Will the UN stop failing Myanmar's people?

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 08 November 2021

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NEW YORK - 521 groups including Human Rights Watch call on the UN Security Council to address the Myanmar junta's continuing atrocities, especially in light of the latest surge of attacks in Chin State, where soldiers deliberately torched houses at random

Time to act against Myanmar's junta abuses; a day for youth and citizen engagement at COP26; Syrian torture continues; UN report fails to give full picture of devastation in Ethiopia's Tigray; Singapore plans to execute a man with disability; and vaccine inequity persists amid European Covid fourth wave.

Nine months after the attempted coup by the military, the humanitarian, human rights and political crisis in Myanmar keeps on escalating. Human Rights Watch and 520 national, regional, and international organizations are calling on the United Nations Security Council to go beyond statements and act to end the junta's abuses, starting with an arms embargo and a referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court. The international community cannot fail Myanmar's people any longer.

'They want us to be extinct': Uyghurs speak out

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 06 November 2021

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By Tasmin Nazeer

LONDON - Gulzara Muhammed is an ethnic Uyghur exile originally from Xinjiang and now living in Turkey with two children. She came from a devout Muslim family, with her husband being the Imam of their local mosque in China. Gulzara recalls how early expressions of Islamophobia by Chinese authorities turned into more sinister practices against her family.

“My family were under surveillance by Chinese authorities just because my husband was an Imam and my father who lives with us had begun teaching the Quran to Uyghur children. We would get constant disturbances by Chinese police asking about our activities which intensified over a period of months, even though we were simply following our faith,” she tells The New Arab.

In 2018 Gulzara’s husband was arrested along with her elderly father under the guise of “inciting and spreading hatred”. Copies of the Quran were confiscated from her home and her residence was turned upside down as police ‘aggressively hit and forcibly handcuffed’ her loved ones.

“I pleaded with the police to let them go and said they have not done anything wrong. One officer spat at my face and threatened that I would be arrested too. They told me that we should not read this and they showed me a copy of an Islamic book I had. I was terrified but they did not care about our cries, they treated us worse than animals.”

Gulzara turned to her brother for help as he had connections with a Hans Chinese teacher who managed to bribe a police officer to release her family members. The trauma was too much to bear for Gulzara’s elderly father who passed away just one day after being released.

“It was then that I told my husband that we have to leave and that it would be unsafe for us to stay in the country. We decided to go to Turkey but I had to get a medical check-up from the family planning workers and do other checks before going.”

In predominant Uyghur areas in Xinjiang, family planning workers are designated to residential areas to oversee the number of children in each family and call them for check-ups almost every three months.

“I was told by the family planning worker that I needed to undergo a medical check-up in the hospital. When I asked why they said for me not to ask too many questions and this was part of the law. I said I did not want this (contraception) as it's against my religion and that I am being careful. I told her that I am not pregnant but she insisted I still go to the hospital.”

Gulzara was later told by a nurse that she had a ‘cyst’ that needed to be removed and that they needed to operate urgently as her ‘life was at risk’.

“I told them I do not have any symptoms of a cyst and suspected something was wrong. I remember being given an injection and I became unconscious. When I woke up I was in pain and was told that the procedure is done but now I will not be able to have any more children.”

Gulzara was horrified as questions swirled in her mind as to what had just happened to her.

“They lied to me. They tricked me. They have sterilised me without my consent and one day I hope they (the Chinese government) will own up to their misdeeds as it is them who orders hospitals to do this. They are trying to stop the Uyghur population from growing and this is the only way they can do it – by targeting us, Uyghur women.”

‘Ayshe’, is a mother of four children from Kashgar, who asked to conceal her identity due to safety concerns.

“I fled China many years ago with my husband and children when things started to get worse for us (Uyghurs). At the time I only had two children but was pregnant with my third child when I left the country.”

After authorities found out that Ayshe had escaped from Xinjiang they targeted her family members and put them into internment camps under false allegations.

“My whole family, my mother, father and sister were all put into internment camps. I got a call from a relative telling me to come back but I could not as it was just not safe. I got the message that my sister was being tortured and that they (the Chinese authorities) had forced her to be sterilised.”

Ayshe cries uncontrollably as she tells The New Arab the horror of recalling the experience of being told by a former inmate of what her sister had to endure.

“She was chained by her two hands and they told her that they would sterilise her by force if she did not comply. She tried to resist and told them she only has one child and she doesn’t even know where he is now after she was taken to the camp. They taunted her that this was her punishment for being born Uyghur and now she will have no children.”

Ayshe has not heard from any of her family members since seeking exile abroad and is fearful that the Chinese government are still after her should they find out her location. She wants justice for the "torture and heartache" she says she has undergone due to the Chinese Communist Party’s policies against the Uyghur ethnic minority.

Mai Abdulhamit, 50, is an Uyghur mother of three living in Turkey. She tells The New Arab that Uyghur women in Xinjiang fear that they will be "deliberately targeted" in a bid to cut births and further erase their population.

“They want us to be extinct, that is their (Chinese Communist Party) plan.”

Mai was living in Xinjiang when she found out that she was expecting her third baby. She hid her pregnancy by staying in the confinement of her room so that she would not be targeted by family planning workers.

“I tried my best to hide my pregnancy as I knew that the Chinese government were intentionally targeting us and I was scared that I would be forced to abort the child or worse be fitted with IUD which I heard they do very aggressively to Uyghur women.”

As months passed by and her pregnancy became more difficult to hide, she tried to move to another town but without the hakou – a residential paper – she was forced to move back. It was then that the family planning worker found out she was pregnant.

“I was so scared, I was trembling and shaking. We told the family planning worker that we would do anything, we would pay money to her but please don’t inform her boss that I am pregnant. I cried so much that my eyes were bloodshot that day.”

Mai says that the family planning worker asked her husband to pay an extortionate amount and advised them to leave the country as soon as possible. She managed to conceal her pregnancy while leaving the country but she fears for the family she has left behind in Xinjiang.

“We don’t know what has happened to our remaining family members. We cannot get through to them at all since we left," she reveals.

"I pray that they are still alive. All I know is that many Uyghurs and mothers like me have suffered. They do not want Uyghurs to have children and they do not want Islam to spread in the country. It’s a very sad situation but I hope the presidents of the world will do more for us.”

Tasnim Nazeer is an award-winning journalist, author, and Universal Peace Federation Ambassador.

Afghanistan girls soccer team given asylum in Portugal

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 21 September 2021

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By ALEX SANZ

LISBON - The girls on Afghanistan’s national soccer team were anxious. For weeks, they had been moving around the country, waiting for word that they could leave.

One wants to be a doctor, another a movie producer, others engineers. All dream of growing up to be professional soccer players.

Then the message finally came early Sunday: A charter flight would carry the girls and their families from Afghanistan — to where they didn’t know. The buses that would take them to the airport were already on their way.

“They left their homes and left everything behind,” Farkhunda Muhtaj, the captain of the Afghanistan women’s national team who from her home in Canada had spent the last few weeks communicating with the girls and working to help arrange their rescue, told The Associated Press. “They can’t fathom that they’re out of Afghanistan.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the girls, ages 14-16, and their families, had been trying to leave, fearing what their lives might become like under the Taliban — not just because women and girls are forbidden to play sports, but because they were advocates for girls and active members of their communities.

Late Sunday, they landed in Lisbon, Portugal.

In interviews with the AP this week, Muhtaj, members of the soccer team, some of their family members, and soccer federation staff, spoke about their final days in Afghanistan, the international effort to rescue them and the promise of their newfound freedom.

The rescue mission, called Operation Soccer Balls, was coordinated with the Taliban through an international coalition of former U.S. military and intelligence officials, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, U.S. allies, and humanitarian groups, said Nic McKinley, a CIA and Air Force veteran who founded Dallas-based DeliverFund, a nonprofit that’s secured housing for 50 Afghan families.

“This all had to happen very, very quickly. Our contact on the ground told us that we had a window of about three hours,” said McKinley. “Time was very much of the essence.”

Operation Soccer Balls had suffered a number of setbacks, including several failed rescue attempts, and a suicide bombing carried out by Islamic State militants, the Taliban’s rivals, at the Kabul airport that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. That bombing came during a harrowing airlift in which the U.S. military has acknowledging it was coordinating to some extent with the Taliban.

Complicating the rescue effort was the size of the group – 80 people, including the 26 youth team members as well as adults and other children, including infants.

Robert McCreary, a former congressional chief of staff and White House official under President George W. Bush who has worked with special forces in Afghanistan and helped lead the effort to rescue the national girls soccer team, said Portugal granted the girls and their families asylum.

“The world came together to help these girls and their families,” said McCreary. “These girls are truly a symbol of light for the world and humanity.”

The Taliban have tried to present a new image, promising amnesty to former opponents and saying they would form an inclusive government. Many Afghans don’t trust those promises, fearing the Taliban will quickly resort to the brutal tactics of their 1996-2001 rule, including barring girls and women from schools and jobs.

This week, the Taliban set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” in the building that once housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, the latest sign that it is restricting women’s rights.

As the girls moved from safehouse to safehouse, Muhtaj, who is also a teacher, said she helped them stay calm through virtual exercise and yoga sessions and by giving them homework assignments, including writing autobiographies.

She said she couldn’t share details about the rescue mission with the girls or their families and asked them to believe in her and others “blindly.”

“Their mental state was deteriorating. Many of them were homesick. Many of them missed their friends in Kabul,” said Muhtaj. “They had unconditional faith. We’ve revived their spirit.”

Some of the girls spoke to the AP through an interpreter. They said they want to continue playing soccer — something they were urged to not do while they were in hiding — and hope to meet soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United’s forward and a Portugal native.

Wida Zemarai, a goalkeeper and coach for the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team who moved to Sweden after the Taliban ascended to power in 1996, said the girls were emotional after their rescue.

“They can dream now,” Zemarai said. “They can continue to play.”