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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United States, a federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s administration from sending three Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, which the president has turned into a detention facility for deported immigrants, a facility that according to reporting by VOX, will seek to eventually house up to 30,000 immigrants requiring a massive infrastructural overhaul given that the site currently is designed to house only 120 inmates. Our recommended read of the day is by Aishwarya S Iyer for CNN on how a new report by India Hate Lab finds that the number of hate speech incidents targeting Christian and Muslim minorities in India rose a staggering 74% in 2024 compared to the previous year. This and more below:
India
World’s most populous nation saw a ‘staggering’ rise in hate speech last year, report says | Recommended Read
India’s religious minorities have faced a “staggering” rise in hate speech over the past year, including from top leaders of the ruling Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a report released Monday. The number of hate speech incidents targeting Muslim and Christian minorities rose to 1,165 in 2024 from 668 the year prior, a 74% increase, according to a report from the Washington-based research group, India Hate Lab. The majority of these, around 98%, targeted Muslims, either explicitly or alongside Christians. “Hate speech in India in 2024 followed an alarming trajectory, deeply intertwined with the ideological ambitions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the broader Hindu nationalist movement,” the report said. Modi, who won a third term in last year’s elections, has long been accused by critics of fueling religious tensions and inciting violence against Muslims and other minorities since assuming power more than a decade ago. His Hindu nationalist party has sought to turn India – a nation constitutionally bound to secularism – into a Hindu rashtra, or homeland for the Hindu majority, critics say, at the expense of the millions who profess minority faiths. read the complete article
United States
Judge blocks Trump from sending Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo
A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s administration from sending three Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, which the president has turned into a detention facility for deported immigrants. The president’s decision to keep up to 30,000 immigrants inside tents and camps at the military prison — which opened in 2002 to hold terrorism suspects during the War on Terror — has drawn international scrutiny from civil rights and humanitarian groups. In a late-night order February 9, Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales temporarily blocked the transfer of three immigrants with a long-standing legal challenge against their “unconstitutionally prolonged” detention after fleeing Venezuela and seeking protection in the United States. The three men have each been in detention with Immigration and Customs Enforcement “with no end in sight,” according to their complaint, which was first filed in September 2024. “I fear being taken to Guantanamo because the news is painting it as a black hole,” Abrahan Barrios Morales, who has been in ICE custody since October 2023, said in a statement Monday. “I also see that human rights are constantly violated at Guantanamo, so I fear what could happen to me if I get taken there,” he said. read the complete article
122 years of US imperialism in Guantánamo: From torture to migrant detention
Colonialist Christopher Columbus landed in Guantánamo Bay on his second voyage to the Americas in 1494. The empires of England, France, and Spain later disputed Guantánamo, a territory of 45 square miles. This “discovery” of the Cuban island unleashed a Spanish extermination campaign against the indigenous population, through disease, starvation, and brutality. What followed the genocide was the “vertiginous growth of the slave trade based in Havana”. As Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research put it: Today, Guantánamo Bay remains occupied by the United States. It is used as a detention center by the most powerful military in history. The U.S. routinely rejects the Cuban government’s call to hand back Guantánamo Bay to the Cuban people. The camp’s status is extremely dubious, not only according to international law, but even by domestic U.S. standards. The government argues that those detained there are not entitled to certain rights under U.S. laws. On January 29, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order calling to expand migrant detention centers at Guantánamo. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2015 banned the transfers of people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay to U.S. soil. It also imposed a “Limitation on construction of new facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” meaning the migrants detained there are confined in outdated, run-down facilities. Today, in Trump’s second presidential term, he is sending migrants to this notorious torture prison. Nevertheless, this is not the first time a U.S. president has exercised this power. Therefore, it is essential to understand the history of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and how this territory came to be a U.S. torture camp. read the complete article
Trump’s Guantánamo plan is an old idea — with an ugly history
President Donald Trump is looking to vastly expand immigrant detention in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Trump hopes to eventually detain up to 30,000 immigrants at Guantánamo, which would require a massive investment in infrastructure, given that existing immigrant detention facilities are only designed to hold about 120 people. Trump’s team is reportedly planning to ramp up to at least one military flight carrying detainees per day, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guantánamo on Friday to survey the site. Under Trump’s plans, most immigrants will not be held at the notorious terror suspects prison. Instead, they’ll be put in immigration detention facilities nearby. But those facilities have their own sordid history, and critics argue that Trump’s plan will violate immigrants’ human rights. And while the Trump administration has tried to wave away those concerns, history is on the critics’ side. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have a record of detaining — and mistreating — immigrants at Guantánamo, mostly Cubans and Haitians traveling in boats intercepted at sea. The most egregious abuses occurred in the early 1990s amid a refugee crisis in which the US kept Haitians in inhumane conditions at Guantánamo rather than allow them to reach American shores. read the complete article