Let the world’s future
not turn into ashes
For Indo-Caribbeans, a
second look at Kashmir By Beverly Longid
MANILA, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)
- With the record rate blaze in
the Amazon that struck Indigenous
communities, the world is
confronted by a humanitarian
crisis in the midst of an everworsening
political-economic
condition.
The International Indigenous
Peoples Movement for Self-
Determination and Liberation
(IPMSDL) joins the international
chorus of condemnation and
call for immediate actions to
put an end to the unfolding crisis
that jeopardizes the lives of
Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon
and planet’s survival.
For centuries, Indigenous
communities have lived in
harmony with the unparalleled
resources of the Amazon:
enriching and defending their
lands, territories, and ways of
life from plunderous government
backed and corporate
development projects.
But because of this intense
blaze in decades in the Amazon,
the IP, particularly the uncontacted
tribes are imperiled to
be wiped out while humanity is
threatened to lose a big chunk
of the world’s tropical forests
and will further suffer the worsening
climate change impacts.
The rise in power of Brazil’s
President Jair Bolsonaro and
the link to the disaster happening
in the Amazon rainforest
cannot be denied. Bolsonaro is
known for its anti-Indigenous
Peoples stance when he has
consistently promoted a more
institutionalized land-grab
scheme to sell over the lands
of IP, prohibit the demarcation
of Indigenous territories, and
constant deployment of military
troops.
Moreover, his far-right
administration’s pro-clearance
policies have empowered and
enabled his corporate cronies
such as large-scale loggers and
ranchers to clear vast tract of
lands that would wreak havoc
on the world’s largest rainforest
until its full ruination.
Bolsonaro’s deplorable policies
on resource exploitation
in the Amazon rainforest have
allowed imperialist agenda
through investments in extractive
industries, energy, logging,
and agro-industrial projects.
The nightmare of environmental
destruction and IP rights
violations under Bolsonaro
regime is now a tragic reality.
The irreversible damages on
our planet’s lungs, the razed
Indigenous territories, the genocide
of Indigenous peoples, the
loss of unique biodiversity may
take centuries if not decades to
recover.
The acceleration of disasters
due to climate crisis has
exposed the inability of marketdriven
solutions to the crisis
and failure to deliver on climate
justice commitments.
Thus, the IPMSDL calls on
our networks, colleagues and
fellow rights defenders for a global
day of action on September
5, 2019 to strongly condemn
and call for the immediate stop
of forest clearings in the Amazon.
We encourage our partners
and members to rise and organise
local actions and campaigns
in solidarity with the Indigenous
Peoples of the Amazon
facing threats of extermination.
Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
George Alleyne, Nelson King,
Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean L 10 ife, Aug. 30, 2019
By Hassan Ghanny
What, to the coolie, is the
Kashmir crisis?
An East Indian from Trinidad
or Guyana or Mauritius
or Fiji knows very little of
contemporary Indian politics.
We’re exposed to it much
in the way that anyone not
directly from the subcontinent
might be exposed to it.
If we happen to be attuned
to history and (anti)colonial
politics, then we might know
more than the average interloper
- might have thoughts
on which sources to trust and
which to disdain. If we’re of
the small but growing population
of people who are half
subcontinent Desi and half
Indo-Caribbean, then we
might have heard from one
half of our family tree about
what, exactly, is unfolding
there, as biased or unbiased
as that might be. But for the
overwhelming majority of us
in the ‘double diaspora’, the
crisis in Kashmir - both the
Modi government’s politcking
and the Kashmiri people’s
advocacy - takes a different
and more abstract form.
Truly, I’m not informed
enough to tell you precisely
what is happening point-topoint
and moment-to-moment
on the ground in Kashmir.
But from where I stand
as Indo-Trinidadian who’s
spent his life on the US East
Coast, there’s a Kashmir in
every neighborhood, on every
block, and in every ethnic
household.
Kashmir is my Puerto
Rican friend, born on the
mainland, who spends every
cent of her disposable income
on island-born Puerto Ricans
resettled on the mainland
after Hurricane Maria. Kashmir
is thousands of dollars
of donations for the Puerto
Rican people sitting idle and
left to rot in a parking lot.
Kashmir is Puerto Rico’s lack
of formal vote in Congress
and lack of organizing artifice
among its diaspora in the
mainland. Kashmir is every
crust of scorched rice at the
bottom of an elderly woman’s
pan, left for her to eat after
giving away the tender rice to
her grandchildren.
Kashmir is my Palestinian
classmate, born in Staten
Island, who cannot go back
to her ancestral village without
severe diplomatic consequences.
Kashmir is my
classmate’s classmate, an
American Jew, who could go
to that very same ancestral
village, volunteer, plant an
olive tree, and pose for a souvenir
photo with the same
ease as a Miami spring breaker
jetting to the Bahamas for
the day. Kashmir is the sound
of every rock reverberating off
the side of an Israeli tank and
every mortar shell fired out
from the tank in response.
Kashmir is my Russian
comrade — though he’d hate
if I called him that — who
lives in exile in the United
States because of his activism
against the dominant regime
back home. Kashmir is every
conversation that springs up
on his Facebook timeline
about the alleged or purported
righteousness of what
Putin does or says, whether by
people who’ve spent their life
in Russia or who’ve barely set
foot in it. Kashmir is the bitter
taste of kvas or homemade
okroshka that will never taste
as good as like the one from
his auntie’s or the café around
the corner from his flat in
Saint Petersburg. Kashmir is
the bitter taste of American
imperialist democracy that
would jettison him just as
easily as it would shelter him.
Kashmir is the disappearance
of pro-democracy activists
and an unmarked mass grave
of homosexual Chechens in a
remote nature preserve.
Kashmir is my roommate
who’s from Hong Kong by
way of Boston. Kashmir is
her agonizing over the news
broadcast while simultaneously
lauding the tenacity
and nimbleness of the street
protestors there. Kashmir
is the encroaching Chinese
state which has perforated the
independent society much as
the tallest buildings there
have openings for spirits and
dragons. Kashmir is Hong
Kongese in Boston being
pushed further and further
out of Chinatown because the
land is too valuable for poor
immigrants to live in anymore.
Kashmir is a sachet of
precious jasmine tea splashed
ignorantly into boiling hot
water with no regard for the
optimal brewing temperature
of the leaf.
Kashmir is my father’s
native Trinidad and Tobago,
which was occupied by the
United States during the
1940s. Kashmir is the hordes
of police vans that round up
Trinis and Guyanese in Queens
for deportation. Kashmir is
Australia’s offshore detention
centers - some would say concentration
camps - that persist
across Oceania. Kashmir
is the depopulation of Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean to
make way for a military base.
Kashmir is the murder of
Rohingya Muslims in Burma
and the trafficking of Burmese
in Thailand. Kashmir
is a scar of British colonialism
that every former colony
still feels in some nerve or
phantom limb. Kashmir is
every abstract dehumanization
which has been given
a rota and taken an institutional
form.
OP-EDS
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