SACW | 12 July, 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  12 July,  2003

#1. A visiting delegation (Amar Jaleel)
#2. Victims of December 13 (Basharat Peer)
#3. Professors fight to keep Swift on syllabus as Pakistan's 
Islamists target 'vulgar' classics (Rory McCarthy)
#4. Bakery was 37th riot acquittal (Leena Misra)
#5.Justice Elusive in India Violence
Muslim Says She Testified Falsely Because of Hindus' Threats (John Lancaster=
)
#6. Statement released by the Citizens for Justice and Peace (Bombay)
#7. How to lose the war on terror (Dilip D'Souza)
#8. Same-sex South Asia (M. V. Ramana)

--------------

#1.

DAWN (Pakistan)
06 July 2003

A visiting delegation
By Amar Jaleel

=46rom newspaper vendors to the visiting Indian parliamentary 
delegation, the subcontinent is one dangerous place.
Someone violently knocked at the door of my one-room apartment at 
dead of night. Startled, I woke up. My heart wobbled. Before I could 
leave my bed I heard the knock again. Clearly it was an aggressive 
knock. Friends do not knock at your door like that.
My apartment is situated in a dilapidated building behind the 
abandoned stables of the now defunct racecourse in the Frere Town, 
Clifton Karachi.
People in the neighbourhood believe the ruined stables are haunted. 
They claim to have heard the neighing of the invisible horses from 
the abandoned stables during the moonless nights. The more zealous 
among them have insisted on oath to have seen the berserk horses 
galloping around the racecourse emanating sparks from their hooves.
As for I am concerned, I have not experienced anything phenomenal or 
supernatural being around me, except that it is unusually calm, so 
calm that at times calmness frightens. Without a plausible reason you 
feel uneasy. Thus, midnight knock at my door naturally startled me.
"Except for a few old books, magazines, and cherished memories I 
possess nothing."
Before unbolting the door I said: "You have come to the wrong place."
"We have come to the right place." They struck the door with heavy 
boots. Someone shouted in a hoarse voice, and said: "Open the door."
I hesitantly opened the door. Dragging a wretched person along two 
rough and tough men banged in my room. Both of them were hawkish and 
hostile. One of them was clean shaven, and had a flattened nose. I 
think he must have been a boxer in his youthful years. He pushed the 
miserable man in front of me, thundered, and said: "Look at him."
"Who are you?" Surprised, I asked: "And, who is this wretched man?"
"No questions." The boxer roughly grabbed me by the front of my 
shirt, and said: "Else, you'll land yourself in trouble."
The other tough man had cultivated unruly enormous moustache on his 
face. It gave him a dreadful look. He held the miserable man by the 
neck, and asked: "Do you recognize him?"
His head hung down, the miserable man was half conscious. I replied: 
"I am afraid, I just can't see his face."
He pulled the wretched man by his hair, and turned his face towards 
me, and asked: "Do you know him?"
His face though badly bruised appeared faintly familiar to me, but I 
couldn't place him. The man with massive moustache caught hold of my 
shoulder, and asked: "Tell us, who is he?"
Perplexed, I meekly asked, "How on earth am I to tell you who he is?"
With a sinister smile he said: "But, he knows you."
I was taken aback, and exclaimed: "How come he knows me?"
The boxer said: "Soon after Indian parliamentarians were received by 
Pakistani lawmakers he was seen crossing our border, and was caught."
I looked at the wretched man from a distance, and said: "May be he is 
a member of the Indian parliamentarians' goodwill group, and may have 
missed the bus!"
"Don't be silly!" The massively moustached man rebuked me, and said: 
"How can an ugly barefoot man in tatters be a member of the neatly 
dressed group of Indian intelligentsia!"
I was left guessing. I asked: "Who told you he knows me?"
With villainous smile on his hard face the boxer said: "During the 
initial interrogations at Lahore, he revealed to have come all the 
way from Delhi to see you."
I went a step closer to the miserable man, and looked at him 
minutely. I cleared his forehead of his unkempt hair. He opened his 
blood-soaked eyes, and looked at me vacantly. Surprised I turned 
around, and talked to the tough men, and said: "He is my friend 
Deepak."
I hugged him, "Oh Deepak, oh Deepak, my brother."
The man with massive moustache said: "How can a Muslim and a Hindu be 
brothers!"
"Deepak like me is a newspaper vendor." I said: "He sells Times of 
India in the streets of Delhi, and I sell Dawn in the streets of 
Karachi. In the evening Deepak sells bhelpuri outside Badshahi Mosque 
in Delhi, and I sell bhelpuri in the vicinity of the mausoleum of 
Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi. Most of his life he has slept on the 
footpaths of Delhi, and most of my life I have slept on the footpaths 
of Karachi. We are perpetually bound in the brotherhood of poverty 
and pain."
"Why has he come to see you?" The boxer asked.
"Why have the Indian parliamentarians come to see the 
parliamentarians of Pakistan?" I asked.
Obviously both tough men felt annoyed. The man with moustache said: 
"The Indian intellectuals, columnists, and the parliamentarians have 
come to meet the intellectuals of Pakistan."
I helped Deepak sit on a chair. Without looking at the tough men I 
said: "Deepak too has come to see me."
The boxer curtly said: "Are you an intellectual?"
I promptly replied, "No. I am not."
He then asked: "Is your friend from India an intellectual?"
I replied: "No. He is not."
"Non-entities are not supposed to see each other!" The boxer said: 
"In fact, you both are Indian agents."
Shaken, I asked: "What if I had gone over to India to see Deepak there?"
They gave out a loud laughter, and said: "The Indian intelligence 
agencies would have nabbed both of you as Pakistani agents."


______


#2.

The Guardian (UK)
July 5, 2003

Victims of December 13

Eighteen months ago, the Indian parliament was attacked. Fourteen 
people were killed. But now, more lives are at stake: three Kashmiris 
accused of conspiring in the attack have been sentenced to death, one 
of them - university lecturer Syed Geelani - on the basis of two 
phone calls. Kashmiris and many others are convinced of his 
innocence. If his appeal, now under way, fails, uproar in the 
inflammable border state threatens. Basharat Peer reports

The circular, colonnaded building of the Indian parliament, designed 
in 1921 by two British architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert 
Baker, is a majestic presence in the heart of New Delhi. On the 
morning of December 13 2001, legislators in the domed central hall of 
the parliament were arguing angrily about the involvement of the 
Indian defence minister in an arms scandal. White Ambassador cars - 
the preferred vehicle of Indian politicians and bureaucrats - were 
lining up on the concourse.

Around 11.30am, policemen at the main parliament gate saw an 
official-looking white Ambassador, with five men inside, approaching. 
It appeared to have the necessary entry pass on the windshield; they 
stepped aside. The car accelerated as it moved past the red sandstone 
wall of the parliament. The next moment it had collided with one of 
the cars in the motorcade of the Indian vice-president, who was 
expected to emerge from the parliament any moment. As policemen ran 
towards the Ambassador, its doors opened. Five men with guns jumped 
out and started firing at the police. Before they could retaliate, 
the armed men scattered into the parliament's large grounds.

The speaker abruptly adjourned proceedings in the debating chamber. 
Emergency messages crackled across police radios: terrorists had 
attacked the parliament. More police and paramilitaries were urgently 
summoned. For half an hour, a fierce battle raged outside the 
building; inside, around 200 trapped and terrified politicians 
listened to gunfire and grenade explosions.

By noon, it was all over. The five armed men were killed. Eight 
policemen and a gardener were also dead. Within a few hours, 
television crews began to beam images of the bullet-ridden corpses of 
the terrorists, clean-shaven and dressed in fatigues, to millions of 
Indian homes.

That same morning, I was sitting with my grandfather, sipping tea in 
the drawing room of our house in a village in the Kashmir valley. 
Winter means a heavy snowfall, a slower pace of life and less blood 
spilled in conflict-ridden Kashmir. My grandfather, a retired 
teacher, was looking forward to the relative peace of the colder 
months, along with flu and frostbite. Suddenly, we heard news of the 
attack - the television channels were full of it. We immediately 
began to fear that a war might erupt between India and Pakistan. 
"This winter the snow will turn red," Grandpa sighed.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the Muslim-majority 
valley of Kashmir. The hostile neighbours each control a part of the 
old princely state and stake an aggressive claim upon the whole. 
Relative peace had prevailed in Kashmir after the Indo-Pak war in 
1971. But in 1987, the government in the Indian-administered Kashmir 
valley rigged a local election. Kashmiris lost their faith in Indian 
democracy and began a secessionist armed uprising in 1990. By the 
mid-1990s, Pakistan-based Jehadi groups had taken control of the 
anti-India insurgency. In 13 years, more than 50,000 have died.

The Hindu nationalist government of India blamed terrorist groups 
based in, and supported by, Pakistan for the attack on the Indian 
parliament; these groups have been operating mostly in Kashmir. 
Hardliners inside and outside the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata 
party (Indian People's party, or BJP) claimed that December 13 was 
India's 9/11. They demanded that Indian soldiers cross the line of 
control - the temporary border between India and Pakistan - and 
attack the terrorist camps in the part of Kashmir held by Pakistan.

Leading the hardliners was the Indian home minister, LK Advani, who 
engineered the rise to power of the BJP in the 1990s. Born in Sindh, 
at present in Pakistan, Advani migrated to India in 1947 when the 
large, British-ruled entity of India was partitioned into the nation 
states of India and Pakistan. Widespread communal riots and mass 
migration of Hindus from what became Pakistan and of Muslims from 
India tainted the dawn of Indian freedom and the birth of Pakistan. 
It was one of those panic-stricken flights that brought Advani to 
India, where he rose to be federal home minister and the deputy prime 
minister in the Hindu nationalist-led government.

Strategic analysts discussing on television the possible use of 
nuclear weapons aroused widespread fears of a holocaust. It was only 
some hectic US and British shuttle diplomacy that forced Pakistan to 
act against terrorist groups "operating in Kashmir" and managed to 
restrain India from attacking Pakistan.

But the Hindu nationalists in India succeeded in stoking an ugly 
xenophobia. Soon after the attack on the parliament, I met a doctor 
from Kashmir who worked in a New Delhi hospital. A practising Muslim, 
he sported a long, flowing beard. To me, he seemed to embody a 
curious mixture of peaceful religiosity and scientific knowledge. But 
passersby on the streets of Delhi stared at him suspiciously. His 
colleagues at the hospital taunted him. He shaved off his beard.

A month after the attack, I returned to New Delhi, where I was 
working as a journalist for a news portal. I was looking for a place 
to stay. I tried the middle-class neighbourhoods of south Delhi, 
inhabited by business executives, lawyers, professors and doctors. 
Most of them had come to Delhi, like myself, to begin a professional 
career. They had to work for decades before owning an apartment or a 
house. Many landlords I met were willing to rent out a room. But then 
they would ask the dreaded question.

"Where are you from?"

"Kashmir."

"Oh! You are Kashmiri Muslim."

I kept looking for a house for months.

The Delhi police claimed to have recovered, within hours of the 
attack on the parliament, a mobile phone, three Sim cards and some 
telephone numbers from "Mohammed", an allegedly Pakistani terrorist 
killed by the police. Two days later, they arrested three Kashmiri 
men and a pregnant housewife, and charged them with "conspiring in 
the attack on the parliament". The police asserted that the telephone 
numbers found on Mohammed had led them to the arrested Kashmiris.

Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, 32, a teacher of Arabic at Delhi 
University, was the first to be arrested on December 15. The police 
said they picked him up outside his rented house in north Delhi. The 
news of his arrest shocked me. I had met Geelani one evening in 
autumn 1999, at Delhi University, where I was an undergraduate law 
student. A mutual acquaintance from Kashmir had introduced us. A 
short, soft-spoken, handsome man, Geelani told me that he had left 
Kashmir before the insurgency began. He had studied in other parts of 
India before joining Delhi University in the early 1990s. He seemed 
happy to see me at the university and lamented the collapse of the 
educational system in Kashmir. "Delhi will teach you a lot and open 
your horizons," he said. "Here, the bigger world opens to you. Work 
hard."

Geelani talked a lot about his teaching job. I thought he spoke with 
the pride of a small-town boy who had worked his way to the faculty 
of a prestigious university. We walked to the hostel canteen and had 
a cup of sweet, milky tea. His easy-going manner contrasted with the 
nervousness that I had seen in many other young Kashmiris in Delhi. 
When we talked about Kashmir, he showed none of the raw passion or 
emotion that most Kashmiris do. He seemed to have accepted Delhi as 
his world. I saw Geelani occasionally on campus after that, but our 
acquaintance could not progress: I was busy in my own world, trying 
to be a journalist.

In Srinagar, the police arrested two other Kashmiri men: Mohammed 
Afzal, who joined a Kashmiri militant group in the early 1990s, then 
laid down his arms and apparently started a business, and Shaukat 
Guru, his businessman cousin. They lived in Delhi, but had left for 
the valley on the day of the attack. The police also arrested Afshan 
Guru, Shaukat's wife. All three arrested men were from Baramulla, a 
border district in north Kashmir; they stayed in the same locality in 
Delhi and knew each other.

They were booked under a draconian anti-terrorism ordinance, 
Prevention Of Terrorism Ordinance (Poto), introduced a month after 
the September 11 attacks by the Hindu nationalist government. In 
March 2002, three months after the attack on the Indian parliament, 
the ordinance became law - the Prevention Of Terrorism Act, 2002 
(Pota). Indian opposition parties and civil rights groups such as 
Amnesty International opposed it, but the global war against 
terrorism took its toll on civil liberties in India as ruthlessly as 
elsewhere in the world.

The arrested men were interrogated. The police claimed that Afzal, 
the main accused, had confessed to his involvement. Rajbir Singh, the 
assistant commissioner in the anti-terrorism cell of the Delhi 
police, invited television crews to recordAfzal's public confession, 
which was then broadcast across India. A tall, sturdy man with rugged 
features, Singh has risen from the lowly position of sub-inspector to 
his present prestigious position in just a few years. His record of 
eliminating terrorists is matched only by the allegations of human 
rights violations against him. His role in six separate killings of 
alleged terrorists and gangsters has been questioned by the Indian 
media, and his involvement in a shoot-out at a shopping mall by the 
National Human Rights Commission of India: last November, Singh and 
his men claimed to have killed two terrorists associated with a 
banned Pakistan-based terrorist outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba, at a 
shopping mall in New Delhi, but a local Hindu doctor, Hari Krishna, 
told the media that he saw the police shoot in cold blood the two 
unarmed and apparently drugged men, who, Krishna said, could barely 
walk.

Singh was already under a cloud when the home ministry, under Advani, 
appointed him to head the investigation into the attack on the Indian 
parliament. It was under Singh's direction that the Kashmiri teacher, 
Geelani, was arrested.

Soon after Geelani's arrest in winter 2001, I travelled to his north 
Kashmir town, Baramulla, to interview his relatives. His mother, a 
widow, was inarticulate with grief. His father-in-law, Habibullah, a 
retired schoolteacher, could not believe that his son-in-law, a 
university lecturer and a father of two, could be involved in an act 
of terrorism. Despite his grief and shock, Habibullah had a dignified 
air about him. He told me that hundreds of townsfolk had gathered 
outside his house to express their support and their faith in 
Geelani's innocence. They wanted to demonstrate against the arrest. 
But he stopped them. He feared that demonstrations, as they typically 
did in Kashmir, would lead to anti-India sloganeering, which would 
anger the government and damage the chances of his son-in-law's 
release. Habibullah was worried about Geelani, who was then being 
interrogated by the police, and about his wife, two children and his 
younger brother, Bismillah, all of whom lived in a rented house in 
north Delhi.

Bismillah told me that he had visited his brother a week after his 
arrest, in a cage-like room at a Delhi police interrogation centre. 
Geelani was limping, had wounds on his ankles; nylon ropes tied 
around his wrists had left blue marks. Bismillah had brought him some 
food, but the police torture had left Geelani without the appetite or 
energy to eat.

The brothers met again a week later, this time in jail. Bismillah 
found out that Geelani was in solitary confinement and was denied 
access to books, paper or the jail library. Criminals in the jail 
looked upon him as a terrorist, an anti-national, and physically 
assaulted him a few times. Around that time, university officials 
suspended Geelani from his teaching job.

Nothing much happened for months. I didn't often think of Geelani; I 
was working on other stories. In May 2002, the police filed a charge 
sheet against Geelani. At the same time, his landlord evicted his 
wife and children, who had to find refuge in a Muslim ghetto in 
another part of the city. It was not until July that Geelani's trial 
could begin.

The trial proceeded not under the usual Indian law, but under the 
controversial Pota. Amnesty International questioned whether a free 
trial was possible under Pota, especially in the case of the accused 
teacher. The Indian law ministry appointed Shiv Narayan Dhingra as a 
special judge. The son of a labourer, Dhingra had worked as a 
newspaper boy, street vendor, radio mechanic and private tutor in his 
childhood and early youth in order to support his family and his 
education. After studying law at Delhi University, he found a 
teaching job there before joining the judiciary. By the 1990s, he was 
handling cases of terrorism and had earned the name The Hanging Judge.

I was assigned to report on the trial. Policemen with automatic 
rifles guarded the courtroom; they checked my identity card and 
frisked me before allowing me inside. I had expected a crowd of 
reporters at what seemed to me the most high-profile legal case in 
India, but was surprised to see very few there. Policemen, both 
uniformed and plain-clothed, occupied most of the chairs, along with 
the lawyers in black gowns. Geelani stood in the dock with the other 
accused.

I thought of our first meeting at Delhi University in 1999. He now 
stood before me, accused of conspiring in an attack on the Indian 
parliament that had almost triggered a nuclear war between India and 
Pakistan. I couldn't stop looking at Geelani, at his handcuffs and at 
the three armed policemen watching him. Over the next few months, I 
kept going back to the trial to cover the "important" hearings. Every 
time, Geelani stood in the dock with the same serene expression on 
his face. I often wondered why he appeared so unfazed.

Perhaps he was given hope by the Indian intellectuals who believed 
that he was innocent and had come together under the banner of the 
All India Defence Committee for Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani. Many 
teachers and journalists had written letters of protest to the chief 
justice. There was initially no criminal lawyer ready to defend him 
in court. Finally, Seema Gulati, a well-known, much sought-after 
criminal lawyer, agreed. Her high fees were paid by contributions 
from university teachers, lawyers and civil rights activists. Rajni 
Kothari, a veteran Indian social scientist, told me the committee to 
defend Geelani was formed "to defend the right of fair trial of a 
courageous man and to defend the values enshrined in our constitution 
by the founding fathers and mothers of the Indian state". The 
committee, formed last August, includes illustrious names such as two 
Magsaysay award-winning social workers, Aruna Roy and Sandeep Pandey, 
human rights activist and jurist Nandita Haksar and writer Arundhati 
Roy.

As the trial proceeded, the prosecution presented the evidence 
against Geelani. It said that he received a call on his mobile phone 
on December 14 2001, from Kashmir, and, while talking in Kashmiri, he 
supported the previous day's attack on the parliament. The 
two-and-a-half-minute telephone conversation with his younger brother 
was the main evidence against him. The police had it translated by a 
semiliterate Kashmiri youth, Rashid Ali, who worked as a fruit vendor 
in north Delhi. The "incriminating" evidence in the call, according 
to the police translation, is this: Caller: "What is this you have 
done in Delhi?" Receiver (the accused teacher, Geelani): "This was 
necessary."

The conversation, police said, revealed the role of the teacher in 
the conspiracy to attack the parliament. Geelani's lawyer, Seema 
Gulati, challenged this, producing Sampath Prakash, a veteran trade 
union leader from Srinagar, and Sanjay Kak, a respected film-maker, 
as defence witnesses. Proficient in the Kashmiri language, the 
witnesses presented to the court transcripts of the intercepted call 
and its English translations. They maintained that the call was an 
innocent conversation between two brothers. Kak translated as follows 
the parts of the call that police claimed showed Geelani's 
culpability: Caller (accused teacher's brother): "What's happened?" 
Receiver (Geelani): "What? In Delhi?" Caller: "What's happened? In 
Delhi?" Receiver: (noise, laughter) "By God!"

Giving evidence in court, Kak said, "The Kashmiri equivalent of 
'What's happened?' is 'Yeh Kya Korua'. It is a generic term used for 
a range of ordinary circumstances, such as when a child spills a 
glass of milk or when there is snowfall or a marital dispute." The 
younger brother of the accused teacher had called simply to get a 
syllabus and a prospectus. He translated that portion of the call as: 
Receiver (accused teacher): "Tell me what you want?" Caller (his 
brother): "Syllabus and prospectus."

During the cross-examination, Ali, the police translator, admitted 
that he could not understand English; he was also shaky in Hindi, the 
Indian language into which he had translated the call. Geelani's 
brother Bismillah and father-in-law Habibullah normally sat in the 
courtroom with gloomy faces. That day, I saw them smile.

Testimonies by independent witnesses seemed to tilt the balance in 
favour of Geelani's innocence. One day a fellow reporter, Shams Tahir 
Khan, who works for Aaj Tak, a popular Hindi-language Indian news 
channel, took the stand. He was one of the television reporters 
invited by Singh, the Delhi police officer, to record the confession 
of the main accused, Mohammed Afzal, after his arrest. The full 
version of the video-recorded interview was played in the courtroom. 
Afzal was seen saying that Geelani was a professor and that he, 
Afzal, "never shared any of this (terrorism-related) information with 
him". Khan told the court that assistant commissioner Singh had 
requested the media not to relay that part of the interview. Geelani, 
his relatives and lawyer seemed more relieved; their smiles were 
broader.

Another day revealed a serious contradiction in the prosecution case. 
Delhi police had claimed that the records of the phone numbers found 
on Mohammed - the slain terrorist - had led to Geelani's arrest on 
December 15 2001. The phone records obtained by police from Airtel, 
the cellular company, were part of the evidence against him. 
Geelani's lawyer pointed out that the phone records cited by the 
police were dated December 17 2001. It left many wondering how the 
police could arrest the accused teacher two days before it got the 
phone records that "led" them to him. The prosecution had no 
explanation to offer. Afterwards, I saw Geelani's friends and 
relatives talking outside the courtroom with a childlike excitement.

By November, the witnesses had testified, the accused had given their 
statements, and the final arguments in the case began. Delhi high 
court had ordered that Geelani's handcuffs be taken off. Armed 
policemen still filled the courtroom. Barring a few reporters, the 
media continued to ignore the trial.

The prosecution argued for Geelani's conviction for conspiring in the 
attack on the Indian parliament. The grounds were that he had 
supported the attack while talking on the phone; he knew the other 
accused; his phone number was found on their phones; he had received 
calls from a co-accused on the day of the attack. Geelani did not 
deny knowing the co-accused and speaking to them on the phone. Judge 
Dhingra dictated the proceedings to a clerk who produced the court 
records on an archaic typewriter.

I wondered why none of the 80 prosecution witnesses who gave evidence 
in court accused Geelani of being a member of a terrorist group or 
having possessed explosives or weapons. Was he innocent? I could not 
be sure. Maybe there was just not enough evidence against him. I 
lived with my doubts.

Geelani's father-in-law, Habibullah, had come from Kashmir to Delhi 
to follow the case. He sat in the courtroom lost in his thoughts. On 
December 16, when the judge was to deliver the verdict, Habibullah 
did not come to the court. Instead, led by Singh, personnel from the 
Delhi police's anti-terrorism wing, who had arrested Geelani and 
conducted the investigation, filled the courtroom. The policemen, who 
were usually unshaven and shabbily clothed, were dressed in expensive 
suits, with matching neckties. They would look good in the newspaper 
photographs tomorrow, I thought.

The courtroom was for once crowded with reporters. I stood close to 
the judge's table, hoping to hear every word of the verdict. It was 
very humid. A reporter shouted at an attendant to switch on the air 
conditioner. It did not work. A reporter standing behind me placed 
his notebook on my back for support to take notes.

Judge Dhingra walked in. There was a long silence in the courtroom. 
Nobody moved while he pronounced the verdict. He held the accused 
teacher, Geelani, guilty of "conspiracy to attack the parliament, 
wage war against the government of India, murder and grievous hurt". 
The other two men were also found guilty.

Geelani made no sound. I kept looking at him. He seemed to see me but 
his eyes said nothing; his face seemed numb. My mind wandered off to 
another Kashmiri who was executed in Delhi in 1984 - Maqbool Bhat, 
the founder of the armed struggle in Kashmir. Even today, Bhat's 
execution fuels an anti-India rage in many Kashmiris. As an 
adolescent in Kashmir, I had seen posters remembering Bhat's 
"martyrdom" pasted on the wooden electricity poles that dot roadsides 
in the valley. Would Geelani end up as a commemorative poster on a 
wooden electricity pole? The thought scared me.

Two days after the verdict, Judge Dhingra announced his sentence. He 
opened the judgment with a long commentary on terrorism, how to 
tackle it, and the necessity of a centralised policy. He called the 
two defence witnesses, who testified that the accused teacher had not 
supported the parliament attack while talking on the phone, 
"interested witnesses". According to Dhingra, the key defence 
witness, film-maker Sanjay Kak, was a member of the committee formed 
for the fair trial of the accused teacher. Therefore his evidence was 
"unreliable". And the other witness, Sampath Prakash, the trade union 
leader, was equally partial and unreliable because he was introduced 
by Balraj Puri, a writer on Kashmir and a civil rights activist.

Dhingra sentenced Geelani to death, along with the co-accused 
Kashmiris, Mohammed Afzal and Shaukat Guru. Geelani was stoic and 
sought the judge's permission to speak to the journalists. Soon 
afterwards, policemen whisked the three convicted men towards prison 
lorries, as television crews jostled for close-ups. Geelani managed 
to say, "Without justice, there will be no democracy. It is Indian 
democracy that is under threat." His younger brother, Bismillah, 
watched him being taken away and burst into tears. The intellectuals 
who had worked against many odds for his fair trial were surprised 
and shocked. In Baramulla, hundreds of protesters burst out on to the 
streets as the news of Geelani's sentencing spread.

Activists of a militant Hindu fundamentalist outfit, Shiv Sena (Lord 
Shiva's Army), were the first to celebrate the death sentence. They 
burst crackers outside the court complex and broke into dances. The 
ruling Hindu nationalist BJP welcomed Dhingra's judgment and its 
spokesperson, VK Malhotra, claimed that the speed with which the 
accused in the parliament attack case had been tried and sentenced 
had established the efficiency of the Prevention Of Terrorism 
Ordinance. He also recommended punishment under the controversial 
anti-terror law Pota for those who had opposed the death sentence on 
the grounds that they were agents of Pakistan's spy agency, the 
Inter-Services Intelligence.

Malhotra's aggressiveness may stem from the fact that, days before 
the judgment, the BJP won elections in the western Indian state of 
Gujarat, despite being implicated in the massacre of around 2,000 
Muslims in early 2002. This victory lengthened the shadow of Hindu 
religious violence and Islamic terror attacks that loomed over India 
throughout 2002. In Gujarat, the fear of Muslim-sponsored terrorism 
consolidated effectively the Hindu nationalist votes. Hindu 
nationalist leaders now talk of turning India into a "Hindu nation" 
in two years, probably making use of the same mix of militant 
rhetoric about Muslims and Pakistan that has served them well so far. 
With its drum-beating about national security and terrorism, the 
party has also made its critics vulnerable to the accusation that 
they are "anti-national". When endorsed by the police and the 
judiciary - both of which appear to have been infiltrated by Hindu 
nationalists - the accusation has a malevolent power.

In a public meeting before the judgment, Arundhati Roy said that, of 
late, even she felt insecure when she woke up in the morning. "The 
people who have framed Geelani are the real terrorists, who steal our 
freedom," she said. "For the sake of democracy, we have to fight, not 
just till Geelani is acquitted but till those who framed him are 
punished."

India's most respected lawyer and former Indian law minister, Ram 
Jethmalani agreed to defend Geelani in the higher courts without 
payment - prompting Shiv Sena activists to burn his effigy as a 
"traitor" and threaten him with "consequences" if he honoured his 
promise. Jethmalani stood his ground. He filed an appeal against 
Geelani's conviction in the Delhi high court. Its judges began their 
hearings on April 2; they are expected to take three or four months 
to reach their decision. Until then, Geelani will be held in the 
Delhi prison where he has been for more than a year.

If the high court does not acquit Geelani, his family will appeal to 
the supreme court of India. The court has in the past acquitted 
defendants whom lower courts had sentenced to death - notably the 
accused in the assassination of Rajeev Gandhi, the Indian prime 
minister, in the mid-1990s. If the Geelanis do have to appeal to the 
supreme court, it will mean at least another six months' wait for a 
decision.

An acquittal can take Geelani back to the classrooms of Delhi 
University; a reduction in the sentence would bring unknown years in 
the prison where he currently awaits his fate; if Dhingra's order is 
upheld, Geelani will be hanged.


_____


#3.

The Guardian (UK)
July 10, 2003

Professors fight to keep Swift on syllabus as Pakistan's Islamists 
target 'vulgar' classics

Rory McCarthy in Lahore

Some of the great works of English literature could be scrapped from 
the syllabus of one of Pakistan's leading universities because of 
what professors fear is a rising tide of Muslim fundamentalism.

A review of books studied in the English courses at Punjab University 
in Lahore singled out several texts, including Alexander Pope's The 
Rape of the Lock, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and Jonathan 
Swift's Gulliver's Travels as containing offensive sexual 
connotations which were deemed "vulgar".

Academics from the English department have fiercely resisted the 
proposed culling of the syllabus and warn of other moves to curtail 
liberal and critical opinion in favour of Islamist thinking. 
"Ordinary, professional liberals feel that there is no space for us 
in our own town now," said a senior academic. "I feel increasingly 
that Lahore is polarised and the threshold of tolerance is falling."

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,994919,00.html

_____


#4.

The Times of India, July 12, 2003
Bakery was 37th riot acquittal
LEENA MISRA
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com:80/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=
=3D72067

_____


#5.

Washington Post (USA)
July 10, 2003; Page A12

Justice Elusive in India Violence
Muslim Says She Testified Falsely Because of Hindus' Threats

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOMBAY, July 9 -- Peering through a concrete trellis, Zahira Sheikh 
said, she watched a Hindu mob murder 14 relatives, neighbors and 
employees of her family's bakery during a night of anti-Muslim 
violence last year.

The 19-year-old became the star witness in one of the most 
high-profile trials to emerge from India's worst communal violence in 
a decade, but when the moment of truth arrived, she could not bring 
herself to speak it.

She testified -- falsely, she now says -- that she could not identify 
any of the attackers. The judge dismissed the charges against the 21 
accused, citing insufficient evidence.

The outcome highlighted what human rights activists say is the 
failure of Indian authorities to hold accountable those responsible 
for the killings, which sullied the country's reputation as a secular 
democracy and left a deep reservoir of anger and fear among India's 
140 million Muslims. Bloodshed in the state of Gujarat last year 
claimed the lives of between 1,000 and 2,000 people, most of them 
Muslims.

Now Sheikh, who went into hiding after her court appearance, is 
speaking out. At a news conference on Monday and in an interview at a 
hotel here this morning, she said she testified falsely after local 
Hindu politicians repeatedly threatened her family -- usually by 
calling her brother on his mobile phone -- and after concluding that 
prosecutors, who made no effort to meet with her before the trial, 
were not serious about gaining convictions.

"At this juncture, when I needed it most, there was no legal help, no 
moral help, and it was in that state of mind that I went to court 
that day," said Sheikh, a slender, strong-featured woman wearing a 
black robe and head scarf. "I could only see the faces of the people 
and the families of the people who had attacked our family."

"I was very, very scared," she recalled of her court appearance in 
May, when she contradicted her statements to police and human rights 
investigators in which she identified the attackers by name.

Like the central government, the state of Gujarat is dominated by 
Hindu nationalist politicians, some of whom have been accused of 
encouraging and even orchestrating the anti-Muslim violence, which 
began when a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu 
nationalists on Feb. 27, 2002, killing at least 58 people.

Though many incidents of retaliatory bloodletting were witnessed by 
scores if not hundreds of people, the state government has yet to 
secure a conviction of a single accused Hindu, according to human 
rights groups. Muslims accused of involvement in the train attack, 
meanwhile, have been charged under an anti-terrorism law that has not 
been applied to Hindus.

"You got the feeling the judges are terrified," said Teesta Setalvad 
of Citizens for Justice and Peace, a human rights organization that 
has relocated Sheikh, her mother and two brothers to Bombay while it 
seeks to have the case retried in another state. "It is not a natural 
situation that prevails in the state of Gujarat."

Sheikh said she decided to go public with her story because she was 
angered by false accusations that she had been bribed to change her 
testimony.

State officials deny they are trying to protect Hindus from 
prosecution, citing, among other things, a state-level judicial 
inquiry into allegations of official complicity in the violence.

=46ollowing the train attack last year, retaliatory violence in Gujarat 
state quickly spread, and on the night of March 1 it reached a mostly 
Hindu neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Vadodara, where 
Sheikh's family lived in a two-story house next door to their 
prosperous business, Best Bakery.

Around 8 p.m., she recalled today, a mob formed outside the bakery 
and tried to set it alight with bombs made from gasoline-filled 
plastic bags. Sheikh took refuge with other family members and 
neighbors on an upstairs terrace, but others -- including an uncle 
and an elder sister -- were trapped on the ground floor, where they 
were soon surrounded by attackers wielding swords and other crude 
weapons.

The besieged Muslims repeatedly called police, and an officer finally 
appeared around 9:30 p.m. But instead of coming to their aid, Sheikh 
recalled, "I heard him tell the mob, 'Whatever you have to do, finish 
it off at night, don't leave anything until morning.' "

Sheikh said she could clearly identify some of the attackers as they 
"set upon" her maternal uncle with an iron rod. The family had moved 
into the neighborhood six months before and Sheikh said she knew a 
number of the killers by name. "I never imagined they would attack 
me," she recalled. "The relations were quite cordial."

The killing went on all night, and when it was over, 14 people were 
dead, including Sheikh's sister, her uncle and four neighborhood 
children. Some of the victims had been burned to death. Three Hindu 
employees of the bakery had their stomachs slit open, Sheikh told 
human rights investigators.

That morning, the attackers finally got their hands on Sheikh, her 
mother and another sister, marching them into a nearby field. "Let's 
rape these women before we burn them," Sheikh recalled one of the men 
saying.

But the men finally ran off when they spotted police nearby. Bleeding 
from a head wound, Sheikh was taken to a hospital, where she 
identified seven of the attackers by name. Her brother, who had been 
beaten unconscious, subsequently corroborated her statement and added 
other names.

Sheikh repeated her story in numerous appearances before human rights 
panels and the news media. But several weeks before her trial 
appearance on May 17 of this year, she said, her brother began 
receiving threatening phone calls from two local politicians.

She said the men threatened to interfere with her family's efforts to 
sell the burned-out bakery and intimated that the family could be in 
danger if she and her brother did not change their stories. Her 
brother followed the advice, falsely telling the court on May 7 that 
he had not recognized any of the attackers because it was too dark, 
Sheikh said.

In interviews, both politicians denied threatening Sheikh or any 
other family members.

Sheikh said she was also influenced to change her story by the 
indifference of prosecutors who made no effort to contact her before 
the trial, even though she was the most important witness.

"What should I do?" she recalled thinking. "Should I stick to my 
testimony or should I save my family's lives by saying something 
different?"

In the end, she chose the latter. Neither the prosecutor nor the 
judge asked why she changed her account.

Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi contributed to this report.


=A9 2003 The Washington Post Company

_____


#6.

July 7, 2003

Statement released by the Citizens for Justice and Peace
at a packed press conference in Mumbai on July 7, 2003.

Zahira Habibullah Shaikh and the entire Habibullah family have 
approached the Citizens for Justice and Peace for legal aid to 
jointly ask for a re-trial in the BEST Bakery Massacre. In this 
petition to be filed jointly, the petitioners will also urge the 
higher Court to order the location of the re-trial outside Gujarat as 
a consistent atmosphere of threat pervades there under the current 
political dispensation. The additional sessions judge in Vadodara had 
about a week ago acquitted all the accused in the massacre who had 
been consistently named by key witness, Zahira Shaikh in her 
statements before the police, the NHRC and the Concerned Citizens 
Tribunal (Crimes Against Humanity, 2002).

Lack of moral and legal support through the court hearings, coupled 
with an atmosphere of direct threat and intimidation, had led her and 
family members to deny recognition of the accused sitting in court 
the day she was summoned for deposition - May 17, 2003. She and her 
family had been directly threatened that they would all be killed by 
the key accused and their mentors from the Hanuman Tekri area in 
Vadodara.

Substantive evidence was also not led in the course of the trial. 
Therefore, today, given the strength and support of Mumbai-based CJP 
they strongly wish to ask for a re-trial. The petition in the BEST 
bakery case asking for a re-trial is likely to be filed later this 
week.

The BEST Bakery carnage in which 14 persons were brutally massacred 
over a period of 12 hours on March 1, 2002, like 18 other brutal 
incidents in that period in Gujarat, epitomised the abject failure of 
the state administration and law and order machinery to protect the 
lives and properties of innocent citizens. Though the NHRC 
recommended over a year ago that such cases be handed over to the CBI 
for non-partisan investigation, and citizens approached the Supreme 
Court making this plea, the apex court is still hearing this matter.

Meanwhile, the various trials carry on within Gujarat with the legal 
and constitutional processes being subverted through inadequate legal 
aid from the state for victims, coupled with intimidation and threat 
by the accused. Petitions praying for compensation from the state 
government are still pending before the Gujarat High Court. We hope 
that the example of the BEST Bakery trial brings alive the issue of 
subverted constitutional norms and delayed justice that is the lived 
reality in the state of Gujarat today, to other democratic 
institutions in the country.


Secretary
Citizens for Justice and Peace

_____


#7.

Rediff.com (India)
July 09, 2003

How to lose the war on terror
Dilip D'Souza

Nothing more accurately sums up the state of justice in India than 
the recent acquittal of 21 accused in the Best Bakery case. This one 
had it all: a horrible crime; political lenses through which the 
crime is viewed from the moment it happens; an administration 
uninterested in punishing the guilty, or anyone; police investigation 
characterised by its indifferent shoddiness; witnesses intimidated or 
tempted to become that quaint court term, 'hostile'; a court left 
with no choice but to acquit.
Result for the families of 14 murdered Indians: utter injustice.

Sure, we have editorial writers and columnists wringing their hands 
over this travesty. We have the National Human Rights Commission and 
ordinary citizens condemning it. But if it's ordinary natural justice 
you're searching for in this case -- the kind that says you cannot 
take the life of another human being, and if you do, you will be 
punished -- you need search no more. Because justice like that is 
dead.
I cannot imagine how any Indian can look at this and not be alarmed, 
outraged, ashamed and nauseated. Yet what is truly astonishing -- 
though by now, with years of practice, it should not be -- is the 
number of people who will rise up to explain away this enormous 
Indian bloodstain, this enormous crime against us all.
You know I refer to the collapse of the case: much the greater crime 
than the slaughter at the bakery in March 2002.
Indeed, I can already hear long fingernails clicking at keyboards as 
some among my readers race to tell me that those murdered were only 
'taught a lesson.' Or that this was only 'retaliation' against 
Muslims for the equally gruesome murders of Hindus at Godhra. Or that 
I -- or Muslims, or pseudo-secularists, or liberals, or really, 
anyone who finds this acquittal shameful -- haven't condemned Godhra 
'enough.' Or we haven't condemned the tragic situation of Kashmiri 
Pandits 'enough.' Or what about conversions in the Northeast? Or 
'please put all your efforts and investiage [sic] from where did you 
get this D'Souza name?' (verbatim, I swear). Or what about all that 
cross-border terrorism by Islamic jihadis?
All this to sweep away the disquieting fact that 14 horrible murders 
have not been and never will be punished. Not that the 
rationalisations work, not even in the minds that dream them up. 
Because even those minds know this simple truth: when innocent 
Indians are murdered, the murderers must face the law.
Or we have no law.
On the evening of March 1, 2002, a few hundred people, enraged by 
Godhra, surrounded Best Bakery on the outskirts of Baroda. Zaheera 
Sheikh, the 19-year-old daughter of the late owner of the bakery -- 
he had died of natural causes in the third week of February -- 
described to various inquiries and to the police what happened. The 
mob, she said, had 'swords, bottles, stones, tins of petrol and 
kerosene.' To start, they looted the bakery. Then they torched a room 
on the first floor where Zaheera's sister and an uncle were trapped. 
Through the night, others -- members of her family, bakery employees 
-- were burned as well; four-year-old cousins who lived next door 
were first hacked to pieces and then burned. In all, Zaheera lost 
nine family members that night.

Why did Zaheera Sheikh have to lie?

Reopen Best Bakery case, says witness

A terrorised Zaheera and some relatives took refuge on the terrace of 
the bakery. The mob spent the night abusing them and trying to get at 
them. Ironically, they couldn't use a ladder to get to the terrace 
because 'the walls were too hot.' In the morning, they killed three 
of the bakery's workers. More irony, because all three were Hindus.
All this, in 'retaliation' for the crime at Godhra two days earlier: 
a crime nobody at Best Bakery had any connection with. A crime which, 
speaking of the death of justice, is itself yet to see satisfactory 
punishment of its perpetrators. (Though note this significant 
difference between the two: the people who torched 60 in Godhra have 
been charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The people who 
torched 14 at Best Bakery did not have that Act applied to them. Why, 
I leave to your guesswork, which I'm sure is as good as mine).
Zaheera's statement to the police was taken as a FIR in the case. One 
Lal Mohammed, owner of a timber shop in front of the bakery that the 
mob also burned down, identified 21 people who were accused and 
brought to trial. Zaheera's initial statements named some of the same 
21 too. The police had 73 witnesses, including Zaheera, who had made 
statements to the police and were to give evidence in the trial.
Between then and today, 39 of those witnesses, including Zaheera, 
'turned hostile.' That is, they recanted their statements. Some said 
they had not seen the accused. Others said the police had made them 
sign on blank sheets of paper, which were later filled with some 
police concoction. Lal Mohammed's hostility was spectacular. He said 
the 21 he had named were falsely arrested, that they were not part of 
the mob of March 1st. He even said that some of the 21 actually 
protected him and his family that night and helped him flee the area.
Zaheera turned hostile in May. The Asian Age (June 29) reports that 
when it happened, she was accompanied to the court by the local BJP 
MLA, Madhu Srivastava. Srivastava had earlier 'promised that 
witnesses would turn hostile in court.' He was prescient: they did. 
Why, I leave to your guesswork, which I'm still sure is as good as 
mine.
None of this should be even slightly unfamiliar. Witnesses in cases 
like this one are notoriously vulnerable to pressures, whether 
intimidatory or monetary. In cases like this one, charged as they are 
with fierce political passions, turning hostile is nearly an Indian 
tradition.
Yes, tradition. Zaheera's turnabout should remind you of Satnami Bai 
and Darshan Kaur, who filed a case against H K L Bhagat for leading 
the murder of their husbands during the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in 
Delhi. Even though Satnami Bai explicitly identified Bhagat as the 
man at the head of the mob that attacked her house and burned her 
husband alive, she later turned hostile. Suddenly, she could not 
identify Bhagat any more. Darshan Kaur had the possible explanation 
for Satnami Bai's behaviour: 'I and my children are still getting 
threats,' she told the court.
So it was with Best Bakery. The judge was left with no option but to 
acquit. Faced with witness hostility, with what he called 'weak' 
investigation by the police, with delays by the police that 'gave 
reason to believe that the FIR had been concocted,' Justice H U 
Mahida decided that 'as sufficient evidence could not be found, it is 
not safe to convict the accused' (The Times of India, June 28).
If Zaheera reminds you of Satnami Bai, Justice Mahida's comments 
might remind you of Justice G P Thareja, who acquitted Santosh Kumar 
Singh in December 1999. Santosh, son of an inspector general of 
police, was accused of the 1996 rape and murder of Priyadarshini 
Mattoo in New Delhi. During his trial, Justice Thareja observed that 
the prosecution had made a series of seemingly deliberate attempts to 
weaken its own case: hiding some evidence, fabricating other 
evidence, not 'following official procedure' and so on. In the face 
of this subversion, Justice Thareja was left with no option: 'Though 
I know [Santosh] is the man who committed the crime,' he wrote, 'I 
acquit him, giving him the benefit of the doubt.'
Justice Mahida, I feel sure, knows today what Justice Thareja meant.
At the end of April 2002, the Indian ministry of external affairs web 
site carried an 'Update on the Situation in Gujarat.' Under the 
heading 'The recent events in Gujarat: some factual points' were 
these lines:
'It is for the police and state machinery to proceed against those 
who have indulged in the heinous acts at Godhra. In no way does the 
Government condone mobs on the street taking recourse to revenge as a 
form of justice.'
Nowhere in these lines, or indeed in the whole site, was there a 
mention of Best Bakery, or indeed of any killing in Gujarat apart 
from Godhra and in police firing. Not a mention. But let that pass. 
Note at least the determination to 'proceed against' the Godhra 
criminals, even if that 'proceeding' still ambles along over a year 
later. Note at least the distaste for 'revenge as a form of justice,' 
the pretext for the Best Bakery crime.
Stand that determination and distaste up against what happened to the 
Best Bakery trial.
Delhi 1984, the Mattoo murder, Godhra, and now Best Bakery. Throw in 
the 1992-93 riots and blasts in Bombay, among others. All monuments 
to a striking reluctance to apply our own Indian laws to the 
terrorists who torch them as they torch their victims. All this from 
a country that seeks the sympathy of the world in its 'war' against 
terror.
We choose not to punish the terrorists in our midst. Fine, so let's 
be clear: we will never win this 'war' against terror.


_____


#8.

Himal Magazine (Nepal)
July 2003

Same-sex South Asia

M. V. Ramana

June was a watershed month for homo-sexual rights in the West. On 10 June, a
court in the province of Ontario, Canada, declared same-sex marriages legal.
Since the federal government has not appealed the decision, Canada in effect
has become the third country in the world, after Belgium and the
Netherlands, to legalise same-sex marriages, and hundreds of same-sex
Canadian cou-ples have already taken advantage of the ruling. Two weeks
later, on 26 June, the US supreme court struck down laws banning sodomy,
which are still on the books in 13 states, ruling that the state cannot make
"private sexual conduct a crime". And four days after that, the British
govern-ment made public a plan to give lesbian and gay couples the same
rights as their married hetero-sexual counterparts.

The homosexual community in South Asia, especially in India, has been making
news as well. On 29 June, the city of Calcutta hosted the first-ever gay
pride march in the Subcontinent. Though small in the number of participants,
it was an important start, and there are other indications that the
community is making its presence felt. The Indian Council of Medical
Research is debating the adoption of guidelines that would allow lesbians
and single mothers to use reproductive technology to conceive babies. The
BBC reports that The Boyfriend, a recently-published Indian novel dealing
with love between an openly gay man and a young boy who feels unable to
pursue his homosexual instincts, "has raised hopes within the country's
largely invisible gay community of the chances of coming out of the closet".
And in Nepal in May, the Blue Diamond Society, an NGO working to promote
homosexual rights, held a beauty pageant for homosexuals, lesbians and
bisexuals in Kathmandu's National Theatre.

These developments notwithstanding, homosexuals in South Asia are a rather
persecuted lot. Even in the big cities, where conditions have improved over
the last couple of decades, and where there is now some limited semblance of
social life for members of the community, especially for those who are
wealthy and have access to clubs and the Internet =96 there are significant
hurdles in the path. Homosexuals are still subject to many forms of
discrimination, in particular housing and employment. In Bombay, "people
have been kicked out after their sexuality was revealed", says a gay
activist who set up an Internet service called GHAR (Gay Housing Assistance
Resource).

If gay men have a difficult time, the strongly patriarchal nature of South
Asian societies ensures even worse treatment for lesbians. The oppression
and discri-mination they face has been rationalised on the basis of claims
about gender, culture, tradition, values and morals. One note-worthy recent
instance of anti-lesbian activity was the Shiv Sena's campaign to stop
screenings of the 1999 film Fire, a work centred on a lesbian relationship,
combined with virulent attacks against its director Deepa Mehta and the
actors who played its protagonists, Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das.

As in the case of Fire, the growth of religious extremism and militant
move-ments has negatively impacted the status of gay men and lesbians.
Religious national-ists have often opposed public discussion and artistic
displays of or about the com-munity. The self-appointed bearers of their own
narrow conceptions of what consti-tutes morality, these movements have tried
to deny any historical basis to same-sex love in South Asia. (Those who
mistakenly believe that our region has no historical tradition of homosexual
love should read Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and
History, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai.) The Jamaat-e-Islami even
recommends capital punishment for those convicted of same-sex romantic
involvement.

Conditions in rural areas are parti-cularly difficult. The relative
anonymity provided by cities and the social spaces - clubs, parks and so
on - are not available in rural areas. Here again class, caste and gender
make a difference. Gay men among the rural elite, such as those from
landlord families, often use their social positions to engage in forcible
sex with poorer or lower caste males. Such instances often lead even
progressive groups to condemn homo-sexuality. One should note, however, that
such acts are instances of violent exploit-ation based on social and
economic power tantamount to rape =96 and are condemnable for that reason.
They do not offer any reason to oppose homosexuality per se.

What makes all these forms of social discrimination particularly odious is
that gay men and lesbians lack legal protection in all South Asian
countries. For example, after independence India adopted the British penal
code dating to the 19th century, and few changes have occurred in the
intervening years. Section 377 of the code relates to homosexuality:
"Whoever volun-tarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature
with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprison-ment for
life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend
to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine". The situation in Pakistan
is much worse. Apart from civil law derived from the British penal code,
there is also a religious law calling for up to 100 lashes or death by
stoning. In Sri Lanka, sex between men is punishable by 12 years in jail,
while the existence of lesbianism is not even acknow-ledged in the penal
code. Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal all have similarly repressive laws on
homosexuality.

These laws are not implemented often; ie, there are not many instances of
homo-sexuals actually being imprisoned for their sexual preferences. But
they are frequently used to harass, blackmail and extort bribes. And because
same-sex love is legally unacceptable, many gay men and lesbians marry
members of the opposite sex =96 with consequent deception, frustration and
misery for all concerned.

Thus, the laws, which should be meant to protect people rather than to
discriminate against them, especially those regarding sexuality, must
change. The scrapping of South Asia's anti-homosexuality laws is important =
=96
often the law must change before social mores do. Legal protection is
prob-ably the only way that South Asia's homo-sexual community can be
guaranteed social rights, rights against exploitation and, importantly,
health rights.


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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