For her work to get justice for survivors of rape by security forces and the police, Soni Sori received the 2018 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. In this interview, she talks about why the state wants to erase Adivasi identity. "We have to keep fighting," she explains. "If we choose to be mute spectators, it would be the victory of evil and injustice."
In an historic first, thousands of people participated in a 10,000-kilometer long Dignity March across India to raise awareness about sexual violence, bring an end to stigma faced by survivors, and highlight the barriers women and children face in accessing justice.
In a protest for religious equality, an estimated 3 million women stood shoulder to shoulder along national highways in Kerala, India to form a “Women’s Wall” that ran the length of the state. The wall stretched for almost 385 miles. The uprising points the way forward for women’s rights in deeply patriarchal India.
The Okinawan struggle against US bases needs to be understood as part of a wider international struggle against US imperialism in the Pacific region. The US is maintaining a ring of military bases, many of them nuclear, across the Pacific region encircling China, its main economic rival. This policy is designed to cement US military and economic domination in the Pacific.
A somewhat similar situation to the Rohingya repression is developing in neighboring Assam, in northeast India. The Assam situation has not received the international attention that Myanmar has as wide-scale violence and refugee flows have not taken place, thus the need for preventive diplomacy now. The people of Assam in northeast India are potentially sitting on top of a smoldering volcano that threatens to erupt into catastrophic suffering. The violence would target ethnic and religious minorities, most particularly Bengali-speaking Muslims, somewhat on the pattern of the fate of the Rohingya of Myanmar.
“We need to shift who talks about foreign policy away from a Cold War, white man framework.” - Christine Ahn, Korean-American peace activist
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019