SACW - 18 Oct 2012 | Pakistan: Malala is a mirror / Britain sucks up to Narendra Modi / Bangladesh: Minorities / India: 1962 war & internment of ethnic Chinese ; Haryana’s Epidemic of Rape

[Harsh Kapoor]

    South Asia Citizens Wire - 16-17 Oct 2012 - No. 2758
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Contents:

1. Pakistan: Taliban’s threat to media (Editorial Daily Times)
2. Pakistan: Malala is a mirror (Talat Farooq)
+ Statement by Afghan women’s rights activist Malalai Joya on the Pakistani Taliban attack on Malala Yousafzai
3. Britain’s odious rapprochement with Narendra Modi (Praful Bidwai)
4. Bangladesh: Investigate failures to protect minorities in the South Eastern region 
- Statement by AHRC and Odhikar
5. The dangerous slide of Bangladesh (Garga Chatterjee)
6. Maldives: Jagged islands (C.H.)
7. The Partition of India: A story of love and hate (Ali Raza)
8. India: A trust betrayed - Without Apologies: The state cares little about the lost years of our ethnic Chinese (S.N.M. Abdi)
9. India: Haryana’s Epidemic of Rape and Deep Patriarchy: A compilation of reports and commentary
- Women organisations hit out at Hooda government (Report in The Hindu)
- The Haryana horrors (Rashme Sehgal)
- Just a number (by Kalpana Sharma)
- Don’t defend the indefensible (Namita Bhandare)
- Nothing consensual about rape (Amit Baruah)
- Fast Food Produces Heat Which Leads to Rapes: Khap
- No excuses (Editorial, The Indian Express)
10. Pushing boundaries for justice (Warisha Farasat)

International:
11. Tunisia: Investigate Attacks by Religious Extremists - Multiple Incidents, No Arrests (Human Rights Watch)  
  
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1. PAKISTAN: TALIBAN’S THREAT TO MEDIA
- Editorial Daily Times
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Editorial Daily Times, 15 October 2012

According to a BBC Urdu service report, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakeemullah Mehsud has issued ‘special directions’ to his subordinates in different cities of Pakistan to target Pakistani and international media groups. This is the TTP’s response in anger at the critical coverage the media across the board has given to the assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai. On the government’s part, the threat is being taken seriously. The Federal Interior Ministry says intelligence agencies have intercepted a telephone conversation between Hakeemullah Mehsud and a subordinate, Nadeem Abbas alias Intiqami, in which the TTP chief directed Abbas to attack media organisations that denounced the TTP after the Malala incident. The cities specified to be targeted are Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and others. Clearly, this is as wide as media targeting can get. The Interior Ministry in response has issued orders to beef up security at the offices of media organisations by deploying additional police. If needed, the government will deploy the Frontier Constabulary as reinforcements. The ministry has also cautioned religious scholars who had publicly denounced the Taliban following the attack.

The countrywide revulsion against the targeting by the TTP of a 14-year-old girl whose only ‘crime’ was standing up defiantly against the Taliban’s campaign to bring a halt to education in general, and girls education in particular, in areas under their influence was also reflected in media coverage of the event. Our lively media rarely converges on such a consensus on anything. When it does, things cannot remain the same and the pressure of public opinion generated as a result of this media consensus tends to force the authorities’ hand to respond to the issue. To their credit, the authorities, from the government to the armed forces, have unanimously come to the conclusion that enough is enough. Now what remains to be seen is how this convergence translates into action. The reports about finally firmly grasping the nettle that is North Waziristan, the hotbed and safe haven of the Taliban, are a hopeful sign, despite the military’s reiteration of the need for a political decision before an offensive can be launched. The apprehension all along about military action in North Waziristan has been the adverse asymmetrical effect in the form of a terrorist blowback throughout the country. By its very nature, the protagonists of such warfare retreat before overwhelming force deployed against them and strike elsewhere so as to distract and stretch out the security forces, which inevitably produces gaps in the security network. It is imperative therefore that unlike previous military campaigns, including the ones in Swat and South Waziristan, any campaign against the terrorists holed up in North Waziristan must take into account and pre-empt the militants’ ability to melt away into other areas in the face of a military offensive, to live and fight another day. Any offensive in North Waziristan therefore must treat the requirements of the theatre as a whole, cut off retreat routes, and at the same time brace for terrorist attacks elsewhere in Pakistan. Bitter as the harvest of a North Waziristan offensive has the potential to reap, there is now no escape from taking out these fanatics and cleansing the soil of Pakistan from such inimical forces that threaten the best values of our state and society.

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2. PAKISTAN: MALALA IS A MIRROR
by Talat Farooq
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(The News, 17 October 2012)

Take a good look – here are the Taliban, here are the Taliban supporters, here are the politicians and here are we, the common men and women of Pakistan. The Taliban are gleeful, the Taliban supporters, bearded or clean-shaven, are cautious; the politicians are alert, wondering how to manipulate the situation; and we, the common men and women of Pakistan are shocked, as if what has happened is a bolt from the blue.

As if innocent men, women and children are not being killed and maimed day in and day out in this land of the pure for the last 11 years. All of us are guilty. Malala is a mirror and this is what she reminds us of.

The army chief was vocal in his condemnation. Malala is the mirror in which General Kayani can see the faces of those who bargained the lives and future of generations of Pakistanis by creating a monster that continues to devour us.

None of these men had the foresight to look beyond their immediate interests and none of them has ever been held responsible for devastating Pakistan in the name of national security.

Shamelessly using religion to further their India-centric foreign policy objectives, these men have made us more insecure than we have ever been in the last 65 years. Determined to attain a nuclear arsenal, to outdo an external enemy, these men failed to protect the people of this country from the internal enemy.

An enemy that they themselves created, fattened, and nurtured. These men who played with our lives are still around, still living in their dream world where the good Taliban from Afghanistan will prove to be their assets and the local militants will win Kashmir for them.

These men are responsible for the deaths of 40,000 innocent Pakistanis at the hands of the militants, both local and foreign and therefore these men are accountable to the people of this country. Will anyone ever have the guts to take them to task? Malala is a mirror and this is what she is asking General Kayani to do.

The conservatives, with and without beards, are groping for words as if the scenario in which a 14-year-old child is fighting for her life needs some kind of clarification.

Is Imran Khan going to stand up, address the TTP leaders by name, look them in the eye and clearly tell them in as many words that they and their ilk, and not the US, are Pakistan’s enemy number one? He is an upright man; he is not corrupt and dishonest like most other politicians.

Therefore, can he admit that if the US drones obliterate the likes of Malala’s killers from the face of this earth then Allah be thanked for this mercy? Does he honestly think that all terrorists are terrorists because US drones have killed their families?

Is Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman going to stand up and be counted? After his love for diesel, military plots and Saudi riyals, is there room left for integrity? And where’s the amir of Jamaat-i-Islami, Munawwar Hasan?

Does he have the guts to say that Malala is as important as Aafia Siddiqi? Or that the killing of Muslims by the TTP is as heinous an act as the killing of the Burmese Muslims?

Can Mufti Naeem take out rallies from Jamia Binoria in defence of Malala and the right of all females to education? None of them can do that for none of them has the courage to speak the whole truth. Malala is a mirror and this is what she reminds them of.

Can the government do more than issue inane ‘condemnation’ calling terrorists “non-Muslim”? (They are Muslims, alright whether we like it or not.) Can it admit that it is impotent and has failed to rise above its fear of the uniformed elite?

That all it has done is fill its own coffers at the cost of this poor nation’s blood and sweat? Can they admit that they have failed to ensure law and order because their own ranks are full of cowards and greedy self-interested thieves — criminals who in civilised countries would be put behind bars to ensure safety of the neighbourhood?

Can the opposition in all honesty claim they are better than the incumbent rulers in terms of integrity and uprightness? How many of them together can claim that they believe in democracy and the rule of law and have lived their lives accordingly? Can any of them guarantee that Malala will be safe in the future? Malala is a mirror and she reflects their true faces.

And what about us, dear reader... what about you and me and other faceless millions like us? What does Malala remind us of? Does she not ask us, “what if I was your child? Your daughter? Your sister? Your grand-child? How soon would you then forget me and move on with life?

Would I become a festering wound in your heart just the way your own child’s pain would? Would you stand up for me and not forget ever again that my future and the future of all the Pakistani children is in your hands? Will you pledge this to be the turning point in the history of this grief-stricken nation?

Please will you not forget tomorrow what you remember with such passion today? Will your efforts go beyond Youm-e-Duaa?” Malala is a mirror and this is what she is asking us.

So then, do we have it in us to stand firm and change our destiny? Can we not look to the military or the politicians or the mullahs to resolve our problems but make them do it simply by taking responsibility for our own lives? Do we have the guts to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves?

I think we do. Despite all our shortcomings I don’t think we can let down a beautiful, brave, young child fighting for her life today because yesterday we could not find the courage to jump into the fray and protect her. Tomorrow we must.

The writer is a PhD student at Leicester, UK. Email: talatfarooq11 at gmail.com
 
o o o 

See Also:
STATEMENT BY AFGHAN WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVIST MALALAI JOYA ON THE PAKISTANI TALIBAN ATTACK ON 14-YEAR-OLD MALALA YOUSAFZAI
http://www.sacw.net/article2931.html

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3. BRITAIN’S ODIOUS RAPPROCHEMENT WITH NARENDRA MODI
by Praful Bidwai
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(guardian.co.uk, 17 October 2012)

About 1,000 Muslims died in the Gujarat riots, under Modi’s watch. Without justice, there can be no reconciliation

Last week, the British government asked its high commissioner in India to meet Narendra Modi, ending 10 years of international isolation for Gujarat’s chief minister. Modi was delighted, of course, immediately tweeting "God is great".

His industries minister instantly promised to "fast-track" British investment projects. But many Indian political parties, including the ruling Congress, parties of the left, and Muslim organisations, have sharply criticised the decision. Ever since the massacre of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in 2002, Modi has been accused by jurists, secular political leaders and civil society in India, as well as by the governments of many countries, of taking no action to prevent the violence, delaying the deployment of police to protect victims and failing to investigate and punish those responsible for the killings. Despite his repeated denials of each of these accusations, Modi is a potent symbol of militant defiance of secularism and constitutional-democratic principles, and remains greatly feared by Muslims.

The decision by the UK to resume contact with him is seen as a cruel blow to the causes of justice for the massacre’s victims (which included three British citizens), and of non-discrimination against India’s 180 million non-Hindus.

Up till now, British officials have followed a "working policy" of no contact with Modi’s government "because of our concerns over what happened in Gujarat". Modi was also refused a visa by the US and EU. Modi’s global isolation has helped to sustain domestic civil society pressure to bring the massacre’s perpetrators to justice. This in turn encouraged the Indian supreme court to intervene, by asking the Gujarat government to reopen criminal cases closed for "lack of evidence", and transferring some trials to Maharashtra.

The new British stand has been rationalised on the ground that it would allow the UK "to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual interest and to explore opportunities for closer co-operation, in line with the … objective of improving bilateral relations …". In reality, it will deepen India’s social and political rifts, and strengthen Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata party, for whose leadership he is making an aggressive bid.

Going by background briefings by British officials to the Indian press, the UK is attracted to "dynamic and thriving" opportunities in Gujarat, especially in "business", "science" and "education". Gujarat has emerged as a major investment destination thanks largely to the sweetheart deals Modi offers to businesses. Despite booming investments, Gujarat’s social indices and poverty ratios remain appalling.

Evidently, the Cameron government doesn’t want to lose out on Gujarat’s business opportunities or support from Britain’s prosperous Gujarati businessmen, described by the Foreign Office as "one of the most successful and dynamic communities in the UK" – even if that means sanctifying large-scale violence. The Foreign Office lamely added that it wants "to secure justice for the families of the British nationals who were killed … [and] support human rights and good governance …" That cannot be done by relaxing moral-political pressure on Modi.

The 2002 massacre was conducted by Hindu fanatics, who speared and burnt Muslims to death, besides raping hundreds of women. Some particularly ghastly incidents were documented by Human Rights Watch and an Indian magazine . A witness told Human Rights Watch that the belly of a pregnant woman was slit open by a mob with swords, and both she and her foetus were torched. At Naroda-Patiya, 97 people were massacred, including 35 children and 32 women, by a mob directed by former minister and Modi confidante Maya Kodnani, who has just been sentenced to 28 years in jail. Police claim they recorded these cases but could not pursue them because of lack of evidence. This is contested by eye-witnesses.

The collective barbaric vengeance against a religious minority couldn’t have occurred, says India’s National Human Rights Commission , without "a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government to control the persistent violation of the rights to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the people". Although many more Sikhs were killed in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the state’s involvement was far deeper in Gujarat, making it the worst massacre of its kind.

The massacre followed riots, which were themselves a reaction to a fire in a train, declared accidental by a railway inquiry, in which 59 Hindus died. According to well-corroborated accounts, including some 40 independent reports, including one by the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, composed of former senior judges, Modi had the bodies of the train-fire victims brought over a long distance to Ahmedabad, and displayed in a procession. Unsurprisingly, this provoked violence in Gujarat’s charged climate. Modi has denied this, saying that the bodies were taken to a hospital to avoid any tensions, and that the violence was simply a natural "reaction" to the train fire.

According to independent accounts, denied officially, police stood by as the killing proceeded, and refused to register the crimes properly. The BJP, in power nationally, did not use the constitutional powers they have which could have helped restore confidence. (In India, if there is a breakdown of order in any state, the central government can sack the provincial government and impose its own rule until the situation improves and fresh elections can be held. In March 2002, a majority of Indian parties demanded that Modi be sacked and central rule imposed in Gujarat, but the BJP-led government refused.) Gujarat’s climate has remained vitiated ever since, allowing Modi to win two state elections.

Modi claims he’s innocent and has never expressed remorse for the violence. His recent overtures to Muslims are viewed with suspicion.

Despite official efforts to shield the culprits, and corrupt or destroy evidence, more than 110 people have been found guilty and sentenced by the courts – a small fraction of the culprits’ number. Some evidence, as in Kodnani’s case, was provided by conscientious policemen, including a detailed mobile-phone log that establishes frequent conversations between ministers, Hindu fanatics and police at specific sites.

Gujarat’s victims have still not received justice. Thousands haven’t been rehabilitated. Large numbers have been driven into ghettoes, and effectively disenfranchised within a communally polarised climate. Without justice, there can be no reconciliation or forgiveness.

Violence of this scale should be an international concern. It shouldn’t be treated lightly simply because India has the trappings of a democracy with free elections. What makes the British decision politically odious is its timing: the Gujarat state election is just two months away.

[The above article is also available at: http://www.sacw.net/article2929.html]

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4. BANGLADESH: INVESTIGATE FAILURES TO PROTECT MINORITIES IN THE SOUTH EASTERN REGION 
- Statement by AHRC and Odhikar
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-204-2012
October 17, 2012

A Statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission

BANGLADESH: State's unpardonable failures deserve credible investigation

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission and Odhikar

AHRC-STM-204-2012-04.JPG The entire governmental machinery of Bangladesh, with its retinue of law-enforcement units, intelligence agencies, and security forces, have totally and abysmally failed to protect minority communities in the South Eastern region of the country.  A large number of monasteries, temples, houses and establishments of the Buddhist communities of the area, and even those belonging to some of the Hindu communities, have been subject to open arson and looting. Starting on September 29th, 2012 for 3 straight days the rampage continued in Cox's Bazar and Chittagong districts. The devastating attacks began at Ramu sub-district town on the evening of 29th September and spread around the region in the following two days, virtually without even token measures by the authorities to protect the assets and trust of the affected communities. It is the local leaders of the ruling political party, in collusion with few leaders of other parties, along with locally known and unknown individuals, have been found to have provoked the hate-mongering and violence.

Victims and witnesses noted how local police acted as silent spectators to the firestorms lit up and fanned by the attackers. 

http://www.sacw.net/article2930.html

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5. THE DANGEROUS SLIDE OF BANGLADESH
by Garga Chatterjee
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Last month, in the Ramu area of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (PRB), a large crowd of the majority religionists destroyed 24 Buddhist and Hindu temples. The crowd included many functionaries of three major political groups – Awami League, BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. Thus, it was not simply a Rohingya response to the Buddhist-on-Muslim oppression in Burma. 

When British India was partitioned amidst massive violence, the conception of mutually assured security – that minorities would be safe because attacks on them would risk retribution by their majority co-religionists elsewhere — was blown to smithereens. Macabre minority-less zones were created in vast stretches of the Punjab, Sindh and Rajputana. In Bengal, the story was different. Except events in Kolkata, Noakhali and Barisal, mass-blood letting was not as prominent as feature as it was in the west. But there was migration of epic proportions – with more Hindus moving into the Indian Union than Muslims moving to Pakistan. This, in part, indicated the difference in security and threat-perception of minorities. The migration of persecuted minorities from East to West Bengal still continues. East Bengal (as East Pakistan and later PRB ) has recorded a continuous decade on decade decrease in the percentage of its Hindu and Buddhist minority population since 1951 – a matter of no small shame. 

This is especially tragic because the Liberation war of 1971 was also believed by many to be a triumph of secularist forces against the forces of religion-based politics. Valiant people like the famous Shahriar Kabir and the lesser known Shamim Osman Bhulu, both belonging to the majority community of East Bengal, have often risked their own lives to protect the minorities and uphold the values of ‘71. But they are powerless in front of a crowd of 25,000, a constitution that discriminates and a state that is apathetic to the plight of the minorities, at best.

http://www.sacw.net/article2932.html

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6. MALDIVES: JAGGED ISLANDS
by C.H.| Male
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(The Economist, Oct 10th 2012)

EMERGING from their planes, tourists are whisked into lavishly equipped boats which cross the turquoise sea to their resort islands, or onto seaplanes to get to farther-flung islets. Those who visit the capital find a tiny city which functions well and looks strikingly modern by South Asian standards.

Beneath the calm, there are bitter, highly personalised differences of view regarding the former president, Mohamed Nasheed, who was arrested on October 8th in the south, a week after fleeing the trial to which he had been summoned. He was released from custody on October 9th, given 25 days to answer charges that he overstepped his powers while president, and restricted from leaving the capital.

His supporters extol him nonetheless. “For so many years he was the only one fighting for our democracy, our freedom, our right to speak our mind,” says Ahmed, a photographer in Male. He is not a member of Mr Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) but praises the changes it has brought, ranging from better transport between islands to a health-insurance scheme.

Adam, a young doctor, feels differently. He feels that under Mr Nasheed’s presidency it became “not cool to say you’re a devout Muslim who prays five times a day”. He says the ex-president was whimsical, and asks why he had to spend a month personally overseeing the construction of a conference centre in the southernmost atoll.

Those are the mild criticisms. Often the tone is harsher. Last December the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP), then in opposition but now in government, issued a pamphlet accusing the then president of trying to “wipe out Maldivians’ religious identity”. According to the constitution every Maldivian must be Muslim, but the leaflet accused Mr Nasheed of seeking to build temples, elevate Christians and Jews in public diplomacy, abolish punitive amputations and public floggings (there are dozens each year, mainly of women) and promote the consumption of drugs and alcohol.

On social media the comments are even more extreme. Recent anti-Nasheed tweets (in a highly Twitter-conscious society) have called him, variously, a kidnapper—in reference to his arrest of a judge whom he accused of misdemeanours—a terrorist, a madman and an animal. He is accused of seeking to “encourage corrupt music” and of giving credence to people who want to do such things as remove God from the school curriculum, break traditional family bonds, remove all restrictions on sex, encourage bestiality and orgies and debase all art. An especially popular implication is that Mr Nasheed is something more akin to a new-age cult leader than a politician—or even the human-rights campaigner he once was.

The pro-Nasheed side tweet back shrilly, using the word baaghee—traitor—as often as they can to describe figures from the new government and senior officials from the security force. At the camp where they organise their regular protests, photographs of the police accused of having organised the suppression of demonstrators are pinned up and named.

Mr Nasheed’s resignation in February sharpened battle lines that were already in place. The party of Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom, who ruled Maldives for 30 years until 2008, is back in power and government circles are referring to Mr Nasheed in the same disparaging terms they used in the old days. Eva Abdulla, an MDP parliamentarian, recently received a Tweet saying: “Do you know how you will die? Allah willing, you will be paralysed.” She says that since the February events life is dominated by “hate-mongering”. The recent murder of the MP Afrasheem Ali, which the presidential media secretary implied was the work of Nasheed supporters, has made things worse.

In light of the DQP’s pamphlet about religious identity, is a heightened Islamist agenda part of the government’s programme? The MDP says it is. No, replies the government. “In some areas we’re actually more liberal,” says Hassan Saeed, the DQP leader and a special adviser to the current president. But Ibrahim Ismail, a colleague and former adviser to Mr Nasheed, thinks Maldives is moving in an Islamist direction and “the government isn’t doing anything about it”. He says, for instance, that in every primary school several dozen children are being pulled by their conservative parents from their gym classes, practical arts and music, and that the trend is only growing.

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7. THE PARTITION OF INDIA: A STORY OF LOVE AND HATE
by Ali Raza
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dawn books and authors | 14 October 2012

THE PUNJAB BLOODIED, PARTITIONED AND CLEANSED: UNRAVELLING THE 1947 TRAGEDY THROUGH SECRET BRITISH REPORTS AND FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS
by Ishtiaq Ahmed
Oxford University Press, Karachi
ISBN 9780199064700
640pp. Rs 2,100

Reviewed by Ali Raza 

Alok Bhalla, in his introduction to the multi-volume Stories About the Partition of India, writes that “there is a single common note which informs nearly all the stories written about the Partition and the horror it unleashed … a note of utter bewilderment.” Bhalla of course, was mostly referring to the vast corpus of literary writing on Partition. Yet, one can also detect this sense of “utter bewilderment” in the first hand testimonies of survivors and witnesses. Testimonies that have been collected and presented in fine detail by Ishtiaq Ahmed in The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed.

One could also argue that it is the state of bewilderment which drives historians, writers, and artists, among others, to make sense of Partition. Ahmed, it seems, is no different. Currently a professor of political science at Stockholm University and born in the fateful year of 1947 in the fateful city of Lahore, Ahmed writes movingly about growing up in an absence; an absence which spoke in its silence of people that were no longer there. And yet, there were visible reminders as well. Reminders such as Chacha Churanji Lal, also known as Lal Din or Lal Mohammad, a refugee from East Punjab who was said to have gone half mad after his only child was killed in front of him.

Both the visible and invisible signifiers spoke of millions of sufferers who were mercilessly slaughtered, forcibly displaced, grievously wounded, and eternally scarred by the loss, pain and trauma of Partition. For the most part, their only fault lay in belonging to the wrong community on the wrong side of the line dividing India and Pakistan.

Ishtiaq Ahmed brings these stories out in stark detail. In compiling this book, to which he devoted more then a decade, he conducted hundreds of interviews, of witnesses, victims and perpetrators, on both sides of the Punjab and beyond. These stories speak for themselves. Their eloquence renders the historian’s intervention unnecessary. And in this respect, Ahmed has done a commendable job in allowing his interlocutors to dominate the narrative.

But he has done more then that. He uses his interviews to weave together a broader narrative that is sensitive to detail, chronology and context. He supplements those with official sources, memoirs, literary works, and newspapers. Personal accounts, along with a superb analysis of the political and social specificities of particular localities, are deftly woven together with the “high politics” of Partition. Without doubt, this is where the book is at its best. What emerges is an incredibly variegated and complex portrayal of Partition, and taken together, this is a compelling way of telling a story.

Yet, for all its complexity, Ahmed attempts to explain it all under a broad theoretical framework of ‘ethnic cleansing’. This is a brave attempt and one that perhaps reflects his training as a political scientist. Full blooded historians might be forgiven for being a bit sceptical. For one, his framework might have been more convincing had he contrasted the Punjabi experience with that of, say, Bengal. Ahmed, though, seems fully convinced about the explanatory power of his framework and his book in general. As he puts it, this book “is the first holistic, comprehensive and detailed case study of the Punjab partition”. That is a bold claim, and one that many a historian would love to challenge.

To be sure though, there are many aspects which make this work somewhat unique. For starters, Ishtiaq Ahmed, as a Swedish citizen, was able to visit both Punjabs. That is a luxury that researchers on either side can only dream of. As a result, Ahmed, for arguably the first time, brings forth detailed narratives from “both sides”. To my mind though, what is more important is how he systematically sets out the degree of official complicity in ethnic cleansing on both sides of the Punjab. Most Partition accounts are silent on the active role played by politicians, government officials, and administrative and military personnel in organising and orchestrating Partition violence. Ahmed brings this aspect out in minute detail. He notes, for instance, how M.G. Cheema, the city magistrate of Lahore, masterminded a massive arson attack on Shah Alami gate, a predominantly Hindu locality. As Ahmed says, this attack “broke the will of the Hindus and Sikhs to hold onto [Lahore]”. Also important in this respect was the role of organised paramilitary outfits like the Muslim League National Guards, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Akal Fauj. It would have been wonderful though, had Ahmed dwelled more on how these groups had been actively preparing for civil war since at least the mid-1940s.

Given its wealth of detail, it is hardly surprising that this book has already received rave reviews in India, Pakistan and beyond. And for the most part, it’s easy to go along with the general consensus. The book though, is certainly not a page-turner (in the literal sense of the term). Rather, each story, each narration, demands attention and invites introspection. Its appeal lies in the heart-rending testimonies of witnesses that stand as a mournful eulogy to a world that was suddenly torn asunder.

The testimonies presented by Ahmed are striking in a number of respects. For one, they underscore how little ordinary people knew about Partition and what it potentially meant for them. This is where the state of “bewilderment” is most acute. The Muslim community in Amritsar, for instance, was convinced that their city would go to Pakistan until almost the very eve of Partition. Those in Gurdaspur found out only a few days after independence that their district had, in fact, gone to India. Criminal in this respect was the role of the British themselves, who botched the whole process from start to finish. Also striking is how the victims of violence were also often its perpetrators. Survivors and refugees for instance, were often at the forefront of “revenge attacks”. At times, it seems that all are victims and all are perpetrators. Perhaps an untainted victimhood can only truly be claimed by the iconic figure of a hapless and ravaged woman, whose body became the site where notions of community and honour were inscribed and fought over.

Yet, alongside stories of hate, violence and dispossession are moving accounts of love, compassion, heroism and unrequited generosity. Of people who risked their lives to save their neighbours from rampaging mobs. Of men who bridged the communal divide and escorted their fellow villagers to either India or Pakistan. This, as Ashis Nandy points out, is the other part of the story, and one that is not emphasised as much it should be in writings on Partition. As he argues, for every story of death and dispossession there is also one that gratefully recounts the assistance rendered by someone “on the other side”. Often, as in many of Ahmed’s accounts, one finds both themes in a single testimony.

In this sense, Partition is about hate and about love. It is as much about cruelty as it is about compassion. It is a testimony to the death as well as the triumph of the human spirit. It’s a story of contradictions. In short, it’s a story of “utter bewilderment”.

And so we have come full circle. Our conclusion has turned out to be the state we started with. There will no doubt be many who will continue to try and comprehend the incomprehensible. Ishtiaq Ahmed has tried his hand at it and he has succeeded to a significant extent. This is, without doubt, a comprehensive work that deserves to be read and reread. For the moment though, Ahmed has passed on the torch and the onus is now on others to carry this work forward.

The reviewer has a PhD in South Asian history from Oxford University

[also available at: http://www.sacw.net/article2933.html]


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8. INDIA: A TRUST BETRAYED - WITHOUT APOLOGIES: THE STATE CARES LITTLE ABOUT THE LOST YEARS OF OUR ETHNIC CHINESE
S.N.M. Abdi
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(outlook, Special Issue: 1962 The China Disaster, Oct 22, 2012)

Not too long ago, I visited a restaurant called Beijing in Tangra, Calcutta’s Chinatown, for a Sunday brunch with friends. The Cantonese noodles and pepper chicken, served in square, white plates, were so delicious that half-way through the meal I wanted to compliment the owner. But Monica Liu, a waiter informed me, had not returned from church. She turned up in a pantsuit while we were savouring our dessert. “You are a God-fearing woman providing excellent food to his hungry children,” I remarked. “You are welcome, sir,” she replied. Then she muttered under her breath: “We have a lot to thank the Lord for. I have come a long way from the concentration camp where I was baptised.”

People rub their eyes in disbelief. I couldn’t believe what I heard. Concentration camp? “I am so sorry, but were you in a concentration camp in China?” I asked Monica confusedly. “No sir. We are Indian citizens. We were picked up from our home in Shillong and dispatched to a concentration camp at Deoli in Rajasthan by the Indian government. We spent over four years behind barbed-wire fences patrolled by soldiers whose rifles were always pointed at us.”

I had thought that I knew my India inside out. But I was proved wrong that Sunday. Like the vast majority of my countrymen, I was blissfully unaware of the detention of a huge number of Chinese Indians in Deoli’s Central Internment Camp  during the 1962 India-China war. By New Delhi’s own admission, nearly 3,000 men, women and children of Chinese descent—most of them Indian citizens—were imprisoned in Deoli without trial. They were picked up on the pretext that they posed a threat to India’s security. But the only ‘evidence’ against them was the colour of their skin and facial features. The war lasted barely a month, but many internees were rotting in Deoli until late 1967—five years after the armed conflict!

That Sunday, however, Monica had caught a seasoned journalist like me by surprise. Fortunately, we struck up a conversation—if we hadn’t, this book wouldn’t have been written.

Monica’s baptism certificate. She was baptised in the Deoli camp.
http://images.outlookindia.com/Uploads/outlookindia/2012/20121022/monica_baptism_certificate_20121022.jpg

I called on Monica after a few days to see her baptism certificate. The pale green paper had cracked at the folds but it corroborated her stunning remark. Born on October 14, 1953, she was baptised on March 23, 1965, in the Deoli camp, according to the signed and stamped certificate No. 67. She recounted her baptism in a makeshift chapel by Reverand Father Benedict Fernandez of the Church of Saint Joseph in Kota. The visiting chaplain had signed Monica’s baptism certificate with a flourish befitting the truly pious.

The baptism certificate is the only proof Monica has of her detention—and she has preserved it. She was a bubbly nine-year-old when the Shillong police picked her up along with her family and packed them off to Deoli in November 1962. Prisoners without trial, they were released in February 1967, traumatised and penniless. No document were ever issued to them. For a government, it’s difficult to get more arbitrary than that.

My account of wartime abuse of Chinese Indians is based on interviews with surviving internees in India and elsewhere. In their recollections, Deoli emerged as a metaphor for state-sponsored oppression, racial profiling and humiliation of persons with Chinese blood. Indian officials who dealt with the Chinese then spoke to me at length. Some talked on record; others shared information and views on the condition of anonymity. Without their version, an objective appraisal was out of the question. I  examined hundreds of pages of diplomatic correspondence between New Delhi and Beijing about the persecution of people of Chinese origin in India just before, during and after the war, besides classified home ministry files and records of the Intelligence Branch of the West Bengal government.

The Indian government emptied the Northeast—close to the zone of military operations—of Chinese in 1962. But they were also taken from Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Jamshedpur and elsewhere by special intelligence units and despatched by train to Kota, the nearest railhead from Deoli.

A concentration camp has horrible connotations. So, was the Deoli facility a concentration camp?

Its antecedents were a dead giveaway. Its origins lay in a cantonment established by the British army in Deoli in 1852; in 1942 its barracks were converted into a POW camp for German, Italian and Japanese combatants and nationals. In 1947, the military handed it over to the home ministry. When busloads of Chinese families started arriving at the camp in November 1962, they were subjected to regulations from an old military manual for administering Axis POWs gathering dust in the commandant’s office. For instance, dinner was served at 5 pm and lights were switched off at 7 pm, plunging the prisoners’ wings into darkness until daybreak. The rule was revoked when it was realised that, unlike Axis POWs, 60 per cent of the internees were children or elderly persons.

According to Sunanda K. Dutta-Ray—former editor of The Statesman—the wartime population of ethnic Chinese was around 60,000, with Calcutta accounting for 50,000. But Arun Chandra Guha, an MP representing Barasat, revealed during a 1962 parliamentary debate that there were between 20,000 and 30,000 Chinese in India. The 1961 census pegged India’s population at 439,234,771, or about 440 million. Going by Dutta-Ray’s figure, ethnic Chinese then accounted for 0.013 per cent of India’s population; going by Guha’s, they accounted for between 0.006 and 0.004 per cent. Could this minuscule minority have posed a threat? By no rational yardstick could such a tiny ethnic group have endangered India. But ethno-phobia is triggered more often by hallucination than facts.

The Indian government spoke with a forked tongue while incarcerating persons of Chinese descent. On December 13, 1962, it said it “became necessary to remove all Chinese nationals from that region (Assam and West Bengal) along with others who were security risks when Chinese aggressors had been moving threateningly toward those areas”. On January 8, 1963, it called its  action “the minimum any government would take under similar circumstances”. Justifying individual arrests, India said “there were very clear reasons for their detention because of their prejudicial and anti-Indian activities”. But after hurling accusations, the government did a somersault: on February 27, 1963, Union home minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the detainees a clean chit! He told Parliament that no internee would be tried for spying or subversion. Shastri was true to his word: nobody was prosecuted. But nobody was set free either: they simply languished behind barbed wires like POWs.

Sadly, even 50 years later, the Indian state has no regrets. There are no pangs of conscience, no symptoms of soul-searching. Questioned about excesses, Jagat S. Mehta, retired foreign secretary who manned the China desk of the external affairs ministry during the war, told an interviewer that India may have overreacted. “Today we are talking from the benefit of hindsight. But during the war Chinese were suspects, although they had been settled in India for a very long time. They got caught in the crossfire when China attacked India.”

In the countdown to war, apparatchiks were cocksure about men of Chinese lineage swelling the ranks of an advancing PLA. A jittery nation was warned that distinguishing between invaders and their collaborators would be impossible because of their identical features! Betrayal was imminent, they insisted: a Fifth Column would suddenly spring into action at the appointed hour, inflicting heavy losses. When nothing of that sort happened despite the PLA marching deep into the Northeast, it was propagated that the Fifth Column was keeping its gunpowder dry and waiting for India to drop its guard before blowing up regimental headquarters, bridges and dams.

The Chinese internees at Deoli (above) were never
issued any documents. It’s difficult for a
state to be more arbitrary. 
A case was systematically built against potential saboteurs, or subversives in waiting. The unfolding reality rubbished every single intelligence report, though. So, in the end, the internees remained just suspects—evidently innocent and harmless—compelling a hard-boiled diplomat like Mehta to concede as much after five decades.

Key Indian officials of that era said they feared a repetition of events in Europe during WW-II. They claimed that Germany’s Blitzkrieg 22 years earlier gave them sleepless nights when reports of China amassing its forces on the border began to trickle in. Officials subscribed to the widely-held view that Norway, Denmark and France wouldn’t have fallen in three months without internal saboteurs. Indian officials, particularly those who had worked with British defence strategists until 1947, believed that Germany’s lightning conquest and rapid destruction of the three countries’ armies was greased by a formidable Fifth Column nurtured by the Third Reich. And they concluded that China had taken a leaf out of Hitler’s book and raised a network of agents—particularly in the Northeast—to help the PLA overrun India.

Moreover, Indian officials brazenly cite America’s treatment of ethnic Japanese after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese navy bombers to justify the internment of ethnic Chinese. Detentions in India, they said, paled into insignificance before the world’s biggest democracy and a superpower like the US throwing 1,20,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps without batting an eyelid. According to them, the two democracies were compelled to intern persons with Chinese or Japanese genes in their national interest. To be sure, India’s Foreigners (Internment) Order of November 3, 1962, was cast in the mould of Executive Order No. 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorising detention of the Japanese to prevent sabotage and espionage. But the parallel goes no further because surviving internees in the US eventually received a fat redressal cheque and a letter of apology from the president.

In 2008, I suggested in an opinion piece published in The Times of India and Khaleej Times that our government should at least say sorry to the Deoli internees. I also wrote that India’s civil society is unlikely to allow a repetition of such state-perpetrated atrocities unopposed in future. Thanks to the internet, I was flooded with e-mails from Deoli victims and their families, now settled in various countries. But the response of Mao Siwei, consul general of China in Calcutta, to my initiative was rather intriguing. Siwei read my piece and wrote back: “Thank you for standing up and speaking out for the Chinese community in India. I remember that in the early 1980s when the so-called Cultural Revolution was just over, there were two schools of thought about what China should do. One was to check the history of the Cultural Revolution thoroughly and making it clear what was right and what was wrong, and get justice to everyone. The other was to Look Forward and not argue too much about the past for the time being. Mr Deng Xiaoping adopted the latter approach. The history of the last thirty years has proved that Deng was right. The former Soviet Union kept checking its history of 70 years but the state collapsed. China has allowed some of its historical issues to remain unsolved but the Nation became stronger. I am afraid that you can get all the justice for the Chinese but then you would find that the remaining 3,000 Chinese have left Calcutta forever. Middle Path is the main feature of Chinese culture. Maybe I am wrong.”

Siwei is indeed wrong, exclaims Paul Chung, Indian Chinese Association president. Chung believes that an apology is a must, as the community’s wounds have not healed. “Unless the government acknowledges that the Chinese were unnecessarily targeted and tortured, how can there be healing? Nobody has owned up responsibility for our suffering. It’s necessary for the Indian government to publicly admit its guilt so that the victims feel reassured,” he advocates.

“Chinese culture hinges on harmony. And rebellion is the antithesis of harmony. Importantly, destiny is supposed to penalise the perpetrators of injustice. That’s why Chinese reaction to the grave injustices of 1962 was to leave India and go away without protesting—without disturbing the harmony. But that’s a typical Chinese approach. I have been brought up differently by Christian priests. Western philosophy demands justice. It encourages people to fight for justice. It’s not fair to wait for justice. The bully has to say sorry, acknowledge his guilt and even offer financial compensation to remove bitterness. While a typical Chinese would leave it to destiny, I would rather pull out all stops to seek justice for harmony’s sake.”

(S. N. M. Abdi is deputy editor of Outlook. These are excerpts from the opening chapter of his forthcoming book on the persecution of ethnic Chinese during the Sino-Indian war.)

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9. INDIA: HARYANA’S EPIDEMIC OF RAPE AND DEEP PATRIARCHY: A COMPILATION OF REPORTS AND COMMENTARY
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sacw.net - 18 Oct 2012
contents:
1. Women organisations hit out at Hooda government (Report in The Hindu)
2. The Haryana horrors (Rashme Sehgal)
3. Just a number (by Kalpana Sharma)
4. Don’t defend the indefensible (Namita Bhandare)
5. Nothing consensual about rape (Amit Baruah)
6. Fast Food Produces Heat Which Leads to Rapes: Khap
7. No excuses (Editorial, The Indian Express)

http://www.sacw.net/article2934.html

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10. PUSHING BOUNDARIES FOR JUSTICE
by Warisha Farasat
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(The Hindu, October 18, 2012)
People’s tribunals are more effective than official commissions of inquiry in the investigation of rights violations and in formulating effective redress mechanisms

When the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) held its latest hearing in New York city between October 6 to 7, it once again affirmed that peace was impossible without justice. A civil society initiative, this tribunal documents and exposes the violations of international human rights law against the Palestinian people. Similar sessions have already been held in Barcelona, Cape Town and London on issues ranging from corporate complicity in the Israeli Occupation to the crime of apartheid.

Though the recommendations of the Russell Tribunal are not legally binding on the parties to the conflict, they have played an important role in laying out the context and documenting the evidence of violations of international law by the Israeli government. With a jury of eminent persons such as Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel Peace Laureate, Alice Walker, American author and poet, and Yasmin Sooka of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and now with the Foundation for Human Rights, the findings of such a tribunal will be hard to ignore. This high profile People’s Tribunal on Palestine has also initiated a discussion regarding the role played by such unofficial or civil society processes not only to document and highlight serious human rights violations but also provide a larger basis for action against such crimes.

In South Asia

South Asia, particularly India has a tradition of official commissions of inquiry, generally constituted to investigate communal violence, massacres and other forms of human rights violations. The reports of these commissions of inquiries have, however, repeatedly failed to break away from the legal formalism associated with investigating and reporting crimes by quasi-judicial bodies. Whether it is the Bhagalpur Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the communal riots of 1989 or the Tewary Commission to establish the violations that occurred during the Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983, the government has avoided implementing even the mild recommendations of these official commissions. The government has not even made these reports public for a debate. Besides, these official commissions of inquiry do not systematically record the testimonies of victims or their families and their demands in their final reports.

With the recent developments in transitional justice and international law, there is growing recognition that victims and their testimonies must be central while ensuring justice for gross human rights violations. Article 68 (3) of the Rome Statute states that the Court shall permit the views and concerns of victims to be presented and considered at stages of the proceedings. This is why people’s tribunals become important.

Unlike governmental commissions of inquiries, these civil society initiatives have broadened the investigation and documentation processes by drawing from mass movements as well as incorporating testimonies of victims of human rights violations themselves. Moreover, they present final reports that not only reflect the legal violations but also the political or social contexts that may have allowed for these violations to happen. For instance, in conflict situations, torture or extrajudicial killings forms a part of the human rights discourse. However, the impact of militarisation, unfair land acquisition or the psychosocial aspects may not get adequate attention. A people’s tribunal or civil society-led processes can contribute to understanding the enabling courses for human rights violations and thus assist in formulating an effective mechanism for redressal.

Even though these civil society initiatives cannot hold perpetrators accountable, they create an exhaustive documentation that can be used for subsequent legal processes. In conflict or post-conflict situations, civil society tribunals add to the existing documentation on violations of civil political rights such as torture, collective punishment, or enforced disappearances, particularly when no genuine official commissions are involved in investigation and documentation. Given the lack of accountability for serious crimes in Sri Lanka, in January 2010, a Permanent People’s Tribunal conducted investigations, heard first-hand testimonies, and held that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly during the last stages of the war against the LTTE in 2009.

Communal violence

Moreover, people’s tribunals can also help to disseminate the truth about injustice or ongoing human rights violations at the time. The Iraq war and the subsequent World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) organised by the “international civil society” is an example. The moral indictment by the WTI through its public hearings helped to substantiate the claims of gross violations and culpability of the American coalition forces in Iraq.

In situations of communal violence, people’s tribunals can push the boundaries of human rights advocacy and justice. In fact, a Concerned Citizens Tribunal was formed even after the Gujarat pogrom, which documented exhaustively transgressions of international human rights and criminal law committed during the riots in 2002, and made concrete proposals to provide justice to the victims and prevent a recurrence of such violence.

Mode of resistance

Finally, a people’s tribunal can also act as a mode of organised or symbolic resistance. A recent tribunal on fabricated cases was organised in September 2012 by an umbrella of civil society groups in Delhi. It heard testimonies from victims and family members of persons from Manipur, Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and other States besides lawyers, journalists and activists who have been incarcerated for years without sufficient evidence of their involvement. People’s tribunals or oral histories can be effective in bringing out these issues and confronting them headlong in situations where State-led official processes are either unwilling or unable to do so.

The history of people’s tribunals in India and elsewhere is replete with interesting and important ways in which they have contributed to advancing agendas of truth, justice and reparations.

When the RToP convened in New York to hear the testimonies of violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinians, its resonance was felt across the Atlantic to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. If Israel or its supporters, especially the United States, choose to take note of the recommendations this time around, it will provide essential guidance to move forward towards a permanent peace.

At home, the government too needs to engage rather than ignore the legal and policy recommendations of people’s tribunals and the civil society processes because it would only help to deepen and institutionalise justice. For these people’s tribunals are in some ways the upholder of our collective consciousness.

(Warisha Farasat, a lawyer, is currently working with the Centre of Equity Studies on issues of justice and reparations for victims of communal violence in India.) 



INTERNATIONAL

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11. TUNISIA: INVESTIGATE ATTACKS BY RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS - MULTIPLE INCIDENTS, NO ARRESTS
- Human Rights Watch
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Human Rights Watch

October 15, 2012

(Tunis) – Tunisian authorities should investigate a series of attacks by religious extremists over the past 10 months and bring those responsible to justice, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a July 11, 2012, letter to the ministers of justice and interior, Human Rights Watch described in detail six incidents in which individuals or groups who appeared to be motivated by an Islamist agenda assaulted people – in most cases artists, intellectuals, and political activists – because of their ideas or dress. Human Rights Watch has received reports of another such attack, by a radical religious group, against the organizers of a festival in August.

“The failure of Tunisian authorities to investigate these attacks entrenches the religious extremists’ impunity and may embolden them to commit more violence,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

The letter to the justice and interior ministers documented the apparent failure of authorities to respond to these assaults. Human Rights Watch asked the ministers whether law enforcement and judicial authorities have responded to the complaints filed by the assault victims and whether any suspects have been charged or brought to trial. Human Rights Watch has received no response to the letter.

The victims in the six cases are: Rajab Magri, a drama teacher and civil society activist, assaulted on October 14, 2011, and again on May 25, 2012, in Le Kef; his nephew Selim Magri, on May 7, 2012, in Le Kef; Jaouhar Ben Mbarek, an activist and organizer for Doustourna, a social network, on April 21, 2012, in Souk Al Ahad; Zeineb Rezgui, a journalist, on May 30, 2012, in Tunis; and Mohamed Ben Tabib, a documentary filmmaker and philosophy professor, on May 25, 2012, in Bizerte.

In all six cases the victims filed complaints at the police stations immediately after the assault, in most cases identifying the attackers. As far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine, police have not arrested any of the alleged attackers or initiated formal investigations or prosecutions against them.

Tunisian authorities are obliged under international law to investigate and prosecute people who assault others, and provide effective remedies to victims.

In the most recent attack brought to the attention of Human Rights Watch, on August 16, a group of bearded men attacked a festival to commemorate the international day for Jerusalem in Bizerte, a city 40 kilometers north of Tunis, injuring at least three activists.

Khaled Boujemaa, a human rights activist and an organizer of the festival, told Human Rights Watch that he called the chief of police several times that day, first to inform him about threats from people he identified from their beards and clothing as salafists, Muslims who advocate a return to Islam as they believe it was practiced in the days of the Prophet Muhammad. The men ordered the organizers to cancel the festival and accused them of being Shi’a, Muslims who are in the minority in Tunisia.

He called the police again after a large group of bearded men started tearing down the photos and the flags posted for the event. Boujemaa made a third call when about 60 assailants started attacking him and other festival participants. He said the chief assured him that police would take the necessary measures for their safety but that no police were sent to protect the festival and that the police chief observed the attack from afar without intervening. Boujemaa was severely beaten and taken to the hospital.

“The police came to see us in the hospital several hours later and we went on August 21 to the police and identified some of the assailants,” Boujemaa told Human Rights Watch. “After that I saw the individuals we identified leave the police station from the back door. We have not heard since whether the trial will take place and when.”

These attacks have taken place in the past 10 months in various parts of the country by people having similar clothing and appearance, based on the victims’ accounts. The attackers have behaved violently and used weapons such as swords, clubs, and knives to prevent festivals or celebrations and have beaten people, apparently for their ideas, dress, or activity.

“The apparent lack of investigations – never mind prosecutions – can only increase the sense of vulnerability by those who earn the ire of these gangs,” Stork said.


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South Asia Citizens Wire
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