SACW | 19 Nov. 05 | Sri lanka polls+ Pakistan quake + Kashmir's disappeared + Free Speech in Tamil Nadu

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 19 Nov, 2005 | Dispatch No. 2177

[1] Sri Lanka: Letter Commissioner of Elections by Center of Monitoring
ElectionViolence
[2] Pakistan: Fault Lines - After the earthquake, some strange new
alliances (Steve Coll)
[3] India: Security operations and forced disappearances in Kashmir
(i) Protest in Solidarity with Victims of Enforced Disappearances (New
Delhi, 25 Nov.05)
(ii) Grim Mystery Slowly Unfolds in Indian Kashmir (Paul Watson)
[4] India - Tamil Nadu: Freedom of expression under attack - opinions
and reports

___


[1]

Letter sent to Sri Lanka's Commissioner of Elections by the independent
citizens group Center of Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV)

Media Communiqué - 18th November 2005

URGENT
Mr. Dayananda Dissanayake,
The Commissioner of Elections,
Colombo.

Dear Mr. Dissanayake,
The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV), having fielded teams
of mobile election
monitors as well as monitors in many of the polling stations throughout
the north and east on
election day November 17 2005 strongly feels that the environment that
prevailed during the
election campaign and on Election Day in the north and east were not
conducive to the conduct of a free and fair election.
There are two separate situations that we would like to address in this
regard.
In the North, the major issue was that of intimidation of voters through
diverse means including the distribution of posters and leaflets that
aggressively discouraged people from going to the polls.
This led to the total turn out of the polls in the Jaffna District, for
example, being as low as 1.5% of the total number of registered voters.
In the East, too, persons from areas under LTTE control were denied
access to the transport – buses
and ferries – that had been made available by the government in order to
enable them to travel to
the cluster polling stations set up in government-controlled areas.
However, in addition, there were acts of violence that took place on the
night prior to elections sand
throughout election day that terrorized and intimidated people from
going to the polls.
Among the most serious incidents are:

- a grenade thrown at the TRO office on Bar Road, Batticaloa at 6.30
a.m. on the 16th;
- a Muslim civilian shot and injured at Pandirippu, Kalmunai at about 7
p.m. on the 16th;
- Alhaj Ahmed Lebbe of Kalmunai shot and killed in Kalmunai town on the
night of the 16th;
- Albert Gunaratnam of Trincomalee shot and injured in Trincomalee on
the night of the 16th;
- a grenade thrown at the Iruthayapuram polling station in Batticaloa at
8.30 p.m. on the night
of the 16th; 3 soldiers injured;
- a grenade thrown at Kulaiwadikolani polling station in Batticaloa at
8.30 p.m. on the night
of the 16th; one soldier and one policeman injured;
- a grenade thrown at Palaimeendmadu polling station in Batticaloa at
3.30 a.m. on the 17th;
- attacks on 3 EPDP offices in Jaffna – in Chavakachcheri, Mallakam and
Manipay – on the
16th;
- a grenade thrown at the main counting center in Batticaloa town at the
Hindu College
premises on the 17th;
- a grenade thrown at Puthunagar Police post on the night of the 16th;
- a grenade thrown at the Vigneswara Vidyalaya polling station on the
night of the 16th;
- a grenade thrown at the Santhiveli Vinayagar School in Batticaloa at
about 9.30 on the night
of the 16th;
- a grenade thrown at the Chenkalady Maha Vidyala polling station (a
cluster polling station)
on the 17th; 6 persons were injured, including 2 policemen and a 14 year
old boy;
- a grenade attack on the Kaluthavalai Maha Vidyalaya polling station at
8 a.m. on the 17th;
- A Sub-Inspector of Police and his driver were assaulted by a crowd of
alleged UNP
supporters when he detained a person suspected of impersonation in
Kattankudy
- a grenade thrown at Hindu Maha Vidyalaya polling station,
Valaichchenai, in the morning
of the 17th.
a grenade thrown at Hindu Maha Vidyalaya polling station, Valaichchenai,
in the afternoon
of the 17th.
In light of the above incidents, CMEV calls on you to use the powers
vested in you as Commission
of Elections to call for a re-poll of the North and East in order to
ensure that a truly free and fair
election of the chief executive of Sri Lanka has taken place.
We would like to refer to Section 103(2) of the 17th Amendment to the
Constitution that mandates
the Commissioner to ensure the conduct of a free and fair poll. This, as
you well know, in terms of
the Presidential Elections Act of 1981 and the Elections (Special
Provisions) Act of 1988, is
especially so in circumstances which could affect the outcome of the
elections. We draw your
attention also to Article 21(2) of the Elections (Special Provisions Act
which refers to the need for a
re-poll where due to an emergency or unforeseen circumstance, the poll
for the election of a District
cannot be taken.
We hope that you will consider the circumstances of violence and
intimidation that accompanied
the Presidential polls in the Northern Province and in the Eastern
Province on November 17 and
call for a re-poll in keeping with the powers vested in you by law.

DR.PAIKIASOTHY SARAVANAMUTTU
MS.SUNILA ABESEKARA
MS. SEETHA RANJANI
CO – CONVENOR(S)

___

[2]

New Yorker
Issue of November 21, 2005
Letter from Kashmir

FAULT LINES
After the earthquake, some strange new alliances.
by Steve Coll

The earthquake that struck northern Pakistan on the morning of October
8th left some eighty thousand people dead, perhaps a quarter of them
children. It was a catastrophe without precedent in the country's
history, and the government was slow to react. In the weeks that
followed, President Pervez Musharraf, who is also the nation's military
leader, faced sharp questions from civilian politicians, Islamic
leaders, and reporters about why the government, and the Army, had not
organized relief more quickly. In much the same way that the Bush
Administration's reaction to Hurricane Katrina embarrassed the White
House, the earthquake-aid effort has threatened Musharraf's standing. In
the first days, Pakistan's offshore independent channels televised the
suffering, and the images were inescapable: people waiting in vain to be
rescued; hundreds of thousands sleeping outside in cold rain, waiting
for tent camps to be built; the injured, with bleeding wounds or broken
limbs, staggering about in search of treatment.

Musharraf seized power in a coup, six years ago, and at the time he
described the Army as the "last institution of stability left in
Pakistan”—the only body disciplined enough to fix the country's ills.
Since then, he has expanded the military's influence in national life,
yet, when the earthquake hit, the Army appeared neither efficient nor
consumed by any sense of urgency. The Alliance for the Restoration of
Democracy, a coalition of opposition parties, demanded an official
investigation into what its spokesman called "the failure of the Army
high command.” The United Nations warned that thousands of earthquake
survivors could die from exposure if relief did not reach them before
winter, yet, ten days after the earthquake struck, Musharraf's
government signed a billion-dollar contract for Swedish military
surveillance aircraft, a bewildering priority. The Friday Times, one of
Pakistan's leading newspapers, suggested in a front-page editorial that
Musharraf's insistence on heavy defense spending might explain the slow
pace of donations to the U.N. for earthquake relief: "If you were a
Westerner asked to provide humanitarian financial assistance to a
country led by a military government obsessed with the regional
‘military balance,' what would you think?" A week later, Musharraf
announced that he would postpone buying American-made F-16 fighter jets,
at least until the financial pressures of earthquake relief had eased.

At a news conference, he dismissed criticism of his government's
performance as irresponsible harping by media skeptics and discredited
politicians. "Panic and alarm in the face of a calamity are signs of
weakness and defeat—let's come out of that," he said. He vowed to "prove
the cynics wrong" by rallying the troops and attracting support from
Western military allies. Adding to his difficulties was the fact that
many of the hardest-hit villages were in Kashmir, whose land and people
are at the center of Pakistan's most emotional national cause—the
fifty-eight-year conflict with India over its political destiny. He said
that the Army was moving into Kashmir, and that aid would reach the
region's stranded victims by winter. The Army's sluggish reaction may be
explained, in part, by its own heavy losses in the area where the quake
hit. According to an Army spokesman, four hundred and fifty officers and
soldiers died on the first day, and seven hundred and eleven were
injured. To judge by the damage I saw in Army camps in Kashmir, the
actual toll may be higher; scores of Army wives and children also
perished as cantonments and schools collapsed.

The epicenter of the earthquake was about sixty-five miles northeast of
Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, in a mountainous region traversed by two
narrow, perpendicular river valleys, the Neelum and the Jhelum. The
Jhelum River flows from Indian-held Kashmir west into Pakistan, and,
weeks after the quake struck, recovery still seemed far off. One
afternoon, in a ragged encampment of tents and tarps on the south bank,
several dozen displaced Kashmiri women squatted on rocky ground, sorting
through heaps of donated clothing. Smoke drifted from smoldering piles
of neckties and sports jerseys that had been judged unusable and set on
fire, and a heavy scent of sulfur rose from piles of fallen rock where
the dead still lay. Helicopters bearing aid and supplies passed back and
forth overhead. In an open field across the road, a Pakistani Army
brigade had set up an olive caravan tent dubbed Operations Center 212,
where a colonel shouted exasperated instructions into a field telephone.
A wiry young major named Fayyaz Ahmed led me to a map of Kashmir mounted
on an easel to explain why the relief campaign was proving so daunting.

There were enormous geographical problems, he said. About eighty
thousand farmers and herders and their families lived in scattered
villages on ridges overlooking the Jhelum River in this district alone,
and they were reluctant to leave their land. Rock slides had blocked
many of the dirt tracks that connected them to the valley. There were
military constraints, too, he pointed out. Pakistani and Indian forces
were deployed in large numbers along the Line of Control, the undeclared
border that has divided Kashmir since 1949; stripes of black Magic
Marker on the Major's map indicated their gridlocked positions. After
several weeks of stilted negotiations, India and Pakistan had produced a
modest plan to allow some relief supplies to cross the border, but, even
with the agreement, passage by Kashmiris remains highly restricted. Each
side has been tending its own victims. "The Pakistani Army is trained
for any job that we are assigned—floods, elections, epidemics," Major
Ahmed told me. But, referring to the earthquake and its aftermath, he
said, "It is the magnitude of a nuclear bomb."

The only way to reach many of the most vulnerable survivors was to walk.
The morning after my conversation with Major Ahmed, I joined an Army
mule column as it climbed out of a base camp at Hattian Dupatta, along
the Jhelum River, whose jade-green waters run between steep mountain
walls. The column comprised twenty-nine Pakistani soldiers, nineteen
mules, and two intrepid dogs. As Musharraf issued his pledges in
Islamabad, the Army dispatched several fresh brigades into the
mountains, and they fanned out into villages on the highest ridges.
Mules that were normally used to haul ammunition to the Pakistani
bunkers closest to the Line of Control were requisitioned for relief
work. Each of the animals was loaded down with more than two hundred
pounds of blankets, cardboard boxes bulging with clothes, and burlap
sacks of grain. A dozen of the soldiers in this unit carried forty-pound
canvas packs to supplement the mules.

"I have never seen anything like this," Alam Khan, a weathered corporal
from Pakistan's Punjab province, said as we marched past lines of
displaced villagers, some with their arms in slings, others with
bandaged heads or legs. Khan enlisted in the Army nineteen years ago and
knew these ridges as scenes of military conflict. "The villagers, when
tensions run high, can't even do free farming out on their terraces,
because the Indians fire at them," he said. "They and their animals are
often wounded." Half a mile up, a section of the gorge wall had
collapsed. Small tombstones protruded at odd angles from a mound of
dirt. A bloated corpse wrapped in a black shroud lay on top of the
mound. Apparently, the person had been killed by a falling graveyard.

Kashmir's mountains are the foothills of the Himalayas. They rise
between four thousand and seven thousand feet above sea level, and mark
a sort of tectonic intersection. For ages, the Indian subcontinent has
been sliding northward at a pace of about one and a half inches a year,
and the movement pushes up rough, crumbly surfaces; a web of fault lines
runs beneath. Kashmiri villagers cut small terraces into the slopes to
farm corn and rice, and most build their own huts from timber, stone,
and mud. Not all of them are destitute. As Pakistan's urban areas
prospered, beginning in the nineteen-sixties, thousands of mountain
villagers migrated to cities like Lahore and Rawalpindi to work as
cooks, drivers, and domestic help, leaving their families behind to farm
or herd goats. Some got as far as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, where they
prospered, and then returned to build houses with concrete foundations
and Chinese-style peaked tin roofs—an odd sight amid the shabby lean-tos
of their neighbors, and miles from any paved road. The earthquake
demolished many of these houses; in the villages we visited, the only
difference between rich and poor seemed to be the size of their piles of
rubble.

As our mule column followed a dirt track along the ridge, we handed out
blankets and food. After six miles, we reached Bandi, a village of about
a hundred and fifty houses scattered on the slopes. Nearly all of the
houses had been destroyed, and the villagers said that eighty people had
died there on the morning of the earthquake. Some of the injured rested
on open ground. About a hundred and twenty people in the next village
had died. Up and down the hills, the story was the same.

A dozen Bandi men surrounded a Pakistani major and shouted that rival
villagers who lived closer to the military base camps were stealing
their aid allotments.The major, a tall, clean-shaven man who wore a
black baseball cap, said he would make sure that those who had been left
out got their share. Mohammed Yousef, a slender man of about fifty with
a wispy beard, watched from nearby, standing above a rock shelf that had
been the foundation of his house. He had stacked all that was
salvageable—three metal trunks, a dartboard, and half a wooden door—on
one side. The Army hadn't reached this ridge until ten days after the
earthquake. Then the officers had handed out slips of paper entitling
each family to a tent, to be picked up at a base camp in the valley.
"When we went down, they didn't have any, Yousef said. Too many of his
Kashmiri neighbors "are not afraid of God, he added. "If you are a
muscleman, a bully, you can get what you need. But if you are a
gentleman, if you wait, you suffer.

Salman Rushdie, in his recent novel "Shalimar the Clown, about the
history of Kashmir's multiple betrayals, imagines an American diplomat
in Los Angeles who is invited to appear on a late-night talk show. He
seizes the opportunity to expound on the fallen paradise of Kashmir, and
his appalled host can hear only "the sound of channels being changed all
over America round about midnight—anticipating the history lesson to
come. In the summer of 1947, Pakistan was carved out of British India,
which had more than five hundred princely states; one of them, the
predominantly Muslim Kashmir, was ruled by a Hindu maharaja, who could
not decide whether to join India or Pakistan. In October, tribesmen from
the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan invaded Kashmir, arriving
in British trucks. That hastened the maharaja's decision to join India,
and India quickly responded by airlifting troops into the region. Sir
Douglas Gracey, the British general in command of Pakistan's new
national Army, refused to lead the Army into Indian-held Kashmir; he did
not want to fight British officers who were assigned to Indian units.
Nevertheless, the fighting continued, until the U.N. endorsed a
ceasefire line, in January, 1949. Since then, two more wars, several
insurgencies, and countless political maneuvers have failed to settle
the issue of the "ownership of Kashmir. Pakistan and India have
strengthened their armies over the years; in 1998, both tested nuclear
weapons. Although the struggle is supposedly about the interests of
ordinary Kashmiris, they have little to show for it. If the conflict is
ever settled peacefully, the ceasefire line - which was named the Line
of Control in 1972 - will likely become an international border; as a
practical matter, it already is.

One afternoon, I boarded a Pakistani Puma helicopter that was to ferry
displaced villagers and supplies to the northern reaches of the Neelum
Valley, a river gorge that snakes about a hundred and twenty miles
toward the Himalayas, often very close to Indian territory; landslides
had sealed off the valley and blocked the only road in or out. Our
pilot, Major Qasim Abbas, zigzagged north through steep canyons. In many
places, the sides of mountains had fallen down, as if they had been
sliced off with a giant axe. Boulders lay on the narrow dirt roads below
us, and hundreds of people walked in uneven lines along the slopes, with
bundles of donated food or clothing on their shoulders, collected from
the valley's helicopter-supplied relief depots.

As we approached the Line of Control, Abbas lost his way. He made a
U-turn in the gorge, swung right into another canyon, and then hurriedly
made a second U-turn. A soldier assigned to spotter duty pointed down at
a tricolor Indian flag flapping directly underneath the helicopter. "I
never knew that the Line of Control was so close there, the Major told
me later, with an insouciant grin. As one of the small coöperative
measures to aid earthquake relief, India and Pakistan have agreed not to
shoot down each other's helicopters if they fly close to the line on
relief missions. It's hard to imagine how the two militaries keep track
of the line in any event. The border twists from side to side and up and
down, as if tracing the fingers of a very thick hand.

Behind their battlements, India and Pakistan have tried to build up
political structures to promote their claims to all of Kashmir, while
tightening their hold on the ground that they already possess. On
Pakistan's side, this approach has given birth to what it calls the
state of Azad (or "Free) Kashmir; it has its own constitution and Prime
Minister, but "azad is mainly just a branding strategy. Kashmiri
politicians who hold office in Azad Kashmir must swear a loyalty oath to
Pakistan - they are not free to seek independence. Tens of thousands of
Pakistani troops roam Azad Kashmir, and its budget is supplemented by
Islamabad. The capital, Muzaffarabad, a hilly, smoky town of about a
hundred thousand that spills across bluffs at the intersection of the
Jhelum and Neelum Rivers, presents a strange blend of commercial flair,
kitschy decorations, and a culture of Islamic martyrdom. A mock
ballistic missile on a launcher points down the Srinagar Road, toward
Indian forces on the Line of Control, and large, brightorange synthetic
palm trees with orange coconuts have been placed at some of the town's
major intersections. The earthquake brought much of this political
whimsy to a halt. Muzaffarabad was devastated; buildings and markets
collapsed, and thousands of residents were killed.

Late one afternoon in Muzaffarabad, I visited Azad Kashmir's Prime
Minister, a center-right career politician named Sardar Sikander Hayat
Khan, at his official residence, a one-story bungalow with several
annexes. The Prime Minister himself had been displaced by the
earthquake; his bungalow was badly cracked, and one of the annexes had
collapsed. He was now living on his front lawn in a large white tent. On
the grass, near a rose bush, Khan had placed some blue cushioned chairs
and couches in a circle, to replicate his reception room. He has a white
mustache and an enormous belly, and he wore a traditional Pakistani
shalwar kameez, an olive sports coat, and plaid bedroom slippers.

Kashmiri Muslims who seek independence for their region regard
politicians like Khan, who want to keep ties to Islamabad, as Pakistani
quislings. He himself argues that Kashmir legally belongs with Pakistan
and that it will develop faster under Pakistani oversight. He described
himself as a practical man who has worked "day and night for years to
lift Azad Kashmir out of poverty. "I promised to the nation that no
house shall be without electricity, he said, and he claimed that he had
almost reached his goal this year. But when the earthquake struck, he
said, "what we achieved in forty years, that was gone in forty seconds.
A minister in his cabinet, twenty senior civil servants, and hundreds of
other government employees died.

Khan said that the earthquake would bring Pakistan and Azad Kashmir even
closer, explaining that aid pouring in from Islamabad would remind
Kashmiri Muslims where their future lay. The previous night had been
chilly, and I asked the Prime Minister if he was cold sleeping in his
tent. "At three o'clock, I was freezing, he said. "I was wearing my
sweater and blankets. At four o'clock, I went inside. His servants
insisted that he go back out. Aftershocks continued to shake the city,
and they feared that his house would fall on him. The Prime Minister
shivered in his tent until dawn.

For the past fifteen years, the Pakistani Army has supported rebellion
on India's side of the Line of Control by aiding violent Islamic groups,
some of them with ties to Al Qaeda, that are seeking to unify all of
Kashmir with Pakistan. One of the most prominent of these groups has
been Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous), which, in December, 2001,
the Bush Administration designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was - and still is, depending on whom you ask - a
radical jihad and proselytizing organization that has carried out
persistent and sometimes spectacular attacks against Indian targets,
both military and civilian, in Kashmir and elsewhere. Under American
pressure, President Musharraf formally banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in early
2002, but he allowed it to create a domestic charity under a new name,
Jamaat ud-Dawa (the Preaching Society), but with the same leader. The
new group runs conservative madrasahs and promotes an austere vision of
Islam through preaching and social work, and, according to a spokesman,
it has hundreds of thousands of members throughout Pakistan. Azad
Kashmir had been an important base for Lashkar-e-Taiba, because the
region offered sanctuary and a convenient launching ground for
anti-India operations.

In Muzaffarabad, I found the main Jamaat ud-Dawa camp on the west bank
of the Neelum River, in a part of the city that had been severely
damaged. Mohammed Khalid, the youthful chief of the group's regional
media committee, welcomed me into a tent strewn with carpets and
cushions. He had a soft beard that fell far below his chin. Unlike the
Army, the group had mobilized quickly after the quake, and I asked how
it had done so. "We had a seminary here, with two hundred students, and
a hospital, he said. "The hospital crumbled. We then dug out medicines,
and doctors started working within thirty minutes. The students handed
out food and set up a generator. "It was all darkness and dust, he said.
"People saw the light and they started coming, and that was where our
work really began. By now, Khalid said, Jamaat ud-Dawa had about three
thousand volunteers throughout the area struck by the earthquake.

The camp in Muzaffarabad covered about ten acres. In one tent, doctors
set broken bones, and in a metal shipping container with power delivered
by a generator, surgeons from Karachi and Lahore had assembled an
operating theatre with an oxygen machine and medical monitoring
equipment. Altogether, Khalid said, his group had brought dozens of
doctors to Azad Kashmir, and they were seeing between seven hundred and
eight hundred patients a day. When I asked if it bothered him that the
American government had branded his group, or its predecessor, a
terrorist organization, he said, "If you accuse someone, that doesn't
mean it's true. I would invite the American doctors and medical staff to
come and join us. Our doors are open. . . . Any American kid or boy can
come work with us. They are most welcome.

Later, we drove to the banks of the Neelum, where, beside an Army camp,
Jamaat ud-Dawa had established a ferry service using motorized rubber
rafts trucked in from the group's headquarters, in Lahore. Normally, the
boats were used "basically for training purposes, one volunteer told me.
He did not say whether this training was for guerrilla war or some other
mission - fishing, perhaps. We stood on a cliff and watched young
volunteers playfully race a raft between ferry runs, tossing up wide
wakes. I asked if we could ride across. As we climbed on, our captain, a
boy who appeared to be in his teens, handed us empty water jugs to use
as flotation devices in case we capsized. Also aboard were two Austrian
soldiers toting water-purification equipment for isolated villages on
the other side. I asked if they knew who was giving them a ride. One
answered yes, with a smile, but added that there was no other way
across. On the opposite bank, dozens of villagers had gathered in
another Jamaat ud-Dawa camp. Mohammed Sharif, an elder of a village
several miles away, said that the group's volunteers had reached them
three days after the quake, and that the Pakistani Army had never turned
up. "They are very good to us, he said. "They did everything on their own.

The Jamaat ud-Dawa volunteers I met offered only mild criticism of
Musharraf and the Army, merely wondering why it had been so slow to
organize. They said that they had been coöperating extensively with
Pakistani troops in the relief work. Later, I asked an Army spokesman,
Major Farooq Pirzada, if this was true, and he replied that all charity
groups, foreign and Pakistani, were welcome in the earthquake zone. The
Army coördinated with them to avoid duplication. "We're helping
everyone, the Major said. "We're not stopping anyone.

Musharraf has said that as long as the jihadi groups concentrate on
peaceful social work, he is prepared to tolerate them; at the same time,
he says that he intends to keep a close watch on them. The
earthquake-relief effort in Muzaffarabad has made plain Musharraf's
dilemma, and has drawn together the two sides of his ungainly balancing
act: his coöperation with the United States in fighting terrorism and
his attempt to appease, or at least manage, Pakistani groups that the
United States has identified as terrorists. Less than a mile from the
main Jamaat ud-Dawa camp in the Azad Kashmir capital, the U.S. Army has
erected a field hospital. American Humvees on break from chasing remnant
Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan were sharing Muzaffarabad's streets
with ambulances from the Al Rashid Trust, a Pakistani charity whose
funds were blocked by the Bush Administration in 2001 because of
accusations that it aided Al Qaeda. Musharraf's political position has
been perilous ever since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, when
he supported the United States; members of one group that Musharraf has
singled out, Jaish e-Mohammed, attempted to assassinate him in December,
2003. The success of jihadi groups in providing earthquake relief have
only strengthened their claims to legitimacy in Pakistan.

At Musharraf's invitation, soldiers and relief workers from European and
NATO countries have also come to Azad Kashmir. Two months earlier, the
region was a closed security zone, to which foreigners typically could
not travel without an escort and a special permit. Now small crowds of
local men gathered to watch with apparent admiration as female European
soldiers shopped in their food stalls. Pakistan has unsuccessfully
sought to turn the conflict into an international matter, with the
United States and European powers directly involved, and helping to push
for a settlement; at least temporarily, the outside world, thanks to the
earthquake, has finally come to Kashmir.

Near the school, in a tent set up to trace the missing, village men
clutched photographs of relatives. A religious teacher from a distant
village held a color passport photograph of his younger brother, a law
clerk who had dressed for the picture in a blue suit. He had lived
across the street in an apartment block that had fallen down a cliff.

I walked over and watched men pulling apart the metal and broken
concrete slabs of the building's remains under a warm sun. Mohammed
Sain, a white-bearded man in a soiled turban, said that eight of his
relatives had lived in this building. So far, he had recovered one body,
that of a brother who worked in town as a baker. "You have to remove the
bodies on a self-help basis, because the Army isn't here, Sain said.
"You dig for your own bodies, and then you carry them. At his side were
two boys, brothers ten and twelve years old, one wearing a blue sweater,
the other a red velvet shirt. He had brought them from their village,
where their mother had been killed in the earthquake, to dig in the
rubble for their missing father.


___


[3] [Security operations and forced disappearances in Kashmir]

(i)

*APPEAL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH VICTIMS OF ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES*

Since the Government of India began military suppression in Jammu and
Kashmir in January 1990, a number of people who were picked up by the
security forces have disappeared. Relatives and friends of these victims of
enforced disappearances ran from pillar to post to learn the where abouts
of their near and dear ones. To no avail. Authorities either disclaimed any
knowledge or passed off involuntary disappearance as being cases of
"missing" i.e. these persons may have gone across the LOC. Why year after
year those who voluntarily went across chose to remain silent and refused
to contact their family was never explained. Indeed if the authorities
were so
sure why were they reluctant to institute an independent judicial inquiry
remains a mystery. But it strengthened suspicion entertained by the
relatives and friends of the disappeared that authorities were afraid to
allow the truth to emerge.

Getting nowhere family members of these victims of involuntary or
enforced violence formed an organization called Association of Parents of
Disappeared

Persons in 1998. Hope was re-kindled when Mufti Mohammed led PDP pledged in
its election manifesto in 2002 to institute a judicial inquiry. After
coming to power this was forgotten. Years have passed the number of victims
of enforced disappearance have grown, and may be no less than 8-10,000 but
the struggle of the families continues. On 25th of every month APDP stages
a dharna in Srinagar to remind the public and the authorities that they will
not give up their right to know what befell their kith and kin.

On September 16th, a "Support Group in Delhi for Jammu and Kashmir" was
formed. It was decided that the membership of this support group would be
open to individuals alone, we would work as a solidarity group for APDP in
Delhi and encourage formation of similar groups in other states. As part of
our activity it was decided to hold a dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi
on November 25 between 12.00-14.00 hrs. This is to coincide with the winter
session of the Indian Parliament. A memorandum would be presented to the
Prime Minister and the same material would be made available in form of a
booklet for wider distribution in both Hindi and English. We intend to meet
with leaders of political parties and Members of Parliament in order to
impress upon them of the need to institute a judicial inquiry under
Commission of Inquiry Act. We also intend to elicit support from the public
for this eminently just demand that relatives and friends have a right to
know the fate of their near and dear ones picked up by the security forces.
If the authorities have nothing to hide they ought not to shy away from an
independent inquiry.

Gautam Navlakha

o o o

(ii)

Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2005

GRIM MYSTERY SLOWLY UNFOLDS IN INDIAN KASHMIR
The army is looking into the case of four missing porters. A cryptic
letter says troops killed them.
By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer

MANGU CHAK, India - The mailman delivered the first clues in the
disappearance of Bushan Lal.
They were written in a letter from someone claiming to be a member of
the Indian army, who identified himself only as "a savior of humanity."

The anonymous informant claimed that Indian soldiers had killed Lal, 25,
along with three other porters hired to carry equipment and supplies for
army troops fighting insurgents in disputed Kashmir.
The letter charged that two Indian army officers in the Rashtriya
Rifles, whose members have been investigated for numerous abuses,
ordered the men shot to boost the guerrilla body count - and their
prospects for promotion.
India's security forces are frequently accused by civilians and human
rights groups of killing noncombatants and claiming they were militants,
in what are known here as "fake encounters."
The victims usually are from Kashmir's Muslim majority. But like most of
the soldiers in the unit, the four missing porters were Hindus. If they
were killed, the prime suspects are the men they worked for.
Lal's father, Madan, is a retired army rifleman who fought in India's
1971 war with Pakistan. His faith in the Indian military vanished along
with his son.
"I have no trust in the army's investigation," he said. "They are trying
to hush up the matter."
The army said Friday that its investigation was continuing, and a
spokesman declined to comment on the specific allegations while the
inquiry was underway.
About 10,000 people have been reported missing in Indian-controlled
Kashmir since 1989, when the guerrilla conflict began, according to the
Assn. of Parents of Disappeared Persons.
Indian authorities say that the number of missing is 3,900 and that they
went to Pakistan, where India says about a dozen groups train militants
for attacks in Indian-held Kashmir. Pakistan, which controls about
one-third of the divided territory, says it provides only moral support
to the insurgency.
The Lal family lives in this village 8 miles from Jammu, the winter
capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Their four-room brick
house is home to 13 people, who scratch out a living from a quarter-acre
field sown with wheat and hay for a few cows and a water buffalo.
As he told the story of his son's disappearance, Madan Lal, 65, sat in
the yard on the edge of a wood-frame cot, next to a heap of cattle dung
about 5 feet high.
Bushan was working as a laborer in a Jammu market last year when a man
recruiting porters for the Indian army offered him a job. He said it
paid $130 a month, with free clothes, meals and accommodation.
If Bushan worked hard, he could get a full-time job, he later told his
father. His family desperately needed the money, so Bushan left home on
April 13, 2004. He promised to send word when he arrived at his post.
"We kept waiting for his message or letter, but he never sent any
address," his father said. "He only told us that he was joining the army
supply wing. I told him to avoid this job because of the situation in
Kashmir. But he assured me that he would come back if he didn't like it."
After five months without hearing from his son, Lal went to inquire at
an army base in Jammu, but the guards wouldn't let him in, he said.
Then, more than a year after Bushan left home, the anonymous letter
arrived. Dated Aug. 19, 2005, it was sent to the four missing porters'
families, in envelopes postmarked New Delhi.
"Sir," it began. "There are some beasts in the Rashtriya Rifles who have
defamed the army and slaughtered humanity."
The letter named an army major and three other soldiers who, the
informant said, led Bushan and three other porters to an army camp in
Kashmir's Lolab Valley. Then, on April 20, 2004, the four porters were
taken to a hilltop overlooking the village of Dewar and shot at 8:45
a.m., the letter said.
Eight soldiers were in the unit that carried out the killings, acting
under the orders of a major and a colonel, the letter said.
The porters' families took the letter to an army major in Jammu, who
promised a full inquiry. Nothing happened after 25 days, so they
complained to a brigadier. He gave them each 30 days of food rations.
When villagers joined the families in a street protest, the army
announced a formal inquiry. Army officers showed Madan Lal a picture of
what they said was a militant killed the day that the informant said
soldiers had shot the porters.
The corpse, which appeared to have one bullet wound to the head, was
lying next to a rifle, the elder Lal said. Its face was partially
obscured by hair, but Lal said he was certain it was his son. "We have
given birth to him and raised him. How we could not have recognized his
body?"
Lal wept as one of Bushan's two young daughters squeezed close. "I have
to feed the family of my son," he sobbed. "I am an old man, and I have
only a small piece of land. How will I be able to manage this?"
The porters' families filed a criminal complaint in Kashmir's Kupwara
district, where police commander Sunil Dutt said his officers were
conducting a separate investigation. It will include DNA tests because
another family has claimed the body that Lal says is that of his son,
Dutt said.
Lal doesn't trust authorities to tell him the truth. His faith is in the
letter and another clue that he discovered himself.
It is the label from a shirt on what was officially called a militant's
corpse. Police allowed relatives to see the garment, which bears the
name of a village tailor near here. It's the shop where Bushan bought
his shirts.

___


[4] [ India - Tamil Nadu: Freedom of expression under attack - opinions
and reports ]

The Hindu
Nov 19, 2005

Editorial

Intolerance that is intolerable

The harassment and unseemly protests against opinions expressed by actor
Kushboo and by Suhasini Maniratnam who expressed solidarity with her
demonstrate a disquieting tendency to shut out free speech that no
democratic society can countenance. Ms. Kushboo's perfectly legitimate
comments on changing attitudes towards sex and the need to move away
from hypocrisy - with which one may or may not agree - based on popular
attitudes as revealed by an opinion survey were distorted and portrayed
as insulting to women of Tamil Nadu and as encouraging indecency. And
Ms. Maniratnam has also come under attack for supposedly insulting Tamil
women. While such intolerance seems particularly marked in Tamil Nadu,
other parts of the country do not seem to be free from it either. Sania
Mirza, who spoke in support of Ms. Kushboo in New Delhi, has come under
attack from both Islamicist and Hindu fundamentalist groups. This is of
a piece with the narrow-minded bigotry and intolerance exhibited by
organisations such as the Shiv Sena and the mullahs who rail against
Sania Mirza's dress and comments. While it is axiomatic that a
democratic society is based on a free exchange of opinions, viewpoints,
and information, it was left to the Supreme Court to endorse the
self-evident truth that freedom of expression "is applicable not only to
information or ideas that are favourably received or regarded as
inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that
offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population," as
the European Court put it. The Court went on to say in the case of the
Tamil film Ore Oru Gramathiley: "Freedom of expression, which is
legitimate and constitutionally protected, cannot be held to ransom by
an intolerant group of people."

It is ironic that while the highest court in the land has underlined the
duty of the state to protect freedom of expression - which "cannot be
suppressed on account of threat of demonstration and processions or
threats of violence" - intolerant groups have begun using the criminal
justice system as a means of harassment and intimidation. All too often,
the law of criminal defamation is invoked to draw those who express
divergent opinions to some corner of the state or to some distant part
outside. The requirement of personal appearance itself becomes
burdensome even if, ultimately, the cases turn out to be frivolous. Such
vexatious misuse by organised, intolerant groups is one more reason -
quite apart from the chilling effect on free speech - why the
decriminalising of defamation brooks no delay. Also, some safeguard
needs to be devised, especially in cases involving larger issues of
public tranquillity, against private complainants who drag people to
court on allegations of offending some group merely to harass and
silence them. Meanwhile, governments at different levels and democratic
forces need to stand firm against incipient Talibanism of the kind
represented by the vicious targeting of Kushboo, Suhasini, and Sania.


o o o

The Hindu
Nov 19, 2005

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

PUCL flays protests against Kushboo, Suhasini

Special Correspondent

"Politicians trying to cash in on the issue with polls in mind"

- Criticism of Suhasini's remarks reflects male chauvinist hypocrisy
- Call to condemn repression of right to freedom of speech and expression

CHENNAI: The People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), Tamil Nadu and
Pondicherry, on Friday expressed shock at the protests and cases filed
in connection with actress Kushboo's comments on "the importance of
practising safe sex" and the call to men "not to insist on chastity as a
pre-condition to marriage."

In a statement here on Friday, PUCL national vice-president Sudha
Ramalingam said Article 19 of the Constitution guaranteed fundamental
right to freedom of speech and expression. Kushboo's comments "are views
which could be personal and not such that which would incite violence.
They would not fall within the exception to curtail the public
expression of such views."

The support extended by actress Suhasini to Kushboo and the former's
apology on behalf of the Tamils "can only at the most be seen as an
attempt by a well-meaning person to defuse the situation. It only
attempts to depict Tamils as a section of people who are not intolerant,
cruel or brutal towards any single individual or to persons with
different viewpoints. There has been no threat to public order, morality
nor was any one defamed by their expressions."

"It is painful to see Tamil Nadu, a land where rationalism was the way
of political thought and life, has become a place where any person who
can muster just a dozen persons with him calls himself the `leader of
the Tamils' and prefixes unimaginable epithets to his name to call
himself the uncrowned leader of the Tamils. Even such persons with
miniscule following have never been questioned for being spokespersons
of Tamils. While so, targeting Suhasini and questioning her authority to
speak on behalf of the Tamils can only be seen as male chauvinist
hypocrisy, which resents the voice of a woman to set right a wrong done
in the name of Tamils and Tamil culture," she said.

The brought against Kushboo must also be looked at in the light of
certain "vested political interests," who were trying to create an image
for themselves as guardians of Tamil cultural morality and Tamil women
to exploit the issue in the coming elections, Ms. Ramalingam said.

The PUCL unit called upon all democratic and socially conscious persons
to stand united and condemn such acts of "repression of the right to
freedom of speech and expression, abuse of rule of law and also to unite
together and act to safeguard the women's rights secured after centuries
of struggle."

o o o

The Hindu
Nov 19, 2005

Tamil Nadu - PMK workers file cases against Suhasini

Staff Reporter

Matter posted for November 24 She feared that getting married would
become a question mark for many young girls in Tamil Nadu.

TIRUPUR: A private complaint was filed against actress Suhasini in a
Tirupur Judicial Magistrate Court on Friday by V. Amirthavalli, a
Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) activist, for her statement supporting
actress Kushboo.

Magistrate T. Baghavathi Ammal posted the matter for November 24 for
further proceedings.

Ms. Amirthavalli sought punishment for the actress for offences under
Sections 117 (abetting the commission of an offence by the public), 153
(wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153 A
(promoting enmity between classes), 295 (damaging or defiling place of
worship or sacred object with intent to insult the religion of any class
or person), 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage
religious feelings), 499 (defamation), 504 (insult with intent to
provoke breach of peace) and 505 (B) (giving false statements with
intent to create enmity, hatred or ill-will between different classes)
of the Indian Penal Code.

Ms. Suhasini's statement would lead to more illicit births and AIDS
cases. Unsavoury comments on chastity had increased after her statement
and the image of the Tamils had been tarnished, Ms. Amirthavalli said.

She feared that getting married would become a question mark for many
young girls in Tamil Nadu. Being the mother of a girl, it had caused her
mental agony, she said.

A case has been filed against Ms. Suhasini in Judicial Magistrate
Court-III in Dindigul by PMK south district secretary Jailani. The court
admitted the case and posted it for hearing on November 22.

The petitioner said Ms. Suhasini's remarks were unparliamentary and
belittled a particular community.


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

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
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SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.