Written by: XRC

Governments over the world have been suppressing people since the beginning of time. Governments have used the most brutal and horrific of ways to suppress people and their freedom – torture, fake encounters, genocide, rape, disappearances, and sponsored media, who hide this homicide. These are the same governments who claim to be the messiahs of freedom and equality, the models of democracy, and those who claim to be working for the development of the people.

Just think of an area of the size of France being wiped out in genocide. The whole population being massacred, millions being displaced, children being snatched from their parents, people becoming refugees in their own country, and so on. If you think that such things just don’t happen in our ‘peaceful’ world, then you are definitely mistaken. Just because the ‘sponsored, corporate’ media doesn’t cover such things doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen at all. Darfur, a region in Sudan, of the size of France, has been witnessing all this since 1989. Home to about 6 million people from over 100 tribes, Darfur is a Muslim-majority region of Sudan. 

In 1989, General Omar Bashir took control of Sudan by military coup, which then allowed The National Islamic Front government to inflame regional tensions. Governments and rulers since ages have been looking forward to acquire more and more territory. In reality the rulers just want the lands, not the people. In a struggle for political control of the area, weapons poured into Darfur. Conflicts increased between African farmers and many nomadic Arab tribes.

Just in a bid to rise against the Government oppression, In 2003, two Darfuri rebel movements- the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)- took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining about the marginalization of the area and the failure to protect sedentary people from attacks by nomads. The government of Sudan responded in a horrific manner. They unleashed on the Darfuri people Arab militias known as Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback”. Sudanese forces and Janjaweed militia attacked hundreds of villages throughout Darfur. Over 400 villages were completely destroyed and millions of civilians were forced to flee their homes. 

The Government sponsored Janjaweed have effectively complete impunity for any actions against civilians, which have come to include systematic torture of tribals, rape of civilian women, collective reprisals (against families, neighborhoods, and villages), shooting to death of children who just are too young to understand anything, and attacks targeting medical personnel, human rights activists, and journalists.

In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month. The Sudanese government disputes these estimates and denies any connection with the Janjaweed. 

As the conflict in Sudan is in its 25^th year, central and state authorities have done little to stop the widespread practice of genocide by the Janjaweed in Darfur. Indeed, when confronted with the evidence of genocide, time and again by the International Criminal Court, the Sudanese government has attempted to impugn the integrity of the people. The Sudanese government appears unwilling to address the human rights crisis in the region and has not taken the necessary steps to restrict the activities of the Janjaweed. In June 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) took the first step in ending impunity in Darfur by launching investigations into human rights violations in Darfur. However, the government of Sudan refused to cooperate with the investigations.

This occupation has had all the typical attributes of any genocide, in unusually intense and prolonged form. For most of the last 25 years, Darfur has been under various flavors of de facto or de jure martial law, with killings, rape, torture, and illegal detention without trial everywhere, and official suspension of many of the norms of democratic governance and civil liberties.

People have also been crushed with heavy rollers, burned, stabbed with sharp instruments, and had objects such as chilies or thick sticks forced into their rectums. Sexual mutilation has been reported. Subjugated, humiliated, tortured and killed by the Government sponsored militias, the people of Darfur have been living through sheer hell for more than 25 years, the result of an increasingly brutal campaign of state repression. Sudan hides behind its carefully-crafted image of “non-violence” and presents itself in international forums as a model of democracy and Pluralism. All journalists, especially television crews, were expelled from Darfur.  With no intrusive cameras to record the brutalities of the Government, the world has been kept largely in the dark.

By beginning TV cameras and prohibiting the presence in Darfur of the International Red Cross and of human rights organizations, the Sudanese government has tried to keep Darfur out of the news.

On March 4, 2009 Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, became the first sitting president to be indicted by ICC for directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. The arrest warrant for Bashir follows arrest warrants issued by the ICC for former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior Ahmad Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb. The government of Sudan has not surrendered either suspect to the ICC.

Darfuris today continue to suffer and the innumerable problems facing Sudan cannot be resolved until peace is secured in Darfur. According to UN estimates, 2.7 million Darfuris remain in internally displaced persons camps and over 4.7 million Darfuris rely on humanitarian aid. Resolving the Darfur conflict is critical not just for the people of Darfur, but also for the future of Sudan and the stability of the entire region.

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Sources:

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide-in-sudan.htm

Written by: M

It seems that you aren’t safe anywhere, even while you’re using your mobile phone, with all of its encrypted data, and all of the personal information, search history, photos, videos, and passwords stored in it. AT&T’s sly tactics were recently brought to light when several newsgroups reported that AT&T and Verizon were using invisible data trackers on their customers’ cell phones.

AT&T claims that it has stopped its controversial practice of adding a hidden, undeletable tracking number to its mobile customers’ Internet activity. “It has been phased off our network,” said Emily J. Edmonds, an AT&T spokeswoman.

The decisive move comes after when AT&T and Verizon received a volley of critical news coverage for inserting hidden tracking numbers into their subscribers’ Internet activity, even after users opted out and are using a different mobile phone service. Last month, ProPublica (an independent, non-profit newsroom) reported that Twitter’s mobile advertising unit was enabling its clients to use the Verizon identifier. The tracking numbers can be used by sites to build an archive about a person’s behavior on mobile devices – including which apps they use, what sites they visit and for how long. The controversial type of tracking is used to monitor users’ behavior on their mobile devices where traditional tracking cookies are not as effective.

The way it works is that a telecommunications carrier inserts a uniquely identifying number into all the Web traffic that transmits from a users’ phone.

AT&T said it used the tracking numbers as “part of a test”, which it has now completed.
Edmonds said AT&T may still launch a program to sell data collected by its tracking number, but that if and when it does, “customers will be able to opt out of the ad program and not have the numeric code inserted on their device.”

A Verizon spokeswoman says its tracking program is still continuing, but added “as with any program, we’re constantly evaluating.”

Verizon uses the tracking number to identify the users’ behavior and offer advertisers insights about users gleaned from that data. Verizon says the data it sells is not tied to a users’ identity. “None of the data that is used in the program is personally-identifiable,” the company stated when it updated its privacy policy in 2012. Verizon offers its customers an opportunity to opt out of the program. But opting out doesn’t remove the tracking ID.

Link: Protect your PC and mobile devices from hackers & governments and surf anonymously

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Sources: (Flynn, Kerry. “AT&T Stops Using Undeletable Phone Tracking IDs.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/14/_n_6160704.html?ir=Technology>.)

Written by: M

BILASPUR/RAIPUR, India, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Some cases show that tablets directly linked to the deaths of more than two-dozen Indian women who visited a sterilization camp in India are most likely to have contained a toxic chemical compound commonly used in raSt poison, two senior officials in Chhattisgarh state said on Saturday evening.

Consecutive preliminary tests of the antibiotic ciprocin tablets were found to contain overwhelming amounts of zinc phosphide, Siddhartha Pardeshi, the chief administrator for the Bilaspur district, told Reuters.

“The antibiotics were handed out at the mass sterilization held a week ago in the impoverished state. At least 15 women have died, most of whom had attended the camp.”

“Authorities performed tests on the tablets after being informed that zinc phosphide was found at the nearby factory of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, the firm at the center of investigations into the deaths at a government-run family planning camp, Pardeshi and Chhattisgarh health minister”, Amar Agarwal said.

“A significant sample of the drugs have now been sent to laboratories in Delhi and Kolkata to verify that the tablets were contaminated as the preliminary report suggested”, Pardeshi said.

“But, this is what we anticipate,” he said. “Symptoms shown by the patients also conforms to that of which is found in zinc phosphide poisoning.”

Mahawar, run from an upscale residential street in state capital Raipur, had been barred from manufacturing medicines for 90 days back in 2012 after it was found in to have produced sub-standard drugs, but it did not lose its license.

An investigation is now under way into why the drugs were bought locally when there was enough stock of the medicine with the state’s central procurement agency, Agarwal said.

“There was no incentive to procure locally so we need to investigate why it was done. This means something is wrong,” he said.

More possible victims arrived at hospitals from villages on Thursday and Friday, some clutching medicine strips from Mahawar and complaining of vomiting, dizziness and swelling, a doctor at the district’s main public hospital said on Friday.

The new patients had not attended the sterilization camps, but had consumed the drugs separately, the doctor and another official said.

The state government said it had seized 200,000 tablets of Ciprocin 500 and over 4 million other tablets manufactured by Mahawar.

Police have arrested Ramesh Mahawar, the firm’s managing director, and his son. Mahawar has said both are innocent.

India is the world’s top sterilizer of women, and efforts to rein in population growth have been described as the most draconian after China. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population growth remains among the world’s fastest.

Sterilization is popular because it is cheap and effective, and sidesteps cultural resistance to and problems with distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas.

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Sources:
(Alfred, Charlotte. “Rat Poison Chemical Found In Drugs Blamed For India Sterilization Deaths.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Nov. 2014. Web. 15 Nov. 2014. .)