Civil rights leader takes heat for stand on Confederate monuments

I heard Andrew Young say this morning that it’s a waste of time to protest Confederate monuments. That energy, he said on NPR’s Morning Edition, should be reserved to continue the struggle to end poverty and the racial injustice that still exists in America. Young’s position was perhaps unexpected given his vast experience in civil rights. Young marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., became mayor of Atlanta, a congressman representing Georgia and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“This is a total distraction undercutting most of the progress we made,” Young told NPR. He feels it’s a waste of time to fight the Civil War again. The civil rights movement succeeded, he said, because of the efforts to bring people together.

He feels it’s a waste of time to fight the Civil War again. Instead, he said, minorties in this country need to form alliances with white people in order to score victories. That’s how the civil rights movement succeeded, he said.

He was asked specifically about the massive tribute to Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis carved on the side of an outcropping of granite just east of Atlanta and mentioned in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”

Young said he supports adding a freedom bell on Stone Mountain but not taking down the carving, even though many African Americans, including the Black Lives Matter movement, would like to see it gone.

“These are kids who grew up free and they don’t realize what still enslaves them,” Young said, “and it’s not those monuments. The issue is life and death and not some stupid monuments.”


Young’s position is probably not a popular one, especially now, after the events in Charlottesville. The protests there had a domino effect and every day, we hear about another monument under fire. Today, the news came from Norfolk, Virginia, where the city council voted to re-located a downtown tribute to Confederate soldiers.

Over the weekend, Young had taken heat over comments he made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that black protesters today get it wrong when they put down white people. He was attacked on Twitter, particularly for this comment:


“The reason I feel uncomfortable condemning the Klan types is that they are almost the poorest of the poor. They are the forgotten Americans. They have been used and abused and neglected….”

Young’s point was that poverty still threatens millions of Americans – no matter what race – and that we should be fighting it together, not divided. Some called him a wise man. Some lamented that he was out of touch. Others were downright angry that a civil rights leader stopped short of condemning the Klan.

I understand how such monuments and tributes to a hateful past can be downright painful. I still have to look at them in my native India, brutalized by the British for so many years. It hurts to see Queen Victoria and British generals and viceroys glorified when they ordered the oppression of my people. Is Young right? I’m interested to know what people think.

But I also understand Young’s point that monuments represent the past. We should add to history, not take away from it. Is Young right? I’m interested to know what people think.

I am still mulling over Young’s words. Is he right or out of touch? I’m interested to know what people think.

Freedom at midnight: Indian independence came at a high cost

 

Today, on the 70th birthday of my homeland, I reread Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s evocative speech, delivered just before India gained independence from oppressive British rule.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

The speech still sends shivers down my spine.

A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

August 15, 1947. Freedom at midnight.

My mother’s family listened to the speech on the radio in Calcutta. My father’s family knew they would have to leave home in Dhaka and restart their lives in Calcutta.

India was no longer one. Its happiest moment was also one of its saddest.

In negotiating freedom, India’s Muslim leaders demanded a homeland of their own. So, from my homeland’s left and right sides was carved out a new nation: Pakistan, land of the pure.

Bengal, the land of my ancestors, was divided in two. Dhaka, the most populous city in East Bengal became a part of East Pakistan at that fateful stroke of the midnight hour. My father’s family was Hindu and they left their house on Bakshibajar Lane. They left childhood friends and everything that was familiar to travel through lush lands around the Ganges Delta to cross over into West Bengal, now a state in India.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen.

Read Pankaj Mishra on India at 70

The partitioning of India gave way to one of the largest forced migrations of the 20

The partitioning of India gave way to one of the largest forced migrations of the 20th century. And though the leaders of the Indian independence movement took enormous pride in having successfully fomenting nonviolent revolution, the partitioning of India was anything but.

About 9 million Hindus and Sikhs moved to India and 5 million Muslims exited to Pakistan. That’s 14 million refugees.

Trains carrying Muslims from Delhi to Lahore arrived drowning in crimson rivers; bodies tumbling out at the station. Hindus killed Muslims. Muslims killed Hindus. Mahatma Gandhi’s dream became drenched with blood.

At least one million people were slaughtered; some believe that number is much higher.

My father’s family was lucky. They resettled in Calcutta, now Kolkata, without terrible loss.

But so many suffered and some of their stories are documented in an oral storytelling project called 1947 Archive.

Ajay Kumar De recorded his story on the 1947 Archive. He was born in Dhaka in 1935, 11 years after my father, and recalled how people irrespective of faith, lived together cooperatively.

He remembered a riot breaking out one day in 1950 and that men brandishing swords attached his school. The principal of the school held off the men and then, when trouble subsided, took the children back home himself, he said.

When the mob approached his house, someone put a hand over his mouth to keep him silenced. He saw the sword-carrying men climb over the wall of his house and attack people. Eventually, the mob left and De’s family sought refuge at a local firehouse, before escaping to West Bengal. He had no documents or belongings and started life from scratch. De went on to earn a Ph.D from Calcutta University, just like my father.

Partition, De said, had created a deep sense of enmity between people who once lived side by side.

Decades passed and my father’s siblings all returned to visit Dhaka, to the home they had been forced to flee, to the friends they had been forced to abandon. My father talked about his childhood and his beloved Dhaka but he could never quite get on a plane to go back. It was too painful, especially after his parents died and a pre-Partition life seemed familiar and alien all at once.

I visited Dhaka several times in the 1980s and 1990s and stayed with my uncle’s closest friends in Bangladesh. Motin Khan took me to the great house on Bakshibajar Lane, the one I had heard fabled stories about from my father. It stood before me, unimpressively small on a congested lane. And yet, I peered inside the metal gate, longing to know what life was like inside in 1924, when my father was born, the second eldest of five brothers and three sisters.

Jawaharlal Nehru delivers his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech before India’s independence on August 15, 1947.

I stared at the cement and plaster grown old with the years and blackened by moisture. It was as though the place had fallen into deep sorrow, mourning a time that could never come back. I pictured my father as a boy, playing with his brothers and cousins, getting stung by hornets after pestering their nests and falling off bicycles ridden much too fast on dirt paths. And later, my father as a young man wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps by studying mathematics at Dhaka University. Sorry, Dacca University, as it was spelled then by the British.

Baba wrote me long letters about his childhood but by the time I was mature enough and curious enough to know more, he was ill with Alzheimer’s. I tried to learn as much as I could but our conversations were limited by his weakened cognitive abilities. I wish now that I had recorded my talks with Baba.

I believe it was 1994 when my uncle finally persuaded Baba to accompany him on a trip back to what has since become Bangladesh – land of the Bengalis. I wished I could have been there with them. What must it feel like to return home after so many decades?

Today, I wish my father were still alive so he and I could talk about that tryst with destiny and the price that was paid for it. So that we could remember all that was lost as we gained freedom at midnight.

Read a few of my stories on India:

The girl whose rape changed a country

Obama’s trip to my homeland

Of cavities, love and paradise

Twilight comes for India’s Jewish community

What I learned from a girl in Iraq: Human being first, journalist second

Iraqi girl born with spina bifida survived the war and now has hope for the future
Noor’s father, Haider, embraces his daughter before brain surgery at a hospital in Uganda.

A few months ago, I traveled to a place I’d never visited before: Mbale, Uganda. I wasn’t there to marvel at the vastness of Lake Victoria or spend a day at a safari park, though I wished I’d had time to see mountain gorillas. I was there to Meet Noor, a girl I met 11 years ago in the midst of the Iraq war. She came to America once and melted a thousand hearts. Everyone wanted to help “Baby Noor.” I have followed her story since then.

You can read my 2013 CNN.com story here: “Baby Noor: An unfinished miracle.”

This photo was taken in 2013, when I went with Noor to the special school she attends in Baghdad. Her best friend is Hajar, who lost a leg in the war.

It was a trip that surprised in so many ways. Noor and her family had never dreamed in they would end up in a place like Mbale for critical surgery. They only had one dream in their hearts. You will have to read my upcoming story on CNN.com to find out what that is and whether it was fulfilled.

But at a time when refugees and immigrants are under fire in the United States, I saw Noor and her father, Haider, as Iraqis who exuded the best of humankind.

Their daily lives are laced with the horror that still unfolds in Iraq, where nearly 7,000 people were killed in attacks last year. They struggle just to survive; never mind address the challenges of a girl growing up with severe disabilities.

Noor and me, a few days after her neurosurgery in Uganda. It was tough to say goodbye. I don’t know when I will be able to see her again.

Noor made me stop and think — again — about the privileged life I lead, about how lucky I am.

I suppose many of us reporters feel that way after a difficult reporting trip. But as you will learn from my CNN story, Noor is no longer a subject of my stories. She has become so much more.

Iraq: Victory in Mosul, but at what cost?

I awoke to news today that Iraqi forces were claiming victory in Mosul. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul to personally deliver a message of victory to the world: ISIS had been driven out of the city in northern Iraq that had been the extremist group’s crown jewel.

Victory. Yes. But at tremendous cost. The ancient city of Nineveh will never be the same.

ISIS took hold of Mosul in June 2014. Thousands of Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen and other minorities fled under threat of forced conversions to the ISIS brand of Islam. Those who remained endured three years of the so-called Islamic State and its brutality and intolerance.

The campaign to oust ISIS began in October 2016. The fighting was brutal. Iraq’s second largest city is left in ruins; many of its ancient sites destroyed by ISIS. That includes the historic al-Nuri mosque with its leaning minaret known as Habda.

Thousands of Iraqis were killed; more than a million people were displaced from their homes.

https://twitter.com/abdullahawez/status/884040835469332480

I was in Iraq last year when the campaign to retake Mosul was still in its early stages. I visited many of the camps set up for IDPs. Internally displaced people. That’s the term used for people who are forced to flee their homes for safety. Really, they are refugees in their homeland, separated from loved ones and the lives they once led.

Here are some of the children of Nineveh province who I met who either living in camps for displaced people or were squatting in empty buildings in Erbil.

Yes, there is victory in Mosul. But what does the future look like for these children? They have been torn from the safety of the homes they knew and out of school for many months. Where will they return to? Will they even return?

Look into the eyes of one of these children. Imagine if this was your little boy or girl. Think of these children when you hear the news today. Think of what victory feels like for them.

Read a few of my recent Iraq stories published on CNN.com:

As Iraqi city of Mosul braces for battle with ISIS, its people recall gentler times

The Iraqi women who escaped ISIS but lost everything

Mosul blogger defies ISIS by listening to violinist Itzhak Perlman

Hiding from ISIS: Women fight for survival by staying put

In biblical lands of Iraq, Christianity in peril after ISIS

Voices of Iraq: Minorities on the edge of extinction

Good Morning, Mosul: Pirate radio risks death to fight ISIS on airwaves

In Iraq, thousands of terrorism’s victims go unnamed

 

Stop the politics today — and remember

Spc. John Figueroa of the 30th Infantry Regiment patrols Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad in 2008. Fig, as he was known, had seen the worst of #war and shared his thoughts with me for
Spc. John Figueroa of the 30th Infantry Regiment patrols Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad in 2008. Fig, as he was known, had seen the worst of #war and shared his thoughts with me for “Chaplain Turner’s War,” a newspaper series and ebook I wrote on an army chaplain. Photo by Curtis Compton/AJC

Amid all the political noise of today, I want to stop and think of all my soldier  friends I met in Iraq and back here at home in all the years I covered the military.

Today is Veterans Day, a time for pause and reflection about the courage and sacrifice of our men and women who served in uniform. I am afraid that they will not get the attention they deserve given the current post-election situation.

Here’s to you, Fig, (see photo caption) and every veteran throughout the land.

You can find Fig’s story here: Chaplain Turner’s War

Iraq: Eye on Mosul

CNN
CNN

I recently wrote a story about a very brave man living in Mosul, who has been defying ISIS for more than two years with his words. You can read about the Mosul Eye blog on CNN here: Determined to let the world about know the suffering of his city.

He posted yesterday as street-to-street fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State fighters raged in Iraq’s second largest city. It made me cry.

 I thought I would share the beginning here.

Oblivion

I don’t know what to write tonight. I’m writing to you then I feel bad because I am sharing my sorrow with you .. you don’t deserve to drop this on you like this, but I feel that sharing my pain with you might help to release some of this stress that sits heavily on my chest and strangles my soul.

I don’t know what to write tonight. I’m writing to you then I feel bad because I am sharing my sorrow with you .. you don’t deserve to drop this on you like this, but I feel that sharing my pain with you might help to release some of this stress that sits heavily on my chest and strangles my soul.

I feel that this war will take longer than I think. We are stranded between Life and Death. We are neither alive, nor dead. I can see death hovering over the city, but it’s not taking lives to declare the end of it, and doesn’t leave the city to let it live in peace. There is no value for death if the dying soul is already dead!

I saw a video where children were dragging along the ground ISIL dead corpses. I cried just for seeing this hideous scene. I was fearing this very moment. It frightens me to see such scenes take place in my city. But I rush to Hannah Arendt as she watches Eichmann and watches the human action and the subjugation to authority. I find my consolation with Hannah Arendt, with all this totalitarianism and atrociousness, how can we restore life and peace to the city? I feel very sad to watch those children play with corpses! They cannot think, they don’t know what thinking means and cannot value it!

Read the rest of the post on Mosul Eye.

Migration crisis: People keep dying

The team from MOAS gets ready to rescue migrants who set sail from Libya on a rubber dinghy.
The team from MOAS gets ready to rescue migrants who set sail from Libya on a rubber dinghy.

Almost every day, I receive an email from the International Organization for Migration containing the latest update on migration issues around the world. Many of you may not know that more than 60 million people are on the move, either as refugees fleeing horrendous situations in their homelands or economic migrants seeking a way out of a life of poverty.

Today, the IOM update included a number. Migrant arrivals in Europe via the Mediterranean: 302,149. Deaths at sea: 3,501.

The numbers are higher than they were last year at this time, yet it seems to me that European nations are addressing the crisis in an incremental way that won’t likely lead to a permanent solution.

In July, I spent almost a week with the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a private rescue outfit started by American millionaire Chris Catrambone and his wife, Regina. They were sickened by what they perceived as a lack of response from governments. They were called to action by Pope Francis who visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, then a hub for migrants, and shamed the rich countries for a lack of action.

Eva, a Nigerian woman, gets some much needed sleep after being rescued at sea.
Eva, a Nigerian woman, gets some much needed sleep after being rescued at sea.

I’ve reported on natural disasters that kill thousands and leave even more in dire conditions. I’ve reported from war zones, where I have seen the worst of humanity unfold before my eyes.

I did not expect I would feel the kind of emotions I did during my days on the Topaz Responder, a ship chartered by MOAS to patrol the Mediterranean with the sole purpose of plucking desperate people from the sea.

In one day, MOAS rescued 366 people. Luckily, everyone had survived. I spoke with many of those on board. Some had traveled for months and experienced the worst physical conditions as well as abuse by human smugglers and Libyan militias. A Nigerian woman, Esther, told me she was right next to her brother  he was shot and killed by gunmen.

Even after those harrowing journeys, refugees and migrants then board flimsy boats to make a long crossing to Europe. Some die of dehydration. Most of the deaths are from drowning and in the winter months, hypothermia.

I thought about the kind of desperation that drives human beings to risk everything for a better life. I can’t fully understand it because I live such a privileged and comfortable life compared to them. But I try hard to report their stories.

Yes, we should be outraged when a photograph of a shell-shocked Syrian boy goes viral on social media. But that’s not enough.

It’s important for those of us who live in rich countries to know the stories of people who were born to poor countries rife with corrupt and callous leaders who do little for their people. It’s important to open our eyes to the suffering of people who endure constant war and conflict.

I encourage everyone to think about how huge the numbers are in the refugee crisis. Think about what it would feel like if you were forced from your home knowing, that you may never see it again. What if you were separated from your mother or father, your husband or wife, your children?

Here’s a link to a few stories I’ve written recently on the crisis, including the one I reported thanks to MOAS.

 

 

 

David Gilkey: remembering an incredible photojournalist

Credit: Michael M. Phillips / The Wall Street Journal
Credit: Michael M. Phillips / The Wall Street Journal

I woke up to extremely sad news today. NPR photojournalist David Gilkey was killed in Afghanistan, along with interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna.

Another friend who worked tirelessly in the world’s most difficult places, gone.

David and Zabihullah were traveling with an Afghan army unit, according to the report I heard on NPR this morning. They came under fire and their armored Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Also killed was their driver, an Afghan soldier.

David was only 50 years old.

He was an incredible photojournalist. His photographs were often difficult to look at and yet I could never turn away. He was so good at capturing the essence of a place through its people.

He won many well-deserved accolades, including the Polk Award. I encourage everyone to look at his work: His NPR profile page and the NPR tribute today

I first met Gilkey in Iraq. I can’t remember exactly which year it was or even where it was. Later, I got to know him better through Military Reporters and Editors. We were both newspaper journalists then — he with the Detroit Free Press and I with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I ran into him in Haiti, after the earthquake in 2010. By then, we had both left the shrinking newspaper world. He joined NPR in 2007 and I had been with CNN for about a year.  We spoke about our transitions and he said:

“You’re a writer who works for a cable television network and I’m a photog who works for radio. Go figure.”

We laughed. He told me he was thankful he could carry on his work. And it was such important work. David gave us an understanding of people who are so often forgotten.

He said this about his work in Haiti, according to NPR: “It’s not just reporting. It’s not just taking pictures. It’s, ‘Do those visuals, do the stories, do they change somebody’s mind enough to take action?’ So if we’re doing our part, it gets people to do their part. Hopefully.”

We forget the risks that journalists take to bring us important stories. We forget until we are reminded by tragedy.

A few days ago, I spoke with Paula Bronstein, another photojournalist who has put herself in harm’s way countless times to tell the sad story of Afghanistan. Paula recently returned to the United States to receive a courage award named for Anja Niedringhaus, also killed in Afghanistan in 2014. You can see that story here: http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/middleeast/cnnphotos-afghanistan-between-hope-and-fear/

I thought today of all the journalists I knew who were killed in conflict. In all, 1,192 journalists have died this way since 1992, says The Committee to Protect Journalists. So many important voices silenced too soon by war.

 

From the darkness of disaster…

meandmaya

I first met Maya Gurung last year, a few days after a massive earthquake struck Nepal. Maya was recovering from the amputation of her left leg at a Kathmandu hospital.

I wrote a story about her  because I wondered how a little girl would fare in Kashi Gaon, the remote and rugged village in Gorkha District, where she lived. It would be hard for her without the use of a leg; her future seemed bleak.

Then a second quake hit Nepal on May 12. And Maya’s life trajectory changed again.

Ahead of the first anniversary of the quake, I returned to Nepal for CNN to find out how Maya was doing. I believe hers is a story of something good happening from something very bad.

You can read the story on CNN.com: A ray of hope for one girl in Nepal

 

When doves cry…

Screen Shot 2016-04-21 at 1.29.33 PM
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here 2 tell u
There’s something else
The afterworld

A world of never ending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night

Prince.

You left too soon. Just two months after Vanity.

I saw you on stage a few times. The first was the best. Tully Gym. Florida State. Vanity 6. Yeah.

You rocked my world.

 

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