Ceasefire Magazine » News

Photo Essay – Kashmir: Bullets for Stones

hich — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:16:59 +0000

By Josh Strauss
Photography by Imran Ali, Ashish Sharma and Sajad Raja

[warning: many of the images contain graphic depictions of violence/injury]

Teenage voices echo in the depths of a deathly silence

Interspersed throughout this article are the thoughts and feelings of Kashmiri boys and girls aged thirteen to sixteen. These are extracts taken from correspondence with their former teacher, Sanaa Alimia, who now resides in the UK. All quotes are written by the young people themselves and dated from the start of June to the 5th of August 2010. Names have been omitted so as not to endanger their lives any further.

“In the 52 days of unrest 43 are dead… among the 43 dead, seven are women and five are aged below ten.”
“I wish we were free from Indian Rule.”

The killing of young Kashmiris at the hands of Indian security forces shows no sign of abating as the death of another 10 year old boy sparks further protests in the capital Srinagar.

Tuesday 31st August saw hundreds of Kashmiri men, women and children defy the government-imposed curfew; taking to the streets in protest at the killing of Irshad Ahmad Parray, after he had been fatally injured during a police operation in the southern town of Anantnag.

Protesters pelting a CRPF vehicle with stones . KT Photo:Imran Ali

The Jammu and Kashmir Police released the following statement: “A huge mob pelted stones on the Sherbagh police post. The police used tear smoke shells to disperse the stone throwers… the protesters did not relent and the police fired rubber pellets in self-defense. Ten-year-old Irshad Ahmad Parray of Old Iddgah Janglat Mandi got injured. He was declared dead at the Sheri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital in Srinagar.”

The leader of the Communist Party of India, Brinda Karat, spoke out against the killings, demanding an all-party delegation to be sent to the region to investigate the disproportionate deaths of young people.

“Stone pelting cannot be met with firing” she said. “How many more children have to be killed?”

“Four people were killed today in Srinagar.

It hurts.

In Kashmir we get bullets for stones”

Young Kashmiris today grow up against a backdrop of fear, persecution and loss. Many young men have picked up stones in protest against the Indian Security Forces’ repeated violations against Kashmiris; expressing desires of recourse for this generation and the next. But tragically, these stones are answered with bullets and the latest inflammation of protest has seen the blood of young teenage boys spilt in gratuitous fashion.

“In recent killings three kids died. First Tajamul, a 17 year old, the second was a 9 year old kid, and the third a 10 year old kid.
The situation in Kashmir is worsening…”

Calls for azaadi (freedom) have cost Kashmir immeasurably. This beautiful Himalayan valley has bared silent witness to the slaughter of countless generations. Between 47,000 to 100,000 lives have been lost amidst a political and military impasse that has smouldered and flared since the 1980s. Exact figures are not known or have been purposefully hidden. Thousands upon thousands are “missing”. Thousands have been tortured.

Kashmir has long been a site of fierce contestation. Since the partition of the former British Indian Empire into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, there have been three Indo-Pakistani cross border wars contesting the territory of Kashmir; not to mention the perpetuation of internal conflict between armed Kashmiri liberation movements and occupying Indian Security forces.

“Day by day they are ruining Kashmir. The situation is getting worse.
Yesterday four civilians, innocent teenagers, one was a girl, were killed by the cops.
The Chief Minister has ordered the army to enter Kashmir. Trouble is everywhere here.”

The probing eyes of the international community have largely regarded the ‘problem’ of Kashmir simply as a matter of geopolitical concern. Moreover, since 9/11 the debate has been increasingly addressed through an all encompassing prism of ‘Islamic militarism’. This misrepresentative approach has obscured and distorted the human tragedy that continues to haunt the people of Kashmir. Their voices are rendered silent, because they remain unheard.

“A curfew is in place by the army here. Cops are beating everyone they find on road.
Terrifying situations…”

Since the most recent demonstrations began towards the end of May, more than 300 people have been injured, including 22 security personnel, in what Amnesty International has described as some of the worst violent clashes between protesters and security forces in recent years. The past month has seen reports of “thousands of youths” pelting security forces with rocks, as well as attacks on a railway station and three police stations. In response, soldiers have shot dead more than 60 protesters, most of them teenagers.

“The government just messes up. The politicians are fighting with each other…
Dozens of people [have been] injured and stone pelting [has] started after the killing of innocents.”

Sanaa Alimia, a former school teacher from Kashmir, says that the protests and stone throwing have nothing to do with ‘terrorism’; but rather they are “the expressions by students, teenage boys, professionals, teachers and mothers – ordinary Kashmiris – against the killings, violations, rapes and injuries which are repeatedly committed against Kashmiris”.

In these modern times of rapid information dissemination, young Kashmiris have utilised the broadcasting potential of social networking sites and shattered the growing silence through the ubiquitous power of the internet. Hundreds of updates and debates have been posted on Facebook concerning protests, killings and human rights violations. Videos and pictures, snapped quickly from mobile phones have also been uploaded to Youtube, documenting stone-throwing, shootings, funerals, and the bodies of those injured, dying and dead.

How will young Kashmiris remember these traumatic events? Their voices must be heard, for they are the future agents of change.

Their teacher, Sanaa Alimia, demands that the Indian authorities cease their “oppressive and iron–fisted policies in Kashmir”, coupled with an end to Pakistani interference in the region. She implores the Kashmiri political leadership to listen to the voices of the people rather than “bowing to Delhi’s demands”. Finally, she asks that “serious international pressure” is brought to bear on the Indian government. We must put an end to India’s disproportionately brutal security measures, which continue to inflict pain, suffering and death upon hundreds of Kashmiris.

The Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer has echoed the words of the late polish Nobel Lauriet, Czeslaw Milosz, in his recent letter to the Indian general public.

You can kill one,

but another is born.

The words are written down,

the deed, the date.

Like many Kashmiris, Basharat Peer has committed to memory, the deed, the date. “The faces of the murdered boys, the colour of their shirts, their grieving fathers”. He says that while these details might disappear from the headlines, “they have already found their place in our collective memory… we remember. Even when we don’t know we are remembering, we remember.”

Josh Strauss is a freelance journalist/camera operator living and working in London. Issues of conflict and forced migration have for a long time been of great interest and concern to him. Through a readjusted lens, he wishes to expose the much more complex and conflicted environments and situations that those living on the ‘periphery’ of our society experience every day.
Imran Ali, Ashish Sharma and Sajad Raja are professional photographers based in Kashmir.

CounterSpin: Should we trust the newspaper?

hich — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:10:50 +0000

By Musab Younis

In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2005, Rupert Murdoch suggested that we are witnessing “a revolution in the way young people are accessing the news.” Today, young people “want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it … They want news that speaks to them personally, that affects their lives.”

“Unless we awaken to these changes”, warned Murdoch, “we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans.”

His words were picked up by influential press critic Jay Rosen, who published a piece on his blog – ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience” – that became popular as a manifesto for a revolutionary approach to journalism. “Once they were your printing presses,” proclaimed the statement, “now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us … Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us.” And so on.

Much commentary has since reinforced the sense that we have entered an age of unparalleled democracy in news production and management – from traditional media to new media – cranking open space in the media world for the popular voice.

The problem with this general consensus is not that it is wholly incorrect, but that it can be seriously misleading. To a substantial extent, the traditional media do continue to crucially shape the type of issues that are permitted to appear on the public agenda. And where progress has been made its significance has often been overstated: in the rush to herald a new age, it is often easy to forget just how much power remains with its traditional guardians.

These guardians are, of course mostly major profit-making corporations, and they continue to decide precisely which issues appear on the agenda, how these issues are framed, for how long they are discussed, in what way, and so on. While it is true that the dissemination of ‘citizen journalism’ has been easier through the internet, it remains the case that only professional journalists working for large and wealthy organisations can actually afford to do this sustainably; and it is perhaps unsurprising, when the key issue of access to resources is taken into account, that they therefore continue to dominate the news agenda.

This is problematic not because they are professional journalists, but because there is a clear tendency – even, you might say, an institutional requirement – for systematic inaccuracies to emerge from the picture of the world that they draw.

Demonstrating media bias and distortion is a lengthy and painstaking task, usually involving careful content analysis of hundreds of articles. An understanding of whether this distortion is systematic – that is, appearing to be an intrinsic feature of the current system of news production – can only emerge when multiple examples and case studies have been collected. Critics and analysts have in the past adopted a range of approaches, from overarching surveys to paired case studies, to forensic examinations of the use of words, and much else in between. Yet although there seems to be little argument with the basic premise held by these critics – less than a fifth of British people say they trust newspapers, for example – there is, at the same time, a surprising lack of awareness (or even interest) about how deeply these problems could be ingrained within the structure of the press.

And though it is generally accepted that inaccuracies exist within the press, and are perhaps even prevalent, there are less questions asked about whether we can trust news providers, as they currently exist, to provide even a basic outline of the truth.

Take, say, the London protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2009. Earlier this year, an article was published in the Sunday Times titled: ‘Met allows Islamic protesters to throw shoes’ [sic]. The article claimed that “Scotland Yard” had “bowed to Islamic sensitivities” by accepting that “Muslims are entitled to throw shoes in ritual protest” – because “shoes, and particularly the soles of shoes, are regarded as ritually unclean in the Islamic world” – providing a “concession [which] has already been taken up enthusiastically by Muslim demonstrators” who have already “pelted Downing Street with shoes.”

The Islamophobia is not unusual, but the sheer flagrancy of lying involved here is rather striking. There was a series demonstrations in London to protest Israel’s attack on Gaza, but they were not “Muslim” demonstrations and had nothing to do with “Muslim” “ritual protest” (despite the delightful racist connotations that this image must provoke); while there was a shoe-throwing stunt in a specific area, there was no general “concession”, let alone one which had anything to do with “Islamic sensitivities”: the image of “Muslim demonstrators” “pelting Downing street with shoes” is, of course, pure fabrication.

It is indeed possible to state without much exaggeration that a reader would have gleaned a more accurate version of events by simply reversing the major claims made by the article: thus, rather than being granted a “concession”, evidence suggested that Muslims who had attended this demonstration had actually been specifically targeted by the police, receiving sentences of up to two years in jail for acts (like throwing bottles toward the embassy) that harmed nobody.

While the conventional approach is to see the mainstream press as offering at the very least an austere outline of events, with commentary from diverse sources filling in the gaps, in this case, as in countless others, articles have been produced by broadsheet, resource-intensive newspapers that do little but deliberately misinform the reader. Any commentary that followed from the Times piece could not have hoped to be anything but misguided – and only a personal involvement in the case would have corrected for this. The same, incidentally, goes for every single mainstream press article that I have been able to find on the G20 protests, until the video of the attack on Ian Tomlinson by the police emerged.

The careful deconstruction of single articles is important, but of course the problem we are discussing extends much further. The needless and provocative invention of a religious and racial element to the Times story, for example, is hardly an isolated case – this type of distortion is a much-loved pastime of the British press. A 2008 report from Cardiff University, for example, which analysed almost 1,000 articles from 2000-2008 as well as images and visuals, found prevalent and systematic distortions in stories that involve Muslims. The most common adjectives used to describe Muslims were: “radical” “fanatical” “fundamentalist” “extremist” and “militant”; the idea that Muslims might actually “support dominant moral values” was found in precisely 2 percent of articles. And throughout the coverage, people from a Muslim background were dehumanised: they were “much less likely than non-Muslims to be identified in terms of their job or profession, and much more likely to be unnamed or unidentified.” Meanwhile, a detailed recent report from the University of Exeter, which presented similar findings, also noted that it provided “prima facie and empirical evidence to demonstrate that assailants of Muslims” – that is, those responsible for hate crime attacks on Muslim targets – “are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media.”

The scale and blatancy of Islamophobia in the British press has meant that it has received some attention recently, but it is really only one obvious example of a whole range of sweeping and repeated misrepresentations in the British press – many of them, especially on crucial political and economic issues, so insidious that it is much more difficult to focus attention on them.

We are left in a situation, then, where the resources for news production are still overwhelmingly concentrated within a few organisations, mostly run for profit, which are found over and over again to systematically decontextualise, exaggerate, misinform, and distort. And it seems that especially where there is little possibility of repercussion – when dealing with groups, for example, that are unpopular and therefore largely defenceless – the tendecy is to further distort until articles (like Leppard’s in the Sunday Times) appear which bear practically no relation at all to reality.

The uncomfortable truth is that setting up blogs, websites, small magazines, and even organisations that aim to disseminate whistleblown information, is nowhere near sufficient. The ownership and control of crucial information is, despite what we are told, probably more concentrated in 2010 than it ever was, and continues to have very real consequences for the majority of people who are not permitted to speak for themselves.

If we are serious about challenging such a broken system, we should be looking at ways of building prominent, large and sustainable organisations that can provide news to millions of people. These organisations need to be fundamentally structured in ways which makes them both supported by, and accountable to, the very audiences they reach, as with the trade union press which thrived in Britain a hundred years ago. Democracy Now! from the US is perhaps the only existing project that even approaches this, but on its own it cannot hope to compete for audiences against the giants.

The ownership and management of news is often overlooked within progressive movements but, in my view, it is really one of the central questions of our time. Without a change, we face what is essentially the tyranny of distortive power – that utter control over information so encapsulated in Orwell’s image of the memory hole. A less than appealing prospect.

Musab Younis is Ceasefire’s Deputy Editor. Counterspin, his column on the media, appears every other Sunday.

Less than a fifth of British people say they trust newspapers

Modern Times: On the REAL cricket scandal

hich — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:43:12 +0000

By Omayr Ghani

The recent furore over allegations of match fixing by members of the Pakistani cricket team has by-and-large missed the most salient aspect of the story: no existing criminal conspiracy to fix a match had been uncovered. Rather, what has taken place is a criminal conspiracy initiated by undercover News of the World (NOTW) reporters who offered a Pakistani agent, Mazhar Majeed, £150,000 in exchange for three deliveries to be bowled over the line. This, in other words, is a clear case of journalistic entrapment.

The term entrapment (encouraging someone to commit a crime so he/she can be prosecuted for that crime) is significant here, if this was committed by a police officer it would be sufficient grounds for the evidence gathered to be deemed inadmissible in court. It is clear why such a law exists: firstly, there is no way to determine whether the accused would have committed the crime if he/she were not entrapped; secondly, there is no way to determine whether anyone else would have committed the crime given similar inducement, thus allowing certain groups or individuals to be targeted unfairly with inducements that wouldn’t be offered to others; and thirdly, the legal ban on entrapment draws a clear line between the criminal and the one bringing him/her to justice. To allow journalists a privilege the police are forbidden from contemplating would be to give corporate news organizations rights that are denied to those whose very duty it is to uphold the law. It would be, in essence, a privatization, like that of education, national resources and railways, to the highest bidder of the most sacred of public services offered by the state: the administration of justice.

To give a recent example of the lengths judges in the United Kingdom go through to uphold the principle of entrapment, I will refer to a case involving a suspected member of a proscribed group in which this principle has been extended from police officers to secret agents. Between May 2005 and June 2006 an MI5 agent posing as a Pakistani arms dealer by the name of “Amir” offered to sell suspected Real IRA volunteer Desmond Kearns large quantities of guns and explosives: an offer Mr. Kearns took-up. Yet after three and a half years of evidence-building and legal proceedings, on June 18 of this year the judge threw the case out, ruling that the offer of arms qualified as entrapment, which amounted to misconduct, explaining that “offences were artificially created by that misconduct, and that the administration of justice would be brought into disrepute were the prosecution permitted to continue.” The prosecuting attorney accepted this seemingly controversial decision, telling the judge “We do not intend to appeal your Lordship’s ruling yesterday so the defendant can be discharged.”

If we take this legal precedent in which the law against entrapment is extended from police to MI5 agents even in a case in which innocent life is under threat on the principle that “the administration of justice” would be “brought into disrepute”, we must surely be able to extend it to a case in which a journalist has offered a sports agent a substantial sum of money to commit a crime that injures no one.

We cannot ignore the role of race and/or religious identity in the media coverage of the two cases either; for unless you are an avid reader of the Belfast Telegraph, the MI5 entrapment story: involving an organization the intelligence agencies believe to be the greatest threat to our national security, is most likely to have passed you by. Contrast that with the wall-to-wall media coverage of and outrage at a cricket ’scandal’ which posed no direct threat to anyone and one cannot help but notice that in the former case the ‘entrapped’ was white and, whether he wanted to be or not, British, whereas the ‘entrapper’ was a Pakistani Muslim; yet, in the current case, things are the other way round. If we draw further comparisons to other instances involving accused Pakistanis and other Muslims groups we can infer that the former case was not given due prominence because the mere existence of the Real IRA contradicts the narrative offered in the mainstream media that political violence committed by non-state actors is the result of the alleged criminal irrationality of the Muslim faith and not a multi-faceted phenomenon that is inspired to a large degree by genuine political repression; and that Muslims such as “Amir” are a threat rather than an asset in relation to our national security. Similarly, the current match fixing story feeds directly into the media narrative that the British way of life is under threat from foreigners, after all, what is more British than cricket? And who is more foreign than “the tourists”? (As the Pakistani cricket team are constantly referred to in media.)

The disparity in reporting could also be seen in the third test match, in which an English bowler, Stuart Broad, threw a ball at Pakistani debutant and leading run-scorer Zulqarnain Haider, at close range in between deliveries causing a lasting injury to his hand and making him unable to play in the fourth test, thus impacting the result of that match far more than the alleged delivery of three no-balls ever would. This, again, received minimal news coverage compared to the recent scandal and only resulted in the docking of half a match’s pay.

Media coverage is relevant because it has a direct and measurable effect on the allocation of police resources (as we saw in the multi-million pound search for Raoul Moat) and, despite legal measures to stop it from doing so, the outcome of judicial decisions and those of cricketing bodies. Thus, at this stage it would be impossible for members of the Pakistani cricket team or their agents to get a fair trial.

In the landmark case of Regina v Loosely, Lords Hutton and Hoffman decided on a series of factors to be taken into account when deciding upon the admissibility of evidence obtained from entrapment, the first of these being whether those who entrapped “acted in good faith,” which, given that the motive was selling newspapers rather than upholding justice, we can immediately conclude not to be the case; another factor is “the nature of the offence”. Whilst it is clear the offence is less serious than trying to procure arms for a proscribed organization, for the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with cricket and/or the story itself we must go into more detail.

Firstly, what was proved to have happened on the fourth Pakistan-England test match was not, as has been suggested, an attempt to pre-arrange the outcome of the match. Rather, a video tape has been released, which shows a Pakistani cricket agent, Mazhar Majeed, promising that three deliveries (out of a maximum of 2700 legally bowled in a test match: equating to 0.00111% of potential deliveries) would be no-balls (those deliveries invalidated when the bowler steps over the line behind which his front foot is supposed to be when the ball is released from his hand).

As it transpired, the three deliveries happened at the same points he predicted they would. The fact that such deliveries comprise such a small percentage of the total, are re-bowled anyway and that there is no evidence to suggest that both teams weren’t trying their utmost to win (the foundational ethos of any sport) at any other point of the game means that the plan had no impact on the result of the match (especially given the eventual wide winning margins), and thus cannot be fairly described as “match-fixing” nor can spectators feel like they have been let down.

Due to the rise in instant, Internet-based betting the probability of predicting a no-ball is much lower, and therefore the profits are much greater, than predicting whether a team wins or loses a match. If someone has inside information on such an occurrence they have the potential of winning money at the expense of bookmakers who are used to earning their (tax-free) profits through exploiting the most vulnerable and poorest members of our society. However, no-one used such information in this case and no bookmaker saw any dent in their profits.

To recap: the outcome of the match was not fixed; no bookmaker was defrauded during the course of the match (though the News of the World journalist had the opportunity to, due to the information he obtained for £150,000); the only money to change hands was from the NOTW journalist to the agent, Mazhar Majeed, who claimed he would then give it to the Pakistani players; most crucially, there is no evidence that any deliveries would have been compromised were it not for the injection of cash from the News of the World. It is true Boasts were made that other matches had been fixed, and yet there is no independent verification these matches were, indeed, fixed; and it is impossible to ascertain that these claims weren’t made by Mazhar Majeed under the lure of quick financial gain, this interpretation is bolstered by the fact he felt he had to tell the journalist on tape “Boss believe me, you are talking to the right people.”

A further factor in deciding the admissibility of evidence gained through entrapment is “the defendant’s circumstances and vulnerability.” For this we can again refer to the NOTW’s own transcript in which Mr. Majeed states, “These poor boys need to [get a share of the £150,000]. They’re paid peanuts”, and we need to look at the backgrounds of the two players accused of deliberately bowling no-balls in exchange for money; Mohammad Aamer (18) and Mohammad Asif (27) come from Gujjar Khan and Sheikhupura respectively, both are desperately impoverished areas of Pakistan that have been badly damaged by the recent floods. The modern Pakistani cricket team, unlike their Oxbridge educated predecessors, are as a whole not known for enjoying a champagne lifestyle and much of their wages go towards supporting extended family networks; it is therefore not difficult to see how they could have been tempted by a large sum of money from an unscrupulous journalist in the immediate aftermath of the devastating floods. To put the same point differently, such an offer doubtlessly leaves them more vulnerable than a suspected Real IRA man being promised guns and explosives in exchange for his own money.

Omayr Ghani is Ceasefire’s Political Editor.

Corin Faife is away and will return next week

South of The Border: The view from Latin America

hich — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:51:00 +0000

72 corpses found at mass grave in North-East Mexico

A mass grave containing 72 corpses was found by Mexican army officers at a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas in the country’s north-east on Tuesday. It is thought to be evidence of the single biggest massacre committed during the Mexican government’s drawn out and bloody struggle against organised criminal cartels, which began to gather steam with the election of Felipe Calderón in December 2006. All of the 58 men and 14 women whose bodies were found are thought to be foreign nationals from other Latin American countries who were passing through Mexico en route to the United States border when they were intercepted and murdered, supposedly by a gang involved in the drug trade. 40 of the bodies have thus far been identified, with 14 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorians and a number of people from Ecuador, Guatemala and Brazil among the dead.

The gruesome discovery was made when one of the victims managed to make it to a nearby military checkpoint. He said immigrants had been kidnapped in order to extract ransom money from relatives living in the United States, and that the captors began shooting people who couldn’t pay or refused offers to work for the gang. An exchange of fire broke out between Mexican troops and gunmen thought to belong to Los Zetas, a prominent cartel involved in narcotics trafficking, during which three gang members and one soldier died. Authorities said it was likely that the massacre had taken place either on the day the bodies were discovered or on the previous day, but did not disclose the type of wounds the victims had sustained, nor any information regarding the nature of the killings.

Violence is surging in the border region separating Mexico from the United States, and has been on the rise since President Calderón dispatched an additional 50,000 troops to the area as part of an effort to bring the power wielded by armed cartels under control. Tamaulipas, which borders the U.S. state of Texas and is home to over 3 million people, has seen a particularly distressing rise in violent incidents in recent months.

Mexican authorities are treating the murders as a federal crime, with Calderón vowing to maintain his efforts to target organised criminal gangs, in order to prevent “the terrible events of this week from repeating themselves”. The Guatemalan government expressed its preoccupation with the “constant reports of abuses, humiliations, and human rights violations” carried out against Guatemalan immigrants in Mexico at the hands of state authorities. The United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights said that the murders were “evidence of the critical situation faced by migrants” from Latin America within Mexico.

On Saturday and Sunday five bombs went off in Tamaulipas, killing at least one person and injuring 23, including nine children. Several U.S. border crossings in the area were closed as a result. On Saturday one of the government officials investigating the case was found murdered close to the site of the massacre. His body was dumped on a nearby road along with that of another unidentified person. In the saga’s latest chapter, the mayor of the nearby town of Hidago, located around 60 miles from the state capital, was shot dead in front of his 10-year-old daughter as he drove along a local highway on Sunday afternoon. Marco Antonio Leal García was 49 years old. President Calderón immediately paid tribute to the fallen mayor and attributed culpability for his killing to organised criminal gangs. García’s daughter remains in a critical condition, having been seriously wounded during the shooting.

Morales demands Peru deport former La Paz mayor

Bolivian president Evo Morales has requested that the Peruvian government deport the former mayor of La Paz, Luis Alberto Valle, and has urged Peruvian leader Alan Garcia not to allow his country to become a “haven for criminals”. Valle is wanted on charges of corruption in Bolivia, and fled the country in April 2009, crossing the border with Peru illegally. It is estimated that the former mayor misappropriated state funds in the region of US$17 million during a two-year term between 1997 and 1999.

The Bolivian president expressed regret that several former Bolivian ministers wanted in their native country have escaped prosecution for crimes committed whilst in office by fleeing to Peru. “Just as we deport Peruvians who have entered Bolivia illegally back to their country, the same thing should happen to Valle”, stated Morales upon returning from a three-day diplomatic visit to South Korea. A Peruvian court ruled that the Bolivian government must seek to have Valle extradited, which Morales maintains is not necessary given that he entered Peru illegally and therefore should not be allowed to remain in the country.

Luis Alberto Valle was apprehended by Interpol agents in Lima just days after arriving in the Peruvian capital last year, and was denied asylum by governmental authorities on account of not having suffered political persecution in his native country. Peruvian police stated that Valle had apparently undergone plastic surgery in order to attempt to disguise his identity. As of yet the government of Alan Garcia has refused numerous official requests that the former mayor be expelled via the Bolivian border so that he can be detained by authorities. The Bolivian government maintains that a number of former government officials wanted on similar charges are also still at large in Peru.

Pernías admits “death flights” took place during Argentine dictatorship

Former Argentine naval officer Antonio Pernías has admitted that the so-called “death flights”, during which live political prisoners were thrown from planes into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and River Plate, indeed took place during the last Argentine dictatorship which lasted from 1976 to 1983. Pernías, who stands accused of human rights abuses along with 18 others for crimes allegedly committed during this period, said that the decisions regarding who to execute were made in advance by higher authorities, and that neither he nor other officers of his rank had the capacity to overrule them. His trial began in December of last year and continues in Buenos Aires.

Pernías is accused by victims of having been among of the most prolific torturers at the infamous underground prison at the Naval School of Mechanics (ESMA) in the Argentine capital, but explicitly denies he took part in torture. Pernías said he was involved in “forceful interrogations”, adding in his defence that such techniques “were legal in Israel and Ireland at the time”. He went on to add of his and his colleagues’ conduct that “there was no cruelty because we were good people”. An estimated 5,000 people passed through the ESMA, the largest secret prison in Argentina, during the dictatorship. The prison was the point from which the death flights departed. Human rights organisations have calculated that around 30,000 people went missing in Argentina during this period, many of whom have never been recovered. Many groups representing family members who were disappeared during this period continue to campaign in order that those who were involved in or responsible for government atrocities be brought to justice.

Lula-backed candidate opens up 20 point lead in Brazilian polls

Dilma Rousseff, who will stand as the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) candidate when Brazilians vote to elect a new head of state on October 3rd has raced into a comfortable lead over closest rival José Serra with the election less than five weeks away. Serra of the Social Democracy Party (PSDB) has vowed to “fight until the last minute” in order to avoid a humiliating landslide for the candidate bidding to become Brazil’s first female president. Rousseff has the backing of President Lula da Silva, and is expected by pollsters to win the election by a considerable margin. She is currently projected to reach the 55% of votes needed to avoid a run-off against the second most popular candidate. Serra held a 20-point lead as recently as December 2009, and at the end of June was neck and neck with Rousseff, who now sits on 49% in polls, compared to the 29% of votes Serra will receive according to current projections.

Lula used last week’s meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum, a conference of left-wing Latin American politicians and thinkers, to underscore his support for Dilma Roussef’s candidacy and to draw attention to the economic growth Brazil has enjoyed since he took power in 2002. He said that since taking office his party has overseen the creation of 14.5 million formal jobs in Brazil, has lifted 30 million people out of poverty and has kept inflation under control after decades of economic turmoil. Brazil has one of the highest levels of wealth disparity of any country in the world, and is plagued by enormous regional imbalances, with the country’s Amazon and north-eastern states in particular afflicted by deeply rooted poverty and a lack of functioning infrastructure. Insecurity continues to be a significant problem in virtually every large Brazilian city, as affluent neighbourhoods and impoverished slums or ‘favelas’ are situated in close proximity to one another and violent crime rates remain extremely high.

In Brief:

Chile: Rescue workers attempting to reach 33 miners trapped 700 metres below ground at a site in the city of Copiaco made contact with the group on Sunday and have verified that there were no fatalities following the collapse 24 days ago which blocked all escape routes. The government has said it is unlikely anyone will be able to leave the mine within the next two months as rescue teams continue to work around the clock.

Brazil: An armed gang took 30 people hostage in a luxury hotel in the district of Sao Conrado in Rio de Janeiro’s affluent south zone on Friday. A gun battle had broken out between police and gang members near Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela which is home to a population estimated at over 865,000. The confrontation took place after a patrol came across several pick-up trucks containing around 40 armed men. One woman was killed in the ensuing crossfire. Most of the gang managed to escape, but several gunmen took refuge in the nearby Intercontinental Hotel, taking hostages in the complex’s kitchen. All hostages were released unharmed and the police arrested nine people.

Cuba: Fidel Castro has charged that Osama Bin Laden is an “agent of the CIA” during a meeting with author Daniel Estulin in Havana. The ageing Cuban revolutionary leader observed that “every time Bush went out to instil fear or make a big speech, Bin Laden appeared, saying what he was going to do and making threats”. Estulin remarked that since December 2001, the Bin Laden tapes released and given worldwide attention have been the work of “a bad actor”, with Castro adding that former president George W. Bush was “never lacking in support from Bin Laden”. The Washington Post confirmed earlier this year that, according to a former agent, the CIA has indeed produced fake videotapes purporting to show Osama Bin Laden. In 2007 Castro raised questions regarding the 2001 September 11th attacks, saying that the U.S. government’s official story does not “correspond with the criteria of mathematicians, seismologists, and information from demolition specialists”. He said the people of the world had been “deceived” and that the truth would probably never be revealed.

Ecuador: At least 42 people were killed and 12 more were seriously wounded as an intercity bus fell from a mountain road into an abyss in the state of Cotopaxi, just south of the capital Quito. Preliminary reports suggest that the bus tipped over as it approached a bend in the road, and is thought to have been overloaded with passengers who had boarded during the journey.

Venezuela: 10 members of the Venezuelan military died in a helicopter accident on Saturday in the state of Apurre, close to the border with Colombia. Their craft had been pursuing suspected drug traffickers, one of whom was captured following the crash.

Colombia: The Colombian People’s Defence has decried the kidnapping of two indigenous leaders by paramilitary groups in the southern department of Narino, close to the Ecuadorian border. People’s Defence Volmar Perez said that five armed men suspected to represent the militant group New Generation kidnapped the two leaders, identified as Martín Esteban Reyes Caicedo y Federico Guastar, on August 18th, as they took a riverboat towards the town of El Charco.

Mexico: Mexicana, the country’s largest airline, indefinitely suspended all operations with immediate effect on Saturday, bringing to an end 89 years of business. The company had been plagued by severe economic problems in recent months.

Tom Kavanagh, a writer and activist based in Argentina, is Latin America correspondent for Ceasefire. His column on Latin American affairs appears every Monday.

South of The Border: The view from Latin America

hich — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:05:08 +0000

By Tom Kavanagh

Hondurans take to the streets to demand jobs and increased wages

Thousands of Honduran workers, students and unemployed have launched protests in cities and towns throughout the country, demanding wage increases and rallying against unemployment in the Central American nation. The demonstrations come amid revelations that 50,000 jobs have been lost in Honduras in the last year, on top of 180,000 redundancies in 2009, leading to a crisis in a country already plagued by rampant poverty and enormous wealth disparities. Leonel Bendeck, head of the Centre of Assessment for the Development of Human Rights in Honduras, attributed plummeting employment figures, with the loss of 230,000 jobs in two years, to poor conditions for investment and widespread insecurity following the coup d’état which toppled democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009.

Zelaya, a wealthy landowner turned populist leader, had raised the minimum wage in Honduras by 60% prior to being kidnapped in the middle of the night by the Honduran military and flown to Costa Rica. Opponents of the former president cited his decision to hold a referendum on extending the maximum number of terms a president can serve as the motive for the coup. Zelaya has since been replaced by Porfirio Lobo who was elected in November 2009, with many Hondurans boycotting the elections amid strong condemnation from many Latin American countries including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, who refuse to recognise Lobo as president. The Obama administration has welcomed the new government, and Lobo publicly thanked U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at his swearing-in for the support he has received from the United States, with Clinton now aggressively pushing for Honduras’ readmission to the Organization of American States from which it was expelled following Zelaya’s overthrow.

Honduras, a nation of 8 million in which 59% live below the poverty line, is the second poorest country in the Americas after Haiti and is home to countless ‘maquilas’ – textile factories producing apparel for export by multinational companies which take advantage of its basement-level wages and status as a signatory to the CAFTA agreement, under which there are no tariffs on Honduran exports to the United States. Leonel Bendeck noted that textile manufacturing was the one sector in which jobs were still being created in the country. Honduras’ external debt stood at around US$2.3 billion at the end of 2008, equivalent to over 23% of the country’s GDP, forcing the government to make crippling interest payments to foreign creditors which deprive overstretched public services of much-needed capital.

Bendeck recommended the creation of 100,000 temporary jobs to stem the country’s employment crisis, however many have argued that this would increase job insecurity and is not a sustainable long-term solution. Another bone of contention is the proposed Law of Public-Private investment, which Honduran teachers’ unions have denounced as “the privatisation of education by stealth”. Trade unions in the country have condemned the “repressive attitude” of Lobo’s government towards political opponents, and have vowed to maintain the protest until their demands are addressed. Members of the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) and trade union leaders have warned that a national strike will be called in the near future if the government does not grant significant wage increases and repay a multimillion dollar debt, thought to stand at over US$200 million, owed to the teachers’ union. Hundreds of baton-wielding police deployed tear gas and beat protesters who had blocked two roads in the capital Tegucigalpa on Friday, detaining more than 20 people and leaving dozens injured.

FNRP members and representatives from other similar organisations have reported receiving death threats from government officials, purportedly working in concert with organised criminal gangs, and have described the situation in the country as “critical”. On Friday, a mass grave containing the corpses of over 100 political dissidents who have gone missing in the last three months was discovered in Honduras.

Colombian court sends plans for U.S. bases back to the drawing board

Mauricio Gonzalez, announcing colombian court decision

The Constitutional Court of Colombia ruled on Tuesday that an accord signed in October 2009 between the government of former president Álvaro Uribe and the Obama administration, granting the U.S. military and intelligence agencies access to seven military bases on Colombian soil, must gain congressional approval. The court’s president, Mauricio González, ruled that the deal must be revised by new president Juan Manuel Santos prior to being submitted to Colombia’s congress for approval. Uribe had cited reasons of “national security” for bypassing congress when the announcement was originally made last year, a move which the court ruled a violation of the country’s constitution. González remarked that the “authorisation for foreigners to carry and use arms” carries with it “new obligations for the Colombian state”, citing this as the principal reason for forcing the issue before congress and granting the government a time limit of one year to get the legislation passed. The United States maintains that the bases are necessary to assist in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism.

Colombian activist groups said they would be campaigning vigorously against the ratification of the agreement, with Lilian Solano of the Life and Justice Movement affirming that “if they have given the government one year then we have one year to let the world know that the last thing we need is these U.S. military bases”. The agreement to station U.S. troops on the ground in Colombia drew sharp criticism from many South American leaders when it was made public in late 2009. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez called it a “permanent, 24-hour danger”, with Bolivian leader Evo Morales calling the announcement “a risk to peace between nations” in South America. The seven bases are all located in the east of Colombia, close to the 1,400 mile-long border with Venezuela. Morales welcomed the court’s announcement this week, calling it “an open defence of the dignity and sovereignty” of the Colombian people. The Bolivian president said the U.S. was using the issues of drug trafficking and terrorism as a pretext to intervene in sovereign nations in order to “keep stealing their natural resources”.

Colombia is the United States’ strongest ally in South America, and under the Plan Colombia agreement has received US$7 billion in U.S. taxpayer money since 1999, with the vast majority earmarked for military hardware and so-called ‘anti-drug operations’. This has coincided with innumerable accusations that the Colombian military and paramilitary groups given tacit support by the government have been responsible for committing atrocious human rights abuses against peasants and political opponents in rural areas of the country. There is also widespread suspicion about the real motives for the United States government’s presence in Colombia. A UN report released in June 2008 revealed that coca production in Colombia was on the rise, and had increased by 27% in the period between 2006 and 2007. In September 2007, a plane which both the European Parliament and the United States Federal Aviation Administration confirmed had been used “several times” by the CIA to transport prisoners to the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba crash-landed in the Yucatán peninsula in southern Mexico containing a shipment of around 3.3 tons of Colombian cocaine.

Six Mexican police officers arrested following kidnap and murder of mayor

Mexican authorities announced on Friday that six police officers had been arrested on suspicion of participation in the kidnap and murder of Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of the town of Santiago in the north-eastern state of Nuevo León. Some of the officers are accused of having kept watch to ensure no other law enforcement officials witnessed the kidnap, which took place at Cavazos’ home on Sunday evening, while others are accused of direct participation in the crime. Among those detained are individuals who had been on duty guarding the mayor’s house at the time of his kidnapping, and all six arrestees have confessed their guilt. Cavazos was found dead on a rural stretch of highway three days after being sequestered. At least four other people are suspected of involvement in the crime.

State authorities informed the press that the mayor, a member of the Felipe Calderón’s ruling National Action Party (PAN), had become a target for drug cartels operating in the region due to his efforts to root out corruption in the town’s police force. Police corruption is routine in much of Mexico, with many officers receiving money from drug cartels in return for immunity from prosecution and on the understanding that law enforcement officials will pursue rival gangs. Drug-related violence has been escalating in the border state of Nuevo León – home to Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest and wealthiest city – in recent years, as rival cartels compete for access to lucrative trade routes into nearby Texas.

President Calderón told an anti-narcotics forum on Thursday that the United States government is not doing enough to stop the flow of illegal arms into Mexico, and said that “public opinion must be mobilised internationally to criticise the irresponsibility” of the U.S. arms industry, which he accused of “fomenting the violence” south of the border. Calderón said that “selling arms to criminals” is big business in the United States, the world’s largest arms manufacturer, and accused the industry of exasperating conflicts throughout the globe.

Fidel shines a light on secretive Bilderberg Group

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro this week published three articles calling attention to the existence of a “global government in the shadows” and issued a warning that “the war against Iran has already been decided by the higher circles of the empire”. Castro, who has long warned of an impending conflict with the Persian state, observed that “only an extraordinary effort of world opinion” can halt a war that former CIA chief Michael Hayden three weeks ago described as “inexorable”. On Monday the former Cuban president used his column, “Reflections from Fidel”, published at regular intervals in the Cuban state-run press, to reproduce an article by Cubavisión television presenter Randy Alonso printed earlier this year entitled “The so-called world government meets in Barcelona”, a reference to the Bilderberg Group’s annual meeting, held in May 2010 at the Dolce Hotel in Sitges on the outskirts of the Catalan capital.

Daniel Estulin addresses EU parliament

Alonso’s article gives an outline of the group’s history and prowess, noting that many former presidents and prime ministers of nations such as the United States and United Kingdom have attended Bilderberg meetings prior to election to their countries’ highest offices, rubbing shoulders with leading lights from the world of finance and media, along with executives of the world’s largest corporations. “Did our readers know this?” asks Fidel of the revelations contained in Alonso’s piece, “has any major television network or newspaper said a word? Can any of them deny that these systematic meetings of the world’s most powerful financiers take place every year?” Castro carries on this rhetorical line of questioning, demanding, “Who hides the truth? Who misleads who? Who lies? Can any of what has been written here be refuted?”

Two subsequent columns, published by the former Cuban president on Wednesday and Thursday and entitled “The World Government, Parts 1 & 2”, are comprised of extracts from Spanish author Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book “The Secrets of Club Bilderberg”, personally selected by Castro. The 84-year-old revolutionary leader calls the book “fabulous”, saying that it “cuts… magnates in the fields of politics and finance” such as “Henry Kissinger, George Osborne, the directors of Goldman Sachs” and others “to shreds”. Castro goes on to refer to the group as “odious”, commenting on the findings documented by Estulin that it is “terrible to think that that the intelligence and feelings of the children and youth of the United States are mutilated in this way” and concluding that “´they must fight in order to avoid being dragged into a nuclear holocaust, and to recover what is left of their physical and mental health”. Castro has invited Estulin, who he describes as “honest and well-informed”, to Havana for a private meeting. Earlier this year the Spanish author gave a presentation on his findings regarding the group to the European Parliament.

Castro also used his Monday column to attack the “absurd” decision to appoint former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe to the position of vice president of the UN commission investigating Israel’s murderous attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, opining that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was “complying with orders from above” and noting that the attack took place “in international waters, a considerable distance from the coast”. “As if a country full of mass graves containing the corpses of murder victims, some holding up to 2,000, and seven Yankee military bases, along with all the Colombian bases at its service, doesn’t have anything to do with terrorism and genocide”, scoffed the former Cuban leader.

In Brief:

Colombia: President of the Colombian Congress Armando Benedetti stated in an interview with teleSUR conducted in Caracas on Sunday that he believes last week’s car bombing in Bogotá to be the work of extreme right-wing terror groups within the country wishing to send a message to new president Juan Manuel Santos. “This is how they operate”, said Benedetti, who dismissed any link between the attack and the restoration of diplomatic ties with Venezuela but admitted that “it is difficult to hypothesise”.

Bolivia: Negotiations between the government and protesters in Potosí showed signs of improvement after an agreement was reached to build an international airport and state-owned cement factory in the departmental capital and to finish construction of a new highway linking Potosí with the department of Tarija. Celestino Condori, head of the Civic Committee of Potosí, said that progress was also being made in the department’s dispute with neighbouring Oruro over access to mineral deposits. Road blocks which had frozen any transport into or out of Potosí for over two weeks have been lifted.

Chile: On Wednesday at least 66 students were arrested at a demonstration in Santiago called in order to demand greater investment in state education and “a halt to the privatising agenda” of President Sebastián Piñera’s government. Traffic was suspended in the area surrounding the unauthorised protest, and police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of demonstrators. The majority of the arrests were made when some protesters attempted to march to the presidential palace in the centre of the nation’s capital.

Venezuela: The government of Hugo Chávez announced on Wednesday that it will support a Serbian UN resolution calling on the international body to guarantee the Balkan state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, in defence of Serbia’s “history, dignity and justice”. When the breakaway province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, Chávez said the Venezuelan government would join Russia, China, Spain and others in not recognising the new state. He denounced the move as an “extremely dangerous precedent for the whole world”, charging that the United States was responsible for stirring up trouble in the region in a bid to undermine Russia’s influence.

Tom Kavanagh, a writer and activist based in Argentina, is Latin America correspondent for Ceasefire. His column on Latin American affairs appears every Monday.

Devil’s Advocate: On the right to offend

hich — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:50:09 +0000

By Omer Ali

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”

— Sigmund Freud

Twelve cartoons depicting Islam’s prophet Muhammad were published on September 30th 2005 in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten under the title ‘The Faces of Muhammed’. Muslim groups in Denmark protested their publication and several Muslim organizations demanded an apology from the paper which was not forthcoming. Meetings and negotiations between the paper and these groups continued for months after the publication of the cartoons. Thus far, however, it was a civil affair.

On February 12th 2008, two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin were arrested and charged with planning the murder of Kurt Westergaard — the cartoonist whose depiction of Muhammad was that of a bearded man with a bomb for a turban. Less than two years later, on January 2nd 2010 a man of Somali origin armed with an axe forced his way into Westergaard’s home. The cartoonist survived by taking shelter in a specially designed panic room and calling the police.

This is not the first time that a member of the public has been met with violence for offending the sensibilities of some Muslims. In November 2004, a Dutch-Moroccan man murdered film director Theo Van Gogh. Some Muslim groups deemed his film ‘Submission’, which tackled Islam’s treatment of women, blasphemous.

I take care to say ‘some’ because it is too easy to fall into the trap of applying a single characteristic to a diverse group. In fact, only a fringe would undertake such drastic action. An extreme form of belief is required for members of any group to act in a way that is clearly against their self interest, but is – in their opinion – in the group’s interest.

What had changed since the initial publication was that within a short period of time, the cartoons were published by newspapers and magazines in more than 50 countries, including some with a Muslim majority. The reaction of the vast majority of Muslims was inimical to these moves. Embassies of the European countries where newspapers led the publication charge were attacked; some were burned.

It seems that what “representatives” of the Muslim community, and here I include fringe elements as well, are in effect asking for is a ban on the publication, showcasing and airing of material they consider offensive. This is unworkable and, to put it simply, unfair.

The debate about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons quickly develops into a debate about freedom of speech. The side defending the publication of the cartoons broadly argues that freedom of speech is paramount and any censorship is unwarranted. The other side then often raises a number of contradictions, notably the double standard of this very position considering that holocaust denial is illegal in sixteen, mostly western, democracies.

True, freedom of speech is not completely unconstrained and hence justifying the publication of the cartoons exclusively on these grounds is problematic. Since all other religions are subject to regular ridicule, however, the fundamental question becomes: why should it be the case that one religion be made exempt from this treatment?

It shouldn’t. At least not in a society where all religions are equal in the eyes of the law. Instead, those Muslims who find themselves offended at abuse of their religion will have to accept that what they consider sacred need not coincide with what others see as beyond ridicule. In a pluralistic society values are diverse and interaction between different factions results in people being exposed to others’ points of view. These could be agreeable or opposed to theirs. These could also be offensive. In constraining freedom of speech, however, society did not judge the charge of being ‘offensive’ to be sufficient for speech to be disallowed. This I find to be reasonable. Consider the alternative scenario in which a group’s offence at a particular type of speech made that speech eligible for censorship. Then the populous, say, David Beckham fan club would undoubtedly place denying Beckham’s deadball accuracy on the list of proscribed speech.

Episode ‘200’, the 6th episode of the 14th season of South Park, which aired on April 21st 2010, featured the prophet Muhammad purportedly in a van, a bear costume and behind a black rectangle labeled ‘censored’. Shortly thereafter, in reference to South Park’s producers Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee posted this on the website RevolutionMuslim.com: ‘We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.’ The post included a photo of the Dutch director’s murdered body and the addresses of both Comedy Central and a house co-owned by the South Park duo.

Some Muslims today (and, as a matter of fact, some Non-Muslims too) see any depiction of the prophet as blasphemous. Whereas some of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons could be regarded as deliberately derogatory, episode ‘200’ offends Muslims such as Al-Amrikee simply because the prophet features in it. I avoid pedantry by not debating whether or not insinuating that the prophet was in a bear suit counts as depiction. Instead I would rather raise a point, regularly ignored, about the core of the Muslim reaction to depictions of the prophet. Does depiction of the prophet deserve such a vexed reaction from Muslims in the first place? Islamic art historian Wijdan Ali believes that the interdiction of imagery of the prophet came as late as the 17th century and yet drawings of the prophet continued to appear among more peripheral sects within Muslim societies until the modern era. While some artists depicted the prophet but obscured his face, others had no such qualms. This makes it clear that the ruling is not fundamental to the faith, hence attitudes towards the issue of depicting the prophet ought to be more tempered. Out of the many live issues in Islam today, this one seems to enjoy unusual concord amongst both moderates and extremists.

The group RevolutionMuslim.com is extremist by all metrics. It represents an interesting case because of the contradictory positions it occupies. On the one hand, it preaches its extreme anti-US views thanks to the enshrinement of freedom of speech in the bill of rights. On the other hand, it attempts to curtail this same freedom because of the offense perceived when others exercise it. Furthermore, these attempts are extra-judicial in nature. Actions by such groups only serve to reinforce the ‘separateness’ from which Muslim communities in non-Muslim-majority countries continue to suffer. Like a child in the playground who refuses to take part then complains about being excluded. The incident with episode ‘200’ illustrates this problem incisively.

Throughout the years, South Park has managed to offend almost everyone; from presidents, both serving and past, to A-list celebrities. They’ve also gone after religions with no repercussions; in the same episode that Al-Amrikee flags, Buddha is shown snorting large amounts of cocaine. In fact, only Muslims have managed to remain on the periphery of their mockery.

In a sense, it would not be preposterous to think that the Muslim community would (or even should) be lobbying for inclusion in the derision that other groups in society are regularly subjected to. Muslims, like every other group, are not incapable of raising their concerns in civility, yet we see this far too seldom. Granted, some extreme elements, far more vocal than the moderate majority, regularly hijack the platforms of expression, but it’s precisely for the sake of their image that moderate Muslims need to take a stand. The media’s willingness to run with another story about some extremist group’s heinous act in the name of Islam is also counter-productive. However these are the facts on the ground, and rather than lamenting them, Muslims should be more proactive. The outpouring of emotion from Muslims of all shades in the aftermath of the re-publication of the Muhammad cartoons would have been more beneficial to the community had it come in the aftermath of Van Gogh’s murder.

That offence provides insufficient grounds for censorship means that Muslims will likely continue to encounter offensive material in the future. What is important is that fringe groups are not able to channel this collective feeling into implicit support for their extra-judicial activities. These activities are deleterious to the image of the religion; a dozen cartoons in a Danish daily are not. Some Muslims (and non-Muslims) simply need to accept that almost nothing is universally sacred, that in a society regulated by the rule of law, objection is expressed in ways that do not include physical violence. In short, they need to learn how to be offended.

Omer Ali is based at the University of Warwick and writes on economics, politics and world affairs. He is a former editor of the Voice Magazine. His “Devil’s Advocate” column appears every other Thursday.

STATESIDE – BDS campaign: hopes and disappointments at UC Berkeley

hich — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:09:50 +0000

By Humza Tahir

On March 18th this year, the University of California at Berkeley became the first major University in the USA to pass a bill that requires the divestment of university funds from companies that “materially support or profit from Israel’s occupation” of the Palestinian territories. The historic bill came after a long campaign by students to have the university sign up to the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which was a call on behalf of 171 Palestinian civil society organisations calling on people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel “until it fully complies with the precepts of international law”. While similar bills have been passed at universities around the world, including, in the UK, the University of Manchester and the London School of Economics, the current bill was undoubtedly the largest success of the campaign so far in the US.

The senate meeting to discuss the bill attracted unprecedented levels of interest, with the meeting having to be moved to a larger venue to accommodate people. The meeting, which began at 9pm on Wednesday the 17th of March, also went past the usual cut-off time of 1.30am and finally ended at 4am early on Thursday morning. The meeting had to be extended to accommodate the 76 speakers who argued both for and against the bill and also for the senators to discuss proposed amendments to the original bill. The speakers ranged from undergraduate students to Vietnam War veterans, rabbis and church ministers. Israeli and Palestinian nationals also took part. The bill garnered support from Israeli and Jewish voices, not least from one of the bill’s co-authors, Tom Pessah, a Jewish citizen of Israel. After some amendments, the bill was passed on a 16-4 vote.

The bill’s authors were both members of the UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which had been working on a divestment campaign from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine since 2000. UC Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine played a central role in researching the legal issues and the international laws pertaining to Israeli human rights violations. The bill provided references from reputable international sources such as Amnesty International and the United Nations to construct its compelling case of persistent and deliberate human rights violations by Israel against both the Palestinians in Gaza and the West bank and Lebanon.

One of the main charges against the bill was that it unfairly singled-out Israel but ignores other countries that also commit war crimes and human rights abuses. However, as pointed out by the bill’s authors and many of the supporters who spoke at the meeting, both South Africa and the Sudan have had similar bills passed against them in the past. The concern was also specifically addressed in amendments made to the bill before it was passed so that it included the call for future action against all companies that aid human rights abuses the world over.

The bill specifically named and targeted two companies, General Electric and United Technologies for providing military technology used against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians during recent military campaigns. General Electric manufactures Apache helicopter engines; United Technologies manufactures Sikorsky helicopters and F-16 aircraft engines. The bill also made the provision for future divestments from other companies that are shown to have participated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world. In this respect Morocco and Congo were two other countries named in the bill as committing war crimes and benefiting from UC investments and a committee was to be set up to monitor and promote university progress in divesting from companies that take part in these countries’ abuses.

According to Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, co-author of the bill, “this vote is an historic step in holding all state and corporate actors accountable for their violations of basic human rights. The broad cross-section of the community that came out to demand our university invest ethically belies the notion that the American people will tolerate the profiting from occupation or other human rights abuses.”

While Hampshire College in Amherst, MA became the first US educational institution to divest from companies directly involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 2009, an action also advocated by the SJP; the reputation and standing of Berkeley is such that this bill garnered much more national and international coverage, and so was a hugely important step for the BDS campaign.

And yet, a week after the vote, and after a sustained period of lobbying from both sides, the student body president, Will Smelko, vetoed the bill on the basis that “It is the role of the ASUC to balance all voices, perspectives, and views in the most fair, honest, ethical, and comprehensive way possible.” This definition of “fair” and “ethical” disregarded previous precedents of divestment against South Africa and Sudan, not to mention the fact that the bill targeted US weapons companies. Ultimately, in the name of “fairness”, the democratic will of the majority was ignored.

Proponents of the bill attempted to get the veto overturned in two further senate meetings that both went on the entire night. Attended by over 300 people on each occasion, both sides brought in high profile speakers to articulate their case. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) were present in force and the Israeli Consul General also attended and spoke in defence of his country, and declared the bill to be against a peaceful resolution of the occupation; significantly, using the word “occupation” in relation to Israel’s military presence in the West Bank.

The pro divestment campaign called upon statements from international figures such as the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Professor Noam Chomsky, the writer and activist Noami Klein and four former Nobel Peace prize laureates. There was also moving testimony from Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old holocaust survivor who pleaded with the senate to back divestment to help prevent the human rights crimes committed by the state of Israel. Testimony was also provided by a phone link with Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, who spoke about the experiences he had witnessed of human rights abuses committed by Israel in the occupied territories and Lebanon. Campus support included a diverse grouping of over 40 student organisations including, amongst others, the Muslim, Sikh, Philipino, Arab, Iranian and Afghan Student Associations, the Queer Alliance and Resource Centre, Berkeley Stop the War Coalition and the Hispanic Engineers and Scientists. The bill also had the support of 114 University of California faculty members and also over 40 off-campus support organisations including Jewish Voices for Peace and Gush Shalom.

In the month that passed between the first meeting and the second the senators who voted for the bill were subjected to intense lobbying from the anti-divestment pro Zionist lobby. This lead to two senators who had previously voted for divestment to change their vote and, crucially, one senator changed her vote to abstain, citing a threat to campus harmony and inadequate knowledge of the situation to make a decision. The bill thus failed to garner the required 14 votes in the senate, falling just one short, a feat only achieved through the anti-majoritarian veto by the student body president and a well financed lobbying campaign putting pressure on three senators whose votes proved decisive.

At the end of the third and final meeting where the veto was upheld, hundreds of students walked out of the meeting with tape over their mouths and their left fist raised in the air. The tape represented the silencing of their views and, as put by Senator Rahul Patel, their raised fists symbolised “The seeds of truth and freedom that we have sowed tonight.” The students reconvened outside to share their feelings about the vote and pledge to keep working towards divestment.

While the bill was ultimately vetoed, the movement gained massive media coverage and sparked similar divestment campaigns across University of California campuses. The student association at UC San Diego is currently debating such a bill and more will follow. The current battle may have been lost but the Boycott and Divestment Strategy has gathered an immense amount of support and momentum and the prospect of divestment across University campuses throughout North America is now an achievable goal. As put by UC Berkeley and SJP alum Sophia Ritchie speaking after the veto: “Something has shifted — in the discourse, in the sheer numbers of people who are concerned, in the solidarity work and coalition building amongst a broad and truly diverse range of student and community groups, in the energy around Palestine — that cannot be ignored. In this way, we are winning.” Just as the movement against Apartheid South Africa took time but was ultimately successful, it is no longer a matter of if but when student groups and organisations will stand up for innocent Palestinian civilians against the serial human rights violations of the state of Israel.

For more information see:

http://www.caldivestfromapartheid.com/

Humza Tahir is an academic and activist. He is a post-doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley and is involved in the University’s BDS campaign.

NEWSROUND: The View from Latin America

hich — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:54:05 +0000

By Tom Kavanagh

Colombia and Venezuela restore diplomatic ties

Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic ties on Tuesday 10th August, with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez meeting with newly elected Colombian head of state Juan Manuel Santos in the coastal city of Santa Marta. Chávez’s government had severed relations with Colombia on July 22^nd, following a deposition made to the Organization of American States (OAS) by outgoing Colombian premier Álvaro Uribe that Venezuela was providing a safe haven for FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas, following more than a year of deteriorating relations between the two governments. FARC is a militant group which has waged an insurgency against the Colombian state since 1964, enjoying considerable support in some rural areas of the country.

Santos stated that Chávez had assured him Venezuela would not tolerate “the presence of armed groups operating outside of the law” in Colombia’s neighbour, announcing that despite “frequent differences” between the two governments in the past, a decision had been made to “turn the page and think about the future”. Chávez, who has in the past referred to Santos as a “warmonger”, stated that his government “neither supports, nor permits, nor will permit, the presence of guerrillas, drug traffickers or terrorists on Venezuelan soil”. The Venezuelan leader reiterated his opinion that militant groups in Colombia opting to use violence in order to redress their grievances with the Colombian state have “no future… I have said this a million times”. He called attention to the fact that Venezuelan state forces had had numerous confrontations with Colombian guerrillas who have crossed the border over the years, adding that “there have been deaths on our side as well”. Both parties confirmed they would be sending additional troop deployments to patrol the border, much of which is situated in dense jungle.

Chávez also presented his Colombian counterpart with a gift, “The Life of Simon Bólivar” by nineteenth century Venezuelan author Felipe Larrazábal. Bólivar, a strong advocate of Latin American integration, was instrumental in liberating both countries from Spanish rule and Chávez cites him as the inspiration behind Venezuela’s present “Bolivarian revolution”. Since taking office, Chávez has officially renamed Venezuela the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The two heads of state met in the house in Santa Marta in which the famous liberator took his last breath on December 17^th 1830.

Mexico considering drug legalisation

Mexican president Felipe Calderón publically acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that his country must reconsider its policy towards illegal substances, days after his predecessor Vicente Fox called for total drug legalisation, stating that prohibition “has never worked”. The rethink comes as drug-related violence in Mexico continues to take an increasingly heavy toll: last week the head of the country’s Centre for Investigation and National Security, Guillermo Váldes, confirmed that over 28,000 people have been murdered in drug-related incidents since December 2006. “We have to accept that the violence keeps increasing”, said Váldes, who noted that in the same period there have been 973 violent confrontations between drug cartels and Mexican state forces on public highways, with an average of one incident per day attributed to organised criminal gangs. Estimates as to the value of the illicit drug trade to Mexican cartels range from US$10 billion to US$40 billion annually.

The most dangerous area of the country is the United States border region, with regular instances of extreme violence on either side of the frontier as rival gangs compete for control over trade routes into the U.S. – the world’s largest market for illegal drugs. “The strategy should be questioned”, said Calderón, “I am willing to receive and analyse proposals of how to change and improve it.” Since taking office in 2006, Calderón has sought to take a hard line against organised crime, with many blaming this strategy for the escalating violence that continues to plague the country. Samuel González, a former high-level anti-organised crime official, welcomed the president’s change of stance, saying that the government “cannot claim any kind of victory” in the ongoing war on drugs. Last Thursday 12 suspected members of a drug gang were killed and 3 state troops injured in an armed confrontation in the northern state of Durango.

Brazilian (semi) u-turn on Iran

On Tuesday, Brazil signed a UN Security Council resolution which imposes severe economic sanctions on Iran, demonstrating an apparent shift in Brasilia’s position on the question of the Persian state’s nuclear program. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim explained the decision by referring to a “tradition of carrying out Security Council resolutions, including those we don’t agree with”. The Brazilian government had hitherto vocally opposed the imposition of sanctions on Iran, and in May negotiated a deal, rejected by the United States and European Union, with the governments of Iran and Turkey whereby Iran would consign low-enriched uranium to Turkey and receive nuclear fuel in return. Brazilian president Lula da Silva, whose country started enriching uranium for use in power plants in 2006, has consistently defended Iran’s right to nuclear power, stating that to condemn Tehran for harbouring similar aspirations would amount to hypocrisy.

Bolivia: Protests put Morales under pressure

Community leaders in the Bolivian department of Potosí have demanded face to face talks with president Evo Morales over an ongoing dispute with the national government regarding a perceived lack of investment in the region. The leader of the Civic Committee of Potosí, Celestino Condori, has said that strikes and road blocks which have paralysed the department for over two weeks will not be lifted until Morales agrees to personally visit the region in order to discuss the protesters demands. The committee has threatened to begin hunger strikes if a solution is not reached, and dismissed as derisory an offer from the government to send a representative to the region in order to restart negotiations. Chief among protesters’ complaints are a border dispute between Potosí and the neighbouring department of Oruro regarding vast mineral deposits at the contested Pahua site, and demands that the government construct a new airport in Potosí.

Bolivian Autonomy Minister Carlos Romero called on protesters to “stop punishing the people of Potosí” and to resume dialogue with the government, estimating that the strikes, which took effect on July 30^th, are costing Bolivia around US$200,000 a day due to lost income from tourism and disruption to mining in the area. President Morales has accused right-wing groups in the country of fomenting unrest in the region in order to destabilise the process of social and political transformation his government is instituting. “What is happening is that the neoliberals and those that wish to sell off the homeland want to confuse the social and civic movements, with the intention of returning to the positions of power which they used for many years exclusively for their own benefit”, Morales affirmed at a meeting in the city of Cochabamba.

The government has ruled out using either the police or the army to break up strikes and road blocks by force. “In the past the military was used by the neoliberals and the landowners to confront the people as they fought for their rights, today [the military has] taken on the cause of patriotism and supports change and social development”, Morales added.

Colombia: Car bombing in Bogota

A car bomb exploded in the financial district of the Colombian capital Bogotá at approximately 5.30 on Thursday morning in front of the offices of local radio station Caracol Radio. There were no fatalities but the attack left nine people injured and caused considerable damage to buildings in the surrounding area. One man has since come forward claiming that he was paid 400,000 pesos (around £140) to change the number plates of the vehicle used in the bombing. He denies having had any prior knowledge of the attack.

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos condemned the bombing, which many have attributed to FARC guerrillas. Santos, however acknowledged that “we have to tell the truth, we still don’t know who was responsible”. Jairo Ramírez, president of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Colombia, says evidence points to the involvement of right-wing militant groups opposed to the reestablishment of bilateral relations with Venezuela. President Santos has offered a reward of 500 million pesos (around £174,760) for any information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. Several regional governments, including those of Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, strongly condemned the attack, describing it as an act of terrorism.

In brief:

Chile: 33 miners remain trapped underground at a site in the city of Copiapó, Chile following a landslide on August 5^th. Chile’s president Sebastian Piñera said it was hoped contact would be made by Monday as rescue operations continue, although it is unknown if any of those trapped in the mine are still alive.

Paraguay: President Fernando Lugo has been discharged from hospital in Sao Paulo, saying he feels “renewed” having begun chemotherapy in order to treat lymphatic cancer. The remainder of the 59-year-old head of state’s treatment will be carried out in Paraguay and he is expected to make a full recovery.

Argentina: A Human Rights Watch report released this week revealed that 40% of pregnancies in Argentina are terminated by illegal abortion – roughly double the average for Latin America. Around 460,000 illegal abortions are carried out in the country each year, a figure that represents over 1% of the country’s population. Abortion is illegal in Argentina except under special circumstances, and HRW warned that the practice is increasingly being used “as a form of contraception”.

El Salvador: The World Bank’s investment dispute resolution panel declared that a lawsuit filed against the government of El Salvador by Canadian mining multinational Pacific Rim under the terms of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) may proceed, despite fierce protests from the Salvadorian government. The company is seeking compensation after the government halted mining at the El Dorado site, citing environmental concerns. The government maintains the lawsuit is invalid, and that CAFTA legislation is not applicable as the company was not registered in a signatory state at the time the deal between the two parties was agreed.

Brazil: Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Worker’s Party (PT) currently leads principal rival José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democrat Party (PSDB) in opinion polls ahead of October’s elections. Rousseff, who leads Serra by 8 points, has the backing of current Brazilian president Lula da Silva who will step down after completing two terms in office. Green Party (PV) candidate Marina Silva sits on 10%, 23 points behind Serra.

Cuba: Cuban revolutionary leader and former president Fidel Castro celebrated his 84^th birthday in Havana on Friday. Castro’s health has significantly improved in recent months and he has made several public appearances, notably warning that an attack on Iran by the United States and Israel seems imminent.

Tom Kavanagh, a writer and activist based in Argentina, is Latin America correspondent for Ceasefire. His column on Latin American affairs appears every Monday.

Think Big! In defence of ideology

hich — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:02:07 +0000

By Alex Andrews

In a recent Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ piece, Anthony Lerman laments the fact an anti-capitalist ideology has not emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis, but wouldn’t really want to subscribe to one if it did. It’s difficult to believe that, as Lerman claims, no new ideas have emerged after the crisis or even the repetition of old ones. It is hard to see “the anti-globalisation movement directed at G8s and G20s” as having “run out of steam” when the City of Toronto just spent $1 billion protecting the leaders of the world from their citizens. When David Harvey can rustle up a Marxist analysis of the whole of the crisis which can be explained by a lovely animation, coherent analyses are not lacking and neither are alternatives.

Putting these issues aside, Lerman manages to obscure the influence of the most successful ideological movement of the 20th century – neoliberalism – unconsciously on his own thought. As the most successful form of capitalist ideology so far devised, neoliberalism has established far more than simply a ‘consensus’ among politicians, but the naturalised defaults of debate that Lerman too appears to subscribe to, likely against himself. Neoliberalism correctly understood as early as the late 1930s that it was not enough to simply explain the benefits of unfettered capitalism to national leaders but to neuter all opposing and alternative ideologies as being part of the same cloth, all steps on the “road to serfdom”. Lerman’s desire for “a fox-like, piecemeal, generalist approach” rather than “a hedgehog-like, all-encompassing ideology” sadly falls into this trap.

The desire for the piecemeal approach, where nips and tucks will somehow render the system fair, plays all too well into the idea that it was a few bad eggs that caused the crisis rather than a systematic question, as Lerman rightly notices. The prohibition against hedgehog thinking is a worse and particularly pernicious element of the ideology of capitalism. The taboo on any form of ideas opposed to capitalism, least they slip into ‘ideology’ is an example of what theorist Mark Fisher has termed capitalist realism: the end of capitalism, or even the modification of capitalism in its current form is not only impossible and dangerous, but quite unthinkable. At best, an attempt to move towards a more just and egalitarian society is naive adolescent idealism, cute, but disconnected from reality.

F. Hayek, one of the major architects of postwar neoliberalism

Even minor adjustments of the present in the name of mollifying some of the human consequences of cuts are foolish, since there is no alternative but to reduce deficits and please the rating agencies, despite reasonable Keynesians pointing out how this will force us into a double-dip recession. At worst, those thinkers hoping to move beyond capitalism are immediately complicit in the worst crimes of the 20th century, regardless of how often and how loudly they declaim them. Anti-capitalist thinkers simply subscribe to a form of fanaticism, an irrational inability to accept the world as it is, a position worthy of pathologisation, mockery and exclusion from popular debate. One only needs to read the hysterical reactions to a figure as mainstream as Noam Chomsky to recognise this is the case, or any Comment Is Free article mentioning the c- or s- word for that matter. Rather, what is required is hardheaded, practical politicians, who with no ideology but a grim determination to face economic realities, to busily implement market based solutions to the NHS and education as well as ensure that those responsible for the crisis itself are rapped lightly over the knuckles and the system that caused it, and will continue to cause future crises, is permitted to continue untouched while all others, particularly the poorest suffer the consequences. As Slavoj Žižek has pointed out, when politicians claim to lay aside their ideology they reveal their most ideological moment. Claims that ideology is absent should be taken as moments where it is likely that an ideology has become so naturalised and transparent that it no longer appears as such. Sadly its influence is clear on Lerman’s analysis, and the very division of the two types of thinking, as with many others. Such is the case with abandoning supposed hedgehog thinking, something Hayek’s motley band of economists, journalists and politicians at the Mont Pelerin Society never considered as they developed neoliberalism and planned to overturn the post-war settlement.

To abandon thinking big is to allow the unacknowledged lens to remain in place. The first step is to think boldly and to reject the terms of debate as they are presented to us. This includes sage warnings not to think big.

Alex Andrews is a freelance journalist, academic and activist living in Canterbury, UK. His main interests are neoliberalism, economics and the interaction of politics and religion

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish – How the revolution was written

hich — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:46:45 +0000

By Ahmed Masoud

On 09 August 2008, Palestinians were distraught and shocked at the news of the departure of their beloved national poet Mahmoud Darwish. Although his health had been deteriorating for over six months, Darwish’s death was received with grief across the Palestinian nation and the Arab world. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) declared three days of national mourning across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This article aims to explore Darwish’s contribution in building modern Palestinian literature which is considered to be at the core of post 1950 modern Arab literary movement. The focus here will be on his life in Israel between 1950 and 1971.

Born in 1942, in the village of Barwa near Acre, Darwish was one of the 800,000 Palestinians deported during the Palestinian Nakba# of 1948. He lived in Lebanon for eight years until he went back to look for the rest of his family. He discovered that his village was one of the 450 villages razed to the ground by Israelis in 1948. Darwish left Palestine in 1971 to study in the USSR for a year and decided to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1973, when he was banned from re-entering Israel. He lived in Cairo between 1975 and 1981where he worked for Al-Ahram newspaper. Darwish moved to Beirut in 1980 where he became the editor of the journal “Palestinian Issues” and was the director of the Palestinian Research Centre. He returned to Palestine in 1996 after the PNA was born as a result of the Oslo agreement which gave Palestinians self-rule over parts of Gaza and small parts of the West Bank.

Darwish is considered to be the founder of the literature of resistance which was born as a reaction to the loss of the Palestinian homeland and identity. The literature of resistance was developed by Palestinians who remained in Palestine after 1948. Their writing came to express their rejection of the new political climate which branded their national aspirations a form of anti-state terrorism. The enthusiasm and anger of some young poets, like Mahmoud Darwish, developed into a unified and structured literary movement which aimed to encourage resistance of the occupation. No one has described the literature of resistance clearer than Moshe Dayan (1915-1981, Israeli defense minister during the Six Day War in 1967) who said in an interview with Ma’areef newspaper (Israeli daily paper) that “only one poem of Fadwa Tuqan# is enough to create ten Palestinian terrorists” (Quoted from Al-Ayyam, 1997).

This statement was a reflection of the fact that, in the mid-twentieth century, Palestinian poets focused their anger on the Israeli government and the West, describing their countrymen as victims of history and heroes fighting to redeem their people. The main themes in the literary writings of that period, therefore, had been resistance as well as the continuous faith in victory and the right of return. Literature, particularly poetry, took a leadership position in inviting people to start a resistance movement after 1948. The nationalist movement was almost destroyed after the Nakba, Also, there was no national media to discuss national issues. All the small newspapers which operated before the establishment of the state of Israel were destroyed. This left the remaining Palestinian community, almost 200,000 people, unorganized and not represented in the new society. In this context, poetry and the spoken word started taking the lead in representing Palestinian issues.

Mahmoud Darwish is always introduced in his poetry readings as Al-Munadil (the freedom fighter). He was seen not only as a man of letters but also as a leader who was able to eloquently express what his people needed, against any attempts of cultural appropriation.

I will say myself that Palestinians are not merciful to their men of letters. This is because of their faith in the effectiveness of literature which has been to them a compensation for all the humiliations when they lost everything (referring to 1948) except words. Literature then took strength from the people to create a relationship between them and the lost home. A Palestinian writer is often asked: Are you a writer or a freedom fighter? (Kanafani, 1998)

Post 1948 Palestinians were treated as second class citizens in Israel. There were not, for example, any unions for Palestinian workers and Palestinians were not allowed to work in any other job than handy work, mainly building and construction. It is indeed his ability to draw attention to national themes while talking about ordinary human matters like love which brought fame to Mahmoud Darwish. In his first anthology Lover From Palestine (1967), he clearly talks about emotional matters which concerned any young man of his age (25), but his ability to incorporate the young man’s emotional concerns within his national outlook is what makes the anthology unique. At the time of its publication, the Israeli government imposed onerous rules on Arabic-language literary production. Publishing was limited and went through Israeli censorship channels; those who did manage to publish sometimes received funding from Zionist organizations which imposed their own ideological imperatives on the context of the writing. In fact, most publications were not allowed to talk about Palestine and the theme of homeland.

Zionist organizations also encouraged Palestinian writers who were desperate to publish their works in Arabic to promote Zionism as an acceptable social phenomenon. In this political environment, poetry was the medium to express the feelings of resentment because it could spread easier than any other printed literature.

Love poetry was a key element in creating the literature of resistance. Post 1948 Palestinians were disconnected from their own community; the majority left Palestine and the remaining minority felt fragmented because a lot of their family members were either killed or deported. Love poetry became a key element in bridging the gaps between those fragmented communities and created a feeling of security amongst those who remained in Palestine. This form of poetry came to compensate for the inability to express the feelings of oppression which were not allowed to be published. Ten years after the Nakba, love poetry was transformed into a new genre which had the aim of connecting social and national issues in one form. While writers talked about love in order to bring communities together, the sense of homeland was re-established in images, memories and most importantly, hopes of civil and national rights. Poets, then, adopted a resistance mentality whereby the enemy was challenged.

To the rest of the world, however, it still seemed that the Palestinian people did not exist, except as remote statistics. Mahmoud Darwish became the main exponent of the literature of resistance in the sixties, and was, like many fellow poets, often imprisoned by Israeli authorities. He earned international acclaim for his poetry on the Palestine experience, etching with the details of human moments rather than ideology, but constantly imbued with a drive for his people’s dignity.When his poem “A Lover from Palestine” was going to be published, he presented it to the Israeli censor, who crossed out the word `Palestine’ and replaced it with `Eretz Israel (Gabriel, 1998)

Like grass growing among the joints of a rock

We existed as strangers one day

The Spring Sky was composing a star…and a star

And I was composing a love verse

To your eyes I will sing.

Do your eyes know that I have waited very long

Like summer waiting for a bird

And I slept like an immigrant

With one eye awake and the other crying

We are two lovers until the moon falls asleep

And know that hugging and kissing

Are the food of love nights

And that morning is calling for my footsteps to continue

On the path!

We are friends, so walk next to me hand in hand

Together we make bread and songs

Why do we ask this path which fate we are facing?

Let’s just walk for ever

Why do we look for songs of crying

In an old poetry anthology?

And we ask: our love, are you going to be for ever?

I love you like Bedouin tribes love the oasis of grass and water

Like a hungry man’s love to a loaf of bread

Like grass growing among the joints of a rock

We existed as strangers one day (Darwish, 1996)

In this poem, entitled “The Most Beautiful Love”, Mahmoud Darwish is clearly writing to his beloved about his love to her and their future together. He expresses his anxiety about her concern regarding the future, claiming that lovers should not worry about what is to come. However, the political references are hidden among the lines and metaphors of this poem. The first line of the poem expresses how Palestinians have become strangers in their own land. The metaphor of the grass and rock suggests the abnormal situation Palestinians in Israel live in where one, the rock, is more aggressive and hostile and the other, the grass, is more passive and powerless. The writer shows how the birth of the state of Israel destroyed the Palestinian nation and prevented it from growing. “I slept like an immigrant” (Darwish, 1996) is another simile of the situation in Palestine at the time. Post-1948 Palestinians have not enjoyed full civil rights and lived like immigrants in their own country. After the mass deportation/exodus of Palestinians, Israeli government worked on ethnically cleansing those who remained in their homes. They delayed registering them as citizens of the new state and did not grant them residency permits which eventually led to their deportation. The majority of Palestinians after 1948 did not have such a permit and therefore had to move around their own country like immigrants. In response to this idea of the immigrant, the poet continues his poem with reference to Palestinian and Arabic culture which is deeply rooted in the land, he talks of the “old poetry anthologies” and how the Arabs used to cherish poetry and the craft of language from the pre-Islamic era. He also refers to Bedouin tribes travelling in the desert. Darwish connects love with the suffering and hunger of Palestinians when he refers to his love as a “hungry man’s love to a loaf of bread”.

Adopting resistance was not an easy choice for Mahmoud Darwish given there was a political crisis at the time in Israel which was centred on Arabs and their involvement in Israeli political life. Many Israeli parties considered Palestinians to be a dangerous enemy accusing them of not abiding by Israeli civil laws and trying to avenge what happened in 1948. This political crisis led to the creation of a new Arab party, Jabhat Al Ard (The Land Front), which evolved from the Israeli Communist Party. Al-Ard was born out of the need to defend Palestinian identity. Many Palestinians had joined the ICP after the establishment of the state of Israel due to the party’s non sectarian ideology which Palestinians thought might be key to counter the Jewish Zionist ideology. In 1959 Jabhat Al Ard published its first journal, benefiting from an Israeli law which allowed individuals to publish one journal a year. In the same year, Al-Ard published twelve more journals using different names. The last of which was after Nasser’s victory in the Suez crisis (1956). Al-Ard published details of the Israeli defeat and pictures of the Egyptian leader. This journal shocked Israeli officials who did not expect Al-Ard to find such a loophole in the Israeli law. But Israeli officials arrested Al-Ard’s writers and deported its editors.

During that time, love poetry developed to express Palestinian nationalism in a more metaphorical way. One of the important themes which developed out of the love theme was the motherhood topic and its symbolic reference to home. This celebration of land and referring to it as a mother was a necessity in Palestine in the twenty years following the Nakba; it provided an easier connection between social and national themes. This is demonstrated in one of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem Ila Ommi “To Mother”. This poem, published in the same anthology A Lover from Palestine, is considered to be a core pamphlet in the building of the literature of resistance. This is because of the writer’s ability to connect both the theme of motherhood and nationhood at times when writing about the latter could lead to imprisonment.

I yearn for my mother’s bread

My mother’s coffee,

My mother’s touch

And childhood grows inside me

Day upon breast of day

And I love my life because

If I died

I’d feel ashamed because of my mother’s tears

Take me (mother), if one day I return,

As a veil for your lashes

And cover my bones with grass

Baptised by the purity of your heel

And fasten my bonds

With a lock made of your hair

With a piece of thread that trails in the train of your dress

Maybe I’d become a god

A god I’d become

If I touched the depths of your heart

Put me, if I return,

As fuel in your cooking stove,

As a clothes line on your rooftop

For I have lost resolve

Without your daily prayer

I have grown decrepit: Give me back the stars of childhood

That I may join

The young birds

On the return route

To the nest of your waiting (Darwish, 1996)

Referring to the bread and coffee being emblematic of Palestinian daily culture, it gives a picture of a peasant woman waking up early to prepare bread for her children. Bread is eaten in almost every meal or at least for breakfast and dinner. Therefore, to start a poem talking about mothers with a reference to bread making is to highlight the existence of different people who cherish their own cultural norms, which are different from the new majority in the new Israeli state. Even coffee is more of an Arabic drink than a European one (indeed, the English word ‘coffee’ comes from the Arabic ‘Qahwa’.)

By connecting Palestinians and motherhood, Darwish was able to present Palestinian cultural identity in a way which Israelis would not be able to punish him for. The poem continues into stronger images of both motherhood and “Palestinianism” or “Arabism” when the poet talks about the beauty of the Arabic woman while veiling her face. The image of a woman veiling her face has recently been connected with extremism, however, in the Arabic culture veiling the face is a way of flirting between men and women. When a woman wants to flirt with a man in the Arab world, she often veils her face to show the beauty of her eyes. It is these images of Arabic culture that the poet is focusing on to bypass Israeli rules. “Put me as a cloth line on your roof top” is a powerful image of how children should be obedient to their mothers and tolerate their mistakes. This image brings to Palestinians their Muslim culture when highlighting the same orders of the Quran which stress the importance of obedience to one’s parents.

The more Darwish renewed the call for resistance, the wider his readership grew and spread across the Arab world. His efforts brought the attention to Palestinian suffering which started to become less important and restricted to refugees and the political divisions between Arab countries. It was in these circumstances that the Al-Hadatha# literary school was born in Palestine. Darwish along with other writers such as Emile Habebi (1992-1996) looked for a form of literature that would communicate the national struggle to a wide audience. He found that writing in traditional poetry was too vague and did not deal with the details of the Palestinian catastrophe. Traditional poetry, in the school’s opinion, focused more on the aesthetics of language and the craft of writing poetry, and did not give writers the freedom to express the changes in their new environment.

Al-Hadatha developed more in Palestine as the struggle for civil rights continued after 1948. Its development came as a result of the Israeli government imposing censorship on Arabic publications particularly on those discussing Palestine and the theme of homeland. This was not only done through close watching of publications but also through creating an uneducated Palestinian population by preventing the establishment of any Arabic school. Even in Jewish/Israeli schools the number of Arab students was restricted. Between 1955 and 1965 the number of Arab students in secondary schools was three per cent . There was only one hundred Palestinian students in higher education institutions. In this period, the Israeli government opened a few elementary schools for Palestinian students but the school curriculum was censored and restricted. The Israeli government banned anything that mentioned Palestine or its history. It also banned Islamic studies which present Jerusalem as an important part of Muslim identity – a subject highly relevant to the Zionist case for creating the state of Israel. In order to bring more Jewish immigrants from across the world, “an imagined community” idea was formulated. The Zionist narrative insisted that Jews were the legal heirs to Palestine and that they had were deported from it two thousand years ago by the Romans. It also claimed that Muslims, seen as subsequent invaders of the land, should therefore be thrown out.

In secondary schools, Palestinian students were treated with negligence. Teachers did not check whether they did their homework and reviews on the development of Arab students were not conducted. This is in addition to the fact that Palestinian students were learning in a new foreign language. About ninety per cent# of Palestinian students at the time left their studies before reaching secondary school in order to support their families and because teaching standards were low. Only the remaining ten per cent succeeded in their studies and not all of them could afford to go to University. Those who managed to reach universities were faced with serious harassment by their colleagues and teachers. Even after this very small minority graduated from university, they faced the challenges of finding a job of their interest within a government which considered them as second class citizens. This situation led to a dearth of education in Palestine and therefore a lack of literary production amongst both the intelligentsia and the public: both were more concerned about living than writing.

Darwish and other writers had to devise a form of literature which would be free of the restriction of the traditional way of writing poetry. This new form had to be easy but sophisticated enough to address the issues that the Nakba created. These issues were mainly represented in the loss of identity as Palestinians were no longer recognized as citizens of any country (to this day, most Palestinians are regarded as stateless). Therefore, Palestinian writers used Al-Hadatha to help them revive the literary movement in Palestine which allowed writers to express their views freely without following any particular method. While the literature of resistance laid down the basis of the new school, other themes became influenced by the new writing style allowing Al-Hadatha to be the dominant literary movement in the region.

In 1969 Mahmoud Darwish was the first to announce his joining of the new resistance ideology, rebelling against all Israeli censorship, when he wrote his famous poem “Write Down, I am an Arab”. This poem became a manifesto for the resistance movement for years to follow and has been read widely and sung by many generations in Palestine and the Diaspora. The strength of the poem comes from both celebrating Arabism and showing the pain involved in being an Arab.

Identity Card

I am an Arab

Card No. fifty thousand

Children, eight

The ninth will be born next summer

Are you upset?

I am an Arab

Vocation: cutting stone with comrades

Must cut bread, clothes and books

For the children, you know

I will never stand at your door a beggar

I am an Arab.

Are you angry?

I am nameless

Patient where everything boils with anger

I struck roots here

Before the olive trees and the poplars

A descendent of the plow-pushers

My ancestors, a mere peasant

No family tree

My home, a cottage of reeds

How is that for a man?

I am an Arab

Colour of hair, jet black

Eyes, brown

Distinguishing features:

A kuffia and Iqal on my head

Hands rock hard and scratchy

Favourite food: olive oil and thime

Address: a forgotten harmless village

Where streets have no names

And all men are in the fields and quarries

Is that good enough?

You have stolen my vineyard

And the land I used to till

You haven’t left anything for my children

Except the rocks

And I hear it said

That your government will expropriate

Event the rocks

Well then

I hate nobody

Neither do I steal

But when I am made hungry

Then I will eat the flesh of my oppressor

Beware of my hunger and my anger

This poem comes as a turning point in the development of the Palestinian literature of resistance. It was the first poem to announce a challenge to and a refusal of the political environment that Palestinians had been living under since 1948. The poem talked not only about Arabism as a subject to be proud of, but also ended with a strong political message that encouraged people to resist. “But when I am made hungry, then I will eat the flesh of my oppressor, beware of hunger and anger” is a line which announces that Palestinian patience had run out. The poem was celebrated in Palestine but also across the entire Arab world, mainly for its celebration of Arabism before Palestinianism – a concept cherished by Arab nationalists who stressed on the primacy of pan-Arabism over regional nationalisms. The poem celebrates Arabic culture and puts it forward as being ideal regardless of the hardships Arabs face.

While the poem celebrates Arabic traditions and love of children, it highlights the poor economic situation created by imperialism, mainly Israeli. The poem also comes to assert Arab and Palestinian identity in a state where denial of such identity was dominant. The poet does this by highlighting even the physical characteristics of Arabs/Palestinians, different from those of the European newcomers. He talks about the colour of hair and the colour of eyes, and how identity is imperishable.

You have stolen my vineyard

And the land I used to till

“You haven’t left anything for my children

Except the rocks

And I hear it said

That your government will expropriate

Even the rocks”

This stanza also brings to the surface the main reason behind Palestinian suffering, and thus an explanation of the anger. He is telling the Israeli government that they are making it difficult for Palestinians to live anymore, and that death is their only choice. Therefore, Palestinians have to choose between resisting and trying to change this situation or waiting for their death. This is why the poem ends with a warning: be careful from pushing Palestinians towards death.

The literature of resistance has been the drive of many revolutions in Palestine, the latest of which is the second intifada which broke out in 2000. As well as poetry, the literature of resistance continued to grow in other genres such as novels. With more Diaspora writers, like Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972), the literature of resistance grew and spread across to become a school attended by those have suffered the Nakba and its consequences, and who believe in the right of Palestinians for national independence.

Darwish continued to develop this literature of resistance even when he moved outside of Palestine. His ability to reach all sectors of Palestinian society made him Palestine’s national poet. His poems brought more sympathy towards the Palestinian cause and people through the imagery he provided of the suffering of Palestinians. His works have been translated into several languages including English, French, Spanish and Dutch and he won many international awards. In 2001, he won the Lannan prize for cultural freedom. This prize recognizes people “whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression“. As defined by the foundation, cultural freedom is “the right of individuals and communities to define and protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalisation”. And so, two years after his death, Mahmoud Darwish continues to be a byword for freedom, and an undying symbol of resistance, courage and sacrifice.

Ahmed Masoud is a Palestinian academic and writer. He grew up in Gaza before moving to the U.K to study for an MA and PhD in comparative literature. He is now working as an educational consultant as well as a freelance theatre director. Ahmed has published a number of articles, book chapters and journals in various academic and mainstream publications. He also directed a number of sell-out theatre productions, including the acclaimed Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea which premièred both in London and Edinburgh, and more recently Between the Fleeting Words, a tribute to Mahmoud Darwish. Masoud has also recently been commissioned to write a play for BBC Radio 4 to be broadcast in January 2011.

Notes:

1 The term Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic and it refers to the events of 1948 when 800,000 Palestinian were deported and the state of Israel was declared.

2 Palestinian poetess born in 1917, Tuqan is considered to be the founder of the Palestinian feminist nationalist movement which will be discussed in later chapters.

3 Nearest translation is modernism

4 Statistical Databases http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/databases.htm

Ceasefire Magazine » News

Photo Essay – Kashmir: Bullets for Stones

A protester faces Security Forces after the killing of a youth at Barthana in Srinagar. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

People shouting pro-freedom slogans during the funeral procession of a youth fatally injured in police firing at Chanapore. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

Security Forces firing at the funeral procession of a youth killed by Police personnel at Barthana in Srinagar. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

Protesters pelting stone at a CRPF vehicle after a demonstration against the killing of a youth in Srinagar. KT Photo:Imran Ali

People carry the body of 8-year-old boy killed by CRPF personnel in Srinagar. KT Photo: Imran Ali

Protesters pelting a CRPF vehicle with stones . KT Photo:Imran Ali

Police personnel fire tear-gas at protest against the killing of a youth in Kashmir Valley. KT Photo:Imran Ali

Ralatives of three youths recently killed holding their pictures during a day-long hunger strike by JKLF chairman Mohd Yaseen Malik at Nadihal, in the district of Baramulla. KT Photo:Imran Ali

Angry protesters torch a Police vehicle after the killing of two youths and dozens of injuries by Police in Pampore, on the outskirts of Srinagar City. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

Photo: Ashish sharma

People carry the body of a militant killed during an fire exchange in Doru Sopore where at least 4 houses have been damaged and one militant killed, the confrontation is still ongoing in Sopore (Kashmir). Photo: Ashish Sharma

Photo: Ashish Sharma

Angry protesters torch a Police vehicle after the killing of two youths and dozens of injuries by Police in Pampore, on the outskirts of Srinagar City. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

Photo: Ashish Sharma

People carry the body of Afroza, an 16 year old girl, who was killed by Police fire in Khrew, in the district of Pulwama. KT Photo:Imran Ali

A couple of youths laying in a pool of blood on the road, injured by Police fire during a demonstration against the killing of youths in Kashmir Valley. KT Photo:Sajad Raja

Irfan, a kashmiri stone thrower. Photo: Ashish Sharma

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