BBC 21/03/2019 - Fifty people were killed and dozens more were injured in the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March. They are fathers, mothers, grandparents, daughters and sons. They are refugees, immigrants and New-Zealand born. They are Kiwis. A lone gunman is believed to be responsible for the shootings at the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic centre, a 10-minute drive away. Below are the names and, where available, photos of those who died. Many had moved to New Zealand to study or work, and build a better life for themselves and their families. Some were refugees, who thought they had found safety. Read more - Lire plus

After Deadly 1996 Massacre, Australia Overhauled Its Gun Laws. New Zealand Now Plans to Do the Same

New Zealand helping to pay Christchurch shooting victims' funerals, regardless of immigration status

New Zealand PM Ardern Urges Her Nation To Make Gunman 'Nameless'

New Zealand bikers stand guard at mosques for first Friday prayers since massacre

rabble.ca 19/03/2019 - As we mourn the victims of the terrorist atrocity in New Zealand -- where at least 50 Muslim worshippers were mowed down by a white supremacist partially "inspired" by Donald Trump -- many are looking for answers to the inevitable questions of why and how. To answer those questions, and explore how we might prevent such terrorist acts, it may be helpful to recognize that what happened at Christchurch -- mass murder produced as the logical result of a long-running political epoch that is almost singularly defined by the dehumanization and demonization of Muslims, Arabs, and anyone perceived as such -- happens every day. As in any war, atrocities are the norm, not the aberration. In the war of terror that has been waged by so-called Western democracies for decades -- long before 9/11 -- governments and militaries, their compliant media partners, the so-called entertainment industry, and a host of others have played the role of initiators, accomplices, and accelerants to a fiery hatred of all things perceived as Muslim. Occasionally, there is official shock and grief at large-scale massacres like Christchurch, the images of tortured bodies at Abu Ghraib, or the front-page picture of a drowned Syrian refugee child washed up on a beach. But our attention too often turns elsewhere because our status quo is defined by indifference to the daily suffering inflicted on large groups of people without white skin privilege who are targeted directly -- or who are too easily dismissed as indirect "collateral damage" -- because they are perceived to have no human value whatsoever. Most of the time, Christchurch-style atrocities in which the victims' humanity is reduced to a mere statistic barely make the news or draw condemnation. When such atrocities do generate headlines, sanctimonious leaders in charge of countries built on racism and genocide try to calm the rage in our hearts by claiming "this is not who we are," even as their regimes' policies contribute to such unspeakable acts. Others, like Conservative leader Andrew Scheer , have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point where they are forced to acknowledge the terrorist targeting of Muslims that Christchurch represented. And then there are those like People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier , who do not feel such atrocities warrant his condemnation. Notably, both Bernier and Scheer are unapologetic for speaking at an Ottawa rally that hosted white supremacist Faith Goldy and racist yellow-vest members in February. As Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network explained , that rally's organizers and backers -- the climax of a truck convoy from Alberta -- were infused with overt racism, and "had engaged in online death threats including calls for the arrest and death of the prime minister, [and] supported anti-Muslim hate groups including Canadian Combat Coalition, Soldiers of Odin, and Worldwide Coalition Against Islam." Canada's national public broadcaster, the CBC, devoted an incredible amount of free publicity to the extremely problematic truck convoy and its two days of tiny rallies, which drew tens of people to Parliament Hill. The CBC's blanket coverage helped normalize the people behind a very dangerous discourse that blames immigrants, and, specifically, Muslims, for everything that's wrong in the world. And while some so-called progressives cheered the formation of Bernier's white supremacist party as a perfect "divide the right" moment, they neglected to remember that the very communities who will be hurt by the existence and media normalization of this very dangerous xenophobic grouping are the ones in line for the next Christchurch. Indeed, Bernier sings from the same songbook as the Christchurch terrorist, right down to Bernier's 2018 tweet that "More diversity will not be our strength, it will destroy what has made us such a great country…. Why should we promote ever more diversity? If anything and everything is Canadian, does being Canadian mean something?" While leaders like Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump did tweet about Christchurch, their government's policies nevertheless contribute to Christchurch-style massacres everyday, whether by aerial bombardment, through economic sanctions, or the approval of their state security services continuing to racially profile and scaremonger about the threat allegedly posed by Muslims, even though study after study shows that white supremacist violence is the leading cause of extremist killings in both leaders' countries. Notably, neither Trump nor Trudeau found it in themselves to tweet last summer when the same number of those killed in Christchurch were murdered in a Saudi air strike against a Yemeni school bus, killing 40 children and 11 adults and injuring 79. The laser-guided bomb used in the attack was sold to the Saudis by Lockheed Martin, the military contractor Canada has chosen to lead its $105-billion warship contract. That is the same Saudi coalition that is still being supplied with $15 billion of Canadian weaponry with the full approval of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Trudeau, further bolstering a slaughter and sanctions regime that kills a Yemeni child every 10 minutes and threatens up to 20 million with death by starvation and disease. Read more - Lire plus

Andrew Coyne: Why does Andrew Scheer find it so difficult to say the right thing?

Canadian Labour Congress and Muslim group accuse Scheer of emboldening far-right actors

Why won’t Maxime Bernier denounce the terror attack in Christchurch?

Former Neo-Nazi: President Trump May Be Complicit in Growing Threat of White Supremacy

Until Christchurch I thought it was worth debating with Islamophobes. Not any more

rabble.ca 17/03/2019 - While the latest mass murder of Muslims by a terrorist happened in Christchurch, New Zealand, it could have happened in Canada. Despite the fact that Canada had its own national tragedy with Islamophobia on January 29, 2017 when Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire on Muslim worshippers in Quebec City, little has fundamentally changed since. [...] Canada has a growing number of white nationalists and Islamophobes who congregate online and offline in a long list of right-wing anti-Muslim groups including the Soldiers of Odin, the Three Percenters, and La Meute. In fact, the number of right-wing extremist groups in Canada grew by 20-25 percent between 2015 and 2018. Between 1980 and 2014, such groups were responsible for 120 different criminal incidents, ranging from drug offenses, attempted assassinations, bombings and other attacks. By comparison, there were only seven “Jihadist-inspired incidents” over the same period. Despite this history of criminal incidents by right-wing extremist groups in Canada, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had abandoned its investigations into such groups prior to the 2017 Quebec City attack. According to Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Canada’s public security organizations have a long history of downplaying the danger from far-right groups. While Canada does have anti-hate laws in its federal criminal code, the Conservative government repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2013 -- thus weakening the legal options to combat hate speech. According to Dr. Barbara Perry, an expert on hate crime in Canada, "The legislation is weak, and the enforcement is even weaker." [...] while motion M-103 was the source of such outrageous discourse in Canada, it ultimately provided a path forward for the Trudeau government. The motion called for a study on religious discrimination that was ultimately published by Parliament's Heritage Committee in February of 2018. While not perfect , the study did gather input from dozens of representatives of Canada's religious communities, along with experts on religious discrimination and bigotry. Based on this input, the study made many sensible recommendations. It proposed, for example, additional grant funding for security systems for religious communities. It also recommended that the government do a better job of collecting hate crime data, and that law enforcement better standardize the data. The study also recommended programs to promote public awareness of different cultural and religious practices. Such programs would be intended to promote diversity and inclusion, and would target certain sectors that appear more vulnerable to religious bigotry. Law enforcement and government employees would also be the beneficiaries of programs promoting cultural sensitivity, as they are often caught up in the public controversies around Islamophobia. Such steps are important. Studies repeatedly suggest that media coverage in the West favours negative discourses about Muslims and other minorities. For example, violent crimes committed by Muslims tend to be emphasized in news reports, while violence against Muslims is downplayed or ignored. The Christchurch mosque shootings should serve as a kick in the pants to the Trudeau government. The Quebec City mosque attack was over two years ago, and the Heritage Committee report was released over one year ago. Given the continued increase in Islamophobic incidents in Canada, it's unconscionable that this government still hasn't implemented some of the recommendations of the report. Even if some programs need time to take effect, the government could immediately take the symbolic step of recognizing January 29 as a national day of action on Islamophobia -- another recommendation of the Heritage Committee. While it may be that the Trudeau government wants to defer action beyond the next election for political reasons, that's highly unethical on an issue of public safety. Worse, it will appear to be shamefully negligent if a mass shooting -- especially one on the scale of the New Zealand attack -- takes place in another Canadian mosque. For all our sakes, let's hope that never happens again. Not in Canada, nor anywhere else. Read more - Lire plus

Soldier who appeared on white nationalist podcast reinstated by Canadian Forces

Reminder: Our compilation of resources against Islamophobia

National Observer 20/03/2019 - In July 2011, the phrase “Cultural Marxism” broke into the mainstream thanks to a long and rambling manifesto. It was published after the author, a Norwegian far-right terrorist, killed 77 people in Utoya, Norway, the majority of whom were youth attending a left-wing political summer camp. Anders Breivik saw these youth as a threat to the White Europe that he wished for. Cultural Marxism, he explained in detail, was a political theory pushed by Jews and feminists to destroy Western Civilization. It was code for the racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, violently sexist worldview that drove Breivik to commit such a mass horror. Breivik’s crimes should have been the moment that Canadian journalists realized that we have an organized white supremacy problem. His manifesto — rambling, long, semi-coherent and deeply racist — touched on many of the tropes that have dominated Canadian discussions about the far right for years, including before and after the attack at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City in 2017. Breivik laid it out for us: how university campuses are hotbeds for Cultural Marxism and feminist organizing, how global movements of refugees threaten white Europe and through anti-Semitic tropes, how media engages in “fake news” to lie to people, and so on. He even started his manifesto with the heading: “Political correctness is Cultural Marxism.” After his rhetorical arguments, he then explains how to carry out an act of mass terror. At the time, I remember reading Breivik’s manifesto in shock to see that someone had summed up every horrible thing that I had become used to reading on the Internet. For years, I had followed racists' websites and blogs to understand a curiosity; but Breivik’s words and actions felt like a watershed moment. We now had the proof to link online hatred and rhetoric, with real-life acts of violence. We saw, clearly, that organized hatred for Islam and Muslims was deadly, and what coded language about Jews, women, Marxists, Antifa, refugees and Liberals really meant to organized white nationalists. The proof was undeniable, and worse, it was set in blood. Breivik focused on Europe and Western settler-states, so it wasn’t surprising to read Canada referenced from time to time throughout the thousand-plus pages. He lamented Canada’s low birth rate. He cited a National Post article that argues that so-called “homegrown” terror is a threat to Canadians. But he took specific interest in an issue that I was involved in: the management of Ryerson University’s multi-faith prayer space. He referenced the Canadian Federation of Students’ Taskforce on the Needs of Muslim Students. There was a direct line from student organizing in which I was involved, to the disgusting ramblings of a mass murderer. Canadians never learned the lessons that we should have following the Utoya massacre. There was no understanding from among politicians or media that the buzzwords that drove Breivik were driving Canadian extremists as well. At Maclean’s, they examined Breivik through the lens of a lone gunman, inexplicable and racist, but with no lessons for us to learn. Colby Cosh summed up how the Canadian media and political establishment understood Breivik in a quip that was profoundly incorrect : “Although Breivik’s boasts about being part of a Europe-wide movement of right-wing terror are yielding nothing but wind…” he writes, and then delves into what was known about Breivik’s childhood at the time. Scanning through the footnotes of his manifesto alone demonstrates that Cosh should have known then that this was more than simply wind — Breivik’s sources reveal an English-language global network of racist writers and thinkers whose entry into the mainstream was simply a matter of time. With the right prophet, these ideas could easily spread. No one did more to mainstream the theory of Cultural Marxism than Jordan Peterson, and not enough commentators or journalists made the connection to its racist, far-right origins. Peterson became an international superstar with the help of journalists promoting his brand of social critique, while doing the bare minimum to interrogate and investigate the origins of his social theories. In a few short years after Breivik’s massacre, the theories that underpinned his rampage dominated right wing Facebook groups and movements. They can even be found sanitized in Canada’s national newspapers. Read more - Lire plus

Newspapers help to radicalise far right, says UK anti-terror chief

Take white supremacist terrorism more seriously, please

Norway attack survivor: The global threat of white terror

The Christchurch Massacre and the White Power Movement

Intercepted Podcast: Radical White Terrorism

Why Tech Platforms Don’t Treat All Terrorism the Same

The Canary 19/03/2019 - Activist Moazzam Begg has placed the massacre of at least 50 Muslims in New Zealand into its wider context, blaming advocates of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ for actually ‘generating’ such far-right terrorism.

This is a context that’s missing from the mainstream discourse on these killings. [...] The suspect allegedly posted  an unsigned 77-page manifesto called ‘The Great Replacement’ just before the attack. The document echoes anti-Muslim, ‘ nativist ‘ language common among far-right white nationalists. It blasts immigration from the global south and declining birth rates among ‘whites’. The author emphasises their concern over “birth rates”, writing “this is White Genocide”. But as Begg, a former detainee at US torture facility Guantánamo Bay, said : "Anti-Muslim sentiment is not confined to the far-right but lives in the respectable halls of parliament, press rooms and academia." Begg is also outreach director for human rights organisation CAGE . He continued : "The violence meted out against peaceful worshippers today is generated from the neo-con playbook of alienating Muslims and stoking anti-immigrant sentiments. New Zealand is yet another signpost of the brutality unleashed. British rapper Lowkey echoed this sentiment on the same day, saying that the “attack in New Zealand did not take place in a vacuum”. And CAGE described the massacre as the “inevitable outcome of decades of War on Terror language”. It said : " This is a moment for politicians and leaders to stop and reflect over decades of policy making under the guise of the ‘War on Terror’, whose actions and policies are premised upon the mass demonisation of Muslims, including treating them as a fifth column within the nations of their birth." CAGE emphasised that : "It is incorrect to narrow this down to a fringe group. Much of the rhetoric on which the perpetrator of this attack has relied, is mainstream in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the West at large." It also noted how : "Individuals allied to think tanks that are in close proximity to the corridors of power, such as the Henry Jackson Society, have openly advocated for ‘less Islam’ and ‘making conditions for Muslims harder across the board’." The Canary revealed in 2016 that several members of UK prime minister Theresa May’s cabinet were also members of the pro-war, Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society . Western governments have been using anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant language to reduce opposition to their endless offensive wars abroad. They have also used the same fear-mongering (playing on Islamophobia) to justify their crackdown on rights and freedoms domestically. Unfortunately, as long as policies like the ‘War on Terror’ remain the norm, we will continue to see attacks like the massacre at Christchurch. Read more - Lire plus

VOA 19/03/2019 - China has released a lengthy white paper that analysts say seeks to justify its anti-terrorism fight and de-radicalization measures in the western region of Xinjiang, where up to 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are estimated to have been forced into detention in what Beijing calls “vocational training centers.” The move, observers say, shows that China has already gone into overdrive to develop a counter-narrative and that it appears to be winning the propaganda war as many countries and Muslim organizations remain silent about the mass detention. Still, while the paper could've been an opportunity to set the record straight China did not say how many are being held in the centers. Estimates overseas are that more than a million have been caught up by the government extremism dragnet. The paper said that since 2014, nearly 13,000 "terrorists" have been arrested in Xinjiang. [...] Rights groups have voiced concern over China's emboldened stance, calling on international society to use sanctions against Beijing to counter its oppression of Muslims in Xinjiang. The World Uighur Congress swiftly denounced the white paper, calling it a deliberate distortion of the truth, and arguing that China’s forced detention of more than one million Uighurs is unlawful. “Accusations named in the white paper are hostile in nature and lack transparency. Uighurs suppressed and arrested by the local Chinese government there have never been legally convicted through due process before they are identified as terrorists,” argued Dilxat Raxit, spokesman of the Germany-headquartered exile group. Read more - Lire plus

When China Convinced the U.S. That Uighurs Were Waging Jihad

DemocracyNow! 21/03/2019 - Amnesty International is accusing the United States of covering up civilian casualties in its secretive air war in Somalia targeting the militant group al-Shabab. The U.S. has carried out over 100 strikes in Somalia since 2017. For years the Pentagon has claimed no civilians were being killed in the airstrikes, but the new Amnesty report found that at least 14 civilians were killed, and eight more were injured, in just five airstrikes. The overall civilian death toll is likely to be far higher. We speak with Brian Castner, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations. He helped write Amnesty’s report, titled “The Hidden US War in Somalia.” Read more - Lire plus

Le Soleil 15/03/2019 - «Les caméras sont toujours en fonction. […] Nous avons décidé de garder les caméras à la suite du G7 sans échéancier pour les enlever», confirme au Soleil David Poitras, un des porte-parole du SPVQ. «L’analyse de la situation nous a permis de conclure que les caméras représentent un outil supplémentaire à l’orientation de nos opérations policières et à la progression de certaines enquêtes.» Combien de ces appareils surveillent les citoyens? «Quelques dizaines de caméras ont été installées peu avant le sommet du G7», précise M. Poitras. Et elles sont où? «Pour des raisons stratégiques, nous ne dévoilerons pas le nombre précis, ni la localisation, ni le type de caméras.» Le SPVQ avance cependant que ces caméras sont allumées en permanence, bien qu’il n’y ait pas d’yeux braqués sur les écrans à temps plein. «Le visionnement des images est effectué par un policier et le réseau d’images est sécurisé. [Mais] il n’y a pas de visionnement 24 heures sur 24.» [...] Est-ce légal d’utiliser des caméras policières filmant les habitants et visiteurs de la capitale en continu? Oui, mais… «Ça fait débat», remarque Pierre Trudel, professeur à la faculté de droit de l’Université de Montréal. «Capter des images dans un espace public, ce n’est pas entièrement interdit, mais il y a des limites. C’est pour ça que c’est si ambigu. C’est parce que les limites, c’est essentiellement de s’assurer qu’on ne fait pas, avec ces systèmes-là, une intrusion qui est disproportionnée par rapport aux avantages qu’on recherche : prévenir le crime, prévenir des gestes illicites.» Au centre des discussions : le droit à la vie privée. «C’est souvent énoncé comme un enjeu important. […] On reconnaît que les gens ont une attente raisonnable de vie privée même dans des espaces publics. Ce n’est pas parce que vous êtes dans un espace public que je peux vous espionner et vous photographier sous toutes les coutures.» Read more - Lire plus

CBC 20/03/2019 - Canadians will soon be able to lodge complaints with an independent watchdog if they feel they were mistreated by a border officer. Tucked away in the Liberals' 2019 budget, tabled Tuesday, was an announcement that Ottawa will assign an independent review agency to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). The government is promising $24.42 million over five years, starting in 2019-20, and $6.83 million per year after that, to expand the mandate of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC), which fields complaints regarding the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The announcement follows stories about questionable behaviour by CBSA officers, which have been investigated by the agency itself. Critics have for years questioned the effectiveness of that arrangement. Last month a  CBC News investigation showed the CBSA investigated 1,200 allegations against its own staff over a two and a half year period from January 2016 to the middle of 2018. Records released by the CBSA didn't show which allegations were found to be credible or what actions it took to address specific problems. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the budget announcement addresses well-known issues. "I'm just very pleased that this measure is going forward and we will be able, in the next number of weeks of this parliamentary session, fill a hole in the architecture that I've wanted to fill," he said in an interview. In order to expand the CRCC's mandate the government will have to amend the Canada Border Services Agency Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act — something Goodale said he's confident he can push through before the House rises ahead of the fall election. The minister said the CRCC — which has dealt with its own harassment allegations — has suitable structure and expertise on which to build. "Yes, there have been issues in the past and we will address those issues as we renovate that organization and add on the additional responsibilities," he said. Read more - Lire plus

DemocracyNow! 19/03/2019 - The Trump administration has barred International Criminal Court investigators from entering the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the U.S. will start denying visas to members of the ICC who may be investigating alleged war crimes by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In September, national security adviser John Bolton threatened U.S. sanctions against ICC judges if they continued to investigate alleged war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A 2016 ICC report accused the U.S. military of torturing at least 61 prisoners in Afghanistan during the ongoing war. The report also accused the CIA of subjecting at least 27 prisoners to torture, including rape, at CIA prison sites in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. We speak with Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Read more - Lire plus

ACLU 21/03/2019 - At a time when violence by white supremacists is on the rise, the FBI appears to be targeting Black people in a secret intelligence program concerning so-called “Black Identity Extremists”— an inflammatory term for a group that doesn’t even exist. The bureau’s practice echoes earlier, shameful government surveillance programs that sought to discredit civil rights and Black power activists who were critical to advancing racial equality — and it echoes modern-day spying that impacts immigrants and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities. That’s probably why the government doesn’t want us to get information about this program. It is also why the ACLU and the Center for Media Justice are taking the FBI to court . In August 2017, the FBI issued an intelligence assessment that designated “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers” a new domestic terror threat. Disseminated to more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies, the intelligence assessment claims, without evidence, that Black people involved in unrelated police killings shared an ideology that motivated their actions. It also focuses on Black people who, in the bureau’s own words, “perceive[] racism and injustice in American society.” The intelligence assessment is built on anti-Black racial stereotypes. It is so deeply flawed and of such “ poor analytic quality ” that even some law enforcement acknowledge that no group of so-called “Black Identity Extremists” even exists. The intelligence assessment sparked an avalanche of concern from elected officials , Black activists, and Black-led organizations, including the Center for Media Justice and Color of Change . The dissemination of a racialized threat label to law enforcement nationwide holds the potential to spark baseless police harassment of Black activists who protest police and state violence. And we know that programs that diminish already weakened mechanisms for police accountability can lead to harm and death for Black people stopped by police. There are too many stories of Black men, women, and transgender people that underscore this truth. Read more - Lire plus

War on the rocks 20/03/2019 - From the beginning of my career in international relief and development, when I witnessed aid being withheld from millions of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge to force political change in the country, I have resisted a political, security-based approach to humanitarian assistance. I’ve seen this approach punish civilians in El Salvador and Mozambique during the Reagan Doctrine wars ; Sri Lanka during its long, brutal ethnic conflict; and, more recently, Somalia and Syria. Today, an unrecognized consequence of the “war on terror” has been its effect on the ability of humanitarian organizations to reach people in need. [...] The U.S. approach to counter-terrorism has a humanitarian problem. On the one hand, the United States professes adherence to humanitarian principles and commits to remaining the largest donor to humanitarian response in the world . On the other, winning the global war on terrorism is an overarching imperative and rationale of U.S. foreign policy. This contradiction is becoming acute. Put simply, the global war on terror is morally bankrupt and will never succeed if the victims of ISIL and Boko Haram cannot receive protection, humanitarian assistance, and support to rebuild their lives. Further, humanitarian organizations that can afford to opt out of partnering with the U.S. government will increasingly do so rather than risking being fined and discredited as the result of investigations based on rules they never signed on to. My argument has three pillars. First, the core contradiction is between humanitarian action and the political agendas of governments and non-state armed groups. Second, contrary to Trisko Darden’s implication that humanitarian agencies don’t distinguish between armed actors, including designated terrorist groups, and civilians, in fact these agencies make every effort to do so to carry out their mission in keeping with humanitarian principles. Finally, far from trying to evade or work around counter-terrorism regulations, humanitarian organizations devote an increasing amount of time and resources to comply with a complex and ever-changing regulatory regime in which they are forced to assume all the risk. Trisko Darden concludes: “Now is the time to seek a middle ground between the noble principles of humanitarian assistance and the operational realities of the counter-terrorism mission.” Yes, let’s find a middle ground. But the way to do so is not by forcing humanitarian organizations to compromise their work to better comport with the political imperatives of the global war on terror. Rather, humanitarian groups and national governments should find it by adopting a risk-sharing approach that allows the humanitarian sector to continue identifying and helping the most vulnerable victims of conflict and violence. [...] Government donors, for their part, need to devote more time to assessing the risk–reward dynamic in a given emergency context, and then make it absolutely clear to their funding recipients what risks they are willing to accept in the name of saving lives. If donors want humanitarian outcomes from their support, they need to be willing to provide funding for compliance units, inspection teams, conflict analysts and other measures to give agencies the capacity to provide assistance in a responsible way. Without this support, “zero tolerance” becomes too great a burden for the humanitarian agencies, and they will have no choice but to decline to accept the risk involved for fear of permanent damage to their reputations. Further, government donors need to recognize that increasing human suffering through draconian counter-terror regimes undermines their avowed commitments to humanitarian action, which in turn undermines their ability to address root causes to reduce the terror threat. Read more - Lire plus

Al Jazeera 15/03/2019 - On May 28, 1994, Farukh Ahmad Khan, a tall, slim man, was delivering a lecture to his students in Thane, Maharashtra, when he was told that a police officer was looking for him.Khan, then 24, wanted to work abroad and had applied for a passport. He thought that the officer's visit was related to his application. The officer left a message for Khan to visit the local police station. When Khan arrived, he was escorted to the commissioner's office for questioning. He was asked whether he knew someone named Jamil Khan, and responded that Khan was his cousin. He was then asked if he knew Ashiq Hussain Khandey, and responded that he didn't know anyone by this name. Police described Khandey as a "Kashmiri terrorist" and accused Farukh of planning attacks in Maharashtra with him, saying the pair wanted to "spread terrorism". They then, he claimed, took him into custody and assaulted him. Khan was unaware that in his hometown of Bhusawal, more than 400km away, police had already picked up Jamil and Yusuf Khan, his cousins. With them, he became part of a group of Muslim men accused of planning to carry out bomb blasts across the state of Maharashtra, which is home to more than 100 million people, of which Mumbai is the capital. For weeks, they appeared on the front pages of newspapers, slammed as "terrorists". Twelve people were accused initially - one accomplice gave evidence to the prosecution and escaped trial. The eleven suspects - Jamil Ahmed Khan, Mohammed Yunus, Yusuf Khan, Wasim Asif, Ayyub Ismail Khan, Shaikh Shafi, Farukh Ahmad Khan, Abdul Qader Habibi, Syed Ashfaq Mir, Mumtaz Murtuza Mir and Mohammed Haroon Ansari - were accused of sedition and conspiring against the country. [...] "We were accused of harbouring terrorists, criminal conspiracy, planning terror activities and so many other things. We kept saying that we don't know anything and are innocent, but the police kept torturing us," Khan told Al Jazeera. "The cops would tie our hands by rope behind the body, and stretch our legs in the opposite direction making a 180-degree angle. On several occasions, our hands were tied, and we would be hung upside down. "After torture, they would ask us to sign on blank papers." [...] On February 27 this year, after a 25-year battle, they were all acquitted. Read more - Lire plus

It is important to examine what happened in the Iraq War: the lies, the crimes, the mass killings, the destruction — all of it. But to understand Iraq’s current reality, we must confront not just 16 years of U.S. policy, but a history that spans the administrations of 11 U.S. presidents.

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