Alice Walker, in her poetry book Sent By Earth, reminds us that murder is murder and that it is personal. Regardless of “if it is done in war. It is very intimate,” Walker says. “The beings we kill become, somehow, ours for life.”

I believe Walker is correct. 

The thousands of Palestinians  — who have been killed at the hands of the U.S.-funded bombs, and the settler colonial apartheid state of Israel — are not guilty. Americans are guilty.  At this point, with a death count of over 20,000 people and displacement of 1.5 million people, Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaign has officially surpassed that of the 1948 Nakba. And this terror campaign is that of U.S. citizens to face. 

PTSD isn’t an acronym long enough to describe what we have inflicted. The women in Gaza have no water to tend to their menstruating bodies, and they have no water for their daughters either. Over a million people in Palestine are displaced, many of them living under tents and tarps, and they spend hours of their days trying to obtain food and water. 

Hospitals — which are supposed to be protected by International Law — have been relentlessly destroyed. Less than 30 percent of Hospitals in Gaza are functioning.  “Not enough beds, not enough doctors, not enough space”, said Palestinian photographer Motaz Aziaza when describing the situation at Al-Aqsa Hospital. 

 “I miss my uni friends, I miss my life”, writes Plestia Alaqad who is a Palestinian journalist.

As we read and see these gut-wrenching and gruesome accounts, it is important not to desensitize ourselves to Palestinian suffering. There are actions we can take every day. Many of us in the U.S. have given far too many tax dollars to genocide. We let our media dehumanize Palestinians through their war-mongering lies. 50 days later and there is no end to this madness in sight. 

And now we must divest from the systems that sponsored this. We will divest from corporate media. I will not watch.  We will continue to boycott Starbucks, McDonalds and Disney. Ethnic cleansers do not get our business. 

Moreover, we must bear the burden of this violence, facing it entirely. Palestinians who have died did so with honor. They died in resistance to their violent occupation. Heartbreakingly, courageous journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, and Hind Khoudary have become heroes of our generation, showing us what it means to be a warrior of resistance in the face of trauma and oppression. 

These heroes — and the burdens they have taken on — should bring us both hope and shame. As they brazenly call out the hypocrisy of Western Media, they have carved paths for us to speak truth to power. But isn’t it sad that our heroes never wanted to be heroes? Isn’t it sad that young adults (many of them our age) had to extort gruesome images of death and terror to make us care? 

Our privilege, as students in the West, means we must continue their work. Our activism will grow to be as relentless as the bombs that displaced and murdered our brothers and sisters. 

As artists, writers, historians, archivists and journalists, we have to tell the truth.  We should show images that maintain both the truth and the integrity of the Palestinian people. We will fight against this gruesome occupation for as long as it takes, and we will understand more than ever that this struggle is not insular. America’s longtime desire to Kill extends everywhere; nobody is safe. 

With our teeth sunk into the military-industrial complex, we have a long road ahead of us in resisting Israel and U.S.-led war crimes — along with further development of potentially catastrophic military developments, which could certainly lead to a disastrous nuclear war. 

Palestinians are wrongfully treated as tokens in the U.S.’s foreign policy agenda. You don’t need to be Arab or Muslim to see that this is wrong. Palestinians are not tokens, and neither are the people of Sudan, Congo & Armenia. These countries have all experienced genocide, ethnic cleansing, and gross human rights violations in recent months. Where has the mainstream media been? Reporting on Barbie. 

Truth is bleak these days. But to stand with the other, the group being marginalized and oppressed, will always be a part of the struggle for liberation. When I feel tired and hopeless, I remember that every action I make matters — that movements have always been built by ordinary people taking both small and large acts. I remember what Angela Davis said: “Freedom is a constant struggle.”

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not represent the views of Glimpse from the Globe or its editorial team.

The post The Genocide of Palestinians is Ours to Face appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Unrecognized is perhaps too passive a word — actively denied, systematically erased and grossly misrepresented would be a more accurate reflection of Ankara’s state policy. The same is true for the Greek and Assyrian Genocides which were executed by the Ottomans during the same period, claiming an estimated 500,000 and 300,000 lives, respectively.

Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words: 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before World War I. By 1922, there were fewer than 400,000 left.

To put that in perspective, an estimated 75% of the world’s Armenian population perished.

It is difficult to articulate the profound impact such a statistic has on a community, and on the country that inherits its legacy. The level of loss and tragedy is unfathomable. 

They say that time heals all wounds. Armenians say, “our wounds are still open.”

Over 100 years ago, 1.5 million Armenian lives were lost to rape, horror and destruction that should have no place in this world. 1.5 million Armenian lives were never brought to justice. Today, millions of Armenians around the world carry the legacy of survival without recognition.

But how do you transmit intergenerational trauma when the trauma is left unspoken? When millions of Armenians today are only alive because one survivor in their family made it out of the carnage? Stories of the brutality endured by our ancestors have been passed down through generations. But for every story told, hundreds more are lost to memory, time and the deeply ingrained Armenian tradition of silence.

Armenians are raised with the knowledge that entire generations of their bloodlines were nearly wiped out. And somehow, they still live. But many do not know their own family’s stories. Instead, they fill the absence of this knowledge with the collective sense of trauma, resilience and the longing for justice that has characterized Armenia, Armenians and the Armenian diaspora for decades.

Armenians are brought into the world conscious that they shouldn’t exist — that their presence must be justified, must mean something, can’t be for naught. We shouldn’t be here, after all. It’s a miracle that we are. An attempt was made on our life — on our community, our identity and our very existence. It builds a collective consciousness that transcends borders and identities.

Armenians — particularly those in the diaspora — are born into an innate sense of purpose and the intense pressure to fulfill it. Those who choose not to take on this crusade, or who stray from its conventional course, are often penalized, their Armenianness questioned and subject to scrutiny. Others become numb, and some get burnt out. Though the fight rages on, fueled by a sense of invisibility in a globalized world where visibility is more attainable, the sense of purpose that often finds young Armenians in their teenage years eventually dulls. 

Now, more than a century later, Armenians find themselves living with something to prove and a life to make worth living — a legacy not born from genocide, but from Turkish denial. A blood-stained, violent kind of denial that fuels the continued ethnic cleansing of Armenians today. It was only July 2020, after all, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to “fulfill the mission carried out by [his]grandfathers,” mere weeks before providing direct military aid to Azerbaijan in its premeditated war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Moreover, in 2021, the United States become the 34th country in the world to recognize the Armenian Genocide under U.S. President Joe Biden, marking the first time in my memory that Armenia made national headlines. Although the collective sigh of relief, validation and victory was palpable among the Armenian-American community, a new responsibility emerged with it: what next?

That’s the question we try to answer every day. Today, crisis after crisis threatens the Armenian nation — and although the world keeps moving forward, it’s always worthwhile to stop and contemplate the events of the past.

We are our history, and we are what we make of ourselves.

The post Here’s Another Armenian Essay About the Armenian Genocide appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

The coup occurred in reaction to the most recent parliamentary election. On November 8, 2020, one of the leading parties, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won over 80% of the available parliamentary seats. The vote was seen as a popular endorsement of the NLD, which Aung San Suu Kyi has led since 2015. Ms. Suu Kyi has been hailed as a beacon of democracy and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.  However, her international reputation has suffered following her refusal to condemn crackdowns on the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar, and the subsequent human rights crisis, genocide and migration that has followed.

The election was expected to be ratified in a parliamentary session this week. The Tatmadaw, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, did not endorse the results.

In Myanmar, the Tatmadaw’s influence is felt in all aspects of society, a relic of its multi-decade long rule. It has its own schools, hospitals and food production systems. Its elite are married into the business world and high-ranking members of the NLD. The party also controls the two largest conglomerates with interests in resources, banking, infrastructure, insurance, media and more.

The democratic constitution did little to disentangle the military’s power and in some instances, reinforced it within the new political institutions.

Prior to the coup, the Tatmadaw was constitutionally guaranteed control of the ministries of defense, home affairs and border affairs. It reserves 25% of seats in national and regional assemblies. Also, it has veto authorities over certain amendments to the constitution. 

The Tatmadaw invoked some of these provisions to declare a state of emergency as a justification for the coup, claiming allegations of voter fraud. Under the constitution however, only the civilian leader can claim a state of emergency which lasts for one year. Independent rights groups have criticized the election for excluding ethnic minorities, however, the nation’s election committee accepted the results and found no evidence of voter fraud.

Because of the constitution’s structure guaranteeing certain roles to the military, the Tatmadaw’s power fundamentally does not change with the coup, rather the appearance of power does. Experts have claimed that the military’s actions are still characteristic of the country’s democratic backsliding because the institutions allowing for a people’s voice have been ignored.

While the motives for the coup have not been made public, some suspect the coup provides a means for the military’s leader, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, to stay in power. He was scheduled to retire this year upon reaching the Defense Service Act’s mandatory retirement age of 65. The elected civilian president would have chosen a successor, meaning that the NLD likely would have chosen a more reform minded leader.

The citizens of Myanmar have not reacted kindly to the coup. This past week, tens of thousands of people have protested the Tatmadaw’s actions in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. Chants of “We don’t want military dictatorship, we want democracy” could be heard throughout the city, and many protesters held posters of Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained officials. The Tatmadaw claims it will hold free and fair elections after reconstituting the election commission, although did not specify when elections would take place.

The Tatmadaw has attempted to prevent the protest through a series of measures, including internet blackouts and false news reports of detained officials’ release.

But protests have spilled over into neighboring Bangladesh, where Myanmar national Rohingya Muslims have taken refuge following previous violent crackdowns on ethnic-minorities by the Tatmadaw.

Few reports of violence have come as a result of the protests, with one instance of gunshots and one report of police authorities using rubber bullets to break up a rally. The Saffron Revolution of 2007, a prior protest movement of similar scale, resulted in at least 13 dead and hundreds injured and arrested. The protests began in response to a state-sponsored jump in fuel prices, but turned against the military rule. The Saffron revolution was considered an important stepping stone in Myanmar’s shift to democracy in 2011. The Tatmadaw has remained largely silent over the public’s opposition to the coup.

Throughout the West, governments quickly condemned the actions of the Tatmadaw, although defining the takeover has been a bit more nuanced. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President of the European Council Charles Michel denounced the coup and called for the detained officials’ immediate release. U.S. President Joe Biden, however, has criticized the military’s “assault on the country’s transition to democracy” and threatened sanctions, but stopped short of calling the actions a coup.

Nearby countries in Southeast Asia have had more mixed reactions to the recent events. Cambodian leader Hun Sen refused to comment on the “internal affairs of another country;” whereas Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia expressed concern over the Tatmadaw’s actions.

China, the region’s most powerful country, blocked a United Nations Security Council statement condemning the Tatmadaw. China claims that sanctions or international pressure may make the situation worse in Myanmar.

As the events in Myanmar unfold, key things to look out for include the development of protests, the international community’s actions, and the military’s response to each respective interest.

The post What You Need to Know About Myanmar’s Coup appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

In 1994, an estimated 100,000 Rwandans were killed between April 7 and July 15. The genocide was sparked by the death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a member of the Hutu ethnic group, when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. Many suspected that Paul Kagame’s Tutsi rebels, an opposing ethnic group, were responsible for the attack. This led the Hutu government to launch a genocide against the Tutsi in retaliation. 

Colonialism and the Rwandan Genocide

In analyzing the history of the Rwandan Genocide, it becomes clear that the anomosity between ethnic groups during the genocide can be tied to colonialism. The Rwandan population was essentially made up of two ethnicities, the Tutsi and the Hutus, with distinct characteristics separating both. Characteristically, the Tusti are generally taller, lighter in skin tone, and have a longer, more slender nose than the Hutus. The main social distinction between the two groups is that the Hutu were typically farmers and the Tusti were cattle herders. The social system in Rwanda was based on the fact that the Hutus would work for the Tutsi in exchange for cattle. In 1884, when Germany formally colonized Rwanda, the large Hutu population was subjugated as the working class, with the minority Tutsi population as the ruling class. This subjugation was solely based on the observation that Tutsi were more Caucasian, and thus, more fit to rule. 

After World War I, Belgium inherited the colony as part of the League of Nations mandate. Belgium allowed the existing Tutsi monarch to continue its control over the Hutus. The Belgians considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus, leading Tutsis to enjoy better jobs and educational opportunities in the early 1900s. Further, the Belgians provided military and political support to the Tutsi as long as they maintained policies of Belgium’s colonial rule. Consequently, resentment among the Hutus grew throughout the years.

Following World War II, the mindset of many European nations changed in regard to colonialism. This shift in belief systems was felt in Rwanda, most noticeably in the Hutu population, which was tired of the existing oppressive social system. In 1959, the Hutu participated in riots where more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed and many more fled to neighboring countries. The existing Tusti government was overturned and replaced by Belgian-backed Hutus. And in 1962, amid a growing global movement for decolonization, Belgium granted Rwanda independence, leaving the Hutus in power. 

Rwanda’s Grapple Post-Decolonization Internal Turmoil

With the Hutus in control of Rwanda, the tables turned — the Tutsis were viewed as the inferior ethnicity. But in 1993, Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana faced diminished popularity as he dealt with Rwanda’s worsening economic state. Tutsi refugees in Uganda formed the Rwandan Patriotic Freedom (RPF) group, led by current Rwanda President Paul Kagame, with the intention to overthrow Habyarimana and return home. 

On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana’s plane was shot down and chaos ensued. The Hutus suspected the attack was done by the RPF, however these allegations have never been substantiated. In retaliation, the Hutu, hoping to grasp any last bits of power left, began purging and murdering any political leaders supporting the Tutsi rebels. The extremist Hutu regime carried out a genocide of Tutsi populations and moderate Hutus in order to squash opposition. In just 100 days, the BBC reports that over 800,000 people were killed — this time was known as the ‘100 Days of Slaughter.’

At this time, Paul Rusesabagina, a moderate Hutu, was the manager of the Hotel Mille Collines, a luxury hotel in central Kigali. Rusesabagina bribed soldiers that were hunting Tutsi and moderate Hutus and also maintained connections with several embassies in order to protect those sheltering at the hotel — amid the genocide, Rusesabagina was viewed as a hero for many.

In July 1994, the RPF finally captured the capital of Rwanda, and the Hutu regime collapsed. The RPF were seen as victorious, resulting in the departure of nearly two million Hutus from the country. Rwanda instated a multi-ethnic government with a Hutu as president and Kagame as his deputy. However, after the president was accused of inciting ethnic violence and subsequently imprisoned, Kagame became president and Rwanda led with a Tutsi government. 

In 1996, Rusesabagina fled to Belgium for fear of his safety. Once he left Rwanda, he became an outspoken critic of the government and Kagame. He co-founded an opposition party, the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change. This opposition has an armed wing known as the National Liberation Forces, which has claimed responsibility for attacks in Rwanda since 2018. Kagame and his government had been trying to capture Rusesabagina and other critics like him. 

Current Developments and Autocratic Conditions

Since the Tutsis overtook the government, Rwanda has been heralded as an example of economic growth and development. However, the nation has also been accused of human rights violations for alleged extrajudicial killings and crackdowns on the press. This was seen in Kagame’s run for his second presidential term in 2010. Opposition media was repressed, several journalists were murdered. Additionally, numerous critics of Kagame have disappeared or been killed in recent years. The most recent occured in 2013, when Patrick Karegeya, a former Rwandan spy chief, was found dead in a hotel room in South Africa. 

In 2015, Kagame backed a constitutional amendment that would allow him to run for a third term. Voters approved amendments to the constitution that now allow Kagame to serve a third seven-year term; in addition, he is eligible to serve two five-year terms after that, giving him the potential to hold the office until 2034. 

Kagame’s repression of the press, intimidation toward his opponents, and passing an amendment that would allow him to rule for 31 years severely contradicts Rwanda’s stance as a democracy. Instead, it is an authoritarian state pushing for the superiority of Tutsis over Hutus. As a result, critics like Rusesabagina refuse to go back to Rwanda, as they know they will be punished for speaking against the authoritarian regime posed as a democracy. 

On August 31, however, Rusesabagina appeared in handcuffs in Rwanda’s capital. His adopted daughter, Carine Kanimba, and other human rights activists voiced their concerns that this was “the latest example of the Rwandan government targeting critics beyond its borders.” Kanimba and the rest of his family claim that their father was kidnapped by the Rwandan government as they said “he would [have]never voluntarily return to Rwanda.” 

Kagame has insisted that “there was no kidnap… He got here on the basis of what he believed and wanted to do.” Rusesabagina faces charges including terrorism, arson, and murder. Rusesabagina’s family and supporters fear he will be the next victim of Kagame’s mission to eliminate any opposition to his reign. Rusesabagina’s arrest has drawn international concern and calls for his release. 

A Democracy Far From Perfect

Kagame feels threatened by Rusesabagina’s opposing coalition: the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, and his government continuously claims that Rusesabagina funds rebel groups. In 2010, Rusesabagina asserted that the government was using these claims to conduct a smear campaign against him. With his arrest, it looks like Kagame seeks political retribution against Rusesabagina. 

Rusesabagina is expected to be granted a fair trial — but the reality may be far from fair. Claude Gatebuke, a Rwandan who survived the genocide, said that, “the story of Rusesabagina, who is a Hutu person, presents a problem to that dominant Tutsi narrative.” 

It is likely that Kagame will do everything in his power to indict Rusesabagina, and continue his “assertion that he is the hero of the genocide, responsible for saving his people and rebuilding the country, and is the only viable leader of Rwanda.”   

The post Paul Kagame’s Rule in Rwanda: The Impact of the Rwandan Genocide on Current Civil Crackdowns appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.