Dems to Biden: Overhaul Drone Program That Has Killed Thousands of Civilians

"In too many instances, U.S. drone strikes have instead led to unintended and deadly consequences—killing civilians and increasing anger towards the United States."

The Iraqi city of Mosul was largely destroyed during fighting between U.S.-led coalition forces and Islamic State militants in 2017. Thousands of civilians were killed or wounded, many of them by ferocious U.S. and allied aerial bombing. (Photo: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images)


BRETT WILKINS

COMMONDREAMS

January 20, 2022

A group of 50 Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday sent a letter to President Joe Biden focusing on the "inexcusable" number of noncombatants killed by drone strikes in the 20-year so-called War on Terror and urging his administration to "review and overhaul" American counterterrorism policy to "center human rights and the protection of civilians."

"In far too many cases, rather than achieving the policy goal of eliminating hostile combatants to preserve U.S. national security, lethal U.S. strikes have instead killed thousands of civilians."

"The continuation of status quo policies that have flouted executive and congressional oversight and resulted in devastatingly high numbers of civilian casualties would run contrary to the Biden administration's commitments to end our forever wars, and promote human rights and our core democratic values," the letter—which is led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—states.

"Over successive administrations spanning nearly two decades, presidents have claimed virtually unlimited, unilateral power to use lethal force around the world and without congressional authorization, killing not only armed actors but also innocent civilians—even American citizens," the lawmakers add.

"In too many instances, U.S. drone strikes have instead led to unintended and deadly consequences—killing civilians and increasing anger towards the United States," the signers note.

The letter cites figures by the monitoring group Airwars estimating that "as many as 48,000 civilians across seven countries have reportedly been killed by U.S. strikes over the past two decades." That figure includes not only drone attacks but all aerial bombardment.

"These inexcusable figures reflect an uncomfortable truth: In far too many cases, rather than achieving the policy goal of eliminating hostile combatants to preserve U.S. national security, lethal U.S. strikes have instead killed thousands of civilians, including children," the letter states.

The Democrats' letter followed publication by The New York Times of video footage of an August 29 U.S. drone strike that killed 43-year-old Afghan aid worker Zamarai Ahmadi and nine of his relatives—including seven children—in the capital city of Kabul.

The U.S. military said the Kabul strike was carried out in the belief that Ahmadi was loading explosives into his car, and that an attack by militants of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) on Kabul's international airport was imminent. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley called the bombing a "righteous strike."

However, investigations by the Times and The Washington Post, as well as the Pentagon's own probe, concluded that—contrary to the military's claims—there were no explosives in the car, and that the men accused of suspicious behavior were engaged in activities related to Ahmadi's work.

The letter cites the Kabul strike, as well as a March 18, 2019 U.S. airstrike in Baghuz, Syria carried out by a secret drone task force in which around 70 civilians died—and which military officials allegedly tried to cover up—as proof of the need for fundamental reform.

"Without systematic reforms centered on human rights and international law, the status quo will continue to undermine counterterrorism objectives, produce significant human and strategic costs, and erode the rule of law and the United States' image abroad," the lawmakers assert.

Related Content

'Infuriating' Report Reveals 'Breathtaking Cover-Up' of US Airstrike That Killed Syrian Civilians
Jessica Corbett

"When there is little policy change or accountability for repeated mistakes this grave and this costly, it sends a message throughout the U.S. armed forces and the entire U.S. government that civilian deaths—including deaths where there was no military target—are the inevitable consequence of modern conflict, rather than avoidable and damaging failures of policy," they add.

The letter also comes a day after Reps. Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—both signatories—introduced a resolution calling for a new American foreign policy that centers nonviolent solutions and eschews militarism and bloated Pentagon budgets.

Lee, who in 2001 was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that authorized the open-ended and continuing War on Terror, said that "the post 9/11 wars taught us that perpetual war takes countless lives, wastes trillions of dollars, and does not make us any safer."

In a statement, Warren said that "we cannot ignore the terrible consequences of U.S. drone strikes over several administrations. I've long pushed for greater accountability for civilian casualties, and the president should seize this moment to systematically reform our counterterrorism strategy."

Murphy argued that "when U.S. strikes kill civilians abroad, it's both a moral failure and national security liability."

"There's no doubt Biden takes this issue more seriously than [former President Donald] Trump, but we can and must do better," he added. "The U.S. should use force only lawfully and as a last resort, and when civilians die, there has to be accountability. That accountability simply has not been happening."

The Marine who marched on the Philippines — and then on Washington
By Jonathan M. Katz
Jan 20, 2022

"Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire" by Jonathan M. Katz is available for purchase now. (Jonathan M. Katz and St. Martin’s Publishing Group)

Smedley D. Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time — the recipient of two Medals of Honor, who served in nearly every major overseas conflict from 1898 until the eve of World War II. But as award-winning journalist Jonathan M. Katz details in his new book, “Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire” (St. Martin’s Press, 2022), after his retirement from the Marine Corps in 1931, Butler became a warrior against war. He decried his storied record, warned about the rise of fascism in America, and said he had been a “racketeer for capitalism.”

In this exclusive excerpt from the book, Katz writes about one of the events that helped foster Butler’s more radical turn: the Bonus March of 1932.


Smedley D. Butler addressing the Bonus Marchers in Anacostia Flats, Washington, D.C., July 19, 1932. (Still from Fox Movietone News outtake, Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina)

Over the spring of 1932, veterans from every corner of the country began making their way to Washington, D.C. Calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, they set up encampments across Washington. By July, there were some forty-five thousand veteran protesters, wives, and children living in shacks in the shadow of the Capitol dome.

The cause that drew them was known as the “bonus.” Veterans’ benefits had been minimal in the last World War. Many had come home from Europe to find their savings drained and jobs gone. In 1924, Congress had finally passed a bonus bill over President Coolidge’s veto, mandating that most who served during the mobilization would get $1 of back pay for each day of home service and $1.25 for each day abroad. But there was a catch: if the sum was more than $50, it would only be paid to the veteran’s survivors after they died or in 1945, whichever came first.

When the Great Depression hit, many veterans realized their green-bordered bonus certificates was their only asset that still held any value. In 1931, an Army veteran named Joseph T. Angelo walked four days from his home in New Jersey to Washington to demand the bonus be paid immediately. In response, Congress passed a bill allowing veterans to cash in part of their IOUs as loans. But President Hoover vetoed it, warning it would set a dangerous precedent by breaking “the barriers of self-reliance and self-support in our people.” The protesters’ goal in 1932 was to change his mind and force Congress’s hands.

Many Washingtonians were sympathetic to the BEF. A D.C. police captain named Sidney Marks, sent to evict the largest encampment — on the mudflats across the Anacostia River — instead told the protesters they had his support. The marchers renamed the site Camp Marks in his honor.

But the federal and military establishments were not as pleased. They denounced the occupiers as Communists and radicals. Most alarming to some, veterans of all skin colors were living in the bonus camps side by side at a time when the District of Columbia and military were strictly segregated by race.

On July 16, the Senate adjourned without taking the latest bonus bill up, effectively killing the measure. Senators left just before midnight, fleeing through the underground tunnels beneath the Capitol to avoid confronting marchers. Hoover headed to his Shenandoah summer retreat.

As dejected marchers began to take federal agents’ offers for train tickets home, the organizer of the BEF, Walter W. Waters, sent an urgent invitation to the one senior military man who had taken a public position in support of the veterans — the one officer whom he knew the veterans would listen to.

Smedley Butler arrived at Camp Marks on July 19, accompanied by his son Smedley Junior, on summer break from MIT. They strolled around the shanty town, greeting men Butler had last seen shuffling through his mudhole camp in France. Word spread, and soon thousands converged around a wooden stage to hear what Old Gimlet Eye had to say.

Smedley took off his sport coat, rolled up his sleeves, and tucked his polka dot tie between two shirt buttons so it wouldn’t flop around. A line of sun-worn U.S. flags waved behind him. Waters introduced Butler as “a real soldier, a real man, a real gentleman, and a real comrade” — noting, in case anyone had forgotten, the two Medals of Honor.

Butler looked over the crowd, now totaling about sixteen thousand stalwarts. He told the marchers what an honor it was to be among fellow soldiers; how it made him “so damn mad” to hear people calling them tramps. “By God, they didn’t speak of you as tramps in 1917 and ‘18!” he said to applause. “I mean just what I say. I don’t want anything,” he assured, his tie now loose and arms flying wildly through the air. “Nobody can kick me anymore. I’ll say what I please.”

His thinning hair was now thoroughly mussed, his throat hoarse, but his lungs were filled with anger — at how the veterans were being treated, at the state of the country, at the ruins of his own career. “This is the greatest demonstration of Americanism we have ever had! Pure Americanism. Willing to take this beating as you’ve taken it, stand right steady. You keep every law! And why in the hell shouldn’t you? Who in the hell has done all the bleeding for this country, and for this law, and this Constitution anyhow, but you fellas?” The veterans roared back in reply.

“But don’t — don’t! — take a step backward,” he warned. “Remember that as soon as you haul down your camp flag here and clear out — every one of you clears out — this evaporates in thin air. And all this struggle will have been no good.”

Unable to bear the thought of leaving, Smedley and Smedley Junior stayed the night at Camp Marks, trading war stories with the protesters late into the night. The next morning, they shared a breakfast of potatoes, black coffee, and hard bread with them before departing.

Inspired by Butler, thousands of marchers stayed. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. Army chief of staff, instructed his adjutants to draw up plans to evict the veterans by force. MacArthur also secretly began moving combat vehicles, machine guns, and tanks to Fort Myer, just outside Washington.

On July 28, nine days after Butler’s speech, policemen fatally shot two marchers in an attempt to evict the BEF from an abandoned building next to the Capitol. MacArthur ordered his aide — forty-one-year-old Maj. Dwight Eisenhower — to put on his uniform and join him in the streets to oversee the final maneuver in person.

Around 4:30 p.m., a reporter spotted four hundred Army infantrymen fixing bayonets and putting on gas masks. Army grenades exploded on the National Mall, releasing gas laced with Adamsite — a chemical weapon that can cause vomiting, asphyxiation, and, under certain circumstances, death. Cavalry, led in the saddle by George Patton, charged into a crowd of spectators. Tear gas and smoke from hundreds of burning shacks blotted out the view of the Capitol dome.

At 9:00 p.m., MacArthur announced that Camp Marks was to be destroyed. Gen. George Van Horn Moseley rushed a message from Hoover ordering the chief of staff not to cross the Anacostia River. MacArthur ignored the president. He positioned tanks on the bridge to cut off the camp from the city, then ordered the camp burned to the ground. Scores were injured. A twelve-week-old baby whose impoverished parents had brought him to Camp Marks choked on Adamsite and died soon after.

At a press conference, MacArthur asserted that he had prevented a Communist revolution. “I think as a military maneuver, if you can call a thing of this kind a military maneuver, that it was unique. I have been in many riots, but I think this is the first riot I ever was in or ever saw in which there was no real bloodshed.” MacArthur was likely thinking of his experiences in the Philippines and Mexico, though he could have been talking about the military’s experience suppressing uprisings and dissent around the world.

Those who watched it could not believe that scenes they associated with the imperial periphery had taken place in the nation’s capital. A reporter who witnessed the violence commented: “God, that I should see such things in the United States.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s handiwork: the Bonus Marchers’ encampment in flames in front of the U.S. Capitol, July 28, 1932. (National Archives and Records Administration)

The “Battle of Washington,” as MacArthur’s assault on the Bonus March became known, was a clarifying moment. For Butler, it hardened a growing conviction that the key fault line in America was class: Wall Street and those who carried out its wishes against the “little guy.” That fall, he tried out a version of the idea he’d been mulling since Nicaragua: that America’s wars were started by capitalists at the expense of the soldiers sent to fight them. “When the war is over,” Butler told a crowd in New York, “the soldier comes back, is given a march up Fifth Avenue, and as soon as he is disbanded at the end of the march the capitalists say, ‘To hell with him’ and start all over again.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt read about the burning of Camp Marks in his bedroom at the governor’s mansion in Albany. He could not believe Hoover had turned the army loose on U.S. citizens, nor how far MacArthur had gone. It was a wonder, Roosevelt told his friend and adviser Rexford Tugwell, that there hadn’t been “more resentment, more radicalism, when people were treated that way.” FDR was in a unique position to do something about it. Four weeks before MacArthur’s assault, he had accepted the Democratic nomination for president, promising “a new deal for the American people.” Butler crossed party lines to campaign for him, calling himself a “Hoover-for-Ex-President Republican.” Roosevelt won in a landslide that November.

The Roosevelt who moved into the White House in March 1933 was still the ex-Navy official who had helped plan the invasion of Veracruz, supervise the brutal occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and oversee the colonial district around his “Uncle Ted’s vast public work” in Panama. Yet Roosevelt was horrified by the approval with which his empire-building peers greeted MacArthur’s assault on American citizens — veterans who had just been asking for their government’s help in a crisis. The president told Tugwell that he sensed in the United States “an impulse among a good many ‘strong’ men, men used to having their way, mostly industrialists who directed affairs without being questioned, a feeling that democracy had run its course and that the totalitarians had grasped the necessities of the time. People wanted strong leadership; they were sick of uncertainty, anxious for security, and willing to trade liberty for it.”

Millions of Americans were turning to demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest who used his nationally syndicated radio show to defend Hitler and spread conspiracy theories of a worldwide “Judeo-Bolshevik” plot. The “Nazi-minded among American leaders,” as Roosevelt called them, were more fond of the dictatorial MacArthur. His greater “charm, tradition, and majestic appearance” put a high-class and distinctively American shine on the naked repression he unleashed against the Bonus Marchers.

Indeed, the divide between outright fascism and the American elite was paper thin at the depths of the Depression. U.S. corporations not only remained in Germany after Hitler became chancellor in early 1933, but courted Nazi approval. There was money in it: Coca-Cola, General Motors, and IBM all saw their German profits surge in the wake of the Nazi ascent. The most influential of all U.S. businessmen, Henry Ford, had long since entered into a mutual admiration society with the soon-to-be führer. Hitler heaped praise on Ford’s antisemitic writings, and had told a U.S. reporter a decade earlier: “We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascisti movement in America.”

Germany and the United States were in many ways sister empires, who had risen at roughly the same time to challenge the older powers of Europe. Now Germany, defeated and humiliated, was turning its imperialism inward in the form of fascism.

The question for all Americans was if they would do the same. MacArthur’s answer in the burning of the bonus camps seemed to be a resounding yes.

Roosevelt chose otherwise. He resolved to show “that democracy in the United States — limited and flawed though it remained — was better kept than abandoned, in the hope of strengthening and extending it,” as the historian Eric Rauchway has written. He would do so by remaking the relationship between government, business, and the people through New Deal programs, including massive spending on public works, social insurance, and support for labor unions. FDR did so knowing that, if he failed, he could be ushered from office — and, more dangerously, that a fascist turn could happen in the United States. All that was missing, as the president told Tugwell, was a leader: “the familiar symbolic figure — the man on horseback — to give it realism.”

From “Gangsters of Capitalism” by Jonathan M. Katz. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Jonathan Myerson Katz, author of “Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire,” received the James Foley/Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for reporting from Haiti. His first book, “The Big Truck That Went By,” was shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, and the WOLA/Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. His work appears in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. Katz has received fellowships from New America and the Logan Nonfiction Program. He lives with his wife and daughter in Charlottesville, VA. His newsletter can be found at theracket.news. Follow him on Twitter at @KatzOnEarth.

Rep. Lauren Boebert Asked Jews Touring Capitol If They Were Doing 'Reconnaissance'

She told BuzzFeed News it was a joke, adding that she's "too short to see anyone’s yarmulke."


Lydia O'Connor
01/20/2022 

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has a history of leveling religious attacks.
MICHAEL REYNOLDS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who has a history of propping up conspiracy theories and instigating religious attacks, asked a group of Jewish people touring the U.S. Capitol on Thursday if they were there to do “reconnaissance,” BuzzFeed News reported.

According to those present for the conversation, Boebert crossed paths with the group, some of whom were wearing yarmulkes and had traditional Orthodox beards, outside an elevator and looked at them “from head to toe” before making the remark.

A rabbi in the group, which was there for a meeting with Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.), told BuzzFeed News that he was “very confused” and “not sure to be offended or not” about the question.

“When I heard that, I actually turned to the person standing next to me and asked, ‘Did you just hear that?’” he said, noting Jewish people have been “very sensitive” to possible anti-Semitism, especially on the heels of a hostage situation at a synagogue in Texas last weekend.

Reconnaissance typically refers to military forces scouting an area in order to obtain information about enemy forces.

Boebert told BuzzFeed that she simply “saw a large group and made a joke” related to the controversy over a late-night tour of the Capitol she led before the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the building. Angry at media coverage of reports about a group tour, Boebert said at the time that “no reconnaissance tour occurred.”

As for her remark on Thursday, Boebert told BuzzFeed News that some people there “got it” and knew it was a joke.

“I’m too short to see anyone’s yarmulkes,” she added.

She didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests that she elaborate on the “reconnaissance” remark.

Suozzi told BuzzFeed News following the incident that lawmakers have a responsibility to be careful with the words they use.

“The bottom line is that everyone, especially members of Congress, have to be very, very thoughtful in the language they use,” he said. “Because when you’re a member of Congress, you have an important role to play in society. You can’t be cavalier in the comments you make, especially if they could be perceived as being antisemitic, or discriminatory.”

Boebert has not shied away from religious insults in the past and has repeatedly called Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is Muslim, a member of the “jihad squad,” likening her to an Islamic terrorist.

She has also promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and the QAnon movement, insisting that many Democrats would soon be arrested for widespread corruption.

Early Treatment Could Tame Peanut Allergies in Small Kids

The researchers gave increasing amounts of peanut protein powder to a group of toddlers to build up their tolerance for peanuts

By Candice Choi • 

Young children might be able to overcome their peanut allergies if treated at an early enough age, according to a study published Thursday.

The researchers gave increasing amounts of peanut protein powder to a group of toddlers to build up their tolerance for peanuts. After 2 1/2 years, close to three-quarters could tolerate the equivalent of 16 peanuts without an allergic reaction. Six months after treatment stopped, one-fifth still had the same tolerance.

The approach seemed to work best in the youngest children and those with milder allergies, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Lancet.

The findings suggest there’s “a window of opportunity” early in life when treatment could have a lasting impact, said Dr. Stacie Jones, a study co-author from the University of Arkansas for Medical Services. But she said more research is needed to determine how long the effect might continue.

A treatment for peanut allergies already exists but it is only approved for ages 4 and older, and the protection it provides is for the accidental exposure to small amounts of peanuts. Children are still supposed to avoid eating the nuts, and carry an EpiPen or other medicine for allergic reactions. It also uses peanut powder, but when children stop taking the treatment, the protection stops.

Jones and her colleagues tested a similar approach on younger children to see if their immune systems could be changed if treated at an earlier age. She helped lead a study for the current treatment, Aimmune Therapeutics' Palforzia, and has consulted for the company.

About 2% of children in the U.S. have peanut allergies, which can cause severe reactions and be a source of constant worry for parents. Some children outgrow the allergy, but most have to continue avoiding peanuts for life. To prevent the allergies from developing, health experts in recent years have encouraged parents to feed babies with peanut-containing foods early on.

The new government-funded study involved 146 children in the U.S. ages 1 to 3. They were given daily doses of peanut powder mixed in food or a dummy powder — oat flour. When the treatment ended, 71% of those who got the peanut powder could tolerate the equivalent of 16 peanuts. Six months later, 21% still could. In the dummy powder comparison group, 2% could tolerate 16 peanuts at the end of the treatment and six months later.

Most of the children had a reaction during treatment, mostly mild to moderate. Some in the peanut group required treatment with an EpiPen.

The research “really supports something that we thought for a while in the field," said Dr. Joyce Hsu, an allergy specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the study. “Children’s immune systems are generally more malleable when they are younger.”

Hsu’s clinic offers an allergy treatment with peanut protein for children ages 4 months and older. As with Palforzia, Hsu noted it is intended to protect against accidental ingestion, and that children are still supposed to avoid peanuts. She said there has been a lack of strong data about treating peanut allergies in infants and very young children.

In a commentary published with the study, other allergy experts noted the wide availability of the peanut powder used in the study. They said the treatment is a reasonable option that’s ready for real-world implementation, under the guidance of an allergy specialist.

Dr. John Kelso, an allergy specialist at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, said the findings should give doctors more confidence to try the treatment for toddlers, and offer it to parents. But he noted that it's still not clear whether any tolerance would have a limit or how it might change over time.

“There still needs to be some caution about thinking of this as a cure,” he said

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright AP - Associated Press

This article tagged under:

U.S. official latest to comment on NBA owner’s dismissal of Uyghur genocide

By Kathryn Post, posted January 20, 2022 in National News

Uyghurs detainees in a camp in Lop County, Xinjiang, April 2017. Wikipedia Creative Commons


RNS) — Comments from NBA part-owner Chamath Palihapitiya that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs” have generated controversy and drawn reactions from U.S. government officials and a media outlet controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Nury Turkel, an official with the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, is the latest public figure to condemn the recent statements from Palihapitiya, a billionaire venture capitalist and a small stakeholder in the Golden State Warriors’ NBA franchise.

The founder and CEO of Social Capital, who is a former executive at Facebook, made the comments on the “All-In” podcast last weekend. During a debate with co-host and tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, Palihapitiya seemed dismissive of concerns over China’s treatment of its Turkic minorities, saying that caring about human rights abuses in foreign countries is a “luxury belief.”

Palihapitiya’s “comment reflects a broader problem,” Turkel tweeted late Tuesday (Jan. 18). The “willingness of executives in biz and sports communities to ignore #China human rights abuses in pursuit of money-making opps. This kind of unrepentant & unconscionable behavior should be met (with) consequences.”

Turkel was appointed to his position by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is the first Uyghur American to receive a political appointment in American history. The U.S. State Department and governments around the world consider China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities to be a genocide. China denies any mistreatment is taking place in Tibet or in Xinjiang – the home province of China’s Uyghur population.

Both Palihapitiya and the Golden State Warriors issued statements this week in an effort to walk back the businessman’s remarks.

“As a limited investor who has no day-to-day operating functions with the Warriors, Mr. Palihapitiya does not speak on behalf of our franchise, and his views certainly don’t reflect those of our organization,” the Warriors said in a statement Monday, though the organization did not directly comment on the issue.

Also on Monday, Palihapitiya offered some “clarifying comments” via Twitter but stopped short of a full apology. He acknowledged his comments “come across as lacking empathy” and assured that, as a refugee who fled his home country, he does believe human rights matter “in China, the United States, or elsewhere.” Pahipitiya’s family left Sri Lanka and moved to Canada when he was 5, later applying for refugee status in order to stay.

But his comments on the podcast had already sparked an outcry from Muslim American groups and Uyghur activists.

“As an Uyghur, whose mother has been forcibly detained for over three years, I found Palihapitiya’s comments to be utterly repulsive,” Uyghur activist Ziba Murat told Religion News Service. “Here is someone choosing money over humanity and morality which is on full display.”

Murat is the daughter of imprisoned Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, one of the roughly 1 million Muslims China has placed in concentration camps. Chinese officials claim such efforts are necessary to reeducate Uyghurs and counter extremism.

Palihapitiya’s comments are the latest development in a series of troubles for the NBA regarding human rights in China. In 2019, Daryl Morey, then-general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted in support of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which resulted in a temporary ban on NBA games being broadcast in China and the Rockets organization distancing itself from Morey, who eventually walked back his comments.

During that same season, fans who attended NBA games were prevented from wearing slogans in support of human rights in China. And the NBA as a whole and some of its stars, in particular Los Angeles Lakers player Lebron James, have faced scrutiny for their views and ties to China.

However, last year NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom began a campaign to raise awareness of China’s human rights issues, including its treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and political prisoners. The campaign has involved social media posts and custom-painted shoes.

The controversy grows out of increasing concern from many consumers and politicians over Western companies operating in the Xinjiang region of China. Last year a coalition of Muslim-American groups announced a global boycott over plans for a Hilton franchise to build a new hotel on top of a bulldozed mosque. This month the automotive firm Tesla drew criticism for its decision to open a show room in Xinjiang. More broadly, a wide array of Western companies have been linked to forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang.

Chinese government officials have repeatedly denied claims that China is violating the human rights of its nationals. In a rare nod of approval, the Global Times, a media outlet controlled by China’s Communist Party, published an editorial Tuesday in defense of Palihapitiya.

“On the surface, Palihapitiya’s remarks certainly come across as lacking empathy,” the editorial said. “However, for anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Xinjiang, the lurid claims of human rights abuses or even ‘genocide’ in the region are pure lies made up by the U.S. government as pretext to crack down on China.”

Stay or go? Dilemma facing last of the Afghan Sikhs


ByAFP
Published January 19, 2022

In the 1970s, Afghanistan's Sikh population numbered 100,000, but decades of conflict, poverty and intolerance have driven almost all of them into exile (AFP/Mohd RASFAN)

The caretaker of the last Sikh temple in Kabul to regularly host open prayer surveys the cavernous hall where throngs once gathered in worship.

Only a handful are left now.

“Afghanistan is our country, our homeland,” said Gurnam Singh. “But we are leaving out of sheer hopelessness.”

In the 1970s, Afghanistan’s Sikh population numbered 100,000, but decades of conflict, poverty and intolerance have driven almost all of them into exile.

The Soviet occupation, subsequent Taliban regime and bloody US-led military intervention winnowed their numbers to just 240 last year, according to figures kept by the community.

After the Taliban returned to power in August, opening the newest chapter in Afghanistan’s dark history, a fresh wave of Sikhs fled the country.

Today, Gurnam Singh estimates just 140 remain, mostly in the eastern city of Jalalabad and in Kabul.


The Kaur children do not go to school, and their mother never ventures beyond the walls of the temple, the only place where she feels safe (AFP/Mohd RASFAN)

– Spiritual home –

These remaining devotees trickle into the Karte Parwan Gurdwara temple for a recent prayer session on a wintry Monday.

Men stand to one side, women the other — about 15 in total.

Sitting barefoot on a floor covered with thick red rugs, they warm themselves around stoves and listen to a recitation from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book.

In November, the temple had three copies, but two have since been sent to New Delhi for “safekeeping”.

Sikhs have long faced discrimination in Muslim-majority Afghanistan. Poverty is rife and attacks from the Islamic State-Khorasan, the jihadist group’s Afghan chapter, are a real threat.

The overwhelming majority of Sikhs fleeing Afghanistan have landed in India, where 90 percent of the religion’s 25 million global adherents live, mainly in the northwest region of Punjab.

Since the Taliban takeover, India has offered exiled Sikhs priority visas and the opportunity to apply for long-term residency. There is no sign yet that citizenship is on the table.

Pharmacist Manjit Singh, 40, is among those who turned down the offer, despite his daughter having emigrated there with her new husband last year.

“What would I do in India?” he asked. “There is no job or house there.”

Among the remaining holdouts, the prospect of leaving is particularly wrenching: it would mean abandoning their spiritual home.

“When this gurdwara was built 60 years ago, the whole area was full of Sikhs,” said 60-year-old community elder Manmohan Singh.

“Whatever joy or sorrow we felt, we shared it here.”

The overwhelming majority of Sikhs fleeing Afghanistan have landed in India, where 90 percent of the religion's 25 million global adherents live (AFP/Mohd RASFAN)

– Leaving home –

From the outside, the temple is largely indistinguishable from other buildings on the street.

But security here is markedly high, with body searches, ID checks and two fortified doors.

In early October, unidentified gunmen forced their way inside and vandalised the sacred space.

The incident had ugly echoes of the most scarring attack on the Afghan Sikh community.

In March 2020, members of IS-K assaulted the Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in Shor Bazar, a former enclave of Kabul’s Sikh community, killing 25.

Since the attack, that temple — and the nearby Dharamshala Gurdwara, the capital’s oldest Sikh house of worship at an estimated 500 years — have been abandoned.

Parmajeet Kaur was struck by shrapnel in her left eye during the IS-K attack, and her sister was among those killed.

In the weeks that followed, Kaur packed her bags and headed for Delhi, but “we had no work and it was expensive, so we came back”, she said.

That was in July, a few weeks before the Taliban returned to power.

Now Kaur, her husband and three children are fed and housed by Karte Parwan Gurdwara.

Her children do not go to school, and Kaur never ventures beyond the walls of the temple, the only place where she feels safe.

She thinks about leaving again, this time for Canada or the United States.

“My son and daughters are still small,” she said. “If we leave, we can make something of our lives.”

Afghanistan Tops North Korea in Religious CHRISTIAN Persecution: CHRISTIAN Watchdog Group

Afghan religious leaders and Taliban members attend the Taliban government's head of the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, acting as the country's ''moral police,'' on Dec. 12, 2021, at the Loya Jirga, a traditional assembly of elders, in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. (Alfred Yaghobzadeh/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP Images)


By Jack Gournell | Thursday, 20 January 2022

Afghanistan has replaced North Korea as the world's worst country for persecuting religious believers, according to the California-based religious persecution watchdog organization Open Doors USA.

Open Doors, which rates countries on the level of persecution and discrimination against people of faith, said that Christianity is the most persecuted faith, Newsweek reported.

Upward of 360 million Christians worldwide are persecuted by radical Hindus and Muslims, according to the group, and 312 million of those — 1 in 7 Christians worldwide — suffer "extreme" persecution, according to Open Doors.

North Korea, led by the dictatorial Kim family where a cult of personality stands in place of any tolerated religion, had led the list for two decades. Although the situation in North Korea actually got worse over the past year, the country fell to second place behind Afghanistan largely because of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. military forces in August.

That made "an [already] deadly situation for Christians worse," the Open Doors report said.

"Every Christian in Afghanistan is either in hiding or on the run," Open Doors USA President and CEO David Curry told Newsweek.

The Taliban's almost instant takeover of the country has Christians fleeing to protect their families, Curry said, with the Taliban moving from door to door seizing girls to marry off to Taliban fighters.

"Christian women are the most vulnerable group in the world today," he said.

Open Doors held an online press conference on Wednesday to share statements from undercover Christians in Nigeria and Afghanistan. Also on hand were Rashad Hussain, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, and Sam Brownback, the former ambassador-at-large.

The survey period of November 2020 to September 2021 rated countries on private, family, community, church and national freedoms and a violence index, Newsweek reported.

The top 11 violators were Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, India and Saudi Arabia.

China showed up at No. 17 despite recent moves against it for human rights violations, including the Biden administration's refusal to send diplomats to the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Curry noted China's mass surveillance of people of faith and what Hussain termed the "genocide" of Uyghur Muslims.

China does not have a higher score because the violence is currently muted, Curry said.

''They're not lining up people and shooting them," as in Somalia and North Korea, he said. "China has figured out how a government with centralized control can squeeze and punish people without them leaving their homes."

But he urged Americans to boycott watching the Olympics on television, even though U.S. athletes are to compete.

"The Communist government wants the attention and revenue from the Olympics, and I think people of faith should just pass," he said.

Afghan women activists go into hiding after Taliban crackdown


By AFP
Published January 20, 2022

Activists say they change safe houses daily and regularly change their cell phone number 

Copyright AFP Wakil KOHSAR

Rouba EL HUSSEINI

Several Afghan women’s rights activists said Thursday they are going into hiding to escape a Taliban crackdown, just days after the hardline Islamists used pepper spray to break up a rally in the capital.

Since storming back to power in August, the Taliban have gradually reintroduced some of the harsh restrictions that characterised their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001.

At least one woman was arrested, in what appeared to be a series of raids Wednesday night, four women activists told AFP.

A self-shot video of a second woman in distress, warning of Taliban fighters at her door, circulated on social media.

The whereabouts of both women were unknown on Thursday.

“We cannot stay at our homes, even at night,” one activist, who has asked not to be named for security reasons, told AFP.

Another activist said the Taliban went to her house looking for her, but she was away with a relative at the time.

Some of the activists, who communicate using WhatsApp and other social media, said they were changing safe houses daily and regularly changing their cell phone numbers.

“The video created a lot of panic… a lot of fear among the women,” said one activist, who asked not to be named.

The small group of dedicated activists have been taking to the streets of Kabul frequently to demonstrate against the Taliban, which have slowly been squeezing women out of public life.

Taliban forces on Sunday fired pepper spray at a group of women protesters, and several said they were followed after they dispersed.

“Our last protest hit them hard, and it pushed them to launch the arrests,” one activist said, referring to Sunday’s rally of about 20 women.

Human Rights Watch has condemned what it called a “violent crackdown” on protest.

It “marks an alarming and unlawful escalation of efforts to suppress peaceful protest and free speech in Afghanistan”, HRW said on Tuesday.

The Taliban have increasingly been crushing dissent, detaining several Afghan journalists and a prominent Afghan university professor who had spoken out on television against the new rulers.

He was released days later following a social media campaign condemning his arrest.

The Taliban have not responded to an AFP request for comment.

Afghan NGO women 'threatened with shooting' for not wearing burqa


More women are wearing the burqa since the Taliban's return to power even though there is no official national policy on it (AFP/Javed TANVEER)

Fri, January 21, 2022, 6:13 AM·2 min read

The Taliban's religious police have threatened to shoot women NGO workers in a northwestern province of Afghanistan if they do not wear the all-covering burqa, two staff members told AFP.

The rights of Afghans -- particularly women and girls -- have been increasingly curtailed since the Taliban returned to power in August after ousting the US-backed government.

Women are being squeezed from public life and largely barred from government jobs, while most secondary schools for girls are shut.


Two international NGO workers in rural Badghis province told AFP that the local branch of the feared Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice met with aid groups on Sunday.

"They told us... if women staff come to the office without wearing the burqa, they will shoot them," one said, asking not to be named for safety reasons.

Women must also be accompanied to work by a male guardian, he added.

A second NGO source confirmed the warnings.

"They also said they will come to every office without prior notice to check the rules are being followed," he told AFP.

A notice to NGOs seen by AFP did not mention the threat of shooting, but did order women to cover up.

Women in deeply conservative Afghanistan generally cover their hair with scarves anyway, while the burqa –- mandatory under the Taliban's first regime, from 1996 to 2001 –- is still widely worn, particularly outside the capital Kabul.

Desperate for international recognition to unlock frozen assets, the Taliban have largely refrained from issuing national policies that provoke outrage abroad.

Provincial officials, however, have issued various guidelines and edicts based on local interpretations of Islamic law and Afghan custom.

In the capital on Friday, the Taliban staged a demonstration with around 300 men, who chanted "We want Sharia law".

Holding posters of women wearing full coverings, the crowd accused women's rights activists who have taken to the streets of being "mercenaries".

Earlier this month, posters were slapped on cafes and shops in Kabul ordering Afghan women to cover up, illustrated with an image of the burqa.

Women are banned from appearing in television dramas and must be accompanied by a male guardian on journeys between towns and cities.

Small and scattered protests have broken out demanding women's rights, which had improved slightly over the past 20 years in the patriarchal Muslim nation.

However, several activists told AFP they had gone into hiding in the capital this week after a series of raids led to the arrests of three women.

eb-ecl/leg

'The last wave?' Spain ICU staff exhausted by Covid battle





'The last wave?' Spain ICU staff exhausted by Covid battleThe work never stops in the ICU, where some 40 percent of those brought in are not vaccinated (AFP/Josep LAGO)

Anahi Aradas and Rosa Sulleiro
Fri, January 21, 2022

Seemingly milder for some but still highly contagious, Omicron has filled intensive care beds again at a hospital near Barcelona where shattered staff are still fighting a virus that refuses to retreat.

"Every time we think we've reached the end of the tunnel, it just gets longer," sighs Rafael Manez, head of intensive care at Bellvitge University Hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region.

Since the pandemic took hold nearly two years ago, overwhelming hospitals across the world, this veteran specialist has steered clear of making predictions, with Covid-19 exhausting them all.

Although more than 90 percent of Spain's population over the age of 12 has been vaccinated, it has not spared the nation from an explosion of Omicron infections, giving it one of Europe's highest incidence rates in recent weeks.

In Catalonia -- one of Spain's most populous regions with 7.7 million residents -- Covid patients are taking up more than 42 percent of intensive care beds, far above the national average of around 23 percent.

And it also has the highest number of patients in critical condition, although there are hopes this wave is on the verge of peaking.

"Our medical teams are really tired, especially by the sense of uncertainty. Will this be the last wave or will there be another?" wonders Gloria Romero, head of nursing at the hospital's intermediate respiratory care unit.

"This takes a toll on healthcare professionals. How long will this situation go on?"

- 'It's very hard' -

With 40 of its 44 beds taken up by Covid patients, the pace has not slowed at the intensive care unit of this hospital, which serves a heavily populated metropolitan area just south of Barcelona.

Inside the unit, staff suddenly start running as a patient appears to run out of air, quickly helping him.

But the work never stops in the ICU, where some 40 percent of those brought in are not vaccinated.

"The unvaccinated patients, who are the ones we're mainly dealing with, are those who are in denial about their illness and even about the treatment," says Santiago Gallego, the ICU's head nurse.

The impact on staff of working through a nearly two-year pandemic is increasingly evident, triggering unprecedented levels of stress and Covid infections, with 600 employees forced to take time off since December 1.

And given the latest explosion of cases, the hospital has also been forced to once again cancel visits, with the most seriously ill patients left to fight for their lives alone, far from their loved ones and only the staff to stay by their side.

"It's very hard physically but most of all emotionally because it just never ends," admits Elena Cabo, a physiotherapist who works in the ICU, her voice breaking with emotion.

- The vaccine as key -

But all the staff just keep on working in the hope that this disease will start to retreat.

"The only thing which is really effective is preventing it through vaccination, nobody can argue with the fact it's had an impact," says Manez.

And if Spain didn't have such a high rate of vaccination, "we would certainly be in a much worse state than we were two years ago," he reflects.

The nature of this sixth wave of infections has also raised long-awaited hopes that Covid-19 is starting to shift from a pandemic to a more manageable endemic illness like seasonal flu.

"The people that are coming in are not as young and they have more underlying health problems, so it's starting to look more like a more common virus," explains Mikel Sarasate, a pulmonologist at the intermediate respiratory care unit.

But nobody wants to get ahead of themselves or play down the severity of a virus that has killed more than 91,000 people in Spain and sickened so many.

"The flu, which is the closest thing we know, doesn't attack patients this badly or with such intensity," Sarasate says, warning about a comparison which for most specialists remains premature.

vid-rs/hmw/mg/imm