SACW - Jan 10, 2011 | Pakistan: Religious right vs The Rest / Bangladesh-India Border Killings / India: Confession by Hindutva kingpin

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire -  Dispatch No. 2693 - January 10, 2011
From: sacw.net

[1]  Pakistan: 
    (i) A blood-dimmed tide  (Ghazi Salahuddin)
    (ii) 'The killer of my father, Salman Taseer, was showered with rose petals by fanatics. How could they do this?'  (Aatish Taseer)
    (iii) My Father Died for Pakistan (Shehrbano Taseer)
     (iv)  Madness in the ‘land of the pure’ (Editorial, Daily Times)
    (v) Will progressive forces wake up now? (Munizae Jahangir)
    (vi) Indians in Solidarity with Pakistanis: Statement Condemning The Killing of Salman Taseer
[2]  Bangladesh-India Border: Killing thy neighbour: India, and its Border Security Force (Rahnuma Ahmed)
[3]   India - Hindutva Terror :  Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions - Its time for an apology (Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association)

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[1] Pakistan:

(i)  The News International, 9 January 2011

 A BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE
 
by Ghazi Salahuddin

Shaken by the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in a high-end market in Islamabad on the fourth day of the New Year, many of us have been struggling to contend with the message that it bears for the future of Pakistan. And it is not just the brutality of that murder most foul that disturbs the mind. What has followed in the abject display of admiration for the murderer and the response of so many religious leaders presents a dreadful portrait of our society.

Logically, the assassination and its aftermath should have compelled our rulers to reflect on the existing state of affairs and make an attempt to understand the implications of this obvious surge in religious extremism and intolerance. I keep wondering about what our military leaders would be thinking about this situation, considering that they have to bear some responsibility for promoting and protecting this trend. What, for instance, are the thoughts of our erudite chief of the army staff? Is the military top brass engaged in any serious appraisal of a situation that has a bearing on our national security?

We may also refer to the ability of our politicians to comprehend and then deal with the challenges that Salmaan Taseer’s assassination has posed to the survival of a democratic system that is rooted in the freedom of thought and expression and in the cultivation of an environment in which rational debate is possible. But, ah, they seem rather powerless in shaping our national priorities. We know where the levers of power are located and who calls the shots when the chips are down.

Also, the politicians must dance to the tune of popular opinion and in the absence of any concerted efforts to educate or enlighten the populace, the clandestinely empowered Islamists, though still devoid of majority support, are able to intimidate even the supposedly liberal and democratic parties. The manner in which the Pakistan People’s Party has sought to camouflage the meaning and the significance of Salmaan Taseer’s admittedly courageous stance is a plot that would be fitting for a Greek tragedy. Even otherwise, the quality of governance and the propensity for corruption that our political rulers have demonstrated is in itself a tragic tale.

There is this intriguing attempt to ignore the antagonistic social division that the event has brought into a sharp focus, in spite of the fact that political parties of the ilk of the PPP, ANP and the MQM are morally bound to confront socially regressive and bigoted elements in society. In fact, the repeated policies of appeasement by our rulers have led us to the brink of disaster. This process, sadly, was launched by the founder of the PPP.

Anyhow, now that we are perched on the very edge of the precipice, what is to be done to salvage the option of creating a liberal, socially plural, egalitarian and democratic polity in Pakistan? This question is to be posed with the presumption that our ‘establishment’ has nurtured some factions of religious extremists – the so-called assets – only for tactical purposes and that it still believes in a Pakistan that keeps pace with the modern world and is mindful of the natural aspirations of the people of this country for peace and economic development.

A forbidding thought comes to mind: does the ‘establishment’ have the necessary intellectual resources to be able to understand the crisis of Pakistan with an open mind and in the light of historical and contemporary realities? As individuals, we may safely presume, many senior functionaries would have doubts about policies that have led to our present impasse. Perhaps the social divide that has acquired a deadly dimension at this time also pervades the higher levels of the establishment. What matters, however, is its collective mind and its deep-rooted biases – so deep-rooted that some major shifts in domestic and regional affairs have apparently not touched the contours of our national security policies.

What has happened in the wake of the murder of Salmaan Taseer is alarming in the specific context of the range of intolerance and extremism in Pakistan. We were always aware of the fundamental divide between the liberal and the orthodox, militant forces. We were also conscious of the fact that a rational dialogue between the two sides was difficult because of intolerance and prevalence of violence in society. Still, what we have now is devastating in its possible consequences.

When the floods came some months ago, we were astonished to see the deprivations of those who had been herded into relief camps. It was a kind of revelation. A similar revelation about the dominance of obscurantism in our society has now hit us. So much so that a cloud of fear has descended across the land, leaving so many liberate and moderate people to wonder if Pakistan is their country, too. The issue is not whether this country is safe for democracy. Also threatened is the culture of civility and human values and open-minded discourse.

Obviously, this is a situation that should readily attract the attention of our rulers, including the elected ones. Even though the blasphemy law has become an urgent point of reference, the basic issue is the surge in religious extremism and intolerance. Is this not an existential threat to the survival of Pakistan? And how can we deal with this threat?

Looking at it from another angle, it seems that the problem is not so much the rise of extremism as it is the continuing decline in our intellectual and humanistic values. Our social indicators remain very dismal. The scope for cultural and artistic creativity as well as appreciation is shrinking. The mass media, catering to the lowest common denominator, is reinforcing this trend. In the first place, we cannot provide universal primary education. Then, the ones who are able to go to school do not acquire any meaningful education. Our educational institutions do not encourage learning in its real sense.

To return to what I said at the outset, shouldn’t our military leaders who seem to have a veto power in defining our national sense of direction, be worried about this state of affairs? Can they not collaborate with our civilian rulers to at least make a serious review of what is happening to this country in its immortal yearning for peace and social justice?

The point is that the present drift is frightening in its potential to subvert the initial vision of Pakistan as a modern, moderate and democratic country. The political scene, too, is promoting instability and social discord. Against this flaming backdrop, the impression that any one who has the courage of his convictions is very likely to be silenced would tend to suppress the very spirit of resistance to forces of death and destruction.

o o o

(ii)

The Telegraph, 8 January 2011

Pakistan
'THE KILLER OF MY FATHER, SALMAN TASEER, WAS SHOWERED WITH ROSE PETALS BY FANATICS. HOW COULD THEY DO THIS?'

Thousands of Pakistanis showered rose petals on the assassin of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who sought clemency for a Christian woman sentenced to death. Here his eldest son, Aatish Taseer, who lives in Delhi, mourns his death - and the nihilism of a country that could not tolerate a patriot who was humanitarian to his core.
Pakistan's religious divide on display

by Aatish Taseer

I have recently flown home from North America. In airport after international airport, the world's papers carried front page images of my father's assassin.

A 26-year-old boy, with a beard, a forehead calloused from prayer, and the serene expression of a man assured of some higher reward. Last Tuesday, this boy, hardly older than my youngest brother whose 25th birthday it was that day, shot to death my father, the governor of Punjab, in a market in Islamabad.

My father had always taken pleasure in eluding his security, sometimes appearing without any at all in open-air restaurants with his family, but in this last instance it would not have mattered, for the boy who killed him was a member of his security detail.

It appears now that the plan to kill my father had been in his assassin's mind, even revealed to a few confidants, for many days before he carried the act to its fruition. And it is a great source of pain to me, among other things, that my father, always brazen and confident, had spent those last few hours in the company of men who kept a plan to kill him in their breasts.

But perhaps it could have been no other way, for my father would not only have not recognised his assassins, he would not have recognised the country that produced a boy like that. Pakistan was part of his faith, and one of the reasons for the differences that arose between us in the last years of his life–and there were many–was that this faith never allowed him to accept what had become of the country his forefathers had fought for.

And it would have been no less an act of faith for him to defend his country from the men who would see it become a medieval theocracy than it was for his assassin to take his life.

The last time I met or spoke to my father was – it seems hard to believe now – the night three years ago that Benazir Bhutto was killed. We had been estranged for most of my life, and just before he died we were estranged for a second time. I was the son of my Indian mother, with whom my father had a year-long relationship in 1980. In my childhood and adolescence, when he was fighting General Zia's dictatorship alongside Bhutto, and was in and out of jail, I had not known him.

I met him for the first time in my adult life at the age of 21, when I went to Lahore to seek him out. For some time, a promising, but awkward relationship, which included many trips to Lahore and family holidays with his young wife and six other children, developed between us.

The cause for that first estrangement, my father had always explained, was that it would have been impossible for him to be in politics in Pakistan with an Indian wife and a half-Indian son. And, in the end, as much as Pakistan had been the cause of our first estrangement, it was also the cause of our second, which began soon after the London bombings, when my father wrote me an angry letter about a story I had written for Prospect magazine in which I described the British second-generation Pakistani as the genus of Islamic terrorism in Britain.

My father was angry as a Muslim, though he was not a practising man of faith, and as a Pakistani; he accused me of blackening the Taseer name by bringing disrepute to a family of patriots. The letter and the new silence that arose between us prompted a book, Stranger to History, in which I discussed openly many things about my father's religion, Pakistan and my parents' relationship. Its publication freakishly coincided –though he might well have been offended even as a private citizen by what I wrote – with my father's return to politics, after a hiatus of nearly 15 years.

The book made final the distance between us; and a great part of the oblique pain I now feel has to do with mourning a man who was present for most of my life as an absence.

And yet I do mourn him, for whatever the trouble between us, there were things I never doubted about him: his courage, which, truly, was like an incapacity for fear, and his love of Pakistan. I said earlier that Pakistan was part of his faith, but that he himself was not a man of faith. His Islam, though it could inform his political ideas, now giving him a special feeling for the cause of the Palestinians and the Kashmiris, now a pride in the history of Muslims from Andalusia to Mughal India, was not total; it was not a complete vision of a society founded in faith.

He was a man in whom various and competing ideas of sanctity could function. His wish for his country was not that of the totality of Islam, but of a society built on the achievements of men, on science, on rationality, on modernity.

But, to look hard at the face of my father's assassin is to see that in those last moments of his life my father faced the gun of a man whose vision of the world, nihilistic as it is, could admit no other.

And where my father and I would have parted ways in the past was that I believe Pakistan and its founding in faith, that first throb of a nation made for religion by people who thought naively that they would restrict its role exclusively to the country's founding, was responsible for producing my father's killer.

For if it is science and rationality whose fruit you wish to see appear in your country, then it is those things that you must enshrine at its heart; otherwise, for as long as it is faith, the men who say that Pakistan was made for Islam, and that more Islam is the solution, will always have the force of an ugly logic on their side. And better men, men like my father, will be reduced to picking their way around the bearded men, the men with one vision that can admit no other, the men who look to the sanctities of only one Book.

In the days before his death, these same men had issued religious edicts against my father, burned him in effigy and threatened his life. Why? Because he defended the cause of a poor Christian woman who had been accused – and sentenced to die – for blasphemy.

My father, because his country was founded in faith, and blood – a million people had died so that it could be made–could not say that the sentence was wrong; the sentence stood; all he sought for Aasia Bibi was clemency on humanitarian grounds. But it was enough to demand his head.

What my father could never say was what I suspect he really felt: "The very idea of a blasphemy law is primitive; no woman, in any humane society, should die for what she says and thinks."

And when finally my father sought the repeal of the laws that had condemned her, the laws that had become an instrument of oppression in the hands of a majority against its minority, he could not say that the source of the laws, the faith, had no place in a modern society; he had to find a way to make people believe that the religion had been distorted, even though the religion – in the way that only these Books can be – was clear as day about what was meant.

Already, even before his body is cold, those same men of faith in Pakistan have banned good Muslims from mourning my father; clerics refused to perform his last rites; and the armoured vehicle conveying his assassin to the courthouse was mobbed with cheering crowds and showered with rose petals.

I should say too that on Friday every mosque in the country condoned the killer's actions; 2,500 lawyers came forward to take on his defence for free; and the Chief Minister of Punjab, who did not attend the funeral, is yet to offer his condolences in person to my family who sit besieged in their house in Lahore.

And so, though I believe, as deeply as I have ever believed anything, that my father joins that sad procession of martyrs – every day a thinner line – standing between him and his country's descent into fear and nihilism, I also know that unless Pakistan finds a way to turn its back on Islam in the public sphere, the memory of the late governor of Punjab will fade.

And where one day there might have been a street named after him, there will be one named after Malik Mumtaz Qadir, my father's boy-assassin.

Aatish Taseer's The Temple-Goers was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award


(iii)

The New York Times, January 8, 2011

MY FATHER DIED FOR PAKISTAN

by Shehrbano Taseer

Lahore, Pakistan

TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad.

The guard accused of the killing, Mumtaz Qadri, was assigned that morning to protect my father while he was in the federal capital. According to officials, around 4:15 p.m., as my father was about to step into his car after lunch, Mr. Qadri opened fire.

Mr. Qadri and his supporters may have felled a great oak that day, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they have succeeded in silencing my father’s voice or the voices of millions like him who believe in the secular vision of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

My father’s life was one of struggle. He was a self-made man, who made and lost and remade his fortune. He was among the first members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party when it was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s. He was an intellectual, a newspaper publisher and a writer; he was jailed and tortured for his belief in democracy and freedom. The vile dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq did not take kindly to his pamphleteering for the restoration of democracy.

One particularly brutal imprisonment was in a dungeon at Lahore Fort, this city’s Mughal-era citadel. My father was held in solitary confinement for months and was slipped a single meal of half a plate of stewed lentils each day. They told my mother, in her early 20s at the time, that he was dead. She never believed that.

Determined, she made friends with the kind man who used to sweep my father’s cell and asked him to pass a note to her husband. My father later told me he swallowed the note, fearing for the sweeper’s life. He scribbled back a reassuring message to my mother: “I’m not made from a wood that burns easily.” That is the kind of man my father was. He could not be broken.

He often quoted verse by his uncle Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Urdu’s greatest poets. “Even if you’ve got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred,” wrote Faiz. Especially as governor, my father was the first to speak up and stand beside those who had suffered, from the thousands of people displaced by the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the family of two teenage brothers who were lynched by a mob last August in Sialkot after a dispute at a cricket match.

After 86 members of the Ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore last May, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital. When the floods devastated Pakistan last summer, he was on the go, rallying businessmen for aid, consoling the homeless and building shelters.

My father believed that the strict blasphemy laws instituted by General Zia have been frequently misused and ought to be changed. His views were widely misrepresented to give the false impression that he had spoken against Prophet Mohammad. This was untrue, and a criminal abdication of responsibility by his critics, who must now think about what they have caused to happen. According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him.

There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others. This week two leading conservative politicians — former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan — have taken the same position my father held on the blasphemy laws: they want amendments to prevent misuse.

To say that there was a security lapse on Tuesday is an understatement. My father was brutally gunned down by a man hired to protect him. Juvenal once asked, “Who will guard the guards themselves?” It is a question all Pakistanis should ask themselves today: If the extremists could get to the governor of the largest province, is anyone safe?

It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

Shehrbano Taseer is a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on January 9, 2011, on page WK12 of the New York edition.

o o o

(iv)   The Daily Times, 10 January 2011

EDITORIAL: Madness in the ‘land of the pure’

A large group of civil society activists have lodged a complaint against Sultan Mosque cleric Munir Ahmed Shakir at the Darakhshan Police Station in Karachi. The said cleric issued a fatwa (edict) against PPP parliamentarian, Sherry Rehman, because she tabled a bill to amend the flawed blasphemy laws. The complainants said that the cleric’s fatwa will provoke people’s sentiments and incite violence. There is a serious threat to Ms Rehman’s life following the recent furore over the issue of blasphemy laws. Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer lost his life at the hands of a religious zealot because the governor took up a principled stand against the misuse of the blasphemy laws. Following Governor Taseer’s assassination, the threat to Ms Rehman is now more real and palpable. What is worse is that Interior Minister Rehman Malik told her to leave the country for the time being due to the security threat. Ms Rehman has refused to leave Pakistan. It is a matter of great shame that instead of providing adequate security to Ms Rehman, the PPP is trying to abandon her. The PPP isolated Governor Taseer but he refused to cow down before the right-wing forces because he was a man of principles. In the end, he was martyred. At a time when the PPP has lost its sitting governor due to religious fanaticism and another leading PPP member’s life is in danger, the interior minister of our country ‘advises’ the latter to flee Pakistan. On the other hand, civil society and other concerned citizens of Karachi have taken up Ms Rehman’s cause, which is commendable.

Yesterday, at the call of Tanzeem-e-Islami (TI), thousands of people gathered in Karachi to protest against any changes in the blasphemy laws. It is all but obvious what kind of hate speeches were delivered at the rally. JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman addressed the rally and said that Governor Taseer “was responsible for his own murder” because of his criticism of the blasphemy laws. The maulana’s justification of a horrid murder is revolting and should serve as a wake-up call for the PPP. It has been mollycoddling the Maulana for quite some time now but his statement vis-à-vis Mr Taseer should put a stop to all such attempts.

In the meanwhile, authorities are looking for a cleric who instigated Mumtaz Qadri to assassinate Governor Taseer. It is imperative that the cleric be found as soon as possible and given exemplary punishment. Other clerics should be rounded up as well who gave fatwas against the late governor and cases against them should be filed under the law. Incitement to murder and hate speech is strictly forbidden under our laws. There should be no exceptions to this rule. Apart from the clerics, all those media persons and politicians who played a role in Mr Taseer’s murder by inciting hatred against him should be held responsible for this gruesome tragedy. Many television anchors gave airtime to illiterate mullahs on their programmes who spewed venom against Mr Taseer and Ms Rehman. In the print media, too, a lot of space was given to provoke the sentiments of religious zealots on the blasphemy laws. It would be a disservice to Mr Taseer if such people are left unpunished.

Pakistan’s tragedy is that the religious right has organised itself so well while the liberal voices are disunited. It is time for the progressive voices to unite and launch a campaign to counter religious extremism. Too many innocent lives have been lost in this madness. It is time to stand up and be heard! 

o o o

(v) 

The Express Tribune, 10 January 2011

WILL PROGRESSIVE FORCES WAKE UP NOW?

by Munizae Jahangir

“What do you think of Salmaan Taseer’s murder?” asked a friend who usually wears jeans. What would one think of anyone’s murder, I thought to myself. She brushed her perfectly manicured hands through her hair and said, “he was morally corrupt”. I felt sick in my stomach. The hairdresser blowdrying her hair agreed: “I just got an SMS saying that those who protect blasphemers deserve to die.” My friend nodded in agreement, picked up her Gucci bag and sighed: “I suppose the dinner tonight will be cancelled.”

I wondered how many more of her are out there. Those who deceptively lead a western lifestyle, drink and party, yet their political beliefs are similar to those of the Lal Masjid brigade. Have we become a schizophrenic society? Or have years of shunning away politics as a vice produced a society bereft of any sound political or moral principles?

We saw Taseer’s murderer, Mumtaz Qadri, become a hero for religious hardliners. And for religious parties, who have remained divided and directionless in the last few years, he has become a rallying point. It is a cause more compelling than rising petrol prices and heavy taxes. And so the politics of religion will begin again in Pakistan, something that this country is all too familiar with. This will in its wake leave behind a trail of blood. It will make the minorities more vulnerable, make the hardliners stronger, unite the religious parties, make the schizophrenics amongst us more confused and the rest more fearful.

The PPP, traditionally a progressive party, has already backtracked from repealing the blasphemy law while proponents of the law have fallen silent, at least for now. Talk shows blabber on and the civil society is reduced to arranging vigils appealing for tolerance. Meanwhile, the Taliban are once again flexing their muscles in Orakzai Agency. They have been enforcing their own laws in the area and terrorising those who do not follow them. It is no longer safe for journalists to travel to these areas. So it’s anyone’s guess how powerful the militants have become over the last two years and what effect this will have in the months to come. Meanwhile, the army is dragging its feet on starting a military operation in North Waziristan. Politicians have not helped either, they continue to play for a stake in the pie and are unable to unite and strategise to safeguard the lives of citizens, who are at the mercy of wild militancy. Benazir’s mission, promised in the manifesto of the PPP, of merging these Taliban-infested areas with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, remains unfulfilled. These areas have become safe havens for thugs, kidnappers, al Qaeda, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and anyone who has a fight to fight and needs training.

The poor wonder how they will get by with inflation and no gas. Businessmen struggle to keep their factories running in the face of an energy crises and a security situation detrimental for any enterprise. As people’s worries pile up, there is less space to think of solutions. While the voices of the hardliners grow louder in support of ‘heroes’ like Mumtaz Qadri, progressive forces clutch onto their candles and take to the streets. It’s the same faces that we see every time a secular-minded leader is killed or a Christian woman is raped. But their numbers have dwindled and they are looking tired and hopeless. What is astounding is that the freedoms they have fought for so courageously are being enjoyed by people — like my jeans-clad friend — who hop from one party to the other, oblivious to the fact that we are fighting a war within.

Salmaan Taseer’s murder presents an opportunity for secular, progressive forces to unite and strategise for their survival, but so far they have not seized it. I fear this may be their last chance, before hardliners swallow the silent, lazy majority and the schizophrenics amongst us.

(The writer is a special correspondent for Express 24/7)

o o o


(vi)  http://www.anhadin.net/article119.html

STATEMENT CONDEMNING THE KILLING OF SALMAN TASEER

Sunday 9 January 2011

We are shocked by the killing of the Governor of the province of Punjab in Pakistan, Salman Taseer by a member of his bodyguard force. He had dared to support Asia Bibi sentenced to death for having committed Blasphemy according to the infamous Blasphemy law of Pakistan.

He was one of the liberal and democratic voices in Pakistan who have been fighting for the repeal of this reprehensible law. More appalling than the killing is the cynical and vocal support of a section of the society of Pakistan to the killer of Governor Taseer. We are worried by the trend of increasing religious intolerance in Pakistan and feel that if not fought with resolve and courage, it might lead to a deathly silence in Pakistan for a long, long time to come.

While concerned for the safety of democratic and progressive voices in Pakistan we are equally worried for the general well being of the common people of Pakistan and express our solidarity with them.

   1. A Kamila, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Chennai
   2. Aban Raza, artist, Delhi
   3. Aijaz Ilmi - Journalist - Delhi
   4. Aijaz Zaka Syed - Journalist – Dubai
   5. Akhlaq Ahmad Ahan, Dept of Persian,JNU
   6. Ali Javed, University of Delhi
   7. Arjimand Hussain Talib, Writer-columnist, Kashmir
   8. Arjumand Ara, University of Delhi, Delhi
   9. Arshad Ajmal, social activist, Patna
  10. Barkat ul Nisa Kamili, Student, Kashmir
  11. Basharat Hussain ,Human Rights Activist, Jammu
  12. Dr Neshat Quaiser, Associate Prof, Sociology, Jamia
  13. Dr Saeed Alam, theatre, Delhi
  14. Dr. Sarkar Haider - Doctor - Bareilly
  15. Dr.Mohd. Arif, Centre for Harmony and Peace,Varanasi
  16. Faiz Raza, Computer Engineer, Delhi
  17. Faizan Haider Naqvi, Entrepreneur, Delhi
  18. Farhat Amin, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Cuttack
  19. Farida Khan – Professor, University of Wisconsin, US
  20. Farukh Shaikh, Actor, Mumbai
  21. Gauhar Raza, scientist, filmmaker, poet, Delhi
  22. Gausuddin Shaikh, Mathadi Union, Mumbai
  23. Gulammohemmed Shaikh, painter, Baroda, Gujarat
  24. Haider Naqvi, HT Bureau Chief, Kanpur
  25. Hanif Lakdawala, social activist, Gujarat
  26. Hasan Kamal, Editor, Sahafat Daily, Lucknow
  27. Hassan Kazim - Journalist - Delhi
  28. Hozefa Ujjaini, Aman Samudaya ,Gujarat
  29. Imtiyaz Hussain,Civil Servant,Srinagar
  30. Inder Salim ,Artist , Delhi
  31. Iqbal Niazi, Delhi
  32. Irfan Engineer, Social Activist, Mumbai
  33. Ishrat Jamil - Theatre - Delhi
  34. Jamal Kidwai, Director Aman Trust, Delhi
  35. Jamil Malik - Entrepreneur - Delhi
  36. Kamran Siddiqui - Service - Noida
  37. Kashif-ul-Huda, Editor, TwoCircles.net
  38. Khalid Ashraf, Associate Professor, KM college, Delhi University
  39. Khatun Shaikh, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Mumbai
  40. Mantasha Binti Rashid, ANHAD, Kashmir
  41. Md Azam Khan – businessman, Hyderabad
  42. Mohd Kazim, University of Delhi, Delhi
  43. Muhammad Tauqeer - Business - Delhi
  44. Mushir ul Hasan, academician, Delhi
  45. Muzaffar Bhatt ,RTI Activist, Srinagar, Kashmir
  46. Nagma Shaikh, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Bangalore
  47. Nasiruddin Haider Khan, journalist, Delhi
  48. Nasiruddin Shah, actor, Mumbai
  49. Nazim Naqvi - Journalist - Delhi
  50. Noorjahan, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Mumbai
  51. Nusrat Sheikh, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Osmanabad
  52. Prof.Nadeem Hasnain, Professor & Head Department of Anthropology, Lucknow University,
  53. Rashida Ansari, grassroot activist, Gujarat
  54. Raza Imam - Educationist - Gurgaon
  55. Rehan Haider - Service - Bareilly
  56. Rizwan Shahid - Media - Delhi
  57. Sadiq Naqvi - Hardnews Magzine - Delhi
  58. Safiya Akhtar, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Bhopal
  59. Sania Hashmi, filmmaker, Delhi
  60. Seema Mustafa, journalist, Delhi
  61. Shabir Hussain Senior journalist Srinagar Kashmir
  62. Shabnam Hashmi, Social Activist-ANHAD, Delhi
  63. Shafiq Mahajir, advocate, Hyderabad
  64. Shaheen Nazar, Journalist, Aligarh
  65. Shahid anwar, playwright, Delhi
  66. Shaiq Ali Khan, Banker, Dubai
  67. Shama Zehra Zaidi-Filmmaker-Mumbai
  68. Sharmila Tagore, actress, Delhi
  69. Sheba George, Social Activist, Gujarat
  70. Sofiya Khan, Director Safar, Gujarat
  71. Sohail Arshad, Content editor, journalist, Kolkata
  72. Sohail Hashmi, filmmaker, writer, Delhi
  73. Syed Hassan Kazim, Journalist, New Delhi
  74. Syed Zulfeqar - Business - Rae Bareli
  75. Taha Abdul Raoof, Researcher, Delhi
  76. Tanveer Hussain Khan, social activist, ANHAD, Srinagar, Kashmir
  77. Tauhid Alam, Business, India
  78. W U Khan, Govt Service, Lucknow
  79. Wasi Haider, Professor and Chairman, Dept of Physics, Aligarh
  80. Zaheer Anis - Lawyer - Lucknow
  81. Zakia - Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Bangalore, Delhi
  82. Zoheb Kamal, Content Editor, New Delhi
  83. Zoya Hasan, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

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[2] Bangladesh:

New Age, 9 January 2011

KILLING THY NEIGHBOUR: INDIA, AND ITS BORDER SECURITY FORCE

by Rahnuma Ahmed

Felani’s clothes got entangled in the barbed wire when she was crossing the Anantapur border in Kurigram. It was 6 in the morning, Friday, 7th January 2011. Felani was 15, she worked in Delhi and was returning home with her father after ten years. To get married. She screamed. The BSF shot her dead. They took away her body.


THE fence is made of steel and concrete. Packed with razor wire, double-walled and 8-foot high, it is being built by the government of India on its border with Bangladesh. When completed, it promises to be larger than the United States-Mexico fence, Israel’s apartheid wall with Palestine, and the Berlin wall put together. It has been dubbed the Great Wall of India.

The fence is being constructed, with floodlighting in parts, to secure India’s borders against interests hostile to the country. To put in place systems that are able to ‘interdict’ these hostile elements. They will include a suitable mix and class of various types of hi-tech electronic surveillance equipment such as night vision devices, handheld thermal imagers, battlefield surveillance radars, direction finders, unattended ground sensors, high-powered telescopes to act as a ‘force multiplier’ for ‘effective’ border management. According to its rulers, this is ‘vitally important for national security.’

Seventy per cent of fencing along the Bangladesh border has been completed. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on November 10, 2010, the Indian state minister for home affairs said, fencing will be completed by March 2012. One estimate puts the project’s cost at ?600 million.

The colonial boundary division between East Pakistan/Bangladesh and India, notes Willem van Schendel, had little to do with modern concepts of spatial rationality. It was anything but a straight line, snaking ‘through the countryside in a wacky zigzag pattern’ showing no respect for history, cutting through innumerable geographical entities, for example, the ancient capital of Gaur. It was reflective of someone with an ‘excessively baroque mind’ (The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, 2005)

The fence divides and separates. Villages. Agricultural lands. Markets. Families. Communities. It cuts across mangrove-swamps in the southwest, forests and mountains in the northeast (Delwar Hussain, March 2, 2009). It divides villages. Everyday village-life must now submit to a tangle of bureaucracy as Indian Muslim law clerk, Maznu Rahman Mandal and his wife Ahmeda Khatun, a Bangladeshi, discovered after Ahmeda’s father died. To attend the latter’s funeral in the same village, Bhira, they would now have to get passports from Delhi, visas from Kolkata (Bidisha Bannerjee, December 20, 2010). It split up Fazlur Rehman’s family too, the fence snaked into their Panidhar village homestead, his younger brother who lived right next door, is now in another country (Time, February 5, 2009). Other border residents have had their homes split in two, the kitchen in one country, the bedroom in another.

To access one’s field, or markets, residents must now line up at long queues at the BSF border outposts, surrender their identity cards. They must submit to the BSF’s regimen, which often means disregarding what the crop needs. As Mithoo Sheikh of Murshidabad says, ‘The BSF does not understand cultivation problems.’ By the time we get to the field it is noon. Sometimes we get water only at night. But we have to stop working at 4pm, because they will not let us remain in the field. If we disobey, they beat us, they file false charges. (‘Trigger Happy’. Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border, Human Rights Watch, December 2010).

This lack of ‘understanding’ percolates to the topmost levels of both border forces. During an official visit to Bangladesh and talks between the BSF and the BDR (Bangladesh Rifles, recently renamed Border Guard Bangladesh) in September 2010, Raman Srivastava, director general of the BSF, in response to allegations that BSF troopers were killing innocent and unarmed Bangladeshi civilians said: ‘The deaths have occurred in Indian territory and mostly during night, so how can they be innocent?’ Ideas reciprocated by the BDR chief Major General Mainul Islam in March 2010, who, while explaining that there was a history of ‘people and cattle trafficking during darkness’, said, ‘We should not be worried about such incidents [killings]…. We have discussed the matter and will ensure that no innocent people will be killed.’


Abdur Rakib was catching fish in Dohalkhari lake, inside Bangladeshi territory. It was March 13, 2009. A witness saw a BSF soldier standing at the border, talking loudly. ‘It seemed that he wanted the boy to give him some free fish.’ Heated argument, verbal abuse. ‘The BSF pointed a gun at the boy. The boy ran and the soldier started to shoot.’ Two were injured. Rakib was shot in the chest. He died instantly. He was 13.


Smuggling, cattle rustling and human trafficking has increased in the border areas as poor farmers and landless people faced by population increases, poor irrigation, flooding, and continuous river erosion struggle to make ends meet. While both the BSF and the BGB accuse each other of corruption, the reality, says the recent Human Rights Watch report, is that some officials, border guards, and politicians on both sides are almost certainly involved in smuggling. It quotes a senior BSF official, ‘There are a lot of people involved, including our chaps. That is why only these farmers, with one or two cows are caught, not groups that ferry large consignments of cattle or drugs.’

A culture of impunity prevails, says Kirity Roy, head of Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (Masum), a Kolkata-based human rights organisation. We have repeatedly approached the courts, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the National Minorities Commission, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. But none of the cases raised have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. In some cases, family members appeared before the BSF court of inquiry but we, as the de facto complainant, were never summoned to appear or depose before any inquiry conducted by BSF. No verdicts have been made public.

Neither has the BSF provided any details to Bangladeshi authorities of any BSF personnel having been prosecuted for human rights violation. Impunity is legally sanctioned as the BSF is exempt from criminal prosecution unless specific approval is granted by the Indian government. A new bill to prohibit torture is being considered by the Indian parliament, it includes legal impunity.


On April 22, 2009, when Rabindranath Mandal and his wife were returning to Bangladesh after having illegally gone to India for Rabindranath’s treatment, a BSF patrol team from Ghojadanga camp detained them. She was raped. Rabindranath tried to save her, they killed him. The following morning, the BSF jawans left her and her husband’s dead body at the Zero Line at Lakkhidari.


The reason for building the fence, said an Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, is the same as the United States’ Mexico fence. As Israel’s fence on the West Bank. To prevent illegal migration and terrorist infiltration.

But Rizwana Shamshad points out that the hysteria generated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party during the 1980s and 1990s—Bangladeshi Muslim ‘infiltration’ by the millions constitutes a serious strain on the national economy, it poses a threat to India’s stability and security, it represents a challenge to Indian sovereignty, demographic changes will soon lead to Bangladeshi citizens demanding a separate state from India—did not withstand investigation. A study carried out by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in 1995 revealed that the BJP-Shiv Sena allegations were not only an exaggeration, but a complete fabrication. Fears and insecurities had been deliberately whipped up to consolidate Hindutva ideology; migrants, it seemed, were more preoccupied with struggling to make a living. While the BJP-Shiv Sena had alleged that there were 300,000 illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Mumbai, they were able to detect and deport only 10,000 Bangladeshi migrants, when in power (1998-2004).

The numbers vary with each media or official report, writes Rizwana. A BJP National Executive meeting declared over 15 million (April 1992). Nearly 10 million, said former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta (May 6, 1997). The group of cabinet ministers (home, defence, external affairs, finance) set up by prime minister Vajpayee post Kargil, reported 15 million (2000). The definitions, she adds, are prejudiced: Muslim migrants are described as ‘infiltrators’. Hindu migrants as ‘refugees’. Neither is there any mention of the Indian economy having benefited from cheap labour.

The HRW report notes, few killed by the BSF have ever been shown to have been involved in terrorism. In the cases investigated, alleged criminals were armed with nothing but sickles, sticks and knives, implements commonly carried by villagers. Nor do the dead bodies bear out the BSF’s justification that they had fired in self-defence. Shots in the back indicate that the victims had been shot running away. Shots at close range signal they were probably killed in custody.

The BSF kills Indian nationals too. In Indian territory. Basirun Bibi and her 6-month old grandson Ashique, May 2010. Atiur Rahman, March 2010. Shahjahan Gazi, November 2009. Noor Hossain, September 2009. Shyamsundar Mondal, August 2009. Sushanta Mondal, July 2009. Abdus Samad, May 2009. The imposition of informal curfews on both sides of the border at night, reportedly to prevent the accidental shooting of villagers, has not lessened the number of innocent people killed.

Beatings, torture, rape, killings. What could be the reason for such compulsively violent behaviour? According to the HRW report, it could have been caused by previous deployment in the Indo-Pakistan border in Kashmir, by ‘difficult and tense periods of duty.’

However, checkpoints, curfews, hi-tech electronic surveillance equipment, harassment, intimidation, beatings, torture and sniper fire remind me of Gaza. Not surprising, given that once finished, the fence will ‘all but encircle Bangladesh’ (Time, February 5, 2009).

The 1947 colonial border division was reflective of someone with an ‘excessively baroque mind.’ Its brutal enforcement through fencing, through the deployment of trigger-happy BSF soldiers speak of a Nazi-state mentality.

Not too far-fetched given Israel and India’s ‘limitless relationship’ (Military ties unlimited: India and Israel, New Age, January 18, 2010). This includes Israeli training of Indian commandos in urban warfare and counter-insurgency operations (in Kashmir), and proposals for offering the Border Security Forces specialised training. Given Israel’s behaviour, which Auschwitz survivor, Hajo Meyer, likens to the Nazis. ‘I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel.’

Israel’s inability to learn to live with its neighbours is increasingly turning it into a ‘pariah state’ (British MP). Its ‘paranoia’ has been noted by Israelis themselves (Gideon Levy). That a similar future awaits India is increasingly clear.

_____


[3] India:

Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

9th January 2010

SWAMI ASEEMANAND’S CONFESSIONS: ITS TIME FOR AN APOLOGY

Swami Aseemanand’s confession before the metropolitan magistrate of Tees Hazari Court has finally put the seal of legal validity over what had been circulating for months now, since the surfacing of the audio tapes seized from Dayanand Pande’s laptop. That Hindutva groups had been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the country—including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Samjhauta Express (2007), Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).

For the past several years however, dozens of Muslim youth have been picked up, detained, tortured, chargesheeted for these blasts—with clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions (which unlike Swami’s confessions have no legal value). Report after report has proved that the Maharashtra and Andhra police willfully refused to pursue the Hindutva angle preferring to engage in communal witch-hunt—or as in the case of Nanded blast—where the evidence was so glaring as to be unimpeachable—weakening the prosecution of these elements.

What is striking today is not the revelation contained in Aseemanand’s confessions but that it should have taken the country’s premier and pampered security agencies this long—four years after the Malegaon serial blasts, and even longer since the explosions elsewhere in Maharashtra—to unravel the Hindutva terror networks. Especially so, when Maharshtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had, as far back as 2008, communicated to the Hyderabad Police the sensational claim by Col. Purohit that he had procured RDX from an army inventory when he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. While the Hyderabad Police having conveniently arrested over 70 Muslim youth, tortured them at private farmhouses and extracted confessions, refused even to seek Puroshit’s custody; the Haryana ATS investigating the Samjhauta Express blast questioned Dayanand Pande but then pleaded that the trail had turned cold, thus washing its hands off. The use of RDX in the Samjhauta blast was touted as proof enough of Pakistani involvement in the Samjhauta blast; the crucial piece of evidence, the suitcase carrying the bomb was traced to Kothari Market in Indore, but the Haryana ATS, possibly under pressure or simply incredulous about the possibility of Hindutva terror appeared paralyzed.

Amnesia about Narco-Analysis?

What is one to make of the reports of the Narco-analysis tests conducted on SIMI activists, including Safdar Nagori his brother Kamruddin Nagori and Amil Parvez in April 2008, which claimed expediently that SIMI activists “had helped carry out the Mumbai train bombings of July 11, 2006 and the Samjhauta Express blasts of January 2007...with the help of Pakistani nationals who had come from across the border.” India Today magazine had proudly claimed in an ‘exclusive’ that the Narco-tests revealed “SIMI’s direct links with not only the Mumbai train bombings which killed over 200 persons but also links with the Samjhauta Express blast of February 2007 which killed 68 persons.” The reports of the Narco test on Nagori claimed that he had revealed that “some persons from Pakistan” had purchased the suitcase cover at Kataria market, Indore, while a SIMI activist “helped them to get the suitcase cover stitched”. Nagori is said to have named Abdul Razak and Misbah-ul-Islam of Kolkata as key people who provided crucial support to SIMI’s Indore unit in executing the Samjhauta train blast.

As for the Malegaon blasts, Nagori is said to have ‘admitted’ during the Narco test that some Muslim members were involved and he was aware of it; and he attributed the Hyderabad blast to one Nasir—who according to Nagori disliked the owner of the Gokul Chat stall—who was arrested a few months’ prior to Nagori’s arrest.  

Other important information revealed in the exclusive story is the Nagori claim that “most of the SIMI activists knew about other bomb conspiracies across the country” and the presence of sleeper cells in Hubli.  (Sandeep Unnithan, India Today, 19 September 2008)

So why did Nagori decide—even if in a drugged state—to take credit for the blasts that have now been proven to be the handiwork of Sangh offshoots? To boost SIMI’s sagging image? Or maybe to score brownie points over rival factions within SIMI? 

Or perhaps, as several scientists, jurists and civil rights activists have been pointing out, Narco-analysis not only robs the suspect’s rights and dignity—amounting to third degree—but is also highly unscientific, dubious and undependable as evidence in investigations. It is entirely possible for the investigator to induce, communicate his/ her ideas and thoughts to the suspect, thereby eliciting a response favoured by the investigator and the police theory—whatever it happens to be at the moment.

Media or Hand Maiden of the Police?

What India Today was trying to disguise as a scoop was the result not of any painstaking investigation, but the patronage of security agencies. This is sadly becoming too routine in supposedly investigative stories about blasts and terror strikes: security agencies pass on dossiers and reports such as the Narco tests to favoured journalists, who dutifully reproduce the police version. The public naming of individuals and groups as suspects—with little credible evidence—is usually a prelude to detentions, arrests and torture of ‘suspects’. No doubt, claims that SIMI members in Maharashtra were in the know of the bomb conspiracy then afford greater freedom to the police to launch manhunts for former SIMI members (even when the organization was still not banned) as co-conspirators. Mass arrests following Mecca Masjid blasts were accompanied by stories which implicated local youth from Muslim-dominated localities such as Moosaram Bagh (“Behind the Mecca Masjid Bombing: Communal Violence, Organised Crime and Global Jihad Intersect in Andhra Pradesh’s Capital” by Praveen Swami, Frontline, May 23, 2007).  Such stories lent a veneer of legitimacy to the subversion of due processes of law—where the hype surrounding the threats of Islamic terrorism justifies the shortcut methods of investigation—namely illegal detentions, torture, custodial confessions, narco-tests and the like.

On October 11, 2007 the Union Home Ministry claimed that the Ajmer Sharif blast was the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which was opposed to Sufi Islam, whose prime symbol was the Ajmer Sharif dargah. And the very next day, Praveen Swami served up “The War against Popular Islam” (The Hindu, October 12, 2007), wherein he claimed that the bombing of the Ajmer dargah—as well as blasts at Mecca Masjid and Sufi shrine in Malegaon—reflect a “less-understood project: the war of Islamist neoconservatives against the syncretic traditions and beliefs that characterise popular Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” It turns out now that Swami’s profound understanding has been turned on its head: it was not rabid Islam’s war against popular Islam but Hindutva’s revenge on the inherent syncreticism of India. Aseemanand is said to have told the magistrate: “Since Hindus throng the Ajmer Sharif Dargah we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from going there.” (in Tehelka, 15 January, 2011). Again screaming headlines about HUJI link created an atmosphere in which the Rajasthan SIT could detain a dozen Imams, maulvis and madrasa teachers, without producing the suspects in court, plucking them from their native places and bringing them to Ajmer for interrogation without even bothering to obtain transit remands.

More recently, the Varanasi blast occasioned yet another rash of stories based on ‘sources’ in the Indian intelligence agencies about Indian Mujahideen men on the run, in hideouts abroad, but whose associates still live in places as predictable as Azamgarh and Bhatkal. (For a fairly standard story see, “Indian Mujahudeen: The Hunt Continues” by Vicky Nanjapa. http://vickynanjapa.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/indian-mujahideen-the-hunt-continues/)

Gear up for more arrests, shall we?

An apology? And some compensation?

Though the Mecca Masjid blast case was transferred to the CBI, the Hyderabad Police registered three cases related to conspiracies in order to retain control over the investigations and indeed to push for its line of investigation based on forced confessions extracted under torture. This is clear demonstration of the high stakes Special Investigation Teams (SITs) and Special Cells attach to cases such as bomb blasts and terror attacks: terror investigations are lucrative means of earning quick medals, promotions and awards—as long as scapegoats (read Muslim youth) can be produced and paraded as masterminds, conspirators and accomplices.

The Home Ministry must release a White Paper on the total number of those arrested and in jail currently for the blasts now in every single the blasts named by Swami Aseemanand as the handiwork of his organization and associates. Those still languishing in prisons must be released without any further delay.

Those whose lives have been destroyed, those psychologically scarred and socially stigmatized by these false charges and imprisonment deserve surely a public apology, from the state governments as well as the Home Ministry. The former Home Minister Shivraj Patil had expressed his satisfaction at the direction of the Ajmer bomb probe—at the time when maulavis and madrasa teachers were being picked up—and in 2009, P. Chidambaram had pleaded that the investigations in the Mecca Masjid blast case had reached a dead end with the death of the mastermind of the blast, Shahid Bilal (the same Bilal whose house appeared prominently in Praveen Swami’s article). More recently, when a Hindutva angle was suggested by the Maharashtra ATS in the Pune Bakery blast, The Maharashtra Home Minister, RR Patil threatened action against the ATS Chief.  

Even the exceedingly low levels of political propriety in our country can be no excuse for not tendering an apology to the victims of the witch-hunt. The Andhra Chief Minister has announced grandly on the floor of the state assembly that he would tender an apology if it was proved that Muslim youth had been deliberately harassed by the police in the aftermath of the Mecca Masjid blasts. The AP Chief Minister would do well to read the reports of the National Minorities Commission and the AP Minorities Commission, both of which laid bare the gratuitous violence committed by the Hyderabad police on suspects. The CM appears to be waiting for the report of the Justice Bhaskara Rao Commission before offering an apology (newspaper reports on 17 Dec 2010). Except that he forgot that the Commission was appointed to look into the police firing after the Mecca Masjid blasts and not into accusations of torture and illegal detention—and the Commission already submitted its report to the CM three months ago, in October 2010!  

While we need to be vigilant that the investigations are now not derailed by prejudice of security agencies and state governments; the issue of compensation to those unjustifiably arrested and tortured needs to be addressed urgently. Dr. Haneef’s case in Australia—where the Australian government apologised and paid undisclosed large sums of money as compensation for wrongful terror accusations and detention—should serve as a model for us here. The Andhra Pradesh Government’s offer of rehabilitation package of Rs 30,000 –Rs 80,000 as loans (!) to those  who suffered arrests and torture can only add insult to the already inflicted injury (“Andhra’s ‘Healing Touch’ to ‘innocent’ Muslims”, Indian Express, 14 Nov 2008). Just for the sake of record, even these loans have not materialsed. On the other hand, the state government is contesting the damages of Rs 20 lakhs each being claimed by the victims in the Hyderabad City Civil Court.

Finally, all those who colluded and covered up these sham investigations need to be brought to justice: those in the intelligence agencies, officers of the police and security agencies, political bosses et al.  The Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police (Administration) Harish Gupta—who presided over the Mecca Masjid custodial confessions, torture and narco-analysis tests—must be held accountable. As must be each and every police officer who participated in this charade of investigation; in this large scale violation of the rights of the accused by subjecting them to brutal torture, and in doing so, undermined their own office. Police officers must be charged and tried for their criminal acts of violence against the youth—whom they knew to be innocent—as well as gross dereliction of duties for deliberately building their investigations on falsehoods in so serious a crime as bomb blasts.  

We shouldn’t have had to wait for a change of Swami Aseemanand’s heart to reach this far.

Sd/-

Manisha Sethi, Sanghamitra Misra, Ahmed Sohaib, Adil Mehdi, Tanweer fazal, Ghazi Shahnawaz, Arshad Alam, Farah Farooqi, Azra Razak, Ambarien Al Qadar, Anwar Alam, Shakeb Ahmed, Haris ul Haq for JTSA.

www.teacherssolidarity.org

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