Pakistan man has been arrested and charged with blasphemy in Rawalpindi, with calls by human rights groups for his release. British man Muhammad Asghar has been arrested for confused letters that he has written about himself, as reported by CNN. Responsible for Equality And Liberty calls for the Pakistan authorities to show mercy and dignity to understand that there will always be confused individuals, and that their human rights also require respect under our Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An online petition calls for his release.
CNN reports: “Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — The family of a mentally ill British man sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy is calling on authorities to release him. A court in the city of Rawalpindi last week handed down the punishment to Muhammad Asghar, 69, over charges alleging that he wrote letters claiming to be a prophet. But his family, his lawyer and a British legal aid group say the court failed to take into account the mental state of Asghar, who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The sentencing hearing took place last week behind closed doors without his legal team’s knowledge, they say, and his lawyer has been blocked from visiting him since.”
Sikh member Sardar Bagwan Singh murdered by extremist factions in Pakistan, as reported by the Pakistan Christian Post
“Charsada; January 24, 2014. (PCP) A Sikh community member resident of Dabgari was gunned down in Tangi Bazar, Charsada, in broad day light in KPK province of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, on evening of January 22, 2014, by extremists. Sardar Bagwan Singh who was Hakeem by profession and practicing medicine over decades in Charsada district became victim of target killers when he was coming home at 4; 00 PM. Sardar Bagwan Singh left behind mourning wife, three daughters and three sons. Hundreds of Sikh community members living in tribal belt of Pakistan migrated to India
Sardar Bagwan Singh (Pakistan Christian Post)
after year 2009 when Talaban took control of FATA and impose extremist taxation on them.”
The United States of America has accepted 73,000 Burmese (Myanmar) refugees from Thailand as part of an agreement with the UNHCR, to provide resettlement for these stateless refugees. Based on our research, this is a combination of Burmese Karen (Christian) and Rohingya Muslim refugees, but we do not have an exact count.
Tun Myin and his family confirming their interest in resettlement to the United States in Mae La Oon camp, north-western Thailand. (Source: UNHCR)
The UNHCR states: “One of the world’s largest resettlement programs recently came to an end in Thailand when UNHCR received the final expressions of interest from eligible Myanmar refugees who wish to start a new life in the United States. The group resettlement program was initiated in 2005, with the support of the Thai and US governments, to offer a durable solution to the tens of thousands of refugees from Myanmar who found themselves in a protracted refugee situation and dependent on international assistance in the nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.”
“Anne C. Richard, assistant secretary at the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, said that her country had welcomed and settled more than 73,000 refugees from Myanmar since 2005. ‘The United States is proud to have given a new start to these refugees. Resettled Burmese refugees have thrived in their new homes, and enriched their new communities. Many have become homeowners, small business owners and American citizens,’ she said.”
“‘We expect several more thousand to arrive in the coming year as the program winds down,” she added. ‘This successful resettlement program has reached its natural conclusion following the January 24, 2014 deadline for Burmese refugees to express their interest in resettlement to UNHCR.'”
“The program’s pending closure was first announced and implemented in January last year in Mae La camp. It was subsequently rolled out to the other camps in different stages. Eligible refugees in each camp were given three months to decide whether or not to apply for resettlement to the US under the simplified procedures.”
“The process ended last Friday as the deadline for applications passed in the last three camps in Mae Hong Son province, namely Mae La Oon, Mae Ra Ma Ruang and Ban Mae Surin.”
“Over the past year, nearly 6,500 Myanmar refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have expressed interest in the US group resettlement program – 2,500 more individuals than in 2012, an indication that many refugees had been waiting for the last chance before making a final decision to resettle or not.”
“In addition to the US departures, some 19,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand have gone to other resettlement countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland and Japan, in the last nine years.”
“‘The end of this chapter does not mean that resettlement is closed completely,’ said Mireille Girard, UNHCR’s representative in Thailand. ‘UNHCR will continue to identify and submit refugees with specific protection needs on an individual basis to various countries. We are also working with the Thai government and resettlement countries to reunite families and make sure family members can be resettled together.'”
“There are an estimated 120,000 Myanmar refugees remaining in the nine camps in Thailand, including more than 40,000 not registered by the Thai authorities.”
NDTV Reports: “While China’s notorious Re-education through labor system has finally ended its 57 years of practice, the over 14 year long persecution of the Falun Gong has not been terminated, and continues in the brainwashing centers and black jails. Minghui.org, which reports on Falun Gong and the persecution in China, reports that at least 76 Falun Gong practitioners are confirmed to have been persecuted to death in 2013 alone. According to data from Minghui.org, among the 76 Falun Gong practitioners who have been tortured to death in the persecution campaign, eight of them were tortured to death by police to extract confessions in detention centers. 10 were killed during violent mental and physical torture at brainwashing centers and labor camps. Twenty nine were tortured to death by prison guards, and 29 were killed after being repeatedly kidnapped by the regime. One third of those who were persecuted to death were young adults, many of whom were public servants, doctors, professors, and industrial managerial personnel. For instance, Deng Huaiying, who had a Masters of Finance from North China Electric Power University, was illegally abducted and detained by police on April 27, 2013. Within a month, he was tortured to death and the authorities secretly cremated his body. Yang Zhonggeng, a native of Zhejiang Province, was abducted by the police on June 24, 2013. He was beaten to death in just four days and died at the age of 38. His mother, suffering from mental trauma after seeing her son’s remains, has not been able to talk since. In addition, art teacher Huang Yuangren of Guangxi Teachers Education University at Changgang, and math teacher Zhang Yan of Bengbu City Middle School both died at young age, and their parents were left with suffering from the pain of losing their dear ones. Witnesses of the tragic scenes of the persecution have also been left with much sadness and trauma. Ms. Hu, Falun Gong practitioner in Chongqing: “While I was illegally detained in Chongqing Women’s Forced Labor Camp in 2011, there was a Falun Gong practitioner there named Xu Zhen. Because she refused to give up her beliefs, the guards ordered criminal inmates to tie her to a bed and brutally beat beat her. They ripped out her toenails, they force-fed water into her mouth and nose, and violently attacked her genitals with brushes, causing profuse bleeding. When she passed out, they woke her up to continue the torture. A few days before she died, we were awakened by her screams for two consecutive nights. Too horrible, I will never forget.” Data on Minghui.org shows that roughly 150,000 Falun Gong practitioners are confirmed to have been persecuted between January 2000 and August 2013. Among them, there were 6,889 Falun Gong practitioners killed by persecution. In fact, the regime’s blockage of the information and the authorities’ pressure on the victims’ families has left many more cases unexposed. The reported cases by Minghui.org are just the tip of the iceberg. Wang Zhiyuan, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong spokesman: “The communist regime’s information blockade is extremely tight. What Minghui.org has reported are the ones that can break through numerous blockades and are confirm with real names. The ones that were kept unknown, untold, or unidentified are countless.” A conservative estimate by Zhengjian.org says that since the persecution of Falun Gong in China started on July 20, 1999, about 3.4 million practitioners have lost their lives. That equates to half of the Jews killed by the Nazi’s during World War II. Wang Zhiyuan: “The estimated data of Zhengjian.org is based on information collected from these many years of persecution, provided by multiple rescue organizations. These projected data are certainly very conservative, because there are many unclear situations in China. Since the persecution campaign began in 1999, large numbers of practitioners went on petitioning. When they were detained, they wouldn’t reveal their identities so as to avoid getting family and friends in trouble. Most of them have been imprisoned and then disappeared.” Many Chinese Communist officials, police, and thugs who were actively participating in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners have suffered miserable and sudden deaths. For instance, many 610 Office (the office responsible for persecuting Falun Gong) officials throughout China have died of cancer. The 610 Office is thus also nicknamed, the death occupation.” See also NDTV video.
End the Torture and Human Rights Abuse of Falun Gong!
Our universal human rights must include a commitment to the human rights of dignity and identity for our elderly citizens. Without a consistent commitment to their dignity and identity, every aspect of their human rights is endangered, including their equality and liberty.
On Human Rights Day, December 10, people around the world remember the guarantees of our Universal Human Rights for all people around the world. Human rights activists regularly speak to the continuing challenges that we see in human rights for those oppressed due to their ethnic, national, religious, gender, or other identities. We have human rights conferences for many of those who continue to be denied their rights, in many parts of the world, including women and children.
But our elderly citizens, who have struggled for this generation’s human rights, are denied such attention when their human rights are threatened. They are not recognized as a group which is being denied their human rights.
Many of our elderly citizens are routinely denied human rights that we all struggle to defend, and which many of us take for granted. They are challenged by those who would use force to steal from them and assault them. They are challenged by those who seek to cheat them, including criminals who regularly target them with fraudulent schemes to steal from them. They are challenged those who practice a discriminatory form of “ageism” to discriminate them and deny them equal rights in society, and by too many who abuse our elderly citizens as the source of derogatory and disrespectful comments.
But of all of these human rights challenges to our elderly citizens, the greatest threat is one which seeks to strip of every aspect of their dignity and identity, undermining the very basis of our human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is based on recognizing the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the cornerstone of our universal human rights. Yet that inherent dignity and even identity of too many of our elderly citizens is being stolen from them daily, and we have no rallies, no conferences, and no impassioned speeches to call for the defense of their rights.
The worst human rights violator today against our elderly citizens is not a dictator, not an oppressive regime, not a hate group – but it is a cruel, ruthless, and unrelenting destroying – disease.
Alzheimer’s Disease is not a “normal part of aging,” but is a progressive, fatal disease which attacks the brain, causing memory loss of one’s surroundings, and eventually memory loss of one’s own identity. Alzheimer’s Disease attacks every aspect of human dignity and liberty: our freedom of speech, our freedom of movement, our freedom of choice, and even our freedom of conscience. Alzheimer’s Disease attacks not just the body, but seeks the destruction of our elderly citizen’s minds, memories, and beliefs.
We have many human rights violators that seek to deny groups public expression of their values and even their public identities. But the human rights violator of Alzheimer’s Disease goes even further – it seeks to deny one’s private identity, one’s private thoughts, and even one’s private sense of self.
In the United States of America alone, there are over 5 million people suffering from the human rights violating illness of Alzheimer’s Disease. This cruel disease seeks to continually debilitate its victims until it has done everything to destroy every aspect of their human rights. As documented by the Alzheimer’s Association, the United States will see a 44 percent increase in victims of Alzheimer’s Disease by 2025. In 2013, Alzheimer’s will cost the United States $203 billion. This number is expected to rise to $1.2 trillion by 2050. Furthermore, this human rights-violating disease disproportionately attacks women as well. Two-thirds of Alzheimer’s Disease victims in the United States are women.
The human rights-destroying Alzheimer’s Disease knows no boundaries and no divisions in attacking our elderly citizens. Recently, researchers have indicated that the increase of Alzheimer’s Disease in developing countries will create massive societal problems. Dr. Molly Fox, who is an Alzheimer’s Disease researcher, states that “today, more than 50% of people with Alzheimer’s live in the developing world, and by 2025 it is expected that this figure will rise to more than 70%.”
When our elderly citizens struggle to remember their family, their surroundings, their lives, and even themselves, they are being denied a fundamental basis for any human rights in a society. When our elderly citizens attacked by the Alzheimer’s Disease cannot even remember or spell their own name, they are not only denied their inherent human rights of dignity, but they are denied their very identity.
Many of our most abused world citizens denied their human rights at least can recall who they are. But for millions and millions of our elderly citizens around the world – they are denied even such a basic human right of dignity and identity.
The generation that raised us deserves better than this. They too deserve their human rights of dignity and basic human identity. They too deserve the inherent equality and freedom that all of our human family is entitled to.
We rightly remember the many different human rights causes and campaigns on Human Rights Day. Let us also remember the human rights needs for the millions of elderly citizens who cannot speak out for themselves, who cannot rally and petition for their human rights, and who are too often forgotten and ignored by those who would not have a world or a life, without the sacrifices of our elderly citizens.
On this Human Rights Day, we must call upon our government and our medical industry to make serious, focused, and renewed efforts to battle and defeat this cruel disease that seeks to destroy the human rights, dignity, and identity of our elderly citizens.
Until they do, this human rights catastrophe will not end with the current generation of elderly citizens, but it will continue to your generation and to your children’s. If we seek to stand for our universal human rights for all, then we must also seek to stop this destroyer of human rights for our elderly citizens – today and tomorrow.
The Associated Press has reported on burning alive of Rohingya Muslims within Myanmar, including an atrocity at Meikhtila, where 36 Rohingya Muslims, mostly teenagers, who were slaughtered before the eyes of police and local officials who did almost nothing to stop it. The Associated Press reported on such atrocities of burning people alive, including burning 36 children: “Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home. Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive.”
This atrocity is so extreme and horrific that R.E.A.L. is going to post this in its entirety so that not a single word is forgotten. We have an included an extreme image which shows the graphic nature of such violence, which we are linking to, but not embedding in this posting due to the disturbing image. We are quoting this AP report.
Attack on Muslim School in Meikhtila, Myanmar, Resulting in 36 Rohingya Muslim Dead
MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home.
Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive.
The mobs that March morning were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. The victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it – students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Myanmar who were so close to being saved.
In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged cowering, hands atop their heads, they only had to make it to four police trucks waiting on the road above.
It wasn’t far to go – just one hill.
What happened on the way is the story of one of Myanmar’s darkest days since this Southeast Asian country’s post-junta leaders promised the dawn of a new, democratic era two years ago – a day on which 36 Muslims, most teenagers, were slaughtered before the eyes of police and local officials who did almost nothing to stop it.
And what has happened since shows just how hollow the promise of change has been for a neglected religious minority that has received neither protection nor justice.
The president of this predominantly Buddhist nation never came to Meikhtila to mourn the dead or comfort the living. Police investigators never roped this place off or collected the evidence of carnage left behind on these slopes. And despite video clips online that show mobs clubbing students to death and cheering as flames leap from corpses, not a single suspect has been convicted.
International rights groups say the lack of justice fuels impunity among Buddhist mobs and paves the way for more violence. It also reflects the reality that despite Myanmar’s bid to reform, power remains concentrated in the hands of an ethnic Burman, Buddhist elite that dominates all branches of government.
“If the rule of law exists at all in Myanmar, it is something only Buddhists can enjoy,” says Thida, whose husband was slain in Meikhtila. Like other survivors, she asked not to be identified by her full name for fear of retribution. “We know there is no such thing as justice for Muslims.”
___
The Associated Press pieced together the story of the March 21 massacre from the accounts of 10 witnesses, including seven survivors who only agreed to meet outside their homes for security reasons. The AP cross-checked their testimony against video clips taken by private citizens, many with the date and time embedded; public media footage; dozens of photos; a site inspection, and information from local officials.
The day before the massacre began like every other at the Mingalar Zayone Islamic Boarding School – with a call to prayer echoing through the darkness before dawn.
It was Wednesday, March 20, and 120 drowsy students blinked their eyes, rising from a sea of mats spread across the floors of a vast two-story dormitory.
Set behind the walls of a modest compound in a Muslim neighborhood of Meikhtila, the all-male madrassa attracted students from across the region whose parents hoped they would one day become Islamic scholars or clerics.
The school had a soccer pitch, a mosque and 10 teachers. It also had a reputation for discipline and insularity – the headmaster, a strict yet kind man with a wispy beard, only allowed students outside once a week. Muslims made up about a third of Meikhtila’s 100,000 inhabitants, compared with just 5 percent of Myanmar’s population, and they lived peacefully with Buddhists.
The Muslims, though, were nervous after sectarian clashes in western Rakhine state in June and October last year killed hundreds and drove more than 140,000 from their homes. Both times, the madrassa shut down temporarily as a precaution.
The unrest was aimed at ethnic Rohingya Muslims, who have lived in Myanmar for generations but are still viewed by many Buddhists as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh. The hatred has since morphed into a monk-led campaign against all Muslims, seen as “enemies” of Buddhist culture.
When classes began on March 20, student gossip quickly turned to an argument on the other side of town between a Muslim gold merchant and a Buddhist client, which had prompted a crowd of hundreds to overrun the shop and set it ablaze.
That afternoon, several Muslim men yanked a monk off a motorcycle and burned him to death. Buddhist mobs in turn torched Muslim businesses and 12 of the city’s 13 mosques.
In Mingalar Zayone, some teachers skipped courses. Then classes were canceled altogether.
Students rushed to the dormitory’s second floor and gazed out of the windows, in shock. Black and gray columns of smoke were rising in the air.
At dinner a couple of hours later, the sound of a teacher weeping filled the hall. His family home had been burned with his parents inside it. Some students pushed their food away.
As the sun slunk in a hazy sky, a Buddhist government administrator came to the gate of the madrassa and took the headmaster aside.
“You need to get your students out of here,” he warned. “You need to hide. The mobs are coming – tonight.”
At sunset prayers, the headmaster told everyone to collect their valuables, their money, their ID cards – and prepare to leave. He asked them to remove their head caps, Islamic dress and anything that might identify them as Muslim.
He never explained why. He didn’t have to.
“If they try to destroy this place, we’ll do our best to stop them,” he said. “But whatever happens, we will not let you die.”
___
After dark, they crept deep into a swampy jungle of tall grass a block away called the Wat Hlan Taw, and the tall reeds swallowed the school’s refugees whole.
Most were students and teachers. But at least 10 women and their children were also among them, relatives or residents too terrified to stay in their own homes.
They sat down in the mud. Nobody said a word.
Soon, they heard the mob approaching – dozens, maybe hundreds of voices, a cacophony of menace and anger that grew louder by the second.
The voices were at the gate of their madrassa. And then they were inside, kicking in doors and smashing windows.
In the darkness of the Wat Hlan Taw, a teacher named Shafee with a stomach ailment reached for his wife’s palm and squeezed it hard.
“If they find us,” he whispered nervously, “you know I won’t be able to run.”
“Don’t worry,” his wife, Thida, replied, cradling their 3-year-old son in her arms. “We’ll be together, every step. I’ll never leave you.”
As the long night wore on, the madrassa burned down.
At 4 a.m., Buddhist prayer gongs rang out, and the mobs began shining flashlights into the Wat Hlan Taw. Some Buddhists fired rocks into the bush with homemade slingshots.
“Come out, Kalars!” they shouted, using a derogatory word for Muslims.
The Muslims ran to a neighboring compound, owned by a wealthy Muslim businessman. Some tore down a bamboo fence to get inside.
The mobs were not far behind.
Thida heard a boy screaming behind her, a student who had been trying to call his mother on his cell phone.
He had waited just a few seconds too long to run.
___
As the first rays of dawn touched Mingalar Zayone, Koko, a quiet, heavy-set 21-year-old student, peered over the compound’s thin fence and felt numb. Men clutching machetes and sticks were girding for a fight outside.
Hundreds more were gathering on a road running across a huge embankment that shadowed the neighborhood’s western edge. The embankment had always been there, but now it seemed to seal them inside the bottom of a huge, oppressive bowl from which they could not escape.
Koko could almost feel the blood draining from his cheeks. He felt weak, no longer human.
“We’re trapped,” he thought, “like animals.”
Some students were frantically making calls for help – to parents, to police. Some were chanting loudly. Others were scouring the property for anything they could use to defend themselves – wooden boards, rocks the gangs outside had thrown at them.
By the time an opposition lawmaker, Win Htein, arrived around 7:30 a.m., dozens of helmeted riot police were on the scene. The security forces, equipped with rifles and gray shields, had formed lines to keep the Buddhist hordes away from the Muslims.
Win Htein saw the head of police and the district commissioner standing nearby, and the bodies of two dead Muslims on the edge of the Wat Hlan Taw. Over the next 45 minutes, he watched in horror as mobs of men chased five more students out of the bush, one by one, and hacked or bludgeoned them to death in broad daylight.
As stone-faced police officers stood idle just steps away, crowds cheered like spectators in a Roman gladiator show.
“They must be wiped out!” one woman shouted.
“Kill them all!” shouted another. “We must show Burmese courage!”
Win Htein felt nauseous. He wanted to vomit. In two decades of prison and torture under brutal military rule, he had never seen anything like this.
When he tried to convince people in the crowds to spare the Muslims, the mobs began threatening him. One Buddhist man demanded bitterly: “Why are you trying to protect them? Are you a Muslim lover?”
An officer advised Win Htein to leave.
Shortly after, a monk and four policemen offered to escort the trapped Muslims on foot to several police vehicles on top of the embankment.
“We’ll protect you,” one officer said. “But the students must stop chanting. They must put down their weapons” – their sticks and stones.
As the teachers debated what to do, they realized their time had run out. The crowds were flinging long bamboo staves wrapped with burning fabric over the fence like giant matchsticks. The compound was on fire, belching orange flame and black smoke into the air.
___
The group emerged slowly with their hands behind their heads, like prisoners of war.
Police led them down a narrow dirt track – a long line of desperate people, crouching in terror. Almost immediately, they were stoned by livid residents of a tiny Buddhist neighborhood who attempted to block their way.
What followed was a gantlet from hell, an obstacle course that came with its own set of macabre rules: Do not run, or they will chase you. Do not fall, or you may never get back up. Do not stop, or you may die.
Police fired several rounds into the air, but the crowds attacked anyway. A teacher was knocked to the ground, and panicked students stepped over his body, sprawled face down in the dirt.
Koko saw a friend hit across the forehead with a hoe. When he tried to stand again, five men with knives dragged him off.
The mobs then attacked Koko with machetes from behind, slicing six palm-sized gashes into the flesh of his back. Blood stained his yellow shirt. He fell and blacked out.
One officer, struck in the face by a rock, apparently by accident, shot a Buddhist man in the leg. The crack of gunfire woke Koko, who realized he had been left for dead and leapt to his feet to catch up with the group.
As they moved inside the Buddhist neighborhood on the path to the trucks, police ordered the Muslims to squat down.
Crowds taunted and slapped them. Several women forced them to bow their heads and press their hands together in prayer like Buddhists. And according to testimony gathered by Physicians for Human Rights, they also shoved pork, which is prohibited in Islam, into the mouths of the Muslims.
One man swung a motorcycle exhaust pipe into a student’s head. Another hit him with a motorcycle chain. A third stabbed him in the chest.
“Don’t kill them here,” yelled one monk. “Their ghosts will haunt this place. Kill them up on the road.”
The monks said the police should round up the women and children and let them go first. When Thida refused to let go of her husband, a Buddhist man shoved a palm in his face and forced them apart. Another man she recognized tried to grab her 3-year-old.
“He’s still breast-feeding. Leave him alone!” she shouted, pulling away.
The man then grabbed her 9-year-old, but pushed him back in disgust when he wailed.
Amid the confusion, one Buddhist woman hurriedly waved two of Thida’s teenage daughters into her home to protect them, in an act of kindness. Both would be reunited with Thida several days later, unharmed.
As Thida and about 10 women and children climbed the hill, several riot police pushed back the stick-wielding crowds around them with open palms. A video reviewed by the AP records a man trying to dissuade the mobs, saying: “Don’t do this. There are kids there as well.”
But the violence continued.
Buddhists still clearing the Wat Hlan Taw forced a thin 17-year-old student named Ayut Kahn out into an open patch of low grass. In a scene captured on video by at least two different unidentified people, the boy – a Meikhtila native with a stutter who loved soccer – was struck 24 times by nine people with long sticks and bloody machetes. Five blows were from a monk.
“Look! Look!” one Buddhist bystander shouted from the top of the embankment as the student was murdered. “The police are heading down there, but they aren’t doing anything.”
___
The last time Thida saw her husband, he was struggling to climb the hilltop road where she waited anxiously beside police. Two teachers were by his side, their arms locked in his. Mobs swarmed the steep embankment between them.
Shafee’s face was pale. He had never looked this way – so exhausted, so drained, so helpless.
Across the hillside, Thida could hear the cries of hate.
“Kill the Kalar! Don’t leave any of them behind!”
“Clean them up! They are just dirty things!”
Somewhere below, several students tried to make a run for it. Crowds chased them.
Somebody pummeled 14-year-old Abu Bakar across the cheek with a bamboo stick. Somebody else sliced the back of 20-year-old Naeem’s legs with daggers. Yet another clubbed Arif – the teacher who had wept at dinner the night before – to the ground.
Police stood on both sides of the hill watching, unmoved. When a boy sitting with them at the bottom of the slope looked up, an officer slapped his head and shouted: “Keep your eyes down!”
A frantic monk waved a multicolored Buddhist flag screaming for the killing to stop. “This is not the Buddhist way!”
The crowd backed away briefly, but police left the wounded behind.
One video clip of the moments that followed shows seven Muslim men curled on the ground beneath a grove of rain trees. The faces of at least three are heavily covered in blood. A man in a green jacket swings a bamboo stave down on the wounded with all his might.
The camera pans to another group of three other crumpled men. One is Shafee, who is lying face down, pulling his legs in toward his stomach.
“Oh, you want to fight back?” a voice says, laughing.
A grainy video filmed shortly after shows flames leaping from a pile of 12 charred corpses in the same spot, and onlookers backing away from a smoky body rolling down the hill. Another video shows crowds cheering.
Thida could only smell the burning flesh. She hugged the leg of a police officer standing beside her and asked: “Hey, brother. Please. Please. What is happening to us?”
“Shut up, woman,” the officer replied. “Keep your head down. Don’t you know you can die here, too?”
___
In all the mayhem, several dozen police reinforcements arrived to escort the remaining Muslims to the hilltop and load them onto trucks.
As they pulled away, Koko knew he would never return to Meikhtila.
“There is nothing left of our lives here,” he said to himself. “There is only Allah.”
The trucks took the traumatized survivors to a police station, where they were offered water, and, by at least one officer, an apology.
In all, about 120 Muslims survived – among them, 90 students and four teachers. They stayed several days at a police station before being bused to another town to join their families.
The dead totaled 32 students and four teachers, according to the headmaster, who cross-checked their deaths with families and witnesses.
The head of state security in the region, Col. Aung Kyaw Moe, who ordered the rescue operation, said “10 or 15” died on the way. But video obtained by the AP, shot by unidentified witnesses touring the area after the killings, contradicts that claim. Two videos alone indicate at least 28 people died, most of them blackened corpses with fists and arms reaching into the air; one is decapitated.
When the people filming pass one body, a voice can be heard saying: “Hey, is that a child?”
“No, he’s just short,” another replies, chuckling.
___
The police present that day were the only ones with rifles and guns, which would have been no match for the crude weapons carried by the mobs. But while they rescued more than 100 Muslims, they did not stop the massacre of dozens of others.
“They were of two minds. We could see that,” the headmaster said. “Some of them tried to help us … but in the end, they all watched us die.”
Win Htein, the lawmaker, said there were two explanations: Either the “police didn’t get any order from above (to shoot), or they got the order from above not to do anything.”
Aung Kyaw Moe, the regional security chief, insisted he had given authorization to fire. But he said police didn’t shoot because “doing so could have angered the crowds and made the situation even worse.”
He said even though 200 police were deployed to the area, the crowds outnumbered them, and Muslims died because “some of them tried to run.”
“They scattered and our forces could not follow every one of them,” he said. “They had to take care of the rest of the people they were guarding. … On the front lines, some things cannot be clearly explained.”
During a tense 50-minute interview, Aung Kyaw Moe said he was “satisfied” with the job police had done.
But he grew increasingly agitated, saying five times that it was “inappropriate” to ask for details because “you’re not writing a novel, you’re not making a movie … you don’t need to know.”
___
The first people prosecuted for the violence in Meikhtila were not the Buddhist mobs. The first were Muslims.
On April 11, a court sentenced the gold shop owner and two employees to 14-year jail terms for theft and causing grievous bodily harm. On May 21, the same court sentenced seven Muslims to terms ranging from two years to life for their roles in the killing of the monk the day the unrest began.
On June 28, a Buddhist man was convicted of the murder of a Muslim elsewhere in Meikhtila and sentenced to seven years in jail, according to state prosecutor Nyan Myint. He said 14 Buddhists have been charged and are on trial for the Mingalar Zayone killings, some for murder, but none has yet been convicted.
Justice “is a matter of time,” he said. “The courts are proceeding with the trials and have no prejudice or bias against any group.”
Aung Kyaw Moe, the security chief, said all those arrested were residents of Meikhtila, but he gave no other details.
No police have been reprimanded.
Similar patterns of justice have played out in other towns.
After Buddhist mobs burned several villages in the central town of Okkan in April, the first convicted was a Muslim woman accused of starting it by “insulting religion.” She had knocked over the bowl of a novice monk. Muslims say it was an accident.
And after more Buddhist mobs rampaged through the eastern city of Lashio in May, setting Muslim shops alight, the first convicted was the Muslim man authorities say triggered the unrest by dousing a Buddhist woman with diesel fuel and severely burning her.
One Muslim man was killed in each incident, but no one has been prosecuted.
___
After the massacre in Meikhtila, the corpses rotted for at least two and a half days before the government sent workers to haul them away, some on garbage trucks. The remains were taken to Meikhtila’s main cemetery, where they were simply burned again in an open patch of red dirt with used car tires and gasoline and left for stray dogs to pick through.
Authorities say they did not hand the bodies back to the relatives of the dead because they were too badly burned to be identified. But families of those slain say they were never even asked, and never given the chance to bury their loved ones according to Islamic rites.
No Muslim families have dared visit the cemetery or return to the massacre site.
The mood in the neighborhood is still hostile to outsiders. When AP journalists visited the area, residents stared silently.
One barefoot woman washing clothes beside a well where a pile of charred corpses were dumped claimed she had no idea what happened that day, because she wasn’t there.
Her friend looked up and said: “Tell him what started it. Tell him about the gold shop, the monk who was killed.”
Ma Myint shook her head, squinting up briefly in the direction of the hilltop.
Those bones “mean nothing to me,” she said.
___
The school’s headmaster pulls out a single sheet of blue-lined paper from his pocket. On it, handwritten, are the names and ages and hometowns of the dead.
What bothers him the most isn’t the decision he made to take his students into the Wat Hlan Taw, or the nightmares he has had since. It’s that those who were slaughtered could have been saved.
Most of those beaten to the ground did not die immediately, he says.
“Had anybody stepped in to help them even then, to push back the mobs, to pick them up and take them to the hospital – they could have lived,” he says.
He has told many of the 90 students who survived to lie low and not testify for fear of reprisal. He dreams of gathering them together again and rebuilding his school elsewhere, but he is too afraid of sectarian violence flaring anew to say where or when.
“Where is safe in this Myanmar?” he says. “Who will protect us?”
On March 21, the headmaster urged his students not to fight back.
“Next time, we will defend ourselves,” he says quietly, “because we know that nobody else will.”
On December 10, 2012, a group of human rights activists gathered together for a joint news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to promote the universal human rights of our fellow human beings around the world.
The annual event, held on or near December 10, commemorates the United Nation’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948. This year’s event had the theme “Universal Human Rights, Dignity, and Compassion for All,” and included both human rights group speakers and a showing of the documentary “Free China: The Courage to Believe.”
The human rights groups will recognize Human Rights Day, and make a renewed call for universal human rights, and dignity, and compassion for all of our fellow human beings.
The event will also include a showing of the documentary: “Free China: The Courage to Believe,” regarding the widespread human rights violations in China and the oppression of the Falun Gong, a type of Taoist and Buddhist meditation practice.
Speakers’ focus will be on human rights issues in the United States, China, Sudan, Pakistan, Balochistan, and the Middle East, including women’s rights and children’s rights. These groups share the common goal of universal human rights for all people, remembering “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The event will be sponsored by the following groups, with speakers from their organizations:
(a) Responsible for Equality and Liberty (R.E.A.L.) – Jeffrey Imm on consistency in human rights and compassion for all and the future of our children
(e) United for Equality (U4E) – Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) and Women’s Rights Activist Carolyn Cook on consistency for women’s rights
(f) The International Committee To Support The Non-Violent Movement For Human Rights in Vietnam – Acting Vice Chairman, Mrs. Nathalie Nguyen, who will address “Raising Awareness of Human Rights Violations in Vietnam & Territorial Expansion Policy By The Chinese Communist Party”.
The film the Chinese Communist Regime doesn’t want you to see…
From the award-winning director of “Tibet: Beyond Fear,” Free China: The Courage to Believe examines the widespread human rights violations in China through the remarkable and uplifting stories of Jennifer Zeng, a mother and former Communist Party member and Dr. Charles Lee, a Chinese American businessman, who along with hundreds of thousands of peaceful citizens are imprisoned and tortured for their spiritual beliefs.
In 1997, while living in different parts of the world, both Jennifer and Charles began to practice Falun Gong, a type of Taoist and Buddhist meditation practice that swept across China in the 1990s. When it was estimated that the number of Chinese practitioners exceeded Communist Party membership, more than 70 million strong the government initiated a brutal crackdown against the spiritual movement that continues to this day. Jennifer, Charles and hundreds of thousands of practitioners were arrested, tortured and forced into slave labor, making products such as Homer Simpson slippers for export to the West. The
As political scandals surface and tensions rise along with more than one hundred and fifty thousand protests occurring each year inside China, this timely documentary also highlights how Internet technologies are aiding human rights activists in China and around the world by allowing online collaboration and uncensored information into closed societies. In addition, the film sheds light on how are-emergence of traditional Chinese culture and spirituality are helping bring about a new China.
But the story doesn’t end here. It’s just the beginning…
Interviewees in the film include:
— Hon. David Kilgour, Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific
— Rep. Chris Smith, US Congressman, Senior Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee (Chairman of its Africa, Global Health and Human Rights Subcommittee)
— Ethan Gutmann, Author of “Losing The New China” and Contributor for The Asian Wall Street Journal
— Dr. Charles Lee, Chinese American Businessman
— Jennifer Zeng, Former Chinese Communist Party Member, bestselling author of “Witnessing History: One Chinese Woman’s Fight for Freedom.” (Now an Australian citizen)
— This is not just a Film. But the start of a peaceful movement towards a Free China.
— For inquiries related to distribution/sponsorship/donations please contact: http://freechinamovie.com/
Hello and welcome to our fourth annual Human Rights Day event here at the National Press Club.
My name is Jeffrey Imm, and I am the founder of the volunteer human rights group, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.). Our objective is to promote consistency in universal human rights and human dignity for all of our brothers and sisters in humanity without exception. Our mission to focus on promoting the shared universal human rights and human dignity that we all have simply as being human beings, and work for the cause of equality and liberty for all. We offer forward-facing solutions to make change in our world with compassion and an outstretched hand of hope to our fellow human beings.
The groups joining us in promoting this Human Rights Day event share this vision. We are joined today by people whose groups represent major areas of human rights challenges in the United States of America and around the world. All of us seek consistency in such human rights and dignity. I am proud to have such courageous and committed leaders in human rights with us to help us commemorate Human Rights Day.
We are joined by
— Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party – Dr. Charles Lee, who will be addressing the human rights atrocities against the Falun Gong in China and the courage to believe
— Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) – Niemat Ahmadi on human rights abuses against Darfuri and Sudanese people
— Pakistan Christian Congress/Post – Dr. Nazir Bhatti on human rights abuses against Pakistan Christians and minorities
— United for Equality (U4E) – Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) and Women’s Rights Activist Carolyn Cook
— Ahmar Mustikhan, Senior Balochistan Journalist and Human Rights Defender
— The International Committee To Support The Non-Violent Movement For Human Rights in Vietnam – Acting Vice Chairman, Mrs. Nathalie Nguyen, who will address “Raising Awareness of Human Rights Violations in Vietnam & Territorial Expansion Policy By The Chinese Communist Party.”
We thank each of the speakers and organizations that join us.
I want to be clear that we very much realize that these areas are not the only areas of human rights crises around the world today. We seek to present a diverse discussion of human rights issues, but we know there are other specific topics that will not be directly addressed. Our goal is something larger than any one individual issue, and that is to demonstrate that all of these issues share the same common root – a need to be consistent on our universal human rights and human dignity, and a need for our human society to be responsible for equality and liberty for all people.
Each of these speakers will come up one at a time. We will offer an opportunity for immediate questions after each speaker, if it does not go too long, otherwise we will need to any long questions to the end of the event. We are also especially honored to have a documentary that we will be showing here at 2 PM, “Free China: The Courage to Believe.” The “Free China” document examines the widespread human rights violations in China against the Chinese people and against Falun Gong practitioners, a type of Taoist and Buddhist meditation practice. We are honored to have those individuals behind this documentary also joining us today, including Director Michael Pearlman and one of the individuals in the film, Dr. Charles Lee who will also be speaking today.
We honor Human Rights Day today to commemorate the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.
Before I begin with the other esteemed speakers, I have a few comments of my own.
Please sign this petition on the U.S. White House Web Site to call for a condemnation and further investigation by the U.S. government of the organ harvesting from Falun Gong believers in China
Tens of thousands of illegally imprisoned Falun Gong believers have been used as a living organ bank, killed on demand to fuel China’s lucrative organ transplant industry, as outlined in this video: http://goo.gl/CcHPe.
The U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report cited allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong believers and other prisoners of conscience. In October, 106 members of Congress wrote to Secretary Clinton requesting further information. Two Congressional hearings have covered the topic. Leading transplantation doctors and medical organizations worldwide have condemned this crime against humanity.
As a world leader in protecting human rights, the U.S. has a moral obligation to expose these crimes, stop them, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) Calls for the CCP and All Chinese Doctors to Reject the CCP Demands for Organ Harvesting on Chinese Prisoners, End Such Killings for Organs and Atrocities, and to End the Crimes Against Humanity Perpetuated against Falun Gong Practitioners (Photo: NDTV file photo)
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) Calls for the CCP and All Chinese Doctors to Reject the CCP Demands for Organ Harvesting on Chinese Prisoners, End Such Killings for Organs and Atrocities, and to End the Crimes Against Humanity Perpetuated against Falun Gong Practitioners (Photo: NDTV file photo)
The atrocities have previously been reported in a series of reports by human rights investigators and the United Nations:
July 13, 2012 - Washington, D.C. - Thousands of Falun Gong Members Rally for Freedom and Human Rights - Seeking Freedom from the Chinese Communist Party
August 7, 2012 - Taipei, Taiwan: Seeking release of prisoner Chung Ding-Pan - a young boy and his sister stand with placards as they join Falun Gong members and sympathizers gather in Taipei (Photo: Reuters)
We call upon the people of the world to educate themselves, speak out, and demand action from their governmental leaders and world power leaders to use their full power, and economic and global influence, to demand that the CCP halt these crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and the Chinese people.
Choose Love, Not Hate – Love Wins.
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) Supports the Universal Human Rights for Chinese People and All of Our Other Brothers and Sisters in Humanity
