SACW - 20 Aug 2017 | Bangladesh: son preference / Pakistan: military mind / India: ever expanding communalism / Barcelona attacks / Ruling on Timbuktu destruction / Honour killings in Russia

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 20 August 2017 - No. 2947 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Pakistan and India: Texts of hate - Editorial in Dawn
2. Pakistan: Sindh Labour Congress August 2017 - select news reports
3. India: What is RSS agenda in Education? | Ram Puniyani
4. India: Video of the lecture by Jean Dreze on growing communalism in Jharkhand; the speech which was interrupted by BJP ministers
5. India: The false godmen of Maharashtra | Puja Changoiwala
6. Recent on Communalism Watch:
 - India: Inventing history to inculcate hatred | Irfan Habib
 - India: In the past, Supreme Court had stood up for inter-faith and inter-caste marriages
 - The Rising Tide of Intolerance in Narendra Modi’s India | Shanoor Seervai (July 27, 2016)
 - India: No change of religion without permission in Jharkhand State
 - India: How identity politics is programmed to classify and rule
 - India: Making patriotism a coercive act is objectionable and unconstitutional (Editorial, Hindustan Times)
 - India: RSS chief hoists Indian flag in Kerala school, flouts collector’s order

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
7.  Afghan female singer's video draws threats and praise | Sherie Ryder
8.  On sexism, son preference and female infanticide in Bangladesh | Taqbir Huda
9.  Pakistan: The military mind | Irfan Husain
10. India: Creed above country - Rise of the Right | Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
11. Undoing the economic partition - Delhi must find the political will to raise the intensity of India’s regional engagement | C. Raja Mohan
12. The Night the Oxygen Ran Out in an Indian Hospital - Editorial, NY Times
13. The Idea ­And Its Mutant | Dilip Simeon
14. India: Portrait of a Lady as a young Muslim revolutionary | Syeda Hameed
15. Invitation to a Hong Kong seminar on “The BRICS and One Belt, One Road”, 2-3 September [2017]
16. Spain Attacks: ‘Las Ramblas cries but it is alive’: Barcelona recovers historic defiance | Jonathan Watts
17. Timbuktu destruction: landmark ruling awards millions to Malians | Luke Moffett*
18. Kenya's New Electoral Authoritarianism | Aziz Rana
19. “Honour killings” in Russia’s North Caucasus | Maria Klimova and Yulia Sugueva
20. Cambridge University Press accused of 'selling its soul' over Chinese censorship | Tom Phillips

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1. PAKISTAN AND INDIA: TEXTS OF HATE - EDITORIAL IN DAWN
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EVEN as they prepare to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their birth, Pakistan and India may want to reflect on why they have not been able to live as amicable neighbours. Both nations saw triumph and tragedy in 1947 — colonial rule was at an end, but the bloody events of Partition are seared in the subcontinent’s memory, a legacy that should have taught them to cherish freedom and to promote peace. Instead, the decades have been marked by conflict and tensions, recriminations and threats. The tendency on both sides to constantly paint the other in an unfavourable light has not helped. Perhaps one example of this is contained in some of the textbooks used by students in both countries.
http://sacw.net/article13413.html

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2. PAKISTAN: SINDH LABOUR CONGRESS AUGUST 2017 - SELECT NEWS REPORTS
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Sindh Labour Conference was organised by the National Labour Council in collaboration with the Sindh Labour Solidarity Committee and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) was held on 12 -13 August 2017 in Karachi
http://sacw.net/article13430.html

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3. INDIA: WHAT IS RSS AGENDA IN EDUCATION?
by Ram Puniyani
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In its recommendation to NCERT, Shiksha Sanskriti Uthan Nyas, an RSS affiliate asks for removal of English, Urdu and Arabic words, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore; extracts from painter M F Husain’s autobiography; references to the Mughal emperors as benevolent, to the BJP as a “Hindu” party., an apology tendered by former prime minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots; and a sentence that “nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002”. (25th July 2017) As such these  (...)
http://sacw.net/article13429.html

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4. INDIA: VIDEO OF THE LECTURE BY JEAN DREZE ON GROWING COMMUNALISM IN JHARKHAND; THE SPEECH WHICH WAS INTERRUPTED BY BJP MINISTERS
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Jean Dreze speech in Hindi on growing communalism in Jharkhand in Prabhat Khabar conclave in Ranchi which was disrupted by BJP ministers
http://sacw.net/article13427.html

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5. INDIA: THE FALSE GODMEN OF MAHARASHTRA | Puja Changoiwala
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In the three and a half years since Maharashtra passed a law against such practices, there have been hundreds of cases against fraudulent godmen who thrived on the superstition and fears of many
http://sacw.net/article13410.html

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6. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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 - India: Inventing history to inculcate hatred | Irfan Habib
 - India: In the past, Supreme Court had stood up for inter-faith and inter-caste marriages
 - The Rising Tide of Intolerance in Narendra Modi’s India | Shanoor Seervai (July 27, 2016)
 - India: No change of religion without permission in Jharkhand State
 - India: How identity politics is programmed to classify and rule
 - India: Making patriotism a coercive act is objectionable and unconstitutional (Editorial, Hindustan Times)
 - India: RSS chief hoists Indian flag in Kerala school, flouts collector’s order

 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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7. AFGHAN FEMALE SINGER'S VIDEO DRAWS THREATS AND PRAISE
by Sherie Ryder BBC UGC and Social News
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(BBC - 17 August 2017)

Image copyright Aryana Sayeed/Facebook
Image caption "Be a girl with a mind, a woman with attitude and a lady with class," Aryana Sayeed on Facebook

Afghan singer, songwriter and TV personality Aryana Sayeed will perform at a concert celebrating Afghan Independence Day on 19 August, but not everyone is happy.
As a traditionally conservative society, women in Afghanistan are restricted in what they can wear or do. Western clothing and not covering the head is considered by many to be against the national norm.

    Why Afghan women are campaigning for their names to be heard

So when Ms Sayeed, known for promoting empowerment among women, posted an eight-minute-long Facebook Live video, the comments were divided.

With her high number of followers - almost 1.9 million - the clip was viewed over 119,000 times in its first day.
Image copyright Aryana Sayeed

Some praised the singer and wished her good luck, whilst others have insulted her and alluded to "explosions" at her concert.
"We support you. Your concert is a kick in the teeth to wrong-headed people," wrote Facebook user Omid Ahmadi.
Others agreed and wished her good luck, including Zenat Amiri's: "I hope, God willing, your concert passes safely and may God be with you."

Sahil Seerat wrote: "This is in fact not a concert but a fight for freedom and justice, and against violence, despotism and obscurity."
However, some opponents of the singer accused her of "misleading thousands of people."
Others spoke of the possibility of a suicide attack at the concert, while some told Ms Sayeed she was "hated," and to celebrate in another country.

Image copyright Aryana Sayeed/Facebook
Image caption Aryana Sayeed insisted the concert would go ahead

There had been some speculation whether the concert would be cancelled, but Ms Sayeed was quick to reject the rumours on Facebook on Monday. The singer expressed her patriotism and enthusiasm for unity in Afghanistan, adding profits from the concert would be used to help those affected by war.
It's not her first time to court controversy. In May, she burned a skin-coloured dress she had worn at a concert, after religious figures and members of the public branded the controversial tight outfit against Afghan culture and non-Islamic.

Ms Sayeed, who has lived in Pakistan, Switzerland and now England, is known for her liberal views, western clothes and has 257,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts many photos of her clothing and make-up.
Image copyright Aryana Sayeed/Facebook
Image caption Aryana has posted many selfies across Facebook and Instagram

Additional reporting from BBC Monitoring

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8. ON SEXISM, SON PREFERENCE AND FEMALE INFANTICIDE IN BANGLADESH
by Taqbir Huda
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(The Daily Star - August 19, 2017)

On July 30, a father in Narayanganj burned his nine-month-old female infant alive since he “wanted a son” and was enraged at the birth of a girl (“Father 'wanted son', burns baby girl alive”, The Daily Star, August 4, 2017). He poured petrol over the child when she was asleep and set her on fire. He then switched on the fan to let the fire spread and stopped the mother from helping the child or taking her to the hospital reported a leading online news site.

While it is appalling and abominable that a practice as medieval and barbaric as female infanticide still takes place in our country, it should not come as a surprise. In fact a similar incident took place only two months ago when a man from Satkhira, Khulna threw his two-week-old daughter into the pond since he too wanted a son and was disgusted by the birth of a daughter (“Father kills 15-day-old infant for being female”, Dhaka Tribune, June 9, 2017). Last year, a man from Abhayngar, Jessore poured poison into his three-month-old daughter's mouth while she was asleep because he was craving the birth of a son and could not bear having a daughter for the fourth time (“Father kills daughter”, The Independent, March 2, 2016). 

Killing new born daughters (i.e. female infanticide) is not a random, inexplicable act of violence; it is an extreme manifestation of a pre-existing and deeply sexist societal mindset known as “son preference” which still plagues a sizeable portion of our population today. A 2006 study of 850 families conducted by Promoting Human Rights Education in Bangladesh showed that 93 percent of Bangladeshi families preferred a son, viewing them as a “blessing” to the home and country, while 93 percent viewed girls as a “problem.” (“Son Preference”, Stop Violence Against Women, The Advocates for Human Rights). So it is not enough or even helpful to simply admonish the perpetrator (necessary as that may be), we must also look at the wider scheme of things and force an introspection: what socioeconomic factors cause certain people to cherish the birth of a son but loathe the birth of a daughter—sometimes loathe to the extent of killing their own flesh and blood—and what are we, as a country, doing to tackle this insidious mentality and its component causes?

In South Asian culture the birth of a son is celebrated because boys are seen as custodians of the family who will secure the family's future by providing economic security and ensuring the continuity of the male line. Conversely, the birth of a daughter is an impediment to this continuity since our culture dictates that upon marriage a girl must take up her husband's name, permanently leave her family and move in with her in laws. As such, the birth of a daughter is considered "a burden" because the family must protect her "honour", and when the time comes, find a husband willing to marry her and provide a hefty dowry to incentivise the marriage (or rather "transfer of burden"). The practice of dowry runs rampant despite it being outlawed in Bangladesh by the Dowry Prohibition Act 1980. Indeed, going back to the Narayanganj case, Jahirul himself had taken Tk 1 lakh as dowry from his wife. 

Given their inevitable departure from the family and the price that must be paid, educating girls (or educating them on par with their male siblings) is not seen as a sound investment. This mindset is encapsulated in the old and notorious Asian expression which warns: “educating a daughter is like watering another man's garden”. Rather paradoxically, it is our own sexist and cultural practices which deny a girl the same opportunities as a boy which in turn eternalises her financial dependence on male kin but the girl is then blamed for “being a burden” as though it was of her own doing. How can we feasibly assess a girl's worth when we do not even allow her to realise her full potential to begin with? 

In her book Gender Roles: A Sociological Perspective, Linda Lindsey explains how female infanticide and neglect are associated with the economic survival of the family, which is dependent on the number of sons and control of the number of daughters, who are regarded as financial liabilities. She further explains that a major shift in favouring males in the average sex ratio at birth (SRB) is growing throughout Asia and rural Bangladesh is among the places with the worst SRB imbalances. 

In 1990, Amartya Sen coined the term “missing women” to denote the shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region or country. This shortfall is usually measured through male-to-female sex ratios (such as SRB), and is theorised to be caused by sex-selective abortions, female infanticide. According to a study by the University of Kent, there are approximately 2.7 million missing women in Bangladesh (“Missing Women and Bare Branches: Gender Balance and Conflict”, ESCP Report, Issue 11). The study also found that gender imbalance in Asia is primarily the result of son preference and the profound devaluation of female life. The futility of the Dowry Prohibition Act in curbing the practice of dowry illustrates how legal change alone cannot remedy cultural malpractices; societal change must also follow.

Why must we wait till a female child is burnt or drowned alive to address the deep-rooted sexism and son preference which pave the way for barbaric practices such as female infanticide to occur? Every time we encounter anyone stating or doing something which is even remotely sexist or anti-women, we should call them out and retaliate. Indeed, change begins at home and change begins with us. We must attack sexism whenever we see it, from whomever we see it and in whatever shape or form we see it. 

Taqbir Huda is currently working as a research officer at Bangladesh Institute of Law International Affairs (BILIA) and volunteers at Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights (BSEHR- Manabadhikar).

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9. PAKISTAN: THE MILITARY MIND | Irfan Husain
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(Dawn, ugust 19, 2017)

MY son Shakir must have been around eight when, after hearing yet another anti-army rant from me during the Zia era, he stopped me in mid-flow by asking: “But why shouldn’t the army rule? After all, they have the guns.”

I was horrified by his question, and proceeded to give him a lecture on democracy and liberty. Far from being convinced, he looked bored, and soon ran off to play. Some 35 years later, it seems that it is our self-exiled dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who needs the same lecture I gave Shakir.

In a recent interview with BBC Urdu, he said some outrageous things about democracy without having the excuse of being eight years old. But he is not alone to hold such opinions about politics and politicians: his arrogance and sense of superiority can be found in messes and barracks across the country as officers speak contemptuously about the “bloody civilians”.

    The defence forces are whitewashed of all sins.

In his interview, Musharraf claimed: “Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins … military rule always brought progress to Pakistan.” For good measure, he added: “All Asian countries have seen progress because of dictators.”

Really? He only has to look across our eastern border to see India thriving economically under elected governments. Further east, we have Myanmar, a country brought to the brink of bankruptcy by its rapacious generals. Any progress in Pakistan has to be set off against the break-up of the country under Yahya Khan; the rise of extremism under Zia that still exerts its pernicious influence; and the breakdown of democratic institutions under each dictator.

Speaking about the coup he staged to come to power in 1999, Musharraf said: “The coup was staged because it was the demand of the country’s people.” It’s news to me that the junta who seized power while he was in mid-air had conducted an opinion poll. The unvarnished truth is that the power grab happened solely because Nawaz Sharif decided to change the army chief, as was his right.

And if anybody has any doubts about who has a hand in the forced disappearances, torture and murders in Balochistan, here is Musharraf again: “India is involved in Balochistan. Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed.”

In his book In the Line of Fire, Musharraf feigns ignorance about Dr A.Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation activities. According to a recent Foreign Office statement, Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the disclosure that it was involved in the development of North Korea’s nuclear programme. To believe that the army — responsible for security at our nuclear installations — was unaware of A.Q. Khan’s activities in Libya, Iran and North Korea is like believing that babies are brought by storks.

Had these views been confined to one deluded general, we could shrug our shoulders, wish him a swift recovery, and move on. But this mindset seems to be hard-wired into others as well. There are even some young captains who throw their weight around, expecting mere civilians to bow and scrape around them. Cops have been beaten up over the years for daring to stop an officer over a traffic violation.

Having said all this, let us be clear that politicians and bureaucrats have hardly been blameless in encouraging the army to seize power: over the years, many have profited by forming an alliance to rule with it in contravention of the Constitution, even though Musharraf says: “We cannot ruin the country in order to save the Constitution. We can disregard the Constitution to save the people.”

And the Supreme Court has consistently legitimised military coups. Even when blatant military interference in the electoral process was established, as it was in the Asghar Khan case, no action against those involved has ever been taken. Yet our superior judiciary is swift to intervene when elected governments are deemed to be at fault.

And many in the media, seeking to curry favour with our spooks, are unsparing in their criticism of politicians, while tiptoeing around the uniformed elephant in the room. No wonder that the mud doesn’t seem to stick to the generals, while unconfirmed accusations are routinely levelled against politicians.

Given this nexus of hostile forces arrayed against them, it’s no surprise that they are seen as inefficient and venal. The military, on the other hand, is whitewashed of all sins. And yet each times a dictator is forced out of office, he leaves a bigger mess behind.

Now that Shakir is an adult, he understands the unrepresentative and arbitrary nature of military rule. I only wish many in the military shared his maturity.

Just for the record, I have been a dinner guest of Musharraf’s a couple of times, and he was a gracious host. I wish I could say something more complimentary about him.

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10. INDIA: CREED ABOVE COUNTRY: RISE OF THE RIGHT | Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
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(Frontline, 1 september 2017)

Close to the 70th anniversary of Independence, one finds a growing tendency of the state to control all facets of life—politics or social equations or culture or culinary habits. The larger intent is to create a political state where there is no opposition, either at the electoral and legislative forums or at the ideological level in terms of expression of alternative views. By VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN

Writing to Members of Parliament a few days before the vice-presidential election, held on August 5, 2017, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the joint candidate of 18 political parties belonging predominantly to the opposition, invoked the speeches and statements made by four legendary leaders of India at the cusp of Independence. His objective in citing Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, B.R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru—in that order—was to highlight the idea of India that these freedom fighters had cherished when the nation was making a new beginning on August 14-15, 1947. The apprehensions too that each of them had even while hoping for an illustrious future for the country was ingrained in these articulations. Collectively, the hopes and apprehensions expressed in their comments underscored the vision and farsightedness of these statesmen. The act of highlighting them, Gopalkrishna Gandhi pointed out, was part of an attempt to look back at the past seven decades of independent India and evaluate how responsibly the aspirations and concerns had been addressed during this period. Interestingly, strains of their points of view would seem like commentaries on the state of affairs, 70 years later, in contemporary India. 

For instance, in a speech made at the special midnight session of the Constituent Assembly on the night of August 14-15, 1947, S. Radhakrishnan, who later became India’s first Vice President, talks about “our national faults of character, our domestic despotism, our intolerance, which have assumed different forms of obscurantism, of narrow-mindedness, of superstitious bigotry” and warns that “our opportunities are great but... when power outstrips ability, we will fall on evil days”. Gopalkrishna Gandhi highlights the “penetrating vision” of the “father of the Indian Constitution”, Ambedkar, who, in his speech at the same midnight session, stated: “Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against.” 

Speaking from Kolkata a day before this Constituent Assembly session, Mahatma Gandhi drew attention to “the perils of sectarian divisions” that confronted independent India and the “responsibility” that this brought upon the country. Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s letter to MPs quotes the father of the nation: “From tomorrow we shall be delivered from the bondage of British rule. But from midnight tonight India will be partitioned. While therefore tomorrow will be a day of rejoicing, it will be a day of sorrow as well. It will throw a heavy responsibility upon us. Let us pray to God that He may give us strength to bear it worthily....” 

The letter adds that Jawaharlal Nehru’s emphasis too was on the responsibility that freedom and power brought. Addressing the nation from Parliament, Nehru stated: “Freedom and power bring responsibility. That responsibility rests upon this assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India.”

The four leaders represented different political and ideological shades and nuances within the national movement, but at the cusp of independence there was a convergence of sorts as to what should represent the core of the political processes in the country. Classified into broad categories, they emphasised freedom and power with responsibility, overcoming despotism, intolerance, obscurantism and bigotry, all along making sure that the nation was placed over any kind of creed. 

Indeed, political, social and cultural tendencies that violated the fundamental tenets identified by these statesmen had come up in India during their lifetimes. In Gandhiji’s case it made a dastardly appearance in his death at the hands of the Hindutva communalist Nathuram Godse, who shot him in 1948, less than a year into independent India. Still, the principles identified by these leaders formed an important part of the overall political discourse during the early years of independent India. 

S. Radhakrishnan was the last of the four leaders to pass away, in April 1975. The monumental and perilous fall of Indian democracy into the Emergency, imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was still two months away. The Emergency in June 1975 was unambiguously the most foreboding event in the 28-year-old history of Indian democracy. It was also the most momentous violation, until then, of the tenets laid out by the founding fathers, marked as it was by gross negation of democratic and citizens’ rights, including freedom of speech, expression and movement, as also the propagation of intolerance and bigotry under a despotic regime. 

Over four decades from that abominable juncture in the history of the nation and in the run-up to the 70th anniversary of Independence, the message that once again emanates from a number of major political developments centres around the blatant violations of the principles advanced by the founding fathers of the Constitution and governance systems. 

Intolerance and arrogant patriotism

Instances of this nature have abounded in the past several months, but to list the prominent ones closest to the 70th anniversary, one needs to look at the happenings that have a connection of sorts to the new Vice President’s election. Specifically, this relates to the manner in which the outgoing Vice President, Mohammad Hamid Ansari, was treated by some of the leaders as well as the self-proclaimed “social media warriors” of the ruling party and its associates in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar. In media interactions and public engagements towards the end of his tenure, Hamid Ansari had raised the plight of the marginalised sections of society in general and the perceptions of heightened threat and insecurity among some of these communities in recent times. He had pointed out that there were “enhanced apprehensions of insecurity amongst segments of our citizen body, particularly Dalits, Muslims and Christians”. 

He had also said that “the version of nationalism that places cultural commitments at its core is usually perceived as the most conservative and illiberal form of nationalism” and that “it promotes intolerance and arrogant patriotism”. Ansari had termed this as hyper-nationalism, which entailed a closing of the mind that is also a manifestation of the insecurity about one’s place in the world. Quoting S. Radhakrishnan, Ansari had stated that “a democracy is distinguished by the protection it gives to minorities” and that it was “likely to degenerate into tyranny if it does not allow the opposition groups to criticise fairly, freely and frankly the policies of the government”.

The response to these observations from the Hindutva “social media warrior” groups was extremely spiteful and communally sectarian. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya said the outgoing Vice President’s remarks were an “insult to the country” and that it had “damaged the country’s image”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and M. Venkaiah Naidu became party to this vituperative exercise though without being directly abusive. Both Modi and Naidu addressed Ansari directly at his farewell function. Modi stated that “it is possible that there was some restlessness within you [Ansari] as well but from today you will not face that crisis”. This was widely perceived as Modi’s reference to Ansari’s “restlessness” under a BJP regime and the deliverance from the “crisis” of holding a constitutional office under this regime. Naidu sought to dismiss outright all the concerns flagged by his predecessor. 

Responses from different segments of the polity, including the grass-roots, have sought to underscore the duplicity and deceit ingrained in the argumentations of the ruling dispensation as well as its political-organisational structure. Varanasi-based grass-roots social activist and political analyst, Kumar Mangalam Appu Singh, who focusses on empowerment issues of the marginalised communities in Uttar Pradesh, said the contentions of the BJP leaders did not stand up to scrutiny. “What they are trying to do is to camouflage and push things under the carpet. What Hamid Ansari has flagged are the right concerns agitating the grass-roots across the country, and particularly in north India. In fact, the very manner in which these people have responded to somebody like Ansari ji exposes the level of discrimination that exists in our polity and society,” he said. 

Appu Singh also pointed out that reports from all parts of the country upheld Ansari’s point. Incidents from Dadri (Uttar Pradesh) to Una (Gujarat) to Ballabgarh (Haryana) have repeatedly underscored this. “But all that matters to Sangh Parivar apologists is the hegemony of Hindutva at the level of politics and society. And they are going all out to make this a unidimensional sociopolitical entity,” he said. 

Evidently, the ruling forces have created a situation that Ambedkar saw as a grave danger to India’s existence and independence—a situation where creed is placed above country and one in which independence is put in jeopardy. Talking to Frontline, Gopalkrishna Gandhi said that he had referred, in his letter to MPs, to “a subtle fear pervading our politics today”, essentially on the basis of the imposition of the political practice of “creed over country”. Reiterating it, he said that this “converts a majority from an honest weightage of democratic opinion into majoritarianism, the very antithesis of democracy”.

The Emergency and after

Interestingly, the strengthening of the Hindutva Right, which has led to massive infringements on democratic rights, is also in some ways related to the struggle for democracy and against the Emergency in the 1975-77 period. The challenge then to democratic and citizens’ rights resulted in a broad unity among a large section of the people cutting across ideological, political, social and cultural divides. The left-of-centre socialists inspired by the ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia, the freedom fighter who worked closely with Gandhi and Nehru, the Marxist Left led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Hindutva Right guided and controlled by the RSS-led Sangh Parivar were all part of the struggle waged against the Congress party, which was led by Nehru’s daughter but had conspicuously moved away from the ideals delineated by the country’s first Prime Minister. Both this struggle and the success in defeating the forces of the Emergency one and a half years later, through the elections of 1977, marked the unleashing and strengthening of diverse social, cultural and political forces representing both progressive and regressive ideologies. 

The Hindutva Right, the left-of-centre socialists and a section of the Congress that had revolted against Indira Gandhi’s leadership joined hands to form the Janata Party in the immediate aftermath of the 1977 electoral success. This new party formed the government at the Centre, but obvious ideological differences led to the breakdown of the political outfit and the government. But by then, the RSS had gained legitimacy in Indian polity, which it had never hoped to achieve earlier. The acceptance of the organisation by some leaders such as Jayprakash Narayan of the anti-Emergency struggle and the Janata Party contributed in a big way to this legitimisation. 

The 1980s and 1990s, the two decades that followed the Emergency, marked the rise of identity politics of different characters and denominations. One of them was the Hindutva-oriented identity politics that sought to take the idea of pan-Hindu politics to new areas. Broadly following a paradigm etched out by Lohia, the marginalised Other Backward Classes (OBCs) advanced their own form of identity politics under the auspices of the erstwhile Socialist parties that had divided into several regional parties. 

The stream of Ambedkarite ideas on empowerment of the most downtrodden Dalits also gathered new wind as a special stream of assertive politics through leaders like Kanshiram and Mayawati. The assertion of these diverse streams and the consequent carving out of electoral support bases led to a period of political instability signified by hung parliaments and coalition governments. 

Parallel to this, the political economy of the 1990s witnessed the widespread implementation of neoliberal economic policies by the Congress and other governments. The Congress and the Hindutva Right were the prime movers of this political economy in practice, but the Left—particularly of the Lohiaite Socialist variety—was unable to evolve a cogent and concrete response to this both at the level of governance and as mass movements. Amidst this, the Hindutva Right moved on, pursuing communal pan-Hindu politics at one level and assimilating neoliberal economic policies at another. 

There were visions of a brief course correction in terms of larger polity when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was dependent on the Left to sustain its government during the 2004-09 period. The collapse of that political understanding and the formation of a UPA government on its own in the 2009-14 period also strengthened the Hindutva Right, particularly on account of the many corruption scandals that came up against several Ministers of that period. In many ways, the UPA government of 2009-14 became the “Weimar Republic” foundation for the formation of the Modi-led NDA government in 2014.

Yet another development in the run-up to the 70th anniversary of Independence is the fact that the present ruling dispensation and its political masters are bent on creating and enforcing this majoritarianism at whatever means and cost. This manifested itself in the manner in which the Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat, the home State of Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, was fought with the express objective of defeating the Congress bigwig Ahmed Patel. Implementing the so-called Indian system of power machinations involving saam, daan, bhed, dand (combination of peaceful, beneficial, discriminatory and forceful methods), Shah directly led this Rajya Sabha election campaign, wooing and terrorising members of the Legislative Assembly belonging to other parties, including the principal opposition Congress. At the end of it all, these ploys did not succeed, and Ahmed Patel won by a whisker. 

But as the Lucknow-based political commentator Professor Sudhir Panwar pointed out, beyond the immediate result of the elections there was a larger objective, and an understanding of the intent of the BJP and the Modi regime was required to make sense of the state of politics 70 years after Independence. “This larger intent is to create a political state where there is no opposition, either at the level of realpolitik and in its electoral and legislative forums or at the ideological level in the form of propagation and expression of alternative views, concepts and ideas,” he said. 

Panwar added that when one considered the happenings close to the 70th anniversary of Independence it was not just the manner in which the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections were fought that unravelled this. He said: “The manner in which the final struggle of the Narmada Bachao Andolan was dealt with using blatant force against activists, including Medha Patkar, is the manifestation at the level of non-electoral opposition. But then, if you look around the country it is not one people’s movement on the Sardar Sarovar project that is being oppressed like this. Hundreds of other similar people’s movements are facing the same situation day in and day out. All this signifies a larger social and political context.” Panwar was of the view that even a person with basic political understanding would know that these dimensions fit in with the establishment of an authoritarian and fascist regime, whatever be its minute classifications and nuances. 

Suppression of alternative thinking

The historian M.G.S. Narayanan also finds a growing tendency in the current ruling regime to control all facets of life, whether it is politics or social equations or culture or culinary habits. “Put simply, it is suppression of all forms of alternative thinking, not to speak of dissent,” he said. According to Narayanan, the political practice of all hues and colours that have held varying degrees of sway and influence over India’s polity have contributed to this state of affairs as we complete seven decades of independence as a nation. 

He said: “The political and social positions adopted by the Congress since the early years of governance at the Centre have all been honed to extremities and converted to hugely politically rewarding platforms by the Sangh Parivar organisations. These include the pursuit of nationalism and religious symbolism of the Hindu variety. The politics of assertion followed by the self-professedly social justice-oriented parties of the Marxist and socialist variety have also been appropriated in varying degrees by the different Sangh Parivar outfits. As this process developed, these political forces contributed also to the whittling of government institutions.” 

As repeatedly elucidated to this writer by the late Mahant Ramachandra Paramahans, a prominent leader of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir agitation in the 1980s and 1990s, the Sangh Parivar is not pursuing politics for just governance or social and economic development but as an instrument to achieve the larger goal of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. Paramahans, who passed away in 2004, was of the view that social justice-oriented and caste-based assertions of OBCs and Dalits were the biggest challenge to Hindutva and that the Sangh Parivar had evolved concrete plans to stave their threat off by the late 1990s. Of course, it took another decade for the BJP and the Sangh Parivar to get those “concrete plans” to work. 

The tactics and strategy employed by the Sangh Parivar to advance its political project, its realpolitik and electoral manifestations fit in well with the history of fascist political and organisational practices as analysed by Dave Renton in his seminal work Fascism, Theory and Practice (Pluto Press, 1999). “Fascism thrives on bitterness and alienation, both of which capitalism nourishes with regular doses of unemployment and crisis. This fuels despair, which further stimulates fascism to grow. Fascism lives off racism, sexism and elitism, while capitalism promotes its own prejudices, guised as common-sense beliefs, which seem to fit people’s experiences, while effectively holding them back from challenging the system. Capitalism generates the myths of racism and elitism, which fascists use for themselves.” Citing the experiences of countries such as Italy, Renton says that by building itself as an independent force, fascism is capable of making the most revolutionary promises, including refuge for the politically homeless, for the socially uprooted, the destitute and the disillusioned.

However, Panwar points out that like all fascist establishments of the past and the present, these revolutionary promises remain on paper, as the primary economic facilitator and promoter of fascism is capitalism. “The world over, there are signs of a revival of nuanced fascism in diverse forms, and the new forms of capitalism, including crony capitalism, is facilitating these diverse forms. One could say that among the practitioners worldwide of this devious political practice, what we have in India is one of the most organised, well-entrenched and effective practices. It is corrupt and has a symbiotic relationship with capitalism, especially the agents of crony capitalism,” he said. Veteran Bihar politician and former Rajya Sabha member Shivanand Tiwari is of the view that even in the midst of this association with crony capitalism, the BJP-Sangh Parivar establishment will continue to throw the history of the foibles of corruption at all political opponents and voices of resistance. 

“So, the real resistance to this could be built up only by exposing the corruption of the BJP and Sangh Parivar leaderships as well as the governments and institutions run by them. But for that is required a resolute leadership that does not buckle under pressure or is not carried away by the lure of power,” he said. Tiwari is certain that only with the emergence of such a movement and leadership will the idea of India as envisioned by the founding fathers of the Constitution and democratic governance get revived in its true spirit.

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11. RAJA MANDALA: UNDOING THE ECONOMIC PARTITION - DELHI MUST FIND THE POLITICAL WILL TO RAISE THE INTENSITY OF INDIA’S REGIONAL ENGAGEMENT.
by C. Raja Mohan
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(The Indian Express, August 16, 2017)

Seven decades after Independence, transcending the tragedy of Partition remains the single biggest national challenge for India. The structural religious tension, engendered by Partition has been aggravated by the unending conflict between India and Pakistan, the successor states of the undivided Subcontinent. Few had expected the conflict to last so long. Nor did the second partition in 1971, that seemed to decisively shift the balance of power in favour of India, create the conditions for enduring peace.

In fact, the vivisection of Pakistan in 1971 set the stage for the politics of revenge in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan army. It acquired nuclear weapons to restore a measure of balance with India. As nuclear weapons gave it a credible assurance that Delhi will no longer be able to embark on a major military adventure, Rawalpindi saw a new opportunity for permanent destabilisation of India through low intensity conflict.

Three decades and more of cross-border terror has not forced India to yield, but only help congeal the conflict. Despite the on-again off-again peace process of the last few decades, there is no hope of any early resolution of any issues involved. Pessimists have begun branding the India-Pakistan conflict as a “Hundred Years War”. Extremists may say it might be too optimistic to expect India and Pakistan will find peace in the next 30 years.

The messy consequences of dividing the Subcontinent — included the hurried drawing of boundaries between India and Pakistan in the Punjab and Bengal by the departing colonial power, the complex inheritance in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the steady militarisation of these borders — were not going to be easily overcome under any circumstances. But coping with the division was made a lot more difficult by one factor that is not usually discussed in relation to the Partition of the Subcontinent — economics.

It was by no means pre-ordained that the political division of the Subcontinent should be followed by economic partition. The political division did not demand that the new states should stop trade and commerce between them or shut down their frontiers or limit people to people contact. In fact, the borders remained relatively open in the first two decades after Independence. The 1965 war, followed by the 1971 conflict, saw the closing of post Partition frontiers and with it the sundering of coherent economic spaces like the Punjab and Bengal.

This drift was accelerated by the new Indian emphasis on economic self-reliance and a deliberate disconnection from the global markets in the immediate aftermath of Independence.

The grand strategy of “socialism in one country”, whatever its ideological sources and economic merits, did not at all understand the long-term consequences of that policy for the natural economic interdependence of the state system in the Subcontinent. Not all frontiers shut down like those between India and Pakistan. Some remained open, as in the case of Nepal and Bhutan, but India’s deepening protectionism and the perception of neighbours as aliens, made it harder to sustain the regional interdependencies.

The great regional junctions and trading centres like Lahore and Amritsar turned into terminals at closed frontiers. India and Pakistan made it ever harder for movement of goods and people between the two countries. Entrepôts like Calcutta steadily began to lose their centrality in the vast hinterland in the eastern Subcontinent and beyond. Economic partition of the subcontinent made regions like the Northeast “land locked”.

India’s smaller neighbours tried different ways to cope with India’s deregionalisation. Sri Lanka, in the late 1970s, turned to the ASEAN and the West. Businessmen in Nepal sought arbitrage between the tariff levels of Delhi and Kathmandu. The political liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 had little economic consequence, thanks to shared commitment to state socialism between Congress and the Awami League. When Dhaka tried to promote regionalism and SAARC in the 1980s, Delhi viewed the initiative with great suspicion.

It was only after 1991 that India put regionalism back on the policy radar. India’s new commercial interest in the neighbourhood was very much a consequence of the turn towards globalisation. But it has not been easy to translate India’s new commitment to regional economic integration into effective policies. Internally the resistance to regionalism in India’s economic ministries remains strong. If India has belatedly returned to regionalism, the Subcontinent was not ready to celebrate and embrace Delhi. For much water had flown down the Indus and the Ganges. Pakistan is just not interested in putting economic cooperation as priority in bilateral relations. Worse still, it is determined to block India’s effort to promote regionalism under the SAARC banner. In smaller countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, the politicisation of economic cooperation with India means knee jerk opposition to all projects involving India.

The smaller neighbours had also long discovered the joys of non-alignment and “strategic autonomy” from India now find an economically powerful and outward-oriented China as a valuable partner. While economic geography might still favour India, China operates with larger financial resources and greater purposefulness.

Overcoming the economic partition of the Subcontinent has become at once urgent and more difficult to achieve. Yet, the problem is not about the lack of ideas or resources. It is about mobilising all of Delhi’s political will to force the pace and raise the intensity of India’s regional economic engagement. Delhi’s decisions to look beyond SAARC, modernise border infrastructure, promote connectivity, open up its markets are all important steps forward. The challenge now is to get a few specific projects off the ground to demonstrate India’s new credibility as a champion of South Asian regionalism.

The writer is director, Carnegie India, Delhi and contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’ on foreign affairs

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12. THE NIGHT THE OXYGEN RAN OUT IN AN INDIAN HOSPITAL - EDITORIAL, NY TIMES
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The New York Times - 17 August 2017
The Modi government has been sharply criticized after children died when a vendor cut off oxygen supplies for lack of payment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/asia/the-night-the-oxygen-ran-out-in-an-indian-hospital.html

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13. THE IDEA ­AND ITS MUTANT | Dilip Simeon
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The Idea ­And Its Mutant
Not tainted ‘opportunism’ but conscience subjugated by ideology is what stands between idealism and the Leftist. Choosing empathy over polemic may turn the tide, leading to reconciliation instead of the familiar spiralling of crimes and suffering.
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-idea-and-its-mutant/299205

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14. INDIA: PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS A YOUNG MUSLIM REVOLUTIONARY | Syeda Hameed
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(Hindustan Times - August 15, 2017)

Married to a magistrate knighted by the British, Sakinatul Fatima became part of the movement which would go on to dismantle colonial British rule

When Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience movement, Lady Sakinatul Fatima discarded the purdah, bought a charkha for daily use and wore nothing but Khadi

Majaz, poet of revolution, gave a call in mid 20th century to young women
Hijab e fitna parvar khud utttha leti to achha ttha
Tu apne husn ko parda bana leti to achha ttha
Tere matthe pe ye aanchal bahaut hee khub hai lekin
Tu iss aanchal se ek Parcham bana leti to achha ttha
Had you lifted yourself your mischievous veil
And made of your beauty itself a veil
On your forehead your scarf is graceful indeed
Had you made it a banner how well it would be!

Women had begun to make a banner of their veils much before this poetic advice. Muslim women were already playing their part in India’s freedom movement in the late nineteenth century but their voices became louder in the first decade of the 20th century. There were many; Abadi Banu Begum known to the world as Bi Amman, mother of Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, leaders of Khilafat Movement, close associates of Mahatma Gandhi; Rehana, daughter of Gandhi’s friend Abbas Tayabji who designed the tiranga jhanda as we know it today and Jahanara Shahnawaz who was elected first to Punjab Legislative Assembly then to Central Constituent Assembly of India. The three Fyzee sisters, Atiya, Zohra and Nazli of Bombay, whose passion for freedom was expressed in their struggle for women’s education. Sharifa Hamid Ali, also from the Tyabji clan, who drew up a model Nikahnama in the 1930s and was a nationalist to core. Shaista Ikramullah from Bengal, who was elected in 1946 to the Constituent Assembly, her fervour for Independence found in her writings. Then there were women who we know as writers but were passionate freedom fighters; Ismat Chughtai, Rasheed Jahan and many others.

My reason to write today about one woman who is not found in the women’s who’s who of the freedom movement is personal. Her name was Sakinatul Fatima and she was born in UP in 1886. As a child, I had heard stories of her blunt outspokenness and her defiant burning of Manchester cloth in Lucknow’s Hazratganj. Her brief life sketch was written by her granddaughter Dr Sakina Hasan, professor of English and Member of the first Status of Women Commission which wrote the landmark report Towards Equality in 1974. In 1931, when Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience movement, she discarded the purdah, bought a charkha for daily use and wore nothing but Khadi. Her husband was Sir Wazir Hasan, Chief Justice of the Oudh Court in Lucknow. Much as she hated the British Raj and its favours, by virtue of being wife of a ‘Sir’, she was known as Lady Wazir Hasan. Her bluntness became legendary. At an official function she was introduced to Lady Wellington. They spoke through an interpreter until Lady Wellington said “Your Ladyship, you should learn English so we can talk without an interpreter.” Bang came the retort in her Purbi boli, which was the language she spoke. “Hum kahe seekhain tohri bhasha” (Why should we learn your language?) You have come across seven seas to rule us, you should learn ours. When we rule over you, we will learn yours!”

Another story is recorded in Munshi Premchand’s autobiography. His wife, with a few comrades, was collecting donations in Lucknow city for the Congress Party for Gandhiji’s non-cooperation tehrik. They came to Wazir Manzil, an imposing mansion, which they were hesitant to enter. But Sakinatul Fatima welcomed them with open arms and gave what she could for the cause. Another incident is recorded by TN Kaul, ICS and foreign secretary, who was at the time DM Unnao. Lady Hasan was traveling by car from Lucknow to Unnao and her car was flying the Congress flag. An enthusiastic British joint magistrate on patrol stopped her car and asked that the flag be removed. She looked at him disdainfully and said: “Nahin, kabhi nahin.” The man refused to let her proceed further. Begum Sahiba also refused to comply and stuck to her point. Ultimately he had to ask his boss the magistrate. He quickly advised him to let her proceed and not clash with her iron will.

She sent her daughters to study in Karamat Husain, Lucknow’s first Muslim girls’ school. She supported the Sarda Act of 1929 for prevention of child marriage. She abhorred polygamy and when her cousin married a second wife she forbade them to enter her house. After independence, she was nominated to the UP legislative assembly. She supported the Zamindari Bill of 1948 despite herself being a small zamindar. She did not care that most Muslim zamindars vehemently opposed it.

Far from being confined to choolha chakki chardeewari as was the stereotype, women like Sakinatul Fatima, with no formal schooling, had the grit to become part of the movement which would dismantle colonial rule, not only in India but its domino effect would reach all over the world.

Syeda Hameed is an educationist, women’s rights activist, and a former member of the Planning Commission of India

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15. INVITATION TO A HONG KONG SEMINAR ON “THE BRICS AND ONE BELT, ONE ROAD”, 2-3 SEPTEMBER [2017]
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Dear all,

On 3-5rd September this year the BRICS will hold a summit in Xiamen. BRICS is an acronym for five developing/newly industrialized countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Since its 6th summit, the BRICS have founded the New Development Bank which will focus on lending for infrastructure projects.

Both domestically and regionally the BRICS regimes do not offer good examples of alternatives which put people first. Instead of offering an alternative, the BRICS actually offer a continuation to neo-liberalism.

On top of BRICS there is also China’s new mega project, the One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR). Its main purpose is to export China’s surplus capital, and in this process seek the cooperation and “mutual benefit” of big foreign TNCs and regimes which are often authoritarian. One Belt One Road passes through some of the world’s most unstable areas, creating problems such as terrorism, civil war, border conflict and so on. The price of these investments is often borne by the working people and the ecological balance in each of the countries concerned. Following the examples of EU/US/Japanese TNCs, Chinese investments will also lead to serious long term problems for local people, especially debt problems. What makes it worse is that there is little transparency and accountability about the BRICS and OBOR projects.

It is time for Chinese and international civil societies to meet and discuss the impact of BRICS and OBOR. We therefore hope to take advantage of the BRICS summit in September to hold a meeting of civil society to discuss the impact of these forms of trans-regional economic integration on people and the environment, and to consider countermeasures.

A coalition of local organizations have decided to make this meeting happen, and we would like to invite you and your organizations to join us in Hong Kong in early September. We will confirm logistical arrangements later.

Thank you. 

Confederation of Trade Unions
Editorial Board of Borderless Movement
Globalization Monitor
Justice & Peace Commission of the HK Catholic Diocese
Labor Education Support Network
Labor Committee of Neighborhood and Workers’ Service Centre

20th July 2017

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16. SPAIN ATTACKS: ‘LAS RAMBLAS CRIES BUT IT IS ALIVE’: BARCELONA RECOVERS HISTORIC DEFIANCE
by Jonathan Watts
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(The Observer - 19 August 2017)

Spain’s second city mourns the victims as the shock sinks in that the Catalan capital has joined the list of terrorism targets in Europe

From the death, confusion and fear of Thursday’s terrorist attack, the Barcelona boulevard of Las Ramblas has returned to its historic role as a centre of life, reflection and defiance.

The paving stones on which the victims died have been cleaned of blood and transformed into a shrine that widens by the hour as mourners bring more tokens of sympathy – flickering candles, bunches of flowers, soft toys and messages of solidarity, love and defiance from around the world.

The words are in Arabic, English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French and Hebrew. They come from individuals, embassies and business groups, from tour parties and religious groups.

“Las Ramblas cries, but it is still alive,” read one. “Stop Daesh. Stop fascism,” asserted another. “No words. Just love,” concluded another.

But the most common phrase was “No tinc por” – the Catalan expression for “We are not afraid”, which was also shouted out after a minute of silence on Friday at a memorial service attended by tens of thousands of people, including the king of Spain, the Spanish prime minister, the Barcelona mayor and the president of the Catalan government, who stood side by side in a rare display of unity for this fiercely independent region. The nation is in the midst of three days of mourning, but there is far more than grief on display on Las Ramblas, which has never been a place where time stands still.

Shortly before the Spanish civil war in 1936, the revolutionary poet Federico García Lorca described Barcelona’s main thoroughfare as the most joyful street in the world. It was he said, “the street where all the four seasons live together. The only street I wish would never end. Rich in sounds, abundant in breeze, beautiful in its encounters, old in its blood: Rambla de Barcelona.”

Two women hold placards that read ‘We suffered it too’ and ‘We are against any injustice’ at an impromptu memorial two days after a van crashed into pedestrians at Las Ramblas in Barcelona’ Photograph: Reuters

These words are now circulating as never before on social media, as more people are drawn physically to the space where 14 people were killed and dozens more injured by a van driven at high speed through the crowds by Moroccan jihadists.

Guillem Gargallo, a restaurant waiter who had come by motorcycle to light a candle, was in tears, but determined not to let sadness breed anger. “This is very hard for us Catalans. We love our city. We never thought this would happen here,” he said. “We must maintain our normal lives. If we dwell on it too much, it will pull us all down.”

Most of the kiosks in the centre of Las Ramblas are closed. Every 50-100 metres is a shrine. At night, hundreds of people gather around these glowing pools of remembrance. Some stop by on the way home from work. Others during a walk with their dogs or on the way back from shipping. Many were tourists, snapping sad-faced selfies against the latest backdrop of shared anxiety and anger.

The murderous route appears to have been chosen for maximum global impact. As well as being crammed with camera-carrying tourists hooked up to social networks around the world, the 500 metre stretch of killing started and ended on two of the city’s most famous and symbolic landmarks: the Canaletes fountain, where fans of Barcelona FC usually celebrate their team’s triumphs; and the Mosaico de Joan Miró – one of three artworks by the Catalan surrealist that the city commissioned to welcome overseas visitors arriving by air, sea and land.

At the former, one local football fan, Josep Gargallo turned up, as he has done countless times, in his team’s football shirt, but this time he was paying his respects and trying to salvage something positive from the loss. “It’s still sinking in, but I believe this will make our city a better place,” he said. “We are very united. It makes me proud the way people have responded with offers of help and hospitality.”

A few steps from here is the building where George Orwell first stayed when he came to join the International Brigade in the fight against fascism in the 1930s. Back then, Las Ramblas was a centre of socialist idealism, fluttering with red and black flags, More recently, the displays are more likely to be advertising and – until last Thursday – the major concerns were excessive tourism, gentrification and tensions over Catalan independence.

Already there are accusations that this tragedy is being exploited in the tussle between Madrid and Barcelona over that independence. Some locals grumbled at an El País editorial yesterday that suggested the city had dropped its guard because it was too focused on an upcoming referendum. The counter-argument here is that Madrid is responsible for the lack of coordination between the Catalan and Spanish police in counter-terrorism. But most people were at pains to keep such disputes at bay. There was a notable absence of flags from either side at the memorial ceremony and on the street.

“This is not the time to go into that issue. We’re all crying for the same reason. We’re all praying for the victims,” said Lucia Gil, a teacher from Salamanca, who sat in reflection beside the Mosaico de Joan Miró, now entirely covered by candles and flowers. “I was thinking about the blood that was on this spot. I was thinking it could have been me. I was going to walk here at that time, but I stopped in a side street to get my nails done. That manicure saved my life.”

On another side-street, dozens of people fled into a tapas restaurant called Bo de Boqueria. They closed the door and took everyone to a terrace at the back of the building. “We thought we were going to be killed. People were shouting and crying,” recalls waiter Imran Sajid. “For the first 10 minutes it was total confusion. Then we put on the TV and saw what had happened.”

A placard reading ‘Pray for Barcelona’ on Las Ramblas. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

While the immediate fear of an attack has abated, his longer-term concern is about the impact on business.

“This is going to affect us badly. I’m 100% sure of that. People will now think twice about coming to Barcelona,” said the Pakistan-born waiter. “It’ll be like France. Many people will not want to visit.”

Having lived in the city for 14 years, Sajid said he did not expect a backlash against the Muslim community. “The Spanish aren’t like that. They are very open-minded. They accept you no matter your nationality or religion. It’s a welcoming place for migrants compared to the US or UK,” he said. Others are not so sure.

Carmen Pasa, a Romanian who is married to a Moroccan, was one of very few in a headscarf to pay her respects at Las Ramblas. She said she had been crying on and off for a day. “I was too frightened to come at first,” she said. “Today, I wanted to put a candle but there are too many people here now so I have decided to do it tomorrow.” Her worries were not just related to acts of terrorism. “I have felt hostility before and don’t want to feel it again,” she said, breaking into tears.
Spain terror cell planned Barcelona bombing rampage
Read more

Although Barcelona has long been a transit point between northern Africa and northern Europe, most of the city’s Muslim community have arrived since the 1960s. Most are Pakistanis and Moroccans, but there is a wide diversity of origins as well as divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Although there have been arrests of terrorists from Girona and Tarragona, until now jihadism was thought to have been relatively weak in Spain, from which 160 people are known to have joined Isis in Syria and Iraq, compared to more than 1,000 from France.

Intelligence chiefs say this is because Spain is better prepared to deal with terrorism, thanks to techniques developed during the four-decade conflict between the government and the Basque separatist group, Eta. But it is also because the Muslim population is smaller (2.1% of Spain’s 46 million people, compared with to the 7.5% of France’s 67 million, and 4.8% of Britain’s 65 million). Some believe that Muslims are also better integrated.

At a late-night kebab restaurant in the El Raval district, the chefs – all from Morocco – said Barcelona was a more welcoming place than most cities in Europe because it was easier to secure documentation to live and work. But many fear this could now change.

“I haven’t experienced any racism here in 12 years,” said a Moroccan, who gave only his first name, Omar. He said he feels more comfortable in Barcelona than in his own country. Chatting over a beer at a tapas restaurant, the 28-year-old chef said he had been encouraged by his Spanish friends, who posted messages of support on social networks. But he fears the attack – even though it was on international tourists rather than Barcelona itself – would stir up hostility to people like him.

“Some people are saying all Moroccans and Arabs are the same. Others differentiate,” he said. “But now I feel that the majority of people hate Arabs.”

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17. TIMBUKTU DESTRUCTION: LANDMARK RULING AWARDS MILLIONS TO MALIANS | Luke Moffett*
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(The Conversation - August 17, 2017)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has ordered Malian radical Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to pay €2.7m in reparations for his role in the destruction of the UNESCO world heritage site in Timbuktu in 2012.

This is the first time the court has demanded reparations for the destruction of cultural property. The ruling sends a strong message that perpetrators who target cultural heritage can be held to account.

Al Mahdi was one of the leading perpetrators in the Islamic militant group Ansar Dine. The group attacked Timbuktu in 2012, taking control of the area.

Initially, Ansar Dine banned people in the region from visiting the mausoleums of their ancestors and the saints, as this was seen as an idolatrous and superstitious practice. When visits continued, the group decided to destroy the mausoleums. The aim was partially to stop the practice of worshipping there, but also to defy the international designation of Timbuktu as a world heritage site.

A total of 14 mausoleums were destroyed along with residents’ tombs. The Sidi Yahya mosque door, which some in the area believed would remain closed until the end of days, was also destroyed.

In September 2015, Al Mahdi was arrested in Niger and transferred to the ICC in the Netherlands. In August 2016, he plead guilty to the charge of destruction of cultural property as a war crime, in exchange for a nine-year sentence. Al Mahdi has apologised for his role in the destruction of the world heritage site in Timbuktu, but the ICC requires convicted people to make reparations to the victims affected by their crimes – hence the heavy fine.
Psychological harm

With the help of significant international funding, Timbuktu has been largely rebuilt since the attack – including the Sidi Yahya door. The reparations decision focuses on the human impact the destruction had on the community in Timbuktu.

Many Malians in the area have a close spiritual connection to the mausoleums and the Sidi Yahya mosque. The attack by Ansar Dine not only took away their ability to worship their saints and ancestors, it also caused psychological harm. Some 139 victims applied for reparations at the ICC. They spoke of their shock and bereavement at the destruction.

The loss of the world heritage site at Timbuktu and ongoing conflict in Mali also meant that tourists and pilgrims could no longer travel to the site. That in turn led to a loss of income for the local people who act as guardians of the sites.

While the ICC recognised that the international community (represented by UNESCO and Mali) had suffered harm, it only awarded them a symbolic €1 each. Instead it focused reparations on the community in Timbuktu. The court awarded individual compensation to victims seen as most affected by the destruction. These included the guardians of the site who suffered a loss of income following the destruction, and the descendants of those whose mausoleums were destroyed who suffered mental harm.
Al Mahdi at his trial in 2016. EPA/Patrick Post

The court also ordered collective measures to benefit the community in Timbuktu. These include community education, return and resettlement programmes for those displaced, and micro-credit grants.

There are of course difficulties ahead, too. Mali is still not a safe place, which will make it difficult for these reparations to be made. In the space of just one week, seven people, including peacekeepers, were recently killed in Timbuktu. The instability makes it difficult for the money to be put to practical use.

What’s more, Al Mahdi doesn’t have any money. That means the reparations will be delivered through the Court’s Trust Fund for Victims, which is supported by donors.
Lessons for Syria?

Over the past few years, cultural property has been destroyed across a number of conflicts, particularly in Syria. Islamic State targeted the UNESCO world heritage site in Palmyra, and indiscriminate fighting in cities like Homs and Aleppo has destroyed dozens of cultural property sites. The Al Mahdi case offers some hope that those responsible for this destruction can be held to account. However, given that the fighting in Syria is ongoing, such restoration and accountability may be a long way off.

Cultural property is specifically protected in international law to ensure the rich diversity of communities that in turn enriches humanity as a whole. Attacking cultural property is explicitly prohibited during times of war. The Al Mahdi case emphasises that in rebuilding sites like Timbuktu, we also need to remedy the psychological and moral harm caused to communities connected to such culture.

(* Senior Law Lecturer in international criminal justice, Queen's University Belfast)

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18. KENYA'S NEW ELECTORAL AUTHORITARIANISM
Aziz Rana
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(Boston Review, August 17, 2017)

Last week’s bitterly contested election in Kenya has placed the country in the international spotlight. Although sitting President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner by the electoral commission, opposition candidate Raila Odinga has refused to concede and contends that the election was stolen from him. After initially rejecting the option, he has decided to challenge the result in the Supreme Court even though many in the opposition doubt the impartiality of the courts. For the time being, his decision to appeal to the courts has calmed fears of escalating violence. The nation nonetheless remains on a knife’s edge.

Kenyan political elites are using the mechanism of the election to cloak their authoritarianism in democratic credibility and shield themselves from international suspicion.

Regardless of the standoff, the overwhelming response from the United States and other foreign observers—from Donald Trump to John Kerry and the New York Times editorial board—has so far been to either congratulate Kenyatta on his victory or to praise the process as transparent. These voices are clearly nervous about the country descending into chaos and note that the opposition has yet to adequately substantiate its fraud allegations. But in the rush to preserve stability, such observers have essentially missed the larger implications of the election. It may well be the case that Kenyatta won more votes. But regardless of the numerical tally, Kenya has been modeling a brand of electoral authoritarianism for the region and beyond over the last decade—one in which citizens worry that they cannot expect a meaningful transfer of national power through electoral means.

In fact, regimes appear to be learning from each other how elections can be part of the toolkit for extending their rule. With greater and greater sophistication, governments realize that they can use the security apparatus and resources of the state to shape the terms of any vote and if need be to manipulate outcomes, especially around the edges. And for foreign officials primarily interested in the exercise on election day, this is largely enough to keep relations cordial and investment and security arrangements in place. But what it does not entail is real democracy. The vote, so essential to popular participation and self-government, has become a critical component for a new electoral authoritarianism.

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Some background on Kenya’s political history helps makes sense of these developments and their wider significance. The first thing one needs to know is that no sitting president in the history of the country has ever lost an election. Since becoming independent from British colonial rule in 1963, Kenya has essentially been governed by the same set of dynastic families. Indeed, Kenyatta and Odinga are the sons of the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and vice president, Oginga Odinga. But the conflicts between these dynasties have also had real material and ideological stakes. The elder Kenyatta and Odinga soon fell out. In response, Oginga Odinga formed the first opposition party to press for a better distribution of state resources to the country’s various ethnic communities as well as for land reform and constraints on growing economic inequality. In turn, the government brutally suppressed political dissent, declared the opposition illegal, and initiated over twenty years of one party rule punctuated by the political assassination of high profile politicians.

No sitting president in the history of Kenya has ever lost an election.

Although the 1990s saw a return to multiparty politics, subsequent presidential campaigns were marred by “state sponsored violence, voter and press intimidation” aimed at ensuring the return to power of Daniel arap Moi (Kenyatta’s successor upon his death in 1978). By the beginning of the 2000s, private looting of state institutions by public officials had become an endemic problem. If anything, Kenyan politics became increasingly shaped by two dominant facts: the reality of impunity, in which one could not expect accountability either for extra-judicial killings or for large-scale public theft; and the persistence of long-term and unaddressed grievances concerning access to land and resources.

As the new century wore on, despite the now routine exercise of elections, very little about these dynamics shifted. In fact, presidential elections came to serve as an embodiment of the country’s larger problems. Raila Odinga running for president in 2007, found himself rigged out of office by the sitting incumbent Mwai Kibaki—a one-time Moi vice president and long-time power player in Kenya’s dynastic politics—in a contest widely seen by observers as subject to “systematic electoral fraud.” The rigging sparked massive national demonstrations in which security personnel left scores dead. To make matters worse, the election also served as cover for acts of ethnic cleansing on the ground. Six years later, in 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto ran as successors to Kibaki, taking full advantage of the state’s machinery. This was despite the fact that, during the campaign, both Kenyatta and Ruto faced International Criminal Court (ICC) charges for crimes against humanity stemming from their own role in ethnic and security violence in the previous election. Although they likely won more votes than Odinga in the multi-candidate race, observers once more concluded that it “was a deeply flawed electoral process,” in which fraud was probably used to avoid a run-off that would have pitted Kenyatta and Odinga directly against each other. The failure of Odinga’s subsequent legal challenge stoked more mistrust, especially due to the judicial ruling barring much of the opposition’s evidence. This left many opposition supporters suspicious that the courts could not be counted on as a neutral arbiter.

Since 2013, there has been one notable and substantial improvement: the steady implementation of a new constitution. Such implementation has devolved power to the local level and increased general access to political decision-making and economic resources. This has defused some of the harshest implications of Kenya’s “winner-take-all” presidential system. But partial devolution has not been enough to rein in either Kenya’s security apparatus or the executive’s centralizing tendencies. Kenyatta’s and Ruto’s first term saw the ICC prosecutions collapse due to witness intimidation and bribery, the persistence of endemic corruption, and the continued prevalence of extra-judicial killings and violent crackdowns on protestors by the police.

This summer’s election season turned out to be no different. A week before the vote, the election commission’s chief technology officer, whose job it was to ensure the security of the electronic system was found tortured and murdered along with another person. He had been complaining of death threats to the police to no avail. The murder remains unsolved, with many viewing the government as the principal suspect. Shortly after that murder, foreign election advisors to the opposition, who were working on how to set up an independent vote tally system, were deported at machine gunpoint and had their laptops seized. At the same time, opposition officials say their vote tally center was raided by masked men and their computers were also taken.

Instead of marking the transition to liberal democracy, elections now legitimate authoritarian regimes.

Election day 2017 and its immediate aftermath did little to quiet the anxieties of the opposition. This was the case even though at least one significant domestic observer organization—the Election Observations Group (ELOG)—reached a very similar number to the electoral commission through their parallel tallying of selected polling stations. The problem was that the electoral commission rushed to declare Kenyatta the winner, apparently under pressure from the State House, before making public the vast majority of the actual paper results. At the time of this writing, the commission claims that they are all accessible on their website, but thousands of documents still remain missing. In essence, the electoral commission is asking the public simply to rely on the accuracy of its raw electronic numbers (after a documented history of stolen elections), without full paper verification or constituency-by-constituency breakdowns.

And to further heighten the tension, in the wake of the election, security forces have killed not only supposed looters, but peaceful demonstrators and innocent bystanders as well—in one tragic case, breaking into homes in an opposition stronghold and beating to death a six-month-old baby. The government also threatened to shut down two of the most important local human rights NGOs—the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and the Africa Center for Open Government (AfriCOG)—as well as to arrest the directors of the latter group. All of this coincides with a police raid on AfriCOG offices. Both civil society organizations have been outspoken critics of the state’s security practices, as well as of perceived government misconduct during the election. They contend that these moves are part of a state effort not only to crush dissent, but also to undercut the ability of groups to challenge the results in court—results they maintain were rife with “massive anomalies.” For many in the country, these developments, taken together, raise the real fear that the incumbents had no intention of relinquishing power, irrespective of outcome. In this context, even though opposition claims about actual large-scale vote manipulation may eventually prove unfounded, it is hard to conclude, as have numerous foreign officials, that this has been a free and fair election.

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What the Kenyan election seems to highlight is the growing sophistication of sitting governments in managing electoral processes. Most commentators still have a 20th century image of what authoritarianism is supposed to look like: the one party rule of a strongman dictator like Jomo Kenyatta or Daniel arap Moi. Under this model, elections are either rejected or held as mere rubber stamps, with the ruler winning nearly all of the rigged votes. But more and more local elites have learned that elections need not constitute dire threats to maintaining control. If, in the post-Cold War era, American and European governments require electoral processes to sustain capital flows and friendly deals, these can be arranged. The state’s security apparatus can be deployed to impede and intimidate opposition campaigns, journalists, and election officials. If necessary, the actual tally can be altered in subtle ways that create plausible victories, difficult to contest in court, especially under circumstances in which judicial independence is suspect. But ideally, a combination of carrots and sticks—resources and funds to supportive constituencies and political violence to opponents—can ensure a bare majority and thus avoid crude vote manipulation.

For foreign commentators, all that matters is the formal exercise of voting on election day irrespective of historical context or political intimidation.

For Kenya specifically, this means that the emerging political order is both similar to and different from past dictatorial incarnations. As in the past, the country remains in the grip of the same ruling elites, who essentially enjoy political and legal impunity and leave historic injustices unaddressed. For instance, Vice President Ruto, who will likely be the favorite to succeed Kenyatta as President in five years, has already said that he has no interest in implementing Kenya’s Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Committee (TJRC) Report on post-election violence in 2007. Although this is not a surprise, given that Ruto was seen by the domestic and international human rights community as a key perpetrator of this violence, it nonetheless highlights the continued climate of disregard for the law. But unlike in the past, current elites seem to have figured out how they can use the mechanism of the election to cloak their authority in democratic credibility and to shield themselves from foreign—if not local—suspicion.

Nothing better proves this last point than how the New York Times editorial board responded to the recent election, calling Odinga a “perennial loser” despite the history of rigging, and seeming to blame demonstrators for violence instead of the security personnel who shot them. Essentially, for foreign commentators who know little about the internal dynamics of Kenya, all that matters is the formal exercise of voting on election day—the peaceful queueing, the official counting—irrespective of historical context or election season intimidation. In going out of their way to praise the existing government, these voices essentially validate the incumbents’ strategy. As long as procedure is adequately performed, the incumbent can entrench and maintain power through coercive means. This also further undermines the incentive for oppositions, who have played by the rules in the past, to accept questionable outcomes in the name of peace or to continue to use legal processes—particularly if past conciliation will lead to being characterized now as “perennial losers.”

The consequences for East Africa and beyond may well be dire. As regimes learn from one another how to manage election season, citizens—particularly those opposed to the existing government and who have been cheated by past riggings—will come to the conclusion that the ballot box is an empty symbol. The public will lose faith in the legitimacy of the state, whether or not the actual vote numbers end up being manipulated in any one particular occurrence. The effect will be a steady ratcheting up of violence. The likelihood of actual transfers of power will continue to decline, because for officials—especially those with blood on their hands—a loss could mean opening oneself up to possible reprisal.

All of this speaks to a more general point about democratization. Scholars and commentators used to wax poetic about the waves of democratization sweeping the globe. A common perception was that elections were part of an almost inevitable transition from authoritarianism to liberal democracy, the latter marked by rights protections, pluralism, and the rule of law. This view still shapes the instinctive support that foreign observers, who helicopter in for short stays, tend to give to any plausibly credible election. But instead the last few years have seen a resurgence in right-wing populism and what amounts to managed authoritarianism from Turkey and Russia to Hungary and the Philippines. Developments in Kenya and other parts of Africa are of a piece with these broader trends. Above all, they highlight the extent to which electoral authoritarianism must not be viewed as transitional. Rather than part of a bumpy move toward liberal legality, the new electoral authoritarianism is increasingly emerging as its own stable kind of regime. And foreign commentators are unwittingly applauding the mechanisms of de-democratization dressed up as progress.

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19. “HONOUR KILLINGS” IN RUSSIA’S NORTH CAUCASUS
Maria Klimova and Yulia Sugueva
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(Open Democracy - 16 August 2017)

When women in the North Caucasus are murdered by their families for “immoral behaviour”, justice is rarely done.  

We translate this article with permission from MediaZona, a media platform that focuses on Russia’s judicial and prison system. Find the original here.

“You can’t say that Sultan Daurbekov ended his daughter’s life, that he killed her.” This is how Ilyas Timishev began his defence of his client. “What you have to say is that he took her away from life, so that she couldn’t bring shame to herself, her father and her entire family. That’s the correct description.” Timishev’s client, Sultan Daurbekov, a resident of Chechnya, was on trial for the murder of his daughter, Zarema. In April 2015, this “honour killing” case, held in Grozny’s Staropromyslov District Court, was drawing to a close, and the public prosecutor had already requested an eight year sentence in a high security prison colony.

According to witnesses, Zarema Daurbekova “led an immoral life”. Reflecting on whether Zarema’s father deserved to be punished for killing her, Timishev remarked that the man was being judged under laws which belonged in a different cultural tradition.

“Our lawmakers are, in general, members of the Russian-speaking population. They will find this father’s actions unacceptable. Why is this?’ asked the defending counsel before immediately answering his own question: “Because they don’t have any traditions.”

 “A father who killed his child after enduring 20 years of humiliation from her, the amoral behaviour of a Muslim daughter, cannot, in principle, face responsibility for murder”

Indeed, as Timishev claimed, the Daurbekov case involved not only legal issues, but ethical and cultural ones as well, and these needed to be properly resolved, “taking into account the mindset and traditions of the Chechen people.” Despite the annoyance of the judge, who tried to return Timishev to the facts of the case, the defence counsel continued to describe in great detail Chechen traditions and the differences between Muslim and Christian “cultural codes”.

“On the one hand, we have the Criminal Code. On the other, traditions, good ones. The honour and dignity of women,” Timishev continued. “This is why I believe, Your Honour, that we need to find a fair balance between the interests of the state, the penal system, law enforcement and the interests of the defendant.” Timishev insisted that Daurbekov killed his daughter in a state of “intense spiritual conflict”, and so his actions couldn’t be classed as murder. “A father who killed his child after enduring 20 years of humiliation from her, the amoral behaviour of a Muslim daughter, cannot, in principle, face responsibility for murder.”

“I don’t remember where the rope came from”

On the evening of 24 November 2013, Zarema Daurbekova, a resident of Grozny, was returning home from work. She and her husband had recently divorced, she had found herself a job in a hairdressing salon and she and her 10 year old son were living with her parents. But that evening, Zarema decided to visit her sister, who lived nearby, and spend the night there. When she got off the bus, she phoned her mother to say that she was on her way from the bus stop, but she never arrived at her sister’s home and didn’t phone again. Her family called the police, thinking she might have been abducted.

Nothing further was heard of Zarema Daurbekova for almost a year, and then, in September 2014, her father turned up at a police station and confessed to her murder. On the day she disappeared, Sultan Daurbekov had been waiting for her at the bus stop where she alighted and asked her to get into his car, to talk. He drove her off into some wasteland, where he stopped and started accusing his daughter of “indecent behaviour”. A row broke out between them. At a certain point Daurbekov grabbed a length of rope, wrapped it round his daughter’s neck and pulled it and held it tight until she died. Then he hid her body in a hole dug in the wasteland and covered it with rubbish.

“There are no reliable statistics on killings of women whose families believe they have brought shame on them”

The witnesses called by Timishev — the Daurbekovs’ neighbours and relatives — discussed Zarema’s private life in every detail. They said that the divorced woman drank alcohol, wore her hair uncovered and got into strangers’ cars. Her mother got her share of criticism as well: according to the neighbours, she covered up for her daughter. In court, Nina Daurbekova did indeed deny that Zarema behaved “immorally” and asked people not to shame the deceased. At the same time, however, she said that he didn’t want her husband sent to prison.

“I just wanted to frighten her,” said Sultan Daurbekov in court. “But the way she was threatening me, I lost control and blanked out. I don’t remember where the rope came from and how I slung it round her neck. I was sitting in the back of the car. I don’t even remember how long it took to kill her. She held up her hand and I thought she had the rope in it, so that’s why I held it so tight. It was only when she fell that I realised I’d killed her. I’d never done anything bad to anyone, never said a cross word to my children. I don’t know how it happened… I’m ready to take my punishment.”

“She threatened her father with her boyfriends. She said: ‘If you touch him, you’ll disappear’,” Timishev told us. “They all deserved that, but you couldn’t punish them all. After all, she was partying and Sultan couldn’t go after them all with an axe. A lot of them were cops anyway. We questioned them in court, but they wouldn’t talk. None of them admitted [to being close to the deceased]. They said they were just friends. They’d go to her salon to have their hair cut.” The counsel for the defence believes that a Caucasian man who kills a female family member for her “licentious” way of life cannot be, in principle, tried for deliberate murder.

We were told by Timishev that the prosecuting counsels and judges, as Chechens themselves, understood and sympathised with Daurbekov, and that the two detectives who led the investigation admitted privately that they would have done the same thing in the defendant’s place. Talking to us, the defence counsel echoed the thought he had expressed in court: “If it were up to me, there would be no penalty imposed, but as we live in a constitutional state where the laws are made not by Muslim, but by Russian lawmakers who find our customs alien, then we need to find an appropriate charge to try him on.”

Illustration: (c) Maria Tolstova / MediaZona.In April 2015, Daurbekov was sentenced to seven years in a high security prison for murder. His counsel argued that at the moment of the crime he was “in the heat of passion”, aroused in him by the “indecent behaviour” of his daughter and the threats she made, but expert witnesses did not accept this as a defence.

Daurbekov’s lawyer is not satisfied with the sentence. After all, Timishev believes that Zarema’s father was “forced” to commit the crime. “They didn’t regard him as a proper man any more. They didn’t criticise him directly, but when he came to a funeral, for example, they would say: ‘Sultan, go back home, we don’t need you here,’” says Timishev. “He felt like an outcast. Murder is a tragedy, of course, but everybody will know that it wasn’t a fair conviction. Or should he have just got used to everyone laughing at the very sight of him and passing him by without a word? Now, nobody thinks he’s a hero. It’s a normal thing to happen. He killed his daughter. He did the right thing and that’s it. But nobody will laugh at him any more.”

“He did what I should have done”

In May 2015, Abdulaziz Abdurakhmanov, from the village of Chirkey in Dagestan’s Buinaksk district was tried for the same offence as Sultan Daurbakov: he killed his cousin Asiyat for “immoral behaviour”.

In court, Abdurakhmanov told the judge that he had seen on the internet a video “of an intimate nature” involving his cousin and an unknown man. What exactly it showed is unknown, but after watching it he went to his cousin’s house and demanded to hear who the man on the video was and who was the father of Asiyat’s second child, born just two weeks earlier. According to his testimony, his cousin refused to explain anything and just said that the video showed her with the man she loved and nobody had the right to poke their nose into her private life.

The cousins got into an argument, with Abdurakhmanov screaming that Asiyat had brought shame on the whole family and her telling him to get out of her house. Then, according to Abdurakhmanov, she grabbed a kitchen knife and went for him, but he managed to snatch the knife out of her hand and stabbed Asiyat in her side. In court, Abdurakhmanov repeatedly stated that when he left, she was still alive. He then told his family about what had happened and turned himself in to the police, still unaware that his cousin was dead. Doctors found nine stab wounds on her body. Like Daurbekov, Abdurakhmanov claimed that he had killed his cousin “in the heat of passion”.

“Honour killings” don’t happen spontaneously — these crimes are planned by members of the women’s families in advance

Zulfiya Isakadzhiyeva, the lawyer who defended Abdurakhmanov in court, hoped to have the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter. The client, Isakadzhiyeva said, had no intention of killing his cousin and couldn’t even remember the details of what happened. At his trial, Abdurakhmanov repented of his actions, asked his victim’s mother to pardon him and promised to support her children, and the families of Abdulaziz and Asiyat (whose fathers were brothers), made peace with one another. The victim’s father supposedly even told his brother, “I have nothing against Abdulaziz: he did what I should have done.” And Asiyat’s mother asked the court not to send Abdurakhmanov to prison, supporting the defence’s appeal for a psychological-psychiatric examination of the defendant.

In conversation with Mediazona, Isakadzhiyeva said that the court tried to avoid any discussion of Asiyat’s private life. All that was known was that she was divorced from her husband. “Asiyat’s mother said that she had been married to her husband as a second wife,” the lawyer said. “Her mother thought that her two children had been born in that marriage, but her ex-husband told the court that he couldn’t be sure he was the father. And rumours were flying around the village. But family members didn’t openly approve of Abdurakhmanov’s action and many couldn’t believe him capable of such a thing. He himself made a partial confession, denying that he had meant to kill her. He couldn’t even remember stabbing her so many times, he said: he thought he had only knifed her twice.”

The forensic psychiatric examination, which took place in Astrakhan, didn’t corroborate Abdurakhmanov’s claimed state of mind at the time of the killing. The court found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to six years in a high security prison colony.
The Shariatisation of violence

“Honour killings” don’t happen spontaneously — these crimes are planned by members of the women’s families in advance, says Svetlana Anokhina, editor-in-chief of Daptar.ru, a website devoted to women’s rights in Dagestan: “As a rule, the decision is taken by the family together and more than one person is involved in the actual murder.”

Anokhina also tells us that there is no correlation between “honour killings” and a family’s devoutness or lack of it: “It’s difficult to say why these ‘traditions’ arose, Dagestan is a very diverse society. I know a village where there are ‘swingers’ among the inhabitants. And next door you have a family where there have been four ‘honour killings’.”

“As a rule, the decision is taken by the family together and more than one person is involved in the actual murder”

It is often members of the extended family — uncles, cousins — who initiate the murder of a young woman for unacceptable behaviour. In the winter of 2010, for example, police officers arrested Tarkhan Ozdoyev, a resident of Ingushetia, whom they suspected of killing his cousin and her two daughters. The bodies of Madina Ozdoyeva, 42, Zarema Ozdoyeva, 20, and Fatima Ozdoyeva, 18, were found by passers-by on the outskirts of the village of Ali-Yurt. Their corpses, which had been dumped in the woods, had been practically beheaded and were covered in bruises and abrasions — before being killed they had been badly beaten.

Ozdoyev admitted to murdering his relatives: they had, in his opinion, behaved in an immoral fashion — walking along the street with their faces uncovered, smiling and talking freely with other villagers. He was convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to 12 years in a high security prison colony.

Illustration: (c) Maria Tolstova / MediaZona.“Fathers often take pity on their children. That’s only natural. But less close relatives can raise the subject and go around spreading the word. And in the end the woman gets killed,” says Svetlana Anokhina. “Male relatives can theoretically intercede for a women accused of ‘immoral behaviour’: in that case, several men have to agree to stand surety for her in front of other family members. But I’ve never actually heard of men trying to save a woman in this way.”

“Honour killings” are often a front for banal, mercenary aims — there is a well-known case where a brother murdered his sister for an inheritance, but excused his crime by claiming that she had an immoral lifestyle. And these killings are also useful for covering up the traces of incest, for example, says Anokhina: “So each of these crimes have to be studied closely, to uncover the real reasons behind them.”

The concept of family honour occupies a special place in the general value system of the peoples of the Caucasus. As Naima Neflyasheva, a specialist in Caucasus history at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ African Studies Institute explains, the behaviour and reputations of girls and women was always of importance to the whole family. “Under local customary law, a married woman who slept with another man could face corporal punishment — 19th century oral sources talk about 100 strokes of the birch; or she could have the tip of her nose cut off and be sent in shame back to her father’s house with her hair loose or cut short,” Neflyasheva says. “Some written sources mention that an unfaithful wife may be killed. But ethnographers’ field studies suggest that both physical punishments and killing were rare occurrences.”

“I’ve heard of young women being expelled from their village, but I don’t know of any cases of their being whipped in today’s Caucasus”

According to Neflyasheva, a bride whose husband discovered she was not a virgin would be returned by his family to her father’s house on a cart with her back turned towards the horse. And if a young woman who was not yet betrothed was found to be “impure” she was usually despatched to relatives in another village, to be married as soon as possible to an elderly widower or the “village idiot”.

“However, these customs had generally died out by the 1930s-1950s”, says Neflyasheva. “And as for the Shariat penalty for premarital sexual relations, that is ideally decided by a Shariat court — a qadi and imams — not by the young woman’s family.” Shariat Law makes a distinction between licentiousness and premarital and adulterous sexual relations – for unmarried women the punishment is a certain number of lashes with a whip and expulsion, as far away as possible, from the village.

“I’ve heard of young women being expelled from their village,” says Neflyasheva, “but I don’t know of any cases of their being whipped in today’s Caucasus. Islam condemns the taking of someone’s life. I feel that the so-called ‘honour killings’ that have taken place in the last few years in the Eastern Caucasus (I want to stress that this practice is region specific) should be regarded as the shariatisation of violence, where everyday violence becomes identified with Sharia Law and is seen as such by the people who commit these crimes.”
“In the majority of cases, it isn’t registered as murder”

Of course, by no means all divorced women are persecuted by their families, Svetlana Anokhina tells us. Nonetheless, some realise that their relatives won’t let them live a quiet life in Dagestan and try to leave the republic. This was the case with Maryam Magomedova, from the village of Nechayevka in the Kizilyurt District, who was forced to move to Moscow with her mother and sister because of continual rows with relatives. Then in August 2010 she was invited to a wedding back in Dagestan and agreed to go.

“When she arrived in the village, Kasum Magomedov, her uncle on her father’s side, summoned her for a chat,” says Salimat Kadyrova, who represented the interests of the dead woman’s mother in court. “At his trial, he said that he had long wanted to talk to her, as he had heard that she and her husband had split up after she was unfaithful to him. Magomedov was also annoyed that her hair was uncovered. He drove her off to the edge of the village to talk to her. She told him to stay out of her life, and he lost his rag. He claimed that he had blanked out and when he came to his senses she was already strangled to death.”

Magomedov buried his niece in the village cemetery himself. When a search for her began Murtazali Abdulmuslimov, her uncle on her mother’s side, discovered that she had been last seen getting into a car with Magomedov and his nephew. After talking to them he suspected foul play, and later noticed a fresh grave in the cemetery and took Magomedov to task again. The same evening, members of Magomedov’s family called for Abdulmuslimov and asked him to go with them to visit Kasum, their oldest brother. There he was told that Kasum had wiped out the stain of shame they bore for Maryam’s unseemly behaviour and proposed that the whole thing be hushed up and Maryam re-buried with all proper funeral rites. Abdulmuslimov, however, didn’t agree and the victim’s mother, Kusum Magomedova, also refused to be reconciled with the family of her daughter’s killer.

“In ‘honour killing’ cases, once the defendant’s guilt is established, he will be convicted, but there remains the question of the length of his sentence” 

“Although Kasum’s relatives also condemned his actions, at his trial they still tried to stick up for him and wouldn’t admit that he had met up with Abdulmuslimov and confessed his guilt,” Kadyrova recalls. During Magomedov’s first trial, the defendant denied his guilt. In April 2013, the Kizilyurt District Court acquitted Magomedov and released him from custody in the courtroom. However, his victim’s mother appealed against the verdict and Dagestan’s High Court overturned it.

“Maryam’s mother said that if it had been a real ‘honour killing’, she might have let it go, but she was sure that her daughter was being slandered,” says Kadyrova. “And indeed, witnesses testified that Maryam was a modest young woman.” In the autumn of 2013, the case was reopened, and in spring 2014 Kasum Magomedov made a partial confession, but claimed he killed his victim “in the heat of passion”. An expert examination concluded that the defendant was of sound mind and he was sentenced to seven years in a high security prison colony.

Two women walk through an underpass in the Grozny-City shopping centre, Grozny, Republic of Chechnya, 2012. Photo (c): Ramil Sitdikov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.

“In ‘honour killing’ cases, once the defendant’s guilt is established, he will be convicted, but there remains the question of the length of his sentence,” the lawyer tells us. “I think the sentences are sometimes too short, but most killings like this manage to be passed off as suicides or accidents. Or the whole thing is hushed up: a young woman disappears and no one will ever know that she was murdered. And even if they know, even their mothers rarely tell. If [the young woman’s “improper” behaviour] is confirmed, her mother has to share the blame — she didn’t bring her up right — so she has to keep silent and hold it all in. But these men are supported by society, sympathised with and their crimes absolved. They’re seen as something like orderlies, cleaning up mess.”

In 2015 Marem Alieyeva, a resident of Ingushetia, also tried to escape from a husband who beat her, but gave in to her family’s persuasion and returned to the republic. Two weeks later, some relatives of her husband Mukharbek Evloyev gathered at their home. Marem could see on the CCTV screen that they were having a discussion about something, and told her sister, just in case. Alieyeva disappeared the same day and has never been seen since, alive or dead.

“The only people they try hard to find are potential suicide bombers,” says Daptar.ru’s Svetlana Anokhina. “But for a search to begin, someone has to report a missing person, and this doesn’t always happen. And the police themselves are very unwilling to open cases of disappearance, so it collapses at the first hurdle. The cops just don’t look for women who have disappeared. They tell the families that the young woman probably just decided to run away. And here it’s a question of: ‘no body: no case’.”

“Why do the dead women’s mothers so frequently keep silent about it? Because they don’t want to get their other children into trouble”

“Sometimes cases are opened because they find a body,” says defence lawyer Timishev. “Although then you can say: ‘They deserved all they got’. Seven or eight women have been found in various parts of Chechnya with bullet holes in their heads, killed five to seven years ago. But they were all ‘tramps’.” The lawyer was evidently referring to the case in November 2008 where six women were killed at the same time, in various districts, by shots to the head. Nothing was stolen from them — neither jewellery, nor cash — so the investigators came up with the idea of “honour killings”. Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov said at the time that they were women of easy virtue who had been punished by their families. As Kadyrov said, “In our culture, if a woman lives like that, if she sleeps with a man, her family kills both of them.” He also admitted, however, that the killings couldn’t be justified by any appeal to tradition.

“Why do the dead women’s mothers so frequently keep silent about it? Because they don’t want to get their other children into trouble,” says Svetlana Anokhina. Also, the murder of a supposedly morally compromised daughter gives her family greater authority in their community. “It means that this family is pretty influential, and has a concept of honour and connections that might protect it from criminal charges. A family like this is afraid of nothing.”

“There are no reliable statistics on killings of women whose families believe they have brought shame on them,” concludes Olga Gnezdilova, a lawyer working for the Netherlands-based Justice Initiative Foundation. “In most cases their deaths are not even registered as murders. The young women are just buried, either with a proper funeral or just in a hole somewhere. The neighbours, of course know about it, but don’t report it, of course.”

Translated by Liz Barnes. 

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20. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS ACCUSED OF 'SELLING ITS SOUL' OVER CHINESE CENSORSHIP | Tom Phillips
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(The Guardian - 19 August 2017)

Academics and activists decry publisher’s decision to comply with a Chinese request to block more than 300 articles from leading China studies journal
Cambridge University
A list of the blocked articles, published by CUP, shows they focus overwhelmingly on topics China’s one-party state regards as taboo Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

The world’s oldest publishing house, Cambridge University Press, has been accused of being an accomplice to the Communist party’s bid to whitewash Chinese history after it agreed to purge hundreds of politically-sensitive articles from its Chinese website at the behest of Beijing’s censors.

The publisher confirmed on Friday that it had complied with a Chinese request to block more than 300 articles from the China Quarterly, a leading China studies journal, in order “to ensure that other academic and educational materials we publish remain available to researchers and educators” in China.
Cambridge University Press blocks readers in China from articles
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A list of the blocked articles, published by CUP, shows they focus overwhelmingly on topics China’s one-party state regards as taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Mao Zedong’s catastrophic Cultural Revolution, Hong Kong’s fight for democracy and ethnic tensions in Xinjiang and Tibet.

They include articles by some of the world’s top China specialists including Columbia University’s Andrew Nathan, George Washington University’s David Shambaugh, and Harvard University scholars Roderick MacFarquhar and Ezra Vogel.

A piece by Dutch historian Frank Dikötter and a book review by the Guardian’s former China correspondent, John Gittings, about the Cultural Revolution were also censored.

In its statement, CUP insisted it was committed to freedom of thought and expression and had been “troubled by the recent increase in requests of this nature” from China. The publisher vowed to raise the issue with the “revelant agencies” in Beijing at an upcoming book fair.

But on Saturday, as reports of the publisher’s move spread, it faced a growing outcry from academics and activists who called for the decision to be reversed.

“Pragmatic is one word, pathetic more apt,” tweeted Rory Medcalf, the head of the national security college at the Australian National University.

John Garnaut, a longtime China correspondent and former adviser to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, described it as “an extraordinary capitulation” to China.

Renee Xia, the international director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, accused the publisher of having “sold its soul for millions of Chinese govt dollars”.

Andrew Nathan, whose name appears three times in the list of censored articles, told the Guardian: “If the Press acceded to a Chinese request to block access to selected articles, as I gather is the case, it violated the trust that authors placed in it and has compromised its integrity as an academic publisher.”

Nathan, the editor of a seminal work on the Tiananmen crackdown, added: “I imagine [CUP] might argue that it was serving a higher purpose, by compromising in order to maintain the access by Chinese scholars to most of the material it has published. This is similar to the argument by authors who allow Chinese translations of their work to be censored so that the work can reach the Chinese audience. [But] that’s an argument I have never agreed with.”

“Of course, there may also be a financial motive, similar to Bloomberg, Facebook, and others who have censored their product to maintain access to the Chinese market. This is a dilemma, but if the West doesn’t stand up for its values, then the Chinese authorities will impose their values on us. It’s not worth it.”

In an open letter two US scholars, Greg Distelhorst and Jessica Chen Weiss, complained that CUP’s move meant Chinese academics and scholars would now only have access to a “sanitized” version of their country’s history.

“To me the problem is pretty straightforward: the problem is publishing a politically-curated version of Chinese history and doing so in the name of Cambridge University,” Distelhorst, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Guardian.

“This makes the publisher an active participant in rewriting history … When a government asks you to censor a piece of scholarship, that request is fundamentally opposed to a principle of academic freedom that I believe to be important to Cambridge and to many universities.”

In a statement the editor of China Quarterly, Tim Pringle, voiced “deep concern and disappointment” at the tightening controls in China. “This restriction of academic freedom is not an isolated move but an extension of policies that have narrowed the space for public engagement and discussion across Chinese society.”

Distelhorst said he sympathised with CUP and particularly the editors of China Quarterly: “Receiving censorship requests puts them in a really difficult position and forces a lot of hard trade-offs ... [But] I hope they will reconsider their decision to selectively censor articles and then present the censored version of the journal to the Chinese public.”

Since Xi Jinping took power nearly five years ago Beijing has dramatically stepped up its efforts to control Chinese academia, with the president last year calling for universities to be transformed into Communist party “strongholds”.

A growing number of intellectuals – the majority political scientists or international relations and law experts – have sought refuge in the US. “It is not as dramatic as the refugees from Hitler; not as dramatic as the enormous number who turned up [after Tiananmen] and we had to deal with. But it is growing and I am seeing them,” the veteran China expert Jerry Cohen, who has been helping some of the refugee scholars, said in an interview last year.

Foreign academics have also been targeted, with Chinese authorities denying visas to academics deemed to be focusing on unwelcome topics. Until now, however, foreign academic journals appeared to have largely avoid scrutiny.

Nathan said China’s list of censorship demands to the CUP appeared to have been generated “by a naive machine search of article and review titles” which had targeted key words and names deemed sensitive. He called the move “a useless overreach” by Beijing.

“What can it accomplish? I’m sorry to say that information control often works. But if you have so much money, staff, and time, that you can burrow down to the level of censoring academic publications in a foreign language that could only be used by your own academic community, then I think your censorship organs are over funded and you would do well to cut their budgets. As the saying goes, this is lifting up a stone only to drop it on one’s own foot.”

One of the censored China Quarterly articles captures the kind of material China’s authoritarian leaders would prefer to see buried.

In his 2016 contribution, The Once and Future Tragedy of the Cultural Revolution, Harvard’s MacFarquhar writes about the burgeoning Mao-esque personality cult around Xi and ponders “the vigorous attempt by the regime to consign the Cultural Revolution to the dustbin of history by discouraging research and teaching on the subject”.

MacFarquhar writes: “The dangers of inducing national amnesia is encapsulated in George Santayana’s famous dictum: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

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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/

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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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