I Pity The Nation That Needs To Jail Those Who Ask For Justice-- Arundhati Roy

For her talk on Kashmir (videos to the right), writer Arundhati Roy has come under the threat of “sedition” charges in India. These speeches are currently being analyzed by Delhi police. Her response to the threat is below and was issued from Srinagar:

See video of her speech on Kashmir here

I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning's papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer's husband and Asiya's brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get 'insaf'—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving 'hate-speeches', of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

Arundhati Roy
October 26 2010

Direct talks ... let the countdown begin

Spend as much time in the Middle East following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as I have over the years and you begin to notice a sad pattern.

The two-state solution based on the Israeli-Palestinian equation of 'land for peace' has brought neither land nor peace but violence.

Now that the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians have begun, so too, many are afraid, has something else: the countdown to the next round of violence in the region.

God forbid it happens. Those of us who live in this part of the world know how much of a human toll this conflict has taken on the people of the region.

But there is a truth that must be said, and while most in the media, particularly the Western media, have failed to mention it, the reality of the violence that follows the failure of such talks always looms present.

Violent Resistance to Nazis

Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass murder fueled resistance to the Germans in the Third Reich itself and throughout occupied Europe. Although Jews were the Nazis' primary victims, they too resisted Nazi oppression in a variety of ways, both collectively and as individuals.

Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsawghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. For months after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, individual Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I’m not sure that’s right. I’ve written books and done activism, but it is neither a lack of words nor a lack of activism that is killing salmon here in the Northwest. It’s the dams.

Anyone who knows anything about salmon knows the dams must go. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows the dams will stay. Scientists study, politicians and business people lie and delay, bureaucrats hold sham public meetings, activists write letters and press releases, and still the salmon die.

Walking with the Comrads

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”

Namashkar Guruji. I wondered whether the Meeter and Greeter would be expecting a man. And whether I should get myself a moustache. 

There are many ways to describe Dantewada. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a border town smack in the heart of India. It’s the epicentre of a war. It’s an upside down, inside out town.

Red Shadow: Centenary celebrations of the adivasi uprising in Bastar; Sten gun at hand

In Dantewada, the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail superintendent is in jail. The prisoners are free (three hundred of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago). Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar.

Stone in my Hand-- to Kashmir (this is what democracy looks like)

Killings in Kashmir by Indian Forces Spark Protests.

South African's Attackin The Wrong Group of People

"Archbishop Desmond Tutu's dream of South Africa as a "Rainbow Nation" of exemplary inclusiveness is being negated. Fourteen years of ANC rule have failed to reverse many of the deep social inequalities inherited from the apartheid era, and the strain caused by mass unemployment, poor sanitation and limited services in many townships has now erupted in a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing. Last November, the South African Institute of Race Relations estimated that 4.2 million people were living on $1 a day or less in 2005, up from 1.9 million in 1996. Even when it has managed to suppress the current upsurge in anti-immigrant violence, the government faces a monumental challenge in transforming the poverty and despair that has fueled the hatred"

How Non-Violence Protects the State

Support our Troops

Support our troops, watch this video

This should be no surprise to find out but U.S. Troops kill people.
Those that pay their taxes to the Untied States pay for people to kill people.
Support our troops, support murder.

If this was my country, and my people...
I would pick up an AK-47, or an RPG as well
I do not quite understand why we are so surprised with terrorism
when we are the same thing, just a well funded terrorist organization


The Transitive Property of Fighting
If...
People = Soldiers
Soldiers = Army
Army = Killing for own cause/justice
Killing for own Cause/justice= Terrorist
Terrorism = army
Army = Soldiers(terrorists)
Soldiers= people

People shouldn't become Soldiers nor terrorists

Killing = Killing

Police Kill 7 Year Old Girl in Raid

Girl, 7, shot as officer's gun fires during raid; Police were searching house for suspect in prior slaying

 

Detroit --Charles Jones had just turned in after covering his sleeping 7-year-old daughter on the living room sofa with her favorite Disney Princess blanket when police burst into his east side apartment early Sunday.

"I heard the flash bang and then the gunshot," Jones said about rushing from his bedroom into the hands of Detroit Police officers, who handcuffed him and pushed him to the floor.

An officer hunting for a murder suspect had shot Aiyana Jones through the neck.

The victim's family said police told them the gun discharged because the girl's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, 46, grappled for the officer's weapon. Later Sunday, police spokesman John Roach said the officer and grandmother may have simply collided.

Mertilla Jones was released from custody Sunday afternoon, and it remained unclear if she will face charges. Police held her for more than 12 hours, during which time she also spent several hours hospitalized with what police said were medical issues.

At a press conference in front of the home Sunday evening, Mertilla Jones said there was no struggle: "I hit the floor when I heard them hit the window.

"They blew my granddaughter's brains out. They killed her right before my eyes. I watched the light go out of her eyes. I seen it."