Politics – BASICS Community News Service News from the People, for the People Sat, 07 May 2016 19:48:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.2 Convincing Your Killers? Black Lives Won’t Matter until Black Power Exists /convincing-your-killers-black-lives-wont-matter-until-black-power-exists/ Sat, 07 May 2016 19:45:52 +0000 /?p=9177 ...]]> By Basics Editorial Committee

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” – Assata Shakur

On Saturday March 26th, over a thousand people gathered for #BlackOut Against Police Brutality to demand justice for Andrew Loku and Alex Wettlaufer who were murdered by the pigs. On Monday April 4th, hundreds marched to Queen’s Park, demanded and were granted an audience with Kathleen Wynne, who admitted “I believe that we still have systemic racism in our society”.

Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) forces onlookers to recognize that police brutality exists and that black people in this city are specifically targeted by the police. It also gives voice to the ways that black people and people of colour experience racism in Canada today. Occupying a space like Police HQ shows that people can come together to build inclusive spaces that rely on the contributions, support and commitment of people across the city.

The Black Lives Matters Toronto movement has made concrete their solidarity with Indigenous organizers. BLMTO stood side by side with occupiers of the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) office in Toronto, just as indigenous allies had stood with the people occupying TPS headquarters when they were attacked by the pigs in the middle of the night.

As a result of Tent City and other actions, Toronto City Council voted to restore Afro-Fest to a full two-day event and unanimously voted to review the province’s Special Investigations Unit through an ‘anti-black racism lens’. Kathleen Wynne committed to meet again with BLMTO organizers and the Ontario Coroner opened an inquest into the death of Andrew Loku. And Michael Coteau, the Minister Responsible for Anti-Racism has promised there will be public meetings to talk about anti-blackness in policing.

But now that Tent City has come to an end, how will the community prevent police from harassing and killing our people? How will we prevent more state-sponsored murders, such as those of Jermaine Carby, Sammy Yatim, and Andrew Loku? Demanding inquests into the murders of people at the hands of police is not something new and has never changed the way police brutalize and murder the people in our communities.

 

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The state has a long history of maneuvering around the demands of protest movements. In the 1990’s, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) agitated against the Toronto Police to stop the police’s investigation of police, which led to the formation of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). However, provincial and municipal governments have always found ways to protect the police because the police are accountable to the state, not the people. Today, the SIU is filled with people who are ex-cops and apologists who do nothing but uphold the current system of exploitation that allow these murders to happen in the first place.

We have to ask ourselves: what is it going to take to build strong and independent communities, to disrupt police brutality, and to challenge state power?

Basics Community News Service members have been working with the families of the victims of police brutality for almost a decade now from Alwy al-Nadhir to Junior Manon to Sammy Yatim to Jermaine Carby. In spite of increasing public awareness, the law continues to drag its feet year after year in the case of Jermaine Carby, who was murdered in December 2014. In the case of Sammy Yatim, the law was used to justify the clearance of murder charges against Officer James Forcillo.

“We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults at it” – Amilcar Cabral

Despite vocal protests against state violence, the demands formed during Tent City will not provide the people with any way of protecting themselves from being brutalized, because the demands are not focused on building up our own power and capacity – they rely on the state agreeing to change for the better. BLMTO organizers frequently chant “the system isn’t broken, it was built this way”. But if the system is working the way that it is supposed to, why do we insist on asking this very system–directly responsible for the oppression we face–for small and incremental changes that don’t address the root of the problem?

The law will never go after the cops who killed Andrew Loku last July, even if they are identified, because that’s the way the system works.

We cannot ask to participate in the colonizer’s power. ‘Freedom’ does not look like black consultation with the SIU or a new body that will replicate the same incompetence. A number of public meetings that were held throughout the province last year had a resounding message: eliminate the practice of carding immediately. But even with all of these public meetings and promises that were made by Yasir Naqvi, the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, carding has merely been ‘regulated’ and in some cases temporarily suspended while under review.

But the practice of racial profiling and police targeting black people and people of colour still continues. What will these new meetings on anti-blackness in policing reveal that we didn’t know already? What can they change if the enforcement completely relies on the state and police to follow through on their empty promises?

Do we want to be on their investigation committees after they shoot our families and friends, or should we make sure that another pig does not dare kill another one of our own? Our power and freedom will come from protecting each other, and from creating our own autonomous communities that maintain the livelihood of the people within them.

“Whether it’s in America or the rest of the African world, black lives will never matter until we attain BLACK POWER; which is power in our hands to determine our future for subsequent generations to come.” – Black is Back Coalition

The people who are incarcerated by police know that they are human and deserve justice. What they don’t have is an organized community that has their back. We cannot ask the state to recognize the value of our lives; we cannot ask them for power. Black lives have never mattered to the Canadian state, and they will never matter, regardless of how much we plead for recognition.

 

 

For police violence to end in our communities, we must work towards building genuine people power that can be organized to prevent or respond to state violence. Building genuine people power means that we create alternative structures that directly challenge the repressive power of the state.

We don’t ask to be accommodated in the system or try to hold it accountable to the people. You don’t ask your enemy to solve your problems for you — especially when they are the ones who created the problem in the first place.

These tactics have proven successful in communities throughout the city including in the Esplanade, Dufferin and Eglinton and in Jamestown. Community members have made significant interventions the moment cops attempt violence on the streets.

In the Esplanade, when the TPS attempted to falsely arrest a young black man, accusing him of committing a murder that he had no involvement in, the Esplanade Community Group (ECG) intervened and prevented his arrest. When the community faced ongoing harassment and brutalization by constant police patrols, ECG members organized a cop watch and systematically intervened by gathering people around the police and recording video of police interactions. When a member of the ECG was targeted by police who attempted to throw him down a set of stairs, once again the community was there to protest police violence. Actions cannot just invite community members to attend, support and then leave, but must actively integrate them into the organizing.

In the neighbourhood of Dufferin and Eglinton, the police of 13 Division had targeted and terrorized the community to the point where black youth could not move freely in the community. If youth were in groups larger than two people, police would stop them and subject them to pat down searches and other forms of harassment. Youth who were most impacted by this police terrorism decided that they had to organize to change these conditions.

They began meeting regularly in the basement of a local bookstore to discuss the issues of police harassment and engaged in political education including knowing their rights when dealing with the police. This organizing work led to the creation of the Black Fist Defence Brigade in the community, and after a period of six months of organizing, youth would be able to walk the streets in their neighbourhood in groups of five, ten, or more without fear of police harassment. The police could no longer stop and harass these youth, because they had an organization to back them up and the support of elders their community.

In Jamestown, the TCHC regularly collaborates with the police at 23 Division, permits police to conduct searches of tenants’ homes, and uses the police to enforce evictions. When families came under attack by these two state institutions, local organizers in the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) mobilized their members and community supporters to defend them from being kicked out of their homes and put out on the street. InPDUM engaged community members directly with the understanding that the police are an institution of the state, which was built and maintained through the theft and destruction of Indigenous, African and other exploited peoples. With this understanding, InPDUM members did not ask the police to reform their tactics or improve their interactions with the community. Instead, the people recognized that in order to make change, they needed to be organized to contend with the power of the state and police.

These interactions with the police were successfully challenged because there was already a clearly outlined protocol in place for community members to follow. The efforts of InPDUM and the residents of Jamestown reflect how organizing – specifically, having meetings with the most affected, working class members of the community, establishing goals collectively, and demanding responsibility from each other rather than the state – all play a crucial role in developing our capacity to be leaders and protectors of our own communities. This is why organizing tactics must focus on creating trust and reliability of members within the community – our only strength is in our unity and organization. We must recognize this in order to combat a state that exists to eliminate indigenous people, brutalize people of colour and exploit the working class.

Organizing to resist and combat the violence inflicted on our communities by the police is not a simple task. But there are more of us than there are of them.

“We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.” – Fred Hampton

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Rice Not Bullets! Organizers Occupy the Philippine Consulate to Protest the Kidapawan Massacre /rice-not-bullets/ Sun, 24 Apr 2016 02:11:15 +0000 /?p=9168 ...]]> By Harshita Singh and Nooria Alam

On Friday April 22nd, organizers from Filipino groups such as Anakbayan, Migrante and the International Coalition for Human Rights held a silent protest inside the office of the Philippine Consulate General of Toronto, condemning the killings of peasant farmers demanding food relief in the Kidapawan Massacre at the hands of soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Their shirts read “BIGAS HINDI BALA” – “RICE NOT BULLETS”, calling on the Filipino diaspora to pay attention to deaths of two farmers, Enrico Fabligar and Darwin Magyao, as well as the injury, starvation, and detainment of many more, including pregnant women and the elderly. This action was the third in a series of actions that have taken place over the month of April, all with the aim of informing the public about the violent undermining of basic human rights and exploitation of peasants in the Philippines.

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The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) had announced as early as September 30, 2015 that a ‘strong’ El Niño would disproportionately affect the Philippines. By January 20th, North Cotabato, a province on the island of Mindanao, had declared a state of calamity under which the Provincial Government is supposed to allocate at least 5% of its internal revenue as calamity funds to be given to those most affected by the drought. The Filipino state gave many declarations but no provisions for the starving farmers. Currently, no funds from the Calamity Fund have reached the farmers.

By the end of March 2016, 40% of the country had experienced the drought; by the end of April, it would be 85%. The Peasant Movement of the Philippines, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), which is part of a larger network of organizations known as Bayan, mobilized its chapters in Mindanao to compel the state to address the drought. From March 28th to March 29th, 6,000 farmers and their families from different towns protested near the National Food Authority Office and the Spottswood Methodist Center in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato.

The farmers called upon the government for the release of 15,000 sacks of rice to respond to the drought; the subsidy of rice, seedlings, fertilizers, and pesticides until the drought ends; an increase in farmgate prices of agricultural products; the pullout of military troops in their communities; and the investigation and disbandment of the Bagani paramilitary group being formed by Rep. Nancy Catamco, who are used to terrorize and control the farmers.

Instead of providing them with rice and seedlings, the Philippine National Police and SWAT personnel violently forced the peasants to leave the area by gunning them down, hitting them with batons, throwing stones and blasting them with water cannons from their fire trucks. After the compound was cleared, it was surrounded by some 200 police and the 39th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

The drought and violent treatment of farmers is connected to a pattern of reactionary state violence from the Filipino government, who depends on exploiting farmers at home with the aid of rich Western governments. Petronida Cleto, one of the organizers of the protest, connects the treatment of Filipino farmers to those who migrate to countries like Canada: “The system in the Philippines is very export-oriented. They facilitate the movement of people by forcing peasants to sell their possessions to pay multiple fees, forced to sell land to go abroad. And for what? To get Permanent Residency after two years of slavery?!”

Rich Western nations like Canada go to the Third World to extract the resources and labour power of countries like the Philippines. Due to the conditions in their country caused by this resource extraction, Filipino people are forced to leave their homes and families behind in search for work in order to survive. Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program is one way this exploitation takes place because it enables the Canadian State to exploit the labour of Filipino migrants, while at the same time stealing land from peasants, all for its own economic gains.

Organizers aim to raise awareness about the oppressive political climate of the Philippines, where “farmers are not allowed to own their own land, and are killed when they try to stand up and defend it,” said Jesson, one of the main organizers of Friday’s action in Toronto. “This action was about showing that the Filipino community condemns this State-sponsored terrorism and the stealing of land from peasants.”

According to the final report of the National Fact-Finding and Humanitarian Mission (NFHM) of Kidapawan City, it is estimated that 1% of the population in the country own 20% of the total 13.34 million hectares of agricultural lands. Farmers toil day in and day out to produce crops only to have them taken away by huge multinational corporations like Del Monte. They are unable to sustain themselves and are then killed when they ask for what is rightfully theirs to begin with. These are the types of inequalities that the private ownership of land and goods results in, where a small portion of the population profits from the exploitation of the majority who are farmers and peasants.

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The state steals and sells the labour of the people to western multinational companies, but the Filipino people do not stand unorganized. The NFHM was conducted within a matter of days after the massacre. Bayan and the KMP mobilizes the peasants based on the fact that they are the farmers of the land. A third of the Philippines’ population is made up of agricultural workers – revolutionary organizations awaken the power of the masses, who already have the skills to maintain their own survival.

When the government watched their people starve, organizations within Bayan like the KMP mobilized 6,000 people to rise and demand that the state open up its stolen resources to the rest of the population. When Gov. Taliño-Mendoza refused to meet the farmers’ demands, offering only three kilos of rice per family once every three months, the peasant leaders unified to reject this offer. The peasants are not asking for charity or handouts; they are demanding the resources they produced from their own land and labour.

Landlords, just like the state, did not miss the opportunity to watch peasants starve. Some have even gone so far as to hoard tonnes of rice in order to drive up prices and increase their profits. The government of the Philippines has done nothing to address this issue, but the New People’s Army (NPA) has taken direct action to reclaim the rice that had been produced by the peasants who are now purposefully being starved by the government and shot at by its army.

The NPA strategically targeted Helen Bernal, who was hoarding more than a tonne of rice. They stormed her warehouse and confiscated 1,384 sacks of rice, along with CCTV monitors, sanding tools, and other electronic equipment in Valencia City, Bukidnon in the country’s southern region. The NPA then redistributed the stolen possessions directly to the places that were most affected by the drought, giving farmers the much needed rice that they had been demanding from the government but were denied, having been served bullets instead.

The deeply organized peasant class, in cities such as Kidapawan and Valencia, along with their comrades in Canada, have the power to hold the corrupt Filipino state accountable. This confrontation clearly shows that organizing and collectivist action is the only way for the peasants to survive and empower themselves during disasters, both “natural” and government-inflicted. The people, when united, will never be defeated. They will only grow stronger.

 

Photos by Nooria Alam

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Brown Faces in White Places: The Imperialist’s Multicultural State /brown-faces-in-white-places-the-imperialists-multicultural-state/ Thu, 18 Feb 2016 00:22:21 +0000 /?p=9139 ...]]> By: Nooria Alam

It has been over five months since the victory of Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau in the Canadian federal elections, ending Stephen Harper’s nine-year rule of tyranny in Parliament. Canadians rejoiced, thinking that there has finally been an end to the racist fear-mongering tactics of the Conservative party leader. But what has actually changed so far under the leadership of the Trudeau government?

Was the appointment of a “diverse” cabinet, one which supposedly “looks like Canada” according to Trudeau, but is only made up of people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, really worth celebrating?

The appointment of Harjit Sajjan as Minister of Defense made many celebrate the racial diversity of Trudeau’s new cabinet. Sajjan, a Sikh man from India was paraded around by media as a “badass” Canadian hero, earning his chops by being the biggest “Uncle Taj” in the Canadian military.

Working in a position of authority in the Canadian military intelligence body, he was aware of the ongoing torture of civilians but did nothing to address or stop it. Far from being a hero, his experience in the army shows that he is responsible for the deaths of many innocent civilians in the war in Afghanistan that can never be justified and continues to this very day.

G.I. Sajjan, A "Real Canadian Hero"

G.I. Sajjan, A “Real Canadian Hero” By: Jason A. Das

The appointment of an Afghan refugee, Maryam Monsef, to Minister of Democratic Institutions means that there will be no mention of the reason why she had to flee her country in the first place. Her swearing in is an oath of submission to the monarchy, and there will be no recognition of the attempts made by the British military to invade her country.

As the imperialist war against the Afghan people continues, Monsef is used as a tokenized tool of her own colonizers. Let us keep in mind that the Liberals voted for the “Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”, a racist law that specifically targets people who look just like Maryam Monsef.

So what do these Cabinet appointments mean for the people of Canada? Faces and policies may change but our material conditions remain the same; with poor housing, precarious work, and overall exploitation. As much as Trudeau might present himself as a Prime Minister of the people, when working class people continue to struggle to make enough to survive on a monthly basis, what difference does it make if our cabinet is more diverse?

While Trudeau’s public relations and media team distract us with people of colour in exploitative leadership positions, we cannot forget the programs that routinely exploit working class labour.

Let us not forget that the Liberal party was the one to create the Temporary Foreign Worker program, a form of labour exploitation that tears apart families and has people working many years in indentured servitude.

Real change will not come from a swap in power within a system built upon genocide and theft. That change can only come from the people themselves. The Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada are two sides of the same coin. It’s not just about stopping Harper or other Conservatives; it’s about collectively challenging systemic issues that are engrained in the very system that Canadians are celebrating because it includes some semblance of diversity.

The participation of minorities within a capitalist system, which seeks to exploit the very people it continually excludes, is not a solution. It is not “real change”, as much as Trudeau may like to throw those words around. The so-called lesser of evils is still evil.

 

Featured Image from Time.com

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24 Hour Solidarity Fast for Palestinian Political Prisoners /24-hour-solidarity-fast-for-palestinian-political-prisoners/ Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:03:53 +0000 /?p=9047 ...]]> by Aiyanas Ormond

 

Yesterday Palestine solidarity activists in Vancouver fasted for 24 hours and set up an info table at a busy transit hub to inform people of the situation of Palestinian prisoners and gather support for the campaign to boycott and divest from British security firm G4S.

Five activists joined the fast and raised over $500 in pledges and donations to support Palestinian prisoners in the action organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network with support from BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, Canada Palestine Association and Alliance for People’s Health.

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The information table highlighted the cases of Muhammad Allan, Khalida Jarrar, Shireen Issawi and Ahmad Sa’adat, but focused on the fact that the mass incarceration of Palestinian activists and political leaders is a tactic of the Israeli occupation to attack Palestinian resistance to the occupation and the whole Palestinian people.  There are currently over 5400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 400 who are in ‘administrative detention’ meaning that they face no formal charge, are denied even the unfair process of Israeli military courts and do not get to see the evidence against them.

Muhammad Allan, who has been on hunger strike for 66 days, has been detained for more than 10 months on such an administrative detention.The information table also carried information about the campaign against G4S in Canada, newly launched by BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, and dozens of people signed on to support the campaign.  In addition to contracts with the Israeli Prison Authority, G4$ runs immigration detention centres in Ontario and provides security for Tar Sands oil developments and pipeline projects in Canada.

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(Photo Credit: Aiyanas Ormond)

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For up to date information on Palestinian prisoners and their struggles go to Samidoun.net
For information on the G4$ campaign and BDS Vancouver go to www.cpavancouver.org
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Edney, Khadr, and the Fantasy of the Law /edney-khadr-and-the-fantasy-of-the-law/ Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:51:50 +0000 /?p=9022 ...]]> by the BASICS Editorial Committee

 

Dennis Edney has spent the last decade of his life defending Omar Khadr. He may have done more than any living person to rescue Khadr from the racist collusion of the Canadian and American governments, which together sought to keep him locked up in military prisons for the rest of his life. In return for thousands of hours of labour and endless stress, Edney has received some small amount of fame, a Wikipedia page, and next to no money. So he deserves immense praise and respect for his principled, decade-long stand.

However, the BASICS editorial team wishes to correct what we view as certain erroneous views about the “rule of law” which Edney expressed to his audience as a solid basis from which to oppose the government’s treatment of his client.

The rule of law is a phrase typically used to mean that everyone within a given country is subject to a single set of laws—both private citizens and the government. If the government or any citizen appears to have broken the law, the police have a responsibility to investigate, and the state has a responsibility to prosecute any crime uncovered. If the prosecution makes a case which a jury can be convinced is true, a person is deemed guilty, convicted, and receives a sentence.

Canada is a country in which, supposedly, the rule of law applies. When speaking of Omar Khadr’s treatment, Edney continually referred to the need to follow the rule of law, cultivate respect for the rule of law among politicians and ordinary people, and rely on the law for protection and the defence of one’s rights. His condemnation of Khadr’s treatment, in other words, was not that it was merely brutal, but more importantly that it was illegal.

What is important, in our view, is that what is evil and racist is not necessarily the same thing as what is illegal. That the government refused to protect one of its citizens and knowingly left him to the tender mercy of American “enhanced interrogation techniques” is clear; that by doing so it broke the law is not.

If, in this case, it actually did break the law, we can be very certain that no Canadian Prime Minister or Foreign Minister responsible for these actions will actually be brought to punishment. And if it did not break the law, it seems quite clear to us that the law does not exist to protect Canadian citizens.

We hear distantly, from the ranks of liberal policy-makers, opinion-writers, and analysts, a cry go up: “This is going too far! A single example of abuse doesn’t prove that the whole system must come down.”

And, if only the single example existed, the argument would be true. BASICS exists, however, to prove the opposite: where laws exist to protect working people, Canada’s indigenous population, migrant workers, racialised individuals, women, and queer and trans folk, they are extensively and routinely violated by the Canadian government, its officials, its police forces, and its army. Very often, however, there are either no laws, or the laws simply exist to aid in oppression and exploitation.

The way in which the Canadian state has interacted with Onkwehonwe (First Nations) peoples provides an object lesson in a whole legal regime designed explicitly to destroy a population and its way of life. The routine seizure of Indigenous children by child welfare authorities on the slimmest pretexts, the serene disregard of investigators for the extensive sex-trafficking and murder of Indigenous women, the everyday brutality with which police treat Indigenous men (exemplified by but not limited to so-called “starlight tours”), and the undisguised glee with which policymakers and bureaucrats seize the land of bands across the country and distribute it to resource extraction companies such as Enbridge and Barrick Gold: all of these taken together form a genocidal policy, in some ways sanctioned by the law, in other ways against it, but in general, simply outside its purview.

What we mean is that no case in any Canadian court will ever be able to stop the genocide of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Telling Indigenous people to have respect for the law or to address their concerns with recourse to law, is to tell them to accept slow strangulation, isolated from reliance on one another.

It is the position of BASICS that the same is true for Black and racialised people, trans people, working people, women, migrants, and the whole spectrum of oppressed peoples in Canada.

The law will never go after the cop who killed Jermaine Carby last September (whose name the Peel Police still refuse to publish). The law drags its feet year after year in punishing James Forcillo, the murderer of Sammy Yatim.

Therefore, when Dennis Edney stands up in front of an audience of Muslim Canadians and explains to them that Guantánamo Bay is uniquely horrible as “a world outside the reach of the law”, we regard this as evidence of either some naiveté on his part or an explanation concocted to justify his profession.

The law certainly exists in Guantánamo, as it does in Canada. It simply decides to recognise some wrongs and not others. When a torturer in Guantánamo beats his prisoner, the law is perfectly silent, as it is when a Canadian police officer executes a young Black man in the street. In both places, the law offers certain rights, privileges and protections to everyone—on paper. In both places, when we see the law in action in real life, we recognise very quickly that these rights, privileges, and protections mostly exist for white people and rich people and mostly don’t exist for anyone else.

Edney believes, correctly, that the government in power right now is subverting the law in service of a racist agenda. But he also believes that if the dispossessed only speak loudly enough, if we only demand firmly enough, if we only elect a liberal enough government, that the law can be turned to our advantage. In this respect, he believes in a fictional equality. Every guard at Guantánamo knows, like every TPS pig who’s assaulted a kid for giving him attitude knows, that the law serves those who enforce it.

(Photo Credit: Jennifer Poburan/CBC)

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International Day of Action Called For Justice For the Craigavon Two /international-day-of-action-called-for-justice-for-the-craigavon-two/ Wed, 01 Jul 2015 17:48:23 +0000 /?p=8990 ...]]> John Paul Wootton in custody of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Paul Faith/Press Association)

John Paul Wootton in custody of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Paul Faith/Press Association)

By Julian Ichim

 

On August 8th, 2015 people across the world will be joining in actions demanding the release of the Craigavon Two, Irish Republican prisoners unjustly imprisoned for the murder of a RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland) police officer. In Kitchener and Toronto local organizers are planning demonstrations and a public event around internment in the Occupied Six Counties.

Packy Carty of the Justice For The Craigavon Two Committee in Ireland stated that “the case of the Craigavon Two is a clear case of a miscarriage of justice and targeting of Irish Republicans. The case against the Craigavon Two centred around four strands of so-called evidence: the brown jacket DNA, the brown jacket residue, Witness M and a British Army MI5 tracking device.”

He continued, “When Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were taken for interrogation by the PSNI, they seized Wootton’s car, and in the car they found a brown jacket with a number of DNA profiles, one of which belonged to Brendan McConville; also on the jacket was a firearms type residue. It was proved beyond doubt that the residue did not come from an AK 47, which was the weapon used in the shooting. The amount of DNA on the brown jacket could have been innocently placed by a sneeze or a slight touch. Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were friends and Brendan had been in the car before. Yet the crown prosecution were trying to say that the coat belonged to McConville and was used in the shooting, even though the forensics disproved  this theory.”

In terms of Witness M, a secret Witness giving testimony, Carty asserts that “his testimony was discredited in court, as he could not have seen the shooting of the police officer. He needed glasses, which he was not wearing that night, and there are other inconsistencies in his testimony.”

“After Wootton and McConville had become well-known in the newspapers and media, a man known only as witness M phoned the PSNI in the middle of the night while drunk and said he could identify those involved in the shooting. Despite being a questionable witness this man became the key part of the prosecution case. He said he had seen McConville near the scene of the shooting that night; it later transpired in court that his eyewitness testimony was clinically impossible, as he was severely short sighted and lied openly in court about his eyesight” stated Carty.

Carty also brought up the fact that Witness M’s own father, who is on the court record as “Witness Z”, came forward to call his son a liar in court.

On the issue of the tracking device, Carty points out that “it emerged that on the night of the shooting the British Army, most probably at the behest of MI5, were tracking Wootton’s car using a covert device. When the device was examined after Wootton’s car was seized, half of the data was purposely deleted, yet despite this destruction of evidence the device was accepted as evidence in the court.”

Despite all these inconsistencies and nothing linking Wootton or McConnville to the scene of the crime, they were both convicted and given life sentences. An appeal was carried out, yet the conviction was upheld despite the fact that according to Carty the prosecutor admitted that they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either McConville or Wootton was involved in the shooting or supporting the shooters with logistics, etc. in the aftermath. At that point in time, a Supreme Court hearing was scheduled to hear the case yet this was cancelled with no explanation.

Due to the lack of justice seen in Ireland surrounding this case, international organizers have concluded that justice can only be served by people across the world taking action. Here in Kitchener, organizer Terry Helm said, “The case of the Craigavon Two is not just about these two people but about the injustice of the British occupational forces in Ireland criminalizing people, not because of acts that they can prove but rather for their political convictions.”

He continued, “If this hearing was carried out in a regular court this decision would be different, but when you have special laws, secret evidence, no right to confront your accusers and the presumption of guilt before innocence, what do you expect?”

He finished by comparing the treatment of the Craigavon Two with possible treatment of Canadian activists in the future: “With Bill C-51 becoming law, this case has more serious implications here for those who are engaged in activism, as the legal system that condemned them will become law here.”

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“We abandoned him”: Khadr Lawyer Speaks Out /we-abandoned-him-khadr-lawyer-speaks-out/ Sat, 27 Jun 2015 18:00:18 +0000 /?p=8828 ...]]> by Nooria Alam

 

“I saw Omar on a screen, stretched out and tied to this wire mesh, crying, screaming in pain; his body had suffered such terrible wounds, and the torturers, these evil men, when Omar had to pee, they would take him down and they would use his head as a mop to pick up the urine.”

These were the words used by defense lawyer Dennis Edney on June 6th at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in describing the horrific experiences of Omar Khadr during his decade-long stay in Guantánamo Bay.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was just fifteen years old when he was captured by US forces in eastern Afghanistan, and has since spent over a decade in American military prisons. Accused of (and tried twice for) killing an American soldier, the evidence against him was so inadequate—based mostly on his own confessions coerced through routine torture—that even openly-biased American military courts couldn’t successfully convict him. Edney has been Khadr’s legal counsel since 2004.

Edney spoke passionately to an audience of hundreds, including members of the Khadr family, about the inhumane treatment that Khadr experienced, first at the military “hospital” at Bagram Airfield—an American military base north of Kabul, Afghanistan—and later at Guantánamo Bay, a maximum-security detention facility located in Cuba.

He described the method by which the Americans convinced Khadr that he had killed Sgt. Christopher Speer, saying, “when Omar woke up [at Bagram] he had been unconscious for a whole week, and from that moment he was put into stress positions—painful positions—and told that he had thrown a hand grenade that killed an American soldier. When they ask Omar [in interrogation videos], he says, ‘I don’t know if I did or not!’ Because from the moment he woke and throughout his many years at Guantánamo, when tortured, he was told that he had done that.”

“When your torturer asks you questions, after a while you’ll give them any answer that you think will make it go away,” he added.

All this, he emphasised over and over again, was a result of the American government’s refusal to act according to the ‘rule of law.’ “One has to look no further than the story of Guantánamo Bay to understand how easy it is for a nation to fall into lawlessness,” he explained, referring to the prison as a “hell-hole…outside the reach of the law. A place shut off from the rest of the world [and] forgotten by all of us.”

He pointed fingers at the Canadian government as well, accusing both the Liberal government of Paul Martin as well as the current Harper Conservatives of abandoning Omar. “When every Western government requested, and was granted, the return of their citizens—all of whom were adults—we left a child. The message that was given to the Americans was ‘we don’t care, do what you want with him.’ While the only message [the Canadian public] got to hear was ‘this young man committed a heinous crime; he’s a terrorist.’”

He attributed Khadr’s abandonment in Guantánamo to the Canadian government’s disregard for its legal obligations to protect its citizens: “Governments such as Germany, Britain, and France demanded that their citizens get out of that hell-hole because [they knew] it was beyond the rule of law… civil liberty was just a fiction there. Meanwhile, I remember [then-Public Safety Minister] Peter MacKay saying to the media, ‘we have been assured by the Americans that he’s being treated well.’ We still don’t talk about the fact that our government allowed one of our own children to be tortured and abused.”

Edney concluded his speech by linking the so-called ‘War on Terror’ to Canadians’ legal rights, stating: “In my view, defeating terrorism means convincing the world of the importance of following the rule of law….we must be alert to the extent to which governments, including our own government, continue to exploit us, by playing the fear card [and] trumping our civil liberties.”

But he also criticised Canadians for “failing” to defend Khadr and themselves from illegal government activity. “As we have failed Omar, we’ve also failed our children through bequeathing to them an uncertain future as the result of this systemic apathy shown by Canadian citizens and our civil institutions. We have all participated in abandoning him. As long as we allow a place like Guantánamo Bay to exist, we cannot call ourselves a civil society.”
Currently released on bail, Khadr now lives with Edney’s family in Edmonton, Alberta. Although his bail has many conditions, including a curfew and an ankle-monitor, Edney told the audience that Khadr studies a lot and is doing well with readjusting to society. “I recall a few years ago, saying to Omar, ‘What do you want to do when we get you out of Guantánamo?’ He said, ‘I wish to be a doctor, to make sure that no one is ever treated like I was.’”

Omar Khadr's and his lawyer Dennis Edney speak to media outside Edney's home in Edmonton, Alberta, Thursday, May 7, 2015. The former Guantanamo Bay prisoner had his first taste of freedom in almost 13 years Thursday after an Alberta judge rejected a last-ditch attempt by the federal government to block his release. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Edney and Khadr in a press conference outside the lawyer’s home in Edmonton. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)

 

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Vancouver commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Komagata Maru /vancouver-commemorates-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-komagata-maru/ Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:32:42 +0000 /?p=8605 ...]]> Connecting the Old Canada with the New Canada: a legacy of Racism

By Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

Participants setting up for the Rally on July 27, 2014 to commemorate the anniversary of the Komagatu Maru.

Participants setting up for the Rally on July 27, 2014 to commemorate the anniversary of the Komagatu Maru.

On May 23rd, 1914, the Komagata Maru steamship arrived in Vancouver with 376 passengers who were fleeing India. There were already over 2000 Indians living in Canada, primarily Punjabis, who faced blatant discrimination. Due to racist government policies to keep out the so called ‘brown invasion’, the passengers of the ship were not let off, and the Komagata Maru was forced to return to India by the Canadian government. 20 of the passengers were killed upon arrival by British colonialists’ bullets.

That was the ‘old Canada’. Now, one hundred years later in what we might consider the ‘new Canada’, people of different nations, led by the Indian community, stood together on July 27th, 2014 in Vancouver to commemorate the anniversary of the incident. It wasn’t, however, a passive commemoration. It was not the kind of commemoration that merely acknowledges the barbarity of the past and takes an idle stance on the present. It was not only a day to reflect on the racist government policies of the past, but also a day to connect them with the present. It was a day for marginalized and oppressed communities to voice resistance against the racism that is integral to colonialism and imperialism and the power of oppressive classes today, both in Canada and around the world.

Just over a hundred years ago, the Continuous Passage Act of 1908 was one of the discriminatory laws passed by the Canadian government, a law that required all immigrants to travel to Canada in an uninterrupted journey. The law made it extremely difficult for Asian immigrants to enter Canada, since most trips from Asia involved stops, and actually made it impossible for Indians to enter Canada as immigrants since there were no steamship lines that provided direct service between India and Canada.[1] To combat this blatantly racist law, Baba Gurditt Singh Sandhu led the journey of the Komagata Maru ship to challenge the act.

Going a little further back in time,” spoke Lakhbir, from the Ghadar Party Centenary Celebrations Committee and the East Indian Defence Committee, “we can see that the economic hard-ships and social desperation that the Punjabi farmers faced due to increased taxation by British Colonialists on farmers forced them to flee the hell of colonial rule to look for better work opportunities. As the British subjects began to arrive in regions like Canada, part of the British Common Wealth, the Immigration laws became more and more discriminatory against the ‘undesirable ones’. The excuse given by the then Government was to avoid conflict between locals and immigrants, because locals feared job loss to immigrants.”

Lakhbir, from the Ghadar Party Centenary Celebrations Committee and the East Indian Defence Committee

Lakhbir, from the Ghadar Party Centenary Celebrations Committee and the East Indian Defence Committee

 Thinking back to this incident, it is important that we do not see it in isolation, but rather understand that racism is and has always been inherent in the settler colonialism on which this country was founded; the appropriation of land and rapid accumulation of capital that once funded the British Empire and now serves the Canadian imperialist ruling class would not be possible without this racism.

If we think back in time to 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, the Europeans immediately began their plans to subjugate the Indigenous people. “They ought to make good and skilled servants…” Columbus writes early on, “With 50 men, you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished,” he said. This was a war of conquest, pursued with racist justifications for the purpose of economic domination. Merely 4 years after Columbus’s arrival in the island of Hispaniola, shared by the modern day Dominican Republic and Haiti, half of the 8 million Indigenous peoples on the island were dead. In the coming decades, this genocide spread through Mexico, Central America, and Peru, killing tens of millions of indigenous people, arguably comprising the most devastating holocaust of history.

The Europeans did not simply arrive in North America for the purposes of settlement – the indigenous peoples were enslaved, forced to work on their own land to grow crops for Europe or extract silver and gold through perilous mines – very similarly to the British occupation of India and the imperialist ventures that continue to exploit the Indian people today. Racism was so vital to this exploitation that it became in and of itself part of the rule of law: racism that has managed to exist independently of economic incentives and racism that has itself governed the nature of society.

Evidently, the refusal of the Komagata Maru very much fits into this legacy of racism. As Lakhbir continued, “On the other hand there were 400,000 immigrants admitted to Canada from Europe in 1913 alone: a figure that remains unsurpassed to this day.  One wonders then, if this was really not an act designed as a policy to keep Canada ‘White’?  One of the most important reasons was certainly, as we strongly believe, the initiations of National Liberation aspirations and fervour amongst Indian people. The heroic legacy of Indian People in resisting occupation and embarking on the liberation struggle, soon after the occupation was complete, is known to the world. The great Ghadar movement of 1857 is also known as last battle of resistance against occupation and first battle for National liberation. And the 1857 Ghadar rebellion has since inspired, generation after generation of Indian people to wage pitched battles against unjust rule.”

That was the old Canada. What about the new Canada?

As if to make us certain that racism persists today in the policies of our governments, the Federal government of Canada recently passed Bill-C24: The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act. This is a Bill that is so illegitimate that it violates International Law on Citizenship. Now, the citizenship of a person born in Canada can be revoked if they are thought to be able to claim citizenship in another state through one of their parents – even if that person has absolutely no connection to their parent’s country. What might merit such a revocation? The criteria is membership in “an armed force of a country or as a member of an organized armed group and that country or group was engaged in an armed conflict with Canada” or engagementin certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada”.

The wording of this bill is so vague, who knows what could constitute “actions contrary to the national interest of Canada.” What is the national interest of Canada, and who decides it? ; Certainly not the indigenous people whose interests are completely ignored by the colonial government. Rather, the decision is made by the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, on paper, without a hearing of any sort; The minister merely provides a notice of intent to revoke Citizenship, allows for a letter in response, and then makes a decision. Not only that, but the minister must have only “reasonable grounds to believe” that a person possesses or could possess citizenship to another country in order to deport them – someone who is incorrectly perceived to hold citizenship elsewhere could become stateless, breaching article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bill C24 has been part of a long line of actions, taken by this government, to persecute the very same people who are fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in Canada. In 2012, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act made it so that any group of refugees coming to Canada without papers, by boat or air, could be detained for up to a year without any form of judicial review. The Immigration Minister also brought forth a racist list of 27 nations that he deemed to be ‘safe countries’, making it so that Roma people fleeing persecution from Hungary would have no chance of being accepted as refugees in Canada. In the same year, the conservative government also cut health care for refugees, depriving them from life-saving medication, until the Federal Court struck down the government’s changes in July of 2014.

These racist policies of the Canadian government show that even the thin veil of ‘democracy’ that exists is being taken away – or perhaps its inexistence is becoming clear. People sometimes believe that we have democracy because of the court system, as we have the right to a fair trial and that the rule of law governs over them with justice; but as the capitalist crisis has hit post-recession, the state can’t even afford to put on a facade of democracy anymore. We see this with the stripping away of social programs, the implementation of brutal austerity measures, and bills like C-24.

Thus, while we commemorate the anniversary of the Komagata Maru, it’s important that we do not make the mistake of believing that racist government policies are a mere thing of the past. They have been ingrained in our system since the inception of our settler colonial state and they continue to persist today. The Canadian government has left us with nothing other than what the East Indian Defence Committee considers the “eye-wash politicsof Apologies”: what good are apologies for racist policies of the past when equally racist policies are being enacted in the present?

A placard reads "Down with Policies of Apologies".

A placard reads “Down with Policies of Apologies”.

“Welcome to the new Canada,” said Aiyanas Ormand, a writer for BASICS, on behalf of the International League of People’s Struggle and Red Sparks Union, “Sadly, it is very much like the old Canada that so ruthlessly turned away the Komagata-Maru.”

 “We urgently need to build an alliance of oppressed people capable of not only waging powerful defensive battles, but also of linking with the revolutionary movements developing in the global South and of fighting for social transformation here in the belly of the beast,” Aiyanas continued. “We need an alliance of Indigenous peoples, people of oppressed nationalities, and the super-exploited multi-racial working class organized on a firm basis of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, women’s liberation and internationalism.

 “The positive Komagata-Maru legacy has been the role of the South Asian community, in Vancouver,  leading many very important struggles for social justice, and in linking us here to the great movements of the subcontinent for national and social liberation. Today, we should all commit to carrying on this legacy until this rotten racist patriarchal imperialist system is finally overthrown.”

 Therefore, let us stand for the legacy of the ship, and actively fight against racism and all other forms of oppression in the spirit of its passengers.

 The Komagata Maru rally was organized by the Ghadar Party Centenary Committee and supported by International League of People’s Struggles, No One is Illegal, Red Sparks Union, and the Revolutionary Student Movement. The following resolutions were also unanimously adapted:

 

  1. This rally resolves to dedicate itself to the memory of the Passengers aboard Komagata Maru, who endured ugly unwelcoming gestures upon their arrival in Canada, inhuman conditions while they awaited their fate in the waters of the Burrard Inlet, and death for 20 of them (a miserable life for the rest) on return to India.

 

  1. This rally resolves to call upon people to unite and fight against all the anti-people laws, such as Bill C-24, being enacted and enforced to devastate people’s lives. It further calls upon people to stand united and vigilant against the recurrence of Komagata Maru-like incidents.

 

  1. This rally believes that, the politics of apologies is nothing more than a corrosive eye wash for people. This rally resolves to denounce the “POLITICS OF APOLOGIES”.

 

  1. This rally resolves to denounce the “BILL C-24”, the so called ‘citizen-ship strengthening act’. The rally further resolves to challenge the BILL C-24 and call for its immediate withdrawal.

 

  1. This rally resolves to denounce Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Nation, present attack on civilian population in Gaza, killings of innocent women and children. This rally further denounces the WAR CRIMES being committed by Apartheid Israel state. This rally resolves to be in solidarity with Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom.

 

  1. This rally resolves to support the Native people’s struggle for their rights.

 

  1. This rally resolves to denounce the Fascist Indian state, which crackdown on people’s democratic rights. It further resolves to call for an immediate end to Operation Green Hunt and other such operations. This rally also resolves to Demand for the release of all political prisoners in India.

 

[1] http://www.whitepinepictures.com/seeds/i/10/sidebar.html

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Antiwar protests spreading in Ukraine as gov’t wages all-out war in the southeast and NATO threatens Russia /antiwar-protests-spreading-in-ukraine-as-govt-wages-all-out-war-in-the-southeast-and-nato-threatens-russia/ Fri, 01 Aug 2014 13:22:04 +0000 /?p=8595 ...]]>

A rising wave of antiwar and anti-conscription protest is taking place in cities and towns across western Ukraine. The protests are prompted by the announcement of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko ten days ago that a “third” military mobilization is now required for the war that his governing regime began waging against the population of eastern Ukraine three months ago. Kyiv calls the war an “anti-terrorist operation.”

The protests are paralleled by a rise in Ukraine army desertions and refusals of men and women to heed conscription orders.

Poroshenko’s mobilization proposal was approved by the Ukraine Rada on July 22. The measure means that more people will be conscripted into military service and that more reserve army units will be thrown into the battle theatre.

Since the crash of Malyasia Airlines Flight 17, Kyiv has embarked on a frenzied military push into southeast Ukraine to try and defeat a pro-autonomy rebellion there. It is blocking access by investigators to the MH17 crash site and the forward line of its military push consists of intense and random bombardments of towns and cities amounting to war crimes on a massive scale.

This video of shelling of an apartment block in the city of Donetsk on July 29 is an example of what is occurring. Buzzfeed reports, “Tuesday’s attack was the first time that shelling hit central Donetsk, a hitherto tranquil rebel stronghold. It left three people dead and wounded 15. The nearby city of Horlivka declared three days of mourning after heavy fire killed 17 overnight and wounded several dozen others. At least four more people died in shelling in the Donetsk suburb of Yasynuvata.”

Kyiv is in a race to defeat the rebellion before the crippling cost of it all as well as rising antiwar protests and army desertions bring its offensive to a halt. It also has to worry about anticipated revolts by the Ukraine population as a whole once the harsh consequences of the economic association agreement that Kyiv signed with the European Union on June 30 bite deeper and deeper.

Protests on the rise

Although the propaganda websites of the Kyiv government boast of the successes of its now three-month long “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine (which it dubs its “ATO”), the special mobilization measure approved last week shows its war is in trouble. More fighting units are needed, the national treasury is effectively bankrupted by it all and there are rising numbers of desertions from the army and growing protests by mothers, wives, friends and neighbours of conscript soldiers. ICTV reports that the advisor to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashenko, has announced that anyone in Ukraine who agitates on social media against the regime’s war will be arrested.

The expanding protests have multiple messages. Some oppose the war outright. Others are specifically addressing the harsh and dangerous conditions that soldiers are facing in the east.

One of the most dramatic of the many protests since the “third mobilization” measure was announced has been in the port and shipbuilding city of Mykolaiv (also spelled Nikolaev), on the Black Sea, east of Odessa. Mothers and wives of soldiers repeatedly blocked the Varvarovsky Bridge over the Bug River for three days beginning July 25. They demanded a return of their sons or husbands from lengthy tours of duty in the 79th Paratroop Regiment. The tours have been extended and the regiment has suffered intense combat.

The women went on foot to the bridge carrying placards reading “Save our boys!” and used a pedestrian crossing to block traffic. Tussles with police and militia took place. (See dramatic video footage here from July 25.)

On the first day of the protest, the women drafted a letter to President Poroshenko which the mayor of the city and regional governor agreed to deliver. The women said their action would not end until they received a satisfactory reply. They didn’t receive that. A police mobilization ended the blockade on July 27. Some protesters were arrested.

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The websites Hronika.info and ZIK.ua report that in the town of Bohorodchany in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast (region) [1], in southwest Ukraine bordering the Carpathia region, angry people attacked the military registration office and the premises of other local organs of power on July 22. They burned conscription documents. (Ukraine language report here.)

It’s a rural region and protesters sounded a theme that is common to many of the anti-conscription protests: they say their menfolk lack proper training and equipment and therefore face “certain death” when sent to the east.

“Certain death” faced by soldiers is not a sign of a war going well. It also suggests that the most recent report of the Office United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reporting “at least” 1,129 killed by the war in Ukraine is seriously understated. It’s a fact that the report’s claim of “100,000” people made refugee by the war is laughingly low — Russia says more than 500,000 refugees have crossed its border since the war began in April and Ukraine admits to nearly 100,000 internal refugees.

Russia has condemned this latest report by the OUNCHR, saying, “Its key message is that the government of Ukraine is permitted to legitimately use force to restore law and order in the east of the country.”

Also on July 22, residents of the village of Skobychivka linked arms and formed a human chain to block the road from Ivano-Frankivsk to Bohorodchany, causing a kilometre-long traffic jam. The protesters held placards reading: “No Afghanistan in Ukraine!” “Send call-up notices to the children of the higher-ups!” “Return our children to us,” and “Stop the bloodshed.” A common slogan in the protests is “Refuse!”

A separate report in Vesti quoted the relatives of soldiers saying their sons were being used as “cannon fodder.” The report said people were also protesting in Yaremcha, in the same region, and in Sambor, Lviv region.

Not far from that area, in Bukovina region, residents in seven villages blocked roads on July 28. That region is southwest Ukraine includes a significant population of Romanian descent.

A video published by 112.UA shows soldiers’ relatives blocking a road in Obukhivs’kyi district, near Kyiv on July 24 demanding a return of soldiers from lengthy duty.

Protesters in the Odessa region blocked the Black Sea coastal highway for hours on July 28.

Residents of six villages in Sokyryanskyi region (Chernivtsi oblast) — Bilousivka, Lomachyntsi, Mykhalkove, Serbychany, Korman and Romankivtsi — blocked the highway between Chernivtsi and Novodnistrovsk on the morning of July 25, demanding that their menfolk not be sent to war.

Protests have gripped the entire region of Chernivtsi in southwest Ukraine. A video recording showed people saying, “We don’t war — we want peace” and “We did not raise our children for war. We will not give them our children.”

This video (screen below) shows a group of people, mostly women, from Chernivtsi who gather to confront a local military recruitment officer. They are carrying their sons or husbands’ conscription orders.

“Go fight your own war,” they tell the conscription officer, who tells locals to “go to the Internet” if they want to find out why the new mobilization is happening. He is referring to the Kyiv regime’s intensely propagandistic websites devoted to all things “ATO.” But the protesters are having none of that. They gather dozens of blue-coloured conscription orders into a pile and burn them.

As they stand around watching the flames, they’re all voicing their opinions. One mother says, “[Kyiv authorities] are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, but they come here to take our sons and send them to death. They made the mess and now they need us to clean it up.” The conscription officer stands by helplessly. What can he do? He is following orders.

In the settlement of Marshintsi in the Novoselytskyy region of Chernivtsi, protesters blocked the entry of soldiers and police. Residents brought tyres and barricaded the road leading into the village. Many wrote letters of refusal, describing the events in the south-east as a “slaughter”.

On July 20, the Kyiv-Chop highway was blocked by local residents, mainly women, in the vicinity of the village of Hamaliivka near Lviv. A protest last month also blocked the highway. The same highway was blocked on July 28, in the villages of Rakoshyno and Znyatsevo, near the border of Slovakia and Hungary.

Here is one of the latest videos to be published on YouTube, of a protest in the town of Town of Novoselytsya in Chernivtsi oblast on July 30.

Many protests are voicing a “No Afghanistan in Ukraine” demand. This harkens back to the ten-year war that the Soviet Union fought against the people of Afghanistan, beginning in 1980. Altogether, 14,500 soldiers of the Soviet Union’s army died, 54,000 were wounded and many, many more Afghans died. The war was a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union, which happened not long after it withdrew from Afghanistan in ignominious defeat in 1988.

Post-Soviet, independent Ukraine later joined the U.S.-led occupation and war in Afghanistan. A small force still participates.

The well-known Ukrainian television journalist and commentator Ostap Drozdov has called for a boycott of the latest mobilization decree. The website Russkaya Vesna reports him saying: “My program yesterday (on the regional television channel ZIK) can be considered the start of an informal campaign to boycott the mobilisation. I state my intention to give my utmost support to this initiative, which goes by the provisional name “Mobilisation Equals Genocide.'”

He said, “It is very important that people who speak out against the mobilisation of the civilian population should see that they are not isolated. There are a great many of them.”

Army in trouble

Exact numbers of army desertions are not known and are the subject of considerable debate and counter-debate. This website report, for example, publishes a purported Ukraine army report saying that close to 3,500 soldiers deserted in the third week of July and that 1,600 soldiers died and 4,700 were wounded in that same time. Sources in Russia say the documents it cites are not authentic.

Here is a brief news report in which several Ukraine soldiers speak of their decision to take asylum in Russia. (Many videos of the fighting in eastern Ukraine are posted here on the “Anti-Maidan YouTube Channel.”)

This video records a protest in Kyiv of relatives of the 72nd Army Brigade that suffered heavy losses from a rocket attack some days ago. The protesters chant “Help the heroes”. A poster reads: “Send [Rada] deputies and generals to the battlefield!” They pray, and sing the Ukraine national anthem.

The Brigade was caught in a grisly cauldron in southeast Ukraine with many killed and injured and some survivors taking refuge in Russia. In this video, soldiers of the brigade speak for 13 minutes of their difficult and disturbing combat experience.

The pro-Kyiv, Interfax news service reports on 18 Ukraine soldiers who took refuge in Russia and received medical treatment.

Russia Today reported several days ago of this group of 40 soldiers who entered Russia and requested asylum.

Recasted fascist introduces conscription bill

Andriy Parubiy introduced the “third” mobilization bill to the Rada. He is Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, a key advisory body to the President and the Parliament on military matters. He says the measure will mobilize 15 more army combat units and 44 combat support units.

Parabuiy is a renowned fascist in Ukraine who has modified his image in the past year and risen to prominence in the Kyiv regime that seized power in February of this year. Last year, he joined the Fatherland party of former Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and was elected to the Rada. Fatherland is a neo-conservative coalition/party.

U.S. journalist Robert Parry wrote of Paruiby earlier this year, “Parubiy is himself a well-known neo-Nazi, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991. The party blended radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols.

“Parubiy also formed a paramilitary spinoff, the Patriots of Ukraine, and defended the awarding [in 2007] of the title ‘Hero of Ukraine’ to World War Two Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose own paramilitary forces exterminated thousands of Jews and Poles in pursuit of a racially pure Ukraine.”

The United States is boosting its military aid and training to Ukraine. The announcement came from U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on July 25. The U.S. already committed to $23 million in equipment; that will now rise to $33 million. It is also intervening in the countries it dominates in the region to boost the training and equipping of their armed forces, including Moldova and Romania on Ukraine’s southwest frontier and Poland on the northwest.

Kyiv’s ruthless shelling and bombing of towns and cities is running out of time due to the war’s huge financial cost. Describing Ukraine’s economy, the Washington Post wrote on July 26:

“The IMF forecasts that Ukraine’s annual GDP will drop by 6.5% this year, while the government deficit is projected at 10.1% of GDP. This week, the government announced that it would need at least 800 million dollars to continue its counterinsurgency operation and asked the parliament to further increase taxes and cut public spending. The deputies’ refusal to appropriate needed funds yesterday triggered Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s resignation as he recognized that soldiers would receive no pay next month. The reconstruction of Donbas is even more uncertain as the government promised to turn to foreign donors for funds in the coming fall.”

In a remarkable admission last week, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Vadym Prystaiko, told the Globe and Mail, “We are pouring all the money in our budget… into the anti-terrorism campaign.”

The war is scandalously riding roughshod over the international investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Investigators were blocked from reaching the site on July 27 and in the days following by the relentless shellings and other bombings by the Ukraine army in the region.

A woman stands in her home destroyed in the Ukrainian troops' shelling of the Golubovka village near Slavyansk on June 27, 2014. (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin).

A woman stands in her home destroyed in the Ukrainian troops’ shelling of the Golubovka village near Slavyansk on June 27, 2014. (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin).

As reported by international media, inspectors are lodged in hotels in Donetsk each night and the passed easily through self defense lines surrounding the city to get to the site. But as the days wore on, the international media reported the blockage as due to “fighting” and “clashes.”

On July 30, Kyiv propaganda began saying that rebel fighters had placed mines on the crash site and were shelling it. That story evaporated the following day when, in circumstances unexplained, inspectors finally reached the site.

The grim reality of Kyiv’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has been airbrushed out of mainstream news reporting. Little or no visual presentation of bombardments or other war crimes is allowed to pass through editorial filters. The war and its consequences are explained away in the vacuous language of “fighting” or “clashes” taking place. The Toronto Star‘s Tanya Talaga began a front-page article on July 30 with, “The European Union and western nations joined on [July 29] to try to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop his military aggression in Ukraine…” (Inside the same edition, the Star published a factual account of the bombardments of cities and towns.)

The European Union is matching the Ukraine army offensive by upping its economic sanctions on Russia. The sanctions are punishment for Russia’s refusal to obey U.S. and European demands that it police the pro-autonomy movements in eastern Ukraine and pressure them to surrender. They are also part of the long-standing drive by the member countries of the NATO military alliance to weaken and isolate Russia.

The rising antiwar movement in Ukraine has profound consequences for the future of the country. Will protests stop Kyiv’s war before southeast Ukraine is reduced to ruin? Will Ukrainian as well as international protests give pause to the military planners at NATO who are increasingly training their sites on Russia?

Ukraine’s economic elite has made a sharp turn to embrace austerity Europe. The kind of austerity consequences that have ravaged Greece and other countries of southern Europe await the Ukrainian people. How will the antiwar protesters and other ordinary Ukrainians react as the government deepens unpopular cuts to social programs and subsidies that reduce the cost of essential items?

Protests around the world are needed to stay the hands of the warmakers in southeast Ukraine. Solidarity actions can stop the killings. They can also help Ukrainians to chart a different path of economic and social development. That would be fitting because anti-austerity sentiment was at the heart of the rebellion in eastern Ukraine in the first place.

A new, 80-minute video compilation, Ukraine Crisis, has been produced that provides a powerful record of the war in eastern Ukraine during the past month. A warning, there are some scenes of death and destruction caused by the Kyiv government’s shelling that are disturbing, particularly in the four to six minute section, inclusively. The testimony of the woman who speaks for five minutes at the 1’17″30 mark is especially insightful and heartrending. She has lost her son to the war, not knowing since March if he is dead or alive. She asks, “What has become of this Ukraine nation?”

This article draws in part from a July 28, 2014 article from the Russian website Rabkor (“Worker Correspondent”) which was  translated into English by Renfrey Clarke. 

Notes:

[1] Ukraine is subdivided into 25 regions: 24 oblasts (regions, or provinces) and one city with special status, Kyiv. Two former oblasts — Donetsk and Luhansk — voted in May for autonomy. The ferocity of Kyiv’s war is driving those two regions to a de facto secession.

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Slander abounds in depictions of autonomy fighters in eastern Ukraine, while MH 17 investigation stalls and Kyiv’s war rages /slander-abounds-in-depictions-of-autonomy-fighters-in-eastern-ukraine-while-mh-17-investigation-stalls-and-kyivs-war-rages/ Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:18:26 +0000 /?p=8587 ...]]>
July 27, 2014—Imperialist governments and media as well as countless other commentators abound with portrayals of the pro-democracy, pro-autonomy forces in eastern Ukraine as “Russian-backed separatists” and worse. On the ‘worse’ range of the spectrum, terms such as ‘fanatics’, ‘thugs’ and even ‘fascists’ are tossed about.

It would take a work of encyclopedic scale to answer all the charges. Admittedly, such a study would include admissions that there are human rights violations taking place on both sides of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But the vast majority of those violations are perpetrated by Ukraine armed forces and militias, while self-defense forces are aware of concerns over their treatment of opposing combatants and are taking measures to ensure the safety of prisoners they capture. Concerning the aforementioned portrayals, let us take one prominent example from recent days and see what it tells us.

Igor Strelkov would rank right up there as a prime example of a dastardly figure on the side of self-defense forces. He is the military commander of the self-defense forces of the Donetsk Peoples Republic.

The Donetsk republic is one of two autonomous republics created in May in southeast Ukraine. The other is the Luhansk Peoples Republic. They came into being following plebiscite votes that were hastily organized as a threat of civil way by Kyiv loomed. Both are coming under murderous attack by the armed forces of the central government of Ukraine and by extreme right militias that work in tandem with the military. (Read here the example of the ‘Azov Battalion’ militia of extreme rightists, which includes volunteers from western Europe and Canada.)

New recruits of the special battalion “Azov” under the command of Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko take their oaths.  The runic symbol on the banner is called Volfsangel (German, Wolfsangel – “wolf-hook”). During the Second World War this was the official symbol of the Nazi SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”.

New recruits of the special battalion “Azov” under the command of Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko take their oaths. The runic symbol on the banner is called Volfsangel (German, Wolfsangel – “wolf-hook”). During the Second World War this was the official symbol of the Nazi SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”.

Kyiv’s war in eastern Ukraine during the past three months has killed several thousand people and forced more than 600,000 people into exile in Russia and central Ukraine. Among the most recent victims of the war are the 298 passengers on board Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. Here is a short video of the July 27 bombardment of the town of Horlovka, near Donetsk. And a close-up of what it wrought: Warning! Disturbing images.

An article two days ago in a UK publication called the International Business Times (IBT) is an example of the bizarre, ‘rush to judgment’ reporting in much of mainstream press over the crash of Flight MH 17 and Kyiv’s war overall. The article and others like it are getting lots of attention, and not only from followers of the political right. Some on the left, too, give credibility to such material.

In the article, the reporter says that Igor Strelkov is “suspected of downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17” and was “allegedly involved in the 1992 Serbian ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad”.

The reporter reveals his own bias on the subject matter in an article on Ukraine one day earlier in which he writes, “US officials told the Wall Street Journal that the separatists who downed the commercial airliner over the Donetsk region used the Buk system…” His article dismisses a Russian government official’s use of the phrase “punitive operation” in describing Kyiv’s war in eastern Ukraine.

A scandalous, non-investigation of Flight MH 17

We don’t know if MH 17 was downed by a missile. If it was, we don’t know who was responsible. What is really bad is that those hoping for a vigorous investigation of the crash are seeing their hopes dashed by the actions of the Kyiv government. [1]

We are learning that ever since self-defense fighters turned the crash site over to the international investigators days ago, the site has more or less sat abandoned. Large numbers of investigators are residing in hotels in Donetsk city (some 40 km away). It’s not at clear why their work until today has been stalled.

As of today, we learn that the Kyiv government has decided to prioritize its war offensive over a crash investigation. As a result of its military operations against the city of Donetsk and neighbouring towns and villages, it is not safe for investigators to do their work. Mind you, yesterday, an Australian couple arrived on the site to lay a wreath to their 25-year old daughter who died in the crash.

A further complication is that foreign governments, with Australia and Holland in the lead, want to land armed police if not soldiers on the site. The Ukraine constitution prohibits foreign police or military on its soil. A special vote of the Rada (Parliament) could bypass that provision, but the country’s government coalition collapsed two days ago and the prime minister resigned.  Parliament is conflicted over how to proceed with the war and with the austerity economic program that the government has embraced in partnership with the European Union. The extreme right in the Parliament is pushing for a quick election. [2]

Speaking of the economy, there are divisions in the Parliament over whether to privatize the country’s publicly-owned energy distribution company. This as Ukraine accumulates a horrific bill for natural gas purchases from Russia (it now stands at $6 billion) and the country’s economy and state budget is near collapse. [3]

The hunt for “separatists” and other scoundrels

Anyway, back to Igor Strelkov. The IBT article adds that Strelkov “has been described” as a covert agent of Russia’s GRU military intelligence. Described by whom? We don’t know.

The writer repeats the Internet hoax by which Strelkov is alleged to have admitted on Facebook (!) that his forces brought down MH17. Serious news outlets backed away from this and other hoaxes and false claims in the days following the disaster, though not U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She told the UN Security Council on July 18:

Separatists initially claimed responsibility for shooting down a military transport plane and posted videos that are now being connected to the Malaysian airlines crash. Separatist leaders also boasted on social media about shooting down a plane, but later deleted these messages.

The Facebook account in question had nothing to do with Strelkov. Meanwhile, comments that have been made by outlets close to him consist of reports of downed aircraft of the Ukraine air force. It’s a well-known fact that Ukraine’s air force has lost many helicopters and fighter aircraft to low-altitude missile strikes by self-defense forces.

Further reported in the IBT story is a 20-plus year old report that Strelkov is said to have served as a volunteer Russian fighter in the war in Yugoslavia. That report consists of an alleged photo of Strelkov along with a claim by a Bosnian army officer that Strelkov took part in “Serbian aggression” in Bosnia.

The claim regarding the photo may be false. An article in a Russian website publication says the person depicted as Strelkov in the photo is instead a former Russian combatant named Alexander Mukharev.

Then we read ominously in the IBT story that Strelkov was “present” in Crimea earlier this year when the population there voted to secede from Ukraine. Russia facilitated that vote and welcomed its result.

As to who is the “real” Igor Strelkov, here is what a colleague in Russia has told me:

I really love these “was allegedly involved” types of arguments.

Strelkov was in the Balkans together with a few thousand Russian volunteers (not mercenaries). So far, not a single person among them is convicted of war crimes or even figured in any serious reports about that. Naturally, Serb militias’ behavior in Bosnia was terrible, but for some strange reason, the Western press reported only the war crimes committed by Serbs while similar crimes of Muslims and Croats rarely attracted attention.

As for Strelkov-Girkins’ career, he was an historian and he studied together with a comrade, a well-known specialist and member of the Russian Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (PLSR). Strelkov was unsuccessful in academia. His ideological sympathies are clearly with pre-revolutionary Russia and the White movement. He identifies with people like General Denikin who in 1941 declared solidarity with the USSR, seeing Stalin as a lesser evil compared with Hitler.

Recently, Strelkov made a very clear statement that he considers his role as a military commander is to stay out of politics. He stressed that the political views of opolcheniye (self-defense fighters) represent a very broad spectrum–from communist to monarchist. My personal encounters with opolchentsy show that most are not deeply engaged in politics.

Many will dismiss this portrayal of Strelkov as something written by a ‘Putin stooge’. Such epithets are in vogue these days to avoid serious discussion. The entire international left would benefit by some serious analysis of the Russian political landscape, including the precise characteristics and degree of support of Russian nationalism and similarly of both the political left and political right in Russia in all its complexity. We are still some distance from that, which is regrettable because of the dire and imminent threat of rising military conflict in eastern Europe. An escalating assault by NATO against Ukraine and Russia would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world.

The threat of escalation

There are very powerful interests that either do not want an inquiry into the MH17 disaster or who want it to finish by pinning the disaster on Igor Strelkov or some other fall guy. That would avoid the real reasons for the disaster, which go far beyond the immediate circumstances of the plane crash. Irrespective of who might have pushed a missile firing button if that was, indeed, how the plane came down, the full story of the crash is intricately woven into the web of Kyiv’s murderous war against the populations of eastern Ukraine. That war is backed by the NATO countries, with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott putting in a ‘me too’ performance as of July 17.

The urgency of all this is underlined by two circumstances. One, contrary to media claims in the past few days (such as the Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon on July 26), it appears that self-defense fighters in Luhansk and Donetsk are far from facing imminent defeat. Reports from Luhansk are saying the Ukraine army is facing a disastrous situation there. Large numbers of Ukraine soldiers are reportedly deserting and conscripts are refusing to answer the conscription call-up. (This July 27 story on Russia Today reports on 40 Ukraine soldiers who have sought refuge in Russia, saying they refuse to go on attacking their fellow citizens.)

Antiwar and anti-conscription protests by the families or neighbours of the men being conscripted into military service are on the rise in western Ukraine. Protesters are commonly saying their loved ones are facing “certain death” in combat for lack of training, weapons and vital supplies. This tends to confirm the other reports of the army’s and militias’ difficulties in the east. Meanwhile, representatives of the Kyiv government in Canada are saying that it is spending “all of its money” on the war in the east and that the well is running dry.

All of this may well explain the frenetic ‘rush to judgment’ and call to military intervention by NATO and others following the crash of MH17.

A steady drumbeat towards greater military intervention in Ukraine is being sounded in NATO capitals and in Canberra. This is grimly illustrated in yesterday’s edition of the Globe and Mail (Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper). Like Canada’s government and its national broadcaster, the CBC, the Globe is on a forced march to deeper confrontation with Russia

The Globe front page cover is a lurid, ghoulish image of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the words ‘Public enemy’ written beside it. The word ‘Putin’ or ‘Russia’ does not appear on the front page, suggesting an overwhelming message that doesn’t need explaining: ‘It’s Russia, stupid’. Inside the newspaper, we find:

  • A wire service story reporting that large numbers of Australian and Dutch police and possibly soldiers will soon be landing in eastern Ukraine in and around the MH17 crash site.
  • A column by the normally liberal Doug Saunders explaining that all of Europe is under “assault” from Russia. He laments, “the European response to this new threat, however, has been slow, uncertain and ambiguous”.
  • An article by seasoned journalist Mark MacKinnon arguing that self-defense forces in Luhansk and Donetsk are in rapid retreat and readying for a lengthy, destructive battle in the center of the cities of Luhansk or Donetsk. The image is of a looming Guernica or Stalingrad of the Kyiv regime.
  • A special column written by the hawkish Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada (!) titled, ‘It’s our duty to stand firm in the face of Russian aggression’.

The international left needs to rapidly mobilize in opposition to the war threat against Ukraine and Russia. We need to voice strong solidarity with the embattled people of southeast Ukraine. There is no time to lose.

Notes:

[1] Russian military leaders have on two occasions put ten probing questions each to Ukrainian authorities concerning the crash of Flight MH 17: on July 18 and on July 21.

[2] From Mediaua.com, translated by Google, edited for language and abridged:

The right sector demands to dissolve the Verkhovna Rada [‘Supreme Council’]

“Right Sector” believes that the current composition of the Parliament of Ukraine does not meet the demands of the people, reports the website ‘Dialogue’. The press service of the Right Sector said on July 26:

“Our party welcomes the dissolution of the current coalition as the only sure way to re-election of the Verkhovna Rada. Upon completion of the active phase of Ukrainian national liberation movement, a new president was elected, the old regime fell, and its main representatives shamefully fled to Russia, thus showing whose interests they served. But the system itself is built by the Yanukovych regime. The foundations of the Soviet government, despite many blows it took, remained afloat and successfully restored some people and structures. Unable to move forward, shackled by the old system, the old regime must be completely destroyed and a new system based on true democracy must be built.”- said in a statement to the press service of the” right sector “on July 26.

The current Parliament, according to representatives of the “Right Sector” does not meet the modern demands of the people of Ukraine. “Significant numbers of deputies are state or even military traitors associated with the separatists. That is why, after the collapse of the coalition and Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s resignation from the post of Prime Minister, the current Parliament should be dissolved immediately.”

[3] From the Washington Post, July 26:

The IMF forecasts that Ukraine’s annual GDP will drop by 6.5% this year, while the government deficit is projected at 10.1% of GDP. This week, the government announced that it would need at least 800 million dollars to continue its counterinsurgency operation and asked the parliament to further increase taxes and cut public spending. The deputies’ refusal to appropriate needed funds yesterday triggered Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s resignation as he recognized that soldiers would receive no pay next month. The reconstruction of Donbas is even more uncertain as the government promised to turn to foreign donors for funds in the coming fall.

Prices to consumers of natural gas have risen 50 per cent this year and Ukraine’s currency has lost half its value in this same time. Kyiv is now totally dependent of loans from international financial institutions.

In the Globe and Mail on July 24, Ukraine’s envoy to Canada, Vadym Prystaiko, explained, “We are pouring all the money in our budget… into the anti-terrorism campaign.” (‘Anti-terrorism campaign’ is Kyiv’s code language for its war in the east of the country.)

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