Human Rights

Free Palestine; Stop Cop City

February 21, 2024 Palestinian Youth Movement, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Atlanta, Cop City, Georgia, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

In South Dekalb County, Georgia, the South River forest forms a canopy so lush and life-giving that it is referred to as one of the “four lungs of Atlanta.” This sprawl of green space was known as “Welaunee” by the native Muscogee people, who were forcibly displaced in the 1830’s. Swaths of Welaunee Forest were settled and cleared to make way for a cotton plantation. This history encapsulates the twinned imperatives of the American colonial project: the displacement and genocide of indigenous populations and the stolen labor of enslaved Africans. Today, the Welaunee forest is once again imperiled.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 136: Netanyahu Approves Ramadan Restrictions On Al-Aqsa Mosque

February 19, 2024 Leila Warah, Mondoweiss. Educate! Al-Aqsa, Benjamin Netanyahu, Genocide, Hamas, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Rafah, Ramadan, Religion

Months after Israel’s initial declaration that they would never attack a hospital, the Israeli military has assaulted several medical facilities in Gaza, rendering them inoperable and leaving the people of Gaza to die slow and painful deaths. On Sunday morning, Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis went out of service following a brutal military raid that lasted several days over the course of last week. In addition to several Palestinians who were killed by Israeli snipers near the entrance to the hospital, eight people in the hospital later died due to the siege of the facility, which prevented electricity and medical supplies from entering the hospital, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Pathetic State Of Our World

February 19, 2024 Mazin Qumsiyeh, Popular Resistance. Educate! Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

We look around our world that is sinking in a spiral of violence and wonder why we humans cannot learn the way of peace, harmony, and coexistence. What are the main factors that lead to such a situation? In the Gaza strip we see a microcosm and a more blatant and severe forms of oppression. Israel forced mass starvation and is every day committing over a dozen massacres causing hundreds of civilians casualties (vast majority of them women and children). It was all so predictable. I wrote a book about this earlier. Children are now living in streets and tents in the bitter cold. Their frail bodies, with ribs showing, reminds one of other concentration camps and starvations like those of Ireland, Eastern Europe, Manchuria, Korea...etc.

It’s Known As ‘Death By Incarceration’; People Want To End It

February 12, 2024 Victoria Law, Portside. Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Deaths, Human Rights, Pennsylvania, Prison abolition

“My life is either going to be a testimony or a warning,” said Derek Lee. Lee was speaking on a video chat from behind the walls of SCI Smithfield in central Pennsylvania. Now 35 years old, Lee has been imprisoned since he was 29. If nothing changes, he will grow old and die in prison. In 2016, a Pennsylvania court sentenced Lee to life without parole for a burglary two years earlier that ended with his accomplice fatally shooting the homeowner. Lee was not involved in the killing, but he was convicted of second-degree or felony murder—an unintentional death that happens when the defendant is committing a felony. In Pennsylvania, that means an automatic sentence of life without parole (LWOP).

Dear Mr. High Commissioner: Help Free Assange

February 10, 2024 Christophe Peschoux, Consortium News. Resist! Extradition, Human Rights, Julian Assange, Legal System, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

On 20-21 February, a High Court in London will decide Julian Assange’s fate: freedom or death. Two judges will decide whether the WikiLeaks founder will still be able to lodge an ultimate appeal, or will end his days in an American jail. Mr. Assange has committed no crime. His only fault is to have revealed some of the crimes of the powerful of our time. Lèse majesté crime! American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have destroyed millions of lives and ruined these countries for generations to come. No one has been prosecuted. On the contrary, these crimes have been covered up with impunity in the United States. And yet Mr. Assange is being punished for having published evidence of some of them. Political justice.

Let Them Eat Dirt

February 9, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Starvation, UNRWA

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The ‘Human Rights Industry’ And Nicaragua

February 8, 2024 John Perry, Resumen English. Educate! Alfred deZayas, Book Review, Human Rights, Nicaragua, Regime Change

Why do United Nations human rights bodies focus on some countries, but not others? Why do organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International appear to ignore important evidence presented to them? And why do the media repeat stories of human rights abuses without questioning their veracity? These issues and more are examined in one of 2023’s most remarkable books: The Human Rights Industry by Alfred de Zayas. It is remarkable for two reasons. One is that it brings together the insights of de Zayas and other experts into the ways in which “human rights” have been distorted to serve the interests of Western governments, principally those of the United States.

Prison Lockdowns Are Becoming More Frequent And More Brutal

February 8, 2024 Silja J. A. Talvi, Truthout. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prisoner rights, Solitary Confinement

Every morning, Mary Frances Barbee wakes up and experiences a “microsecond of happiness before the terror sets in.” Barbee had a heart attack, transient ischemic attack and then a stroke after her sons were incarcerated. She puts on a brave front when they call. “I wonder what they are going through, will they be able to call today, and how long until they are out of lockdown again,” Barbee, 71, says as she chokes back tears. “Will it be for just three hours after many days or weeks locked inside? They have no exercise. Four, six or 12 days without a shower. It is inhumane treatment on a daily basis.” What Barbee is living through is something that millions of people inside and outside razor wire are also experiencing: The purgatory of endless prison “lockdowns” where prisoners are forced to live in isolation that typically exceeds punitive segregation conditions.

Cobalt Red, How The Blood Of The Congo Powers Our Lives

January 25, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Book Review, Cobalt, DR Congo, Electric Vehicles, Human Rights, Resources

“Unspeakable riches have brought the people of the Congo little other than unspeakable pain.” So writes Siddharth Kara in Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives . It’s one of the many poetic phrases that make this book easy on the ear but hard on the heart and mind. There’s pleasure in turning the pages of such finely crafted prose, pain in knowing that, if you have half a heart, you’ll never be able to see your smartphone, laptop, tablet, solar power system, or electric car quite the same way again, that you’ll see blood all over the supply chain that put them in your hand, on your roof, or in your driveway.

The Language We Use To Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

January 16, 2024 Tamiko Nimura, Smithsonian Magazine. Educate! Concentration Camps, Criminal Justice and Prisons, History, Human Rights, Internment Camps, Japan, Pearl Harbor, Racism, Trauma, World War II, WWII

Out the front windows of our bus, we could see acres of sun-dried grasses during a hot and arid Northern California summer. On either side of the road stood barbed-wire fences, like the ones many of our family members spent years behind, surrounded by armed guards and guard towers, living in crowded tar-paper barracks with little to no privacy. “How many of you have been here before or were here during World War II?” our tour guide asked. A few Japanese Americans—in their 70s and 80s, or even older—raised their hands. Many of us were stunned by what the tour guide said next, almost in passing: “Welcome back.”

An Ex-CIA Agent Looks Back At 22 Years Of Torture At Guantanamo Bay

January 11, 2024 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! CIA, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Torture

January 11 marks the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the prison component of the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Cuba. The U.S. military has been at Guantánamo for decades, of course, but the idea to use the isolated base as a prison where men — and in some cases boys — who had never been formally accused of a crime could be held forever, came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002. In the intervening years, presidents and members of Congress of both parties have ignored civil rights, civil liberties and human rights to keep this abomination open. It’s up to the rest of us to demand its destruction.

Delegation To Honduras Launches Campaign To Indict The US, Canada

January 10, 2024 Honduras Solidarity Network, Popular Resistance. Organize! Honduras, Human Rights, Narcotrafficking, US coup

Members of a ten-day US/Canada delegation hosted by the Cross Border Network of Kansas City and the Honduras Solidarity Network of North America have investigated how their two nations prioritize protecting the political, economic, and military interests of their governments and corporations over the rights and interests of the Honduran people. The delegation visited communities affected by mining and land grabbing, met with labor movement activists, and spoke with US, Canadian and Honduran officials and found that the continuing poverty, inequality, and dispossession of the Honduran people result from the crimes of the narco-dictatorship that ruled Honduras since the U.S. and Canadian-supported coup in June 2009.

How Corporate Media Whitewash Israeli Crimes: A Personal Narrative

January 6, 2024 Mnar Adley, MintPress News. Resistance Report Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Media, Palestine, Whitewashing

Like many of you, my heart is weighed down so heavily by the ongoing turmoil in Gaza. And every day, I witness in absolute horror what Israel is doing to Palestinians, as it commits war crime after war crime; it’s watching dismembered children with their limbs blown off or helpless fathers carrying their decapitated babies while collecting the body parts of their wives and children in plastic bags. Or mothers carrying the dead bodies of their children, crying and screaming for them just to wake up. Or the newlywed wife who embraces her deceased husband, her lover, and gives him her last kiss and hug goodbye.

We Need To Reverse The Culture Of Decay

January 5, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The final months of 2023 pierced our sense of hope and threw us into a kind of mortal sadness. Israel’s escalating violence has killed more than twenty thousand Palestinians to date, wiping out entire generations of families. Horrifying images and testimonies from Palestine have flooded all forms of media, stirring a deep sense of anguish and outrage among large sections of the global population. At the same time, in keeping with the zigs and zags of history, this collective sorrow has been transformed into collective strength. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have taken to the streets day after day, week after week, to express their vehement opposition to Israel’s Permanent Nakba against Palestinians.

Every Person Is A Person — #ToutMounSeMoun

January 4, 2024 Michel DeGraff and Vivien Sansour, Mondoweiss. Educate! Haiti, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Revolution

Yakoub el Khayat, the little-known Palestinian oral poet who passed away in 2022, was made a refugee in 1948. In that year, the Israeli state was established on his ancestral land, including his home in the village of Iqrith in the upper Galilee, and he joined some 750,000 Palestinians in fleeing everything he had ever known and loved. Yakoub, who tempered his grief by calling it “the beloved wound” and whose words inspired resilience in every person who heard them, lived for another 74 years — his early days in Iqrith but a distant memory — and ultimately died with a profoundly heavy heart.

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