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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Panic in Rohingya refugee camps amidst talks of repatriation. In India, an alarming rise of lynchings target non-Hindu minorities, in the U.S, an op-ed argues against using surveillance technology to combat the rise of white supremacy. Our recommended read of the day is by Ryan Gallagher on Twitter, and how the social media platform aided the Chinese government in spreading disinformation about Uighurs. This, and more, below:
China
Twitter helped Chinese government promote disinformation on repression of Uighurs | Recommended Read
Twitter helped to promote Chinese government propaganda and disinformation about the country’s controversial internment camps in the Xinjiang region, a review of the company’s advertising records reveals. The social media company today announced a policy change that would bar such promotion following an inquiry from The Intercept and an earlier controversy over similar propaganda related to demonstrations in Hong Kong. read the complete article
China: Free Our Parents From Concentration Camps
China’s decades-long campaign against the Uighur minority has surged in recent years through the construction of hundreds of detention camps. Even outside of detention centers, millions of Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region live in a virtual prison. The surveillance state deploys sophisticated technology, including facial recognition tracking, compulsory apps that monitor mobile phones, and even DNA collection. read the complete article
United States
Opinion | Profiling Muslims was wrong after 9/11 -- and it'd be wrong to use it to fight white supremacy now
The tragic attacks earlier this month reminded the nation what many have long known to be true: Most violent domestic terrorism now originates from white supremacists, according to multiple and varied sources. And yet despite the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, carried out by a white male, I am acutely aware that my white friends and neighbors may go on with their lives without the fear that they will be affected by anger over the white identity they share with the perpetrator—a privilege that my Muslim, Arab and South Asian friends and neighbors cannot enjoy whenever somebody of the same faith or ethnic background carries out a terrorist attack. read the complete article
Christchurch mosque terrorist inspired U.S mass murderers
Although many white supremacist terrorists might seem to be “lone wolves,” there is now incontrovertible evidence that the New Zealand anti-Muslim terrorist was a major inspiration for at least two other high-profile American white supremacist mass murderers in 2019 alone, one targeting Jews and one target Hispanics. According to award-winning British columnist Jeff Sparrow, the ongoing “war on terror” global narrative has now effectively normalized anti-Muslim rhetoric and which pretty much exactly replicates “all the traditional tropes of anti-Semitism” that white supremacists had used before. read the complete article
Trump's hypocrisy on extremist groups
On Saturday, right-wing activists gathered in Portland, Oregon, for a rally (unironically) titled, "End Domestic Terrorism." Among the groups reportedly at the event was the "Proud Boys," an organization formally designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for spewing white nationalist memes as well as for being horribly anti-Muslim and misogynistic. Some members of this group have been arrested in the past for acts of violence. To add to that, the FBI, according to a July 2018 internal memo from the Clark County Sheriff's Office in Washington, described the Proud Boys as "an extremist group with ties to white nationalism," that has "contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington." read the complete article
Myanmar
Panic in the world’s largest refugee settlement: ‘I will kill ... my entire family if I am forced to leave’
Last week, news spread through the sprawling temporary camps in southern Bangladesh that the Myanmar government had created a list of 3,450 refugees who were eligible to return with their families. But hardly any refugees are willing to go back to Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where they have suffered systematic persecution and hundreds of thousands fled a 2017 government offensive that the United Nations termed a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” An earlier attempt at repatriating 2,200 Rohingya families, in November 2018, was halted after protests by refugees and criticism from advocacy groups that argued that Myanmar had not created safe conditions for their return. read the complete article
India
Spate Of Lynchings Target Minorities, Especially Muslims, In India
Mobs in India are lynching minorities. Many accuse the Hindu nationalist government of failing to forcefully condemn the violence. Activists have launched a hate crimes hotline in 100 Indian cities. FRAYER: Before he died, Khan described his attackers to police. Six men were arrested, but charges were later dropped, and instead, Khan himself was charged posthumously with cow smuggling. Police say he didn't have a permit to transport cows across state lines. Khan's two sons, who were with him that day, are awaiting trial and face up to five years in prison. FRAYER: "It's like they're trying to erase us," Khan's widow, Jaibuna, says, "erase all of my people." Since a Hindu nationalist party won power in India five years ago, lynchings of minorities have surged. Human Rights Watch counted at least 44 murders over three years. Hundreds more have been injured. There have been very few prosecutions and hardly any public outrage. read the complete article
Romania
Romania, a beacon of coexistence for Muslims in Eastern Europe
Some of the region's Muslims left for Turkey, but others stayed on; their descendants now form the backbone of Romania's Muslim community of about 64,000 people, roughly 0.34 percent of the country's population. Compared with other countries in Eastern Europe, Romanian Muslims say their experience has largely been one of peaceful coexistence. "When Muslims here were still the majority in the 1870s, the Muslim mayor of the town of Medgidia appealed to the authorities in [Romania's capital] Bucharest for money to build a church for the local Christians," said Murat Iusuf, who has been Romania's Chief Mufti since 2005, speaking to Al Jazeera from his office in Constanta. Romanian Muslims appear to have largely been spared the Islamophobic vitriol seen in neighbouring countries at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. But that year, while there were no rallies against refugees from Muslim-majority countries, protests did erupt over plans to construct a large Turkish-funded mosque in Bucharest, which was ultimately shelved in 2018. read the complete article