On 28 July, the Arab community of Chicagoland awoke to a viral video on Facebook showing a Palestinian-American boy being brutally beaten by three Oak Lawn police officers. (Oak Lawn is a southwest suburb of Chicago that has a large Palestinian population.)
The video, filmed the day before by a Black woman from her car, shows two officers on top of the teen, repeatedly beating him in the head and body. A third officer runs up and appears very briefly to place his knee on the child’s head or neck before the three grown men finish handcuffing their target.
The boy in the video, Hadi Abuatelah, is a 17-year-old Palestinian-American and a rising high school senior from Bridgeview, Illinois, another of the Palestinian-heavy southwest suburbs of Chicago.
As a result of the attack, Hadi sustained multiple injuries, including fractures to his pelvis and face, and internal bleeding in his brain. He was transferred to a local hospital in critical condition, and it took almost six days for his health to stabilize enough for him to be released from the hospital and into police custody.
The Oak Lawn Police Department alleges that Hadi had a gun on his person and that is why they used such force. The video shows that a gun was found after the beating, but it is not at all clear where it came from.
Yet the gun has nothing to do with the criminal act committed by these three officers. In the end, it was an act rooted in racism in a community that is no stranger to systemic, structural, and institutional racism and targeting by law enforcement, other government agencies, and ultra-right and white nationalist groups.
In July 2022, the AAAN published a report exposing a surveillance and data-gathering program used by Illinois law enforcement agencies. The program, named Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), collects massive amounts of data on Arab, Muslim and other communities of color, pulling them into the US counterterrorism nexus.
The report found that police departments like Oak Lawn’s participate in the SARs program, targeting and criminalizing Arabs and Muslims for everyday activities and stereotyping us as the local face of the “enemy” abroad.
Read the fully updated report on: The Electronic Intifada
Ten years ago, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a white supremacist opened fire on an American Sikh congregation, murdering six people and injuring many more before taking his own life. The eighth individual, Baba Punjab Singh, was partly paralyzed and subsequently passed away from his injuries.
It was one of the bloodiest mass shootings in a house of worship at the time since the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. Additionally, it was the worst attack on the American Sikh community since they first immigrated to the US more than a century ago.
Journalists covering the atrocity had no background knowledge of the Sikh people. One anchor referred to the gurdwara as a mosque and the victims as Muslims. The gurdwara was reported as a Hindu temple by another journalist. A third used the name “sheikhs” rather than “Sikhs” to refer to the Sikh religion as a branch of Islam.
According to academics and government officials, there are about 500,000 Sikhs living in America. They have frequently been the focus of discrimination due to cultural ignorance.
Most of the Sikh population was headquartered in Punjab, which was taken over by British conquerors in 1849, and Sikhs started moving to other areas under the jurisdiction of the British Empire.
During the 1890s, the first Sikh community arrived in the US via the West Coast. As soon as they arrived, prejudice started to affect them. For instance Bellingham, Washington had the nation’s first racial riot in 1907 that was directed toward Sikhs. Sikh laborers were picked up by angry white mobs, assaulted, and driven out of town.
After 9/11, the number of racist attacks increased again, in part because Americans were unaware of the Sikh religion and confused the distinctive Sikh appearance with common perceptions of what terrorists look like.
After President Donald Trump’s victory in the election, the rate of violence against Sikhs increased. In 2018, the Sikh Coalition reported that around once every week in the United States, Sikhs were the subject of hate crimes.
Some Lino Lakes residents woke up Saturday to find white bags of rice containing racist messages by white supremacists on their properties, according to the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
CAIR-Minnesota condemned the action in a press release sent out Sunday. Leaders said they welcomed a statement from state senator Roger Chamberlain, (R-Lino Lakes) expressing “zero tolerance for this behavior.”
“I condemn these racist acts in the strongest possible way,” the senator said in a statement Sunday. “These cowardly actions are an attempt to sow seeds of hate and division in our community. It will have the opposite effect – those seeds will not take root; it will unite us against this evil. Make no mistake, I have zero tolerance for this behavior. It should be investigated and fully prosecuted as a criminal act. I support law enforcement efforts to find the perpetrators and ensure they are dealt with accordingly.”
The action is on the heels of a similar incident by White supremacists last week in Cottage Grove when residents there found racist flyers in bags of rice. Police are still investigating.
“The group these flyers direct people to is linked to white supremacists,” Police Chief Pete Koerner wrote on Facebook. “While the information in these flyers isn’t illegal, we agree that it is disturbing. The Cottage Grove Police Department is here to protect all of our neighbors of all races, genders, religions, etc.”
“We condemn this latest racist incident targeting our communities and welcome Senator Chamberlain’s expression of ‘zero tolerance for hate,” Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-MN’s executive director said in a press release Sunday about the Lino Lakes incidents. “We join in the call for law enforcement authorities to investigate all such hate incidents and to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
He added that the American Muslim community and CAIR stand in solidarity with all those challenging anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, white supremacy, and all other forms of bigotry.
For the past few years, Jews of color in the United States have been counted and recounted. They’ve been argued over and used as props in ideological battles.
Now their own voices have emerged as hard data with the release Thursday of the most comprehensive survey of Jews of color ever carried out.
The movement fighting racism within the Jewish community is heralding the study as a watershed moment.
Responses from more than 1,100 people in the study reveal a deep engagement with Jewish identity that has often come with experiences of discrimination in communal settings.
In some cases, Jews of color said they are ignored. In others they are casually interrogated about their race and ethnicity. Respondents said white Jews will sometimes presume a need to educate them about Jewish rituals or assume they are present in synagogues or schools as nannies and security guards rather than community members.
Some 80% of respondents said they have experienced discrimination in Jewish settings.
Titled “Beyond the Count,” the study out of Stanford University corroborates with data and the anecdotes of racism in the Jewish community that have been widespread for years.
The study’s sponsor and research team hope the findings will jolt Jewish institutions into funding initiatives for and by Jews of color and changing the composition of decision-making bodies to reflect Jewish diversity.
“This study validates the experiences of Jews of color, and it also takes away a bit of the illusion that Jewish community organizations are doing enough to respond to racism and racial injustice,” said Ilana Kaufman, executive director of the Jews of Color Initiative, which commissioned and funded the study. Kaufman also shared her reaction to the study in an essay.
Source: Times of Israel
Also Read: 60% of Jews in Queensland have experienced antisemitism, watchdog says
At last it appears that Britain is willing to address what is perhaps the greatest ongoing human rights atrocity on the planet: the mass incarceration and mistreatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslim people of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. On Sunday, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, publicly recognised the “gross and egregious human rights abuses” under way there, despite the denials of the Chinese ambassador, Liu Xiaoming.
The ambassador’s denials were to be expected: they are invariably China’s first response when challenged about the mistreatment of its own citizens. Indeed, the mass internment of large sections of the Uighur and other minority populations were denied until the evidence became incontrovertible, after which the argument moved to the treatment of the inmates. How long were they being imprisoned for? What were the conditions they were being held under? Why had they been detained?
These have not been easy questions to answer. In his BBC interview on Sunday, Liu Xiaoming complained of false accusations being made at China, and about a lack of evidence to support them. At the same time, however, China rigorously controls the information that crosses its borders. Foreign academics and journalists who have attempted to gather details are regularly denied access, or followed and directed by Chinese officials. Chinese researchers do not even attempt such investigations. During my own time in Xinjiang, where I spent nearly two years conducting my PhD research, the police and security forces presence was pervasive and oppressive. In the time since I left in 2014, it has intensified enormously.
Nonetheless, evidence builds up. Former staff and inhabitants of the so-called “re-education centres” – where inmates are expected to abandon their religion and cultivate loyalty to the state – have travelled abroad and shared their experiences, satellite data has confirmed the construction of the camps, and journalists and researchers have covertly visited Xinjiang or made contact with friends in the region.
Read More
Also Read: The persecution of Uighur Muslims in China shows we have not learned from past genocides
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Addressing an audience of Jewish Americans on Saturday, President Donald Trump clearly relished the chants of “four more years” and the peppering of red “Make America Great Again” hats throughout the crowded ballroom.
“The Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president, Donald J. Trump,” he proudly told thousands gathered at the Israeli-American Council National Summit before lashing Hillary Clinton, Democrats and the previous administration. Read more…
US says N. Korea is ‘horrible’ on human rights, religious freedom
The United States said Friday it will use sanctions against North Korea for its “horrible” record on human rights and religious freedom.
Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, told reporters that the situation in North Korea is “deplorable” and cited the example of a woman who was sent to a prison camp for having a Bible.
“North Korea’s horrible on human rights and religious freedom,” he said. “They’ve been a Country of Particular Concern for years.”
The U.S. State Department on Friday released its annual report on international religious freedom, which covers the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2018.
It notes that the U.N. Commission of Inquiry in 2014 concluded there was an “almost complete denial” by the North Korean government of the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and that in many instances, the government’s violations of human rights constituted crimes against humanity.
In the reporting period, North Korea released a detained American pastor in May. In December, the State Department identified three entities and three North Korean officials associated with serious human rights abuses or censorship.
“We’re going to continue to exert strong pressure,” Brownback said. “Unless they change radically, they’ll continue to be a Country of Particular Concern for us.”
The U.S. in November redesignated North Korea as a CPC for the 18th consecutive year.
“These carry sanctions with them as well, and we’ll use those in North Korea and other places that are particularly egregious cases of religious freedom violations,” the ambassador said. The U.S. in November redesignated North Korea as a CPC for the 18th consecutive year.”These carry sanctions with them as well, and we’ll use those in North Korea and other places that are particularly egregious cases of religious freedom violations,” the ambassador said.
Freeing of Iranian Hijab ‘Rosa Parks’ Hailed as Victory For Women: ‘She Has Broken This Huge Taboo
Freeing of Iranian Hijab ‘Rosa Parks’ Hailed as Victory For Women: ‘She Has Broken This Huge Taboo
Freeing of Iranian Hijab ‘Rosa Parks’ Hailed as Victory For Women: ‘She Has Broken This Huge Taboo
Iranian activists have called the early release of Vida Movahedi a “huge victory” for women in the Islamic Republic after the protester was arrested in March for her opposition to compulsory hijab laws
Omid Memarian, Deputy Director at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, told Newsweek that Movahedi, like the African American civil rights figure Rosa Parks, had reset the expectation for what was acceptable in Iran with her protest What she did was enormous, in any movement the first one who stands up, like Rosa Parks, breaks a huge taboo. Then it is possible to stand up to oppression Memarian said This protest has cascaded down throughout the country. It has encouraged many women to think they can do the same thing,” he added The image of Movahedi brandishing a white hijab from a stick during street protests that rocked Iran at the end of 2017 into the beginning of 2018 became a rallying call on social media for other women to protest mandatory dress laws in the Islamic Republic.
Human rights groups slam draft UN plans to send Rohingya to barren island
Human rights groups have reacted with horror to reports of United Nations draft plans to help relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees from Bangladeshi camps to a barren, flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal.
A document drawn up this month by the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s food aid arm, and seen by Reuters, has revealed how the agency supplied the Bangladeshi government with detailed plans of how it could provide for thousands of Rohingya being transported to the island on a voluntary basis.
Dhaka has long insisted that it is unable cope with the dramatic influx of refugees to camps in Cox’s Bazar since a brutal crackdown by the Burmese military in August 2017, said by UN investigators to have been conducted with “genocidal intent”, prompted some 730,000 Rohingya to flee their homes.
Relocation to the uninhabited, remote island of Bhasan Char has been touted as a solution to chronic overcrowding. But many Rohingya are fearful to go and human rights experts warn that the move to an island made of silt and vulnerable to frequent cyclones could spark another crisis.
The revelation of draft WFP plans, including a timeline and a budget for how the agency and its partners “may facilitate the identification, staging, forward movement, reception, and sustainment of refugees” on Bhasan Char, was met with outrage on Monday.
“What the hell is the WFP thinking? Bangladesh’s plan to move Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char looks like a human rights and humanitarian disaster in the making so UN agencies should be talking about how to stop this ill-considered scheme, not facilitate it,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
“The reality is the Rohingya don’t want that one-way ticket to Bhasan Char because it promises to be a Rohingya Alcatraz, with freedom of movement restricted, health and other services limited, and no guarantees of survival if a typhoon hits and submerges the island,” he told The Telegraph.
UN human rights chief: Every day 8 children in Yemen killed, hurt despite truce
Children living in 31 active conflict zones across the country witness ‘heavy, war-related violence,’ says Michelle Bachelet.
The UN human rights chief warned Wednesday that children in Yemen continued to be killed and maimed at an alarming rate, despite a three-month-old truce in a vital port.
“Since the Stockholm agreement on December 13, it is estimated that eight children have been killed or injured in Yemen every day,” Michelle Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Yemen’s beleaguered Saudi-backed government and Iranian-linked Huthi rebels agreed in Sweden on a truce that included a ceasefire in Hodeida, the lifeline port on the Red Sea.
But Bachelet said children were currently living in 31 active conflict zones across the country, and witnessing “heavy, war-related violence,” including in Taez, Hajjah and Saada.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said earlier this week that 348 civilians had been killed in Hajjah and Taez alone since the Stockholm accord was signed.
The UN rights chief voiced particular concern at the recent escalation in the northern province of Hajjah, where 22 people — 12 children and 10 women — were killed, and another 30, nearly half of them children, were hurt in strikes earlier this month.
An estimated 10,000 people have been killed since March 2015, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — with the logistical and political backing of the United States — unleashed air power against the Huthi rebels.
Rights groups say the death toll could be far higher. Save the Children has estimated that 85,000 Yemenis under five years old may have died of starvation.
Bachelet said it was unclear how many children had starved to death in Yemen but warned that “Yemeni civilians, including children, are now more vulnerable and hungrier than at any time since March 2015.”
She said more than two million children were suffering from acute malnutrition, including 360,000 with severe, acute malnutrition, meaning they are wasting away and risk starvation.
Bachelet also voiced deep concern at reports that both the government-backed forces and the Huthis were continuing to enlist children as fighters.
“In most cases, the children are between 11 and 17 years old, but there have been consistent reports of the recruitment or use of children as young as eight,” she said.
Source: Times Of Israel