[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 25 Aug. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
25 August 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

Note from compiler:
[Kanak Mani Dixit, the best known journalist, intellectual from Nepal, &
the founder of the only South Asian Magazine Himal, is now recovering in
hospital following a mishap. Since many on this list know Kanak and admire
his work, SACW dispatch extends him best wishes & a speedy recovery .... ]
--

#1. US/ Bangaldesh: The Solarz Correspondence: A Congressional Inquiry
Deliberately
Derailed? (Part 2)
#2. Some Reflections on Hamodur Rahman's Report
#3. 1971 crisis: facing facts as they were
#4. Accession of Kashmir - History Recalled
#5. India: Bombay Activist's letter re Sri Krishna Commission
#6. India: Cynicism & Communalism triump with such people in the secular ca=
mp
#7. Another Website of Hindu Supremacist Right
#8. India: Innocent Victims of Air Force shooting range
#9. Nepal: Kanak Mani Dixit (prominent journalist) canvelessing
#10. Call for Nominations - 2001 Martin Ennals Award
_____________________

#1.

The Daily Star
23 August 2000
Op-Ed.

THE SOLARZ CORRESPONDENCE: A CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY DELIBERATELY
DERAILED?
Second of Three Parts

by Lawrence Lifschultz

One would think the adage would be, 'No permanent friends or enemies
only permanent interests.' This would have dictated that the United
States immediately welcome Mujib and embrace the regime: to try to keep
it within the camp. But, there was as I have said, Kissinger's
vindictive streak. It ran through it, in the sense, he [Mujib] is not
our man. And, if he is not our man, there is no such thing as permanent
interest. Now it is a matter of getting our people in and their people
out."

-(Continued from yesterday)

IN January 1981, Stephen Solarz became Chairman of the powerful
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. I visited Washington in the autumn of 1981. I was then living
in Europe. A member of Solarz's staff had privately informed me the
"inquiry" into what happened in Dhaka in August 1975 was being deftly
strangled. I found it impossible to get an appointment with Solarz. My
impression was that he had not even been informed that I would be
visiting Washington and wanted to see him. It was at that point that I
met the "guard" at the door. It was a moment of tremendous irony. Solarz
had recently hired William J Barnds to be the Subcommittee's staff
officer for South Asia.

If one wanted a fox to guard the chicken coup, then Barnds was your man.
Barnds had worked as a South Asia specialist at the Central Intelligence
Agency for years. In numerous books and publications he had long
identified himself as a CIA officer. Barnds epitomized the "old boy
network" of the Agency. He didn't beat around the bush when we spoke. He
told me bluntly that he had no interest in investigating the matter of
"prior contacts" any further and that Solarz was not going to pursue the
matter. After all, as far as Barnds was concerned, half of those about
whom there were questions were personal friends of his. I got the
impression that Solarz and a few eager members of his staff were being
reigned in, and taught some lessons about how the "big boys" can play
hardball in Washington. If you are ambitious in Washington, you learn to
play by the rules of imperial politics. Solarz had hoped to become
Secretary of State. In fact, he was considered for the post during the
first Clinton Administration. And, Stanley Roth did ultimately become an
Assistant Secretary of State. He serves in the post today.

Certainly, there have been a number of congressional inquiries and CIA
scandals over the last thirty years. But, one rarely hears about how
many inquiries are derailed and smothered. The Agency has an active and
well-funded programme of keeping its congressional relations in order
and on track. In this way, many scandals are kept under wraps. As we
talked I suggested to Barnds that perhaps one day the victims of the
coup might return to power in Dhaka and begin seeking answers
themselves. They might even ask concerned Americans inside Congress and
beyond the capital to assist them in a search for the facts. I was a
young man then talking to a crusty old operative. He was dismissive. It
would be a very long time before that happened. Barnds smiled and we
parted. Indeed, it had been a very long time.

During that 1981 visit to Washington I called Richard Anderson, an
important aide to Les Aspin, the Chairman of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. It had been Aspin whom Solarz had asked to
inquire into allegations concerning CIA involvement in Bangladesh.
Anderson listened to me with interest. He said no material concerning
the coup against Mujib had ever been received from Solarz by the
Intelligence Committee. Anderson stressed that had the Committee been
sent such material he would have certainly known about it. The
Committee, he claimed, had never received any communication from Solarz
regarding this issue. It was then that I noticed that Solarz's had not
actually formally signed his letter to Aspin. This was evident from the
copy he had sent me. The letter had been typed but apparently not
signed. Nor, according to Anderson had it apparently ever been sent. Had
a member of Solarz's staff been deliberately involved in an effort to
"lose" the Bangladesh file? Or, had it been "lost" once it reached the
Intelligence Committee?

Bangladesh was not Iran, Chile, Zaire or Guatemala where highly
organized covert operations were mounted by the United States. These
covert actions ultimately did lead to some measure of public scrutiny in
the United States. However, Bangladesh has been essentially peripheral
to American interests. Although Kissinger's idiosyncrasies and pet
hatreds certainly may have played a role, what happened at the American
Embassy in Dhaka during 1975 could have simply involved arrogant
bungling with rather lethal consequences. Intelligence routines
established during the Cold War more than once generated signals that
yielded unintended consequences.

Yet, there is also the possibility that what happened in Bangladesh in
1975 was not simply a matter of serendipity and foolish meddling.
Certainly, this is the view of Roger Morris, a former aide to Henry
Kissinger on the National Security Council, and the author of a
critically acclaimed biography of Kissinger. And, this leads us to a
final facet of this story.

Very little has been written about Henry Kissinger's' attitudes or role
in the crisis of Bangladesh's emergence or in subsequent events. There
have been "The Anderson Papers" and a few biographical works on the
former US Secretary of State. But, when compared to the public attention
given to Vietnam, Chile, or West Asia Bangladesh has remained obscure
and peripheral for the US public and press, despite the extreme but
generally unknown crisis it caused within Kissinger's foreign policy
bureaucracy in 1971.

What is not well known is the extent to which Kissinger regarded the
events in Bangladesh as a deep personal defeat in the realm of foreign
policy, and how seriously it threatened his place in the Nixon
Administration at the time. In an extended interview with this
correspondent, Roger Morris, Kissinger's former aide, recounted the deep
animosity towards Mujib that Kissinger sustained after 1971. Morris, who
is the author of the critical biography, "Uncertain Greantness: Henry
Kissinger & American Foreign Policy," resigned from Kissinger's staff at
the NSC the day before the United States' invasion of Cambodia. "In
early 1975," said Morris, "I was interviewing for my book a man who was
then or of Kissinger's closes aides and most senior confidants. I had
known him well. In utter seriousness and not at all as a criticism of
Kissinger's policy, he said, there had been three nemeses of American
foreign policy in the Kissinger era. These were the three 'most hated
men' on Kissinger's foreign 'enemies list'. He said they were Allende,
Thieu, and Mujib."

Allende was rather obvious, according to Morris. After all, he publicly
advocated "socialism." America's ally Nguyen Van Thieu was a bit more
difficult to fathom for a place on such a list.

But Thieu was despised because he never performed precisely as the
pliant American puppet he was intended to be. During the Paris peace
negotiations on Vietnam, he emerged again and again as an obstruction to
"the deal Kissinger was trying to cut with the North Vietnamese." Each
time Kissinger turned in Paris, Thieu was expected to twist accordingly
and simultaneously in Saigon. But he did not perform on cue, and the
Americans were also having to send Alexander Haig or some other emissary
to Saigon to twist his arm. The Paris peace negotiations and their
timing vis-a-vis Kissinger's style in Paris of making grand
announcements such as "peace is at hand," only to be delayed by Thieu's
reluctance, were giving the Nixon Administration an embarrassing press
at home and fuelling the critics of an ever more strident anti-war
movement.

So, it was that Nguyen Van Thieu found himself alongside Allende on
Kissinger's private "enemies list." It was not a matter of having allies
or having enemies or adversaries," explained Morris, "but simply these
people had upset the apple cart in various ways."

When compared to the others, Morris said, "Mujib I would have thought
wasn't quite in that league. On the other hand, Kissinger felt the
events in East Pakistan [in 1971] were so damaging and so distracting
and so potentially disastrous for his China diplomacy on which so much
else rested, including the Vietnam negotiations... And here was this
unnecessary irritation on the flank; a king of obstreperous politician
who was not behaving in a proper way."

In addition, Kissinger's position in the Nixon Administration was not at
all secure at this stage. Nixon's two closest advisers on domestic
policy, HR Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both despised Kissinger and
sought his removal from the Administration's inner circle. In 1971 it
was not at all certain that Kissinger would be carried over into the
second Administration inner circle. This of course, was prior to the
China reversal, the Paris negotiation on Vietnam and the SALTS
agreement. "It is hard to imagine now," said Morris, "but if one looks
back at the time (1971) one remembers a lot of talk about John Connolly
becoming Secretary of State and Kissinger saying to his friends in the
press that if that happens, 'I will go.'

"For the most part the only stain on the record up to this time,"
recalled Morris, "with the exception of the anti-war opposition has been
South Asia. It is the only place the administration has been under
public fire in the Congress or in the press. It is the only place where
Kissinger diplomacy is seen to be ineffectual and where no magic could
be made to work... in a sense the Bangladesh crisis [of 1971] is used as
the last major challenge Kissinger's rivals within the White House
mounted against him. After that Watergate overtakes them all." In
another, but rather sympathetic biography of Kissinger written by
Bernard and Marvin Kalb, Kissinger recalls the Bangladesh crisis and
says, "Haldeman almost got me on that one."

What resulted, according to Morris, was a residue, a blended aftermath
of embarrassment and political vindictiveness which stuck with Kissinger
in the years ahead. It is worth quoting Morris's remarks on this point.

"I don't want to exaggerate the importance of Bangladesh, because it
wasn't a strategic defeat for American interests in the long-run. It
didn't create any great shift in the balance of powers, but it was an
extraordinary embarrassment," says Morris "One thinks of Henry Kissinger
as being a traditional 19th century diplomat. His mentors, models, and
heroes are all 19th century. One would then think the adage would be,
'No permanent friends or enemies only permanent interests.' This would
have dictated that the United States immediately welcome Mujib and
embrace the regime: to try to keep it within the camp. But, there was as
I have said, Kissinger's vindictive streak. It ran through it, in the
sense, he [Mujib] is not our man. And, if he is not our man, there is no
such thing as permanent interest. Now it is a matter of getting our
people in and their people out."

In, an essay entitled "Bangladesh: Anatomy of a Coup" published in the
Economic & Political Weekly (Bombay) on December 15, 1979, I have
described in great detail the pressures which were brought to bear upon
Bangladesh and the Mujib regime during the 1972-75 period. [See the
section entitle "Perils of a Client State," pp-2063-2065] Part of this
material found its way into my book published in the same year. However,
the EPW article is more specific in describing the economic and
political pressures brought to bear on Bangladesh in this period.

(The writer is working as a Research Associate at the Yale Centre for
International and Area Studies, Yale University. He was recently named a
Fulbright Scholar for South Asia)

The third and the concluding part appears tomorrow.

______

#2.

[24 August 2000]

SOME REFLECTIONS ON HAMODUR RAHMAN'S REPORT

by Mubarak Ali

Hamodur Rahman's report did not shock the nation. On the contrary, the
immediate reaction was who leaked it to the press, in particular to the
Indian press; an unpatriotic act that should be traced out and culprit be
punished because it is published at a time when there is military rule in
Pakistan, an enlightened military rule that is supported by most prominent
liberal and political activists of the country. Therefore, it is rightly
assumed that the purpose of the publication is to defame the army, which is
otherwise saviour of the nation and delivered it from the clutches of the
corrupt politicians. The second immediate reaction is that the report is
concocted, false and there is no truth in it. The information minister
immediately claimed that the government has the real and correct report,
which will soon be published to expose the falsity of the already published
one. However, the next day there was clarification from the government that
it has no intention to publish it. It is a classified document and should
not be published in the interest of the "public". Now slowly, responses are
coming from those who were named in the report as accused and recommended
to be court marital. They are, of course, respectable war heroes and
enjoying a very high quality of life in the society. One of them claimed
that the Commission that was set up under Justice Hamodur Rahman was an
attempt on the part of Z.A.Bhutto to demoralise the army and distorts its
image in the eye of the people. Therefore, the whole report is biased and a
conspiracy to exonerate the politicians and condemn the army.

The analysis of these responses is very interesting. For example, if we
examine that why the nation in general is not shocked and more or less kept
quiet or just shrugged the shoulders and did not react on the acts and
deeds of brutalities which were perpetrated against their fellow Bengali
brothers? The reason for the silence and coolness may be traced in the
image of the Bengalis which was created after the partition in our media
and textbooks and which persists even today, that the Bengalis are trouble
makers, polluted with the Hindu culture and beliefs, not patriotic, and
always ready to conspire with India. Such unpatriotic and impure Muslims
should be punished. Brutality was the only method to reform them. This is
how some people justify the military action, as no other alternative to
save the country was available.

Another reason that people of Pakistan are not surprised on the scale of
brutality is because they are also victims of violence in their daily life.
Custodial killings, inhuman and insulting behaviour of the law enforcing
agencies has made people accustomed of all sort of brutalities. By the
passage of time whole society is becoming brutal and violent. Women are
killed in the name of Karo kari or on the pretext of honour. Young brides
are burnt alive. Women are gang raped in cities aswell as in rural areas.
Innocent children are strangulated, slaughtered and cut into pieces. People
shoot each other on minor disputes. So, in a feudal and tribal society
brutality is normal and its occurrence has become routine of daily life.
Therefore, what happened to the people of East Pakistan is not shocking;
they are facing such situation daily in their lives. So, what is new in it?

However, the announcement of the government that in the interest of
"public" the report will remain a classified document is interesting. The
spokesman has no courage to say that it is not the interest of the public
but the interest of the ruling classes, which are in power that the report
will be kept in secret. Again it is naivete of the spokesman to believe
that in this age of information, the government would keep people in
ignorance and dark. What people are experiencing in their daily lives
provides enough evidence and material of corruption, misuse of power, lust
and greed of the ruling classes. People are aware of the true character of
these people whether the report will be published or not.

There is also reported by some high ups that the commission was set up by
Bhutto to malign the army and, therefore, the report is not correct. If it
was so, then why Bhutto did not publish it? Why was it kept behind iron
vaults? If we probe this we are tempted to ask the next question: did he
use it to blackmail the army? The hypothesis is refuted by his acts. He
made a number of steps to improve the shattered image of the army and
successfully rehabilitated it. There is no doubt that the politicians were
also responsible for the debacle of East Pakistan but what army did cannot
be justified and pardoned on this account. If there are gaps in the report,
they must be filled by new investigation.

It is very unfortunate that we do not have tradition of confession in our
society. We either accuse others or try to find out excuses for our wrong
doings. In spite of so many tragedies, catastrophes and holocausts, we
haven't learnt any lesson from history. That is why we are repeating our
history. It is high and right time for our ruling classes to come forward
and, instead of trying to prove their innocence, confess their crimes and
clear their conscience. It needs courage.Our rulers do not have it.
______

#3.

DAWN
24 August 2000 , Thursday

1971 CRISIS: FACING FACTS AS THEY WERE

By Rashed Rahman

THE publication of the supplementary part of the Hamoodur Rahman
Commission (HRC) report in the Indian magazine India Today has served to
focus attention on a dark chapter in our history which has been wilfully
suppressed. After the tumultuous events in what was then East Pakistan
through 1971, the debacle in December of that year left the military with
no choice but to remove the top brass held responsible for the disaster and
induct into power the party which had won a majority of the seats in West
Pakistan in the 1970 elections. Thus Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was given charge
of the wounded country.

Such was the extent of the debacle that critics of the military's penchant
for seizing power were hopeful that with the return to civilian rule, the
nightmare of Bonapartism would become a thing of the past. But for that to
happen, the military had to be firmly reminded of, and consigned to, its
real role: defence of the country's frontiers. But to the surprise of many,
Mr Bhutto went about rebuilding the confidence of the shattered military.
This was the mailed fist hidden inside the velvet glove of Mr Bhutto's
slogan of "picking up the pieces" and "building a new Pakistan".

How far the Pakistan Mr Bhutto rebuilt was different from the old, and
what consequences this course of action was to have for the country as well
as for Mr Bhutto himself, is another story, which perhaps can be recounted
in detail at some other time.

What is of greater interest and of immediate importance is the glimpse
provided by the publication of the supplementary report of the Hamoodur
Rahman Commission, compiled in 1974, into the circumstances surrounding the
breakaway of East Pakistan and its emergence as Bangladesh. As the
supplementary report reveals, the main report of July 1972 stated that it
had of necessity to leave some of its conclusions tentative, since it did
not have before it the evidence of most of the persons taken prisoner of
war, including the major personalities, involved in these seminal events.

After they were released, the commission heard them and then compiled the
supplementary report. This report saw no reason to revise the major
conclusions of the main report, with the exception of the exoneration of
Major-General Rao Farman Ali, the principal 'political' adviser to the
military government in East Pakistan, in clear violation of the principle
of collective responsibility. General Tikka Khan, who had earned the
sobriquet of 'Butcher of Bengal' because of his initial brutal crackdown
from March to April 1971 is hardly mentioned in the supplementary report.

The inference from this, that he was exonerated in the main report would
not be far wrong. We should not forget that he was appointed COAS by Mr
Bhutto immediately after the ouster of General Gul Hassan and Air Marshal
Rahim Khan who had been instrumental in handing over power to Mr Bhutto
amidst the ruins of 1971.

Neither the main nor the supplementary report of the HRC has ever been
released by successive governments, starting with Mr Bhutto's. That the PPP
government may have been motivated by the need to avoid bringing the
spotlight of scrutiny onto Mr Bhutto's own role in the crisis of 1971 is
perhaps no insinuation. Additionally, his purpose of rebuilding the
capability of the armed forces would have been badly dented had the
damaging revelations of the HRC report become public knowledge.

This rebuilding of the armed forces by Mr Bhutto was not motivated
entirely by the defence requirements of the country. A more expedient
consideration was continuing the army's role in internal policing. That
role was subsequently on display in Balochistan (1973-77) and Sindh (1983).

This internal focus of the military on inherently political issues and
situations provided the climate for the overthrow of Mr Bhutto, and,
arguably, the military takeover of October 1999. The opportunities for such
interventions were, however, provided by the respective incumbent civilian
governments themselves.

What, then, are the main conclusions of the supplementary report of the
HRC that has just appeared in a section of the national press? What are the
lessons to be learnt from these conclusions and the events of 1971? On the
answers to these questions may rest the future political destiny of today's
Pakistan.

The HRC report pins the main responsibility for the 1971 debacle on the
military's intervention in political affairs since the 1958 Ayubian coup.
Seizing power and using it without any institutional mechanisms for
restraint or answerability, exposed the armed forces to the corrupting
influence of civilian life and the often weird and inscrutable ways of the
civil bureaucracy.

Martial Law and civil administrative responsibilities distracted the armed
forces personnel from their professional duties, to the detriment of their
training, competence and fighting mettle. Because of their excesses, lapses
and failures, the highest-ranking officers have come in for the most
scathing criticism in the HRC report.

The corrupted top brass, the report suggests, were incapable of carrying
out the task of governance, handing over power to the elected
representatives of the people turned up by the 1970 elections (regarded to
date as the fairest and freest of all elections in Pakistan's history), or
handling the political and military consequences of a failure to honour the
electorate's will, and finally, defending the territorial integrity of the
country.

Considering that these conclusions are culled from the supplementary
report, one can only imagine how much more damning the main report may
prove, should it ever be published.

Even the sketchy details made available of the conduct of the army during
the nine-month crackdown in East Pakistan, are enough to make one's hair
stand on end. What the report euphemistically calls the use of "excessive
force", often in the form of summary execution of anyone considered
remotely 'suspect' points to the mindset of the military vis-a-vis the then
majority of the population of united Pakistan.

Professors, teachers and intellectuals were lined up and shot in Dhaka
University grounds, not once, but twice - once when the initial suppression
campaign began on March 25, 1971, and subsequently a few days before the
surrender, on December 9, 1971.

The report refuses to acknowledge these massacres on the grounds of lack
of irrefutable evidence. Suffice it to say that on my first ever visit to
Dhaka in February this year, I saw and heard sufficient to convince me that
these infamous acts did indeed take place.

The supplementary report mentions atrocities against the general populace
during 'sweep operations' carried out by the army after March 25, 1971. It
also quotes instances of looting and plunder in which soldiers took away
anything they could lay their hands on in the houses and workplaces of
their unfortunate victims. It reports that "living off the land" (i.e. at
the expense of the people) was positively encouraged by their commander,
Lt-Gen A. A. K. Niazi, on the grounds that they were in "enemy territory".

The report even quotes an instance of a bank being looted by soldiers
under the command of an officer who later rose to high positions in the
army. Comment seems superfluous, except that a military outfit reduced to a
murdering, looting, plundering horde against its own people is an unlikely
candidate for defence of either territory or any kind of principle or for
discharging responsibilities of governance in a critical situation.

The commission takes note of the overwhelming odds against the 'gallant'
defenders of East Pakistan, forgetting that its own earlier indictment
points, instead, to the moral and professional lapses and failures of a
large section of the officers and men of the Eastern Command leading
eventually to their forced surrender.

This is what explains the "complete moral collapse" towards the end of
General Niazi, the overall commander (accused in the report of being
involved in smuggling paan to West Pakistan throughout his tenure and being
reduced to loud weeping at the denouement), and of those of his subordinate
officers who abandoned their posts without a fight, who got soldiers under
their command killed needlessly because of panic and confusion, and who
failed to carry out 'denial procedures', thereby handing over large stores
of weapons, ammunition and equipment to the enemy, and in one particular
instance, even abandoning their sick and wounded comrades while fleeing for
their lives.

Each and every citizen of Pakistan must insist that the conspiracy of
silence imposed on the events of 1971 for the past 29 years, be now broken.
As individual citizens as much as a collective entity, we need to know, we
have the right to know, we must know the full facts about the debacle in
Dhaka.

Only then, perhaps, will we be able to place the aberrations of military
rule in proper perspective, learn the appropriate lessons, and, hopefully,
persuade our present rulers of the to see the wisdom of an early exit.

______

#4.

[recieved from Sukla Sen]

The Indian Express,
23 08 00

OF ALL OUR CASES ON KASHMIR

by Dalip Singh Ghuman

In `Sub-plots in Kashmir drama - the Instrument of
Accession was not linked to Plebiscite' (Write Back,
July 28), Arvind Lavakare has cited the opinion of two
legal personalities, including the present Chief
Justice, both of whom appeared to have considered the
accession from a purely legal angle. They have ignored
the fact that all princely states became independent
after the lapse of British paramountcy and that every
ruler could decide to which country his state should
accede or whether it should remain independent. The
Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh
and accepted by Lord Mountbatten was an agreement
between two sovereign states. How it can be examined
under the Indian Contract Act is beyond the
comprehension of anyone who knows the history of the
dispute.

It was the Congress party's policy that the views of
the peoples of the princely states must count in
deciding their future. It was also Mahatma Gandhi's
view, who said in the =DAf40=DBHarijan of August 24,
1947:-

``Common sense dictated that the will of the Kashmiris
should decide the future of Kashmir and Jammu... How
the will of the people would be decided was a fair
question. He hoped it would be decided between the two
Dominions (India and Pakistan), the Maharaja Sahib and
the Kashmiris.''

About the same time, the Muslim ruler of a small,
vastly Hindu-majority state, acceded to Pakistan. The
people rose against his decision. India proposed a
referendum. Nehru said on October 6, 1947, ``Any
decision involving the fate of large numbers of people
must necessarily depend on the wishes of the people...
a dispute involving the fate of any territory should
be decided by a referendum or plebiscite of the people
concerned.''

There was no response from Pakistan. On October 9,
Indian troops entered Junagadh and met with no
resistance. Pakistan protested but was ignored. A
referendum was held on February 20, 1948.

H.V. Hodson, Constitutional Advisor to previous
Viceroy Linlithgow wrote:

``If the Indian Government acquiesced, admitting the
undoubted legal right of the ruler to decide which way
to go, the precedent of a Muslim Prince taking a
Hindu-majority state into Pakistan...could be applied
to the far greater prize of Hyderabad. If the Indian
Government intervened with force... it would set up a
contrary precedent, to be applied by Pakistan to
Kashmir, were the Maharaja to accede to India. If
India demanded, as alternative to force, a plebiscite
in Junagadh, this could be adopted as a general
principle which, when applied to Kashmir and Jammu
would, in Karachi's estimate, take the state to
Pakistan.''

Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on
October 26, 1947, after Pakistani invaders had reached
the outskirts of Srinagar. Under the circumstances,
the accession document was accepted subject to a
plebiscite after normalcy returned. Whether the
conditional acceptance was recorded on the same
document or in a separate letter is immaterial. India
could not adopt double standards, one for Muslim-ruled
but Hindu-majority Junagadh and Hyderabad and another
for Hindu-ruled but Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir.

There was no blunder or monumental mess as contended
by Lavakare. Whatever was said, written or done by
Nehru about holding a plebiscite, before the UN or any
other forum, was a reiteration of the earlier
commitment to the Kashmiri people. Mountbatten and
Nehru were not dealing with a piece of real estate
``gifted'' to India by Hari Singh but with the
accession of a then sovereign state. The will of its
people had to be ascertained at some stage.

It is preposterous to argue our case on the legal
niceties of the Indian Contract Act. The problem in
Kashmir is political and what is needed is a political
initiative involving India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri
people.

______

#5.

24 August 2000

Prof. Ram Puniyani
Secretary
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity)
B-64, I. I T. Qutrs
Powai Mumbai 400076, India
-------------------------------------------

Sir/Madam

The recent decisions of the Maharashtra Govt. to reject the ATR formulated
by previous Sena- BJP govt. (which in effect rejected the findings of
ShriKrishna Commission report, calling it as an anti- Hindu report) and
suspending the 5 police personnel implicated by the report is a step in
the correct direction. The relatives of the victims of riots and the civil
rights activists are looking forward to the total acceptance of the
findings of the report and punishing the guilty named in the report. This
will involve action against 31 police personnel, opening up of all the
Summary (A) cases closed by the Sena Govt. to protect the guilty and to
pay the due compensation to the relatives of the missing persons after the
riots. While congratulating the govt. for this correct step we do look
forward to the govt. to also initiate the other necessary steps.

Ram Puniyani
______

#6.

[ This Sakshi Maharaj bloke mentioned below besides being a rank
opportunist is a male chauvanist pig, has been recently charged with rape;
Its disgusting that such figures also consitute the elected reps who are
considered secular opponets of the 'Sangh Lafangs' of the the Hindu
Supremacist Right]

NaradOnline Beyond the News
August 21,2000

WITH CHAMPIONS LIKE THIS :
CYNICISM AND COMMUNALISM TRIUMPH WHEN PEOPLE LIKE SAKSHI MAHARAJ TURN
SECULAR CHAMPIONS OVERNIGHT

by T K Arun

When man transforms into insect, we have quintessential Kafka. When
saffron kar sevak turns overnight into defender of secularism, the
resultant farce is barren of irony or humour and breeds cynicism and
defeat. When the newfound secular convert is sent to the House of Elders to
wage battle against communalism but finds his style cramped by sequential
charges of rape and murder, we have politics of secularism, Indian style.

Mr Satchidanand Sakshi is currently a Samajwadi Party MP in the Rajya
Sabha. This was the reward for his campaign against Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee during the last Lok Sabha elections. Since his ardent role
as kar sevak in the campaign to demolish the Babri mosque at Ayodhya in
1992, till his mentor in the BJP, Mr Kalyan Singh chose him as the
mouthpiece of rebellion against the party leadership, Mr Sakshi had been a
BJP partisan. He had been elected twice to the Lok Sabha on a BJP platform.
He fell out of favour when his name was linked to the murder of Brahm Dutt
Dwivedi, rising BJP star.

He continued to enjoy the patronage of the then UP chief minister and
fellow casteman, Mr Kalyan Singh, even after he invited the party's wrath
over the murder of Dwivedi. However, when the Samajwadi Party found his
fulminations against the Prime Minister useful, he became close to SP
strongman Mulayam Singh Yadav. When Kalyan Singh finally broke off from the
BJP to form his own party, the man whom he had made an MP decided that it
made sense to stick on with Mulayam Singh. In his brand of politics, of
course, there is only permanent self-interest.

Such consistency in politics is decidedly rare but his detractors dub this
virtue as opportunism. Perhaps it is this ability to focus on short term
interests, losing sight of long term goals, that makes him an ideal secular
ally. For the secularists are involved in series of opportunistic alliances
to fight the BJP and communalism. In Bihar, they have allied with Laloo
Yadav, in Tamil Nadu with Jayalalitha.

This brand of secular politics only strengthens communal forces. The more
people see secularists trying to defeat the communal with the corrupt and
the criminal, the more the secular and the communal merge into the purely
criminal. This only breeds cynicism and insecurity, which can be exploited
by anti-national forces to foment trouble where none existed before.

With such champions like Sakshi Maharaj, secularism needs no enemies.

______

#7.

Posted below is the address of another website of the votaries of a 'Hindu
Rashtra':
http://hindurashtra.everwork.com/

______

#8.

IAF GUNS FIND INNOCENT TARGETS

DEBASHIS KONAR
STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE

BARRACKPORE, Aug. 23. - Living close to the Air Force shooting range has
proved miserable for villagers of Jafarpur and adjoining areas of
Barrackpore in North 24-Parganas. Two people have been killed and over a
dozen injured by stray bullets, the villagers allege. They say they have
not received any compensation. The Committee for Protection of Democratic
Rights had taken the villagers=ED complaints to the West Bengal Human Right=
s
Commission.

The complaints have been forwarded to the National Human Rights Commission.
Villagers of Baliaghata, Hasia, Mathuarapur, Kayrapur and Palta have been
pleading with the Air Force to prevent such incidents, but in vain.
Judisthir Baidya, a farmer, is a victim. He was hit on his hand, and shows
the bullets collected by villagers from the fields. Ganesh Mondal, another
farmer, took a bullet in his waist. Even after years, the scar remains
prominent. Ganesh was hit as he worked in the fields one morning. "Air
Force officials came along with the local police one day and gave me Rs
300," he says. "They assured me they would give more money, but did not
return." Chalana Mondal was grazing cattle when she was hit on the left
ear. The bullet pierced her skull. A decade later, her husband Biswanath
Mondal is yet to get any compensation. Air Force officials at the range
refuse to believe anyone could have been hit by their bullets. Firing, they
say, is done mostly from a distance of 100 to 400 yards, and a mound beyond
the targets provides protection. "There is a distance of 2,100 yards
between the range and the mound," said an official, and it was impossible
that the bullets should hit humans.

According to the officials, some villagers might have unwittingly strayed
inside the range and got hit. There have also been incidents when villagers
were caught collecting bullets from within the danger zone for their
metallic value. Mr Dayamay Biswas of CPDR, however, said hapless villagers
had now begun to sell their land at throwaway prices and leave the area. He
said that a buffer wall should be constructed immediately to prevent
further incidents. Some villagers alleged that after repeated complaints,
the frequency of the firing drill had been reduced; it has, however,
returned to normal in the past one year. Mr Peejush Pandey, ASP,
Barrackpore, said if an innocent person is injured by bullets fired by the
armed forces, the victim is eligible to get compensation only if it is
proved that he/she did not enter the shooting arena.

______

#9.

[24 August 2000]

PROMINENT EDITOR SURVIVES FALL; RESCUED AFTER THREE DAYS

KOL Report

KATHMANDU, Aug 23-A prominent Nepali journalist, Kanak Mani Dixit, was lost
for several days while trekking in the high Himalayas before he was rescued
early Wednesday.

Dixit, the publisher of Himal Khabarpatrika and editor of Himal South
Asian maganizes, fell "several hundred feet" from a steep mountain face
while trekking the Annapurna circuit, his family and freinds said. He
survived the fall but could not climb back to the trekking trail due to
injuries, forcing him to spend three nights in a row down in the ravine
without food and drink.

Worried family and friends who had not heard from him for days then
launched a rescue mission, hiring a helicopter and notifying the police.
Dixit's elder brother Kunda Dixit managed to locate his injured brother
near a village called Bahundanda near the Lamjung and Manag border, and he
was airlifted to Kathmandu Wednesday morning. Dixit is now undergoing
treatment at a private nursing home in the Nepali capital. (sp)

______

#10.

NOMINATIONS FOR THE MEA 2001

Dear colleagues and friends,

The Martin Ennals Foundation would like to invite you to nominate a
deserving individual or organisation for the 2001 Martin Ennals Award for
Human Rights Defenders (MEA). The deadline for nominations is 15 October 20=
00.

Please find below the MEA application form and more information on the
Award. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any queries. The
new MEA website: http://www.digitalsmile.com/mea provides further
information as well as the nominations form ready for electronic submission=
.

With best regards,

Hans Thoolen
Chairman, Martin Ennals Foundation
[...]

THE MARTIN ENNALS AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

NOMINATION FORM (to be sent to the address above)

Name of Candidate:
Address:
Tel:
Fax:
E-mail:

Brief particulars of the candidate including a short description of recent
activities for the protection of human rights and their impact (max. 100
words):

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