#deportation of ethnic minorities

[thenuclearmallard]

Nov 2nd 1943 (79 years ago) - 70,000 from the Karachay population of the Caucasus were deported from their native lands by Stalin.

Just a portion of the crimes committed by the government.

#Karachay #indigenous russia #indigenous #indigenous russian #culture #russia #important #colonization #fypシ #fypage #landback #soviet union #deportación #deportation #decolonize #Land back #muslim #ethnic minority #no to genocide #Displacement #russian war crimes

[vydumaj]

someone needs to conduct a study on why spaniards online are more happy to spread russian government propaganda more than any other demographic outside of american tankies. no, ukrainian people aren’t nazis for speaking ukrainian or fighting in the war. they’re not “selfishly prolonging” the war, but trying to stop the russian army from killing more people… (nothing here is a strawman I’ve seen literally hundreds of “progressive” spanish people say these things)

#the takes you see … I do want to unlearn spanish sometimes I really do #I’m as anti military and pacifist as you can be you’ve got to realize there’s a difference between Russian army attacking ukraine and the #Ukrainian one defending themselves from the attacks?? or?? #you’ll also see them spread Soviet propaganda like how the ethnic minorities that got deported during ussr times were ALL nazis and that’s #why it happened and actually people are Nazis for speaking their minority languages #and it’s always Spaniards?? I’ve never heard of the Spanish education system being worse than other places #like you’re not ~woke~ for advocating genocide of Eastern European Caucasian and north/central minorities #and you hear a lot about russian oligarchs in German and British politics but not in Spanish #maybe there’s a simple explanation but I don’t know it #it’s scary though #nazism tw #and yeah there ARE Nazis in the Ukrainian army … and the Russian one #more of them there #can’t even say it’s Russia having effective Spanish language propaganda bc you don’t see Spanish speakers from Latin America doing this #really? it’s something spain specific

[prigorie]

they fucking beat a 17 year old girl with heart problems to death in front of everyone else. because she was scared and hiding. just to make a point about what happens if someone tries to escape

#this is about the deportation to the ussr of the german ethnic minority living in romania #and it happened on the 4th of january 1945 #not that it doesn't happen today because it still does

[anticurses]

lrb this + members of our far right party - who are in our parliament - wanting to ‘remigrate’ every non citizen AND people who do have german citizenship but who migrated here plus their children :)

#like. idk if that’ll be successful but it would mean i - who was born and raised here - would be deported #to a country whose language i dont even speak :) #not to even mention thay we’re part of the (oppressed) ethnic minority there. fun!

[bijoumikhawal]

It is wild seeing people go "nasser sucks on a whole because he betrayed orher communists" okay cool what about the horrible shit he did to ethnic and racial minorities

#Cipher talk #I'm not saying getting rid of the British and reclaiming the canal wasn't good #But he also did like. Displace Nubians from their homeland to build a dam and stole land and money from ethnic minorities. #Partially through the justification that they were foreign citizens (even though some of them had literally been barred from seeking #Egyptian citizenship by the British) #Also the mass deportations/exiles and internment camps of those same people and the feeding into zionist propaganda #And nationalizing Coptic schools which has restricted Copts ability to teach history and culture

[makerinthemaking]

neil gaiman is a fucking zionist.

"b-but neil gaiman simply said both israel AND palestine have a right to exist!! that doesn't make him a zioni--" yes the fuck it does u privileged ignorant fucks. i shouldn't have to fuckin say this but y'all will say anything for the sake of defending the brits ig? even throwing those being mass genocided rn under the bus?

i used to admire the guy 'til i found out what he's believed, the genocidal state he supports the existence of, & continues to stand by what he said.

israel DOESN'T have a right exist.

not as it is, not as it's been & will always be. a genocidal state built on stolen land. its very citizens have shaped into a culture of discrimination, see the shit they post about palestinians. see questionnaires & statistics. segregation laws many of them gladly endorse. this ain't just the politicians (who have been loud in their prospects of ethnic extermination to allow for more land stealing) nor is it abt jews, abt neil's or anyone's jewish background. plenty jews speaking up against this bullshit, & already there were jewish ppl living in palestine before colonization (brought by an illegitimate act of imposed imperialism & not one palestinian representative in sight. the UK must also be held accountable but they won't be). dare y'all to tell me it shouldn't be the goal to give the land & the power back to its indigenous colonized peoples, regardless of the oppressing settlers already being... settled. it ain't the native peoples' problem to figure out, esp when so many of the colonizing settlers will support the shit thrown at palestinians. there's maybe like 1000 palestinians losses for very israeli casualty. US cops r trained by Israel, not to mention Israel equips them w shit to k1ll minorities in the US. Palestinians stand by BLM & gave advice on how to dodge gas & bullets during protests. they stood by Malcolm X & Black Panthers. BIPOC oppression & fight has always aligned w Palestinians'. israel freely enjoys basics & luxuries & will fuss abt the silliest shit like not getting enough diet flour at the moment, while publicly segregating & making racist mock of palestinians for literally not having access to basic shit like water & shelter & for getting their population violently cleansed & decimated while in an open-air prison. they're not even allowed to try & leave without risk of getting killed, & they're bombed even where Israel directs them it's safe to go (like South Gaza!) but why should they leave? it's THEIR land. would be successful cultural genocide. & now Israel declines offers to recover Israeli hostages just bc they don't wanna return infant Palestinian hostages, & instead Israel bombs places where ISRAELI hostages may be kept. even target-bomb hospitals, houses. freed Israeli hostages come out saying how appalled they are at how Israel failed them & keeps failing them. Israel's also been stealing & jailing/target killing palestinian children for ages. this mass killing's been going on for decades, yet Palestine is demonized by media when they try defend themselves. ain't no matter of "two sides" & "neutrality" when one side is oppressed & the other the oppressor. hamas is israel's oppression fault (& their politics actually see them as a convenience). actual palestinians have stated again & again they don't just want the genocide to end, they also want their stolen land back & the genocidal invasor state to be dismantled. which is what's right. the state of israel often has to delete its own posts cuz they're always found to be fabricated, falsified shit against palestinians, now western jewish AND christian celebrities post abt how "scared" they are, from the safety of their mansions & limos. it was already illegal to wear traditional muslim attire in anti-muslim countries such as france, now it's illegal to even peacefully protest for palestine & if u do ur thrown in jail as a terrorist or deported. these countries publicly support israel. israel has the army the means & the world's support, palestine's been in need of support & neilman ain't helping. should just shut his goddmn mouth. ain't he the one getting genocided this day. i dare that moron neilman to come at me i'll fucking have him, he's just like any other people who won't let themselves be educated anyway. not by us, much less by the oppressed people of palestine, the ones actually getting the shitty end of this situation. im so done. bland fuckin spineless "liberals". so quick to defend the british. stop fucking defending rich public figures online & do something for the persecuted ppl actually getting killed rn.

they're never on equal footing when it's 15 goliaths against 1 david.

no, israel shouldn't fucking exist & neil gaiman is a fucking zionist for even saying it should. not sorry i said this - palestinians r getting worse than rudely worded posts.

not a war. GENOCIDE.

#i dare a bitch to come at me. he knows well how to get his fans to pile on people anyway #Palestine #Israel #free palestine #israel palestine conflict #neil gaiman #neilman #Zionism #settler colonialism #islamophobia #ethnic cleansing #genocide #anti zionisim #Hamas #terrorism

[loumands]

Today (April 8) is The International Romani Day. The Romani people (also called Rromani, Romany, Roma) are Europe's largest ethnic minority with an estimated 10-14 million people, though knowing exact figures is hard because the Romani often live on the fringes of society and many Romani choose not to disclose their ethnic identity. The Romani are unique among peoples in the sense that they've never identified with any territory or claimed they have a homeland where they came from. Their origin was somewhat a mystery for a long time (the slur "gypsy" comes from Europeans thinking they came from Egypt) but later genetic research has traced their ancestry to northern India and more specifically to the casteless Dalits. The Romani arrived in southeastern Europe by the 1300s and in western Europe by the 1400s, and in modern times the live in every continent.

The Romani experience a very high level of discrimination and marginalization and are among the most persecuted groups of people in the world. The entire history of the Romani people has been filled with ostracization, deportations, slavery, and systematic abuse ranging from segregation to forced sterilizations. Anti-Romani sentiment reached its peak during the Holocaust when 25%-50% of the European Romani were killed in the genocide called Porajmos, and some countries' Romani populations were destroyed completely. After the war the communist Central and Eastern European states tried to forcibly assimilite and suppress their Roma populations. In the present day anti-romani racism continues to be extremely common, with the studies showing most Europeans (especially Eastern Europeans) have unfavorable views of Romani people, hate crimes against them being common, and many of them living in poverty and marginalized.

People have many misconceptions about the Romani that often trace all the way back to the Middle Ages. The Romani are often confused with other itinerant groups like Irish travellers which are culturally and ethnically a completely separate group. Despite being almost synonymous with the nomadic lifestyle most Romani nowadays are not migratory, and with those who are it's often not by choice but because of persecution or homelessness. Most Romani are Christians or Muslims and they don't usually practice witchcraft, and if they do it's never to try to curse of hex anyone. There is a prevailing conception that Romani are seductive and hypersexual despite that Romani communities tend to be fairly sexually conservative. Fetishization harms especially Roma women who are often victims of sexual violence. While it may be true that there's more crime among the Romani populations (there are conflicting studies about this) majority of Romani are not thiefs or otherwise criminals, and it's important to understand that the crime is a direct result of poverty and deprivation, with it often being almost impossible for the Romani people to get jobs or higher education and being generally rejected by the society around them. The Romani themselves are frequently victims of crime, for example being extremely overrepresentated among the trafficked people.

Despite all this, the Roma people have persisted for hundreds of years and managed to retain their culture and identity. The Romani populations around the world have very diverse cultures and traditions but have many similarities too. A very high value placed on the family and deep love that the Romani people have for each other is something i think has helped them to survive. Despite all the challenges i'm optimistic about the future and i believe that the Romani will continue to survive and things will get better even though it may take time.

#initially i thought write like a real masterpost with links and sources and all but then i realized i don't have time for that lol #so this is just a 'hey we exist!' shoutout post #roma tag #keanu.txt

[avizou]

Pakistan is in the process of deporting 1.7 million Afghan refugees.

At least 60% of them are children born and raised in Pakistan, as Afghans have been seeking refuge within their southern neighbour's borders since the 1970s. Harrassment by Pakistani law enforcement has increased to unprecedented levels as they have started raiding refugee camps. People are held at newly constructed detention centers without transparency or access to legal representation.

Afghans are now being forced to return to a country ruled by a group that doesn't grant women equal rights and is aiming to establish a gender-apartheid state. Ethnic and religious minorities continue to suffer state-sanctioned violence. Among these refugees, journalists, former government employees and ISAF collaborators will all have to fear for their lives upon return.

Additionally, Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian crisis. Higher grain prices, an on-going draught and continued international sanctions are currently putting 20 million people at risk of a famine. Just recently, several magnitude 6 earthquakes killed over 3,000 and injured over 10,000 in the Western province Herat.

#afghanistan #pakistan #refugees #current events #the pakistani state has been sponsoring terrorism and proxy wars in afghanistan for the last 40-ish years btw.

[luvfy0dor]

Hey y'all! I know my posts aren't the longest things in the world, but if you've got time to read them, you've got time to sign petitions to help the people of Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Azerbaijan! Here's some good links to places in which you can donate or sign, there is genocide going on and it is being completely ignored.

Donation Button For Palestine

^ If you can't donate, click here and press the button. You can press it every 24 hrs and it will go towards helping Palestine. Writers in Gaza say demand for ceasefire is more needed right now though!

PETITIONS;

Investigation of War Crimes Committed by Israeli Military

Immediate Ceasefire

Call For Immediate Ceasefire

Demand For USA to Stop Sponsoring Israel

Free Palestine

Demand The U.S. to Cease Financial Aid to Israel

Stop Unethical Cobalt Mining in Congo

Stop Apple, Samsung And China From Exploiting Children To Mine Cobalt In Congo

Investigation on Violent Military Action on Peaceful Protesters in Sudan

Help The People in Sudan

Save Sudan

Stop Azerbaijan's policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Armenians in Artsakh

Stop the Forced Deportations of Armenians from Aghavno and Berdzor

OTHER GREAT POSTS;

Gaza Updates - Sulfurcosmos

Ways You Can Help Palestine - Sulfur Cosmos

Links to Sites For Palestine, Congo, and Sudan - Rockabswing

Australian Residents Petition to Call For Ceasefire - Catshinji

What to Boycott NOW - Fairuzfan

Brands That Support Israel - Komsomolka

Israel Truce Violations - Sulfurcosmos

Boycotts - boopy-boop

How to Help as a Minor - the-leftist-nd-slander-kids

Israel Wants to Replace UNRWA With CIA Fronted Group - fiapple

Palestinian Businesses To Support - Stormlex

Lord Balfour Painting Slashed - probablyasocialecologist

SOME OF THE PETITIONS ARE OLDER, BUT IT DOES NOT MATTER, KEEP SUPPORTING THESE PLACES!!!! If you know of anything else going on that I haven't included, please tell me.

#free gaza #gaza #gaza strip #free palestine #palestine #help palestine #free congo #congo #sudan #free sudan #azerbaijan #stop israel #stop war #stop the genocide

[beardedmrbean]

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A human rights organization representing ethnic Armenians submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court on Thursday, arguing that Azerbaijan is committing an ongoing genocide against them.

Azerbaijan’s government didn't immediately comment on the accusations. The neighboring countries have been at odds for decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and are already facing off in a separate legal case stemming from that conflict.

Lawyers for the California-based Center for Truth and Justice, or CFTJ, say there is sufficient evidence to open a formal investigation into Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other top leaders for genocide. They have submitted a so-called Article 15 communication urging the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan to look into alleged atrocities.

Khan’s office will now consider the evidence submitted and determine if the court will open an investigation, a decision expected to take months.

“My goal here is to get the highest bodies that protect human rights to take some action, not just mere words,” Lala Abgaryan, whose sister Gayane was killed by Azerbaijani soldiers in 2022, told The Associated Press.

Her sister’s body was badly mutilated and images of the abuse were spread online. Abgaryan says the pictures were so heinous that she suffered psychological damage after looking at them.

Long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted in 2020 into a war over Nagorno-Karabakh that left more than 6,600 people dead. The region is within Azerbaijan but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Last year, following a lightning military campaign, Azerbaijan retook the disputed territory. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000, more than 100,000 of the region’s ethnic Armenians fled, although Azerbaijan said they were welcome to stay and promised their human rights would be ensured.

Prior to Azerbaijan’s offensive, Armenia and former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo accused Azerbaijan of committing genocide by creating conditions aimed at destroying Karabakh Armenians as a group.

A group of around 30 people gathered in the rain in front of The Hague-based court Thursday to hand over more than 100 pages of documents.

The rights organization said it has submitted a dossier of evidence containing the testimony of more than 500 victims and witnesses.

“These atrocities are captured on social media, by Azerbaijani soldiers themselves, where you hear them laughing, making comments, and taking the dead bodies that they’ve just slaughtered and beheaded,” CFTJ leader Gassia Apkaria told the AP.

Legal experts say that genocide may be out of reach for the court. Armenia is a member of the ICC, but Azerbaijan isn't, leaving prosecutors with jurisdiction only over crimes committed on Armenian territory. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Forcing nearly the entire population to relocate to Armenia, however, could fall within the court’s remit. Deportation is considered a crime against humanity.

“There is no way this was an exodus by chance,” says Mel O’Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia and genocide expert.

The court has moved forward with an investigation under similar circumstances into possible crimes committed by Myanmar against the Rohingya minority group. While Myanmar isn't a member state, neighboring Bangladesh is and around 750,000 people have fled across the border after being forced from their homes.

The CFTJ’s request came amid two weeks of proceedings between Armenia and Azerbaijan at another global court in The Hague. The United Nations' top court, the International Court of Justice, is hearing arguments related to a pair of cases stemming from the conflict. Each country has accused the other of violating a racial discrimination treaty.

#nunyas news #waiting for the crickets to start up

[oceanmonsters]

To summarise:

a non-verbal/minimally verbal Black 17 year old UK citizen went missing from the hospital where he was being treated for psychosis

local police and british transport police were notified of his disappearance (i.e. he was known to be a missing person)

he was arrested at a train station for “fare evasion”

police claim that they were “unable to engage with the male or verify the details provided”

because of this, he was then assumed to be an immigrant and handed over to immigration enforcement, who record him in their documents as a Nigerian national who does not have leave to remain in the UK (once again, he is a UK citizen who has never even been to Nigeria. According to his mother he “never would’ve said he was Nigerian”. It’s unclear whether he is even Nigerian by ethnicity). 

a british transport police commander said she assumed the teenager was Nigerian because of his accent (his mother contests this; she says that on the rare occasions he speaks he has a Manchester/London accent, on account of him being born and raised in England).

in the records prepared at the immigration detention centre, it is stated that his removal from the UK is “imminent” as he had “failed to give satisfactory or reliable answers”

to emphasise: because he was black and minimally verbal and psychotic, they assumed he could not speak English. UK immigration services prepared to deport a black minor to a country simply because they assumed he was an immigrant from that country, without any actual evidence of his nationality or immigration status or what country he was actually from.

This is genuinely one of the most disgusting and scary cases I have heard about in a while. It shows two things: one, the consequences of the dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric and “hostile environment” policies from our government over the past years — how citizens can be picked up off the street and assumed to be immigrants until proved otherwise — and how any discussions about racism and anti-Blackness in the UK are inherently linked with immigration and one cannot be discussed without the other l. Secondly, the intersection between ableism and racism/anti-Blackness — how disabled and mentally ill individuals of colour are the most vulnerable and any discussion about racism & ableism has to take this into consideration.

#uk politics #racism #antiblackness #ableism #acab #abolish the police

[bobemajses]

Were there Jews in Chechnya?

Of course!

In 1897, the Jewish population in Grozny numbered 1,711 (11% of the total population) and was divided into two groups: "native" Mountain Jews and "Russian" Ashkenazim. Next to the central mosque stood a grand, Moorish-style synagogue.

They partially assimilated into Chechen society by forming a Jewish teip, the Zhugtii. All ethnic minorities had the option of forming a teip in order to properly participate in the developments of Chechen society such as making alliances and gaining representation in the Mekhk Khell, a supreme ethnonational council that is occasionally compared to a parliament.

In 1944, the NKVD deported the entire Chechen populace in Chechnya, and moved other ethnic groups into their homes; the Jews mostly refused to take the homes of deported Chechens while there are some reports of Chechens entrusting their homes to Jews in order to keep them safe.

During the First Chechen War, many Mountain Jews left due to the Russian invasion and bombardment. Despite historically close relations between Jews and Chechens, many also suffered high rate of kidnappings and violence at the hands of armed Chechen gangs who ransomed their freedom to "the international Jewish community".

#chechnya #jewish #north caucasus #chechen

[warcrimesimulator]

Here's a few of the genocides and ethnic cleansings committed by Russia towards ethnic minorities and occupied peoples, and this isn't even close to all of them

Circassian Genocide: 400,000–1,500,000+ deaths of the indigenous Circassian people committed by the Russian Empire (still denied by russian govt today)

Genocide of the Ingrian Finns

Polish Operation of the NKVD: executions of 111,091 Poles living in the Soviet Union

Deportation of the Crimean Tatars: 34,000-195,471 deaths

Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush: 123,000–200,000 deaths

Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union: 16,500 to 50,000 deaths

Deportation of the Kalmyks: 16,000+ deaths

Genocide of Volga Germans

[hirkyy]

people are fucking dense, neonazi sentiment is as much of a problem in ukraine as everywhere in europe, meaning a big one. which is why ethnic minorities are particularly vulnerable during wartime, ukrainian roma who fled to western europe face discrimination and violence regularly and ethnic minorities in general are overrepresented in ukrainian state child care institutions where much of the illegal abductions and deportations of children to russia take place. every european in fact needs to log off and take their head out of their ass to see what's happening in their own country while they are marinating in the most america-specific braindead online cesspool imaginable. there are plenty of organizations working to improve the human rights situation of jewish, romani, tatar, armenian and countless other people in europe, most of you just don't actually give a shit about the lives of minorities beyond virtue-signaling to americans on the internet. and a lot of eastern europeans show their true colors and go ass out with the most rabid racism when it comes to roma in particular.

[ausetkmt]

Black nurses have shared their experiences of racism in the workplace, as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) commemorates the 75th anniversary of Windrush at its annual conference this week.

In June 2018, the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, commissioned the Windrush Lessons Learned review – a report reflecting on the causes of the Windrush injustices. The independent review was in response to mounting evidence that members of the Windrush generation were losing jobs, homes and access to benefits, as well as being denied NHS treatment, detained, and forcibly deported to countries they left as children.

The findings, alongside the testimonies of black British citizens affected by the hostile environment, are truly anguishing.

Wendy Williams, the HM inspector of constabularyappointed as the independent reviewer, has examined the key legislative, policy and operational decisions that led to the Windrush injustices, and spoken to those who suffered grave and catastrophic consequences from becoming entangled in the government’s hostile immigration policies.

Williams’ review draws a stark conclusion: the UK’s treatment of the Windrush generation, and approach to immigration more broadly, was caused by institutional failures to understand race and racism. Their failures conform to certain aspects of Lord Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism, enshrined in the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999.

Macpherson defined institutional racism as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

The Windrush Lessons Learned review pulls no punches in describing the failure of ministers and officials to understand the nature of racism in Britain. It shows how the government’s hostile environment immigration policies had devastating impacts on the lives and families of black citizens within the UK.

The fact that black British people who had spent much of their lives in Britain, working and paying taxes, were accidental victims of the government’s immigration policies, perfectly illustrates how the coalition and Conservative governments not only failed to adhere to existing race relations legislation, but also showed a complete lack of understanding about “indirect discrimination” – a concept accepted in legislation as far back as the 1976 Race Relations Act.

Neither that lesson of “unintended discrimination”, nor the definition of “institutional racism” from the Macpherson report, seem to have been learned by Britain’s policymakers and politicians. Not only is intent irrelevant for assessing whether policies are racially discriminatory, but race equality laws (including the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act and the public sector equality duty) appear to have made little difference to immigration and citizenship policies affecting people from different ethnic groups.

This reveals a shocking lack of understanding of what racism is – namely that it’s not solely about intent. In April 2018, the dramatic apology by the then prime minister, Theresa May, showed a failure to understand this lesson, when she insisted it wasn’t her government’s intent to disproportionately affect people from the Caribbean in the operation of hostile environment immigration policy.

For policymakers and politicians to learn the profound lessons of the Windrush review, they must not only “right the wrongs” suffered by the Windrush generation (as well as those from other ethnic minority groups), but they must also understand how and why immigration and citizenship policies, and Home Office culture, have repeatedly discriminated against black and ethnic minority citizens over the decades.

The Windrush generation are owed a full apology – an apology that is based on understanding that their treatment wasn’t an accidental misfortune, but the result of institutional failure to understand the role of race and racism in Britain.

#Black nurses question how much has changed 75 years after Windrush #windrush #british immigration #british racism #Nurses of the Windrush #Black Nurses in UK #english racism #immigration iies #The Windrush review is unequivocal: institutional racism played its part #sajid javid

[septembriseur]

So, like, there’s this guy in Afghanistan who I kind of know, but don’t really know well, like he was a teenager who worked at a cafe, and every day he emails me about a million times to tell me how bad his situation is and how he absolutely has to get out of Afghanistan. And he’s not wrong! He’s an ethnic minority who has suffered terribly since the U.S. withdrawal, in ways that most people in the U.S. could not imagine. But he has also wasted his time and money doing dumb stuff that I told him not to do, like getting smuggled into Iran illegally and then promptly deported (like I predicted he would). And I have sent him some small amounts of my own money a few times, because: the thing is: I do genuinely know that he is in terrible straits! But I have told him many, many times that there is absolutely nothing that I can do for him, that there is no way for him to escape Afghanistan, and that I cannot keep sending him money. But he is convinced that if I just got him a lawyer in the US, then surely the lawyer would know how to get him to the US. And I have tried to explain to him that many, many lawyers have been working since August 2021, often pro bono, to try to help the approximately 90,000 or so Afghans who have the most legible and realistic claims to US resettlement, and that almost none of these people have actually been resettled in the US. But there is this sheer dumb insistence on his part, a deeply-held conviction that this is not the way the world works, that this cannot be the way the world works, and that surely if he just told the right person his story then they would help him— because no human being would tolerate the knowledge of another human being’s suffering if they could alleviate it. Or rather in the natural world, the world that has not been set terribly awry by warfare, no human being would do this. And America has marketed itself as that natural world, where human beings live as they are supposed to.

So he keeps insisting. There must be something I can do. I thought he would give up if I didn’t reply, but he doesn’t. He’s like a specter in my inbox. He is the most extreme embodiment of some unnameable problem: that there is nothing I can do, and yet it seems impossible that there is nothing I can do, and that I just sort of have to watch on my $500 smartphone as people I know have increasingly horrible things happen to them.

I don’t actually particularly want any comments in response to this; I’m just posting it. There’s a friend-of-friend I’ve worked with who wins prizes for her work in refugee mental health in the UK, and semi-regularly on Facebook she posts these brutal updates about her complete despair and helplessness and inability to tolerate it. And people comment the most uselessly supportive things, to which she is sometimes quite sharp in her replies. And I understand why! Because nothing is going to change and no one reading has the power to change anything; that power has been systematically stripped from all of us. And TBH this is not even a huge part of my daily life, so what right do I have to complain? But it still is a daily part of my life. Every day. I am always aware of it.

#long post #reading Halia Warsha has been helpful