Category Archives: human rights

Pacific Disability Theatre Group Inspires and Educates – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service

In the Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, 23 actors with disabilities, from youth to senior citizens, who have battled physical and social barriers all their lives, are now empowering themselves and others through socially engaged theatre.

via Pacific Disability Theatre Group Inspires and Educates – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service.

Between A Rock And A Sectarian Bloodbath « The Dish

Joshua Landis offers an ominous prediction about the coming Shiite backlash:

I would not be shocked to see significant ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad should ISIS attack and give the Iraqi Army a run for its money.

After all, the Iraqi army is large, has helicopters, sophisticated intelligence capabilities, tanks, artillery and all the rest. They were caught napping and without esprit de corps, much as the Syrian army was. But capable officers will emerge who will strip down the “power-sharing” fat that the US built and rebuild it based on loyalty to Maliki and Shiism, if most of that has not been done already. This is what happened in Syria, when we saw the Syrian Army unravel at the base during the first year of the Sunni uprising. The Syrian military was quickly rebuilt along sectarian and regional lines to make it much stronger and more loyal, with locally recruited Iranian style National Defense Forces modeled on the Islamic Guard. If Sunnis choose to form such local militias and ally with the Shiite regime, so much the better. If they do not and choose to lay low until they figure out whether ISIS can win in their regions, the Shiites will go it alone and assume all Sunnis are a fifth column.

via Between A Rock And A Sectarian Bloodbath « The Dish.

With a Dream of Return: Deportees in Mexicali | Latina Lista

“I feel like I am drowning but everybody around me is breathing.”

This is what I was told by Esmeralda, a dreamer who grew up in Arizona, and in 2010 was detained at a checkpoint, coerced to sign her voluntary departure, and was deported to Mexico, where she was told her high-school diploma from the U.S. was not valid. Esmeralda’s story is one of the 2 million people deported by U.S. Immigration authorities during the Obama administration–the largest number of deportations in the history of the U.S.

In March 2014, I traveled to the border city of Mexicali, where thousands of people are deported every month. Last year alone, it is estimated that 113,539 people were deported to Mexicali, a city with a population of 700,000. There, in the City of the Deportee, I visited the Hotel of the Migrant, a place that have assisted 200,000 deportees since 2010. The Hotel of the Migrant is a former abandoned Hotel that now serves as the only city shelter open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Managed by a non-profit organization, the hotel is located just a few blocks from the Calexico Port of Entry. Usually, deportees are dropped off in the middle of the night in poor conditions.

via With a Dream of Return: Deportees in Mexicali | Latina Lista.

Israel/Palestine: Free 3 Abducted Youth | Human Rights Watch

{My question is this: I thought nearly all cell phone were traceable – so why have they not been found?}

Any Palestinian armed groups unlawfully holding three Israeli teenagers should release them immediately and unconditionally. Israeli forces searching for the three should respect the laws of war with respect to the Palestinian population in the occupied territory and not carry out mass, arbitrary arrests. The three teenagers apparently were abducted in the West Bank on June 12, 2014.

Eyal Yifrach, 19, and Gil’ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel, both 16, were reported missing after they tried to hitchhike home from the southern West Bank, near the Kfar Etzion settlement. The three attend Jewish religious schools in Kfar Etzion and in Kiryat Arba, another settlement, Israel media reported.

“There is no justification for abducting civilians,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “It is a disgrace to drag children into this conflict, whether Israeli or Palestinian.”

One of the youths called an Israeli police hotline at about 10:30 p.m. on June 12 and said, “We’re being kidnapped,” before the call was disconnected, Israeli news media reported. Human Rights Watch could not confirm two separate reported claims of responsibility by Palestinian armed groups.

via Israel/Palestine: Free 3 Abducted Youth | Human Rights Watch.

Estonia remembers the Soviet deportations – Estonian World

In the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a result of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. In the aftermath of World War II, Estonia lost approximately 17.5% of its population.

via Estonia remembers the Soviet deportations – Estonian World.

President & First Lady Make Historic Trip to Standing Rock Sioux Reservatio Today

Presidential visits to Indian reservations are extremely rare. President Bill Clinton was the last sitting U.S. president to visit an Indian reservation when he did so in 1999 to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Prior to President Clinton’s visit, President Franklin Roosevelt visited the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina in 1936.

via President & First Lady Make Historic Trip to Standing Rock Sioux Reservatio Today.

I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Sometime in the 2020s, San Francisco

One day my son is going to ask me at the dinner table: Daddy, why did we lose the Iraq war?

I won’t ask him if his teacher put him up to it, because 10 years from now, it will probably be common knowledge that, yes, we did lose the Iraq war. Everybody – teachers and historians, liberals and conservatives – will agree.

I have years to prepare an answer for my son. Right now, this is what I think: We were winning when I was there. We were winning when we were there.

That’s about all I can say. We lost.

Of course, I could also say the same same thing my father thought about his alma mater: A lot of good Americans died in the war.

Period. End of discussion.

What else can you say?

via I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

28 injured, 8 detained in fierce clashes at Al-Aqsa | Maan News Agency

Twenty-eight Palestinians were injured and eight detained during clashes that broke out after Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City after Friday prayers.

Israeli forces stormed the holy compound, which is the third-holiest site in Islam, after worshipers began marching in support of more than 125 Palestinian administrative detainees who have been on hunger strike for more than 50 days.

The march left through the Moroccan and Chain Gates, at which point groups of special forces began firing stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets toward worshipers.

Special forces also began beating worshipers with batons, including ambulance crews and journalists on the scene, while another Israeli unit besieged the worshipers in the Al-Aqsa Qibli Mosque and closed the doors and launched stun grenades and pepper gas into it.

A fourth unit besieged worshipers inside the Marwani Mosque, and fired stun grenades and gas at worshipers, who were mostly elderly, according to the Al-Aqsa mosque director.

After the end of clashes, police set up a checkpoint at the doors of the Al-Aqsa mosque and began checking identity cards. They detained eight Palestinians during the checks, according to police.

via 28 injured, 8 detained in fierce clashes at Al-Aqsa | Maan News Agency.

If this were US, British, or German police doing this to worshipers – what would we say?