THE INVISIBLE AND THE DEAD
THE INVISIBLE AND THE DEAD
We live so they say in an information age; we only have to use Google to trawl the internet to uncover information that would otherwise be hidden from us. However this very plethora of information buries us unless we find some way to filter it. Mostly we do so by restricting ourselves to causes and interests close to our heart, the rest stays silent. In that silence lives are lived out, or disposed of, prayers go unanswered, dreams are dreamt hopes are extinguished, or kept alive, barely flickering, in a ferocious wind. There is suffering and injustice in far away countries of which we know little. This is how it has always been. In the ‘Information Age’ we must inevitably filter to enable ourselves to cope, we have lives to lead.
Here I try to briefly illuminate, like a military flare, some of those who might otherwise be invisible both to you and I and some of the recently dead.
AFRICANS IN ISRAEL FACE PERSECUTION
http://caravanmagazine.in/Story/1265/Losing-Faith.html
‘Instead of reviewing the cases of African asylum seekers, the Israeli government calls them a faceless mass, “infiltrators”. It’s a word preferred by politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also claims that Africans are a “threat” to the “character of the country”, our “Jewish and democratic” state.’
’On 9 January, just a week after I interviewed Isaac, the Israeli Knesset passed a parliamentary bill that modifies the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law. Initially created to keep Palestinians from returning to their homes in Israel after the 1948 war, the updated legislation will subject African refugees and their children to three years in jail, without trial. Those from “enemy countries”, including the Darfur region of Sudan, could be imprisoned indefinitely.’
HIGH PROFILE CHECHEN POET MURDERED
http://www.worldcrunch.com/high-profile-chechen-poet-murdered-moscow/4113
‘Chechen poet and social activist Ruslan Akhtakhanov has been shot dead outside his central Moscow apartment in what his friends have told Kommersant was a contract killing by Chechen separatists.’
‘Akhtakhanov published collections of poems and was admitted to the Union of Writers of Russia. He set up the Democratic Progressive Party and said Chechnya should develop as an independent, democratic and secular state.
His friends believe his secularism may have been what led to his death as it was at odds with religious extremists and nationalists in the North Caucasus who viewed him as an apostate.’
HUMAN RIGHTS IN UZBEKISTAN
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/13/uzbekistan-detainees-tortured-lawyers-silenced
‘In one torture case described in the report, the wife of “Abdumannob A.,” whose name has been changed to protect him, spoke of the beatings her husband endured in a Tashkent pretrial facility at the end of 2008 and much of 2009, when he was held by security services and accused of espionage. She told Human Rights Watch:
Officers would hang him from the ceiling by his wrists, and eight or nine people one after the other would beat him. When I saw him, it was obvious he had been hanged by the wrists. I could see the marks. He told me that several times guards and detainees were brought into the interrogations and were given needles to poke under his nails. Guards handcuffed him to his cell once and burned his penis with newspapers that they had lit on fire, giving him a second-degree burn.’
RAPE IN PAKISTAN
The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that in 2009 roughly 46 percent of all female murders in Pakistan that year were in the name of "honour." The report noted that a total of 647 incidences of "honour killings" were reported by the Pakistani press. However, experts say that actual incidences of "honour killings" in Pakistan are much higher and never get reported to the police because they are passed off by the families as suicides.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/refusing-to-kill-daughter-pakistani-family-defies-tradition-draws-anger/245691/
‘A Pakistani girl who says she was kidnapped and gang-raped faces a new threat: honor killings, a tradition here, but one that her family refuses to carry out ‘.
‘But, according to Abdul Hai, Kainat is lucky: "The woman or the girl usually gets killed and the man gets away," he said. "Over 70 percent of the murdered victims are women and only 30 percent of victims of honor killings are male."’
GAY MAN MURDERED IN SCOTLAND
http://www.care2.com/causes/murdered-gay-man-beaten-tied-and-burnt-in-scotland.html
‘In the early hours of Saturday morning the body of 28-year-old gay hotel manager Stuart Walker was found tied to a lamppost in the small town of Cumnock Scotland.…he had been ‘horrifically’ beaten and burned; police said it was not yet clear if he was dead when his body was set on fire.’
‘A tribute Facebook page was set up on Sunday morning and many people who knew him have been leaving messages paying tribute to his good humor.’
We live so they say in an information age; we only have to use Google to trawl the internet to uncover information that would otherwise be hidden from us. However this very plethora of information buries us unless we find some way to filter it. Mostly we do so by restricting ourselves to causes and interests close to our heart, the rest stays silent. In that silence lives are lived out, or disposed of, prayers go unanswered, dreams are dreamt hopes are extinguished, or kept alive, barely flickering, in a ferocious wind. There is suffering and injustice in far away countries of which we know little. This is how it has always been. In the ‘Information Age’ we must inevitably filter to enable ourselves to cope, we have lives to lead.
Here I try to briefly illuminate, like a military flare, some of those who might otherwise be invisible both to you and I and some of the recently dead.
AFRICANS IN ISRAEL FACE PERSECUTION
http://caravanmagazine.in/Story/1265/Losing-Faith.html
‘Instead of reviewing the cases of African asylum seekers, the Israeli government calls them a faceless mass, “infiltrators”. It’s a word preferred by politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also claims that Africans are a “threat” to the “character of the country”, our “Jewish and democratic” state.’
’On 9 January, just a week after I interviewed Isaac, the Israeli Knesset passed a parliamentary bill that modifies the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law. Initially created to keep Palestinians from returning to their homes in Israel after the 1948 war, the updated legislation will subject African refugees and their children to three years in jail, without trial. Those from “enemy countries”, including the Darfur region of Sudan, could be imprisoned indefinitely.’
HIGH PROFILE CHECHEN POET MURDERED
http://www.worldcrunch.com/high-profile-chechen-poet-murdered-moscow/4113
‘Chechen poet and social activist Ruslan Akhtakhanov has been shot dead outside his central Moscow apartment in what his friends have told Kommersant was a contract killing by Chechen separatists.’
‘Akhtakhanov published collections of poems and was admitted to the Union of Writers of Russia. He set up the Democratic Progressive Party and said Chechnya should develop as an independent, democratic and secular state.
His friends believe his secularism may have been what led to his death as it was at odds with religious extremists and nationalists in the North Caucasus who viewed him as an apostate.’
HUMAN RIGHTS IN UZBEKISTAN
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/13/uzbekistan-detainees-tortured-lawyers-silenced
‘In one torture case described in the report, the wife of “Abdumannob A.,” whose name has been changed to protect him, spoke of the beatings her husband endured in a Tashkent pretrial facility at the end of 2008 and much of 2009, when he was held by security services and accused of espionage. She told Human Rights Watch:
Officers would hang him from the ceiling by his wrists, and eight or nine people one after the other would beat him. When I saw him, it was obvious he had been hanged by the wrists. I could see the marks. He told me that several times guards and detainees were brought into the interrogations and were given needles to poke under his nails. Guards handcuffed him to his cell once and burned his penis with newspapers that they had lit on fire, giving him a second-degree burn.’
RAPE IN PAKISTAN
The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that in 2009 roughly 46 percent of all female murders in Pakistan that year were in the name of "honour." The report noted that a total of 647 incidences of "honour killings" were reported by the Pakistani press. However, experts say that actual incidences of "honour killings" in Pakistan are much higher and never get reported to the police because they are passed off by the families as suicides.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/refusing-to-kill-daughter-pakistani-family-defies-tradition-draws-anger/245691/
‘A Pakistani girl who says she was kidnapped and gang-raped faces a new threat: honor killings, a tradition here, but one that her family refuses to carry out ‘.
‘But, according to Abdul Hai, Kainat is lucky: "The woman or the girl usually gets killed and the man gets away," he said. "Over 70 percent of the murdered victims are women and only 30 percent of victims of honor killings are male."’
GAY MAN MURDERED IN SCOTLAND
http://www.care2.com/causes/murdered-gay-man-beaten-tied-and-burnt-in-scotland.html
‘In the early hours of Saturday morning the body of 28-year-old gay hotel manager Stuart Walker was found tied to a lamppost in the small town of Cumnock Scotland.…he had been ‘horrifically’ beaten and burned; police said it was not yet clear if he was dead when his body was set on fire.’
‘A tribute Facebook page was set up on Sunday morning and many people who knew him have been leaving messages paying tribute to his good humor.’
