Trump's America Shutting Out Muslim Refugees

 Only 20,918 refugees have so far been admitted to the US in fiscal year 2018, despite the cap being set at 45,000. Of those admitted, Muslim refugees have been hit the hardest with their share dropping to 14.5%, the lowest since 2001. At the same time, the Christian refugees share rose to nearly 71%, the highest since 2001, according to data compiled by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This data provides incontrovertible evidence of U.S. President Donald J. Trump's Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Turkey is the largest and Pakistan is the second largest host country for refugees worldwide. Turkey has nearly 3.5 million refugees mostly from Syria. Pakistan has 1.4 million refugees mainly of Afghan origin. Germany is the only western country that shows up among the top 10 host countries for refugees. Most of the rest are Muslim majority countries.

The number of Muslim refugees admitted into the U.S. dropped from more than 9,000 in the 2017 fiscal year to fewer than 2,000 with less than a month left in FY 2018 — an 80% drop, according to Axios:

Myanmar: A majority of Muslim refugees accepted into the U.S. in FY 2018 have come from Myanmar, where thousands of Muslim-majority Rohingya have been killed in an ethnic cleansing and hundreds of thousands have fled.

Somalia: The number of refugees admitted from the Muslim-majority, African nation of Somalia has dropped by 96% compared to last fiscal year. For no known reasons, the White House expressed particular concern over allowing refugees from Somalia into the U.S., former chief of the refugee affairs division at USCIS Barbara Stack told Zoe Chace in the latest episode of This American Life.

The year of Islamophobia began in earnest on January 20, 2017 with the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump who called for "total and complete shutdown" of  Muslims entering the United States during his successful electoral campaign. Among the first executive orders he signed was a "Muslim Ban" from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Then came an avalanche of a large number of Islamophobic tweets and retweets from Trump's twitter account. Some recent Trump retweets were of tweets from Britain First's Jayda Fransen. These tweets and retweets were swiftly denounced by top British and Dutch officials. Trump did not apologize.

Trump developed a pattern of using terror attacks to tweet against Muslims while ignoring similar or worse terror attacks by others.

Trump closed the year with recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a recognition that prior US administrations had withheld pending negotiations and final settlement of the issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

Only 20,918 refugees have so far been admitted to the U.S., despite the cap being set at 45,000 for fiscal year 2018. Of those admitted, Muslim refugees have been hit the hardest with their share dropping to 14.5% while the Christian refugees share rose to nearly 71%, according to data compiled by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This data provides incontrovertible evidence of U.S. President Donald J. Trump's Islamophobia and xenophobia. The simultaneous rise of Neo Nazis in the West and the Hindu Nazis in India represents a very serious and growing threat to world peace. Their combined menace can lead to further global instability and increased violence if these trends are not halted and reversed soon. I hope good sense prevails among the voters in these countries to pull the world back from the brink of human catastrophe.

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Haq's Musings

Hindu Nationalists Love Nazis

Islamophobia Goes Mainstream in 2017

A Conversation With White Nationalist Jared Taylor on Race in America

Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

Modi and Trump

Anders Breivik: Islamophobia in Europe and India

Hindu Nationalism Goes Global

Hindutva: The Legacy of the British Raj

Indians Among Top Asylum Seekers in OECD Countries

India is among the the top 5 sources of migrants seeking asylum in OECD countries, according to OECD's International Migration Outlook 2017. The other four are: China, Syria, Romania and Poland.  Is increasing religious violence in India, like Syria, contributing to growing numbers of asylum seekers from the South Asian nation?

UP CM Yogi Adiyanath with Indian PM Modi

Indian asylum seekers rank 2nd in New Zealand, 4th in Latvia and 6th in Finland and United Kingdom and 8th in Australia, the OECD report says. The numbers of Pakistanis seeking asylum remains stable but they still show up among the top 3 asylum seekers in some OECD nations such as the UK, Ireland, Italy, Greece and South Korea.

Indians have sought political asylum in more than 40 countries over the years, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

There's a long history of India's religious and ethnic minorities seeking asylum abroad after being persecuted at home, starting with the exodus of 8 million Muslim refugees fleeing to Pakistan after the Partition of India.  Many more millions of Dalits, Muslims and Sikhs have left India to find refuge in Canada, Europe, the United States and elsewhere.  Pakistan, too, has seen members of its religious minorities leave the country after persecution by the majority community.

Europe has historically seen a large number of new asylum applications from Indians---6,300 in 2012 and 2013. The United States has also experienced an increase in the number of Indian asylum seekers in recent years.  Media reports show 2,100 Indians receiving asylum in the United States between 2012 and 2014. The rise of extreme right wing Hindu Nationalists and increasing violence against minorities are likely to further accelerate the trend.

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Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

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Indian Sikh Massacre of 1984

Yogi Adiyanath as UP CM

Hindu Nationalists Admire Hitler

Hinduization of India Under Modi

Muslim Victims of Gujarat 2002

India's Superpower Delusions: Modi's Flawed Policies

What Do Modi and Trump Have in Common?

Black Friday in Pakistan?

Pakistan saw its first Black Friday sales this year. These retail sales were on at both brick-and-mortar stores and e-tailers like Daraz.pk. There were also media reports indicating similar sales in the UK and other countries as well.  For those unfamiliar with Black Friday, let me explain what it is.

Black Friday, a day of mega sales by retailers, follows Thanksgiving Day in America. Black Friday marks the start of the annual Christmas shopping season that accounts for about half the annual retail revenue and much of the profits earned by US retailers.

Thanksgiving is a quintessential American holiday that commemorates the arrival of European "Pilgrims" fleeing religious persecution across the Atlantic. It is celebrated with a dinner of turkey, cranberries and corn that made up the feast offered by native Americans, also known as American Indians, to welcome the hungry and tired Europeans in this continent of North America. President Barack Obama used the occasion to remind today's Americans of their duty to welcome those who are fleeing persecution in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Here's what the President said:

“Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims – men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families. What makes America America is that we offer that chance. We turn Lady Liberty’s light to the world, and widen our circle of concern to say that all God’s children are worthy of our compassion and care. That’s part of what makes this the greatest country on Earth.”

So what do many American shoppers do on Black Friday? They mob the shopping malls and the brick-and-mortar stores as they open very early on Friday morning following Thanksgiving holiday to snap up bargains. Overzealous shoppers are known to knock down and trample other shoppers as they race to take advantage of bargain basement prices on items such as new apparel, consumer electronics and toys. With the rise of e-commerce, many American shoppers now prefer to take advantage of Black Friday sales offered by popular e-tailers like Amazon.com. The e-commerce sites usually have such Black Friday sales continue beyond a single day.

This year, Pakistan's Daraz.pk e-tailer offered Black Friday bargains to Pakistani shoppers. Daraz.pk partnered with several companies including PTCL, Ponds, Mediatek, InnJoo and Easypay. EasyPay is the official payment partner, offering an additional 25 per cent discount on products to customers who use Easypay on Black Friday.  There were category discounts as high as 63 per cent on smartphones, 50 per cent on computers and 70 per cent on fashion and accessories on offer at Daraz, according to Express Tribune newspaper.

In addition to e-commerce sites, there was also a report in England's "The Daily Mirror" about "Lahori aunties going mad" on Black Friday at a fabric store in Lahore.

To the dismay of many, American style consumerism is finding broad acceptance among the middle class consumers across the world, including developing countries like Pakistan. Is this wise? Is it sustainable? How would it affect our future? I'll leave these questions for the readers to answer for themselves.


https://vimeo.com/147199858



Amir Khan Under Fire Over "Intolerance" in India; Black Friday in Pakistan; Russia-Turkey Conflict in Syria; PPP's Asim Husain C from WBT Productions on Vimeo.


https://youtu.be/_y07qQCtWXw





Related Links:

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High-Tech Investments in Pakistan

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Pakistan Middle Class Grows to 55%

South Asia's Rising Consumption; Depleting Resources

Syrians Flee Persecution

Gujarat Muslims Ignored by Indian Politicians

It has been almost seven years since the 2002 Gujarat riots in India in which at least 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs and several hundred girls and women were stripped naked, raped or gang-raped, had their wombs slashed and were thrown into fires, some while still alive. But even today, tens of thousands of Muslims continue to languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes. Why? Because the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom are widely known. Some of them were even caught on video, in a sting carried out by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Another organization, Human Rights Watch, has also criticized the Indian government for failure to address the humanitarian condition of the victims, "overwhelming majority of them Muslim." Following their traumatic experiences, the surviving Muslim victims of Gujarat are still living in fear, as the perpetrators of riots remain powerful and roam free.

But the plight of the riot victims does not find any echo in the general elections of the world's largest democracy, according to a BBC report. Both the ruling BJP and Congress party remain silent on the shoddy rehabilitation of the victims or the delay in bringing the culprits to justice.

Most independent observers believe that the Nanavati commission report, which absolved Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of any responsibility for the riots, is nothing but a farce. Nanavati Commission, appointed by the Gujarat government accused of complicity in the riots, echoed the government's position that the Godra incident was a pre-planned conspiracy. The Nanavati report was designed to pre-empt the findings of the independent Justice Bannerjee commission report which clearly found that the fire incident in which 58 Kar Seveks on the train died was an accidental one.

"We cannot vote for the BJP and the Congress almost has a fixed deposit on our votes. So it's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea," the BBC quotes Mr Ansari, a refugee in Ahmadabad, as saying.

Muslims comprise barely 10% of the population in Gujarat. "Despite the riots and the headlines, the political parties here feel that they can ignore them, because they don't comprise a decisive vote bank," analyst Achyut Yagnik told the BBC.

Such total disregard for the rights and plight of minorities in India raises serious questions about the secular character of India's democracy and adherence to its secular constitution. But the Indian and Western media continue to be silent about the suffering of Gujarati Muslims.

Similarly, while the torture and human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib by the Bush administration have been exposed, documented and condemned by the world media, the continuing abuses of Muslims in India's "war on terror" have gone largely unnoticed. There appears to be a conspiracy of silence by the world media when it comes to the brutality against Indian Muslims practiced by officials and the right-wing Hindu extremists in world's largest secular democracy. The western media, in particular, have completely bought what Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, describes as a "peaceful, stable, and prosperous" India. Even the officially-endorsed anti-Muslim violence and resulting deaths of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat have not been able to shake the faith of the Indophile western journalists.

Here's a Tehelka.com video clip of Babu Bajrangi account and confession of killings of Gujarat Muslims in 2002:



Related Links:

Amnesty International India Report

India: Justice- the Victims in Gujarat

India's Guantanamos and Abu Ghraibs