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Undiminished Scars of 1971 Tragedy Part-3 by Brig.Gen(Retd) Asif Haroon Raja

Undiminished Scars of 1971 Tragedy

Part-3

 

“Refusal to learn from history is not unique to a particular ruler: It is a general failing of governments and people”. George Hegel

 

Asif Haroon Raja

 

UN Resolutions vetoed by USSR

After 4 Dec, all the resolutions moved in the UNSC were vetoed by the Soviet Union. On 8 Dec, Bhutto as Vice PM had been sent to New York to find a diplomatic solution to the East Pakistan (EP) crisis by arranging a ceasefire. He took a circuitous route and reached there in 3 days. He chose a leisurely course and took things lightly when EP was falling. On 14th December Poland presented a draft resolution that obviously had the backing of the USSR. It called for the transfer of power to the elected representatives, followed by a ceasefire, withdrawal of forces and later evacuation of Pakistani forces.

On 15 Dec, Bhutto made an emotional speech that was hardly relevant and then rejected the Polish resolution in a theatrical fashion, tore his notes and walked out of the meeting in a huff. Lt Gen Jacob stated later on that passage of the Polish resolution would have been disastrous for India and that it was Bhutto who saved the day for India. (Lt Gen Joseph Jacob, Surrender at Dacca, p 146).

Dying Moments

Indian Eastern Command intercepted the flurry of confusing signals transmitted between GHQ and Dacca from Dec 7 onwards and directed Commander Communication Zone, Maj Gen Nagra on 15 Dec to race for Dacca and pull a fast one on Gen Niazi that the game was over. All the major Indian formations were behind the rivers. Not a single Pakistani formations/units fighting the war had capitulated.  

Nature had given Gen Niazi a chance to stand up to the threat and enter his name in the golden Islamic history as a real tiger. He chose to give up under the plea of saving the lives of thousands of soldiers. Maj Gen Tajammul Hussain, my Brigade Commander on the Hilli front, who had given me a smashing war report, wrote is his book, “The Story of My Struggle, 1991, p 159, “Niazi was basically not a coward but he was made a coward by the cowards around him”.

No results could be achieved by the counter offensive launched on the western front where a ceasefire came into place.

“No General can vindicate his loss claiming that he was compelled against his better judgment to execute an order that led to the defeat”. Field Marshal Von Manstein

East Pakistan

 

 

 

     

The Aftermath

 

Biharis Abandoned

 

After the surrender, 35000 Pak Army all ranks and non-combatants serving in units and HQs, 13000 EPCAF and Police personnel and 48000 non-Bengali civilians including their families were taken into safe custody of the Indian Army and later shifted to already established PoW camps in India. The Biharis were left to fend for themselves. Gen AA K Niazi and his negotiating team didn’t insist on including them in the repatriation list. They were left at the mercy of marauding Mukti, Qadri, Mujib and several other Bahinis who massacred them brutally and raped their women. The occupying Indian Army made no effort to stop the bloodshed since they were busy in looting, in carnival pleasures and nocturnal merrymaking. Hundreds of mass graves were dug to dump their bodies. The dried wells were filled with their dead bodies. Brutalities of the MBs were lumped on Pak Army.

 

10% Bengalis wanted independence

 

According to Professor G.W Choudhury, a Bengali member of Yahya’s cabinet and a fellow of Columbia University writes in his book, (The Last Days of United Pakistan, Oxford University Press, p. 167), ‘The vast majority of the Bengali Muslims were not prepared to see Pakistan dismembered and their homeland become again a target of domination by the ‘Bhadralok (elite) from Calcutta. They were interested in having genuine regional autonomy. In fact, their basic demand was for the improvement of their economic lot. Mujib captured their imagination because he promised them a ‘golden Bengal’ if they would only vote for his six points —‘

 

Propaganda War

 

The bizarre figures of 3 million Bengalis killed and 300,000 women raped by Pak Army in 9 months were dispelled by several western and Bengali authors including Sharmila Bose in her book ‘Dead Reckoning. She said that during her ground investigations, despite her best efforts she couldn’t get any evidence that soldiers of Pak Army had targeted Bengali women and children. In her view the highly exaggerated figures were given to arouse the sentiments of the public. She also negated the story of mass killings of students in Dacca University saying her probe revealed that all schools, colleges and university were closed and no one was living in the university hostel except for AL militants who had stacked big dumps of arms and ammunition and used to impart military training to the students.  

 

R.J. Rummel in his book ‘Death by Government’, writes about the atrocities committed by militant Bengalis against on-Bengalis: “In the whole of EP, non-Bengalis were attacked and were subjected to torture and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Muslim families were wholly eliminated; women were raped and their breasts were cut with specially carved knives. The children of the victim women were also not spared. Thousands of surviving children had to live a torturous life. In Chittagong, Khulna, and Jessore, dead bodies of 20,000 Biharis were discovered. A cautions guess gives a figure of 2.50 lacs non-Bengalis killed at the hands of MB”.  

 

Between 1972 and 1974, Indian military and civil writers with the assistance provided by the Indian government published 270 books on the 1971 War and this trend continued over the years. The purpose was to justify Indian military’s intervention into EP, hide their crimes against humanity and build a narrative to prove that the myths of slaughter of 3 million Bengalis and rapes of 300,000 Bengali women by the Pak Army were true, and that the numbers pitched against Indian Army were 93000. 

 

Sustained Indo, Russian, Western propaganda together with publication of large numbers of books by Indian, western and Bengali authors helped India in portraying the Pak Army soldiers as bloodthirsty monsters and rapists and in convincing the world that Gen Yahya Khan’s regime and Pak Army were responsible for the dismemberment of united Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh (BD).

 

Their false narrative gained authenticity since Pakistan first remained mum over the slaughter of Biharis and non-Bengalis in March 1971, fearing that disclosure of the news would result in a backlash in West Pakistan (WP). After the surrender, Pakistan again chose to remain tightlipped till the leakage of Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report in 2001. Our silence helped India to convert their lies into truth. Our muteness and absence of authentic information gave rise to speculation, fabrication and distortion of facts by vested interests.

 

Looting by Indian Army

 

Soon after the creation of BD, the Indian Army went on a looting spree like hungry parasites. They took away war munitions, heavy guns, army vehicles, private cars of West Pakistanis, household items including bathroom fittings, fridges, ceiling fans, TVs, radios, electronic items, factories machinery, food grains, jute, yarn, canned food etc. Trains and thousands of trucks were looted and it was estimated that the loot was valued $ 2.2 billion. (Martin Woolla cott. The Guardian, Jan 22, 1972). Others who wrote in detail about the plunder were Sunil Gangapadhyay in his novel Purbha Pashchin, Maj MA Jalil MB 9 Sector Comd in his book (Araksmita Swadhinata-e-Paradhinata), Maj Shawkat Ali, MB 5 Sector Comd, Zainal Abedin in his book Rape of Bangladesh, J.N. Dixit in his book Liberation of Bengal: Indo-Bangladesh Relations.   

 

In the truncated Pakistan, Lt Gen Gul Hassan and Air Marshal Rahim Khan forced Gen Yahya to resign and Bhutto sitting in New York was given a call to come and take over the reins of power. After taking over, Bhutto wore three hats of President, CMLA and Chief of Armed Forces. Yahya was interned and a probe under chief justice Hamoodur Rahman ordered the mandate of which was confined to the military debacle in EP, making the postmortem controversial. Mujib was released from jail on 8 Jan 1972 and sent to Dacca. Lt Gen Gul Hassan was appointed COAS but he and Air Marshal Rahim were sacked four months later on charges that they had Bonaparte tendencies. Superseded Lt Gen Tikka Khan replaced Gul. After fascist rule of Bhutto, he was ousted by Gen Ziaul Haq in a military coup in July 1977 and Bhutto was hanged to death on 4 April 1979. After General Zia’s death in a C-130 crash in Aug 1988, Benazir Bhutto was elected, but the ten-year democratic era saw power changing between the PPP and the PML-N under Nawaz Sharif four times. Gen Musharraf’s 9-year rule couldn’t upturn the economic fortunes of the country. Thereon, the 5-year each rule of PPP under Zardari and of PML-N under Nawaz dipped all the economic indicators of the country and exacerbated moral and social issues. So far the incumbent PTI regime has been unable to cure the diseases of Pakistan and the economy is declining and provincialism has gained ground.         

 

In Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib carried out witch-hunting of Bihars and patriotic Bengalis favoring One-Pakistan, and sought trial of 195 WP officers in alleged war crimes. He could survive for a few years only and on Aug 15, 1975, he along with 22 other family members were killed in a military coup led by Maj Farooq and Maj Rashid. Khondkar Mushtaq after remaining in the president’s chair for two months was deposed in another coup on Nov 3, 1975 which brought Brig Khalid Musharraf to power. After 4 days, he was toppled in a military coup and Maj Gen Ziaur Rahman was chosen to lead the country. After ruling for six years, he was assassinated and Gen Hussain Ershad ruled the roost till he was defeated by Mrs. Khalida Zia in elections in 1991. In the 1997 elections, Sheikh Hasina Wajid won and ruled for the next five years. She sentenced 15 army officers to death in Nov 1998. After another stint of Khalida, Hasina again came to power in 2008. She is still in the chair and has made impressive socio-economic improvements.         

 

To be continued

 

The writer is Brig, war veteran, defence analyst, international columnist, author of five books, sixth book under publication, Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre. [email protected]

  

 

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ISRAEL SPYING ON PAKISTAN- India’s Gandhi and Pakistan’s Khan Tapped as Targets in Israeli NSO Spyware Scandal

India’s Gandhi and Pakistan’s Khan Tapped as Targets in Israeli NSO Spyware Scandal

 

Omer Benjakob

Tech & Cyber reporter and editor for Haaretz in English

 

 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel in 2017. Over 1,000 Indian numbers were potentially targeted by NSO’s Pegasus software

Prominent Indian politician Rahul Gandhi and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan were selected as potential targets of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware program by clients of the NSO Group cyberespionage firm, a global investigation can reveal Monday.

Forbidden Stories – a Paris-based journalism nonprofit – and Amnesty International had access to a leak of more than 50,000 records of phone numbers that NSO clients selected for possible surveillance. The leak was shared with Haaretz and 16 other news organizations worldwide that have worked collaboratively to conduct further analysis and reporting over past months.

Forbidden Stories oversaw the investigation, called the Pegasus Project, and Amnesty International provided forensic analyses and technical support.

Project Pegasus partners The Guardian and the Washington Post, as well as the Indian newspaper The Wire, revealed Monday that Rahul Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest political rival, was selected to be a target at least twice. 

Rahul Gandhi in Karnataka in 2018. Two numbers linked to Gandhi were selected for targeting by an NSO client and are being revealed as part of the Pegasus Project
Rahul Gandhi in Karnataka in 2018. Two numbers linked to Gandhi were selected for targeting by an NSO client and are being revealed as part of the Pegasus ProjectCredit: Sidheeq via WikiCommons

The database only includes potential targets – a wish list of sorts from NSO’s clients – and not verified targets. But traces of NSO software were found in more than 85 percent of the analyses conducted by Amnesty International on iPhones that were used by potential victims across the world at the time of their number’s selection. 

According to the Pegasus Project investigation, out of the 50,000 phone numbers leaked, over 1,000 Indian numbers were selected as potential targets. According to The Guardian, the numbers “strongly indicate that intelligence agencies within the Indian government were operating the system.”

India has not confirmed nor denied whether it is a client of NSO, and its regulation does not require the government to disclose the use of such technology. 

Among those potentially targeted in India were two of Gandhi’s closest advisors – Alankar Sawai and Sachin Rao – and Ashok Lavasa, a senior Indian election official. The local head of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, M. Hari Menon, was also tapped as a potential target.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan June 4, 2021. REUTERS/Saiyna Bashir
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan June 4, 2021. Credit: SAIYNA BASHIR/ REUTERS

Additional potential targets included Pakistani officials, including a number once associated with Pakistani leader Khan. They also included Kashmiri separatists, leading Tibetan religious figures and even an Indian supreme court judge. Khan did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post. 

Gandhi, who said he changes phones every few months to avoid being hacked, said in response: “Targeted surveillance of the type you describe, whether in regard to me, other leaders of the opposition or indeed any law-abiding citizen of India, is illegal and deplorable.

“If your information is correct, the scale and nature of surveillance you describe goes beyond an attack on the privacy of individuals. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country. It must be thoroughly investigated, and those responsible be identified and punished.”

According to an analysis of the Pegasus Project records, more than 180 journalists were selected in 21 countries by at least 12 NSO clients. The potential targets and clients hail from Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Togo and Rwanda. 

The Amnesty International Security Lab conducted forensics analyses of cell phones targeted with Pegasus as part of the project. Their findings are consistent with past analyses of those targeted with NSO’s spyware, including the case of dozens of journalists allegedly hacked in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, identified by Citizen Lab in December of last year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel in 2017. Over 1,000 Indian numbers were potentially targeted by NSO's Pegasus software
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel in 2017. Over 1,000 Indian numbers were potentially targeted by NSO’s Pegasus softwareCredit: Koby Gideon, GPO

India is Israel’s biggest arms market, buying around $1 billion worth of weapons every year, according to Reuters. The two countries have grown closer since Modi became Indian prime minister in 2014, widening commercial cooperation beyond their longstanding defense ties. Modi became the first sitting Indian leader to visit Israel in July 2017, while former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a state visit to India at the start of 2018.

NSO issued a response to the 17 media partners led by the journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, calling the leak an “international conspiracy.” 

“The report by Forbidden Stories is full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources. It seems like the ‘unidentified sources’ have supplied information that has no factual basis and are far from reality,” the company said in the statement.

“After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report,” NSO’s statement said.

In response to questions from the Washington Post, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said the claim that specific people were targeted “had no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever.” They added that “any interception, monitoring or decryption of any information through any computer resource is done as per due process of law.”

 

 

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Good Riddance. Sheldon Adelson Dead at 87 By Moon Of Alabama

Good Riddance. Sheldon Adelson Dead at 87

By Moon Of Alabama

January 14, 2021

Sheldon Adelson, the casino oligarch who has financed far right causes as well as the political careers of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahoo, has died. In 2013 Adelson had called for nuking Tehran (vid).

Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson dies

The casino magnate donated massive sums to Republican candidates and various causes.

Good Riddance.

Unfortunately his money will continue to flow to the far right as his Israeli wife is the one who is now running the show.

In other news B’Tselem, the topmost Israeli human rights organization, finally describes both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single apartheid regime:

B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.

Nothing really new there but it makes it official. 
With B’Tselem finally speaking out it is much easier to refute those who falsely denounce the much justified condemnation of Zionism and Israel as anti-semitic.
This comes at a time when Israel is scheming to derail the incoming Biden administration’s plan to return to the nuclear deal with Iran:

Israel Wants to Derail Biden’s Plan to Rejoin Iran Nuclear Deal

David Wainer,Ivan Levingston

Israel is already plotting how to derail one of Joe Biden’s signature foreign-policy promises.

Israel will start by sending a stream of envoys on visits to Washington, the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss private deliberations. It’s stated publicly that it doesn’t want the U.S. to abandon sanctions on the Islamic Republic without a new deal, and that a tougher stance should be taken toward its nuclear project, ballistic missile program and regional proxy forces.That strategy runs against the Biden team’s willingness to re-enter the deal, then negotiate an expansion of its terms. It’s conditioned on Iran’s returning to compliance with the accord, whose limits it breached after President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018.

Israel also has a higher-risk card up its sleeve: the potential to upend diplomatic efforts through covert operations against Iran.

Netanyahu has been open about his intention to thwart renewed U.S. participation. In a rare public split, he rebuked his envoy to Germany for supporting Berlin’s push to expand the deal.

“There should be no return to the Iran nuclear agreement of 2015 — a deal which is flawed to its foundations,” Netanyahu said.

With Biden being an arch-Zionist and with a team of Zionist Jews leading the State Department the chances of a fast return to the deal can be regarded as slim.

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Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons by Dr.Desmond Tutu

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons

Dr.

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians

  • Desmond Tutu is a Nobel peace laureate and a former archbishop of Cape Town

Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘a sense of power and impunity’. Photograph: Reuters

Thu 31 Dec 2020 11.00 EST

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.

But one other effect of the US administration’s ostrich approach is that it avoids invoking the US’s own laws, which call for an end to taxpayer largesse for nuclear weapons proliferators.

Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator. There is overwhelming evidence that it offered to sell the apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons in the 1970s and even conducted a joint nuclear test. The US government tried to cover up these facts. Additionally, it has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Yet the US and Israeli governments pushed for the invasion of Iraq based on lies about coming mushroom clouds. As Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu said: the nuclear weapons were not in Iraq – they are in Israel.

Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban US economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. While president, Jimmy Carter invoked such provisions against India and Pakistan.

But no president has done so with regard to Israel. Quite the contrary. There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters.

 

US presidents and politicians have refused to acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons even though the law offers an exemption that would allow the funding to continue if the president certified to Congress that aid to a proliferator would be a vital US interest.

Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is comparable with that of Britain. Nevertheless, US taxpayer funds to Israel exceed that to any other country. Adjusted for inflation, the publicly known amount over the years is now approaching $300bn.

This farce should end. The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law. Other governments – in particular South Africa’s – should insist on the rule of law and for meaningful disarmament, and immediately urge the US government in the strongest possible terms to act.

Apartheid was horrible in South Africa and it’s horrible when Israel practises its own form of apartheid against the Palestinians, with checkpoints and a system of oppressive policies. Indeed another US statute, the Leahy law, prohibits US military aid to governments that systematically violate human rights.

It’s quite possible that one of the reasons that Israel’s version of apartheid has outlived South Africa’s is that Israel has managed to maintain its oppressive system using not just the guns of soldiers, but also by keeping this nuclear gun pointed at the heads of millions. The solution for this is not for Palestinians and other Arabs to try to attain such weapons. The solution is peace, justice and disarmament.

South Africa learned that it could only have real peace and justice by having truth that would lead to reconciliation. But none of those will come unless truth is faced squarely – and there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.

Photographs –Courtesy

VANUNU’S PHOTOS OF DIMONA – 1985

Mordechai Vanunu brought his camera to work in late 1985, shortly before leaving his eight-year stint as a technician at Israel’s nuclear weapons factory at Dimona.

Acting on his conscience, he carefully took about 60 photos of the top-secret labs and unique production processes involved. When some of these photos were originally published in the London Sunday Times’ exposé, they confirmed his eyewitness testimony about the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and revealed Israel to be one of the world’s top nuclear powers. To this day, the Israeli government refuses international inspection of Dimona and continues to deny the existence of its nuclear arsenal. [click here for more of Vanunu’s story: archive/story.html]

While their publication resulted in Vanunu being locked away for an 18-year prison sentence, his photographs of Israel’s nuclear weapons factory – a bold statement against nuclear secrecy and for the abolition of nuclear weapons – are here for all to see.

Click on the thumbnail views below to see the full-size photos in this selection.

1) Looking inside a glove box for tooling nuclear materials
2) Looking from outside into a glove box
3) Control panel
4) Control panel
5) Control panel for lithium 6 production
6) Control panel
7) Workshop
8) Looking inside a glove box at lathe for turning precision shaped pieces of plutonium or other components.
9) Laboratory model of nuclear weapons core
10) Looking inside a glove box at models of bomb components or containers for nuclear materials
11) Outside of glove box
12) Plutonium separation plant control room
13) Shielded viewing portal for observing nuclear reactions
14) Production model of nuclear weapons core
15) Production model of nuclear weapons core

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                ‘Fanning the Flames’ Proves West’s Anti-Muslim Bigotry     

‘Fanning the Flames’ Proves West’s

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

By

                            Sajjad Shaukat                          

 

A report of the watchdog groups entitled ‘Fanning the Flames’, published by the Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE) on October 31, 2019 provided facts-based evidence regarding complicity of major technological platforms and US corporations in promoting ‘white supremacy’, anti-Muslim’ bigotry and violence across the world.

 

In fact, after the orchestrated drama of the September 11 tragedy inside the United States, American President George W. Bush and neo-conservatives crossed all the limits in protecting the political, economic and religious interests of the Zionist Jews and Israel at the cost of Muslims and patriot Americans. Just after the 9/11 catastrophe, statements of Bush, high officials of his administration and Zionist-controlled media deliberately developed chauvinism and extremism among the Americans. There had been an organised campaign against the Muslims in the US and other Western countries. Its main themes were that Islam and the Muslims were the true cause of terrorism.

 

During the drastic aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy in wake of the US-led fake global war on terror which still continues, Western  politicians have introduced dangerous socio-religious dimension in their societies by equating the “war on terror” with “war on Islam” and acts of Al Qaeda and ISIS with all the Muslims. Their media have also been contributing to heighten the currents of global politics on cultural and religious lines with the negative projection of Islam. Owing to these reasons, far right-wing parties and “Stop Islam” movement in the West, particularly in Europe has been becoming popular by largely attracting their people. Right-wing parties in a growing number of European countries have made electoral gains. The right-wing parties range across a wide policy spectrum, from populist and nationalist to far-right neofascist.

 

Both India and Israel which joined the American war against terrorism, have been equating the ‘wars of liberation’ in Palestine and Kashmir with terrorism. Their main purpose is to divert the attention of the West from their own state terrorism, while employing delaying tactics in the solution of these issues.

 

While exaggerating the so-called threat of Islamophobia, the US-led Western countries ignored the Indian extremist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Israeli fundamentalist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who have continued fanatic policies against the Muslims.

Face of an Anti-Muslim Bigot

As regards the anti-Muslim policy of the UK, on January 18, 2015, while singling out only Muslim women, British Prime Minister David Cameron had announced that Muslim women who fail to learn English to a high enough standard could face deportation from Britain. He also suggested that poor English skills can leave people “more susceptible to the messages of groups like Islamic State (IS).”  His biased statement was firmly criticized by the Muslim MPs and some members of his own party.

 

Similarly, on September 4, this year, in his first Prime Minister’s Questions, Boris Johnson came under fire when Opposition Member of Parliament Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, who is Sikh and wears a turban, demanded that the prime minister apologize for comments about Muslim women in a newspaper column in August 2018 in which Johnson wrote that women who wear the burka look like “bank robbers” and “letter boxes.”

 

Dhesi elaborated: “For those of us who from a young age have had to endure and put up with being called names such as towelhead or Taliban or coming from Bongo-Bongo Land, we can appreciate the hurt and pain felt by already vulnerable Muslim women…when will the prime minister finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks…which have led to a spike in hate crime?” He also asked when the Prime Minister would order an inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party”.

 

In this respect, the monitoring organisation Tell Mama found that the number of incidents of anti-Muslim hate crime rose  by 375% in the week after Johnson compared Muslim women who wear burqas to bank robbers and letterboxes.

 

However, the report which was published by the ACR E’s Crescendo Project in partnership with the Public Accountability Initiative stated: “Corporations with global reach in the tech, finance, and media sectors especially have reliably resourced anti-Muslim individuals and groups both domestically and internationally and have created the infrastructure for anti-Muslim messages and bigotry to spread and thrive”.

 

The paper mentioned the companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, iHeartMedia and Sinclair Broadcast Group “the unindicted co-conspirators of the Christchurch shooter,” who massacred 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in March.

 

According to the report and revelations of the ACRE’s co-executive director Saqib Bhatti: “Anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise because corporations like Google, Amazon and Fidelity have decided they are OK with white supremacy and anti-Muslim bigotry as long as they can make money out of it…Wall Street firms including Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs have funneled millions of dollars to anti-Muslim hate groups. The biggest media culprit in spreading anti-Muslim bigotry is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp–the corporation that owns Fox News, the New York Post, and many other right-wing media outlets in the US and abroad.…The Guardian reports that News Corp outlets in Australia have served to demonize Muslims and normalize white nationalist talking points. This is important, because the Christchurch shooter is an Australian national who had recently moved to New Zealand, Following the shooting, News Corp’s Sky News Australia aired footage from the shooter’s livestream of the attacks, even though New Zealand authorities and Muslim community leaders had discouraged people from sharing the video out of concern that it could inspire copycat attacks….But these corporations [and]…Social media platforms…weaponize the idea of neutrality, and they hide behind it. Making money off letting white supremacists organize, fundraise, recruit and strategize is not neutral. As such, these corporations all have blood on their hands…Researchers found that major tech platforms have not only “provided a space for unsafe actors…their search and recommendation algorithms also enabled white supremacist and bigoted propaganda to spread further”.

 

The report said: “While the Christchurch shooter’s Facebook Live stream of his massacre was removed, platforms including Twitter, Reddit and YouTube were ineffective in removing duplicates of the video. Their algorithms, which feed users similar content and experts say  has become a tool to gradually radicalize users, further ensured that more and more eyes viewed the footage…these tech platforms have not created strategies to eliminate anti-Muslim bigotry from their sites…researchers wrote, pointing to tech companies’ 2017 cooperation in creating tools to remove ISIS propaganda from their platforms as well as their success in removing copyright-infringing material and images of child sexual abuse”.

 

The report disclosed: “Twitter, too, has been reluctant to clamp down on white supremacist content and “has made a deliberate decision to help normalize anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry by willingly serving as [President Donald] Trump’s megaphone”.

 

In its key findings the report again stated:  “The Christchurch mosque shootings provide clear evidence…the rise of white nationalism…On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist walked into two different mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and started shooting. He killed 50 Muslims and injured another 50, and livestreamed the gruesome attacks on Facebook Live. He prefaced the attacks with a 73-page manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement”, which he emailed out to various public officials and media outlets immediately before he entered the first mosque. The manifesto was littered with white supremacist rhetoric, anti-immigrant conspiracy theories, and neo-Nazi symbols. In the manifesto, the shooter specifically cited Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose…The election of Trump marked new heights for a burgeoning authoritarian, xenophobic worldwide movement that threatens peace, democracy, and human lives all over the globe. Trump joined the ranks of other authoritarian heads of state like Viktor Orbán in Hungary,Narendra Modi in India, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines that have built administrations based on fear, corruption, and xenophobic hate to make way for sweeping undemocratic policies that concentrate political power. Trump has focused specifically on anti-Muslim bigotry, calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” during his campaign and enacting the first version of the Muslim ban during his first full week in office….the number of hate groups in the United States grew by 30% over the past four years…crimes in the United States have skyrocketed during his Presidency. In fact, researchers at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom have found a direct correlation between Trump’s anti-Muslim tweets and spikes in hate crimes targeting Muslims”.

 

Notably, in June, this year, ACRE published a report, pointing out almost 50 US corporations which were engaged in anti-Muslim behavior, facilitating anti-Muslim bigotry. It was in accordance with the June-report of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which found that over 1,000 mainstream philanthropic foundations have unwittingly funneled almost $125 million into dozens of anti-Muslim groups from 2014 to 2016. An alliance of Boston-area civil rights groups also launched the Unmasking Fidelity campaign, pushing the Boston-based Fidelity’s Charitable Gift Fund to make groups involved in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT discrimination ineligible to receive donor-advised contribution.

 

It of particular attention that taking cognizance of the West’s anti-Muslim bigotry, the emergency meeting of Executive Committee of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), convened in Istanbul, on March 23, 2019, strongly condemned the “horrendous and despicable Islamophobic terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand”, and urged the UN Secretary General to convene a special session of the UN General Assembly to declare Islamophobia as a form of racism and to assign a special rapporteur for monitoring and combating the menace in the Western countries.

 

It is mentionable that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was on seven-day visit to the New York City in connection with the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) opened on September 24, 2019. In his interaction with the US lawmakers, scholars, human rights activists and the media, and meetings with the US President Donald Trump and world’s other leaders, he briefed them on the repercussions of the Indian annexation of the disputed Kashmir valley. And during his speech at the UNGA, Imran reiterated the drastic implications of the lockdown in Kashmir, including dimensions of the Islamophobia and some other issues the world is facing.

 

In his address at the UN General Assembly, P.M. Imran Khan said: “Illegally, they [India] revoked Article 370 which gave Kashmir the special status…they put eight million people under curfew…what RSS is. Modi is a life member [of RSS]…It is an organisation inspired by Hitler and Mussolini. They believe in racial purity and superiority. They believe they are an Aryan race…They believe in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims…[Nearly] 100,000 Kashmiris have died in the past 30 years because they were denied their right of self-determination…What about the 1.3bn Muslims watching this who know this is only happening because they are Muslims?….What would the Jews of Europe think if 8,000 Jews were stuck…Among the 1.3bn (Muslims) someone will pick up arms…Muslims will become radicals because of this, not because of Islam….You are forcing people into radicalization…Two nuclear countries will come face to face. If a conventional war starts between the two countries…This is a test of the UN…This is the time not to appease but to take action…Islamophobia is creating divisions, hijab [Scarf] is becoming a weapon; a woman can take off clothes but she can’t put on more clothes…It started after 9/11 and it started because certain western leaders equated Islam with terrorism…There is only one Islam….What message does this [the term] send? How is a person in New York going to distinguish between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims?…This radical Islamic terrorism used by leaders has caused Islamophobia and has caused pain for Muslims…In European countries it is marginalising Muslims, and this leads to radicalisation…The basis of all religions is compassion and justice which differentiates us from the animal kingdom…religion [Islam] was viewed differently in the west, which was why the reaction in the Muslim world to content maligning Islamic personalities was not understood… The holocaust is treated with sensitivity because it gives them [Jews] pain…That’s all we ask. Don’t use freedom of speech to cause us pain”.

 

It is noteworthy that in a speech to university students and teachers in the capital, Baku, President of Azerbaijan stated on November 26, this year: “Azerbaijan won’t seek closer integration with Europe…which is discriminating against Muslims and undermining my country’s traditional values…Shall we integrate with those who are saying ‘Stop Islam?”

 

We can conclude that if not checked in time by the peace-loving Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, the US-led West’s anti-Muslim bigotry will bring about a major war between the Muslim and the Christian worlds, which will convert the entire world into holocaust.

 

 

 

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