Genocide by Anglo-American Champions of Human Rights

by Latheef Farook

Western hostility towards Islam and Muslims is not something new as they have never missed a chance to demonise Islam and Muslims to suit their agendas. But this campaign came into open with all its ferocity in the aftermath of the 9/11 events in New York and the Pentagon.

Accusing Al Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden of masterminding the 9/11 attacks and threatening the security of the United States, President George Bush unleashed a wave of terror against Muslims in all corners of the world.

President Bush, together with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and their European allies, managed quite successfully to sell the Al Qaeda threat to justify their designs on Muslim countries although, even today, Al Qaeda remains an organisation without an office, without an address, without a telephone or fax number and even without an e-mail address.

Other countries such as Russia, India and even China joined this campaign as it suited their own agendas. Third world countries, especially Muslim countries, were blackmailed to get in line or face the consequences. Regimes in many Muslim countries have become active collaborators. This is the crucial problem facing the Muslim world today.

Muslim countries are being attacked and bombed with impunity; Muslims are tortured and killed, their religion and prophet mocked. Muslims are among the poorest people in the world and their countries the least developed. Ironically, this is despite some Muslim countries having enormous wealth and riches.

Initially Muslims all over the world were confused and frightened. But it didn't take them long to realise that the fight against terrorism was a skilfully executed Judeo-Christian conspiracy against Islam and Muslims which sought to reduce many Muslim countries to wastelands.

This include Somalia, Algeria, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, occupied Palestine, Kashmir, Gujrat and Central Asian Muslim Republics such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the Muslims in China's Xingjian province and many other areas where Muslims were suppressed. But no one speaks about them.

During the past one and a half decades more than 12 million Muslims were driven to refugee camps where they suffer in abject poverty. Millions of Muslims were killed. Muslim men and women carrying their belongings and walking with their loved ones in search of refugee camps have become a familiar sight the world over and Sri Lanka is no exception.

Muslims struggling for freedom in places such as occupied Palestine, Kashmir, Southern Philippines, and the South of Thailand have been regarded as terrorists and jihadists and killed without any justification.

This destructive campaign strikes at the very root of political, military, economic, financial, social, religious and even cultural life of Muslims. It has kindled anti Muslim feelings and 'Islamophobia' has been spreading like wildfire, not only in the west, but also in other parts of the world where Muslims live as minorities.

The unanswered question remains: Who are these Islamic terrorists? From where did they appear? Have they descended all of a sudden from another planet to unleash violence on peace-loving people on planet Earth? Worst of all, why do they suddenly turn to violence to redress their grievances?

The fact however remains that Muslims all over the world lived in peace and harmony, even with Jews and Christians, for more than fourteen centuries. Islam gave birth to one of the greatest civilisations in known history, enriched many other civilisations and even contributed towards enhancing modern European civilisation. So how come the Muslims with such a fascinating and inspiring history have suddenly become terrorists now?

The move to associate Islam with violence began with the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran when the killings of the Shah's supporters were exploited to project Muslims as lawless people who kill each other in the name of their own religion.

To crush the Islamic revolution, the United States, Europe, Israel, Gulf and other Arab states got together and pressed Iraq to invade Iran on the pretext of recovering the disputed Shatt Al-Arab region.

The almost daily bloodletting during the eight year war were exploited to project Muslims as fundamentalists and terrorists. The only beneficiaries from this conflict were Israel and the arms industries in the United States and Europe.

A year after the war ended, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. People all over the world were jubilant in the hope that the United States, which preached democracy, human rights and freedom, would usher in an era of peace and harmony.

But they were to be severely disappointed as the real rulers of the world, the Jewish lobbies, weapons industries, oil cartels, pharmaceutical companies, banking, finance and real estate sectors and other corporate conglomerates which control the media had their own agendas to exploit the wealth of the world.

European colonial powers withdrew from their colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 1950 and 1960s. But they have now returned through the back door under a well organised programme combining globalisation and the open economy, technological advancement especially electronic media to reach the hearts and minds of people and most frighteningly a regime change programme to install puppet regimes in areas deemed vital to US interests.

The biggest threat to this programme was Islam and thus they started demonising Islam to shift the focus of the world, once on communism, to Islam.

The United States selected Muslim Somalia as an experimental laboratory for regime change, armed tribal war lords and triggered off the civil war which turned once peaceful Somalia into a lawless country causing untold misery to Somalis.

This experiment failed when footages of US soldiers killed, hands tied and dragged along the streets of Mogadishu, were shown in the television networks turning public opinion in the US against the government. The US forces withdrew promptly.

Since then Somalia, ignored by the whole world, remained a lawless country. After 16 years there emerged a new force called the Islamic Courts which restored law and order, won the confidence of people and was almost on the verge of establishing a stable government when the US got Ethiopia to invade Somalia early this year, triggering off a violent political crisis that has since created more than 300,000 refugees.

The US then turned attention to the oil rich Arab Gulf where they precipitated a political crisis by tricking President Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. Once Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, the US led West unleashed a ferocious media campaign followed by fierce aerial bombardment before despatching ground forces into Iraq under the guise of liberating Kuwait...

Battered by aerial bombardments and crippled by UN sanctions which killed more than 500,000 children, Iraq was virtually an occupied country. The western weapons industry flourished as they sold a staggering $ 157 billion worth of armaments. Many Gulf countries were thus brought under the political and military umbrella of the United States.

In the aftermath of the war, former US President George Bush Sr said that "Israel is safe and the oil flows freely". It was Israel that badly wanted this war and the US merely fulfilled this Zionist dream.

Algeria

Then came the Algerians turn to pay the price. After centuries of colonial rule and a long spell of dictatorship, the Algerians gave a massive mandate to the Islamic Salvation Front in the first ever general elections in the country held in December 1991. But the military staged a coup and crushed the people's choice.

In the subsequent civil war around 180,000 people were killed often in a savage manner.

Islamic groups were blamed for these killings throughout the crisis. But later the Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyhia admitted that government forces killed 17,000 Islamic activists who comprised the cream of Islamic scholarship in the country.

Then came the genocide of Muslims in the heart of Europe when Bosnian Muslims declared independence following a referendum in April 1992. The Serbs opposed and committed some of the worst ever atrocities against Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995.

The Bosnian Muslims were detained in warehouses and other such places, starved for weeks, tortured and systematically and mercilessly butchered and buried in mass graves, some of which are yet to be identified.

The United Nations weapons embargo prevented Bosnian Muslims from defending themselves giving the Serbs a free hand to slaughter them. In the city of Srebrenica alone around 10,000 Muslim men and boys, separated from their loved ones, were massacred in one of the most gruesome killings in recorded history. Most of the victims were under the protection of the UN Dutch peace keepers who handed them over to the Serbs knowing very well they were to be killed.

Admitting the failure and guilt of the UN, its Secretary General Kofi Annan said that "the massacre of Muslims would forever haunt the UN which must accept partial responsibility for this massacre, in the UN "safe area". With its infrastructure destroyed, and thousands of families left without male members who were the bread winners, Muslim society in Bosnia remains devastated today.

Kosovo

In its wake came the genocide of Muslims in the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo where more than ninety percent of the population were Muslims, with the minority Serbs controlled the Government, Parliament, Civil Services and even Education.

All the Kosovo Muslims wanted was autonomy. Serbian President Milosevic declared a state of emergency, imposed direct rule from Belgrade, and turned the province into a Serb run police state. Milosevic brutalised Kosovo Muslims to accept Serbian rule and remain part of Yugoslavia and so continued his killing spree throughout 1998 while the West watched doing nothing.

Central Asian Republics

The vast and beautiful region of Central Asia comprising the largely unknown Muslim states of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, renowned for their famous silk route cities of Bukhara and Samarkhand where Islamic civilization flourished, is probably the most obscure area of the world.

In the post-Soviet era, all East European Christian countries such as Poland, Hungary, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia were free to decide their destiny.

They became independent and were absorbed into the European Union. East Germany was united with West Germany. But the Central Asian Muslim Republics were brought under Russia's grip through the newly established Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS.

The oppressed people throughout these Muslim republics wanted to do away with their puppet rulers who ruled over them with Russia's help and so set up their own governments to enjoy religious freedom and improve their economic and social conditions.

The result was a worse type of oppression, systematic torture and the killing especially of Muslim religious scholars and political activists.

Oppressive measures such as dropping people in boiling water and chopping off various parts of the human body failed to drew any attention from the Western media.

Chechnya

In the midst Chechnya declared its independence, in November 1991 from Russia. Russia responded by using its military might to subjugate Chechens and caused horrific scenes of death and destruction. Unable to either crush or contain Chechen fighters, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was forced into a humiliating peace deal in August 1996.

Later accusing Chechens of bombing an apartment complex which in fact was bombed by the Russian intelligence Services, Russian President Vladimir Putin bombed Chechnya and ruined this country, forcing hundreds of thousands of Chechens to flee and they could still be found languishing in refugee camps. Who cares for their plight?

To be Continued next week