Omar Suleiman – Kashmir Genocide Russell Tribunal
AI: Summary ©
The segment discusses the global crisis in Bosnia, including the collapse of the peace process and the loss of human rights. The segment also touches on the global political and security crisis, including the actions of the United States and the actions of the European
the segment ends with a statement from the speaker, thanking everyone for their attendance.
the segment ends with a statement from the speaker, thanking everyone for their attendance.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Peace
be with you all and good evening.
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, in the name
of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful.
Growing up in the United States with Palestinian
parents who had their nation and identity stolen
from them, they made sure that Bosnia was
just as important to us as our own
land that we pray is one day liberated,
Inshallah.
That a soul in Sarajevo is just as
precious as a soul in Jenin.
And I begin actually with some of those
words that I grew up with from my
mother, May Hashem Rahimahullah.
Ahen Sarajevo, bakaytuki wa maa fee joobati illa
al-bukaa, bakaytu feeki wa yaa'a al
-shaa'bi wa al-awtaan, bakaytu feeki ihtiraaqa
ummeti fee bahri al-ahzaan, bakaytu feeki intihaak
al-Islami fee diyar al-Islam.
Man yunjidu al-adhaara fee Sarajevo, man yunjidu
al-atfaal, man yunjidu al-insana min baratin
al-insan.
O Sarajevo, I've mourned you perpetually, and I
possess nothing but my tears.
I've cried for you over the loss of
a nation and its people.
I've cried for you over the extinction of
my ummah in a sea of sorrow.
I've cried for you over the destruction of
Islam in a land of Islam.
Who will save the young women of Sarajevo?
Who will save the children?
Who will save humanity from the cruelty of
humanity?
We're one body, and every single aggression against
any part of that body is to be
viewed not as a toothache or a toe
injury because of our own human miscalculations that
assign importance to causes only on the basis
of casualty counts and political calculations, but as
a blow to the head and to the
heart of that body that threatens its very
ability to function.
Today, our heart is Kashmir.
I'd like to remind myself and others here
that our present narratives are often so distorted
due to deceptive narratives about history that have
found their way into the discourse.
When the British sold Kashmir to the Hindu
dogma in the 1800s, it was on the
condition that they affirm British supremacy.
We today are not subjected to that delusion.
There were a people in Kashmir before the
British arrived, and there were a people in
Kashmir before the British left behind a mess
of casualties that manifested most prominently in the
partition that followed.
In fact, there were a people in Kashmir
before the creation of the states of India
or Pakistan.
Martyrs' Day speaks to a massacre in 1931
before either were established.
And it's just as important to understand the
reality of 1931 in Kashmir as it is
to make sense of the * occupation in
1947, just like it's important to understand what
1917 meant for the Palestinians as it is
1948.
What's at stake is that Kashmir remains a
playground of the global superpowers around it the
way we see happening in places like Syria
and Yemen, and that a less-than-human
status is maintained under blockade as we see
in places like Gaza.
The contradiction that India is referred to as
the world's largest democracy in the world while
not only recently enshrining Modi's fascism into law
with citizenship act, but continuing to maintain the
most militarized zone in the world in Kashmir
with up to a million troops.
It is an irony similar to that of
Israel being referred to as the only democracy
in the Middle East with millions of occupied
people without citizenship whose subhumanity is now written
into the Jewish nation-state law.
The tragedy of genocide is not just the
genocide itself, but other compounding factors.
That the legal determination of genocide is most
often not enough for the world to actually
act, nor is it when the people can
no longer bear the crimes inflicted upon them.
It's when our global conscience has been sufficiently
disturbed that we're able to activate the necessary
pressure to stop genocide.
Working against us in that regard is that
the purveyors of violence, settler colonialism, and ethnic
cleansing maintain not just superior military capacity, but
the ability to blackout, bomb, and cripple the
media exposure of those crimes.
It's not just the technology of their drones,
but the ability to hack phones abroad and
shut down phones domestically, all while daring international
bodies of law to stop them.
We also have to reckon with our own
desensitization, numbness, and apathy with the amounts of
collective tragedy that only embolden the grip of
oppressors while weakening the will to liberation.
And lastly, that as these cases grow, the
oppressed are forced into another layer of cruelty
by having to compete for the attention of
the world.
Would Bosnia, which is again sensing the creeping
factors that led to the awful tragedies in
the 90s, still be front and center for
us if it happened in 2021?
Do Afghanistan or Iraq still matter?
Is it Yemen or Syria, Ethiopia or Mali,
Honduras or Guatemala, the Uyghurs or the Rohingya?
To us, it must always be all of
the above and more, with only our efforts
being divided for the sake of being specialized,
not our empathy selective on the basis of
convenience or culture.
So I'm here, as many of you today,
not as an expert of Kashmir, but wanting
in fact to be further educated on Kashmir.
Not as an eyewitness to the atrocities on
the ground, but a witness with my ears,
eyes, heart, and mind to our brothers and
sisters from Kashmir who can tell us how
we can be better for them.
The Foreign Minister of Bosnia informed us yesterday
that she would arrange a meeting with some
of the mothers of the martyrs of Srebrenica.
While that is a great honor, I can
guarantee you they would have much preferred our
earlier intervention over our delayed condolences.
So let's not continue to merely make symbols
of the tragedies we could have stopped with
the help of God and then our insistence
on working together for a better world for
all.
Thank you.
Wassalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh.