Saturday, 14 December 2013

THE WOMEN WHO SOLD THEIR DAUGHTER INTO SEX SLAVERY


Ngao, Ann and Neoung live amid poverty in the Cambodian fishing village of Svay Pak. When faced with a financial crisis, each made the extraordinary decision to sell their adolescent daughter to sex traffickers.
A neighborhood in Cambodia is a global hotspot for the child sex trade. The people selling the children? Too often, their parents. CNN Freedom Project and Mira Sorvino, award-winning actress and human rights activist, investigate.
By Tim Hume, Lisa Cohen and Mira Sorvino
Photography by Jeremie Montessuis for CNN
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN)
Watch "Every Day in Cambodia" on CNN International Saturday at 10 a.m. CET, 9 p.m. CET and Sunday 3 a.m. CET in Europe, and Saturday 5 p.m. HKT, Sunday 4 a.m. HKT and 10 a.m. HKT in Hong Kong.
When a poor family in Cambodia fell afoul of loan sharks, the mother asked her youngest daughter to take a job. But not just any job.
The girl, Kieu, was taken to a hospital and examined by a doctor, who issued her a "certificate of virginity." She was then delivered to a hotel, where a man raped her for two days.
Kieu was 12 years old.
"I did not know what the job was," says Kieu, now 14 and living in a safehouse. She says she returned home from the experience "very heartbroken." But her ordeal was not over.
After the sale of her virginity, her mother had Kieu taken to a brothel where, she says, "they held me like I was in prison."
She was kept there for three days, raped by three to six men a day. When she returned home, her mother sent her away for stints in two other brothels, including one 400 kilometers away on the Thai border. When she learned her mother was planning to sell her again, this time for a six-month stretch, she realized she needed to flee her home.
"Selling my daughter was heartbreaking, but what can I say?" says Kieu's mother, Neoung, in an interview with a CNN crew that travelled to Phnom Penh to hear her story.

Cambodia's hidden child brothels

Karaoke bars are a common front for child prostitution. Mira Sorvino details going behind the scenes of this illicit trade.
Like other local mothers CNN spoke to, she blames poverty for her decision to sell her daughter, saying a financial crisis drove her into the clutches of the traffickers who make their livelihoods preying on Cambodian children.
"It was because of the debt, that's why I had to sell her," she says. "I don't know what to do now, because we cannot move back to the past."
It is this aspect of Cambodia's appalling child sex trade that Don Brewster, a 59-year-old American resident of the neighborhood, finds most difficult to countenance.
"I can't imagine what it feels like to have your mother sell you, to have your mother waiting in the car while she gets money for you to be raped," he says. "It's not that she was stolen from her mother -- her mother gave the keys to the people to rape her."
Brewster, a former pastor, moved from California to Cambodia with wife Bridget in 2009, after a harrowing investigative mission trip to the neighborhood where Kieu grew up -- Svay Pak, the epicenter of child trafficking in the Southeast Asian nation.
"Svay Pak is known around the world as a place where pedophiles come to get little girls," says Brewster, whose organization, Agape International Missions (AIM), has girls as young as four in its care, rescued from traffickers and undergoing rehabilitation in its safehouses.
In recent decades, he says, this impoverished fishing village – where a daughter's virginity is too often seen as a valuable asset for the family – has become a notorious child sex hotspot.
"When we came here three years ago and began to live here, 100% of the kids between 8 and 12 were being trafficked," says Brewster. The local sex industry sweeps up both children from the neighborhood -- sold, like Kieu, by their parents – as well as children trafficked in from the countryside, or across the border from Vietnam. "We didn't believe it until we saw vanload after vanload of kids."

Global center for pedophiles

Weak law enforcement, corruption, grinding poverty and the fractured social institutions left by the country's turbulent recent history have helped earn Cambodia an unwelcome reputation for child trafficking, say experts.
UNICEF estimates that children account for a third of the 40,000-100,000 people in the country's sex industry.
Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the heart of this exploitative trade.
As one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in one of Asia's poorest countries – nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day -- the poverty in the settlement is overwhelming. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.
Svay Pak, an impoverished neighborhood on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, is the epicenter of Cambodia's child sex trade. Many of its residents are undocumented Vietnamese migrants, living in a community of ramshackle houseboats connected by rickety walkways.
It's a precarious existence. The river is fickle, the tarp-covered houseboats fragile. Most families here scrape by on less than a dollar a day, leaving no safety net for when things go wrong – such as when Kieu's father fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, too sick to maintain the nets that contained their livelihood. The family fell behind on repayments of a debt.
In desperation, Kieu's mother, Neoung, sold her virginity to a Cambodian man of "maybe more than 50," who had three children of his own, Kieu says. The transaction netted the family only $500, more than the $200 they had initially borrowed but a lot less than the thousands of dollars they now owed a loan shark.
So Neoung sent her daughter to a brothel to earn more.
"They told me when the client is there, I have to wear short shorts and a skimpy top," says Kieu. "But I didn't want to wear them and then I got blamed." Her clients were Thai and Cambodian men, who, she says, knew she was very young.

Don Brewster, a former pastor from California, is the founder and director of Agape International Missions, an organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating the victims of child trafficking in Cambodia and smashing the networks that exploit them. He moved to Cambodia with his wife in 2009 after a harrowing investigative mission trip to the neighborhood.
"When they sleep with me, they feel very happy," she says. "But for me, I feel very bad."
The men who abuse the children of Svay Pak fit a number of profiles. They include pedophile sex tourists, who actively seek out sex with prepubescent children, and more opportunistic "situational" offenders, who take advantage of opportunities in brothels to have sex with adolescents.
Sex tourists tend to hail from affluent countries, including the West, South Korea, Japan and China, but research suggests Cambodian men remain the main exploiters of child prostitutes in their country.
Mark Capaldi is a senior researcher for Ecpat International, an organization committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children.
"In most cases when we talk about child sexual exploitation, it's taking place within the adult sex industry," says Capaldi. "We tend to often hear reports in the media about pedophilia, exploitation of very young children. But the majority of sexual exploitation of children is of adolescents, and that's taking place in commercial sex venues."
The abusers would often be local, situational offenders, he says. Research suggests some of the Asian perpetrators are "virginity seekers," for whom health-related beliefs around the supposedly restorative or protective qualities of virgins factor into their interest in child sex.
Whatever the profile of the perpetrator, the abuse they inflict on their victims, both girls and boys, is horrific. Trafficked children in Cambodia have been subjected to rape by multiple offenders, filmed performing sex acts and left with physical injuries -- not to mention psychological trauma -- from their ordeals, according to research.
In recent years, various crackdowns in Svay Pak have dented the trade, but also pushed it underground. Today, Brewster says, there are more than a dozen karaoke bars operating as brothels along the road to the neighborhood, where two years ago there was none. Even today, he estimates a majority of girls in Svay Park are being trafficked.

Virgins for sale

Kieu's relative, Sephak, who lives nearby, is another survivor. (CNN is naming the victims in this case at the request of the girls themselves, as they want to speak out against the practice of child sex trafficking.)
Sephak was 13 when she was taken to a hospital, issued a certificate confirming her virginity, and delivered to a Chinese man in a Phnom Penh hotel room. She was returned after three nights. Sephak says her mother was paid $800.
"When I had sex with him, I felt empty inside. I hurt and I felt very weak," she says. "It was very difficult. I thought about why I was doing this and why my mom did this to me." After her return, her mother began pressuring her daughter to work in a brothel.
Toha listens to her mother explain how she came to sell her to sex traffickers. She no longer lives with her family, opting instead to live in a residence for trafficking survivors run by Brewster's organization -- but still provides her family some financial support from her new job.
Not far away from Sephak's family home, connected to the shore via a haphazard walkway of planks that dip beneath the water with each footfall, is the houseboat where Toha grew up.
The second of eight children, none of whom attend school, Toha was sold for sex by her mother when she was 14. The transaction followed the same routine: medical certificate, hotel, rape.
About two weeks after she returned to Svay Pak, she says, the man who had bought her virginity began calling, requesting to see her again. Her mother urged her to go. The pressure drove her to despair.
"I went to the bathroom and cut my arms. I cut my wrists because I wanted to kill myself," Toha says. A friend broke down the door to the bathroom and came to her aid.

Mothers as sex traffickers

CNN met with the mothers of Kieu, Sephak and Toha in Svay Pak to hear their accounts of why they chose to expose their daughters to sexual exploitation.
Kieu's mother, Neoung, had come to Svay Pak from the south of the country in search of a better life when Kieu was just a baby. But life in Svay Pak, she would learn, wasn't easy.

Why Cambodia?

How has this Southeast Asian nation become a hotspot for pedophiles? Poverty, corruption and a brutal reign of terror have all played a part in making Cambodian children vulnerable to adult predators.
When her husband's tuberculosis rendered him too sick to properly maintain the nets on the family's fish pond, the family took on a $200 loan at extortionate rates from a loan shark. It has now ballooned to more than $9,000. "The debt that my husband and I have is too big, we can't pay it off," she says. "What can you do in a situation like this?"
"Virginity selling" was widespread in the community, and Neoung saw it as a legitimate option to make some income. "They think it is normal," she says. "I told her, 'Kieu, your dad is sick and can't work… Do you agree to do that job to contribute to your parents?'"
"I know that I did wrong so I feel regret about it, but what can I do?" she says. "We cannot move back to the past."
But she adds she would never do it again.
Sephak's mother, Ann, has a similar story. Ann moved to Svay Pak when her father came to work as a fish farmer. She and her husband have serious health problems.
"We are very poor, so I must work hard," she says. "It's still not enough to live by and we're sick all the time."
The family fell on hard times. When a storm roared through the region, their house was badly damaged, their fish got away, and they could no longer afford to eat. In crisis, the family took out a loan that eventually spiraled to about $6000 in debt, she says.
With money-lenders coming to her home and threatening her, Ann made the decision to take up an offer from a woman who approached her promising big money for her daughter's virginity.
"I saw other people doing it and I didn't think it through," she says. "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't do that to my daughter."
On her houseboat, as squalls of rain lash the river, Toha's mother Ngao sits barefoot before the television taking pride of place in the main living area, and expresses similar regrets. On the wall hangs a row of digitally enhanced portraits of her husband and eight children. They are dressed in smart suits and dresses, superimposed before an array of fantasy backdrops: an expensive motorcycle, a tropical beach, an American-style McMansion.
Life with so many children is hard, she says, so she asked her daughter to go with the men.
She would not do the same again, she says, as she now has access to better support; Agape International Missions offers interest-free loan refinancing to get families out of the debt trap, and factory jobs for rescued daughters and their mothers.

For the children: Mira's journal

Mira Sorvino details her week spent in Cambodia with the CNN Freedom Project meeting victims, government officials and activists working to end child sex trafficking. Read more »
The news of Ngao's betrayal of her daughter has drawn mixed responses from others in the neighborhood, she says. Some mock her for offering up her daughter, others sympathize with her plight. Some see nothing wrong with she did at all.
"Some people say 'It's OK -- just bring your daughter (to the traffickers) so you can pay off the debt and feel better,'" says Ngao.

A new future

Not long after her suicide attempt, Toha was sent to a brothel in southern Cambodia. She endured more than 20 days there, before she managed to get access to a phone, and called a friend. She told the friend to contact Brewster's group, who arranged for a raid on the establishment.
Although children can be found in many brothels across Cambodia -- a 2009 survey of 80 Cambodian commercial sex premises found three-quarters offering children for sex – raids to free them are infrequent.
The country's child protection infrastructure is weak, with government institutions riven with corruption. Cambodia's anti-trafficking law does not even permit police to conduct undercover surveillance on suspected traffickers. General Pol Phie They, the head of Cambodia's anti-trafficking taskforce set up in 2007 to address the issue, says this puts his unit at a disadvantage against traffickers.
"We are still limited in prosecuting these violations because first, we lack the expertise and second, we lack the technical equipment," he says. "Sometimes, we see a violation but we can't collect the evidence we need to prosecute the offender."
He admits that police corruption in his country, ranked 160 of 175 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, is hampering efforts to tackle the trade in Svay Pak. "Police in that area probably do have connections with the brothel owners," he concedes.

Toha's nightmare is now over. She earns a steady income, weaving bracelets that are sold in American stores, while she studies for her future. Her dream is to become a social worker, helping other girls who have been through the same ordeal.
Brewster believes that corruption was to blame for nearly thwarting Toha's rescue. In October 2012, after Toha's call for help, AIM formulated plans with another organization to rescue the teen, and involved police.
"We get a warrant to shut the place down," recalls Brewster. "Fifteen minutes later, Toha calls and says, 'I don't know what happened, the police just came with the owner and took us to a new place. I'm locked inside and don't know where I am.'"
Fortunately the rescue team were able to establish Toha's new location, and she and other victims were freed and the brothel managers arrested – although not before the owners fled to Vietnam.
Toha's testimony against the brothel managers, however, resulted in their prosecutions.
Last month, at the Phnom Penh Municipal Courthouse, husband and wife Heng Vy and Nguyeng Thi Hong were found guilty of procuring prostitution and sentenced to three years in jail. Both were ordered to pay $1,250 to the court, $5,000 to Toha, and smaller sums to three other victims.
Brewster was in court to watch the sentencing; a small victory in the context of Cambodia's child trafficking problem, but a victory nonetheless.
"Toha's an amazingly brave girl," he says on the courthouse steps, shortly after the brothel managers were led down to the cells.
"Getting a telephone when she's trapped in a brothel to call for help, to saying she would be a witness in front of the police…. She stood up and now people are going to pay the price and girls will be protected. What it will do is bring more Tohas, more girls who are willing to speak, places shut down, bad guys put away."
Like the other victims, Toha now lives in an AIM safehouse, attending school and supporting herself by weaving bracelets, which are sold in stores in the West as a way of providing a livelihood to formerly trafficked children.
In the eyes of the community, having a job has helped restore to the girls some of the dignity that was stripped from them by having been sold into trafficking, says Brewster.
It has also given them independence from their families -- and with that, the opportunity to build for themselves a better reality than the one that was thrust on them. Now Sephak has plans to become a teacher, Kieu a hairdresser.
For her part, Toha still has contact with her mother – even providing financial support to the family through her earnings – but has become self-reliant. She wants to be a social worker, she says, helping girls who have endured the same hell she has.
"(Toha)'s earning a good living and she has a dream beyond that, you know, to become a counselor and to be able to help other girls," says Brewster. "You see the transformation that's happened to her."

Child sex trafficking: Why Cambodia?

Svay Pak is a poor fishing village on the outskirt of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, known globally as a destination for child sex.
It's a place where mothers sell their own daughters to child traffickers, who supply them to brothels locally and across the country.
But how has such a perverse trade been able to take root, let alone flourish here?
Mark Capaldi, senior researcher for Ecpat International, an organization committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children, says several factors have made Cambodia a prime destination for child sex offenders.
"Insufficiently enforced laws, corruption, and the failure to address more overarching problems such as poverty and the negative side effects of globalization have made it a challenge for the country to shed the unenviable reputation as a destination for child sex," he says.
The authors of a 2011 Ecpat International report identified a number of cultural and sociological factors that made Cambodian children "particularly vulnerable to adult predators." "It has been observed that Cambodian children are indeed expected to abide by rules set forth by adults, and saying 'no' to an adult is not easily tolerated," reads the report.
 But what of the acceptance and willing participation of so many locals, including parents themselves, in the trade? For Don Brewster -- head of Agape International Missions, which aids Cambodian child survivors of the sex trade -- part of the answer as to why so many adults in Svay Pak are able to abnegate their parental duty to protect may lie in Cambodia's brutal recent past, which left behind a fractured society.
"What this country went through was unique in history," says Brewster, of the Khmer Rouge's systematic destruction of religious, educational and social structures -- not least of which the family unit -- during its genocidal 1975-79 reign.
When Pol Pot's maniacal experiment ended, 2 million people were dead, and society's institutions almost erased. "You lost your educated people and the system of educating them; you lost the moral compass that Buddhism provided," he says.

Nigerian Man who tried to behead UK soldier says he loves Al-Qaeda



A photo released by the Ministry of Defence on May 23, 2012 shows soldier Lee Rigby, who was killed in a street in Woolwich, southeast London on May 22

A photo released by the Ministry of Defence on May 23, 2012 shows soldier Lee Rigby, who was killed in a street in Woolwich, southeast London on May 22

4 Saudi female drivers' detention varied by their locations

Saudi activist, Manal Al Sharif, drives her car in Dubai on October 22 in defiance of the authorities to campaign for women's rights to drive in Saudi Arabia. 
 
Four women were detained by traffic police in two Saudi Arabian cities this week for defying the Kingdom's driving ban, according to all the women stopped.
In the Red Sea port city of Jeddah Thursday, two women, Sahar Naseef and Tamador Alyami, were stopped by police after being spotted in a car on one of the city's main thoroughfares.
Alyami, who's been an avid supporter of a two-month-old campaign seeking to gain the right to drive for women in Saudi Arabia, told CNN she and Naseef were hoping to get caught.
"We did go driving on a main street where we know there's a lot of traffic police," explained Alyami, who was in the passenger seat.
"We're just trying to push and see how far can we go with this," said Alyami, "because two women yesterday were caught by police and detained for 10 hours. Today, in a different city it was totally different. We were caught and stopped for only two hours."
The woman who drove the car, Naseef, told CNN she was so convinced she and Alyami would spend the night in jail, she even packed a toothbrush, some shampoo and an extra set of clothing.
For Alyami, an author and columnist who's driven herself around Jeddah five times now, getting behind the wheel is no longer enough in an extraordinary campaign of civil disobedience that has seen dozens of women taking to the streets since October.
"We're asking girls in different regions to go out," she said, "because we're trying to see if police in different regions react differently to cases of women driving."
According to Naseef and Alyami, the traffic police officer who pulled them over was very kind to them and even supportive of their cause. They said he told them that due to protocol, he had to call for backup, and they were soon surrounded by several more police cars. In the end, Naseef had to sign a pledge not to drive again in the presence of a male relative before the women could be released.
One day earlier in the country's capital, Riyadh, which is in a far more conservative part of the country, two other women described a far more difficult experience after being caught driving.
Azza Al-Shamasi and Bareah Alzubeedy told CNN they were detained at a Riyadh police station for more than 10 hours after being caught and pulled over by traffic police.
Al-Shamasi, who was driving, said when they first started driving down one of Riyadh's main streets, many male drivers around them were giving them signs of support. Half an hour later, after a traffic police officer spotted them, they were pulled over.
"We were then surrounded by six cop cars, and the people who stopped us were quite rude," said Al-Shamasi.
According to Al-Shamasi, despite the fact that her husband came to the police station shortly after she was taken there, it still took at least eight more hours before she was released into his custody.
Alzubeedy explained they were not looking to attract the police's attention, just simply doing what they should be able to do.
"Freedom of movement is a right," said Alzubeedy, a human rights activist. "This is a right for women here. There's no law that bars women from driving in Saudi Arabia, and I hope more women will go out and drive."
Despite repeated attempts, CNN was unable to reach Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry for comment.
The issue of women driving is a particularly sensitive and controversial one in Saudi Arabia, the last country on Earth where females don't have that right. In recent years, though, more women have challenged the government, urging officials to overturn the ban and taking to streets in remarkable displays of civil disobedience. Although women are not allowed to drive in the ultraconservative Kingdom, there is, in fact, no law barring them from doing so. But religious edicts are often interpreted to enforce the prohibition.
In May 2011, Manal Al-Sharif was jailed for more than a week after posting a video of herself driving in Saudi Arabia online. She quickly became a hero to many and inspired dozens of women to drive throughout the streets of various cities in June of that year.
More recently, in September, a website for the October 26 Women's Driving Campaign launched, and within a few weeks, tens of thousands had signed an online petition calling for an end to the driving ban for women in Saudi Arabia. As October 26 approached, numerous women filmed themselves driving in the conservative Kingdom and uploaded those clips to sites like YouTube.
In the weeks leading up to October 26, one Saudi cleric gave an interview in which he warned that Saudi women who drove risked damaging their ovaries. On October 24, the country's Interior Ministry issued a statement telling women to stay off the streets.
Despite strong opposition by conservative quarters in the Kingdom, where a puritanical strain of Islam is practiced, October 26 saw dozens of women taking to the streets and driving. The campaign's backers insist the movement is ongoing and has been a success thus far, while its critics say it has failed.
In early December, two of Saudi Arabia's best-known female advocates for lifting the ban on women driving were also detained after being caught behind the wheel in the country's capital. Aziza Al-Yousef, who was driving the car, and her passenger, Eman Al-Nafjan, told CNN they were pulled over and spent a few hours at a police station in Riyadh until being released into the custody of their respective husbands.
 

Death for man who stabbed 22 children in China



Min Yongjun waves a knife at a child at a school on December 14, 2012 in Guangshan County, in central China's Henan province in this screen grab taken from a video released by China's Public Security Bureau

Min Yongjun waves a knife at a child at a school on December 14, 2012 in Guangshan County, in central China's Henan province in this screen grab taken from a video released by China's Public Security Bureau
Surveillance footage showed Min pursuing a group of panicked children through an unguarded school gate, before a group of adults entered equipped with straw brooms and chased him out

Mass killings largely ignored in 2 Nigerian states, rights group says

Horrific ethnic and religious violence resulting in "mass murder" and other abuses in two central Nigerian states has largely gone ignored by the authorities, rights group Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
Its report, focused on Plateau and Kaduna states, is based on interviews with more than 180 witnesses and victims of violence as well as police investigators, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and community leaders.
Many of the victims, including women and children, Christians and Muslims, "were hacked to death, burned alive, or shot simply based on their ethnic or religious identity," said the report, "Leave Everything to God: Accountability for Inter-Communal Violence in Plateau and Kaduna States, Nigeria."
And a seeming culture of impunity has created a cycle of violence as individuals who find no recourse elsewhere seek retribution for wrongs done to them, it said.
"Witnesses came forward to tell their stories, compiled lists of the dead and identified the attackers, but in most cases nothing was done," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
"The authorities may have forgotten these killings, but communities haven't. In the absence of justice, residents have resorted to violence to avenge their losses."
According to the report, communities in Plateau state have been plagued by sectarian violence for more than a decade, leaving thousands of Christians and Muslims dead.
"However, the Nigerian authorities have taken no meaningful steps to address underlying grievances or, until recently, bring to justice those responsible for the bloodshed," it said.
Human Rights Watch lays much of the blame for the culture of impunity at the door of "an already broken criminal justice system."
It points the finger at "systemic corruption in the Nigeria Police Force," exacerbated by political pressure to protect those responsible for violence.
The Nigerian police have not yet responded to repeated CNN requests for comment.
Complex root causes
Much international attention has focused on recent violent attacks by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, particularly Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.
But the Human Rights Watch report paints a grim picture of life in Kaduna and Plateau states.
Their location in Nigeria's "Middle Belt," between the largely Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south, has put them at the intersection of sectarian strife in the large and unruly West African nation.
"Since 1992, more than 10,000 people in those two states have died in inter-communal bloodletting; several thousand of those deaths have occurred since 2010 alone," the report said.
The root causes of the violence are complex, it said.
While they often involve longstanding grievances and disputes, "they are exacerbated both by divisive state and local government policies that discriminate on ethnic or religious lines and by the failure of authorities to hold to account those responsible for the violence."
The strife pits Hausa-Fulani Muslims -- the largest and most politically powerful group in northern Nigeria -- against smaller predominantly Christian ethnic groups, which counted together make up the majority of the population in the region, it said.
Each side accuses the other of discrimination, oppression and violence to advance its position.
Rights group urges reforms
In Plateau state, episodes of mass violence in 2001, 2004 and 2008 left hundreds of people dead, the report said.
"Following this violence, federal and state authorities took no meaningful steps to address underlying grievances and brought no one to justice for the bloodletting," the researchers said.
The continuing tensions erupted in 2010, centered on the Plateau state capital of Jos, resulting in the massacre of hundreds of people, many of them Muslims in rural communities. While the federal authorities this time stepped in and prosecuted some suspects, most were not brought to justice, the report said. Many more sectarian attacks have followed.
In Kaduna state, bloody episodes of ethnic and sectarian violence in 1992, 2000 and 2002 left hundreds or more dead -- and few perpetrators were held accountable.
The authorities' response to different mass killings often follows a similar pattern, the report said. Police will round up hundreds of "suspects" but fail to gather evidence properly. This makes it difficult for prosecutors to file a case against any individual -- and ultimately most charges are quietly dropped, it said.
Witnesses who did report crimes said police often took no action; others told researchers they were afraid to report them or did not do so because they believed the police would do nothing.
The prosecution of suspects by federal authorities following the 2010 violence in Plateau state was an important exception to this pattern, Human Rights Watch said.
The right group urges the federal government to ensure mass killings are swiftly and properly investigated by the police, to bar discriminatory policies that help fuel ethnic tensions and to treat the intercommunal violence as a criminal, rather than political, problem.
Other recommendations include ordering a high-level review of police investigations into crimes alleged in the report, ensuring police are trained to do their jobs properly and reforming the police force. The Justice Ministry should identify why suspects in certain cases were not prosecuted and prosecute remaining suspects, it said.
"Nigerian authorities can and should take urgent steps to ensure that the perpetrators of communal violence, including mass murder, are investigated and prosecuted, and that victims are provided restitution or compensation for their enormous losses," the report said.

Arsenal need to find an extra gear against Manchester City

Arsenal will need to improve if they are to get anything from Manchester City on Saturday, with their midweek defeat to Napoli rendering them vulnerable.
It's an unfortunate point to consider that such mundanities might have a drastic effect on the location of silverware at the end of the season, but the fixture list can only be ignored for truly exceptional teams. For others, it almost comes to define a season. While talk of conspiracies and unfair dealings is ridiculous -- a difficult run at one point means an easy run at another -- it can never account for the timing of big games and their potential to influence seasons.

Friday, 13 December 2013

SHOCKING DETAILS: How Male Nurse defiled Patient 5 Times In One Night

A male nurse in Utah has been arrested after an unidentified woman went to the police and accused him of defiling and threatening to kill her.

 utah_nurse 

The man was arrested on Monday after the woman revealed her alleged ordeal that happened in April to the police.
According to report, the 37-year-old woman was a surgery patient staying the night at Uintah Basin Medical Center in Roosevelt, where Shumway worked, to recover.
Shumway entered her room during the night and allegedly sexually assaulted the woman five times in the course of the evening.
The nurse was said to have given her medication before placing her hand on an automatic morphine injector to activate it and after pumping her with morphine, he allegedly lifted up the woman’s hospital gown and began fondling her multiple times in the night. He then forced her to touch him inappropriately and made her engage in s*xual acts.
According to the woman, she was trying to say, ‘No, please,’ but her pleas fell on deaf ears. She also tried searching for a nurse call button to get help, but was unable to find it.
On his fourth visit into her room, Shumway allegedly threatened t o put her under cardiac arrest with a syringe he showed her, if she ever told anyone about the incident. On his final visit, he allegedly tried strangling the victim.
“Each time she would whimper or cry, (he) would tighten his grip on her neck,” investigators wrote.
After going for counselling, the victim was asked by her therapist to report the matter to the police.
The accused was booked into Duchesne County jail with a bail set at $500,000.
He now faces a long list of felony charges, including object r*pe and forcible sodomy, three counts of forcible s*xual abuse, and three counts of witness tampering. Shumway has also been charged with making threats of violence, a misdemeanor.
Shumway voluntarily surrendered his nursing license on Tuesday.

Man Allegedly Shoots Wife, Sister In Nursing Home ‘Mercy Killings’

A 60-year-old man shot and killed his wife, who was suffering from dementia, and then walked into a convalescent home and killed his sister as she lay in a vegetative state, Los Angeles police said.
The man surrendered to officers Wednesday morning at the Country Villa Sheraton nursing facility in the North Hills area of Los Angeles, Lt. Paul Vernon said.
A gun was recovered at the scene.
The suspect’s name was not immediately released.
The sister, who was shot once in the head, was identified as Lisa Nave, 58. She had been in a vegetative state for several years, Vernon said.
After learning of Nave’s death, family members called sheriff’s deputies and requested a welfare check on the suspect’s wife, he said.
Deputies found the wife’s body at a home in the north Los Angeles County community of Canyon Country. According to family, the wife was suffering from dementia, the lieutenant said.
Vernon characterized the shootings as “apparent mercy killings.”

Uruguay To Become First Country To Legalize Marijuana Trade

South American country Uruguay is set to become the first country in the world to allow its citizens to grow, sell, buy and smoke marijuana. The country’s Senate began its final debate on the issue today Tuesday Dec. 10th and claim they want to legalize it in a bid to take the business from criminals.
If this bill, which has the support of majority of the House and the president of the country, is passed, Uruguay will be the first country to legalize a trade that is illegal everywhere else in the world.
After the trade is made legal, Uruguay will then draft regulations imposing state control over the cultivation and distribution of marijuana. Anyone who wants to go into the business would have to be licensed and registered, with government monitors keeping tabs to enforce limits, such as the 40 grams a month that any adult will be able to buy at pharmacies for any reason.

Amilcar Cabral and the national liberation movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde

Amilcar Cabral and the national liberation movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. By Danny Shaw Tribute to an African revolutionary For 500 years, Portuguese colonialism was built upon the slave trade and the systematic pillaging of its African colonies: Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome e Principe, Angola and Cape Verde. Marxist historian Walter Rodney summarized Portuguese’s colonial rule in Africa: “The Portuguese stand out because they boasted the most and did the least. After close to half a thousand years not a single medical doctor had been trained in Portuguese Mozambique. As for Guinea Bissau, Portugal confessed open neglect of this territory.” Amilcar Cabral was born in Bafatá, Guinea Bissau, to Cape Verdean parents in 1924. He was the son of Juvenal Lopez Cabral, a schoolteacher and anti-colonial activist, and Iva Pinhel Evora, a seamstress and laborer in a fish supplying factory. At the age of eight, his family moved back to the Cape Verdean Islands, where he excelled as a student and poet. There were several droughts in Cape Verde in the 1940s leading to the deaths of over 50,000 people from starvation. The impact of the drought was felt even more sharply because of Portugal’s indifference to the suffering and starvation. The contradictions of colonial rule across Africa inspired the 20-year-old Cabral to vow to wage a life and death struggle to free his people from the yoke of foreign domination. The Portuguese empire offered a few scholarships to students from the colonies in hopes of co-opting and training them to be future functionaries of the Portuguese colonial government. Because of his exemplary intelligence, in 1945, Cabral received a scholarship to study in the colonial center of Lisbon, where he came into contact with other African students from the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Sao Tome e Principe, and Mozambique. His arrival in Europe at the close of World War II coincided with a new stage of struggle throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In country after country, colonized populations began to demand independence. Even the intellectuals who had been trained in Europe and traditionally argued that colonialism brought “progress” began to assert otherwise. Interacting with his counterparts from British and French colonies in Africa, Cabral formed the African Studies Center in 1948 in Lisbon. He worked closely with Augustinho Neto, the future leader of Angola’s liberation struggle, and Eduardo Mondlane, first president of FRELIMO (the Liberation Front of Mozambique) in an underground study group to discuss political theory, including Marxism, and solutions to the African colonial question. Trained as an agronomist, Cabral returned to Guinea. He traveled the countryside to study his country’s soil topography and crop production, generating the first and best scholarly study on the topic. His travels throughout Bissau and Angola familiarized him even more with the psychological and economic features of colonialism and the cultural life of his people. For instance, he realized that some of the conventional demands of the left towards the peasantry—such as land reform—were not the most pressing; in the Guinean countryside, small private landholdings were already common. Instead, peasants experienced the burdens of colonialism most heavily through their interactions with Portuguese merchants: their exploitative trade rates, insistence on single-crop production and daily personal humiliations. These experiences would have a profound influence in his writings and outlook on how to defeat Portuguese rule in Africa. Though Cape Verde is a series of islands 500 miles off the coast of Africa, the nations of Cape Verde and Guinea share a similar history. The Portuguese rulers sought to divide the two nations by favoring the Cape Verdeans, who were thought to be lighter-skinned than the Guineans. Cabral saw the destiny of the two nations as inseparable and in 1956 formed the African Party for Independence (PAI), which would later become the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), declaring open armed struggle as the way forward. National liberation and the ‘road of socialism’ Cabral was part of a trend in the worldwide anti-colonial movement that, drawing inspiration from the Chinese and Vietnamese examples, argued for the supremacy of the urban and rural masses in national liberation struggles. Cabral believed revolutionary socialism was the only genuine solution for colonized peoples: “In our present historical condition, there are only two possible paths for an independent nation, to return to imperialist domination (neo-colonialism, capitalism, state capitalism), or to take the road of socialism.” Cabral divided history into three epochs related directly to the development of the means of production: society before classes (of which he called for more study), class society, and a future communist society in which private property and class divisions would be eliminated. Guinean pre-class society had already given way to class divisions prior to Portuguese colonialism, but the latter had stunted the colonies’ economic and cultural development. The objective for Cabral was to seize the national productive forces, further develop them and utilize them for the common good. He argued that only mass, popular resistance—not just negotiation conducted by a small stratum of intellectuals—could ever be successful in truly completing these tasks. Guinea, as a super-exploited colony, had a small urban working class and Cabral looked to the peasantry as the social force capable of defeating the Portuguese. He emphasized the unreliable nature of the native bourgeoisie, which developed as a service class for colonialism. He warned that they would seek to inherit the state apparatus and continue to siphon off the wealth of the nation to imperialism as long as they received their share. “If we accept the principle that the liberation struggle is a revolution and that it does not finish at the moment when the national flag is raised and the national anthem played.” Instead, "we are fighting so that insults may no longer rule our countries, martyred and scorned for centuries, so that our peoples may never more be exploited by imperialists not only by people with white skin, because we do not confuse exploitation or exploiters with the color of men's skins; we do not want any exploitation in our countries, not even by black people." Cabral directly addressed intellectuals and called on them to abandon their loyalty to other class interests and the agents of imperialism. Instead, the role of the revolutionary intellectual was to march shoulder-to-shoulder with the most oppressed sectors of society. The latter were the only social force truly capable of carrying out a social revolution. (“Return to the Source,” 1974) In the process of struggle, guerrilla leaders would undergo “a reafricanization of the spirit.” In short, this meant that picking up arms against the colonial rulers would puncture the mythology of the latter’s "greatness and invincibility" and restore African people’s identity, dignity and self-determination. In his famous “The Weapon of Theory” address at the 1966 Tricontinental Congress in Havana, Cabral expressed the desire and determination to emulate the Cuban people’s example of overthrowing all forms of exploitation through armed struggle. Like Che Guevara, Cabral emphasized the human dimension of the liberation struggle, hoping that out of the struggle for a new society, a new man and new woman would develop elevated beyond egotism and self-interest. Maria da Luz “Lilica” Boal, an original combatant with Cabral who oversaw the school for children in the liberated territories in the late 1960s and early 1970s, described to Liberation the character of his leadership. She recalled how Cabral checked in at the school every morning gently adjusting the children’s school uniforms and having a laugh with them before he left to oversee the ideological and political training of the PAIGC cadre. Cabral’s internationalism Undoubtedly familiar with Lenin and the general line of the Communist International in the wake of World War I, Cabral also viewed national liberation as part of a worldwide struggle against capitalism in its imperialist stage. In 1970, Cabral visited Alma Ata, the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, for a conference on oppressed nation’s self-determination. Cabral called Lenin “the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples." In fascist Portugal, all references to Marxism and class struggle were punishable by imprisonment, torture and even execution. It was in Africa that many conscripted Portuguese soldiers, of rural and working-class backgrounds, first came into contact with ideas about democracy and socialism. The steadfast resistance and determination of the peoples of Cape Verde and Bissau wore down the conscripted Portuguese army and emboldened them to rebel against their commanding officers in 1974. Thirteen years of war against the African liberation movements had moreover over-extended the Portuguese military and become a burden on the economy. In an interview with Portuguese poet and politician Manuel Alegre, Cabral spoke directly to the 20,000 Portuguese conscripts urging them to consider their class interests above and beyond the national chauvinism their ruling class fed them. Portuguese officers began to refuse orders on African battlefields, and formed an Armed Forces Movement (MFA) that supported the demand for independence. In today’s terms, this would be equivalent to the rank-and-file of the U.S. military declaring their solidarity with the Iraqi resistance—imagine the impact! The MFA led a rebellion against fascism at home, which ended more than 40 years of rule under António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano. It opened the door to a popular upsurge that nearly claimed power for the Portuguese workers. These social convulsions in the imperial center in turn facilitated the independence of Portugal’s African colonies. Each wave of revolution builds on and draws from the victories of the past. Just as the Cuban revolution received invaluable support from the Soviet Union, the national liberation struggles in Guinea and other colonies likewise received invaluable assistance from the Cubans, who sent an international mission under the leadership of Victor Drake to train PAIGC cadre. You can kill the revolutionary, but not the revolution The PIDE—the Portuguese secret police—functioned both at home and in the colonies to harass, jail and squelch all resistance against the ruling junta. They had Cabral killed on Jan. 20, 1973. It was only a few months before the victory of his people over Portuguese colonialism and the declaration of the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Cabral is only one in a long list of African revolutionaries and visionary leaders assassinated by the colonialists and their elite allies. That list includes Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique, killed by a PIDE letter bomb in 1969. It includes Félix-Roland Moumié, a Marxist Cameroonian leader murdered by French intelligence in 1960. It includes Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, and Chris Hani of South Africa. These figures, and the movements they led, contrast sharply with all of the racist, bourgeois clichés about corrupt, inefficient, vainglorious, tribal African leadership and failed states. Instead of inter-ethnic conflict and the enrichment of a tiny elite, they projected broad African unity premised on the public ownership of the continent’s vast resources. This vision—which cut to the very heart of imperialist control—remains potent, ready to be picked up and expanded by the next generation of African revolutionaries. From Tunisia to South Africa, and everywhere in between, the stage is set for a new era of class and anti-imperialist struggles. Amilcar Cabral’s legacy and thought remains valuable today.

Meet 11-year-old boy Whose Dream Is to Kill the President of His Country

boy_killer 
 Mohammed Afar, the resident of Aleppo area in Syria is 11 years old. The modified Kalashnikov assault rifle he carries stretches to more than half of his height.


Over the top of his faded yellow jacket a Free Syrian Army (FSA) vest holds three extra clips, each full with live ammunition, and a walkie-talkie. An FSA badge sits on one side and a rendering of the Islamic Shahada, in Arabic calligraphy, on the other.
He says he does not miss school or want to stay at home with his mother and two sisters.
“I want to stay as a fighter until Bashar is killed,” he says, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The fighters surrounding him, all claiming to be from Liwa al-Tawhid, pass him a sniper rifle and offer to take him to a frontline, so he can demonstrate his shooting.
The father of the boy, Mohammed Saleh Afar refers to his son as “ great shot” and “a little lion.”
Over the course of its grinding 21-month insurgency, Syria’s children have endured numerous abuses.
Caught-up in shelling, airstrikes, and sniping, they have additionally been subject to arbitrary arrest, torture and r*pe, as reported by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria in August; which, additionally, noted “with concern reports that children under 18 are fighting and performing auxiliary roles for anti-Government armed groups.”
Both the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children carry provisions that call for not using combatants under the age of 15, while the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute makes it a war crime.
Mohammed quickly disengages his magazine and presents it, before skillfully reinserting it, but not chambering a round. The older fighters surrounding him – some of whom are little more than boys themselves – praise his speed and mirror his father’s earlier statements, calling him a “good shot.”
He says he admires the fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra – composed of hardline Islamists subscribing to Takfiri ideology – and recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. Al-Nusra have proven effective in battle, winning itself scores of supporters.
Many of its fighters previously cut their teeth on other frontlines of the global jihad – notably Iraq and Afghanistan, but also throughout Central Asia and the Middle East.
The group’s rise has imbued the opposition with an unmistakable Islamicist hue while raising fears of a sectarian bloodbath in the event that Assad falls: Syria is home to Sunni, Alawite, Druze, Christians and Yazidi.
“They [Jabhat al-Nusra] know Islam and Sharia. They know what it means to be a Muslim,” Mohammed
“When my father goes to the frontline, he takes me with him,” says Mohammed. “He says to be careful and we find a safe place to shoot from.”
According to a November Human Rights Watch report, some opposition groups fighting in Syria “are using children for combat and other military purposes.”
“Even when children volunteer to fight, commanders have a responsibility to protect them by turning them away,” said its children’s researcher, Priyanka Motaparthy, in the report.
“Children are easily influenced by older relatives and friends, but their participation in armed hostilities places them in grave danger of being killed, permanently disabled, or severely traumatized.”
Yet Mohammed’s father – his long and graying beard styled in the fashion favored by religiously conservative Salafists – sees little wrong with his son’s participation.
“I put my trust in God,” he says.
The other members of the unit agree. The 11-year-old is kept safe, they claim, and never taken to frontlines that are too dangerous.
“There are other boys fighting too,” Mohammed says. “Some, but not much.”

Thursday, 12 December 2013

Israel Follows Saudi Arabia, Planning Deportation of 500 African Migrants



African Migrants, Israel,
As Ethiopians removed from Saudi Arabia continue filing back into the country, Israel is also planning to deport 500 Ethiopians, possibly as early as January 2014.
Approximately 60,000 migrants from African countries – particularly Eritrea and Sudan, which make up the lion’s share at some 90 percent of the total – have entered Israel in recent years through the Sinai Peninsula. This has led to fears that the Jewish character of the country of 7.8 million is being threatened, as stated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech in May 2012.
To assuage those concerns, the country is embarking on a drive to remove the undocumented migrants, which it calls “infiltrators,” with incentives designed to encourage voluntary departures. These include $3,500 in compensation for each migrant, in addition to free plane tickets and health care.
For Ethiopians, deportation will occur  within a short period of time, according to the Ethiopian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel.
“The deportation will happen in the near future. That is a given,” said Hilawei Yosef, Ethiopian ambassador to Israel, speaking on the phone to Ethiopian Ambassador Dina Mufti, spokesperson to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Addis Ababa. “But, at least they are well-protected and safe, unlike those from Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The operation will probably begin as of January next year, according to the Embassy.
Israel’s government had informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) of its decision months ago, said another official who requested anonymity. A delegation from the Middle East at the MoFA, led by Wubeshet Demesie, director general of the division, had planned to go to Tel Aviv to sort out the issue, but the Saudi Arabia case demanded more immediate attention, according to the source.
After the case of Saudi Arabia is settled, a four-person delegation, including Wubeshet, will go to Tel Aviv to negotiate with the Israeli government about the compensation, the official said. This will include demands to raise the compensation to $5,000.
The ministry has also written a letter to the International Organization for Migration, according to information from the MoFA.
More than 100,000 Ethiopians have returned from Saudi Arabia as of Dec. 6.
Unlike those who will be leaving Israel shortly, a large portion of those from the oil-rich kingdom returned to the country without their personal belongings; some of them even barefoot.
“We wish these measures weren’t to be taken, but at least they will not throw them out the way Saudi Arabia did,” said Dina.
The Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa, on the other hand, requested full cooperation from the Ethiopian government in the manner of returning the migrants, since they entered into the country using illegal means.
“We are talking about people who crossed the border without legal permission to do so,” said Leo Vinovezky, deputy head of mission at the Embassy. “They will be returned to their countries in full coordination with their governments.”
Currently, there are more than 130,000 people of Ethiopian origin in Israel, the majority of whom have Israeli citizenship given that they are Beta Israel.

Caricom to Update Caribbean Nations on Reparations Legal Case



reparations
Following a meeting with British law firm, Leigh, Day & Company over legal representation of Caribbean nations seeking redress from European countries for horrors endured during the 300-yearslong slave trade, the Caricom committee addressing this issue is slated to update the region on the progress of this pursuit.
Signaling an earnest attempt to seek compensation from former slave-trade countries for the atrocities of the period of trans-Atlantic human trafficking, members of Caricom’s reparation committee met with the British law firm yesterday in Jamaica to discuss their position.
The regional reparations executive committee also hosted a preparatory meeting with the law firm after holding a series of its own internal meetings after leaders approved plans to fight Britain, Spain and other European nations for slavery compensation at the July summit in Trinidad and Tobago.
The announcement by the Guyana-based Caribbean trade bloc secretariat said the committee has a mandate to “advance the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the governments of all the former colonial powers, to the nations and people of the Caribbean for native genocide, the trans-Atlantic Slave trade and a radicalized system of chattel slavery.”
Caricom has engaged that British law firm largely because it won international accolades for winning millions in compensation for hundreds of Kenyan Mau Mau tribesmen who were tortured by British soldiers and agents in colonial Kenya.
It has not been stated the amount expected from the former European colonizing nations, but leaders like St. Vincent’s Ralph Gonsalves, have pointed to the fact that Britain had paid out about 22 million British pounds in compensation to planters who lost slaves after abolition. That compensation sum, it was contended, would be an equivalent of about $327.5 billion (£200 billion) today.
At the 34th Conference of the Caricom Heads of Government, it was agreed and encouraged that each Caricom Member State would establish a national reparations committee. Some six countries; Jamaica, Suriname, Barbados, St. Vincent, Belize and Antigua have so far set up committees to support the work of the executive body, while the others are expected to join them in the coming months.
Today’s press conference will be streamed live across the region to update people in the bloc about the latest developments, the announcement said. It will be held at the regional headquarters, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

6 Truths Kanye West Exposed About Institutional White Supremacy

Over the past several weeks, Kanye West has given fans and critics alike an earful of his philosophical musings. Less than nine years removed from his declaration that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” at a charity event for Hurricane Katrina survivors, and four years following his infamous Taylor Swift speech interruption, “I’ma let you finish but…,” at the MTV Music Awards, West is back at it with much more to say.
The Chi-town rapper admirably tries to tackle the behemoth that is white supremacy, a system organized to maintain global power and influence in the hands of Western European people and their institutions.  Check out these six statements by West about white supremacy that we believe are justified.
kanye boys clue 
 
The good ol’ boys club is alive and well = “Man, let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money. People want to say Obama can’t make these moves or he’s not executing. That’s because he ain’t got those connections…Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connection as oil people.”



kanye small business
The glass ceiling is high for Black entrepreneurs = “For you to have done something to the level of the Yeezys and not be able to create more and you cannot – you cannot create that on your own, with no support, with no backing. So when I say, ‘Clean water was only served to the fairer skinned,’ what I’m saying is we’re making products with chitterlings.  T-shirts! That’s the most we can make! T-shirts. We could have our best perspective on T-shirts. But if it’s anything else, your ‘Truman Show’ boat is hitting the wall.”

Businessman Watching City Skyline
Institutions, primarily controlled by white males, guarantee personal security =“You know we don’t know nobody that got a nice house. You know we don’t know nobody with paper like that we can go to when we down. You know they can just put us back or put us in a corporation. You know we ain’t in situation. Can you guarantee that your daughter can get a job at this radio station? But if you own this radio station, you could guarantee that. That’s what I’m talking about.”



kanye diddy
Barriers to entry limits long-term wealth = “We don’t got it like that. When I tell you [there are] only seven Black billionaires, look at marginalization; and we feel like we happy because me and [rap artist] Rick Ross got it made, or I got a spread outside, a couple of us, or they put a Black president [in the White House].”
kanye pimp
Racial stereotypes are fully embedded in the media to fight against a new image  = “When someone comes up and says something like, ‘I am a god,’ everybody says, ‘Who does he think he is?’ I just told you who I thought I was, a god! I just told you! That’s who I think I am! Would have been better if I had a song that said, ‘I am a nigga?’ or if I had song that said ‘I am a gangsta?’ or if I had song that said ‘I am a pimp?’ All those colors and patinas fit better on a person like me, right? But to say you are a god… Especially, when you got shipped over to the country that you’re in, and your last name is a slave owner’s. How could you say that? How could you have that mentality?”

kanye new slaves 1
Anti-establishment propaganda is thwarted to maintain the existing power structure = “Pause that, pause that. That song (“New Slaves”) is a hit record minus, ‘F**k you and your corporation/ Ya’ll n**s can’t control me.’ Because if you can’t control me, then you can’t control him, then you can’t control him, then you can’t control him, and then the information age starts.”

Dynamics of Domination: 6 Steps Arabs and Europeans Used to Establish Dominion Over Black People

To dominate a people requires the exercise of power over their consciousness and Europeans and Arabs who have sought to control African people have made the dominion over Black minds their major objective. It has been the successful path to prosperity and power for oppressive nations for several centuries, with no significant changes to date. The consequence has been the creative power of 1 billion people of African descent directed primarily toward advancing the interests of Caucasian people.
For the physical enslavement and domination of African people by Arabs and Europeans to last as long as it did, there had to be a correlating enslavement of the minds of Black people, according to the late Asa G. Hilliard III (August 22, 1933 – August 13, 2007), an African-American professor of educational psychology who worked on indigenous ancient African history (ancient Egyptian), culture, education and society.
Hilliard argued that to establish mental slavery, the oppressors used a six-step process that he called “the dynamics of domination.” These are the practices that Europeans and Arabs engaged to conquer the continent of Africa and enslave and colonize African people for several centuries.
Hilliard further argues that to liberate ourselves from foreign domination, Black people must recapture, re-institute and practice our native culture prior to the Arab and European invasion of Africa as the basis for creating a new reality.
The following are the six steps in the dynamics of domination.

 1. Erase the Historical Narrative of African People
The act of erasing the historical memory of African people, according to Hilliard, was a psychological military operation that when completed disabled Black people psychologically as a group.  This disabling act prevented African people from being able to properly filter, interpret and respond to social, political and cultural stimuli in the interests of their own culture .  After this step in the process is completed, African people are effectively dispossessed of their own cultural narrative.
As was reported previously on Atlanta Black Star:  “Without a coherent personal narrative, it is hard to find our footing in the world. Maryland psychologist May Benatar, Ph.D., says a surprising number of people actually don’t have a coherent story, something that hangs together, makes sense and has some internal consistency to it. The story may have large, important chunks missing or the narrative is fragmented and chaotic.”
War-dance of Bantu tribesmen
2. Suppress the Practice of African Culture – Destroy group unity
By suppressing the practice of African culture, Europeans and Arabs prevented Africans from building and maintaining cultural institutions that would enable group unity, which then engenders economic and political power.
As a result of the discontinuation of the practice of African culture, despite having trillions of dollars in buying power and raw material resources, Black people around the world have been unable to unify and wield the necessary economic and political power to shape the world toward their natural benefit as a group.

The Mis-Education of the Negro 
3.Teach  WhiteSupremacy – Install the oppressors’ narrative
After the  historical memory of the African population has been erased and replaced with a white supremacy narrative, the African population is placed in a position where it begins to reject its own image and becomes less African in conscious behavior.
African people who have been victimized by these processes tend to identify themselves primarily with European and Arab cultural institutions in religion, language, nation state, etc. These behaviors are passed down to their descendants, even though they may not have experienced  actual physical oppression.
Amos Wilson (1941 – 1995) author and professor of psychology, said white supremacy myths continue to alter the consciousness of Black people today by giving us fabricated data: false history, false knowledge and false narratives. Therefore, our ability to think and act in our own interests has been impaired because we have become confused about what knowledge is, who it belongs to, and how it should be used.

 
Haitian-schoolchildren4. Control the Institutions of Socialization – preventing African people from re-learning, teaching and practicing their own culture and cultural narrative
Since culture plays the role of gluing a group of people together, for the oppressors to maintain control over Black people they had to separate them from their own culture, Hilliard said.
In doing so,  the European and the Arab were able to prevent group unity among enslaved or colonized Africans. This act weakened the African population and made them more controllable.
Chinweizu , author of “The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite,”  wrote:   “The central objective in decolonizing the African mind is to overthrow the authority that alien traditions exercise over the African. This demands the dismantling of white supremacist beliefs, and the structures which uphold them, in every area of African life. It must be stressed, however, that decolonization does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; it simply means denial of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them.”


china-is-very-busy-milking-africas-resources
5. Control of Wealth – Prevent Black people from controlling the economic resources necessary to finance their own development
By controlling the natural resources and means of production, Europeans, Arabs and now Chinese are able extract the benefits of what would naturally be African people’s wealth.  Black people are therefore unable to use their resources to build institutions and organizations that would develop and protect their interests at home and abroad. This relationship with non-Africans keeps the African population in a perpetual dependent role of beggar and borrower.
Today a new scramble for Africa marks the beginning of the latest chapter in the plunder of the continent. The United States, Europe, China and others are seeking to consolidate their grip on Africa’s oil, its minerals, and other resources, all worth more every day because of a massive boom in the price of oil and raw materials. Like earlier ventures, the new rush for Africa is not only about profits, but also control of strategic resources.
cps-segregation6.Physical Segregation – Prevent Black people from gaining access to developmental resources otherwise made available to the oppressors’ group
In societies where the oppressor lived in relatively close proximity with the African population, strategies were created to prevent the Black population from gaining access to the same quality of institutional benefits.
Racial segregation is generally outlawed today in most nations, however the practice still exists through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it. Segregation is maintained today by means ranging from discrimination in school zoning and hiring, in the rental and sale of housing to certain races, to vigilante violence.