When Galloway started going on about the UK police brutality towards the Gaza protesters in London, these were the images of police brutality that went through my head, real vicious sadistic brutality that Galloway chose to ignore. The crimes that the Stop the War worshippers of Galloway do not want to know about.
Under Galloway’s former paymaster, Saddam Hussein:
This is the text of a speech by Gita Sahgal at AIUSA Public Round-table on 16 Feruary 2007 cross-posted from Human Rights For All
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In 1993, at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, a group of feminist advocates held a now famous tribunal on Violence against Women. And in that moving event which reflected the experiences of thousands of women across the world, a challenge was posed to governments and to the leadership of the formal human rights movement. It was not a challenge to abandon the principles of human rights, or to dilute them. It was a challenge to embrace them more fully by accounting for the experience of a whole category of excluded victims.
A short video of the “Stop the Violence Against Paharis” demo held at Altab Ali Park, yesterday.
This was the statement which was read out at the meeting:
Honourable Prime Minister,
We, the Bengali and Jumma people living in the United Kingdom (UK), express our deepest concern about the recent attacks and acts of violence against the Indigenous peoples in Baghaichari, Rangamati and Khagrachori districts in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), that occurred between 19-23 February 2010.
Amnesty International has raised awareness by calling for an immediate investigation into the human rights violations and state-sponsored violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh.
Amnesty International calls on the government of Bangladesh to:
Carry out prompt, impartial, and independent investigation into these attacks and killings to identify individuals who set houses on fire and army personnel who may have used excessive force, and bring those responsible to justice in a fair trial without resort to the death penalty;
Ensure that the detainees have access to lawyers of their own choice, can challenge the legality of their detention, have access to family visits and medical treatment, and are not at risk of torture;
Compensate the victims and survivors of the attacks, rehabilitate the people who have lost their homes and belonging and provide them with medical treatment for their injuries;
Allow independent observers to visit the sites of the violence, and ensure the security of the Jumma indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This is a cross-post of an article by the estimable Lucy Lips from Harry’s Place
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Michael Weiss writes (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Begg does not hide his own Islamist convictions. In his memoir, “Enemy Combatant,” he recalls his interrogation at Guantanamo, in which he credits his emigration to Afghanistan to his desire “to live in an Islamic state—one that was free from the corruption and despotism of the rest of the Muslim world.” The Taliban, Mr. Begg insists in his book, were “better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past twenty-five years.” Elsewhere he has cited and sold the works of the “charismatic scholar” Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, erstwhile mentor to Osama bin Laden.
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Amnesty continues to defend its affiliation with Mr. Begg and Cageprisoners. Last week, on a Canadian radio program, Amnesty’s interim Secretary General Claudio Cordone described Mr. Begg’s politics as benign, saying there was so far no evidence to suggest that the organization should severe ties with him.
There is to be a demonstration for calling for protection of the Pahari people and peace in Chittagong Hill Tracts on Sunday 28 February.
On Saturday 20th February, an outbreak of violence against the Jumma people of Khagrachari in Rangamati caused the deaths of 4 people, hundreds of homes torched, destruction of a temple and a church, and many dozens still missing.The random violence against the Pahari people has continued unabated.
The oppression of the Chakma and Pahari peoples has been going on for decades and incidents of this kind form part of a long-standing conflict.
We urge the end to the attacks and violence against the Paharis in Bangladesh.
Please come and show your support and solidarity for the Jumma people in Bangladesh.
This is an interesting comment from “Mircea” who blogs at Just Speculations, who was at first willing to reject Gita Sahgal’s claims regarding Cageprisoners and Amnesty’s decision to partner with them, not because the accusations lacked veracity but because some people, or often a single person, they loathed had chosen to publicly champion Sahgal, because, of course, their concerns for human rights were highly suspect. In this writer’s case, the bête noire happens to be the “evil” Salman Rushdie:
My reaction, especially after seeing Salman Rushdie’s spirited defence of Sahgal, was suspicion. I remember seeing Rushdie speak ca. 2004, just as my own views on the invasion of Iraq were changing, and realising with some chagrin that he had become in some important ways an apologist for neo-conservative neo-imperialism. But is Sahgal another Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an “establishment feminist” championed by the “enlightened” anti-Muslim literati, hiding a sinister agenda? A glance at the petition supporting her should dispel such doubts: http://www.human-rights-for-all.org/spip.php?article15
Given your experience with Amnesty after you tried to red flag its association with Begg, what are your concerns about the links between human rights groups such as Amnesty and radical groups such as Cageprisoners?
I’m afraid it is beginning to show that some human rights organisations have remained wilfully ignorant of the real agendas of a group like Cageprisoners. The reasons for this are still quite mysterious. One clear reason is that they want to promote an image of a ‘perfect victim’. If they did any research into that person’s ideology, or their institutional links with other jihadis, that would sully the idea of their standard bearer as being perfectly innocent. It might show that they are promoting violence and discrimination. That is why it is necessary to trash research into it as ‘innuendo and baseless allegations’. However, Amnesty International’s extensive PR for Begg still seems quite extraordinary. He is the director of an organisation and well able to defend himself.
