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Deadly Indonesia floods spark conversations on campus awareness, deforestation, corruption
Catastrophic flooding and landslides in Indonesia in late November have killed more than a thousand people, making it among the worst natural disasters in the world this year. The disaster, which has displaced more than a million people in Indonesia and injured thousands, tore across Sumatra island, burying entire villages under mud. Debris from the…
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Sudan roundtable event raises awareness about war, genocide
NoirUnited International, a 501(c)(3) global development organization focused on mobilizing the African diaspora, hosted a Sudan Roundtable in collaboration with multiple student organizations, including Sudanese Student Association, African Student Association, African Students United for Progress, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Helping Hand for Relief and Development on Thursday, Nov. 6. The roundtable featured a…
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“People don’t know”: Sudanese students speak out on genocide, war in Sudan
Over 150,000 people have been killed and around 13 million people displaced in the ongoing war and genocide in Sudan, according to BBC and United Nations Refugee Agency. The conflict, which began after the 2019 fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir, is a power struggle between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and the…
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UMD club hosts IDF soldiers event, raising concerns about student safety
Three soldiers from Israel’s military who fought in Gaza during the ongoing genocide were on UMD’s campus at an event held by student organization Students Supporting Israel (SSI) in Jimenez Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 21. The event was intended for the soldiers — Ariel Levy, Daniel Shalom, and Avigayil Atlas — to share their “powerful…
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Israel guilty of genocide, says UN Commission
Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza strip, an independent United Nations commission has found. The report, published Tuesday by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, found that “Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five possible genocidal acts defined by…
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UMD Hillel annual “Birthright Israel Trip” raises controversy
A group of UMD students returned from a trip to Israel from June 4 to 15 organized by Maryland Hillel and Taglit-Birthright Israel. Photos and posts from the trip — including students meeting with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and hiking in the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory — have…
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“We stand in firm solidarity”: Boycott Israel Fest in photos
Enclosed in a circular frame of silver fences, students and faculty stood side-by-side in Hornbake Plaza for a counter-demonstration against the annual “Israel Fest” on May 6. The protest, hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), called for the campus community to boycott the festival, referring to it as a celebration of a settler…
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Uyghur students speak out about China’s genocide, building community in US
Over hundreds of thousands of Muslims are imprisoned in China’s concentration camps, according to Amnesty International. Among them is Hadija Yahya’s uncles, whom she has never been able to contact. “We don’t have any relatives in the US,” the freshman biology major, who is of Uyghur descent, said. “My uncles are in concentration camps.” Who…
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Afghan girls’ education relied on USAID. Now, it’s at risk of shutting down.
On a frigid Tuesday afternoon, maintenance crews removed the silver-coated letters from the organization’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t just signage being taken down from a federal building — it was the erasure of a symbol imprinted on thousands of tents, bags of food, and humanitarian resources that millions across the globe relied on…
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Palestine’s struggle: A history and context of Israel’s occupation
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 46,600 Palestinians, over half of whom are women, children, and the elderly, over the past 15 months. Sources such as the Yale School of Public Health suggest the true death toll may be higher. A conservative estimate from The Lancet, a medical journal, indicates that over 186,000…
Al-Hikmah 