[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 6-7 Nov. 00

Mon, 6 Nov 2000 22:43:11 +0100

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
6-7 November 2000

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#1. Pakistan: SAFHR letter to General Parvez Musharraf

#2. Sri Lanka: 'Racism will only make LTTE stronger'

#3. India: Were the Harappan & Vedic civilizations the same?

#4. HT Debate on Anti Christian Violence by Hindu Fundamentalists in India

#5. India: Gay Liberation & The Humanisation of Society

#5. India: TUSC on Anti-Labour Judicial Activism

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#1.

[6 Nov 2000]
Enclosed is the copy of an appeal that SAFHR sent to General Parvez Musharraf, Chief Executive of Pakistan about Dr. Yonus Shaikh who was arrested under the Blasphemy Law on October 4 in Islamabad. The letter provides the details of the case. Dr. Shaikh is facing a serious threat to his life. In the past several so-called undertrial prisoners charged under the Blasphemy Law were killed while still in police custody. We request you to kindly take up this case and send similar letters to General Musharraf. 

___________________________________________________________________________ 
H.E. Pervaiz Musharaf, 
Chief Executive of Pakistan
Chief Executive's Secretariat, 
Islamabad, 
Pakistan
Fax. + 92-51-927 0205 
E-mail: ce@p...

Your excellency,

We the members of South Asia Forum for Human Rights are concerned about the imminent threat
to the life of Dr. Yonus Shaikh, the founder-President of 'Enlightenment', a Pakistan-based
organization which is a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Dr. Shaikh is a
doctor and a teacher at a medical college in Islamabad. According to reports Dr. Shaikh was
arrested on October 4 under the Section 295-C of the Blasphemy Law of the Pakistan Penal Code. 
It was alleged that he defiled the Prophet, PBUH, by pointing out certain well established
historical facts. He is alleged to have said that the Prophet did not become a Muslim till the age of
40, i.e. until he received the first message of God, and that the Prophet's parents were
non-Muslims because they died before Islam was proposed by the Prophet. 

Blasphemy in Pakistan is a cognizable offence and carries a mandatory death sentence.
However, Section 295-C of the law does not even precisely define the crime it is meant to
punish. This law has a history of abuse. It has become a convenient means to settle personal
scores. In this case, it has been reported that a disgruntled student, Mr. Muhammad Asghar Khan
who wanted to put Dr Shaikh into trouble had complained about him to a cleric. Under the
Blasphemy law even those not present at the time of the commission of the alleged 'offence' can
file a complaint. We have learnt that one Maulana Abdur Rafoof, a cleric, registered the case
against Dr. Shaikh in Islamabad's Margalla police station. Under Section 295-C of the law which
empowers a police officer to arrest, without obtaining a warrant from a judicial magistrate. Dr.
Shaikh was arrested and he has been in custody since 4 October 2000. We have learnt that Dr.
Shaikh was presented before a Court in Islamabad on October 19, 2000. No lawyer was willing to
represent him in this case.

We would like to submit, that Dr. Shaikh's alleged comments should not be interpreted
as 'blasphemy'. Apart from the fact that what he has pointed our out is historically correct, this
surely should not be the reason to put him to death. This would be a travesty of justice.

We urge you once again to look into this case immediately and save the life of Dr. Shaikh. We also
call upon you to take immediate steps to amend the Blasphemy Laws so that such gross
miscarriage of justice can not take place. 

In anticipation of your immediate intervention in this matter
Yours faithfully

Tapan Kumar Bose
Secretary General 
(South Asia Forum For Human Rights)

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#2.

The Hindu
Thursday, November 02, 2000

'RACISM WILL ONLY MAKE LTTE STRONGER'

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, NOV. 1. As the central hills of Sri Lanka began to return to normality, the President, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga, warned that the country ran the risk of suffering international isolation once again if there was a ``relapse'' of Sinhala-Tamil communalism.
In an address to the nation last night over radio and television, Mrs. Kumaratunga appealed for restraint by all ethnic groups, reminding the majority community that Sinhala racism would only make the LTTE stronger.
``Those who spread narrow racist ideals are the very people who become traitors to the Sinhala people of our country. It is Sinhala racism that becomes the greatest strength of the Tamil racism of Prabhakaran. The best foundation for Prabhakaran's terrorism is the thuggery against the Tamil people,'' she said.
Mrs. Kumaratunga pointed out that the LTTE grew on the support of the international community after the anti-Tamil riots of 1983 but her Government changed that. ``Šit has come to the point that the international community is in the process of rejecting the LTTE. If there is a relapse of Sinhala-Tamil communalism, all our efforts to usher in peace will be in vain.''
The President's address came after a massacre of LTTE prisoners at a government facility for their rehabilitation near the hill town of Bandarawela last week, and later rioting in the adjoining Tamil-dominated areas.
UNP leader in custody
The Government has said the incidents were instigated by ``certain groups'' acting in collusion with the LTTE.
An MP of the United National Party (UNP), Mr. P. Chandrasekharan, who is also the leader of the Up-Country People's Front (UCPF), a trade-union-cum-political party representing tea estate workers, continued in police custody for the third day today.
He was detained for questioning following the riots, which broke out first at a UCPF meeting held to protest the Bindunuwewa massacre.
Appealing for his early release, his wife told journalists today that the meeting had not been organised with any ulterior motive, but was held only to express sorrow at the killings of 27 prisoners at the camp.
There was no curfew in the area today, but work on the estates continued to be hit as many labourers stayed indoors, some to protest against the detention of Mr. Chandrasekhar and others out of fear.
In her address, Mrs. Kumaratunga said her Government had not forgotten the Tamil community, and reiterated her promise to bring in a political solution to solve the ethnic conflict through a new Constitution. 

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#3.

WERE THE HARAPPAN AND VEDIC CIVILIZATIONS THE SAME?

by Deepshikha Ghosh, India Abroad New Service

New Delhi, Nov 5 - A debate over whether the Harappan and Vedic
civilizations were the same has been stirred by the contention of some
Indian archaeologists that the former should be renamed the Indus-Saraswati
civilization.

More importantly, the move is being seen by some as an attempt to throw back
the origin of Hinduism.

The Harappan, or the Indus Valley, civilization was a highly developed
civilization that existed during the third millennium B.C. It derives its
name from the location of its sites, most of which have been discovered on
the banks of the river Indus which flows from the Himalayas to Pakistan on
its way to the Arabian Sea.

A section of Harappa archeologists want to call it the Indus-Saraswati
civilization as they contend that more sites were found on the banks of the
dried up Saraswati on the Indian side than on Indus on the Pakistani side.

Noted leftist historian K.N. Panicker dismissed the theory. "It is a
complete distortion of established facts. Existing knowledge does not bear
out any of these claims." Panicker said it was basically an attempt to
identify the Harappan civilization with the Vedic civilization and establish
the origin of the Hindu religion before known estimates.

A pamphlet by the National Museum on an exhibition 'Harappan Civilization',
however, claims that around 500 sites have been dug up on the Saraswati
basin, whereas the number of similar number of sites on the Indus is only
150.

It says the excavations point to three broad phases of the civilization, the
early phase (3,500 B.C.-2,600 B. C.), the mature phase (2600 B.C.-2000 B.C.)
and the late phase (2,000 B.C.-1,500 B.C.)

A recent publication, "Harappan Script on the Way of Decipherment,"
interprets some of the discoveries as indicative of early Harappan people
(3200-2700 B.C.) and early Vedic people existing at the same time, disputing
the earlier theory that the Indus Valley civilization was destroyed by the
Aryans.

The author of the book, archaeologist D.P. Sharma, however, differs from
what he terms a "rightist" view that Harappan and Vedic people were one and
the same. According to him, evidence largely suggests that the Harappan
civilization co-existed with the "atharvavedic period" (the third among four
Vedas), but they were different.

At the same time, Sharma believes there is no harm in renaming the Harappan
civilization as the Indus-Saraswati civilization. "We have nothing against
the Indus name. But it is important to modify history according to the
findings," Sharma told Indiaabroad.com.

Sharma said the museum's exhibition on Harappan artifacts was named Harappan
civilization instead of Indus-Saraswati to avoid any controversy. The
authorities have also steered clear of any religious references on objects
such as the terracotta 'shivling' (lord Shiva's phallus, worshiped by
Hindus), fire-worshiping implements, horse bones (an Aryan symbol) on
display.

"Though it is easy to accuse us of painting these artifacts in religious
light, fact is that they show Vedic influence," says Sharma.

Archeologists are treading cautiously on the theory that the Harappan and
Vedic civilization are the same. Sharma said so far, evidence suggested that
the two "may have existed at the same time, but separately." Simply put,
Harappans lived in the city while the Vedic civilization was based in the
village.

"Before going a step further to declare that they were the same people, one
needs to establish the scriptures and the language of the Harappan
civilization," Sharma noted.

S.P.Gupta, president of the Indian Archeological Society (ASI), strongly
believes the name should be changed to Indus-Saraswati. "You cannot deny
facts thrown up by at least 500 excavations," Gupta asserted.

--India Abroad News Service

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#4.

The Hindustan Times : 
HT DEBATE ON ANTI CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE BY HINDU FUNDAMENTALISTS IN INDIA

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram\061100\debate.asp

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#5.

GAY LIBERATION AND THE HUMANISATION OF SOCIETY

By Yoginder Sikand

Some day ago I received a letter from Arjun, a friend who lives in Delhi. He 
had been strangely silent for several months despite my frequent post-cards 
to him. That was most unlike him and, as I tore open the letter, I knew he 
had bad news to tell. In three pages of his familiar scrawl he wrote of how 
a policeman had found him loitering in a public park one evening arm-in-arm 
with another man, and how he had been threatened that if he did not pay up 
he would be taken to the police station and his parents informed that he was 
a homosexual or, worse, a hustler. Arjun, timid and gentle as he is, caved 
in at once and yielded to the policeman, giving in to his demands for money. 
Then, he had walked home, and as he was ascending the steps, a firm hand 
grasped his shoulder. Turning around, he found, to his shock, the same 
policeman, who had followed him to his home. Now that he knew where he 
lived, he said, Arjun had better comply with all his demands if he did not 
want his parents to know of his secret, dark life. From that day onwards, 
Arjun would meet him every evening in a shopping centre close to his home 
and ply him with money and a bottle of beer to buy his silence. Life had 
become a veritable hell, Arjun wrote, and he had even thought of suicide. 
And that was why, he said, he had not written for so many months.
Arjun's is by no means an isolated case, and I myself know of dozens of gay 
men who have been through similar agonising, hellish experiences. Some of 
them have been reduced to nervous wrecks, one eventually landing up in a 
mental asylum, so searing was the torture of being black-mailed for him. 
Hatred against gays is deeply entrenched in heterosexual, patriarchal 
society, and as the Indian gay movement grows increasingly assertive, there 
are growing reports of gay-bashing, black-mailing and the like. Because few 
Indian gay men are open about their sexual orientation for fear of rebuke 
and persecution, this remains a little-known secret that they closely guard 
from what they perceive, and rightly so, to be a hostile hetero-patriarchal 
society around them.
What accounts for "mainstream" society's pathetic and unrelenting hatred of 
homosexuals? If homosexuality is just as "natural" as is being left-handed, 
as gay activists insist, why do many heterosexuals, particularly men, react 
with such undisguised hostility whenever the issue of homosexuality is 
raised? This is a question that has often exercised me, and I am convinced 
that much hatred of homosexuals, which is buttressed by appeals to religion 
and morality, is rooted principally in two factors: ignorance and fear. Not 
many heterosexuals know gay men or women personally, and even if they know 
them few would know that they are indeed gay, such is the great secrecy 
surrounding the phenomenon. Ignorance breeds the worst sort of prejudice, 
and ignorance of gay people thus leads to all the many negative stereotypes 
that underlie heterosexual discourse about homosexuals---of gay men being 
perverts and child-molesters, sex-starved maniacs with insatiable sexual 
appetites, women in menís bodies and so on. These stereotypical images, 
which have no basis in actual fact, then, serve to legitimise an already 
deep-rooted homophobia.
Equally crippling is the fundamental fear that many heterosexual men have 
of gay men. Any digression from the conventional forms of heterosexuality, 
based as it is on male superiority and female subordination, is, at a 
subliminal level, perceived as challenging the structures of patriarchy and 
male privilege. If males begin to behave, as many gay men do, like ëfemalesí 
are seen to, not just in purely sexual terms, but also in lifestyles, in 
habits, in dress, in speech, in emotional expression and so on, the 
carefully cultivated, yet fragile, edifice of male superiority, structured 
on male difference, begins to crumble. For, if men behave no different from 
women, then the very rationale for male superiority is forcefully 
challenged. In this way, homophobia can be seen to be, in a very real sense, 
a reflection of a hatred, and worse still, of a fear of the feminine that 
undergrids the structures and ideology of patriarchy and male supremacy. It 
is, in that sense, propelled by a subliminal realisation of how flimsy the 
structures of male domination actually are. And that is why any deviation 
from the rigid norms of heterosexuality are punished so severely, why gays 
are stamped with an irremovable label of criminality and sin, and why people 
like Arjun and countless others continue to be made mute victims at the 
altar of patriarchal "morality" and "normality".
As I see it, male liberation is equally urgent a project as female 
emancipation is for the emergence of a truly human society. In this quest 
for humanisation, gay men have a key role to play, stripping off the layers 
of centuries of imposed and carefully cultivated normative rules for male 
behaviour that are based on both the control of women and the denial of the 
finer, feminine side to every man, for androgyny is a universal condition. 
In other words, the gay liberation movement has a dual task ahead of it: 
freedom for the Arjuns of the world, who continue to lead haunted maimed 
lives for no fault of their own; and, what is more, rescuing heterosexual 
men of the heavy, crippling iron chains of patriarchy that blunt their 
sensitivities and bludgeon their ability to express emotions, and in the 
process, challenging the stifling strictures of patriarchal oppression of 
women.

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#6.

TRADE UNION SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE
6, Neelkanth Apartments, Gokuldas Pasta Road
Dadar (E), Mumbai 400014
Phone 4102252
Phone/Fax 4150750
E-Mail <aibef@y...>

STATEMENT

The recent strike by BMC workers demanding their customary ex-gratia 
bonus attracted wider attention from public, media and the courts. 
BMC workers and their union came under strong criticism for the 
strike they launched. An impression was sought to be created that BMC 
workers and the toiling masses are outside the definition of 
"citizens".

At this stage we would not like to go into the merits and demerits of 
the demands by BMC workers as well as the settlement reached for 
higher bonus. The strike, settlement reached between concerned 
parties, and subsequently High Court's order setting aside bonus 
payment to BMC workers have raised several questions of propriety, 
locus of parties in a High Court petition as also judicial activism 
against labour.

According to The Times of India, Mumbai, (October 18, 2000) HC 
likened the situaion created by strike to that of Veerappan. The 
report said Justice Srikrishna remarked "we will not allow any union 
to hold the city to ransom and we will see that no illegal payment is 
made at the cost of the public exchequer. This is nothing but 
extortion by the unions. Why should the BMC pay when it is facing 
huge losses ? Going further the report said, the judge observed, that 
"If you want to share profits as bonus, you should share the losses". 
Another reported observation of the judge said "the court would 
direct the State government to call in the military or the home 
guards to take control of any such situation".

The media and the ruling class had already started a smear campaign 
to destroy organised labour and unions. To these elements the 
recent remarks of Hon'ble judge would act as new weapons in their 
armoury against unions.

TUSC takes strong exception to the uncalled for anti-working class 
remarks by Justice Shrikrishna. Not only were the remarks gratuitous 
but were also highly undemocrtic and beyond the jurisdiction of the 
court.

We hope the judiciary will refrain from making such remarks in future.

N. Vasudevan
Joint Convenor, Trade Union Solidarity Committee

____________________________

Endorsed by the following unions at a delegates meeting held at 
Antonio D'Silva High School Hall, Dadar (W) on November 5, 2000:

Blue Star Workers Union
Hindustan Lever Employees Union
Siemens Workers Union
Voltas Employees Union
Nicholas Employees Union
Mukand Kamgar Union
Kamani Employees Union
Sarva Shramik Sangh
Otis Elevator Employees Union
Voltas Motor Plant Employees
Hindustan Lever Research Employees Union
Bombay Union of Journalists

______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA COMMUNALISM WATCH (SACW) is an
informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service
run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1996. Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
at http://www.egroups.com/messages/act/
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