Habib Siddiqui

High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein says Saudi-led campaign to close the network is 'extraordinary, unprecedented'. UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein "is extremely concerned by the demand that Qatar close down the Al Jazeera network, as well as other affiliated media outlets", Hussein's spokesman Rupert Colville said on Friday. "Whether or not you watch it, like it, or agree with its editorial standpoints, Al Jazeera's Arabic and English channels are legitimate, and have many millions of viewers," Colville added. Colville said that "if states have an issue with items broadcast on other countries' television channels, they are at liberty to publicly debate and dispute them", adding that "to insist that such channels be shut down is extraordinary, unprecedented and clearly unreasonable." He also said that if a closure were to happen, "it would open a Pandora's Box of powerful individual states o...

A former employee of a New York City hospital opened fi re with an assault rifle inside the building, killing one doctor and wounding six other people before fatally shooting himself, officials said. The gunfire broke out at 2:50 pm local time on Friday (18:50 GMT) inside the Bronx Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx. The assailant, wearing a white lab coat and armed with an assault rifle, stalked the 16th and 17th floors of the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. Police who swarmed the building found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a search, they said. One physician was shot to death in the course of the bloodshed, and six other people were injured, five seriously, including one who suffered a gunshot wound to the leg, Police Commissioner James O'Neill said at a news conference. "The body of a woman who was shot was found near his body," O'Neill said before adding that five of the wounded were in serious condition and "fighting for their lives"....

They Kill Children, Massacre Civilians, Use Slave Labour And Human Shields, And Are Trained By Britain by Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK A shocking new report by Amnesty International into ongoing human rights violations in Kachin State and northern Shan State in Burma has prompted Burma Campaign UK to raise further questions about the decision of the British government to provide free training to the Burmese Army. The report, “All the civilians suffer” , describes many of the human rights violations as war crimes. The vast majority of them are committed by the Burmese Army. They include 25 instances of the Burmese Army executing civilians, including one case where 18 men were executed and left in a mass grave. Another example cited was the death of an eight or nine-year-old child, killed when the Burmese Army fired mortar bombs at a village. Villagers are used as slave labour to carry equipment for soldiers, and face regular beatings. In one example they had thei...

Click the  link here to see how Myanmar military implants their kind amongst the Buddhist monks to incite violence and acts of genocide against Muslims.

Oppression of the Rohingya in Burma Continues by Jason Rhode The Rohingya are still being persecuted by their country. Although the government of Myanmar has taken a step back from most blatant and flagrant public persecutions, the unjust oppression of these people continues apace. Their schools are destroyed, they are slandered and denied from every corner. Now the far-right Hindu nationalists of India threaten them with death. Three days ago, an alleged Rohingya paramilitary group attacked two Burmese villagers on two separate occasions. The government of Myanmar is on high alert. There is a chance that the national authorities will use this occasion to injure or kill many Rohingya under the cover of “crackdown” and “reprisal.” The government has a long history of using the actions of a few Rohingya to devastate the rest. As Reuters reminds us, Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar border guard posts in October, provoking a military crackdown in which hundreds were killed, more ...

Lynchings: Is Prime Minister's Silence A Tacit Symbol Of A Community’s Derecognition? by Arnav Das Sharma Lynching seems like an epidemic that has gripped the body politic. But, so far, no such statement has come forth, either from the PMO or even the Home MinistryWhen citizens gather at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and venues in at least 10 other cities on Wednesday to protest against the lynching of a 16-year-old boy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will, in all likelihood, be on his way back from his whirlwind three-country tour. As is the norm, expect a flurry of announcements—from defence deals to shared strategy on terrorism. But one wonders, should it not be the norm for the prime minister to also issue a statement condemning acts of mob violence? Lynching seems like an epidemic that has gripped the body politic. But at the time of writing this article, no such statement has come forth, either from the PMO or even the Home Ministry. Silence can sometimes contain as much mea...

The article below by Apoorvanand  is a few days old. ============= Muslims in many parts of India are marking Eid today with black band to register their anguish and protest over the unabated assaults on Muslims which have also resulted in killings. Muslims are being attacked on the excuse of stealing of cattle, committing a crime or carrying beef or raising slogans for Pakistan or bursting crackers to celebrate their victory over India in a cricket match, or for simply looking Muslim. While these attacks and their increasing frequency have created disquiet insensitive Indians, they seem to have left the political class cold. There have been tweets and statements here and there but it is clear that more than a genuine expression of grief or protest they are an attempt to put on record that they had also spoken. The opposition has been criticising the head of the government for remaining silent in the wake of attack on a large section of Indian population. It shows again eit...

What's wrong these days with Hindu India ? As many as four people were lynched in Bihar and Jharkhand in three separate incidents on Thursday, according to reports. Just hours after  Prime Minister Narendra Modi  condemned killing of people in the name of "Gau bhakti" on Thursday, a meat trader, identified as  Alimuddin Ansari,  succumbed to his injuries after he was assaulted by at least 10 people who stopped his van allegedly carrying “cattle meat” in Ramgarh district near Ranchi. The police said the victim was from the Giddi area in Ramgarh. In another incident from Jharkhand, a man accused of  raping and murdering  an eight-year-old girl, was allegedly lynched by mob in Dumka's Ramgarh. The incident took place on Thursday when a man raped and then murdered the girl, who hailed from Kusumdih, came to Ramgarh to attend a wedding at her uncle's place. According to reports, the 30-year old man identified, as Mithun Hansada, abducted the victim while she ...

I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m also Muslim. And the Supreme Court decision on the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban scares me. In a June 26 ruling, the  court  decided to leave in place parts of the Muslim ban while the merits of the case are debated, effectively barring individuals from six Muslim-majority countries without a “bona fide” relationship in the U.S. — say, with family members, an employer, or an educational institution — into the country. This decision may also prevent entry for all refugees for 120 days. The ruling has been hailed as a victory for the Trump administration — not just on the legal end, but also in the degree to which it instills fear in Muslims. The fear is real, and not just for those who may be directly impacted, but for the larger community, too. After all, what the travel ban is ultimately meant to do is to hold all Muslims collectively responsible for the actions of a (miniscule) few. As a Muslim American of Egyptian descent, will I be le...

To read the veteran journalist Robert Fisk's article on Mosul, click here .

Pushing Gaza to Suicide: the Politics of Humiliation by Ramzy Baroud Mohammed Abed is a 28-year-old taxi driver from the village of Qarara, near the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He has no teeth. Lack of medical care and proper dentistry work cost him all of his teeth, which rotted and decayed at a very young age. Yet, his dire financial needs prevented him from acquiring dentures. His community eventually pitched in, collecting the few hundred dollars needed for Mohammed to finally being able to eat. Mohammed is not unemployed. He works ten hours, sometimes more, every single day. The old taxi he drives between Khan Younis and Gaza City is owned by someone else. Mohammed’s entire daily salary ranges from 20 to 25 shekels, about 6 dollars. Raising a family with four children with such a meagre income made it impossible for Mohammed to think of such seemingly extraneous expenses, such as fixing his teeth or acquiring dentures. Strange as it may seem, Mohammed is somewha...

Israeli officials apologized to a trio of Turkish journalists Wednesday after the group complained of being subjected to humiliating treatment by Israeli security personnel at a conference in Tel Aviv this week. Communications Minister Ayoub Kara issued an apology to the group, hailing the importance of recently re-established ties between Jerusalem and Ankara, and an Israeli diplomat in Istanbul also issued an apology over the incident, officials said. The three journalists were invited by the Israeli embassy in Istanbul to attend the annual cybersecurity conference held at Tel Aviv University, as special guests of the Foreign Ministry. But when they arrived at Cyber Week in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Daily Sabah editor Şeyma Eraz said she and Fox Turkey reporters Emre İzkübarlas and Kenan Özcan were pulled from the group of other journalists and made to go through a separate security check. Eraz told the paper that Israeli security officials demanded she remove her headscarf during ...

Paris police say a driver has been arrested after unsuccessfully trying to drive a car into barriers around a suburban mosque. The police department said in a statement that no one was hurt in the Thursday incident in Creteil south of Paris. The reason for the driver's actions is unclear. The incident happened as French religious sites and other public places remain under high security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks. As we have seen such hate crimes, which are nothing but terrorizing Muslim community, are whitewashed to appear as petty crimes of less importance. I am sure if the same crime were committed by a Muslim against a Church, it would become the news headline and dubbed as nothing but terrorist activity.

Tonight my attention was drawn to a protest march of some 200 fascist Buddhist monks demanding the ouster of Myanmar's religious affairs minister. The news report says: "Hundreds of Buddhist nationalists  staged a protest  in Naypyidaw last month, where they accused the minister of favoring Muslims over Buddhists. They also demanded the lifting of a preaching ban from anti-Muslim monk Wirathu, the enactment of a plan to protect Buddhism, and an apology from the minister. The minister’s critics staged  similar protests  in Yangon and Mandalay on June 25 to demand his resignation."   What a joke Buddhism is becoming in the hands of these fascist Buddhists! I am simply amazed at their ludicrous charges of favoritism for Muslims against the religious affairs minister. Did not he refer to the Myanmar’s Muslims as “ visitor citizens ”?   The fascist monks seem to have hijacked Buddhism in Myanmar, and need to be reined in bef...

Myanmar doubled down Thursday on its refusal to cooperate with United Nations' efforts to investigate reported army atrocities in the strife-ridden western state of Rakhine, with the foreign ministry saying it has ordered the country's embassies not to issue visas to UN investigators. The United Nation Human Rights Council issued a resolution in March calling for the dispatch of an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate the alleged recent human rights violations by security forces in Rohingya Muslim communities in the northern part of the state. In May, the council appointed three legal experts and rights advocates as members of a fact-finding mission to investigate the human rights situation in Myanmar, especially in Rakhine state. The mission was tasked with producing a draft report by September. On Thursday, however, Kyaw Tin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affair, told parliament Myanmar's embassies were ordered not to grant visas to UN fact find...

Why Two Hundred Ordinary Hindus Did Not See A Dead Muslim Child On A Railway Station In North India ON  27/06/2017  BY  AARTI SETHI IN  CULTURE ,  EVERYDAY LIFE ,  GOVERNMENT ,  IDENTITIES ,  IMAGES ,  LANGUAGE ,  MEDIA POLITICS ,  POLITICS ,  RELIGION ,  RIGHT WATCH On 22 June 2017 fifteen-year old Hafiz Junaid was stabbed to death on a Mathura-bound train from New Delhi. He was traveling home for Eid with his brothers and two friends. A dispute over seats resulted in a group of men repeatedly assaulting and stabbing Junaid and his companions. The assailants flung their bodies onto the Asoti railway platform. A crowd gathered. At some point an ambulance was called and two bodies were taken away. Junaid is dead. His companions are in critical condition. While one person has been arrested the police investigations are running into a wall of social opacity since they have been unable to find a single eye-witness ...