[sacw] sacw dispatch (13 Oct.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
13 October 1999
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Contains:
#1. Transcript of Pak Army Chief speech after the Army takeover
#2. [BBC News Online readers reactions to Pak Coup d'=E9tat]
#3. Kashmiri Widows Wallow In Poverty
#4. Displacement in the Kargil War
#5. A Film Unreels the Silence Shrouding Partition
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#1.
DAWN
13 October 1999

Transcript of [Pak.] COAS's Speech

Below is the complete transcript of the short address to the nation in
English by the Chairman Joint Chief's of Staff Committee and Chief of
the Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf that started at 02:45 PST
(21:45 GMT)

My dear countrymen, Assalam Alaikum

You are all aware of the kind of turmoil and uncertainty that our
country has gone through in recent times. Not only have all the
institutions been played around with, and systematically destroyed, the
economy too is in a state of collapse. We are also aware of the
self-serving policies being followed, which have rocked the very
foundation of the Federation of Pakistan.

The armed forces have been facing incessant public calmer, to remedy the
fast declining situation from all sides of the political divide. These
concerns were always conveyed to the Prime Minister in all sincerity,
keeping the interest of the country foremost. It is apparent that they
were never taken in the correct spirit. My singular concern has been the
well being of our country alone. This has been the sole reason that the
army willingly offered its services for nation building tasks, the
results of which have already been judged by you.

All my efforts and counsel to the government it seems were to no avail.
Instead they now turned their attention on the army itself. Despite all
my advice they tried to interfere with the armed forces, the last
remaining viable institution in which all of you take so much pride and
look up to, at all times, for the stability, unity and integrity of our
beloved country. Our concerns again were conveyed in no uncertain terms
but the government of Mr. Nawaz Sharif chose to ignore all these and
tried to politicize the army, de-stabilize it and tried to create
dissension within its ranks.

I was in Sri Lanka on an official visit. On my way back the PIA
commercial flight was not allowed to land at Karachi but was ordered to
be diverted to anywhere outside Pakistan, despite acute shortage of
fuel, imperiling the life of all passengers. Thanks be to Allah, this
evil design was thwarted through speedy army action.

My dear countrymen having briefly explained the background, I wish to
inform you that the armed forces have moved in as a last resort, to
prevent any further de stabilization. I have done so with all sincerity,
loyalty and selfless devotion to the country with the armed forces
firmly behind me. I do not wish to make a lengthy policy statement at
this moment. I shall however, do that very soon. For the moment I only
wish to assure you that the situation in the country is perfectly calm,
stable and under control. Let no outside forces think that they can take
advantage of the prevailing situation.

Dear brothers and sisters, your armed forces have never and shall never
let you down, INSHALLAH. We shall preserve the integrity and sovereignty
of our country to the last drop of our blood. I request you all, to
remain calm and support your armed forces in the re-establishment of
order to pave the way for a prosperous future for Pakistan.

May Allah guide us on the path of truth and honor. Allah Hafiz. Pakistan
Paindabad. (Bureau Report)
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#2.

BBC News Online
Tuesday, October 12, 1999 Published at 20:13 GMT 21:13 UK

BBC News Online readers call for change

About 500 hundred e-mails an hour are arriving at BBC News Online with
people eager to express their views on the situation in Pakistan.
Most messages have come from Pakistan, India, the UK and America with
the majority critical of dismissed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his
government. Many express concerns about stability in the region.

Some support the army's actions but many say that army rule is out of
the question for the country. "We Pakistanis have suffered too much from
them and won't let them go away with it," wrote Qaiser Kakakhel from
Pakistan.

Among those critical of Nawaz Sharif was an e-mail from A Hanif in
America who said the situation had been coming for some time. "Mr Sharif
has been acting like a dictator even though he was elected. It's the sad
fate of Pakistan to be ruled by the Army again and again."

Others were concerned about how the action would be perceived worldwide.
"I feel sad for the Pakistani moderate public," wrote Kalyan from India.
"Now Pakistan will be seen in the eyes of the world as an irresponsible
nation and this kind of coup happening in a country owning nuclear arms
is alarming."

A number of readers thought army control was a price worth paying. "No
one wants a coup but Nawaz Sharif was a complete disaster for Pakistan
and really most people here are pleased to see the back of him, even if
its because of the army," wrote Ali Khan from Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif: SurroundedZ Hussain from the UK said Nawaz Sharif had made
another "stupid mistake". "Democracy only works in a country full of
strong institutions. Nawaz Sharif has destroyed all of them, and is now
attempting to destroy the only institution in Pakistan, the Army," he
wrote.

Another e-mail from the UK said the situation could now be good for
Pakistan. Lutfey Siddiqui wrote: "At least we'll now have a transparent
undemocratic regime. Coups have often been a pillar of stability and
relatively bloodless in Asia."

Another said a military regime would hamper foreign investment and cut
the inflow of foreign exchange, which is already scarce. "The need of
the hour in Pakistan is a stable democratic government that focuses on
improving the economy and ties with India," wrote Raguram from the USA.

Others feared it would increase tension between India and Pakistan.
"Pakistan's blind race for N-arms and hi-tech jets will now know no
bounds. After getting a drubbing in the Kargil crisis, Pakistan will now
try to get things done in the most heinous way. They will use all their
might to strike Kashmir and 'fulfil' their never-to-be-fulfilled dream,"
wrote Amit from the USA.

Another looked to the future for the country. "If Pakistan is ever going
to come out of dark ages three institutions need to be dismantled,"
wrote Ashesh from the USA.

The army and the feudal land-owning families and the Islamic clergy.
None of these three centres of power has any vested interest in
improving education, health-care and rural development. On the contrary,
they have even more interest in maintaining the status quo."
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#3.
[Recieved from: Optimist <hope@a...>
Date: 12 Oct 1999]

Kathmandu Post, (Date ?)

Kashmiri Widows Wallow In Poverty

By Krishnan Guruswamy

SRINAGAR, India, Oct 10 (AP) - They're pushed aside by their in-laws,
shunned by neighbours, exploited by employers and harassed by security
officers. They are Kashmir's "half-widows," some 2,000 women whose husbands
never returned home after security forces took them away for questioning as
suspected separatists.

Only hope keeps the women going. Hope that their husbands - and also sons -
will come back one day. Under Islamic law, a woman can remarry four years
after her husband disappears if sustained efforts have been made to find
him. In practice, the women don=EDt want to remarry.

"They keep hoping that their husbands will come back," says Bashir Ahmad
Dabla, a sociology professor who surveyed Kashmir=EDs half-widows earlier
this year. Parveen Angher, a human rights activist, has helped poor Muslim
women file lawsuits seeking help from India=EDs government.

"They have no source of income. Their children usually don=EDt go to school.
The women are in poor health. They mostly wait and weep," she says.

Angher founded the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons after
police picked up her 15-year-old son nine years ago. He never came home. In
1989, an insurrection erupted in the Kashmir Valley, a Muslim-majority area
that Islamic militants want to break away from India, which is
predominantly Hindu.

The guerrilla war has killed thousands of civilians, militants, police,
army and paramilitary officers. Security forces have special powers to
detain anyone without giving reasons.

Hundreds of civilians have disappeared, some of them killed by guerrillas
who suspected them of being police informers. Allegations of torture and
human rights abuses are numerous against both sides. Zainam, a half-widow
who like others asked to be identified only by her first name, says she
hasn=EDt seen her husband since soldiers stormed her house one night three
years ago.

"They beat my husband for two hours. He was screaming all the time. Then we
didn=EDt hear anything. The soldiers left. We went upstairs. He was not
there. ... We never saw him again," she says. The illiterate mother of
three children says she has visited dozens of army camps and police
stations looking for her husband, who was a government gardener.

"We used to hear from villagers that he is here or there. We could never
find him," says Zainam, who looks far older than her 30 years.

She never went to school, like most women in this male-dominated Muslim
region. She lives in her husband=EDs extended family.

She is weak from anemia and suffers from high blood pressure. Her eldest
daughter has leucoderma, a skin condition marked by white irregular
patches. Zainam has no money for medicine.

Rafiqua, another of the half-widows, says her in-laws sent her back to her
parents a few months ago after complaining about the 10,000 rupees (dlrs
230) they spent looking for her husband. He was picked up by security
forces in 1996.

Rafiqua says she worked from dawn to dusk for her in-laws. "They wouldn=EDt
even buy me soap." Now they want her back again.

"I=EDm like a servant in their house. But what can I do? I can=EDt go on liv=
ing
with my parents. They have other children to look after," says Rafiqua, a
mother of four at age 25.

Her son, Faisal, 5, sits beside her quietly through the interview. "He is
always quiet," she says. "The doctor said, =EBDon=EDt let him see people
crying.=ED He is always depressed."

The half-widows and their children all show symptoms of depression. Most of
the women have heart ailments, says Dabla, the sociologist.

"The condition of the half-widows is worse than that of widows. They don=EDt
know if their husbands are dead or alive," Dabla says. "In Islamic society,
women have few rights. These women are mostly illiterate and unemployable."

Dabla found children whose fathers disappeared have dropped out of school
and developed minor criminal behaviour.

"The authority structure at home collapsed. The children especially develop
a revenge psyche. If the security forces have taken away their fathers,
they show anger toward the government and its agencies. If it was the
militants, they want to take revenge," Dabla says.

In an attempt to pressure the government into admitting the missing men
were killed and to pay compensation to the families, human rights lawyer
Parvez Imroz is helping 300 half-widows pursue lawsuits demanding that
security forces produce the missing men in court.

The cases have dragged on, sometimes for 10 years, says Imroz, who pleads
the cases free of cost. Imroz wants the government to pay the same 150,000
rupees (dlrs 3,500) it pays to relatives of people acknowledged to have
been killed by security forces or by the separatists.

Police and security forces rarely admit they picked up the missing men.
When there is evidence officers did, officials say the men were released.

The head of the Jammu-Kashmir Human Rights Commission, Ghulam Ahmed
Kuchchai, says he will insist the government pay compensation even if it
has no information about the whereabouts of the missing men. The
commission, set up by the government in August 1997, is examining more than
300 complaints of human rights abuses in Kashmir. It has no powers to
punish anyone, but its recommendations are binding on the government.
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#4.

Displacement in the Kargil War
Refugee Watch (Special Issue), September 1999, No.7

Published by South Asia Forum for Human Rights
PO Box 12855
Kathmandu, Nepal
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#5.

Washington Post
12 October 1999

Letter From India
A Film Unreels the Silence Shrouding a Divided Nation
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 12, 1999; Page C01

NEW DELHI-Partition. For millions of Indians, the word is weighted with
horror and hellish memories.

Partition is India's legacy of shame, a wound that never heals, an event
so scarring that it will never truly be expurgated until every Hindu and
Muslim who lived through it is no longer alive.

In 1947, northern India was abruptly and arbitrarily carved up by its
departing British rulers to create the new Muslim state of Pakistan. The
result was chaos--a massive crisscrossing exodus of Hindus fleeing south
and Muslims north, of homes and friendships broken forever, of atrocity
avenging atrocity. When it was over, in a matter of months, more than a
million people had died and another 12 million had been uprooted.

=46or years, partition has been a semi-taboo subject here. The religious
tensions that drove it are too easily revived, the memories too painful,
the relationship between India and Pakistan too fragile.

This past spring the animosities between the two countries were
rekindled with the outbreak of a 10-week border conflict in the remote
Kargil mountains of Kashmir. More than 500 Indian troops died in the
fighting, as well as an uncounted number of Pakistanis and their
insurgent allies.

With nationalistic feelings reaching a fever pitch, some Hindus have
voiced doubts about the patriotism of Indian Muslims. There were
rumblings of ugly, Partition-era sentiments like: "Why don't they all
just go to Pakistan?"

Although hundreds of academic tomes and polemical treatises have
explored the effects of Partition, most popular writers and artists have
either shied away from the topic or cloaked it in safe, autobiographical
or fictional treatment. "Train to Pakistan," a short but searing 1956
novel by Khushwant Singh, was the single major literary work on
Partition for a full quarter-century.

Only a handful of notable works on the subject have appeared since then.
One was Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," a picaresque and
sardonic pinioning of the times published in 1980. Another was a 1988
novel called "Cracking India," by Bapsi Sidhwa, the story of a young
Parsee girl in Lahore who witnesses the impact of Partition on her Hindu
nanny and Muslim friends.

"Partition was the defining moment in our contemporary history, but for
some reason it has not defined the Indian imagination the way the
Holocaust has in Europe," said S. Prasannarajan, a literary critic for
the Indian Express newspaper. "It is part of our legacy, but the younger
generation doesn't remember it, the older generation isn't reconciled to
it, and now all this hate has been manufactured again by Kargil."

In the middle of this tense period, a film titled "1947" was released in
India last month. Based on Sidhwa's novel, it is a tale of love,
betrayal and unspeakable acts, with Partition as both backdrop and
driving force.

Released recently under the title "Earth" in the United States, it is
the second film in a taboo-breaking trilogy by Deepa Mehta. Her first
film, "Fire," which dealt with lesbianism, provoked riots in Bombay two
years ago. A third, to be called "Water" and set on the sacred Ganges
River, will explore religion in India.

To American audiences, "1947" offers a palatable, even entertaining
glimpse of a grim chapter of history about which most Westerners know
little. It sneaks in the violence between scenes of romantic picnics,
restaurant debates and the captivating, crippled 9-year-old girl through
whose eyes the story is told. To European audiences, the ominous scenes
of trains chugging into dark stations and refugees herded like cattle,
accompanied by heavy and haunting music, will instantly evoke images of
Nazism and the Holocaust.

Moreover, in a few deft scenes, Mehta manages to introduce foreign
audiences to India's mid-century cast of characters--British colonials,
Sikhs, Muslims, Parsees (Zoroastrians) and Hindus--and to their
distinct, equally tragic roles in Partition.

There is nothing subtle about "1947" except the film's superb lighting,
which crackles with fire, throws ominous shadows and caresses the
textures of an earlier time. The little Parsee girl witnesses a man torn
limb from limb by a frenzied mob, then goes home and does the same thing
to her favorite doll. A pudgy, innocent adolescent is married off to a
hideous old stranger. A Muslim man waiting for his sister's train leaps
on board to find bloody corpses sprawled in a heap. The pretty Hindu
nanny agrees to marry a suitor of the other faith and dreams of their
wedding day, only to be dragged off to an unthinkable fate by a crowd of
agitated Muslims.

But the scene that has evoked the most empathy from audiences here is a
small moment of private pain and anguish, one that must have been
repeated tens of thousands of times in homes across northern India as
Partition loomed. A middle-aged Sikh man calls on a neighbor to say that
he is leaving his beloved city of Lahore, about to become part of
Pakistan, and seek refuge in a strange part of India. By the end of his
short, grief-stricken speech, the dignified man is in tears--and so is
half the theater.

"It is our reality. What can we do? We just have to absorb it," says a
middle-aged Sikh man, slumped silently in his seat in an affluent Delhi
theater as the movie ends.

"I was only 7, but I remember everything," says another well-dressed
filmgoer. "My father buying a gun, my mother crying, the servants
running away, the mates I never saw again. How can you ever forget? Or
forgive?"

Perhaps "1947," by humanizing the horrors inflicted by India's two major
religious groups on each other, can help Indian audiences come to terms
with Partition and even rise above it. In the last scene, in which a
jilted suitor betrays his beloved to the ravages of a jeering mob, the
answers to India's anguished questions of moral choice and religious
identity seem suddenly, sickeningly, clear.
=A9 Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

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