Murdered in the name of the law...

The American police has killed 1048 people on the streets of USA, till date! 254 - White, 266- Black, 169 Hispanic/Latino, 58 of unknown origin, 18 Asians/Pacific Islanders, 13 Native Americans.

Back in the 1980s, sometime around the apex of Soviet-American war in Afghanistan, I had an offer to go study in the Soviet Union. The offer was very lucrative, because the package included free education, free boarding and a stipend to cover daily expenses. What more could a young boy, just out of high school, dream of?

It sounded as the dream of getting quality education, come true, and in fact it seemed too good to be true. I had very little knowledge of the Soviet Union, apart from a few common facts, and the only reason why I could decide that education in the Soviet Union could had been good quality, was the fact that I knew about all of those Nobel prize winning Soviet Scientists, Russian MIG planes and of course I knew Gagarin, who was the first man in space. There were a few more things that I knew about the Soviet Union, but none of those bits of knowledge contained any information about life in the Soviet Union and about the people of the Great Super Power.

Since I’m talking about the early 1980s, there was no Internet around to provide ready information. You could not just Google to know the pros and cons of something. There was no Wikipedia, and the encyclopaedias available in those days were not affordable for everyone. More so the country, where I hail from, never emphasized the need for developing sources of information, unless it was secret information!

Although, I am not one of those people, who try to find the down-side in everything, I still could not decide on going for education to a country, about which I knew nothing or near to nothing and the “too good to be true” offer aroused my doubts. I decided to go to the two probable sources of information available to me: the American Center and the British Council Library. The printed, illustrative and audio video materials available, mainly at the American Center, portrayed the Soviet Union as a living hell. The information acquired by me during many days of tireless studies about the Soviet Union made me understand that in the Soviet Union people did not have the right to practice their basic rights, like the right to freedom of expression, the right to free dislocation. The information spread by the American Center clearly stated that the Soviet Union was a POLICE STATE. 

It was a country, where people could not eat what they wanted to eat, because they had no right to buy anything other than the set rations supplied by the state. People could be jailed for as little as expressing discontent with the state of affairs. If a person would go from one city to another without proper permissions he/she could be arrested. People could be executed for minor infringements and that human life meant nothing. The citizens of the Soviet Union were slaves to the system. Simply saying it was the worst place on the face of the earth and no stipend could justify the sacrifice of liberties.

Anti socialist propaganda

I declined the offer of getting good-quality free education, impressed by the British and American anti-communist propaganda and thought that I had saved myself of witnessing the cruelties of the inhuman Socialists.

If I wanted education I had to get it from a university in a liberal country: A country where human rights were respected; a country where people ruled the state not vice-versa; a country where the police served instead of ruling etc. The best example of the said freedoms of course were the United States of America and the Western European states, which had freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom for the pursuit of happiness. 

What happened to me, consequently, is not so important, but the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the lowering of the iron curtain were the significant events of the subsequent years.

What happened after the lowering of the iron curtain? Did the world become a more liberal place to live in? Unfortunately, the answer is NO.

The countries, which were on my side of the iron curtain; the ones with liberties and freedoms; gradually turned into the POLICE STATES no different from the Soviet Union that they so strongly despised. 

Yes I know most of you would say that it is exaggeration of facts to call UK a police state, not to dare accusing USA of such inhuman conduct. But if we take a closer look at things, we would agree that starting from 1990 till date these countries and not only these countries, have embraced the practice of closing eyes to infringement of human rights. 

The French laws against wearing veils are nothing other than violation of human rights. I am not quoting it, because I have some religious affiliation, but because when the state starts dictating what you can and what you cannot wear, it is high time to raise your voice against state instigated suppression of rights. How can we criticize Saudi Arabia for not letting women drive, when in “liberal” France a woman cannot decide on what to wear?

I have a strong urge not to mention Guantanamo bay, Abu-Ghuraib in Iraq and secret CIA prisons in many of the Eastern European countries. I don’t want to mention killings of innocent human beings in North-Western Pakistan by US drone attacks, killings of the residents of Northern Burma to protect US corporate interests and not even the killing of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans and Tunisians sacrificed to promote US and its allies’ agenda, because these killings by the “HUMANE” states have deeper and more complex reasons and consequences.

The shooting of an unarmed 34 year old Black American woman in the country’s capital by police is one of the examples of lawlessness of law-enforcers. This woman was first deprived of basic human right of being proud of ones origin, by labelling her as Afro-American instead of letting her enjoy the pride in being Black or Negro, which my friends is just the Spanish and Portuguese word for Black. And to make things even clearer the word “NIGER” is the Latin word for Black. So there is no contempt in calling a black person black in Spanish, Portuguese, Latin or any other language.

Apart from being robbed of her identity this poor 34 year old “proud” American citizen was shot by “brave” “highly trained” trigger-happy American policemen, when her car was already blocked, with no chance of escape. The height of “observance” of human rights by the “superior” American policemen could be judged by the fact that this poor 34 year old Black American woman’s one year old child was also in the car. Three cheers for the cops of the land of liberties!!!

Meanwhile in America...

As far as the freedom of movement is concerned, we all know how Edward Snowden was handled, when he decided to leave the country without the permission of the STATE. He did expose the malpractices of the FLAG CARRIERS OF FREEDOMS AND DEMOCRACY in front of the world, and he did tell the more than 6 billion people of this world, how they were being watched day in and day out by the defenders of the first amendment.

The best sign of a police state is the appreciation by the state of those, who break law, while enforcing it. In Washington, on the day of the killing of 34 year old Miriam Carey, the members of the US congress, as soon as they got the news of Miriam being killed, stood up to applaud the killing of an innocent citizen, showing their appreciation for violation of human rights.