SACW - 21 July 2011 | Bangladesh Constitution | Pakistan: ethnic differences | India: State armed militia and defence spending

[Harsh K]

 South Asia Citizens Wire - 21 July 2011 - No. 2723
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents:

1. Afghanistan:
Afghan Women Protest Harassment:  
US Agrees with Establishment of Political Mission for Taliban
2. Religion-based political parties and the Bangladesh Constitution
(Harun ur Rashid)
3. Subcontinental drift (Salil Tripathi)
4. Pakistan: Language of exclusion (Saroop Ijaz)
5. India: Husain Is Safely Dead (Ashok Mitra)
6. India: Divisive track (Editorial Comment The Times of India)
7. India:: Communal and targeted Violence Bill: A step in right direction (Irfan Engineer)
8. India: Worshipping a steel rath in Orissa (P. Sainath)
9. India: Joint Statement Condemning Attack on Peaceful Protesters of Nuagaon (Anti-POSCO Struggle Area Odisha)
10. In God We Trust … Rest Strictly Cash!! (Sandeep Shastri)
11.  Dhaka Declaration: South Asia Women’s Network’s position on an emerging ’Green Economy’
12. India: Implement The Supreme Court Order On Salwa Judum And SPOs (press Release)
13. India: The State of The War (Nirmalangshu Mukherji)
International: 
14. Charlie Chaplin in Berlin (Victor Grossman)
15. Revolution and Repression on the Banks of the Suez Canal (Joel Beinin)

==============================================
1. AFGHAN WOMEN PROTEST HARASSMENT    |   US DEAL WITH TALIBAN
==============================================

reuters, 14 July 2011
IN HIGH HEELS, HEAD SCARVES, AFGHAN WOMEN PROTEST HARASSMENT
By Michelle Nichols

KABUL | Thu July 14, 2011 11:08am EDT
(Reuters) - In high heels and head scarves, a small band of Afghan women took to the streets of the country's capital, Kabul, on Thursday to protest harassment by men in public places.

Carrying signs, that read "This street also belongs to me" and "We won't stand insults anymore" the 20 or so women -- and some men marching in solidarity -- protested being abused, groped and followed on the city's streets.

Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative country, with heavy cultural and social restrictions on women's freedoms, even though the ouster of the hardline Taliban nearly a decade ago brought huge improvements in their legal rights.

"The idea behind street harassment is that women should not be out of their houses," said organizer Noor Jahan Akbar, 19, founder of rights group Young Women for Change.

"We want to fight that mentality because we believe that these streets belong to us as much as they belong to the men of this country," adding that she herself had suffered harassment so persistent it made her reluctant to walk anywhere.

International attention has often focused on the most extreme attacks on women's freedom, including acid attacks on girls walking to school and mysterious gas poisonings at several girls' schools, including in Kabul.

But Afghan women say they face a barrage of lower level persecution that can make daily life a challenge.
"What we want to wear, how we want to walk, that's our decision," said Anita Haidery, 19, a film and computer science student who also helped organize the protest.
Akbar, who is studying music and literature at university in the United States and returns to Kabul in the summers, said that she had been criticized for "importing an idea from the West," but said in fact women's freedom had its roots in Islam.
"Women's safety is not a western idea, even in the time of Prophet Mohammad, women were safe, they could do trade, they could go out, and that's what we deserve," she said.
Police redirected traffic as the protesters marched several kilometers through the city's dusty streets, thrusting flyers promoting their cause in the open windows of passing vehicles in the hope of sparking grassroots change.
Omaid Shirfi, 25, who works for the Afghan Transition and Coordination Commission, said he wanted to march with the women to show sympathy for their plight and promote change.
"They are a part of this society, they are half of the population. They should have the right to go to school, to go on the street," he said.

(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Sugita Katyal)

o o o

The Guardian,     
the women's blog with jane martinson
18 July 2011

AFGHAN WOMEN SHOUT BACK

Tired of being abused and hassled on the street, women in Kabul have been marching for an end to street harassment

Campaigns against street harassment are booming. Hollaback!, a movement that started in the US, collecting women's experiences on its website, has spread across the world with websites from India to the UK, while Egyptian and Lebanese bloggers named 20 June "anti-street harassment day", tweeting and posting on the subject en masse. But the latest campaign for the right to walk in public without being abused, groped or hassled has raised eyebrows for its unexpected location – Afghanistan.

In the first action of its kind in the country, 30 men and women marched through Kabul, from the city's university to the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan building, holding banners and handing out flyers to passersby. And while the turnout may be small compared with marches in other countries, organisers say it is just the beginning.

Noor Jahan Akbar, 19, is from Young Women for Change, a coalition committed to increasing female inclusion in the country's political, social, economic and cultural life. She arranged the march, she says, because women around Kabul, "face harassment everyday and are forced to keep quite about it."
In a pilot project, the group interviewed 20 women about their experiences in public spaces. A staggering 19 out of 20 had experienced street harassment, and 14 said it had included physical assault. But, says Akbar, previous attempts to fight back against sexual assaults have been silenced and no public figures seem willing to talk about the problem, which has such a huge impact on women's lives.
While assassinations, bombs and war might pose more extreme threats, the constant harassment women face also hinders their everyday life, keeping them indoors and preventing them from taking part in public life. "Harassment is a problem that haunts us every moment of our life here," says Akbar. "Despite the fact that we face harassment on a daily basis, no organisations, religious leaders or media outlets or even the government, have recognised it as a problem and addressed it. We want our campaign to be the start of a dialogue about sexual harassment, and a step towards recognising it as a problem."

A press conference on the importance of the media in tackling women's safety on the streets is being planned. And, says Akbar: "We also are working on city-wide research during which thousands will be surveyed on how significant the problem is in Kabul."

o o o

SEE ALSO:

US AGREES WITH ESTABLISHMENT OF POLITICAL MISSION FOR TALIBAN
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9004250781

==============================================
2. RELIGION-BASED POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE BANGLADESH CONSTITUTION
by Barrister Harun Ur Rashid
==============================================

(The Daily Star, July 20, 2011)

On June 30th, the Bangladesh Parliament passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, and it was signed by the President on July 3rd. The Constitution now comes into effect with the assent of the president.

The Constitution of 1972 has gone through 14 amendments, the last of which was adopted in May 2004.

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution brought 55 changes, some of them reversions to the 1972 constitution, following the judgment of the apex court on the illegality of the fifth, eighth and thirteenth amendments.

The opposition party BNP boycotted not only the sessions of the Parliament when the 15th Amendment was passed but also the deliberations of the special parliamentary committee on constitutional amendments.

One of the amended ones is Article 12, which prohibited religion-based politics. The question is whether a political party's name with the words "Muslim" or "Islamic" or "Hindu" or "Christian" is prohibited under the constitution.

The answer to the query is in the negative because it is not just the name of the parties that matters.

What matters is whether a political party wants to change the structure of the constitution and laws of a state on the basis of a particular religious set of guidelines. In such circumstances, it is considered using religion for political purposes and is counter to the Constitution of Bangladesh, which is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.

When political parties in their manifestoes want to change the structure, system of government, judiciary and laws of a state in accordance with the principles and beliefs of a particular religion among multi-religious citizens, people of other faiths in such a state perceive gross discrimination on the basis of religion. Such discrimination is arguably untenable under the Bangladesh Constitution.

In many European countries, political parties have prefixed the name of a religion, such as Germany's Christian Democratic Union and Christian Union in the Netherlands. In Pakistan, it is Muslim League, and there are parties with Hindu names in India.

Although many political parties in Europe have prefixed the word "Christian," there appears to be no intention to change the basic structure of a state's existing structural system and laws on Biblical doctrines.

The word "dharmanirekhapata" (religious pluralism) is to be distinguished from non-involvement with religion. Religious pluralism implies governmental engagement with religion for the purpose of treating all religious groups fairly, equally and equitably, while non-involvement implies governmental isolation from matters of religion.

It is argued that in the background of festering and destructive communal politics in British India, religious pluralism and Bengali-language based nationalism constituted the spirit of the Liberation War of 1971. The fact that Pakistani Muslim soldiers committed crimes against humanity against Bengali Muslims in 1971 demonstrates that commonality of religion could not hold back the Pakistani soldiers from committing such nefarious crimes.

Religious pluralism is a golden thread running through the Constitution that was adopted on November 4, 1972. The concept of freedom of religion is further stipulated in Article 41 of the Constitution, which is as follows:

"(1) Subject to law, public order and morality:

(a) every citizen has the right to profess, practice or propagate any religion;

(b) every religious community or denomination has the right to establish, maintain, and manage its religious institutions

(2) No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or to take part in or to attend any religious ceremony or worship, if that instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than this own."Article 41 is founded upon on religious pluralism. In Bangladesh, people of various faiths are deeply religious, and the most devoutly religious people are also the staunchest defenders of religious pluralism.

Bangladesh, despite a few extra-constitutional bumps on the road, has been very successful in keeping harmony among people of all faiths, which is consistent with the long-standing political and cultural history of the Bengali people.

Recently, a Vatican leader Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, during his visit to this country, expressed happiness that Bangladesh could be considered "as an example of how it is possible for people of different religions to live together, cooperative together and simply be together."

He tried to ascertain the reasons for such an extraordinary characteristic of Bangladesh. He posed questions: "Is it based in Bengali culture? Is it based in constutional realities? Is it based in the history of the country? Is it based in the realm of religions themselves and in particular in Islam as it exists and is followed here? I leave the answers to those to experts."

Given the foregoing paragraphs, one may argue strongly that if a political party uses religion for political purposes, meaning when it wants to change the basic structure, laws and judicial system of Bangladesh on the basis of one religious doctrine to the exclusion of other religions or faiths, it is counter to Article 12 of the amended constitution.

The writer is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.

==============================================
3. SUBCONTINENTAL DRIFT
by Salil Tripathi
==============================================
Does the controversial book about Bangladesh’s war of liberation uncover new truths, or simply reverse old biases?

Livemint, July 15 2011

 Books

It is an article of faith in Bangladesh that three million people died in its war of independence in 1971. At that time, the population of the former East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh) was about 70 million people, which means nearly 4% of the population died in the war. The killings took place between 25 March, when Pakistani forces launched Operation Searchlight , and mid-December, when Dhaka fell to the invading Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini forces (who was aiding whom depends on which narrative you read— India’s or Bangladesh’s). As per Bangladesh’s understanding of its history, the nation was a victim of genocide. Killing three million people over 267 days amounts to nearly 11,000 deaths a day. That would make it one of the most lethal conflicts of all time.

One of the most brutal conflicts in recent years has been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the International Rescue Committee reported that 5.4 million people died between 1998 and 2008. A more thorough Canadian analysis now concludes that the actual figure is about half. At 5.4 million deaths, the daily death toll would be around 1,500; at 2.7 million, around 750. Was the 1971 war up to 15 times more lethal than the Congolese conflict?

It is an uncomfortable question. Many Bangladeshis feel that raising such a doubt undermines their suffering and belittles their identity. But a thorough, unbiased study, going as far as facts can take the analysis, would be an important contribution to our understanding of the subcontinent’s recent history.

In Dead Reckoning, the Harvard-trained Oxford academic, Sarmila Bose , tries doing that, arguing that Bangladesh has believed two national narratives—that it was an innocent victim, and that it fought bravely. She challenges both notions, causing considerable hurt, and even a sense of betrayal, among many Bangladeshis. Bose is Bengali, from India, and the grand-daughter of Sarat Chandra Bose, the elder brother of Subhas Chandra Bose. How could she let the side down?

Bangladeshis welcomed Bose warmly when she began her study, and many intellectuals, historians, academics and survivors told her their stories. She also went to Pakistan, and remarkably, was able to get the cooperation of many Pakistani commanders who participated in the war. Pakistan’s army is not entirely an accountable organization to begin with, and except for a judicial commission in 1971, which was set up to examine the narrow question of what led to Pakistani defeat in the war, there hasn’t been a serious attempt to understand what happened. Any effort to get Pakistani generals to talk is welcome, particularly since the war crimes trials, set to begin in Bangladesh soon, will not try Pakistani nationals, but only Bangladeshi perpetrators and collaborators.

Those seeking justice will end up being perplexed after reading Bose’s account, because she makes a valiant attempt to show the Pakistani army as one trying hard to operate professionally, and in many cases acting with restraint. Bangladeshis don’t have an appetite for such a narrative—a recent film, Meherjaan, a love story between a Bengali woman and a Pakistani soldier during the war, had to be withdrawn from public release following an outcry.

Dead Reckoning—Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War: C Hurst and Co.,London, 239 pages, £20 (around Rs 1,415)

Academics should ask tough questions. Bose rightly attempts a detailed forensic examination of the Bangladeshi version of events. She doesn’t always question Pakistani claims with the same thoroughness.

She notes how a Bengali officer mis-remembers the name of his Punjabi counterpart, or how the testimony of the sole Bengali survivor of a massacre can’t be corroborated. But she accepts when she hears of tens of thousands of Biharis (Urdu-speaking, non-Bengali East Pakistanis) dying at Bengali hands. She disparages Mujibur Rahman ’s Awami League ’s overwhelming victory in the 1970 elections, when the party won 160 of the 162 seats, giving it an absolute majority in the combined Pakistani legislature, by pointing out that only 56% of East Pakistanis voted in the election, when by the standards of most democracies, that’s a reasonable turnout.

Yahya Khan , the dictator who ruled Pakistan at that time, has been the butt of many jokes even in Pakistan, and observers of Pakistan’s politics like Tariq Ali have blamed him for strategic and tactical blunders. Bose’s Yahya is reasonable, trying to get two recalcitrant politicians— Mujib in the east and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the west, who hadn’t secured a majority, but still wanted to be the prime minister—to talk, but who is almost reluctantly driven into using force in the east because of Bengali secessionist demands.

Some statistics are impossible to establish. There has been controversy over the number of rapes Bangladeshis cite (up to 400,000), and Bose’s account hardly mentions rapes, implying that the issue may not be that big. That is peculiar, considering that even in normal circumstances, rape is an under-reported crime, and in a subcontinental context, more so, given the inevitable stigma.

One can debate whether the 1971 conflict fits into the precise legal definition of genocide. But even if it is not genocide, far too many terrible things were done to far too many people, whose dreams of redress and justice remained unfulfilled for too long.

Bose is right in pointing out that the conflict was a complex one. She prefers the Pakistani characterization of the war—that it was a civil war—over the Bangladeshi preference—that it was a war of independence. As evidence, she shows the Awami League negotiating for a solution till early 1971, implying that linking Bangladeshi nationalism to the language agitation of the 1950s was an ex-post-facto justification, rather than a well-thought strategy seeking independence. That is an interesting point, but Bose doesn’t develop the argument further. And she refutes an argument not many reasonable people have made, when she says that Mujib was not leading a non-violent movement.

She writes of several incidents in which Pakistani soldiers act in a humane way. Clearly, every Pakistani soldier was not evil incarnate, nor every Bengali nationalist an angel. And yet, Pakistanis won’t find Bose’s account comforting-some terrible atrocities are documented here. Bangladeshis should not ignore it either. They should rise to the challenge and document their own suffering more accurately.

In any event, several conclusions emerge-that many Bengali students of all faiths were targeted, and killed; that many Bengali women were raped, or forced into sexual slavery; that many Bengali intellectuals were murdered two days before surrender; that not all Pakistani commanders were brutal, nor all Pakistani soldiers evil; that Bengalis did terrible things to Pakistanis and Biharis.

Missing is the simpler grand narrative: that a nation with two halves separated by 1,000 miles with little in common except faith, was probably a bad idea to begin with. And when the part which felt discriminated against, protested, and demanded respect, cultural autonomy, and greater resources, even winning a majority in nationwide elections, the dominant half ignored the verdict, sent troops, and killed tens of thousands of people, before surrendering to a guerrilla force assisted by a superior army, but not before destroying the new nation’s physical infrastructure and killing intellectuals who could have helped lead the country.

Call it what you will. It was terrible, and it remains a crime against humanity.

Salil Tripathi writes the fortnightly column Here, There, Everywhere in Mint and is researching a book on the 1971 war.

==============================================
4. PAKISTAN: LANGUAGE OF EXCLUSION
by Saroop Ijaz
==============================================

The Express Tribune, July 19, 2011

The writer is a lawyer and a partner at Ijaz and Ijaz Co in Lahore saroop.ijaz at tribune.com.pk

The numbers signifying the death toll in Karachi have lost their sanctity. Those dead, unless associated with a political party, die faceless, nameless with their only mention being as a number in the death count. The term ‘target killing’ is hopelessly imprecise. It seems to suggest a meticulously planned murder with a clearly identified victim, which is certainly not the case with most of the murders committed in Karachi. It is unquestionably random killing, with only vague notions of appearance and manner of speech dictating who dies next. The term target killing is almost as absurd as using the innocuous term ‘missing persons’ for those abducted, tortured and murdered in Balochistan. The violence in Parachinar and the rest of Kurram Agency is conveniently described as ‘sectarian strife’, instead of the systematic killing of the Shia by the ISI-backed Haqqani network.

The recent and to some extent ongoing spasm of violence in Karachi was ostensibly provided impetus to by the statements of Dr Zulfiqar Mirza. Dr Mirza very deliberately attempts to be a loose cannon, and in the present episode made statements which were hurtful, provocative and downright stupid. However, the significant question is, does the making of a stupid statement directly lead to or justify a body count in the triple figures? The statements made by all three stakeholders, namely the PPP, the MQM and the ANP, stressed that their workers show restraint. The tacit and dangerous implication of these apparently noble calls is the admission that their workers are, in the first place, to some extent responsible for the mayhem. The killings of a legislator from the MQM also lead to similar proportions of violence.

The distinguishing mark of Karachi politics has gradually become the casualness with which violence is brought up in public discourse. One would remember the call by Altaf Hussain last year to “patriotic generals” to take over and hang the corrupt politicians from the nearest trees. In similar vein, Abdul Sattar Edhi has recently appealed to General Kayani to take over and exterminate all politicians. While Mr Edhi may be forgiven due to old age and a stellar career in philanthropy, politicians being intimately aware of the piousness of army generals should not be forgiven. Deweaponisation of Karachi is imperative, yet it is reductionist to expect this to be a panacea, or even be possible in the present circumstances. One question that party leaders and loyalists conveniently ignore is why political parties are armed in the first place. Does not an order by a party leader to cease violence which results in the actual stoppage of killing, suggest that he has a semblance of control over it?

In my opinion, George Orwell’s best essay is “Politics and the English Language”. In the essay, Orwell contends that the use of particular terms ultimately has political and economic causes. He continues to argue that an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. The term ‘muhajir’ is a case in point. The literal meaning of the term ‘muhajir’ is simply one who is a migrant. In Islamic traditions it conjures up images of the grand hijrat from the persecution of the heathens. However, the meaning of the term in the context of Karachi is settled now, in so far as it refers to the Urdu-speaking emigrants from India who decided to come to Karachi in 1947. It is common practice and completely acceptable to have blanket terms to describe communal groups. However, the political ramifications of this particular usage are problematic on many levels. Firstly, those who actually did migrate from India should by all means use the label, but the majority of the Urdu-speaking population in Pakistan today was born in Pakistan, and hence would not fit neatly in this category. Secondly, the MQM leadership lamenting the inflow of Pashtun migrants into Karachi has a very pugnacious sense of irony to it. The term used for those displaced in the Swat operation was not ‘muhajir’, but rather the cold acronym IDP (internally displaced persons). IDP does not evoke the historical grandeur of ‘muhajir’ which also presumes the presence of an ‘ansar’. Of all the political parties, one would have expected the MQM to be sympathetic to the plight of the muhajirs and welcome them with open arms.

Karachi, it seems, has become a city of stereotypes. The Pashtuns and the ANP are associated with terrorism frighteningly causally. This, of course, is deliberate ignorance. The role of the ANP and its sacrifices in the war on terror dwarf those of any other political party. Coming back to Orwell, the exclusionary usage of the term ‘muhajir’ and the claim to dominion over Karachi may have historically and politically justified reasons, yet it perpetuates an alienation which makes it impossible for a meaningful dialogue. Most significantly, it is unfair to the proud Pakistani Urdu-speaking populace, who contribute the single major share to the national economy.

The manifest racism in Dr Mirza’s statement represents the horrifying intolerance now creeping into Karachi politics. Similarly, MQM legislators routinely make remarks containing the insinuation that Pashtuns are terrorists. ANP leaders easily refer to the elected representatives of the Urdu-speaking people as a criminal organisation. Deweaponisation will not be possible or effective as long as the isolationist, hateful rhetoric remains in vogue.

Although this may seem as an overreaction, anybody who has followed the Balkan Wars and the genocide in Rwanda will know of the potential of violence based on minor ethnic differences, and lurid rhetoric. The only discernible physical difference between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda was marginally of height (barring economic class), and it resulted in violence the likes of which the modern world has not seen. It is for now a battle amongst the political parties in Karachi, but the insidious, intentional attempt is to transform it into a battle between the people. This should be chillingly scary to everyone in Karachi and elsewhere in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20th, 2011.

==============================================
5. HUSAIN IS SAFELY DEAD
- Posthumous tributes to the self-exiled artist expose India’s hypocrisy
by Ashok Mitra
==============================================

The Telegraph, 18 July 2011

Jibanananda Das, now acclaimed as the most significant figure in Bengali poetry in the post-Tagore era, composed the cameo of a poem in his later years. It is in the form of a narrative, oozing in sarcasm and debunking the myth of his aversion to social realities. He describes the proceedings of a post-midnight soirée held by a sample of Calcutta’s underclass: the venue is the dirty pavement, right next to a leaking public hydrant, that abuts a downtown street intersection; an eerie stillness which has supplanted the roar of chaotic traffic during the long hours of the day and the evening. Those in attendance are the usual sprinkling of street beggars, part-time pickpockets and other riff-raff, tattered clothes and diseased bodies. But each has as much a mind of his own as a point of view. They are discussing a most important issue: who, pray, is the beneficiary if one of them is donated a free bottle of medicine, but only after he is dead? Arguments and counter-arguments fly across the pavement. That is all. The poet does not inform us whether a vote was taken at the end of the debate.

The farce taking place in the country since the passing of Maqbool Fida Husain in London last month would have drawn a chuckle from Jibanananda Das. Messages of condolence are flooding the newspaper pages; long editorials extolling his contributions spill into even academic journals. Television channels have collected the usual crowd of resident pundits to unravel the mystery of Husain’s eclecticism. The Hindutva crowd has of course kept mum, politicians of all other hues are fiercely in competition to record their lament at the shuffling of mortal coils by this great son of India. Disappointment is expressed at the failure of reported efforts to have his body brought back to India and entombed here with appropriate solemnity and grandeur. Magazines have brought out supplements on Husain’s life and works. A number of seminars and workshops have already been organized on the same theme; more are planned. Exhibitions of his paintings in the personal collection of industrial tycoons are in the offing. A couple of short documentaries Husain produced are in intense demand for special shows. Earnest rookie directors had perhaps shot stray scenes from Husain’s daily perambulations while on a visit to Delhi or Bangalore and woven them together; these patchworks too are beginning to find a market. Anecdotes around Husain are suddenly a dime a dozen. The dhaba he frequented while visiting Calcutta is threatening to turn into a tourist attraction. Trust several books on him to be on the anvil; eminences grises, such as State governors and peripatetic Nobel laureates, will be busy releasing them in city malls. And — this was inevitable — voices have already been raised suggesting a posthumous Bharat Ratna for the great Maqbool Fida Husain, the barefoot vagrant who won for India a place of reckoning on the global map of contemporary art but nonetheless had to scamperingly leave his homeland for fear of his life.

Can there be any greater instance of collective hypocrisy? Politicians, including those in government, who are now unloading torrents of crocodile tears over Husain’s death in exile, hardly stirred themselves when circumstances were being created to hound him out of the country. Had they exerted themselves and taken a determined stand against the vandals who had targeted exhibitions of Husain’s works, it could have been a different story altogether. The prime minister and his cabinet colleagues looked the other way when atrocious anti-Husain incidents were taking place in the very heart of the nation’s capital. Non-Bharatiya Janata Party, non-Congress parties too could have, jointly as well as severally, launched a searing campaign in defence of Husain’s — and every other citizen’s — right to creative activities of all genres howsoever distasteful these might be as per the code of aesthetics of any other citizen or group of citizens — with the only reservation that these must not encroach upon the fundamental rights of others. That apart, a portraiture of, for instance, a nude Saraswati should not be any more erotic than the medieval sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses in various amatory positions observable in the temples of Konark and Khajuraho. True, to be outraged by Husain but make a beeline for Khajuraho is in the domain of one’s personal prerogative. To demand a ban of Husain’s work or create a situation vicious enough to compel him flee the country was, however, something totally out of alignment with the tenets of a free society. Why deny it, there was also an undercurrent of a sickening attitude echoing the crooked, not-quite-uttered-but-implicit assertion that if some damsel was fated to be violated, that act should be the exclusive right of only a hoodlum belonging to her own religion or caste rather than that of an outsider.

Civil society activists could have thronged New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar or Ramlila grounds to demand the end of the sordid ongoing drama. Scholars of weight and art connoisseurs, currently busy giving discourses and writing long tracts on the genius of Husain, could have addressed the Union and state governments seeking adequate measures to protect Husain’s right to free expression, failing which — they could have given the ultimatum — they would resign from all official committees and commissions, including cultural bodies like the Lalit Kala, Sangeet Natak and Sahitya Akademis or the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. There was not a squeak from these categories.

Call this hypocrisy or call this cowardice, it has a solid material basis. Political parties by and large have their eye on the main chance. They want to come to power. To capture power, it is necessary to win votes. Around 80 per cent of the national electorate, they reason — even if clandestinely — are from the majority community. Debauchery indulged in by deities is a subject never to be discussed; the affairs of gods and goddesses are out of the jurisdiction of ordinary mortals. Painting the goddess Saraswati in the nude by one such mortal — that too by one who does not belong to the denomination — was a different matter. One never knows, it could affect the susceptibilities of a substantial section of voters; so why take an unnecessary risk, it was safer to be circumspect and not be too vocal against the religious bigots harrying Husain, let him take care of himself.

Civil society groups, alas, are hardly innocent Simple Simons either. Several of them are, in supposedly authentic Gandhian tradition, of a religious bent; a controversy concerning, say, the depiction of an unclad female deity was not exactly their cup of tea. The culture vultures are even more calculating. They, the bulk of them, prefer to be always in the limelight, it bloats their ego. There are, besides prospects of collateral dividends to be considered. Government patronage ensures opportunities for both being at the receiving end of public notice and selection for official goodwill trips to charming distant countries. The credo is, come hell or high water, be on the right side of the establishment. Those in authority had decided to throw Husain to the wolves; the so-called intelligentsia hastened to take the cue.

Any way, all is well that ends well. Now that Husain is safely dead, everybody can breathe easy and pile homage upon homage on him. As for the BJP, there was, of course, no problem ever. Husain-baiting promised a swelling of its vote bank; it could afford to relax. One or two of its leaders, with the reputation of being culture buffs, had some early Husains in their private collection; these were hastily removed from the living room and stashed away. Meanwhile, the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh government is exceedingly happy with its tourism development corporation which continues to make a roaring business carting tourists, foreign and native, to see the Khajuraho stoneworks — and die.

The layers of hypocrisy have no bottom.

[the above article is also available at: http://www.sacw.net/article2200.html]

==============================================
6.  DIVISIVE TRACK
Editorial Comment The Times of India, July 20, 2011
==============================================

Last heard, India had a secular constitution that protected freedom of expression. That slipped the notice of Vishwanath Hegde Kageri, Karnataka's school education minister, when he declared that those opposed to the teaching of the Gita in schools should quit India. Whether Kageri or the state BJP likes it or not, there is a constitutional issue around religious preaching by state schools. Article 28(1) of the Constitution forbids religious instruction of any kind in educational institutions wholly funded by the state. That's why the matter is before the courts now, but Kageri is trying to browbeat opponents by resorting to inflammatory and communally polarising rhetoric. Quite apart from the constitutional impropriety of state schools imparting religious education, anyone has the right to oppose the introduction of any school text at any time, without being asked to leave the country. Can politicians never get beyond their old divisive habits, not even in communally sensitive times such as these?

Kageri's approach also sums up another common ailment of Indian education ministers. They still do not see their job as expanding the boundaries of education and promoting useful skills that will empower the young, but as prescribing what should be taught, using schools and colleges to disburse patronage, policing the boundaries of Indian culture, and turning education into a tool of political propaganda. That's why the system continues to churn out vast numbers of unemployable graduates. Education must be freed from political straitjackets if we are to cultivate a skilled workforce and realise our demographic dividend. And the change must come from the top. For starters, Kageri can be asked to quit his ministry. 

==============================================
7. INDIA:: COMMUNAL AND TARGETED VIOLENCE BILL: A STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION
by Irfan Engineer
==============================================
sacw.net

The proposed draft of Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 is a step in right direction. The BJP is attacking the Bill precisely for the reason that it holds officers responsible for their acts and omissions and negligent behavior or willful failure in controlling riots. The Officers would not listen to their political bosses, else they could face prosecution if they are complicit. Organising, instigating and abetting communal violence will not be easy. The pretext these leaders are using is that the Bill does not propose to address communal and targeted violence perpetrated by the minority against the majority community. However, whenever that happens, the state has not been found wanting in taking appropriate action against those responsible.
http://www.sacw.net/article2202.html

==============================================
8. WORSHIPPING A STEEL RATH IN ORISSA
by P. Sainath
==============================================

The Hindu, July 13, 2011

Trying to criminalise protesters seems a standard operating procedure in dealing with anti-displacement struggles in Orissa and beyond.

They captured national attention during their nerve-wracking stand-off with the police barely a fortnight ago over the Orissa State's forcible acquisition of their land for POSCO. Today, Dhinkia and Govindpur villages seem, on the surface at least, quite relaxed.

“That,” says Abhay Sahoo, smiling, “is partly because the 24 platoons of police which came here to throw us out have been busy with the Jagannath rath yatra in Puri (where they beat up the priests). They were needed there for some days.” Sahoo is the main leader of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) that is fighting the land acquisition. Another reason for the lull, he says, is that “after they messed up in June, the Orissa government might worry about a new embarrassment. That too with a Parliament session just days away.” Hence the pause in the conflict. Anti-POSCO villagers won the last round, both on the ground and in the media. But, as they see it, the police serve Lord Jagannath's wooden rath for only two weeks. “Their commitment to Posco's steel rath is round the year. They'll be back.”

The returning police will meet a stubborn people. Quite determined to resist the State government's takeover of their farmland for the South Korean giant's proposed integrated power and steel plant and captive port. The project would also allow for the mining of 600 million tons of iron ore.

The vineyards

People here are among Orissa's better off agrarian communities. The betel vine (pan leaf) economy is central to their well-being. There are 1,800 vineyards in the project zone in official count. Betel farmers here put the number at 2,500. About a thousand of them in Dhinkia and Govindpur. The daily wage rate is Rs.200 or more plus a good meal. That's the highest in the State's agrarian sector, higher than what construction workers in Bhubaneswar get and close to twice Orissa's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) rate. It can go up to Rs.450 plus a meal for specific tasks in the vineyards. A tiny vineyard on a tenth of an acre can produce 540 labour days or more in a year. That's apart from 600 days of family labour. Some landless workers earn even more by being fishermen as well. That source of income collapses if POSCO's captive port comes up at Jatadhari. So locals mock the claim of projects bringing jobs, pointing to labour shortages and no major demand for employment. In all classes, even amongst traders, most are unwilling to lose their livelihoods for a project they find destructive and a compensation they see as meaningless.

Cases and warrants

Below the calm surface is a larger tension flowing from the State's way of dealing with the anti-POSCO struggle. With multiple cases filed against large numbers of people — and countless warrants issued — several have been unable to go out of these villages for five years. “Many can't attend close family weddings in other villages. They can't visit very ill siblings or parents,” protestors at the “human wall” guarding Dhinkia and Govindpur against police told us. This has fostered a state of siege feeling.

Abhay Sahoo has 49 cases filed against him and spent 10 months in Choudwar Jail while fighting them. “In all,” he says, “over a thousand people here have had 177 cases filed against them for resisting POSCO.” Trying to criminalise protesters seems a standard operating procedure in dealing with anti-displacement struggles in Orissa and beyond. Barely a hundred kilometres away in Kalinganagar is Rabi Jarika, leader of the tribal resistance to acquisition of land for a Tata steel plant. “I couldn't leave my village of Chandia in years. The police had slapped 72 cases on me under every section you can name.”

Jagatsinghpur district's Superintendent of Police S. Devdutt Singh attacks the PPSS' count as “utterly false. There may be,” he told us on the phone from Delhi, “200-300 troublemakers against whom there are cases. Cases have also been filed by those harassed by the PPSS, including 52 families they drove out forcibly. And if there are innocent people fearing arrest if they step out, they may have been misled by the PPSS.”

2005 MoU

Back in Dhinkia, Sahoo seems to be right about the present calm. While pouring rain was the reason advanced for a lull in the land battle, political embarrassment seems a more potent one. The latest is the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights' asking the State “to withdraw police forces sheltered in schools meant for the education of children” in the project area. Critics point out that the government is forcibly acquiring land for a project whose memorandum of understanding (MoU) expired a year ago. The 2005 MoU between the State and the corporation gave POSCO the mineral at way below market prices. Top government sources say “the renewal is likely in 15 days.” But the lack of an MoU has not stopped the State from moving to acquire 4,004 acres of land for the project. Roughly half of that is in Dhinkia and Govindpur.

Priyabrata Patnaik, CMD of the Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation and the officer-in-charge of all land acquisition, declares: “It is not mandatory for us to have an MoU to acquire land. We have acquired and allotted over 9,000 acres for industries which have no MoU with the State.”

The Orissa government Chief Secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik told TheHindu, “We are acquiring only government land. Most of it here is forest and we will not take private land (which is a small portion of the total).” The vineyards,” he insists, “are fairly recent.” Villagers, however, point out that survey records show betel farms existing in 1927. “And we have been here even longer,” says Gujjari Mohanty at her vineyard. She is past 70 and has been “engaged in this work from an early age.”

Devdutt Singh asserts: “Of seven villages in the project zone, things have moved smoothly in all except Govindpur and Dhinkia, where there is resistance. Even in Govindpur, I believe the majority are not with PPSS, only in Dhinkia they might be. Right now, we are clearing the work in the first five. Then we will go on to the others. There is no war here. We will do our job. But I cannot discuss how many platoons we have there or our plans.”

He is right that there is no war here — in that one set of combatants is totally unarmed. But when the police do move in on Dhinkia and Govindpur, POSCO's steel rath might run into that human wall. 

==============================================
9. INDIA: JOINT STATEMENT CONDEMNING ATTACK ON PEACEFUL PROTESTERS OF NUAGAON (Anti-POSCO Struggle Area Odisha)
==============================================

 On 16th July 2011 Saturday eight platoons of police attacked and lathi charged peaceful protesters in the village of Nuagaon, Jagatsinghpur District, Odisha [India]. The protesters, despite being mainly women, were attacked by an entirely male police force, resulting in injuries to several and serious injuries to one woman, who has now been hospitalised. The protesters were seeking to protect their forests and trees from being cleared by the police as part of the government’s land grab for the POSCO project. After the lathi charge the entire village joined the protest, eventually driving the police back and forcing them to retreat. We strongly condemn this brutal attack on a peaceful protest by people seeking to protect their legal and democratic rights.
http://www.sacw.net/article2204.html

==============================================
10.    IN GOD WE TRUST … REST STRICTLY CASH!!
 by Sandeep Shastri
==============================================
 The politics of Karnataka has verily become the theatre of the absurd! Having been ‘sworn- in‘ three years ago to govern the State, the political leadership was heading for a ‘swear- out‘ at Dharmasthala, an important seat of religion and spirituality in the State. This was to affirm one’s commitment to the truth. The Chief Minister (B.S. Yeddyurappa) challenging a former Chief Minister (H.D. Kumaraswamy) to testify before God at Dharmasthala by means of a government advertisement in all leading newspapers is clearly something exceptional in a secular state. The fact that the challenge was accepted was equally shocking. Before the days of plastic money, many shops had a board ‘In God we Trust, Rest Strictly Cash‘. This seems to be the new mantra of the political leadership in the State.
http://www.sacw.net/article2203.html

==============================================
11.    DHAKA DECLARATION: SOUTH ASIA WOMEN’S NETWORK’S POSITION ON AN EMERGING ’GREEN ECONOMY’
==============================================
South Asia is the region that bears a heavy burden of the global ecological crisis, including climate change and species extinction. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers, the intensification of droughts, floods, and cyclones, and the rising sea level aggravate the already-serious ecological stresses in our region.
http://www.sacw.net/article2201.html


==============================================
12. IMPLEMENT THE SUPREME COURT ORDER ON SALWA JUDUM AND SPOS
==============================================

PRESS RELEASE 18 July 2011

We strongly welcome the Supreme Court order by Justice Sudershan Reddy and Justice SS Nijjar declaring the use and arming of SPOs as well as state support for Salwa Judum unconstitutional and directing the state to disarm SPOs, stop using them in counterinsurgency operations, as well as file FIRs and prosecute them vigorously, as also the CBI enquiry into the Tadmetla attacks.  This landmark order is not a victory for any one side, but a victory for the Constitution itself over those who seek to violate and destroy it.

We are at the same time dismayed by the response of the state and union governments to this order. Even now,  the state government is refusing to accept – despite all the evidence established to the contrary – that Salwa Judum  was a violent, illegal, unconstitutional movement, supported by the government, which was responsible for attacking some 644 villages, killing hundreds of people, raping women and burning thousands of homes, destroying crores of rupees worth of paddy and property.

This refusal to accept the court’s verdict is, however, nothing new. Right from 2008 when the Court has been directing the state to show what action it has taken to file FIRs, compensate people who have been victims of Salwa Judum, SPOs and security forces at the same rates as compensation to the victims of Naxalites, rehabilitate affected villages, bring the IDPs (internally displaced people) back from Andhra Pradesh,  close down the camps, and vacate schools occupied by security forces – the state government has consistently ignored the Court’s directions.  Not only this, in 2010, they arrested Kartam Joga, the lead petitioner in WP 119/2007, one of the three cases on which this order has been passed, on completely trumped up charges. He is still in jail along with Kopa Kunjam and Sukhnath, whose sole crime was helping to resettle villagers who had been attacked by Salwa Judum.  It is clear that the Government has nothing but contempt for both the Court and the Constitution.

And yet the state and union governments claim to be fighting for ‘India’ sending thousands of security forces to die in operations against their own people. Is this the India that they are fighting for – a state which does not believe in its own laws?
Had the state government arrested even one SPO or Salwa Judum leader –including those who are roaming free despite being convicted by the trial court of rape – there would be no room for worry that they would be vulnerable to Maoist reprisals. However, the Maoists too must heed the Court’s wise words and leave it to the law to take its own course as far as punishing SPOs and Salwa Judum leaders go. It is not up to them to offer  amnesty to SPOs who have committed crimes. They must be punished under the proper legal process.
By locating the fundamental problem in the amoral political economy of the country, but simultaneously grounding the solution in the vision of the constitution to nurture people’s aspirations and defend their fundamental rights, the Court has courageously shown the way forward. The question is whether both sides are intelligent and brave enough to understand the importance of this order.  

We call upon the Government of India, the state of Chhattisgarh and CPI (Maoist) to immediately enable the implementation of the Court’s orders to bring relief to the people of Chhattisgarh.  Social, political and economic justice will act as a major confidence building measure, and it is only on this basis that the path to peace can be paved.

Citizens Initiative for Peace, 
People’s Union for Civil Liberties
People’s Union for Democratic rights.
Delhi Solidarity Group
National Alliance of People’s Movements

==============================================
13 INDIA: THE STATE OF THE WAR
by Nirmalangshu Mukherji
==============================================

outlookindia.com

Someone remarked recently that the Maoists will make sure that the fight continues until the last adivasi, and the Indian forces will not stop firing until the Maoists do. The war goes on.

A war has broken out in some parts of east-central India, especially some regions of the Dandakaranya forests that span across the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh. Reportedly, there are thousands of Maoist guerrillas armed with sophisticated weapons confronting a vast array of paramilitary forces assembled by the government of India.

Caught in the crossfire are millions of poor, marginalised and historically isolated adivasis. Their habitat, in which they have lived as forest-dwellers for thousands of years, is now heavily mined and laced with thousands of explosive devices planted by the Maoists. The Maoists have occupied vast regions of the dense forests where their guerrilla zones and heavily-guarded military headquarters are located. In response, the state forces have set up hundreds of camps and have occupied school-buildings to launch their attack.

Plans are afoot to install a jungle warfare training school by the Indian Army close to the supposed Maoist headquarters. Already hundreds of adivasis have lost their lives in the crossfire, thousands are in jail mostly on fake charges, several hundred villages have been looted and burned, lakhs have fled from their homes, hundreds of schools have closed down, and malnutrition has reached sub-Saharan dimensions.

Further, as it usually happens with ill-grounded armed insurgencies, armed actions of the Maoists and the state are already giving rise to ugly vigilante reactions from among the same exhausted adivasi population: adivasis killing, raping, looting other adivasis. An (unpublished) official report of the Ministry of Rural Development states that the vigilante campaign sponsored by the Chhattisgarh state—called Salwa Judum, euphemistically meaning “peace hunt”—was “headed and peopled by Murias, some of them erstwhile cadre and local leaders of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) ... The first onslaught of the Salwa Judum was on Muria villagers who still owed allegiance to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). It turned out to be an open war between brothers.”

After the earlier strictures by the Supreme Court of India on the illegality of state-sponsored vigilante groups, the war continued unabated between those adivasis who are with the Maoists, one the one hand, and Koya commandos recruited by the state from the same adivasi population, on the other. With fresh strictures against the hiring of SPOs and Koya commandos (Supreme Court of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 250 of 2007, Order of July 5, 2011), the “war between brothers” is likely to assume newer, more clandestine, forms. The adivasis will now be encouraged to “spontaneously” attack other adivasis owing allegiance to the Maoists with the state acting behind the scenes.

Also, the state is likely to induct more local adivasis directly into police and paramilitary forces to compensate for the loss of low-cost SPOs and Koya commandos. If the state could hire over 5000 adivasi boys for a meagre salary of three thousand rupees per month, they can surely hire three times more with regular police salaries. And money is not a problem with shining India; there are 12,000 vacancies in Chhattisgarh police anyway. Alternatively, some of the “disarmed” Koya commandos may want to go back to the Maoists for food, guns, and shelter since there is no Supreme Court judgment on “special Maoist officers.” A veiled invitation to that effect is already on offer. With no dearth of jobs with guns if they are willing to die, the land of Chhattisgarh is full of opportunities for adivasi boys and girls. The “war” goes on.

With the reported scale and sophistication of Maoist military preparations and the determination and the vast offensive resources available to the Indian state, the grim picture just sketched appears to be just the beginning. It does not require either space science or insider’s knowledge to infer that, ultimately, the Maoists cannot win this one since they have never secured mass acceptance with the people of India. In fact, if their history of four decades of armed operations is any indication, it is extremely unlikely that they will ever expand beyond the jungles of Dandakaranya: these forests denote their only habitat and (final) burial. Even Maoist sympathisers seem to understand this: “There is no doubt that the Maoists’ militarised politics makes it almost impossible for it to function in places where there is no forest cover” (Roy, “Trickledown etc.”). It is another matter that Maoist sympathisers continue to be under the illusion that this (four-decades-old) limitation is just a fleeting phenomenon that will be overcome as the movement expands.

Nonetheless, given the special character of jungle warfare and the relative inaccessibility of their operational zones, Maoists have certainly developed the means to ward off Indian forces, including eventually the Indian army, for years. Even a single forest brigand, Veerappan, accompanied by a few dozen armed men, was able to resist security forces for decades. As with Veerappan and the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the security forces are likely to suffer relatively more damage in the initial stages due to the unfamiliar terrain and lack of penetration in the local population (see, e.g., “Naxals rule the roost as cops take it easy,” Times of India, 22 June 2011). The history of insurgency in the North-East shows that the Indian government will respond to the early setbacks with escalated violence, perhaps armed with special laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which is in operation in Kashmir and the North-East for decades.

The state of Chhattisgarh has already enacted and put into operation the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA) under which an untold number of hapless adivasis have been incarcerated. An impressive international campaign—involving scores of nobel laureates and other dignitaries—ensued when Dr. Binayak Sen was jailed under this act. It is a victory of the democratic forces that Dr. Sen is now released. Yet, perhaps thousands of faceless adivasis are still in jail as the campaign died out once Dr. Sen was granted bail.

Needless to say, the entire brunt of the projected “proctrated war” will be borne by the adivasis, while elite urban radicals, well-ensconced in their privileged homes and corporate television studios, become progressively stoned with imaginary fumes of revolution emanating from the Maoist guns. As Aditya Nigam (“Rumour of Maoism”, Kafila) put it, “we have a Maoist-aligned intelligentsia vicariously playing out their revolutionary fantasies through the lives of adivasis, while the people actually dying in battle are almost all adivasis.” Someone remarked recently that the Maoists will make sure that the fight continues until the last adivasi, and the Indian forces will not stop firing until the Maoists do. The war goes on.

Professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji teaches at Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

o o o

SEE ALSO

NEED 65,000 TROOPS TO FIGHT NAXALS: ARMY ASSESSMENT
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/need-65-000-troops-to-fight-naxals-army-assessment/819322/

PEACE-LOVING INDIA, THE WORLD'S LARGEST ARMS IMPORTER
by Andrew Buncombe
Defence spending has leapt since the Mumbai attacks of 2008 as Delhi steps up security and deterrence
http://ind.pn/qMTlkY


==============================================
13. CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN BERLIN
By Victor Grossman
==============================================

Berlin Bulletin No. 30
July 16 2011

Charlie Chaplin in Berlin, like everywhere else, past or present, equals hilarious laughter but means also, for all whose eyes are wide enough, no lack of true drama full of nuances. This was proved again on Friday, July 15th.
Chaplin had visited Berlin in 1931, touring with his new film, “City Lights,” and on his way to Adlon Hotel, where he stayed for five days, he was greeted by wildly enthusiastic crowds. But it was a Berlin under the double shadow of the great depression and the menacing growth of the forces led by Hitler.
Hitler and Chaplin, known for their similar little mustaches and born only four days apart, represented in every other respect exact, extreme opposites.
Eighty years after Chaplin’s triumphant Berlin visit, Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate proved an unusual but fitting backdrop for the giant screen showing of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”, his own moving declaration of war, in 1940, against hatred and fascism, racism and all oppression. It was this same big arch through which, two years after Chaplin’s visit, Hitler’s storm troopers had marched triumphantly to power and it is very close to the spot where, in 1945, he swallowed a fatal dose of poison just before Red Army soldiers raised their red victory flag nearby over the hulking ruins of the Reichstag. This pillared arch has always been of historic importance, also in our own recent lifetime. At the free showing Friday evening hundreds of people, most of them sitting patiently on the ground, undoubtedly followed the advice uttered by his daughter Geraldine before the film started: “.to enjoy it, to think and to grow.”
This slender little actress, no longer young but contagiously full of much the same joyous energy and attraction as her father, came to Berlin, where she is staying in that same famous Adlon Hotel, to help host a Chaplin retrospective of all of  her father’s films.
Except for the one remarkable outdoor showing of the mockingly anti-Hitler film at Brandenburg Gate, so fraught with symbolism, his films, all eighty of them, early ones and late ones, 8-minute shorts and those of feature length, will be shown in the next three weeks, as many as five or six a day, in a cinema orgy of laughter mixed with occasional tears in the Babylon cinema theater. It is a building full of its own anti-fascist symbolism; it was designed in 1929 by a great anti-Nazi architect and, later, a small resistance group here was able to provide a brief hiding place behind the scenes for people pursued by the Nazis.
The opening night in Babylon theater, a few hours before darkness permitted the open air showing, was devoted to Chaplin’s “Gold Rush”, with the little tramp hunting for gold on the Klondike. Before it started, Geraldine said a few words to the eager audience, with a line or two in German, words filled with her lively humor and informality while also showing how moved she was by this ambitious tribute to a father she still admires so vividly.
Her words in English were translated by the noted film director Volker Schlöndorf, while curator Friedemann Beyer and theater director Timothy Grossman welcomed prominent guests and thanked all who had been of help, up to and including US Ambassador Murphy and Berlin Mayor Wowereit.
But then Chaplin took over with his major early film success, accompanied by the Neues Kammerorchester Potsdam, an ensemble of young musicians who are playing the music to all the silent feature films with exactly the music Chaplin composed for them. Even old buffs who know the films well were amazed at what a difference an orchestra made!
Those lucky enough to see many of the eighty films can follow the route of this little slapstick comedian from London, landing in those early days in heady Hollywood and developing into a stirring spokesman, not only for those oppressed by Hitler and his legions, but for all tramps, outcasts and underdogs against the greedy and the narrow-minded, the violent and hateful everywhere in the world. Although he never publicly committed himself to any particular political direction, his message was clear enough, and strong enough, as in his film “Monsieur Verdoux”, exposing all eager warriors.  He was forced to give up his adopted American home in 1952 thanks to just such views and finally settled in more neutral  Switzerland with his young wife Oona and his many children. In 1957 he voiced his angry reaction to the likes of Senator Joe McCarthy in “A King in New York.” Neither of these two films was shown widely in the USA. Both are today as relevant as ever.
“Circus”, “Modern Times”, “City Lights” , and “The Kid”, with countless wonderful laughs and all with something to say, will have the fine orchestral backing - as well as “Limelight”, of course, his coming to terms with old age, the recollections of his lonely childhood years in London and a haunting, hugely successful signature song. The shorts, some hardly known, will mostly be shown in a smaller room with piano accompaniment by fine pianists.
After the first two showings nearly everyone spoke about how wonderful it was to watch the films with a large audience, to laugh out loud with all the others - but also, secretly, to wipe away a tear or two. Somehow even sentimental passages, easily derided in other films, never seemed kitschy when Chaplin filmed them.  His taste was superb; he was one of those very rare masters who was able to reach all ages, all levels, all interests, and almost all views.
So many of his sentiments, though interpreted in many different ways, remain as relevant as ever before in the contradictory, challenging, ever-changing life of the German capital, and far beyond it. There are still too many homeless tramps and hungry children around and still too many of the men who love weapons and often long to use them.
(Personal note. If my review seems especially enthusiastic, it is not solely because of the great films, though I love nearly all of them. As I must disclose, a main organizer of the retrospective and director of the theater, Timothy Grossman, is my son.  And just incidentally, it was he discovered that Chaplin had found it necessary to abandon McCarthy-ridden America exactly one month to a day after I was compelled to make the same unhappy decision.)

==============================================
14. Revolution and Repression on the Banks of the Suez Canal
by Joel Beinin
==============================================

(Jadaliyya, July 12 2011)
Many people in Suez proudly claim that they initiated Egypt’s “January 25 Revolution.” There were several demonstrations in opposition to Gamal Mubarak inheriting the presidency from his father as early as July 2010. Relations between the police and the people were tense after a police general was assassinated on November 29, 2010. On January 25, when protests in Cairo and Alexandria were relatively peaceful, the demonstration in Suez was particularly violent. Police shot dead three protesters, the first “martyrs of the revolution.” Demonstrators torched a police station.

Suez is strategically located at the southern end of the Suez Canal, and its workers have a history of militancy. Security authorities have typically gone to great lengths to intervene in strikes and other collective actions. This has not changed since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

Seven subsidiary companies of the Suez Canal Authority in Suez, Isma‘iliyya, and Port Said employ about 9,000 workers in ship repairs and other maritime services. They went on strike on June 12 demanding parity with the wages and benefits of workers directly employed by the canal authority. This would amount to a salary salary increase of 40 percent. Workers raised this demand long before January 25, 2011.  

In April the interim government promised to meet their demand. The effective rulers of Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, has not authorized the wage increase on the technically correct grounds that as workers in the public service sector, their wages and working conditions are established by parliamentary legislation. Since there is no parliament, their conditions of employment cannot be changed by the proper legal procedures. The strike expresses workers’ rejection of this logic.

I travelled to Suez on July with two other Americans and an Egyptian to hear about the strike directly from workers at the Suez Canal Maritime Arsenal Company. On the way we stopped to speak with demonstrators who had been occupying the main square of downtown Suez (Maydan al-‘Arba‘in) since July 5.

A large and carefully painted banner commanding the square listed their demands, more-or-less the same as those who have occupied Tahrir Square and downtown Alexandria since the very large demonstrations of July 8. Speedier public trials for Hosni Mubarak and the high officials of his regime accused of corruption and purifying the Ministry of Interior, which commands the police, are high on the list. The banner also demands a jobs program for youth – unemployment is especially high in Suez – and a national minimum and maximum wage. The revolutionary youth groups do not speak so specifically about economic issues. More commonly, they call for “social justice” and, recently, “the poor first.” Liberals, like the business magnate Naguib Sawiris and his Free Egyptians Party, avoid these issues altogether.

An intense debate erupted about whether or not anyone should speak to foreigners. Most of those in the square were quite willing. Because there is a disproportionately high number of “martyrs of the revolution” in Suez, several people spoke with particular vehemence about demanding compensation for their families and prosecution of the police officers and commanders responsible for their death, a demand also prominent in Tahrir Square. 

Some people mentioned the water problem in Suez. The pipeline supplying fresh water begins in Cairo and passes through Isma‘iliyya before it reaches Suez. Consequently, the drinking water is foul-tasting and has many impurities resulting in intestinal and kidney diseases and cancers.

The most articulate and willing to speak with us was a woman very conservatively dressed in a plain brown skirt, headscarf (hijab), another scarf down to her waste (khimar), and black gloves. She invited us into one of the tents set up in the square. A number of youths intervened and demanded that we leave the tent. Under pressure from the youths, we left the square sooner than we might have, but confident that we had understood why people were there.

When we arrived at the arsenal, one worker (no names are used in this article for obvious reasons) immediately suggested that he give us a copy of his video clip of a violent clash between the army and protesters who had blocked the road to ‘Ayn Sukhna, a popular beach resort sixty kilometers south of Suez, the previous evening. The clash is evidence that in provincial cities like Suez, not only in Cairo and Alexandria, distrust of the SCAF is growing. Even many who insist that they “support the army” go on to say that it has failed to fulfill the aspirations of the revolution. 

Soon we were surrounded by a swarm of plainclothes security officials. The worker’s laptop, his personal property, not the company’s, was seized by one of the security men before he could complete the file transfer to our flash drive, and he was whisked away. Even though our main worker-contact had come out to greet us, we decided to leave before more workers were endangered. We drove to Port Tawfiq, where we bought snacks and a newspaper which reported that six workers at the arsenal had been dismissed the day before for participating in the strike.

As we had agreed, we spoke with our worker-contact on the phone after things calmed down. He and another worker agreed to come to meet us. We began the interview in a park in Port Tawfiq on the bank of the Suez Canal. 

The park was occupied by about fifty youths who told us they had moved there from the ‘Arba‘in Square sit-in to “escalate their pressure on the army.” They insisted that they had no intention of disrupting the Suez Canal and that their presence was only symbolic. Nonetheless, there was an intimidating military unit stationed between the protesters and the canal. The park had been cordoned off with extensive rolls of barbed wire, leaving only one narrow entry.

The “revolutionary youth” came over to us and told us that we could not interview and photograph the workers in the park. They claimed that the workers had “sectoral demands,” whereas they had “national demands” and they did not want any confusion between the two. We mildly objected that we were about 100 meters away from the sit-in and weren’t photographing it or the Suez Canal. But we left the park. 

The better dressed and more articulate worker introduced himself as “HM,” a “ship repairing engineer.” In Egypt many people who do not have university engineering degrees (such graduates would definitely not consider themselves workers) are called “engineer.”  So this did not immediately arouse my suspicion. I did begin to have doubts when he said that the workers would accept a compromise of less than the full 40 percent wage increase, that the army was “trying to solve the problem,” and that their trade union committee affiliated with the Egyptian Trade Union Federation fully supported the strike. ETUF was an important instrument of the Mubarak regime and very rarely supported worker initiatives of any sort and only two strikes in recent decades. Independent trade unionists are demanding its dissolution.

The “ship repairing engineer” eventually admitted that he was part of management. So it was no surprise that the actual worker was unwilling to say much in his presence, even though he had agreed to speak with us only twenty minutes earlier. But this effort to control workers’ voice was only part of the story – the part that HM was willing, if reluctantly, to concede. 

We had already attached his lapel microphone in the park and the recorder was running as we left. As we were crossing the street to conduct the interview, a military intelligence officer approached us. MH was recorded telling him, “I spoke to Colonel “A” from your office…. We coordinated with them regarding the things we are going to stay in this interview. We will finish and call you.”

MH also gave a brief report to the military intelligence officer about the political situation in Suez: “…last Friday, during the sit-in in ‘Arba‘in Square, some people from the April 6 group said they want the independence of Suez and the management of the waterway, and that is ridiculous. So we interfered, in cooperation with other political forces, and made them take back their statement. This is just stupidity. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go talk to them for five minutes and then I’ll get back to you.”

It is, in fact, unlikely that the April 6 Youth Movement, a mainly upper-middle class group with a fundamentally liberal, albeit increasingly radical, outlook would make such demands. 

More importantly, the collaboration of the company management with security and intelligence authorities, which was well-known and assumed during the Mubarak regime, remains just as it was. The novelty is that suppressing the voices of workers and other “stupid” people is not only a prerogative of their managers at work. Now even “revolutionary youth” feel empowered to determine who can speak to whom, where, and what should be said.


David Enders and Robert Eshelman were in Suez with me and have also reported on our experiences.


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

South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter 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.