SACW | 17 Oct. 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE   |  17 October,  2003

Announcements:
a)  The South Asia Citizens Web web site is down, 
users are invited to use Google cache till 
further notice.
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via:
http://www.proxify.com
http://www.multiproxy.org/multiproxy.htm  [a more detailed list is given below]

+++++

[1] Where are the women in the Sri Lankan peace? (Sarala Emmanuel)
[2] Fears as Nepalese disappear (Owen Bowcott)
[3] India, Pakistan walk a fine nuclear line  (Praful Bidwai)
[4] Notion of Nation | Subtext of Doctored Textbooks (Anuradha M Chenoy)
[5] India under threat of riots: Khakhi Short and 
Saffron Flags Making Mayhem in Ayodhya
- Ayodhya tense: Kar sevaks defy security cordon
- VP Singh and Gujral urge Vajpayee to rise above party line
- District admn bans VHP's Sankalp Sabha
-  VHP: Tents Down in Ayodhya (Raghuvansmani)
- ...and the dismal crawl backward (edit, Hindustan times)
+ Interview with UP Police chief: 'Where there's 
a will, there's a way  Vidyadhar (2002)
[6] Book Release: The Gujarat Carnage" edited by 
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer (18 Oct, Bombay)
[7] A Nation Without Women (Matrubhoomi) screening at London Film Festival

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

[1.]

Himal, October 2003
PERSPECTIVE
Where are the women in the Sri Lankan peace?

If and when peace comes to Sri Lanka, the new 
structures of political relations must be 
designed to preserve and advance the gains made 
by women in the last two decades.

by Sarala Emmanuel

The two parties to the separatist conflict in Sri 
Lankan-the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 
(LTTE) and the federal government-have been 
negotiating the political future of the country 
since a ceasefire agreement was signed by both 
parties on 22 February 2002. This adds a new 
dimension to the work of the women's movements in 
Sri Lanka. Though these movements have been 
active in confronting the conflict over the last 
two decades, the transition to a potential 
military and political peace poses new dilemmas 
in framing women's concerns. The Sub-Committee on 
Gender Issues that has been instituted within the 
negotiating mechanism is only one such forum for 
articulating and placing these concerns within 
the framework of constitutional and political 
rights. In addition to this, they will have to 
consider other important issues that lie outside 
this framework of rights which will inevitably 
surface in the post-conflict period.

In countries around the world that have been 
stricken by protracted conflict, women have been 
actively involved in campaigns for peace. In 
Northern Ireland, feminist writers have 
documented the efforts of women's groups from 
both sides to organise on working class lines, 
while the 'men' were negotiating a 'settlement'. 
Similarly, one of most striking peace campaigns, 
the "Women in Black", is active in the 
Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as in the 
former Yugoslavia. In Peru, women's organisations 
persistently lobbied the state to end the war and 
establish democratic processes. They used the 
media and other networks to promote peace, and 
were also directly involved in humanitarian work. 
In South Africa, women campaigned actively 
against measures that restricted their mobility 
in addition to struggling against the apartheid 
regime.

Sri Lankan women, too, have been campaigning for 
peace since the early stages of the conflict. 
Women's activism in Sri Lankan has involved 
multiple organisa-tions representing different 
agendas and identities, which have sometimes come 
together strategically to lobby for certain 
common causes. Kumudini Samuel, the human rights 
activist and a co-ordinator of the Women and 
Media Collective in Colombo, has documented in 
detail the activities of the Mother's Front of 
the early 1980s, (which campaigned for peace and 
demanded the return of their sons who had 
disappeared in the North), and of the 
left-oriented Women's Action Committee, formed in 
1982, which took up issues such as the Prevention 
of Terrorism Act (1979), the release of women 
political prisoners and the rape of women in the 
North and East. Since those early efforts, with 
the repeated failure of peace negotiations, the 
demand for peace by women's groups has only grown 
stronger, and their activism over the past two 
decades has varied from lobbying for legal reform 
to following up individual cases of wartime 
violence against women. Mothers in the North have 
come together to demand the return of their 
'disappeared' sons and mothers of the soldiers in 
the Sri Lankan military have actively sought 
information about their sons missing in action. 
Groups have also been working on the special 
humanitarian needs of women living in the 
conflict areas. These groups have developed links 
across ethnic communities and expressed and 
demonstrated solidarity with each other's 
demands. In many ways, women have been 
negotiating peace for years in Sri Lanka, even 
during the worst periods of violence.
In its own perverse way, conflict opens up the 
scope for greater women's role in the society and 
economy

Despite this history of activism, women have been 
excluded from the official peace process. Since 
the 1980s there have been six attempts to resolve 
the North-East conflict through negotiations. In 
1984 there was the All Party Conference in 
Colombo. This was followed by the talks held in 
Thimpu in 1985. In 1987 the Indo-Lanka Peace 
Accord was signed on the initiative of the then 
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In 1989-90 
talks were held between the President, Ranasinghe 
Premadasa and the LTTE, which resulted in the 
expulsion of the Indian Peace Keeping Force. The 
last round of negotiations was initiated by the 
current President Chandrika Kumaranatunge in 
1994. After a gap of eight years the sixth 
attempt was launched by Prime Minister Ranil 
Wickramasinghe in February 2002. In all these 
attempts, women have been excluded from any key 
negotiating role. (The only woman who has been 
present at every round of the current peace 
negotiations has been Adele Balasingham, the wife 
of the former chief LTTE negotiator. However, she 
has not claimed to represent a women's agenda for 
the LTTE at the peace table.) Only the parties 
responsible for war and its accompanying 
atrocities are negotiating the terms of the 
peace, while those who have been lobbying for 
peace and campaigning against human rights 
violations over the past two decades find 
themselves marginalised in the formal process.

This is of a piece with historical trends across 
the world, of course. In more recent years, 
however, there have been encouraging examples of 
women succeeding in securing a place in formal 
negotiations. In Liberia, women forcibly intruded 
into the all-male negotiations in Accra in 1994. 
The six women who stormed the Accra conference 
won official observer status by the second day of 
talks, and later succeeded in having a woman 
included in the five-member Council of State. 
Subsequently, this council was headed by a woman, 
Ruth Sando Perry, the first African woman head of 
state, as part of the revised Abuja Peace Accord 
of August 1996. Women have also used 
international agencies such as UNIFEM to 
facilitate their participation in formal peace 
processes, as in Burundi. In the case of Northern 
Ireland in the 1990s, women's groups came 
together to form the Northern Ireland Women's 
Coalition, a political party which participated 
in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 
and which was allocated representation in the 
Northern Ireland Assembly. Perhaps the most 
significant example of women's involvement in 
formal negotiation processes in a "Southern" 
conflict comes from South Africa. Women were 
party to the negotiations and three formal bodies 
were put in place to represent women's 
concerns-the Office on the Status of Women in the 
Presidency, a Joint Monitoring Committee in the 
Parliament, and an independent Committee on 
Gender Equality.

Muted presence: Adele with Anton Balasingham
Only the parties responsible for war and its 
accompanying atrocities are negotiating the terms 
of peace

The sub-committee
Though in the current Sri Lankan process women 
have been excluded from any negotiating role, one 
development of significance was the establishment 
of the Sub-Committee on Gender Issues (SCGI) 
during the fourth round of talks between the 
government and the LTTE in Thailand in January 
2003. At the third round in December 2002 in 
Oslo, both the LTTE and Sri Lanka government 
agreed in principle to establish a women's 
committee to explore the effective inclusion of 
gender concerns in the peace process. During in 
the fourth round, the representatives to the 
committee were agreed upon
and it was officially constituted. The 
Sub-Committee is composed of five members 
nominated by the government of Sri Lanka and five 
by the LTTE. However, the SCGI has no mandatory 
power and its role is to provide advice to the 
main negotiators. Curiously, it was given few 
formal instructions from the negotiating table. 
It is also the only sub-committee associated with 
the negotiating mechanism to be given the freedom 
to formulate its own terms of reference. This 
unusual autonomy was also reflected in the choice 
of the government nominees, who are not members 
of either the Sri Lankan administration or of any 
political party. Their Tamil counterparts, 
however, are all members of the LTTE, and it is 
not yet clear what degree of autonomy they enjoy. 
Significantly, SCGI members have decided to work 
as a unified body, lobbying unanimously with 
other entities in the negotiating mechanism to 
include gender concerns.

The apparent independence of the SCGI could be 
seen as providing valuable freedom for the women 
in the committee to formulate their agendas. 
However, as the women nominated by the government 
have noted, this has also meant a very limited 
interaction with the state and the formal 
negotiation process. There are as yet, no formal 
mechanisms for the SCGI briefing the negotiating 
parties about its concerns, and the real 
influence that the Sub-Committee has on the 
overall peace process is questionable.

It is also important to look at the issue of 
ethnic representation in the SCGI as, among other 
things, it goes to the core of the conflict in 
the island. Among the five government nominees, 
three women are publicly perceived to be 
ethnically Sinhala and two to be Muslim. (It is 
another matter that these women may not 
necessarily fit into such neatly simplified 
categories, but this is how they have been 
defined in the public perception.) The LTTE 
nominees are all recognised as being Tamil women. 
The fact that the Tamil representative is 
publicly perceived to be exclusively from within 
the LTTE ranks is extremely significant, and has 
led to much debate within the women's groups in 
Sri Lanka. Many Tamil women who have been working 
for women's rights in the different women's 
movements for many years were irked that the LTTE 
cadres had taken on the role of sole 
representative of Tamil women, whilst the 
government nominees were all "non-Tamil". 
According to government sources, the LTTE had 
objected to all the Tamil women nominated by the 
government, which was what led the government to 
nominate alternative "non-Tamil" women. 
Responding to this composition, some women were 
of the view that the government nominees should 
refuse to serve on the Sub-Committee to protest 
against the exclusion of non-LTTE Tamil women. 
They argued that there are non-LTTE Tamil women's 
groups which understood the needs of the 
different civilian communities, as a result of 
decades of experience in campaigning for rights 
and peace among civilian populations. A strong 
lobby, however, felt that the SCGI could be a 
voice that carried the demands of the different 
women's groups (especially Tamil women's groups) 
to the negotiating table, and towards this 
objective it was justified to make a strategic 
compromise on the question of representation. 
After all, the Sub-Committee was the only access 
that women had to the peace process so far. 
Proponents of this view felt that the five 
government nominees should be accessible and 
transparent to all other groups, and should have 
a participatory open system of discussing issues 
to be addressed by the larger sub committee of 
10, as well as feeding back details of the sub 
committee's discussions to this larger plural 
constituency.
"Post-conflict history"

In the post-conflict situation in Sri Lanka, how 
will the conflict of the last two decades be 
represented in historical accounts? If there is 
one victor, usually the history of the conflict 
is written by victor. In the Sri Lankan case, 
both parties play a somewhat equal role in the 
negotiation process. If the negotiations 
establish two separate units of governance, will 
there be two separate accounts of history written 
by the two key parties? Currently, in areas 
controlled by the LTTE, the historical accounts 
of the conflict have been shaped by their 
ideology. LTTE cadres have been exalted and 
elevated to martyrs to be commemorated. Schools 
have photographs of the LTTE leader Velupillai 
Prabhakaran in their classrooms, accompanied by a 
map of Tamil Eelam. There are also accounts that 
documents the history of the 'cause' of the 
liberators and narrations of the conflict, have 
been given to many schools by the LTTE in the 
East. In similar fashion, state supplied 
textbooks have pointedly omitted any account of 
the current North-East conflict. And, the 
'official' history of Sri Lanka in the 
government-issued textbooks endorses the idea of 
the glorious past of the Sinhala-Buddhist 
civilisations, leaving out historical accounts of 
the Tamil, Muslim and Burgher communities.

How will representations of history be recorded 
in a post-conflict situation? And how will women 
be represented in the historical accounts of the 
past two decades? Will the LTTE only record women 
martyrs for their cause? Will women's activism 
and peace movements be forgotten? Will women's 
struggles against and triumphs over the brutal 
realities of conflict be suppressed? Will the 
human rights violations committed during the 
conflict and during the peace process be erased 
from the records? It will be interesting to see 
what role bodies such as the Sub Committee on 
Gender Issues have in representing women's 
histories and personal accounts of the conflict 
in its aftermath.

Some critics began to feel that the government 
nominees, who are predominantly from women's 
rights and human rights backgrounds, were 
compromising the strategic interests of the 
women's movement as a whole by being co-opted by 
the two parties to the conflict. This would 
undermine protests against issues such as child 
recruitment and the intimidation of civil society 
in the North and East by the LTTE. However, as 
one government nominee explained in personal 
communication with this writer, they have to 
tread carefully and negotiate sensitively and 
innovatively with the other members of the 
Sub-Committee on how such issues can be addressed 
in the future.

The class dimension of the body has also been 
questioned. As one woman pointed out, at a 
meeting with the government nominees, the latter 
are predominantly Colombo-based, middle class 
women and there was no representation of women 
who have been living and working through the 
conflict. She noted that, at least, the LTTE 
nominees were representative of the different 
regions within the North and the East of the 
island.

The strategic and the practical
It is important for the future of women's 
activism in Sri Lanka to examine the nature of 
the compromises entailed by participation in the 
SCGI and what benefits will accrue from it. Is it 
more important to stick to the principles of 
human rights, women's rights, representation and 
participation, and keep influencing the peace 
process from the margins, voicing anger and 
criticism against the flaws of the peace process? 
Or is it more important to try and move into the 
small spaces emerging within the peace process 
even if they are flawed and circumscribed, to try 
to expand them? A third option would be to evolve 
innovative strategies and use as many mechanisms 
as possible, both formal and non-formal.

Even as these existential questions of purpose 
and method remain pending, there are other more 
immediate matters to be resolved. An important 
challenge for the women in the SCGI is to put 
forward a common agenda that addresses the 
concerns of all the members. As the feminist 
scholar Maxine Molyneaux, speaking in the context 
of the movement in Nicaragua and the problems of 
mobilising women, points out, in forging common 
platforms, tensions quickly emerge between the 
"strategic gender interests" and the "practical 
gender interests". Strategic interests are those 
concerned with underlying structural inequities, 
while practical interests are oriented towards 
more immediate material conditions. As is evident 
from the debates and disputes surrounding the 
SCGI, women's movements are never homogeneous. 
Class, ethnic, religious, caste and political 
factors influence the work of the different 
women's groups. The issues that are most commonly 
experienced and real to most women across these 
divides are the practical gender interests, such 
as basic needs and economic needs. And these 
interests are the ones on which it is easier for 
different women's groups to unite. Accordingly, 
the SCGI has, to begin with, put forward very 
practical demands upon which both major groups 
within the committee could agree.

As put out at a meeting between the government 
nominees and women's groups following the first 
and second sittings of the Sub-Committee, the 
concerns of priority for the women from the LTTE 
are primarily practical gender interests that 
stem from the realities of women who have 
experienced conflict at close quarters for over 
20 years. These primarily involved issues of 
relief, health, infrastructure and 
rehabilitation. However, the LTTE nominees have 
also raised 'structural' issues that fall into 
Molyneaux's category of "strategic gender 
interests", such as equal representation of women 
in decision-making processes and violence against 
women. The government nominees have been guided 
by documents such as the Women's Manifesto 2001 
and the Memorandum to the Government the LTTE and 
the Norwegian Facilitators from Women's 
Organisations of Sri Lanka, which present a 
similar combination of practical and strategic 
gender interests, but are often couched in the 
language of human rights. The question remains of 
how far LTTE members and the women's rights 
activists nominated by the government can agree 
to raise fundamental structural issues (or 
strategic gender interests) such as the 
subordinate power structures in the communities, 
violence against women by both the parties to the 
conflict, issues of justice and accountability, 
freedom of speech and political activism of 
women. How the tension between these two types of 
gender interests will play out remains to be seen.

The recent changes in the peace process are also 
significant for the Sub-Committee. The earlier 
mechanisms for rehabilitation and governance 
established by the LTTE and the government have 
been effectively dissolved. The two parties are 
negotiating new proposals for an interim 
administration to replace these. It is still 
unclear where the SCGI currently stands in 
relation to these new proposals and what role it 
will have with regard to a future interim 
administration.

Given this complex background and uncertain 
future, it is crucial that civil society and 
women's groups actively lobby with the formal 
systems. What the conflict resolution experts 
calls 'track-two activism', needs to play a more 
prominent role in the peace process. It was when 
international lobbies demanded some form of 
involvement of women in the peace process, that 
the two parties hastily put together the SCGI. 
But, the Sub-Committee is just one mechanism and 
it only provides a narrow entry into the formal 
peace process. Non-formal organisations and 
groups must innovatively include themselves at 
the different levels of the peace process, since 
there are many post-conflict reconstruction 
concerns that require the participation of the 
people of the North and East.

After the war
Very often issues of very great significance for 
the post-conflict situation are ignored in the 
process of building peace and unless these are 
addressed with the necessary urgency, the basis 
for a lasting peace will be undermined. Among the 
realities that must be considered is the 
empowerment of women that occurred during the 
conflict-such as taking on public roles within 
the community or becoming the sole breadwinner of 
the home. In the post-conflict phase, there 
should not be a sliding back. After the Second 
World War, women were compelled to leave their 
employment and to renounce the new status they 
had acquired in society during the war. Most went 
back to being housewives. Even when 
reconstruction and rebuilding of 
conflict-affected communities is framed within a 
rights-based framework, these aspects are still 
thought of within a patriarchal ideology due to 
the absence of women with the requisite 
consciousness in key decision-making positions. 
Even though women have taken on key roles during 
conflict, their contributions are seen to 
'accidental', 'unusual' or 'anomalous' and in 
most cases when peace is negotiated and 
implemented, it is assumed that women would go 
back to their previous subordinate roles.
Among the realities that must be considered is 
the empowerment of women that occurred during the 
conflict. In the post-conflict phase, there 
should be no sliding back

The failure to validate women's new roles has 
much to do with how women are represented as 
victims. Sepali Kottegoda of the Women and Media 
Collective discusses, in her work Female Headed 
Households in Situations of Armed Conflict, how 
the state categorises women who head their own 
families as 'vulnerable women' or 'destitute 
women' or 'unsupported women', not giving 
recognition to their own agency or capacity in 
their new roles. Therefore, it is crucial that 
there are women within influential bodies to give 
a gender sensitive perspective to designing 
post-conflict policies, so that hard-earned 
advances made by women made during the past two 
decades are not lost. Noted South African author, 
Antjie Krog emphasises this point with regard to 
the post-apartheid experience. She notes that the 
African National Congress (ANC) introduced a 
quota system for women to all its decision-making 
bodies as part of the new South Africa, giving 
recognition to the decades of women's political 
activism against the apartheid regime. It is 
because of this policy, says Krog, that South 
Africa is one of the countries with relatively 
high levels of women's representation in 
parliament. In its own perverse way, conflict 
opens up the scope for a greater women's role in 
the society and economy. It will be unfortunate, 
if the peace process reverses this trend in the 
pursuit of a return to normalcy.

Reconciliation
Another concept popular in liberal civil society 
discussions at the present time is that of 
'reconciliation'. Some countries where 
negotiations have taken place only between the 
warring parties have opted for a policy of 
forgive and forget, as in the case of El Salvador 
and Nigeria. Scholars such as Ana Ibanez and 
Murray Last, who have analysed these situations, 
argue that this policy has not worked as 
intended. The Nigerian civil conflict was 
resolved over three decades ago by 'forgetting' 
the crimes committed by all the sides. As Last 
observes, "There was no public judgement on what 
had been suffered, no reparations, no apology; 
almost no one was held to be accountable for what 
they had done".
The peace process is largely inaccessible to 
civil society actors and lacks transparency or 
people's participation

Last notes that the subjects of 'hurt' and 
'injustice' were pushed to the 'private' domain, 
where the process of memory and recovering went 
on in churches, town unions and family networks. 
Similarly, in El Salvador, not only was 
'forgetting' imposed on people, there was also a 
condoning of the violence that had taken place. 
However, as Ibanez notes, even after many years 
the memories never died in people's minds. It is, 
on the other hand, heartening that in Peru, after 
many years, there has finally been an 
acknowledgement of the violence and killings that 
took place in the 1980s, due to the conflict 
between the state and the Maoist group, Sendero 
Luminoso. The president of Peru accepted the 
report of the Truth Commission, which had worked 
for two years documenting the disappearances of 
over 60,000 people and other human rights 
violations, and made a public pronouncement that 
the perpetrators would be prosecuted.

It is still not clear what direction the Sri 
Lankan peace process will take-whether like 
Nigeria and El Salvador, the parties to the 
conflict will decide not to address human rights 
violations or whether like Peru, they will be 
compelled to admit their accountability to 
victims.

Within Sri Lankan civil society, the debates 
around reconciliation have both applauded and 
criticised the South African experience. Peace 
movements, religious movements, human rights 
activists and psychosocial workers have all been 
examining the need for processes of 
reconciliation. For women activists, it is 
important to maintain a feminist perspective 
within these discussions. The South African 
experience itself was clearly designed in such a 
way that meant many women were unable to approach 
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to 
narrate their own experiences of gender-related 
violence. Many of the women who had suffered such 
violence were inducted into important government 
positions or were prominent businesswomen. Antjie 
Krog notes that they had strong public roles and 
could not talk about their very private 
experiences of sexual violence during the 
apartheid within the framework of the TRC. 
According to Sheila Meintjes, the South Africa 
Commissioner of the Commission on Gender 
Equality, who spoke at the conference on Women, 
Peace Building and Constitution Making in Colombo 
in 2002, out of 21,000 cases presented to the 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission only a tiny 
fraction were by women with specific accounts of 
gender-related violence. Clearly, specific 
attention needs to be given to developing 
sensitive and supportive processes for hearing 
women's experiences, so that there can be a 
systematic acknowledgment of these violations as 
well.

It is not only important to push the two parties 
to recognise and put into place a system of 
accountability and justice, it is also vital that 
these mechanisms are framed within a gendered 
perspective. Therefore, it will be important for 
Sri Lanka's women's groups to intervene in the 
design of processes for reconciliation and/or 
justice in order to enable women's specific 
experiences to be addressed. Women's 
understandings of issues of justice, suffering 
and what they want in terms of setting to rest 
past violations, have to be further explored and 
brought into these debates.

The remains of the war
There is evidence that in post-conflict 
situations, violence within communities may 
actually increase compared to earlier levels. 
This has been the experience in Bosnia as well as 
in South Africa. This violence also takes on a 
specifically 'gendered' dimension, for example in 
the rise of domestic violence or sexual assaults 
(as in the case of South Africa). In the Sri 
Lankan print media, there are increasing links 
made between violent crime and army deserters. It 
is important to recognise the link between 
decommissioning when it takes place and the 
incidences of violence. Then there are other 
questions: If an interim administration in the 
North and East were to be solely controlled by 
the LTTE, will there be any decommissioning on 
their part? Will the systematic assassination of 
other Tamil political figures by the LTTE 
continue? Given the increasing level of violence 
in politics, what space will there be for women 
to enter the political arena in the North and 
East or the rest of the island?
Women have been building
peace during conflict and
continue to do so as part of their daily work, 
whilst remaining largely independent of petty 
political manoeuvrings

The complexities involved in decommissioning 
women militants or soldiers become apparent when 
one examines the current process being elaborated 
for child soldiers in Sri Lanka. The current 
debates have clearly treated child soldiers only 
as 'victims' and have been pushing for the 
(temporary) institutionalisation of these 
children within transitional centres. It appears 
that this process may completely negate their 
experiences of 'agency' and power within the 
movement, although these may be central to their 
sense of competence and self. There is also a 
potentially devastating stigma that may be 
attached to them in terms of both their temporary 
institutionalisation and subsequent 
re-integration back into society.
It is possible that a similar disempowering

process may be in store for women militants. Ana 
Ibanez, describing the experiences of women 
guerrillas in El Salvador, states that for most 
women, being decommissioned was a very difficult 
process. Most of the men and women in the 
movement felt most competent in warfare. They 
were also used to the regimentation of camp life. 
Decommissioning meant that they were separated 
from their fellow cadres. Reunion with their 
families was very difficult. The skills of 
warfare (such as intelligence work or use of 
weapons) which had been glorified during the 
conflict were looked down upon once these women 
re-entered civilian life. Women combatants in Sri 
Lanka may face similar challenges of devaluation 
of competence and the renegotiation of entirely 
new roles in a society from which they had been 
relatively isolated.

Although the LTTE's female cadres seem to look 
forward to a strong role for women in future 
political processes, it is yet to be seen whether 
they, through the Sub Committee on Gender Issues 
or other fora, will be able to significantly 
influences the policies governing decommissioning 
of women cadres. Similarly, the fate of women in 
the state military apparatus in still unclear.

Women, more than any other constituency in 
society, are faced with the difficulties of 
engaging with an evolving peace process that 
consists of structures and mechanisms that have 
been pre-designed by the government of Sri Lanka 
and the LTTE. In the Sri Lankan case, the peace 
process is largely inaccessible to civil society 
actors and lacks transparency or people's 
participation. The final peace deal is likely to 
be negotiated between the two most serious 
violators of human rights in the conflict. 
However, even though women have been engaging 
with a peace process that has fundamental 
limitations, this has not stopped women's 
activisms outside the peace process. The lobbying 
of international donors, political actors and 
other community leaders continues. The strongest 
contribution the women's movements have made for 
peace so far has been the links built across 
ethnic, caste, class and political divides. Women 
have been building peace during conflict and 
continue to do so as part of their daily work, 
whilst remaining largely independent of petty 
political manoeuvrings. However, the real 
challenge facing women activists is to find ways 
of exerting pressure on the government of Sri 
Lanka and the LTTE to incorporate their 
perspectives in forging a just peace - which is 
one that respects women's rights.

(This paper was originally presented at the Peace 
Studies Programme of the South Asian Forum for 
Human Rights)

____


[2.]

The Guardian
October 16, 2003

Fears as Nepalese disappear

Owen Bowcott

At least 30 people have disappeared in renewed 
counter-insurgency operations by Nepal's security 
forces in the past six weeks, according to 
Amnesty International.

In a report released today, the human rights 
group documents a surge in the number of 
students, journalists and lawyers arrested on 
suspicion of supporting Maoist rebels. None has 
been seen since being detained.

The operation follows the breakdown on August 27 
of a seven-month ceasefire declared by the 
Communist party of Nepal (CPN). The rebels 
claimed agreements reached with the government 
during talks in May had not been implemented.

The US significantly stepped up military aid to 
kingdom after the September 11 attacks. Britain, 
concerned about the country's human rights 
record, has been more cautious.

As many as 250 "disappearances" attributed to the 
security forces have been recorded by Amnesty 
since the CPN launched a "people's war" in 
February 1996.

Among those reportedly taken by plainclothes 
officers in Kathmandu, the capital, at the end of 
August are Balaram Sharma, a writer and poet, and 
Ram Hari Chaulagain, a journalist.

There is a "widespread pattern of 
'disappearances' perpetrated by agents of the 
state," Amnesty says, highlighting "hundreds of 
alleged extrajudicial executions, thousands of 
arbitrary arrests and numerous reports of 
torture".

Maoist forces, Amnesty notes, have been 
responsible for scores of abductions and 
kidnappings over the same period. Even during the 
ceasefire there were reports of atrocities.

____



[3]

Asia Times, October 17, 2003

India, Pakistan walk a fine nuclear line
By Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI - As India and Pakistan ready their 
nuclear arsenals for deployment, their leaders 
seem to be slipping into denial mode, refusing to 
acknowledge that they are being inexorably sucked 
into a dangerous, and potentially ruinous, 
nuclear arms race.
Pakistan has just conducted a series of three 
missile test flights in the course of 11 days. 
Two of the tests, on October 8 and October 14, 
were on a medium-range 700 kilometer missile 
called Shaheen-I. On October 2, Pakistan test 
flew the Ghazanavi (or Hatf-III) with a range of 
290 kilometers. Both missiles are capable of 
carrying nuclear warheads.
Indian officials have shrugged off these tests as 
"nothing special". India's foreign secretary, 
Kanwal Sibal, said there was "nothing new" in 
Pakistan's short-range ballistic missile tests. 
"[The Pakistanis] have conducted missile tests 
before."
This is extraordinary because these missiles can 
reach medium-sized cities in India, to kill 
hundreds of thousands of citizens. There is no 
conceivable defense against them or means of 
preventing their entry.
Strangely, Indian Defense Minister George 
Fernandes' first reaction was, "It has to be seen 
whether the missile is [Pakistan's] own or 
provided by North Korea or China."
Yet it is irrelevant whether the missile 
technology is indigenous to Pakistan or sold to 
it. It would be just as lethal - assuming it 
works.
The smugness of the Indian authorities is 
astonishing and shocking. It speaks of a cavalier 
disregard for security, and an obsessive wish to 
accelerate the arms race with Pakistan.
As for Pakistani officials, they claim that the 
the timing of their tests was based on the 
country's missile defense needs. "The timing of 
the tests reflect Pakistan's determination not to 
engage in a tit-for-tat syndrome to other tests 
in the region," the military spokesman said. 
"Pakistan will maintain the pace of its own 
missile development program."
Islamabad claims the tests demonstrated 
"Pakistan's technical prowess" in missile 
technology. "They also reflect Pakistan's resolve 
and determination to continue to consolidate its 
minimum deterrence needs and national security."
However, many media reports say the tests were 
aimed at showing Pakistan's "protest" and 
"frustration" at India's procurement of an 
airborne radar system from Israel, with 
Washington's approval. The Phalcon early warning 
system was jointly developed by Israel and the 
United States.
Last week, India signed an agreement with Israel 
and Russia for the supply of the Phalcon, to be 
mounted on a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 aircraft 
platform. The Phalcon will function as a command 
and control post in the sky and allow the 
detection of aircraft or missile launches deep 
inside Pakistan territory.
Pakistan has forcefully protested against the 
sale of the Phalcon and demanded that Washington 
supply it airborne radars, F-16s, unmanned aerial 
vehicles or drones and Cobra helicopters "to 
restore the weapons balance" in South Asia.
Pakistan Defense Secretary Hamid Nawaz Khan said 
last month, "Pakistan believes that a 
conventional balance [is] the key to maintaining 
peace between India and Pakistan; the nuclear 
threshold would come down, if this balance was 
disturbed."
He claimed that "the Pentagon had agreed to help 
effectively check the imbalance of power being 
created by India in the region".
Since then, Pakistani President General Pervez 
Musharraf has pledged to do whatever it takes to 
maintain the current "no-win situation" with New 
Delhi.
In an interview with the Malaysian newspaper "New 
Straits Times", he said, "We will maintain that 
no-win situation come what may. The world should 
know and India should know. They [Israel and 
India] have reached an agreement and we will 
counter it."
Musharraf expressed his impatience with New 
Delhi's refusal to resolve the Kashmir issue 
through bilateral negotiations.
Just last month, Musharraf and Indian Prime 
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a hostile 
exchange at the United Nations General Assembly. 
Vajpayee accused Pakistan of continuing to 
sponsor "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir. 
Musharraf accused India of "state terrorism" and 
violating Security Council resolutions on 
Kashmir, meanwhile still trying to muscle its way 
into the council as a permanent member.
It is not just Pakistan that is making proactive 
moves in the missile and nuclear fields.
Last month, India announced it was proceeding to 
deploy and "consolidate its nuclear deterrence". 
It is raising a special artillery division to 
manage its nuclear-capable missiles. The existing 
Agni and Prithvi missile groups will be 
integrated into this division.
Equally important, Fernandes declared on October 
5 that India's short and medium-range 
nuclear-capable ballistic missiles were ready for 
deployment and that the nuclear command chain, 
including alternative "nerve centers," was in 
place, giving India an effective retaliatory 
capability.
Fernandes said, "We have established more than 
one [nuclear control] nerve center." Nuclear 
command shelters have also been established. An 
underground shelter is now reportedly under 
construction right in the heart of New Delhi, 
designed to protect the cabinet and top military 
commanders from a decapitating nuclear strike. By 
building such a shelter, the Indian government 
has acknowledged that the danger of a nuclear 
strike is not hypothetical or distant; it is real.
However, it is doing absolutely nothing to 
protect the capital's 15 million citizens against 
such a devastating attack. This involves a 
bizarre and perverse notion of security - not for 
the people or the nation, but for a handful of 
powerful individuals.
The contradiction also exposes an anomaly at the 
heart of India's nuclear doctrine and its 
much-vaunted pledge of no-first-use: India won't 
be the first to use nuclear weapons against 
anyone. This seeks to achieve security through an 
assured second-strike capability: by retaliating 
massively.
But such retaliation can at best be an act of 
senseless revenge, not one that protects the 
lives of one's own citizens or soldiers, but 
instead wreaks untold havoc on civilians in an 
adversary state after hundreds of thousands of 
one's citizens have perished.
India and Pakistan have now reached a critical, 
perilous, turn in their nuclear journey. The arms 
race between them at both the conventional and 
nuclear levels is too stark and blatant to escape 
notice. But their leaders deny this altogether.
On Sunday, Vajpayee said, "We are not in any arms 
race with anybody. Whatever steps India has been 
taking [are] for self defense." He added, chiding 
Pakistan, "Those who are themselves acquiring 
weapons are blaming us."
Now, any state that participates in the arms 
race, either as an initiator of new moves or 
reactively, can claim it is acting in "self 
defense". That is the very logic of a nuclear 
arms race, with escalation built into it. That 
does not negate the reality of the arms race, or 
make it less dangerous.
(Inter Press Service)

_____


[4]

  [INDIA UNDER THREAT OF VIOLENCE: KHAKHI SHORT 
AND SAFFRON FLAGS MAKING MAYHEM IN AYODHYA  ]

Ayodhya tense: Kar sevaks defy security cordon  (oct 17, 2003)
http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=Ayodhya&slug=Kar+sevaks+defy+security+cordon+in+Ayodhya&id=12978&callid=0&category=National
Hundreds of Ram Bhakts slip into Ayodhya
Friday, 17 October , 2003, 08:19
http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13285957

VHP undecided on venue for Ayodhya meet
Friday, 17 October , 2003, 07:57
http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13285948
VP Singh and Gujral urge Vajpayee to rise above party line
http://www.deepikaglobal.com/latestnews.asp?ncode=8026
District admn bans VHP's Sankalp Sabha
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=237588

o o o

Ayodhya Diary [Oct 17, 203]

  VHP: Tents Down in Ayodhya

Today [16.10.2003] the tents standing for the 
proposed Sankalp Karyakram [vow making program] 
of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were pulled down on 
the direction of the state administration. It has 
become obvious that the administration is firm 
enough on not allowing any untoward happening on 
the 17th of the month. It is now very difficult 
for the VHP to go according to its scheduled 
program. The administration’s grip on the place 
of the program has tightened. Keeping in view the 
program of theVHP the dense barricading in 
Ayodhya has separated one mohalla from the other. 
While the administration has stopped the 
infiltration from out side it has made the 
movement in Ayodhya difficult too. Now the VHP 
will depend on the local activists or those in 
the hidings. This marks the crumbling of the VHP 
power in Ayodhya.In a face saving attempt it is 
trying to come to a compromise with the 
administration to organize its symbolic Sankalp 
Karyakram at some place away from Ramsevekpuram, 
the proposed site. The firebrand statements are 
not made any more by the VHP spokes persons.

The administration is keeping a vigil on the 
intrusion of karsevaks on the borders of Faizabad 
and Ayodhya.Yesterday, in an unprecedented move, 
the forces arrested more than 200 karsevaks from 
the Karsevakpuram.Likewise the forces arrested a 
number of people in the adjacent cities including 
the capital of UP, Lucknow.The arrests made on a 
big scale has minimized the possibility of the 
intrusion of the karsevaks in Ayodhya from 
distant places. This has also curbed the power of 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s followers in the near by 
cities. Mr. [V.].N.Rai, the IG zone and in charge 
of the action, was in jubilant mood while he 
informed the journalists about the arrests. It is 
not improper here to inform that [V.].N.Rai is a 
noted Hindi novelist and the editor of a reputed 
Hindi literary magazine 'Vartaman Sahitya'. He is 
given the responsibility of dealing with the 
karsevaks by the chief minister Mulayam Singh 
Yadov.A sensitive job to a sensitive person.

Today the arrests continued. Karsevaks were 
arrested from a train at Sultanpur station.

Adityanath, the troublesome Jogi of the 
Gorakhnath temple, was stopped on his way to 
Ayodhya.It is in the air that the RSS is planning 
to mobilize its cadre from the areas meeting the 
borders of Ayodhya and Faizabad.But over all the 
entire mood in the Hinduttva camp is somber. And 
it becomes obvious in the statements made by its 
leaders.L.K.Adwani has advised Mulayam not to 
stop the karsevaks from coming to Ayodhya.VHP has 
said that things will go peacefully if the 
karsevaks are allowed to move freely. The Prime 
minister has already advised Mulayam Singh to 
have faith in the VHP people. But no one is ready 
to believe those who demolished the Babari mosque 
in spite of their promise to the court in the 
year 1992. The VHP has a good track record of 
breaking such promises in the past. Moreover, 
once the mob gathers the administration is 
helpless and can't control it. So the people of 
Faizabad and Ayodhya view the decision of the 
administration as a correct one, that is, don't 
let the mob collect lest it should go out of 
control. A communal mob has no psychology.

  From the very beginning of this program of the 
VHP the people of Faizabad were against such 
trouble creating ceremonies. The Vyapar Mandal 
[business circle] was very quick to oppose it. 
Earlier the BJP and VHP leaders used to collect 
money for such programs from this class. But the 
business people soon found out that these 
activities harmed their business every time the 
political Hinduism gathered the masses. The shops 
in Ayodhya either remain closed or devoid of 
costumers while the Hinduttva forces clash with 
the administration. Many sants of Ayodhya have 
turned against the program showing resentment at 
the way the VHP functions. Another group of 
saints criticizes the way VHP makes use of 
religion in its politics. Some sants have started 
a Budhi Sudhi Yagya [a prayer for the 
purification of the mind] for the VHP leaders.

It is said that Nritya Gopal Das, the head of the 
Ramjanm Bhumi Nyas, was also opposed to the 
timing for it was to fall in the Kalpwas period 
[the time the pilgrims stay in Ayodhya for a 
month for spiritual enlightenment]. But the VHP 
argued that the timing would be correct as they 
wont have to work hard to collect mass as a great 
number of Hindu believers would be already 
available during the Kalpvas period. Nritya Gopal 
Das is not arrested because he is in the Kalpwas. 
He feels himself alienated in the stalemate of 
politics. There is the rumour of the reaching of 
Ashok Singhal in Ayodhya and administration is 
making the search.

What happens on the next and final day is still 
to be seen. There are many ways of face saving in 
politics, but there is no doubt that coming down 
of the tents and bhagwa flags in Ram Sevakpuram 
shows the slipping of the public support for the 
Hinduttva forces. It also exhibits that the 
communal forces can be nailed down if the 
administration possesses some will power and the 
support of a government.


Raghuvanshmani / 00.10am / 17.10.2003
Faizabad, UP,India

o o o

Editorial, The Hindustan Times, Oct., 16, 2003
...and the dismal crawl backward
October 16

The contrast cannot be more stark. Even as China 
enters the space age on the back of its economic 
success, India is floundering in medieval 
politics.

While the Chinese are rejoicing over their 
achievement in joining an exclusive club of space 
travellers, attention in India is focused on the 
antics of the viciously sectarian VHP which is 
bent on creating trouble in the name of religion. 
The pity of it is that even as the nation is 
desperately hoping that nothing untoward will 
happen in Ayodhya, the BJP seems paralysed, 
unable to take preventive action lest it should 
antagonise its core supporters. In fact, it is 
supposed to have been told by the RSS not to 
divert or suspend train services so that the VHP 
kar sevaks are not inconvenienced in anyway.

The entire responsibility for maintaining peace 
has been left, therefore, to Uttar Pradesh Chief 
Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Hanumangarhi 
sadhus led by Mahant Gyan Das who have promised 
to protect the Muslims if riots break out. The 
BJP's dilemma is obvious. It cannot afford to be 
seen to be too stern against a fraternal outfit. 
Besides, not only does its own supporters share 
much of the VHP's anti-Muslim world view, the 
party would also like to reap an electoral 
benefit from a communal polarisation engineered 
by the VHP, as in Gujarat. At the same time, the 
BJP is wary of an outbreak of riots tarnishing 
its reputation.

It is unfortunate, however, that the country is 
held to ransom by the VHP's annual efforts to 
whip up communal tension. But it isn't the 
communal angle alone which is disturbing in the 
context of China's march into the modern era. It 
has to be remembered that India's human resource 
development ministry is also engaged in 
propagating a medieval agenda with its emphasis 
on astrology and religious rituals, not to 
mention the encouragement of tantrik rites and 
quackery.
o o o

RELATED MATERIAL:


Where there's a will, there's a way [*]
Vidyadhar Date
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, MAY 03, 2002 12:52:25 AM ]
V N Rai, Uttar Pradesh's inspector-general of 
police who has done considerable research on 
communal riots, feels that the police can 
certainly check communal riots if they want to. 
[...]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?art_id=8691178

_____


[5]

The Times of india
17, 2003

Notion of Nation | Subtext of Doctored Textbooks
ANURADHA M CHENOY
[ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2003 12:00:20 AM ]
Recent debates across three countries, India, the 
US and Pakistan, on the question of textbooks 
reveal how ruling regimes attempt to construct 
nationhood in young minds. These debates show how 
education is an instrument of ruling paradigms 
and ascertains how power is structured.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni 
(ACTA), chaired by the vice- president's wife, 
Lynne Cheney, published a report insisting that 
the American universities teach courses on 
western and American civilisation and America's 
'continuing struggle to extend and defend the 
principles on which it was founded'. This report 
was critical of several univer-sities for 
'unpatriotic incidents'.

These universities were focusing on other 
cultures and critiques of American policies that 
did not coincide with the current US government's 
interests. A study by academics from the 
Sustainable Development Institute of Pakistan 
revealed that social studies texts for the junior 
grades in Pakis-tan's public schools instruct 
students in the concept of jehad. The curriculum 
stresses male superiority and women are subtly 
shown in traditional roles.

The seminaries in Pakis-tan are known to have 
contributed large numbers of young boys to the 
Taliban and jehadi outfits. In India, texts by 
internationally acknowledged historians were 
first censored and then removed by the government 
because they discussed issues that did not 
conform to the construction of a dominant Hindu 
nation. Instead, new school textbooks that 
reconstruct history to suit Hindutva ideology 
have been introduced.

All three instances show how education is a site 
where a particular kind of national chauvinism 
can be constructed and how ruling regimes 
intervene in education to promote ideologies that 
glorify a dominant community while marginalising 
other groups, especially minorities. In such 
circumstances secular and multicultural history 
is seen as subversive and governments try and 
impose a cultural uniformity through education. 
Textbooks are the obvious examples of how history 
is manipulated especially if it is conceived by 
ruling regimes and authored by people with the 
interests in constructing a nation based on a 
homogeneous nationality.

In texts where history is simplified by 
glorifying conquest or constructing humiliation, 
there is little interest in people's history. If 
concepts of heritage, history and literature 
minimise the reality of the marginalised and 
construct the past in a way to suit the present, 
they lead to a mindset where power is equated 
primarily with force and dominance in the young 
mind. The tendency then is to use this aspect of 
power to negotiate relations and strategise life. 
This paradigm is reinforced in popular media that 
leave imprints on the learning mind.

The consequence of such education is evident. It 
brings biases and conflicts into the classrooms 
and then communities view others in opposition to 
themselves and are bent upon taking revenge for 
the past as a consequence of incomplete 
knowledge. Quality education gets restricted to 
elite schools and universities that have the 
option to choose different systems and texts. 
Schools run for the purpose of inculcating the 
values of any one religion whether they are the 
shiksha mandirs or Taliban style madrassas 
generate life-long biases.

Governments make appointments to bodies that 
oversee curricula and it is very difficult to 
ensure political non- intervention. But 
politicians need to allow these institutions to 
function within an academic realm. Clearly, 
academics known in these subjects should 
determine curricula without being subject to 
political intervention. The curricula should be 
subject to peer and user review and periodically 
upgraded. While governments are interested in 
influencing texts, they are not equally 
interested in increasing finances for improving 
the overall quality of education and are 
withdrawing from responsi- bilities towards 
upgrading teachers' skills, introducing new 
technology to government-aided schools or add-ing 
creativity and sports to curricula.

If ruling regimes are genuinely interested in 
education they need to facilitate schools and 
universities by prioritising funding for them as 
they do for defence and security. In all the 
cases cited above, the budget for education is 
far below other items, especially military 
expenditure, and less than the needs of society. 
School teachers are poorly paid and their value 
downgraded.

There is far too large a gap between the private 
and public school systems. The education system 
does not work in isolation of society, nor does 
it change society on its own. But, it can become 
a partner for transformation. Education and 
educators play a dialogic role in the process of 
contesting sectarian ideas especially if they 
link up with wider social movements and 
discourses. For expanding and improving the 
quality of education, each segment of society has 
to play its separate role without enforcing a 
specific political agenda. Governments should 
restrict themselves to funding.

Clearly, ruling regimes should be looking at the 
infrastructure needs of the education system, 
widening its scope and bringing more children and 
youth into primary, secondary and higher 
education. No nation can follow just one textbook 
even if a regime dictates it should. After all 
political regimes and their ideas are subject to 
change.

______


[6]

Book release  function for a book known as "The 
Gujarat Carnage" edited by Dr. Asghar Ali 
Engineer published by Orient Longman.

Venue:     CROSSWORD, 1st Floor, Mahalaxmi Chambers,
                   22 Bhulabhai Desai Road,  Mahalaxmi
                   Mumbai - 400 026. [India]

Date:     Saturday 18th October

Time:     At 5 p.m.



______


[7]

http://www.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=181
47th London Film Festival

A Nation Without Women (Matrubhoomi)
  	Oct 28 - 14:00 ICA Cinema, Screen 1

  	Oct 28 - 18:45 ICA Cinema, Screen 1

In his debut feature Manish Jha presents a 
harrowing fairy tale of the future of rural India 
where, due to the prevalence of female 
infanticide, women are now almost eradicated. In 
this scary new world men play every role in 
society and have become unstable and debased of 
their humanity. A rich landlord has five sons but 
cannot find a wife for any of them. Finally a 
girl is discovered, her father sells her into 
marriage with all five sons reducing her to a 
sexual slave and menial domestic. Only one son 
shows her kindness and in a fit of Cain and 
Abel-like jealousy he is killed by the elder 
brother. The degradation of the woman goes on, 
until one day she becomes pregnant. As all the 
men vie for the paternity of the child, a furious 
fight breaks out that ultimately leads to the 
woman's emancipation. Satirical in the extreme, 
this film highlights the abuse of women by men; 
of course, an issue not limited to India, and how 
ultimately this violence destroys the men who 
perpetrate it.

Cary Rajinder Sawhney
Directed by: Manish Jha
Written by: Manish Jha, Sudhir Pandey, Sushant Singh, Tulip Joshi
Country: France, India
Year of Production: 2003
Running Time: 93 minutes
Subtitled: YES


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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
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note the SACW web site has gone down, you will 
have to for the time being search google cache 
for materials]
The complete SACW archive is available at: http://sacw.insaf.net
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