South Asia Citizens Wire | October 8-9, 2008 | Dispatch No. 2578 -
Year 11 running
[1] Afghanistan: Dont Talk to the Taliban (Massoumeh Torfeh)
[2] Bangladesh:
(i) Illegal killings by legally constituted forces must end (New Age)
(ii) All those deaths . . . and all our questions (Syed Badrul Ahsan)
(iii) Human Rights Watch Letter in Response to Bangladesh Home Ministry
(iv) Human Rights Forum on UPR, Bangladesh
[3] Pakistan: Don’t get Lahore bombings wrong (Daily Times)
[4] Sri Lanka:
(i) Breakdown of Law and Order (Media Release by Women’s
Organisations and Networks)
(ii) Profiling problem (B. Muralidhar Reddy)
[5] India Administered Kashmir: Can brutal force silence people's
voice? (Kashmir Times)
[6] India: Hindutva continues to Maim, while to Govt pays daily lip
service to secularism
(i) Orissa is trying to replicate Gujarat’s ‘success’ in
sectarianism (Mukul Kesavan)
(ii) No consensus on Bajrang Dal ban (Aditi Tandon)
(iii) BSP stink in Durga on jumbo (Tapas Chakraborty)
(iv) Betrayal Beyond Belief (Badri Raina)
(v) War against Terror and New Lawlessness (Sukumar Muralidharan)
[7] India: National Convention Against Fascism is being planned in Delhi
[8] Book Review: Why the Story of Bhagat Singh Remains on the
Margins? (Pritam Singh)
[9] Naked Capitalism and the Defence Industry:
-Making sense of $700 billion (James Carroll)
-Land of Gandhi Asserts Itself as Global Military Power (Anand
Giridharadas)
[10] Announcements:
(i) Film Screening: Firaaq a Film by Nandita Das (London, 16 and 18
October 2008)
(ii) Demo to protest communal violence in India, (New York,11 October
2008)
(iii) Join Jahanzeb Sherwani for evening devoted to apps for the
iPhone (Karachi, 11 October 2008)
______
[1]
The Guardian
October 08 2008
DON'T TALK TO THE TALIBAN
Negotiating with the Taliban is an insult to the Afghan people. Has
the world forgotten what they are like?
by Massoumeh Torfeh
The international community entered Afghanistan with Operation
Enduring Freedom in 2001 to oust the Taliban. It promised
reconstruction and democracy. Seven years on it is negotiating with
the Taliban.
Details of the negotiations were revealed by Jason Burke in the
Observer last month. The talks are said to have been initiated by the
Afghan government and led by the national security adviser, Zalmei
Rassul, approved by the French, MI6, the British Foreign Office and
the Saudi king before being implemented by a man as yet unnamed.
Later, a French weekly reported comments attributed to the British
ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, advocating "an
acceptable dictator" to rule Afghanistan. Then reports confirmed that
the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, is
also backing the idea of negotiations with the Taiban and advocating
their taking up cabinet posts. The Taliban obviously have the upper
hand and have put forward 11 demands, including having their members
in cabinet posts.
These steps will have devastating consequences for Afghanistan and
will discredit the international community beyond repair. The
suggestion being voiced by some of our top international advocates of
democracy is disrespectful to the people of Afghanistan. Imagine if
you told Americans that the US wants to negotiate with al-Qaida and
have a few of them in high-ranking posts in the administration. Would
anyone dare to say that in the US? If not, then how is it that the
interntional community permits itself to play that scenario for
Afghanistan?
Has the world forgotten what the Taliban and their allies did to
Afghanistan in the space of six years? They devastated the country,
humiliated the nation, punished, tortured and killed Afghan men and
women and tormented the young. Are we saying that the most powerful
armies of the world were unable to defeat a few thousand tribal
fighters? Are the top international men of peace running out of
ideas? You cannot advocate "good governance" and then support an
Afghan cabinet with Taliban members in key posts.
One of the main mediators in the negotiations with the Taliban is the
notorious warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. For more than 10 years he was
one of the main culprits in the wars that raged in Afghanistan. He
entered into hundreds of loose alliances, inflaming an already
desperate situation. He was at the time responsible for the fall of
Kabul to the Taliban. And now he is aiding their entry to Kabul for a
second time. He has already placed in the Afghan cabinet one of his
loyal supporters and the Taliban are asking for several more
ministerial posts. There will be no end to these demands and there
will be no reciprocal action.
Continuing high levels of unemployment and severe poverty are among
the main reasons why young men join the Taliban. A lucrative
narcotics business is also continuing to fund the Taliban's terrorist
activity. So would it not be more appropriate if the international
community focused on creating jobs, eradicating poverty and fighting
the production of narcotics?
The International Crisis Group reported in July that the Taliban have
created a "sophisticated communications apparatus that projects an
increasingly confident movement". It said the Taliban are using a
full range of media, "successfully tapping into strains of Afghan
nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government
and its international backers". Is the international community doing
anything to counter that propaganda?
Leaders of the latest brands of Taliban, recently interviewed by
international media have openly confessed they work for the Taliban
because their "pay and conditions" are far better than any other work
they can find in Afghanistan. People are desperate due to
unemployment and poverty. Are these the Taliban that the
international community is referring to as "moderate" Taliban? If not
who are these "moderate" Taliban? Why are their names not announced?
Are they the ones who destroyed the statutes of Buddha in Bamyan, or
those killing hundreds of international forces in southern
Afghanistan, or perhaps the ones taking people hostage and placing
roadside bombs in main highways? Or it might be their other new major
partner, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is based in Waziristan in the tribal
areas.
The people of Afghanistan have been watching with horror the return
of the Taliban since 2003, not only to the southern and eastern
provinces but also to new areas to the north and, worst of all, to
Kabul. They will be even more shocked when they find out the Taliban
are in the so-called democratically elected government of Afghanistan.
_____
[2] Bangladesh:
(i)
New Age
October 7, 2008
ILLEGAL KILLINGS BY LEGALLY CONSTITUTED FORCES MUST END
Not only have extrajudicial killings not stopped, they are now being
perpetrated with greater recklessness. Odhikar, a human rights
coalition, says the killings are carried out ‘with absolute impunity,
as reported in Sunday’s New Age. The rights group has listed 116 such
killings by legally constituted forces in the first nine months of
the current year. The censure by the public, the media and civil
society and national and international watchdog bodies do not seem to
have had any effect in this regard. So defiant of the laws and norms
these errant law enforcers have indeed become that they do not even
think it necessary to give an elaborate report of the circumstances
of deaths to explain away their conduct but hand out the same
stereotyped make-believe story of ‘crossfire’ or ‘exchange of
gunfire’. In January 2008 eight people were reportedly killed while
in September, the last month of the period under survey, those killed
in this way numbered 19. During this period ten people were allegedly
tortured to death while in custody.
While election and democratic rights are in the air, police
reforms and accountability are being talked about, the law enforcers
continue to commit the grossest kind of human right violation. The
emergency rules have curtailed the freedom of common citizens to seek
fair trial while they have given a new freedom to law enforcers to
arrest, torture and kill. This is not to say that extrajudicial
killings were absent before the declaration of emergency but the
unabated deaths go to prove that emergency neither controls crime nor
improves crime control mechanism or performance of law enforcers. And
the way the government is giving indulgence to law enforcers and
covering up their excesses is puzzling. We do not know of any
instance of the perpetrators being punished for their acts. This may
create the impression that the country is abandoning the universally
accepted justice delivery system.
We have admitted above that extrajudicial killings have existed
for years and are not an innovation of the interim government. But if
the most outrageous abuses of the past are to be perpetuated and made
worse then it can further smear the record of the 21-month-old
government. If the government remained true to its claim that it
would clear much of the cobwebs of the past, then it should have
probed the summary executions that took place in the past instead of
adding about a dozen new instances every month. Extrajudicial
killings and custodial deaths are a national shame that should no
longer be tolerated.
o o o
ALL THOSE DEATHS . . . AND ALL OUR QUESTIONS
by Syed Badrul Ahsan
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=57667
o o o
(iii)
Human Rights Watch
October 6, 2008
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH LETTER IN RESPONSE TO BANGLADESH HOME MINISTRY
Major Gen (ret.) MA Matin
Home Affairs Adviser
Ministry of Home Affairs
People’s Republic of Bangladesh
Dear Home Affairs Adviser Matin,
Thank you very much for the response of the Ministry of Home Affairs
to the Bangladesh section of Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2008,
which was forwarded to us by the Bangladesh High Commission in London
on August 8.
While we acknowledge the seriousness of the political situation
leading up the declaration of a state of emergency on January 11,
2007, and appreciate the importance of government actions to
reconstitute and empower public institutions, we regret that the
Ministry of Home Affairs has in its response sought to deny without
factual basis the serious allegations made by Human Rights Watch
rather than addressing our pressing human rights concerns.
The ministry states that “there is no allegation of torture by DGFI”
– the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, Bangladesh’s chief
intelligence agency – and that “DGFI has no interrogation cell by its
own.” This is not true, and there is ample evidence that the ministry
knows it is not true. Human Rights Watch has collected numerous
statements by credible witnesses who have given detailed and
independently consistent accounts of torture being inflicted on
businessmen, politicians and others in the DGFI office inside the
cantonment in Dhaka. Numerous suspects remanded in police custody
have instead been detained inside the premises of DGFI. Journalist
and human rights worker Tasneem Khalil’s detailed account of his
arbitrary detention and torture by DGFI has been published in a
February 2008 Human Rights Watch report. Instead of dismissing
offhand the very serious allegations made in the report – to which
many diplomats and government officials involved in obtaining Mr.
Khalil’s release can vouch – the government should be mapping out its
plan to ensure such abuses do not reoccur in the future.
The Ministry of Home Affair’s reply further says that, “the
government and its law enforcing agencies and security forces are
always respectful to the Court’s verdicts and orders...” However,
Human Rights Watch’s research has found that many court ordered
releases on bail have been delayed because prison authorities have
not been granted the “required” DGFI permission to release the inmate
in question. There are also numerous due process violations reported
from the special anti-corruption courts and several lawyers
representing some of the more high-profile prisoners have been
subjected to harassment by DGFI.
As an example of the government’s respect for court orders, the
Ministry of Home Affairs notes that businessmen like Mr. Abdul Awal
Mintoo and Mr. Babul of the Jamuna Group have been released on bail.
What is not mentioned is that government authorities have used
threats and extortion to force detainees to transfer arbitrary sums
of money to state coffers, and reportedly also to individual
accounts, in exchange for promises of not arresting the person in
question and for securing releases.
Regarding the media, the ministry says that “it is free and working
without hindrance.” This assessment is unfortunately not shared by
the media itself. On May 8, 2008, for instance, several newspaper
editors and senior journalists expressed public concern about “the
increasing interference of a security agency in discharging
professional responsibilities of both print and electronic media.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs’ claim that the Rapid Action Battalion
(RAB) only killed armed criminals while exercising the right to self
defense and saving government property is contradicted by eyewitness
accounts, evidence of torture on the victims’ bodies, and the fact
that many victims were killed after being taken into RAB custody.
Indeed, you yourself on January 29 this year acknowledged, according
to press accounts, the problem of custodial deaths and instructed the
security forces to put an end to such practices.
As judicial or executive inquiries have been conducted into RAB’s
killings, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs’ response, we
would greatly appreciate if these inquires could be made available to
us.
Human Rights Watch remains deeply concerned by the issues raised in
our 2008 World Report. We look forward to engaging in a constructive
dialogue on these issues with the government of Bangladesh, and
specifically with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Yours sincerely,
Brad Adams
Executive Director
Asia Division
Cc: Mr. Allama Siddiki, Deputy High Commissioner, Bangladesh High
Commission, London
o o o
(iv)
HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM ON UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW (UPR), BANGLADESH
This report has been prepared by the Human Rights Forum on UPR ('the
Forum'), Bangladesh, a coalition of 17 human rights and development
organisations formed to prepare a joint stakeholders' report under
the UPR.
Stakeholders
1. Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Secretariat
2. Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF)
3. Bangladesh Mohila Parishad (BMP)
4. Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS)
5. Bangladesh Legal Aid & Services Trust (BLAST)
6. Bangladesh Dalit and Excluded Rights Movement (BDERM)
7. Centre for Rehabilitation of Torture Survivors (CRTS)
8. D.Net (Development Research Network)
9. Karmojibi Nari (KN)
10. Nagorik Uddyog
11. Nari Uddoyog Kendra (NUK)
12. Nijera Kori
13. Nari Pokkho
14. National Forum of Organizations working with the Disabled (NFOWD)
15. Research and Development Collective (RDC)
16. Steps Towards Development (Steps)
17. Transparency International Bangladesh (TI-B)
Download the document or read it online here:
http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2008/10/07/upr-2008/
or see the PDF version see at SACW:
http://sacw.net/article114.html
______
[3]
Daily Times, October 9, 2008
Editorial
DON’T GET LAHORE BOMBINGS WRONG
The police have “opined” that the three bomb blasts that damaged the
fruit-juice cabins in Garhi Shahu in Lahore could have been organised
by “local” religious elements who were outraged by the boys and girls
visiting these shops. The effort behind this “gloss” is to separate
these small blasts from the activity of Al Qaeda and Taliban who blow
up entire buildings. There is also an element of “criticism” of
youths who drink juice in Garhi Shahu. This is taking the discussion
of the blasts in the wrong direction.
The “moral” elements of Lahore also issued 70 hoax calls to co-ed
schools too. There are large hotels where the “moral” people see all
kinds of unseemly things happening all the time. And there are parks
and grounds where people gather daily to avoid the congestion of the
city. The truth is that families used to visit these fruit juice
kiosks in Garhi Shahu because of the privacy they offered. And the
“religious” elements who could manage small explosives can do a big
one if they are not stopped. And they can be stopped with the help of
the local policeman who knows who has been upset with the juice
vendors. But let us not indirectly justify terrorism because it looks
like being moral in any sense.
______
[4] Sri Lanka:
(i)
http://www.sacw.net/article116.html
SRI LANKA: BREAKDOWN OF LAW AND ORDER
Media Release by Women’s Organisations and Networks
A number of concerned women’s groups and networks join other
organisations and individuals who have condemned the recent grenade
attack on the residence of Mr. J.C Weliamuna the well known and
respected human rights lawyer.
Women’s organisations have in the past, drawn the attention of the
Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Development and the
National Committee on Women to acts of violence against women and
children committed with impunity by armed persons in various parts of
the country, including the North and East. We have in particular
highlighted the failure to monitor and implement the Presidential
Guidelines that seek to prevent abuse of authority.
The grenade attack on the Weliamuna residence took place at night,
traumatizing his two infant children. The attack followed Mr.
Weliamuna’s professional involvement in two cases on police torture
and bribery, and the gunning down of his client in the presence of
the client’s 11 year old child. Despite the public outcry on the
attack against Mr. Weliamuna, unidentified persons later attempted to
force their way into his office, and escaped on a motor bicycle.
In the last few days the press has also reported an assault by army
personnel on a doctor at the Ragama Hospital who made a police
complaint regarding a drug crime. A woman doctor who had also filed a
case of criminal intimidation was gunned down by the accused, a
soldier alleged to be from the Embilipitya army camp. These incidents
are all symptomatic of a dangerous breakdown of law and order, and
the incapacity of the government and law enforcement authorities to
protect men, women and children in all parts of the country from
criminal acts of violence, perpetrated through a perceived sense of
power and impunity.
It is time for the President and the Ministers specifically entrusted
with law enforcement and the protection of human rights to inform the
public of the specific measures that they have taken as well as put
in place. It is their responsibility to ensure that there is no
impunity for criminal acts committed by members of the police and
armed forces, and gunmen who move around easily with their weapons.
Mere condemnation of these acts and promises of investigation are no
longer acceptable. It is in times of conflict and military offensives
that specific measures are vital to prevent impunity, enforce
discipline and ensure public confidence in the rule of law. Everyone
in the police and the army must be held accountable for protecting
the life, liberty and property of civilians, men, women and children
in the community.
Endorsing Organisations
1. Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR)
2. Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum (MWRAF)
3. Women’s Education and Research Centre (WERC)
4. Academy of Adult Education for Women
5. Women and Media Collective (WMC)
6. Women in Need (WIN)
7. Agromart
8. Kantha Handa/Voice of Women
9. Kantha Shakthi
10. Women’s Centre, Ja-Ela
11. Siyath
12. Wilpotha Kantha Ithurum Parishramaya
13. Sri Lanka Muslim Women’s Conference (SLMWC)
14. Sri Lanka Women’s NGO Forum
15. Action Network for Migrant Workers (ACTFORM)
16. Suriya Women’s Development Centre (SWDC)
17. Women’s Development Centre, Kandy
18. Uva Wellassa Farmer Women’s Organization
19. Mothers and Daughters of Lanka (MDL)
20. Community Encouragement Foundation, Puttlum
21. Women’s Resource Centre, Kurunegala
22. Women’s Support Group
23. Women’s Development Centre, Kurunegala
24. Dabindu Collective, Katunayake
25. Women’s Development Centre, Badulla
26. Association of War Affected Women
27. Devasarana Independent Women’s Action Committee, Kurunegala
28. Binthenna Women’s Front
29. Community Education Centre, Malabe
30. Sunile Women’s Centre, Welikanda
o o o
(ii)
Frontline, October 11-24, 200
PROFILING PROBLEM
by B. Muralidhar Reddy
in Colombo
“‘The Americans put all citizens of Japanese origin into camps for
the duration of the World War. Did you know that?’
She did not say anything.
‘What if we place all Tamil citizens in camps for a period of one
year,’ I asked. ‘We’d use that year to flush out and kill all the
rebels hiding in the Wanni. You can’t blow up our cities when your
bombers are not allowed free access to economic and civilian targets,
pretending to be innocents.’
‘That idea is barbaric. It is only a short step from there to the gas
chambers,’ she said furiously and then brightened. ‘But I like the
idea. When you start on it, the whole world will condemn you…. It
will help our cause in other ways as well. We’ll have plenty of new
recruits and funding from our expatriate community will increase
immediately.’
‘Oh, I understand that the idea is impractical but we don’t have many
options.’”
So goes the dialogue between Captain Wasantha Ratnayaka, the
Sinhalese officer in the Sri Lanka Army, and Kamala Velaithan, a
female cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who
pretends to be an informer of the diabolical plans of the Tigers, in
the much-acclaimed novel of the late Nihal de Silva titled The Road
from Elephant Pass.
On September 21, the Sri Lankan government almost made real this
surreal scenario with its diktat that all citizens from the five
districts of the LTTE-dominated North who have been living in and
around Colombo (Western Province) for the past five years “re-
register” themselves with the police.
[. . .]
http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20081024252104700.htm
______
[5]
Kashmir Times
October 9, 2008
VALLEY UNDER SIEGE
CAN BRUTAL FORCE SILENCE PEOPLE'S VOICE?
If the ruling elite in New Delhi and its administration in Srinagar
think that by putting the entire population of Kashmir virtually
under house arrest, making it impossible for any one to move out,
they have succeeded in silencing the voice of the alienated people of
Kashmir then they are certainly living in a fools’ paradise. They
have obviously refused to learn any lesson from history and the
recent past in Jammu and Kashmir. The coordination committee, a joint
front of the so-called separatist groups and other organizations, had
only excercised its democratic right to give a call for a peaceful
march to the historic Lal Chowk in Srinagar to demonstrate their
strength and to reassert for what they described as their inalienable
right for self-determination. The leaders of both factions of the
Hurriet Conference- Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq- as
also the JKLF chief Yasin Malik and several other leaders of the
coordination committee had repeatedly warned the people joining the
march against pelting of stones or resorting to any other kind of
violence. There was no reason to believe that the Lal Chowk rally
will lead to any kind of violence. Still the authorities betraying
their colonial mindset and total lack of faith in the people, whom
they consider as adversaries and dub as anti-national, decided to
abort the march with all the force and resources at their command.
For two days the entire Valley was under the siege by security forces
including the army, para-military forces and all wings of the state
police. All roads and streets were blocked by putting up massive iron
barricades and spools of barbed wire making it difficult for any one
to move out of his or her house. On all accounts it was an ugly and
frightening demonstration of the armed might of the Indian state.
After two days of siege, converting the entire valley into a
garrison, those at the helm gleefully claimed that they have
succeeded in aborting the separatists plan for march to Lal Chowk.
They might have prevented the march and rally by demonstrating and
deploying their armed power but can they in any way silence the voice
of the alienated people and suppress their political urges and
aspirations by using brutal force. These methods are being tried in
varying degrees for the past 20 years. But what has been the result ?
Clearly the use of strong-arm methods and repression have failed to
silence the people’s voice. The “ bullet for bullet “ policy too has
proved counter-productive. Even the “carrot and stick “ policy by
offering doles and massive economic packages on the one hand and
using brutal force and resorting to grave human rights abuses on the
other have not paid any dividends to the Indian state. On all
accounts there has been perceptible increase in the level of people’s
alienation from New Delhi with even the so-called mainstream
political parties raising their voice against the policies pursued by
the Indian state.
Within hours of the authorities proclaiming to have aborted the plan
for Lal Chowk march the Chief Election Commissioner and his two
commissioners landed in Srinagar to get endorsement from the state
authorities and some power-crazy politicians of their already decided
agenda of going for another farcical election to the State assembly
to impose another puppet political regime on the alienated people of
the State. They cannot be oblivious of the fact that under the
present situation, with virtually the entire population in revolt,
there is little possibility of holding an all inclusive election.
Democratic, free, fair and credible election is possible only in a
climate free from fear with people enjoying all the basic rights to
ensure massive participation. Do we have such an atmosphere in the
turbulent state? Fear of gun and sense of insecurity still persist.
With over half-a-million armed forces present in the civilian areas,
gun –totting soldiers parading the streets and with draconian laws,
depriving the people of their freedom and fundamental rights, it is
height of naivety to think that free and fair election with massive
voters turnout is possible. Any such electoral exercise without
voters willing participation for imposing a pliant regime on the
estranged people will only further alienate them. Neither the use of
strong-arm methods nor rushing with a farcical election will help in
winning over the hearts and minds of the people. Dialogue is the only
way out. But unfortunately the ruling elite in New Delhi is still
living in a world of make-believe by perpetuating status-quo with the
vain hope of tiring out the alienated and struggling people of Kashmir.
______
[6] India: Hindutva continues to Maim, while to Govt pays daily lip
service to secularism
(i)
The Telegraph
October 9, 2008
AN ALIEN POSSESSION
- Orissa is trying to replicate Gujarat’s ‘success’ in sectarianism
by Mukul Kesavan
From August 25 to now, Kandhamal district in Orissa has been the
stage for organized violence against Christians. That adds up to one-
and-a-half months. A week after the violence began, by September 1,
the government of Orissa reported that more than 12,000 refugees from
the violence had been fed in relief camps. Five weeks later, that
figure has risen.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has an explanation for the burnt homes and
churches that have led to the Christian exodus into relief camps.
According to The Hindu, the VHP central unit secretary, Mohan Joshi,
said, “Christians are setting their own homes on fire to get good
compensation. There are rivalries among Christian groups. They are
attacking and killing each other.”
Every conflict can be explained in more than one way, but historians
know that one way of sifting out bad explanations is to look for
plausibility. Here, we’re being asked to believe that the thousands
of extremely poor people who make up the populations of these relief
camps are self-arsonists running a compensation scam. This is not
just a bad explanation; it’s an explanation made in bad faith.
There’s another, more respectable, sort of explanation for the
prolonged violence that treats it as you would a natural disaster.
This explanation, which doubles as an alibi for the inability/
unwillingness of the state government to stop the violence, goes like
this. Kandhamal is a large, inaccessible district where the absence
of good roads and the presence of a jungly landscape make it
impossible for agents of law and order (that is, the police and the
administration) to get to the affected villages and settlements to
impose order. This was the explanation offered by Jay Panda, Biju
Janata Dal MP and spokesperson, on more than one televised discussion
of the chronic violence in Kandhamal. A related factor, according to
Panda, was the Central government’s tardiness in sending CRPF
reinforcements requested by the state governments.
It would be reasonable to give Naveen Patnaik and Jay Panda and the
BJD the benefit of the doubt if it weren’t for the fact that the
administration seems to have done so little with the powers and
police forces that it did have at its disposal. The state government
allowed the assassinated Swami Laxmananda Saraswati’s funeral
procession to pass over 150 kilometres in a district electric with
sectarian tension. This triggered off a massive campaign of violence
against the Christian community. A nun was raped in front of
policemen who did nothing. Organized bands of Hindu militants carried
out night-time attacks on village after village with impunity. The
larger question is this: why was Kandhamal, which had erupted in
violence as recently as the last week of December 2007, so thinly
policed?
Kandhamal district in Orissa is demographically unusual. The tribal
community after which it is named, the Kandhas, are numerically the
largest group in the district. The Kandhas are Hindus and their
political loyalties lie with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its
affiliates who have worked amongst them for decades. The Panos, a
community of Dalits, are mainly Christian, and while estimates vary,
the Christian population of Kandhamal is estimated to be between one-
fifth to one-fourth of its total population. This is a high figure
compared to the figure for Orissa, where Christians constitute just
over 2 per cent of the population.
The success of the RSS and its affiliates on the one hand and of
churches and missionary organizations on the other, in influencing
two distinct communities who often see their material interests to be
at variance with each other, has made Kandhamal a tense place. These
are both very poor communities who live in a district where the State
has abdicated its ameliorist function: schools, roads, dispensaries,
all the institutions that represent a responsible and caring
government, are conspicuous by their absence. The absence of the
State in matters of welfare is one reason why denominational
organizations have been so successful in establishing themselves in
Kandhamal. Even so, the Panos and the Kandhas look to the State for
affirmative action and jobs, and since life in a straitened district
seems like a zero-sum game, any concession to either community sparks
resentment in the other.
This history, this social context, is often worked into accounts of
the violence that has repeatedly made the headlines since August. Jay
Panda referred to the long-standing tension between tribals and non-
tribals, and warned against the dangers of simplifying a complex
social history into a communal conflict. The problem with this
apparently reasonable warning is that in Kandhamal, a complex social
history is being violently simplified through communal conflict.
There are two communities in Kandhamal, but only one is the object of
sustained, organized violence. A social history of the district might
help us understand the way in which tribal/non-tribal tensions have
been exacerbated by religious affiliation, but it doesn’t explain a
coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing that renders a large
fraction of the Christian community homeless, marooned in wretched
refugee camps, unable to go home.
Unable to go home because Hindu militant groups announce with
impunity that they won’t be allowed to return unless they reconvert
to Hinduism. The refugee camps, filled with fearful Christians, are
symbolic of the place of minorities in the Hindutva project. Guruji
Golwalkar, the RSS’s most revered sarsanghachalak, wrote long ago
that non-Hindus “may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the
Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any
preferential treatment, not even citizens’ rights”. The successful
marginalization and subordination of Muslims in Gujarat has helped
create a state where Muslims live, de facto, as second-class
citizens, on Hindu sufferance.
What we’re seeing in Orissa is the attempt to replicate Gujarat’s
‘success’ and Golwalkar’s object on a smaller scale. Thus, Christians
are driven out of their homes to live in limbo as destitute, vagrant
wards of the State in camps, or else allowed to return to their
villages as neo-Hindus purged of an alien possession. This is, or
should be, unacceptable. The use of murder, rape and arson against
civilian communities to achieve a political object (in this case
ethnic cleansing) is a form of terror, and this republic’s government
needs to treat it as such.
The prime minister has declared his intention to visit Orissa so he
can see for himself if the state government was discharging its
responsibilities. The measure he should use to make this judgment is
not the mere absence of violence, but evidence to show that Naveen
Patnaik’s government is actually rehabilitating Christian refugees in
the homes from which they’ve been driven. If the government of Orissa
seems unwilling to do this, or (as it has done in the matter of law
and order) eagerly declares its helplessness in the absence of
Central aid, perhaps the government of India should take it at its
word and directly assume the responsibility of governing that state.
o o o
(ii) India's Spineless Govt keeps dragging its feet to re the demand
to outlaw Bajrang Dal.
The Tribune, October 9, 2008
NO CONSENSUS ON BAJRANG DAL BAN
by Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 8
The marathon meeting of the union cabinet today failed to arrive on
any consensus on the controversial issue of banning the Bajrang Dal
ahead of Assembly and general elections.
The issue came up for heated discussion when the Cabinet reassembled
at 8 pm but did not end conclusively, with some members questioning
its feasibility and legal standing. The Cabinet, however, decided to
send a ministerial delegation to Orissa, even as home minister
Shivraj Patil told the members that his ministry was in process of
gathering evidence for banning the Bajrang Dal.
Meanwhile, sources told The Tribune that there was lot of discussion
in the Cabinet on the practicability of imposing a ban on the Bajrang
Dal, which has been on the forefront of anti-Christian violence in
Orissa. Such a ban would have to be ultimately enforced by the state
and the state’s role in this regard is crucial, sources said. It was
on this ground that some members questioned feasibility of the ban.
Although the UPA allies, including the RJD, the LJP and the SP have
been very vocal about their demand to ban the Bajrang Dal and the
Congress, too, today pitched for similar action, saying there was
enough evidence to proceed, a decision in this matter is likely to be
advanced at least till the National Integration Council (NIC) meets.
The idea, UPA sources said, is to not politically jostle the BJP at
this time but to isolate it on a broader platform.
Moreover, sources said the matter regarding banning an extremist
organisation needed not come to the Cabinet at all. Such a ban can
simply be enforced through notification by the centre.
The government, however, feels the need to raise the issue at the NIC
first, said sources, adding that the NIC is a 103-member forum of
union ministers, Chief Ministers, political leaders, heads of
national commissions and eminent public figures, and can be used to
gauge broader opinion of the intelligentsia on sensitive matters.
The NIC is meeting here on October 13 to discuss ways of fighting
divisiveness in the country. Orissa violence will feature in
discussions, so will the matter of banning the Bajrang Dal and
imposition of Article 356.
Also, discussions in the Cabinet today on the imposition of Article
356 in Orissa remained inconclusive. Senior Cabinet members like
external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and agriculture minister
Sharad Pawar were absent from the meeting, which, sources said, was
another reason why vital decisions on Orissa could not be taken.
o o o
(iii)
The Telegraph
October 9 , 2008
BSP STINK IN DURGA ON JUMBO
by Tapas Chakraborty
The Durga idol sitting on an elephant in the Jaunpur pandal. Picture
by Naeem Ansari
Lucknow, Oct. 8: A Durga on an elephant, the Bahujan Samaj Party
symbol, rather than a lion has shocked devotees in Jaunpur town and
triggered a court case.
“What a twist…. Durga riding an elephant to catch votes for the BSP,”
said homemaker Manisha Rai derisively after visiting the Phool Wali
Gali Puja, whose chief organiser is BSP leader and Jaunpur municipal
chairman Dinesh Tandon.
“This is nothing short of blasphemy,” said Durgaram Saran, a Congress
worker.
A lawyer, Arvind Prasad, moved a petition in a magistrate’s court in
the eastern Uttar Pradesh town on Monday alleging the Puja organisers
had hurt Hindu sentiments. “The motive is mala fide and there is a
clear move to get political mileage out of this,” Prasad said.
Some priests had earlier asked the Jaunpur police chief to take
action but the police did not. Now the court has asked the police to
register a case and probe.
Mahendra Sonkar, chief patron of the Puja, justified the move in the
name of artistic freedom. He also mentioned that according to the
Hindu almanac, the goddess was supposed to arrive on earth this year
riding an elephant, symbolising good rain and prosperity. “So what’s
wrong if the idol is put on an elephant?”
A Sanskrit scholar from Varanasi, Satish Pandey, did not accept this
argument.
“The basic deity of Durga is not to be interfered with,” he said.
“She should be on a lion in keeping with mythology, since this image
is embedded in the minds of devotees. It is outrageous to see Durga
on an elephant.”
When Tandon came to the pandal to inaugurate the Puja on Saturday
evening — Panchami — he had praised the organisers for the
innovation. But the huge elephant and a relatively small Durga
puzzled ordinary devotees.
Using the Puja for political campaign isn’t unheard of. Mayavati’s
new ally, the CPM, regularly sets up stalls selling Marxist
literature in front of Puja pandals.
Since the CPM does not organise pujas, however, it has had hardly any
chance to use the idol to send out political messages.
o o o
(iv)
BETRAYAL BEYOND BELIEF
by Badri Raina
Agreed you were Adi Indians,
Long before the Aryans came;
Agreed we made you Dalit
To set off the conqueror’s name.
Agreed you are illiterate,
Agreed you have no say;
Agreed you are untouchable,
Agreed you are kept at bay.
Agreed that our development
Makes you resentful, red;
Agreed, in fact, we prosper
Upon your sweat and blood.
Agreed we rape your women,
Agreed we stray, at worst;
Agreed you may not use our wells
To quench your low-born thirst.
Agreed our Constitution
Is ours and ours alone;
Agreed our hallowed temples
Will not let you in.
Agreed your land, your forest
We grab, we chop, we burn;
Agreed our banks, our markets
Will never serve your turn.
Even so, your villainous move
To leave the Hindu fold –
How could we ever forgive you
Betrayal so beastly, bold?
Go tell these priests who dupe you
That all plants, animals, men
Were created Sanaatan Hindus
The minute the world began.
Do you then prefer Christian ease
To family atrocity?
How traitorous, how ungodly
Can this world of vermin be!
o o o
(v)
WAR AGAINST TERROR AND NEW LAWLESSNESS
by Sukumar Muralidharan
http://www.epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12715.pdf
______
[7] Support Secular Resistance
NATIONAL CONVENTION AGAINST FASCISM IS BEING PLANNED IN DELHI
anhadin.net
Dear Friends,
The urgency to intervene in defense of democracy, secularism and
justice has never been more pressing than in the conditions
prevailing in the country today. There is a recognizable change in
the general tenor of public discourse; unlike in the past, it is
informed more by the communal than by secular ethos. Concerted
attacks have been mounted across India by communal fascist
organizations by invoking religious symbols and sentiments. There is
total apathy and indecisiveness towards confronting this challenge by
those in power.
RSS and organizations under its umbrella have mounted a vicious
campaign against the Christian community across India. Over 10 states
have seen violent attacks on the Christian community , their
institutions, religious places, property and businesses during the
past one month. The culprits behind the communal violence against
Christians in Orissa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and other states are
being allowed to go scot-free.
The recent attacks on Christian religious institutions are in fact
openly claimed by Hindutva terrorist groups, like the Bajrang Dal, in
front of television news cameras and yet no action is taken against
them. Throughout the country Muslim youth are being targeted, without
any or little evidence, as responsible for terrorist attacks. There
is a concerted attempt by the Indian police, sections of the media
and certain political parties to portray all members of the Muslim
community as ’terrorists and extremists’ - to be arbitrarily
arrested, tortured and killed in fake encounters.
On the other hand hard evidence available against Bajrang Dal and
other Sangh outfits about their direct involvement in terror attacks
is not only being ignored but actively being pushed under the carpet
by the state.
The spaces uncolonized by the RSS network are decreasing by the day.
The threat from the fascist forces is not only to the survival and
dignity of India but to the very idea of India. We feel that there is
urgent need to call for a national convention to challenge the forces
of fascism. We had sent out sms messages to about 40 organisations to
get a response from them about the possibility of organizing a
national convention on 25 and 26 October, 2008 in New Delhi.
All those who responded felt the need for this convention.
Please respond urgently to this mail:
1. By endorsing the convention- send the name of your organization/
individual
2. By supporting your own travel and if your organization can support
the travel of 5-10 people from your state who are working on these
issues.
3. Wherever possible arrange for your own stay in Delhi. Those who
can’t inform us in advance.
4. Groups in Delhi- Help in sponsoring the breakfast/ lunch and
dinner for the convention and stay for the outstation participants.
5. Please inform us how many people from your group will participate
and whether any/ all of them will require stay arrangements in Delhi.
The program for the two days is being finalized . Please send
suggestions . We will also inform the venue and the final schedule
for the convention as soon as it is finalised after hearing from more
groups/ individuals.
Shabnam Hashmi
ANHAD
Tel- 23070740/ 23070722
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Those groups who responded the sms message and have already endorsed
Anhad’s call for the convention are:
All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch
All India Quami Mahaz
Aman Samudaya
ANHAD
Antarik Visthapit Hak Rakshak Samiti
ASHA Pariwar
Awaz e- Niswana
Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan
CSSS
Darpana Academy
EKTA
ICHRO
Insaf
ISD
Janvikas
Mahatma Gandhi Foundation
National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights
Peace
People’s Research Society
Roshan Vikas
Sahrwaru
Sajhi Duniya
Samarpan
Sanchetana
Sandarbh
Urja Ghar
Yuv Shakti
______
[8]
www.sacw.net
24 September 2008
Book Review
WHY THE STORY OF BHAGAT SINGH REMAINS ON THE MARGINS?
by Pritam Singh
S Irfan Habib, To Make the Deaf Hear: Ideology and Programme of
Bhagat Singh and His Comrades (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective,
2007), xviii+231pp. Rs. 500 (hb), ISBN 81-88789-56-9 and Rs. 250
(pb), ISBN 81-88789-61-5.
The publication of this book in the year of the 100th birth
anniversary of Bhagat Singh is aimed to highlight the ideological
dimensions of the work of Bhagat Singh and his associates. S Irfan
Habib is a historian of science and works with the National Institute
of Science, Technology and Development Studies in India. This book
can be usefully read in the context of competing ideologies in the
current political landscape of India. The year 2007 has been a year
of many anniversaries relating to South Asia. These include the 250th
anniversary of the 1757 Battle of Plassey, 150th anniversary of the
1857 uprising and the 60th anniversary of India’s independence from
British colonial rule and its partition into Muslim-majority Pakistan
and Hindu - majority, though formally secular, India in 1947. As an
icon, Bhagat Singh can be called the Che Guevara of India. Yet, his
100th birth anniversary was the least celebrated of all the
anniversaries except the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Plassey.
[. . .]
http://www.sacw.net/article22.html
______
[9] Naked Capitalism and Military Power
International Herald Tribune
October 6, 2008
MAKING SENSE OF $700 BILLION
by James Carroll
How much is 700 billion? The mind registers the number with such
imprecision as to make it meaningless. One blogger proposed this way
of grasping the figure: As a stack of $100 bills, it would reach 54
miles high. But who can imagine that? On the other hand, someone at
the Smithsonian once calculated that counting to one billion, at the
rate of one digit per second, would take 30 years. By that scale,
counting to 700 billion would take 21,000 years.
Come again? That stretch of time takes us back to the cave painters
of Lascaux, the glacial age, the last Neanderthals. The mind is not
helped.
By a nice coincidence, though, the U.S. financial rescue package of
$700 billion duplicates a number that was also in the news last week
- the Pentagon budget. In the fiscal year just beginning, the U.S.
Defense Department will spend $607 billion on normal military costs,
and an additional $100 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(As of June 30, 2008, Congress had appropriated $859 billion for the
wars; Congressional Budget Office projections assume further costs of
$400 billion to $500 billion as the wars wind down). But for the
coming year, $700 billion is the Pentagon's nice round number (this
includes neither Homeland Security nor intelligence costs).
Step back. All of last week's hand-wringing hoopla over the emergency
bailout stands in stark contrast to the utter indifference with which
politicians approved an equivalent layout for the military - an
approval so routine that it was ignored in the press and by the public.
Barack Obama has no issue with current Defense expenditures. The
annual American military budget is at least 10 times larger than the
military budgets of Russia and China; it is 20 times larger than the
entire budget of the U.S. State Department. But last week's
demonstration of anguish over the historic financial rescue figure
throws an entirely new light on the nearly identical number that will
fund the Pentagon for one measly year.
This is not a matter merely of comparison. Here is the question that
no one is asking about America's grave financial crisis: By fueling
corporate profits, jobs, and private-sector growth for two
generations with massive over-investment in the military, has the
United States gutted the real worth of its economy?
One needn't be an economist to know that spending money on war
planes, missiles and exotic weapons systems, not to mention combat
operations, creates far less social capital than spending on
education, bridges, mass transit, new forms of energy - even the arts.
The genius of America's most brilliant minds has been yoked for more
than half a century to the invention of ways to kill and destroy. ("I
saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." - Allen
Ginsberg's "Howl," 1956) What if those minds had been put to work
imagining alternative futures - the rescue of the environment, the
ending of disease and poverty, the artistic fulfillment of new media,
the teaching of children? It's a question as old as Eisenhower ("The
cost of one modern heavy bomber," he said in 1953, "is this: A modern
brick school in more than 30 cities." Leaving office, he said, "We
cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without
risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage."
That's us.)
The $700 billion bailout aims to rescue the world's economy, but
that, too, raises questions about the Pentagon's prior effect there.
Because America has put military invention at the heart of its
enterprise, the exporting of weapons to countries that do not need
them and cannot afford them has become a main mode of America's being
in the world. (The Arms Control Association reports that in 2007 the
Pentagon sent $40 billion worth of arms to two dozen nations; that is
double the 2007 appropriation for US foreign aid.) Unneeded weapons
spark unnecessary wars.
That the majority of humans are in dire straits and that the planet
itself is groaning are issues treated like givens of nature, yet they
are results of the ways creativity is channeled and resources are
shared. $700 billion for rescue. $700 billion for war. Something is
wrong with this picture, and last week that coincidence of numbers
told us what.
o o o
LAND OF GANDHI ASSERTS ITSELF AS GLOBAL MILITARY POWER
by Anand Giridharadas (New York Times, September 21, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/world/asia/22india.html?
partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
______
[10] ANNOUNCEMENTS
(i)
Firaaq
a Film by Nandita Das
The story of how the Hindu-Muslim riots that ravaged Gujarat in 2002.
Thu 16 October 2008 13:30 NFT1
Sun 19 October 2008 13:30 ODEON WEST END 1
http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/1175?
utm_source=lffs4&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=lffs
- - -
(ii)
Raise Your Voice!!
Stand Up For Freedom And Justice!!!
Join The Mass Demonstration To Protest The Mass Killings Of
Christians, Adivasis And Dalits
Saturday Oct 11
11 AM - 2 PM
@ 47th Street and 1st Ave in New York City,
In Front of The United Nations
Draw International Attention To The Violent Murders Of Christians,
Dalits, And Tribals Of India
- - -
(iii)
Join us at T2F for an exciting evening devoted to developing apps for
the iPhone
Date: 11 October 2008 | Time: 7:00 pm
Jahanzeb Sherwani is Pakistan's first developer whose application has
been accepted into Apple's iPhone App Store. Jaadu is a
groundbreaking application for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets
you control your computer from wherever you are in the world.
After Jahanzeb shows us how Jaadu works, he will talk about life as
an indie iPhone developer and his experience in selling applications
through the App Store. Jahanzeb would especially like to guide other
budding developers and entrepreneurs who are interested in pursuing
similar opportunities.
Jahanzeb is a final year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University
and is working on speech interfaces for emerging markets in South
Asia. He believes speech interfaces can be a revolutionary medium of
interaction for a massive cell-phone consumer base that has, for the
most part, not been able to tap into the digital revolution. Over the
past year, he has worked with HANDS (a Pakistani NGO) to design,
develop and test a telephone-based spoken interface in Sindhi for
health information access by low-literate community health workers.
Jahanzeb received his undergraduate degree from LUMS, where he
studied computer science and social sciences, and also co-founded the
LUMS Music Society. He was last spotted at T2F playing John Lennon's
"Imagine" on his guitar.
This event is brought to you in association with TiE Karachi. If
you're an aspiring entrepreneur, become a member of TiE and gain
access to networking and mentoring opportunities. Forms will be
available at the event.
Date: Saturday, 11th October 2008
Time: 7:00 pm
Minimum Donation: Rs. 100
Venue: The Second Floor (T2F)
6-C, Prime Point Building, Phase 7, Khayaban-e-Ittehad, DHA, Karachi
538-9273 | 0300-823-0276 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Map: http://www.t2f.biz/location
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: http://sacw.net/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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