This powerful track from British rapper and activist Lowkey a.k.a Kareem Dennis. featuring Mai Khalil and The Grime Violinist called Free Assange has been released as part of States of Violence, a collaboration between a/political https://a-political.org/WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/and the Wau Holland Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wau_Holland_Foundationon the 20th anniversary since George Bush and Tony Blair launched their criminal invasion of Iraq, leading to the death of more than a million people, that also saw the Iraq state smashed into smithereens.
It sent shockwaves reverberating around the wider region, greatly strengthening the terrorism it professed to be combatting. A month before the war on February 15rg. eight million people on five continents, me included, 1.5 million of them in London took to the streets and marched against the coming invasion. We were ignored and sadly the masters of war around the world today remain as arrogant and belligerent as they were two decades ago.
Wikileaks the whistleblowing news site that was founded in 2006 alongside courageous journalist Julian Assange were at the forefront of the many information leaks that helped expose the morally, despicable and illegal activities committed by governments and corporations at the time of the Iraq war. and now in 2023 WikiLeaks is partnering with the London-based
arts organisation a/political and the freedom of information
organisation Wau Holland Foundation to present an exhibition this month
which will include a physical copy of some of the top secret US
diplomatic cables it leaked in 2010.
The
leak, widely known as “cablegate”, began on 28 November 2010 when
Wikileaks began releasing 250,000 diplomatic cables gathered from US
embassies around the world, including logs from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan which exposed human rights abuses. Wikileaks’ founder Julian
Assange was shortly after arrested on espionage charges in London and
remains in Belmarsh Prison facing extradition to the US where he could
receive 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Titled States of Violence,
the aim of the London show (24 March-8 April) is to “unite the people
who support both Wikileaks and Julian Assange”, according to Joseph
Farrell, a Wikileaks ambassador, and Chloe Schlosberg, an art consultant
at the Wau Holland Foundation.
Describing
Wikileaks as “a persecuted organisation”, Farrell and Schlosberg say:
“Julian Assange is sitting in a maximum security prison for publishing
the truth about war and government corruption. As a result we understand
more than most what it means to live and work under insidious and
secretive states of violence."
They
add: “We have had great success with rallies and demonstrations in
support of Julian and here we are creating the chance that allows people
to reflect and consider the gravitas of what both Julian and the
organisation have been through in the last 16 years.”
States of Violence brings together artists, agitators and icons such as Ai Weiwei, Dread Scott and The Vivienne Foundation to unveil and oppose techniques of government oppression, from war and torture to police brutality and surveillance. The world’s most outspoken individuals turn the spotlight on global power structures, releasing material which lays bare the darkest truths of our contemporary reality. This is presented alongside “SECRET+NOFORN” (2022), a body of work by the Institute for Dissent & Datalove, which comprises the highest classification of cables, SECRET and NOFORN (meaning no foreign nationals), from the 2010 WikiLeaks Cablegate publication of U.S. diplomatic cables. It is the largest-ever physical publication of top secret government cables, never before available in the UK in hardcopy.
The video above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hytO-oSzdD8 features a clip from 'Collateral Murder' released by WikiLeaks on the 5th of April 2010. It shows a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Next month marks 4 years since Julian Assange, a man who committed his life to transparency was buried in Belmarsh supermax prison for lifting the lid on numerous war crimes and human rights abuses, while as Lowkey has pointed out 'war criminals like Bush and Blair are free, delicately humanised, solemnly listened to, and even revered, while Julian who published information about their crimes, is cursed, spied on, imprisoned, and ignored.'
And let us not forget that all these years later too many of the pundits who cheered on the carnage two decades ago continue to stink out the opinion pieces of national newspapers.
The Iraq War was an unnecessary conflict, launched on the basis of flawed
intelligence, secret diplomacy and with no sound legal basis, 20 years has not diminished the horror of the Iraq War,and it's
only because of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks that the world knows of some
of the shocking war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, and
for the US to be pursuing him the way they are is simply unconscionable, and it is long past time that those responsible were held to account.
Is it not now hypocritical that Western leaders are calling currently calling for Vladimir Putin, a U.S ally I will remind you in the early years of the so called war on terror- to face trial for war crimes but those others mentioned continue to evade justice for their own crimes.
Thank you Lowkey for speaking truth to power with your beautiful and empowering words, and for reminding us that we must free Julian Assange before it is too late and that it really shouldn't be the case that :
' The poor get bullets and the bombers get medals
Contracts for the rich and a cell for the rebels.'
On this day March 18th, 1871, artisans and communists, labourers and anarchists took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune, rising up against a despised and detested government and proclaimed the city an independent municipality belonging to itself. The workers of Paris, joined by mutinous National Guardsmen, seized the city and set about reorganising society in their own interests based on workers' councils.
This heroic radical experiment in socialist self government may have lasted only 72 days before being violently being crushed in a brutal massacre that established France's Third republic. but the rebellion would shake the foundations of European society to the core,building a commune where they would directly and collectively manage their society through new institutions and voluntary associations of their own creation. It would mark the first major experience in history of men and women. picking up arms in a proletarian revolution to create a socialist society, and taking charge of their own destiny.Celebrated as an episode in which the have-nots wrested power, albeit briefly, from the haves, the Commune is remembered as a golden “What if?”
Paris was, at the time, the second largest city in the world after
London, and had a population of over 1.8 million by 1870. It was the political
centre of the world, and there had been revolutions or overthrows of
governments in France in 1830 and 1848, and many insurrectionary incidents in
the years that followed. Leading up to 1870, Napoleon III was in power and his
government amounted to a police state, which kept down workers. But France was
also the largest section of the First International, or the International
Workingmen’s Association, of which Marx and Engels were early influential
members.
The Paris Commune came into being in the context of the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon went to war because his repression at home had not
succeeded in stopping strikes or the growth of the International. He needed a foreign distraction to pull the
country behind him, and chose a war with Prussia over the issue of who would
ascend to the vacant Spanish throne. The
main reason he lost this war was because he and the rest of the ruling class
were terrified of recruiting and arming a mass army, of giving guns to the
workers. As Adolphe Thiers (who would later become the President) said, “it is
not safe to place a gun on the shoulders of every socialist.
The war against Prussia began in July 1870 and within two months,
Napoleon and some several thousand French troops were captured. Immediately
afterwards, crowds of Parisians invaded the Legislative Assembly and the City
Hall and declared a new, republican government on September 4, 1870. Everyone, except royalists and the defenders
of the old empire, was thrilled that the Napoleonic dictatorship was gone. The
Parisian deputies to the Legislative Assembly formed a provisional government.
Many hoped that an armistice with Prussia would be reached immediately. When
this did not happen, Parisians turned to the task of preparing the city to
resist. In September 1870, the Prussian siege of Paris began. At the end of
January 1871, the Government of National Defence accepted Bismarck’s armistice
terms and surrendered the city to the Prussians.
The French held elections for a National Assembly, which in turn
selected the elderly and extremely conservative statesman Adolphe Thiers to
lead the government. Appalled at the government’s capitulation to Bismarck’s
terms and angered that the Prussian troops who had starved and bombarded Paris
were to be allowed to humiliate the city with a triumphal march, the Parisians
grew daily more suspicious of the government’s motives. Working class
neighbourhoods barricaded themselves. Cannons that had been left in the zone to
be occupied by the Prussians were dragged by hand to the hills of Paris for
safekeeping.
The French Government of Thiers decided that unpaid back rents had
to be paid up, which was impossible because there was no money due to mass
unemployment. The government also said
that all debts incurred during the war had to be paid, and then the government
stopped paying the National Guard. It suppressed radical newspapers. It sentenced the working class leaders
Auguste Blanqui and Gustave Flourens to death in absentia. And it moved the
capital of the country from Paris to Versailles, the historic centre of French
royalty.
The Versailles government wanted to disarm the National Guard. The
government’s army went to Montmarte, a working class neighbourhood, to remove
the cannons. The National Guard became aware of this attempt and one of the
Communards who led the resistance was Louise Michel. Michel described the
situation in Montmartre: “It was an
ocean of humanity, but there was not death, because the women threw themselves
on the cannon, and the soldiers refused to turn on the crowd.” Later that day,
two senior French military officials were killed by their own soldiers.
As Val Morel of the Central Committee of the National Guard, said
“This fighter had dreams for fifty years and now he was living his dream, and
seeing businessmen humbled, begging for an audience. At last.”
By March, there was a situation of dual power, with the National
Guard in Paris, and the ruling class government moved outside Paris, to
Versailles.Even though the National
Guard at one time had been bourgeois, it had become working class in makeup.
The wealthy had left Paris during the winter, leaving the workers armed in the
National Guard.
The Commune emerged on March 18, 1871, out of material conditions
that drove the masses into action. First, the siege of Paris cut off the city
from the rest of world (except by air balloon), and there was total economic
collapse. Secondly, the winter added to a food and heat crisis. The government
did not ration food so the wealthy did just fine—eating the animals in the zoo,
horses, cats, dogs and rats—while the masses starved. Thirdly, while the
government talked about defending the
country, it preferred surrendering to Prussia than giving power to its workers.
It had set up the National Guard, essentially a citizens militia, and lots of
unemployed workers joined up. Now there was a mass, organized, and armed
working class.
The ruling class was now more terrified of its own working class
citizens than it was of the Prussians. And for good reasons. The National Guard
was democratized: officers were elected, there were instant recall provisions,
and there was no extraordinary pay for senior officers. This became the basis
for the workers’ democracy the Commune tried to develop. So there was working
class unity, democratic control, and centralization to take on the ruling
class. This was something brand new, a mass and democratic movement from below
to create a new society.
A large fraction of the National Guard were
proletarians, and rejected
to wear the official uniform. While there was a general discontent with
the unconditional surrender of the French army and nationalist calls to
continue the war or revenge Prussia for the defeat were widespread, the
First International had gained significant influence especially within
the working class of Paris, as well. This combined the general
frustration within the population due to the lost war and the
devastating siege with a general urge for profound social change due to
arising class consciousness. Accordingly, already within the last month
of the war, some attempts of uprising were undertaken with popular
demands like the civil control of the military and elections of a
commune.
The central government, not unaware of the revolutionary potential of
an armed Paris, secretly sent troops into the city in the night of
March 17th/18th in order to bring the cannons of
the National Guard under the control of the central army. However, the
attempt was soon revealed and the people of Paris quickly rushed to
defend their cannons. Only a few shots were fired before the soldiers
defected to the crowd that had surrounded them. On March 18th,
authorities of the central government started to flee from the city,
followed by a general retreat of the French Army which left the National
Guard in control of the city. The republican tricolor was replaced with
the red flag. The Paris Commune was born.
The National Guard Central Committee, arrondissement mayors, and
Parisian deputies instituted self-rule for Paris, announced city-wide elections
and tried to negotiate with the government in Versailles to reach a peaceful
solution to the crisis. On March 28th the Paris Commune officially
came into existence. The newly elected municipal council was inaugurated at the
city hall, or Hotel de Ville, and began to undo the decrees of the National
Assembly.
The Paris Commune was the high point in the surge of the workers movement also expressed in the First International founded in 1867. Ideologically charged, with lots of division, the backlash following the defeat of the Commune, also broke up the International in 1872, which would see it splitting into two factions; Marxist and Anarchist. The leading figures on the two sides were Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin.
Both Marx and Bakunin supported and hailed the Commune - unlike some English trade unionists in the International, who recoiled in horror. Bakunin and his followers would use the word 'commune' a lot saying that the state could be immediately abolished by transforming society into a federation of free communes. The Paris Commune reflected anarchist ideas of community control, workers associations and confederations, and surprisingly at the time Karl Marx strongly embraced the Commune, writing at the time he said " Working men's Paris, with its commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. It's martyr's are enshrined in the great heart of the working class."
Since then the Paris Commune has been thus variously described as either Anarchist or Socialist depending on the ideology of the commentator. It still fills me with much cause for celebration and inspiration. Along with the establishment of a state of, by, and for the working class, the Commune’s claim to greatness is the remarkable range of measures it passed. Rent payments were deferred, as were debt obligations for a period of three years, with no accrual of interest; goods held in the government pawnshop were released to their owners; the separation of church and state was declared, with the government no longer funding church operations and all religious emblems removed from classrooms; the standing army was abolished, replaced by the National Guard, with its officers elected by its members; the guillotine was publicly burned; all elected members of the Commune’s council were made revocable, with their wages limited to those of a worker; factories closed down by their owners during the siege and Commune were to be turned into cooperative enterprises under worker control; and night work for bakers was banned. The Vendome Column, the symbol of Napoleonic military glory, was torn down, its demolition organized by Gustave Courbet.
From March 18 to 28 May the two million residents of Paris ran their city as an autonomous commune, establishing 43 worker co-operatives, and advocated for a federation of revolutionary communes across France, establishing an 8 hour day,and began to regulate workers wages and contracts, abolishing fines for workers, giving them compensation, this was truly a government who put the interest of workers first . It also aimed to make education free, opening up culture for the people, formerly the sole property of the wealthy, opening reading rooms in hospitals to make life pleasant for those sick. Paris was filled with life, ideas and enthusiasm , though their city was under siege, attempts made to starve and break the will of the people surrounded by a hostile army.
The Commune also opened the way for the emancipation of women, allowing them a greater role in politics than they had previously enjoyed. The name of Louise Michel, who headed a vigilance committee and organized an ambulance service, is the best known of the female Communards, but there were others of note. The most important organization was the Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded, co-founded by the Russian emigré Elisabeth Dmitrieff, who also fought at the barricades in the final days of the Commune and later fled to Switzerland. Women weren’t granted the vote or the right to sit on the Commune, but they played a key role at the barricades and were involved in the fight from its first day. The Communards famously set fire to many of Paris’ most famous and important buildings, the arson attributed to roving bands of revolutionary women known as Les Petroleuses.
Peter Kropotkin later enthused "Under the name of the Paris Commune, a new idea was born, to become a starting point for future revolutions.' But many others thoughts that the Paris Commune did not go far enough .
Anyway the French government was not going to tolerate this radicalism in its capital, and finally the French army marched from Versailles, but retaking the city would prove to be difficult, the communards would hold out for several weeks. The revolutionaries had built 600 barricades around the city which had to be cleared one by one. The French army finally entered Paris on May 21 and crushed the movement by May 28. Paris burned and was drowned in blood , the estimate of Parisian civilians killed usually tally's to be around 20,000, many died on the barricades. The leaders of the Commune might have had faults but for all their mistakes , they chose to fight to the end alongside the other workers. At the Père Lachaise Cemetery the French army lined up and executed 147 Commune members.
In reckoning with the French state’s actions concerning the Commune, it is important to also highlight that even after the mass executions had ended, a further 9,000 Communards were sentenced to either imprisonment or exile. In the forts along the French Atlantic Coast, but above all in the penal colony on New Caledonia—known as the “dry guillotine”—Communard resistance fighters died in great numbers, before an amnesty declared in 1880 permitted survivors to return to their homeland.
The amnesty, however, was no rehabilitation; the sentences received by the Communards retained their legal validity, and to this day French authorities have staunchly refused efforts to have them revoked. This means that the Communards retain the status of political criminals. The intent here is clear: to delegitimize the Paris Commune. In this sense, the depiction of the aforementioned events published in an 1881 issue of the German magazine Der Sozialdemokrat to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Commune’s defeat remains as apt as ever. A sea of blood separating two worlds; on the one side, those who struggled for a different and better world, and on the other, those who sought to preserve the old order
There is a wall at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, known as “Le Mur des Fédérés” It was there that the last fighters of the Paris Commune were shot To the left, the wall became the symbol of the people’s struggle for their liberty and ideals and a reminder of the ferocity of the government's reprisals.In keeping with their anti-bourgeois principles the former Communards rejected the grandiosity of monuments land wished only for a simple plaque to mark the wall where the mass executions had taken place. However, fearful of encouraging future insurrection, the authorities attempted to sell off the plots associated with the common grave and banned any mention of the events on individual or collective monuments within the cemetery. Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also buried nearby.
Jules Jouy, a chansonnier from Montmartre wrote:
"Tombe sans croix et sans chapelle, sans lys d'or, sans vitraux d'azur, quand le peuple en parle, il l'appelle le Mur.”
"Tomb without a cross or chapel, or golden lilies, or sky blue church windows, when the people talk about it, they call it The Wall."
The memory of the Commune remained engraved in the people's memory, especially within the workers’ movement which regenerated itself in a few years time. However following the Commune, worker’s protests were not authorized in the streets of Paris until roughly 1910. For anarchists and socialists commemorative ceremonies at the Wall of the Communards assumed the same role that the funerals of opposition figures had during the Restoration. The first march to the Wall took place on 23 May 1880, two months after the partial amnesty for former exiled and deported communards, which came into effect in March 1879, and just before the general amnesty of July 1880. It would be coordinated principally by the (Guesdist) Workers’ Party via its associated relays such as the Socialist Committee for Aid to the Pardoned and Unpardoned (Comité socialiste d’aide aux amnistiés et non-amnistiés) and the Federated Syndical Workers’ Union of Workers of the Seine and the Socialist Press (Union fédérative ouvrière et l’Union syndicale des travailleurs de la Seine et la presse socialiste) which included the publications L’Égalité and Le Prolétaire.: 25,000 people, a symbolic "immortal" red rose in their buttonholes, stood up against police forces. From that time on, this "ascent to the Wall", punctuated French labour force political history. Every year since 1880, the organizations of the French left have held a demonstration in this symbolic place during the last week of May.
The “Wall” has, little by little, become established as the open-air domus ecclesia of a secular and revolutionary left. This secular space has become a new space of sacralization around which those who still believe in and hope for the coming of a more just and egalitarian society and for the completion of the work left unfinished by the revolts of March 1871, come to rest, to reassemble, and to recharge.
Unlike the masculine crowds of street protests that often ended in insurrection, these are respectful family affairs that included women and children. Their orderly nature was later invoked to convince the authorities to grant permits to political parties so that growing worker’s movements might march in the streets of the capital. The modern protest march, now an institution of Parisian life, can be said to have in part been born within the walls of Père Lachaise, where innovations of funerary practice and funerary architecture first allowed for personal and collective commemoration.
Ironically Strangely, Adolphe Theirs is also buried in the cemetery. He was the French President who presided over the execution. and the man most widely associated with the Communes brutal suppression. In May 1971, 100 years after the Commune and just three years after the 1968 protests that had rocked both the capital and the Fifth Republic, commemorators once again lined the streets. Some individuals tried to blow up the tomb of Adolphe Thiers. And in May 2019 thousands of gilet haunes poured out onto the streets and into Père Lachaise to commemorate the Commune and its stand against the French State.Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also buried nearby.
“Ce que nous demandons à l’Avenir.
Ce que nous voulons de Lui.
C’est la Justice.
Ce n’est pas la Vengeance.”
Victor Hugo (Inscription on the Communards’ Wall)
What we ask of the future
What we want from it
Is justice
Not vengeance
Every year the tens of thousands, of French people, but also people from all over the world, who visit this exalted place of memory of the labour movement, either coming alone or in demonstrations, with red flags or flowers, they sometimes sing an old love song, which became the song of the Communards: “Le Temps des Cerises”. We do not pay homage to a man, a hero or a great thinker, but to a crowd of anonymous people who we refuse to forget.
The cemetery is built on a gently sloping hill side in Paris in the 20th arrondissement on the eastern side of the city. To walk through it is almost to visit the last 200 years of French history. The pathways are cobbled and elegantly maintained. It is like walking along a stretch of peaceful country lanes, a place where time seems to stand still. Vive la Commune.
The annual Memorial Meeting Near the Wall of the Communards in the Cemetary of Père Lachaise
Painting by Ilya Repin
After its demise, the Commune became all things to all people on the left; for some, the first socialist state, for others, anarchism in action. For Friedrich Engels, as he wrote in his postscript to Marx’s The Civil War in France, it was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that he and Marx and the First International had long called for. It was, in reality, not just the first revolution of its kind, but in many ways the last, above all a product and prisoner of France’s particular conditions and history. The measures implemented by the Commune, a form of government that, like so much else about its foundations, harked back to the French Revolution, would be echoed through the decades, inspiring movements around the world and playing an essential role in the rise of the left. But if Engels is right and the Paris Commune was the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, many of those who later invoked their ideas ultimately betrayed them..Engels’s description was championed by Marx and later by Lenin who, in the months leading up to the Russian Revolution, called for the creation of “a state of the Paris commune type.”
As Walter Benjamin said in his theses “On the Concept of History” (1940), the struggle for emancipation is waged not only in the name of the future but also in the name of the defeated generations; the memory of enslaved ancestors and their struggles is one of the great sources of moral and political inspiration for revolutionary thought and action. The Paris Commune is therefore part of what Benjamin calls “the tradition of the oppressed”, that is to say, of those privileged (“messianic”) moments in history when the lower classes have succeeded, for a while, in breaking the continuity of history, the continuity of oppression; short - too short - periods of freedom, emancipation and justice which will, each time, serve as benchmarks and examples for new battles.
Since then both Communists, left wing societies, socialists, anarchists and others have seen the Commune as a model for a prefiguration of a liberated society, with a political system based on participatory democracy from the grass roots up
Inarguably, the Commune triumphed as an ideal for the Left, creating a
set of radical possibilities. It endures not only as a historical event,
but also as a sketch open to multiple interpretations. Its historical
content provides a map suggesting various routes to egalitarianism,
while ‘the idea of the Commune’ presents an open vessel, sufficiently
ample to hold differing and shifting equitable ideals.
Just as Lenin saw the October revolution in the tradition of the Paris Commune as he proved by euphorically counting every day up to the historical 73 day mark of resistance of the Commune, this remarkable legacy has acted as an exemplary model for all victorious revolutions that followed and has been continued in the resistance of Sur in Bakur (North-Kurdistan) as well as with the revolution in Syria and Rojava (West-Kurdistan). It is a story of possibility not failure, evidence that points to the seeds of building an alternative society, that unites a spring of peoples, resisting together., and committed to continue building up the practical alternative we want to live.
Many aspects of this first attempt at social emancipation of the oppressed retain an astonishing relevance and should be reflected on by the new generations. Without the memory of the past and its struggles there will be no fight for the utopia of the future.The people of Paris began the fight for a new world, I guess it's up to us to finish the task.The sun that rose over Paris on the 18th of March 1871 is eternal. The dream stays alive.
Today the anniversary is being observed amidst a powerful upsurge of class struggle in France, Paris again in flames due to people protesting against their capitalist oppressors, and globally a wave of protests and strikes, that imparts to this historic day intense contemporary relevance .How appropriate that all this is going on during the anniversary of the start of the Paris Uprising.
The
spirit of the Commune is wonderfully captured in the song “The International”
written by Communard Eugene Pottier. Ir has been a standard of the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century, when the Second International adopted it as its official anthem.Sung in languages around the world even
today, the lyrics, continue to inspire:
Debout, les damnés de la terre / Arise, damned of the earth
Debout, les forçats de la faim / Arise, prisoners of hunger
La raison tonne en son cratère, / Reason thunders in its volcano
C’est l’éruption de la fin / This is the eruption of the end
Du passé faisons table rase, / Lets make a clean slate of the past
Foule esclave, debout, debout, / Enslaved masses, arise, arise
Le monde va changer de base / The world is is going to change its foundation
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout / We are nothing, we will be all
Chorus:
C’est la lutte finale / This is the final struggle
Groupons-nous, et demain, / Group together, and tomorrow
L’Internationale, / The Internationale
Sera le genre humain. / Will be the human race
Il n’est pas de sauveurs suprêmes, / There are no supreme saviors
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun, / Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune
Producteurs sauvons-nous nous-mêmes / Producers, let us save ourselves
Décrétons le salut commun / Decree the common salvation
Pour que le voleur rende gorge, / So that the thief expires
Pour tirer l’esprit du cachot, / To free the spirit from its cell
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge, / Let us fan the forge ourselves
Battons le fer tant qu’il est chaud / Strike while the iron’s hot
Chorus
L’État comprime et la loi triche, / The State oppresses and the law cheats
L’impôt saigne le malheureux; / Tax bleeds the unfortunate
Nul devoir ne s’impose au riche, / No duty is imposed on the rich
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux. / The right of the poor is an empty phrase
C’est assez languir en tutelle, / Enough languishing in custody
L’égalité veut d’autres lois: / Equality wants other laws
«Pas de droits sans devoirs, dit-elle, / No rights without duties she says
Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits!» / Equally, no duties without rights
Chorus
Hideux dans leur apothéose, / Hideous in their apotheosis
Les rois de la mine et du rail, / The kings of the mine and the rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose, / Have they ever done anything
Que dévaliser le travail? / Than steal work?
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande, / Inside the strong-boxes of the gangs
Ce qu’il a créé s’est fondu. / What work has created is melted
En décrétant qu’on le lui rende, / By ordering that they give it back
Le peuple ne veut que son dû. / The people only want their due
Chorus
Les Rois nous saoulaient de fumées, / The kings made us drunk with fumes
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans / Peace among us, war to the tyrants
Appliquons la grève aux armées, / Let the armies go on strike
Crosse en l’air et rompons les rangs / Stocks in the air, and break ranks
S’ils s’obstinent, ces cannibales, / If these cannibals insist
A faire de nous des héros, / On making heroes of us
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles / They will know soon enough that our bullets
Sont pour nos propres généraux. / Are for our own generals
Chorus
Ouvriers, Paysans, nous sommes / Workers, peasants, we are
Le grand parti des travailleurs; / The great party of laborers
La terre n’appartient qu’aux hommes, / The earth belongs only to men
L’oisif ira loger ailleurs. / The idle will go reside elsewhere
Combien de nos chairs se repaissent / How much of our flesh have they consumed
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours, / But if these ravens, these vultures
Un de ces matins disparaissent, / Disappear one of these days
Le soleil brillera toujours / The sun will shine forever
Chorus
“If socialism wasn’t born of the Commune, it is from the Commune
that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer
wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed,
but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and
every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an
end to the capitalist regime.” —Edouard Vaillant, a member of the Paris Commune.
" History has no like example of a like greatness... to these Parisians storming heaven" - Karl Marx.
Long live the memory of the Paris Commune / Vive la Commune!
Everybody has the rights to a refugee status. It is a human right. There is no such thing as an illegal refugee.Home Secretary Suella Braverman is turning Britain into a Fascist state. It is how it started in Nazi Germany with their forced emigration for the Reich's Jews, and the use of nationalist rhetoric to justify policies of exclusion , in breach of international law and human rights which seems to many people to be tragically occuring again today.The plight of refugees desperate to reach safe havens is very similar to the plight of refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Europe only to be pushed back.
Fascist organisations like Patriotic Alternative are actually quoting Braverman's incendiary, inflammatory language. describing desperate, vulnerable refugees " an invasion of our southern coast" as a slogan to mobilise and build support for their vile fascist agenda.
Regarding the abhorent illegal Immigration Bill. The bill applies to everyone who arrives in the UK - by whatever means - without immigration leave as of 7 March 2023 (as well as some family members who arrived in the UK before that date), which means that all those arriving in the UK irregularly would be banned from claiming asylum and they would be subject to detention and deportation.
This is an incredibly cruel position for the Government to adopt, and there is no evidence that the bill would act as a deterrence to those wishing to cross the Channel in unsafe vessels as its provisions do not target people smugglers, but rather asylum seekers and refugees. It is deeply concerning that an impact assessment for the bill is yet to be produced.
Perhaps most appalling is the fact the Home Secretary has included a statement in the Bill suggesting it may be incompatible with Convention Rights. This statement and the bill’s disapplication of section 3 of the Human Rights Act foreshadow a likely conflict between the Government and the European Court of Human Rights. The UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) rightly describes the bill as amounting to “an asylum ban – extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”
In the event, the Illegal Immigration bill was disgustingly passed at its Second Reading by 312 (ayes) votes to 250 (noes). The Government’s abhorrent Bill has cast a dark shadow over many people. especially the refugees who are seeking a safe life here in the UK.
In times like this it can be hard to see any positives, but there has been one: the solidarity shown by Gary Lineker, and other football pundits and commentators who have stood up for their beliefs. It’s also been incredibly heartwarming and inspiring to see the massive public outcry in support of Gary Lineker after he stood up
against the anti-refugee legislation and the good numbers that protested outside Parliament on Monday illustrate just how widespread opposition on this issue is..Solidarity comes in all sizes, and we can all play our part in standing against hate and fear.
Together, we can create an outpouring of compassion and show individual refugees that they are welcome here We should support the rights and dignity of all those escaping
persecution, war, fleeing in fear, escaping danger, in search of
safety, a better future. It is essential that we offer a safe haven for
desperate refugees, offering them protection and dignity.
However the persecution of refugees continues, whipped up by forces of racism those on the far right which includes our cruel Government who are using fear and misinformation to further scapegoat immigrants and refugees..
It's not nearly remarked on enough that prominent among the xenophobes
are individuals of migrant/refugee background who project on to others
the unintegratable part of their own selves: see Patel (Uganda-Asian),
Farage (Huguenot), Trump (German), Sarkozy (Hungarian),
It is worth noting that there are 65.6 million displaced people around the world. As continuing tragedy unfolds, some of the countries most able to help are shutting their gates to people seeking asylum. Borders are closing, pushbacks are increasing, and hostility is rising. Avenues for legitimate escape are fading away.
Remember migration is a normal activity and migrants must not be demonised but welcomed.Since the beginnings of civilization, we have treated refugees as deserving of our protection. Whatever our differences, we have to recognise our fundamental human obligation to shelter those fleeing from war and persecution. It is time to stop hiding behind misleading words. Richer nations must acknowledge refugees for the victims they are, fleeing from wars they were unable to prevent or stop. History has shown that doing the right thing for victims of war and persecution engenders goodwill and prosperity for generations. And it fosters stability in the long run. Those who leave everything behind for the purpose of living in peace need our support and solidarity. Today and tomorrow we must continue to stand up for refugees. We must remember that arms trade helps exacerbate the crisis, plus poverty and inequality, war and conflict, we need to build bridges not more obstacles and borders. Refugees have suffered unimaginable loss, and yet they are filled with the strength to triumph over adversity. The refugee crisis is a human crisis. Their story is our story. We are all human,and together, we can build a better world.We all have an important role in ensuring that refugees have the support they need. When we work together, we can help even more people feel safe from conflict, stay healthy and forge ahead to a better, stronger future.
I support free movement and equal rights for all. We should support the
rights and dignity of those escaping persecution, war, fleeing in
fear, escaping danger, in search of safety, a better future. It is
essential that we offer a safe have for desperate refugees, offering
them protection and dignity,
As part of a global day of anti-racist demonstrations,I will be marching in solidarity alongside Stand up to Racism and the Trade Union Congress this Saturday in Cardiff.This is a pivotal moment for all of us who stand up for the rights of refugees. With a wave of far-right protests targeting hotels accommodating asylum seekers following the disgraceful riot outside the hotel in Knowsley last month, and the Government’s recently published bill that will ban refugees from claiming asylum in the UK, your support is needed more than ever.
There has never been a more important time to take a stand and loudly say that refugees are welcome here and stand up against the forces of bigotry, racism and hate. Because all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to stand by and do nothing.It is not refugees – or other targets of the Tories’ reactionary
so-called ‘war on woke’ such as trans people, BAME communities and
disabled people – that are to blame for the ever-deepening
cost-of-living emergency but the Government who have overseen over a
decade of ideologically-driven austerity that has decimated communities.
When Lee Anderson has declared that a “mix of culture wars and trans
debate” will be at the heart of the next Tory election campaign, it is
clear that we need to stand up to this reactionary agenda now more than ever.
This government’s scapegoating agenda is all about divide-and-rule,
but the majority of people today are against racism, and we can mobilise
this majority to both roll back the Tory’s attacks and stop the
far-right in their tracks. Now is the time to stand for human rights, unity and solidarity – racism can, and must, be defeated.•
Please join us in Cardiff on Saturday if you can. If you are in Scotland or England please do attend the demonstrations in Glasgow and London.You can sign-up and see more informationhere.
Imagine a world free of borders, it's
easy if you try, the sky has none, there is only one world. no borders
are necessary.No human is illegal.We must say no to the Refugee Ban Bill
and yes to to solidarity.
Twenty years ago this week on March 16th 2003 23 year old American Evergreen student and human rights activist Rachel Alleyene Corrie was murdered by Israeli Defense Force bulldozers in Gaza while bravely non violently acting as a human shield against the demolition of Palestinian homes in the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza strip.
Born on April 10, 1979, in Olympia,
Washington, Rachel Corrie had dedicated her life to human rights,
defending Palestinian rights, in particular.
She was the youngest of three children of
Craig and Cindy Corrie, who described their family as "average American,
politically liberal, economically conservative and middle class."
From
a young age, she wrote poetry and recorded her thoughts in journals.
She also had an awareness of suffering and injustice in the world. As a
high school student, she spent six weeks in Russia as a foreign exchange
student. This experience help continue her international outlook and
her realization of how privileged her own upbringing was.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.
-poem written by Rachel Corrie at age 10
After high school, Rachel attended The Evergreen State College. She
took a year off from her studies there to volunteer with the Washington
State Conservation Corps. Corrie worked with patients in a mental
hospital and continued visiting with them for three years.
After September 11, 2001, Rachel became involved in political
activism. In her senior year of college, she set up a study abroad
program in which she traveled to Rafah, a city in Gaza, to establish a
relationship between her own city of Olympi and the city of Rafah.
Rachel worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
This organization, founded in 2001, is a Palestinian-led group committed
to non-violently resisting the oppression and occupation of
Palestinians. Much of Rachel Corrie’s work with ISM involved getting to
know the people in this area and working to protect them. She sat with
families in houses to protect them from demolition, sat in front of
wells to protect them from being destroyed, and escorted children to
school to keep them safe.
Rachel was horrified at the destruction she witnessed. Homes were destroyed and people detained and killed on a daily basis. Rachel recorded what she observed and felt in letters and emails to her family that have since been collected in Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie. . In one email she wrote,home, and internationals who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, wont make it.
" Now the Israeli army has actually dug upthe road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university cant. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home, and internationals who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, wont make it.""
In another email she wrote,
"Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom... Honestly a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence off the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me."
On 16 March 2003 in the Gaza Strip's southern city of Rafah, Rachel stood before an Israeli bulldozer whilst wearing a bright orange fluoresent jacket and using a megaphone in hopes of stopping it from demolishing the home of a local Palestinian family.
Corrie believed that her foreign features and blonde hair would deter the bulldozer, but she was wrong. She was crushed to death when the bulldozer driver ran over her repeatedly, according to witnesses.
The people of Gaza received news of her murder with grief and horror, describing her as a "martyr "and staged a massive funeral for the American activist. Since then the name Rachel Corrie has become synonymous with the Palestinian cause, an icon of global solidarity withe the people of Palestine. Her name was chosen as the name for an Irish aid ship that set out to Gaza in 2010, while her story has been told in several documentary films portraying Palestinian suffering.
The play My name is Rachel Corrie first seen two years after her death, directed by Josh Roche and edited by the late Alan Rickman and Guardiannewspapereditor Katharine Viner, gives a troubling account of an extraordinary young woman's overwhelming commitment to her cause, the play darts through the diaries Corrie wrote from the age of 12 upwards. The form makes it potent, nothing if not honest. Diaries, being private, have no reason not to be. They're personal, not political, and whatever anyone makes of her standpoint, there's no denying what Corrie witnessed in Palestine children growing up surrounded by shellfire, farms razed without warning, soldiers shooting at will. The play allows us to sense Rachel's solitude and sense of impending death. Yet her journal also records the beleaguered existence of people in the city of Rafah where countless homes have been bulldozed, many of those that survive have tank holes in the walls, and checkpoints that to this day prevent people getting to work or registering at university. The singer-songwriter Iris DeMent honoured her in a recent songas a 'warrior of love.'
Near the home that Rachel was protesting to save, Palestinians launched an annual sports championship in her memory.
It was launched in 2010 by a football
match between the two teams from that neighbourhood and evolved into an
official championship with more than 32 competing sports teams from all
parts of Gaza.
Nearly two decades on, the championship is
still held every year with several sports including football, table
tennis and martial arts, attended by thousands of Palestinians,
according to Mohammad Gharib, the event's Information Coordinator.
Officials print and distribute posters,
pictures and leaflets to tell Corrie's story, why she came to Gaza, and
how she was killed, quoting her words on Palestinian rights.
These materials are put up in the streets and handed out to all the people who attend the game.
So today day I reflect upon Rachel's brave stand in Gaza and her courage to resist, and all those who continue to live and struggle there. And all those passionate change makers across the globe who each day act with conscience and work tirelessly to try and make a difference.
Her name and memory are also present at
the Return Social Centre, also known as the Rachel Corrie Centre, which
serves tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children and teenagers
with skills training programs, economic empowerment and psychological
support, and as a safe space for victims of violation.
The Centre's administration also joins locals annually to honour the activist's bravery.
"Her family visited the Centre twice in
the past several years and supported it. Now, we're keeping contact with
them to make them feel how she is still in our minds," said Iyad
Abu-Louli, the Director of the Centre.
It was named after her in 2004, due to her
friendly relations with the Centre and its team members at the
beginning of her stay in Gaza. Justice has never been served for her, along with many others who have been killed under the Israeli occupation. In 2005 Rachel's parents filed a civil lawsuit against the the state of Israel. The lawsuit charged Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case and with responsibility for her death. They sued for a symbolic one U.S dollar in damages to make the point that that the case was about justice for her daughter and the Palestinian cause, she had been defending. Charging Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case and with responsibility for her death. In August 2012, an Israeli court predictably rejected their suit.
Her death they said was a " regrettable accident " for which the state of Israel was not responsible. According to Judge Oded Gershon of Haifa Court she had " put herself in a dangerous situation " whilst dressed in a bright orange jacket and acting as a human shield, when she was crushed to death. Israel to all intents and purpose declared itself not guilty of her murder. giving its stamp of approval to the flawed and illegal practices of the Israeli military. the verdict failed to hold Israel's military accountable for its continuing violation of human rights. The ruling was slammed by human rights organisations, such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, as well as activists. The home Rachel died trying to protect was razed to the ground, along with hundreds of others. and today Israel still acts with impunity, 20 years on Rachels parents are continuing to fight for justice that will one day see the prosecution of the people responsible for her death.
Remember there is still no justice when Israel's courts show such contempt for justice's meaning. There is no justice either, when the Gaza strip remains a sealed open prison, there is no justice when countless Palestinian families are made homeless, their houses destroyed. Where is the justice for them or their friends after the uneccessary death of their loved ones and there is no justice for the thousands of Palestinians regularly killed by the IDF.
Remember that what is happening in Palestine is no inexplicable cycle of violence where each side is as bad as one another.It is no more than an equal cycle of violence than that seen in apartheid South Africa. Being against this injustice is not anti-Jewish, as is standing up to the British Government's injustices is seen as being anti- British. Rachel Corrie understood these links and connections and would have known about an active Israeli peace movement, and of the hundreds of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, many of whom have been jailed for their stance. Israel has invaded Palestinian land in breach of international law. Rachel died while attempting to prevent a demolition of a home, a common practice that the Israeli army, uses as a collective punishment that has left more than 12,000 Palestinians homeless since the beginning of the second uprising in September 2000. A practice that violates International Law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. So here's to the memory and bravery of Rachel Corrie a true American hero,who courageously died whilst living her dreams, staying human and showing her solidarity with her beloved friends, the Palestinians. who continues to inspire activism and compassion across the globe, her spirit lives on, challenging us to get out of our comfort zones and act with our convictions. Inspiring us that we can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong even in the most difficult circumstances. Rachel's death was tragic, but brought the world's attention to the suffering and death of thousands of Palestinians. At least 6,500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli occupation since 2000, so the international community must carry on fighting for their justice too, as well as that of Rachel's, the situation sadly in the West Bank and Gaza, still no different today.Years later Palestinians are still being killed and injured as they demand the right to return to lands that have been stolen from them.
In the years since Rachel's death Palestinian home demolitions by Israel ;have increased several fold. So Rachel's message remains as relevant as it was then. if not more. The world must not stay silent, while the struggle continues against the demolition and occupation of Palestinian homes and lands, restrictions of movement, detentions, arrest, collective punishment, the siege of Gaza and the aggressive military attacks that continue on a daily basis.We must continue to hold Israel accountable for decades of oppression, displacement, land theft, occupation, and loss,
Here is a link to the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice set up in her memory
I conclude this post with a poem I wrote about Rachel in her memory a few years ago.Rachel continues to represent the individual human feeling that is often not
represented by governments.The kind of human feeling that
makes a person refuse to normalize unjust realities, even if it’s at
the expense of personal interest or even one's life.
Courage to Resist ( For Rachel Corrie 10/4/79-16/3/03 ) Rachel Corrie witnessed the oppression So she bravely stood with the Palestinian Shoulder to shoulder in a land of occupation
Her breath full of peace, no room for compliance
With firm belief in heart she stood in front of force In act of defiant non violent resistance To try to prevent destructive demolition
Of peoples homes and olive groves
The world witnessed as she was crushed
By a Israeli bulldozer, and left like a rag doll
Years later her message of solidarity still strong Her spirit remains free. moving and inspiring Because oppressors can never kill a thought Defiance will always rise, wherever there is injustice In the town of Rafah their gentle sister is not forgotten
Her deep passion, courage and conviction honoured
We must continue her brave struggle for freedom
As the skys are still weeping, tears still raining down.
Each year on March 10th, Tibetans and allies around the world commemorate Tibetan Uprising Day one of the most important dates in the Tibetan Freedom Movement callender and remembers the courageous Tibetans who took a stand against Chinese imperialism. It is a symbol in Tibetan history, marking the day in 1959 when tens of thousands of Tibetans rose up in protest against China’s invasion and occupation of their country.. This revolt was preceded by several deliberate acts of the Chinese which deprived the Tibetans of freedom to follow their religious practices, customs and traditions.The all-enveloping subjugation, discrimination and harassment resulted in pent up frustrations amongst the peaceful Tibetans which burst out in the form of an unprecedented uprising. 64 years after the first uprising, Tibet’s culture is in peril with more than 800,000 Tibetan children separated from their families and at risk of losing their connection to their native culture. The destruction of Buddhist monuments and the brutal crackdown in Drakgo has been likened to the Cultural Revolution. Dozens of Tibetans who have spread news about this tragedy have been arrested.
The vast landlocked Tibet is a region in Central Asia inhabited mainly by the Tibetan people. For thousands of years Tibet was a self-governing, independent entity with its’ own language, script, costumes, traditions & religion. Being an independent Buddhist nation in the Himalayas, Tibet had little contact with the rest of the world. It existed as a rich cultural storehouse of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings of Buddhism.Religion is a unifying theme among the Tibetans, as is their language, literature, art, and world view developed by living at high altitudes, under harsh environments. After Chinas newly established communist government took over Tibet in 1949- 50, in an invasion of unprovoked aggression, a treaty was imposed on the Tibetan government acknowledging sovereignty over Tibet but recognising the Tibetan governments autonomy with respect to Tibets internal affairs. But as the Chinese consolidated their control, they repeatedly violated the treaty, nut since it was signed under duress anyway the agreement was already in violation of international law. In open resistance and with simmering resentment growing it led to the first major popular uprising against Chinese rule.
On 10 March - in Lhasa in 1959, the Dalai Lama was supposed to attend a dance troupe performance, but he was told he could not bring his bodyguards.Fearing his abduction to Beijing soon thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Norbulinka summer palace of their spiritual leader, in order to protect him from being taken away by the Chinese army. From Tibet then aged 23 he reached the safety of India having escaped on foot disguised as a soldier in a gruelling 15- day journey over the Himalayan mountains, traveling by night and hiding by day. where he has maintained a government-in-exile in the foothills of the Himalayas ever since.
On March 12, 1959, two days after the National Uprising Day, thousands of women gathered on the ground called Dri-bu-Yul-Khai Thang in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. This demonstration marks Tibetan Women’s Uprising Day. March 12th was the catalyst that sparked the Tibetan Women’s Movement for independence.Tibetan rebels launched an attack on March 19, but Chinese troops captured the city on March 25.The uprising was vastly outnumbered and met with extreme force, and brutal suppression, some 87,000 Tibetans were killed, and some 100,000 fled as refugees.resulting in the beginning of increasingly harsh Chinese rule over Tibet.Members of the Dalai Lama's bodyguard remaining in Llasha were disarmed and publicly executed or arrested, and monasateries and temples around the city were looted or destroyed. The Chinese government dissolved the Tibetan government headed by the Dalai Lama on March 28, 1959, and the Panchen Lama assumed control of the Tibetan government on April , 1959. The Malayan government condemned the Chinese governments use of military force against the Tibetans on March 20, 1959, and Prime Minister Nehru of India expressed support for the Tibetan rebels on March 30, 1959. Prior to its invasion, Tibet had a theocratic government of which the Dalai Lama was the supreme religious and temporal head. The Chinese media routinely try to illustrate a narrative of oppression being commonplace in Tibet before their invasion and painting the Dalai Lama as a terrorist and dangerous seperatist to justify their occupation, stating they freed the pwople of Tibet from "misery" and " slavery" under a feudal serfdom controlled by the Dalai Lama and his followers to try and distract us from the human rights abuses that China committed.Though it was no Shangri-La like paradise not only are their contradictions in this false narrative of serfdom and oppression that China likes to portray, most scholars have soundly rejected it and are moving away from this idea.
Tibetans since the invasion were treated as second-class citizens in their own country. They are routinely kicked out of their homes and sent to townships so the government can ‘develop’ occupied spaces '. Over 6,000 monasteries have been destroyed and those that have survived are not being used by monks, but ironically, are used as spiritual attractions for – mostly Chinese – tourists while they tighten Tibetans’ religious freedom. Areas that were once spiritual spots and pure nature are used as nuclear waste sites. Worst of all, Tibetans do not have freedom of speech, religion or movement. Many passports have been recalled and the borders are closed, trapping Tibetans in the country as their culture and land diminishes.Chines replaced Tibetan as the official language, Despite official pronouncements, there has been no practical change in this policy. Secondary school children are taught all classes in Chinese. Although English is a requirement for most university courses, Tibetan school children cannot learn English unless they forfeit study of their own language. In addition the Dalai Lama says 1.2 million people have been killed under Chinese rule, though China disputes this.
The international community has since reacted with shock to the events that have occurred in Tibet. The question of Tibet was raised at the U.N General Assembly between 199 and 1967. Three resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly condemning China's violations of human rights in Tibet and callIng upon China to respect their right including their right to self determination.
The following website https://tibetuprising.org/ is a useful one to view a timeline of Tibetan resistance over the decades. Large scale protests across Tibet took place in the 1980s and in 2008, as Beijing prepared to host the Olympic Games. China's response left 227 dead, over 1,000 injured and 6,810 in prison. Some have since been released. Some are still behind bars. Some didn’t live to tell the tale. A few not only survived until release but then evaded surveillance and managed to escape into exile. At least 155 Tibetans, young and old, monks and nuns, have self immolated since 2009 calling for the freedom of Tibet and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama..With no end in sight to the Chinese occupation of their motherland, the Tibetans have been forced to choose the path of self-immolations as an individual form of non-violent protest to highlight their plight and sufferings.
The gravity of the present day situation can be understood from the recent action of Tsewang Norbu, a 25 year old popular Tibetan singer attempted self immolation on February 25 2022 in front of the Potala Palace in Llasha and was subsequently reported dead, Courageous protesters on this day usually end up in detention. Some known as potential protesters are also arrested in advance as a cautionary measure, simply meaning that innocents are imprisoned in absence of any crime. In some cases, Tibetan protesters in Tibet have been also shot on spot. Even Tibetans residing abroad are routinely locked up in some countries before March 10, on the pretext of avoiding disturbances between the host countries and Chinese Government.
March 10 is the most restricted day in Tibet with several thousand of Chinese security forces usually sent throughout Tibet Autonomous Region. To cope with this, young and educated Tibetans have adopted new strategies to combat Beijing’s policies, always using non-violence. They of course use social media, a toll that reveal itself to be effective and efficient in waking up consciences in the world at large Recent evidence shows that there has been a significant increase of Tibetan political prisoners since the protests, and torture has become more widespread than ever. In 2015, Tibet Watch put the testimony of seven torture survivors in front of the UN. Voices that China tried to silence now told tales of barbaric cruelty and incredible bravery. They told of the unbreakable spirit of Tibetan resistance. Please see the following link for more details www.tibetwatch.org/blood-on-the-snows
A report by human rights experts of the United Nations on the eve of International Language Day on February 21 unmasked the real nature of oppression on Tibetans practised by the Communist Party of China (CCP) in the form of forced assimilation of Tibetan identity into the dominant Han Chinese identity, the Tibetan Press reported. The report by UN human rights experts, released in Geneva on February 6, 2023, talked about a million Tibetan children who have been separated from their families by the Chinese authorities and placed in government-run boarding schools.
“We are alarmed by what appears to be a policy of forced assimilation of the Tibetan identity into the dominant Han-Chinese majority through a series of oppressive actions against Tibetan educational religious, and linguistic institutions,” the experts said in their report. The Chinese rulers in Tibet are using the residential schooling system as a ploy to assimilate Tibetan people culturally, religiously and linguistically with the Han identity
At the moment the citizens of Tibet do not have anything that resembles any form of basic human rights. Children and adults can dissapear at any time. To practice their religion means they will face prison, torture and death. The people are prevented from displaying their banned flag, or in joining mass protests, but Tibetans still assert their desire for freedom in the face of severe repression. Today this struggle is being carried forward by a generation of Tibetans whose parents and even grandparents do not remember a life free of Chinese rule. Tibetans’ spiritual leader has pleaded with the Chinese government to make Tibet truly autonomous so people can have freedom of speech, religion, and movement. The Tibetan people should be allowed to retain their right to protest and allow their struggle and dscontentment with China and its illegal occupation and continued mistreatment of Tibetans to be recognised.Even though the plight of the Tibetans does not seem to garner the media attention it once received,
The fact remains that China still occupies Tibet in much the same way that Western empires of the nineteenth and twentieth century occcupied large parts of Africa and Asia. Chinas claims to have ' liberated 'Tibet rings hollow,and the continuing Tibetan resistance represents a legitimate important call for self-determination. Despite being stripped of virtually all freedoms of their identity, Tibetans have continued to preserve their rich and diverse culture and traditions. The struggle is still not over yet. Tibetans are still fighting for basic human rights, such as the freedom to practice their religion, follow their own religious leaders, learn their own language in schools, being able to openly speak Tibetan, and live freely in their own country.
The international community has since reacted with shock to the events that have occurred in Tibet. The question of Tibet was raised at the U.N General Assembly between 199 and 1967. Three resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly condemning China's violations of human rights in Tibet and callIng upon China to respect their right including their right to self determination.
The following website https://tibetuprising.org/is a useful one to view a timeline of Tibetan resistance over the decades. Large scale protests across Tibet took place in the 1980s and in 2008, as Beijing prepared to host the Olympic Games. China's response left 227 dead, over 1,000 injured and 6,810 in prison. Some have since been released. Some are still behind bars. Some didn’t live to tell the tale. A few not only survived until release but then evaded surveillance and managed to escape into exile.
At least 155 Tibetans, young and old, monks and nuns, have self immolated since 2009 calling for the freedom of Tibet and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama..With no end in sight to the Chinese occupation of their motherland, the Tibetans have been forced to choose the path of self-immolations as an individual form of non-violent protest to highlight their plight and sufferings. The gravity of the present day situation can be understood from the recent action of Tsewang Norbu, a 25 year old popular Tibetan singer attempted self immolation on February 25 2022 in front of the Potala Palace in Llasha and was subsequently reported dead,
Courageous protesters on this day usually end up in detention. Some known as potential protesters are also arrested in advance as a cautionary measure, simply meaning that innocents are imprisoned in absence of any crime. In some cases, Tibetan protesters in Tibet have been also shot on spot. Even Tibetans residing abroad are routinely locked up in some countries before March 10, on the pretext of avoiding disturbances between the host countries and Chinese Government. Yes, March 10 is the most restricted day in Tibet. Several thousand of Chinese security force are usually sent throughout Tibet Autonomous Region. To cope with this, young and educated Tibetans have adopted new strategies to combat Beijing’s policies, always using non-violence. They of course use social media, a toll that reveal itself to be effective and efficient in waking up consciences in the world at large
Recent evidence shows that there has been a significant increase of Tibetan political prisoners since the protests, and torture has become more widespread than ever. In 2015, Tibet Watch put the testimony of seven torture survivors in front of the UN. Voices that China tried to silence now told tales of barbaric cruelty and incredible bravery. They told of the unbreakable spirit of Tibetan resistance. Please see the following link for more detailswww.tibetwatch.org/blood-on-the-snows
At the moment the citizens of Tibet do not have anything that resembles any form of basic human rights. Children and adults can dissapear at any time. To practice their religion means they will face prison, torture and death. The people are prevented from displaying their banned flag, or in joining mass protests, but Tibetans still assert their desire for freedom in the face of severe repression.
Today this struggle is being carried forward by a generation of Tibetans whose parents and even grandparents do not remember a life free of Chinese rule. Tibetans’ spiritual leader has pleaded with the Chinese government to make Tibet truly autonomous so people can have freedom of speech, religion, and movement. The Tibetan people should be allowed to retain their right to protest and allow their struggle and dscontentment with China and its illegal occupation and continued mistreatment of Tibetans to be recognised.Even though the plight of the Tibetans does not seem to garner the media attention it once recieved todays anniversary still marks years of oppression and exploitation.The fact remains that China still occupies Tibet in much the same way that Western empires of the nineteenth and twentieth century occcupied large parts of Africa and Asia. Chinas claims to have ' liberated 'Tibet rings hollow,and the continuing Tibetan resistance represents a legitimate important call for self-determination.
Despite being stripped of virtually all freedoms of their identity, Tibetans have continued to preserve their rich and diverse culture and traditions. The struggle is still not over yet. Tibetans are still fighting for basic human rights, such as the freedom to practice their religion, follow their own religious leaders, learn their own language in schools, being able to openly speak Tibetan, and live freely in their own country.
On this annual day of resistance and hope for the Tibetan people, I pay tribute to the extraordinary courage of Tibetans resisting in Tibet, and all Tibetans, past and present who have courageously resisted China’s violent colonial rule I urge citizens around the world to join me in calling for an end to China’s occupation of Tibet, stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people, to show them that they are not alone and that the world is responding to their calls for freedom . Call our governments to action to challenge China's repression in Tibet and to unite in action to help resolve the Tibet crisis, and hold Xi Jinping and the Chinese government accountable for it extreme and violent policies against the Tibetan people, and .commit to securing the promise of human rights and religious freedom for the people of Tibet and support their ongoing fight for autonomy. while remembering the bravery and strength of Tibetans .Long live their resistance.
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