… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Author: dizzy

  • Sheikh Hasina resigns as prime minister and leaves Bangladesh following mass protests

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    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Sheikh Hasina addresses party rally last year (Photo: Delwar Hossain/ Wikimedia Commons)

    The protests, initially led by students demanding reforms in the quota system in government jobs, took a violent turn in the last weeks of July

    Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country, army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced during an address to the nation in the afternoon of Monday, August 5.

    The Army chief also claimed to have taken full responsibility over the government, promising that an interim government would be formed soon after consulting all the opposition parties. He also appealed to the protesters to end their demonstrations with a hope that the violence would stop.

    Waker-Uz-Zaman promised that he will make sure that all persons responsible for the killing of protesters are held accountable for their acts.

    Despite the announcement of Hasina leaving the country, demonstrations continued throughout the day in Bangladesh. There were reports of Hasina’s former official residence being stormed and Dhaka’s international airport being shut down in the afternoon.

    Protesters reportedly blocked roads at different places in the country, vandalized the statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, considered the founder of the nation, as well as the offices of Hasina’s Awami League. Attacks were also carried out against the offices of various other parties, and continued into the evening.

    Over 300 people, including security personnel, have been killed and thousands of others have been injured in the protests so far.

    The protests in the country have been ongoing for over a month now. The first weeks of the protests saw university students demand reforms in the quota system in the recruitment in government jobs, and were largely peaceful. Protests turned violent after they were allegedly attacked by members of the ruling Awami League Party under the cover of security in the third week of July.

    Amid the intensification of the protests, the Hasina government called for all universities to be shut down, imposed a curfew and a communication blockade. A shoot on sight order was also issued to the army deployed to control the violence.

    Over 200 people were killed and thousands were injured in clashes between the security forces and protesters in the following week of July.

    On July 21, the country’s Supreme Court scrapped most of the quota, fulfilling the central demand of the protesters. Yet, the protests continued with growing demands for action against the perpetrators of the violence and against the government itself.

    The second round of protests erupted on Sunday, August 3, with thousands gathered in different major cities in the country calling for Hasina to resign. Chittagong, one of the major centers of quota reform protests witnessed the hundred of thousands of people flooding the streets, waving national flags and shouting slogans against Hasina.

    Over 100 people, including over a dozen security personnel, have been killed in Sunday’s protests.

    Hasina’s government and her Awami League party had alleged that the violent protests were initiated as a part of a conspiracy against the elected government. Hasina had accused the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of collaborating with Jamaat-e-Islami, an extremist group, to provoke violence across the country in order to bring regime change in the country as they could not win popular elections.

    According to a source on the ground, the violence during the quota reform movement was used by the imperialist powers led by the US to orchestrate regime change in the country. They also claimed that the new regime would be used to undo the secular and progressive reforms initiated by the Hasina government during her four terms. 

    In January’s national elections in Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina had won her fourth straight term as prime minister since 2009. This was her fifth term as prime minister in total. She was first elected as prime minister in 1996. The US had questioned the legitimacy of the last elections in January.

    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Challenge racism, stand with the victims of far-right terror

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/challenge-racism-stand-victims-far-right-terror

    Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
    Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

    Migrants and refugees are not responsible for Britain’s ills – a message we must make absolutely clear, says JEREMY CORBYN MP

    LAST week, a horrendous murder took place in Southport as three children were brutally hacked to death in a violent knife attack. What followed showed both the best and worst of society.

    The best was the outpouring of support for the grieving families of the children. The worst was the far-right forces who attacked the mosque in Southport, a hotel housing refugees in Rotherham, and Muslim-run businesses across the country.

    These far-right attacks on the Muslim community echo the tactics of the Nazis against Jewish people, shops and businesses in Germany in the 1930s. In both scenarios, the far right use violence against minorities and blame them for poverty, housing shortages and pressures on health and education services.

    The emboldening of the racist right has come from the growing use of anti-migrant language by supposedly mainstream politicians, claiming that desperate people crossing the Channel in flimsy boats are an “invading force.”

    The same voices seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that wars cause refugee flows, and that the migrants who have made their homes in Britain work tirelessly to try and make underfunded services work at all.

    At the same time, we are witnessing an economic strategy inherited from the Tories which increases the huge wealth gap in our society, perpetuates austerity and ignores the desperate poverty of so many children.

    The response of the left must be to stand with the victims of far-right terror, challenge the far-right racism and call for the government to address the common issues facing all communities: the housing crisis, crumbling education and the collapse of our NHS.

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/challenge-racism-stand-victims-far-right-terror

  • Hundreds gather in Parliament Square as 21 now imprisoned for demanding climate action 

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    Hundreds gathered in Parliament Square on Saturday in solidarity with the 21 political prisoners currently incarcerated for demanding an end to the fossil fuel era, as well as all political prisoners fighting for change in the UK and abroad, including two imprisoned for taking action with Palestine Action. In recent weeks Just Stop Oil has been taking action with groups internationally to demand governments establish a fossil fuel treaty, to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. 

    Supporters of Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, Defend our Juries and Fossil Free London, gathered at the Gandhi statue in Parliament Square. The crowd heard speeches from a range of speakers and messages from those currently in prison. Attendees could be seen holding signs which read ‘You can’t lock up the Truth’ and ‘No Justice when Juries are Denied the Truth.’ After the rally, many attendees joined the Palestinian solidarity march in London, in resistance to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    One of those speaking at the rally today was Raj Chada, a lawyer who has represented many of these 21 political prisoners in court. He said:

    “This is about the nature of our democracy, in which peaceful protestors are routinely being imprisoned now. In the Supreme Court, a few years ago, they said that ‘protest was the lifeblood of our democracy.’ Our democracy is on its knees then, because they are not paying attention to protest.” 

    “I have been doing this job now for 20 years and until 3 years ago, I hadn’t had one client imprisoned. Something has changed in the establishment. In the shadow of this [Gandhi] statue, it shows the importance of nonviolent action and what it can achieve and why it should be so important. We will continue that fight for as long as we possibly can.”

    Raj Chada appears in this video.

    My anaysis – dizzy – is that the fossil fuel industry has bought these laws by financing think tanks and lobbying organisations and that judges are blatently biased, not even pretending to be neutral and impartial. If you routinely use private transport to travel even moderate distances, you should expect to be occasionally delayed. Driving delays of hours are commonplace. For consistency shouldn’t people causing delays by conducting road works or having an accident also be imprisoned for many years FFS? It is overwhelmingly biased and punitive. How did some of these harsh judges get to try so many JSO trials?

    later ed: The argument that people causing delays by roadworks or having an accident should be imprisoned is strengthened by the fact that motivations are not considered relevant.

    7/8/24 Apologies, I can and should do better that my ‘analysis’ above. The argument about imprisoning for roadworks or accidents: The point I’m making is that since motivations are not considered relevant in trials of climate protesters then what is left is the effect: delays to private vehicle users and delays are also caused by roadworks and accidents. I wonder if that’s clear, can be followed.

  • Left and civil society groups demand India end its complicity in Israel’s genocide

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    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Brinda Karat, CPI (M) polit bureau member speaking in the press conference in New Delhi on Thursday, August 1

    Left parties will observe a day of solidarity with Palestine on August 3 to pressure the Indian government to stop sending weapons to Israel and to end the genocide

    Five left parties in India issued a joint call, asking the Indian government to stop supplying weapons to Israel, and demanding immediate comprehensive international sanctions over its continued violations of international law and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Similar calls were made by civil society groups as well.  

    The parties include the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Forward Bloc, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, issued a joint call for a nationwide protest mobilization on August 3, in solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

    Apart from calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and creation of a Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders, the left parties demanded Israel be declared an apartheid state, and denounced Israel’s continued defiance of UN resolutions, existing international laws and the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).  

    “In the light of brazen violations of UN resolutions, the ICJ rulings against the genocide by Israel in Gaza and the escalation of such genocide against the people of Palestine,” the left parties call upon “Indian people to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the genocide and atrocities being carried out by Israel backed by the United State of America” the text of the joint call reads.  

    The left parties also demanded that the government of India “cancel all export licenses and permissions to various Indian companies for the supply of military arms and ammunition to Israel, and halt all arms imports from Israel” and “end all forms of complicity with Israel’s illegal military occupation and genocide [which is] based on the principles of colonial apartheid.”

    Speaking in a press conference organized by civil society groups on Thursday in New Delhi, Brinda Karat, a CPI (M) polit bureau member said that, “our deep and abiding solidarity for Palestinian freedom requires us to hold our own government accountable for actions which help the perpetrators of the continuing barbaric horrors against the children, the people of Palestine.”

    Speaking in the press conference, economist and right to food activist Jean Dreze accused the Indian government of complicity in genocide and starvation of Palestinians, by refusing to stop cooperation with the Zionist state and by refusing to press Israel to stop its war in Gaza.

    Almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 90,000 injured so far in the Israeli genocide on Gazam which began on October 7 of last year.   

    Stop aiding Israeli genocide in Gaza!

    Several prominent figures, including former judges of the Supreme Court of India, scholars and activists wrote a joint letter to India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday, asking the country to immediately halt all supplies of weapons to Israel, claiming it violates India’s obligations to international laws and its own constitutional provisions.  

    Quoting media reports about Spain not allowing the docking of at least two ships allegedly carrying military equipment from India to Israel in recent months, as well as labels of “made in India” found on some of the missiles dropped by Israel in Gaza, the civil society members claimed in a press conference on Thursday that the Narendra Modi-led government of India has forgotten its own commitments to the Genocide Convention and other international laws, and even failed to implement its historical positions on the Palestinian issue. 

    The joint letter to India’s defense minister provides evidence of how at least three Indian companies are manufacturing missile parts and Hermes drones, which are used by Israel to launch attacks inside civilian areas in Gaza. 

    “Any supply of military material to Israel would amount to a violation of India’s obligations under international humanitarian law and the mandate of Article 21 read with Article 51 (c) of the Indian constitution. We urge you, therefore, to cancel the concerned export licenses and halt the granting of any new licenses to companies supplying military equipment to Israel,” the joint letter reads.   

    India’s billions of dollars of arms trade with Israel contradicts its own stated positions of “peaceful resolution in Palestine” and its voting patterns on successive UN resolutions most of which support an immediate ceasefire and the creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories, various speakers said in the press conference on Thursday. 

    Speakers, including Karat, demanded that the Indian government should stop trying to be a beneficiary of the Israeli occupation and stop indulging in opportunistic practices, such as sending its workforce to replace Palestinians in Israel.  

    Last year, the Indian government agreed to send workers to replace thousands of Palestinians whose work permits were canceled by Israel after the beginning of the war on October 7.

    Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of the Wire, said that India’s policy on supporting Israel during the war goes against the Modi government’s stated position of preserving Indian interests, as Israeli acts such as the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran earlier this week could result in the eruption of regional warm which can force around 5 million Indians working in the Gulf countries to return home.

    Lawyer Prashant Bhusan, and prominent writer Arundhati Roy, also underlined that any clandestine deal between India and Israel violates India’s democratic principles and its historic commitments to anti-colonial struggles around the world. 

    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Tens of thousands march across Britain demanding an end to arms sales to Israel

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tens-of-thousands-march-across-britain-demanding-end-arms-sales-israel

    People take part in the National march for Palestine in central London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, August 3, 2024

    TENS of thousands of Palestine supporters marched in towns and cities across Britain on Saturday in defiance of threats of continuing far-right violence.

    In London an estimated 100,000 marched as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) staged its 17th national demonstration in the capital since Israel began its invasion of Gaza in October last year.

    Hundreds turned out in Manchester marking the 300th day of Israel’s genocide in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed including 20,000 children.

    Norma Turner, chair of Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine which brings together a dozen Palestine campaign groups in north-west England, said: “Three hundred days — 60 children killed by Israel every day — and we demand our government stops arming Israel.

    “We grieve for three children randomly killed in Southport.

    “We condemn the fascist thugs trying to cause discord on the back of people’s grief. And we mourn the 40,000 martyrs in Gaza — we will continue to protest and take action until Palestine is free.”

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tens-of-thousands-march-across-britain-demanding-end-arms-sales-israel