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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Uighur activist wins EU’s Freedom of Thought prize, as Trump’s travel ban disrupts science conference in the U.S. In India, a seething Kashmir awaits respite from India’s military crackdown. Our recommended read today is by Rana Ayyub on the Kashmiri communities silenced by Indian intervention in the region. This, and more, below:
India
Opinion | India’s crackdown in Kashmir has paralyzed and silenced entire communities | Recommended Read
Jaan’s neighbor Mohammed Yusuf Butt, who has acres of apple orchards, was despondent, suicidal. That same night his son, Shikir Ahmed Butt, went to the police station to inquire about the apple truck that had been burned. The Shopian police detained him and told his father that they would be slapping the draconian Public Safety Act against his 30-year-old son. The act allows for detention for up to two years without trial or due process. “They have taken my only son, my apples are rotting in the farms, and then they accuse us of shielding militants,” Mohammed told me. “First they took away our rights, now they accuse us of shielding militants.” read the complete article
India Is Slowly Easing Its Lockdown in Kashmir. But Life Isn't Returning to Normal
It was Aug. 5 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government said it would scrap the semi-autonomous status that the state of Jammu and Kashmir had held under India’s constitution for seven decades. For the next 72 days, the Kashmir Valley and parts of Jammu endured a communications blackout, with landlines, cell phones and the Internet suspended. “Nine to 10 million people were pushed behind an iron wall. We’d never seen anything like this,” says Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of the Kashmir Times, citing previous Internet blackouts that still left phone services intact. “There was an absolute silence.” Already one of the world’s most militarized regions, the Valley was flooded with tens of thousands of Indian troops. read the complete article
Opinion | Kashmir is seething — and somebody needs to step in before it's too late
Imran Khan wants international cooperation to solve the vexing problem of Kashmir. India wants to maintain the status quo, squeezing the region through military occupation and trying to enforce an information black-out. Modi refuses to talk to Pakistan until extremis is somehow eliminated. And the United States, famous for its “no pre-conditions” approach, is supporting pre-conditions that it knows India will never agree have been met. This is a disaster for human rights in Kashmir and potentially for the region and the world. read the complete article
In India, Release of Hate Crime Data Depends on Who the Haters Are
Officials in the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tracked many types of crimes, but they selectively released results, choosing to share figures about attacks committed by left-wing extremists but not religious-based crimes or violence against journalists. read the complete article
United States
U.S. Travel Ban Disrupts The World's Largest Brain Science Meeting
The U.S. denied Keshavarzi's request for a visa to attend this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting, which drew more than 25,000 brain scientists from around the world to Chicago this week. She was also denied a visa for last year's meeting in San Diego. The reason: Keshavarzi holds an Iranian passport, even though she hasn't lived in that country since 2007. Iran is one of seven countries included in President Trump's travel ban, implemented through an executive order. "I knew there was a travel ban in place," Keshavarzi says, "but I thought there could be an exception because I am a permanent resident of Australia." read the complete article
Google Removed Employee Questions About Its Hiring Of A Former DHS Staffer Who Defended The Muslim Travel Ban
Google has been removing questions from an internal company message board about its hiring of a former Department of Homeland Security staffer who once publicly defended the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. Ahead of an all-hands meeting on Thursday at Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, management twice deleted inquiries about Miles Taylor, the chief of staff of former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who joined the company last month as a government affairs and public policy manager. In response, some employees have expressed anger in emails and group messages, asking why the company hired and shielded a former Trump administration member who helped implement policies Google and its executives had previously protested. read the complete article
Hope & Fear in Minnesota's Heartland: Are efforts to counter anti-refugee hate working?
Linda Thielen has lived in St. Cloud her whole life. She’s always been a people person, quick to strike up conversation, open her door to company and bake treats for neighbors. But she remembers feeling a mix of emotions — fear, confusion, anger — when she and other longtime residents started to notice more Somali and East African people moving to the city about a decade ago. In the back of Linda’s mind was 9/11, the devastating terrorist attacks claimed by Islamic extremists that she said had instilled an omnipresent fear for many in Central Minnesota and across the country. As more Somali residents — many of them Muslim — moved to St. Cloud, Linda said she was afraid of another attack, this time in her community. “That was what we knew: Those people were over there. We wanted to keep them there,” she said. “When fear is involved in any culture it does an injustice. And not knowing — you develop a fear.” read the complete article
Opinion | Morrissey is anti-immigrant and backs a white nationalist political party. Why don’t fans care?
In recent years, Morrissey has pushed a political and social agenda that she can no longer ignore. The singer is nothing if not a provocateur. A vegan and fervid supporter of animal rights, in 2010 he seemed to indict a whole population when he said to the Guardian, “Did you see the thing on the news about [China’s] treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can’t help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies.” In response to a question about Harvey Weinstein’s downfall, Morrissey told German magazine Der Spiegel, “I hate rape. I hate attacks. I hate sexual situations imposed on someone. But in many cases, one looks at the circumstances and thinks that the person referred to as victim is merely disappointed.” read the complete article
International
Uighur activist Ilham Tohti wins EU's Sakharov Prize
The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ilham Tohti. Tohti is an economist fighting for the rights of China's Uighur minority and the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China. In 2014 the human rights defender was sentenced to life imprisonment for separatism-related charges. Earlier this month, Tohti received the Council of Europe's Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize. read the complete article
Iran reacts furiously as US rejects visas to delegation visiting World Bank in Washington
Iran's economic minister has cancelled his upcoming trip to Washington to protest against the US government rejecting visas to members of his delegation. Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told The Independent: “The Trump administration is denigrating the US role as a global leader with petty moves like this one that violate international norms and subsume multilateral institutions in the ideological policies of the current White House occupant.” He believes the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy is an abject failure and by continuing down this road instead of pivoting the administration is maximising its own self-inflicted damage on America while bailing out Iran from accountability on its own violations by casting it as the victim read the complete article