SACW | Oct. 25-27, 2007 | Gujarat's fascists roam freely 5 yrs after pogrom (Tehelka investigation)

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at mnet.fr
Fri Oct 26 20:10:21 CDT 2007


South Asia Citizens Wire | October 25-27, 2007 | 
Dispatch No. 2464 - Year 10 running

[1] Sri Lanka:
   (i) Attack On Anuradhapura Airforce Base Highlights Cost Of War
   (ii) The Peace Process In Sri Lanka (Rohini Hensman)
[2] Pakistan: Beheading women, what next? (Anis Haroon)
[3] India: Gujarat Pogrom of 2002: 5 years on the 
truth uncovered by an undercover media 
investigation
(i) Gujarat : The Truth
Lest We Forget Our Shame (Editorial by Harinder Baweja)
+ A series of investigative reports and spycam videos (Ashish Khetan)
(ii) 'A Black Day For Democracy' Message from 
Shabnam Hashmi on blocking of TV broadcasts in 
Gujarat
(iii) Hindus Detail Involvement In Deadly '02 Riots in India (Rama Lakshmi)
(iv) Gujarat Pogroms: Take Immediate Action 
(statement Communist Party of India (Marxist))
(v) Outraged Indian Americans Demand the 
dismissal of Gujarat State Government in India 
(Press Release)
[4] India: The marked people (Harsh Mander)
[5] On India's Foreign Policy:
- America's Strategic Opportunity With India: The 
New U.S.-India Partnership (R. Nicholas Burns)
- The Future of Indian Foreign Policy (Itty Abraham)
[6] Announcements:
(i) Citizens Meet on Non-Implementation of 
Srikrishna Commission Report (Ahmedabad, 29 
October, 2007)
(ii) Meeting on citizens documentation of human 
rights violations (Colombo, 31 October 2007)
(iii) 1857 Rebellion in India: Exhibit, films, 
conference, lectures (Delhi, 26 October - 
December 2007)
______

[1]  SRI LANKA

(i)

National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka
12/14 Purana Vihara Road
Colombo 6
Tel: 2818344, 2854127, 2819064
Tel/Fax:2819064
  E Mail: npc at sltnet.lk,
Internet: www.peace-srilanka.org


27.10.07

Media Release

ATTACK ON ANURADHAPURA AIRFORCE BASE HIGHLIGHTS COST OF WAR

The LTTEís ground and air attack on the 
Anuradhapura Air Force base and destruction 
caused to at least 8 military aircraft and the 
loss of over 31 lives is a harsh reminder of the 
terrible costs of war. The manner in which the 
LTTE sent in 21 suicide cadre to perform the 
ground attack, and the manner in which their 
naked bodies were exposed by government 
authorities after the attack, are a manifestation 
of the disregard for human life and civilized 
norms that is accompanying the conflict. Apart 
from the human cost, the economic cost of the 
attack will mean further and longer 
impoverishment of the country and its people. If 
this state of affairs continues, the human and 
economic costs are likely rise to unbearable 
proportions and civilized values will further 
collapse.

The attack on the Anuradhapura Air Force base is 
also an indication that the theatre of military 
action cannot be confined to the contested north 
and east of the country. This has been seen in 
previous instances as well, such as the LTTE 
attack on Katunayake International Airport in 
2001 and numerous bomb attacks in Colombo. The 
governmentís victories in the east have been 
accompanied by the spread of fighting in the 
north and outside of it in the south. It is 
tragic that history is repeating itself with 
catastrophic consequences to the lives of people 
and to the economy, but the military and 
political leaders of the country fail to learn 
from the past.

At the recently held International Conference on 
Countering Terrorism in Colombo which was hosted 
by the Sri Lankan government, the terrorist 
dimension of the ongoing conflict in Sri Lanka 
received primary attention to the neglect of the 
need for a political solution to the ethnic 
conflict. However, many of the international 
experts invited by the government who addressed 
the conference, including the keynote speaker Dr 
Gerard Chaliard who was former head of the 
European Centre for the Study of Conflicts, were 
of the view that without a convincing and 
legitimate political solution, there could be no 
end to terrorism.

The National Peace Council regrets the All Party 
Conference convened by President Rajapaksa is 
engaging in a desultory journey without any 
leadership whatsoever being provided by the key 
decision makers in the government. We also regret 
the recent equivocal stance on a federal solution 
by the UNP, which earlier indicated its support 
for such a solution, and call on it to rejoin the 
All Party Conference in collaboration with the 
government. In this time of national shock and 
apprehension, we call on the government to learn 
from international experience and Sri Lankaís own 
past and to provide bold leadership to developing 
a political solution to the ethnic conflict in 
collaboration with the opposition and ethnic 
minority parties as the basic foundation to 
ending the war.


Executive Director
On behalf of the Governing Council


o o o


(ii)

THE PEACE PROCESS IN SRI LANKA

by Rohini Hensman

The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA)

With rumours of quiet diplomacy on the part of 
the Norwegian government to begin a new round of 
negotiations between the Government of Sri Lanka 
(GoSL) and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 
(LTTE) in the air, it is important to reiterate 
the lessons learned from the breakdown of the 
earlier Norwegian-backed peace process. The 
intervention of the Norwegian mediators led to 
the signing of the 2002 CFA between the GoSL and 
LTTE.  The agreement led to an immediate 
cessation of fighting, and in that sense was 
beneficial; but it also contained the seeds of 
its own breakdown and that, too, in the most 
catastrophic manner.

Its obvious bias towards the LTTE not only 
provided justification for Sinhala nationalist 
attacks on it, but also had dire consequences for 
Tamil dissidents. Those who were laid down their 
weapons under the sub-clause specifying that 
Tamil paramilitary groups would be disarmed 
became easy prey for LTTE death squads. 
Similarly, the freedom of movement for 'political 
work' allowed to LTTE cadres in territory 
controlled by the government allowed them to pick 
off unarmed Tamil critics at will and forcibly 
conscript Tamil children into their armed forces. 
Thus the CFA authorised the decimation of the 
Tamil constituency for peace by cold-blooded 
murder, even while it delegitimised the Sinhalese 
constituency for peace by associating it with an 
asymmetric agreement: the government forces were 
not given any similar right to conduct 'political 
work' in LTTE-controlled areas. Muslims were shut 
out altogether, despite their vital interest in 
the outcome of the talks and the conditions under 
which they were taking place. Admittedly, 
Sinhalese liberals, local NGOs and international 
NGOs who supported the CFA assisted in the 
process of delegitimising themselves by failing 
to point out its glaring weaknesses.


In Article 2 of the CFA, ‘Measures to restore 
normalcy,' it was mentioned in passing that ‘The 
Parties shall in accordance with international 
law abstain from hostile acts against the 
civilian population, including such acts as 
torture, intimidation, abduction, extortion and 
harassment.' Yet the mechanism set up for 
ensuring this was truly laughable. The Nordic Sri 
Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) with a Norwegian 
Head, charged with monitoring the CFA, would set 
up local monitoring committees consisting of five 
members, two appointed by the GoSL, two by the 
LTTE, and one international monitor appointed by 
the Head of the SLMM. Thus civilians complaining 
of hostile acts against them – the abduction of 
their children, for example – would find 
themselves reporting to the violators, and 
subjected thereafter to reprisals which might 
include the torture or death of the child they 
were trying to rescue. It is not surprising that 
many violations – at this stage, mostly by the 
LTTE – were not reported, and even those that 
were reported were seldom redressed.

Indeed, the SLMM and Norwegian mediators suffered 
from a conflict of interest when it came to 
taking action on human rights issues. Their main 
mandate was to stop the armed conflict, and they 
therefore refrained from putting too much 
emphasis on preventing or redressing violations 
against unarmed actors in case such action might 
derail the so-called peace process. Thus the lack 
of a human rights agreement with separate 
monitors, independent of the GoSL, LTTE and SLMM, 
ensured that civilians in the North and East 
would pay a heavy price for the temporary 
cessation of hostilities. It also allowed the 
LTTE to build up and expand its military hardware 
as well as armed forces. The Norwegian government 
was directly responsible for assisting this 
process by its financial contributions to the 
LTTE and its propagation within the international 
community of the fascistic notion of the LTTE as 
the sole representative of the Tamils of Sri 
Lanka.

The CFA started off by saying that its overall 
purpose was ‘to find a negotiated solution to the 
ongoing ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka', and yet 
there was absolutely nothing in the agreement 
that could contribute to such an objective. At a 
minimum, there should have been some mention of 
the necessary participants to such a discussion, 
but there was none, making clear the assumption 
that NO ONE OTHER THAN THE GOSL AND LTTE WOULD BE 
INVOLVED IN NEGOTIATING A POLITICAL SOLUTION TO 
THE CONFLICT.

It was assumed, in other words, that no Muslims, 
no political parties outside the government, and 
no civil society groups would have any say 
whatsoever in the shape of a future Sri Lanka! 
Such a blatant contradiction of all democratic 
norms could only reinforce totalitarian 
tendencies among both the Sinhalese and the 
Tamils. Moreover, it allowed the LTTE to put 
forward its proposals for an Interim Self 
Governing Authority (ISGA) that would have 
resulted in international recognition of its 
dictatorship over the North-East of Sri Lanka. 
Given the lack of any conception of an acceptable 
end result to the negotiations, opponents of the 
ISGA could be characterised as Sinhala 
chauvinists – which, indeed, some of them were – 
without much critical appraisal of what the 
proposals themselves would mean for the people of 
the North-East in particular and Sri Lanka in 
general. Again, hardline Sinhala nationalists 
gained strength from this whole exercise.

Thus the CFA not only guaranteed its own demise, 
but also ensured that when it did finally break 
down, the consequences would be ghastly. By 
strengthening the extremists among both Tamils 
and Sinhalese and sidelining the moderates, by 
emphasising military might at the expense of 
human rights, and above all by throwing democracy 
aside as though it had no importance in the 
solution to the conflict, the CFA, along with its 
Norwegian sponsors as well as local and 
international supporters, created the 
preconditions for the atrocities that have 
accompanied Eelam War IV.

A New Phase

We have moved forward considerably from the 
situation when the 2002 CFA was signed. Partly as 
a consequence of relentless campaigning by Tamil 
human rights activists, the ‘conflict resolution' 
paradigm, which favours those who possess 
military and political power, has been abandoned 
in favour of an international law paradigm, which 
defends the human and democratic rights of 
civilians against all those who wield arbitrary 
power over them. This has resulted in many 
international NGOs, governments and the UN 
recognising the egregious human rights abuses 
perpetrated by the LTTE and penalising it for 
them. It has also shifted the emphasis from 
simply demanding an end to the fighting to 
demanding respect for international humanitarian 
and human rights law from all combatants and 
their commanders. The recent visit to Sri Lanka 
of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise 
Arbour, in which she offered greater cooperation 
between her office and the government to stem 
human rights violations, is an example of this 
new approach. In principle, this is the 
application to Sri Lanka of laws applicable 
worldwide.

While the UN may not have the power to impose 
respect for human rights on powerful nations – 
indeed, it does not have the power to impose its 
solutions even on a small nation like Sri Lanka – 
wherever it does succeed, it is to the benefit of 
victims of violence, regardless of who they are, 
and who is inflicting the violence. In Sri Lanka, 
for example, it would target human rights abuses 
by government forces, the LTTE and other armed 
actors equally.

The other area in which progress has been made is 
in the proposals for a permanent political 
solution to the conflict worked out in the 
All-Party Representative Committee (APRC). The 
fact that this has included actors kept out by 
the Norwegian-backed peace process (Muslims, for 
example) and has taken account of their concerns 
is a huge improvement on the earlier situation. 
Again, international pressure to accelerate the 
process of arriving at proposals acceptable to 
the democratic majority of all communities plays 
a positive role. Moreover, the public debate and 
transparency of the procedures is a breath of 
fresh air.

The Way Forward

The Norwegian-backed negotiations made a major 
contribution to the mess we are in today by (a) 
colluding in the murder of Tamils who favoured 
peace in a united Sri Lanka, helping to discredit 
pro-peace Sinhalese as LTTE collaborators, and 
excluding Muslims who had a vital interest in the 
process; (b) helping the LTTE to build up their 
land, sea and air forces in preparation for 
launching Eelam War IV; (c) and downplaying 
concerns with human rights and democracy, thus 
ensuring that when the inevitable breakdown of 
the CFA took place, the resulting war would be 
exceedingly brutal.
Despite appearances to the contrary, we have come 
a long way since then, and MUST NOT go back to a 
process that will simply waste the lives lost in 
the expensive learning process we have been 
engaged in, and lead to more loss of life in the 
future. It is now very clear that if the 
international community genuinely wishes to help 
bring about peace in Sri Lanka, it needs to: (1) 
put pressure on the GoSL and LTTE to accept and 
cooperate with a UN human rights monitoring 
mission in the areas under their control, thus 
helping to bring to an end the most heinous 
violations of international human rights and 
humanitarian law by both sides; (2) put pressure 
on the government to allow the APRC to come out 
with its proposals for a political solution that 
were broadly accepted by the democratic majority 
of all communities instead of throwing a spanner 
in the works at every opportunity; (3) in 
accordance with democratic norms, ensure that all 
stakeholders in the peace process are represented 
in future peace talks, especially the Muslims who 
were deliberately excluded by the Norwegians; and 
(4) ensure that all talks are public and 
transparent. These measures will provide 
much-needed support to the genuine peace 
constituency in Sri Lanka and among the Sri 
Lankan diaspora.


______


[2]

The Dawn
October 26, 2007

BEHEADING WOMEN, WHAT NEXT?

by Anis Haroon

TODAY the NWFP presents a grim picture of 
religious militancy. The Islamic vigilantes have 
lashed out brutally at the people, especially 
women, causing widespread fear. Only last month, 
two women were beheaded in Bannu. It shocked us 
no end. These women were killed on the pretext of 
'having been involved in immoral acts', what-ever 
that may mean.

But equally terrible was the absence of public 
outrage. Except for protests by a few women's 
groups, some NGOs and a couple or so of 
editorials in the national newspapers, there was 
no reaction whatsoever, although it made front 
page news.

Shaken out of our apathy, we at the Aurat 
Foundation decided to conduct our own little 
inquiry into this gruesome incident. Putting 
itself at considerable risk, a team of four from 
our regional office in Peshawar, including women 
clad in 'shuttlecock' burqas, undertook the 
arduous journey to Bannu on Sept 21.

When it called on the DIG Bannu, Amir Hamza 
Mehsood, our probe team was told that 'three 
armed men intercepted an auto-rickshaw near Skri 
Gate in the Cantonment area and forcibly abducted 
two women Moeena and Maliki, while a third one 
Rashida, managed to escape'. The women were in 
their mid-40s and were returning from a local 
hospital. Their bodies were found dumped in a 
canal in Momandkhel on Sept 7. A note from the 
local militants left near them read, 'All men and 
women running brothels, including the one who 
escaped on Thursday, are hereby warned. They 
should wind up their ugly business or they will 
meet the same fate.'Later, the surviving woman's 
house was attacked with grenades and the family 
is so intimidated that it refuses to talk to 
anyone. The district police officer described 
this as the first ever case in the area where 
women were beheaded for 'immorality'. But the 
question is: who decided that these women were 
prostitutes? Even if they were, how could 
militants be allowed to take the law into their 
own hands?

The DIG perceives the Bannu security situation as 
an extension of the Waziristan conflict. The 
law-enforcement agencies claim to be at war with 
the militants. These elements are obscurantist in 
their outlook so women's rights mean nothing to 
them, the police chief observed. Recalling what 
now look like the halcyon days of 2004 when he 
was posted there as DIG, he said he could go out 
for morning walks. Now he worries until his 
children return home from school.

But what is the police's response to this 
incident? They are not seriously investigating 
the case which has led people to suspect that 
they are involved. A local journalist showed the 
AF team three threatening letter-cum-press 
releases from unknown 'mujahideen'. Interestingly 
they were all posted from Peshawar.

Bannu is no longer safe for women. The director 
of the Aurat Foundation, Rakhshanda Naz, says, 'I 
have lived in Bannu for several years by myself. 
But now the place is scary and desolate. People 
you see on the streets look terrified.' One 
hardly sees women in public and those who come 
out return home by noon because good women are 
not supposed to be seen outside their homes.

Identifying two brands of militancy in Bannu, the 
DIG says the real Taliban apparently respect 
women. But worse are the common criminals who are 
acting in the guise of the Taliban. He mentioned 
two cases where police encounters with apparently 
religious extremists had caused the latter to 
surrender and they turned out to be ordinary 
criminals. Now people do not feel safe and are 
fleeing Bannu.As happens when law and order 
breaks down, the unscrupulous and the criminals 
exploit the situation. In the beheading case, one 
of the women was the second wife of a man whose 
son from the first wife had joined the Taliban. 
He was suspected of being behind the murders. 
Conveniently, she was charged with running a 
brothel - a charge that sealed her fate and 
ensured that no questions would be asked.

Civil society in Bannu is worried. What next? 
Will women walking without a veil or seen talking 
to a man become the target for the vigilantes' 
beheading spree? Who will check them? According 
to Ikramullah, an advocate, 'This incident in the 
hometown of the NWFP chief minister is a sad 
reflection on the inability of the government to 
act against the militants.'

We are faced with a grim situation. Civil society 
and politicians are more concerned about the 
'morality of victims' rather than the gross 
violation of human rights. It is the security 
dimension of the incident that has upset people 
but no one is ready to agitate against the 
incident. Some conceded that they had never heard 
about the brothel before the murders.

From music and CD shops, the vigilantes have 
expanded the sphere of their activity to women. 
Previously, the punishment involved burning and 
destroying shops and there was little or no loss 
of life. But now women are at risk. The police 
are ostensibly upset at the situation, but more 
at the attacks on the police than by the death of 
the women.

The writer is resident director, Aurat Foundation, Karachi.

______


[3]   [Gujarat Pogrom of 2002: Five years on The 
Truth Uncovered by an undercover media 
investigation.
India's crumbling secular state must take note 
and arrest the men from the Hindu far right who 
organised the killings. Materials gathered by the 
Tehelka investigation should be used as evidence 
and the men charged now.]

(i) Tehelka, issue of November 3, 2007

GUJARAT [2002]: THE TRUTH
Tehelka's Ground breaking investigation
108 Pages + Spycam Videos [www.tehelka.com  / www.tehelkahindi.com]

Editor's Cut
Lest We Forget Our Shame
HARINDER BAWEJA
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Editor'sCut.asp


[Below Stories by Ashish Khetan]
CONSPIRATORS & RIOTERS
First-hand accounts from the men who plotted and 
executed the genocide in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and 
Sabarkantha. Mayhem was meticulously planned and 
carried out by VHP-Bajrang Dal cadres across 
Muslim localities. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Overview_Conspirators.asp

THE BOMB MAKERS
The VHP and the Bajrang Dal manufactured and 
distributed lethal weapons across the state, 
often with the connivance of the police. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107The_Bombmakers.asp

ROLE OF THE POLICE
Shocking accounts of how the guardians of the law 
colluded with the outlaws to make Gujarat's 
horror even worse. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107RoleOfPolice_Overview.asp

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT MODI
Key BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal activists speak 
openly of how Narendra Modi blessed the 
anti-Muslim pogrom . READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107What_They_Said.asp

LEGAL SUBVERSION
How public prosecutors ran with the hare and 
hunted with the hound, keeping their sympathies 
strictly for the accused. Government Counsel 
Arvind Pandya on how he hopes to subvert justice 
by manipulating the Nanavati-Shah Commission, set 
up to ascertain the truth. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Legal_subversion.asp

DANCE OF HATE
The truth behind Naroda Patiya, the grisliest 
massacre of 2002. Ahmedabad police's collusion in 
the pogrom and its cover-up. Gory details of how 
former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was hacked limb by 
limb at Gulbarg Society, in the words of those 
who did it. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Dance_of_hate.asp

GODHRA: THE DIABOLIC LIE
How spontaneous mob fury was shown as a 
premeditated conspiracy by the police who 
produced fake witnesses by bribing, coercion and 
torture. READ »
http://tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Godhra.asp

----

Tehelka spycam videos

Babu Bajrangi
A local Bajrang Dal leader and one of the main conspirators
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfnTl_Fwvbo

Arvind Pandya
State Counsel appointed by the Narendra Modi 
government to defend it before the Nanavati-Shah 
Commission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9KlevWeYrE

Ramesh Dave
VHP's point man who planned attacks on Muslims in Kalupur and Dariyapur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DRS0WyGJVo

----

Reporter's Diary
Voyager Between Two Worlds

Having been undercover on the shadow lines 
between sanity and mayhem, ASHISH KHETAN retraces 
a quest for truth

I HAD JUST finished breakfast and was settling 
down to the newspaper when my cellphone rang in 
the next room. Before I could reach it, the 
caller had disconnected and left an SMS. Call me, 
it read. The sender was Tarun Tejpal, my editor. 
I had returned from Gujarat only a couple of days 
ago, having completed a sting operation on Chief 
Minister Narendra Modi's involvement in a spate 
of fake encounter killings. The story had 
exposed, fairly conclusively, that the Gujarat 
cops - more hitmen than cops - had made quite a 
practice of killing Muslims in these 
"encounters". I wondered why Tarun wanted to talk 
to me so early in the morning (it was almost 11, 
but that, for most journalists, is an early 
hour). Maybe it was about the story's fallout. 
Maybe those exposed had sent a legal notice.

I dialled Tarun with questions crowding my mind. 
"Ashish, have you heard about the vandalism in 
Baroda", asked Tarun. Of course I'd heard. For 
years, Gujarat had been in the news for all the 
wrong reasons - this was one more instance of a 
few lunatics, doped out on "Hindutava", going on 
a rampage. This time their target was the Fine 
Arts Faculty of Vadodara's Maharaja Sayajirao 
University (MSU). "It's appalling," said Tarun. 
The hooligans had already been on more than one 
TV channel, articulating their twisted ideology, 
announcing loudly to the world how the "obscene" 
portrayal of Hindu deities had hurt their 
religious sentiments. But there seemed a larger 
motive behind the targeting of a few Fine Arts 
students and professors, Tarun argued. Find out 
who these people are, what they do and above all 
what their views in private are as opposed to 
their public postures.

As I put the phone down, I felt a sense of 
melancholy enveloping me. Three back-toback 
investigative reports (we had also exposed Sanjay 
Dutt for his involvement in the 1993 serial 
bombing and Maharashtra DGP PS Pasricha for his 
illegally-gotten wealth) had made me a bit 
battle-weary. I had repeatedly failed to honour 
my promise to take Chris, my wife, on vacation. 
It had been a while since I'd spent time with my 
nine-month-old daughter. But there I was, within 
a few hours of that call, packing my bags to 
leave for Gujarat, a place that evoked foreboding 
every time I went there.
Illustration: Sudeep Chaudhury

My first visit to Vadodara had been in the winter 
of 2004, after Zaheera Sheikh - the prime witness 
in the Best Bakery massacre - had made yet 
another retraction in court, playing yet again 
into the hands of her tormentors. As the 
autorickshaw took me from Vadodara airport to 
Alkapuri, the city centre where all the hotels 
are, I passed places I'd visited then - the 
station, the roundabouts, the restaurants. I 
remembered how incredible that visit was. But the 
familiarity of the place, half-blackened by 
shadow, half illuminated by streetlights, only 
made me the more sombre. Now, as in 2004, I had 
set out for a story, armed with nothing more than 
a couple of spycams and some daredevilry.

Now, as then, the biggest question was where to 
start? And, now as then, I knew nobody, not a 
soul in this alien land. A magic, perhaps divine 
intervention had seen me through my 2004 visit - 
within a fortnight of my arrival, I'd been 
sitting right before Zaheera's chief tormentor, 
BJP MLA Madhu Srivastava, the local ganglord, in 
his own front garden, he on a swing, I on a 
shabby plastic chair, with a spycam on my lap. 
Then, as now, my brief was simple. Nothing was 
adding up in the Zaheera episode, Tarun had said. 
I was to join together the scattered pieces and 
complete the picture. And when completed, it 
added up to a nice round figure: Rs 18 lakh. The 
sum Srivastava had paid Zaheera to buy her 
silence. But that was then. Miracles don't happen 
everyday, I told myself. Still I had to give it a 
shot.

After a frantic search for a reasonably priced 
hotel room, I checked into Hotel Aditi 
International, Room No 506. Except for its name, 
there was nothing grand about the hotel. The 
peeling paint and the murky light of the bare 
room, did little to cheer me up. Maybe a few 
cigarettes would bring some clarity. Then, an 
idea floated up, above the plume of self-doubt 
and nicotine. Since I didn't know where to go, 
why not take a few small steps on every lane that 
opened up? And then see which road would lead to 
my goal?

I hastily made a few calls to rights activists 
protesting the events at MSU; I also got in touch 
with a contact in Mumbai who had friends in 
Gujarat. I told him to put me in touch with 
people in the BJP's Vadodara unit without telling 
them I was a journalist. "Tell them I'm Piyush 
Aggarwal, a research scholar from Delhi 
University, writing a thesis on Hindutva in 
Gujarat." He said he'd give me a few references 
in the morning. The next day, I called him at 
10am. He did not respond. I called several times, 
to no avail.

I then decided to line up meetings with a few 
activists. Later in the day, one of them put me 
in touch with Prof Iftikhar, who was among the 
few at MSU to come out openly against the saffron 
hooligans. Iftikhar spoke of how the BJP had 
crowded the MSU senate and syndicate - its two 
governing bodies - with men affiliated to either 
the RSS or the VHP. One's appointment, promotion, 
even authority in the university all hinged on 
which side of the ideological divide - Right 
against Centrist and Left - one was.

My Mumbai contact finally answered my call. He 
gave an excuse for not having been available 
earlier. I was more interested in getting the 
names and numbers of local BJP men. He obliged 
with a few. "I hope you've told them I'm a 
research scholar, not a journalist," I said. My 
contact assured me this was exactly what he'd 
done. I called up Mr A. He was a bit probing, 
asking questions about the nature and purpose of 
my research. He didn't sound like I'd convinced 
him, but he put me in touch with Mr B., who in 
turn put me in touch with one Dhimant Bhatt who, 
I was told, was personal assistant to the 
Vadodara BJP MP and would introduce me to the 
right people.

From the news, I already had the name of Neeraj 
Jain, the BJP office bearer who led the ruckus at 
MSU. I called up Bhatt and told him I wanted to 
meet Neerajbhai Jain (bhai is an essential suffix 
to most names in Gujarat). At the appointed time, 
I walked into the high-ceilinged reception room 
of the Vadodara BJP party office. Half an hour 
later, Jain walked in, a short man in his late 
30s with a newly-acquired paunch. He was fixated 
with Muslims, whom he evidently considered the 
root of all evil. But his hatred for Muslims did 
not seem to flow naturally - it seemed more a 
matter of political expediency, of routine. From 
ordinary Bajrang Dal worker to Vadodara BJP 
general secretary, Jain had travelled a long 
enough path to know that Hate Muslims was his 
ticket to political success. Vandalising 
paintings in the name of Hinduism had only 
enhanced his reputation.

JAIN'S MUSLIM phobia did not make a story for me. 
A day passed before I decided to meet Dhimant 
Bhatt who, besides being a BJP man, was the MSU 
chief accountant. At 11:30am on May 19, I walked 
into Bhatt's second floor office in an 
administrative block on the MSU campus. 
Struggling between perusing files and answering a 
near-incessant string of phone calls, he was most 
hospitable, offering me water, then tea, then 
showing me the way to the toilet (where I 
switched on the two spy cams I was wearing). 
Fifteen minutes into the conversation, after 
Bhatt was convinced I was as staunch a Hindu as 
he was (love for Hinduism being displayed on both 
sides by heaping abuse on Muslims), he uttered a 
few lines which would not only redefine my story 
but also, I believe, the way the nation sees the 
Gujarat riots. "I was involved in burning down 
the houses of Professor Bandukwala and the 
bureaucrat, PeerzadaŠ Disguised as a peacekeeper, 
I supplied weapons during the riotsŠ We should 
put the Sangh's lathis aside and take up AK-56s 
instead."

My head began to reel. Bhatt might be an 
accountant by day, but his true vocation lay in 
tormenting religious minorities. Destroying 
paintings was, for him, a small skirmish. The 
real battle had been fought and won five years 
ago, in 2002. And five years ago was where the 
real story lay, I told Harinder Baweja, known 
also as Shammy, my immediate boss. Both Tarun and 
Shammy agreed, and told me to go after the story. 
Resources and time were no constraint, said 
Tarun. "Let your story be the last word on the 
Gujarat riots," Shammy said. And thus began a 
sixmonth journey. A journey that would take me 
back in time, looking to rewrite the history of 
the year 2002. A journey in which my only 
companions would be fear and hope - hope of 
finding the truth and fear of being consumed by 
it; hope of hunting down the murderers and fear 
of being hunted myself. Hope, which is so rare 
for so many in Gujarat. Fear, a permanent shadow, 
almost an extension of your being, always lurking 
at your shoulder.

I set out to meet as many VHP, BJP and RSS men as 
I could. I asked Bhatt for a few introductions to 
members of the 'Parivar' - all the Hindu 
organisations are known collectively as 'Parivar' 
or one single family - in Ahmedabad. He readily 
agreed. And the journey continued, In Ahmedabad, 
one man would put me in touch with another, 
another with a third. A pyramid of contacts rose 
and kept rising. A few days later, I asked a BJP 
man if he could send me to Godhra - a small town 
that had leapt out of obscurity to become one of 
the most important words in the Indian political 
lexicon, a tragic conundrum yet to be solved.

Next day, I was in Godhra, sitting before Kakul 
Pathak, a BJP man and an eyewitness to the 
Sabarmati Express fire. He referred me to Haresh 
Bhatt, former Bajrang Dal president, now a BJP 
MLA from Godhra. Bhatt was an extempore speaker, 
a man who preferred being heard to having a 
discussion. For a journalist, such men, 
particularly if they have things to reveal, are a 
blessing. After 45 minutes of tiring discourse on 
Hindutva, I edged a question in. "We" (meaning 
the Hindus; Bhatt was convinced I was an adherent 
of the militant religiosity he had preached all 
his life) "never keep arms. How then could we 
manage to kill so many Muslims in 2002?" "If I 
tell, do you promise it won't be in your book?" 
(I had said I was writing a book to propagate the 
VHP's brand of Hindutva.) "I made bombs, rocket 
launchers, swords, and distributed them across 
Gujarat. Firearms and swords were smuggled in 
from other states as well. It's the first time 
I'm telling anyone this outside the party 
circle," he said. For a moment, I was numbed with 
fear.

That was June 1, 2007. Over the next few months, 
I would meet many who had been charged with 
rioting and killing and many who had worked 
behind the scenes. Along the way, I negotiated 
dead ends, spells of despair, moments of sheer 
terror. I was travelling once with Bhatt in his 
car from Ahmedabad to Godhra. Mid-way, he 
received a phone call. After disconnecting it, he 
turned to me and said he had just been informed 
that a journalist from Delhi was carrying out a 
sting operation on the Sabarmati Express incident 
and that he had been told to be careful. Oh, 
really, I said, with a straight face.

A FEW MINUTES later, Bhatt's driver steered the 
car off the main road and turned into a narrow, 
deserted, kutcha road. As the car stopped outside 
a desolate, one-storey house, another car pulled 
up and two men got out. Bhatt and these men went 
into the house and told me to wait. I had two 
spy-cams on me and all it needed to blow my cover 
was a body frisk. I prepared myself for the 
worst. Twenty minutes later, Bhatt returned and 
we set out for Godhra again. The two men went off 
in a different direction. Bhatt told me he'd had 
been doing business with them.

On another occasion, Bharat Bhatt, a Sabarkantha 
public prosecutor, became suspicious about my 
identity. Having told me how he'd threatened and 
bought off Muslim witnesses, Bhatt called me as 
soon as I'd taken his leave and said he had 
serious doubts I was an RSS man. Within a few 
minutes, another VHP man I'd stung a few days 
earlier called and asked for my location. 
However, I survived these close shaves and kept 
sailing. Whenever the tension became too much, 
I'd make a quick trip to Mumbai, to my wife and 
daughter, my home, my cocoon.

For six months, I remained a voyager between two 
worlds - my world, where I was Ashish Khetan, a 
journalist with a Catholic wife, a daughter with 
a French name and no fixed religion, and a host 
of Muslim and Christian friends. And then there 
was the other world, where I was Piyush Aggarwal, 
a member of the "Parivar", a Hindu zealot, a 
religious fanatic, with only murderers and 
rapists for friends.
Nov 03, 2007

o o o

(ii)

From: "shabnam hashmi" <shabnamhashmi[AT]gmail.com>
Subject: A BLACK DAY FOR DEMOCRACY: please orward to friends

WE STRONGLY CONDEMN THE UNDEMOCRATIC DECISION BY THE GUJARAT GOVT.

aaj tak, ibn-7/cnn-ibn, ndtv- has been asked to 
switch off by government forcibly in Gujarat 
yesterday evening from 7:30pm There is a order 
issued from District Magistrate and District 
Election Officer, Ahmedabad Mr Dhananjay Dwivedi 
dated 26.10.07, it states that: From 7:30 onwards 
dated 25.10.07, there are programmes like 
"Tehelka-Aaj Tak Khulasa", "Operation kalank" and 
"Gujarat ka sach" being telecast on Aaj Tak and 
IBN7 depicting visuals and statements of people 
pertaining to 2002 communal riots. As per clause 
5 of the cable tv network regulation, 1995, no 
entity can broadcast or rebroadcast any 
programme, which is not as per programming code

o o o

(iii)

Washington Post

Hindus Detail Involvement In Deadly '02 Riots in India
ON VIDEO, ASSAILANTS TELL OF STATE COLLUSION
by Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 26, 2007; A13

NEW DELHI, Oct. 25 -- Five years after one of 
India's worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence, 
a series of videotaped confessions released 
Thursday showed Hindu activists acknowledging 
their roles in the killings and detailing blatant 
state collusion.

In the video footage, recorded as part of an 
undercover expose by a New Delhi-based weekly 
magazine called Tehelka, Hindu activists and 
politicians bragged about hacking Muslims to 
death and burning their bodies. One assailant 
said he slit open a pregnant woman's stomach.

The violence began in February 2002 when a Muslim 
mob torched a train in India's western Gujarat 
state, killing 58 Hindu passengers. Angry Hindu 
groups launched a wave of reprisal killings and 
set fire to Muslim homes and shops across the 
region. In all, an estimated 1,000 people died.

Human rights groups in India and the United 
States have charged that Gujarat's ruling party, 
the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, 
tacitly supported the mob violence against 
Muslims. Several thousand cases related to the 
riots are still pending in Indian courts and 
state inquiry committees.

At a packed news conference on Thursday, the 
editor of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal, released the 
magazine's forthcoming issue, which contains 106 
pages of coverage on the killings. Two national 
television channels broadcast images that had 
been taken as part of the expose. In some parts 
of Gujarat's capital, Ahmedabad, where the issue 
of the riots remains sensitive, cable operators 
reportedly switched off their service to block 
stories on the subject.

"It is a very disturbing story; it is not a story 
you can take joy from," Tejpal told reporters. 
"There is a complete absence of remorse in these 
confessions. The perpetrators of the violence 
have themselves confessed to the crime. It is a 
story that makes me worry about the kind of India 
we are living in."
The video footage, by Ashish Khetan, a reporter 
for the magazine, showed Hindu activists 
confessing to dousing petrified Muslims in 
kerosene and burning them alive. The footage also 
showed a Hindu nationalist politician saying that 
the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, had 
"given us three days time to do whatever we 
could. After three days, he asked to stop and 
everything came to a halt."

Modi has previously said the Hindu violence was a 
spontaneous reaction to the attack on the trains.
A Hindu religious activist who has been accused 
of slitting open a pregnant woman's stomach said 
he showed Muslims "what kind of revenge we can 
take if our people are killed."

The disclosures come in the run-up to a December 
state election in Gujarat, where the Bharatiya 
Janata Party is still in power. The party's 
spokesman in New Delhi, Prakash Javdekar, 
dismissed the Tehelka story as a political 
conspiracy by the opposition Congress party.
For many Muslim leaders, the video footage 
released Thursday did not come as a surprise.
"None of these confessions are new to us. We have 
experienced all this firsthand," said Shakeel 
Ahmed, a legal activist in Gujarat and a member 
of the Association for the Protection of Civil 
Rights. An application for a new investigation 
into the violence has been pending in the Supreme 
Court for the past two years.

"But this will mount enormous moral pressure on 
the state government, because the perpetrators 
themselves are admitting to the heinous crimes," 
Ahmed said. "Whether it will bring justice 
depends on political will. Many of the accused 
are our rulers today. Who will investigate them?"


o o o

(iv)

October 26, 2007
Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India 
(Marxist) has issued the following statement:

GUJARAT POGROMS: TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION

The shocking and graphic details of the massacre 
of the minority community in Gujarat in 2002 have 
been brought out by the perpetrators themselves 
in the Tehelka footage shown on television. It 
has confirmed what is well known that the 2002 
violence in Gujarat was a State-sponsored one. 
The Chief Minister Modi and his government were 
fully responsible for this gross violation of 
human rights and subversion of the Constitution.

A number of cases pertaining to the Gujarat 
killings are before the Supreme Court. There has 
been a great delay in disposing of these cases 
and bringing the culprits to book. The Tehelka 
tapes should be taken as prime facie evidence and 
the Supreme Court and the Central Government 
should move expeditiously to see that all those 
guilty are brought to justice. The Central 
Government and the law enforcement agencies have 
a special responsibility in this regard.

o o o

(v)

OUTRAGED INDIAN AMERICANS DEMAND THE DISMISSAL OF 
GUJARAT STATE GOVERNMENT IN INDIA

For Immediate Release:

Friday, October 26, 2007:  Several prominent 
Indian organizations and individuals based in US 
& Canada are calling for the immediate dismissal 
of the state government in Gujarat, India 
following an exposé by the Tehelka news magazine 
in which many top Hindu nationalist figures 
linked to the administration admitted to their 
active role in orchestrating and perpetrating the 
massacre and ethnic cleansing of Muslims in 2002 
in Gujarat. The exposé reveals active 
participation of key state institutions including 
police forces and judiciary in the anti-minority 
pogroms.

Several national and international human rights 
organizations including Amnesty International and 
Human Rights Watch have maintained since 2002 
that the Gujarat government led by the BJP Chief 
Minister Narendra Modi orchestrated these 
pogroms. Following widespread protests by many 
Indian American organizations, Modi was denied 
visa by the United States administration in 2005 
on account of his human rights record.

The Tehelka tapes present incontestable evidence 
of the involvement of state machinery in the 
massacre. It captures several confessions 
including that of
-    The state prosecutor Arvind Pandya who 
stated that the "mass killings of Muslims in 
Gujarat should be celebrated every year as a 
victory day" and that "Every judge was calling me 
in his chamber and showing full sympathy for me - 
giving full cooperation to me, but keeping some 
distance- the judges were also guiding me as and 
when required - how to put up a case and on which 
date- because basically they are Hindus"
-    Another confession came from Babu Bajrangi 
who stated that "to get me out of jail, [Chief 
Minister] Narendra Modi changed judges thrice".
-    Yet another MLA acknowledged that Modi gave 
him "three days to do whatever violence they 
wanted".

In a further disturbing incident that reflects 
upon the dictatorial nature of the presiding 
administration in Gujarat, reports are pouring in 
from the ground that state government is forcing 
the TV operators to block/censor the telecast of 
the exposé.    

The following organizations and individuals 
endorsing the above statement are calling upon 
the government of India for:

1.    The immediate dismissal of the Narendra 
Modi administration and imposition of President's 
rule in Gujarat.
2.    The immediate arrest of the all criminals 
who have confessed their crimes in the Tehelka 
tapes.
3.    The transfer of all legal cases pertaining 
to the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 to a court outside 
of Gujarat.

Endorsing Organizations:

1.    AFMI: American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin
2.    AIM: Association of Indian Muslims
3.    Dharma Megha
4.    FIACONA: Federation of Indian American 
Christian Organizations of North America
5.    FOSA: Friends of South Asia
6.    GMAA: Gujarati Muslim Association of America
7.    India Foundation
8.    IACP: Indian American Coalition for Pluralism
9.    IMC-USA: Indian Muslim Council – USA.
10.    IMRC: Indian Muslim Relief & Charities
11.    International Service Society
12.    NRI-SAHI: Non Resident Indians for a Secular and Harmonious India.
13.    SANSAD: South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy
14.    Seva International
15.    SHRI: Supporters of Human Rights in India
16.    Vedanta Society of East Lansing
17.    Washington Watch

Endorsing Individuals:

1.    Abraham Mammen (President, FIACONA)
2.    Dr. Angana Chatterji (California Institute of Integral Studies)
3.    Biju Matthew (Associate Professor, Rider University)
4.    Firoz Vohra  (President GMAA)
5.    George Abraham (National Coordinator, NRI-SAHI)
6.    Ghazi Akailvi (Chairman, SHRI)
7.    Prof. Hari Sharma (SANSAD)
8.    K S Sripada Raju (Director, Washington Watch)
9.    Kaleem Kawaja (AIM)
10.    Khalid Azam (IMC-USA)
11.    Manzoor Ghaori (IMRC)
12.    Ms. Mayuri Poddar (Director, Vaishnava Center)
13.    Najma Sultana (NRI-SAHI)
14.    Nasir Chhipa (Washington DC)
15.    Nilesh Modhwadia (New Jersey)
16.    Raju Rajagopal
17.    Rasheed Ahmed (President, IMC-USA)
18.    Saeed Patel (IACP)
19.    Dr. Shaik Ubaid (Founder President ImanNet)
20.    Dr. Shakir Mukhi (AFMI)
21.    Shrikumar Poddar (Director, International Service Society)


CONTACT:
1.    Dr. Hyder Khan, Supporters of Human Rights in India:  Tel: 612-889-7334
2.    George Abraham, NRI-SAHI, Tel: 917-544-4137
3.    Rasheed Ahmed, Indian Muslim Council-USA: Tel: 630-670-8875
4.    Dr. Shaik Ubaid, Indian American Coalition 
for Pluralism: Tel: 516-567-0783

RELATED NEWS:
Washington Post: Hindus Detail Involvement in Deadly ’02 Riots in India
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102501829.html

Sify: News Channels Blacked Out After Tehelka exposé
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14550638

Gujarat 2002 - The Truth: In the words of men who did it
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107gujrat_sec.asp

'To Get Me Out On Bail, Narendrabhai Changed Judges Thrice'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107To_Get.asp

'All The Cops Helped, Even Gave Us Cartridges'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107All_The_Cops.asp

'It Should Be Something History Has Never Seen'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107It_should_be_something.asp

'They Hacked Him Bit By Bit, Then Burnt Him Alive'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107They_hacked.asp

'Explosives Experts Helped Make The Bombs'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107ExplosivesExperts.asp

'KG Shah Is Our Man. Nanavati Is Only After Money'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107KG.asp

'Muslims, They Don't Deserve To Live'
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107NarodaPatyaMassacre.asp

Open Case: Gaping Loopholes; Shut Case: Proof Of Subversion
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107Godhra.asp


_____


[4]

Hindustan Times
25 October 2007

THE MARKED PEOPLE

In the name of fighting terror, the Hyderabad 
Police have targeted the Muslim community

by Harsh Mander

In TODAY'S world, many things have been 
globalised. One of these is prejudice. In the 
name of the global war on terrorism, an entire 
community has been labelled and demonised. Terror 
attacks, whether in Washington, London or Madrid, 
are followed by paranoid surveillance, strip 
searches and prolonged detentions of large 
numbers of Muslim youth, often without even 
tenuous evidence or respect for their elementary 
human rights.

The latest to join this global assault on 
democratic rights - in the wake of the three bomb 
blasts that hit Hyderabad this year - is the 
Congress government in Andhra Pradesh. The state 
Minorities Commission has reported the abduction 
and illegal detention and torture by the police 
of a large number of Muslim youth within days of 
the blasts on August 25, 2007. I have heard from 
several terrified families of many youth who 
"disappeared" for several days without legal 
trace, chilling testimonies similar to those made 
by youth incarcerated in Cheraiapally Jail before 
the fact-finding committee established by the 
Commission. The committee comprised advocate Ravi 
Chandran, Professor of forensic sciences Mahender 
Reddy and activists , Nirmala Gopalakrishnan, K. 
Anuradha and Afsar.

What emerges is that tens of - it is feared 
hundreds - Muslim youth have been forcibly picked 
up from their homes, and more often while they 
are on way to work or the market or to worship, 
without legal arrest. These detentions have been 
forced by men in civilian clothes presumed to be 
policemen. Among those illegally arrested is an 
autorickshaw driver, an embroiderer, a medical 
student and a software engineer. Almost none have 
criminal records.

As they struggle against their abductors, they 
are bundled into vehicles without number plates, 
their eyes covered with blindfolds that they are 
not allowed to remove throughout their detention, 
their hands bound and their mouths gagged. They 
are then driven to unknown destinations, possibly 
farm houses in the periphery of the city In . 
these locations they and other youth, , are 
subjected to various forms of torture, including 
denial of food for long periods, electric shocks 
and beatings on the soles of their feet. Their 
eyes continuously masked, they lose track of 
night and day They are driven . every few days to 
new torture chambers, grilled about their role in 
the bomb blasts and coerced to agree about their 
alleged role in the blasts and their sympathies 
with international jehad. They are continuously 
battered with communally-charged taunts by the 
interrogating policemen. Some succumb by signing 
blank confession papers; others stoutly resist.

Their hapless families are, of course, not 
informed by the police about the detention. They 
are sometimes informed by witnesses of the police 
abduction. Many are poorly educated and 
impoverished, desperate, but unable to comprehend 
how to set about finding their loved ones. They 
contact the police, who deny any knowledge of the 
missing men. Others frantically contact lawyers 
and human rights organisations to file habeas 
corpus petitions in the high court. These are 
heard without urgency by the judges, and the 
police routinely deny in court, that the , 
missing men are in their custody . However, in a 
few days, they are indeed produced by the same 
police before magistrates, claiming that they 
were arrested just a day earlier. It is not 
possible that the habeas corpus petitions by the 
families of the youth could have been filed 
before their arrest by the police, in 
anticipation of their future arrest by the police.

The fact-finding committee found "tell-tale signs 
of bodily abuse obviously not self inflicted" in 
the incarcerated youth, including "noticeable 
small scars of 1 cm diameter noted on external 
ears" and "1 mm to 2 mm scars noted around 
nipples indicative of electricity or needle 
entry". Even jail records in three cases 
acknowledge injuries. They were visibly 
traumatised, some vomited blood, and others were 
severely dehydrated with swollen limbs and barely 
able to walk. The Commission observed that since 
these injuries "are not self inflicted, these 
obviously arose during police custody [therefore] 
custodial ... atrocities on young detainees, all 
minority persons, stand proved".

What is even more worrying is that the 
magistrates abdicated their duties by wantonly 
ignoring the visible signs of torture (some even 
noted later in jail records), when the detained 
youth were presented before them. Even the high 
court judges ignored Supreme Court guidelines by 
listing habeas corpus matters for hearing only 
once a week, unmindful of the imminent threats to 
the survival of the youth.

It is remarkable that even after legal 
production, following prolonged interrogation 
under torture, the police could still not charge 
most youth with involvement in the bomb blasts. 
Instead, the police alleged the youths' support 
for international jehad been 'proved' by 
possession and propagation of 'inflammatory' CDs 
and pamphlets. The remand case diaries that I 
have in my possession describe these CDs as 
containing "Gujarat communal incidents like 
showing burnt bodies, damaged houses, the 
statements of victims as well as their relatives" 
and the other "clippings like shooting and 
beheading ofŠ western forces by jehadis". I 
possess and exhibit at least the former. Is that 
evidence to detain me for waging war against the 
State, in the way that these unfortunate youth 
have been charged?

The dazed families of the detained men live with 
their loss in intense social isolation. They are 
not just stigmatised by people of the 'other' 
community even their neighbours, , friends and 
relatives avoid contact with them, for fear that 
they too will be suspected by the authorities to 
harbour sympathies with terrorism. The larger 
community especially , poorer Muslims in the city 
subsist , with the daily cold dread that their 
own loved one may be the next target of the 
police.

An agonised young woman related to one of the 
detained youth cried out in a solidarity rally 
"We are also In , dians; we love India. Why are 
we seen as ISI agents and traitors?" Speaking 
from the heart, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 
warned recently against the dangers of precisely 
such 'labelling' of communities as unpatriotic or 
violent. It is a warning that governments led by 
his own party in , Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra 
and Assam, do not seem to heed. He recalled that 
his own community of Sikhs was similarly labelled 
in the 1980s. What he did not mention was that 
thousands of youth were similarly abducted by the 
police in Punjab in those times, exterminated and 
cremated in mass graves. The story is hardly 
different for thousands of young people alleged 
to be Naxalites in Andhra, who are similarly 
abducted and eliminated.

After terror incidents, a hamstrung police are 
under unbearable pressure to perform. But 
crippled by ramshackle intelligence, poor 
investigative skills, demoralised and untrained 
forces and the crumbling fibre of police 
leadership, it resorts to shortcuts like the 
illegal abductions and torture that Hyderabad has 
witnessed. As the advocate appointed by the 
Commission, Ravi Chandran, concludes, "What is at 
stake is not just the lives of 20 odd young boys 
living in resigned solitariness in a cell tucked 
away somewhere on the periphery of the modern 
city What is at . stake is the functioning of a 
healthy democracy If you have tears, prepare . to 
shed them now."


______


[5]


Foreign Affairs,
November/December 2007

AMERICA'S STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY WITH INDIA: THE NEW U.S.-INDIA PARTNERSHIP

by R. Nicholas Burns

Summary:  The rise of a democratic and 
increasingly powerful India is a positive 
development for U.S. interests. Rarely has the 
United States shared so many interests and values 
with a growing power as we do today with India. 
By reaching out to India, we have made the bet 
that the future lies in pluralism, democracy, and 
market economics.

   R. NICHOLAS BURNS is U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86609/r-nicholas-burns/america-s-strategic-opportunity-with-india.html

o o o

Economic and Political Weekly
October 20, 2007

THE FUTURE OF INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY

by  Itty Abraham

India has failed in its endeavours to gain global 
influence by mimicking the "Great Powers" and 
trying to develop its hard power capacities 

http://www.epw.org.in/uploads/articles/11153.pdf


______


[6] ANNOUNCEMENTS:

(i)

CONCERNED  CITIZENS  OF  GUJARAT

MEETING WITH REGARD TO NON-IMPLEMENTATION OF " 
THE SRIKRISHNA COMMISSION REPORT"
On October 29th, 2007

On 16th February 1998, Justice B. N. Srikrishna 
submitted his report on the Mumbai riots of 
December 1992 - January 1993.


The three main sections of this Report recommend  :

1.	Action against 31  policemen ( these are named in the report)
2.	Reinvestigation of the closed cases - 60 
% of all the riot cases are closed, a total of 
1358 cases.
3.	Compensation for the families of those missing since the riots.

Several  Governments have come and gone in 
Maharashtra but not  one of them  has made a 
single attempt to implement any of the 
recommendations given by this Report. As a 
consequence, the people who suffered in these 
riots have got no justice at all even after 
fifteen  years of the barbaric assault on their 
lives, families,  livelihoods and belongings.

Petitions challenging the immediate 
implementation of the findings of the Srikrishna 
Commission Report are scheduled to come up for 
hearing in the Supreme Court on October 30th, 
2007.

Some delegations have been meeting with the 
National Human Rights Commission, the National 
Minorities Commission, the Planning Commission, 
the Vice President of India and others so that 
added focus could be given on the 
non-implementation of the Report.

As Concerned Citizens of Gujarat, we also intend 
adding our voices / efforts,  to those who have 
been struggling for justice.  We hope that you / 
your organization will also join in this 
collaborative effort.

We will be having a short meeting to draw the 
attention of wider society to this Report :


On                   Monday,  October 29th,  2007
At                     1630 hrs.
At                     PRASHANT
                         Hillnagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall
                         Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad  380 052

We expect some legal experts and human rights 
activists, besides the media, to be present for 
this meeting.

We hope you will be present for this meeting. 
Kindly confirm your participation.

In solidarity,
for and on behalf of Concerned Citizens of Gujarat

Hiren Gandhi                                              Fr. Cedric Prakash
INSAF 
PRASHANT 
        

Cell: 9426181334 
Cell: 9824034536 

email: 
<mailto:hiren_darshan at yahoo.com>hiren_darshan[AT]yahoo.com 
 
email: sjprashant[AT]gmail.com

---

(ii)

The Human Rights in Conflict Programme of the Law 
& Society Trust (LST) is pleased to invite you to 
a briefing on the update of an ongoing joint 
project in documentation of human rights 
violations. This document has now been updated 
through 31st August 2007. With project partners, 
LST has compiled and analysed information 
regarding persons disappeared and killed 
throughout the island. A public version of this 
document will be available to those who attend 
the briefing.

The full updated confidential document, listing 
all names and available information on individual 
cases, will be submitted as before to the 
Presidential Commission of Inquiry and relevant 
members of Government prior to this briefing.

Date:        Wednesday 31st October 2007

Time:        5pm

Location:  3 Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 8.


---

(iii)

'Ghadar on the DU Campus'


Inauguration

Oct 26, 2007, 4.30 pm

Venue: University Convention Hall, Vice-Chancellor's Office

*--------*
Traces of the Uprising, 1857

Exhibition of photographs: a University of Delhi and Alkazi Foundation for
the Arts collaboration

Oct 26 - Nov 20, 2007 (10 am - 5 pm, Monday to Saturday)

Venue: University Conference Centre* *(opposite the Botany Dept.)

* *

*The exhibition will showcase a selection of 19th 
Century photographs from the Alkazi Collection 
relating to three sectors of the Uprising: Delhi, 
Kanpur and Lucknow, with a special focus on 
Delhi.*

*--------*
Film Screenings

*Shatranj ke Khilari*, Oct 29, 2007, 4 pm

*Junoon*, Nov 12, 2007, 4 pm

*Jhansi ki Rani*, Dec 3, 2007, 4 pm

*Mirza Ghalib*, Dec 17, 2007, 4 pm

Venue: Auditorium, School of Environmental Studies

*--------*
European Responses to the 1857 Rebellion in India

Conference organized by the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies

Oct 30 - 31, 2007, 10 am - 5 pm

Venue: University Conference Centre

* *

*The conference will focus on continental 
European responses to the 1857 events - literary 
texts, press reports, and other documents that 
appeared in languages other than English. *

*--------*
The Revolt of 1857: Re-thinking colonial resistance

Conference / Nov 26 - 28, 2007

Venue: University Conference Centre

*The conference will bring together scholars to 
share their work on various issues related to the 
Revolt - its historiography, the events in Delhi, 
the military aspect, the intellectual impact and 
representations in popular and
folk literature *

*--------*
Mirza Ghalib's letters read by Anis Azmi

Nov 27, 2007, 2 pm

Venue: University Conference Centre

*--------*
Qawwali: Miraj Ahmad Nizami and party

Nov 28, 2007, 6.30 pm

Venue: University Conference Centre

*--------*
Dastan Goi: Traditional Hindustani Oral Narrative by Mahmood Farooqui and
Danish Hussain

Dec 18, 2007, 4 pm

Venue: University Conference Centre

*--------*
Special Lectures   Dec 7, 2007, 4 pm

Gautam Chakravarty

Mutiny or War? Revisiting an old debate
  Jan 25, 2008, 4 pm

Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Nationalism and History Writing:

S.N.Sen and S.B.Chaudhuri as historians of 1857
  Feb 20, 2008, 4 pm

Margrit Pernau

Contested memories and memoirs.

Remembering 1857 in Delhi
   Mar 4, 2008, 4 pm

C.M. Naim

The Three Delhis of Syed Ahmad Khan

*--------*
A Walk through Time

Heritage walks: Northern Ridge, its monuments and 1857

* *

*In 1857, as the rebels captured Shahjahanabad, 
the British retreated to the ridge and planned 
the recapture of the city. The northern ridge 
also has structures that represent periods and 
events that date back to earlier times. The 
heritage walks will cover the Vice-Chancellor's 
Office, the Flagstaff Tower, Chauburja, Pir 
Ghaib, Bara Hindu Rao, Ashoka Pillar and Mutiny 
Memorial.*

Dates: November: 6, 7, 12, 17,19, 21, 24, 26, 28; December: 7, 8, 10, 15,
17, 22.

Time: 10 am-1 pm

Starting point for the walks: University Conference Centre

For details regarding the walks, please contact: Srimanjari
(srimanjari[AT]gmail.com) / Sanjay Sharma (sanjaykusharma[AT]yahoo.co.in)

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

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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