SACW - 23 April 2014 | Sri Lanka: Marry the Rapist Law / Bangladesh: Rana Plaza Tragedy - 1 Year on / Pakistan: Attack on Media / India: Big Business in Take Over Bid ; Censorship by the Batra Brigade; Letter from UK Academics / World Cup and the Neoliberal Transformation of Brazilian Cities

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Tue Apr 22 14:04:01 EDT 2014


South Asia Citizens Wire - 23 April 2014 - No. 2819 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. Sri Lanka: Thuggistan! | Tisaranee Gunasekara
2. Sri Lanka Detains British Tourist for Having a Buddha Tattoo (AFP)
3. Pakistan: Between the soldier and the citizen | Harris Khalique
4. Bangladesh: One Year After Rana Plaza Tragedy - Frustration of Survivors ; will they get justice ? | Muktadir Rashid
5. BJP leader’s dangerous affront to Bangladesh - Editorial, New Age
6. The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread: Letter from UK Academics and Scholars
7. India: Big Business Taking Over Will be undoing of Democracy | Harsh Kapoor
8. India: 'Secularism is dead!' says Shekhar Gupta - Comments by Dilip Simeon
9. Narendra Modi: India's saviour, or sectarian with blood on his hands? - Ian Jack     
10. Kashmir: No end to the woes of families returning from PAK under the amnesty scheme
11. India: His Master's Voice - Amit Shah's speeches in UP belie the promise of a new BJP
12. India: The murky past of Narendra Modi's right-hand man | Andrew Buncombe
13. India 2014 Elections: An Appeal to Voters from Concerned Citizens and Workers Associated with the World of Cinema
14. India: Censorship by the Batra Brigade | Wendy Doniger
15. Abki Bar, Abki Bar [Not Modi Sarkar]
16. India: Graham Staines to Gulbarg Society - What Modi doesn't know
17. India: Political Over Reach By Election Commission - Reserve Bank Governor | Rajindar Sachar 
18. India: Eclipse at Noon - Text of 15th D P Kohli Memorial Lecture by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
19. The First Indian Kiss - A short film on youtube
20. India: BJP spokewoman links Sonia with Mussolini. Will the RSS/BJP finally clarify their stance on fascism and Nazism?
21. India: Text of Citizens for Justice and Peace Legal Notice to ’The Pioneer’ For Defamation 
22.India: ’A Mockery of Justice’ - K.S Subramanian’s review of Manoj Mitta: ’The Fiction of Fact-Finding’
23. Selections from Communalism Watch:
 - India: Disregarding fascism | G. Sampath
 - India: The Modi hype is relentless | Pranab Bardhan
 - India: Why Modi's selfie campaign is not picture-perfect | Bharat Bhushan
 - Saeed Naqvi » India: non vegetarian majority with a vegetarian ruling class?
 - India 2014 elections: Christophe Jaffrelot on BJP's Manifesto
 - Be prepared to stand alone | Harsh Mander 

::Full Text::
24. Pakistan: Another attack on the media - Editorial, Dawn
25. Asif Bhai’s remedies  | Jawed Naqvi
26. Bridging the narratives in Sri Lanka | Gerrit Kurtz
27. The World Cup and the Neoliberal Transformation of Brazilian Cities | Brian Mier

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1. PAKISTAN: BETWEEN THE SOLDIER AND THE CITIZEN | Harris Khalique
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Like in any third world country, the contradiction between the rich and the poor, across ethnic, provincial and sectarian lines, is sharp as ever. The Pakistani state is doing next to nothing to change that massive imbalance in favour of the rich. There is an inherent bias towards the powerful and the privileged in all institutional arrangements and functioning of the state. The lack of provision of basic facilities and services, health and education, employment and entertainment, to the large majority of Pakistanis is shameful. This was a contradiction the state inherited from colonial rule; while it did not create it itself, it did nothing serious to resolve it either.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SouthAsiaCitizensWeb/~3/ayyO4DJnYKg/article8380.html

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2. SRI LANKA: THUGGISTAN! | Tisaranee Gunasekara
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“My opinion is that nobody can make men responsible for the violence against women. Women are responsible for it…” Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa
http://sacw.net/article8416.html

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3. SRI LANKA DETAINS BRITISH TOURIST FOR HAVING A BUDDHA TATTOO
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Arrest is the latest in a series of cases against foreign nationals based on perceived threats to Buddhism. A female British tourist in Sri Lanka has been detained and faces deportation for having a Buddha tattoo on her arm.
http://sacw.net/article8440.html

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4. BANGLADESH: ONE YEAR AFTER RANA PLAZA TRAGEDY - FRUSTRATION OF SURVIVORS ; WILL THEY GET JUSTICE ? | Muktadir Rashid
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A two part article by Muktadir Rashid.
http://sacw.net/article8448.html

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5. BJP LEADER’S DANGEROUS AFFRONT TO BANGLADESH
Editorial, New Age
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SUBRAMANIAN Swamy’s ‘estimate’ that ‘one-third of Bangladesh’s population lives in India’ and suggestion that Bangladesh ‘should compensate by giving land to India’ if it ‘does not agree to take back its people’ may be, as reported in New Age on Sunday, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader’s own view, and not his party’s, but are extremely incendiary. Bangladesh-bashing, especially on ‘illegal infiltration’, seems to have become a significant part of election-time rhetoric, particularly by the ultra-rightist BJP. Suffice to say, such rhetoric is generally one-sided and packed with manufactured statistics, if not blatant lies.
http://www.sacw.net/article8449.html

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6. THE IDEA OF MODI IN POWER FILLS US WITH DREAD: LETTER FROM UK ACADEMICS AND SCHOLARS
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As the people of India vote to elect their next government, we are deeply concerned at the implications of a Narendra Modi-led BJP government for democracy, pluralism and human rights in India.
http://sacw.net/article8437.html

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7. INDIA: BIG BUSINESS TAKING OVER WILL BE UNDOING OF DEMOCRACY
by Harsh Kapoor
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The run-up to the 2014 general elections in India has been an unprecedented demonstration of the massive infusion of money in electoral campaigning. A veritable carpet-bombing of India’s voters with the opposition BJP’s message is everywhere to be seen, from advertisements in newspapers, on TV, Youtube, Radio, Mobile Phones, CDs and the Internet, to billboards in all metropolitan cities and small towns and on transport vehicles, including inside the Delhi Metro trains. In effect, it has blocked out all other political parties as far as public advertising goes. This vast campaign has been on a scale never seen in history, estimated by some to be costing Rs 5000-6000 crores or more (from 800 to over 900 million dollars).
http://sacw.net/article8434.html

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8. INDIA: 'SECULARISM IS DEAD!' SAYS SHEKHAR GUPTA - COMMENTS BY DILIP SIMEON
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The moderate and liberal Hinduism that (as Gupta reminds us) is the bulwark of Indian secularism, is under attack by precisely those who are mobilising like never before to seize power for a Savarkarite programme. Let us remember who murdered Mahatma Gandhi, and why. We learn from the pages of the Indian Express that its owner prides himself on having been the (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/change-is-inevitable-constant-rss-chief/) invisible publisher of the RSS journal Organiser. (Why was he invisible?) I’d like to know Gupta’s views on the RSS and its activities.
http://sacw.net/article8429.html

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9. NARENDRA MODI: INDIA'S SAVIOUR, OR SECTARIAN WITH BLOOD ON HIS HANDS? - Ian Jack =========================================
The likely new prime minister of India is wildly popular among his supporters, and has a rags-to-riches backstory to warm the hearts of meritocrats, but others fear and distrust him by Ian Jack. Save a single exception – typically, an academic – every person of Indian descent known to me within a half-mile radius of my house wants Narendra Modi to be the next prime minister of India. Admittedly, this is not a large sample: it consists of a few shopkeepers who sell groceries and newspapers in my small part of north London. Nor is it a very balanced sample: like many small shopkeepers in Britain, they have their origins in the state of Gujarat and they are all, I think, Hindu by tradition if not observance. In other words, they share Modi's language, customs and religious identity
http://sacw.net/article8409.html

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10. KASHMIR: NO END TO THE WOES OF FAMILIES RETURNING FROM PAK UNDER THE AMNESTY SCHEME
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It is a pity that the woes of the families returning from Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) under the amnesty policy for surrendered ultras have remained unheeded. The tragic suicide by a wife of one of beneficiaries of this policy last week demonstrates this beyond a shadow of doubt. It turns out that three years after Jammu and Kashmir government gave the nod for rehabilitation and amnesty policy for youth who had crossed the borders for arms training and wish to return to lead normal lives is a major fraud with them. Several men who picked up guns after 1989 but had no cases against them did return, most of them with wives they married there and children who were born out of the wedlock, after crossing the Line of Control or taking the long route via Nepal. However, the policy is both conceptually flawed and ambiguous. Besides, there is as yet no mechanism in place for making the policy effective and allowing beneficiaries to settle back in their original homes to lead normal lives, disconnected from the conflict.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SouthAsiaCitizensWeb/~3/d7fzxgiKuzY/article8379.html

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11. INDIA: HIS MASTER'S VOICE - AMIT SHAH'S SPEECHES IN UP BELIE THE PROMISE OF A NEW BJP
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The difficulty with believing the BJP's new ‘governance' anthem is that Modi and his right-hand man, Amit Shah, chose during their election campaigns to sing a succession of the sangh parivar's oldest tunes. As political disc-jockeys they showed a marked preference for the BJP's bloodiest hits. In Bihar, Modi made speeches where he re-mixed the cow-slaughter theme song under a new title, the ‘Pink Revolution'. The lyrics of his cover version went like this: the Congress government had subsidized cow-slaughter, butchers had grown rich on the back of meat exports, did Yadavs really want to make common cause with people who killed the sacred cow? Amit Shah, hand-picked to deliver Uttar Pradesh to the BJP in 2014, made even more viscerally provocative speeches.
http://sacw.net/article8377.html

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12. INDIA: THE MURKY PAST OF NARENDRA MODI'S RIGHT-HAND MAN | Andrew Buncombe
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Last spring, a year ahead of the election now gripping India, Amit Shah was dispatched by Mr Modi to Uttar Pradesh with instructions to build support for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the nation's largest and politically most-important state. He set about identifying candidates and meeting local leaders in an effort to deliver Mr Modi the "wave" he will need to become India's next prime minister. But while Mr Shah has cemented support for Mr Modi, he has also run into problems. Over the weekend, one week into the five-week voting process to elect a new government, the Election Commission (EC) banned Mr Shah from addressing public meetings in the state, and ordered that charges be filed against him after he was accused of stoking communal tensions.
http://sacw.net/article8376.html

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13. INDIA 2014 ELECTIONS: AN APPEAL TO VOTERS FROM CONCERNED CITIZENS AND WORKERS ASSOCIATED WITH THE WORLD OF CINEMA
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Indian society has prided itself on being essentially secular in character, rejecting communal hatred, embracing tolerance. As Indian citizens who love our motherland, we appeal to you to vote for the secular party, which is most likely to win in your constituency.
http://sacw.net/article8373.html

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14. INDIA: CENSORSHIP BY THE BATRA BRIGADE | Wendy Doniger
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In February of this year, after a long career of relative obscurity in the ivory tower, I suddenly became notorious.1 In 2010, Penguin India had published a book of mine, The Hindus: An Alternative History, which won two awards in India: in 2012, the Ramnath Goenka Award,2 and in 2013, the Colonel James Tod Award.3 But within months of its publication in India, a then-eighty-one-year-old retired headmaster named Dina Nath Batra, a proud member of the far-right organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had brought the first of a series of civil and criminal actions against the book, arguing that it violated Article 295a of the Indian Penal Code, which forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class” of citizens.
http://sacw.net/article8396.html

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15. ABKI BAR, ABKI BAR [Not Modi Sarkar]
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http://sacw.net/article8395.html

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16. INDIA: GRAHAM STAINES TO GULBARG SOCIETY - WHAT MODI DOESN'T KNOW
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The whole BJP campaign has focused on Narendra Modi as the Man Who Knows It All. That's the gist of what Rahul Gandhi alleged when the BJP's manifesto was missing in action. The Man was the Manifesto. So what was the point of poring over Murli Manohar Joshi's fine print. Modi has all the answers. Modi knows all. If Rahul was trying to alert his audience to the dangers of a Modi-who-knows-all, now we have a glimpse of the Modi who does not know. In a rare television interview, Modi was asked by an audience member if he would take steps to ensure no churches are broken down if he becomes prime minister. Modi replied “I have never heard of such incidents taking place.”
http://sacw.net/article8388.html

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17. INDIA: POLITICAL OVER REACH BY ELECTION COMMISSION - RESERVE BANK GOVERNOR
by Rajindar Sachar
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All parties have broadly agreed on various aspects of Model code worked out by Election Commission for a certain period before the elections – It has worked quite satisfactorily. Fortunately the Election Commission still remains in command. Recently it denied the central government to make certain changes in some economic and subsidy policies (though the later would adversely affect the poorer sections of society) its neutrality was not challenged.
http://sacw.net/article8393.html

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18. INDIA: ECLIPSE AT NOON - TEXT OF 15TH D P KOHLI MEMORIAL LECTURE BY GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
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Reliance Running a Parallel State . . . I do not know of any country where one single firm exercises such power so brazenly, over the natural resources, financial resources, professional resources and, ultimately, over human resources as the company of the Ambanis. . . . I wonder why it is that Indian science which has done such wonders for us, is yet to make an impact on what Nehru used to call the scientific temper. Superstition has increased exponentially in our country. I value the affection and faith of those who tie strings and charms to my wrists for love and care of me. But the rings and strings on the fingers and wrists of our politicians are signs of their fear psychoses, insecurities and desperate placatings of benign stars or for the averting of evil eyes. he number of Godmen and, to a lesser extent, Godwomen, is increasing in algebraic leaps.
http://sacw.net/article8408.html


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19. THE FIRST INDIAN KISS - A SHORT FILM ON YOUTUBE
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Producer - Abbas Syed | Director - Rohit Tiwari | Writer & Associate Director - Anurag Thakur
http://sacw.net/article8407.html

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20. INDIA: BJP SPOKEWOMAN LINKS SONIA WITH MUSSOLINI. WILL THE RSS/BJP FINALLY CLARIFY THEIR STANCE ON FASCISM AND NAZISM?
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(Via Dilip Simeon's Blog)
This article should be read carefully by everyone interested in Indian politics. The logic employed by the BJP leadership is revealing. By her reasoning, Sonia Gandhi is bound to be a fascist because her father was an Italian soldier. Are political ideas inherited along with one's DNA? Today, the doctrine of historically transmitted guilt is used by all communalists to justify their violence against innocent people. Is this not what lies behind slogans such as 'Babar ki aulaad'? Since Ms Lekhi is announcing her awareness of the evil of Nazism and facism, may we expect the BJP leadership to finally make a public repudiation of Gowalkar's and V.D. Savarka's sympathy for the Nazis and their racial hatred of Jews?
http://sacw.net/article8390.html

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21. INDIA: TEXT OF CITIZENS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE LEGAL NOTICE TO ’THE PIONEER’ FOR DEFAMATION
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The Citizens for Justice and Peace has served a Legal Notice on The Pioneer edited by BJP parliamentarian, Chandan Mitra for carrying a series of slanderous and defamatory articles, the last one of which appeared today dated April 21, 2014. The notice served by the CJP’s lawyer, Mr Mihir Desai is a notice to publish the content of the Legal Notice in Full with an Apology or face Criminal and or Civil defamation.
http://sacw.net/article8439.html

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22. INDIA: ’A MOCKERY OF JUSTICE’ - K.S SUBRAMANIAN’S REVIEW OF MANOJ MITTA: ’THE FICTION OF FACT-FINDING’
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In this remarkable and courageous book, Manoj Mitta (senior editor with the Times of India who writes on legal, human rights and public policy issues) mounts a devastating critique of the final report of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by RK Raghavan, the reports of the amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran, the Chief Minister and aspiring prime minister Narendra Modi, the Gujarat judiciary and by implication the state and central governments too for failing to deliver justice to the over 2000 victims of organised violence in the Gujarat pogrom, 2002, which caused extensive destruction of property as well. 
http://www.sacw.net/article8450.html

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23. SELECTIONS FROM COMMUNALISM WATCH
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BJP blocks its website in Pak but Narendra Modi’s portal accessible
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/bjp-blocks-its-website-in-pak-but.html

India: Son of Religion | Vinayak Razdan
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-son-of-religion-vinayak-razdan.html

India: Disregarding fascism | G. Sampath
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-disregarding-fascism-g-sampath.html

India: Complaint to election commission re inflamatory and hateful speech by Shiv Sena leader while Modi and other BJP leaders look on; "Narendra Modi will destroy Pakistan in 6 months"
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-complaint-to-election-commission.html

India for MODIfied people now
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-for-modified-people-now.html

India: The Modi hype is relentless | Pranab Bardhan
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-modi-hype-is-relentless-pranab.html

India: Why Modi's selfie campaign is not picture-perfect | Bharat Bhushan
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-why-modis-selfie-campaign-is-not.html

Saeed Naqvi » India: non vegetarian majority with a vegetarian ruling class?
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/saeed-naqvi-india-non-vegetarian.html

India: Pravin Togadia, World Hindu Council President and BJP supporter wants Muslims evicted from Bhavnagar in Gujarat
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-pravin-togadia-world-hindu.html

Samaj Sampradayikta Aur Hinsa: A documentary film on communal violence by Sharvari Raval
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/samaj-sampradayikta-aur-hinsa.html

India: Prominent Sikh relgious bodies told by election commission not to mix religion with poliics
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-prominent-sikh-relgious-bodies.html

India 2014 elections: Saba Naqvi's report on the divided Muslim vote in UP
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-2014-elections-saba-naqvis-report.html

India 2014 Polls: In UP RSS campaigning hard for Modi
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-2014-polls-in-up-rss-campaigning.html

India: "Shoot this *** traitor" - ultra nationalist group heckles prominent lawyer and politician Prashan Bhushan
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-shoot-this-traitor-ultra.html

India 2014 elections: Christophe Jaffrelot on BJP's Manifesto
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-2014-elections-christophe.html

Interview in Hindi with Hindutva Leader and Gorakhpur MP Adityanath | and other interviews
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/interview-in-hindi-with-hindutva-leader.html

Be prepared to stand alone | Harsh Mander 
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/be-prepared-to-stand-alone-harsh-mander.html

::: FULL TEXT :::
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24. PAKISTAN: ANOTHER ATTACK ON THE MEDIA
Editorial, Dawn
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(Dawn, 21 April 2014)
THE murderous attack on Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan’s most recognisable faces in the TV news industry, may have been shocking, but is anyone truly surprised? The media is specifically under threat and the spate of attacks culminating with the one in Karachi on Saturday against Mr Mir may only be the beginning.

Across the media, there is a growing fear that something truly dreadful and on a spectacular scale may be in the offing. And what is the government’s response? Verbal condemnations and an emergency meeting convened by the prime minister yesterday at which it was decided to form a judicial commission to investigate the attack. That, as the many commissions that have come before it are a testament to, is the government effectively saying there’s nothing it can do.

But there is much that the government can do. It could, for example, take a hard line with the group that directly, routinely and openly threatens the media: the outlawed TTP, the very group with which the government is negotiating.

At the very least, the TTP could be asked to take back its fatwa against sections of the media. The TTP could also, as part of the dialogue process, be asked to explicitly renounce violence against the media. Yet, a judicial commission whose report may never see the light of day if it ventures too close to uncomfortable facts is all the government has to offer.

There is also silence in another difficult area that became the focus in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Mr Mir: the role of Pakistan’s military-run intelligence agencies. While many of the accusations were emotional and bereft of hard information, there is a wider point to consider.

Instantaneous denials via the ISPR are never followed up with what should be the next step: finding the actual culprits. Who killed Saleem Shahzad, for example? All that is publicly known is who denied having anything to do with his death. Is it any surprise then that in moments of emotion, the same set of accusations is repeated? Unless such cases are investigated and the culprits brought to book, fingers will always be pointed at those whose duty it is, in fact, to provide protection to media personnel and other citizens.

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25. ASIF BHAI’S REMEDIES
by Jawed Naqvi
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(Dawn, 22 April 2014)

ASIF Kidwai was a popular homeopath of Lucknow. But he was equally a raconteur, a wit, a political publicist, a journalist, a moderate, well-read Muslim activist, a flirt, a handsome man with a flowing thick black beard.

His legs were paralysed by a bout of pneumonia confining him to a bed for life. The bed was stacked with books and a notepad. Asif Bhai, as we called him, smelled of mild attar, its bouquet varying with the season, and a fragrant paan, which he occasionally chewed. His archaic bathroom slippers under the bed puzzled me always. The lightly bamboo-curtained boudoir-cum-free-clinic regulated a stream of patients, poets, academics and sighing women. The language shifted from high browed Urdu to lilting Awadhi to Shavian English, in any order.

During the 1965 India-Pakistan war, police surrounded Asif Kidwai’s house amid dark rumours that usually accompany cordoning off of Muslim homes. Asif Bhai would routinely tune into Radio Pakistan for the ‘other side’ of the story and the state momentarily thought he was a spy. BBC Radio had not yet become a household name.

Asif Bhai once treated a young boy for childhood incontinence, a problem whereby the six year-old would wet his bed in sleep and stink up the room for those who shared it. The prescription included a sweet white powder to be taken twice a day for three days. A boiled goose egg at night, twice a week would be helpful. And yes, the last chore of the day: the patient should empty his bladder into a shining brass tumbler and slip it under the elder brother’s bed at night.

Thought the boy was healed, it was only some 20 years later that Asif Bhai gleefully revealed the magic in the cure. All he wanted, he declared with a chuckle, was that the boy should sleep with an empty bladder. The sweet powder and goose eggs were placebos. The brass tumbler was a decoy to lure the patient, to make it exciting and mysterious for his young spirit.

Simple solutions to complex issues formed an essential feature of Indian sagacity, but those days are gone. When a glass of Coke spilled on his sofa at a party, the newly returned Non-Resident Indian reached for his spanking new vacuum cleaner, which he had brought from the Gulf, and began to assemble it. By which time a lady guest had spread out an old newspaper to soak up the mess.

Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana, Emperor Akbar’s remarkably learned noble, wrote a versified aphorism in Brajbhasha, one of many he is famous for:

“Rahiman dekh bade’in ko, laghu na deejiye daar

Jaha’n kaam aawai sui kaha’n kari talwar

(Often a tiny needle is all we need, not the sword

Your finely stitched robe makes the point my lord)

Consider two issues that have turned gangrenous all because Indian strategists leaned on the sword where a needle and thread would have worked nicely. Take, for example, the Kashmir dispute and the Maoist insurgency in Chhattisgarh. All we needed was a more democratic, more secular and more equitable India, and there would be no issue in either of the locations to warrant dire military solutions.

Anyone who has talked to Kashmiris over the last few decades would know that the source of everyone’s grief in the Valley was India’s fading secular democracy. Kashmiri separatism may have an entire history of aloofness from New Delhi to lean on, but the promise of unbiased and equitable democracy that India once showcased did trump the nascent sectarian urges.

What went wrong then was never hard to divine. First it was the tinkering with the constitutional guarantees, which New Delhi gave Kashmir. Then the rigging of elections to suit New Delhi’s whims and prejudices hugely riled the public in Valley.

In recent years Kashmir has been one of the issues between India and Pakistan when their talks are proceeding smoothly. Hiccups turn it into a flaming core dispute backed by a battery of precariously poised nuclear weapons.

The implicit assertion in this is that Indians would rather plan for a nuclear war than plug the leaks in their secular, equitable democracy, which was promised by the country’s still enviable constitution. Why anyone from Kashmir, no matter how seriously they despised Indian presence in Srinagar, would want to go to an ethnically riven Pakistan is perhaps too simple a question to pose since its logic eludes the big budget policymakers in New Delhi.

Similarly, the Maoist insurgency is rooted in the coveted virgin forests, land, water and mineral resources that India’s tribal people have preserved and worshipped from time immemorial. It follows that the Maoists who assumed the role of guarantors of tribal rights in the absence of the state’s resolve can be easily disarmed without recourse to an eventually unworkable military option.

All that the tribes-people have been asking New Delhi is to heed their one simple request: “Ease out the banya-contractor-politician nexus from the forests.” The nexus has been mercilessly plundering the resources presumably with New Delhi’s patronage while not sparing the tribal women from its snare. If the future doesn’t look too bright for Chhattisgarh it has to be explained by the rise of Narendra Modi as a fact of life, a nominee of the entrenched exploitative troika.

Asif Bhai and Rahim Khan-i-Khana are no more and the world they left behind looks comfortable with its penchant for witless solutions to problems that were not meant to be there.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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26. BRIDGING THE NARRATIVES IN SRI LANKA
by Gerrit Kurtz
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(The Hindu, April 19, 2014)

HEALING WOUNDS: Among those in the North and East, the leftovers of war still dominate daily life in various ways. Picture shows people who were displaced to the Vanni during the war, and who now live in Jaffna. Photo: Meera Srinivasan	
HEALING WOUNDS: Among those in the North and East, the leftovers of war still dominate daily life in various ways. Picture shows people who were displaced to the Vanni during the war, and who now live in Jaffna. Photo: Meera Srinivasan

Instead of victory memorials, Sri Lanka needs a monument to commemorate all casualties of the war

In the hot plains of the Vanni, a larger-than-life stone soldier emerges out of a block of concrete, an AK-47 in one hand and the Sri Lankan flag in the other. Hardly visible from the ground, a dove sits on the machine gun. This is a “victory memorial” created by the Army after the end of the hostilities between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Army in May 2009. Beneath it, two plaques commemorate its creation. They are in Sinhala and in English, but not in Tamil, the majority language there.

Travelling through Sri Lanka, five years after the end of hostilities in May 2009, I was confronted with starkly different perspectives. For many people in the South and West, the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) brought an end to a constant climate of fear. It was a time when parents would take different buses to the same destination in case one blew up. The last few years have also jumpstarted economic development, notably in industries such as tourism, transport and construction, according to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. In Colombo, construction sites for new luxury hotels compete with each other. Consequently, many Sinhalese do not see urgency in addressing allegations of war crimes.

Leftovers of war

Among those in the North and East, the leftovers of war still dominate daily life in various ways. The economic boom after the war is particularly pronounced here. New roads, rail links, administration buildings and private investments including Jaffna’s first mall demonstrate an impressively quick development. Still, the newly refurbished Kandy and Mullaitivu roads are dotted with military cantonments. Checkpoints are often manned by the military instead of civilian police forces. The dominant war memory in this area is not of any victory, but of the bitter loss of husbands, children and siblings to the forced recruitment of the LTTE or the indiscriminate firing of the Sri Lankan Army, as human rights organisations consistently allege.

These narratives continue to divide Sri Lankan society. The first step in effective communication is finding a common language. In post-conflict reconciliation, this common language has to bridge those diverging narratives about the nature of the hostilities. Shrill claims of Western imperialism by Sri Lankan ministers and Sinhalese neo-colonialism by Tamil diaspora activists cannot provide the fertile ground for constructive engagement on outstanding allegations and reports of human rights violations on both sides of the conflict.

Overcoming the most extreme narratives and moving closer to reconciliation does not require either the Sri Lankan government or the Tamil leaders to abandon their political identities. The Rajapaksa brothers have built a significant domestic legitimacy around their defeat of “terrorism,” as the memorial plaques say. Admitting that Sri Lankan soldiers and officers committed “excesses” (a formulation used, for example, by the Congress manifesto) at the end of the war would only taint the already discredited notions of a “zero-civilian-casualties policy” during the “humanitarian operation” purported by the Sri Lankan Army. A proud victor with strong electoral support among the Sinhalese can afford to admit mistakes, and punish those responsible (even if the very top will be spared for now).

The Tamil National Alliance should ensure that its members and elected officials make a credible cut with any Tamil Tiger history. If it really wants to lead “the Tamil people through a painful process of introspection,” as a statement on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ recent report said, it should speak more frequently about the grief of Sinhalese and Muslim families that lost family members to LTTE attacks.

Building a memorial in Colombo for all persons killed during the war and those still missing would be a good start. Even if it is too early to agree on many other aspects, Sri Lankan communities should acknowledge the realities of grief, no matter for which ‘side’ the person fought or died. It would be important to erect such a memorial in the capital to underline its central importance for the “new Sri Lanka” that billboards boast about. It could even include shrines of all four major religions in Sri Lanka, as a recent photo exhibition in Colombo showed how Buddhists and Hindus revered the same goddess under different names.

Beyond the high diplomacy in chic Geneva, where the UN Human Rights Council mandated an independent investigation in March into war crimes allegations, this should help expand the public space for an open, transparent and respectful political debate in Sri Lanka. It should build on strong international support for the trilingual policy as well as people-to-people exchanges between different communities. With these initiatives, the exchange between the Sri Lankan government and South Africa on a truth-seeking mechanism should lead to an institution as independent as possible from state influence.

Taking reconciliation seriously would also help the Sri Lankan government deflect international pressure. Already, members of the business community fear repercussions in terms of decreasing investments, terms of trade and even sanctions if Sri Lanka continues to ignore these calls. The recent Provincial Council elections, where the government United People’s Freedom Alliance coalition lost seats to the opposition despite retaining its majority, seemed to demonstrate that the Rajapaksas’ anti-Western rhetoric is failing to cover up remaining economic and political problems.

What India should do

If India finds that its recent abstention in the Human Rights Council has given it renewed leeway in Sri Lanka, it should use it to press the government on tangible reconciliation efforts. This should also help to achieve India’s long-standing goal of political devolution in Sri Lanka, as the government would take the Northern Provincial Council, elected last year, more seriously. Progress on reconciliation would also make both the government as well as Tamil leaders more amenable to negotiations on increased powers for the provincial councils under the 13th amendment.

Owing to consistent international pressure, the Sri Lankan government has started to address some problems, however imperfectly, including by appointing a missing persons commission, investigating a case where (Sinhalese) female recruits appeared to have been mishandled by their superiors, and gradually releasing land from high security zones. Many of these actions go back to the government’s own action plan on the implementation of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.

Serious reconciliation requires mutual acknowledgement of past abuses and mistakes in an atmosphere of trust and forgiveness. Glorious victory memorials and a sole focus on economic development will not be able to heal the country’s wounds.

(Gerrit Kurtz is with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.) 

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27. THE WORLD CUP AND THE NEOLIBERAL TRANSFORMATION OF BRAZILIAN CITIES
by Brian Mier
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(nacla.org)
Although the huge street protests predicted by some northern journalists for 2014 are not happening, many Brazilians are still angry about the World Cup. One complaint is that local governments are using it as an excuse for neoliberal restructuring. Gentrification, transportation, and construction of white elephants contrast with the progressive, macroeconomic changes representative of 12 years of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) coalition governance.

Elites governed Brazil for 500 years. Then, in 2002, a labor union leader with a fourth grade education named Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president. Lula reversed his predecessor’s neoliberal wage suppression policy and increased the minimum salary by over 150%. According to the Institute for Applied Economic Research, which conducted the most thorough study on the subject, this was the main cause for 26 million Brazilians moving out of poverty in just five years. Brazil avoided the 2008 world financial crisis; 4 million jobs were generated in the past three years and, despite glum predictions by the Economist, Brazilian GDP growth outperformed the United States, the European Union, and Russia last year. These achievements help explain why, despite frustration over the World Cup, Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff recently polled 25 points above her closest competitor and is strongly favored for re-election this October.

Despite these advances, serious structural problems remain in the Brazilian political system. Due to an amnesty law, no one was ever punished during the transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1985. The dictatorship’s two official parties were allowed to change their names and maintain majorities in Congress (MDB, the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro became PMDB, the Partido de Movimento Democrático Brasileiro. ARENA, the Aliança Renovadora Nacional became PFL, the Partido de Frente Liberal, then DEM, Democratas). Both parties, traditional supporters of neoliberal policies, held cabinet posts in every presidency until 2002. Lula took power in 2003 and DEM left the governing coalition, but PMDB still controls the vice-presidency and key cabinet posts. This has led to what the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing Raquel Rolnik calls “a growth coalition that links Keynesian strategies for job generation and wage increases to a neoliberal urban development model, focused exclusively to facilitate market actions and open new fronts for finance capital, with the World Cup and Olympics projects being the most recent and radical." 

Third world cities differ from those in the North because entire neighborhoods are located on squatted land with no formal deeds. 1.3 million people in Rio de Janeiro live in favelas, squatter communities that sprung up after slavery ended and grew exponentially during the migratory wave of 1950-1990 as the poor were left with no choice but to build on steep hillsides and floodplains. When Rio’s cocaine boom began in 1983, organized crime factions took over most of the city’s favelas, including the residents’ associations that validate informal real estate transactions.

Rio’s population doubled in a span of under 30 years and some favela real estate became desirable to the middle class. In 2008 the state government launched a program called UPP (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora, or Police Pacification Units). It hired thousands of military police officers and set up stations in favelas on the city’s wealthy south side. These officers do not pursue thieves or conduct routine forms of police work; their only duties appear to be guaranteeing that the drug gangs that continue to work in the area do not carry weapons, and ensuring safety for utility companies to charge residents for their services. UPPs have been set up in all favelas located near the tourist hotel zone, Maracana stadium, and the drive in from the international airport.

The UPP's effect on real estate prices has been tremendous. Real estate agents have moved in and begun “flipping” houses. Rents have soared as the poorest residents are forced out into distant neighborhoods still controlled by drug gangs and paramilitary militias. One tenet of neoliberalism is strong private property rights, and although some argue that UPPs are a temporary security fix for World Cup and Olympics tourism, the fact that real estate tycoon Eike Batista donated R$80 million to the program suggests that they may be part of a long-term strategy to regulate the private property market in the favelas.

When the World Cup was first announced, governors and mayors promised major public transportation improvements. Last June’s protests, which started over frustration with São Paulo’s bus system, showed that this is a huge issue in Brazil where the government’s strategy of stimulating the auto industry to buffer the economy against the 2008 financial crises increased the already growing automobile fleet and caused huge traffic problems. The government set aside around one-third of the World Cup budget for transportation projects, but the results have not lived up to expectations. Manaus’ local government failed to build a solid enough proposal to pass the federal government’s auditing court, so planned monorail and BRT (bus rapid transit) systems never got off the ground. Cuiabá’s light rail system will serve a neighborhood targeted by the mayor’s real estate cronies. Rio’s BRT system will be only partially finished before the World Cup, connecting the international airport to booming, middle class Barra Tijuca but with no connection to downtown.

In 2007 the Brazilian government anticipated the world financial crisis by investing around USD 300 billion in a growth acceleration program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento), which aimed to subsidize construction and other industries to create 10 million new jobs. It is understandable, therefore, why Brazil would welcome the opportunity to finance the World Cup. Cup preparations have generated tens of thousands of jobs, but venue costs have gone three times over budget, with the total for stadiums and infrastructure now estimated at USD 11 billion. This is a lot of money but not unprecedented; construction for the 2007 Pan American games cost ten times more than the original estimate. Questions remain about how the World Cup money was spent, however.

Most or all of the stadiums that were financed by the federal development bank (BNDES) will be privatized. With privatization comes higher ticket prices, and the poor—the heart and soul of Brazilian soccer—are less and less able to afford attendance. This year, for example, some games in Rio’s 78,000-capacity Maracana stadium have had fewer than 2,000 spectators. At least Rio de Janeiro has first division soccer teams, however; the best team in Manaus, where a USD 300 million arena just mushroomed up for the World Cup, is in the 4th division. Although the governor has not yet produced a plan for stadium use after the Cup is over, citizens will spend the next 30 years paying back the loan to BNDES. There are similar doubts about future stadium use in Cuiabá, Brasília, and Natal.

When FIFA and government officials sold the idea of the World Cup to the Brazilian people they talked about its legacy. Although significant job generation cannot be ignored, this legacy appears to primarily be one of debt, gentrification, and neoliberal reorganization of the city. This brings us to the question asked over the past four years by the activists and academics of the network of People’s Cup Committees: “Who is the Cup for?”

Brian Mier is a member of the Fórum Nacional de Reforma Urbana’s executive secretariat. The FNRU is a network of Brazilian social movements, unions, NGOs, and professional and academic organizations that advocates the right to the city. Accomplishments of the FNRU include creating articles 182 and 183 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 and drafting the Statute of the City of 2001 that regulates these articles. He has lived in Brazil for 19 years.

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