[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch 18 Jan 2000

Harsh Kapoor act@egroups.com
Tue, 18 Jan 2000 21:08:56 +0100


South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
18 January 2000
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
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#1. Navy takes over Indian ports to crush workers struggle
#2. India's Post-Hijack Blame Game - Turn the Probe Inwards
#3. Pakistan in the Year 3000
#4. Human Rights: A National Convention in India
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#1.
BBC News Online: World: South Asia
Tuesday, 18 January, 2000, 17:26 GMT

NAVY TAKES OVER INDIAN PORTS

The Indian Government has handed over 11 major ports to the Indian navy
and territorial army, after an indefinite strike by port workers paralysed
operations. Thousands of workers in India's major ports have gone on
strike to demand better pay, threatening the movement of cargo.

A BBC correspondent in the eastern city of Calcutta says naval units were
seen taking control of the Calcutta port.

Non-technical operations were being handled by the territorial army, made
up of military reserves.

The Indian Government said it was ready for talks with the workers'
unions, but would not give in to what it described as blackmail.

The workers are demanding higher pay, rent allowance and a city allowance
to help offset the cost of living in the bigger cities.

India's Transport Minister, Rajnath Singh, said if the demands were
accepted it would increase the wage bill by more than 106%.

The government is only prepared to offer a 28% hike in pay.

Disruption

Officials said movement of general cargo had been hit by the strike but
petroleum products were still being transported.

In Calcutta, police used canes and batons to break up a demonstration by
striking workers outside the offices of the Calcutta Port Trust.

The navy has moved in and 50% of normal operations are on Transport
Minister Rajnath Singh

A spokesman for the Indian Navy in Calcutta told the BBC that they had
been asked to take over operations in three major eastern ports- Calcutta,
Haldia and Paradip.

In Delhi, the transport minister said the move was meant to help the
movement of ships into berths and cargo operations.

"The navy has moved in and 50% of normal operations are on," Mr Singh
said. [...] .
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#2.

Daily Star
Mon. January 17, 2000 (Volume 3 Number 142 )
Editorial Page

POST-HIJACK BLAME GAME - TURN THE PROBE INWARDS

Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi

The Vajpayee government is desperately trying to cover up
its abject mishandling of the IC-814 hijacking by blaming
Pakistan for the whole episode. This attempt would be less
unconvincing if it did not repeat promises to reveal "relevant facts" at
"the appropriate time", but instead made full, up-front,
public disclosures.

The "appropriate" moment has still not arrived! All we have
is selective "background" briefings by unattributable
"sources". But the same "sources" had earlier said that
Masood Azhar did not want to be released from jail although the hijackers
wanted him out! The "evidence" of the "Pakistani hand" is
less than clinching, much of it based on confessions (which
would hardly pass legal muster).

The fact that some of the hijackers were Pakistani, or
connected with Kashmir, does not prove that Islamabad was
involved, although that cannot be excluded. For over 50
years, Kashmir's advocacy has transcended borders, and generated strong
emotions in both India and Pakistan. Past Kashmir-related
hijackings were unconnected to Pakistan.

It does not stand to reason that Islamabad-estranged from
the US, under flak for its support to Islamicist causes, and
with its economy near collapse-would want to risk a
high-profile hijacking and further antagonise Washington. Although some
Pakistani dirty-tricks agency could have acted
independently, that is a matter to be painstakingly
established, not insinuated through speculative argument or guesswork.

Even less uplifting is the spectacle of travel agents
rounded up in Mumbai Central, who issued fake passports to
the hijackers. The counterfeit ration cards, concocted
addresses, and blank school-leaving certificates damn our own officialdom,
not Pakistan. We shouldn't point fingers at other unless we
clean up our own act in a transparent, convincing manner.

Here, New Delhi has an abysmal record. It is yet to publish
the Henderson-Brooks report on the 1962 war or abide by the
30-year secrecy rule. All recent White Papers have been
whitewash jobs, not even resembling their rationale-the fullest official
statement of all the facts on a subject. The official reluctance to publish
even the "sanitised" Subrahmanyam report on Kargil further
confirms this.

Hardly more edifying is our past record on "spy scandals" -
from the Samba case, through BK Subba Rao, to ISRO. Barring
the Larkins Brothers case, the government has failed to
secure any convictions. It falsely accused Capt Subba Rao of trying to leak
India's "nuclear secrets" (in reality, his own PhD thesis) to the US. It
had to apologise unconditionally. We must take its claims
with a pinch of salt.

However, even more questionable is the government's larger
diplomatic agenda: to isolate Pakistan as a "terrorist
state", and enter into an exclusive relationship of
proximity with the US, symbolised by a Bill Clinton visit. Nothing would
please New Delhi more than a Clinton visit which skips
Islamabad-the greatest legitimation of Hindutva.

This BJP agenda will inevitably cause long-term damage to
India's relations with other states, especially Pakistan.
Hegemony-seeking Washington today represents the ugliest
face of global capitalism. Alliance with it will win India hostility, not
respect or friendship.

Underlying New Delhi's new gambit is a short-term
calculation: trap Washington in its pro-democracy rhetoric
to distance itself from Pakistan, and thus counter attempts to
internationalise Kashmir. But this internationalisation became a decisive
new reality after the 1998 nuclear tests. India is unlikely
to get far in keeping Kashmir out of the limelight-so long
as trouble brews there.

It would be foolish to read too much into Washington's
statements denouncing Masood Azhar. They have less to do
with solid support for India, than with open threats to
American lives. The Indo-US "honeymoon" is not consummated. It may never be.

However elated Mr Clinton might feel filling the "India
void" in his life, he still regards Kashmir as the world's
"most dangerous" problem, as he recently said.

Popular alienation in Kashmir, aggravated by the hated
=46arooq government, is undeniable. As are human rights
violations, which have triggered the recent revival of
militancy. But our home ministry's response-further tighten security and
launch more repression-is proving counter-productive. Even a
state as militarily well-organised as Israel could not
prevent its own prime minister's assassination. Kashmir needs more
than police methods.

So we must pause and ask: Even if we isolate Pakistan, will
that really help contain terrorism? Is it realistic to
expect the US to be sympathetic to India on the core Kashmir
dispute? Are we really sincere about a peaceful, negotiated solution to
Kashmir? What have we done to promote it by talking to moderate elements?

Are we just wishing Kashmir problem away even after having
painfully learned that it won't vanish whether we use brutal
force or our best public relations? The time has come to
turn the searchlight inwards, to focus on India's real problems, and our
rulers' numerous failures. It won't do to malign, demonise,
and ridicule Pakistan. That only plays into the hands of
Hindutva and turns us blind to our own responsibilities.

True, Pakistan shouldn't be equated with India. The two are
not mirror-images of each other. Democracy and secularism
are entrenched here in ways they are not in Pakistan. But
they are under attack. There are pressures on India to diminish itself to
the pathologies long characteristic of Pakistan.

These must be resisted. So must the attempt to parody
Pakistan as a terrorist, aggressive state and glorify India
as an eternally peaceful, harmless, nation. India has also
messed around in Sindh and Baluchistan, as has Pakistan in Kashmir and
Punjab.

India broke up Pakistan and annexed another country -
Sikkim. It has militarily intervened in Sri Lanka and
Maldives, and bullied other neighbours. India's image is
very different from its self-depiction. We shouldn't humiliate or punish
Pakistan. Wisdom demands reconciliation, dialogue,
cooperation. Beggar-thy-neighbour machismo is the road to
disaster.
____________

#3.

PAKISTAN IN THE YEAR 3000
by Pervez Hoodbhoy

What may have happened a millennium later. Will Pakistan ultimately be
able to provide prosperity, freedom, and human dignity to its citizens? Or
is it destined to land into the dustbin of history as a failed state? Which
of the two paths we travel upon will be largely determined by the extent
and speed with which modernity and science are accepted as part of culture.
At the turn of the century there is cause for worry. Today, like most Arab
countries, Pakistan combines insatiable greed for the gadgetry produced by
Science together with a profound antipathy for the method and philosophy of
Science. The "trouble" with Science-as seen by many both in this country
and elsewhere-is that it is predicated on the primacy of reason on the one
hand, and experimental verification on the other. It recognizes no
authority except its own internal logic, has no sages or prophets, and its
truths transcend geographical boundaries, cultural divides, and faiths.
=46inding these facts distasteful, some have insisted on pursuing the chimer=
a
of "Islamic Science" even at the end of this millennium. Readers may be
aware of yet another fruitless conference on this subject, hosted last
month by the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Progress
becomes difficult, if not impossible for peoples who mistake the past for
the future. Many take comfort in arguments seeking to prove that Science is
limited, incomplete, and lacks permanence. Yes, it is certainly true that
Science, as it progresses, keeps imposing limits and constraints upon its
own power. Einstein's theory of special relativity forbids any material
particle, and even information, from traveling faster than the speed of
light. Quantum mechanics forbids exact knowledge of the micro realm. Chaos
theory, a relatively new development in physics, forbids certain phenomena
(like weather) from being predicted with certainty. Kurt Godel's famous
theorem forbids asking certain questions within any defined mathematical
framework. And evolutionary biology forbids us from assuming that we humans
have a purpose any different from that of apes or green peas. I am sure
these frank admissions must please quite a few readers, reassure others.
Some will triumphantly cry out that they knew this-doesn't everyone know
already that Science is incomplete and insufficient? Nevertheless any
admission of weakness by the enemy is, of course, considered welcome.
Thanks to propaganda disguised as education, and the relentless efforts of
Pakistan Television, Science finds few defenders and still fewer
practitioners in this country to take up cudgels on its behalf.
Unfortunately for those who think that the self-limitations imposed by
Science show up the soft underbelly of the beast, exactly the opposite is
true. Unremitting honesty and objectivity, and strict respect for law, is
precisely why Science is so absurdly strong. A Deity is certainly free to
violate any law of nature, but woe to the poor physicist who disrespects,
for example, the law of conservation of energy. It was the uncompromising
demand that this law hold always and everywhere that made possible lathes
and locomotives, lasers and lunar landings. The law-abiding nature of
Science separates it from magic, which knows no limits, as well as the
supernatural. Whether we like it or not, Science is getting not just
stronger, but immensely stronger. Societies that refuse to concede this
are fated for marginalization in the centuries to come. Darwin told us this
a long time ago and it is time we listened closely. Humans and apes, the
smart and the dumb, come from two branches of the same evolutionary tree.
Please don't for a moment think this tree has stopped growing and
branching; if anything it is speeding up. Human intervention is compressing
eons into millennia, centuries into months. Comes the year 3000. How then
shall the world look? The Smarts will be merrily flying around the solar
system, occasionally taking a vacation to Mars, establishing contact with
distant civilizations, and perhaps traveling by way of worm-holes and time
warps to distant galaxies. The primitive Internet that existed a thousand
years ago will have been replaced by a vast system of distributed Quantum
computers with protein molecules serving as memory chips. The Smarts will
have conquered disease, modified the aging gene, devised beautifully
nuanced modes of expression far subtler than exists in the best of today's
poetry and music. With minds symbiotically connected to massively parallel
systems, they will create ever more beautiful systems of mathematics and
resolve problems of physics much too deep for us to even imagine today. And
the Dumbos? They will be the neo-Taliban of all faiths, religions, and
countries. This bunch of fragmented and fractious groups, consumed by
hatred for the Smarts as well as each other, will fight out blood feuds and
disputes with origins thousands of years into the past. They shall be
helpless in the face of global pollution and drug resistant microbes
because their education shall be no more than singing of past glories and
safeguarding ideological frontiers, even as the rest of humankind is
crossing frontiers of outer space. Like the present ones across our western
border, who shoot down supersonic aircraft with American Stingers and run
jeeps fueled by Shell gasoline, the Dumbos will continue to live off what
the Smarts invent and are willing to part with. Their morality will
continue to center on matters related to procreation. As always they will
blame fate, believe the cause of their misery is deviation from the True
=46aith, energetically purge unbelievers from their midst, and revel in the
past. The logic of Evolution is unforgiving, merciless, terrifying. Apes
don't have much of a future on planet Earth. Nor do Dumbos. Isn't it time
to wake up to this reality and get Smart?

(Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam
University, Islamabad. He is also a featured writer at Chowk. Visit him at
Particle Politics.)
____________
#4.

INVITATION
NEW CHALLENGES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: A NATIONAL CONVENTION

Dear Friends
The new millenium is here and with it a challenge to make this one better
than the last. The last century had blazed a trail of freedom form foreign
rule for people of India. This century is ours. A time to break new grounds
in the areas of civil liberties and human rights and to make our hard
earned freedom even more worth the effort and sacrifices of those fellow
Indians who have gone before us. Today, democratic rights within India
stand violated. Racial, religious, ethnic and regional discrimination have
acquired sharp and worrying dimensions. Even the basic fundamental rights
to a life of dignity has become a question rather than an effective freedom
giving statement. In fact, too many of these rights have, in recent years,
been actually taken away and worse, the offenders have gone scot free
suggesting open collusion between the state and perpetrators of the crimes.
People from different strata of society, be it gender, class, case or
community are witnessing violent crimes against their own. Governments at
both the centre and state-levels, over the past decade, have also abdicated
all responsibility towards providing health facilities, housing literacy
and education and employment of citizens. It is to this need that we have
responded by initiating a process of formation an All India Civil Liberties
Organization which will directly intervene in the of human rights and
democratic right violations through four basic strategies: On the Spot
Investigations, Awareness among the Public, Legal Interventions, Advocacy.
=46or this, an All India Convention is being scheduled in Mumbai (19-20th
=46ebruary 2000), at Vinayalaya, Behind Holy Family Church, Mahakali Caves
Road, Chakal, Andheri (E), Mumbai, having around 125 delegates from all
over the country. Justice Suresh has agreed to preside over the two-day
convention and senior civil libertarians Kirit Bhatt and Girish Patel will
address the gathering. Here is where you can join the movement for freedom
for the new millennium. The registration fee for the convention would be
Rs. 50/- only. We look forward to you for a substantial support for this
All India conference set the ball rolling for this Civil Liberties
Organization.

SIGNATORIES: Justice Suresh, Girish Patel, Tulsi Boda, Madhav Sathe, Ramesh
Rao Pimple, Gautam Thakker, Kirit Bhatt, Trupti Shah, Rohit Prajapati, J.
S. Bandukwala, Sonal Mehta, Dophy D=EDSouza, Ram Punyani, Anil Pawar, Firoze
Mithiborwala, Vinayak, Subodh More, Shabana, Ammu Abraham, Teesta Setalvad.

Name: Organization: Address: Telephone/Fax Email No:

Address for correspondence: c/o Communalism Combat, PB 28253, Juhu P.O.
Juhu, Mumbai-400 049. Tel/Fax: 022-6602288, Tel: 022-6603927, Email No:
sabrang@b...

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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.