Pride month: Kuwait criticises US embassy over pro-LGBT tweets

By Leo Sands
BBC News

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Kuwait has summoned a top US diplomat in protest over tweets from the American embassy supporting LGBT rights, its foreign ministry says.

US officials there had posted a rainbow flag and message of solidarity from President Joe Biden for Pride month.

But Kuwait officials criticised the embassy for "supporting homosexuality" and demanded it didn't happen again.

Rights for LGBT people are severely restricted in Kuwait and it is illegal there for men to be gay.

In a pair of tweets published in English and Arabic on Thursday, the US Embassy in Kuwait quoted President Biden as saying all humans "should be able to live without fear no matter who they are or whom they love".

The post, published to mark the beginning of Pride Month, appeared with a picture of a rainbow flag symbolising LGBT rights.



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Hours later, Kuwait's Foreign Ministry said it rejected what had been published and had summoned the US Charges d'Affaires James Holtsnider to hand him a memorandum condemning the posts.

According to its statement, the Foreign Ministry ordered the embassy to respect Kuwaiti laws and "not to publish such tweets".

Kuwaiti officials accused the embassy of violating international conventions requiring diplomats to "respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state".

Many conservative Kuwaiti Twitter users responded with similar outrage to the US embassy's Pride post, including MP Osama Al-Shaheen who wrote: "The behaviour of the American embassy is unacceptable."

"Foreign embassies must respect the public order of Kuwait and its official religion," he added.

Another Kuwaiti social media user accused US officials of "imposing a diseased and decadent culture on our conservative Muslim society".

Rights for LGBT people are extremely limited in socially conservative Kuwait - one of 69 countries in the world where being gay is criminalised.

According to the Gulf state's penal code, men who have same-sex relations can be punished by up to seven years in prison.

Until this year, it was a criminal offence in Kuwait to be a trans person. A court has now overturned the law as unconstitutional.

The US State Department is yet to respond from an emailed request from the BBC for comment.

 

US Embassy To Vatican Again Flies Pride Flag

 June 3, 2022

By CNA

By Kevin J. Jones

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See has again flown a Pride Flag, as President Joe Biden reiterated his commitment to supporting LGBT advocacy and, apparently, transgender-affirming health care for children.

“The United States respects and promotes the equality and human dignity of all people including the LGBTQIA+ community,” the U.S. embassy to the Vatican said on Twitter June 1. It showed a photo of its Pride Flag and used several hashtags including “All Inclusive.”

The acronym LGBTQIA+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, intersex. The “a” stands for “asexual,” an identity inconsistently used in other U.S. government statements, while the plus sign stands for other varieties of self-professed sexual identity.

The message differs slightly from last year’s, when the embassy said the U.S. “respects the dignity and equality of LGBTQI+ people.”

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See showed the Pride Flag last year as well.

In early 2021 U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that U.S. embassies and consulates around the world could fly the Pride Flag on the same flagpole as the American flag, during “Pride season.”

That authorization to fly the flag, which was not a mandate, was given ahead of May 17, observed by activists as the international day against homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia.

Blinken’s cable on Pride Flags, first reported by Foreign Policy magazine in April 2021, advised that diplomatic posts in certain countries should avoid flying the rainbow flag if doing so would create a backlash.

The U.S. Embassy to Italy similarly displayed a Pride Flag and various messages on its Twitter page, including a link to President Joe Biden’s May 31 declaration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month.

“Today, the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans are under relentless attack,” Biden said, adding, “An onslaught of dangerous anti-LGBTQI+ legislation has been introduced and passed in States across the country, targeting transgender children and their parents and interfering with their access to health care.”

Biden did not specify the legislation, but some states have raised concerns that children are wrongly being exposed to sexual propaganda or wrongly face pressure to undergo purported gender transitions, beginning with puberty blockers.

The president said 45% of self-identified LGBTQI+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide last year, saying this is “a devastating reality that our Nation must work urgently to address.”

“Today and every day, my Administration stands with every LGBTQI+ American in the ongoing struggle against intolerance, discrimination, and injustice,” he said, rejecting violence against self-identified LGBTQI+ people.

“We reaffirm our belief that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights,” Biden’s message said.

Biden again called on Congress to pass the Equality Act, legislation which would establish sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in federal civil rights law alongside race and sex. The legislation would also override the limited religious freedom protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has warned that despite the bill’s stated aims of combatting discrimination, it would discriminate against people of faith who are opposed to the redefinition of marriage and to transgenderism.

The USCCB has warned that the bill, by mandating access to public accommodations based on one’s sexual orientation or gender identity, could be used to pressure churches to “host functions that violate their beliefs.” Religious adoption agencies could be forced to match children with same-sex couples, and faith-based women’s shelters could be required to house biological males identifying as transgender females.

U.S. government promotion of Pride Month has differed depending on the president.

Under the Trump administration, U.S. diplomatic outposts were reportedly prohibited from flying the rainbow Pride Flag from embassy flagpoles, and had to obtain special permission to do so. They were allowed to display the flag inside buildings.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See made pro-LGBT social media posts on the international day against homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia and during “Pride Month” in 2014 and in 2011.

The embassy also made a pro-LGBT Facebook post for “Pride Month” in 2017 during the Trump administration.

The U.S. State Department is funding LGBT advocacy throughout the world through its Global Equality Fund. Its multiple country partners include Italy. Non-government partners to the fund include the Human Rights Campaign and the Arcus Foundation, funded by billionaire heir Jon Stryker.

Stryker’s foundation has backed Christian LGBT groups and others which reject Christian teaching on marriage and sexual morality and seek to create cultural and doctrinal change within various denominations. Its grantees include Methodist groups which recently helped split the United Methodist Church over issues including sexuality.

Another U.S. State Department effort is the Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Democracy and Empowerment Fund. The GLIDE Fund accepts funding requests for various projects, including those which seek to increase religious leaders’ support for self-identified LGBTQI+ people.

The promotion of LGBT causes can conflict with Christianity and other religions. In October 2015 Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle said Great Britain had sought to link financial aid to Ghana’s legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages.

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, controversial for his support of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has sought to connect pushback against LGBT advocacy to Russia’s war on Ukraine. He depicted Pride parades as a loyalty test to Western governments and to “the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power.”

In February 2022, Gallup reported that 7.1% of Americans now identify as LGBT. Of these, 57% identified as bisexual. Some 6% of all women respondents told Gallup they were bisexual, compared to 2% of men. The percentage of self-identified LGBT respondents was particularly high among younger generations. Surveying of self-identified LGBT respondents has caused debate over accuracy, given the possibility of respondent errors and sampling size problems. There is also debate over whether sexual self-identification in young people will persist as they age.

CNA
The Catholic News Agency (CNA) has been, since 2004, one of the fastest growing Catholic news providers to the English speaking world. The Catholic News Agency takes much of its mission from its sister agency, ACI Prensa, which was founded in Lima, Peru, in 1980 by Fr. Adalbert Marie Mohm (†1986).

Rare ‘unicorn’ deer with white coats seen in Georgia, officials say. See the photos

Madeleine List, Lexington Herald-Leader - Yesterday 

People in Georgia have been reporting sightings of “unicorns” in their backyards.

But the spotted animals aren’t mythical creatures, they’re deer with a rare coloration, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

At least two people reported sightings of the piebald deer, which have partially white coats instead of the typical brown coloring, in May, according to the department.

The department shared photos of a fawn and an adult deer that were spotted.

Wildlife Resources Division - Georgia DNR

on Tuesday

It's a unicorn! It's a cow! It's a ...piebald fawn?

Observations are relatively uncommon and reported at rates less than 1%, but can vary depending on location and if they are protected from harvest. Both of these piebald deer were observed and submitted in the past few weeks.

Piebald coloring is caused by a heritable genetic mutation that causes fewer pigmented cells in the skin. BOTH parents have to have the recessive gene for offspring to exhibit piebald characteristics....

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The coloration is rare and observed in less than 1% of deer sightings, the department wrote in an email to McClatchy News.

Their white coloring is caused by a genetic mutation that leads to fewer pigmented cells in the skin. Both parents have to have the recessive gene in order for the fawn to show the coloration, the department says.

But the gene can have an effect on the deer beyond the white coat. It can cause issues, such as short legs, arching of the spine, “dorsal bowing of the nose,” “deviation of limb joints,” overbite and “malformation of internal organs,” the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said.

“Most adult piebald deer seen have a mild form of the condition, while deer born with more pronounced malformations usually are still born or die shortly after birth from deformities or predation,” the department wrote on Facebook.

©2022 Lexington Herald-Leader. Visit kentucky.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Cambodian woman says police assault during strike led to miscarriage

Police violence during the NagaWorld Casino labor dispute is a violation of human rights, NGO says.

By RFA Khmer
2022.06.02

Sok Ratana speaks to RFA prior to her miscarriage.
citizen journalist

A Cambodian woman said a physical assault she suffered at the hands of police officers during a labor protest outside the NagaWorld Casino may have led to the death of her unborn child.

Sok Ratana told RFA’s Khmer Service that she had been pregnant when she joined the ongoing strike outside the casino’s offices on May 11. The police pushed and shoved her during the protest, she said. Fearing they may have hurt her baby in utero, she went to her doctor, who told her that the baby only had a 50% chance to live.

Sok Ratana said that she miscarried on May 28. The doctor told her that the baby had likely died two days before he removed it from her womb, she said.

“Losing my beloved baby has caused me an unbelievable pain that I will feel the rest of my life,” said Sok Ratana. “This experience has shown me the brutality of the authorities and it has deeply hurt my family.”

Sok Ratana is one of thousands of NagaWorld workers who walked off their jobs in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of eight jailed union leaders, three other jailed workers and 365 others they say were unjustly fired from the hotel and casino. The business is owned by a Hong Kong-based company believed to have connections to family members of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The strikers began holding regular protest rallies in front of the casino. Cambodian authorities have said their gatherings were “illegal” and alleged that they are part of a plot to topple the government, backed by foreign donors.

Authorities began mass detentions of the protesters, claiming that they were violating coronavirus restrictions. They often resorted to violence to force hundreds of workers onto buses.

“The labor dispute has turned to a dispute with authorities because they constantly crack down on us without any clemency,” Sok Ratana said. “I never thought that Cambodia has a law saying that when workers demand rights … authorities can crack down on us.”

She said that authorities worked with the company to pressure workers to stop the strike. She urged the government to better train its security forces to not become violent.

Kata Orn, spokesperson of the government-aligned Cambodia Human Rights Committee, expressed sympathy with Sok Ratana’s circumstance but said that it was too early to say whether the authorities were at fault. He urged Sok Ratana to file a complaint with the court.

“We can’t prejudge the loss due to the authorities. Only medical experts can tell,” he said. “We can [only] implement the law. It is applied equally to the workers and the authorities.”

Sok Ratana said she is working on collecting evidence to file a complaint, but she wasn’t confident a court will adjudicate the case fairly.

“I don’t have much hope because my union leader was jailed unjustly for nine weeks. Her changes have not been dropped yet,” she said. “To me, I don’t hope to get justice. From who? I want to ask, who can give me justice?”

Police violence is a serious human rights violation, Am Sam Ath of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights told RFA. He urged relevant institutions to investigate the miscarriage and bring those responsible to justice.

“Labor disputes can’t be settled by violence and crackdowns. This will lead to even more disputes and the workers and authorities will try to get revenge,” he said.

The Labor Ministry has attempted to mediate the dispute between the casino and the union leaders, who have been released on bail, but no progress has been made after more than 10 meetings.

Am Sam Ath said the difficulty in resolving the labor dispute might push the government to crack down harder on the holdouts and make more arrests.

RFA attempted to contact Phnom Penh Municipal Police spokesman San Sok Seiha and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs spokeswoman Man Chenda, but neither were available for comment.

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A History Of Balochistan – OpEd

 

Gwadar city, Balochistan, Pakistan. Photo Credit: Shayhaq Baloch, Wikipedia Commons

 June 3, 2022  

By Patial RC

Balochistan with a mixed history has historically found itself squeezed between competing  powers due to its geographical location between modern-day Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Earlier it fought to maintain its autonomy against aggressive empires. During the British rule it was directly administered as the ‘Baluchistan Agency’ and a federation of sovereign princely states led by the Khanate of Kalat. Once the British left, Khan of Kalat declared the independence of Kalat state, including that of Las Bela, Kharan and Makkoran.

The Pakistani government was able to pressure the Khan of Kalat to accede to Pakistan by 27 March 1948. However, both Houses of the Kalat legislature rejected the move. The ruler’s own brother, Prince Abdul Karim, initiated a revolt against the coerced merger with Pakistan, resulting in the Pakistan Army’s occupation of Balochistan and since then pro-independence factions continue the Balochistan freedom struggle. 

Balochistan Struggle 

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) is an armed separatist group that targets security forces and civilians, mainly in ethnic Baloch areas of Pakistan. The BLA, the armed wing of the Baloch movement, has carried out several violent attacks in Pakistan. It has about 6,000 cadre spread across Balochistan and in the bordering areas of Afghanistan. It is borne out of the tradition of armed militants who were earlier indirectly supported by the Marri, Bugti, Mengal and other clans. The US has designated the BLA as a terror organisation. 

BLA is opposed to Pakistan’s exploiting the resources of the  without giving the due share to the locals and the indigenous Baloch tribes. In recent years, the BLA has emerged as a movement with a network of supporters in both urban and rural areas of Balochistan. BLA rebels have claimed that they are aiming for both freedom from Pakistan and internal reform of the Baloch society. 

Geography

Balochistan is geographically the largest of the four provinces at 347,190 square km and totals 42 percent of the total land area of Pakistan. The population density is very low due to the mountainous terrain and scarcity of water.

The Sulaiman Mountains dominate the northeast  and the Bolan Pass is a natural route into Afghanistan towards Kandhar. Much of the province south of the Quetta  is sparse desert terrain with pockets of inhabitable towns mostly near rivers and streams. Quetta is situated in a river valley near the border with Afghanistan, with a road to Kandahar in the northwest.Iranian Balochistan is to the west, Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north and Punjab and Sindh to the east. To the south is the Arabian Sea. The principal languages in the province are Baluchi, Pashto, Brahui, and Persian. The capital and largest city is Quetta.

The  Balochistan Economy

The economy of Balochistan is mainly based upon the production of natural gas, coal and other minerals like gold, copper, etc. Agricultural development could not take place due to the absence of  water. Wheat, rice, jowar are the major food crops, and fruits are the principal cash crops. In addition to this great majority of the population is involved in sheep grazing.

Despite being rich in natural resources the people of this region are living in extremely poor conditions. Much of the population is illiterate, malnourished living without electricity or clean drinking water.

The  Water Crisis

The people of Pakistan, particularly those in southern Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, are facing the worst kind of water crisis. Research suggests that 85 per cent of people in Balochistan have no access to clean water. The groundwater situation in Pakistan is also alarming, having tumbled down to frightening levels. Pakistan ranks 14 among the 17 countries that are deemed extremely high water-risk regions in the world. Experts say Pakistan may become the most water-stressed nation in the region by 2040.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Exploitation

The political and economic outcomes of the CPEC are at cross roads with the local politics of total distrust and regionalism in Balochistan. The history of political exclusion and resource exploitation by the elite Punjabi military-bureaucracy nexus manifested in Balochs’ CPEC. The acquisition of Gwadar port, exclusion of Baloch firms and labour from Gwadar and associated CPEC projects and exclusion of native fishermen have heightened pre-existing feelings of regionalism in Balochistan, with Baloch nationalist forces either wholly rejecting the project or voicing for greater share in these projects.

Fish Resource Exploitation by Chinese

Most recently, Gwadar has seen protests against CPEC in the specific context of fish resource exploitation by Chinese trawlers. Many of the local fishermen vacated their fishing spots due to construction of Gwadar port in hope of better future. However, the federal government granted fishing permission to the Chinese fishermen ignited widespread unrest and further alienated the local population. This unrest culminated in a 28 day sit-in protest in 2021 led by Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) in which a large number of people, including women, and children, participated.

Gwadar Port

Pakistan has given China exclusive rights to run ‘Gwadar Port’ for the next four decades as it is under huge Chinese debt.China’s debt-trap diplomacy has not spared Pakistan, which ranks as its sole strategic ally.  China will take away 91 percent of the port’s revenues. It also plans to build near the port a Djibouti-style outpost for its navy. People of Baluchistan including women have been protesting against the sell out to China.

The Gwadar port project and associated networks of roads and railways have not resulted in integrating Balochistan with the rest of the country. Contrary to expectations, locals have not found jobs and despite commitments neither a hospital nor a vocational training center has been established. Instead, local fishing grounds have been taken over by the Chinese. The locals view development and economic activities carried out in Gwadar as exploitative which has led to anti-state feeling that  leads to violence.

In response to the Baloch people’s resistance against the  exploitation of it’s natural resources, the Pakistan Agencies have responded with mass-scale forced disappearances and  killings. Balochistan has come to be known as the Land of enforced disappearances which have increased in recent years. At the same time militants have increased the frequency of attacks aimed at undermining Chinese investment. Any blast taking place in Balochistan is a result of RAW conspiracy for the Pakistani establishment. Floods in the Punjab region of Pakistan are always a result of the Indian conspiracy which lets excess waters go without warning from upstream projects. Not withstanding the fact about decades of disappearances in Balochistan, Pakistan policies support proxy wars and enforced disappearances. What justice can a common citizen expect, and Balochistan lives with this malice of enforced disappearances…

Patial RC

Patial RC is a retired Infantry officer of the Indian Army and possesses unique experience of serving in active CI Ops across the country and in Sri Lanka. Patial RC is a regular writer on military and travel matters in military professional journals. The veteran is a keen mountaineer and a trekker.

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCH 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCHISTAN 

Belgian teacher who hid Jewish children during Holocaust dies at age 101

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici risked her life to help save around 1,000 children from the Nazis, was recognized by Yad Vashem and given honorary Israeli citizenship

By MICHAEL HOROVITZ

Today, 

Belgian Andrée Geulen-Herscovici poses during a visit to the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, April 18, 2007. (Orel Cohen/Flash 90)

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici, a teacher from Belgium who helped save approximately 1,000 Jewish children during the Holocaust, died on Wednesday in Ixelles, Belgium, aged 101 years old.

As a young teacher, Geulen-Herscovici was disturbed by the Nazi occupation of her hometown of Brussels when Jewish students arrived at her school wearing yellow stars. She told her students — both Jewish and non-Jewish — to come to school wearing aprons to cover the symbol.

The discriminatory Nazi policies prompted Geulen-Herscovici to join the rescue organization Comité de Défence des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee) in 1942. There, she met the Jewish activist Ida Sterno, who needed a non-Jewish person to assist her in rescue efforts.

Geulen-Herscovici was among several non-Jewish women who were tasked by the rescue organization with quietly approaching Jewish families to suggest they give up their children to hide them. She also transferred children between various hiding places.

“It was the hardest thing to do, not telling a mother where I was taking her son,” Geulen-Herscovici recalled in an interview.

Operating under the code name Claude Fournier, Geulen-Herscovici was instructed to live at the school where she taught, called Gaty de Gamont, where she helped to protect 12 Jewish students who had taken shelter there.

Belgian Andrée Geulen-Herscovici (second from right) observes a moment of silence in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem April 18, 2007. 

(Orel Cohen/Flash 90)

In May 1943, Nazis raided the school and arrested the students who were hiding there. Geulen-Herscovici and the other teachers were taken for questioning. The school’s headmistress, Odile Ovart, and her husband were sent to concentration camps, where they both died.

Geulen-Herscovici avoided arrest, and warned her Jewish students of the raid and to not return to the school.

From then on, Geulen-Herscovici operated under a false identity and helped accompany Jewish children to safety.

Geulen-Herscovici took the children to hide among Christian families and at monasteries. She ensured the families were able to provide for them and watched out for them for the duration of the war.

Geulen-Herscovici maintained coded records of the children, including their birth names and hiding locations, so that they could be reunited with their families after the war, but many of the parents who gave up their children perished in the Holocaust.

In 1989, Geulen-Herscovici was recognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center as a Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts. The recognition is bestowed by the memorial center to those who are verified to have risked their lives to save Jews during World War II.

During a 2007 visit to Israel for an international convention for rescued Belgian children, she was granted honorary Israeli citizenship in a ceremony at Yad Vashem.

Israel’s ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon mourned her death, calling Geulen-Herscovici “a true hero of humanity… she was an amazing and wonderful woman, who saved many Jews during WWII.”

TOI staff contributed to this report.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

US government report flags attacks on minorities in India took place throughout 2021

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said there has been a rise in attacks on places of worship in India.

Scroll Staff

Citizens in New Delhi shout slogans and hold placards during a peace vigil organised on April 16 against rise in hate crimes and violence against Muslims in India. | Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

Attacks on minorities in India, including killings, assaults and intimidation, took place throughout last year, said the United States Department of State’s Report on International Religious Freedom for 2021, released on Thursday.

The report listed scores of incidents of violence against minorities including incidents of cow vigilantism, attacks on religious places and properties owned by Muslims and anti-conversion laws in several states of India.

While releasing the report, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noted the “rising attacks on people and places of worship” in India.

Ambassador-At-Large For International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain said that some officials in India were “ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship”.

What does the report say?

The section on India in the report said that attacks on minorities included incidents of vigilantism against non-Hindus based on allegations of cow slaughter or selling or possessing beef.

The report said that ten out of 28 states in the country have laws restricting religious conversions.

“Four state governments have laws imposing penalties against so-called forced religious conversions for the purpose of marriage although some state high courts have dismissed cases charged under this law,” it noted.

The report took note of an incident on September 26, when a 14-year-old Christian boy from Bihar’s Gaya district died after some persons allegedly threw acid on him. The report also referred to allegations by two Muslim men in Jamshedpur that the police on August 26 forced them to strip naked and beat them up during an interrogation.

“According to a media report, no action was taken against the accused police officers by year’s end,” the report said.

The Department of State also said that alleged militants in Jammu and Kashmir killed civilians from Hindu and Sikh minorities, leading to “widespread fear” among the communities.

It took note of reports of properties owned by Muslims, including mosques, shops and houses, having been damaged in attacks by Hindu nationalist groups.

The report made mention of incidents of hate speech against minorities, including at a conclave at Uttarakhand’s Haridwar city in December, where Hindu supermacist seer Yati Narsinghanand urged Hindus to take up weapons against Muslims.

It also referred to a statement made by Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui on October 15 calling for beheading of those who insult the Quran.

In April, the US Department of State had noted that Muslims in India are vulnerable to communal violence and discrimination. The state department made the observation on the chapter on India in its “2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”.

The report had mentioned discrimination against minorities in India, extrajudicial killings, degrading treatment or punishment by the police and prison officials and arbitrary arrests and detentions by government authorities among other concerns.

Essay

The truth about Ukraine’s far-Right militias

Russia has empowered dangerous factions

BY ARIS ROUSSINOS

June 1, 2022

Torch-bearing Azov fighters. Credit: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty

Like any war, but perhaps more than most, the war in Ukraine has seen a bewildering barrage of claims and counter-claims made by the online supporters of each side. Truth, partial truths and outright lies compete for dominance in the media narrative. Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country is surely one of the clearest examples. The Russian claim that the Maidan revolution of 2014 was a “fascist coup” and that Ukraine is a Nazi state has been used for years by Putin and his supporters to justify his occupation of Crimea and support for Russian-speaking separatists in the country’s east, winning many online adherents.

But the Russian claim is false: Ukraine is a genuine liberal-democratic state, though an imperfect one, with free elections that produce significant changes of power, including the election, in 2019, of the liberal-populist reformer, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine is, unequivocally, not a Nazi state: the Russian casus belli is a lie. And yet, there is a danger that the understandable desire by Ukrainian and Western commentators not to provide ammunition for Russian propaganda has led to an over-correction — and one that may not ultimately serve Ukraine’s best interests.

During one recent news bulletin on BBC Radio 4, the correspondent referred to “Putin’s baseless claim that the Ukrainian state supports Nazis”. This is, itself, disinformation: it is an observable fact, which the BBC itself has previously reported on accurately and well, that the Ukrainian state has, since 2014, provided funding, weapons and other forms of support to extreme Right-wing militias, including neo-Nazi ones. This is not a new or controversial observation. Back in 2019, I spent time in Ukraine interviewing senior figures in the constellation of state-backed extreme Right-wing groups for Harper’s magazine; they were all quite open about their ideology and plans for the future.

Indeed, some of the best coverage of Ukraine’s extreme Right-wing groups has come from the open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat, which is not known for a favourable attitude towards Russian propaganda. Bellingcat’s excellent reporting of this under-discussed topic over the past few years has largely focused on the Azov movement, Ukraine’s most powerful extreme Right-wing group, and the one most favoured by the state’s largesse.

Over the past few years, Bellingcat researchers have explored Azov’s outreach effort to American white nationalists and its funding by the Ukrainian state to teach “patriotic education” and to support demobilised veterans; it has looked into Azov’s hosting of neo-Nazi black metal music festivals, and its support of the exiled, anti-Putin Russian neo-Nazi group Wotanjugend — practitioners of a very marginal form of esoteric Nazism, who share space with Azov in their Kyiv headquarters, fight alongside them in the front line, and have also played a role translating and disseminating a Russian-language version of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. Unfortunately, Bellingcat’s invaluable coverage of Ukraine’s extreme-Right ecosystem has not been updated since the current hostilities began, despite the war with Russia providing these groups with something of a renaissance.

The Azov movement was founded in 2014 by Andriy Biletsky, former leader of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine, during the battle for control of Kyiv’s central Independence Square during the Maidan Revolution against the country’s Russia-leaning, elected president Viktor Yanukovych. Back in 2010, Biletsky claimed that it would one day be Ukraine’s role to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led untermenschen“. The revolution, and the war which followed, would give him the national stage for which he had so long craved.

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Alongside other far-Right groups, such as Right Sector, the nascent Azov movement played an outside role in the fighting against Ukrainian security police which left 121 dead and secured the success of the revolution. Acquiring control of a large property, just off Independence Square, from the Ministry of Defence, Azov turned the building, now named Cossack House, into its Kyiv headquarters and recruiting centre. Though Azov has since toned down its rhetoric, and many of its fighters may be non-ideological and simply attracted by its martial reputation, its activists are often to be seen covered in tattoos of SS totenkopfs and lightning bolt runes, or sporting the Sonnenrad or Black Sun symbol of esoteric Nazism. Derived from a pattern created for Himmler at Wewelsburg castle in Germany, chosen as an occultic Camelot for senior SS officers, the Sonnenrad is like the Wolfsangel rune of the SS Das Reich division one of Azov’s official symbols, worn on their unit patches and on the shields behind which their fighters parade in evocative torchlit ceremonies.

I’ve visited Cossack House multiple times to interview senior Azov figures, including the leader of its National Militia (which provides auxiliary patrolling muscle to Ukraine’s official police force), Ihor Mikhailenko, and Azov’s International Secretary and intellectual linchpin, Olena Semenyaka. It’s an impressive setup: along with classrooms for the educational lectures they provide with state funding, Cossack House is home to Azov’s literary salon and publishing house, Plomin, where glamorous young hipster intellectuals busy themselves with organising Right-wing seminars and book translations, beneath glossy posters of fascist luminaries such as Yukio Mishima, Cornelius Codreanu, and Julius Evola.

But Azov’s power derives from the gun, not their literary efforts. Back in 2014, when the Ukrainian army was weak and underequipped, Azov volunteers under Biletsky’s leadership fought at the vanguard of the battle against Russian-speaking separatists in the east, reconquering the city of Mariupol, where they are currently under siege. Effective, courageous and highly ideological fighters, Azov’s efforts in the east won them great renown as defenders of the nation, and the support of a grateful Ukrainian state, which incorporated Azov as an official regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard. In this, Azov is believed to have enjoyed the support of Arsen Avakov, a powerful oligarch and Ukraine’s Interior Minister between 2014 and 2019.

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Both Ukrainian human rights activists and leaders of rival extreme Right-wing groups have complained to me, in interviews, about the unfair advantage Avakov’s patronage gave the Azov movement in establishing its dominant role in Ukraine’s Rightwing sphere — including official functions as election observers and state-sanctioned auxiliary police. Ukraine is not a Nazi state, but the Ukrainian state’s support — for whatever reasons, valid or otherwise — of neo-Nazi or Nazi-aligned groups makes the country an outlier in Europe. The continent has many extreme Right-wing groups, but only in Ukraine do they possess their own tank and artillery units, with the state’s support.

This awkwardly close relationship between a liberal-democratic state supported by the West and armed proponents of a very different ideology has caused some discomfort in the past for Ukraine’s Western backers. The US Congress has gone back and forth in recent years on whether Azov should be blocked from receiving American arms shipments, with Democrat lawmakers even urging in 2019 that Azov be listed as a global terrorist organisation. In interviews, Semenyaka complained to me that this unease was a result of their listening to Russian propaganda, and insisted that American cooperation with Azov would be beneficial for both parties.

In this, the current war has surely come as a blessed relief for Azov. Biletsky’s attempt to found a political party — the National Corps — met with almost zero success, with even a united bloc of Ukraine’s far- and extreme Right-wing parties failing to clear the very low hurdle for parliamentary representation in the last election: Ukrainian voters simply do not want what they are selling, and reject their worldview. Yet in time of war, Azov and similar groups come to the forefront, with the Russian invasion seemingly reversing the downward spiral that set in for them following Avakov’s resignation due to international pressure. Judging by their social media, Azov’s armed units are expanding: they’re forming new battalions in Kharkiv and Dnipro, a new special forces unit in Kyiv (where Biletsky is organising at least some aspects of the capital’s defence) and local defence militias in western cities such as Ivano-Frankivsk.

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Along with other extreme Right-wing groups such as Karpatska Sich (whose militancy against Western Ukraine’s Hungarian-speaking minority, including Roma, has drawn criticism from the Hungarian government), the Eastern Orthodox group Tradition and Order, the neo-Nazi group C14, and the extreme Right-wing militia Freikorps, the Russian invasion has allowed Azov to restore its earlier prominence, burnishing its heroic reputation with its dogged defence of Mariupol alongside regular Ukrainian marines. While just a few weeks ago there was still a concerted Western effort to not directly arm Azov, now they seem to be a prime beneficiary of Western munitions and training: these pictures tweeted by the Belarusian opposition outlet NEXTA show Azov fighters being instructed in the use of British-made NLAW anti-tank munitions by blurred-out trainers.

Similarly, until the Russian invasion, Western governments and news outlets frequently warned of the dangers of Western neo-Nazis and white supremacists gaining combat experience fighting alongside Azov and their allied Nazi subfactions. Yet in the heat of the moment, these concerns seem to have dissipated: a recent photograph of newly-arrived Western volunteers, including Britons, in Kyiv shows Azov’s Olena Semenyaka smiling happily in the background, alongside the Swedish neo-Nazi and former Azov sniper Mikael Skillt. Indeed, Misanthropic Division, a unit of Western neo-Nazis fighting alongside Azov, is currently advertising on Telegram for European militants to join the flow of volunteers and link up with them in Ukraine, “for victory and Valhalla.”

Like Ukraine’s other extreme Right-wing militias, Azov are dogged, disciplined and committed fighters, which is why the weak Ukrainian state has found itself forced to rely upon their muscle during its hours of greatest need: during the Maidan revolution, during the war against separatists from 2014 onwards, and now to fend off the Russian invasion. There has been a certain new-found reticence abroad to speak frankly about their role, no doubt for fear that doing so will provide ammunition for Russian propaganda. This fear is surely misplaced: after all, groups such as Azov are only prominent precisely because of Russia’s meddling in Ukraine. Instead of de-Nazifying the country, Russian aggression has helped solidify the role and presence of extreme Right-wing factions in Ukraine’s military, reinvigorating a waning political force rejected by the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians.

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If anything, the primary threat posed by groups such as Azov is not to the Russian state — Russia happily supports extreme Right-wing elements in its Wagner mercenary group and in the separatist republics, after all — nor to Western nations whose disaffected citizens may find themselves drawn to a combat role alongside them. Instead, the threat is to the future stability of the Ukrainian state itself, as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have long warned. While they may be useful now, in the event of the decapitation or evacuation of Ukraine’s liberal government from Kyiv, perhaps to Poland or Lviv, or more likely, in the event of Zelenskyy being forced by events to sign a peace deal surrendering Ukrainian territory, groups like Azov may find a golden opportunity to challenge what remains of the state and consolidate their own power bases, even if only locally.

Back in 2019, I asked Semenyaka if Azov still saw itself as a revolutionary movement. Thinking carefully, she replied, “We are ready for different scenarios. If Zelenskyy is even worse than [ex-president] Poroshenko, if he is the same kind of populist, but without certain skills, connections and background, then, of course, Ukrainians would be heavily in danger. And we have already developed a plan of what can be done, how we can develop parallel state structures, how we can customise these entry strategies to save the Ukrainian state, if [Zelenskyy] would become a puppet of the Kremlin, for instance. Because it’s quite possible.”

Senior Azov figures have been explicit, over the course of years, in stating that Ukraine has unique potential as a springboard for the “reconquest” of Europe from liberals, homosexuals and immigrants. While their broader contintental ambitions may have a very doubtful chance of success, a broken, impoverished and angry postwar Ukraine, or worse, a Ukraine suffering years of bombardment and occupation with large areas outside central government control, would surely be a fertile breeding ground for a form of extreme Right-wing militancy not seen in Europe for many decades.

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Right now, Ukraine and Zelenskyy may well need the military capabilities and ideological zeal of nationalist and extreme Right-wing militias simply to fight and win their battle for national survival. But when the war ends, both Zelenskyy and his Western backers must be very careful to ensure that they have not empowered groups whose goals are in direct conflict with the liberal-democratic norms they both pledge adherence to. Arming and funding Azov, Tradition and Order and Karpatska Sich may well be one of the hard choices forced by war, but disarming them must surely be a priority when the war ends.

As we have seen in Syria, there is nothing that radicalises a civilian population more than dispossession, bombing and bombardment. Just as in Syria, there is surely a danger that temporarily empowering extremist factions for their military utility, even indirectly, may have grave and unintended consequences. And in Syria, too, there were strong early taboos among Western commentators in discussing the rise of extremist militias that would later cannibalise the rebel cause, for fear of validating Assad’s propaganda that the rebels were all terrorists: this early reticence did not, in the end, work in the rebels’ favour.

It is not doing Putin’s work for him to observe frankly that there are extremist elements fighting against him in Ukraine: indeed, it is only by carefully monitoring — and perhaps, curtailing — their activities now, that we can ensure they will not deepen Ukraine’s misery in the years to come. For years, liberal Western commentators complained that the Ukrainian state was turning a blind eye to its Right-wing extremist factions: it serves no good purpose for the same commentators to now do the same thing themselves.

Aris Roussinos is UnHerd's Foreign Affairs Editor,

 and a former war reporter.
arisroussinos

Pain management: Tulsa shooting exposes threats doctors face

The deadly mass shooting at an Oklahoma medical office by a man who blamed his surgeon for pain following back surgery underscores the escalating threats doctors face

By Andrew Demillo 

Associated Press
June 02, 2022

The deadly mass shooting at an Oklahoma medical office by a man who blamed his surgeon for continuing pain following an operation on his back underscores the escalating threat of violence doctors have faced in recent years.

Michael Louis, 45, fatally shot Dr. Preston Phillips and three other people in Tulsa on Wednesday before killing himself. Police said Louis had been calling the clinic repeatedly complaining of pain and that he specifically targeted Phillips, who performed his surgery.

“What we currently know is that Louis was in pain, Louis expressed that he was in pain and was not getting relief and that was the circumstance surrounding this entire incident,” Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said at a news conference.

Doctors have been increasingly threatened with or become victims of violence by patients complaining of pain, especially in recent years when they have prescribed alternatives to opioids and tapered patients off addictive painkillers. Police have not said that Louis was seeking opioids to relieve his pain.

More than two-thirds of pain specialists surveyed during a violence education session at a 2019 American Academy of Pain Medicine meeting said a patient threatened them with bodily harm at least once a year. Nearly half said they had been threatened over opioid management.

“We only become aware of it when these dramatic and tragic events occur,” said Dr. W. Michael Hooten, a former president of the academy and a professor at the Mayo Clinic. “Some of the lower-level threats and lower-level occurrences of violence, we're simply not aware of them because they don’t get the attention.”

A jury in Minnesota returned a guilty verdict on all counts Thursday against Gregory Paul Ulrich, who was charged in the 2021 health clinic shooting that left one person dead and four injured. Sentencing is scheduled for June 17.

Investigators have said the alleged gunman's addiction to opioid medication was the “driving factor" behind the shooting.

A police report says Ulrich had threatened a similar mass shooting in 2018, allegedly as revenge against people who he said “tortured” him with back surgeries and prescribed medication.

In 2017, an Indiana man shot and killed a doctor who refused to prescribe opioids to his wife.

Oklahoma has been hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis. State statistics show that from 2007 to 2017, more than 4,600 people in Oklahoma died from opioid overdoses, including prescription painkillers and illicit drugs such as heroin and illegally made fentanyl. Nationally, opioids have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the Tulsa shooting, Franklin said Louis was carrying a letter that said he was targeting Phillips, an orthopedic surgeon with an interest in spinal surgery and joint reconstruction.

Franklin said Phillips performed the surgery on Louis on May 19 and that the patient was released from the hospital on May 24.

He said Louis called the doctor’s office “several times over several days” reporting he was still in pain and that he saw Phillips on Tuesday for “additional treatment.” Louis called the office again Wednesday “complaining of back pain and wanting additional assistance,” he said.

The threats have prompted some facilities to take steps including installing panic buttons, restricting high-risk patients’ access and seating doctors closer to the door than patients. Dr. David Holden, president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, said it’s also meant reviewing access points to their facilities.

Holden, an orthopedic surgeon, said doctors have long dealt with concerns about threats from patients over care. But the violence in recent years has taken that concern to a new level.

“We've had those concerns forever, so that's not new," Holden said. “What is new is the sudden, targeted violence to the extreme."