Winslow, Arizona, United States - On a cool evening in March, a group of Navajo gathered in front of the police department in Winslow, Arizona, holding signs, carrying candles, and demanding justice.
It was March 27, one year since 27-year-old Navajo mother Loreal Tsingine was shot dead by Winslow police officer Austin Shipley.
Tsingine, was shot five times by Shipley on Easter Sunday, 2016, after allegedly shoplifting from a local Circle K shop.
Brandon Benallie, a Navajo member of the national council of The Red Nation, a countrywide organisation of Native and non-Native activists, teachers, students and community organisers that advocates for Native American rights was at the demonstration. He says that after Tsingine was killed in the afternoon, her body was left in the pavement until six the next morning.
"From a Native perspective, you have to take care of the memory of that person. Essentially, she's supposed to be respectfully remembered before the sun sets," Benallie says. "To leave her out there for over 12 hours as they waited for a coroner to arrive … it was extremely disheartening and disturbing that they allowed that to happen."
For Benallie, Tsingine's death, and the deaths of 23 other Native Americans at the hands of police in 2016, is "a sad affirmation that this racism and violence committed towards Native people is systemic".
The convenience store where Loreal Tsingine allegedly shoplifted before she was shot dead by a police officer in 2016 [Creede Newton/Al Jazeera]
Rise in killings
Native Americans, who make up 5.2 million or 1.7 percent of the country's population, are the only group that saw a rise in deaths due to police shootings, from 13 in 2015 to 24 in 2016, according to the Guardian's The Counted.
In 2015, Native American deaths were measured as 5.49 per one million people. Blacks killed by police were 7.69 per million. Last year, the number for blacks was 6.66 per one million, while the number for Native Americans rose to 10.13 per million.
Every other racial group saw a decrease, including those whose race is listed as "other".
"These numbers are so terrible," Benallie says. "This isn't the oppression Olympics. There's no gold medal for who gets killed more by police. When you look at the Latino, black and Native communities, they're all suffering."
In 2016, six Native Americans were killed by police in southwest Arizona, the state that is home to the majority of the Navajo Nation and where the highest number of these killings occurred.
Benallie says the struggles of Native Americans must be viewed through the lens of "settler-colonialism", likening their situation to that of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
The Navajo Nation is a 71,000 square kilometre semi-autonomous territory spanning three separate US states and essentially serving as a reservation, with "border towns" like Winslow and nearby Flagstaff lying on its edges. These border towns have served as guard stations to control the Navajo, Benallie says, with police as the "tools of the settler-colonial process".
The Winslow Police Department officer who killed Tsingine had been an officer for three years and had a history of excessive force [Creede Newton/Al Jazeera]
Tsingine's death
Of the six Native Americans killed by police in Arizona last year, Tsingine's case was the most controversial. It sparked outrage in the Native community.
In Shipley's bodycam footage, Tsingine can be seen brandishing a pair of scissors.
Ryanle Benally, a Winslow resident who saw Shipley fire, told the local daily newspaper, the Arizona Republic, that when the officer confronted Tsignine, he grabbed her and her "whole body flew over and slammed into the concrete". He says he saw Shipley pin her to the ground with his knee and at that point thought she was going to be arrested.
"That should have been it," he said.
Shipley began yelling, "Stop resisting!" Benally then thought the officer pulled out his taser.
"It wasn't. It was a rapid fire, five times," the witness said.
On April 5, 2016, candles, flowers and stuffed animals mark the site where Loreal Tsingine was shot and killed by Winslow, Arizona, police officer Austin Shipley on March 27 [AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca]
It was later revealed that Tsingine had a history of mental illness and previous altercations with the police.
Shipley also had a history of using excessive force and falsifying records, according to documents from the Arizona Republic's investigation into his employment record.
Shipley had drawn his gun on suspects five times, his Taser four times - including once on a teenage girl with her back turned to him, and used physical force at least three times. He had been an officer for three years.
For Native and non-Native residents of Winslow, the revelation of Shipley's employment history raised questions about whether he was qualified to be a police officer.
In July, Maricopa County lawyer Bill Montgomery announced that after a four-month internal investigation, Shipley had been cleared of any criminal conduct and wouldn't be charged. In October, Shipley, who went on paid leave shortly after killing Tsingine, resigned after being presented with the results of a separate internal investigation.
Benallie and others question why there wasn't enough evidence for charges, but enough to spur Shipley's resignation.
Montgomery told Al Jazeera that the investigations varied greatly: "An internal affairs investigation and an employment decision do not have the same burdens of proof."
Aside from his work in the Red Nation, Benallie helped form the group Bordertown Justice Coalition, which aims to end police violence against his community. The coalition also started the "Justice for Loreal" movement to support Tsingine's family, with whom they work closely.
Benallie says that while representatives of the Winslow Police Department travelled to the Navajo Nation to speak with her family, there have been "no meaningful reconciliation efforts".
He says Tsingine's murder was not "a random act of violence against Native people". Police violence, Benallie points out, "doesn't begin when someone dies".
Tina McGrath, 48, a Navajo, mother and resident of rural northern Arizona, agrees.
She says that she has endured 20 years of racial profiling and targeted policing. "I feel like [the police] are watching us," she says. "They know us."
One of the worst encounters occurred in 2013, she says, when her family was celebrating her husband's birthday in Flagstaff.
Two employees of a local petrol station followed her son Perratin, who is in his mid-20s and suffers from schizophrenia, and daughter-in-law back to their hotel room after arguing with them at the petrol station. McGrath says the employees were drunk.
A fight ensued and someone at the hotel called the police. When they arrived, McGrath says that she tried to explain that the petrol station employees had instigated the trouble.
"But the police believed [the employees]. They took their story over ours," she says.
When the police began to arrest Perratin, he tried to grab on to his father, and the police "jumped on both of them," McGrath says.
"I thought they were going to kill them," she says. "I didn't know what to do." Panicked, she approached the police and shouted for them to stop. She says one officer, Ryan Darr, pushed her and she "flew back", landing in a seated position.
Documents provided by the Flagstaff Police Department (FPD) relating to this event and Darr's employment record confirm much of McGrath's account of the events.
"As we struggled on the ground I felt a pull on my arm … I could also see other family members closing in," said Darr in the police report, explaining why he pushed McGrath.
The impact broke a screw in McGrath's spinal fusion, which had been installed to connect two vertebral segments in order to stop pain in her lower back.
McGrath filed a complaint against Darr, citing use of excessive force.
In the police records regarding the complaint, investigating officer Lieutenant Lasiewicki wrote in his findings that Darr, "did push Tina. The amount of force he used was minimal and justified. Regarding the accusation of excessive force, Sgt Darr is exonerated."
Of the few witnesses Lasiewicki was able to contact regarding the incident was one of the petrol station employees who had been arrested for assaulting the McGrath family. In the police report, the individual admits he had been drinking.
According to the FPD documents, Darr had received five commendations since 2008. The records also show three citizens' complaints filed against him, including McGrath's and another which alleged use of excessive force. Internal FPD investigations found them all to be "unfounded". to be untrue.
Through Lasiewicki's investigation, the city prosecutor instructed Darr to issue McGrath with a court summons for "resisting an officer", a misdemeanour offence.
McGrath says she was never informed of the summons. After roughly a month she was stopped by a police officer for a traffic violation and arrested for missing her court date.
"I sat in jail five [for] days with a broken back. That's how I found out I got charged," McGrath says.
She was given another court date and ordered to complete community service.
As time went on, the spinal fusion began "bending," McGrath says, due to the broken screw, causing her to use a wheelchair and suffer even greater pain.
"I went to court in a wheelchair. I did community service in a wheelchair."
McGrath says the fusion remains unrepaired. She now walks with a cane. The pain reminds her "every day" of the assault. "I want to fight this," she says. "I have rights."
Al Jazeera requested documents concerning the arrest records of both Winslow and Flagstaff police.
Although Native Americans account for 25 percent of Winslow's population, they averaged nearly 64 percent of arrests from 2012 to 2015, according to police filings.
In nearby Flagstaff, public police reports from 2011 to 2015 show that Native Americans accounted for an average of 47 percent of arrests. US census data from 2010says Native Americans account for 11.7 percent of the city's population.
Al Jazeera presented these statistics to Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which, according to their website, aims to "secure equal justice for all through the rule of law".
"These are truly astounding disparities. When we see disparities like this, often they're attributable to some unlawful policy or practice such as racial profiling," Clarke responds.
According to FPD Deputy Chief Dan Musselman, 56 percent of the Native Americans who have been arrested are repeat offenders and more than half of them don't live there, but come from other towns or the nearby Navajo Nation.
Sergeant Cory Runge of the FPD said that "while the census for Coconino County/Flagstaff Metropolitan area indicates Native Americans account for 27 percent of the population", these census numbers "may be a little misleading because it is estimated that 75 percent of every Navajo dollar is spent in border towns."
The FPD's relationship with the community is "variable and dependent on countless factors involved within each interaction," Runge says.
Many Native Americans come to Flagstaff to do their shopping, according to Musselman and Runge.
McGrath agrees, saying that shops are scarce on Navajo lands, so many come to border towns to purchase goods.
Even so, "these are significant disparities, that warrant closer analysis," Clarke says in reference to the arrest statistics. "It's hard to believe there's any explanation other than race being a factor. It certainly deserves an investigation."
Albert Hale. a former Navajo president, says government institutions have been forced on Native Americans by 'the colonisers' [AP Photo/Ross D Franklin]
Although McGrath wants to fight her grievances, she says that she is unsure of how to proceed and that there is little institutional help.
McGrath sat in front of a table covered with police reports, complaints, and documents prepared for the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission which was created to assist and investigate alleged rights abuses of Navajo Nation members committed by Native and non-Native institutions and their employees.
Current Navajo institutions are relatively new. The commission was founded in 2006, after reports of violence against Navajo in border towns.
The office of the president of the Navajo Nation was created in 1991 following a restructuring of the national Navajo government.
McGrath, Benallie and other Navajo residents of Flagstaff and Winslow, say their national Navajo leadership and institutions have a troubled history which does not inspire confidence.
Of the Navajo's eight presidents, four have been investigated for criminal acts centring around corruption, fraud, misused funds and other charges.
Albert Hale, the Navajo Nation's second president who served from 1995 to 1998, was the first president to resign. His resignation was spurred by his being under investigation for more than 50 felonies and misdemeanours.
"Leadership needs to understand … these are [governmental] institutions forced upon us by the colonisers. We didn't develop these," Hale tells Al Jazeera when asked about the Navajo people's lack of trust in their government when it comes handling human rights abuses as well as other issues.
The former president stressed that offices such as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission and the presidency are not a part of the tribe's history and that a Navajo "sense of justice" is lacking.
Hale has also served more than a decade in the Arizona legislature and US Congress. He left the state legislature in 2017 after losing re-election for Arizona's seventh district.
During his long tenure in what he called the "coloniser's institutions", Hale said that he tried to educate both the Navajo and his colleagues in state and national government about the struggles and contributions of Native people.
Hale has experienced his own loss at the hands of the police. In 1952, when he was a toddler, his father was arrested by police in Gallup, New Mexico, another border town. He was missing for several days.
"My mother didn't even know where he was," he says. "Then they found him in the morgue."
Hale believes his father was beaten to death by police while in custody, although this was never confirmed.
Hale's mother "was left to struggle, to find ways to support the family" and raise four children.
He empathises with Tsingine's child.
"Police violence doesn't end with the victim. It extends out," Hale says, and police "have to be made aware of that."
The FBI announced a pilot programme in 2016 to track deadly use of force by law enforcement, but as of yet, no information is publicly available regarding the initiative.
Hale says institutional powers like the police must be educated about cultural differences and the economic and cultural importance of Native people.
Benallie, on the other hand, believes a united approach between marginalised peoples - Latino, black and Native - must be employed to end oppression.
"We must unite to smash these structures that continue to murder us," Benallie says. "We have the numbers, in the end, to make that a reality."
Members of a Hindu nationalist vigilante group established to protect cows are pictured with animals they claimed to have saved from slaughter in Agra, India [Cathal McNaughton/Reuters]
Jyoti Malhotra has been a journalist for more than 30 years and is based in New Delhi, India.
The food police have struck in Lucknow, the capital of India's Uttar Pradesh, cracking down not only on the illegal sale of beef but also the perfectly legal sale of buffalo meat.
In sympathy, the chicken and goat-sellers in the city have mutinously downed their shutters. As a result, vegetable prices have sky-rocketed, but the state's newly elected chief minister Yogi Adityanath, an avowed bachelor who has devoted his life to the worship of god but has no qualms about dabbling in politics, remains unmoved.
These days in BJP-ruled India, what you eat is who you have voted for.
The food on your plate is directly linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) decision to not only strictly implement the ban on slaughtering cows, considered sacred animals across the country, but also shut down the business of transporting buffalo. In the BJP's lexicon, it seems, all bovines are equal.
Of course there's more to the kebab than meets the eye.
The meat trade in India is run mostly by Muslims who are largely antipathetic to the BJP and what it stands for. It's not difficult to see why, as Muslims have often faced the brunt end of communal mob fury and paid with their lives: In Gujarat in 2002 about 800 Muslims were killed; in 1992, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque, several hundred Muslims lost their lives; and before that in 1987 in Meerut, 42 Muslim men were forcibly picked up and shot in cold blood.
In a country as diverse as India, which was birthed in 1947 in the horrors of violence that accompanied a division along religious lines, neither revenge nor reconciliation is a new motif.
In the ebb and flow of centuries, good and bad kings have presided over both communal conflagration and the brotherhood of men.
Previous governments of the Congress Party have often paid lip service to minority Indians, including Muslims, and sometimes aided and abetted communal riots. A former BJP government run by Atal Bihari Vajpayee - between 1998 and 2004 - acknowledged that Muslims feel especially disenfranchised and said that they must be integrated into the mainstream.
But Narendra Modi's government has been different. It has maintained a stony silence in the face of climbing social tension in the past three years.
Under Modi it seems the BJP is determined to avenge 800 years of Muslim rule in India that started when the Afghan king Mahmud of Ghazni invaded the country in the 11th century and destroyed a temple in Somnath, especially holy to Hindus. A dominant strain in the party today believes that Muslims must fall in line and repent for the sins they committed against Hindus in the long-gone past.
So when a Muslim man was killed barely 50km from the capital, Delhi, in 2015, on the rumour that he stored beef in his refrigerator, Modi didn't say a word.
As Lucknow becomes vegetarian and the rest of Uttar Pradesh follows suit, the question is whether the BJP will use its incredible political majority in the state to monitor personal choice.
In early April, a dairy farmer named Pehlu Khan was murdered by vigilantes protesting their allegiance to the sacred cow. They accused Khan of taking the cow that he had just bought from a cattle fair in Rajasthan to the slaughterhouse. Modi, once again, did not condemn the act or issue a statement or a tweet that promised that justice would be done.
The BJP's parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose foot soldiers play a big part in turning the tide in favour of the BJP when elections need to be won, wants to ban not only beef but also buffalo meat. "The cow gives milk, like your mother does. Should you kill your mother or should you treat her in a sacred manner?" an RSS follower asked me.
So last week, the nation's solicitor-general told the Supreme Court that all cattle would soon get tamper-proof tags with a unique identification number - akin to the social security numbers that Indians are getting these days - which will prevent cow smuggling and protect the animal by exhibiting a range of data including the type of horn and tail.
Is the penny finally starting to drop?
Some people say the Modi government is getting perturbed about the terrible press his foreign investor-friendly government has been getting from all these cow troubles. It's one thing, after all, to implement a nonsensical "fatwa" on the kind of food you can eat, but quite another to allow those accused of a lynching to go scot-free.
BJP leaders are also slowly realising that India's unique diversity makes it incredibly difficult to implement a meat - or even a beef - ban. For example, India's predominantly Christian population in the northeast eats beef, and a beef ban in these parts will make the BJP so unpopular that it will never be able to come to power.
Moreover, India earns as much as $4bn annually from exporting buffalo meat - largely to the Middle East, but also to South-East Asia. Certainly, that's not petty change.
So, perhaps the penny is finally beginning to drop.
BJP-run Rajasthan's chief minister Vasundhara Raje spoke up about Pehlu Khan's murder more than three weeks after the incident, to say that the guilty would not be spared.
But there was not one word of commiseration to the family. Nor has anyone bothered to deny the remarks of Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria, who said Pehlu Khan was lynched because he had at least three cases of cow-smuggling registered against him.
BJP leaders say, off the record, that these cow vigilantes don't belong to the party and bring it shame. But Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister, is regularly confronted by statements that his own former organisation, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, and other extreme right-wing bodies make about or against Muslims and neither he nor his government has said nary a word on the issue yet.
From a public health point of view, the overenthusiasm in shutting down Uttar Pradesh's so-called illegal abattoirs is a welcome step - after all, several of them are run in terrible conditions.
It seems that 27 tests need to be cleared to run an abattoir - they must have working air-conditioning, running water, etc, which is all very well in theory, but in practice terribly difficult to fulfill. In fact, several government-run abattoirs were also shut down because they violated one or another of these requirements. Which means that small meat retailers have nowhere to go, except undertake small-scale operations in the bylanes of inner cities.
So as Lucknow becomes vegetarian and the rest of Uttar Pradesh follows suit, the question is whether the BJP will use its incredible political majority in the state to monitor personal choice. And why it feels so insecure that it must even consider the need to do so.
Editor's note: An eariler version of this article incorrectly claimed that India earns as much as $1bn a year from buffalo meat exports. The actual figure is $4bn.
Jyoti Malhotra has been a journalist for more than 30 years, is based in New Delhi, India, and has worked in a variety of news media, such as print, TV, radio and the web, in both English and Hindi. Her areas of interest include domestic Indian politics as well as India's foreign policy, especially across South Asia.
Now in its eighth year, the fighting in northeastern Nigeria has shown little sign of respite.
Boko Haram, known for its contempt of Western education, has attacked schools, churches and mosques and used children as "suicide" bombers in its bid to establish an "Islamic State" in the country’s northeastern region.
At least 20,000 people have been killed, thousands of others maimed in a horrific showdown between Boko Haram and Nigeria’s military in towns and villages since 2010. Thousands of others have been abducted, and remain unaccounted for. The 2014 abduction of the 276 Chibok schoolgirls led to international outrage and condemnation.
In early May 2017, the group released some 82 schoolgirls who had been abducted from Chibok in 2014 after almost two years of negotiations.
The Nigerian military has repeatedly claimed to be winning the war against the group, but with severe restrictions on communication and media, it is impossible to independently verify their claims.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed that those responsible for the explosion at the Zemestanyurt mine would be prosecuted [Iranian presidency handout/AFP]
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani faced furious protests from coal miners and their families on Sunday when he visited the site of an accident that claimed dozens of lives, two weeks ahead of an election.
Local news agencies showed people surrounding Rouhani's car and beating on the windows in northern Golestan province as it tried to make its way through an angry crowd at the mine site, where at least 26 people were killed by an explosion on Wednesday.
At least nine more miners were trapped inside, but officials say there is little chance they survived.
The accident is thought to have been caused by concentrated methane gas that was ignited when workers tried to jumpstart an engine.
"The entire Iranian nation shares the sorrow of families of those killed in the Zemestanyurt mine accident. We are all responsible for this incident," said Rouhani, calling for tighter regulations in the mining sector.
Protests emerged in Golestan province where at least 26 miners were killed in an explosion on Wednesday [Iranian presidency handout/EPA]
The miners were angry over poor safety conditions and delayed wages, as thousands of factories and industrial sites across the country have struggled to keep up with payments in recent years because of the stagnant economy.
"Why is there no safety at the mine? Why does no one care?" the spokesman for the miners can be seen shouting at the scene in a video shared on social media.
"Last year, we gathered in front of the governor's office together with our wives because we were unpaid for 14 months. And you, the president, didn't even notice."
Iran presidential hopefuls face off in second election debate
Conservative presidential candidates trying to unseat Rouhani have focused on the poor, saying government policies have only benefited the wealthy.
The miners' spokesman said workers earn 10 million rials ($265) a month. "Can you live with that?" he asked the president in the video.
"Look at the mother with seven children. We have nothing to eat."
Labour Minister Ali Rabii travelled 1,400 metres into the mine, where rescue teams have been trying to unblock a collapsed tunnel as the search for survivors continues.
Rouhani has ordered a task force to investigate the causes of the explosion and handle compensation for victims and their families.
Globally, there are more than 200 million people without jobs today.
High unemployment rates and a demand for improved workers rights have prompted thousands of people around the world to hit the streets today, May 1, to mark International Workers' day.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) attributes the 5.7 percent rise in unemployment on the inability of governments to create enough jobs to meet local demands, while other analysts point to stagnate wages.
While wages have grown in some countries in the Global North, such as the United States and Germany , it has not been large enough to compensate for the declines elsewhere.
In January, the ILO predicted that the number of unemployed people across the world is expected to grow by another 3.4 million by the end of the year as well as an additional 2.7 million in 2018.
Varying unemployment rate
Unemployment rates have fluctuated drastically in some countries, while remaining fairly stable in others. In the US , a spike was later followed recovery. In the European Union , the recovery was less complete than in the US. The Middle East and North Africa have seen small improvements and dips in ebbs and flows.
High youth unemployment rate
The labour force aged between 15-24 have been particularly hard hit. From India to Greece, youth unemployment is a barrier for economies.
Worse still, unemployment rates may not depict an entirely accurate picture, as many countries have high rates of youth self-employed or working in informal settings. When youth underemployment devolves into unemployment, it is often a cause for unrest.
![Members of a Hindu nationalist vigilante group established to protect cows are pictured with animals they claimed to have saved from slaughter in Agra, India [Cathal McNaughton/Reuters]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tLOTPd_2u_SleJHnDiF9z1lZ7tmoOfSIUb5ha73uN8L8weJD63odq5Nd_IUYosSf_fHp_EAU1XHsSnNmwLRcVGO_IuRCvmFieTmm8k_Xn8BlWba01Cqu9HbD-zqKakuP2tac_VIKFjabD3-3ZSuCGRMbLHNEp3D8RAN9LtC6lY_CD1HzQdWMh1pgezvDv5dIts_PQ21kmkt3k=s0-d "India's politics of meat")
