Standing at Gaza Border Felt Like Visiting Auschwitz: Burmese Genocide Scholar Maung Zarni
The United Nations is warning about widespread human rights abuses in Burma as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. A new report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says many of those detained by the Burmese military are children taken from their parents, with dozens of minors dying in custody. “What it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. If you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell,” says Burmese scholar, dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni. He also discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses. “Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level,” says Zarni.
Lebanon: 37 Dead, 3,400+ Injured in Wave of Explosions in Electronic Devices Booby-Trapped by Israel
We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. A day earlier, at least 12 people were killed and thousands more left with gruesome injuries when pagers began exploding across the country. Lebanon has banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all flights, while Lebanese citizens say they now live in fear that everyday household electronics could suddenly explode. Among those killed in the attacks are children, medics and other civilians. “This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occuring in civilian areas,” says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel’s “terrorist attacks” could be a prelude to a larger assault. “The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon.”
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