SACW | 28. Nov. 2003
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Thu Nov 27 21:43:28 CST 2003
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE | 28 November, 2003
From the South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net
_______
[1] India and Pakistan must act on the confidence
building proposals now - statement by PIPFPD
[2] Pakistan: "All HIV patients should just be
shot, that'll solve the problem" - says Mullah
[3] Indo-Pak relations - Hopes of lasting peace (Praful Bidwai)
[4] India: [What a Shame Bengal's Secular Govt ]
. . .readies Taslima book ban (Swati Sengupta)
+ Taslima publishers allege raid
[5] India: A bad job (Editorial, The Hindustan Times)
[6] India: The Northeast burns again (Subir Roy)
[7] India: Fact finding Report on Bollottu Encounter
[8] India: Inventing defense for Punjab police (Daya Varma)
[9] India's Mystical Murders (John Lancaster)
--------------
[1]
Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy
India Secretariat: B-14 Gulmohar Park, New Delhi 110049, INDIA
Pakistan Secretariat: 11 Temple Road, Lahore, PAKISTAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDIA AND PAKISTAN MUST ACT ON THE CONFIDENCE BUILDING PROPOSALS NOW.
Response to Prime Minister Mir Zaffarullah
Jamali's statement by Pakistan-India Peoples'
Forum for Peace & Democracy
Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and
Democracy (PIPFPD) welcomes Pakistan Prime
Minister Mr. Mir Zafarullah Jamali's declaration
of unilateral ceasefire along the Line of Control
(LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. This is a most
appropriate Eid gift to the peoples of India and
Pakistan and particularly to the embattled
peoples of Jammu and Kashmir. This initiative
will help in reducing tension, building
confidence and restoring normality in the region.
We hope that India will reciprocate this
initiative.
We are most encouraged by Mr. Jamali's
reiteration of the proposal to open a bus service
between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad. In the Simla
Agreement both Pakistan and India had agreed to
respect the LoC without prejudice to the stated
positions of either side on Jammu and Kashmir. We
are excited by the fact that the two governments
have now indicated their willingness to allow the
peoples of the divided territory of Jammu and
Kashmir to visit each other. We hope that the
opening of the bus service between Srinagar and
Muzaffarabad will be followed by similar bus
services between Jammu and Mirpur and Jammu and
Kotli. This will strengthen the civil society of
Jammu and Kashmir, reduce violence and help build
a democratic consensus in Jammu and Kashmir.
Since 1994 members of PIPFPD from both countries
have been asking for removal of all impediments
to cross border travel by the citizens of India
and Pakistan. We have also urged the two
government to open more offices for the issue of
visas. In fact, we have urged the two governments
to introduce a visa-on arrival system on all
entry points as has been done by the government
of Sri Lanka for all citizens of the SAARC
countries. This is essential for encouraging
people to people dialogue and building confidence
at the grassroots level.
We appreciate that Pakistan has already issued a
notification allowing persons over 65 years of
age to cross the Wagha border on foot. We hope
that India will immediately reciprocate this
initiative of Pakistan by issuing a similar
notification. We also request the Indian
government to respond to Pakistan Prime
Minister's proposal to work out a mechanism for
the release of all cross border prisoners who
have already completed their sentences from each
other's custody before the end of the year.
We also request Pakistan to favourably respond to
the Indian Minister for External Affair's earlier
proposals for creation of a 'hotline' between the
coast guards, non-arrest of fishermen at sea and
resumption of sporting contacts. The proposal to
restart the ëSamjhauta Expressí deserves
immediate attention, as it is the most convenient
and affordable means of transportation of the
majority of the people. The introduction of an
additional Delhi-Lahore Bus service and a
Lahore-Amritsar bus service are most welcome
suggestions.
We thank Mr. Jamali for this promising response
to the 12-point confidence building proposals of
the Minister for External Affairs of India almost
a month ago. We are aware that in the past, both
India and Pakistan have made offers and the
counter offers to each other, which include
several of these proposals. We urge the two
governments not to let the present initiative to
be destroyed by arguments about who made which
proposal first. The peoples of India and Pakistan
yearn for peace. We expect that this time the two
governments will go beyond verbal rhetoric and
make this confidence building measure a reality.
Tapan Kumar Bose Anis Haroon
General Secretary Secretary General
PIPFPD-India PIPFPD-Pakistan
November 25, 2003
_____
[2]
BBC News
26 November, 2003
'I was treated as an untouchable'
As part of a BBC series on Aids, people living
with HIV from around the world tell their own
stories in their own words.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pakistani Shukria Gul, a 33-year-old, HIV
positive mother, explains why she was motivated
to try to combat ignorance about the disease
through a centre she set up in Lahore.
Shukria was relieved that her children were not infected
My husband had spent three years working in South
Africa. After a car accident, he was given
contaminated blood.
In 1995, he became ill and we found out that he
was HIV positive. In fact, by then, he had
full-blown Aids.
He was in the last stages of the illness and died
soon afterwards. He never learnt of the diagnosis.
I was tested at the time and found out that I,
too, was HIV positive. My children were also
tested but, thank God, they tested negative. They
were only little then, but now my daughter is
12-years-old and my son is 10.
Giving hope
When my husband and I were diagnosed, even our
doctor didn't have any proper information about
the disease. I suffered a kind of double crisis.
My husband's condition was getting worse and the
doctors were very unhelpful. When he died, they
even told the press, which created many problems
for me.
There was a lot of ignorance about the illness
and people in there area where I lived behaved as
though it was dangerous and contagious. They
treated me like some kind of untouchable.
There was a lot of ignorance about the illness
and people in there area where I lived behaved as
though it was dangerous and contagious
Shukria Gul
My family didn't have much information either,
but they were still very supportive.
I went to Islamabad to get information and then I
set up a non-governmental organisation called New
Light. I wanted to raise awareness, to help
people diagnosed with HIV and to give them a
platform.
I wanted to tell them that this diagnosis does
not mean their lives are over, they are not dead,
they need to live with HIV.
People's attitudes are changing, but very slowly.
We conducted a workshop in Peshawar, where the
population is much more conservative.
A mullah at the workshop was irritated by our
talk of sexual contact. He said: "All HIV
patients should just be shot, that'll solve the
problem".
On the last day of the workshop when I revealed
that I was HIV positive, he stood up and
apologised to me for what he'd said.
_____
[3]
Deccan Herald
November 28, 2003
Indo-Pak relations
Hopes of lasting peace
By PRAFUL BIDWAI
The post-Iraq war situation raises the potential
for a productive dialogue between India and
Pakistan
India and Pakistan, which have been locked in a
particularly nasty confrontation for almost two
years, have moved towards normalising relations
but whether this will turn out to be yet another
near-miss, one of many lost opportunities in
their tortuous, suspicion-ridden and halting
dialogue is left to be seen.
Going by India's speedy and positive response to
the offer of a ceasefire across the Line of
Control (LoC) in Kashmir made on Sunday by
Pakistan's Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali,
the possibility of progress seems real, although
it remains fraught with uncertainty.
Jamali's proposal was implemented Tuesday
midnight to coincide with Eid, which marks the
end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the
guns fell silent not only on both sides of the
LoC in the Kashmir Valley, but also according to
India's proposal, along the Actual Ground
Position Line in Siachen, the Himalayan glacier
where the two neighbours have fought the world's
highest-altitude war for 18 years.
Routine artillery shelling across these borders,
which occurs thousands of times every year, is
not only costly but takes a massive toll of life
and of property. Its ending will be a gain in and
of itself. But there is more to Jamali's offer,
which comes a month after India tabled 12
confidence-building measures.
Jamali has also agreed to discuss the Indian
proposals to start a bus service between Srinagar
in Indian Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in Pakistani
Kashmir, and to open rail/road links between
Sindh in Pakistan and India's Rajasthan. In
addition, Pakistan could discuss re-starting a
ferry service between Mumbai and Karachi, which
India has proposed.
Earlier, Pakistan had hedged in its
counterproposals with several conditions,
including a role for the United Nations in
issuing travel documents for crossing the
"disputed" territory of Kashmir - a role India is
loathe to accept.
Jamali's ceasefire offer is remarkable in that it
is unilateral and unconditional. It signifies a
major change in Pakistan's posture because it
breaks out of the action-reaction mould which has
prevailed ever since Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee held out the "hand of friendship" from
Srinagar on April 17.
Earlier, in August and September, Pakistan
President Gen Pervez Musharraf too had offered a
ceasefire, but one conditional upon India ending
its "repression" in Kashmir. Five years ago,
India had refused a ceasefire agreement unless
Pakistan ended the infiltration of secessionist
militants into Kashmir.
Powerful proposal
This time, too, India says that "to establish a
full ceasefire on a durable basis, there must be
an end to infiltration". But it has not made the
beginning of a ceasefire conditional upon
Pakistan's cessation of support to militants. It
however reserves the right to open fire upon
illegal "infiltrators".
What makes the new proposals more powerful and
more capable of delivering results is the
realisation among moderate elements in both
governments that they are under international
pressure to end their long, hurtful confrontation
which began after a terrorist attack on India's
Parliament building in December 2001.
New Delhi accused Islamabad of complicity in it
and mobilised 700,000 soldiers at the border,
threatening war. Pakistan responded by deploying
300,000 troops. The eyeball-to-eyeball
confrontation went for 10 long months. India and
Pakistan came close to the brink of war at least
twice - in January and end-May and early June
2002. Both resorted to nuclear brinkmanship.
Military engagement between them was averted due
to mediatory efforts by the United States, which
despatched senior officials to their capitals.
Indian leaders were the first to draw the lesson
from the war on Iraq that the entire South Asian
region would become vulnerable to external
intervention, especially from the United States,
unless it reached a degree of mutual
accommodation. Vajpayee's April 17 offer was
inspired by this. But it did not produce results.
Today, Pakistan's leaders seem to have become
acutely aware of a growing perception in the
world community that Islamabad is reluctant to
break its links with Islamist extremists, and
that its support to the "war on terrorism" is
half-hearted. Several recent statements by
Western leaders, including British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and US Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage, reflect this.
The Indian leadership's assessment is that
Jamali's new offer follows consultations with
Musharraf and must be taken seriously. That
explains India's 'very, very positive' response,
as Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha put it.
Another hopeful sign is that Islamabad has
delinked a discussion of India's October 22
proposals from a dialogue on the "core issue" of
Kashmir. New Delhi insists that such a dialogue
would only become possible once Pakistan stops
supporting "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir.
Economic competition
There is also growing realisation in both
capitals that South Asia's future hinges upon
intensified economic competition. SAARC has been
hostage to India-Pakistan rivalry. Its summit was
cancelled last year because of India's refusal to
attend it.
The summit is now due to be held in early January
in Islamabad. Vajpayee will travel to Islamabad
if air links are restored. Upon their restoration
depends re-establishment of rail links - and of
direct trade.
South Asia is one of the world's few regions
without a free trade agreement. Pakistan has
dragged its feet on this for fear that Indian
goods would swamp its markets. But in recent
weeks, Pakistani business groups have shed some
of these fears and made visits to India,
reciprocated by Indian business delegations'
visits to their country.
Of a piece with greater readiness to intensify
economic relations, and outstripping it, is a
recent upsurge in citizen-to-citizen contacts
between the two countries. This civil
society-level interaction is unprecedented.
Scores of members of their Parliaments,
journalists, and other opinion-shapers have made
visits across the border, creating a reservoir of
goodwill and strengthening the hands of moderates.
To an extent, domestic politics - particularly in
India where the Hindu-chauvinist, anti-Muslim BJP
leads the ruling coalition-- put a brake on this
process. At its core are elections to the
legislatures of four key states on December 1.
But now, as the election campaign nears its end,
this negative factor will weaken, raising the
potential for a productive dialogue. (IPS)
_____
[4]
[I write with deep sense of dismay at the move
underway at banning of the latest book by Taslima
Nasrin by the West Bengal govt. As an Indian
National i am deeply offended by this move coming
of all places this time from the left wing and
progressive govt in west Bengal; It is shame
indeed that they ban her work on the grounds that
it may provoke 'communal trouble'. I would like
express my solidarity with her (i am sure a large
number of my secular co-citizens would join me)
and support Nasrin's right to free expression
and publication in India. See pasted below, a new
reports of 28 Nov 2003 from Calcutta dailies. The
Telegraph and The Statesman.
Harsh Kapoor
South Asia Citizens Web (www.sacw.net ) ]
o o o o
The Telegraph
November 28, 2003
Worried about communal strife, Bengal readies Taslima book ban
SWATI SENGUPTA
Calcutta, Nov. 27: The Bengal government is
banning Taslima Nasreen's controversial book,
Dwikhandita (Split in Two), sources in the home
department told The Telegraph.
Home secretary Amit Kiran Deb confirmed the move:
"The Bengal government has already taken an
official stand to proscribe the book. The order
will be issued tomorrow."
The government action follows apprehension that
certain portions of the book may cause communal
disharmony. "The book makes objectionable remarks
against a particular community in pages 49 and 50
and the government has felt it could incite
ill-feeling," an official said.
Some Muslim intellectuals have written to chief
minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee asking the
government to confiscate the book because it
contains passages that denigrate the Prophet and
Islam, which could be used by mischief-makers.
The petition was signed by author Syed Mustafa
Siraj, state planning commission member, Islamic
history scholar Osman Ghani and the editor of the
weekly, Qalam, Ahmad Hassan Imran.
The pages in question contain passages such as
this: "The history of Islam says that the Arabs
used to live in caves, they used to bury girl
children and Mohammed put an end to all the
misery. However, misery I think has increasedŠ"
A notification banning the book will be announced
tomorrow, but a typed copy has already been
released by the government.
"Once the order is issued, the government will
pass on the message to the director-general of
police and the city police commissioner and ask
the enforcement branch to seize copies of the
book from the market," a home department official
said.
The seizure began late tonight. The police took
away 2,000 copies of the book from the College
Street area, publisher Shibani Mukherjee said.
"They also came to my house to question me and
wanted to know how I contact Taslima," she added.
Calcutta High Court had already stopped sale of
the autobiographical book by the Bangladeshi
author in exile for a fortnight since November 18
on a petition by a little-known poet, Syed Hasmat
Jalal, who has filed a Rs 11-crore defamation
suit alleging that the writer has presented a
distorted view of his moral and religious
standing.
Taslima has written about her physical intimacy with Jalal.
Siraj, who is among those to have petitioned the
government for a ban, is Jalal's elder brother.
Speaking to The Telegraph from Harvard
University, where she is working on a fellowship,
the author challenged Jalal, claiming that
whatever she has written is true.
Taslima is no stranger to book bans. Lajja, which
preceded Dwikhandita, was proscribed in
Bangladesh for the same reason that the Bengal
government is citing now.
India, too, has been a ban-happy nation. Salman
Rushdie's Satanic Verses was blacked out by
Delhi. Calcutta follows suit.
o o o
The Statesman | Nove 28 2003
Taslima publishers allege raid
KOLKATA, Nov. 27. -Sleuths from Lalbazar
allegedly raided the outlet of Peoples' Book
Society, publishers of Taslima Nasreen's
controversial book Dwikhandita, on Bankim
Chatterjee Street and seized about 2,000 copies
of the book from the binder's godown this
evening. Later, the team questioned the owner of
the publishing house, Mrs Shibani Mukherjee, at
her Belghoria home, it was learnt. DC DD-I Mr
Soumen Mitra, however, denied having conducted
any such raid.
In the afternoon, the publishers had met the DC
(special branch), Mr Sanjay Mukherjee, and
assured him of withdrawing the book from the
market if any communal unrest took place, Mrs
Mukherjee said. "We've been asked to meet the DC
DD-I tomorrow," she said. "The sleuths had come
in a Kolkata Police van and called the DC DD-I
from our residence. It was then that the
appointment was fixed," she said. - SNS
_____
[6]
The Hindustan Times | Editorial
November 27, 2003
A bad job
The parochial agitations in Assam and Maharashtra
must have boosted the confidence of outfits like
the ULFA, the AASU and the Shiv Sena that thrive
on sectarianism.
Till the railway recruitments sparked off the
trouble in Guwahati, these organisations seemed
to be lying low. But no sooner had the Bihari
job-seekers been targeted than the Shiv Sena,
too, took up the cudgels against those Biharis
who were applying for railway jobs in Mumbai.
Neither the ULFA nor the AASU nor the Shiv Sena
has ever had any stake in promoting social
harmony. If the ULFA is out-and-out a
secessionist outfit, the AASU came into
prominence for its anti-foreigner agitation in
the Eighties which revived the old tensions not
only between the Assamese and the Bangladeshi
immigrants, but also between the Assamese and
longstanding Bengali residents of the state. The
Shiv Sena, on its part, forever looks to
harassing non-Maharashtrians and/or Muslims to
spread its message of hate, ostensibly in favour
of 'sons of the soil'.
Given their chauvinistic attitude, it should be
the endeavour of all politicians who believe in
the constitutional rights of all Indians to live
and find employment anywhere in the country to
discourage such divisive propaganda. Laloo Prasad
Yadav tried to do that. But, surprisingly, a
Union minister, Satyabrata Mookherjee, has
expressed the view that lower-level jobs should
virtually be reserved for the local people. Yet,
at the same time, while speaking at a medical
institute in Shillong, he said local doctors (who
cannot be regarded as lower-level employees)
should be given preference when vacancies arise.
It is obvious that a statement of this nature
will be welcomed by the ULFA, the AASU and the
Shiv Sena as a virtual endorsement of their
stand. That it should have been made by a Union
minister is unfortunate, to say the least. It is
no secret that in a majority of cases, the
Grade-D jobs do go to the locals. But this
practice should by no means be raised to the
level of a principle, as the minister has tried
to do. Instead, people in authority should
articulate the view as often as possible that
such restrictions undermine national unity.
_____
[7]
Business Standard
November 26, 2003
The Northeast burns again
Beauty and violence uniquely coexist there, writes Subir Roy
Migrant Biharis killed in upper Assam; families
waiting at railway stations to flee back to
Bihar. The images have a familiar ring. It does
not take long to go back in memory 25 years to
the late 1970s.
I was then paying my first visit to Assam as a
reporter. The night bus from Guwahati, then still
Gauhati, dropped us in the morning at the bus
stand in upper Assam. The ultimate destination
was Doom Dooma tea estate where two tea garden
labourers had been killed.
It was the beginning of that particular agitation
in Assam, directed at "outsiders" (bahiragata),
much as today the ire is being vent against
outsiders from Bihar. Today, it is the hand of
the dreaded United Liberation Front of Assam
(ULFA) which is seen to be behind the attacks and
the killings. The ULFA did not exist then but the
mood was the same.
The agitation was then being led by the students
and a new group, the All Assam Gana Sangram
Parishad (AAGSP). Its constituents had political
ambitions and soon the agitation changed its
target from "outsider" to "foreigner" (bideshi
nagarik).
The students and the AAGSP wanted to maintain
some niceties. You couldn't openly campaign
against fellow Indians from other parts of the
country. The official target had to be an illegal
migrant from another country.
Over time the target became the Bengali Muslim
migrant from Bangladesh or erstwhile East
Pakistan. And before you knew it, the tangled
skein of emotions had taken in the educated
Bengali Hindus who has cornered so many
white-collar jobs.
Today, the ULFA does not swear allegiance to the
Indian Constitution and does not feel compelled
to maintain appearances. So it does not hesitate
to clearly attack Indians from another part of
the country.
The years of agitation, thousands killed, solved
nothing. With time the student leaders who were
held in high esteem became older, full-time
politicians and came to power waving the banner
of the Asom Gana Parishad.
The culture of Indian governance caught up with
them; the top duo fell out. The once respected
Prafulla Mohanta eventually lost the elections to
the Congress, despised at one stage for turning a
blind eye to illegal migration as it created a
vote bank for it.
The Congress is now as helpless against the
marauders as it always was. If you know how
far-flung the Assam terrain is, you will not be
surprised.
In the old days, before the districts were broken
up, you could take a whole day to travel from one
end to the other of a district like Darrang. To
properly police Assam and its countryside, you
would need an army of lakhs and the logistics to
back it.
Assam and the Northeastern hills hold a peculiar
fascination. When I first landed in Shillong, in
the early 1970s, it had just ceased to be the
capital of Assam and become the capital of
Meghalaya. That made it better, I thought.
The hill tribes, with their missionary influence
and English education, were a bit cosmopolitan
and would keep Shillong elegant, the way it had
been, I hoped. But soon it became a shadow of its
former self. Going to the Shillong Club only made
you sad and the last bad news I read in the
papers was that the fine old style Assembly
building had been destroyed in a fire.
The images of Assam and the Northeast that linger
are a peculiar mixture of violence, tension and
undulating scenic beauty, which has to be
savoured at an easy pace to do justice to it. In
early 1983, for over a month, a couple of us
journalists were the only guests at a hotel in
the centre of town.
It was the period of endless violence that
straddled the elections which brought Hiteshwar
Saikia to power. The two contrasting images that
linger are of a burly sardar striding the
countryside in total fearlessness, police chief K
P S Gill, and the frail new chief minister who
had only courage and no physical muscles.
The schedule of the day during that month was to
find out from our intelligence contacts at night
where a fresh riot had taken place and to set out
for it the next morning in one of those
Ambassador taxis plied by a bunch of intrepid
drivers who stood by us scribes come what may.
And the image that will never go away is that of
Nelli, dead bodies of people who were alive less
than 24 hours ago, in field after field. In one
of them - the size of a football field - we
counted more than a hundred and the most
unforgettable was that of a mother with her baby
still in her arms, both long dead.
It was not all mayhem and gore. We journalists
never failed to be amused over how the security
guards at Dispur, the state government complex
just outside of Gauhati, would treat you
differently depending the way you dressed and
whether you came by car or otherwise.
The best way to breeze in, if you didn't have a
security pass, was to sport a tie and sit back as
imperiously as you could on the rear seat of your
car.
The contrasts affected everybody. The middle
class which hated the intermittent curfews
nevertheless liked the sharp fall in burglaries
that went with them. We solemnly told each other
that the burglars couldn't get curfew passes.
Through most of that period, while Assam burned,
Nagaland, which had an older history of trouble,
remained mostly peaceful. And should you have
been in the Naga hills in the runup to Christmas,
the feeling of peace and goodwill would be
heightened by the sound of hymns that would float
from hill to hill.
The memory that endures the most is of one such
evening, when you could barely see the thatched
huts but for the light shining out of their few
doorways and windows, pouring out the most
incredibly harmonious music - well-known hymns
sung in an unfamiliar language - and the sound of
that music going from one hillside to another and
echoing back.
_____
[8]
27 Nov 2003
Fact finding Report on Bollottu Encounter
On 18th November 2003, the newspapers published a news
that two women Naxalites had been killed in an
encounter on 17th November at Bollottu in Karkala
taluk of Udupi district. People in Karnataka are aware
about a movement of the adivasis in the Western Ghats
region against the formation of Kudremukh National
Park. The encounter occurred with this movement in the
backdrop.
This incident has disturbed all democratic minded
people and all those who believe in human rights. It
is in this context that a team of seven members,
including members of PDF, journalists and lawyers
visited the spot where the encounter took place.
The team met the inmates of the house where the
incident took place, the villagers in that area, the
police and in particular Mr. Murugan, the Superindent
of Police, Udupi district. The team also met Yashoda,
a member of the Naxalite team,who was injured in the
encounter and was hospitalised by the police. Details
of the encouter were also collected from journalists
of Udupi. The team wishes to place before the people
of Karnataka its findings regarding the alleged
encounter, specially the violation of human rights
that happened during the episode.
The FACTS
(1) The intention of the police was not to arrest the
Naxalites.
This point is clear from the way the incident took
place and the discussion that the fact-finding team
had with the people it met.
* The number of policemen were not enough to overpower
and arrest the Naxalites.
* The moment they saw Parvathi they shot her without
bothering to find out whether she was a house-member
or Naxalite.
* They could have easily arrested Hajima inside the
house. Rather, they shot her point-blank, hitting her
on her stomach.
* Yashoda could escape being killed only by hiding in
the loft. She was already injured by then. She was
arrested and kept in illegal detention.
(2) The encounter is fake.
The police claim that they had to fire in
self-defence. But the findings of the team is in
contradiction to this.
* As the inmates of the house say, Hajima was not
killed by any bullet from somewhere. She had rushed
into an inside-room for cover. She was pursued by the
police into the room where she was shot down even
though she was unarmed.
* Yashoda, who is in hospital, has categorically said
that she had witnessed Hajima being killed by the
police inside the room and there was no encounter.
* The team did not come across any traces of
cross-fire.
* The statement of Mr. Murugan, the SP, does not make
it clear whether the police personnel were also
injured in the shootout.
* The weapons and other materials allegedly recovered
from the Naxalites were all taken away that night by
the police without any 'panchnama'. On 17th November
at around 12noon, the police went back to the spot
with the bags belonging to the Naxalites, put them in
the room, took snaps to show that there was a
'panchnama'. Naturally, such an action by the police
raises quite a few questions.
* The SP now claims that Hajima was killed by a bullet
from somewhere. Such statements only increases the
suspicions regarding the circumstances under which
Parvathi was killed.
(3) The delay in handing over the deadbodies to the
relatives and the harassment.
* The parents of Paravati faced a lot of harassment in
the hands of the police when they went to claim her
body. The human rights activists were questioned about
their relationship with the persons killed, when they
had accompanied the parents for claiming the bodies.
* Haji, the brother of Hajima, was made to wait for
two days when he went to claim his sister's body.
During this period, he was also harassed and
interrogated for many hours. When the SP was asked to
clarify why such treatment was meted out, he mentioned
that if required the police would have taken more
time.
These details go to establish the fact that the police
has intimidated the people to cover their own lapses.
(4) Threat to Yashoda's life
The incident took place on 17th morning (early hours).
Yashoda was not produced in the court till 22nd
afternoon. As per law, she should have been produced
in
front of the magistrate within 24 hrs of her arrest.
The SP mentioned to the team that the police had not
yet arrested her. However, it is a fact that she is in
police custody in the hospital - anyone wishing to
meet her had to obtain the permission of SP.
Yashoda is an eye-witness to the killing of the other
two women. She was only produced in court after she
appealed to the Chief Justice of Karnataka through
a written letter. However, the members of the
fact-finding team have a fear that even now her life
is under threat, as she is the sole witness to the
killings.
(5) Oppression against democratic movements in the
name of suppressing Naxalites
After the encounter, the manner in which the police
has acted with the democratic movements, human rights
organisations and political activists, it is quite
clear that they wish to suppress them.
(6) No FIR was filed
The law relating to human rights state that a FIR
should be filed every time there is an encounter.
There is also a law that 'encounters' should be
treated as 'murders' till proved otherwise. During the
incident at Karkala, no such procedure was followed.
On the basis of the above findings, the team makes the
following demands :
(#) A judicial enquiry should be conducted into the
encounter.
(#) All the police personnel involved in the incident
should be suspended pending enquiry.
(#) Yashoda should be provided adequate protection
considering the threat to her life.
(#) The government of Karnataka should take steps such
that the culture of encounters stays away from
Karnataka.
(#) The Naxalite movement has been going on in
different parts of the country for more than three
decades. The vicious circle of killings and
counter-killings continues because the governments
fail to recognise the movement as a political issue
but treat it as a law and order problem. The
fact-finding team demands that the government should
consider the Naxalite movement as a political
movement.
After the incident, the home minister says that it is
a political problem wheregovernment should consider
the Naxalite movement as a political movement.
After the incident, the home minister says that it is
a political problem where as the law minister speaks a
different language. This only shows how confused the
govt. is about the issue. The govt. should come out of
this confusion and declare the issue to be a political
one.
signed by -
Prof. N. Babaiah (PDF)
Prof. G.K.Ramaswamy (PDF)
P.Choudhuri(PDF)
R. Somanath (journalist)
B.N.Jagadeesh (Advocate)
_____
[9]
[Letter Sent to Frontier (Calcutta)]
o o o
27 Nov 2003
Inventing defense for Punjab police
Praveen Swami invents the catch word "genocide"
(November 7, 2003) to refute claims of human
rights violation in Punjab in the book "Reduced
to ashes" by R.N. Kumar, A. Singh, A. Agrawaal
and J. Kaur. It is heartening that the book
prompted Frontline to investigate even if two
decades later an ugly part of India's history. If
the evidence presented in Reduced to Ashes is
shaky, the refutation by Swami, primarily based
on "official" accounts, is shakier and adds no
more than what KPS Gill and other government
sources have been asserting all along that all
deaths occurred during encounters in which police
killed Khalistani terrorists in self defense;
surprisingly police officers did not die.
Reduced to Ashes raises the vital issue of human
rights, the violation of which is widely
recognized because nothing is secret in India. In
a democratic country, police cannot be above law
and political demands, no matter how unjust,
should be treated politically and not by guns.
Journalists are expected to be truthful and not
recite their political bias as "investigation".
Daya Varma
Montreal, Canada
November 15, 2003
Address:
Dr. Daya R. Varma
Professor of Pharmacology,
McGill University,
Montreal, QC H3G 1Y6
Canada
_____
[10]
Washington Post
November 25, 2003; Page A22
India's Mystical Murders
Kidnap-Slaying of Boy, 6, Puts Spotlight on Tantrism
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
DEHRI, India -- Madan and Murti Simaru were
desperate for a son. So when nature failed to
provide them one, the impoverished field hand and
his wife did what many Indians do in times of
need: They went to see a tantrik, practitioner of
an ancient spiritual art -- tantrism -- that aims
to harness supernatural powers for the resolution
of worldly ills.
The outcome could hardly have been more shocking.
Acting on the instructions of the tantrik, the
couple arranged for the kidnapping last month of
a 6-year-old neighbor and then -- as the tantrik
led them in chanting mantras -- mutilated and
killed the child, Monu Kumar, on the bank of an
irrigation canal, according to a police report.
Murti Simaru allegedly completed the fertility
ritual by washing herself in the child's blood.
"I was never expecting such a heinous crime
against any child," said Narendra Kumar, the
victim's 22-year-old father, who cultivates wheat
and sugar cane near this quiet village roughly
100 miles north of New Delhi in the state of
Uttar Pradesh. "This is not a matter of Monu
only. These tantrik practices must be stopped."
Local authorities seem to agree. After a rash of
similar killings in the area -- according to an
unofficial tally in the English-language
Hindustan Times, there have been 25 human
sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last
six months alone -- police have cracked down
against tantriks, jailing four and forcing scores
of others to close their businesses and pull
their ads from local newspapers and television
stations.
The killings and the stern official response have
focused renewed attention on tantrism, an amalgam
of mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism.
But tantrism also has adherents among Buddhists
and Muslims and, increasingly, in the West, where
it is usually associated with techniques for
prolonging sex. Often likened by its critics to
witchcraft, tantrism has millions of followers
across India, where it is thought to have
originated between the 5th and 9th centuries A.D.
"This is a problem you can identify somehow with
the Indian psyche," said Police Superintendent
Sunil Kumar Gupta, who launched the crackdown in
the state's Saharanpur district. "Let's hope that
now we will have a national focus on this and
let's hope in due course this will go out of
society."
For all its association with black magic,
tantrism has many benign forms and is practiced
across a broad spectrum of Indian society.
Billboards in the capital carry advertisements
for tantriks, who often charge handsome fees for
their services. Some tantriks enjoy
near-celebrity status in India, hosting seminars
at five-star hotels and hobnobbing with
politicians and film stars.
Tantriks caught up in the crackdown in Uttar
Pradesh say their reputation has been imperiled
by the disreputable actions of a few. "Tantrism
has nothing to do with human sacrifices," said
Mohammed Nafees Malik, 24, a Muslim tantrik who
was forced to close his practice in Saharanpur
after the latest killing here.
If killing is necessary, he explained, "you can
offer any animal like a goat or a cock. Sacrifice
is very common in cases where someone is
possessed by supernatural ghosts or witches."
Malik, a diminutive, lightly bearded man who
wears Western clothes and studied tantrism for
three years under a guru in Bombay, hastened to
add that he does not perform animal sacrifices.
He prefers to treat his client's problems with
tiny Koranic inscriptions contained in a metal
capsule called a taveez, which is then strapped
to the arm or worn around the neck.
"People who are suffering from diseases, family
problems, business problems, they come to us and
we provide them relief," said Malik, who used to
charge 51 rupees -- slightly more than $1 -- for
each office visit.
Perhaps the biggest danger posed by tantrism
stems from the difficulty of defining it. "No one
really knows what it is," said Sudhir Kakkar, a
psychoanalyst and author who has written widely
on Indian mysticism.
Some tantriks, for example, believe that the path
to salvation lies in shattering taboos --
involving sex, diet and other forms of behavior
-- in order to "uncondition yourself from all the
conditioning you have had," Kakkar said.
Followers of one tantrik cult near the Hindu holy
city of Varanasi are said to eat charred human
flesh pilfered from cremation grounds.
Others seek to appease the Hindu goddess Kali,
who occupies an especially prominent role in
tantrik mythology, through "blood rituals"
involving sacrifices of animals and,
occasionally, people. In cases involving
infertile couples, the idea is that "if you want
a child, you sacrifice one to get another life
back," Kakkar said. "You give it to the goddess
and the goddess gives it back to you."
There are no statistics on sacrificial killings,
and Gupta, the police superintendent, described
the phenomenon as "very, very rare." At the same
time, he said, tantriks have been implicated in
at least two killings in his district in the last
month, including that of Monu Kumar and a man who
was beaten to death by his wife and her lover.
Indian press reports have described a number of
similar cases, including that of a 2-year-old
girl who was kidnapped and killed in the state's
Bijnor district on Oct. 18.
While not unheard of in urban areas, such
killings most often occur in rural India, where
poverty and illiteracy provide fertile breeding
grounds for superstition. That appears to have
been the case here in Dehri, a warren of narrow
lanes and thatched-roof houses -- flanked by
mango groves and sugar cane fields -- that is
home to roughly 2,000 people, most of them
casteless "untouchables" at the bottom of India's
social hierarchy.
The accused couple, Madan and Murti Simaru,
already have a daughter, but -- like countless
other couples in this male-dominated society --
yearned for a son to look after them in old age
and carry the family name.
After consulting with the tantrik, Murti Simaru
asked her brother, Popin, to bring a child to
her, the police report said. Police say Popin did
this on the afternoon of Oct. 7, a school
holiday, when he allegedly kidnapped 6-year-old
Monu -- who loved to play cricket and had just
entered the first grade, his parents said -- as
he played in a field on the edge of the village.
The brother was arrested after a witness reported
seeing him in the company of the child. He
confessed to the killing and described it in a
detailed statement to police, who then arrested
the Simarus, the tantrik and one other relative,
authorities said. All five are awaiting trial in
Saharanpur.
Gupta, the police superintendent, said he was
doing his best to prevent a recurrence, having
arrested four other tantriks on what he smilingly
acknowledges is the legally creative charge of
"apprehension of breach of peace."
But in the end, he admits, there is only so much
the police can do. "The major role has to be
played by society itself," he said.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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