SACW | 17 Feb 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   | 17 Feb.,  2005
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Press Release re recent rape of a physician - 
Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women of 
Pakistan
[2]  Nepal:
(i) Citizens Letter to the King re arrest of Professor Lok Raj Baral
(ii) Committee to Protect Journalists urges Nepal to restore press freedom
(iii) Eleven steps to safeguard press freedom in 
Nepal (Reporters without Borders)
[3]  Bangladesh: Bangladesh: Bomb Attacks by Fundamentalists
People Urged To Fight Back Fundamentalist Forces
+ Brac, Grameen Bank under bomb attack
[4]  India - anti sikh riots of 1984: Justice as 
self-purification (Jyotirmaya Sharma)
[5]  India: The Hindu far iight and their 
extraterritorial loyalty (J Sri Raman)
[6]  Japanese peace mission travels to Pakistan - 
'Learning From Hiroshima' (Zubeida Mustafa)
[7] Announcements:
(i) Meeting on Slum Demolitions in Bombay (New Delhi, 19 February 2005)
(ii) Suggestions re 'Food-for-work' in India
(iii) The Metrosexuals: Exploring the Unexplored  (Red Earth)


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

[1]

[15 February 2005]

Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women of Pakistan (ANAA)

PRESS RELEASE:

Members of Asian American Network Against Abuse 
of Women of Pakistan (ANAA) are outraged at the 
recent rape of a physician while on duty working 
for Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL). Rape is
a violation of human rights and that of a healer 
who should have been given protection by PPL is 
beyond belief. Not only did PPL management fail 
to provide security to her, they tried to cover up
this heinous crime and the alleged involvement of 
Pakistan army officers in this crime is even more 
infuriating. To make matters worse, now this 
unfortunate doctor is also being labeled as Kari 
and
her own tribe has vowed to take her life. We 
demand justice for the victim and harsh punitive 
actions to be taken against PPL. Nothing can 
alleviate the pain and suffering of this 
unfortunate doctor,
but making an example of giants like PPL will 
scare future perpetrators. We demand justice so 
that our women can feel safe and their families 
can allow them to pursue professional career 
paths.

We have started a signature campaign. Our goal is 
500 signature and we have crossed 225 mark. 
Letter will be sent to Ambassador Pakistan and 
President Musharraf.

Please visit:
www.4anaa.org

______


[2]  [Nepal : Statements by citizens and Rights groups]

(i)

16 February 2001
5 Falgun 2061

His Majesty King Gyanendra
Chairman, Council of Ministers
His Majesty's Government
Kathmandu, Nepal

Your Majesty,

On 7 February 2005 (25 Magh 2061), Professor Lok Raj Baral was
picked up by security personnel on arrival from New Delhi at the
Tribhuvan International Airport. He has been in detention since.
Prof. Baral is an independent scholar, and his arrest for unknown
reasons has provided cause for concern among the country's
academics, intellectuals and others. No society can progress when
independent thought and expression are controlled. Such actions
also hamper the search for a common solution to the difficulties
facing the country.

We the undersigned seek the immediate release of Prof. Baral.

Dhruba Kumar
Krishna Khanal
Hari Sharma
Krishna Hachhethu
Dalman Dahal
Kanak Mani Dixit
Abhi Subedi

o o o o

(ii)

Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Avenue, 11th Fl., New York, NY 10001 USA
Web: www.cpj.org

February 16, 2005


His Excellency Ambassador Kedar Bhakta Shrestha

2131 Leroy Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008

Via facsimile: 202-667-5534


Dear Ambassador Shrestha:

Thank you for meeting with Joel Simon, deputy 
director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, 
and CPJ Washington, D.C., Representative Frank 
Smyth last week. As communicated in that meeting, 
CPJ is deeply alarmed at the treatment of 
Nepalese journalists since King Gyanendra's 
February 1 declaration of a state of emergency, 
and we urged your government to restore press 
freedom immediately in the interests of your 
nation's citizens and its international standing. 
We greatly appreciate your offer to convey our 
grave concerns to the king.

The recent assault on the Nepalese press has been 
immense and deeply troubling. More than two weeks 
after King Gyanendra cut off all communication in 
the country and imposed total media censorship, 
many of the drastic measures affecting Nepal's 
journalists remain in place. A program of 
military-enforced censorship that began on 
February 1 has not been lifted, and hundreds of 
journalists who cannot report the news face 
layoffs. Communications have been restored with 
the disturbing caveat that security forces may 
monitor and cut them off at will. And several 
journalists remain in detention, including Bishnu 
Nisthuri, the General Secretary of the Federation 
of Nepalese Journalists.

Threats to the press leave all citizens at 
increased risk of abuse by security forces. 
Reports from Nepal indicate that the media 
crackdown has been most severe in rural areas, 
which are the primary site of conflict between 
the army and Maoist rebels.

CPJ is particularly concerned about the following press freedom violations:

Censorship
Independent FM radio stations have been banned 
from reporting the news and are limited to 
broadcasting entertainment programming. Hundreds 
of broadcast journalists now face layoffs, and 
the survival of local radio in Nepal-more than 40 
outlets are a primary source of news to people in 
districts across the country-is at stake.

The king's orders have banned all media from 
broadcasting or publishing negative commentary on 
the king's activities or indirectly or directly 
criticizing the security forces in any way that 
could "affect morale." Anyone who disobeys these 
orders will be placed under immediate house 
arrest, according to state media.

For a period of days following the February 1 
declaration, security forces were stationed at 
the nation's major media houses. Military 
officers vetted news articles and editorials and 
imposed the king's new censorship guidelines by 
threat of force. Though the physical presence of 
military battalions in media offices in Kathmandu 
has diminished, media outlets remain under 
military surveillance and censorship. Security 
forces continue to enter newspaper and magazine 
offices at will. Local sources told CPJ that in 
the last week, security forces have entered the 
offices of weeklies Chhalphal, Deshantar, and 
Dristi to censor their content.

Print publications outside the capital are at an 
even greater risk. Because of the disruption in 
communications, specific information on 
conditions in the provinces is limited. But 
sources have told CPJ that many newspapers in the 
districts have closed completely-some under 
orders of security forces-or have drastically 
reduced their staff size.

In the midwestern city of Nepalgunj, the military 
rounded up newspaper editors to issue an order 
banning them from publishing any information on 
civilian deaths perpetrated by security forces. 
The 12-point guidelines also banned them from 
publishing information on political parties or 
quoting news about Maoists from foreign media and 
required them to submit publications to the 
government for monitoring.

The media was prohibited from reporting on a 
February 1 student protest in Pokhara, where 
police shot one student and detained and beat 58 
others, many of them severely, according to Human 
Rights Watch.

Communications
Mobile phone lines across the country remain 
down, and the king has authorized security 
personnel to monitor or ban the use of telephone, 
radio, fax, television, e-mail, or any other form 
of electronic media as they see fit.

CPJ has received reports that on February 14, 
security forces ordered Nepal Telecommunications 
to cut off telephone lines in eastern Nepal's 
Sarlahi District, isolating thousands of people 
and disrupting all flow of information in that 
area.

Detention of journalists
At around 10 p.m. on February 4, security forces 
arrested Bishnu Nisthuri, General Secretary of 
the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ), at 
his home in Kathmandu. His arrest came hours 
after Nisthuri had issued a statement condemning 
the harassment of journalists and military 
censorship of the press during the state of 
emergency. Nisthuri remains in custody at the 
Singha Durbar Ward Police Office.

Security forces have also targeted FNJ President 
Tara Nath Dahal, visiting his home and 
threatening his wife and children. The offices of 
FNJ remain under military surveillance, sources 
told CPJ.

Also in detention since the first days of the 
emergency is Khagendra Sangraula, a columnist for 
Kantipur daily and a strong critic of the 
monarchy. He is being held at the armed police 
headquarters at Halchowk, on the outskirts of 
Kathmandu.

On February 13, security forces arrested two 
journalists in Chitwan District for unknown 
reasons. We request additional information on the 
status of reporters Narayan Adhikari, with the 
state-owned Rastriya Samachar Samiti news agency, 
and Basanta Parajuli, of the daily Gorkhapatra.

On February 15, security forces arrested D.R. 
Panta, local correspondent of Kantipur 
publications in the district of Dadeldhura. 
According to news reports, he is currently being 
held at the district police office.

CPJ also requests additional information on the 
reported detentions of FNJ member Narayan Dutta 
Kandel, Suresh Chandra Pokhrel of Channel Nepal, 
and Suman Shrestha. The latter two were 
reportedly arrested while attending protests.

Your Excellency, your government has justified 
its actions by claiming that they are necessary 
to disrupt the Maoists' alleged communication 
network and to put an end to news reports that 
were demoralizing the population. But by 
dismantling Nepal's communication infrastructure 
and shutting down the press, you have gravely 
harmed both the people of Nepal and your 
country's international reputation. When Maoist 
rebels have disrupted communications and attacked 
the press, your government has condemned their 
actions. Yet officials have now taken much more 
sweeping action against the media.

As you well know, Nepal's economy is largely 
dependent on international aid and tourism. The 
February 1 actions have garnered universal 
international censure, compelling several major 
donor countries to recall their envoys and 
putting millions of dollars of development and 
military aid under review. In November 2004, the 
U.S. Congress passed a bill linking military aid 
to Nepal's demonstrated commitment to human 
rights. In May 2004, nine donors, including 
Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Norway, and 
Germany, signed a statement making development 
aid contingent on democratization and human 
rights.

According to reports received by CPJ, at least 
eight journalists have been arrested since the 
crackdown began, putting your country in the 
company of just a handful of other countries, 
including China, Eritrea, Cuba, and Burma, whose 
routine imprisonment of journalists puts them 
outside the international mainstream.

As an independent organization dedicated to 
defending press freedom worldwide, CPJ calls on 
your government to restore full communications 
without security surveillance, lift media 
censorship, and immediately release all 
journalists.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. We await your reply.

Sincerely,

Ann Cooper
Executive Director

CC:
James Moriarity, U.S. Ambassador to Nepal
Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Amnesty International
Article 19 (United Kingdom)
Artikel 19 (The Netherlands)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Freedom Forum
Freedom House
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Center for Journalists
International Federation of Journalists
International PEN
International Press Institute
Michael G. Kozak, United States Assistant 
Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
The Newspaper Guild
The North American Broadcasters Association
Overseas Press Club
Reporters Sans Frontières
The Society of Professional Journalists
World Association of Newspapers
World Press Freedom Committee

o o o o o

(iii)

Reporters Sans Frontières / Reporters without Borders
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris

Press Release

16 February 2005

NEPAL: ELEVEN STEPS TO SAFEGUARD PRESS FREEDOM

As the international community works to help 
restore democracy in Nepal, Reporters Without 
Borders has sent the Nepali government, via its 
embassy in France, a list of 11 urgent steps it 
should take to safeguard press freedom, damaged 
by recent decisions from the palace and the 
military.

As long as the Nepalese government fails to take 
these steps, the organisation will continue to 
campaign for Western countries to impose 
political sanctions on the Himalayan kingdom. EU 
and India's ambassadors have been withdrawn from 
Kathmandu for consultations and the United States 
is planning to suspend aid, including military.

Reporters Without Borders also sent a list of ten 
Nepalese journalists who have been imprisoned, 
five of them arrested since 1 February 2005. 
Among those arrested was Bishnu Nisthuri, 
Secretary General of the Federation of Nepalese 
Journalists.

Eleven urgent measures to save press freedom in Nepal

1. Repeal the prohibition, imposed on 1 February, 
on the publication of any negative information 
about the king, government or army for a period 
of six months.
2. Withdraw the directives issued on 7 February 
to newspaper editors about authorised news and 
information.
3. Allow news programmes to resume on FM radio stations.
4. End the blocking of privately-owned TV 
stations and international TV stations.
5. Reopen all provincial media.
6. Release imprisoned journalists.
7. End the control which the security forces have 
been exercising in the editorial offices of 
newspapers, especially opposition weeklies.
8. Reopen community radio stations.
9. End the harassment of the leaders of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists.
10. Allow the FM re-transmission of the BBC World 
Service's Nepali-language programmes to resume.
11. End the censorship of news websites.


______


[3]  Bangladesh: Bomb Attacks by Fundamentalists

Daily Star
February 17, 2005

PEOPLE URGED TO FIGHT BACK FUNDAMENTALIST FORCES
'People's committee' to be formed to probe bomb attacks
Staff Correspondent
Speakers at a roundtable yesterday called upon 
the people to fight back the fundamentalist 
forces as they have become a threat to the spirit 
of the liberation war.

They also decided to form a 'people's inquiry 
committee' to investigate into all grenade and 
bomb attacks, and another body to publish a white 
paper on the activities of the extremist groups.

The roundtable on 'Repeated grenade and bomb 
attacks and target of militant fundamentalism: 
The duty of civil society" was organised by South 
Asian People's Union against Fundamentalism and 
Communalism and Muktijuddher Smriti Sangrakkhan 
Kendra at Cirdap auditorium yesterday.

Barrister Amir-ul-Islam said a national programme 
should be chalked out to save the country from 
the grip of fundamentalist forces.

AAMS Arefin Siddiqui, president of Dhaka 
University Teacher's Association, said the people 
are panicked as the government could not find out 
a single bomb or grenade attacker.

Prof Muntasir Mamun said the young generation is 
now confused as true history of the country could 
not be presented to them.

Bazlur Rahman, editor of the daily Sangbad, 
stressed the need for strengthening the 
organisational power of the progressive forces.

Shahriar Kabir, union secretary, presented a 
concept paper at the roundtable where he quoted 
some interviews given by top Jamaat-e-Islami 
leaders of Bangladesh to Jamaat leaders of 
Pakistan showing how Jamaat-e-Islami, a major 
partner of the alliance government, strengthened 
its organisational power with the help of the 
government.

The interviews also revealed that until now the 
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh is carrying out its 
activities following the ideology of Maulana 
Moududi, founder of Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami.

Chaired by Prof Kabir Chowdhury, the roundtable 
was also addressed by CPB President Monjurul 
Islam Khan, Justice KM Sobhan, Promod Mankin MP, 
former secretary Mokammel Haq, Barrister Shafiq 
Ahmed, Prof Nim Chandra Bhoumik, development 
worker Aroma Dutta, human rights activist Rosalin 
Di Costa, Moulana Abdul Awal Khan, Zabid Ahsan 
Sohel and Shamsunnahar Siddiqui.

o o o o

[See Also]

The Daily Star, February 17, 2005
BRAC, GRAMEEN BANK UNDER BOMB ATTACK
8 staffs wounded; 3 grenades recovered from a Brac office
Eight people -- six employees of Brac and two of 
Grameen Bank -- have been injured in identical 
bomb attacks on two Brac offices and a branch of 
the bank since Sunday, while three grenades were 
recovered from another Brac office  [...].
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/02/17/d5021701011.htm

_______


[4]

The Hindu - February 17, 2005

JUSTICE AS SELF-PURIFICATION

By Jyotirmaya Sharma

The report on the anti-Sikh riots offers the 
Congress a chance to reinvent itself.

NOTHING WOULD do more to enhance the credibility 
of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance 
(UPA) Government at the Centre than the early 
publication of Justice (retd.) G.T. Nanavati's 
report on the post-Indira Gandhi assassination 
anti-Sikh riots of 1984. A fair, speedy and 
impartial Action Taken Report (ATR) following its 
publication will give substance to the UPA's 
promise in the Common Minimum Programme "to 
preserve, protect and promote social harmony and 
to enforce the law without fear or favour to deal 
with all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements 
who seek to disturb social amity and peace."

It is essential to restate that the mandate of 
the 14th Lok Sabha was for secular and 
progressive forces. Keeping the Bharatiya Janata 
Party (BJP) and its allies out of power is only a 
small step towards consolidating secularism. 
Enormous effort to build and strengthen liberal 
institutions, practices and observances is the 
inevitable next step towards preventing a 
political regrouping of communal forces. Any 
stance of the UPA Government that seeks to 
establish truth, reconciliation and justice on a 
firm footing will only further its claims to 
furthering a substantive idea of secularism.

Previous attempts to bring the victimisers of the 
Sikhs in 1984 to book have failed either because 
of excessive legalism or because of the lack of 
sufficient will to punish the guilty. Whatever 
the reasons, little has been done to take into 
account the perception of the victims. Nor has 
the system of law and justice reflected this 
perception. The failure of the state and the 
citizens has been at various levels. At one 
level, it is reflected in the lack of willingness 
to act on behalf of those who suffered. Further, 
there have been attempts to blame certain parties 
and individuals and absolve others while little 
has been done to mitigate, compensate and act on 
behalf of the victims.

The anti-Sikh riots unveiled a trend where those 
suffering at the hands of a well-organised mob 
become hapless spectators to a growing sense of 
tolerance to passive injustice. Indifference to 
the misery of others as well as the inability of 
the rule of law to contain all forms of vengeance 
is on the rise. Such indifference is often 
cloaked in the guise of the `inevitability' or 
`necessity' argument: acts of violence are 
condoned by their perpetrators by resorting to 
the idea of a `spontaneous' and `popular' 
reaction.

While there will be sections within the Congress 
that would resist the outcome of the Nanavati 
Commission's findings, the party would be wise to 
rise above partisan politics and implement the 
report. The Congress has lacked a coherent 
ideology for many decades now, and what 
masquerades as ideology is often a negative 
sentiment against all that the BJP stands for. 
Part of the problem lies in the Congress' attempt 
to be all things to all people. The report on the 
anti-Sikh riots offers the party a tremendous 
opportunity to reinvent itself.

To emerge as a viable political force on its own 
steam, the Congress must give up being a more 
acceptable version of the religion, caste and 
identity-based political formations. More so, it 
needs to strengthen democratic institutions, 
including Parliament and the Judiciary, introduce 
genuine transparency and openness in the work of 
government and governmental institutions, and, 
above all, it needs to exhibit a sense of 
fairness and non-partisanship. The BJP's claim to 
be a party with a difference was a mere slogan; 
the Congress needs to be such a party for its 
survival and restoring its legitimacy. Its 
attitude towards the Nanavati report ought to be 
one of self-purification.

There is a real danger that differences on 
economic issues might derail the primary focus of 
the UPA Government, namely, fighting communalism. 
Mere lip service to secularism, therefore, will 
not be enough. If Gujarat has been viewed by the 
BJP as its most successful laboratory, the 
Congress must take action against the guilty in 
the 1984 riots and claim the moral high ground to 
take on the BJP and its brand of divisive 
politics.

For the past 10 months, apart from rectifying the 
saffronisation of educational institutions, 
little has been done by the UPA Government to 
take on communalism in a decisive fashion. The 
Prime Minister's ambivalence over the Savarkar 
controversy only added to the view that the 
senior partner in the alliance was not 
wholeheartedly behind the drive to marginalise 
communal forces. The temptation to opt for 
reconciliation is strong in polarised polities. 
But reconciliation becomes merely a ploy to paper 
over differences in order to pursue economic, 
managerial and bureaucratic visions. Truth and 
justice, on the other hand, are about the very 
survival of liberal-democratic politics. The 
choices here are stark, but the people of India 
did vote for truth, justice and secularism in May 
2004. There is little reason to believe they 
think otherwise now.


______


[5]

Daily Times - February 17, 2005

THEIR EXTRATERRITORIAL LOYALTY

by J Sri Raman

Historians warn us against the 'what-ifs' of 
history. Fussy academic concerns, however, need 
not stop a newsman's frivolous and speculative 
query. What if the Bharatiya Janata Party had 
headed the government in New Delhi on February 1? 
What, indeed, if the last general election had 
gone the BJP's way and the party had held 
untrammelled power on the day the King of Nepal 
placed a partial democracy under suspension?
Of course, in its official reaction to the 
dramatic development, the BJP has been critical 
of King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev's action. 
He had dismissed the quasi-representative 
government of appointed prime minister, Sher 
Bahadur Deuba, declaring a state of emergency and 
taking over all state powers. Said the BJP: "The 
events in Nepal have seriously affected the cause 
of legitimate democracy. India has been 
consistently supporting the development of a 
political system that truly reflects people's 
aspirations. King Gyanendra's actions have caused 
a serious setback to this process."
No strong denunciation, but a disapproving 
statement all the same, though it suggests that 
the suspension of the process is temporary. The 
statement cleverly avoids comment on the ground - 
"Maoist terrorism" - the King has cited for his 
action.
But the BJP, whether as part of a coalition in 
power or an opposition front, cannot fully and 
freely represent the far right on such issues. 
The far right has far less circumscribed fronts - 
like the Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh (RSS) and the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) - to speak up on such 
occasions. They did so repeatedly and in ringing 
tones whenever the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime 
had to resort to the device of double-speak.
They did so, for example, on Ayodhya when the 
allies would not let the regime proceed beyond 
paying tributes to the "nationalist movement". 
They did so, too, on Gujarat, when Vajpayee had 
to condemn the carnage even while vindicating it 
as a reaction to Godhra. Demolition of the 
edifice of secularism, they swore, would follow 
that of the "disputed structure" of the Babri 
Masjid. They hailed the Gujarat pogrom and held 
it up as a model for the rest of the country.
They are playing the same role now on Nepal. No 
pretence of commitment to principles of democracy 
dilutes their defence of the King and his action. 
The stated ground of their defence is the same as 
his - "Maoist terrorism" - but the true reason is 
not too remote from their case on Ayodhya and 
Gujarat. The counter-terrorist argument 
camouflages, pretty thinly, a cross-border 
extension of communal fascism.
The always quotable Praveen Togadia of the VHP, 
who had glorified the police-aided Gujarat pogrom 
as a great 'Hindu' upsurge, said "There was 
anarchy in the Hindu kingdom before the King's 
takeover". He warned that, "if India remained a 
mute spectator to the unfolding events in Nepal, 
China might take advantage of the situation". VHP 
president Ashok Singhal, who had proclaimed he 
was "proud of Gujarat", said that "increased 
extremist terror targeting innocent people had 
prompted the palace to dismiss the Deuba 
government".
RSS spokesman Ram Madhav sneered: "I do not 
understand all this criticism from India. We want 
democracy to flourish around the world, but what 
about Goa?" He was referring to the raging 
controversy over the dismissal of a BJP 
government in the tourism-centred state, despite 
a doubtful vote of confidence it won in the 
assembly under a partisan speaker. Madhav also 
pointed to the constitutional provision under 
which the King had acted, though the RSS rejected 
a similar defence of Indira Gandhi's infamous 
emergency in 1975.
The real reason for this special pleading was no 
secret. Ashok Singhal put it succinctly on 
January 22, 2004, in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, 
at a ceremony to honour King Gyanendra as the 
world's only Hindu monarch. Ordained the VHP 
oracle: "It is the duty of 900 million Hindus the 
world over to protect the Hindu samrat (king) ... 
God has created him to protect Hindu dharma." 
Singhal also proposed to organise a world Hindu 
meet in New York under the King's leadership. The 
proposed event "would project Hindus as a global 
power... with the Nepalese king leading the way". 
Similar sentiments have emanated from the 
Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram, now facing 
criminal charges relating to a murder. He denies 
the police allegation that he was planning to 
flee to Nepal, but his relations as the 'rajguru' 
or the palace priest in Kathmandu with Gyanendra 
(and his brother and predecessor King Birendra) 
have been as close as with the VHP and the rest 
of the far-right parivar (family). The 
Shankaracharya, on a visit to Nepal, proclaimed 
its monarch as "the king of all Hindus" and 
counselled the Nepalese people to support him 
against "Maoist insurgents".
To the parivar, the King of Nepal may be the 
"king of all Hindus". To sections of the 
far-right 'family', however, the Hindu kingdom 
must also be part of a 'Hindu' India. In January 
2001, BJP leader KR Malkani kicked up a 
controversy with his 'revelation' that King 
Triubhuvan of Nepal had offered his country's 
accession to India in the early fifties. Malkani 
added: "We should have accepted (the offer)." The 
BJP, of course, distanced itself from his 
"unfortunate" remarks without taking any other 
action against him.
Long ago, RSS ideologue Guru Golwalker, in his 
famous 'Bunch of Thoughts', listed India's 
Muslims, Christians and Communists as the 
country's main enemies for their 
"extraterritorial loyalty". To far-right 
political philosophers, loyalty to the king of 
another country does not fall in the same 
category.
The writer is a journalist and peace activist based in Chennai, India


______


[6]

Dawn (Pakistan)
16 February 2005
Op-Ed.

LEARNING FROM HIROSHIMA

By Zubeida Mustafa

The India-Pakistan dialogue has had many ups and 
downs since it was launched last year. The fact 
is that every time there is a "down" there are 
many who wait with bated breath and keep their 
fingers crossed.

Is there need for this over-reaction - if one may 
call it so? Yes, if one remembers that both India 
and Pakistan now have nuclear capability and 
could use nuclear weapons if war breaks out 
between them. They have threatened to do so, at 
least on one occasion.

A war fought with conventional weapons is bad 
enough. A nuclear war is a catastrophe. But the 
world - especially the leaders who decide the 
destiny of nations - seem to be blissfully 
unaware of the devastation and horrors atomic 
weapons can unleash. After all, 60 years have 
passed since the Hiroshima tragedy and people, 
most of whom were not even born then, feel they 
can put it all behind them and move on.

But not the people of Hiroshima who still carry 
the scars of that fateful day in August 1945 when 
nuclear terror rained down upon them from the 
skies killing 70,000 people instantaneously, 
injuring 140,000 and causing painful radiation 
effects on another 100,000.

Nearly two-thirds of the buildings in the city 
were destroyed. They remember it all and they 
want others who escaped that experience to 
remember it too, so that man never uses nuclear 
weapons ever again.

In anticipation of the 60th anniversary of the 
day "Little Boy" (the American atomic bomb) was 
dropped, the Hiroshima International Cultural 
Foundation, a non-profit organization established 
in 1977 to enhance peace awareness, created a new 
project.

This was the Hiroshima World Peace Mission. Since 
last year the mission has been dispatching small 
groups of representatives from Hiroshima to 
nuclear weapon states to share with the people 
their own experience of a nuclear attack.

Co-sponsored by two media companies and supported 
by the local bodies, peace organizations and the 
UN universities in Japan, the mission has already 
sent four delegations to the Middle East and 
Africa, Northeast Asia, Europe, and Russia.

The fifth delegation visited Pakistan and India 
recently to pass on its "A-bomb experiences and 
memories" to the people and governments of these 
countries as well. Later this year, a group will 
visit the United States and the UN.

While talking to these peace activists, one could 
vividly visualize the devastation nuclear weapons 
and wars can wrought and how their trauma runs 
through generations.

Since they had experienced these horrors first 
hand one could not dismiss them as a bunch of 
crazy peace campaigners who do not understand the 
intricacies of power politics. Emiko Okada, the 
67-year-old hibakusha (survivor of the nuclear 
attack), spoke with deep emotions about what she 
had lived through.

When the bomb fell, she was eight-year-old and 
her entire family was exposed to the blast and 
the radiation that enveloped them. They were 
badly burnt and injured. Describing her own 
condition, she said, "Because I had breathed the 
radioactive gas, I was vomiting frequently and 
was very ill. I couldn't move for two days. I was 
bleeding from my gums and lost my hair. I often 
felt weak and had to lie down."

But worse was the shock of losing her 12-year-old 
sister who had left home in the morning saying, 
"See you later." She had gone to the building 
demolition work near the hypo centre where the 
students were helping. She never came home. Emiko 
recalled, "My mother would spend hours and hours 
searching through the rubble for Mieko.

My parents had believed till the end that my 
sister was alive and they died without submitting 
a notification of her death to the municipal 
office. We don't have her remains and belongings 
[those who died instantly from the blast simply 
vaporized never to be seen again].

All we have is this letter (which she wrote to 
her cousin looking forward to his return home 
from the army and excitedly telling him what a 
different city Hiroshima would be)."
It is not strange that Emiko hates nuclear 
weapons and fears for the countries which possess 
them. "Now I find that the threat of nuclear 
weapons is not going away. A-bombs are not things 
of the past. We must call for nuclear abolition, 
so that my sister may not have died in vain."

Even 22-year-old Takayuki Sasaki, a peace studies 
student at the university of Hiroshima, feels as 
strongly against nuclear weapons as Emiko. Though 
he belongs to the post-war generation and none in 
his family suffered from the nuclear attack on 
Hiroshima, he has heard a lot about the war.
Japanese society is now aware of the dangers of 
nuclear weapons because those who witnessed its 
horrors were determined not to let the lesson of 
Hiroshima die. The impact of the Hiroshima blast 
continued for decades.

Those who survived developed fevers, nausea, 
diarrhoea, keloids, leukaemia and other effects 
of radiation. The children born to those exposed 
suffered from deformities.
As if words were not enough, Akira Tashiro, 57, 
the director of the mission and a journalist 
working for Chugoku Shimbun, one of the 
co-sponsors of the mission, had with him pictures 
of Hiroshima after it had been bombed.

The paper, which was founded in 1892, lost 150 of 
its 350-strong staff on August 6, 1945. All its 
facilities were destroyed and only the frame of 
its building remained standing as a bizarre 
structure amidst a sea of ruins, located as it 
was only 900 metres from the hypo centre.

The Chugoku Shimbun photographer who had survived 
took those pictures. I looked at them and felt 
sick. There were pictures of a totally bombed out 
city, images of shadows of people which I was 
told were actually the men and women themselves 
who had vanished like thin air when the intense 
heat from the bomb burned them through leaving 
the dark marks on the ground, sombre photographs 
of the streets strewn with corpses with no clear 
ground for people to walk on, and bare bodied men 
and women whose nakedness was covered with the 
hanging strips of their own skin.

And then I looked out of the hotel room to see 
the bright neon signs and street lights of 
Karachi - a vibrant city full of life. I shut my 
eyes and imagined this city in ruins like 
Hiroshima.

No, we don't want nuclear weapons. We don't want 
a nuclear war. Yet we live in a make-believe 
world of our wishful thinking. Our nuclear 
weapons are only to maintain a power equilibrium, 
we are told.
They give us security and protection since they 
provide us with mutually assured destruction (the 
so-called MAD theory of yesteryear) and act as a 
deterrent to war, it is drummed into us. But is 
that so?

If we don't resolve our disputes with India and 
continue to practise a policy of brinkmanship, 
war can actually break out. Were that to happen 
will the two sides refrain from using their 
nuclear arsenals? We don't even warn our children 
about the horrors of war. We build monuments of 
Chaghai, and erect missile-like structures. How 
many of our students will be like Takayuki after 
what they read in textbooks?

What we need is a peace culture. No army which 
wields political power in a country can be 
expected to promote that culture because it 
intrinsically goes against the raison d'etre of 
its existence. Hence it is the people - the civil 
society as we call them - who will have to 
promote this culture. Is any university teaching 
peace studies in Pakistan? We do have private 
universities now.

Do we persistently call for nuclear disarmament? 
Many occasions arise when we can. Did we protest 
when the nuclear explosions took place in 1998? 
Only a few people in Balochistan did.

It is time we started cultivating a peace culture 
in our society. We can do that on our own 
initiative without the government's intervention. 
Let all mothers decide to boycott toy guns and 
not give them to their boys.

Let every teacher speak of love and peace to his 
students even if the books do not do so. Let the 
singers sing of friendship and tolerance. Let us 
spread the message of peace far and wide and see 
how it will change the world.

_______


[7]   ANNOUNCEMENTS

(i)

The last few weeks have witnessed an intense, 
brutal round of demolitions of jhuggis in Mumbai. 
Starting 8 December, up to 60-75,000 slum houses 
have been destroyed, in various parts of Mumbai, 
affecting perhaps upto 3 lakhs people. Contrary 
to its promises in the recent elections, the 
Maharashtra Government has been demolishing 
houses that have come up after 1 Jan 1995. It is 
reported they have slowed demolitions in recent 
days in the face of widespread protests across 
the city.

This attempt by elites to turn our cities into 
another "Shanghai" was also witnessed in the huge 
demolitions in Yamuna Pushta last year, and in 
other parts of Delhi.

Leena, a housing rights activist, will initiate a 
discussion by sharing experiences of what is 
going on in Mumbai. This can be followed by a 
discussion, and perhaps we can also discuss what 
kind of intervention here is possible.

We will also be distributing copies of a new 
report on the Yamuna Pushta demolitions, 'Suno 
Nadi Kya Kehti Hai', recently brought out by 
Visthapan Virodhi Abhiyan, a collective that was 
formed in response to the Pushta demolitions.

Time: 4.30 pm
Venue: Saheli office, under Defence Colony Flyover  [New Delhi]
Date: Saturday, 19 February 2005



______


(ii)

Subject: Food-for-work
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005

Dear friends,

At recent meetings in Delhi and elsewhere, many 
suggestions have been made about possible 
campaign activities in the "food for work" 
districts.  What happens in these districts is 
likely to have an important influence on the 
debate about an Employment Guarantee Act.  Also, 
there are special opportunities for grassroots 
mobilisation in these districts.  Recent 
suggestions of possible activities in these 
districts include:

- Organised demand for work.
- Monitoring of the works that are started.
- Ensuring the payment of minimum wages.
- Fighting corruption.
- Forming unions of labourers employed on FFW programmes.
- Organised demand for conversion of FFW into Employment Guarantee.

With this in mind we are circulating below a 
summary of the official "guidelines" of the FFW 
programme. The full guidelines can be found at 
http://rural.nic.in/nffwpguidelines.htm, and also 
in the "Employment Guarantee" section at 
http://righttofood.tripod.com/rtowork/ffwguidelines.html.

According to the guidelines, muster rolls are 
supposed to be available for public scrutiny and 
"copies of muster rolls duly certified by the 
Panchayat Sarpanch shall be placed before the 
Gram Sabha".

The list of 150 "FFW districts" is available at 
http://rural.nic.in/AnnexureNFFWP1.htm.

If you are working in FFW districts please send 
us a line; we are trying to compile a list of 
organisations working in these districts and to 
initiate regular contacts with them.

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (Rajasthan) is 
willing to help organise training programmes for 
activists working in FFW districts.  If you are 
interested please let us know or write directly 
to MKSS at mkssrajasthan at gmail.com

_______


(iii)

The Pamphlet Project, the flagship initiative of 
'Red Earth' which aims to revive the literary 
genre of the pamphlet, using it to articulate 
issues centred on popular culture, urban life, 
and the arts in India. The first issue of the 
project 'The Metrosexuals: Exploring the 
Unexplored' was released in October 2004, and is 
a multi-faceted study of metrosexuality in global 
and Indian contexts. More details, and a 
synopsis, are available at 
www.redearthindia.com/pamphlet/issue_1.html

Red Earth
A 39/3, SFS, Saket
New Delhi 110017
Ph: 011-51764054, 98182-10894
www.redearthindia.com


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

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.