At least three protesters were killed on Thursday amid rallies that took place in different areas across Sudan, including its capital Khartoum, that demanded the restoration of civilian rule, according to medical professionals.

At least three protesters have been killed by live munitions in Omdurman, the twin city of the capital Khartoum across the White Nile River, while dozens were injured or affected by tear gas, the Central Committee of the Sudanese Doctors said in a statement.

"The security organs have used massive violence against the protesters especially in Omdurman where at least three killed and others injured, hospitals have been also attacked. We warned the security forces not to use the massive violence and stop it immediately," said the statement.

In the meantime, offices of the media outlets, including the Al-Arabiya, Skynews, and Alsharg TV channels, have been raided by the security forces, the Sudanese journalist network said in a statement Thursday evening.

Al-Arabiya further published a video showing some of its staff injured due to the attack on their office by the security forces.

The rallies took place in several areas in Khartoum, Kasala, and Port Sudan in the country's east, as well as the northern city of Atbara, according to Anadolu Agency correspondent on the ground.

During the rallies, protesters called for democratic civilian rule and decried a recent political deal between the military and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

Internet services on Thursday were down in the capital and other areas prior to the demonstrations as providers cut mobile services, with only landline connections remaining available.

Neither authorities nor internet providers have so far commented on the issue.

On Wednesday, security authorities closed multiple bridges and overland routes, installing concrete barriers and barbed wire on roads leading to the presidential palace.

The calls for protest were made by the Sudanese Professionals Association, which rejected the deal signed last month and called for full civilian rule.

Sudan has been in turmoil since Oct. 25 when the Sudanese military dismissed Hamdok's transitional government and declared a state of emergency.

Hamdok, however, was reinstated on Nov. 21 under an agreement with army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan in a move rejected by Sudanese political and civil forces as an "attempt to legitimize the coup."

On Saturday, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Khartoum and other cities to push for full civilian rule in the north African country.

Before the Oct. 25 military takeover, Sudan was administered by a sovereign council of military and civilian officials overseeing the transition period until elections in 2023 as part of a precarious power-sharing pact between the military and the Forces of Freedom and Change coalition./aa

China on Thursday demanded that the US soldiers involved in a drone attack on Kabul that killed Afghan civilians in August must be held accountable and punished.

“China urges the US to launch a thorough investigation into the deaths of Afghan civilians in a drone attack this August, punish the perpetrators, and do justice to the Afghan people,” Senior Col. Tan Kefei, spokesman for China's Ministry of Defense, told a news conference.

Pentagon had ruled out any punishment to US soldiers involved in the drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, that triggered global condemnation.

The drone hit was one of the last strikes when the US military was still in the war-torn country before it pulled out along with all foreign forces in August.

“The Chinese side always holds that all combat approaches and means, including armed drones, must comply with relevant rules of the international humanitarian law, especially on the strict distinction between innocent civilians and combat personnel,” Tan said, according to a statement by the Chinese Defense Ministry.

“The so-called Summit for Democracy led by the US has come to an end recently, but those innocent Afghan victims and their families still haven’t seen any justice done from the US after several months. That is a blatant stomp on the rules of international humanitarian law, and a great irony on the so-called ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ touted by the US itself,” Tan added.

The summit was convened by US President Joe Biden early this month to re-emphasize the need to uphold democratic behavior by respective countries. Russia and China were not invited while Pakistan did not attend despite the invitation.

Tan urged the international community to take “joint actions to investigate those warmongers and hold them accountable for deliberately sabotaging international rule of law and slaughtering innocent civilians without any scruple.”/agencies

By Rana Ayyub

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’"

These lines, written by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, came to me as I heard the horrifying speeches delivered by Hindu nationalists during a religious conference this month, when leaders issued direct calls for genocide against Muslims.

“If 100 of us are ready to kill two million of them, then we will win,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, a militant organization, at a conference in the city of Haridwar, 150 miles north of New Delhi. “Be ready to kill and go to jail.”

At the same event, another Hindu seer invoked the crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar as a model for what can be done to drive Muslims away, a monstrous event that has been covered in the media.

The Dharma Sansad (Hindu convention) was attended by members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party. Videos of the packed event have been circulating on social media. Attendees made pledges to turn India into a Hindu nation. Unsurprisingly, the calls for violence and extermination have been met with silence by Modi and others — a silence that translates as an endorsement.

Inciting violence is a crime in India, but Pandey and the other speakers remain free. The police are supposed to be investigating but have been very slow to act — since they know full well these leaders have the protection of the ruling political class.

In fact, these Hindu leaders have now been emboldened to form a paramilitary force of monks who they claim will lead an armed fight against the 220 million Muslim population in India.

Days after the conference, Tejaswi Surya, Modi’s handpicked youth leader and a BJP member of parliament, called for bringing Indian Muslims and Christians back to Hinduism, “the mother religion.” He then tried to walk back his comments.

What is happening in India, where calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing are a centerpiece of our political debates? Where the Hindu nationalist who assassinated Mohandas K. Gandhi, a global symbol of nonviolent resistance, is glorified by national leaders.

What is happening in India, where the majority Hindu community fails to repudiate acts of terror unleashed in its name? Where Muslims are lynched on the streets, where Christmas celebrations are attacked, where the government has blocked the charity of human rights icon and Nobel laureate Mother Teresa from receiving international donations.

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What is happening in India, where Suresh Chavhanke, the influential owner of a right-wing nationalist news channel, calls for people to “fight, die and kill if required” to make India a “Hindu nation” at an event on Dec. 19 in the national capital as the cameras rolled and the police looked on.

What is happening in India, where law enforcement is more likely to investigate journalists over tweets and the sons of critical public figures over alleged marijuana possession, than go after fanatics calling for mass murder?

What is happening in India, where the captain of the Indian cricket team, Virat Kohli, loses his position for defending a Muslim colleague who was targeted for his faith?

The answer is as loud and clear as the hate spewed at those events, as the mobs that have been given a free pass to attack minorities.

Not only does Modi’s silence give encouragement to the most dangerous elements threatening India, but the silence of our allies is also enabling them.

During the “Summit for Democracy” hosted earlier this month by President Biden, Modi claimed to be a champion of free speech, rule of law and a secular and pluralistic ethos, but the world is seeing how he and his party are willing to rely on threats, dog whistles, intimidation and violence to consolidate control. All these calls for genocide are happening in the context of state elections. Is this the type of “democracy” Biden and other allies are championing?

Modi has cultivated this type of hate for decades. We know what’s happening in India now. I fear what will come next.

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*The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal views

Written by Neeti Nair 

The recent assembly of so-called sadhus at Haridwar in Uttarakhand has called for the mass murder of Muslims. The videos of the vitriolic, hate speeches have now been in circulation for a few days, and have been analysed by the media in some measure. Yet, with Covid surging and election news dominating headlines, this latest avalanche of hate speech has already begun to drop off the front pages of newspapers. We neglect this new low at our peril.

A little over 50 years ago, in May 1970, Lok Sabha witnessed a gloves-off contest between two ideas of India, one represented by the poet and rising star of the then Jana Sangh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the other represented by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During the discussion on communal disturbances in the country, Vajpayee declared “We should understand two things. Whatever the reason, our Muslim friends are becoming more communal (sampradayavadi) and in reaction Hindus are becoming more angry (ugra). For 700-800 years we have had a tradition (parampara) of accepting violence.” Coming in the wake of the horrific riots in Allahabad, Ranchi, Bhiwandi, Jalgaon, Jabalpur, Vajpayee’s speech flew in the face of evidence that Hindus would not, as he claimed, “start the violence”. Indira Gandhi, who usually let speeches be given uninterrupted, intervened to let Vajpayee know that he was saying things that would “deeply hurt all minorities” and that his speech would “create a bad atmosphere in the country.” In response, Vajpayee asked her to “resign and get out” and accused her of heading a minority government.

When elections were called the following year in early 1971, Vajpayee predicted that even if 95 per cent of rickshaw pullers voted for Indira’s Congress, supporting her on bank nationalisation, 95 per cent of Hindus would vote for the Jana Sangh on the Hindu-Muslim issue.

As it happened, the Jana Sangh’s tally was reduced from 44 to 22 seats. Indira’s Congress won 352 seats in the Lok Sabha. Analysing this rout, the right-wing journal Organiser, which had predicted a massive victory for the Jana Sangh, now editorialised that they had made a mistake in contesting on finer points: “People in the mass understand and appreciate only bold actions.” It also concluded that her victory was “purely personal. There is no organisation or ideology behind it. Ideological parties like Jana Sangh may lose battles, but not the war. For while individuals may come and go, ideology abides.”

So, should the recent juggernaut of the BJP, successor to the Jana Sangh, propelling its way through parts of India, be read as evidence that the Organiser was right after all, and that the Opposition had no ideology behind it? Why did so many Hindus vote for Indira’s Congress in 1971? Was it because they supported her populist measures alone? Did ideology have nothing to do with her victory? It is notoriously difficult to read into the many factors that affect decision-making when individuals vote, and we know this to be true from so many exit polls that have gone wrong. Historians can only rely on the evidence of strong speeches and campaign manifestoes and there, Indira’s Congress put up a good show. The preceding year had also seen a long-drawn debate on “Indianisation” — a thinly veiled attack on the patriotism of Indian Muslims.

Whereas at the national convention of the Jana Sangh in Patna in December 1969, Indianisation was defined as the “subordination of all narrow loyalties like those of religion, caste, region, language or dogma to the over-riding loyalty to the nation of all fissiparous elements, especially of those with extra-territorial loyalties… to the two-nation or multi-nation theory”, in Parliament, Vajpayee held that Indianisation was simply “a bid to make India strong”, to make sure India did not depend on the Americans or the Russians in determining her foreign policy. He went on to say that India did not become a Hindu rashtra after Independence because our sanskriti did not give us permission to do so. Secularism, he argued, was not “a slogan or innovation of the Congress party; this is a mantram created out of the culture of this country.” He lamented that secularism had come to mean “Hindu-virodh” and declared that the prime minister too needed to be Indianised.

When it was the prime minister’s turn to reply to the debate, she acknowledged her absence in Parliament when Vajpayee had spoken. Therefore, she had read his speech in “cold print” wherein “his true intentions come out better when shorn of his ringing cadences.” She thought “his theory… not quite so innocent.”

“Who will judge the quantum or the quality of Indianness of any individual? … We remember vividly the havoc caused in America by some people who declared other Americans to be un-American and, in the entire world, when some Germans maintained that other Germans were un-Aryan and, therefore, un-German. … the test of any statement is not how you yourselves interpret it, but what impact it has on the people about whom you make that statement. … I have given a good deal of time to Shri Vajpayee’s thoughts because I think that they merit it. I have tried to see through his words, behind his sweet phrases and his beautiful Hindi,” she said.

Indira’s English was no less beautiful. There was, in the pre-Emergency years, a clarity to her conviction. Whether it came from her advisers or speech-writers such as P N Haksar is not entirely the point. She knew what she stood for, and it was in the service of such an idea that she passed legislation through Parliament such as Section 153B of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised the actions of anyone who “asserts… or publishes that any class of persons shall by reason of their being members of any religious … or regional group … be denied … their rights as citizens of India.” It is a different matter that the courts have not lived up to their promise, letting the hate speech and hate-filled editorials of Bal Thackeray in the 1990s go unpunished, despite such laws.

Yet, the will to secular practice, whether in Vajpayee’s elaboration of secularism or Indira’s defence of it when “secular” was formally inserted into the preamble to India’s Constitution in 1976, has been limited to the realm of beautiful language. This latest iteration of diabolical hate speech against Muslims, on the eve of another momentous election campaign, should remind us that dangerous speech has consequences. The courts, the police, and the Election Commission of India ignore them to our collective peril./ Indian Express 

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal views

The fast-moving omicron variant of COVID-19 is triggering a “tsunami of cases,” leaving health systems near collapse, exhausting health workers, and disrupting the goal of halting the pandemic’s acute phase in 2022, the World Health Organization chief said on Wednesday.

“I am highly concerned that omicron being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said at a webinar.

Highlighting the effects of the virus on people and global health systems at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, he said: “This will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse and again disrupt lives and livelihoods.”

There were 1.8 million recorded deaths in 2020, and 3.5 million in 2021, Tedros said, adding WHO knows that the actual number is much higher.

He said this tally did not mention the millions of people dealing with long-term consequences from the virus.

“But I still remain optimistic that this can be the year we not only end the acute stage of the pandemic, but we also chart a path to stronger health security.”

He urged the world to build on the successes and failures by sharing vaccines faster and equitably under the COVAX system aiming at global vaccine equity.

Rollout to everyone

“We must support countries in manufacturing and rolling them (vaccines) out to everyone. And access to new treatments must also follow,” said Tedros.

He warned that the virus will continue to evolve and threaten global health systems if the collective response is not improved.

“Right now, delta and omicron are twin threats that are driving up cases to record numbers, which again is leading to spikes in hospitalizations and deaths.”

“All of us are sick and tired,” of the pandemic, said Tedros at his final press webinar of 2021.

He said the development of new vaccines proved effective in checking infections and deaths.

However, he noted that while science delivered, “politics too often triumphed over solidarity.”

The impediments included “populism, narrow nationalism and hoarding of health tools, including masks, therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines,” by a few countries that undermined equity, “and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of new variants.”

“Misinformation and disinformation, often spread by a small number of people, have been a constant distraction, undermining science and trust in lifesaving health tools,” lamented Tedros./aa