India: Lucknow girls take direct action against rape

Teenage girls from Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) have become the more efficient force against rape. The members of the so-called Red Brigades (for their clothes, based on the traditional female attire of the area) won't tolerate sexual abuse and will strike back at rapists and other sexual aggressors. These may get a beating or just public humiliation but what is clear is that they won't get away anymore.

All the members of the Red Brigades are former victims of sexual aggressions. This way they turn the suffering into self-empowering, turning the tables on the Patriarchal order.

Greece: shooting down the immigrants

On July 27, it was known by means of a survivor that three Pakistani immigrants were murdered by Greek border police agents, who shot them down when they tried to cross the border from Turkey. Four others were injured. The media remains silent. 

From Samaa (via I Can't Relax In Greece):

Three Pakistani migrants were killed and four others wounded as they came under fire from Greek border guards.

According to reports, the Pakistani nationals were illegally trying to sneak into Greece from Turkey when they were spotted by border security forces, who opened fire. As a result, three Pakistanis were killed and four others were injured.

Family of Zafar, a resident of Mandi Bahauddin, who was among the dead, called upon Pakistani authorities to bring back the body of his son.

The aggrieved family says that it was informed about the attack by another Pakistani, who too was trying to enter Greece.

India recognizes dolphins as non-human persons

I very much welcome this development. India has a long tradition of respect for all forms of life and particularly animals, which are in many cases integrated in the Hinduist religion and enjoying this or that kind of protection therefore. But unlike cows or monkeys, dolphins, belonging to the sea, never before were integrated in any meaningful way and yet they are (at least some dolphin species) some of the most intelligent beings on Earth, which may only lack a civilization for less important reasons such as the lack of hands or the impossibility to set up a fire in the water, not for lack of intelligence nor sensibility.

The main practical effect of this new legislation is a ban on dolphinariums, which are equivalent to human slavery. Dolphin slaves usually come from violent hunts in Japan, Russia or other Pacific Ocean countries.

"They drive groups of dolphins into shallow bay areas where young females whose bodies are unmarked and are thought to be suitable for display are removed. The rest are often slaughtered."

Dolphins know well that they are being held captive and the narrow confines of even the best aquarium can only drive them depressed and even mad, hurting themselves in desperate attempts to swim away from their prison. 

There have been large animal rights demonstration in India, especially in the city of Kochi, where a new dolphin circus was to be opened. The result is this legislation which follows the spirit of the Helsinki declaration of cetacean rights. 

An issue that remains open is the most delicate situation of the Ganges dolphin, one of the few freshwater species, which is seriously endangered.

Source: DW.

Pakistan: communist wins elections in South Waziristan (again) but Pakistan demands new elections

Muhammad Ali Al-Maroof Ali Wazir (pictured in electoral poster) won again the elections in the electoral district 41 of the "Taliban" region of South Waziristan under the traditional slogan "bread, clothes and homes", as well as demanding schools and healthcare for all. He did also in 2008 but then as now, the real Pakistani state, the secret services known as ISI, have managed to force a repeat of the voting process. 

I can only underline how ironical is that in the stronghold of Islamic Fascism a communist wins once and again the elections. In other parts of the South Asian country, communists have been effectively barred from running (ah, "democracy"!), but in South Waziristan, Ali Wazir managed to run on an independent ticket... and win. 

Soon after his victory was announced, still at 86% of the vote count, the authorities declared that the election would have to be repeated. 

Source: In Defense of Marxism.

Pakistani court rules: US drone attacks are Crimes Against Humankind

Sometimes someone has to state the obvious: drone attacks (againts usually civilian or mixed targets) are Crimes Against Humankind, and then, of course, absolutely illegal under Pakistani and International law. 

The case was brought by citizens of North Waziristan on the particular (but way too common) case of a US attack against a tribal council (jirga), which had been mustered to solve a long-standing inter-tribal conflict. Among the attendants were some 18 alleged Taliban militants but all the rest were unrelated to any conflict. 

The Peshawar High Court declares the USA and the CIA guilty of blatant violation of basic human rights and are against the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly Resolution, as well as against the Geneva Convention (war laws).

The civilian victims of this mass murder included infants/ suckling babies, women and preteen children, as well as considerable damage to properties, livestock and wildlife. 

The court rules that the USA and CIA must pay indemnities to the victims or their survivor relatives, established in dollars. It also instructs the Pakistani government to take measures so no further violations of the sovereignty of Pakistan are committed by foreign troops, having the right and obligation to strike down the drones when they enter Pakistani airspace. 

It also instructs the government to file a formal complaint against the USA and to officially investigate the matter, as well as to demand the UN to establish a War Crimes tribunal dedicated to the matter. It requires from the Pakistani and UN Security Councils to pass resolutions condemning the violations of sovereignty, asking that, if not satisfied by the USA, Pakistan must sever all ties with the aggressor power, diplomatic and logistic. 

The Pakistani Armed Forces get a yearly $26 billion bribe from the USA, what effectively makes them, as happens with Egyptian, Yemeni, Colombian and other neocolonial armed forces, a mercenary entity unwilling to defend its own population against their imperial master.

Source: The Dissenter.

Bangladesh: fascist war criminal sentenced to death

Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, 59, former pro-Pakistani militia commander and currently Assistant Secretary-General of the reactionary fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, sponsored by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, the USA, etc., was sentenced to death by a Bangladeshi court today.

The notorious war criminal turned fundamentalist politician was found guilty of leading his troops to murder at least 183 civilians in his home district of Sherpur. He had formed the death squad Al Badr in collaboration with the Pakistani army with the goals of murdering civilians and raping women. 

Kamaruzzaman was 19 at the time of the crimes but like the kapos of the Nazi death camps his crimes against Humankind can never prescribe.

Sadly enough it is not common that a criminal of this kind has to face justice and, even in Bangladesh, this trial has taken way too long to happen: forty years!

This is just the tip of the iceberg, Jamaat murdered some three million civilians and raped some 200,000 women, in the Bangladeshi Liberation War, working for the neocolonial Pakistani oppressor. Some days ago another notorious war criminal of the same fascist organization, Abdul Quader Mollah, was sentenced to life in prison, a punishment deemed too benevolent by many, considering his crimes (murder of 345 civilians, including a poet, and raping an 11 years old girl).