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Seven thousand armed forces positioned throughout Suleimaniya, secret police detain 1000 students

CPTnet | 19 April 2011

Following sixty-two days of continuous protest in Suleimaniya Iraq against corruption within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the government has revoked legal permission for protest, and a source within the armed Peshmerga Forces told CPT that forces received orders to shoot to kill any demonstrators today.

The otherwise nonviolent demonstrations in Suleimaniya at Azadi (Freedom) Square ended in major violence on 17 and 18 April. On both days, security forces formed a ring around Azadi Square. Claiming groups of young men throwing rocks had provoked them, the forces entered the square containing about 1000 unarmed and nonviolent demonstrators, shooting tear gas and live bullets. They also beat people with batons as they tried to clear square of all demonstrators. At 6:30 p.m., 18 April, the armed forces burned down the stage and platform used by speakers at the demonstration.

Nine people have died and close to 1000 have been injured since the demonstrations began on 17 February 2011. Hundreds have been arrested and disappeared. The independent television station, NRT was burned to the ground in February and authorities have detained, beaten, kidnapped, and tortured hundreds of journalists.

Today, 19 April, at 11:00 a.m., the Asaish (secret police) took hostage approximately 1000 students from Suleimaniya University who were planning to demonstrate at the Suleimaniya Courthouse.

Seven thousand Peshmerga, Asaish, and Emergency Protection Forces loyal to PUK party leaders are positioned throughout the city of Suleimaniya as of this morning, 19 April.

April 19, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | Leave a comment

Bahrain: Breaking the silence

In Focus | April 17, 2011

Part 1

Part 2

April 18, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Sulaymanieh Protest leaves 35 injured

Press TV – April 17, 2011

Clashes between police and protesters in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region have left at least 35 people injured, including seven policemen, reports say.

In recent months, protests have flared up in the region’s second largest city of Sulaymanieh, where thousands of people have spilled out into the streets to protest against corruption and a lack of freedom.

Police fired shots, used tear gas and batons to disperse the protesters on Sunday.

Seven protesters also suffered bullet wounds and some others were hurt by batons or tear gas, Reuters quoted police and witnesses as saying.

Rekawt Hama Rasheed, general director of the health office in Sulaymanieh, said that seven policemen suffered exposure to tear gas.

Several people were also taken into custody, including journalists, but the exact figure is not known, he said.

Two journalists were among the wounded, one of them a photographer, who was shot while covering the clashes, said Rahman Gharib, an editor at the Kurdish weekly newspaper Hawalati.

Kurdistan is dominated by just two parties, the PUK and the regional president’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

President of Iraq’s Kurdistan region Massoud Barzani had announced plans last month to shake up the regional government and enact reforms, but demonstrators wanted more reforms.

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day

Tania Kepler for the Alternative Information Center | 17 April 2011

Today, 17 April, is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. The day commemorates the release of Palestinian prisoner Mahmoud Hijazi in the first prisoners’ exchange between the Palestinians and the Israelis in 1974.

This year Palestinian Prisoners’ Day comes in the midst of a wave of mass and arbitrary arrests by the Israeli military forces in the West Bank village of Awarta, following the murders of 5 family members in the nearby settlement of Itamar.

So far more than 500 men, women and children have been arrested, questioned, detained, and asked to sign statements in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.

While most villagers were released within hours of their arrest, 50 still remain in detention without charges, including two children, according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

The situation for Palestinians in Israeli prisons is grim. According to ADDAMEER, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Rights NGO, over 6,800 Palestinians, from the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and 1948 Palestine, are currently imprisoned by the Israeli state. Of those, over 300 are children, 34 are women, 18 are elected Palestinian representatives and almost 300 are ‘Administrative Detainees’ – that is they have been interned without trial not having been charged with any crime or seeing the secret evidence against them.

The prisoners are being detained in 17 prisons and detention centers; such as, Nafha, Ramon, Ashkelon, Beersheba, HaDarom, Gilboa, Shata, Al-Ramla, Damon, Hasharon, Naqab, Ofer and Megiddo.

Over four decades of illegal Israeli military occupation, Palestinians from all walks of life have been illegally detained by Israel. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel, reports ADDAMEER.

An estimated 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained since 1967 under Israeli military orders, which govern nearly every aspect of life in the occupied Palestinian territory. As of 1 February 2011, 36 Palestinian women remain in Israel’s prisons and detention centers, including 3 women in administrative detention. The two prisons in which Palestinian women are detained are located outside the 1967 occupied territory, in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Sign this petition to free all Palestinian Women Prisoners in Israeli Jails:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/6/free-Palestinian-women-political-prisoners/

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Army arrests Hebron child after settlers attack home

Ma’an – 16/04/2011

HEBRON — Israeli soldiers detained a child from Hebron’s Old City after settlers attacked the boy’s home Saturday.

Mu’taz Al-Muhtaseb was beaten by soldiers and arrested, locals told Ma’an.

They added that Israeli forces came to the area after settlers from the illegal outpost Beit Hadasa attacked Mu’taz’s home.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that soldiers arrested a Palestinian but said that the army was unaware of any beating or unusual incidents since his arrest.

He also told Ma’an that the incident came after several Israeli civilians hurled rocks at a Palestinian house. “When an IDF force arrived at the scene, they dispersed,” the official said.

April 16, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Yemeni women stage massive protest

Press TV – April 16, 2011

In Yemen, thousands of outraged women have defended their right to protest in the capital and other cities over remarks made by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

President Saleh had earlier said that it was un-Islamic for women to join men in demonstrations against him, Reuters reported.

In response, around 5,000 women took to the streets in Sana’a on Saturday. The protesters, who have filed a complaint against Saleh for disrespecting women’s rights, marched from University Square to the office of Attorney General Abdullah al-Olafi.

Similar protests were held in the industrial city of Taizz, south of the capital, Sana’a. Sit-ins were also held there and in the city of Ibb.

Women argue that their participation in the demonstrations is religiously sound, and that the president is exploiting religion after failing to stop the protests through employing tribes and security forces.

The demonstrators continue to call on Saleh to step down after nearly three months of protests. While Saleh says civil war could break out if he steps down before an orderly transition, the protesters say they want him out immediately.

Meanwhile, a local Yemeni newspaper has revealed that Saleh will step down from power in 30 days upon the designation of a new vice president. This is according to a timetable set by the US and EU ambassadors.

April 16, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Teenage girl released from prison: Awarta

International Solidarity Movement | April 15, 2011

Late on Thursday afternoon sixteen year old Julia Manzen Awwad arrived back to the village of Awarta, following her release from Israeli military prison. She had been detained for five days after being arrested by force during an army raid on her family home in the early hours of Sunday morning. Upon arrest Julia was taken blindfolded and bound by her wrists and ankles to the military base at Huwwara, where she was detained for a night. She was then transferred to a military prison.

During her detention Julia was denied basic human rights and prevented from contacting either her family or a lawyer. Instead she was confined to a dark room and intensively interrogated about the murders of the Fogel family at Itamar, the nearby illegal settlement. Julia described being woken at regular intervals and asked the same questions repeatedly. Confused and frightened she answered that she knew nothing, only to be met with aggressive retorts accusing her of lying.

Ill treatment and abuses included the refusal of her request for a doctor when experiencing stomach pains, being fed food she described as fit for animals, and being handcuffed and marched to the toilet furthest from her cell. At times she was not even allowed to use the toilet. Prior to her release Julia was coerced into signing a document she could not understand and had wires attached to various parts of her body during a lie detector test.

Whilst Julia was welcomed by her mother, Noaf, and extended family members, she spoke of the sorrow she felt returning to her house as her brothers, George (20) and Hakim (17), along with their father, Mazen, still remain in custody. Her mother, who was also detained in the raid last weekend, was released on Monday.

Earlier in the day a demonstration organized by a local Palestinian womens group marched through Awarta in protest at the barbaric treatment of the community at the hands of the Israeli army over the last month. In a show of solidarity it finished outside the homes of other members of the Awwad family, which were ransacked and destroyed by soldiers in a raid last Monday night.

Since the brutal murder of five family members in Itamar settlement at the beginning of March the villagers of Awarta have been subjected to near continuous incursions by the Israeli army. Men and women, some in their 80s, and children, some as young and 14, have been arrested. Whilst many have been released after a few days, others, mainly men, remain in detention. On these early morning raids, the army fire sound grenades through windows prior to forcing their way into homes and brutalizing the occupants – regardless of age.

April 15, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

No surprise Bob Dylan is visiting the ‘neighborhood bully’

By Nima Shirazi | Mondoweiss | April 13, 2011

You may have seen the recent letter by the Israeli peace and justice group “Boycott From Within” (BfW) asking Bob Dylan to heed the Palestinian call for BDS and therefore not perform in Israel.  The letter follows reports of Dylan’s 2011 summer tour, during which he will perform at Ramat Gan Stadium on June 20th.

The BfW letter hits all the right notes and speaks truth.  It asks Dylan “not to perform in Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights,” explaining that “a performance in Israel, today, is a vote of support for its policies of oppression.”  The letter speaks of ethnic cleansing, land theft, martial law, air strikes, and massacres.  It beseeches the folk legend, who has “been part of a civil rights movement,” to stand with the oppressed against the aggressor.  BfW writes that “BDS is a powerful and united civil initiative in the face of a brutal military occupation and apartheid. It’s a nonviolent alternative to a waning armed struggle and it has reaped many successes and instilled much hope, in the past six years.”

A Ha’aretz article proudly notes that the Dylan concert will be held “where Leonard Cohen and Elton John recently performed,” and is being promoted by “Marcel Avraham, the promoter who organized the Leonard Cohen and Elton John concerts – as well as the upcoming Justin Bieber concert that will be held over Passover.”

So, will Bob Dylan – the man who wrote “Masters of War” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in 1963 – heed the call?  Of course not.  Although Dylan would appear to be the perfect political ally, his human and civil rights bona fides have faded over time – to the point of non-existence.

In 1971, Time Magazine reported that Dylan was “returning to is his Jewishness” and “getting into this ethnic Jewish thing.”  A friend of his told the magazine, “He’s reading all kinds of books on Judaism, books about the Jewish resistance like the Warsaw ghetto. He took a trip to Israel last year that no one was supposed to know about and even, it is rumored, gave a large donation to the Israeli government.” The article continues:

Dylan denied giving money to Israel or to the fanatical Jewish Defense League, but he confesses great admiration for that “Never again” action group and its reckless leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. “He’s a really sincere guy,” says Bob. “He’s really put it all together.”

Yes, you read that right.  Bob Dylan said Meir Kahane, who favored the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and whose racist Kach party has since been banned from Israeli politics, is “a really sincere guy” who’s “really put it all together.”

In 1983, twenty years after he sang, “you don’t count the dead” and “you never ask questions, when God’s on your side,” Dylan penned a song in response to the international outrage over the devastating Israeli assault on Lebanon in 1982, which took the lives of nearly 18,000 Lebanese civilians and wounded about 30,000 others.  The song did not mention the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in which between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were murdered.  The Israeli Kahan Commission, published in February 1983, found that Israel bore “indirect responsibility” and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon “bears personal responsibility” for the massacre.

Rather, Dylan’s song, entitled “Neighborhood Bully” and featured on his Infidels album (which incidentally also contains the songs “Man of Peace” and “License to Kill“), is a bitter and indignant defense of Israel’s actions, an exercise in Zionist mythology, eternal victimization, and bogus “right to self-defense” hasbara, that sounds like it was written collectively by Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Anthony Weiner, and Golda Meir.

Dylan sings of nameless (though obvious) “neighborhood bully,” labeled such by “his enemies” who “say he’s on their land” and have him “outnumbered about a million to one” with “no place to escape to, no place to run.”  And that’s just the first verse.

The hasbara escalates as the song continues.  Dylan sings of exile (“The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land”) and bigotry (“He’s always on trial for just being born”), of lonely survival and attempts at delegitization (“He’s criticized and condemned for being alive”), of the Osirak bombing, of deserts blooming.  The only way to believe how thick the Zionist talking points are laid on is to listen to the whole song, or read the complete lyrics (copied below).

Unfortunately for the BDS community and the courageous activists of BfW, Bob Dylan will not be an ally in the fight for justice or international law.  He made his choice decades ago.  It is Dylan who can apparently no longer see “where the people are many and their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, where the executioner’s face is always well hidden, where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, where black is the color, where none is the number.”

And, although Dylan once claimed that he’d “tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, and reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,” he has decided to stand with those who aggress and oppress, with those who starve and deprive, with those who surround and fly-over and bomb hospitals and deny, with those who steal land and resources, with those who reinvent and erase history, with those who criminalize memory and prioritize ethnicity and religion.

By ignoring the call to boycott and by performing in Israel this summer, Dylan is solidifying his reputation as one who – when it counted most – didn’t stand for morality and humanity.  Dylan once asked, “how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?”  It seems that Dylan’s own answer to the Palestinians would be, “A while longer and don’t ask me to help.”  He has become his own rhetorical character: the man who turns his head, pretending he just doesn’t see.

So, the questions remain.  “How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?  How many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?”  The answers are no longer simply blowing in the wind, however.  They are in discourse and education, flash mobs and rallies, sit-ins and walk-outs.  The answers are international law and humanitarian justice.  The answer is promoting basic morality and common decency.  The answer is raising public awareness.  The answer is opposing settler-colonialism, military aggression, collective punishment, air strikes and assassinations, drone attacks and white phosphorous, tear gas and torture, ethnic cleansing, diplomatic immunity, war crime impunity, ethnocentrism and supremacism, racism and discrimination, apartheid and occupation.  The answer is BDS.

And, as Bob Dylan told us himself, the times they are a-changing’.

Sadly, this time around, however, it seems Dylan does need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing.

Neighborhood Bully

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

April 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Street protests banned in Baghdad

By Sara Ghasemilee | Al Arabiya | 14 April 2011

Iraq has decided to officially ban street protests in the capital Baghdad and limited approved demonstrations sites to three soccer stadiums, a security official said on Wednesday, according to reports.

“We have specified Al-Shaab, Kashafa and Zawraa stadiums as permitted sites for demonstrations in Baghdad instead of Ferdus or Tahrir squares,” the capital’s security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta said at a news conference televised by state broadcaster Iraqiya TV.

The decision follows after regular demonstrations were held in Bagdad with thousands of people protesting against government corruption, poor basic services and unemployment.

“Many shop owners and street vendors have called us and complained to us because demonstrations have affected their work and the movement of traffic, “Major General Atta said.

Following uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Iraqis have frequently been protesting since late February around the country, from the mainly Kurdish north to the Shiite south.

The authorities have responded by deploying guards, troops and internal security forces.

More than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted President Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s infrastructure remains severely damaged. The country suffers a chronic water shortage and electricity supply is intermittent making daily life difficult and leaving many Iraqis feeling frustrated.

April 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties | Leave a comment

San Francisco to require ID scans, photos of everyone who goes to a venue

By Cory Doctorow | Boing Boing | April 12, 2011

San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission has proposed that all bars, clubs, and venues should be required to photograph and collect ID from everyone who comes in for a drink or a show. The photos and personal information would be retained so that police could get a list of every person who was in the club on any given night. Leaving aside the (obvious) fourth amendment issues inherent in governments collecting massive databases of presumed-innocent people’s lawful activities and movements, this is also a security nightmare, in which thousands of club staff and their friends would have access to personal information that would be of great interest to stalkers, creeps and identity thieves.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation will present their critique of this proposal to the Commission at a public meeting on April 12.

Events with strong cultural, ideological, and political components are frequently held at venues that would be affected by these rules. Scanning the ID’s of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would have a deeply chilling effect on speech. Participants might hesitate to attend such events if their attendance were noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities. This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state.We are deeply disappointed in the San Francisco Entertainment Commission for considering such troubling, authoritarian, and poorly thought-out rules. The Commission should reject this attack on our most basic civil liberties. San Francisco cannot hope to remain a hub of cultural and political activity if we are stripped of our civil liberties the moment we walk through the door of a venue.

EFF to San Francisco Entertainment Commission: Don’t Turn SF into a Police State

April 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Bahraini Bookshop Owner Dies under Torture while in Police Custody

Al-Manar | April 13, 2011

Abdul Karim Al-FakhrawiAbdul Kareem al-Fakhrawi, a prominent Bahraini businessman, was martyred on Tuesday due to severe torture while in prison, the opposition al-Wefaq group said.

Fakhrawi is the fourth Bahraini, tortured to death, since anti-government protests began in the country in mid-February. The 49-year-old businessman disappeared on or around April 4, when he went to file a police report against policemen who had earlier raided his home, reports said.

Fakhrawi had been a potential parliamentary candidate in Bahrain’s 2006 elections.

The circumstances surrounding his disappearance, detention, and death remain unclear but according to sources his brother identified the body at a local morgue. The Bahrain interior ministry has not commented on the incident.

Fakhrawi owned the Fakhrawi bookshop chain and was an investor in the independent daily al-Wasat.

His death comes just a day after Bahrain buried blogger Zakria Rashid al-Asherri, 40, martyred while in police custody.

Bahraini forces have severely suppressed the anti-regime protests with the help of Saudi, the UAE and Kuwaiti troops.

Signs of abuse on bodies of detained

In recent days Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) among other rights groups had criticized the Bahraini government crackdown.

“Bahrain should investigate the death in police custody of three people,” U.S.-based HRW said on Wednesday, saying one of the bodies bore signs of physical abuse.

The opposition says hundreds have been arrested and four have died in police custody over the past 10 days.

“It’s outrageous and cruel that people are taken off to detention and the families hear nothing until the body shows up with signs of abuse,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for the New York-based group.

HRW said it had seen the body of Ali Saqer, one of the men who died in police custody, and that it bore signs of severe physical abuse.

Bahrain has accused human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, of doctoring pictures of the corpse. “We viewed Ali Saqer’s body just prior to his burial and its condition was exactly as shown in the photo that Nabeel Rajab circulated,” Stork said.

April 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Bahrain to try independent journalists

Press TV – April 11, 2011

Bahrain intends to try three former editors-in-chief of a leading independent newspaper for their coverage of the popular revolution against the kingdom’s royal family.

Bahraini authorities banned the publication of Al Wasat — Bahrain’s most popular opposition newspaper — earlier in the month. They then forced the daily to fire its chief editor Mansur al-Jamri so it would be allowed to reprint.

The former opposition activist is now forced to attend trial alongside two of his former workmates on charges of “unethical” reporting of the government protests, the Associated Press reported.

The editors are accused of “publishing fabricated news,” “harming public safety” and “damaging national interests.”

Bahraini people, emboldened by the popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, have been demanding an end to the two-century-plus rule of the Al Khalifa dynasty since February 14.

Scores of protesters have been killed and many others gone missing since the beginning of the revolution during government-sanctioned crackdown.

Bahraini forces have reinforced their violent armed attacks on the protesters with the help of troops dispatched from neighboring Arab states in the Persian Gulf.

The much-condemned military intervention has been led by Saudi Arabia.

April 12, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

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