[sacw] sacw dispatch #2 (19 dec.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web - Dispatch #2.
19 December 1999
___________________________
#1. Sri Lanka: Ending the War -The People's View
#2. Building India-Pakistan trust, the family way
#3. Partitioned siblings to meet after '47
#4. Patriot Games
#5. INDIA: Workers Court Death in the 'Golden Corridor'
___________________________
#1.
National Peace Council of Sri Lanka
291/36A Havelock Gardens
Colombo 6
Tel: 075 349696
Tel/Fax: 502522
E Mail: peace2@s...

17.12.99

PRESS RELEASE

Ending the War: The People's View

The results of a a public opinion poll carried out during the Presidential
Election campaign reveal that the election platforms of both front running
candidates reflect significant elements of public opinion on the war
situation. The poll was conducted in all provinces of the country,
including the north-east districts of Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya,
Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara.

A total of 2994 persons were polled which consisted of 70 percent
Sinhalese, 16 percent Sri Lanka Tamils, 10 percent Muslims and 4 percent
Estate Tamils. The poll was carried out during November 21- 26 and
December 2- 10, 1999 (for the northern districts) by Research International
and commissioned by the National Peace Council.

A significant majority of 59 percent of those polled were in favour of
government-LTTE peace talks. (When the northern poll results were excluded
this figure dropped to 57 percent). But only 18 percent saw the Fox
Agreement by itself as the method for achieving success in such talks. More
weight was put on the formation of a national government as being the best
method, which was supported by 42 percent. The business community's peace
initiative to obtain a PA- UNP consensus for peace talks with the LTTE
obtained a 53 percent approval.

A significant majority of 58 percent supported an equal devolution to all
provinces with only 37 in favour of asymmetric devolution. Only 28 percent
supported a military solution. Only 25 percent approved the censorship of
war news. Only 25 percent wanted the north and east kept separate. Public
opinion was clearly flexible on the issue of the north-east merger, with 31
percent being in favour, a further 30 percent calling for a referendum and
10 percent favouring re-demarcation and merger.

On several controversial issues, public opinion was more or less evenly
split. These included foreign third party assistance
(mediation/facilitation) with 50 percent supporting and 45 percent opposed.
The use of the government's devolution package to commence negotiations
with the LTTE was supported by 46 percent with 41 percent opposed to such
use. Another result showed 49 percent believing that insufficient food and
medicine was being sent to the north-east with 32 percent expressing belief
in their adequacy.

Excluding the northern poll results changed some of the figures slightly.
Those advocating government-LTTE peace talks decreased from 59 to 57
percent. Those advocating foreign third party assistance declined from 50
to 46 percent. Those advocating an outright military victory by either side
declined from 30 to 28 percent.

The National Peace Council is of the view that the survey results show that
a majority of about 55 percent of the people are in favour of negotiations
and compromise. A significant minority of about 30 percent are
uncompromising and in favour of a military solution. Nevertheless, these
results give sufficient grounds for optimism that the political space
exists for a newly re/elected President to initiate a flexible and
accommodative peace process.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Opinion Poll On The Ethnic Conflict & The Peace Process
November 21 - December 10, 1999

Introduction

This opinion poll survey was carried out between November 21 and December
10, 1999, at the specific request of the National Peace Council with the
purpose of obtaining the perceptions of the public about the ethnic
conflict and the peace process. The survey was carried out in all
provinces of the country.

The data was collected through personal interviews using a structured
questionnaire with close-ended questions. The enumerators used to collect
the data are well experienced in conducting opinion polls of this nature,
who were trained prior to the conducting of this poll. The enumerators were
instructed to select a maximum of 2 locations in their respective
divisional secretariat divisions. This was to ensure that both urban and
rural sectors are covered through this process.

After cleaning of data, to eliminate incorrectly filled questionnaires, the
final analysis was done using responses of 2994 persons. The sample
consisted of 53.6% of males and 46.4% females, with 69.6% being Sinhalese,
16.0% Sri Lankan Tamils, 3.9% Indian Tamils, 10.2% Muslims, 0.1% Malays and
0.2% Burghers. Nearly 54% belonged to the age group category of 26 - 45
years, while 18.5% were between 18 - 25 group, 16.9% were between the ages
of 46 - 55 years, and almost 11% were 56 years and above.

The majority of the respondents, almost 70% had passed at least their GCE
O/L of which 25.2% had completed up to their GCE A/L examination, while 4%
had professional/technical qualifications and 6.2% had some form of
university education of 2 years and over, of which 4% were qualified with a
degree, while nearly 1% had post graduate qualifications. Only 8.1% of the
respondents had attended school from grades 1 - 5 and 20.5% completed
schooling from grades 6 - 9 while only 1.3% had no schooling at all.

Nearly 27% of the respondents said they were employed by the government or
the private sector on a full time basis, while over 8% said they had part
time employment with the state or private sector. 18.7% said they were
self-employed, almost 18% said they were unpaid family workers and over 13%
said they were unemployed.

The family income of the majority (over 63%) was in the range of Rs 701- Rs
5,000, while the income of the next largest percentage (nearly 26%) were
between Rs 5,001 - Rs 10,000. Only 2.8% were earning less than Rs. 700
while the family income of 4.5% of the respondents were in the over Rs
10,000 income category.

Jehan Perera
Media Director
_________________
#2.
The Hindustan Times
19 december 1999

BUILDING TRUST, THE FAMILY WAY
by Chander Suta Dogra

Chandigarh, December 18
A Trust connected with Nawaz Sharif's native village Jatti Umrah in
Punjab has begun an exercise to "renew friendship and foster social
exchanges" between the people of India and Pakistan.

The medium - families separated during Partition, who for years knew
their relatives lived across the border but somehow didn't have the
courage to acknowledge.

With the borders, their religions too changed. Though their hearts
yearned to meet their relatives, fear of social ostracism always came in
the way. After much persuasion, the trust, headed by former Goa Governor
Pratap Singh Gill, has managed to convince them to make an effort.

As seven men and women, now in their sixties and seventies, begin
preparations to leave for Pakistan to meet their relatives located by
this trust, it is with a feeling of trepidation.

Most of them are Muslims who had to change to Hinduism or Sikhism after
they were left behind during Partition. It has taken them years to gain
social acceptance in their villages, and many fear their attempts to
contact their relatives across the border would revive memories of the
past. Fifty-five-year old Khursheeda is now Gurnam Kaur. Her husband
died a few years ago. Since his permission is not required now, she is
all set to meet her brother Allah Rakha in Lahore.

Anaita Bai of Amritsar district is facing problems getting her two sons
married. "People still regard me as a Muslim. They do not want to give
their daughters in my family," she says.

But at 60 years, she is too eager to meet her sister.

Sardar Ali, a Sikh, is looking forward to meeting his brother Niaz Ali
near Lahore. For octogenarian Arjan Singh, the former sarpanch of
village Jatti Umrah who has organised "Akhand Paths" whenever Sharif has
been trouble, the problem is between the governments, and not the
people. "We believe through our efforts, things will improve. Who knows,
one day the two countries may unite. Don't we still have the same
culture and traditions?"

Col Gill, who is spearheading the effort through what he describes "a
network of well meaning persons" on both sides of the border, is now
trying to get visas for these people. He says he has established contact
with the relatives and even got them to talk to each other on phone.
______________
#3.
The Asian Age
19 December 1999

PARTITIONED SIBLINGS TO MEET AFTER '47
By Asit Jolly

Chandigarh: Seventy-five-year-old Khurshida's wrinkled face is lit up by
her first real smile in literally a lifetime. Fifty-two interminable
years after being abducted and separated from the rest of her family
during the insanity of the Partition riots, she is looking forward to
crossing the border into Pakistan to meet her "pehla pariwaar (earlier
family)."
Her parents were butchered by marauders, all Khurshida knows for sure
today is that her elder brother did manage to make it across with one of
the many caravans headed west. "He was only two-and-a-half years older.
I don't even remember his face. Anyhow, I am sure he must look very,
very different now," she said, clearly nervous as well as excited at the
pros-pect of meeting her only known relative.
Old Khurshida's dream is about to come true thanks to the efforts of the
Chandigarh-based Jati Umra Hind-Pak Pariwaar Milaap Trust - a private
charitable enterprise initiated by former Goa governor Pratap Singh Gill
and some 10 other individuals.
As a personal guest of ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Naw-az Sharif in
1998, Col. Gill and his colleagues met a number of Hindu and Sikh women
who, after being kept back in 1947, are now living there as part of
Muslim families. "Many of those women wanted to somehow establish
contact with their families in India," said Col. Gill.
But in their search for the families in Indian Punjab, Col. Gill and his
friends came across an equal number of Muslim women who were forcibly
married into Sikh and Hindu families after being abducted and held in
captivity for several years. "We decided that we must do all that can be
done to reunite families on both sides with their daughters," Col. Gill
said.
After months of arduous work in relocating individuals and families, the
trust has now put together its first list of women who are to be
escorted across the border to meet their relatives and family for the
first time. According to Col. Gill, it has taken immense courage on part
of the women who have come forward to list themselves with his trust.
Many of the women - who have borne children and have grandchildren in
Sikh and Hindu households - refused because coming out could mean being
stigmatised as victims of rape and abduction. Many others said that
going back to Pakistan would mean too much pain to their present
families and themselves.
Col. Gill admits that the trust was able to carry out its investigations
and other work essentially because of Mr Nawaz Sharif's personal
interest in the enterprise. "Nothing would have been possible without
his help - he brushed aside all restrictions and permitted us to visit
villages in areas where no outsider is allowed to go," he said. But,
given the nature of the effort that his trust is making, Col. Gill is
confident that Pakistan's new ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, will
continue the good work. "If for nothing else, I am certain he will
respond to me as a former Army officer," he said.
_____________
#4.
The Telegraph
19 december 1999
Editorial

PATRIOT GAMES=20
=20
Secular people find it not just hard but impossible to understand why so
many Indians vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party. They look at L.K.
Advani equivocating about his party's record on the Babri Masjid; they
watch Murli Manohar Joshi being strident in an angavastram; they listen
to the hate speech of its sangh parivar allies, the Shiv Sena, the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal; they follow as best as they
can the doings of dour ancients in Nagpur and wonder: why do people we
know support these sullen, resentful, intolerant men?
People who support the BJP never think of it as communal. The historical
triumph of the Congress is that every party must now lay claim to the
virtue of being secular. The meaning of secularism can be contested -
truly secular, pseudo-secular - but it is a value, like democracy, that
no mainstream political party can publicly repudiate. The BJP is
genuinely bewildered when it's called communal. It thinks of itself as
nationalist and it is not mistaken. Victor Banerjee supports the BJP
because he admires its nationalism. So do many others. And if we look at
the history of nationalism, particularly the nationalisms of Europe, we
will find that there is warrant for this claim.

The BJP's nationalism which magazines like The Economist call Hindu
nationalism, is very different from the nationalism of the freedom
struggle, the nationalism born of anti-imperialism. Since colonial
nationalism had to prove to the raj that the variety of India could be
gathered under the umbrella of a single movement, there was a Noah's Ark
quality to the Congress's nationalism as it did its best to keep every
species of Indian on board.

The nationalism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (founded in the early
Thirties) had very little to do with anti-colonialism. The RSS was a
professedly apolitical militia, dedicated to Hindu self-strengthening.
Its nationalism was derived from European models, and it was an
exclusionary nationalism that tried to create a uniform citizenry on
tried and tested European nationalist principles: a shared language, an
authorized history, a single religion and a common enemy. French, Greek,
German or Italian nationalisms differ from each other in important ways,
but none of them has any interest in plurality.

The uniqueness of the Congress's nationalism is its near complete
freedom from mystical and mystifying notions such as blood, soil or
national essence which are the stock-in-trade of narrower patriotisms.
The Congress, whether by design or default, replaced these with colonial
exploitation and economic subjection. Because we don't fully appreciate
the originality of the Congress's construction of nationalism, we tend
to confuse it with this other, European kind. And so do many of our
fellow-citizens.

Since the dominant sense of nationalism the world over is derived from
the European experience, when a Hindu nationalist arguing, say, about
the primacy of Hindi, asks, "Doesn't France have a common language?"
this begins to seem a sound nationalist precedent for supporting Hindi.
When he asks, "Don't the English acknowledge that their culture and
morality are derived from Christian values?" this becomes a persuasive
reason to support the demand that all Indians acknowledge that they are
constituted by Hindutva.

The proper secularist response to this is that the nationalism of
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi that won us our freedom as a nation state and
shaped the pluralism of the Constitution has very little in common with
this hectoring, homogenizing patriotism. These derivative arguments
don't apply; they're irrelevant because they aren't rooted in the
experience of our freedom struggle, they don't emerge from nationalist
practice.

The reason it's important to acknowledge the BJP's claim to being a
nationalist party is to understand (more clearly than we could if we saw
it as simply communal) how it tries to fudge the difference between the
two nationalisms to create a genealogy for itself. The BJP has huge
difficulty in laying claim to the freedom struggle because the role of
its ideological forebears, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, in the
struggle was minimal. There is a certain awkwardness in its
appropriation of swaraj and swadeshi because it is nationalist without a
nationalist movement. The BJP's posturing about the tricolour is
particularly ironic because for decades, Hindu nationalism swore by its
saffron standard, the Bhagwa Dhvaj, since the tricolour was so closely
associated with the emblem of Gandhi's Congress.

When the BJP lays claim to anti-imperialist campaigns or movements like
those of Subhas Chandra Bose, it's scavenging, feeding on carcasses
killed by hunting animals.What would Major General Shah Nawaz Khan have
had to do with Hindu zealots?

This BJP's brand of majoritarian nationalism isn't singular: there are
parallels with Serb and Sinhalese nationalism. Hindu chauvinism is a lot
like Serbian nationalism: a memory of defeat at the hands of the Turks,
legends of gallantry in defeat, a memory of long Turkish dominance and
atrocity.

It was this that Josip Tito managed to balance for 50 years, in a
secular, federal state. The similarities to North India are uncanny: the
same language, in different scripts, shared ethnicity, different
religions. Kosovo is the Serbian Kashmir. The Serbs and the Sinhalese as
majority communities succeeded in aligning the state closely with their
religions, the Orthodox church and the Buddhist sangha respectively.
Despite the much advertised absence of a Hindu clergy, the BJP has been
doing quite handily with its bands of sadhus and vocal shankaracharyas.

It's significant that this alignment of the majority's religion and the
state has done nothing to resolve the internal conflict or civil war. It
has made the divisions worse, in some cases, hastened a partition.
Indonesia has lost East Timor, Sri Lanka has effectively lost Jaffna,
the rump state of Serbia has been deprived of Kosovo. It isn't hard to
see the direction in which the BJP's belligerence about Muslims in
particular and minorities in general could lead us in Kashmir. Of
course, the precedent the BJP favours in the business of minority
management is China and Tibet, that old fantasy of Hindu immigration and
a demographic shift. That's not going to happen, unless we want a United
Nations supervized partition tomorrow.

The BJP's identity is critically dependant on the presence of the
Muslims as the enemy Other. Christians are part of its demonology, but
its historical grievance is centred on the Muslim conquest. Its
nationalism is premised on Hinduism beleaguered by Islam. It's a
sheepdog nationalism where the BJP is the sheepdog, trying to keep a
Hindu flock together, protecting the strays from Muslim and Christian
wolves. If there were no wolves, there would be nothing for the BJP to
do. It is a nationalism that like so many of its type in Europe slips
easily into chauvinist intolerance and bigotry. It isn't a coincidence
that M.S. Gowalkar in the Thirties wrote in admiration of Adolf Hitler's
way with Jews and the lessons to be learnt from this by Hindus faced
with intransigent minorities.

=46or secular Indians, the dreadful track record of intolerant
nationalisms and their failure in containing secession or managing
dissent is a gift. Instead of reflexively denying the BJP's claim to
nationalism, secularists should ratify this claim enthusiastically. They
should then distinguish it from the nationalism of Gandhi and the
freedom struggle, and encourage an undecided public to study the
self-destruction that BJP-like nationalisms wreaked on countries
misguided enough to harbour them.

The task of secular persuasion will be aided by the fact the BJP is
unattractive in the way majoritarian parties with minority complexes
always are. Bharat Mata being forced into clothes intended for smaller
women is not a pretty sight. And a Hindu Gulliver tied down by
Lilliputian minorities is a story easier told as fiction than as real
life. =20
_____________
#5.
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.

*** 16-Dec-99 ***

HEALTH-INDIA: WORKERS COURT DEATH IN THE 'GOLDEN CORRIDOR'

//Attn Editors: This is the second of a series of four articles
from the 'Golden Corridor' industrial belt in Gujarat, in western
India, on the impact on environment and people. The first moved
on Dec. 14//

By Laxmi Murthy

VADODARA, India, Dec 16 (IPS) - Early this year, when Pandit
Govind, a worker here in the Hema Chemicals factory, won a
lifelong monthly compensation for nasal perforation from exposure
to chemicals at the workplace, he was making history.

Rarely does the Special Medical Board set up under India's
Employees State Insurance Act, 1948, accept claims of work-
related injury.

=46or thousands of workers in the 400-km-long 'Golden Corridor'
-- a string of vast industrial estates in the western Gujarat
state -- their jobs are a daily courting of death.

=46actories have given safety regulations the short shrift,
despite the statutory holding of special public hearings to
monitor hazardous manufacturing processes which was introduced
after the 1984 gas disaster in the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal.

At a chemical unit in the Nandesari Industrial Estate, 20-kms
from here, men covered with yellow and bluish dust, their hands
and faces permanently discoloured, scrub themselves in vain at
the end of a shift. ''With every bite of food, I'm consuming a
little poison, but what to do,'' says a worker helplessly.

The chemical, dye, paint, pesticide, plastic, pulp and paper
factories in Gujarat's industrial estates, which stretch from
Ahmedabad to Vapi, south of Vadodara, are the only source of jobs
for the rural poor in the adjoining villages, and from outside.

Gujarat manufactures many of the 'Dirty Dozen' pesticides like
DDT, Dieldrin, and Aldrin, classified by the Pesticides Action
Network as hazardous for humans and the environment.

Pesticide factories in the 'Golden Corridor' use outdated
technology and equipment often imported from countries where its
making has been banned. Most industries have not bothered to put
even basic safeguards in place.

C.G. Pandya, a Vadodara-based engineer who has conducted
survey's on workers' health and safety in the industrial estates,
says 50 percent of chemical storage tanks are ''in a very bad
condition'' and only 18 percent of units have alarm systems.

''An estimated 80 percent of the workers work without personal
protective equipment,'' he estimates.

Predictably the employers blame the workers. N.K. Navadia of
the Ankleshwar Industries Association says, ''We have provided
all safety measures as per rules, but workers don't bother to use
it, or sell it off to make a little money.''

According to the workers, the employers give poor quality
gloves, boots and masks which are not replaced when they wear
out. ''In one unit I worked in all we had to protect ourselves
from chemical dust and fumes were our own hand-towels!'' said one
man.

=46ew workers dare to complain since they are largely poor, and
unorganised migrants from outside Gujarat, who need the job so
desperately that they are ready to risk their lives and limbs.

One worker, Ram Kailash Saroj, who was angry enough to talk to
the press was instantly suspended. Saroj had to have his toes
amputated after a foot turned gangrenous from burns suffered on
the shop floor. His factory, Hema Chemicals, took no
responsibility.

Neither does the state government whose sole aim is to make
Gujarat an industrial leader under its Vision 2010 industrial
development plan.

Doctors at the Sayaji General Hospital in Vadodara say there
is a growing incidence of respiratory and skin diseases and even
cancer among the labour force and say it could be related to
their work conditions.

They suffer from ''short term illnesses like skin, eye and
other irritations, to long-term diseases like asthma, kidney
damage, nasal ulcers, perforated ear drums, cancer and
infertility,'' they say.

Under the 'Factories Act', 1948, managements have to pay
compensation to workers for occupational health problems, but the
process is long-drawn and frustrating, since the onus of linking
their ill-health to their jobs is on the workers.

Says Jagdish Patel of the Vyavasaik Swasthya Suraksha Mandal
(Occupational Health and Safety Group), Vadodara for every Pandit
Govind who won compensation there are thousands of others who

are unable to take action.

Claims for occupational diseases are decided by the Special
Medical Board, in Delhi, which recently went to Vadodara after a
gap of 18 months. Demands for the creation of a separate Medical
Board for Gujarat, the second most urbanised state in India, have
so far been ignored.

In India, the safety and health of workers is covered by the
=46actories Act (1948), a central government law which is not
uniformly applied in the states. Neither does the Act cover the
newer technologies.

Also, according to Pandya, its ''implementation is left to
=46actories Inspectors, who, as a rule, are a corrupt lot.''

More frustratingly for the workers, accidents are covered by
other laws, like the Explosives Act, with only one inspector to
cover two big states like Gujarat and Rajasthan.

As a result managements cover up even fatalities, specially in
cases where the workers are migrants, and no one misses them when
they don't return from work.

According to Bhanubhai Parmar, a worker from a village
neighbouring the Nandesari Industrial Estate, a reactor burst in
a factory near his house, badly damaging the walls. ''We heard
that nine workers died, but the accident was not acknowledged.''

''Since they (the dead men) were migrants from Uttar Pradesh,
there was no one to even notice they had not come home, leave
aside fight for compensation.''

Only in two instances have employees been able to force
managements to be accountable.

Employees of Hema Chemicals in Vadodara forced the factory to
stop its indiscriminate dumping of hazardous waste in the
surrounding residential areas. The campaign which ran for two
years continues with the workers keeping constant vigil.

Says an employee: ''Since we know how harmful the chemicals
are, it is our duty to inform those not aware of the risks.''

At Ashok Organics, in the Nandesari Industrial Estate, when
the labour force discovered that the new chemical herbicide they
were producing was 2, 4 Di-phenoxy acetic acid (one of the
constituents of Agent Orange) they struck work.

The management was forced to stop its manufacture in 1995.
They are small victories, but very significant considering the
odds stacked against workers in the 'Golden Corridor'.
(END/IPS/lm/an/99)

__________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.