Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

Without the stateless nations, there's no alternative to Spanish right wing

It can even be understood why some sectors of the Spanish left are as belligerent as or more belligerent than the right with the pro-independence movements. Without EH, Catalunya and Galiza, nowadays, the Spanish state would be victim of the right-wing. It is as easy as remembering where Pedro Sánchez achieved the required supports -via vote in favor or via abstention- to achieve the presidency of the Government after the elections of November 10, 2019.

The three stateless nations send to the Spanish Congress 94 representatives, and more than 2/3 of them (65) facilitated the investiture of Sánchez, compared to 29 who voted against. The distribution in the rest of the Spanish state was radically different. Of the remaining 256 seats, 136 voted against the PSOE candidate, against 120 in favor. Without EH, Catalunya and Galiza, what was then called "the trifachito" -PP + Vox + Ciudadanos- would have obtained a comfortable absolute majority.

It can also be seen from another perspective: more than a third of the support for Sánchez's investiture came from these three peoples.

The only possible way to stop the entente between PP and Vox, therefore, goes again this July 23rd through the stateless nations. And more particularly by the secessionist parties.

It's predictable that the Basque contribution to the Spanish right wing will continue to be mostly derisory but all are hypotheses before knowing the verdict of the ballot boxes. We know that the picture in the stateless nations will not be the same as it was four years ago, and that it is quite likely that PSOE will see its position strengthened, especially in Catalonia if polls are right.

But we also know that the expectations of the Spanish right wing are still very limited in EH, Catalunya, and Galiza, so they will remain fundamental in a possible defeat of the right wing.

The times when the help of IU, PNV or CiU was enough to rule in Madrid are over. Everyone should take note.

Original article [SPA]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

.

I keep forgetting that being raised by an English family has completely different connotations in detective Jorge's universe. Imagine asking a kid about his unusual last name and he goes, well so I was raised by Atlanteans,

you think kurdistan should be a thing?

transitioning as an intersex person for me is an act of rebellion. i am embracing everything i was told not to want! i am prioritizing the parts of my body that I was told were wrong! when they told me what I was supposed to be, THEY were wrong!

I remember you mentioning you were opposed to birthright citizenship, what do you propose instead?

have i said that? i might have. i only wonder because this is something i actually have mixed feelings about. "birthright citizenship" (jus soli) has a pretty long history in english common law which is something i value. but with advances in transportation tech and how fast large numbers of people are able to move around the world, i think this becomes a bit of an issue.

so, ideally, i would be in favor of a restricted form of birthright citizenship. one that only gives citizenship to children of lawful residents and excludes the children of unlawful residents.

and obviously the other options are being born to american citizens obviously gives you citizenship by blood (the /true/ birthright citizenship imo) and naturalization gives you citizenship.

Roma have no Homeland, Roma men have no choice to leave the Ukraine under Marshal law and must die for Ukraine Neonazi Regime.

🕊️ we demand peace

Do you have 1 minute? Add your name, surname and email to send a pre-written email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister, other Indian government ministers, and the companies vying to build the project:

PP be like

No sé si has vist la controvèrsia que hi ha hagut amb la editorial Ivréa aquest cap de detmana per twitter on sembla que han estat bloquejant a gent només per preguntar si anaven a traduir mangues en català.

https://twitter.com/samfaina_visual/status/1672900791982538755?cxt=HHwWhoC2qYWaq7cuAAAA

https://twitter.com/ryuzakyy7/status/1673009848319967235?cxt=HHwWhoC8rfrl3LcuAAAA

https://twitter.com/elmangazin/status/1673015937698594819?cxt=HHwWhoC84bPI37cuAAAA

🤦 No ho havia vist, no.

The social media managers of the publisher house Ivrea are angry that some Catalan people have asked them (with full respect) if they will ever publish some mangas translated to Catalan too (for context, this publisher has a headquarters in Barcelona but only publishes in Spanish). The comment that started it all was this one (in Spanish, so the publisher can understand without complaining):

Translation: Hi @/Ivrea, my niece asked me if some day she'll be able to read #SpyXFamily in Catalan? She's starting to get into manga now thanks to Dr. Slump and Night Guardians and she would love to read it in her mother tongue.

The official Ivrea account blocked Samfaina_visual right after saying this, and tweeted saying these are bad faith comments and that it looks like this is a troll. Ivrea has blocked the other users who commented saying they would like it too or showed support in favour of Samfaina_visual.

There's a Catalan online magazine that talks about mangas called Mangazine, they were blocked by Ivrea too because they reported about this happening, even though they have many times reviewed Ivrea's mangas (which is a way of promoting them without getting paid btw, they're not even thankful for that). They sent a very respectful message to Ivrea asking why they and other Catalan people who post about mangas were blocked, and Ivrea answered a very angry text full of anti-Catalan stereotypes (for no reason, nobody had brought them up before) and pure hatred for the Catalan language, and ends by saying that they will sue for hate crimes against Spanish. For having asked if they will publish in Catalan.

(It's the 3rd link. It's quite long so I'm not translating the full thing but if someone wants to know and doesn't speak Spanish, let me know and I will translate it)

See what we have to deal with? The mere fact that we still exist is treated as a hate against them, just because we survived these centuries of persecution and illegalization, resisted and didn't give in and abandon our language and culture to substitute them for the Spanish ones that they keep telling us are so superior. Nothing against Spanish, we would just like to be able to live in our language, like they have the right to live in theirs. But apparently that's a hate crime. This is the treatment that marginalized languages get in Spain.

I hadn't seen this case before anonymous sent me this ask, but it did not suprise me at all, taking into account the amount of Catalanophobia there is. Very often there are cases like this, or where Catalan speakers are denied healthcare in public hospitals in Catalan-speaking territories because the staff are Catalanophobic: an example from last month, where a man was being served dirty food and denied water and mistreated by the hospital staff in Palma; or when a man called an ambulance and the person who answered the emergency number refused to call the ambulance until he repeated it all in Spanish and started giving him lessons on the phone saying why he must speak Spanish and that "you are not Catalan here" for some reason instead of calling the ambulance; or when a doctor refused to treat a patient for not speaking in Spanish, when this patient had a psychic disability and Catalan was the only language she spoke; or the many, many, many, many, many, many cases where doctors have refused to attend Catalan speakers because they spoke to them in Catalan. Or how people are kicked out of services like a hotel, a bank, a taxi, a petrol station (this one with an extra of anti-Catalan slurs), a press conference, or an airplane for speaking Catalan. Or the way that the Spanish police arrests or fines people just for speaking Catalan (again, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times) and sues them because speaking Catalan to a policeman is considered disrespect of authority. Or the hoards of Catalanophobic insults that content creators who make stuff in Catalan get online, or the way that tragedies like airplane crashes and terrorist attacks are celebrated on Spanish social media because Catalan people died, or the way that Spanish nationalists (talking about individual citizens here, not just the police) have beaten people up for their ideology, even the Facebook group of Spanish people living in London called to "hunt independentists", among others. And this is without getting into what the Spanish media say or, even worse, the politicians, that reaches points like a mayor of PP (the Spanish conservative party) that publicly said "we must erradicate Catalan and its carriers" (I translate as "carrier" the term "agente portador" which is the wording used for someone who carries and spreads an illness).

All of these cases happened here in Catalan-speaking territories btw, it's not like we go somewhere else and expect to be attended in our language (unlike others ehem), it's in our own country that we're not allowed to use our language.

So, yeah.

[NewYorkTimes is Private US Media]

Over the past month, we’ve watched an astonishing, high-stakes global drama play out in The Hague. A group of countries from the poorer, less powerful bloc some call the global south, led by South Africa, dragged the government of Israel and, by extension, its rich, powerful allies into the top court of the Western rules-based order and accused Israel of prosecuting a brutal war in Gaza that is “genocidal in character.”

The responses to this presentation from the leading nations of that order were quick and blunt.

“Completely unjustified and wrong,” said a statement from Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister.

“Meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the United States National Security Council.

“The accusation has no basis in fact,” a German government spokesman said, adding that Germany opposed the “political instrumentalization” of the genocide statute.

But on Friday, that court had its say, issuing a sober and careful provisional ruling that doubled as a rebuke to those dismissals. In granting provisional measures, the court affirmed that some of South Africa’s allegations were plausible and called on Israel to take immediate steps to protect civilians, increase the amount of humanitarian aid and punish officials who engaged in violent and incendiary speech. The court stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, but it granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent further civilian death. For the most part, the court ruled in favor of the global south.[...]

The court was not asked to rule on whether Israel had in fact committed genocide, a matter that is likely to take years to adjudicate. Whatever the eventual outcome of the case, it sets up an epic battle over the meaning and values of the so-called rules-based order. If these rules don’t apply when powerful countries don’t want them to, are they rules at all?

“As long as those who make rules enforce them against others while believing that they and their allies are above those rules, the international governance system is in trouble,” Thuli Madonsela, one of South Africa’s leading legal minds and an architect of its post-apartheid Constitution, told me. “We say these rules are the rules when Russia invades Ukraine or when the Rohingya are being massacred by Myanmar, but if it’s now Israel butchering Palestinians, depriving them of food, displacing them en masse, then the rules don’t apply and whoever tries to apply the rules is antisemitic? It is really putting those rules in jeopardy.”[...]

The military campaign has “wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II,” the report quoted researchers as saying. The researchers, hardly some raving left-wing activists, are experts cited in one of the most respected news organizations in the world, The Associated Press.[...]

The International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding opinion in 2004 that the security barriers Israel was erecting in the West Bank violated international law, but that ruling has had no effect. The walls still stand.[...]

Indeed, what is a rules-based system if the rules apply only selectively and if seeking to apply them to certain countries is viewed as self-evidently prejudiced? To put it more simply, is there no venue in the international system to which the stateless people of Palestine and their allies and friends can go to seek redress amid the slaughter in Gaza? And if not, what are they to do?

For the cause of Palestinian statehood, every alternative to violence has been virtually snuffed out, in part because Israel’s allies have helped to discredit them. The most recent example is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that has, in many places, been successfully tarred as antisemitic or even banned altogether. Efforts to use the United Nations Security Council have drawn U.S. vetoes for decades. Is seeking redress at the appropriate venue for alleged violations of international law also antisemitic, as Israel’s defense minister said on Friday? Does no law apply to Israel? Are there no limits to what it may do to defend itself?[...]

The Biden administration has made the shoring up of the international rules-based order a centerpiece of its foreign policy but, unsurprisingly, has struggled to live up to that aspiration.[...]

Occasionally straying from your principles because circumstances require it is very different from being seen to have no principles at all, and that is precisely how much of the global south has come to regard the United States.

It seems especially shortsighted in these times that the Biden administration elected to wave away the carefully documented case prepared by South Africa. One of the biggest threats to the rules-based international order is the growing consensus in the poor world that the rich world will apply those rules selectively, at its discretion, when it suits the powerful nations that make up the global north, such as when Russia invaded Ukraine.[...]

As far as the rules-based order is concerned, when it comes to crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, it simply does not matter who started it. [...] The best way to shore up the rules-based order is to be seen, in word and deed, as committing to the institutions and moral commitments of that order.

28 Jan 24

ID: Instagram post by @/letstalkpalestine. The slide reads: "Let's Talk: 8 things to know about what's happening in Palestine." End ID.

ID: "#1 This is possibly the largest ever Palestinian liberation operation in modern history. Never before have Palestinians succeeded in taking back so much of their land and breaking out of the segregated ghettoes in which Israel has concentrated them." End ID.

ID: "#2 This was an 'attack' [the word attack is striked through] response. Anyone would fight back after a decades-long process of colonization, after they have been turned into stateless refugees, expelled and concentrated in tiny ghettoes, imprisoned, or killed for daring to resist. For 15 years Israel has besieged Gaza with snipers stationed all around it, drones occupying its skies 24/7, and navy patrols shooting at any fishermen who venture too deep. If this happened to your city, wouldn't you fight back?" End ID.

ID: "#3 Palestinians didn't 'infiltrate israel." Most Gazans are not actually from Gaza. 70% of them are from the same surrounding lands they liberated yesterday morning." A map is shown of the area, overflowing with orange pins, with only a few red pins near the Mediterranean Sea. "Each orange pin is a Palestinian village that israel wiped out and ethnically cleansed. Most Gazans are from these places, fighting to return home." End ID.

ID: "#4 Hamas has enough israeli prisoners to free every single Palestinian hostage held by israel. Typically, israeli-held Palestinian hostages are only released through a swap with israeli prisoners. The last Hamas-israel prisoner swap was 1 israeli soldier for 1,027 Palestinians. Hamas has more than enough israeli prisoners for a deal that would free every imprisoned Palestinian based on past ratios." Two boxes are shown on each side of the slide, one that reads, "36+ estimated israeli prisoners," and another that reads, "5,200 estimated Palestinian hostages." End ID.

ID: "#5 The Fall of the Gaza Wall In a historic moment already reshared millions of times online, Palestinian bulldozers have brought down parts of the israeli wall and fence that surrounds Gaza and traps in its residents. This comes as Palestinians have finally regained control of parts of the border, including the crossing in & out of Gaza. This is a historic achievement."

ID: #6 israel has never made concessions to Palestinians without pressure. Palestine can only be liberated by both violent and peaceful resistance, like any colonized nation in history. The only time in history israel gave up land was when it returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. This was only achieved after the 1973 War when the Egyptian-Syrian attack showed israel that it couldn't sustain its occupation of the territory, contrary to its prior belief." End ID.

ID: #7 This marks a new phase in Palestine. Palestine will not be freed overnight. Liberation is a long-term process. But the resistance's unprecedented achievements and strength have proven that even if Israel temporarily beats it back, the Siege on Gaza is coming to an end sooner rather than later. This does not mean that Gaza will be fully liberated and independent, but that Palestinians will likely gain more control and that israel can no longer treat Gaza as it has for the last 15 years." End ID.

ID: #7 Continued. Beyond Gaza, israel will be deterred from escalating its occupation against Palestinians in places like Jerusalem. Hamas has conclusively proven the effectiveness of fight back against the occupation, in contrast to the diplomatic means of resistance which -- while still important -- on their own have proven to be futile in the face of israeli rejectionism. This will likely shake up the Palestinian political scene, as the Palestinian Authority, which collaborates with the israeli military and refuses to defend its people, will now face even more challenges to its rule." End ID.

ID: “#8 What will happen now? Palestinians have never responded to israel with such a large operation. israel's actions will be more violent and intense than anything we've ever seen before. The Palestinian death toll is climbing faster than expected -- at 320 at the time of this publication. israel is considering a full-scale land invasion of Gaza, which guarantees higher death tolls. We need to keep sharing, educating and protesting in solidarity in order to pressure our governments to end their support for the israeli regime." End ID.

Remember this important kink rule. The cuter they look when snuggled up against you, the more depraved their kinks are.

Be warned that that sweet puppy girl in your lap wants you to do things to her that are illegal in at least 36 nations.

That cat boy laying his legs over your lap wants you to commit such heinous acts on his body that you'd get an express ticket to hell.

That nonbinary bunny wiggling their ass against you while claiming they're just trying to get comfy has thoughts that would scar an old god for life.

And just to throw it out there for obviously no reason, I'm a fan of a stateless society, as a Jew I don't believe in Hell, and I have a breeding kink that would make The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young look chaste. Just saying~