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.



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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
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