Category Archives: human rights

JBTC – Just because they can – Palestinian teenager shot in head by Israeli forces dies – Autopsy announced for Monday

16 year old Muhammed Sunuqrut died in hospital on Sunday after being critically wounded by Israeli forces in an East Jerusalem protest last week. Relatives state that the teenager was shot in the head at close range with a rubber-coated bullet. 

Muhammed Sunuqrut was declared clinically dead at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, on Thursday before dying on Sunday.

He was wounded in the Wadi Joz neighborhood close to his home on the 31st of August. The teenager’s uncle, Motabi Sunuqrut, said the boy had not even taken part in the demonstrations and that the area was quiet at the time of the incident.

“Ten minutes earlier I returned home and nothing was happening. He left home and was talking to his aunt on the phone, when suddenly he was shot at close range. After he fell the soldiers went on beating him and wouldn’t let anyone come near him to treat him,” he said.

via Palestinian teenager shot in head by Israeli forces dies – Autopsy announced for Monday.

13 Reminders to Help You Deal with Haters. | Rebelle Society

{Took me ages to finally learn this – when I did, I could finally put away all the hurt one of my parents gave me – when I was not the real target of the hurtful comments}

5. Don’t take it personally. Don Miguel Ruiz’s second agreement states: Don’t take anything personally.

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in.

When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.“

via 13 Reminders to Help You Deal with Haters. | Rebelle Society.

Local newspaper correspondent beaten in her office in Guanajuato state – Reporters Without Borders

So? Where is El Presidente?

Newspaper reporter Karla Silva was beaten up by three assailants yesterday in her office in Silao, a town in the central state of Guanajuato, where she works as the local correspondent of El Heraldo de León.

“Three men went to our correspondent’s bureau in Silao and attacked her, beating her bloody, threatening her and telling her to stop ‘pissing everyone off’ with her articles,” El Heraldo de León deputy editor Carlos Martínez Vertí told Reporters Without Borders.

They had visited Silva’s office several times earlier in the day, asking for her by name, harassing her assistant and taking a computer and four mobile phones.

Silva’s reporting has been very critical of the Silao municipal government, headed by a mayor who is a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). She has written about the poor services in Silao, the high crime rate, wasteful use of resources and the lack of transparency.

via Local newspaper correspondent beaten in her office in Guanajuato state – Reporters Without Borders.

Avian Flu Diary: WHO Statement: Consultation On Potential Use of Ebola Therapies & Vaccines

There was consensus that the use of whole blood therapies and convalescent blood serums needs to be considered as a matter of priority. {From people who have survived ebola, since antibodies that help to fight off the virus are present in the blood and serum}

via Avian Flu Diary: WHO Statement: Consultation On Potential Use of Ebola Therapies & Vaccines.

Mean and hateful – just because they have the power! Israeli soldiers set fire to olive trees in Hebron | Maan News Agency

Israeli soldiers set fire to Palestinian-owned olive trees near the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron late Thursday.

Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli soldiers deployed in the area pushed a burning tire into an area of olive trees, causing severe damage.

Local Palestinians called the fire brigade to extinguish the blaze but were prevented from arriving in the area by Israeli forces.

via Israeli soldiers set fire to olive trees in Hebron | Maan News Agency.

IRIN Asia | Concern over Bangladesh move to repatriate Rohingyas to Myanmar | Bangladesh | Myanmar | Conflict | Governance | Human Rights

How would you feel if no state wanted you to live there in peace and would rather you just disappear? This is between Burma and Bangladesh but could just as easily be Serbia, USA, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Lebanon…

However, the 30-year-old said, choking back tears: “Our biggest concern is if we will be safe back in Burma? We don’t have any rights in Burma. We don’t have any dignity as human beings there. We are not entitled to our identity. Our properties and religious institutions are damaged. How we can be assured that we would be safe out there?”

via IRIN Asia | Concern over Bangladesh move to repatriate Rohingyas to Myanmar | Bangladesh | Myanmar | Conflict | Governance | Human Rights.

Obama: ‘You Lost Your Independence Once Before. With NATO You Will Never Lose It Again’ | News | ERR

US President Barack Obama minced no words and left no doubts in his keynote address at the Nordea Concert Hall in Tallinn, Estonia, saying that the US would unconditionally come to the defense of its small Baltic allies in case of need and that the US would never condone or recognize the Russian invasion and annexation of any part of Ukraine.

In a speech largely dedicated to reassurance of newer allies and representing perhaps the most powerful expression of support from the US over the last 23 years of restored diplomatic relations, Obama made clear where the US stood on Baltic as well as Ukrainian independence.

“Just as we never accepted the occupation and illegal annexation of the Baltic nations, we will not accept Russia’s occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea or any part of Ukraine,” he said. Among much else, he denied that NATO had second-class members. “The defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London.”

via Obama: ‘You Lost Your Independence Once Before. With NATO You Will Never Lose It Again’ | News | ERR.

The Problem with Systemic Racism…

The problem with systemic racism is that it is like a heat source that keeps a pot of water simmering at a constant 211 degrees. Extremely hot, but not quite boiling. Every once in a while the heat gets turned up just a tad. Like when a frightened white police officer in Ferguson MO shoots a young unarmed black man while his hands are in the air. Or a group of ignorant, overzealous college students from Oklahoma State University create a banner for a football game that makes light of an act of genocide committed against Native Americans by the United States government.

And then water starts to boil.

Protests are organized. Twitter goes ablaze. Op-Eds are written. And civil rights leaders are given the microphone.

And the temperature is brought back down to 211 degrees.

Even the dominant culture gets caught up in the frenzy. However, their fight is vastly different from the fight of the Native American, African American, Latino or other minority cultures.

For while the minority culture is angry because of the entire system of racism they are surrounded by, the dominant culture is protesting because a single individual committed one offensive act that caused the equilibrium to be thrown off.

via The Problem with Systemic Racism….