to many Afghan women members of civil society, politicians, journalists and others about what comes next in their country, and they all said the same thing: Whatever happens will not bode well for them.

Whether the Taliban take back power by force or through a political agreement with the Afghan government, their influence will almost inevitably grow. In a country in which an end to nearly 40 years of conflict is nowhere in sight, many Afghans talk of an approaching civil war.

All the time, women are the victims of mens wars, said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistans Parliament. But they will be the victims of their peace, too.

When the Taliban governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school, and practically made them prisoners in their own homes.

After the U.S. invasion to topple the Taliban and defeat Al Qaeda in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Western rallying cry for bringing womens rights to the already war-torn country seemed to many a noble undertaking. The cause helped sell the war to Americans who cringed at the sight of a B-52 carpet bombing insurgent positions.

Some schools reopened, giving young women and girls a chance at education and careers that many before them didnt have. But even before American troops touched Afghan soil, some women had already risked their lives by secretly pursuing an education and teaching themselves.

Over two decades, the United States spent more than $780 million to promote womens rights in Afghanistan. The result is a generation who came of age in a period of hope for womens equality.

Though progress has been uneven, girls and women now make up about 40 percent of students. They have joined the military and police, held political office, become internationally recognized singers, competed in the Olympics and on robotics teams, climbed mountains and more all things that were nearly impossible at the turn of the century.

As the conflict dragged on over 20 years and setbacks on the battlefield mounted, American officials and lawmakers frequently pointed to the gains of Afghan women and girls as proof of success of the nation-building endeavor some measure of progress to try to justify the loss of life, both American and Afghan, and billions of dollars spent in the war effort.

Even in the twilight weeks before President Biden made his final decision to pull out all U.S. troops by September, some lawmakers and military officials argued that preserving womens rights was one reason to keep American forces there.

I remember when Americans came and they said that they will not leave us alone, and that Afghanistan will be free of oppression, and will be free of war and womens rights will be protected, said Shahida Husain, an activist in Afghanistans southern Kandahar Province, where the Taliban first rose and now control large stretches of territory. Now it looks like it was just slogans.

Across the country, schools are now being forced to contemplate whether they will be able to stay open.

Firoz Uzbek Karimi, the chancellor of Faryab University in the north, oversees 6,000 students half of them women.

Female students who live in Taliban areas have been threatened several times, but their families send them secretly, Mr. Karimi said. If foreign forces leave early, the situation will get worse.

Human rights groups, nongovernmental organizations, schools and businesses are left trying to figure out contingency plans for female employees and students should the Taliban return to power by force or through an agreement with the Afghan government.

In his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said the United States would continue to prioritize womens rights through humanitarian and diplomatic assistance.

But even now, the gains for women in some places over the past 20 years have been fleeting and unevenly distributed despite the millions invested in womens rights programs.

In Taliban-controlled areas, womens education is extremely restricted, if not nonexistent. In some areas in the countrys east and west, the Taliban have opened schools to girls who can attend until they reach puberty, and in the north, tribal elders have negotiated to reopen some schools for girls, though subjects like social science are replaced with Islamic studies. Education centers are routinely the targets of attacks, and more than 1,000 schools have closed in recent years.

It was my dream to work in a government office, said Ms. Ahmadi, 27, who graduated from Kunduz University two years ago before moving to a Taliban-controlled village with her husband. But I will take my dream to the grave.

If there is one thing that decades of war have taught Afghans, it is that conflict was never a good way to achieve human or womens rights. Since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, war has continuously fueled more war, eventually undermining any humanitarian achievements.

Under the U.S. occupation, education opportunities, cultural shifts, employment and health care have benefited some and barely affected others, especially in rural areas. In those places, some of the wars most brutal chapters played out with many civilians dead and livelihoods devastated.

Often, womens opinions are unclear in these parts, where roughly three-quarters of Afghanistans 34 million people live, and are often unreachable because of geographical, technological and cultural constraints.

Despite real improvements, Afghanistan remains one of the most challenging places in the world to be a woman, a U.S. government watchdog report released in February said. U.S. efforts to support women, girls and gender equality in Afghanistan yielded mixed results.

Still, the Talibans harshly restrictive religious governing structure virtually ensures that the oppression of women is baked into whatever iteration of governance they bring.

The Talibans idea of justice for women was solidified for Ms. Ahmadi when she saw the insurgents beat the unveiled woman in front of her in Kunduz Province.

For many other Afghan women, the governments judicial system has been punishment of a different kind.

Farzana Alizada believes that her sister, Maryam, was murdered by her abusive husband. But a police investigation of any sort took months to start, thwarted by absent prosecutors and corruption, she said. Ms. Alizadas brother-in-law even pressured her to drop the charges by accusing her of stealing. The police asked her why she was pushing the case if her sister was dead.

Domestic violence remains an enduring problem in Afghanistan. About 87 percent of Afghan women and girls experience domestic abuse in their lifetimes, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

I lost all the hope I have in this government. In some cases, maybe the Taliban is better than this system, Ms. Alizada said. No one is on my side.

Ms. Alizadas sentiments were similarly portrayed in Doha, Qatar, at the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Despite months of negotiations, there has been little progress, especially when it comes to discussing womens rights, which neither side has made a priority.

At a separate peace conference held in Moscow in March between the Afghan government, political power brokers and the Taliban, only one woman, Habiba Sarabi, was on the 12-member delegation sent by the Afghan government. And only four are a part of the 21-person team in Doha.

Moscow and Doha, as well, with its small number of women representatives laid bare the thin veneer of support for genuine equality and the so-called post-2001 gains when it comes to who will decide the countrys future, said Patricia Gossman, the associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

But one of the gains that is almost indisputable has been Afghanistans access to the internet and the news media. Cellphone coverage extends across much of the country, meaning that Afghan women and girls have more space to learn and connect outside their familial bubbles and villages. The Afghan news media, too, has blossomed after large investments from foreign governments and investors, and many women have become nationally known journalists and celebrities.

But even their futures are uncertain.

Lina Shirzad is the acting managing director of a small radio station in Badakhshan, in Afghanistans restive north. She employs 15 women and fears, given the growing insecurity, that they will lose their jobs. Even some of the larger national outlets are looking to relocate employees or move some operations outside the country.

With the withdrawal of foreign forces in the next few months, these women that are the breadwinners for their family will be unemployed, Ms. Shirzad said. Will their values and achievements be maintained or not?

Fahim Abed contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.

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Afghan Women Fear The Worst after U.S. Withdrawal - The New York Times

Why does Ottawa still refuse to take Canadas side? Why, after all the brute diplomacy and bullying of Canadian citizens, does this government continue to appease Beijing?

The Halifax Security Forum planned to give an award to the president of Taiwan for her leadership in the face of Chinas hostile government. Canadian officials allegedly threatened to pull support and funding from the event when they learned of this.

If this was indeed the case, Canadas actions went beyond the scope of mere careful diplomacy. Threatening the Halifax Security Forum for recognizing Taiwans president, if true, was naked appeasement of a regime both hostile and antithetical to a democratic Canada.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau sidestepped giving clear answers to questions regarding the alleged threat. Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan denied there had been a threat, but subsequently demurred on the topic of renewing funding for the next Halifax Security Forum. Sajjan also refused to support or oppose the awarding of the Taiwanese president. These are the same cabinet members who refrained from voting on a parliamentary resolution condemning Beijings oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Whether a threat was made or not, there was an opportunity to assert Canadas commitment to its democratic allies. The government failed to take it.

A government that publicly commits itself to defending democracy and self-determination, like the current Canadian government, would not shy away from standing up for Taiwan.

We need to get to a place where Indigenous peoples in Canada are in control of their own destiny, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2018. There is no good reason why the prime minister should not apply that same mentality to Taiwan or even Hong Kong. The president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, leads a party committed to the principle of geographic separation from China and political independence for Taiwan, not reunification with the mainland. The principle of supporting self-determination is compromised if selectively applied by the Canadian government.

Taiwan is not a rogue province. It has functioned as an independent country since the end of the Chinese Civil War. Canada and Taiwan have bilateral trade relations and all the other trappings of an international relationship between fully legitimate states. The refusal to officially treat Taiwan as a truly independent country is diplomatic posturing, not a reflection of reality.

Ottawa seems intent on avoiding any actions that would lead to retribution from Beijing. If Canada continues to back off from confrontation, it will make no difference in how the Chinese government treats Canada. Beijing has no goodwill toward Canada or its citizens. It actively tries to undermine the political system of Canada and the rights to free speech of Canadian citizens.

CSIS warned that China, along with Russia, have infiltrated the Canadian political system to lobby against opposition to those countries governments. Canadian citizens of Chinese descent are subjected to menacing late night calls if they speak up against the brutality of the Beijing government. Their families in China are threatened with disappearance, injury and death if those Canadian citizens continue to exercise their democratic rights. Citizens of a free, democratic nation are being bullied into silence by a faraway authoritarian regime. This should be a pressing concern for the current government.

The fantasy of an amicable relationship with a benign Peoples Republic of China has to end. Canada will not be treated as an equal by Beijing. China is vastly more powerful, economically and militarily, than Canada. It makes no sense for China to do so. The Chinese government is not our friend, and will not be regardless of how much appeasement takes place.

Ottawa has the ability to assert that Canada will not be bullied by undemocratic regimes. Australia, India and Taiwan have shown they will not be cowed into a reluctant submission to Beijing. The ambiguous stance of the current government is not enough and that deficiency will hurt Canada more as Beijings power grows.

Canada must join that list of countries who will stand up to Beijing, or history will show Canada wavered at a time when the strength of democracies was tested harder than at any other time this far into the 21st century.

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Geoff Russ is a history graduate, a journalist at The Source and Spheres of Influence, researcher at On This Spot and former member of the Conservative Party of Canada.

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Opinion | Ottawa on the wrong side of history on China - TheSpec.com

For over seven decades now, films have been an active medium of politicisation. Renowned director Vetrimaran said that there are no exclusive art film audiences and commercial film audiences per se in Tamil Nadu. The same set of people are the viewers, and thereby there is often blurring of such a difference.

Of late, there are two sets of concerns emerging in the film space. One, a set of films have turned out to be outcomes of lazy and misinformed politics and therefore dissemination of such political ideas is a worrying trend.

Two, many a time, the makers of the films, writers and/or directors wish to shy away from claiming the existence of a political quotient in their films. However, the director of the movie in question, Mari Selvaraj, is one among the few who explicitly claim to be disseminating socio-political and cultural ideas through their movies.

Karnan, his recent directorial venture with Dhanush, Lal Paul, Natarajan Subramaniam, Rajisha Vijayan, Yogi Babu and others is one such meticulously woven film. The movie seeks to articulate and mainstream the politics of the marginalised communities and radically locates such politics in dignity, recognition, and socio-economic mobility.

At the same time, the movie cautions against the furthering of the politics of the marginalised through regressive ritual pride and violence as pivots. The title, which is the name of a vital character of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, deftly captures the essence of the current marginalisation, that is, denying rights to the capable on the basis of birth.

The movie is set in the late 1990s in the south of Tamil Nadu the time and place that were rife with clashes between the Thevars, a shudra caste group, and the Devendra Kula Vellalars (DKVs), previously called the Pallars, a formerly untouchable caste group.

Also read:Kabali Destabilises the Established Idioms of Tamil Cinema

While the movie is filled with subversive references and metaphors for the keen eye, the director has been unapologetic with the music in the film and food, two proxies of dominance that many woke progressives fail to understand or worse, perpetuate.

A prevalent example is how a specific variety of upper caste music and vegetarian food are promoted as markers of Tamil identity whereas the state is a site of hundreds of folk art forms and nine out of ten people are meat-eaters. The movie celebrates sub-regional folk arts and the local meat-based cuisine.

Metaphors, and a cry for dignity, power and mobility

The site of the movie is Podiyankulam, an ostensible pseudonym for Kodiyankulam, a Dalit village that was subject to police brutality in 1995. The movie gives ample screentime to metaphors without demur.

The bus stand in the movie serves as a metaphor for mobility, recognition by the state, and access to state resources. While the state in theory functions to provide its resources to its subjects equally, the movie expounds on how access to the state resources are restricted to and by certain communities, many a time by hampering the communication channels available to the marginalised.

Another captivating metaphor is that of a donkey foal whose forelimbs are tied, allowing for only confined movements, first introduced in the movie after a triumphant celebration by the people of Podiyankulam.

The above is a practice used by tamers to instill obedience during the domestication of donkeys, a similar tactic is alluded to in the movie in a discussion among the folks of the affluent neighbouring village/town by restricting mobility of the oppressed.

A still from Karnan movie. Photo:Twitter/@mari_selvaraj.

The recurring masked figure or uruvam in the movie is a representation of the suppressed anger and sorrow that is harboured by not just the protagonists family but by the entire village as the misfortune that sets the foundation for the movie could have happened to anyone belonging in a similar setting.

The state in the movie is shown as a metaphor for caste oppression, a system put in place to maintain the status quo, with checks and balances, be it the denial of a basic amenity like the bus stop or the unwillingness to negotiate with the aggrieved. The antagonist Kannabiran, a senior police officer of the region, serves as a vessel of the same. Instead of a dominant caste village head as the antagonist, Mari Selvaraj has successfully mainstreamed issues that involve systemic oppression. Using police violence as a conveyor of the same has served well in establishing an emotional connection and relatability with the wider audience given Tamil Nadus recent experience with custodial deaths in Sathankulam.

When houses are ransacked and certificates are torn, that is, markers of mobility are destroyed, violence becomes the only recourse to the oppressed. Anger and retaliation are shown as means to secure recognition and respect. The use of the villages sword or ur-vaal to kill serves as a symbol of the collective anger of the marginalised against the discriminatory system represented by the antagonist.

Also read:The Anti-Caste Film in English Is a Genre in the Making

The movie culminates with the protagonist reflecting on how their means to mobility and their needs are turned a blind eye to and instead only subservience is expected of them. The two scenes revolving around the names of people belonging to both the caste groups serve well to expose the insecurities that exist in proximate caste groups that believe in rights that are imputed to ones birth. A riveting dialogue by the protagonist goes, Kandiahs son could be named Kannabiran but Madasamys son should not be named Karnan?

Karnan as a caution to the DKVs move to Hindutva

A considerable chunk of the Devendra Kula Vellalars is seen to be rallying behind the BJP and the Hindutva construct. Since the run-up to the 2019 elections, the BJP has been vocally supportive of the demand to rename the Pallars as Devendra Kula Vellalars. The leaders of two parties claiming to represent the DKVs, Puthiya Tamizhagam Party led by Dr. Krishnasamy and Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam led by John Pandian have expressed their explicit support to the BJP and its ideology.Dr Krishnasamy went one step ahead and claimed to not owe his allegiance to the BJP but to the RSS.

The decade of the 1990s saw a fissure among the SCs owing to differences in aspirations. The DKVs have not foregrounded victimhood but a glorious past of valour and prosperity as markers of their identity, thereby making them vulnerable to the Hindutva appropriation, one that just provides them cursory respect and recognition.

While the BJP-led Union government has accepted the renaming demand, Krishnasamy and Pandian have also been critical of the affirmative action policies at varying degrees as they have held pride above all.

In contrast, Mari Selvaraj deftly problematises the communitys present instead of its past. While he echoes the demand to be named and called better, he firmly holds on to the issues of redistribution of state resources, educational mobility, and the vocabulary of social justice.

Moreover, the movie moves beyond a narrow inter-caste antagonism framework towards a broader matrix of securing recognition, redistribution, and representation for the marginalised in avenues of power.

Vignesh Karthik K.R. is a doctoral researcher at the Kings India Institute, Kings College London. He tweets at @krvtweets. Ajay Chandra is a political analyst based in Chennai. He can be reached at ajaycvu@gmail.com.

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Tamil Movie 'Karnan' Serves a Note of Caution to Mainstream Politics of the Marginalised - The Wire

A new and rapidly growing popular rebellion is affecting the Iranian regime. On March 11, a statement signed by 640 eminent Iranians, some living within and some outside Iran, was posted on-line in English and Persian with the hashtag #No2IslamicRepublic. It marked the launch of a new anti-government movement.The founding statement called for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, describing it as the biggest obstacle in the way of freedom, prosperity, democracy, progress, and human rights. The signatories urged Iranian activists to unite, to make #No2IslamicRepublic their national solidarity objective, and to create a massive movement that can purge Iran from this dark and corrupt regime. Many ordinary Iranians posted images on social media of murdered and executed dissidents and political prisoners, along with other examples of social and cultural oppression by the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.Since the launch, the number of adherents has mushroomed into the tens of thousands, and the campaign has succeeded in uniting opposition elements outside the country that have previously failed to coalesce. As the number of signatories rapidly rose, it became clear that they were drawn from many sectors of Iranian society: political and civil rights activists, artists, athletes, authors and university professors, among others. One of the best-known is filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad, who has spent years in and out of prison for his outspoken criticisms of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was joined by five female advocates for democracy and womens rights who were arrested and jailed in 2019 after signing an open letter calling for Khameneis resignation.

The #No2IslamicRepublic campaign is supported by many Iranians abroad who are household names in Iran singers, a composer, an award-winning filmmaker, a historian, a feminist sociologist, womens rights activists and even former Ontario cabinet minister Reza Moridi.

The most public face of the campaign is Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shahs son and Irans last heir to the throne before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979. The 60-year-old Pahlavi heads the National Council of Iran for Free Elections, which has been acting as a government-in-exile. Just recently he announced a major change in the objective of his organization.

Setting aside his previous intention to reestablish a constitutional monarchy, Pahlavi now supports the establishment of a democratic republic to replace the revolutionary regime. This has meant that a rival body operating its own government-in-exile, an organization calling itself The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has been able to come together with Pahlavi under the umbrella of the #No2IslamicRepublic campaign.

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From the regimes point of view, the campaign could not have surfaced at a more inconvenient time. Iran is in the midst of a delicate diplomatic game of poker with the US over reopening the nuclear deal. Is Iran going to agree to observe the terms of the original deal, which the US demands as the price of returning to the table, or is Washington going to lift all the sanctions imposed during the Trump era, which is Irans precondition? A full-scale public rebellion inside Iran, not only against the government but against the republic itself, would severely weaken the regimes bargaining position.

THE SITUATION is made even more unstable because new Iranian presidential elections are scheduled for June 18, and activists are seizing the opportunity to condemn the faux democracy that has been imposed on the country. Iranians know that nothing happens in the state without the approval of the supreme leader, and that Hassan Rouhani is president only because it suited Ayatollah Khamenei in 2013 and again in 2017 to have him as a moderate figurehead.

Moderation may be far from how the regime intends to deal with the current insurrection. Present indications are that a military hard-liner is likely to succeed Rouhani, who is serving his final term. As with all elections in Iran, potential candidates must be vetted by the Guardians Council, whose members are directly and indirectly appointed by Khamenei, and the supreme leader is reported to have said publicly that the country should be led by a relatively young and ideologically hard-line president.

The Islamic Republic is currently weaker than it has been for decades. Ex-president Donald Trumps maximum pressure policy, applied for years, succeeded in reducing the regimes power, both economically and politically. Yet President Joe Biden, determined as he is to resurrect ex-president Barack Obamas failed policy of seeking engagement with Iran, is unlikely to offer any support, overt or covert, to this latest effort to substitute a genuine democracy for the rigid, unpopular and failing theocracy currently imposed on the Iranian people.

If Biden does turn his back on Irans popular uprising, it would be a case of history repeating itself.

The patently manipulated 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president gave rise to an upsurge of popular anger. The public believed that the poll had been subject to vote rigging and election fraud. Ordinary Iranians took to the streets in their millions in what came to be known the Green Movement.

The Obama administration eager, perhaps determined, to engage with Iran regardless of the cost did precisely nothing to support the protest. The message the ayatollahs took was that the US would look away no matter what they did to stamp out their domestic opposition. As a result, the Green Movement was ruthlessly suppressed, and its leaders were either imprisoned or eliminated.

Widespread popular discontent with Irans revolutionary regime rumbles away below the surface, and there have been other opportunities such as in the popular uprisings in 2019 and 2020 to endorse it, but neither the US nor any Western nation has ever offered overt support. The reluctance is perhaps understandable. Past efforts at encouraging or supporting regime change, even in flagrantly anti-democratic countries, does not have a notably successful track record.

To attempt the overthrow of an established regime that has all the engines of the state and the military under its control is a formidable, perhaps foolhardy, enterprise. Yet this #No2IslamicRepublic campaign has just that objective.

Unless, or until, it seems to be succeeding, experience tells us that it can expect little by way of outside support.

The writer is Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. He blogs at a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com

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How secure is the Iranian regime? - The Jerusalem Post

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Opinion: Governments are developing action plans but for the women and girls in danger, we are not making progress quickly enough.

Author of the article:

Since the start of the pandemic, we have been asked to stay home as much as possible a critical measure to stop the spread of COVID-19. But not everyone is safe in their own homes. During the pandemic, domestic violence against women has increased as much as 20 to 30 per cent in parts of the country.

Most women experiencing abuse now have longer, closer contact at home with their abusers, and less in-person access to friends, family and other support systems.Women are losing jobs and income faster than anyone else. How can they leave?

The federal and provincial governments are developing action plans to address the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence. For the women and girls in danger, we are not making progress quickly enough. We need action now.

To be effective, B.C.s plan needs to be coordinated among all levels of support, from non-profits providing services, to the justice system to government. It needs to address the immediate safety needs of women experiencing abuse and the financial barriers to leaving. It needs to reach the public through evidence-based education and awareness campaigns.

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There must also be meaningful acknowledgment that gender-based violence intersects with other forms of discrimination and oppression, creating additional barriers for those who experience the greatest challenges accessing resources that could help.

Finally, this plan needs to be sustainable, with long-term investment and clearly defined, measurable goals that are revised every two years.

Our provincial action plan needs to ensure that staff across the justice system are educated on gender-based violence and trained in best practices to ensure that victims are treated with appropriate and sensitive responses.

Addressing safety also means increasing funding for Legal Aid to ensure all women experiencing intimate partner violence have access to a lawyer for the duration of any family law proceedings.

Intimate-partner violence impacts women regardless of socio-economic status, but women who have lower incomes face substantial financial challenges to leaving. They need support reconstructing their lives. This can include access to a livable income, to transportation, career training, job-related expenses, child care, supplies and services for children, and a safe, affordable place to live.

There has been some progress provincially on income assistance rates, child care and housing. While it was encouraging to see the $175 increase in income and disability assistance rates, it is still not a livable amount. Rates need to reflect the actual basic cost of living in British Columbia and be indexed to inflation to remain at a livable amount.

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Without a place to live, women with children are often forced to return to an abusive partner. BC Housings Womens Transition House and Supports Program has been working with organizations like YWCA Metro Vancouver to build new first- and second-stage transition houses, and long-term housing for women with children. This work must continue.

The pandemic has shown us how critical child care is to our everyday lives, especially a womans capacity to work. Expanding affordable child care must be a priority for the provincial government. To do this, they must also address the ongoing recruitment and retention challenges facing the child care sector.

Addressing gender-based violence at its core must be the ultimate goal of the plan. Changing attitudes will take time and require a well-executed and properly funded plan, including education programs for youth and government public awareness campaigns. We also need to ensure that any programs offered to the perpetrators of violence against women are evidence-based.

The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountabilitys recent report found that 160 women and girls were murdered in Canada last year. Half of these women were killed by a current or former intimate partner. Those who were killed by strangers were often marginalized because they were poor, racialized, or were sex workers. Twenty per cent of women and girls killed last year were Indigenous.

When it comes to COVID-19, most of us have been supportive of government funding and action to tackle the problem to keep everyone in B.C. safe. We have listened to the experts and changed our behaviours.

We can do the same to address gender-based violence so that we dont have to read about another person whose life has been stolen simply because she is a woman.

Lisa Rupert is vice-president for housing and violence prevention with YWCA Metro Vancouver.

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Lisa Rupert: We need action now to address shadow pandemic of gender-based violence - Vancouver Sun

The U.S. human rights group Jewish Voice for Peace Action on Thursday endorsed a bill introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum that would place conditions on the billions of dollars in annual military aid given to Israel in a bid to stop its government from using the funds to kill, torture, imprison, displace, or otherwise harm Palestinian children and families.

"It could not be clearer: Congress needs to stop funding the Israeli government's oppression of Palestinians."Beth Miller,JVP Action

McCollum's (D-Minn.)bill (pdf) would prohibit Israel from using U.S. taxpayer dollars to "support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law."

Additionally, it would require the U.S. secretary of state to certify to Congress that U.S. funds are not being used for these illegal purposes.

Beth Miller, senior government affairs manager at JVP Action, said in a statement that the bill "could not come at a more critical moment. The pandemic has exposed and intensified brutal systemic injustices around the worldand Israel is no exception."

"The Israeli military has continued to imprison Palestinian children and, horrifyingly, at a time when we are all asked to stay at home, the Israeli government has actually increased the rate at which it is demolishing Palestinian homes," she added. "It could not be clearer: Congress needs to stop funding the Israeli government's oppression of Palestinians."

Israel currently receives about $3.8 billion in annual unconditional military aid from the United States.

Proud to introduce new legislation: Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. It's time for Congress to support peace & justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

Read my full statement here: https://t.co/mi5XfQ18Jj

Rep. Betty McCollum (@BettyMcCollum04) April 15, 2021

"U.S. assistance intended for Israel's security must never be used to violate the human rights of Palestinian children, demolish the homes of Palestinian families, or to permanently annex Palestinian lands," McCollum said in a statement introducing the bill. "Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children, and this includes the U.S. taking responsibility for how taxpayer-funded aid is used by recipient countries, Israel included."

"Congress must stop ignoring the unjust and blatantly cruel mistreatment of Palestinian children and families living under Israeli military occupation," McCollum continued. "I strongly believe there is a growing consensus among the American people that the Palestinian people deserve justice, equality, human rights, and the right to self-determination."

"The unprecedented endorsement of this bill by human rights organizations as well as Christian, Jewish, and Muslim organizations is indicative of an energized movement in support of human rights for Palestinians," she added. "It is time for Americans, especially Members of Congress, to stand with Palestinians and Israelis who seek a future of peace and justice."

Thank you, Betty McCollum, for being a tireless advocate for Palestinian rights. We hope that your support for Palestinian justice, freedom, and equality will inspire other members of Congress to speak truth to power about Israeli occupation and apartheid. #FreePalestine https://t.co/NKU5xdRimB

CODEPINK (@codepink) April 15, 2021

Co-sponsoring McCollum's bill are Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Andre Carson (Ind.), Danny K. Davis (Ill.), Jess "Chuy" Garca (Ill.), Ral Grijalva (Ariz.), Marie Newman (Ill.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Bobby L. Rush (Ill.), and Rasida Tlaib (Mich.)the first Palestinian American elected to Congress.

The bill comes days after a 14-year-old Palestinian boy lost an eye after he was shot in the face by Israeli occupation forces in the illegally occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

According to the rights group Defense for Children InternationalPalestine, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinian minors in 2020, while the Israeli human rights defenders B'Tselem said 157 Palestinian minors were imprisoned by Israeli authorities as of the end of last September.

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Jewish Voice for Peace Action Endorses McCollum Bill Placing Conditions on US Aid to Israel - Common Dreams

The killings of African Americans at the hands of police officers has continued unabated in the United States. In the past year, the deaths of Breonna Taylor in her bed and George Floyd by public asphyxiation are two of the most egregious.

As the officer who knelt on Floyds neck was being tried for the killing in court, another officer shot and killed Daunte Wright.

Scholarly research has begun to document the traumatic consequences of police killings on African Americans. One study finds the effects on Black males meet the criteria for trauma exposure, based on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used for psychiatric diagnoses.

Besides police use of force in North America, one of the trajectories of my research focuses on armed insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa. I am beginning to observe in the U.S. some of the social conditions necessary for the maturation and rise of an armed insurgency. The U.S. is at risk of armed insurgencies within the next five years if the current wave of killings of unarmed Black people continues.

To begin, the armed insurgencies would not have a defined organizational structure. They may look like Mexicos Zapatista movement or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

Entities operating independently will spring up, but over time, a loose coalition may form to take credit for actions of organizationally disparate groups for maximum effect. There will likely be no single leader to neutralize at the onset. Like U.S. global counter-terrorism efforts, neutralizing leaders will only worsen matters.

Using research and contextual experience from the developing world to make predictions about the U.S. in this regard is apt. There are many interrelated conditions for the rise of an armed insurgency. None of them in and of itself can lead to an armed insurgency, but requires a host of variables within social and political processes.

Transgenerational oppression of an identifiable group is one of the pre-conditions for an armed insurgency, but this is hardly news. What the U.S. has managed to institute on a national and comprehensive scale is what sociologist Jock Young calls cultural inclusion and structural exclusion.

A strong sense of injustice, along with significant moments, events and episodes like the killings of Taylor and Floyd are also important.

The racialized trauma from police killings adds to the growing sense of alienation and frustration felt by African Americans, but police killings arent the only way they experience disproportionate death rates.

African Americans have the second highest per capita death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic: 179.8 deaths per 100,000 (second only to Indigenous Americans with 256.0 deaths per 100,000). They are also at a higher risk of death from cancer, for example. The pandemic has compounded these deaths, adding to the disproportionately high unemployment rate and the impact of layoffs during the pandemic.

There is another, related variable: The availability of people willing and able to participate in such insurgency. The U.S. has potential candidates in abundance. Criminal records sometimes for relatively minor offences that mar Black males for life, have taken care of this critical supply. One study estimates that while eight per cent of the U.S. general population has felony convictions, the figure is 33 per cent among African American males.

Some of these men may gradually be reaching the point where they believe they have nothing to lose. Some will join for revenge, others for the thrill of it and many for the dignity of the people they feel have been trampled on for too long. Although 93 per cent of protest against police brutality is peaceful and involves no major harm to people and property, there is no guarantee that future protests about new police killings will remain peaceful.

The legitimacy of grievances of Black Americans among their fellow citizens is also an important variable. Their grievances appear to have found strong resonance and increasing sympathy within the broader population. Many Latino, Native American and white people see the injustices against Black people and are appalled. Black Lives Matter protests are now major multicultural events, particularly among young adults.

Read more: Derek Chauvin trial begins in George Floyd murder case: 5 essential reads on police violence against Black men

A sense that there are no legitimate channels to address the grievances or that those channels have been exhausted is also crucial. This is evident in the failure to convict or even try police officers involved in several of the incidents. A grand jury could not indict the officer whose chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner, despite video evidence. Such cases have led to a troubling loss of trust in the criminal justice system.

Any anti-police insurgency in the U.S. will likely start as an urban-based guerrilla-style movement. Attacks may be carried out on sites and symbols of law enforcement. Small arms and improvised explosive devices will likely be weapons of choice, which are relatively easy to acquire and build, respectively. The U.S. has the highest number of civilian firearms in the world with 120.5 guns per 100 persons or more than 393 million guns.

Critical infrastructure and government buildings may be targeted after business hours. The various groups will initially seek to avoid civilian casualties, and this may help to garner a level of support among the socially marginal from various backgrounds. The public would be concerned but relatively secure in understanding that only the police are being targeted. Escalation may ensue through copycat attacks.

The U.S. government will seem to have a handle on the insurgency at first but will gradually come to recognize that this is different. African American leaders will likely be helpless to stop the insurgency. Anyone who strongly denounces it in public may lose credibility among the people. Authenticity would mean developing a way to accommodate the insurgents in public rhetoric while condemning them in private.

I am often amazed that many people appear unaware that Nelson Mandela was co-founder of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the violent youth wing of the African National Congress, which carried out bombings in South Africa. The rationale provided in court by Mandela regarding his use of violence is instructive. Mandela told a South African court in 1963:

I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.

To predict that an armed insurgency may happen in the U.S. is not the same as wishing for it to happen: It is not inevitable, and it can and should be avoided.

Police reform is a first step. A comprehensive criminal justice overhaul is overdue, including addressing the flaws inherent in trial by jury, which tends to produce mind-boggling results in cases involving police killings. Finally, the judgment in the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyds death will have an impact on the trajectory of any possible future events.

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The United States is at risk of an armed anti-police insurgency - The Conversation CA

On Wednesday, after more than three decades of trying, the House Judiciary Committee advanced HR40, a bill to explore paying reparations to Black Americans for centuries of racism and oppression dating to the beginning of American slavery in 1619. The vote was along party lines, with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, accusing the Democrats who passed the measure of trying to take money from people who were never involved in the evil of slavery and give it to people who were never subject to the evil of slavery.

Jordans is a common refrain among Republican members of Congress any time reparations come up. And much of the American public agrees with him. Only one in five Americans supports reparations, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll last summer.

But Jordans argument isnt just morally dubious; its misleading. Slavery is far from the only evil America needs to account for in the reparations debate.

One less known wrong is the federal governments role in enforcing and furthering housing segregation. As late as the 1950s, the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in Black neighborhoods while facilitating the construction of affordable suburbs for white families.

Examples of this federally supported discrimination abound in the Bay Area. Consider Daly City, where, as historian Richard Rothstein has documented, the FHA financed the development of the Westlake neighborhood on the condition that the area be restricted to whites. Once established, that color wall remained largely in force until the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Similarly segregated housing developments were built across the country with the guidance and direct participation of the federal government. The impacts, both social and financial, linger to this day.

Home values are a major component of the racial wealth gap between Black and white families in the United States. And historians have traced this gap directly to discriminatory housing policies, including those of the federal government. The average home price in Westlake is currently over $1.2 million, according to Redfin estimates a boon to those who inherited them and an overwhelming barrier to the vast majority of potential buyers.

Slavery was arguably the greatest evil perpetrated in the history of the American republic. But it was far from the only evil directed at Black Americans with the complicity of the federal government. Either through ignorance, willful obfuscation or some combination of the two, Republican legislators are ignoring that history in the debate surrounding reparations. And theyve been successful in influencing public opinion on the matter.

One of HR40s primary goals is to correct the record and educate Americans about racism throughout our history including but not limited to slavery. That lesson is clearly needed. The reparations debate might not be so contentious if it werent so uninformed.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

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Editorial: Slavery isnt the only evil we need to talk about in reparations debate - San Francisco Chronicle

Papua New Guineas first post-independence leader, Michael Somare, died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, aged 84. Somare was the most important political figure in PNGs history, having served as prime minister from 1975 to 1980, 1982 to 1985 and 2002 to 2011.

His political career and legacy serve as another demonstration of the abject failure of bourgeois nationalism. Contrary to the various promises made by Somare and his colleagues in 1975 and afterward, the independent capitalist state in PNG has failed to advance the economic interests and social and democratic rights of the working class and rural masses. Still dominated by Australian imperialism, the countrys people remain among the most impoverished in the world, while PNGs extensive natural wealth, including minerals and energy, continues to be plundered for profit by transnational corporations.

Somare was born in 1936, to a father who worked as a police officer with the Australian colonial force. The PNG half-island had been under full Australian control since 1914, when Canberra seized on the eruption of World War I to take over the German-controlled northern part of the territory.

Somare inherited his fathers chiefly status within his East Sepik-based tribe in northern PNG. He trained as a teacher and spent seven years working in primary and secondary schools before becoming a radio and newspaper journalist.

He became active in politics after 1963 when authorities decided to bring down salary levels to what it was estimated the economy of the Territory could afford (in the words of one Australian official). This involved racist distinctions between pay rates for indigenous blacks and expatriate whites within the public service. The measure saw new local public service workers paid about half what white Australians were paid for doing the same work. Existing public service workers like Somare had their wages permanently frozen, with no possibility of raises through promotion.

With the new salary scheme it became practically impossible for any Papua New Guinean to move into one of the more comfortable houses, Somare explained in his 1975 autobiography. There was probably no other single issue that made Papua New Guineans more aware of the injustices of colonialism. [Sana: An Autobiography of Michael Somare, p. 43]

It is telling that the origins of the nationalist movement in Papua New Guinea lie not in a concern for the plight of the countrys masses under imperialist rule, but rather in the effort of a small and relatively privileged layer, including members of the chiefly elite, to advance its social and economic interests.

There was never a mass anti-colonial movement in PNG. Somare and his colleagues played an important role in blocking the entry of the masses into politics, fearing a challenge to their class interests and a disruption to their relationship with the Australian authorities. Somare occasionally drew the ire of the most reactionary and racist settler layers, but Canberra saw him as a trusted guarantor of Australian imperialist interests. This is why Somare was never imprisoned or harassed by colonial authorities in the pre-independence period.

His political career leading up to independence consisted of manoeuvring within the pseudo-parliamentary structure created by the Australian authorities as they prepared to hand over formal control. By the mid-1960s, previous Australian imperialist proposals to annexe PNG as a new state or territory had been abandoned. World imperialism was forging a new form of exploitative relationships with the previously colonised territories and the Australian government feared international censure if it was not seen to be making preparations for PNG independence.

A flag and national anthem were invented in 1961. Australia commissioned a World Bank survey of the territorys economy in 1965 (the greatest hopes in the mineral sector rest on general geological indications that the Territory, and western Papua in particular, may contain major petroleum fields, the report noted). It established the University of Papua New Guinea and Institute of Technology in 1967, with the express aim of training an indigenous ruling elite. A related initiative in 1964 saw the creation of a House of Assembly based on a restricted franchise, limited powers and reserved seats for white expatriates.

Somare won a seat on this body in 1968, after rising to prominence through his work in the public service trade unions. He was elected together with a group of fellow aspiring public servants who in 1967 had formed Pangu Pati (Papua and New Guinea Unity Party). Pangu was not a political party in the usually understood senseit had no mass membership, no clear program beyond aspiring to home rule for the territory, and its House of Assembly caucus lacked stability, as members variously joined or left the group. Somare nevertheless came to head a group that, as he described it, constituted a loyal opposition to the administration.

The establishment of formal independence

After the 1972 elections, Somare was able to muster a majority in the House of Assembly and was appointed chief minister.

This coincided with the election in Australia of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who accelerated the preparations for independence. Whitlam was seeking to fashion a fresh face for Australian capitalism on the world stage amid growing denunciations of its White Australia immigration regime and racist treatment of the Aboriginal population. Whitlam saw PNG independence as a means of maintaining Australian hegemony in the South Pacific. Labor, he explained, had commitments, first, to our own national security, secondly to a secure, united and friendly Papua New Guinea.

Somare and his colleagues repeatedly expressed concerns that Whitlam was moving too quickly and suggested an extended home rule period before independence.

Somares record as chief minister from 1972 to 1975 underscores his conservative politics and commitment to the status quo. On the question of PNGs post-independence constitution, for example, he emulated Australias anti-democratic constitution, even retaining Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. He dismissed student demonstrations that broke out in Port Moresby when the constitution was announced, arguing that retaining the British monarchy was aimed at ensuring stability.

Ideologically, Somares Pangu Pati had been formed only on the basis of some vague sympathies for Tanzanias first post-colonial leader Julius Nyerere, together with an idealised promotion of the Papua New Guinean village.

After becoming chief minister, Somare issued Eight Aims in December 1972. These included a rapid increase in the proportion of the economy under the control of Papua New Guineans a more equal distribution of economic benefits including equalisation of income among people decentralisation of economic activity and an emphasis on agricultural development [and] a more self-reliant economy less dependent upon imported goods and services.

These aims, one historian explained, quickly became the cornerstone not only of economic planning but also a sort of instant government-sponsored ideology they acquired, or at least the government tried very hard to have them acquire, an almost religious sanctity. [Don Woolford, Papua New Guinea: Initiation and Independence, p. 220]

After independence, the Eight Aims were effectively dropped, along with associated talk within ruling circles of pursuing a non-capitalist, egalitarian village-based economic development. This had been nothing but a populist cover for Somares pursuit of a capitalist economic program, subordinated to the diktats of Australia and the US.

The first post-independence budget was unveiled by Somares finance minister, businessman Julius Chan, who declared that self-reliance now meant fiscal self-reliance, adding that easy days are over, with lower than expected Australian aid requiring austerity measures.

This set the stage for the subsequent domination of the PNG economy by transnational corporations that continues to the present day.

Somare in office

After taking office in nominally independent PNG, Somare headed a government that remained tied by a thousand strings to Australian imperialism. Canberras so-called aid funding comprised 56 percent of total PNG government spending in 1975, and by 1985, a decade after the end of colonial rule, this had only slightly declined to 33 percent.

During Somares first two terms in office (1975-1980, 1982-1985), very little, if anything, changed for the vast majority of PNGs population. There was no significant redistribution of wealth, change in land ownership, or shift in economic policy.

The first years of Papua New Guineas independence coincided with the collapse of the nationalist program of economic regulation and import substitution based on tariff protection that had been widely promoted and adopted in former colonial countries. From the late 1970s and 1980s, governments in the so-called Third World instead sought to integrate their economies into the capitalist world market by welcoming foreign investment on exploitative terms. This approach saw PNG transformed into a lucrative source of minerals and energy for many of the worlds largest transnational corporations.

Australian investments were protected after PNG independence, most importantly including Rio Tintos Panguna copper and gold mine that was opened in 1972 in the island province of Bougainville. The mine, one of the worlds largest copper sources, caused widespread environmental damage and triggered a separatist civil conflict in Bougainville that has not finally been resolved despite an end to fighting.

Just four years after independence, dissatisfaction with the government triggered student protests and workers strikes in Port Moresby. Tribal conflicts spiralled in some regions, including the Highlands. Extreme social inequality and lack of decent housing in the capital city also saw an increase in violent crime. Somare responded by declaring a state of emergency over much of the country in 1979, and threatening to deploy the military to crack down on strikes and demonstrations. This was only the first of many states of emergency, with the military repeatedly deployed in the Highlands and other parts of the country in the 1980s.

Somares foreign policy was squarely in line with US-Australia Cold War imperatives. His loyalty to the Western powers found one expression in his enthusiasm for the British monarchy. After independence he accepted a seat on the Queens Privy Council and a knighthood (afterwards insisting he be referred to as Sir Michael). Somare also sought to appease the neighbouring Indonesian military junta that had come to power in 1965-66 through an anti-communist bloodbath. Somare endorsed Indonesias brutal invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 and welcomed the Indonesian dictator Suharto to Port Moresby in 1979.

PNG politics increasingly became dominated by unstable cliques of capitalist politicians and independents based on narrow parochial appeals in a country fragmented by hundreds of language or wontok groups and motivated by the crumbs of office and personal aggrandisement. To provide some small measure of stability, governments formed on the basis of unwieldy and shaky alliances have been protected by a 30-month period of grace when no-confidence votes are not permitted.

Somare was installed for a third term as prime minister in 2002 on the basis of a coalition of 13 parties and 20 independent MPs. His final term in office (2002-2010) saw greater friction with Canberra. Somare regarded the emergence of China as a significant power in the region as an opportunity to gain financial assistance as well as some leverage with Australian imperialism.

Somare initially agreed to the Australian governments Orwellian-named Enhanced Cooperation Package,

$A1 billion neo-colonial program aimed at inserting Australian police, legal officials, economists and other state officials into key positions of power in Port Moresby. The program was modelled on the 2003 Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), an Australian military-police takeover of that Pacific country.

By 2006-2007, however, Somare withdrew support for the operation, in part because of Australian government provocations on PNG soil during its illegal vendetta against Solomon Islands attorney general Julian Moti. Somare won a national election in 2007 amid threats of an Australian military intervention and regime change operation. In 2011, however, his continued orientation to Beijing under the banner of a Look North foreign and economic policy saw the Australian government endorse his illegal ousting by political rival Peter ONeill.

Somares legacy

Somares domestic record is marked by the failure of successive governments, his own included, to alleviate the enormous poverty and social inequality that wracks PNG.

The country exports cash cropsincluding coffee, cocoa, coconut and palm oilas well as minerals such as nickel, copper and gold, and also oil and gas. The aggregated value of these exported resources since independence would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. This has not flowed, however, to ordinary Papua New Guineans but to many of the worlds largest mineral and energy firms, mostly Australian and Americanincluding ExxonMobil, Chevron, Barrick Gold, BHP Billiton, Newcrest Mining, and Rio Tinto.

A tiny elite layer within PNG has accumulated significant personal fortunes, Somare and his family among them. In 2011, it emerged that he and his children owned a number of Australian beachfront houses and luxury apartments. The former prime minister was repeatedly accused of corruption, including accepting multi-million dollar corporate bribes though this was always denied and not proved in court.

For most people, so-called capitalist development after independence has been a disaster. Many mining and energy extracting operations have produced environmental crisesmost notoriously at BHPs Ok Tedi copper and gold mine, where waste chemicals were dumped for more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, with more than 50,000 people affected by the poisoning of the Fly River eco-system.

The country remains among the worlds most impoverished. Average life expectancy is just 65 years. Diseases including polio, malaria, and HIV-AIDS ravage the country, contributing to an annual death toll of more than 15,000 children, or one in every 13 children. Around three-quarters of the 8.5 million people still depend largely on subsistence agriculture. Just over half have access to electricity, and only a small minority access reliable power.

Within PNG villages and towns, there are numerous serious social problems, including alcoholism and family violence. Around one-third of the population is out of school and unemployed, and only 62 percent of adults are literate. Within the cities and towns, young people are afflicted by mass unemployment, lack of basic facilities, and a shortage of educational opportunities.

It is a damning indictment of Somare and the entire venal capitalist class he represented that they have proven unable to meet the democratic aspirations and basic social needs of the vast majority of the population.

A new generation of Papua New Guinean workers and youth will in the next period turn toward a new political perspective, based on socialist internationalism and Leon Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution. Workers in the country confront the same exploitation, often by the same transnational corporations, as their fellow workers throughout the Asia-Pacific and internationally. A unified struggle with workers internationallyabove all in the Pacific states, Australia and Indonesianeeds to be based on the fight for a government of the working class and rural masses that will establish genuine democracy and end neo-colonial oppression through socialist policies directed to the social needs of the population.

From global Pandemic to global class struggle

2021 International May Day Online Rally

Saturday, May 1, 1PM US Eastern Time. Streamed at wsws.org/mayday.

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Michael Somare (1936-2021) and the failure of bourgeois nationalism in Papua New Guinea - WSWS

Though Yashica Dutts Coming Out as a Dalit was published in 2019, its selection as the winner of the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar is a reminder of the timelessness of its appeal. It holds ones attention from first to last, as she threads her life story through the horrors of Indian casteism, particularly casteism as practised against Dalits.

Dutts family story mirrors that of the most upwardly-mobile Dalits throughout India reservations in higher education and government jobs have been absolutely central to their success story. Dutt is the third generation of a family where her father and both her grandfathers had successful careers in government service, having gained their jobs through the affirmative action policy mandated by Ambedkars constitution.

Reservations have undoubtedly been the single most important policy instrument through which educated Dalits have been able to shake off their shackles. Fettered, above all, by poverty, and entrapped in despised, very low-paying manual jobs, Dalits have been deliberately immobilised in these dreadful jobs, of which the cleaning of sewers is the most deadly. Dalit men die virtually every day somewhere in India, while doing this work, lacking the mandatory safety gear that ought to be provided to them. Nobody else wants to do these jobs so impoverished Dalits are forced, by sheer poverty, to perform them.

Yashica Dutts Coming Out as Dalit.

Remarkably, Dutts family members in Rajasthan came from the low manual scavenger caste, and yet they were able to climb up the social ladder. But the cost of this success was dramatically embodied in the young Yashica herself. Her remarkable and persevering mother realised that her daughter would need to attend good private schools in order to learn to speak English fluently. And this the young Yashica and her stalwart mother actually accomplished, at significant financial cost. But there was another, far greater cost the young schoolgirl had to hide her Dalit identity. She had to constantly pretend that she was upper-caste and succeeded in doing so.

Thus, by the time she was working as a fashion journalist in Delhi, she was passing as a young Brahmin woman, and was accepted as such. People seek to pass in many societies, but the phenomenon has been most discussed in the US, particularly when African Americans who look white seek to pass as white. Skin colour as Ari Sitas has noted, has no actual, ontological status it is yet another fabrication of the human mind.

Casteism is Indias racism and here in India the ludicrous, fabricated nature of caste/race identity is even more apparent, because racist divides are made between groups of people who are identical to each other in skin colour. One such group, always impoverished, is deemed untouchable, sub-human, without intelligence or worth while the other group, always wealthy, is declared to be upper caste, the acme of humanity, profoundly intelligent and naturally meritorious. Michael Sandel is right to dynamite the iniquitous notion of merit it has been used by Indias well-educated higher castes to claim that their intrinsic worth is annulled by the reservation system.

Also read: Aside From Atrocities, The Everyday Dalit Life Deserves To Be Told

All this Dutt skilfully weaves into her story, carrying us through her schooldays to the almost miraculous break she eventually got, which brought her to Columbia Universitys Masters programme in Journalism on a full scholarship. And as has so often happened in another social context, surrounded by people who did not think along racist/casteist lines Dutt began to realise that she did not need to feel ashamed of her Dalit parentage. Instead, the shame belonged to the upper castes of India who had consistently humiliated and denigrated Dalits in order to control their labour and thus enrich themselves. She now saw herself very differently, declaring, My history is one of oppression and not shame.

Reading Ambedkar, Dutt discovered, with delight as many of us have what a truly astonishing intellect he had and what a startling breadth of compassionate spirit. She marvelled that he had never tried to distance himself from his origins, but had instead used his tremendous learning and his great energies to set his people free. But, as she reveals, the great moment of reckoning arrived for her when young Rohith Vemula died by suicide in his Hyderabad University hostel on January 17, 2016, having been driven to despair by the actions including the withholding of his scholarship of the university authorities. To her horror, Dutt realised that this young PhD scholar, who had killed himself, was the same young man who had reached out to her two weeks earlier, requesting to be a Facebook friend.

Dutt tells us that, in this moment of truth, she realised that she could easily have been a Rohith Vemula a Dalit university student who had been institutionally murdered. This shocked her profoundly, because Rohith had done the diametrical opposite to her: he had never hidden his Dalit origins but had devoted himself whole-heartedly to working towards the emancipation of Dalits.

Within days of this profound realisation, Yashica Dutt had come out, revealing her Dalit identity to the whole world, even though she was aware that this would cost her the friendships and the esteem of almost all her upper-caste acquaintances and colleagues.

Her riveting book offers, in these dark and fearful times, a bright and beautiful hope that young people of Dalit heritage will be empowered to demand their right to live as equal citizens in India and will be enabled to do so. However, this, as yet, is a distant dream Dutt herself sees her future in the US. This is hardly surprising as long as caste-racism poisons our polity the most educated young Dalits will wish to leave our benighted society behind, to seek a better life abroad. Who can blame them? Even Babasaheb would have understood.

Karin Kapadia is an independent scholar.

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In the Memoir of One Young Woman, the Story of Indian Racism - The Wire