Gender Apartheid
Afghan Women & Girls:
If you want to speak up, understand and sign for ending gender apartheid: End Gender Apartheid
If you want to keep track of Taliban's (mis)doings of rights of Afghan women and girls: Tracking the Taliban's (Mis)Treatment of Women
If you want to tell the UN to recognize and deal with gender apartheid by adding "gender" to the definition of apartheid, sign this petition.
It would be remiss to iterate what is happening. The bans, the restrictions, the exclusions, the deprivation, the silencing; all amount to the systematic erasure of Afghan women and girls from public, intellectual, and even private life. From being barred from education and employment to being denied freedom of movement, expression, and autonomy over their own bodies, the regime's policies are not isolated acts of oppression; they form a coherent architecture of control. What is unfolding is not merely a rollback of rights but a deliberate annihilation of presence: a gender apartheid in both name and effect.
Even spaces that once seemed benign, like beauty salons, hubs of female livelihood, solidarity, and social life, have been shuttered. These closures are not about modesty or morality; they are about dismantling every corner of female autonomy and interaction. In removing such spaces, the regime isnât just banning beauty but it is erasing visibility, voice, and community. It is making every aspect of female participation in society contingent on male permission or surveillance. The goal is chillingly clear: to redefine womenâs existence solely in relation to men, as daughters, wives, dependents, never as individuals, never as citizens.
This is not just an Afghan issue. It is a global indictment. When the world remains muted or conditional in its outrage, it sends a clear message: that gender apartheid is tolerable, negotiable, or worse, forgettable. But it is not. And it must not be.
To stay informed, to raise our voices, and to hold global institutions accountable is the least, and the most, we can do in solidarity. Sign. Share. Speak. Because silence, here, is complicity.
Palestine
History will be our trial if we become complicit and facilitate this crime against humanity with our silence, neutrality, and ignorance. The emancipation people of Palestine is the litmus test of us who preach of collective action. So, now is the time.
Donations
Water is Life Gaza
Help Families and Children in Palestine. - I found this here.
The Sameer Project - Donations based initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza.
Gaza Mutual Aid Collective
Rammun Foundation
GAZAFUNDS.com
Grassroots Gaza ŘşŮŮز؊ اŮشؚبŮŘŠ
Petitions
Allow the March for Gaza on the Sydney Harbour Bridge!
Lift the blockade on Gaza and stop the genocide.
Suspend the EUâIsrael trade agreement. Stop the genocide.
Kancha Gachibowli
Sign this petition to stop the violation of nature and natural lives. This petition aims to halt TGIIC's auction of 400+ acres of vital forest land in Kancha Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India.
April 3, 2025: The Supreme Court has taken a step of judicial intervention regarding the ongoing deforestation on 400 acres of land in Kancha Gachibowli, near the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) campus, and directed the Telangana state government to immediately halt all tree-felling and excavation activities at the site.
Vantara Story
Vantara is known as large-scale animal rescue centre, cave, conservation and rehabilitation centre established by Reliance Industries with Reliance Foundation. Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre Jamnagar, Gujarat, an affiliate of Vantara, is registered as a zoo.
A South African wildlife organization, THE WILDLIFE ANIMAL PROTECTION FORUM, raised alarm over animal export to Ambaniâs Vantara. But, it does not stop there. There is a layered story of censorship. After the alarm, some news outlets shared the story like Financial Times, Deccan Herald, The Telegraph.
- Financial Times:
Despite the words in URL, this is what the article is NOW: Vantara a model for animal welfare: 10 things that makes it unique
If you run the URL in Wayback Machine, it shows you the originally published article: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/south-african-organisation-raises-alarm-over-export-of-wild-animals-from-south-africa-to-ambanis-vantaranbsp/3773160/
But quickly redirects you to the homepage of Financial Times.
- The Telegraph:
They are not available anymore. I was unable to trace it via Wayback Machine.
- Deccan Herald:
Not available anymore. But you can read the article via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250310113735/https://www.deccanherald.com/india/gujarat/neither-rescue-nor-conservation-south-african-wildlife-organisation-raises-alarm-on-ambanis-vantara-in-gujarat-3439835
- The Tribune:
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/south-african-group-questions-animal-export-to-vantara/
Not available anymore. But you can read the article via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250312073325/https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/south-african-group-questions-animal-export-to-vantara/
Itâs less a news cycle, more a memory hole: a scenario Orwell would find all too familiar. What we see is a pattern of quiet redactions, sudden disappearances, and vanishing headlines. This isnât just about animal rights anymoreâitâs about the right to know. The right to question. The right to speak truth to power.
When news reports vanish from multiple platformsâFinancial Express, The Telegraph, Deccan Herald, The Tribune, after raising red flags over the export of wild animals from South Africa to a privately-run âconservationâ project by one of Indiaâs wealthiest families, it begs a deeper question: what are we being shielded from, and more importantly, why?
This is a case study not only in environmental opacity but also in informational erasure. Where the media, often dubbed the âfourth pillar of democracy,â seems to be buckling under invisible pressure. When the URL says one thing, the archived page another, and the current content has been replaced by what reads like promotional fluff, we are witnessing a form of digital sanitization.
All of this stands in contrast to the mandate of Article 48A of the Indian Constitution, which explicitly requires the State to protect wildlife. The State, however, is not merely the government; it is an ecosystem of institutionsâincluding the media, which plays a vital role in public oversight. If that ecosystem is compromised, the Constitution of the people is no longer a living document, it becomes ornamental, empty.
Even the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, designed to prohibit the trade and trafficking of endangered species, must now reckon with the private acquisition of exotic animals under the guise of conservation. The ethical and ecological implications of removing animals from their natural habitats to house them in privately-funded reserves must be scrutinizedânot suppressed.
Where are the debates? The parliamentary inquiries? The public discourse?
The silence is neutral and itâs orchestrated. And when censorship aligns with power, whether corporate or political, it violates not just freedom of speech (Article 19), but the very spirit of constitutional morality. This is not just about animals being moved from one continent to another. This is also about what we are allowed to see, to say, to search and who decides that for us. In George Orwellâs 1984, the Ministry of Truth rewrote facts, it erased the possibility of remembering what was true to begin with. Today, the Ministry is no longer fictional. Itâs algorithmic, editorial, and economically embedded. And if the fate of lions and lemurs from the plains of South Africa to the enclosures of Gujarat is sealed under silence, then the story is just as much as about conservation as itâs about complicity.