SACW | 30-31 Aug 2004
sacw
aiindex at mnet.fr
Mon Aug 30 15:35:21 CDT 2004
South Asia Citizens Wire | 30-31 August, 2004
via: www.sacw.net
[1] Pakistan and India urged to promote peace
- Indo-Pak MPs want defence spending cut
[2] Discarding the habit of patriotism (Jawed Naqvi)
[3] Pakistan: FIA's strange concern (Editorial, Dawn)
[4] Colours of Indianhood (Ashutosh Varshney)
[5] India: Federico Garcia Lorca's Essentially
Yerma in Imphal (New Delhi, August 31)
[6] India: A one-day convention on "employment
guarantee and the right to work" (Delhi,19 Sept)
[7] India: India's Intifada (Satya Sagar)
[8] India: The Sexuality and Rights Institute:
Exploring Theory and Practice (Pune, Jan. 8-22,
2005)
[9] Sri Lanka: Stop the LTTE’s Campaign to Eliminate Political Dissidents Now!
[10] India: On Mission Peace, they're going to Pak
[11] India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch # 146
--------------
[1]
Dawn - August 30, 2004
PAKISTAN AND INDIA URGED TO PROMOTE PEACE
By A Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Pakistan and India must
protect their peoples by cutting down defence
expenditures and diverting resources to
strengthening economies, social development and
public welfare.
This was the consensus that emerged at a public
meeting addressed by interfaith delegation of
Indian parliamentarians and peace activists of
India and Pakistan here on Sunday.
The panel of speakers included member of
parliament and deputy leader of the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) Mohammad Saleem,
Congress Party parliamentarian Karvinthan and Gen
(retired) Moti Dhar.
The Pakistani side was represented by Senator
Akram Zaki and Chaudhry Manzoor, MNA. Addressing
civil society representatives and people from
different segments of society, the meeting
emphasised peace between the two countries for
the strengthening of infrastructures and welfare
of peoples.
The meeting observed that both the countries as
neighbours faced similar problems and should make
best endeavours to eradicate illiteracy, hunger,
diseases and other menaces.
The delegation encouraged people-to-people
interaction and exchange of delegations to clear
misunderstandings and for bettering the prospects
of peace in the region.
"The two countries must end fighting like
monkeys. The tax- payers' money is being spent on
weapons for their destruction. Resources must be
utilized for social development, quality
education and better health services besides
combating other complications that prevail in
both the states," said Gen Dhar.
"People on both sides are suffering. Kashmir
remains one of the world's longest running feuds
and the problem can only be solved through talks.
There are also issues of diseases and hunger that
must be addressed first by Pakistan as well as
India," he said.
Being nuclear state is a very serious threat.
According to research, only a medium-sized bomb
dropped on Mumbai will kill 350,000 people
immediately. Another 350,000 will die after
awhile and another 200,000 even more gradually,
he said.
He said the perception inherited from the British
that domination was determined by military might
was wrong. The West gave up this thinking after
World War-II. But generals in India and Pakistan
still insist on this destructive approach, he
said.
Stressing on regional co-operation, Mohammad
Saleem said South Asians had met on several
occasions and talks had not gone from theory to
practice. He said there were no practical steps
and no progress and the two sides were only
inching towards peace. Vested interests on both
the sides are creating hindrances and some people
even do not want to see the two nations to come
closer, he said.
Media is equally responsible for creating
differences between the two by making a mountain
out of a mole hill and highlighting negative news
to create unnecessary sensation rather than
focussing more on positive aspects, he said. Ban
on Indian and Pakistani channels is futile.
People on both sides want to watch these channels
and want cultural interaction, he added.
Chaudhry Manzoor stressed on relaxing visa
restrictions by both Pakistan and India. The
ruling classes take one step forward and two
steps backward when it comes to ending mutual
confrontation, he said.
Differences between Pakistan and India are the
people's problem. People of both the nations need
to wear team jackets and must come forward to end
the hatred, he maintained.
o o o
The Daily Times - August 30, 2004
INDO-PAK MPS WANT DEFENCE SPENDING CUT
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani and Indian lawmaker have
urged Pakistan and India to curtail budgetary
allocations for defence and allocate more funds
for poverty alleviation and eradication of
unemployment.
They were addressing a seminar, "A step towards
peace", organised jointly by Pakistani and Indian
non-government organisations on Sunday. Lawmaker
from Indian National Congress SK Kharo Vaynthaan
told the audience that the two countries fought
many wars in past and were still wrestling over
many bilateral disputes.
He said the bilateral hostility was affecting
common men of the two countries who were finding
it quite difficult to make their ends meet. He
stressed the need to put up joint struggle to
give socio-economic relief to the people.
Salim Mehmood, an Indian Communist Party
legislator, said nations were coming closer for
regional cooperation. He said better regional
cooperation in various sectors of the economy was
the reason for the unprecedented development and
progress of many Western, Arab and North American
states.
He said that Pakistan was spending one percent of
its budgetary allocations on education and
healthcare against the Indian allocations of two
percent for the same. He stressed current
educational and health funds be enhanced to at
least 10 percent.
Former Indian Vice Chief of Army Staff Gen (r)
Moti Dhar said a peaceful solution to the
longstanding Kashmir dispute should be found and
in the whole process, the wishes of the Kashmiri
people should also be taken into consideration.
He said there should a complete ceasefire in
Indian-held Kashmir.
Pakistan People's Party lawmaker Chaudhry Manzoor
Ahmad said Pakistan and India were facing
unemployment, poverty, backwardness and
illiteracy as serious challenges. He said the
ruling class of both countries was not interested
in giving their people any benefits. Pakistan
Muslim League central leader Akram Zaki said the
core issue between Pakistan and India was Kashmir
and without resolving the dispute, peace and
stability could not be achieved. online
______
[2]
DAWN - August 30, 2004
DISCARDING THE HABIT OF PATRIOTISM
By Jawed Naqvi
During the Narasimha Rao era, a European diplomat
got rare access to a prison in Srinagar where he
asked an inmate about the care being given by his
Indian captors to issues of his basic comfort and
human rights. "Oh, thank you, kind Sir.
We are treated rather well by the authorities,"
the prisoner replied instantly. Asked which part
of Kashmir he belonged to, pat came the answer:
"I come from POK, Sir."
Had the inmate called out his address as Azad
Kashmir or something equally appropriate to go
with his status as a Kashmiri prisoner in an
Indian jail, the diplomat would have probably
found his story more convincing than was
eventually going to be the case. But 'POK' tended
to give the inmate away.
And yet we can understand the compulsions of a
tutored prisoner performing the role of a planted
PR man, so what if he manages to miss the crucial
distinction between Azad Kashmir and POK.
On the other hand it seems far more difficult to
comprehend the reasons for the so-called
independent and objective journalists of India
and Pakistan to fall into the trap of official
jargon that comes with their respective
nationalist historiography.
Is it professionally kosher for journalists to
flaunt their nationality, quite often even their
patriotism in war and in peace? To a few of us in
the profession the question might seem instantly
absurd.
Should we have expected American and British
reporters who covered World War II from the
battle-zones, from the frontline trenches, to
allow for any heroic description of the Nazis?
It's a valid question, but one that can be
tackled with equally tantalizing counter
questions.
Was it then not patently unpatriotic of all those
American journalists in Vietnam who refused to
turn the blind eye to the blood curdling
massacres of My Lai? Was it not a betrayal of the
"home team" to expose the heart-rending trauma of
the napalm-stricken naked Vietnamese girl that
was to be etched in everyone's memory for ever?
Conversely, and in a more contemporary context,
if patriotism is indeed a legitimate emotion for
journalists to possess, then why do we feel
exasperated by the deeds of the so-called
embedded journalists who covered the war in Iraq
from the exclusive perspective of the American
war effort, often for the exclusive benefit of
the Pentagon? And how then should we regard the
contributions of those few western journalists,
such as Robert Fisk, for example, who never ever
relented from the avowed mission of reporting the
truth as they saw it, to expose the horrors of
war from close, bodily harmful quarters?
These issues are urgent and relevant for
journalists in South Asia. Aspects of these
ostensibly semantic issues have been raised
informally among journalists, including several
times during the meetings of this or that forum
claiming to represent the region's media.
The use of certain descriptions such as Azad
Kashmir and Held-Kashmir are patently
Indo-Pakistani in origin and currency. These
represent narrow nationalist points of view and
are not even used in neutral forums such as the
United Nations.
Why don't we leave it to the officials to quarrel
for as long as they like about whatever
differences they see in the use of the words
"issue" or "dispute" to go with their respective
views on Kashmir? Is it not possible to sit
across the table over a couple of days to thrash
out a common lexicon for issues and ideas that
divide us so meaninglessly?
There is a great penchant among our tribe to hold
veritably incestuous meetings in this country or
that to pontificate on matters of high diplomacy
where senior journalists from the charmed circles
assume the role of make-believe foreign
secretaries as it were to prepare a draft or a
declaration with great deliberation.
It is a shame on the other hand that we have to
lean for help on organizations such as the
Committee for the Protection of Journalists based
in New York for elementary help, for example to
find out which colleague has been incarcerated or
simply bumped off mysteriously by our respective
government agencies.
Why do we allow our establishments to get the
better of us? Why is it that we carry verbatim
our spokesmen's briefings without asking them:
How come you quote Amnesty International's report
to reinforce your briefing about ethnic upsurge
in, say, Karachi, but reject the same Amnesty as
a western propaganda tool when it seeks to visit
Kashmir to probe rights abuses there?
Why do we sometimes behave worse than the
tutored, planted jail inmate when it comes to
reporting cases of terrorism against each other?
Every Indian who has returned from a foreign
visit has had a first-hand experience of the
immigration official's scowl as he turns the
Indian passport a dozen times over and through
some high-tech contraption before determining the
holder's true credentials.
This exercise could sometimes take quite a long
while. Consider on the other hand our quick
conclusions when we rush to tell the stories of
so-and-so Pakistani terrorist in Gujarat or so
and so RAW agent in Karachi who were killed in an
encounter. No passport, no immigration official.
Only the killer's word.
It is not a difficult task to call the bluff of
our self- styled minders. Yes, it is true that in
the process we may have to forgo an invite to a
presidential banquet here or a prime ministerial
junket there.
But we can begin by asking a simple question that
Arundhati Roy asked the other day. "Just who do
you suppose holds the keys to war or peace
between India and Pakistan?" she wondered.
Do we for that matter care to know what brought
about the change of heart within the Indian
establishment between December 13, 2001, when we
were suddenly set on the course of a ghastly
nuclear war and April 18, 2003, when a dramatic
but as yet unexplained craving for peace suddenly
took over?
There was a very interesting analysis in The
Washington Post recently about the newspaper's
error of judgment in not taking the alternative
view of its reporters seriously when they
questioned the basis for the Iraq war. The
article by Howard Kurtz should make a highly
relevant subject of discussion when journalists
from our region meet the next time.
______
[3]
Dawn - August 1, 2004 | Editorial
F[edeal] I[nvestigation] A[gency]'s strange concern
The directive by the FIA director-general to
immigration officers posted at international
airports to stop young Pakistani female members
of cultural troupes from leaving for the Middle
East makes no sense. The directive has been
issued apparently after a number of expatriates
living in the Middle East complained that some of
the women on such trips abroad indulged in
'objectionable' activities, which brought a bad
name to the country. While indulgence in
'objectionable' activities by citizens of either
sex cannot be condoned whether in Pakistan or
abroad, the singling out of women smacks of
gender bias and of a patronizing attitude towards
women.
The immigration officers' reluctance to enforce
this strange edict is understandable because
there is no law that bars women performers alone
from visiting abroad. The truth is that it is
mostly our men and not women who have at times
been the cause of embarrassment to the country
while living or visiting abroad - a drunken
airline official in Saudi Arabia being one recent
example.
As for Pakistani cultural troupes going out to
perform in the Middle East, the FIA
director-general can rest assured that the host
countries are quite capable of enforcing their
own laws regarding indecent behaviour, whether by
men or women. The singling out of women for the
purpose is simply absurd.
Instead of wasting their efforts and energies on
non-issues such as this one, the FIA and the
immigration staff would do well to concentrate on
other more menacing problems like human
trafficking, including that of 'camel kids', and
smuggling of priceless antiques out of the
country.
______
[4]
Indian Express - August 30, 2004
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=54082
COLOURS OF INDIANHOOD
Uma's tricolour vs Sonia's Italian origin: it's a facile distinction
Ashutosh Varshney
By presenting her arrest in Hubli as an
irreconcilable clash between an Indian's natural
love for the national flag and the inauthentic
Indianness of an Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, Uma
Bharati and the BJP have yet again put the issue
of Indian nationhood and citizenship on the
agenda. Being Italian, say the Hindu
nationalists, Sonia Gandhi can never be a true
Indian. It follows that she cannot possibly love
the tiranga (tricolour) the way India-born Uma
Bharati can.
Underlying the Hindu nationalist position is a
fundamental confusion, which needs to be
straightened out. How does one define an Indian?
Is an Indian citizen, even if born outside India,
not Indian? Are millions of NRIs, ethnically
Indian but citizens of other lands, really Indian?
On how a citizen is defined, there are two
models available. Some nations are based on what
is called the principle of jus solis (soil);
others on jus sanguinis (blood). These ideal
types are not perfectly realised anywhere. The
best real-world examples of the first are France
and the US; typical illustrations of the second
would be Germany and Japan. Nationhood in the
first model is defined in terms of a set of
principles: liberty, equality and fraternity in
France, and the five principles of the
Declaration of Inde-pendence - liberty, equality,
individualism, democracy and the rule of law - in
the US. Anyone can be "French" or "American",
including, of course, ethnic Indians, so long as
they demonstrably subscribe to these principles.
Naturalisation is relatively easy in these
countries. In the Olympic teams of France and US,
naturalised citizens belonging to all sorts of
races are present by the dozen.
The second model does not allow easy
naturalisation, but lets ethnicity be the
decisive, often only, factor in citizenship.
Those born to ethnically German parents anywhere
in the world can become German citizens without
any difficulty, even if they have lost German as
their language. After the disintegration of the
Soviet Union, many ethnic Germans, who had lived
there and come to speak Russian as their first
language, migrated to Germany and became German
citizens. In contrast, millions of Turks, living
in Germany since the 1960s, including a large
proportion born in Germany, are still "guest
workers". Only a small fraction have been allowed
German citizenship. Japan has a roughly similar
idea driving its nationhood and citizenship.
By celebrating and courting Indians who are
citizens of other countries through the Pravaasi
Divas, among other things, and unleashing
political venom on Sonia Gandhi, who has been an
Indian citizen since 1984-5 and has lived in the
country longer, the Hindu nationalists are taking
Indian nationhood in the jus sanguinis direction.
Unlike them, the great leaders of the Indian
freedom struggle - Mahatma Gandhi in particular -
never defined the nation ethnically. Rather, they
gave Indianness a cultural definition: those who
accepted Indian culture, including foreigners,
were welcome to be Indians. In Hind Swaraj, he
argued that even Englishmen could be Indians so
long as they accepted Indian culture as their
own. "It is not necessary for us," he said, "to
have as our goal the expulsion of the English. If
the English become Indianised, we can accommodate
them." Extending the argument further and
commenting on the relationship of the various
religious groups to Indian nationhood, he also
wrote: "If the Hindus believe that India should
be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in a
dreamland. The Hindus, the Muslims, the Parsis
and the Christians who have made India their
country are fellow countrymen." By the Mahatma's
definition, Sonia Gandhi is only ethnically
Italian, but culturally Indian.
Ethnicity on the one hand and culture and
nationhood on the other need to be conceptually
distinguished. By accepting Indian ethos, making
a family in India and living in the country,
Sonia Gandhi has become an Indian in spirit and
culture. Her ethnicity, as in the Franco-American
model of nationhood and citizenship, has become
irrelevant to a discussion of her culture and
nationality. Indeed, by not only plunging in the
political process but also campaigning in
elections, she has passed a deeper test of
citizenship: political participation. By Gandhian
reasoning, she is both culturally and politically
Indian. It should be noted that India's
constituent assembly, after a vigorous debate
marked by some dissent, accepted the Gandhian
idea of citizenship. An argument was made that
Indians in South and East Africa had to be
citizens of their adopted countries, not of
India. There was a demand that they be given
Indian citizenship.
None of what I have said above should be
construed to argue contemporary India should be
indifferent to NRIs. Thanks to globalisation and
advances in communic-ation technology, the first
decade of the 21st century is not the same as the
1950s. Frequent contact with the ancestral
homeland is possible, and diasporas are today
assets to many countries. In the highly
competitive Western environments, the resounding
professional and economic success of NRIs, many
born and educated in India, is understandably a
matter of pride in India. If they are willing to
contribute to the lands they came from, there is
every reason to embrace their goodwill, ideas,
resources and energy. It will not only be
unpragmatic but an utter folly to do otherwise.
But what's a matter of defensible pragmatism
should not be turned into an overarching
principle. At the very least, NRIs are no more
Indian than Sonia Gandhi is. In fact, they may be
considerably less so. Despite strong ties, they
have neither lived in India nor made a career
there, nor on the whole have they campaigned in
electoral politics. Only a purely ethnic
definition of India would make them more
authentic Indians.
Luckily, neither in India's Constitution nor in
the freedom struggle was India defined
ethnically. Nor, for the matter, has India been a
stranger to migrants over the many centuries of
its history. By questioning Sonia Gandhi's
Indianness, Uma Bharati and the Hindu
nationalists are getting India's history, culture
and Constitution remarkably wrong.
The writer is professor of political science, University of Michigan
______
[5]
A reaction to what is ravaging Manipur.
Our weapon: Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma.
This 70-year old play of one of the finest voices
of the world theatre seems to articulate
Manipur more strongly than any other texts.
YOUTH FOR PEACE
(An Anhad Initiative)
Is launching its theatre group 'Third Act'
&
Presenting
Federico Garcia Lorca's
Essentially Yerma in Imphal
Direction, design and dramaturgy: Parnab Mukherjee
Additional poetry:
Trilochan
Workshop associate and still documentation: Avik Chatterjee
First Show: August 31, 2004
Time: 4pm
Venue: Deputy Speaker Hall, Constitution Club,
Rafi Marg,
New Delhi-110001
Followed by discussion with the director
and the group.
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED
anhad- 23327366/ 67
______
[6]
INVITATION
A one-day convention on "employment guarantee and
the right to work" will be held in Delhi on 19
September 2004. All organisations committed to
the right to work are invited to participate.
This event is a follow-up of the recent
convention on the right to food and work, held in
Bhopal on 11-13 June. The aim of the convention
is to consolidate the growing momentum for the
immediate adoption of an Employment Guarantee Act
(EGA), and to discuss the essential features of
an acceptable EGA. Other aspects of the right to
work, such as social security for unorganised
workers, are also on the agenda.
The convention is part of a series of events and
activities planned in preparation of a
nation-wide "day of action for the right to work"
on 16 October, another offshoot of the Bhopal
convention. It is hoped that similar discussions
of the proposed Employment Guarantee Act will be
held at the state level, and locally, during the
next few months.
An informal "programme committee" has been formed
and will be meeting on 5 September to plan the
details of the convention. If you have any
suggestions in this regard, please send a line to
workforall at rediffmail.com or contact any member
of the programme committee (Ashim Roy, Babu
Mathew, Jayati Ghosh, Jean Dreze and Roma).
The venue is likely to be either Constitution
Club or the Indian Social Institute. For
confirmation please check
www.righttofoodindia.org closer to the event.
You can also find further background material,
including a draft Employment Guarantee Act, on
the same website.
_____
[7]
ZNet | India
India's Intifada
by Satya Sagar (August 23, 2004)
It is not Fallujah, Palestine or even Kashmir but only a small province in
the north-east of India. But there is no doubt that what the people of Manipur
are staging right now is a full-scale intifada against the atrocities of an
occupying army.
The immediate target of their ire is one of the world’s most draconian
‘anti-terror’ laws anywhere- the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, imposed on
several parts of the Indian north-east since
1958. The larger protest is against
what is correctly perceived as decades of racist
oppression by successive Indian
governments that ‘inherited’ the north-eastern
territories from British colonial
rule in 1947.
‘Manipur ? Who ? What ? Where ?’ I can already hear people ask. Not
surprising at all for those are questions that many Indian citizens themselves
would be hard put to answer. Unlike Kashmir or the fate of the ‘untouchable’
Dalits- whose causes have made it to global
platforms in recent years- the dirty
little secrets of the Indian State’s predations in its north-eastern provinces
are unknown to even rest of India.
Not that rest of ‘Aryan’ India really cares.
To them, the populations of the
Indian northeast, of largely Tibeto-Burman ethnic origins, are an ‘invisible’
lot- whose territory and resources ‘belong’ to India but whose people don’t.
Probably a rung below the ‘visible’ Dalits who ‘belong’ to India but possess no
territory.
What sparked off Manipur’s intifada was a spectacular and emotionally
searing protest against yet another rape and murder of a local woman by members
of the Assam Rifles, an Indian paramilitary force stationed in the province.
On July 15, this year, a dozen middle-aged Manipuri women calmly walked up
to the gates of the paramilitary headquarters in the province, stripped stark
naked and help up placards which read ‘ Indian Army rape us’, ‘Rape us the way
you did Manorama’. The images flashed throughout India caused outrage of course
but in Manipur it brought the entire citizenry out on the streets.
Manorama was the name of a 32 year old Manipuri woman, who was picked up
from her house in early July by soldiers for being a ‘suspected insurgent’ and
later found dead. Autopsy reports showed she had been shot at close range and
that too several times through her genitals- an obvious attempt to fudge any
investigation of rape.
Officers of the Assam Rifles claimed Manorama was a member of the outlawed
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), one of several Manipuri militant groups
demanding autonomy or even outright separation from the Indian union. According
to them she was shot while trying to ‘escape from custody’- a standard excuse
for assassinating the ‘inconvenient’ anywhere in the world. Assam Rifles
personnel have so far brazenly refused to testify before an official inquiry
investigating Manorama’s death.
What has united the entire population of Manipur, 2.4 million in all and
across the political spectrum, is not just the rape/murder (of which there is a
long list over the decades) but the fact that Indian security forces are
‘legally covered’ no matter what they do.
Providing such legal cover is the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958
(AFSPA) under which all security forces are given unrestricted and unaccounted
power to carry out their operations, once an area is declared ‘disturbed’. The
ACT allows even a non-commissioned officer the right to shoot to kill based on
mere suspicion and to "maintain the public order". And members of the security
forces acting under the AFSPA can be prosecuted only with the explicit consent
of the Indian government- leaving their victims perpetually without remedy.
Like many other antiquated Indian laws the AFSPA too is a slightly modified
version of an old British colonial Act imposed to control a nationwide struggle
by Indian nationalists for independence. The AFSPA was enacted in 1958 and
initially aimed at the Naga insurgent movement for independence from India but
amended in 1972 to be applicable to all the seven provinces in the north-
eastern region of India.
Known as the ‘seven sisters’ the provinces of Assam, Manipur, Tripura,
Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and
Nagaland- are among the most neglected
and underdeveloped parts of India. Manipur is 22% behind the national average
for infrastructural development, and the entire north-eastern region is 30%
behind the rest of India.
The irony of the AFSPA lies in the fact that Manipur, of all the seven
provinces in the Indian northeast, was the most peaceful- till it came within
the purview of the Act in 1980. There have been
separatist insurgencies in other
parts of the Indian north-east since the early days of Indian independence,
notably that of the Nagas and Mizos, but never among the ethnic Meitei who form
the bulk of Manipur’s population. Currently there are reported to be over a
dozen insurgent groups operating in the province – a testimony to the AFSPA
having achieved exactly the opposite of what it was purported to do.
According to human rights groups, the enforcement of the AFSPA has resulted
in innumerable incidents of arbitrary detention, torture, rape, and looting by
security personnel. Many of the provisions of the Act violate the Indian
constitution and various international human rights charters.
Despite all this over the years successive governments in New Delhi have
justified the legislation on the plea that it is
required to stop the North East
provinces from seceding from the Indian Union. All the mainstream Indian
political parties, each trying to be more ‘patriotic’ than the other, agree on
the need to keep the AFSPA despite its unpopularity and dubious record.
The simple truth about India is that its elites are still running a 19th
century State wrested from British colonialists which always prioritized land
and resources over the lives of ordinary people. For all the glib talk about
India being a ‘software superpower’ those who run the Indian State have always
displayed a perverse fetish for protecting their ‘national hardware’.
Successive Indian governments since independence have been been guilty of
treating the country’s north-eastern provinces as mere property with little
respect for its people’s culture, aspirations and demands. And when the people
revolt against such treatment the only solution the Indian elites can think of
is a military one.
Making matters worse of course is the fact that these Indian national
elites, essentially drawn from upper caste ‘Aryan’ stock, combine the brute
technology of the nation-state with the metaphysics of the ancient caste system
thereby asserting a double oppression on all
‘lesser people’ in the land. So the
members of the Indian army and police who lord it over the people of the
northeastern provinces are armed with not just gun and bayonet but also
Bramhinical notions of cultural and racial ‘superiority’ over those they so
gleefully rape and pillage.
Truth be said the Indian government’s actions in its north-east are not
really very different in many ways from what many other countries are doing to
their own ethnic and cultural minority people
elsewhere in the world. And within
India too it is not just the people of the Indian north-east who bear the brunt
of such racism but also all the Dalit and tribal
people living in other parts of
the country- robbed of their resources, dignity and way of life under the
‘patronage’ of the Indian State.
The only real difference though is that the people of the Indian north-east
are not willing to take such colonialism lying
down and have repeatedly risen up
to fight for their rights.
Even as I write now Manipur is burning- literally- with students setting
themselves ablaze, shops and institutions closed, people out blockading the
roads- an entire population out on the streets in protest.
The recently elected Congress government in
Delhi says, ill advised no doubt
by the Indian army and bureaucracy, says it is willing to talk to the
‘insurgents’ but refuses to repeal the AFSPA. This ignores the fact that the
unrest in Manipur is today not about a handful of militants anymore but become
an insurrection by its entire population.
It is time that the rest of the world woke up
to the plight of the people of
Manipur and the Indian north-east for the simple reason that they are among our
globe’s oldest victims of the tyranny wrought by misplaced and dubious
‘anti-terrorism’ legislation. All those concerned about how the US sponsored
‘War on Terror’ is destroying democracy globally should pay close attention to
the struggles of the Manipuri people. The context may be different but the
problem is a painfully familiar one.
And the rest of India should oppose what is happening to their brethren in
the north-east as the Indian State is perpetrating atrocities in their name and
because the price of indifference could be their own subjection to such
brutalities in the future. In the process, they could begin to forge nothing
less than a new idea of the Indian nation – shorn
of racism and defined in terms
of living people with living concerns and not dead property or the abstract
perimeters of a paper map.
Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist,
videomaker based in Thailand. He can be contacted
at sagarnama at yahoo.com
______
[8]
The Sexuality and Rights Institute: Exploring
Theory and Practice, January 8-22, 2005, Pune
The Sexuality and Rights Institute is an annual
two week long residential course that focuses on
a conceptual study of sexuality. It examines the
interface between sexuality and rights and its
links with the related fields of gender and
health. The Institute also aims to further the
analytical skills of participants to critically
examine how various strategies and practices in
the field of sexual and reproductive health
affirm or violate the rights of individuals.
Participants examine sexual and reproductive
health programs as well as various legal and
socio-cultural issues and incorporate their
learning into planning and working on programmes.
Sexuality spans multiple disciplines and areas of
work. Accordingly, the course content of the
Sexuality and Rights Institute draws from
different social science disciplines. Course
themes cover: Sexuality and Rights; Sexuality,
Gender and the Legal System; Sexual and
Reproductive Health and Rights; Sex work,
Sexuality and Rights; Agency and Victimhood;
Representation of Sexuality; Sexual Diversities
and Rights; and Sexuality and Disabilities.
National and international faculty teach the
courses. They employ different pedagogical
methods including classroom instruction, group
work, case studies, simulation exercises, fiction
and films. The faculty at the 2005 Sexuality and
Rights Institute includes: Radhika Chandiramani,
Shohini Ghosh, Manisha Gupte, Dilip Menon,
Nivedita Menon, Alice Miller, Geetanjali Misra,
Janet Price, Tanika Sarkar and Carole Vance. The
medium of instruction and discussion is English.
Individuals working on issues of sexuality,
rights, health or gender are eligible to apply. A
maximum of twenty-five participants are selected
each year, based on their applications and
personal interviews. Women are especially
encouraged to apply. Candidates must be fluent in
English. Participants are required to stay for
the whole duration of the course.
The Sexuality and Rights Institute will hold its
fourth course from January 8-22, 2005 in Pune,
Maharashtra. Participants stay on campus in
twin-sharing accommodation. The Institute covers
costs of lodging and boarding. Participants from
international organisations will cover their own
costs. Participants are expected to contribute
Rs. 5000/- towards the course and cover their own
travel expenses.
The Institute is a collaborative initiative of
CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in
Action) and TARSHI (Talking About Reproductive
and Sexual Health Issues). Both CREA and TARSHI
are registered non-profit organisations. Based on
a vision of the right to sexual well-being for
all people, TARSHI works towards expanding sexual
and reproductive choices in people's lives. CREA
empowers women to articulate, demand, and access
their human rights by enhancing women's
leadership and focusing on issues of sexuality,
reproductive health, violence against women,
women's rights, and social justice.
For other information, please contact The
Sexuality and Rights Institute at the address
given below. Application forms may be photocopied
and distributed, and may also be submitted
electronically. The last date for submission of
application forms is October 7, 2004.
The Sexuality and Rights Institute
11 Mathura Road, 1st Floor, Jangpura B,
New Delhi-110014, India.
Tel: 91-11-243136967, Fax: 91-11-24314022
Email: sexualityinstitute at vsnl.net
Website: www.sexualityinstitute.org
______
[9]
Stop the LTTE’s Campaign to Eliminate Political Dissidents Now!
An Appeal to the International Community and Human Rights Organisations
We Sri Lankans, and others concerned about human rights and democracy in
Sri Lanka, demand an end to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE)
campaign to eliminate its political opponents and dissenters in Sri Lanka.
We call upon all human rights organisations to support our call urgently,
and the international community to buttress our demands with concrete
policy changes that will call the LTTE to account and end these
atrocities.
In its quest to be the sole representatives of the Tamil people, the LTTE
has always used periods of cease-fire arrangements with the Sri Lankan
Government as licence and opportunity to eliminate Tamils who are opposed
to its hegemony. (The assassination of A. Amirthalingam of TULF in 1989
to T. Subathiran of EPRLF in 2003 to Bala Nadarajah Aiyar in August 2004 -
are only three prominent examples, there are hundreds of other fallen
individuals who are victims of the current cease-fire and whose names are
being erased from history.)
Since March this year, the LTTE has escalated its elimination of
opposition and murdered numerous Tamils all over the country. People are
unsafe no matter where they live in Sri Lanka, as they have been targeted
and killed on their hospital bed, at home, on roadsides, at public
executions, inside the prisons and even inside the courthouses. These are
not only heinous crimes, but also violations of the cease-fire agreement
the LTTE signed with the Sri Lankan Government in February 2002.
These attacks have created a climate of fear within the Tamil community
and intentionally discouraged dissent and democratisation. Even mourning
for the dead has become dangerous in the face of intimidation calculated
to erase the memory of the dead. We remember all who have fallen as we
appeal for the protection of those who are at risk.
The peace process and cease-fire in Sri Lanka though having overwhelming
international support has from the start been marred by these killings.
We are disappointed that the international community and especially the
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) have done very little to stop these
atrocities.
We call upon the international community to link all international aid for
development and promotion of the peace process to the LTTE’s strict
adherence to human rights norms and principles of democracy. We demand
that international human rights monitors with powers to observe and act in
all parts of Sri Lanka be deployed immediately.
The safety and security of all civilians in Sri Lanka is at stake, and in
the current context Tamils opposed to the LTTE are enormously vulnerable.
The security of those under threat and their right to life should be the
priority of the international community, and such security should
necessarily be the first step towards initiating a just and lasting peace.
Please sign below or e-mail your name and country of residence to:
stopthekillings at lankademocracy.org
Name Country Signature
_____
[10]
Ahmedabad Newsline - August 30, 2004
ON MISSION PEACE, THEY'RE GOING TO PAK
Express News Service
Ahmedabad, August 29: To spread the message of
peace and harmony, members of the Ahmedabad-based
Gandhi World Peace Mission will set off on an
Indo-Pakistan peace tour. Mission director Mittul
Shelat along with three of his colleagues will
zoom out of Sabarmati Ashram on their motorcycles
on September 11, to reach Pakistan on October 2.
There, they plan to spread the Mahatma's message.
The group will cover 10,000 km during their
journey to promote their belief: my life is my
message. ''Earlier, we had decided to drop the
tour idea as it involved a lot of risk. Then, we
came to know about Pakistanis through various
media reports. This changed our perspective,''
says Shelat, adding: ''The common man there wants
peace and is willing to co-operate in efforts
towards world peace.'' Gandhiji believed in
non-violence, brotherhood and unity, so we will
try to spread this message in Pakistan, he says.
The tour will start from Ahmedabad and move on to
Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab before entering
Pakistan through Wagah. The members will take at
least two months to complete the tour.
Expaining the importance of commencing the tour
on September 11, the director says, ''Everyone
rooted for non-violence when the twin towers were
destroyed. That's why we decided to start the
tour on that day,'' says Shelat, a medical
technician who has just returned to his homeland
after working with a US-based medical company.
_____
[11]
India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch Compilation # 146
(30 August, 2004)
=========================================
[1] Nuclear Weapons:
- Who wants nukes? (Faisal Bari)
- An Open Letter To Mayors (Lalit Surjan)
- Haunting memories of Hiroshima (M.H. Askari)
[2] Pakistan: reports on 'normal terrorism',
cantonments, defence businesses, military land,
nuclear programme, security, arms licensing,new
arms aquisitions
2.1 Khuzdar incident
2.2 Spectre of 'normal terrorism' in Balochistan
2.3 Pakistan won't roll back its nuclear programme: Aziz
2.4 CJ directs police to stop fake encounters
2.5 Military operation in Balochistan: Lawyers mark black day across ...
2.6 No military cantonments will be allowed: Bugti
2.7 New Arms License Policy sets off in Sindh
2.8 US will buy small arms from Pakistan:
Military requirements of Iraq and Afghanistan
2.9 Defence businesses and civilians
2.10 Land and the military
2.11 Lahore: Armymen to guard high-security prisons
2.12 Chinese warplanes to be inducted soon
2.13 Making sense of Indian defence spending
[3] Pakistan, Taliban, Jihadis, Al Queda etc. .
3.1 Pakistan Allows Taliban to Train, a Detained Fighter Says
3.2 Cracking open Pakistan's jihadi core
3.3 Interview: Top Analyst Barnett Rubin Says
Pakistan Is Letting Taliban Survive
3.4 Terror in the bazaar
3.5 'Al Qaeda activists' distribute pamphlets
[4] [India Pakistan Talks]
- Refusal To Exchange Maps
- Sir Creek talks end without progress
- Text Of The Joint Press Statement On Indo-Pak Talks On Sir Creek
- Joint Press Statement On India-Pakistan Talks On Sir Creek
[5]
5.1 Circle of Violence (Praful Bidwai)
5.2 Uncivil Laws and Repression in the North East of India: A compilation
(i) Uncivil Wrongs (Bibek Debroy)
(ii) Human rights diary (Kuldeep Nayar)
(iii) Odious Comparisons (EPW Editorial)
(iv) Why the Armed Forces Special Powers Act should be dumped (Subhash Gatade)
(v) Recover Manipur (Edit , Hindustan Times)
(vi) Manipur Abandoned (Edit , The Times of India)
(vii) Manipur on the brink (Edit , Indian Express)
(viii) Why Malom is a big reason for Manipur
anger against Army Act (Rahul Pathak)
(ix) Modern India's humiliated orphans (Monisha Behal)
(x) Manipur on the boil (Siddharth Varadarajan)
(xi) `Bring erring Army officers to book'
(xii) Repeal of POTA: What about Other Draconian Acts? (Ujjwal Kumar Singh)
[6] India: Nuclear Missile Test, A useless tank,
Nuclear submarine, Fast breeder reactor, military
cooperation:
6.1 India test fires Agni II
6.2 After 30-Year Wait, India Rejects Arjun for Combat
6.3 India to induct Brahmos missiles next year
6.4 India needs n-submarines, says new Naval Chief
6.5 When The Big Guns Backfire
6.6 Fast breeder reactor projects put on fast track'
6.7 India president justifies nuclear program
6.8 India News: 'Military cooperation propelling India-US ties'
[7] India's ever rising Defence Spending
7.1 Indian defence spending set to grow by 12.5% (Iftikhar Gilani)
7.2 Defence needs Rs. 6,000 crores more for modernisation (Sandeep Dikshit)
[8] Military and Security Mania and Daily Life in India - Pakistan
8.1 IAS recruitment should be through armed forces
8.2 Jammu & Kashmir: Displaced by war, cut off by a fence
8.3. Schoolgirls honour MLI jawans with 'rakhis'
8.4 Waving national flags and wearing Bharat Army T-shirts [at cricket Matches]
8.5 Lahore: Cameras sought for monitoring plays
8.6 Goa govt approves Bill on security agencies
8.7 Noida cops to keep close watch on foreigners
[9] India: Availability of Arms to civilians ....
private militia and kidnapping business
- Minister raises private army to take on criminals
- Gabbar's back and counting crores
- Students Flee India's Crime Capital After Kidnapping Spree
- Army men sell weapons to us: Former dacoit
- Secretary home to head probe [into fake arms licences racket]
[10] Bangladesh: Bombs, armed squads, the state somewhere and democracy
(1) Bombs in Bangladesh (Ekram Kabir)
(2) We are shocked, alarmed
(3) Bomb spree a conspiracy against spiritual
songs - Fakirs, saints, bauls demand an end to it
(4) Bangladesh: Rapid Action Battalion: Rationale
and reality (Muhammad Nurul Huda)
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/157
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
Sister initiatives :
South Asia Counter Information Project : snipurl.com/sacip
South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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