Supporters of hardline Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan carry shout slogans during a protest against the reprinting cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Karachi on September 4, 2020. PHOTO/AFP/Asif Hassan
State-backed sectarian violence is on the rise in Pakistan as authorities cosset and back hellbent Islamic Sunni radicals
A Pakistani Shia Muslim girl holds a placard during a protest against sectarian violence in Karachi, Pakistan in a file photo. PHOTO/ AFP
Pakistan is reeling under a new surge of sectarian violence targeting Shiite and other religious minorities across the country, threatening new rounds of instability in the Muslim majority nation.
The rising trend is being fueled in part by state organs and
authorities who cosset and align with radicals bent on violence instead
of upholding their duty to protect marginalized communities.
Over 96% of Pakistanis practice Islam, of which anywhere between
75-95% of adherents are Sunni. Shiites comprise somewhere between 5-15%
of all Muslims while Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis combined make up
around 3% of the population.
Over the last month, four people including two Shiite Muslims, one
Ahmadi sect member and a US citizen who renounced the Ahmadi sect have
been brutally gunned down for apparent religious reasons.
Over the same period, around 50 people mostly belonging to the Shiite
sect were booked under draconian sections – namely 295-A and 298 – of
the blasphemy law as defined under the Pakistan penal code for allegedly
“insulting the companions of Prophet Muhammad.” Penalties for insulting
Islam under the law range from fines to death.
Encouraged by the mass filing of blasphemy cases against Shiite
orators by the local administration, thousands of Tehreek-e-Labbaik
Pakistan (TLP) and Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) Islamic group
activists took to the streets last week in Pakistan’s port city of
Karachi against the minority.
Both extremist outfits had clear backing and support of security agencies and authorities. The rally pelted an imambargah (Shiite religious place) with stones as unruly radical Sunni mobs went berserk in the Imamia Lines Area.
Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a
conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no
principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a
religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”
Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as
president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m
talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of
preparation. The lying. Holy s***.”
Lamenting “what they’re doing
with kids at the border,” she guessed her brother “hasn’t read my
immigration opinions” in court cases. In one case, she berated a judge
for failing to treat an asylum applicant respectfully.
“What has he read?” Mary Trump asked her aunt.
“No. He doesn’t read,” Barry responded.
In
the weeks since Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle has been
released, she’s been questioned about the source of some of the
information, such as her allegation that Trump paid a friend to take his
SATs to enable him to transfer into the University of Pennsylvania.
Nowhere in the book does she say that she recorded conversations with
her aunt.
The interpretations of and commentaries in the bibliography vary
widely, from unquestionable support for WikiLeaks to outright hatred of
Assange.
“The section on Julian Assange’s writings and interviews
provides readers a chance to systematically study his thought
firsthand.”
WikiLeaks is among the most important organizations of the
twenty-first century. It has profoundly affected the world by disrupting
countless geopolitical, economic, journalistic, and technological
norms, reminding us that digital technology is an indispensable tool in
the global fight for justice.
Yet WikiLeaks remains highly misunderstood, especially in the United
States. One major cause of this misunderstanding is the decade-long
disinformation campaign waged by those in the U.S. government and
corporate media who view Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as political
enemies. Because U.S. government agencies and corporate media
journalists and editors have largely been able to control the narrative
about Assange and WikiLeaks, readers have had difficulty accessing
reliable information about them.
Another reason WikiLeaks is misunderstood is that information about
WikiLeaks has never been collected and centralized in a manner that is
accessible and free to people around the world. The disparate bits of
information that appear in news reports on WikiLeaks may be informative
when they are accurate, but this piecemeal approach undermines the
ability of publics to consider the big picture of WikiLeaks—and by
extension undermines the ability of publics to consider WikiLeaks within
a bigger picture.
Thus, the WikiLeaks Bibliography is
officially launching September 1, 2020. It is designed to be a resource
for readers of all kinds—academics, journalists, and average
citizens—and it aims to provide a foundation for a better, clearer
understanding of WikiLeaks and the worldview that inspired it. While the
bibliography does not post sources, it lists them and links to them
when possible. And it is organized so that various parties with
differing questions and agendas may find what they need.
Current Features
The WikiLeaks Bibliography current features bibliographies of primary
sources written by Assange and other WikiLeaks personnel and secondary
sources by academics, journalists, and filmmakers.
Assange has not been given proper credit for his creative and
compelling theorizing, so the section on his writings and interviews
provides readers a chance to systematically study his thought firsthand.
Though Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, he is not its only
theorist. Thus, the bibliography also contains a section dedicated to
the writings and interviews of other WikiLeaks personnel. Sarah
Harrison, for example, has articulated the ideas behind WikiLeaks’
transformation from a publisher and into a full-blown research library.
Among the secondary sources, readers will find lists of books, films,
academic articles, and news media pieces. Among the bibliographical
entries here, the interpretations of and commentaries on WikiLeaks vary
widely, from unquestionable support for WikiLeaks to outright hatred of
Assange. The purpose of indexing these resources was not to selectively
include essays, books, and films that collectively give a single image
of WikiLeaks. Instead, the bibliography is informed by one of WikiLeaks’
own principles: make the information available and let people decide
for themselves, fighting with the truth along the way.
In addition to its bibliographical sections, the WikiLeaks
Bibliography contains two editorial sections: a blog and a list of
Researcher Guides. The blog will maintained as a space for announcing
updates to the bibliography and sharing news about WikiLeaks. The
Researcher Guides provide introductory reading lists for people who are
interested in various aspects of the study of WikiLeaks. Currently, the
site provides guides on the cypherpunk movement and the concept of
“scientific journalism,” as well as a general primer reading list on
WikiLeaks.
A trans sex worker takes to the streets of Tegucigalpa PHOTO/ Frauke Decoodt
How trans women in Honduras are helping their imprisoned sisters.
Brithany and Nicolle live in Honduras, one of the worst places to be
trans women – at least 111 transgender people have been killed since
2009. But the two have something else in common. They both spent time in
a prison containing some 7,000 male inmates. Listening to their stories
of how they negotiated their lives in prison and on the outside, it
became evident that the threat of violence never recedes.
Surviving the streets
I first met Nicolle in 2018, not long after her release from prison, at
the offices of Arcoiris, an organization defending LGBTQI+ rights.
Today, she looks different, with her hair in braids, in high heels and
make-up. She now speaks in a hoarse whisper, because last November she
was stabbed in the throat. Other trans women I met at Arcoiris have
since been killed, like Bessy in July 2019, or have fled, like Paola,
who escaped to Europe in January 2020 after an assassination attempt.
Killed or attacked because they are activists denouncing crimes against
their community, or for engaging in sex work.
When I first met Nicolle, she swore she would never do sex work but now
necessity has forced her into it. ‘I hate it!’ she says. ‘Sometimes I
earn close to nothing, but I need to pay rent and buy food.’ She made
better money before going to prison, selling drugs for a street gang.
Gangs often coerce trans women to work for them. Nicolle soon got
arrested for possession of marijuana. She was beaten while being driven
around by the police for several hours, later sentenced and sent to
Tamara Penitentiary for three years. She was 24 years old.
When Nicolle became co-ordinator, she told residents of her corridor to
keep their heads down. ‘If one of us makes problems, all of us pay’
Nicolle is not an exception. Honduras is a conservative Christian country where many consider machismo
a virtue. This explains the constant discrimination and violence the
LGBTQI+ community faces. Many trans people cannot find ‘normal’ work and
are rejected by their families. Crime and sex work become the only
options left for many trans women, with prison sometimes the next step.
‘There are so many things in this trans life that started with
transphobia and homophobia,’ sighs Nicolle.
Chris Rock calls out President Trump and Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, for their role in the pandemic. PHOTO/AFP via Getty Images
Chris Rock isn’t exactly surprised about what’s going on in America right now. In a wide ranging interview with the New York Times, the Fargo star, 55, discussed everything from President Trump to the racial reckoning prompted by the killing of George Floyd.
“This is the second great civil rights movement,” the comedian declared.
Rock
recently performed a standup set for a socially distant audience as
part of Dave Chappelle’s outdoor comedy series where he talked about
“our political whatever.”
“America,” he explained to the Times.
“Part of the reason we’re in the predicament we’re in is, the
president’s a landlord. No one has less compassion for humans than a
landlord. And we’re shocked he’s not engaged.”
Rock likened the president to a child but equally blasted Democrats.
“Did you ever see that movie The Last Emperor,
where like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China? There’s a kid and he’s
the king. So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Because you knew
that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old,
they only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, ‘OK, this
is what we’re really going to do.’ And it was totally up to [Nancy]
Pelosi and the Democrats,” he said. “Their thing was, ‘We’re going to
get him impeached,’ which was never going to happen. You let the
pandemic come in. Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the
5-year-old.”
Rock
added, “Put it this way: Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats
leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced
argument. In a sense, it’s all fake news.”
As
for the Black Lives Matter movement sweeping the country, Rock noted
there’s a key difference from what’s happening now versus the civil
rights movement in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
“Dr.
King and those guys were amazing. But they knew nothing about money.
They didn’t ask for anything. At the end of the day, the things we got —
it was just, hey, can you guys be humane? All we got was, like,
humanity. If they had it to do all over again, in hindsight, there would
be some attention paid to the financial disparity of all the years of —
let’s not even count slavery, let’s just count Jim Crow,” Rock
explained.
“You’re
talking about a system that really didn’t end until about 1973. And I’m
born in ’65 in South Carolina. I’m probably in a segregated wing of a
hospital — there’s no way in the world I was next to a white baby. Even
if the hospital wasn’t segregated, I was in a whole other room and that
room didn’t have the good milk and the good sheets. My parents couldn’t
own property in certain neighborhoods when I was born. There was an
economic disparity there, and that was not addressed in the original
civil rights movement. It was a huge oversight. So there’s no money and
there’s no land. If you don’t have either one of those, you don’t really
have much.”
Rock
has talked about racism and police brutality throughout his career,
certainly before 2020. So when asked if he feels like he’s seen
“circumstances” improve at all, Rock had a poignant response.
“[Racism]
is real. It’s not going away. I said this before, but Obama becoming
the president, it’s progress for white people. It’s not progress for
Black people,” Rock replied.
“It’s
the Jackie Robinson thing. It’s written like he broke a barrier, as if
there weren’t Black people that could play before him. And that’s how
white people have learned about racism,” he shared. “They think, when
these people work hard enough, they’ll be like Jackie. And the real
narrative should be that these people, the Black people, are being
abused by a group of people that are mentally handicapped. And we’re
trying to get them past their mental handicaps to see that all people
are equal.”
Rock
continued, “Humanity isn’t progress — it’s only progress for the person
that’s taking your humanity. If a woman’s in an abusive relationship
and her husband stops beating her, you wouldn’t say she’s made progress,
right? But that’s what we do with Black people. We’re constantly told
that we’re making progress. The relationship we’re in — the arranged
marriage that we’re in — it’s that we’re getting beat less.”
In the August 14 article, WSJ reporters Newley Purnell and Jeff Horwitz detail how Ankhi Das, Facebook’s high-flying public policy director for India and South and Central Asia, blocked action against the ruling BJP party leaders. Facebook had tagged these leaders internally as promoting “hate speech” and “dangerous” and with the potential to cause, as Purnell and Horwitz write, “real-world violence.” The reason Das reportedly gave for letting these violations of Facebook’s policy go unpunished was that such action would harm Facebook’s business in India.
On August 21, Horwitz and Purnell wrote that
Facebook has subsequently come under attack internally for its failure
to address violations of its hate speech policy in India: “Facebook
employees are pressing the company’s leadership to review its handling
of hate speech in India, saying [in a letter addressed to ‘FB
Leadership’ that] the company has tolerated toxic content by prominent
political figures.”
This is not the first time Facebook’s sheltering of hate speech and divisive right-wing figures has been exposed. In a 2017 article for Bloomberg,
Lauren Etter, Vernon Silver, and Sarah Frier wrote that Facebook
“actively works with political parties and leaders including those who
use the platform to stifle opposition—sometimes with the aid of ‘troll armies‘
that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.” They also wrote
that “a little-known Facebook global government and politics team… led
from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist
who worked on former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential
campaign,” has helped specific political parties “from India and Brazil
to Germany and the U.K.—the unit’s employees have become de facto
campaign workers.” In 2018, a five-article series for
Newsclick by Cyril Sam and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta ahead of India’s 2019
general elections investigated the close ties between Facebook
executives and the BJP, particularly Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
team, and found that the ties went far beyond Facebook’s relationships
with other political parties in India.
Lausan
Editor’s note: In 2019, simultaneous uprisings in Hong Kong and Lebanon
led activists, organizers, and writers from these two locales to engage
with and think about each other’s struggles. Lausan spoke to Lebanese activist, writer, and scholarJoey Ayoub about
the ongoing protests, the resonances between our respective sites of
struggle, and the possibilities for transnational solidarity.
This interview has been edited for structure and clarity. Read this article in Chinese.
‘The people want the downfall of the regime’: Lebanon in struggle
Lausan Collective (LC): Can you tell us a bit about why the protests in Lebanon began?
Joey Ayoub (JA): In Lebanon, there exists a system
of sectarianism, which is essentially a power-sharing agreement between
sectarian elites. The example usually given is how the president must be
a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker
of parliament a Shia Muslim. This means that, unlike in Syria or Libya
or Egypt or Tunisia, or indeed in Hong Kong, Lebanon has no dominant
symbol of power. There’s no Assad, Gaddafi, Mubarak/Sisi or Ben Ali, and
there’s no Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
What this means is that Lebanon is both stable and fragile at the
same time. It has managed to withstand sectarian strife for the most
part, even though conflicts have always existed; and people have never
had an obvious, individual target to try to take down. And so when
Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, Tunisians and so on were calling for the
downfall of the regimes in 2011, only a minority of people in Lebanon
made the same demands.
In 2015, there was a brief period of mobilization during the “You Stink” protests in 2015,
which was sparked by the closure of a major landfill and the piling up
of trash on the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and which was more
broadly a protest against corruption in the political system.
But our moment really came in 2019,
when years of widespread corruption and disastrous economic policies
resulted in a severe and ongoing financial crisis, exacerbated by the
nearby Syrian civil war. Finally, on October 17th, thousands of protesters gathered up the courage to chant: “The people want the downfall of the regime.” The movement remains ongoing to this day.
Between Hong Kong and Lebanon: Temporal angst and fears of ‘disappearance’
LC: What first prompted you to think of the
connections between the October Uprising in Lebanon and the
anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong?
JA: Immediately after the protesters started, we began to see Hong Kong protest tactics playing out in Lebanon.
Protesters began to use high-powered lasers and blinding lights to
distract and confuse security forces—something they had never done
before. We also learned how to neutralize tear gas based on tactics from
Hong Kong.
What’s curious is that the Lebanon–Hong Kong parallels aren’t really
new. Before and during the civil war (1975-1990), comparisons between
Beirut and Hong Kong or Hanoi were not unheard of: it was sometimes said
that Lebanon was being faced with the choice of being Hong Kong or Hanoi.
For some people back then, Hong Kong, as a colonial outpost, was
synonymous with capitalism and imperialism, whereas Hanoi was synonymous
with socialism and anti-imperialism. Although this binary was always
too simplistic, it actually created space for a segment of Lebanese and
Palestinian leftists in Lebanon to link up with struggles in Vietnam.
Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, US president’s senior adviser Jared Kushner, and UAE’s National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan hold a meeting in Abu Dhabi PHOTO/Reuters
Analysts say normalisation deals between UAE, Bahrain, and Israel are unprecedented steps with unknown ramifications.
Representatives of the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain, Israel, and United States governments will converge in
Washington, DC on Tuesday to sign historic normalisation accords between
the Gulf nations and Israel.
The UAE agreement, announced in August and since
dubbed the “Abraham Accords” by White House officials, makes the UAE the
third Arab country and first in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to agree to establish relations with Israel.
The agreement ends the UAE’s economic boycott of
Israel and allows the possibility of advanced US weaponry sales to the
Emirates. Blasted by Palestinians as a “betrayal“,
a sentiment echoed by regional players Turkey and Iran, the deal will
have lasting, unprecedented geopolitical ramifications, experts told Al
Jazeera.
But the extent of these ramifications remains to be seen.
Arms sales
William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Program at the
DC-based Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera arms sales
were an “important factor” in the agreements.
The UAE has long wanted F-35 fighter jets, Hartung said, and larger drones, which the US was unable to sell because of its commitment to Israel’s military advantage.
But Trump often touts arms sales and was likely to view the UAE as another client as a positive, Hartung said.
The US ramped up its arms sales by 42 percent globally in 2019, an increase of almost $70bn, according to figures from the Forum on the Arms Trade (FAT) from the US Foreign Military Sales programme.
But the Middle East and North Africa region far outpaced the global
growth rate, going from $11.8bn in 2018 to more than $25bn in 2019, or a
118 percent increase. Morocco leads the pack in purchasing US arms,
with almost $12bn sold to Rabat.
Nations in the GCC accounted for much of the rest. The UAE spent more
than $4.7bn on US arms in 2019, FAT recorded, with Bahrain spending
$3.37bn, Qatar spending about $3bn and Saudi Arabia at roughly $2.7bn.
Hartung said Bahrain may have agreed to normalisation to access to advanced weaponry and the Saudis could potentially follow.
What if the story of Palestine was retold, this time by Palestinian prisoners? Ramzy Baroud’s latest book, “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” attempts to answer that question. These powerful, yet vulnerable, men and women will take you on a journey – of stories that go beyond the limits of human endurance. Watch this compelling video, share it, and obtain the book. There is a whole new Palestine waiting to be told. Appearance order: Nael al-Barghouti Dima Ismail al-Wawi Khalida Jarrar Wafa Ibrahim Samir al-Bis Khadija Ahmad Ibrahim Khweis Mohammed Khalil al-Halabi Israa’ Riyad Ja’abis Dareen Tatour Music: “Homeroad” by Kai Engel Art: Book Cover by Dalia Alkayyali Footage: Dark Cell Window / Edy Varde Sunset /Darshak Pandya Khiam Prison Lebanon / www.discoverlebanon.com Cat in Window / Maria von Usslar
