SACW | 25 Feb 2006 | Pakistan: The Tanks and the Cranks; India's Armed Peace brokers; Landmark court verdict on Gujarat; Bhopal gas disaster victims march for justice

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 25 February, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2224


Contents:

[1] He's Welcome In Pakistan (Ahmed Rashid)
[2] Pakistan: Women's NGO's Petition against Swara and Vani customs
(Mohammad Kamran)
[3] Pakistan: Religion and politics  (Hasan-Askari Rizvi)
[4] India: How the Stalemate Machine Works (Sanjib Baruah)
[5] India: Best Bakery Case Re-trial verdict: A victory for secular
activism - Comments and Reports
[6] India: Bhopal Gas disaster victims foot march to Delhi
[7] India: Rajasthan plans to ban conversions
[8] Film Screening: "Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi" a documentary on Dance bar
girls (Delhi, 26 February 2006)

____________________________________


[1]

Washington Post (USA)
February 26, 2006; Page B01

HE'S WELCOME IN PAKISTAN

By Ahmed Rashid

LAHORE When President Bush lands in Islamabad later this week, it may be
the closest he ever comes to being in the same neighborhood as Osama bin
Laden. His nemesis is probably only a few hours drive away in Pakistan's
Pashtun belt, now considered to be al Qaeda Central and one of the
world's most dangerous regions.

During the past 12 months or so, CIA and Pentagon officials have quietly
modified the line they employed for three years after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks -- that bin Laden was hiding out "in the tribal areas
along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border." Now the same officials say with
some confidence that he is "not based in Afghanistan." Whatever
ambiguity there was in the past is gone: Bin Laden is in Pakistan.
	
What's left is the question: What are the United States and its ally,
Pakistan, doing about it?

Not enough, according to high-ranking Afghan, Pakistani and Western
officials I've spoken to here. Indeed, the disastrous policies of the
United States and Pakistan, starting with the aftermath of the war in
2001, have only hastened the radicalization of northwest Pakistan and
made it more hospitable to bin Laden and his Taliban allies. The region
has become a haven for bin Laden and a base for Taliban raids across the
border back into Afghanistan which they had fled.

Not that you'd be able to tell any of that from what Bush administration
officials have been saying. Almost everything the administration claims
about the al Qaeda leader is tinged with bravado and untruthfulness. "We
are dealing with a figure who has been able to hide, but he's on the
run," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month. Here
in Pakistan, however, the view is different. Bin Laden is not considered
to be on the run, but well protected by friends who are making his life
as comfortable as possible.

After all, his number two, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri,
appears to have a busy social calendar in Pakistan's Pashtun belt. U.S.
missiles narrowly missed him at a dinner party held in his honor on Jan. 13.

This represents a change in venue for bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden's zone of influence was
among Pashtuns in Afghanistan, which was the center of the Taliban's
power and its major recruiting base. The Pashtuns are Afghanistan's
largest ethnic group and have ruled the country for the past 300 years.
They were artificially divided by the British so that today millions of
Pashtuns also live across the border in Pakistan, many of them in seven
so-called tribal agencies where control by the government has been minimal.

It was in eastern Afghanistan that bin Laden made his last public
appearance in Jalalabad on Nov. 10, 2001, just after the northern cities
had begun to fall to the anti-Taliban alliance. He addressed an
estimated 1,000 Pashtun notables and militants, urging them to continue
resisting the American invaders, according to U.S. journalists working
in the region at the time. He dished out wads of U.S. and Pakistani cash
and then disappeared into the mountain fastness of Tora Bora, never to
be seen again. (The CIA didn't learn of the meeting for several days.)

Few Afghan Pashtuns would have dared to betray him then. But times have
changed in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghan Pashtuns now want the
benefits of peace -- economic development, roads and schools.

Pakistan's Pashtuns, by contrast, have become more radicalized than they
ever were before 9/11. And the bloody Taliban-al Qaeda resurgence now
under way has relied on Pakistan's Pashtun belt for most of its
recruitment, logistics, weapons and funding.

Bin Laden's new friendship zone stretches nearly 2,000 miles along
Pakistan's Pashtun belt -- from Chitral in the Northern Areas near the
Chinese border, south through the troubled tribal agencies including
Waziristan, down to Zhob on the Balochistan border, then to the
provincial capital Quetta and southwest to the Iranian border. The
region includes every landscape from desert to snow-capped mountains.
Sparsely populated, it provides bin Laden an ideal sanctuary.

Al Qaeda's money, inspiration and organizational abilities have helped
turn Pakistan's Pashtun belt into the extremist base it is today, but
U.S. and Pakistani policies have helped more. Although the Taliban and
al Qaeda extremists were routed from Afghanistan by U.S. forces,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's refusal to put enough U.S.
troops on the ground let the extremists escape and regroup in Pakistan's
Pashtun belt. The Taliban settled in Balochistan where they had
originated before 1994, while al Qaeda members hid in the tribal
agencies they knew well. Bin Laden had built tunnels and caves there for
the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in the 1980s.

What followed was a disaster: For 27 months after the fall of the
Taliban regime, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
Washington's closest ally in the region, allowed the extremists free
rein in the Pashtun tribal areas to re-establish training camps for
militants who had escaped Afghanistan. These included Arabs, Central
Asians, Chechens, Kashmiris, Africans, Uighurs and a smattering of East
Asians. It was a mini-replay of the gathering in Afghanistan after bin
Laden arrived there in 1996.

Musharraf did capture some Arab members of al Qaeda, but he avoided the
Taliban because he was convinced that the U.S.-led coalition forces
would not stay long in Afghanistan. He wanted to maintain the Taliban as
a strategic option in case Afghanistan dissolved into civil war and
chaos again. The army also protected extremist Kashmiri groups who had
trained in Afghanistan before 9/11 and now had to be repositioned.

Indeed, in March 2002, just three months after the defeat of the
Taliban, the United States began to withdraw its Special Forces,
surveillance satellites and drones from Afghanistan to prepare for war
in Iraq. Distracted by Baghdad, it did not notice what was happening in
the tribal agencies. By the time the Pakistan army entered South
Waziristan in March 2004, the extremists were so well entrenched that
250 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the first encounters.

Since then, with no consistent political strategy to woo the Pashtun
population away from bin Laden, the army has steadily lost ground. The
political agents, who ran the tribal agencies with a mixture of bribery
and pressure, have been replaced by arrogant generals ignorant of local
conditions. Today the extremists rule over North and South Waziristan
and other tribal agencies, while the 70,000 Pakistani troops stationed
there are boxed up in outposts, too frightened to patrol the mountains.
More than 100 pro-government tribal elders have been assassinated by
extremists for divulging information to the U.S. or Pakistani secret
services.

Meanwhile down south, the Balochistan provincial government is
controlled by a coalition of pro-Taliban fundamentalist parties, which
came to power in elections in 2002. Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islami, the party
that controls the key ministries, openly supports the Taliban.

This has created a new stronghold from which the Taliban can launch
attacks back in Afghanistan. The 99 U.S. soldiers killed last year in
Afghanistan were mostly targeted by the Taliban based in Balochistan.
While Washington's principal aim has been to capture bin Laden and
decapitate al Qaeda, whose members are believed to be in Waziristan, the
United States has failed to pressure Pakistan to deal with the Taliban,
despite protestations from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. On a visit to
Islamabad this month, Karzai handed Musharraf intelligence dossiers
detailing how suicide bombers are being trained in Pakistan. In the past
few months, at least 30 attacks have killed nearly 100 people in
Afghanistan, including NATO peacekeepers and a Canadian diplomat.

The dossiers listed the names and addresses of Pakistani recruiters and
people who equip suicide bombers with explosives before sending them to
Afghanistan. Much of the recruitment takes place at a radical Islamic
bookshop, several mosques and some madrassas in the port city of
Karachi, while the training is done at safe houses in Quetta and Chaman,
in Balochistan province.

"We have provided President Musharraf with a lot of very detailed
information on acts of terrorism . . . and we discussed in great detail
what actions Pakistan could now take," Karzai told me on Feb. 17 in
Islamabad. ''Americans are dying, a Canadian diplomat has been killed,
our people are suffering. So it is time that action is taken to stop
these acts of terrorism and interference in Afghanistan internal
affairs," he said. "We expect results."

Getting those results won't be easy. Bin Laden has fighters and
sympathizers down the length and breadth of Pakistan's Pashtun belt. No
Pakistani Pashtun has reason to betray bin Laden, despite the $27
million reward for his head. Thanks to the drug trade in Afghanistan and
the suitcases full of cash still arriving from backers in the Arabian
Gulf, neither al Qaeda nor the local Pashtuns are short money. The
Pakistani army's failure to offer Pashtuns a greater political role in
the national framework has not inspired any loyalty among the tribesmen.
And misguided U.S. interventions, such as the January missile strike
that killed women and children, do the rest.

Washington's recent decison to start pulling U.S. troops out of
Afghanistan this year has only reinforced al Qaeda's belief that it is
winning. After nearly five years of avoiding capture or death, every
single day that bin Laden stays alive is a day that inspires the
extremists who protect him and join his ranks.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the author of "Taliban:
Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale University
Press) and "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia" (Penguin
Books).



____


[2]

Daily Times (Pakistan)
February 25, 2006 	

PETITIONS AGAINST SWARA AND VANI CUSTOMS:
SC directs IGs to stop marriages for compensation

By Mohammad Kamran

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the inspectors general
of police (IGPs) of the four provinces and the Northern Areas to stop
women’s marriages to settle family feuds, declaring the customs of Vani
and Swara un-Islamic.

A three-member bench consisting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry, Justice Faqir Muhammad Khokhar and Justice Mian Shakirullah
Jan directed the IGPs to protect Vani victims. The court also summoned a
report from the IGPs by the last week of April.

The court was moved to abolish the social customs of Vani and Swara (a
mode of dispute settlement in which young girls of the offender’s family
are wedded to the men of the victim family as compensation).

The court also heard the cases of five girls from Mianwali who have
appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and the chief justice to save
them from Vani, and a petition by freelance anthropologist Samar
Minallah against the notorious customs.

Five girls – Asiya, 8, Amina, 9, her sisters Abida, 7, Sajida, 5, and
Fatima, 7 – were given in verbal Nikah in compensation of a murder to
save their elders. Amina, Sajida and Abida have reportedly threatened to
commit suicide if not protected from the custom.

On Friday, Mansoor Ali Shah, the counsel for Ms Minallah, told the bench
that his client had formed a group of nine non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) for a statistical research on Swara in Mardan and
Swabi (NWFP). The chief justice asked Minallah to expand her work to
Balochistan and Punjab.

Her counsel informed the court that a number of women had been saved
from committing suicide or freed from the bondage in NWFP due to the
Supreme Court’s last order. Ms Minallah told Daily Times that she was
doing a gender equality project in Swabi and Mardan with help from Aurat
Foundation, Khundo Kor, Oxfam, Sparc, SPO, Ethno Media and Shirkat Gah.
She asked the court to issue directions to stop Swara immediately. The
bench will now resume the case in the last week of April.



____


[3]

Daily Times (Pakistan)
February 26, 2006 	

RELIGION AND POLITICS
Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

For the first time since Pervez Musharraf came to power, there is a real
possibility of the political initiative shifting from the military to
the MMA. If the government is unable or unwilling to undertake a
dispassionate and objective review of the current political trends, it
may have to either compromise with the MMA or take drastic measures to
retain the political initiative

Religion and politics are so intertwined in Pakistan that the government
and the opposition often invoke one for the other. Religious issues and
symbols are used as a cover for partisan political agenda and purely
political demands like the change of government are described as a
pre-requisite for implementing Islamic political order.

This mixing of Islam and politics is not a new phenomenon. It may partly
be traced to the articulation of the demand for a separate homeland for
the Muslims in British India. By the mid-1950s, the Islamic parties
employed Islam to carve out a role for themselves in politics.
Subsequently, three military regimes invoked Islam to sustain their
commanding position. Its use for advancing partisan political agenda or
sustaining power focused attention on questions like what is Islamic or
un-Islamic rather than addressing the issues of socio-economic justice
and political participation.

General Yahya Khan invoked Islam and Islamic ideology to undercut the
autonomy movement by the Awami League in what was then East Pakistan.
General Zia ul Haq cultivated close relations with Islamic parties,
especially orthodox Islamic groups, to neutralise his political
adversaries and sustain his military rule. He also took advantage of the
Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan to strengthen his ties with
these groups and win over the support of the United States and
conservative Islamic states.

In order to pursue its strategic agenda in post-Soviet Afghanistan and
Indian-administered Kashmir the military maintained close interaction
with the Afghan resistance groups and hard-line Islamic groups in
Pakistan even after General Zia’s death.

General Pervez Musharraf continued to pursue military’s close
interaction with hard-line Islamic elements until August 2001 when he
imposed restrictions on some sectarian groups. His government pulled
away from the hard line Islamic groups in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks in the United States in September 2001. However, the military
government could not go all the way against these elements because they
enjoyed the support of Pakistan’s Islamic parties and the groups the
Musharraf regime needed for pursuing its domestic power agenda of
neutralising mainstream political parties.

The military government therefore used coercion against the Al
Qaeda-type hard-line Islamic elements in a selective manner that enabled
it to maintain a working relationship with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal
(MMA) that supported the Taliban, sympathised with Al Qaeda and opposed
Pakistan’s participation in global efforts against terrorism. The MMA
joined hands with the Musharraf government for passing the 17th
constitutional amendment that legitimised most of the changes made by
the Musharraf regime in the 1973 constitution. The cordial interaction
between the two ran aground when President Musharraf refused to quit as
army chief on December 31, 2004.

The first half of 2005 was a period of triumph for the Musharraf
government. It had deflected the MMA pressure on the uniform issue. It
mounted additional pressure on the MMA through its policies of
enlightened moderation, madrassa registration and military operations in
the Tribal Areas. While pursuing such anti-MMA policies, the government
also persisted in its policy of weakening the mainstream political
parties. President Musharraf repeatedly declared that he would not allow
former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to return home
for active participation in politics.

The Danish cartoons issue has now provided the MMA with an opportunity
to hit back at the Musharraf government. Since the cartoon issue appeals
to Muslims of all denominations, the MMA is engaged in popular
mobilisation in an aggressive manner. It is expected to continue
mounting pressure on the government until its domestic political agenda
is achieved. The MMA chief and head of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Qazi Hussain
Ahmed, has minced no words in demanding the removal of General Pervez
Musharraf. He said on February 19 that the “days of the military
government are numbered... We will not allow President General Musharraf
to remain in power till March 23.” Anti-Musharraf slogans were raised in
the MMA demonstrations in Lahore, Islamabad and many other cities.
Another key MMA leader, Maulana Fazl ur Rehman, may not be so hard
hitting in attacking General Pervez Musharraf but he has made it clear
that the MMA would challenge Pervez Musharraf unless he changes the
policies that undermine MMA interests. The MMA and other Islamic groups
also want Pakistan to sever its diplomatic ties with the European
countries whose newspapers published these cartoons. Further, they want
the government to put an end to its close interaction with the United
States for counter-terrorism.

The latest protest has created a difficult situation for the government.
It publicly supports protest on the newspaper cartoons issue in order to
prove its Islamic credentials. However, it cannot accept the MMA
demands. If the government stays quiet and gives a free hand to the MMA
and other Islamic groups for protest marches, they get the opportunity
for popular mobilisation they need.

On the other hand if the government uses the state apparatus or
political manipulation to neutralise the MMA protest, it may face an
extremely volatile domestic situation. The increased tension with the
Islamic elements threatens the normal functioning of the political
process. This adds to the problems of the government that is already
bogged down in civil strife in parts of Balochistan and anti-extremist
drive in the Waziristan area.

The current protest causes serious concerns for two additional reasons.
First, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and its allies have
failed to wean the people away from the MMA. The protest movement has
exposed the organisational weakness of the PML.

Second, the government policy of undermining the mainstream and
nationwide political parties has also enabled the MMA to expand its
political clout. The absence of an alternative political framework has
enabled the MMA to expand its support base by invoking a religious
issue. A large number of people are left with no political choice but to
join hands with the MMA to register their protest on the cartoons issue.

While the government is trying to deflect the MMA pressure by
restricting its protest marches and arresting some of its activists and
leaders, it has also arrested several prominent PML-N leaders. Further,
pressure is being mounted on Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari through
the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). This policy of applying
pressure on all political adversaries may force them to join hands for
the common minimum agenda of dislodging Pervez Musharraf.

The government needs to recognise the gravity of the situation caused by
the mix of Islam and politics. It may have firm control over power in
Islamabad. However, at the provincial and lower levels, its political
base is gradually slipping from under its feet. If the mainstream
political parties join it, the present MMA movement has the potential to
become a nationwide agitation against the government.

For the first time since Pervez Musharraf came to power, there is a real
possibility of the political initiative shifting from the military to
the MMA. If the government is unable or unwilling to undertake a
dispassionate and objective review of the current political trends, it
may have to either compromise with the MMA or take drastic measures to
retain the political initiative. The post-military rule political order
and co-opted political leadership cannot cope with the mounting pressure
from the alienated political forces. The sooner the government
recognises this fact, the better.


____


[4]


The Telegraph (India)
February 20, 2006

HOW THE STALEMATE MACHINE WORKS

Sanjib Baruah

The obvious lesson of Kakopathar is that counter-insurgency operations
and negotiations towards peace do not go together, writes Sanjib Baruah
The author is at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and Bard
College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

The developments in Assam over the past few days have made one thing
clear: that reports in recent years of the United Liberation Front of
Assam losing influence have been highly exaggerated. At least that is
not the case in those parts of rural upper Assam  the home ground of
ULFAs exiled top leadership and the site of the recent unrest.

For a number of days, pro-ULFA slogans and sentiments have been in open
display as villagers of the Kakopathar region blocked a national
highway, stormed army pickets, vandalized vehicles and even dug up the
highway to protest against the custodial killing of a fellow villager by
the Indian army. That the army describes the victim as an ULFA hit-man
has had no effect on the publics sense of outrage. Nine persons were
killed in a police firing of protesters. ULFA called an Assam bandh on
February 13, protesting against the Kakopathar firing and its chairman,
Arabinda Rajkhowa, compared the incident with the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre.

The backdrop to these developments might initially seem awkward. The
second meeting between the government of India and the ULFA-appointed
peoples consultative group had just taken place in Delhi where the
government even promised confidence-building measures to facilitate what
could some day be called a peace process. However, important differences
exist on the government side on whether to negotiate with ULFA. No less
a person than Assams governor, Lieutenant General Ajai Singh  architect
of two counter-insurgency operations against ULFA  publicly opposes
negotiations. What is there to negotiate with them? he asks. Instead, he
favours instilling fear in the rebels so that they cannot dictate terms.
By contrast, Assams elected chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, has been
strongly supportive of negotiations. Singh and some others in the
security establishment would probably interpret Kakopathar as no more
than a temporary setback. But if a single incident could become a
trigger to such public anger and expression of pro-ULFA sentiments, one
can hardly have confidence in the security establishments reading of the
ground situation and its recipe for bringing about peace.

Indias track record of ending internal armed conflicts is quite poor.
Today the world has numerous intra-state armed conflicts, and everywhere
they last long on average about seven years as opposed to six months for
international wars according to one count. However, the duration of
intra-state armed conflicts in India  and in the rest of south Asia
have been much longer than the world average. The Naga war  despite the
nine-year old ceasefire  will soon enter the sixth decade, making it one
of the worlds oldest armed conflicts.

There are many reasons why most of our conflicts have been long-lasting.
But one common factor seems to suggest itself. Those who study armed
internal conflicts emphasize the role of a mutually hurting stalemate
felt by conflicting parties  as a necessary condition for pushing
conflicts in the direction of a negotiated settlement. These theorists
argue that when parties realize that further military escalation would
not produce victory and that the costs of the status quo are
unacceptably high, a conflict becomes ripe for resolution.

But in India, even when conflicts have been terribly hurtful, localized
suffering has not easily translated into high costs for the government
side. Doing something about conflicts in the Northeast may be important
for our national-level politicians, but no government has fallen because
of the way it has handled or mishandled them. And after decades of
counter-insurgency and attention to security, we have further cushioned
our decision-making elites from the hurting effects of a stalemate.

In a new two-tiered order, the top echelons of the bureaucracy, the army
and the political establishment who live and travel with very high
levels of security are now the security haves. Under these conditions,
despite enormous suffering by civilians, those who favour a military
solution or rather a victors peace tend to win policy arguments. They
seem to believe that given the obvious military superiority of the
governments side, all armed groups can be eventually bullied into
submission. This of course has meant, in effect, stalemated
long-duration armed conflicts and the costs being paid almost entirely
by the security have-nots.

One obvious lesson of Kakopathar is that counter-insurgency operations
and efforts toward a negotiated peace do not go together. Kakopathar
underscores the absence of a solid coalition on the government side in
support of negotiations. What has made the two meetings with the PCG
possible is simply an electoral calculation that in post-Illegal
Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act Assam, the ethnic Assamese
vote might matter to the Congress more than usual. Appearing to be on
the side of a negotiated peace with ULFA might give the Congress an edge
over the Asom Gana Parishad among this segment. But since this posture
does not have to be maintained beyond the elections, there is no need to
try to build a stable political coalition to support a negotiated peace.
Thus the serious differences between the governor and the chief minister
can just be put aside. Were we serious about a negotiated peace, there
might have been pressure for the governor to resign. After all, there
could be no better confidence-building measure than making a civilian,
and someone untainted by counter-insurgency operations, the next governor.

Decisions made under these political conditions can only reinforce the
existing stalemate. Daniel Ellsberg had coined the term stalemate
machine to describe the American political logic of successive
presidents committing just enough resources to Vietnam so as not to
violate two critical domestic political rules of thumb: to not lose
South Vietnam to the communists before the next election and not commit
US ground troops to a land war in Asia. Pretending to work towards a
negotiated peace with ULFA while carrying on counter-insurgency
operations is an Indian version of a stalemate machine.


_____


[5]

Indian Express (India)
February 25, 2006
	 	
Editorial
  	
JUSTICE TRIUMPHS
FOR MODERN DAY NEROS, A REMINDER FROM THE COURT: YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR
YOUR FIDDLING
	
Of the many real and implied threats to the idea of India, the gravest
by far is that of communal violence. Yet those who commit such violence
have invariably slipped away unpunished under the anonymity of being
part of a mob. Biased and inept investigation and prosecution have only
assisted in the great escape. The significance of Friday’s verdict by
Mumbai judge Abhay Thipsay in the Best Bakery retrial case is that it
signals the certainty of punishment to the perpetrators of hate crimes
at a time when public confidence in the criminal justice system was at a
new low after the Jessica Lall verdict earlier this week.

The verdict is a ringing endorsement of the role played by sections of
the media, civil society, organisations and individuals, especially
Teesta Setalvad of Communalism Combat who, unfazed by vicious
propaganda, stayed the course. For this newspaper, which doggedly
reported on the tortuous course of the tragic Best Bakery case, the
verdict is a vindication. It had graphically captured the pressure on
witnesses in an interview with Zaheera Sheikh’s mother, in which she
admitted to lying to the court, shortly after a Gujarat trial judge had
acquitted all the accused in June 2003. It is gratifying therefore that
the retrial verdict took due note of the crime of perjury, by issuing
show-cause notices to all the witnesses who had turned hostile in the
case. This should renew the focus on this vexed issue and help usher in
the sort of reform of the criminal justice system that former Chief
Justice of India, V.N. Khare, wrote about in these columns three days
ago. The exoneration of the accused in the Jessica Lall case, followed
by the conviction of nine people in the Best Bakery retrial case, could
together prove a turning point in the history of Indian criminal
jurisprudence. The Delhi High Court has in fact just issued a notice to
the Delhi police on its handling of the Jessica Lall case.

Finally, this is about whether the country’s institutions rise up to
their constitutional responsibilities. The Gujarat government flunked
this test resoundingly in its handling the Gujarat carnage. Not only did
it fail to protect the lives of hundreds of its citizens, it was also
complicit in letting the perpetrators get away. It needed the
intervention of the National Human Rights Commission and the highest
court of the land to try and correct Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s
odious lack of “raj dharma”; to make up for what the apex court termed
as the indifference of “modern day Neros”. The are other cases from that
infamous interregnum in Gujarat now awaiting the sagacity of the courts.
Justice must continue to triumph.


BBC News (UK)
Friday, 24 February 2006, 12:46 GMT

LANDMARK JUDGEMENT RAISES HOPE
By Sanjoy Majumder
BBC News, Delhi

Riots in Ahmedabad in 2002
The police were accused of doing little to prevent the violence
The conviction of nine people in what has come to be known in India as
the Best Bakery case brings to an end one of the country's most
controversial and high profile trials.

Many see it as a landmark judgement and a vindication of India's much
maligned justice system.

In short, the system stood accused of failing Muslims in the state of
Gujarat after more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed
in rioting by Hindu mobs.

"Justice has been done," says a former chief justice of India's Supreme
Court, VN Khare, who ordered a retrial in the Best Bakery case in 2004
after a court acquitted all 21 accused.

Rights campaigners who have pushed for justice to be delivered to the
riot victims are relieved that their efforts have finally paid off.

"The retrial has been justified and vindicated," Teesta Setalvad of the
Citizens for Justice and Peace told journalists.

Frenzied killing

Fourteen people, including 12 Muslims, died in the arson attack on a
bakery in the city of Baroda, in Gujarat.

	
I found there was no will to prosecute the guilty
Former Chief Justice VN Khare
Judge who ordered retrial
It was part of the infamous 2002 riots, some of the worst since India's
bloody partition in 1947.

Hindu mobs in cities, towns and villages in Gujarat went on the rampage,
attacking Muslims, destroying and looting their property and desecrating
their places of worship.

The rioting started after a Muslim mob was reported to have attacked a
train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Nearly 60 Hindus died when the train
caught fire.

An indifferent, some would say hostile, police and state administration,
led by the Hindu-nationalist BJP party, failed to take steps to prevent
the violence from taking place.

Acquittals

But what followed raised serious questions about the legal justice
system in the world's largest and proudest democracy.

Gujarat riot
More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the 2002 riots

Cases were registered against "unnamed" persons, few were arrested and
there were no mass scale resignations of senior officials.

Several hasty trials later, some 2,000 cases were closed citing lack of
evidence.

Others, including the Best Bakery case, led to acquittals because the
prosecution failed to build up a strong case.

All that changed in 2004 when the country's Supreme Court, faced with
mounting public pressure from human rights groups and riot victims,
hauled up the Gujarat state government for doing little to punish the
guilty.

It forced several cases to be reopened and in some instances - including
the Best Bakery case - ordered a retrial.

'No will to prosecute'

Sixteen months later, the special court set up by the Supreme Court has
now handed out its verdict despite having to cope with witnesses
retracting their evidence.

Justice Khare says the verdict shows that there was nothing wrong with
the justice system but that the Gujarat state authorities had failed in
their duties.

"I found there was no will to prosecute the guilty. There was nothing
wrong with the system but the state did not discharge its function," he
told the BBC News website.

	
This has led to some hope that we will also receive justice
Syed Khan, riot victim
Significantly, the Supreme Court had ordered that the retrial should be
held outside Gujarat state to ensure a fair trial.

"It is because of this that people were able to depose without fear.
They may not have spoken out if the trial had been held in Gujarat," Mr
Khare says.

Hope

The Best Bakery case is only one of more than one thousand that are
still to be heard.

But many riot victims have taken heart from the judgement and hope that
their cases will also get a fair hearing and the guilty punished.

"This has led to some hope that we will also receive justice," says Syed
Khan whose relatives were among 39 people who were killed in a
residential complex in Ahmedabad known as the Gulbarg Society.

"It is clear that the Gujarat police did not investigate the case
properly," he told the BBC.

Few people have been convicted over the riots in which more than 1,000
people died, mostly Muslims.

But rights campaigners and riot victims are hoping the Best Bakery
sparks off a trend.

o o o

The Telegraph (India)
February 25, 2006

BAKERY KILLERS GET LIFE TERM
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Mumbai, Feb. 24: A special court retrying the Best Bakery case today
sentenced nine rioters to life, in a verdict hailed as the triumph of
justice.

Judge Abhay Thipse said those convicted were identified by eyewitnesses
and found guilty of being part of a mob that set the Vadodara bakery on
fire, burning alive 14 people inside, during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Zahira Sheikh, a prime witness on whose appeal the retrial was ordered
but who later turned hostile, has been served with a perjury notice
asking why she should not be charged with furnishing false evidence in
court. Four members of her family, which owned the bakery, have been
served with similar notices.

He could not award capital punishment because the specific roles played
by the accused in the carnage could not be ascertained, the judge added,
in a packed courtroom dotted with celebrities. The nine have also been
convicted of causing grievous injury to five witnesses.

Teesta Setalvad, an activist who had pushed for the retrial, welcomed
the verdict as “satisfying”.

The case was shifted to Maharashtra in a landmark move by the Supreme
Court in 2004, after a trial court in Vadodara cleared all 21 accused
and Gujarat High Court upheld the acquittals.

Eight of the accused were acquitted today for want of evidence.
Non-bailable warrants have been issued against four who are absconding.

Setalvad, who had helped Zahira seek retrial only to be accused by the
witness later of tutoring her to implicate innocent people, was cleared.

The prosecution said today’s verdict revealed the difference between the
judicial processes in the two trials of the Best Bakery case. Only seven
witnesses turned hostile this time, five of them from the Sheikh family,
compared to 68 when the case was being tried in Gujarat.

“Our victory was built on the strength of the evidence against the
accused,” public prosecutor Manjula Rao said.

Playwright Vijay Tendulkar, who made a rare public appearance, filmmaker
Mahesh Bhatt and actor Rahul Bose were present in the courtroom to hear
the ruling.

The Supreme Court is expected to give its verdict shortly on a probe
that found that Zahira had been paid by a BJP leader from Gujarat, Madhu
Srivastava, to retract her statement in court. The apex court is also to
rule on a request for reinvestigation in eight other Gujarat riot cases.

The nine sentenced to life were Raju Baria, Pankaj Gisav, Sanjay
Tahkkar, Jeetu (Bahadur Singh Chauhan), Jagdish Rajput, Dinesh Rajbhar,
Sanabhai Baria, Sailesh Thadvi and Suresh Vasava (Laloo). They are
expected to appeal in Gujarat High Court.

o o o

The Telegraph
February 25, 2006

CHEER AFTER FASTING FOR JUSTICE
- Riot victims & activists hail Bakery verdict, but Teesta hints at
‘bigger forces’
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Mumbai, Feb. 24: Hundreds of people in Gujarat who kept roza for a day,
hoping for justice, are celebrating now.

“Victims of the riots in Gujarat observed fast for a day waiting for
this moment,” said Javed Anand of the Citizens for Justice and Peace,
the organisation through which Teesta Setalvad has highlighted the Best
Bakery case and several other riots cases.

The verdict was greeted with equal warmth all around, especially after
the acquittal of all the accused in the Jessica Lal murder case. The
nine accused in the murder case of the model from Delhi were allowed to
walk free after most witnesses turned hostile.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and actor Rahul Bose, who were present in the
courtroom, welcomed it enthusiastically. So did a Catholic organisation.

“The Bombay Catholic Sabha welcomes the Best Bakery case judgment and
hopes that this verdict would act as a deterrent for
fundamentalist/fascist forces to continue such acts of crimes against
humanity,” the organisation said.

The welcome statements, however, came with a rider.

Setalvad said she was happy with the verdict, but there were bigger
forces behind the convicted.

Bhatt and Bose echoed her. Bhatt said it was important to remember that
the convicted were “merely pawns in a game” and the “actual perpetrators
should be apprehended”.

It has been repeatedly claimed that the violence in Gujarat was
state-sponsored; the BJP government was responsible for it in many ways.
One hand that is clearly moving the “pawns” is alleged to belong to the
BJP MLA from Vadodara, Madhu Srivastava. He has been accused of
influencing Zahira to change her statement twice before courts.

Zahira, who claimed to be the prime witness of the death of 14 people at
the bakery, retracted her statement before a Vadodara court, where the
case was first heard, and the Mumbai court, which delivered the verdict
today.

According to a hidden camera operation carried out by a weekly,
Srivastava has allegedly paid Zahira and her family a huge amount of
money to retract her statement.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its verdict on the report that
was submitted to it in August that probes links between Srivastava and
Zahira and her family.

Srivastava has repeatedly denied knowing Zahira. He said today there was
a “conspiracy” run by NGOs to malign the BJP government’s image in Gujarat.

o o o

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060219/asp/opinion/story_5864237.asp#
The Telegraph (India)
19 Feb., 2006

BEST GETS WORSE

- ‘The Sheikhs are living in a no-man’s land. And
their trial begins now’

On Tuesday, a Mumbai special court is expected to give
its judgement on the Best Bakery inferno. The Sheikh
family which owned the bakery has disappeared.
Bishakha De Sarkar reports from Vadodara

It’s difficult to tell, but there was a time, no
doubt, when the double-storeyed house echoed with
laughter. After all, it housed a family like any
other. The father worked hard for a living, but did
well in his small bakery business. The mother took
care of the family and coped with the problems of
everyday life — the elder son had a Hindu girlfriend;
the younger, his tenth standard examinations. And the
youngest of their three daughters — 18-year-old Zahira
Sheikh — weaved the dreams of an ordinary teenager.

The house in a shanty settlement in Vadodara is now
black with soot. The Sheikh family has disappeared —
two are dead and four are on the run.

The one left behind, a daughter-in-law, weeps — and
abuses the family.

“I’ll tell you all about them,” she says. “I’ll tell
you about the whore.”

In Hanuman Tekri, everybody knows the house. This is
where Best Bakery functioned till it was set on fire
on March 1, 2002 — killing 14 people, including one of
the Sheikh daughters. The father, Habibullah, had died
of a heart ailment a month before the mob attacked the
bakery with swords, sticks and torches. The survivors
— among them Habibullah’s wife and three children —
locked themselves up on the terrace and pleaded for
help through the night as the mob ran amok.

On Tuesday, a Mumbai special court is expected to give
its judgement on the Best Bakery inferno, which
occurred two days after a train carrying Hindu
activists was set afire in Godhra, 80 km from
Vadodara. The Supreme Court ordered a retrial of the
case and moved it to Mumbai after a Vadodara special
court — in the first verdict in a case relating to the
Gujarat violence in June 2003 — acquitted all the 21
accused.

But this time Vadodara’s Muslims are convinced that
several of the 17 accused will be convicted. A
conviction, they stress, will mean justice.

But for the Sheikhs, it will mark the beginning of
another troubled era.

“The real tragedy for the family starts after the
verdict,” says a city professional once close to the
Sheikhs. “What will happen to them once the case is
settled and those who are now said to be taking care
of them are gone?”

What’s clear, though, is that the family will continue
to be in a state of flux. Since 2002, the Sheikhs have
moved at least five houses in the city. For the last
few months they were living in a flat in a Hindu
colony. The rent of Rs 2,500 was paid by a
non-governmental organisation (NGO), Jan Adhikar
Samiti. “Even we don’t know where they are now,” says
city lawyer Tussar Vyas, who runs the NGO which, he
says, paid about Rs 4 lakh for the Sheikh family’s
legal and other expenses.

The family lived there quietly, seldom mixing with the
neighbours. The rooms were sparsely furnished: there
was not much by way of sofas or beds, but they had a
television set and a refrigerator. “No, I never wanted
to speak with them,” says electrician Manishbhai
Panchal, whose family rented the flat out to the
Sheikhs. “Who would want to?”

The landlord believes that the family has moved to
Mumbai — a claim seconded by Heena, once the Hindu
girlfriend of Nafitullah, or Guddu, and now his Muslim
wife. The Sheikhs, she says, are in Mumbai’s Nair
Hospital for her husband's treatment. Heena weeps for
Guddu and her four-year-old son, Samir, who, she says,
has been taken away by the family. “My husband is
serious. Cancer,” she says. “And they won’t give me
back my son,” Heena says, hurling abuses at her
sisters-in-law.

The first floor of the Hanuman Tekri house is
startlingly bare. There is just a TV in one corner and
a framed photograph of a cherubic Samir. Her daughter
is bawling and Heena says that she hasn’t cooked for a
day. “I have sold everything — my earrings, my
bangles. Now they want me to sell the TV.”

Clearly, the Sheikhs are a divided family, beset with
problems. Zahira’s lawyer, Atul Mistry, says her two
brothers — Guddu and Raju, or Nasibullah — are scrap
dealers, but Vadodara’s Muslims dismiss them as
idlers. “They are sharabi kababis,” says one critic,
implying that the brothers are fond of liquor. “They
like to gamble and have been losing money,” says
another.

Guddu’s first and estranged wife, Yasmin, and their
daughter live with Yasmin’s mother in Chhotaudaipur,
some 100 kilometres from Vadodara. “If we had known
about the other girl, we would never have got our
daughter married to Guddu,” says mother Rasheeda Bibi.

But when the ‘rishta’ — a tentative marriage proposal
— first came for Yasmin, her family was happy. The
Sheikhs were a “khaata-peeta” family, a phrase that
denotes affluence. The father was a good man — even
though he was a Bihar-UP border migrant derogatorily
referred to as a Bhaiyya.

“Zahira was always pleasant,” says Yasmin’s sister,
Shahnaaz. “And we don’t expect her to ask about her
niece and bhabhi when she has no address to call her
own.”

Zahira evokes the strangest of emotions in and around
Vadodara. Few Muslims have anything charitable to say
about her, but the city is forever abuzz with rumours
— or talk — about the girl who took on the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and then, allegedly,
struck a deal with it. Many hold that on the day of
Eid, she was spotted shopping in a burqah and fled
when she was recognised from the eyes that peered out
of the veil. Somebody else says she was seen in jeans
and a T-shirt.

Another stresses that the burqah she wears is
expensive and costs around Rs 4,000.

Quite evidently, public interest in Zahira refuses to
die down. There were scores of other cases in Gujarat,
some even more gruesome than the Best Bakery incident,
but the role played by Zahira gave the case a human
face, and, thereby, reams of newsprint and airtime.

“If the media had not highlighted the case so much,
the ‘other side’ wouldn’t have tried that hard to get
the accused acquitted,” argues Deen Dayal Tuteja, who
was the police commissioner of Baroda during the riots
and has since retired.

There was a reason for the media hype. Zahira gave a
detailed account of the incident to the police but
recanted later in the Vadodara court.

After the acquittal, she said members of the BJP,
including legislator Madhu Srivastava, had intimidated
her and her family. A year later, Zahira said that she
had made accusations against the BJP because she had
been asked to do so by Mumbai-based human rights
activist Teesta Setalvad. She later told the Mumbai
court that she hadn’t seen a thing on March 1, 2002.

Rohit Prajapati, an activist with the People’s Union
for Civil Liberties, says he understands why Zahira
did all that she did. “She is an ordinary girl, a
victim herself. But we tend to look at her as an
activist — a Gandhi and a Bhagat Singh rolled into
one.”

The few who sympathise with the family seek to point
out that it was not easy to take up a position against
the rioters in Vadodara, a city that has been a
witness to violence for decades. “It’s no coincidence
that the first stabbing and burning after Godhra
happened in Vadodara,” says a resident.

But there was a time, people recall, when the city was
sensitive, yet not quite communal. “There were riots —
but mostly sparked by rivalries among bootleggers,”
says Iftekhar Ahmed, who teaches history at the M.S.
University. The anti-reservation riots in Gujarat in
the eighties turned communal and spilled into
Vadodara. “But the city really changed after the Rath
Yatra (of the early Nineties) led to a spate of
riots,” he says.

That is why, when Godhra happened, the city feared the
worst. Tuteja says he imposed curfew on the first day
itself — an act that, he stresses, curbed the
violence. “I had a force of 1,300 and kept asking for
more. We patrolled the city through the day,” says
Tuteja.

But the city saw 47 deaths in what many thought was an
engineered pogrom of violence. “It had been planned in
advance,” says businessman Cassim Unia. “Every Muslim
business had been marked out and systematically
demolished — from the upmarket showroom to the small
thela-gaadi,” he says.

Four years on, BJP MLA Madhu Srivastava stresses that
peace has now returned to Vadodara. “If it hadn’t, do
you think the BJP would have swept the municipal
elections,” he asks, referring to the polls in
December when the BJP stormed to power in the state’s
five civic bodies.

There are some, though, who believe that the city will
never be the same again. Sharply polarised, Vadodara
dwells in two quarters today — for Hindus and Muslims.
Retired central government employee Amanullah Khan’s
family was one of two Muslim households that lived in
a Hindu area of 40,000 people before the riots. “I
lived on there despite earlier riots. But this time we
felt we had to move out.”

In the ghettoised city, there is a growing belief that
the administration is turning its back on Muslims.
Unia holds that there are few post offices or
nationalised banks in Muslim areas. Amanullah Khan
says that the discrimination is stark just outside his
Bina Nagar Colony, at a spot where two roads meet. The
one going into a Muslim colony is broken and without
street lights, while the approach to the Hindu
neighbourhood has a brightly-lit, well-tarred four-way
lane.

Quite like Vadodara, it will be a while before life
for the Sheikhs is back on an even keel. Guddu is
battling for life, while his two unhappy wives live
away from him. His brother, Raju, had once wanted to
study.

“Didi, I want to be like you,” he had told a local
journalist. And since Raju had missed his board
examinations because of the riots, the journalist did
all that she could for him. Special permission was
obtained and books and pens were procured for Raju. On
the day of the examination, he never turned up.

The family fabric has ripped apart, but Zahira — like
any other 22-year-old — makes plans for the future.
“She does want to get married,” says lawyer Mistry.
“Any girl of that age would be thinking of marriage
and happiness,” he says.

But happiness, for what was once an ordinary family,
is a distant dream.

Right now, as an acquaintance puts it, the Sheikhs are
nowhere. “They are living in a no-man’s land,” she
says. “And it’s now that their trial begins.”

_____


[6]

[BHOPALIS' 800-KM FOOT MARCH TO DELHI!

More than 130 survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster began their march on
foot to New Delhi on February 20, 2006 demanding justice and a life of
dignity after 22 years of struggle. ]

o o o

Padyatris prepare to set out

Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha
Bhopal Group for Information and Action
Bhopal ki Aawaaz

February 17, 2006

Survivors of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal and people poisoned by
ground water contamination from the pesticide factory that caused the
world’s worst industrial disaster on December 3, 1984 will start their
Bhopal to New Delhi Padyatra (march on foot) on February 20, 2006.

Over 100 Padyatris will start walking “to the office of the Prime
Minister at Raisina Hill, New Delhi” from the Union Carbide factory at
11 AM on Monday. They have already hand delivered the information on the
800 kilometers long march to the offices of the Prime Minister and the
Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh along with their six-point charter of
demands.

The four survivors’ organizations are seeking the Prime Minister’s
personal intervention in ensuring “justice and a life of dignity for the
people poisoned by Union Carbide and its current owner Dow Chemical”.

Their demands include immediate supply of safe water to the communities
with ground water contamination, speedy prosecution of Union Carbide
Corporation and its officials and blacklisting of Dow Chemical till it
pays for environmental and health damages caused due to reckless dumping
of hazardous wastes.

The organisations : Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari
Sangh, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, Bhopal ki
Aawaaz and Bhopal Group for Information and Action also demand the
setting up of a “National Commission on Bhopal” for long term medical
care, research and economic and social rehabilitation of the victims.
They demand that the disaster in Bhopal must be made part of educational
curricula and the creation of a memorial to the disaster with full
participation of the victims.

A team of supporters in New Delhi will be communicating the demands of
the Padyatris to the Director of the Bhopal cell in the Ministry of
Chemicals on a daily basis. Supporters in other parts of the country
will organize rallies and signature petitions to the Prime Minister.
Members of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal will hold
demonstrations at Indian embassies in USA and other countries in support
of the campaign.

The ICJB’s campaign web site www.bhopal.net is providing communication
support to the marchers who will be updating blogs on a daily basis.

With their ages ranging from 19 to 70 years, the Padyatris are from gas
affected areas such as Jai Prakash Nagar and Risaldar Colony as well as
from areas that are affected by contamination of ground water such as
Shiv Shakti Nagar and Blue Moon Colony. Their five week long journey
will take them through Guna, Shivpuri, Gwalior, Dholpur Agra, Mathura,
Ballabhgarh and other towns and villages in four states.

Walking between 25 and 35 kilometers every day, the Padyatris will
depend on villagers and townspeople for food and shelter. They will
exhibit posters, screen films and address public meetings along the way
to create awareness about industrial pollution, corporate accountability
and other issues of the Bhopal campaign. The four organizations today
made an appeal to the people of Bhopal for financial and material
support to the Padyatris and requested persons from the media to join in
the march.

Rashida Bee, Champa Devi Shukla
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh
+91 93031 32959

Syed M Irfan
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha
+91 93290 26319

Shahid Noor
Bhopal ki Aawaaz
+91 98261 82226

Satinath Sarangi, Rachna Dhingra
Bhopal Group for Information & Action
+91 98261 67369

Contact :
House No. 12, Gali No. 2, Near Naseer Masjid,
Bag Umrao Dulha, Bhopal 462 010

For the latest information on the Bhopal to New Delhi Padyatra please
bookmark www.bhopal.net/march/


_____

[7]

The Hindu
Feb 26, 2006 	

RAJASTHAN PLANS TO BAN CONVERSIONS
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/26/stories/2006022614880100.htm


_____


[8] FILM SCREENING


Dear Friends,

You are cordially invited to the first screening of the documentary
DELHI -MUMBAI - DELHI at the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre ,
Lodhi Road, New Delhi.
Date - Sunday,  26 February 2006
Time - 7.00pm

Delhi -Mumbai -Delhi - synopses - Riya dances in the beer bars of Mumbai
to make a living. The documentary follows her from her home in Delhi to
Mumbai where hundreds of working class girls come in search of work and
a future. Riya's future is unpredictable and the present is marked with
its own difficulties. The police harass her family in Delhi, there is
constant pressure from her agent in Mumbai to attract more tips and the
work itself is demanding. However, there are other girls to have fun
with, there is money to dress well and then there are men. admirers
promising the moon. The documentary is an intimate portrait of the
everyday in the life of the girls, their agents and their neighbourhoods.
Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi, shot in the backdrop of the Maharashtra Governments'
controversial move to ban girls from dancing in beer bars, interweaves
stories of gender, labour, sexuality and popular culture within an
increasingly globalized economy.

Duration: 63 Minutes
Director: Saba Dewan
Camera: Rahul Roy
Editor: Anupama Chandra

Sound: Asheesh Pandya & Sunder
Sound mix: Gissy Micheal

Contact: Aakar, A-19, Gulmohar Park, New Delhi 110049


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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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