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Covid in Italy, the never-ending State of Emergency and the “othering” of dissent

Posted: 12/30/2021 by editormary in Europe, Politics
Tags: Covid, Italy

Written by Mary Rizzo

Vaccinations are widely perceived as useful and necessary, but there is growing civil unrest, as all criticism and dissent to public policies is silenced or demonised. The progressive vision of potential for a positive transformation of a hard-hit society after the tragedy of the pandemic has been all but lost, as worries about the lack of pluralism in the political debate and the fragility of democracy in a what resembles a cultural hegemony are concrete

The vaccination campaign in full swing. PHOTO BY GIOVANNI DIFFIDENTI

A shortened version was first published in German on Bildungswerk Berlin der Heinrich Böll Stiftung

Crawling from the Covid wreckage, “Whatever it takes”

Two years after the outbreak of Covid and its rapid diffusion in Italy, the country still finds itself under a State of Emergency, despite the fact that the data of the vaccination campaign show that Italy outperforms other countries. While Prime Minister Draghi has had the opportunity of boasting of the effectiveness of government policies both at the European Council and the G20, the fourth wave could reserve some negative surprises, so the Health minister is not taking off the table the possibility of extending the State of Emergency into the spring, with other hotly contested restrictive measures continuing through (at least) June. All of this in the midst of establishing a budget law that sees workers losing more rights, and incrementally moving the finish line for retirement further in the distance, an issue in which the reformist left is woefully disinterested and which shockingly met with barely an outcry from the labour unions.

With the vaccination campaign in full swing, since July 2021 there has been a gradual loosening of the closures put on most forms of sport, commerce leisure and cultural activities. A policy of total closure was enforced starting on 9 March and lasting until 18 May, rather than opting for using the WHO recommended preventive and sanitary measures. In essence, investments had to be made to adapt facilities to the new reality, but then the facilities, from cultural centres to gyms, restaurants to shops, were ordered to be shuttered, some for 18 months, as if the loss of these sectors for such an extended time would not damage actors in part of the economy, in what might be seen as a form of “austerity”. The grip applied by the State to some economic sectors has indeed been deadly, after the tragic parenthesis and linguistic shift that determined workers, and not just sectors, being classified as “essential” and “non-essential”. Unfortunately, the fate of those positioned in some forms of labour and entire economic sectors, namely, workers with precarious or no contracts, and the SMEs – that alone represent 78.5% of workers -, is clearly not even close to being a priority.

Draghi, as former head of the European Central Bank and part of the directorate of the Group of 30 think tank, has expressed clear ideas about which workers are expendable. For the think tank that moves from a role of consultant to one of policy-maker when its members become Prime Ministers, the post-Covid philosophy is that not all suffering businesses should be saved and that the choice of recipients of public support should be determined by their potential to be profitable after the pandemic. The two Italian governments in power during the pandemic (Conte’s second legislation, governing during its onset, and Draghi since 13 February 2021) each introduced economic aid packages intended to bring relief to most of the affected actors, but in reality, the aid was deemed by the beneficiaries as insufficient to even meet costs (in the Ho.Re.Ca. sector, for example, of 243 billion euro being lost, only 29 billion was financed, a mere 7%). Access to aid became increasingly limited through the perdurance of the epidemic, as efforts were made to avoid indiscriminate disbursement, and the infamous red tape involved discouraged their pursuit. This left some businesses unable to even contemplate reopening after the closures were lifted, much less derive a profit from their activities.

In light of all these hardships for the workers and citizens and the clear programmatic tendency toward supporting only the profitable, Covid remains the crux of public policy and discourse, considered as the primary problem to be addressed by those in power, at the expense of other concerns. The State attributed to itself the successes of the vaccination campaign and hard lockdown, while framing any failures a result of the action of individuals and successively, imputing to the anti-vaxxers and the conspiratorial thinking that largely defines and influences their position, all criticism of the governance of a vaccination campaign that is, in the eyes of many, including researchers and public administrators, severely flawed and poorly managed. It did not help matters that the Extraordinary Commissioner for the Covid-19 Emergency (Army General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, replacing Domenico Arcuri), responsible for the implementation and coordination of the necessary measures for the containment and contrast of the epidemiological emergency, was issuing contradictory indications for recipients of the available vaccines from one week to the next. Suddenly pulling vaccines, as was the case with the AstraZeneca vaccine which was already given to millions being taken out of circulation in many countries, including Italy, only created confusion, fear and hesitation in the Italian public that takes the saying, “Con la salute non si scherza – Health is the most serious thing” as an oath.

Italy is currently the scenario of a full-blown protest movement, upon which the Ministry of the Interior has put a clampdown as of 12 November, “From tomorrow, all marches will be prohibited, and this is true for all protests, not just the no vax ones,” in the words of Carlo Sibilia, undersecretary of the Ministry, with static sit-ins in areas away from city centres being still allowed. These words reveal the conflation being made between two distinct issues: protests about the vaccination and protests about other measures introduced and the continuation of the State of Emergency. Opposition is not coming only from the anti-vax faction, or the fascist movements, which indeed are present in the dissent, and in the case of Rome, have a massive presence. Dissent is much more capillary, diversified and democratic than the mainstream media lets filter through, and a great deal of it is coming from anarchist and antifascist movements and the reformist and revolutionary left.

The Parliament seems to accept that the Prime Minister’s authoritative “Whatever it takes” statement is peremptory and that all debate is therefore closed. By and large, the mainstream media and the pundits of the centre-right and centre-left political areas have all faithfully reiterated the government line in a narrative that promotes its single-minded approach as sound, as well as unquestionably the only course of action that must be considered so as to safeguard the health and safety of the population. This notion extends to most of the progressive media as well. All this seemingly universal agreement appears so coordinated and harmonious, much more than would even be rational to be expected in a country that often feels like it is in a never-ending electoral campaign.

“The problem, comrades, is not that there is also the right, the problem is that we are not there!”

Italians need to keep in mind the words of Umberto Eco, that freedom and liberation are never-ending tasks. And this holds true even during a health emergency. In these two dramatic years, the lack of real pluralism in the political debate and discussion of containment and recovery measures is noticeable, with citizens and workers feeling excluded from the body politic. When practically all the institutional and communication points of reference exhibit a dangerous lack of critique and display a choral backing of anything the government says or does, it shifts the space for dissent about government measures “to the fringes” of the left and the right, where they are then easily demonised. While all Italians agree that “everything’s changed” and that a return to the past is out of the question, some people see what they label as the government’s obsessive focus on security as continuing to use Covid-19 as a diversionary tactic to bring about policies that otherwise might meet with resistance, since they involve more government control but fewer safety nets, resulting in more polarisation within an exhausted population, which has in effect led to protests demanding change.

While the progressive and revolutionary left is present, it is disheartening that is not organising the street, or as better expressed by a far-left organiser, “The problem, comrades, is not that there is also the right [organising], the problem is that we are not there!”. However, the majority of the protesters may not have any ideological identification at all and, in the narrative, the divergence of the dissent is downplayed. In a constant stream of televised discussions, the line is hegemonic, there’s no hint that the imposition of some measures that many ordinary people are concerned about could be a problem, they are too busy framing the people being worried as the true problem. In essence, all resistance or opposition to measures either dealing with Covid or a consequence to Covid are being articulated as deriving from nationalist-populist-fascist tendencies, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they actually do or not. This is precisely what is happening with the current wave of protests that are sweeping Italy, and the media coverage that frames it and consolidates public opinion. As was stated by sociologist Luca Fazzi, “When in a democracy it is necessary to emphasise that one agrees with the dominant opinion in order to even have the right to speak, it is cause for alarm … with the result of destroying the very principle of dialectics that is the basis of every truly democratic system.”

The State of Emergency has become the ordinary state

The government didn’t make vaccinations mandatory, possibly out of fear about managing or controlling dissent, but it might also be because the constitution indicates that it would require an intervention of Parliament to impose it, and not just a Prime Minister’s Decree, as has been the mode of governance during the pandemic. Very few politicians would be willing to take the risk of deliberating on such a delicate issue where politicians are never popular (the attitude of the populace toward politicians has been defined as “a culture of perennial resentment” in Foreign Policy). Urging the government to do so was never an aspect of this crisis, although there were some seeing obligatory vaccinations favourably. A journalist of a major far-left site wrote, “A government seriously concerned about safeguarding its own citizens would not have any doubts, it would make [vaccines] mandatory. And it would also assume that substantially small percentage of unpopularity (that 25% of sceptics, the uncertain, doubtful, etc.) as long as they achieved the result.”

Instead, it was chosen to extend the adoption of a certificate that has taken on a totemistic role and extended its range of action, the Green Pass. This is a document valid for 9 months when one is vaccinated or for 48 hours after a negative swab for those who are not. It was introduced by decree and without democratic process or public debate. Initially seen by the general public primarily as an inconvenience when applied to allowing access to restaurants and leisure activities, it revealed itself to also have dangerous discriminatory potential when it became obligatory for all workers as of 15 October and has since become that bridge too far, since each required molecular swab, paid by the individual workers, has an average cost of €72, putting it well out of the reach of many workers. The Green Pass is not in any way medical and the critical issues that exist about its use are serious, though kept far from the political debate. It can be used in a vexatious and discriminatory way in the workplace, and all workers who do not comply with it will be fined, suspended and have their pay frozen. Foreign workers also run the risk of having the renewal of their stay and work permits denied. Its application also involves issues of violation of privacy and tracing. According to Niccolò Bertuzzi, researcher on social movements, Italy would be “the only country in the ‘developed world’ that binds the exercise of any profession at all to the exhibition of a pass that certifies the absence of one sole illness.”

Others in the left claim that the imposition of the Green Pass has a nefarious political project behind it, “Numerous citizens crushed by the crises, whose grievances have been reduced to silence by the continual “emergency” nature of the situations, understand that submitting to an instrument that separates, with substantially arbitrary motivations, who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ is the definitive weapon to break the back of all resistance.” Its imposition in place of mandatory vaccination “without even bothering to explain the reasons,” is also labelled as “cunning, hypocritical and chaotic” in an editorial in MicroMega, a leading progressive magazine.

If the issue is vaccinating as many as possible, herd immunity has more or less been obtained in Italy. Neither is it a question of bringing the anti-vax movement into the fold of science (which is not going to happen, fears have to be respected, even if they are irrational); the true issue is how the political class will be able to manage, in the respect of human and political rights, the strong dissent to the punitive bureaucratic controls of a slice of the population that refuse them.

Pushed to the margins is the reasoning that a more effective way to fight the pandemic and increase vaccinations could have been to adopt a policy of persuasion, rather than imposing the Green Pass, widely viewed, even by those involved in social solidarity and bioethics as a necessary punitive coercion to vaccinate, (though there is still the contradiction of leaving the citizen free to refuse being vaccinated). Citizens do at some point, even during a health crisis, expect to be treated as beings with agency, and democratic processes and silencing of criticism being put on the back burner to impose diktats (the State of Emergency only serves ostensibly to streamline purchasing and distributing vaccines) is an idea that is tearing at the seams. The hegemony of the institutions does have some cracks though, as authoritative figures outside of politics are questioning these policies, including the virologist Andrea Cristanti, who stated, “After two years, the State of Emergency has become the ordinary state, and this is not acceptable, this demonstrates that they haven’t understood us well enough.”

Who’s the enemy?

Despite the initial progressive and revolutionary belief of leftist movements that the pandemic would lead to cooperation and a revived sense of community to face the common enemy, (the virus), the reality was instead that the State, which has a low level of trust (in a poll from 2020, only one person in three trusted it), assumed the role as the sole representative of the general interest of the community. This disappointment in a missed opportunity was expressed by activist and author Nicola Casale: “To regain legitimacy, [the State] established measures in which the only possible solution was to put all the responsibility of stopping the pandemic on individual behaviour, up to the point of unleashing a phobia of the other, each one terrorised by the possibility that the other is the public enemy, ready to attack him in case of lack of respect of the social distancing rules. The theoretical potential of the community that could open the way toward a new community of class consciousness was immediately resolved in the opposite direction.” Social cohesion has started to fray as the pandemic has evolved, given the social stigma associated with the carriers of the virus, who were identified to those in their communities, quarantined and often feared or blamed, particularly if they were exposed to the virus through travel or leisure activities.

With a strong belief in the necessity of mass vaccinations, the left, both reformist and revolutionary, has found itself promoting many of the same policies as the government, but unable to suggest an alternative in Italy to the crippling economic measures or the contradictory mode of imposition. It has instead been the fascist movements (organised in parties and movements and eager to ride the wave of discontent) who are attempting to represent themselves as organisers of the people against an authoritarian system that does not engage in a dialogue, much less a deliberation. “Dissent” in times of Covid is being treated either as a privilege or a deviant activity. There is indeed considerable political disaffection of the populace in a country where the governments formed don’t usually represent the will expressed by the voters, since coalitions can be forged and smitten without any reflection on the popular vote, seen most recently in the record low turnout for widespread administrative elections in October.

No one can deny that the two administrations governing during Covid have wielded an unspeakably immense power in imposing a generalised national lockdown during what has been, objectively, the most stringent lockdown in the world. According to Global Risks Insights, “The government’s ‘stay at home’ strategy became increasingly hard to implement after it became clear to the public that the vaccine rollout had stalled and there seemed to be no end to the lockdown in sight.” The Italian people exhibited an extreme amount of obedience and compliance, making sacrifices both for the greater good and to avoid punishment, “always confined to the home in a timeless night of the virus.” But over time, public goodwill changed to dissatisfaction and a growing anger at the fact that the government constantly changes the indicators for this required obedience. Nationalised hard lockdown and closures until vaccine. Selective, often inequitable and arbitrary closures and lockdowns. Access restrictions in some closed spaces (Green Pass) until herd immunity is reached. Herd immunity as established by the commission to manage the emergency somehow arbitrarily moving from 70% to 85%, even to 90% and beyond. Division of society where only the vaccinated have the right to work. The policy-makers have done anything and everything to make individuals responsible for the prevention of the collapse of the healthcare system that Covid put to the extreme test, except resolving the problem at the structural level, which would mean reversing the cuts in public health spending, modernising the hospital system, hiring more healthcare professionals and doctors. But that would require too much negotiation and a change of course. In Italy the health system is national only in name, it is actually fragmented into twenty-one different systems, making it all very much based on political patronage, and therefore, extremely discontinuous from region to region.

Technical government mon Amour
At this point, understanding the dynamic between the governed and the distrust of those who govern them is essential for comprehension of the particularly complex Italian situation during the pandemic. The number of governments Italy has had (69 since the republic was formed in 1945, making it an average of one new government every 13 months) can strike people as surprising, but it is telling as to the amount of political fragmentation that exists in this country’s politics. Following the collapse of the second Conte government through the ultimatum of a junior member of the coalition, the technocrat Draghi was called in by the President of the Republic who said it would be too much of a risk to hold elections at this point in the pandemic. If a parliament cannot reshuffle the coalition, the President has the liberty to decide whether to call elections or postpone them to an undetermined point in the future. Italians actually never know when they will be voting or which parties will be created and dissolved in the meantime. This tends to distance the public from the political sphere. It was never made clear how voting during a pandemic might be too much of a risk, and considering a period of time when voting is not permitted at all (six months before the election of the President of the Republic by the parliament for a seven-year term) this leaves enormous power in the hands of a few. The one thing that the pandemic situation has made clear to all is that a handful of people can sink and form governments without a popular mandate or a large parliamentary representation, and then govern by decree or with votes of confidence.

The current government is a “national unity” coalition representing the entire political spectrum present in parliament with the exception of one party, defined as “the Cutting Edge of Post-Democratic Governance” in The Jacobin. The catch-all movement that won the majority in the last general election (MoVimento 5 Stelle) has lost almost all public support in polls and the governing style assumed by each successive government is more “top-down”, using a strategy of personalisation of leadership and consolidating it in the management of the Covid crisis where “the source of legitimacy has shifted from traditional democratic procedures to the use of emotional capital,” in the view of researchers for Frontiers in Political Science. Almost all policy by the Conte II government has been due to the use of Prime Minister’s Decrees (avoiding legislation), with panel of “experts” providing guidance. Nearly weekly televised messages to the Nation were focused on announcements of more Decrees and a call to personal responsibility. With the health emergency, democratic institutions were left out of the decision making, and the die was cast for the normalisation of a paternalistic pinnacle of power that prefers decrees to deliberation, and it doesn’t matter whether this individual’s entitlement to power is based on charisma or expertise.

As in other countries, parliamentary right-wing forces that act like opposition serve a long-established function. They represent a fake opposition able to intercept the real discontent and channel it to where it cannot cause any damage to the system. But they also provide an outlet for those in the centre or left who defend the system to silence or slander all of the discontent that cannot be tapped into by the right-wing and by the fascist-inspired forces, by associating all dissent with them. In essence, all resistance or opposition to measures either dealing with Covid or a consequence to Covid are being articulated as deriving from nationalist-populist-fascist tendencies, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether they actually do or not. If, as the majority of Italians, one gets all news from the television or mainstream press, they would think there was a sole fascist “mastermind” behind dissent. This is precisely what is happening with how the media coverage is framing the current wave of protests that are sweeping Italy, while a closer look reveals a much different picture. The heart of the protests has actually been organised by social movement unionism.

Democracy means that the freedom of the individual has to be filtered by collective freedom, but also that the freedom of the community is achieved only with the freedom of all its members: in a true democracy, there is no demand that everyone comply with a sole possible worldview or idea, even when that idea is elevated into to being for the common good. Instead, as long as we are in a democracy, the thoughts of everyone are to be respected and divergence of opinion is to be allowed and especially, dissent is not to be silenced, vilified or misrepresented. Two years into this pandemic, the dialogue between different analyses has been shut down, in a Manichaean way, every issue has two clear sides and no compromise is possible: on one side or the other of the Green Pass, the discourse is reduced to either saving the community through the necessity of restrictions that unfortunately might be discriminatory, but these are the times and this is the demand, and all those against it are anti-science and a danger to society or, alternatively, that Italians are living in a “health dictatorship” where our free choice and freedoms are no longer a value and we are living in a regime that has put democracy on hold. There is no middle ground in the public discourse when maybe each side contributes some valid points which require addressing. In the same way, parliamentary deliberation to address the structural causes of the health service being in such precarious condition is off the tables right now, given the health emergency and political climate.

The weakness of the system itself and its difficulty in dealing with dissent are barely touched upon (if at all) by all the pundits and journalists, and now we are at the boiling point and the only way out is for those who govern to loosen the reins, declare the state of emergency to be over and begin democratically managing the Covid crisis as part of ordinary administration of a pluralistic democracy acting in its full powers and not an eternal sword of Damocles where obedience is required and persuasion is eschewed. Then the polarisation will be fitfully ended because the actual thing that exists that pits the system against “the people”, its unilateral power to control freedom of movement and prevent people from going to work, school or even leaving the house, will have no reason to exist. At present, there is a total avoidance to utter the concept of this clash between State and population, as if we aren’t witnessing it and to speak of it at this delicate moment (if not now, when?) would break the spell. It would mean that the government is in reality not strong, but weak, and must resort to a monopoly on discourse or vilification of dissent every time its control is too severely challenged.

Italian hostage liberated, and the melodrama against her begins

Posted: 05/11/2020 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Europe, Human Rights, Religion

silvia-romano-625x350-1589121457
Written by Mary Rizzo

Silvia Romano is a young Italian humanitarian volunteer who was kidnapped by criminals in Kenya, passed on to terrorists in Somalia and, thankfully, liberated, through the coordinated work of the Italian, Somalian and Turkish secret services, whose efforts brought an end to eighteen bitter months of captivity. Once again, Italians can be grateful that our government has been successful in such a risky mission and, at least in some cases, the intelligence services work in the shadows so that innocent prisoners are returned to the safety of their homes and the love of their families without recourse to blitzes that do not ensure their safety.

Only Silvia knows what she endured in those long, terrible months of captivity, and only time, distance and a great deal of psychological support will be able to allow her to build her life as a free woman once again. Italians got to know this woman through photographs of her before her abduction, dressed in a tank top or donning a Masai costume, with a wide smile and often surrounded by African orphans, who were the beneficiaries of her humanitarian efforts. The first hours of acritical joy at the liberation of this woman were quickly replaced with the typical Italian population response of scorn and derision that is reserved for the victims of these crimes. As she descended from the plane that brought her to her country after her rescue, her attire was commented on, with the press continually stating it was “Islamic dress”.

Many of us watched that descent, a small, yet energetic woman, who waved at the press with the wide smile we came to know and love, but clothed in a large green integral veil that covered her entire body with the exception of part of her legs, where we saw the Somalian dress that it is claimed she had worn for the past year and a half. We were in tears, awe and very moved by her walk on the tarmac, toward her parents and sister, and we also were “treated” to witnessing the long embrace with her family. Soon, though, if one follows the media reaction, the principle question emerges, “did she convert to Islam?”. The response to this omnipresent question in comment sections under every kind of article was by and large negative, angry and hostile. We see a renewed playing out of that typically Italian drama that happens at the release of every hostage. There is the idea that “we paid while she played”, which is a disgusting script adopted for almost all of the female hostages, because often, they were not protected by a company or were not working for a newspaper or government, but ventured into difficult situations as humanitarian volunteers for NGOs who “could have stayed home and saved us the money”.

Rather than adopt a position that seeks to understand the complicated and fragile position of a person who had been deprived of her freedom for a year and a half, the Italian people are quick to condemn and judge. They refuse to consider that this woman will undergo a new and different kind of prison, that of being a public person against her will and who is subject to constant criticism and vile attacks. Why does the Italian public ignore that reality that this person will have to travel on a road back to freedom and serenity that will be long, difficult and at times full of depression, regret, anger, fear and a dual and contradictory need to resume a normal life, but to seek an escape from the pressures of life as a freed captive in Italy, where her every move, thought and emotion will be scrutinised and condemned. Never mind that every single Italian is reaffirmed that they will be protected to some extent if something terrible should happen to them overseas. They will not be abandoned to their fate. Every Italian enjoys the guarantee that the Italian government will work to free hostages, and this effort will not be denied to anyone, including any of the lions of the keyboard or their loved ones. Criticising the government for upholding a duty to protect its citizens overseas is always counterproductive and small-minded.

SILVIA-ROMANO-1

But, if Silvia had descended from the ramp of that plane dressed in the blue tank top we were used to seeing her in, this criticism toward the government, which immediately morphed into criticism of the victim of the crime and her family, “let THEM pay the ransom!” may never have been so loud. It’s always painful to read the commentary that follows one of these liberations. The petty and resentful nature of the Italians that claim to be speaking for the common man shines brightly through them. Some comments were borderline absurd, “We have been forced for two months to not be able to embrace our relatives and here she is holding her mother tightly! How unfair”. No, that was not ironic, and yes, the commenter used the word “congiunti”, here translated as relatives, which has been the subject of much discussion as it was the mysterious word the Prime Minister used to define which persons could be visited at the first loosening up of the lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. Other comments were vicious and cruel, claiming she was in cahoots with the criminals, and it was all a trick so that she could get the terrorists money so that they could commit horrible acts in Europe and she was returning to Italy only to give birth in our hospitals, as her body under that veil was scrutinised shamelessly. Perhaps that veil was intended to protect her, as it may have done for such a long period of captivity, but here in Italy, it has put her on the defendant’s stand.

Again, Italian public opinion, upon the release of hostages, always tends toward the vicious and nasty when a young woman is concerned and where the crimes committed against her take place in a country where Islam is the dominant or state religion, particularly if there are terrorist organisations in those countries who define themselves as Islamist. In the eyes of these critics, she must be condemned because she committed some cardinal sins: she didn’t “thank the Italian people”, “she went into a dangerous place unprepared and we are paying for her adventure”, and “she did not condemn the criminals”. Not only did she claim that she was throughout her captivity she treated without violence, but she admitted that she had converted to Islam.

The mass media, quick to pick up on the anger and gossip mood of a people that has become even more provincial after three months of navel-gazing during a lockdown where the rest of the world barely existed and our own return to normality is a huge worry and a massive problem for millions who have not seen the governmental support required to ensure not only a future of work in the long-term, but survival in the short-term, as they are undergoing difficulties in paying their bills and purchasing food, jumped on the “Conversion to Islam” angle. From the more detached and objective outlets to the most reactionary or conservative, all the titles of the news focused on that aspect.

That Silvia had decided to answer the question of her conversion is one thing, that it has been rendered public is totally another. In addition to this statement, the papers have disclosed that she said she was always treated well by those who held her captive, that she was not subjected to violence or forced into marriage or forced to convert, but that she had asked for a copy of the Qu’ran, was taught some Arabic and decided without constraint to convert. Was the press violating a pact of confidentiality by revealing these words that were made to investigators, in a place, evidently that was microphoned for the press? Isn’t the investigation to find and subject the criminals to legal procedures ongoing? Shouldn’t any statements made to the investigators be strictly confidential, particularly if they have the capacity of instigating public outrage and anger?

“If she was not subjected to violence, why did she need a ransom paid or a State flight to take her back to Italy?” Yes, this is a legitimate question for someone to ask, but it also reveals a lack of comprehension of what a person who is a victim of this kind of trauma and violence might be able to say or how he or she is able to process such awful events. I know several victims of kidnapping and persons who were taken hostage, but I also know humanitarian volunteers and workers who were abducted by foreign governments and imprisoned and subjected to torture, physical and psychological violence. They are well aware that their freedom was robbed from them, that their families had to undergo periods of terrible anguish and dread. They have experienced situations of such unique and painful separation and fear for their very survival, that they have had to learn a new way of survival in a situation where they may not know if they will see another day. It is not whitewashing criminals to speak of relative good treatment, favours granted or even to never speak at all of the violence or to need years to process the experience and even talk about it at all. They have to learn ways of protecting their own sanity and also protecting those whom they love who do not physically share the prison with them, but are also imprisoned by the criminal acts.

Persons who have undergone these experiences may also decide to not reveal the worst to those who love them the most, to spare them the sorrow and pain. It is a logical and quite natural thing to keep bad things from those you love, to prevent them suffering any more than they have to. To state that her captors used no violence against her may not mean that they were wonderful people with whom she identifies. There may not be any Stockholm Syndrome going on, but a coping approach that either spares the loved ones’ knowledge of the violence beyond that terrible crime of holding a person against their will and denying them their human rights. Silvia was aware of the loss of freedom that millions of persons in Africa and elsewhere are subject to, as her university thesis was on human trafficking. Before her captivity, she must have been familiar with the mechanisms, where the prisoner relinquishes their freedoms and ceases to fight in order to be able to survive until a moment arrives for their release or escape. They have to bear with the situation in order to survive and see a future that will restore their human rights to them. Whatever Silvia had undergone during that lengthy captivity, she had the strength to know and apply the survival mechanisms and to be able to make it through until the joyful moment of her reunification with her family and loved ones.

Was her conversion a free choice? Is anything a free choice under captivity? That is a question will can and will ask ourselves, but she should be neither condemned for it nor praised for it, as I have seen in, for instance, an article in the Naples edition of La Repubblica, where an Imam says that since there is no constriction in Islam, her conversion was entirely her own choice and should be respected. There are certainly many who celebrate this as a wonderful outcome of a horrible situation. Whatever her choices are, for belief, for survival, for conviction, or even to study the only book that she would have been allowed access to under the terrorist group Al Shabaab, these choices should and must be respected and understood as belonging to a person in an extreme situation and in a condition of imprisonment. Since the conversion has been rendered public, that doesn’t mean that it has to be accepted as a wonderful thing or condemned as a terrible thing. All of those kinds of responses are irresponsible and damaging to this person who is fragile and will require time and effort to come back to freedom. Italians should be more understanding of this, as we too have been deprived of our freedoms due an event out of our control, just as the abduction of Silvia was out of her control.

Hopefully, full light will be brought on the perpetrators of this crime and all the crimes committed against the freedom of individuals, and the criminals will be tried and punished to the full extent of the law. That is where energies and efforts are needed, in addition to creating more security for the people in the places where there is suffering, poverty and war, as well as for those humanitarians whose mission it is to bring them comfort, aid and support. Right now, we should feel joy at the liberation of such a decent human being. Life offers so few opportunities to feel pure joy, and this is one of them. Bentornata a casa, Silvia!

Viruses, dictatorship and democracy: the deception of perception

Posted: 03/26/2020 by editormary in Europe, Internet and Communication, Iran, Politics
Tags: Coronavirus

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Written by Eugenio Dacrema 25 March, 2020, translated by Mary Rizzo

For human beings, every problem, even a very concrete one such as the spread of a disease within a community, is first and foremost a matter of perception given by our essence as social animals. If, for example, at some point we personally do not have a certain disease and people in direct contact with us do not have it, it will be very difficult that we perceive the spread of that disease as something serious in the country or in the city in which we live. This has very practical effects: until a couple of weeks ago many citizens of Milan, including the writer, did not realise the danger of the new virus until the media started dedicating massive energies to it and more and more announcements by the authorities, ever more alarming, began to arrive about the number of infections and deaths.

This might seem like pure theoretical elucubration if it were not that, especially in today’s world, the separation between perception and reality is often masterfully and very concretely exploited by many regimes in power throughout the world to manage the most serious global crisis of our generation: that of the coronavirus.

The perception that dictatorship is a defense against the spread of the virus

To understand what that means, simply take a look at the data on deaths and infections published throughout the world (many news sites, for instance, Bloomberg, do it very well with interactive maps). The numbers seem to tell us a rather peculiar thing: leaving China aside (on whose data it would still be necessary to do a great deal of checks), the virus seems to hit democratic countries particularly hard, and only touch the countries governed by dictatorships with benevolent lightness.

The debate over this discrepancy has become increasingly surreal in recent weeks. A “rationalist” approach raises arguments that have some factual basis, for example, the fact that advanced democracies are more interconnected with the world and for this reason were some of the first to be reached by the contagion. We have also seen an increase in the number of explanations flirting with the perennial Italic fascination with authoritarian solutions. According to this line of thinking, “strong” men and regimes would have somehow been able to keep the virus at bay thanks to their ability to impose discipline “with brutal measures” (although it is not clear how, since in most cases no special restrictive measures were imposed: perhaps simply “using fear”). In Italy, this approach has brought out one of the most disheartening aspects of this crisis in recent days, namely the tendency of many Italians to throw themselves at the feet of any dictator ready to give us some planes full of aid (with an often dubious utility and usefulness) and to tell us that his “strong” regime, as opposed to our democracy, has kept the disease at bay.

Media control and the battle of Italy

The point that “rationalist” and “pro-authoritarian” explanations seem to be unable to grasp is a simple mechanism that modern dictatorships have learned: if you control everything, from hospitals to information to the police, you don’t need to solve a problem, you just have to say that you that you have solved it. If you don’t look for a problem (for example, by not testing patients) of course you won’t find it. And thus, for example, in Russia there are a mere 150 cases of coronaviruses declared and hospitals are instead dealing with thousands of cases of a particularly lethal pneumonia (but, of course, according to the authorities, it’s all absolutely ordinary). In Egypt, the authorities seem more committed to introducing restrictive measures for journalists who have been talking about the expansion of coronavirus in the country, rather than introducing measures to contain the contagion. In Iran, a regime already in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy, contradictory messages are being sent, divided between the one message on the need for aid and the other of not appearing excessively weakened in the eyes of its citizens. And so, while Zarif is asking for help via tweets in English – and rightly many, including Mondodem, have taken action to ask their governments to support Iran at this time and to press the US for at least a partial lifting of sanctions – Khamenei does not miss any opportunity to reiterate that the virus is an American plot to strike the country.

We have often seen the actual dictatorships flanked by leaders with aims that are not exactly what we could consider as democratic, such as the Brazilian Bolsonaro – who called the coronavirus a media hoax – and the Israeli Netanyahu – who used an emergency decree to annul a parliamentary vote that prevented the government from using equipment normally used for hunting down terrorists to monitor the contagious among the population. Because as another Israeli, the writer Yuval Noah Harari, said, the real dividing line that the pandemic is tracing is that between two different reactions of societies around the world: those that will decide to proceed with coercion and imposition from above, and those who will first try to delegate responsibility (and power) to their citizens, explaining to them the situation and the very good reasons why certain restrictions have become necessary.

Italy is now in the balance between these two choices. So far, the Italian citizens have been able to take responsibility for themselves and, despite some regrettable exceptions, the vast majority have understood the seriousness of the situation and have been able to comply with the restrictions demanded by the government without the need for major intervention of surveillance and law enforcement. Unfortunately, however, the fascination so many people have for dictatorships, often encouraged by the ability of those dictatorships to show themselves as being much stronger and untouchable than they really are, is still strong, for solutions of authority that involve delegating responsibility and power to a higher authority, giving it free reign to impose by force all the restrictions it desires. It does not matter if such restrictions often have a struggle ahead of them in being reversed once the emergency is over. A trend that is indicative of the lack of maturity of many Italians who prefer to feel like children who are being cared for by a father-master state rather than owners on a par with power – and therefore duties and responsibilities – in their own society. But the choice between these two approaches is, after the medical one against the virus, the other fundamental battle worth fighting today. Because if we can be sure that the epidemic will end sooner or later, we can be equally certain that the choices we make today to combat it will leave even deeper traces of the virus in our future and that of future generations.

ORIGINAL: http://www.mondodem.it/covid-19/virus-dittatura-e-democrazia-linganno-della-percezione/?fbclid=IwAR0Ph6iYJ2kTggw5gYUPOJOBox8OuglKQz-T3Zw7JcExFURgHX-H9jS077E

Making sense of Baghdad and the scenario of “ousting the Americans”

Posted: 01/08/2020 by editormary in Counter-terrorism, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Maps, Middle East Issues, Politics, War

Daniele Ranieri, Italian journalist, writes: Updates on the death of Iranian general Soleimani

Did the American Reaper drone that killed Suleimani depart from the Sigonella base in Sicily? The Reaper can fly for 1,900 km and the distance to Baghdad is 2,700 km, so this theory is to be excluded. It’s is like there are no nearby slopes in the Middle East where it could have been launched from. Half of Baghdad airport is a giant American base, and Soleimani’s car skirted the wall.

The Iraqi Parliament did not “vote for the ousting of the Americans.” It met to approve a non-binding letter to the Prime Minister calling for an end to military missions in Iraq and the dissolution of the militias. “Reunited” is a big word because there were 170 out of 328 MPs, the other 158 deserted the chamber because they opposed the motion.

The Americans are in Iraq because there is a letter of invitation from the Iraqi Prime Minister and he can theoretically withdraw it. But he hasn’t done it yet. He called for foreign soldiers to remain in Iraq so that they would train Iraqi soldiers, but this is a request that will not be heeded: the trainers will not remain in Iraq without all the other soldiers who guarantee them a minimum of protection.

In short: Iraqi politicians had to save face in the face of the Iranian regime with a “vote”. It is very likely that the presence of the International Coalition in Iraq will end soon anyway, because it makes no sense to continue operations against the Islamic State and to stay in bases that will be bombed by pro-Iranian militias with rockets and mortars.

There are no “American bases” in Iraq, there are Iraqi military bases that contain compounds where Americans (and soldiers of other nationalities, Italians included) are staying. And every time Soleimani’s militias fire rockets and mortars at the bases, they injure and kill Iraqi soldiers.

In mid-October, Soleimani met with militia commanders in Baghdad to create a new militia unknown to the Americans that would increase attacks on the bases. The Iranian general had also coordinated the arrival of other weapons from Iran, including anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Coalition helicopters, according to a piece published yesterday by Reuters, which interviewed two militia commanders present at the meeting.

So, Soleimani alive or Soleimani dead, Iran’s campaign to end the Coalition’s presence in Iraq was already underway. Thirteen attacks in the last two months of the year are the proof.

Did Trump order Soleimani’s killing to distract America from impeachment? Republicans have 20 seats that should change their minds in the Senate but will never vote to remove Trump. The impeachment was born dead and in fact the TV rating was rather uninspiring.

Why drive out of Iraq the soldiers of the international mission who are carrying out operations against the Islamic State and who have at their disposal very advanced and valuable technology and intelligence against terrorists and who sooner or later would have left anyway? Because for three months there has been a stalemate in the country: the center of the capital is occupied by thousands of protesters who peacefully demand an end to Iranian interference in the country. Soleimani’s militias have killed no less than five hundred, but that’s not enough. The government is comatose, the Prime Minister has resigned but no one has yet replaced him. Tension against an external enemy has the potential of extinguishing protests. And in fact, in three days the coverage of the “war” between America and Iran was a thousand times greater than that of the protests. This is an explanation that holds up far more as a theory than “there was a need for a distraction against impeachment.”

Soleimani’s death sparked a wave of relief and joy in the Middle East. His militias – also made up of teenagers recruited in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, sent to war for Iranian interests – have kidnapped, tortured and made thousands of people disappear, have besieged some cities until death by starvation of the civilians and destabilised the region for years.

The Iranian Soleimani wanted to appoint the prime minister of Iraq, had Iraqi soldiers killed at their bases, kidnapped and killed 20-year-old Iraqi protesters. It was the textbook definition of military butcher and imperialist arrogance.

Have the Iranians withdrawn from the nuclear agreement? No, the Iranians after Trump suddenly abandoned the agreement, had also announced a gradual and progressive withdrawal. The announcement made yesterday does not accelerate the withdrawal that was already underway and does not touch on one of the most important principles: the possibility for the International Atomic Agency to carry out inspections at sites in Iran. In short: it is very likely that the Iranian regime will turn the nuclear issue into a tug of war, into a permanent crisis to make Western governments pay for it, but for now, the drama is in the headlines, not in the facts.

The Trump Administration does not want to wage war and yet it continues to make a fuss and to cite the invasion of Iraq in 2003 or the conflict in Vietnam. The American Administration has established a principle of deterrence: if the Iranians send a bomb truck against an American embassy, the Americans bomb Iranian targets (this is just is an example). I understand that if the Administration wanted to occupy Tehran, it would be a disintegration, but it is not. Deterrence, not war, is what is actually happening.

Soleimani’s militias yesterday released a video with faces covered in balaclavas, weapons and black clothes in which they announce suicide attacks.

Original in Italian: https://www.facebook.com/news.danieleraineri/posts/620167975190694?pyx26Az9VNP3__VxBq_A8j66GP1gbzgTRz aWbbRugu05EwbahkYM2PCdp3E9Bg1uKB0DUlyFdy9RSz03p3atjm4smEWdm_S4ahC0e3xlOwOc1z07n0pvteelJvn5EsEKsNvmRrvu4JVCEVTbvUSkLFm5a9OXJD1fp8QPkAIMM3QA8sJ0gVhWDv13f1vNndspWtdqqpCi __xts__ CaMfUcUCZAPNcF9Y3Ea6h1QZCW7UjjB3MULJrebzZo0IdCGTY-91Tib9bX-b2Uo5GCof2bLYk7WG8LT6VjJI8Y5drE&__tn__-R

Communication and War: not just Rojava and why we always forget Syria

Posted: 10/17/2019 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Assad, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Internet and Communication, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Politics, Refugees, Religion, Resistance, Strategy for Liberation, Syria, War

WRITTEN BY Francesco Petronella, translated by Mary Rizzo

Why is the war in Syria and its dead remembered only if Trump and Erdogan intervene, badly? Or when something touches Rojava?

Operation “Spring of Peace”, conducted on Syrian territory by the Turkish army against the Kurdish YPG militias (part of the security forces of the NES, commonly known as Rojava), comes as a thunderstorm that wipes out the fog of hypocrisy. It clearly shows the inherent contradictions in the way the Syrian conflict has been viewed by the Western world, and by Italians in particular.

The first “great discovery” that the Turkish offensive in northeastern Syria (NES) has brought to light is as extraordinary as it is obvious: there is a war in Syria.

9 YEARS OF WAR, ANYONE REMEMBER THAT?

The mainstream media, the in-depth news talk shows and the whole Western media circus connected to it, seem to have remembered the war in Syria only through the US withdrawal and the Turkish offensive. This creates some perplexity in the face of a conflict that has been going on, continuously, for almost 9 years and has resulted in a civilian death toll that is officially (under)estimated to count between 370,000 and 570,000 deaths.

In Syria, in fact, people died even before Trump gave the green light to Erdogan’s Turkey to launch the operation. One only has to look at the last battle ground between the self-styled Islamic State and the SDF and the constant Russian-Syrian government raids against anti-Assad rebels in the Idlib area, under the canton of Afrin.

In that region – regarded by the Assadists as “in the hands of fundamentalists” – people died (and still today die) in a very particular way. Local health officials, in fact, communicate the coordinates of hospitals, clinics and field schools to the Syrian army and to its responsible bodies, so that missiles and Russian-Syrian government air raids avoid these targets by focusing their firepower on the rebel positions.

IDLIB AND GHOUTA HAVE BEEN FORGOTTEN

The outcome, as evidenced by various sources including the UN and the WHO, is exactly the opposite: health and school facilities are systematically targeted by the Russian-Syrian forces using these coordinates supplied to them.

Mohamad Kattoub of the Syrian-American Medical Society (Sams), interviewed by the Italian agency “Dire”, said that of the 38 hospitals hit from April to July 2019 in the Idlib area “14 had shared their coordinates for the first time” with Assad’s forces.

A very serious act and a blatant crime against humanity, but also news that, taken up by almost no one in the Italian media, has not aroused a fragment of the political and social uproar seen in recent days for the Turkish campaign against the YPG. Almost as if there were double standards at play, however, ones that follow an already common pattern.

In February 2018, with operation “Olive Branch”, Turkish forces together with Syrian anti-Assad rebels took control of the Syrian canton of Afrin, which until then was controlled by the Kurdish YPG. The operation sparked protests in many of Italy’s cities, enraged tweets against Turkey and even the call for a No Fly Zone in the area to counter the air raids against Afrin.

A few months earlier, civilians living in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb controlled by anti-government militias, were subjected to indiscriminate airstrikes by Russian-Syrian government forces, with deaths in the thousands. Yet, also in that case, in the face of the outcry over Afrin, there was only silence for Ghouta.

COMMUNICATION IS EVERYTHING

Why did Afrin matter more than Eastern Ghouta, and today, why does Rojava matter more – for us Westerners – than Idlib?

The reason is because the difference between civilian deaths in Syria and victims of the Turkish invasions is purely political.

Without a doubt, abandoning Rojava to its own – terrible – fate after the SDF and YPG have been praised as having “defeated the Islamic State” is just as counterproductive as it is immoral and wrong, but this isn’t enough to explain why there is so much indignation currently.

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The YPG – talking about “Kurds” is a simplification that can even be misleading – arouse particular sympathy in certain circles of the Italian and international left, from Youth Social Centers to parliamentary forces. Everyone in recent days has spoken in favour of the Kurdish-Syrian cause and against the Turkish offensive and the issue has entered – to the detriment of the Turkish players – also on the football pitch.

The reason for this feeling between the YPG – armed branch of the Syrian wing of the Kurdish PKK – and the Italian left is due to the fact that the former have had, over the years, the incredible ability to propose their cause as a one that is socialist, libertarian, gender-friendly and even gay-friendly. They, as mentioned in a previous article, had the ability – for a just cause – to use the mass media and social media in their favour.

NOT JUST ROJAVA

To understand the phenomenon, just sift through social media or enter any bookstore. If we talk about the YPG or SDF, the images are always those of proud young women armed with machine guns and with the wind blowing through their hair: the perfect nemesis of the male-dominated jihadists and obscurantists of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. The antithesis of what we as Westerners define as “wrong” in Islamic culture.

Bearded and observant? Terrorist. Woman without a headscarf? Courageous leftist revolutionary. The reality, unfortunately or fortunately, is much more complex than that.

Needless to say, among the Kurdish population, the vast majority of whom are Sunni Muslims, there are also bearded men who pray five times a day and observe Ramadan like any devout follower of Islam. Needless to say, Rojava, the PYD (of which the YPG are the armed branch) are only the forces on the ground, a fragment of a spectrum – the Kurdish cultural one – that is far wider and more diversified.

It would be superfluous, if these purely aesthetic and formal aspects were to become the substance of the discussions on the Middle East, those that make us define – à la Fallaci – in a Manichean way, the “good” and the “bad”, fomenting the enormous misinformation in the West on the subject.

Mideast Syria

THE FORGOTTEN LEFT/S IN SYRIA

It is less superfluous to point out that the application of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava theorised by Ocalan was not the only “left-wing experience” of the Syrian conflict.

In the forgotten Eastern Ghouta, experiments in the organisation of civil society were undertaken by the rebels, involving the provision of the welfare and assistance needs from below through the Local Coordination Committees – tansiqiyat in Arabic – in competition with the top-level structure of the regime, known with the term Nizam (literally ‘system’). All this is following the writings of a Damascus dissident Omar Aziz, for whom the goal of the Syrian revolution – “the time of the revolution” – was to reduce the dependence of Syrian citizens on the regime and its structures – the time of power – for its daily livelihood.

Is there anything more left-wing than that? And Aziz was not the only one. Razan Zaytouneh, Samira Khalil are only some of the names, unknown in the West to almost everyone, of those who dreamed of a secular and democratic Syria, but did not have the press agents necessary for this dream, the original dream of the Syrian revolution, so it was never able to reach the lazy ears of the Westerner.

Let us be clear, this is not a condemnation of the YPG, the SDF or of Rojava, but of the way in which we, here in Italy and the West, perceive and/or think we understand the war in Syria with the terrifying result that when we talk about it, the discriminating factor between general protests and indifference does not seem to be concerned with the loss of life, almost always civilian lives, but it is all about us and our ideological belonging.

This is why the visual narrative offered by the YPG is successful. It gives the left – or presumed such – a subject with which it is easy to empathise. Just as, always on an ideological and communicative level, the images of the Assad military and the “great defender of Christianity” (and beacon of American anti-imperialism) Putin against bearded terrorists fuel the rhetoric of the radical right.

Add to this the possibility that the attack – again from our ideological point of view as Westerners – or the invasion is carried out by the “absolute villain” Erdogan thanks to the betrayal of the “even worse villain” Trump against the “absolute good guys” of the YPG, we have the perfect storm: a scenario where it’s in fact too easy to take sides.

Even at the expense of forgetting now – as happened in the past – the rest of Syria, so it will be easier to forget it again when the Rojava emergency is over.

Original: http://caffeopinione.com/rojava-erdogan-sinistra-ypg/?fbclid=IwAR07lVFI2iZ0RGK-AXUHzCDnhJfpobMHwFcIRMtotaCLZBIAE84mtgGDd9I

Syrian “tourism”, taking a page from the Hasbara Handbook

Posted: 09/13/2019 by editormary in "Israel", Activists and Activism, Assad, BDS, Europe, Hasbara / Zionist Propaganda, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Human Rights, Internet and Communication, Palestine, Politics, Refugees, War, Zionism

all that glitters

Any person who has been a campaigner for Palestinian rights is aware of the various techniques that Israel uses to whitewash the occupation of Palestine and the oppression that the Palestinians are subject to. Along with Hasbara, which is a kind of prepared narrative to dominate the talking points and shift the discourse to a place where it makes Israel appear to be the underdog fighting for its legitimate rights instead of its actual reality as a brutal militarily occupying force against Palestinians, there is “whitewashing”. When regimes or countries that are not democratic use whitewashing, they make use of propagandists to determine talking or selling points that make these countries seem more democratic, more progressive and more appealing than they really are. The curtain is never pulled back to show what lay on the other side of all that “great stuff”.

Israel invests heavily in campaigns of tourism. “Two Sunny Cities, One Break” and “Douze Points” are only two of the campaigns in recent years that have sought a new, fashionable kind of tourist, one that was looking for the nightlife and a place to party 24 hours, and mostly a place to continue the promotion with selfies to be shared, encouraging yet more tourism to Israel in a virtuous circle. In the advertisements, the emphasis is on discotheques, pools, chic restaurants and bars. It’s all about fun and hedonism. That doesn’t mean that the “heritage” tourism, to religious sites and kibbutzes has stopped, it’s just that the advertising focus wants the potential tourist to believe that going to Tel Aviv is exactly like going to Milan, Prague or Madrid, only in this case, your holiday will never be spoiled by rain and your fun never stops. It is selling the side of Israel that reaps the benefits from the occupation, and doesn’t actually have to even think about Palestinians existing on the other side of the wall or who are living imprisoned on the outskirts of Jewish Settlements or any of the other situations where Palestinians do not experience full rights, including the right of free movement in their own country.

The BDS movement has a statement on ethical tourism which begins as follows:

Based on the UN’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) affirmation in its statutes that it fundamentally aims at “the promotion and development of tourism with a view to contributing to […] universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”

It would follow that tourism to countries where there is a brutal occupation, violations of human rights and enclaves of persons living in grave peril under bombing and siege by their “government” and its allies would be exactly like violating the BDS call to boycott Israeli tourism. To go to places like that would require a particular behaviour set in order to be ethical, and that set has to be consistent. One can’t dance in the Tel Aviv discos and also show solidarity by avoiding all institutional links of any sort with Israel. You can’t pick and choose parts from each; it’s all or nothing.

The Syrian government has learned so much from the Israeli government’s use of hasbara, of throwing the rock and hiding the hand. One can say that it realises that slick propaganda is the other side of military occupation and oppression. They are working hard at whitewashing Syria, pointing out the sun, fun and pride of the “loyalist” Syrians (who never had to experience the bombs and destruction of any of the opposition areas, because the opposition did not have the military power or the conviction to subject the civilian population to sieges and air strikes). But, the regime can’t do it alone. It can’t put up slick advertisements on major Western TV channels. It is really limited in the extent to which it can promote the false narrative. This means that it has to find an alternative.

Facebook main photo of the Syrian Ministry of Tourism

The Syrian Ministry of Tourism has always been the propaganda arm of the regime. In the past, the process of vetting (and interrogating) tourists, with those finally passing through all the hoops specifically having limited or no access to some places and making a person fully aware that the “walls have ears”, made tourism there a sort of adventure tourism and a bit of a Truman Show. You accept that you have certain limits, which you are careful to not overstep. And how could you ever forget, with pictures of Big Brother everywhere, at public transport hubs and markets, but even on archaeological sites and churches. Everyone around you knows you can be called a spy, so you will only hear the most glowing and fervent praise of the government. The element of it being an inauthentic experience for everyone was more than mitigated by: for the tourist, beautiful scenery and a very different kind of experience (something to write home about as weird but exciting), for the Syrians playing along, making some money off of tourists. Everyone played the game, but at least, everyone knew it was a game.

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The regime in the past also had a habit of involving bloggers and journalists – and not just those whose topic was travel, but especially those who were active in blogging for Palestine or Arab Nationalism – in “junket trips” where they not only had the government approved handlers, but were also shown many of the same places, with a similar narrative and the instructions to “take the talking points back home”, with a sort of briefing of what the points were. That allowed them to create a group of people who, given the amount of perks and the hospitality, were either blinded or they felt morally obligated to pay back the courtesy. Letting oneself be wilfully blinded works if someone can ignore reality. That was certainly easier in the past, when Syria was never in the news, when people “disappeared” for having told a joke or their opportunities were determined by how much they were able to prostrate themselves before the dynasty in power and all of its long arms around the country.

Today, it is impossible to ignore what is going on in Syria. That half of the country’s population has become refugees or internally displaced. That enormous areas of the country have been destroyed by constant and relentless air raids by the regime and other occupying forces, with Russia and Iran’s proxy militias playing the leading roles in these destructive raids, expecting their payback now and in the future. That hundreds of thousands of civilians have “disappeared” and many have been documented in photographs smuggled from a Syrian prison where they were tortured to death. That massacres of all kinds have been documented, with loyalists rejoicing and calling the victims terrorists, even the children who were slaughtered by knives, nerve gas or barrel bombs.

To go to Damascus and other regime-held areas, partying in the shisha bars, sunbathing at the beaches, buying souvenirs in the souks and visiting the sites, whether pretending to be “independent”, while employed by RT, or on a fact-finding mission, getting only the facts the regime wants one to get, with the loyalist behaviour doing the self-censorship, would require a certain, pathological kind of disconnect from reality, along with a severe ethical deficit.

To go to Saydnaya and to just look at the beautiful church, denying that the regime’s most brutal torture prison is located in the same village, is just like going to Tel Aviv, and not pulling the curtain back on Hebron’s misery.

Beware of any “journalist” or “tourist” going to Syria being anything but a propaganda tool for the regime and a knife in the heart of the Syrian people whose struggle for freedom was also a struggle to no longer play the game of lies and deceit. To live in their own country, authentically, without the oppression of the dynasty in power.

Mamlouk – from the blacklist to an official visit in Italy? Open letter demanding accountability

Posted: 03/13/2018 by editormary in Assad, Europe, Middle East Issues, Politics, Syria

mamlouk At the end of February, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, notoriously close to Hezbollah, reported that one of the most important names of the leadership of the repressive Syrian security apparatuses, Ali Mamlouk, who appears in the European blacklist for those responsible for crimes against humanity, is said to have arrived in Rome to discuss coordination under the name of “fighting terrorism”, expanding a relationship that already exists between the intelligence departments of the two countries. According to Al Akhbar and reported by the prestigious think tank Carnegie Middle East Center, Mamlouk is said to have met at the Viminale, home of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, the heads of the ministry itself and of the Agency for Information and External Security. The meeting is said to have been facilitated by the Lebanese Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim, who has always been very close to Hezbollah and who seems to have also convinced Rome to send a private plane to pick up the powerful Syrian intelligence chief from Damascus.

The newspapers quoted in fact indicate that Mamlouk’s aim is to collaborate in fighting terrorism in order to obtain support from Italy in order to pressure the EU into softening the European Community position towards the Syrian regime. It is widely known that in recent years Mamlouk has made visits aimed at coordination in combating terrorism in many Arab capitals, especially in the Gulf countries. Therefore, it is conceivable that it became necessary for the regime to be accredited or to boast having special and direct relations also with European countries.

Although the news has been reported by various Arab and international media, there is no trace of it in the Italian media, focused on the political elections, and there has been no confirmation or denial by the Italian government or intelligence in this regard.

Considering as a very serious matter the possibility that our Government and our institutions have agreed to meet an individual who is included in all the international lists of those responsible for crimes against humanity, and in particular on the EU list (see EU regulations No. 504/2011 of 23 May 2011 and No. 442/2011):

– We ask the Italian authorities, and in particular the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Affairs Ministry and AISE to verify the truthfulness of what has been reported about this visit, and that, if it is fake news, as we hope it will be, they will be able to release a statement as such.

– We also ask the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, to verify compliance with the European regulations concerning the sanctions against the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Syria, in particular in the context of the upcoming debate regarding Syria to be held Tuesday, 13 March, to the EP in Strasbourg, in the presence of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini.

We also ask that the question of Ali Mamlouk’s visit and its consequences be adequately included in the resolution that the EP will approve in Strasbourg on 15 March, the anniversary of the Syrian Revolution for Dignity and Democracy.

Who is Ali Mamlouk?

Key man of the Syrian regime since the birth of Hezbollah in Lebanon, operation in which he cooperated in person, the little-known head of Syrian Political Security, became a leading figure in 2005, the year of the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, according to international court investigators on Syrian mandate and by Hezbollah militia. A methodology that he is quite familiar with.

After 2005 he became a key figure on another border, the Iraqi one. As reported by Limes, the Italian journal of geopolitics: “From there, according to various converging sources, he took over the task of organising the journeys of Syrian “jihadist” militias to Iraq in an anti-American function and to show that Damascus has cards to play on the regional table. The Anglo-American invasion began just two years prior to that, and the Iraqi insurgency attracted foreign fighters. Mamlouk coordinated recruitment, starting from Syrian prisons. He himself had helped to fill the cells of presumed or true fundamentalists (today they would be called radicalised) since the mid-80s, and the files were already on his table. It is estimated that in those years the Syrian government sent thousands of jihadists to Iraq to support Iraqi “resistance”. Not only Syrians, also men of other nationalities who used the Syrian territory as a natural bridge to the Anbar and Mesopotamia. ”

One wonders if they are the same bombers who struck Italian forces in Nāṣiriya in November 2003, given the similarities with other attacks that occurred in Lebanon and that a vein of the investigation led straight to Beirut.

The alleged mediation of the Lebanese Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim then raises further questions, given that Mamlouk is accused of terrorism by the judiciary of the country of the Cedars, being implicated in many terrorist attacks in Lebanon, not least that which should have led to the elimination of the Maronite Patriarch and cardinal of the Catholic Church, His Beatitude Beshara Rai.

What are CasaPound and the European Front for Syria up to?

Posted: 10/31/2017 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Assad, Europe, Middle East Issues, Politics, Syria, Uncategorized, War

One of the celebratory posters of the Syrian General plastered in various Italian cities. It bears almost all the signs of the Fascist and Neo-fascist propaganda, (use of this stylised alphabet, the declaration of HONOR!) Interestingly enough also the Italian far left celebrates the same “hero”.

WRITTEN BY RICCARDO CRISTIANO, translated by Mary Rizzo

(Translator’s note: CasaPound is an Italian political movement that is proudly “far right”. It is the first “centro sociale” (youth and student movement starting in the 90s that is primarily far left) that considers its inspiration Fascist. Like many far-right movements in Europe, it maintains a very active base, which often makes up for its lack of “official” political recognition, though it currently participates in elections with its own candidates and in coalitions with other right-wing parties. Though the militants of CasaPound are renowned for their frequent episodes of violence and xenophobia, they also are very active in ideological recruitment in campaigns that are nationalistic, at times having a social character, such as proposals for interest-free public housing, and together with groups such as the European Front for Syria, are involved in the dissemination on the street level (literally) of international issues with propaganda for the regime in Syria in particular, because, in their own words: “For Six years Assad has been the best defence of Europe against terrorism”.)

Sunday morning. The British press reported that Sahar Dofdaa, who was only one month old, had died in Damascus. She starved to death. She was born in the village of Hamuriya in al-Ghouta, an area that has been besieged for years by troops loyal to the government of Damascus and controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Jaysh al-Islam, which keeps a tight hold on the town’s inhabitants. It is the same area where Assad’s army, in 2013, used chemical weapons to massacre civilians, even if the UN has been unable to officially declare the culprit, because since 2012, the UN peacekeeping troops have been removed from Syria. The British newspaper The Guardian has published the statements of Dr. Yahya Abu Yahya, who speaks about a great number of cases of severe childhood malnutrition such as that of Sahar, born from a mother who did not have the strength to nourish her child, citing seventy infants who are dying of starvation and four thousand children who suffer from nutritional deficiencies. And the sample from which he refers is limited to just nine thousand children.

If not even this fact can shake us, it is probably because the propaganda machine has convinced us that in al-Ghouta, just as in other areas controlled by fierce jihadists, everyone is a terrorist, even children who have lived just one month of life. Instead, this is in all probability precisely the dramatic outcome pursued with ferocity by the regime since 2001. This is also the case with Idlib.

Tuesday morning. Although in Italy very little media time has been dedicated to it, there is an interesting piece of news from the International press: Russia has vetoed the resolution that would allow prosecution of the investigation in regard to the chemical weapons massacres in Syria, the Joint Investigative Mechanism, whose mandate expires in November. A report was scheduled to appear by the end of October concerning the massacres perpetrated this summer at Khan Shaykhun near Idlib by means of chemical weapons. In this massacre, just as in the Ghouta massacre with chemical weapons, many children were killed. Russia sought to discuss the report on the Khan Shaykhun massacre before renewing its mandate.

Wednesday morning. It should be mentioned that one hundred Italian cities have woken up discovering that Casa Pound and the European Front for Syria have plastered walls and monuments with slogans written to celebrate one of the most notorious Syrian army commanders, Issam Zahreddine, a war criminal responsible for crimes against humanity, recently killed in combat in Syria, supposedly struck by a landmine planted by ISIS. This General of the Syrian Republican Guard, has been placed in the “short list” of individuals that are subject to special and personal sanctions on behalf of the European Union, with the accusation that he was the organiser of the chemical attack on Khan Shaykhoun.

The General had become famous for a photograph that portrays him standing close to hanged bodies that had clearly been tortured prior to their execution, as well as a film that shows him walking in front of a row of corpses so long that he cuts his walk short before even finishing the entire review. According to family members of Marie Colvin, the journalist that was assassinated in Syria, he ordered the artillery attack that killed her when he learned where the famous reporter was staying. Among his last public actions, an interview released just a few weeks ago. Turning to the millions of Syrian refugees who fled abroad after losing everything, Issam Zahreddine said, “If you know what’s good for you, you will never again set foot in Syria.” It’s important to know that in addition to the far right who signed the banners, among the environments that sympathise with him are also groups of the radical left.

Originale: http://formiche.net/2017/10/26/casa-pound-fronte-europeo-siria/

About Arab Revolutions

Posted: 04/11/2017 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Assad, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Egypt, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Iraq, Libya, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Politics, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Syria

This text was written by Dyab Abu Jahjah in 2012. This is his site.
Relative to revolutions all around the world, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are historical miracles and a shining example of non-violent, civilized uprisings. The Yemeni revolution, in its insistence on non-violence and its discipline, is truly amazing, as is the revolution in Bahrain. The Syrian revolution, in its enormous sacrifices in the face of a ruthless killing machine, is a historical epic. The revolutions in Libya is an epitome of effectiveness.
We cannot just mention Libya in passing because the Libyan case has become the favorite example for conspiracy theorists and doubters in the revolution. It is true that the intervention by NATO is complicated and is definitely not innocent. But it is also true that the agenda of the Libyan revolutionaries is not identical to NATO’s agenda. This divergence will emerge slowly but surely because the relationship between the Libyan revolution and NATO is not one of submission. European powers wanted to secure the oil contracts that they had signed with Kaddafi and at the same time appear to support the Arab revolution after their shameful support for Ben-Ali and Mubarak to the very end. The Libyan revolutionaries wanted air cover in their confrontation with Kaddafi’s barbaric killing machine. and unfortunately no Arab or Islamic country was able to provide such a cover. Hence, a deal was struck, and we must look at this deal from the point of view of shared interests. In the end, Libya has been liberated and there are no occupation forces and no NATO mandate on Libya. As for the oil contracts, they are a matter of commerce because oil is nothing more than a commodity that is sold by the state based on the people’s interests; it does not represent our dignity or our honor. Isn’t it better for a free Libyan people to trade and cooperate with foreign countries to benefit itself rather than for a dictator like Kaddafi to do the same thing while oppressing his people for the benefit of himself and his sons with their many lovers?

A free people determines its path by itself and no one can claim any longer that a deranged tyrant knows his people’s interests better than the people. The alternative, for those who are always asking about alternatives, as if we were replacing one totalitarian government with another, is always the ballot box. What’s more important, and what is true in any region in the Arab World, is that foreign intervention is a small detail in the midst of the massive historical movement that the Arab revolution represents, which neither the reactionary oil oligarchies nor Western imperialism will be able to co-opt no matter how hard they try. The old regimes and their remnants will fail in their attempt to paint the Arab revolution as a western conspiracy to dethrone them because of their achievements in pursuing the interests of the people. The people know that the historical trend in our region is one of revolution, and they are aware of the West’s attempts to intervene and co-opt the revolution, but they are also capable of thwarting these attempts. In Syria, for example, the revolutionary forces have rejected military intervention and instead called for international protection and observers, and some insist on most being Arab, in spite of the enormous oppression and killing. Those who accuse the Syrian revolutionaries of being traitors are similar to someone who denies a seriously ill patient medicine because that medicine is made in Paris or London and is being distributed by United Nations agencies.

Neo-fascist “Blitz”, where those bursting in end up running away with their tails between their legs. The whole story.

Posted: 10/09/2016 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, Syria, War

Announcing their “heroic” venture, the Italian neo-Fascist party Forza Nuova writes:
[From the Facebook page of Forza Nuova]

Forza Nuova Roma, pro-Assad blitz at the Maxxi

“This morning’s blitz at the Maxxi of Rome is a warning sent to the media and the liars of the regime [translator’s note: regime = Italian government]: we will not remain silent in the face of the war in Syria.

A conflict created and desired by the USA and by the Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in primis, to destabilise a key region of the Middle East.

A war fought on the battlefield by ISIS and supported by globalist disinformation, in which the legitimate president Assad and the Russian president Putin, the only true peace-seekers in the region, are painted as “evil”, when they are the only ones fighting against the terrorism of ISIS and defending Italy and Europe against immigration and bombs.

We cannot tolerate that mystification pollutes the minds of the people with outright lies, no less by the seductive means of an exhibition.

Forza Nuova has been with Assad since the start of the aggression against Syria and it will remain steadfast until the last breath for peace and freedom!”

Alessio Costantini, Leader of Forza Nuova Roma

So much for their press release. Here is the account of their routing as soon as things got difficult for them. Article from La Reppublica

Rome, Forza Nuova stage pro-Assad at the Maxxi museum

The Roman museum is currently hosting the exhibit “Code name: Caesar. Syrian detainees, victims of torture”, a selection of photographs that document the mutilation, the abuse, the beatings and the torture of the bodies of the detainees in two government prisons in Syria

The blitz at the Maxxi (photo from Facebook, Forza Nuova Roma) Neo-fascist pro-Assad blitz at the Maxxi Museum of Rome . A group of Forza Nuova militants, political group of the extreme right, long-time backers of the Syrian president, made an irruption into the hall that currently is hosting the exhibit, “Code name: Caesar. Syrian detainees, victims of torture”. It is a crude, dramatic exhibit, of great impact, with just a few images coming from the archives of 53,275 photos taken by a former Syrian police officer who had to document the mutilation, the abuse, the beatings and the torture on the bodies of the detainees in two government prisons in Syria.

Twenty activists entered into the hall, shouting slogans in a megaphone and throwing flyers in the air, sticking some of them even inside the showcases that hold the photos, causing fear among the twenty or so visitors present who were observing the images. As soon as the museum guards called the police, the extremists made a run for it. “The blitz – explained the leader of FN in Rome, Alessio Costantini in a press release – is a warning sent to the media and the liars of the regime: we will not remain silent in the face of the war in Syria. The legitimate president Assad and the Russian president Putin are painted as “evil”. We cannot tolerate that mystification pollutes the minds of the people with outright lies, no less by the seductive means of an exhibition.”

The reply by the General Secretary of Maxxi, Pietro Barrera is firm: “This vulgar provocation by FN, which fortunately did not cause any damage, confirms just how important our commitment is for the defence of human right wherever they are trod upon”.
[end]

The organisers of the exhibit issued their own press release:

THE INVASION OF FORZA NUOVA INTO THE SHOW ON THE TORTURE IN SYRIA AT THE MAXXI OF ROME: DENUNCIATION OF THE PROMOTERS

On Saturday 8 October, at around 11:30 am, a group of members of Forza Nuova penetrated into the exhibition space of the MAXXI, where very many Romans have already visited the exhibit Nome in codice Caesar: le foto che fanno vergognare l’Umanità regarding the Syrian victims of torture, sponsored by Amnesty International – Italia, Articolo21, Focsiv, FNSI – Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana, Unimed and Un ponte per…

In front of the showcases, where the images of the tortured bodies were kept, members of Forza Nuova were extolling the Syrian president Assad and the Russian one Putin, accusing the promoters of the show as having sympathies for the armed group that calls itself Islamic State (Daesh). For the humanitarian operators of Focsive and Un Ponte Per… it is a particularly serious accusation, given their decades-long commitment of service in the territory of Syria and Iraq, assisting and supporting the civil populations that are among the first victims of Daesh.

Notwithstanding that the history of all of the promotors is testimony that the only “sympathy” is that for human rights, freedom and justice, this invasion has strengthened the common determination to have this exhibit circulate as far as it possibly can in all of Italy. We strongly denounce this act and we ask that those who hold the same values likewise denounce it.

The promotors.

Human compassion for the Syrians, from a Greek psychiatric patient

Posted: 09/22/2016 by editormary in Children's Corner, Europe, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, Refugees, Syria, War

Daphni, Greece. I was sitting in my office with the computer open, when a patient enters to ask for the medicine he had forgotten to take. The picture of a dead boy on a beach shows on the screen and the conversation that is below follows:

What’s that?
A child
Why isn’t someone picking him up? It will drown.
It has drowned
Where’s his mother?
I don’t know
She should be put in jail. She didn’t take care of the child
It’s not the mother’s fault. She put him in a boat to save him from war but those boats have no destination port
Why don’t they have a destination port?
Because the countries who aren’t in war don’t want them
So, refugees?
Refugees…..
Listen Maria…
John, my name is not Maria
It doesn’t matter. Your name is random and it’s by coincidence that you don’t live in a country that’s in war. Those who don’t want the refugees are cursed
They won’t change
Earth doesn’t belong to anyone. The people didn’t give a land for this child to walk on but earth gave him a spot to die….the soil makes no discriminations….the soil accepts everyone….whites, blacks, yellows…everyone
You believe he’s resting now?
Of course! He sleeps on his belly so not to see people
Go to your bed and get some rest
Don’t send me away when we’re discussing
I don’t want to discuss further
If you can’t take it anymore, go to the PM and tell him that we want the refugees and that he should bring them here. We have space. I’ll lie near the wall and then there’ll be enough space for one more person to lie in my bed. And the food is more than enough. It suffices fo reveryone. This is what you should tell him. Children aren’t supposed to die. Will you tell him?
I can’t tell the PM but I will tell lots of people in a while
Will you give a speech?
Something like that!
Tell people they should love children
I’ll tell them
And bring me my medicine

He’s in his bed, crying…he stopped asking for his medicine……he’s lying as close as possible to the wall and mumbles…why did I tell her just one? If I get a bit closer to the wall, two more people can lie in my bed….

Conversation with a psychiatric patient…

Ilda Dali, Nurse at Daphni Psychiatric Hospital

Translated by Christina Baseos

Original

Observations on the Battle of Aleppo and the demise of the US antiwar “movement”

Posted: 08/01/2016 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Education, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Politics, Syria, War

Some “anti-imperialists” who think that the US Empire is the cause of the war in Syria. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

WRITTEN BY DAVID A TURPIN, JR.

Putin cynically offers humanitarian corridors to Aleppo. The cynicism of his proposal is so obvious that even the spineless United Nations must insist on control of the corridors, so as to offer the proposal a fig leaf of “legitimacy”.

Putin’s offer must be understood for what it is: 1) He is responding to international pressure to end the siege of Aleppo, 2) He is preparing a “justification” for new massacres.

Just as the Assad regime only “negotiated” while preparing military offensives, the “humanitarian corridors” offered by Putin are only intended to deflect international criticism as Putin and Assad starve 300,000 people and bury them with air and artillery strikes.

The “terrorists” are using the people as shields, we are told by the apologists for the war criminal Assad regime. A casual comparison of the relatively easy military victory over Daesh (IS) at Fallujah with the titanic struggle over Aleppo gives instant lie to this infamy.

The relatively quick collapse of IS at Fallujah compares nothing to the titanic struggle taking place in Aleppo, and the reason is obvious: Assad and his backers are fighting the forces of a popular democratic revolution.

The revolutionaries are fighting to the death because they know Assad can only offer death. There is nothing to negotiate.

Yes, indeed, the “Terrorists” are using the people as shields: but the terrorists in the battle of Aleppo are Assad, Putin and Tehran’s thugs.

In attempting to understand the course of the Syrian democratic revolution and how it is that the Assad regime has gone from near collapse to its current position of strength, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the Syrian democratic revolution has been abandoned by the US and European left. To say this does not ignore the role played by the US arms embargo placed upon the opposition to Assad, or the intentional effort by the US and its Gulf State allies to prevent the formation of a cohesively united military command for the struggle against Assad–the fracturing of the opposition was engineered because the Obama administration has never supported the formation of a strong democratic Syria. Yet, these factors are givens: international solidarity movements for the democratic struggles in Latin America were always built as movements in opposition to US policy; the solidarity movement with Syria has also always objectively been opposed to the actual course followed by the Obama administration–his lip service to democracy notwithstanding.

It is an inescapable fact that the leaderships of our antiwar coalitions consciously decided against building solidarity with the Syrian people. The decision to abandon the Syrian people to Assad, Putin and Tehran’s thugs was led by pro-Baathist and Stalinist forces, which openly apologize for the war-criminal Assad regime and defend their treachery with claims of “anti-imperialism”, but these usurpers of our antiwar opposition were only able to triumph by cynically appealing to “unity”. Fears of splitting our antiwar coalitions allowed the apologists for the war criminal Assad regime to dictate our movement’s political orientation.

In the UK, it's clear that the support is for the regime.

The pro-Baathist traitors within our antiwar opposition have completely demobilized our movement.

The antiwar movement is dead. It’s last action was to stand in solidarity with the Assad regime!

We should never, ever, let this ignominious demise be forgotten.

Attempts to get around the defeat and demise of our antiwar opposition by ignoring it will gain nothing. There cannot be any serious proposal for the victory of progressive forces that ignores the terrible dangers of a military triumph by the Assad regime. The reasons are becoming increasingly obvious, no matter how hard they are ignored by the US and European left.

Even if Assad triumphs militarily, his regime cannot rebuild and stabilize Syria. Assad can only burn Syria; he has no other power; he cannot inspire and mobilize–he can only terrorize. Crushing popular revolutionary movements does not advance national development; crushing the energy of these movements destroys the very spirit that builds nations.

In the context of a burning Syria, despair and demoralization will only feed the growth of violent extremism. The centrifugal forces unleashed in Iraq will gain momentum in Syria. Daesh may be defeated in Raqqa and Mosul, but the anger and despair that feed the plague of sectarian violence can only deepen with the bitter divisions fomented by the Assad regime and by Tehran’s sectarian policies in Iraq and Lebanon. The alternative to violently sectarian forces has always only ever been solidarity with the struggles for democracy and self determination.

The alternative to violent sectarianism, building international solidarity with the democratic struggles–and centrally with the struggle in Syria, is also the only alternative to the never-ending “War on Terror” and to the imposition of permanent states of siege and the targeted repression of Muslims and immigrants in the West.

Daesh can be militarily defeated in Raqqa and Mosul, as it was in Fallujah, but the fight that must be won is to build a political alternative to the despair and alienation that allows Daesh, or any such nihilistic forces, to recruit. Walls, spies, permanent occupation forces in far away lands, and never-ending military operations cannot bring safety and security to the citizenry in the West. Demagogic proponents of a strategy to “follow Israel’s example” fail to recognize that much of the high command of the Israeli military is gripped by a sense of despair at the impossibility of maintaining a permanent occupation in the West Bank and a never-ending siege on Gaza. The Apartheid system of permanent repression could not hold in South Africa; it cannot hold in the occupied territories of Palestine and it cannot work as a strategy to contain the democratic aspirations of the peoples of the Middle East.

The leaderships of our antiwar coalitions want to ignore Syria, but by doing so they ignore the reality that the victory of the democratic struggle in Syria is the only alternative to the never-ending “War on Terror”, and by ignoring this reality, these leaderships have completely paralyzed our movement. It is no accident that there have been no mobilizations against the growing presence of US troops in northern Syria, against Obama’s decision to reverse one of the central campaign issues that brought him electoral victories–a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is no accident that even when US air strikes result in documented large numbers of civilian casualties in Syria, there are no mobilizations. The US antiwar “movement” is dead; it died when it mobilized in solidarity with the Assad regime. It was betrayed and murdered by the apologists for the Assad regime. The pieces that make up our antiwar coalitions may be able to regroup and rebuild, but only if they embrace solidarity with the democratic struggles.

They killed the migrants and sold their organs. Italian investigation uncovers human trafficking/organ trafficking ring

Posted: 07/04/2016 by editormary in Egypt, Europe, Human Rights, Refugees

State Police photo of the Roman headquarters of the organ trafficking ring (courtesy RAI)

A gruesome scenario emerges from the reports of the latest investigation of the Anti-Mafia Directorate of the District of Palermo, which this morning has led to the detention of 38 people.

The operation: since the earliest hours of the morning, the State Police has been carrying out 38 arrests in Italian cities, issued by the Anti-Mafia in Palermo, against as many suspects believed to belong to a transnational criminal network devoted to the smuggling of migrants. The centre of financial transactions has been individuated in Rome, in a storefront where, in addition to a ledger showing names of foreign nationals and reference utilities were seized € 526,000 and $ 25,000 in cash.

The “repentant” State’s witness: Those who had no money were killed, their organs harvested
Those who did not have the money to make the journey by boat to Italy “were killed, the organs were then sold to some Egyptian organ merchants”. This is the shocking background that emerges from the “Glauco 3” Operation of the State Police, which at dawn today has led to the detention of 38 persons, issued by the Prosecutor of Palermo. To recount the details of this alleged organ trafficking is an State’s witness already in the operation “Glauco 2”, which had led to the arrest of 24 people, who had helped the Palermo magistrates to shed light on human trafficking.

Nuredin Wehabrebi Atta, 32, the repentant State’s witness, is an Eritrean smuggler arrested in 2015. After his arrest he decided to come clean and tell about how the functioning of human trafficking works. The investigation is coordinated by the Deputy Prosecutor Maurizio Scalia and by Prosecutors Gery Ferrara, Claudio Camilleri and Annamaria Picozzi. –

See more at: http://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/articoli/Operazione-polizia-Glauco-3-inchiesta-DDA-Palermo-Uccidevano-i-migranti-e-ne-vendevano-organi-pentito-sulla-tratta-degli-esseri-umani-0b0e040e-ee29-44ab-8b3f-abb2c2e7069a.html

Western Policy towards Iran Helps Perpetuate Terrorism and Human Rights Abuses

Posted: 01/27/2016 by editormary in Ahwaz, Europe, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance

Written by Rahim Hamid, Ahwazi Arab writer

It seems the Italian authorities thought they had to cover up all the nudes in a museum for President Rouhani’s visit. Europe allegedly despises the veiling of ordinary Muslim women, but hypocritically covers up statues to appease the Iranian Islamic leaders – censoring classical art is all about oil.

The West’s silence with respect to Iranian terrorism and Tehran’s interference in the affairs of others is a strong contributing reason for all that is happening and will happen in this region. The West’s double standards in defining terrorism and what it means to counter it have now become overt to all.

Khamenei, the main backer of Assad, continues to support the Syrian dictator, responsible for a war that has killed over 250,000 people and displaced more than half of the country’s population.

The major powers, especially the United States, look to the region through a different lens than the Arabs and other regional nations do. It appears that immediate economic, political and military interests are the main drives for the involvement of the Western countries in the Middle East, and no other considerations, such as human rights and long-term implications seem to be of any importance at the current juncture.

Iran rejoiced and welcomed Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election in 2009. The Iranian pro regime masses at that time translated Obama’s name into Persian to read; “He is with us.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L), U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (2nd L), Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi (2nd R) and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (R) wait with others ahead of a meeting at the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne on March 26, 2015 during negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme. REUTERS/Brendan Smialowski/Pool – RTR4UXKJ

Many remained heedless towards the Iranian political readability. But with the progress of time and Obama’s focus on the Iranian nuclear program after failing in all other areas in the region, some began talking about the wager of “Obama” on Iran in the hope that history preserves his legacy after he leaves the presidency in early 2017. In fact, the intent of the Obama administration, all along, has been to empower the Islamic Republic regionally – and they’ve certainly succeeded.

Based on his actions, Obama clearly doesn’t care about the fate of Iran and ordinary citizens who are oppressed by the regime any more than Bush did; he’s better at PR speeches and paying lip service to human rights. He’s naive in that he managed to convince himself and others in his administration that it would be in the interests of the United States to have Tehran as a regional policeman, rather than the United States, and a “partner for peace” for the West, via controlling the region.

Iran’s involvement in the region would enable the US to “pivot to Asia” or otherwise focus on whatever the latest foreign policy trend the policy wonks are recommending. In reality, allowing Iran’s expansionist ambitions is a recipe for endless war. Despite his seemingly idealistic vision, Obama is certainly no anti-establishment guy.

Obama’s primary ‘legacy’ has been to empower fascist demagogues, dictators and totalitarians domestically – such as Trump, who probably genuinely could shoot people and still get more votes, as he claimed – and globally. Proof is his support for the political descendant of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the Castro regime in Cuba, the brutal Islamic State regime, Bashir al-Assad. Obama’s policies have also led to Putin’s Russia increasing their interference and influence around the world.

George W. Bush considered Iran part of the “axis of evil”, and Iran calls the United States “the Great Satan”, today we witness a temporary marriage between “the evil” and “the great Satan”.

Protests against Rouhani’s visit in Rome

What brought the region and the world to this point? How will the face of the region change after Tehran feels emboldened by the loosening of Washington’s grip on the region, giving the green light to the Islamic Republic’s interventions in the internal affairs of Arab countries, and continuous strengthening of sleeper cells and spy networks, agents of influence, support for terrorism, and instigation of sectarian strife in the region?

The Western States, on the one hand, shake hands with state sponsors of terrorism, and secretly strengthen those bonds with multiple partnerships on various levels, and on the other, these Western states demand that Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, fight terrorism and freeze the financing of terrorist organizations, root out support for terrorism in all forms. Hypocritically, these states simultaneously slam and condemn Saudi Arabia for executing terrorists, so long as such condemnations play into the hands of the Islamic Republic.

These two contradictory stands do not mix well. They can work only in the baseless fantasy of Obama’s projected entente with Iran, allegedly aimed at providing the region with security, stability and integrity.

With honesty that suits the political landscape and developments around us, we should say without hesitation or shame: the Iranian aggression and projected expansion that targets our nations with the tacit complicity, and the terrible silence of the West cannot be met only with a similar response.

This is the time to respond with firmness and determination in a world that tolerates no weakness or hesitation. Iran has spread its arms and military cells in our countries; it seeks to resuscitate a sinister version of the Persian Empire, create a Shiite Crescent and under the umbrella of Mahdism and other nationalist auspices while harping on the glories of the Sassanid past.

The current regime only understands the language of force. Therefore, we are forced to respond with the same methods. However, no strong response to the Islamic Republic’s expansionist ambitions can be made successfully taking a fitting strategic agenda and a thoughtful decision-making process.

The Islamic Republic correctly reads the West’s capitulatory policy the region as its inability to confront Iranian arrogance. The West’s perceived weakness emboldens the Mullahs to continue in their interventions and to grow and multiply their wicked plans.

The West forgets that the actual power in Iran lies not with Rouhani but with its Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, who is directly responsible for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Iran’s counterpart of the former Soviet KGB, imposing oppressive measures at home and promoting terror across the Middle East.

It is this regime, controlled by the Supreme Leader and the mullahs, that continues to contribute heavily to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and funding Shi’a militias and individual despots such as Assad who have committed mass atrocities against his own citizens.

One could (and should) criticize the mullah regime for being racist and utilizing racism and scapegoating to support centralized power and keep their subjects away from heretical thoughts. Iran has a long history of conquering and subjugating its ethnic and religious minorities.

Ethnic subjugation and oppression precede the Islamic Republic — we need only to take a look at the history of Al-Ahwaz, Iranian Kurdistan, and Baluchistan, not to mention South Azerbaijan. There is no shortage of horrifying stories about activists who have been imprisoned, raped, beaten or tortured.

The hostilities of the Iranian Mullahs towards the Arab Gulf countries is not born of the moment, and the burning of embassies is an accurate reflection of the nature of the Iranian regime. It is an aggressive theocratic Persian cult worship which underlies the structure of the regimes’ ideology.

This doctrine survives only as long as exporting violence can be perpetuated, which itself is achieved via claiming all Arab Shiites as Iranian subjects and their land as Iranian land.

This Iranian exportation of sectarian violence among Arabs and in Arab lands is affected in order to avoid solving Iran’s unsolvable internal problems and to export them outside its borders.

Since 1979, Iran started applying its provocative policies which were vigorously and successfully responded to by Iraq and Iran was forced to retreat inside its borders. With the American destruction of Iraq, however, the Arab world was left wide open to Iranian aggression. Iranian purposes cannot be achieved in a quiet area away from escalation due to its interior economic and political and social problems.

The Iranian people, including ethnic groups, have long suffered and experienced harsh suppression at the hands of the Iranians in power. In order to cover up for Iran’s chronic unsolvable problems, the peculiar Persian cult worship type of Shiism was developed, and exporting it gives the Mullahs respite in their tenuous hold on power inside Iran.

Thus, Iran’s policy was built on interference in Arab affairs and continues to interfere in the internal affairs of the Arabs in the era of monarchists as well as during the revolutionary period of the Mullahs. Both under the Shah and Khomeini, wherever Shiism exists the land is claimed Persian one way or another!!!

This shows that Persian expansion has always come at the expense of the Arab countries and interference in their internal affairs. Most important though is that this aggressive Iranian policy is not the result of a particular system, but is thought rooted in the very foundations of the Persian state that sometimes shows itself in Monarchy apparel and other times dressed in the Islamic Republic guise.

For both the Shah and Khomeini intentionally created an arch and historical enemy for the Persian State, which permeates both old and new Iranian doctrine.

A psychological hostility was established in the center of Iran towards the Arabs which led to the arrogant racist view of the Iranian community members who make up the political and social system and the rest of civil institutions and non-civilian organizations.

If we investigate a little bit, the monarchic Iranian or Republican culture both rely on racist approaches. Both insist on focusing Iranian education on mobilizing Persians via arrogant racist socially constructed myths in favor of bullying the Arab region, intending to building generations who harbor hatred towards Arabs even among opponents of the regime living in European countries, where we find that the hatred of the Arabs is rooted and ingrained. However, they endured the oppression from their rulers in the Royal era.

Iran is not a state of institutions as it claims, but a state of the militia. Charters and international laws will not deter it but it can be hindered by firm force as Iraq did in 1980 and Saudi Arabia in 2011 in Bahrain, as well as the Gulf-Arab alliance in a decisive storm in 2015, and add to this it is the right time for Arab countries to activate the cause of oppressed peoples in Iran such as Ahwazi Arab people under Iranian occupation and through supporting those people in their claim of right to self-determination.

I am well aware that the decisions to be made are difficult, but the most difficult is the fact that the world respects only those with power, regardless of moral imperative. Thus, we are forced into a Solomonic dilemma of having to launch a decisive storm in alliance with some Arab countries, against a much greater evil in the face of the Iranian regime.

The world has tolerated the status quo for military action approved by the Security Council; this approval would not have been possible if the operations did not originate on the ground and the Arab states did not prove they can take crucial decisions on their own without waiting for the approval of Western or Eastern states. Perhaps this successful model can lead the Iranian regime to shift from an offensive to a defensive position and to retreat to the inside, where it will be forced to face the long overdue retribution in the hands of its own citizens.

That is when the Iranian people will take their stand for freedom from tyranny and religious fundamentalism. And thus, the region can finally achieve the release from the evil of the Iranian regime. Revolution has not yet come to Iran. Therefore, Iran will be the major root of instability and violence all across the region.

Now the time has come when Arab nations, in order to rid themselves of terrorism, need to set aside their differences and act as a united force to confront Iranian hegemony.

In addition, the Western powers need to reconsider their view of the Middle East and not contribute to conflicts that may be difficult to contain later. The silence of the West to Iranian terrorism and intervention in the affairs of others is the primary reason for the growing instability and violence in the region.

When will the great powers take the actions of which they are capable and prevent the spread of violence in the region?

“Giù le mani dalla Siria” vale anche per la Russia: chiamata per le adesioni.

Posted: 10/12/2015 by editormary in Activists and Activism, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East, Petitions, Refugees, Resistance, Strategy for Liberation, Syria, War

Ci auguriamo che vi unirete a noi nel sostenere questo appello. Se è così, scriveteci il vostro nome così come vorreste che appaia nella versione pubblicata insieme a una frase breve (10 parole o anche meno) che vi identifichi (ad esempio professione, attivista, blogger, ecc), compreso il vostro Paese di residenza. Si prega di utilizzare questo indirizzo e-mail per contattarci: magpie68@outlook.com

“Giù le mani dalla Siria” vale anche per la Russia.
Come persone e gruppi provenienti da molti Paesi, uniti da un comune impegno per la pace, la giustizia ed i diritti umani, condanniamo l’offensiva militare russa in Siria (successiva escalation) iniziata il 30 settembre 2015.
Mentre il governo russo ha dichiarato che queste operazioni sono dirette contro lo Stato Islamico (ISIS), la maggior parte degli attacchi si sono verificati in aree con nessuna presenza dell’ISIS. L’obiettivo dell’offensiva militare russa sembrano essere le comunità civili e militari dell’opposizione nella parte a nord della regione di Homs, centro permanente di resistenza al regime di Assad.

Le vittime dell’aggressione russa il 30 settembre sono state prevalentemente civili, tra cui molti bambini. Le condizioni umanitarie erano già disperate nella zona prima che la Russia lanciasse la sua offensiva aerea, perché la zona era da tempo sotto assedio del regime per la sua resistenza.

Il regime di Assad ha provocato il caos in tutta la Siria. E’ responsabile di avere innescato la guerra civile con la sua politica di sparare contro i manifestanti che chiedevano democrazia. Il regime ha ucciso oltre un quarto di milione di siriani, ha costretto metà della popolazione ad abbandonare le loro case e ha creato milioni di profughi. Nel corso di questa operazione, ha perso il controllo di metà del Paese. Anche se la pace non potrà mai essere ripristinata dal regime che l’ha distrutto, sembrerebbe che la Russia ora utilizzi direttamente la sua potenza militare per puntellare ulteriormente un regime che, senza il sostegno straniero, sarebbe crollato anni fa. Questa operazione dalle forze russe può solo prolungare l’agonia del popolo siriano, aumentare il flusso di rifugiati e rafforzare forze estremiste come ISIS.

Le dichiarazioni russe circa la legalità dell’escalation militare non sono più veritiere di quelle usate dagli Stati Uniti per giustificare la sua guerra contro il Vietnam. Quando il governo che invita un Paese straniero a intervenire è illegittimo, lo è anche l’invito. Anche gli Stati Uniti hanno responsabilità per la catastrofe, come tutti gli attori regionali e internazionali che hanno ignorato le aspirazioni ed i sacrifici del popolo siriano in ogni loro tentativo di risolvere la crisi, sostituendoli con i propri bisogni strategici e ambizioni.

Noi condanniamo in modo inequivocabile sia le brutali azioni repressive del regime di Assad che l’intervento militare russo volto a prolungarne l’esistenza. Se la Russia vuole una transizione politica negoziata in Siria, deve fermare la sua assistenza alla brutalità e agli attacchi indiscriminati del regime siriano contro obiettivi civili e deve smettere di incoraggiare il rifiuto persistente del regime di Assad di impegnarsi in ogni serio processo di pace. Gli attacchi contro le popolazioni civili sono in violazione del diritto internazionale. Ci appelliamo alla comunità internazionale, ai governi nazionali e alle Nazioni Unite affinché assicurino il rispetto della Risoluzione del Consiglio di Sicurezza numero 2139, di cui la Russia è parte, che prevede che “Tutte le parti cessino immediatamente tutti gli attacchi contro i civili, così come l’impiego indiscriminato di armi in aree popolate.” Chiediamo a tutti coloro che si occupano di pace internazionale e di difesa dei diritti umani ad unirsi a noi nel condannare le azioni di ostentata arroganza della Russia con tutti i mezzi a vostra disposizione – lobbying dei vostri rappresentanti, manifestazioni pubbliche, petizioni pubbliche e le altre forme di protesta.

FIRMATO:

Mike Gapes, Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Ilford South, UK

Rt. Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman, MP, UK

Thomas Pierret, (Lecturer, University of Edinburgh, UK)

Rupert Read (Reader in Philosophy, University of East Anglia; Chair of Green House Think Tank, UK)

Peter Tatchell (Director, Peter Tatchell Foundation)

Yassin al Haj Saleh (Syrian Writer Living in Exile, Istanbul)

Abdulaziz Almashi (Syria Solidarity Movement, UK)

Haytham Alhamwi (Managing Director, Rethink Rebuild Society, Manchester Syrian Community, UK)

The Syrian Community of the South West UK

Hussam Ayloush (National Chair, Syrian American Council)

Faisal Alazem, Director, Syrian Canadian Council

Abdulrazzak Tammo (Leadership Consultant, Kurdish Future Movement, Syria/UK)

Planet Syria (Organization, UK)

Laila Alodaat (Lawyer, UK)

Juan Cole (Professor of History, University of Michigan & Blogger, Informed Comment, USA)

Jean-Pierre Filiu (Professor, Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs)

Sune Haugbølle (Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Denmark)

Nader Hashemi (Director, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver, USA)

Steven Heydemann (Professor of Middle East Studies, Smith College, USA)

Rana Issa (University of Oslo, Norway)

Mohja Kahf (Professor of Comparative Literature & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Arkansas & Member of the Syrian Nonviolence Movement)

Vinay Lal (Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

Ziad Majed (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Politics, The American University of Paris, France)

Danny Postel (Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver, USA)

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad (University of Stirling, Scotland)

Luke Cooper (Lecturer in Politics, Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Juliette Harkin (Doctoral Student, University of East Anglia, UK)

Brian Slocock (Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Paisley, Retired, UK)

Mary Rizzo (Syria Solidarity Activist, Blogger at wewritewhatwelike.com, Italy)

Peter Clifford (Middle East Blogger, UK)

Saskia Sassen (Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, USA)

Saleh, Syrian, network engineer, KSA

Qusai Zakarya (Syrian Activist)

Lilia Marsali,. blogger and activist, Member, Algerian Congress for Democratic Change,France

Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Writer/Activist, Former President, TransAfrica Forum)

Gail Daneker (Friends for a NonViolent World, Minnesota, USA)

Clay Claiborne (Linux Beach Productions, Venice, California, USA)

Terry Burke (Minnesota Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria, USA)

Afra Jalabi (Syrian Writer & Vice-Chair, The Day After Association)

Andrei Codrescu (Poet, Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University, USA)

Stephen R. Shalom (Editorial Board, New Politics, USA)

James Sadri (The Syria Campaign, UK)

Robin Yassin-Kassab (Writer, Scotland)

Leila Al Shami (Activist and Writer, Jordan)

Rafif Jouejati (Director of FREE-Syria, the Foundation to Restore Equality and Education in Syria & English-language spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, USA)

Nicolas Hénin (Journalist, Author, ex-ISIS hostage)

Leila Vignal (Fellow, Refugee Studies Centre, Department of International Development, Oxford University, UK)

Paul Woodward (War in Context, USA)

Ella Wind (New York University and MENA Solidarity Network, New York)

Roxanne Abbas (Activist, Minnesota, USA)

Ian Keith (Public School Teacher, Minnesota, USA)

Andrew Berman (Veterans for Peace, USA)

Mujeeb R. Khan (Department of Political Science, University of California Berkeley)

Şener Aktürk (Department of International Relations, Koç University, Turkey)

Omar Qureshi (Teacher, New York)

Michael Karadjis (Teacher, Sydney, Australia)

Fazal Khan (Associate Professor, University of Georgia School of Law, USA)

Kareen El Beyrouty (Economist and Member, Syria Solidarity Movement, UK)

Mark Boothroyd (Syria Solidarity Movement, UK)

Graham Campbell (RISE Glasgow East and Glasgow TUC Unite/ Scottish Trades Union Congress Delegate, UK)

Clara Connolly (Immigration and Human Rights Lawyer, UK)

Soumya Datta (Assistant Professor, South Asian University, New Delhi, India)

Bronwen Griffiths (Activist, UK)

Adina Mutar (Journalist, Romania)

David L. Williams (Peregrine Forum of Wisconsin, USA)

Ed Potts (Socialist, UK)

Nina van Krimpen (Human Rights Activist, The Netherlands)

Alfonso Vázquez (Human Rights Activist, Spain)

Pete Klosterman (Retired Software Engineer, New York, USA)

Therese Rickman Bull (Human Rights Activist, USA)

David Turpin Jr. (Antiwar Committee in Solidarity with the Struggle for Self Determination, Northwest Indiana, USA)

Kelly Grotke (Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, USA)

Stephen Hastings-King (Author, Ithaca, New York, USA)

Dr Ahmad Sadiddin, research fellow in development economics, Univ of Florence, Italy

Mazen Halabi (Activist, Minnesota, USA)

Barry Rubin (Independent Scientist, UK)

Subhi Hadidi (Writer, Syria/France)

Farouk Mardam Bey (Publisher, Paris, France)

Wael Khouli (Physician Executive, Member of Syrian American Medical Society, USA)

Mary Lynn Murphy (Grandmothers for Peace Delegate to the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, USA)

Rihab Naheel (Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria, Minnesota, USA)

Susan Ahmad (Syrian Human Rights Activist and Journalist, UK)

Adnan Almahameed (Syrian Citizen, Community Organizer, Canada)

Pierluigi Blasioli (Student, University of Pescara, Italy)

James Bloodworth (Journalist, Editor of Left Foot Forward, UK)

Samantha Falciatori (Humanitarian Volunteer and Solidarity Activist, Italy)

Terry Glavin (Author/Journalist/Columnist, Canada)

Nancy Lindisfarne (Anthropologist, Author, UK)

Grant Padgham (Solidarity Activist, UK)

Harry Shotton (Student and Campaigner, UK)

Kellie Strom (Artist and Children’s Author, UK)

Jonathan Neale (Writer, UK)

Bill Scheurer (Executive Director, On Earth Peace, New Windsor, Maryland, USA)

Kenan Rahmani (Syrian American Activist, Washington DC)

Harald Etzbach (Translator/Journalist, Germany)

Ken Hiebert (Activist, Ladysmtih, BC, Canada)

Andrew Pollack (MENA Solidarity Network-US, Brooklyn)

Richard Dawson (Concerned Citizen, Los Angeles, California)

Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miler (IT/Science Reporter and Editor, USA)

Louis Proyect (Writer, CounterPunch film co-editor, New York City)

John Wilborn (Veterans for Peace, Chapter 168, Louisville, Kentucky, USA)

Fouad Roueiha (Journalist and co-founder of Solidarity with Syrian People Committee, Rome, Italy)

Gerard Di Trolio (Editor, rankandfile.ca, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Thomas F Barton (Military Resistance Newsletter)

Ricardo Salabert (Political Activist, Portugal)

Manuel Barrera (Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA)

Jason Schulman (Editorial Board, New Politics, USA)

Edna Bonhomme (Doctoral Candidate, Princeton University, Brooklyn, New York, USA)

Associazione Rose di Damasco (Como, Italy)

Riccardo Bella (Activist for Syria and Palestine, Milano, Italy)

Veronica Bellintani (Student, Activist and Volunteer with Syrian Refugees, Italy)

Karama Napoli (Committee to Support the Arab People, Italy)

Fiore Haneen Sarti (Human Rights Activist, Italy)

Jane Kelly (Activist, UK)

Jamie Milne (Labour Friends of Ukraine, UK)

Lara Bartocci (Freethinker and Graphic Designer, Italy)

Enrico De Angelis (Media Analyst, Free Press Unlimited, Italy)

Comitato Permanente per la Rivoluzione Siriana, Italy

Luke Staunton (Syria Solidarity Movement, UK)

Joshka Wessels (Postdoctoral Researcher on Syria, Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Carol Coren (Social Enterprise Entrepreneur, Oregon and Pennsylvania, USA)

Anthony Saidy (Author, Los Angeles, USA)

Ralph Apel (Engineer, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Linda Parsons (Supporter of the Syrian People’s Revolution, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)

Ali Rahabi (Syrian Activist, Local Coordination Committees in Syria, Deir ez-Zor, Syria)

Zaher Sahloul (Physician, President of the Syrian American Medical Society, USA)

Mohamad Khouli (Activist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

Jennifer Kaiser (Researcher, Turkey)

Polly Kellogg (Retired Associate Professor, St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, USA)

Basel Watfa (Pharmacist & Translator, Syrian refugee camp, Kusel, Germany)

Luna Watfa (Freelance Journalist/Photographer, Syrian refugee camp, Kusel, Germany)

Seyla Benhabib (Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, USA)

Annalisa Roveroni (CIVIC Cooperativa Sociale, Italy)

Enzio Zuffo (Istituto Sviluppo Olistico, Italy)

Fred Mecklenburg (News & Letters, Chicago, USA)

Ron Aminzade (Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota, USA)

MJ Maynes (Department of History, University of Minnesota, USA)

Meredith Tax (Writer & Chair of the Centre for Secular Space, New York, USA)

Deidre A. Kellogg Ketroser (Human Rights Activist, Refugee Advocate/Advisor, Minneapolis, USA)
Originale in inglese: http://www.syriauk.org/p/hands-off-syria-applies-to-russia-tooas.html

Who is Father dall’Oglio, the Jesuit abducted in Syria 2 years ago?

Posted: 07/31/2015 by editormary in Culture and Heritage, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East, Religion, Resistance, Syria, War
Tags: Paolo Dall'Oglio

WRITTEN AND TRANSLATED By Samantha Falciatori

“Democracy in Syria is possible, but only if freedom of expression is assured and if you waive any attack on human dignity and abuses against human rights”, wrote Father Paolo dall’Oglio in 2011. At the outbreak of the revolution and in front of the repression that followed, Father Paolo sided immediately with the oppressed.

Jesuit of Roman origins, Paolo dall’Oglio fell in love with Syria when he was a young man and he settled there with a mission: to promote peace and dialogue between religions and ethnic groups in Syria. To do so, in the ’80s he founded the monastic community of Deir Mar Musa (Monastery of St. Moses the Abyssinian), north of Damascus.

His work for peace and for the promotion of dialogue between Christians and Muslims has earned him respect across the country, but after the outbreak of the revolution it became troublesome. To resolve the crisis, Father Paolo wrote an article in 2011 in which he proposed a peaceful transition to democracy in Syria, on the basis of what he called “consensual democracy”, with a Parliament that had real power; something that in over 40 years of dictatorship has never existed, except on paper. President Bashar al-Assad would have a central role in this process and, conceding the reforms that the people asked, he could stop the violence and maintain the country’s stability.

“I pray with all my heart that the President, his family and his advisers, can see this occasion as historic because Syria can make a quantum leap in the direction of a more just future,” wrote Father Paolo. But his prayer fell on deaf ears; on the contrary, it unleashed the wrath of Assad, who issued an expulsion order, where among the motivations there was “aiding terrorists”. In an interview in January 2013, Father Paolo explained:

“I have been in one of the besieged cities in the hands of the revolution, I gave blood to the wounded, I tried to free the prisoners, the kidnapped, and this put me in contact with the armed resistance [author’s note: FSA]. Later it was said that Father Paolo is connected with terrorism, but for the government all the revolution is terrorism[..] Now since I am in solidarity with young people who demand democracy and are imprisoned, tortured or massacred, I become a terrorist agent.”

The expulsion was not immediately implemented and Father Paolo could stay, as long as he would keep a “low profile”, avoiding statements opposing the regime. However, following the publication of an open letter addressed to the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan (May 2012) in which he urged the intervention of the Security Council, the UN peacekeepers and the establishment of a no-fly zone to protect civilians from the indiscriminate bombings by the government aviation, under the pressure of his bishop he was forced to leave Syria. He was accompanied to Lebanon by the Apostolic Nuncio in Damascus, not by government authorities, on June 12, 2012. He went into exile in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. But also from the exile he did not stop denouncing the ongoing violence in Syria and claiming loudly the need for a democratic solution to the conflict that could only start from the renewal of the Syrian government and from the end of decades of dictatorship.

His courageous stand in support of the protesters, in the name of human rights and of the legitimate aspirations for freedom, made him even more loved by the Syrian people: on December 4, 2011 Syrian citizens dedicated to Father Paolo one of the usual Friday protests to emphasize how religion is a factor of unity and not of division.

In December 2012, Dall’Oglio was awarded with the Peace Prize of the Lombardy region for his efforts to bring peace in Syria. But the honesty, the frankness and the intransigence of its position against the Syrian government made him troublesome even for ecclesiastical authorities, which are historically allied with Damascus. Even Father Paolo’s open letter to Pope Francis, also a Jesuit, fell unheard.

In July 2013 Father Paolo returned to Syria, in the eastern city of Raqqa. His last whereabouts are recorded in these videos http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/…/video-father-paolo-dall… that show him taking part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xwrC76gtqM&feature=youtu.be, on July 28, to a rally in support of the martyred city of Homs, then besieged by government troops. On July 29, he was kidnapped by ISIS and since then there is no information, if not conflicting and never verified reports. According to some sources he was executed two hours after the kidnapping, but then he was reportedly spotted in a prison in Aleppo and then among the prisoners of ISIS in Raqqa. The Italian Foreign Ministry has never confirmed nor denied and to this date his fate is still unknown.

But why Raqqa?

Because when Raqqa became the first Syrian city to fall entirely in the hands of the opposition, in March 2013, it became one of the first successful experiments of self-government by the civil society, that formed local governments and peaceful movements (such as Our Right and Raqqa Free Youth Assembly) that kept the city going. There were even the first free local elections after 40 years of dictatorship. But the idyll did not last long, not just because the government air force bombed Raqqa daily, but also because ISIS (which in those months was beginning to consolidate power in Syria) attacked the city assuming total control in the following months. Terror returned, along with the hunting down of activists, the tortures and the executions. In Raqqa Father Paolo wanted to meet with ISIS leaders to demand the release of foreign journalists, but he was kidnapped too.

“It is madness for a sheep to talk peace with the wolf”, wrote Thomas Fuller. Maybe, but he who believes in peace, in democracy, he who does not bend to the logic of political opportunism, he who makes out of Christian ethics his lifestyle and not just a dress, he does not even fear wolves.

To commemorate the Jesuit priest, on July 23 the Association “Journalists friends of Father Dall’Oglio” was established.

In Italian: Translation http://www.thezeppelin.org/padre-dalloglio-il-gesuita-rapi…/

Forced sterilization, exclusion, persecution, cultural genocide: The situation of Ahwazi women: an interview with Mona Oudeh

Posted: 03/09/2015 by editormary in Ahwaz, Culture and Heritage, Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Interviews, Iran, Middle East, People's Movements / Struggles, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Strategy for Liberation, Syria

Mona Oudeh, an Ahwazi activist based in London, said in an interview with Al-Sharq Newspaper that she has always carried the burden of the Ahwazi cause like every other Ahwazi Arab woman who rejects and repudiates the Persian occupation of Al-Ahwaz that has forced her to leave her homeland.

Mona, who devotes all of her time to the Ahwazi cause, has spoken about some of the atrocities perpetrated by the Persian occupation against her Arab compatriots, and in particular, against women, affirming the fact that due to decades of Iranian occupation, Ahwazi Arab women have been subjected to human rights violations such as being deprived of their inalienable right to education in Arabic, their native language.

Al-Sharq: How do Ahwazi women consider the Persian occupation of their homeland Ahwaz?

MO: First I would like to express my gratitude to the venerable Al-Sharq newspaper for allowing me this opportunity to talk about Al-Ahwaz case.

Also, let me take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to the Saudi people, brothers, and all observers, and to all those interested in news and developments in the matter of Al-Ahwaz. To answer your question, Ahwazi women, as an integral part of their society, believe that the occupation has to be overthrown, even militarily, if necessary, and the area returned to Ahwazi Arab rule.

The occupation is entirely illegal, and there is no doubt that sooner or later it is bound to disappear. The occupation is the root cause of my people’s suffering, and Ahwazi women endure additional repression and exclusion, such as losing their right to live in dignity in their homeland.

In fact, since the start of Iranian occupation and domination of Al-Ahwaz, the ultra-national Persian institutions have systematically implemented policies of racial discrimination against the entire Ahwazi population, and in particular, of Ahwazi women, who have been excluded from all rights and privileges including educational opportunities, employment, intellectual, literary and artistic participation, as well as the denial of exercising their indigenous cultural activities.

Mona continued, saying that crimes of the occupation are incalculable, but the worst crime committed against the majority of Ahwazi women is through the policy of ethnic cleansing practiced in the cruelest manner, by preventing women of childbearing age to bring about demographic change in the areas of Al-Ahwaz.

The occupation authorities are forcing Ahwazi women to give birth through “Caesarean” procedure rather than natural birthing, and in many cases the authorities urge the doctors to carry out sterilization on birthing women without their knowledge or prior approval, through the process of tying the fallopian tubes. This results in Ahwazi women no longer being able to have more than one child, and thus, it reduces population growth among the Arabs.

She pointed out the suffering of the Ahwazi women as a consequence of the apartheid policies of Iranian occupation. Women are subjected to arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, physical harassment, psychological and physical torture as well as the death penalty like all Ahwazi activists. The Arab and international stance regarding our plight is still weak, and our cause must be activated and placed on the table of international forums.

Al-Sharq: What else do the Ahwazi women suffer because of the occupation?

MO: If we want to describe and analyze the nature of oppression and suffering of Ahwazi women under the grip of Iranian Occupation, then it would require us to write books about it.

This is because of a racist, anti-Arab mentality and ideology of the Iranian occupation against Arab people generally, and particularly against Ahwazis. As a matter of fact, the intensity of the regime’s racial oppression and segregation falls primarily on the Ahwazis in comparison to other ethnic and indigenous peoples in Iran, which is reflected in all aspects of their social, economic, and political lives and many other areas.

In this case, because the Iranian occupation harbors hatred towards Arabs, the Ahwazi women suffer and endure the most vicious types of harassment, arrest, imprisonment, physical and psychological torture because of three major factors, the first one is their female gender and, the second is their Arab ethnicity and the third is because they are Ahwazi women freedom fighters.

Ahwazi women, as Ahwazi men, face the death penalty because of their struggle against the Iranian occupation, and while sometimes the Ahwazi woman activist has undergone such heavy and cruel punishment, the most prominent Ahwazi woman imprisoned in an Iranian jail is Ms. Faheme Esmaili Badawi. She is an elementary school teacher and political activist who was arrested in 2005 and is currently serving 15 year’s imprisonment in exile from her homeland.

In December 2006, the Iranian occupation regime executed her husband Ali Matouri Zadeh, the Ahwazi activist and founding member of the moderate Hizbal-Wifaq (Reconciliation Party).

The suffering of Faheme Esmaili Badawi cannot be easily summarized through her arrest and the injustice of her husband’s execution, during imprisonment she was forced to give birth to her daughter Salma without receiving adequate medical assistance and in the most unsanitary conditions. Her daughter Salma is now seven years old, and she lives without her mother and her father, who was unjustly hanged by the regime.

Al-Sharq: What is your view of the stance of Arabs and Muslims toward your issue?

MO: Honestly, the position of the Arab and Islamic countries toward the issue of Ahwaz is very weak and timid. It cannot in anyway be considered a significant stance, neither can it be called advocacy or support for it. So far, however, hopeful and positive indicators have recently occurred in one or two of the Arab Gulf countries. However, we can say that there is no Arab state with a clear and explicit stand in support for the Ahwazi issue. In reality, the promises made regarding supporting Ahwazi people were only words spoken, no actions have been taken. There are Arab countries allied with Iran, and these countries, especially the Syrian regime, have handed over political Ahwazi activists to Iran to be sentenced to death and executed.

As for the European position, through the work of human rights and civic organizations, it has resulted in the right of assembly and demonstration for Ahwazi communities in European countries. European governments have met with Ahwazi organizations in order to learn about and understand their cause.

Al-Sharq: What is the stance of the United Nations and international organizations toward the plight of the Ahwazi people?

MO: All that the United Nations and human rights organizations have done is to condemn and denounce the crimes committed by the Iranian occupation authorities in Al-Ahwaz, despite the fact that the Iranian crimes against Ahwazis have reached the level of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The international community has to do its duty to prosecute those responsible for these heinous crimes.

The secret letter leaked from the office of “Abtahi” during the tenure of the President Mohammad Khatami clearly indicated a policy of ethnic cleansing, a policy that is still ongoing and expanding. The letter stipulates orders and certain conditions for conducting systematic ethnic cleansing of Ahwazis within 10 years, such as the banishment of influential and educated Ahwazis such as teachers, university professors and governmental employers to remote Persian areas. This is facilitated through different enticements, particularly by making them promises of providing better living conditions, promotions and increased salaries and then replacing them with Persian settlers who implement the orders of the occupation government in Al-Ahwaz.

Al-Sharq: How do you see the future of the Al-Ahwaz cause and Middle East?

MO: I think that all Ahwazi activists believe that the demise of the occupation and the establishment of the state of Ahwaz is a fact that will come into being and what separates us from our goal is just a matter of time and the need to improve Ahwazi capabilities and facilities that will ensure the development of tools for the Ahwazi struggle to defeat the Persian occupation. Ahwazis fully believe in the future of their cause and work on this basis.

We know the rule says that the revolutionary struggle for liberation from the clutches of colonialism and oppression requires manpower, in fact, we have the manpower that is willing to sacrifice in order to regain the legitimate rights of Al-Ahwaz.

But, we also need foreign support and backing at all levels for our struggle against the Iranian occupation. We need the international human rights and law agencies to decry the human rights abuses practiced against Ahwazi Arab people.

Additionally as Al-Ahwaz has been occupied military and the enemy only understands force, there has to be a regional strategy to supply us with arms and training, as well as the implementation and full force of international law, to recognize us as an occupied and oppressed people. It is the responsibility of the global media and regional media to expose our suffering to the world.

Lack of attention to our just cause is only in the interest of the Iranian occupation to perpetuate its illegal existence and crimes and expansionist aspirations which know no boundaries not only in Al-Ahwaz but all the neighboring Arab countries, as today it is more evident than any other time, when we see Iran’s occupation of Syria, Iraq, Yemen destroying our people’s revolutions through their mercenaries. The only tool that can foil the regime’s devastating colonial advancement in the region is by supporting Ahwazis and other non-Persian ethnic groups such as Turks, Kurds and Baluchs in Iran.

In my point of view, this is the only way we can trample the regime, because as long as the regime exists and there is the absence of a comprehensive national Arabic project to deal with Iran, nowhere in the Middle East will there be peace and stability. Thus, the absence of the Ahwazi cause in the international and regional arena only serves the regime, as the Iranian regime’s major strength has originated from its domination of Al-Ahwaz’s sea oil and gas, albeit, the Ahwazi indigenous people have gained nothing from their vast resources, which have become a curse against them solely.

We ask the international community to support our cause in accordance with the norms and the international conventions because we are a suffering and oppressed people undergoing countless policies of racial discrimination.

The Iranian regime is attempting to melt us down in the crucible of Persian culture, eliminating our Arabic origins. As earlier mentioned, the regime has exercised such brutal racial discrimination policies that have amounted to ethnic cleansing through forcible displacement, reverse migration, and settlement construction for installing Persian settlers in Al-Ahwaz in order to impose a new demographic reality on us and the future of Al-Ahwaz.

The brutal oppression of the indigenous Ahwazi Arab people encompasses political, economic, social and cultural measures has been going on for years, and the sheer injustice imposed on my Arab people has gone unreported for decades, never getting the attention that it deserves. Our cause has been sanctioned due to regional plots related to bilateral economic and political interests.

The most unfair tool that is still used against our plight is the Media Blackout made of the spilled blood of my people who have dared to speak out against the Iranian occupation. Is their blood so cheap, without global condemnation?

The truth is that Ahwazis are sieged and restricted and unable to convey their voices out because the internal media is controlled by the regime and even the outside Persian opponent the media are bribed and supportive of the regime’s crimes against us and deliberately hide our news and events taking place on the ground, as such biased media stigmatizes Ahwazi Arab fighters by describing them as foreign stooges scheming with Britain and Saudi Arabia who want to break up the country and bring corruption, terrorism and Wahhabism.

Likewise, the occupying judicial system presses the same charges against the Ahwazi prisoners and simply executes them. This is because the racism and the anti-Arab sentiment has taken deep root into the minds of the entire Farsi-speaking community. Furthermore, Arab and Western media also have not really put a spotlight on our issue because of the aforesaid reasons, turning our issue into a regional and global orphan.

The outcry of Ahwazi prisoners remains unheard behind bars, so our most basic and smallest demand is to receive help and solidarity from Media outlets to break the Iranian occupation blackout, to make known the reality of the Ahwazis and other ethnic groups, where our most basic conditions are so low in the framework of Iran’s petrified ideology.

We need the world to hear our voice and stand by our side against the Persianization policies and genocide campaign that look like a fatal cancer metastasizing to the whole Ahwazi Arab society as an attempt to erase the Arabic identity of Ahwazis. For instance, as I mentioned earlier, this vicious occupation policy, through denying our native Arabic language, has caused the Ahwazi people to be stammering and uneducated in our own tongue, not able to speak Arabic or write in it.

My people have had enough of torture, prison, execution, poverty and illiteracy. We have had enough of the grief of mothers whose loved ones are executed or imprisoned for years. Let’s stop here because I am speechless. I have run out of words. I cannot depict the gravity of the nameless crimes exercised by the Iranian occupying authorities in Al-Ahwaz. I just look forward to seeing a better future for my Ahwazi oppressed people as they are free of any chains of oppression and living in safety and dignity.

Main Source: Al-Sharq newspaper

Translated by Rahim Hamid

Ahwazi mass demonstration in front of the European Parliament in Brussels

Posted: 03/07/2015 by editormary in Ahwaz, Europe, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Syria

Ahwazi and Syrian freedom flags march together to demand the EU address their human rights.

written by Ahwazna website

The Arab Struggle Movement for the Ahwazi mass demonstration in front of the European Parliament in BrusselsLiberation of Al-Ahwaz has organized a mass demonstration, under the title “We will never forget our Ahwazi people” in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, the Belgian Capital.

The Demonstration took place on Friday 6th of March to condemn the policies of Iranian occupation and the ongoing anti-human atrocities against the Arab people of Ahwaz.

The Ahwazi community organized this massive demonstration as a message of solidarity with the enormous sacrifices of the Ahwazi Arab people in the path of preserving the Arab identity and liberation of the Al-Ahwaz land from Iranian domination which has brought nothing but destruction and murder to its indigenous Arab people. Also, it acts upon the belief in the feasibility of using all legal means in combating the unlawful Iranian occupation and its non-humanitarian practices in Al-Ahwaz.

This demonstration was a part of series of demonstrations and activities undertaken by the Arab Struggle for the Liberation of Ahwaz as a bid to expose the obnoxious occupation policies of the Iranian regime. In addition, to make heard the oppressed voice of Ahwazi Arabs who are under extreme oppression from the occupation by Iran, the likes of which is not known to the world at large, despite the objective brutality of this occupation.

Hundreds of Ahwazis and Syrian took part in the mass demonstration, as there was a significant presence of Arab communities including Iraqis, Lebanon, Yemenis and Palestinians who came from various European countries as well as distinguished media figures and human rights advocates who came from Arab Gulf states and other countries for the purpose of supporting the Ahwazi cause.

Non-Persian communities such as Turks from South Azerbaijan and Kurds from East Kurdistan and Baluchis attended this demonstration to denounce the Iranian regime over its atrocious policies that are murdering their people in cold blood and in particular, against the ongoing machine of execution that is being used at an alarming rate against their activists.

Ahwazi women along with other non-Persian women including Kurds and Turks who came from different countries took part in this demonstration to protest against the violated women’s rights, for their fundamental rights to education in their mother language and for the right to freedom of expression, against sex discrimination and inequality that the totalitarian Iranian regime has been committing against them for decades.

During the demonstration, participants raised the national flag of Ahwaz and the flags of the struggle movement and images of Ahwazi martyrs and prisoners and numerous banners in Arabic and English denouncing the continued policies of forced displacement and changing the demographic structure of Ahwazi Arab areas through construction of exclusive vast settlements for bringing Persian settlers. There were also banners whose theme was the dryness of Ahwazi rivers and marshlands via construction of excessive dams.

Many outspoken political figures emphasized the necessity of supporting the Ahwazi Arab cause in their long struggle against Iranian occupation and ongoing Iran oppression and to denounce the abuse of human rights of Arab people in occupied Ahwaz territory. Moreover, they stress the necessity of implementing an effective political and media strategy to highlight the Ahwazi Arab issue not only amid the Arab world but also on the international level.

As the Arabic region is on the verge of mass domestic unrest and instability, important speeches were addressed to the audience regarding Arab national security and the increasing threat of Iranian influence and its terrorism-driven campaign in Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain and the necessity of Arab countries to build strong alliances to tackle the aggressive Iranian foreign policy which is extending serious repercussions outwards, as its expansionist ambitions to achieve more influence politically and economically in the Arab world countries, mainly Arab Gulf states, become more evident each day.

The partial list of names of veteran political and journalism figures who were present at the demonstration are Dr. Walid Tabtabai, the Former Kuwaiti MP, Mohammad Al-Emadi and Nasser Al-Fezalle the MPs in Bahrain’s parliament, Rashid al-Fayed, the veteran politician and representative of the Lebanese Future Movement, Anwar Malek, an Algerian human rights advocate, Behjet Al-kurdi, the Iraqi political activist, Ayed Al-Shemeri, the prominent Saudi journalist, Delegation from PJAK party, Delegation from Baluchistan and Democratic Party of South Azerbaijan.

The participants spoke about ways to support the struggle of the Arab people of Ahwaz in order to lift the injustice, oppression and racial discrimination which has been practiced against them and also viable solutions to reclaim their freedom and exercise the right to self-determination of Ahwazi Arab people who have sought to end Iranian occupation of their homeland for years.

The demonstration has witnessed notable coverage by Arabic and foreign newspapers as well as TV news channels such as Al-Arabiya, Orient, Alrafidain, Wesal and Lebanon Future Channel.

The Arab Struggle Movement, in a letter submitted to the European Union, called for urgent intervention to immediately stop the Iranian regime’s arbitrary arrests and executions of Ahwazis.

The Movement also appealed to the European Union and its institutions to visit Al-Ahwaz to uncover and document the Iran regime’s occupation practices that have polluted and destroyed the environment, leading to the large-scale spread of dangerous diseases in all parts of Al-Ahwaz.

The delegation of the Arab Struggle Movement met with a number of European Union officials in Brussels after the demonstration.

The delegation stressed the need for the European Union intervention and implementation of safeguards as provided for in international treaties and conventions to protect oppressed peoples under military occupation, in particular, the Arab people of Ahwaz.

The Arab Struggle Movement also expressed its hopes that the EU’s relations with the occupying Iranian regime would not be at the expense of the right of peoples under Iranian occupation, and to be supportive of the demands of the peoples struggling for their freedom and the formation of their Independent States.

The final statement which came out with five recommendations was stated by Musa Mehdi Fakher, the Ahwazi political activist. The some of the notable recommendations are as follow:

– Stop ongoing violent persecution ranging from execution, torture and detainment of Ahwazi Arab people.

– Unconditional release of all Ahwazi political and cultural prisoners.

– Granting the prisoners their legal rights of having access to lawyers and having an open, transparent and non-biased trial respecting human rights standards.

– Stop changing the main courses of Karoon, Jarahi, Karkheh Rivers, and stop damaging the environment in Ahwaz.

– Stop the forced displacement and construction settlement policies that are conducted in line with ethnic cleansing policies against Ahwazi Arab people.

– Support the protesters who are protesting against the Iranian occupying authorities in destroying the environment in Ahwaz.

– Demand for sending specialist envoys to Al-Ahwaz by the United Nations to stand up against the repeated cases of abuse suffered by the people of Ahwaz, where some of them reached the level of extermination and ethnic cleansing crimes, and demand the punishment of those individuals who must be held accountable for these offences.

– Refusal to make the Ahwazi, Kurdish, Baluchi and Turkish Azeri people issues and the violations of human rights of the occupying clerical regime as issues of compromise during the ongoing negotiations between the West and the occupying Mullah regime over its nuclear program. As it is not permissible to compromise on the fundamental rights of these peoples supported by international law under any circumstances.

To conclude, we demand the free world, specifically the EU, to assume its full humanitarian responsibilities and to stand by the side of Ahwazi people and other non-Persian peoples in their legitimate struggle for their freedom and to maintain their dignity.

It is worth mentioning that this demonstration is the third of its kind this year, as the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz has already organized a mass demonstration, entitled “We will never forget our Ahwazi oppressed people” in front of the Embassy of the State of Iranian occupation in the Danish capital, Copenhagen on 10 January 2015. Followed by another massive demonstration in front of the UN headquarters in the Austrian capital Vienna on 20 February 2015, to support the Ahwazi people rising up at home against the Iranian occupation policies.

The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz called for UN intervention in Al-Ahwaz

Posted: 03/03/2015 by editormary in Ahwaz, Culture and Heritage, Europe, Iran, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Strategy for Liberation

Written by Ahwazna website

Ahmad Mola, the Chairman of Political Bureau of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, has called on the United Nations to take swift actions against the continued Iranian regime’s crimes in Al-Ahwaz.

At a time when the Ahwazi Arab people continue their decade’s long struggle to regain their homeland’s independence from Persian occupation, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz organized a demonstration in front of the UN headquarters in the Austrian capital Vienna on 20 February, 2015.

The demonstration, expressed the support and solidarity of the Ahwazi Arab community, Arab and non-Persian groups in Europe with the Ahwazi people rebelling against the lingering inhuman policies of Iran’s occupation in Al-Ahwaz.

The Arab Struggle Movement in a letter submitted to the United Nations called on for the urgent intervention to immediately to stop the Iranian regime’s arbitrary arrests and executions of Ahwazis. The Movement also appealed to United Nations Environment and Health organizations to visit Al-Ahwaz to uncover and document the Iran regime’s occupation practices that have polluted and destroyed the environment leading to the large-scale spread of dangerous diseases in all parts of Al-Ahwaz.

The delegation of the Arab Struggle Movement met with a number of United Nations officials in Vienna after the demonstration. The delegation stressed the need for United Nations intervention and implementation of safeguards as provided for in international treaties and conventions to protect oppressed peoples under military occupation, in particular, the Arab people of Ahwaz.

While the demonstration showed solidarity with the decades-long suffering of the people of Ahwaz, Ahmad Mola, the Chairman of Political Bureau of the Arab Struggle Movement stated that the suffering becoming worse by the day due to Iranian occupation and violations of human rights in Ahwaz.

Such policies are inconsistent with and in violation of international law and covenants, hence the urgent appeal to the United Nations to intervene to prevent the State of Iran’s colonization and human rights violations against Ahwazi people living under occupation.

Ahmad Mola added, “the crimes of the Iranian occupation are approaching a very dangerous turning point in Al-Ahwaz and we hope that the United Nations perform its humanitarian and its legal duty to upholding the right of the Ahwazi Arab people in their freedom and independence from the Iran’s occupation and the backing and support of the struggle of our people in all its forms”.

“When you read about the Ahwazi people sufferings you will understand the occupying Iran regime’s policies are aimed at completely erasing the people of Ahwaz, their history, culture and future by constructing settlements which target Ahwaz and its population”.

“This is meant to undermine Arab identity in the crucible of Persian culture. The spread of drug addiction and crime in Ahwaz is also largely attributable to the policies of the Iran regime. This enemy of democracy spreads ignorance and backwardness and tries to repress the entire Al-Ahwaz region by supporting drug dealers and yet another attempt to ruin Ahwazi society”, said.

Ahmad Mola, the Chairman of Political Bureau of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, has called on the United Nations to take swift actions against the continued Iranian regime’s crimes in Al-Ahwaz.

“The plight of Ahwazi people is very long term, and their right to independence and safety has worsened during successive Iranian regimes that denied the fundamental right of having access to education in mother language and punishing everyone for acquiring Arabic books attempting to make Ahwazis to be lost generation without identity and history melting in Persian culture . However, despite all this, the Persian state’ racist policies failed due to the strong national will of our people in rejecting occupation adhering to their Arab identity and culture.

Iran’s Sharia law and legal system make it one of the worst, repressive, totalitarian regimes in the world. It is hard to find a system which is more politically manipulative, and its theocratic rule misleads its people and the world.

It is opportunistic, self-serving and sectarian, discriminating particularly by region and socially excluding many. Its aim is for the country to be entirely dominated by glorifying Safavid history and culture, whilst destroying other neighboring history and culture.

The Iran regime’s expansionist policy, for example in the case of UAE islands and neighboring regions such as occupied Al-Ahwaz, is done aggressively and ruthlessly with no regard for international relations or upholding human rights”, said Ahmad Mola.

The demonstration came as mentioned in the earlier statement released by the movement of its media “Ahwazna” to support the people of Ahwazis’s struggling against the State of Iran’s occupation policies and to condemn the Iranian occupier criminal policies committed against the land and the people, including drying rivers, which cause environmental pollution in Ahwaz, where the region called “the capital of global pollution.”

The protesters carried Arabic and English signs demanding the Iran regime stop the ethnic cleansing policies against the Ahwazi Arab people, and that the world condemn the land confiscation policies taking place in Ahwaz.

Many of the Ahwazi Arab protesters who participated in the massive rally came from various European countries. There was significant presence of the Arab community showing solidarity with the Ahwazi Arab people, in addition to a number of Arab brothers who are supporters of the cause of Ahwaz hailing from European and Arab countries The friends and comrades of the Kurdish, Baluch and Turkmen communities, whose people also suffer under the enslavement and occupation of the Persian state, made an unforgettable presence at the demonstration, embodying the spirit of true friendship and solidarity in the face of the most notorious occupation on earth.

During the demonstration, Ahwazi participants raised the national flag of Ahwaz and carried posters of martyrs and prisoners and banners in both Arabic and English, condemning the policies of forced displacement and changing demographics which are being carried out by the Persian occupation.

They strongly denounced and condemned Iran’s changing the course of the Karoon River, and diverting its water away from the Ahwazis to central Persian regions.

The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, who had called for this demonstration, stated that despite grave human rights violations perpetrated against Ahwazi people, the plight of this occupied nation remained invisible to the world at large.

The ultimate aim of the demonstration was to bring the suffering of the Ahwazi people to the attention of the public and to demand that the international organizations place pressure on the Iranian regime to stop the ethnic cleansing practices, the arbitrary arrests and executions of the Ahwazi Arab people, and to recognize and uphold the political prisoner status of the political and human rights activists.

For years, Iran has been oppressing the Ahwazi Arab people through intimidation, mass arrests, torture, and mass execution of Ahwazi civilians.

The exploitation of the wealth and natural resources of Ahwaz, In particular, the natural gas and oil are being extracted without discernible economic benefit for the Ahwazi Arab people.

The Persian state’s policies have crippled the majority of the Ahwazi Arab population, with an estimated 80 percent of Ahwazi households living below the poverty line, while they are living on the sea of oil and gas, and mineral resources that have been exploited and stolen since 1925.

Press and media censorship continues to be a serious obstacle for Ahwazi activists speaking out against the non-stop abuses being committed against the Ahwazi people. This censorship allows the Iranian regime to discriminate perpetually against the Ahwazi Arab people.

Ahmad Mola, addressing the Arab and regional countries reminded that the Iranian state is rapidly controlling and destabilizing the whole region. The Ahwazi Arab parties, with the right military training and arms, would be ready to inflict strong blows to the Iran regime, but support and shelter from Arab and regional countries were imperative.

Vanessa e Greta, thank you: a message from a member of the SNC

Posted: 01/23/2015 by editormary in Europe, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East, Opinions and Letters, Refugees, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Syria, War
Tags: Greta Ramelli, Vanessa Marzullo

Thank you, from Nour, an artist in Syria.

Dearest daughters, dear Vanessa and Greta,

Welcome home. We are very happy to know you are safe within the loving embrace of your families. In these five months we have never stopped praying for you.

I want to just write a few lines to thank you for your sacrifice and your commitment, thank you for having made the cause of the long-suffering Syrian people your own and for having taken so fully to heart the suffering of the children, women, youth and the elderly who are dying in Syria. You are a noble example of what volunteering is, the pride and joy of Italy, where every day thousands of persons are dedicated to helping those in need. The Syrian people thank both of you and all the Italians who have never stopped sending their aid and who have welcomed and comforted refugees in transit on Italian soil.

You have been mothers to the little orphans and sisters to the many Syrian women who are paying with their lives without any reason for it. You have waved the flag of Free Syria, honouring the sacrifice of the 270 thousand Syrian victims who have died in the name of dignity and freedom.

As a father, I am so proud of your altruism and your generosity: so young, and yet at the same time, so sensitive to the pain of the millions of helpless civilians who have been undergoing a genocide for almost four years. My dear daughters, five months spent so far away from your loved ones, five difficult months of pain and suffering: you have paid so dearly for your altruistic instinct for which the entire Syrian population, 21 million persons, are indebted to you.

Please don’t apologise, on the contrary: the world of free men and women is on your side and is with you, and is very sorry for all that has happened to you and what you have had to undergo.

Welcome back, and may you receive the blessings that the Lord will grant you for your generosity and sensitivity.

Dr. Dachan Mohamed Nour

Syrian National Council

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WRITTEN AND TRANSLATED By Samantha Falciatori

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Ahwazi mass demonstration in front of the European Parliament in Brussels

The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz called for UN intervention in Al-Ahwaz

Vanessa e Greta, thank you: a message from a member of the SNC

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WRITTEN AND TRANSLATED By Samantha Falciatori

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