SACW - 28 Dec 2015 | Sri Lanka: Erosion of A Tradition of Law / Myanmar: Chinese jade miners / India-Pakistan: talking again? / India-Nepal: A de-escalation? / Bangladesh: Kamal Hossain Interview / India: Purging Plurality; tributes to Susanne Rudolph & B.D. Sharma / Racist Violence in Poland! / The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 28 December 2015 - No. 2878 
[since 1996]

Contents:
1. 1. Joint statement calling on the National Assembly of Pakistan to vote against the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill in its current form
2. Bangladesh: Excerpt from History Wars - Kamal Hossain Interview (Part 2)
3. So what is behind the resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue / Buying peace at the grocery
4. Remembering Jinnah, the Indian Nationalist (T. N. Madan)
5. India’s uranium mining complex at Jadugoda pours its radioactive wastes into Subarnarekha river
6. India: Purging Plurality and Urdu from Rajasthan Textbooks under BJP Government
7. India: 10 years of the Forest Rights Act - Say no to change in progressive and pro-people laws - Press Release by Bhoomi Adhikaar Andolan
8. Why Delhi’s homeless prefer to sleep in the freezing cold than in government shelters (Harsh Mander)
9. M. G. Vassanji: Of places called home
10. Susanne Rudolph - 1930-2015: A tribute by Ananya Vajpeyi
11. BD Sharma: Advocate of Adivasi Rights in India - A tribute by PUDR
12. ABVA releases digitized version of its 1990 citizens report "Women & AIDS - Denial and Blame"
13. Recent On Communalism Watch:
  - Call for Papers : (E)razed Chapters: Remembering the Tales of Mourning Carnage ’84
  - Russian president, Vladimir Putin's Gift to India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, A double-edged sword (Editorial, The Telegraph)
  - India - Dadri Lynching: Son's beef query stuns Dadri father
  - Is Pakistan supporting Bangladeshi Islamists? (Shamil Shams)
  - Report in Indian Express on Bhuvith Shetty, the 24-year-old Bajrang Dal activist
  - India: Frontline Cover Story Horror behind bars ........ Communal bias
  - A brief history of religious intolerance in India (DN Jha and Mukul Dube )
  - India: Mangaluru-based activist faces online abuse, rape threats, for complaining against Bajrang Dal
  - No Sign that the West is willing to end this toxic love affair with Islamism
  - India: Notice announcing a 'Strategy Meeting Against Communalism' by NAPM (24 dec 2015)
  - Announcement: Sahabalyeva Sagara - 30 Jan 2015 - Mangalore - KKSV (Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum)
  - India: Hindutva driven Ram temple talk, stone-carving gains momentum in Ayodhya
  - [India] Real people are censored, the anonymous say what they want: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
  - Intolerance Debate: Story So far
  - Now more than ever, it is time to stand up for France’s brand of secularism (Natalie Nougayrède)
  - The Islamist war on secular bloggers in Bangladesh (Samanth Subramanian)
  - India: 1987 book on RSS by Andersen and Damle being updated for a new edition
  - India: Ramachandra Guha on Narendra Modi and the RSS
  - India - Uttar Pradesh: Police invokes NSA against Hindutva activist Kamlesh Tiwari as Muslim protests rage on
  - India: Dont expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rein in the so-called fringe elements because they form the core of his constituency (A.G. Noorani)
  - India: The musclemen of Hindutva (Vikas Pathak)
  - Book Review: Kuldeep Kumar on Shamsul Islam's 'Muslims Against Partition'
  - India: Communalism - A Journey To Nowhere Since 1992, a lecture by Dr Rizwan Qaiser (05 December 2015)
  - Bangladesh: A battleground of ideologies (Jaideep Mazumdar)
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
14. Bangladesh: Religious extremism - legal action not enough (Editorial, New Age)
15. Punishing Nepal: The Indian government's Nepal policy is shameful, dangerous and self-defeating (Editorial in EPW)
16. A de-escalation in the cards on Nepal-India? (Kanak Mani Dixit)
17. Sri Lanka: The Erosion Of A Tradition Of Law - What Went Wrong? (Dr. Rajan Hoole)
18. India - Pakistan:: #ModiSharif: Enjoy the bonhomie. But don't expect anything more (Bharat Bhushan)
19. Bangladesh signs $17 billion deal with Russia for nuclear power plants
20. The Year of the Cow (G. Sampath)
21. Karachi Book Launch:: Surkh Salam: Communist Politics and Class Activism in Pakistan 1947–1972 by Kamran Asdar Ali
22. Chinese jade miners in overdrive before Myanmar's new government can crack down (Hnin Yadana Zaw)
23. Stop Racist Violence in Poland! (Andrew Solomon and the Polish PEN Club)
24. Patrick Iber. Review of Witham, Nick, The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: U.S. Protest and the Central American Revolutions. 

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1. JOINT STATEMENT CALLING ON THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF PAKISTAN TO VOTE AGAINST THE PREVENTION OF ELECTRONIC CRIMES BILL IN ITS CURRENT FORM
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Article 19, Digital Rights Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, the Association for Progressive Communications and other organisations remain seriously concerned by the proposed Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill in Pakistan.
http://sacw.net/article12177.html

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2. BANGLADESH: EXCERPT FROM HISTORY WARS - KAMAL HOSSAIN INTERVIEW (Part 2)
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Our history is never still, and there are always processes of rewriting Bangladesh’s history, erasing crucial figures. The best response to such history wars is to let the record speak, when possible. In an Alal O Dulal exclusive, we have translated a 37 page interview of Kamal Hossain (from Shaptahik magazine, 2014). This is the second part.
http://sacw.net/article12125.html

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3. So what is behind the resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue / Buying peace at the grocery
========================================
Comment by Bharat Bhushan and by Jawed Naqvi on the restarting of India-Pakistan dialogue in December 2015
http://sacw.net/article12201.html

[see also No. 18 below in full text: India - Pakistan:: #ModiSharif: Enjoy the bonhomie. But don't expect anything more (Bharat Bhushan)]

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4. REMEMBERING JINNAH, THE INDIAN NATIONALIST (T. N. Madan)
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On the 140th birth anniversary of one of India’s most influential public figures of modern times, eminent sociologist TN Madan ruminates on his star-crossed career to ask a vital question: what happened to transform this ‘ambassador of unity’ into an advocate of Partition in just 25 years?
http://sacw.net/article12214.html

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5. INDIA’S URANIUM MINING COMPLEX AT JADUGODA POURS ITS RADIOACTIVE WASTES INTO SUBARNAREKHA RIVER
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Indian and Japanese scientists have found that Indian citizens living downstream from the country’s enormous uranium mining and processing complex are routinely exposed to exceptionally high levels of radiation.
The Indian government has either rebuffed or suppressed some of these findings, insisting that any illnesses are caused by poverty, not radiation.
http://sacw.net/article12197.html

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6. INDIA: PURGING PLURALITY AND URDU FROM RAJASTHAN TEXTBOOKS UNDER BJP GOVERNMENT
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Rajasthan government decided to drop her stories from school textbooks. It also removed poems and short stories by the late theatre activist and writer Safdar Hashmi.
http://sacw.net/article12198.html

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7. INDIA: 10 YEARS OF THE FOREST RIGHTS ACT - SAY NO TO CHANGE IN PROGRESSIVE AND PRO-PEOPLE LAWS - Press Release by Bhoomi Adhikaar Andolan
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Over 500 people associated with different social movements, democratic struggles and Trade Unions from different states of the country gathered at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi today, on the historic day of enactment of Schedule Tribe and other Forest Dwellers, Recognition of Forest Rights Act in 2006. We collectively pledge to continue our struggle against the NDA government’s proposed illegal move to dilute the Forest Rights Act bypassing the Parliament of India.
http://sacw.net/article12200.html

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8. WHY DELHI’S HOMELESS PREFER TO SLEEP IN THE FREEZING COLD THAN IN GOVERNMENT SHELTERS (Harsh Mander)
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The government is ’rescuing’ unwilling homeless people from the streets and packing them off to shelters. Nobody thought of speaking to the homeless first.
http://sacw.net/article12218.html

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9. M. G. VASSANJI: OF PLACES CALLED HOME
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East African Asian society was complex and contradictory as any truly multicultural society needs to be, and perhaps as only Indians can make it.
http://sacw.net/article12215.html

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10. SUSANNE RUDOLPH - 1930-2015: A tribute by Ananya Vajpeyi
========================================
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, born in 1930, passed away on December 23 at a hospice in Oakland, California, with her husband, intellectual partner and scholarly co-writer of more than 60 years, Lloyd I. Rudolph, by her side.
http://sacw.net/article12217.html

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11. BD SHARMA: ADVOCATE OF ADIVASI RIGHTS IN INDIA - A tribute by PUDR
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PUDR mourns the death of Dr Brahma Dev Sharma, one among the rare breed of civil servants who, in service as well as on retirement, continued to stand by the marginalised and the oppressed.
http://sacw.net/article12172.html

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12. ABVA RELEASES DIGITIZED VERSION OF ITS 1990 CITIZENS REPORT "WOMEN & AIDS - DENIAL AND BLAME"
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On the eve of World AIDS Day, December 1, 2015, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan is releasing the digitized version of its very first report titled “Women & AIDS – Denial and Blame”, twenty-five years after it was first published. The report is as relevant today as it was when the print version was first brought out. The above two quotes bear testimony to this.
"There are no bio-medical or physiological factors which make some groups rather than others more prone to HIV infection. Contrary to popular fantasy, the modes of transmission of HIV put many more people at risk than the label “high-risk group” implies. It is not what you are but what you do, and what blood-banks and blood product manufacturers and hospitals do, that constitutes the primary risk factor. It therefore becomes crucial to understand the spread of HIV in terms of activities and not groups which are at high-risk.
http://sacw.net/article12138.html

========================================
13. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
========================================
  - Call for Papers : (E)razed Chapters: Remembering the Tales of Mourning Carnage ’84
  - Russian president, Vladimir Putin's Gift to India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, A double-edged sword (Editorial, The Telegraph)
  - India - Dadri Lynching: Son's beef query stuns Dadri father
  - Is Pakistan supporting Bangladeshi Islamists? (Shamil Shams)
  - Report in Indian Express on Bhuvith Shetty, the 24-year-old Bajrang Dal activist
  - India: Frontline Cover Story Horror behind bars ........ Communal bias
  - A brief history of religious intolerance in India (DN Jha and Mukul Dube )
  - India: Mangaluru-based activist faces online abuse, rape threats, for complaining against Bajrang Dal
  - No Sign that the West is willing to end this toxic love affair with Islamism
  - India: Notice announcing a 'Strategy Meeting Against Communalism' by NAPM (24 dec 2015)
  - Announcement: Sahabalyeva Sagara - 30 Jan 2015 - Mangalore - KKSV (Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum)
  - India: Hindutva driven Ram temple talk, stone-carving gains momentum in Ayodhya
  - [India] Real people are censored, the anonymous say what they want: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
  - Intolerance Debate: Story So far
  - Now more than ever, it is time to stand up for France’s brand of secularism (Natalie Nougayrède)
  - The Islamist war on secular bloggers in Bangladesh (Samanth Subramanian)
  - India: 1987 book on RSS by Andersen and Damle being updated for a new edition
  - India: Ramachandra Guha on Narendra Modi and the RSS
  - India - Uttar Pradesh: Police invokes NSA against Hindutva activist Kamlesh Tiwari as Muslim protests rage on
  - India: Dont expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rein in the so-called fringe elements because they form the core of his constituency (A.G. Noorani)
  - India: The musclemen of Hindutva (Vikas Pathak)
  - Book Review: Kuldeep Kumar on Shamsul Islam's 'Muslims Against Partition'
  - India: Communalism - A Journey To Nowhere Since 1992, a lecture by Dr Rizwan Qaiser (05 December 2015)
  - Bangladesh: A battleground of ideologies (Jaideep Mazumdar)
  -> available at: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: FULL TEXT :::

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14. BANGLADESH: RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM - LEGAL ACTION NOT ENOUGH (Editorial, New Age)
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(New Age [Bangladesh] - December 27, 2015)

THE arrest of seven militancy suspects, along with the seizure of 17 improvised grenades, a huge amount of explosive and suicide vests, in a 14-hour joint operation by the law enforcement agencies at Mirpur in Dhaka on Thursday should be a wake-up call for the Awami League-led government to properly address the issue. The police involved in the drive identified, as New Age reported on Friday, three of the arrested as ‘high ranking’ Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh leaders, an Islamist outfit that is to have been involved in a number of recent bomb and gun attacks, some of which were fatal, on the Shia headquarters in the capital, a Shia mosque in Bogra and a temple in Dinajpur. Investigations have also found people belonging to the group to be involved in the earlier attacks on a pastor of a Pabna church and an Italian missionary doctor in Dinajpur and the killing of the Japanese citizen in Rangpur a few months ago. Meanwhile, a suspected suicide bomber died in an explosion in an Ahmadiyya mosque in Rajshahi during Friday prayers, a locality where Bangla Bhai, a key leader of the banned JMB, formed another militant group, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, in 2004.
The busting of the suspected JMB den took place at a time when the government looked hell bent, that too on tenuous reasons, on denying the existence of anything like the Islamic State and when the IS authorities claimed to have some links with the JMB in their magazine Dabiq though. Moreover, the incumbents sought to blame their political rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, for almost all the above-mentioned incidents. Not only that, the police refused to officially term the latest bomb attack to be a ‘suicide’ one lest it would go against the government’s no IS existence claim. In any case, the government needs to realise that all this indicates its ostrich syndrome regarding the militancy issue which may end up leading the menace even to a condition difficult to cure. Besides, as the attackers have so far targeted mostly people belonging to different religious minority groups, the centuries-old communal harmony will be the worst victim of the situation posing a serious threat to the national unity. One can recall here that the latest drive against the JMB took place just a few hours before Christmas, the major religious festival of the Christian community.
It cannot be denied that the recent rise of the religious extremism took place against the backdrop of the failure of successive governments, including the incumbents, to make a reality the issues such as establishing a secular, democratic and egalitarian state that united people to fight for freedom from the neo-colonial rule of Pakistan. In addition, efforts of the incumbents to anyhow retain power constricting space for dissents, in general, and any political opposition, in particular, and, thereby, establish authoritarianism instead of democracy have created a political vacuum, an ideal situation for bigotry, religious and otherwise, to thrive in. It is true that stringent law enforcement actions against the menace may halt the situation from worsening. But to eliminate the threat, the government immediately needs to effectively the problems of democracy, religious freedoms and poverty.

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15. PUNISHING NEPAL: THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT'S NEPAL POLICY IS SHAMEFUL, DANGEROUS AND SELF-DEFEATING (Editorial in EPW)
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(Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50, Issue No. 51, 19 Dec, 2015) 

EDITORIAL

It is almost three months since the supply of goods from India into Nepal has been choked. A few days after Nepal’s Constituent Assembly approved its new constitution on 20 September 2015, the Madhesis—the Nepalis of the plains—began protests blocking roads and access points from India. Nepal’s constitution, by denying naturalised citizens access to the top positions of the republic, barred many Madhesis whose parents or grandparents came to Nepal from India from these posts. Also, the demarcation of provinces and constituencies has been done to keep the Madhesi population—which is half of Nepal’s total population—divided through administrative boundaries. The present constitution seems to ring-fence the traditional control of the hill upper castes—the Bahun and Chhetri—over the Nepali state. The Madhesi protest in the terai regions bordering India is a direct fallout of the inability of the main political parties of Nepal—the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), the Nepali Congress and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)—to address these demands.

What, however, cannot be denied and is a cause of great concern is that there is now ample evidence to suggest that this blockade of Nepal is happening with the complicity of the Government of India. Even the response of the Indian government to the adoption of the new constitution and the manner in which it demanded changes in it indicates a brusque diplomatic demeanour, bordering on arrogance. This is not the first time that India has choked supplies to this impoverished landlocked country. In the late 1980s the Rajiv Gandhi regime, angry about Nepal’s growing relations with China, informally enforced a blockade by allowing trade and transit duties to lapse. It is inconceivable that the Madhesi groups have the stamina to sustain such a massive blockade over so many months without active and direct Indian support, both political as well as from its intelligence agencies.

The result of the ongoing blockade is that a major petroleum and fuel shortage has developed in Nepal which is having a deleterious impact on all parts of the country’s economy. There is now also a substantial dearth of medical supplies, and even books and stationery for education are in short supply. The reconstruction after the April earthquake, already mismanaged by a corrupt and incompetent administration, has come to a standstill. Through this blockade, it seems that India has got Nepal in a chokehold. Will the Nepal government and its main political parties manage to hold out, or will they succumb to the pressure? In this present climate of bullying by India and distrust by Nepal, the answer to this question is difficult to find, but some other things have become clear.

First and foremost, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Nepal policy now lies in tatters. If we assume that Modi was initially pitching for a strong bilateral relation economically beneficial to both countries, his government has destroyed any possibility of that for the next few years. Whether it is a diplomatic and national security misstep, or an effort to teach Nepal a “lesson,” the Madhesi blockade has been a foreign policy disaster. It has alienated Nepal’s political parties as well as public opinion from India and exposed the Madhesi community to further vulnerability from Nepali national chauvinists who have always accused them of being a fifth column for India. From the Indian nationalist perspective, it has pushed Nepal “into the arms of China.” Internationally too, India is being seen as responsible for the blockade of Nepal and few are buying the government’s versions of it being an “internal” matter of Nepal. The point, as most have seen it, is that India has been unable or unwilling to use its wide influence to work towards a solution, rather it is contributing to a crippling of the daily lives of the Nepalis. Having painted itself into a diplomatic and political corner with an all-or-nothing game India may now even be losing some of its leverage with Nepal’s political groups, including the Madhesis.

How can India extricate itself from the hole it has climbed into vis-à-vis Nepal? India has to use its influence with the Madhesi groups to lift the blockade, even as they can continue to (and should) agitate for equal citizenship rights in Nepal. It also needs to rebuild its relations with Nepal’s political parties and state, though we fear that the present political esta­blishment in New Delhi may well have lost the political credibility and diplomatic capital to rebuild ties. In the long term, the most important thing that the Indian state needs to do is to provide an assurance that it will never again use its geographical advantage to bully its Himalayan neighbour. One hopes that the Government of India will eventually show the sagacity and maturity to work towards this. Diplomats and lawyers need to find ways in which Nepal is guaranteed unhindered access to the sea and an uninterrupted flow of its goods.

Last, but most importantly, we, as India’s citizens, need to realise that the unifying thread in the present government’s foreign policy and geostrategy is to crown itself the regional power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, in a subsidiary alliance (in deeds, if not in words) with the United States. Browbeating Nepal into submission makes sense only within this framework of a nation aspiring to become the region’s boss. While this prospect may please the hawks among India’s nationalists, such a policy is, at once, unworkable, dangerous and unethical.
- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2015/51/editorials/punishing-nepal.html

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16. A DE-ESCALATION IN THE CARDS ON NEPAL-INDIA? (Kanak Mani Dixit)
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(Nepali Times, 25-31 December 2015 #788)
Comment
Deciding to de-escalate: A win-win can only happen with a halt to Indian micro- and macro-management
Kanak Mani Dixit

Much recrimination has roiled the waters of the Sirsiya stream dividing Raxaul and Birganj between September-December 2015, punctuated by three statements from New Delhi’s Ministry of External Affairs. The latest note of 21 December indicates that, at long last, the Ministry may be coming to its senses on the senselessness of this economic blockade imposed on India’s most steadfast neighbour.

The statements are themselves works of fine penmanship that allow little room for misinterpretation. Thus, the menacing tone of the 20 September note was lost on no one, released even as President Ram Baran Yadav was releasing the Constitution. It read: ‘We note the promulgation in Nepal today of a Constitution.’

The wordsmiths at MEA-India thought fit merely to ‘note’ after seven years of effort, in the wake of a ten-year conflict, a decade of polarising transition, and an earthquake to boot. The scorn heaped on Nepal’s constitutional process – history will regard it as such – was heightened by the precise employment of the article ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ in referring to the document adopted by an elected, inclusive Constituent Assembly.

A day later, on 21 September, came another press note, with suggestion of the blockade to come. The Tarai-Madhes had been in agitation for a month previously without obstruction of the border or highways, but MEA-India provided ample hint of its intentions with the sentence: ‘Our freight companies and transporters have also voiced complaints about the difficulties they are facing in movement within Nepal and their security concerns, due to the prevailing unrest.’

Then came the blockade, with the Madhes-based parties as willing partners. Indian customs, Indian Oil Corporation and the Seema Suraksha Bal implemented an elaborate embargo under orders from New Delhi. For three months, there has been calibrated release of fuel and essential supplies to fulfill no more than 10 per cent of Nepal’s needs, in fits and starts to keep the economy off-keel.

Nepalis swung between hope and despair, counting the tankers and ‘bullets’ coming in, hanging on imagined signals of New Delhi’s magnanimity, applauding individual articles in the Indian press and speeches in the Rajya Sabha.

While the Kathmandu establishment and the Madhes-based politicians helped set the stage for this dangerous turn of constitutional politics, India’s blockade widened the gap between hill and plain communities. Fortunately, the polarisation has not escalated to conflagration, hence the urgency for New Delhi to stop adding fuel to the tinder.

Perhaps Nepal’s resilience under the blockade, or some welcome circumspection about its own immaturity, made New Delhi come around to its 21 December statement. The note certainly points to a backtracking by India, even if the spinmeisters at MEA-India try to make it look like Kathmandu’s surrender.

The statement on Monday points to a geopolitical gear-shift by India in welcoming the Nepal cabinet’s decision of what has been the months-old negotiating plank of the big-three parties. These include, as stated in the Indian statement, ‘proportionate inclusiveness and delineation of electoral constituencies on the basis of population’ and the ‘demarcation of provinces to be addressed through an appropriate arrangement in the Constitution on the basis of political consensus’.

MEA-India ‘welcomes’ these ‘important decisions’ as ‘positive steps that help create the basis for a resolution of the current impasse in Nepal’. Indicatively, the Ministry also saw fit to upgrade the title it gave the notes – from ‘Statement on the Situation in Nepal’ in September to ‘Statement on Nepal’ in December.

It does indeed look like India has decided to de-escalate, but why the blockade at all is the Mother of All Questions. While we work on that, this should be the start of a pushback to the southern interventionism that has dogged Nepal throughout its modern era since 1950.

New Delhi’s appetite to intervene increased after 2006, as sycophantic Kathmandu politicians allowed the intelligence apparatchiks to run amok. Micro-management penetrated the government superstructure, going as far as the makeup of cabinets and appointment of officials high and low, including the head of the anti-corruption watchdog.

Nepal’s socio-economic advance under the new Constitution is good for Big India, the pre-condition for this being a halt to India’s micro- and macro-management. New Delhi having flagged its step-back, the Kathmandu establishment must now move proactively to make amends for its own ills and malfeasance. As a start, Prime Minister KP Oli must stop spouting invectives against the plains movement and form a credible commission to investigate the death of Madhesi demonstrators in police firing.

The vital remaining task will be the demarcation of federal provinces in a way that does not cheat the citizens of plain, hill and mountain. Federalism must be win-win for all – or not at all. As for the blockade, even as it winds down we must seek accountability and reparation for the devastation wrought. The Indian side, meanwhile, must internalise the Economic and Political Weekly editorial of last week which termed the blockade 'unworkable, dangerous and unethical'.


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17. SRI LANKA: THE EROSION OF A TRADITION OF LAW - WHAT WENT WRONG? (Dr. Rajan Hoole)
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(Colombo Telegraph, 26 December 2015)

Present Realities and Precarious Options – II

The Citizenship Act, the Sinhala Only Act and the practices that ensued from them were a clear beginning. Officials were encouraged to break or circumvent the rules to advance preferment to Sinhalese. The Constitution of 1972, which was drafted by the veteran LSSPer, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, compounded the situation with several errors of subjectivity. The rulers mistook the landslide victory against the UNP in the 1970 elections, which only required a modest swing in support in the first-past-the-post system, for a revolutionary mandate. The tone of the rhetoric was that the people had banished the opposition for all time. Central to the Constitution was the idea of the Sovereignty of the People as exercised through their elected representatives in Parliament.

This was distinct from the sovereignty of a Moral Tradition as codified in legal statutes for practical application. While the Judiciary interpreted the Law, the guardianship of this tradition was diffused among the various components of civil society. A judgement given at a particular point of time is bound to be influenced by prevailing opinion, class and vested interests, and may obviously be contrary to a long established moral tradition. Such was the case with the Supreme Court judgement upholding the Citizenship Act of 1948, which was quite evidently contrary to the spirit of Article 29 of the Soulbury Constitution. This however did not nullify Article 29 or the anti- discriminatory principle it enshrined. Its utility remained in the fact that a future Supreme Court could reverse the ruling of the early 1950s. Today, Sri Lankans are more conscious of the universality of the Law as strengthened by international covenants beginning with the UDHR, and a self-respecting Supreme Court would be hard put to uphold iniquitous laws, and their reversal was only a matter of time.

The same applied to the Sinhala Only Act and Mediawise Standardisation that were contentious issues when the 1972 Constitution was being drafted. Dr. Colvin R. de Silva underestimated the fickleness of Parliament which supposedly represented the sovereign people. What was worse, this principle was so inflexible that it could not brook any check on the power of Parliament.

So out went the second chamber (the Senate) even before the Constitution was promulgated and judicial rulings could no more constrain Parliament. Also of no little value in retrospect was that delicate, undefined and largely untried balance of power that had existed between the Sovereign (Queen Elizabeth II) and Parliament, even if in practice the Queen’s role was only ceremonial. The Queen and Section 29 of the Soulbury Constitution played a stabilising role that was both subtle as well as psychological.

In the context of ethnic polarisation and the alienation of the minorities, the British Sovereign, however tenuous the link to her was, even remotely, an independent arbiter. It was also not lost on the Tamils that it was the Queen’s representative, Sir Oliver, and not the Parliament, who acted to stamp out the 1958 communal violence. These stabilising features of the Soulbury Constitution were dissolved at the stroke of a pen on 22nd May 1972 when Ceylon became Sri Lanka. The Tamil problem was aggravated by leaving the key issues of Tamil agitation unresolved, yoking the minorities, as it were, to a majoritarian tyranny. Ironically, Dr. de Silva had himself sided forcefully with the minorities on these issues in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Why did Colvin R. de Silva do it? Having been a lifelong Marxist revolutionary, it perhaps appealed to him, symbolically at least, to sweep away everything before him and put something supposedly new in its place. But the enhanced power was not passing on to anything remotely resembling a revolutionary vanguard. It understandably meant a lot to Dr. de Silva to make that symbolic act of defiance against the British Crown. In making Parliament sovereign, Dr. de Silva appears to have encountered difficulty in prescribing legal remedies for Fundamental Rights that were defined in his Constitution.

This problem is addressed by Walter Jayawardena QC, who was cabinet secretary to the ministry of constitutional affairs under Dr. de Silva, in a recent article (Sunday Island 12.3.2000). Among Dr. de Silva’s reasons were, that the courts and administrators were bound to have due regard to these rights whenever a citizen took his stand on them, and the Constitution should be brief and need not include matters that would be dealt with in the normal course of legislation. Walter Jayawardena comments on Dr. de Silva’s strongly felt insistence on the removal of the Public Service Commission -“three gentlemen who owed no direct loyalty to anyone”- and vesting its functions with ministers.

Walter Jayawardena observes: “He [Dr. de Silva] would not give the right weight to the contention that it was not the honesty of ministers that mattered so much, nor the fact that they were subject to party discipline and parliamentary control. What really mattered was that politics in Ceylon had reached a point where party bosses had themselves become biased completely the wrong way, thoroughly corrupted if you like; with the result that no one believed that a just appointment would be made without undue weight being given to party considerations… To the Tamil minority, this was an irreparable blow. It is an injustice fraught with danger for the nation, and could have been foreseen. I cannot believe that for all the feeling he displayed Colvin was a free agent in this matter. I recognise that this is indeed a double edged compliment.”

It was left to J.R. Jayewardene to uncover the extent of mischief wrought by the 1972 Constitution. Having mistaken her five-year mandate in 1970 for a revolutionary one, Prime Minister Mrs. Bandaranaike overstayed her welcome and was resoundingly beaten in the 1977 parliamentary elections. All the prominent Left leaders and the majority of the SLFP ministers were beaten in constituencies they had long represented, often by unknown UNP opponents. With a five-sixths majority in the sovereign parliament, Jayewardene drew up another constitution, making himself in 1978 the first sovereign president. Mrs. Bandaranaike’s precedent was taken and the life of parliament became 6 years, as was the president’s term.

A public services commission was restored and so was a judicial service commission. But these, like the position of chief justice, were filled by the executive president and were more firmly politicised. The politicisation comes not so much directly as from a host of other factors. Restraining traditions observed up to 1970 had been decisively breached by this new notion of a sovereign parliament with no fetters. The moment one is happy to promote the 20th man on the seniority list to have a yes-man in place, it creates a chain of other evils. Fundamental Rights were made judicable, but this can be nullified by the Parliament’s unfettered legislative power.

This was the case with the Parliament in 1978 passing a law to overturn the Appeal Court ruling on the SPC (Special Presidential Commission) dealing with Mrs. Bandaranaike and then, in 1980, legislating to deprive Mrs.Bandaranaike of her civic rights for 7 years. This was done despite such retroactive punishment being contrary to the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) which Sri Lanka had already signed. Fundamental Rights were of no avail to the victim. Neither does it seem that the Judiciary could stop Parliament from enacting bad, inconsistent and even calamitous laws (see Chapter 7).

Had the Supreme Court not cleared controversial constitutional amendments, the Government would have been embarrassed and a point made. But Jayewardene would no doubt have, as in September 1978, removed all the judges using some obscure provision and re-appointed a new bench. To make its point, the sovereign Parliament appointed a committee on a frivolous petition in early 1983 to probe the alleged misconduct of two judges of the Supreme Court, whom it then exonerated. Judges were thus given a clear message to conform.

Thanks to Jayewardene having in 1978 replaced the first-past-the-post with proportional representation, Kumaratunga in 1994 did not get her two-thirds. This limited her freedom in the legislative sphere. We move onto some aspects of human rights, civil liberties and governance, pointing out how the present relates to the past.

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18. INDIA - PAKISTAN:: #MODISHARIF: ENJOY THE BONHOMIE. BUT DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING MORE (Bharat Bhushan)
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(CatchNews.com - 27 December 2015)

The sudden stopover in Lahore en route from Kabul to Delhi was typical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's penchant for showmanship. He has rightly been called India's first 'Bollywood Prime Minister' - everything is carefully scripted, meant to be publicly noticed and applauded.

Aware of Modi's need for appreciation, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has described him as a "harbinger of innovative diplomacy" and claimed that "no one in the world had ever seen diplomacy like this." If he was not being plainly sycophantic, this means that the Home Minister whose core mandate is to deal with terrorism was not in the picture at all.

Ever since he assumed office, Modi has taken India on an emotional roller-coaster ride by breathing hot and cold about Pakistan. In either case, he provides no explanation for his actions but seeks appreciation. He wants the people to go into a frenzy both when he thumps his apocryphal 56-inch chest taking a muscular stand on Pakistan as well as when he projects himself as a peacenik walking hand in hand with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as his long-lost buddy.

Like Bollywood which seeks to entertain for a few hours, it is quite likely that the Lahore bonhomie of Prime Minister Modi has only tactical aims. Strategically, it may change little.
Sure shots

His move will undoubtedly deny Pakistan the brownie points internationally by claiming that India was obdurate while it was ready to talk. It will also prevent Modi's friend "Barak" from breathing down his neck as the United States was pressing India to restart dialogue with Pakistan.

The Lahore stopover also has the advantage of projecting Modi as someone with the ability to change the optics of the India-Pakistan relations. If the atmospherics result in a constructive dialogue, he will get credit and his stature would be enhanced.

Since Modi is very keen on attending the 19th SAARC summit in Islamabad in July 2016, he would not want anything to mar his visit. His Lahore foray can help prepare the ground for the visit. The Modi machine must already be preparing for a grand show in Islamabad to outmatch Atal Bihari Vajapyee's visit for a similar summit in January 2004.

Since there are no non-resident Indian crowds in Pakistan to attend his trademark rock-star shows, he has to think innovatively to outdo the Vajpayee visit which resulted in a commitment - honoured more in the breach subsequently - that Pakistan would not allow area under its control to be used for terrorism against India.
Also possible

By improving the optics with Pakistan further collateral advantage may be had in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election due in 2017. If it is true - and this is by no means an established truth - that Muslims in North India tend to be well-disposed towards parties that improve ties with Pakistan, then some sections of the community may swing towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

There are a large number of divided families in UP who place primacy on normal ties with Pakistan so that cross-border visits become easier. Whether the BJP will indeed become more acceptable to the voters in the state, who have been the target of its communalism up to now, remains to be seen.
Legacy Modi

Finally, it is quite possible that Modi may also have begun to think in legacy terms. The first indication of this was his speech to the Navy Commanders' conference on INS Vikramaditya where he declared that he was "engaging Pakistan to try and turn the course of history".

Indian Prime Ministers while in office tend to assume that their initiative and the sheer power of their personality are sufficient to change the trajectory of India-Pakistan relations. Modi believes that he can pick up the threads of India-Pakistan relations from where Vajpayee had left off.

If he succeeds where the former Prime Minister failed his image would get a massive boost; he would prove his critics wrong and, who knows, he may then even be looking at the prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Modi's new found warmth towards Pakistan has found support in the media and the opinion-making classes. There is little doubt that should he be looking for it, Modi can generate a broad consensus in the country for peace with Pakistan.

Having grown up politically breathing fire against Pakistan, he knows that at the end of the day, the ordinary folk in India do not like threats of war; that they recognise that without a dialogue with Pakistan there cannot be a compromise on any outstanding issue. Also, they know that a dialogue does not mean that India has let go of its interests.
State & Army

There is also belief in some sections of the policy-making establishment in India that while Nawaz Sharif is well intentioned, it is the Pakistan Army which is villainous when it comes to forging peace with India. Thus the arguments that the Pakistan Army did not want Sharif to come for Modi's swearing-in ceremony and that the appointment of a former military officer Lt. Gen (R) Naseer Khan Janjua as Pakistan's National Security Advisor suggests that this time around the Pak Army was on board for initiating peace with India.

Also read: Modi-Sharif meet: Lahore visit was neither a coup nor a surprise

Without appreciating the role of the army in Pakistan's neighbourhood policy, they dream of either minimising the military's influence in India-Pakistan dialogue or hoped it will not act as a spoiler.
The insurance

If, however, things were to go terribly wrong with his assumptions about Pakistan, Modi still has the option of falling back on a hardline position.

He could then claim that he made several efforts with Pakistan - in Kathmandu, in Ufa, in Paris and even in Lahore - but the Pakistanis are an incorrigible lot.

From his perspective then, he is engaging in safe gestures with no immediate downside.
Necessary scepticism

To claim that Modi's diplomacy is path breaking is to ignore how far Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had gone with Pakistan, despite the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament and the Kargil War. Even then, we witnessed the Mumbai terror attacks.

India then went so far as to separate acts of terrorism from a dialogue with Pakistan, but to no avail. Pakistan, in fact, changed the discourse on terrorism and claimed that India was behind terrorist acts in Pakistan.

Also read: Twitter takes on TOI's epic-length headline. Hilarity ensues

After one discounts the hoopla around the 'engineered spontaneity' of the Lahore visit, one might wonder whether there is indeed a downside to it. The question is: How would Modi's actions be viewed in Pakistan and would there be any change in Pakistan's attitude in the long run?

The new optics suggest that India had been wrong all along and it has now come to the right path, realizing that it needs to take corrective measures, behave better and walk hand-in-hand with Pakistan. The Modi establishment, up to now, had been telling the Indian people that the ground reality was exactly the opposite.

Are the Pakistanis going to be taken in by the engineered birthday bonhomie? They would wonder what Modi's motivations are. They will monitor whether the nature of India's retaliation on the Line of Control has changed from the threatened disproportionate response or the tit-for-tat responses of India's intelligence agencies (India is accused by Pakistan of fomenting trouble in Balochistan).

If they find that India has indeed stepped back, it is unlikely that they would think that Modi is approaching them from a position of strength. They may also conclude that he comes to them at a time when his popularity is sagging and his stature has been eroded after the Delhi and Bihar poll debacles.
The trappings

In the medium and the long term, neither Pakistan's nor India's interests are going to change fundamentally. Pakistan would always want to put Kashmir on the front burner and settle Siachen. Both are tricky issues for any Indian Prime Minister, given the entrenched Indian position on Kashmir and on giving up or weakening the Indian Army's position on Siachen, which is totally under Indian control. Retreating on either will be particularly difficult for a BJP Prime Minister.

Similarly, Pakistan is unlikely to give India any satisfaction on the 26/11 trials, curbing the activities of Hafiz Saeed or acting against terrorist organisations in Punjab like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. The Pakistan Army and the terrorist groups in Pakistan's Punjab recruit from the same areas and communities.

Targeting them could create internal strife and the Pakistani political leadership itself might become a target. Therefore, it is very difficult for the political leadership to act on the basics of terrorism against India.
No big deal

On the face of it, therefore Modi's dramatic strategy is unlikely to deliver. A more sustained engagement with Pakistan without hyperbolic gestures may help the two countries understand each other's concerns and interests better.

Relationships that have been bombed virtually beyond repair need to be rebuilt slowly, steadily and with sustained effort without raising hopes of a final resolution because of the personal charisma of a leader.


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19. BANGLADESH SIGNS $17 BILLION DEAL WITH RUSSIA FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
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(The Straits Times, Dec 26, 2015)

DHAKA (REUTERS) - Bangladesh's state-run Atomic Energy Commission signed a deal with Russia on Friday to set up two nuclear power plants, each with 1,200 megawatt capacity, an investment totalling US$12.65 billion (S$17.7 billion), a government official said.

Work will begin early next year at Ruppur in Iswardi, 160km from Dhaka, said Kamrul Islam Bhyian, spokesman for the ministry of science and technology.

"Russia will finance up to 90 per cent of the total cost as credit with an interest rate of Libor plus 1.75 per cent," Bhyian told Reuters.

Bangladesh will clear the total loan within 28 years with a 10-year grace period.

Bangladesh finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said it would be the country's biggest power project.

The first power plant is expected to begin operating by 2022 and the second by 2023.

The official said the plant would use a new generation reactor that has a lifespan of 60 years with an option of extending it for 20 years.

The reactor contains improved safety features, and its passive safety system can work for 72 hours in any critical or emergency situation, it said.

Rosatom will maintain the plant for the first year of its commercial operation before handing over to the Bangladesh authorities, and will bear fuel costs for the first year of operation.


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20. THE YEAR OF THE COW (G. Sampath)
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(The Hindu, 26 December 2015)

The cultural legacy of 2015 can be summed up in two words: beef and intolerance. But in the midst of it all, the year brought some cheer for free-speech advocates with Section 66A of the IT Act being struck down

For the Chinese, 2015 was the Year of the Sheep. But in India, as we all know by now, it was undoubtedly the Year of the Cow. It was neither the economy nor politics that dominated the headlines. What did, was culture. And if we were to sum up the cultural legacy of 2015 in two words, it would be ‘beef’ and ‘intolerance’.

2015 was a year when culture became a matter of life and death. We were witness to what can only be described as ‘cultural murders’— the killings of M.M. Kalburgi and Mohammad Akhlaq in India; and of Avijit Roy, Ananta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman, and Niloy Chakrabarti in Bangladesh. And these were preceded by the literal ‘death’ of an author as Perumal Murugan ended his writing life.

Culture hogged the national discourse again when the senior-most of the Pandavas, ‘Yudhistir’, was appointed the chairman of the Film and Television Institute (FTII), prompting students to go on strike for several weeks. The culture wars spread to other fronts, as leading cultural and academic institutions in India underwent an intellectual blood transfusion of sorts, with secular or Leftist scholars giving way to saffronites sympathetic to the Hindutva agenda.

Then we had the so-called ‘award wapsi’ phenomenon, where writers and artists took to returning state awards in protest against a deteriorating climate for free speech and communal harmony. While the ruling NDA government sought to dismiss it as ‘manufactured rebellion’, there ensued a national debate on what came to be framed as ‘the problem of intolerance’.

If the core of the ‘intolerable’ was beef-eating, radiating outward from this core was a range of cultural expressions that drew the wrath of the culture police — from not standing up for the national anthem, to celebrating Valentine’s Day, to marrying outside one’s religion, or voicing an opinion even mildly at variance with that of the culture police (ask Aamir Khan/Shah Rukh Khan).

Even as the cultural wars raged on, the state began to encroach on the very basis of cultural freedom — the fundamental right to free speech and expression. For instance, in October this year, a folk singer, S. Kovan, was arrested by the Tamil Nadu police and charged with sedition for singing songs critical of the state government. At the national level, the state went berserk on social media censorship, blocking as many as 844 pages in 2015 alone (as of November 30).

But it was not all doom and gloom. 2015 also gave free speech advocates something to cheer about, as they got rid of the dangerous Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act. This was a draconian provision under which any message transmitted using an electronic device (such as an email), if found to be “offensive”, could put you in jail for up to three years. In 2014, a total of 4,192 cases were reported under 66A; 2,423 persons were arrested, 1,125 charge-sheeted, and 42 convicted — all for ‘offensive’ messages shared online. But with the Supreme Court striking down this provision in March this year, those victimised by it, and potential future victims, got a reprieve.

On occasion, the restraints on cultural expression took a ludicrous turn. The Pahlaj Nihalani-led Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) became the butt of jokes on social media when it censored amorous scenes in the recent James Bond release, Spectre. It sparked a series of SanskariJamesBond memes, in one of which, a sari-clad Bond girl displaces Ursula Andress in a bikini.

The CBFC’s antics became even more absurd in the case of India’s first female buddy film, Angry Indian Goddesses. Typically, it is the expletives that are beeped out. But the words muted in this film included ‘lunch’, ‘sarkaar’, and ‘Indian figure’, while among the censored visuals were images of goddess Kali.

The whole intolerance phenomenon, while salient through 2015, is not new. This year merely saw the consolidation of tendencies that had gathered steam in 2013, in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, and grew dominant under the benign gaze of a Right-Wing government.

It would be a mistake, however, to blame only the Parivar-affiliated NDA government for it. What we are witnessing in India today is part of a wider trend in free market democracies around the world — a phenomenon the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has described as ‘the culturalisation of politics’.

With the major political questions on economic policy left to unelected experts and international trade agreements, there is a tendency for democratic national politics to be emptied of substantive content. What then takes the place of traditional political battles over justice, equality, and end of exploitation — which are now strictly off the table — are cultural issues to do with what we say, what we eat, how we dress, and who we marry.

Such culturalisation is fairly commonplace where authentic political choice in the theatre of democracy is ruled out. The rising influence of culture-obsessed right-wing political forces across the world — from the Muslim-baiting Trump in the U.S. to Golden Dawn in Greece, and Front National in France, among others — are a testimony to this larger trend.

In India, there were a couple of blips this year when it actually looked like inflation, especially the rising price of pulses, might become a talking point that could lead to substantive political debates about food security, social security, and, in the context of the caste census, equity, as integral parts of economic development. But almost as if on cue, some Parivar rabble-rouser would spout something outrageous, and public attention switched back to the cultural domain.

As we approach the final days of 2015, the cultural politics of intolerance rages on, the latest being the cancellation of the screening of Bajirao Mastani in a Pune multiplex due to pressure by BJP workers, and a similar treatment meted out to Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dilwale in Mangalore by VHP and Bajrang Dal activists, who wanted to show the actor what “real intolerance” was.

And yet the year has not been without hope. Perhaps the most emblematic episode in the Year of the Cow was the minor skirmish over a bovine installation that occurred in Jaipur last month which, miraculously, the cow-natics lost.

November 21 was a bright sunny morning in the pink city, and floating in the blue sky above the Jawahar Kala Kendra was a black-and-white cow. As the preceding months had made clear, 2015 was the wrong year to be fooling around with a cow. Yet an intrepid artist participating in the Jaipur Art Summit had found it imperative to suspend a Styrofoam cow from a gas balloon. It was an art installation intended to raise awareness about how abandoned cows end up eating plastic and choking to death. Within 30 minutes of the cow structure going up, cops arrived, and citing offended sentiments, forced the cow down. Two artists involved with the project were detained.

The police then advised the artists that if the idea was to raise awareness, they should write essays and make paintings — why fly a cow? The hitherto high-flying Styrofoam cow was duly garlanded and subjected to a small puja. It could have been just another day in cow-rashtra. But it wasn’t.

Acting swiftly, the state administration pulled up the cops involved, and transferred them out of the area. The police commissioner apologised to the artists. Rajasthan’s BJP Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje tweeted that she was saddened by the incident. Art had beaten back fanaticism — at least this once. And in befitting irony, it took a plastic cow to put one over the cow brigade.

2016 in the Chinese calendar is the Year of the Monkey. We don’t know yet which animal will reign over the New Year in India — hopefully, it won’t be the cow again.

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21. KARACHI BOOK LAUNCH:: SURKH SALAM: COMMUNIST POLITICS AND CLASS ACTIVISM IN PAKISTAN 1947–1972 BY KAMRAN ASDAR ALI
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Surkh Salam: Communist Politics and Class Activism in Pakistan 1947–1972
by Kamran Asdar Ali

Karachi Book Launch
Date: 1st Jan 2016 | 7:00PM
Venue: t2f
10-C, Sunset Lane 5, Phase 2 Extension, DHA, Karachi - 75500

Pakistan today stands at a critical juncture in its short history of existence. While much has been written about Pakistan, little is known about Communism or left-leaning politics in the country, post-partition, which played a key role in shaping Pakistani politics today.

Kamran Asdar Ali here presents the first extensive look at Pakistan's communist and working class movement. The author critically engages with the history of Pakistan's early years while paying special attention to the rise and fall of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), from Partition in 1947 to the aftermath of Bangladeshi independence in 1971.

Since its formation in 1947 as a homeland for South Asian Muslims, Pakistan has been a configuration of shifting alliances and competing political and social ideologies. Pakistan has experienced three military takeovers and is plagued with geopolitical conflict - from Kashmir to Baluchistan, Waziristan - and while these aspects of Pakistan make headlines, in order to understand the complexities of these events, it is vital to understand the state's relationship throughout history with its divergent political and ethnic voices.

One dominant feature of the state, along with its emphasis on the Islamic nature of its polity, has been the non-resolution of its ethnic problem - while the history of Pakistan is often viewed through the lense of unified Muslim nationalism, the author here also explores the history of Pakistan's often tense relationship with its various ethnic groups - Baluch, Pathan, Sindhis, Punjabis and Bengalis.

Shedding light on a vital and little-researched aspect of Pakistani history, this book shows that military coups, Islamic radicalization and terrorist activities do not constitute the sum total of Pakistan's history; that it, too, has had a history that included the activities of communist intellectuals and activists.

About the Authour:
Kamran Asdar Ali is an associate professor of anthropology and director of the South Asia Institute at University of Texas, Austin.

Moderator:
Asif Aslam Farrukhi is a Pakistani writer, literary critic and editor. He has translated books from English into Urdu. He has edited and compiled many anthologies of Pakistani writers. He also writes for Dawn and other newspapers, and periodicals on literature.

Speakers:
Karamat Ali
Imran Aslam
Hoori Noorani

Date: Friday, 1st January 2016
Time: 7:00PM
Entry: Free! (Please support us by donating to www.sabeenmahmudfoundation.org) 
Directions and Map: http://www.t2f.biz/category/location

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22. CHINESE JADE MINERS IN OVERDRIVE BEFORE MYANMAR'S NEW GOVERNMENT CAN CRACK DOWN
by Hnin Yadana Zaw
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(The Sydney Morning Herald - December 18, 2015)

Merchants inspect jade displayed at the Gems Emporium in Naypyitaw earlier this month. Photo: AP

    Nearly 100 bodies pulled from landslide at Myanmar jade mine
    Myanmar's bloody jade heist enriches drug lords, military elites and Chinese financiers

Hpakant:  Using heavy earth-excavators and explosives, miners have been tearing into Myanmar's northern hills in recent months in a rush to excavate more jade from the world's richest deposits of the gemstone before a new government takes office next year.

Hectares of forest have been felled, leaving behind craters, barren cliffs and a web of dirt tracks in the once-picturesque Kachin hills as the Chinese firms that dominate the jade business step up mining and aggressively seek new concessions.
Jade displayed at the show in Naypyitaw earlier this month.

Jade displayed at the show in Naypyitaw earlier this month. Photo: AP

They are anticipating the multi-billion dollar industry could change once Aung San Suu Kyi's election-winning National League for Democracy (NLD) party takes office with a promise of clean governance, those in the trade say.

The NLD has said it will bring in rules and competition and crack down on rampant smuggling that deprives the government of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, but sceptics doubt it will be able to do much in the remote, rebel-infested region.

Nay Win Tun, a flamboyant MP and heavyweight in the jade trade with close links to the Myanmar military, says the Chinese have been flooding the trade with cash and equipment, ramping up production and taking over local miners.
Examining the quality of jade in the Hpakant, Myanmar, earlier this year.

Examining the quality of jade in the Hpakant, Myanmar, earlier this year. Photo: AP

"Right now, the market is being ruined by China," he said in a rare interview at one of his mines near Hpakant, dressed in an orange shirt, sunglasses and a cowboy hat, and surrounded by a uniformed entourage.

"Chinese companies tried to do a joint venture with my company," added Nay Win Tun. As he spoke, one of his attendants stooped down and tied his shoe-laces.

"I didn't accept because they're asking for a share of profit that's too much."
Jade on sale in Myanmar.

Jade on sale in Myanmar. Photo: AP

About 600 jade mining firms operate on 9000 hectares around the town of Hpakant, but activity is dominated by about 10 firms, among them mostly Chinese-led ventures, according to Ye Htut, the deputy head of Myanmar Gems Enterprise, a department of the Ministry of Mines.

"We are worried about the political changes in the coming months," said Eik Yin, a site manager for Triple One Company, a China-Myanmar joint venture in Hpakant. But he declined to say whether this was leading to ramped up production.

Because of the stepped-up extractions, thousands of villagers are being forced off their land. Scavengers, or "handpickers" who in their thousands scour mountains of loose earth and rubble for nuggets of jade, are sometimes buried alive, including 114 killed in a landslide last month.
Chinese miners are flooding Myanmar to take advantage of the lucrative jade trade.

Chinese miners are flooding Myanmar to take advantage of the lucrative jade trade. Photo: AP

Many of the scavengers are addicted to narcotics.

Aung Ko Oo, director of the locally-owned Thukha Yadana mining company, said mainland Chinese firms had stepped up activity since the start of the year.

"Mostly they came in by joint venture with local (ethnic) Chinese companies," he said. "Our firms have already sold two six-acre (2.4-hectare) sites to the Chinese. We need money."

Myanmar miners say they cannot stand up to Chinese tycoons who buy influence and invest in modern heavy machinery like Caterpillar and Komatsu earth-excavators. Processions of giant trucks, with eight-foot high wheels, are a common sight in the area and all belong to Chinese firms.

These firms have successfully cornered the market, selling directly to visiting Chinese buyers they are already familiar with, according to traders.

A Myanmar Gems Enterprise official said Chinese firms had co-opted local army commanders to secure mining concessions on their behalf, knowing they were too powerful for the local government to refuse them.

"The military officers already have deals with the Chinese companies to transfer the sites to them," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"They don't change the name of ownership sometimes. No one dares to touch (these) sites."

Much of the jade is being smuggled into China each year, locals say. Jade is a status symbol in China widely believed to bring fortune, wealth and longevity.

According to official data, China - the world's biggest jade market - imported only about $US540 million of Myanmar jade in the first nine months of this year. Global Witness, a non-governmental organisation, estimated the value of Myanmar's jade production at $US31 billion in 2014.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unaware of any allegations of Chinese companies' involvement in jade smuggling, but added the country was opposed to such illegal activities.

A regional police official in Hpakant said hundreds of trucks were concealed in the Kachin jungles, a few of which operated each night to transport undeclared jade rocks from Hpakant towards the China border. "At night, there are nine or 10 trucks moving," the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Since it's an army dominated area, the Chinese work together with the army to move trucks to Hpakant."

In its election manifesto, the NLD led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi pledged closer scrutiny of investments when it replaces the current government early next year. But given the military's political power and vast network of business and influence, it may be impossible to police the jade industry.

"Even this government can't control this region because of the military's domination," said Eik Yin, the manager for Triple One. "Until now, Aung San Suu Kyi hasn't been able to influence the military, so I don't think an NLD government can either."

Reuters

o o o

[see related:
DEADLY LANDSLIDE HITS JADE MINES IN NORTHERN MYANMAR
Deutsche Welle - ‎Dec 26, 2015‎
Dozens of people were feared missing or dead at the jade mines in Hpakant, Kachin state, 350 kilometers (220 Miles) north of the city of Mandalay - at the heart of Myanmar's billion dollar jade industry. "We started searching and rescuing people this ... 
http://www.dw.com/en/deadly-landslide-hits-jade-mines-in-northern-myanmar/a-18942770  ]

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23. STOP RACIST VIOLENCE IN POLAND!
Andrew Solomon and the Polish PEN Club
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(New York Review of Books - January 14, 2016 Issue)

To the Editors:

Poland has no significant Muslim population. Nevertheless, amid controversy over European refugee policy, anti-Muslim rhetoric emerged as a major feature of the Polish parliamentary election campaign this fall. The victors in the October 25 vote, a populist, nationalist-right party called Law and Justice, promoted xenophobia on a scale unseen in Poland since the fall of communism in 1989. During the campaign, the Law and Justice leader, the former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński, attacked immigrants for carrying “various parasites and protozoa, which don’t affect their organisms, but could be dangerous here.” Social media and the far right press also promulgated anti-Muslim slogans and images. One magazine cover featured a photoshopped picture of the then Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz clad in a burqa and holding explosives.

Several massive anti-refugee protests followed. Protesters have held marches, burned EU flags, and chanted nationalist slogans. In a number of Polish cities, gangs have beaten up or taunted dark-skinned “Arab” students or tourists; one victim was a Sikh entrepreneur. On November 18, in the city of Wrocław, a far-right group staged an anti-immigrant demonstration and—moving rapidly from one form of racial intolerance to another—burned an effigy of an Orthodox Jew.

Yet neither these groups nor Kaczyński speaks for the majority population. The mayor of Wrocław instantly condemned the demonstration, as did many others. The Polish Catholic Church has called on individual parishes to accept the beleaguered regardless of their religion, reminding Poles of their “Christian duty to help refugees.” Former Polish President Lech Wałesa has denounced the new ruling party’s chauvinism, and asked that Poles do the maximum they can to help the disenfranchised now pouring in from the war-torn Middle East. The attached statement, from the Polish PEN Club, is an urgent protest against the events in Wrocław and, more generally, against the shift in public rhetoric in Poland.

Andrew Solomon
President
PEN American Center
New York City

STATEMENT OF THE POLISH PEN CLUB

Following a long series of physical and symbolic acts of racist violence in Wrocław and other Polish cities, a group of extreme nationalists burned a figure of a Jew in the Wrocław central square. This was a neo-Nazi death sentence in effigie, an attack on the image of an imaginary convict. The main perpetrator of this act was until recently one of the closest colleagues of a member of the Polish parliamentary special services committee, who is the leader of a parliamentary party.

Genocide is not part of the tradition of Polish Wrocław. It belongs rather to the traditions of a different Wrocław, the city that was the most strongly pro-Nazi in the Third Reich. If Wrocław wants to aspire to become a European Capital of Culture, and not a “KuKluxKland,” it must quickly come to terms with this disgrace.

We express our support for the position taken by the mayor of the city of Wrocław, who demanded that law enforcement officials react immediately. We appeal to the highest authorities of the republic to bring a halt to the increasingly open acts of racist violence that are taking place in Poland.

—November 22, 2015

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24. PATRICK IBER. REVIEW OF WITHAM, NICK, THE CULTURAL LEFT AND THE REAGAN ERA: U.S. PROTEST AND THE CENTRAL AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS. 
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Nick Witham. The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: U.S. Protest and the Central American Revolutions. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015. x + 240 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78453-196-6.

Reviewed by Patrick Iber (University of Texas at El Paso)
Published on H-Diplo (December, 2015)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

Nick Witham’s The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: US Protest and Central American Revolution is an examination of Anglo-American left-wing cultural production in solidarity with Central American revolutionaries during the long 1980s. Its goals are twofold. First, it seeks to establish that, despite the 1980s being understood as the “age of Reagan,” political activists challenged Reagan’s way of seeing the world in that decade. The book’s central claim is that “the cultural work that developed alongside the movement in solidarity with the people of Central America should be considered as a significant, if by no means dominant, feature of the landscape of 1980s US political and cultural history” (p. 2). The second goal is to describe the features of that cultural production, including its internal divisions and the variety of approaches that were taken.

Drawing from a division that appeared in a 1983 paper produced by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Witham identifies three currents within the Central American solidarity movement: anti-interventionism, solidarity, and anti-imperialism. Since solidarity defined the basic position of organizations such as CISPES and NicaNet (the Nicaragua Network), it is the division between anti-interventionist and anti-imperialist views that he uses to examine cultural production within the era. Anti-imperialism, as used here, implies an active embrace of the revolutionary movements. The anti-imperialists believed that the victory of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in Nicaragua in 1979, and the potential victory of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in El Salvador, were genuinely advancing the cause of justice. But not everyone who opposed US foreign policy in Central America in the 1980s fully endorsed these revolutionary movements. There was a wider set of anti-interventionists who may not have shared the politics of the FMLN or FSLN, or may have remained agnostic about them. Still, these anti-interventionists were critical of US foreign policy of the era, including support for the Nicaraguan anti-FSLN Contras and the Salvadoran military’s counterinsurgent efforts. Both groups opposed US foreign policy towards Central America. But anti-imperialism implied radical politics, while most anti-interventionists were liberals.

Witham’s book is divided into six main chapters: two dealing with what he describes as “intellectual culture,” two with “press culture,” and two with “film culture.” In each case, Witham is interested in the ways that this cultural production interacted with the solidarity movements, and how the anti-interventionists and anti-imperialists interacted with one another. In a chapter on The Nation magazine, for example, he quotes its former editor Victor Navasky as describing its orientation as one of a “long running debate/argument/conversation between radicals and liberals” (p. 73). The magazine was generally sympathetic to the revolutionary movements, and in 1981 even produced a pamphlet intended to inform activists on issues relating to El Salvador. But The Nation was also occasionally critical. After Nicaragua’s junta declined to relax emergency controls after its electoral victory in 1985, for example, The Nation published an article by Michael Massing asking “hard questions” about Central America, criticizing both US support for counterrevolution and the Left’s approach to revolutionary activity (p. 71). Navasky then asked for reader comments, and two weeks later published responses to Massing’s article. The Nation’s in-house press critic, Alexander Cockburn, accused Massing of standing “side by side with Reagan” (p. 72). Cockburn’s regular Beat the Press column was written from a firmly anti-imperialist point of view, and, in Witham’s view, gave The Nation a radical voice alongside the more dominant strain of liberal anti-interventionism. (In another chapter, he contrasts The Nation with the New York-based radical newspaper the Guardian, which began life as a progressive organ for Henry Wallace’s campaign in 1948 before passing through a more sectarian Marxist-Leninist phase, before adopting a “left unity” approach by 1979 on the subject of Central America.)

In another example of the contrast he draws between anti-interventionists and anti-imperialists, Witham devotes a chapter to comparing the work of the historians Walter LaFeber (who published his Inevitable Revolutions in 1983) and Gabriel Kolko (whose Confronting the Third World came out in 1988). Both shared the view that the US government used anticommunism to justify global interventionism. Kolko, as a professor at University of Pennsylvania, had been close to its student activists in the New Left era, whereas LaFeber, at Cornell University, was critical of both the activists and his university’s administration. Witham argues that these basic perspectives continued to inform their scholarship: LaFeber thought that the academic’s role was to challenge prevailing norms of society while remaining an independent voice, including from radical activism. Kolko, by contrast, believed in full engagement. Kolko accepted the left-wing framework of dependency theory and saw the Nicaraguan revolution as a victory for the Left that proved the structural weakness of American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. LaFeber defended only modified forms of dependency theory, and thought that Central America’s revolutions were inevitable, but not necessarily beneficial. He imagined that centrist and democratic revolutions might have chosen to work with the United States.

Though he offers insightful readings of members of both groups, Witham is occasionally harsher on the anti-interventionists than on the anti-imperialists. For example, he criticizes only LaFeber for unrealistic assumptions, writing that LaFeber’s contention that Jimmy Carter had failed to “win” the Sandinista revolution for the United States “ignored the fact that ... [the Sandinista insurgency] was so fundamentally anti-Yankee that its agents would have struggled to work closely with an American presidential administration, no matter how benevolent” (p. 40). This is probably so, although the case of Costa Rica might seem to support LaFeber’s general argument, and many aspects of Kolko’s dependency theory have also not held up especially well. In another example, Witham notes anti-imperialist Alexander Cockburn’s criticism of New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer’s stories that the Sandinistas were supplying arms to El Salvador’s FMLN—but does not mention that Kinzer was correct.

But in general, Witham’s goal is not to favor the cause of the anti-imperialists over the anti-interventionists. Instead, he aims to show that both were important to the solidarity movement. The value of the anti-imperialist cultural products was that they were explicitly geared towards producing content that would be of assistance to activists: here, he cites the cases of Verso Books, the Guardian, and the testimonial films When the Mountains Tremble (1983) and María’s Story (1990). On the other hand, anti-interventionist products, like Oliver Stone’s Salvador (1986), most of The Nation, and LaFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions, could reach a larger audience and served to convince North American viewers to be skeptical of the Ronald Reagan administration’s messages and of mainstream media portraits of the nature of the conflict.

Given this structure and scope, the book is likely to be most interesting to scholar-activists, who will find it a thoughtful guide to some of their struggles and dilemmas. Organizers in the antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have faced challenges similar to those of their counterparts in the 1980s—not in this case because of sympathy for the targets of US intervention, but because they share the difficulty of forming an alliance that features both radicals and liberals. Witham’s book should be a useful reference for those wanting to think through the costs and benefits of various approaches.

However, the author has made some decisions that are likely to limit the book’s usefulness outside of those circles. Most importantly, the archival work is extremely sparse. A few footnotes point to collections held by the Wisconsin Historical Society, but this is primarily a history of media production that depends on media sources. Claims about the importance and influence of these publications is inference drawn from the fact that they exist. Additionally, the focus here is exclusively on Anglo-American cultural production, even though the solidarity movements they sought to aid were transnational organizations. To better assess their importance, it would have been necessary to cite Spanish-language sources, and to include Central American actors among the book’s major characters. US government documents could have shown how the Reagan administration viewed this production, especially because we know that, in general, it tried to undermine and discredit transnational solidarity organizations like CISPES and NicaNet. But despite the promise of the title, this book does not attempt a transnational history of Central American solidarity organizations on the model, perhaps, of James Green’s We Cannot Remain Silent about Brazil (2010).

A more ambitious research agenda would probably also have allowed Witham to advance more significant claims. His central claim, that there was an oppositional Left during the Reagan presidency, is simultaneously correct and unsurprising. The absence of such a Left in a democracy would be far more stunning than its existence is. His conclusion, pointing to throughlines of cultural radicalism in the New Left of the 60s and 70s, Central American solidarity movements of the 1980s, and today, offers some examples that suggest possibilities for future research: Paul Berman, whose regrets have made a liberal interventionist of an anti-interventionist, and Oliver Stone, whose films are now more anti-imperialist than anti-interventionist. Engagement with US foreign policy and Central American politics was certainly a meaningful and important experience for many activists in the 1980s, and Witham’s book reminds us of the internal diversity of those movements. But assessing what lessons were learned, and perhaps what lessons should have been learned based on what we can now use historical methods to uncover, will require a different approach.

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