Category: Children/Youth

  • Salman Maki Ali was a 15-year-old Bahraini student and minor when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him on 21 October 2014 from the street without presenting an arrest warrant.  During detention, he endured torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, denial of access to legal counsel, unfair trials based on confessions extracted under torture, sectarian-based insults, and medical neglect. He is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.

    On 21 October 2014, at around 9:45 P.M., masked plainclothes officers, aided by a number of security forces, arrested Salman and two others on the main street in the Markuban area of Sitra, where they were setting up Ashura banners with a group of young men. As Salman was near Sahara Studio, two civilian cars passed by him and the group, from which masked officers in civilian clothes and security forces emerged, chasing them on the street before apprehending Salman. Simultaneously, they beat, kicked, insulted, and cursed him. Subsequently, they transported him and his friends on a bus to the Sitra area, where they seated him in the front seat, subjected him to psychological pressure and beatings, and demanded he guide them to a relative’s house. Furthermore, Salman and his friends were taken to al-Bandar (the coast guard in Sitra), where they were threatened that if they didn’t confess, they would be tortured. Following this, they were transferred to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building.

    On the same day after his arrest, the family was unaware of their son’s location. His mother visited the Sitra Police Station, Isa Town Police Station, and Nabi Saleh Island Police Station, seeking information about his whereabouts, but received no information. On the morning of the second day, she went to the CID, where officers took her information, but she still received no response. Salman’s family continued to search for him by visiting the CID, the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), and the court, yet they received no response. Three days after his arrest, on 24 October 2014, Salman’s family was surprised when they saw a news in the state media and a statement from the Ministry of Interior, stating that their son was accused of terrorist crimes, primarily the case of burning the car of parliamentary election candidate, MP Sheikh Majid AlAsfour.

    During Salman’s interrogation, he was transferred multiple times between the CID building and the PPO before being transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center. At the CID, the detainees were dispersed into separate rooms. Salman had his friend’s phone when CID officers asked him to unlock it. However, he did not know the password to do so. Consequently, they subjected him to psychological pressure and beatings. CID officers stripped him of his clothes, beat him, insulted and slandered him, and sexually harassed him. They also threatened him with rape, beatings, and deprived him of the ability to pray.

    Furthermore, officers didn’t allow Salman to use the bathroom when needed, but only at specific times. They rushed Salman inside the bathroom and sometimes opened the door on him. Additionally, they lined the detainees up in one row blindfolded and hit their heads against the wall. Husain AlSari, Ali Abdulhadi, and Jasim Mohamed Ajwaid were among those detainees accused of the same charge brought against Salman, which was burning the car of the parliamentary elections candidate, Majid AlAsfour.

    Salman’s interrogation lasted for about 7 days and was conducted without the presence of a lawyer. As a result of the threats and torture, his mental state deteriorated, and consequently, he was forced to confess by signing an investigation report without being aware of its content. On 28 October 2014, Salman was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center. A week after his transfer to the Dry Dock Detention Center, his family received phone calls from detainees at the center who informed them that their son was in the detention center, enduring a bad psychological state. A few minutes later, Salman called and reassured his family of his condition.

     

    Salman was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trials, was unable to present evidence and challenge evidence presented against him, was denied access to his attorney, and wasn’t allowed to meet with him alone. Furthermore, his confessions extracted under torture were used against him despite informing the judge that the charges against him were untrue and obtained under torture. On 6 September 2015, Salman was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison in the case of burning the car of the parliamentary election candidate for a terrorist purpose and endangering people’s lives and money. He was charged with 1) arson, and 2) manufacturing usable or explosive devices. Moreover, he was later sentenced to ten years in prison on the charge of 3) attacking a police patrol and causing harm to a citizen. On 28 October 2015, he was also sentenced to ten years in prison in a gathering and rioting case on charges of 4) negligent destruction, 5) intentionally endangering a private means of transport, 6) manufacturing usable or explosive devices, 7) arson, and 8) assaulting the body integrity of others. Lastly, on 1 November 2015, he was sentenced to three years in prison on the charge of 9) manufacturing usable and explosive devices to disturb public security, resulting in a total sentence of 33 years imprisonment. On 28 March 2016, the court of appeals reduced Salman’s first sentence for the charge of burning the car of MP AlAsfour to five years of prison. On 29 May 2016, the court of appeals also reduced the sentence for the last case, the charge of manufacturing usable and explosive devices to disturb public security, to two years imprisonment. However, the court of appeal upheld the verdict for the third case on 31 May 2016, making the total of his sentence 27 years. On 6 September 2015, after the issuance of the first verdict, Salman was transferred to the New Dry Dock Prison, designated for inmates under the age of 21.

    After the first sentencing hearing, on 6 September 2015, the prisoners were taken to Jau Prison to collect their personal belongings. During this time, Salman was severely beaten and handcuffed from behind. Additionally, a police officer beat him in the stomach. He endured long hours of torture before being transferred to the young convicts’ prison. Furthermore, the security forces subjected him and the other prisoners to psychological and physical torture by insulting, laughing, and mocking them.

    Salman and his fellow inmates were insulted and tortured by the Dry Dock Prison officers, forcing them to stand and sit for a long time. He also suffered from alopecia in the head, for which he was denied medical treatment before being allowed to bring in the necessary medicine from outside the prison. 

    In 2020, Salman was transferred to Jau Prison upon reaching 21 years old, where he faced mistreatment while serving his sentence. Jau Prison officers once tied him up on a cold day while he was wearing light clothes and left him in the corridor of the prison where it was extremely cold. Moreover, Salman was subjected to discrimination by Jau Prison officers based on his religious and political opinions. They insulted him, his Shia sect, and the opposition figures belonging to the sect. Additionally, he was once placed in solitary confinement in Jau Prison for going out to the prison fence.

    Furthermore, Salman was infected with COVID-19 and was isolated with the other infected inmates in a cell containing more than eight people. Back then, he did not receive the necessary medical treatment for a period ranging from 10 days to two weeks.  

    In August 2023, Salman participated in a collective hunger strike with around 800 prisoners in Jau Prison to protest mistreatment and inadequate healthcare. This hunger strike persisted for 40 days, ending in September 2023 with a promise from the prison administration to improve conditions inside the prison.

    Recently, Salman complained about medical neglect in Jau Prison and the inedible meals offered to him. For three months, he has been suffering from poor eyesight and needed an eye test to get suitable glasses. After prolonged delays, he underwent an eye test at Salmaniya Hospital, and eyeglasses were prescribed to him; however, the glasses have not yet been handed over to him.

    Salman’s warrantless arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, unjust solitary confinement, denial of attorney access, unfair trials, religious discrimination, and medical negligence constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

     

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Salman. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, denial of legal counsel, religious discrimination, and medical negligence, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a fair retrial for Salman under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Salman, including eyeglasses, treatment for his head alopecia, and adequate healthy food, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Salman Maki Ali appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Rarely has the International Court of Justice been so constantly exercised by one topic during a short span of time.  On January 26, the World Court, considering a filing made the previous December by South Africa, accepted Pretoria’s argument that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was applicable to the conflict in so far as Israel was bound to observe it in its military operations against Hamas in Gaza.  (The judges will determine, in due course, whether Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the genocidal threshold.)  By 15-2, the judges noted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.”

    At that point 26,000 Palestinians had perished, much of Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.  Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

    Israel was duly ordered to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Gaza populace; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within a month.  The balance sheet on that score has been uneven at best.

    Since then, the slaughter has continued, with the Palestinian death toll now standing at 32,300.  The Israelis have refused to open more land crossings into Gaza, and continue to hamper aid going into the strip, even as they accuse aid agencies and providers of being tardy and dishonest.  Their surly defiance of the United States has seen air drops of uneven, negligible success (the use of air to deliver aid has always been a perilous exercise).  When executed, these have even been lethal to the unsuspecting recipients, with reported cases of parachutes failing to open.

    On March 25, the UN Security Council, after three previous failed attempts, passed Resolution 2728, thereby calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan “leading to a lasting sustainable” halt to hostilities, the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, “ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs” and “demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain”.

    Emphasis was also placed on “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip”.  The resolution further demands that all barriers regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance, in accordance with international humanitarian law, be lifted.

    Since January, South Africa has been relentless in its efforts to curb Israel’s Gaza enterprise in The Hague.  It called upon the ICJ on February 14, referring to “the developing circumstances in Rafah”, to urgently exercise powers under Article 75 of the Rules of Court.  Israel responded on February 15.  The next day, the ICJ’s Registrar transmitted to the parties the view of the Court that the “perilous situation” in the Gaza Strip, but notably in Rafah, “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024”.

    Throughout the following month, more legal jostling and communication took place, with Pretoria requesting on March 6 that the ICJ “indicate further provisional measures and/or to modify” those ordered on January 26.  The application was prompted by the “horrific deaths from starvation of Palestinian children, including babies, brought about by Israel’s deliberate acts and omissions … including Israel’s concerted attempts since 26 January 2024 to ensure the defunding of [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Israel’s attacks on starving Palestinians seeking to access what extremely limited humanitarian assistance Israel permits into Northern Gaza, in particular”.

    Israel responded on March 15 to the South African communication, rejecting the claims of starvation arising from deliberate acts and omissions “in the strongest terms”.  The logic of the sketchy rebuttal from Israel was that matters had not materially altered since January 26 to warrant a reconsideration: “the difficult and tragic situation in the Gaza Strip in the last weeks could not be said to materially change the considerations upon which the Court based its original decision concerning provisional measures.”

    On March 28, the Court issued a unanimous order modifying the January interim order.  Combing through the ghoulish evidence, the judges noted an updated report from March 18 on food insecurity from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC Global Initiative) stating that “conditions necessary to prevent Famine have not been met and the latest evidence confirms that Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”  The UN Children’s Fund had also reported that 31 per cent of children under 2 years of age in the northern Gaza Strip were enduring conditions of “acute malnutrition”.

    In the face of this Himalaya of devastation, the Court could only observe “that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing a risk of famine, as noted in the Order of 26 January 2024, but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration”.  There were “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza strip over recent weeks, as well as the increasing risks of epidemics.”

    Such “grave” conditions granted the Court jurisdiction to modify the January 26 order which no longer fully addressed “the consequences arising from the changes in the situation”.  In view of the “worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation”, Israel should take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.

    The list of what is needed is also enumerated: food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, sanitation requirements, and “medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.

    A less reported aspect of the March 28 order, passed by fifteen votes to one, was that Israel’s military refrain from committing “acts which constitute a violation of any rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group” under the Genocide Convention “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”

    In this, the Court points to the possible, and increasingly plausible nexus, between starvation, famine and deprivation of necessaries as state policies with the intent to injure and kill members of a protected group.  It is no doubt something that will weigh heavily on the minds of the judges as they continue mulling over the nature of the war in Gaza, which South Africa continues to insist is genocidal in scope and nature.

    The post Starvation in Gaza: The World Court’s Latest Intervention first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • May’s family

    Latifa Najjar superimposes hearts over the faces of her children’s online photographs in the classic mother’s move to protect them. But, unfortunately, her children are in a Rafah refugee camp, and it’s the middle of the Israeli-Gaza war. So she’s unknowingly saving me from missing their beautiful faces, if I learn one day they’ve been murdered by bombs or famine. Exterminated by the bad luck of being born in Gaza, a country stripped not only of its housing and masjids (mosques), but food, water, and medical care. A country strip-searched by Israeli soldiers like they strip-search its women—taking their last bit of dignity and leaving nothing left but malnourished bodies and lips to pray with. Latifa lost almost everything—even her snow white, blue-eyed kittens Lia and Leo, for they were left behind in the misery of North Gaza, where they are sure to die.

    Latifa’s brother is dead, a cousin too, but the family she created with her husband still lives. Her eldest daughter, Farah, age seventeen, translates Facebook messages between us. Deciphering her mom’s homegrown Arabic into an English she learned a la cart from Sherlock Holmes movies, social media and online classes. Amideast, an American NGO, gave her an award for an essay she wrote about her future: The Remarkable Story of Farah Najjar. Now that future seems impossibly far away.

    Things are hard for Latifa’s family, so I take her children to the land of make believe, where they become a family of kings and queens. Why not? Latifa’s been so open with me, a total stranger. She has to tell a man she’s never met about her life and death struggles. Not a thing women usually do in Gaza. It’s a patriarchal culture, and I’m on the wrong side of history. But all that is forgotten as I entertain her children with a bedtime story.

    In a faerie tale desert by the sea, I exchange their tattered refugee clothes for luxurious silk garments. I put them on gorgeous thrones set on thick carpets in Bedouin tents instead of dirt floors under blue tarps. The little princes and princesses enjoy endless sweets, playtime and peace. No bombs detonate here, no innocent people scream.

    Years from now they will live in solace. They will forget that long ago missiles wiped out family and friends leaving half-living relatives to bury the dead. Tonight I take them to a world where children slay dragons and fear is conquered with toy swords and Aladdin’s wishes. Finally, the moonlight serenades faces as tired eyes fall asleep.

    That next day I receive a call from a young woman, Fatima, who’s somewhere that’s not Rafah. Stuck on a rooftop overlooking a fractured city block. In her arms, her two-year-old son. Scattered around her: water, garbage and shame. Gunfire argues in the distance. Every building in the background is reduced to rubble or half burned up in flames. Trapped civilians scream out for help, but no one hears them. Fatima asks for money. I send ten dollars. “Ouch,” she replies, demanding more. A Facebook friend obliges. Then Fatima makes another request. The cycle continues. It will never stop. Scam, or not? Normally, I would have never sent her money—I’m not one for double drowning. But I forgive her because, just above, I witnessed hell on a smartphone screen.

    This asking for money is the only control she has over life. She demands our charity, while facing death and being buried by debris. Regardless, she’s nearly alone, with only a few small souls for company, less in weight than they used to be, the lower echelon of refugees. Her only link to sanity is through the same technology that guides the smart bombs which kill whole families. I say goodbye. We will never talk again. She’ll be ravaged by circumstance, and I’ll write about her while sitting here, sickened by what I’ve seen.

    Latifa posts videos of her children singing, dancing, pleading. I can feel her heart beating through the interwebs. There’s nothing else to do, but mask the horror with innocence. Long before the war she was a social researcher, a young woman with a college degree helping her people. And here she is, years later, kingdom gone and trapped among the poor.

    But, she has plans. Like many Palestinians she’s had enough of the endless strife with Israel, and wants to leave Gaza. Enticed by the internet images of life outside their nation-state prison, she works at getting away by soliciting money for her Go Fund Me. With luck they will not perish in the genocide.

    Another woman-lead family messages me. Samah Ouda is far away from food in a place called Nuseirat, a suburb by the sea. The remains of Turkish coffee houses, masjids and cemeteries are all that’s left. The beaches, strewn with chunks of concrete. The streets, peppered with powdered coffee. The call to prayer, absent from the broken minarets after endless centuries. She’s more desperate than Latifa, speaking in shorter sentences, not allowing herself to dream. Her children’s survival, less likely. Her words, terse and to the point. She taught English before the war. Now, she promotes her plight through Tik-Tok and Instagram, to fund her own Go Fund Me.

    I focus on Latifa’s family and their future, not wanting to think about those who won’t make it, those whose death will have no meaning. I message her again, but she’s too busy trying to live, to listen. So I find a channel that’s live-streaming a Gaza hospital, where children play on wheelchairs amid the dying.

    The next day we talk.

    “Alhamdulillah (God help me), I’m desperate,” Latifa says. “We need a truce.”

    So I say: “You are brave. You are strong.”

    “Thanks a lot.” she replies. “We are happy to know you brother. I pray that we survive.”

    Then an anonymous young woman asks me for help. She is alone, stranded in a home housing elderly and children. Like many, she has lost touch with her friends from before the war. I hear it all the time. A fragmented people, living fragmented lives, with fragmented families waiting to die. In this case the young woman is too afraid to go outside, or even look out the window. She has stayed off evil by refusing to see, her terror limited to the sound of bombs, gunfire and drones. But even so, her food is tasteless and nothing smells good. No one hugs her either, so she’s slowly losing the sense of touch as well. A solitary life in a solitary room, but still, that’s a better existence than some.

    She is worried about what the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) will do to her if they invade Rafah. She has heard the stories, the tales of sexual assault. At first I avoid the topic, try to steer her mind somewhere else. But there is a very good chance she will be caught and stripped searched as she tries to flee. Likely in front of male Israeli soldiers, rifles pointed in her direction, ready to kill. She will feel humiliated. A young woman who’s never shown, since puberty, an unrelated man an inch of her skin not on her face or hands. The clothing the Israelis say oppresses her will now be used to violate what little she has left.

    When I finally tell her about how to stem the anxiety and fear, my words feel like instructions for going to the gallows. Repeat this prayer in times of trouble: ‘I take refuge in the Lord of the people.’ Supposedly, the last line spoken before the Prophet’s (PBUH) death.

    I hear about an airstrike striking Nuseirat that kills many women and children. I message Samah and luckily she replies, she is not hurt. We chit-chat for once, and I learn that before the war she was a high school physics teacher.

    The next day I receive messages from two new women. Mays Astal and Maryam Hasanat are desperate. They are both eight months pregnant, in land with little medical care if anything goes wrong. One of them has a good chance of surviving, for the other everything has already gone wrong.

    Mays, Catholic Relief Services employee, Palestinian Red Crescent Society engineer, found herself with nothing but a tent, her two children named Dialah and Mohammed and a husband. Yet she still spends three hours a day as a humanitarian worker risking death at the hands of the IDF. The perfect American nuclear family, except they live in a war zone, not prosperity.

    One day the IDF decided it would be best if they burn down all the buildings in the refugee camp with incendiary munitions, then drive tanks through the tent city to run down the living. Mays and her family bury themselves in the sand, narrowly avoiding being run over. She clings to hope with another Go Fund Me, so she and her family can get out of hell and into Egypt. There she can give birth in peace.

    Maryam has a beautiful Facebook profile picture from her wedding. In it her tall, handsome husband smiles as he looks down at her. Like nearly everyone else, they lost everything, and left their home as soon as Israel littered their living area with leaflets exalting doom and destruction for all who remain. Within a few weeks their apartment was bombed, and her brother-in-law was shot to death by the IDF as he drove back to his young wife and child.

    A day after she contacted me, she sends me a message: “Today my best friend, Haia, and her baby died.”

    “From a bomb?” I ask.

    “No, Haia was pregnant, and she had to have a cesarean section.”

    “What went wrong?”

    “They cut her womb open with no anesthesia, and couldn’t stop the bleeding. Neither mother nor child survived.”

    Then I find out why Maryam’s so desperate. She’ll need a c-section as well, because her pelvis is too narrow. That’s why she needs twenty-five thousand dollars to get to Egypt, so she and her baby won’t die in a hospital in Rafah that has no supplies. So she won’t become one of the thousands of women who have lost their lives between the barbed wire and the sea.

    The following fundraisers will help bring hope to these families. They are listed in order of appearance in this story.

    Latifa’s Go Fund Me Campaign

    Samah’s Go Fund Me Campaign

    Mays Go Fund Me Campaign

    Maryam’s Go Fund Me Campaign

    Maryam and husband

    Pregnant Maryam and her son

    Latifah’s daughter

    • Please message the author at moc.liamgnull@erotavlassore if you want to inquire about helping refugees in Gaza.

    •• First published in Z

    The post The Women Who Live Between the Barbed Wire and the Sea first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Husain Mohamed Falah was a 17-year-old Bahraini minor and high school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his home on 15 December 2014 without presenting any arrest warrant. During his detention, he endured torture, sexual harassment, denial of attorney access during interrogation and trial, and an unfair trial. He is currently serving a life sentence in Jau Prison, facing religious discrimination, medical neglect, and being denied his rights to education and communication with his family.

    On 15 December 2014, at 4:00 A.M., plainclothes officers arrived with a 16-passenger bus, an armored vehicle, and more than 10 Jeep cars, and conducted a forceful raid at Husain’s family house where they were sleeping. They broke the doors of the house and the garage, confiscated his identification card along with his phone, and took him on the bus to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building without providing any arrest warrant or reason behind his arrest. En route to the CID building, officers blindfolded Husain inside the bus and hit him on the head. On the same day at 6:00 A.M., Husain’s parents received a 4-second call from him, stating that he was in the CID building. Two days later, at 4:00 A.M., officers returned to Husain’s home, raided it, and filmed the raid with two cameras without submitting a search warrant They searched Husain’s room, focusing on his personal belongings. They confiscated an old phone he had that did not have a SIM card and was not working. On 19 December 2014, Husain was brought blindfolded near his home, to a location where Bahraini authorities claimed he participated in “rioting and the killing of a police corporal”.

    At the CID building, Husain was interrogated for a week without the presence of a lawyer. CID officers tortured him by completely blindfolding him, stripping him of his clothes, forcing him to stand for extended periods with his hands cuffed, pouring hot water on him, and spitting on his face. Officers also subjected Husain to electric shocks, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse, and prevented him from contacting his parents. Subsequently, he confessed to the fabricated charges brought against him under torture.

    Following his interrogation, Husain was brought on 22 December 2014 before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), which subsequently ordered his detention for two months, and his lawyer was not allowed to attend. He was then transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he endured further torture. On 24 December 2014, Husain’s family was able to visit him for the first time since his arrest.

    Husain was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, was denied access to his attorney before and during the court sessions, and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the court utilized the confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him in his trial. On 30 December 2015, Husain was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprivation of his Bahraini nationality after being convicted in a mass trial with 22 other defendants for 1) joining a terrorist cell to kill a police corporal on 8 December 2014, and 2) carrying out riots on 9 December 2014. Although Husain was transferred to the courtroom for the sentencing hearing, he was not allowed to enter and was forced to wait outside. Then the lawyer came out and informed the family of the judgment. His citizenship was reinstated on 27 April 2019, through a royal pardon. Husain appealed his sentence, and on 22 December 2016, the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal and upheld the initial verdict. Consequently, the Court of Cassation upheld the sentence on 5 June 2017.

    Husain is currently serving his sentence in Jau Prison, enduring discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia religious sect and facing threats and deprivation of his rights by the prison officers from time to time on the pretext of taking revenge for the alleged murder of a policeman. In addition, he’s currently deprived of calling his family, experiencing issues within his eye retina that are getting worse as a result of medical negligence, and is denied his right to continue his university education. Husain’s family filed complaints to the Ombudsman, documenting the raid, torture, and eye conditions. The Ombudsman received these complaints and visited Husain with no result obtained.  This mistreatment and medical neglect prompted Husain to go on hunger strikes every now and then to protest against the prison’s poor status and the violations to which he was subjected.

    Husain’s warrantless arrest, torture, sexual assault, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations and trial, unfair trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical negligence represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Husain. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of Husain’s arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, denial of attorney access during interrogations and trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical neglect while holding the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB calls for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Husain, holding it responsible for any possible deterioration in his health. Finally, ADHRB calls on the Jau Prison administration to immediately grant Husain his right to regularly call his family and allow him to continue his university studies.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Husain Mohamed Falah appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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  • Every Palestinian child in Gaza has a story of exposure to unimaginable Israeli military violence, including killings, traumatic injuries, mass displacement, hunger, destruction of whole neighborhoods, and separation from family members, which leaves lasting scars and trauma. No child should have to endure such burdens.

    The post Unaccompanied Children first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Muntadher Fawzi Salman was a 17-year-old Bahraini high school student when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him from his home on 22 December 2016 without presenting an arrest warrant. During detention, he endured torture, enforced disappearance, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations, unfair trials, and medical neglect. He is currently serving a nearly 80-year prison sentence in Jau Prison.

    On 22 December 2016, riot police, commandos, and plainclothes officers raided the home of Muntadher’s friend in Bani Jamra, where Muntadher was residing, at night while they were sleeping. They beat him and apprehended him without presenting any arrest warrant. Subsequently, they transferred him to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) Building, where his news was cut for a day. He managed to contact his family the following day, informing them that he was at the CID Building. The family received another call from him on the same day, informing them that he was at the Roundabout 17 Police Station.

    Before his arrest, Muntadher was pursued by Bahraini authorities for a year and a half, and his family received several summonses for him. Additionally, he had received a 3-year prison sentence in absentia for allegedly burning a Jeep.

    During Muntadher’s interrogation, he was transferred multiple times between the CID Building and the Roundabout 17 Police Station. On 24 December 2016, he once again forcibly disappeared for 14 days, leaving his family unaware of his whereabouts. CID officers and Roundabout 17 Police Station officers tortured Muntadher. They beat him in sensitive areas and on his face and ears. Additionally, they forced him to stand for long hours with his hands tied behind his back and compelled him to sleep in extremely cold cells. They also insulted and threatened him, and denied him access to a lawyer. Due to the torture inflicted upon him, Muntadher developed severe ear pain that persisted for two years. Following this torture, he was coerced into signing confession papers without being aware of their content. 

    On 5 January 2017, Muntadher was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center. On 11 January 2017, twenty days after his arrest, his family was allowed to visit him for the first time at the Dry Dock Detention Center. 

    Muntadher was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trials, and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the confessions extracted from him under torture were utilized as evidence in his trials. 

    On 16 June 2016, Muntadher was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison as part of a mass trial involving 43 defendants. The charges against him included 1) gathering and rioting, 2) manufacturing explosive devices, 3) arson, 4) negligent destruction, and 5) attempted murder. On 21 May 2018, the court imposed an additional three-year prison sentence on him, along with the revocation of his citizenship. Subsequently, his citizenship was reinstated through a royal pardon. Muntadher later received additional verdicts, bringing the total of his sentence to nearly 80 years. However, the dates, charges, and details of these subsequent verdicts remain unknown.

    Currently held in Jau Prison, Muntadher is subjected to insults by officers and denied proper treatment for stomach problems he has.  His family filed a complaint with the Ombudsman regarding his torture; however, no results have been obtained.

    In August 2023, Muntadher participated in a collective hunger strike with around 800 prisoners in Jau Prison to protest mistreatment and inadequate healthcare. This hunger strike persisted for 40 days, ending in September 2023 with a promise from the prison administration to improve conditions inside the prison.

    Muntadher’s warrantless arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations, unfair trials, and medical neglect represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Muntadher. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, enforced disappearance, denial of attorney access during interrogations, and medical neglect. ADHRB further advocates for the Bahraini government to provide compensation for the injuries he suffered due to torture and hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB calls for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Muntadher, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Muntadher Fawzi Salman appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.

    — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

    Day by day, tyranny is rising as freedom falls.

    The U.S. military is being used to patrol subway stations and police the U.S.-Mexico border, supposedly in the name of national security.

    The financial sector is being used to carry out broad surveillance of Americans’ private financial data, while the entertainment sector is being tapped to inform on video game enthusiasts with a penchant for violent, potentially extremist content, all in an alleged effort to uncover individuals subscribing to anti-government sentiments

    Public and private venues are being equipped with sophisticated surveillance technologies, including biometric and facial recognition software, to track Americans wherever they go and whatever they do. Space satellites with powerful overhead surveillance cameras will render privacy null and void.

    This is the state of our nation that no is talking about—not the politicians, not the courts, and not Congress: the government’s power grabs are growing bolder, while the rights of the citizenry continue to be trampled underfoot.

    Hitler is hiding in the shadows, while the citizenry—the only ones powerful enough to stem the authoritarian tide that threatens to lay siege to our constitutional republic—remain easily distracted and conveniently diverted by political theatrics and news cycles that change every few days.

    This sorry truth has persisted no matter which party has controlled Congress or the White House.

    These are dangerous times.

    Yet while the presidential candidates talk at length about the dangers posed by the opposition party, the U.S. government still poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

    Police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power: these are just a few of the ways in which the police state continues to flex its muscles in a show of force intended to intimidate anyone still clinging to the antiquated notion that the government answers to “we the people.”

    Consider for yourself the state of our nation:

    Americans have little protection against police abuse. The police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

    Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies with their secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

    Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. Indeed, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

    Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. While the courts continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear. When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

    Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

    Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents, is at the heart of almost every debate over educational programming, school discipline, and the extent to which parents have any say over their children’s wellbeing in and out of school.

    Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police forces. With local police agencies acquiring military-grade weaponry, training and equipment better suited for the battlefield, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts patrolled by a standing military army.

    Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

    Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

    Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered the age of authoritarianism, where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and so-called elected officials represent the interests of the corporate power elite. This topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

    Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

    I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

    This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past seventy-plus years regardless of their political affiliation.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    We are walking a dangerous path right now.

    Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

    Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

    The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of “we the people.”

    Now you don’t hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

    In other words, in America, “we the people”— sovereign citizens—call the shots.

    So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

    That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

    In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

    We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

    The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

    Worst of all, “we the people” have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

    How do we reconcile the Founders’ vision of the government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police state’s insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?

    They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.

    We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

    We are repeating the mistakes of history—namely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

    Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote:

    “No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.”

    So where does that leave us?

    Aldous Huxley predicted that eventually the government would find a way of “making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

    The answer? Get un-brainwashed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries,

    Stop allowing yourself to be distracted and diverted.

    Learn your rights.

    Stand up for the founding principles.

    Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

    Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

    Most of all, do these things today.

    The post The State of Our Nation No One’s Talking About first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Following the February 29 Israeli slaughter of at least 115 starving Palestinians lined up for food aid, there was little or no outrage by the same Western media which would have howled if the perpetrator were Russia or Syria.

    According to the Gaza Health Ministry, early morning on Thursday, February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting just southwest of Gaza City for desperately needed food aid. As a result, 115 civilians were killed and over 750 wounded.

    Popular US commenter Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with award-winning analyst Professor Jeffery Sachs, Innocent Gaza civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down, by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they’ve engaged in.

    The official Israeli version of events, unsurprisingly, puts the blame on the Palestinians themselves. The deaths and injuries were supposedly caused by a stampede, and the Israeli soldiers only fired when they felt they were endangered by the crowd. The BBC even cited one army lieutenant as saying that troops had cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots. Mark Regev, a special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, went as far as to tell CNN that Israeli troops had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from Palestinian armed groups.”

    Testimonies from survivors and doctors tell a different story, though, saying the majority of those treated after the incident had been shot by Israeli forces. Legacy media reports, however, use characteristically neutral wording when evidence starts to stack up against Israel. 112 dead in chaotic scenes as Israeli troops open fire near aid trucks, say Gaza officials, a Guardian headline reads. Palestinians always seem to just “die,” not get killed, and Israeli troops seem to have just “opened fire” nearby. The skewed wording conventions persist even despite the attribution to Palestinian officials present in that same headline – officials like the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which was quite clear in accusing Israel of perpetrating a ”massacre” as part of a genocidal war.

    The article does eventually cite the acting Director of al-Awda hospital as saying most of the 161 casualties treated appeared to have been shot. The confusing headline was likely intentional, counting on most people not bothering to read the article in full.

    In a report published on March 3, Euro-Med stated members of its field team were present at the time of the incident and documented Israeli tanks firing heavily towards Palestinian civilians while trying to receive humanitarian aid. The report goes on to cite Dr Jadallah Al-Shafi’i, head of nursing at Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, saying, paramedics and rescue workers were among the victims, and that at Shifa they observed dozens of dead and injured, hit by Israeli gunfire.

    The report also cites Dr Amjad Aliwa, an emergency specialist at Shifa who was also on site when Israel opened fire. According to Aliwa, the Israeli fire began, as soon as the trucks arrived on Thursday at 4 am.

    But the February 29 massacre, tragic as it is, is only a part of the current stage of Israel’s war on Gaza: the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. And like the massacre itself, the whole issue is being subjected to the hands-off wording treatment by establishment media.

    On February 29, the New York Times published an article whose headline, Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children,” suggests starvation is a mysterious malicious force with a will of its own, skirting the mention of the Israeli siege as its obvious cause.

    Again, as with the Guardian article, a few paragraphs in, the NYT piece does state that the hunger is a man-made catastrophe, describing how Israeli forces prevent food delivery and how Israeli bombardments make aid distribution dangerous.

    As Professor Sachs stated, “…Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved! I’m not using an exaggeration, I’m talking literally starving a population. Israel is a criminal, is in non-stop, war crime, status now. I believe in genocidal status.

    Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the February 29 massacre was not the first such incident, and likely not the last. A thread on Twitter/X outlines this, noting, Before yesterday’s ‘Flour Massacre’, the IDF has been shooting indiscriminately for WEEKS at starved Gazans awaiting aid trucks at the exact same spot, virtually every single day!

    The thread (warning: graphic images!), compiled by Gazan analyst and Euro-Med chief of communications Muhammad Shehada, gives examples of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinians every single day in the week prior to February 29.

    You can bet that, were these Syrian or Russian soldiers firing on starving civilians, the outrage would be front page, 24/7, for weeks. Scratch that, they wouldn’t even have to do it – just a hint of an accusation would have been enough to get the presses going.

    Starvation in Syria was another matter

    The NYT article mentioned above notes that Reports of death by starvation are difficult to verify from a distance. But ‘verifying from a distance is precisely what the NYT and other Western media did repeatedly in Syria over the years.

    In areas occupied by (then) al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam, and the other extremist terrorist gangs which the West and corporate media dubbed “rebels,” food aid was always taken by the respective terrorists and withheld from the civilian population, causing starvation in some districts. Madaya, to the west of Damascus, eastern Aleppo, and later eastern Ghouta were districts most loudly campaigned over in legacy media, providing covering fire for the broader US-led campaign to overthrow the Syrian government.

    Backing the claims that the government was starving civilians were mostly “unnamed activists” or activists whose allegiance to Nusra, or even ISIS, was very overt.

    As I would see and hear whenever one of these regions was liberated, ample food and medicine had been sent in, but civilians never saw it. Time and again, in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, al-Waereastern Ghouta, to name key areas, civilians complained that terrorist factions hoarded food and medicine, and if they sold it to the population, it was at extortionist prices people couldn’t afford.

    In the old city of Homs in 2014, back then dubbed by legacy media as the “capital of the revolution,” starved residents I met told me the West’s precious “rebels” had stolen every morsel of food from them, stealing anything of value as well.

    Yet, media headlines about these regions screamed about starvation, outright blaming the Syrian government, and were accompanied by disturbing images of emaciated civilians (some of which were not even from Syria) meant to evoke strong emotions among readers and viewers. The same media largely opts not to show you gaunt, starving, Palestinians in Gaza.

    Tellingly, Syrian towns surrounded by terrorist forces, besieged, bombed, sniped and starved, got virtually no media coverage. It didn’t fit NATO’s narrative of “rebels”=good, Assad=bad.

    But in Gaza the world watches in real time as Palestinians die from the ongoing, preventable, starvation.

    Open the borders

    Some days ago, the CEO of Medical aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, in an interview with CNN, named Israel as the cause of starvation in Gaza.

    It’s very simple: it’s because the Israeli military won’t let it in. We could end this starvation tomorrow very simply if they would just let us have access to people there. But it’s not being allowed. This is what they said [on October 9], ‘Nothing will go in’, Ward said.

    She described the starvation as the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded. What that means is that children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen. And we could finish it tomorrow, we could save them all. But we’re not being able to.

    This is echoed by UNICEF. The press-release for its February 2024 report notes that 15.6 % (one in six children) under two years of age are acutely malnourished in Gaza’s north. Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment,” UNICEF notes.

    Even worse, “since the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today,UNICEF warns, likewise noting the rapid increase of malnutrition is dangerous and entirely preventable.”

    Professor Sachs made an important point: “This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self control in Israel, there is none…They believe in ethnic cleansing or worse. And it is the United States which is the sole support…that is not stopping this slaughter.”

    Air-dropping paltry amounts of food aid into Gaza is not the answer. It both legitimizes Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza and also makes those Palestinians who run toward the aid sitting ducks for the Israeli army to maim or kill. The only solution is to immediately open the borders and allow in the hundreds of aid trucks parked in Egypt. And end the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

  • First published at RT.com.
  • The post The Hunger Killing Gaza’s Children Has a Clear Cause that Few are Willing to Name out Loud first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Sayed Osama Ali Husain was a 16-year-old student when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him from the street without presenting an arrest warrant. During detention, he endured torture, denial of access to legal counsel, and an unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture. He is currently serving a 22-year and 6-month sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.

     

    On 5 March 2017, officers from the Ministry of Interior (MOI), riot police officers, security police officers, and Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) officers arrested Sayed Osama on Al-Maared Street where he was going with his friend to have dinner at a restaurant located in a commercial area in the Bahraini capital, Manama. Subsequently, the officers transported Sayed Osama, simultaneously beating and torturing him, and raided the apartment where he had been hiding. They transferred him to the CID building afterward. Moreover, the parents were not aware that Sayed Osama was arrested at the time, whereas they found out the next day at dawn when they woke up to the news of the raid on the apartment. Approximately six hours after the arrest, they received a call from Sayed Osama stating that he was at the CID building, where he was detained for almost four days.

     

    Before his arrest, Sayed Osama was being pursued on a daily basis for two years. Consequently, he was compelled to hide in an apartment and lived in difficult conditions, experiencing instability and insecurity. Furthermore, two years before his arrest, at the age of 14, Sayed Osama had been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of riots, illegal assembly, and the manufacture of usable and explosive devices. On the other hand, the family’s house received multiple summonses at different times without mentioning the charges or providing any reason.

    At the CID building, officers repeatedly tortured Sayed Osama by beating him on various parts of his body during the entire interrogation period. They stripped him of his clothes and placed him in a very cold room for an extended period of time. He endured various other forms of torture but didn’t disclose all of them out of fear for the feelings of his parents. Due to the torture he endured, Sayed Osama has been suffering from various injuries. The interrogation lasted for about a week and was conducted without the presence of a lawyer. As a result of the threats and torture, he confessed before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) to some of the charges against him.

    On 19 March 2017, two weeks after his arrest, Sayed Osama was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he was able to meet his family for the first time since his arrest. On 11 May 2017, he was transferred to the New Dry Dock Prison, designed for convicts under the age of 21.

     

    Sayed Osama was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, and wasn’t able to present evidence and challenge evidence presented against him. Furthermore, there was no lawyer present as neither the parents hired a lawyer nor did the court provide one.

    The court convicted Sayed Osama between 27 March 2016 and 28 February 2019, in cases related to 1) illegal assembly and rioting, 2) manufacturing usable or explosive devices, 3) intentional damage to buildings or public property, 4) placing structures simulating forms of explosives, 5) manufacturing or trading in explosives or importing weapons, 6) importing or possessing explosives or rifles or pistols, 7) explosion or attempted explosion, 8) arson, 9) violation of the terms of the license to import explosives or their quantity, and 10) negligent destruction. He was sentenced to a total of 22 years and 6 months in prison. Sayed Osama appealed some of the rulings, but the court of appeal rejected all the appeals and upheld the verdicts.

    Sayed Osama is still suffering from injuries resulting from the torture he was subjected to by the officers during his arrest and interrogation in 2017, and he is still being denied treatment and health care.

    Sayed Osama’s warrantless arrest, torture, denial of attorney access, unfair trial, and medical negligence constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

     

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Sayed Osama. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, denial of legal counsel, and medical negligence, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB further advocates for the Bahraini government to provide compensation for the injuries he suffered due to torture and hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a fair retrial for Sayed Osama under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to immediately provide Sayed Osama with the necessary health care to address the injuries resulting from torture, holding it responsible for any additional deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Sayed Osama Ali Husain appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.


  • Students display a butterfly they made at the Madu Adu (science, or ‘let’s do it’) corner. Credit: Photographs and collages by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

    In 1945, the newly formed United Nations held a conference to found the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The main concern of the delegates, particularly those who came from the Third World, was literacy. There needs to be a ‘world crusade against illiteracy’, said Dr Jaime Jaramillo Arango, the rector of the National University of Colombia. For him, and several others, illiteracy was ‘one of the greatest outrages to human dignity’. Abdelfattah Amr, the Egyptian ambassador to the United Kingdom and a champion squash player, said that illiteracy was part of the broader problem of underdevelopment, as evidenced by ‘the shortage of technicians and the scarcity of educational materials’. These leaders found inspiration in the USSR, whose Likbez (‘liquidation of illiteracy’) programme virtually eradicated illiteracy between 1919 and 1937. If the USSR could do this, then so could other largely agricultural societies.

    In December 2023, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a stunning report showing that, since 2018, literacy in reading and mathematics has declined amongst the world’s students. Importantly, they noted that this situation could ‘only partially be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic’: scores in both reading and science had been on the decline before the pandemic began, though they have only worsened since. The reason, the OECD notes, is that there has also been a decline in the time and energy that teachers and parents devote to assisting their students and children. What the OECD does not mention is that this decline in support over the past fifty years is a result of the austerity regimes that have been imposed on most societies in the world. Education budgets have been cut, which means that schools simply do not have enough resources or staff to begin with, let alone enough teachers to provide the extra support that struggling students need. As part of school funding cuts, states have insisted that corporate education providers generate textbooks and learning modules (including online systems) that disempower teachers and demoralise them. As parents work in increasingly uberised professions, they simply do not have the time nor the energy to supplement their children’s education.


    Students from Siddapura and nearby villages participate in a rally to inaugurate the 2023 Joy of Learning Festival in Siddapura.

    Why have states across the world been unwilling to adequately fund public education? In the Global North, where there is significant social wealth, leaders are reticent to tax the highest income earners and wealth holders, tending instead to use the remaining precious resources to fund the military establishment rather than social services such as education, health, and elder care. Global North countries that are within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation system spend trillions of dollars on weapons (three quarters of total global military spending) but miniscule amounts on education and health care. This is evident in the OECD’s report, which notes precipitous declines in mathematical knowledge in countries such as Belgium, Canada, and Iceland – none of them poor countries. The OECD report suggests that this is not merely because of funding levels, but also because of ‘the quality of teaching’. However, the report does not point out that this ‘quality’ is the outcome of austerity policies that rob teachers of the time needed to teach and support students, of having a say in the materials in the curriculum, and of the resources needed for additional training (including sabbaticals).

    In the Global South, the declines are attributed more directly to the collapse of funding. Studies over the past few years, and our own analysis of International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff assessments, show that the organisation has pressured poorer nations to cut public sector funding. Since the wages of most teachers make up part of the public sector wage bill, any such cut results in lower teachers’ salaries and higher teacher to student ratios. An ActionAid study of fifteen countries, from Ghana to Vietnam, showed that the IMF forced these states to cut their public sector wage bills for several budget cycles (up to six years) to the tune of $10 billion  – equivalent to the cost of employing three million primary school teachers. Another study, produced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, shows that the IMF has enforced budget cuts in 189 countries that will remain in place until 2025, by which point three-quarters of the world is projected to remain under austerity conditions. A UN Development Programme report noted that twenty-five poor countries spent 20 percent of their revenues in 2022 to service external debts – more than twice the amount spent on social programmes of all kinds (including education). It would seem that it is more important to satisfy wealthy bondholders than children that need their teachers.

    This horrendous situation condemns Sustainable Development Goal no. 4 (ending illiteracy) to failure. To meet this objective, the world would need to hire 69 million more teachers by 2030. That is not on the agenda of most countries.


    A group of students present the map they made after touring a village as part of the Uru Tiliyona (‘let’s find out about the village’) corner activity.

    In 1946, the UK’s Minister of Education Ellen Wilkinson served as the president of the first UNESCO conference. Wilkinson, who was known as ‘Red Ellen’ (and was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920), led the fight for the unemployed in the 1930s and was a champion of the Spanish Republic. During World War II, she said, we witnessed ‘the great fight put up against this monstrous wickedness [of the ‘narrowest nationalism’ and ‘subservience to the war machine’] by the intellectual worker, by men and women of integrity of mind’. Red Ellen explained that the fascists knew that reason and literacy were their enemies: ‘In every land which the totalitarians over-ran, it was the intellectual who was picked out first to face the firing squad – teacher, priest, professor. The men who meant to rule the world knew that first they must kill those who tried to keep thought free’. Now, these teachers are not put before the firing squad; they are simply fired.

    But these intellectual workers did not surrender then, and they are not surrendering now. Our latest dossier, How the People’s Science Movement Is Bringing Joy and Equality to Education in Karnataka, India, shines a light on intellectual workers who are finding innovative ways to bring scientific and rational thought to children in Karnataka, such as through their movement’s Joy of Learning Festivals, neighbourhood schools, and ‘guest-host’ programme. This is taking place in a context in which the government of India has decided to cut evolution, the periodic table, and the sources of energy from the curriculum and school textbooks – despite the alarm raised by nearly 5,000 scientists and teachers who signed a petition drafted by the Breakthrough Science Society calling upon the government to reverse its decision.

    The petition and Joy of Learning Festivals alike are part of a broader movement to democratise knowledge and dismantle wretched social hierarchies. The Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (Indian Science Knowledge Association or BGVS) holds Joy of Learning Festivals to promote scientific learning and rational thought across the Indian state of Karnataka, which has a population 65 million – about the same as France. Our dossier shows how the BGVS has brought joy to science education for millions of young children in India.


    Students participate in activities at the Kagadha Kattari (crafts, or ‘paper and scissors’) corner.

    Imagine you are a young child who has never been exposed to the laws of science. You find yourself at a BGVS festival in a rural area of Karnataka, where there is a stall with a dismantled bicycle. The teacher at the stall says that if you can assemble the bicycle, you can have it. You run your fingers through the chain, the gears, the frame of the bicycle. You imagine what a fully assembled bicycle looks like and try to put the pieces together, at the same time coming to an understanding of how energy is generated by pushing the pedal, which, through the gears, amplifies the movement of the wheels. You begin to learn about the laws of motion and torque. You learn about the simplicity of machines and their immense utility. And you laugh with your friends as you struggle with the puzzle of all the pieces of the bicycle.

    Such an activity not only brings joy to the lives of a million children in Karnataka; it also enhances their curiosity and challenges their intelligence. This is the heart of the work of the BGVS and its Joy of Learning Festivals, which are run by government schoolteachers recruited and trained by the science movement. This kind of festival not only rescues the collective life but is a mechanism to lift up the work and leadership of local teachers and affirm the importance of scientific thinking.

    Cubans celebrate at the closing march of the literacy campaign in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, December 1961. Photograph by Liborio Noval.

    In 1961, the Cuban singer Eduardo Saborit wrote the beautiful song Despertar (‘The Awakening’) as a tribute to the Cuban literacy campaign. ‘There are so many things I can already tell you’, he sings, ‘because at last I have learned to write. Now I can say that I love you’. Now, I can understand the world. Now, I can no longer feel diminished. Now, I can confidently put one foot before the other and march to change the world.

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  • Abdulla Hatem Yusuf was a 15-year-old minor and school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his home on 15 May 2015. During his detention, he was subjected to torture, sexual harassment, denial of access to his lawyer during interrogation, and an unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture. He is currently serving a 13-year sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.

    On 15 May 2015, plainclothes officers raided Abdulla’s home, conducted a search, and damaged the items inside. They arrested Abdulla while simultaneously beating him, without presenting any arrest warrant or disclosing the reason for the arrest. When the family inquired about his destination, the officers mocked them, stating that they were taking him to the Sitra Police Station. However, Abdulla later made a brief call to his family on the same day, informing them that he was at the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building. Consequently, the family discovered that the officers had lied to them. 

    Abdulla had been arrested twice before. The initial arrest occurred when officers apprehended him from AlFariq Mosque, accusing him of intending to participate in a march on 15 January 2015. He was subsequently released on 29 January 2015. The second arrest occurred on 15 February 2015, when the CID contacted Abdulla’s father, asking him to bring his son to court on charges of harassing a girl by phone. When Abdulla was handed over, it became clear that they were pursuing him for a political case. He was later released on 11 March 2015.

    During Abdulla’s eight-day interrogation at the CID, officers beat him on the jaw and sensitive places of his body, stripped him naked, forced him to stand for extended periods, sexually harassed him, poured cold water on him, and placed him in a cold room. Moreover, they blindfolded him during the entire interrogation period, deprived him of sleep, and insulted him. Abdulla was also denied his right to attorney access, and officers promised his release if he confessed to the fabricated charges against him. Subsequently, he falsely confessed to the charges brought against him. As a result of the torture, Abdulla’s entire body was covered in bruises. On 23 May 2015, eight days after his arrest, Abdulla was transferred to the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), where he was accused of bombing and attempted murder of security personnel. He was later transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he was able to meet his family for the first time one month and a half after his arrest.

    Abdulla was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, and he was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial. Furthermore, the court used confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him, even though he denied them before the judge, informing him that they were extracted under duress. On 28 April 2016, the court sentenced him to 3 years in prison on charges of 1) using fireworks to endanger people’s lives, 2) criminal arson, and 3) burning the National Bank of Bahrain’s ATM for terrorist purposes using explosives. Abdulla appealed the ruling, but the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal and upheld the sentence. Subsequently, on 26 May 2016, the High Criminal Court sentenced Abdulla to an additional 10 years in prison on charges of 4) attempted murder of security personnel, 5) arson, and 6) detonating a locally made bomb for terrorist purposes in the AlNoaim area, resulting in a total of 13 years in prison. Abdulla appealed the ruling, but on 13 December 2017, the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal and upheld the ruling. The verdict was subsequently upheld by the Court of Cassation.

    Abdulla’s warrantless arrest, torture, sexual harassment, denial of access to his lawyer during interrogation, and unfair trial constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Abdulla. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, sexual harassment, and denial of access to legal counsel during the interrogation phase when he was a minor, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release.

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  • It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill.  The Senate Judiciary Committee and the leaders of social media companies were on show to thrash out matters on technology and their threats on January 31 in a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.”  The companies present: X Corp, represented by Linda Yaccarino; TikTok Inc, fronted by Shou Chew; Snap Inc, by Evan Spiegel; Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; and Jason Citron of Discord Inc.

    Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) got the ghoulish proceedings underway with a video featuring victims and survivors.  “I was sexually exploited on Facebook,” declares one.  “I was sexually exploited on Instagram,” comes another.  “I was sexually exploited on X.”  And so forth.

    Exploitation leads to distress and worse.  “The child that … gets exploited is never the same again,” says a parent.  One lost their son to suicide after being exploited on Facebook.  Then, the failings of indifferent Big Tech operatives are carted out.  “How many more kids will suffer and die because of social media?” goes the tune.  “We need Congress to do something for our children and protect them.”

    This supplied Durbin the ideal, moralistic (and moralising) springboard.  And nothing excites those in Congress more than a moral crisis from which much mischief can be made.  There was, he solemnly declared, a “sexual exploitation is a crisis in America.” In the decade from 2013 to 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) had received and increase from 1,380 cyber tips per day to 100,000 daily reports.  The modern smartphone has become a hellish conduit of exploitation. “Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children. Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of paedophiles.  Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. TikTok has become a ‘platform of choice’ for predators to access, engage, and groom children for abuse”.

    From the Republican side, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham saw social media companies in their current design and operation as “dangerous products.  They’re destroying lives, threatening democracy itself. These companies must be reined in or the worst is yet to come.”

    The senators were ploughing familiar ground: the corrosion of mental health including instances of self-harm and suicide, the role of social media in perpetrating a number of crimes (drug dealing, sextortion) and the blissful digital heavens such companies have created for any number of unsavoury cults, ideologies and inclinations.

    What, then, of it?  For one thing, Zuckerberg, who was making his eighth appearance at such a hearing, was hardly going to offer anything constructive – at least in a binding sense.  In the month just passed, internal Meta documents revealed a number of concerns from employees that the company’s messaging apps had featured in various instances of child exploitation.  Little was done about it, which was precisely to be expected.

    As a useful whipping boy of Congressional outrage, Meta’s CEO provided the perfect platform for senatorial outrage.  Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) could spice the airwaves (and the global social media universe) with his righteous display: “There’s families of victims here today.  Have you apologised to the victims?  Would you like to do so now?”  Zuckerberg, reminded that he was on national television, did the performing seal act, turning around and facing the audience.  A number of photos of deceased children were helpfully offered to torment the guilty soul.  “I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg responded.  “Everything that you all have gone through, it’s terrible.  No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have had to suffer.”

    It was a fantastically bloodless response, filled with the usual Big Tech baubles: industry standards would be met, innovations would be made, investments would follow, and new products of sterling safety engineered.  As Zuckerberg went on to explain to Hawley, “I view my job and the job of our company is building the best tools that we can keep our community safe.”  But the model as to how such companies extract, use, and monetise information – surveillance capitalism – is left untouched.  Hawley’s cosmetic suggestion is to create a compensation fund for victims; the social media business model can continue to operate untrammelled because no member of Congress wants to be tarnished with the anti-corporation brush.  Money always comes first.

    Another great threat was also being teased out in the combative questions posed to the social media CEOs.  Their companies have produced hideous, wounding and in some cases lethal products, all of which continue being used by billions, including haranguing, morally indignant politicians and unsuspecting children.  But Congress also showed why it is also a problem to the very people it claims to be protecting.

    The form this takes is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a co-sponsored initiative from Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).  KOSA ostensibly deals with child safety, intended to empower the attorney general of every state, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to file lawsuits against apps or websites for failing to “prevent or mitigate” the various harms that supposedly affect children.  Its effect, far from protecting children, will be something quite different, elevating the “duty of care” principle to scrub content that might cause “anxiety”, “depression” and any other number of undesirable behaviours.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes KOSA as a censorship bill.  And it is easy to see why, with any item of information or news shared susceptible to being banned or modified for causing distress to children.  “Ultimately,” writes the EFF’s Jason Kelley, “no amendment will change the basic fact that KOSA’s duty of care turns what is meant to be a bill about child safety into a censorship bill that will harm the rights of both adult and minor uses.”

    Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer was also deeply unimpressed, telling TechCrunch that, “Dozens of human rights, civil liberties, LGBTQ+ and racial justice groups oppose the reckless legislation being proposed at today’s hearing.”

    In an attempt to stream roll the CEOs into supporting the bill, Senator Blumenthal asked where they stood on its merits.  Spiegel and Yaccarino expressed support for KOSA.  Those from TikTok, Meta and Discord dithered and expressed reservations.  Citron was diplomatic.  “We very much think that a national privacy standard would be great.” Chew noted that “some groups have raised some concerns”.  Zuckerberg blandly stated that, “These are nuanced things.”

    The hearing of January 31 ended with an open conspiracy against genuine change in the social media ecosystem.  Instead of focusing on privacy and surveillance capitalism, the senators were more interested in the regulation of outrage over undesirable content.  Instead of considering genuine reform, the CEOs made non-binding promises about cosmetic adjustments and fictional industry standards.  Along the way, the children were well and truly forgotten.

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  • Last week, as the International Court of Justice heard South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel, we put the scale of the atrocities in perspective by visualizing how many buses it would take to carry the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. We dedicated this visual to Dunia Abu Mohsen, whose first name means “world” in Arabic, and whose time in this world was cruelly cut short by genocide.


    Special thanks to Hadeel Saalok for collaborating with us on this visual.

    The post In Memory of Childhoods Stolen first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Ali was an 18-year-old high school student at Jidhafs Secondary Industrial School for Boys when he was arrested on 13 November 2019. Additionally, he is a former volleyball player at the Bani Jamra Club. Ali had been arrested several times, occasionally multiple times in a single day, during his minor years. During his last detention, he endured torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, sect-based insults, deprivation from practicing his religious rituals, reprisal, blackmail, and denial of contact with his family. Ali was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison in an unfair mass trial with charges of a political background. Currently, he is serving his sentence at Jau Prison.

    On 13 November 2019, at 9:10 p.m., the playground of Diraz Park was surrounded by masked officers in civilian clothing, along with jeeps containing riot police officers. They blocked the street and instilled fear among individuals present at the park. Officers arrested a group of young people playing football, including Ali, without presenting any arrest warrants. They beat him with wooden and metal objects and kicked him in the backyard of AlHelli Supermarket in Diraz. Later, Ali was taken back to Diraz Park, where he was subjected to further beatings. The officers demanded that Ali stage an attack on a jeep and a bus, but he refused, leading to more beatings and kicks. Subsequently, Ali was taken to the Cavalry Police Station in Budaiya (Ministry of Interior, Cavalry Unit), where military forces and officers in civilian clothing continued to beat and kick him. He was then taken to the backyard of the Cavalry Police Station, where a group of police dogs attacked him and other detainees. Finally, Ali was taken to Budaiya Police Station. On 14 November 2019, at 9:00 AM, he was transferred to AlQala’a Hospital for a medical examination and then to Building 15 for investigations at Jau Prison.

    Ali’s family became aware of his arrest when they received a call from an individual who witnessed the arrest and the subsequent transfer of Ali to Budaiya Police Station. Upon receiving this information, the family went to the police station with the hope of understanding the reason behind his arrest. However, they were initially informed that he was not present at the station. Unconvinced, the family persisted and chose to wait in front of the station. Ali’s father informed the officers that they had been misled in a previous instance regarding their son’s arrest.

    On 14 and 15 November 2019, Ali made two phone calls to his family from two different numbers, each lasting no more than a second. He sounded tired and mentioned that he was fine and that he was located at the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID). However, Ali’s family, suspecting he was at the Investigations Building in Jau Prison (Building 15), did not receive any official declaration confirming his location.

    Initially, Ali was unaware of the charges against him but was subjected to torture during interrogations to force him to confess to terrorist acts. Officers from the Cavalry Police Station and Jau Prison tortured Ali for nine days, interrogating him for approximately 18 hours each day. He was denied sleep for more than a few hours, allowed to sit for only a few minutes, and forced to stand handcuffed from the back with metal chains. Ali endured electric shocks, beatings, kicks, and death threats. Officers also threatened his family and insulted him based on his Shia sect, as well as prominent religious figures. Ali was also prohibited from freely practicing his religious rituals. He managed to contact his family on 26 November for half an hour. During interrogations, officers asked Ali about his links with some people and charged him with assaulting a jeep and a bus, among other charges. Ali refused to confess, but he was forced to sign a paper from the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) without knowing its contents. He was prohibited from contacting or seeing his lawyer during interrogations.

    Ali showed signs of beatings on his waist and other signs resulting from electric shocks, and he was unable to urinate. He initiated a hunger strike on 8 April 2020, protesting the fabricated charges and the torture he endured. After a week, Ali ended his hunger strike in the absence of a response from the authorities.

    Ali had previously experienced multiple arrests when he was a minor. On 13 February 2014, at the age of 12, he was arrested and subjected to severe beatings by the police. Subsequently, on 14 April 2018, during his final exams period, Ali was detained for six months but was released without facing trial. Following this arrest, he received numerous threats from unidentified individuals. Civilian vehicles would often patrol around Ali’s residence and the routes he frequented, engaging in phone conversations with him. These individuals threatened to arrest him and fabricate serious charges if he refused to cooperate as an informant, a proposition Ali rejected. Ali’s father was also arrested, and he was threatened with Ali’s arrest. The perpetrators claimed they could fabricate charges against Ali if his father did not confess, a threat that materialized on 13 November 2019.

    On 21 November 2019, Ali was presented before the PPO, and his lawyer was denied access to attend. The PPO decided to detain him for 60 days in pre-trial detention at the Dry Dock Detention Center. Subsequently, on 16 January 2020, the PPO, in the presence of Ali and his lawyer, opted to extend his pre-trial detention for an additional 60 days. On 18 March 2020, the pre-trial period was once again extended, this time without the presence of Ali or his lawyer. On the morning of 21 November 2019, Ali was initially at the PPO, then transferred to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) and AlQala’a Hospital. Finally, during the night, he was moved to the Dry Dock Detention Center.  His lawyer was only present once, at the PPO during the second hearing on 16 January 2020. Ali was able to contact his lawyer about a month after being transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center.

    The judge brought multiple charges against Ali, including joining a terrorist cell belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) in Iran; engaging in training and armament, participating in illegal assembly, and other offenses. Despite Ali’s explanation to the judge that he had been subjected to torture and coerced into signing papers without awareness of their content, along with his plea to be released and tried under the principles of a fair trial, the judge opted to extend the period of Ali’s pre-trial detention by an additional 30 days.

    On 3 November 2020, the First High Criminal Court convicted Ali in absentia as part of a mass trial that included 52 defendants, which lacked the minimum conditions for a fair trial. The charges against him included 1) joining a terrorist group called “the Bahraini Hezbollah”, 2) intentionally setting a bus on fire and breaking its windows, and 3) possessing Molotov cocktails with others. Ali received a ten-year prison sentence. Importantly, Ali was unaware that the trial was taking place, and he learned about the ruling against him through a later phone call with his family. Subsequently, he appealed the decision, but the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal on 11 April 2021. The Court of Cassation also upheld the ruling on 12 July 2021. 

    On 25 September 2021, a day before the broadcast of a television report highlighting violations against children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center, an officer, in collaboration with a crew from the security media, blackmailed prisoners within the young convicts’ section, which included Ali. They promised to release them under the condition that they assert they are experiencing very normal prison conditions. Despite a significant number of prisoners refusing to comply with this coerced narrative, the media crew proceeded to film the prisoners playing football and obtained statements from some of them. This was an attempt to whitewash the prison’s image and discredit the information presented in the report about violations, claiming it to be incorrect.

    On 15 June 2022, Ali and three of his fellow young convicts complained about the intense heat inside their cell, as the air conditioning had been deliberately turned off for them. In response, they knocked on the cell door, requesting to have the air conditioning turned on. Instead of addressing their concerns, the officers at the Dry Dock Detention Center assaulted them and used pepper spray on their faces. Following this incident, the prison administration transferred them to solitary confinement, where they were denied the right to contact their families for more than a week. 

    During 2023, Ali faced degrading inspections and mistreatment from some officers at Jau Prison, including Officer Hisham AlZayani. Ali was admitted to Salmaniya Hospital, where he forcibly disappeared from his family, who only learned about his transfer two days later. He was also denied contact throughout the year as a collective punishment imposed on him and several other prisoners.

    In November 2023, Ali’s family requested the PPO to appoint a lawyer for him, aiming to retry him before the Children Restorative Justice Court under the Restorative Justice Law for Children of 2021. However, the PPO did not respond to their request, even though most of the charges brought against him were alleged to have occurred when he was a minor.

    Ali’s arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, unfair trial, solitary confinement, insult based on his sect, deprivation of his right to perform religious rituals, reprisal, extortion, humiliating inspections, and denial of his right to contact his family violate the Bahraini Constitution as well as international obligations to which Bahrain is a party. These treaties include the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Ali’s arbitrary detention several times previously as a minor and his exposure to torture, blackmail, threats, and insults, in addition to depriving him of his right to a fair retrial before the Children’s Court – given that most of the crimes he was convicted of allegedly occurred when he was a child – is considered a clear violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is a party. Given the absence of an arrest warrant and Ali’s conviction in absentia in a mass trial lacking the minimum standards for a fair trial and relying on false confessions extracted under torture, it can be concluded that he is arbitrarily detained by the Bahraini authorities.

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to fulfill their human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Ali. ADHRB urges the Bahraini government to investigate all allegations of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, torture, sect-based insults, deprivation of his right to perform his religious rituals, reprisal, blackmail, degrading inspections, and denial of the right to contact his family, to ensure accountability for those responsible. Furthermore, ADHRB calls on Bahrain to compensate Ali for all the violations he endured in prison, including health problems resulting from the torture he suffered, or at the very least, to conduct a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release.

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  • Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem.  He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas.  But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.

    The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods.  There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes.  No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase.  No credit card bills that come due in the new year.  No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

    Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life.  That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

    These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories.  They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected.  They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

    Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

    It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

    To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

    While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

    Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

    A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs.  Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message.  As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

    Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks.  But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me.  As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter.  A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

    I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

    In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking.  On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred.  He writes:

    The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

    Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness.  This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

    Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death.  Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners.  They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

    The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit.  In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

    Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

    It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

    It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

    It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

    It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

    It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

    It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

    Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

    Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another.  Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

    Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers.  His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

    I have nothing against Santa.  I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind.  He was fat and jolly.  He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas.  But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

    That is what I want.  To remember.

     

    The post Jesus, Gaza, and the Murder of Useless People first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • I recently witnessed the birth of one of my relative’s daughter. The entire event was bathed in a spiritual halo. The relative’s tormented screams – likened by a person to an animalistic agony – were supposedly neutralized by the prayer which she was loudly reciting. When the baby finally came out, everyone was thankful to God for transforming the pain of pregnancy and childbirth into the beauty of the child. In the end, everything was justified by the radiant plenitude of the child’s face. Whereas the world is considered as coarse, as full of unmanageable problems, the baby is held as a fresh beginning, as a blank slate gleaming with innocence. While everyone was talking about how cute the child was, I tried to extricate myself from the absolute serenity of the baby’s face, its pristine distance from any contaminating dependency, to focus on how its very cuteness was the result of a long process. To be more precise, I remembered that the relative under discussion had to undergo the costly and painful procedure of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to hold her daughter in her hands. But in the jubilation brought about by the infant, this history was forgotten, as if God had directly gifted the infant to us.

    The glorification of the Child is based on the romanticization of maternity, in which women are predominantly conceived as baby incubators. Their bodies are never their own; they always belong to a higher ideal, in this case – the Child. Against this background of intense pro-natalism, it is refreshing to recall Periyar’s seemingly absurd statement that “for the true liberation of women, the problem of child bearing should be totally destroyed”. For him, it is because of child bearing that “women are unable to demonstrate that they can live without men. As men have no such burden, they are so placed as to declare that they can live without women. Besides, problems of maternity make women seek the help of others and this gives rise to male domination.” In order to destroy the illusion that women can’t live without men, Periyar exhorts the former to stop bearing children. When asked if this move wouldn’t lead to the eventual death of the human species, Periyar retorts: “What difficulty would fall upon women if the world doesn’t increase? What danger could befall women if the human race doesn’t multiply? We don’t understand what difficulty would arise (because of the human race not reproducing) for those who talk about such kind of justice? We don’t know of any benefit that has come out of the human race that has multiplied for so long.”

    By supporting the extinction of the human race, Periyar opens a space where the unquestioned superiority of the Child can be displaced in favor of alternative ways of living. Since the figure of the Child forces subaltern groups to sacrifice their own identity for a superior ideal, any resistance to it has to begin with an act of assertive incineration whereby the solidity of long-held beliefs melts into the drain of oblivion. The theological splendor of the Child, the fullness of its presence, has to be erased in order to expose it as a historical construction that pretends to be a metaphysical fact. In order to do this, one has to step out of the fantasy of spiritual security, the ideologically enforced heavenliness of the child. In pro-natalist ideology, the Child functions as an emblem of permanent security: no matter how much atrocities the institution of procreation inflicts upon women, no matter how deeply one feels the arbitrariness of domination, in the end, everything turns out to be right, evident in the glow of the infant’s face. This “fascism of the baby’s face,” as Lee Edelman calls it, is predicated upon the belief that life has an ultimate meaning, that the future is a teleological endpoint towards which we are duty-bound to move. Thus, the image of the Child constructs a linear future in which human desire gets a clearly determined trajectory in the wider framework of an ultimately meaningful history. In opposition to the restriction of human desire within the continuum of a teleological temporality, Shane Greene proposes “the figure of a human life never even conceived. I call it the never-born. It exists but only in the minds of the already born and possesses no material manifestation whatsoever. No sperm hooking up with egg, no embryo, no fetus, no natal development, no forty weeks, no moment of birth, no child to care for, no adult in the making, no mortality to face.”

    The identity of the never-born stands for a radical nihilism in which human desire loses any sense of meaningfulness. Whereas the Child symbolizes a locus of meaning that is visible in the divinized body of the infant, the never-born indicates a meaningless absence, a pure void that lurks in the ostensible stability of those who exist. The never-born doesn’t signify any existent thing; it is what defies those things, the medium in which nothing happens, everything perishes. That’s why it can be connected with the fact of cosmic extinction, which Ray Brassier articulates as follows:

    [S]ooner or later both life and mind will have to reckon with the disintegration of the ultimate horizon, when, roughly one trillion, trillion, trillion (101728) years from now, the accelerating expansion of the universe will have disintegrated the fabric of matter itself, terminating the possibility of embodiment. Every star in the universe will have burnt out, plunging the cosmos into a state of absolute darkness and leaving behind nothing but spent husks of collapsed matter. All free matter, whether on planetary surfaces or in interstellar space, will have decayed, eradicating any remnants of life based in protons and chemistry, and erasing every vestige of sentience – irrespective of its physical basis. Finally, in a state cosmologists call ‘asymptopia’, the stellar corpses littering the empty universe will evaporate into a brief hailstorm of elementary particles. Atoms themselves will cease to exist. Only the implacable gravitational expansion will continue, driven by the currently inexplicable force called ‘dark energy’, which will keep pushing the extinguished universe deeper and deeper into an eternal and unfathomable blackness.

    Cosmic extinction underscores that the mind is dependent on matter, that mind itself is an intricate organization and form of matter. Since thought itself is a natural process, it is subject to the fact of extinction contained in universal material interaction. As a dissipation of material intensities, the human mind is marked by a loss that can’t be incorporated into the legible script of the Child. The Child promises to undo a loss that is located within the individual experience of the human being. By constructing a narrative of a linear desire, natalism positions the Child as an object that can provide immediate satisfaction. However, the loss represented by cosmic extinction is not a human loss; it an extra-human loss that constitutes the very foundations of humanity. Even as cosmic extinction subjects everything to a crippling impermanence, its working accounts for the transition from dead nature to organic nature. Since matter constitutes the basis of human experience, it can’t be exorcised. It is not a hole that can be plugged through the Child. Rather, it is a hole that forms our identity: as matter in motion, our organic lives are dissipations of energy on account of which we are dead already, death lives within us as the capacity of unbinding.

    This “inbuilt loss,” as Alenka Zupancic calls it, means that the permanent security offered by the Child is false. The future can’t be secured through the fictional coherence of a fixed object like the Child, which stands aloof from all concrete interrelations to exude an untouched purity. On the contrary, “there are in general no things in the world that would exist in isolation from the universal links – things always exist in a system of relations to one another.” Universal material interaction – matter in motion – is the structural context within which human beings develop and deploy their capacities. As Evald Ilyenkov notes, “each individual phenomenon (thing, event, etc.) is always born and exists in its definiteness and later dies within a certain concrete whole, within a system of individual things developing in a law-governed way.” Our mode of enjoyment, then, lies not in the attainment of a final, invulnerable object lying beyond the system but in the exploration of our objective interdependencies with other components of the system. This enables a deeper understanding of ourselves and thus enhances our practical powers. Instead of remaining content with an ultimate object of satisfaction, human desire enjoys its own repetitive movement of self-development and self-expansion. Desire is concerned not with the realization of an authentic self, essence or identity but in its own consumption to the end, as it transcends its limited boundaries to relate itself to the entire system.

    Given that human life is the dissipation and unbinding of matter, desire enjoys the negation of its own immediacies, the consumption of its restricted boundaries. In response to the question “How does one use life?” Max Stirner said, “In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up…The question runs not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.” Any reified social organization that pretends to offer the narcissistic solace of a solid existence is false. As a radical indifference towards everything, as the movement of nothingness, human life “refers to a persistent negation that offers assurance of nothing at all: neither identity, nor survival, nor any promise of a future.” It only insists on the self-consuming dynamic of desire whereby everything is treated as matter in motion, as consisting of its own dissipation.

    It is the inevitability of extinction that forces us to think of ourselves as eminently historical, contingent creatures who can enjoy only by freely determining their own mode of dissipation. As organisms that are dead already, whose existence consists in the constant overcoming/negation of their own selves, our truth lies in accepting this unilateral fact. The unilaterality of extinction “means letting go of myself, renouncing my absolute will to be unique, separate from others, for that too traps me into one form of being I. To remain one’s own is thus to let go of the will to be only one’s own.” This process itself stands for the I, which constantly consumes itself by treating everything as nothing, by refusing to absolutize anything as an unbreakable limit. The overturning of all hierarchical ideals allows the human subject to locate itself in the system of universal relations that is constantly negating itself in the movement towards cosmic extinction. “I am an auto-cannibal, eating myself to protect myself from my own loss into something other, something fixed, alien. If I fail to destroy myself on my own terms, then I am destroyed by another.” The auto-cannibalism of humanity is obscured by the “economic bilateralization” of extinction’s unilateral terms, whereby the latter is subsumed under an exclusivist regime of dissipation.

    Through the symbol of the Child, natalism enacts such a bilateralization as it construes heterosexual reproduction as the sole form in which the human species can articulate its negativity. Insofar as the Child becomes the exclusive manifestation of human future, the inevitability of extinction is trivialized as a trifling matter when compared to its grandeur. In response, we need multiple modes of dissipation, which means making motherhood one option among many others; and it is actually optional only if people have access to contraception and abortions, if people who don’t have children are not stigmatized. Once alternatives are promoted, reproduction itself will be divested of its mystical aura to become a mere historical arrangement. Currently, the materiality of sex – its transitory status as “expenditure without reserve, as the irreparable loss of presence, the irreversible usage of energy” – is translated into the eternal durability of procreation, manifest in the Child. Once people have access to alternatives to reproduction, they will be able to assess hetero-genital sex in a level-headed manner as a contingent practice, and not view it as an overbearing moral imperative. Furthermore, with the democratic development of artificial reproduction technologies, concerned with the ability for ectogenesis (the growth of a fetus outside the body), the practice of having children could be divorced from the fantasmatic figure of the Child. The end of the Child, the end of patriarchy, could thus open a future unbound by any specific future.

    The post Against the Cult of the Child first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Israel’s repeated military assaults on Gaza have devastating consequences for children. Israel is not only killing Palestinian children at astonishing rates, but also killing the childhood of those who survive.

    The post Six Wars Old first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Malak Mattar (Palestine), A Life Stolen Before It Had Begun, 2023.

    Malak Mattar (Palestine), A Life Stolen Before It Had Begun, 2023.

    The indecency of the phrase ‘humanitarian pause’ is obvious. There is nothing humanitarian about a brief interlude between bouts of horrendous violence. There is no true ‘pause’, merely the calm before the storm continues. We are witnessing the bureaucratisation of immorality, the use of old words with great meaning (‘humanitarian’) and their reduction to new, empty phrases that betray their original meanings. Before the debris from the first rounds of Israeli bombs could be cleared, the bombing resumed just as viciously as before.

    The word ‘humanitarian’ has been severely bruised by the West. You might remember another phrase, ‘humanitarian intervention’, that was used as cover for the destruction of Libya in 2011 after the legitimacy of Western military intervention had been eviscerated by the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003. To rehabilitate this legitimacy, the West pushed the United Nations to hold a conference that resulted in a new doctrine, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which, while purporting to ‘ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’, instead provided the West with a UN Security Council mandate (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) for the use of force. The attack on Libya in 2011 took place under this doctrine. The guise of humanitarianism was used to destroy the Libyan state and throw the country into what appears to be a permanent civil war. There has never been even a whiff of R2P when it comes to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza (not in 2008–09, not in 2014, and not now).

    It does not seem to matter that more Palestinians have been displaced and killed by Israel since 7 October than were displaced and killed in the Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) of 1948. If the word ‘humanitarian’ meant something in 1948, it certainly does not mean much now.

    Hanaa Malallah (Iraq), The Looting of the Museum of Art, 2003.

    Hanaa Malallah (Iraq), The Looting of the Museum of Art, 2003.

    As the numbers of the dead and displaced increase, a sense of numbness grows. It began with a hundred dead, then a hundred more, and is rapidly escalating into the tens of thousands. In Iraq, approximately a million people were killed by the US onslaught, the sheer scale of death and the anonymity surrounding it forcing a sense distance from the rest of the world. It is difficult to wrap one’s head around these numbers unless there are stories attached to each of the dead and displaced.

    Part of the problem here is that the international division of humanity makes for unjust accounting of human life: were the Palestinians killed in Gaza treated with as much dignity as the Israelis killed on 7 October? Are their lives, and deaths, assigned equal worth? The uneven response to these deaths, alongside the uncritical acceptance of this unevenness, suggests that this international division of humanity remains in place and is not only accepted, but also perpetuated, by Western leaders, who make allowances for the killing of more brown bodies than white ones, the latter seen as precious, the former seen as disposable.

    Abdel Rahman al-Muzayen (Palestine), Untitled, 2000.

    Abdel Rahman al-Muzayen (Palestine), Untitled, 2000.

    During the ‘humanitarian pause’, a hostage transfer took place through which Hamas and the Palestinian factions released 110 Israelis while Israel released 240 Palestinian women and children. The stories of the Israeli casualties, many of them residents of settlements near the Gaza perimeter fence, and other hostages such as the Thai and Nepalese fieldworkers are now well-known. Less frequently discussed and much less understood are the stories of the Palestinian casualties. Equally disregarded is the fact that after 7 October, Israel launched a mass campaign to detain over 3,000 Palestinians, including nearly 200 children. There are more Palestinians in Israeli prisons now than before 7 October. During the first four days of the truce alone, Israel arrested almost as many Palestinians as it released through the hostage transfer.

    It is of note that most (more than two-thirds) of the Palestinians released from Israeli prisons are never charged with any crime and have been held in ‘administrative detention’ in the military’s legal system, meaning that they are held without a time limit, ‘without trial [and] without having committed an offence, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future’, as defined by the human rights organisation B’tselem. Some of them have been lost in the maze of the Israeli incarceration system indefinitely, unable to exercise even the most basic right of habeas corpus, with no court appearance, no access to a lawyer, and no access to the evidence against them. Israel currently holds more than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners, many of them associated with left-wing factions (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). More than 2,000 of these prisoners are being held in administrative detention.

    Many of these Palestinian prisoners are children. Many of them spend years in the Israeli system, often under administrative detention, unable to make a case for their release. The Defence for Children International (Palestine) reports that 500–700 children are detained each year, and a chilling report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2015 showed that Israel is in full violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). Article 37 of the convention says that the ‘arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time’. As multiple cases show, Israel uses arrests as a measure of first resort and holds children for long periods of time.

    Defence for Children International studied sworn affidavits from 766 child detainees from the occupied West Bank arrested between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2022. The following data emerged from their analysis:

    75% were subjected to physical violence.
    80% were strip-searched.
    97% were interrogated without a family member present.
    66% were not properly informed of their rights.
    55% were shown or made to sign a paper in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not understand.
    59% were arrested at night.
    86% were not informed of the reason for their arrest.
    58% were subjected to verbal abuse, humiliation, or intimidation during or after their arrest.
    23% were detained in solitary confinement for interrogation purposes for a period of two or more days.

    Sliman Mansour (Palestine), Prison, 1982.

    Sliman Mansour (Palestine), Prison, 1982.

    There are thousands of untold stories of the brutality inflicted upon Palestinian children. One of them, Ahmad Manasra, was arrested on 12 October 2015 at the age of thirteen in occupied East Jerusalem on the charge that he stabbed two Israelis: Yosef Ben-Shalom, a twenty-year-old security guard, and Naor Shalev Ben-Ezra, a thirteen-year-old boy, who survived the attack. The Israeli courts initially found Ahmad guilty of the stabbing but then changed their opinion to say that his fifteen-year-old cousin Hassan Khalid Manasra, who was shot dead at the scene, had stabbed the two Israelis. There was no evidence of Ahmad’s complicity, yet he was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison.

    Still in prison, Ahmad Manasra (now 21) has been held in solitary confinement for months on end. Khulood Badawi of Amnesty International said in late September that Ahmad ‘was taken to the mental health unit at Ayalon prison after spending the better part of two years in solitary confinement. The Israeli Prison Service has requested an extension of Ahmad’s isolation for another six months in brazen violation of international law. Prolonged solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment’.

    Ahmad’s case took place during a wave of what were called ‘knife attacks’, when young Palestinians were accused of rushing at Israeli military posts with knives and were then shot dead. At that time, I investigated several of these attacks and found them to be based on little more than the word of Israeli soldiers. For instance, on 17 December 2015, Israeli soldiers at the Huwwara checkpoint shot fifteen-year-old Abdullah Hussein Ahmad Nasasra to death. Eyewitnesses told me that the boy had his hands in the air when he was fatally shot. One of them, Nasser, told me that there was no knife, and that he ‘saw them kill the boy’. Kamal Badran Qabalan, an ambulance driver, was not allowed to retrieve the body. The Israelis wanted control over the body and the story they would tell about it.

    Another story is that of twenty-three-year-old Anas al-Atrash in Hebron. Anas and his brother Ismail returned home from a week of work in Jericho, their car filled with fruits and vegetables. At a checkpoint, Anas got out of the car when instructed to do so and an Israeli soldier shot him dead. The next morning, Israeli media reported that Anas tried to kill the Israeli soldiers. The journalist Ben Ehrenreich, who reported the story with a fierce determination for the truth, sought out the family’s version. Anas had no interest in politics, they told him. He was studying accounting and hoped to get married soon. The Israeli soldiers and intelligence officials kept asking Ismail if his brother had a knife. There was simply no knife. Anas had been killed in cold blood. ‘This is a savage country’, an eyewitness told Ehrenreich. ‘They have no shame’. He meant the Israeli soldiers.

    Hakim Alakel (Yemen), from the series The Eye of the Bird, 2013.

    Hakim Alakel (Yemen), from the series The Eye of the Bird, 2013.

    The grammar of the Israeli occupation is to put pressure on Palestinians until an act of violence takes place – a knife attack, say, or even a fabricated knife attack – and then use that event as an excuse to deepen the displacement of Palestinians with more illegal settlements. The events that have followed 7 October maintain this logic. Israel has used people like Anas, Abdullah, and Ahmad, and the fabricated narratives surrounding their alleged crimes, as the raison d’etre to increase the demolition of Palestinian homes and expand illegal Israeli settlements, accelerating the Permanent Nakba.

    Ten years ago, I met with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who teaches at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shaloub-Kevorkian studies how the occupation produces an everyday form of victimhood that stretches from the streets to Palestinians’ most intimate of spaces. Her book Security Theology, Surveillance, and the Politics of Fear (2015) provides a glimpse into the industry of fear that is produced and reproduced in the everyday violence inflicted upon Palestinians by settlers and the military, including the difficulties that Palestinians face in giving birth and burying their dead. The depth of the violence and uncertainty, Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes, moves Palestinian women to speak of ‘being choked, suffocated, or gagged’ and has led many of their children to lose their will to live. There is widespread social trauma in Palestine or what Shalhoub-Kevorkian calls ‘sociocide’: the death of society.

    More than fifty years of an occupation and war have created a strange dynamic. Both Ehrenreich and Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s work offer windows into this madness. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who lives in Jerusalem, told me that she is part of a group of women who walk Palestinian children to school each day, since it is too dangerous for them to confront the police and the settlers on their own, or even in the company of their Palestinian family and friends. ‘Bikhawfuni!’ (‘They scare me!’), one girl, Marah (age 8), told her.

    The children draw pictures at school. One of them drew a clown, a Palestinian clown. When Shalhoub-Kevorkian asked the child (age 9) what a Palestinian clown is, he explained, ‘This is a Palestinian clown. Clowns in Palestine cry’.

    Abdul Rahim Nagori (Pakistan), Sabra and Shatila, 1982.

    Abdul Rahim Nagori (Pakistan), Sabra and Shatila, 1982.

    The poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who moved to Beirut to edit the magazine Lotus in the aftermath of the 1977 military coup in Pakistan, wrote with horror about the plight and struggles of the Palestinians:

    Tere aaqa ne kiya ek Filistin barbaad
    Mere zakhmon ne kiye kitne Filistin aabaad.

    Your enemies destroyed one Palestine.
    My wounds populated many Palestines.

    Faiz’s poem ‘A Lullaby for a Palestinian Child’, written during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, reflects the reality facing Palestinian children today:

    Don’t cry children.
    Your mother has just cried herself to sleep.

    Don’t cry children.
    Your father has just left this world of sorrow.

    Don’t cry children,
    Your brother is in an alien land.
    Your sister too has gone there.

    Don’t cry children.
    The dead sun has just been bathed and the moon is buried in the courtyard.

    Don’t cry children.
    For if you cry,
    Your mother, father, brother, and sister
    And the sun, and the moon
    Will make you cry ever more.

    Maybe if you smile,
    They’ll one day return, disguised
    to play with you.

    The post Your Enemies Destroyed One Palestine; My Wounds Populated Many Palestines first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Mujtaba AbdulHusain Ali Ahmed was a 16-year-old high school student when he and his friend Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab were arrested at the latter’s grandfather’s house on 27 August 2019 without a warrant. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and reprisal, and has been denied his right to a fair retrial before the Children Restorative Justice Court. He is currently held in Jau Prison, serving an 18-year and 7-month prison sentence resulting from an unfair trial.

    On 27 August 2019, plainclothes officers and Riot Police officers stormed the home of Husain’s grandfather, where Mujtaba and Husain were sleeping, without presenting an arrest or search warrant. Subsequently, officers from the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) and Security Police officers apprehended them. Then, they moved them to a bus where young men and children had gathered after authorities raided and arrested them in their homes. While on the bus, the officer asked Husain to tell him where Kameel Juma Hasan -the son of activist Najah Yusuf- was, so that he would release everyone on the bus. When he refused, he beat both of them. He was then moved to the CID building, where he forcibly disappeared, as his family knew nothing about his whereabouts. He also was denied contacting them.

    Mujtaba was convicted in 2017 of gathering charges and was sentenced in absentia to one year’s imprisonment and a fine. However, he was not imprisoned. In 2019, Mujtaba and his friend, Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab, knew that they were part of a chased group in which the authorities wanted Kameel Juma Hasan. 

    During Mujtaba’s interrogation at the CID, which lasted for two weeks, CID officers brutally tortured him and placed him in solitary confinement for eight days. They severely beat and kicked him all over his body, especially on sensitive areas, stripped him naked, and sexually harassed him. They presented him with a choice: either falsely stating that his friends Kameel Juma Hasan, Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab, and Habib Ali Habib committed a crime, or fabricating charges against his uncle, Qasim AlMoumen, who was outside Bahrain. They also threatened to arrest his grandmother and charge her in the case if he did not confess. As a result, he falsely confessed to his friends under pressure. Because of the intense torture, he developed weak hearing. Subsequently, Mujtaba was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he managed to contact his family for the first time since his arrest. However, the officers insisted that he put the phone on speaker mode and only allowed him a very brief call. This call lasted for a few seconds, during which Mujtaba only managed to say, “I’m under investigation, and I’m fine,” before hanging up. The prison administration permitted him to meet his family for the first time three months after his arrest.

    Mujtaba was not brought promptly before a judge, did not have adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, and was denied access to an attorney. In court, he informed the judge that his confessions were made under torture; however, the judge ignored his statement. Furthermore, he did not attend all the court sessions as the prison administration was denying him the right to participate in the sessions under false pretexts, such as not shaving his hair. Despite being a minor, no one was allowed to accompany him to the trial. Consequently, the court convicted Mujtaba between 2019 and 2020 in 12 cases related to illegal gathering, riots, criminal arson, and the manufacturing and possession of explosive packaging and Molotov. It sentenced him to a total of 22 years in prison with a fine while issuing some of these sentences in absentia. Mujtaba appealed his ruling, and it was reduced to 18 years and seven months on appeal.

    While serving his sentence at the Dry Dock Detention Center, officers placed Mujtaba in solitary confinement many times. On two occasions, they beat him and put him in solitary confinement just because he was standing and looking out of the cell window. In September 2023, Mujtaba was transferred to Jau Prison after he turned 21 years old, where he is currently serving his sentence.

    On 16 September 2023, about 28 young convicts initiated a hunger strike due to the Jau prison administration’s disregard for their rights. The prisoners’ demands included their request for education, family visits, healthy meals, clothing, proper medical treatment, and to be retried before the Children Restorative Justice Court under the Restorative Justice Law for Children. Mujtaba joined this strike, demanding a retrial before the Children’s Court, but the Public Prosecution rejected his repeated requests. He consistently asked the representatives of the Public Prosecutor to apply the Restorative Justice Law for Children, issued in 2021, to his case, as he was sentenced in the adult court when he was 17 years old. In his last meeting with a Public Prosecutor’s representative, the official assured him that a report of his case would be filed with the prisoners and children’s court. However, he has yet to receive any response. The prison administration also promised Mujtaba to meet his demands, so he ended his hunger strike. However, his demands have not yet been fulfilled.

    Mujtaba’s warrantless arrest as a minor, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, torture, unfair trial, reprisal, and denial of his right to a fair retrial before the Children Restorative Justice Court all constitute violations of Bahrain’s obligations under the Bahraini Constitution and international treaties. These treaties include the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

    As such, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Mujtaba. ADHRB also urges an investigation into the allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, unfair trial, and ill-treatment, with a commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable. Furthermore, it calls on Bahrain to respect Mujtaba’s rights as a child, provide him compensation for all the violations he has faced in prison, or at the very least, respond to his demand for retrial under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Mujtaba AbdulHusain Ali Ahmed appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza’s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital “cannot take more children with the wounds of war…with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones.”

    Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing.”

    We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the woefully inadequate gesture of a seven day truce. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza’s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners, disease.

    Those with influence among authorities in Israel and the United States must reckon not only with the reckless carnage they are inflicting on children. They must also grasp the likelihood of an exponentially increased death toll from battlefield illnesses afflicting children. Surviving Gazans live amid ominous pre-conditions for outbreaks of water-borne diseases especially deadly to children: a mounting number of unburied corpses, unsafe drinking water, overcrowding in impromptu mass shelters where sick people are  denied any access to health care, as well as a breakdown of basic sewage and sanitation systems.

    The World Health Organization warns that Gaza is “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks.”

    On November 15, 2023, the World Health Organization reported more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea had been documented in Gaza since mid-October — already a dramatic increase compared to previous years and after only two months of the bombardment.

    “Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO.

    Yet. without electricity and fuel, it’s impossible to repair Gaza’s collapsed health care system. Israeli authorities cut off Gaza’s electricity supply after October 11, according to UNOCHA, and fuel reserves for Gaza’s sole power plant have been dangerously depleted.

    History repeatedly shows that children in war zones bear the brunt of punishment as bombing wars give way to even more lethal economic war, and what ought to be regarded as biological warfare against children. (It’s noteworthy that Israel is one of only eight world nations not to have signed the Biological Weapons Convention.)

    The suffering inflicted on Iraqi children following the 1991 war and ensuing years of merciless economic sanctions is well known to U.S. and Israeli authorities

    When the U.S. Desert Storm bombing war against Iraq ended, on Feb 28, 1991, a new kind of warfare proved far more devastating than even the worst of the bombing. By 1995, UN workers recognized that children were dying, first by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and eventually by the hundreds of thousands because economic sanctions prevented necessary access to medicines, clean water, and adequate food.

    Demolished vehicles lining Highway 80 in Iraqi during Operation Desert Storm, April 8, 1991.

    The U.S. military itself predicted epidemic levels of waterborne diseases would break out, in Iraq, because the U.S. bombing had so badly damaged the country’s underground water pipelines, causing cracks allowing sewage to seep into water used by civilians. Thirteen years of punitive economic sanctions cost the lives of countless Iraqis who couldn’t possibly have been held accountable for the actions of their government, – elderly people, sick people, toddlers and infants.

    A similar pattern emerges if we turn our gaze toward the Saudi aerial bombing of Yemen from 2015 to 2018. The Saudi attacks against vital sewage and sanitation facilities, and against the electrical plants which powered them, contributed to severe shortages of potable water. The Saudis were also known to bomb sites where Yemenis were digging their own wells.

    report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated  at least 85,000 children died from extreme hunger since the war began in 2015. The worst cholera outbreak ever recorded infected 2.26 million and cost nearly 4,000 lives. Attacks on hospitals and clinics led to closure of more than half of Yemen’s prewar facilities. Besieged on all sides, 3.65 million Yemenis were internally displaced. An entire generation of Yemeni children will suffer the trauma and disease caused by Saudi bombings using weapons supplied by U.S. and other western manufacturers.

    Dr. Yara Asi, a professor of global health management, points out that “the Gaza Strip had fragile health and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors long before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and prompted the retaliatory airstrikes. The health system of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world, has long been plagued by  underfunding and the effects of the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.”

    In early 2023, an estimated 97% of water in the enclave was unfit to drink, and more than 12% of child mortality cases were caused by waterborne ailments. Diseases including typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A are very rare in areas with functional and adequate water systems.

    Now, OCHA reports over 1.8 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80 per cent of the population, are internally displaced. Overcrowding at makeshift UNRWA shelters significantly increased cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, skin infection, and lice. Without wells and water desalination, dehydration and waterborne diseases are mounting threats.

    We can’t help but ask whether Israeli officials, intent on continuing the war for possibly as long as a year, see the potential for widespread disease as motivation for families to leave Gaza, accepting massive ethnic cleansing that would displace them beyond Gaza’s borders.

    In a recently published investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, an Israeli intelligence veteran notes Israel’s detailed information on where Gazan civilians are located: “Nothing happens by accident … When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed – that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home. ”

    Rather than wait for Gazan parents to dig graves for the children sickened by lethal water-borne diseases, we must clamor for a permanent cease fire, reparations, and an end to Israel’s apartheid regime. In the United States, we must truthfully diagnose our diseased foreign policy, sickened for many decades by greed, fear and an addiction to war.

    Worldwide, people are demonstrating their commitment to care about the Gazan children who survive this hideous war. The call for a permanent ceasefire includes the utter rejection of weaponizing disease to collectively punish children.

    The post Predicting Pestilence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Mohamed Jaafar Mohamed Ali (AlShamali) was a 15-year-old Bahraini child and school student when he was arbitrarily arrested from his home on 15 July 2012. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, medical neglect, an unfair trial, reprisals, and ill-treatment. Additionally, he was denied education, access to healthy food, sufficient access to water, family visits, and the ability to pray during his detention. He is currently held in Jau Prison, serving a 21-year and 6-month prison sentence.

     

    On 15 July 2012, security vehicles surrounded Mohamed’s house and the entire neighborhood. Masked plainclothes officers, armed and equipped with a searchlight, raided the home without presenting an arrest or search warrant. They conducted a search and apprehended Mohamed. Subsequently, he was taken to the Dawwar 17 police station, where he underwent interrogation and forcibly disappeared for 18 days.

     

    During his interrogation at the Dawwar 17 police station, Mohamed endured severe physical and psychological torture inflicted by the General Security Forces. They kicked him on his chest until he lost consciousness, stripped him naked, slapped him, spat on him, and placed him on an iron bed in a very cold cell. Officers placed iron restraints on his hands and legs, forced him to move between two corners, walk barefoot, and sexually harassed him. They beat his head and submerged it in water, forced him down an overflowing toilet, and extinguished cigarettes in his mouth. At one point, they even put him in a garbage bin. Each time he walked, officers were beating him and sending him to solitary confinement without reason. They threw his clothes in the cell corridor, instructing detainees to step on them, and prevented interaction by punishing anyone who spoke with him with solitary confinement. False rumors of his death were spread. Due to this torture, he suffers from chronic headaches, chest pain, eye, head, and ear injuries, and has lost hearing in his right ear. A head wound resulting from torture was sewn four times until the doctor refused to continue due to the risk to his life. Without treatment, he is at risk of losing eyesight. Following this brutal torture, Mohamed was coerced into giving a false confession related to assaulting a man from another sect and damaging his vehicle.

     

    When brought before the judge at the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), he denied the charges and, in an attempt to show evidence of torture, removed his clothes to reveal the marks on his body. However, the judge ignored the torture marks and sentenced Mohamed to six months imprisonment and a fine, all without the presence of a lawyer and without notifying his family. Eighteen days after his arrest, he finally contacted his mother, informing her that he was held at the Dry Dock Detention Center, had undergone interrogation, and appeared before a judge in the PPO. Mohamed appealed his sentence and was later found innocent, but the appeal ruling was issued after he had already completed his sentence. 

     

    After completing his sentence, he was not released; instead, he was taken back to the Dawwar 17 police station. There, the center’s director slapped him for denying the charges brought against him before the judge. Subsequently, he endured further torture at the Dawwar 17 police station in an attempt to coerce a confession. Following this, he was transported to the Dry Dock Detention Center in relation to a second case.

     

    On 21 March 2013, the court convicted Mohamed of the following charges: 1) attempted murder, 2) burning a Jeep car and tires, throwing Molotov cocktails, and 3) obstructing security personnel from performing their duties. As a result, the court initially sentenced him to 15 years of imprisonment and fined. Mohamed appealed his sentence, leading to the Court of Appeals reducing it to 10 years of imprisonment. He further appealed to the Court of Cassation, which affirmed the sentence.

     

    On 10 March 2015, a prison protest occurred in Jau Prison. Subsequently, riot police deployed tear gas and birdshot in close quarters to subdue the inmates, after which they were led into courtyards where they were collectively beaten and humiliated. Following this, the prisoners were deprived of food for several days and prevented from bathing for several weeks. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of the inmates who faced torture did not participate in the protest. Mohamed, who was accused of involvement in the protest, experienced torture, injuries, and forced disappearance in its aftermath. He was convicted of the following charges: 1) incitement, 2) assault on security personnel and obstructing their work, and 3) vandalism and destruction of the contents and facilities of the Jau Prison building. As a result, he received another 15 years of imprisonment, which was later reduced to 10 years after an appeal. The appeal ruling was subsequently upheld by the Court of Cassation.

     

    Mohamed repeatedly experienced medical neglect for his eczema condition, regularly receiving unhealthy food in insufficient quantities and being denied adequate access to water. In April 2017, following a complaint submitted by Mohamed’s mother to the Ombudsman regarding the denial of medical treatment for his eczema, prison officers restrained him to the prison gate for three days instead of providing the necessary treatment. Additionally, they filed a complaint against him. On 19 June 2017, while visiting Mohamed, his family noticed blisters on his head, face, and fingers due to poor hygiene caused by a lack of showers for a month due to water cuts. He informed them that he and his fellow detainees were enduring harsh treatment, confined to their cells, and subjected to degrading inspections. During these inspections, prison officers intentionally touched private areas of their bodies and molested them when entering and exiting the prison yard. Mohamed also revealed that prisoners expressing anger were beaten or hung on doors, and officers falsely claimed that the phones were broken, shutting them down for a full month. He further indicated that there were eye and face injuries among detainees, some of whom were kicked in their genitals.

     

    On 28 November 2017, Mohamed received a three-year prison sentence for insulting a public employee, which was later reduced to one year and a half after an appeal. This adjustment brought the total length of his sentence to 21 years and 6 months of imprisonment. Following this, he was transferred to Jau Prison without his parents’ knowledge, and for a week after the transfer, he was not permitted any outside contact. Subsequently, he reported inadequate detention conditions, including a lack of warm winter clothes and being compelled to take cold showers.

     

    Following his second and third sentences, Mohamed endured repeated torture, assaults, insults, threats, solitary confinement, forced disappearances, denial of medical care, visits, and calls, as well as reprisals and mistreatment. Additionally, he was prohibited from praying. Furthermore, personal items such as his clothes, blanket, towel, and robe – brought by his mother based on the dermatologist’s recommendation for eczema control – were destroyed. Consequently, his mother filed several complaints with the Ombudsman, the Special Investigation Unit (SIU), and the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) concerning these violations. Unfortunately, none of these complaints resulted in any tangible outcomes.

     

    On 9 July 2018, water cuts occurred in various buildings of Jau Prison, initiated by the deliberate delay of prison authorities in repairing and maintaining the plumbing. These water cuts persisted for more than a month, with some lasting for 36 consecutive hours. Victims, including Mohamed, reported that these cuts affected both drinking water and water for bathing and toilet facilities. To cope, they filled bottles during brief periods of water supply to use for ablution and washing. The lack of consistent access to water contributed to unhygienic conditions, resulting in the spread of disease and skin conditions. Mohamed reported suffering from severe burning sensations in his body and excretion of fluids due to untreated eczema. The condition was exacerbated by the lack of hygiene, and the prison administration neglected and postponed his need for treatment.

     

    In August 2018, Mohamed’s mother stated that her son had been deprived of education since his arrest, despite the family paying the education fees to the prison administration each year. Although he was later permitted to continue his high school education within the prison, he was denied enrollment in university under the pretext that the prison administration had selected a specific number of students.

     

    In May 2019, during the month of Ramadan, many detainees in Jau Prison, including Mohamed, experienced food poisoning due to the subpar quality of the food provided to them. The prisoners endured severe stomach pain and intense diarrhea, making their fasting even more challenging.

     

    Mohamed has been denied family visits for over a year. His family last visited him on 28 July 2022, when his father and brother were permitted to see him. However, they denied entry to his mother, stating that she “did not take the COVID-19 vaccine.” Despite presenting the officer with a negative PCR result from one day before the visit, he still refused her entry. As a result, she is demanding the right to visit her son, as the last time she saw him was more than three years ago, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, Mohamed has been denied the right to make a video call with his mother since July 2023.

     

    In August 2023, Mohamed took part in a collective hunger strike along with over 800 detainees in Jau Prison, protesting their harsh prison conditions. As a result, his blood sugar level plummeted.

     

    Mohamed’s arbitrary detention when he was a minor, denial of access to a lawyer during the interrogation period, torture, solitary confinement, forced disappearance, denial of family visits and video calls with his family, hindered education, inadequate food, limited access to water, and the restriction of the right to pray, combined with an unfair trial, exposure to reprisals, and medical neglect, constitute violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party.

     

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Mohamed. ADHRB further calls for a thorough investigation into all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, denial of family visits, education, prayer, adequate food, proper access to water, and medical neglect, while compensating for Mohamed and holding the perpetrators accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB urges Bahrain to permit Mohamed to receive family visits, particularly from his mother, who has been unable to visit him for more than three years. ADHRB also calls for allowing him to make video calls with his family, pursue a university education, and receive healthy food. Additionally, ADHRB insists that Bahrain provides suitable medical treatment for Mohamed, holding the country responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Mohamed Jaafar Mohamed Ali (AlShamali) appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • “It should never have happened,” an elderly Holocaust survivor of a Nazi death camp told the New York Times. He was referring to the colossal failure on October 7, of Israel’s touted high-tech military and intelligence operations that opened the door to Hamas’ attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians. In many parliamentary countries, the government ministers who are responsible for this kind of failure would have immediately been forced to resign. Not so with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ministers.

    Instead, Netanyahu’s coalition of extremists, who know that the Israeli people are enraged about their government’s failure to defend the border, has unleashed a “unifying” genocidal war against every child, woman and man that comprise the 2.3 million population of Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.… We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly” was the opening genocidal war cry from defense minister Yoav Gallant to defend the onslaught that massive military forces are implementing against the long-illegally blockaded Gazan population.

    Israeli leaders declare that there are Hamas fighters possibly in and under every building in Gaza. Israel has long made computer models using their unprecedented surveillance technology (see Antony Loewenstein’s interview in the November/December 2023 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen). Nothing and no one is off limits for the Israeli bombing.

    Keep in mind that Israel is an ultra-modern military superpower, with hundreds of thousands of fighters on land, air and sea, going after the few thousand Hamas fighters who have limited supplies of rifles, grenade launchers and anti-tank weapons. Moreover, all of Israel’s supplies are being replenished daily from the U.S. stockpiles in Israel and new shipments arriving by sea, compliments of President Biden. The invasion is a “piece of cake” an experienced U.S. government official told reporter Sy Hersh.

    Contradictions abound. First, Netanyahu has always referred to Hamas as a “terrorist organization.” Yet he told his own Likud party for years that his “strategy” to block a two-state solution was to “support and fund Hamas.” (See, the October 22, 2023 article by prominent journalist Roger Cohen in the New York Times).

    If Netanyahu believes dropping over 20,000 bombs and missiles on the civilian infrastructure of this tiny crowded enclave and its people, nearly half of whom are children, is so restrained, why has he kept Western and Israeli journalists out of Gaza, other than a few recently embedded reporters restricted to their seats in Israeli armored vehicles? Why has he ordered four nightmarish total telecommunications and electricity blackouts, with excruciating consequences, over the whole Gaza Strip for as long as 30 hours at a time?

    None of this or international laws matter to the prime minister whose top priority is to keep his job, with his coalition parties, as long as the invasion continues. And before an outraged majority in Israel ousts him from power for not defending their country on October 7 from some two thousand urban guerrilla fighters on a homicide/suicide mission.

    As the slaughter of defenseless babies, children, mothers, fathers and grandparents in Gaza continues to drive the death, injury and disease toll to higher numbers each day, the observant world wonders what the Israeli government, which regularly blocks humanitarian aid, intends to do with Gaza and its destitute, homeless, starving, wounded, sick, dying and abandoned civilian Palestinians.

    After all, Gaza has only so many hospitals, clinics, schools, apartment buildings, homes, water mains, ambulances, bakeries, markets, electricity networks, solar panels, shelters, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and the clearly marked remaining United Nations’ facilities left, to bomb to smithereens. Endless American tax dollars are funding the carnage. Israel has also killed over 50 journalists, including some of their families, in the past seven weeks – a record.

    Why will it take months to clear out the tunnels? Not so, say military experts in urban warfare. Flooding the tunnels with water, gas, napalm and robotic explosives are quick and lethal and would be deployed were it not for the Israeli hostages.

    In addition to the reality that all Gazans are now hostages, over 7,000 Palestinians are languishing in Israeli jails without charges. Many are youngsters and women who were abducted over the years to extort information and to control their extended families in Gaza and the West Bank. What’s holding up an exchange, as Israel did twice before in 2004 and 2011? Again, the Netanyahu coalition stays in power by postponing the pending official inquiries into their October 7 collapse, that Israelis are awaiting.

    Meanwhile, the hapless Joe Biden dittoheaded the previously hapless presidential pleas for a two-state solution. The dominant politicians in Israel have always sought “a Greater Israel” using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” meaning all of Palestine. Year after year Israel has stolen more and more land and water from the twenty-two percent left of original Palestine, inhabited by five million Palestinians under oppressive military occupation.

    With Congress overwhelmingly in Israel’s pocket, Israeli politicians laugh at proposals for a two-state solution by U.S. presidents. Recall when Obama was president, Netanyahu went around him and addressed a joint session of Congress whose members exhausted themselves with standing ovations – a brazen insult to a U.S. president, unheard of in U.S. diplomatic history!

    Day after day, the surviving Palestinian families are trapped in what is widely called “an open-air prison” being pulverized by Israel and its aggressive co-belligerent, the Biden regime. A regime in Washington that urges Netanyahu to comply with “the laws of war,” while enabling Israel with more weapons and UN vetoes to violate daily “the laws of war” and the Genocide Convention. (See our October 24, 2023 Letter to President Joe Biden and the Declarations from genocide scholars William Schabas and other expert historians).

    Consider the plight of these innocent civilians, caught in the deadly crossfire of F-16s, helicopter gunships, and thousands of precision 155mm artillery shells. Whether huddled in their homes and schools or fleeing to nowhere under Israeli orders, the IDF is still bombing them.

    Palestinians cannot escape their blockaded prison. They cannot surrender because the Israeli army does not want to be responsible for prisoners of war. They cannot bury their dead, so their families’ corpses pile up, rotting in the sun being eaten by stray dogs.

    They cannot even find water to drink, since Israel has destroyed the water infrastructure – another of its many war crimes.

    For years under Israel’s occupation law, collection of rainwater with rainwater harvesting cisterns has not been permitted. Rain is considered the property of the Israeli authorities and Palestinians have been forbidden to gather rainwater!

    The Israeli armed forces will soon control the entire Gaza Strip. Under international law, Israel would become responsible for the protection of the civilian population as well as the essential conditions for Palestinian safety and survival. Will they at last abide by just one international law? Or will they establish obstructive checkpoints to restrict humanitarian charities trying to save lives while Israel continues to push the Gazans into the desert or neighboring countries?

    The Israeli operation precisely fits the Genocide Convention’s definition by “intentionally creating conditions of life calculated to physically destroy a racial, religious, ethnic, or national group in whole or in part.” Netanyahu’s regime further incriminates itself by defining the targets for annihilation as being between 21st-century progress and “the barbaric fanaticism of the Middle Ages” and a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness.”

    See October 17, October 24, and November 17, 2023 Letters to President Biden on Israel/Gaza

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I am a Black man in prison, and I want to talk about trauma. I want us all to be able to talk about trauma.

    I’m here because when I was a teenager and young man, I made many bad life choices involving drugs and violence. Living with the consequences of my actions is not always easy, but I keep moving forward toward redemption. As I have struggled to understand those choices, I also have realized I must go further back in my life, long before I committed a crime, if I want to heal myself.

    When I was a child, I was sexually abused by a man.

    Facing that fact has been even harder than confronting the ways I have hurt others, but I know there is no redemption without working to understand how that has affected me.

    All three of those aspects of my identity—male, Black, incarcerated—are part of this struggle.

    Everywhere we turn, the dominant society tells us that masculinity is primarily about being tough, which can make it hard to deal with the emotional scars of trauma. In the Black community, taboos against men speaking about being abused have constrained many of us. And, in prison, where any sign of weakness can be dangerous, acknowledging that one needs help to deal with childhood trauma seems risky.

    An example of how fraught this subject can be: Recently I was talking with a friend about trauma in the lives of Black men, and I started to describe my plans for this article. He clearly wanted to avoid the issue, apparently concerned that I wanted him to talk about trauma in his life. As we talked, he started physically shaking, and I quickly assured him that I was not going to press him to discuss his experiences. He breathed a sigh of relief, and I decided to move along to other topics.

    I understood his reaction. I still am not always sure how to speak about being abused and how to process all of the emotions. For much of my life, I worked hard not to appear vulnerable or weak, afraid that I would be seen as a victim, especially in the eyes of other Black men. But when I was one year into my life-without-parole sentence, I decided to seek counseling and come to terms with that abuse. Facing that pain is essential to transformation, for me as an individual and for our communities, and so I continue to speak about it, including here for the first time in print.

    My Early Life Story

    My story starts when I was eight years old and sent to visit my father. My mother thought it would be good for me to spend time with the man who fathered me but had not been in my life. Instead, it turned into a nightmare for me and her. For a year, she did not know where I was, nor could she have imagined the abuse I would endure at the hands of the man she once loved. I left my mother a pretty normal eight-year-old and returned to her a broken boy.

    My mother, who also had been sexually abused as a child, knew something was different about me when I was returned to her care, but I said nothing. When I was 11 or 12, detectives called asking if I had been abused, part of their investigation of allegations against my father involving another child. When I was questioned about the abuse I denied it, not wanting my father to go to jail. My mother did talk to some family members about it, but I avoided the subject, and we never really dealt with it. She feels responsible, but I have told her that it’s not her fault—just as it wasn’t mine. It took a long time for me to understand that.

    My mother took me to a therapist, but I protected my father and denied everything. By the time I was 15, I was drinking and smoking weed, unable to stay out of trouble. I wanted to forgive my father, but I was also ashamed about what had happened. Against my mother’s wishes, I would return to my father, enduring the emotional stress that came with holding this secret because I wanted the relationship that I thought all boys should have with their dads. I watched my father create more nurturing relationships with my stepbrothers, leaving me feeling rejected.

    To say I was confused is an extreme understatement. When I thought about the abuse, I became depressed. The man who was supposed to be my role model had hurt me and then manipulated me into fearing that my masculinity was in question. It’s an all-too-common story in a society still saturated with homophobia: If sexual abuse happened, I must have wanted it to happen, which would mean I was gay, though I didn’t feel gay. I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time, which was to suppress the feelings, to disconnect.

    From there I started selling drugs, immersing myself in the life of the streets. I thought that if my father wasn’t going to teach me how to be a man, the streets would. My grades were horrible, and I was held back twice. I was finally kicked out of school after I was caught with drugs. My father’s wife did not understand why I acted out, and when I finally explained—in the presence of my father—that he had sexually abused me when I was younger, he denied it.

    From that point, my life spiraled out of control. I tried to move past my trauma, but depression always seemed to surface in moments when I was doing well. Prior to my incarceration, I had quit my job and was being evicted. I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t see a way out. The process felt like a slow death, and I did not start truly living and caring for myself until I began addressing what was killing my spirit.

    At the age of 23, after a year in prison, I was in a dark place psychologically, overwhelmed by despair and hopelessness. It was a place I had been many times since the abuse, but I was finally ready to try to build a better life for myself. I felt compelled to talk to someone about my emotions but couldn’t connect with anyone in my immediate environment, which was defined by the toxic masculinity that tends to define men’s lives in prison.

    My Story in Prison

    Obviously not everyone in prison has the same experience as I do. But after more than a decade incarcerated, I have no doubt that most of the inmates I’ve met have lived through at least one serious trauma; many of them have never had an opportunity to confront it in healthy ways; and many have avoided the limited opportunities that exist.

    My experience—burying the hurt and pain I felt instead of finding the help I needed—isn’t idiosyncratic but, rather, grew out of common ideas about what it means to be a man, and especially to be a Black man. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak about what I’ve seen and heard from other Black men.

    Robin D. Stone, a mental health counselor in New York City, confirms my observations about trauma and abuse. “In many homes and social circles, the topic is still avoided—it’s taboo,” she told Counseling Today. “In some cases, men haven’t shared with anyone that they’ve had this experience, that they have this history. That leaves them with psychological wounds that they learn to ‘pack away’ for years.”

    The hyper-masculine environment of a prison creates additional impediments. Inmates fear that any sign of weakness might lead another inmate to take advantage, another reason not to speak openly with others. Sexual abuse is at the top of the list of things prisoners will not talk about.

    Going to a therapist in prison also can be interpreted as weakness, another risk that other inmates will prey on you. For me, it took a desire to escape that dark place—what I would learn later was a state of depression—to go to therapy.

    At first, it wasn’t easy talking to the therapist I was assigned. She was an older White woman who was nice, but my biases and insecurities made it difficult for me to open up to her at first. By going to a counselor, I was breaking a rule I learned from my community—don’t talk to White people about what goes on in Black households—and I felt like I was selling out my mother. But I needed to confront what was killing me on the inside.

    I am accountable for the actions that landed me in prison. I’m not here solely because I was sexually abused as a child. But, after therapy, it’s hard not to wonder where I would be today if I had not been abused.

    Community Stories

    Individuals who live through abuse can find healing through therapy, but as with any problem that is rooted in social dysfunction, the deeper solutions are at the collective and community level. Some people will find the help they need, summoning the courage to take those first steps on the road to recovery. But many more suffer in silence, and we cannot blame the problem on victims who don’t find that help.

    The core problem is disparities in power and status that flow from systems that allow some people to abuse and exploit others with relative impunity—most centrally the hierarchies in sex, race, class, and nationality. In a world defined by hierarchies, children especially will be at risk. As social movements challenge those inequalities, communities also have to recognize how many are suffering and provide more ways for people to get help.

    There are too few resources, throughout society and especially in Black communities, for those who have been abused. We need more affordable and accessible counseling. Beyond the services of mental-health professionals, healing circles led by experienced community members can help those suffering from trauma in the context of restorative justice. We need to let go of toxic ideas about what it means to be a man, which too often leads to people excusing the abuse of girls and women. And we need to challenge the homophobia that leads to people ignoring the sexual abuse of boys.

    We have to confront the link between masculinity and violence. In her 2004 book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, bell hooks argues that violence is not just a product of boyhood socialization but, instead, that violence is the essence of boyhood socialization. When boys are cut off from our mothers far too early, we are less able to express our feelings and be sensitive to others. Being a man too often means sucking it up and moving on past difficult emotions. As hooks puts it, “Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity.”

    We, Black men, need to talk about this. Most people are concerned about their image in the eyes of others. In my experience, that is especially true for Black men, who connect their status in their community with hyper-masculinity. Too often, violence is the easiest way to shore up that sense of being a man. In some settings, it can feel as if violence is the only way to prove our masculinity.

    History matters as well. Black people who came here enslaved were not men and women but property. African values and traditions that socialized boys into manhood and girls into womanhood were lost. Our sense of self too easily became rooted in White expectations, though we would never truly be accepted in certain spaces due to our Blackness.

    Today, I have learned to challenge many of the ideas I was raised with. I am inspired by the courage it takes for our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ+ community to be honest and open about who they are and speak about the traumas they have endured. It takes strength to challenge harmful social norms, but that courage is at the heart of liberation, at our quest to live to our fullest potential.

    These problems exist in every community. But, as a Black man, it is my responsibility to challenge the social norm of hiding sexual abuse in Black families and ignoring the effects on Black boys and girls. All children need safe places to talk about their experiences and struggles. Without those spaces, too many will gravitate to gangs, drugs, crime, and violence to deal with the pain, which only inflicts more trauma on more people, and the cycle continues.

    Our Stories

    With the help of a therapist, I have been fortunate to confront my trauma and develop an analysis about abuse. I have become more comfortable telling people I’m close with, no longer feeling I have something to hide. I now know that the abuse didn’t happen because of anything I did. It wasn’t my fault. I continue to work through the anger, guilt, and shame I have felt, allowing me to address my depression. It has been a struggle, but it is liberating. I know who I am, and what other people think about me does not matter as much.

    When we don’t have opportunities to confront trauma, our pain can turn into behavior that is self-destructive, abusive to others, and a threat to our own community. From the outside looking in, most would wonder why this destructive behavior continues. If some individuals are able to find help to overcome these behaviors, why is it so difficult for others? I repeat: The answer is not to blame people who have been abused and traumatized for not getting help. The answer is to change our society and provide more opportunities for those who have been hurt.

    It has not been easy for me to write about such a deeply personal subject. I have had second thoughts many times, questioning whether it is worth doing. But then I think about everyone who is dealing with the same kind of trauma and realize we need each other if we are to develop the courage to speak about these things.

    These are hard truths to face: Sexual abuse of Black girls has too often been accepted as inevitable, and too often we pretend that sexual abuse of Black boys doesn’t happen. These are hard challenges to face: How do we end this abuse? Until it ends, how do we ensure that no child grows up feeling they have to hide their abuse?

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Haider Ebrahim Mulla Hasan was a 16-year-old Bahraini child and a student completing his education in school when he was arrested by Bahraini authorities in 2015. He is the youngest of three detained brothers, Mohamed and Hussain. Bahraini authorities forcibly disappeared him and tortured him to extract a forced confession. He was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment with revocation of his nationality. He is still in the New Dry Dock Detention Center, which is designated for imprisoned individuals under the age of 21. Haider currently suffers from several health problems due to medical negligence by the prison administration and his denial of treatment. Some of these problems have not yet been diagnosed due to negligence, which makes his health condition worse.

    On 29 November 2015, officers in civilian clothes arrested Haider without an arrest warrant on the street in the village of Sanabis when he was only 16 years old. Then they took him to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) and forcibly disappeared him for three months, during which they interrogated him without a lawyer and tortured him. They subjected him to various methods of torture to extract a confession, including physical beatings with batons, slapping in the face, beatings in sensitive areas, and exposure to electric shocks. He was also subjected to intimidation, threats, and insults. As a result, Haider suffers from several health problems, including poor vision in one of his eyes, complete hearing loss in one of his ears, and respiratory problems due to his broken nose. He was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital following torture, but these were only visits to the doctor, and he was not provided adequate treatment.

    On 1 February 2018, Haider was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment with revocation of his nationality, fined 2,784 Bahraini Dinars, and had his belongings confiscated on charges of 1) illegal assembly, 2) assaulting an intelligence officer, and 3) participating in the Karranah bombing. He was unable to reach his lawyer during interrogation, was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, and was not provided with adequate time to prepare for trial. Although he and his family desired to appeal the ruling, they were unable to do so because they couldn’t afford the expensive costs of a lawyer. His citizenship was later reinstated through a royal decree issued in April 2019.

    Authorities intermittently held Haider in solitary confinement throughout his detention and incarceration. In March 2018, he was held in solitary confinement for more than two months as punishment for refusing to sign a document without knowing its contents. When he asked when his solitary confinement would end, the guards refused to answer. Haider believes that the extended solitary confinement caused him psychological harm. He then went on a hunger strike to protest the punitive use of extended solitary confinement and other abuses in the prison system. At that time, the prison administration deducted more than 25 minutes from the one-hour visit period allocated to his family members. They were permitted to see Haider 10 minutes after the visit began, but they were arbitrarily kicked out 15 minutes before its scheduled end as an additional form of retaliation against him. 

    While serving his sentence, Haider went on several hunger strikes to protest the periodic retaliation against him by placing him in solitary confinement. During one of these strikes, in August 2019, his family noticed while visiting him in the Dry Dock Detention Center that he was suffering from swelling in one of his eyes as a result of beatings and torture. He told them about being beaten, punched, kicked, and pepper-sprayed by officers in the prison to force him to end the strike.

    On 9 January 2022, after not hearing from Haider for more than ten days, his family received a phone call from him, in which he reported that he had been detained in solitary confinement for a week without knowing the reasons. The family expressed their deep concern for his safety and asked the prison administration to allow him the right to call to check on him.

    Haider suffers from several other health problems that are getting worse due to medical negligence against him and his deprivation of medical care by the prison administration, as the last time he saw a specialist doctor was in July 2022 at Salmaniya Hospital. On 2 November 2022, after suffering for a long time from stomach pain and the deterioration of his health condition, He was supposed to undergo an endoscopy and colonoscopy, but the prison administration did not transfer him to the hospital to undergo the operation.

    On 25 December 2022, Haider indicated in a call with his parents that he continues to suffer from an internal medical problem, which he does not know whether it is in the stomach or colon due to the ongoing medical neglect of his health, as when he is transferred to the prison clinic, he is only given painkillers without diagnosing the problem or dispensing a treatment. In detail, He indicated that he vomits and defecates blood at least 3-4 times a month. He also confirmed that he is unable to eat and suffers from severe pain in his head and difficulty breathing. In addition, Haider suffers from a problem with his teeth, as eight of them were removed without installing the replacements they promised him, which hindered his ability to chew his food.

    Haider’s arbitrary detention when he was a minor,  torture,  unfair trial, exposure to solitary confinement and enforced disappearance as retaliatory measures, as well as medical neglect, constitute a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is a party.

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to fulfill its human rights obligations by ensuring a fair retrial for Haider and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary arrest when he was a child, torture, ill-treatment, and his exposure to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, and enforced disappearance with the aim of reprisal. It also calls on Bahrain to investigate the allegations of medical negligence while holding the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB also sounds the alarm about the deterioration of Haider’s health due to the continued medical negligence against him, which has reached the point of refraining from diagnosing one of the health problems he suffers from, calling on Bahrain to diagnose his health problems as soon as possible and to urgently provide him with appropriate treatment, holding the Government of Bahrain responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Haider Ebrahim Mulla Hasan appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • On 17 September 2023, approximately 28 young Bahraini detainees in the Dry Dock Detention Center began a new hunger strike in protest against the continued violations committed against them by the prison administration, and the neglect of the relevant state institutions to carry out their duties, notably the National Institution for Human Rights, and the Ombudsman.

    The rights of children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center are subject to serious violations, as most of the arrests are based on political backgrounds, and the victims are subjected to unfair trials. In 2011, the state security institutions launched a series of arbitrary arrest campaigns that affected various Bahraini regions and towns and included citizens of different age groups, including children who were not over the legal age at the time of their arrest, for participating in peaceful demonstrations in the movement demanding reform and democracy. Since that date, the scene has been repeated as part of the policies of suppressing freedom and encouraging impunity in Bahrain.

    Due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Interior’s data, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detained children. However, investigative reports have previously revealed that Bahrain detains about 150 children, 10 of whom are in Jau Prison – which is designated for adults – while the remaining 140 are divided into two wards. One ward is designated for children aged between 15 and 18 years old, and the other is designated for solitary confinement. Despite these reports, the Bahraini government claims that it has no children in detention, stating instead that those arrested from the age group of 15 to 18 years are serving their sentence in a private reform center.

    Young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center are exposed to many human rights violations, including fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Their most prominent demands relate to the following:

    – The right to education;

    – The right to medical treatment;

    – The right to obtain diverse and healthy diets;

    – The right to communicate with the outside world;

    – The right to family visits;

    – The right to have appropriate clothing; and

    – The right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice and the Protection of Children from Mistreatment.

    The Law on Restorative Justice for Children and their Protection from Mistreatment was approved on 15 February 2021 and came into effect on 18 August 2021. However, its effects were not reflected on the conditions of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, nor on those who were arrested after the enactment of this law. These include:

    •       notifying the child’s guardian or person responsible for him – as the case may be – in the legally prescribed ways of every decision or action taken against the child;
    •       ensuring that detained children are treated without discrimination and with an equal degree of decent and humane treatment and ensuring that all necessary rights and needs are met, and that there is no criminal liability on the child who was not more than fifteen full calendar years of age at the time of committing the crime;
    •       that the child victim or witness, in all stages of investigation and trial, must have the right to be heard, his demands must be understood, and he must be treated in a way that preserves his dignity and guarantees his physical, psychological, and moral integrity;
    •       that there be no discrimination between child prisoners on the basis of gender, origin, language, religion, or belief;
    •       The periodic medical examination of all children;
    •       The provision of academic and practical study curricula helping develop their intellectual abilities;
    •       the observation of the child’s right to freedom of practice of religion; and
    •       that, in the event that a child was subjected to physical or sexual mistreatment by the person responsible for him, the specialized prosecution should appoint someone to legally represent the child to carry out all the procedures stipulated in the law, including submitting a complaint, objection, grievance, and appeal against all procedures taken regarding the child.

    Since its passage, this law has been subjected to numerous criticisms, as the government of Bahrain exploits its promulgation to promote the reforms that it has carried out. Unfortunately, its application is still limited to a very small number of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, despite the fact that many of them meet the conditions of the law and almost all of them demand the right to benefit from it.

    As well, the law fails to guarantee children’s fundamental rights to due process. The law does not prohibit questioning or interrogating children without the presence of a lawyer or their guardians. Article 66 states that “health, social, legal and rehabilitative services must be provided to accused children” at “all stages”, including during “arrest and investigation.” However, Article 67 stipulates that a child has no right to a lawyer until after the child’s case reaches trial. The law also fails to clearly stipulate the child’s right to appeal his deprivation of liberty, while Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in conflict with the law has the right to “immediate access to legal assistance.”

    International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have previously condemned the failure of this law to protect the fundamental rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it legitimizes arbitrary detention on charges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly, and allows the interrogation and investigation of children without the presence of their parents or attorney.

    The prison for young convicts fails to uphold the most fundamental rights, and detainees on charges related to the right to expression are subjected to ill-treatment, torture, and reprisal. They are deprived of healthy meals and clothing, are denied family visits, and are denied means of entertainment, which exposes them to psychological and health risks and harms, and which is inconsistent with human and moral principles and values.

    As a result of all of this mistreatment, many of the children have undertaken repeated hunger strikes, despite the dangers that such actions pose to their health. Recently, they announced their hunger strike on 17 September 2023, in protest against the Public Prosecution’s neglect of their right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice as a means that may help them get escape these violations. Among them is Hussein Ahmed Habib, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison; he was less than 16 years old at the time his alleged offense was committed. He submitted more than five requests to more than one public prosecutor representative, demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but to no avail. Also, Mujtaba Abdul Hussein Abdulla, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old, is demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but the public prosecution rejects his repeated requests.

    Instead of children being behind their school desks, they are deprived of the right to education. This violation does not stop there – it destroys their future even after the end of their sentence, as they are deprived of job opportunities due to the denial of “good conduct” certificates for political prisoners.

    Among them is Ali Isa Jasim, one of the young convicts who was deprived of his fundamental rights, after he was arrested when he was fifteen years old. He went on two hunger strikes in one month, protesting the denial of his right to education. Despite the promises he has received from the prison administration to provide him with an education, he has yet to be given access to learning resources. His suffering is shared by Khalil Ebrahim Sabah, who resorted to a hunger strike to protest the deprivation of his fundamental rights, including education, for two years. They are therefore waiting to be transferred to Jau Prison to obtain this right.

    In addition to the torture, forced disappearance, solitary confinement, and psychological threats they endure, many child detainees also face deprivation of the necessary treatment and medical care. They are denied medical visits, and the prison administration ignores the conditions of those suffering from illnesses and in need of constant follow-up. On 17 June 2023, six young convicts, including Khalil Sabah and Fares Salman, declared a hunger strike to protest against their deprivation of health care for their scabies disease, which they contracted while in prison due to squalid conditions. Further, Haidar Ebrahim Mulla Hasan, who was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in three different cases, did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest, but as a result of torture and the dire conditions in prison, including medical neglect, he began to suffer from severe stomach pains to the point of vomiting and defecating blood. He continues to suffer from severe headaches, difficulty breathing, and a dental problem. Despite this, the prison administration refuses to refer him to a doctor for a diagnosis of his condition, and he has not received any treatment yet. In fact, the last time he was presented to a doctor was over a year ago.

    Following the crackdown on popular protests that the country witnessed in 2011, criticism prompted Bahrain to establish three bodies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior: the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission (PDRC), the Ombudsman, and the Special Investigation Unit in the Public Prosecution, but the lack of independence of these bodies and their political affiliations has rendered them unfit for purpose. Since their establishment, complaints raised by detainees, especially young convicts, have not been investigated, and the security forces responsible for torturing political prisoners have not been held accountable.

    By exposing young convicts to violations, including forced detention, torture, denial of medical care, and of the right to education, Bahrain is violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stress the rights of Prisoners, including:

    •       Treat all prisoners with respect because of their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
    •       The prohibition of subjecting any prisoner to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and all prisoners should be protected from this.
    •       The right to obtain legal representation and to investigate all cases of death in custody, disciplinary action, and punishment.
    •       The prison system should strive to minimize the differences between prison life and free life.

    Hence, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to:

    •       Stop exposing young convicts to ongoing violations, including forced detention and torture.
    •       Grant young convicts their right to education, medical care, and other fundamental human rights.
    •       Protect minors from ill-treatment, investigate allegations of torture, and stop the policy of impunity that has been practiced until now.
    •       Respond to the demands of young people, and not renounce the promises made to them.
    •       Held them a retrial in accordance with the fair trial procedures that apply to children in order to obtain their immediate and unconditional release, guarantee all their civil rights, and compensate them. 

    The post Young convicts in the Dry Dock: ongoing violations and delayed justice appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • On 17 September 2023, approximately 28 young Bahraini detainees in the Dry Dock Detention Center began a new hunger strike in protest against the continued violations committed against them by the prison administration, and the neglect of the relevant state institutions to carry out their duties, notably the National Institution for Human Rights, and the Ombudsman.

    The rights of children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center are subject to serious violations, as most of the arrests are based on political backgrounds, and the victims are subjected to unfair trials. In 2011, the state security institutions launched a series of arbitrary arrest campaigns that affected various Bahraini regions and towns and included citizens of different age groups, including children who were not over the legal age at the time of their arrest, for participating in peaceful demonstrations in the movement demanding reform and democracy. Since that date, the scene has been repeated as part of the policies of suppressing freedom and encouraging impunity in Bahrain.

    Due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Interior’s data, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detained children. However, investigative reports have previously revealed that Bahrain detains about 150 children, 10 of whom are in Jau Prison – which is designated for adults – while the remaining 140 are divided into two wards. One ward is designated for children aged between 15 and 18 years old, and the other is designated for solitary confinement. Despite these reports, the Bahraini government claims that it has no children in detention, stating instead that those arrested from the age group of 15 to 18 years are serving their sentence in a private reform center.

    Young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center are exposed to many human rights violations, including fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Their most prominent demands relate to the following:

    – The right to education;

    – The right to medical treatment;

    – The right to obtain diverse and healthy diets;

    – The right to communicate with the outside world;

    – The right to family visits;

    – The right to have appropriate clothing; and

    – The right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice and the Protection of Children from Mistreatment.

    The Law on Restorative Justice for Children and their Protection from Mistreatment was approved on 15 February 2021 and came into effect on 18 August 2021. However, its effects were not reflected on the conditions of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, nor on those who were arrested after the enactment of this law. These include:

    •       notifying the child’s guardian or person responsible for him – as the case may be – in the legally prescribed ways of every decision or action taken against the child;
    •       ensuring that detained children are treated without discrimination and with an equal degree of decent and humane treatment and ensuring that all necessary rights and needs are met, and that there is no criminal liability on the child who was not more than fifteen full calendar years of age at the time of committing the crime;
    •       that the child victim or witness, in all stages of investigation and trial, must have the right to be heard, his demands must be understood, and he must be treated in a way that preserves his dignity and guarantees his physical, psychological, and moral integrity;
    •       that there be no discrimination between child prisoners on the basis of gender, origin, language, religion, or belief;
    •       The periodic medical examination of all children;
    •       The provision of academic and practical study curricula helping develop their intellectual abilities;
    •       the observation of the child’s right to freedom of practice of religion; and
    •       that, in the event that a child was subjected to physical or sexual mistreatment by the person responsible for him, the specialized prosecution should appoint someone to legally represent the child to carry out all the procedures stipulated in the law, including submitting a complaint, objection, grievance, and appeal against all procedures taken regarding the child.

    Since its passage, this law has been subjected to numerous criticisms, as the government of Bahrain exploits its promulgation to promote the reforms that it has carried out. Unfortunately, its application is still limited to a very small number of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, despite the fact that many of them meet the conditions of the law and almost all of them demand the right to benefit from it.

    As well, the law fails to guarantee children’s fundamental rights to due process. The law does not prohibit questioning or interrogating children without the presence of a lawyer or their guardians. Article 66 states that “health, social, legal and rehabilitative services must be provided to accused children” at “all stages”, including during “arrest and investigation.” However, Article 67 stipulates that a child has no right to a lawyer until after the child’s case reaches trial. The law also fails to clearly stipulate the child’s right to appeal his deprivation of liberty, while Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in conflict with the law has the right to “immediate access to legal assistance.”

    International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have previously condemned the failure of this law to protect the fundamental rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it legitimizes arbitrary detention on charges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly, and allows the interrogation and investigation of children without the presence of their parents or attorney.

    The prison for young convicts fails to uphold the most fundamental rights, and detainees on charges related to the right to expression are subjected to ill-treatment, torture, and reprisal. They are deprived of healthy meals and clothing, are denied family visits, and are denied means of entertainment, which exposes them to psychological and health risks and harms, and which is inconsistent with human and moral principles and values.

    As a result of all of this mistreatment, many of the children have undertaken repeated hunger strikes, despite the dangers that such actions pose to their health. Recently, they announced their hunger strike on 17 September 2023, in protest against the Public Prosecution’s neglect of their right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice as a means that may help them get escape these violations. Among them is Hussein Ahmed Habib, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison; he was less than 16 years old at the time his alleged offense was committed. He submitted more than five requests to more than one public prosecutor representative, demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but to no avail. Also, Mujtaba Abdul Hussein Abdulla, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old, is demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but the public prosecution rejects his repeated requests.

    Instead of children being behind their school desks, they are deprived of the right to education. This violation does not stop there – it destroys their future even after the end of their sentence, as they are deprived of job opportunities due to the denial of “good conduct” certificates for political prisoners.

    Among them is Ali Isa Jasim, one of the young convicts who was deprived of his fundamental rights, after he was arrested when he was fifteen years old. He went on two hunger strikes in one month, protesting the denial of his right to education. Despite the promises he has received from the prison administration to provide him with an education, he has yet to be given access to learning resources. His suffering is shared by Khalil Ebrahim Sabah, who resorted to a hunger strike to protest the deprivation of his fundamental rights, including education, for two years. They are therefore waiting to be transferred to Jau Prison to obtain this right.

    In addition to the torture, forced disappearance, solitary confinement, and psychological threats they endure, many child detainees also face deprivation of the necessary treatment and medical care. They are denied medical visits, and the prison administration ignores the conditions of those suffering from illnesses and in need of constant follow-up. On 17 June 2023, six young convicts, including Khalil Sabah and Fares Salman, declared a hunger strike to protest against their deprivation of health care for their scabies disease, which they contracted while in prison due to squalid conditions. Further, Haidar Ebrahim Mulla Hasan, who was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in three different cases, did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest, but as a result of torture and the dire conditions in prison, including medical neglect, he began to suffer from severe stomach pains to the point of vomiting and defecating blood. He continues to suffer from severe headaches, difficulty breathing, and a dental problem. Despite this, the prison administration refuses to refer him to a doctor for a diagnosis of his condition, and he has not received any treatment yet. In fact, the last time he was presented to a doctor was over a year ago.

    Following the crackdown on popular protests that the country witnessed in 2011, criticism prompted Bahrain to establish three bodies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior: the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission (PDRC), the Ombudsman, and the Special Investigation Unit in the Public Prosecution, but the lack of independence of these bodies and their political affiliations has rendered them unfit for purpose. Since their establishment, complaints raised by detainees, especially young convicts, have not been investigated, and the security forces responsible for torturing political prisoners have not been held accountable.

    By exposing young convicts to violations, including forced detention, torture, denial of medical care, and of the right to education, Bahrain is violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stress the rights of Prisoners, including:

    •       Treat all prisoners with respect because of their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
    •       The prohibition of subjecting any prisoner to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and all prisoners should be protected from this.
    •       The right to obtain legal representation and to investigate all cases of death in custody, disciplinary action, and punishment.
    •       The prison system should strive to minimize the differences between prison life and free life.

    Hence, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to:

    •       Stop exposing young convicts to ongoing violations, including forced detention and torture.
    •       Grant young convicts their right to education, medical care, and other fundamental human rights.
    •       Protect minors from ill-treatment, investigate allegations of torture, and stop the policy of impunity that has been practiced until now.
    •       Respond to the demands of young people, and not renounce the promises made to them.
    •       Held them a retrial in accordance with the fair trial procedures that apply to children in order to obtain their immediate and unconditional release, guarantee all their civil rights, and compensate them. 

    The post Young convicts in the Dry Dock: ongoing violations and delayed justice appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Abdulla Mohamed AlDurazi, an 18-year-old Saudi citizen from the Qatif region in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was arrested without an arrest warrant while walking alone on 27 August 2014. His detention has been marred by multiple human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and an unfair trial. He was sentenced to death for alleged freedom of expression-related crimes committed when he was a minor. He is currently detained in the General Directorate Investigations prison in Al-Dammam, awaiting execution, as the Saudi Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on 8 August 2022, meaning he could be executed at any time without prior notice, in a clear violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, despite the 2020 Saudi Royal Decree aiming to abolish the death penalty for child defendants. On 16 October 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions, issued a press release, in which he urged “the Saudi judiciary and other institutions in Saudi Arabia to ensure that Abdullah AlDurazi’s execution is not carried out”.

     

    On 27 August 2014, while Abdulla was walking alone in the street, Saudi security officers seized him, beat him, and arrested him without presenting an arrest warrant. After being taken to the Tarout Police Station and then Qatif Prison, he was moved to the Dammam Investigations Center six months following his arrest. Abdulla forcibly disappeared for three months and endured approximately six months of solitary confinement, during which he was subjected to physical and psychological torture. Prison officers inflicted severe burns around his eye, broke his tooth, and injured his knee while he was restrained for a long time. Because of the cruel torture he endured, he suffered a severe ear injury, and he was hospitalized, where he spent two weeks in a coma. Under this brutal torture, Abdulla was forced into signing a false confession, which he was not allowed to read, claiming his involvement with a terrorist group.

     

    Following three years of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and solitary confinement, Abdulla faced trial before the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court in August 2017. During the trial, he cited the details of the torture he endured during the investigation period, which forced him into signing an already prepared written false confession that he was not allowed to read. He also made many requests for the court for his medical records to be admitted, which shows evidence of his hospitalization from the torture he endured to coerce his confession, but the court ignored them. It also denied Abdulla access to a court-appointed lawyer, which made his father, who works in the fishing sector and has no legal training, represent him at his trial before the Specialized Criminal Court, as his family could not afford to appoint a private lawyer.

     

    Abdulla’s trial relied only on his coerced confession, as the court did not present any other evidence for his alleged involvement in the crimes of which he was accused. Additionally, all of these alleged offenses are not considered among the most serious crimes. Consequently, Abdulla was convicted of 1) participating in the formation of a terrorist cell aimed at destabilizing the internal security in the country and targeting security officers, 2) participating in demonstrations and marches, 3) attacking and destroying public property, carrying out acts of sabotage and chaos, blocking the road and seeking to cause strife and division in the country, 4) assaulting security men by throwing Molotov cocktails at them, 5) blocking the road for pedestrians by burning tires, 6) chanting anti-state slogans, and 7) participating in Ahmed AlMatar’s funeral and distributing water during it, and organizing this funeral. The court even exaggerated and fabricated charges that were not included in the investigation books and the statements extracted under torture, in which Abdulla did not mention the formation of a terrorist cell.  Even though all these crimes allegedly occurred before Abdulla turned 18, except for one crime in relation to peaceful protest-related activities that took place in May 2014, when Abdulla was 18, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced him to death in February 2018.

     

    Despite the 2020 Royal Decree by Saudi King Salman abolishing the death penalty for child defendants, and Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman’s statement in an interview with “The Atlantic” on 3 March 2022 that the death penalty had been abolished except for murder charges, the Court of Appeal upheld his death sentence on 8 August 2022 and rejected Abdulla’s appeal, ignoring the protection provided in the 2020 Royal Decree to minors in Saudi Arabia for discretionary offenses (ta’zir), which involve the charges brought against Abdulla. Notably, the alleged crimes were protest-related and did not involve crimes considered the most serious, such as murder. Abdulla appealed his sentence before the Saudi Supreme Court, and in October 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, meaning he could be executed at any time.

     

    On 16 October 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions, issued a press release, in which he expressed concern at the imminent execution of Abdullah AlDurazi, who was a child when he allegedly committed his crime and urged “the Saudi judiciary and other institutions in Saudi Arabia to ensure that Abdullah AlDurazi’s execution is not carried out”. He added that “the Juvenile Act does not extend to mandatory and retributive death sentences, allowing for the execution of children sentenced under the provisions of the Sharia legal system” – that is, according to the Saudi interpretation of Sharia. Accordingly, he called on Saudi Arabia “to publish the text of the 2020 Royal Decree and enforce it for all defendants below the age of 18, regardless of their crime”. Reprieve, in collaboration with other organizations, had worked on this issue, contributed to its promotion, and shed light on it, warning of the danger of Saudi Arabia carrying out Abdulla’s execution at any time.

     

    Abdulla’s warrantless arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and unfair trial go against the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), to which Saudi Arabia is a party.  Additionally, the violations that he faced despite being a minor violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

     

    As such, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) urgently highlights the imminent threat to execute Abdulla and at least two other children in Saudi Arabia for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. ADHRB calls on the international community to take immediate action and pressure the Saudi government to revoke the death sentences imposed on all minors in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it urges Saudi authorities to release Abdulla immediately, given the absence of a fair trial and proper legal procedures. It further demands an investigation into the allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and ill-treatment, holding the perpetrators accountable. Compensation for the violations he endured should be provided, or at the very least, a fair retrial must be granted, leading to his release.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Abdulla Mohamed AlDurazi appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • What is a terrorist? Seriously. I’m asking.

    Per the Oxford Dictionary, terrorism is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

    So it makes sense that we would regard the murder of at least 260 attendees of the Supernova music festival in southern Israel as terrorism. It makes sense that we would see the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians as terrorism.

    I fully understand the demands–coursing across social media–to condemn Hamas’s recent atrocities as terrorism. From my apartment in Brooklyn, I can only imagine what Israelis are experiencing at this moment, but I imagine that it is something that can be justifiably described as terror.

    What I don’t understand is that if this is terrorism, what is the Israeli airstrike, on Monday, that reduced a marketplace in the Jabalia refugee camp to rubble and killed dozens of civilians?

    What are the airstrikes that destroyed four mosques in the Shati refugee camp, killing people worshiping inside?

    What is the word that we should use to describe an air force that levels entire school buildings, hospitals, apartment complexes, and neighborhoods?

    I am asking what these things are, because when they’ve happened, there has been no overwhelming demand from the American public to label these atrocities as terrorsim. There have been no calls by politicians to label Israel as an entity that yearns for the extermination of all Palestinians. There have been no coordinated attempts to label Israel’s actions as terrorism.

    But then what is an appropriate descriptor for the siege that will cut off Gaza from food, water, aid, and electricity and that is being enacted in contradiction of international law?

    What shall we call the killing, last year, of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank? Or the killing of at least six more journalists in Gaza in recent days?

    What about the murder, carried out this past September by the Israeli special forces, of a 15-year-old boy as he was leaving his grandfather’s house?

    How should we think about the acts that killed 91 children in the Gaza Strip over the course of 48 hours this past weekend? Should we understand them as acts of self-defense? Because if we should, then I am unclear as to how this notion of self-defense differs from what I am being told to understand as terrorism.

    I visited Israel once, in 2016, on a Birthright trip alongside thirty other young American Jews. I remember that over the course of those weeks, we threw around the word terrorist with abandon. In fact–and this is true–one of the icebreakers that we engaged in after touching down at Ben Gurian airport was called “Escape the Terrorist.” The game involved seeking out a partner to help navigate an area of sidewalk littered with make-pretend bombs.

    The only history lesson we received on that trip was a brief lecture given to us by Gil Hoffman, the chief political correspondent at the time for the Jerusalem Post. What left the biggest imprint was Hoffman’s closing remark.

    I remember him, in a dramatic pause, holding his chin in his palm, and then looking into our eyes and saying, “When the Palestinians care about their own children, then there will be peace.”

    Later that day, I was reminded of Hoffman’s words as I stared into the grainy footage of a Nazi propaganda film on display at Yad Vashem. The film, ostensibly, showed the routine goings on within a Jewish ghetto. In the center of the frame, a group of emaciated children huddled together for warmth, as passersby didn’t so much as stop to take notice.

    A placard near the screen described the propaganda as an attempt to depict the Jewish people as callous–as a people incapable even of caring for their own children.

    Nearby, a mic’d-up guide addressed a group of elderly tourists, saying, “They tried to strip us of our humanity, but in doing so only revealed the absence of their own.”

    What does it mean to believe that an entire people would not care for their children? What does it mean to believe that an entire people would be more celebratory of death than they would be of their own emancipation?

    What does it mean that terrorism is defined not by the act but by the actors?

    What does it mean to be a terrorist? I’m not sure that we know.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Headlines have been dominated since Saturday by the surprise Hamas attack against Israel and the Netanyahu government’s response. By Monday, Israel had formally declared war against the Islamist group and moved tens of thousands of troops toward Gaza in what looks like preparation for a full-blown ground invasion. Most controversially, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that Israel is cutting off water, food and fuel to the Gaza strip — an area that contains about two million people, about half of whom are children — which constitutes collective punishment, a war crime prohibited under international law.

    Government heads and opposition leaders alike across Western Europe and North America have been denouncing Hamas in withering terms and pledging unconditional support for Israel. The Biden administration issued a statement shortly following the attacks stating that the US “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza.” The statement added that the US is “ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel.”

    British prime minister Rishi Sunak declared: “There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. … [Hamas’] barbaric acts are acts of evil.” The Guardian had reported earlier that he has pledged “to provide diplomatic, intelligence or security support to Israel.” British Home Secretary Suella Braverman went so far as to suggest that the police should arrest people for engaging in “provocative demonstrations” that could “cause distress to UK Jewish communities.” This reportedly could include something as simple as chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Never to be outdone, opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer pledged his support for Netanyahu’s move to prevent food, water or fuel to enter Gaza during an interview on London’s LBC radio.

    The corporate-owned media have been acting in lockstep — demanding unwavering support of Israel, denouncing Hamas in the harshest terms and, above all, viciously dismissing any attempt to engage in what some outlets term “equivalence.” Even the most modest of attempts to add balance are fiercely denounced as “terrorist apologetics.”

    But not all is as it seems. Independent journalists and activists have begun investigating and fact-checking some of the claims that are being repeated in corporate-owned media. And all turns out that many of the claims made about Saturday’s surprise Hamas incursion are misleading or, in some cases, even outright false. Recent changes made to the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), meanwhile, have led to a tsunami-like spread of unverified footage and made it increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.

    Undoubtedly the most damning accusation to be leveled against Hamas is the charge that some of its units that took part in the Saturday attack murdered 40 babies, some of whom were decapitated. This claim was quickly seized on by corporate media outlets as part of their outrage against Hamas. But increasing doubt began to surround the allegation as people looked for verification. Ultimately, it turned out that not even the Israeli military itself was willing to confirm the reports. Another claim that has been circling corporate media outlets and right-wing X accounts is the accusation that Hamas engaged in rape. But again, there has been no independent verification. By Wednesday at least one mainstream outlet had retracted the claim.

    Some of the videos circulating on X is based on footage that is misrepresented or, in some cases, even of completely different conflicts in different countries. One video, for example, that was labeled “Hamas fires a salvo at Israel,” turned out to actually be footage of the conflict in Syria filmed three years earlier. One X user, far-right commentator and friend of Elon Musk, Ian Miles Cheong, posted a video with the caption: “Imagine if this was happening in our neighbourhood, to your family” that purported to depict Hamas militants killing Israeli citizens. It turned out that those in the video did not belong to Hamas but rather Israel’s own law enforcement. Other footage turned out to not even be depicting real life but rather the content of a video game. Labeled on X as “NEW VIDEO: Hamas fighters shooting down Israel war helicopter in Gaza,” it turned out to be taken from the 2013 open world tactical shooter simulation game Arma 3.

    Far from representing some inventive first on the part of Israel, engaging in this kind of disinformation campaign is, in fact, a tried and trusted component of its military arsenal. And some of them come straight from the Israeli government itself. During the flair up of violence in May 2021 sparked by the Israeli raid of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, for example, an Israeli government spokesperson posted a video on X (then Twitter) purporting to depict explosions taking place in Gaza. It turned out that the footage was actually of rockets fired from Syria or Libya three years earlier. The Israeli government sometimes even enlists student groups as part of this propaganda effort. In July 2014, Electronic Intifada reported: “Israel student union sets up “war room” to sell Gaza massacre on Facebook”

    Israel apologists will naturally claim that the Palestinian side engages in media manipulation as well. Though there have been some isolated examples of this (hardly surprising given the sheer number of social media users), it should be pointed out that Palestinians don’t have anywhere near the same kinds of resources that Israel does. After all, Israel is a regional superpower and the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since the end of World War II. And it has used these resources to engage in media manipulation operations even in third countries. In February of this year, for example, France24 reported: “An Israeli firm sought to influence more than 30 elections around the world for clients by hacking, sabotage and spreading disinformation, according to an undercover media investigation published Wednesday.”

    In addition to outright distortion and lies, another tactic that Israel and its media allies have been employing is what some have termed “selective outrage.” For instance, in the case of rape, even if we imagine for a moment that accusations against Hamas on this charge are true, the corporate media proceeds as if this is something entirely unique to the Palestinian side of the conflict. Sexual violence against Palestinian women on the part of Israeli security forces and prison guards, however, is in fact well documented. Just last month reports emerged that Israeli soldiers in the occupied city of Al Khalil had forcibly stripped five women and paraded them naked before stealing their jewelry — all in front of their own children. A 2020 academic study exploring the experience of 20 female Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail found that all but one had “experienced some sort of unwanted verbal and nonverbal sexual comments or gestures, forced nudity, or forced touching by prison personnel.”

    The most outrageous example of selective outrage, however, must be the killing of children. Again, even if we imagine for a moment that the accusations against Hamas are true, the Islamist group would be mere amateurs compared to the Israeli security forces when it comes to killing children. Israel’s record is far too extensive to list exhaustively here, but examples include Operation Protective Edge in 2014 during which Israeli forces murdered 495 children and Operation Cast Lead in 2008–9 during which they murdered 344 children. Israeli snipers, meanwhile, have shot dead in 2023 alone: two-year-old Mohammed al-Tamimi in June; three-year-old Muhammad Haitham al-Tamimi in June; 15-year-old Sadeel Naghniyeh in June; 14-year-old Qusai Radwan Yousef Waked in February; and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Hasan Ahmad Hardan in July. In January of this year, Israeli security forces and allied settler extremists managed to kill just under 40 Palestinian children in just one day.

    To be absolutely clear, accusations against Hamas should not be automatically dismissed as Israeli disinformation. And certainly, no rape or murder on the part of Israeli forces would excuse a rape or murder by a member of Hamas. But at the same time, we must consistently stress that Israel and its minions in the corporate-owned press are adept at spreading false information against the Palestinian side and notorious for engaging in flagrant selective outrage to make Israel out as the sole victim of the conflict. As they continue to manufacture consent for what is shaping up to be an all-out war against Gaza, a heavy burden falls on independent media to call out these duplicitous actions and shameless double standards.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.