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HOW GLOBAL ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - Admin - 03-07-2010

ANOTHER  NONMUSLIM GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST MUSLIMS AND CROCODILE TEARS SHED. THE PROSECUTION OF GENOCIDAL NAZI BUDDHIST WAR CRIMINALS AND  AUNG SAN SUU KYI  IS NOT ENOUGH. WHAT ABOUT SANCTIONS AND  REGIME CHANGE AND IS NOT IT TIME TO RAISE A REAL  INDEPENDENT GLOBAL TRANSNATIONAL ISLAMIC ARMY OF JUSTICE  DEFENDING THE DEFENCELESS AND TAKING ON  THE OPPRESSORS AND GIVING THEM SOME OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE.  


SUFFICE TO STATE THAT  THE EXACT NATURE OF THIS NEW ENTITY AND IT'S PARAMETERS WILL BE OUTLINED.  THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AS WHAT IS BEING CALLED FOR WILL NOT BE ANOTHER  WESTERN NATO PROXY LIKE AL QAEDA OR DAESH NOR A SECTARIAN ENTITY SUCH AS HIZBULLAH . WE WILL ADDRESS THIS SOON AS IT'S EMERGENCE  IS INEVITABLE JUST AS WE SEE THE SUNSET AND SUNRISE. WE HERALD AND  SALUTE THE FORTHCOMING ISLAMIC JUSTICE ARMY WHICH IS OVERDUE                  

BUDDHIST TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE AGAINST  ROHINGYAS 

www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/indonesia-fm-urge-myanmar-halt-rohingya-violence-170903160924784.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/in...24784.html
www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/09/01/533709/Erdogan-Rohingya-Muslims-genocide
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/feature...42812.html



GENOCIDE OF ROHINGYA MUSLIMS BY MYANMAR ARMY AND BUDDHIST VIGILANTES




ROHINGYA REFUGEES CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO NASTY REGIMES
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articl...ty-regimes


BURMA's ROHINGYA MUSLIMS FACE WORST CRISIS YET 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMcaktqgFxA



THE DEBATE – PLIGHT OF ROHINGYA MUSLIMS 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwYYxrDCSc



HAJJ 2017 ROHINGYA MATTERED NOT


FIVE THINGS TO DO AND KNOW THE ROHINGYA 



AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI URGES ACTION AGAINST MYANMAR GOVERNMENT OVER ROHINGYA MUSLIMS 

[url=http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/09/12/534856/Iran-Leader-Myanmar-government-political-economic-pressure]http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/09/12...c-pressure


Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called on Islamic governments to exert political and economic pressure on Myanmar’s “cruel” government to make it stop a deadly crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims in the Southeast Asian country.

Speaking on Tuesday, Ayatollah Khamenei urged practical measures by Islamic governments to end the crisis in Myanmar.

“Of course, practical measures don’t mean military deployments. Rather, they (Islamic governments) have to increase their political, economic, and trade pressure on Myanmar’s government and cry out against these crimes in international organizations,” the Leader said.

Myanmar’s government has laid a siege to a western state where the Rohingya are concentrated. There, horrific violence has been taking place against the minority Muslims, according to reports and eyewitnesses.

Soldiers and extremist Buddhists have reportedly been killing or raping the Muslims and setting their homes on fire. The Myanmarese government says 400 people, mostly Muslims, have died in the latest bout of violence. The UN says the actual number likely tops 1,000. Ayatollah Khamenei strongly criticized the silence and inaction of international bodies and self-proclaimed human rights advocates on those ongoing atrocities.

The Leader said the crisis in Myanmar is a political issue and should not be reduced to a religious conflict between Muslims and Buddhists, although he said religious prejudice may have been involved.

“This is a political issue because the party that has been carrying out the atrocities is Myanmar’s government, at the top of which is a cruel woman who has won the Nobel Peace Prize. And with these incidents, the death of the Nobel Peace Prize has been spelled,” he said. Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has taken almost no action to end the deadly violence against the Rohingya in the country’s western Rakhine State. Recently, she said widespread reports of brutal violence against the Muslims were fake news.


Ayatollah Khamenei said the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should convene to discuss the crisis in Myanmar. 

The Leader said Iran has to be bold in making its stance known. 
“The world today is the world of oppression, and the Islamic Republic has to maintain for itself the honor of speaking out against oppression anywhere in the world, whether in territories occupied by Zionists, or in Bahrain, or Yemen, or Myanmar,” he said.


UN URGES AN END TO ROHINGYA VIOLENCE

UN head demands Myanmar government to halt military action in Rakhine state and grant Muslim-minority legal status.

Guterres called on the authorities to allow the UN and NGOs into Rakhine State to provide humanitarian aid 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the Myanmar government to end its military campaign against the Rohingya Muslims, acknowledging that the minority group was being ethnically cleansed in the Buddhist-majority nation. 

Speaking ahead of a closed-door UN Security Council meeting to discuss the humanitarian crisis on Wednesday, Guterres called the situation for the Rohingya refugees "catastrophic" and "completely unacceptable".

Around 370,000 of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population have fled the country's western state of Rakhine into neighbouring Bangladesh in recent weeks, according to the UN.
The violence began on August 25, after Rohingya fighters attacked police posts, prompting a military crackdown.

"I call on the Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence, uphold the rule of law and recognise the right of return of all those who have had to leave the country," the UN chief said at the press conference in New York. Guterres' comments mirrored those of UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, who denounced the situation in Myanmar as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" on Monday. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan, reporting from the UN headquarters, said it remains to be seen if the Security Council can do anything from a practical standpoint following Wednesday's meeting. "There is a lot of concern here at the UN about the ongoing crisis," she said. "The question is who can be held accountable and can the situation be resolved quickly or is there going to be another looming humanitarian catastrophe." 
 
Guterres' remarks came as Myanmar's national leader Aung San Suu Kyi cancels her trip to next week's UN General Assembly to deal with the crisis, her office said on Wednesday. She is due to give her first speech on the crisis in a televised address next week.  Suu Kyi has been widely condemned for a lack of moral leadership and compassion in the face of the crisis, denting the Nobel peace laureate's reputation. The secretary-general also said he has spoken to Suu Kyi several times.

Dramatic tragedy
Pressure has been mounting on Myanmar to end the recent surge in violence, with the United States calling for protection of civilians and Bangladesh urging safe zones to enable refugees to go home.

Asked if the situation could be described as ethnic cleansing, Guterres replied: "Well I would answer your question with another question: When one-third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, could you find a better word to describe it?"  Myanmar's government said on Wednesday that 176 Rohingya villages were completely empty, as residents fled the recent upsurge in violence. "This is a dramatic tragedy," Guterres said. "People are dying and suffering at horrible numbers and we need to stop it. That is my main concern. The government says about 400 people have been killed in the latest fighting in the western state. Guterres called 
on the authorities to allow the UN and NGOs into Rakhine State to provide humanitarian aid. The UN describes the Rohingya as the world's most persecuted people. The Rohingya have suffered years of discrimination and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982. 

But Guterres said that the Myanmar government should either grant the Rohingya nationality or legal status that would allow them to live a normal life.




THE TRUTH BEHIND WHAT REALLY HAPPENED


ROHINGYA: HATE SPEECH, LIES AND MEDIA MISINFORMATION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWpV3rk8c0&feature=youtu.be



UPFRONT - AUNG SAN SUU KYI : TURNING HER BACK ON ROHINGYA? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFZGgusN7_I

GEORGE GALLOWAY TALKS ABOUT BURMA GENOCIDE OF ROHINGYA PEOPLE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxbkwuOSRlI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlKMTVQ9wJY

GEORGE GALLOWAY BLASTS AUNG SAN SUU KYI AND DEMANDS HER NOBEL PEACE PRIZE STRIPPED FROM HER 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pQlUNC4a8c


GENOCIDE OF THE ROHINGYA 
Mahboob Alam
[size=undefined][size=undefined]https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/genocide-of-the-rohingya

ROHINGYA: ABANDONED BY THE WORLD
 www.hizb.org.uk/multimedia/videos/rohingya-abandoned-world[/size]

WHO CAN PROTECT THE ROHINGYA MUSLIMS ?

The US' top diplomat decries Rohingya suffering but stops short of calling it ethnic cleansing or demanding sanctions.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insi...33623.html

Depending on who you ask, the Rohingya people in Myanmar are facing ethnic cleansing, genocide, or simply a complicated situation. Myanmar's government has exonerated itself and says accusations against the military are completely false. Many people across the world disagree. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls the plight of the Rohingya a "tremendous concern". US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also visited Myanmar and denounced "horrific" violence.


What now for the persecuted minority?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom


Guests:

Matthew Smith - Fortify Rights campaign group
Phil Robertson - Human Rights Watch
Simon Billenness - International Campaign for the Rohingya


ROHINGYA MUST BE CONSULTED BEFORE REPATRIATION
Adam Bemma
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/ro...10411.html


The repatriation deal does not take Rohingya refugees' rights into consideration, said the European Rohingya Council (ERC). Its Malaysia ambassador, Tengku Emma Zuriana, has spoken out against it. "This repatriation process should not proceed until the safety of the Rohingya [can be] ensured," she said. Malaysia is home to about 150,000 Rohingya. Several non-government organisations held a press conference here on Thursday to discuss the repatriation plan.

The United Nations and United States have stated the violent actions taken by Myanmar's armed forces and "local vigilantes" amount to ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya minority. "This must be a voluntary process, in safety and dignity, and for them to return to their homes - not into camps. And if there's any loss of property and life, it must be compensated fairly," Zuriana said.

Malaysian civil society groups and faith-based organisations urged the Myanmar government to end the violence, and to ensure the safety of the Rohingya living in Rakhine state before any repatriation process begins. The Malaysia Consultative Council of Islamic Organisation (MAPIM) said any repatriation deal must include protection and compensation for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who've lost everything amid the heavy-handed "security clearance" operation.

"Even if the agreement has been finalised, we strongly call on the UN to ensure safe passage for the Rohingya to return back to their homes," said MAPIM President Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid. He went on to ask the international community and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): "What repatriation are they planning to implement when the Rohingya's' lives are totally destroyed?"

Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHROM) wanted to remind Bangladesh of past Rohingya repatriations to Myanmar. "[An] estimated 240,000 Rohingya were repatriated by the Bangladesh government under the 1978 agreement, which had a six month time limit. After that, Bangladesh repatriated about 236,000 Rohingya until 2005 under the 1992 agreement," noted MERHROM President Zafar Ahmad. In 2012, Myanmar's armed forces began to force Rohingya into refugee camps, both in Rakhine state and across the border into Bangladesh.

Recent attacks on a police outpost in Rakhine state by the armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) sparked the latest army crackdown. More than 600,000 Rohingya fled their homes into Bangladesh's refugee camps. Hundreds of thousands have fled since late August 

MERHROM wants the UN Security Council to conduct an assessment of the situation in Rakhine state, to ensure military operations against Rohingya have ceased. Myanmar Armed Forces Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has said the Rohingya could return only if they are "real citizens". The UN said on Friday the time wasn't right for a Rohingya return. "At present, conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine state are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns. Refugees are still fleeing, and many have suffered violence, rape, and deep psychological harm," said Adrian Edwards, a spokesperson for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "It is critical that returns do not take place precipitously or prematurely, without the informed consent of refugees or the basic elements of lasting solutions in place," he added.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia agree they must be consulted. "Until the Myanmar government is serious to improve the situation, the Bangladesh government should not agree to any repatriation plan," Zuriana said. "The European Rohingya Council is calling [on] Myanmar authorities to grant full citizenship to the Rohingya and review the [1982] citizenship law."

Myanmar forces committed 'widespread rape' of Rohingya

ERC called on the international community to send a clear message to Myanmar that it will not tolerate any further violence. It also said it wants to see the UN observe, support, and monitor all investigations into  human rights violations. Humanitarian agencies providing aid and medical services to the Rohingya in Rakhine state are not allowed to access secured areas, where those most affected need urgent help. Until unhindered access is granted to aid agencies in Rakhine by the Myanmar government, refugee and civil society groups in Malaysia will continue to voice opposition to any agreement, they said.

The concern is Myanmar will force returning Rohingya into displacement camps and settlement zones protected by the same armed forces guilty of carrying out attacks them. "They don't have the freedom to go back home," Zuriana said.


  • ROHINGYA TRAPPED IN OPEN AIR PRISON OF APARTHEID
         www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/rohingya-trapped-open-air-prison-apartheid-171121062049964.html


Imagine that your son becomes critically ill, but he is not allowed into the nearest hospital for treatment. You need to travel to the market to earn enough money to put food on the table, but you cannot get the permit required to leave your village. You want to go to school to gain an education, but a government official tells you that people like you are not welcome there. These restrictions are not there for any other reason than because of who you are. Because of your race, your ethnicity and your religion.

This is the daily reality facing hundreds of thousands of people belonging to the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.For months, the world has listened in horror to stories from the more than 600,000 mainly Rohingya who have fled into Bangladesh following the Myanmar security forces' vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing. Soldiers have killed people at random, torched whole villages and committed rape and other acts of sexual violence. But these violations have not happened in a vacuum. Today, Amnesty International is publishing a ground-breaking investigation into the root causes of the current crisis. It reveals the full extent of the state-sponsored and dehumanising system of discrimination facing Rohingya inside their own country.

We have spent the past two years gathering an extensive body of evidence and conducting a thorough legal analysis of the situation in Rakhine state, the western region of Myanmar which is home to the vast majority of Rohingya. Ultimately, we drew the obvious legal conclusion: what the Rohingya are subjected to is nothing short of the crime against humanity that is apartheid. This crime is clearly defined in international law, including in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Myanmar forces committed 'widespread rape' of Rohingya

For the Rohingya still left in Myanmar, life inside Rakhine State resembles an open-air prison. They live under a system of repression that is upheld through an intricate web of laws, policies and practices, imposed by state officials at all levels - township, district, state and nation-wide.

At the heart of the discriminatory policies are extreme restrictions on the Rohingya's' freedom of movement. Across the entire state, Rohingya need official permission to travel between townships. In some areas, they need special permits even to move between villages.

In others, they are essentially under lockdown in their homes every night, and at risk of arrest if they try to leave villages or neighbourhoods without authorisation or outside of curfew hours. 

There are even areas where Rohingya are not allowed to use roads but can only travel by waterways, and then only to other Muslim villages. For those who do obtain permission to travel, a network of checkpoints is a source of endless harassment, extortion and sometimes violence at the hands of the notorious Border Guard Police in northern Rakhine State.

For Rohingya who need medical care, access to the main hospital in the state capital Sittwe is severely restricted, except in extreme emergency cases. Those who do get admitted are kept under police guard in separate "Muslim wards". Rohingya children are largely banned from government schools, while government teachers often refuse to travel to Muslim areas. The restrictions also mean that accessing food or livelihood opportunities is an enormous struggle. Malnutrition and poverty are extremely widespread.

Underpinning this discrimination is the fact that Rohingya have essentially been denied citizenship - and the rights associated with it - since the early 1980s when authorities enacted a law to this effect. But the repression has intensified alarmingly recently - in particular since 2012 when waves of violence between Muslims and Buddhist, who were often supported security officials, swept the region.

Who can protect the Rohingya Muslims?


I have spent the past two years travelling back and forth to Rakhine state and the stories I have heard have been deeply moving. Over and over again, Rohingya and other Muslim communities described their lives in Rakhine State in terms such as living in a cage. I spoke to a 16-year-old girl who, just hours after sitting her school physics exam, told me she had abandoned her dream of becoming a doctor because as a Rohingya she was not allowed to access higher education. Countless people said they were struggling to survive, not the least because the government continues to deny aid groups access to Rakhine state.


What unites almost everyone I spoke to is a profound sense of hopelessness and despair about the future. Many have been trapped in this reality for as long as they can remember, and cannot see a way out. "There is no rule of law here. It is a lawless land... There is no hope," the father of a young man who was killed by border guard police told me.

The only way forward is for the Myanmar government to act immediately to dismantle this appalling regime. A very first step must be to develop a comprehensive action plan to dismantle the system of apartheid, which must include repealing or amending all discriminatory laws and radically changing policies and practices. Crimes against humanity are being committed in Rakhine State on a daily basis. The evidence documented by Amnesty International indicates that these crimes are committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination of a racial group and thus constitute the crime of apartheid.

This cannot be ignored and swept under the carpet. A climate of impunity where human rights violations and crimes go unpunished only serves to perpetuate the cycle of abuse. There must be accountability and those responsible - regardless of rank or position - must be brought to justice. If the government is unwilling and unable to take up this task, which it so far has been, the international community must step in. States must use every diplomatic tool at their disposal to pressure the Myanmar authorities to act now. Donor countries, in particular, must be careful to ensure that development aid is not spent in a way that props up this nightmarish system. The world can no longer stand idle in the face of this 21st century apartheid.


UN DOCUMENTS SHOCKING CRIMES BY MYANMAR ARMY 
Top Myanmar generals led brutal campaign against Rohingya involving "gravest crimes under international law"
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/r...44502.html


Myanmar's military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya with "genocidal intent" and the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted, UN investigators said on Monday. It was the first time the United Nations explicitly called for Myanmar officials to face genocide charges over their campaign against the Rohingya, and is likely to deepen the Southeast Asian nation's isolation.  The UN mission found Myanmar's armed forces had taken actions that "undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law", forcing more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee starting in late August 2017.
Speaking in Geneva on Monday, Marzuki Darusman, the mission's chairman, said his researchers amassed evidence based on 875 interviews with witnesses and victims, satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos. Marzuki said victim accounts were "amongst the most shocking human rights violations" he had come across and would "leave a mark on all of us for the rest of our lives".

WATCH:


He described Myanmar's military as having shown "flagrant disregard for lives" and displayed "extreme levels of brutality".  "The Rohingya are in a continuing situation of severe systemic and institutionalised oppression from birth to death," Marzuki said. The UN does not apply the word "genocide" lightly.  Its assessment suggests crimes against the Rohingya could meet the strict legal definition used in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan's Darfur region.


'Burning entire villages'

The team cited a "conservative" estimate from aid group Reporters Without Borders that some 10,000 people had been killed in the violence, but outside investigators have had no access to the affected regions, making a precise accounting elusive, if not impossible.  The UN report said military generals, including Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, must face investigation and prosecution for "genocidal intent" in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, as well as crimes against humanity and other war crimes in the states of Kachin and Shan. The report singled out Myanmar's military, known as the Tatmadaw, but added that other Myanmar security agencies were also involved in abuses. "Military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang-raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages," the report said.  "The Tatmadaw's tactics are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine state but also in northern Myanmar."

In Rakhine state, there was evidence of extermination and deportation, the report added.
"The crimes in Rakhine state, and the manner in which they were perpetrated, are similar in nature, gravity and scope to those that have allowed genocidal intent to be established in other contexts," the UN mission concluded, adding there was "sufficient information" to prosecute the military's chain of command. 


Christopher Sidoti, a member of the investigatory committee, urged the UN Security Council and General Assembly to act on the report's findings. "We are convinced the international community holds the key to dismantling the destructive veil of impunity in Myanmar," he said.


'This is extremely significant'

Mohammed Jamjoom, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Cox's Bazar   "What we've heard in the report really 



lines up with witness testimonies I've heard here. For most of the past year, when official bodies of governance spoke about the atrocities committed in Rakhine state, they called it ethnic cleansing.  Now there's a very extensive UN fact-finding mission recommending that top tier military officials in Myanmar be prosecuted and investigated for genocide.  When the members of the panel in Geneva laid out their investigation, they said that they conducted 875 interviews, they talked about the destructive veil of impunity in Myanmar and they said that until that is lifted, the cycle of violence in Myanmar will continue.   They said there needs to be a mechanism by which these crimes can be prosecuted and the cycle of violence in Myanmar can be ended.

That's going to be very difficult, we don't know exactly where this goes. At some point, it will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council and then potentially to the UN Security Council.
But we must remember that Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, so the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction."


Criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi
Investigators compiled a list of suspects, which included Min Aung Hlaing and other military commanders. The mission said a full list of suspects will be made available to any credible body pursuing accountability, adding that the case should be referred to the International Criminal Court, or an ad hoc criminal tribunal.  Myanmar's civilian leadership also drew criticism for its failure to prevent the abuses.  "The State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has not used her de facto position as Head of Government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in Rakhine State," the report said. 


The Government and the Tatmadaw have fostered a climate in which hate speech thrives, human rights violations are legitimized, and incitement to discrimination and violence facilitated.


UN REPORT
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been criticised internationally for her failure to speak out against abuses in Rakhine State and has had several human rights awards rescinded for her stance.

The Rohingya: Silent Abuse
In August 2017, Myanmar's armed forces launched a campaign ostensibly against Rohingya armed groups in Rakhine state.  Investigators documented mass killings, the destruction of Rohingya dwellings, and "large-scale" gang rape by Myanmar soldiers.  The UN's report drew praise from the ground in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, where refugee camps have taken in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from across the border.  "We are happy for this. If these army people are punished the world will take note of it. They are killers. They must be punished," said Mohammed Hasan, 46, who lives in the Kutupalong refugee camp.  "They killed thousands, we have seen that. They torched our homes, that's a fact. They raped our women, that's not false." 



SUU KYI USES FIRST APPEARANCE SINCE UN DAMNING REPORT TO DISCUSS LITERATURE

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/08/2...-UN-report 
Myanmar’s embattled leader Aung San Suu Kyi has resorted to literature instead of addressing the critical humanitarian issues regarding her country’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in her first public appearance a day after a damning report by the United Nations confirmed that “genocide” had occurred in the country under her watch.  In her speech at the University of Yangon on Tuesday, Suu Kyi discussed poetry and literature instead of reviewing the scathing report compiled by a UN mission and published a day earlier, which concluded that Myanmar’s military had carried out a series of “shocking” rights violations against the Rohingya, including mass killings and gang rapes. 

According to the damning report, the military had carried out "genocide" of the Rohingya in Rakhine state, the home province of majority of the Muslims, and was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the states of Rakhine, Shan and Kachin. Myanmar generals directed murder, rape, and arson that sent 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing for their lives, but Aung San Suu Kyi reassures us that the generals she knows are "all rather sweet." Not to worry. 

http://bit.ly/2BtBdAz 
2:52 PM - Aug 21, 2018



In its final report released on Monday, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said the country’s army, led by Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, had carried out the “gravest crimes” against the Rohingya with “genocidal intent.”  The UN investigators called for an international probe and prosecution of Myanmar’s army chief and five other top military commanders for their crimes.  However, the Myanmar leader, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner, chose instead to stay silent on all issues of politics and made no mention of the shocking report by the world body.

PressTV-Facebook removes Myanmar's military chief
Facebook removes accounts belonging to Myanmar's military chief and a number of other pages related to Myanmar after a UN fact-finding team calls for his prosecution,

Suu Kyi, whose government is now facing mounting calls to be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, spent almost all the afternoon chatting with students about the merits of Gone With the Wind, a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, and the differences between fiction and non-fiction.


Kitty Holland
@KittyHollandIT


Aung San Suu Kyi should be arrested and brought before International War Crimes Tribunal...women and children burnt to death under her watch


10:08 PM - Aug 27, 2018



Last year, Myanmar’s armed forces, backed by Buddhist extremists, launched a state-sponsored crackdown against the Rohingya in Rakhine under the pretext of a number of attacks on military posts blamed on the minority group.


The crackdown, once described by the UN as the textbook example of "ethnic cleansing," forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, where they are living in overcrowded refugee camps in dire humanitarian conditions.

PressTV-Rohingya rally to mark Myanmar 'genocide' anniversary
Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh rally to call for "justice" on the anniversary of Myanmar’s deadly crackdown on the minority group.

The new report further lashed out at Myanmar’s de facto leader for failing to give a proper response to the military’s brutalities, which have drawn widespread criticism from the UN and leading international organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees by 2020, followed up by an agreement with the UN last month.  Experts and Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh say a recent deal falls short of guaranteeing the Muslims’ safe return to Myanmar.




HOW GLOBAL ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - Admin - 10-16-2014

 Dr.Muhammad Ahsan

Abstract: The post-9/11 situation has brought several changes in the world and there are winners and losers in this process. Unfortunately, the Muslim World is one of the main losers in this regard. This situation does not help in bringing global peace and prosperity; rather, it creates more problems. This paper is an effort to analyse this situation. It argues that the global media is an important source of informal education. But unfortunately it is dominated by major global players and they use it to influence global opinion by defaming Islam and Muslims. Although this piece of research acknowledges some pro-Islamic views reported in the global media, they are well in minority and thus do not influence the global opinion. This strategy is not helpful in promoting global peace when on several occasions Islam has been branded a violent religion while Muslims are labelled as terrorists.??This short piece of research highlights the need for concrete measures and suggests some steps that can be taken for the building of mutual confidence between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world.

Read more here

http://ipripak.org/journal/winter2005/is...obia.shtml



MEDIA STOKES ISLAMOPHOBIA: UK STUDY
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1169744118165&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout


The report said that the media was demonizing Muslims and Arabs and stoking prejudice and stereotypes

CAIRO — The Western media and film industry are perpetuating Islamophobia and prejudice by demonizing Muslims and Arabs as violent, dangerous and threatening people, according to a new British report released Friday, January 26.
"The western media are largely seen by Muslims as a negative influence," co-author Sameera Ahmed said in the report "The British media and Muslim representation: the ideology of demonization,," a copy of which was e-mailed to IslamOnline.net.

The study, conducted by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said that the media was demonizing Muslims and Arabs and stoking prejudice and stereotypes.

"This view is perhaps not without foundation," added Ahmed.

"The traditional Orientalist stereotypes of Muslims as political anarchists and tyrants at home subjugating their women have been disseminated in the media as caricatures and stereotypes.

"Very often the news that is shown about Muslims centers around negative stories," she added.

The report said that the Western media was failing to address anti-Muslim issues.

"The TV News analyzed showed a limited framework within which Muslims and Islam were discussed," it said.

Islamophobic

A survey conducted as part of the British report showed that the majority of respondents view Western media as "Islamophobic".

"All respondents unanimously pointed to media as being the chief instrument of Islamophobia," said the report.

Some 63.4% of British Muslim respondents said media portrayal was Islamophobic.

A further 15.5% felt media to be racist while 9.4% said it was covertly destructive.

The survey also found that 9.9% of non-British Muslims believe media portrayal was Islamophobic while 15.5% said media were racist and 13.2% thought it was covertly destructive.

"There is a dominant perception amongst Muslims that the media does indeed portray them and their religion in an inaccurate and derogatory manner," said the report.

Famed US academic Stephen Schwartz had criticized the western media for failing to meet the challenge of reporting on Islam and Arab issues after the 9/11 attacks.

An independent review ordered by the BBC has recently concluded that its coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is "inconsistent, incomplete and misleading," failing to adequately report the hardships of Palestinians living under occupation.

Films  

    
The report said the film industries in Britain and the United States were stoking fears of Muslims and Arabs

The British report said the film industries in Britain and the United States were also stoking fears of Muslims and Arabs.

"A broad spectrum including Hollywood action blockbusters, cartoons and British artistic movies are all means through which either crude or exaggerated stereotypes are reinforced or otherwise more subtle disdain of Islam is obtained."

The report cited a number of Hollywood and British movies giving the image of Arabs and Muslims as "violent and terrorist" people.

The Siegeportrays Palestinians carrying out a wave of attacks in New York city in response to the abduction of a Muslim religious leader by the US military.

"Apart from the monolithic stereotype of the Arab/Palestinian/Muslim being violent and ready to be martyred for their cause (a ‘cause’ which is never given any context and seems puzzling to the average American), a considerable number of other stereotypes about the Muslim/Arab culture and religion were presented in the film," the report said.

"Muslim men are shown praying in a mosque, a call to prayer is made from a New York mosque minaret, recitation of the Qur`an or prayers are said in Arabic and one of the ‘mastermind’ terrorists is shown using a rosary.

"All of these scenes are dotted about in the film between acts of violence, bombs exploding and indiscriminate killing, and more often than not they have no direct connection to the overall storyline."

Executive Decision also portrays Palestinians hijacking a Boeing 747 to launch a nerve gas attack on Washington D.C.

The film "plays on the worst fears ... about a potential terrorist lurking in every Arab/Middle Eastern/Muslim-looking person, and the incompatibility of Islamic and western values," it added.

The report also cited the Disney film Aladdin which describes Aladdin's homeland as "barbaric", and that "good Arabs" including Aladdin are given American accents while the rest of the cast have "exaggerated and ridiculous Arab accents".

"It was evident from all genres that they contained negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims/ Arabs," added the report.

"They all exhibited examples of Islamophobic discourses, including dual discourses of racism and Islamophobia, where the ethnicity of the character was understood to be irreducibly Muslim ."

The 114-member Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) launched in June a news service to counter ill-founded and misleading Western media reports.

Malaysia has also proposed setting up an international Islamic journalism center to counter mounting Islamophobia and coach non-Muslim journalists about Islam and Muslims.

Click to read the report in full

OVERBLOWN THREAT AND ISLAMOPHOBIA
Abukar Arman
Friday January 26 2007

Abukar Arman sits on the Board of CAIR-Columbus and is a Council Member of the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio. He contributed this article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).

"The national treasury is being drained as the U.S. tries to build a bulwark against a mirage of fear and dashes to every corner of the world where “al-Qaida flag is waved.”

Analysts both in the Muslim and the Western world by and large agree that “fear” and lack of objective dialogue are the root cause of Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism. And while the debate on which one of the two ignited the other is still ongoing, one fact remains irrefutable: more people were victimized as a result of Islamophobia than the other way around.

A recent public opinion survey conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) indicates that Muslims are still viewed negatively in the U.S. There are estimated 7 million Muslims in America and over 50 thousand in Central Ohio alone- the majority being Somalis.

Among a number of questions raised in the survey, the open-end question “When you hear the word ‘Muslim,’ what is the first thought that comes to your mind?” had the revealed the most daunting reality that Muslims still carry the 9/11 burden. Six percent of those surveyed indicated positive perception as they offered response such “good religion,” “good people,” “faithful,” “devout,” “misunderstood.” On the other hand, twenty-six percent of them indicated to espouse negative perceptions about Muslims as they offered answers such as “violence,” “hatred,” “terrorists,” “war,” “guns,” “towel-heads” and “rag-heads.”

The irony is that this came at a time when Muslims in the U.S. and in the West were doing more outreach than ever before. Are the powerful engines that propel the “war on terror” blowing smoke of fear and distrust that ultimately hindered efforts toward building bridges of understanding?

I recently had an opportunity to interview Professor John Mueller, the author of bestselling book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them. Professor Mueller is a national security expert. He holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at the Mershon Center.

In that interview arranged by SomaliLink Journal, Professor Mueller reiterated the premise of his book that America is frightened senseless…and that there are some “well-meaning” special interest groups “who grossly exaggerated the threat of terrorism” and as a result created “terrorism industry” that in due course became an economic abyss.

The national treasury is being drained as the U.S. tries to build a bulwark against a mirage of fear and dashes to every corner of the world where “al-Qaida flag is waved.”

“If there were any sleeper cells or al-Qaida operatives who are as determined, as inventive and as demonically competent as assumed, why have they not done it yet, especially when carrying a terrorist act does not require flying planes into buildings? Could it be because they are not yet here? If not, they must not been trying hard enough or perhaps they are far less dedicated, diabolical, and competent than we are being told.” said Professor Mueller. “Apparently, there are no terrorists under the bed or hiding in mosques- the very lamppost that they should be avoiding in the first place” he added.

And while Professor Mueller acknowledged the need and the importance of enhancing the security of the United States, he repeatedly pointed out the sheer absurdity that justifies the post 9/11 fear-driven policies and initiatives. He said the FBI embraces a spooky line of reasoning that he refers to as “I-think-therefore-they-are”. He quoted the FBI Director Robert Mueller who said “…the greatest threat is from al-Qaida cells in the U.S. that we have not yet identified," who substantiates his claim by repeating “his alarmist mantra” and telling the public “I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing."

According to Professor Mueller, it is this kind of mindset combined with the rhetoric of fear-mongering politicians whose aim often is to frighten voters to their side; lazy journalism and the media’s desire to sensationalize the news; and those in the security business who are motivated to seize this golden opportunity to push their profits and services and maximize their profits that perpetuate the terrorism industry, keep Muslims demonized, and the anti-terrorism laws irrationally rigid.

Even a well-meaning innocent person could be held as an “enemy combatant”.

“When a judge raised a hypothetical question on who might be detained as an enemy combatant and asked ‘what about an old lady in Switzerland who donates money to an orphanage in Afghanistan who, unbeknown to her, finances al-Qaida? Could she be detained as an enemy combatant? The answer provided by the Justice Department representative was simply “Yes”.

The rationale of course is that ‘we live in age of terror’- a notion that Professor Mueller outright rejects as “hyperbolic”. He said “the probability of an American being killed by an act of terrorism is 1 in 80,000, which is more or less the same probability of being hit by an asteroid.” But, no one is frightening people with the latter.

“Including 9/11 in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism in the last three decades is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.” Yet, the message often repeated is that the sky is about to fall….which makes diplomacy seem irrelevant. Despite all this, Professor Mueller still maintains a rare sense of optimism. He believes an introspective government working with people of goodwill can change the course of history.

And, in order to reverse the current trend, two main things must happen: first, the gross inflation of the threat of terrorism that implicitly portrays Muslims as ticking bombs must be appropriately calibrated. Second, diplomacy and constructive dialogue must be revived, and moderate Muslims must be engaged.



RE: How Western anti-Muslim bigotry became acceptable - globalvision2000administrator - 11-04-2017

A MESSAGE TO MUSLIMS IN THE WEST
John Esposito



ISLAM AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 
John Esposito


ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RADICALISATION 
John L. Esposito


UNDERSTANDING ISLAM, ARABS, ISLAMOPHOBIA & TERRORISM 



HAVE WE REACHED THE TIPPING POINT? 
THE NEW NORMAL OF ANTI-MUSLIM INTOLERANCE
John Esposito



RE: How Western anti-Muslim bigotry became acceptable - globalvision2000administrator - 11-04-2017

LEGITIMIZING ISLAMOPHOBIA
Zafar Bangash
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/legitimizing-islamophobia

It is open season on Muslims. There is hardly a country in the world where Muslims do not face genocide, racist attacks, ethnic cleansing, and abuse. If Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar are the latest group to join a long list of victims, others such as the Kashmiris and Palestinians who have suffered at the hands of Hindu Nazis and Zionists respectively have preceded them by decades.

Vile propaganda against Muslims has become the norm; branded as “terrorists,” millions have been killed worldwide since 2001. Places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have become synonymous with death and destruction. Add to that Yemen where so-called Muslims (Bani Saud) are busy slaughtering other Muslims as well as starving them to death. Cholera stalks the alleyways of villages and towns in Yemen affecting at least 500,000 people, mostly children.

This is the case in the Muslim world. There is an equally sinister campaign underway in the West. It would be wrong to assume that it started in America with the rise of the foul-mouthed bigot, Donald Trump. Islamophobia has been raging in Europe and North America long before 9/11; it has gained public acceptability since. A raft of Muslim-specific laws was passed in many countries. Even Canada, considered a model of multiculturalism, has not escaped the ill wind of Islamophobia.

Last month, the French-speaking province of Quebec passed Bill 62 prohibiting government services to Muslim women wearing the niqab because it is a religious symbol in a “secular” Quebec! The province has no problem with a huge crucifix installed behind the speaker’s chair in the National Assembly. So much for Quebec’s religious neutrality; hypocrisy and Islamophobia have no limits.

The racist Islamophobic bill was proposed and passed by the ruling Liberal Party. The opposition Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois berated the Liberals for not going far enough. Perhaps, they wanted niqab-wearing Muslim women to be stoned to death! The poster-boy “Sunny Ways” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also tiptoed through the issue, refusing to take a clear stand on a bill that is targeting a tiny minority of Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab. In Canada, women can go topless — and are protected by the law — but they cannot cover their faces as a matter of choice.

If a supposedly progressive province like Quebec can pass such a regressive law, what hope is there for Muslims in Alberta, home to racists and bigots like Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and Andrew Scheer. At a time when Canada is coming to terms with the crimes it committed against its Indigenous people, Islamophobia continues to rage, receiving official patronage.

Across the Atlantic, Europeans continue to display their customary racism, now targeting Muslims. People in Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Austria have provided massive support to anti-immigrant parties that openly declare Islam has no place in their societies. The British Home Office reported last month 80,000 hate crimes in one year. In September, the racist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), gained seats in the German parliament, the first in 90 years, garnering 21.5% of the popular vote. There was even more bad news from Austria when the anti-Muslim Freedom Party came a close third in last month’s election winning 26% of the popular vote. The leading party, the People’s Party, gained 31.5%.

Why are people flocking to anti-Muslim parties in such large numbers? The simplistic answer would be that there are terrorist acts being perpetrated by Muslims riling up ordinary people. The reality is rather different. In almost all cases of terrorism, the security and intelligence agencies are fully aware of the perpetrators before they carry out such acts. Why they are not apprehended before the crimes are committed is a question the intelligence agencies refuse to answer.

There is a parallel reality that is also conveniently ignored. When a white, non-Muslim person perpetrates a terrorist act as happened with Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas last month, it is not called a terrorist act. Paddock was described as a “lone wolf” and “nutcase” but perish the thought if anyone calls him a terrorist even though he perpetrated the worst bloodbath in recent American history.

Islamophobia is a policy deliberately promoted for ulterior motives. Western regimes are always in need of “enemies” to divert attention from failing economies at home and justify warmongering policies abroad. Numerous Muslim countries are under attack resulting in millions of innocent deaths. The West is supposedly fighting the “bad guys.” If Muslims in the West are seen as hardworking law-abiding citizens, it would be difficult to sell their war-mongering agenda and justify huge military budgets. 


Islamophobia is part and parcel of the West’s policy of perpetual war.


AMERICAN ISLAMOPHOBIA 



FORMER FBI AGENT - MUSLIM BAN 'NOT ABOUT SECURITY' 


CLAIMS TRUMP IS A RECRUITING SERGEANT FOR ISIS]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/tr...29171.html





TRUMP's MUSLIM BAN IS A DANGEROUS DISTRACTION

Donald Trump's executive orders are smoke and mirrors to distract his supporters from the promises he won't be keeping

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion...23073.html





THE MUSLIM AS A 'MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

The imperial-age idea of the 'conspiratorial Muslim' has re-emerged with new force and scope

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/muslim-manchurian-candidate-170116085751234.htm





WHY CAN'T MUSLIMS TALK ABOUT THE MUSLIM BAN ON US TV ?

US cable news media's coverage of Trump's 'Muslim ban' featured predominantly white men instead of Muslims

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion...53137.html





MYTH OF THE MODERATE MUSLIM

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion...19521.html




WHY WESTERN ATTEMPTS TO MODERATE ISLAM ARE DANGEROUS 


[i]An analysis of the dangers posed when Western governments and the Muslim establishment limit Muslim political activism.[/i]

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/01/western-attempts-moderate-islam-dangerous-160118081456021.html





ALL INTERNATIONAL LAWS TRUMPS MUSLIM BAN IS BREAKING 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/international-laws-trump-muslim-ban-breaking-170202135132664.html





JESSE JACKSON SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ISLAMOPHOBIA 

The civil rights leader compared the plight of Syrian refugees to that of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/feature...29819.html





ISLAMOPHOBIA AND A CHALLENGE TO BILL MAHER 

Deepa Kumar on Reality Asserts Itself (1/5)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12506



FIGHTING THE DEMONIZATION OF MUSLIMS 

Deepa Kumar on Reality Asserts Itself (2/5)  

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12522



ISLAMOPHOBIA AND THE POLITICS OF EMPIRE 

Deepa Kumar on Reality Asserts Itself (3/5)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12527



THE ISLAMOPHOBIA OF "HOMELAND" 

Deepa Kumar on Reality Asserts Itself (4/5)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12531



CULTURE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE 

Deepa Kumar on Reality Asserts Itself (5/5)
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12542



RE: HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 11-22-2017

RATKO MLADIC AND THE VERDICT THAT CHANGES NOTHING 
Harun Karcic
http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/europe/2017/11/ratko-mladic-verdict-171122163421435.html 


THE DEFENSE OF BOSNIA


ISLAM AND BOSNIA 


The UN-established International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, better known by its acronym, ICTY, sentenced former General Ratko Mladic to life in jail. Mladic, the former army chief of Bosnian Serbs, has since 1992 symbolised the worst that human beings are capable of. As a Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) who was forced to flee Sarajevo from the onslaught of marauding Serb soldiers, I feel no satisfaction with the verdict whatsoever. Many fellow Bosnian Muslims would agree. The reason is simple: though Mladic will spend the rest of his life behind bars, his idea lives on and the Serb-only statelet that he and Radovan Karadzic fought for is now a reality. It is a legal part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, highly autonomous, makes up 49 percent of Bosnia's territory, and has been threatening to secede and join neighbouring Serbia for the past 10 years.

Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Karadzic, with overt political, military and financial support of neighbouring Serbia, led a military campaign to forcefully rid significant areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina of hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims. They knew exactly what they were doing from the very start. 



11 LESSONS ABOUT SREBRENICA GENOCIDE 'UNWELCOME' IN BRUSSELS 

Exhibit that was scheduled be held in European Parliament cancelled after certain members disapproved of its content.



An exhibit titled "Genocide in Srebrenica: Eleven Lessons for the Future" has opened in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, after it was turned away from its original event location in Brussels by certain members of the European Parliament (EP) for displaying "too many skulls and bones".


Exhibit organiser Hikmet Karcic, an author and genocide researcher from Sarajevo, told Al Jazeera that he had been in contact for a year with some members of the European Parliament, who had agreed to host his exhibit in parliament on July 11, commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.  However, when the members realised that the exhibition focuses on the steps that lead to genocide instead of the genocide's consequences and reconciliation – they decided to cancel the event just a few days before the exhibit was supposed to start.
"They requested that we take out photos of [Serb war criminals] [Slobodan] Milosevic, [Radovan] Karadzic, [Ratko] Mladic and photos of mass graves," Karcic said.

He added that the decision wasn't the official stance of the European Parliament, but the opinion of certain members who canceled the event due to personal "political calculations".

"It's important that we talk about this theme and with as many details as possible. If we don't look at the causes then we don't get a complete image of genocide," Karcic said.
"That's why it was important to hold this exhibit in parliament to show how nationalists, right-wing movements can very quickly turn to mass killings in the centre of Europe."
Karcic did not name the EU parliament members involved for reasons of anonymity. A spokesperson from the European Parliament was not available for comment.

The return and rise of far right groups across Europe and controversial policies targeting minorities in the United States have alarmed the public, and what happened in Srebrenica has become more relevant than ever as it serves as a reminder of how the "impossible" can quickly and easily unravel into a reality.

When the 'impossible' became a reality
Much of the Bosnian nation and the world was stunned in disbelief when Serb and Croat forces began their attack on Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 with the goal of creating a greater Serbia and Croatia respectively. 
Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs were raped, tortured and executed - often by people they personally knew such as neighbours, former elementary school teachers and colleagues. The nearly four year war on Bosnia culminated with a genocide on July 11, 1995 when over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically executed in Bosnia's eastern town of Srebrenica – a UN-declared protected enclave. From 1992-1995 at least 100,000 people were killed in the country and as many as 50,000 women were raped.

'Justice eludes victims' as Yugoslavia tribunal ends


The Bosnian War ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement, which divided the country into two administrative entities: the Bosnian-Croat "Federation" entity and the "Republika Srpska" (Serbian Republic) for Bosnian Serbs. Karcic decided to focus his exhibit on the 10 stages that led to genocide in Bosnia, a process coined by American genocide researcher Gregory H. Stanton, but also added an 11th stage, specific to Bosnia's case – "Triumphalism", or the celebration and glorification of genocide and war crimes – coined by Bosnian Australian anthropologist Hariz Halilovic.

Karcic's exhibit highlights the historical, political and military aspect of the Srebrenica genocide starting from former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power in the late 80s to today's denial of genocide common among Bosnian Serb politicians and society.
However, the hosts disapproved of this focus and Karcic says he was surprised to hear them say that his exhibit was problematic because it could potentially jeopardise Bosnia's path to Euro-Atlantic integration. "That's what hurts me the most – that people would quit on these kind of exhibits just so they can score personal, short-term political points," Karcic said.


"We didn't see the point in having an exhibit without photos of Mladic, without photos of mass graves, etc; I think that's an extermination of the truthful image of Srebrenica."
Unwelcome in Brussels, the exhibit moved to Sarajevo where it could be presented without complications. Karcic still remains determined for the exhibit to be presented elsewhere in Europe and around the world. "Of course anyone who is interested in viewing our exhibit, which wasn't welcome in the European Parliament, we will eagerly organise it in any city, any institution," Karcic said.

At the exhibit a map of Srebrenica is on display with a message written by convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radislav Krstic reading "Srebrenica has been Serbian and remains Serbian. 12 July 1995." [Courtesy of Mirnes Kovac]

'Genocide is worth it'
The European Parliament adopted the Resolution on Srebrenica in 2009 calling for July 11 to be marked as the day of mourning for victims of genocide in Srebrenica.
Srebrenica has long been internationally recognised as an act of genocide, including by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. The Hague Tribunal has convicted numerous Bosnian Serb war criminals of genocide including former military commander Radislav Krstic, former president of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadzic and military leader Ratko Mladic.
However, genocide denial is widespread in Republika Srpska and Serbia's political establishment and society.

The president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, one of the most outspoken Srebrenica genocide deniers, has called the massacre, "the greatest deception of the 20th century". 
Bosnian Serb leader describes Srebrenica genocides as a 'lie'.  "We cannot and will never accept qualifying that event as a genocide," Dodik said in a 2010 interview with the Belgrade daily, Vecernje Novosti.  Convicted war criminal Momcilo Krajisnik was welcomed back as a national hero with over 2,000 people partying in the streets in his hometown of Pale, about 18km east of Sarajevo, after being granted an early release from prison.


Bosnian journalist Mirnes Kovac told Al Jazeera that the members of European Parliament who decided to cancel the exhibit shows that Europe in fact isn't ready to come to terms with the worst atrocity committed on its soil since the Holocaust.  "The denial of genocide in Srebrenica, which for the most part has been led by the Serbian political establishment in Bosnia's Republika Srpska entity and in Serbia has obtained an institutional character and support in the media," Kovac said.


"With triumphalism along with the European Parliament [members'] mitigation with its rejection of the exhibit on Srebrenica, the world is in fact confronting with the most brutal lesson from Srebrenica, from Bosnia and it's short and clear: "Genocide is worth it".



REMEMBERING DAYTON: THE ACCORD THAT ENDED BOSNIAN WAR 

Riada Asimovic Akyol

In October of that year, seeing that Yugoslavia(where Serbs dominated in politics) was breaking up, and emboldened by rising nationalism among the masses and an ever-assertive Orthodox church, the Bosnian Serb leadership (in coordination with Belgrade) decided to embark on establishing its centuries-old idea of having an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia". This would include significant parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Serbs constituted considerable numbers.

In order to carry out their plan, they established illegal parallel political institutions known as "Serb Autonomous Regions", which were tasked with implementing the Serbian Democratic Party's (SDS) notorious genocidal policies on a local level. In August 1991, the SDS, Karadzic's party, began boycotting Bosnian state presidency meetings, and, by October, it had removed all its deputies from the Bosnian parliament and set up its own "Assembly of the Serbian People of Bosnia and Herzegovina", first in Sarajevo, then in Pale.

Having parallel political institutions on the local and state level, along with the already Serb-dominated police force, Bosnian Serbs embarked on their plan. In May 1992, Karadzic presented to his fellow Bosnian Serb politicians in the Serb Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina a document titled "Six Strategic Goals of the Serbian People in Bosnia and Herzegovina". One of their strategic goals was, in their own words, the "separation from other ethnic groups on the territory rightly claimed by Serbs, by force if necessary".

For such a radical plan to be implemented in an ethnically mixed country, with its capital, Sarajevo, having the highest percentage of inter-ethnic marriages in former Yugoslavia, it could only mean one thing - utterly destroying the Muslim and Croat populations, either through killings or mass expulsions. Mladic stood up, not to disagree, but rather to make sure the entire Bosnian Serb leadership was on the same page. ''We cannot [ethnically] cleanse, we don't have a sieve to sift so that only Serbs can stay, and others leave," he said. "I don't know how Mr Karadzic and Mr Krajisnik will explain this to the world. This is genocide, people.''
Everyone present agreed this was the way forward. Having the necessary political backing, the self-proclaimed Army of the Serb Republic, as well as Serb police forces, proceeded to implement their plan.


What took place over the following four years was a systematic campaign of death, terror, and destruction straight out of the Nazi handbook. Bosnian Muslim women were systematically raped, as was well documented by the UN during the war. Muslim men and young boys were locked up in concentration camps such as Omarska, Trnopolje, and Keraterm. Ed Vulliamy from the Observer was one of the first western journalists to discover Serb-run concentration camps. Here is how he described what he saw: ''...the bones of their elbows and wrists protrude like pieces of jagged stone from the pencil-thin stalks to which their arms have been reduced. Their skin is putrefied, the complexions ... have corroded. [They] are alive but decomposed, debased, degraded, and utterly subservient, and yet they fix their huge hollow eyes on us with [what] looks like blades of knives".


In the town of Visegrad in eastern Bosnia, so many Muslim men were slaughtered and tossed off the beautiful Ottoman-era bridge into Drina river that Milan Josipovic, then a Visegrad police inspector, received a macabre complaint from the manager of a nearby hydroelectric plant, asking whoever was responsible to please slow down tossing dead Muslims into the river as they were clogging up the culverts in his dam. Muslim houses in areas under Serb military control were burned to the ground, so they would have nowhere to return after the war. Those who did return after 1995 were attacked, threatened, and their mosque vandalised. Such a policy continues to this day.

Under Mladic's policy of spreading death and terror, Sarajevo was shelled for nearly four years while the Bosnian towns of Trebinje, Foca, Prijedor, Banja Luka, and Visegrad were ethnically cleansed of their non-Serb populations. Mladic's forces stand accused of killing more than 100,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims, between 1992 and 1995, and raping more than 20,000 Muslim women.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, waged against Bosnia's multiethnic but predominantly Muslim government, ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement in the United States, which effectively divided the country into two autonomous political entities: the Bosniak-Croat "Federation" and the ''Serb Republic'' for Bosnian Serbs.

OPINION
DAYTON ENDED THE WAR, BUT DID NOT MAKE LASTING PEACE

Nidzara Ahmetasevic

After Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in jail last year, for genocide and crimes against humanity carried out against Bosnian Muslims, former General Mladic is the highest-ranking military leader to be imprisoned for the same crimes. This means that two of the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb leaders, who are credited with establishing the Serb Republic, have been found guilty by a UN-established court of committing the worst of crimes against humanity.
This falls in line with the existing Bosnian Muslims' stance that the autonomous Serb Republic was created through genocide and as such has no legitimacy.  

Mladic has systematically denied all charges levied against him, describing them as "obnoxious" since his first appearance in court in 2011. He claims to have been defending Bosnia's Serbs against ''radical'' Muslims. Will such a verdict change anything in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Hardly so. Take Visegrad as an example. Before the war, there were more than 13,000 Bosnian Muslims living in that eastern Bosnian town. Today, less than 1,000, mostly elderly, Muslims remain. Only 7.69 percent of the prewar Muslim population returned to live in Visegrad. Once these Bosnian Muslim men and women, now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s pass away, hardly any Muslims will be left in Visegrad. Almir Salihovic, a Bosnian Muslim who fled marauding Serb soldiers from Srebrenica in 1995 and returned to the town in 2014, speaking of the Mladic verdict told Reuters: "For most Serbs he will remain a hero, for others he will be the butcher and criminal, and we will continue to live in our folds, side by side, not together."  

The Bosnian Serb political idea of creating an ''ethnically pure'' Serb statelet has been a success. So no verdict, no matter how harsh, will change facts on the ground. Bosnian Serbs achieved what they envisioned in the 1990s. 


RE: HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 12-16-2017

TRUMP’S CONNECTION TO THE EUROPEAN FAR RIGHT 



HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 12-30-2017

THE RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT  
Dr Yasir Qadhi



THE SECRETS OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE 
Dr. Yasir Qadhi 



RE: HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 01-01-2018

WAR ON TERROR , WAR ON MUSLIMS ? - AL JAZEERA'S EMPIRE



IS AMERICA AT WAR WITH ISLAM? 



RE: HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 04-19-2018

THE CAMPAIGN TO EXTERMINATE MUSLIMS 
 Chris Hedges

The Israeli army’s wanton slaughter of unarmed Palestinians trapped behind the security barriers in Gaza evokes little outrage and condemnation within the United States because we have been indoctrinated into dehumanizing Muslims. Islam is condemned as barbaric and equated with terrorism. The resistance struggle against foreign occupation, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza, sees Muslims demonized as the enemy. Muslims are branded as irrational and inclined to violence and terrorism by their religious beliefs. We attack them not for what they do but because we see them as being different from us. We must eradicate them to save ourselves. And thus we perpetuate the very hatred and counterviolence, or terrorism, that we fear.

Muslims in this age of racialized authoritarianism have been stripped of due process in our courts and are subject—as Abid Naseer and Haroon Aswat were in Britain before being extradited to the United States—to pretrial incarceration for years. They endure police brutality and secret trials, are convicted on secret evidence they cannot see and suffer long-term detention in solitary confinement, often in clandestine prisons known as black sites. They are kidnapped anywhere in the world and taken, hooded, drugged and shackled, to the secret sites. They are tortured through savage methods such as beatings, “walling,”  sexual humiliation, close confinement, prolonged isolation, water dousing, electric shocks, waterboarding and so-called rectal rehydration. Their citizenships are revoked. Their communities and mosques are harassed, infiltrated and monitored by law enforcement. Muslim children are viewed as future terrorists. Muslim women as breeders of terrorists. Muslim men as dangerous. We are the maniacal Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” keeping the heads of “savages” on stakes outside our fortress and crying out “Exterminate all the brutes!”

We have declared a worldwide war on Muslims. Muslims, who read us better than we read ourselves, are rising up to resist. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Middle East have been butchered since our invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have been destroyed as viable states. Millions of Muslims have been displaced or are refugees. And when desperate Muslim families attempt to flee to Europe or the United States from the hell we created in the Middle East, they are thrown into displacement camps or turned back and branded as disease carriers, thieves, rapists, barbarians and terrorists. Islamic culture and religion in our Manichean narrative have been shorn of all nuance, humanity, complexity and depth. Islam has been replaced by a xenophobic cartoon version, an image that, to use the words of Frantz Fanon, is the “quintessence of evil.” We respond to the crisis we created out of ignorance, self-exaltation and racism.

As the imprisoned poet Syed Talha Ahsan writes:


to kill

is to erase an image

off a mirror:

side-step

no body

just a gaping hole

upon an indifferent world


Israel’s slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people, justified by the racism and Islamophobia that are central to Israeli identity, has entered a new, deadlier phase. No longer constrained by any pretense of respecting human rights or a peace process, Israeli soldiers, although they are not threatened, fire indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed Palestinians, killing or wounding men, women, children, the elderly and journalists. The sheer number of the dead and wounded—nine or more Palestinians killed by Israeli fire and hundreds injured on Friday alone—testifies to raking the crowd with gunfire. In a civilized world, Israel would be immediately slapped with sanctions, boycotts and divestment—the only mechanism left to protect the Palestinian people from extermination—but we do not live in a civilized world. We live in a world where murder and racism are state policy, where the oppressed are dehumanized and unworthy of life and where our mutant demagogues and despots revel in the rivers of blood they create.

This racialized authoritarianism, one that defines Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has ominous consequences for the oppressed. It is fed by a willful refusal to accept our responsibility for the social and political disintegration as well as the violence in the Middle East and, increasingly, at home. Most academics, trapped in the meaningless silo of Islamic writings on apocalyptic terrorism, contribute nothing to the debate. The press, which has turned journalism into nonstop entertainment and the celebration of nonexistent American virtues, is complicit in this perpetuation of anti-knowledge, which Tennessee Williams once called our voluntary matriculation into a school for the blind. It dehistoricizes these movements. It certifies radical jihadists, and by extension Islam, as incomprehensible. Since terrorism is incomprehensible, and since it is an intrinsic part of Islam, Muslims are worthy not of investigation but annihilation. But facts don’t speak for themselves, as Edward Saidnoted. They require context to be understood, and all context is absent.

“You could hardly begin (in the public sphere provided by international discourse) to analyze political conflicts involving Sunnis and Shi’is, Kurds and Iraqis, or Tamils and Sinhalese, or Sikhs and Hindus—the list is long—without eventually having to resort to the categories and images of ‘terrorism’ and ‘fundamentalism,’ which derived entirely from the concerns and intellectual factories in metropolitan centers like Washington or London,” Said wrote in “Culture and Imperialism.” “They are fearful images that lack discriminant contents, or definition, but they signify moral power and approval for whoever uses them, moral defensiveness and criminalization for whomever.”

The pattern of persistent decontextualization traps us in an endless cycle of violence for violence. Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou in his book “A Theory of ISIS: Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order” writes of the now-standard response following a terrorist attack:

For every time a new radical Islamism-related attack takes place in New York, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels or Berlin, a ritual of denial of the deeper political issues plays out in an increasingly familiar fashion. The sequence is performed thus: shock gives way to fear followed by anger; security experts step up hurriedly in television studios and on social media to denounce the lack of preparation by the authorities; specialists in radical Islamism (or simply Islam) follow, declaring that IS (previously Al Qaeda) has been weakened, is on its way to be defeated and is merely lashing out with desperate attacks; Muslim communities in Western countries are called out and racist and violent attacks against them sometimes take place (hours after the March 2016 attacks in Brussels a #stopislam movement started trending, revealing the depth of bias that had come to overtake sectors of the Western world, readily associating Islam and terrorism); sympathy movements for the victims of city where the attack took place are set up (Je suis Charlie, I am Brussels, etc.); calls for tougher legislation (surveillance mechanisms, detention conditions, nationality measures, immigration procedures, travel regulations, dress codes, access to pools, prayer sites, etc.) are spoken urgently; arrests are made in neighborhoods where Muslim migrants are known to reside and bombing is redoubled in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen or Libya.

The Obama administration under counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, now a national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC, set up a database, Disposition Matrix, of terrorism suspects across the globe. It is known informally as the kill list. Those on the list are targeted by clandestine CIA extradition units, special forces, militarized drones and airstrikes. These techniques for racialized control of Muslims are drawn from the blueprint of colonialism, although the state now uses the coded language of ideology to mask its racist assault. As in colonialism, those who defy the “liberal democratic” state have forfeited all rights and deserve to be treated as beasts because they are beasts. This stance of collective criminalization of a group or race will have ominous consequences as the corporate state, beset by the growing unrest from deindustrialization and global warming, begins to view larger and larger segments of the population as hostile.

“In some sense, the figure of the terror suspect forms the testing ground upon which Western versions of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ are deliberated,” writes Nisha Kapoor in “Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism.” “It is via the representation of these individuals that cases are made in support of summary killings, bigger bombs, drone strikes, ever more grotesque forms of torture, and clandestine and indefinite detention. It is also through the policing of such individuals that mechanisms have been put in place in Britain [and the United States] for the growing use of secret justice, the retraction of the provisions of citizenship and the move away from human rights protections.”

Policies have consequences. The decision to hunt down Muslims around the globe, giving to the so-called war on terror a transnational dimension, means also that those who oppose us are not restricted by national boundaries. The terrorists who carry out these attacks are mirror images of ourselves, consumed by the same narcissism and cult of the self that define celebrity culture. They post self-indulgent videos of rants against the West and of their beheadings of captives clad in orange jumpsuits. They replicate the cultural effort to film “Life the Movie.” The images we use to communicate with the world, as well as each other, infect all of their messages to us. They are not from a medieval era. They are creations of modernity. They feed to us their own versions of the pornographic violence that fascinates and deforms our culture. They know this is how you communicate with the West. And we communicate back in the same manner.

The Israeli massacre of Palestinians is a prelude to a dystopian, neocolonial world where global elites, hoarding wealth and controlling the mechanisms of power, increasingly resort to widespread bloodshed to keep the oppressed at bay. What Israel is doing to Palestinians—impoverished and trapped without adequate food, water and medicine in the open-air prison that is Gaza, a strip of land subject to repeated murderous assaults by the Israeli war machine—will be done to desperate climate refugees and citizens who rise up to protest the pillage by global oligarchs. Those who resist will be as dehumanized as Muslims. They too will be branded as terrorists. The global elites have a plan for the future. It is visible in the killing fields of Gaza.



RE: HOW WESTERN ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY BECAME ACCEPTABLE - globalvision2000administrator - 05-09-2018

TURKEY TARGETS FRENCH STUDIES DUE TO QURAN ROW AND RECIPROCITY 
Quran row and a lack of Turkish studies in France behind move to stop admissions to French studies, official says
Umut Uras

Turkish universities will no longer admit new students to French language departments, Turkey's Higher Education Board has ruled, the latest development in the strained ties between Turkey and France. The decision came in response to a manifesto signed by prominent French figures, calling for the removal of certain passages from the Quran, and as a reciprocal measure over the "lack of Turkish studies departments in the European country," a Turkish official told Al Jazeera.

"We have condemned the controversial statements on the Quran coming from France. And the Higher Education Board, which is an autonomous institution, made this move as a response to those statements," said Emrullah Isler, chairman of the Committee on National Education, Culture, Youth and Sport in the Turkish parliament. Isler added that universities in France do not have enough departments teaching Turkish, that there is an imbalance between the two countries in that area.
"Lack of university departments in France that teach in Turkish is another factor behind the decision. They need to form decent Turkology departments there. "Plus, there have been too many departments teaching in the French language in Turkish universities," he told Al Jazeera from the capital, Ankara.

He added that the Higher Education Board took the decision in such a manner that currently enrolled students would not suffer from the measure. "The existing departments with active students are going to continue teaching in French as usual, but will not admit new ones," Isler said.

The Board had cited "reciprocity" and "graduate-employment links" on Thursday as the reasons for its decision. Turkish officials reacted with anger to a French manifesto calling on Islamic authorities to strike certain parts of the Quran. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even likened the signatories of the text to members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.
The open letter, published on April 22 in French newspaper Le Parisien, and signed by nearly 300 prominent French figures, said that verses of the Quran calling for the "murder and punishment of Jews, Christians and disbelievers" should be removed from the book, arguing they were "obsolete".

Erdogan slams French intellectuals: You're no different than ISIL
The Turkish government's first reaction came in early May, ahead of June parliamentary and presidential polls, despite the letter being published last month. Signatories included former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, as well as former ministers, deputies from the National Assembly and other public figures.
"Who are you to attack our scriptures? We know how vile you are … You are no different than ISIL," Erdogan retorted on Tuesday in a speech in the capital, Ankara.
"Have they ever read their books, the Bible? Or the Torah?" Erdogan asked, referring to the Christian and Jewish holy books, adding: "If they had read them, they probably would want to ban the Bible."

French-Turkish relations have been tense for a number of reasons.
Turkey slammed a recent proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron to mediate between Ankara and outlawed Kurdish fighters in Turkey. Paris has been highly critical of Ankara's military incursions in northern Syria against the Kurdish fighters, which Turkey considers "terrorists". In late January, Turkish forces and Free Syrian Army fighters started a military operation into Syria's Afrin to remove a US-backed Kurdish militia - known as the YPG, or the People's Protection Units.
Ankara considers the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and its armed wing, the YPG, to be "terrorist groups" with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

ERDOGAN DENOUNCES FRENCH MANIFESTO CALLING FOR REMOVAL OF QUR'AN PASSAGES

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced an anti-Islam manifesto published last month by 300 French figures calling for parts of the Qur’an, the holy book of Muslims, to be removed.

"Who are you to attack our scriptures? We know how vile you are," Erdogan said in a speech in the capital Ankara on Tuesday.

“Have they ever read their books, the Bible? Or the Torah?" Erdogan asked, referring to the Christian and Jewish holy books, adding, "If they had read them, they probably would want to ban the Bible."

"You are no different than ISIL (Daesh)," he added.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ® receives a copy of the Qur’an at an international students’ meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 16, 2015.  AP)

The request by the figures was made in an open letter, published last month in French daily Le Parisien. The signatories, including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, three former premiers, and several MPs, equated Islam with “anti-Semitism” and demanded that “Muslim authorities … strike with obsolescence” verses in the Qur'an, which they said, were calling for “the murder and punishment of Jews, Christians, and non-believers.”

In response, 30 French Muslim clerics published a letter in the French paper Le Monde, condemning anti-Semitism and warned that the manifesto could strain relations between religious communities in the European nation.

They also denied that Qur’anic verses could be used to justify “violence,” quoting a famous passage, which equates murder to the killing of the entire humanity.
Anti-Islam 'manifesto' sparks outrage in France

"Some have already seen [in this manifesto] a long-awaited opportunity to incriminate an entire religion. They no longer hesitate to publicly propagate, including in the media, that the Qur’an itself calls for murder. This pernicious idea is incredibly violent,” they wrote.

In reaction to the manifesto, Turkey's Europe Minister Omer Celik said on Sunday it was "the most striking example of intellectual violence and barbarity."

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also said: "No one can dare to touch even a single letter of Qur'an; it is under God's protection." 


FRANCE’s MARINE LE PEN ON TRIAL OVER ANTI-MUSLIM HATE SPEECH

The leader of France’s far-right National Front party, Marine Le Pen, is put on trial for hate speech after making derogatory statements about Muslims and their religious rituals. The French politician arrived in court on Tuesday in the city of Lyon. She faces charges of “incitement to discrimination, violence or hatred towards a group of people on the basis of their religion,” leveled against her by four anti-racism and human rights groups.

"I have the right, as a political leader, to evoke a crucial issue and it's even a duty for me to do it,” Le Pen told reporters, while describing herself as a victim of "judicial persecution.”

French far-right leader and National Front party president Marine Le Pen arrives at the Lyon's courthouse, central France, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015. (AP photo)

 

While addressing a party rally in Lyon in 2010, Le Pen had, in offensive remarks, compared to the occupation by the Nazis Muslim worshippers praying in the streets in three French cities due to a lack of mosques or a lack of space in local prayer rooms. “I’m sorry, but for those who really like to talk about the Second World War, if we’re talking about occupation, we can also talk about this while we’re at it, because this is an occupation of territory,” she said.


Le Pen lost her European Parliament immunity over the comments in 2013.  If found guilty, she would face up to a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros (USD 51,000). In the run-up to regional elections in December, she is trying to garner more votes by taking advantage of the influx of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe, which has created a crisis for the continent. She has called the crisis a "migratory submersion."