India: The Legacy of British Colonialism — Historic Injustice and Impunity

[Old and new imperialist powers have never accepted responsibility for their numerous horrifying crimes against their victims, and for the historical legacies of their enslavement, colonization, and their unending forms of subjugation, dehumanization, ethnic cleansing and genocide.  Some, when pressed to some level of admission, have made token amends.  But advocates of reparations, world-wide,  have kept collective memory, resistance, and demands for historical justice alive, and have fueled new movements with a strong historic sense of their revolutionary mission.  Among these are the advocates of British reparations to people in India. -- Frontlines ed.]

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Apologies and reparations to India

It started a few months after the end of the first world war when an Englishwoman, a missionary, reported that she had been molested on a street in the Punjab city of Amritsar. The Raj’s local commander, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, issued an order requiring all Indians using that street to crawl its length on their hands and knees. He also authorized the indiscriminate, public whipping of natives who came within lathi length of British policemen.
On April 13, 1919, a multitude of Punjabis gathered in Amritsar’s Jallian wala Bagh as part of the Sikh Festival “Baisakhi fair” and to protest at these extraordinary measures. The throng, penned in a narrow space smaller than Trafalgar Square, had been peacefully listening to the testimony of victims when Dyer appeared at the head of a contingent of British troops. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering, and for 10 to 15 minutes 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the screaming, terrified crowd, some of whom were trampled by those desperately trying to escape.
Amritsar Massacre
“The Indians were ‘packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies’; the people ‘ran madly this way and the other. When fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, and the fire was then directed on the ground. This was continued for eight or ten minutes, and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point of exhaustion”…..Winston Churchill
Dyer then marched away, leaving 379 dead and over 1,500 wounded.
Back in his headquarters, he reported to his superiors that he had been ‘confronted by a revolutionary army,’ and had been obliged ‘to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.’ In the storm of outrage which followed, the brigadier was promoted to major general, retired, and placed on the inactive list.
 Senior British officers applauded his suppression of ‘another Indian Mutiny.’ The Guardians of the Golden Temple enrolled him in the Brotherhood of Sikhs. The House of Lords passed a measure commending him. The Conservatives presented him with a jewelled sword inscribed “Saviour of the Punjab.”
A young Sikh teenager who was being raised at Khalsa Orphanage named Udham Singh (aka Mohammad Singh Azad) saw the happening with his own eyes. He vowed to avenge the Amritsar massacre.
On 13 March 1940 at 4.30 p.m. in the Caxton Hall, London, where a meeting of the East India Association was being held in conjunction with the Royal Central Asian Society, Udham Singh fired five to six shots from his pistol at Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who was governor of the Punjab when the Amritsar Massacre had taken place, to avenge the massacre.
On the 31st July, 1940, Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville jail, London
“He was the real culprit. He deserved it. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I [had to] crush him.” Udham Singh, telling the trial court why he killed Michael O’Dwyer.                             –  from the account by Jallian Wala Bagh

Thursday, 11 April 2013
Press Release: Colonialism Reparation

Colonialism Reparation calls on the UK to apologize and pay reparations to India for the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh and for the whole period of British colonial rule.

On April 13, 1919, hundreds of Indians were massacred by the British colonial troops under General Reginald Dyer, the “Butcher of Amritsar”. Considering the need to cause terror to prevent any rebellions in Punjab, General Dyer gave orders to shoot on the crowd gathered to attend a rally in Jallianwala Bagh, a narrow square of the city, without firing warning shots and until exhaustion of the ammunition. The troops then withdrew without providing any medical assistance to the wounded.

During the disciplinary proceedings against the general Dyer by the “Disorders Inquiry Committee”, specially constituted by the British Government in India, no measures were taken against him because his actions were tolerated by his superiors even if, as a result of the investigation, the officer was relieved of command on March 23, 1920 and retired on July 17, 1920 retaining the rank of colonel.

On February 20, 2013 the British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the memorial of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, describing it as “a deeply shameful event in British history,” but avoiding to condemn it, to present an official apology and to offer reparations to the relatives of the victims. Furthermore, the visit of the British Prime Minister took place during a trip that had as its main purpose the development of trade relations, including the promotion of the multi-role fighter Eurofighter Typhoon.

On February 21, 2013, the British Prime Minister David Cameron also said that the United Kingdom does not intend to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond, even if India already demanded its return on several occasions.

Colonialism Reparation calls on the UK to apologize and pay reparations to India for the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh and for the whole period of British colonial rule, also returning the cultural property stolen during the colonial period.

Colonialism Reparation is an international movement for the acknowledgement, the reconciliation, the apologies and the reparations of colonialism. It develops nonviolent activities at a personal and institutional level to create awareness of the situation and to make sure that the colonizing nations which have given rise to situations of inhumane injustice and suffering condemn their colonial actions recognizing their behavior as criminal, they reconcile with their past, apologize and finally pay reparations to the colonized countries.

www.colonialismreparation.org

Liberal Anti-Drone-Policy activists ask legal accountability — but Obama and Congress could not care less

Rights Groups, in Letter to Obama, Question Legality and Secrecy of Drone Killings

[Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency -- A drone model burned Friday at a protest in Sana, Yemen. Most American drone attacks have been in Yemen and Pakistan.]

By SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, April 12, 2013

In a letter sent to President Obama this week, the nation’s leading human rights organizations questioned the legal basis for targeted killing and called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.

The “statement of shared concern” said the administration should “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”

The nine-page letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations and several other groups, is the most significant critique to date by advocacy groups of what has become the centerpiece of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts.

While not directly calling the strikes illegal under international law, the letter lists what it calls troubling reports of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command to select targets and assess results. The reported policies raise “serious questions about whether the U.S. is operating in accordance with international law,” the letter says. It is also signed by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and units of the New York University and Columbia Law Schools.

West Bank protesters rally for release of deteriorating prisoners

19 February, 2013

[Palestinians throw stones towards Israeli troops during clashes that broke out after a rally in the West Bank city of Hebron to show solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails February 18, 2013. (Reuters / Ammar Awad)]

Thousands demonstrated in Palestine’s two largest cities in support of hunger strikers in Israeli jails. Protesters called on the EU to take action to demand better treatment of the weakening prisoners and back their release.

­More than 1,000 people rioted in the West Bank’s two largest cities on Monday to collectively demonstrate their support for the four long-term hunger strikers imprisoned in Israel’s jails. Public anger has heightened over the uncertainty of the prisoners’ fates, and people took to the streets to both show their support and demand that the international community step in.

The protests flared in both Nablus in the north and Hebron in the south, prompting clashes with the army. Over 1,000 people gathered in Nablus, with a further 1,500 demonstrating in central Hebron. Palestinian youths also blocked the entrance to the UN offices in Ramallah, 10km north of Jerusalem. However, Palestinian police prevented them from entering the building, according to AFP correspondents.

Strategizing To Defeat Control Unit Prisons And Solitary Confinement

By Angola 3 News, 15 February, 2013

Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons, by Nancy Kurshan

–An interview with author/activist Nancy Kurshan

Author and longtime activist Nancy Kurshan’s new book, entitled Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons , has just been released by the Freedom Archives . Kurshan’s book documents the work of The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), which she co-founded in 1985 as a response to the lockdown at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois. It quickly turned into a broader campaign against control unit prisons and human rights violations in US prisons that lasted fifteen years, until 2000. The following excerpt from Out of Control details CEML’s origins:

I had been living in Chicago for about a year when I heard the news that two guards had been killed by two prisoners in the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, 350 miles south of Chicago. Although it was an isolated incident with no associated riot conditions, the prison was immediately placed on lockdown status, and the authorities seized on the opportunity to violently repress the entire prison population. For two years, from 1983 to 1985, all of the 350 men imprisoned there were subjected to brutal, dehumanizing conditions. All work programs were shut down, as were educational activities and religious services.

During the initial stage of this lockdown, 60 guards equipped with riot gear, much of it shipped in from other prisons, systematically beat approximately 100 handcuffed and defenseless prisoners. Guards also subjected some prisoners to forced finger probes of the rectum. Random beatings and rectal probes continued through the two-year lockdown. Despite clear evidence of physical and psychological brutality at the hands of the guards, Congress and the courts refused to intervene to stop the lockdown…

…Although the terrible conditions at the prison were striking, what drew us to Marion in particular was the history of struggle of the prisoners and their allies on the outside. When the infamous Alcatraz was closed in 1962, Marion Federal Penitentiary was opened and became the new Alcatraz, the end of the line for the “worst of the worst.”

In 1972 there was a prisoner’s peaceful work stoppage at Marion led by Puerto Rican Nationalist Rafael Cancel Miranda. In response to this peaceful work stoppage, the authorities placed a section of the prison under lockdown, thus creating the first “control unit,” essentially a prison within a prison, amplifying the use of isolation as a form of control, previously used only for a selected prisoner. That was 1972.

At this time, in 1985, after two years of lockdown, they converted the whole prison into a control unit. Importantly, because Marion in 1985 was “the end of the line,” the only “Level 6” federal prison, there were disproportionate numbers of political prisoners—those who were incarcerated for their political beliefs and actions. These included people such as Native American Leonard Peltier who had spent years there until recently, and now (in 1985) Black Panthers Sundiata Acoli and Sekou Odinga , Puerto Rican independentista Oscar López Rivera , and white revolutionary Bill Dunne . These were people we knew or identified with, activists of the 1960s and 1970s incarcerated for their political activities. Marion, like its predecessor Alcatraz and its successor ADX Florence, was clearly a destination point for political prisoners.

A rare show in iron-fisted monarchy: “Saudis in capital protest for release of prisoners”

MARIAM RIZK, Associated Press, February 10, 2013

CAIRO (AP) – Residents of the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh say more than 100 people have demonstrated to call for the release of people detained without charge.  Saudi security officials say they arrested at least five people. They spoke anonymously in line with police regulations.

Dozens of security vehicles blocked the intersections of two streets Saturday where the demonstrations were taking place.

North of Riyadh in the city of Buraydah, around 30 people – mostly women related to the prisoners – held a similar rally.

Women demonstrated in Riyadh

In past years, a small number of Saudis have demonstrated in Riyadh to demand the release of thousands of people detained without charge or trial on suspicion of involvement in militant activity. Some have been held for up to 15 years.

Protests are rare in the conservative kingdom.

In The US, Mass Child Killings Are Tragedies. In Pakistan, Mere Bug Splats

George Monbiot, The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012

 

[A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan 'have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears'. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty.]

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

The barbaric comprador monarchy of Saudi Arabia defends beheading

[That barbarism, feudalism, monarchism, and imperialism present an undivided front of arrogant impunity--of acting like nothing's wrong--is shocking and disgusting, but expected, given their history and nature.  But that the story is so hidden, in the highly touted "information age," is a shameful crime of media who claim, falsely, that they are objective, the basis for an informed democracy.  No, they are premeditated co-conspirators with the barbaric powers-that-be. -- Frontlines ed.]

Charlotte Rachael Proudman, The Independent (UK), Tuesday 15 January 2013

The beheading of a housemaid in Saudi Arabia highlights slave-like conditions

In 2010, 27 migrant workers were executed in Saudi Arabia and, according to Amnesty International, more than 45 foreign maids are currently on death row

A young Sri Lankan woman was beheaded with a sword last Wednesday in a Dawadmi, a small town in Saudi Arabia. Rizana Nafeek was found guilty of murdering her employers’ child – a crime she vehemently denied until death.

Rizana is not the only migrant worker to have been executed in Saudi Arabia – at least 27 were executed in 2010 and more than 45 foreign maids are facing execution on death row according to Amnesty International. Rizana’s deadly fate highlights the plight of migrant workers all around the world.

Like many migrant workers’ Rizana’s story began when she left her home country Sri Lanka in 2005 for Saudi Arabia to work as a housemaid where she could earn enough money to support her relatives. In the same year she was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to death for murdering her employers’ four-month-old son, Kayed bin Nayef bin Jazyan al-Otaibi. Rizana said the child choked on milk and died. The child’s family believed Rizana had strangled the child after attempting to bottle-feed him.

Once arrested Rizana battled with an unjust Saudi legal system. “Defendants are rarely allowed formal representation by a lawyer and in many cases are kept in the dark about the progress of legal proceedings against them,” Amnesty International said. The Sri Lankan government and human rights organisations campaigned for Rizana to have a fair trial.

Rizana did not have legal representation prior to her trial – and – she was physically assaulted and forced to sign a confession under duress, which she later retracted. Under international law Rizana at the age of 17 was too young to receive the death penalty. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is prohibited from sentencing a child under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offence to death. It is unlikely Saudi Arabia will be subject to any stringent sanctions for violating international law, which led to the death of a young woman.

How to Avoid “Stop and Frisk”

Hundreds Of Indigenous Women And Girls Were Murdered In Canada

By Farooque Chowdhury, Countercurrents.org

30 October, 2012

Hundreds of indigenous women and girls were murdered in Canada . To many, it’s a baffling fact.

Recently, there were proposals in the UK parliament to expand the use of secret court hearings in civil cases.

In Greece , migrants and asylum seekers are being hounded by police and right-wing extremists.

These are only a few bitter, and unbelievable to a section in broader society, facts related to human rights in the advanced capitalist world. These facts are difficult to swallow to the section that trusts moral standing of state.

Hard facts related to human rights in these advanced capitalist democratic countries accompany human rights situation in Iraq and Pakistan , countries in the fringe of the world system, but part of the system. In one of these countries, democracy, considering it as a simple commodity, has been exported/imported or is being constructed.

A dirty picture overwhelms human perception. It’s a picture of asserting power, imposing authority, calculus of competition, internal power game, failure to resolve conflicting demands, subjugation, and silencing souls dissenting.

When did “the land of the free” become a “police state”?

[The capitalist rulers of the USA have long claimed the country to be the fountain of democracy, brotherhood and freedom.  But along the way, the victims of the US’ rampant and violent growth have wondered "what in the world are they talking about?"

• When the colonists and later the pilgrims arrived, their force hurled against the indigenous was certainly repressive.
• When African people were kidnapped and brutally enslaved, and their exploitation enforced by the lash and the gun, this was not brotherhood at work.
• When the US developed police forces to round up fugitive Africans, this was a police state.
• When half of Mexico was seized, and turned into half of the USA instead, and the people were turned into illegal aliens, they were subjected to a police state.
• When workers rose up to loosen the chains of their exploitation, and were shot down or jailed or executed, this was certainly a police state at work.
• When Chinese were criminalized and banned, was this the brotherhood so proclaimed?
• When Mexican-American citizens were rounded up, and blamed for the Great Depression of the 30’s, and hundreds of thousands were deported, this expulsion was characteristic of a police state action.
• When Jim Crow enforced white supremacist rule with noose and whip and gun, with official badges worn or with the embrace or encouragement of officialdom, this was the police state at work.
• When Japanese-Americans were rounded up and imprisoned, for the crime of being Japanese, this was surely a police state action.
• When reformers and radicals and communists were banned from culture and schools and work, and many were jailed, was this an expression of the “land of the free?”
• When people rose for civil rights and Black liberation, countless were beaten, jailed, and killed.  Many remain imprisoned today.  The face of a police state was seen by millions.
• When the largest mass imprisonment program in the world as been expanded, largely against black and brown people, this speaks eloquently to the nature of US society.
• And today, surveillance of Arabs and Muslims, black and brown youth, anti-war, environmental, women's rights, and other political activists and opponents, and now electronic, social networking and drone surveillance continues to expand this repressive police state into every aspect of public and private life.

Some argue that one brutal or oppressive tool, or another, began this process.  Some of the earlier forms did not bother some people so much.  And some have been part of a privileged elite or so-called “middle class” which has enjoyed many of the "democratic" fruits obtained from an exploitative and oppressive system.  When do you think “the police state” truly has begun?  -- Frontlines ed.]

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The coming drone attack on America

Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised

Naomi Wolf, guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 December 2012

[By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. Photograph: US navy/Reuters]

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, “a huge push by […] the defense sector” to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won’t necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.

Palestinian Prisoners Support Office Raided by Israeli Forces

Addameer Offices Raided by Israeli Occupying Forces This Morning

http://www.addameer.org/etemplate.php?id=549

The Israeli Occupation Forces raided three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ramallah at 3 am this morning, including Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Five computers and a camera were stolen from Addameer, as well as a number of legal files, pictures and posters of prisoners and detainees on hunger strike. Ironically, this attack coincides with the 64^th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Addameer believes that this brutal assault is part of the constant targeting of the association’s staff and mission to defend Palestinian political prisoners. Since 2002, Addameer has been subjected to raids and attacks and arrest campaigns of staff members in past years. Most recently, Addameer’s researcher, Ayman Nasser, was detained on 15 October 2012 and is charged for supporting Palestinian prisoners and detainees and calling for their freedom. Similarly, in midst of the prisoners’ hunger strike between 17 September and 13 October 2011,  the IOF issued an arbitrary order that bans Addameer’s chairperson Abdullatif Ghaith from entering the West Bank, a ban that is still in effect.

“Hands off the People of Iran” exposes Tribunal on Iran’s 1980′s massacre of prisoners

[Frontlines recently posted an article ("The Iran Tribunal and the crimes of the Islamic Republic") about recent hearings, proclaimed to be in the historic tradition of the Bertrand Russell Tribunals in the 70's against war crimes, but focused on the mass murder of Iranian political prisoners in the 1980's.  It was, subsequently, brought to our attention that this recent tribunal (unlike the tradition of the Russell Tribunals) is designed to limit the focus on the "old news" of this Iranian massacre, and prevent inclusion of anti-imperialist evidence of crimes--both historic and current--against the people of Iran, who are not only oppressed by the Iranian regime (which continues today the mass imprionment and executions of its political opponents), but also by the western (US, EU) sanctions and war threats.  And many have stepped forward to expose this recent Tribunal as a US--and particularly, the CIA--as the funders and "limiters" of this Tribunal, apparently to use it as grist for their media mill and western war plans against the Iranian people.  Frontlines thanks those who brought this to our attention.  For more information, see the article below, and the website http://hopoi.org/ -- Frontlines ed.]

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The 7 key arguments against the “Iran Tribunal”

by “Hands Off the People of Iran”

1. Payam Akhavan (chair and spokesperson of the tribunal’s steering committee) has links to organisations that have accepted large amounts of money from the US government

2. The tribunal refuses to take a stand against war and sanctions on Iran
3. Mainstream lawyers and politicians like Sir Geoffrey Nice, John Cooper QC and Maurice Copithorne ideologically support the tribunal – why?
4. The pro-war Mujahedeen is closely involved with the tribunal
5. Many organisations and witnesses have withdrawn
6. Critical voices have been silenced
7. Conclusion: The tribunal has become part of the campaign to legitimise war and sanctions to enforce pro-western ‘regime change from above’.

The arguments in more detail:

Bloodbath in Gaza

Counterpunch, November 15, 2012

by PATRICK HIGGINS

For days now, Israel has been launching aerial attacks on Gaza, resulting in many dead and many injured. The attacks are part of a larger and massively depressing spectacle of a usurping colony forcing a population into a wall-enclosed ghetto and bombing them in the name of Judaism and the Jews.

A New York Times article, published November 14^th, reports on the death of Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari, killed by one of Israel’s recent (“pinpoint,”* according to the article) airstrikes. Naturally, the article makes sly non-mention of the others—including the children—killed in the strikes. One phrase in the article reflects the Israeli government’s logic regarding the matter: “The ferocity of the airstrikes, in response to what Israel called repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants…”

The article goes on to bolster this logic when considering the always-tenuous ceasefire between Hamas, the governing body of Gaza, and Israel:

“Since [2008-2009] Hamas has mostly adhered to an informal, if shaky, cease-fire and at times tried to enforce the smaller militant groups to stick to it. But in recent months, under pressure from some of the Gaza population for not avenging deadly Israeli airstrikes, it has claimed responsibility for participating in the firing of rockets.”

So the question posed is, Who started it? When one reads the above words, one gets the sense that the “starting” of “it” amounts to a recent phenomenon, and that the question’s answer is to be found in recent events, circa last weekend. This logic upheld by the Israeli government and the U.S.’s “newspaper of record” is also upheld by—I apologize in advance for the astonishing lack of surprise here—the U.S. government.

At the end of his presidency, George W. Bush** justified Operation Cast Lead—Israel’s massacre of around 1,400 Palestinians—by saying Hamas started it by breaking a ceasefire with rocket fire.

First of all, that was never even true. Israel broke the ceasefire on November 4^th, 2008, when it raided the Gaza Strip and killed six Hamas members. The raid was reported by the Guardian at the time. The event wasn’t really mentioned in the mainstream discussion of the U.S., which reveals something about the predominant U.S. attitude towards Israel and Gaza.

Supporters of Israel often brag about how Israel “withdrew” from Gaza, as if Gaza’s transition from formally occupied territory to open-air prison constituted a grand Israeli peace effort. But Israel breaches Gazan territory at will and becomes quite pestered when it’s met with resistance for doing so. This is perhaps unexceptional. Israel’s sponsor, the United States, similarly believes it owns everything and can do what it likes to whatever territories at any time. Just think of its vast drone network, always busy murdering civilians in places from Pakistan to Yemen.

Technically, Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza offered Israel a truce as recently as November 12^th. But let’s ask the question in a deeper sense: Who started it?

The question is easily answered, but it should be asked with more specificity: Who started the murderous settler-colonialism? (“Murderous settler-colonialism” is redundant, but I will nonetheless employ the phrase to make the point as clear as possible.)

Israel did, of course. The question of settler-colonialism is important. It clarifies. After all, settler-colonialism is a process. In Palestine, it’s always underway. More important to note is that it’s always violent.

Iran hanged 10 people on Monday

DUBAI | Mon Oct 22, 2012

(Reuters) – Iran hanged 10 people convicted of drug trafficking on Monday, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported, part of what rights group Amnesty International called a “state killing spree”.

Executions are regular events in Tehran, and the latest took place in a prison in the capital. The judiciary said those hanged were members of two drug smuggling gangs, Mehr said.

Iran: Evin Prison inmates say they witnessed torture to death of Iranian blogger

Al Arabiya, Sunday, 11 November 2012

Iranian Sattar Beheshti, 35, died after he was arrested for his anti-government blog. (Courtesy photo of http://www.kaleme.com)

By Najah Mohamed Ali
DUBAI

Inmates of the Evin Prison, northwest of the Iranian capital Tehran, have testified to seeing blogger Sattar Beheshti being brutally tortured to death by prison authorities.

Iranian opposition website Kaleme published what it said was a leaked testimony signed by 41 political prisoners. They said Beheshti was was severely beaten, hanged from the ceiling by his wrists, and also was repeatedly threatened to be killed.