Dear Colleagues ,
Even as we view with disbelief the Military Basesof Pentagon assisted by
NATO in every single continent ,with contingents of 48 troops stationed only in
one country , Afghanistan; to remind ourselves of the political , social and
cultural history of colonization and occupation which has ravaged the
continent of the Americas among other continents including of Africa ,
Australia and Asia ; it is necessary to read what one of the most important
political prisoners of conscience in the United States , Mumia Abu-Jamal has to
say on the US holiday " Thanksgiving" which commemorates the assistance Native
Americans rendered to European settlers which sums up the history of the
occupation of the Americas as seen from the perspective of the Native Americans
which could reflect what the people of Palestine, Afghanistan , Iraq , Haiti ,
the Congo , Honduras among others ,feel to-day :
In the words of Mumbai Abu Jamal , a political prisoner jailed for racist
reasons in the United States of America whose incarceration for several
decades ,despite proof of a racist Judge and Jury who is representative of the
real situation of middle income and working classes of the African-American
community and whom the President of the USA does not represent , Thanksgiving
means :-
"To this day , I can hardly bear to think of that quintessentially American
holiday - Thanksgiving .
Centuries later what can Thanksgiving Day mean to Natives Peoples......
Thank you for stealing our land ? Thank you for wiping out our people ?
Thank you for placing a remnant of our once great numbers on rural
ghettoes called Reservations?
Thank you for abolishing most of our ancient traditions ?
Thank you for poisoning what little Indian lands remain with Uranium.
Thank you for poisoning lands inhabited with Whites .
Thank you for letting Indians fight in American wars against our people
."
Even as citizens of the United States are waking up to the need for mass
civil disobedience and non -cooperation against the militarization
hemorrhaging their savings and social security with 25 % unemployment and even
as the citizens of the NATO powers face economic insecurity and uncertainty of
a kind that they have not faced in half a century , they must understand what
the policies of their government have done to peoples throughout the world
,before devouring the employment and saving of their own people .
Before the government of the United States requests for the release of the
political prisoners in other countries and seeks to pronounce on human rights
, it is necessary to release Mumia Abu-Jamal among other political prisoners
and vacate military bases destroying the Human Rights of the people of occupied
countries and the rights of all those peoples where these bases are situated .
Niloufer Bhagwat
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