The People's Heroes Demand The Right to Protest

When people ask why I’m so passionate about Tibet, I feel confused by the question. I don’t understand why the Tibetan struggle isn’t apparent to all liberty loving people. Their struggle is exactly the same as the desire for Sicilians to remain Sicilian in nature and practice. Sicilians are (so far) lucky to not be persecuted for practicing cultural activities or demeaned (at least in public and with government support) for cuisine, clothes, live styles, etc. Unfortunately for their cousins the Roma, Northern League fascists have signaled them out as scapegoats for all that’s wrong with Italy today. But be sure that the heat can come down on any other group that does not see exactly the same world as il imperatore Napolesconi. But in Tibet today people are afraid to display their ethnic pride. It is also not the case for the 56 “recognized” ethnic minorities that make up part of the Han dynasty, such as the Zhuang, Uyghurs, Mongols, Taiwanese, etc.
But I digress…
Two women in China are sentenced to one year at a labor camp because they asked, A S K E D permission to publicly protest the loss of their homes due to the Olympics! Are you shocked? Wait, there’s more … THEY’RE IN THEIR SEVENTIES AND ONE IS LEGALLY BLIND! Tell me more about how fabulous China is, please!
Chinese Woman, 79 with Disabilities, Sentenced to Labor Camp
As we draw nearer to the close of the Summer Olympics and the wall-to-wall coverage of the various events, stories of the toll these games have taken on the Chinese people continue to leak out, despite incredible efforts by the government of that nation to hide the reality of life in China. Now we read of two women in their late 70's and how they have been sentenced to a year in a labor camp as part of what the chinese government refers to as a re-education program. While you pause and wonder what threat two little old ladies could pose to China, know also that one of them is blind and has other disabilities.
Perhaps you caught the NBC Nightly News Report earlier this week that examined the process that China established through which citizens could petition for the right to protest at three specially appointed locations during the Olympics. It turns out that of 77 requests filed by citizens that none of them were granted. [my bold] Further, it appears that some who have made these requests have been arrested or, as in this case, sentenced to re-education programs which appear to be nothing more than a quick and convenient way to punish people without allowing the individuals any rights or chance to defend themselves.
Wu Dianyuan, 79, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, [right on, sisters!] were notified Sunday that they were to serve a yearlong term of re-education through labour, said Wang’s son, Li Xuehui. Officials did not specify a reason and still had not acted on the order, he said.
Instead, the pair were under the observation of a neighbourhood watch group and it was unclear if they would be sent to prison, he said.
The order followed the pair’s repeated attempts to apply for permission to protest their forced eviction from their homes. China agreed to allow demonstrations in three designated areas during the games, which end Sunday. So far, there have been no protests in any of the official areas.
The re-education system, in place since 1957, allows police to sidestep the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge and send people to prison for up to four years to perform penal labour.
Beijing has pointed to the special zones — public parks far away from Olympics venues — to defend its promise to improve human rights in China that was crucial to its bid to host the games.
Obviously China never had intentions of allowing citizens or foreigners for that matter any right to voice or exhibit opposition to their way of rule, especially during the Olympic games. Unfortunately, while the world is being treated to one of the finest exhibitions of sport and athletics ever to have taken place at the summer games, many of the people of China have been moved from their homes, lost their jobs and been displaced so that we don't see their reality.
I don't expect that NBC will revisit this story and report to the average American that people wanted to protest but have been sentenced to hard labor and prison for daring to consider the possibility. The average person will only remember Michael Phelps and is incredible gold metal performances. However, at least for the next year and perhaps longer, a blind chinese woman will pay for wishing for the right to express her views while the world moves on to other issues.

http://www.disabilitynation.net/blog/chinese-woman-79-disabilities-sentenced-labor-camp

Exceptionalism, Here, There, Everywhere

The town is called Torregavetta. Torre is an ivory tower, and gavetta means to rise from the ranks. Can it be possible to rise so high above fellow human beings that your senses become immune to their suffering? How can anyone be so assured of their place in this world that they cannot identify with the vision of death before them? Is it really possible to "enjoy" the rest of the afternoon with two bodies a few feet away? What do you think you would you do?

The picture that shames Italy

By Peter Popham in Rome
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children. [my bold] The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.
It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea – then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.
They had come to the beach on the outskirts of Naples on Saturday with another sister, Diana, nine, and a 16-year-old cousin, Manuela, to make a little money selling coloured magnets and other trinkets to sunbathers. But it was fiercely hot all day and, about 2pm, the girls surrendered to the temptation of a cooling dip – even though they apparently did not know how to swim.
"The sea was rough on Saturday," said Enzo Esposito, the national treasurer of Opera Nomadi, Italy's biggest Roma organisation. "Christina and Violetta went farther out than the other two, and a big wave came out of nowhere and dashed them on to the rocks. For a few moments, they disappeared; Manuela, who was in shallow water with Diana, came to the shore, helped out by people on the beach, and ran to try and get help."
Other reports said that lifeguards from nearby private beaches also tried to help, without success. "When Manuela and Diana came back," Esposito went on, "the bodies of her cousins had reappeared, and they were already dead."
It was the sort of tragedy that could happen on any beach. But what happened next has stunned Italy. The bodies of the two girls were laid on the sand; their sister and cousin were taken away by the police to identify and contact the parents. Some pious soul donated a couple of towels to preserve the most basic decencies. Then beach life resumed.
The indifference was taken as shocking proof that many Italians no longer have human feelings for the Roma, even though the communities have lived side by side for generations.
[...] The attitudes of ordinary Italians towards the Roma, never warm, have been chilling for years, aggravated by sensational news coverage of crimes allegedly committed by Gypsies, and a widespread confusion of Roma with ordinary, non-Roma Romanians, who continue to arrive. The Berlusconi government has launched a high-profile campaign against the community, spearheaded by the programme announced by the Interior Minister, Roberto Marroni, to fingerprint the entire Roma population. The move has been condemned inside Italy and beyond as a return to the racial registers introduced by the Fascist regime in the 1930s. The fingerprinting of Roma in Naples began on 19 June. [my bold]
[...] In a speech yesterday, Mr Maroni proposed, "for humanitarian reasons", granting Italian citizenship to all Roma children in Italy abandoned by their parents.
The Italians and the Roma
Roma have been living in Italy for seven centuries [my bold] and the country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions in one of around 700 encampments on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. But their poverty and resistance to integration have made them far more conspicuous than other communities. And the influx of thousands more migrants from Romania in the past year has confirmed the view of many Italians that the Gypsies and their eyesore camps are the source of all their problems. The ethnic group is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. According to a recent newspaper survey, more that two thirds of Italians want Gypsies expelled, whether they hold Italian passports or not. [How many centuries does a community have to live in a place before they "belong?"]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-picture-that-shames-italy-873743.html

Powerful War Criminals are Free to Ruin US

Excellent discussion about the hypocracy which is inherent in world diplomacy. Coming from an insider of the Bush/Regan/Bush (early on he bailed from W) years, it's even more powerful than if one of us "lefties" wrote it. My only critique is when he sites the "enablers" and forgot to mention Signore Berlusconi, who dreams of being the next Il Duce.
Little War Criminals Get Punished,
Big Ones Don’t
By Paul Craig Roberts
16/07/08 "ICH" -- - National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial as well. The entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other than bullets.
Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war criminals? Why al-Bashir?
Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?
[...] President Bush claims that the enormous destruction and death he has brought to Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary in order for Americans to be safe. If we are accepting excuses this feeble, Milosovic passed muster with his excuse that as the head of state he was obliged to try to preserve the state’s territorial integrity. Is al-Bashir supposed to accept secession in the Sudan, something that Lincoln would not accept from the Confederacy? How long would al-Bashir last if he partitioned Sudan?
Last October the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a photo on its front page above the fold of an elderly man with mikes shoved in his face. Paul Henss, 85 years old, is being deported from the US, where he has lived for 53 years, because Eli Rosenbaum, director the the US State Department’s Nazi-hunting bureaucracy, declared him a war criminal for training guard dogs used at German concentration camps. Henss was 22 years old when World War II ended.
A kid who trained guard dogs is being deported as a war criminal, but the head of state who launched two wars of naked aggression, resulting in the deaths of more than 1.2 million people, and who has the entire world on edge awaiting his third war of aggression, this time against Iran, is received respectfully by foreign governments. Corporations and trade associations will pay him $100,000 per speech when he leaves office. He will make millions of dollars more from memoirs written by a ghostwriter.
Does no one see the paradox of deporting Henss while leaving the war criminal in the White House?
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan Administration, is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20294.htm
Photo by John Amis
Paul Henss, left, takes reporters questions as wife Else stands at his side at their home Monday, Oct. 1, 2007 in Lawrenceville, Ga. Federal authorities have begun deportation proceedings against the 85 year-old Paul Henss, who they say served as a Nazi guard and trained and handled attack dogs at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.
“I am not a war criminal,” he told a throng of reporters. “I was 19 years old … Everyone was with the Hitler Youth.” [my bold]
"We were all just doing what we believed was right...." This could be the neocon/neoliberal defense.