The bodies of 32 Rohingya Muslims thought to have been trafficked into Thailand from Myanmar were discovered buried near a clandestine jungle work camp in the Thai south, a report said on 1 May. A Malaysian is reported to have chanced upon the camp and alerted authorities. Police Colonel Wirasan Tanpiam of Sadao police station reportedly said that the bodies were discovered by a joint team of police, border patrol police and rescue workers in the camp in Sadao district in Songkhla province, close to the Thai-Malaysian border.
“When the joint team arrived, it found one Rohingya alive but totally exhausted and they have rescued him,” he said. He added that while forensics investigate the cause of death of those found buried, rescue teams are continuing to search the surrounding area for other corpses. International organisations are attempting to pressure the Thai government into authorising an independent investigation with United Nations assistance into the discovery of mass Rohingya graves.
BOSNIANS REMEMBER AHMICI MASSACRE
Bosnians in the village of Ahmici recently gathered to remember 116 civilians killed 21 years ago in the April 16, 1993 massacre during the civil war. 73 men, 32 women and 11 children were murdered by Croatian Defense Council (CDC) forces on that tragic day, including an 81-year-old woman and a 3-month old baby. So far, 86 of those killed have been identified while the identity of 30 is still unknown.
“April 16 – Ahmici” association president Elvedin Kermo was present at the ceremony, where he reminded the mourning families that 21 years on, only two individuals had been prosecuted for the killing of 3 victims during the massacre, one of whom was later released.
SHOOTOUT OUTSIDE US ANTI-ISLAMIC CARTOON CONTEST
Two suspects were shot dead on 3 May in the U.S. state of Texas after they opened fire outside a contest for cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) , a report citing authorities said on 4 May. Police put the Curtis Culwell Centre in the city of Garland on lockdown and evacuated the event’s participants, the city said in a Facebook post. Several surrounding businesses were also evacuated.
The event, billed as the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest,” was sponsored by the New York-based anti-Muslim, pro-Israel American Freedom Defence Initiative group. The group recently sparked controversy when it placed Islamophobic advertisements on transit systems of a number of major U.S. cities, including New York, Washington and Philadelphia.
FIGHTING ANTI-MUSLIM POSTERS WITH HUMOUR
A poster campaign that says “Muslims are coming!” by a bigot would ring alarm bells but in NYC from this month on this will only guarantee a good tight bear hug if the latest posters that are coming are anything to go by. Dean Obeidullah and Negin Farsad are New York based documentary filmmakers who decided to come up with a humour strategy to counter the rabid anti-Muslim posters on MTA buses, likening Muslims to Nazi’s. They came up with the idea of the campaign, calling it, Fighting Bigotry with Delightful Posters when they saw the anti-Muslim posters on the buses. They claimed that the posters added furth insult to injury because the aesthetics were not close to attractive and poorly designed. They figured that if you’re going to be bigoted, at least choose a better font.
The posters that they have designed are not only clever, but also use satire to bring home the point of how the anti-Muslim ads forgot one particular point: that New York City is a melting pot of culture with people of all races and religions.
PRESS CONDITIONS IN EGYPT ‘GLOOMY’
The head of Egypt’s Journalists’ Syndicate on 3 May described the conditions of the press in his country as “gloomy.” “Despite the fact that the situation is dim, we will continue to say that the press would continue to defend its freedom,” Yehia Qalash said during a ceremony organised by his union on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. Qalash took over the top spot at the independent union in March.
He said more and more people were put in jail every day in contravention of freedom of speech. He expressed hopes that his country’s current war against terrorism would not come at the expense of media and the journalists. Three Egyptian journalists were put in jail on 3 May without a charge, according to Khaled al-Balshi, the head of the Freedoms Committee at the Journalists’ Syndicate. There is not an official estimate of the number of journalists in Egyptian jails.
FRANCE BERATED FOR ‘RELIGIOUS’ SKIRT BAN ON MUSLIM GIRL
French anti-Islamophobia groups have strongly condemned the recent school suspension of a Muslim girl for wearing a long black skirt to class. Abdallah Zekri, president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, said that it was “outrageous and unacceptable” that a girl was suspended on the pretext of breaching principles of secularism.
Earlier this month, Sarah, a 15-year-old Muslim girl, was banned from class twice by her school head teacher for wearing a long black skirt, which was seen as a concerted “provocation” by the regional education office in northern France’s Charleville-Mezieres town. “That was not a valid reason to suspend me,” Sarah said. “The skirt is simply a style of dress, not an ostentatious sign. It is a beautiful skirt and I felt like wearing it.”
ISRAELI TROOPS TOLD TO ‘KILL ON SIGHT’ IN GAZA WAR
An Israeli NGO on 4 May expressed concern over the Israeli army’s “indiscriminate fire” policy against Palestinians after collecting testimony suggesting that soldiers were ordered to “kill on sight” during last summer’s military onslaught on the Gaza Strip. In a Sunday statement, Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO, said that testimonies that it had collected painted a “troubling picture” of the Israeli army’s policy of “indiscriminate fire,” which, it asserted, had “directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians.”
The NGO said it had collected testimony from 60 Israeli soldiers and officers who had participated in last summer’s offensive – dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” – against the Gaza Strip. More than 2,160 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed – and another 11,000 injured – during seven weeks of unrelenting Israeli bombardments across the Gaza Strip in July and August of last year.
ISRAEL USED GAZA AS ARMS TESTING FACTORY
The UK’s role in the Gaza attacks by Israel last summer have come to the surface with the Manchester Jews for Justice for Palestine writing an open letter and calling for an end to the arms deal with Britain and Israel. In a news report in Russia Today, the letter to Mondoweiss claims that in November last year, figures revealed that Britain had approved arms sales to Israel worth £7 million in the six months before its offensive on Gaza last summer, including drone parts, combat aircraft and helicopters, a report said on 2 May.
MOROCCO OFFICIALLY CANCELLED INVITATION OF PERES
Morocco has backtracked an earlier invitation extended to the former Israeli president Shimon Peres to pop in the Kingdom to attend the Clinton Global Initiative’s First Middle East and Africa Conference set to kick off on 5 May in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. Morocco rescinded the invitation it had dispatched earlier to the notorious former Israeli PM Shimon Peres after his projected stopover stirred up a hornet’s nest among the Kingdom’s pro-Palestine activists and organisations.
Earlier, on Friday, a series of protest rallies staged in observance of the International May Day also voiced firm rebuff of Peres’s stopover. Morocco’s National Federation of Labour, affiliated with the Justice and Development Party, called for ceasing all policies of normalisation with the Israeli occupation. Meanwhile, the Moroccan Association to support the nation’s causes has organised 25 protest vigils throughout the country.