linguistic front

Syria

Syria: can new integration pact avert war on Rojava?

The Syrian interim government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reached an agreement to immediately halt fighting and integrate SDF-held areas into state institutions. The deal follows days of renewed clashes, in which government forces routed SDF strongholds in the city of Aleppo and then pushed east, taking several towns that had been under the control of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Just hours before the agreement was reached, autonomous authorities in the Kurdish region, known as Rojava, had announced a “general mobilization” in support of the SDF, citing an “existential war” launched by Damascus against their territory. (Photo: Rudaw)

Syria

Syria: army shells Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo

Civilians fled Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Aleppo after the Syrian army declared them “closed military zones” and began shelling the areas. Some 300 homes are reported destroyed in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh, which have long been under the control of the Kurdish Asayish militia. The Asayish and the interim government’s army blamed each other for initiating the clashes. Thousands have fled through “humanitarian crossings” the army established for residents to evacuate. But the fighting is spreading into the Kurdish heartland. The town of Deir Hafer, east of Aleppo, is also coming under shelling from government forces. The town is held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), main military wing of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration that controls much of the country’s east. The clashes mark the worst outbreak of fighting since an agreement last March to merge the SDF and autonomous administration into Syria’s new government. The deal has still not been implemented, with both sides at odds over the terms. (Map: Google)

New York City

NYPD documents reveal ‘surveillance abuses’

Amnesty International and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) released more than 2,700 New York Police Department (NYPD) documents obtained after a five-year lawsuit. The groups say that the documents reveal extensive and discriminatory surveillance practices. The records, ordered to be disclosed by a New York state court in 2022, show repeated use of facial recognition technology (FRT) against individuals engaged in everyday activity as well as political expression. According to the organizations, the disclosures detail how the NYPD relied on FRT to identify people flagged by police reports that labeled them “suspicious” for speaking a foreign language or wearing culturally distinctive clothing. Advocates say the documents demonstrate that racial and cultural profiling frequently served as the basis for surveillance. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

East Asia

China: new law threatens minority protections

Human Rights Watch warned that pending legislation in China may lead to escalated repression of ethnic minorities. The proposed Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity & Progress imposes Mandarin language dominance in public life and education across all regions of the People’s Republic. It would effectively overturn the current Law on Regional National Autonomy, which guarantees minorities the right to “use and develop their own spoken and written languages and their freedom to preserve or reform their own folkways and customs.” Ominously, the law introduces mandatory educational requirements for families and home life as well as schools. While Article 12 instructs authorities to “organize education” to ensure “correct views of the state, history, the nation, culture and religion,” Article 20 imposes legal obligations for parents to educate minors to “love the Chinese Communist Party.” (Photo of Uyghur family in Kashgar: Todenhoff/Flickr)

Inner Asia

Amnesty: still no accountability for China’s crimes against Uyghurs

Amnesty International condemned the lack of accountability for the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in western Xinjiang region, noting that nearly three years have passed since a groundbreaking UN report detailed gross violations of international law against the ethnic group. In interviews with Amnesty, distraught family members recounted being prohibited from any form of contact with their loved ones, many of whom were suddenly taken away and imprisoned without due process or formal charges. They spoke of how they have remained in the dark for years about whether their relatives are alive, and how lack of transparency has meant fear and anguish, with one family member describing the uncertainty as a “wound that never heals.” (Photo: Amnesty International)

Southeast Asia

Vietnam: Khmer Krom people face escalating repression

UN human rights experts condemned what they described as escalating repression against the Khmer Krom people in Vietnam, urging authorities to cease targeting minority communities through security laws, and to release those detained for peaceful activity. The experts reported that Khmer Krom rights defenders, including Theravada Buddhist monks, face systematic harassment and criminalization for peaceful efforts to promote indigenous identity, cultural expression and religious freedom. The experts further condemned government claims that indigenous and minority cultural identity threaten national security and public order. (Image: Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization-UNPO)

Syria

Syria: revolution on the razor’s edge

The investigation by the Syrian transition government into the March violence against the Alawites in Latakia province has been submitted—but the full findings have not been made public, and it apparently exonerates the government of involvement. Meanwhile southern Suwayda province has seen a perhaps even deadlier eruption of violence—this time pitting Druze against Bedouin, with the role of the government similarly the source of much contestation (and fodder for Internet partisans). And a Damascus protest against the violence and for co-existence was attacked by goons. Amid all this, Israel is militarily intervening, the government looks to Turkey for military aid, and both the US and Russia still have forces on the ground—treating the country as a Greet Power chessboard. In Episode 288 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg warns that the Syrian Revolution is poised on a razor’s edge, ready to descend into ethno-sectarian war and authoritarianism unless political space can be kept open for the secular-democratic civil resistance that began the revolution 14 years ago. (Image: Banners read “Syrians must not shed Syrian blood” and “We reject Israeli aggression against Syria.” Credit: The Syria Campaign via Facebook)

North America

California sues Trump admin over National Guard deployment

California filed suit against the Trump administration, asserting that its activation and deployment of the state National Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles is unconstitutional. The suit asks the US District Court for the Northern District of California to halt President Donald Trump’s “unlawful militarization” of Los Angeles. Calling Trump’s actions an abuse of power that needs to be ended, Gov. Gavin Newsom further described the administration’s move as “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” (Photo: US Northern Command via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

Cameroon: peace activist sentenced to life term

Amnesty International condemned the life sentence handed down by a military court in Cameroon against activist Abdu Karim Ali, calling it an “affront to justice” and demanding his immediate and unconditional release. According to Amnesty, Ali was arrested without a warrant and arbitrarily detained after he produced a video exposing torture carried out by the leader of a pro-government militia in Cameroon’s conflicted Southwest Region. Cameroon’s Southwest and Northwest regions have been experiencing an armed conflict since 2016 in what is known as the Anglophone crisis. Demonstrations for greater linguistic rights in the Anglophone regions were met with repression by the Francophone central authorities, leading to an initiative to secede from Cameroon as the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia.” Ali had advocated for a Swiss-led mediation process to resolve the conflict. (Map: TNH)

Mexico

Trump-induced migration crisis in Mexico

President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown has been credited with reducing flows northward towards the United States, but it is leaving hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers trapped in a legal limbo further south, anxiously wrestling with what to do next. People on the move are now stranded in precarious living conditions across Mexico, more exposed than ever to violence, abuse and privation. (Photo of Tapachula migrant camp: Daniela Díaz for The New Humanitarian)

New York City

Podcast: Cantonese & Toisan language promotion with Kim

In Episode 264 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Kim of New York City’s Chinatown Cantonese Toisan group about her efforts to promote Cantonese and Toisan language and culture. Indigenous to China’s Guangdong province, these tongues are spoken by millions in a global diaspora. Thanks to the efforts of State Sen. Iwen Chu, Feb. 12 is now Taishan (Toisan) Day in New York state, commemorating the day in 1499, during the Ming Dynasty, that Toisan County was officially created—and honoring the contributions of Toisan immigrants, most notably in the dangerous work of building the Transcontinental Railroad. It was a Toisan man born in San Francisco, Wong Kim Ark, who won the 1898 Supreme Court case that established birthright citizenship as a constitutional right. Yet in China, Cantonese and Toisan are relegated to the status of fangyan (regional dialects) and officially discouragedin favor of Mandarin—leading to protests in provincial capital Guangzhou in 2010. Even in the US, the children’s book Coolies, about the Cantonese railroad workers, has been banned from public libraries by local forces of intolerance. Through exhibits, social gatherings and a weekly language class, Kim works to keep Cantonese and Toisan heritage and pride alive in the New York metropolitan area. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Europe

Estonia recognizes Crimean Tatar deportation as genocide

The Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu, officially recognized the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union in 1944 as an act of genocide. The statement passed in the 101-seat body with 83 votes in favor and eight abstentions. The Riigikogu drew parallels between the Soviet-era deportation and the current Russian occupation of Crimea, which began in 2014. It charges that “the Russian Federation is continuing the policy of genocide pursued by the Soviet Union… with the aim of destroying the identity and erasing the historical and cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars.” (Photo via Ukrainian Institute of America)