SACW 30 March 2012 | Afghan moral crimes / America's Pakistan / India: 1969 Jeevan Lal Kapur Report on Gandhi Murder digitised ; Democracy and protest / Adrienne Rich Dies

[Harsh Kapoor]

    South Asia Citizens Wire - 30 March 2012 - No. 2736
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Contents:

1. Afghanistan: Hundreds of Women, Girls in Jail for ’Moral Crimes’ (Human Rights Watch)
2. Pakistan: 'Is this justice?' (Beena Sarwar)
3. Prominent Pakistani acid victim commits suicide (Sebastian Abbot)
4. Sri Lanka: Open letter to ensure the security of Herman Kumara and Anura Roshantha
5. America's Pakistan (Zia Mian , Sharon K. Weiner)
6. Pakistan, India: Callous pursuit of power (Jawed Naqvi)
7. Pakistan, India urged to release fishermen with boats (report in Dawn)
8. India: Now digitised - Report of Jeevan Lal Kapur Commission of Inquiry in to Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi (1969) 
9. India: Cowardly Alliance Francaise shuts down exhibition of photographs by Sunil Gupta (Statement by Sahmat)
10. India: Democracy and the right to protest (Gautam Bhatia)
11. Maldives: Ousted President Mohamed Nasheed on the Coup That Ousted Him & His Climate Activism
12. India: Political buttons to protest erasure of A K Ramanujan’s essay by Delhi university (Harsh Kapoor)
13. India: Patriarchy and reactionary family values runs in their veins - reports

International: 
14. The British Asian activists attacked for promoting women's rights (Catrin Nye & Perminder Khatkar)
15. Feminist and women's rights organisations say NO to safeguarding "traditional values" at the expense of the human rights of women! (Petition)
16. Adrienne Rich, feminist poet and essayist, dies (Tribute by John Nichols)

17. Announcements:
- All India Meeting on: Women Prisoners & Custodial Violence (New Delhi, 31 March 2012)


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1. AFGHANISTAN: HUNDREDS OF WOMEN, GIRLS IN JAIL FOR ’MORAL CRIMES’ 
(Human Rights Watch)
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Human Rights Watch: Government Should Target Abusers, Not Victims

(Kabul) March 28, 2012 – The Afghan government should release the approximately 400 women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The United States and other donor countries should press the Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai to end the wrongful imprisonment of women and girls who are crime victims rather than criminals.

The 120-page report, “‘I Had to Run Away’: Women and Girls Imprisoned for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” is based on 58 interviews conducted in three prisons and three juvenile detention facilities with women and girls accused of “moral crimes.” Almost all girls in juvenile detention in Afghanistan had been arrested for “moral crimes,” while about half of women in Afghan prisons were arrested on these charges. These “crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution.

“It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “No one should be locked up for fleeing a dangerous situation even if it’s at home. President Karzai and Afghanistan’s allies should act decisively to end this abusive and discriminatory practice.”

The fall of the Taliban government in 2001 promised a new era of women’s rights. Significant improvements have occurred in education, maternal mortality, employment, and the role of women in public life and governance. Yet the imprisonment of women and girls for “moral crimes” is just one sign of the difficult present and worrying future faced by Afghan women and girls as the international community moves to decrease substantially its commitments in Afghanistan.

Human Rights Watch interviewed many girls who had been arrested after they fled a forced marriage and women who had fled abusive husbands and relatives. Some women interviewed by Human Rights Watch had gone to the police in dire need of help, only to be arrested instead.

“Running away,” or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, but the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals. Zina is a crime under Afghan law, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Women and girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses including forced and underage marriage, beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, forced prostitution, kidnapping, and murder threats. Virtually none of the cases had led even to an investigation of the abuse, let alone prosecution or punishment.

One woman, Parwana S. (not her real name), 19, told Human Rights Watch how she was convicted of “running away” after fleeing a husband and mother-in-law who beat her: “I will try to become independent and divorce him. I hate the word ‘husband.’ My liver is totally black from my husband… If I knew about prison and everything I would have just jumped into the river and committed suicide.”

Human Rights Watch said that women and girls accused of “moral crimes” face a justice system stacked against them at every stage. Police arrest them solely on a complaint of a husband or relative. Prosecutors ignore evidence that supports women’s assertions of innocence. Judges often convict solely on the basis of “confessions” given in the absence of lawyers and “signed” without having been read to women who cannot read or write. After conviction, women routinely face long prison sentences, in some cases more than 10 years.

Afghanistan’s 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women makes violence against women a criminal offense. But the same police, prosecutors, and judges who work zealously to lock up women accused of “moral crimes” often ignore evidence of abuse against the accused women, Human Rights Watch said.

“Courts send women to prison for dubious ‘crimes’ while the real criminals – their abusers –walk free,” Roth said. “Even the most horrific abuses suffered by women seem to elicit nothing more than a shrug from prosecutors, despite laws criminalizing violence against women.”

Abusive prosecution of “moral crimes” is important to far more than the approximately 400 women and girls in prison or pretrial detention, Human Rights Watch said. Every time a woman or girl flees a forced marriage or domestic violence only to end up behind bars, it sends a clear message to others enduring abuse that seeking help from the government is likely to result in punishment, not rescue.

The plight of women facing domestic violence is made still worse by archaic divorce laws that permit a man simply to declare himself divorced, while making it extremely difficult for a woman to obtain a divorce, Human Rights Watch said. The Afghan government made a commitment to reform these laws in 2007 under its National Action Plan for Women in Afghanistan, and a committee of experts drafted a new Family Law that would improve the rights of women. This new law, however, has been on hold with the government since 2010, with no sign of movement toward passage.

“It is long past time for Afghanistan to act on its promises to overhaul laws that make Afghan women second-class citizens,” Roth said. “Laws that force women to endure abuse by denying them the right to divorce are not only outdated but cruel.”

By maintaining discriminatory laws on the books, and by failing to address due process and fair trial violations in “moral crimes” cases, Afghanistan is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law. United Nations expert bodies and special rapporteurs have called for the repeal of Afghanistan’s “moral crimes” laws. The UN special rapporteur on violence against women has called on Afghanistan to “abolish laws, including those related to zina, that discriminate against women and girls and lead to their imprisonment and cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.” The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged Afghanistan to “emove so-called moral offences as a crime and release children detained on this basis.”

“The Afghan government and its international partners should act urgently to protect women’s rights and to ensure there is no backsliding,” Roth said. “President Karzai, the United States, and others should finally make good on the bold promises they made to Afghan women a decade ago by ending imprisonment for ‘moral crimes,’ and actually implementing their stated commitment to support women’s rights.”

Human Rights Watch Press release

[Also at: http://www.sacw.net/article2612.html ]

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2. PAKISTAN: 'IS THIS JUSTICE?'
by Beena Sarwar
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(received via email)

ISLAMABAD, March 25: The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered two adult women who had stated that they were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam, to be sent back to the Karachi shelter home where they had been lodged since being `recovered', for three more weeks to give them time to "consider" their views.
The Hindu community in Pakistan is asking if he would have done that if these women — Rinkal Kumari and Dr Lata Kumari –had given statements in favour of their kidnappers?
Lawyers and women's rights activists are asking how women who are legally adult can be treated like errant children and sent off to `consider' their behaviour and views.

According to an eyewitness (a family friend of Rinkal Kumari's): "When Rinkal came into court, she was brought to give a statement in front of CJP without being allowed to meet her parents, or even her mother. She only stated that she doesn't want to go anywhere, BUT with her mother. Then CJP met with Rinkal alone for about 20 minutes, and then let her mother meet her for only 10 minutes. Afterwards Rinkal was crying before CJP, saying she wanted to go to her parents. CJP said, girl wants to go with her parents but there is confusion as the girl had embraced Islam and had spent married life, so how can she turn around from her previous statement? Therefore, he ordered Rinkal to be sent to shelter home for more three weeks to think, along with Dr. Lata, who was sent to shelter home on same grounds."

"Is this justice?" asked the friend, a Hindu citizen of Pakistan, adding bitterly. "The Chief Justice should have backed the innocent girls, supported them and should have ordered immense and appropriate action against the Mullah and involved culprits, BUT after all he is a Muslim as well, he has intentions to book a plot in heaven as well…"

According to a KTN reporter, Rinkal Kumari's words in court were: "Pakistan mein sab log ek doosre ke saath mile huwe hain, yahan insaaaf sirf muslaman ke lye hai, Hindu ke lye koi insaaf nahee hai, mujhe yaheen court room mein maar daalo, lekin Dar-ul-aman nahee bhejo, yeh sab log mile huwe hain yeh humein maar dale.nge" (Everyone in Pakistan is hand in glove, there is justice only for Muslims, there is no justice for Hindus. Kill me here in court, but don't send me to Darul-Aman, all these people are hand in glove, they will kill us).

This is not a new issue. Here's the link to Hasan Mujtaba 1994 report `Brides of contention` (http://bit.ly/GSXWxG) and Marianna Baabar's article of 2006 "Sindh's Stolen Brides" in Outlook (http://bit.ly/HexIrp).

Here is the KTN report, captured on a personal camera – the reporter repeats Rinkals words quote-un-quote: http://youtu.be/zCe2hBysTKg

beena

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3. PROMINENT PAKISTANI ACID VICTIM COMMITS SUICIDE
by Sebastian Abbot
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( http://tinyurl.com/6t647k2 )
Associated Press – 29 March 2012

Family members of Pakistani acid attack victim Fakhra Younnus, mourn her death at Karachi airport in Pakistan on Sunday, March 25, 2012. Fakhra, who committed suicide by jumping from the sixth floor of her flat in Rome, was a victim of an acid attack allegedly carried out 12 years ago by her husband, the son of a feudal politician. (AP Photo)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani acid attack victim Fakhra Younushad endured more than three dozen surgeries over more than a decade to repair her severely damaged face and body when she finally decided life was no longer worth living.
The 33-year-old former dancing girl — who was allegedly attacked by her then-husband, an ex-lawmaker and son of a political powerhouse — jumped from the sixth floor of a building in Rome, where she had been living and receiving treatment.
Her March 17 suicide and the return of her body to Pakistan on Sunday reignited furor over the case, which received significant international attention at the time of the attack. Her death came less than a month after a Pakistani filmmaker won the country's first Oscar for a documentary about acid attack victims.
Younus' story highlights the horrible mistreatment many women face in Pakistan's conservative, male-dominated culture and is a reminder that the country's rich and powerful often appear to operate with impunity. Younus' ex-husband, Bilal Khar, was eventually acquitted, but many believe he used his connections to escape the law's grip — a common occurrence in Pakistan.
More than 8,500 acid attacks, forced marriages and other forms of violence against women were reported in Pakistan in 2011, according to The Aurat Foundation, a women's rights organization. Because the group relied mostly on media reports, the figure is likely an undercount.
"The saddest part is that she realized that the system in Pakistan was never going to provide her with relief or remedy," Nayyar Shabana Kiyani, an activist at The Aurat Foundation, said of Younus. "She was totally disappointed that there was no justice available to her."
Younus was a teenage dancing girl working in the red light district of the southern city of Karachi when she met her future husband, the son of Ghulam Mustafa Khar, a former governor of Pakistan's largest province, Punjab. The unusual pairing was the younger Khar's third marriage. He was in his mid-30s at the time.
The couple was married for three years, but Younus eventually left him because he allegedly physically and verbally abused her. She claimed that he came to her mother's house while she was sleeping in May 2000 and poured acid all over her in the presence of her 5-year-old son from a different man.
Tehmina Durrani, Ghulam Mustafa Khar's ex-wife and his son's stepmother, became an advocate for Younus after the attack, drawing international attention to the case. She said that Younus' injuries were the worst she had ever seen on an acid attack victim.
"So many times we thought she would die in the night because her nose was melted and she couldn't breathe," said Durrani, who wrote a book about her own allegedly abusive relationship with the elder Khar. "We used to put a straw in the little bit of her mouth that was left because the rest was all melted together."
She said Younus, whose life had always been hard, became a liability to her family, for whom she was once a source of income.
"Her life was a parched stretch of hard rock on which nothing bloomed," Durrani wrote in a column in The News after Younus' suicide.
Younus' ex-husband grew up in starkly different circumstances, amid the wealth and power of the country's feudal elite, and counts Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar as a cousin.
Bilal Khar once again denied carrying out the acid attack in a TV interview following her suicide, suggesting a different man with the same name committed the crime. He claimed Younus killed herself because she didn't have enough money, not because of her horrific injuries, and criticized the media for hounding him about the issue.
"You people should be a little considerate," said Khar. "I have three daughters and when they go to school people tease them."
In February, Younus said in one of her last interviews that powerful Pakistanis brutally treat ordinary citizens and "don't know how painful they make others' lives."
"I want such people to be treated in the same way" as they treat people whose lives they ruin, she told Geo TV over the telephone from Rome.
Younus was energized when the Pakistani government enacted a new set of laws last year that explicitly criminalized acid attacks and mandated that convicted attackers would serve a minimum sentence of 14 years, said Durrani. She hoped to return someday to get justice once her health stabilized.
"She said, 'When I come back, I will reopen the case, and I'll fight myself,' and she was a fighter," Durrani said.
Durrani had to battle with both Younus' ex-husband and the government to send her to Italy, where the Italian government paid for her treatment and provided her money to live on and send her child to school. Pakistani officials argued that sending Younus to Italy would give the country a bad name, Durrani said.
[Related: Domestic violence against women: How to spot abusive men]
Younus was happy when Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar for her documentary about acid attack victims in February, but was worried about being forgotten since she wasn't profiled in the film, said Durrani.
Durrani said Younus' case should be a reminder that the Pakistani government needs to do much more to prevent acid attacks and other forms of violence against women, and also help the victims.
"I think this whole country should be extremely embarrassed that a foreign country took responsibility for a Pakistani citizen for 13 years because we could give her nothing, not justice, not security," said Durrani.
___
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Asif Shahzad contributed to this report.

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4. SRI LANKA: OPEN LETTER TO ENSURE THE SECURITY OF HERMAN KUMARA AND ANURA ROSHANTHA
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http://www.sacw.net/article2607.html
sacw.net

Ensure the security of Herman Kumara and Anura Roshantha

Monday, 26 March 2012

We, the undersigned civil society organisations and activists, are deeply disturbed by the threats faced by Mr. Herman Kumara of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO) and Mr. Aruna Roshantha Fernando of All Ceylon Fisher Folk Federation (ACFFF) and condemn these attempts to stifle democratic rights and silence these leaders.

Herman Kumara was followed from the airport by an unknown group upon his return to Sri Lanka after attending a meeting overseas on 24th February 2012. This group tailed him to his village and made inquiries from neighbours about his whereabouts. Herman Kumara believes that their intention was to abduct him.

We believe that that the current threat to Herman Kumara is a direct consequence of his naming in Parliament by the Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Development, Dr. Rajitha Senarathne on 21st February 2012, as one of two persons responsible for the protests of the fishing community against the fuel price increase – in which one fishermen in Chilaw was shot dead by the Special Task Force (STF). Despite numerous statements by the protestors themselves that their agitation was spontaneous and self-organised, and not instigated by others, both Herman Kumara and Anura Roshantha have had to go into hiding in fear of their safety because of these unfounded and malicious allegations.

Herman Kumara is the national convenor of a vibrant fisher people’s organisation in Sri Lanka – the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO) – and he has been the General Secretary of the World Federation of Fisher People (WFFP) for several years. He is a leading activist involved in other movements including the People’s Alliance for the Right to Land (PARL). He has worked tirelessly on individual campaigns to protect the rights of fishermen in the Negombo lagoon, whose livelihood was threatened by the introduction of sea-planes, and in opposing moves to appropriate the land of villagers in Kalpitiya for tourist development.

We have worked with Herman Kumara and his organisation for many years and we know the important role they have played in creating people’s awareness and sustaining the struggle against injustice where the socio-economic and democratic rights of people are threatened by the State or other actors. Herman Kumara and NAFSO have also participated in building solidarity between people in the North and East and those in the South through people-to-people dialogues for peace and sustainable development. The despicable threats and the use of the state media to intimidate Herman Kumara and NAFSO aim to undermine all these initiatives.

These threats against Herman Kumara and others are not isolated incidents but rather, just an example of a pattern of events that is taking place in the country to intimidate civil society organisations and human rights defenders involved in protecting and securing the rights of our fellow citizens. As organisations and individuals actively involved in struggles and movements for social justice and democratic rights, we are deeply concerned by these recent incidents targeting individuals, and the broader trends of intimidation and violence.

We would like to appeal to all people, regardless of political opinion, to join in solidarity to condemn this intimidation and to call for basic freedoms of association and expression to be protected so that Herman Kumara, Anura Roshantha, and many others activists and organisations, can function freely.

We appeal to the government of Sri Lanka to take urgent steps to:

Conduct impartial investigations into the threats faced by Herman Kumara and Anura Roshantha;

1. To protect the lives of these activists exercising their lawful and constitutionally protected freedoms;

2. To instruct state security and intelligence agencies to desist from surveillance and intimidation of all activists engaged in non-violent social action;

3. To unequivocally and publicly defend the rights of human rights defenders in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

Endorsed by (Organizations):

 Movement for Land and Agricultural Reforms (MONLAR)
 Uva farmers’ collective of poison free agriculture (UFCPFA)
 Vikalpani National Women’s Federation
 People’s Health Movement
 Sri Lanka Nature Group
 Environment Conservation Trust
 Mothers and Daughters of Lanka
 Womens Centre
 IMADR Asia Committee
 Sri Lanka human rights defender network
 Centre for Environmental Justice.
 Savisthri women’s Movement
 Women’s Action for Social Justice
 National Active Women’s United Collective
 Centre for Policy Alternatives
 Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union
 Movement Of Stand-Up
 All Lanka Peasants Front
 Interfaith Cooperation Forum
 International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth
 International Federation of Catholic Adult Rural Movements
 FIAN Sri Lanka Working Group
 Uwa Vellassa Kantha Sanvidhanaya
 Southern Fisheries organization, Matara
 Christian Alliance for Social Action
 People for Human Rights and Equality (PHRE), Melbourne, Australia
 Lawyers for Democracy
 Lanka Solidarity
 People’s Alternatives to Climate Change and Crisis in Agriculture

Endorsed by (Individuals):

 Rev. Fr. Sarath Iddamalgoda
 Fr. Oswald B. Firth, OMI
 Rev. Fr. Reid Shelton Fernando
 Rev Fr Ashok Stephen OMI
 Prof. Kumar David
 Prof Amal Kumarage
 Dr. Sumathy Sivamohan - Senior Lecturer
 Dr. Deepika Udagama—academic
 Lionel Bopage
 Melani Manel Perera – Journalist
 Danesh Karunanayake - academic
 Sunila Abeysekara
 Gamini Viyangoda
 Balasingham Skanthakumar
 Chandraguptha Thenuwara- Artist/ Senior Lecturer
 Padma Pushpakanthi- Social Development Activist
 K. P. Somalatha- Social Development Activist
 Priyanjith Alokabandara – freelance journalist
 Anushaya Collure
 H.M.P. Sanjeewanie – Researcher
 Ruki Fernando
 Shanthi Sachithanandam
 Sandun Thudugala
 Rohini Hensman (freelance writer and researcher)
 Mylvaganam Sooriasegaram
 Santhush Kumar Pararajasingam
 Sunil Bastian
 Shamala Kumar, University of Peradeniya
 Ainslie Joseph, Convenor of Christian Alliance for Social Action
 Ahilan Kadirgamar
 Balachandran Gowthaman
 Mahendran Thiruvarangan
 Shakya Pathmalal Lahiru
 Niyanthini Kadirgamar
 Marshal Fernando
 Dayapala Thiranagama
 Mahendran Thiruvarangan
 Chinthaka Rajapakse

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5. AMERICA'S PAKISTAN 
by Zia Mian , Sharon K. Weiner
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http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/americas-pakistan

published March 2012

David Ignatius, Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage (W. W. Norton, 2011).

Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (Public Affairs, 2011).

Philip Oldenburg, India, Pakistan and Democracy (Routledge, 2010).

Bruce Riedel, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad (Brookings, 2011).

Howard B. Schaffer and Teresita C. Schaffer, How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States (US Institute of Peace, 2011).

American policymakers and their advisers are struggling with the question of Pakistan. The last ten years have produced a host of policy reviews, study group reports, congressional hearings and a few academic and more popular books, with more expected as the 2014 deadline for the end of US major combat operations in Afghanistan nears. Much of this literature sees Pakistan as a policy problem and seeks to inform Washington’s debate on how to get Pakistan to do what the United States wants it to do. The literature also reveals the limits of American knowledge and power when it comes to Pakistan.

The welter of new material reveals a profound confusion in Washington about Pakistan as a state and society. “Much about Pakistani behavior remains a mystery,” claims Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has been advising American presidents about Pakistan since 1991 from a series of posts in the National Security Council and the Defense Department. He is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. His book Deadly Embrace offers a detailed participant’s view from the vantage point of policymaking on Pakistan over the past two decades. Riedel says, “Pakistan’s complex behavior and motives are certainly difficult for outsiders -- including US presidents -- to grasp.” As a result, “Pakistan can be frustrating.”

The confusion and frustration are not new: US experts have struggled to understand Pakistan since it became a state in 1947. US policymakers have an almost equally long history of trying to induce Pakistan to fit into their plans. [1] For America, from 1954 to 1969, Pakistan first figured as a possible ally in defense of Middle East oil, then as a staging ground for eavesdropping on the Soviets. Later, from 1979 to 1989, Pakistan was the means of safely managing a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After 2001, Pakistan was to be a comrade in arms, albeit press-ganged, against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In none of these cases, however, have things gone as planned for the United States.

Pakistan clearly has been pursuing its own interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan used American support to arm itself for war with India. In the 1980s, under cover of the Afghan war, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, in contravention of US wishes. Since 2002, Pakistan has diverted direct US military aid and equipment intended for Pakistani counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan to prepare for the next war against India. Pakistan also has been rapidly increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal. Finally, Pakistan’s government continues its support for radical Islamists, evident lately in the mass rallies being organized in major cities by the Difa-e Pakistan (Defense of Pakistan) Council, which brings together 40 Islamist groups and political parties including the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa -- the former Lashkar-e Taiba. This last group was established to fight in Kashmir and was behind the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai.

All of this double-dealing could have been expected. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power in a coup in 1999, addressed the Pakistani nation and explained that the country faced a critical choice: Support the United States in the imminent war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan or suffer the consequences. He explained, “We have to save our interests. Pakistan comes first; everything else is secondary.” Musharraf said, “Our critical concerns are our sovereignty; second, our economy; third, our strategic assets (nuclear and missiles); and fourth, our Kashmir cause.” It was to defend these interests that Pakistan gave its support to the United States and distanced itself from its Taliban allies.
Terrorism and Trust

For America’s current relationship with Pakistan, the most important issues are the war in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism. The US concern today is the efforts of the Taliban to shake off the American-led occupation, destabilize the government of Hamid Karzai and restore their own authority. A resurgent Taliban could give more secure refuge to al-Qaeda or other extremists, creating a safe haven from which such groups could plot new attacks on the US homeland, or against troops and civilians abroad. Although many analysts remain worried about the al-Qaeda-Taliban connection, questions have been raised about whether years of running and hiding, frequent drone strikes and the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 have ended al-Qaeda’s days as a viable transnational terrorist group.

Despite an estimated $22 billion in US military and economic assistance, Pakistan has choked the delivery of military supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Further, and in defiance of constant US pressure, the Pakistani army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has persisted in supporting, training, financing and manipulating some of the Afghan Taliban groups the United States is fighting. It is a long-standing relationship that goes back to the early 1990s, according to Riedel, when “soon after the movement’s founding, Islamabad, including the ISI and the Ministry of the Interior, began to give it significant support...[including] critical oil supplies...and crucial military advice and assistance.” The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, had received ISI training in the 1980s as part of the mobilization of Afghan mujahideen to battle the Soviets then occupying their country.

The ISI is also responsible for introducing the Taliban leadership to Osama bin Laden. These links came into public view in 1998, when President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes upon bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan -- a camp built by Pakistani contactors and funded by the ISI, according to the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The casualties included ISI officers who were training Islamist militants for the war in Kashmir. Retired Gen. Ziauddin Khawaja, an ex-head of ISI, has even claimed that Pervez Musharraf, who held the positions of chief of army staff and president from 1999 to 2008, knew that Pakistani intelligence had sheltered bin Laden before the US raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. [2]

Despite this history, the United States has been forced to rely on a deeply distrusted Pakistani army and ISI to pursue its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The layer upon layer of suspicion and contrivance involved in this pas de deux are vividly captured in Bloodmoney, the compelling spy novel written by influential Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. It is a tale of kinship, revenge and remorse, replete with drone attacks that kill terrorists and innocents in FATA, off-the-books, plausibly deniable covert operations, and cold-hearted CIA and ISI agents who both cooperate and compete.

A fascinating figure in the story is the hyper-nationalist ISI chief. This character bears a striking similarity to Gen. Shuja Pasha, who stepped down as head of the ISI in 2012. Ignatius describes his fictional spymaster as someone who, like many young army officers of his generation, received training in the United States. Although he disliked the United States, he pretended otherwise; he “knew how to sham, in the way that is an art form for the people of South Asia.” The ISI chief is “a professional liar,” but one who believes “a man’s honor is his most precious possession.” In this cloak-and-dagger world, the ISI boss is aiding the CIA all the while seeking out Pakistanis who were “opening to American eyes the family secrets of Pakistan.” These were traitors, “dung beetles...burrowing into the shit of the motherland and then scurrying away to the West.” In these machinations, Ignatius observes, “To say that the Pakistani was playing a double game did not do him justice; his strategy was far more complicated than that.”

A real-life example of the intrigue that Ignatius describes is the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who killed two people in the Pakistani city of Lahore in January 2011, with a third bystander run down by the car sent from the US consulate to aid him. The ISI believed Davis was running his own intelligence operation without Pakistan’s knowledge or approval. The response was outrage in Pakistan, which the ISI then used to gain additional leverage over the scale and scope of American intelligence activities in Pakistan.

As Ignatius recognizes, and Pakistan never tires of repeating, America had a hand in creating this relationship. For six decades, American funding and trust have been vested overwhelmingly in Pakistan’s army and, since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the ISI has been a cheap if not dependable ally. The ISI has taken American training, money and weapons, and been more or less willing to initiate other actors into the black arts to aid the pursuit of US interests, in the process saving American lives and affording Washington some measure of deniability about its involvement.

But the ISI’s help has come at a price: It has also used its resources and influence in quests for Pakistani security goals that are often at odds with American interests. For example, in September 2011 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that the Haqqani network, a Taliban group based in FATA that carries out attacks across the border in Afghanistan, including the late 2011 bombings of a US base and the US embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul, “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” [3]

Ignatius’ story follows this narrative except for one crucial difference. Although both Pakistan and the United States are hard-core realists vying for control and influence in South Asia, US interests are short-term and revolve around terrorism. Pakistan, in contrast, is worried about state survival and security against India. As a consequence, the United States and Pakistan have the basis for a temporary alliance, but the United States should expect Pakistan to siphon resources and will away from the fight against the Taliban toward its project of securing a predominant position in Afghanistan. Pakistan also seeks to limit growing Indian influence there, and to renew the six-decade-old fight over Kashmir.

What is often missing from discussions about terrorism is the Pakistan Taliban, which has launched an insurgency in FATA, the area where al-Qaeda and some Afghan Taliban groups found sanctuary after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The Pakistan Taliban (Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan) is a network of mostly Pashtun Islamist militant groups, formed in 2007, that wages war against the Pakistani government with the goal of creating a fundamentalist Islamic state. Taliban gains in Afghanistan would bolster the hopes of the Pakistan Taliban that they can prevail against a deeply divided army and notoriously weak administration in Islamabad. From cross-border hideouts in Afghanistan, the Pakistan Taliban might carry out a drawn-out campaign of their own.
The American Relationship with Pakistan

Yet all of America’s fears converge in one way or another on the prospect of Pakistan falling into the hands of extremist Islamists. This event would lead to instability, and the dreadful possibilities of Pakistan splintering or nuclear weapons coming under the control of terrorists who might target the United States or attack India, plunging the region into war. In Bloodmoney, David Ignatius has the US president’s chief of staff describe Pakistan as “two hundred million pissed-off people, plus nuclear weapons. Scary shit.”

On the Pakistani side, there is widespread anti-Americanism. Many Pakistanis now believe the United States is the hidden hand behind many of the problems that plague their country. A June 2011 Pew poll found that 75 percent of Pakistanis held an unfavorable view of the United States; 70 percent believed the US is an enemy rather than a friend; and 70 percent saw the US as a possible military threat to Pakistan. The November 2011 cross-border attack on a Pakistani military outpost by US and NATO forces, killing 23 soldiers and wounding 13 others, seemed to confirm these fears. It led Pakistan to shut down the conduit for NATO supplies into Afghanistan and end US access to the Shamsi air base, used for CIA drone operations. Some of these restrictions may be easing, but the prospects look grim for the US-Pakistani relationship.

As Bruce Riedel describes it, the US alliance with Pakistan has always been turbulent and destructive: “For the past 60 years, American policy toward Pakistan has oscillated wildly.... In the love-fest years, Washington would build secret relationships (which gave rise to the U2 base in Peshawar and the mujahideen war in the 1980s) and throw billions of dollars at Pakistan with little or no accountability. In the scorned years, Pakistan would be demarched to death, and Washington would cut off military and economic aid. Both approaches failed dismally. Throughout the relationship, America endorsed every Pakistani dictator, despite the fact that they started wars with India and moved their country ever deeper into the jihadist fold.”

The “love-fest” years and the “scorned” years were not a matter of whim, however. In general, when Pakistan was useful as a military ally, the United States has tended to ignore issues related to domestic politics, Pakistan’s relationship with India or nuclear proliferation. During periods without an overwhelming security interest involving Pakistan, the United States has tended to distance itself and bring half-hearted pressure on the country to democratize, make peace with India and forgo nuclear weapons. Throughout these years, leaders and ordinary people in Pakistan knew what was going on and had their own agendas.

One reason why US approaches to Pakistan have crashed and burned so often is that the modern US foreign policy tradition, born out of six decades of superpower status, has an expectation of how easy or hard it should be to elicit the acquiescence of other states. Howard Schaffer and Teresita Schaffer, a husband-and-wife team with long experience in the US Foreign Service, including in Pakistan, explore the US-Pakistani diplomatic relation in How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States. The Schaffers argue that Pakistan seeks to keep America engaged on issues that matter to Pakistan as a means of gaining additional influence both in the region and on topics where US interests diverge from those of Pakistan. Where to exercise this leverage is determined both by what the United States wants and by domestic politics in Pakistan.

In this effort, the Schaffers argue, senior Pakistani officials raised in a very hierarchical society resort to cultural practices of dependency and patronage. Pakistan plays up its weakness and vulnerability to elicit expressions of obligation from a United States that sees itself as powerful and responsible. While playing this role, however, Pakistanis know power can be fickle and have sought to exploit American interests: “Since 9/11 and on previous occasions as well, Pakistan has based its approach to the United States on two assumptions: that Pakistan is vulnerable and that the United States needs Pakistan more than the other way round.” Being played in this way by Pakistan is manageable for the time being, propose the Schaffers, but trouble may come “if Pakistan continues on the democratic path...[where] a resentful public opinion...may place greater limits on what the United States and Pakistan can do together.”

Pakistani weakness and American power dominate Anatol Lieven’s sprawling Pakistan: A Hard Country. For Lieven, a former reporter for the Times of London who spent time at various Washington think tanks and is now a professor in the War Studies Department at Kings College, London, “Pakistan is divided, disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive toward the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism.” It is kept afloat by “islands of successful modernity and of excellent administration...a few impressive modern industries...some fine motorways; a university in Lahore...a powerful, well-trained and well-disciplined army...[and] a number of efficient, honest and devoted public servants.” Above all, though, Pakistan is dominated by kinship, which Lieven claims is “central to the weakness of the Pakistani state, but also to its stability.”

A reliance on the explanatory power of kinship, largely seen as a fixed and uncontested category, leads Lieven to portray Pakistan as a place of tradition, continuity and old social forms, but to miss what is changing and being fought over. [4] At times, Lieven sounds like a British officer trying to parse the peculiar ways of the natives. This impression is strengthened by his repeated citation of nineteenth-century colonial commentaries on South Asian and Muslim notions of honor, loyalty, honesty, the virtues of Islamic law, the role of saints, the withering away of old feudal families, Pashtun leadership and culture, Sindhi architecture and Baloch tribal structure, to give only some examples. The dilemmas of this backward-looking gaze are most striking in his discussion of the Pakistan Taliban, where he resorts to observations on tribal rebellion offered by the last British governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, Olaf Caroe.

When the tribal kinship and tradition explanation falters, to his credit, Lieven concludes that “while certain Pathan cultural and ideological traditions have continued little changed, Pathan society has in some respects changed quite radically.” One wonders why, for Lieven, the rest of Pakistan is assumed not to have changed just as radically.

According to Lieven, Pakistan is a weak state because it has no enduring basis for a national identity and no political processes that can transcend kinship. Even the Pakistani army, otherwise lauded as modern, is described as a clan. Pakistan’s weakness vis-à-vis the United States leads Lieven to evince concern for Pakistan’s wellbeing and to call for US restraint and consideration. Western strategy, he says, “should include recognition, at least in private, that it has above all been the US-led campaign in Afghanistan which has been responsible for increasing Islamist insurgency and terrorism in Pakistan since 2001.” The worst thing the United States could do is send troops into FATA to fight the Taliban, thus challenging Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Bruce Riedel, on the other hand, tends to see Pakistan as a capable state that can articulate its foreign policy preferences; the simple fact is that these preferences are at odds with those of the United States. Moreover, he says, “Pakistanis and Americans have entirely different narratives about their bilateral relationship. Pakistan speaks of America’s continual betrayal, of America promising much and delivering little. America finds Pakistan duplicitous, saying one thing and doing another…. These attitudes will not change overnight, or even in a few years. They are the legacy of America’s ties with Pakistan.”

Riedel and others in Washington believe that in time Pakistan will come around. They see the answer in American programs to sponsor democracy and development. Such was the premise of the 2009 Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, a five-year, $7.5 billion aid package that will end in 2014. The bill suggested the possibility of a second aid tranche of $7.5 billion to run from 2015 to 2019. The hope is that this extended assistance will buy lasting friendships for Washington in Pakistan and facilitate the convergence of interests. In particular, the two countries share the goal of avoiding nuclear confrontation in South Asia. This logic, however, assumes that Pakistan will eventually come to see the error of its ways and embrace US interests, rather than continue to have its own ideas about what it wants. The United States and a more democratic Pakistan may still have irreconcilable differences.
Pakistan’s Troubles

It is a truism that the development of democracy in Pakistan has been hindered by the power of the military. Washington treats the army’s anti-democratic propensities as an unfortunate, if at times useful, fact of life. It has been less concerned about understanding why it has come to pass. This gap is filled by Philip Oldenburg in his very thoughtful study India, Pakistan and Democracy.

Oldenburg argues that geographic and political realities at the time of the partition of British India in 1947 resulted in Pakistan being created without the grassroots political organizing that accompanied independence in India. This history underlies the subsequent failure of democratic institutions, especially mass-based political parties. Pakistan, Oldenburg says, lacks “a political society with a thick layer of institutions and leaders who have forged their identities and capacities in some sort of struggle for democracy, and have then been able to maintain and develop the citizen-politician link, typically through a vigorous party system, once the democracy begins to function.” Critically, he suggests, “Politicians with that base of legitimacy can win the critical battles for authority with the state apparatus, in its bureaucratic and military form.” According to Oldenburg, civilians have been in complete control for only two periods of time: from 1947 through 1958 (for almost half of this time the civilians in control were actually bureaucrats rather than politicians), and from 1972 through 1977 under the authoritarian rule of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. For the rest of Pakistan’s history, the military has been directly or indirectly in control of the country.

The army has seized power on three occasions, ruling for about a decade after each coup. At other times, it has actively manipulated the political process by supporting right-wing and religious extremist groups to help build pro-military political coalitions or intimidate political opponents. In February 2012, Pakistan’s Supreme Court resumed hearing a case about the ISI’s illegal funding of right-wing political parties and candidates in the 1990 general elections to prevent a possible victory by Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan People’s Party. The head of the ISI at that time, Gen. Asad Durrani, has conceded to the Court that this funding took place, and revealed who was paid and how much, claiming that the operation was ordered by Chief of Army Staff Gen. Aslam Beg and the president of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The hundreds of millions of rupees that were spent were extorted from a leading banker, who has testified to the Supreme Court on how he was arrested and mistreated when he initially refused to cooperate. The case had first been brought to the Court in 1996, but the prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif, was among the politicians accused of receiving ISI funds. Sharif’s government was overthrown by Gen. Musharraf.

The failure of democracy in Pakistan is most evident today in the rise of political violence directed against the state. One such threat is the religious sectarian groups that seek an Islamic state. The other is the ethnic movement in Balochistan that demands self-determination and secession. The first has been largely ignored by the state -- and sometimes supported by it. The second has met with brutal repression.

Religion has been present in Pakistani politics since the beginning, a natural outcome of the demand for a homeland for the Muslims of British India that led to its creation. It offered an easy way to bolster a fragile, undeveloped nationalism and foster support for the state. Despite its obvious risks and drawbacks, religion was used by the Pakistani state to try to hold its various major ethnic groups together, all but one of which (the Punjabis) have at one time or another sought to secede. The majority population of the original Pakistan, the Bengalis of East Pakistan, won independence in 1971 and became Bangladesh.

Religion was also used to counter Pashtun ethnic nationalism, which sought to build an identity linking Pakistani Pashtuns and Afghan Pashtuns -- at times expressed as a demand for a Pashtun state. It has also been used to deflect a growing national sentiment in Balochistan.

Islamist parties and Muslim sects have campaigned and fought for their own versions of an Islamic society, often by denouncing others as unbelievers, heretics and infidels worthy of assault and deserving death. In 2011, Islamist militants killed Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti for supporting calls to amend Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which carry a mandatory death penalty. The persecution of religious minorities is now endemic, with the targets being mostly Christians, Hindus and members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam. The more spectacular attacks are directed by Sunni militias against Pakistan’s Shia, fueling revenge attacks by Shiite militants. The death toll is in the hundreds each year. [5]

Over the last five years, Pakistan has seen a sharp increase in attacks by religious extremists across the country. There are now ideological, organizational and individual links between Islamist social and professional organizations, political parties and armed jihadi groups -- some that go all the way to FATA and al-Qaeda. The rise of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan in FATA has brought Punjabi Islamist militants to train and fight in the Tribal Areas. High-profile al-Qaeda members have been captured in Pakistani cities in homes and mosques run by the Jamaat-e Islami, a major Islamist political party.

The result has been an increase in the intensity, sophistication and extent of Islamist violence -- with insider help in some cases. There have been attacks on national leaders, including multiple attempts to kill Pervez Musharraf and the murder of Benazir Bhutto. The Pakistani army’s general headquarters were attacked, as were ISI offices in Peshawar and Lahore. Other prominent targets have included the air force base in Sargodha, the army ordnance factories at Wah, the Mehran naval base in Karachi and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, as well as the eleventh-century Data Darbar shrine in Lahore and many other shrines, mosques and markets.

The other pressing problem of domestic political violence, one often neglected in America’s view of Pakistan, is the episodic insurgency being waged by the Baloch. Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, bordering Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Sea, and the most underdeveloped. It has over 40 percent of Pakistan’s land area but around 5 percent of the total population. Like the tribal areas in Pakistan’s northwest, the Baloch assumed they would be independent in 1947 but were annexed in 1948 and were subsequently never fully integrated into Pakistan’s federal government.

There have been insurrections in 1958, in 1962 and from 1973 to 1977; the last proved to be a brutal struggle, with thousands of Baloch militants, soldiers and civilians killed. The current insurgency erupted in 2005 and has seen widespread repression by the Pakistani state, which has resorted to kidnapping, torturing, killing and dumping the bodies of possibly hundreds of Baloch activists and their supporters. [6] Baloch nationalist fighters, for their part, have attacked soldiers, major natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure linking their province to the rest of Pakistan, as well as government workers and immigrant settlers from other provinces. The Baloch argue that Islamabad has proven eager to take the province’s abundant natural resources but provided little in the way of economic development or political empowerment.

When the United States mentions Balochistan, it tends to focus not on the issues raised by the Baloch, but on the possibility that the province is harboring members of al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban -- most famously the Quetta shura, which is believed to be a key part of the Taliban leadership in exile. Islamabad, in turn, argues that the Baloch insurgency is largely enabled by India and bent on destabilizing Pakistan. A new generation of Baloch leaders have said they would accept Indian support if that is what it took to gain freedom from Pakistan. The United States was thrust into this struggle in February when Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher from California chaired a hearing on Balochistan and introduced a resolution declaring that “the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.” This move has triggered outrage in Pakistan about American interference in Pakistan’s internal issues.
Pakistan in Flux

In trying to understand Pakistan, Washington focuses on security issues and the interests of its interlocutors -- the army, the ISI and select members of the elite -- in the hope of deepening engagement on terms set by America. This approach tends to neglect how much Pakistan is changing and the contests for power that, increasingly, are undermining existing state institutions and elites.

One area where change is clearly noticeable is how Pakistan thinks about India. The army and their political allies have fostered anti-Indianism for decades, since it allows them to offer up a discourse of nationalism, identity and the need for a powerful state. Not all Pakistanis are anti-Indian, of course, and Pakistan was not always anti-Indian in the way it is now. The antipathy, nevertheless, sank deep roots.

But times are changing. Over the past few decades, as governments in India and Pakistan pursued a ruinous arms race, fought wars, developed nuclear weapons and fomented one crisis after another, a determined cross-border, people-to-people peace process began to emerge. This citizens’ diplomacy movement now embraces thousands of activists, scholars, businesspeople and retired government officials. They have carved out common ground on issues ranging from national security and cross-border conflict to economic and trade ties, education reform, ecology, the rights of women and minorities, and arts and culture.

Political leaders now feel obliged to meet delegations of visiting citizens from the other country; visa restrictions have eased; new cross-border transport links have been established; trade is increasing rapidly; cross-border theater, film and music festivals are emerging; and two major mainstream media groups in the two countries have launched a joint campaign to promote peace and better relations.

Polls show that 70 percent of Pakistanis want better relations with India, and about the same majority support further diplomacy and increased trade. In November 2011, after a 15-year delay, Pakistan finally agreed to reciprocate India’s offer of Most Favored Nation trading status. It is expected that the current $2.6 billion of India-Pakistan trade (with another $10 billion in smuggled goods) will grow substantially. The trade potential has been estimated at up to $40 billion a year. Indian vegetables are appearing in the Pakistani bazaar; soon, so will fruit. Pakistan is also about to begin importing gasoline from India.
 
Pakistan is changing in other ways as well, pointing to basic shifts in social power and relationships. The changes are the result of the increasing presence and mobility of capital, labor and information that have swept over Pakistan, and all of South Asia, in recent decades. These shifts have been made possible by rapid and uneven economic growth, long-running neoliberal policies that have privatized public assets, large amounts of foreign aid, remittances from overseas workers, foreign direct investment, especially from the oil-rich Gulf states, the increase in trade (including from smuggling) and a property boom in Pakistan’s cities.

Pakistan’s population has grown rapidly and people are on the move from the countryside to the city. Manufacturing and service sectors of the economy have grown, and women are more often at work in the formal and informal sectors. The opening of television channels to private companies, the advent of the cell phone, and the growth in literacy and education have changed what people know about each other and the world. All of these processes are forging new identities.

There are also signs of the slow decentralization of the Pakistani state. The eighteenth amendment to Pakistan’s constitution, enacted in 2010, devolves power from Islamabad to the provinces. There is also new legislation increasing the legal protection and rights of women. Parliament has held the first debates over Pakistan’s military spending since the 1960s, and the Supreme Court has increasingly confronted the military and political leadership.

Among ordinary people, there is tremendous frustration about the difficulties of everyday life -- evident in frequent, widespread urban rioting over shortages of electricity and natural gas -- the dire state of the economy, the lack of accountability and the denial of the rights of citizenship. This crisis of democracy and the spiraling political violence have nothing to do with the US war in Afghanistan. These problems would have exploded regardless of the September 11 attacks and the American response thereto, and they pose an internal challenge to Pakistan’s stability and prosperity. US policy, however, will be central in the coming elections, expected sometime in 2012 or early 2013, which may prove to be pivotal for the future of Pakistan.
Endnotes

[1] The best source for the history of this alliance from the US perspective is Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001).
[2] See Khawaja’s December 11, 2011 interview with Dawn News at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DThgijCy9gA.
[3] New York Times, September 22, 2011.
[4] A very different view is offered in Arif Hasan, The Unplanned Revolution: Observations on the Process of Socio-Economic Change in Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[5] See, for instance, International Crisis Group, Pakistan: The Militant Jihadi Challenge (March 2009) and The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan (April 2005).
[6] Human Rights Watch, “We Can Torture, Kill or Keep You for Years”: Enforced Disappearances by Pakistan Security Forces in Balochistan (New York, July 2011); and “Their Future Is at Stake”: Attacks on Teachers and Schools in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province (New York, December 2010).


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6. PAKISTAN, INDIA: CALLOUS PURSUIT OF POWER
by Jawed Naqvi
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(Kashmir Times, 29 March 2012)

DOES political power drive electrical power or is it the other way round? Absurd as it may sound ask any ordinary resident of energy-strapped Lahore or Delhi and they will likely acknowledge a palpable nexus between the two colluding and sometimes mutually hostile realities that shore up a citizen’s daily life.
The link between the two can in fact be framed in a slogan. Give me blood and I will give you freedom, said Indian freedom fighter Subhash Bose. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have spun his own mantra, which says: give me energy, preferably nuclear energy, and I will continue to claim unbridled political power.
It is another story that Gandhi’s non-violent method demolished the youthful exuberance of Bose just as his assiduous aversion of consumerism, one pursuit that Gandhi could only be applauded for, would lay low Dr Singh’s galloping ambition for a myopic idea of a happy India.
Across the border, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani should have read the lovely instructive story on Dawn’s website on how more and more Pakistanis are turning to environment-friendly solar energy to meet their basic needs.
Instead, he found himself holding forth at the Seoul nuclear summit on the merits of nuclear power. Never mind that Fukushima was a short flight away from Seoul, but there were this unique South Asian twosome, representing self-styled nuclear weapons states, if that has done them any good, begging the world for nuclear energy.
No surprises there, though I am not sanguine that Mr Gilani would go to the extent of fudging a vote in his parliament to pursue the obsession with nuclear power, not that Pakistan’s National Assembly is brimming with men or women of insight and reason to challenge what is tantamount to a neo-liberal idea of progress in developing countries.
For the record, Mr Singh’s party stands accused of bribery to win a parliamentary vote to push for laws that would invite foreign nuclear plant vendors to set up shop in India on ridiculously adverse terms.
The South Korean president, the summit’s strange choice for a host, meanwhile, beat back thousands of protesters against his pursuit of nuclear power units, both to increase domestic capacities and for sale abroad. President Obama, coming from a country that had all but disowned manufacturing of nuclear energy plants after the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, was in attendance, not bereft of obvious double standards to cheer the contenders.
It is clear that the urbanite South Asian has abandoned the simple contraptions like the wind towers of yore, the thatched insulations, high ceilings and commonsensical ventilation as passé. Their preference for desert coolers, which run on scarce electricity and scarcer water, is heartrending.
Far higher-energy-consuming air conditioners are the new metaphors of the so-called development drive in the tropics of South Asia. Fuel-guzzling cars are another fetish. Pakistan should invite my fellow journalist and anti-nuclear activist Praful Bidwai to showcase his battery-run two-seater car, not that it has inspired many in Delhi to heed his obvious advice.
While everyone stands to benefit from a steady supply of affordable electricity, the obsession with power generation and its many uses at any cost is characterised by a class divide. There is also a clear rural-urban hiatus. In a way the divide exists between the larger neo-liberal development strategy and how it is received by the poor.
Why should the poor people of Singur, for example, vacate their land in West Bengal to make way for an Indonesia-based investor to make it an industrial hub? Why should the people of Singur in the same state be evicted from their homes so that mini cars could be assembled there? People could do with mass transport, yes, but cars…?
Delhi has more cars, an increasing number of them guzzlers, than Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata put together. Even the supposedly people-sensitive Left Front missed the point and it paid for it.
In Maharashtra, in India, the massive Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project is the focus of concern — 931 hectares (2,300 acres) of farmland will be needed to build the reactors, land that is now home to 10,000 people, their mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields — and it has attracted many protests. Fishermen in the region say their livelihoods will be wiped out. Protests have escalated in the wake of the Fukushima tragedy. Will the people win against the state’s machinations and accompanying corporate media hype?
Thousands of protesters and villagers living around the Russian-built Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the southern Tamil Nadu state were blocking highways until the state government began a violent crackdown last week after supporting them initially. Prime Minister Singh has accused the protesters of being foreign agents. The people have accused him of being an IMF plant.
What is shocking in this standoff is that a Russian report has questioned the safety of nuclear power plants even as the Indian government, led by the prime minister, swears by them.
The Russian report, stunning in its candour prepared for President Dmitry Medvedev by state agencies concerned with the safety of the country’s nuclear power reactors in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster, reveals that Russia’s atomic reactors are grievously under-prepared for both natural and man-made disasters ranging from floods to fires to earthquakes or plain negligence.
The report comes as several countries have given up on hopes of a nuclear future. Germany had voted to phase out its last nuclear power plant by 2022, and Switzerland plans to follow suit by 2035.
Recently, Italy sent a strong message in a referendum when 95 per cent of Italian voters turned down the opportunity to have a future lighted by nuclear power. Russians have similarly expressed in polls that they would like to see Russia pursue a different energy strategy.
In it, 31 serious flaws that make Russia’s nuclear industry extremely vulnerable to natural disasters are catalogued. The report is one of the few documents to surface in recent history that strongly contradicts Russia’s own glowing assessment that its reactors are safe.
If the fatal Chernobyl unit was made by Russia, the Japanese reactors that inflicted a nightmare on an unsuspecting people had a different genealogy. Indian and Pakistani governments have not much to choose from. Their people do.
—(Courtesy: Dawn)

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7. PAKISTAN, INDIA URGED TO RELEASE FISHERMEN WITH BOATS
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dawn.com
29th March, 2012

KARACHI, March 28: A member of the India-Pakistan Joint Judicial Committee (IPJJC) on Prisoners and a visiting delegation of peace activists from India on Wednesday appealed to the governments of both countries to release all fishermen languishing in their jails and allow them to return home in their boats that were seized when they were held.

Speaking at a press conference held at the Karachi Press Club, retired justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, senior lawyer and former minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs Sayed Iqbal Haider, Mumbai-based journalist and rights activist Jatin Desai and Delhi chapter`s general secretary of Pakistan-India People`s Forum for Peace and Democracy Haris Kidwai also demanded implementation of the recommendations of the fifth meeting of the committee held in January in India.

They demanded that the two governments provide consular access to the fishermen within three months of their arrest as provided in the Agreement of Consular Access, 2008 and complete verification of their nationality within three months after giving consular access.The rights activists also called for evolving a mechanism for the earliest possible release of fishermen and requested the governments of the two countries to work together for adopting a “No Arrest” policy for fishermen.

According to the statistics circulated by Justice Zahid during the press conference, 426 Indian fishermen are in Malir district jail. Of them 70 prisoners have served out their sentences, 329 will serve out their term within three months and 27 are facing trial.

Justice Zahid added that a civilian arrested by the special branch of police under the Foreigners Act was facing trial before a judicial magistrate (south).

Of the 70 Indian detainees, 31 were granted consular access on April 11 last year but the Indian authorities had not confirmed their Indian nationality so far, he said.

He demanded that the government reduce delay in provision of consular access to fishermen and confirmation of their nationality.

Expressing concern over the plight of interned fishermen, Mr Haider said at least two constitutional petitions would have to be filed to ensure implementation of the Supreme Court`s orders with regard to the release of held fishermen.

He also requested the two governments to follow a policy of no arrest for small fishermen to promote mutual amity.

In the January meeting, the India-Pakistan Joint Judicial Committee on Prisoners also had recommended to the governments that the consular access must be provided within three months of the arrest and repatriation must take place within one month of the confirmation of nationality and completion of sentences.

The Agreement on Consular Access (2008) makes a provision that an arrest detention or imprisonment of a person of the other country shall be notified to the respective high commission.

Mr Desai said that fishermen of both countries were suffering a lot due to the indifferent attitude of the governments. Although both governments had signed the consular access agreement in May 2008, it was never implemented in letter and spirit, he added.

He said that 11 Pakistani fishermen arrested in October 2011 were still in India and the state of Gujarat had not yet filed cases against them. They were provided consular access in November 2011 and were waiting for the verification of nationality.

Another issue was the release of fishing boats, he said, adding that hundreds of confiscated boats were rusting in Pakistani and Indian coasts. In the past, the governments of India and Pakistan used to release boats along with the release of fishermen, he added.

About 600 Indian boats were lying in Karachi and adjoining areas, whereas more than 120 Pakistani boats were there in India. “This has created economic hardship to the fishermen and boat owners,” he said.

In the IPJJC meeting in New Delhi, the committee had called for evolving a mechanism for compassionate and humanitarian consideration to be given to women, juvenile, mentally challenged, old aged and all those prisoners suffering from serious illness/permanent physical disability.

It was recommended in the meeting that the next visit of the committee to Pakistani jails be arranged in the second half of April.

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8. INDIA: NOW ONLINE - REPORT OF COMMISSION OF INQUIRY IN TO CONSPIRACY TO MURDER MAHATMA GANDHI (1969) 
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1969 Report of Jeevan Lal Kapur Commission of Inquiry in to Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi (Part 1 and Part 2)

Full text of the 1969 report of Commission of Inquiry in to Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi. Published in 1970 by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, the report has fallen out of public memory since it has been out of print for decades. This two part report has been now been fully digitised and uploaded on the internet in public interest with the intent to permanently keep it in the public domain. - sacw.net

http://www.sacw.net/article2611.html

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9. INDIA: COWARDLY ALLIANCE FRANCAISE SHUTS DOWN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUNIL GUPTA
Statement by Sahmat
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http://www.sacw.net/article2610.html

SAHMAT
29, Feroze Shah Road , New Delhi -110001
Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787
e-mail-sahmat8 at yahoo.com

28.3.2012

We are shocked to read that the exhibition of photographs by Sunil Gupta mounted by the Alliance Francaise in Delhi as a part of their Francophone Festival was shut down shortly after its opening. The show opened with a large attendance of Delhi’s artists at which Aruna Roy, the highly regarded social activist, also gave a speech. Apparently the Delhi police arrived at the venue on the complaint of an individual that there were nude images on display. One section of the exhibition had images made in Paris for a show of contemporary Indian art at the famed Center Pompidou last year, which had funded the project. There is nothing obscene about these photographs, many of which have been published in Indian newspapers and art magazines before and are in the public realm.

The Alliance Francais needs to publicly clarify if they were ordered to shut down the exhibit by the Delhi police and if so, on what grounds. If major institutions like them cannot stand up against complaints made by a single individual and support the work of an artist they have invited to exhibit, they do not deserve the respect or patronage of the art community. It is specially ironic that a French institution would buckle under so easily. We hope the Alliance will clarify the circumstances which have led to yet another instance of moral policing against the freedom of expression.

Ram Rahman, Geeta Kapur, Vivan Sundaram, Indira Chandrasekhar
For SAHMAT
The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust

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10. INDIA: DEMOCRACY AND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST
by Gautam Bhatia
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(Asian Age - March 19, 2012)

In 1971, at a student rally in the US, I was part of an anti-war demonstration against the US’ involvement in Vietnam. An enraged group of some 20,000 people, with placards of “No War” and “Get out of Vietnam”, we shouted slogans against the US government and heckled the occupants of the White House. I carried a “Nepalm Pentagon” sign amongst many other foreign students who also opposed the war. As a resident in the US, I had every right to raise my voice, even though I was ineligible for the draft or to vote. Freedom to protest was not confined to American citizens.
India, however, denies democratic rights not just to foreigners in the country but also to its own nationals. While Indian NGOs are regularly targeted for harassment by the Indian government, Sonnteg Reiner Hermann, a German on a tourist visa in India, was recently deported by the home ministry for participating in the anti-nuclear protest in Tamil Nadu. Defending his deportation decision, home minister P. Chidambaram said, “There was information to show that Hermann had links with the anti-Koodankulam stir”, and that “was not consistent with a person who had come here on a tourist visa”.
Is a tourist visa only for viewing monuments and shopping? If so, could Mr Hermann have been jailed for not visiting the Taj Mahal, or not buying trinkets? Should tourist itineraries be approved by the home ministry before a visa is issued? Should then foreigners on a work visa even be allowed to visit monuments?
Within the law, unless there are clear signs of promoting anti-national and seditious activities, a tourist is understandably free to participate in any activity in the country, except employment.
Protest is a singularly democratic method for any government to soften its shrill and dogmatic line, and is tolerated in most democracies around the world. The cross-border protest against Dow Chemicals’ sponsorship of London Olympics is a case in point. Should Britain, like India, outlaw these demonstrations and deport demonstrators for embarrassing one of its top sponsors, and that too for an incident that Britain has nothing to do with.
It is well known that the nuclear debate in Europe and the propagation of new power plants by some countries there garnered massive opposition from Greenpeace and local parties, enough to alter the thinking of some governments. The protesters were an international coalition whose remarkable anti-nuke cause was without boundaries. As a result of their efforts, almost 40 per cent of Germany’s energy needs are today met by alternate sources.
In India, the problem lies inherently in an archaic nationalism. A couple of years ago, a tired Sania Mirza after a gruelling match, inadvertently stretched her feet to relax, towards the Indian flag. Before she could retract, unknown to her, a cameraman had snapped a picture of her “unpatriotic” gesture and published it in a newspaper. At a rural school in Uttar Pradesh, a young girl who didn’t know the lyrics of Vande Mataram was punished by the teacher. More recently, the heavy hand of the Indian government stretched beyond the borders of Ukraine, refusing visas to young women tourists believed — erroneously — to be prostitutes. So outrageous was the presumption that Femen, a politically savvy protest group of young topless women, raised a stink at the Indian embassy, stomping on the Indian flag and demanding an apology. Instead of resolving this situation diplomatically, the embassy officials were so enraged at the desecration of the flag that they filed criminal charges against the women with the local police. The reaction from the topless women was even more telling. Many among them asked openly, “Is India a democratic country? If so, why can’t it tolerate protest?”
The answer to their first question is a resounding “maybe”. Antiquated norms in India are the result of having accepted and wholeheartedly embraced old colonial ideals as our own, and an unwillingness to remove moral policing from the judiciary and politics. As society changed, rules and legal codes continued to change in England. But India has remained steadfast in its adherence to old foreign ideas in bureaucracy, civic regulation and other matters of governance. Moreover, social and caste forces today not only make generations unsure of each other but also create new barriers of misunderstanding. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the broader definitions of individual freedoms — the freedom to speak freely, make sexual choices freely, use the flag or any other national symbol in personal expression, travel across borders, exchange ideas across the Internet, buy products online.
Much of this was not even possible in the 20th century. The state’s maintenance of personal, professional and national boundaries at the time was taken for granted. Today, of course, changes in technologies, social mores and instant communications have, for all intents and proposes, altered that. In a world so closely connected, the state’s imposition of its antiquated models calls for a fresh mandate. The hokey and trivial patriotism that had plagued an unconfident India of the 20th century will, hopefully, be dumped. Burning a flag or protesting across international borders can no longer be treated as a crime. The government’s recognition of a new reality will only bridge the growing divide between the state and the citizen. And protest is a crucial measure of the differences remaining between the two. Without it, we might as well vote for Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. Or, for that matter, Manmohan Singh.

Gautam Bhatia, architect, artist and writer, has built extensively in India and the US

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11. OUSTED MALDIVES PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED ON THE COUP THAT OUSTED HIM & HIS CLIMATE ACTIVISM
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DEMOCRACY NOW LINK:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/29/ousted_maldives_president_mohamed_nasheed_on

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12. INDIA: POLITICAL BUTTONS TO PROTEST ERASURE OF A K RAMANUJAN’S ESSAY BY DELHI UNIVERSITY
by Harsh Kapoor
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Dont let fundamentalists drive university syllabi !

This set of seven political buttons [for images see URL below] were made by me in collaboration with Mukul Mangalik on the occasion of the First A K Ramanujan lecture and seminar that was held at the Ramjas college in Delhi University on 21 March 2012.
http://www.sacw.net/article2605.html


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13. INDIA: PATRIARCHY AND REACTIONARY FAMILY VALUES RUNS IN THEIR VEINS 
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The Hindu, Lucknow, March 29, 2012
Deoband: talaq given in a state of drunkenness valid
Atiq Khan
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3259035.ece

RSS slams live-in relationships, says it is against humanity
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rss-slams-livein-relationships-says-it-is-against-humanity/924612

see also:
Proposed law on matrimonial property for women opposed
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/proposed-law-on-matrimonial-property-for-women-opposed/925570/0


INTERNATIONAL
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14. THE BRITISH ASIAN ACTIVISTS ATTACKED FOR PROMOTING WOMEN'S RIGHTS
By Catrin Nye & Perminder Khatkar
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BBC Asian Network ~ 26 March 2012 Last updated at 05:48 ET

Shaista Gohir said she has become accustomed to receiving abuse

Their job is to protect women, but it means they are coming under attack themselves.

Many British Asian women say are being persecuted for the work they do in promoting female rights.
They say they frequently receive hate mail, harassment and even death threats for dealing with issues such as forced marriage and honour-based violence.
The persecution has been compared with that suffered by the Suffragette movement and, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, much of it is being hidden.

Renu, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said: "They called me all the names under the sun; they called me a home-wrecker."
She is performing the daily ritual of checking her car - seeing if the tyres have been slashed.

"I check wing-mirrors first because they're quick and easy for them to do," she said.

Renu has been working with Asian women in the UK for more than a decade and deals with domestic violence, so-called "honour" crime and forced marriage.
She has had threatening phone calls for years but things came to a head when she went away from home for a short trip.
She said: "In the worst incident, after the usual abuse, they went on to say they knew where I was, and that's the time I thought: 'Oh my god'"

The story rings true for Shaista Gohir, a high-profile female Muslim activist.

“I don't want anyone taking this lightly...in my book it is serious stuff”

Mak Chishty Association of Chief Police Officers

She said she keeps a record of her abuse.

"I've got a few examples here: 'You cannot be a Sunni Muslim, I feel sorry for your husband and children with a wife and mother like you. You are corrupting other women. Your throat should be slashed'.
"The worst thing that you can say to any Muslim is that you're a Kuffar, I really believe in my faith and for someone to say that you're not a Muslim, it's the worst thing you can say, and I get that in each and every message."
'Power over women'

According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Ms Gohir and Renu tell a typical story.
The CPS says there are dozens of recorded cases of this type of abuse in England and Wales but that hundreds more are going unreported.
Nazir Afzal, chief prosecutor for the North West region, said while abuse is a problem for many women's groups - it can be much starker for South Asian women because they're seen as rejecting the power that men typically hold.
He said: "Members of those communities somehow feel that women should not be standing up for their own rights."
"So it's something as very basic as men trying to exert power over women which I don't think is as prevalent in the white British community but is clearly something that I witness in the South Asian community."

His experience is that the problem has quite unique consequences as the threat can spread all the way to the South Asian countries in which the women have heritage.

"In one particular case I know, and I'm sure this is very common, a woman working with victims in this country, while feeling safe herself, is concerned about the safety of her extended family in South Asia who have been threatened because of her work in the UK."
'Serious stuff'

This was the case for Renu who eventually went to the police with her concerns but had the case dropped because of a lack of evidence.

Despite her experience, Renu said people had to tell their stories.

The CPS and police also urge women to come forward with complaints.

Commander Mak Chishty heads up policymaking on honour-based violence and forced marriage for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

He said: "I don't want anyone taking this lightly. So if someone is getting threatened I don't want anyone shaking it off as part of the job. It's serious stuff."

You can hear the full documentary The Hidden Backlash on BBC Asian Network on Monday 26th March at 1800.

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15. FEMINIST AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS SAY NO TO SAFEGUARDING "TRADITIONAL VALUES" AT THE EXPENSE OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN!
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Call to Action: http://www.apwld.org/uncategorized/say-no-to-safeguarding-traditional-values-over-womens-human-rights-sign-here/#more-2361
 
Deadline: 5 April 2012

This month the UN Commission on the Status of Women failed to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session on the basis of safeguarding "traditional values" at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women.
 
Together with our partner feminist and women's rights organisations, we say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. 
 
We have outlined our concerns in the statement below, which will be submitted to UN Member States, treaty bodies, CSW and other relevant UN human rights and development entities.
 
Would appreciate if you could join us in solidarity and endorse the statement by 5 April 2012. Pls go to the link below for the full statement as well as to endorse it.
http://www.apwld.org/uncategorized/say-no-to-safeguarding-traditional-values-over-womens-human-rights-sign-here/#more-2361
 
Thank you for your support.
 
In solidarity,
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD)
Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
International Women's Heath Coalition (IWHC)
International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW ASIA PACIFIC)
Women Living under Muslim Laws/ Violence is not our Culture Campaign
 
_______
 
STATEMENT OF FEMINIST AND WOMEN’S ORGANISATIONS ON THE VERY LIMITED AND CONCERNING RESULTS
OF THE 56TH SESSION OF THE UN COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN 
 
We, the undersigned organisations and individuals across the globe, are alarmed and disappointed that the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) failed to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session. This failure has diminished the considerable work, energy, time and costs that women all over the world invested on the 56th session of the CSW.  The advancement of women’s human rights should not be put on hold because of political battles between states.  We say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. 
 
We  are particularly concerned to learn that our governments failed to reach a consensus on the basis of safeguarding “traditional values” at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. We remind governments that all Member States of the United Nations (UN) have accepted that “the human rights of women and of the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and individual part of universal human rights” as adopted by the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna.   Governments must not condone any tradition, cultural or religious arguments which deny human rights and fundamental freedoms of any person.  After more than 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was embraced and adopted by the UN, the relationship between traditional values and human rights remains highly contested.  We affirm the UDHR as not only ‘a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’ but a common standard of assessment for all traditional values.  The UDHR is an embodiment of positive traditional values that are universally held by this community of nations and are consistent with the inherent dignity of all human beings.  We remind governments that under the Charter of the United Nations, gender equality has been proclaimed as a fundamental human right.  States cannot contravene the UN Charter by enacting or enforcing discriminatory laws directly or through religious courts nor can allow any other private actors or groups imposing their religious fundamentalist agenda in violation of the UN Charter.  
 
“No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by international law, nor limit their scope.  Not all cultural practices accord with international human rights law and, although it is not always easy to identify exactly which cultural practices may be contrary to human rights, the endeavour always must be to modify and/or discard all practices pursued in the name of culture that impede the enjoyment of human rights by any individual.” (Statement by Ms. Farida Shaheed, the Independent Expert in the field of cultural rights, to the Human Rights Council at its 14th session 31 May 2010)
 
Amongst other things, it is alarming that some governments have evoked so-called “moral” values to deny women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Sexual and reproductive rights are a crucial and fundamental part of women’s full enjoyment of all rights as well as integral to gender equality, development and social justice.  Social and religious morals and patriarchal values have  been employed to justify violations against women. Violence against women, coercion and deprivation of legal and other protections of women, marital rape, honour crimes, son preference, female genital mutilation, ‘dowry’ or ‘bride price’, forced and early marriages and ‘corrective rapes’ of lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and inter-sexed persons have all been justified by reference to ‘traditional values’. 
 
We remind governments that the CSW is the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women with the sole aim of promoting women’s rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields.  Its mandate is to ensure the full implementation of existing international agreements on women’s human rights and gender equality as enshrined in the Convention on  the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action as well as other international humanitarian and human rights law.  
 
We strongly demand all governments and the international community to reject any attempt to invoke traditional values or morals to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by international law, nor to limit their scope.  Customs, tradition or religious considerations must not be tolerated to justify discrimination and violence against women and girls whether committed by State authorities or by non-state actors.  In particular, we urge governments to ensure that the health and human rights of girls and women are secured and reaffirmed at the coming Commission on Population and Development and the International Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).  Any future international negotiations must move forward implementation of policies and programmes that secure the human rights of girls and women.     
 
We call upon the member states of the UN and the various UN human rights and development entities to recognise and support the important role of women’s groups and organisations working at the forefront of challenging traditional values and practices that are intolerant to fundamental human rights norms, standards and principles.  
 
ASIA PACIFIC FORUM ON WOMEN, LAW AND DEVELOPMENT (APWLD)
ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN DEVELOPMENT (AWID)
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S HEALTH COALITION (IWHC)
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTION WATCH ASIA PACIFIC (IWRAW ASIA PACIFIC)
WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS (WLUML) / VIOLENCE IS NOT OUR CULTURE CAMPAIGN


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16. ADRIENNE RICH'S TOUCH WAS POLITICAL - A tribute by John Nichols
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The Nation - on March 28, 2012

Adrienne Rich was an exquisitely politically poet—and a politically exquisite poet.

Radical in word and deed, Rich did not play games with politics or poetry. She treated each seriously, displaying a genius first recognized by W.H. Auden in the early days of the McCarthy Era that so horrified them both—and that new generations of readers would recognize across the decades during which she became as definitional as the elder poet who had selected the 22-year-old Rich for the 1951 "Yale Series of Younger Poets Award."

Dead now, at age 82, Rich will speak on—well and wisely—through her poetry and through the myriad interviews she gave about writing and radicalism. Intensely committed to the causes of civil rights, socialism, feminism, lesbian and gay rights, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, she wrote poems about being an observer, but she was an eternal participant. And that participation was transformational.

"We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed," she would write, "yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."

Committed to trade unionism, she served on the board of the National Writers Union, as arguably the most honored of its author members. Yet there were some honors she would note accept. In 1997, she famously refused a National Medal of Arts as a protest not merely against right-wing attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts but against the economic, social and political compromises of the Clinton administration. "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration," Rich explained. "[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage"

A huge fan of "Democracy Now," and a frequent contributor to The Nation and other journals of the left, she made political media more lyrical. But she also made literary journals more political. Asked in a very fine interview a year ago with Paris Review Daily about the "overtly political" character of her 2011, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve—with its anguished reflections on "Guantánamo, waterboarding, official U.S. denials of torture, the 'renditioning' of presumed terrorists to countries where they would inevitably be tortured"—Rich replied:

    I’m not quite sure why you see Tonight No Poetry Will Serve as more overtly political than my other books. The split in our language between “political” and “personal” has, I think, been a trap. When I was younger I was undoubtedly caught in that trap—like many women, many poets—as a mode of conceiving experience.

    In 1969 I wrote, “The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political” (“The Blue Ghazals,” in The Will to Change [1971]). Writing that line was a moment of discovering what I’d already begun doing. Much of my earlier poetry had been moving in that direction, though I couldn’t see it or say it so directly.

 "The Blue Ghazals," published as an homage to Mizra Ghalib—the 19th-century master of Urdu ghazals who penned a poetry that was free and beautiful in a time of oppressive and cruel British colonialism—spoke of the common ground between love and solidarity as well as any poetry of our time.

What Rich explained in "The Blue Ghazals" she practiced across more than sixty years as as poet who maintained an exceptional level of engagement with the good fights of her times.

Rich was passionate about that engagement. And her poetry challenged others to share the passion.

After the end of the Reagan presidency, she published "In Those Years,"  which always seemed to me to be a fitting extension of Auden's "September 1, 1939."

Rich's poem read:

    In those years, people will say, we lost track
    of the meaning of we, of you
    we found ourselves
    reduced to I
    and the whole thing became
    silly, ironic, terrible:
    we were trying to live a personal life
    and, yes, that was the only life
    we could bear witness to

    But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
    into our personal weather
    They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
    along the shore, through rages of fog
    where we stood, saying I

John Nichols’s new book on protests and politics is Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, just out from Nation Books. 


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17. ANNOUNCEMENTS:
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All India Meeting on:
WOMEN PRISONERS & CUSTODIAL VIOLENCE
31st March, GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION, DELHI
9.30 AM – 6.00 PM

9.30 AM – 10.00	REGISTRATION

10.00-10.30	TEA

SESSION I
	
10.30 – 11.30		OVERVIEW	 

Sudha Ramalingam (PUCL Tamil Nadu), Sudha Bharadwaj (Advocate, PUCL Chhattisgarh/WSS), Discussion (20 minutes each)  

SESSION II

11.30 – 1.30		EXPERIENCES FROM GROUND	

Anjum (Muslim Khawateen Markaz)– Kashmir & Tihar, Delhi 
Rakesh (HRLN) – Manipur
Renu (Samadhan) – Uttarakhand
Shamim (TISS Professor, Samajwadi Jan Parishad)– MP
  
15 minutes for each speaker and Discussion 

1.30- 2.30 LUNCH 
SKIT BY SAMADHAN FROM UTTARAKHAND

SESSION III

2.30 – 4.30		EXPERIENCES FROM GROUND

Anu (Trade Union Activist) – Tihar, Delhi	
Madhuri (Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan)– WSS	
Nisha (Scientist, Democratic Rights Activist)- Kolkata

15 minutes for each speaker and Discussion 

4.30- 4.45 TEA
SESSION IV

4.45 – 6.00 DISCUSSION – PLANNING – STRATEGIES Moderated by Vrinda Grover (Advocate, Human Rights Activist)

Organisers: Saheli, PUCL, PUDR and WSS


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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.
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