By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
28 October
2020
• Inside The Rohingya Refugee Camps:
Circumstances Beckon Prudence And Vision
By C R Abrar
• Why Leftists Should Vote For Biden In Droves
By Zeeshan Aleem
• When My President Sang ‘Amazing Grace’
By Thomas L. Friedman
• The Trump Administration Is Illegally Hiding
An FBI Report On White Supremacist Terror
By Alex Henderson
-----
Inside The Rohingya Refugee Camps:
Circumstances Beckon Prudence And Vision
By C R Abrar
October 28,
2020
In
January, the Bangladesh government’s change in policy, which finally allowed
education and skills training for Rohingya children, was widely appreciated.
Photo: Collected
-----
From an
unprecedented shutdown of activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country
is gradually moving to a new normal situation. Although the spectre of the
second wave of the contagion looms large, road, rail and air communications are
being resumed, shopping outlets are beginning to see customers, mills and
factories are slowly resuming production and construction sites are steadily
getting active as internal migrants desperate for jobs flock to the urban
centres. Many services that were suspended due to the outbreak of the pandemic
are gradually being restored.
Like the
rest of the country, life in the Cox's Bazar-Ukhiya-Teknaf region has also
begun to pulsate. The huge success of the local administration in enforcing a
total shutdown, restricting humanitarian responses to critical activities and
barring the movement of people and vehicles, have yielded handsome results. It
slowed the spread of the virus and provided opportunities to shore up required
public healthcare facilities, including establishing isolation and treatment
centres for both Rohingya refugees and the locals.
There is
little room for complacency. The congested nature of the dwellings in camps has
made it virtually impossible for the refugees to maintain social distancing.
There is general reticence to use protective gear. The idea that only divine
intervention can cure the disease is pervasive.
The
negative perception associated with the virus contributes to a general
reluctance to visit clinics for test or treatment, particularly for fever and
other Covid-19 like symptoms. Even those suffering from non-Covid-19 symptoms,
as a result of other illnesses, avoid visiting clinics for fear of being
stigmatised. The situation becomes more complex with brewing discontent and
tension among the host community that refugees will spread the virus. Disease
epidemics have historically been used to create divisions between groups of
people and to assign blame.
The
emphasis on Covid-19 appears to have overshadowed other critical health needs,
such as routine immunisation, mental health services, maternal/child health
services, etc. Diphtheria cases are being reported. These types of epidemics,
especially of preventable illness, can in turn erode trust in health services
and create a feedback loop where healthcare is not sought or services are not
utilised. Enhancing trust, through positive and effective risk communication,
can help mitigate this, but only if other health services are provided.
Poor
quality of services including non-availability of medicines, language barriers
and long hours of waiting also discourage service seekers from accessing
healthcare facilities. Therefore, there is an urgent need to improve the
quality of services and for decisive action to restore regular medical services
through adequate mobilisation of resources.
In January,
the Bangladesh government's change in policy, which finally allowed education
and skills training for Rohingya children, was widely appreciated.
Notwithstanding the restrictions that the education must be informal and must
not use the Bangla language, it was a refreshing departure from a previous
stance that breached Bangladesh's obligations according to the Convention on
the Rights of the Child. One hopes that this is the beginning of efforts to
address existing critical gaps in refugee access to education and skills
development opportunities, and will eventually lead to "access to
appropriate, accredited and quality education" for all children of the
area, including Rohingya children.
The
outbreak of Covid-19 has delayed the implementation of the new education and
skills training programme. There is an urgent need to gear up efforts, with
adequate mobilisation of resources by the international community, so that
Rohingya children are not deprived further in their pursuit to realise their
innate potentials. Retention of skills requires their application. The next
logical step could therefore be planning to engage the refugees in income
generating activities.
Education
not only provides children with the opportunity to advance in their career, it
also enables them to think clearly, make a distinction between good and evil,
claim their rights and face challenging situations. An educated, informed and
engaged youth will be less prone to irrational ideas, including those of
religious and sectarian bigotry and violent extremism. Education not only
shapes individuals' mental abilities to its fullest potentials, it contributes
to the development of their talents, instills self confidence and empowers
them. It is in such a context of harnessing their human potential that the
government may reconsider allowing the re-enrolment of enterprising and
talented Rohingya youth who secured admissions on merit in formal institutions,
continued their studies without any public assistance but were subsequently
de-registered through a government fiat.
The recent
spate of violence, resulting in the death of five refugees and the injury of
scores of others, has been a worrisome development. Although local media have
interpreted the incident as "factional fighting" within the Rohingya
community, its links with the drug trade, involving powerful persons of the
mainstream community, is also a possibility. These incidents are harmful not
only for the security and safety of refugees but also for their reputation and
public perception. Needless to say, such incidents reinforce the Burmese
position that the Rohingya are a violent group harboured by Bangladesh. Robust
efforts to ensure law and order are vital. Also, there is a need for proper
investigations into the incident.
Another
important matter of deep concern for the refugees has been the renewed call by
a section of the media and intellectuals for the relocation of 100,000 refugees
to Bhashan Char. Presumably to garner support, impressive accounts and footages
are being made available in the public domain of what was earlier perceived to
be a hush-hush project. Recently, a visit of a group of journalists was arranged
"to assess its habitability". Not surprisingly, the visit yielded a
general endorsement. After all, the structures and facilities on the "self
sufficient" island are surely more impressive than the thatched, rickety
shacks that the refugee currently live in.
Last week
in Prothom Alo, analyst Kamal Ahmed raised two pertinent questions. Would not
the current inmates of the facility, who have been living on the island for
months, be the most suitable persons to speak on the issue, and what prevented
the journalists from speaking with them? Also relevant is the question of
whether this would give a signal to the Burmese, and also the world, that
Bangladesh is beginning to accept the Rohingya as fait accompli by building
permanent structures for them.
It is regrettable
that the project was conceived and executed in haste without engaging important
stakeholders who are rendering services for the protection of the refugees.
Before carrying out any relocations, the call for a comprehensive technical and
protection assessment to evaluate the safety and sustainability of life on
Bhashan Char is a reasonable one. In line with its earlier commitment, the
government must ensure that relocation will be voluntary and refugees will
enjoy access to basic rights, services and livelihood opportunities.
One wonders
if the placement of more than 300 refugees in May as the first residents of the
island, mostly women and children who were intercepted and rescued on their way
to Malaysia, was a prudent one. The persistent refusal of the authorities to
grant UN access to these vulnerable and traumatised survivors to assess their
protection and humanitarian situation only generates negative publicity. The
claims by the inmates of sexual abuse and extortion (while effecting money transfer
by relatives) that have been highlighted by international media and rights
organisations need to be thoroughly and impartially investigated and acted
upon. These, coupled with the insensitive (if not reckless) comments of some
state functionaries that the refugees will be forced to relocate, and the
suggestion that all imprisoned Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar can be granted bail on
condition that they agree to go Bhashan Char, only present it as a penal
facility, thereby bolster the perception that life on the Char may not be quite
bearable.
There is a
need for the emergence of an organically grown leadership at different tiers. A
long standing demand of refugees and rights activists has been ensuring the
participation of the community in making decisions that affect them. A recently
released Amnesty International report "Let us speak for our rights"
deftly argues that instituting such an arrangement would not only help in
making the right decisions; it will ensure openness, accountability and transparency.
The
protracted nature of the Rohingya presence in Bangladesh demands innovative and
sensitive policy responses. Jettisoning its earlier approach, Bangladeshi
authorities have responded to the felt needs of the refugees and acknowledged
the importance of education and skill training. It has lifted the blanket ban
on internet coverage. It has acted decisively to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is trying its best to bring the sharply deteriorating law and order
situation in Teknaf under control.
At a time
when Burma is under global scrutiny from international accountability
mechanisms, policymakers in Dhaka should ensure that the focus remains on the
perpetrators of genocide. They should act prudently and refrain from taking any
actions that may amount to the proverbial "shooting yourself in the
foot".
---
C R Abrar is an academic with an interest in
migration and rights issues.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/inside-the-rohingya-refugee-camps-circumstances-beckon-prudence-and-vision-1985253
----
Why Leftists Should Vote for Biden in Droves
By Zeeshan Aleem
Oct. 27,
2020
Joe
Biden, Photo NYT
-----
If you were
to think up a nightmare for the socialist left, it would be hard to think of
someone more horrifying than President Trump: an authoritarian billionaire who
uses the White House to enrich himself and his inner circle while deploying
racism to cleave the working class and shunning international cooperation.
And yet in
some quarters of the left there are signs of hesitation about voting for Joe Biden.
Briahna Joy
Gray, press secretary for Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign,
caused a stir in a recent debate with Noam Chomsky by questioning the value of
voting for Democrats. And even among those who do support voting for Mr. Biden,
it is common to see them attach qualifications that narrow that to swing-state
voting.
After Mr.
Sanders dropped out of the 2020 primaries, Krystal Ball, a left-wing
commentator, argued that leftists should decide whether they want to cast “nose
holding” votes for Mr. Biden in the general election. And she committed to not
“judging or shaming” former Sanders supporters for weighing their options, a
choice each one would have to make “for themselves.”
But Ms.
Ball’s formulation, ironically, has a whiff of bourgeois liberalism to it.
Leftists don’t tell one another to split up and act in isolation; they derive
power and meaning from debating and executing collective action, like labor
politics and protests and community organizing. And leftists shouldn’t conceive
of politics as self-expression: Politics is about the balance of power in
society — between capital and labor, between elites and the marginalized.
It’s
evident that while socialists detest Mr. Trump’s embodiment of plutocracy, some
still feel icky about casting a ballot for a man pledging to restore the status
quo and whose prominent surrogates proudly point out that he could not be
mistaken for a socialist. But they shouldn’t. Instead, they should mobilize en
masse on behalf of Mr. Biden in every state, without apology or embarrassment —
and even with some excitement. To do so would not be to renege on their
commitment to socialism, but rather to advance its cause.
A social
movement that wants to reshape the world seeks out political terrain more conducive
to change.
Mr. Trump’s
re-election would mean four more years of scrambling to shield the already
insufficient Affordable Care Act, but a win by Mr. Biden would allow socialists
to go on offense and push for a Medicare-for-all system. Mr. Trump’s re-election
would deal irreversible damage to the planet, but there are signs that Mr.
Biden could be pressured to adopt the ambition of the Green New Deal. And
without Mr. Biden to rebalance the ideological makeup of the courts, most of
the policies that the left is pushing on organized labor or the welfare state
would be rendered legally impossible.
These
policies would not constitute the realization of socialism, but they would help
lay the foundation for liberating workers.
Since
Americans are far more motivated to enter the voting booth for presidential
candidates than for politicians for any other office, encouraging turnout for
Mr. Biden could also tip the outcome of competitive down-ballot races:
Socialists and their fellow travelers on the left could ride into office in
federal, state and local elections on his coattails, pulling the Democratic
Party left and enacting policies that protect the poor and communities of
color.
Just as
important, it could help ensure that Democrats win back control of the Senate.
If Mr. Biden slips into the presidency without the Democrats’ taking control of
the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell will filibuster even the most vanilla
Democratic bills into oblivion.
The unique
threats that Mr. Trump poses to democracy with acts like the politicization of
the Justice Department and calls for violent crackdowns on protests should
clarify the stakes for the left.
An
overwhelming majority of active socialists in the United States today are
democratic socialists — they believe that political and economic democracy are
both indispensable and interconnected. That means they have a duty and an
interest in thwarting the emergence of an authoritarian regime.
Mr. Trump’s
efforts to interfere in the elections are yet another reason for a massive
left-wing mobilization: Given his attempts at tampering and his questioning the
legitimacy of mail-in voting, legal scholars like Lawrence Douglas at Amherst
College argue that a huge margin in favor of Mr. Biden may be the country’s
best weapon against Mr. Trump trying to steal the election.
A very
fringe view on the left holds that the election of reactionaries like Mr. Trump
intensifies the crises that will inspire people to turn to socialism and
justifies ignoring the polls or voting for third-party candidates. This
argument suffers both from ethical and strategic problems.
Subjecting
the planet and the most vulnerable people who live on it to suffering on the
hope that it prompts people to question capitalism is a cruel gamble at odds
with principles of leftist solidarity. Moreover, it’s a reckless wager:
Consider that authoritarian regimes that deprive their citizens of rights and
prosperity are capable of great longevity, as we’ve seen in countries like
Russia and North Korea. No student of history would underestimate the
possibility of things to simply get worse.
The left is
ultimately investing in its own electoral future by taking voting for Mr. Biden
seriously. A great deal of political science literature shows that voting is
habitual; lefty organizations should be building get-out-the-vote
infrastructure and socializing the left to think about voting as a routine
collective action so that they can mobilize more effectively in future races.
While
general elections often involve uninspiring choices, the rise of Mr. Sanders
and a left-wing bloc in Congress led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
have illustrated how Democratic primaries provide critical opportunities for
the left to insert itself into American political life. If the left becomes a
consistent constituency rather than a periodic threat to potential turnout
numbers, it will have more leverage over the party establishment.
A
sophisticated and strategic left — a left that strives to win power — knows how
to pick its fights and its adversaries. The primaries are over, the party
convention is over, and voting has already begun. Change does not begin or end
in the voting booth. But voting is one of the simplest and most tangible ways
to tilt the playing field and offer some protection to the vulnerable.
Socialists
should fight like hell to get Mr. Biden into office — and then fight him like
hell the day that he becomes president.
-----
Zeeshan Aleem is a freelance political
journalist and publisher of What’s Left.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/opinion/joe-biden-left.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
When My President Sang ‘Amazing Grace’
By Thomas L. Friedman
Oct. 27,
2020
This is my
last regular column before Election Day, so what is there left to say? Instead of
giving you an answer, let me leave you with a question, which I think is the
question. What would you do if your kid came home from school and said:
“Mom, Dad,
my teacher said President Obama ordered the killing of the U.S. Special Forces
team that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. My teacher said Bin Laden is
actually still alive, that the guy the Navy SEALs killed was a ‘body double.’
He also claimed that Obama’s aides got Iran to send Bin Laden to Pakistan so
Obama could have a ‘trophy kill.’ What’s a trophy kill? My teacher said he had
heard all of this somewhere on the internet and he just thought he’d pass it
along to our class. Mom, Dad, is this true?”
I know how
I’d respond. I’d immediately call the school principal and ask how someone
peddling such vile and fraudulent conspiracy stuff could be teaching in any
classroom in America. Who wouldn’t? It violates the most basic judgment and
norms of decency that we expect of anyone teaching in public school or serving
in public office.
And that is
really the question Donald Trump’s voters can’t ignore: Why would you be ready
to fire your kid’s teacher for passing along such disgusting nonsense but be
willing to rehire the nation’s teacher in chief — our president, the man with
the most-read blackboard in the world — after he peddled exactly these crazy
conspiracy theories to some 87 million people on Twitter the other day? Is
there anything more warped?
On Oct. 13,
“Trump retweeted a post from an account linked to QAnon, a collective of online
conspiracists, which has since been suspended,” reported CNN. “The tweet
alleged ‘Biden and Obama may have had SEAL Team 6 killed,’ that Osama bin Laden
was still alive, and that the man killed in the Obama-directed raid led by SEAL
Team 6 was actually a body double. Later that night, Trump retweeted a post
claiming top Obama administration officials colluded to bring Bin Laden from
Iran to Pakistan for ‘Obama’s trophy kill.’”
The CNN
story continued: “Trump’s initial retweet was rebuked by one of the Navy SEAL
members of the raid, who is very much still alive. ‘Very brave men said goodby
(sic) to their kids to go kill Osama bin Laden,’ Robert J. O’Neill tweeted
following Trump’s retweet. ‘We were given the order by President Obama. It was
not a body double.’
“O’Neill,
who has previously expressed support for Trump, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that the
promotion of these conspiracy theories for the purpose of politics is ‘really
trampling on the graves of some of the best heroes I have ever personally
worked with.’”
When NBC
News’s Savannah Guthrie asked Trump why he would spread such a lie, Trump
shrugged: “That was a retweet, I’ll put it out there. People can decide for
themselves.”
In other
words, Trump sees as part of his job as president — with the world’s best
global intelligence network at his disposal — not to discredit malicious
conspiracy theories, so Americans can better navigate a confusing world, but
rather to spread this bile, without even asking the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. if
it’s true. Let people sort it out for themselves, he says — as if their
resources match his.
I
understand that many Americans stand by Trump because of his policies on
immigration, taxes, political correctness or selection of judges, or because
they feel he gives voice to their grievances against elites who may look down
on them. None of that resonates with me, but those are legitimate positions
shared by some 40 percent of the country.
But our
president is not just a policy robot. He’s also a role model, whether he or we
like it or not. So, for all of you who plan to cast your ballot for Trump, I
beg you to ask yourselves: How can you tolerate behaviors in a president that
you would never tolerate in your kid’s seventh-grade teacher or babysitter?
Trump has
so redefined decency down that we have forgotten what is normal, let alone
optimal, in an American president. We have forgotten what it is like to have a
truth-teller, a healer, in the White House, someone who starts his day with at
least the inclination to unite the country and to project America at its best
for the world — not someone who has lived every day in office aspiring to be
president only of his base, while offering anyone at home or abroad looking to
the United States for inspiration just one message: Show me the money.
As I was reflecting
on all this last weekend, my friend Elena Park, an executive producer for
Stanford Live, sent me a YouTube video — an incredible performance the other
day by the singer Meklit and the Kronos Quartet of “The President Sang Amazing
Grace.”
The song was
written by Zoe Mulford about the 2015 murder of nine people at the Emanuel
A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. It was debuted by
Mulford in 2017, telling in song how a different president, Barack Obama, came
down to that church for a memorial service and during his eulogy for the Rev.
Clementa Pinckney sang “Amazing Grace,” one of the most moving and healing
moments of his presidency.
Listen to
Meklit sing it:
We argued
where to lay the blame
On one
man’s hate or our nation’s shame
Some
sickness of the mind or soul
And how
those wounds might be made whole
But no
words could say what must be said
For all the
living and the dead
So on that
day and in that place
The
President sang Amazing Grace
My
President sang Amazing Grace
So, there’s
your choice in a nutshell, folks. You can vote for a president who retweets
sick conspiracy theories — claiming that his predecessor murdered U.S. Navy
SEALs. Or you can vote for Biden, a man who, like Obama, will strive each day
to make our wounds whole, and do it, I’m sure, with dignity and grace.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/opinion/trump-obama-2020.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
The Trump Administration Is Illegally Hiding An
FBI Report On White Supremacist Terror
By Alex Henderson
October 26,
2020
For
decades, much of the right-wing media has emphasized the threat posed by
violent Islamist extremists while downplaying the terrorist potential of
far-right white supremacist and white nationalist groups. But that doesn't make
the latter any less dangerous. And one Democratic congressman who is sounding
the alarm is Mississippi's Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland
Security Committee and wants to know why an FBI report on white supremacists is
four months late.
In an
article published this week, journalist Spencer Ackerman — who specializes in
national security matters for the Daily Beast — notes that the FBI "has
failed to produce a legally required report detailing the scope of white
supremacist and other domestic terrorism, despite mounting concerns that the
upcoming election could spark far-right violence." That report was
supposed to be released in June, and according to Ackerman, Thompson is
demanding answers.
"I
would hate to think that they are reacting to President Trump's machinations
about his dislike for senior leadership in the FBI," Thompson told the
Daily Beast. "This report probably would not be viewed favorably by this
administration. That, I think, precipitates the report not being released by
November 3."
Thompson
told the Beast that the American public "needs to know who the real,
documented terrorists in this country, based on the FBI's intelligence, really
are…. I think (FBI Director Christopher Wray) understands that if he wades too
far in the water around this subject, he might drown — or get fired, to be
honest."
Trump has
had a lot to say about antifa in recent months but precious little to say about
white supremacist and white nationalist groups. Conservative Elizabeth Neumann,
a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official under Trump who has been
active in the group Republican Voters Against Trump and has endorsed former
Vice President Joe Biden for president, had been sharply critical of his
treatment of the issue. Neumann has stressed that Trump has spent way too much
time talking about Antifa while downplaying the terrorist threat that white
power groups pose. And like Thompson, she would like to see an in-depth FBI
report on the threat.
Neumann
told the Beast, "I have no doubt the FBI is on top of any number of cases
of this. I have confidence that the FBI is likely to thwart a lot of these
attempts."
Neumann and
Miles Taylor — another conservative ex-DHS official who has been active in RVAT
and is supporting Biden — both believe that white supremacist terrorism isn't a
high priority for the Trump White House. Taylor told the Beast, "The
bottom line from the White House was they didn't want us to talk us about
domestic terrorism because they worried that if we talked about right-wing
extremism, we would alienate many of the president's supporters."
According
to Thomson, the Trump White House is putting the public at risk by downplaying
the dangers of white supremacist and white nationalist terrorists.
The
congressman told the Beast, "The White House, members of Congress, other
outside groups, are saying, 'These radical Muslim groups, these radical
left-wing groups — we gotta do something about them.' Well, it was clear that
when you talk to professionals, these weren't the most dangerous, nor from a
numerical standpoint — the statistics were going in the opposite direction.
We're still having these incidents occur, but the ideology and the individuals
perpetrating them lean more toward the right-wing philosophy. And I think, when
that hit, it kind of took the fire out of the domestic-terrorist
conversation."
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/house-homeland-security-chairman-and-others-are-pushing-for-an-fbi-report-on-white-supremacist-terror-threat-journalist/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5765
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