The situation is absolutely grim. Kashmir is under military siege. There are paramilitary forces on every street, outside homes, outside localities. The situation is really quite alarming. There is no scope for anyone to speak, no scope for peaceful protests. 

On the day of Eid, there was desolation. No one except tiny children were in festive clothing. They were not allowed to go to the mosque to do their prayers in rural areas. The azaan was not permitted so they just had to do their namaz at home. People feel a complete sense of anger and betrayal. There is helplessness, frustration. 

In the Kashmir Valley, we did not meet a single soul who was happy with the decision. They were upset with the media coverage. They said, ‘Everyone is saying that it’s a great thing for Kashmir, but whose wedding is it and who is celebrating? It’s supposed to be our wedding, at least ask us whether we are happy? How come no one is asking us what we think?’  It is seen as an act of humiliation and violence against the people of Kashmir.

A group of Sikh intellectuals and eminent citizens held a press conference in Chandigarh on Tuesday.

At the press conference, Professor Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon, a renowned scholar of Sikh history said, “On one hand, 80 lakh people have been imprisoned in their own land, they are being subjected to the worst kind of oppression. On the other hand, people are dancing on the streets in celebration. What kind of people are these? Is this their faith? Is this their nationalism? It is shameful”.

Retired IAS officer Gurtej Singh said, “Hindutva forces are out to destroy the nation. Every institution is under attack.”

Leading a protest at the Panjab University campus, the Students’ Union President Kanupriya said, “The BJP’s entire politics is about Hindi-Hindu-Hindutva. This is why they have denied rights to the people of Kashmir”

Amandeep Singh of the Punjab Students Union (Lalkar) said, “Kashmir is the world’s most militarised zone. People’s rights have already been trampled upon. Now, whatever special protection they had has also been destroyed. This won’t stop with Kashmir, this may be repeated in Punjab and the Northeast”.

hot takes on AOC saying that the United States government is operating concentration camps:

WARNING: This post contains references to gruesome human rights violations. It is not for everyone.

76 people in a cell designed for 12.

155 people in a cell designed for 35.

41 in a cell for 8.

Don’t look away.

900 people total, or or more than seven times the 125-person capacity of the El Paso Del Norte immigration processing center.

If it weren’t for the white boxes shielding the faces of dozens of men and women stuffed into the overcrowded cell, it would be difficult to count the people in the photograph, since their overlapping limbs make it impossible to see where one body ends and another begins.

Standing room only cells, where people are held for weeks. Limited access to showers and clean clothes, resulting in those held wearing soiled clothing “for days or weeks.”

People standing on toilets just to find air to breathe. 24 deaths while in ICE custody.

Johana Mediana Léon, 25 years old. Transgender. Passed away four days after release from custody after complaining of chest pains.

Mergensana Amar, 40 years old. Removed from life support after committing suicide in custody.

Efrain De La Rosa, 40 years old. Committed suicide in custody by self-inflicted strangulation.

Roxana Hernandez, 33 years old. Transgender. Passed away in custody after experiencing cardiac arrest.

300,000-500,000 individuals per year in custody. Acting ICE director Mark Morgan’s response? Plans to increase large scale raids.

Don’t look away.

They’re not “centers.” They’re not “facilities.” They’re not “processing areas.” Let’s call them what they are.

The United States government is operating concentration camps. And we must act.

Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees. These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.

Don’t look away.

It’s certainly been helpful for the Trump Administration that nobody has called them concentration camps until this week, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came under great fire for doing so.

It may well be a testament to the media machine that is the Trump administration. Look away! He wore an ill-fitting tuxedo to meet the Queen! Look away! He won’t acknowledge that the Central Park Five are exonerated! Look away! He fired pollsters for giving him numbers that he didn’t like!

Don’t look away.

It’s helpful to the President that the media covers these human rights abuses intermittently instead of as what they actually are: proof of a racist administration, unchecked by the law. It’s helpful that there’s so much else to look at right now. But more than anything else, it’s helpful that the places where these people are being tortured and left to die are hidden. They’re locked away from the eyes of journalists and concerned members of the public. They’re misleadingly named.

That’s what a concentration camp is. And the immediate outrage to AOC calling them that is the right response. Hearing that the government is running concentration camps is something one should feel scrupulous towards. A concentration camp isn’t the same as a death camp. We don’t have those yet. But when Hitler ran his, they started as the former, extending to the latter.

Don’t look away.

Hannah Arendt, imprisoned by the Gestapo and interned in a French camp, wrote about the levels of concentration camps. Extermination camps were the most extreme; others were just about getting “undesirable elements … out of the way.” All had one thing in common: “The human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead.”

Is that not what we were doing?

I hesitate to speak for my own ancestry, for my family members killed at Neuengamme camp along with more than 43,000 others. But I can’t hesitate long enough to sway my thinking away from confirming what AOC already said.

It’s easy to think of the Holocaust only in terms of the final outcome. But there was a beginning.

Don’t look away. It started with fear mongering. It started with ghettoization. It started with hidden camps. Then, the pogroms. Then, the extermination camps.

Mass detention isn’t new. But this president has made it a centerpiece of his rhetoric and his agenda. He’s perfected the extreme language that dehumanizes immigrants. At a rally in Florida last month, Trump was bemoaning migrants’ legal protections when someone in the audience suggested they should be shot. The president laughed and made a joke.

Through overcrowding and dehumanization, concentration camps became self-fulfilling prophecies. The culture of abuse leads to frustration and violence, thus “justifying” their incarceration after the fact. Other citizens become desensitized to the dehumanization of a group of people and thus implicitly give approval for concentration camps by our lack of pushback.

Do you see it?

It’s happening now.

Don’t look away.

🇸🇩 ✊ 💙 🙏

wild how people had a lot of feelings about an empty building burning down in paris but when the lives of over a hundred sudanese civilians are taken in a massacre, most of the internet wants to stay mute. y’all cried legit tears over a piece of white history being on fire but turn the other cheek when african lives are being taken violently.

here is a gofundme for emergency medical help in Sudan, so far its the only donation resource I can find but I’ll add more if I come across anymore

Honestly first time I read about the situation in Sudan was 5 minutes ago on tumblr, while the notre dame fire was all over the news days after it happened. We shouldn’t make people guilty about not knowing things that are majorly ignored by the media. We should provide that information instead. How else are they supposed to find out about it?

And to add on, what the hell are you comparing the notre dame fire to the situation in sudan for? These are two separate events, they literally have nothing to do with each other. There’s no need in putting the notre dame down so you can spread awareness about the sudan situation, and you can care about both events without mocking the “less significant” one

A building burning with no human casualties is always always ALWAYS less significant than human beings being murdered, raped, and tortured wtf are you on?