Tag: war

The shocking testimony of an Afghan student to the Guardian

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The shocking testimony of an Afghan student to the Guardian

The Taliban, a militant group that ran the country in the late 1990s, have again taken control.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, ousting the Taliban insurgents from power. But they never left the region.

After they blitzed across the country in recent days, the Western-backed government that has run the country for 20 years collapsed. Afghans, fearing for the future, are racing to the airport, one of the last routes out of the country.

“The Taliban have taken over the entire country,” Kempfer says.

“The Afghan national forces just melted away. Didn’t put up much resistance at all. The president of Afghanistan fled the country and the Taliban are in charge everywhere.”

He noted that the Taliban are allowing the United States to evacuate their own personnel. There are also some 20,000 to 40,000 Afghan nationals who wish to leave the country because they worked with the U.S. and believe they are in danger.

The evacuation is happening quicker than expected because U.S. planners did not think the Taliban would move in so quickly as U.S. troops withdrew.

For more what happening click here:

https://6abc.com/what-is-happening-in-afghanistan-news-taliban-kabul/10955430/

The shocking testimony of an Afghan student to the Guardian: “Now I have to burn what I have been building for 24 years.”
“As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started.”
“Early Sunday morning I was going to university for a class when a group of women ran out of the dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me that the police had evacuated them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul and they were going to hit as many women who did not have a burqa.
We all wanted to go home, but we could not use public transport. The drivers did not let us get in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman.
Meanwhile, the men standing around us were laughing and joking with our fear. “Go and put on the burqa,” one shouted. “These are your last days on the streets,” said another. “I will marry four of you in one day,” said a third.
As government offices began to close, my sister ran several miles to return home. “I turned off the computer, left my office in tears and said goodbye to my colleagues. “I knew it was the last day of my job.”
I have received almost two degrees at the same time from the best universities in Afghanistan. I should have graduated in November from the American University of Afghanistan and the University of Kabul, but this morning everything changed before my eyes.


I worked so many days and nights to become who I am today, and this morning when I got home, the first thing my sisters and I did was hide our IDs, diplomas, and certificates. It was catastrophic. Why hide things we should be proud of? In Afghanistan now we are not allowed to be known as the people we are.
As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war started by men. I felt like I could no longer laugh out loud, I could no longer listen to my favorite songs, I could no longer meet my friends at our favorite cafe, I could no longer wear my favorite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to work or finish university.
I liked to do my nails. Today, as I was going home, I took a look at the beauty salon where I was going for a manicure. The front of the store, which was decorated with beautiful pictures of girls, had been whitewashed.
All I could see around me were the frightened faces of women and the ugly faces of men who hate women, who do not like to be educated, to work and to have freedom. Instead of standing by us, they stand by the Taliban and give them even more power.
The Afghans sacrificed themselves for the little freedom they had. As an orphan I knitted carpets to be able to study. I faced many financial challenges, but I had many plans for my future. I did not expect everything to end like this.
Now it seems that I have to burn everything I have achieved in 24 years of my life. Possessing any identity or award from the American University is dangerous now. Even if we keep them, we are not able to use them. “There are no jobs for us in Afghanistan.”

May 19: Remembrance Day for the Pontic genocide

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The Greek genocide (Greek: Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων, Genoktonia ton Ellinon), including the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish national movement against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire and included massacres, forced conversion to Islam, forced deportations involving death marches[where?], expulsions, summary execution, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece). Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

By late 1922, most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed. Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the exodus and barred the return of the refugees. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Armenians, and some scholars and organizations have recognized these events as part of the same genocidal policy.

The Allies of World War I condemned the Ottoman government–sponsored massacres. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution recognising the Ottoman campaign against its Christian minorities, including the Greeks, as genocide. Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the Ottoman campaign against these Christian minorities as genocide, as have the national legislatures of Greece, Cyprus, the United States, Sweden, Armenia, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Many victims

The question of the number of victims of persecution during the decade that lasted until the Asia Minor Catastrophe concerns scholars and activists seeking the recognition of the events as genocide and is related to the question of the multitude of Greeks living in Asia Minor at the beginning of World War II. In the case of Pontus, the scholar and refugee Georgios Valavanis himself established in 1925 the number of 353 thousand victims, which was then reproduced by the activists of the Pontian genocide, as a result of which it was officially accepted and repeated in all relevant commemorative ceremonies. Political scientist Rudolf Rammel estimates that it cost the lives of approximately 326,000-382,000 Greeks. The number of 350,000 dead in the Pontus during the period of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923, is repeated by the genocide scholars Samuel Totten and Paul Bartrop. As the journalist Tassos Costopoulos proved, however, this number of Valavanis came with the arbitrary addition of 50,000 to the number of 303,238 displaced mentioned in a 1922 pamphlet, who were presented not as displaced but as exterminated. Costopoulos estimates that about 100-150,000 were exterminated in the period 1912-1924 in Pontos.

Global recognition

On February 24, 1994, the Greek Parliament unanimously voted to declare May 19 a “Day of Remembrance for the Greek Genocide in Asia Minor,” the day Mustafa Kemal landed in Samsun. Also in 1998, Parliament unanimously voted to declare “September 14th as a day of national remembrance of the genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turkish State.”

In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) officially recognized the Greek genocide, along with the Assyrian genocide, and issued the following resolution: 

"CONSIDERING that the denial of a genocide is universally recognized as the final stage of genocide, ensuring impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and well-prepared the ground for future genocides,
CONSIDERING that the Ottoman genocide against the minority populations during and after the First World War is usually presented as genocide against the Armenians only, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities,
DECIDES that it is the belief of the International Union of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against the Christian minorities of the empire, between 1914 and 1923, constituted genocide against the Armenians, Assyrians, Pontians and Greeks.
"THE UNION DECIDES to ask the Turkish Government to recognize the genocides against these populations, to formally apologize, and to take appropriate and important steps towards restoration (non-repetition)."

Commemorative plaque of the Pontian Brotherhood of South Australia for the exterminated Pontians in Adelaide, Australia.

The Pontian genocide is officially recognized as such by four states, Greece by law of 1994 (N. 2193/1994), Sweden by a vote in the Swedish parliament on March 11, 2010, Armenia by March 2015, along with the genocide of the Assyrians and the Netherlands, together with the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians, on April 9, 2015.

Turkey does not acknowledge that there was genocide and attributes the deaths to war losses, plague and disease and does not admit that there was genocide. Most modern Turks are partially or completely ignorant of these events. However, Turkish historians have publicly described the events as genocide.

Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

Author (s): info-scanner