Rahila Gupta

Author and Activist

Rahila Gupta

WHY BLACK MATTERS

New Internationalist, 18 January 2021   We live in an age when self-identification is all the rage. And yet, for many years, there has been a storm growing in sound and fury about the use of the label ‘Black’ by racialized minorities in the UK. It is a Very British Debate which even our US … Continue reading

Treaties Alone Can’t Protect Women from Violence

September 26, 2020, (CNN) Women have always been punching bags for men’s anger in the patriarchal systems we live in. It comes as no surprise that rates of violence are up everywhere as the pandemic and its lockdowns push women further into men’s deadly embrace. In Turkey, with its already high rate of femicide — more … Continue reading

The State is Watching

14 July 2020, New Humanist The inclusion of eco-activists in the Prevent counter-terrorism programme is only the tip of the iceberg. Prevent, the British government’s principal counter-terrorism programme, has come under sustained criticism ever since New Labour introduced it in response to 9/11. Critics have pointed to its disproportionate focus on Muslims and the stigmatisation … Continue reading

Why abolishing the police and turning to the community won’t protect women

The Independent, 21 June 2020 Women come to us when their family and elders have not only failed to remedy the situation but reinforced it. Furthermore, communities cannot be held accountable in the same way as the state The killing of Rayshard Brooks by police in America happened less than three weeks after that of George Floyd. With jaw-dropping … Continue reading

Women are leading the fight to protect India’s secular constitution

  New Humanist, 2nd March 2020 The Citizenship Amendment Act is only part of President Modi’s assault on the secular underpinnings of the Indian constitution. Walls – physical, digital, bureaucratic – are going up all over the world, dividing citizen from citizen. The very notion of citizenship is being questioned and restricted. India is no exception but the … Continue reading

The Assault on Rojava

On 9 October, Turkey began a military invasion on northern Syria to attack the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It’s an open secret that Turkey has been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to annihilate the Kurdish autonomous region Rojava in northeastern Syria, ever since it was established in 2012 while Assad’s attention was … Continue reading