SACW - 14 Jan 2014 | Bangladesh: New Hasina Govt / Sri Lanka: Neoliberalism / Pakistan: Passport & Polio / India: AAP; Immunity - Impunity; Homophobia / Solidarity for professor Grayson / Rwanda Genocide

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 14 January 2014 - No. 2805 
[year 16]
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Contents:

1. Pakistan: [Ideology in the Passport] The heart of darkness | Madeeha Gauhar
2. The Political Economy of Neoliberalism in Sri Lanka | B Skanthakumar
3. Bangladesh: Post Poll Politics and Attacks on Minorities - A compilation of reports, editorials, commentary and statements
   (1. Bangladesh: Attacks on non-Muslims must stop now, forever
   (2. Hindu minority become target of Bangladesh violence by Victor Mallet
   (3. No impunity for violence - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
   (4. Bangladesh: Challenge Before Third Hasina Govt - Gautam Das
   (5. Time for the BNP to cut Jamaat loose - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
   (6. Bangladesh’s Radical Islamists Get U.S. Backing - Daily Beast
   (7. Bangladesh’s Predicament - Economic and Political Weekly, Editorial
   (8. Deplorable attacks on religious minority communities - New Age, Editorial
   (9. Odhikar indictment a worrisome sign - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
  (10. Obhoynagar reminds of ’71 horrors by Emran Hossain
  (11. The ugliest face of the opposition - Tribune Editorial
  (12. Attacks on Religious Minorities - Fresh attacks take place in Satkhira, Panchagarh (New Age)
  (13. Politics is done best with lathis in Bangladesh by Afsan Chowdhury
4. The bomb hurler and why he is burning Bangladesh by silversandals
5. Pakistan Must Fight Those Who Threaten and Kill Health Workers Providing Medication Against Polio - Select Editorials, 12 January 2014
6. India: Gays as refugees in their own land | Rajeev Dhavan
7. India: Homophobia was inculcated into Indians as part of Macaulay’s plan to ‘educate’ the natives | Ruth Vanita
8. India: How ghettos get made - It’s dangerous that Akhilesh’s government has outsourced riot relief work to religious outfits | Rakhi Chakrabarty
9. India: People’s Movements Extend Support to Aam Aadmi Party | NAPM Press Release
10. India: Was Anna’s Movement really against Corruption or a RSS Sponsored Ploy? – Kiran Bedi spills the beans | Mukul Sinha
11. India: Aam Adami Party (AAP) - Political Forays | Ram Puniyani
12. India: Statement from All India Secular Forum Following Arrest of Yugal Kishore Sharan Shastri
13. India is still a hunger hotspot | Arvind Virmani, Charan Singh
14. Scientific Advance: On the road to manipulating objects at distance
15. Joint letter in support of professor Grayson and gender equality at York University, Canada
16. India: Statement Against PM's move to inaugurate the ill-conceived Nuclear Plant in Haryana
17. India: 1989 Kanpur Mill Workers Stop the Trains Action | Sunil Nigam
18. Immunity ≠ Impunity | Devyani Khobragade Indicted
19. Bangladesh: Minority Report - Do you remember “Lajja”?
20. The Statistical Future of Bangladeshi Hindus
21. India: Revenge the Shape of things to come - A statement by eminent citizens
22. India: Condemn Attack on AAP Headquarters, Defend Freedom of Expression, Oppose Politics of Hurt Sentiments - Statement by NSI
23. India: From displacement to disappearance | Farah Naqvi
24. India: NAPM demands Release of Narmada Adivasi Oustees
25. Online Petition: No diplomatic immunity for domestic worker abuse!
26. India: Why does Manish Sisodia sound like Raj Thackeray?
27. Selected Posts from Communalism Watch:

Full text:
28. Toiling to Bring Rwanda Genocide Suspects to Justice | Maïa de la Baume
29. The Shroud Over Rwanda’s Nightmare | Michael Dobbs 
30. Dissertation Review by Nawab Osman: [Islamist] Student Activism in Indonesia
31. Publication announcement: The Darjeeling Distinction by Sarah Besky

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1. PAKISTAN: THE HEART OF DARKNESS
by Madeeha Gauhar
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(TFT Issue: 10 Jan 2014)
At the passport office Madeeha Gauhar felt her lifetime of activism had come to nought in the face of a constitutional reality
http://www.sacw.net/article7270.html

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2. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NEOLIBERALISM IN SRI LANKA
by B Skanthakumar
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. . . neo-liberalism has failed to eradicate poverty and actually exacerbated inequality and vulnerability, why has the Sri Lankan state not abandoned the perspectives and approaches that it has followed since 1977?
http://sacw.net/article7200.html

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3. BANGLADESH: POST POLL POLITICS AND ATTACKS ON MINORITIES - A COMPILATION OF REPORTS, EDITORIALS, COMMENTARY AND STATEMENTS
(sacw.net - 13 January 2014)
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Contents:
(1. Bangladesh: Attacks on non-Muslims must stop now, forever
(2. Hindu minority become target of Bangladesh violence by Victor Mallet
(3. No impunity for violence - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
(4. Bangladesh: Challenge Before Third Hasina Govt by Gautam Das
(5. Time for the BNP to cut Jamaat loose - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
(6. Bangladesh’s Radical Islamists Get U.S. Backing - Daily Beast
(7. Bangladesh’s Predicament - Economic and Political Weekly, Editorial
(8. Deplorable attacks on religious minority communities - New Age, Editorial
(9. Odhikar indictment a worrisome sign - Dhaka Tribune Editorial
(10. Obhoynagar reminds of ’71 horrors by Emran Hossain
(11. The ugliest face of the opposition - Tribune Editorial
(12. ATTACKS ON RELIGIOUS MINORITIES - Fresh attacks take place in Satkhira, Panchagarh (New Age)
(13. Politics is done best with lathis in Bangladesh by Afsan Chowdhury
http://www.sacw.net/article7269.html

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4. THE BOMB HURLER AND WHY HE IS BURNING BANGLADESH
by silversandals (on Alal o Dulal)
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 The bomb hurler and why he is burning Bangladesh by Nadine Shaanta Murshid for AlalODulal.org Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. If you look too deeply into the abyss, the abyss will look into you. -Nietzsche The elections are over. But not a […]
http://www.sacw.net/article7243.html

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5. PAKISTAN MUST FIGHT THOSE WHO THREATEN AND KILL HEALTH WORKERS PROVIDING MEDICATION AGAINST POLIO - SELECT EDITORIALS, 12 JANUARY 2014
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. . .the militant threat in the fight against polio must be thwarted and the health workers facilitated in every way possible
http://www.sacw.net/article7268.html

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6. INDIA: GAYS AS REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN LAND 
by Rajeev Dhavan
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ON January 3, 2014, it was reported that the United States ( U. S.) granted asylum to a gay couple, Jagdish Kumar and Sukwinder who fled India in June 2012 because of pressure on Jagdish to marry a girl. They did not try and sneak into the U. S. but surrendered to the U. S. immigration authorities asking for asylum at the Mexican border. The case was supported by an NGO called Immigration Equality which specialises in gay and lesbian cases. The U. S. judge was doubly convinced following India’s Supreme Court judgement re- criminalizing same- sex behaviour which was brought to the attention of the U. S. judge.
http://www.sacw.net/article7266.html

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7. INDIA: HOMOPHOBIA WAS INCULCATED INTO INDIANS AS PART OF MACAULAY’S PLAN TO ‘EDUCATE’ THE NATIVES 
by Ruth Vanita
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In 1835, Macaulay famously stated that the British education system in India should create ‘a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’.
http://www.sacw.net/article7265.html

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8. INDIA: HOW GHETTOS GET MADE - IT’S DANGEROUS THAT AKHILESH’S GOVERNMENT HAS OUTSOURCED RIOT RELIEF WORK TO RELIGIOUS OUTFITS
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Muzaffarnagar has a notorious crime record, but its communal amity stood out in UP. Economy and not religion was the overriding factor. Every member preserved his religious or social identity while being part of a cohesive whole. The September 2013 riots changed that, rupturing social relations cemented over centuries. This is bound to tell on the economy of the country’s sugar bowl.
http://www.sacw.net/article7262.html

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9. INDIA: PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS EXTEND SUPPORT TO AAM AADMI PARTY
by NAPM
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We consider the attempt of AAP as a movement and appreciate the endeavour to fill in the political vacuum. The decision is based on our viewing AAP as an evolving political vehicle for people’s movements. We are however, yet to discuss some aspects – ideological to strategical – with AAP leadership and ensure a mechanism to establish a relation of the party with the people’s movements. Many of us are part of National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), a non-party political platform, which will continue to retain its independent identity and provide input to programmes and policies and also lead struggles on people’s issues as done always.
http://www.sacw.net/article7263.html

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10. INDIA: WAS ANNA’S MOVEMENT REALLY AGAINST CORRUPTION OR A RSS SPONSORED PLOY? – KIRAN BEDI SPILLS THE BEANS
by Mukul Sinha
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Kiran Bedi’s open support to Narendra Modi and at the same time declaring that Congress was the target of the anti-corruption campaign exposes the game plan behind Anna’s anti-corruption movement
http://www.sacw.net/article7255.html

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11. INDIA: AAM ADAMI PARTY (AAP) - POLITICAL FORAYS
by Ram Puniyani
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AAP's emergence and the realization that it may not be a mere ‘one go' phenomenon, the strategists in Nagpur head office, RSS top brass and Modi' team have changed the strategy. Now their major fire is directed against AAP. Social media and other word of mouth propaganda is going full barrel against Kejrival, Prashant Bhushan, Yogenra Yadav and Company. Prashant Bhushan's balanced statement that the opinion of people of Kashmir should be taken about the army deployment in Kashmir, met with a hostile response. AAP office was ransacked by Hindu Raksha Sena, whom AAP blames to be the outfit of RSS-BJP. Kejrival himself disassociated with that statement is another matter at present. The threat being perceived by the secular democratic forces, that Modi's becoming the Prime Minister will herald the era of fascism seems to have been blunted partly at the moment due to the unprecedented response being received by AAP. How much of this is true, one is not sure.
http://sacw.net/article7246.html

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12. INDIA: STATEMENT FROM ALL INDIA SECULAR FORUM FOLLOWING ARREST OF YUGAL KISHORE SHARAN SHASTRI
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The UP police arrested Yugal Kishore Sharan Shstri on 11th January. He had planned to organize a People's Panchayat on the issue of attack on Shrine of Sheesh Paighambar, which was attacked on 20 December 13. In this attack a student Zeeshan was killed. The police arrest of Shastriji has been made on the ground that he is ‘threat to peace and order' in the city.
We understand that the arrest is the result of his sustained campaign to expose the communal elements 
http://sacw.net/article7245.html

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13. INDIA IS STILL A HUNGER HOTSPOT 
by Arvind Virmani, Charan Singh
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Malnutrition, lack of clean water and prevalence of poor sanitation are the main causes of high child mortality in India.
http://sacw.net/article7251.html

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14. SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE: ON THE ROAD TO MANIPULATING OBJECTS AT DISTANCE
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Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. 
http://sacw.net/article7250.html

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15. JOINT LETTER IN SUPPORT OF PROFESSOR GRAYSON AND GENDER EQUALITY AT YORK UNIVERSITY, CANADA
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York University is standing by its sexist decision to allow a student to be excused from a group project because the presence of women interfered with his “firm religious beliefs” even after his professor refused the request. To defend professor Grayson and gender equality, please sign the petition here.
http://sacw.net/article7239.html

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16. INDIA: STATEMENT AGAINST PM'S MOVE TO INAUGURATE THE ILL-CONCEIVED NUCLEAR PLANT IN HARYANA
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After terming the Indo-US nuclear deal his "greatest achievement", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is going to Fatehabad, Haryana on 13th January to lay the foundation stone for the Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Project. Just 150 kms from New Delhi, this project is an invitation to disaster as it critically depends on a canal for cooling-water supply; canals can fail or dry up.
http://sacw.net/article7238.html

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17. INDIA: 1989 KANPUR MILL WORKERS STOP THE TRAINS ACTION | SUNIL KUMAR NIGAM
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(SACW LABOUR ARCHIVE)
Article on February 1989 Kanpur cotton mill workers rail roko action 
http://sacw.net/article7233.html

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18. IMMUNITY ≠ IMPUNITY | DEVYANI KHOBRAGADE INDICTED
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GKS and advocates of domestic workers' rights are dismayed by the Indian government's pursuit and the ultimate granting of diplomatic immunity to Devyani Khobragade, a move that only serves to protect Indian employers who violate labour rights and human rights. GKS condemns the humiliating treatment of Ms. Khobragade during her arrest – however, the immunity conveniently sought later highlights only the continuing denial of domestic workers' human rights by the Indian government everywhere. However, the indictment and the qualified immunity that Ms. Khobragade has been given show that immunity does not equal impunity.
http://sacw.net/article7237.html

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19. BANGLADESH: MINORITY REPORT - DO YOU REMEMBER “LAJJA”?
(from alaldulal)
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“But in the last Awami period, from Ramu to Sathia, during the various attacks on Buddhish and Hindu community, alongside BNP-Jamaat, we have also seen local Awami League members. This has put into crisis the entire basis for this party to claim itself as “secular.” Last Friday, during the attacks in Barisal, the leadership was […] - General / Bangladesh, Violence / Conflict, Minorities
http://sacw.net/article7219.html

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20. THE STATISTICAL FUTURE OF BANGLADESHI HINDUS
by Dipen Bhattacharya (on alaldulal)
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The Statistical Future of Bangladeshi Hindus by Dipen Bhattacharya for AlalODulal.org In 2051, the Hindu population could fall to the level of 1974. One thing that every Bangladeshi possibly knows is that the Hindu population as a percentage of the total is shrinking monotonically. This is the legacy of the partition of India in 1947 
http://sacw.net/article7220.html

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21. INDIA: REVENGE THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME - A STATEMENT BY EMINENT CITIZENS
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The Gujarat government is trying to intimidate Citizens for Justice and Peace activists fighting the Zakia Jafri case, by filing an FIR based on trumped-up charges against them. Some eminent citizens led by historian Romila Thapar have issued a brief statement deploring this. "Indian citizens have just got a disturbing glimpse of how the state would deal with dissidents and human-rights defenders should Narendra Modi come to power nationally...."
http://sacw.net/article7225.html

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22. INDIA: CONDEMN ATTACK ON AAP HEADQUARTERS, DEFEND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, OPPOSE POLITICS OF HURT SENTIMENTS - STATEMENT BY NSI
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New Socialist Initiative condemns the attack on the headquarters of AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) office at Kaushambi, Ghaziabad by vigilantes of the Hindutva Brigade and demands stern action against the culprits. Given the inordinate delay by the police in reaching the place and nabbing the hooligans in the case of an emergent political party and high-profile politicians, one can only imagine the safety and security of common citizen under such dispensation.
http://sacw.net/article7226.html

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23. INDIA: FROM DISPLACEMENT TO DISAPPEARANCE 
by Farah Naqvi
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Camp after camp has been forced to disappear in Muzaffarnagar by the official authorities. But where are the internally displaced persons? Look closer where the camps once stood and you will find them. In small shanty settlements, 10 tents here, another 10 tents half a kilometre down the road, 20-odd tents along the talab in Loi village. It is the same story in Shahpur. The “camp” has disappeared. Its people are now part of India's great slum story, their tent clusters dotting the countryside of Shahpur village, here today, gone tomorrow; their permanent addresses unknown.
http://sacw.net/article7214.html

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24. INDIA: NAPM DEMANDS RELEASE OF NARMADA ADIVASI OUSTEES
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8th January: Hundreds of adivasis and farmers, representing a large number of oustees affected by the Sardar Sarovar and Jobat Dam Projects in the Alirajpur District of Madhya Pradesh, stormed the office of the Collector, Mr. N.P. Deheria yesterday and engaged in a day-long protest, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of about 40 adivasis, including 6 women, who were arrested on 5th January in a completely illegal manner from the site of the Zameen Haq Satyagraha at Jobat.
http://sacw.net/article7213.html

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25. ONLINE PETITION: NO DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY FOR DOMESTIC WORKER ABUSE!
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Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general to the US, was arrested by US police in December for allegedly paying her housekeeper Sangeeta Richard less than one-third the legal minimum wage and lying to US officials about Sangeeta's real wage and working conditions. While there are understandable concern about Khobragade's treatment following arrest, the diplomatic row between the US and India triggered by the arrest has obscured the real issue of worker exploitation.
http://sacw.net/article7208.html

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26. INDIA: WHY DOES MANISH SISODIA SOUND LIKE RAJ THACKERAY?
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(via Dilip Simeon's Blog)
Nothing travels faster, it seems, than a bad and populist idea. By announcing that 90 per cent of the seats in 12 Delhi University colleges directly funded by Delhi will be reserved exclusively for residents, the new education minister, Manish Sisodia, has endorsed a small-minded proposal that was earlier supported by the BJP and Congress. The large-hearted cosmopolitanism of this city of migrants sets it on par with metropolises like Bangalore and Mumbai. Before the AAP goes ahead with its misguided plan, it should look again at the voters, or even its own council of ministers, and ask just who the real "Dilliwallah" is.
http://sacw.net/article7197.html

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27. SELECTED POSTS FROM COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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  - India: Politics of a riot | Badri Narayan 
    http://communalism.blogspot.in/2014/01/india-politics-of-riot-badri-narayan.html
  - India - General Election 2014: In UP, Amit Shah picks RSS men
    http://communalism.blogspot.in/2014/01/india-general-election-2014-in-up-amit.html
  - India: The Capitalist Logic of Spatial Segregation - A Study of Muslims in Delhi | Ghazala Jamil
    http://communalism.blogspot.in/2014/01/india-capitalist-logic-of-spatial.html
  - India: 24-year-old conflict has once again made 5,000 Rengma Nagas staying in Assam feel unwelcome
    http://communalism.blogspot.in/2014/01/india-24-year-old-conflict-has-once.html

FULL TEXT
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28. TOILING TO BRING RWANDA GENOCIDE SUSPECTS TO JUSTICE
by Maïa de la Baume
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(The New York Times, Jan. 10, 2014)
By bringing civil lawsuits against Hutus suspected of involvement in the genocide, Alain and Dafroza Gauthier have challenged France’s longstanding protection of Rwandan fugitives. Catalina Martin-Chico for The New York Times
The Saturday Profile

REIMS, France — ABOVE his desk in a peaceful and tidy townhouse with pots of geraniums hanging from the windowsills and walls covered with photos of his children, Alain Gauthier keeps 24 files labeled with the names of some of the men and women accused in one of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century.

Mr. Gauthier and his wife, Dafroza, have been collecting information for 13 years on each of the 24 Rwandan men and women they suspect of having participated in their country’s 1994 genocide. The suspects are members of the Hutu ethnic group who now lead comfortable lives in France and deny any involvement in the slaughter of more than 800,000 people — most of them Tutsi — in just 100 days.

“Here, the fugitives live in denial,” said Mrs. Gauthier, 59, a chemical engineer and a Tutsi from Rwanda. “They’ve always denied, they have created another story, they have completely erased that part of their lives. They were obliged to do so, otherwise you end up in a mental institution. You can’t live with a crime like that.”

“What drives us is that the killers be judged, for history, for the victims,” Mrs. Gauthier said. “It is our turn, us as alive people, as survivors to claim for justice because if we don’t do it, nobody will, and nobody will make amends for what happened.”

But most important, by bringing civil lawsuits against Hutus suspected of being fugitives, the couple has challenged French authorities and the news media over the country’s longstanding protection of Rwandan fugitives.

France, which has long been accused of providing weapons and military training to the Hutus before the genocide, has never convicted anyone accused of complicity in the Rwandan genocide. But after restoring diplomatic relations with Rwanda in 2009 — they were broken in 2006 when a French judge accused a group of Rwandans of having plotted in 1994 to shoot down the plane of Rwanda’s president at the time, touching off the genocide — Paris appointed five judges to investigate the matter of the Rwandan fugitives and opened a police section specializing in crimes of genocide. Next month, the judges are scheduled to bring their first criminal case against a Rwandan fugitive accused of genocide.

For the Gauthiers, these are crimes that cannot be erased. They say that only by bringing the accused to justice can they help the victims and their families to forgive and move on. In France, they are frequently likened to Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the couple who pursued Nazi criminals in the 1950s.

Mrs. Gauthier, a graceful woman from Butare, one of the largest cities in Rwanda, lost her mother and about 80 relatives in the genocide. Mr. Gauthier, 65, is a retired high school principal who lived in Rwanda as a young man, teaching French at a local junior high school, which is how they met.

FOR the Gauthiers, the news that French authorities were prepared to bring their first genocide case was vindication for 13 years of labor. They had found the defendant, Pascal Simbikangwa, five years ago, at his home in the slums of Kaweni, a city on the island of Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.

“They were alone, they fought, and their work is colossal,” said Maria Malagardis, a journalist for the newspaper Libération, who wrote a book, “On the Track of the Rwandan Killers,” about the couple.

The Gauthiers consider themselves amateur investigators, in that neither studied criminal law and both have spent their working lives in unrelated fields.

Born in 1954, Mrs. Gauthier grew up in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where she met her husband. From 1973 to 1977, she was forced to live as a political refugee in Belgium, where she studied chemistry. In 1974, she went to visit Mr. Gauthier in southern France, where he had moved after his years in Rwanda, and they married in 1977.

Some years later, the couple settled in Reims and had three children, Violaine, Emmanuel and Sarah. They were never to live in Rwanda again, although they would go there about once a month for their investigations.

In most respects, they were living a typical middle-class life until that day in April 1994, when the calls started coming. “We were glued to the telephone all day,” Mrs. Gauthier recalled. “People would tell us, ‘At X’s home, they’re all dead. They’ve been killed this morning.’ It didn’t mean anything anymore. I can’t express it with words. We were lost, we wondered whether it was true. Once we were there, we realized the magnitude of things when people we knew weren’t there anymore, and even their houses had disappeared.”

Mrs. Gauthier learned that her mother had been shot by a Hutu general who later fled to Cameroon, where he died a free man, she said. She promised herself that even if she had failed to find her mother’s killer, she would seek justice for the thousands of Tutsi victims who were killed because they were “scapegoats, undesirable people.”

In 2001, she traveled with her husband to Brussels for the trial of four Rwandans convicted of committing war crimes during the mass killings in 1994. There, the couple met the head of an association that searched for Rwandan fugitives in Belgium. “He told us, ‘Why don’t you do this in France? There are hundreds of them there,’ ” Mr. Gauthier said. “And so we did.”

That year, the Gauthiers set up an association, the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, to have legal standing to file civil cases against fugitives. The French police detained three of the 24 fugitives in the country at the time, and about a dozen of them were put under formal investigation.

Only one was convicted by the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was established in 1994 by the Security Council to prosecute people accused of genocide. Today, Mr. Gauthier says he believes that more than 100 Rwandan fugitives live in France. “But as long as we don’t have names, it’s hard to know,” he said.

HE and his wife have worked feverishly since then, interrogating prosecutors, prisoners and victims of the genocide in Rwanda. They have gathered information online and through archival research and interviews with former prefects, magistrates and doctors — people with the wealth and connections to flee their homeland. The couple established that many of the fugitives, some of whom were wanted by Rwanda, Interpol and the tribunal, had become respected French citizens.

In 2004, the couple unmasked Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, a former prefect who had settled in Carcassonne, in southern France, after the genocide. Mr. Ntawukuriryayo worked in a church there and founded Future Geniuses, a nongovernmental organization to help children in Rwanda.

Mr. Ntawukuriryayo, who played a major role in the killing of as many as 25,000 Tutsi refugees in April 1994, was eventually extradited to Tanzania, where the tribunal was sitting and where he was convicted on genocide charges in 2010 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The couple also tracked down Sosthène Munyemana, a respected gynecologist who lives in the southwest of France and has never been convicted. In Rwanda, he is sometimes called the “butcher of Tumba” (Tumba is a district south of Butare) and is accused by local authorities and Interpol of murder and being involved in his country’s extermination plan against the Tutsis.

Mr. Gauthier, who listened carefully to his wife’s dark recollections, has devoted much of his time and energy to the hunt for criminals, often sleeping only a few hours a night. In the last 13 years, he has never missed a court hearing involving a fugitive.

On a recent day in Paris, Mr. Gauthier sat at a cafe outside the tribunal where he had attended a hearing for one suspect, Claude Muhayimana, a former driver who is charged with participating in several massacres in 1994.

When Mr. Muhayimana, dressed in a white tracksuit, came to sit with his family a few steps from Mr. Gauthier’s table and glanced at him with an air of disdain, Mr. Gauthier looked away, almost untroubled.

“I know those looks,” he said. “I’m used to them now.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Toiling to Bring Rwanda Genocide Suspects to Justice, ‘for History, for the Victims’. 

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29. THE SHROUD OVER RWANDA’S NIGHTMARE
by Michael Dobbs 
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(The New York Times, Jan 9, 2014)
Alvaro Dominguez; Photo courtesy of of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago this Saturday, the commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda wrote a coded cable to his superiors in New York that has come to be known as the “genocide fax.” Citing inside information from a “top-level trainer” for a pro-regime militia group, Brig. Gen. Roméo Dallaire warned of an “anti-Tutsi extermination” plot.

The refusal by United Nations officials to approve the general’s plan for raids on suspected arms caches has been widely condemned as paving the way for one of the worst genocides since the Holocaust. But evidence submitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, some of it still under seal, reveals a murkier, more complicated situation than has often been portrayed.

New details about the mysterious informant known to General Dallaire as “Jean-Pierre” serve as a reminder that history can take a long time to reveal its secrets. Important documents that could shed light on the unresolved mysteries and ambiguities of the Rwanda genocide remain under lock and key.

It is now commonly recognized that the international community failed miserably in its efforts to protect the people of Rwanda. But even 20 years later, there is still much to learn. While the new evidence does not absolve the United Nations and Western governments for failing to take timely action, Jean-Pierre’s story illustrates the challenges that continue to vex decision-makers struggling to make sense of unfolding crises in countries like the Central African Republic or South Sudan.

The immediate trigger for the Rwandan genocide was the shooting down of a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Over the next hundred days, Hutu militia groups murdered at least half a million members of the Tutsi minority, along with tens of thousands of “moderate” Hutus. These massacres took place against the backdrop of a war that pitted the Hutu-dominated regime against Tutsi-led insurgents who had invaded Rwanda from neighboring Uganda.

Whether the genocide was planned, and was thus foreseeable, has been hotly debated by scholars, politicians and lawyers. The “genocide fax” has been a key part of this debate. Controversy has surrounded Jean-Pierre’s motives for cooperating with General Dallaire, the reliability of his information, and his fate after his request for protection was rejected by the United Nations.

We now know a lot more about Jean-Pierre Abubakar Turatsinze (his full name was established by the war crimes tribunal). Half-Hutu and half-Tutsi, he operated on both sides of Rwanda’s political and ethnic divide. While his prediction of mass murder of Tutsis by Hutu militia groups proved chillingly accurate, he misled United Nations peacekeepers on some key points.

Important details about his background and eventual fate are contained in a 2003 interview with his wife by tribunal investigators that has never been officially released but is now available. At the time of his marriage, in 1990, he worked as a driver for a senior Rwandan official. In the turmoil following the rebel invasion, Jean-Pierre used his connections to become an intermediary to the Interahamwe militia, whose principal goal was to defend the Hutu-dominated regime.

Curiously, the fact that he was married to a Tutsi and was the product of a mixed Tutsi-Hutu marriage does not seem to have affected his advancement in the Interahamwe, at least until the end of 1993. Around this time, he told his wife that he might have to kill her because the ruling party was planning to carry out “massacres.” As she told investigators, “because I am Tutsi and his mother was Tutsi, I understood this to mean that the massacres were going to be against the Tutsi population.”

Jean-Pierre told General Dallaire’s aides in January 1994 that he had been instructed to register “all Tutsis” living in Kigali, apparently for “their extermination.” He also said that the Rwandan Army had been supplying the Interahamwe with weapons, and identified several arms caches, including one in the headquarters of the ruling party. The Interahamwe went on to commit many of the murders during the genocide.

The Arusha-based international tribunal has found that the Rwandan Army channeled weapons to the Interahamwe and provided military training to militia members. But tribunal judges were not convinced that the purpose of that training was the “extermination” of Tutsis, as Jean-Pierre claimed, rather than preparation for renewed hostilities with the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. They found that the Interahamwe had drawn up lists of “suspected opponents of the regime,” but such lists were “not focused exclusively on ethnicity.”

Evidence submitted to the tribunal showed that Jean-Pierre may have had other motives for seeking United Nations protection. He had fallen out with party leaders who suspected him of selling arms to rebels in Burundi. Some witnesses believe he might have been an agent of the Rwandan Patriotic Front assigned to penetrate the Interahamwe.

While there is no reliable evidence to back the claim that he was an R.P.F. agent in January 1994, it is clear that he had connections to opposition parties allied with the Tutsi-led rebels. According to United Nations cables, a Hutu opposition leader named Faustin Twagiramungu served as Jean-Pierre’s conduit to General Dallaire. These connections caused French and Belgian analysts to suspect that Jean-Pierre might be spreading “disinformation.”

In his 2003 memoir, “Shake Hands With the Devil,” General Dallaire raised the possibility that his informant had “simply melted back into the Interahamwe, angry and disillusioned at our vacillation and ineffectiveness, and become a genocidaire.” Jean-Pierre told the general’s aides at their final meeting in February 1994 that he was planning to go to Zaire, for “commando training.”

Instead, he went to Tanzania where he joined the R.P.F., according to his wife. In late March, two weeks before the president’s assassination, he moved to a rebel-held enclave in northern Rwanda, where he was reported to be “in very good books with senior members of the R.P.F.” In late 1994, a minister in Rwanda’s new Tutsi-led government informed the family that Jean-Pierre had been “killed in battle.”

The circumstances of his death remain a mystery. As his wife told investigators, “I do not know how he died and where.” She was unable even to establish whether he was “surely dead.”

General Dallaire has told the tribunal that he operated on “instinct” in sending the genocide fax, which was followed up by a series of warnings to New York in early 1994 that were rebuffed or ignored. He sensed that the peacekeeping force had to reassert its authority. But his superiors in New York needed something more than their field commander’s instincts to justify aggressive action.

Newly released State Department records show that United Nations officials briefed the United States, Belgium and France on the emerging crisis, but there was zero enthusiasm in the Clinton administration following the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia in October 1993. Much stronger intelligence would have been necessary to disrupt the passivity of senior decision makers.

The “Jean-Pierre” revelations are a tantalizing indication of how much we still have to learn about the Rwandan genocide. Records that could shed light on whether it could have been prevented are still classified in Washington, New York, Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Arusha and Kigali — unavailable to the public despite pledges by international leaders to fully investigate the tragedy. In order to draw the correct lessons from history, we must first establish all the facts.

Michael Dobbs directs a Rwanda documentation and oral history project for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Security Archive.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 10, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Rwanda’s Shrouded Nightmare

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30. DISSERTATION REVIEW BY NAWAB OSMAN: [ISLAMIST] STUDENT ACTIVISM IN INDONESIA
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(Dissertation Reviews - 9 January 2014)

A review of LIVING FOR THE CALIPHATE: HIZBUT TAHRIR STUDENT ACTIVISM IN INDONESIA, BY CLAUDIA NEF SALUZ.

Claudia Nef Saluz’s dissertation makes an important contribution to our understanding of student activists linked to the highly secretive movement, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. Nef seeks to understand the interplay between religious revival and economic globalization through the study of HTI’s student activists. The key argument of the dissertation is that Islamic piety movements, such as Hizbut Tahrir, are not a refuge from globalization nor a way of resisting it. Rather, religion is analysed as an integral part of globalization and neo-liberalism. She demonstrates this through five themes: the meaning of learning and necessity of learning to establish religious authority; the process of appropriating the ideas of An-Nabhani (HT’s founder) in presenting arguments for the re-establishment of the Caliphate; consumption patterns, and piety. Although deeply engaged with the anthropological method - this dissertation stemming from several years of field work - Nef does not limit herself to anthropological theories alone, but also borrows from the fields of sociology and political science. The dissertation consists of six chapters together with an introduction and epilogue.

Chapter 1 sets out with great clarity the key arguments, structure, methodology and theoretical framework of the thesis. Engaging the literature on HT in general and HTI in particular (including that produced in Indonesia), Nef’s critical analysis of the works of alarmist authors such as Zeyno Baran and Ariel Cohen is presented with an intriguing flair. Nef’s analysis of HTI is set in the milieu of the 1980s-1990s emergence of Islamic groups at Gadjah Majah University, in Yogyakarta (Central Java), and Chapter 2 thus provides a comprehensive analysis of the historical and sociological context in which Nabhani’s ideas spread across the student body, as well as an overview of the different political actors involved in student and national politics.

Chapter 3 addresses one of the core questions of the dissertation, investigating how HTI student activists acquire their knowledge of Islamic subjects. Most notably, this chapter suggests that students do not simply acquire Islamic knowledge but contribute back to the concept of Islam as a living tradition by constantly relating the founding texts of Islam to contemporary challenges they themselves face. In doing so, Nef argues, these activists are themselves creating new Islamic knowledge, a process of learning much pertinent for a successful struggle towards the establishment of the Caliphate. Offering interesting insights and new empirical data, Nef investigates the sites and structures of authority where HTI students learn to successfully call for the Caliphate.

Digging deeper in the the practice of da’wah, Chapter 4 examines the different styles of “arguing” employed by HTI activists to win new supporters for the Caliphate and thus revive the ideas of An-Nabhani. Focusing on both men and women activists, Nef dedicates much attention to the organization’s ideology as a means of criticizing the status quo and imagining a better future (p. 152). Offering several examples of how students affiliated with HTI articulate their opposition to capitalism and democracy while proposing alternatives to these systems in the form of An-Nabhani’s conception of Islamic economic and political systems, particular attention is dedicated to a study of these activists’ views on the need for the state to provide free education and health care. In the current political context of Indonesia, with elections scheduled to take place in 2014, the discussion on HT’s attitude towards democracy and the 2009 election emerges as particularly important (p. 165) as at the time the HT’s leadership remained ambiguous on whether its members should vote. This is further interesting given that HT’s central leadership has constantly advocated against voting in a system that is un-Islamic, with the  only exception being the 1954 election in Jordan where members succeeded in electing Sheikh Ahmad Ad-Daur as an independent. As such, this could actually be a case of HTI departing from HT’s original position on the issue. Chapter 4 is also of broader relevance as here Nef covers criticisms of HT, opening a window on the intra-Islamic competition between HT and other Muslim organizations.

Chapter 5 examines consumption choices and its implication for moral critique, revealing the complex entanglements between consumption and competing understandings of Islam (p. 186), as preferences can be categorized as either expressing “consumption” or “abstinence.” And so it is that in order to show the complexities between patterns of consumption and piety, Nef offers cases from a wider range of Islamic groups rather than limiting herself to HTI. One example is worth mentioning: the chapter opens with the captivating illustration of the dilemmas faced by HTI student activists when discovering that the prize (pop-corn) won at a Muslimat HTI quiz-contest had been produced in America and was thus seen as an un-Islamic product.

Chapter 6 addresses the question of whether the call for the establishment of the Caliphate under Islamic law constitutes perceptions of ‘proper’ Islamic conduct and piety. Analyzing public debates over sexual morality (p. 210), and focusing on issues such as standards of proper interaction with the opposite sex, the selection of marriage partners, polygamy, child marriage, and proper Islamic dressing, this chapter proves to be an important contribution to understanding the role of women in neo-conservative groups like HT.

Chapter 7 is the best chapter of the dissertation. Here Nef brings forward the suggestion that new media technologies have facilitated the emergence of new and dynamic structures of mobilization. Through the (very apt) case study of DK.com she shows how these dynamics are now less hierarchical and more prone to producing fluid networks that are more open and inclusive.

Summing up, Nef’s dissertation is well argued and very interesting, offering new theoretical insights in analyzing Indonesia’s branch of the Hizbut Tahrir, a movement which still proves difficult to research.

Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman
S Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Nanyang Techonology University
ismnawab at ntu.edu.sg

Primary Sources
Literature produced by Hizbut Tahrir and other activists
Over seventy open interviews with both men and women student activists, members of various Islamic organizations at Gadjah Mada University
Regular meetings with activists during the production of an edited book as well as a documentary film
Participation in a large number of conferences, small workshops and discussion rounds organized by the various groups on a broad spectrum of topics

Dissertation Information
University of Zurich. 2012. 296 pp. Primary Advisor: Shalini Randeria.

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31. PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: THE DARJEELING DISTINCTION BY SARAH BESKY
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The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India
by Sarah Besky
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013
ISBN: 9780520277397

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills of Northeast India, Darjeeling is synonymous with some of the finest and most expensive tea in the world. It is also home to a violent movement for regional autonomy that, like the tea industry, dates back to the days of colonial rule.

In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea workers in Darjeeling. She explores how notions of fairness, value, and justice shifted with the rise of fair-trade practices and postcolonial separatist politics in the region. This is the first book to explore how fair-trade operates in the context of large-scale plantations.

Readers in a variety of disciplines - anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental studies, and food studies - will gain a critical perspective
on how plantation life is changing as Darjeeling struggles to reinvent its signature commodity for twenty-first-century consumers. The Darjeeling Distinction challenges fair-trade policy and practice, exposing how trade initiatives often fail to consider the larger environmental, historical, and sociopolitical forces that shape the lives of the people they intended to support.

CONTENTS:

List of Maps and Figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on Orthography and Usage

Introduction: Reinventing the Plantation for the Twenty-first Century
1. Darjeeling
2. Plantation
3. Property
4. Fairness
5. Sovereignty
Conclusion: Is Something Better Than Nothing?

Notes
Bibliography
Index

For more information (including review copy requests), see the UC Press
listing:
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520277397


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