SACW | June 15-18, 2009 / Sri Lanka After War / Lock Up the Fatwabaz / Swat Offensive / Hindutva / State and Religion / LGBT

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | June 15-18, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2635 -  
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net

[ SACW Dispatches for 2009-2010 are dedicated to the memory of Dr.  
Sudarshan Punhani (1933-2009), husband of Professor Tamara Zakon and  
a comrade and friend of Daya Varma ]
____

[1] Sri Lanka after the war: Victory's rotten fruits (The Economist)
     - Sri Lanka: End Illegal Detention of Displaced Population  
(Human Rights Watch)
[2] Bangladesh: No scope for dithering over fatwa (Editorial, New Age)
     -  We will not let them forget you (Hana Shams Ahmed)
[3] Pakistan: The Swat offensive (Rashed Rahman)
    - We need to save history from terrorists too! (Ranjan Roy)
[4] India: USCIRF Regrets Absence of Visas for Visit to India
[5] Bomb Blasts In Nepal: Global Dimensions of Hindutva Terrror  
(Subhash Gatade)
[6] India: Getting away with murder in Gujarat (Mari Marcel Thekaekara)
     - [Asking A Whale to Ride a Bicycle : Asking BJP to Abandon  
Hindutva]  (B. G. Verghese)
     - Should the State Fund these Religious Trips: Populism takes  
pilgrimage path (Venkatesha Babu, Priyanka P. Narain and C.R. Sukumar)
[7] India: Leave The Jeans On (Editorial, The Times of India)
[8] LGBT South Asian conference to take place in New York (Scott  
Stiffler)
[9] Miscellanea:
     - UK: We must separate church and state (Theo Hobson)
     - Could we be the generation that runs out of fish? (Johann Hari)
[10] Announcements:
  - Bengaluru to celebrate Queer Pride for the second time  
(Bangalore, 21-28 June, 2009)

_____


[1] Sri Lanka:

June 11 2009
 From The Economist print edition

SRI LANKA AFTER THE WAR: VICTORY'S ROTTEN FRUITS

The government’s unpleasant triumphalism is sowing the seeds of  
renewed conflict

Reuters

THE defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan  
army should be cause for almost universal celebration—whatever its  
manner. The foreign governments that had banned the Tigers as  
terrorists and from whose Tamil minorities some of the Tigers’ funds  
had been extorted are glad to see them beaten. So too are Sri Lanka’s  
Sinhalese majority, after a 26-year civil war. But Sri Lankan Tamils  
should also rejoice. They had borne the brunt of the Tigers’ ruthless  
silencing of dissenting voices, of their pressganging of children and  
of the bloody consequences of their refusal to countenance any  
achievable political settlement. Yet the government of President  
Mahinda Rajapaksa is making even moderate Tamils at home and overseas  
feel its victory as their defeat.

In the third of his big set-piece victory speeches early this month,  
Mr Rajapaksa asserted that the war had been fought to liberate the  
Tamil people. Unaccountably, he made no reference to the sufferings  
of Sri Lankan Tamils even though nearly 300,000 of them have been  
displaced from their homes and are now miserably interned in camps.  
The president also harked back to ancient Sinhalese martial heroes.  
Marking victory with plans to build stupas all over the mainly  
Buddhist country, and relishing songs, posters and newspaper articles  
hailing him as a “king”, Mr Rajapaksa seems to be cultivating the  
image of an elected monarch. In particular, he likes to recall  
Dutugemunu, a famous warrior-king of the second century BC, who  
defeated Elara, a Tamil usurper from India.

This foolish oratorical provocation has been matched by increasing  
intolerance of dissent, suspicion of many Tamils and threats against  
those seen as Tiger “collaborators”. The government refuses to bow to  
calls for an independent investigation into the final weeks of the  
war, in which thousands are believed to have been killed by  
government shelling. It blames nearly all the civilian deaths on the  
Tigers. But in the absence of any inquiry a decades-old culture of  
impunity will persist, as will Tamil grievances and a sense of  
injustice.

This week a shipload of relief supplies for the displaced, sent by  
Tamil exiles suspected of Tiger sympathies, was turned back, even  
though the defence ministry conceded they had no “dangerous”  
intentions. The process of sending the displaced people home from the  
camps is painfully slow, partly because of the need to de-mine and  
rebuild their home villages, but also because of the fixation on  
weeding out Tigers hiding among the civilians. One-eighth of those  
interned are believed to be children. In light of the Tigers’ record  
of deploying women and children as fighters and suicide-bombers, some  
caution is understandable. But little is being done to reassure  
moderate Tamils that the government cares for their plight.  
Conditions in the camps are no longer so critical, but there are too  
few toilets, and some have to queue five or six hours for their daily  
ration of water.

Meanwhile government ministers in Colombo mutter darkly about  
journalists and NGOs allegedly once in the Tigers’ pay. This  
encourages a freelance witch-hunt. On June 1st thugs abducted and  
beat up Poddala Jayantha, a journalist and activist. They have not  
been caught, but a fellow writer who alerted the police to the  
abduction was interrogated for hours. Scared, journalists have  
started to censor themselves.
No farewell to arms

Far from cashing a peace dividend by demobilising soldiers, the chief  
of the army has said he means to swell its ranks by 100,000, to  
300,000—out of a population of just 21m. An already highly  
militarised country is to become even more so, with soldiers deployed  
everywhere to nip any reborn Tamil nationalist insurgency in the bud.  
In the “liberated” north local elections are to be held as early as  
August. Many will have to vote from the camps. Few will believe the  
process free or fair, seeing it, like elections in 2008 in the east,  
as a way of installing candidates in favour in Colombo.

Having made a strong case that it was liberating millions of its own  
people from the terrorist yoke, Sri Lanka’s government seems to be  
doing its best to make those people feel newly oppressed. That is not  
the way to win reconciliation. It is a prescription for renewed  
rebellion.

o o o

Human Rights Watch
June 11, 2009


SRI LANKA: END ILLEGAL DETENTION OF DISPLACED POPULATION
Nearly 300,000 Tamils Enduring Poor Conditions in Camps


(New York) - The Sri Lankan government should end the illegal  
detention of nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the recently  
ended conflict in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today.

For more than a year, the Sri Lankan government has detained  
virtually everyone - including entire families - displaced by the  
fighting in the north in military-run camps, in violation of  
international law. While the government has said that most would be  
able to return home by the end of the year, past government practice  
and the absence of any concrete plans for their release raises  
serious concerns about indefinite confinement, said Human Rights Watch.

"Treating all these men, women, and children as if they were Tamil  
Tiger fighters is a national disgrace," said Brad Adams, Asia  
director at Human Rights Watch. "Displaced Tamil civilians have the  
same rights to liberty and freedom of movement as other Sri Lankans."

While the Sri Lankan authorities are expected to screen persons  
leaving the war zone to identify Tamil Tiger combatants,  
international law prohibits arbitrary detention and unnecessary  
restrictions on freedom of movement. This means that anyone taken  
into custody must be promptly brought before a judge and charged with  
a criminal offense or released. Although human rights law permits  
restrictions on freedom of movement for security reasons, the  
restrictions must have a clear legal basis, be limited to what is  
necessary, and be proportionate to the threat.

Since March 2008, the government of Sri Lanka has detained virtually  
all civilians fleeing areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers of  
Tamil Eelam at so-called "welfare centers" and "transitional relief  
villages." A small number of camp residents, mainly the elderly, have  
been released to host families and institutions for the elderly. The  
vast majority, however, remain in detention. As of June 5, the United  
Nations reported that the authorities were keeping 278,263 people in  
detention in 40 camps in the four northern districts of Vavuniya,  
Mannar, Jaffna, and Trincomalee.

A significant number of the detainees have close relatives in the  
region, with whom they could stay if they were allowed to leave.

"Many people are in the camps not because they have no other place to  
go," said Adams. "They are in the camps because the government does  
not allow them to leave."

Before the recent massive influx of displaced persons, the government  
proposed holding the displaced in camps for up to three years.  
According to the plan, those with relatives inside would be allowed  
to come and go after initial screening, but young or single people  
would not be allowed to leave. After international protests, the  
government said that it would resettle 80 percent of the displaced by  
the end of 2009. But the government's history of restricting the  
rights of displaced persons through rigid pass systems and strict  
restrictions on leaving the camps heightens concerns that they will  
be confined in camps much longer, possibly for years.

More than 2,000 people displaced from their homes in northwestern  
Mannar district by the fighting two years ago were released from the  
camps only in May, when the government said they could return to  
their homes.

Conditions in the camps are inadequate. Virtually all camps are  
overcrowded, some holding twice the number recommended by the United  
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Food distribution is chaotic,  
there are shortages of water, and sanitation facilities are  
inadequate. Camp residents do not have access to proper medical  
services and communicable diseases have broken out in the camps.

Since May 16, the military camp administration has imposed numerous  
restrictions on humanitarian organizations working in the camps, such  
as limiting the number of vehicles and staff members that can enter  
the camps, which has delayed the provision of much-needed aid. The  
military does not allow organizations into the camps to conduct  
protection activities, and a ban on talking to the camp residents  
leaves them further isolated. The military has also barred  
journalists from entering the camps except on organized and  
supervised tours.

"The poor conditions in the camps may worsen with the monsoon rains,"  
said Adams. "Holding civilians who wish to move in with relatives and  
friends is irresponsible as well as unlawful."


_____


[2] Bangladesh:


  New Age, 17 June 2009

Editorial : No scope for dithering over fatwa

Bangladesh Mahila Parishad has called upon the government to make a  
law under which the issuing of fatwa (arbitrary religious decree)  
will be considered a criminal offence. The parishad also urged the  
home ministry to issue a circular declaring fatwa a criminal offence  
pending enactment of the law. The demand came in the context of  
several incidents of women being punished, publicly flogged and  
humiliated and sometimes driven to suicide in the name of  
implementation of fatwa. In one recent instance a woman in a village  
in Moulvibazar was publicly flogged for no other offence than talking  
to a non-relative male in the street. The woman’s husband had made no  
objection to his wife’s action but the village elders were unsparing.  
While such incidents remain isolated and infrequent, there is little  
room for any degree of complacency on the part of either the  
government or the democratically oriented sections of society, as  
fatwa incidents could become an infectious malady gradually taking  
over the lives and liberties of poor rural women. It is all the worse  
when such inhumanities are committed through perverse interpretation  
of religious doctrines by obscurantist and often self-seeking clerics.

Each case of fatwa signals a leap backward and threatens social  
progress itself. Society in the twenty-first century cannot afford to  
live with fatwa. Allowing the issuance and implementation of fatwa  
also implicitly infringes upon the primacy of the country’s legal and  
judicial systems; after all, there cannot be two laws and two  
judicial systems in a country. The debate over fatwa had been  
clinched years ago by the High Court when a two-member bench  
(including a woman judge) declared fatwa illegal. An appeal against  
the High Court’s verdict was preferred with the Appellate Division  
and a stay order was issued. Unfortunately, during the seven years  
that has passed since, the government has made little or no effort to  
pursue the case and get the stay order vacated.

The government’s inaction could very well be interpreted as  
indulgence and embolden the obscurantist and often self-seeking  
clerics to run havoc with their perverse interpretation of religious  
doctrines. The government needs to be decisive in its action vis-à- 
vis fatwa. Hence, as Mahila Parishad has demanded, the attorney  
general’s office should immediately initiate a move to get the stay  
order on the High Court’s verdict against fatwa vacated.

o o o

The Daily Star
June 12, 2009

WE WILL NOT LET THEM FORGET YOU

by Hana Shams Ahmed

SHE was only 22 years old, a very vocal woman activist. An activist  
from a community that is treated by the Bangladesh state as second- 
class citizens. Someone who did not fear the most venerated  
institution in our country. A combination of all these elements made  
her a chillingly vulnerable person, a target for "The  
Vanishing" (i.e. those who are made to disappear without a trace).

The headlines in Daily Star and many other newspapers followed -- "DU  
students urge government to rescue Kalpana Chakma" (The Daily Star,  
July 1, 1996), "Mahila Parishad urges govt to rescue Kalpana" (The  
Daily Star, July 2, 1996), "Abduction of Kalpana, Home ministry probe  
demanded" (The Daily Star, July 5, 1996), "Int'l appeal for Kalpana's  
release" (The Daily Star, July 10, 1996), "HR bodies urge Home  
Ministry to rescue Kalpana" (The Daily Star, July 15, 1996), "Kalpana  
issue: 24 Infantry Div terms it a conspiracy against Army" (The Daily  
Star, July 24, 1996), "Where's Kalpana?" (The Daily Star, July 24,  
1996). 13 years after her abduction, there is still no answer to the  
question "Where is Kalpana?"

In a report by Bangladesh Human Rights Commission (BHRC), executive  
director Advocate KM Huq Kaiser claimed, without giving any evidence,  
that Kalpana was actually living in Tripura, India (The Daily Star,  
July 9, 1996). The report also claimed that the army officer accused  
of leading the abduction was "busy doing other duties" at the time of  
the incident.

Those who compiled this questionable BHRC report never talked to the  
two main witnesses to the abduction, Kalpana's two brothers. Very  
soon, claims of sighting of yet another Kalpana Chakma turned up, in  
the form of Tripti Begum (The Daily Star, July 28, 1996) in Jhenidah.  
But this claim was also debunked.

While these false "sightings" were going on, and under increasing  
national and international pressure from human rights groups, the  
government was finally forced to form an enquiry committee in  
September 1996 to investigate the whereabouts of Kalpana.  
Interestingly, the report of the enquiry committee was never made  
public, and remains as elusive as it was when it was handed over to  
the then government. The person(s) responsible for the alleged  
abduction continue to enjoy complete impunity under every political  
party that has come to power.

Although the Awami League was in power in 1996, and they seemed to  
have a very pro-CHT attitude, nothing positive ever came out of the  
investigations taken under their authority. According to the accounts  
given by her mother and brother, Kalpana was taken away in the very  
early hours of the morning of June 12, 1996. This was the day of the  
national elections, which was won for the first time by the Hasina- 
led Awami League government. With their 2008 re-election under a  
promise for a transparent judicial system, we can perhaps re-ignite a  
hope for justice.

The post-1996 government showed political acumen by signing the 1997  
CHT Peace Accord the following year, and managing to end the  
guerrilla war in the region. Unfortunately, although Pahari guerrilla  
leader Shantu Larma did lay down arms and sign the treaty, most of  
the clauses in the treaty remain unfulfilled until today.

In its 2008 election manifesto, the AL has promised to fully  
implement the CHT Peace Accord, and Deputy Leader of the Parliament  
Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury was made chairperson of the national committee  
for implementation of the Accord.

Kalpana never witnessed the signing of the Peace Accord. Her life was  
cut short much too early. But while she lived, as Organising  
Secretary of the Hill Women's Federation (HWF), she actively fought  
for the rights of Pahari people. Sexual crimes against Bangladeshi  
women are high, but Pahari women have always been more vulnerable.  
The HWF was primarily formed to resist rape and sexual crimes against  
Pahari women.

Kalpana's diary, along with newspaper clippings and activists'  
articles, was published as a book 'Kalpana Chakma's Diary'. Her very  
articulate memoirs reveal the struggle of the Pahari people under  
government and military occupation. In her writings she reveals her  
tough opposition to the patriarchal society and her abhorrence of  
living under military and racial domination. She talks about equal  
participation of Bengali and Chakma men and women in the democratic  
political process. She describes how society has created a structure  
where a woman taking a stance is always seen as a disturbance.

Each year, on June 12, there are rallies, discussions and human  
chains to demand justice for Kalpana Chakma, and to call for  
implementation of the Peace Accord. This year will be similar, but  
will the protests by heard by the government, at last? Kalpana, at a  
very young age, had shown great political acumen and leadership  
qualities. She had the potential to pierce the veil separating the  
people from their rulers. Therefore, she had to be disappeared before  
she could make any "trouble." Her abductors were successful and were  
never punished. How much longer will we continue to let the  
perpetrators get away with this crime? It is still in our hands.



_____


[3]   Pakistan

sacw.net, 18 June 2009
http://www.sacw.net/article967.html

THE SWAT OFFENSIVE

by Rashed Rahman

The military offensive in Swat Valley and surrounding districts of  
Malakand Division has more or less completed its initial phase. This  
may be a good moment therefore to assess the operation so far.

There is little doubt that there was a fundamental shift in the  
attitude of the army before such an unprecedented military offensive  
could be launched against the Taliban whom the military until  
recently was fond of referring to as its ‘strategic assets’. What led  
to this ‘change of heart’?

Under Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), the duality in policy  
of capturing/killing Al-Qaeda members to assuage US post-9/11 rage  
and preserving the Afghan Taliban continued from after 9/11 until  
Musharraf’s ouster from power in September 2008. Along the way, US  
pressure to do something about the safe havens Al-Qaeda and the  
Afghan Taliban enjoy in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas  
(FATA) and which had permitted them to transform the relatively low  
intensity insurgency in progress since 2001 in Afghanistan into a  
more effective guerrilla war (helped enormously by Bush’s blundering  
into Iraq in March 2003), forced Musharraf in 2004 to send the army  
into FATA for the first time in Pakistan’s history. That campaign was  
a disaster. The army’s contingents were ambushed and literally cut to  
pieces. Clearly General Head Quarters (GHQ), the Pakistani military’s  
apex command, had forgotten the lessons of the British colonialists  
in fighting the Pashtun tribals in these areas.

The military debacle persuaded the army to sue for peace with the  
local militants in Waziristan and other tribal areas. Such agreements  
were totally to the benefit of the militants and humiliating for the  
‘mighty’ Pakistan army’s pride. Nevertheless, the army swallowed its  
gall in the interests of trying to persuade the Pakistani Taliban to  
support the struggle in Afghanistan rather than challenge the writ of  
the Pakistani state. The watchful US military command in Afghanistan  
did not try to disguise its disquiet at these so-called peace  
agreements since it detected that an easing of the military pressure  
on the Pakistani side of the Pak-Afghan border meant increased  
attacks on their and NATO’s troops in Afghanistan. Hence at every  
given opportunity, they attempted to sabotage such agreements through  
missile strikes that took out the local Taliban commanders who had  
signed such deals with the Pakistan military. The Pakistani military  
still hoped (consistently since 2001) that the US and NATO would tire  
of the ‘futile’ and endless struggle in Afghanistan and GHQ and the  
Afghan Taliban would then easily step back into the relative power  
vacuum in Kabul, aided and abetted by their Pakistani Taliban  
facilitators and hosts. This was a serious underestimation of US  
determination not to repeat the mistake of allowing Afghanistan to  
slip once again into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s hands. Whatever other  
differences in policy Obama may have had with the outgoing Bush  
administration (for example on Iraq), on Afghanistan he declared for  
seeing the task through, albeit with a more nuanced policy.

In the interim, Musharraf and the Pakistani military continued on a  
strategy of raising the cost of the Western presence in Afghanistan  
through the Afghan Taliban, extracting in the process $ 11 billion  
dollars for the Pakistani military over eight years without any  
proper accounting of where this money went. Suspicions in the US  
Congress that the bulk of this money went to provide weapons for the  
Pakistani military to bolster its conventional arms balance against  
India have led to delays in and calls for accountability and  
transparency for any future US aid to the Pakistani military.

Under Musharraf, the Pakistani military came to be hated as never  
before by the people of Pakistan. The military’s overbearing  
attitudes, corruption and control of state and society under  
Musharraf evoked great resentment amongst the Pakistani people. When  
General Ashfaq Kayani took over as COAS last year, he and the  
military’s top brass embarked on a refurbishing of the military’s  
public image. This was conducted through an ostensible distancing of  
the army from politics and cooperation with the elected civilian  
government. The past collaboration between the military and the  
Pakistani Taliban incrementally gave way to a firmer posture of not  
allowing the Pakistani Taliban to challenge the writ of the state.  
The failure of the so-called peace agreement in Swat (a chronicle of  
a failure foretold) cleared the path for the current military  
offensive in Swat, backed as it now is by a changed public perception  
of the Taliban and their brutalities.

As for the offensive, the military has not cared a fig for the people  
of Swat, using heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and the air force  
to blast their way into the Valley from three directions at the cost  
of three million people’s displacement. These people fled for their  
lives in the face of this indiscriminate bombardment, which arguably  
saved many soldiers’ lives, but at the cost of so many tragic stories  
of local people killed, children and the old having to be abandoned,  
and the continuing misery of the displaced in camps and amongst host  
communities. The military advanced behind this heavy bombardment into  
Swat from the south, east and west. Despite this, they failed to cut  
off the escape routes of the Taliban (an inherently difficult task in  
such mountainous terrain). The result is that the Taliban leadership  
has by and large escaped, probably into surrounding mountains and  
FATA. That is the harbinger of a protracted war, especially since the  
military is now planning an offensive into South Waziristan, the  
stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehreek-i-Taliban  
Pakistan.

The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) will have a tough time even  
after returning to their shattered homes, with no economic  
opportunities, smashed infrastructure and a huge reconstruction and  
rehabilitation task, which on the evidence of the government’s  
capabilities of looking after the IDPs promises to be another  
disaster to add to the long list of Pakistan’s miseries.

The situation is certainly at a turning point, especially since the  
inventors and mentors of the Taliban, the Pakistani military, has  
finally decided that the challenge to the state is too grave to brook  
any further prevarication. That does not, however, rule out the  
possibility that some of the Taliban may be persuaded to forego their  
challenge to the Pakistani state in exchange for being spared and  
diverted once again to the ‘export’ of jihad into Afghanistan and  
Kashmir. Whether this fond hope of GHQ materializes or suffers the  
same fate as their best laid plans of the last four decades to  
control Afghanistan in the name of ‘strategic depth’ and liberate  
Indian-administered Kashmir through jihad, only time will tell.  
However, what can be surmised at this juncture is that the whole  
jihad export enterprise has suffered a crippling blow. Whether the  
blow is fatal or something can be and will be salvaged from the  
ashes, it is difficult to say at this juncture. The Taliban having  
taken to hitting back throughout Pakistan through terror indicates  
that we are at the beginning of a long and bitter civil war whose  
outcome will determine the future direction of state and society. The  
present conjuncture represents a turn from the domination of the  
national agenda by the military and its Taliban cat’s paws. Without  
overcoming this phenomenon, Pakistani state and society cannot hope  
to clear the way for a more enlightened and hopeful future.

The writer is an acclaimed journalist and political analyst. This  
article is a part of his email series by the title of Pakistan  
Political Review. He can be reached at: rrahman at nexlinx.net.pk

o o o


The Times of India
June 16, 2009

WE NEED TO SAVE HISTORY FROM TERRORISTS TOO!

by Ranjan Roy

What is lost in terrorist attacks is much more than life. Driven by  
single-minded hatred towards all things they either don’t know of,  
understand or those that don’t fit into the Pashto-centric worldview,  
terrorists have destroyed chunks of history and today are dangerously  
threatening more. After the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in  
central Afghanistan because boss Mullah Omar had decreed all  
depiction in stone or paper of human and animal forms un-Islamic, the  
phrase archeological terrorism was coined by scholars who had watched  
the carnage unfold.

Last Friday’s suicide attack that killed well-known Lahore cleric  
Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi in the seminary’s office is a gruesome calling  
card by the Taliban that says no idea, thought or philosophy barring  
their own has any space.

The world watched with horror as the Taliban destroyed ancient  
sculptures in Afghanistan. The response was a helpless, collective  
gasp as explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two  
colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan, 230 km from the Afghan  
capital Kabul. Today, the same danger looms over Pakistan, which  
contains sites from the Indus Valley civilization.

Baitullah Mehsud's Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has only hatred and  
disdain for the golden relics of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the first  
of the urban civilizations built on syncretic ideas which are  
anathema to the Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban. Imagine the damage  
caused in any attack on sites which have only in recent years started  
yielding pointers to the journey our modern society has traversed.  
Visualize the Taliban plundering the ancient site of Taxila, a few  
hours north of Islamabad, not far from where the Pakistan army is now  
fighting them.  The worries aren’t mine alone. Many young men, who  
make a living by acting as guides to tourists told me during a visit  
to Taxila two years ago that they are already being frowned upon for  
talking about Buddhism and Buddhist history.

It’s not just a doomsday scenario!  I shudder at the thought of  
Taliban attackers plundering thorough Lahore Museum that Kipling  
writes about in Kim. It’s something that they have done and will do.  
That’s one more reason why this band of terrorists has to be  
defeated.  Herat, the western Afghanistan city fell to the Taliban  
even before Kabul did in 1996 and it is here that some of the teasers  
to the carnage of Bamiyan took place. Journeying through Afghanistan  
the year Taliban captured Kabul, I smuggled myself into Herat to see  
some of this. Frightened residents, after ensuring it was safe to  
talk to me, took me to buildings where poets hid, lest they be  
executed for heresy. The kite-maker in a neighbourhood had run away  
after the Taliban destroyed his workshop and banned kite-flying as un- 
Islamic entertainment. And worst of all, was what I saw at the Herat  
museum that once housed priceless relics from the time that Alexander  
the Great crossed into the region. The Taliban had pillaged though  
the brick buildings and smashed ancient stone sculptures, pottery and  
glassware. Some residents had waited for the mob to go back and then  
sneaked in and collected whatever they could salvage. The greedier  
ones sold these pieces, some close to 1,000 years old, for a few  
hundred dollars each, but there were others who reportedly handed  
them over to authorities later when the Taliban were defeated.

UNESCO and governments around the world need to wake up to the danger  
that the building blocks of the Indus Valley Civilization and sites  
such as Taxila are today at grave risk. While the focus will remain  
on the ground battle, history too needs to be protected against  
terrorism.



_____


[4] India:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 17, 2009


INDIA: USCIRF REGRETS ABSENCE OF VISAS FOR VISIT TO INDIA

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious  
Freedom (USCIRF) regrets that visas have not been issued by the  
Indian government for a USCIRF visit to discuss religious freedom  
conditions with officials, religious leaders, civil society activists  
and others in the world’s largest democracy.

As a U.S. government body, visits by the Commission must have  
official status. USCIRF obtained U.S. State Department support, made  
travel arrangements, and requested meetings with a variety of  
officials. Despite this, the Indian government did not issue the  
USCIRF delegation visas. The Commissioners were to have left the  
United States on June 12.

The aim of the long-requested trip was to discuss religious freedom  
conditions in India, home to a multitude of religious communities  
that have historically co-existed. India has experienced an increase  
in communal violence against religious communities in recent years  
and the USCIRF Commissioners sought to discuss the Indian  
government’s responses to this, and its development of preventive  
strategies at the local and national levels. According to information  
before USCIRF, the Indian justice system has prosecuted only a  
handful of persons responsible for communal violence and related  
abuses since the mid 1980s.

In 2002, USCIRF recommended India be designated a “Country of  
Particular Concern” (CPC) following events in Gujarat that resulted  
in an estimated 2,000 deaths. Although India was removed from the CPC  
list in 2005, USCIRF has continued to monitor, report, and comment  
publicly on events in the country, including last year’s violence in  
Orissa, attacks in Mumbai, and other events.

The Indian government did not offer alternative dates for a visit.  
USCIRF first tried to obtain visas for India in 2001. This would have  
been the Commission’s first visit to India. India joins Cuba as the  
only other nation to have refused all USCIRF requests to visit.

“We are particularly disappointed by the new Indian government’s  
refusal to facilitate an official U.S. delegation to discuss  
religious freedom issues and government measures to counter communal  
violence, which has a religious component,” said Commission chair  
Felice D. Gaer. “Our Commission has visited China, Russia, Saudi  
Arabia, and over 20 other countries. India, a close ally of the  
United States, has been unique among democracies in delaying and  
denying USCIRF’s ability to visit. USCIRF has been requesting visits  
since 2001.”

USCIRF issues its annual report on religious freedom each May and  
this year’s India section was delayed because of the planned USCIRF  
trip. “We wanted to hear from all sectors of Indian society, and  
allow these diverse perspectives to shape our report,” said Gaer. In  
the absence of in-country travel, USCIRF will release a report on  
India later this summer.


USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government  
commission. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and  
the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House  
of Representatives. USCIRF’s principal responsibilities are to review  
the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom  
internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President,  
the Secretary of State and Congress.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, contact Tom Carter,  
Communications Director at tcarter at uscirf.gov or  (202) 523-3257.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by  
the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status  
of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as  
defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related  
international instruments, and to give independent policy  
recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress.
Visit our Web site at www.uscirf.gov


Felice D. Gaer, Chair • Michael Cromartie, Vice Chair • Elizabeth H.  
Prodromou, Vice Chair
Don Argue • Imam Talal Y. Eid • Richard D. Land
Leonard A. Leo • Nina Shea • James D. Standish, Executive Director

800 NORTH CAPITOL STREET, NW SUITE 790 | WASHINGTON, DC 20002 |  
202-523-3240 | 202-523-5020 (FAX)


_____


[5]  Nepal / India

sacw.net
15 June, 2009

BOMB BLASTS IN NEPAL: GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF HINDUTVA TERRROR

by Subhash Gatade

I
Churches in Nepal, the erstwhile Hindu Rashtra on the face of the  
earth have maintained a unique tradition. They hold services on  
Saturdays because it is a public holiday when schools and offices are  
closed.

When Deepa Patrick, 22 and Celeste Joseph 15, both from Patna went to  
visit some of their relatives in Lalitpur, situated south of  
Kathmandu, they found this fact of Lalitpur's christian communities  
social life very interesting. In one of her last emails to her  
parents back home Deepa even specifically mentioned this aspect of  
Lalitpur, which has a very small community of Christians living there  
for many decades.

The email by Deepa is the last communication which her mother has  
with her now, as Deepa is no more.

She and Celeste died in the same Church when a bomb exploded at the  
time of the service itself.It was Saturday and about 500 people were  
attending the service on that day. The priest had just started giving  
his sermon that there was an explosion in which a bomb ripped through  
the Church of the Assumption killing both of them on the spot. Around  
12 others were also injured. Five of the injured are in serious  
condition. (aljazeera.net, May 23, 2009, Blast rips through Nepal  
church, The blast at the Roman Catholic church was the first such  
attack in Nepal [EPA]) According to an eyewitness who attended the  
church service, a bag was lying on the floor of the church and  
someone moved it make some space and it just exploded with a loud noise.

The bomb blast took place just few hours before the country's  
parliament was to elect a new prime minister.

A hindu extremist group called the National Defence Army claimed  
responsibility for the bloody act.The said group is fighting to  
restore the nation's Hindu monarchy abolished in 2008. The NDA, which  
was formed by Ram Prasad Mainali of Sarlahi district, following the  
declaration of Nepal as a secular state by the Constituent Assembly  
last year, has been involved in various violent communal activities,  
including last July’s murder of Father John Prakash at Don Bosco  
School in Sirsiya, Morang, eastern Nepal. As his record shows,  
Mainali has walked out every time after serving jail terms and paying  
fines.

The group also said it bombed a mosque in the east of the country  
last year, killing two people.

Definitely it was not for the first time that a hindu extremist group  
had involved itself in criminal/terrorist activities to sabotage the  
nascent republic which was being built on the ruins of the decadent  
monarchy.

Birgunj had also witnessed a bomb blast in 2007 which was executed by  
a similar hindu extremist group.
[. . .]
http://www.sacw.net/article962.html


_____


[6] India:

The Hindustan Times
June 16, 2009
	
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER

by Mari Marcel Thekaekara
	
Now that election fever has abated, it’s time to look at important  
issues that were sidelined by the polls. The Supreme Court order to  
probe Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom has restored  
faith in the secular fabric of the country, even as we watch it being  
systematically and deliberately destroyed by communal forces.

I was a part of the first Women’s Commission invited to investigate  
the Gujarat atrocities against women in March 2002. We went from camp  
to camp interviewing women to document the horror stories of rape and  
murder they recounted. Our report — The Survivors Speak — stayed on  
the websites of major national newspapers for several months. But in  
the seven years since
2002, there has been neither relief nor justice for the victims.

The authorities swore there was no evidence of Modi’s complicity in  
the genocide. However, human rights groups talked openly of a  
February 27 meeting where the police were ordered to “look the other  
way to allow ‘our boys’ their ‘revenge’”.

So Modi was not merely complicit, say human rights groups, he was the  
mastermind. The source of this information, Haren Pandya, Modi’s Home  
Minister, deposed before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, led by  
Justice Krishna Iyer. This information has been in the public domain  
since Outlook carried the story. Pandya was not allowed to live to  
tell his tale. His murder led his embittered father, Vitthalbhai  
Pandya, an RSS veteran, on a crusade for justice. Vitthalbhai is  
willing to testify that in the February 27 meeting, his son opposed  
Modi’s plan to make Muslims all over Gujarat pay for Godhra.

Cedric Prakash, Director, Prashant, an Ahmedabad-based human rights  
group, states, “I possess letters written by Vitthalbhai Pandya,  
addressed to the President and Prime Minister, categorically stating  
that his son, Haren Pandya, was killed by Modi and Advani. “

I spoke to the 82-year-old Vitthalbhai. “My son advised Modi, you  
cannot allow the violence to spread beyond Godhra, it will tarnish  
the reputation of Gujarat. But Modi is a dictator.” In Ellis Bridge  
area [Haren Pandya’s constituency], not a single killing happened. My  
son went out and stopped the mob. I am willing to testify before the  
Special Investigation Team (SIT) that my son was at the February 27  
meeting and tried to stop Modi from spreading the riots all over  
Gujarat.”

Three years after the violence, I revisited some of the worst-hit  
areas. Amina, (name changed) whose father, mother, husband, siblings  
and several children had been butchered, pointed out, “That is my  
father’s farm, there’s our house. The people who killed them have it  
all. They looted and confiscated our property. They laugh at us. We  
cower before the men
who raped us. They taunt us, laugh in our faces, but we can’t do a  
thing.”

Prakash says, “Muslims have mostly been forced out of the western  
part of Ahmedabad and from the upmarket areas. Gujarati Hindus will  
not sell property or houses to them in many places. Even wealthy or  
middle class Muslims have been forced into ghettos.”

Harsh Mander, who has worked for peace and justice in Gujarat since  
2002, observes, “What’s happening in Gujarat is unprecedented. It’s a  
systematic, continuous process of social and economic boycott of  
Muslims, which has changed social relations forever between the  
communities. Gujaratis will not employ Muslims, trade with them or  
attend their weddings.

It’s worse in the villages. Those who were sent back have to live in  
submission next to the neighbours who murdered and
raped them. They have been allowed back on conditionalities of total  
silence. There is a settled fear, a settled submission, a settled  
despair. Without justice there cannot be healing.”

The Supreme Court’s decision, however, has rekindled hope. It is  
vital that the SIT works swiftly and effectively at this crucial  
juncture. Will the SIT bring in Justice Iyer and members of the  
Tribunal as witnesses? The Tribunal comprises human rights defenders  
with impeccable records. Justice Iyer is revered for his integrity  
and intelligence. The Tribunal boasts of heavyweights who can provide  
invaluable information to the SIT. Others who have worked for  
justice, peace and reconciliation since 2002 include Harsh Mander,  
Gagan Sethi, Martin Macwan, Mallika Sarabhai, Cedric Prakash and  
Manjula Pradeep.

Gagan Sethi of Citizen’s Initiative, Ahmedabad, says, “Each  
commission or fact-finding team that came to Gujarat in 2002,  
corroborates the reports submitted by the others. So do hundreds of  
print and television journalistic reports. SIT can ask for a panel of  
judges known for their exemplary courage and fairness. Precedents  
have already been set in the past. There are good retired judges who  
have nothing to gain or lose at this point in their careers. The  
outcome will depend on this.”

Gujarat is a litmus test for justice for minorities. If Modi and his  
henchmen get away, quite literally, with murder, Gujarat, as the  
Hindutva laboratory, will have succeeded. The cancerous doctrine of  
hate and intolerance will spread. All those who believe in a secular,  
democratic State are praying that the Supreme Court will ensure that  
justice, even if delayed, will not be denied.

(Mari Marcel Thekaekara is founder of Accord, an NGO that works with  
tribals in the Nilgiris)

o o o

The Tribune
June 17, 2009

A MOMENT OF TRUTH: ABANDONING HINDUTVA WILL HELP BJP

by B. G. Verghese

It was always expected that there would be a moment of reckoning for  
the BJP and the Left. The old adage goes that you can fool some of  
the people all the time all the people some of the time, but not all  
the people all of the time. The last elections proved that. Now  
introspection among many in these parties has started a process of  
unravelling that bold statements cannot paper over.

In the BJP, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha have joined Sudheendra  
Kulkarni and Brajesh Misra in denouncing the party leadership for  
attempting to cover up failure and duck accountability. The latter  
two are not party members but were influential advisers whose words  
still carry weight. The wrangle over succession within the  
organisational and parliamentary wings is an in-house quarrel of  
relatively little importance.

More relevant is the fact that the party’s internal critics now  
clearly see its electoral discomfiture as an unmistakable rejection  
of its barren and vicious Hindutva ideology. The BJD walked out of  
the NDA before the polls on account of the BJP’s unrepentant role in  
Kandhamals.

The JD (U) and others denounced Varun Gandhi’s crude Hindutva battle  
cries which the leadership embraced even while denouncing them - a  
case of running with the hare and hunting with the hound in which the  
party and the Parivar has been adept. In 1948-49 when the RSS was  
banned after Gandhiji’s assassination, its leadership sought to curry  
official favour by offering an abject apology to Sardar Patel.

Again in 1975, the RSS boss, Deoras, sought to ingratiate the  
Partivar with the authorities by criticising JP’s Bihar movement,  
congratulating Indira Gandhi on winning her election petition and  
offering unstinted cooperation in the government’s constructive  
programme.

It is the exclusivist and chauvinistic Parivar ideology of Hindutva,  
politely termed “cultural nationalism” but in effect a revivalist  
hate creed, that has been its undoing. One does not know when  
precisely the term first gained currency but whenever it did it had  
nothing to do with Hinduism which is a most catholic and eclectic  
faith symbolised by its proclaimed adherence to the wholly inclusive  
ideal of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam or the world is my family.

Savarkar formalised a politically rejectionist theory that the  
Parivar adopted in the form of the two-nation theory that was  
enunciated by him in 1927, well before the Muslim League adopted it.

The Ayodhya Ram Mandir movement spearheaded by L. K. Advani gave  
currency to Hindutva in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This cultural  
nationalism, rejecting foreignness, was itself a strange derivative  
terminology coined by Westerners and Orientalist scholars 200 to 300  
years ago as a handy description of the unfamiliar residual non- 
Muslim, non-Buddhist, non-Christian peoples they encountered in India  
whom they called Hindus.

The people of India were earlier known as Hindis, from al-Hind, the  
Arab name for this country which the French transliterated into le  
Inde. The Orientialists converted the adjective Hind or Inde,  
describing a people, into “Hindu”, to describe a faith. The term  
“Hindu” is, therefore, recent and foreign and not ancient and  
indigenous as Hindutvadis make out.

One mentions this background only to underline one of the many  
confused notions on which Hindutvadis rest their case which was spelt  
out in Golwalkar’s “We, Our Nation Defined”. This eulogised fascism  
and centralised, authoritarian rule” and labelled Muslims,  
Christians, Parsees and Jews as foreigners, placing them beyond the  
pale.

Subsequent repudiation of this treatise is part of a long cultivated  
tradition of double speak. Since Independence Parivar ideologues have  
asked Muslims and Christians to prove their Indianness while their  
own rewritten history of victimhood and revenge for an allegedly  
stolen past glory have found a place in some of their contemporary  
textbooks.

How was this old glory lost? It happened, Parivar historians would  
have it, because Asoka took to ahimsa after renouncing war on  
witnessing the ravages of his Kalinga campaign, which knocked the  
fight out of true Indians who were then easy prey to foreign  
conquerors. It is such perverse logic that defines Hindutva as  
practised, though others sometimes preach differently so that it  
might mean all things to all men as and when required.

There is no future for the BJP, whoever leads it, unless it totally  
abandons its Hindutva creed. I have repeatedly argued that the tirade  
against Article 370 amounts to a lot of sound and fury signifying  
nothing; that in haranguing endlessly about implementing a uniform  
code, BJP warriors are barging through an open door as constitutional  
illiterates; and that harping on yet another Ramjanmabhoomi temple at  
Ayodhya and “protecting” the Ram Setu, the BJP and the Parivar are  
confusing faith with the crude exploitation of political ideology to  
divide people.

These are not 21st century concerns that matter to Hindus who are  
secure in their faith and, like other Indians, aspire to escape from  
poverty and to lead better lives. The law can take care of forced  
conversions, truly offensive art and “pub culture” without Parivar  
vigilantes trying to save what they scream is a threatened Hindu  
demography and ethos.

Tweedldum may replace Tweedledee but nothing will change for the BJP  
unless it gives up its Hindutva ideology and breaks free of crippling  
bondage of the RSS and its Parivar. The country can do with a  
moderate right-of-centre party and the BJP has many good men and  
women who can play an honourable and worthwhile national role in that  
capacity. It is time for the BJP to stop shadow-boxing and face both  
the facts and the future.


o o o


livemint.com, June 18 2009

POPULISM TAKES PILGRIMAGE PATH

by Venkatesha Babu, Priyanka P. Narain and C.R. Sukumar

Bangalore/Mumbai/Hyderabad: Competitive populism is entering the  
realm of religion, a trend that critics say is a potentially  
dangerous political game being played with an eye on electoral gains.

Click here to watch video
http://tinyurl.com/lohbhg

State governments in a country that swears by secularism are starting  
to offer subsidized pilgrimages to citizens, who at election time in  
the past have been wooed by politicians with promises ranging from  
offers of rice at Rs2 per kg to free colour television sets.

Religious bandwagon

Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is the latest to  
join the religious bandwagon, proposing to subsidize the travel and  
stay of pilgrims who visit the temples of Udupi, Dharmasthala and  
Saudatti in the southern Indian state.

In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the Congress party-led government is  
subsidizing the cost of travel for Christians visiting Jerusalem, the  
holy land.
Karnataka minister for housing S.N. Krishnaiah Setty, who also heads  
a department that oversees Hindu temples and endowments under  
government control, said last week that the administration intends to  
set apart Rs10 crore to subsidize pilgrimages for Hindus.

He didn’t say how the money would be spent or the beneficiaries  
identified. “Modalities are being worked out and will be announced  
shortly,” Setty said.
To be sure, the concept of subsidized pilgrimages is not new. The  
Union government spent an estimated Rs700 crore last year on the Haj  
subsidy for Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Centre also underwrites a part of the cost of the annual  
pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet that Hindus believe is the  
abode of the Hindu god Shiva.

President Pratibha Patil, in her inaugural speech to the new  
Parliament outlining the policies of the Congress party-led  
coalition, said the government would strive to strengthen and “reform  
the management of Haj operations”.
At the heart of the debate is what it means to be a secular state— 
should the government be involved in all religions equally or in none  
at all in a country where Hindus comprise about 80% of the  
population, Muslims around 13% and Christians 3%?

A matter of faith: A file photo of Haj pilgrims. State governments  
are offering subsidies for religious pilgrimages, sparking a debate  
on whether the state should be be involved in all religions equally  
or in none at all. Amit Dave / Reuters

Rama Jois, former chief justice of the Karnataka high court and  
author of a special report on government presence in temples and  
temple trusts, says the idea of a secular government subsidizing  
religious travel is a dangerous one.
“Ideally, the governments should not be opening this door at all,”  
Jois said. “Although it is not unconstitutional for a secular state  
to subsidize religious travel for citizens, it must be done equally  
for all. But then the question is about what is equal.”
Dangerous game


_____


[7] India:


The Times of India

Editorial Comment | LEAVE THE JEANS ON
15 June 2009

Four colleges in Kanpur are only the latest educational institutions  
to ban female students from wearing jeans, among other western  
attires, on
campus. Kanpur is far from the only city in India to have implemented  
such draconian dress codes for women. Varsities in Hyderabad and  
Lucknow have also put in place measures to bar women from wearing  
outfits of their choice because university officials believe women in  
western dress are more vulnerable to that peculiarly Indian  
phenomenon called 'eve-teasing'.

This is outrageous. It goes without saying that young adults of both  
sexes should have the freedom to decide what they want to wear to  
college. The colleges that have barred their students from wearing  
jeans in the guise of protecting them from sexual assault are  
betraying their parochial mindsets. It is ridiculous that these  
institutions continue to use a euphemism eve-teasing to refer to  
crimes as serious as sexual harassment and in some cases, assault.  
That phrase is as anachronistic as the attitudes of the people who  
run these institutions.

Our cities are unsafe for women, which is an aspect of the everyday  
discrimination that Indian women face. Why must female students be  
punished for the harassment they suffer at the hands of their male  
counterparts? Authorities at universities
, whose job it is to protect their students, would rather blame women  
for dressing 'provocatively'. To compound the irony, many of the  
strictures are being imposed by colleges that are exclusively for  
women, with restricted entry for men. At the bottom of the draconian  
dress restrictions is a refusal by college authorities to treat their  
wards as adults, even if they have the right to vote.

Studies have shown that the way women dress has no impact on how  
vulnerable they are to sexual assault. Yet officials persist in  
acting as if women and their fundamental freedoms are the cause of  
the problem. After this latest move by Kanpur colleges, some quarters  
are asking that funding for colleges that try to dictate dress codes  
be cut. That is a good idea, particularly if it is combined with  
strict punishment for men who sexually harass women. Things will only  
change if the perpetrators of the crime are punished, not the victims.


_____


[8] LGBT SOUTH ASIAN CONFERENCE TO TAKE PLACE IN NEW YORK

by Scott Stiffler

http://www.edgeboston.com/
June 16, 2009

Sunil Pant, the first openly gay Nepalese parliamentarian, is among  
those slated to take part in the first annual South Asian Queer  
Leaders Summit in New York on June 25-26.


As people around the world continue to celebrate Pride month, a group  
of activists, cultural icons, policy makers and pundits will gather  
next week in New York to create a collective strategy designed to  
further the rights of LGBT South Asians.

Engendered, a transnational arts and human rights organization that  
focuses on gender, sexuality, ritual and religion in South Asia, has  
organized the South Asian Queer Leaders Summit. It is scheduled to  
take place on Thursday, June 25, and Friday, June 26, at various  
locations throughout the city. Sunil Pant, Nepal’s first openly gay  
parliamentarian who was instrumental in securing rights for LGBT  
Nepalese, Mala Nagarajan, co-director of the National Queer Asian and  
Pacific Islander American Alliance and a fellow at the National Gay &  
Lesbian Task Force, "A Jihad for Love" director Parvez Sharma and  
Urooj Arshad of the Muslim Youth Project are among those slated to  
participate.

"We are at an interesting precipice as the South Asian queer  
community living in the United States and South Asia," Engendered  
executive director Myna Mukherjee said. "On the one hand, we have  
countries like Nepal, which in 2008 commemorated the passage of  
landmark, constitutional rights, such as same-sex marriage, for her  
LGBT people."

Those gains are contrasted, says Mukherjee, by the situation in  
neighboring India. Activists and others continue to challenge Section  
377 of the country’s penal code that criminalizes sodomy. Mukherjee  
also added she feels Proposition 8’s passage negates the socially  
progressive reputation the United States likes to project to the  
world. And she concluded there remains a clear need "for greater  
dialogue between our Eastern and Western counterparts to strategize  
around ’best practices’ that will benefit our community, as a whole."

To address that need for dialogue, Engendered, in partnership with  
the Asia Society and the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan, has  
organized the summit not only as a way to evaluate the state of LGBT  
South Asians, but to hopefully spark a common global agenda.  
Immigration reform, marriage for gays and lesbians and other basic  
human rights as they relate to sexual orientation and gender identity  
and expression top the agenda.

"Over the years, distinct (South Asian) movements have always been on  
the fringes of the western LGBT movement. There’s been little  
connectivity between the movements happening in South Asia [and the  
United States.]"
"Over the years, distinct (South Asian) movements have always been on  
the fringes of the western LGBT movement," Mukherjee said. "There’s  
been little connectivity between the movements happening in South  
Asia [and the United States.]"

Change has begun to emerge in these countries. Mukherjee pointed to  
legislative gains in Nepal as an example of the work she feels can be  
done in this country.

"The South Asian movements that are specific to the countries  
themselves have become strong indigenous movements." Mukherjee said.

Another major goal of the conference is to, through panel and policy  
discussions "create instruments of change from inside out" as opposed  
to using one country’s activism to inspire or impose change on  
another. Rather than just academic discourse, Engendered has  
structured the event to look at movements and the culture of the region.

As for the United States, Mukherjee cites immigration as a top concern.

"There’s still a ban on green card holders who are HIV positive," she  
lamented. "Any HIV positive immigrant will not be able get permanent  
status in this country."


Scott Stiffler is a New York City based writer and comedian who has  
performed stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy. His solo shows include  
Damaged by the 70s and An Evening With Insane Mark Twain & Dead Bette  
Davis. He must eat twice his weight in fish every day, or he becomes  
radioactive.


_____


[9]  MISCELLANEA:

The Guardian
17 June 2009

WE MUST SEPARATE CHURCH AND STATE

In England, our constitution is blighted by an ancient theocratic  
hangover. Time to sweep it away

by Theo Hobson


Well, OK, we're not Iran, but our constitution does have a theocratic  
structure. I think this holds us back, impedes us, like an old  
invisible injury. Like a subtle poison in the blood, it quietly harms  
us. Most people seem unaware of it. Even Hazel Blears, who recently  
said that we are a secular democracy.

Yesterday a seminar was held at the UCL Constitution Unit to mark the  
launch of a book on the issue by Bob Morris. Church and State in 21st  
Century Britain is a meticulous analysis of the situation. No such  
study can be entirely neutral, but Morris seems to have no religious  
agenda; his aim is to point out that establishment is at odds with  
the principle of religious equality, making it "anomalous to the  
point of unsustainability". He is wary of the term "disestablishment"  
but he does advocate the big reform – ending the monarch's need to be  
Anglican.

In his presentation yesterday he said that reform would ideally come  
from the church itself. Otherwise it is likely to have reform thrust  
upon it, in a way it cannot control. So it is in its interest to lead  
the process. He acknowledged that here is little sign of this  
willingness as yet, but seemed hopeful that a fresh look at the issue  
might change that.

In the discussion that followed three Anglican representatives spoke.  
Each offered a slightly different flavour of the old conservative  
line: that it would be perilous to mess with our ancient  
constitution, that it might unleash an aggressive secularism. None  
admitted that there was a problem here that had to be faced.

These speakers confirmed my view that the Church of England looks  
very nice and liberal from a slight distance but at heart its  
philosophy is high Tory: tradition is sacred, those who want to  
tamper with it are dangerously shallow. I know of almost no Anglican  
who has said anything different, who admits Morris' basic point that  
reform is necessary, so that we can have a constitution we can really  
affirm, and participate in, rather than an alienating relic from the  
imperial past. One exception is the Oxford theologian George  
Pattison, who has recently called for a more honest debate within the  
church (in an article in The Church Times). It is worth noting that  
Rowan Williams has failed to start the debate; he has allowed the  
reactionary position to become stronger – a piece of major political  
cowardice.

Might reform come from elsewhere? Of course the secularist lobbies  
advocate it, but in a sense this is unhelpful: it makes it seem an  
atheist cause, and so strenghtens the hand of the Anglicans, who  
scarify with the prospect of a Dawkinsish tyranny. Ideally it would  
come from a political movement that was also Christian, led by a new  
Cromwell figure.

Why is disestablishment not a mainstream liberal cause? It baffles me  
frankly. Why is it hardly ever mentioned by the columnists of this  
paper, except as a quick aside? (Jonathan Freedland once wrote a good  
book calling for constituional change on the US model: he should  
return to the theme.) To my mind it is the very essence of  
liberalism, that church and state should be separate. This is the  
English revolution that we have never quite had. It is the way to a  
new sort of political participation, a new sense that we are citizens  
of a modern state. Other aspects of constitutional change, and other  
liberal causes such as CCTV, are pathetically small-fry compared to  
this.

o o o


The Independent,
5 June 2009

COULD WE BE THE GENERATION THAT RUNS OUT OF FISH?
The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction

by Johann Hari

In the babbling Babel of 24/7 news – where elections, bailouts and  
beheadings blur into one long shriek – the slow-motion stories that  
will define our age are often lost. An extraordinary documentary  
released next week, The End of the Line, forces us to stop, and see.  
Its story is stark. In my parents' lifetime, we have killed 90 per  
cent of the world's fish. In my lifetime, we will finish off the rest  
– unless we change our ways, fast. We are on course to be the people  
who wiped fish from the earth.

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It  
was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly  
creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your  
hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches  
started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they  
disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a  
rapid rate that they couldn't reproduce themselves. But the  
postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any  
attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining  
fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they  
haven't. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.

A growing number of scientists are warning that we could all be  
living in Newfoundland soon. Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie  
University published a detailed study in the prestigious peer- 
reviewed journal Nature saying that at the current rate, all global  
fish populations will have collapsed by 2048. He says: "This isn't  
some horror scenario, it's a real possibility. It's not rocket  
science if we're depleting species after species. It's a finite  
resource. We'll reach a point where we run out."

The species in the frontline is bluefin tuna, the pinnacle of the  
evolutionary chain for fish. This little creature can swim at 50mph,  
and accelerate faster than the swishest sports car. It has even  
developed warm blood. Yet every year, a third of the remaining  
population is ripped from the seas and slapped onto our plates. Soon,  
it will be gone.

All over the world, from the Bay of Bengal to Lake Victoria to the  
shores of South America, I have heard fishermen say their catches are  
shrinking, in size and in number. Industrial-scale fishing only began  
in the 1950s. By the standards of the news cycle, this is slow – but  
by the standards of the planet or of settled fishing communities,  
this is a click of the fingers. The effects of the new industrial  
fishing are uniform. Professor Ransom Myers found that whenever the  
vast industrial trawlers are sent in, it takes just 15 years to  
reduce the fish population to a 10% shadow of its former self.

This process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction,  
ripping up everything in its path. Charles Clover, who wrote the book  
on which the documentary is based, has a good analogy for it. Imagine  
a band of hunters stringing a mile of net between two massive all- 
terrain vehicles and dragging it at speed across the plains of  
Africa. Imagine it scooping up everything in its way: lions and  
cheetahs and hippos and wild dogs. The net has a massive metal roller  
attached to its leading edge, smashing down every tree that gets in  
its way. And in the end, when the hunters open up the net, they pick  
out the choicest creatures and dump the squashed remains in the sun  
as carrion for the vultures.

But we need fish. Our brains don't form properly without their fatty  
Omega-3 acids. So why do our governments allow this process of  
destruction to continue? Why do they actively encourage it, with  
$14bn of subsidies for fishermen to keep on trawling every year?

A small number of people are making a lot of short-term profit out of  
this destruction – and they are using this cash to ensure they can  
carry on hunting, down to the last fish. In 1992, an attempt to get  
the bluefin tuna listed as an endangered species was scuppered by the  
US and Japanese governments at the urging of the tuna lobby – who  
happen to give large campaign donations to all parties. A similar  
corruption has eaten into European politics.

Add to this the fact that fishermen are a determined and demanding  
constituency with an equally short-term agenda. They demand the  
maximum quotas today – even if that means no quotas tomorrow.

Our societies are structured to put these short-term cries for money  
for a few ahead of the long-term needs of us all. A small determined  
group with hard cash almost always beats a diffuse group with good  
intentions – until they get angry and fight back.

Yet today, ordinary people in rich countries are being insulated from  
the fish crisis. As we exhaust our own fish stocks, our corporations  
are sailing out across the world to steal them from the poor. Today,  
there are armadas of industrial European and American fishing boats  
across the coast of West Africa, leaving the small fishermen who live  
on its coasts to starve. Professor Daniel Pauly says: "It is like a  
hole burning through paper. As the hole expands, the edge is where  
the fisheries concentrate, until there is nowhere left to go."

We are not only stealing fish from Africans; we are stealing them  
from future generations. In the age of limits, we are hitting up  
against the capacity of the planet to provide for us – yet we are  
reacting with blank denial. This story is unfolding, in one form or  
another, in the rainforests, the air, and in the planet's climate  
itself.

It has left us at a strange crossroads. We will either be a despised  
generation who left behind a depleted husk-planet – or a heroic  
generation who, at five minutes to ecological midnight, turned back  
to the light.

With fish, the solution is even simpler and more straightforward than  
with the other ecological crises ensnaring us. The scientific experts  
say we need to follow two steps. First, expand the 0.6 per cent of  
the area of the world's oceans in which fishing is banned to 30 per  
cent. In these protected areas, fish can slowly recover. Second, in  
the remaining 70 per cent, impose strict quotas on fishermen and  
police it properly, as they do in Alaska, New Zealand and Iceland.

The cost of this programme? $14bn a year – precisely the sum we  
currently spend on subsidising fishermen. At no extra cost, we could  
turn them from the rapists of the oceans into their guardians.

Yet The End of the Line has one flaw – and it is one that riddles  
current environmental thought. It presents us with a great earth- 
altering crisis, and then says our primary response should be to  
change our own personal consumption habits. It urges people not to  
buy from Nobu, which shamefully still sells bluefin tuna, and to ask  
if the fish we buy is sustainably produced. It's like the end of An  
Inconvenient Truth, where the primary response Al Gore presses on us  
is to shop green and change our lightblubs.

Of course this is valuable – but it is only an anemic and minor first  
step. It is rather like, in 1937, reacting to the rise of Nazism by  
urging people to make sure that they personally weren't killing any  
Jews or gays or Jehovah's Witnesses, or buying from any Nazi-owned  
companies. We needed collective action that would stop other people  
from killing these minorities – just as today we need collective  
action that prevents anyone from irreparably trashing the means of life.

At the moment, many good people get anxious about environmental  
issues, and hear the message that The Response is to scrub their own  
lifestyle clean. Yet individual voluntary action by a minority of  
nice people will not save the bluefin tuna, never mind the ecosystem.  
But if all these honourable people act together – by volunteering  
for, and donating to, organizations like Greenpeace, Friends of the  
Earth and Plane Stupid – they can change the law, so everybody will  
be required to change their behaviour, not just a benevolent 10 per  
cent. It was just such determined minorities armed with the facts  
that spurred the fights against slavery, colonialism and fascism.  
When you respond as a consumer, you are weak; when you respond as a  
citizen, you are strong.

The voice of millions of people can drown out the concentrated power  
of the fishing industry – and all the other industries with a vested  
interest in trashing our planet – but not with the swipe of a credit  
card.

The alternative to collective action today is catastrophe tomorrow.  
As Charles Clover explains: "When the human population comes under  
pressure on land because of global warming, when we are running out  
of ways to feed ourselves, we [will] have just squandered one of the  
greatest resources on the planet – wild fish." The epitaph for the  
human species would turn out to have been scripted by Douglas Adams:  
so long, and thanks for all the fish.



____


[10] Announcements:


BENGALURU TO CELEBRATE QUEER PRIDE FOR THE SECOND TIME
Sunday, 21st June 2008 - Sunday, June 28th, 2009

After last year’s successful and vibrant queer pride march, which saw  
over 600 people celebrating and affirming queer lives in Bengaluru  
alone, Karnataka is gearing up for its second edition christened  
Karnataka Queer Habba.  This year we as individuals and  
organisations, under the banner of Campaign for Sex-workers and  
Sexual Minorities Rights (CSMR), have decided to extend the  
festivities to a week beginning with a cricket match on June 21st and  
culminating with the pride march on June 28th.  Come celebrate along  
with us as Bangalore’s LGBTQ community paints the town pink on the  
28th June 2009. Like last year, this time too the pride march will  
begin at National College, Basavanagudi at 2:00 p.m and go up to  
Puttanachetty Town Hall via Sajjan Rao Circle and Minerva Circle and  
will culminate with a series of speeches as we gather on the Town  
Hall steps. Celebrities including actress Arundhati Nag will address  
the celebration at the end of the march.


After the success of last year’s pride we have decided to host an  
even bigger event christened “Karnataka Queer Habba” this year. As a  
run up to this year’s Pride March we will be hosting a week of events  
across the city. The events will include:


“Queering the Pitch”: Cricket Match

When      : Sunday, June 21st, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where     : RBANMS Play Ground, Gangadhar Chetty Road, Ulsoor.
Contact   : Gurukiran 98803 65692 or Sunil 99450 90301



Dalit-Sexual Minorities Dialogue on Stigma and Discrimination


When      : Monday, June 22nd, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where     : Indian Social Institute, 24 Benson Road

Contact   : Manohar 96322 23460



Release of Human Rights Watch Report - This Alien Legacy: The Origins  
of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism - followed by a discussion  
“Laws that Terrorise:  Threats to Indian Democracy”


When      : Tuesday, June 23rd, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Where     : Institute of Agricultural Technologies, Queens Road.

Contact   : Arvind 99800 10933



Pirat Dyke Film Screening of One in Ten and Desert Hearts


When      : Wednesday, June 24th, 6 p.m.

Where     : Swabhava Office, 4th Floor, No. 1., M.S. Plaza,

13th A Cross, 4th Main Road, Sampangiramnagar (opposite

Sampangiramnagar Police Station)

Contact   : Nitya 99164 82928



Public Discussion on Religion and Sexuality


When      : Thursday, June 25th, 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Where     : United Theological College (UTC), Millers Road

Contact   : Shubha 92434 46105



Evening of Theatre and Dance Performance


When      : Friday, June 26th, 4:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Where     : St. Josephs College of Commerce auditorium

Contact   : Sumati 98451 65143



Story Telling Sessions


When      : Saturday, June 27th, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Where     : Cubbon Park

Contact   : Deepak 93437 63497



Bengaluru Pride 2009


When      : Sunday, June 28th, 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Where     : National College Basavanagudi to Puttanachetty

Town Hall via Sajjan Rao Circle, Minerva Circle and J.C. Road. Here's  
a map of the route.

Contact   : Siddharth 98450 01168 or Nithin  98860 81269

Email: bengalurupride at gmail.com
Website: www.bengalurupride.org



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S o u t h      A s i a      C i t i z e n s      W i r e
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/

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