Category Archives: human rights

PHOTOS: Nationalist Jewish-Israelis march through Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter | +972 Magazine

Ahead of the march Police order Palestinian shopkeepers to shutter their stalls and stores and Palestinians are cleared from the streets in order to prevent the ultra-nationalist participants from attacking them. Jewish participants have been known to vandalize shuttered stores, bang on the doors of homes, chant racist and violent slogans against Muslims and Palestinians, and even use physical violence against Palestinian passersby. This year, following two consecutive years in which the High Court of Justice ordered police to reign in Jewish participants verbal and physical violence against Palestinian residents, police kept closer reigns on the march. It was limited in time and although individual provocative acts still took place, police and ushers were reportedly more vigilant about maintaining order. A police spokesperson said officers arrested two Jewish minors for shouting racist slogans.

Source: PHOTOS: Nationalist Jewish-Israelis march through Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter | +972 Magazine

Bangladesh attacks kill wife of police officer and Christian | News | DW.COM | 05.06.2016

The first attack took place in the coastal city of Chittagong early Sunday morning when at least three men on a motorbike stabbed and shot the wife of an anti-terror police superintendent. Mahmuda Khanam was walking her son to a school bus stop when the assailants struck. “The attackers came on a motor-cycle. Her son said she was stabbed first. Then they pointed a pistol near her ear and shot several times,” Chittagong Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner Moktar Hossain told news agency AFP. Khanam was the wife of Babul Akter, a police official who led several high-profile operations against the banned Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) militant group in recent months. No one immediately claimed responsibility on Sunday, but police said jihadists could be behind the murder. “We suspect JMB or local Islamist extremists for the attack. Akter led successful anti-militant raids in Chittagong in which several JMB men were arrested,” Hossain said.

Source: Bangladesh attacks kill wife of police officer and Christian | News | DW.COM | 05.06.2016

Philippines’ president-elect Rodrigo Duterte urges public to kill criminals, offers bounties – (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) “Kill your enemy and claim he or she is a drug dealer – OK?”

“If they are there in your neighbourhood, feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun. You have my support,” he told his cheering followers. “If he fights and fights to the death, you can kill him. “I will give you a medal.” He stressed that drug addicts could not be rehabilitated and warned: “If you are involved in drugs, I will kill you. You son of a whore, I will really kill you.” Mr Duterte reiterated that his anti-crime campaign would be “a bloody war”, as he offered money for slain drug lords. “I will pay, for a drug lord: five million pesos ($145,000) if he is dead. If he is alive, only 4.999 million,” he laughed. Mr Duterte, who takes office on June 30 and is the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, also offered smaller amounts for lower-ranked figures involved in the drug trade. He did not say how a private citizen could identify suspects. Mr Duterte has previously been linked with vigilante “death squads” that have killed scores of people in Davao and has vowed to widen his campaign when he becomes president. Others have followed his lead with the elected mayor of the central city of Cebu, Tomas Osmena, admitting he paid more than $US3,000 ($4,000) to police officers for killing drug traffickers. Mr Duterte and other officials have previously brushed aside warnings from human rights groups about the dangers of such a policy.

Source: Philippines’ president-elect Rodrigo Duterte urges public to kill criminals, offers bounties – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Return Of Saffron Violence? – Groundviews

a new group of saffron robed extremist monks, who are attempting to come in to the limelight through propagating a racist agenda. The desperate common opposition led by the Rajapaksa faction in parliament has started playing the racist card once more, provoking Buddhist extremism. They are using multiple fronts to attack minorities, especially the Tamils and Muslims after their dismal performance at the May Day rally in Kirulapone, in the hope that they can harness the vote bank of the Buddhists. These forces have now been unleashed to create hate and target the Muslims and evangelical Christians with the hope that the international community and, especially the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) would notice it and impose sanctions on Sri Lanka that would lead to the collapse of our economy.  A ban on the import of Sri Lankan labour to the Middle East would drive the majority of our population to the streets – literally begging for their next meal. The income from foreign remittances is estimated to be around 6-7 billion US Dollars per annum.

Source: Return Of Saffron Violence? – Groundviews

Humans of New York

“I’ve always believed in heaven. But it was so hard to lean on that understanding after my father passed away. I was a Daddy’s girl. His death was an emotional clusterfuck. I could close my eyes and imagine he was somewhere else. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t pinpoint his location on a map. And even though I’d taken an astronomy class in college, I couldn’t find him with a telescope. His absence was so much more real than I thought it would be. And it really shook my beliefs. I had to form a deeper understanding of what exactly ‘heaven’ means. And I’m still working on that. But I do still talk to him everyday. And I still believe that I’ll see him again.”

Source: Humans of New York

Gaza… The Resilience | nadiaharhash

Inside me an image of poverty and destruction overwhelmed with desperation and despair. And infront of me, an image of an interactive scenery of normality. A scene I can see on any shore in the world, with the addition of exclusivity for Arabs. Genuine existence. …Persistence … to be, to live.Not every city can reflect itself to you through its people. Gaza is among those. It is not the sea. It is not the beauty or the monuments. It is not the ugliness or the destruction. It is not the richness or poverty. It is not the facilities, the streets, and the services. It is the people. It is one place that makes you see what it means to be lived. It makes you feel life through it’s people … and yet, you cannot really get to them as you pass through them.You live them.With all there stories… told and untold.With their non-ending miseries, tragedies, traumas.With their continuous destined fate of displacement and disruption.With their never tired resilience despite exhaustion and blocked opportunities.

Source: Gaza… The Resilience | nadiaharhash

Boycott Tel Aviv Pride 2016

Tel Aviv is known as a “top gay destination.” However, gay pride brochures fail to mention that it is also an hour away from the world’s largest open prison, Gaza, and that it is built on stolen land. They forget to mention that the gay soldiers you dance with in the pride parade check, arrest, and kill Palestinians on a daily basis. After your day of pride, some tour operators will take you to Bethlehem or the Dead Sea, without telling you that you will travel through the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories, or that the wine you are drinking in the Golan Heights comes from businesses that have been declared illegal under International Law. So, why are you proud of Tel Aviv? Perhaps Tel Aviv has a vibrant nightlife, hot gay men, and beautiful beaches, but Israel also has an illegal occupation; restricts the mobility of any Palestinian just because they are Palestinian; and uses your tourism money for its next invasion of Gaza or home demolition in East Jerusalem, after which it will say “but look at us, we have gay rights!” Underneath the beautiful beaches lies a different truth: Israel does not respect human rights! Be aware of what you are proud of. Israel sponsors Tel Aviv Pride 2016 with over 4 million dollars! It even tries to attract you with arguably homophobic ad campaigns  It aims to promote Israel as a prime gay tourist destination, because it thinks gay tourists don’t care about other human rights violations taking place in the country. Awesome right? Not only does Israel want to bring more money to Tel Aviv, it also wants your political support for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian Territories and its violation of Palestinian human rights. And if it can’t get your explicit political support, it will just use your presence as a cover up for its war crimes. Israel does not only want your gay tourism money, it also wants to turn “every foreign tourist into an ambassador” for Israel. They are like “look how cool we are with our gay rights!” which makes you forget sometimes that you are actually in a warzone, where freedom is a principle limited to Israelis and international gay tourists. There is nothing hot about cruising in a Warzone! There is nothing celebratory about gay rights when they do not include rights and equality for all people! There is no pride in being used by the Israeli State for its propaganda machine! #BoycottTLVpride until Israel:  Ends its occupation of Palestinian land occupied in the 1967 war and dismantles its Apartheid wall Recognizes the rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality Respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.   Boycott TLV Pride!

Source: Boycott Tel Aviv Pride 2016

After Harambe’s Death, Rethinking Zoos – The New York Times

Captive apes don’t all die from a gunshot; but almost all die having never really experienced what it is to be a gorilla. Harambe was born in a zoo in Brownsville, Tex. There are signs that times are changing. Prominent circuses are retiring their elephants. The “Blackfish” film helped change norms for orcas, or killer whales. The focus of this shift so far has been on big-brained, highly social species (those most like us) — a distinction that’s rejected as elitist by some animal advocates. There’s much more to be done. This issue was compellingly explored in Scientific American this week by Marc Bekoff, who studies animals’ behavior and awareness and is a proponent of what he calls “compassionate conservation”: While some might say Harambe had a ‘good life’ in the zoo, it doesn’t come close to the life he would have had as a wild gorilla, with all its attendant risks. Indeed, one might argue that the animal people were seeing was not really a true western lowland gorilla, surely not an ambassador for his species. He calls for an end to captive breeding of gorillas and an eventual shift from zoos to sanctuaries, with money saved going to conservation of species in the wild.

Source: After Harambe’s Death, Rethinking Zoos – The New York Times

The Last Survivor of the Black Wall Street Oklahoma Disaster | 3CHICSPOLITICO

A local newspaper had printed a fabricated story that Rowland tried to rape Page. In an editorial, the same newspaper said a hanging was planned for that night. As groups of both Blacks and Whites converged on the Tulsa Courthouse, a White man in the crowd confronted an armed Black man, a war veteran, who had joined with other Blacks to protect Rowland. Eddie Faye Gates, a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed several years ago to determine exactly what happened, told CNN what happened next. “This White man,” she said, asked the Black man, “What are you doing with this gun?” “I’m going to use it if I have to,” the Black man said, according to Gates, “and (the White man) said, ‘No, you’re not. Give it to me,’ and he tried to take it. The gun went off, the White man was dead, the riot was on.” Truckloads of Whites set fires and shot Blacks on sight. When the smoke lifted the next day, more than 1,400 homes and businesses in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a prosperous area known as the “Black Wall Street,” lay in ruins. Today, only a single block of the original buildings remains standing in the area. Experts now estimate that at least 3,000 died. Dr. Olivia Hooker was one of the survivors of this racially motivated attack, which she refuses to call a riot.

Source: The Last Survivor of the Black Wall Street Oklahoma Disaster | 3CHICSPOLITICO

French court overturns “illegal” ban on BDS event | The Electronic Intifada

In recent months, three EU governments, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ireland, have publicly recognized the legitimacy of the BDS movement and defended boycott advocacy as free speech. Earlier this month the Ontario parliament handily defeated an anti-BDS bill that civil liberties groups warned would have had a disastrous impact on the democratic rights of people in Canada’s most populous province.

Source: French court overturns “illegal” ban on BDS event | The Electronic Intifada