* Sub-heading: “Security officials openly admit that unarmed civilians trying to enter India illegally are being killed.”
It blows my mind that people are outraged at the most mild immigration limits of US, Australia, Canada, and every last nation of Europe, but completely indifferent to the most extreme immigration limits of the rest of the world.
Japan openly asserts it’s right to remain a homogeneous single ethnicity nation state. The Arab gulf states do the same. And of course Israel. To be fair, expectations on mostly white secular/Christian Russia are low as well.
Do good fences make good neighbours? Not along the India-Bangladesh border. Here, India has almost finished building a 2,000km fence. Where once people on both sides were part of a greater Bengal, now India has put up a “keep out” sign to stop illegal immigration, smuggling and infiltration by anti-government militants.
This might seem unexceptional in a world increasingly hostile to migration. But to police the border, India’s Border Security Force (BSF), has carried out a shoot-to-kill policy – even on unarmed local villagers. The toll has been huge. Over the past 10 years Indian security forces have killed almost 1,000 people, mostly Bangladeshis, turning the border area into a south Asian killing fields. No one has been prosecuted for any of these killings, in spite of evidence in many cases that makes it clear the killings were in cold blood against unarmed and defenceless local residents.
Shockingly, some Indian officials endorse shooting people who attempt to cross the border illegally, even if they are unarmed. Almost as shocking is the lack of interest in these killings by foreign governments who claim to be concerned with human rights. A single killing by US law enforcement along the Mexican border makes headlines. The killing of large numbers of villagers by Indian forces has been almost entirely ignored.
The violence is routine and arbitrary. Alauddin Biswas described to Human Rights Watch the killing of his 24-year-old nephew, who was suspected of cattle rustling, by Indian border guards in March 2010. “The BSF had shot him while he was lying on his back. They shot him in the forehead. If he was running away, he would have been shot in the back. They just killed him.” The BSF claimed self-defence, but no weapons were recovered.
Nazrul Islam, a Bangladeshi, was luckier. “At around 3am we decided to cross the Indian border,” he said. He was headed to India to smuggle cows back to Bangladesh. “As soon as the BSF saw us, they started firing without warning.” Islam was shot in his arm, but survived.
Some of the victims have been children. One father recounted how his sons were beaten by BSF officers. “The BSF personnel surrounded the boys and without giving any reason started beating them with rifle butts, kicking and slapping them. There were nine soldiers, and they beat my sons mercilessly. Even as the boys fell down, the BSF men continued to kick them ruthlessly on their chest and other sensitive organs.”
The border has long been crossed routinely by local people for trade and commerce. It is also crossed by relatives and friends separated by a line arbitrarily drawn by the British during partition in 1947. As with the Mexican border in the United States, the border has become an emotive issue in Indian politics, as millions of Bangladeshis now live in India illegally. Many are exploited as cheap labour.
* If it is anything like Brexit it will be hilarious. The media will predict total immediate disaster, in the hope of making it happen. Then they will talk of impeachment. After no disaster happens and the deportations proceed smoothly they will occasionally lash out, plot in the shadows before, and I do not know yet, slowly vanishing?
* For a guy of 100% pure Nordic stock; a blond blue-eyed six-footer of Lutheran German and Scots Presbyterian background, Trump must have the greatest chutzpah of all time. The brazen culturally semito-levantine New York style, synthesized with an urgent will to preserve hearth and home for the people, is possibly unique?
I’m fascinated that by the current year, it takes a billionaire playboy bullsh*ter actually to save America and her posterity.
* Another one of my predictions: just like Presidente Nieto has a hunch who is gonna win so he needs to study the chessboard, Kapaernick is inadvertently giving Trump the winning touchdown!
This total narcissist is showing the American people that they are all complicit in “institutional racism” and that they are not worthy of his respect. I predict this is such a yuge mistake since football is the one religion in this country that everyone can get behind. His disrespect for his team, police, armed forces, and American people will further broadcast to the American electorate that Trump is correct in that everyone who is an American citizen has a duty to respect our country. Otherwise, just leave; you don’t deserve to live here.
That a million-dollar player (who’s not that good anymore, btw) of a ball game, has the audacity to think his ramblings about race will resonate with fans (and the millions watching tonight’s game), is delusional and just, well, dumb.
If he is auditioning for a job with ESPN, he’s too much of a liability. The network can not take a risk that their audience is forced to ever listen to this disrespectful loser ever again. You have to have charisma and be likable on camera – and, this guy just doesn’t have any of that…the American football audience don’t like to be told they are racists…and espn needs to quit playing politics, shut their traps on the election, and just talk about the games this season. Enough. I just can’t stand this player; he’s just a jerk in a football jersey he doesn’t deserve to wear anymore.
Well, I say carry-on and diss the people in the stadiums this season, it will turn millions of people to vote for Trump. People are tired of race grandstanding. Football is not the time and place for this. I also predict ESPN will lose more subscriptions…and they can’t afford that anymore. Espn has laid-off about 800 people the last 4 years.
