SACW - 5 July 2014 | Pakistan - North Waziristan: The Military Operation is Regrettable but Necessary / Sri Lanka: Cant build peace with concrete / Bangladesh’s Rotten-Mango Crisis / India: BJP's Nuclear Policy / USA: Hobby Lobby - Corporate Christianity

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 5 July 2014 - No. 2828 
[since 1996]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Announcement: Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups is available at http://www.sacw.net/article9057.html]

========
Contents:
1. Pakistan - North Waziristan: The Military Operation is Regrettable but Necessary | Pervez Hoodbhoy
2. Pakistan: IFJ Statement and CPJ Letter Regarding Deteriorating Climate for Press Freedom - Bombings and attacks continue
3. Proud Inheritors or Petty Contractors? Understanding the BBS phenomenon in Sri Lanka | Chaminda Weerawardhana
4. India: Disingenuous Diplomacy to Push Forward BJP's Nuclear Policy | Sukla Sen
5. India: Civil society groups assert freedom of expression, assembly and association. 
6. Media Coverage of recent sacw release 'Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups'
7. Selections from Communalism Watch:
  - India’s future does not lie in a highly mythologised past (Rashmee Roshan Lall)
  - India: Dressing up of right-wing icons gaining momentum under Modi's govt | Restoration of fifties interview with Syama Prasad Mookerji
  - Whose Ambivalence – Modi’s or Varshney’s? (Jyoti Punwani)
  - India - The 'Emerging' Middle Class: Role in the 2014 General Elections (Ravinder Kaur)
  - India: Interview with Hartosh Bal on Ekal Vidyalayas (Anand Ranganathan)
  - UP temple row: Protesters clash with cops, many top officials hurt
  - India: Quit Mizoram Notices - Fear of the Other (N William Singh)
FULL TEXT:
8. Bangladesh’s Rotten-Mango Crisis | Tahmina Anam
9. Sri Lanka: You can’t build peace with concrete | Cédric Gouverneur
10. India: Victimhood and the Pascal Mazurier Case | Sowmya Rajendran
11. USA: We are a corporate theocracy now: The Christian right seeks cultural and political domination | CJ Werleman
12. USA: Hobby Lobby, Megachurches, and the Trouble With Corporate Christianity | Charity R. Carney

=========================================
1. PAKISTAN - NORTH WAZIRISTAN: THE MILITARY OPERATION IS REGRETTABLE BUT NECESSARY
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
=========================================
Progressive Pakistanis are split on whether to support the military operation against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or to condemn it.
http://www.sacw.net/article9087.html

=========================================
2. PAKISTAN: IFJ STATEMENT AND CPJ LETTER REGARDING DETERIORATING CLIMATE FOR PRESS FREEDOM - BOMBINGS AND ATTACKS CONTINUE
=========================================
Press Statement by IFJ and a Letter by CPJ to the Prime Minister of Pakistan
http://www.sacw.net/article9090.html

=========================================
3. PROUD INHERITORS OR PETTY CONTRACTORS? UNDERSTANDING THE BBS PHENOMENON IN SRI LANKAN POLITICS
by Chaminda Weerawardhana
=========================================
This article seeks to shed light upon the question of what BBS represents in the present-day Sri Lankan political landscape. In so doing, it is deemed worthwhile to delve into BBS’s ideological centrepoints and their historical antecedents. The present article, however, is intended at contributing to (and questioning) existing debates and dominant readings of BBS, as an extremist agitator, an unprecedented religious nationalist current, and an instigator of communal violence.
http://www.sacw.net/article9096.html

=========================================
4. INDIA: DISINGENUOUS DIPLOMACY TO PUSH FORWARD BJP'S NUCLEAR POLICY
by Sukla Sen
=========================================
In his Agenda for nuclear diplomacy1, the author, Rakesh Sood, has rather intriguingly tied up two different issues together.
But before taking that up, let's look into the claim made by the author right at the very beginning of his article: "On June 22, the Narendra Modi government announced that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol had been ratified (emphasis added)." This appears to be rather misleading. On two counts. One, while some of the news reports (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article9088.html 

=========================================
5. INDIA: CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS ASSERT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION. DEMAND THAT GOVERNMENT RESPOND TO THE MALICIOUS IB REPORT
=========================================
We, as individuals, people’s organisations, citizens groups, trade unions and mass movements came together on June 26, 2014 at Indian Social Institute, New Delhi to reiterate our deep conviction about the importance of preserving and nurturing spaces for social dissent and the freedoms of association, assembly and expression as the essential hallmarks of a democratic society.
http://www.sacw.net/article9091.html

=========================================
6. MEDIA COVERAGE OF RECENT SACW RELEASE 'HINDU NATIONALISM IN THE UNITED STATES: A REPORT ON NONPROFIT GROUPS'
=========================================
http://www.scroll.in/article/668870/New-report-shows-how-Hindutva-groups-operate-in-US,-send-money-to-India
http://www.newslaundry.com/2014/07/04/interviewing-hartosh-bal-on-ekal-vidyalayas/
http://www.countercurrents.org/jm010714.htm


=========================================
7. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
  - India’s future does not lie in a highly mythologised past (Rashmee Roshan Lall)
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/indias-future-does-not-lie-in-highly.html

  - India: Dressing up of right-wing icons gaining momentum under Modi's govt | Restoration of fifties interview with Syama Prasad Mookerji
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/india-dressing-up-of-right-wing-icons.html

  - Whose Ambivalence – Modi’s or Varshney’s? (Jyoti Punwani)
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/whose-ambivalence-modis-or-varshneys.html

  - India - The 'Emerging' Middle Class: Role in the 2014 General Elections (Ravinder Kaur)
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/india-emerging-middle-class-role-in.html

  - India: Interview with Hartosh Bal on Ekal Vidyalayas (Anand Ranganathan)
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/india-interview-with-hartosh-bal-on.html

  - UP temple row: Protesters clash with cops, many top officials hurt
  http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/up-temple-row-protesters-clash-with.html

  - India: Quit Mizoram Notices - Fear of the Other (N William Singh)
   http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/india-quit-mizoram-notices-fear-of.html

::: FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
8. BANGLADESH’S ROTTEN-MANGO CRISIS
by Tahmina Anam
=========================================
(The International New York Times, July 2, 2014)

As an apprentice anthropologist, I once had the misfortune of attempting to converse with the Indian critical theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Professor Spivak, who translated the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and wrote the famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” was visiting Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I went to meet her. After patiently listening while I asked a series of dumb questions about discursive practice, she turned and said, cryptically, “I came for the mangoes.”

Ah, the mango. It may be a cliché pitfall for the South Asian writer, but for this academic, famous for her impenetrable prose, the mango brought the esoteric down to earth. Ms. Spivak is regarded as one of the great minds of her generation, but in Dhaka, she was, like everyone else, there for the mangoes.

In Bangladesh, the obsession with the mango comes from its evanescence. The fruit’s intense seasonality means that even the more prosaic varieties are available for only a few weeks of the summer. The most prized is the langra: Its floral, slightly sour flavor is more complex than the overly sweet chaunsa or Alphonso mangoes. Aficionados love the langra in part because it is almost impossible to catch at its peak — too green and your tongue will swell and itch; a few hours late and its flesh turns to mush.

But this year, the langra is nowhere to be found. The markets are empty of the sought-after mango.

On the roads that lead into Dhaka, the precious fruit lies rotting by the truckload. The reason: chemical poisoning. The langras are said to be contaminated with formalin, a strong solution of formaldehyde that is sprayed on the fruit in an effort to extend its life. The government responded by setting up checkpoints on the roads to the city.

It isn't just the mangoes. Earlier this year, the Institute of Public Health found that 47 of 50 food items tested were adulterated. Formalin is used to preserve both fruit and fish. Turmeric has been found tainted with lead. Since June 18, the police have set up mobile formalin-detection units, confiscating thousands of tons of locally produced and imported fruit.

The fruit industry is up in arms, claiming that the police are using faulty devices and crippling the industry. Last week, the fruit sellers’ association went on strike, and their produce rotted in the warehouses of the port city of Chittagong. In the weeks leading up to the month of Ramadan, the tussle has been fierce, with demonstrations and counter-demonstrations taking place across Dhaka. And the langra has vanished.

The practice of spraying fruit with formalin is one problem, but more worrying is that the entire food chain is compromised — the soil itself contaminated by toxins that are almost impossible to eradicate. Bangladesh was born in the shadow of famine, and since independence in 1971, a series of government measures have put increasing pressure on farmers to keep the rice yields increasing every year. This has meant exploiting the land to its limits: intensive farming, extensive irrigation and the unchecked use of groundwater.

A result is that Bangladesh has made great strides in becoming self-sufficient in food, tripling rice yields in 40 years: In 1970, the rice crop was 0.76 tons per acre; in 2012, it was 1.9 tons. The increase is the result of using high-yield, short-duration varieties, which require the greater application of fertilizers and a huge increase in irrigation. In the last 30 years, the use of fertilizers has grown by 400 percent, and pesticides have been widely overused. And as the water table gets lower, the salinity increases and contaminants like arsenic leach into wells that provide drinking water. The land has borne the cost of our need to climb out of famine.

Dhaka’s brouhaha over contaminated fruit speaks to a growing chasm between the urban and the rural. This broken, congested city is where we have placed all our hopes for a better Bangladesh. The capital is where you will find the budding start-ups, the English-speaking college graduates, the cellphone users, the social networkers — all the engines of economic growth. And as we become more removed from the traditional modes of food production, the agricultural hinterland is being treated as nothing more than the food source for a hungry city.

The great irony here is that Bangladeshis romanticize the rural. The greatest compliment you can pay a Bangladeshi is to say she is “matir manush,” a person of the earth. The country, as the American anthropologist James Ferguson put it, provides “alternative moral images,” a counterpoint to the complexities — the allure, as well as the danger — of rapid urbanization. The rural continues to act as a repository of our fantasies about national identity; it is a favorite subject of every cultural artifact, from poetry to contemporary art. Our touchstone is Rabindranath Tagore, the great bard of the pastoral in Bengali literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But when we place checkpoints on the roads into our city, we are saying that we care only if urban citizens are poisoned; we couldn’t care less if the contaminated fruit is consumed outside of Dhaka. Ms. Spivak may have used the mango as a way to express her rootedness, but a taste for mangoes reveals a person to be among the few who can afford to consume them.

The truth is, the fruit is grown by the rural poor and fed to the urban rich. To keep the city sated with mangoes, the crop must be abundant and it must be beautiful. And for that to happen, formalin must be involved.

As Ramadan approached and the langra disappeared, the fruit sellers and the state came to an agreement. The fruit sellers would end their strike so that the population could sit down to its dates and apples after a long day of fasting; the police agreed to look into obtaining new devices to test the levels of formalin in fruit.

Unless, however, we think critically about the moral economy of food, about sustainability as well as growth, our food will remain tainted. If the rationality of urbanism — the city as the treasured engine of growth, the country merely its fodder — continues to dominate, we will merely be polishing the surface of a slowly rotting core.

Tahmima Anam, a writer and anthropologist, is the author of the novel “A Golden Age.”

=========================================
9. SRI LANKA: TIGERS’ WAR MAY BE OVER BUT NOT THE CONFLICT
YOU CAN’T BUILD PEACE WITH CONCRETE
by Cédric Gouverneur
=========================================
(Le Monde diplomatique - July 2014)

It’s five years since the final, and lethal, defeat of the Tamil Tigers by Sir Lanka’s government forces. Most of Sri Lanka still doesn’t know exactly what happened, or what justified grievances the Tamils still have.

Kilinochchi, in northern Sri Lanka, was the Tamil Tigers’ capital for more than 20 years, until it was retaken by government forces in January 2009. The separatist guerrillas of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) had transformed it into a showcase for their proto-state, with government ministries and even traffic police. But the appearance of normality was not enough to make rare visitors forget the personality cult around the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, killed in the final battles of May 2009, nor the high proportion of child soldiers (1).

Kilinochchi is again a showcase, this time for the victors in the civil war. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose forces destroyed the LTTE, wants to turn it into a model city for northern Sri Lanka, now officially “liberated from terrorism”. “Welcome to Kilinochchi, Rising City of Peace, Hope and Harmony,” read the signs in English. Despite all the ruins riddled with bullet holes, there is a semblance of normal life. The A9 road looks new, and the railway, out of operation for two decades, will now get you to the large town of Vavuniya in half an hour. Most of the checkpoints have disappeared, as have the minefields, and new businesses and hotels have opened. Only the water tower, a victim of the last days of the war, remains in ruins: next to it a sign reads “No More Destructions”.

A major in the paratroopers welcomed a guided tour to a three-storey building with a children’s play area: “Welcome to the Harmony Centre,” he said. “You will see how happy people are in Kilinochchi, despite what the Tamil diaspora’s propaganda may say.” Around 750,000 exiles live in Europe and Canada (2).

On the ground floor, dozens of young Tamil girls in school uniform were attending a class. Most of them had served in the LTTE, the major told us, but the army offered them jobs. He then introduced us to a former LTTE lieutenant colonel, with an artificial leg, who had fought with the guerrillas for two decades, and who said: “I commanded 150 fighters. Twice a month we officers met Prabhakaran to be given our orders.” After being surrounded in 2009, he chose not to swallow the cyanide pill that all Tigers were supposed to take if captured: “I surrendered, I had had enough. In the prison camp, the army offered me carpentry training. Now I make a good living. I have more opportunities now than I did with the Tigers. My relations don’t understand my decision, but I have three children to feed.”
Money to families of the disappeared

At counters on every floor, soldiers in civilian clothes showed us how they had helped local people by giving them professional training, fishing nets, dairy cows and coconut palms. One counter was for people applying to work in the Gulf, where two million Sri Lankans already work. Another was receiving complaints about people who had disappeared, victims of extra-judicial killings. “The families of the disappeared prefer to come here, rather than go to a police station,” said a young lieutenant. According to independent sources, the Harmony Centre, which is part of the ministry of defence, offers money to the families of the disappeared to keep them quiet. Questions are worded to intimidate those seeking information: “How can you be sure it wasn’t the LTTE who killed your child? How can you be sure your son or daughter was kidnapped by soldiers? Can you identify the soldiers who took them?”

The major took us next to the orphanage of Senchcholai, where around a hundred small girls waited quietly for us in the hall. There we met the head of the orphanage, Kumaran Pathmanathan. Now in his sixties, he was once one of the most wanted men in the world: known then as KP, he co-founded the LTTE in 1976 and was for three decades its arms procurer. He was suspected of involvement in the assassination of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. KP was arrested in Malaysia in August 2009 and extradited to Sri Lanka. Freed in October 2012, he has been running this orphanage for the victims of war since, with the blessing of the government in the capital Colombo. The major saluted his former enemy, before leaving us.

With substantial funds from the diaspora (given willingly or not), a fleet of cargo boats and strong relations in Southeast Asia, KP armed the Tigers. In March 2007 government troops were shocked to be bombed by Tamil Tiger aircraft — the LTTE was the first guerrilla army in history to have an air force. Asked how he managed this, Pathmanathan replied modestly: “We dismantled the planes and transported the parts in different containers.” What kind of a man was Prabhakaran? “Privately he could be very nice. But he didn’t listen to anyone else, and no one dared contradict him — it would have been too dangerous.” How did Pathmanathan explain the defeat of the Tigers? “Prabhakaran didn’t understand that the world had changed after 9/11. The LTTE should have evolved. We should have negotiated.”

Despite a promising ceasefire signed in February 2002, the LTTE, convinced of its military superiority, maintained its hardline position and set up its own state in the north and east. Colombo could not accept this, and went on the offensive. “We must move forward,” Pathmanathan said. “We achieved nothing through fighting. I feel sad, so many people lost their lives.” The old guerrilla confided that he has found comfort in Hinduism. To the Tamil diaspora who call him a traitor, he says: “They don’t understand the situation here. Some of them think Prabhakaran is still alive! They have to accept the reality.” He made one criticism of the victors: “The army is occupying far too much farm land. That makes the Tamils feel oppressed. I bring this matter up all the time with the army and the government.”

At the army’s new headquarters we met Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, commander in chief of the Sri Lankan army in the region. On the stairway leading to his office were a fresco of the Sinhalese cavalry charging British invaders in 1803 and another of the Sri Lankan army crushing the last bastion of the Tigers in May 2009. Ranasinghe was furious that the US had denied him a visa as a person accused of war crimes: “These accusations are unjust. Look at everything the army is doing for the Tamils. We have freed them from terrorism. Many of them now work for us, even former Tigers. I am proud of our work rehabilitating former child soldiers. Anyway, since Guantanamo, the US is in no position to preach.”
‘Why would we leave?’

His attempt to justify some of the army’s actions, such as seizing land, wasawkward: “People tell us it’s their land, but they can’t prove it, since the terrorists destroyed the land registry. We can’t give land back, or compensate people, without being sure of who the owner is.” He said the army had “three divisions, that is 6,000 men” in the region (though a single division is 7,000-9,000 men). When asked how long they would stay, he was evasive: “Why would we leave? This here is Sri Lanka. And we will not demobilise — the Sri Lankan soldier participates in the development of his country.” All over the north, soldiers are building infrastructure. They also run restaurants, hotels and even farms, competing with local businesses and further angering the local population.

Back in the town centre, we found two older Tamil men, who said: “We are not afraid because we are already dead — too many of our loved ones have been killed. Why do they need such a big military presence when the war is over? To control us! We are under occupation. As soon as five or six people get together, plain clothes police intervene.” They laughed at the mention of the Harmony Centre. “That’s just propaganda. The vast majority of people are opposed to the government.” In last September’s provincial council election, the Tamil towns of Kilinochchi and Jaffna voted by over 80% for the pro-autonomy Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The two men did not hide their preference for the Tigers over the army: “We’re not saying it was perfect. Child soldiers... that was inexcusable. But we felt freer with the LTTE than we do now with the army. It was our government.” They glanced anxiously behind them, where two young men were watching us, so we ended the interview.

We drove out into the countryside where, away from prying eyes, we talked to villagers. Some were crippled. They described how, in the final days of the war, the army shelled them from all sides: “We all lost loved ones.” A young girl burst into tears as she told us how the soldiers had been “very bad” to her. One peasant farmer told us: “The government promised each family 50,000 rupees [$385], but we have only been given 20,000 [$150]. Most of the money goes to those who agree to collaborate.” Human rights workers confirmed this. The villagers were angry that “the roads are built by Sinhalese.” But “we don’t have any vehicles anyway. These roads just serve to bring in more soldiers. We are afraid of them. People are disappearing.” They said they felt as though they were under occupation, and they too missed the LTTE. “There was no corruption, no crime, and their courts were fair. The Tigers fixed prices — a kilo of rice cost 35 rupees, compared to 80 or 100 today. It was safe for a woman to walk outside after dark.” Even the child soldiers were “willing”, they claimed. The villagers are so unhappy that they idealise their lives under the Tigers.
‘Why would we leave?’

The government soldiers erect marble memorials in their own honour, while destroying the Tigers’ cemeteries. Eradicating memories will not help Colombo gain favour with the local population. What angers villagers even more is knowing that electing the TNA will have no effect. “The TNA councillors explained to us that they have no power. Colombo decides everything. Under the LTTE we didn’t have elections, but we didn’t care — they were our government.” Everyone we spoke to in the north echoed this fear, sadness and nostalgia. On the coast, fishermen complained about competition from Sinhalese boats from the south, and even Chinese factory ships. In the east of the island, on the border of the Tamil and Sinhalese areas, villagers resent the massive influx of Sinhalese peasant farmers, whom they see as “settlers”. There is a growing feeling of dispossession: “The Sinhalese can do anything; we can do nothing.”

The city of Jaffna in the far north, the historic birthplace of Tamil culture in Sri Lanka, was taken, lost and retaken in the 1980s and 90s. It is still scattered with ruins. But there are also more cars and some new hotels, and tourists have replaced foreign NGO workers. There are still as many police and soldiers, even if the roadblocks have gone. The secretary general of the Lanka Tamil State Party (Federal Party), an important member of the TNA coalition, Xivioi Kulanayagan, said: “The Tamils put their faith in us to fight democratically for their rights. The TNA has 30 out of 38 seats on the provincial council, but we are powerless. The few powers the 13th amendment to the constitution grants the provincial council have been assumed by the governor, who is appointed by the president. People are angry.” The TNA has asked in vain for the demilitarisation of the northern and eastern provinces.

In the bishop’s palace we met Mgr Thomas Savundranayagam, still waiting for news of one of his curates and his assistant, who disappeared after a raid in August 2006 (3). “The government needs to understand that the northern provincial council represents the will of the people, and it must give it power,” he said. “It has done nothing to reconcile people in this country. The president could have got everyone round the table, just after the war, but he failed to take the opportunity. Instead, the authorities deny the aspirations of the Tamil people and reduce the civil war to a ‘humanitarian operation against terrorism’.” The situation could eventually reach boiling point. This April, two TNA councillors declared publicly that they “would fight alongside the Tamil people if the dictatorship continued.” A few days before, three Tamils accused of terrorism had been killed by the army in the Jaffna peninsula, the most serious incident since 2009. Between March and June, 47 people were arrested, accused of plotting to revive the LTTE.

Human rights defenders in Colombo also deplore the lack of any attempt at reconciliation. “The government likes to believe that economic development alone will bring about reconciliation,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, “but you can’t build peace with concrete. The results of the provincial council election prove it — the TNA won a landslide. The war may be over, but not the conflict, whose roots lie in the Sinhalese majority’s refusal to give any autonomy to the Tamil minority.”
Decisive action against ‘terrorism’

Elected in 2005, then re-elected in 2010, Rajapaksa expects to win the presidency again in 2015. He is popular among the Sinhalese, who appreciate his decisive action against “terrorism”. For them, Tamil separatism equates with LTTE violence: bombs on buses and trains and in Buddhist temples, Sinhalese and Muslim villagers massacred, prisoners of war burnt alive, assassinations of politicians and anyone daring to criticise Prabhakaran. They don’t understand the UN’s accusation of war crimes, and its estimate that there were 100,000 deaths between 1972 and 2009, and “tens of thousands” in the final assault of 2009 (4). A restaurant owner on the south coast told us: “If a couple had to go somewhere together they would take different buses, so their children would not be orphaned if there was an attack. For 25 years no one helped us. The West wasn’t interested. It was too far away and too complicated. You even wanted us to negotiate with terrorists. And now, when we have finally managed to put an end to this hell, you come here and pester us?” A UN mission, due in Sri Lanka in June to investigate war crimes, do not have visas as yet.

Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council, explained the president’s popularity: “Many Sinhalese see Rajapaksa as defending the country’s sovereignty against internal threats — Tamil separatism — and external ones — interference from the international community. He flatters Sinhalese nationalism, but this policy alienates the Tamil minority and worsens ethnic tension.” Perera says there is no dialogue or reconciliation: “Tamils and Sinhalese may rub shoulders in their daily lives, but they don’t talk about politics. Or rather, a Sinhalese will talk politics, but his Tamil friend will keep quiet, for fear of causing offence, or being suspected of sympathising with the LTTE.” A Tamil who had in the past received death threats from the Tigers, told us: “After the war, my Sinhalese doctor said to me: ‘You must be so happy we liberated you from terrorism.’ She was being sincere, and I didn’t dare tell her it was more complicated than that.” The absence of dialogue prevents people admitting their own mistakes and acknowledging the motives of others, and bodes ill for the future (5).

Rajapaksa’s nationalist rhetoric has another function, which is to deflect attention from the corruption and nepotism of his administration. His brothers, Basil and Gotabaya, have become minister of economic development and minister of defence and urban development respectively. All foreign aid and joint projects must go through the state budget and get their consent. Massive Chinese investment, with high-interest loans (6-7% a year), lacks transparency.

Rajapaksa has authoritarian tendencies. “He thinks his popular mandate means he can ignore the separation of powers,” said an analyst. The president has imprisoned his former chief of staff, General Sarath Fonseka, for going into politics, abolished the limit of two presidential terms and sacked the president of the supreme court.

The pro-government press describe any critical voice as treacherous or pro-LTTE. Far-right groups, directed by the minister of defence, have attacked churches, mosques and a demonstration by lawyers. Journalists have disappeared or been assassinated. In March 2013 a government minister, Mervyn Silva, promised to “break the limbs” of journalists and human rights defenders (6). Last November a Sinhalese human rights lawyer, Nimalka Fernando, was threatened with death on a popular state radio show. Rajapaksa, in his youth an ardent supporter of human rights, said on 2 May: “The government will not allow itself to be destabilised by plots from home or abroad.”

Translated by Stephanie Irvine

Cédric Gouverneur is a journalist.

(1) Cédric Gouverneur, “Sri Lanka: up country with the Tamil Tigers”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2004.
(2) The Tamil Tigers had an annual budget of $200m-$300m.
(3) Cédric Gouverneur, “The time of triumphalism”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, August 2010.
(4) “UN rights council approves inquiry into alleged abuses in Sri Lanka war”, UN News Centre, 27 March 2014.
(5) Eric Paul Meyer, “Defeating the Tigers won’t solve the problem”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 2009.
(6) Charles Haviland, “Sri Lanka minister Mervyn Silva threatens journalists”, BBC, 23 March 2012.

=========================================
10. INDIA: VICTIMHOOD AND THE PASCAL MAZURIER CASE
by Sowmya Rajendran
=========================================
(The News Minute - July 1, 2014)
Source:  http://www.thenewsminute.com/stories/Victimhood%20and%20the%20Pascal%20Mazurier%20Case

What happens when the victim is a child, too young to be blamed for what has happened to her? Well, then, it’s the mother who finds herself in the dock. 

After every rape case that makes the headlines, there are the ‘wise’ people who hop out of the deep wells in which they reside to graciously offer the victim some advice: what could she have done differently to avoid the crime? She could have called the rapists ‘bhaiya’, she could have fallen at their feet and begged for mercy, she could have stayed at home after 5 pm (like an obedient cow returning to its pen at sundown).

If she failed to do any of these things and ended up getting raped, she could at least try and be a good victim. Because, as Babulal Gaur, the Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh, so eloquently tells us, rape is ‘sometimes right, sometimes wrong’. If you happen to be a bad victim, then you sure got what you deserved! Or so the legal system and the society around you will have you believe.

The Madonna/whore binary to which women are subjected to routinely becomes even more pronounced in cases of sexual assault where strangely, it becomes the victim’s duty to demonstrate that she is a wronged Madonna and not a whore who messed up a ‘business’ deal. The rights of a sex worker, of course, don’t even enter the picture.

What happens when the victim is a child, too young to be blamed for what has happened to her? Well, then, it’s the mother who finds herself in the dock. In June 2012, Suja Jones realized that something very wrong was happening in her family. Her daughter, who was only three years and ten months old at that time, was trying to tell her something that she did not want to believe at all. When she couldn’t live in denial any more, Suja took her daughter to a gynecologist and had her worst fears confirmed – her husband, the child’s father, had allegedly been sexually abusing their daughter.

Suja’s husband, Pascal Mazurier, a French national, was employed with the French Ministry of External Affairs when Suja filed the case against him for raping their child. While the first reactions of the media and the public were to sympathize with the child and her mother, Suja says that these responses systematically underwent a change as people realized that she did not fit the mould of a ‘good’ victim. A reporter from Bangalore who followed the investigation from the beginning says, ‘Initially everyone questioned Pascal. A week or so later, the investigating officers started telling reporters, “Suja is not fully innocent, we think”. Any proof? No, just a hunch. Then they tried to plant stories about how the doctor who examined the child was a fraud, but that turned out to be false. By then, however, the impression that Suja had something to hide had been created.’

Conspiracy theories that Suja was trying to have her husband framed for a crime that a mystery man, purportedly a ‘lover’ of hers, had actually committed, arose after the news broke out that the DNA from the vaginal swabs did not match that of her husband’s. The reporter says, ‘The police ‘sources’ told journalists that DNA samples didn’t match Pascal’s. What they didn’t reveal was the full story - that the samples didn’t match those of the child’s either. Which means the swabs may have been swapped.’

Suja, by her own admission, is not the sort of vanilla woman who has stepped out of an Ekta Kapoor serial. She’s educated, she’s traveled, she’s lived a good life, she knows her rights. So obviously, she should be the ‘type’ of woman who has many lovers and is…umm, shall we say, not very ‘virtuous’? That’s what the police think anyway. They wanted to know how many men she’s dated in the past, how many men she meets currently, what kind of parties she attends and so on because…all of it is very relevant to the case, right? No background check on Mazurier, the accused, though. Not important.

In December 2013, on Christmas day, Pascal Mazurier, his mother, and some policemen went to Suja’s house. The cops were aware that this was a clear violation of Mazurier’s bail order, but they’d still come to request Suja, in the spirit of Christmas, to let the father be part of the festivities! Never mind that what they were asking, if the allegations are proved right, is for a child to meet her rapist. Not exactly a tearjerker Karan Johar family reunion, is it? Curiously enough, just a week earlier a newspaper carried a report on Mazurier, characterizing him as a bereaved father who wanted to visit his children. Coincidence? _

Pascal Mazurier, from being ‘monster dad’ has become a ‘grieving father’ while Suja has turned into the villainous witch who is trying to break up the holy institution of the family. A sin that no good woman should dare commit, whether she’s being harassed for dowry or is a victim of domestic violence or is married to a man who is abusing their child. The investigating officer, who spoke to their daughter, was so eager to keep the sacred institution of the family intact that he physically touched the child in different places, asking if daddy had done the same to her and if she loved him. In his concluding report, he wrote that the child loved her daddy very much and wanted him back. Victims of child sexual abuse, as any psychologist will attest, are torn between conflicting emotions and loyalties. Especially when the abuser happens to be a parent. But the IO was probably just following his Bollywood instincts. We just love happy endings, don’t we?

When she goes to court, Suja makes sure she goes in salwar-kameez with dupatta. No sleeveless, please. She has to be the very picture of ‘modesty’ or she risks creating the ‘wrong’ impression. That of a woman who refuses to hide under the shroud of victimhood. It matters that she is covered up so the facts can speak for themselves. It matters that she looks the part for the medical evidence and the testimonies of the doctors and the psychologists to carry weight. Suja complies because she knows how important this is – the stigma of sexual assault is something she’s lived with, through her daughter, for the past two years. She has had to move out of their expensive home and it was a nightmare trying to find a house because the minute the landlords knew about the case, they didn’t want anything to do with her or her children.

But what of the child, that brave little soul who wouldn’t back down till she was heard? From a child who refused to speak when she first went to school, Suja says her daughter is now blooming. She’s even become naughty, the teachers declare! She will always carry the mark of what happened to her like a burn scar, but she has moved past the pain of the wound. Slowly, she has started trusting men again; her world is limping back, sometimes galloping, towards the normal. Here is one victim who wants to sing, dance, and laugh. Does that make her a good victim or a bad one? Neither. It makes her a survivor.


=========================================
11. USA: WE ARE A CORPORATE THEOCRACY NOW: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT SEEKS CULTURAL AND POLITICAL DOMINATION
by CJ Werleman
=========================================
(salon.com, July 4, 2014)

Christian right's plan is simple: Dominate courts, state legislatures, and push their twisted morality on all of us

“If fascism comes to America, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution,” wrote in a 1936 issue of The Christian Century. Nobel Laureate recipient Sinclair Lewis put it even more succinctly when he warned, “It [fascism] would come wrapped in the flag and whistling the Star Spangled Banner.”

No one who has followed the rise of the Christian Right in national politics over the course of the past three decades should be surprised by Monday’s Supreme Court decision to grant corporations religious personhood. It was as predictable as Pat Robertson saying something stupid about gay sex. The hyper religious conservatives on the bench of the nation’s high court, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, see the federal government as being controlled by ‘secular humanists’ who wish to make war against the purity of the Christian belief system. Like the 89 million Americans who count themselves as evangelicals, they seek total cultural and political domination.

Not only is the Christian Right the most politically agitated and reliable voting bloc of the Republican Party, but it is also emboldened like no other time in their warped history. With recent efforts to legalize discrimination against gay Americans defeated, the Hobby Lobby case against the Affordable Care Act has reenergized the theocratic wing of the GOP base — the wing that is now the party’s fuselage. Throw red meat to their holier than thou rationalizations and they won’t care what big business does to this great nation. They care for one thing – turning America into a theocratic regime. Don’t be fooled by the flag-waving and the obnoxious hyper-masculine jingoistic platitudes; the Christian Right does not love America unconditionally. They love America on the condition that representatives they help get elected are carrying out their political agenda.

There is no conspiracy theory here. Their strategy is evidently clear and unashamedly boasted. Their strategy is to control state and federal legislatures, and the courts – in  a way that says, “We don’t care what the American people want. We write the laws, and those laws will not reflect the wishes of the center majority, but instead will cater only for the theological cranks within our ranks.”

In state after state, the nation’s theocrats are fighting and defeating America’s secular sense of self. The Christian Right has not only moved from the fringes to become the main strain of the Republican Party; it is the Republican Party. “The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians and Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public square by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs,” observes Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years in Congress as a Republican.

These radicals continually surprise America for the fact that the mainstream media and casual political observers mistakenly believe these theocrats represent the minority fringe. You cannot sugarcoat the fact that it was a majority of Republicans in Arizona’s Senate who voted for the anti-gay bill. Likewise it was a majority of Republicans in Kansas’ House who voted for a similar bill. They voted for these religiously motivated discrimination bills because the Christian Right wish to discriminate against individuals they claim the Bible deems abhorrent.

The American Taliban is on a roll, and the Republican National Committee is seeking to capitalize on the Christian Right’s renewed energy, which has been fueled by victory in the Supreme Court. Last week, the RNC launched its first web-based effort to rally social conservatives and evangelicals as a key cornerstone of the party’s efforts to retake the Senate in the coming November elections.

“This shouldn’t be outreach, this should be who we are — it is who we are,” said Chad Connelly, director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee and the force behind this new initiative, GOPfaith.com. Evangelicals, Connelly said, “are our biggest, most reliable voting bloc.” The aim of the website is “to build an army of conservative pro-faith activists” — that is sympathetic conservative Christians.

The RNC believes a big reason for Mitt Romney’s heavy defeat in the 2012 election was that the party didn’t do enough to court the Christian Right, with less than a third of the 89 million evangelicals casting a ballot. “Let’s overcome that myth of the IRS saying you can’t talk about this from the pulpit,” Connelly said. “Look, if there’s no freedom of speech in the pulpit, there’s no freedom of speech.”

“Now is the time of righteous indignation,” he said, a time to be the “turn-the-tables-over Jesus” and not the “meek, turn-the-other-cheek Jesus.”

The immediate goal of this renewed effort to “maximize the faith vote” is to help the GOP win in key Senate races, especially in battleground states like Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. With the GOP needing a net gain of seven seats to take unilateral control of the U.S. Congress, winning those seats is essential to the GOP’s 2014 prospects.

“Many Republican leaders are tired of losing, they see some real opportunities to win, and that means they have to fire on all cylinders, if you will. And this is a key constituency,” said John Green, head of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “They don’t have to woo them to the party as much as they need to woo them to the polls,” Green said of conservative evangelicals.

Should the Christian Right help the GOP retake the Senate, the Piper will need to be repaid. This prospect should terrify every secular, liberal American to his bootstraps.

The Hobby Lobby case is yet another reminder that those who wish to transform America’s secular democracy into a tyrannical theocracy are on the march.


CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America, and God Hates You. Hate Him Back. You can follow him on Twitter:

=========================================
12. USA: HOBBY LOBBY, MEGACHURCHES, AND THE TROUBLE WITH CORPORATE CHRISTIANITY
by Charity R. Carney
=========================================
(Huffington Post, 2 July 2014) 

It was the most difficult job I've ever had. I've been a history professor for years, toiled as a graduate assistant before that, and even did a stint as an IT technician. But the three months I worked at Hobby Lobby stocking googly eyes and framing baseball cards takes the cake. I wanted a break from academia but it ended up not being a break at all. I found myself deconstructing and analyzing all aspects of my job -- from the Bible in the break room to the prayers before employee meetings and the strange refusal of the company to use bar codes in its stores. (The rumor amongst employees was that bar codes were the Mark of the Beast, but that rumor remains unsubstantiated.)

Three months was enough to convince me that there is something larger at work and the SCOTUS decision only confirms my belief that corporate Christianity (and Christianity that is corporate) has made it difficult for Americans to discern religion from consumption.

As a scholar of religious history, I observe the way that faith intersects with culture. I study and publish on megachurches and my interpretation of this week's events is informed not only by my experiences as an employee at Hobby Lobby but also my knowledge of recent religious trends. My biggest question after hearing the decision was not about the particular opinions or practical repercussions (which are significant and have far-reaching and dangerous consequences). Instead, my first thought was: "What is it about our cultural fabric that enables us to attribute religious rights to a corporate entity?" In the United States we have increasingly associated Christianity with capitalism and the consequences affect both corporations and churches. It's a comfortable relationship and seemingly natural since so much of our history is built on those two forces. But it's also scary.

Hobby Lobby is a for-profit craft chain, not a church. I'm stating the obvious just in case there was any confusion because -- let's face it -- it's confusing. It's as confusing as those googly eyes (do you really need three different sizes, Hobby Lobby, really?). Today, we see giant churches that operate like corporations and now corporations have some of the same rights as churches. Many megachurches adopt "seeker-sensitive" approaches to attract members, relying on entertainment and conspicuous consumption to promote their services. After a while, the spiritual and secular lines start to blur and the Christian and corporate blend. Ed Young, Jr.'s Fellowship Church, for instance, started a "90-Day Challenge" for members. The church asks congregants to pledge 10 percent of their income and promises "that if you tithe for 90 days and God doesn't hold true to his promise of blessings, we will refund 100 percent of your tithe."

Megachurches advertise on television, billboards, the Internet. They have coffee shops and gift stores. Some feature go-cart tracks, game centers, even oil changes. Many are run by pastors that also serve as CEOs. So when Hobby Lobby seeks similar religious rights as these very corporate churches, we have to reconsider our definition of religious organizations and maybe even say "why not?" We have normalized corporate Christianity to the point that the Supreme Court deems it natural for businesses to hold "sincere" religious beliefs. The religious landscape in the United States, including our familiarity with megachurches and celebrity pastors, certainly contributes to the acceptance of the church/company conundrum.

The "why not" can be answered, however, with the real costs of the decision. Women's reproductive rights are compromised. The religious freedom of employees for these corporations is compromised. The sanctity of our religious institutions is also compromised. To protect religious pluralism and freedom of the individual we need clear demarcations between what is spiritual and what is economical. Otherwise, we sacrifice the soul of American religion and all that makes it good and why I study it on the altar of industry. I can't get those three months at Hobby Lobby back (or the praise muzak out of my head) but I can see more clearly the dangers of allowing corporate Christianity to become the norm. Without clear boundaries, we risk distorting the very idea of religious freedom and the rich, diverse religious culture that makes us who we are. And that's tragic -- maybe not as tragic as praise muzak, but tragic nonetheless.

Carney is a historian of religion, gender, and the South.


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
=====================================