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November 28, 2005
Caste off your bicycle chains
India's caste system, although illegal on paper, remains one of the world's most odious forms of injustice. The country's 200 million Dalits ("untouchables") remain trapped in horrific lives of unimaginable poverty, brutalized by sectarian violence, hemmed in by hundreds of petty restrictions backed by armed gangs.
In some villages, Dalits are not permitted to ride bicycles. This causes problems in villages where there are no schools in walking distance; the bicycle is the only practical way for children to get an education. One young woman, just fifteen years old has determined to fight this.
This girl is willing to risk her life to get an education. She is a heroine in the purest sense of the word.
Update: the original link no longer works, but here is another from the Times of India.
Posted by Tyrone at 02:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 25, 2005
The Ukrainian genocide
Today, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko opened an exhibition about the genocide of 1932-33.
Most genocides in history were carried out to eliminate a group of people; Armenians, Jews, Rwandan Tutsis, or Darfur blacks. In contrast, killing people was not the main goal of Ukrainian genocide, but a side effect. The lives of ten million people were considered less important than the policy goals of the communist regime.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wanted to abolish private property completely and collectivize agriculture; he also wanted grain to be exported to bring in hard currency to finance his industrialization plans. The Bolsheviks had been able to seize most land in the rest of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War of 1917-21, but Ukraine was a special case. In Tsarist times, Ukraine's economy had been less feudal, with land in the hands of small farmers, or kulaks, rather than large landholders, as was the case in Russia proper. Thus, their lands didn't simply change hands during the Bolshevik rise to power.
By 1932, Stalin was determined to break the Ukrainian peasantry, and with it the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism which he saw as a threat to his totalitarian rule. He therefore ordered "shock troops" to raid Ukrainian farms and appropriate grain supplies. The farmers were left with neither food to eat nor seed to plant for the next year. To add a dreadful finality, trains and roads leading out of Ukraine were blocked. It was war by deliberate starvation.
Starving to death is one of the most horrible deaths imaginable. The words of one victim speak for themselves:
We have neither bread nor anything else to eat. Dad is completely exhausted from hunger and is lying on the bench, unable to get on his feet. Mother is blind from the hunger and cannot see in the least. So I have to guide her when she has to go outside. Please Uncle, do take me to Kharkiv, because I, too, will die from hunger. Please do take me, please. I'm still young and I want so much to live a while. Here I will surely die, for every one else is dying...
Death and suffering became routine. To see a skeleton-like person drop dead in the middle of the street, to see skeleton-like corpses line roadsides, to see empty, desolate villages and fields was just a part of life.
A visiting American journalist described the horror:
A peasant woman...appeared from a side path. She was dragging a child of three or four years old by the collar of a torn coat, the way one drags a heavy bag-load. The woman pulled the child into the main street. Here she dropped it in the mud.Everybody saw the scene, but no one made a move. My escort explained that he had long since grown accustomed to such sights...The child's little face was bloated and blue. There was foam around the little lips. The little hands and tiny body was swollen. Here was a bundle of human parts, all deathly-sick, yet still held together by the breath of life.
The mother left the child on the road, in the hope that somebody might do something to save it.
To this day, the Russian government has refused to release the NKVD's files on the famine.
Posted by Tyrone at 05:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 21, 2005
The silent genocide
It kills without hesitation, without pause, without mercy. Its victims are the young and the old, from parents to children, with no thought of race or creed. It strangles out life slowly, brutally, watching coldly as people waste away, their limbs decaying, their minds disintegrating. It leaves families shorn of strength, dignity, and hope. Its mere existence is a blot on all of us - the fact that it can thrive in our so-called enlightened age makes a mockery of us all.
One thousand people are dying every hour. Twenty-four thousand a day, more than eight million a year - it matters little how you count, only that it is too many.
Its name is hunger. Chronic hunger. Not just the hunger of droughts and wars and refugees, but the insidious, long-term hunger, the hunger that persists even in fast-growing economies, even in the face of bountiful yields and seemingly generous aid.
We cannot believe that 800 million people around the world are chronically undernourished, for want of just a few dollars a year to help them. The money the Western world spends on lipstick, alone, would be enough to feed them all. But there is political will for lipstick, and there is none for the hungry. Their governments are corrupt, it is said, they themselves are lazy and ignorant and untrustworthy. There is time to wring hands and issue platitudes, but there is no sense of crisis, no feeling of urgency, little belief that this is an outrage that cannot be allowed to continue.
Who is to blame? There, we have no shortage. We can blame warlords who burn crops and rape women for plunder. We can blame imperalists who carved up a continent and sucked it dry. We can blame kleptocrats who pad their Swiss bank accounts with their taxpayers' money. We can blame oversubsidized cows. We can blame international loan sharks for wringing blood - or interest, as they call it - from a stone.
But we cannot think of any way to feed these people. And so they die. They continue to die. The silent genocide marches on, and none even dare notice it, let alone stop it.
Posted by Tyrone at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack