Palash Speaks

Bolivar reborn

Palash Biswas

Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551

Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com

Bolivar reborn
The Chávez revolution remains the most original and democratic experiment in Latin America, and is clearly here to stay

By Richard Gott
The Guardian

"In an unusually large open space, in a poor area of the city of Caracas where ramshackle houses built from breeze blocks and concrete columns occupy every available piece of ground, and where narrow streets wind up the hillside filled perpetually by throngs of people, one of the many thousands of cooperative enterprises created in the last few years has been securely established.

Two large hangars house workshops, and close by is a large well-equipped clinic and a government food store selling cheap food, known as a Mercal. It sells a limited range of basic foodstuffs but would hardly justify the title of supermarket. Today, as everywhere throughout Caracas, powdered milk is in short supply, although no one knows for certain if this is the result of opposition manoeuvre and malice, or of government incompetence.

The clinic is clean and well organised, with modern equipment and a stream of patients throughout the day. Unusually, it is manned by Venezuelan doctors rather than by the Cubans who, in their thousands, have run the medical outposts in the poorest parts of the country over the past three years....

.....Quite apart from the extraordinary mobilisation of the people in the poorest areas, benefiting from new schools and clinics, there has been a huge expansion of public works all over the country, with new railway lines and motorways and well-designed sports facilities in almost every major city. Even the road from the airport has finally acquired a new motorway bridge, and many shacks on the surrounding hillsides have been freshly painted in gaudy colours, blue and orange, yellow and pink. Doubtless these could be denounced as Potemkin villages, yet they demonstrate an organising power on the part of the people that augurs well for the future. The Chávez revolution remains the most original and democratic experiment in Latin America, and is clearly here to stay."

# posted by Tony : 5:48 AM

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Counterattack as Fateful Referendum Looms

COUNTERPUNCH EXCLUSIVE!

CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces
By JAMES PETRAS

"On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.

The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA's polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.......

The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a major historical event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas. A positive vote (Vota 'Sí') will provide the legal framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis for a self-managed factory system. A negative vote (or a successful US-backed civil-military uprising) would reverse the most promising living experience of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome, would lead to a blood bath, such as we have not seen since the days of the Indonesian Generals' Coup of 1966, which killed over a million workers and peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the US- backed Generals.

A decisive vote for 'Sí' will not end US military and political destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history."

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government
30 Nov 2007
http://www.legitgov.org/
All items are here:
http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news
Bush seeks to pressure Democrats over war funds --Bush seeks approval of $196 billion for his wars during fiscal year that began Oct. 1 29 Nov 2007 U.S. President [sic] George W. Bush on Thursday stepped up pressure on lawmakers to pass his Iraq war funding request, while a senior Democrat said a deal might be possible.

Bush urges Congress to approve war funding before Christmas $50 billion war spending bill passed the House but stalled last week in the Senate 29 Nov 2007 President [sic] Bush on Thursday called on Congress to approve billions of dollars in additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before lawmakers leave for their Christmas break.

US to control growth of Iraq neighbourhood patrols 29 Nov 2007 The U.S. military will carefully manage the growth of neighbourhood police units credited with helping to curb foment violence in Iraq, aiming ultimately to move many into public work roles, a spokesman said on Thursday. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said about 50,000 Iraqis had been trained and were manning "concerned local citizens" checkpoints in their own communities and being paid by the U.S. military.

Iraq government wants to pay neighborhood police units: U.S. 26 Nov 2007 Iraq's government wants to start paying the wages of U.S.-backed neighborhood security units, a U.S. general said on Monday. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said he was not immediately aware of any Iraqi plan to pay the wages which have so far been paid by U.S. forces.

6,000 Sunnis [Hired to] Join Pact With US in Iraq 29 Nov 2007 Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday... The ceremony to pledge the 6,000 new fighters was presided over by a dozen sheiks, who signed the contract on behalf of tribesmen at a small U.S. outpost in north-central Iraq. For about $275 a month -- nearly the salary for the typical Iraqi policeman -- the tribesmen will man about 200 security checkpoints beginning Dec. 7, supplementing hundreds of Iraqi forces already in the area.

U.S. sponsorship of Sunni groups worries Iraq's government 29 Nov 2007 The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims 'against' Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it's out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.

Iraq MPs block Maliki nominees for cabinet posts 29 Nov 2007 Iraqi legislators thwarted Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's attempts to get approval for nominees to fill two vacant cabinet posts on Thursday. Legislators from several parties boycotted the session, ensuring parliament did not have a quorum to vote on nominations for the justice and communications portfolios.

US not seeking permanent Iraq bases: White House 29 Nov 2007 The White House denied Thursday that the United States seeks permanent military bases in Iraq, days after the US "war czar" said that would be part of talks next year on long-term security ties.

Insurgents kill U.S. soldier in Baghdad 29 Nov 2007 A U.S. soldier was killed by 'insurgents'' small arms fire in Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Thursday. The soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division - Baghdad, was killed in western Baghdad on Wednesday, a military statement said.

Australia wants Iraq troops home by mid 2008 29 Nov 2007 About 550 Australian combat troops in Iraq should be withdrawn by about the middle of next year, Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd said on Friday, setting a broad timetable for the soldiers to return home.

US security firm runs into new trouble - and this time it's closer to home --Rural community opposes expansion by company at centre of Iraq allegations 30 Nov 2007 Now Blackwater is looking to expand domestically. So it has come to the border hamlet of Potrero, population 850. Eight miles from Mexico and 40 miles inland from San Diego, Potrero has found itself at the centre of a controversy.

Blackwater Grand Jury Resumes 29 Nov 2007 A federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide began its second day of work Thursday as an unidentified witness returned to the stand. The Justice Department is investigating the government contractor for its mercenaries' involvement in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Blackwater guards accused of drug use, ignoring orders 28 Nov 2007 At least one in four Blackwater bodyguards in Iraq use steroids and other drugs, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of several Iraqis killed or wounded in a Baghdad shooting in September. The lawsuit filed Monday in Washington also accuses the Blackwater guards of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in the shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, media reports said Wednesday.

NATO denies killing civilians in E Afghanistan 29 Nov 2007 The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Thursday categorically denied killing civilians in Afghanistan's eastern Nuristan province.

NATO air-strike kills 12 Afghan civilians: governor 28 Nov 2007 NATO air strikes killed 12 civilian road workers in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on Wednesday, an incident bound to fuel Afghan resentment against the presence of international forces.

2 Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan 30 Nov 2007 Two Danish soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan, news reaching here Thursday said. The soldiers belong to a Danish reconnaissance unit stationed in the Upper Gereshk Valley of Helmand Province.

Musharraf: Emergency in Pakistan to be lifted on Dec. 16 30 Nov 2007 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced on Thursday that he intended to lift the state of emergency martial law on Dec. 16.

Habib 'told not to talk about torture' 30 Nov 2007 Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib says he did not reveal details of his torture in early interviews with media and others because he was told not to by his doctors and lawyers.

Rabbi: Cleanse country of Arabs --Prominent right-wing rabbis gather for 'emergency meeting' ahead of Annapolis conference, state no peace can be achieved if Arabs stay on Israel's land 27 Nov 2007 "We must cleanse the country of Arabs and resettle them in the countries where they came from," head of the Yesha Rabbis Council, Rabbi Dov Lior, declared Monday, adding that, "If this means we have to pay them, we will. Without doing so, we will never enjoy peace in our land."

Bin Laden urges Europe to quit Afghanistan-TV 29 Nov 2007 Al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] leader Osama bin Laden urged European countries to end their military participation with U.S. forces in the Afghan conflict, Al Jazeera television said on Thursday. Jazeera aired portions of an audio tape in which a speaker who sounded like [?] bin Laden said his Taliban allies had no knowledge of plans for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a main reason for the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

TSA plan to gather more data protested 29 Nov 2007 A government proposal to start collecting full names, birth dates and genders of people reserving airline flights is drawing protests from major airlines and travel agencies that say it would be invasive, confusing and "useless." The plan centers on transferring the task of checking passenger backgrounds from airlines to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

'Unfamiliar smell' prompts Southwest flight to return 29 Nov 2007 A Southwest Airlines flight that took off Thursday morning from Sky Harbor International Airport returned to the terminal shortly after flight attendants noticed an "unfamiliar smell" in the cabin.

'Terrorist plot' on Aussie US base 30 Nov 2007 An al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] leader who visited Australia on a lecture tour in the late 1990s was involved in a plot to attack a US military base on Australian soil, according to secret documents made public for the first time this week. An Algerian terrorist known as Abu Sheema and his associates allegedly revealed their plans to the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib when he was in Afghanistan just weeks before the September 11 attacks.

Judge jailed entire court for phone interruption --Doors locked after ringing mobile enrages magistrate --46 sent to cells in moment of 'inexplicable madness' 29 Nov 2007 Judge Robert Restaino was hearing a session of domestic violence offenders in a court in Niagara Falls City in upstate New York when proceedings were interrupted by 10 or 11 rings of a phone. "Everyone is going to jail, every single person is going to jail in this courtroom unless I get that instrument now," he bellowed at the court... Fourteen of the defendants who could not post bail were shackled in irons and sent to the county jail. The judge cooled off and later that afternoon released all 46. The "two hours of viral lunacy", as one member of the commission described it, has probably cost Restaino his job. The commission ruled that he should be removed from his $114,000 (£55,000) job for "an egregious and unprecedented abuse of judicial power".

CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces --'OPERATION PLIERS' 28 Nov 2007 On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007. The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government.

Coup 2008 gets an early start: Virginia GOP Demands Loyalty Pledge at Primary --Reichwing Target Crossovers, Independents 29 Nov 2007 The loyalty pledge to the Republican Party that Virginia voters will be required to sign if they vote in the state's GOP presidential primary on Feb. 12 is another attempt by the party to police steal the open primary system. On Feb. 12, a GOP primary voter will have to sign a piece of paper that says, "I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for President." The state does not require voters to register by political party, which means a voter can decide on the day of the primary whether to participate in the Republican or Democratic primary. [The Virginia GOP loyalty oaths typify the Reichwing hypocrisy of UNbalancing the scales of fairness and justice. This mentality allowed Bush bin Laden to steal the 2000 and 2004 'elections,' via two GOP coup d'etats. Remember when the GOPedophiles whined that Al Gore was not letting 'our brave men and women in the military' have their ballots counted - and of course, LieberBush couldn't agree fast enough, an early sign of his dementia - even though such ballots were ILLEGALLY postmarked *after* 'Election Day?' See: New York Times documents military role in theft of 2000 election By Barry Grey 19 Jul 2001.]

The plot to rig the 2008 US election By Johann Hari 29 Nov 2007 In the long, hot autumn of 2000, the world was shocked by the contempt for democracy shown by the Republican Party. They knew their man had lost the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million votes. They knew the majority of voters in Florida itself had pulled a lever for Gore. But they fought – amid the confetti of hanging chads – to stop the state's votes being counted, and to ensure that the Supreme Court imposed George W Bush. Today, that contempt for democracy is on display again. In California right now, there is a naked, out-in-the-open ploy to rig the 2008 presidential election – and it may succeed.

Giuliani's Mistress Used N.Y. Police as Taxi Service 29 Nov 2007 Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

Bird flu spreads to 60 countries, pandemic risk still high: UN 29 Nov 2007 Bird flu in poultry and wild birds spread to 60 countries but is entrenched only in six because of improved and faster responses, experts said. Despite those strides, the risk of a worldwide human-to-human pandemic remains as great today as it was when the hard-to-treat H5N1 flu strain first gained intense attention in mid-2005, said a new report by Dr. David Nabarro, the UN official co-ordinating the global fight against avian influenza, and World Bank officials. "We think it will happen sometime but we don't know when or where," Nabarro said Thursday. [Oh, that's an easy one: The US, just before the 2008 'elections.']

Defra unable to identify bird flu source 30 Nov 2007 An initial report into the recent outbreak of deadly bird flu in Suffolk has been unable to identify the source of the disease, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said today. [Right, check your local US Army lab for the source. See: Killer flu recreated in the lab 07 Oct 2004 A US team added two genes from a sample of the 1918 virus to a modern strain known to have no effect on mice. Animals exposed to this composite were dying within days of symptoms similar to those found in human victims of the 1918 pandemic.]

Michael Moore cut this scene from Sicko because no one would believe it 22 Nov 2007 (Video) In addition to France, Canada, and the UK, Michael Moore also went to Norway. What he found, was unbelievable. [A must see!]

Fire shuts key Canada-U.S. pipeline, oil surges $4 29 Nov 2007 An explosion crippled the main pipeline supplying Canadian crude to U.S. Midwest refineries on Wednesday, forcing operator Enbridge to halt nearly a fifth of U.S. imports and sending crude prices as much as $4 higher. Alberta-based operator Enbridge Inc said in statement Thursday that the cause of the explosion [Blackwater?] had not yet been determined.

Bank of England promises £10bn of extra Christmas liquidity 30 Nov 2007 The Bank of England acted again to soften the worst effects of the credit crunch yesterday, announcing that it would be lending £10bn to the commercial banks at the base rate of 5.75 per cent for a five-week period, rather than for the usual seven days.

Are polar bears endangered? 29 Nov 2007 Scientists studying polar bears say global warming is melting the Arctic Sea ice they depend on to live. Today, conservationists visited the bears at the Toledo Zoo and made a plea to designate wild polar bears as endangered. A member of the Natural Resources Defense Council spoke today about asking the government to add polar bears to the federal endangered species list. A decision on whether to add polar bears to the endangered species list should come by January 9. E-mail the Department of the Interior through the Polar Bear SOS website.

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[Previous lead stories:] Holocaust Denial, American Style By Mark Weisbrot 21 Nov 2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

More Iraqi civilians shot dead by U.S. troops 27 Nov 2007 Iraqi officials say American troops in Baghdad have killed as many as seven Iraqi civilians, including a child, in two separate shootings.

Survey Shows Dangers for Iraq Reporters 28 Nov 2007 American journalists covering Iraq say they face unprecedented dangers with many reporting that they've worked closely with Iraqi colleagues who have been killed or kidnapped, according to a survey released Wednesday. The survey by the Washington-based media watchdog Project for Excellence in Journalism offered a grim picture of reporters trying to work under they describe as the constant threat of violence and intimidation in Iraq

A protest by the poets in the language of poetry
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
Interview of Palash Biswas (Bengali audio): Riot against Taslima was planned by CPM Inbox

Dr Biplab Pal to me
show details 1:12 pm (6 hours ago)
Images are not displayed.
Display images below - Always display images from biplabpal2000@yahoo.com

Mr Biswas, a distinguished journalist ( He writes in Hindi and well known all over the India) gave me an interview just now from Calcutta--as a journalist he walked through the lanes of violence on that horrible day and came to conclusion there was no riot but a planned violence hatched by CPM to divert attention from Nandigram and Taslima was made a pawn to recapture minority votebank.
www.vinnomot.com

For people in South Asia, listen to this link for better audio experience
http://is.rediff.com/filemusic.php?id=72793

Rediff lifted ban on previous discussion and now available. In India and in Bangladesh please use redifflink:
With Fotemolla explaining Taslima & Islam issue:
http://is.rediff.com/filemusic.php?id=72314

Prof Mohit Roy explaining leftist appeasement of Islamist force
http://is.rediff.com/filemusic.php?id=72313

If Rediff links get vandalized againt, please listen from www.vinnomot.com. Otherwise Rediff will always give better experience.

Biplab
Editor:
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JOYOTU BONGODESH

KOBITAR BHASHAY KOBIDER PROTIBAD
A protest by the poets in the language of poetry

Poets of all over Bengal are requested to participate in the programme on 8th December of 2007 to read poetry and at Nandigram Dharna Manch, Metro Channel, Esplaned, Kolkata. We cordially solicit your august presence on that day.

Time: between 12 noon to 8pm

Please forward

you are also an organiser
for further information pl contact : Shyamol Bhattacharjee,9330862514, Prasun Bhowmik, 9830015598

One State Declaration Vs Annapolis Statement
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
One State Declaration Vs Annapolis Statement
The One State Declaration
CounterPunch
"For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them.
The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution.
In light of these stark realities, we affirm our commitment to a democratic solution that will offer a just, and thus enduring, peace in a single state based on the following principles:
....
....
The struggle for justice and liberation must be accompanied by a clear, compelling and moral vision of the destination ­ a solution in which all people who share a belief in equality can see a future for themselves and others. We call for the widest possible discussion, research and action to advance a unitary, democratic solution and bring it to fruition."
Madrid and London, 2007
Signed:
Ali Abunimah
Naseer Aruri
Omar Barghouti
Oren Ben-Dor
George Bisharat
Haim Bresheeth
Jonathan Cook
Ghazi Falah
Leila Farsakh
Islah Jad
Joseph Massad
Ilan Pappe
Carlos Prieto del Campo
Nadim Rouhana
The London One State Group

# posted by Tony : 10:20 AM
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Annapolis Statement: "Palestinian Bantustan"
by Francis A. Boyle
(Professor Francis A. Boyle served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations and its Chair, Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi from 1991 to 1993 and is the author of "Palestine, Palestinians and International Law" )
Global Research, November 28, 2007
"The mass mobilization against Annapolis by Palestinian civil society around the world and especially in occupied Palestine prevented the Palestinian Delegation from selling out the rights of the Palestinian People under international law to Israel and the United States as some of these same delegates had previously done during the Oslo, Norway negotiations of 1993.
For once Palestinian People Power triumphed over Israeli/American power politics. But the Palestinians and their supporters must remain ever-vigilant against a permanent sell-out as these so-called "final status" negotiations unfold during the next year.
Based upon the Oslo Agreement, the "final status" contemplated by Israel and the United States is a Palestinian Bantustan. To be sure, the Palestinians must expect no meaningful assistance from those quisling governments and organizations that dignified the Annapolis photo-op with their presence."

# posted by Tony : 4:39 AM
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UN archives reveal plan to arm Jewish militia
An Explosive Story and A Must Read
Contributed by Lucia in Spain
"It was November 29, 1947. The United Nations General Assembly had just passed Resolution 181 - the Partition Plan, according to which the British Mandate was to be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Civil war broke out between the Jewish and the Palestinian residents, particularly in the mixed cities and on the roads. The UN faced a difficult problem: how to implement the partition resolution together with the economic union of the two states, as specified by the resolution. The UN Secretariat created a Special Committee to deal with what was seen as the first major challenge of the young body.
Dr. Elad Ben-Dror, a historian at Bar-Ilan University, has been studying UN diplomacy after the Partition Plan, at the University Institute for Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation of Tel Aviv University. Last year, he sat in the UN archives and read recently-declassified documents relating to the work of the Special Committee. He made an interesting discovery: The UN had planned to implement the Partition Plan by means of a Jewish militia, trained by the UN and armed, also by the UN, with weapons, combat aircraft and tankettes.
"The plan to establish a militia was the most surprising material I found at the UN," Ben-Dror says. "As part of the Partition Plan, both states were to create militias - a military force under government control and charged mainly with domestic policing duties."
But because the Palestinian leadership viewed Resolution 181 as a pro-Zionist plan and did everything possible to foil it, the UN focused only on establishing the Jewish militia.
"From quite an early stage, due to a lack of cooperation, the UN dropped half of the Partition Plan - the idea of establishing an Arab state," Ben-Dror explained.
"The idea was to implement at least part of the plan - that is, the Jews would create the Jewish state, on the assumption that eventually the UN Security Council would implement the creation of the Arab state," Ben-Dror continued. "As soon as the Partition Plan was adopted, UN Secretary General Trygve Lie and senior UN officials became identified with the idea of the Jewish state. The Arab assault was interpreted as an assault on the UN resolutions, and the UN trusted that the Jews would carry out the partition and not do anything beyond that."
According to the plan, the main role of the Jewish militia was to impose the authority of the Jewish state over its Arab residents; under the partition map, the Arab population within the Jewish state was nearly the same as the Jewish population. The militia command was to be supervised by the UN, which would also appoints its commanders. In practice, however, the Special Committee intended to base the Jewish militia on the Haganah [the pre-state underground Jewish militia].
"It was clear to them that there was no need to create an army out of thin air, and that they could rely on the Haganah," Ben-Dror said. "All that was left to do was to give the UN seal of approval to the Haganah and to provide arms. Among others, there was the question of how to control the Negev Bedouin, who would oppose being under Jewish sovereignty. So they planned to supply the militia with combat aircraft, using British military techniques. At that stage, they didn't think the militias would engage each other."
The story of the Special Committee, in particular its failure to implement the plan created by UN diplomats, is similar to that of many other plans in the following decades that remained on paper only. Ben-Dror attributes the failure of the Partition Plan primarily to opposition from the Palestinians and the Arab states as well as lack of cooperation from Britain......."

# posted by Tony : 9:57 AM
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Hamas: Palestine could not be partitioned by resolutions or agreements
Contributed by Lucia in Spain
"GAZA, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement on Thursday held the UN fully responsible for the tragedies that befell the Palestinian people as a result of the "oppressive" resolution 181 that sanctioned the partitioning of Palestine and allowed the creation of the Hebrew state.
It said in a statement on the 60th anniversary of that resolution that the implementation of that decision had led to the displacement of hundreds of thousand of Palestinians and replaced alien invaders in their place.
"We call on those who sanctioned this historic oppression to amend their mistake," Hamas said.
It also said that all those attending the Annapolis conference will shoulder the historical and national responsibility for their participation in a conference that was held under the condition that Palestine is a Jewish homeland.
The Movement urged the Arab and Islamic countries to be aware of the conspiracy that is being hatched against the Palestinians' presence in their own land and to renew political, material and moral support for the Palestinians to bolster their steadfastness.......
In 1947 the UN passed its ominous 191 resolution that allowed the partitioning of Palestine between its indigenous people and the Zionist invaders and even gave those aliens 56% of historical Palestine and left 46% for the Palestinians and internationalized Jerusalem."

# posted by Tony : 9:00 AM
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Israeli Arabs: Abbas lacks mandate to make concessions
Poll conducted by Arab Center for Practical Social Research finds that the majority of Israeli Arabs distrust Palestinian negotiators to settle on core issues in peace talks with Israel; 65.6% of respondents state that negotiators lack the authority to recognize Israel as a sovereign state; staggering 81% of Israeli Arabs say negotiators cannot concede the rights to Jerusalem
"A poll conducted among Israeli Arabs finds them unwilling to recognize Mahmoud Abbas' authority to negotiate with Israel on their behalf.
A survey conducted by the Mada-El- Carmel Institute, or the Arab Center for Practical Social Research, found that most Israeli Arabs feel that Palestinian negotiators lack the mandate to make concessions on key issues in peace talks with Israel, including the right of return, the future of Jerusalem, formal recognition of the state of Israel, as well as other territorial concessions.
Professor Nadim Ruchana, who conducted the poll, said: “These results essentially imply that Israeli Arabs are telling Abbas and the PA that they have no right to make decisions that impact upon their future.”....."

# posted by Tony : 8:23 PM
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Lies from Annapolis
Comment by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
"The peoples of the world are being subjected to a fresh dose of lies, this time coming from Annapolis, Maryland, in the United States.
George Bush, the Fuehrer of the White House, who has destroyed two nation-states and killed a million human beings, and then had the chutzpa to claim that the Almighty told him to do so, displayed some of his characteristically morbid magic this week.......
After all, the Palestinians, who have almost miraculously survived in spite of history, are the main victim of this sinister lingering outrage which allows Israel to constantly steal more Palestinian land for the purpose of creating more lebensraum for Jewish settlement expansion. But Palestinian national survival can’t really be taken for granted no matter how many “peace” conferences are organized and how many foreign dignitaries are invited and how many nice-sounding speeches are given.......
Let us be frank and honest about this. Israel is not about to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel is not about to give up the spoils of the 1967 war. Israel is not about to give up occupied East Jerusalem......
And above all of this, Israel is insisting that it be recognized as an exclusively Jewish state whereby Israel’s non-Jewish citizens (25% of the population) would be treated not only as lesser citizens with more or less transient and uncertain status, but actually as children of a lesser God.
So, how can we possibly expect peace with attitudes like these, and with the outrageous willingness on the part of the West to entertain Israel’s racist whims?......
Israel wants any prospective settlement with the Palestinians to reflect Israeli military supremacy, political hegemony and Jewish predominance over American politics and policies......
For these reasons, I am certain that this endeavor will meet the same failure that previous endeavors ultimately met. And then, another American administration might invite the “sides,” along with another multitude of false witnesses, to a new peace conference.
But then, it might be too late for a Palestinian state, or even for peace."

Palestinian refugee children die in Iraq
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 30 November 2007, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Two sick Palestinian refugee children waiting for resettlement from Iraq died in the last two weeks, one of them in Al Waleed refugee camp at the Iraq-Syria border and the other one in Baghdad. Another refugee, a 50-year-old man, also waiting to be resettled, died earlier this month in Al Waleed refugee camp. So far seven people have died there, including three young children, since Palestinian refugees started to arrive at the border in March 2006 fleeing violent attacks against them.
http://www.reliefwe b.int/rw/ RWB.NSF/db900SID /PANA-79FHSD? OpenDocument

Israel high court okays Gaza fuel cuts
Israel's high court on Friday ruled that the state could continue with month-long fuel cuts to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, but ordered a delay on plans to reduce electricity supplies too, officials said.
http://afp.google. com/article/ ALeqM5jM6VzxBYuC EXcyPfOy2CNL37ut TQ
PCHR Weekly Report: 6 killed, 22 wounded, 51 abducted by Israeli forces
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) Weekly Report, in the week of the 22nd to 28th of November, 11 Palestinians, including 2 brothers, were killed by Israeli forces, 28 were wounded, and 42 were abducted by Israeli forces this week.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51795
Israeli military invade Nablus and attack two mosques
At least 30 Israeli military vehicles invaded the Balata refugee camp in eastern Nablus in a pre-dawn military operation on Friday.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51799
Israeli army forcibly evacuate at least 200 Palestinians from Kherbet Qessa
At least 200 Palestinian residents of Kherbet Qessa in the Hebron district were left homeless after being forcibly evacuated by the Israeli army in order to establish the annexation wall in their place.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51785
Israeli military invades Al Bireh and kidnaps three from Hebron
Israeli military forces kidnapped three Palestinian civilians from the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, transferring them to an undisclosed detention center.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51801
Palestinian security forces arrest 7 Hamas men in West Bank
Palestinian security services arrested seven members of Islamic Hamas movement in West Bank over the past 24 hours, security sources and Hamas said on Wednesday.
http://news. xinhuanet. com/english/ 2007-11/28/ content_7162183. htm
PA police terrorize Palestinian journalists
Palestinian police answerable to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have been terrorizing non-conformist Palestinian journalists throughout the West Bank in a manner unprecedented since the creation of the PA following the Oslo Accords in 1993.
http://www.palestin e-info.co. uk/en/default. aspx?xyz= U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MD I46m9rUxJEpMO% 2bi1s7fMOXK% 2bxWa99RfCnAmldp P6uOVD2j1ICqqxuN yblzSKeMiCfLZ9uA szxjkwved9PB614c %2fkuRsJsonlWD9u rRAQmMn3BEr7ZPL3 zkTwEa5Vk% 3d
Four injured in peaceful Billien protest
On Friday after the weekly prayers, residents of the West Bank village of Bilien, west of the city of Ramallah and a group of International and Israeli peace activists marched in a massive rally.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51806
IDF catches two Palestinian teens with bombs at West Bank checkpoint
Security forces on Friday found three bombs in a bag belonging to two Palestinian teenagers at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus in the West Bank.
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ spages/929946. html
PHR-Israel emergency appeal for medical supplies for Gaza
The prolonged siege imposed by the Israeli government on Gaza, the closing of its borders, the tightening of policies regarding permission to exit Gaza for medical purposes, and the severe shortage of medications and other medical supplies all severely damage the Palestinian health system and endanger the lives and health of thousands of Palestinian patients.
http://www.reliefwe b.int/rw/ RWB.NSF/db900SID /KARI-79EQH5? OpenDocument
Israeli High Court orders army to allow passage of four terminally-ill Palestinians
After the deaths of three Palestinian patients awaiting permission from Israel to receive medical treatment, the Israeli High Court ordered on Thursday that the Israeli military must allow four other terminally-ill patients to exit Gaza for treatment.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51797
Report: Gaza closure threatens education of 3,000 students
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza has released a report condemning the Israeli ban on the travel of Gaza Strip students to pursue studies in universities and schools abroad. The Center called upon the international community and international organizations, especially UNESCO and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to pressure Israeli Occupying Forces in the Gaza Strip to allow more than 2,700 students to travel so as to avert the negative consequences for their educational future.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51792
Report warns against proposal for funding of W. Bank outposts
The author of a highly influential government report on illegal outposts in the West Bank has recently warned the government against approving a new justice ministry proposal that would allow state funding for outposts, Haaretz has learned.
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ spages/929745. html
Abbas: Now is the moment of truth for Palestinian statehood
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told his people on Thursday the "moment of truth" on Palestinian statehood has come, following his participation in the Annapolis conference in the United States.
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ pages/ShArt. jhtml?itemNo= 929692&contrassID=1&subContrassID= 1
Israeli Prime Minister: Without two-state solution, Israel will not survive
After meeting with the Palestinian President in the US on Tuesday and Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asserted that a two-state solution between the two peoples is the only possible solution.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51791
PA official: Olmert lying about Temple Mount
Israeli PM claims holy site not up for talks, but Palestinians say he has already agreed to forfeiture.
http://www.ynetnews .com/articles/ 0,7340,L- 3477322,00. html
Haj pilgrims call for opening of Gaza border
Hundreds of white-robed Muslims staged a protest at the closed border crossing between Hamas-run Gaza and Egypt on Thursday to demand they be allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage.
http://www.reuters. com/article/ worldNews/ idUSL29203440200 71129
Hamas says it has secret, public contacts with Europeans
Islamic Hamas movement revealed on Thursday that the deposed Hamas government, which still rules Gaza, has "secret and disclosed" contacts with European sides.
http://news. xinhuanet. com/english/ 2007-11/29/ content_7169748. htm
Ban Ki-Moon: Palestinians continue to suffer indignities of occupation
Marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that the International Day came at a time when Palestinians continued to suffer the indignities and violence of Israeli occupation.
http://www.kuna. net.kw/NewsAgenc iesPublicSite/ ArticleDetails. aspx?id=1861642&Language=en

Olmert: Israel 'finished' without Palestinian state
In unusually frank comments, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned in an interview published today that "the state of Israel is finished" if a Palestinian state is not created, saying the alternative was a South African-style apartheid struggle.
http://www.chron. com/disp/ story.mpl/ front/5339295. html
Blair: There won't be Palestinian state unless it is coherently run coherently
On Wednesday morning, the day after dozens of leaders from around the world came to Annapolis to express support for a renewed dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Quartet envoy Tony Blair was preparing to go to the White House for the ceremony marking the launching of actual negotiations, which was being hosted by President George Bush. We met him at the residence of the British ambassador to Washington, where he lodged during his stay in the U.S. capital.
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ pages/ShArt. jhtml?itemNo= 929898&contrassID=1&subContrassID= 1
The One State Declaration
For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
http://www.counterp unch.org/ onestate. html
James Petras: US Military versus Israel Firsters
The underlying deep and widespread hostility of the high-ranking military officials has nothing to do with Zion-Con charges of 'anti-Semitism' and everything to do with the destruction, demoralization and discredit of the US military.
http://palestinechr onicle.com/ story-1129071719 02.htm
After 40 years of occupation "solidarity" is not enough
On this, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the international community must not only clearly renounce its tacit acquiescence to Israel's violations of international law, but also commit to concrete action to end these violations, and in doing so, end the occupation itself.
http://electronicin tifada.net/ v2/article9133. shtml

PSL: On the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine, we remember the Nakba
Like all great struggles, it has had many twists and turns, and will have many more. But the root cause of the conflict— the forcible expulsion of a people from their homeland—is neither ambiguous nor confusing. Sixty years ago, this is precisely what happened to the Palestinians in "The Catastrophe," known as "Al-Nakba" in Arabic.
http://www.palsolid arity.org/ main/2007/ 11/28/psl- on-the-internati onal-day- of-solidarity- with-palestine- we-remember- the-nakba/
Palestinians commemorate 1947 UN resolution creating state of Israel on their land
On Thursday, November 29th, the Palestinian people commemorated the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. November 29th marks the day on which the United Nations signed a resolution in 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine to create a Jewish homeland, called Israel.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 51794

Stuart Littlewood: See Gaza and Weep
(In the run-up to "Annapolis", Stuart Littlewood went to Gaza on an unusual mission. He joined a party of priests bringing moral support to the Christian community and to its Muslim neighbours, all suffering horribly under Israel's collective punishment and cruel siege.) Traffic into Gaza through the elaborate new border "facility" at Erez is down to a tiny trickle these days since Israel branded the Palestinian seaside enclave a "hostile entity". The purpose of our visit was to bring moral support to elderly Fr. Manuel, who ministers to his flock, runs an excellent school (for Christians and Muslims) and is revered as a local hero. Should he ever leave Gaza, the Israeli authorities will not allow his return, so he has allowed himself to be incarcerated there for 9 years. He'd had no visitors since February and when he heard we were coming, said a colleague, he burst into tears.
http://www.unobserv er.com/layout5. php?id=4123&blz=1
Shades of grey: Nusseibeh's "Once Upon A Country"
In his new historical autobiography Once Upon A Country, Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, who many accuse of selling out due to his comments regarding the right of return, highlights the shades of grey in a conflict that most people prefer to see in black and white. Miko Peled reviews Nusseibeh's new book and finds that it shows that neither Rabin, or Barak or any other Israeli prime minister had ever intended to make peace with the Palestinians. Their intention was, and still is, to turn the Palestinian people into "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for the Jewish state that was established on the ashes of a country that, as the book title suggests, once upon a time existed.
http://electronicin tifada.net/ v2/article9132. shtml
Photo Flash: West Bank, UK - The Musical
Oren Safdie (Private Jokes, Public Places) and Ronnie Cohen (Jews & Jesus) return to the New York stage with the world-premiere musical West Bank, UK – about an Israeli and Palestinian living under the same roof.
http://broadwayworl d.com/viewcolumn .cfm?colid= 23355
CHECKPOINT JERUSALEM BLOG
Going to the movies - in Ramallah: OK, I have a small confession to make: While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were delivering their historic speeches in Annapolis, I was watching a movie. Yes, I missed live coverage of the events, which coincided with the Ramallah debut of "Driving to Zigzigland."
http://www.kansasci ty.com/451/ story/382074. html
Earthquake rumour panics West Bank Palestinians
Ramallah - Schools, high building and even some government offices were evacuated Thursday in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after a rumour said an earthquake was about to hit the territory.
http://news. monstersandcriti cs.com/middleeas t/news/article_ 1377495.php/ Earthquake_ rumour_panics_ West_Bank_ Palestinians
NPR Watch: Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?
All Things Considered coverage of the Annapolis meeting reinitiating Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks was a big disappointment. Ordinarily, such an event would prompt ATC to present a solid half hour of coverage, including providing listeners with the historical and factual background needed to understand and interpret the event.
http://www.counterp unch.com/ pace11292007. html
Robert Fisk: A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are the same
Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo. "It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?
http://news. independent. co.uk/fisk/ article3204054. ece
Op/Ed: Bush isn't the only 'decider'
Despite the show at Annapolis, this week's main diplomatic initiative has concerned Iraq, not Israel. Without any fanfare, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced that the United States and Iraq will begin negotiating a long-term agreement that will set the terms of Washington's Iraq policy for "coming generations." President Bush is again in legacy mode. His White House "czar" on Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, explained that the administration intends to reach a final agreement between the two countries by July 31, 2008. In describing the negotiations, he made a remarkable suggestion: Only the Iraqi parliament, not the U.S. Congress, needs to formally approve the agreement.
http://www.latimes. com/news/ opinion/la- oe-ackerman29nov 29,0,3241305. story
Not Through Annapolis
As the U.S. convenes a Mideast summit in Annapolis, Maryland today, we spend the hour on the Israeli-Palestine conflict with two of the world's leading thinkers: former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky says U.S. backing of continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land is the biggest obstacle to peace. He says: "The crimes against Palestinians. .. are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them. We have to face the reality that our actions have consequences, and they have to be adapted to real-world circumstances, difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of shameful crimes in which we are directly and crucially implicated.
http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/article187 95.htm
Two Ships Passing in the Dark?: The Meaning of Annapolis
Last week, as participants in the latest international peace conference on Israel- Palestine prepared to wend their way to Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, in Tel Aviv senior Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officials were wrapping up a three-day headquarters exercise focusing on urban terror. Media reports said the drill was the largest in eight years to test reactions to and prevention of terror incidents.
http://www.counterp unch.com/ smith11292007. html
Annapolis: US prepares Palestinian civil war
Rallies Arab support against Iran.
http://www.wsws. org/articles/ 2007/nov2007/ anna-n29. shtml
Paint by numbers
The Israeli vice premier and minister of strategic threats (officially strategic affairs) Avigdor Lieberman doesn't let any opportunity pass without mentioning that the positions of the extreme right Israel Beituna Party that he heads have come to form a central "national" consensus in Israel. Lieberman does not conceal his relief that more parties and political movements in Israel have begun to adopt his party's position calling for the implementation of a land swap between Israel and a Palestinian state. In such a swap, the Palestinian leadership is supposed to agree to Israel annexing the major settlement conglomerations in the West Bank in return for annexing to a Palestinian state some of the residential areas in Israel in which the Palestinians live.
http://weekly. ahram.org. eg/2007/873/ re71.htm
Annapolis is About War, Not Peace
"Those claiming to see signs of a plausible peace process in the events that began at Annpolis on Tuesday are clutching at straws. You only have to look at the joint declaration adopted by the Israeli and Palestinian sides under U.S. prodding to see why....The key statement in the declaration adopted at Annapolis, however, is in its concluding paragraph: "Implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States."
http://tonykaron. com/2007/ 11/29/annapolis- is-about- war-not-peace/
Flexibility versus escalation
Israel doesn't need bombs to abort the Annapolis meeting. The incendiary rhetoric with which Israeli officials and media are arming Arab and Palestinian opponents to Annapolis should do the trick.
http://weekly. ahram.org. eg/2007/873/ op11.htm
Demoralisation and absence
A once profound and widely read commentator recently c

Taslima withdraws controversial lines from Dwikhandita, Why?
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Left defensive over Taslima issue
11/30/2007 10:17:06 AM

WB Governor upset with state government
In West Bengal, the Governor has once again expressed his displeasure over the manner in which the state government has handled the Nandigram violence and the Taslima issue and understandably, going ahead this is expected to put more pressure on the Buddhadeb government.
Taslima Nasreen, Bangladeshi Author said, "I want to go back to Kolkata. When will I ever be able to return” But Kolkata might not be a very welcoming place for Taslima after the protest.
After all she was forced to leave Kolkata and saw the army out on the streets, with curfew imposed in many areas for a night when angry mobs came out to protest not only against Taslima, but also against the West Bengal government's inaction in Nandigram. Both the issues have now put the left front on the defensive and even West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi has found it hard to ignore.
The governor's meeting with both Shivraj Patil and President Pratibha Patil was dominated by two issues, Nandigram, and Taslima Nasreen, coming from a governor who made his strong views on the West Bengal government's attitude on Nandigram public, this just puts more pressure on the left front.
http://www.timesnow.tv/NewsDtls.aspx?NewsID=4605

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen on Friday said she was withdrawing some controversial lines from her autobiographical novel Dwikhandita as those evoked strong protests from "a section of people in India."
"I am withdrawing controversial lines in Dwikhandita, written in 2002 with the memory of Bangladesh in the 1980s when the military threw out secularism in the country. I wrote the book in support of the people who defended secular values. I had no intention to hurt anybody's sentiment," she told PTI in Kolkata over phone from an undisclosed location.
"Now since some people in India claim that it hurt their sentiments, I am withdrawing some lines in the book," Taslima said.
The Bangladeshi writer hoped that from now on, there would be no controversy and "I'll be able to live peacefully in this country."
Taslima said she had already asked the publisher of the book People's Book Society not not to circulate copies of the book, which were in their possession.
"I asked my publisher to bring out the next edition of the book deleting those controversial lines," she said.
A spokesman of the publisher said that Taslima had requested them not to circulate copies of the book.
"We will withdraw 30 to 40 copies, already in circulation, from the market and in the next edition we will delete three controversial pages of the book," she said.
In Delhi, Communist Party of India leader Gurudas Dasgupta, who has been in touch with Nasreen, said the author informed him about the decision to withdraw the controversial lines on Prophet Mohammed in her book.
"This is a very correct step she has taken. She believes this step will help bring in normalcy. I also think this would assuage the feelings of those who have been hurt," Dasgupta said.
He expressed hope that the move would also "facilitate her return to West Bengal."
The novel Dwikhandita was banned in India earlier, but the ban was later stayed by the Calcutta high court.
Dear Friends,
I have just read and signed the online petition:
"Granting of Citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen"
hosted on the web by PetitionOnline. com, the free
online petition
service, at:
http://www.Petition Online.com/ eiw2007/
I personally agree with what this petition says, and I
think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a
look, and
consider
signing yourself.
Best wishes,
Satbir Singh Bedi
Granting of Citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen
View Current Signatures - Sign the Petition

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: Indian Government
Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil
President of India
presidentofindia@rb.nic.in
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
manmohan@sansad.nic.in

Granting of Citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen
Honourable President, Honourable Prime Minister:
We are writing this petition to you for granting citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi writer & a human rights defender, who currently lives in Kolkata.
Nasreen has been terrorised in Kolkata during the week beginning 17 November 2007 by certain groups of Islamic fanatics. The latter’s methods of terrorising included assaulting police, burning cars, and holding school children hostage.
In August 2007, a group of Muslim fundamentalist MLAs & their party political cadres committed criminal acts with impunity by targeting Nasreen in Hyderabad where she was invited to speak.
Hate crimes come naturally to these violent & criminally inclined people and, they pose a great danger to & bring instability in a civilized democratic country that value pluralism, human rights, freedom of expression & peaceful assembly. Such people should be regarded as unfit for public office & continual citizenship in any democracy because of deliberately violating the constitution or charter of rights. Further, they should be charged with criminal activities committed against a lawful resident.
Nasreen, a writer & a human rights defender, has a right to live in an Indian city of her choice, doesn’t have to go into hiding in a free country & should be protected from terrorism. (Terrorism needn't always be committed through use of firearms & bombing of civilian targets but can also be perpetrated by violent bigots threatening civilians through assaults, death threats, eviction threats, inciting hate, & spreading
fear.).
(Dr.) Talisman Nasreen (a child specialist turned writer & human rights defender) should be given favourable consideration for Indian citizenship, as well as honoured for her exemplary courage with which she expresses her thoughts on abuse of human rights
Indians of all faith should admire her unique work "Lajja” (“Shame”.) It's not just a novel (as some Bengali writers & readers tend to make out), Lajja reveals more including a vivid account of the atrocities at the time that led to 2,500+ Hindu women being attacked & brutally raped in one single week of December 1992. (Indians of all faith groups and, the world media/ politicians/ governments should be ashamed of themselves for not condemning such heinous crimes.) There is more. 3000+ Hindu temples were razed/ desecrated in that same week, and, there were murders and burning down of Hindu owned shops & businesses located a short distance away from the seat of the then Government & Dhaka Police head quarters.
Taslima received fatwa not for insulting Islam (although it’s never difficult to whip up one) but for telling the truth for which Bangladeshi Islamic cadres, mullahs & politicians should be held to account. One can charge the Pakistani Sunni army for raping 200,000 Hindu girls & women as their ‘comfort women” and for slaughtering 2 million Hindu civilians between March & Dec 1971: but in December 1992, thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims, who could have been annihilated by the West Pakistani army without India’s help & intervention, committed crimes against humanity.
Nasreen has been facing death threats & fatwas in Bangladesh, her country of birth, for last 15 years. So we understand why she is restrained in expressing her outrage on the unprecedented level of minority cleansing & the thousands of gang rapes of minority women in Bangladesh that have been ongoing since October 2001.
It is unacceptable the way Nasreen is being moved around at this time. The Government of the Indian state of West Bengal is wrong on not safeguarding her as a human being & for sending her to Rajasthan. India should not cowed by any home grown &/or imported religious extremists.
India has accommodated millions of persecuted people (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Sufi Muslims) over many centuries and, during last 50 years, India has incurred the wrath & enmity of China for welcoming Dalai Lama, given shelter to Burmese dissidents & refugees, housed 10 million displaced East Pakistanis during 1971, and, taken Tamils fleeing earlier atrocities in Sri Lanka.
Nasreen is a naturalised Indian and should be favourably considered for citizenship. She should be allowed to live and write without fear of persecution and any kind of threats from religious fanatics. A freethinking citizen from any faith or a human being who seeks justice & freedom would strongly support the cause of granting Indian citizenship to her. It’s only to save her from the bigots and religious zealots, Taslima, the writer & the human rights defender, is now a "saranagata" in India.
Ultimately, the Indian Government should protect Nasreen adequately through all available means. In Indian citizenship law there simply is no place of taking the side of one faith that discriminates or terrorises.
We urge you to grant Taslima Nasren citizenship rights, and, protect India’s core values of pluralism, individual human rights, and freedom of expression.
Yours truly:
Mouli Ghosh
on behalf of East India Watch
http://eastindiawatch.blogspot.com/
Copy to:
• Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Leader of the House
psm@sansad.nic.in
• Shri Lal Krishna Advani, Leader of Opposition
advanik@sansad.nic.in
• H.E. Dr. Louise Arbour
larbour@ohchr.org
• Ms Irene Khan
ikhan@amnesty.org
• Ms Catherine Baber
cbaber@amnesty.org
• KennethRoth
• HRWLondon
• HRWToronto
• CarolineMcCormick
• WritersInExileNetwork

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

View Current Signatures
"LET US HAVE OUR SAY"
Dear Friend,
As you know 10th December is International Human Rights Day. Incidents like Singur, Nandigram, Rizwanur made ancient legacy of our state bloodshed. We are getting afraid… Is this our State….West Bengal? Bloodshed at Nandigram, unnatural death of Rizwanur – are not isolated cases, everyday, every hour, people of West Bengal are facing the inhuman attitude and heinous crime against humanity by the people in uniform, in our state.
So the International Human Rights Day observation in this year has another dimension. In this regard we are going to organize one program on 9th December, Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. in between the area of Rabindra Sadan ticket counter and entrance of Academy of Fine Arts Hall. Different celebrities like literary and cultural artists and others intelligentsia of different fields will make the program colorful. Several victims (around 100), tortured by police and state agencies of our state of West Bengal will share their painful experience with us. The dais will be meant for Unheard Voices of the victims of state-repression .
Your active presence on that program will make us enrich and will make stronger in our walk for human rights. We cordially believe that we will be united and will take a greater role in this campaign.
Thanking you,
With regards,

--
Kirity Roy
President
Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha
(MASUM)
26 Guitendal Lane
Howrah 711101
West Bengal INDIA
Mobile: 9903099699
Fax : +91-33-2640 4118
Phone: +91-33-2640 4520
e. mail : kirityroy@gmail. com
Web: www.masum.org. in
Authoring a bungle
By Kuldip Nayar
IT was a case of political asylum. The government of India bungled it
because of the fear of fundamentalists. It could not take the stand that
a democratic, secular country would, not bow before their demand to
oust Taslima Nasreen, an intrepid author of Bangladesh.
She was living in Kolkata with a visa till Feb 17, 2008. She wanted a
permanent residence or citizenship. (The government has moved her to
some place beyond the public gaze.)
In fact, all political parties, except the BJP, have more or less
rejected an asylum for her. Even the Left has not supported her case. The
BJP has done it to exploit the situation. Put M.F. Hussain, the world
famous painter, in place of Taslima, the party’s stand stays exposed. Its
foot soldiers have threatened to kill him if he returns to India. His
paintings of Hindu goddesses irritate the fanatics who have filed dozens
of cases against him.
Both instances when boiled down relate to freedom of expression which
has been threatened. That it should happen in India which is proud of
its ethos of pluralism is a point of concern. Fundamentalists in every
religion want to open the door for communalism.
Yet, once they find it ajar, they would even beak it. India faces the
same dilemma. It should not compromise on principles. But the erosion is
already visible.
Great Britain, with all its racial prejudice, has proved to be far more
liberal than India. Hussain is living in London which has become a
Mecca for dissenters and conscientious objectors. I had imagined that
India would one day be a rendezvous of revolutionaries and others who
raised the standard of revolt against their autocratic regimes.
I even thought that leaders from Pakistan and Bangladesh would come to
Delhi instead of going to London, Dubai or New York.
One other instance which has dismayed me is the centre’s attitude
towards a leading editor who was harassed by Bangladesh. I tried my best to
fix his interview with officials in key positions in the government. He
wanted to stay in Delhi. But none met him.
The government was afraid of Dhaka’s reaction. India, under Jawaharlal
Nehru, was a different country. He had a vision and could see the
country becoming a meeting point of different ideologies and people from
different climes. He welcomed the Dalai Lama at a time when he required
the best of relations with China.
Yet he preferred Indian values to Beijing’s threats. In contrast, the
Manmohan Singh government led by the same party, the Congress, issued
instructions to its ministers not to attend the felicitation ceremony of
the Dalai Lama.
Therefore, it was not surprising to see the centre quibbling over the
status of Taslima. It was just scared lest the asylum should annoy
Indian Muslims.
This is unfair to them because they are not a community of
obscurantists. Nor is Islam against a liberal approach. But my great disappointment
is over the reaction of leading Muslim organisations in the country.
The All India Milli Council which often holds seminars on pluralism
says that she had “not behaved as a gentle lady of an international
dimension”.
The Jamiat-i-Islami which supports a secular front expressed its regret
that the violence in Kolkata was not a sudden outpouring of anger but
the demand by several Muslim organisations for revocation of Taslima’s
visa for many months. Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, very close to the Congress,
says: “Let her not stay in any part of the country. Send her back. You
cannot put the entire country at stake for her sake.”
I wish these organisations, honourable as they are, would tell me what
she said against Islam. Her first book, Lajja (shame) was no piece of
literature but described vividly the anti-Hindu riots in Bangladesh
after the demolition of the Babri masjid.
The 1993 writing is still haunting her. The protesters against Taslima
in Kolkata do not realise that they have communalised the whole issue
of Nandigram.
Already, the BJP is pointing out at its poll meetings in Gujarat how
“intolerant and fanatic” Muslims have turned out to be in their reaction
to Taslima.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been most disappointing. It
has taken an anti-Taslima stand. I have always heard Brinda Karat, the
politburo member, taking up the cause of women. But when it came to
Taslima she was just silent, not even seen anywhere.
Her party’s key functionary, Sitaram Yechuri, said that the West Bengal
government did not force Taslima to go from Kolkata while the fact was
that two officials of the state government put her in a flight to
Jaipur despite per protests.
It has come to light that the administration was badgering her for a
long time to leave Kolkata. The CPM which claims to protect democratic
and secular forces has surrendered before fundamentalists for the sake of
votes.
The emerging third alternative, swearing by secularism, has said that
Taslima must apologise. What is her fault? Is it because she has written
in favour of the afflicted women in Bangladesh?
In fact, what is visible is minority communalism. The recent blasts at
Varanasi, Azamgarh and Lucknow have pointed a finger at it.
Two years ago, I would say that Muslims in India did not go to
Afghanistan when there was a call for jihad. They did not go to Kashmir to
fight because they were aware of the country’s sensitivities.
I cannot say that now because it is clear to me that a soft kind of
parochialism has infected Indian Muslims.
Whether the Al Qaeda or the Taliban have infiltrated the country is not
as relevant as the fact that terrorists get logistic support from
within India and are given shelter here.
The justification given for this are the riots in Gujarat and the
destruction of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya which are like a millstone of
guilt around the nation’s neck.
Yet, there have been vehement criticism of the happenings and till
today there is no slac kening of the anger in the media.
Responsible for the two tragedies, BJP lost the government at the
centre because of them. The common man is tolerant and believes in the
tradition which is secular in content. But what should he do? His life
revolves around daily living and he mixes with different communities in the
process.
He has been conscious of Hindu fundamentalism for some time because of
the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal. Now he also has to reckon
with Muslim fundamentalism which he suspected to be there but has not
seen it in concrete form. He is insecure. Yet his antenna tells him that
the country’s soul is intact, although many Hindus and many Muslims
have got contaminated.
The writer is a leading journalist based in New Delhi.
Withdraw Taslima's books with objectionable comments: AIMPLB
New Delhi : A prominent Muslim body on Friday welcomed Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen's decision to delete objectionable portions from one of her controversial books, while another asked the government to ensure withdrawal of previous editions of the book.
In a cautious response, the All India Muslim Personnel Law Board wondered what will be done with the books already in circulation and asked the government to ensure that they are withdrawn from the market.
"The first question is that of those books which are already available in the market. Those should be withdrawn. She has only said that the coming editions will not contain those controversial lines," AIMPLB spokesman S Q R Ilyas said.
"What about the previous editions?" he asked.
Welcoming the Bangladeshi author's decision, Jamait-e- Hind said that as Nasreen had withdrawn the objectionable lines, the issue had ended.
"If she (Nasreen) has expressed sorry for those lines in her book, then keeping in view the Islamic rules and practices, I feel that all believers will end the issue related to it," Mehmood Madhani, an MP and chief of Jamiat-e- Hind, said.
Nasreen has told PTI that she was withdrawing some controversial portions from 'Dwikhandita' (Split into Two), written in 2002 about Bangladesh of the 1980s.

India tightens security after POSCO project clash

Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
EU-India summit: economic development through mass displacement violates human rights
(Brussels, 30 November 2007) - On the eve of the EU-India Summit in New Delhi, Amnesty International urges EU leaders to raise concerns with the Indian government that serious human rights violations are occurring in the country in relation to economic development projects imposed on local communities.
Marginalized groups face fear of being displaced from their lands as a result of industrialisation projects in the context of the government-managed Special Economic Zones (SEZ). As an example, at least 4000 hectares of land have been used for the SEZ in West Bengal, raising fears that the fundamental rights of the people living in those areas have not been fully respected.
In light of this, the EU should urge the Indian government to implement its economic strategy in such a manner that it respects the communities’ basic rights and its obligations under international law, which requires that evictions are carried out only as a last resort, and only following adequate notice and consultation with those affected.
The land dispute has also recently given rise to violence. At least 40 people died over the past year as a result of violent incidents in West Bengal. "The EU should ask the Indian government to ensure full investigation and prosecution of those responsible", said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty International’s EU Office.
Amnesty International also recalls that the effects of the 1984 Bhopal disaster are still to be fully addressed. Up to now, no one has been held responsible for the toxic leak. Over 20,000 people died and more than a 100,000 continue to suffer from chronic and debilitating diseases.
"After more than 20 years it is high time for the Indian Government, in conjunction with the companies involved, to ensure effective decontamination and clean-up of the Bhopal disaster site, and the EU is well placed to make that call at this summit", said Dick Oosting.
Considering that a parallel business summit will take place in New Delhi, Amnesty International also stressed the crucial link between business and human rights and highlighted the role of the state and of companies in their respective human rights duties in both the EU and India.

For further comment/background and interviews:
Amnesty International EU Office (Brussels):
Tel: 32-2-5021499
Fax: 32-2-5025686
Email: amnesty-eu@aieu.be

India tightens security after POSCO project clash
Reuters Friday November 30 2007
BHUBANESWAR, India, Nov 30 (Reuters Life!) - Authorities in eastern India deployed extra police at the site of a proposed $12 billion steel plant by South Korean steelmaker POSCO after villagers clashed with each other over the plan, police said on Friday.
The plant in Orissa state would be India's single largest foreign investment project, but has been delayed by months of protests by villagers opposed to the plant.
Late on Thursday, small clashes broke out between villagers in favour of the plant and those protesting in Jagatsinghpur district of the state, where authorities are planning to acquire land for the project.
At least a dozen villagers were injured in the clash, forcing the government to deploy a large police force and intensify patrols, a top police officer said.
"We are keeping a close watch on the situation and have deployed adequate police force," Gopal Chandra Nanda, the state's police chief, said on Friday.
The state government and POSCO have said they are serious about pushing ahead with the project.
But villagers have erected barricades in the form of huge gates at several entry points to stop government and company officials from visiting the site.
Last month, armed protesters abducted four senior POSCO officials, including three South Koreans, when they were inspecting the plant site.
They were later released following an assurance by the police that executives from the firm would not visit the area until the dispute was resolved. (Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)
Clashes persist over POSCO project in Orissa
By NI Wire Views:49
Bhubaneswar Comments:0

Nov 30: Turning into yet another Nandigram and Kalinga Nagar like situation two groups of villagers in the Erasama Block of Jagatsinghpur, Orissa turn violent over the proposed POSCO steel plant; taking shape of a serious clash between supporters and opponents that left many injured.
The incident occurred at around 5 pm on Thursday when activists of anti-POSCO project led by the NGO - POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti were sitting on a “dharna” presenting their opposition at Balitutha. This is the place where the NGOs have been continuously demonstrating by blocking roads.
With opposition from locals of Balitutha the activist had later removed the road blockade but the villagers from the nearby region wanted the activists to lift their camp, which didn’t please the anti-POSCO campaigner and this turned into a clash between the two groups.
As per the local reports the supporters of the project pelted stones and even threw bombs towards the anti-POSCO protestors that left more than 15 persons critically injured. The supporters of the project also burnt the tents at the campsite. However, police later took the clash under control though no such cases have been registered so far as the administration has been advocating in favour of the project since long.
The proposed Rs 52000 crore POSCO steel plant has been cause of major unrest in Orissa as farmers of the project site doesn’t want to give up their land citing the land in place are fertile and ever since demanding the plant should be shifted to some infertile land.
The Korean steel company needs a total of 4,000 acres land the sate government has not able to provide half of it that is the major cause of delay though the POSCO deal was signed in June 2005.
The latest hostage issue and repeated conflict is not only worsening the situation but also a clear indication that the administration has not done anything concrete for a proper dialogue with the agitators.
With the implementation of new ‘Rehabilitation and Resettlement’ policy by the central government the people of the Jagatsinghpur district can hope for something better on their way. But first of all, the administration must learn how to take locals into confidence for the success of project like this as any resettlement policy only goes in vague creating most shocking situation like the incident in Kalinga Nagar of Jajpur district where 12 villagers had been killed by police firing while demonstrating against the TATA steel plant.

Opposition creating unrest: Buddhadeb
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/30/stories/2007113055691600.htm

Special Correspondent
KOLKATA: The Opposition was desperate to stall development projects of the State government and was finding “delight in creating an atmosphere of unrest” across the State, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Thursday.
He said:
“It appears that the Opposition has little else to do than stirring up trouble. But we will not be cowed down. “In no other State have I seen the Opposition parties doing what they are doing here. When it comes to promoting the overall interests of a State, all parties elsewhere, even in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, come together. Here, it is not the case.
“But the Opposition cannot prevent us from keeping our commitments to people, who have voted us to power. We have not come to government to sleep away our term.” Mr. Bhattacharjee, who was addressing an open session of the South 24 Parganas district conference of the CPI(M), said: “I have been telling them [the Opposition] that development is not a question of the Trinamool Congress and the CPI(M). It involves the future of people. But they refuse to understand.”
On the central political situation, he said: “Our support to the Congress is not unconditional. If it does not implement policies for the betterment of the common man, we will not support it. We have been telling the Congress not to be under the delusion that because we are supporting you [at the Centre] we will not oppose those policies and legislation detrimental to the interests of people.
SEZs in India: The record so far

C. P. Chandrasekhar
Jayati Ghosh
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/11/27/stories/2007112750070900.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Economic Zones were launched with much fanfare in India but have become a source of intense controversy. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh consider the costs and benefits of SEZs and examine how the different States have implemented the SEZ Act so far.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEZs differ from the older and more acceptable concept of industrial clusters. This is because they go beyond basic infrastructure provision to what are called “enabling conditions”.
For some time now, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been touted across the developing world as one of the chief instruments through which a country can achieve rapid industrialisation through exports. SEZs differ from the older and more acceptable concept of industrial clusters, that is industrial zones that bring together different productive units, with good infrastructure facilities and simplified procedures.
This is because they go beyond basic infrastructure provision to what are called “enabling conditions”, such as tax and duty holidays and/or rebates, highly subsidised or even free land, little or no compulsory worker protection, and the like.
It is really these provisions, which exist to greater or lesser degree in the regimes governing SEZs in different countries, which are so potentially problematic and have become so controversial.
Indeed, it is not clear how much such concessions actually matter in attracting investment.
There is very little conclusive evidence in support of the idea that fiscal concessions are particularly helpful in ensuring more investment, despite the threats routinely issued by corporates in this regard.
Major areas of concern

While the gross benefits of SEZs are still open to debate, there is already much concern about the aggregate social and economic costs of this strategy, making the net benefits even more uncertain. There are three major areas of concern: the fiscal costs; the issue of workers rights and net employment generation; and land transfer, dispossession and displacement.
SEZs in India functioned under the provisions of the Foreign Trade Policy from November 2000 to February 2006. But since February 2006, they have come under the Special Economic Zones Act 2005.
Since then, it is the issue of land acquisition that has become the most controversial and raised the greatest political response in India. Of course this is an important issue, but it can be argued that the areas of policy concern relate more to the process of land transfer and the nature of compensation and rehabilitation of displaced persons, rather than to whether there should be a change in land use per se.
Some opponents of SEZs have argued that any transfer of agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes (whether it be for industry, real estate development or other activities) is invalid and should not occur. However, this is clearly an extreme and unjustifiable position.
Shift in land use

The process of development — even the most equitable, broad-based and democratic sort of development — will necessarily require that land use be shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural purposes as economies and societies become more diversified.
This is not only inevitable but even desirable in the long run, as long as food security issues are adequately taken into account.
However, it is absolutely necessary to ensure that those who are affected by changing land use — which includes not just those with land property titles but all those who had a source of livelihood from that land — are adequately compensated and rehabilitated. Since land use is certainly going to keep changing rapidly, and not necessarily only for SEZ development, this is one of the central policy questions of our times.
In the specific case of land appropriation for SEZs, the question of ownership and control is also critical. In India, the current rules require only 25 per cent of the land to be used for industrial processing purposes, allowing the remaining land to be used for any other purpose. This means that real-estate developers can engage in major land grab in the guise of SEZs. Clearly, the rules must be changed to prevent or at least reduce this possibility.
One response to the issue of land grab has been to argue that the state should actually stay out of this altogether. After all, it is the power of eminent domain of the state that allows land to be taken over for national development purposes. However, leaving land use to market forces — or to private developers to engage in transactions with individual landholders — may be even worse. Firstly, it means that there is no chance of compensation of all the other stakeholders who have been adversely affected, such as tenants and agricultural labourers on that land.
Secondly, it allows for the possibility of large purchasers using pressure tactics or other methods to acquire land, in effect making offers that can’t be refused.
In situations of unequal power it also means that small land holders are less likely to receive the true value of the land.
Therefore the government must be involved in this process, but in a way that ensures that all those who stand to lose through the land acquisition are properly compensated.
Another important issue is whether SEZs actually generate more employment than would otherwise have come about, and the whether the terms of this new employment are acceptable and desirable. A major problem with SEZs in many countries is that they propose to relax or even do away with many laws relating to labour protection and even crime, for the purpose of attracting investment into these zones.
The current Indian law does however provide for the same legal structure of labour protection within SEZs as in the rest of the economy, but of course it is necessary to ensure that these are implemented.
Fiscal losses

But the greatest problem with the SEZ Act in its current form is the huge fiscal losses that will occur because of the tax incentives and hidden subsidies being provided to SEZ developers and producers within the zone.
The offer of tax holidays in the SEZs goes beyond generous — providing 100 per cent exemption from income-tax on profits for the first five years of production and 50 per cent for the next five years. Even land developers are to be given tax breaks.
These amount to appalling losses in terms of foregone revenue — the Finance Ministry has estimated that if total investment in SEZs is around Rs 3,60,000 crore, the revenue loss to the state exchequer would be more than Rs 1,74,000 crore.
To give up such a huge amount of government resources is, of course, a major crime given the needs of Indian society today and in future. But once again, what is at stake is more than the revenue losses, enormous as they are. Providing such massive tax giveaways encourages investors to shift their production from other locations to SEZs, in order to benefit from the tax holiday. This means NO net benefit to the economy from additional investment, since it is simply moving from other areas.
Implementation by States

Given recent public concerns about land acquisition, it is worth examining how the SEZ Act has worked thus far in different States. Table 1 provides a summary of the SEZs that have been notified (as opposed to just approved) from February 2006 to October 2007.
It is evident from Table 1 that only a few States — indeed just five of them — have dominated in actually setting up SEZs, whether in terms of the number or the area involved. This is further clarified in Charts 1 and 2, which show the shares of these four States in total area under notified SEZs and total number of SEZs.
Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra clearly lead the pack in terms of notified and actually functioning SEZs, and have actually given away very large tracts of land for individual SEZs unlike most of the other States. This is interesting to note, given the relative lack of public attention to such land transfer in these States.
It is also worth noting that the compensation given for such acquisition in these States has been well below that offered in some other States such as West Bengal, where there has been much greater and more vocal opposition to very small tracts of land being acquired.
In Andhra Pradesh, for example, just two SEZs in Kakinada and Vishakapatnam account for around 6,500 hectares. In Maharashtra, the Navi Mumbai SEZ alone is spread over an area of around 5,000 hectares, including 1,850 hectares of regional park zone.
It must be borne in mind that the notified SEZs constitute only a small proportion of the SEZs that have already been approved and, therefore, are likely to be notified and come into operation in the near future.
Table 2 indicates that nearly 400 SEZs have been approved as of October 3, 2007, that would cover well above 50,000 hectares of land. However, further acquisition of land for these has been kept on hold until the proposed new national compensation and rehabilitation policy is implemented.
It is evident that once again, the same few States are dominant in terms of the approved SEZs. Only three States — Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh — account for more than 70 per cent of the land of the approved SEZs, although they account for less than half the number.

India tightens security after POSCO project clash

Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
EU-India summit: economic development through mass displacement violates human rights
(Brussels, 30 November 2007) - On the eve of the EU-India Summit in New Delhi, Amnesty International urges EU leaders to raise concerns with the Indian government that serious human rights violations are occurring in the country in relation to economic development projects imposed on local communities.
Marginalized groups face fear of being displaced from their lands as a result of industrialisation projects in the context of the government-managed Special Economic Zones (SEZ). As an example, at least 4000 hectares of land have been used for the SEZ in West Bengal, raising fears that the fundamental rights of the people living in those areas have not been fully respected.
In light of this, the EU should urge the Indian government to implement its economic strategy in such a manner that it respects the communities’ basic rights and its obligations under international law, which requires that evictions are carried out only as a last resort, and only following adequate notice and consultation with those affected.
The land dispute has also recently given rise to violence. At least 40 people died over the past year as a result of violent incidents in West Bengal. "The EU should ask the Indian government to ensure full investigation and prosecution of those responsible", said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty International’s EU Office.
Amnesty International also recalls that the effects of the 1984 Bhopal disaster are still to be fully addressed. Up to now, no one has been held responsible for the toxic leak. Over 20,000 people died and more than a 100,000 continue to suffer from chronic and debilitating diseases.
"After more than 20 years it is high time for the Indian Government, in conjunction with the companies involved, to ensure effective decontamination and clean-up of the Bhopal disaster site, and the EU is well placed to make that call at this summit", said Dick Oosting.
Considering that a parallel business summit will take place in New Delhi, Amnesty International also stressed the crucial link between business and human rights and highlighted the role of the state and of companies in their respective human rights duties in both the EU and India.

For further comment/background and interviews:
Amnesty International EU Office (Brussels):
Tel: 32-2-5021499
Fax: 32-2-5025686
Email: amnesty-eu@aieu.be

India tightens security after POSCO project clash
Reuters Friday November 30 2007
BHUBANESWAR, India, Nov 30 (Reuters Life!) - Authorities in eastern India deployed extra police at the site of a proposed $12 billion steel plant by South Korean steelmaker POSCO after villagers clashed with each other over the plan, police said on Friday.
The plant in Orissa state would be India's single largest foreign investment project, but has been delayed by months of protests by villagers opposed to the plant.
Late on Thursday, small clashes broke out between villagers in favour of the plant and those protesting in Jagatsinghpur district of the state, where authorities are planning to acquire land for the project.
At least a dozen villagers were injured in the clash, forcing the government to deploy a large police force and intensify patrols, a top police officer said.
"We are keeping a close watch on the situation and have deployed adequate police force," Gopal Chandra Nanda, the state's police chief, said on Friday.
The state government and POSCO have said they are serious about pushing ahead with the project.
But villagers have erected barricades in the form of huge gates at several entry points to stop government and company officials from visiting the site.
Last month, armed protesters abducted four senior POSCO officials, including three South Koreans, when they were inspecting the plant site.
They were later released following an assurance by the police that executives from the firm would not visit the area until the dispute was resolved. (Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)
Clashes persist over POSCO project in Orissa
By NI Wire Views:49
Bhubaneswar Comments:0

Nov 30: Turning into yet another Nandigram and Kalinga Nagar like situation two groups of villagers in the Erasama Block of Jagatsinghpur, Orissa turn violent over the proposed POSCO steel plant; taking shape of a serious clash between supporters and opponents that left many injured.
The incident occurred at around 5 pm on Thursday when activists of anti-POSCO project led by the NGO - POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti were sitting on a “dharna” presenting their opposition at Balitutha. This is the place where the NGOs have been continuously demonstrating by blocking roads.
With opposition from locals of Balitutha the activist had later removed the road blockade but the villagers from the nearby region wanted the activists to lift their camp, which didn’t please the anti-POSCO campaigner and this turned into a clash between the two groups.
As per the local reports the supporters of the project pelted stones and even threw bombs towards the anti-POSCO protestors that left more than 15 persons critically injured. The supporters of the project also burnt the tents at the campsite. However, police later took the clash under control though no such cases have been registered so far as the administration has been advocating in favour of the project since long.
The proposed Rs 52000 crore POSCO steel plant has been cause of major unrest in Orissa as farmers of the project site doesn’t want to give up their land citing the land in place are fertile and ever since demanding the plant should be shifted to some infertile land.
The Korean steel company needs a total of 4,000 acres land the sate government has not able to provide half of it that is the major cause of delay though the POSCO deal was signed in June 2005.
The latest hostage issue and repeated conflict is not only worsening the situation but also a clear indication that the administration has not done anything concrete for a proper dialogue with the agitators.
With the implementation of new ‘Rehabilitation and Resettlement’ policy by the central government the people of the Jagatsinghpur district can hope for something better on their way. But first of all, the administration must learn how to take locals into confidence for the success of project like this as any resettlement policy only goes in vague creating most shocking situation like the incident in Kalinga Nagar of Jajpur district where 12 villagers had been killed by police firing while demonstrating against the TATA steel plant.

Opposition creating unrest: Buddhadeb
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/30/stories/2007113055691600.htm

Special Correspondent
KOLKATA: The Opposition was desperate to stall development projects of the State government and was finding “delight in creating an atmosphere of unrest” across the State, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Thursday.
He said:
“It appears that the Opposition has little else to do than stirring up trouble. But we will not be cowed down. “In no other State have I seen the Opposition parties doing what they are doing here. When it comes to promoting the overall interests of a State, all parties elsewhere, even in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, come together. Here, it is not the case.
“But the Opposition cannot prevent us from keeping our commitments to people, who have voted us to power. We have not come to government to sleep away our term.” Mr. Bhattacharjee, who was addressing an open session of the South 24 Parganas district conference of the CPI(M), said: “I have been telling them [the Opposition] that development is not a question of the Trinamool Congress and the CPI(M). It involves the future of people. But they refuse to understand.”
On the central political situation, he said: “Our support to the Congress is not unconditional. If it does not implement policies for the betterment of the common man, we will not support it. We have been telling the Congress not to be under the delusion that because we are supporting you [at the Centre] we will not oppose those policies and legislation detrimental to the interests of people.
SEZs in India: The record so far

C. P. Chandrasekhar
Jayati Ghosh
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/11/27/stories/2007112750070900.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Economic Zones were launched with much fanfare in India but have become a source of intense controversy. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh consider the costs and benefits of SEZs and examine how the different States have implemented the SEZ Act so far.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEZs differ from the older and more acceptable concept of industrial clusters. This is because they go beyond basic infrastructure provision to what are called “enabling conditions”.
For some time now, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been touted across the developing world as one of the chief instruments through which a country can achieve rapid industrialisation through exports. SEZs differ from the older and more acceptable concept of industrial clusters, that is industrial zones that bring together different productive units, with good infrastructure facilities and simplified procedures.
This is because they go beyond basic infrastructure provision to what are called “enabling conditions”, such as tax and duty holidays and/or rebates, highly subsidised or even free land, little or no compulsory worker protection, and the like.
It is really these provisions, which exist to greater or lesser degree in the regimes governing SEZs in different countries, which are so potentially problematic and have become so controversial.
Indeed, it is not clear how much such concessions actually matter in attracting investment.
There is very little conclusive evidence in support of the idea that fiscal concessions are particularly helpful in ensuring more investment, despite the threats routinely issued by corporates in this regard.
Major areas of concern

While the gross benefits of SEZs are still open to debate, there is already much concern about the aggregate social and economic costs of this strategy, making the net benefits even more uncertain. There are three major areas of concern: the fiscal costs; the issue of workers rights and net employment generation; and land transfer, dispossession and displacement.
SEZs in India functioned under the provisions of the Foreign Trade Policy from November 2000 to February 2006. But since February 2006, they have come under the Special Economic Zones Act 2005.
Since then, it is the issue of land acquisition that has become the most controversial and raised the greatest political response in India. Of course this is an important issue, but it can be argued that the areas of policy concern relate more to the process of land transfer and the nature of compensation and rehabilitation of displaced persons, rather than to whether there should be a change in land use per se.
Some opponents of SEZs have argued that any transfer of agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes (whether it be for industry, real estate development or other activities) is invalid and should not occur. However, this is clearly an extreme and unjustifiable position.
Shift in land use

The process of development — even the most equitable, broad-based and democratic sort of development — will necessarily require that land use be shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural purposes as economies and societies become more diversified.
This is not only inevitable but even desirable in the long run, as long as food security issues are adequately taken into account.
However, it is absolutely necessary to ensure that those who are affected by changing land use — which includes not just those with land property titles but all those who had a source of livelihood from that land — are adequately compensated and rehabilitated. Since land use is certainly going to keep changing rapidly, and not necessarily only for SEZ development, this is one of the central policy questions of our times.
In the specific case of land appropriation for SEZs, the question of ownership and control is also critical. In India, the current rules require only 25 per cent of the land to be used for industrial processing purposes, allowing the remaining land to be used for any other purpose. This means that real-estate developers can engage in major land grab in the guise of SEZs. Clearly, the rules must be changed to prevent or at least reduce this possibility.
One response to the issue of land grab has been to argue that the state should actually stay out of this altogether. After all, it is the power of eminent domain of the state that allows land to be taken over for national development purposes. However, leaving land use to market forces — or to private developers to engage in transactions with individual landholders — may be even worse. Firstly, it means that there is no chance of compensation of all the other stakeholders who have been adversely affected, such as tenants and agricultural labourers on that land.
Secondly, it allows for the possibility of large purchasers using pressure tactics or other methods to acquire land, in effect making offers that can’t be refused.
In situations of unequal power it also means that small land holders are less likely to receive the true value of the land.
Therefore the government must be involved in this process, but in a way that ensures that all those who stand to lose through the land acquisition are properly compensated.
Another important issue is whether SEZs actually generate more employment than would otherwise have come about, and the whether the terms of this new employment are acceptable and desirable. A major problem with SEZs in many countries is that they propose to relax or even do away with many laws relating to labour protection and even crime, for the purpose of attracting investment into these zones.
The current Indian law does however provide for the same legal structure of labour protection within SEZs as in the rest of the economy, but of course it is necessary to ensure that these are implemented.
Fiscal losses

But the greatest problem with the SEZ Act in its current form is the huge fiscal losses that will occur because of the tax incentives and hidden subsidies being provided to SEZ developers and producers within the zone.
The offer of tax holidays in the SEZs goes beyond generous — providing 100 per cent exemption from income-tax on profits for the first five years of production and 50 per cent for the next five years. Even land developers are to be given tax breaks.
These amount to appalling losses in terms of foregone revenue — the Finance Ministry has estimated that if total investment in SEZs is around Rs 3,60,000 crore, the revenue loss to the state exchequer would be more than Rs 1,74,000 crore.
To give up such a huge amount of government resources is, of course, a major crime given the needs of Indian society today and in future. But once again, what is at stake is more than the revenue losses, enormous as they are. Providing such massive tax giveaways encourages investors to shift their production from other locations to SEZs, in order to benefit from the tax holiday. This means NO net benefit to the economy from additional investment, since it is simply moving from other areas.
Implementation by States

Given recent public concerns about land acquisition, it is worth examining how the SEZ Act has worked thus far in different States. Table 1 provides a summary of the SEZs that have been notified (as opposed to just approved) from February 2006 to October 2007.
It is evident from Table 1 that only a few States — indeed just five of them — have dominated in actually setting up SEZs, whether in terms of the number or the area involved. This is further clarified in Charts 1 and 2, which show the shares of these four States in total area under notified SEZs and total number of SEZs.
Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra clearly lead the pack in terms of notified and actually functioning SEZs, and have actually given away very large tracts of land for individual SEZs unlike most of the other States. This is interesting to note, given the relative lack of public attention to such land transfer in these States.
It is also worth noting that the compensation given for such acquisition in these States has been well below that offered in some other States such as West Bengal, where there has been much greater and more vocal opposition to very small tracts of land being acquired.
In Andhra Pradesh, for example, just two SEZs in Kakinada and Vishakapatnam account for around 6,500 hectares. In Maharashtra, the Navi Mumbai SEZ alone is spread over an area of around 5,000 hectares, including 1,850 hectares of regional park zone.
It must be borne in mind that the notified SEZs constitute only a small proportion of the SEZs that have already been approved and, therefore, are likely to be notified and come into operation in the near future.
Table 2 indicates that nearly 400 SEZs have been approved as of October 3, 2007, that would cover well above 50,000 hectares of land. However, further acquisition of land for these has been kept on hold until the proposed new national compensation and rehabilitation policy is implemented.
It is evident that once again, the same few States are dominant in terms of the approved SEZs. Only three States — Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh — account for more than 70 per cent of the land of the approved SEZs, although they account for less than half the number.

Excellent work done by the Tumkur team
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
indiadevelop to me, jothiraj
show details Nov 29 (1 day ago)
Dear friend Palash Biswas,

Many thanks for sending me copies of your work in further promoting the Dalit Pnchayat movement. Yes, the excellent work done by the Tumkur team for over 2 decades is an inspiration to all right-thinking people of India. You are right, before "modern manusmriti imperialism " and increasing religious fanaticisms of various colours make life more miserable for common people, there is need to strengthen the present movements. I spent the last week of Oct. in Delhi participating in another march of 25000 tribals and landless people under the banner JANAADESH, for the basic rights. The Govt. has promised to set up a national commission soon.

Let all of us, wherever we are, in whatever capacity, build up the solidarity of such people's movements. Otherwise, USA is ready to swallow India courtesy MMS and combine.

With warm regards, E.P.Menon

"Prathiba Sundaram" wrote:
Re: Quit Islam, Burn the Koran
HE IS AN INDIAN LUNATIC. LEAVE HIM FREE
kanan seems like you have some bad childhood memories associated with marxists and muslims. am i right? damn it, tell them all, you will feel better, this is called "ventilaton" cow's dunk sucker

On Nov 30, 2007 12:03 AM, Kannan Devan wrote:
Ninety Five percent of the deadly problems we face in the world is created by Jihadi Muslims and the inefficient policies of the Marxists and bogus secularists who tolerate intolerant Islam. They come up with phony explanations to substantiate Islamic terrorism. They have a special skill in mentally misdirecting the gullible public by blaming the victims of Islamic terrorism. In India, peace loving, tolerant Hindus are blamed by the Islamic media and their hired agents for Islamic terrorism. The only way to achieve peace, prosperity, progress, harmony and tranquility in the world is to wipe out intolerant and hostile Islamic ideology and closed, rigid, fundamentalist Marxism.

Translation of letter prohibiting entry of yatra in mansa from Gurmukhi to English

Office District Magistrate Mansa
(Miscellaneous Branch)

To
Project Coordinator
Dalit Dasta Virodhi Andolan,Tube Well No.3
Killa Raod ,Phillaur (Jallandhar)

Letter No.2007/Misc---4/14052
Dated: 29-11-2007

Subject: Appointment of Duty Magistrates in relation to arrival of Dalit Dasta Virodhi
Andolan in District Mansa
In reference to: In relation to your office letter no.122o/07 dated 15.112007
In relation to above stated subject Senior Superintendent of Police Mansa thorough his letter no.8616/DSB dated 29-11-2007 and letter no.8645/DSB dated 29-11-2007 has informed that on 30-11-2007 to celebrate the martyr day of Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedkar from 22-11-2007 a Yatra has being from Jallianwala Bag Amritsar to Chandigarh in which 5000 Dalit members will participate. They have informed this office that Rally will pass through villages Kangarh,Kudial and Kishangarh Police Stataion Bareta were there has been clash in the past in village Kangarh,in that regard FIR No.52 dated 13-9-2007 u/s 341,323,427,148,149 IPC Police Station Bareta has been registered which is under investigation. They have written to this office that taking into consideration law and order situation Yatra may not be allowed to pass through these villages.
Therefore considering the law and order situation Yatra is allowed to pass through the villages as mentioned in letter except villages Kangarh,Kudaial and Kishangarh.

-sd-
District magistrate
Mansa

Ref. No.2007/Misc

Excellent work done by the Tumkur team Palash Biswas Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551 Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com indiadevelop to me, jothiraj show details Nov 29 (1 day ago) Dear friend Palash Biswas, Many thanks for sending me copies of your work in further promoting the Dalit Pnchayat movement. Yes, the excellent work done by the Tumkur team for over 2 decades is an inspiration to all right-thinking people of India. You are right, before "modern manusmriti imperialism " and increasing religious fanaticisms of various colours make life more miserable for common people, there is need to strengthen the present movements. I spent the last week of Oct. in Delhi participating in another march of 25000 tribals and landless people under the banner JANAADESH, for the basic rights. The Govt. has promised to set up a national commission soon. Let all of us, wherever we are, in whatever capacity, build up the solidarity of such people's movements. Otherwise, USA is ready to swallow India courtesy MMS and combine. With warm regards, E.P.Menon "Prathiba Sundaram" wrote: Re: Quit Islam, Burn the Koran HE IS AN INDIAN LUNATIC. LEAVE HIM FREE kanan seems like you have some bad childhood memories associated with marxists and muslims. am i right? damn it, tell them all, you will feel better, this is called "ventilaton" cow's dunk sucker On Nov 30, 2007 12:03 AM, Kannan Devan wrote: Ninety Five percent of the deadly problems we face in the world is created by Jihadi Muslims and the inefficient policies of the Marxists and bogus secularists who tolerate intolerant Islam. They come up with phony explanations to substantiate Islamic terrorism. They have a special skill in mentally misdirecting the gullible public by blaming the victims of Islamic terrorism. In India, peace loving, tolerant Hindus are blamed by the Islamic media and their hired agents for Islamic terrorism. The only way to achieve peace, prosperity, progress, harmony and tranquility in the world is to wipe out intolerant and hostile Islamic ideology and closed, rigid, fundamentalist Marxism. Translation of letter prohibiting entry of yatra in mansa from Gurmukhi to English Office District Magistrate Mansa (Miscellaneous Branch) To Project Coordinator Dalit Dasta Virodhi Andolan,Tube Well No.3 Killa Raod ,Phillaur (Jallandhar) Letter No.2007/Misc---4/14052 Dated: 29-11-2007 Subject: Appointment of Duty Magistrates in relation to arrival of Dalit Dasta Virodhi Andolan in District Mansa In reference to: In relation to your office letter no.122o/07 dated 15.112007 In relation to above stated subject Senior Superintendent of Police Mansa thorough his letter no.8616/DSB dated 29-11-2007 and letter no.8645/DSB dated 29-11-2007 has informed that on 30-11-2007 to celebrate the martyr day of Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedkar from 22-11-2007 a Yatra has being from Jallianwala Bag Amritsar to Chandigarh in which 5000 Dalit members will participate. They have informed this office that Rally will pass through villages Kangarh,Kudial and Kishangarh Police Stataion Bareta were there has been clash in the past in village Kangarh,in that regard FIR No.52 dated 13-9-2007 u/s 341,323,427,148,149 IPC Police Station Bareta has been registered which is under investigation. They have written to this office that taking into consideration law and order situation Yatra may not be allowed to pass through these villages. Therefore considering the law and order situation Yatra is allowed to pass through the villages as mentioned in letter except villages Kangarh,Kudaial and Kishangarh. -sd- District magistrate Mansa Ref. No.2007/Misc?4/____ dated 29-11-2007 Copy of this letter to: Senior Superintendent of Police Mansa for necessary action and information immediately to Sub Divisional Magistrate Mansa/ Budhlada/ Sardulgarh for necessary action PA to DC/Steno to ADC and Steno to AC (G) Mansa for information -sd- District Magistrate Mansa Hon,ble Chief Justice of India High Court at New Delhi Subject: Regarding violation of Fundament Right of Speech and Movement and Article 21 of Constitution of India of Dalits by Deputy Commissioner Mansa Respected Sir/Madam, Dalit Dasta Virodhi Andolan is a public spirited Social Action Group, involved in eradication of Bonded Labour System and Dalit Atrocities. DDVA on 6th December 2007 Martyr Day of Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar celebrating as ?Dalit Daman Virodhi Maha Rally? at Chandigarh. More then 5000 Dalits form Punjab will gather at Chandigarh to warn the Chief Minister of Punjab to take formative action against the atrocities on Dalits. We are starting a Yatra on 22nd November 2007 from Jallianwala Bag Amritsar and will pass through the following districts Amritsar, TranTaran, Jallandhar, Kapurthala, Ferozpur, Bathinda, Mansa, Sangrur, Patiala, Fathegarh Sahib, Mohali and will culminate at Chandigarh on 6th December 2007. The march is a peaceful march on Gandhian & Ambedkar?s philosophy. After traveling in more then 100 villages peacefully Yatra will enter District Mansa on 30.11.2007 evening. Now on 30.11.2007 and e-mail prior to few hours of entrance in District Mansa has been received from the District Magistrate Mansa, prohibiting the entry of Yatra in Villages Kangarh, Khudal and Kishangarh under Police Station Bareta District Mansa. If there is threat to law and order situation why the landlords who attacked the Dalits on 13.9.2007 are not yet arrested by Police so far, therefore Police is giving shelter to landlords and restraining the peaceful marchers. That the Yatra is an peaceful march as is evident from the traveling from 22 November 2007 onwards, although the District Administration Mansa has failed to protect the fundament rights of the Dalits in Punjab as guaranteed under Article 19 (a)& (d) and 21 of Constitution of India and the act of the Administration is to suppress the voice of dalits for their rights. Now District Mansa has become a second Nandigram were the rights of the weaker section has been violated by the administration. That all the Deputy Commissioners and Senior Superintendents of Police from where the Yatar will pass were informed in advance to provide security and avoid any mishappening, as earlier DDVA from 14th August 2007 started a Pad Yatra from Fathegarh Sahib which faced resistance from the landlords and during this Yatra DDVA activists were illegally arrested by Police of Police Station Lehra District Sangrur and later were discharged by the orders of SDM Moonak and in village Kangarh District Mansa activists were attacked by mob of landlords, but the Administration remained the salient spectator and did not taken any action against the violent landlords, but peaceful marchers were restrained. You are therefore humbly requested to issue appropriate directions to District Administration Mansa to provide appropriate security to Yatra and protect the Fundament Rights of Dalits in the Yatra. Thanking you Yours truly, Jagjiwan Singh Legal Coordination Enclosed: Letter received from DM, Mansa prohibiting entry of Yatra in Villages of Mansa under Police Station Bareta and its translation in English The plight of India's ?untouchables? elicits only sporadic attention within the country. Public outrage over large-scale incidents of violence or particularly egregious examples of discrimination fades quickly, and the state is under little pressure to undertake more meaningful reforms. Laws granting Dalits special consideration for government jobs and education reach only a small percentage of those they are meant to benefit. Laws designed to ensure that Dalits enjoy equal rights and protections have seldom been enforced. Instead, police refuse to register complaints about violations of the law and rarely prosecute those responsible for abuses that range from murder and rape to exploitative labor practices and forced displacement from Dalit lands and homes. Laws and government policies on land reform and budget allocations for the economic empowerment of the Dalit community remain largely unimplemented. Dalits who dare to challenge the social order have often been subject to abuses by their dominant-caste neighbors. Dalit villages are collectively penalized for individual ?transgressions? through social boycotts, including loss of employment and access to water, grazing lands, and ration shops. For most Dalits in rural India who earn less than a subsistence living as agricultural laborers, a social boycott may mean destitution and starvation. The present time is an historic moment, not only for Dalits, but for all those committed to basic human rights and principles of justice, equality, liberty, fraternity. India, a rising star and increasingly important player on the world stage, must not be allowed to ignore the injustice and oppression within its own borders any longer. Together, we must unite, nationally and internationally, to force the Indian government to rise above an entrenched caste-mentality and to properly enforce its laws, implement its policies, and fulfill its responsibility to protect the basic human rights of ALL of its citizens. Among the Dalit community and its supporters & sympathizers, Dr. Ambedkar?s statement resounds louder today than ever: ?My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can lose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of reclamation of human personality. It is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for the reclamation of human personality." Jai Bhim! **Some information above quoted/adapted from Chapter 1 of: Smita Narula, Broken People: Caste Violence Against India?s Untouchables (Human Rights Watch, 1999). http://www.ncdhr.org.in/ncdhr/general-info-misc-pages/oodhrs Power in the hands of forces that actively establish a hegemonic culture such as Brahminism shall never guarantee equal rights for all people. This is being witnessed and experienced in India with the Nation State having become a virtual Agent State of the Hindutva forces. The denial and violations are blatant and brutal. Decimation of multiculturalism in India will naturally make the Dalits and other marginalized groups effective instruments in the hands of the dominant forces as the fundamental principles of governance in this order are drawn from an instrumentalist rationality. It will be a national disaster if the nearly 240 million Dalits in this country are governed by Brahminic worldview and become instruments in the hands of the Hindutva forces. Starting from the great Ravana till Babasaheb Ambedkar all Dalit ancestors and elders have made a choice against such instrumentalization. Pluralism ? An Antidote It is then of paramount importance that in the interest of the nation and of the marginalized communities Dalit culture and other subaltern cultures are respected, reviewed and revived not necessarily in their pristine glory but in a way that they will lead to the strengthening of the internal governance of different communities. This should further lead to national governance that will distribute values equally, both material and spiritual. Rama who is the axis of the wheel of the Hindu revivalism by the RSS, VHP and the like is a symbolic representation of the antithesis of the distribution of values. The symbolic representations of Rama are the defeat, murder and co-option of the indigenous kings and queens for the appropriation of their land, labor and water. These are later transferred into the hands of the Brahminic forces. Deprivation par excellence. The machinations continue till today. Set against this background pluralism will act as an effective antidote against the emergence of the Brahminic State as an absolute State. Copyrights Reserved. www.dalitreds.in Dalit Culture ? A Reality of History The following suggestions are made for the renewal and re-establishment of the Dalit culture. Dalit Religion ? The Dalit people are an eco people who worshipped earth as mother and established relationship in order to draw energy and life from her. Such a relationship has been lost to a great extent by the physical alienation of land from them and by the intellectual barraging of looking at earth only as a material resource that needs to be accumulated. Through the worship of the earth as Booshakthi the Dalit people will lay a claim to their inheritance of this earth. Another major dimension of the ancient Dalit religion, which is still very much prevalent in the Dalit communities, is the worship of ancestors. This will be revived as a strong assertion of the rejection of the normative order of capitalism and Brahminism. Dalits are neither Hindus, nor Christians, nor Muslims, nor Buddhists. DALITS ARE DALITS. In this reassertion we give a clarion call to all our Dalit brothers to come back to Dalit religion established by our ancestors and elders and now revived through Dalitology. Dalit Panchayat ? The normative order of Dalitism will find expression in the establishment of the Dalit Panchayat, which is the forum for the internal governance of the Dalit community. In the conventional village Panchayat the Dalit people are allowed only to stand and receive judgment (it is always a punishment) from the dominant caste people. Dalit Panchayat is an assertion of the Dalit people that they will be governed by their own beliefs, value systems and practices. Dalitism accepts differences. However, it does not allow differences to form the basis of discriminating cosmic beings as superior and inferior. By strengthening the Dalit communities through an internal normative order the Dalit Panchayats will strive hard to consolidate and expand its space in governance so that a Dalit Social Order may be ushered in. In this Dalit Social Order there will be no place for superiority-inferiority, purity-impurity, discrimination and exclusion. Each community will have the freedom to govern itself according to its own internal normative order developed through its history and culture. The society that will be governed by Dalitism will be a multicultural society. Cosmosity ? The lifeline of Dalit culture is the energy it derives from the cosmos and the values it has developed towards cosmic beings. Man is just one part of the cosmos and his claim to superiority over all other beings is born out of a high level of arrogance. In this blurred vision of man he is unable to see even woman as equal. Cosmosity is the attitude of a total identification with nature and a readiness and acceptance to merge into it without even an iota of desire to perpetuate oneself. Thus in Cosmosity there is no place for god, soul, heaven, hell etc. Cosmosity is another name for what is conventionally understood as spirituality. Copyrights Reserved. www.dalitreds.in Dalit Normative Order ? In the internal normative order of the Dalit community there will be the following dimensions. Five Dalit Festivals will be celebrated in a year. No festival will take glory in the killing or subjugation of the symbolic representations of another community. The five festivals will be the Dalit New Year Day (10 January); Birthday of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Babu Jagjivanram (14 April); Dalit Women?s Day (03, June); Booshakthi Festival (04 August) and Dalit Ancestors Day (06 December). No More Caste Service - Dalits will give up forthwith all free labor that is ascribed to them through the caste system. The welfare of the village such as cleaning, removing dead animals, festivals, marriages etc. is the responsibility of the whole village. In as much as other caste people in the villages are willing to participate in these labor the Dalits will also participate and only in such proportion that it represents the collective responsibility of the whole village. Dalit Community Education - Dalits will initiate a community education programme on their history and culture. Dalit literature, especially Dalitology will be read out to the community everyday in such a way that all people will be able to hear from wherever they are. Each Dalit village will have a Booshakthi Sevaka or Sevaki who will take care of the community education. The Dalit Panchayat will also see to it that all Dalit children are enrolled in formal educational institutions and no child will drop out of school. Music, Beef and Toddy - Dalit musical instruments will begin to thunder during all Dalit festivals and other community gatherings. Beef eating, which is an ascribed reason for imposing untouchability on the Dalit people will be done with gusto during all community celebrations. Toddy, which is a part and parcel of Dalit food, will be revived. Color Symbol and Community Events - Blue and black will become the color symbols of the Dalit people as they have always been in history. The birth of a Dalit child, the naming of the Dalit child, the day when a Dalit girl becomes a woman, the Dalit marriage and the Dalit death will be celebrated with ceremonies drawn from the age old traditions and customs of the Dalit communities. Long Live Dalitism Since the dominant Brahminic culture is the perpetrator of untold violence not only on the Dalit people but also on all hapless communities the Dalit people all over the country will form their own protection forces. The Hindutva forces are preparing their men and women in the use of arms to strike at the Dalit people and the minorities if they do not go by the universalism of their scriptures. Copyrights Reserved. www.dalitreds.in However, the Dalit people will establish a society based on multi-culturalism and pluralism. A culture that is guided by pluralism is less violent than a culture that is guided by universalism. The problem with Capitalism and Brahminism is that their fundamental virtue is violence of multiple dimensions. Democracy is surrounded with weapons of mass destruction and non-violence is soaked with the blood of the victims of hegemonic shenanigans of the Brahminic forces. Dalitism has a history of resilience in the face of continuous onslaught on its dignity and rights. It is non-violent. Dalitism has a history of providing unlimited space to all people of the earth just as Mother Earth does. It is an egalitarian social order. Dalitism has a history of recognizing, respecting and accepting all cultures. It is pluralism par excellence. Press Release A Pastor Killed and Church Set on flame by Hindu Fundamentalists in Chhattisgarh Christians Appealed to Prime Minister, National Minorities Commission. New Delhi, November 22, (All India Christian Council) The Hindu fundamentalists murdered a pastor and burnt a church at Mandwa village under Kodenar Police Station of Jagdalpur district in Chhattisgarh on November 20th night. The village has 60 Christian families who are members of a Pentecostal church. The information reaching to the All India Christian Council, on the night of November 20th, Bajrang Dal activists came in a jeep and surrounded the church with the help of some of the villagers. Pastor Sudroo, Ramlal, Sonadhar Kashyap and Jugal Kashyap were tied with ropes and severely beaten and pastor was reported murdered by the fanatics. The General Secretary of Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, Mr. Arun Pannalal informed to Christian Council that one pastor has been murdered by the Hindu fundamentalists. "The Christians, who witnessed the incident, rushed to local police station to lodge First Information Report (FIR) against those culprits. They were detained in police station for 24 hours without food and water and later released without registering the complaint," says Mr. Pannalal. The attack on Christians in Mandwa was informed to the concerned Superintendent of Police and the District Collector by Kodenar police station but no action against the Hindu fundamentalists was taken till the filing of this report according to the sources reaching to Christian Council. The Christian minorities in the state are facing grievances as the state and district authority do not take action against the Hindu fundamentalists, who have tortured innocent Christians in the state, says Mr. Pannalal. The legal system in the state has failed to render justice to Christian minorities, now only possible way left is to approach the Office of Prime Minister and National Minorities Commission, says Mr. Pannalal. The religious persecution in Chhattisgarh has mounted up ever since Bharatiya Janata Party has come to the power in April 2001. Christian workers and missionaries suffer false allegation of forced and fraudulent conversion charges under Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religious Act 1968, which is actually an anti religious freedom in its nature. Mr. Pannalal says, "None of the allegations against pastors and Christian workers by the Hindu fundamentalists have been given verdicts so far, which mean the charges are baseless." National Commission for Minorities has termed the Anti Conversion bills passed in eight Indian states violets the fundamental rights provided in Indian Constitution and the Commission said that India has enough laws to handle the fraud and forced conversions, therefore there is no need of such laws. The Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religious Bill 1968 was amended in 2006 by BJP Government, but Governor Narasimhan refused to sign it into the law and forward to the Attorney General of India Milon Banerjee for legal opinion. The Christian persecution in India has risen to four attacks per week, already 192 in 2007 (from 1 January to 22 November) while there were 178 in 2006 and 165 in 2005. These figures represent only the reported incidents while many other unreported attacks take place. The All India Christian Council (www.aiccindia. org), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders. By Madhu Chandra Regional Secretary, All India Christian Council About 90 percent of women working in unorganized sector are mainly from the lower castes (:87). It may be surprising to know that till1932 the representation in legislature was only by uppercaste Hindus and untouchable were totally neglected (:90). By recognising the seriousness of women?s participation in politics, in the year 1987 the Janata Government in Karnataka announced 25 percent reservation for women in Zilla Parishad and Mandal Panchayat, as per Zilla Parishad Act 1932, with a special provision of 5:1 ratio reservation to dalit women in 25 percent women reservation, which is a very important and significant aspect. Due to this reservation a number of dalit women had an opportunity to take part in active politics. 19 dalit women against 211 upper caste women in Zilla Parishad and 2469 dalit women against 14025 upper caste women in Mandal Panchayats were elected. The participation of these representatives in active politics varies. A few women have really showed good performance in the participation. But with their social and economic background and the level of education they need proper guidance and time to reveal their responsibilities in power sharing and decision making (:90). The representation of dalit women in Zilla Parishad and Mandal Panchayat does not widen the reality of women?s political visibility. Therefore efforts should be made to increase the scope and percentage of reservation in legislatures and in Parliament. All the political parties should strictly implement the reservation specifically for dalit women. And it is the responsibilities of voluntary social organizations, dalit organizations and women organizations to pressurize the political parties for the implementation of reservation and also to create the politica awareness and its importance among women (:90). The dalit women are exploited by dalit men, and the uppercaste men and women (91). Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wanted to bring certain changes in the Hindu law for the betterment of women. In 1951 when he was a minister in Jawaharal Nehru?s Cabinet, he wanted to bring an amendment in Hindu Law such as adoption, guardianship, divorce, Hindu Marriage, Widow Re-Marriage and property rights to women. But because of the strong opposition by the traditional caste Hindus the bill was not accepted in the parliament and because of this Dr. Ambedkar had to resign from Nerhu?s Ministry (92). Rathnaiah, K. 1991. Social Change Among the Malas: An Ex-Untouchable Caste in South India. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House. Social Organization: The Malas have patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence. Property cannot be inherited by a woman. The wife of a deceased person is not entitled to any share from the property of her husband. She will be looked after by her male children (:39).). Types of families among Malas: nuclear 58%, joint 39%, extended 3%. 95% of respondents married through arrangement and negotiations, 3% had love marriages, and 1% had inter-caste marriage (:43). Relationship in mate selection: 47% had cross-cousin, 37% had uncle-niece, 15% had distant relations, and 1% others (:45). Age at Marriage for females: below 10 years, 10%; 11-15 years, 52%; 16-21 years, 29%, 21-25 years, 5%; above 25 years, 5%. Age at Marriage for males: below 10, 0%; 11-15, 1%; 16-21, 3%, 21-25, 23%; above 25 yrs. 65% (:46). Among Malas we find bride price which is locally known as 'Oli' practised by 84% of respondents, dowry by 12%, and in 4% of marriages no money was given (:47-8). Reddy, D. N. 1984. "Women in Economic Development: The Scheduled Caste Female Agricultural Labourers in India - A Target Group Approach," in Manohare, ed., Women?s Status and Development in India. Warangal: Society for Women?s Studies and Development. Pp. 40-51. Rege, Sharmila. 1995. "Caste and Gender: The Violence Against Women in India," in P. G. Jogdand, ed., Dalit Women in India: Issues and Perspectives. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, in collaboration with University of Poona, Pune. p. 18-36. Steven Lukes? "Radical View of Power"(Lukes 1974) and Harding?s "Epistemology of Rainbow Coalition Politics" (Harding 1991) provide the relevant theoretical framework for the analysis of violence and the strife in sisterhood. The violent practices against women reveal definite variations by caste; while upper caste are subjected to controls and violence within the family, it is the absence of such controls that makes lower caste women vulnerable to rape, sexual harassment and the threat of public violence. To varying degrees these different practices are "accepted" as given and some of them like ?sati? and ?devdasi? practice may even be glorified (:19). Lukes has agued that the supreme exercise of power is through compliance, by control over the thoughts and desires of the other. Further, Lukes has argued that power presupposes human agency and that agents consist in a set of expanding and contracting opportunities. Together these constitute the structural possibilties which specify the power of agents varying between time and over agents (Lukes 1974). Women?s agency needs to be located in the context of the structural possibilities of class, race, caste and community. The collusion and contestation between partiarchies and ?brahmanism? (upper castes practices and ideologies) reveals the exercise of such power through the differential definitions and management of gender by caste (:19). Centering from the perspective of the marginalized prevents the distortion of both; those at the center and at the margins (Harding 1991). Further, such an analysis need not amount to speaking for the marginalized or speaking for the ?Dalit? women - for the multiple and contradictory subject agent of feminism is also logically the subject of every other libratory project. In following Harding, we agree that this is not only epistemological but also a moral and political issue (1995:19-20). More than seventy percent of India?s labor force falls in the category of landless labor. The number of female headed households have been on the increase and there has been a growing deterioration and privatization of the country?s common property resources on which the poor in general and women in particular depend (Agarwal 1989). Food allocation in the family is heavily biased in favor of men... despite the fact that women in this region perform at least fifteen hours of arduous labor. This contributes to a higher mortality rate among women (:21) Several studies have revealed that employment for women of the upper and middle classes has not brought much change in the power axes of the family (Standing 1990). Women?s labor in fact remains a flexible resource (Banerjee 1992). The population of women in India has been declining and the sex-ratio has declined from 972 females to 1000 males in 1901 to 927 felames to 1000 males in 1991. Only 24.8 percent of the women are literate and only 5.7% can ever reach the university. More than 70% of the female labor force is in the unorganized section which means long hours of work, wage differentials and no security (:21). Despite child marriage being a legal offence, 10% of the females in the age group of 10-14 are married by the age fo 18. Birth of daughters is unwelcome and new forms of female foeticide are emerging. The birth of a daughter means the liability of guarding her virginity and debts in paying the dowry in marriage to the bridegrooms family. This payment, however, does not guarantee any security for women as there is always a demand for more in the form of festive offerings and gifts (:21-22). In the capital city of New Delhi, two women die of burns every day; the cases being either of ?suicide? or dowry murders. In 1991, the number of women who faced the torture of rape were estimated at 2 million, and the majority of the victims were tribal, Dalit; the incidence of rape being higher in areas declared to be turbulent and where the army or the police have been stationed (Gandhi and Shah 992). The declaration of emergency and withdrawal of civil rights in 1975 had led to several atrocities. As the emergency war lifted, civil liberties groups brought to light several cases of gang rapes of lower caste women in northern India. The left and anti-caste movements labelled the feminist focus on violence violence as ?middle class? and saw the women?s centers as being ?welfaristic? and not ?revolutionary? enough (:22). For the first thirty years after Independence, women figured in the planned development as only ?mothers? in the ?mother and child welfare programs?; despite the fact that more than 50% of the agricultural labor was provided by women (Towards Equality 1975). This spirtuality of the inner sanctum, the home was to be maintained by the woman as the torch bearer of tradition (all violence within the family was thus rendered invisible), and by reverse logic all those women (lower caste and working class) who ?did not? were designated as ?impure. ? (:25) Ramusack (1990) referred to the British feminists as the ?maternal imperialists? while Paxton (1990) argues that for the feminist the choice was limited, between being racists and loyal or being disloyal to the civilization (:26). The first wave of feminists in India (20th century) were women related to the reformers or the nationalists, mainly upper caste women who lobbied tirelessly for the right to property ans amendments in the Hindu law of marriage. These first wave feminists were preoccupied with issues of ?status? rather than ?survival?. It was therefore, the uppercaste, middle class women who drew the benefits from the constitutional guarantees and leagal measures (Omvedt 1985). The second wave feminists in India who formed autonomous groups politicised the issue of violence against women, both inside and outside the home. Free legal aid centers and counselling groups were set up and consciou

CIA Plans to Disrupt Venezuela Election
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
Jewish human rights group launches four-nation Nazi hunt in South America

By Jeannette Neumann
ASSOCIATED PRESS

2:48 p.m. November 27, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – A Jewish human rights group launched a “last chance” hunt for surviving Nazis in South America on Tuesday, hoping to track down perpetrators of genocide before they die of old age.
“The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrators,” said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli Simon Wiesenthal Center as he announced the campaign.
The No. 2 Nazi on the center's most-wanted list is Dr. Aribert Heim, who is believed to be in either Chile or Argentina, Zuroff said. “The whole program would be worth it just if we found Heim.”
The Wiesenthal Center is offering a $460,000 reward for information leading to the capture and prosecution of Heim, who it says worked as a “doctor” in three concentration camps, injecting the drug phenol directly into the hearts of Jews and other prisoners to kill them. The Austrian and German governments put up part of the reward money.
Heim's daughter is currently living in Chile, Zuroff said, and the former Nazi doctor continues to maintain a bank account in Germany containing more than $1.5 million.
If alive, Heim, known as “Doctor Death,” would be 93 years old.
“I'm sure, God forbid, that if someone murdered your grandmother, and we found that murderer 60 years later, it wouldn't very much matter to you if that person was 70, 80 or 90,” Zuroff said.
“All of the people who committed these crimes murdered someone's grandmother or grandfather, father or mother, son or daughter,” he added.
“Operation: Last Chance” was first launched in 2002 in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
According to an annual report released earlier this year by the Wiesenthal Center, there are 1,018 ongoing investigations of Nazi war criminals in 14 countries. The yearlong period ending March 31 saw 21 convictions, primarily in Italy, a statistic that is “considerably higher than in past years,” Zuroff said.
Many Nazi war criminals fled to South America, especially to Argentina, after World War II.
In November 1995, former Nazi Capt. Erich Priebke was extradited from Argentina to Rome, where at 93 he is serving a life sentence for his role in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in 1944.
Priebke had lived peacefully for decades in the Patagonia mountain town of San Carlos de Bariloche, where he was found and interviewed in 1994 by Sam Donaldson for the ABC News program “Prime Time Live.”
The most famous case was the 1960 capture in Buenos Aires of SS Col. Adolf Eichmann, the so-called architect of Adolf Hitler's final solution to exterminate Europe's Jews. Eichmann was hanged in 1962 in Israel, after a trial that led journalist Hannah Arendt to coin the term “the banality of evil.”
http://www.signonsa ndiego.com/ news/world/ 20071127- 1448-argentina- nazihunt. html
CIA Plans to Disrupt Venezuela Election
http://www.venezuel analysis. com/analysis/ 2914
------------ --------- -----
Emergency support rally for
Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution!
Stop the U.S. gov't/media slander campaign!
This Saturday, Dec. 1st at 1pm
Venezuelan Consulate
7 East 51th Street
(between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue)
Take the E/V to 5th Ave or the 6 train to 51st St.
See below for other weekend events.
Click this link to endorse
http://answer. pephost.org/ site/Survey?
SURVEY_ID=4240& ACTION_REQUIRED= URI_ACTION_ USER_REQUESTS
Contact 212-694-8720 or nyc@answercoalition .org
for more information or to get involved.
On Sunday, December 2, the Venezuelan people will go to the polls once again to vote in a
referendum to reform the country's constitution. People in the United States who support
social justice need to stand with the Bolivarian Revolution in the face of U.S. government
threats and media lies.
The Venezuelan public has expressed its political will over and over again in the last
several years. This process has involved millions of people and been profoundly
democratic. But because their will contradicted the aims of U.S. imperialism, Washington
and the corporate media have slandered President Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan
revolution. They have grotesquely distorted, or simply invented, the political reality in
Venezuela.
As the struggle over Venezuela's future heats up -- and the traditional elite become more
desperate to halt the revolution's momentum -- the anti-Venezuela propaganda
campaign will intensify. There have been rumblings of another U.S.-backed coup attempt.
Progressive people in this country need to set the record straight and stand up in defense
of Venezuela's sovereignty.
On Saturday, December 1st, the day before the referendum in Venezuela, there will be an
emergency support rally in front of the Venezuelan Consulate at 7 East 51th Street
(between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue). The rally will begin at 1pm, and then we will
march to CNN headquarters to protest the misinformation propagated by the U.S.
corporate media. Click this link to endorse.
Call 212-694-8720 or email nyc@answercoalition .org for more information.
Endorsers: ANSWER Coalition, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Cuba Solidarity New York,
Lucha (Columbia University), ANSWER Club (Bronx Community College), Red de Resistencia
Revolucionaria, Iglesia de San Romero - UCC,
Venezuela's constitutional reforms
The proposed reforms are aimed at building a "social economy," strengthening grassroots
communal councils, allowing unlimited presidential reelections so that option is "the
sovereign decision of the constituent people of Venezuela" (similar to the political process
in countries like England, France, Germany and Australia), lowering the eligible voting age
from 18 to 16, guaranteeing free university education to the highest level, prohibiting
foreign funding of elections and political activity, and reducing the work week to 36 hours
to promote more employment.
Unlike traditional political debates, the discussions of the reforms occurred nationwide
and involved massive public participation. In a 47-day period, some 9,020 public events
were held. Over 10 million copies of the reforms were distributed to the public, and one
poll found that over 77 percent of the Venezuelan people had read them.
This democratic and social campaign is not just a step forward for the Venezuelan people.
It is an example of what is needed by millions of people around the world—and right here
in New York City!
Other weekend support events
The Venezuelan opposition is planning a protest against constitutional reform on Dec. 2 -
come show your support for the democratic process that is taking place in Venezuela! The
rally will be followed by an event in the Bronx.
Sunday, Dec. 2 at 11:30 am
Venezuelan Consulate
7 East 51st Street
(between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue)
Take the E to 5th Ave or the 6 train to 51st St.*
Sunday, Dec. 2 at 3:30pm
El Maestro Community Center
Juan Laporte's Boxing Gym
677 Elton Avenue, Bronx
Between 153rd St and 154th St., Corner of 3rd Avenue
A Short History
of the Human Rights Movement
http://www.hrweb.org/history.html
Early Political, Religious, and Philosophical Sources
The concept of human rights has existed under several names in European thought for many centuries, at least since the time of King John of England. After the king violated a number of ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, which enumerates a number of what later came to be thought of as human rights. Among them were the right of the church to be free from governmental interference, the rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and be free from excessive taxes. It established the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and established principles of due process and equality before the law. It also contained provisions forbidding bribery and official misconduct.
The political and religious traditions in other parts of the world also proclaimed what have come to be called human rights, calling on rulers to rule justly and compassionately, and delineating limits on their power over the lives, property, and activities of their citizens.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe several philosophers proposed the concept of "natural rights," rights belonging to a person by nature and because he was a human being, not by virtue of his citizenship in a particular country or membership in a particular religious or ethnic group. This concept was vigorously debated and rejected by some philosophers as baseless. Others saw it as a formulation of the underlying principle on which all ideas of citizens' rights and political and religious liberty were based.
In the late 1700s two revolutions occurred which drew heavily on this concept. In 1776 most of the British colonies in North America proclaimed their independence from the British Empire in a document which still stirs feelings, and debate, the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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In 1789 the people of France overthrew their monarchy and established the first French Republic. Out of the revolution came the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."
The term natural rights eventually fell into disfavor, but the concept of universal rights took root. Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Henry David Thoreau expanded the concept. Thoreau is the first philosopher I know of to use the term, "human rights", and does so in his treatise, Civil Disobedience. This work has been extremely influential on individuals as different as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Gandhi and King, in particular, developed their ideas on non-violent resistance to unethical government actions from this work.
Other early proponents of human rights were English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his Essay on Liberty, and American political theorist Thomas Paine in his essay, The Rights of Man.
The middle and late 19th century saw a number of issues take center stage, many of them issues we in the late 20th century would consider human rights issues. They included slavery, serfdom, brutal working conditions, starvation wages, child labor, and, in the Americas, the "Indian Problem", as it was known at the time. In the United States, a bloody war over slavery came close to destroying a country founded only eighty years earlier on the premise that, "all men are created equal." Russia freed its serfs the year that war began. Neither the emancipated American slaves nor the freed Russian serfs saw any real degree of freedom or basic rights for many more decades, however.
For the last part of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, though, human rights activism remained largely tied to political and religious groups and beliefs. Revolutionaries pointed at the atrocities of governments as proof that their ideology was necessary to bring about change and end the government's abuses. Many people, disgusted with the actions of governments in power, first got involved with revolutionary groups because of this. The governments then pointed at bombings, strike-related violence, and growth in violent crime and social disorder as reasons why a stern approach toward dissent was necessary.
Neither group had any credibility with the other and most had little or no credibility with uninvolved citizens, because their concerns were generally political, not humanitarian. Politically partisan protests often just encouraged more oppression, and uninvolved citizens who got caught in the crossfire usually cursed both sides and made no effort to listen to the reasons given by either.
Nonetheless many specific civil rights and human rights movements managed to affect profound social changes during this time. Labor unions brought about laws granting workers the right to strike, establishing minimum work conditions, forbidding or regulating child labor, establishing a forty hour work week in the United States and many European countries, etc. The women's rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the right to vote. National liberation movements in many countries succeeded in driving out colonial powers. One of the most influential was Mahatma Ghandi's movement to free his native India from British rule. Movements by long-oppressed racial and religious minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the U.S. Civil Rights movement.
In 1961 a group of lawyers, journalists, writers, and others, offended and frustrated by the sentencing of two Portugese college students to twenty years in prison for having raised their glasses in a toast to "freedom" in a bar, formed Appeal for Amnesty, 1961. The appeal was announced on May 28 in the London Observer's Sunday Supplement. The appeal told the stories of six "prisoners of conscience" from different countries and of different political and religious backgrounds, all jailed for peacefully expressing their political or religious beliefs, and called on governments everywhere to free such prisoners. It set forth a simple plan of action, calling for strictly impartial, non-partisan appeals to be made on behalf of these prisoners and any who, like them, had been imprisoned for peacefully expressed beliefs.
The response to this appeal was larger than anyone had expected. The one-year appeal grew, was extended beyond the year, and Amnesty International and the modern human rights movement were both born.
The modern human rights movement didn't invent any new principles. It was different from what preceeded it primarily in its explicit rejection of political ideology and partisanship, and its demand that governments everywhere, regardless of ideology, adhere to certain basic principles of human rights in their treatment of their citizens.
This appealed to a large group of people, many of whom were politically inactive, not interested in joining a political movement, not ideologically motivated, and didn't care about creating "the perfect society" or perfect government. They were simply outraged that any government dared abuse, imprison, torture, and often kill human beings whose only crime was in believing differently from their government and saying so in public. They (naively, according to many detractors) took to writing letters to governments and publicizing the plights of these people in hopes of persuading or embarrassing abusive governments into better behavior.
Like the early years of many movements, the early years of the modern human rights movement were rocky. "Appeal for Amnesty, 1961" had only the most rudimentary organization. The modern organization named Amnesty International gained the structure it has mostly by learning from mistakes. Early staff members operated with no oversight, and money was wasted. This led to establishing strict financial accountability. Early staff members and volunteers got involved in partisan politics while working on human rights violations in their own countries. This led to the principle that AI members were not, as a matter of practice, asked or permitted to work on cases in their country. Early campaigns failed because Amnesty was misinformed about certain prisoners. This led to the establishment of a formidable research section and the process of "adoption" of prisoners of conscience only after a thorough investigation phase.
The biggest lesson Amnesty learned, and for many the distinguishing feature of the organization, however, was to stick to what it knew and not go outside its mandate. A distinguished human rights researcher I know once said to me that, "Amnesty is an organization that does only one or two things, but does them extremely well." Amnesty International does not take positions on many issues which many people view as human rights concerns (such as abortion) and does not endorse or criticize any form of government. While it will work to ensure a fair trial for all political prisoners, it does not adopt as prisoners of conscience anyone who has used or advocated violence for any reason. It rarely provides statistical data on human rights abuses, and never compares the human rights records of one country with another. It sticks to work on behalf of individual prisoners, and work to abolish specific practices, such as torture and the death penalty.
A lot of people found this too restrictive. Many pro-democracy advocates were extremely upset when the organization dropped Nelson Mandela (at the time a black South African anti-apartheid activist in jail on trumped-up murder charges) from its list of adopted prisoners, because of his endorsing a violent struggle against apartheid. Others were upset that Amnesty would not criticize any form of government, even one which (like Soviet-style Communism, or Franco-style fascism) appeared inherently abusive and incompatible with respect for basic human rights. Many activists simply felt that human rights could be better served by a broader field of action.
Over the years combinations of these concerns and others led to formation of other human rights groups. Among them were groups which later merged to form Human Rights Watch, the first of them being Helsinki Watch in 1978. Regional human rights watchdog groups often operated under extremely difficult conditions, especially those in the Soviet Block. Helsinki Watch, which later merged with other groups to form Human Rights Watch, started as a few Russian activists who formed to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the human rights provisions in the Helsinki accords. Many of its members were arrested shortly after it was formed and had little chance to be active.
Other regional groups formed after military takeovers in Chile in 1973, in East Timor in 1975, in Argentina in 1976, and after the Chinese Democracy Wall Movement in 1979.
Although there were differences in philosophy, focus, and tactics between the groups, for the most part they remained on speaking terms, and a number of human rights activists belonged to more than one.
Recognition for the human rights movement, and Amnesty International in particular, grew during the 1970s. Amnesty gained permanent observer status as an NGO at the United Nations. Its reports became mandatory reading in legislatures, state departments and foreign ministries around the world. Its press releases received respectful attention, even when its recommendations were ignored by the governments involved. In 1977 it was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for its work.
Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize didn't impress the governments Amnesty most wanted to get through to. That year the Argentine military dictatorship reportedly claimed that Amnesty was a front organization for the Soviet KGB. This supposedly occurred the same week that the Soviet government claimed Amnesty was run by the U.S. CIA, to the amusement of human rights activists and, presumably, embarrassment of certain people in Argentina and the Soviet Union.
An Introduction to the Human Rights Movement
http://www.hrweb.org/intro.html
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Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law...
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These are the second and third paragraphs of the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 without a dissenting vote. It is the first multinational declaration mentioning human rights by name, and the human rights movement has largely adopted it as a charter. I'm quoting them here because it states as well or better than anything I've read what human rights are and why they are important.
The United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and UN Human Rights convenants were written and implemented in the aftermath of the Holocaust, revelations coming from the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the Bataan Death March, the atomic bomb, and other horrors smaller in magnitude but not in impact on the individuals they affected. A whole lot of people in a number of countries had a crisis of conscience and found they could no longer look the other way while tyrants jailed, tortured, and killed their neighbors.

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In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me... and by that time, there was no one to speak up for anyone.
-- Martin Niemoeller, Pastor,
German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church
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Many also realized that advances in technology and changes in social structures had rendered war a threat to the continued existence of the human race. Large numbers of people in many countries lived under the control of tyrants, having no recourse but war to relieve often intolerable living conditions. Unless some way was found to relieve the lot of these people, they could revolt and become the catalyst for another wide-scale and possibly nuclear war. For perhaps the first time, representatives from the majority of governments in the world came to the conclusion that basic human rights must be protected, not only for the sake of the individuals and countries involved, but to preserve the human race.

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
President of the United States
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
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My Reasons for Working for Human Rights
My reasons for believing in and supporting human rights stem from what I saw growing up in El Paso, Texas, less than two miles from the border with Mexico and Mexico's second largest city, Cuidad Juarez. Like most border cities, Juarez was filled with very poor people who had left the countryside looking for a better life. They were prey to every kind of abuse, from harrassment to false imprisonment to beatings to rape to politically-motivated murder by authorities and others on both sides of the border with more power and influence than they had.

I doubt I would have known such things existed from my own experience. It became part of my experience, though, and I've never since been able to take my freedom and lack of fear for granted.
Human rights
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Magna Carta or "Great Charter" was the world's first document containing commitments by a sovereign to his people to respect certain legal rightsHuman rights refers to "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law."[1] The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."[2]
The idea of human rights descended from the philosophical idea of natural rights which are considered to exist even when trampled by governments or society;[3] some recognize virtually no difference between the two and regard both as labels for the same thing, while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate association with some features traditionally associated with natural rights.[4] Natural rights, in particular, are rights of the individual, and are considered beyond the authority of a future government or international body to dismiss. John Locke is perhaps the most prominent philosopher that developed this theory.[5]
9.1 Human rights organizations

[edit] Human rights sources
[edit] The United Nations
Main articles: United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The UN General AssemblyThe United Nations is the only international entity with jurisdiction for universal human rights legislation. All UN organs have advisory roles to the United Nations Security Council. Article 1-3 of the United Nations Charter states "To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion."
The United Nations Human Rights Council is involved with the investigation into violations of human rights.[6] The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principle judicial organ of the United Nations.[7]

[edit] Europe
Main articles: European Convention on Human Rights, European Social Charter, and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
The European Convention on Human Rights defines and guarantees since 1950 human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe have signed this Convention and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In order to prevent torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (see Article 3 of the Convention), the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has been set up.

European Court of Human Rights in StrasbourgHuman rights commonly include:
security rights that prohibit crimes such as murder, massacre, torture and rape
liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as arrest and imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of, e.g., education, paid holidays, and protections against severe poverty and starvation
group rights
[edit] History of human rights
[edit] Human Rights in the ancient world
Ur-Nammu, king of Ur in ca. 2050 BC created the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest legal codex that survives today. Several other sets of laws were created in Mesopotamia including the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1780 BC), one of the best preserved examples of this type of document. It shows rules, and punishments if those rules are broken, on a variety of matters including women's rights, children's rights and slave rights.
The prefaces of these codes invoked the Mesopotamian gods for divine sanction. Societies have often derived the origins of human rights in religious documents. The Vedas, the Bible, the Qur'an and the Analects of Confucius are some of the oldest written sources that address questions of people's duties, rights, and responsibilities.

[edit] Persian Empire
See also: Persian Empire

The Cyrus cylinder of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian EmpireThe Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great. After his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the king issued the Cyrus cylinder, discovered in 1879 and recognized by many today as the first human rights document. The cylinder declared that citizens of the empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely. It also abolished slavery, so all the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era where slaves typically did such work.[8] These two reforms were reflected in the biblical books of Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Ezra, which state that Cyrus released the followers of Judaism from slavery and allowed them to migrate back to their land. The cylinder now lies in the British Museum, and a replica is kept at the United Nations Headquarters.
In the Persian Empire, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were also given the same rights, while women had the same rights as men. The Cyrus cylinder also documents the protection of the rights to liberty and security, freedom of movement, the right of property, and economic and social rights.[9]

[edit] Maurya Empire
See also: Maurya Empire
The Maurya Empire of ancient India established unprecedented principles of civil rights in the 3rd century BC under Ashoka the Great. After his brutal conquest of Kalinga in circa 265 BC, he felt remorse for what he had done, and as a result, adopted Buddhism. From then, Ashoka, who had been described as "the cruel Ashoka" eventually came to be known as "the pious Ashoka". During his reign, he pursued an official policy of nonviolence (ahimsa) and the protection of human rights, as his chief concern was the happiness of his subjects.[10] The unnecessary slaughter or mutilation of animals was immediately abolished, such as sport hunting and branding. Ashoka also showed mercy to those imprisoned, allowing them outside one day each year, and offered common citizens free education at universities. He treated his subjects as equals regardless of their religion, politics or caste, and constructed free hospitals for both humans and animals. Ashoka defined the main principles of nonviolence, tolerance of all sects and opinions, obedience to parents, respect for teachers and priests, being liberal towards friends, humane treatment of servants, and generosity towards all. These reforms are described in the Edicts of Ashoka.
In the Maurya Empire, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups also had rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka.[11] Slavery was also non-existent in ancient India.[12]

[edit] Early Islamic Caliphate
Main article: Early reforms under Islam
Many reforms in human rights took place under Islam between 610 and 661, including the period of Muhammad's (Peace Be Upon Him) mission and the rule of the four immediate successors who established the Rashidain Caliphate. Historians generally agree that Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) preached against what he saw as the social evils of his day,[13] and that Islamic social reforms in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery, and the rights of women and ethnic minorities improved on what was present in existing Arab society at the time.[14][15][16][17][18]

Appeal to Left Front Partners to Withdraw from West Bengal State Government
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
We endorse the Appeal to Left Front Partners to Withdraw from West Bengal State Government Petition to The General Secretaries of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Communist Party of India (CPI), All India Forward Block (AIF.
to send money online for the relief of the distressed people of nandigram Inbox
hindol bhattacharjee to me
show details 11:48 am (7 hours ago)
you have to write in this format
Beneficiary's Name:
Janasqwastha Swadhikar Mancha
A/C No. S/B 24941 with canara bank, Sealdah, Kolkata( 0396)swift code: CNRBINBBCFD Canara Bank A/C No 2000193008894 with Wachovia Bank, Newyork, Swift Code: PMBPUS3NNYC

Hindol Bhattacharjee
9830751535
To: The General Secretaries of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Communist Party of India (CPI), All India Forward Block (AIF
Respected friends,
We are horrified by the barbaric attack on the people of Nandigram by a veritable army of CPI(M) cadres and anti-social elements. In a clearly pre-planned move, co-ordinated with the West Bengal government, the CPI(M) is out to recapture what it identifies as lost territory, and to teach the people of Nandigram a lesson for originally resisting the acquisition of their lands for establishment of an SEZ.
The ongoing atrocities, which includes the surrounding of Nandigram from all sides, penetration by armed brigades of CPI(M) cadres, widespread firing, looting, destruction and burning of homes and eviction of thousands of people all signify this absolutely fascist move. The attackers have erected road-blocks all around Nandigram and have physically assaulted and prevented human rights workers and social activists from entering Nandigram, and have also prevented the injured from getting medical attention. More disturbingly, the police has remained a silent spectator, suggesting direct abetment by the state government of West Bengal. These horrifying atrocities, which have given rise to a humanitarian crisis, are being committed by the CPI(M) in collusion with the state government, which is a government of Left parties like yours, and would become a permanent blot on the history of the Left movement in India.
We have seen, and greatly appreciated, the courageous and pro-people stand your respective parties had taken after the 14th March massacre in Nandigram. Together with the outpouring of indignation and protests by all sections of the people, it was your constant pressure that made the West Bengal government back off from acquiring the land of Nandigram. At this critical juncture in front of the Left in India, when all the gains made by peoples' struggles and sacrifices in creating the Left Front is in danger of being lost by the unilateral and fascistic action of one party, we appeal to you to take a stand and clearly come out on the side of the poor and working people. We request you to condemn the actions of the CPI(M) and demand a halt to the atrocities in Nandigram, withdraw from the Left Front, withdraw your ministers from the West Bengal state cabinet and act in unison with the greater peoples' movement that is taking place around Nandigram and other mass struggles.
The CPI(M) is already isolated from the people, it is up to you to isolate it from the Left Front. It is up to you stop these brutalities being inflicted on the people and to prevent the collapse of peoples' trust in the Left movement in India. History has put a great responsibility on your shoulders today, and we sincerely hope that you would take these actions which would express your long-standing commitment to the common people of India.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned

Stalinism and Fascism: A Comparison
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/print/zize01_.html The Two Totalitarianisms Slavoj Žižek A small note – not the stuff of headlines, obviously – appeared in the newspapers on 3 February. In response to a call for the prohibition of the public display of the swastika and other Nazi symbols, a group of conservative members of the European Parliament, mostly from ex-Communist countries, demanded that the same apply to Communist symbols: not only the hammer and sickle, but even the red star. This proposal should not be dismissed lightly: it suggests a deep change in Europe’s ideological identity.
Till now, to put it straightforwardly, Stalinism hasn’t been rejected in the same way as Nazism. We are fully aware of its monstrous aspects, but still find Ostalgie acceptable: you can make Goodbye Lenin!, but Goodbye Hitler! is unthinkable. Why? To take another example: in Germany, many CDs featuring old East German Revolutionary and Party songs, from ‘Stalin, Freund, Genosse’ to ‘Die Partei hat immer Recht’, are easy to find. You would have to look rather harder for a collection of Nazi songs. Even at this anecdotal level, the difference between the Nazi and Stalinist universes is clear, just as it is when we recall that in the Stalinist show trials, the accused had publicly to confess his crimes and give an account of how he came to commit them, whereas the Nazis would never have required a Jew to confess that he was involved in a Jewish plot against the German nation. The reason is clear. Stalinism conceived itself as part of the Enlightenment tradition, according to
which, truth being accessible to any rational man, no matter how depraved, everyone must be regarded as responsible for his crimes. But for the Nazis the guilt of the Jews was a fact of their biological constitution: there was no need to prove they were guilty, since they were guilty by virtue of being Jews.
In the Stalinist ideological imaginary, universal reason is objectivised in the guise of the inexorable laws of historical progress, and we are all its servants, the leader included. A Nazi leader, having delivered a speech, stood and silently accepted the applause, but under Stalinism, when the obligatory applause exploded at the end of the leader’s speech, he stood up and joined in. In Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, Hitler responds to the Nazi salute by raising his hand and saying: ‘Heil myself!’ This is pure humour because it could never have happened in reality, while Stalin effectively did ‘hail himself’ when he joined others in the applause. Consider the fact that, on Stalin’s birthday, prisoners would send him congratulatory telegrams from the darkest gulags: it isn’t possible to imagine a Jew in Auschwitz sending Hitler such a telegram. It is a tasteless distinction, but it supports the contention that under Stalin, the ruling ideology presupposed a space in
which the leader and his subjects could meet as servants of Historical Reason. Under Stalin, all people were, theoretically, equal.
We do not find in Nazism any equivalent to the dissident Communists who risked their lives fighting what they perceived as the ‘bureaucratic deformation’ of socialism in the USSR and its empire: there was no one in Nazi Germany who advocated ‘Nazism with a human face’. Herein lies the flaw (and the bias) of all attempts, such as that of the conservative historian Ernst Nolte, to adopt a neutral position – i.e. to ask why we don’t apply the same standards to the Communists as we apply to the Nazis. If Heidegger cannot be pardoned for his flirtation with Nazism, why can Lukács and Brecht and others be pardoned for their much longer engagement with Stalinism? This position reduces Nazism to a reaction to, and repetition of, practices already found in Bolshevism – terror, concentration camps, the struggle to the death against political enemies – so that the ‘original sin’ is that of Communism.
In the late 1980s, Nolte was Habermas’s principal opponent in the so-called Revisionismusstreit, arguing that Nazism should not be regarded as the incomparable evil of the 20th century. Not only did Nazism, reprehensible as it was, appear after Communism: it was an excessive reaction to the Communist threat, and all its horrors were merely copies of those already perpetrated under Soviet Communism. Nolte’s idea is that Communism and Nazism share the same totalitarian form, and the difference between them consists only in the difference between the empirical agents which fill their respective structural roles (‘Jews’ instead of ‘class enemy’). The usual liberal reaction to Nolte is that he relativises Nazism, reducing it to a secondary echo of the Communist evil. However, even if we leave aside the unhelpful comparison between Communism – a thwarted attempt at liberation – and the radical evil of Nazism, we should still concede Nolte’s central point. Nazism was effectively
a reaction to the Communist threat; it did effectively replace class struggle with the struggle between Aryans and Jews. What we are dealing with here is displacement in the Freudian sense of the term (Verschiebung): Nazism displaces class struggle onto racial struggle and in doing so obfuscates its true nature. What changes in the passage from Communism to Nazism is a matter of form, and it is in this that the Nazi ideological mystification resides: the political struggle is naturalised as racial conflict, the class antagonism inherent in the social structure reduced to the invasion of a foreign (Jewish) body which disturbs the harmony of the Aryan community. It is not, as Nolte claims, that there is in both cases the same formal antagonistic structure, but that the place of the enemy is filled by a different element (class, race). Class antagonism, unlike racial difference and conflict, is absolutely inherent to and constitutive of the social field; Fascism displaces
this essential antagonism.
It’s appropriate, then, to recognise the tragedy of the October Revolution: both its unique emancipatory potential and the historical necessity of its Stalinist outcome. We should have the honesty to acknowledge that the Stalinist purges were in a way more ‘irrational’ than the Fascist violence: its excess is an unmistakable sign that, in contrast to Fascism, Stalinism was a case of an authentic revolution perverted. Under Fascism, even in Nazi Germany, it was possible to survive, to maintain the appearance of a ‘normal’ everyday life, if one did not involve oneself in any oppositional political activity (and, of course, if one were not Jewish). Under Stalin in the late 1930s, on the other hand, nobody was safe: anyone could be unexpectedly denounced, arrested and shot as a traitor. The irrationality of Nazism was ‘condensed’ in anti-semitism – in its belief in the Jewish plot – while the irrationality of Stalinism pervaded the entire social body. For that reason, Nazi
police investigators looked for proofs and traces of active opposition to the regime, whereas Stalin’s investigators were happy to fabricate evidence, invent plots etc.
We should also admit that we still lack a satisfactory theory of Stalinism. It is, in this respect, a scandal that the Frankfurt School failed to produce a systematic and thorough analysis of the phenomenon. The exceptions are telling: Franz Neumann’s Behemoth (1942), which suggested that the three great world-systems – New Deal capitalism, Fascism and Stalinism – tended towards the same bureaucratic, globally organised, ‘administered’ society; Herbert Marcuse’s Soviet Marxism (1958), his least passionate book, a strangely neutral analysis of Soviet ideology with no clear commitments; and, finally, in the 1980s, the attempts by some Habermasians who, reflecting on the emerging dissident phenomena, endeavoured to elaborate the notion of civil society as a site of resistance to the Communist regime – interesting, but not a global theory of the specificity of Stalinist totalitarianism. How could a school of Marxist thought that claimed to focus on the conditions of the
failure of the emancipatory project abstain from analysing the nightmare of ‘actually existing socialism’? And was its focus on Fascism not a silent admission of the failure to confront the real trauma?
It is here that one has to make a choice. The ‘pure’ liberal attitude towards Leftist and Rightist ‘totalitarianism’ – that they are both bad, based on the intolerance of political and other differences, the rejection of democratic and humanist values etc – is a priori false. It is necessary to take sides and proclaim Fascism fundamentally ‘worse’ than Communism. The alternative, the notion that it is even possible to compare rationally the two totalitarianisms, tends to produce the conclusion – explicit or implicit – that Fascism was the lesser evil, an understandable reaction to the Communist threat. When, in September 2003, Silvio Berlusconi provoked a violent outcry with his observation that Mussolini, unlike Hitler, Stalin or Saddam Hussein, never killed anyone, the true scandal was that, far from being an expression of Berlusconi’s idiosyncrasy, his statement was part of an ongoing project to change the terms of a postwar European identity hitherto based on
anti-Fascist unity. That is the proper context in which to understand the European conservatives’ call for the prohibition of Communist symbols.
From the LRB letters page: [ 31 March 2005 ] Clive James [ 21 April 2005 ] Phil Edwards.
Slavoj Žižek is a dialectical-materialist philosopher and psychoanalyst. He also co-directs the International Centre for Humanities at Birkbeck College. The Parallax View appeared last year.

The No-spin Zone - Nandigram, facts and myths (ongoing commentary)
http://sanhati.com/news/415/
Nov. 26, 2007 - Ration riots - The Disconnect and the Connections - Debarshi Das
Nov. 24, 2007- Sushilbabur Maaneboi, or how to tell a Sushil from a Harmad and other exam questions - Cheatsheet by Saikat Bandyopadhyay [PDF, Bengali] »
Nov. 24, 2007- The Fig Leaf Falls - Debarshi Das
Nov. 21, 2007- An Autumn of Discontent - Debarshi Das
Nov. 20, 2007- Prior to Nandigram - Debarshi Das
Nov. 18, 2007- The spark of Nandigram - Debarshi Das
Nov. 16, 2007- The CPI(M)’s Harmad Bahini - human shields, rape as a weapon and other parallels with private militias the world over - Siddhartha Mitra
Nov. 16, 2007- Which side are you on, Mr Bhattacharjee? Neo-liberal games and the cloak of turf war - Debarshi Das
Nov. 15, 2007- How long shall we sing the TINA tune? Nandigram comes to me as burning torch of courage. - Suvarup Saha
Nov. 13, 2007- “Bol ki lab aazad hain tere” - Debarshi Das
Nov. 12, 2007- The struggle of memory against forgetting… - Debarshi Das
Nov. 11, 2007- Are Maoists the new WMDs? - Debarshi Das
Nov. 11, 2007- Who is fighting this turf-war, and why sides need to be taken - Partho Sarathi Ray
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Ration riots - The Disconnect and the Connections
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Dhanupada Das was a landless farm labourer in Gonnaserendi village of Bardhaman district. He used to earn Rs 45 plus a kilo and a half of rice the day he found work. His son Paresh, a cowherd, could not attend school. They have to buy rice at Rs. 14 a kilogram in open market. The family cannot remember the last time they had dal. The vegetables consist of leaves of locally found plants. This family comes under the APL category. On 3rd of October, villagers accosted the local ration dealer; they wanted to know why wheat allotment under APL had not been available for the last 11 months. Police first lathi charged, allegedly under a local CPM leader’s instruction and then opened fire. Dhanupada was shot dead. For assets, the widow, Suchana, has a run-down hut and a cow which they have leased in. They can keep the milk if it calves.
Sitting in his comfortable drawing room, the village Panchayat chief Ansarul Haq theorises, “Those who are creating trouble are reactionary elements.” He does not know if the village ration dealer is honest or not, but “He is a good man.” The villagers were alleging that Panchayat leaders themselves had ordered the firing. The chief responds, “They were fining the dealers. We opposed the fining of the dealers. They don’t understand we were doing so in the interest of the people.” He assures that he was considering if the widow could be given widow dole.
Langalhata village of Birbhum district was home of Ayub Shekh. “He fell to a police bullet after joining a team that had gone to the block development officer at Labhpur in Birbhum to demand action against corrupt dealers.” After he was killed in the ration turmoil, instead of a ration card, a job card was found in his pocket. Perhaps Rs. 6.75 a kilogram wheat under the ration scheme does not entirely explain the fire which engulfed south Bengal. The link between the right to work and food security is clear to the poorest and the illiterate. In Radhakrishnapur, Chandmoni Tudu, does not whine over not getting her rightful supply of grains. She is angry because she had worked for 7 days and she had to put thumb impression under 14 days. The police had refused to lodge a complaint. On handing out morsels of subsistence people may have given up on the ruling dispensation. They are demanding the right to work, to work with dignity. When this is not being met, the starkest and most unjust manifestations of the nexus, the ration shops, are being raged.
Swati Bhattacharya further writes, “Touring the villages one could not find support for the hypothesis that the ration system is collapsing due to APL customers; and hence the poorest BPL customers are bearing the brunt….There might be difference in the central allocations, but ration scam does not differentiate between APL and BPL. That the theory of class conflict one hears on ration scam is a cruel parody of reality can be realised if one is a little observant while visiting the villages.” When the whole body is infected it is indeed ludicrous to amputate the APL part. The enormity of the situation is brought home by the following pieces of statistics. Percentage of people who get the right quantity of ration allocation is 2% in Bengal (national average 8%, Bihar 6%). Percentage getting the right quality is even worse at 1% (9%, 14%). Percentage of those who get their rations regularly is 9% (23%, 10%). In 2002, a survey was conducted in 24 states investigating the administration of the Public Distribution System. Tamil Nadu topped the list, West Bengal was at 17. NREGA implementation in the state is equally abysmal. The complicity of the reactionary-hating ‘Leftists’ becomes clear as one reads, “One ration dealer of Sonamukhi in Bankura, accused of hoarding foodgrains, has admitted that he has been funding party programmes. “It would have been impossible to run my business without the help of the party,” he said…. A party source who refused to be named, said: “Ours is the ruling party with a strong organization down to the grassroots level. So, the leadership was very much aware that ration dealers sell foodgrains meant for public distribution in the black market. It is not possible for ration dealers to carry on the illegal business without backing from sections of the party.””
One woman member of the state Agricultural Labourers Forum is remarkably clear on the rural reality, “Land owners, school teachers, rice dealers will never do anything for us.” Aside from gaping poverty and getting killed by the aforesaid clique, one more thread binds Dhanupada Das of Gonnaserendi and Ayub Shekh of Langalhata together. Panchayat chiefs did not dare to visit their houses after the deaths.
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Nov. 24, 2007 - Sushilbabur Maaneboi, or how to tell a Sushil from a Harmad and other exam questions [PDF, Bengali] »
A cheatsheet by Saikat Bandyopadhyay, Sanhati
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Nov. 24, 2007 - The Fig Leaf Falls
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Taslima Nasreen is no stranger to communal politics. Some would sniff she revels in being its victim. It seems neither does the greatest defender of secularism in the national political space, namely the Communist Party of India (Marxist), consider the same politics beyond the pale. On 28th November, 2003 the Left Front government in West Bengal banned Taslima Nasreen’s “Dwikhondito.” Some prominent Muslim citizens had appealed to the government that “the book contains false and fictitious comments regarding the holy Quran and commandments of Islam. This may jeopardise the tradition of communal peace among the Hindus and Muslims in the state.” Curiously the signatories were not the run of the mill skullcap Mullahs. They included a former Madrassa College principal, a former professor of Calcutta University cum member of the state Planning Board, and strangest of all, the incisive and robust Bengali writer Syed Mustafa Siraj.
The State Secretary of the party Anil Biswas had the familiar words, “The book has been banned because it can spread communal tension. The government has done this as a precautionary measure.” For good measure, he reminded us that the Left Front government had not banned a single book for political reasons in its 26 years of rule. What is to be noted is that all the books of literature which had been banned before the LF, were due to court orders and not because of government intervention (on charge of obscenity principally – Samaresh Basu’s “Bibar,” “Prajapati,” Buddhadeb Basu’s “Raatbhor Brishti”). The litterateur chief minister was silent when asked if banning of a book did not violate the freedom of writers and artistes in a democratic country.
However, there were people who were not ready to stomach the nose poking by the state. On 22nd September, 2005 on an appeal by APDR (Association for Protection of Democratic Rights) the Calcutta High Court revoked the ban. The Left Front government had an unusual comrade in this jihad on freedom of expression. The Anandabazar Patrika of 23rd September reports, “The lawyer of the State Government had appealed the Division Bench for a stay order of six weeks. On behalf of a Muslim organisation, Idrish Ali also appealed for a stay order of six weeks. This was turned down.”
The two reunited on the streets of Kolkata on 21st November, 2007. Idrish Ali of All India Minority Forum was one of the organisers for the proposed three hour blockade of Kolkata. They demonstration was against the Nandigram massacre, mishandling of Rizwanur Rahman case, and demanding cancellation of visa for Taslima Nasreen. Gradually, however, the last demand engulfed the other two. For five hours central Kolkata was at the mercy of a communal rabble. This is the first time since 1992’s Babri Masjid that the city witnessed dusk to dawn curfew in a number of localities. Questions have started to be asked as to why the police did not respond swiftly enough. And indeed the paralysis has a longer history. The administration did precious little when in late June a local imam announced a reward for eliminating her.
Doubt condenses into suspicion when Biman Bose, after a day of shameful ineptitude and prostration to Muslim fundamentalists, declares that she should better accommodate to fascist demands (later retracted). And suspicion almost reaches conviction as one learns “the Left Front government on Thursday [22nd November] nudged the controversial Bangladeshi writer to leave the state for Jaipur…the Buddha government liaised with Rajasthan Foundation, a body of Rajasthani businessmen in Bengal and led by a top cement manufacturer, to make arrangements for her stay in Jaipur.” Could not the progressive government of the day stand up to Muslim fundamentalism, as it supposedly does to the RSS Vanar Senas? Was this fleeing of the incompetent or is there any cynical electoral calculus underlying?
Perhaps it’s all a matter of appropriating political space. It would be a folly to ignore ‘Nandigram’ in the list of agenda of the Kolkata demonstration of AIMF. As the ‘Left’ is renouncing the anti-imperialist, pro-people stand, these popular demands would search for articulation from some quarters. As Germany and Iran have shown, visceral forces of fascism and religious fundamentalism would have a natural tendency to fill up the vacuum and to channelise people’s rage into destructive routes. It would be a failure of ominous proportions for the left movement in India if it does not recognise this and as an ad hoc measure, submits to opportunistic electoral deals.
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Nov. 21, 2007- An Autumn of Discontent
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Starting from mid-September CPM’s hold over rural Bengal began to get questioned in a violent way. Mainly in eight districts of south Bengal, there were spontaneous and repeated attacks on the stores of ration dealers, their houses were looted and torched, Panchayat members were beaten up, local CPM leaders were accosted and roughed up, even the police were attacked when they came to protect the property of the wealthy and the influential. The correlation of attack on ration dealers and CPM leaders is not surprising. On 6th October The Anandabazar Patrika reports, “On Friday [5th October] the CPM State Committee discussed issues such as, a part of the party may have got involved in the ration scam, through a nexus with the ration dealers they may have denied people their rightful supply. The district leaders were instructed to assuage people’s anger by organising meetings and gatherings. In Bankura and Birbhum districts there were attacks on the houses of two CPM leaders. Arson, beating up of dealers, vandalising, tension have continued.” After four days, the same paper reports, due to continuing lawlessness finger pointing has started within the Left Front. “A part of the political set up is questioning why the Food Department, under Forward Bloc, had not taken adequate measures so that the situation could not go out of control. In fact the chief minister himself is dissatisfied with the working of the Food Department in the context of ration scam.” The Forward Bloc was not to keep quiet. It tried to pass the buck to corruption at the Panchayat level. Further, a leader of the party remarked, ‘If there is an investigation our people will be only 10% of the guilty, CPM’s will be 90%!’ In the same vein a leader of the Left Front said, ‘Nothing is working here – everyone is getting his pound of flesh depending on his might’”.
On 8th November, Swati Bhattacharya, a well known journalist with the Anandabazar Patrika, writes of Kotalpukur village in Bankura district where there was firing by a dealer wounding five villagers, “Rajob Ali, a bullet wound in his leg, says, ‘Every Monday they used to sell ration rice and wheat openly in Sonamukhi market.’” In Radhamohanpur the complain was, “Supply used to get sold from the point of the wholesaler, the dealers would not even bring it to the village. ‘They have kept us in the dark, be it in job cards or ration cards. There are no mid day meals for two months a year, the gruel of Anganwadi has stopped for more than a week now. No one has the guts to stand up to the leaders. There is no use of the Panchayat.’” Moksed Sardar, a member of the village Development Council says, “We have repeatedly said the ration shop must be opened four days a week, notices should be put up. The Food Inspector asks us, who are you? Neither does the Panchayat inform us of anything.” Dharmadas Mandal, a village Education Committee member of Dhulia villages says, “Till this day I have not got any account of the mid day meals. They beat us up if we complain on corruption.” In Basanti Bajar, South 24 Pargana district, Mohammad Anisur Rahman laments, “People whom we have elected tell us they would not tolerate our protest.”
Though, “the supply of essential commodities through the PDS has been the cornerstone of Left politics in West Bengal” the response of the ruling alliance and especially CPM to this crisis has been curious. Any leftist worth his salt would recognise the demand for food as one of the key facets shaping his politics. District Secretary and State Committee member, Amol Haldar’s reaction, “This is not an attack by the people. Criminals are involved in this. We had protested against lawlessness and therefore have become the target. If this continues, we shall have to retort.” Chairman of the Left Front, Biman Bose, never short of words, offers, “This is a conspiracy for breaking down the public distribution system.”. Some leaders, have been more brave. Sanat Pramanik, Zonal Committee Secretary, Nalhati almost issued a threat, “The Party will be forced to hit back.” The State Committee member Arun Chouduri nearly confessed, “Ours is a large party, there are plenty of members. All of them cannot be controlled.”.
But most strangely, there were talks that the burden of APL (above poverty line) beneficiaries was creating distress for the BPL (below poverty line) clients. “A part of the political establishment is now demanding APL should be scrapped. Only BPL should remain. That would mitigate the problem considerably”. Perhaps Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is aware that neo-liberal thinking is in the same lines. Sugata Marjit, a well known economist writes in the Anandabazar Patrika of 23rd October, “It would have been far better if the ration system was folded up gradually and open market made more competitive.”
Did not Nandigram, and Singur before that, play a role of catalyst in the flare up?
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Nov. 20, 2007: Prior to Nandigram
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
If the Nandigram churnings had been confined within a few municipalities, factories and colleges the Communist Party of India (Marxist) would not have been so much worried. The indomitable Benoy Konar would not have ventured to advice the Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, to fly a Trinamul Congress flag or would not have asked the High Court chief justice whether the police carry gangajal . What perhaps made them jittery and more prone to violence, both physical and verbal, was that Nandigram became a symbol that rural Bengal is done with CPM and can defy it. The party has traditionally depended on its rural mass base which catapulted it to power and which was consolidated further by the land reform programme Operation Barga. From 1952 to 1972 it was in fact the Congress party which used to call the shots in rural Bengal.
During the initial Left Front governments a few things were given priority. One, patta land, or vested government land, be distributed among the landless and small peasants; two, bargadars, or tenant cultivators’ legal rights be properly protected; three, a three tier Panchayat system was introduced which had its first election in 1978. About 60% of total distribution of land however happened before 1977, that is, even before the LF government came to power. Nevertheless the combination of economic and political measures played a major role in uplifting a wide swathe of rural masses. During 1980-1983 agricultural production in West Bengal rose by 5.83% per annum, one of the highest recorded by any state in the country. Rural poverty fell substantially from 73% (1973-74) to 48% (1988). Thereafter things started to slow down. The rate of growth in agriculture was only about 3% per year during 1992-1995. The decline of poverty slowed down as well. The percentage of people living below the poverty line was 44% in 1998-1999, that is, a fall of 4 percentage points in 10 years. Why did growth and decline in poverty slow down?
There are many reasons which have been emphasised by researchers. One major point is that land reform was by its very nature limited in its reach. One, the most numerous and vulnerable section, namely the landless labourers did not figure much in the entire agenda. In 1993 the minimum wage rate in Bengal was higher than only UP and Bihar and lower than states like Orissa, Assam, Madhya Pradesh etc. The growth rate of wage was also most tardy. Over 1983 to 1993 Bengal had the second lowest figure above. It was found out the keeping wages of agricultural labourers low was one of the main instruments in containing class conflict. Two, the landless and marginal peasants continue to get excluded from organised credit markets for lack of collaterals. Needless to say, access to credit is vital for meeting the cost of production and consumptio

Indian protest rocks Malaysia ahead of polls
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Indian protest rocks Malaysia ahead of polls
By Mark Bendeich & Clarence Fernandez
http://ultracurrents.blogspot.com
Sun Nov 25, 2007 , REUTERS
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's ethnic Indian
community staged its biggest anti-government street
protest on Sunday when more than 10,000 pro testers
defied tear gas and water cannon to voice complaints
of racial discrimination.
The sheer size of the protest, called by a Hindu
rights group, represents a political challenge for the
government as it heads toward possible early elections
in the next few months.
Ethnic Indians from around the country swarmed into
Kuala Lumpur for the rally, despite a virtual
lock-down of the capital over the previous three days
and warnings from police and the government that
people should not take part.
"Malaysian Indians have never gathered in such large
numbers in this way...," said organizer P. Uthaya
Kumar, of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf).
"They are frustrated and have no job opportunities in
the government or the private sector. They are not
given business licenses or places in university," he
said, adding that Indians were also incensed by some
recent demolitions of Hindu temples.
Riot police fired at the protesters with sustained
volleys of tear gas and jets of water laced with an
eye-stinging chemical, but it took more than five
hours to finally clear the streets of downtown Kuala
Lumpur, by then littered with empty gas canisters.
Veteran journalists and analysts could not recall a
bigger anti-government protest by ethnic Indians, who
make up about 7 percent of the population, although
some said a larger rally had been held over internal
Indian politics in the late 1980s.
Political columnist Zainon Ahmad said the protest
would shake the Indian community's establishment
party, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), a junior
member of the ruling coalition.
"The MIC is severely challenged on this matter," he
said.
MIC leader S. Samy Vellu, who is also works minister,
denied the protest spelt trouble for his party. "We
represent the Indian community and will remain so," he
said in a statement.
But Vellu, who has himself voiced unease over a recent
Hindu temple demolition by local authorities outside
the capital, added: "There is still a lot to be done
for the Indians and we will continue with our
struggle."
"LACK OF OPPORTUNITIES"
Many protesters complained of a lack of educational
and business opportunities, saying a government
affirmative-action policy in favor of majority ethnic
Malays had marginalized them.
Malays make up about 60 percent of the population and,
according to official data, remain the poorest group
by some average measures such as household income.
Opposition groups say the most severe cases of poverty
exist among Indians.
Brought over as indentured labor from the late 1800s
by colonial ruler Britain, Indians worked Malaya's
rubber estates. These estates were later broken up,
forcing many unskilled Indian workers into poverty in
the city.
Ostensibly, Sunday's protesters wanted to hand a
petition to the British embassy in support of a legal
claim by Hindraf for reparations from Britain for
colonial-era abuses. But Hindraf said the protest was
also aimed at the Malaysian government.
"We are here for our rights," one protester told
Reuters as he sat cross-legged on the road.
"The British brought our forefathers here 150 years
ago," he added. "Whatever the government is supposed
to give us, to look after our welfare, well, they have
failed."
Police fired tear gas outside Kuala Lumpur's iconic
twin towers and five-star hotels. Curious tourists
ventured out to take a look but rushed back inside
once the gas stung their eyes.
At the Batu Caves, a Hindu place of worship just
outside the capital, police clashed with 2,000
protesters early on Sunday after barring entry to the
temple.
Many Malaysians, including an Indian Muslim group,
opposed the rally, fearing it could spark violence.
Malaysia has not experienced a major race riot since
1969, but many seasoned politicians fear racial and
religious tensions could flare again.
At least one policeman was injured when protesters hit
him with crash helmets, one officer said. Organizers
said 400 had been arrested and 19 injured. Police said
they had no figures.
It was the second crackdown this month on a
demonstration critical of the government, as
speculation grows that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi will call snap elections early next year. The
next election is not due until May 2009.
Early in November, about 10,000 protesters demanding
electoral reform defied a police ban to rally in the
capital.url:http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSKLR16504820071125___##0##___ MALAYSIAN SHARIA @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqIhYxT__c&mode=user&search=
http://ultracurrents.blogspot.com

CONVERSIONS AND POLITICS OF HINDU RIGHT
- Sumit Sarkar
With the spread of liberation theologies, churches have been changing. Christian groups have been prominent in progressive movements. In the face of attacks, they have not retreated into secretarian or fundamentalists shells but have joined secular, liberal and Left formations. It is this progressive aspect of contemporary Christianity that arouses the greatest anger and fear among proponents of hindutva.
1. ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS
POKHRAN blasts apart, it seems likely that BJP-Dominated rule at Delhi might come to be remembered above all for the concerted campaign against Christians. The Sangh parivar has always needed one or more enemy 'Other' to consolidate into an aggressive bloc the 'Hindu community' which it claims to represent and seeks to constitute. What is largely new is that over the past year Christians seem to have displaces Muslims as primary target.
The epicenter, so far as the number of incidents is concerned, has been BJP-ruled Gujarat, where already in August 1988 a fact-finding team sent by the Nishant Theatre Group, Delhi, saw many villages sporting the banner 'Vishwa Hindu Parishad welcomes you to Hindu Rashtra's village'. The earlier attacks were widely spread out, and not confined to the Dangs tribal area. Particularly gross incidents included that of Samuel Christian, whose body was exhumed from Kapadvanj cemetery (Nadiad district) on July 8, 1998 and thrown outside the Methodist church, and the attack on century-old Christian girls school at Rajkot on June 20, 1998 where amidst slogans of 'Jai Shri Ram', copies of the New Testament were torn out from the hands of students and 300 of them burnt. By August 1009, the All India Catholic Union had complied a list of 33 incidents in various parts of Gujarat, most of htem during the preceding six months. The targets were mostly Christians, but also included some Muslims - for they have certainly not been left off the hook altogether. Thus at Bardoli scores of shops owned by Muslims were burnt after an inter-religious marriage between a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl, and large number of Muslims of Randhikapur (Panchmahals_ and Sanjeli (Godhra) had to flee their homes following a couple of cases of similar inter-religious love affairs. (The Gujarat government's reaction was characteristic, and revealing: it set up a police cell to 'monitor', i.e. harass and discourage, inter-religious marriages. The same government has disbanded an earlier police cell that had been set up to investigate atrocities against women.)
Then, during Christmas week, no doubt to teach Christians a lesson for having had the temerity to organize a most impressive peaceful country2ide protest and shutdown of missionary schools on December 4, there came the obviously concerted, planned attack on Christian Dangs. Between December 25 and January 3, 24 churches, three schools, and six houses or shops were burnt, destroyed or damaged, and nine Christian tribals suffered serious injuries. "The only lights visible that black Christmas night, and the nights to come, were infernos of churches [Gonzalves]. Incidents in other states have been more sporadic, but in some cases even more horrifying. On September 23, 1998 there was the gang-rape of four nuns at Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. B.L.Sharma, former BJP MP and currently central secretary of the VHP, claimed that this was a result of the "anger of patriotic youth against anti-national forces…the direct result of conversions of Hindus to Christianity by the Christian priests." The subsequent assurance by VHP general secretary Giriraj Kishore that his organization was not condoning rape did not improve matters, for he demanded that "foreign missionaries should be removed from the country (Hindu, September 29, 1998; The Times of India, October 1998). And then in the last week of January 1999 came the burning alive at Monoharpur, Orissa, once again amidst slogans of 'Jai Shri Ram', of the Australian missionary doctor Staines and two of his children. Staines had left the comforts of first world life to serve for 40 years the lepers of this obscure village in India.
The sheer horror of the Staines murder, and the almost unbelievable fortitude, dignity and deeply moving Christian forgiveness with which his widow received the news, evoked powerful and wide spread emotional reactions both in India and abroad. "Serve lepers, do not burn those who serve them", ran the banner carried by some school children at a protest demonstration in Delhi on January 30, 1999 one of many throughout the country. Quite unusually, the initiative for protest rallies often came from students generally aloof from politics, as at Delhi colleges like Miranda or St. Stephens. The prime minister claimed that he was hanging his head in shame, and the intensity of reactions seems to have forced a certain threat, for the time being. But scattered incidents of violence and intimidation are still being reported, and there are also signs that a systematic campaign of lies and distortions concerning Christians is being disseminated through leaflets and brochures. Some of these - usually those without press-lines - are crudely slanderous, and threaten open violence against Christians. Others present what might appear at first sign cogent arguments against missionary activity, often claiming to quote from respected national figures.
Let me give on example, from a pamphlet of the more 'sober' kind. 'Seva ki aad me church ka shadyantra' (church conspiracy under the cover of service) by Ravindra Agarwal (Hindu Manch, Delhi, Sivaratri, 1999), carries, very prominently on its inside cover, the Hindi translatioin of a passage from Gandhi which seems to justify the current anti-missionary campaign. I checked up the reference, and found that it is there in the Mahatma's Collected Works, Volume XLVI, pp 27-28, nor is the translation unfair. In an interview dated March 22, 1931 given to Hindi, Gandhi apparently stated that if in self-governing India missionaries kept on "proselytizing by means of aid, education, etc., I would certainly ask them to withdraw. Every nation's religion is as good as any other. Certainly India's religions are adequate for her people. We need no converting spirituality." The crunch comes when we look at the entire article, which was first published in Young India, April 23, 1931. Here Gandhi began with this passage, but went on to add that "This is what a reporter has put into my mouth….All that I can say is that it is a travesty of what I have always said and held." He offered a corrected version, where he explained that "I am, then, not against conversion. But I am against the modern methods of it. Conversion nowadays has become a matter of business, like any other." The modifications he made in the rest of the quote are equally interesting: "Every nation considers its own faith to be as good as that of any other. Certainly the great faiths held by the people to another." As adequate for her people, India stands in no need of conversions from one faith to another." As striking, and utterly in contrast to hindutva tenets, is the list he went on to offer of India's great' and 'all-sufficing' faiths: "Apart from Christianity and Judaism, Hinduism and its offshoots, Islam and Zoroastrianism are living faiths." The article ended with a characteristic plea for "living friendly contact among the followers of the great religions of the world and not a clash among them…."
An anti-Christian campaign in India today necessarily has to base itself on the question of conversion. This is a partial contrast to Hindu-Muslim relations, for between Hindus and Christians there are no memories of communal violence or partition, nothing that rally corresponds to issues like 'go-korbani' (cow-slaughter) or music before mosques that have sparked off so many riots at least from the 1890's onwards. It is not at all accidental, therefore, that the so-called mild face of the BJP, Vajpayee, had recourse to this ploy when he visited Gujarat just after the Christmas burnings of churches and called for a 'national debate' on conversions, thus adroitly hinting that Christians are ultimately responsible for their own woes. And this, though CP Singh, director-general of the Gujarat police, had categorically declared on October 6, 1998 that the charges being made of forced inter-religious marriages and conversions were baseless, and that it was rather "the activities of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal activists who are taking the law into their own hands which posed a serious danger to peace in Gujarat" (Communalism Combat 1998). As for Staines, he had been a doctor, not an ordained priest, and could not have baptized anyone even if he had wanted to. A delegation of religious leaders of various communities that went on a pilgrimage to Monoharpur recently found that there was not a single Christian among the 80 inmates of Staines' leprosarium (Thampu 1999). Conversion through force evidently requires the complicity of sections of the state apparatus, and, whatever may or may not have been occasionally under colonial rule, in today's circumstances - and most obviously in the BJP's Gujarat bastion - it is clearly absurd to think that such support could ever come the way of Christian missionaries.
Actually some information is available about who exactly is doing forced conversions in the Dangs. "…since the past few months, and more extensively in the first fortnight of January, tribals (of Goghli and surrounding villages) were being bundled into jeeps and taken to the 'garamkund' (hot springs) at Unai for a 'shuddhikaran' (purificatory bath). Then they were driven to swami Assemanand's ashram, to state that they have 'reconverted' to Hinduism."
What is worrying is the confusion the question of Christian conversions can still evoke, even among well-intentioned and progressive people. There are very few who would not condemn the Staines murder, yet this could be accompanied by something like a sotto voce 'but' about conversions. Thus even swami Agnivesh, well know champion of so many progressive causes, welcomed Vajpayee's call for national debate, and while stating that "individual freedom is thekey to the modern outlook", declared that he was "indignang at conversions" [Communalism Combat 1999]. The Hindu Manch pamphlet that I have cited quotes with great glee a report from the Indian Express, January 7, 1999, headlined 'Gandhians blame conversions, seek total 'ban'. The statement apparently comes from two senior Gujarat Sarvoday workers, one of whom, the 82 year old Ghelubhai Nayak, claimed that way back in 1948 Sardar Patel had sent him to Dangs to counter possible Christian conversions there.
In logic and law alike, one would have thought, there is little scope for doubt or confusion here. Article 25 (1) of the Fundamental Rights chapter in the Constitution defines the 'Right to Freedom of Religion' quite categorically: "all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion". Propagation makes no sense at all without the possibility of convincing others of the validity of one's religious beliefs, and rituals. Freedom of choice, in religion or for that matter in politics or anything else, and therefore freedom to change one's beliefs, is surely n any case integral to any conception of democracy. Conversely, conversion by force or fraud is contrary to the basic principle of equal freedom.
Yet, in an admittedly specific and isolated judgment, a Supreme Court judge defied commonsense by declaring that the right to propagate does not include the right to convert, and it is pointless to deny that doubts about this subject have come to be accepted as somehow 'natural' by many. But it is always the 'natural' that stands in need of the most rigorous questioning, and I feel that a little historical exploration might help. In what follows, I look first at the question of conversions and its changing meanings and forms across time, trying to investigate when, under what conditions, and how it became such a contentious issue. My closing section will come back to current events, and ask why the Sangh parivar has chosen such a tiny minority as prime target, and what developments might be helping to make such targeting appear plausible.
2. CONVESIONS IN HISTORY
Let me begin by raising two preliminary questions, one of logic, the other semantics.
What conditions, or widely held assumptions, are necessary before conversions can become contentious issue, arouse widespread and violent passions? Clearly religious communities need to have become crystallized, come to be seen as having firm and fixed boundaries, so that the crossing of borders becomes a dramatic, one-shot matter. Such developed 'community consciousness' however, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the development of what 20th century Indian English has come to call 'communalism': when, obviously, conversions become controversial on a qualitatively higher scale. This requires, not just the transition from 'fuzzy' to enumerated communities to which Sudipo Kaviraj drew our attention some years back in an influential essay, but the further assumption of inevitable and overriding, conflict of interests, such that, in a kind of zero-sum game, the gain of one community is thought to invariably involve the loss of the other.
It needs to be emphasized that this distinction between developed community-consciousness and communalism is important precisely because tendencies exist that virtually equate the latter with any firmly-bounded religious identity. These operate from two diametrically opposed points of view. Pradip Datta has recently made the very perceptive point that communalism is distinctive among ideologies in its refusal to name itself. There is rather the constant effort at identification with religious community, as well as, for Hindu-majoritarian communalists, with nationalism. Consider for instance the very term 'hindutva' which literally means no more than 'Hindu-ness', but has come to be the self-description, from the mid-1920's onwards, of a much more specific and narrow ideology. And here extremes sometimes meet, for its secularism gets equated with anti-religion, the implication becomes that communalism can be countered only by exposing religion as 'superstitious' or 'irrational'. Once again, in effect, 'communal' is being collapsed into 'religious community'. Operationally, such hostility to religion has been rare within Indian secularism, for here the term ahs really been synonymous with anti-communal policies and values, rather than being anti-religious or even particularly rationalist. Anti-secularist polemic however frequently makes such an equation for its own purposes. Paradoxically, when combined with rejection of hindutva as within an influential current intellectual trend, 'communal' and 'community' once again tend to get collapsed into each other, except that then a sharp disjunction is postulated between 'modern' and Pre-modern' communities, 'religion-as-ideology' as contrasted to a somewhat romanticized 'religion-as-faith'.
The sense of outrage evoked by religious conversion, thirdly, can be greatly intensified and made to appear much more legitimate if the loss can be given a 'patriotic', or 'national', colour. This, of course, has been the special advantage enjoyed by Hindu majoritarianism, particularly after 1947. Sangh parivar justifications of recent outrages against Christians are replete with instances of such equation.
One need to note also the very effective semantic ploy through which it has come to be widely assumed that Hinduism is near-unique among religious traditions in being non-proselytising: conversion to other faiths therefore is a loss that cannot be recuperated, and so particularly unfair. This at 'first sight seems to fit in well with the ommon sense view that one can become Hindu by birth alone, since caste (whether in the 'varna' or the 'jati' sense) is crucial to Hinduism, and your caste status is hereditary. But certain ticklish questions arise as soon as we enlarge the time-perspective: where did all the Buddhists of ancient India go, for instance? And how did Hindu icons and myths spill over into lare parts of southeast Asia? More crucially, one needs to recognize that, across centuries but in accelerated manner with modernized communications, brahmanical Hindurituals, beliefs, and caste disciplines have spread across the subcontinent and penetrated and sought to transform communities with initially very different practices and faiths. It has somehow become very conventional to describe the process here by anodyne terms like 'Sanskritisation' or 'cultural integration', but they really amount nevertheless to what with other religious traditions would have been termed 'conversion'. There is also much historical data about the spread of specific varieties of Hindu traditions, like for instance Chaitanya bhakti from central and western Bengal into Orissa and the uplands of Jharkhand. A whole battery of terms was developed from the late 19th century onwards as expansion directed towards marginal groups and tribals became more organized: 'reclamation', 'shuddhi' (purification'), 'recon version', 'paravartan' (turning back', the term preferred by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad today). Commonto all these labels is an instance that all that is being attempted is to bring people back to their 'natural' state: which, for all the targeted groups, is always assumed to be being Hindu in a more or less sanskritised manner. Semantic aggression can hardly go further.
But if shifts in religious allegiance are obviously nothing new, their forms are likely to have changed over time. The precise meanings of 'conversion; need to be historicized.
The thrust of much recent historical work has been towards the destabilization of assumptions of continuous, firmly-bounded identities. This is in significant contrast to the bulk of earlier historiography, which had tended to essentialise terms like Hindu or Muslim, and then gone on to emphasize either the moments of synthesis, or (in the communal variant) perennial conflict. On need not go as far as the questioning of pre-colonial identities as some colonial discourse analysts would want to agree that the absence of modern communicational networks (developed roads, railways, telegraph lines, the printing press, etc) must have greatly hindered the formation of stable and tight countrywide religious blocks. Trends in medieval Indian scholarship seem to be moving in a similar direction, though a more rigorous probing of the rhetorical aspects and precise implications of texts than at first sight seem to indicate a high level of religious conflict and persecution. (Selective 19th century translations from some of these, notably by Elliot and Sowson, had greatly contributed to communalization.) Thus Persian chronicles boasting of wars against infidels and desecration of temples - or for that matter a text like the Vilasa copperplate grant describing in lurid but highly formulaic terms that Kaliyuga ushered in by Muhammad bin Tughlaq's destruction of the Kakatiya dynasty in Andhra - are being recognized to have been in part legitimate devices. (The same temples, for instance, seem to be getting destroyed again and again, as Romila Thapar has shown recently in an as yet unpublished paper about Somnath). Again, 'Hindu' texts, in Sanskrit or regional languages like Telugu, use, overwhelmingly, ethnic rather than religious terms (Turushka, most commonly) to describe the kingdoms and armies we have become accustomed since the 19th century to call 'Muslim'. All this does not mean, of course, that there were not many instances of conflicts and acts of violence wholly or partly 'religious' (thought even the meaning of that term is not entirely transparent, or impervious to change), amidst much everyday coexistence and co-mingling of practices. But their generalization into mass communal ideologies with a sub-continental reach was unlikely.
In an important discussion of processes of Islamisation in medieval BENGAL, Eaton has tried to draw out the implications of their relative absence of firmly-bounded communities for the question of religious conversion. Use of the term itself, he argues, becomes "perhaps misleading - since it ordinarily connotes a sudden and total transformation", whereas the changes could have "proceeded so gradually as to be nearly imperceptible". Like other secular-minded historians, Eaton (1994:269) rejects the theory of large-scale forcible conversion, since the religions that became massively Muslim - East Bengal and Western Punjab - were also those furthest away from major centres of Muslim politico-military power. He discounts also the view that Islam attracted converts from lower castes primarily by virtue of its egalitarian tenets, for these were also the areas where brahmanical penetration, and therefore structures of caste oppression, had been relatively weak. By implication, Eaton's account draws attention to the possibility that in large parts of the subcontinents, certainly in medieval times and to a considerable extent even today, the great religious traditions have been expanding at the cost, not so much of each other as in relation to a multitude of local cults or practices. Conflicts in pre-modern times would have been considerably reduced, further, by the slow, phased nature of the transition. Here Eaton (1994: 113-19, 268-90) distinguishes three, heuristic moments, of 'inclusion' of Islamic cult figures within the local cosmologies, 'identification' of some of these with indigenous objects of worship, and finally (and perhaps often mainly in the 19th century), 'displacement' through which Islam became 'purified' through reform or purging of non-islamic beliefs and practices. One might add that pre-colonial conversion was probably not so much a matter of individual and one-shot choice, as of slow changes involving an entire group, family or kinship network, or local community - which would once again reduce the potentials for conflict.
Three major changes, roughly from the latter part of the 19th century onwards, seems particularly relevant for understanding why conversions started becoming so much more controversial.
The first was the tightening of community boundaries: there has come into being a broad consensus about this among historians, despite continuing differences regarding the extent of novelty involved her, or in the practice weighing-up of causes. Within the broader framework of developing politico-administrative, economic, and communicational integration, particularly important inputs probably came from colonial law, and from census operations. In matters of so-called 'personal' or 'family' law, the British had decided in the 1770's that they would administer according to Hindu or Islamic sacred texts and in consultation with Brahman pandits and Muslim ulema: differential, in other words, for the two major religious traditions. In many everyday situations, therefore, one had to declare oneself a Hindu or Muslim (or member of any other religious communities that had come to develop 'personal' legal systems of their own). While superficially not dissimilar to Mughal practice, there was a significant change insofar as Mughal courts had never tried to penetrate deep into lower levels through the kind of systematic hierarchy of appellate jurisdictions that British rule developed over time. Disputes must have been often decided at local or village levels according to diverse customary standards that would have had little to do with textual (or 'religious') principles Colonial 'personal' law centralized, textualised, made operationally much sharper the boundaries between religious communities and probably enhanced also to a significant extent the influence over the rest of society of high castes and Muslim elites.
The impact of the census from 1870's onwards is more obvious, and has been repeatedly emphasized in recent academic discussions. Census operations necessitated the drawing of sharp distinctions, of religion, caste, language, or whatever else the administrators had decided on as worthy of being counted. Enumerated communities made for mutual competition, complaints about unfair representation in education, jobs, administration or politics, stimulated fears about being left behind in numbers games. The census procedures often involved the imposition of order, rather than simple recording of realities on the ground, becomes clear, for instance, from the amusing instance in the 1911 census of a 35,000-strong community of 'Hindu-Muhammadans' in Gujarat, so termed by a Bombay census superintendent confounded by the inextricable combination of multiple practices, beliefs, and even self-definitions. The latter was pulled up sharply by his superior, census commissioner E.A. Gait, who ordered the location of "the persons concerned to the one religion or the other as best he could" [Census 1911:118]
Colonial modernity helped to tighten community bonds: it has been less often noticed, however, that it also stimulated forces that made them more fragile. What was coming into existence by the late 19th early 20th century was a situation conducive for growth of note one, but many community identities - religious, caste, linguistic-regional, anti-colonial 'national', class, gender, in interactive yet often conflictual relationships with each other. Among the many merits of Pradip Datta's just-published work (1999:9) is the way he has been able to bring together these interlocking narratives, in an effort to view "communal formations…..as part of a field in which they have to perforce relate to other collective identities (other than its binary in 'Hindu' or 'Muslim'), such as class, gender, or caste affiliations."
Signs can be discerned, thirdly, of the beginnings of a discourse of individual rights. The direct influence of western liberal and radical ideologies, while not negligible, was no doubt confined to relatively few, but there was also the fallout from certain institutional developments. Colonial justice, while shoring up religiously-defined community norms in personal law, simultaneously enlarged up to a point "the freedom of the individual in the market-place" in land and commercial transactions (Washbrook 1981: 650). British Indian definitions for criminal liability, too, came to be theoretically based on notions of an "equal abstract and universal legal subject" - though once again only to a partial extent, for there were many accommodations in practice with existing social hierarchies (Singha 1998: viii). Equality before the law, promised in much-cited official documents like the Queen's proclamation of 1858, was often severely tampered with by white racial privilege. But then promises simultaneously held out and broken trend to whet appetites, and such a dialectic came to operate, though of course in widely different and at times even contradictory ways, both with respect to attitudes towards their foreign overlords of growing number of Indians, and lower caste (and/or class) resentments about indigenous hierarchies of privilege and exploitation.
Even more significant initially, perhaps, were developments relating to gender, it has been argued recently that the 19th century legal reforms and debates around women ('sati

Should the State License Human Beings?

Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com

Should the State License Human Beings?
Op_ed
By Sheldon Richman
Translation

Should the State License Human Beings?
Democratic presidential candidates are tripping over the driver’s-licenses-for-illegal-aliens issue like a bunch of old slapstick vaudevillians.
What’s so comical about their antics is that the issue demonstrates that politicians are locked into bad assumptions from top to bottom. Start with driver’s licenses. In one debate Sen. Chris Dodd said driving “is a privilege not a right.” That’s a common belief. But it’s incoherent.
In common parlance, a privilege is something someone grants to someone else. If I let my teenager borrow my car, that’s a privilege I extend to him. Since it’s my car, I have the legitimate authority to do this. I may set the terms, and I can revoke the privilege at will. My child has no rights in the matter. He is in the position of a supplicant. (When he grows up and I need to borrow his car, the roles will be reversed.)
This sort of privilege, then, grows out of property ownership. The owner sets the rules of use, and no one may rightfully use the property without the owner’s permission. Privileges regarding use are an owner’s to bestow — or not.
What does a driving privilege mean when we’re talking about adults and the government? Where does the government get the authority to bestow, deny, or revoke this alleged privilege? Under American political theory, the government supposedly rules by the consent of the governed. Sometimes it is held that the government is us. If that is true, the grantor of the driving privilege must ultimately be the people.
Who is the grantee? Also the people. So we the people grant us the people the privilege to drive. That makes no sense.
"The upshot is that the government-issued driver’s license is incompatible with a truly free society. So are government-owned roads, for that matter. We may confidently predict that owners of private roads, which have existed through history, would require drivers to have proof of competence, but that is a far cry from the system of identification that constitutes today’s driver’s license. Under the REAL ID legislation passed by Congress the link between identification and permission to drive will take a quantum leap."
But it does make sense if we realize that this theory of government is a fraud. The government is something over and above the people with the power to issue decrees we are legally required to obey under threat of punishment. True, each of us gets an infinitesimal say in who holds office, but that doesn’t change the essential fact that once candidates are in office, they issue orders and we defy them at our peril. If you don’t like the orders, you are instructed to exercise your “power” to elect a new government. Good luck with that.
The upshot is that the government-issued driver’s license is incompatible with a truly free society. So are government-owned roads, for that matter. We may confidently predict that owners of private roads, which have existed through history, would require drivers to have proof of competence, but that is a far cry from the system of identification that constitutes today’s driver’s license. Under the REAL ID legislation passed by Congress the link between identification and permission to drive will take a quantum leap.
If Americans shouldn’t need the government’s permission to drive, why should so-called illegal aliens, who are merely undocumented residents, need it?
Presidential candidates find it in their interest to one-up their rivals in showing how tough they want to be on “border security.” Denying undocumented residents permission to drive is part of their posturing. So are the threats to imprison employers who hire them. How odious. People who have no other way of getting into the United States sneak in to make a better life through hard work. Preventing them from driving and threatening their prospective employers are flagrant attacks on innocent people’s ability to improve their lot in life.
As we head into Thanksgiving, let us contemplate this disgrace to America’s noble heritage.
Mr. Richman's articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. Articles by Sheldon Richman at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/sheldon-richman

Why does the Prime Minister Not Lose Sleep over Dr Binayak Sen?
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
http://www.mainstre amweekly. net/article442. html
Following are excerpts from an interview with Binayak Sen’s wife, Dr Ilina Sen, a senior activist in the women’s movement and Head of the Women Studies Department of Mahatma Gandhi International University in Wardha.
Question: How did Binayak Sen get involved with Narayan Sanyal?
Dr Ilina Sen: At the end of December 2005 a message came to the PUCL that a senior activist with Maoist background had been arrested. Journalists were not aware what this was about. When Binayak contacted Home Secretary B.K.S.. Ray, he said after a few days that the arrest had been made by the Andhra Pradesh Police. At that time, the fact finding on Salwa Judum in Dantewada district by the APDR, PUCL Chhattisgarh, PUDR Jharkand and Indian Association of People’s Lawyers had already taken place. (See PUCL website of October/November 2005.)
Sanyal’s brother contacted Binayak and sought help to locate Narayan Sanyal. He reached Bilaspur on January 1, 2006 and on January 2 the habeas corpus was filed. The Chhattisgarh Police denied any knowledge, but the Andhra Pradesh Police said he had been picked up on the Andhra side, in an area bordering Dantewada. He was held in Andhra without charges till April and then released, only to be re-arrested in Chhattisgarh. Binayak took interest in Sanyal also as a doctor, because he needed a hand surgery which could not be done in the jail. This surgery was finally done successfully outside. N. Sanyal’s brother, who had brought clothes to his brother and money for the lawyer, suffered a heart attack in late 2006 and could no longer visit him. Instead, Piyush Guha, a business-man in tendu leaves from Kolkata, brought money to be given to the lawyer.
Question: What led to Binayak’s arrest?
Dr Ilina Sen: I had recently joined the Department of Women’s Studies in the M.G. International Hindi University in Wardha as HoD. On April 30, 2007, I took our daughters to Kolkata to visit Binayak’s mother. Binayak was to come on May 2. This was a family holiday planned long in advance. On May 1, 2007 Binayak held his clinic in Bilaspur. He also went to meet Piyush Guha in a hotel at 8.00 pm. The room was locked and the reception said Guha had gone out and was expected back soon. Binayak went out to take a meal, but on his return he was told that Guha had checked out without information. Binayak searched, but could not find him. He went to Kolkata as planned. On May 4, Guha’s wife called to say her husband had disappeared. Binayak referred her to the PUCL State President in Chhattis-garh, since he himself was on holiday. Guha was missing since May 1, but only on May 5 the PUCL reported it to the Chhattisgarh Police. The police said
that a
suspicious looking man had been arrested on way to Raipur station with a bag in which Rs 49,000 were found, Naxal literature and three handwritten letters from Narayan Sanyal; Guha is supposed to have said that Binayak gave them to him. Obviously, Binayak could not have met Guha, because he had disappeared and Binayak himself had come to Kolkata on May 2.
On May 9, friends from Raipur phoned us saying the police had put out a version that Dr Sen and his family were absconding in Kolkata. Due to this situation, his lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj had advised anticipatory bail. This could only be physically done in Chhattisgarh. So Binayak came to Bilaspur on May 14 and was arrested in Sudha Bharadwaj’s office.
Question: What is the incriminating evidence in the case?
Dr Ilina Sen: So far, not a shred of incriminating evidence has been produced. The police wanted to search our apartment on May 16, but since I am the owner and I was not present, the flat was sealed. I came on May 16 and insisted in court on May 17, 2007 that independent witnesses must be present. Already our farm house had been searched without any proper warrant. So I got a court order to bring independent witnesses for the house search and this took place on May 19. The police walked off with the hard disc of the computer, which was examined in Hyderabad. The result came on June 16, but it has not been made known. The charge- sheet was given on the 89th day after arrest. Ninety days is the limit. Binayak is supposed to be a hard- core Naxalite but the allegations made are of a completely general nature and without evidence. The postcards from Sanyal found in our house were written with permission of the jail authorities to the PUCL
Secretary. The
police says that Piyush Guha had three letters from Sanyal in his bag when arrested and he is supposed to have alleged that these were given to him from Binayak. Now the situation has worsened because there has been a tip-off to the police on October 31, 2007 that Narayan Sanyal had a cell phone in his underwear and a charger in his bathroom. He is said to have swallowed his SIM card.
Question: How do you experience the conditions in the jail?
Dr Ilina Sen: The food is terrible. Binayak has lost 17 kg of his weight. Half of the food supplements relatives bring are taken away by the police during fleecing. The roof leaks. Visits are only once a week for half an hour.. One of the worst things is the court lock-up. The prisoners are herded to court in crowded vehicles. Binayak is kept separate for high security. The families are kept outside and yell to convey messages to the cages in the court room. Our children get very depressed by this situation.
The police suggested video-conferencing of Binayak’s case, but we refused that, because then he does not even have access to a lawyer.
Question: From November 1 to 7, 2007, the Chhattisgarh State Utsav is taking place, commemorating the formation of the State. What is your comment on “good governance�?
Dr Ilina Sen: It is a police raj. e- Governance (open source based) is advertised in view of the 2008 elections. But it is clear that the so-called peace campaign of the Salwa Judum has escalated the violence. The Utsav had to be stopped because of the ambush on the police, in which eleven policemen lost their lives. The exhibition at the Utsav displayed the guns captured from Naxalites and the police had a stand where the public could train their guns on Naxals (on mock-up screen) and practice to shoot them. The enormous poverty in the interior villages and the repression through Salwa Judum has to be addressed democratically. There is no indication of this either under the BJP Government, or in the Congress party.
Question: How do you see the situation of people’s movements in the State?
Dr Ilina Sen: The situation of the people’s movements is a tragedy, due to the overwhelming repression. Sangharsh aur Nirman was the slogan of the CMM under Niyogiji, but today where is the Mukti? The CMM and other activists are carrying on bravely and have supported Binayak with vigils and dharnas. The units in Bhilai, cultural groups and children’s groups have held up his memory as a doctor. The chargesheet depicts his medical work as negligible and just a cover. But doctors from Shahid Hospital in Dalli Rajara and Jan Swasthya Sahayog are running the clinic in Bilaspur without fail. The Jan Mukti Morcha has organised dharnas and burned the Chief Minister’s effigy. There has been an impressive expression of solidarity from the Medico Friends Circle, the Alumni of the Vellore Hospital in Tamil Nadu, the British House of Commons, Amnesty International, Noam Chomsky, Amartya Sen, Arundhati Roy and many others.
But the situation is very depressing under globalisation. The culture of Chhattisgarh is crumbling. Raipur suffocates under the veneer of glittering shopping malls and consumerism, while Hindutva tries to synthesise the cultural pluralism and streamlines the indigenous culture into sanskritised Hinduism. There is a climate of militarisation, which suffocates democracy and leads to proliferation of armed resistance. The draconian laws in force in this State, like the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005 and the UAPA of 2004, had to be signed by the President when they were passed, though the first one is only a State law. This shows how extreme the situation is. They need to be revoked, because they are only used to suppress any dissent, for example against privatisation of water (Sheonath river), non- implementation of labour laws, alienation of tribals from jal, jangal aur jammeen, struggle against mafia in land, water and liquor
and corporate
and contract business. A large number of organisations like the PUCL, PUDR, APDR, AIPL, CAVOW, ACHR, and International Association of People’s Lawyers have conducted independent inquiries, documenting hundreds of unaccounted for killings, rapes, burning of thousands of homes, destruction of livestock, grains and clearing of hundreds of villages, amounting to displacement of almost two lakh persons.
Question: What is your appeal?
Dr Ilina Sen: It is necessary to look at the facts. The chargesheet is full of general allegations without substance. Binayak has even been depicted as a Christian Missionary. Mr Sanyal is resourceful enough on his own. Binayak only did his duty as the General Secretary of the PUCL and as a doctor. He is widely known and respected as a doctor and human rights activist. Mr Piyush Guha has recently been implicated in an old bombing case in Purulia, in which there was never mention of him earlier. The arbitrariness of the State and the police is alarming. The case must be watched when it comes up in the Sessions Court. A nationwide campaign for restoration of democracy in Chhattisgarh would be very helpful.

Cases Related To Children / Women
Year 1993-1994
Interventions in Court Proceedings under section 12(b) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993: Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment of women
Year 1994-1995
Alleged rape in custody by an Assistant Sub-Inspector of Delhi Police
Year 1995-1996
Rape in police custody of T. Uma in Tamil Nadu
Torture and sexual assault of a minor tribal girl from Bihar in Maharashtra
Stripping of teenagers in police lock-up in Kerala
Year 1998-1999
Torture of a child labourer, U.P. (CASE NO:5897/24/98-99)
Girl rescued from captivity, Rajasthan (CASE NO:496/20/97-98)
Disparities in Maternity Leave to the Employees of Private Schools, West Bengal (CASE NO:16295/96-97)
Escape of inmates from Juvenile Homes etc. (CASE NO:497/13/97-98 & other 86 cases)
Sexual exploitation of woman, Rajasthan (CASE NO:685/20/97-98)
Year 1999-2000
Rape of a minor dalit girl by protectors of law, U.P. (CASE NO:9133/24/98-99)
Illegal detention of 3 year old child for ten years due to apathy of the police and other authorities (CASE NO:78/25/98-99)
Education of children of sex workers, Delhi (CASE NO:16754/96-97/NHRC)
Year 2000-2001
Death of a Girl in VVIP Movement, U.P. (CASE NO:13881/24/97-98)
Year 2001-2002
Sexual harassment in the work place and suicide of Sangeeta Sharma, Advocate, Andhra Pradesh (CASE NO:203/1/2000-2001)
Rape of a minor Dalit girl: failure to comply with the law, Haryana (CASE NO:390/7/98-99/NHRC)
Death of 12 year old child worker, Naushad, Bangalore (CASE NO:452/10/2000-2001)
Commission of rape by a Minister of State in the Government of Assam (CASE NO:113/3/2000-2001)
Year 2002-2003
Removal of uterus due to medical negligence: Rajasthan (Case No. 1518/20/2000/2001)
Atrocities on Smt. Usha Kiran Vajpayee by Police personnel: Uttar Pradesh (Case No.29929/24/2000-2001)
Atrocities on inmates by the Superintendent, Probation Home, Devghar: Jharkhand (Case No.177/34/2001-2002)
Exploitation of child labourers in Tonk: Rajasthan (Case No. 817/20/2001-2002)
Death of a minor boy, Chanderpal, owing to negligence by the Police, Uttaranchal (Case No.11150/24/1999-2000)
Bonded child labour: Andhra Pradesh (Case No.443/1/2001-2002/FC)
Violation of the rights of children arising out of the practice of rituals: Tamil Nadu (Case No.558/22/2002/2003)
Year 2003-2004
Kids Slogged 12 hours a Day Paid @ Rs. 5/- a Week: Delhi (Case No.1868/30/2001-2002)
Alleged Illegal Detention of Girl Child: Orissa (Case No:80/18/2003-2004(WC)
Harassment, Misbehaviour and Injury Caused to U.K. Vajpayee, ANM.: Uttar Pradesh (Case No: 29929/24/2000-2001)
Rape of 17 Women Including complainant and her Mother: Gujarat (Case No:256/6/2003-2004(WC)
Rape of Four Year Girl Belonging to Bhil Adivasi Community: Delhi (Case No:3703/30/2002-2003(WC)
Rape of a Ten Year Old Girl Inmate of the Juvenile Observation Home, Raichur: Karnataka (case No.32/1/1999-2000(WC)/FC)
Rape in Ranchi Police Station: Jharkhand (Case No.415/34/2001-2002-AR/FC)
Child Marriages: Chhattisgarh (Case No.56/33/2003-2004)
Year 2004-2005
Sexual Harassment at work place - Case No. 1775/35/2003-2004-WC
Exploitation of Children by the Great Roman Circus in Gonda District of Uttar Pradesh – Case No.7993/24/ 2004-2005.
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Year 1993-94
Interventions in Court proceedings under Section 12 (b) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993: Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment of women.
The Commission took cognizance of a press report dated 12 January 1994 concerning the alleged tattooing of the words "Jeb Katri" on the forehead of four women by Amritsar Police personnel. The victims had also filed a Writ Petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh, praying for directions to the respondents, viz. Government of Punjab, Superintendent of Police, Amritsar and others to arrange for plastic surgery for removal of the objectionable tattoo, giving adequate compensation for inhuman torture and humiliation and for punishing the guilty police officials. On 17 January 1994, the Commission addressed a letter to the Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab calling for a report in the matter.
As the matter was pending before the High Court, the Commission decided to intervene under Section 12 (b) of the Protection of Human Rights act and, upon intervention being allowed, filed an Affidavit through a Counsel asking for
(i) investigation to be handed over the CBI as the accused belonged to the State police and investigation by a sister wing may not inspire confidence.
(ii) allow the victims to have their foreheads operated by competent plastic surgeons of their choice at State cost, and
(iii) allow interim compensation.
The High Court, after hearing Counsel for the parties including Shri Mohinderjit Singh Sethi, Senior Advocate, for the Commission, made a direction accepting all the suggestions of the Commission.

Year 1994-95
Alleged rape in custody by an Assistant Sub-Inspector of Delhi Police
In July 1994, pursuant to its circular of 14 December 1993, the Commission received a report from the Dy. Commissioner of Police, South District. New Delhi, in regard to a custodial rape by an ASI of the Delhi Police force. The victim had been brought to the police station by another ASI, as she had got lost on her way to her parent’s home. No report was made in the daily diary of the police station of the victim having been taken to the police station, nor was due care taken to ensure the return of the victim to their family. The ASI who took her to the police station was accordingly placed under suspension. The victim was raped by another ASI who took her to his house in the residential quarters of Paharganj police station. The ASI who committed the rape was arrested and the case was sent to Court for trial. The Commission also received a complaint and a report on this incident from the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), Delhi.
The Commission, on perusal of the report from the Government of NCTD, and also the report of the PUDR, directed the Government of NCTD to explain as to why the woman was detained at the police station for the night, how it was that there was no supporting entry for her detention at the police station, and what steps had been taken or were proposed to be taken to ensure that women were not called to and detained at the police station for investigation, particularly at night. The Commission took serious objection to the persistence of such practices, notwithstanding the decision of the Supreme Court given some 15 years ago in the case of "Nandini Satpathi Vs. State of Orissa".
The Government of NCTD subsequently reported that there had been a lapse on the part of duty officers both at P.S. Hauz Khaz and at P.S. Okhla for not recording the victim’s presence in the police station and also for not informing her family members of her whereabouts. Departmental enquiry into the lapses has also been ordered against the concerned police officials. Instructions not to call women for interrogation in the night, and to detail women police officers if a woman is called for interrogation to police station at an odd hour, have reiterated by the Government of NCTD for strict compliance by all concerned officers.

Year 1995-96
Rape in police custody of T. Uma in Tamil Nadu
On receipt of a report from the Collector, Kamarajar District, Tamil Nadu about the custodial rape of T. Uma by the Head Constable of Alangulam police station, the Commission called for a report. The Government of Tamil Nadu, through their letter dated 2 May 1995 stated that the accused was placed under suspension and that acase under section 354 and 376 IPC was registered against him on 30 September 1994. It was also stated that the enquiry report on the alleged rape was under examination and that action would be taken against the delinquents, if necessary, and that a report would be sent in due course.
The Commission considered this report in May 1995 and commented adversely on the long delay; it also called upon the State Government to complete its scrutiny of the report expeditiously andindicate its final view quickly.
Subsequently, the State Government reported to the Commission that it had accepted the findings of the enquiry officer and had come to the conclusion that Uma was indeed raped by the Head Constable and that there was reasonable ground for launching criminal prosecution and simultaneous departmental action against him and other policemen who were involved in this incident. Further, considering the indigent circumstances of the family of Uma, the State Government also sanctioned Rs. 100,000 as compensation to Uma.
While accepting the State Government’s report, the Commission recommended that the prosecution should be launched without further delay and that the investigation be entrusted to a senior police officer.

Alleged rape of Jain Sadhvis: Madhya Pradesh Police asked to follow the spirit of law
The Commission has asked the Madhya Pradesh Government to take cognizance of and to start investigating allegations relating to the rape of two Jain Sadhvis, a matter which was the subject of widespread media coverage. Interpreting the relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code(IPC), the Commission held that it was not necessary for the State Government to wait for a formal report from the victims or anyone on their behalf.
Sakshi, a Delhi-based non-governmental organization, had earlier drawn the attention of the Commission to this incident and requested it to conduct an enquiry into it.
In an initial examination of the complaint on 26 July 1995, the Commission had felt that the act in question did not come within its purview, as it was committed by a private person. The Commission, however, decided to enquire from the Director General of Police, Madhya Pradesh wheher prosecution had been launched in this case or not.
The Director General of Police, Madhya Pradesh reported to the Commission concerning the efforts made by his Department to enquire into the matter. He indicated that a criminal case had not been registered, as the Sadhvis in question were not willing to report the matter to the police. He added in clarification that neither the Sadhvis nor anyone else on their behalf had ever lodged any complaint at the Police Station, Morena or with the Superintendent of Police, Morena.
As the offence of rape punishable under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code is a cognizable one, the Commission took the view that "the police would be free under their own information to take cognizance and to start investigation."
Accordingly, theCommission addressed a letter to the Chief Secretary, Madhya Pradesh to look into the matter from this point of view and to advise the police to put the law into motion. The Commission further held that even though the victims of rape had not left the order to which they belonged and were not prepared to come to court, it was the duty of the police to follow the spirit of the law and to take effective steps to ensure that crimes, particularly cognizable ones, did not go unpunished.
Upon the intervention of Commission, a case has now been registered by the Madhya Pradesh Police in this matter. Investigation is in progress.

Torture and sexual assault of a minor tribal girl from Bihar in Maharashtra
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Singhbhum unit (East and West), Bihar brought to the attention of theCommission six cases of serious violations of human rights which included, among others, an incident of torture and sexual abuse of a minor tribal giril "Baby" by the relatives of an influential officier of the Bihar Police . The girl was working as domestic help in Bombay at the house of the siter and brother-in-law of the police officer, where shewas allegedly tortured by the couple and was also sexually assaulted. There were reports in the press on the hushing up of this matter by the Adityapar police (Bihar) in connivance with the said police officer.
The Commission initially issued notice to the Bihar Government calling for a report. Subsequently, it also sent a Superintendent of Police from its Investigation Division to look into the case.
Upon perusing his enquiry report, the Commission termed the whole episode "shocking"and resulting from "depraved human conduct". As a result of steps taken by the Commission, a case of torture and rape wasregistered in Raigarh, Maharashtra which was the place of the incident.
The Commission noted down that Baby, an orphan, who is now living with her grandmother in Jamshedpur, would not be in a position to go to Raigad, the place of trial. It further noted that Jamshedpur would also be inappropriate to serve as thevenue for a trial as the brother-in-law of the acused was a senior police officer in Bihar,. Under these circumstances, the Commission felt that thetrial should be transferred to a venue such as Delhi and it moved the Supreme Court in this respect. The Supreme Court has entertained the petition and stayed further proceedings of the trial pending disposal of the transfer petition. Having regard to the trauma of the minor Adivasi girl, the Commission has also provided some interim financial assistance through an NGO, in Ranchi that has agreed to look after her interests

Stripping of teenagers in police lock-up in Kerala
Upon the recommendation of the Commission, the Kerala Government has sanctioned payment of compensation of Rs 10,000 to each of seven boys who were strippedand forced to spend two nights in the police lock-up at Tirunelli in WayanadDistrict. Necessary action has also been initiated by the State Government forrecovering, through departmental proceedings, the total compensation amount of Rs. 70,000 from the delinquent police officers, who have been placed under suspension.
The Commission took suo motu cognizance of press reports which stated that some tribal youths, mostly students, were picked up by the police when they were agitating against the opening of liquor shops in Appappara andwho were treated in a very harsh manner. The Commission also subsequently received complaints in this regard from the Kerala Harijan Samajam, Centre for Human Rights, Legal Aid and Reserach, Keralal and Madhya Pradesh Youth Organization, all of them being non-governmental organizations.
In response to the Commission’s notice calling for areport, the Kerala Government accepted that certain boys and girls, peacefully demonstrating in front of an arrack shop, were unnecessarily arrested and the the police constables behaved indecently with them.
As the allegations were prima-facie found to be true, theState Governmentsuspended four police personnel responsible for this incident and ordered a detailed enquiry.
The Commission, after considering the State Government’s report, termed the whole episode "reprehensible" and as yet another case of the violation of human rights of the less fortunate in society. The Commission recommended that Rs 10,000/- be paid as compensation to each of the victims and that the money be recovered from the errant personnel.In its reply, the Government of Kerala has tated that necessay compensation has been sanctioned and that efforts are on to recover it from the delinquent officers through Departmental or other appropriate proceedings

Year 1998-99
Torture of a child labourer: Uttar Pradesh (Case No. 5897/24/98-99)
The Commission took suo-motu cognizance of a report appearing in Nav Bharat Times of 3 July 1998 in which it was stated that two drunken police constables allegedly tortured a young boy, working in a road side Dhaba. The news item further alleged that the two constables ordered him to fetch his mother to entertain them and when the boy refused, they stripped him and branded him with a hot iron rod used for making "tandoori roti".
On instructions of the Commission, the case was investigated by the Commission’s own investigating team and it was found that the boy was beaten with footwear and, later, with a walking stick, by the police constables.
The two constables involved in the incident had been placed under suspension and a criminal case started against them.
In view of the sufferings of the boy, the Commission recommended to the Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh, the payment of a sum of Rs.5,000/- to the parents by way of immediate interim relief to be spent on the welfare and education of the boy. At the instance of the Commission, the District Magistrate has initiated action against the Dhaba owner under the Child Labour (Prevention) Act for employing a child in his Dhaba.
COMMENT
The Convention on the Rights of the Child’ (CRC) sets the standards that should prevail for the protection of children. It emphasises in particular, the rights to life, survival and development of the child. Art. 6(2) of the CRC makes it obligatory for the State to ensure the survival and development of the child to the maximum possible extent. This spirit prevails in the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution, e.g., Art. 39 (e) & (f), which require that the State should direct its policy towards securing for children the opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner, in conditions of freedom and dignity, that childhood is protected against exploitation and the tender age of children is not abused.
The efforts of the Commission seek to give expression to the spirit of Art. 32 of the CRC, the provisions of Constitution of India and judicial pronouncements of the Supreme Court. These provisions recognise that the child has a right against economic exploitation and the performing of any work which is likely to be hazardous or interfere with the child’s education or be harmful to the child’s health or development.
The Indian Constitution, in its Art. 24, prohibits employment of children in factories and other hazardous enterprises and Art. 45 mandates that the State shall endeavour to provide free and compulsory education for children upto the age of 14 years of age.

Sexual exploitation of woman: Rajasthan (Case No.685/20/97-98)
The Commission received an anonymous complaint alleging that a 24 year old woman had been forcibly detained and was being sexually abused by certain persons at Jaipur for the last 2-3 years. According to the complaint, the woman had a young child and was in a pitiable condition and the culprits were planning to force her into prostitution. The Commission took cognizance of the anonymous complaint. A report submitted by S.P. (Rural) Jaipur on notice from the Commission stated that both the suspected persons had been contacted and that, as they belonged to a respected family, their involvement was ruled out. The report also stated that no such woman as mentioned in the complaint could be located. Not satisfied with the report, the Commission deputed its investigation team for an on-the-spot inquiry. The Commission’s team, alongwith local police, rescued the woman on 13 April 1998.According to the report of the investigation team, she was recovered from the house of one Manoharlal Sharma, a criminal, and was found to be undernourished, in ill health and in traumatized condition. She was sent for medical examination and was found to be pregnant. According to the report, a case under relevant provisions of the IPC was registered and 6 persons, including a police constable, were identified as being responsible for her desperate condition; two of them had already been arrested. The Commission considered the report of its investigation team and noted that the law had been set in motion. Further, taking note of the travails of the victimized woman as well as the trauma that she had undergone, the Commission recommended that the Government of Rajasthan accord her appropriate assistance, inter alia by providing her suitable employment.

Girl rescued from captivity: Rajasthan (Case No.496/20/97-98)
The Commission received an anonymous petition stating that a young girl had been kept in captivity in a house in Dholpur, Rajasthan for about 5 years and, as a result of that, she had become mentally ill and her condition was serious. The Commission, taking cognizance of the matter, directed its investigation team to submit a report after making an on-the-spot inquiry. It also directed the investigation team to take up the matter with the members of the family in case the facts alleged were found to be true. The investigation team, on finding that allegations made in the petition were true, undertook a rescue operation. The team reported to the Commission that, after the Commission’s intervention, the victim had been given appropriate care and had been receiving proper medical attention. Noting the report of the investigating team, the Commission further directed the Rajasthan Police to vigorously pursue their efforts to apprehend the culprit, the brother of the victim, and to monitor the progress of treatment of the victim. The Commission also directed the SMS hospital to continue to provide medical assistance to the victim and report to the Commission.

Disparities in Maternity Leave to the Employees of Private Schools: West Bengal (Case No.16295/96-97)
A complaint was received by the Commission alleging that management of certain private schools in West Bengal had not been providing maternity leave benefits to the teaching and non-teaching women employees. The Secretary, Department of Education, Govt. of West Bengal on notice from the Commission submitted a report based on inquires made by the Department with regard to the three specific categories of private schools, where the provisions of maternity leave allegedly were not enforced. The report said that different provisions were made for different categories of schools and that the schools were strictly following the rules which were applicable to each of these categories. On consideration of the report from the Secretary, Department of Education and examining the report of the Ministry of Labour on the subject of maternity leave, the Commission observed that there was no uniformity in the rules/ code framed by different boards like the ICSE and the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education with regard to maternity leave and that they were at variance with the maternity leave rules framed by the Government. It was noted that, in some cases, the existing rules/codes had not been followed. The Commission directed the Government of West Bengal to undertake a review of the existing rules / codes and to bring about uniformity and also to incorporate the provision of grant of 120 days maternity leave to the teaching and non-teaching women employees of various educational institutions. The Commission further stated that it was up to the authorities of t

COTTON FARMERS SUICIDES-07-
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
VIDARBHA JANANDOLAN SAMITI
11, Trisaran Society, In front of Somalwar School, Khamla, Nagpur – 440 025
Tel No. (0712) 2282457 Mob No. 9422108846 kishortiwari@ gmail.com
============ ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========
Ref : VJAS/relief package-07 PRESSS-NOTE 29th november, 2007
COTTON FARMERS SUICIDES-07- REVENUE MINISTER NARAYAN RANE MISLEAD STATE ASSEMBLY-KISHOR TIWARI .
Nagpur-29TH November, 2007
Vidarbha jan andolan samiti has storgly objected the misleading information provided by maharashtra revenue minister narayan rane in the maharashtra ssembly as the farm suicide figure given by the minister is 50% of what govt. Official website gives ,it is unfortunate that maharashtra govt instead of giving relief aid is claiming toll bogus claims for face saving ,kishor tiwari informed in press release today .
Maharashtar govt. Official figure of year 2007 is 1003 till october 07 but minister informed it as 485
It is reported in the media and
I QUOTE
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/Nagpur/ 485_farmers_ committed_ suicide_in_ 07/articleshow/ 2566413.cms
While non-government organisations and farm activists have put the farmers' suicide toll in the current year at around 1,000 only in Vidarbha region, the state government has claimed that only 485 farmers have ended their lives from January 1 to October 31 in Maharashtra this year.
In a written reply in the state assembly on Friday, revenue minister Narayan Rane stated that the Prime Minister's Rs 3,750 crore special package and Rs 1,075 crore relief announced by the state government were being implemented effectively.
The starred question, interestingly was put up by over 60 members of the assembly including leader of the opposition Ramdas Kadam, and several members of the treasury benches.
Denying that there was an alarming rise in suicide cases in the state, Rane submitted district-wise figures of suicide cases, claiming that the toll was 485 for this year. While the highest number of cases, 53, were reported from Yavatmal district, Wardha (37), Amravati (33), Akola (31) and Buldhana (25) were the worst-hit districts where suicides were reported. Nanded and Jalgaon districts where cotton cultivation is taken up in large areas as cash crop had reported 32 and 30 cases respectively during the period.

UNQUOTE
HERE IS THE CONTRADICTION
http://www.vnss- mission.gov. in/docs/suicide. pdf
MONTHS-2007
RANE'S FARM SUICIDES
GOVT. WEBSITE FIGURE OF FARM SUICIDES

JANUARY

99

FEBRUARY

107

MARCH

113

APRIL

97

MAY

102

JUNE

85

JULY

86

AUGUST

95

SEPTEMBER

116

OCTOBER

118

485
1003
RANE'S MISLEADING DISTRCTIWISE FIG. OF FARM SUICIDES
DISTRICT
RANE'S FARM SUICIDES
GOVT. WEBSITE FIGURE OF FARM SUICIDES

AMARAVATI
33
206

AKOLA
31
98

YAVATMAL
53
301

BULDHANA
25
142

WASHIM
37
143

WARDHA
37
103

485
1003
VJAS urged Maharashtra govt. to provide food security. health security and employments opportunities to dying west vidarbha farmers. there is lot of talk of complete loan waiver and cash subsidy cotton growers to the tune of rs.2000 per hector limited 5 hectors but at the ground level minimum food, medicine, social system support is missing. 'this govt. is so pathetic towards agrarian crisis that relief declared year back has not being given to farmers after lapse of one year. it is need of time to provide food security health care to minimum 4.34 lacs farm families who are identified by administration as farmers in deep distress ,kishor tiwari added.
Please arrange to publish this press note
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
For VIDARBHA JANANDOLAN SAMITI
KISHORE TIWARI
PRESIDENT.
kishortiwari@ gmail.com
contact-09422108846
INDIA
Conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir and communal violence dominated human rights developments in India during the year. The Hindu nationalist Indian People's Party (Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP), which led India's coalition government during the year, appeared to condone the activities of right-wing Hindu groups responsible for attacks on religious minorities and people at the bottom of or outside India's caste system, including members of tribal groups. The attacks increased significantly in the months preceding national parliamentary elections in September and October. In Bihar, a series of caste clashes and massacres between January and April once again revealed the unwillingness of state authorities to protect the rights of those born into lower castes.
Human Rights Developments
In April the BJP government lost a motion of confidence in Parliament by one vote. Because opposition parties were unable to form a government, India was forced to hold national parliamentary elections for the third time in as many years. In October the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance returned to power, a development that boded ill for communal relations.
Human rights violations by Indian security forces and by Islamic militants, many of them Pakistani-trained, continued to fuel tensions within Kashmir and between India and Pakistan. In February, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's bus trip across the Indo-Pakistan border to meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seemed to signal the beginnings of a reconciliation and hopes for a resolution of the Kashmir conflict. However, those hopes were short-lived. In April India tested ballistic missiles and Pakistan followed suit. In May, after Islamic militants crossed from Pakistan into Indian Kashmir near the town of Kargil, India responded with military operations against the militants and their Pakistani backers. Armed clashes between India and Pakistan continued for the next eight weeks, until Pakistan agreed to withdraw the militants, and both countries agreed on a process of "disengagement."
In the course of those clashes, over 1,200 people, many of them civilians, were killed by artillery fire. Civilians were also forced to flee the towns along the 720-kilometer border that divides Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Communal violence between Hindu and Muslim groups escalated during the military confrontation, particularly in Jammu, the Hindu-majority area of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. For example, on June 30, Islamic militants gunned down twelve Hindu migrant laborers in southern Kashmir, reportedly in retaliation for the June 28 massacre of fifteen Muslim villagers, including women and children, by unidentified gunmen in Poonch district. Human rights activists reported that the gunmen were members of a militia backed by the army. Pakistan's agreement on July 4 to withdraw its fighters did not bring an end to the violence. On July 20 about twenty Hindus were killed by militants in Doda and Poonch districts. The victims included eight women and children.
Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir continued to violate human rights with impunity. The Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which authorize warrantless searches and arrests, remained in effect in the state. Military-led cordon-and-search operations in Muslim neighborhoods continued to result in violations of fundamental civil rights, including the detention, torture, and summary executions of suspected militants.
Caste violence assumed alarming dimensions early in the year, particularly in the state of Bihar, where clashes between the Ranvir Sena, an upper-caste landlord militia, and Naxalites, Maoist guerrillas agitating for higher wages and more equitable land distribution for lower-caste laborers, claimed many lives. Human rights activists charged the state administration with criminal negligence for failing to intervene effectively and prosecute those responsible for the killings. On January 25, about one hundred armed extremists from the Ranvir Sena killed at least twenty-two Dalit ("untouchable") men, women, and children in Bihar's Jehanabad district. On February 10, Sena members struck again in the same district killing eleven Dalits as they slept.
The massacres led the government in New Delhi to impose "president's rule" in Bihar, a legal regime whereby the central government takes over authority from the state. Despite that measure, which led to the increased presence of paramilitary forces in the state, twelve alleged supporters of the Ranvir Sena were reportedly gunned down on February 14 by Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (Liberation) activists in retaliation for the January killings. In early March the central government reinstated the state government led by Chief Minister Rabri Devi. On March 18, Naxalites killed another thirty-five upper-caste villagers in Senari village, Jehanabad district. On April 21, about a hundred armed activists from the Ranvir Sena killed twelve lower-caste villagers in neighboring villages in Gaya district. The victims included a sixty-five-year-old man, three women, and a nine-month old child. Police made little effort to prevent the killings, despite the fact that the Ranvir Sena often publicly announced its intentions days before each attack. They also failed to provide protection for villagers in the aftermath of such attacks.
Caste clashes also continued to plague the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and Dalit women were primary targets. On March 29, in the Ogalur-Villupuram region of Tamil Nadu, four upper-caste men sexually assaulted a female Dalit farm laborer. The attackers were then beaten by those responding to the laborer's cry for help. On April 3, in retaliation for the beatings, three upper-caste men set fire to a Dalit colony, injuring twenty people. On June 19 a gang of upper-caste Hindus looted and destroyed the houses in a Dalit settlement in Kodankipatti village, Madurai district, after Dalits there had demanded a share in the common property of the village. The Dalits were then chased out of their homes.
More incidents of violence against India's Christian community were recorded during the past two years than in all the years since independence. Attacks occurred primarily in the tribal regions of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa, as well as the state of Maharashtra. Activists belonging to militant Hindu extremist groups, including the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP) were often blamed for the violence. While the central government officially condemned the attacks, spokespersons for the BJP characterized the surge in violence as a reaction to a conversion campaign by Christian missionaries in the country.
Anti-Christian violence in the state of Gujarat reached its peak during Christmas week 1998 when a local extremist Hindu group obtained permission to hold a rally on December 25 in Ahwa town in the state's southeastern Dangs district. Over four thousand people participated in the rally, shouting anti-Christian slogans while the police stood by and watched. After the rally, Hindu groups began to attack Christianplaces of worship, schools run by missionaries, and shops owned by Christians and Muslims. Between December 25, 1998, and January 3, 1999, churches and prayer halls were damaged, attacked, or burned down in at least twenty-five different villages in the state. Scores of individuals were physically assaulted, and in some cases tied up, beaten and robbed of their belongings while angry mobs invaded and damaged their homes. Thousands of Christian tribals in the region were also forced to undergo conversions to Hinduism.
On January 23 in Keonjhar district, Orissa, a mob of Hindu extremists burned to death Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two sons as they slept in their car. Staines had worked for over thirty years in a leper colony in the state and was accused of conducting mass conversions to Christianity. In August a government-appointed judicial commission accused Bajrang Dal activist and BJP member Dara Singh of leading the charge in the killings. The commission's report also found that Staines had not been involved in any conversions, but it fell short of accusing the Bajrang Dal, insisting that Singh acted alone. Opposition parties labeled the report a "whitewash," while allies of the BJP by and large welcomed the findings.
The Shiv Sena, a Hindu party which heads the state government of Maharashtra in coalition with the BJP, also engaged in disruptive practices and hate campaigns against Muslims and Christians throughout the year. In December 1998, the award-winning film Fire , by director Deepa Mehta, was recalled from theaters after Shiv Sena activists vandalized at least fifteen cinemas where it was playing. Sena members objected to the film's depiction of a lesbian relationship between two Hindu sisters-in-law, adding that had the women been Muslim there would be no objection.
In January 1999, when Pakistan's cricket team was set to travel to India for a series of test matches, members of the Shiv Sena dug up the pitch at a New Delhi stadium that was to host the first match and ransacked the headquarters of the Board of Control for Cricket in Bombay. In June, the Shiv Sena launched a series of attacks against Christian mission-run kindergarten schools alleging that they were not admitting the children of Sena activists. On June 26 suspected Sena members vandalized the Sacred Heart school in Worli, Bombay.
On August 26 Staines' killer Dara Singh struck again, when he led an angry mob to attack the garment shop of Sheikh Rehman, a Muslim trader in Orissa's Mayurbhanj district. In the presence of four hundred eyewitnesses and in broad daylight, Rehman's arms were chopped and his body was set on fire. Singh continued to evade arrest despite his numerous television appearances in the months following the Staines murder. One week later, on September 2, the Rev. Arul Doss was killed by a gang of fifteen unidentified assailants. Voting in Orissa for the staggered general elections was scheduled for September 25. On September 20, a Catholic nun in Bihar was abducted by two men, stripped, and forced to drink their urine. The nun was reportedly interrogated about her proselytizing activities.
Violence remained a salient feature of India's national parliamentary elections. During five stages of polling in September and October 1999, repolling was ordered for hundreds of poll stations as a result of violence and the destruction of ballot papers and ballot boxes. Well over one hundred election-related deaths were reported throughout the country, predominantly in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kashmir, Bihar, and the northeast region of Assam and Tripura. Most deaths resulted from clashes between supporters of rival parties and from attacks by separatist militants trying to enforce election boycotts. In the Chidambaram constituency of Tamil Nadu, Dalits were not allowed to vote in as many as twenty-three villages as a result of attacks by political parties contesting elections in which the Dalit Panthers of India were also candidates. In clashes that ensued, nearly ten Dalit hamlets were torched. While over two hundred Dalits were arrested, police refused to register cases against caste Hindus.
Police in Andhra Pradesh continued to summarily execute suspected Naxalites in so-called "encounter killings." Violence in the northeastern states, particularly Assam, continued throughout the year, claiming many civilian casualties. Members of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), a militant group seeking Assam's independence from India, repeatedly clashed with the police and with surrendered ULFA members, now working with the government and referred to as "SULFA."
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act remained in effect in the northeast, but it was not the only abusive law on the books. Due to the spurious backdating of violations, detentions under the notorious Terrorist and Disruptive Practices (Prevention) Act (TADA) continued for offenses allegedly committed before the law lapsed in 1995. In Karnataka, for example, fifty-two people remained in pre-trial detention in Mysore Central Prison for periods ranging from four to six years.
Women, particularly those belonging to the lower castes, continued to be victims of violence and sexual abuse. In a positive step to promote gender equality, the Supreme Court of India gave women the same rights as men to act as natural guardians of a minor. Gita Hariharan's application for financial bonds in the name of her minor child had been rejected by the Reserve Bank of India on the basis of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act of 1956, which regards the father, and only after him the mother, as the natural guardian of a minor. The Supreme Court ruled that the provision "after" had to be struck down from the act as it violated gender equality
Defending Human Rights
India's vibrant human rights movement continued to grow despite some setbacks. While most organizations were allowed to function freely, social action groups working with marginalized communities faced continuous harassment and intimidation. On December 10, 1998, the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights was officially launched in New Delhi. Among the campaign's demands were the abolition of untouchability practices, the effective implementation of the 1989 Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and increased intervention by U.N. bodies and the international community against caste-based violence and discrimination.
On February 11, members of Parivartan, an NGO working with Dalits and landless agricultural laborers in Gujarat, were attacked in Padra village. Sixteen Dalit women, who had come to attend a tailoring course organized by Parivartan's women's co-operative, were among those physically assaulted by local strongmen. Police officials agreed to register a complaint only after the Home Ministry's intervention. In 1998, the Hindu group VHP had issued a press statement claiming that Parivartan was trying to convert Gujarat's entire tribal belt to Christianity-a charge that the NGO has denied. On June 11, four fishworkers were killed and thirteen were injured when police opened fire on an anti-shrimp culture protest organized by the NGO Chilika Matsyajibi Mahasangh in Orissa. Despite a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting shrimp farms within a thousand meters of the Chilika lake in Orissa, a number of shrimp farms had obtained support of local politicians and bureaucrats.
On July 23, police action against lower-caste laborers in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, resulted in the loss of seventeen lives. The victims, including two women and one child, were among those protesting working conditions at a local tea plantation and demanding the release of 652 workers arrested following a demonstration on June 8. Members of the police and reserve forces chased the victims into theThamiraparani river where they drowned. In July, political parties in favor of the building of the Sardar Sarovar dam across the Narmada river in western India burned copies of the book, The Greater Common Good by novelist-activist Arundhati Roy. Roy, whose book discussed the social and environmental costs of the Narmada project, including large-scale population displacement, was part of a larger people's movement against India's big dam projects. Facing threats from the youth wings of the BJP and the Congress party, bookstores in Ahmedabad city, Gujarat, also began to pull the book from their shelves.
On September 27, the Ministry of Home Affairs sent a notice to several prominent NGOs asking them to justify their status as nonpolitical organizations under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. The notice was effectively a threat to cut off foreign funding. The NGOs, many of whom worked on women's rights, communal violence, and Dalit and tribal issues, had publicly criticized the policies of the BJP-led government and the anti-secular activities of the sangh parivar , a collective of rightwing Hindu organizations of which the BJP is a member.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a government-appointed body, tried to defend human rights in several areas, although it did not directly address the troubled regions of Kashmir and the northeast. In February the NHRC directed state governments to ensure regular medical examinations of all prison inmates and to submit monthly reports. Concerned over the rising number of custodial deaths and excesses committed by the police, the NHRC launched human rights cells in all state police headquarters. The commission also ordered the payment of compensation to the families of persons who had either died as a result of police violence or had been physically assaulted by the police, and recommended action against guilty police officials.
The Role of the International Community
Tensions between India and Pakistan dominated India's international relations during the year. Many countries welcomed the Indo-Pakistan summit in February, but while crediting India with showing "restraint" in its handling of the Kargil crisis, the international community failed to use the opportunity to press India to curb human rights abuses in the state.
United Nations
While Pakistan demanded U.N. mediation in the Kashmir dispute, the Indian prime minister rejected an offer by the U.N. secretary-general to send an envoy. In a report issued in January, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture commented on India's abysmal record on torture and detentions, especially in Jammu and Kashmir, and noted with regret the government's continued refusal to extend him an invitation to conduct investigations in the country. Also in January, the special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism indicated that, with the permission of the Indian government, he might undertake a field mission to investigate the situation of "untouchables" in the country.
World Bank
In April the World Bank board approved a controversial plan limiting the powers of the inspection panel, an internal watchdog body set up to receive and investigate complaints by those adversely affected by bank-funded projects worldwide. Following a visit in July 1997, the inspection panel was blocked from conducting a more thorough investigation in Singrauli, India's "power capital," where a World Bank-funded thermal power project resulted in the displacement of thousands of villagers and severe environmental damage. India was prominent among World Bank member countries pushing for limiting inspection panel investigations.
European Union
The European Union (E.U.) joined the international community in expressing concern over the escalation of fighting in Kashmir, and issued several statements publicly urging India and Pakistan to hold talks to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. The E.U. remained India's largest trading partner, with an estimated 26 percent share of India's export and 25 percent of the country's imports. In a February resolution the European Parliament expressed deep shock over the persecution of Christians in India by extremist groups and called on the Indian government to put in place effective measures for protection of religious minorities and to bring to justice those responsible for the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines. The European Parlaiment also called on the E.U. and the European Commission to ensure that human rights clauses in treaty agreements with India be rigorously implemented. A legally binding partnership and development agreement between India and the E.U. concluded in 1994 contains such a human rights conditionality clause.
In March, the European Parlaiment expressed support for the European Commission's efforts to enhance relations with India but said improved relations should depend in part on India's nuclear disarmament. The European Parlaiment also urged India to foster tolerance and protect freedom of religion; to ratify the torture convention; and to impose a moratorium on executions and step up efforts to abolish the death penalty.
Japan
In response to India's nuclear tests in May 1998, Japan halted all new grant aid (with the exception of emergency and humanitarian aid and grant assistance for grassroots projects) and all new yen loans in accordance with Japan's Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) Charter. The suspension remained in effect in 1999.
United States
The Clinton Administration dropped its objections to a U.S. $150 million World Bank loan request by India for a power project. In June the U.S. Senate approved a measure lifting sanctions on the sale of farm commodities and other products to India and Pakistan. The sanctions,which had been triggered by India's May 1998 nuclear tests, were to remain in place for missile and nuclear technology and for military sales. The Clinton administration joined the international community in expressing concern over India and Pakistan's ballistic missile tests in April, and over the conflict in Kargil. In September the U.S. Department of State released its first annual report under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, detailing attacks on religious minorities throughout India. Responding to reports that U.S. Ambassador Robert Seiple wished to visit the country to discuss religious rights, the Indian government defended its ability to guarantee constitutionally mandated religious freedoms and rejected any "intrusive exercise" into its internal affairs.
India
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 8, 2006

India is a longstanding multiparty, federal, parliamentary democracy with a bicameral parliament and a population of approximately 1.1 billion. Manmohan Singh was named prime minister following his Congress party-led coalition's victory in the April-May 2004 general elections in which 675 million citizens participated. The 2004 general elections, the various 2004 state assembly elections, as well as the February state elections in Arunachal Pradesh Jharkhand, Bihar and repoll in October/November, and Haryana, were considered free and fair, despite scattered episodes of violence. While the civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces there were frequent instances in which elements of the security forces acted independently.
The government generally respected the rights of its citizens; however, numerous serious problems remained. Government officials used special antiterrorism legislation to justify the excessiveuse of force while combating active insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir and several northeastern states. Security force officials who committed human rights abuses generally enjoyed de facto impunity, although there were reports of investigations into individual abuse cases as well as punishment of some perpetrators by the court system. Corruption was endemic in the government and police forces, and the government made little attempt to combat the problem, except for a few instances highlighted by the media.The lack of firm accountability permeated the government and security forces, creating an atmosphere in which human rights violations often went unpunished. Although the country has numerous laws protecting human rights, enforcement was lax and convictions were rare. Social acceptance of caste-based discrimination remained omnipresent, and for many, validated human rights violations against persons belonging to lower castes. The additional following human rights problems were reported:
• extrajudicial killings and killings of persons in custody
• torture and rape by police and security forces
• poor prison conditions, lengthy pretrial detention without charge, and prolonged detention while undergoing trial
• occasional limits on press freedom and freedom of movement
• harassment and arrest of human rights monitors
• corruption at all levels of government
• legal and societal discrimination against women
• forced prostitution, child prostitution, and female infanticide and feticide
• trafficking in women and children
• discrimination against persons with disabilities
• discrimination and violence against indigenous people and scheduled castes and tribes
• violence based on caste or religion
• exploitation of indentured, bonded, and child labor.

Separatist guerrillas and terrorists in Kashmir and the northeast committed numerous serious abuses, including killing armed forces personnel, police, government officials, and civilians. Insurgents also engaged in widespread torture, rape, and other forms of violence, including beheadings, kidnapping, and extortion.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life

Government forces continued arbitrary and unlawful deprivation of life of those in custody. Police and prison officers also committed extrajudicial killings of suspected insurgents and suspected criminals by the use of staged encounter killings. Terrorist and militant groups killed members of rival factions, government security forces, government officials, and civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, several northeastern states, and in the Naxalite belt in the eastern part of the country (see section 1.g.).

The Home Ministry reported that security forces killed 927 insurgents and terrorists during the year. The ministry also reported that insurgent and terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir declined in 2004 with 733 civilians (including 92 women, 32 children, and 62 political workers), 330 security force members, and 976 insurgents killed. Security forces often used staged encounter killings to cover up the murders of captured non-Kashmiri insurgents and terrorists from Pakistan or other countries, often after torturing them. Human rights groups accused security forces of targeting suspected terrorists, militants and their suspected supporters. There were no widely accepted data on the magnitude of extrajudicial killings in Jammu and Kashmir, with estimates or reports depending on the political orientation of the source. In 2003 the Jammu and Kashmir state human rights commission received 15 complaints relating to custodial deaths and 27 complaints relating to disappearances. Human rights organizations sought to clarify these cases by submitting numerous requests to Jammu and Kashmir authorities, but they received inadequate and unsatisfactory responses.

According to human rights activists, press reports, and anecdotal accounts, the bodies of persons suspected of terrorism and detained by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir often had bullet wounds and/or marks of torture. The South Asian Human Rights Documentation Center (SAHRDC) reported that the number of such custodial deaths decreased slightly during the year, most likely due to the overall decline in infiltrations, as well as a new emphasis by the government on reducing human rights violations. Custodial deaths however, remained a serious problem.

On October 4, the Laopora Police lodged a First Information Report against 10 army officers accused of the February 2004 killing of 5 civilian porters used as human shields by security forces in Kashmir. The case remained open at year's end. In November residents of Pattan, a village 17 miles from Srinagar alleged that militants killed 2 village men after the army used them as human shields in an operation. After protests erupted, the authorities promised to investigate and the investigation remained open at year's end.

In July security forces killed three teenaged boys they mistook for terrorists in the Kupwara area of Kashmir. Security forces maintained that the boys were outside at night during a curfew and ran away when challenged by the officers. The killing sparked widespread protests in the area, and the state government ordered an inquiry, which was not completed by year's end. On July 26, the army offered compensation and an apology to the boys' families.

At year's end no action was taken on the Manorama Devi rape/custodial death case from July 2004. The Upendra Commission, formed in November 2004 to investigate the Devi case, submitted its report to the state government. The inquiry was concluded without the DNA fingerprints and blood samples of the Assam Rifles personnel on duty the night of the incide

Another Custodial death of a Bangladeshi citizen, is judiciary beyond criticism??
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
Dear friend,
One another custodial death in West Bengal. Victim is a Bangladeshi citizen.
Please go through the fact finding report which will show how the system is going on.
The inquest (176 Cr.P.C.), the post mortem examination, the prison, the police and the JUDICIARY, all are in dock.
We are sending this complaint to Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court & cc to Chief Justice of India & other governmental authorities.
Today at 4.30 pm, post mortem examination finished and report will be in public as and when police authority thinks.
Hope you will support
With fraternity
Kirity

The Honourable Chief Justice,
High Court of Calcutta
Kolkata – 1
Respected Sir,
We have come across a case where a young man, Mr. Sanjay Kumar Biswas , Age:20yrs, s/o Gobinda Kumar Biswas, residing at Nalir Char, Police Station: Terakada, Dist: Khulna, Bangladesh crossed and entered the border of India in between 22 & 23 April 2007 near Bongaon, North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, without any valid paper as alleged. He was arrested in connection with Bongaon police station case no: 203 under section 14 Foreigners' Act (GR No. 528 of 2007). The ACJM court, Bongaon, sent him in prison on 24th April 2007. from Bongaon jail he was sent to Dumdum central prison, where he died.
Our Fact finding report disclosed that on 17th September 2007 Sanjay was declared as 'release prisoner' as his term of punishment was over. From 17th. September he was confined in Dumdum Central Correctional Home illegally without any court order. It is also unbelievable that the authority concerned could not succeed to sent back him in Bangladesh within 17.9.2007 to 27.11. 2007.
This young boy was declared dead while he was in judicial custody in a mysterious condition on 26.11.2007 at 8.15 am by Dr. Ashok Pal, Emergency Medical Officer at R. G. Kar Medical College & Hospital. Till that time, his body was not examined by the judicial magistrate nor by the autopsy surgeon. On 27.11.2007, 28.11.2007 his body was sent to NRS Medical College & Hospital and was returned back after waiting whole day. Again today, 29.11.2007, his body was sent to NRS Medical College & Hospital. At around 3.30pm, one Magistrate appeared in the morgue, and started inquiry. After finishing inquest over a fully decomposed body, the post mortem examination was conducted at around 4 pm. We are really disturbed to see the entire episode of enormous callousness of the criminal justice delivery system in connection with this case.
None of the judicial magistrate was willing to conduct enquiry as prescribed by the new Criminal Procedure Code under section 176 of Cr.P.C.
The judiciary awarded punishment to the victim, sent to prison as punishment for a stipulated period, but is not accountable as the custodian of the said prisoner, when he was kept within bar even after the period is over.
The police of Bongaon PS, who arrested the victim, did not inform the family members of the victim, though it was mandatory as per D. K. Basu judgment, AIR 1997 SC 610.
The police and administration who were duty bound to organize for magisterial inquiry and post mortem examination of the body in a case of custodial death, failed again and again, for three consecutive days, but not accountable.
The Legal Aid Organisation, which was supposed to send the information to the victim's family as described by the apex court of India in AIR 1997 SC 610, Para 36 (4), but failed to that, and is not accountable.
In this context, as a member of civil society, I want to raise these questions before your judicious conscience, whether, the persons, paid from public exchequer, can be brought to book for non compliance of the procedure deliberately and for showing ultimate disregard to a dead body?
To finish, I only want to say that this is the picture in heart of Kolkata city, just think about the situation of the rural area.
With a high hope that your Honour will take up the issue, will see that the wrong-doers are not getting impunity and in future, such wrongs can be avoided.
For your honour's better appreciation, I am attaching our fact finding report herewith.
Yours sincerely
(Kirity Roy)
State Director
NPPTI, West Bengal
&
President, MASUM
Copy to:-
Chief Justice of India , Supreme Court, New Delhi
Principal Secretary, Judicial Department, Govt. of West Bengal
Principal Secretary, Home Department, Govt. of West Bengal
Principal Secretary, Health Department, Govt. of West Bengal
Name of the victim : Sanjay Kumar Biswas , Age:20yrs, s/o Gobinda Kumar Biswas, residing at Nalir Char, Police Station: Terakada, Dist: Khulna , BANGLADESH
Name of the Perpetrators : Dumdum Central Correctional Home Authority, Police of Bongaon, Ministry of External Affairs of Government of India, and Mr. D. N. Mitra, the ACJM, Bongaon court.
Place of Incident : Dumdum Central Jail, 3/3 Ward, R.G.Kar Medical College & Hospital and N.R.S. Medical College & Hospital
Date & Time of Incident : 26.11.2007 to 29.11.2007
Detail of the Incident:
On 23.4.2007 Mr. Sanjay Biswas, one Bangladeshi national, along with 8 others were arrested by the police of Bongaon police station, District – North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India under Bongaon police station case no: 203 under section 14 Foreigners' Act (GR No. 528 of 2007). Mr. Amit Yadav, Assistant Commandant of Border Security Force (BSF), posted at Haridaspur Border Out post (BOP) handed over Sanjay and 8 other persons to Bangaon police station. Mr. Nandan Mondal, Sub Inspector of police, was entrusted to investigate the matter. Sanjay was sent to Assistant Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court, Bongaon wherefrom he was sent to Bongaon Correctional Home (Jail) by the court on 24.4.07. On 30.4.2007, the Investigating Officer, Mr. Nanadan Mondal submitted charge sheet against Sanjay before ACJM Court, Bongaon, where he was found guilty.
Due to excessive numbers of prisoners in the said jail, he was removed to Dumdum Central Correctional Home on 5.9.2007 by the authority. As stated by the Jailor of Dumdum Central Correctional Home, Sanjay had no ailment except one incident, when he was treated on 10.9.2007 at jail hospital for his ailment, which was also not followed up. Our fact finding revealed some more information from the authorities of Dumdum Central Correctional Home that his (Sanjay's) maternal brother, Mr. Shankar Barui, is also now staying in the Dumdum Central Correctional Home, as under trial prisoner (UTP). The jail authorities also informed our fact finding team that the victim, Sanjay was suffering from heart [non-functioning of Heart valves] problem. Though Dumdum Central Correctional Home authority failed to show any document for such heart deceases of the victim, when asked.
On 7.9.2007 conviction period was expired as judgment passed by the trial magistrate court of Bongaon. So on and from 17.9.2007 Sanjay was illegally kept in jail. According to jail authorities, due to 'some legal complexity' he was not released.
On 26.11.2007 the body of Sanjay was brought to R.G.Kar Medical College & Hospital [General Emergency Department] from Dumdum Central jail by Mr. Yasim Ali, Mr. Basudev Das, [both are Jail Warden, attached to Dumdum Central Correctional Home] at 8.15 a.m. At that time Dr. Ashok Pal, Emergency Medical Officer, was on duty. Dr. Ashok Pal examined the body of Sanjay and declared the body as dead. But interestingly, the incident was registered in the 'Death Register' of the R.G.Kar Medical College & Hospital at 9.30 am, after a lapse of 75 minutes !
On 27.11.2007, at 12.10 p.m, Sanjay's body was taken out from R.G.Kar Hospital Morgue (Department of Anatomy). A plain clothed police officer of Tala Police Station was present there and was observing the body of Sanjay & openly said that no external injury was found, he also said that the death of Sanjay may be caused of jaundice. Then the police officer was taking notes of the description of the dead body in a white paper and after finishing his job, he put the note sheet in the body of Sanjay. Then he took the body in a police van of Kolkata Police with the help of DOM (dead body carrier) to N.R.S Hospital morgue for Post Mortem examination. But without performing Inquest of the judicial magistrate and Post Mortem examination, the dead body again returned back to morgue of R.G.Kar Medical College & Hospital.
In the morgue, Sanjay was wearing a chrome yellow synthetic half pant & white shirt, yellowish face with beard & moustache, one piece of leucoplast was on his left hand.
On 28.11.2007, the fact finding team contacted Mr. Sk. Nazrul Islam, jailor of Dumdum Jail, and other jail officials. It is to be noted due to total callousness of the criminal justice system of the state of West Bengal, the necessary works (Inquest & Post Mortem examination) could not be done from 26.11.2007 9.30 am to 29.11.2007 noon. On 27.11.2007, 28.11.2007 the body was again and again sent to N.R.S. Medical College & Hospital for post mortem and was returned back without performing inquest & P.M. examination. On 29.11.2007, again the body was sent to N.R.S. Medical College & Hospital for post mortem.
Ultimately, at about 3.30 pm on 29.11.2007, one magistrate appeared at the morgue and did his job. After that, post mortem examination was conducted. The name of the inquiring magistrate and the name of the autopsy surgeon can not be disclosed as Prof. Dr. Suddhodan Batabyal, attached to N. R. S. Medical College informed us. According to him, this informations is highly secret, according to him.

--
Kirity Roy
President
Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha
(MASUM)
26 Guitendal Lane
Howrah 711101
West Bengal INDIA
Mobile: 9903099699
Fax : +91-33-2640 4118
Phone: +91-33-2640 4520
e. mail : kirityroy@gmail.com
Web: www.masum.org.in

--
Kirity Roy
President
Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha
(MASUM)
26 Guitendal Lane
Howrah 711101
West Bengal INDIA
Mobile: 9903099699
Fax : +91-33-2640 4118
Phone: +91-33-2640 4520
e. mail : kirityroy@gmail.com
Web: www.masum.org.in
The
Protection of
Human Rights Act, 1993
[As amended by the Protection of Human Rights
(Amendment) Act, 2006–No. 43 of 2006]
National Human Rights Commission
Faridkot House
Copernicus Marg
New Delhi - 110 001
Website : www.nhrc.nic.in
THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACT,
1993*
No. 10 of 1994
(8th January, 1994)
An Act to provide for the constitution of a National Human
Rights Commission, State Human Rights Commission in States and
Human Rights Courts for better protection of human rights and for
matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
Be it enacted by Parliament in the forty-fourth year of the
Republic of India as follows :
* As amended by the Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2006–
No. 43 of 2006.
CONTENTS
PREAMBLE
CHAPER 1
PRELIMINARY
1. Short title, extent and commencement 1
2. Definitions 1
CHAPTER II
THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
3. Constitution of a National Human Rights Commission 3
4. Appointment of Chairperson and other Members 4
5. Resignation and removal of Chairperson and Members 4
6. Term of Office of Chairperson and Members 5
7. Member to act as Chairperson or to discharge his
functions in certain circumstances 6
8. Terms and conditions of service of Chairperson and Members 6
9. Vacancies etc., not to invalidate the proceedings
of the Commission 6
10. Procedure to be regulated by the Commission 6
11. Officers and other staff of the Commission 7
CHAPTER III
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS OF THE COMMISSION
12. Functions of the Commission 8
13. Powers relating to inquiries 9
(iii)
14. Investigation 11
15. Statement made by persons to the Commission 12
16. Persons likely to be prejudicially affected to be heard 12
CHAPTER IV
PROCEDURE
17. Inquiry into complaints 13
18. Steps during and after inquiry 13
19. Procedure with respect to armed forces 14
20 Annual and special reports of the Commission 15
CHAPTER V
STATE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
21. Constitution of State Human Rights Commissions 16
22. Appointment of Chairperson and Members
of State Commission 17
23. Resignation and Removal of Chairperson or a
Member of the State Commission 18
24. Term of office of Chairperson and Members
of the State Commission 19
25. Member to act as Chairperson or to discharge
his functions in certain circumstances 19
26. Terms and conditions of service of Chairperson and
Members of State Commission 20
27. Officers and other staff of the State Commission 20
28. Annual and special reports of State Commission 21
29. Application of certain provisions relating to National
Human Rights Commission to State Commissions 21
CHAPTER VI
HUMAN RIGHTS COURTS
30. Human Rights Courts 22
31. Special Public Prosecutor 22
CHAPTER VII
FINANCE, ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT
32. Grants by the Central Government 23
33. Grants by the State Government 23
34. Accounts and Audit 23
35. Accounts and Audit of State Commission 24
CHAPTER VIII
MISCELLANEOUS
36. Matters not subject to jurisdiction of the Commission 26
37. Constitution of special investigation teams 26
38. Protection of action taken in good faith 26
39. Members and officers to be public servants 26
40. Power of Central Government to make rules 27
40(A). Power to make rules retrospectively 28
40(. Power of Commission to make Regulations 28
41. Power of State Government to make rules 29
42. Power to remove difficulties 29
43. Repeal and Savings 30
(iv) (v)
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
1. Short title, extent and commencement
(1) This Act may be called the Protection of Human Rights Act,
1993.*
(2) It extends to the whole of India.
Provided that it shall apply to the State of Jammu and Kashmir only
in so far as it pertains to the matters relatable to any of the entries
enumerated in List I or List lll in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution
as applicable to that State.
(3) It shall be deemed to have come into force on the 28th day of
September, 1993.
2. Definitions
(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires-
(a) “armed forces” means the naval, military and air forces and
includes any other armed forces of the Union;
(b) “Chairperson” means the Chairperson of the Commission
or of the State Commission, as the case may be;
(c) “Commission” means the National Human Rights
Commission under section 3;
(d) “human rights” means the rights relating to life, liberty,
equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the
Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants
and enforceable by courts in India.
(e) “Human Rights Court” means the Human Rights Court
specified under section 30;
(f) “International Covenants” means the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural rights adopted by the
General Assembly of the United Nations on the 16th
1
* Amended vide Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2006 (No. 43 of 2006).
December, 1966 [and such other Covenant or
Convention adopted by the General Assembly of
the United Nations as the Central Government
may, by notification, specify”]1 ;
(g) “Member” means a Member of the Commission or
of the State Commission, as the case may be2;
(h) “National Commission for Minorities” means the
National Commission for Minorities constituted
under section 3 of the National Commission for
Minorities Act, 1992;
(i) “National Commission for the Scheduled Castes”
means the National Commission for the Scheduled
Castes referred to in Article 338 of the Constitution1;
(ia) “National Commission for the Scheduled Tribes”
means the National Commission for the Scheduled
Tribes referred to in Article 338A of the Constitution2 ;
(j) “National Commission for Women” means the
National Commission for Women constituted under
section 3 of the National Commission for Women
Act, 1990;
(k) “Notification” means a notification published in the
official Gazette;
(l) “Prescribed” means prescribed by rules made under
this Act;
(m) “Public servant” shall have the meaning assigned
to it in section 21 of the Indian Penal Code;
(n) “State Commission” means a State Human Rights
Commission constituted under section 21.
(2) Any reference in this Act to a law, which is not in force
in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, shall, in relation to that State,
be construed as a reference to a corresponding law, if any, in force
in that State.
1 Added by Act 43 of 2006
2 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006
CHAPTER II
THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
COMMISSION
3. Constitution of a National Human Rights Commission
(1) The Central Government shall constitute a body to be known
as the National Human Rights Commission to exercise the powers conferred
upon, and to perform the functions assigned to it, under this Act.
(2) The Commission shall consist of:
(a) a Chairperson who has been a Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court;
(b) one Member who is or has been, a Judge of the Supreme
Court;
(c) one Member who is, or has been, the Chief Justice of a
High Court;
(d) two Members to be appointed from amongst persons
having knowledge of, or practical experience in, matters
relating to human rights.
(3) The Chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities,
1[the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes, the National Commission
for the Scheduled Tribes] and the National Commission for Women shall
be deemed to be Members of the Commission for the discharge of functions
specified in clauses (b) to (j) of section 12.
(4) There shall be a Secretary-General who shall be the Chief
Executive Officer of the Commission and shall exercise such powers and
discharge such functions of the Commission2 [except judicial functions and
the power to make regulations under section 40 B], as may be delegated
to him by the Commission or the Chairperson as the case may be.
1 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006 for “The National Commission for the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes.”
2 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006 for “as it may delegate to him.”
2 3
43 of 2006
43 of 2006
20 of 1990
45 of 1860
(5) The headquarters of the Commission shall be at Delhi and the
Commission may, with the previous approval of the Central Government,
establish offices at other places in India.
4. Appointment of Chairperson and other Members
(1) The Chairperson and [the Members]1 shall be appointed by the
President by warrant under his hand and seal;
Provided that every appointment under this sub-section shall be made
after obtaining the recommendations of a Committee consisting of–
(a) The Prime Minister — Chairperson
(b) Speaker of the House of the People — Member
(c) Minister in-charge of the Ministry of Home Affairs in the
Government of India — Member
(d) Leader of the Opposition in the House of the People — Member
(e) Leader of the Opposition in the Council of States — Member
(f) Deputy Chairman of the Council of States — Member
Provided further that no sitting Judge of the Supreme Court or sitting
Chief Justice of a High Court shall be appointed except after consultation
with the Chief Justice of India.
(2) No appointment of a Chairperson or a Member shall be invalid
merely by reason of any [vacancy of any member in the Committee referred
to in the first proviso to sub-section (1)]2.
5. Resignation and removal of Chairperson and Members3
(1) The Chairperson or any Member may, by notice in writing under
his hand addressed to the President of India, resign his office.
(2) Subject to the provisions of sub-section (3), the Chairperson or
any Member shall only be removed from his office by order of the President
of India on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity after the
Supreme Court, on reference being made to it by the President, has, on
inquiry held in accordance with the procedure prescribed in that behalf by
the Supreme Court, reported that the Chairperson or the Member, as the
case may be, ought on any such ground to be removed.
(3) Notwithstanding anything in sub-section (2), the President may,
by order, remove from office the Chairperson or any Member if the
Chairperson or such Member, as the case may be–
(a) is adjudged an insolvent; or
(b) engages during his term of office in any paid employment outside
the duties of his office; or
(c) is unfit to continue in office by reason of infirmity of mind or
body; or
(d) is of unsound mind and stands so declared by a competent court;
or
(e) is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for an offence which
in the opinion of the President involves moral turpitude.
6. Term of office of Chairperson and Members1
(1) A person appointed as Chairperson shall hold office for a term
of five years from the date on which he enters upon his office or until he
attains the age of seventy years, whichever is earlier.
(2) A person appointed as a Member shall hold office for a term
of five years from the date on which he enters upon his office and shall
be eligible for re-appointment for another term of five years.
Provided that no Member shall hold office after he has attained the
age of seventy years.
(3) On ceasing to hold office, a Chairperson or a Member shall be
ineligible for further employment under the Government of India or under
the Government of any State.
7. Member to act as Chairperson or to discharge his functions
in certain circumstances
(1) In the event of the occurrence of any vacancy in the office of
the Chairperson by reason of his death, resignation or otherwise, the 1 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006 for “other members”
2 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006 for “vacancy in the Committee”
3 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006
4 5
1 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006
President may, by notification, authorise one of the Members to act as the
Chairperson until the appointment of a new Chairperson to fill such
vacancy.
(2) When the Chairperson is unable to discharge his functions owing
to absence on leave or otherwise, such one of the Members as the President
may, by notification, authorise in this behalf, shall discharge the functions
of the Chairperson until the date on which the Chairperson resumes his
duties.
8. Terms and conditions of service of Chairperson and
Members
The salaries and allowances payable to, and other terms and
conditions of service of, the1 [Chairperson and] Members shall be such as
may be prescribed.
Provided that neither the salary and allowances nor the other terms
and conditions of service of2 [the Chairperson or] a Member shall be varied
to his disadvantage after his appointment.]
9. Vacancies, etc., not to invalidate the proceedings of the
Commission
No act or proceedings of the Commission shall be questioned or shall
be invalidated merely on the ground of existence of any vacancy or defect
in the constitution of the Commission.
10. Procedure to be regulated by the Commission
(1) The Commission shall meet at such time and place as the
Chairperson may think fit.
(2) Subject to the provisions of this Act and the rules made
thereunder, the Commission shall have the power to lay down by regulations
its own procedure3.
(3) All orders and decisions of the Commission shall be authenticated
by the Secretary-General or any other officer of the Commission duly
authorised by the Chairperson in this behalf.
11. Officers and other staff of the Commission
(1) The Central Government shall make available to the Commission:
(a) an officer of the rank of the Secretary to the Government
of India who shall be the Secretary-General of the
Commission; and
(b) such police and investigative staff under an officer not
below the rank of a Director General of Police and such
other officers and staff as may be necessary for the efficient
performance of the functions of the Commission.
(2) Subject to such rules as may be made by the Central Government
in this behalf, the Commission may appoint such other administrative,
technical and scientific staff as it may consider necessary.
(3) The salaries, allowances and conditions of service of the officers
and other staff appointed under sub-section (2) shall be such as may be
prescribed.
1 Inserted by Act 43 of 2006
2 Inserted by Act 43 of 2006
3 Subs. by Act 43 of 2006
6 7
CHAPTER III
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS
OF THE COMMISSION
12. Functions of the Commission
The Commission shall perform all or any of the following functions,
namely:-
(a) inquire, suo motu or on a petition presented to it by a victim
or any person on his behalf [or on a direction or order of any
court]1, into complaint of
(i) violation of human rights or abetment thereof; or
(ii) negligence in the prevention of such violation,
by a public servant;
(b) intervene in any proceeding involving any allegation of violation
of human rights pending before a court with the approval of such
court;
(c)2 visit, notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the
time being in force, any jail or other institution under the control
of the State Government, where persons are detained or lodged
for purposes of treatment, reformation or protection, for the
study of the living conditions of the inmates thereof and make
recommendations thereon to the Government;
(d) review the safeguards provided by or under the Constitution or
any law for the time being in force for the protection of human
rights and recommend measures for their effective implementation;
(e) review the factors, including acts of terrorism that inhibit the
enjoyment of human rights and recommend appropriate remedial
measures;
(f) study treaties and other international instruments on human
rights and make recommendations for their effective
implementation;
(g) undertake and promote research in the field of human rights;
(h) spread human rights literacy among various sections of society
and promote awareness of the safeguards available for the
protection of these rights through publications, the media,
seminars and other available means;
(i) encourage the efforts of non-governmental organisations and
institutions working in the field of human rights;
(j) such other functions as it may consider necessary for the
protection of human rights.
13. Powers relating to inquiries
(1) The Commission shall, while inquiring into complaints under this
Act, have all the powers of a civil court trying a suit under the Code of
Civil Procedure, 1908, and in particular in respect of the following matters,
namely :
(a) summoning and enforcing the attendance of witnesses and
examining them on oath;
(b) discovery and production of any document;
(c) receiving evidence on affidavits;
(d) requisitioning any public record or copy thereof from any court
or office;
(e) issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses or
documents;
(f) any other matter which may be prescribed.
(2) The Commission shall have power to require any person, subject
to any privilege which may be claimed by that person under any law for
the time being in force, to furnish information on such points or matters
as, in the opinion of the Commission, may be useful for, or relevant to,
the subject matter of the inquiry and any person so required shall be deemed
1 Inserted by Act 43 of 2006
2 Sub. by Act 43 of 2006
8 9
to be legally bound to furnish such information within the meaning of section
176 and section 177 of the Indian Penal Code.
(3) The Commission or any other officer, not below the rank of a
Gazetted Officer, specially authorised in this behalf by the Commission may
enter any building or place where the Commission has reason to believe
that any document relating to the subject matter of the inquiry may be found,
and may seize any such document or take extracts or copies therefrom
subject to the provisions of section 100 of the Code of Criminal Procedure,
1973, in so far as it may be applicable.
(4) The Commission shall be deemed to be a civil court and when
any offence as is described in section 175, section 178, section 179, section
180 or section 228 of the Indian Penal Code is committed in the view or
presence of the Commission, the Commission may, after recording the facts
constituting the offence and the statement of the accused as provided for
in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, forward the case to a Magistrate
having jurisdiction to try the same and the Magistrate to whom any such
case is forwarded shall proceed to hear the complaint against the accused
as if the case has been forwarded to him under section 346 of the Code
of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
(5) Every proceeding before the Commission shall be deemed to be
a judicial proceeding within the meaning of sections 193 and 228, and for
the purposes of section 196, of the Indian Penal Code, and the Commission
shall be deemed to be a civil court for all the purposes of section 195 and
Chapter XXVI of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
(6)1 Where the Commission considers it necessary or expedient so
to do, it may, by order, transfer any complaint filed or pending before it
to the State Commission of the State from which the complaint arises, for
disposal in accordance with the provisions of this Act;
Provided that no such complaint shall be transferred unless the same
is one respecting which the State Commission has jurisdiction to entertain
the same.
(7)1 Every complaint transferred under sub-section(6) shall be dealt
with and disposed of by the State Commission as if it were a complaint
initially filed before it.
14. Investigation
(1) The Commission may, for the purpose of conducting any
investigation pertaining to the inquiry, utilise the services of any officer or
investigation agency of the Central Government or any State Government
with the concurrence of the Central Government or the State Government,
as the case may be.
(2) For the purpose of investigating into any matter pertaining to
the inquiry, any officer or agency whose services are utilised under subsection
(1) may, subject to the direction and control of the Commission:-
(a) summon and enforce the attendance of any person and examine
him;
(b) require the discovery and production of any document; and
(c) requisition any public record or copy thereof from any office.
(3) The provisions of section 15 shall apply in relation to any
statement made by a person before any officer or agency whose services
are utilised under sub-section (1) as they apply in relation to any statement
made by a person in the course of giving evidence before the Commission.
(4) The officer or agency whose services are utilised under subsection
(1) shall investigate into any matter pertaining to the inquiry and
submit a report thereon to the Commission within such period as may be
specified by the Commission in this behalf.
(5) The Commission shall satisfy itself about the correctness of the
facts stated and the conclusion, if any, arrived at in the report submitted
to it under sub-section (4) and for this purpose the Commission may make
such inquiry (including the examination of the person or persons who
conducted or assisted in the investigation) as it thinks fit.
1 Inserted by Act 43 of 2006 1 Inserted by Act 43 of 2006
10 11
15. Statement made by persons to the Commission
No statement made by a person in the course of giving evidence before
the Commission shall subject him to, or be used against him in, any civil
or criminal proceeding except a prosecution for giving false evidence by
such statement:
Provided that the statement:-
(a) is made in reply to the question which he is required by the
Commission to answer; or
(b) is relevant to the subject matter of the inquiry.
16. Persons likely to be prejudicially affected to be heard
If, at any stage of the inquiry, the Commission:-
(a) considers it necessary to inquire into the conduct of any person;
or
(b) is of the opinion that the reputation of any person is likely to
be prejudicially affected by the inquiry;
it shall give to that person a reasonable opportunity of being heard in
the inquiry and to produce evidence in his defence:
Provided that nothing in this section shall apply where the credit of
a witness is being impeached.
CHAPTER IV
PROCEDURE
17. Inquiry into complaints
The Commission while inquiring into the complaints of violations of
human rights may–
(i) call for information or report from the Central Government or
any State Government or any other authority or organisation subordinate
thereto within such time as may be specified by it:-
Provided that–
(a) if the information or report is not received within the time
stipulated by the Commission, it may proceed to inquire into the
complaint on its own;
(b) if, on rece

Priyanka gets back her belongings:Court told Diana and Dodi target of a plot
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Priyanka gets back her belongings
Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, Nov. 28: Rizwanur Rehman’s family members today virtually snapped their last ties with Ms Priyanka Todi by returning all her belongings which she had left behind at Tiljala.
Rizwanur’s brother, Mr Rukbanur Rehman said: “Priyanka had informed yesterday that she would be sending her representative to collect her belongings today afternoon. Accordingly two persons, Mr Nazmul Karim and Mr Narayan Choudhury accompanied by two lawyers came to our house and collected the materials”.
He also said that even though Mrs Jehan had always wanted that Priyanka, being the daughter-in-law of the Rehman family, should come personally and take back the belongings after meeting her in-laws, Priyanka declined to come citing the trauma she has been through.
“My mother decided to give back her belongings which she was demanding as everything was over with the death of Rizwanur,” he added.
It may be recalled that Ms Todi had written to her mother-in-law Mrs Keshwara Jehan to return all her materials which she had left behind at Tiljala. Even though Mrs Jehan had initially declined to hand over the materials to anyone except Ms Todi herself she later agreed to hand over the materials to any person authorised by Ms Todi. Mrs Jehan, however, requested that Ms Todi should inform her at least 24 hours in advance about that person before he arrives at Tiljala to take back the materials. Accordingly Priyanka informed the Rehman family that she would be sending a person on 21 November. The meeting, however, had to be cancelled on that date due to the violence that broke out in Park Circus and Ripon Street area.
Even though Ms Todi had claimed that she had left behind some photographs, certificates, sarees, and CDs among other things. Mrs Jehan, however, wrote back that some of the items which Priyanks had claimed to have left back was not there. She also wrote that some documents and certificates of Priyanka were seized by the sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation. Mrs Jehan, however, refused to show her the seizure list.
Court told Diana and Dodi target of a plot
LONDON (Reuters) - Mohamed al-Fayed was convinced Princess Diana and his son Dodi were victims of an assassination plot the moment he heard they had died in a Paris car crash, the inquest into their deaths was told on Thursday.
(Advertisement)
The luxury Harrods storeowner alleges that the couple were killed by security services on the orders of Prince Philip.
Al-Fayed says Diana was pregnant with Dodi's child and that the couple were planning to marry. He claims the royal family could not bear the idea of Diana marrying a Muslim.
Backing for his conspiracy theory was given in court on Thursday by Franz Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel in Paris where the couple spent their last hours in 1997, as he gave evidence to the inquest at London's High Court.
Klein, who was on holiday in the south of France at the time, broke the news by phone of Dodi's death to Mohamed al-Fayed whose instant reaction was to tell Klein: "I know more than you know or, more than you think."
"Mr Fayed, very calm, said to me: 'This is not an accident. This is ... a plot or an assassination'," Klein told the court.
Klein also told the court Dodi had told him he and Diana were going to get engaged and live in Villa Windsor, where Edward VIII and divorcee Wallis Simpson lived after the monarch's abdication. Mohamed al-Fayed had bought the Paris property.
"He did not mention the princess by name over the phone but he did tell me that he was going to stay in Paris to live. He told me he was going to move into the Villa Windsor with his girlfriend and he also told me, all the time in English, that they were going to get married," Klein said.
Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
The inquest, expected to last up to six months and cost up to 10 million pounds, was opened after the conclusion of major British and French police investigations.
Those investigations concluded Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk and drove too fast through a Paris road tunnel, crashing the vehicle into a pillar.
Asked if he thought Henri Paul had a drinking problem, Klein told the court: "Not at all".
Taslima effect on Meenaxi
- MF’s movie in Bhopal

Tabu: On Bhopal date
If one BJP government has opened its doors for Taslima Nasreen, another has refused to shut them on M.F. Husain’s work.
Husain’s Meenaxi — A Tale of Three Cities was screened on Wednesday at the film festival in Bhopal in spite of muted protests from ministers and Sangh parivar activists.
Minutes before the screening of the Tabu-starrer, culture minister Laxmikant Sharma said: “I do not know how it has been approved. I will see how it can be stopped.”
But when he approached the chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chauhan told him to avoid controversy.
The week-long film festival is being organised by the state government together with the IAS officers’ association.
At 92, the painter is hated in the BJP and the Sangh parivar. In Indore, Sangh activists have filed several cases against his depiction of Hindu goddesses. Several groups have said they want him beheaded, his eyes gouged and his hands chopped off.
Facing death threats and court cases, Husain left the country and now lives in Dubai and London.
Local Bajrang Dal convener Devendra Rawat fumed that had he got “clearance” from the top, he would have stopped the screening of the “offensive film”. Asked if he had seen Meenaxi, Rawat said he was not a “pervert”.
Produced in 2004, the film is the story of Nawab, a popular Hyderabadi novelist suffering from a writer’s block who finds an unusual muse in a woman named Meenaxi. Hyderabad, Jaisalmer and Prague are the three cities in the title.
A source close to the chief minister justified the screening: “We in the Sangh parivar are against his outrageous depiction of Hindu goddesses and not against the artist.”
The state government has published a book with Husain’s Mother Teresa on the cover, the source added.
The screening comes a day after Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi invited controversial author Taslima Nasreen, kept out of Bengal, to live in the western state.
But the Opposition Congress is less than impressed. Party spokesperson Manak Aggarwal said the Chauhan regime, facing the heat in the Assembly over corruption charges, had simply avoided raking up another controversy. “The chief minister and his wife face serious allegations of misconduct,” he said.
Aggarwal pointed to the Bajrang Dal’s demonstration in Bhopal in May supporting an exhibition of paintings titled The Face of Terror, which showed Muslims as terrorists. The exhibition was organised by Kailash Tiwari, who has led several campaigns against Husain.

RASHEED KIDWAI IN BHOPAL
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071129/asp/frontpage/story_8606112.asp
CBI concludes Rizwanur death inquiry, hints at suicide
As the CBI probe into the infamous Rizwanur Rehman case is virtually completed, seniors in the agency indicate that the 27-year-old computer graphics expert was forced to commit suicide to escape being persecuted and murdered. He was hiding from the chasing goons with friends for two days before his death. An analysis of the details emerged from the month-long investigation suggests that Rizwanur, constantly harassed by goons of main accused Ashok Todi, was driven to commit suicide as he was pushed against the walls and he could see no escape route from the quandary he found himself after his marriage with Priyanka Todi.
As the CBI probe into the infamous Rizwanur Rehman case is virtually completed, seniors in the agency indicate that the 27-year-old computer graphics expert was forced to commit suicide to escape being persecuted and murdered. He was hiding from the chasing goons with friends for two days before his death. An analysis of the details emerged from the month-long investigation suggests that Rizwanur, constantly harassed by goons of main accused Ashok Todi, was driven to commit suicide as he was pushed against the walls and he could see no escape route from the quandary he found himself after his marriage with Priyanka Todi.
Sleuths have also discovered that Priyanka, whom Rizwanur had married against the wishes of her parents, was in touch with him through phone and had warned him to stay away from his residence, especially during nights, because her father's goons were on the lookout for him.
"We have established that Priyanka warned Rizwanur to stay away from his house," said a senior officer, adding that the designer stayed with friends while under threat. "He would only visit home daytime and for a brief period". Investigators also revealed since Rizwanur suspected his mobile phone was being tracked, he made calls only from public booths.
The officer said apart from the goons, Rizwanur was being constantly threatened by Kolkata Police officials of dire consequences if he did not stay away from Priyanka and nullify his marriage. The CBI report, in fact, has added a long chapter on the role of the police and strongly indicted four former officials of Kolkata police, in its report. The CBI is also believed to have suggested initiating stern actions against those officials. The former Kolkata Police officials named in the report include Gyanwant Singh (IPS), Ajay Kumar (IPS), Krishnendu Das and Sukanti Chakraborty.
"Some details of these threats came up during questioning of Kolkata Police officials. We have also found various discrepancies in police records as several back-date entries were made by police," the officer added.
The CBI sleuths have also found out apart from muscle power, Ashok Todi put into use money power as well to separate his daughter Priyanka from Rizwanu. He spend over Rs. 25 lakhs (Rs 25,00,000) as bribes to the police, payment made to the goons and to grease the palms of some of Rizwan's kins.
According to some highly placed sources in the CBI, the death of Rizwanur has brought into fore a murky tale where culpability of many have also been fixed.
Meanwhile, the bereaved Rahman family finally handed over the personal belongings of Rizwanur's widow Priyanka to the official carriers of the Todi family on Wednesday. According to prior information, the carriers ? Nazmul Karim and Narayan Chowdhury ? came to the Rahmans' house at Tiljala and collected Priyanka's belongings. Two lawyers also accompanied them. Earlier, Priyanka shot off a letter to her mother-in-law, asking her to send back all her belongings to her Salt Lake house. Priyanka alleged that some of her belongings were being shown on television without her consent. However, Todi family sources said they are yet to receive 15 CDs containing photographs. They also found some photographs missing from the bunch. "We are yet to receive a packet of Archies greetings cards and letters, one duplicate birth certificate and one small note pad," said a family source.

Call for new front against CPM
In a bid to take on the mighty CPI(M) in its own turf the Trinamool Congress and its allies have decided to float a progressive, democratic and secular front in West Bengal. They will approach both the Congress and the Left Front's junior partners, including the RSP, CPI and Forward Bloc to join the new front as "Marxist rule has become so oppressive that the people are looking for an alternative," Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to be kept outside the proposed coalesce even as the Trinamool Congress remains in the NDA where BJP is the lead constituent. She, however, evaded a direct answer to the question whether the BJP would be a constituent of the new front. "When we say it's a progressive and secular front, the answer to the question is self-explanatory," she said.
Leaders of the West Bengal unit of the Congress, including Somen Mitra, had called on the Trinamool to take a lead in the formation of a front to dislodge the CPI (M) from power in the coming panchayat poll.
Banerjee said discussions would be held with the Congress for joining the front. "We understand the LF junior partners may not readily respond to our call, but we believe they feel the need for such a combine to save the state from the CPI-M-orchestrated state-sponsored terror and anti-farmer and anti-people policies," Banerjee said.
She also lashed out at the state government for its handling of Taslima Nasreen's stay in the city. "It's all part of the CPI-M's game of duplicity that has created such a situation," she said.
Trinamool's initiative to form a rival political coalition in West Bengal is expected to create significant political churns in the state if the move gets translated into reality. Earlier similar initiatives of the party had ended in whimpers as the move never received any response from the junior partners of the ruling Left Front. One primary reason for earlier fiascos was the presence of the BJP. None of the junior partners of neither the Left Front nor the Congress wanted to align with Trinamool having even the faintest of relation with the BJP. Secondly, the junior Left Front partners, who have during past 30 years of Left rule in the state, have grown too used to being in power and were very reluctant to be in the opposition.

States agree to new dual GST by 2010
A key milestone towards indirect tax reform in the country was achieved today when state governments approved the introduction of a nationwide dual Goods and Service Tax (GST) from April 1, 2010. The dual GST will operate at two levels ? the Centre and states. The tax rate has not been finalised yet. A decision on whether non-VAT items like petroleum goods and alcohol will come under the new levy will be taken next month. "We will recommend the adoption of dual GST to the central government. The dual GST model will reduce the incidence of indirect taxes on products and services," said Asim Dasgupta, West Bengal finance minister and chairman of the empowered committee of state finance ministers.
"The attempt is to integrate and subsume as many taxes on consumption and services as possible and feasible," he said, adding that there will be no double taxation. The final GST roadmap is expected by December 20, after which it will be sent to the Union finance ministry.
Under the dual GST model, there will be more than four slabs of tax on goods and services. The new point is that states will tax services. My expectation is that the service tax levy will continue to be in the range of 12.36 to 12.5 per cent.
Currently, the central government levies excise duty at various rates like 16, 12 and 8 per cent. It also levies 12.36 per cent tax on around 100 services. States do not levy or collect service taxes, but get a share from the Centre's collections. It is now proposed that states will keep the entire collection from 33 services from this year.
Another 44 proposed new services will be given to states for collection and appropriation as part of compensation for central sales tax phase-out in 2010. Parliament is required to amend service tax regulations to allow states to levy taxes on services.

Taslima issue: Islam,violence and human right
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
BJP slams UPA Govt on Taslima issue
Hindu - 2 hours ago - Kolkata (PTI): Criticising the UPA government and the CPI-M for shifting Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen from one ...
Times of India - Daily News & Analysis - BBC News
Home secy mum on Taslima
KOLKATA, Nov. 28: State home secretary Mr Prasad Ranjan Ray today declined to comment when asked whether the former city police chief, Mr Prasun Mukherjee, had visited controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen’s residence and requested her to move to Kerala in September.
The Statesman reported yesterday that Mr Mukherjee had paid a visit to Ms Nasreen’s 7, Rowdon Street residence on 27 September and requested her to move to Kerala as “the state government was worried about her security in Kolkata”. Mr Mukherjee had claimed that he had acted at the instance of the state government and that the state home secretary knew everything about it. But, Mr Ray refused to say anything on the issue at Writers’ Buildings today. When asked what kind of threat perception may have prompted Ms Nasreen to leave Kolkata, he chose to remain silent.SNS
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&theme=&usrsess=1&id=178365
Gag on ‘guest’ Taslima
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, Nov. 28: Taslima Nasreen can stay on as India’s guest but will have to mind her tongue.
The Centre today said it would continue to protect the Bangladeshi author as India had never “refused” anyone shelter.
This “civilisational heritage, which is now government policy, will continue”, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee told Parliament in a statement, but added a word of advice to the controversial writer. She would have to “refrain from activities and expressions” that might “harm” India’s relations with “friendly” countries and “hurt the sentiments of our people”.
He added that as along as “guests” like Taslima were in India, the Centre and state governments would “provide them protection”.
Although expansive on India’s “civilisational” legacy, the statement didn’t mention why Taslima had to flee CPM-ruled Bengal and was silent on the way the author was tossed from state to state, ostensibly for security reasons.
It was clear the government didn’t want to risk embarrassing its ally as Taslima’s flight from Calcutta after last Wednesday’s violence by minority protesters had provoked a debate on artistic freedom.
The BJP called Mukherjee’s statement “meaningless” and “incomplete”.
“The statement is silent on why she was forced out of Bengal. Is she free to return to Calcutta? There is also no mention of whether she would be provided security,” party leader V.K. Malhotra said.
Malhotra also wanted to know why the government hadn’t “categorically” said if Taslima would be allowed to stay anywhere she liked in India and if her visa would be extended once it expired.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071129/asp/frontpage/story_8606951.asp

We recorded two Bengali discussions on the topic: Both the files available in
www.vinnomot. com
[Both the discussions are highly enlightening and informative for every section of the people-specially 1st discussion is a must for everybody to increase their knowledge in this topic]

1: Views of Islamic scholars: Moderator Quddus Khan,
Participants: Hassan Mahmud (Leader of Islamic reform movement in North America),
Anis Rahman ( Leader of orthodox Islam (Ummah) in North America)
Biplab Pal ( Editor of Vinnomot and secular thinker)
Audio file link:
http://ishare. rediff.com/ filemusic. php?id=72314

2: Views of human right activist Prof Mohit Roy in Calcutta: He is leader of CAMP and his group took to the street of Calcutta for Taslima. Interviewed by Biplab Pal & Rahul Guha(http://www.vinnomot .com/Farid/ PressCAAMB. pdf)
Audio file link:
http://ishare. rediff.com/ filemusic. php?id=72313

Thanks
Biplab

The Paradox of Taslima Nasreen
Is Taslima treading a dangerous path in India by courting the Hindu fundamentalists ?
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
In an interview to the Indian Express, Delhi on November 24th, noted Bengali author Taslima Nasreen said, "Nothing happens to MF Hussain, who has done so many things, while everybody is after my life'. It is ironical that the statement comes from a person who has been 'wronged' by the Muslim clergy in Bangladesh and whose issue rocked Indian parliament as well as has exposed the hypocrisy of our society and so-called 'liberal' values.
It is more than shocking that the issue cropped up at a time when the self style custodian of the secular values in India were exposed to the outside world on the issue of the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in West Bengal. Their own intellectuals, artists started questioning the take over of Nandigram and communalization of West Bengal. The seer hypocrisy of the Government of West Bengal was visible as the CPI(M)'s cadre went back to 'annex' Nandigram and the victory day celebrations took place there. The red flags were hoisted as if Nandigram was an alien territory and great nationalist forces of the left have won.
A fortnight ago when some of the intellectuals and political activists from Kolkata came to Delhi for a meeting, the issue of emergence of some outstanding Muslim leaders also came into focus. It was said that the Muslim Dalit combination is set to win over West Bengal and future of the West Bengal politics would always be in the secular hands and not to a Bhadralok politician. I thought it was rare that Muslim political leadership would raise the issue of the concern of Muslim Samaj, which is mainly socio-economical and not religious. The literacy rate is very low; there are no health centers in Muslim localities, no government jobs for them and virtually no benefit of land reforms for them. West Bengal's government was already targeting many of them in the name of Bangladeshi's infiltrators. Yet, what happened in the streets of Kolkata November 21 st was not only shameful deviation from the real issues of Muslims in West Bengal but it gave the CPM's government as much waited relief to hide in the shade of Taslima Nasreen. How come Taslima become the main issue of the community which is fighting for its survival in Nandigram ? It is another matter that many of the Muslim leaders from Bengal are blaming the CPM for the current crisis. They charge that these riots were engineered by the CPM to save themselves from further charges of anti Muslim rhetoric. Not to be left behind in this exercise, West Bengal's ruling party's spokesperson Biman Bose retorted that Taslima was unwelcome in Kolkata, a city which prided itself in giving shelter to a hapless Muslim tailor of Ahmedabad in Gujarat who became face of terrorized Muslim community in Gujarat.
It is unfortunate that Muslim leadership everywhere joined hand and started protesting against Taslima ignoring the vital fact that the more they would protest against her, the bigger would be the damage done to the community. A community which is living in marginalization in India, where the brahmanical supremacy is working over time to marginalized communities, Muslim political leadership has completely failed and betrayed their community. The west takes it a chance to target Islam in further isolating the Muslims. It is not the Islam but the Mullahs who are in danger. Taslima is no Salman Rushdie. She has projected the face of fundamentalist Muslims in Bangladesh in the aftermath of the Babari demolition. It might have been the genuine grievances of the minority community in Bangladesh and the same is true about the Muslims in India who are living on the margins. And more importantly same is true about both the communities and their treatment to Dalits in all our South Asian societies including Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India. Poor Nasreen perhaps does not know the plight except the plight of a bhadralok Bengali upper caste Hindu in Bangladesh.
While any one is free to ignore Taslima's writings which many of the scholars term as blasphemous. That she has no right to live in India is the case point that every one of them has been making. She has hurt the sentiments of Islam, they said. Nobody has a right to hurt religious sentiments, said Pranab Mukherjee, Indian foreign minister, in Parliament. One does not know how sentiments are hurt. If ask for a ban on Kumbha fair, it hurts the sentiments of Hindus. If we say that the roads which are closed for nearly a fortnight between Delhi and Hardwar for ensuring that Hindu pilgrims walks on the road freely despite all other problems for commuters and travelers, during Savan, its appeasement. Again when we speak against susidy provided to Haz pilgrims, it is appeasement says, Hindu right wing while seculars keep quiet and Muslims are happy. That makes things easier for the Hindu right wing and they make it point to explain it their constituency and others through media. Therefore when M.F.Hussain paints something and the Hindu right wing are up in arms against him for hurting their sentiments. Actually the Hindu fundamentalists also want to have a 'right to take life' or threat to issue 'fatwa' like their Islamic friends in India and elsewhere. And that way, the Jamayate Islami in Bangldesh has been of great help to Sangh Parivar here for threatening Taslima Nasreen. Now she is more than welcome in India by them. And unfortunately, Ms Nasreen seems to have played in their hand when she said that nothing happens to M F Hussain. What do you want to be done to Hussain, Ms Nasreen? Should we hang him, beat him to equate ourselves with the Bangladeshi Mullahs or Talibani thugs?
Taslima should not let down all those who stood for her. All those who stood for her are fighting the case against the Hindu fundamentalists in India. These fundamentalists who do not want any dissent in this country. Who want brahmanical hegemony at all cost? Narendra Modi invited her to Gujarat, the other day saying that a woman and that too an 'intellectual' of Taslima's stature should be welcomed. He used the same Bangladeshi refugee card in his speeches. Modi, who tells us that 'scavenging' is a spiritual experience, and that every time the questions about his sincerity towards the Muslim population of Gujarat are raised, he comes back to his pet old thesis. In the last election it was Mia Musharraf and this time, it seems, he want Taslima to be in Gujarat. Modi's Gujarat shines at the cost of Dalits and tribals and Muslims and Christians are the hunting ground for him. Many leaders of the Hindutva brigade have already given Taslima the status which she never had. Her victimization story might be true but there is nothing new what she says. The fact of the matter is that the oppression of women and marginalized is not an Islam Centric thing. It is everywhere in religion which have become our daily routine. They are also part of cultural values and have mixed up with religion in different parts of the world. Many people try to explain religion in a different way to make it more inclusive while others go in to every word written there. There is another stream which feel every word written in these texts need to be challenged and questioned.
It is equally baffling that the secular voices remained mute in this entire exercise and the support to Taslima came from the right wing Hindu fundamentalists. And to the discomfiture of secularists as well as humanists, as Taslima claims herself to be, she has linked her problems with that of M.F.Hussain. There are two different issues involved here and one commonality between them. First the common point is that attack on both of them is an assault on freedom of artistic ex-pression and freedom of conscience. Hussain is facing many charges against him in the courts filed by various Sangh Parivar outfits. The officially he is not debarred from India but at this age of 90 he is running here and there. Secondly, Hussain actually has not defamed the Hindu Gods and Goddesses but celebrate them. A large number of his paintings are bought by the Hindus themselves. He celebrates Madhuri Dixit and her 'Naritva', an ideal Indian womanhood. I am sure Taslima would agree that any such concept is not only derogatory in nature but stereotype
the women in general.
Taslima's main problem emanates from her one sided writings. Surely, she is not an activist hence can take liberty to so-called freedom of conscience even if there are riots and mayhem caused by them. Her writings are one way passage to demonize Islam. It is no doubt that she faced victimization in Bangladesh. That such feudal outlook is not confined to Islam and Bangladesh only. Such situation exists in our part of the world also and elsewhere too. Women were always used in religion and considered subservient to man. Taslima can speak to a Shankaracharya and a Christian clergy who would never say that they are equal. Ofcouse, an enlightened and politically mature religious leader would always say that they are equal. Unfortunately, like many others, she also feels that her best security in Indian would come from the Hindu fundamentalist. That approach is dangerous and self defeating. Taslima should understand that Muslims in India live in utter fear and are even more marginalized than the Dalits as far as participation in the governance is concerned. All those who support here from the Hindu rightwing organizations target M.F.Hussain for denigrating the Hindu Gods. What happens when these rituals and practices denigrates the 170 million Dalits in India. Yes, as I mentioned and hopefully Taslima would also be reading that, Narendra Modi, the chief Minister of Gujarat, who presided over a regime that butchered innocent Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and further isolated them till this date, consider scavenging as a 'spiritual' experience. Yes, one can only hope that Modi and his generations would leave politics and adopt this 'noble' profession of cleaning shit of others so that their sins are washed.
I would also like to remind Taslima that she seems to be ignorant of the vast anti caste movement in India. One is not sure whether she ever read the work of Ambedkar, Phule and Periyar, she would not have uttered the word against M.F.Hussain and his creative work. Much before Taslima and Salman Rushdie could think of challenging the religious orthodoxy, I am not sure whether they ever challenged it or just narrated to us their own 'experiences'. Ambedkar wrote 'Riddles of Hinduism' and Periyar wrote his own explanation of 'Ramayana'. Phule condemned Brahmanical values and many others fought against the brahmanical social order and hegemonistic concept of the brahmanical values. When Ambedkar's riddles were published, the government banned it buckling under the pressure of the Hindu right wing elements. Thanks to the strong Dalit protest against this proscription that government had to lift ban over it. If Taslima think that Ambedkar and Periyar would not have allowed to live after all they wrote much more against brahmanical values than Taslima could think of writing against Islam. Yes, it was the power of the people. Ambedkar, Periyar, Phule were not just philosophers and writers but responsible social revolutionaries. When they were targeting against rituals and religious values, they were enlightening another group of people who were denied basic human rights by the same religion. And Taslima, I hope would remember how Dalits have been living in India, and how their untouchability had got religious sanction. Yet, these great revolutionaries changed the mindset of the people and their power was understood. Today, Dalits are a powerful political force in India despite all disabilities attached to their birth and caste. A majority of Muslims and Christians got converted overtly or covertly to escape from the tyranny of the brahmanical system in India.
Taslima love Bengal. It is natural. She says Kolkata was a secular place. Yes, in that secular space there was no space for Muslim voices, no space for dissent. During the partition days, Kolkata saw the worst ever communal riots. In the 1990s, the bhadralok public did not allow a new comer ' Srilankan' to win against India in the world cup semi finals. Yes, in this entire jargon of secularism in India only powerful upper elite of every religion participated, others were votary of secularism but not leaders of it. The secular debate came from those whose ancestors created this caste divide. Taslima is a proud member of this elite club today. She is a welcome guest and must speak out openly against all forms of oppression. I am sure the day she will open her mouth against the Hindu fundamentalism, the same voices of 'sanity' will ask for her head.
Voices of dissent have to be careful in their criticism. After all for whom are they working? As I mentioned earlier, India had the history of voices of dissent right from Carvaka to Buddha and in this age in the form of Ambedkar, Phule and Periyar. They dissented and lived a life for their people and today they are loved and respected. Not only that, Ambedkar is supremely respected and worshipped by the millions of Dalits all over the world for his unrelenting and uncompromising struggle against brahmanical supremacy. The problem of Islamic fundamentalism in the subcontinent lies in the same. They need an enemy to retain their upper elite hegemony. In India, already, there are voices of the down trodden Muslims asking for their share in power structure and for the socio-economic benefit of the community. Lot of work is being done at the grassroots and people are protesting. Ofcourse, not every one will leave the religion. Ambedkar and Phule were working for the communities and hence they fought and had the courage to tell the Dalits to reject the brahmanical Hinduism and embrace radical Buddhism. Taslima is an individual hence perhaps can not even tell any one to do what Ambedkar and Periyar could ask for?
As far as the Islamic zealots are concerned, the least said about them is better. They have no work except the religious issues. It is strange how they use democracy for their own purposes. They need liberal voices from other religions, from secularists, from atheists when the community faces music from the right wing Hindus but they are not ready to change. They are unable to understand that in the 21 st century a lot of things have to be changed. The socio-economic-cultural paradigms are changing. Muslim women will come out and work in the offices, do PhDs, and join films and sports. As the economic independence knock at their doors, women's can not be expected to remain mute on violence against them. They will speak and they will have to speak. There is no other alternative against violence and hegemony. Religions have been a male hegemony and modernity demand equal rights for all. The power of religion would not allow this power equation to change. But as their time is coming closure so will be the targets. They would attack all those who challenge them because it is the threat from with in that seems powerful and not from outside. Both the Hindu Fundamentalists and the Muslim fundamentalists know it well. For a Narendra Modi, Taslima is the best to demonize Islam and deviate from the assertive OBCs, Dalits and tribals who are asking him where is Gujarat shining, for the Muslim fanatic groups, since they have done very little work to gain the faith of the Muslim masses, Taslima gives them hope to revive their dirty agenda. As usual the Muslim intelligentsia is submissive and does not have the courage to stand on its own.
The only answer to both these fundamentalist groups could be the forces of change with in the communities. Yes, the Dalit Muslims are now asking their share in power and will not succumb to these tactics and a broader alliance with the Dalits, tribals and OBCs will not only throw away their own middlemen leaders but ultimately pave the way for a humanist society where every one can live in harmony and where criticism is constructive and aimed at resolving the crisis and not to further it. One sincerely hopes that good sense will prevail to Kolkata's Muslims and they will ally with other secular Dalit groups in opposing the socio-economic marginalization of their community people in Nandigram. Taslima is not an issue. Let her live in peace otherwise she will become fodder for those who have demonize Muslims in India. For Taslima, it would be good if she continue her writing without any prejudice and should not become another Francis Goutier, who has today become the soldier of Sangh Parivar. One hopes that all those opposing Taslima will understand that her withdrawal from Kolkata and West Bengal does not solve the crisis of the people of Nandigram. In fact, it will unnecessarily divide forces who stand with the displaced people of Nandigram and salute their heroic struggle against the land acquisition in the name of Developing an SEZ in Nandigram.

--
Vidya Bhushan Rawat
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http://www.indianexpress.com/story/244470.html

In the name of Taslima Nasreen
Amrita Shah
Posted online: Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST
The manner in which Taslima Nasreen has had to be shunted from city to city over the last few days is a matter of shame. It reveals a clear unwillingness or incapacity on the part of the state to protect freedom of speech and expression. Both the CPM-led Left government in West Bengal and the UPA government at the Centre have shown themselves to be weak-kneed in the face of mob unruliness.
It is the BJP that has emerged as Nasreen’s unexpected champion, offering her shelter in Rajasthan, demanding that she be declared as a political refugee. Even by India’s low standards of political morality, the BJP’s stand is astoundingly hypocritical, given the record of the party and its ideological mates in leading violent campaigns on grounds of social or religious disagreement.
The BJP’s pro-Nasreen stand is no evidence of a volte-face on the issue of artistic freedom — which, even as a ruse, would sit oddly with its and its sister organisation, the VHP’s, shenanigans at the Baroda School of Art this May or its virulent campaign against M.F. Husain. This is perhaps why the party is demanding that Nasreen be treated as a ‘political’ refugee, regardless of the fact that the opposition she represents is social rather than political.
The BJP’s unexpected show of solidarity with the beleaguered Bangladeshi writer is aimed more at showing up what it believes is the hypocrisy of its political and ideological opponents: Hindutvawadis having long held that Indians who believe in secularism, especially Communists, ‘favour’ Muslims over Hindus. It is testimony to the dogged persistence with which the BJP has made its case over decades and partly to the changing environment in the world in the wake of increasing incidents of Islamic terrorism that its argument has been finding favour even among the more liberal sections of society. The argument gaining ground goes that Muslim fundamentalism being as bad as Hindu fundamentalism, the right to criticise both should be fervently protected.
In its appearance of even-handedness, this line of reasoning seems faultless. It is also in tune with the tide in international opinion against political correctness. The furore over the publication of the Danish cartoons for instance, led many in the West to question how far it wishes to sacrifice its traditional freedoms for the sake of illiberal cultures, even when they form part of the melting pot in their own countries.
The problem, then, given the growing articulation for the right to freedom of expression, indeed the demand for freedom of expression to take precedence over minority or other sensitivities, is: why is there so little support in general for it? Nasreen’s plight may have received widespread media coverage but it is unlikely to provoke public outrage. For years India’s best-known painter, M.F. Husain, has been forced to stay out of the country for his personal safety. Libraries and cinema houses have been ransacked with no major incidence of public protest. And while mob violence at the Baroda School of Art and the jailing of a young artist did bring the art community out on the streets, it did not succeed in altering the environment for freedom of expression. Artists continue to be vulnerable. Acutely so. And from what one can see, it is not an issue that actively engages the public mind.
Why is this so? Could it be perhaps because the growing demand for self-interest, both at the individual and national level has left us incapable of sustaining idealism in any field? The overwhelming push today is towards expediency. One cannot imagine India’s long silence on Burma, for instance, passing off with so little negative comment in an earlier era. The BJP’s sustained campaign against ‘favouritism’ towards the minorities similarly glosses over the fact that there are vulnerable groups in society that need protection from the prejudices of the majority. Times change. And it is likely that the excesses of notions such as political correctness need to be corrected. But what is being eroded from our consciousness is sympathy for the underdog. The artist then is perhaps just one more casualty of the politics of pragmatism.

Mumbai-based Shah is author of ‘Hope, Hypocrisy and Television in Urban India’
Taslima Controversy: No To Appeasement Politics
by Kashif ul-Huda
Taslima Nasreen has nothing to do with Nandigram, but for some
illogical reason she was moved out of Kolkata as an answer to months
of protest against the Nandigram violence in West Bengal. This is
the latest in a long list of examples of politics of appeasement
practised in India since its independence.
By shipping Nasreen out, the West Bengal government seems to
be "giving in" to the demands of Muslims, but it has chosen to act
on an issue that has no socio-economic relevance to a majority of
them. This appeases known anti-Muslim parties more than the average
Muslim individual, as it gives them more ammunition to target
Muslims with. It might also please those Muslim leaders and
organizations that have been campaigning against Nasreen for their
own ulterior motives. These Muslim leaders can now claim victory and
be on the lookout for another symbolic issue to add another feather
in their cap.
The violence in Kolkata that lead to Nasreen's ousting happened on
Wednesday, 21 November, on a protest call by a small group called
the All Indian Minorities Forum (AIMF). Contrary to its name, the
AIMF is not found all over India, nor does it represent all its
minorities. Its president, Idris Ali is known for raising emotive
issues. He was found guilty of being in contempt of the high court
when he reportedly urged the imams of Kolkata to defy the court ban
on the use of loudspeakers for azan.
Last week's protest was attended by a few thousand, and for some
unexplained reason the protesters resorted to battles with the
police. The Kolkata Police, which should be an expert in dealing
with demonstrations of any kind, was ill-prepared to handle the
small numbers of youth engaged in the violence.
Just five days earlier, about 100,000 Muslims had descended on
Kolkata for a peaceful demonstration against the violence in
Nandigram. This was organized by Milli Ittehad Parishad, a body made
up of various Muslim organizations such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind,
Jamaat-e-Islami Milli Council and Majlis-e-Mushawarat. If the
Muslims of West Bengal really wanted to resort to violence, why
didn't they choose that Friday's rally instead of Wednesday?
Some other questions: Why did the state government "give in" to a
few violent youths and a small, unknown organization, but not pay
attention to the silent cry of 100,000 Muslims and a respectable,
established Muslim organization? Are we not sending the wrong
message to the Muslims of India that the only way to get your voice
heard is violence? Does that explain the bomb blasts in various
cities all across India? Also, why is the government not ready to
budge on Nandigram, which is a social, economic and justice problem?
What made it listen to the demand of a few Muslims on an issue that
is symbolic and of religious sentiment?
These questions are not only for the West Bengal government; it is
asked of all states and the Centre. Government officials,
professionals, journalists, businessmen and everyone need to realize
that if India is to reach its full potential it has to listen to the
legitimate demands of the majority of Muslims. Fortunately, their
demand of justice, equality, dignity, security, education,
employment, etc., are those of any other Indian, there is nothing
religious about these. Issues and demands that are religious in
nature should be seen on their merit and not because of an
opportunity to play the politics of appeasement.
Let not a tiny violent minority dictate what Indian Muslims want.
More important, let not politicians reward this violent minority. If
political parties are allowed to keep playing appeasement politics,
they will keep Indian Muslims, and India, backward.

Again forced eviction occured in West Bengal
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com

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1984 riots: CBI gives clean chit to Tytler
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New Delhi: Jagdish Tytler, a senior Congress leader and former Union minister, on Thursday got a clean chit in the 1984 anti-Sikh riot case, as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a court that there was no evidence against him.
'84 riots: CBI never contacted me, says key witness Times of India
1984 riots: CBI says no evidence against Tytler, witness cries foul Zee News
Dear friend,
Again forced eviction occured in West Bengal. The authority wants
beautification hence eviction. Most of the victims are Muslim and
Dalits.
Many of them are children & women. We put the list of the names at
bottom.
After our Fact Finding over this eviction, we lodged complaints before
1. Chairman, NHRC
2. Chairman, NCM
3. Chairperson, WBCW
4. Governor, West Bengal
5. Principal Secretary, Home, Govt. of WB
6. Principal Secretary, Social Welfare, Govt. of WB
7. Chief Security Commissioner, Eastern Railway
8. Divisional Railway Manager, Sealdah Division, Eastern Railway
Hope you will do needful.
Regards
Kirity

*Names of the Victims:* 1.) Noor Jahan, w/o Md. Salim Seikh, Age – 40
years,
Religion – Muslim, 2) Alami, Child of Kamal Seikh, Age – 11/2, Religion
–
Muslim, 3) Kala, s/o Mahesh Hazra, Age –3 years, Religion – Hindu,
Rahim
Khan, Age – 50 years, Religion – Muslim and other people residing at
Rail
Bridge and the side of Railway Track near Armenian Ghat, Ward Njumber –
45,
Police Station – North Port Police Station, District - Kolkata, West
Bengal
and other victims.
*Names of the perpetrators: *(1) Officers of North Port Police Station,
Kolkata. (2) Officers of Railway Protection Force, Cossipore, Kolkata.
(3)
Officers of Government Railway Police, Cossipore, Kolkata. *(*4) Some
local
supporters of political parties. (5) General Manager, Eastern Railway,
Fairly Place, Kolkata. (6) N. K. Singh, Assistant Sub Inspector,
Railway
Police Force, Cossipore, Kolkata **
* *
*Place of Incident: *Railway Track and Railway Bridge near Armenian
Ghat,
Ward Number – 45, Police Station – North Port Police Station, District
-
Kolkata, West Bengal.* *
*Date and Time of Incident: *From 14.11.2007 around 12 Noon to
16.11.2007.
*Case Details: *
There were as many as fifty families who took shelter at the places as
stated above under plastic sheds or temporary sheets.
On 13.11.07 at 9 p.m. one official of Governmental Railway Police came
in
the place of incident in plain cloth and ordered inhabitants to remove
the
roof made by plastic of each and every shelter and to leave the place
immediately. That officer also instructed them not to remove household
goods
inside their plastic sheds.
On 14.11.2007 at 8 a.m. two uniformed railway police personnel came to
the
place once again along with a plain dressed police officer and asked
them to
leave the place by removing the plastic sheets. The unfortunate people
of
the area followed their instruction and stayed away from the respective
shelters and stood under the open sky in the morning while it was
raining.
But around 12 noon on that day, 4 uniformed railway police officials
went to
Armenian Ghat area with two other plain cloth officers. Some local
members
of various political parties of the said area also joined the team. All
these persons threw away the goods and articles of the homeless people
at
distance and did not give opportunity to anyone to recover or save the
goods.
Noor Jahan Begum, one 40 years old woman was taking her meal at the
side of Railway
Bridge. The Police attacked her hand and threw the bowl she was
holding.
Wife of Kamal Seikh collecting goods under the railway bridge with her
one
and half year old child named Alami. During the time of eviction one
piece
of wood thrown by police hit on the head of Alami resulting injury.
Kala, a three years old son of Mahesh Hazra was there on the bridge. He
received injury on his waist while the police were throwing the goods
and
articles.
Rahim Khan, one 50 years old who was sick, was drinking water and was
suddenly hit by Railway Police in his hand by stick while he was
sitting by
the side of the railway track.
The railway police raided the place six times on that day. Those
officers
informed that Deputy Railway Manager, Sealdah Section would come for
inspection and for that reason all the inhabitants must leave their
places
for three days only and they would be allowed to stay.
On 15.11.2007 at around 10 a.m. 5/6 railway police officials appeared
there
and destroyed oven built the homeless people.
Total 58 families were there in the said area, out of them, 27 resided
on
the Railway Bridge and 31 beside the Railway Track). Police destroyed
each
and every home in ruthless manner.
MASUM's fact finding team went to North Port Police Station at Kolkata
on
16.11.2007 at 1.10 p.m. and met Duty Officer named A. K. Biswas, a Sub
Inspector for enquiring the matter. In his statement that officer told
that
the said area was under the jurisdiction of Government Railway Police.
North
Port Police Station did not have any information regarding that matter.
According to that officer North Port Police Station, they only deal
with the
dead body found in the river Ganga, nothing else. No other types of
case
usually come into the said police station. Thereafter that officer took
name, designation and phone number of the member of the fact finding
team in
his notebook.
On the same day at 1.30 p.m. the said team of fact finding got
information
from The Calcutta Samaritan, one NGO that N. K. Singh, Assistant Sub
Inspector, Railway Protection Force, Cossipore, Kolkata was present
there at
the place of incident. That officer took lead role in the evection
drive.
MASUM's fact finding team met with the officer. That officer told that,
Deputy Railway Manager, Eastern Railway, Sealdah Section gave order to
evict
those inhabitants of the Armenian Ghat area. Deputy Railway Manager,
Sealdah
Section directed his order to be carried by General Manager, Eastern
Railway, Fairly Place. N. K. Sing also expressed that General Manager;
Eastern Railway passed the order to North Port Police Station because
the
said area is under the local jurisdiction North Port Police Station.
The
eviction was done in the presence of the officers of the said police
station. The said officer was surprised to know that the police of
North
Port Police Station refused to accept their involvement in the said
eviction. In his statement N. K. Singh further told that the tender has
been
placed for the re-construction of the railway bridge at Armenian Ghat.
Later
on the said officer informally discussed with MASUM's fact finding team
that
Political Parties were involved in this eviction process otherwise the
tender order could not be issued. Political Party exerted influence
upon the
higher authorities to pass the tender. The said land was under the
jurisdiction Port Trust before but the railway authority bought the
land and
constructed the bridge. In the end of conversation N. K. Singh
confessed
that police resorted to lathicharge* *and forced children on the bridge
to
remove because those children might get injuries by the utensils thrown
by
Railway Protection Force.
Thereafter MASUM's fact finding team went to Eastern Railway Office at
Fairly Place at 2 p.m. on that day but found the officer closed for
religious Festival.
The list of the evicted people in detail is furnished herein below.
*List of evicted persons and their family members: *
*Address: ** Ward No – 45, Armenian Ghat, Beside Railway Track, Police
Station – North Port, Kolkata – 1.*
* *
Sl No
Name
Age
Occupation
Family Detail
1
Rahinm Khan
50
Porter
Son-20 years, Daughter-16 years
2
Faruque Sheikh
40
Van Puller
Daughter-12 years, Son-7years
3
Tinu Sheikh
35
Van Puller
Sons-20 years, 12 years
4
Jasim Sheikh
18
Van Puller
5
Anwar Sheikh
40
Rag Picker
Daughter-7 years
6
Morium Bibi
60
Rag Picker
Sons-22 years, 20 years
7
Nur Islam Sheikh
50
Rag Picker
Sons-22 years, 20 years, Daughters-11 years, 18 years
8
Kader Sheikh
60
Van Puller
I Daughter, 6 Sons
9
Rabiul Sheikh
40
Rag Picker
3 Grand Daughters, 1 Daughter
10
Beauty Bibi
25
Domestic Maid
Son-5 years
11
Rahila Bibi
55
Rag Picker
Sons-20 years, 10 years
12
Sahera Bibi
50
Rag Picker
4 sons, 1 daughter
13
Marzina Bibi
50
Daily Labour
3 sons, 1 daughter
14
Nizam Sheikh
30
Van Puller
Son-5 years, daughter-21/2
15
Kamal Sheikh
40
Daily Labour
3 sons,
16
Sahidul Shaikh
25
Driver
Daughter-11/2 years
17
Moni Sheikh
24
Van Puller
Son-5 months
18
Seikh Jahangir
60
Rag Picker
2 sons, 2 daughters
19
Margina Begam
50
Daily Labour
Son-20 years
* *
*Address: Ward No – 45, Armenian Ghat, Rail Bridge** , Police
Station – North Port, Kolkata – 1.*
* *
Sl No
Name
Age
Occupation
Family Detail
1
Nanki Sahani
50
Rag Picker
1 son, 3 daughters
2
Debendra Jha
50
Daily Labour
sons-22 years, 14 years, 9 years
3
Md. Raju Khan
39
Daily Labour
4
Rubiya Begam
49
Rag Picker
5
Noor Jahan Begam
40
1 son 2 daughters
6
Raja Sheikh
35
Van Puller
7
Moni Jamal Sheikh
25
Daily Labour
8
Madhu Bibi
70
Rag Picker
1 daughter
9
Marhina Bibi
50
Rag Picker
5 daughters, 2 sons
10
Rohul Sheikh
40
Van Puller
2 sons, 1 daughter
11
Firoza Begam
50
Daily Labour
2 sons, 1 daughter
12
Malekha Bibi
60
Rag Picker
13
Jalekha Bibi
40
Rag Picker
2 sons, 1 daughter
14
Aasia Begam
70
1 daughter, 1 grand son
15
Neharun Khatun
35
Rag Picker
2 daughters, 1 son
16
Akban Ali
70
Rag Picker
4 sons, 4 daughters
17
Morani Bibi
40
Rag Picker
1 son
18
Feroza Bibi
60
Rag Picker
2 Daughters
19
Nazma Bibi
30
Rag Picker
1 son, 1 daughter
20
Mazi Sheikh
60
Rag Picker
2 sons, 1 daughter
21
Manik Sheikh
25
Driver
1 son, 2 daughters
22
Samella Bibi
60
Rag Picker
3 daughters, 2 sons
23
Mahesh Hazra
30
Van Puller
1 son, I daughter
24
Asharfhi Singh
35
Van Puller
3 sons, 1 daughter

--
Kirity Roy
President
Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha
(MASUM)
26 Guitendal Lane
Howrah 711101
West Bengal INDIA
Mobile: 9903099699
Fax : +91-33-2640 4118
Phone: +91-33-2640 4520
e. mail : kirityroy@gmail.com
Web: www.masum.org.in
Dalit’s Struggle Demanding Land in Kerala
NCDHR is closely monitoring the issue and planning State level and National level intervention in the coming days.Activists of National Federation of Dalit Land Rights Movements and National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights visited the area
Thousands of Dalits in Kerala is in the path of struggle for the last 43 days demanding land. Dalits from the southern districts of Kerala forcibly occupied the land now under the control of Harrison’s Malayalom Plantation Ccorporation at Chengara , in Pathanamthitta district. This land was leased out to the corporation by the erstwhile Travancore dynasty at a nominal rate. The contractual period has already expired but the successive govts in Kerala never tried to attach the land.
Last year also the Dalits conducted a similar struggle but it was wound up as an agreement was reached between the revenue minister of the sate and Dalit leadership that land would be distributed within six months time. But that promise was never kept.
The state govt , mainstream political parties and the media prefer it better to neglect the whole issue. In the meantime the authority is trying to give an extremist overtone to the struggle .It is alleged by the
Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJSV) , which is leading the struggle that the govt was preparing the ground for a police attack against the people in the model of Muthanga.
Activists of National Federation of Dalit Land Rights Movements and National
Campaign on Dalit Human Rights visited the area and assessed the situation. NCDHR is closely following the issue and planning serious and effective intervention at the National and state level in the coming days.

A team led by NCDHR met the Chiefminister and Minister of SC&ST ,Kerala on the ongoing land struggle at Chengara
CM assured immediate intervention and reassured his govt's commitment to destribute land among the landless and poor..
A Delegation comprised of NCDHR-NFDLRM members led by NCDHR National Secretary Vincent Manoharan met Chief Minister, VS Achuthanandan and the Minister for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, A K Balan of Keralaand appraised of the ongoing struggle by the Dalits and Adivasis for land at Chengara ,Pathanamthitta district and demanded that land should be distributed to the Struggling Landless people and their interests and concerns should be addressed.
The Chief Minister assured the Team that the Govt has already initiated a process to identify the Government and surplus land and committed to the policy of distribution of land to the poor and the landless.
The Minister for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes informed that the District Administration was already started surveying the land and assured to distribute it to the Struggling people. He also assured that the SC/ST (PoA) Act 1989 should be properly implemented to protect the Rights of the SCs and STs.

National Federation of Dalit Land Rights Movements (NFDLRM) is a National Platform of Dalit organizations, Land rights movements and Activists from all over the country. It is part of National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, a Human Rights Advocacy Platform in India.

NFDLRMs concentrates in addressing the Socio Economic Rights of Dalits very particularly the issue of Land for Dalits. It mobilizes the Landless Dalits for Mass Action and under takes Advocacy and Legal Intervention to ensure land and livelihood and also upheld the issue of Civil Political Rights of Dalits who face the inhuman practice of Untouchability which has been identified along with Apartheid. We undertake Fact Findings on the Struggles of Dalits and draw attention of authorities concerned to ensure justice to victims and communities who strive for human rights, right to land and livelihood.

NFDLRM and NCDHR team visited the area and the People who struggle

· Manas Jena,National convenor,National Federation of Dalit land Rights Movements, Bhubaneswar, Orissa.
· Mr. Lalit Babbar,National Co convenor,NFDLRM, Maharashtra.
· Mr. Arun Khote,National Media Secretary, NCDHR,NewDelhi
· Mr. R Prakash, NCDHR, Convenor, Kerala.
· Mr. Pradeep ,Human Rights Defender,Pathanamthitta.
· Mr. J .Vincent Manoharan,General secretary, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights(NCDHR),New Delhi.

The Team met the following persons:
· Shri .V.S. Achuthanandan,chief minister , Kerala
· Shri. AK Balan ,Minister of Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes,
· Mr. Laha Gopalan Leader of Sadhujana Vimochana Samyutha Vedhi – who leads the struggle
· Around 2000 people who participate in the fight along with Ms. Saraswathy, Secretary , SVSVS.
· Leaders of various Dalit organizations - KDP, AKPMS, Bamboo Workers Union, Dalit Unity Centre, etc.,
· Rev. M.J. Joseph and Johnson ,Solidarity Co-ordination Committee .

Major Findings:

· Dalits and Adivasis are the most neglected among the marginalized and the Landless in this state.
· Their life and livelihood is at stake and no successive Governments paid sufficient attention to address the demands of these people
· This struggle is going on fro a long time and the people withdrawn from such a similar struggle 8 months back as per the assurance of the Government to allot land.
· Harrison’s Malayalam Plantations Corporation is a Private Company which holds thousands of hectares of land in the state and cultivates Tea and Rubber Plantation
· It was told that the company violated the conditions of the Lease agreement and sublet and even sold lands under its hold.
· This company also encroached large areas of land and occupy it illegally .
· It tries to extend the Lease period and argue that even though the land belongs to the Government the Rubber Trees are the company’s.
· CITU , the trade union of CPI(M) , the major constituent of the ruling Left Democratic Front in its attempt to protect the interest of the Plantation workers , so far didn’t show any interest in the struggle
· The Dalits and Adivasis allege that the Government always come out with the customary reply that there is no surplus land in Kerala to allocate to the landless.
· Therefore the Dalits and Adivasis now demand the govt to seize the land under H&C company ,as the lease period is already over due and distribute among the real owners of the land who are rendered landless.
· The Non Dalits and the Land Mafia are eying the land and they do not want the Dalits and Adivasis to get this high cost fertile land .
· Media silence is conspicuous – may be with a notion to block this struggle and to create a myth among the general public that this struggle is disoriented and the strugglers disappeared from the scene.
· Dalit Movements yet to join this struggle but they start expressing their solidarity in different ways.
· The Solidarity Committee formed by Navchetana is active in giving visibility to this issue through various strategies like Satyagraha, consultations, cultural activities, holding public meetings, poster campaign etc.,
· NFDLRMs initiated by NCDHR visited the area a month back , met the struggling people and assured its solidarity and support and came out with a poster campaign.
· The district Collector has assured the Struggling People that the whole land in question will be surveyed and the surplus land will be notified as Government land and will inform the Government on the demands of the Ds and Ads.

· The Landless families of Ds and Ads registered with SJSVSV and moved in to the hilly area to pitch their tents demanding land. The number is increasing day by day.
· The people who have pitched their tents in the Hills are not dared to move out of the site either fearing an attack from Goondas of the Company or the Government will use force to evict them.
· But they seem to be determined even to face bullets for their cause
· They suffer from hunger and various diseases like chikungunya which is worsened by monsoon.
· Children stopped attending schools because of this struggle.
· The sick ,aged and disabled are the worst sufferers both physically and mentally.

The Demands

· SCs, STs ,Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims should be given land for housing and cultivation for a decent livelihood. The title deed should be issued in the name of the Women and Men.
· The struggling Dalits and Adivasis in Chengara and other areas should not be evicted as they are struggling for their livelihood
· The lease agreement with Harrison Malayalam Plantations Corporations and other Private parties should be cancelled and the land should be distributed among the Dalits and Adivasis
· Legal Actions should be taken against H&C and similar companies other than cancellation of the agreement .

· Medical assistance should be provided to the strugglers as they suffer from Chikungunya and other communicable diseases.
· The poor and land less families should also be provided with interest free loan without any collateral security for housing and agricultural activities like land development, irrigation, purchase of agricultural appliance, seeds etc.
· SCs and STs(POA)Act 1989 should be implemented strictly by the state government to protect the communities from the practices of untouchability and caste discrimination in all spheres.
· Any effort by the Harrison Malayalam Plantations corporations to evict these Struggling people by any means should be prevented by the Government and it should protect the struggling Dalits and Adivasis.
· The Surplus land in the State should be identified by implementing the Land Ceiling Act and the same be distributed to the landless Dalits, Adivasis and other Marginalised Communities.

APPEAL :

All Dalit and Adivasi Movements, Political Parties and Civil Society Organisations are requested to express their Solidarity and Support at all possible ways and means to strengthen the Struggle of Dalits and Adivasis of Chengara for land to ensure a secure Life with Dignity

Contact Details to enlist support to this Struggle :
Mr. Laha Gopalan ,State President – SVSV
Ms. Saraswathi, State Secretary - SVSV
Pattanamthitta PO
Kerala .
Laha Mobile: 092491 01709

Manas Jena
National Convenor – NFDLRMs
Lalit Babar
National Co-Convenor – NFDLRMs
VINCENT MANOHARAN
General Secretary – NCDHR

Human Rights Issues
Palash Biswas

Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
CPI asks govt to take up issue of ethnic Indians with Malaysia

New Delhi, Nov 29: The CPI today expressed concern over "discrimination and repression" of people of Indian origin in Malaysia and asked the government to take it up with Kuala Lumpur in an "appropriate manner".
Observing that Malaysia had very good relations with India, party National Secretary D Raja said "the government should take up the issue in an appropriate manner and advise our mission there."
He said the Tamilians and others belonging to Indian origin, most of whom went to Malaysia as indentured labourers, were subjected to discrimination despite constituting about eight per cent of the population.
They are demanding equal rights, he said.
Maintaining that their discrimination had led to protests, he alleged that a large number of protesters had been taken into custody.
"India has very good relations with Malaysia and it should protect and safeguard the interest of Tamils," Raja said adding that the government should act with a sense of urgency.
did not criticise the Malaysian govt: Karunanidhi

Zeenews Bureau
Kuala Lumpur, Nov 29: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi defended his remarks over the treatment of Tamils in Malaysia by saying that he did not criticise the Malaysian govt but only asked the Indian premier Manmohan Singh to look into the matter.
In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh two days ago Karunanidhi asked the government to intervene and protect the rights of Tamils in Malaysia. He wrote that he was "pained" at the way Malaysian police had treated Tamils during a protest march against racial discrimination to ethnic Indians.
The ethnic Indians, who are a minority in Malaysia, had taken out a rally on the weekend sparked by anger over policies they say prevent them from getting decent jobs or a good education for their children. The rally, which drew more than 10,000 people, had triggered sporadic protests in Tamil Nadu.
Karunanidhi said Tamils formed major chunk of 1.8 million ethnic Indians living in Malaysia and added that people of Tamil Nadu were disturbed by the events there.
"His place is in Tamil Nadu, not Malaysia. He should worry about his own state. His own state has got problems. "This has got nothing to do with him ... lay off." Malaysia`s de-facto Justice Minister Nazri Aziz told reporters by telephone.
Multi-racial Malaysia has brushed aside claims that it mistreated its ethnic Indians, saying that they were better off than those in India.
But ethnic Indians complain of a lack of educational and business opportunities, saying government affirmative-action policies that favour majority ethnic Malays had marginalised them.

Vote for me or face 'humiliation': Putin
MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned Russians to vote for his party in elections or face a return to "humiliation" as a prominent critic accused him of leading Russia toward dictatorship.
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In a televised address, Putin urged voters to back United Russia, warning that the liberal opposition would return Russia to the "humiliation, dependency and disintegration" it suffered after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The Kremlin leader spoke just hours before former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov was released after five days in prison and warned that Russia was sliding into dictatorship.
"This regime is entering a very dangerous phase that is turning it into a dictatorship," Kasparov told journalists as he arrived at his Moscow apartment.
United Russia is forecast to win a big majority in the State Duma lower house of parliament. The tiny liberal parties are not expected to win a single seat and complain they are victims of heavy-handed Kremlin tactics.
"We should not allow back into power the people who... want to change and muddle Russia's development plans," Putin said ahead of the vote on Sunday.
The 55-year-old Kremlin leader warned against the "dangerous illusion" of believing his legacy was safe and also appeared to confirm he would step down next year.
The television address had been closely watched for any sign of Putin's plans after he completes his second term next year, when the constitution requires he must relinquish the presidency.
"The result of the parliamentary elections will, without a doubt, set the tone for the elections for a new president," he said.
That appeared to confirm that Putin will not seek to override a constitutional ban on seeking a third consecutive term in a March 2 presidential vote.
Former chess world champion Kasparov who now leads The Other Russia opposition coalition vowed to continue fighting Putin's policies and accused him of resorting to fear and repression ahead of the weekend vote.
"Fear is the only chance this regime has to survive."
Kasparov complained that he had been denied free access to a lawyer during the five days that he spent in a Moscow prison for taking part in an unauthorized rally at the weekend.
Controversy over the fairness of Sunday's polls was growing amid what Kremlin opponents describe as a crackdown aimed at fixing the election results.
US President George W. Bush said he was "deeply concerned" at the break-up of rallies in Moscow and elsewhere in the country over the weekend. EU countries and Amnesty International also criticised the Kremlin.
Although as president he cannot actually take a Duma seat, Putin heads the electoral list of United Russia, which is presenting the parliamentary election as a referendum on the ex-KGB officer's highly popular rule.
Putin has repeatedly said he intends to retain a major role, prompting speculation that he might hang on to power, or at least retain influence through a handpicked successor.
"The result of the election will be the preliminary stage for Putin to make decisions," said Kasparov.
He said Putin will have to decide "whether he is ready to turn into a full-blown dictator and if he is still trying to pretend that he has some sort of democratic clout."
United Russia "will win the elections, thanks to Vladimir Putin," former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying.
Gorbachev said calls from United Russia for Putin to stay on as "national leader" were confusing. "Maybe they have already decided what it means, or maybe they will surprise us with something else, although nothing would surprise me."
In an address to foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin on Wednesday, Putin pledged to uphold democratic standards on Sunday, the fifth parliamentary vote since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
But he also warned the world to keep out of Russia's business.
"I need to repeat -- we will not allow this process to be corrected from the outside," Putin said.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) earlier this month called off its election monitoring mission for the Russian elections, citing a lack of cooperation from Moscow, a claim Russia denies.
Continuous attempts are being made by the Commission to address various Human Rights Issues.Some of these issues are being monitored as Programmes on the directions of the Supreme Court.
http://www.nhrc.nic.in/

The Programmes in pursuance of Supreme Court Remit are :-
Abolition of Bonded Labour
Functioning of the Mental Hospitals at Ranchi, Agra and Gwalior
Functioning of the Government Protective Home (Women), Agra
Right to Food
Other Programmes and Human Rights issues taken up by the Commission include :-
Review of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929
Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Preventing Employment of Children by Government Servants: Amendment of Service Rules
Abolition of Child Labour
Guidebook for the Media on Sexual Violence against Children
Trafficking in Women and Children : Manual for the Judiciary for Gender Sensitisation
Sensitization Programme on Prevention of Sex Tourism and Trafficking
Maternal Anaemia and Human Rights
Rehabilitation of Destitute Women in Vrindavan
Combating Sexual Harassment of Women at the Work Place
Harassment of Women Passengers in Trains
Abolition of Manual Scavenging
Dalits issues including atrocities perpetrated on them
Problems faced by Denotified and Nomadic Tribes
Rights of the Disabled
Right to Health
HIV/AIDS
Relief Work for the Victims of 1999 Orissa Cyclone
Monitoring of relief measures undertaken after Gujarat Earthquake 2001
District Complaints Authority
Population Policy- Development and Human Rights
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Abolition of Bonded Labour
The Commission has been involved in the monitoring of the implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act as per the directions of the Supreme Court in WP (Civil) No. 3922 of 1985 (PUCL v State of Tamil Nadu & Others).
The Commission is presently monitoring the BLS (Abolition) Act by calling for information from the States on a quarterly basis on identification, release and rehabilitation of bonded labour.
In September 2000, the NHRC constituted a Group of Experts to closely examine the matter and to prepare a report on the status, suggest methods of improving the existing schemes and make recommendations to effectively implement the laws for abolition of bonded labour system and other connected matters.
The Report of the Expert Group was submitted to the Supreme Court. The Report contained a status of the work relating to the abolition of the bonded labour system in the various States. It detailed the position of the various existing schemes and made several recommendations to amend the Act so as to make it more effective.
The NHRC through its Special Rapporteurs has been interacting with the State Governments and with the Ministry of Labour to evolve suitable measures to eradicate the problem of bonded labour.
The Commission is involved in sensitizing the District Magistrates, Deputy Commissioners, Deputy Development Commissioner and other Senior Officers of the State Government by holding Sensitization Workshops. These workshops are presided over by the Chairperson and Members of the Commission. During 2003-04 sensitization workshops for the District Magistrates were held in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
and Karnataka. During 2004-05, four additional workshops are proposed to be held.
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Functioning of the Mental Hospitals at Ranchi, Agra and Gwalior

The Management of the mental hospitals at Ranchi, Agra and Gwalior came under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court through Writ Petitions (C) No.339/96, No.901/93, No.80/94 and No.448/94 in the matter of Rakesh Chandra Narain etc. v. State of Bihar etc.. The Supreme Court in its Order dated 11 November, 1997 requested the National Human Rights Commission to be involved in the supervision of the functioning of these three hospitals. In pursuance of the Order of the Supreme Court, the Commission remains deeply
involved in overseeing the functioning of the Ranchi Institute of Neuro Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS), Institute of Mental Health and Hospital (IMHH), Agra and the Gwalior Mansik Arogyashala (GMA), Gwalior. The Commission continues to monitor the implementation of the tasks assigned to these Institutions by the Supreme Court while granting them autonomous status in September 1994.
A Member and Special Rapporteur of the Commission visit these Institutions periodically and submit detailed reports on the working of various services and facilities, treatment and care of patients, training and research activities and community health services as specified by the Supreme Court.
As a result of the monitoring by the Commission, improvements have since been noticed in the working of these Institutions. Admissions and discharge have been streamlined in accordance with the provisions of the Mental Health Act, 1987. A clear shift from custodial to treatment and care concerns is noticeable in the functioning of these institutions. Cell admissions have been totally stopped. Switch over from close to open system of custody of patients is being steadily improved. Incidence of death of patients has come down
as a result of close scrutiny of every case by the Commission. Library facilities, training activities and research works have shown appreciable improvement at RINPAS, Ranchi and the IMH&H, Agra. The aspect of Community Mental Healthcare is receiving greater attention than before.
A Core Group headed by a Member of the Commission has been set up for rehabilitation of mentally ill cured patients languishing in the three mental hospitals.
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Functioning of the Government Protective Home (Women), Agra

As per the directions of the Supreme Court of India in the Writ Petition No.1900/81 - Dr. Upendra Bakshi & Others v State of Uttar Pradesh vide Order dated 11-11-1997, the Commission has been supervising the functioning of the Government Protective Home (Women), Agra. The District Judge of Agra has been entrusted with the responsibility of conducting monthly inspections and submitting a visit report to the Commission. The Reports are scrutinized by the Commission and appropriate directions given to the State Government for
overall improvement of the functioning of the Home.
A Member of the Commission as well as a Special Rapporteur of the Commission frequently visit the Home to make a broad assessment of the functioning of the Institution. The Home was last visited on 5th May, 2003 and certain discrepancies were noticed during the visit. The Commission has taken up the matter with the State Government.
The Commission called the Director (Women's Welfare), Govt. of Uttar Pradesh for a discussion alongwith the Superintendent of the Home and the District Probation Officer, Agra to review the functioning of the Home on 20-01-2004. The Director (Women's Welfare) was directed to take pro-active steps in Agra and elsewhere in the State for effective cooperation between the concerned wings of the administration for effective implementation of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act. The Director (Women's Welfare) was asked to draw up an action plan within a given time frame for implementation of the Act in law and spirit.
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Right to Food
On 3rd December, 1996, the Commission took cognizance of a letter from Shri Chaturanan Mishra, the then Union Minister for Agriculture regarding starvation deaths due to the drought in Bolangir district of Orissa. On 23rd December, 1996, the Indian Council of Legal Aid and Advice and others filed a Writ Petition (Civil) No.42/97 before the Supreme Court of India under Article 32 of the Constitution, alleging that deaths by starvation continued to occur in certain districts of Orissa.
When the Writ Petition came up before the Supreme Court of India on 26th July, 1997, the Court directed as under:-
"In view of the fact that the NHRC is seized of the matter and is expected to give its report after an enquiry made at the spot, it would be appropriate to await the report.Learned Counsel for the petitioner submitted that some interim directions are required to be given in the meantime. If that be so, the petitioner is permitted to approach the National Human Rights Commission with its suggestion."
Pursuant to the Orders of the Supreme Court, the Indian Council of Legal Aid and Advice filed a petition before the Commission on 1st September, 1997 making a number of suggestions in regard to interim relief to the affected population.
After due consideration of the matter, the Commission, on 17-02-1998, arrived at the view that some interim measures should be undertaken for an overall period of two years. The Commission also requested the Orissa State Government to constitute a Committee to examine all aspects of the Land Reform question in the KBK Districts. Further the Commission with the assistance of one of its Special Rapporteur has been regularly monitoring the progress of implementation of its directions.
The Commission observed that as starvation deaths reported from some pockets of the country
are invariably the consequence of mis-governance resulting from acts of omission and commission
on the part of the public servant, they are of direct concern to the Commission under the provisions of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. The Commission holds the view that to be free from hunger is a Fundamental Right of the people of the country. Starvation, hence, constitutes a gross denial and violation of this right.
Following this, the Commission felt the need to formulate a programme of action for making Right
to Food a reality in the country. With this in view, a meeting was organized, with leading experts on the subject, in January, 2004 to discuss issues relating to ‘Right to Food’.
The Commission has approved the constitution of a Core Group on Right to Food, that can advise
on issues referred to it and also suggest appropriate programmes, which can be undertaken by the Commission.
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Review of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929
In order to curb the practice of child marriage in the country, the Commission recommended to the Central Government (Department of Women & Child Development) a number of amendments to the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 in July 2002. In pursuance of these recommendations, the Central Government (Legislative Department, Ministry of Law & Justice) introduced a Bill entitled the Prevention of Child Marriage Bill, 2004 in the Rajya Sabha on 20.12.2004 incorporating almost all the recommendations of the Commission. The Bill is at present under consideration of the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice. The salient features of the Bill are as follows:
(i) To make a provision to declare child marriage as voidable at the option of the contracting party to the marriage, who was a child.
(ii) To provide a provision requiring the husband or, if he is a minor at the marriage time, his guardian to pay maintenance to the minor girl until her remarriage.
(iii) To make a provision for the custody and maintenance of children born of child marriages.
(iv) To provide that notwithstanding a child marriage has been annulled by a decree of nullity under the proposed section 3, every child born of such marriage, whether before or after the commencement of the proposed legislation, shall be legitimate for all purposes.
(v) To empower the district court to add to, modify or revoke any order relating to maintenance of the female petitioner and her residence and custody or maintenance of children, etc.
(vi) To make a provision for declaring the child marriage as void in certain circumstances.
(vii) To empower the courts to issue injunctions prohibiting solemnization of marriages in contravention of the provisions of the proposed legislation.
(viii) To make the offences under the proposed legislation to be cognizable for the purposes of investigation and for other purposes.
(ix) To provide for appointment of Child Marriage Prevention Officers by the State Governments.
(x) To empower the State Governments to make rules for effective administration of the legislation.
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Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
The United Nations General Assembly adopted two Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 26 March 2000, viz. (1) Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict; and (2) Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The Commission recommended these Protocols to the Government of India for adoption. Ministry of External Affairs has informed that the Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York was authorised to sign the said Optional Protocols, and in whose favour the instrument of Full Powers was obtained from the President of India for signing the same. Accordingly, the above-mentioned Optional Protocols were signed on 15 November 2004, but they are yet to be ratified.
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Preventing Employment of Children by Government Servants: Amendment of Service Rules
With a view to preventing employment of children below 14 years of age by Government servants, the Commission recommended that the relevant Service Rules governing the conduct of Central and State Government employees be amended to achieve this objective. The Union Ministry of Personnel and Public Grievances and Pensions (Department of Personnel & Training), has informed the Commission that the Central Government has amended the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968 as well as the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964. Except for the State of Manipur, all the States/UTs have also brought out the required amendments to the Conduct Rules of their employees.
The Commission intends to monitor the issue and see whether the Central and State Governments
actually take action against those public servants who continue to employ children as domestic servants.
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Abolition of Child Labour
The NHRC has been deeply concerned about the employment of child labour in the country as it leads to denial of the basic human rights of children guaranteed by the Constitution and the International Covenants.
The Commission on ‘child labour has observed that –
“No economic or social issue has been of such compelling concern to the Commission as the persistence, fifty years after Independence, of widespread child labour in our country. It prevails, despite articles 23,24,39(e) & (f), 41, 45 and 47 of the Constitution and despite the passing of various legislations on the subject between 1948 and 1986. It has defied the terms of six Conventions of the International Labour Organization to which India is a party and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in addition. Despite the announcement of a National Child Labour Policy in 1987, the subsequent constitution of a National Authority for the Elimination of Child Labour (NAECL) and the undertaking of National Child Labour Projects (NCLP) in an increasing number of areas of our country, the goal of ending child labour remains elusive, even in respect of the estimated two million children working in hazardous industries who were to be freed from such tyranny by the year 2000”.
The Commission focusing its attention on the following industries where from rampant reports of child labour were received. These interalia include the :-
· Bangle/glass industry
· Silk industry
· Lock industry
· Stone-Quarries
· Brick Kiln
· Diamond cutting
· Ship-breaking
· Construction-work
· Carpet-weaving
The Commission monitors the child labour situation in the country through its Special Rapporteurs, visits by members, sensitization programmes and workshops, launching projects, interaction with the industry associations and other concerned agencies, coordination with the State Governments and NGOs to ensure that adequate steps are taken to eradicate child labour.
The Commission believes that unless and until the reality of free and compulsory education for all upto the completion of the age of 14 years is realized, the problem of child labour shall continue. The Commission has involved the NGO sector in the non-formal education of child labourers and a number of such schools/training centres are functioning in the districts of the carpet belt. There has also been a distinct improvement in the level of awareness among the general public about child labour issues.
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Guidebook for the Media on Sexual Violence against Children

In order to encourage media professionals to address the issue of sexual violence against children in consistent, sensitive and effective manner, consonant with the rights and best interest of children, the Commission and Prasar Bharati with support from UNICEF have jointly developed a Guidebook for the Media on Sexual Violence against Children. The Guidebook is the culmination of four workshops organised in Goa (1999), Ranchi (1999), Jaipur (2000) and Puri (2000) in which professionals, legal functionaries, police personnel, communication specialists and media professionals participated. The Guidebook aims to facilitate media intervention to protect the rights of children against sexual violence.

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Trafficking in Women and Children: Manual for the Judiciary for Gender Sensitisation
The Commission and the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of India in partnership with UNICEF have prepared a Handbook for sensitizing the subordinate judiciary on the issue of Trafficking of Women and Children for Commercial Sexual Exploitation. The purpose of the Handbook is to sensitize the Judicial Offi