Glasgow City College student Majid Ali faces torture and death if returned to Pakistan. Majid Ali’s brother and other members of his immediate family have been taken and I am afraid very probably murdered by the Pakistani authorities as part of their relentless persecution of the Baloch people and desire to wipe out Baloch national identity. The UK Home Office intends to deport Majid. The people of Scotland must defend him.
There will be an emergency demonstration at the Scottish office, 1 Melville Crescent, Edinburgh at 13.00 tomorrow. I shall be going along. NUS Scotland are organising a letter-writing campaign to Scottish MPs to get them to put pressure on the Home Office. This is important.
It is appalling that London can seek to rip Majid from a Scottish community which values him, from a nation which respects its immigrant communities and their contribution, as part of Theresa May’s campaign to pander to the corporate media induced racism which regrettably has been introduced into many communities in England. It is a further example of why independence is essential to build a more ethical state.
The persecution of the Baloch has received little attention in the West. Peter Tatchell has done admirable work in trying to raise its profile in the UK, but with little traction. Like so many dreadful abuses, it is a direct result of wrongdoing by the British Empire. Baloch or Beluchistan was formally known as the state of Kelat, which Britain first invaded in 1839, destroying the city of Kelat in 1840 and murdering the ruler Mehrab Khan on the pretext he had given insufficient support to the British invasion of Afghanistan. Britain’s relations with Kelat thereafter were an appalling litany of broken treaties, culminating into the forceful and unwanted incorporation into Pakistan.
A few years ago I met the current Khan of Kelat at his home in exile in Wales and learnt a great deal about the dreadful persecution the Baloch suffer. In the course of my researches into British responsibility for the situation I cam across the crime of the massacre of Kotra. After the killing of Mehrab Khan, fighting continued until a truce was agreed with Mehrab’s 15 year old son Nasir. While the truce was in force, British forces silently surrounded Nasir’s mountain camp at Kotra and attacked before dawn, massacring 500. It is reminiscent of Glencoe, though this was a much larger massacre. In the National Archives of India I trembled as I held the manuscript order for the massacre in my hands.
We should do everything we can to save Majid Ali out of common decency, wherever he is from. But the knowledge of Britain’s historic responsibility for the situation should broaden and deepen our understanding of his plight.
Wikipedia again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprieve_%28organisation%29
Sorry, what does ‘wikipedia again’ have to do with anyone else here? With whom are you arguing? What are you trying to do to the rest of us?
Technicolour.
While I was on my first cycle training session Noddy was asking cynically why I was not supporting a blog-post I had not read. While I was still out Resident Dissident had echoed a second the tongue-in-cheek insult from Habbabkuk. You might not be interested in whether Resident Dissident has the right to make erroneous statements without substantiating them. I understand that and suggest you skip them. By the way you cannot speak for everybody else “surely to no-one else’s” but you are entitled to a personal opinion.
Because I donate and subscribe to Reprieve I should like to know whether or not this is just plucked out of RD’s head, or whether he has some evidence like that provided against Amnesty International, with whom he makes the comparison.
This is the statement I challenge.
“I have made my support clear for Shafqat Hussain through Amnesty (a body you rubbished earlier this week) rather than through the rather less reputable (and less effective) Reprieve.”
Regarding the ‘independence’ of Amnesty International:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/07/ai-eritrea/
Goodnight all. Thanks Node. Technicolour pleased to hear you support Reprieve.
Scotland not racist, England racist, so Scottish independence good? Really? There are many racist attacks in Scotland, notably against those of Pakistani and English origin (maybe start here or <a href="here), and it won’t do to say that that’s a lie spread about by Unionist, Tory and English propagandists who want to keep the mild-mannered, foreigner-welcoming, open-minded Scots under the thumb of the bemonocled, cruel English knout-wielders. You mention the British Empire but Scottish arseholes were just as keen on it and involved in it as English arseholes were. Majid Ali should be defended, but for fuck’s sake grow the fuck up and stop using him as fodder for nationalism.
Amnesty International, like Oxfam, has worked with MI6 for decades.
So it’s hardly surprising that they work with the CIA too. I mean, who wears the trousers in the ever so special relationship? In Britain, Amnesty International also gives snot-nosed posh wives in places like Chipping Norton, Bath and Winchester something ‘voluntary’ to do on the home front.
I first heard them called ‘Amnesia International’ in the 1980s.
Well said Listen Up:
“You mention the British Empire but Scottish arseholes were just as keen on it and involved in it as English arseholes were. Majid Ali should be defended, but for fuck’s sake grow the fuck up and stop using him as fodder for nationalism.”
May I also add that Craig’s fascination with the bowdlerisation of the “arseholes” sex lives sits strangely with his defence of a Muslim since half a Muslim’s breathing life is dedicated to the maintenance of chastity within the permission of 4 wives.
A Hindu professor who ignores the brutality of the British Raj to concentrate on the crimes of the Mughal Empire has probably bought his phd online for a few rupees. A Seikh once explained to me the Indian attitude to the British: “Well, if you’re clever enough to do it …” Like it or not Mughal persecution was based on religious doctrine, which you can never ascribe to the poetry consuming “arseholes” of the UK Raj.
Last week, almost in response to my claim that UK Muslims are incapable of being radicalised, but are rather being bribed to join Al Queenida in Syria, Frank Garbage Gardner of the BBC World Service rounded up some Arabs in White City to pose as captured IS prisoners in Baghdad who claimed zero political insight into the nature of IS murderous practises. “We didn’t want to kill anyone when we joined” Garbage garbage as they say on the automated voice at HMRC.
Question: Would the underlying issue of Balochistan Nationalism be a desire for sectarian freedom of Shi’a from Sunni rule. Or ideological nationalism like Craig’s? USUKIS are allies with Iran, while utilising the Sunnis to takfir and genocide all.
Well, if you’re clever enough to do it … .
As to Majid Ali, people should write to Sir Adam Thomson, UK Permanent Representative to NATO, formerly UK Ambassador to Pakistan who by sitting on his hands without rocking the boat for 35 years at the FCO earned the right to sign off manuscripts that of the type shake your hands.
of the type that shake your hands
My wife and I had 5 minutes warning this afternoon.
It was like Margeret Thatcher meets Alice in Wonderland.
Almost twin sisters…but poles apart…
It was like an annual inspection of our house and garden (second in 10 years (they don’t get on))
I am just trying to describe you to ..what it is like..
People want to belong – a bit like a family – but ffs a lot of people can’t stand their family and just be polite when they really have to be..
But when you go out in the Open World..you might feel very alone…but no one else is going to do it for you…no family..no friends…and you look like me…or even worse…you just go oh shit..what can I do but die?
And then well when you are so down..this beautiful angel speaks to you…
You ask who are you?
And then it gets better..She pulls you out of the Pit of Despair..and you just look at her…and ask…
Lets Get Married and Make Babies Together.
She Smiles and Says O.K.
Lets Do it…
And so we did…
But it doesn’t just stop there…but its a good start…and after all these years…We are Still here together and Still in Love…and we have a lot of friends.
Tony
Sorry for absence. Family visitors for w/e.
I support all and any action to prevent Theresa’s thugs deporting Majid Ali. Cannot see what his crime is. Is he supposed to be an illegal immigrant?
Thanks for the template John Spencer-Davis.
From Peter Tatchell’s fine statement –
‘Just like Israel’s settlement programme on the West Bank, Islamabad has a settler scheme to colonise Balochistan. It is encouraging Punjabis, the largest and dominant ethnic group in Pakistan, to move to the region. The aim is to make the Baloch people a minority in their own homeland, as happened to the Native Americans in the US and the Aboriginal people in Australia. This goal has already been achieved in major cities like Quetta, where colonist settlers now predominate.’
and from the internet this morning
U.S. Backs Renewed Israel Bombing of Gaza
Israel conducted a series of bombing raids on Gaza Thursday, hitting at least three sites in the coastal enclave, as Netanyahu accuses the world of “hypocrisy.”
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/U.S.-Backs-Renewed-Israel-Bombing-of-Gaza-20150607-0015.html
Rubble to rubble, dust to dust, human flesh and blood to human flesh and blood.
Nothing about this on the BBC Middle East page needless to say but we are told that the Saudis killed 44 and injured 100 Yemeni people yesterday in airstrikes. Using US supplied aircraft and weapons as on Gaza.
PS ‘Palestinian’ by the way Habbabkuk, not ‘Palesitnian’.
If only Theresa was as assiduous in the round up of predatory sexual abusers of children as she is on deportation of illegal immigrants and the activities of the renowned Border Agency.
Little or nothing is heard from the numerous ‘inquiries’ and the long grass grows longer and longer.
~~
Border Force or Border Agency?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Border_Agency
Historic data
http://data.gov.uk/dataset/staff-organograms-and-pay-uk-border-agency
New Inspector appointed. He has worked in ‘arenas of security and crime fighting’. SOCA and NCIS.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-chief-inspector-of-borders-and-immigration-appointed
Ref Ken Roth and Hunan Rights Watch. I think the vernacular is ‘well dodgy’.
Ken Roth of HRW appears to have used a video of Gaza to illustrate destruction in Syria.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1431161749.html
Mr Goss
Once you have addressed all your statements that I have challenged on other threads for the last 3 months I will happily explain my thinking regarding Reprieve.
I could also add that you should be apologising for misquoting my position on may things including Reprieve but that is up to you.
Mary
A bit philosophical for early in the morning, the link between God’s moral boundaries and the Border Force?
I think support for UKIP at the last general election is a reasonable though not perfect indicator of the amount of base racism in various areas of the United Kingdom.
Craig
If people have been frequently treated badly by foreigners that is not racism is it? The human brain accumulates experience and data
” It is a further example of why independence is essential to build a more ethical state.”
Another piece in the Mail today on your more moral and ethical Nationalists.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3114728/Rein-cybernats-SNP-told-action-details-savage-abuse-Kennedy-emerge.html
John Goss, Resident Dissident
Technicolour may not speak for everyone but count me in on wanting you to stfu with your boring, endless shite.
At least we know that RD is a Keynsian. I think it’s a ridiculous position but at least we know.
John, you ramble so it is not clear to me, are you Maoist or Stalinist?
“I think support for UKIP at the last general election is a reasonable though not perfect indicator of the amount of base racism in various areas of the United Kingdom.”
I suspect that’s post hoc. There are certainly many racists who vote for the older political parties, including Labour, and there have been as long as I can remember. But if you want to draw conclusions about racism from voting figures you should factor in that whereas in England a substantial proportion of flag wavers, or those who follow flag wavers, vote UKIP, in Scotland many people in that market section are attracted to a certain other party, the one that adopted not the pound sign as its symbol but a rune.
Seriously.
In Scotland, UKIP markets itself as first and foremost the most unionist of the unionist parties. In England, it markets itself as anti-EU and tough on immigration. Be careful when comparing apples with oranges.
Anti-EU types are xenophobic, yes. But being anti-EU is very closely connected in their heads with wanting something to be done about immigration.
There are real problems caused by immigration – problems to do with falling wages, worse conditions and, yes, the crime that comes with those. I am a person of the left. I am not a Daily Mail reader. I am anti-racist. That doesn’t stop the sentence with which I opened this paragraph from being true.
Many who are inclined towards UKIP are not the kind of people who would wish ill upon impoverished immigrants when they think of them as individual human beings, although for sure they would applaud if the government ‘stood up for British people’ and would close their minds to the ill that consequently got done to impoverished immigrants. Welcome to hypocrisy and stupidity.
The left has no serious line on immigration because it is so middle class.
What is necessary is to build solidarity between British workers and immigrant workers so that neither group stabs the other in the back, whether it’s by fascist politics among the first or scabbing for low wages among the second. Without solidarity, antagonism will continue and increase.
The answer is stronger trade unions that accept immigrants, including in sectors where traditionally the level of union membership has been low.
o/t, but directional for all who thought Amber Rudd was a breath of fresh air. Her first outing in front of a nuclear installation turned into a gushing Conrad type call up to spruce our power station, to make them more pretty.
Aaaahhhh
Expect cubist colourful excellence, and for the hippies, Hallo Tony, they will have a few wind chimes hanging by the gate. The Tory’s have gone well and truly mad!
A technical sophisticated nation such as Japan is fighting a rearguard action to cool and stop 13 hot spots, still active at Fukushima, to run out of control. World wide cancers have gone up during the last two years and nobody is making a peeps.
Japan should be held responsible for the world wide ecological impact it created by lackadaisical operations of Daichi, the release of millions of gallons of contaminated cooling water into the pacific is outrageous, an ecological experiment that has contaminated fish stocks all over the pacific and spreading and now Amber Rudd is telling us that rising sea levels and tsunamis don’t happen here, lets build some more pink coloured power station by the sea, rah rah rah.
If she, as a scientist, does not see the immense capacities for alternative energies around our coastline, then she should go home, resign now!
I support Reprieve and I follow Clive Stafford-Smith on Twitter, so I can re-tweet him and push it out to even more people.
I also agree with Technicolour and Phil, about John and Resident Dissident. It’s gone on long enough, folks.
Mary says, “PS ‘Palestinian’ by the way Habbabkuk, not ‘Palesitnian’.”
Also Mary, it’s Human Rights Watch not Hunan Rights Watch.
Anyone can make typos.
Come on, any SNP activists or politicians reading this. I am calling for SNP MPs to vote against the legalisation in England and Wales of posh Tory scum ripping foxes to pieces for fun and barbarically smearing the blood on children’s faces.
Are you FOR or AGAINST? Or is your answer “I’m neither. I’m Scottish”?
Never mind Scottish fucking independence for a while. Yes, you want to run a bigger budget, and you want more pork barrels. And anyone who tells you what you are is a Fucking English Bastard or a Self-Hating Scot.
But you were elected by British people to go to a British parliament and debate and decide upon issues affecting people in all parts of Britain.
If you leave your saltire underpants in the drawer today, forget Mel Gibson for a moment, and vote against foxhunting – you will have at least done something right and something against the Tories.
when push comes to shove and nobody agrees on what to do next, bring on the animal issues, badgers, foxes, squirrels, deadly mitten crabs and all the other immigrants to these shores.
Thanks for your post N_, I shall have look at what nationalism holds in store for me when I go up there later in August, get a feel of the SNP infused society, and what it does to Scots people.
If I get there and at first see a bloke downing a pint of milk, I shall get worried….:)
Nevermind
“If I get there and at first see a bloke downing a pint of milk, I shall get worried”
That was a hedgehog, silly.
…hunan rights…
Did you mean Hunan Riots?,/i>
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-april-1910/1/serious-riots-are-reported-from-changsha-the-capit
Very droll Baal. I should have put my specs on @ 6.24 am. Glad Dreoilin spotted it! We need correction.
Spellcheck suggests Derailing or Drooling for her name.
Listen up – I have no use for nationalism which for me conjures an image of superiority, blind arrogance and war instead of admiration for a way of life. Craig has used the adjective ‘ethical’ meaning humane which without preaching to the knowing is more than being human in that we recognise the arseholes that we are, fettered by the systems fabricated by the few, while we, the people, struggle with the deficiencies and shortcomings to turn the next corner.
Technicolour, Phil, Dreoilin
I disagree about the value of John Goss and Resident Dissident’s long-running feuding.
They debate important issues which both feel strongly about. Their competitiveness results in a thorough examination of all the factors involved. They question each other’s facts and challenge each other’s sources, and we get informed opinion from both sides of the debate. I learn more from their eternal bickering than from any amount of unchallenged lecturing. Yes, they go on a bit, yes, it can be repetitive, but, hey, I’ve got a scroll wheel. Considering the amount of petty vindictive inconsequential shite that gets posted on this blog, I find it strange that you direct your criticism at genuine informed political argument.
Still can’t make my mind up about the combine-harvester/missile launcher controversy though. Would you mind running the main points past me again, chaps?
“Spellcheck suggests Derailing or Drooling for her name.”
Well, that was an extraordinarily spiteful comment. I expect you’re sorry about that, particularly since it was occasioned by her pointing out that you did precisely what you were picking on Habbakuk for. Tsk tsk.