SACW - 24 Sept 2012 | Rushdie Interview / Pakistan: Talibanisation / Sri Lanka: Teachers struggle / India: Challenges for Left / Egypt: fears for women's rights / South Africa: Wildcat strikes

[Harsh Kapoor]

    South Asia Citizens Wire - 24 Sept 2012 - No. 2751
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Contents:

1. The exemplary struggle of Sri Lanka’s teachers against authoritarianism and neoliberalism
2. Pakistan: The curse of sectarianism (Kamila Hyat)
3. The Talibanisation of Society in Pakistan (Jan Breman)
4. Pakistan: Labour and rights groups petition the Sindh High Court on the factory fire incident on Sept 11, 2012, in Karachi
5. India: Challenges for Left (Praful Bidwai)
6. Nehruvian Till The End - Verghese Kurien believed in India (Ashok Mitra)

International: 
7. Turkey and Syria: The nervous wait (The Economist)
8. Rape, abortion and the fight for women's rights in Turkey (Elif Shafak)
9. Egypt draft constitution article raises fears for women's rights
10. South African Miners Win through Wildcats (Mischa Gaus)
  
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1. 6% FOR STATE EDUCATION: THE EXEMPLARY STRUGGLE OF SRI LANKA’S TEACHERS AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM AND NEOLIBERALISM
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An incredible and courageous struggle by Sri Lanka’s university teachers for the defence of the state education system is underway. This started as a pay dispute and has expanded itself to raise key questions about the role of education in society, university autonomy, role of intellectuals to promote public debate. The teachers are not backing down despite having gone without pay for several months and facing all kinds of intimidation. University teachers across south asia and beyond need to extend a hand of solidarity and support to Sri Lanka’s teachers.

http://www.sacw.net/article2874.html

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2. PAKISTAN: THE CURSE OF SECTARIANISM 
by Kamila Hyat
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It seems than no minority sect, group, or community is safe from the sectarian horrors that have cut across our country, leaving behind a trail of blood and gore.

The tiny Bohra community of Karachi, known as among the most peaceful of groups, had for years been able to avoid getting caught up in the bloodshed.

But they have finally failed.

The two home-crafted devices, laden with pellets, which went off in quick succession of each other near Karachi’s Hyderi market clearly targeted the community.

The first blast took place as Bohras left their Jamaat Khana after prayers. The second, also controlled by a remote device in the hands of unknown operators, was detonated only minutes later as the shocked community gathered in the crowded street.

The attack had obviously been well planned and carefully executed. There had been a similar attempt in August which failed only because the bomb was diffused.
This time there was no escape. Eight persons, including a child died, while 24 were injured. As a stunned community mourned its dead, familiar post-blast scenes were witnessed at hospitals.
We can fairly safely assume that responsibility for the attack lies with one of the extremist groups who have expanded through the decades.

They have targeted Ahmadis and Shias before, and now appear to have come for even more helpless groups – completely unable to defend themselves. Others too may fall prey next.
It appears there is no end in sight to the sectarian evil spread out all around us like a giant trap that more and more people are falling into.

No matter how hard they try to keep themselves safe, they simply have no means of succeeding given the ruthlessness of the predators stalking them.

It is clear that the state needs to act now. It cannot afford to watch its citizens mowed down by men who know no morality and no humanity.

Such killings also raise fears of further departures from the country by communities who have contributed a great deal to it in terms of business, economy, development and diversity.

There is only one answer: extremists need to be targeted with all the force we can muster.

At present they are terrifyingly strong and determined to leave no group in peace.

This simply cannot be allowed to continue, given the degree of destruction that has already been inflicted on us. Our country simply cannot sustain more.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. 
 

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3. THE TALIBANISATION OF SOCIETY IN PAKISTAN
by Jan Breman
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(Economic & Political Weekly, August 25, 2012)
Abandoned by their government, the poor of Pakistan have turned to the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups for support and solace. At the same time, a growing pressure for emancipation presses against fundamentalism. Which force will triumph? A report based on travel in rural Sindh.
http://sacw.net/article2792.html


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4. PAKISTAN: LABOUR AND RIGHTS GROUPS PETITION THE SINDH HIGH COURT ON THE FACTORY FIRE INCIDENT ON SEPT 11, 2012, IN KARACHI
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details of a petition filed with the Sindh High Court on the tragic Baldia Town factory fire incident on Sept 11, 2012, in Karachi. The Petition has been filed by the Pakistan Institute of Labour and Education and Research (PILER), Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum, National Trade Union Federation, Hosiery Garments Textile, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and legal activist Javed Iqbal Burki and others.
http://www.sacw.net/article2873.html


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5. INDIA: CHALLENGES FOR LEFT
by Praful Bidwai
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(Frontline, Sep. 08-21, 2012)
The Left parties can reverse their decline and strengthen themselves only through candid self-criticism and by returning to mass work.

THE mainstream Indian Left, which has contributed richly to the nation’s social and political life for over 80 years, today finds itself in crisis and decline. The Left – the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the CPI (ML-Liberation) and other smaller parties – successfully withstood the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global and domestic onslaught of neoliberalism and even grew in strength for almost two decades. This was a remarkable achievement given that many communist parties elsewhere in the world disintegrated.

However, the Indian Left has suffered numerous setbacks and reverses in recent years. These manifest themselves not only in its reduced parliamentary strength (down from 61 to 24 seats in the Lok Sabha), an electoral rout in West Bengal after 34 years, and a narrow defeat in Kerala, but, more importantly, in its declining national influence, prestige, moral-political authority, internal morale, and ability to forge a radical alternative to bourgeois politics, besides some weakening of Left unity.

Put starkly, the Left faces a number of crises and challenges: an ideological-programmatic crisis, a crisis in defining its policies vis-a-vis the state and ruling classes and in formulating political mobilisation strategies, and an organisational crisis, including factionalism and alienation of cadres.

The Left’s presence in mass movements and grass-roots mobilisations on people’s livelihood issues, while still substantial, has decreased. It is not taking up with enough vigour and tenacity burning issues such as gross income and wealth inequalities, which have reached obscene proportions in India, or the grave agrarian crisis, which has led to 250,000 farmers’ suicides. Its influence within the progressive intelligentsia is also on the wane.

Regrettably, this is happening just when global capitalism is in deep crisis, neoliberalism has proved utterly bankrupt, and popular disenchantment with the Indian state is at its peak. It is of the utmost importance for the health of Indian democracy that the Left resolves its crises and rejuvenates itself.

After all, it is the only current in mainstream politics which has a deep commitment to India’s underprivileged and an agenda of egalitarian social transformation. As this column has argued for two decades, if the Left did not exist in India, we would have to reinvent it. This must be done on a firmly Marxist foundation.

Many of these issues were discussed between top Left party leaders, eminent progressive intellectuals and civil society activists at a seminar organised by the Council for Social Development in New Delhi on August 8, which this writer coordinated. Although no overarching consensus emerged, this was the first dialogue of its kind, which all the 120 participants welcomed, not least because it highlighted the challenges facing the Left in a constructive, non-sectarian manner.

I also visited Kerala in mid-August to deliver the C. Achutha Menon Birth Centenary Lecture and met a good cross section of Left leaders, cadres and scholars in Thrissur, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram with whom I discussed the state of the Left. What follows is partially based on these two rounds of discussion, besides my own political orientation and analysis. In part, it is also a somewhat expansive wish list, albeit from a well-wisher. Consider a few propositions.

Ideologically, the Left is the sole consistent opponent of neoliberal policies in India’s mainstream political spectrum. This opposition must be reflected more adequately than it currently is in its own policies and practices, especially at the State level. More crucially, the Left must recognise and emphasise the cardinal truth that the neoliberal state is fundamentally authoritarian and must necessarily dispossess people and suppress or limit their social, economic and civil-political rights.

Opposing neoliberalism effectively thus also means fighting the Indian state, which is becoming increasingly repressive, and defending the citizen’s fundamental rights and liberties. This poses two dilemmas for the Left. How can it play a dual role as a party of governance (if only in a few States) and as a national party of opposition without the risk of being seen as part of the Indian establishment and partly losing consistency or credibility? Second, how can the Left achieve a balance between parliamentary politics and the politics of mass mobilisation to further its cause, which goes beyond capturing provincial power?

Resolving these dilemmas demands creative theorising and imaginative praxis. The Left can rise to these and the other challenges it faces only if it enunciates a distinctly emancipatory vision of social transformation based on Marxism, offers a cogent alternative to neoliberal economic and retrograde social policies, fights for an egalitarian income policy and income and wealth redistribution through higher taxes on the rich, devises innovative political mobilisation strategies, and widens its appeal by participating in struggles on issues that deeply concern working people.

To do this, the Left needs to update its analysis of Indian society and evolve a contemporary vision of development and relate this to its political programmes and policies. It must also develop a sharp analysis of the causes of the setbacks it has recently suffered, including through the social and economic policies pursued by its State governments, and its deficiencies in providing alternative perspectives and creating a pole of attraction for the classes and social groups it seeks to represent.

This calls for a number of changes, including a shift away from a literal belief in the inevitable development of the productive forces and the idea of a “two-stage” revolution. This is itself rooted in the axiom that India is some kind of semi-feudal semi-colonial society, rather than a capitalist one, even if it is a backward, poverty-stricken capitalist society that incorporates oppressive forms of gender and caste hierarchy and social exploitation, classically associated with pre-modern societies, into the bourgeois economic and social relations that prevail today.

This is not an academic distinction. Different characterisations of the state and the ruling class lead to divergent priorities, strategies and social coalitions. The central task before the Left is to oppose and weaken Indian capitalism and the neoliberal state while empowering working people to make inroads into, and eventually take over, governance structures to radicalise them along socialist lines.

This means combining a range of transitional demands based on a comprehensive charter of rights, which reflect mass aspirations for a life with human dignity, with a transformative politics and relating day-to-day mass struggles to that larger long-term goal.

Equally necessary is a rejection of the presumed inevitability and intrinsic desirability of industrialisation, especially along the classical Western pattern, which can lead to slippage into an “industrialisation at any cost” position.

This approach was at least partly responsible for the land acquisition and industrial promotion policies followed in West Bengal by the Left Front since 2006, which led to the Singur and Nandigram disasters and to the neglect of vital social agendas, reflected in the State’s slipping or stagnant human development indices.

Closely tied up with this is the dominant view of nature and natural resources as externalities rather than as something central or pivotal to an alternative radical perspective which makes a clean break with GDPism and incorporates environmental protection into development and social transformation agendas.

The Left has to “green” itself and address issues such as climate change and defence of the commons (common property resources) not just in global terms, which emphasise differential North-South responsibilities. It must do so domestically, too, in ways that conventional thinking simply cannot do and acknowledge that ecologically India’s growth trajectory is profoundly unsound. These issues must become organic to the Left’s emancipatory development vision.

True, the Left has shed its obsession with “development” of the productive forces counterposed to environmental protection, which was evident in its support for the Silent Valley project in the 1970s and its suspicion of the radical environmental movements of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Left does recognise neoliberal capitalism’s depredations and plunder of natural resources. But it has still not made ecology a central component of the development model it advocates. Even after Fukushima, the growing popular opposition to nuclear energy worldwide – inherently accident-prone and fraught with radiation and intractable problems of storing wastes that remain hazardous for thousands of years – and the emergence of safe, climate-friendly and cost-effective renewable alternatives, the Left still maintains a largely ambivalent position on nuclear power.

The Left has a unique opportunity to bring ecology centre stage amidst the explosion of grass-roots mobilisations in virtually every Indian State against destructive irrigation, power and industrial projects and on the issue of control over land, water, minerals and other natural resources. It must participate wholeheartedly in these and take on board their concerns to broaden its own agendas.

Above all, the Left should include these issues in a charter of people’s rights to the fulfilment of their basic needs and aspirations, including equitable provision of food, water, employment and social security, universal good-quality health care, education, energy and other public services.

Besides outlining such programmatic perspectives and strategies as an integral part of a humane politics which empowers working people, the Left can greatly gain in credibility and popular acceptance by developing sector-wise alternatives on issues such as land, water and shelter rights, equitable access to energy sources, sustainable agriculture, rural job generation, urban development, ecologically sound housing, transportation, neighbourhood schools, culture, and egalitarian education and skill-generation programmes.

Equally important are issues such as pensions for the old, special programmes for unorganised workers, and affirmative action in favour of underprivileged, dispossessed and marginalised groups, including single-women-led households and homeless people, besides religious and ethnic minorities.

Central to such a comprehensive charter or grand agenda would be a programme of combating gender discrimination and fighting for women’s rights, which goes beyond equal wages or 33 per cent political reservation and which recognises that patriarchy is a critical and integral component of the entire system of social oppression on which Indian capitalism is based. Fighting patriarchy cannot be left to the future; it must be integrated into the Left’s core agenda.

No less important are the “old” issues of caste, religion, ethnicity, tribal identity and regionalism, which the Left has self-confessedly neglected, and certainly not theorised to generate a multifaceted understanding of Indian reality. Some of these issues have been muddied by identity politics and its emotive appeal. But that makes it all the more pressing for the Left to address them in both theory and practice.

Of critical importance here would be a sustained, continuous dialogue between the Left parties and radical/progressive scholars and social activists devoted to expanding people’s rights and entitlements to a humane existence. A substantial base of knowledge, analysis and insight exists among the latter, from which the Left stands to gain handsomely through such interaction.

Among the “emerging” issues the Left must grapple with are the new authoritarian and communal structures growing within the Indian state as it evolves an Islamophobic “counterterrorism” strategy and deludes itself that “left-wing extremism is India’s greatest internal security threat” and then uses a militarist approach to deal with it.

Militarisation of state and governance in India’s tribal heartland, where the bulk of the country’s mineral and forest resources are located, is a great menace to democracy, perhaps greater than the crises in Kashmir or the north-eastern region were at their peak. Closely connected with militarism is nuclearism, or the government’s growing addiction to nuclear weapons and its tight embrace of nuclear deterrence, a doctrine India rightly described for half a century as “morally repugnant” and strategically irrational.

The Left must resolutely oppose militarism and actively return to the principled nuclear disarmament agenda it adopted after the Pokhran-II tests in 1998 but which it did not quite pursue during the 2005-08 debate on the United States-India nuclear deal.

Another battle the Left has to wage is over the belligerent and chauvinist nationalism growing in India, based on hubris and domination and on a perverse notion of Indian exceptionalism, which deeply influences our ultra-individualist middle-class elite. This nationalism is located in a Hobbesian world view where might always prevails and nations forever compete fiercely; they never cooperate.

The Left will not find it easy to radically transform its theoretical framework, analysis of strategic issues and its political practices given the indifferent or poor culture of internal (and external) debate that prevails in its organisation. Underpinning this is the doctrine of democratic centralism, interpreted along Stalinist lines, which stifles free debate. There has also been an erosion of the quality of discussion in party forums in relation to the 1950s or even the late 1970s.

If the Left wants to overcome its decline, it will have to reaffirm a firmly Marxist orientation but rethink the political framework, or paradigm, within which it works. It will have to swallow the bitter pill of painfully candid self-criticism and admission of strategic errors, theoretical inadequacies and flawed practices through open and free debate. Without such debate, there can be no course correction and stemming of the Left’s decline.

One last word: “Beyond the Obvious” will go beyond the visible range in these pages. But it will continue to fight in other forums for the ideas and causes it has championed since 1993.

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6. NEHRUVIAN TILL THE END - VERGHESE KURIEN BELIEVED IN INDIA 
by Ashok Mitra
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(The Telegraph, 21 September 2012)
Verghese Kurien believed in creating his own ambience. No letters or telephone messages in advance, flowers would arrive at your doorstep in the early morning to announce his presence in the city; you would wait confidently for him to turn up at the end of the day’s chores; the session that would ensue would stretch late into the night, sparkling with argument, humour, banter and outspokenness. Now he is gone. Advancing age evolves its own mechanism to absorb the shock of harsh realizations such as this: ah, well, there had been no encounters with him for the past few years, there would be no further encounters, period.

Kurien loved the epithet that stuck to him, the nation’s dudhwala. Come to think of it, he could have filled the role, equally capably, of a haughty corporate boss or, as easily, that of a blustering, crowd-pulling trade union leader. This born-to-be innovative man could have even been a rollickingly successful film director or, for that matter, an army general. To organize, to build or to put disparate things together was his particular forte. What he actually became was an accidental detail. Had he chosen to apply himself, he could have emerged as an all-conquering ruling politician. Verghese Kurien, an intensely moral man, chose with a moral purpose in mind. His morality in turn was governed, overwhelmingly, by his sense of patriotism.

In that broadcast on the midnight of August 14-15, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru was perhaps a bit carried away while soliloquizing: even as the rest of the world slept, India was embarking on a tryst with history. Even if only a handful of youngsters took Nehru’s evocation at its face value, Kurien was one amongst them. An executive trainee at Jamshedpur with the Tatas, he had just been offered a government scholarship for higher studies overseas. It would have been natural for him to opt for steel technology or some thing similar for further studies in the United States of America, but, free will at work, Kurien chose refrigeration engineering. It would have been scarcely surprising if, returning home, he had stayed on at Jamshedpur; he could have looked forward to moving rapidly up the corporate hierarchy: his uncle was John Mathai, then a director of the Tatas and soon to be the country’s finance minister.

Instead, Kurien took an extraordinary decision; it was his way of joining India’s tryst with history. A chance encounter with a young Patel — of sturdy, impeccable patidar background from Anand, Gujarat — had set him thinking. The study of cooling engineering had filled him with plenty of insight on how to preserve milk over a length of time. Why not use that knowledge in the country’s cause? His Patel friend had casually mentioned his father’s venture to start a milk producers’ cooperative society at Anand. Whatever other blemishes might be laid at the door of Lord Curzon’s viceregal tenure in the opening decade of the 20th century, it had at least bequeathed the country one gift full of rich possibilities: Curzon introduced a statute which aimed to spread the cooperative movement across the empire. The Bombay Presidency’s record of performance in cooperative activities was fair enough. Most of the experiments, though, were with credit cooperative societies. Producers’ cooperatives were few and far between; the Maharashtra sugar cooperatives were still in the embryonic stage.

Kurien proceeded to Anand and had a long session with the middle-aged, kind-hearted patidar father of his friend. Judged externally, the two were as different as chalk from cheese. But they were keen to learn from each other and appreciated each other’s point of view. A grim phase of interaction and exchange of ideas followed, which also involved hours of learning by doing. Cattle, the patidars knew, yielded milk that was saleable as a nourishing liquid. But they had to be persuaded to believe that milk could be preserved for long periods, and preserved in bulk, thereby vastly enlarging the prospect of it being sold not just as liquid nourishment, but as dairy products in various forms, and, again, not just in the immediate neighbourhood and within the next 24 hours or thereabouts. Preservation in bulk however entailed collection in bulk. This was where cooperatives entered the picture. Milk from your own cattle was just piffle to run economically a refrigerating plant; therefore invite your neighbours to join the cooperative you and some of your close friends have sponsored; the cooperative would now have to don the role of purchasing agent; in due course, invite all the cattle farmers in the village to join the cooperative: the milk producers would simultaneously be milk purchasers, each seller of milk receiving hard cash at the end of the day from the purchasing agent, which was again the cooperative of which each seller of milk happened to be a shareholder. That was not all. The cooperative would not be only a distant, aloof seller-cum-purchaser of milk; it would engage veterinarians and other experts to dispense advice on how to take care of the animals and what animal husbandry practices to follow to raise milk productivity. It was a long day’s journey into the night, but, at the end of it, Kurien could convince each and all that the key to success in cooperative ventures was integrity, understanding the points of view of one another and ruthless suppression of the instinct for bossism. Once the little fellow discovered that the cooperative society he had joined treated him on equal terms with the village hoity-toity, he took very little time to get involved in the cause, he began feeling he belonged, he was the society. He, besides, was a co-owner of the big plant which preserved the milk as well as of the several dairy producing units which converted milk into butter, cheese, chocolates, misti doi, puranpoli, et al. He was also one of the owning angels of the marketing unit of the cooperative society; the size of the society’s various dairy outputs had reached a level where it could set terms to the most formidable purchasing corporate bodies.

That, in brief, is the story of Amul, the Anand Cooperative Milk Union Limited, a story of grit and perseverance, straddling the middle decades of the last century. True, it is not a one-man story; it is equally true, though that, leave out Verghese Kurien, there would be no story. Three elements were at work to render the miracle of Amul possible; these elements defined Kurien too: commonsense, courage to be brutally blunt and a Malayali wit which, despite its severity, still breathed a charm capable of washing away the hurt caused by Kurien’s bluntness of expression.

Once he won Anand, the rest of Gujarat was easy take, Amul and the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation soon became indistinguishable. Amul grew and grew, became rich and richer, the prosperity was shared by thousands of its members. Several points got established: cooperation works if it is allowed to work; a near-arid environment is no hindrance, animal husbandry, including scientific breeding, can do wonders for milk productivity; even the humblest farmer can be a factory owner. The sprawling Amul factory sites at Anand consist of huge plants with arrays of cooling and refrigeration units manufacturing this or that dairy product, research laboratories, animal husbandry and agronomy divisions, the ever busy public relations units. Everything in apple-pie order, an aura of quiet, efficiency and discipline, the whole lot owned by thousands of peasantry, a beautiful dream come true, the fulfilment of Kurien’s personal pledge to the nation.

It was finally the helmsmanship of the National Dairy Development Board. Kurien had at his disposal surplus milk gifted by the United Nations, which he used as bait to entice other states into accepting the Amul concept. The response was mixed. Cooperation as an acceptable functional premise cannot be thrust from above, nor can it be the outcome of a bargaining counter. In a number of states, the Mother Dairy units Kurien arranged to start through the intermediary of the NDDB got enmeshed in bureaucratic or political wrangles. At a certain point, Kurien all but gave up.

Success made him happy, perhaps a bit proud too, but never insufferable. Accolades piled up during the day in the concourse outside. As the evening’s shadow fell, Kurien would withdraw to the tranquillity of his middle-class Malayali household in the company of wife and daughter. In spite of more than half a century in Anand, his Gujarati remained rudimentary. No matter, his heart knew how to communicate, he could get along with his rugged Hindi and the sharpness of his wit. No greater hero ever belonged to Anand. A milling crowd of visitors would be always there, many from overseas, some of whom Kurien would, with flourish, install in the Kosygin Room of Amul’s guest house, to pay homage, as it were, to the heyday of the non-aligned movement India once provided the leadership of; he was perhaps the last of the Nehruvians.

Not that there were no occasional irritations. Gandhi’s Gujarat turned out to be fertile ground for religious fundamentalism. Kurien would now and then face turbulence because of Amul’s principled stand on the issue of cow slaughter. It was far nobler, he would tell the holy-cow rabble, to eliminate cattle in a selective manner than to starve them and otherwise treat them inhumanely for days on end. He was determined to expose the crass hypocrisy of certain types of people. There was that episode when one rabid religious leader invaded Kurien’s citadel at Anand to campaign against cow slaughter. Kurien was the most gracious of hosts, took the guruji round the different units of the Amul works and, getting to know of the religious leader’s fondness for cheese, presented him with one huge carton of the best cheese Anand was producing at the moment. The guruji was duly appreciative. His pleasure was, however, short-lived: in a casual aside, Kurien let drop the information that the excellence of the cheese the guruji had just been presented with was on account of the use of a fluid extracted from the seventh — or was it the ninth — intestine of calves.

Kurien believed in India, perhaps one of the last of the friends one could debate the issue with. He too is now gone: no more flowers at the door in the early morning.



INTERNATIONAL

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7. TURKEY AND SYRIA: THE NERVOUS WAIT
- The Economist
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Sep 20th 2012, 16:53 by The Economist online | ANTAKYA

IN THE dingy lobby of the Orontes Hotel in the southern Turkish town of Antakya, a 20-minute drive from the Syrian border, Syrian men—some smartly suited and booted, others bearded and in tracksuits—sit on ragged leather chairs around a low table, cigarettes smouldering in the ashtray. A defector from Homs shakes hands with a sheikh from the city. A fighter from the port of Latakia sidles up to a businessman sliding prayer beads the colours of the Syrian freedom flag between his fingers.

Here in the hotels and cafés of Antakya, once part of Syria, friendships are forged and rebel rivalries wrought that will affect the future of the war-ravaged country over the border. Well-heeled holidaymakers have gone, replaced by Syrians trailed by other foreigners—journalists, wheeler-dealers and spies.

Abu Hassan, a Syrian trader from Dubai who flew in with a fat wallet, passes a plastic bag of cash across the table to an activist to give to the needy. The businessman says he has given away $400,000 since the revolution started. Other donors are less open, says a Turk from Istanbul, who insinuates he is a Muslim Brother.

In Antakya's hospitals lie young girls and fighters with sniper wounds who have been rushed over the border to be treated or, as often as not, to die. Comrades from north-western Syria pull up in battered vans and shiny Mercedes to wait for news of a rebel commander who was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel. His weary-looking father's shell-suit rustles as he paces up and down. Sick Turks eye them warily: the queue for treatment has got longer. Arabic, already spoken here, has replaced Turkish as the lingua franca. Out in the streets, demonstrations against the influx of Syrians have got louder in recent weeks.

Come nightfall, people cross into the farms and border villages where Turkish territory blurs seamlessly into Syria. Spotty young foot soldiers with wispy beards linger on the streets sipping coke, while their rebel commanders in safe houses drink tea, their bloodshot eyes glued to a television showing non-stop videos of the grisly war across the border. In a corner shop a Syrian man buying cigarettes is jolted by the thud of shells landing on a nearby hillside, where the lights of a Syrian village flicker. “My country, my country,” he groans.

Surrounded by the scent of rosemary and the sound of chirruping crickets, another wave of women and children follow smugglers across the olive groves to the safety of Turkey. They know they may never see their menfolk again, as they add to the burgeoning mass of Syrians sitting in limbo in refugee camps and cramped houses on the Turkish side of the border.


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8. RAPE, ABORTION AND THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN TURKEY
by Elif Shafak
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(The Guardian, 9 September 2012)

A controversial rape case has shown how in this patriarchal country it is always women who pay the price

In Turkey, outside big cities, social life concentrates on coffee houses, that is, if you are a man. This week, the customers of a coffee house in a village in the Mediterranean region saw a young woman carrying a bloody sack. Inside was a severed head. She hurled the sack towards them and said: "I saved my honour. Do not talk behind my back any more."

The woman was 26-year-old Nevin Yildirim, a mother of two. Her husband had been away working at a seasonal job in another town. In his absence Nurettin Gider, aged 35 and a father of two, had raped her repeatedly, taken photos of her naked, and blackmailed her. She had become pregnant. He had been boasting about his visits to her house to his drinking buddies, and there were people in the village who knew what was going on.

She shot him 10 times, stabbed him in the abdomen and cut off his head. She turned herself in, and told the police she would rather die than have the baby. Her seven-year-old daughter was about to start school this autumn. She said she didn't want anyone to call her children "the whore's kids". Instead, they would be seen as "the children of a woman who had cleansed her honour".

The case has caused an uproar in Turkey. Women's organisations have rallied to her support, her story has received wide coverage in the media, the social media has buzzed with remarks, and an appeal has been made for her to have an abortion. As I write, the court has announced its decision against the appeal. Yildirim turned out to be 29 weeks pregnant, past the legal limit to terminate a pregnancy, which is 10 weeks. In cases where a woman's health is endangered, abortion can be allowed at up to 20 weeks.

The court's decision sparked a debate with deep moral, social and political implications. Not long ago, members of the government discussed limiting, if not banning, both caesarean section and abortion rights in Turkey. The health minister, Recep Akdag, had said that should any children be born as a result of rape or violence, the government would take care of them. The proposal on abortion was fiercely opposed across society, as a result of which it was shelved. The laws regarding C-section, however, have been changed and the procedure greatly limited.

The truth is, recent debates on women's bodies and reproduction rights have left a bad taste in the mouths of us Turkish women. The suddenness of the proposal and the lack of a genuine, pluralistic debate left many women uncomfortable and worried about the future. Turkish women have enjoyed greater rights than their sisters in other parts of the Muslim world. But all of a sudden, women realised the rights they had taken for granted could one day be taken away.

For women in Turkey who are victims of domestic or sexual violence, there are few doors to knock on. There are few women's shelters, and too often society tends to judge the victim, not the perpetrator. Every year women are killed or forced to commit suicide in the name of honour. In a context as unfair as this, we need politicians who are sensitive to women's problems and dedicated to solving them. However, unlike other areas of life in Turkey, local and national politics remains stubbornly patriarchal.

Yildirim's baby needs to be treated as a free individual and raised with love and care in a healthy environment where he or she won't be stigmatised. Yet Turkey is far from there. This is a male-dominated country where codes of honour run deep and it is always women who pay the price – women, and at times their innocent children.


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11. EGYPT DRAFT CONSTITUTION ARTICLE RAISES FEARS FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS
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((Ahram Online, Sunday 23 Sep 2012)
Leftist and liberal parties, groups voice 'deep concern' after draft constitution article promises gender equality 'without contradicting precepts of Islamic Law'

Following publication of Article 36 of the 'Rights and Duties' section of Egypt's draft constitution, a number of political parties, coalitions and public figures have issued a joint statement expressing their "deep concern" for the draft article's wording, which, they say, could compromise women's historical rights.

The wording as it currently stands reads: "The state is committed to taking all constitutional and executive measures to ensure equality of women with men in all walks of political, cultural, economic and social life, without contradicting the precepts of Islamic Law."

The article adds: "The state will provide all necessary services for mothers and children for free, and will secure for women protection, along with social, economic and medical care and the right to inheritance, and will ensure a balance between the woman's family responsibilities and work in society."

Critics fear that the wording of the draft article is a convoluted detour around equal rights between men and women, due to the ambiguity over the phrase "without contradicting the precepts of Islamic Law."

The statement was issued by the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and endorsed by the Popular Socialist Coalition, the Free Egyptians party, the Popular Current, the New Woman Organisation, the Woman and Memory Organisation, Al-Nadeem Centre and a number of others. The statement was also signed by several public figures, including Mohamed Abul-Ghar, George Ishaq, Khaled Youssef and Sakina Fouad. More signatures are currently being collected online and via petitions.

The statement also stresses that such unclear wording "endangers the democracy that everyone aspired for and sacrificed for," stating that the struggle of Egyptian women throughout history should guarantee them the rights they had already gained historically on the basis of equal citizenship. Such rights should not be reduced, the statement added, noting that such a reduction would contradict Egypt's commitments to international charters and agreements.

The reason behind this stipulation, the statement warned, is the Constituent Assembly's largely Islamist representation, which, it claimed, was willing to bargain on the rights of women. The statement went on to say that the constitutional referendum should not be put up to a single yes-or-no vote, but rather be voted upon section-by-section. It added that the approval rate for amendments to pass should also be raised to 75 per cent, and that public debate on the constitution should be increased beyond the 15 days currently planned after the draft constitution is completed.

The statement goes on to urge that, if the article is passed as is, then all women and independent Constituent Assembly members should resign to protest "this unacceptable inequality."

The constituent Assembly has already suffered a number of withdrawals, when the 'Egyptian Bloc' parties – including the Free Egyptians, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and the leftist Tagammu Party – initiated a walk-out,  followed by the Karama Party, the Socialist Popular Alliance Party and the Democratic Front Party, to allow greater representation for women, young people and Coptic-Christians, while also registering their objection to "Islamist monopolisation" of the assembly.

Meanwhile, the troubled assembly still faces the risk of dissolution by court order in September on grounds that it was drawn up by the People's Assembly, the since-dissolved lower house of Egypt's parliament.  


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12. SOUTH AFRICAN MINERS WIN THROUGH WILDCATS
by Mischa Gaus
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(The Indypendent, September 22, 2012)

South African miners won a dramatic pay increase in September, following a wave of strikes that spread to many gold and platinum mines.

But their struggle exposed fractures in South African society that won’t heal soon.

The miners demanded a rise in wages to $1,500 a month, from the $500 to $1,000 they earn now. At the Marikana mine at the heart of the conflict, they won $1,350.

The strikes grew after an August massacre by police that left at least 34 dead. Human rights advocates have brought forward evidence and eyewitnesses saying police shot miners as they attempted to surrender or flee.

Tens of thousands of miners suspended work for six weeks in wildcat strikes, halting production in a platinum industry responsible for 80 percent of global output. The government put the military on alert and cracked down on “illegal gatherings,” halting a march.

Platinum miners returned to work in mid-September, but 15,000 gold miners continued their wildcat as a mine owner resisted the wage trend.

The conflict has its roots in tectonic shifts in South African society, its union movement, and its crucial mining sector. Almost two decades after liberation from white minority rule, unemployment hovers around 25 percent, old forms of exploitive migrant contract labor persist, and the country has been convulsed by near-daily protests over the government’s failure to deliver basic services.

For some observers, the mine massacre has become a turning point for a country struggling to make its way since a movement fusing Black liberation, radical politics, and militant unionism upended apartheid in 1994. They have called into question the legitimacy of the ruling African National Congress.

“By sending police to attack workers, the ANC moved to defend the new elite in South Africa: old white business owners garnished with a sprinkling of politically connected Blacks,” said Leonard Gentle, director of the International Labour Research and Information Group in South Africa. “The ANC is stepping squarely into the shoes of its apartheid predecessors, acting to secure the profits of corporate mining interests through violence.”

CONFLICT BETWEEN UNIONS

Others trace the origin of the conflict to the mine corporations’ plans to divide union strength.

Mine bosses have acted to undermine the master agreement that coordinated bargaining in the minerals sector by aiding the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, said Sidumo Dlamini, president of COSATU, the major union federation in South Africa, in a speech.

Dlamini accused mine bosses of fomenting the split by ignoring contracts and “developing a resignation form, parading and forcing members to resign” from the COSATU-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers. The AMCU now claims a membership of 30,000 workers at coal, chrome, and platinum mines, and is recruiting at gold mines. Before the recent strikes, NUM’s membership was 300,000.

Dlamini accused “individuals” affiliated with the breakaway union of coercion and violence, saying NUM officials have been “attacked in their office, forcefully removed, the offices keys handed over to management.” AMCU officials called that a lie and defended their willingness to strike as more effective for workers than NUM’s more cooperative approach.

COSATU and its allies have charged the rival with being a company-financed “yellow union,” pointing to a history of shadowy groups in the mining camps that try to play off different unions and workers against each other.

But COSATU’s own founding president, Jay Naidoo, has rejected such claims.

“Let us ask ourselves if splinter unions are just the work of opportunists,” he wrote in an open letter to his former colleagues. “Are we saying that seasoned trade unionists are so weak, pliant and intellectually inferior that they will risk losing their jobs and their lives—and for what?”

Naidoo said established unions like the NUM are no longer a visible force in the workplace, adding, “The fact is that there is a deep and growing mistrust of leaders in our country, and the expanding underclass feels it has no voice through legitimate formal structures.”

SHIFTING MEMBERSHIP

Gentle says changes in mine work and union membership have generated friction.

Much of the hard work underground is now done by contract workers, he says. These are the most exploited and insecure workers, who work the longest hours and have short-term, unstable jobs. The mine companies exploit divisions by recruiting along tribal and regional lines.

NUM grew out of the less-skilled job categories of South African mineworkers, Gentle says. But they make up just 40 percent of the membership now. An increasing portion of the NUM’s membership is skilled, higher-level mining staff, who dominate the union’s structures.

The shifting composition of the workforce affected union decision-making. According to the trade journal Miningmx, NUM stipulated a 50 percent plus one member threshold for recognition in 2007 contracts, foreclosing any way for workers to form new unions and challenge the company-recognized NUM.

NUM has also struck deals that benefited more skilled workers. One such agreement sparked a strike at another platinum mine earlier this year, after rock drillers learned they had been denied an 18 percent bonus granted to other workers.

Gentle says NUM is becoming a union of white collar above-ground technicians, which led to the formation of the AMCU in 2001.

The breakaway sped up when NUM ousted a popular leader in the platinum sector who now heads the AMCU.

COSATU says it faces a “coordinated political strategy to use intimidation and violence, manipulated by disgruntled former union leaders.”

Critics, like South African analyst Dale McKinley, say it is hypocritical of COSATU and its allies to call for organizing vulnerable contract workers and then slam another union for actually attempting to.


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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
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