killing – Page 3 – Shahidul News

Today in Gaza

You who are silent
You who leave it to others
You who do not hear the screams

Every bomb that falls
Every ‘call for restraint’
Every blood clot etched in the sand

Calls out in vain
Calls out in pain
Calls out your name

Remember you let it happen
Remember you turned away
Remember you were silent

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This letter arrived this morning:
Dear Shahidul
This is from my friend Selim, about yesterday’s aggression. As you know I worked on year in Gaza (as the head of the UNRWA health services that provides primary health care to 20,000 refugees daily. So far more than 200 dead and more than 700 wounded, many civilians as there is no “clean” war in urban settings and surgical strikes; The horror is there. And foreign governments recommend restraints on both sides as if it was a solution. Hamas respected the truce for many months and saw no improvement.
Thanks for doing what you can.
Pierre Claquin
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Today in Gaza
It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window, barely had I looked out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn’t understand, then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzpi Livni’s statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hussni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all.
What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I’m in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.
6 locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza city. The images are probably not broadcasted in US news channels. There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men are still alive, someone lifts a hand here, and another raise his head there. They probably died within moments because their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts hanging out and they’re all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home, (which is close to the 2 largest universities in Gaza) a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students, they’d been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbors kids, young men who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I’m writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the 3 Rayes boys, They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now their sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn’t spoken a word since.
What did Olmert mean when he stated that WE the people of Gaza weren’t the enemy, that it was Hamas and the Islamic Jihad who were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us?? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike 3 schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.
In all the locations people are going through the dead terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren’t working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the floor weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanished after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.
And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It’s truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren’t life threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window, she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home, too many people needed medical attention more urgently. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia
200 people dead in today’s air raid. That means 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -actually all of us- would gladly have Hamas sign off every last basic right we’ve been calling for the last few months forever if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.
The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is ok, but 2 of my uncles’ homes were damaged. We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fate has already been sealed.
This doesn’t even begin to tell the story on any level. Just flashes of thing that happened today that are going through my head.
Peace
Selim
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Identity Card, a poem by Mahmoud Darwish
gaza-holocaust-report
gaza-violence-attracting-people-to-citizen

The Game of Death

She may well have been the best leader available. With a military dictator and a corrupt businessman as the alternatives, Benazir Bhutto, with her western admirers and her feudal followers, was clearly a front-runner. How she died will probably remain a mystery, but she was playing the game of death, and it was unlikely she would win every time.
It is difficult to write about people who have just died. Many are grief stricken at the untimely death of the former prime minister. Even her critics are shocked by the way she was hunted down. An insensitive piece would aggravate their pain, and one doesn’t generally speak ill of the dead. I remember as a child asking my mother “Amma. Do bad people never die?” A man not known for his strength of character had died, and newspaper reports had described him as an honest social worker. I am no longer of the age to get away with such questions. But even for those who have loved Benazir, I believe the questions need to be asked if this cycle is to ever stop.
It was 1995. They were troubled times in Pakistan. I had gone over to Karachi on the invitation of my architect friend Shahid Abdulla. There were no telephone booths at Karachi airport, or anywhere else in the city. The government was worried the MQM would use them for their communication. Sindh was at war with itself.
Shahid wanted me to run a photography workshop at the Indus Valley School of Architecture and Design that he was involved in. Those were the days when we had time for long conversations. We talked of many things. The gun-toting security men outside every big house in Karachi. Shahid’s meeting with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. His memories of Benazir. But the conversation would often veer to a person we both admired. Abdus Sattar Edhi, the humanitarian who had set up an unparalleled ambulance service all over Pakistan.
On the morning of the 10th October, I went over to see the man. He had an easy charm that came from living a simple life and having little to hide. He sat on his wire mesh bed, talking of how things started. We were regularly interrupted by people coming in with requests, and Edhi responding to minor crises. Then we heard about Fahim Commando the MQM leader, having been killed. Fahim and his comrades had apparently been caught in an ambush and all four had died. They had been in police custody, but the police had all escaped and not one of them had been injured. Edhi was not judgmental. Fahim was another man who needed a decent burial. As I watched him bathe the slain MQM leader, I could see the burn marks on the bullet holes on the commando’s body.
Abdus Sattar Edhi, bathing Fahim Commando. Karachi. Pakistan. 10th October 1995. ? Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World
The extra-judicial killings during Benazir’s rule are well documented. The fact that no investigation was done when her brother Mir Murtaza was killed outside Bilawal House, the family home, fueled the commonly held belief that her husband Asif Zardari had arranged the killing. Even Edhi’s ambulances had not been allowed access. Not until Murtaza had bled to death. Anyone who witnessed the murder was arrested; one witness died in prison. Benazir was then prime minister.
Murtaza had been vocal against the corruption of Zardari. Benazir defended her husband stoically throughout. Despite the Swiss bank accounts, she assured people that he would be seen as the Nelson Mandela of Pakistan. With Zardari now tipped as the new chief of PPP, Pakistan’s Mandela and his Swiss bank accounts might well be the new force. Whether Pakistanis will see this polo-playing businessman as the saviour of the day remains to be seen.
Supported by the US, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had been largely responsible for the break up of Pakistan and the genocide in Bangladesh. The current string pulling by the US has hardly made Pakistan a safer place. The western support of militarisation in Bangladesh and the growing importance of Jamaat is an all too familiar feeling. If Pakistan is an omen, it is a sinister one.
Perhaps Mrs. Packletide would have known how the former prime minister of this nuclear nation died. But the government’s attempts to cover-up will do little to quell the conspiracy theories. Like the Bhutto family, the military too have burned a lot of bridges in getting to where they are. There are too many skeletons in their closet. There is no going back, and no price too high.

We Would Have Had So Much Fun Shooting Them Down

Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport, 13th October 2001.

The documents were impressive. I had an official letter from Le Directeur des Rencontres, Ministere de la Culture of Mali certifying that a visa was awaiting me in Bamako, a certificate of accreditation and an invitation letter from Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, a well-known personality in France and the director of AFAA/French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Still, I left well in time, knowing there might be problems. I was to do a report for the Prince Claus Foundation in the Netherlands and was on my way to attend the Fourth African
Photography Encounter in Bamako. I also had my yellow fever certificate.
None of what happened at the airport seemed sinister, until you realised what it was leading to. The immigration in Hall B in Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle is BEFORE the check-in desk. The questions started well before then. Where was I going, what did I have with me, why was I going. We went over and over the same things.
Lengthy manoeuvres that kept slowing me down. Still, there was almost an hour to go to departure time when I reached the check in desk, and immigration had already been done. I had a confirmed ticket, so I wasn’t worried. There were plenty of passengers at the check in desk, but when it came to me, the officer calmly said, “Sorry sir, the flight was closed at 10 o’ clock.” No degree of persuasion, or my insistence that I had arrived at the designated place in the airport well in time and that the delay was due to airport officials, seemed to matter. The fact that immigration, security and airlines check-in desks operate independently, made it easier for the check-in desk to deny responsibility. I had one of these cheap tickets, non- refundable, non-endorsable, so I was stuck.
Eventually, when I pointed out to the individuals who had delayed me, they did offer me an alternative booking for the outgoing flight. I could leave on a date FOLLOWING my date of return. No doubt they found it funny. I offered to pay to get onto another flight, but that too couldn’t apparently be done. By then I had worked out what was going on, and asked them to book me on the date they suggested, AFTER my due date of return. This they did. I could see people were still checking-in, and knew, if I could get through the blockade, I would get on the flight.
So I took a flight out to the nearest airport from which I could get a connecting flight. The idea being, that if I went through the check- in procedure elsewhere, where such barricades might not be present, they would no longer have grounds for refusing to let me fly. I left early in the morning from my hotel in Strasbourg, taking the tram and the bus through the fog at night to be the first person to arrive at the check-in desk. The woman at the desk at this small airport was extremely helpful. When I said I wanted to go to Bamako with a connecting flight, she immediately took my ticket and issued me a
luggage tag to Bamako. Then of course she discovered I was not booked on the flight. She made a tentative booking, issued me a `boarding pass’ without a seat number, and put in a note in the computer that I was a passenger bound for Bamako. She even gave my luggage (now tagged for Paris, in place of Bamako) a priority tag, so I would not lose time changing planes.
The luggage arrived early as planned. I rushed across to terminal B, arriving well in time to lay a claim to a seat. People were still checking in. When I approached the officer in charge, she whipped the temporary boarding pass from my hand, tore it to bits, and with a dramatic gesture, let the flimsy flight coupon fall to my hand. “The are no seats” was the terse reply.
This vulgar demonstration of power, reminded me of the article I had been reading on the 13th, the day I was first refused onto the plane, in the Wall Street Journal Europe (October 12-13, 2001, Brussels, page 3). [Lt. Ken, a 28 year old pilot from Washington state was munching on Twizzlers candy at the controls of his jet when the 57- millimeter artillery rounds started exploding below. “I’ve been peppered before, hunting pheasant, but it doesn’t really compare.” He said in Vinson’s ready room. Vinson’s air wing is trying to put all ts pilots through combat flights ? learning the tricks “before the other guys get smart,” as Capt. Wright puts it.
Capt. Wright saw two MIGs parked at the end of the runway. He fired a laser-guided bomb at one; the pilot of another F-14 nearby hit the second. “When they blew, they blew big ? you could see they were full of fuel and ammunition.” But infrared images indicated that the MIG engines were cold, which means that the jets weren’t about to take off ? much to Capt. Wright’s annoyance. “We would have had so much fun shooting them down” he said. As Capt. Wright flew back to the ship, chewing on a peanut-butter sandwich and sharing his post-battle emotions with the flight officer sitting behind, they suddenly had to dispense death to a different enemy: a cockroach had crawled up the airman’s legs. “We got a little bit of hilarity on that,” he said.]
John Wayne might have died, but these Texan-led soldiers could well have been riding into the prairie to `cut em off at the pass’. Five hundred years later, they continue to find new `Indians’ to `dispense death to’.
As for the luxuriant growth of hair on my face. I’ve decided to let it grow longer.
Shahidul Alam
Tue Oct 16, 2001