Guest Post by Shivani Chaudhry

If you could lose your job for speaking out against genocide, then it’s not a place worth working at.

If you worry what ‘others’ will say if you stand against genocide, those ‘others’ need to be ignored.

If you feel a genocide occurring in another country doesn’t concern you, you’re wrong. It does. Genocide affects each of us; it violates *every* principle of life, of humanity, of humanness, and of morality.

What if your land, your home, your community, your city were being annihilated?

What if those being massacred were your children, your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, your friends?

What if your children’s limbs had to be amputated without anesthesia and they never recovered from such trauma?

What if you had been displaced multiple times, pushed into supposedly ‘safe zones’, only to be attacked repeatedly and left with nowhere to go?

What if you were bombed while you were sleeping?

What if you were critically ill, badly burnt, or bleeding profusely and had no medicine and no doctor, clinic, or hospital to go to?

What if you were shivering, had no warm clothes, and your only shelter was destroyed again and again and again?

What if you were being forcefully starved for months, hunger cramps ripping your insides, your bones protruding through your skin?

What if your innocent brothers or sons were arrested, imprisoned, and brutally tortured?

What if you had to hear soul-piercing cries of pain, for over a year?

What if you had to bear the stench of rotting corpses and burning bodies, every day?

What if you lost a loved one every week, for 60 continuous weeks?

What if you lost *every* living member of your family overnight?

Would you still be silent?
I don’t think so.
Then why are you silent now?

How would you feel if you knew the world was watching your extermination but chose to pretend it wasn’t happening?

There is NO excuse for not using our voice, our platform, our energy to oppose genocide.

Being human means feeling the pain of every human being as our own.
Having a conscience means confronting injustice, anywhere.

Speak out. Stand up. Act.
Listen to Palestinian voices.
Boycott. Divest. Sanction.
NOW!

NOTHING
IS
MORE
IMPORTANT
THAN
ENDING
GENOCIDE.

NOTHING.

Reposted from LinkedIn: Shivani Chaudhry is widely recognized as a human rights specialist, with expertise in housing, land, and related issues. She is the former Executive Director of Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN), where she worked for 17 years, from 2004 to 2021. Prior to this, she worked for five years at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Shivani received her B.A. in Economics from St. Xavier’s College (Bombay University), India, and her M.A. in Environmental Studies from Brown University, Providence, U.S.A.

She has been working in the field of human rights for over twenty years with a focus on economic, social, and cultural rights, especially the human rights to adequate housing, land, livelihood, and the environment. She has engaged actively with issues related to forced evictions, displacement, homelessness, land rights, disasters, climate justice, discrimination, sustainable development, women’s rights, and human rights education. She has conducted many human rights education and training workshops at the national and international levels and has also contributed to the development of international standards related to housing and land rights. These include the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Security of Tenure for the Urban Poor, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

Over the years, Shivani has been associated with several national and international networks and movements. She co-founded the New Delhi-based Shahri Adhikar Manch: Begharon Ke Saath (Urban Rights Forum: With the Homeless) and the Delhi Housing Rights Task Force, and was one of the founding members of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN. She was a member of the Government of India, Ministry of Rural Development’s Task Force on Land Reforms, and contributed to the draft National Land Reform Policy 2013 and draft National Right to Homestead Bill 2013.

Shivani regularly speaks on human rights and related issues in international and national spaces. She has also spoken on the topic of land rights in the European Parliament.

She writes in newspapers, magazines, and journals, and has contributed to multiple publications and books, including those published by the American Society for International Law, UN-Habitat, and Oxford University Press. She has extensive experience in various forms of editing and documentation. She also loves writing short fiction and poetry.

One of countless stories of Palestinians murdered by the IDF. Look at the picture, say their names, remember them, and what they could have become.

From Abdel Rahman Elsayed, a LinkedIn contact:

These two newly admitted University of Waterloo PhD students, twin sisters Sally and Dalia, were recently murdered in Gaza by the criminal, genocidal Israel “Defense” Forces.

When will the University of Waterloo divest from Israeli institutions that support this genocidal war and the apartheid system such as Technion – Israel Institute of Technology?

“We (the family) would like to thank you (the people working on the fellowship) for helping Sally and Dalia. Unlike the last year, in the last few days, the twins were vibrant, bubbly, excited and full of dreams and ambitions. They constantly talked about their PhD study, jokingly calling each other Dr Sally and Dr Dalia, and talking about the things they want to do in Canada”

Rest In Peace Sally and Dalia.
انا لله وانا اليه راجعون (We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return.)