RUTHFULLY YOURS

It seems that either al-Qaeda, with or without the Islamic State, has been linking up with Bangladesh’s indigenous radical networks.

If the Hasina government cannot restore a sense of normalcy, the booming Bangladeshi economy is likely to stagnate, Western corporate investment may dry up, and liberal technocrats probably will seek security elsewhere. If this happens, Bangladesh’s minorities will feel even further isolated.

“They believe that we are all going to hell, and no matter how they treat us, that they will all go to heaven.” — Former Catholic seminarian.

Friday’s Islamic terrorist attack in the swankiest section of the Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, in which 20 people were murdered, had been expected by the country’s law enforcement services. When this attack took place, the government had been in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on known terrorist sympathizers. The police had made hundreds — some reports claim thousands — of arrests. They had also seized explosives, firearms, machetes and jihadi tracts. Most of the arrests consisted of members of indigenous, outlawed jihadist groups such as the Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Harakat-ul Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), and Ansarullah Team.

Three men have been jailed for a string of sexual offences against a teenage girl in Oxford.

The victim was plied with drink and drugs between the ages of 13 and 15 and passed around “like a piece of meat”.

The offences included rape and indecent assault. On one occasion the girl was taken to woodland and told she would have her neck snapped.

She was in the care system when the abuse started and it continued between 1999 and 2007.

The defendants, charges, and sentences:

Assad Hussain, 35, was found guilty of five counts of rape, two counts of indecent assault, and one count of making a threat to kill – 12 years
Anjum Dogar, 33, was convicted of one count of rape and one count of indecent assault – 10 years
Akhtar Dogar, 35, was convicted of one count of indecent assault, two counts of rape, and one count of making a threat to kill – 10 years

Prosecutors said the crimes took place in wooded areas around Oxford and private addresses.

In sentencing, Judge Ian Pringle said: “This victim was perfect prey for those who wanted to sexually exploit her. There was clearly never any consent given.”

He said Akhtar Dogar had been the “principal player” in the “shocking” threats to kill, saying that he “used friendly companionship and turned it into an opportunity to serve his sexual desires”.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

The Religion of Peace recently distinguished itself by hacking
a Buddhist leader to death, shooting a Christian priest in the
head, murdering a Hindu temple worker, and slaughtering
a 13-year-old Jewish girl… all in less than 24 hours!
Still think all religions are the same?

Islamic State claimed responsibility for a massive car bomb that exploded overnight in the heart of one of Baghdad’s busiest commercial areas, killing 72 people and wounding at least 150 others, Iraq’s interior ministry said.

The explosion in the upscale central neighborhood of Karrada went off around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, setting nearby buildings ablaze as young people and families packed the streets, reveling after sundown and the breaking of the Ramadan fast. It was the terror group’s first major attack on the heavily patrolled area since May 2015.

Islamic State, a Sunni militant group, said in a statement distributed online that it had targeted a gathering of Shiites. It and other Sunni extremists reject Shiism, calling it polytheism.

Civil defense teams worked through the night pulling bodies from the debris. Families of those missing gathered in the street, looking for their relatives and shouting and cursing at security forces they said had failed to keep the area safe.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi toured the site hours after the explosion, promising to punish those responsible, according to a statement from his office. Angry crowds there jeered him, calling him a thief.

“Leave, leave, don’t let him stay here,” they said.

Mr. Abadi has faced months of political uncertainty partly caused by frequent attacks on Baghdad and other cities that have exposed gaps in Iraq’s security infrastructure. A protest movement this year questioned his leadership and called for immediate government reform.

Minutes after the Karrada bombing, an improvised explosive device detonated in the crowded east Baghdad neighborhood Al Shaab, killing four people and wounding 16 others, the interior ministry said. It targeted young Iraqis who were out shopping for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins this week.

No group has claimed responsibility for the second attack.

Islamic State in May claimed a series of bombings that left 88 people dead across Baghdad, one of the deadliest days of insurgent violence in the country’s history and a stark reminder that the government had failed to uproot the extremist group despite dealing it a number of recent setbacks on the battlefield.

The Iraqi army reclaimed full control of Fallujah from Islamic State on June 26. The Anbar province city some 40 miles west from Baghdad had served as a command center for the terror group, and was one of its last major strongholds in Iraq following losses in Ramadi and the northern city of Sinjar. CONTINUE AT SITE

A new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully advocating for an independent Biafra. Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, is fighting the nascent independence movement with military force.

“I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fire …” — Witness to the shootings, to Amnesty International.

As for IPOB’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu, director of London-based Radio Biafra, he was arrested in October 2015 and has been held since, illegally, despite meeting bail conditions.

It is noteworthy that a peaceful situation, such as that of the pro-Biafra movement, apparently requires a “military option”, whereas a lethal terrorist group, such as the Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who murder innocent civilians, does not. This tactic furthermore brings into question whether Buhari’s efforts at curbing Boko Haram in the country are genuine or merely a play he puts on half-heartedly for the benefit of the international community.

On paper, the plight of Biafrans — whose state in what is today southeastern Nigeria, lasted for only three years, 1967-70, before the Nigerian authorities ended it with a genocide against them — should, for the international community, be an open-and-shut case.

Journalists, human rights activists, social justice warriors on campuses throughout the West, and organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, all ostensibly claim to care deeply about human rights, especially for people whom the Europeans once colonized.

Biafra constitutes a textbook example of British colonization. The country’s brief existence was cut short by the Nigerian government’s genocide, which crushed all hopes for independence and self-determination. Biafrans, today, are denied their fundamental rights of assembly and free expression — rights that are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution. The Nigerian government continues murderously to oppress them and their movement for sovereign freedom.

The international community, headed by the UN, which preaches the gospel of human rights and self-determination, persistently ignores their national aspirations.

The territories that constitute present-day Nigeria came under colonial occupation as British protectorates around 1903. Nigeria is essentially an artificial construct, created as a colony by Great Britain in 1914, when it merged the protectorates. The country is made up of a number of different indigenous African peoples, among them the Biafrans, who are ethnically predominantly Igbo.

After Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain in 1960, Biafra seceded from Nigeria, and in 1967 declared its own state. The Nigerian government refused to accept the secession and responded by launching a war on Biafra. The assault included a blockade of the nascent state, and resulted in the murder of more than two million Biafrans, many of whom were children who starved to death because of the blockade.

The Biafrans, watching the dissolution of their young state, surrendered to Nigeria in January 1970. They realized, perhaps, that the world’s abandonment of them did not warrant any future for their cause.

Unlike others at that time, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Biafrans did not engage in hijacking and bombing airplanes, taking hostages and other forms of terrorist attacks against innocent civilians to further their cause. The international community responds obediently to terrorism. Whereas the PLO has now become the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid, with a plethora of “human rights activists” championing its cause (as well as a UN body, UNRWA, exclusively for Palestinians), it would be hard to find a diplomat at the UN who even knows how to pronounce “Biafra”.

The question inevitably comes to mind, why the ostensibly anti-racist, pro-self-determination international community of opinion makers and human rights advocates has neither the political goodwill, nor the treasure to spare for the Biafrans.

Although the genocide effectively ended Biafran independence, a new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully pressing for an independent Biafra again. In an example of extreme hypocrisy, Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has declared himself fully committed to a Palestinian state, while his military fights the Biafran movement for self-determination with brutal force.

On May 30, Biafrans commemorated Biafra Heroes Remembrance Day. According to Amnesty International, the only major human rights organization that has interested itself in Biafra,