Tag: racism

Tunis police raid sees refugees abandoned near the border with Algeria | Refugees News

Tunis, Tunisia – Teams of refuse workers are busy in the deserted alleyway outside the International Organization for Migration (IOM) offices in Tunis. A nearby park stands empty.

In both, large piles of refuse are the only evidence of the hundreds of sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants who sheltered here until recently.

In the early hours of Friday morning, police swept into both camps, plus a protest site outside the offices of the UNHCR a few miles distant, clearing them of the shelters erected there and bundling the men, women and children onto municipal buses to the Algerian border.

The Refugees in Libya organisation claims they were taken off the buses near the border town of Jendouba – whose governorate borders Algeria – where they were left without food or water to fend for themselves.

The raids in Tunis are the latest example of an increasingly hostile environment taking hold in Tunisia. One where irregular sub-Saharan African arrivals, their numbers swelling by the day, find themselves attacked by both security services and politicians, forced to shelter in open fields while increasingly vulnerable to kidnapping and ransom.

Who they are

There are currently tens of thousands of irregular sub-Saharan African arrivals sheltering in Tunisia, nearly all hoping to continue their months-long journeys on to Europe.

Total numbers are impossible to confirm. However, the IOM estimates that about 15,000 may be living in the fields near the coastal city of Sfax after police ejected them from the centre in September.

Some have returned to the outskirts of the city, squatting in the working-class districts close to the rail tracks. More shelter in the fields near Zarzis, close to the Libyan border, clustering around the UNHCR office in hopes of securing refugee accreditation and a degree of protection in a country that offers none.

Some 550 were estimated to have been living rough in Tunis at the time of Friday’s police raid. Outside the offices of the IOM, many families had sheltered in structures of timber and tarpaulin. Among them were a large number of children and newborn babies, including Freedom, a four-month-old boy born in Tunisia to a Nigerian mother, Gift.

“I named him that because I need freedom,” she had told Al Jazeera, “I need to know freedom. There is no freedom for us,” she says.

Gift had entered the country last summer through Libya, where a militia patrolling the desert had taken her prisoner, holding her for seven months before her family in Nigeria could raise her ransom.

Gift and Freedom’s location is currently unknown.

Cleanup crews clearing the alleyway by the IOM office in Tunis on May 3, 2024 [Al Jazeera]

Unwanted

Conditions in the fields near Sfax are dire, 37-year-old Richard from Ghana said.

Violent police raids and surveillance have grown more frequent and disease has gradually taken hold in a community deprived of medical care. The fear of arrest and deportation to the desert borders with Libya and Algeria is ubiquitous.

“Conditions there are bad. Very, very bad,” Richard said.

He had returned from Sfax to the fragile security of the IOM camp in Tunis a week earlier.

“I am sick, you can see. My body hurts,” he said. “I have to go to hospital but they give you no assistance. In Sfax, it is very difficult.”

He gestured to his friend Solomon, 36, who was coughing: “My brother here is really sick. He’s been coughing for some time,” he said.

“I started to cough three days ago. All my body hurts. Lots of people at the camp had the same symptoms,” Solomon said.

On top of the spread of disease is the ongoing threat from the police. Camps around Sfax where the undocumented shelter offer no protection from police surveillance, which has taken to the skies recently.

“I saw the drones,” Solomon says. “I was at Kilometre 31. They were going up and down,” he says, waving his hand above his head.

A tear gas cannister fired at refugees and migrants in Al Amrah, 23-25 April Sfax. Photographed by Richard from Ghana
Tear gas canisters from Al Amrah, near Sfax, Tunisia 23-25 April 2024 [Courtesy of Richard]

Richard joins in, he had been at Kilometre 34, names given to the informal camps based on their distance from Sfax centre. He describes a raid last month where the refugees were able to film the police burning tents and firing tear gas.

“The police came and burned the tents,” Richard explains, showing the video of the raid on his phone.  “I don’t know why they did it,” he says.

But this is just one of what have become commonplace raids for those living in the fields around Sfax, shut off from the world by a police force that seeks to block access from NGOs and prying journalists.

Both Richard and Solomon subsequently told Al Jazeera that they were away from the Tunis camps at the time of the police raid.

Kidnapped

With much of the sub-Saharan African refugee community existing in an official vacuum, a trade in kidnapping has been growing since at least the end of last year.

In Tunis, huddled on a broken sofa that, like the shelters surrounding it, was subsequently swept up in the raid, three Sierra Leoneans spoke of having been held and tortured on arriving in Sfax from Algeria.

They were held prisoner by an unknown number of Francophones, their guess was Cameroonians, after being “sold” to them by the Tunisian smugglers they had already paid 600 euros ($644) to.

“They beat us with plastic pipes. One, he gets a bottle and burns it, so the plastic falls on us,” 29-year-old Hassan said.

His friend, 34-year-old Izzi from Freetown, took up the story: “They make us call our families. I phone my wife in Sierra Leone. I am supposed to be earning money for her and our three children. We all phone.

“We transfer the money. They leave us with nothing. They take our phones, everything.”

Accounts of kidnapping, torture and trafficking are rife among the sub-Saharan African refugee community. In March, the practice was called out, by a group of 27 international and national NGOs, including the regional office of Lawyers Without Borders, who said the prevalence of kidnapping was the outcome of official attitudes towards migration.

Determining how prevalent the trade is – like trying to count overall arrivals – when both victim and trafficker rely upon secrecy, is like trying to place one’s finger on liquid mercury.

“There have been escalating reports of such practices since the end of last year, primarily in Sfax, where migrants are kidnapped by other migrants, or in conjunction with Tunisian smugglers,” Romdhane Ben Amor, communications officer for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, said.

“They are then held against their will in apartments or houses.”

Translation: What is currently happening in Sfax is shameful. The worst part is that the state and so-called politicians are all complicit. Remember that #Tunisia has more than 12,000 refugees, mainly in Italy, where they are treated with dignity.

The situation deteriorated since authorities expelled undocumented sub-Saharan refugees to the fields outside Sfax, Ben Amor continued.

In April, journalists for French newspaper Liberation reported on a police raid on a three-storey building in a working-class district of Sfax, where sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants were ordered onto the roof by their Black kidnappers and instructed to threaten to jump should the police approach.

Vilified

Encouraged by a government that analysts typically characterise as authoritarian operating in tandem with a largely pliant media, many within Tunisia are venting their frustrations over tanking living standards, shrinking freedoms and endemic unemployment in the Black refugee and migrant community.

In Sfax, local MP Fatma Mseddi has channelled much of that anger, petitioning to have irregular arrivals deported and pushing a law intended to hobble the international NGOs she blames for supporting them.

A suggestion from a Tunisian NGO to shelter some of the refugees and migrants in a hotel has already been attacked within the press with the organisation’s national credentials questioned.

On the ground, community Facebook groups focus that anger while ignoring from their own contribution to the overall migration numbers. 17,322 Tunisian nationals made the journey to Italy without paperwork last year.

However, with no long-term solution in sight, Tunisia continues to punish refugees and migrants for their presence.

How four-month-old Freedom and the other children of the Tunis encampments may be responsible for their homelessness and destitution is unknown.



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Far-right Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner banned from entering Germany | The Far Right News

Sellner is known for his talk about ‘remigration’ at a recent meeting of nationalist populists in Europe that triggered large protests in Germany.

Far-right Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Sellner, a leader in Austria’s ultranationalist Identitarian Movement, said in a video posted on Tuesday on X that German authorities sent his lawyer a letter saying he was not allowed to enter Germany for the next three years.

Sellner is known for his talk about “remigration” at a recent meeting of nationalist populists from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) that triggered large protests in Germany.

Identitarians belong to an extreme right movement that started in France and mainly campaign against immigration and Islam.

A spokeswoman for the Potsdam city authorities, from where Sellner posted his video on Tuesday, told the AFP news agency that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Swiss police said on Sunday they had prevented a large far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Muslim stance.

The group is a proponent of the far-right ethnonationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which advocates for the deportation of immigrants.

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Foreign students attacked over Muslim prayers at Indian university | Government

NewsFeed

More than a dozen men have attacked international students who were performing Ramadan prayers at their Gujarat University accommodation. Police say they are investigating.

Published On 17 Mar 2024

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Black Britons fear for Diane Abbott after millionaire’s call for violence | Racism News

London, United Kingdom – Natasha Shotunde, a British barrister, was born two years after Diane Abbott was elected as the first Black female member of parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1987.

It is a seat the 70-year-old, affectionally called “Auntie Di” in the Black British community, still holds today.

“Whatever strand of the political spectrum you might be in, for a Black woman, a Black girl growing up, seeing someone in such a prominent space, it’s big,” Shotunde told Al Jazeera. “It shows you that it’s possible – you can be in public life and in public roles.”

Like many Black Britons, this has been a week for Shotunde.

On Monday, the Guardian newspaper reported that the biggest donor to the ruling, right-wing Conservative Party had told colleagues in 2019 that Abbott made him “want to hate all Black women”.

Frank Hester, a businessman from the northern English Yorkshire region, also said Abbot “should be shot”, the Guardian revealed.

While shocking, it is not the first time the veteran politician has faced racist abuse.

Shotunde said Abbott’s public experiences with anti-Black racism and sexism were a public “mirror” for the experiences many Black women still face in white-dominated spaces like politics and law.

“For all of us, it feels like a personal attack because [Hester] has attacked Auntie Di,” Shotunde told Al Jazeera. “As a Black woman, it feels like he’s attacked me too.”

According to the Guardian’s investigation, Hester has donated 10 million pounds ($12.75m) to the Tories this past year.

He said five years ago, “It’s like trying not to be racist, but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like, I hate, you just want to hate all Black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned the comments as “racist” and “wrong” but stopped short of returning the money to Hester.

The episode comes in a heated election year.

Pollsters said the Conservatives, in power for more than a decade, have an uphill battle against the main opposition Labour Party, from which Abbott was suspended in 2023 after she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people are not subject to racism “all their lives”.

Abbott has faced documented sexist and racist abuse for decades, online especially.

In a report investigating online hate received by UK women in politics prior to the general election in 2017, Amnesty International found Abbott received almost half of all abusive tweets analysed.

Sophia Moreau, a diversity, equity and inclusion expert and the deputy leader of the Women’s Equality Party, said Hester’s comments were an indictment of Sunak’s government.

She accused the premier of “minimisation gymnastics” by referring to Hester’s comments as “alleged”.

“It’s almost as if someone is right in front of you, insisting that there is not a chair blocking the door with absolute confidence, to the extent that others are repeating it and saying the ‘alleged chair’ in front of the door when there is a chair in front of the door,” Moreau said. “We are being gaslit on a national scale and in a way that is unfolding in public discussion.”

In an opinion piece written for the Guardian, Abbott said she was “upset but not surprised” about Hester’s comments because she was “hardened to racist abuse”.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has described Hester’s remarks about Abbott as “abhorrent” and urged the Conservatives to return the millionaire’s money.

But the scourge of racism is not unique to the Conservatives.

In 2022, the Forde Report – an independent investigation commissioned by Starmer into allegations of racism, sexism and bullying in the Labour Party – found senior officials had shared messages about Abbott in their WhatsApp groups, saying Abbott “literally makes me sick” and is “truly repulsive”.

The messages were “expressions of visceral disgust, drawing (consciously or otherwise) on racist tropes, and they bear little resemblance to the criticisms of white male MPs elsewhere in the messages”, the report concluded.

Moreau said Labour is not doing enough to tackle anti-Black racism.

“If they take action now, it would almost be a case of too little too late,” she said. “Is it only because it’s coming from a Conservative Party donor that there would be meaningful action?”

Labour sent an email to its supporters on Wednesday asking for donations for the general election campaign that referenced Hester’s comments, saying the Conservatives will “happily ignore the racism, cover their ears and spend every penny”.

The email was roundly condemned. because Abbott no longer sits with the party.

“What we’ve seen over the past week is how threats to your life can be instrumentalised for political gains [as a] political football, which makes it even less attractive for people of colour, for Black women, to want to enter the political sphere,” said Kimberly McIntosh, a writer and Labour councillor.

“I see no reason why I would give up not only my safety but my personal life for higher office when there’s no guarantee that anyone, whether your own political party or the opposition, will give you the support you need,” she added.

Violence against politicians is rare in Britain, but in recent memory, two serving members of the United Kingdom Parliament, both of them white, have been killed.

A far-right sympathiser fatally shot and stabbed Labour’s Jo Cox in 2016. Five years later, a 25-year-old fatally stabbed Conservative politician David Amess in an ISIL (ISIS)-inspired attack.

“That [risk] is heightened if you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you’re a woman of colour and if you’re a Black woman,” McIntosh said.

Charlene White, the first Black woman to present the mainstream current affairs show ITV News at Ten, said on social media that racism “defended by the upper echelons of society” risked the safety of Black women with public profiles.

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, a top Tory politician who has in the past been criticised for rejecting critical race theory as a “divisive agenda”, extended a hand over party lines to Abbott, saying Hester’s comments “as reported were racist”.

“Abbott and I disagree on a lot. But the idea of linking criticism of her to being a Black woman is appalling,” Badenoch, herself a Black Briton, wrote on X.

Abbott remains a Labour member but sits as an independent MP while an internal investigation of her comments last year continues.

After Hester’s remarks, Labour is facing growing pressure to welcome Abbott back.

Hester said he was “deeply sorry” for his remarks but refused to accept they were racist.

At the time of writing, the Labour Party had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

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UK Conservatives’ top donor Frank Hester spoke of hating ‘all Black women’ | Politics News

Opposition Labour Party blasts Frank Hester over remarks about Diane Abbott, who calls the comments ‘frightening’.

The biggest donor to Britain’s governing Conservative Party has come under fire after he reportedly said looking at the country’s longest serving Black lawmaker made him “want to hate all Black women” and she “should be shot”.

Frank Hester has given 10 million pounds ($12.8m) to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party in the past year, and the publication of his comments from 2019 prompted the opposition Labour Party to urge the Conservatives to return the donation.

The Guardian newspaper quoted Hester as referring to Diane Abbott, who became the first Black woman to be elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom when she won a seat in 1987.

“It’s like trying not to be racist, but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like, I hate, you just want to hate all Black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot,” he was quoted as saying.

Hester said in a statement that he “accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting several years ago but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.

He said he abhors racism and had tried to apologise to Abbott.

“Mr Hester has made clear that while he was rude, his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor the colour of her skin. He has since apologised,” a Conservative Party spokesperson said.

Then-Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott addresses anti-Brexit voters in London on October 19, 2019 [File: Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo]

“The comments about Diane Abbott are just abhorrent,” Labour leader Keir Starmer told ITV on Tuesday. “This apology this morning that is pretending that what was said wasn’t racist or anything to do with the fact she’s a woman, I don’t buy that I’m afraid, and I think that it’s time the Tory Party called it out and returned the money.”

Abbott, 70, sits as an independent after being kicked out of the Labour Party caucus for comments that suggested Jewish and Irish people do not experience racism “all their lives”.

Abbott issued a statement Tuesday saying Hester’s remarks were alarming for a public figure who is a visible presence in the community because she doesn’t have a car and regularly walks or takes the bus.

“It is frightening,” Abbott said. “I am a single woman, and that makes me vulnerable anyway. But to hear someone talking like this is worrying.”

Hester’s comments are likely to revive scrutiny of the Conservative Party and how it handles allegations of racism.

Former party chairperson Lee Anderson was suspended after he refused to apologise for saying London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, was under the control of “Islamists”.

Senior Conservative lawmakers said Anderson’s comments were wrong but declined to say why or whether they were Islamophobic.

Graham Stuart, a minister in Sunak’s government, was asked by reporters about Hester’s comments on Tuesday morning. He said they were unacceptable but refused to call them racist, telling Times Radio he did not like to “sit in judgement”.

He said the party noted that Hester had said the comments made “half a decade ago” were not racist, and he told Sky News the party could not “cancel” people based on previous remarks.

Anneliese Dodds, chairperson of the Labour Party, said it was vital that the party returns the donation.

“Rishi Sunak has claimed that ‘words matter’ and he must know that holding on to that money would suggest the Conservatives condone these disturbing comments,” she said in a statement. “Sunak must return every penny.”

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‘Reminds us of home’: An Indian kitchen serves love against bias, violence | Food

New Delhi, India – Bidotama, 26, is in the kitchen stirring peanuts in a pan. Every few minutes, she turns to her best friend, Mardza, 25, who is busy chopping tomatoes and slicing U-morok, a hot chilli variety, that will go into the special chicken curry bubbling on a two-burner gas stove.

They speak in their native Meitei language and chuckle as they continue cooking.

In the living room, Akoijam Sunita, 45, is moving a mixture of black perilla seeds, ginger and salt between a heavy pestle mortar and an electric grinder, hoping to get a grainy texture and not a paste. The graininess is key to getting thoiding asuba, a Manipuri side-dish, right.

Bidotama, or Bido as she likes to be called, and Mardza dressed in those comfy, furry pants the young like to live in these days, have been up since 4:30am cooking for a Sunday lunch service that they run out of Akoijam’s three-bedroom apartment in New Delhi.

Until May last year, both Bido and Mardza worked as digital marketing managers in Imphal, the capital of Manipur in India’s northeast. Akoijam, or Akoi as she is referred to, was their Delhi-based team leader.

Mardza and Bido cooking food for Lombard Kitchen at the New Delhi apartment of their friend, Akoi [Suparna Sharma/Al Jazeera]

Now Bido and Mardza are Akoi’s house guests and she is their business partner in the lunch service they have started in an attempt to rebuild their lives after they were wrenched from their homes in Manipur in the wake of ethnic violence that broke out in May. It has left over 200 people dead and thousands injured, and turned the beautiful, scenic state with the world’s only floating national park, into a ravaged war zone.

A day after violence erupted, Manipur was placed under curfew and an internet ban was imposed that lasted till December. In those seven months, many businesses shut down, including Bido and Mardza’s.

In the clashes between the dominant, largely Hindu Meitei community and the minority Christian Kuki-Zo community, many have lost their homes and continue to live in relief camps in Manipur or, like Bido and Mardza, fled the state fearing for their lives and in search of a livelihood.

[Clockwise from top right] A pressure cooker with dal, chayote squash, lightly boiled Manipuri chicken curry with king chillies and kambong kanghou, a stir-fry dish made with brinjal, crispy peanuts and water bamboo [Suparna Sharma/ Al Jazeera]

In the New Delhi apartment, all three women find solace in cooking, eating, talking about their food and running the Lomba Kitchen.

“This meal from Lomba Kitchen is Yum Gi mathel,” types Akoi on her phone as she composes a brief note about the Manipuri dishes. She will WhatsApp it to customers as the food parcels are sent out for delivery later in the day.

Their enterprise is named after a purple-coloured herb that looks like lavender and has a citrusy aroma and a peppery taste – the Lomba. It flowers around October-November and is used as a garnish in several Manipuri dishes.

“The name Lomba has meaning … When we think of winter, we think of Lomba. It reminds us of home,” says Bido.

Akoi crushes some Lomba flowers and sprinkles them on eromba, a mash made with yendem (colocasia) stalks, beans, sponge gourd, potatoes and fermented grilled fish. In the text she is sending to customers, she calls it “an object of our unconditional love”.

It’s 7am, and New Delhi’s temperature has dropped to a freezing single digit. But Akoi’s apartment, where the Sunday lunch menu is slowly coming together, is warm with the aroma of Manipur.

Akoijam Sunita, 45, at a pop-up dinner she hosted in Bengaluru, India, recently [Photo courtesy Lomba Kitchen]

‘Dirty food’

Roughly 1,500 miles from New Delhi, Manipur is one of the seven ‘sister states’ in the northeast that is geographically connected by a narrow 200km (120-mile) strip of land called the Chicken’s Neck to India’s mainland.

Most people from the northeast have distinct physical features and culinary traditions that add to India’s much-vaunted diversity. But incidents of racial discrimination, even verbal and physical abuse for their food choices, are routine in cities they migrate to, like New Delhi and Mumbai.

Staples like fermented bamboo shoots, soya bean paste and dried fish are added to northeastern dishes for their meaty, savoury aroma and umami flavour – one of the five core tastes that include sweet, sour, bitter and salty.

In her 2022 paper on “Dirty Food, racism and casteism in India”, anthropologist Dolly Kikon gives the instance of landlords and neighbours finding the food cooked by people from the northeast “stinky and revolting”, a reaction that, she says, stems from “ignorance of the eclectic food cultures in northeast India”.

The 2019 Bollywood film Axone, about a group of friends cooking the northeastern delicacy akhuni (or axone) with pork and strong-smelling, fermented soya beans, captures the hate that northeastern food often faces in the rest of India.

“My food has been so racially attacked that I always wanted to do something around food … When they [Bido and Mardza] came to stay here, we started talking about cooking … Maybe invite people over for a Manipuri meal,” Akoi says and then laughs as she adds, “But we didn’t have a dining table.”

Cooking chicken with king chilli [Suparna Sharma/Al Jazeera]

‘The drums fell quiet’

”I’m here and she’s over there. We have a river in the middle,” says Bido, gesturing to explain where she and Mardza live – across the Nambul river that runs through Imphal, a city where the sun comes up early and the streets get crowded by 6am.

On alternate days, Bido and Mardza would set off around 4am to buy vegetables from the Ima Keithel or Mothers’ Market, the largest all-women market in the world. And then they would cook for both their families before heading to work.

May 3, 2023, was no different.

After finishing work, Mardza filled petrol in her car, dropped Bido and went home.

It was around 8pm when Bido heard someone banging an electric pole with a stone – a common way to alert the neighbourhood and get people to gather for any information or disturbing news.

ngari, a dried, fermented fish, being grilled [Suparna Sharma/Al Jazeera]

Bido came out and heard from the people who had gathered that there had been clashes between members of the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities in Churachandpur, a hill district 200km (120 miles) from Imphal. Houses were being burned and there had been incidents of firing.

“It started raining,” says Bido, and under the soft solar street lights, she saw a religious procession coming her way. “I could see women on horseback, people dancing and singing because Lainingthou Sanamahi, considered the king of all gods, was returning to the local shrine,” Bido says.

The chatter in her community about the violence was getting louder and suddenly, she recalls, “The procession stopped … The clarinets, the drums fell quiet … It was eerie.”

The Meiteis, who are politically strong, live in and around the Imphal valley, occupying about 10 percent of the state’s land.

Kukis live predominantly in the hills and are listed as Scheduled Tribes, a constitutional protection given to historically disadvantaged tribes. It comes with certain guarantees, including job reservations and land rights.

For years, Meiteis have been demanding their inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list, which would entitle them to jobs and government loans, and also give them the right to buy tribal land in the hill districts.

Their demand has been rejected in the past, but on March 27, 2023, a court directed the Manipur government to consider including Meiteis in the Scheduled Tribe list, triggering protests and clashes.

Manipuri chicken and dal, prepared at Lomba Kitchen in New Delhi [Suparna Sharma]

“Our neighbourhood was not affected by violence,” says Bido, but adds that there was constant fear of being attacked, often fuelled by rumours.

May 5, 2023, was one such night when a rumour swirled about three armed Kuki men hiding in the river. “Everyone was so delusional, so paranoid,” Bido recalls.

At 1am, several men from her locality jumped into the river and began searching for the armed men. On Mardza’s side, people were out with big flashlights scanning the water for signs of humans.

Bido could not sleep at night. Lying awake, the slightest sound would make her panic.

In anticipation of a sudden attack, she kept her sneakers close and packed a small school bag. It had her educational certificates, a couple of candles, a matchbox, a T-shirt, a water bottle, some paracetamol, cyclopam tablets for menstrual pain and three Choco Pies.

When Bido and Mardza eventually left Manipur at the end of May, they carried a small suitcase and a red handbag: They had packed some summer clothes, ngari (fermented) fish, fermented bamboo shoots and dry chillies. The plan was to get away for a few days, get some sleep, get some work and, when the violence subsided, to return home.

Bido, 26, getting meal trays ready. The meal she is putting together is called yum gi mathel. On a plate on the left rests Lomba, a herb that looks like lavender and has a citrusy aroma [Suparna Sharma/ Al Jazeera]

Something sour

It’s 9:30am in Akoi’s apartment, the electric rice cooker’s lid is bobbing with steam and her large coffee table is starting to fill up.

There’s a pressure cooker filled with hawai thongba (split lentils cooked with chives, smoked green chillies and garnished with dill), Mardza’s chicken curry (yen thongba) and kambong kanghou – a stir-fry dish made with brinjal, crispy peanuts and water bamboo that a store in New Delhi sources from around Manipur’s Loktak lake.

“In Manipur, meals end with something sour. Usually, it’s a fruit sprinkled with dry-roasted chickpea flour and red chilli powder,” says Akoi.

But since that is not practical, the Lomba Kitchen sends a little surprise gift with its meals. Last week it was black rice kheer, this week it is thoiding asuba – a traditional Manipuri condiment that Akoi has ground to perfection and is now rolling into Oreo-sized little patties in her gloved hands.

In June last year, just weeks after Bido and Mardza had flown into New Delhi, when they were missing home and wanted to go back, a video of two women from the Kuki-Zo community being paraded naked and sexually abused by a mob surfaced.

It sparked national outrage and fear.

“This had never happened in our generation in Manipur. There were a lot of bandhs, blockades, but nothing like this. Our generation was very happy. We thought it [the violence] would be contained by the next day … or in a few days. It’s now been … what?” Bido asks Mardza.

“Nine months,” she replies.

Their parents are still in Imphal and refused to leave with their daughters. Bido and Mardza talk to them on video calls regularly. Firing and deaths, they say, are now a part of everyday conversation.

“Earlier we would get triggered by the news of death … Now, when we hear some person died, we’re like, ‘Oh, where?’… I think that part of us died … the emotion part,” says Bido.

Meal trays are filled with food before being delivered [Suparna Sharma/Al Jazeera]

Comfort food

After several stressful weeks of trial and error, the Lomba Kitchen team has cracked the toughest part of their enterprise – packing food and making sure that the meals are delivered on time.

Several rows of black plastic meal trays are laid out neatly on the coffee table.

Beginning from the top right, Bido starts putting in the stir-fry, then the dal. Mardza adds the chicken, Bido puts in eromba, carefully wiping the edges, ensuring there are no spills anywhere. Finally, on top of the rice, she places two long slices of daskus champhut (chayote squash, lightly boiled).

Together, and with Akoi’s help, Bido and Mardza have found a rhythm of life in Delhi.

In a room full of cardboard boxes with stuff left behind by friends that Akoi and her husband have taken in over the years, Bido and Mardza have negotiated a small world of their own. A laptop sits on a small study table and their clothes are neatly folded and kept on the bags they arrived with.

They have found new clients and resumed their digital marketing work. On weekends, they run Lomba Kitchen.

Bido, 26, and Mardza, 25, in their room in New Delhi [Suparna Sharma/Al Jazeera]

Mardza and Bido talk wistfully about weekends spent driving out of Imphal valley with their mats, food and friends. They would settle on a hill from where they had a panoramic view of the city and the Loktak lake.

Bido says she often dreams of her home, of Manipur, of the tree-lined university campus with “overgrown grass” where she completed her graduation.

But in her nightmares, triggered by news of violence from Manipur, she sees people running after her or watches herself being killed.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I lose my s***… When I am closer to nature I have better control of myself.”

Bido, a literature student, is expressive and often, mid-sentence, breaks into Meitei language to ask Mardza a question, to confirm a fact, or to hand her something.

Mardza, who has a master’s in microbiology, is the quieter of the two. She finishes Bido’s sentences and fills in the gaps with details and dates.

So what’s your favourite dish, I ask Mardza, trying to get her to talk.

She falls silent for so long that Bido gets impatient and blurts out while shaking with laughter: “What’s the dish you would eat if you were to die today?”

“Eromba,” Mardza finally says.

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‘Call it by its name’: How hateful rhetoric feeds anti-Palestinian violence | Israel War on Gaza News

Burlington, Vermont – With Israel waging war in the Gaza Strip and violence reaching new heights in the occupied West Bank, Hisham Awartani’s family thought he would be safer in the United States.

That’s why, instead of going to the West Bank for Thanksgiving break, the 20-year-old Palestinian student and his two childhood friends decided to spend the US holiday with relatives in the small northeastern state of Vermont.

It’s also why Awartani’s uncle, Rich Price, didn’t think too much of the convoy of police cars that screamed past his house, sirens blaring, on the evening of November 25.

Awartani was supposed to be out of harm’s way in the quaint lakeshore city of Burlington. But a call Price received from his mother that night would remind him of the violence Palestinians face, even abroad.

“Hisham had called her and said, ‘Granny, I’ve been shot,’” Price told Al Jazeera from his dining room, where family photographs line the walls. Large windows look out onto North Prospect, the same street where Awartani and his friends Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmad were attacked.

Rich Price’s nephew and two of his friends were shot a few blocks from Price’s house while visiting Burlington, Vermont [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]

“Their families decided it was safer for them to come to Burlington, Vermont,” Price said. “One of the really difficult things about this is that they came here specifically because we felt this was a safer place for them to be.”

The Palestinian students were wearing keffiyehs and speaking a mixture of Arabic and English when a man stepped off his porch, less than three blocks from Price’s home, and opened fire. All three were injured but survived. Awartani is now paralysed from the chest down.

“He’s doing incredible work and putting a lot of effort into his rehab, and I think it’s difficult. Now he’s back at Brown [University]. He’s having to actually experience what it means to be back on that campus in a wheelchair,” Price said.

The attack didn’t just upend Awartani’s life, though. It also spurred fear across the country, where Palestinians and their supporters said they have faced a barrage of hateful rhetoric since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in early October.

According to Price, the dehumanisation of Palestinians in the US is the primary factor that fuelled November’s shooting.

Hearts with the message ‘Neighbors Stand Against Hate’ are stuck on the front door of Price’s home [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]

“The Palestinian struggle is one that is not told in a balanced way in this country,” he said.

“The rhetoric of people in politics, in positions of leadership — certainly after October 7 — that talked about the struggle as a struggle between good and evil is really dehumanising and dangerous rhetoric.”

That’s a view shared by nearly a dozen community advocates and experts who spoke to Al Jazeera for this story. They detailed how politicians, media outlets and pro-Israel groups have spent years dehumanising and demonising Palestinians — with sometimes deadly results.

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Why were Muslim prisoners in the US pepper-sprayed while praying? | Human Rights

On February 28, 2021, just after 9pm, nine Muslim men removed their shoes, lined up in single file, and knelt quietly for Isha, their faith’s mandatory night prayer, inside a Missouri state prison in the small city of Bonne Terre.

Their action was neither unusual nor provocative. The men had been praying together in the common space of their wing at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (ERDCC) for several months without incident, up to four times a day, after COVID restrictions put the prison’s chapel off-limits.

They lived in Housing Unit Four or 4-House’s B wing, which was known as the “honour dorm” and was reserved for prisoners with no recent infractions. In other wings of the men’s prison, prisoners were given limited time out of their cells. But in the honour dorm, the men could be out of their cells all day long in the wing’s ground floor common area, heating food that they had purchased at the commissary in the shared microwave, or gathering to talk or play cards or chess at tables bolted to the concrete floors.

The group of worshippers who gathered to pray at the back of the common area began with three prisoners and had grown to between nine and 14. Qadir (Reginald) Clemons, 52, who usually gave the call to prayer, says he had periodically checked in with the prison chaplain, and the “bubble officer” in the control room, which commanded a view of all four wings, to confirm that there would be no problem with the group praying. Christian prisoners also held communal prayer circles throughout ERDCC, including in the honour dorm.

The ERDCC prison in Missouri [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]

On this night, however, the kneeling men would be charged at by prison guards. Five of them would be doused with pepper spray until they writhed in pain. Seven would be shackled and, most of them shoeless, marched about 50 metres through the winter mud of a recreation yard to another housing unit where they would be put into solitary confinement, also called administrative segregation, AdSeg, or simply – “the Hole”.

The group’s leader, Mustafa (Steven) Stafford, 58, a short, jovial man whom the others called “Sheikh” due to his commitment to Islam, would be assaulted en route to AdSeg and again once there. After their release from the Hole 10 days later, Stafford and others would face further retaliation.

None of the men – who dubbed themselves the “Bonne Terre Seven” after the incident – were accused of anything aside from disobeying a lieutenant’s orders to stop praying, which their faith dictates they cannot do, except in an emergency. According to the now-retired lieutenant, no prison official was disciplined over the incident.

This account of a peaceful prayer’s violent disruption and its aftermath is based on dozens of in-person and telephone interviews, including with six of the Bonne Terre Seven, eight other prisoners who witnessed the attack and several officers. It is bolstered by accounts from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by Clemons, now amended to include his eight fellow worshippers, who are petitioning the court to declare that the Missouri Department of Corrections (MODOC) cannot deny their religious rights and to award them damages for what they suffered. It also draws on interviews with human and prisoner rights advocates and the men’s lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The picture that emerges is of a facility, and a larger prison system, that often treats Muslim prisoners, the majority of whom are Black, with suspicion, hostility and racism.

Even against this backdrop, the ERDCC attack stands out for its savagery. “I’ve never seen a case that involves this level of violence,” says Kimberly Noe-Lehenbauer, a CAIR lawyer representing the nine victims.

The prison

ERDCC is located on the outskirts of Bonne Terre in the low, rolling hills of the Ozark Plateau, 60 miles (96.6km) south of Missouri’s second-largest city, St Louis.

Bonne Terre is in St Francois County, which is nearly 93 percent white and squarely Republican; 73 percent of voters supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Trump signs still proliferate today, along with other markers of local beliefs; a “Jesus Loves You” billboard sits on the side of a state highway, followed soon after by a front door wrapped in the Confederate flag.

A Confederate flag covers the door of a house in Bonne Terre [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]

ERDCC opened in 2003, bringing a new main industry to the former mining town, whose centre sits atop a large mine that was shuttered in 1962. The city has a population of under 7,000, including the prisoners, which as of July 2020 numbered nearly 2,600 men.

ERDCC is a sprawling D-shaped mixed-security encampment. It has the state’s largest prison population and encompasses 11 housing units, 10 of those with four wings and a control unit or “bubble” in the centre.

The encampment also has a dining hall, a building housing educational programmes and a medical facility, three recreational yards, an intake area, and a small factory where some prisoners produce soap and other cleaning supplies. A visitation room lies in a building just past the prison entrance. That same building houses Missouri’s only execution chamber, though condemned prisoners are held in Potosi, 15 miles (24km) west, and brought to ERDCC shortly before their scheduled execution.

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As corporate America pivots to AI, consumers rejected for loans, jobs | Technology

New York City – Rachel S lives in a walkable neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York. Most days she is able to live comfortably without a car. She works remotely often but occasionally she needs to go into the office. That’s where her situation gets a bit challenging. Her workspace is not easily accessible by public transportation.

Because she doesn’t need to drive often she applied for the car-sharing platform Zipcar to fulfill her occasional need. The application process is pretty fast allowing consumers to get on the road using its fleet of cars relatively quickly.

Unfortunately, that was not the case for Rachel. As soon as she pressed the submit button she was deemed ineligible by the artificial intelligence software the company uses. Puzzled about the outcome, Rachel got in touch with the company’s customer service team.

After all, she has no demerits that would suggest she’s an irresponsible driver. She has no points on her licence. The only flump was a traffic ticket she received when she was seventeen years old and that citation was paid off years ago.

Although the traffic citation has since been rectified, now in her thirties she is still dealing with the consequences.

She talked to Zipcar’s customer service team to no avail. Despite an otherwise clean driving record, she was rejected. She claims that the company said she had no recourse and that the decision could not be overwritten by a human.

“There was no path or process to appeal to a human being and while it is reasonable the only way to try again would be to reapply” for which there is a nonrefundable application fee, Rachel told Al Jazeera recalling her conversation with the company.

Zipcar did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Rachel is one of the many consumers who were declined loans, memberships and even job opportunities by AI systems without any recourse or appeal policy as companies continue to rely on AI to make key decisions that impact everyday life.

That includes D who recently lost their job.

As a condition of the interview D requested that we only use their initial out of respect for their privacy. D searched religiously for a new opportunity to no avail.

After months of looking, D finally landed a job but there was one huge problem — the timing.

It was still several weeks before D started the new job and it was several weeks after that D received the first paycheck.

To get some extra help, D applied for a personal loan on multiple platforms in an effort to circumvent predatory payday loans, just to get by in the meantime.

D was rejected for all the loans they applied for. Although D did not confirm which specific firms, the sector has multiple options including Upstart, Upgrade, SoFi, Best Egg and Happy Money, among others.

D says when they called the companies after submitting an online application, no one could help nor were there any appeals.

When D was in their early twenties they had a credit card which they failed to pay bills on. That was their only credit card. They also rent an apartment and rely on public transportation.

According to online lenders driven by AI, their lack of credit history and collateral makes them ineligible for a loan despite paying off their outstanding debt six years ago.

D did not confirm which specific companies they tried for a loan. Al Jazeera reached out to each of those companies for comment on their processes — only two responded — Upgrade and Upstart — responded by the time of publication.

“There are instances where we’re able to change the decision on the loan based on additional information, i.e. proof of other sources of income, that wasn’t provided in the original application, but when it comes to a ‘human judgment call,’ there is a lot of room for personal bias which is something regulators and industry leaders have worked hard to remove,” an Upgrade company spokesperson said in an email to Al Jazeera. “Technology has brought objectivity and fairness to the lending process, with decisions now being made based on the applicant’s true merit.”

Historical biases amplified

But it isn’t as simple as that. Existing historical biases are often amplified with modern technology. According to a 2021 investigation by the outlet The Markup, Black Americans are 80 percent more likely to be auto-rejected by loan granting agencies than their white counterparts.

“AI is just a model that is trained on historical data,” said Naeem Siddiqi, senior advisor at SAS, a global AI and data company, where he advises banks on credit risk.

That’s fueled by the United States’ long history of discriminatory practices in banking towards communities of colour.

“If you take biased data, all AI or any model will do is essentially repeat what you fed it,” Siddiqui said.

“The system is designed to make as many decisions as possible with as less bias and human judgment as possible to make it an objective decision. This is the irony of the situation… of course, there are some that fall through the cracks,” Siddiqi added.

It’s not just on the basis of race. Companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have even been accused of systemically granting lower credit limits to women over men.

These concerns are generational as well. Siddiqi says such denials also overwhelmingly limit social mobility amongst younger generations, like younger millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012), across all demographic groups.

That’s because the standard moniker of strong financial health – including credit cards, homes and cars – when assessing someone’s financial responsibility is becoming increasingly less and less relevant. Only about half of Gen Z have credit cards. That’s a decline from all generations prior.

Gen Zers are also less likely to have collateral like a car to wager when applying for a loan. According to a recent study by McKinsey, the age group is less likely to choose to get a driver’s licence than the generations prior. Only a quarter of 16-year-olds and 45 percent of 17-year-olds hold driving licences. That’s down 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stepped up its safeguards for consumers. In September, the agency announced that credit lending agencies will now need to explain the reasoning behind a loan denial.

“Creditors often feed these complex algorithms with large datasets, sometimes including data that may be harvested from consumer surveillance. As a result, a consumer may be denied credit for reasons they may not consider particularly relevant to their finances,” the agency said in a release.

However, the agency does not address the lack of a human appeal process as D claims to have dealt with personally.

D said they had to postpone paying some bills which will hurt their long-term financial health and could impact their ability to get a loan with reasonable interest rates, if at all, in the future.

‘Left out from opportunities’

Siddiqi suggests that lenders should start to consider alternative data when making a decision on loans which can include rent and utility payments and even social media behavior as well as spending patterns.

On social media foreign check-ins are a key indicator.

“If you have more money, you tend to travel more or if you follow pages like Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and Reuters you are more likely to be financially responsible,” Siddiqi adds.

The auto-rejection problem is not just an issue for loan and membership applications, it’s also job opportunities. Across social media platforms like Reddit users post rejection emails they get immediately upon submitting an application.

“I fit all the requirements and hit all the keywords and within a minute of submitting my application, I got both the acknowledgement of the application and the rejection letter,” Matthew Mullen, the original poster, told Al Jazeera.

The Connecticut-based video editor says this was a first for him. Experts like Lakia Elam, head of the Human Resources consulting firm Magnificent Differences Consulting says between applicant tracking systems and other AI-driven tools, this is increasingly becoming a bigger theme and increasingly problematic.

Applicant tracking systems often overlook transferable skills that may not always align on paper with a candidate’s skill set.

“Often times applicants who have a non-linear career path, many of which come from diverse backgrounds, are left out from opportunities,” Elam told Al Jazeera.

“I keep telling organisations that we got to keep the human touch in this process,” Elam said.

But increasingly organisations are relying more on programs like ATS and ChatGPT. Elam argues that leaves out many worthwhile job applicants including herself.

“If I had to go through an AI system today, I guarantee I would be rejected,” Elam said.

She has a GED—- the high school diploma equivalency — as opposed to a four-year degree.

“They see GED on my resume and say we got to stay away from this,” Elam added.

In part, that’s why Americans do not want AI involved in the hiring process. According to an April 2023 report from Pew Research, 41 percent of Americans believe that AI should not be used to review job applications.

“It’s part of a larger conversation about losing paths to due process,” Rachel said.

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Progressive US lawmaker Omar faces censure over mistranslated speech | Government News

Washington, DC – A new Republican firestorm has ignited around United States Congress member Ilhan Omar — this time over alleged statements she made during a speech to Somali Americans.

The only problem, according to two independent analyses of the speech, is that the words that fuelled the uproar appear to be mistranslated.

Omar is accused of saying in Somali that she would put foreign interests before those of the US — but multiple news outlets have since debunked the accusations, pointing to major flaws in a viral translation of her speech.

That, however, did not stop firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from seizing on the speech. On Thursday, she introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to censure Omar, who is the first Somali American and first former African refugee to serve in the US Congress.

Greene accused Omar of “serving as a foreign agent for a foreign country”. In an apparently intentional gaffe, she referred to Omar as the representative from “Somali — I mean, Minnesota”.

Her resolution comes one day after House Majority Whip Tom Emmer demanded an ethics investigation into Omar. Florida governor and former Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis also called for Omar to be “deported”.

For her part, Omar quickly rejected the attacks, saying they were only the latest attempt by Republicans to weaponise her ethnicity and religion.

In a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Omar called the attacks “not only completely false, they are rooted in xenophobia and Islamophobia”.

“This is a manufactured controversy based on an inaccurate translation taken entirely out of context,” she said.

Critics also see the controversy as the Republican Party’s latest attempt to attack a group of progressive Democrats known as the “Squad”.

In February 2023, Omar was removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a vote divided along party lines, amid accusations that she had voiced “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Israel” rhetoric. At the time, Omar said she was being targeted because of her identity as an African Muslim woman.

In November, the House also voted to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib for comments critical of Israel. Tlaib has stood by her remarks, rejecting claims they were anti-Semitic.

Mistranslated speech

The Star Tribune — a newspaper based in Minneapolis, Minnesota — and another publication, the Minnesota Reformer, have both independently translated Omar’s speech, which was delivered to Somali Americans in the state on January 27.

Both found the words that stoked the Republican ire were not actually what Omar said.

The flawed translation, which spread widely on social media, read: “The US government will only do what Somalians in the US tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders, and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia … Together we will protect the interests of Somalia.”

According to the more accurate translation, verified by the Star Tribune, Omar expressed a different message, one that encouraged civic engagement among Somali Americans.

“My answer was the US government will do what we tell the US government to do. We as Somalis should have that confidence in ourselves. We live in this country. We pay taxes in this country. It’s a country where one of your own sits in Congress … The woman you sent to Congress is aware of you and has the same interest as you,” she said.

According to the Star Tribune, Omar used the speech to recount how she had responded to constituents’ concerns over a new agreement between Ethiopia and the self-governing region of Somaliland, which Somalia claims as its own. The agreement would see Ethiopia lease a portion of Somaliland’s coastline, a move vehemently opposed by Somalia.

Observers have noted the Congress member was also speaking in support of longstanding US policy. The US maintains some ties with Somaliland — but does not recognise its independence or its authority to unilaterally strike a deal with landlocked Ethiopia.

While that position has stoked condemnation from Somaliland officials, Democrats have roundly rejected the notion that it indicates Omar is working on behalf of Somalia or that she puts her Somali roots before her congressional duties.

On Thursday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned Greene’s move to censure Omar as “frivolous”. He called it “designed to inflame and castigate and further divide us”.



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