South Asia Citizens Wire | August 1-4, 2008 | Dispatch No. 2546 - Year 10 running
[1] For a nuclear-weapons-free Southasia (Zia Mian) [2] Pakistan: Fata's growing disconnect (Afrasiab Khattak) [3] India: State Cultivation of the Amarnath Yatra (Gautam Navlakha) [4] India: The Sarpotdar case (Jyoti Punwani) [5] International: A chance to fix the fight against Aids (Siddharth Dube and Joanne Csete) [6] Publication announcement: The History of Pakistan (Iftikhar H. Malik) [7] Upcoming Events: (i) The Nigah QueerFest '08 (New Delhi, 8 - 17 August 2008) (ii) War and the Question of Minorities: Democratization and State Reform in Sri Lanka (Toronto, 8 August 2008) ______ [1] Himal SouthAsian, August 2008 SOMEONE ELSE'S WEAPONS by Zia Mian A nuclear-weapons-free Southasia must be championed by the smaller countries. In May 1998, first India and then Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. War erupted in the Kargil region of Kashmir a year later. This was the first war between two nuclear-armed states anywhere in the world, and raised the prospect that the next conflict would be a catastrophe beyond reckoning. Since Kargil, both states have continued to build nuclear weapons, to develop and test ballistic missiles with ranges up to several thousand kilometres, and to accelerate their build-up of conventional arms. The tests, war, crises and the on-going arms race are only the latest expressions of a more than 60-year-long conflict between Pakistan and India, which has plagued efforts to build democratic and just societies in these countries and has hampered the progress of Southasia as a whole. A settlement of the Kashmir dispute would help ease tensions, but would not necessarily be enough for India and Pakistan either to give up their nuclear-weapons status or to end their mutual hostility. The experience of the Cold War and the nearly two decades since its end makes this abundantly clear. The US and Russia still have thousands of nuclear weapons each, despite the fact that the Soviet Union is no more. The logic of nuclear weapons has had an enduring effect in preventing the establishment of peace in any meaningful sense. This suggests that the Indian and Pakistani nuclear stockpiles ensure that the future of the region will remain in jeopardy until these weapons are eliminated. Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be a catastrophe not only for the two countries. Recent studies simulating the effects of such a conflict have suggested that the use of 50 weapons by each side could create enough smoke from burning cities to trigger a decade-long change in climate across much of Southasia - indeed, across large parts of the northern hemisphere. This would lead, in turn, to crop failures and widespread famine. The casualties would be beyond imagination. Against the backdrop of the nuclear-weapons tests of 1998, peace groups sprang up spontaneously in towns and cities across India and Pakistan. Building on years of work by a handful of anti-nuclear activists in both countries, these groups articulated deep public concern about the grave dangers posed by nuclear weapons, sought ways to educate and mobilise local communities, and reached out to make common cause with other civil-society groups working on issues of sustainable development and social justice. The need for a Southasia-wide effort on public education and mobilisation for nuclear disarmament in India and Pakistan was recognised by activists in both countries. They hoped that a South Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (SANWFZ) treaty, modelled on such agreements in Latin America, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia (with Africa and Central Asia on the block), could offer a way to build regional consensus against nuclear weapons. Such a treaty would forbid each signatory state from possessing or seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. At its heart, this activism reflects a politics based on imagining and bringing about, from the ground up, a Southasian community of countries sharing a particular set of values. It envisages the countries of the region as not only committed to peaceful co-existence, but also as rejecting the possession and threat of use of nuclear weapons. The political path is one where the civil society in the non-nuclear weapons states in Southasia (ie, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Maldives and Bhutan) campaign for respective governments and others in the region to negotiate a SANWFZ treaty. This combination of popular and official pressure would strengthen nuclear-disarmament movements in India and Pakistan. Peace zone It was back in January and February 2001 that Admiral (retired) Laxminarayan Ramdas and Sandeep Pandey from India, and A H Nayyar from Pakistan, as well as this writer, were asked by groups in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal to travel to each country, to begin a regional civil-society dialogue on a Southasian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone. This effort was by some measures very successful. It showed the feasibility and utility of systematic interactions between peace activists from India and Pakistan with a large number of civil-society organisations, activists, scholars and government officials in the other Southasian countries. The interest generated by the visits, evident from the large meetings and extensive media coverage that ensued, indicated a widespread concern in the region about the implications and challenges created by the nuclearisation of India and Pakistan. In some places, people did seem to find the nuclear dangers facing the region somewhat remote. The clearest expression of this was in Sri Lanka, where many seemed to be hearing about the devastating effects of nuclear weapons for the first time. This could be due simply to geography; Sri Lanka is, after all, far removed from any plausible conflict between Pakistan and India. But there can also be no doubt that there are more pressing concerns for Sri Lankan civil society and policymakers, with the long civil war there showing few signs of ending. Nonetheless, even in Colombo, there was enthusiasm for a Southasia-wide civil-society initiative for peace and disarmament, recognition that nuclear weapons posed a risk to the whole region and support for a SANWFZ treaty. While there were no discussions with government officials in Sri Lanka, we learnt that Sri Lanka had sought to encourage talks between India and Pakistan on the matter of nuclear weapons. This is a positive sign, and suggests that a more formal dialogue with government officials on the possibilities of the treaty could be worth pursuing. There was strong support from the Bangladeshi civil society for the idea of a SANWFZ treaty, and the need for the smaller, non-nuclear countries in the region to lead the way. The contacts with government officials suggested that Bangladesh could be encouraged to consider working towards such a treaty. This willingness reflects the historical role that Bangladesh played in launching the idea of SAARC as a regional organisation during the late 1970s, and in hosting the organisation's first summit in 1985. Meanwhile, in Kathmandu, there was concern about the impact of a possible nuclear war on the northern parts of the Subcontinent, which would rope in Nepal. The possibility of being affected by radioactive fallout was taken very seriously. An important issue raised most directly in Nepal, but also elsewhere, was that of overcoming the constraints imposed by the larger and more powerful neighbours on political initiatives by smaller Southasian countries. While immediate domestic problems took priority in each country, there was a widespread sense of urgency regarding possible nuclear-armed confrontation between India and Pakistan. There was likewise significant understanding that, without peace between Pakistan and India, the Southasian region would remain unstable, and fail to develop the structures of economic and political cooperation it needs to meet the people's needs. From nuclear weapons to energy, food security and climate change, there is a growing array of problems that need to be seen as regional in scope, and which require collective regional solutions. These problems and their solutions will necessitate and generate the practice of a Southasian politics - and with it, a Southasian identity. Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security. ______ [2] www.dawn.com July 31,2008 FATA'S GROWING DISCONNECT by Afrasiab Khattak IT is hardly an exaggeration that the security of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the entire region and indeed that of the whole world will be defined by developments in Fata over the next few months. Different scenarios are being painted by military strategists and political experts. Al Qaeda, after regrouping in the militant sanctuaries of the area, is acquiring the capacity to repeat attacks in North America or Europe similar to those carried out in 2001 in the US. If reports about the exchanges between Pakistan and the US at the highest level are anything to go by it is pretty clear that the US will retaliate against Pakistan, probably even more severely than it did against the Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. Similarly the use of these militant sanctuaries for cross-border fighting is so large in scale (in fact all the six political agencies bordering Afghanistan are being used) that denial in this regard is no longer plausible. The federal government has to either admit defeat or muster the political will to resolve the problem, or else justify the existence of militant sanctuaries by explaining their usefulness to the national interest. We have run out of time and this decision cannot be delayed any more as there are no takers of the denial line. As if this were not enough, armed lashkars (armies) from militant sanctuaries in Fata are poised to penetrate/invade the contiguous settled districts. The events in Hangu some three weeks back are a case in point. The Hangu police arrested four Taliban commanders from a car that also contained weapons, explosive material and manuals for making bombs in a place called Doaba not far away from the Orakzai Agency border. Hundreds of Taliban surrounded the Doaba police station and demanded the commanders' release. They also blocked the Hangu-Kurram highway. During this confrontation the Frontier Constabulary was ambushed near Zargari village and 16 security personnel were killed. Subsequently the army was called in to launch a military operation in Hangu. This action was not just in retaliation for the murder of 16 FC men but also came in view of the threat of attack by four to five thousand Taliban from Orakzai and Kurram agencies. By now the said military operation has been completed and the targets achieved to the extent that the Taliban have been chased out of Hangu. Nevertheless, they have fled to Orakzai Agency where they are regrouping and preparing for future attacks. The NWFP (Pakhtunkhwa) government is in a quandary. It has to call in the army whenever armed lashkars threaten to overrun a district as the police force simply does not have the capacity to fight an ever-expanding insurgency. After Swat the army has also been deployed in Hangu. In view of the militant sanctuaries situated nearby, the army cannot be withdrawn in the near future. Imagine if the story is repeated in other vulnerable districts. Will the army also have to be deployed in all these other districts? Will such measures not bring the existence of the civilian provincial government into question? Is it not amazing that in spite of such high stakes the presidency that has a monopoly over governance in Fata seems to show no anxiety over the prevailing situation? It is continuing with the policy of keeping Fata a black hole where terrorist groups from across the globe run their bases. It is still a no-go area for the media and civil society, and so far there is no corrective measure or policy change in sight. So much so that we have failed to take even the most preliminary step of extending the Political Parties Act to Fata. It is only natural that we are perturbed when attacks are launched from across the border. But should we not be equally sensitive to the loss of our sovereignty over Fata to militant groups? Strangely enough we do not seem to be bothered about the militants' total control of Fata. When the international media carries reports about this situation we dismiss them as 'enemy' propaganda against Pakistan. We have failed to grasp the fact that in the post-cold war world there is a universal consensus about two things. One, that all assault weapons that can be used for launching a war cannot be allowed to be kept in private possession. Two, that no state will allow the use of its soil by non-state players against another state. The entire world is astounded by our fixation with the cold war mode. We have developed an incredible capacity to live in unreality. This is indeed dangerous for any state system but it can be catastrophic for a state dancing in a minefield. Where does all this leave the people of Fata? They are victims and not perpetrators as some people would like us to believe. They are in fact in triple jeopardy. Firstly they are groaning under the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901. They have no access to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan since they are not justiciable outside of the jurisdiction of the higher judiciary. Secondly the tribal belt has almost been occupied by foreign and local militant organisations that are better equipped, better trained and better financed than the local population. More than 160 tribal leaders have been killed by terrorists in North and South Waziristan who operate with total impunity. Today's Fata is not dissimilar to the Taliban and Al Qaeda controlled Afghanistan before 9/11. Thirdly, the people of Fata get caught in the crossfire between militants and security forces from both sides of the Durand Line. The so-called collateral damage has seen a cancerous growth in Fata. The people of Fata have lost the support and protection of the state. They have no access to the media, courts and hospitals or to humanitarian assistance. The only intervention by state players takes place through their armies and air forces in which people of the tribal area are mostly on the receiving end. For any informed and sensitive Pakistani, the situation in the tribal area is the top-most priority when it comes to policy formation and implementation. We must realise that the question of dismantling militant sanctuaries in Fata and taking short-term and long-term measures to open up the area and integrate it with the rest of the country needs urgent national attention if we are to avoid the impending catastrophe. ______ [3] The Economic and Political Weekly July 26, 2008 STATE CULTIVATION OF THE AMARNATH YATRA by Gautam Navlakha The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation. The Amarnath pilgrimage erupted into a major controversy last month entirely on account of the actions of the state. The Act setting up the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) was passed by the National Conference government in 2001. On January 1, 2008, the SASB informed the legislature of Jammu and Kashmir, through a letter to the deputy chief minister, that "(t)he Governor is sovereign ex-officio holder of the power... who acts on his own personal satisfaction and not on the aid and advice of the council of ministers...the member (of the legislative council) may be explained that he does not enjoy the powers to question the decisions of the body" (Greater Kashmir, June 12, 2008). Disconcertingly, the SASB, when presided over by S K Sinha when he was governor, has been engaged in some controversial transactions. The chief executive officer (CEO) of the SASB is the principal secretary to the governor. The CEO's wife, in her capacity as principal secretary of the forest department, granted permission to the SASB on May 29, 2005 to use forest land for the pilgrimage. Because this action was not in accordance with the provision of the J&K Forest Conservation Act of 1997, the state government withdrew the order. However, a division bench of the J&K High Court stayed the withdrawal of permission to occupy forest land. But when in mid-2008, the state cabinet gave its approval to "divert" 40 ha of forest land for the yatra the issue erupted into widescale public protests. The deputy chief minister, belonging to the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) went so far as to claim that Congress ministers "black- mailed" them into giving this approval (Indian Express, June 16, 2008). The Indian state has often used the yatra to promote a certain kind of nationalism. During the Kargil war, in 1999, the Press Information Bureau put out a press re- lease stating: "(the) yearning for moksha (salvation) can move the devotees to the challenging heights of Kashmir and will be a fitting gesture of solidarity with our valiant soldiers who have been fighting the enemy to defend our borders" (pib.nic.in/ feature/feo799/f1507992 html). A Little Known Shrine Thus, what is otherwise a religious pilgrimage of the shaivite Hindus has been elevated to represent a patriotic enterprise. What is interesting is that the translator of Rajtarangini, Aurel Stein, found no reference in 1888 in either the Rajtarangini or the Nilmata Purana to the Amarnath cave. For Kashmiri Hindus the holiest site was the Haramukuta (Shiva's Diadem) and Haramukh-Gangabal pilgrimage (see M Ashraf, 'Aggression At Its Worst', Greater Kashmir, June 20, 2008). The cave was in fact discovered in the 18th century and a Gujjar family and its descendants who found it were given the right to a share of the offering as a consequence. Even until the 1980s, this pilgrimage was not well known and in 1989, only 12,000 pilgrims visited the cave in a fortnight of pilgrimage. It is only after 1996 that the Amarnath cave acquired its prominence when militancy in Kashmir was at its peak. The SASB is headed by the governor (until recently S K Sinha, a former lt general in the army) and his principal secretary, from the Indian Administrative Service, is the CEO of the SASB. Thus when the SASB pushes for movement of a larger and larger number of pilgrims and rejects the right of the legislators to even raise a question regarding the functioning of the SASB, the Indian state is sending a simple message. Imagine if a Muslim governor of Rajasthan were to ask to set up an independent Ajmer Sharief Dargah development authority, with say, control over a large part of Ajmer city. What would be the response of Rajasthan's BJP government or the right wing Hindutva rabble-rousers? Ironically, it is the deposed custodian of the shrine Deependra Giri who has been crying hoarse over SASB's promotion of pilgrimage as tourism, flouting the principle of penance inherent in such pilgrim ages as laid down in the Hindu scriptures! The point is this promotion of Amarnath can be faulted on temporal, religious and secular grounds. In other words it is downright duplicitous when the Indian state promotes religious tourism (tourism in any event) in the guise of the welfare of Hindu pilgrims. This is an extension and/or part of the process of acquisition of a huge mass of land (orchard and cultivable fields, including the precious saffron fields of Pampore) by Indian security forces and water management and control through the National Hydro Power Corporation. Implications The implications are far-reaching. The SASB runs a virtually parallel admini- stration and acts as a "sovereign body" promoting Hindu interests, increasing the number of pilgrims from 12,000 in 1989 to over 4,00,000 in 2007 and ex- tending the period of the pilgrimage from 15 days to two and half months (the first fortnight is meant for families of service personnel). The SASB has virtually taken over the functioning of the Pahalgam De- velopment Authority, laying claims to forest lands and constructing shelters and structures even on the Pahalgam Golf Course! As part of the latest instances of land grab the SASB received the approval of the state government on June 3, 2008 to transfer 800 kanals of forest land. And it wanted another 3,200 kanals. The SASB has also staked claims to set up an "independent" Amarnath Development Authority between Nunwan, Pahalgam, and Baltal (ahead of Sonmarg). It is true that the state government shot down this proposal and has publicly claimed that only temporary structures can be set up in the 800 kanals, but two things should be kept in mind. Firstly, the brazen manner in which the SASB has gone about staking its claims. Secondly, but for public anger it is doubtful if the state government would have found the courage to oppose the demands of the SASB. It has not done anything to prevent or rollback the annexation of parts of Pahalgam Golf Course in order to provide security for pilgrims. If it were not for the widespread protests in Kashmir and the PDP's withdrawal from the government, the new governor of Jammu and Kashmir would not have been compelled to revoke his predecessor's order. Environmental Damage Be that as it may, probably the most damning evidence against the SASB and its dangerous exclusivist policy is the dam- age being caused to the environment in and around Pahalgam. A noted environmentalist told Greater Kashmir (June 10, 2008) that "The yatris during their Amarnath yatra do not only defecate on the banks of the Lidder river but throw tonnes of non-degradable items like polythene, plastic items directly into the river. This has resulted in the deterioration of its water quality." One expert, M R D Kundangar, told Greater Kashmir that "(t)he chemical oxygen demand of the Lidder has been recorded between 17 and 92 mg/l which is beyond the permissible level. Such enriched waters with hazardous chemicals ranges can no way be recommended for potable purposes. It has crossed all permissible limits due to flow of sewage and open defecation. Lidder has been turned into a cesspool." It has been estimated that every day during the pilgrimage 55,000 kg of waste is generated. Apart from this waste, the degradation caused by buses and vehicles carrying pilgrims, trucks carrying provisions and massive deployment of security forces contributes further to air pollution. Another fallout is the threat posed to local inhabitants from crowding of the ecologically fragile area where they have to compete to retain their access and rights to re- sources, both water and land. Indeed such was the arrogance and clout of the previous governor that he sent an ordinance to the state government to establish Shardapeeth University in Baghat Kanipora in Srinagar. Prominent jurist A G Noorani was constrained to point out to Greater Kashmir (June 9, 2008) that this move of the governor was "unheard of in parliamentary democracy". General Sinha would have gotten away with this had it not been for the fact that state coalition government did not have enough time to promulgate this while he was still the governor. The same governor, who also headed the Shri Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, had also created a special facility for rich Hindu pilgrims visiting Vaishno Devi by paying an additional Rs 200-500. Had it not been for the strike by residents and ordinary pilgrims in Katra this decision would not have been withdrawn. The special time allocated for the pilgrimage to the armed forces personnel, the acquisition of land, introduction of helicopter services (which causes its own attendant problems), crowding of the area and slowly pushing out local people from these locations because of the environmental degradation or because their livelihood is adversely affected (for example consider the protests by the Pahalgam- based tourism industry for squeezing them out), all pose a huge challenge. Limits in Gangotri Significantly, even the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand on May 1, 2008 limited the number of pilgrims visiting Gangotri and Goumukh to 150 persons per day so as to protect the fragile ecology of the area. Yet, in the case of Amarnath, and despite overwhelming evidence of environmental degradation posed by the huge increase in the number of pilgrims and large number of security forces deployed for protection of such pilgrims, there is no one who dares challenge the SASB's stubborn extension of the yatra. Indeed if the CEO of SASB is to be believed since "the population of India will increase we will have to consider further extension of the yatra period". Arguably, when the yatra was halted between 1991 and 1996 due to the threat by a section of the militants it played into the hands of the extreme right wing elements in Indian society who have since then played an integral role in mobilising large numbers of pilgrims. However, it is equally important to note that earlier, school- children and college youth used to act as volunteers and provide assistance to the yatris. Even when this was discontinued after 1996, the main indigenous militant organisation the Hizbul Mujahideen and Muslim Janbaz Force always supported the yatra and consistently demonstrated its opposition towards those who tried to dis- rupt it. And even today there is no section of people who opposes the yatra. What they resent is the horrendously jingoistic turn that it has taken under the SASB. Verily the more things change more they remain the same. ______ [4] Indian Express, July 31 2008 THE SARPOTDAR CASE by Jyoti Punwani Mumbai is still to come to terms with the Madhukar Sarpotdar conviction. On July 9, the former Shiv Sena MP was convicted to a year's imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000 for having committed an offence under Sec 153 A, i.e., promoting communal enmity. The offence had been committed during the 1992- 93 riots and the judgment was handed down by one of the two special magistrates' courts set up in March his year to exclusively try the 1992-93 riot cases. Madhukar Sarpotdar's case has been the highest profile case of the Mumbai riots, thanks to the special mention it received in the Srikrishna Commission report. It concerns a procession led by the then Sena MLA in his constituency (where his party boss, Bal Thackeray also lives) addressed by Sarpotdar and other Sena leaders. Two of them (one now with the Congress) were convicted with him. The processionists carried placards and shouted slogans, some of them so vulgar that even hardened policemen refused to repeat them in court. On one of those placards was a slogan which Justice Srikrishna highlighted as illustrative of the Shiv Sena's vigilantism during the riots. It read: 'Only in the Shiv Sena's terror lies the true guarantee of people's safety.' Just a fortnight earlier, the worst riots to hit Mumbai had ended, with 263 dead. Incidents of communal violence continued. Yet, the top police officers accompanying the 5,000-strong procession made no attempt to prevent it from being taken out, or to arrest anyone en route or after it was over. Doing so would have escalated communal tension, they told the Commission. The then Police Commissioner had agreed with this assessment. A mere four days after the procession, communal violence erupted again in Sarpotdar's constituency. At the height of this second phase of the riots, the army intercepted, during curfew hours, Sarpotdar in his jeep with his licensed revolver, and others, including his son, with unlicensed revolvers, choppers and hockey sticks. The local police convinced the major to hand over the case to them, arrested Sarpotdar three days later, allowed Shiv Sena women to block the highway in protest, and then produced him before the night magistrate who gave him bail immediately so as not to create further tension. Five years later, Sarpotdar was acquitted in this case because the major couldn't recognise the weapons he had seized. It is this background one needs to keep in mind to understand the reaction of awe and wonder that has greeted Sarpotdar's conviction. After the Srikrishna Commission report held the Sena responsible for the second phase of the riots, the general feeling was : if Thackeray can't be booked, let's at least get Sarpotdar. When Vilasrao Deshmukh set up the two courts exclusively for riot cases, he was simply taking the easiest measure to placate Muslims upset at the harsh punishment handed down to the 1993 bomb blast perpetrators, while those indicted for the riots, which had led to the blasts, remained untouched. Among the 120-odd non-descript cases sent to these courts, two had wellknown Sena leaders as accused. Former minister of state for home Gajanan Kirtikar was acquitted in May. Everyone expected Sarpotdar to walk free too. The trial had already lasted 15 years, with magistrate after magistrate giving adjournments at the behest of the defence. Even after the Congress government took over in 1999, no special PP was appointed; indeed, one resigned after having remained unpaid for more than six months. All seven accused - six from the Sena and one from the BJP -were never present in court together, but warrants were rarely issued and if issued, not served. Then, the police had done their best to save Sarpotdar. All that they produced in court against him as evidence was the FIR and the Station Diary Entry that had the text of the speeches, placards and slogans. Typically, they had not bothered to record the statement of any independent witness. Sarpotdar's lawyer Jaiprakash Bagoria, who had got him acquitted in the previous riots case and also got Kirtikar acquitted, had once fought elections on a Sena ticket. He was confident about the outcome thistime too. Ironically, it was his cross-examination that got his clients convicted. Bagoria did not deny that his clients had given speeches. In his cross, he only contested the content of the speeches. Bagoria submitted a newspaper photograph of the procession which showed no placards. The accompanying text mentioned placards and slogans Magistrate R C Bapat Sarkar, picked out from a civil court to judge cases of rioting, was the kind who scrutinised every word of the evidence before her. Hence, she read not only those excerpts of the speeches highlighted in the FIR but also the long excerpts in the Station Diary Entry, which were far more incendiary. The judgment reproduces these long excerpts to show just how "vituperative and acerbic" the speeches were, the language used leaving no doubt about their intention to promote enmity on grounds of religion. The conclusive paragraphs of the judgment are worth reproducing only because they remind us that acts committed day in and day out by Hindutva leaders are in fact crimes for which they are never punished. Says the judgment: "All the accused have to begin with, lauded the act of destroying the Babri Masjid as a credit to the Hindus... These kind of speeches were clearly aimed at kindling the Hindu populace into an aggressive stance Against the backdrop (of the riots) it would be obvious to any prudent person that such incitement would lead to further aggravation of communal sentiments and violent acts. The accused were all seasoned politicians and elected representatives with some maturity In spite of this, it has come on record that they blatantly gave such speeches openly exhorting Hindus to take to the streets instead of discarding their responsibility towards the public of trying to alleviate tension and restore normalcy. Such acts deserve punitive measures in order to send the correct signal to society at large that wrong-doing would be punished." The judgment is all the more remarkable because the magistrate could easily have taken the easy way out and talked about letting bygones be bygones. After all, she had an illustrious precedent - the Bombay High Court had done that while exonerating Bal Thackeray for his editorials in Saamna, just two years after the riots. A week before this judgment, Magistrate SS Sharma's special riots court convicted two Shiv Sainiks for rioting, the first time anyone from the party was found guilty in a 92- 93 riots case. Not in his wildest dreams would Deshmukh, whose appointment had been welcomed in Saamna, and who has shown no inclination in the eight years he's been CM, of wanting to punish the guilty of the '92-93 riots, have imagined such an outcome. One more wily politician thwarted by the judiciary. ______ [5] The Guardian August 3 2008 A CHANCE TO FIX THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS To improve prevention, HIV/Aids organisations must roll back George Bush's demonising of sex workers and drug users by Siddharth Dube and Joanne Csete With President Bush's term coming to a close and a search underway for a new chief for the UNAids secretariat, the 15,000 experts and activists gathered in Mexico City for the 17th International Aids Conference can begin to repair the deadly damage inflicted by the Bush administration's reactionary take on HIV prevention and the UN's culpable failure to challenge it. Since 2001, the Bush administration has poured billions of US government dollars into preaching abstinence to young people, maligning the efficacy of condoms, denying key HIV prevention services to drug users and eradicating sex work - the last, bizarrely, elevated to an explicit goal of US foreign policy. The net result today is that HIV prevention is in tatters in many countries, including in the US itself. In 2007, 2.5m people contracted HIV, bringing the global total of people living with HIV to over 33m. HIV prevention services reach less than one in 10 injection drug users and men who have sex with men, globally, and less than one in five sex workers - even though these disenfranchised populations have some of the highest HIV infection rates and are crucial to stemming the epidemic's spread. The demonising of sex workers and drug users has intensified, with raids, imprisonment and punitive laws on the upsurge in country after country, rich and poor alike. US-funded abstinence-only programmes have derailed comprehensive approaches to HIV prevention in several sub-Saharan African countries, as well as fuelled persecution of gay men, sex workers and even people living with HIV. Just as perniciously, through financial blandishments and outright bullying, the Bush administration has sabotaged the UNAids secretariat's commitment to providing rigorous guidance on any issue contested by it. (UNAids is a joint-agency effort that has coordinated the UN's response to Aids since 1996. Its 10 co-sponsors include the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.) The UNAids secretariat's now-outgoing executive director, Belgian virologist Peter Piot, blundered hugely in not combating the reactionary Bush agenda on HIV prevention when it first emerged. Consequently, global policy-making on HIV prevention has regressed at precisely the time when rigorous guidance could have made the billions now available for anti-Aids programmes work effectively. To its great credit, in its early years of operation, UNAids successfully integrated human rights and public health imperatives, as well as on-the-ground evidence of what works best, in framing policies and guidance on HIV prevention. It developed a remarkable body of guidelines for legislators and other policy-makers about protecting the rights of the disenfranchised populations that are very vulnerable to HIV. It put together a wealth of evidence showing the value of Aids programmes and policies that put the last first - that engaged with and respected some of society's most marginalised persons as agents of change and HIV prevention. It pronounced as "best practice" those path-breaking programmes that recognised the power of sex workers to educate their clients and the public, and the effectiveness of drug users as counsellors and outreach workers in HIV prevention efforts. Tragically, in the face of the Bush administration's assault, UNAids has disavowed much of this admirable legacy. The disavowal is particularly marked on sex work and injection drug use, the two areas singled out by the Bush administration. Thus, UNAids' longstanding policy guidance that sex work should be decriminalised, sex workers mobilised and health and workplace conditions regulated, as a central HIV prevention strategy, contrasts starkly with a UNAids guidance note on sex work released last year (pdf), seeming to have been dictated by the White House. The guidance note focused on "rescue" and "rehabilitation" of sex workers - an approach that UNAids had criticised in the past as being harmful to HIV prevention - rather than on supporting sex workers. The guidance note did not even refer to UNAids' earlier recommendations on sex work, let alone explain the reversal of policy. It may bode well for a new era of more courageous UN leadership against Aids that the Commission on Aids in Asia, a group of distinguished experts convened by but independent of UNAids, released a report in March that breaks with both the Bush and the current UNAids lines. The HIV epidemic in Asia, the commission noted, affects mostly sex workers and their clients, drug users and men who have sex with men. The epidemic is stopped in its tracks, then, by ensuring that those persons have access to all the HIV prevention and treatment services that 25 years of experience have shown to be effective. But providing those services is nearly impossible to people whose most pressing worries are escaping police repression and overcoming social exclusion. So with clarity and boldness that has been completely lacking from UNAids for many years now, the commission recommends decriminalisation of sex work as being essential to HIV prevention. It calls for reshaping policy on illicit drugs so that public health services for people with addictions are more important than criminal prosecution. And it enjoins Asian nations to repeal sodomy laws, to respect the rights of men who have sex with men, and to empower them to be part of HIV programmes and policy-making. The case for such legal and policy reform is so strong that UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon himself explicitly endorsed the commission's call for decriminalising sex work, same-sex relations and "harm reduction" for injection drug users. A strong and human-rights-based UNAids response is vital to ensuring that millions more people do not die as a result of preventable HIV infections. If the delegates to the Mexico Aids conference want to see HIV prevention efforts get back on track, they must insist that the next leader of the UNAids secretariat be someone who has the nerve to resolutely stand up to political pressures - and to always put the needs and legitimate demands of the last first. ______ [6] [Just Published] THE HISTORY OF PAKISTAN by Iftikhar H. Malik ISBN: 0-313-34137-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34137-3 260 pages, map Greenwood Press Publication: 7/30/2008 List Price: $45.00 (UK Sterling Price: £25.95) Media Type: Hardcover Also Available: Ebook Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Table of Contents: * Series Foreword * Preface * Acronyms * Chronology * Chapter One The Indus Heartland and Karakoram Country * Chapter Two The Indus Valley Civilisation: Dravidians to Aryans * Chapter Three Islam in South Asia: The Indus and Delhi Sultanates * Chapter Four The Great Mughals and the Golden Era in the Indo- * Islamic Civilisation, 1526-1707 * Chapter Five The British Rule and the Independence Movements * Chapter Six Muslims in South Asia and the Making of Pakistan * Chapter Seven Pakistan: Establishing the State, 1947-58 * Chapter Eight Military Take-over and the Separation of East Pakistan, 1958-1971 * Chapter Nine Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, PPP and the Military Regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, 1972-88 * Chapter Ten Democratic Decade: 1988-1999. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif * Chapter Eleven General Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan in the Twenty-first Century * Biographical Notes * Glossary ______ [7] UPCOMING EVENTS (i) THE NIGAH QUEERFEST '08 8th to 17th August 2008 in New Delhi http://www.thequeerfest.com o o o (ii) Kethesh Loganathan Memorial Event WAR AND THE QUESTION OF MINORITIES: DEMOCRATIZATION AND STATE REFORM IN SRI LANKA Saturday, August 9, 2008 7:00p.m. OISE/University of Toronto Auditorium 252 Bloor Street West (St. George Subway Station) Sri Lanka is mired in a brutal war with civilian suffering reaching immense proportions. A just political solution that rejects violence and works towards democratization and co-existence is the need of the hour. Impunity must end and there is no military solution to the conflict. The question of minorities, who are under increasing attack, needs to be addressed through open dialogue and a democratic political process. Please join Sri Lankan activists from around the world for this public discussion in memory of longtime democracy activist Kethesh Loganathan. Sponsored by Sri Lanka Democracy Forum (SLDF) _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 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. _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list SACW@insaf.net http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net