US silent on Guantanamo abuse claim : Aren’t we all opaquely silent about the lack of transparency in global affairs??
April 16, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Aren’t we all hurting, prisoner or free?
Don’t we all distrust anything anyone says in public, especially our elected politicians?
Aren’t we all blinded already by global violence, hate and revenge?
Aren’t we all opaquely silent?
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. “
Martin Luther King Jr
US silent on Guantanamo abuse claim
Al Jazeera 16/4/2009
The US state department has refused to comment on a claim that guards at Guantanamo Bay prison camp abused a Chadian prisoner held there.
Al Jazeera reported on Tuesday that Mohammad al-Qurani had been beaten and tear-gassed by guards after Barack Obama, the US president, pledged to end abuse at the camp in January.
Cory Crider, a member of al-Qurani’s legal team, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday it was hard to ascertain how al-Qurani had been treated in recent months as the situation varied from camp to camp within the facility and also there had been “ramping up” of secrecy in the new administration.
On his second day in office, Obama ordered the closure of the prison, which has been heavily criticised by rights groups over reports of ill-treatment of detainees.
He also ordered that prisoners held there be treated in line with the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the abuse of detainees.
Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, said his clients had been subjected to similar abuses at Guantanamo Bay over the past two years and that the situation had remained the same despite the Obama administration coming to power.
“However, he ( Obama ) tasked the department of defence with conducting that review, so the same people… who had been running the operation for years were charged with being critical of their own operation. So, when the report came out, it said that everything was all right. It really wasn’t critical and independent in the ways we would have wanted.”
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Will Humanity Forget, Constantly, constantly?
April 12, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Laith filmed this family attempting to flee Fallujah – ten minutes later they were dead
Will we forget, constantly, constantly?
Or will we forever brush the discomfort aside because that corpse was not our mother’s or our child’s?
Or will we join Laith Mushtaq in saying, “Fallujah ( in-humane, senseless death ) never leaves my mind.”
Don’t we realize what ANY ‘army does on the ground’ and if we do, what do we choose to do or say about such a realization?
Dear Laith,
Thanks for your work and your article, because media, like everything else, should help us understand ourselves.
We, Afghan youth, understand those images that never leave your mind. We have to learn to cope somehow and we need to be strong.
And to hope that human civilization can change. If it doesn’t ?? ?????” What can we do? “
Sincerely,
Our Journey to Smile
Al Jazeera ‘Fallujah never leaves my mind’
By Laith Mushtaq, cameraman
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/04/200948132212418175.html
Laith Mushtaq was one of only two non-embedded cameramen working throughout the April 2004 ‘battle for Fallujah’ in which 600 civilians died.
When I think of Fallujah, I think of the smell. The smell was driving me crazy. In a dead body, there is a kind of liquid. Yellow liquid. The smell is disgusting, really. It sticks in your nose. You cannot eat anymore.
And you can’t get the pictures off your mind, because every day you see the same: Explosion, death, explosion, death, death.
After work, you sit down and notice there are pieces of flesh on your shoes and blood on your trousers. But you don’t have time to ask why.
I had to show the truth to people outside of Iraq.
I still remember the nurses couldn’t carry the woman because she was in too many pieces, people were jumping back when they saw it. Then, one nurse shouted: “Hey, she looks like your mother.”
In the Iraqi language that means: “She could be your mother, so treat her like you’d treat your mom.”
At some point, I couldn’t move anymore. I sat down on the street and kept smoking. I couldn’t move. I see what’s happening around me, but I can’t move. Khallas [enough]. I didn’t have any energy left.
The Americans said our pictures stirred up hatred against them. But what I did was only showing what their army did on the ground.
I don’t hate them, I don’t want vengeance, I just wish they had understood what they were doing.
US military admits killing mother, children
Afghan News Network 9/4/09
The US military in Afghanistan admitted Thursday that four people its troops killed in a raid were not “combatants”, after Afghans said they included a mother and her children, with a baby dying afterwards.
Aren’t ordinary Afghans both physically and vocally suffocated??
April 7, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Afghan ’smuggling bid’ youths die
Al Jazeera 05/04/2009
More than 60 Afghans, mainly children and youths, have been found dead after suffocating inside a shipping container in southwestern Pakistan in an apparent human smuggling attempt.
The physical suffocation of these Afghan youth seeking a better life is just as sad and devastating as the suffocation of the Voices of Afghan youth living in Afghanistan who are also seeking a more humane life.
Will ANYONE listen?
Will ANYONE listen to ordinary Afghan youth before they get suffocated?
Have you heard a SINGLE ordinary Afghan’s wish yet, while all of the world leaders and all of media talk about what non-Afghans want for Afghanistan?
The Voice of peace and humanity has a historical, present and future need to be heard.
This is why, unfortunately or otherwise, there will be protesters everywhere.
Un-healthy anger is accumulating because Systems have not addressed the majority’s genuine concerns sufficiently.
The state of international relations, as well as individual and community lives, needs to CHANGE.
We, unfortunately, cannot bring that CHANGE about through the status quo, far less through a fellow human being like Obama.
And we can’t get there through anger.
We need every individual to START by STOPPING, STOPPING to LISTEN, not to a few individuals, but to ordinary HUMANITY.
We humbly and quietly suggest that, as an example, while A FEW WORLD LEADERS are deciding the near future of Afghanistan, we can start by HEARING, and this is not even listening yet, to the ordinary wishes of ordinary Afghan youth.
Aren’t Afghans human beings?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWi26t5mB4
Do Afghan children need to respond at all to Obama’s and NATO’s new Afghan policy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTcxC1mZNc
Perhaps, then, ordinary humanity can begin growing.
Aren’t Afghans Humans too?
March 26, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
We are humans
We are proud to be Afghans
Freedom is a basic foundation of every human being and of all individuals
We ask for the right to live decently, freely.
We wish for peace, freedom, humanity.
Aren’t we humans?
Aren’t Afghans humans?
Aren’t we humans too?
Letter to Palestinian Dr Izzeldeen from Afghan youth
February 24, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Letter to Palestinian Dr Izzeldeen from Afghan youth
Dr Izzeldeen
Dr Izzeldeen lost 3 daughters and a niece in the Gaza conflict. He says that he still believes in peace. He said that his family was only armed with love and education.
Afghan youth in Bamiyan and all in Our Journey to Smile humbly wish to put the SMILE back on Dr Izzeldeen’s face.
Dear Dr Izzeldeen,
We, the youth of Bamiyan Afghanistan, grieve with you.
We know from personal firsthand experiences that grief is permanent and inconsolable.
As difficult as this grief is Mankind’s disappointment in the obstinate, undignified in-humanity of the few fellow human beings who would kill LOVE, again and again.
War and violence kills LOVE, again and again.
Raziq and Abdul
15-year-old Raziq and 12-year-old Abdul would like to specially comfort you using a poignant Afghan phrase, “Our ‘liver is bleeding’ with you (we are intensely sad with you).”
Ba-AmAn KhudA (wishing you the peace and protection of God),
Our Journey to Smile
ourjourneytosmile.com
Our Heart on In-Humanity
February 13, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Why have we become in-humane? Why terrorism?
Why such pride in insisting that we are right and others are wrong? Why the ‘clash of civilizations’?
Why can’t we find genuine friends, whose words we can trust? Why such disparities in life?
We get the feeling that life shouldn’t be this way, at least, people, humans, shouldn’t be this way.
Are we not all human?
Are we losing the gift of a smile?
Afghanistan’s dilemma is the world’s dilemma: extremism, conflict, politics and self-interest. Afghans, like all of mankind, want peace.
In 2008, Bamiyan university students volunteered to address this hope through a 3 month Peace Workshop.
At the end of the workshop, 16 students from different conflicting ethnic groups lived together in the same dormitory rooms for one semester. It was difficult but they have taken a step.
Join us in this continuing journey this year, going towards 21st September 2009, International Peace Day, at the World Heritage Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
In the midst of pain, disappointment and apparent impossibilities, you and I, all of us, should encourage each other in our journeys to recover our smile.
Especially at such a disheartening time in human history as this.
‘ Let us always meet each other with a smile, for a smile is the beginning of love.’ Mother Teresa
Our Journey to Smile : Humane Relations seeks to build wide scale humane relationships based on humane love. In the midst of pain, we hope to raise a majority public practice of humanity’s shared hopes, by encouraging ourselves and others to smile.
In 2009, Our Journey to Smile seeks international volunteers, one from every nation, to journey with Afghan college students from different ethnicities, in our common journey for humane relationships.
We would celebrate this together on International Peace Day on 21 September 2009, at the World Heritage Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
Our Journey to Smile : Humane Relations is based on Humane Love
L – Listens
O – Others-first
V – Violence not resisted with violence, but with grief and forgiveness
E – Empathizes with all humans as humans, including those perceived as “enemies”
What Our Journey to Smile is NOT :
- It is NOT political or religious.
- It is NOT a charity. It is voluntary.
- It is NOT a new idea. A smile is an ancient need and wisdom.
- It is NOT an institution.
- It is NOT activist. It is non-violent.
An Afghan’s Questions
February 12, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
An Afghan’s questions about global civility, about kindness
Why have we become so inhumane? Who is kind?
Can I trust NATO or the ‘terrorists’ ? Surely, they, like I, crave the possibility of love?
Do we, including you and I, Obama and Osama, the CEOs and the laborers, the haves and have-nots from the beginning of time, share the same understanding that we are human?
That we are born in times and places not from our own voluntary choosing?
That we all die?
That we wish for happiness and a better life?
That we admire compassion and value love?
That we have not seen any benefit from wars, save creating permanent rifts and permanent deaths?
That we don’t desire to be lonely, because we want to relate deeply with others?
Are there those in this world who will pursue a humane kindness?
Why must Man always insist that he alone is correct? Why has Man’s heart not enlarged?
Why is every Man unmoving with this obstinate presumption of CORRECTNESS?
If I asked two conflicting groups , won’t each group say that they, and not the other group, are correct? Correct socially, politically, religiously and ‘civil-ly’? Won’t they immediately think that I, Habib, have got my facts wrong about their ‘enemies’? Would there be any avenue for me to reason otherwise?
Isn’t it apparent that there is no ancient or modern way of judging who of the two parties is right? Nor plausible scientifically or spiritually within all of our lifetimes to call upon a verdict from the unseen God many claim to know vaguely?
How can I shirk SELF?
Whatever happened to Man’s heart?
Who is a sincere friend? Who can I trust?
Doesn’t our actual practice of love and conscience reveal how imperfect we are? Who is the friend who will tell me what’s real?
Why has Man reached the Moon and yet has not been able to reach his less fortunate neighbors? Why can we reach Space but not souls?
Why does Man rely on atoms and expensive defense systems yet cannot trust fellow human beings? Why do we trust machines more than Man?
Why does the world have more money, but yet, there are more poor people? Why don’t others figure significantly?
Why do a minority of men and women, in the name of democracy or Marxism, religion or civilization, have so much sway over common people like myself, making decisions that perpetuate the wars which the majority of us do not want?
Isn’t humanity’s hurt, anger and disappointment abysmal?
Can’t I build my life in peace?
Are we not human? Can we not smile?
Why are MY interests bigger and more important than YOURS?
What happened to the ancient possibility of a civilized world?
Why do some claim they love their enemies but resist and even kill them?
Why do some claim they desire peace but hold on to such hate?
I am tired but am willing to take any hard questions in a hard life just as much as I am hoping for some answers. Answers to questions I am asking on behalf of Afghans, on behalf of Man.