Propaganda: the (blatant) Indian way

ZoneAsia-Pk

Indian media can be called many things – free, vibrant, opinionated – but if there is one thing it cannot be called is subtle. The Indian media has had a long history of bias, Pakistan-bashing and a general lack of uniformity on national issues.

When the gang rape story broke in December, there was an intense media debate in India about the consequences of the tragedy on the country. The Indian Express advocated reform and called for a safe environment in the country on its Op-Ed pages. The Hindu, on the other hand, took off on a different tangent and discussed the need for death penalty and castration for rapists. The Times of India chose to remain on the fences, calling for “long term solutions.” The Asian Age focused on the political fall-out of the gang rape. Navbharat Times, on the other hand, filled its Op-Ed pages with a debate on the oppressed classes of the Indian society and raised an entirely existential question. Nai Dunya, went off in a completely different direction, and called for an end to protests since laws could not be “made over night.”

However, this is tame compared to some of the attacks the Indian media has made on its national athletes. And that onslaught is nothing compared to the continuous Pakistan-bashing that occurs every time wind blows from the west. Over the years, the Pakistani establishment has consistently demanded that the Indian media tone down its anti-Pakistan stance for better Indo-Pak relations. Several times over the years, former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf has blasted the Indian media for fabricating stories about Pakistan’s military. Furthermore, Pakistan High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir said in an interview, “Pakistan-bashing has become fashionable in India whenever there is an issue.” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar also said several times that she was saddened by the constant barrage of negative comments emanating from the other side of the border.

“Pakistan and India are both important countries of South Asia. It is imperative that they demonstrate requisite responsibility for ensuring peace by addressing all concerns through dialogue. Rhetoric and ratcheting up of tensions is certainly counterproductive. We are saddened and disappointed at the continued negative statements emanating from India both from the media as well as certain Indian leaders. For its part, Pakistan has observed a measured and deliberate self-restraint in our public statements on India. This has been done keeping in view the interest of peace in the region,” said Khar.

The LoC, Pakistan-India cricketing rivalries, political and security debates aside, the latest stunt pulled by the Indian media was worthy of a good laugh.

In the wake of the Hyderabad blasts in India that left 16 dead and 117 injured, the Indian security forces issued a statement that slain Pakistani MQM leader Manzar Imam was the mastermind behind the attack. Within a few hours of this statement, the Indian media men dug out a photograph of Manzar Imam and declared him the chief terrorist behind the incident. Except the fact that Imam had been killed in a targeted attack a few weeks ago. It took them another few hours to realize their mistake and retract their statements.

This incident, again, just goes to prove how the Indian media looks for any outside sources to blame without looking inwards for their own security woes.

The Indian Home Minister Shinde announced in a statement that they had been expecting some form of retaliation after two high-profile hangings – Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab. If it was expected, perhaps the Indian journalists should focus their energies at investigating how there was such a massive security failure in one of their busiest, most populous cities instead of pointing fingers on dead men across the border.

In every journalism course there is a section on media ethics and responsibility. It seems that either the Indian journalists missed those important classes or need to revisit them once more.

Propaganda: the (blatant) Indian way

ZoneAsia-Pk

Indian media can be called many things – free, vibrant, opinionated – but if there is one thing it cannot be called is subtle. The Indian media has had a long history of bias, Pakistan-bashing and a general lack of uniformity on national issues.

When the gang rape story broke in December, there was an intense media debate in India about the consequences of the tragedy on the country. The Indian Express advocated reform and called for a safe environment in the country on its Op-Ed pages. The Hindu, on the other hand, took off on a different tangent and discussed the need for death penalty and castration for rapists. The Times of India chose to remain on the fences, calling for “long term solutions.” The Asian Age focused on the political fall-out of the gang rape. Navbharat Times, on the other hand, filled its Op-Ed pages with a debate on the oppressed classes of the Indian society and raised an entirely existential question. Nai Dunya, went off in a completely different direction, and called for an end to protests since laws could not be “made over night.”

However, this is tame compared to some of the attacks the Indian media has made on its national athletes. And that onslaught is nothing compared to the continuous Pakistan-bashing that occurs every time wind blows from the west. Over the years, the Pakistani establishment has consistently demanded that the Indian media tone down its anti-Pakistan stance for better Indo-Pak relations. Several times over the years, former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf has blasted the Indian media for fabricating stories about Pakistan’s military. Furthermore, Pakistan High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir said in an interview, “Pakistan-bashing has become fashionable in India whenever there is an issue.” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar also said several times that she was saddened by the constant barrage of negative comments emanating from the other side of the border.

“Pakistan and India are both important countries of South Asia. It is imperative that they demonstrate requisite responsibility for ensuring peace by addressing all concerns through dialogue. Rhetoric and ratcheting up of tensions is certainly counterproductive. We are saddened and disappointed at the continued negative statements emanating from India both from the media as well as certain Indian leaders. For its part, Pakistan has observed a measured and deliberate self-restraint in our public statements on India. This has been done keeping in view the interest of peace in the region,” said Khar.

The LoC, Pakistan-India cricketing rivalries, political and security debates aside, the latest stunt pulled by the Indian media was worthy of a good laugh.

In the wake of the Hyderabad blasts in India that left 16 dead and 117 injured, the Indian security forces issued a statement that slain Pakistani MQM leader Manzar Imam was the mastermind behind the attack. Within a few hours of this statement, the Indian media men dug out a photograph of Manzar Imam and declared him the chief terrorist behind the incident. Except the fact that Imam had been killed in a targeted attack a few weeks ago. It took them another few hours to realize their mistake and retract their statements.

This incident, again, just goes to prove how the Indian media looks for any outside sources to blame without looking inwards for their own security woes.

The Indian Home Minister Shinde announced in a statement that they had been expecting some form of retaliation after two high-profile hangings – Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab. If it was expected, perhaps the Indian journalists should focus their energies at investigating how there was such a massive security failure in one of their busiest, most populous cities instead of pointing fingers on dead men across the border.

In every journalism course there is a section on media ethics and responsibility. It seems that either the Indian journalists missed those important classes or need to revisit them once more.

USURPING OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN IHK

Spearhead Research

During October 2012 two reports were released pertaining human rights situation in the IHK. Reports by Amnesty International (AI) and Citizen’s Council for Justice (CCJ) were released in a quick succession. Both dossiers have adequately exposed the ongoing Human Rights (HR) violations in IHK.

Indian Independence Act had laid down clear terms of reference for the rulers of princely states. They were given the choice to freely accede to either India or Pakistan, or to remain independent. Both these factors were ignored in the case of Kashmir.

Ever since the landing of Indian troops in Kashmir, on 27 October, 1947, HR violations by the Indian Law Enforcing Agencies (LEAs) and Security Forces continue with impunity. Public Safety Act (PSA) empowers the State authorities to detain any individual in IHK on the charges of acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order. Under section 8 of this act, a Divisional Commissioner or a District Magistrate may issue a detention order to prevent any person from acting in a manner prejudicial to the “security of the State or the maintenance of public order”. Vague wording of the statute provides an umbrella cover to the atrocities of LEAs.

Read more…

Kashmir: A dangerous nuclear flashpoint

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

Sixty three years have lapsed but Kashmir dispute remains unresolved. During this period, besides several military standoffs, two full fledged Indo-Pak wars and two localised conflictsin April 1965 and in summer of 1999 took place on account of Kashmir issue. India has been defying UN Resolutions on Kashmir and playing monkey tricks all these years to avoid resolving the dispute. Indian security forces have kept the people of Kashmir suppressed through use of brute force and has hid its gross human rights abuses under the cover of blatant lies and deceit. Today Kashmir has turned into a dangerous nuclear flashpoint.

The peace loving and docile Kashmiris patiently waited for 43 long years in the hope that India would fulfil its solemn commitment and hold a fair plebiscite but when they found that India will never give them their just right, they ultimately decided to pick up arms and push out Indian Security Forces (ISF) illegally occupying their land since 1947. Armed uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) in end 1988 added fuel to fire to militancy in Pakistan, which had intensified during the eight-year Afghan Jihad.

Tens of die-hard Jihadi groups cropped up to assist the Kashmiri struggle. Large amount of funds were collected for the cause of Kashmir. The people of Pakistan who have always regarded IOK as part of Pakistan and an unfinished agenda of partition left behind by scheming British were deeply pained over the atrocities committed by ISF upon hapless Kashmiris. The ISF had been given a licence to kill and to use rape as a weapon to break the will of freedom fighters. The world took no notice of worst human rights abuses by ISF nor made any effort to find a political solution on the basis of UN Resolutions.

The US which had drawn closer to India after 1990 started changing its stance by undervaluing UN Resolutions and terming them as outdated. Israel which had also forged special ties with India imparted training to Black Cats Commandoes of India in specialised counter insurgency operations and taught them new methods of torturing detainees so as to break the back of movement. Indo-Israel propaganda machinery supplemented by western media started projecting Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists and Pakistan as an abettor of terrorism. Full throttle was given to the theme of cross border terrorism. Efforts were geared to get Pakistan branded as a terrorist state.

The religious right in Pakistan sympathised with Kashmir cause and took out rallies in their support and also took practical steps to alleviate their sufferings by providing financial and material assistance. The general public filled up money boxes placed in front of each mosque wholeheartedly. The seculars particularly the liberal elite by and large took least interest in the plight of Kashmiris. Rather, they subscribed to Indo-western propaganda and pressed the government to rein in Jihadists to appease India.

Reign of terror unleashed in IOK by over 700,000 ISF, Indian intelligence agencies and Hindu extremist groups have turned the vale of Kashmir into hell. The whole valley is drenched in human blood but the conscience of the international comity is dead. Shrieks and cries of ill-fated Kashmiri men, women and children get drowned under the din of gunfire, one-sided propaganda and patronage of USA and civilised west. Instead of cautioning India to restrain from human rights abuses, the entire pressure was exerted on Pakistan and held solely responsible for worsening security situation in IOK. Despite use of excessive force and worst form of torture, the flame of liberty lit by handful of Kashmiri fighters kept burning vigorously. No amount of brutality could weaken their resolve to keep fighting till the accomplishment of their due right of self determination as provided for in UN Resolutions.

Indian inhuman cruelty alienated the Kashmiris and their hatred for India touched new heights. Except for insignificant number of Indian toadies enjoying fruits of power at the cost of enslavement of five million Kashmiris, each and every Kashmiri yearns to get rid of India. Having seen the ugly face of India and miserable plight of Indian Muslims, they have lost all trust in duplicitous Indian leaders. Conversely, their love for Pakistan is growing by leaps and bounds. They want to be part of Muslim Pakistan and not of Hindu India where Muslims are treated as second rated citizens. They know that secularism in India is a big farce since Hindu extremist forces are far more powerful than Hindu secularists who are too weak to question them.

Takeover of power by Gen Musharraf in October 1999 brought smiles on the faces of depressed seculars particularly when he came out with his concept of enlightened moderation. The fortunes of Kashmiri resistance forces that were giving a real tough time to 700,000 ISF as well as Jihadi forces in Pakistan plummeted in the aftermath of 9/11. New laws framed by USA on terrorism changed the complexion of freedom movements within Muslim world overnight and freedom fighters were branded as terrorists. This rule was applied in IOK as well which impelled India to apply full pressure on Musharraf to change its policy on Kashmir.

Ten month military standoff in 2002 followed by the US pressure forced him to ban six Kashmir oriented Jihadi groups and to freeze their accounts. Besides allowing India to fence the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, he took stringent measures to control cross LoC movement and also started hounding extremists. He also took on board moderate leaders of All Parties Hurriat Conference promising them an out of box solution to the dispute falling outside the ambit of UN Resolutions. These measures favoured India but went against the interest of Pakistan and resultantly rolled back the momentum of liberation movement. Indian military hastened to claim that it had succeeded in crushing insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan thus lost the lone card of Kashmir which it could play against India which held several cards.

As a consequent to blocking Jihadi groups from assisting Kashmiris, these groups in revenge joined hands with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and TNSM and started fighting Pak security forces, thus compounding Pakistan’s security problems. These groups facilitated TTP in launching suicide and group attacks within cities. Kashmiris saved the day for Pakistan when they bounced back in the valley in 2008 in the form of violent strikes and protest marches which flabbergasted India. Mumbai attacks were hastily engineered in November 2008 to distract the attention of the world from Kashmir, to put off Indo-Pak composite dialogue which was in advanced stages and to exert pressure on Pakistan to stay away from Kashmir.

Kashmiri movement took a new turn in 2010 when the teenagers with stones in their fists came in the forefront and kept raising anti-India and ‘freedom from India’ slogans despite being ruthlessly killed and tortured by ISF. Unarmed movement of tender age boys captured the attention of the world and for the fist time India found itself short of lame excuses. It could not possibly dub unarmed small boys as young as 8-15 years as terrorists. Nor could it justify its brutal actions against them. Apart from many in western countries, several intellectuals and human rights activists within India have started to sympathize with Kashmiris and are condemning ISF brutalities. Arundhati Roy has taken the lead and has not minced her words in saying that Kashmir is not part of India as claimed by Brahman Indian leaders and that justice should be meted to the people of Kashmir.

In a seminar recently organized in British Parliament, the parliamentarians lent unflinching support to the right of self determination of Kashmiris and have stressed upon their government to use its good offices to solve this chronic dispute. They also called upon India to withdraw its forces from IOK and to facilitate granting right of self determination to Kashmiris. Black day was organized by Kashmiris on both sides of the divide on 27 January and also in Pakistan and other parts of the world reminding India to prevent its forces from massacring innocent Kashmiris and to grant right of self determination to Kashmiris. Rumbling within India for a solution is getting louder.

Indian leadership will never risk holding a plebiscite since it knows that the result would be to its disfavor. It will keep dragging its feet until it is forced to give up its obduracy. The US must play its role to solve this dispute to avoid a nuclear holocaust in the future.

OBAMA’S INDIA YATRA

by Ghalib Sultan

As President Obama prepares for his India ‘yatra’ it would be instructive to see how an open source case can be built up for US complicity in the war on terror by using Islamic militants in pursuit of its own interests. Indians are busy highlighting the US-India convergence in the war against terror and according to India the epicenter is in Pakistan and its religious extremists (Hindu extremists that fan violence in India are conveniently not mentioned). The US coming out in support of India or agreeing to it on Pakistan would simply confirm the perception that the convergence that India harps on with the US is actually getting Washington to put its head together with Delhi to ‘deal’ with Pakistan and Islamic militants. Islam is not just in Pakistan-it is in the whole world so India’s view through a Pakistan prism can be unsettling.

Read Complete Article Here: http://www.zoneasia-pk.com/ZoneAsia-Pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2474:obamas-india-yatra&catid=41:securityissues&Itemid=62

Thousands fled India-controlled Kashmir. Are they better off in Pakistan?

By Issam Ahmed

While an insurgency raged against Indian authorities in the early 1990s, thousands of young men, including Rana Altaf’s father and uncle, were arrested by authorities, beaten, and tortured. Fearing for their lives, they eventually crossed the line of control that separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. They trekked on foot for three days over treacherous snowy terrain in a group of 60 people from neighboring families, avoiding Indian landmines.

“We knew if we turned back we faced certain death. They would have shot us,” recalls Rana’s father, Abdul Rasheed. Rasheed says he was arrested three times and interrogated by a man he remembers as “Major Sharma” who threatened to have him killed if he did not give up the names of militants hiding in his village. Rasheed insists he had nothing to do with the armed struggle in which an estimated 84,000 civilians lost their lives.

Seventeen years later, like many who made similar treks, the family lives in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir. Though they count themselves lucky to be alive, the family’s dream of a welcoming Pakistan was short lived.

“We’re grateful to Pakistan but we’re always made to feel different. The people here don’t like us, don’t mix with us, and it’s hard to get a job,” says Rana who has not yet received Pakistani citizenship or an ID card, and is therefore not entitled to attend college or legally seek employment. Rana’s mother, Sobia, complains that the family struggles for food each month as the men find informal work only occasionally.

A better option?

Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates. They traveled difficult terrain and long distances to a country that claimed to speak for the beleaguered Kashmiri people. Years later, however, it has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants, mostly from the second or third generations. Most migrants live in camps and subsist on government handouts of about $8 a month per person.

“These are a group of people who bring into focus a humanitarian factor of the whole Kashmir dispute. The fact that these people have been living for 20 years in camps remains virtually unknown,” says Marjan Lucas, a Senior Program Officer at Dutch nongovernmental organization IKV Pax Christi who has been campaigning on behalf of the migrants.

Ms. Lucas suggests the government has been slow in awarding citizenship rights to the migrants because to do so would mean negating their right to self-determination. The Pakistan government continues to insist the 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for self-determination is the only acceptable mechanism through which to solve the Kashmir dispute with India.

“They were invited and told to stay until the dispute was resolved. When they came they were welcomed but it was expected that their stay would be temporary so Pakistan said ‘We don’t have to give you ID cards because you have the right to self-determination.’ ” This situation continued and continued and they’re still in the same situation they were in when they arrived, and now the third and fourth generations have been born within the camps.”

‘We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left’

At Rana’s residence, a make-shift shanty home with a corrugated iron roof, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad city, three families crowd into two rooms and subsist on government welfare checks of $17 per person per month. Not one of the family possess a Pakistani ID card- including Rana and his younger brother Mushtaq, who was born in Muzafarrabad.

“We left our lands, our properties, our animals and businesses to come here,” says Abdul, the family head. “We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left. What business do they have in Kashmir?” he asks.

Few can afford to visit or contact relatives back home

Only 1 percent of the total population of Kashmir claims to have been able to visit friends of relatives on the other side in the last five years, according to a recent poll by the Chatham House think tank in London.

Having left behind their possessions, almost none of the migrants have been able to return to meet loved-ones, and some have not even been able to afford to make telephone contact. The much-touted bus service between the two Kashmirs, launched as part of peace efforts between India and Pakistan in 2005, is “just for show” they say, as bureaucratic hurdles make travel impossible for the common man.

A people without a home, ‘it’s like we don’t exist’

At the Manak Piyan camp at Muzaffarabad, home to some 2,000 migrants, a school teacher who asked not to be named because of his past membership in a militant group supported by Pakistani intelligence, says: “Nobody wants to take responsibility for us, it’s like we don’t exist.” Before fleeing India, the teacher studied at the Srinagar SP college.

He finally got his ID card seven years ago, after a long struggle with red tape. Some members of the community petitioned the High Court in 2005 for citizenship rights, but the court’s ruling extended only as far as a few dozen individual cases. Other migrants were granted citizenship in 2006 in the run-up to the Azad Jammu Kashmir state elections, in what some felt was a cynical ploy by politicians to garner votes.

Mir Abdul Rasheed Abbasi, a member of the AJK parliament, acknowledged delays in granting citizenship to the migrants but said that poor record keeping and fraudulent petitions for benefits are partly responsible.

The school teacher and other migrants here say they once fought India as members of the Inter Services Intelligence backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He says he was taken to Khost in Afghanistan for training under the command of pro-Pakistan Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He walks with a prosthetic left leg after hitting a landmine during one of his sorties with militants back into Indian administered Kashmir.

Not your average jihadi

But he is not a run-of-the-mill jihadi: He is a staunch supporter of women’s right to education and work. He also says he is especially grateful for the work of Christian charities in the region and simply wants the world to recognize his struggle. “Our right to fight the occupying forces is guaranteed under the United Nations Charter,” he says, adding: “We want to go back home but we are hostages to our situation. Though we respect the people of AJK, their government does not favor us.”

Many within the camps still hold out hope for an independent Kashmir, and view armed struggle as necessary. Some find they do not fit in Pakistan because of cultural and linguistic differences – migrants speak the Kashmiri language whereas many of the locals speak a dialect of Punjabi. Some migrants are too proud to accept a Pakistani ID, says Lucas of Pax Christi. The community itself is not classed as “refugee camp” by the UNHCR.

For these reasons, Lucas says that her organization, along with Pakistan’s Mass Welfare Foundation, hopes to “stimulate the debate amongst the migrants (about) what future they want for themselves.”

Similarities can be drawn between the plight of the Kashmiri migrants in AJK to the struggle of the “Kashmiri Pandits” – Kashmiri Hindus of Brahmin heritage, who were driven out of Indian administered Kashmir en masse during the uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Up to 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits are believed to be displaced.

“Groups like these tend to become exploited for propaganda purposes. The Indian establishment chose to use the Pandits as proof of the racist oppression of Muslim Kashmiris, to put them forward and say ‘these are the victims of Islamic terrorism,’ ” says Lucas.

“Pakistan has so far not exploited the Kashmiri migrants in a similar way, and this is very commendable,” she says. “But that might also be to avoid drawing attention to the conditions in which they are living in the camps.”

Games India Isn’t Ready to Play

By PANKAJ MISHRA
http://www.nytimes.com

Mashobra, India: ON Friday afternoon, public spaces across north India were flooded with policemen and paramilitaries. Thousands of alleged “troublemakers” were arrested. The sending of bulk text messages from mobile phones was banned. These precautions had nothing to do with the opening on Sunday of the Commonwealth Games, the athletic competition among the nations of the former British Empire that so many Indians have hoped would be their country’s symbolic coming out as a world power.

Rather, the police were out in force because an Indian court had pronounced its verdict on the site in the town of Ayodhya that has been long claimed by Hindu nationalists as the birthplace of Lord Rama. The government did not want a repeat of the horrific mob violence that in 1992 had followed the destruction by Hindu nationalists of a 16th-century mosque standing on the land in question.

Shortly after the verdict, which split the disputed site unequally in favor of Hindus and to the detriment of Muslims, I went for a walk through the Himalayan village near my home. Even here, 600 miles from Ayodhya, people seemed to be playing it safe, the market partly closed, and shopkeepers clustered around television sets behind shutters.

Only the migrant laborers, who have come hundreds of miles from central India to the Himalayas, were still at work, men, women and even children carrying heavy stones on their heads at the construction projects that litter the hillsides.

Easily identified – the parents small and thin and dark, and the children with distended bellies and rust-brown hair that speak of chronic malnutrition – these migrant laborers have been a regular sight here for some years, building summer homes for the affluent of Delhi all day, and then huddling under tin shacks at night.

I stopped to talk to a couple I know. All morning news channels had been working themselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety. Even the more sober commentators fretted whether our “rising economic superpower” would be torn apart again over the question of whether the mythical Lord Rama was born in a ramshackle provincial town.

But the laborers hadn’t heard of the court verdict. As colder weather approaches, their greatest anxiety seemed to be to protect themselves: the punitive rains this summer have blown away the roofs of their living quarters. And it seemed only right that these helots of India’s globalized economy should be indifferent to the possible despoiling of India’s image in the West.

So who is anxious over India’s image in the wealthy world? That particular burden is borne by India’s small affluent elite, for whom the last few months have been full of painful and awkward self-reckonings. Certainly, the fear of violence over Ayodhya was only the latest in a long line of reminders that, as the columnist Vir Sanghvi put it, “as hard as we try to build a new India … old India still has the power to humiliate and embarrass us.”

Since June, a mass insurrection, resembling the Palestinian intifada, has raged in the Indian-held Valley of Kashmir. Defying draconian curfews, large and overwhelmingly young crowds of Kashmiri Muslims have protested human rights abuses by the nearly 700,000 Indian security forces there. Ill-trained soldiers have met stone-pelting protesters with gunfire, killing more than a hundred Kashmiris, mostly teenagers, and ensuring another militant backlash that will be exploited by radical Islamists in Pakistan.

A full-blown insurgency is already under way in central India, where guerrilla fighters inspired by Mao Zedong’s tactics are arrayed against a government they see as actively colluding with multinational corporations to deprive tribal people of their mineral-rich lands. In recent months, the Maoists have attacked the symbols of the state’s authority – railroads, armories, police stations – seemingly at will, killing scores of people.

Yet the greatest recent blow to wealthy Indians’ delusions on the subject of their nation’s inexorable rise has been the Commonwealth Games, for which Delhi was given a long and painful facelift. For so many, the contest was expected to banish India’s old ghosts of religious and class conflict, and cement its claims to a seat at the high tables of international superpowers.

But the games turned into a fiasco well before their scheduled opening. Two weeks ago, a huge footbridge connected to the main stadium collapsed. The federation that runs the games has called the athletes’ housing “uninhabitable.” The organizers have had to hire an army of vicious langur monkeys to keep wild animals from infesting the venues. Pictures of crumbling arenas and filthy toilets are circulating more widely than the beautiful landscapes of the government’s “Incredible India” tourism campaign.

As the ratings agency Moody worries that the debacle has “tarnished” India’s image, commentators here angrily hunt for blameworthy politicians and officials over what they call “national shame.” The contrast to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in which the Chinese government largely overcame controversy and staked a claim to a dominant place in the world order, is all too depressingly clear.

These shocks to the Indian self-image are traumatic. But then the illusions about the new India have been too blinding. Vigorous economic growth, high-profile Indian businessmen congregating at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, and the greater visibility of successful and articulate Indians abroad have combined to make India, or English-speaking Indians, anyway, appear a perfect fit for the Western model of modernity – a “roaring capitalist success story,” as Foreign Affairs described the country in 2006.

It has helped our self-image, too, that Indians have many democratic institutions that are missing in most non-Western countries. Thus the major narrative that has developed internationally about democratic India in recent years assumes it to be more “stable” than authoritarian China. Yet Beijing faces no political problems as severe as the many insurgencies in central India and Kashmir, or tragedies as great as the waves of suicides of tens of thousands of overburdened farmers over the last two decades.

Certainly, the narrative of India as vibrant democracy and booming economy suppresses more than it reveals. Business-lounge elites around the world revel in statistics about economic growth and Indians rising up Forbes’s rankings of billionaires. At the same time, they simply ignore the alarmingly deep and growing inequalities of income and resources in India.

The newspaper Financial Express estimated that the private wealth of the 49 Indians on the Forbes list is nearly 31 percent of India’s gross domestic product – a ratio that makes them three times more crucial to the Indian economy than their billionaire counterparts in the United States are to the American economy. In July, a United Nations report revealed that there are more poor people in just eight Indian states than in all the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, with the large state of Madhya Pradesh comparable in intensity of deprivation to war-ravaged Congo.

India not only lives, as the cliché goes, in several centuries at once; it is also a land of multiple narratives, which continuously and often painfully overlap. The Commonwealth Games, the showcase of India’s progress, uprooted as many as 100,000 of the most deprived Indians in Delhi no less ruthlessly than the Chinese cleanse their ultramodern cities of the ungainly poor.

The laborers building the vacation retreats of the privileged in my village – part of the explosion of cheap labor that has helped build private fortunes in India and abroad – are refugees from the part of India where longstanding feudal cruelties are now compounded by the battles between Maoists and multinational corporations seeking precious minerals.

Well-to-do Indians fear that Hindu nationalists emboldened by the verdict on Ayodhya might scare off foreign investors. But it was Hindu nationalists who, coming to power in 1998 through successive bloody anti-Muslim campaigns, followed policies that expedited the country’s grossly uneven economic development and entrenched corporate special interests in India’s politics.

More fatefully, the Hindu nationalists exploded nuclear bombs underground and threatened Pakistan with all-out war, creating a legacy of hard-line nationalism – which the Indian military in Kashmir and successive governments in Delhi have embraced.

Certainly, the four million Muslims of Kashmir, who every day suffer the brutalities of what’s arguably the world’s largest military occupation, cannot be blamed for failing to make meaningful distinctions between Hindu nationalists and the current government, led by the more moderate Congress Party. Their fate remains that of a minority kept under perpetual siege by a paranoid nation-state.

Like hundreds of millions of other voiceless Indians, the migrant laborers in my village are even less able to distinguish between the oppressions of old feudal India and the pitiless exploitations of the new business-minded India. I wonder if the recent destruction of their fragile shelters doesn’t hold some symbolism. Perhaps the greatest danger to India’s image is that they may one day cease to cower in those shacks, and, like their counterparts in central India, erupt in armed revolt.

This summer’s setbacks to India’s image may soon fade from memory. But their lesson for the rhapsodic narrators of India’s modernity seems clear. “There is no document of civilization,” Walter Benjamin once wrote, “which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” This is the melancholy truth that all narratives about “rising” India must acknowledge if they are not to be trumped by pictures of a collapsed bridge and a leaking toilet.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.”

India agrees to release Kashmir stone-throwers

BBC News

Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir say men detained for pelting stones at security forces during the ongoing protests will be released immediately.

The protests are the biggest security challenge to Indian rule in many years

More than 100 civilians have been killed since June in protests against Indian rule.

Most of the clashes have been between young people throwing stones and Indian security forces.

India has announced a range of measures to defuse tension in the region.

A senior official in Indian-administered Kashmir said that 50 of the nearly 100 men held for stone-throwing would be handed over to their parents after “assurance” was given about the agitators’ future conduct.

Authorities have also decided to remove 16 bunkers used by security forces in the summer capital, Srinagar, which has seen the most violence during recent periods of unrest.

They said they were also reviewing the possibility of removing the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives sweeping powers to the army, from some disturbed areas.

The moves are part of an eight-point initiative announced by India’s federal government to ease the crisis in the region.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Kashmir since an armed revolt erupted in 1989.

Full text of the joint memorandum submitted by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik

“Let me say clearly that we accept the basic proposition that the future of Kashmir is going to be decided finally by the goodwill and pleasure of her people. The goodwill and pleasure of this Parliament is of no importance in this matter, not because this Parliament does not have the strength to decide the question of Kashmir but because any kind of imposition would be against the principles that this Parliament holds.

“Kashmir is very close to our minds and hearts and if by some decree or adverse fortune, ceases to be a part of India, it will be a wrench and a pain and torment for us. If, however, the people of Kashmir do not wish to remain with us, let them go by all means. We will not keep them against their will, however painful it may be to us… However sad we may feel about leaving we are not going to stay against the wishes of the people. We are not going to impose ourselves on them on the point of the bayonet.” – Jawaharlal Nehru, Speech to the Indian Parliament, August 7, 1952

“When a question becomes an international question like the Kashmir question, this Parliament can take many steps, of course, but it cannot solve the international part of it… the accession of Kashmir to India… was in that sense complete, not subject to anything except subject to the goodwill of the people of Kashmir… It is a very important thing and by that declaration we are going to stand. It is left to their decision… Now it is before an international forum and how can I or this Parliament take it away?” – Jawaharlal Nehru, Speech to the Indian Parliament, March 25, 1952

The All-Party Delegation from Delhi comes to Srinagar on the heels of some of the most vexed circumstances that Jammu & Kashmir has faced. The assault on the life and dignity of the average Kashmiri has been relentless. Daily life in our homes and streets has been turned into a nightmare as an entire population is treated as hostages on their own soil.

Just a simple act of stepping out of our own houses has been turned into an act fraught with danger, threat and menace with unprecedented prolongation of the brutal curfew, ruthless persecution, topped up by some of the most uncivilized acts by a nation that claims to abide by democratic practice and the rule of law.

The blockading of food, fuel and medical supplies with even life-saving drugs and ambulances being prevented from reaching their destinations, nocturnal raids and illegal detention of children and teenagers, clampdown on the local media and thrashing of media persons in recent days, is clearly an attempt at bullying and humiliating the Kashmiri population with base and inhuman tactics employed earlier only by rogue regimes in some notorious instances of international shame like in Kampuchea, Bosnia Palestine and Sri Lanka.

We cannot help but feel that we Kashmiris have been corralled into a concentration camp of concertina wires, jack-booted surveillance and vengeful assault by the Indian State, which deliberately chooses to deny this part of its ‘claimed’ nation the constitutional guarantee of ‘the Right to Life’.

And we have not even begun talking yet about the more than 100 Kashmiri youngsters senselessly but brutally killed by the Indian security forces in just over 100 days. It follows the thousands of lives already lost over the past decades due to the unresolved Kashmir Dispute.

All this precipitates your visit today.

We had hoped the 21st Century would offer our children a new world of opportunities. Indeed, both Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh gave us reason to hope for an honourable and lasting solution to the Kashmir Dispute through their multiple public declarations on Kashmir. We believe these statements represented not only their personal or partisan views but a commitment on behalf of the Indian people which your delegation today now represents.

We started this decade with the intention of engaging in a meaningful process to resolve the Kashmir Issue and we continue to be committed to that objective. However, for the people of Jammu & Kashmir, this first decade of the century has only been one of continued human misery, unfulfilled promises, false hopes and failed efforts to resolve the issue.

Failure has bred cynicism and destroyed hope.

In recent times, the struggle in Kashmir has transformed from a violent to a non-violent movement and the new generation has adopted the mode of democratic protest rather than the gun to voice its aspiration. It leaves us shocked and resentful that rather than listening to and engaging with this call from the streets of Kashmir, India is responding to it with bullets and violence.

We are at a threshold and it is vital that a new generation of Kashmiris should not be pushed to the wall. Dialogue and negotiation must come to the front, not a new chapter of violence and instability. Nobody will gain and we will all lose, if such a situation develops.

The passage of time over the past 63 years has, in fact, made the Kashmir Problem more, rather than less, intractable. Allowing this dispute to fester will only extract increasing human costs from the people of Jammu & Kashmir and, for that matter, the people of India and Pakistan.

Frankly, today we hope to make a break from the past.

What we have seen for the last 63 years and what we are seeing in the current bloodshed is an aggregation of failed approaches. Above all we are seeing a failure to develop and evolve a sustainable, purposeful, results-oriented process of dialogue and negotiation aimed at tangibly resolving core issues rather than dealing with the crisis of the day.

We are concerned that domestic politicking in India has again started to create hurdles on the way to developing a meaningful process of negotiation. This has been a phenomenon right from the inception of the Kashmir Conflict. Due to domestic politics in both India and Pakistan, the windows for working towards a solution to Kashmir have been narrowed or interrupted and, as a result, the people of Jammu & Kashmir have had to suffer dearly.

It is disconcerting that today the BJP has taken a hard line on Kashmir. This is the same party whose veteran leader Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee went to Lahore and declared from the base of Minar-e-Pakistan: “It is my dream and wish to resolve the Kashmir Issue.” This is the same BJP who initiated peace talks with the then united APHC under the chairmanship of Syed Ali Shah Geelani. This is the same party that engaged Hizbul Mujahideen in a cease-fire and talks process in the Summer of 2000. This is the same BJP that declared a unilateral cease-fire in the Month of Ramadhan and then offered talks “under the constitution of Insaniyat”. This is the same BJP whose Prime Minister Vajpayee laid out an inspiring agenda on Kashmir from Kumarakom on January 2, 2001: “We shall not traverse solely on the beaten track of the past. Rather, we shall be bold and innovative designers of a future architecture of peace and prosperity for the entire South Asian region”.

We are now disheartened to see the same party advocating a contrary view as the principal Opposition in the Indian Parliament. It is time to develop a peace process on Kashmir that is immune to domestic politics and power tussles, both in India and Pakistan.

On many occasions, in 2004 and again in 2006 from Amritsar, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh talked boldly about engaging in an irreversible process of dialogue to reach a political solution on Kashmir. We are concerned that the recent statements of the Prime Minister suggest that the Kashmir Problem is being seen as a matter of unemployment and that conditions are being imposed on the dialogue process.

For an entire generation, more than 20 years, we have engaged in multiple exercises of dialogue and talks with the Government of India. We took risks to do so and some amongst us sacrificed their lives to tread the path of peacemaking, while others amongst us paid with our credibility. we give some suggestions with a view to generating a favourable political climate for a purposeful dialogue like (a) revocation of draconian laws, (b) release of political prisoners (c) withdrawal of troops and (d) zero tolerance for human rights etc but these suggestions were not taken seriously.

We are now wary that your visit today, however well-intentioned, represents only an effort at short-term crisis management and that there is no clear commitment nor path towards effective resolution of the Kashmir Issue and addressing the aspirations and interests of the people of Jammu & Kashmir.

We have seen in the past that it is only when a major crisis erupts that visible efforts are made to engage and understand our aspirations. And as soon as the immediate crisis subsides, the demonstrated and inherent political complacency and negligence is restored.

Today in light of the concerns expressed above and to voice our unequivocal condemnation of the killings of our children and youth, we choose not to meet with your delegation

Today, we ask not for unilateral political concessions but rather a joint commitment to a meaningful process that guarantees results. We believe this is possible only if serious efforts are made to create a conducive environment for dialogue by removal of the harsh and repressive measures that are in force here, to suppress our aspirations and our fundamental democratic rights.

We look forward to entering into a dialogue based on the following shared commitments:

To create a beginning and to sustain the process of dialogue we need to create a process in which all views and options – most of all Kashmiri aspirations will be considered and explored before arriving at an acceptable solution.

Let resolving the Kashmir Dispute in accordance with aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir become a Common Minimum Programme shared by all political parties in India and in Pakistan. Achieving a solution to the Kashmir Issue should now rise above vote bank politics and be taken up as a national agenda shared by all, worked for by all, and risked for by all major political parties of India.

Let the Government of India act on the suggestions given by the Kashmiris and facilitate to establish and empower an official body, a Kashmir Committee, consisting of senior representatives of all major Indian political parties to develop and enter into a process of engagement with the representatives of the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Let this process be transparent designed to deliver a negotiated solution to the Kashmir Issue that is mutually worked towards by and acceptable to all parties concerned.

We believe that a similar Kashmir Committee, bringing together all political forces, should also be established in Pakistan. We will advocate to the political parties in Pakistan that this be done. This will ensure that all major political forces in India and Pakistan are on board with the peace process and it will help institutionalize and sustain the process to resolve the Kashmir Problem. We must render the process immune from domestic politics and tendencies to act as spoilers

On our part we are ready and willing to engage and sustain a meaningful and irreversible process of dialogue designed to avoid the failures of the past and to jointly develop and implement a solution to the Kashmir Dispute that is acceptable to all sides – India,Pakistan and above all the people of J&K

Sincerely,

SD/
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
All Parties Hurriyat Conference

SD/

Muhammad Yasin Malik
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front

The Bleeding Vale of Kashmir

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

The cauldron of Kashmir continues to simmer and smolder in view of India’s scorched earth policy. Appalling human rights abuses and atrocities have been committed against civilian population. According to recently published Human Rights report, between 1989 and June 30, 2010, the number of Kashmiris killed at the hands of Indian security forces stands at 93,274. Additionally, there have been 6969 custodial killing, over 107,351 children have been orphaned, 22,728 women widowed and 9920 women gang raped. 11735 persons were arrested and 105861 houses or structures in use were razed.

Kasmir is bleeding; India competing with Israel

Ever since indigenous armed resistance commenced in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) in 1989, India has been incessantly holding Pakistan responsible for the uprising. It portrayed the freedom struggle as terrorist movement wholly aided by Pakistan. India didn’t take into account the hard realities that Kashmiris had sustained the cruelties of Indian forces for too long. They had been repeatedly duped and promise of plebiscite made by Jawahar Lal Nehru made in 1948 remained unfulfilled. They had got fed up of the puppet state regimes imposed upon them and the lackluster approach of Pakistan towards their cause.

They got inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 followed by Palestinian intifada in 1987 and grand victory of Mujahideen against a super power in Afghanistan in 1988. These events catapulted the otherwise insipid and terrorized Kashmiris who would not pick up courage to even protest against abuses of Indian security forces. This was evident from their poor response to Operation Gibraltar launched By Pakistani irregulars in August 1965 aimed at helping the Kashmiris to realize their dream of freedom from India. Kashmiri youths from 1990 onwards were a transformed lot, fully motivated and charged up. No amount of brutal force and torture applied by Indian forces would break their will to fight back.

Few thousand Kashmiri Mujahideen kept over 700,000 regular and paramilitary forces in a spin and Kashmir became a bleeding wound for India. They showed their extraordinary grit and firmness during the Kargil conflict in summer of 1999 where in conjunction with irregulars of Northern Light Infantry, they kept the might of Indian Army at bay for ten weeks. The US and G-8 countries had to intervene to force Pakistan to vacate the occupied heights. After suffering humiliation at Kargil, India had to suffer another embarrassment when its ten-month military standoff failed to intimidate Pakistan and it had to withdraw its forces in October 2002.

India sought assistance from Israel how to deal with Kashmiri militants and learnt new methods of torture but to no effect. By 2003, Indian troops employed in IHK had become fatigued and demoralized. Cases of indiscipline, soldiers firing at seniors, desertions, suicides, and mental disorders rose phenomenally. Hospitals got filled up with malingerers and psychiatric cases. Recruitment in Army dropped radically despite announcing better pay packages. Kashmir became a dreaded station and none liked to be posted there. It was under such unsavory conditions that Indo-Pak peace treaty facilitated by USA was signed in January 2004.

In his exuberance to appease India so that an amicable solution to Kashmir dispute and other disputes of Siachin, Sir Creek and dams on rivers could be found, Gen Musharraf took several steps to remove Indian concerns. He gave a written pledge that he would not allow Pakistan soil for exporting terrorism. He banned six Jihadi outfits engaged in supporting freedom struggle in IHK and ceased their funds. By restoring peace in Kashmir, he allowed India to fence the Line of Control (LoC) and also took stringent measures to curb movement across the LoC.

All Parties Hurryat Conference (APHC) got split between moderates and extremists, former led by Mir Waiz and latter by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Moderates agreed to hold negotiations with Indian leaders and to workout an out of box solution as proposed by Musharraf which was outside the realms of UNSC Resolutions. Musharraf’s one-sided initiatives delivered severe blows to the indigenous struggle waged by Kashmiri armed freedom fighters that had intensified in 2003-04. Indian leaders started admitting after 2005 that cross border infiltration had reduced to a trickle. Instead of appreciating efforts put in by Pakistan Indian military claimed that stringent measures adopted by them had not only blocked movement of foreign terrorists but also the insurgency in IHK.

Peace along LoC and in IHK helped India to use Afghan soil to export terrorism into Pakistan and to create situation similar to IHK. India created and supported terrorist outfits for Balochistan and FATA to destabilize Pakistan. It was also able to hold general elections in the state in 2007 which brought in pro-India National Conference and Congress in power. Since the voters’ turnout was over 50%, Indian leaders started to brag that foreign sponsored insurgency had almost been quashed and there was no need for negotiations. They once again reverted to their uncompromising stance that Kashmir was integral part of India and its further division was out of question. The only leeway they wanted to give was to treat LoC as permanent border between two Kashmirs. The Kashmiris once again felt let down by Pakistan, betrayed by India and ignored by the world as they had felt in 1989.

There was also resentment among younger generation of Kashmir against their leaders for getting hoodwinked by Indian sweet talk and damaging the movement. The movement got reignited on a dispute over land being allotted to Amarnath Shrine Board in summer of 2008 and economic blockade imposed by Hindus in Jammu. The whole Valley resounded with slogans of Azadi (freedom) and pro-Pakistan slogans. Hundreds of thousands of people defied curfews and heavy presence of security forces. Soldiers and policemen fired straight into the crowds killing scores of people but protests continued unabated. It was the first manifestation of democratic, non-violent protests as note by Arundhati Roy.

Intensity and resoluteness of unarmed protests by Kashmiris in Srinagar and other major towns of the Valley unnerved India and the state government. Protests over India’s black laws and oppressive and unjust policies continued for months but neither Pakistan nor the world took any note of their plight. Policy of picking up suspects, putting them in secret dungeons and torturing them, fake encounters and rape continued unabatedly. The second bout of unarmed protests took place in the summer of 2009, which were ruthlessly dealt with by Indian forces disregarding that the protestors had no arms.

Fresh wave of mass agitation against India’s rule in J&K spearheaded by unarmed teenagers have spread across Kashmir Valley since last June. Intensity of protests is growing with each passing day. In June 2010 alone, 33 people were killed including four children. 572 people were tortured and injured and eight women were molested. 59 Kashmiris, mostly teenagers including an eight-year boy have been killed till 14 August by CRPF and Police. Each killing is fuelling more anger and they are coming out on streets in greater numbers.

It is high time for champions of human rights to listen to the cries of Kashmiris and take stock of atrocities perpetrated by Indian forces, killing small kids and old men and raping Kashmiri women with gusto. Peace in South Asia will remain illusive without a solution to Kashmir dispute, which has also bred extremism and terrorism in the region. Indian leaders must come out of their uncompromising and stubborn mode by fulfilling the pledge of their reverend leader Nehru and hold a plebiscite in Kashmir. Farce of Aman ki Asha and other deceitful games would work no more. Resolution of longstanding Kashmir dispute will usher in peace and prosperity in South Asia, which is primed for a bigger explosion because of discontentment and burgeoning poverty. The UNSC and USA should let go their duplicitous policy and act before it is too late.

Brig Asif Haroon Raja an Member Board of Advisors Opinion Maker is Staff College and Armed Forces War Course qualified, holds MSc war studies degree; a second generation officer, he fought epic battle of Hilli in northwest East Bengal during 1971 war, in which Maj M. Akram received Nishan-e-Haider posthumously. He served as Directing Staff Command & Staff College, Defence Attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of Corps of Military Attaches in Cairo. He commanded the heaviest brigade in Kashmir. He is lingual and speaks English, Pashto and Punjabi fluently. He is author of books titled ‘Battle of Hilli’, ’1948, 1965 & 1971 Kashmir Battles and Freedom Struggle’, ‘Muhammad bin Qasim to Gen Musharraf’, Roots of 1971 Tragedy’; has written number of motivational pamphlets. Draft of his next book ‘Tangled Knot of Kashmir’ is ready. He is a defence analyst and columnist and writes articles on security, defence and political matters for numerous international/national newspapers/websites

Kashmiri agitators get Naxalites’ salute

TNN

NAGPUR: The central committee (CC) of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has given its thumbs up for the Kashmiri protesters clashing with the security forces in the valley. In a scathing criticism on the role of the central and state governments, the Naxals have claimed that the enemy was the same, be it at Dandakaranya or Kashmir.

Through a two-page release, the rebels have extended their ‘revolutionary salute’ or Inquilabi salaam to the Kashmiri protesters fighting for their rights. The Maoists were critical of the use of force by the Omar Abdullah-led coalition government to crush the resistance of the people.

The CC, along with the people’s army and other revolutionary outfits, has vowed to continue supporting the valley protesters.

The naxals dramatically equated the stone throwing youths of Kashmir to the bow-and-arrow equipped tribals of Dandakaranya. The CC “believes that the Kashmir belongs to Kashmiris”. It has also appealed to all to support the ‘just national liberation struggle of the people of Kashmir’.

The CC has lashed out at the media for distorting Kashmir’s history. Naxals have also urged citizens across the length and breadth of the country to raise their voice against the ‘heartless killing of youth’ by the security forces.

They have also made an appeal to the activists and right bodies to demand the withdrawal of the forces from Kashmir. The rebels had made a similar demand several times in the Dandakaranya region in the past too.

Targeting perjury

By Ikram Sehgal

The ongoing controversy about fake credentials being used to enter parliament on false pretences, and thus conceivably preside over the destiny of the nation, brings into focus a greater affliction in the body politic of Pakistan, rampant perjury. In my article “Perjury” written as far back as Feb 8, 2000, I noted, “A few weeks ago I sat and watched in increasing frustration and disgust as two executives of a semi-government corporation lied through their teeth while giving evidence under oath. Almost every sentence of their affidavits was a lie, answers to every question was a blatant untruth. Even though this was before one of the best judges ever produced by the judiciary in Pakistan, the judiciary seems to have become helpless to prevent perjury.

The judiciary acts only on the evidence on record, giving judgment on the basis of the statute books without relevance to the integrity of the evidence being presented before them”. Being still sub judice ten years later (successfully filibustered by well-paid lawyers of the opposite party it could go on for many decades more), one cannot ethically take names.

As opposed to the suited and booted liars in the aforementioned case, professional touts can be found outside many subordinate courts in Pakistan, ready to render “evidence” under oath for a price. In many criminal cases, the verdict is subject to either influence or disbursements by the highest bidder. While not always, perjury is taking place in enough of the cases for the situation to be considered catastrophic for the rule of law. To put it bluntly, justice can be manipulated to suit those who have a reason to manipulate it, and have the means, either money or influence, to do so. This subversion of the rule of law has become endemic in many countries in varying degrees, in Pakistan even more so. Clearly, drastic corrective action is a crying need of the time.

Accountability of any kind is almost impossible in a country where almost all statements or cross-examinations under oath are badly tainted. Our failure to deal with systemic perjury is why corruption has flourished. In the article “Eliminating perjury” on December 15, 2005, I wrote, “Justice is dependant upon the evidence brought before those dispensing justice. If the evidence is manipulated in any manner or a witness deliberately makes material false or misleading statement the verdict given will be flawed. It stands to reason that for justice to be done, it is imperative to ensure the credibility of evidence. In the first world, serious notice is taken of perjury, and many are convicted and punished for it. One really wonders as to the record of such convictions in third world countries — presumably it would be abysmally low”. Falsification of documents, statements etc. is done for personal advantage to derive benefit more than what is their due. How many people have we sent to jail for such criminal conduct?

Attacks by some senior (and supposedly responsible) functionaries of the government on the superior judiciary seem deliberately motivated to destroy both the judiciary’s credibility and capability to uphold the rule of law. The fabric binding society is the belief that those that are supposed to uphold the law will do so, if one has reason to fear these very people of violating the laws of the land then the very basis of civilisation fails.

A movement emanating from a small village called Nagalbari in the 60s in India spread throughout the East and South East as the “Naxalite” movement. Five decades later Naxalites have become a potent force to contend with in many Indian states, killing criminals and the corrupt in the judiciary and law enforcement alike, not to mention corrupt bureaucrats, crooked businessmen, anybody amassing inordinate wealth. Even though the Indians are generally in self-denial about Maoists holding sway across a broad swath of India, even collecting revenues in as many as 70 districts, the issue has assumed such crisis proportions that the Indian Army is being increasingly employed to go after hardcore terrorists. In Pakistan the militants used the facade of religion in Swat, what they really exploited was rampant injustice and frustrations thereof. If the whole system is taken to be corrupt and the justice meted out to be unjust and unfair, frustration forces those seeking justice to take law into their own hands. Loss of faith in the judicial system can become a very potent breeding ground for vigilantes. Social upheaval turning violent can spill over into the Pakistani heartland.

As officers of the court, both under law and professional ethics, lawyers are not supposed to be party to fabrication of, and tampering with, the evidence. They are duty-bound to bring malfeasance of any kind to the attention of the court. Many lawyers will not take a case if they find evidence of malfeasance, how many will report wrongdoing that comes to their knowledge? Many fall back on the sacred nature of the lawyer-client relationship that all facts disclosed are privileged communication that cannot be disclosed to a third party (or parties) if detrimental to the interests of the client. When a court decides in favour of one side, unless it is for technical reasons, it has effectively confirmed that the other side’s case submitted false evidence. Unfortunately highly paid lawyers can distort evidence or have it set aside on technical grounds, knowing evidence to be false and still persevering with it not a clear violation of the oath to present the truth and nothing but the truth?

Those committing perjury, and this includes distorting of evidence, must be punished by stiff imprisonments and heavy fines according to the nature of the offence. In criminal trials, the punishment could be exactly what the accused would have got if the evidence had been held to be correct. If based on the statements of the witnesses committing perjury the accused would go to the gallows, shouldn’t those giving false evidence face the gallows themselves? No given formula can be used. The judge (or judges) must decide each case of perjury on merit and come down with a heavy hand against perjurers as well as their manipulators and abettors.

Except for the president, who for some odd reason is the only holder of public office exempted from declaration of assets, our parliamentarians have furnished these under oath. If one were to believe the stated record, most of them are living below the poverty line. Why doesn’t the Election Commission (EC) have Class One auditors determine their actual wealth and compare it against filed income tax statements and declaration of assets information? Other than stiff jail sentences, perjurers should be forever disqualified from holding public office. This is a unique opportunity for the EC, and if not than the superior judiciary, to make an example that no one is above the law and that the rule of law will prevail, that perjury will not be tolerated.

The great majority of elected representatives are honourable people with genuine credentials, why should they object if those of their colleagues committing perjury get exemplary punishment?

The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@path finder9.com

Rage of a lost generation

By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE – Kashmir is on the boil again. Some 15 people, mostly teenagers, have died in police firing over the past month. In an attempt at quelling the unrest, the government called out the army last week in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. This is the first time ever that the army has been called out in Srinagar for crowd control.

The decision to send in the army was taken when even the imposition of curfew on an angry city failed to get protesters off the streets. The curfew, imposed last Wednesday, was lifted on Sunday.

According to Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, the army has been sent in to Srinagar to act as a “deterrent”. Confrontation of protesters on the streets will continue to be tackled by the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the state’s police.

The Kashmir Valley has been caught in an ugly cycle of violence and counter-violence since a month ago, when the first of many civilian deaths took place following the CRPF’s firing on protesters. A 17-year-old boy returning home from school was killed when a tear gas shell landed squarely on his head. Since then protests have become a daily occurrence with stone-pelting mobs fighting pitched battles with police on the streets of Srinagar and other towns. Over the past fortnight, at least one civilian death a day has been reported.

The CRPF has come under fire for trigger-happy handling of pebble-pelting mobs and criticized for shooting at unarmed protesters. Several of those who fell to CRPF bullets were not even participating in the protests. A 25-year-old woman who was watching the protests from the window of her house was shot dead. Many of the victims were boys; one just nine years old.

While an uneasy calm has descended over Srinagar following the deployment of the army, the rest of the valley remains restive.

The Kashmir Valley is the main bone of contention in the India-Pakistan dispute over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety. India is in control of two-thirds of the territory, including the valley. The valley has been in the grip of a powerful armed uprising against Indian rule since 1989.

Militancy has been on the decline since 2001. But mass protest have broken out in the state periodically as, for instance, in 2008, when an agitation erupted in the Muslim-dominated valley over a decision of the local government to transfer some land to a Hindu religious trust. More often than not, such protests have been triggered by the killing of civilians in “encounters” faked by the security forces.

In May, for instance, protests broke out in several towns over the killing of three youth in Kupwara by an army major and his subordinates. The army had claimed that the three were “terrorists” and had been killed after a gunfight. It emerged subsequently that the three had been abducted and shot at point blank range.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly spoken of his government’s “zero tolerance of human-rights violations” by the security forces. However, the extra-judicial killings continue. Protected by special laws giving them extraordinary powers to deal with terrorism, the security forces are acting without accountability to civilians.

Anti-India sentiment in the valley seemed on the decline following public disgust with militancy, but is now gaining ground. The CRPF killing of civilian protestors has fueled public rage.

Even at the height of the insurgency in the early 1990s, the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), not the Indian army, was responsible for Srinagar’s security. The army was called in a couple of times, but these were to deal with crisis situations – as in 1993 when militants took control of the Hazratbal mosque, which is believed to house a strand of Prophet Mohammed’s hair, and in 1999 when militants took control of the offices of the Special Operations Group, an anti-terrorism wing of the Jammu and Kashmir state police in Srinagar.

The decision to summon the army now indicates that Delhi now views the protests as a serious crisis. Some have questioned the wisdom of calling into Srinagar army personnel who have been trained to shoot to kill rather than to quell unrest. Others see the army as the “most disciplined force”, more effective in dealing with the crisis than the overworked, under-equipped and excessively stressed CRPF.

Memories of the mass protests that preceded the armed uprising in 1990 remain vivid in the Indian establishment. Decision-makers in Delhi and Srinagar do not want a repeat now. “Calling in the army is as much about deterring the stone pelters as it is about preventing the emergence of an environment conducive to militancy raising its ugly head again in the valley,” a Home Ministry official told Asia Times Online.

Stone-throwing as a form of protest has a long history in the valley going back to the 16th century. In parts of downtown Srinagar, stone-pelting at police has been a bit of a ritual. Especially after Friday prayers, youth coming out of mosques in downtown Srinagar would hurl stones at police posts. A cat and mouse game would ensue, with police chasing the boys through the maze of lanes in crowded neighborhoods like Maisuma and Batmaloo. Police would refer to these confrontations as “limited-over cricket matches”; the two sides would fight it out on the streets and it would end before long. After the brief confrontation, “Kashmir’s Gaza Strip”, as these areas are called, would return to normal.

That is no more the case. Over the past two years and especially over the past month, the stone pelters haven’t gotten off the streets easily. They held their ground and it has taken the curfew and the army’s presence to clear them.

The pebble protests present India with a huge dilemma. The participants are angry youth, not terrorists. They are armed with stones, not Kalashnikovs. But they have used stones with lethal effect. Over 1,200, including cops and civilians, have been injured by the stones. An 11-day-old infant was among those killed by stone pelting.

Besides, the protests are not all spontaneous. They are believed to be orchestrated by leaders of the hardline, pro-Pakistan faction of the separatist Hurriyat Conference. The protests are being funded with stone pelters reportedly receiving around US$3-$6 for a day’s “work”.

The home minister has accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba of fomenting the protests. Intelligence intercepts of conversations between members of terror outfits, Hurriyat activists and protesters indicate that protesters are being instructed “to martyr a few civilians” during demonstrations to fuel further unrest.
That the separatists, the militants and their handlers in Pakistan are brewing up trouble and could be behind at least a few of the killings in recent weeks cannot be ruled out. These sections have had a long history of fishing in Kashmir’s troubled waters. Certainly for the Hurriyat, which has been sidelined in Kashmiri politics for some years, the ongoing protests present an opportunity for a fresh lease of life.

Yet the rage evident on the streets of Srinagar cannot be blamed on them alone.

Those out on the streets today belong to a generation born during the militancy. All they have seen is violence by state and non-state actors. The face of India they have seen in Kashmir is that of its coercive apparatus. It is true that they have also seen a bit of democracy – when politicians make grand promises during elections. But democracy has brought them no jobs, no security, and no future. That frustration is exploding on the streets in such circumstances is not surprising.

Angry boys are picking up pebbles to hurl against the Indian state and its functionaries. They could reach out for the gun soon.

India measures the seriousness of the militancy in terms of militancy-related fatalities. This has fallen steadily in recent years. It celebrates the return of normalcy by looking at tourist arrivals. What it needs to look at is the depth of discontent, especially among youth. This is serious. Mass discontent should worry the Indian state far more than militancy.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

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Militants open fire in Sopore, curfew continues in Valley

Srinagar: Two policemen were injured in two separate attacks by militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s Sopore town, while an indefinite curfew continued in Srinagar and other major towns of the Kashmir Valley on Friday, officials said. “Militants fired at the State Bank of India building in Sopore town late Thursday, injuring one policeman. In another incident, militants fired at a police vehicle in the same town early Friday and the driver was hurt,” a senior police officer said.

Army soldiers in a truck patrol a curfew-bound locality during a flag march in Panthachowk

“Both have been shifted to hospital and doctors say they are out of danger,” he added.

Curfew continued for the third day in all areas of Srinagar city, Sopore, Ganderbal, Handwara and south Kashmir’s Anantnag, Pulwama, Kakpora and some towns along the Jammu-Srinagar highway.

“Restrictions have been imposed in other towns like Baramulla, Qazigund, Bijbehara, Kangan as well,” another officer said.

“The situation is being closely monitored. A decision about relaxating the curfew would be taken after reviewing the situation later,” he added.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has convened an all-party meeting here Monday to discuss the situation in the state.

The army was requisitioned by the civil administration for assistance here Wednesday, a day after widespread violence in the city following the recovery of a teenager’s body, who relatives allege had been forcibly drowned by security forces during clashes.

Three more people, including a 25-year old woman, were killed in Tuesday’s violence.

The army carried out flag marches at many places in the city in the last two days.

Army called in as Held Kashmir boils again

* Three more killed as security forces fire at stone-pelting mob
* 13 people injured in fresh clashes across IHK
* Mobile services blocked
* Chidambaram pledges support to IHK govt
* Blames anti-national elements for ‘trying to exploit the situation’

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: The Indian-held Kashmir government sought the army’s help on Tuesday and imposed a curfew in the region to control continuing unrest, when firing by security personnel on stone-pelting protesters left three more people dead. The army moved in Sopore and the adjoining Baramulla township, as violence spread to South Kashmir and more areas of North Kashmir.

At least 13 people were injured in fresh clashes between protesters and security forces across the valley, police said.

On Tuesday, deaths were reported from the southern Anantnag district where protesters had gathered on the streets. Police identified the killed protesters as Ishfaq Ahmed Khanday, Imtiyaz Ahmad Itoo and Shujatul Islam. The victims were part of a mob hurling stones at Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Anchidoora in Anantnag town, 55 kilometres of Srinagar, police said.

Locals alleged that the CRPF personnel barged into houses and shops while chasing a violent mob protesting the rise in killings by security forces, and shot the victims in a house and a bakery. Death toll in the firings has reached to eight in a week. Two people had died in CRPF firing in Sopore and Baramulla on Monday.

Reports of violence were also reported from across the valley in Kupwara, Bandipur, Budgam, Pulwama Kangan and Sumbal areas.

In the northern town of Kupwara, at least five protestors and four policemen were injured when CRPF and police resorted to baton-charge and teargas shelling to disperse hundreds of people from Kupwara and adjoining areas who protested and tried to march towards Sopore. Massive protests were also held in nearby Handwara. Protestors from Rajwar, Handwara and Kulangam assembled at the Handwara Chowk to march towards Sopore.

Services blocked: Under the current situation, mobile services in North Kashmir and SMS service in the entire valley were blocked on the instructions of the government.

Separately, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram pledged support to the IHK government to enforce curfew restrictions sternly and end rioting. In a statement after a high-level meeting of security chiefs to review the situation in IHK, the minister blamed anti-national elements for attempting to exploit the situation, and appealed to the people to help restore law and order.

Anti-state elements: “There are reliable reports that anti-national elements are trying to exploit the situation. Some militants may also have sneaked into the valley to trigger violence. I appeal to all those who believe in peace and development to stand by the state government and help it restore law and order,” he added.