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Category: Afghanistan

  • Inside a secret summit of Afghan women’s rights activists – podcast

    Annie Kelly reports from a conference in Albania where Afghan women have spoken publicly about the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on their freedom

    In August, the Taliban published “vice and virtue” laws that banned women’s voices being heard in public. Weeks later, more than 130 women travelled to Tirana in Albania to attend the All Afghan Women summit to talk about the Taliban’s human rights abuses.

    The Guardian reporter Annie Kelly spoke to Afghan women at the conference about how their lives had changed since the Taliban took control.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Taliban jams Afghanistan International broadcasts in Kabul

    New York, September 23, 2024 —The Taliban must stop transmitting disruptive signals to prevent residents in the Afghan capital Kabul watching the popular London-based Afghanistan International on television, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.

    “The Taliban must immediately cease jamming Afghanistan International’s broadcasts, which marks a new low in their shameful campaign to silence an important source of independent news in Afghanistan,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “The Taliban’s decision to use this sophisticated technology is highly alarming, demonstrating the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to prevent the free flow of information and news to the Afghan people.”

    Harun Najafizada, executive editor of Afghanistan International, told CPJ that the television station had been using other satellites to ensure people in Kabul could watch its news after September 5, when the Taliban blocked its usual signal from a ground station in Afghanistan. Any independent media organization committed to providing accurate information faces threats and intimidation from the Taliban, he said.

    Video clips reviewed by CPJ showed black screens and a “no signal” message on the TV station’s usual frequency. Kabul residents told CPJ that the signal was intermittent due to the jamming.

    On September 4, the Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanekzai denounced Afghanistan International as an “enemy” for reporting that aid relief sent to the flooded northern province of Baghlan had been allegedly misused. In May, the Taliban ordered journalists and citizens to boycott Afghanistan International for falsifying information and producing broadcasts that aided the group’s opponents.

    It is the country’s most popular international television channel, also available via social media and cable.

    CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid requesting comment on the broadcast jamming went unanswered.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Even the National Intelligence Director Admits Government Secrecy Is a Problem

    Deception, lies and secrecy — including lies to cover secrecy — characterize authoritarian regimes. However, the politics of lying and official secrecy are no less common in democratic governments. For example, thanks to whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers, the public learned of the truth about the Vietnam War: U.S. military officials were systematically lying to Congress…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Afghan women meet in Albania in ‘act of defiance’ against Taliban crackdown

    Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public

    More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.

    Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Taliban label Afghanistan International an ‘enemy’ for reporting on alleged aid misuse

    New York, September 11, 2024—The Taliban must stop harassing the popular London-based broadcaster Afghanistan International, which they accused of conducting a “propaganda war against us,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

    In his September 4 speech, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanekzai attacked the independent outlet as an “enemy” for reporting that aid relief sent to the flooded northern province of Baghlan had been allegedly misused. This latest criticism follows the Taliban’s ban in May on journalists and experts from cooperating with Afghanistan International and on people providing facilities for broadcasting the channel in public.

    Separately, on September 4, Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice officials met with Afghan media executives in the capital Kabul and gave them verbal orders to replace Persian words — which they described as “Iranian” — with the Pashto equivalent in their reporting.

    Persian, also known as Farsi, is the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan and in neighboring Iran. But the Taliban mainly speak Pashto and they have removed Persian words from signboards for public institutions and spoken out against the teaching of Persian in universities since their return to power in 2021.

    The officials also ordered the journalists to respect Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.

    “The Taliban must immediately halt their campaign of intimidation against Afghanistan International and lift their restrictions on Persian-language reporting,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The Taliban’s recent vice and virtue law has already emboldened their notorious morality police to further restrict the media, threatening to annihilate press freedom gains made during the two previous decades of democratic rule in Afghanistan.”

    CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid requesting comment went unanswered.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Militarism Is a Leading Cause of the Climate Catastrophe

    This week marks 23 years since George W. Bush declared a U.S.-led “war on terror” and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are still suffering its consequences. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, an estimated half a million Iraqis were killed and at least 9.2 million were displaced. From 2003-2011, more than 4.7 million Iraqis suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. Over 243,000…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Observer view on Afghanistan: Britain and the US are complicit in the Taliban’s oppression of women

    Despite the regime withdrawing even the most basic human rights of women and girls, liberal democracies have failed to take action

    ‘So pervasive is the Taliban’s institutionalised gender oppression, and so slender are the spaces in which women and girls may live freely, that in Afghanistan today almost any act can be characterised as an act of resistance.”

    That conclusion from Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, encapsulates how unbearably suffocating it is to be female in Afghanistan today: excluded from education and from running a business; forbidden from going outside for a walk or to exercise, to speak or show any part of their face or body outside the home; or even for their voices to be heard singing or reading from within their own home. There is no other country where women and girls are so oppressed on the basis of their sex.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Gender equality stalling or going backwards for 1bn women and girls

    ‘Dismal’ lack of progress leaves women and girls facing litany of abuses – with no country on track to achieve equality

    More than 850 million women and girls are living in countries rated as “very poor” for gender equality, says a new report, subjecting them to a litany of potential restrictions and abuses, including forced pregnancies, childhood marriage and bans from secondary education.

    The SDG Gender Index, published today by a coalition of NGOs, found that no country has, so far, achieved the promise of gender equality envisioned by the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

    Between 2019 and 2022, nearly 40% of countries – home to more than 1 billion women and girls – stagnated or declined on gender equality.

    Continue reading…

  • Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help? | Shadi Khan Saif

    This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’

    In the final days of the Afghan republic – in defiance of a looming takeover by the Taliban – the Hazara journalist Mani sang revolutionary poems in public in Kabul about women, freedom and justice. Now she is on the run, waiting for the Australian government to grant her a humanitarian visa.

    It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘She has won our hearts and minds’: can one woman unite the Baloch people in peaceful resistance?

    With more than 70 people reportedly killed by rebels this week, Dr Mahrang Baloch’s effective and non-violent protests against Pakistan’s government are rapidly gaining support

    On the morning of 26 August, about three dozen armed men intercepted traffic at Musakhel in Pakistan, a district on the border between Balochistan and Punjab. Identifying and off-loading 23 men from the Punjab province from different vehicles, they shot them dead. They also set 35 vehicles ablaze.

    The Balochistan Liberation Army, the most active militant group in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the second of its kind this year. In April, nine passengers were forced out of a bus near Noshki, a city in Balochistan, and shot dead after the assailants checked their ID cards.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Women in Afghanistan are singing in protest


    This content originally appeared on Amnesty International and was authored by Amnesty International.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Gender Apartheid”: Taliban Approves Law in Afghanistan Requiring Women Remain Silent in Public


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Gender Apartheid”: Taliban Approves Law in Afghanistan Requiring Women Remain Silent in Public

    Seg3 afghan women public

    The Taliban government in Afghanistan is drawing renewed outrage over a new law banning women’s voices in public, forcing them to completely cover their bodies and faces out of the home, and more. This comes after the Taliban banned women from working in most fields and ended girls’ education past primary school following their takeover of the country in 2021. We speak with Sima Samar, an Afghan human rights advocate and doctor who chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission from 2002 until 2019; she also briefly served as minister of women’s affairs in the interim Afghan government in 2002, after a U.S.-led coalition toppled the first Taliban government for its support of al-Qaeda. “You cannot see such a law in any other regime on this planet,” she says. “This is a crime against humanity. It is gender apartheid.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Taliban Silence Women’s Voices in Afghanistan


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

    New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN

    New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

    The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Iran: Key to World Peace

    From what is read and what is said, Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East. One problem with the accepted scenario is that the facts do not coincide with the assumptions.

    Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence and military services, the Islamic Republic has not harmed anybody in the Western nations. In the last 200 years, Iran has fought only one war ─ a defensive battle against aggressor Iraq. It has assisted friendly nations in their conflicts with other nations, similar to United States actions, but on a smaller scale. The demise of Ayatollah Khomeini established a refreshed Islamic Republic that promoted cordial relations with nations who were willing to return the cordiality. Iran has not sought hegemony, economic advantage, or extension of its influence to others than those who desire the influence.

    Do a somersault and find the real Iran. The real Iran has tried to cooperate with the United States and other nations and bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

    This does not excuse Iran’s semi-autocratic regime and human rights violations, no more than they can be excused in nations with whom the United States has friendly relations — Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico, Tajikistan, and others. For American diplomats, the concept of “cannot excuse” is an excuse for not engaging in diplomacy and resolving problems with Iran. The results have been disasters — harm to American society, harm to the American people, and an unending voyage to calamities.

    Designating Iran as the greatest menace to peace assumes there is peace in the Middle East. Is there peace and has there been peace since the words Middle East entered the lexicon? The conflagrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria would have existed without the presence of the Islamic Republic; the former two wars occurred due to United States’ invasions in those nations. Is the Islamic Republic responsible for Israel’s continuous wars with its neighbors and for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Emirates battles with their own citizens and quarrels they had with Yemen and Gaddafi’s Libya. The Islamic Republic and its well-educated and alert citizens have not initiated a war against another nation and their restraint holds the key to Middle East peace. The United States refusal to allow the key to unlock the cages that maintain the doves of peace is one of the great tragedies of the century. This was shown in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Unlike America, Iran had special connections and interests in Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing the war in Afghanistan, solicited help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organized the resistance by the Northern Alliance and provided the Alliance arms and funding, which helped topple the Taliban regime.  In an interview with Iranian Press Service (IPS), Flynt Leverett, senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), said, “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States.”

    Because the Northern Alliance played a significant role in driving the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they demanded 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government and blocked agreement with other opposition groups. According to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, Iran played a “decisive role” in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands.

    Dobbins, J. (2009). “Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience,” The Washington Quarterly, 33(1), 149–162.

    The Northern Alliance delegate, Younis Qanooni, on instructions from Kabul, was insisting that his faction not only retain the three most important ministries—defense, foreign affairs, and interior—but also hold three-fourths of the total. These demands were unacceptable to the other three Afghan factions represented in Bonn. Unless the Northern Alliance demand could be significantly reduced, there was no way the resultant government could be portrayed as broadly based and representative.

    Finally Iranian representative, Javad Zarif, stood up, and signaled Qanooni to join him in the corner of the room. They spoke in whispers for no more than a minute. Qanooni then returned to the table and offered to give up two ministries. He also agreed to create three new ones that could be awarded to other factions. We had a deal. For the following six months, Afghanistan would be governed by an interim administration composed of 29 department heads plus a chairman. Sixteen of these posts would go to the Northern Alliance, just slightly more than half.

    Dobbins worked with Iranian negotiators in Bonn and related that at a donors conference in Tokyo, in January, 2002, Iran pledged $540 million in assistance to Afghanistan.

    Dobbins writes:

    Emerging from a larger gathering in Tokyo, one of the Iranian representatives took me aside to reaffirm his government’s desire to continue to cooperate on Afghanistan. I agreed that this would be desirable, but warned that Iranian behavior in other areas represented an obstacle to cooperation. Furthermore, I cautioned him by saying that my brief only extends to Afghanistan. He replied by saying, “We know that. We would like to work on these other issues with the appropriate people in your government.”

    On returning to Washington, O’Neill and I reported these conversations, to then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and cabinet level colleagues, and to the Middle Eastern Bureau at the Department of State (DOS). No one evinced any interest. The Iranians received no private reply. Instead, they received a very public answer. One week later, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush named Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, an “axis of evil.” How arch-enemies Iran and Iraq could form any axis, evil or otherwise, was never explained.

    How would the Afghanistan fiasco have played out if the American governments cooperated with the Iranian governments? No analysis can supply a definite and credible answer; clues are available.

    The result of 20 years of U.S. occupation and battle in Afghanistan resulted in nearly 111,000 civilians killed or injured, more than 64,100 national military and police killed, about 2500 American soldiers killed and 20,660 injured in action, and $1 trillion spent by the U.S. in all phases of a conflict that ended with the Taliban return to power. The only accomplishment of the twenty years of strife had Osama bin Laden leave the isolated, uncomfortable, and rugged mountain caves in Tora Bora for a comfortable and well-equipped walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a gift from Pakistan intelligence. Note that the al-Qaeda leader did not flee to U.S. adversary, Iran; he joined his family in U.S. friendly, Pakistan. The 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was a catastrophe and anything is better than a catastrophe.

    More than any other nation Iran had justifiable reasons for wanting a stable, friendly, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

    • Iran had previous problems with the Taliban and did not want to repeat them.
    • Terrorists enter Iran from Afghanistan and cause havoc to the Islamic Republic.
    • Iran and the Afghan government created a free trading zone on their border and Iran wanted to continue to continue to exploit the arrangement.
    • In 2017, Iran surpassed Pakistan as Afghanistan’s top trade partner and, in 2019, Iranian exports reached $1.24 billion.
    • Iran had funded construction of the 90-mile (140 kilometer) line from Khaf in northeastern Iran to Ghoryan in western Afghanistan.
    • Iran and Afghanistan had several mutual problems that needed, and still need, close contact to resolve. Among them are water distribution, poppy production in Afghanistan, export of opium to Iran, and refugee flow to Iran. “Between 1979 and 2014, Iran claims to have lost some 4,000 security forces fighting heavily armed drug traffickers along its eastern border. In 2019, Iran seized more heroin and illicit morphine than any other country, according to U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.”
    • Iran shared ethnic, linguistic and religious links with millions of Afghan Shi’a and was interested in their protection.

    More than any other nation, Iran had assets to assist in achieving a stable, friendly, peaceful, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

    • Iran was a large source of foreign direct investment, and provided millions of dollars for Afghanistan’s western provinces to build roads, electrical grids, schools, and health clinics.
    • Afghanistan found Iran could assist Afghanistan in trade. “On April 2016, Iran, Afghanistan and India signed an agreement to develop the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran as a trading hub for all three nations.  Afghan goods would be transported to the Iranian port by rail, and then be shipped to India by sea. The first phase of the port was inaugurated in 2017.”
    • Iran had knowledge of Taliban personnel, arrangements, and activities. It had contacts and informants who could provide intelligence.
    • Not sure if they would acquiesce, but the Iranians could accommodate bases from which to attack the Taliban and to which fighters could retreat.

    The U.S. State Department learned nothing from its disjointed and catastrophic actions in Afghanistan. It repeated the same worthless and aggressive policy in its invasion of Iraq.

    After supporting Iraq against Iran in the 1980s Iraq-Iran war, the U.S. declared war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and performed a first in the history of foreign policy ─ helping a nation that wars against a nation that is not doing any harm to you, and then attacking the nation that it helped do the harm to the nation that was not harming you. The U.S. continued with sanctions against the nation it previously supported, Iraq, and then, in 2003, engaged it in another war, finally ending up with the nation it initially wanted to contain, Iran, essentially winning the war without firing another shot, and gaining influence in Iraq; another example of a U.S. policy toward Iran that backfired. Foreign policy at its finest.

    While stumbling and fumbling its way into destroying Iraq, the U.S. managed to have al-Qaeda (remember them, the guys that America invaded Afghanistan to defeat) reconstitute itself in Iraq. This renewed al-Qaeda, “organized a wave of attacks, often suicide bombings, that targeted security forces, government institutions, and Iraqi civilians.” The American military was forced to use Iraq’s notorious militias, known as “Awakening Councils,” to expel the al-Qaeda organization; a short-lived victory that led to the formation of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).

    A statement by the ever-unaware President Trump, in a January 8, 2020 speech, argued the US had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remained defeated. The US spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and personal assistance from Major General Qasem Soleimani, was able to retake Tikrit and Ramadi, push ISIS out of Fallujah, and eventually play a leading role in ISIS’ defeat in Mosul. The U.S. honored Soleimani’s efforts by assassinating him ─ one of the most vicious crimes in history ─ and commended Iran by continually sanctioning it. No good deed goes unpunished.

    As in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic assisted in the re-building of Iraq. As far back as 2012, The Guardian reported that “Iran is one of Iraq’s most important regional economic partners, with an annual trade volume between the two sides standing at $8bn to $10b.” The U.S. confused competitive advantage with diabolical meddling and regarded Iran as a troubling factor in the Fertile Crescent, even though the inhabitants of Mesopotamia considered the United States as the troublemaker in the region. Iran had leverage in Iraq that could not be ignored nor easily combated.

    Why is the Islamic Republic, sanctioned, vilified, and isolated? One clue is that almost all references to Iran in the U.S. media succeed with the phrase, “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The phrase is stuck onto the word Iran as if by Velcro and all the words are one word. How does this coincidental commonality occur?

    It occurs because the Zionist press distributes most reports on Iran to the American media. Israel has used U.S. support to subdue Israel’s adversaries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq —and  has turned its national army to coerce Iran, the last man standing, into battle. It has turned its worldwide army of thought controllers to vilify Iran and entice Western powers to remove the Islamic member of the “axis of evil” from the map. Blind the world to reality.

    Substitute the nation Israel for the nation Iran in each of the salient accusations made against Iran and the accusations become correct. Nowhere do the facts and historical narrative demonstrate that Iran has disrupted peace and stability by any of the combining factors. Israel is present in all the factors. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” Doesn’t Donald Trump, in his support for apartheid Israel, know that he verified his statement? Bet on the wrong horse and you are sure to lose.

    The following table summarizes the factors and clarifies the issues.

    Iran ─ Key to World Peace

    Analysis shows that Iran has not displayed characteristics of a “major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East.” The only directives against Iran are sanctions and some human rights violations. The former are engineered by the U.S., Israel and their allies, have proved ineffective, not accomplished their intentions and greatly harmed the Iranian people. The latter need attention and can be addressed to almost any country on the planet, including the U.S. in its treatment of its African American citizens.

    Israel displays all the characteristics falsely attributed to Iran plus being recipient of tens of Resolutions and decisions by International agencies that accuse Israel and its leaders of aspects of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, illegal occupation, and crimes against humanity. In the 21st century, in Resolutions by the UN that condemn nations, Israel is mentioned more times than all others combined, an enviable record.

    Incorrect U.S. policies have led to continuous warfare in the Middle East, the unnecessary sacrifice of U.S. lives, economic disturbances, and waste of taxpayer money. When something is wrong, the normal practice is to make it right. Why does the United States maintain an aggressive attitude toward Iran and a permissive attitude to Israel? The answer is that the U.S. is controlled by traitors to American principles and to the American people. This cannot continue until its final denouement ─ settled by Armageddon.

    Only Iran has been willing to challenge Israel and halt its destructive path. Iran cannot do it alone. By supporting Israel, the Western powers have turned their backs on their own people. It is radical and will be greeted with gasps, but it is time to turn the other way and support Iran in its endeavors. Stopping war is mandatory and preliminary to achieving peace. If fortifying Iran stymies Israel’s aggression and stops the wars, then peace can be achieved. Iran is the key to world peace.

    In the cauldron of corruption and autocracies, which pits Sunni against Shi’a, Gulf states and Saudi Arabia against Iran, religious extremists against moderates and Israel against all, the United States makes its choice of allies. Whom does Washington support – those who are the most repressive, most corrupt, most militaristic, most prone to cause Middle East instability, and to add to the obvious State Department confusion, Israel, the principal instigator of Al Qaeda terrorism, and Saudi Arabia, the principal supplier of al-Qaeda terrorists. A new perspective of Iran yields a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel would finally receive attention as the major participant in bringing chaos to the region.

    Discouraging to note that policies that determine war or peace proceed from agendas and not from facts and obligations. Maybe, when the makers and shakers realize their warlike polices will one day result in the eventual nuclear catastrophe, they will have an awakening and comprehend that the quotation, attributed to Plato, “Only the dead know the end of war,” is given more meaning by adding, “after you’re dead, it’s too late to stop the war.”

    The post Iran: Key to World Peace first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Hundreds of cases of femicide recorded in Afghanistan since Taliban takeover are ‘tip of the iceberg’

    Analysis on third anniversary of seizure of power finds regime officials implicated in more than half of reported incidents of gender-based violence

    The 300-plus reported cases of Afghan women being killed by men since the Taliban seized power are just “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the true scale of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, according to new data analysis.

    Open-source investigators at the Centre of Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project combed through social media and news sites to record 332 reported cases of femicide since the Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Here’s what’s happened in Afghanistan during three years of Taliban rule since Aug 15, 2021


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Taliban suspends broadcast licenses of 14 media outlets in Afghanistan

    New York, August 6, 2024—The Afghan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) suspended 17 broadcast licenses for 14 media outlets on July 22 in eastern Nangarhar, one of Afghanistan’s most populous provinces.

    “Taliban officials must immediately reverse their decision to suspend the broadcast licenses of 14 active media outlets in Nangarhar province that collectively reach millions of people,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “The Taliban continues to exert pressure on media outlets to control their programming and broadcasting operations in Afghanistan. They must cease these tactics and allow the independent media to operate freely.”

    The order also stipulated that the outlets must renew their licenses and pay any outstanding fees or risk having all the outlet’s licenses revoked, according to CPJ’s review of the order, the exiled Afghanistan Journalists Center watchdog group, and a journalist who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity. 

    ATRA is a regulatory body that operates as part of the Taliban’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

    Outlets with suspended radio and TV licenses: 

    Radio networks affected: 

    CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid for comment did not receive a reply.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘The Taliban tried to silence us’: the musicians who escaped to Portugal

    With music now a crime in Afghanistan, Braga has become one of the few places where the practice is being preserved

    A stone’s throw from Portugal’s oldest cathedral and buzzing bakeries serving up pastéis de nata, the complex notes of a sitar fill the ground floor of an unassuming building in the northern city of Braga.

    The soft strumming belies the radical nature of the mission that has taken root here: to preserve Afghan music and use it as a tool to counter those who want to eradicate it.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Sara Nabil, a human rights defender, from Afghanistan

    Sara Nabil is a human rights defender and artist from Afghanistan. She spoke to ISHR about her dream of one day seeing a ‘free democratic Afghanistan, where each human being [regardless of which] gender they are, man or woman, neutral or other genders, [would be] treated equally.’

    Stand in solidarity with Sara and other women human rights defenders from Afghanistan: join us in our campaign to push for UN experts and States to explicitly and publicly recognise the situation in Afghanistan as a form of gender apartheid and the need for an accountability mechanism to address gross human rights violations against women.

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Plea deal ends personal ordeal for Julian Assange, but still media freedom concerns, says MEAA

    Pacific Media Watch

    The reported plea bargain between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the United States government brings to a close one of the darkest periods in the history of media freedom, says the union for Australian journalists.

    While the details of the deal are still to be confirmed, MEAA welcomed the release of Assange, a Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance member, after five years of relentless campaigning by journalists, unions, and press freedom advocates around the world.

    MEAA remains concerned what the deal will mean for media freedom around the world.

    The work of WikiLeaks at the centre of this case — which exposed war crimes and other wrongdoing by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan — was strong, public interest journalism.

    MEAA fears the deal will embolden the US and other governments around the world to continue to pursue and prosecute journalists who disclose to the public information they would rather keep suppressed.

    MEAA media federal president Karen Percy welcomed the news that Julian Assange has already been released from Belmarsh Prison, where he has been held as his case has wound its way through UK courts.

    “We wish Julian all the best as he is reunited with his wife, young sons and other relatives who have fought tirelessly for his freedom,” she said.

    ‘Relentless battle against this injustice’
    “We commend Julian for his courage over this long period, and his legal team and supporters for their relentless battle against this injustice.

    “We’ve been extremely concerned about the impact on his physical and mental wellbeing during Julian’s long period of imprisonment and respect the decision to bring an end to the ordeal for all involved.

    “The deal reported today does not in any way mean that the struggle for media freedom has been futile; quite the opposite, it places governments on notice that a global movement will be mobilised whenever they blatantly threaten journalism in a similar way.

    Percy said the espionage charges laid against Assange were a “grotesque overreach by the US government” and an attack on journalism and media freedom.

    “The pursuit of Julian Assange has set a dangerous precedent that will have a potential chilling effect on investigative journalism,” she said.

    “The stories published by WikiLeaks and other outlets more than a decade ago were clearly in the public interest. The charges by the US sought to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and send a clear message to future whistleblowers and publishers that they too will be punished.”

    Percy said was clearly in the public interest and it had “always been an outrage” that the US government sought to prosecute him for espionage for reporting that was published in collaboration with some of the world’s leading media organisations.

    Julian Assange has been an MEAA member since 2007 and in 2011 WikiLeaks won the Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Walkley award, one of Australia’s most coveted journalism awards.

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange boarding his flight
    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange boarding his flight at Stansted airport on the first stage of his journey to Guam. Image: WikiLeaks

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Does Israel really want to open a two-front war by attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon?

    ANALYSIS: By Ian Parmeter, Australian National University

    Among the many sayings attributed to Winston Churchill is, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

    This sentiment seems appropriate as Israel potentially appears ready to embark on a war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

    Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this week a decision on an all-out war against Hezbollah was “coming soon” and that senior commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had signed off on a plan for the operation.

    This threat comes despite the fact Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is far from over. Israel has still not achieved the two primary objectives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put forth at the start of the conflict:

    • the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing entity in Gaza
    • the freeing of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas (about 80 believed to still be alive, along with the remains of about 40 believed to be dead).

    Why Hezbollah is attacking Israel now
    Israel has cogent reasons for wanting to eliminate the threat from Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been launching Iranian-supplied missiles, rockets and drones across the border into northern Israel since the Gaza war began on October 8.

    Its stated purpose is to support Hamas by distracting the IDF from its Gaza operation.

    Hezbollah’s attacks have been relatively circumscribed – confined so far to northern Israel. But they have led to the displacement of some 60,000 residents from the border area. These people are understandably fed up and demanding Netanyahu’s government takes action to force Hezbollah to withdraw from the border.

    This anger has been augmented this week by Hezbollah publicising video footage of military and civilian sites in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, which had been taken by a low-flying surveillance drone.

    The implication: Hezbollah was scoping the region for new targets. Haifa, a city of nearly 300,000, has not yet been subject to Hezbollah attacks.

    The most far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called for Israel to invade southern Lebanon. Even without this pressure, Netanyahu has ample reason to want to neutralise the Hezbollah threat because residents of northern Israel are strong supporters of his Likud party.

    US and Iranian interests in a broader conflict
    The United States is obviously concerned about the risk Israel will open a second front in its conflicts. As such, President Joe Biden has sent an envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon to try to reduce tensions on both sides.

    In Lebanon, he cannot publicly deal directly with the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, because the group is on the US list of global terrorist organisations. Instead, he met the long-serving speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who as a fellow Shia is able to talk with Nasrallah.

    But Hezbollah answers to Iran — its main backer in the region. And it’s doubtful if any Lebanese leader can persuade it to desist from action approved by Iran.

    Iran’s interests in the potential for an Israel-Hezbollah war at this time are mixed. It would obviously be glad to see Israel under military pressure on two fronts. But Iranian leaders see Hezbollah as insurance against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

    Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could reach deep into Israel. So far, Iran seems to want Hezbollah to hold back from a major escalation with Israel, which could deplete most of that arsenal.

    That said, although Israel’s Iron Dome defensive shield has been remarkably successful in neutralising the rocket threat from Gaza, it might not be as effective against a large-scale barrage of more sophisticated missiles.

    Israel needed help from the US, Britain, France and Jordan in countering a direct attack from Iran in April that involved some 150 missiles and 170 drones.


    Israel and Hezbollah conflict: escalating cross-border tensions. Video: ABC News

    Lessons from previous Israeli interventions in Lebanon
    The other factor – especially for wiser heads mindful of history – is the country’s previous interventions in Lebanon have been far from cost-free.

    Israel’s problems with Lebanon started when the late King Hussein of Jordan forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat, to relocate to Lebanon in 1970. He did that because the PLO had been using Jordan as a base for operations against Israel after the 1967 war, provoking Israeli retaliation.

    From the early 1970s, the PLO formed a state within a state in Lebanon. It largely acted independently from the perennially weak Lebanese government, which was divided on sectarian grounds, and in 1975, collapsed into a prolonged civil war.

    The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, leading Israel to launch a limited invasion of its northern neighbour in 1978, driving Palestinian militia groups north of the Litani River.

    That invasion was only partially successful. Militants soon moved back towards the border and renewed their attacks on northern Israel. In 1982, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to remove the PLO entirely from Lebanon, launching a major invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut. This eventually forced the PLO leadership and the bulk of its fighters to relocate to Tunisia.

    Despite this success, the two Israeli invasions had the unintended consequence of radicalising the until-then quiescent Shia population of southern Lebanon.

    That enabled Iran, in its early post-revolutionary phase under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to work with Shia clerics in Lebanon to establish Hezbollah (Party of God in Arabic), which became a greater threat to Israel than the PLO had ever been.

    Bolstered by Iranian support, Hezbollah has become stronger over the years, becoming a force in Lebanese politics and regularly firing missiles into Israel.

    In 2006, Hezbollah was able to block an IDF advance into southern Lebanon aimed at rescuing two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured. The outcome was essentially a draw, and the two soldiers remained in captivity until their bodies were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in 2008.

    Many Arab observers at the time judged that by surviving an asymmetrical conflict, Hezbollah had emerged with a political and military victory.

    For a while during and after that conflict, Nasrallah was one of the most popular regional leaders, despite the fact he was loathed by rulers of conservative Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.

    Will history repeat itself?
    This is the background to discussions in Israel about launching a war against Hezbollah. And it demonstrates how the quote from Churchill is relevant.

    Most military experts would caution against choosing to fight a war on two fronts. Former US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 when the war in Afghanistan had not concluded. The outcome was hugely costly for the US military and disastrous for both countries.

    The 19th century American writer Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Will Israel’s leaders listen to the echoes of the past?The Conversation

    Dr Ian Parmeter, research scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Call for Alarm

    The unique post-World War II economic and military power of the United States prevented military and foreign policy errors from becoming overpowering disasters. Military adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq upended America’s political system and wounded its psyche. Other than the 2001 attacks on American soil, physical destruction was foreign, appearing as images on television screens. Oil price rises, inflation, increasing debt to finance military costs, and social upheavals temporarily perturbed the US socioeconomic system. A powerful America overcame the impediments and continually extended its power until the Asian Tigers, a rejuvenated China, and progressive Latin leaders appeared on the global stage. America’s hegemony declined and the decline became confirmed by the Russian/Ukraine conflagration, Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and a subsequent attack on protesting students at the UCLA campus. No nation with unique power and in control of that power would have permitted these horrific happenings.

    The US is sliding into a mediocre existence. Heard that before? Hear it again. Four words describe those who have brought the United States to a sorrowful state ─ treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitor ─ harsh words that will be met with smiles, sneers, and derisions. They are correct words and backed by a long list of treacherous, treasonous, tyrannical, and traitorous actors in the American public. The description of the “tyranny in America” is not a repetitious overkill; it is a necessary refrain that punctuates the alarm ─ America is led by pseudo patriots who have betrayed its ideals and Americans must regain its inspiring freedom, liberty-loving, and peaceful aspirations.

    Domestic treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors

    Running for president of the USA are two traitors ─ Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

    Donald Trump is accused of provoking and aiding the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol and pursuing an insurrection against the US government. Treason.

    Donald Trump is accused of keeping US government top secrets in his home in locations where they could be revealed to others. He is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.

    Donald Trump solicits Evangelical vote and financial assistance by supporting Israel, a foreign nation, in its genocide of the Palestinian people. Treachery.

    Joe Biden said, “Because even where we have some differences, my commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad. I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world who’s secure. I think Israel is essential.” Besides the nonsensical statement that condemns Biden for not knowing that Israel is the only country in the world where Jews have continually suffered from fatal attacks, claim insecurity that seeks security, and exhibit excessive prejudice toward one another — Ashkenazi against Mizrahi, both against Yemeni and Falasha, and secular against ultra-orthodox — Biden admits he has failed to protect the most well-off Americans ─ Jewish citizens (from what??). Treachery.

    By having said, “My commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad,” Joe Biden betrayed US interests, which should have a flexible foreign policy. He has allied the US people with genocide. Traitor.

    Hunter Biden had financial dealings with adversaries of the US government. Joe Biden should have known his son’s arrangements and prevented accusations of influence peddling. Joe Biden is guilty of violating his oath of office. Treachery.
    Biden, similar to Trump, brought classified documents to his home and left them scattered in places open to revelation. Despite the Justice Department not pressing charges, Biden is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.

    The US Justice Department (DOJ) indicted several Russians and Chinese who infiltrated America, gathered information, and lobbied for a foreign nation. The US Justice Department has not indicted one of tens of thousands of Israelis (could be one of hundreds of thousands), who have performed similar duties for Israel. Lobbying is only a small part of the damage to Americans done by these miscreant infiltrators, sent by Israel to foreign shores to do their mischief. From the almost one million Israelis living in the United States, hundreds of thousands may have become citizens, voted, and changed a highly contested election. In a coming election in Westchester, New York, Westchester Unites urged Jewish voters in the district  (not non-Jewish voters??) to request ballots so they could vote before the June 25 Democratic primary battle between New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who criticizes Israel, and challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, an avid supporter of apartheid Israel’s genocide. Campaign organizers say they will spend up to $1 million to boost voter turnout.

    I’m not privy to the manipulations of the American public performed by the mass of Israeli infiltrators. One example is the declarations by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. His contrived Amplify Israel Initiative “aims to breathe new life into the principles we’ve been committed to for decades, with an array of programs aimed at bolstering support for Israel and aligning Zionism with liberal ideology.” In clearer words, “influence every man, woman, and child that nationalist, militarist, oppressive, and apartheid Israel is a benevolent country.”

    Who is Rabbi Hirsch? Ammiel Hirsch went to high school in Israel, served as a tank commander in the IDF, and was formerly the director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, the Israeli arm of the North American Reform movement. In a response to a letter, in which 93 rabbinical and cantorial students harshly criticized Israeli actions in the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Rabbi Hirsch wrote:

    For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement — the synagogue arm (Union for Reform Judaism), the rabbinic union (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and our seminary (HUC-JIR) — every organization separately, and all together, are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel.

    Why did Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, after receiving training in Israel, come to the United States to guide the Reform movement, which, in previous decades, had been against Zionism, and define it in Israel’s image? By not investigating the actions of multitudes of Israelis residing, the US Justice Department betrays the US people.

    In an espionage scandal involving Lawrence Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, who passed classified documents to AIPAC officials, which disclosed secret United States policy towards Iran, Franklin pleaded guilty and, in January 2006, was sentenced to nearly 13 years of prison. He served ten months of house arrest. The DOJ dropped espionage charges against the AIPAC officials — Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Reason (which was treason) — the Department claimed court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information (which can apply to almost every trial for treason). Despite the previous espionage charges and knowledge that un-American AIPAC is a lobby for apartheid Israel, the DOJ has not indicted AIPAC for being an unregistered lobby and has permitted its cadre of Israel firsters to wander the halls of Congress and shake palms with dollar bills. Traitors.

    US representatives know that AIPAC lobbies for an apartheid Israel that is committing genocide and drags US citizens into accusations of aiding the genocide. Politicians accept contributions from individuals allied with AIPAC and vote in accordance with AIPAC’s preferences. The power of the contributions and fear that disregarding AIPAC poses a danger to remaining in office was highlighted in 1984. For voting to permit Boeing to sell AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia and for suggesting there were Palestinians and they had “rights,” AIPAC marked as undesirable the popular Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Charles Percy, who had always favored Israel. Paul Simon wrote in his autobiography that Bob Asher, an AIPAC board member, called him to run for Senator from Illinois. Simon unseated the admired and respected Charles Percy who was only 98% pure in his support for Israel. Treachery.

    The US government and local governments favor laws, such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which can suppress free speech and free actions that contend Israel’s genocidal policies, and H.R. 3016, Anti-Boycott Act, which “bars U.S. citizens from participating in boycotts of U.S. allies if those boycotts are promoted or imposed by foreign countries.” Federal and local governments tyrannize the US people. Tyranny.

    The Los Angeles (LA) Police Department stood by for hours before halting attacks on peaceful UCLA students and then arrested dozens of student protesters and not any of the vigilantes who represented a foreign power and attacked the students. The LA Police Department supported a group representing a foreign government and failed to protect American citizens. Treason.

    The House of Representatives has had numerous one-sided hearings on campus anti-Semitism that feature callous remarks against Jews from relatively few of the protestors. In none of the hearings has a Committee invited the student protestors to testify; maybe, because they might say, “These students do not represent the protestors. They are angry and frustrated individuals who see Israel identify itself as a Jewish state and note that a great number of American Jews approve of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinian people. They realistically equate Jews with the genocide.” The truth of these hearings is they are more concerned with fictional Jewish feelings than factual Palestinian lives. Let’s face it, these hearings are organized by Israel’s advocates who seek to prevent the US public from gaining awareness of the genocide and shift the protest arguments to a spurious charge of anti-Semitism in America. Elected officials adhere to a foreign nation’s request to stifle American citizens from exercising their right to protest and move dialogue from the horrific victimization of Gazans to an artificially created Jewish victimhood. College presidents committed a huge error by not responding to the committees’ fabricated charges of campus anti-Semitism with a simple statement, “There is no campus anti-Semitism and you are attempting to divert the impact of these demonstrations that criticize Israel policies into a false charge that indirectly enhances Israel’s image.” By representing a foreign power and censoring American students from their right to protest, these elected officials are guilty. Treason.

    Foreign policies exhibit the same treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors.

    North Vietnam
    President Lyndon Johnson’s reciting a dubious attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the USS Maddox in international waters cajoled Americans into accepting an increased US military involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. Global strategists also mentioned the Domino Theory, where if one country falls to communism, then adjacent nations also become communist. A non-functioning Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO) tied these fabrications into a call for action. Result was 58,148 uniformed Americans killed, 200,000 wounded, and 75,000 severely wounded. Ho Chi Minh’s followers won the war and none of the neighboring SEATO nations became communist. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the leading prophet of the Domino Theory, confessed, “I think we were wrong. I do not believe that Vietnam was that important to the communists. I don’t believe that its loss would have led – it didn’t lead – to Communist control of Asia.” Treachery.

    Six-day war
    During the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors, Israeli torpedo boats and airplanes attacked the intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killed 34, and wounded 171 American service personnel. President Johnson refused to respond to this assault, an insult to all Americans. Treason.

    Yom Kippur war
    In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, President Nixon’s administration supplied arms to Israel and reversed the course of the war. Arab nations responded with an oil embargo that caused huge inflation in the United States, punished the American consumer, and harmed the American economy. Treachery.

    Afghanistan-1980s
    President Ronald Reagan’s CIA covertly assisted Pakistan intelligence in providing financial and military assistance to Osama bin Laden during the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan. In effect, the US played an essential role in creating the al-Qaeda network. Treason.

    International Terrorism and 911
    After Ronald Reagan helped create and popularize Osama bin Laden, later presidents did not heed Osama bin Laden’s warnings. The arch-terrorist clarified his position in the infamous  Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the American people,” which has been conveniently sidetracked to ensure Americans do not get infected with terrorism germs. It should be titled, “How the United States made me a terrorist.” It is difficult to agree with bin Laden but his statements are not easily contended.

    You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern.

    Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

    You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.

    William J. Clinton was president during the period that Bin Laden raged his fury at the United States. If Bill Clinton had considered some of bin Laden’s grievances his considerations might have prevented the later 9/11 attack on American soil. Treason.

    George W. Bush and American security officials permitted 19 co-conspirators to enter the country and take preparatory flying lessons in full view of authorities. His DOJ did not pursue information that connected the Saudi royal family with the bombers. Treason.

    Afghanistan-2001
    Without exhausting all means to have Osama bin Laden extradited from Afghanistan and knowing that the Taliban was not directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in a military adventure that had no defined purpose and accomplished nothing. In a war that lasted 20 years, the United States had 2,459 military deaths and 20,769 American service members wounded in action. Twenty years of a useless war that only brought the Taliban back to power. Treachery.

    Iraq
    George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is the best example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests. The cited reason ─ destroying Hussein’s weapons of destruction ─ whose evidence of developments the U.S. based on spurious intelligence and was a farce that no sensible person could believe. This “made for consumption” and fabricated story detracted from the real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq — to prevent Iraq from becoming the central power in the Middle East and able to threaten Israel. Neocons succeeded in pressuring President George W. Bush to sacrifice American lives and, by military action, remove Saddam Hussein from power. Discarding the nonsensical assertion that Saddam Hussein, who had no nuclear material, no technology to develop a nuclear weapon, and no ICBMs to deliver a bomb, threatened the United States, and needed to be immediately stopped from turning bubble gum into a mighty weapon solicits a more acceptable reason for the U.S. attack on Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense casualty website has the US military suffering 4,418 deaths and 31,994 wounded in action during the Iraq War. No coincidence that Iraq was a long-time adversary of Israel and it was in Israel’s interests to have Iraq become militarily impotent. Treason.

    Libya
    NATO declared it intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” President Barack Obama remarked, “Gaddafi declared that he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment.”

    Reuters report demonstrated significant differences between Gaddafi’s remarks and President Obama’s rendition: Gaddafi Tells Rebel City, Benghazi, ‘We Will Show No Mercy,’ March 17, 2011.

    Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear. He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city.

    Logic tells us that few Benghazi residents could even have guns to hide, and Gadhafi’s forces were too limited to carry out any large-scale purge.

    The U.S. vacillated, and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, convinced President Obama to join NATO in removing Gaddafi. NATO eliminated Gaddafi, Islamic extremists gained partial power, discarded armaments were shipped to al-Qaeda “look-alikes” throughout North Africa and soon the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) coalition, Boko Haram, and Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) were creating havoc throughout North Africa. The US gained nothing in removing Gaddafi and created more Islamic extremist organizations with which to contend. Treachery.

    UN Vetoes

    As of December 18, 2023, the U.S. vetoed resolutions critical of Israel 45 times. Each time, the Secretary of State offered the excuse that the resolution would not advance the cause of peace, and each time vetoing the resolution did not advance the cause for peace. Why do Americans give deference to Israelis when Israel insults American leaders, uses Americans to die in wars that advance Israel’s interests, causes havoc that brings injury to U.S. relations with other nations,  and sucks money ($3.1 billion annually) from U.S. taxpayers to support its apartheid and oppressive policies?

    Some mentioned reasons, which have changed during the decades, are:

    • Israel was aligned with the US during the Cold War.
    • The US needs a Western-style pistol-packing mama in the Middle East.
    • Israel has an excellent intelligence-gathering network that shares information.
    • The two countries collaborate on the joint-development of sophisticated technologies.

    Pundits confuse support for Israel with support for this Israel. The United States, for military and geopolitical reasons, can support Israel, as it does Columbia, but there is no reason to support and assist this Israel in the destruction of the Palestinians. The Washington establishment and foreign policymakers have incorrectly calculated the tradeoffs between supporting this Israel in its denial of Palestinian rights and in satisfying the Palestinian cause.

    • Israel is no longer dependent on the United States and seeks its own alliances.
    • Israel will not scratch a finger to help the US in any conflict; just the opposite, it convinces the US to fight for Israel.
    • Israel intelligence provides the CIA with intelligence concerning nations that are adversarial to the US due to its close ties with Israel. No close ties, none of these adversaries, and no need for intelligence.
    • Israel has used US and Russian engineers for its technical achievements. No Israel, and the Russian and American engineers will go to work in Silicon Valley.

    Just for money and votes, U.S. politicians sell out their commitment to the American people, follow the dictates of a foreign nation, and make Americans party to the destruction of innocent people. TREASON!!

    Conclusion

    Americans have, at times echoed grievances against their government’s policies and demonstrated their despair, well, some Americans, a small minority of the US population. The rest of the population has been naïve, complacent, and manipulated. Due to America’s intrinsic wealth — natural resources, abundant farmland, temperate climate, rivers, valleys, streams, hard-working population, ocean barriers to foreign incursions —  the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors temporarily slowed but did not stop the roaring engine. The roaring engine is beginning to sputter.

    America’s posture as the leading defender of democracy and human rights is hypocritical; its economic system is challenged; its united states are disunited; its pluralistic political system is an epic fantasy; its legislative bodies are divided; and its courts are agenda-seeking rather than law-abiding. Democracy recedes and polarization of citizens widens. Americans are increasingly divided in their aspirations and express increasing fears of one another. An almost self-sufficient economic system proceeds with debt financing imports, trade imbalances, and growth, an unruly situation that can continue until debt hits a financial wall and repaying the debt becomes intolerable.

    Hopefully, more Americans will take cognizance of the failed leadership, meet the challenges they pose, gather the resources, form the organizations, shout much louder, push much stronger, and succeed in disposing of the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors that have made the Statue of Liberty weep.

    The words of Patrick Henry, “These are the times that try people’s souls,” are heard again in the cities and villages of a disunited United States of America.

    The post Call for Alarm first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Human Rights Defenders issues at the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council

    The UN Human Rights Council will hold its 56th regular session at Palais des Nations in Geneva from 18 June and 12 July 2024. And as always the excellent Alert of the International Service for Human Rights permits me to hightlight what concerns HRDs most. To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC56 on X, and look out for the Human Rights Council Monitor.

    Civil Society Access and Participation The UN is facing a severe liquidity crisis due to member states not paying their membership dues in full and on time. This shortfall is impacting victims and survivors of human rights violations. The crisis risks being used to impose restrictions on civil society participation, although online and hybrid modalities offer cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions. Over 100 human rights organisations have called on all states to promptly pay their dues to address the liquidity crisis. Additionally, this session States have the opportunity to continue to build on the good practices adopted in the past years and allow for a broader, more inclusive, effective and climate-friendly human rights system, including by providing remote access to informal consultations on HRC resolutions that can greatly benefit from the analysis and lived experiences of human rights defenders.

    Thematic issues Issues on the agenda At this 56th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including with the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including with: The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Internally Displaced Persons, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, the Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers

    The Council will also hold debates on interrelation of human rights and thematic issues including with: The High Commissioner on new and emerging technologies.

    The new incoming Independent Expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, Graeme Reid, will present his first report focusing on freedom of expression, assembly and association.

    Environment and Climate Justice The Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons will present her report on planned relocations of people in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters. This report is building up on previous reports by other mandates and will also look at laws and policies at the national, regional, and international levels. The newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Climate Change will also present her first report looking at the upcoming priorities and some reflections of the progress achieved on some issues in the last 5 years. The report will also provide a snapshot of some other key topics and the impacts on some particular groups. The Special Rapporteur will also present two country visits reports: Honduras and the Philippines. There is currently a call for inputs for her upcoming General Assembly report on access to information on climate change and human rights. The Working Group on Business and Human Rights will present its report on investors, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) approaches and human rights. The report will raise awareness of the responsibilities of investors and will clarify responsibilities on how to align their ESG approaches to human rights. On Thursday 20 June, the President of the Human Rights Council is organising a high-level informal Presidential discussion on ‘The important link between climate change, food security and health security’. The discussion should address the important role of environmental human right defenders in promoting and securing the full realisation of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and recognition of the obligation of States to prevent, protect and promote their work in an enabling environment.

    International Solidarity Civil society and international experts have continued to raise grave concern at the attacks on fundamental freedoms when advocating for the human rights of Palestinians by authorities in Western countries, including in universities. The High Commissioner deplored the ‘sharp rise in hatred globally – including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’. In her report to the Council, the Independent Expert on International Solidarity called on States to ‘eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization and the ending of apartheid or genocide […] stressing that States ‘should not conflate them with ‘manifest support of terrorism’ or antisemitism in relevant legislation or regulations’. The Special Rapporteur on racism also raised concern at ‘accusations of antisemitism on the basis of legitimate criticism of treatment of Palestinians by Israel’ in her report following her visit to the United States.

    The Special Rapporteur on Education, following her visit to the United States, stressed that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is being used to crackdown against pro-Palestinian protesters, including individuals who ‘self-identify as belonging to the Jewish community or represent Jewish student associations’. The Rapporteur addressed violations against students following the organisation of ‘mass encampments at nearly 40 universities in more than 25 states across the country’, including the detention of more than 2000 individuals, raids by fully armed police on university campuses requested by educational institutions to ‘disperse demonstrators and dismantle encampments’.   During the session, and especially in the ID with the experts on International Solidarity, Education, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Assembly and Association, we urge States to call for an end to the repression and criminalisation of groups and individuals advocating for the human rights of the Palestinian people, including through the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism (IHRA definition) and anti-terrorism policies, including in universities, and especially in the West (including in Austria, France, Germany,  Italy, United States, United Kingdom).

    Reprisals
    HRC56 is a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals and demand that governments provide an update on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. This month ISHR launched a new campaign regarding cases. ISHR urges States to raise these cases in their statements:

    Cao Shunli was a prominent Chinese human rights defender, who sought to share information on the human rights situation in China with the United Nations in Geneva. Cao was arbitrarily detained and died in prison 10 years ago. [for more saee: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/cao-shunli/]

    Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini-Danish advocate known for his unwavering commitment to freedom and democracy. In April 2011 during the Bahrain chapter of what is known as the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, while he was leading peaceful demonstrations, Abdulhadi was violently arrested. He went missing for two months and, in June 2011, after a military trial, he was condemned to life-imprisonment on terrorism-related charges, despite grave concerns from the international community about unfair trials. [s`eae also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/11/29/mea-laureate-abdulhadi-al-khawaja-facing-new-charges-for-protesting-injustice-in-jau-prison/ and https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/4d45e316-c636-4d02-852d-7bfc2b08b78d]

    Pham Doan Trang is an author, blogger, journalist and pro-democracy activist from Viet Nam. Trang was prosecuted for her articles and reports on the human rights situation in Viet Nam, including an analysis of a 2016 report on the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Plant environmental disaster that was shared with the United Nations. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/fe8bf320-1d78-11e8-aacf-35c4dd34b7ba and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/pham-doan-trang/].

    Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj are two Kashmiri human rights defenders. They have conducted ground-breaking and extensive human rights documentation in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, including through their work within the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). In 2016, Indian authorities arrested Khurram a day after he was barred from traveling to Geneva to attend the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/81468931-79AA-24FF-58F7-10351638AFE3 and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/khurram-parvez/. Meanwhile, on 20 March 2023, Irfan was summoned for questioning and arbitrarily detained by the NIA in Srinagar also under provisions of the UAPA and other laws. The NIA targeted Irfan for being ‘a close associate of Khurram Parvez.’ Both Khurram and Irfan are presently in pre-trial detention in the maximum-security Rohini prison in New Delhi, India.

    Country-specific issues on the agenda

    The Council will consider updates, reports on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include: Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Enhanced Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Interactive Dialogue with the Independent international fact-finding mission for the Sudan Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Venezuela Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Libya Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Ukraine and interim report of SG on Crimea Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Colombia

    Afghanistan On 18 June, Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan will present his most recent report on the ‘phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls’ (HRC res. 54/1). The report provides a multidimensional understanding of the design, commission and impact of the harms resulting from the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender-based oppression. We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s view expressed in the report that the framing of gender apartheid most fully encapsulates the institutionalized and ideological nature of the abuses in the country. We note that the report of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women to be presented at this session also noted the pattern of large-scale systematic violations of women’s and girls’ fundamental rights in Afghanistan ‘constitutes an institutionalized framework of apartheid based on gender and merits an unequivocal response.’ ISHR considers that the pursuit of justice for Afghan women and girls demands a multifaceted approach harnessing the strengths of various accountability mechanisms, including the establishment of an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity; with strategic coordination exerting heightened pressure on the Taliban.

    Sudan On 18 June, the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan will provide its first oral update to the HRC. Since the conflict erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, more than 30 thousand people have been killed while 10 million and a half have been displaced, a majority of which are women and children. Half of the population is now on the verge of famine, and 2.5 million could die of starvation by September. The continued fighting in El Fashir portends a repeated massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Masalit in El Geneina last year. In Aljazeera at least one hundred people were killed by RSF on 5 June, the area is facing grave human rights violations since last December.  Meanwhile, the attacks on women’s rights groups and local response initiatives continue unabated.bHumanitarian responders get arbitrarily arrested, and smeared as traitors by the warring parties, some sentenced for up to 2 years and even killed. States should call for an immediate ceasefire, protection of civilians and adherence to international law by all parties in the conflict. 

    Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel On 19 June, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its report addressing the 7 October attacks by Palestinian armed groups and the commencement of Israel’s war on Gaza.

    Venezuela The High Commissioner will present his report on 3 July with his Office staff still operating from Panama. The Maduro government has still not permitted the return of the Office on the terms of its original mandate. With Presidential elections to be held on 28 July, concerns increase about the safety of human rights defenders and opposition figures. Uncertainty has recently been increased by the re-introduction (and then rapid postponement of adoption) of the NGO Law. HRDs Javier Tarazona and Rocío San Miguel remain wholly unjustifiably detained. States must engage actively in the dialogue with the High Commissioner to make clear their support of the essential work of human rights defenders and of the UN’s essential, multifaceted regime scrutinising the human rights situation in the country. Situations of concern that are not on the Council’s agenda

    Algeria The sustained repression against the pro-democracy movement and human rights defenders in Algeria was addressed in the end-of-session statements of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly as well as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders who conducted official visits to Algeria in 2023. These were the first visits since 2016 by UN mandate holders to the country. The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association addressed the ‘criminalisation of civil society work‘, and the ‘suspension or dissolution of political parties and associations, including prominent human rights advocacy organisations’ (including RAJ and LADDH), as well as ‘overly restrictive laws and regulations’ hindering their work.


    Bahrain Thirty-three civil society organisations reiterated that thirteen years since Bahrain’s popular uprising, systemic injustice has intensified and political repression targeting dissidents, human rights defenders, clerics and independent civil society has effectively shut any space for the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression or peaceful activism in the country. Despite the recent royal pardon issued on 8 April 2024, which included the release of more than 650 political prisoners, marking a change in State policy from previous royal pardons, the pardon excluded many individuals who played significant roles in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, with an estimated 550 political prisoners remaining behind bars. HRC56 provides an important opportunity to address these developments in States’ national and joint statements, including during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs and Independent Expert on Health, Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, Independence of Judges and Lawyers and International Solidarity. We urge States to call for the release of all those arbitrarily, including human rights defenders and opposition activists Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, Abduljalil Al-Singace, Hassan Mushaima and Sheikh Ali Salman as well as death row inmates Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who have now spent over a decade unlawfully detained following torture and unfair trials and remain at immanent risk of execution.

    China The adoption on 4 July of the outcome of China’s fourth UPR review, which exposed strong international condemnation over grave abuses in January, is a key opportunity for States to urge China to fully implement recommendations emanating from existing findings by UN bodies. Any rejection by the Chinese government of UPR recommendations referring to UN expert mechanisms or to constructive cooperation with the UN system should be promptly condemned. Ahead of the second anniversary of the publication of the damning OHCHR Xinjiang report, and its authoritative findings of possible crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region, States should request updates on the implementation of the report’s recommendations. To uphold the integrity of its mandate and put an end to China’s exceptionalism, the HRC must also establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the country, as repeatedly called for by over 40 UN experts and hundreds of human rights groups globally. States should further urge the UN High Commissioner to strengthen follow-up action on his Office’s Xinjiang report, including through public calls for implementation, through translation of the report, and through an assessment of its implementation. States should raise serious concerns at the repression of peaceful protests by over 100 Tibetans who opposed a hydropower project in Derge County, affecting villages and monasteries. States should unequivocally call out the adoption of yet-another national security law further criminalising dissent and human rights promotion in Hong Kong, considered a ‘regressive step’ by High Commissioner Türk. States should echo the latter’s call to ‘release immediately and unconditionally all those arbitrarily arrested and detained under these laws.’ States should further ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders arbitrarily detained or disappeared, including feminist activist Huang Xueqin, human rights lawyers Ding Jiaxi, Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.

    Occupied Western Sahara ISHR is concerned over the situation of Saharawi human rights defenders, including lawyer M`hamed Hali, who has been arbitrarily deprived of his right to practice in the Moroccan judicial system due to opinions expressed in support of the right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara. His hearing is scheduled on 27 June in front of Morocco´s highest court. We urge States to address  the crackdown on Sahrawi civil society including: during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, to call on Morocco to immediately put an end to ‘the systematic and relentless targeting of human rights defenders in retaliation for exercising their rights to freedom of association and expression to promote human rights in Western Sahara’; during the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to call on Morocco to reinstate M’hamed Hali’s right to practice as a lawyer, stressing that this case sets a dangerous precedent for the independence of lawyers; and during the Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on International Solidarity  to reiterate the recommendation of the expert that ‘States should eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization […]’ in the case of Western Sahara.  

    Saudi Arabia On 4 July, the Council will consider Saudi Arabia’s fourth UPR outcome, as the authorities announce whether they have accepted or rejected recommendations issued by States in January. The recommendations address widespread and systematic rights violations in the Kingdom, and have the potential to bring about significant change. They include, but are not limited to: calls for the release of prisoners of conscience, many of whom are serving decades-long prison sentences for peacefully exercising their basic rights, and the repealing of travel bans imposed on human rights defenders following their release; the abolition of the death penalty for child defendants, with several young men at imminent risk of execution for alleged crimes committed as minors; and a raft of legislative measures, including ratifying key international human rights treaties and revising repressive laws. States should use this key opportunity to urge Saudi Arabia to accept them in good faith, and crucially implement them.

    Tunisia In May 2024, Tunisian authorities waged an unprecedented crackdown against Black migrants and refugees, and civil society organisations defending their rights. On 6 May, in the opening address to a National Security Council meeting, Tunisian President Kais Saied reiterated discriminatory and hateful remarks against Sub-Saharan migrants and refugees while inciting against civil society organisations, describing them as ‘traitors and [foreign] agents’ and ‘rabid trumpets driven by foreign wages’, because of their receipt of foreign funding and their ‘insulting’ of the state. The president questioned the sheltering of asylum seekers and refugees by the Tunisian Council for Refugees (CTR) – a nongovernmental organization, partner of the UNHCR, which supports the registration of asylum claims – and described asylum seekers and refugees residing in Tunisia as illegal. President Saied suggested that CSOs should only work with the state and under its instructions. Since 3 May, Tunisian authorities have arrested and opened investigations against the heads or members of at least six organisations working on migrant and refugee rights and against racial discrimination, including the CTR. Five people, including WHRD Saadia Mosbah, President of Mnemty, have remained in pre-trial detention, under unfounded accusations of financial crimes. On 14 May, the Prime Minister announced that a new association law is being finalized, which would replace Decree-Law 88, an internationally lauded legislation that that safeguards Tunisia’s right to the freedom of association. During the interactive dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Assembly and Association, and Freedom of Expression, we urge States to call on Tunisia to put an end to the crackdown on civil society, immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, including individuals providing support or advocating for the rights of migrants and refugees, and to firmly condemn the escalating smear campaign and stigmatisation of human rights and humanitarian organisations receiving foreign funding and working with migrants and refugees, supported by the president’s speeches, often making use of discriminatory and racist language against Black migrants and Black people.

    Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Belize, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Congo, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal. ISHR supports human rights defenders in their interaction with the UPR. This session of the Council will provide an opportunity for Chad, China, Congo, Mauritius, Nigeria to accept recommendations made in relation to human rights defenders, as proposed in ISHR’s briefing papers.

    Side events

    19 June at 13:00 (room XXV): ISHR will hold a side event to launch the Declaration +25: A supplement to the UN Declaration on human rights defenders. See https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/06/08/launch-of-the-hrd-declaration25/.

    Open Society Institute will hold a side event on human rights in Afghanistan 19 June at 15:00:

    American Civil Liberties Union will hold a side event on human rights in the United States of America

    On 25 June at 16:00: Center for Justice and International Law will hold a side event on human rights in Guatemala

    26 June at 14:00: Amnesty International will hold a side event on the protection of freedom of expression and assembly

    On 27 June at 14:00: International Bar Association will hold a side event on gender apartheid: Case studies

    On 3 July at 12:00: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung will hold a side event on climate change and human mobility

    On 3 July at 17:00: Third World Network will hold a side event on business accountability in the context of armed conflict

    On 4 July at 15:00: Earthjustice will hold a side event on Protection of Environmental Human Rights Defenders #HRC55:

    Alert to the Human Rights Council’s 56th session

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Their Rules-Based International Order Is the Rule of the Mafia

    Ana Segovia (Mexico), Huapango Torero (‘Huapango Bullfighter’), 2019.

    The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It covers our entire surface, at some points only as thin as a piece of paper and at other points about half as thick as a credit card. The skin, which protects us from all manner of germs and other harmful elements, is fragile and unable to defend humans from the dangerous weapons we have made over time. The ancient blunt axe will break the skin with a heavy blow, while a 2000-pound MK-84 ‘dumb bomb’ made by General Dynamics will not only obliterate the skin, but the entire human body.

    Despite a 24 May order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Israeli military continues to bomb the southern part of Gaza, particularly the city of Rafah. In blatant disregard of the ICJ’s order, on 27 May Israel struck a tent city in Rafah and murdered forty-five civilians. US President Joe Biden said on 9 March that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be his ‘red line’, but – even after this tent massacre – the Biden administration has insisted that no such line has been violated.

    At a press conference on 28 May, communications advisor to the US National Security Agency John Kirby was asked how the US would respond if a strike by the US armed forces killed forty-five civilians and injured two hundred others. Kirby responded: ‘We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties. We did the same thing’. To defend Israel’s latest massacre, Washington has chosen to make a startling admission. Given that the ICJ has ruled that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, could it be said that the US is guilty of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan?

    Ficre Ghebreyesus (Eritrea), Map/Quilt, 1999.

    In 2006, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to assess the possibility of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then, in 2014 and 2017, respectively, opened formal investigations into crimes committed in both countries. However, neither Israel nor the United States are signatories to the 2002 Rome Statute, which established the ICC. Rather than sign the statute, the US Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act – known informally as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ – which legally authorises the US government to ‘use all means necessary’ to protect its troops from ICC prosecutors. Since Article 98 of the Rome Statute does not require states to turn over wanted personnel to a third party if they have signed an immunity agreement with that party, the US government has encouraged states to sign ‘Article 98 agreements’ to give its troops immunity from prosecution. Still, this did not deter ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (who held the post from 2012–2021) from studying evidence and issuing a preliminary report in 2016 on war crimes in Afghanistan.

    Afghanistan joined the ICC in 2003, giving the ICC and Bensouda jurisdiction to conduct their investigation. Even though it signed an Article 98 agreement with Afghanistan in 2002, the US government fervently attacked the ICC’s investigation and warned Bensouda and her family that they would face personal repercussions if she continued with the investigation. In April 2019, the US revoked Bensouda’s entry visa. Days later, a panel of ICC judges ruled against Bensouda’s request to proceed with a war crimes investigation in Afghanistan, stating that such an investigation would ‘not serve the interests of justice’.

    Staff at the ICC were dismayed by the court’s decision and eager to challenge it but could not get support from the justices. In June 2019, Bensouda filed a request to appeal the ICC’s decision not to pursue the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan. Bensouda’s appeal was joined by various groups from Afghanistan, including the Afghan Victims’ Families Association and the Afghanistan Forensic Science Organisation. In September 2019, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC ruled that the appeal could go forward.

    Dawn Okoro (Nigeria), Doing It, 2017.

    The US government was enraged. On 11 June 2020, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13928, which authorised his government to freeze ICC officials’ assets and ban them and their families from entering the United States. In September 2020, the US imposed sanctions on Bensouda, a national of Gambia, and senior ICC diplomat Phakiso Mochochoko, a national of Lesotho. The American Bar Association condemned these sanctions, but they were not revoked.

    The US government eventually repealed the sanctions in April 2021, after Bensouda left her post and was replaced by the British lawyer Karim Khan in February 2021. In September 2021, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said that while his office would continue to investigate war crimes by the Taliban and the Islamic State in Afghanistan, it would ‘deprioritise other aspects of this investigation’. This awkward phrasing simply meant that the ICC would no longer investigate war crimes committed by the United States and its allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The ICC had been sufficiently brought to heel.

    Alexander Nikolaev, also known as Usto Mumin (Soviet Union), Friendship, Love, Eternity, 1928.

    Prosecutor Khan again demonstrated his partial application of justice and fealty to the Global North ruling elites when he rushed into the conflict in Ukraine and began an investigation into war crimes by Russia just four days after its invasion in February 2022. Within a year, Khan would apply for warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, which were issued in March 2023. Specifically, they were charged with colluding to abduct children from Ukrainian orphanages and children’s care homes and take them to Russia, where – it was alleged – these children were ‘given for adoption’. Ukraine, Khan said, ‘is a crime scene’.

    Khan would use no such words when it came to Israel’s murderous assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Even after more than 15,000 Palestinian children had been killed (rather than ‘adopted’ from a war zone), Khan failed to pursue warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military subordinates. When Khan visited Israel in November–December 2023, he warned about ‘excesses’ but suggested that since ‘Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders’, they could prevent any horrendous violations of international humanitarian law.

    Ayoub Emdadian (Iran), The Sapling of Liberty, 1973.

    By May 2024, the sheer scale of Israel’s brutality in Gaza finally forced the ICC to take up the issue. The orders from the ICJ, the outrage expressed by numerous governments of the Global South, and the cascading protests in country after country together motivated the ICC to act. On 20 May, Khan held a press conference where he said that he filed applications for the arrest of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his head of military, Yoav Gallant. Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said that the ICC accusations against Netanyahu and Gallant are ‘baseless’ and that Israel will not comply with any ICC warrant. For decades now, Israel – like the United States – has rejected any attempt to apply international humanitarian law to its actions. The ‘rules-based international order’ has always provided immunity for the United States and its close allies, an immunity whose hypocrisy has increasingly been revealed. It is this double-standard that has provoked the collapse of the US-driven world order.

    Buried within Khan’s press statement is an interesting fragment: ‘I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence the officials of this Court must cease immediately’. Eight days later, on 20 May, The Guardian – in collaboration with other periodicals – published an investigation that revealed Israel’s use of ‘intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear, and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries’. Yossi Cohen, the former head of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, personally harassed and threatened Bensouda (Khan’s predecessor), warning her, ‘You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family’. Furthermore, The Guardian noted that ‘Between 2019 and 2020, the Mossad had been actively seeking compromising information on the prosecutor and took an interest in her family members’. ‘Took an interest’ is a euphemistic way of saying gathered information on her family – including through a sting operation against her husband Philip Bensouda – to blackmail and frighten her. These are clichéd mafia tactics.


    Hamed Abdalla (Egypt), Conscience du sol (‘The Consciousness of the Earth’), 1956.

    As I followed these stories of the blood and law, I read the poems of Chechnya-born Jazra Khaleed, writing in Greek in Athens. His poem ‘Black Lips’ stopped me in my tracks, the last stanzas powerful and bleak:

    Come let me make you human,
    you, Your Honor, who wipe guilt from your beard
    you, esteemed journalist, who tout death
    you, philanthropic lady, who pat children’s heads without bending down
    and you who read this poem, licking your finger—
    To all of you I offer my body for genuflection
    Believe me
    one day you will adore me like Christ

    But I’m sorry for you sir—
    I do not negotiate with chartered accountants of words
    with art critics who eat from my hand
    You may, if you desire, wash my feet
    Don’t take it personally

    Why do I need bullets if there are so many words
    prepared to die for me?

    Which words are slowly dying? Justice, perhaps, or even humanitarianism? So many words are thrown about to assuage the guilty and to confuse the innocent. But these words cannot muffle other words, words that describe horrors and that demand redress.

    Words are important. So are people, such as Gustavo Cortiñas, who was arrested by the Argentinian military dictatorship on 15 April 1977, never to be seen again. He became one of the 30,000 people whom the military killed between 1976 and 1983. On April 30, two weeks after Gustavo was arrested, his mother, Nora Cortiñas (or Norita, as she was lovingly known), joined other mothers of the disappeared to protest in front of the government house Casa Rosada, at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the first in what became a regular feature.

    Norita was a co-founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which courageously shattered the wall of misleading words that tumbled out of the mouths of the military Junta. Though her son was never found, Norita found her voice looking for him – a voice that was heard at every protest for justice and spoke with great feeling about the pain in the world until the weeks leading up to her death on 31 May. ‘We say no to the annexation of Palestine’, she said in a video message in 2020. ‘We oppose any measure that tends to erase the identity and existence of the Palestinian people’.

    Norita leaves us with her precious words:

    Many years from now, I would like to be remembered as a woman who gave her all so that we could have a more dignified life… I would like to be remembered with that cry that I always say and that means everything I feel inside me, that means the hope that someday that other possible world will exist. A world for everyone. So, I would like to be remembered with a smile and for shouting loudly: venceremos, venceremos, venceremos! We will win, we will win, we will win!

  • See also “What is the Rules-Based Order?“
    • The post Their Rules-Based International Order Is the Rule of the Mafia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Human rights defender’s profile: Elham Kohistani, from Afghanistan

    On 3 June 2024, ISHR published Human rights defender’s story: Elham Kohistani, from Afghanistan

    Elham Kohistani is a human rights defender from Afghanistan. Having witnessed successive governments trample human rights in her country since her childhood, she has dedicated her life to fighting for the basic rights of women and girls.

    In an interview with ISHR, Elham spoke about her hopes for the future of Afghanistan, urging the international community to continue supporting human rights defenders in the long term to achieve peace and prosperity.

    Stand in solidarity with Elham and other women human rights defenders (WHRDs) from Afghanistan: join us in our campaign to push for UN experts and States to explicitly and publicly recognise the situation in Afghanistan as a form of gender apartheid and the need for an accountability mechanism to address gross human rights violations against women.

    https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/human-rights-defenders-story-elham-kohistani-from-afghanistan

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949)

    For the Chinese, the trauma of the Century of Humiliation continues as a blunt reminder of their past defeat and neo-colonial servitude, as well as a reminder of the West’s self-righteous hypocrisy and arrogance.

    In 1500, India and China were the world’s most advanced civilizations. Then came the Europeans. They eventually looted and wreaked havoc on both, just as they were to on the Americas and Africa. For India and China, Britain was the chief culprit, relying on state-sponsored drug-running backed by industrialized military power. The British Empire was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium—the main product of global trade after the gradual decline of the slave trade from Africa. Their “civilization” brought the Century of Humiliation to China, which only ended with the popular revolution led by Mao Zedong. This historic trauma and the struggle to overcome it and re-establish their country is etched in the minds of the Chinese today.

    Before the British brought their “culture,” 25% of the world trade originated in India. By the time they left it was less than 1%. British India’s opium dealing was for the large part of the 19th Century the second-most important source of revenue for colonial India. Their “opium industry was one of the largest enterprises on the subcontinent, producing a few thousand tons of the drug every year – a similar output to Afghanistan’s notorious opium industry [during the US occupation], which supplies the global market for heroin.” Opium accounted for about 17-20% of British India revenues.

    In the early 1700s, China produced 35% of the world GDP. Until 1800 half the books in the world were printed in Chinese. The country considered itself self-sufficient, not seeking any products from other countries. Foreign countries bought Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain, having to pay in gold and silver. Consequently, the balance of trade was unfavorable to the British for almost two centuries, like the situation the US and Europe face with China today.

    This trade slowly depleted Western reserves. Eventually, 30,865 tons of silver flowed into China, mostly from Britain. Britain turned to state sponsored drug smuggling as a solution, and by 1826 the smuggling from India had reversed the flow of silver. Thus began one of the longest and continuous international crimes of modern times, second to the African slave trade, under the supervision of the British crown.

    (The just formed United States was already smuggling opium into China by 1784. The US first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor grew rich dealing opium to China, as did FDR’s grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr.)

    The British East India Company was key to this opium smuggling. Soon after Britain conquered Bengal in 1757, George III granted the East India Company a monopoly on producing and exporting Indian opium. Eventually its Opium Agency employed some 2500 clerks working in 100 offices around India.

    Britain taxed away 50% of the value of Indian peasants’ food crops to push them out of agriculture into growing opium. This soon led to the Bengal famine of 1770, when ten million, a third of the Bengali population, starved to death. Britain took no action to aid them, as they did almost a century later with their orchestrated famine in Ireland. Another famine hit India in 1783, and again Britain did nothing as 11 million starved. Between 1760-1943, “As per British sources, more than 85 million Indians died in these famines which were in reality genocides done by the British Raj.”

    At its peak in the mid-19th century, the British state-sponsored export of opium accounted for roughly 15% of total colonial revenue in India and 31% of India’s exports. The massive revenues from this drug money solidified India as a substantial financial base for England’s later world conquests.

    In 1729, the Chinese emperor declared the import of opium illegal. At the time it amounted to 200 chests a year, each 135 pounds, a total of 14 tons. The emperor in 1799 reissued the prohibition in harsher terms, given imports had leaped to 4,500 chests (320 tons). Yet by 1830 it rose to 1100 tons, and by 1838, just before the British provoked the First Opium War (1839-1842), it climbed to 40,000 chests (2800 tons).

    A chest of opium cost only £2 to produce in India but it sold for £10 [over $1,000 in today’s prices] in China, nearly an £8 profit per chest.

    About 40,000 chests supplied 2.1 million addicts in a Chinese population of 350 million. China was losing over 4000 tons of silver annually. Addicts were mostly men, twenty to fifty-five years old, which should have been their most productive years. Smoking opium gradually spread to different groups of people: government officials, merchants, intelligentsia, women, servants, soldiers, and monks.

    Just before the First Opium War the Chinese “drug czar,” Lin Zexu, wrote to Queen Victoria, “Where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; this is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries.” In standard imperialist arrogance, Britain ignored the letter and challenged the very legality of China’s sovereign decision to prohibit opium imports.

    Britain provoked this First Opium War in retaliation for China seizing and destroying 1300 tons of opium held by British drug dealers off Canton (now Guangzhou). This had a value equal to one-sixth of the British empire’s military budget. British Foreign Secretary Palmerston demanded an apology, compensation for the opium, a treaty to prevent Chinese action against British drug-running, and opening additional ports to “foreign trade,” their euphemism for drug dealing.

    The British India Gazette reported on the sack of one Chinese city during the war:

    A more complete pillage could not be conceived than took place. Every house was broken open, every drawer and box ransacked, the streets strewn with fragments of furniture, pictures, tables, chairs, grain of all sorts — the whole set off by the dead or the living bodies of those who had been unable to leave the city from the wounds received from our merciless guns… The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy.

    Once Britain defeated China, the Treaty of Nanking gave Hong Kong to the British, which quickly became the center of opium drug-dealing, soon providing the colony most of its revenue. The treaty also allowed the British to export unlimited amounts of opium.

    In 1844, France and the US forced China to sign similar unequal and unjust treaties, with the same unrestricted trading rights.

    In the wake of the First Opium War, a devastating famine hit southern China, causing mass starvation among millions of poor Chinese peasants. Soon the Taiping Rebellion against Chinese imperial rule broke out, claiming 20 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1864. As with many later civil wars, as in Syria a decade ago, the European states financed the rebels to undermine the national government.

    Karl Marx detailed how Britain provoked the Second Opium War (1856-1860). France joined in the looting. The Times of London, propagandists for their state-sponsored drug mafia, declared, “England, with France . . . shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereafter be a passport of fear, if it cannot be of love, throughout their land.”

    In October 1860 the British and French military attacked Beijing. Despite French protests, British commander Lord Elgin destroyed Yuanming Yuan, the emperor’s summer palace, in a show of contempt for the Chinese.

    The Summer Palace was the quintessential treasure house of China. No such collection of wealth and beauty had ever existed anywhere on earth. Nor would it ever again.…in some 200 fabulously decorated buildings, thirty of them imperial residences, lay riches beyond all dreams of avarice. Jewels, jade, ceremonial robes, the court treasures, bales of silk, and countless priceless artifacts represented the years of accumulated tribute placed before the Chinese emperors. There were splendid galleries of paintings and irreplaceable libraries…For three days British and French troops rampaged through the palace’s marble corridors and glittering apartments, smashing with clubs and rifle butts what they were unable to carry away.

    When the robbery and destruction was finished, they burned Yuanming Yuan to the ground. An estimated 1.5 million Chinese relics were taken away, many still filling museums and the homes of the wealthy in the West today.

    Britain and France forced China to legalize the import of opium, which reached 5000 tons by 1858, an amount surpassing global opium production in 1995. China had to agree that no Westerner could be tried in Chinese courts for crimes committed in the country, and, ironically, to legalize Christian missionary work.

    The 1881 pamphlet, Opium: England’s Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous Results in China and India, stated:

    As a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer on the bombardment of Canton: ‘Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.’ In one scene of carnage, the Times correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,000 men were in ten minutes destroyed by the sword, or forced into the broad river. The Morning Herald asserted that ‘a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness.’

    By the mid-1860s, Britain was in control of seven eighths of the vastly expanded opium trade into China. Opium imports from India skyrocketed to 150,000 chests (10,700 tons) in 1880. British opium earnings amounted to $2 billion a year in today’s money and accounted for nearly 15% of the British Exchequer’s tax revenue. The London Times (October 22, 1880) outrageously claimed that “the Chinese government admitted opium as a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free will.” Lord Curzon, later Under Secretary for India, “denied that England had ever forced opium upon China; no historian of any repute, and no diplomatist who knew anything of the matter, would support the proposition that England coerced China in this respect.”

    China began domestic production to curtail losing more silver to imported opium. After 1858, large tracts of land were given over to opium production, and provinces turned from growing food and other necessities to opium. Eventually the Chinese were producing 35,000 tons, about 85% of the world’s supply, with 15 million addicts consuming 43,000 tons annually.

    China, now greatly weakened by the British narco state, surrendered territory to Russia equal to the combined size of France, Germany, and Spain. In 1885 France seized Chinese Southeast Asia. In 1895, Japan seized Taiwan and Chinese-controlled Korea.

    The Eight-Nation Alliance (Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary) invaded again in 1900 to crush the nationalist Boxer Rebellion. An indemnity of 20,000 tons of silver was extracted, and China reduced to a neo-colony.

    By 1906, besides British India, opium dealing also provided 16% of taxes for French Indochina, 16% for the Netherlands Indies, 20% for Siam, and 53% for British Malaya.

    That year, the British, still exporting 3500 tons to China, finally agreed to end the dirty business within ten years. The British crown had the distinction of being the biggest opium smuggler in history – a central factor in their wrecking Chinese and Indian civilizations.

    World opium production by 1995 was down to 4,200 metric tons (4,630 tons), mostly from Burma and Afghanistan. The Taliban banned it in 2000, and production fell from 3400 to only 204 tons. The 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan reversed this, and by 2008, US occupied Afghanistan was producing 90% of the world’s opium, reaching 10,000 tons in 2017. After the US was driven out in 2021, the Taliban quickly stopped opium production. The United States Institute of Peace, possibly revealing US support for narco-trafficking, pronounced, “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world” and “will have negative economic and humanitarian consequences.”

    The blight of opium on China was not resolved until the revolutionary victory in 1949 – though it continued in British Hong Kong. Mao proclaimed “China has stood up,” ending its Century of Humiliation during which at least 100 million Chinese were killed in wars and famines, with up to 35 million during the Japanese invasion from 1931-1945.

    By 1949, China had been reduced to one of the world’s poorest countries. Just 75 years ago four out of five Chinese could not read or write. But since 1981, China has lifted 853 million of its people out of poverty, has become an upper middle income country according to the World Bank, and regained its stature in the world. The West now views China as a renewed threat, again seeking to economically disable it and chop it into pieces. However, this time, the Chinese people are much better prepared to combat imperialist designs to impose a new era of humiliation on them.

    The post Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “America’s Monster” in Afghanistan


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human rights defender profile: Sara Nabil from Afghanistan

    Sara Nabil is a human rights defender and artist from Afghanistan, forced into exile. She spoke to ISHR about her dream of one day seeing a ‘free democratic Afghanistan, where each human being [regardless of which] gender they are, man or woman, neutral or other genders, [would be] treated equally.’

    ‘Since the Taliban came to power, Afghanistan [has become] the only country where we see that women don’t have any kind of rights.’

    Learn more about Sara and other human rights defenders like her: https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/

    see also: https://www.dw.com/en/art-in-exile-afghan-sara-nabil-fights-for-womens-rights/a-61732508

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.