KANDHAMAL ATTACKS - Haunted by the riots

Christian dalits and adivasis in Kandhamal district of Orissa live fearfully among their Hindu neighbours more than two years after large-scale riots against members of their faith.

The Christian community of Kandhamal in Orissa, one of the poorest districts of India, was targeted with violent attacks between Christmas day of 2007 and August 2008. Two years on the administration maintains the situation is normal but, in effect, many of the victims still live in terror, a jury of the National People's Tribunal learned in August this year. 

Young Esthori, from Gunjiwadi, is one of those for whom the night of 25 August is a terrifying memory. She recalls how mobs attacked Christians like her family in the aftermath of Swami Laxmananda's assassination. Although the Maoists claimed responsibility for the crime, it was the Christians who were made the target. Says Esthori, "Many many people came to the village with sticks and stones, beating drums. We ran away and hid in the jungle for four days. I was very hungry. Today I still feel scared. Some children taunt me for being a Christian." 

For 13-year-old Dobin Nayak of Bududipada, Tiangia, the psychological trauma is far worse. A terrified Dobin witnessed a huge mob rushing into his home and setting it on fire. The attackers then turned on the adjoining house and dragged out his uncle Bikram Nayak, a prominent pastor. Bikram Nayak was savagely attacked with crowbars and an axe and then left for dead. The women, including Dobin, hid Bikram in a cowshed where he suffered a night in terrible agony. He later succumbed to his injuries in hospital. 

Two years after the horrific attack, Dobin's father Bipin, who deposed before a jury of the National People's Tribunal in Delhi asserts there is no real peace. Those who were part of the attack roam the village with impunity and threaten him with meeting the same fate as his brother. 

Deep in the forests in Bogadi hamlet, live Jacob Pradhan and his wife. They work as casual labourers or make platters from sal leaves. Pradhan was caught up in the maelstrom in a bizarre manner when he set forth from his home on 24 August to buy medicines for his father. Totally oblivious of the carnage, Pradhan reached the chemist's shop in Nuwagaon where some RSS workers questioned him. On learning he was a Christian they marched him to the police who took him and two others into custody. He was then charged with being part of the Maoist conspiracy that murdered Swami Laxmananda and three other VHP leaders. 

Taken to district headquarters of Phulbani they were stripped to their underwear, chained, locked up in a toilet and questioned repeatedly by the police in flagrant violation of all human rights. Then taken to Bhubaneswar, Pradhan was paraded as an accused and made to undergo a polygraph test before being suddenly released after 40 days of custody. No charges were eventually filed. 

Meanwhile, his home had been destroyed and his daughter narrowly escaped a sexual assault. After five months in a relief camp, Pradhan came back to his hamlet but in a complete travesty of justice he has not been successful in filing an FIR against those who destroyed his home. Nor have cases been lodged against those who held him and tortured him. 

No justice yet

Esthori, Nayak, Jacob ... like them there are thousands of other Christians, mostly Dalits (known locally as Panas) and adivasis (Kondhas) who are still awaiting justice and accountability for the attacks that took place in their district. According to official figures more than 600 villages were attacked, 295 churches destroyed, 54,000 people left homeless and 38 people were killed. More than 10,000 children had their education severely disrupted due to displacement and fear. 

Even these numbers, says Father Ajay Kumar Singh of Jan Vikas (a Christian organization working for social empowerment) would have been much higher had not the forests provided refuge for the thousands who fled there. 

Yet civil society's response to this sectarian violence has been hugely muted in comparison to Gujarat. Singh and other activists are perturbed by the hostile justice environment whereby victims, living cheek-by-jowl among their attackers, have not been given witness protection and are coerced into saying they cannot recognise those who carried out the attacks. 

Ethnic rivalry, or communal conflict?

Civil society's response to the sectarian violence in Orissa has been hugely muted in comparison to the attention paid to similar atrocities in Gujarat. Why did Kandhamal erupt? The reasons behind the violence - whether it was ethnically motivated, or part of a carefully designed communal strategy - is a subject of heated debate. The region has some of the poorest socio-economic indices in the country. Its population (2001 Census) comprises of 51.96 per cent Schedule Tribes (Kondhas) and 18.89 per cent Schedule Castes (Panas or Dalits). Until 1949 the Panas were also known as Hill Tribes but were then de-listed and classified as Dalits. Subsequently they began making demands for Schedule Tribe status on the grounds that they speak the Kui language. Consequently there were some simmering tensions between the two over land issues and allegations against Panas (many of whom converted to Christianity and lost SC benefits) of acquiring false certificates. 

It was against this background that Justice Sarat Chandra Mohapatra, appointed to inquire into the violence, declared the Kandhamal violence to be ethnic in nature, sparked by the issue of certification by the Panas. His remarks were widely picked up and endorsed by the Orissa media. 

However many of the victims and other organizations have protested vociferously saying the communal nature of the attacks and the specific role of saffron groups cannot be ignored. The Sampradayik Hinsa Prapidita Sangathana complained to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and accused Mohapatra of not unearthing true facts but making irrational conclusions and judgments. Several affidavits also categorically say that leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal led the mobs. In particular the name of BJP member, Manoj Pradhan, who has been convicted by the fast track court in two cases, figures prominently. Patnaik too has admitted that several VHP and Bajrang Dal members were arrested in connection with the attacks. 

A number of affidavits also affirm that the Christian and Hindu communities among the Dalits and Kondhas had for decades lived in harmony and celebrated festivals together but that the atmosphere was vitiated by inroads of the VHP who raised the bogey of proselytisation and forced conversions by Christians. Nimontee, whose son Dasharath was killed by locals in 2008 says she is shocked at the extent to which the amicability has been replaced with a communally charged mood. Slogans like "If you see a Pana cut him down instantly," still render the air. 

Observers say the communal cauldron was stirred up by Swami Laxmananda who became known for his inflammatory rhetoric. The VHP's base in Kandhamal also grew in strength with the influx of traders and small businessmen from the coastal strip. The National Solidarity Forum - a platform of concerned activists, media persons, film makers and others in its report - is emphatic that communal forces used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination against the Christians of SC origin. 

People in Nandagiri live in tents and makeshift quarters as they cannot return to teir villages. They have been warned they must convert to Hinduism if they want to return. 

Kedar Mishra, Chairman of the Orissa Samskruti Academy disputes the notion that proselytisation and missionary activities were the key reasons for the build up of tensions. Orissa, he points out, is 95 per cent Hindu (if one includes tribals among the fold) while Christians account for just two per cent. He says early missionaries were well received and respected for compiling the first Oriya grammar texts and dictionary. The image of the Christian community as a peaceful one underwent a metamorphosis only after the coming of the RSS, who raised the issue of forced conversions. 

Mishra, who has presented a paper on the media's role in Kandhamal, points out that Orissa has a particular law against forcible conversions or those converted under allurement. Why have no cases been filed so far? he asks. 

Ironically it is the Pana Christians who have complained of being coerced to repudiate their faith. Many families from Betikola, Killakia, Rautingia and others now live in tents and makeshift shelters at the small settlement of Nandagiri because they were told in unequivocal terms they could not return home from the transit camps unless they renounced Christianity. In another instances, some women of Barakhama, which has a sizeable population of Christians, were forced to apply sindoor on their hair, an overt sign of being Hindu.

However there are heartening examples of people who refused to let the communal sword cleave the community. One such woman is Ramonti Malik of Pattama village, who defied threats of the RSS and her own Kondhas and sheltered several Pana Christian families for four days in August 2008. "They are my people," she says. "It makes no difference what faith they choose to practise." 

 

COMMONWEALTH GAMES - Wounded pride, or vanity?

If we lack the courage to be ashamed of the callousness with which our government treats its own people, we have no right to hope that a different India can be put on display when the world is watching.

It was hard to comprehend why our national media was displaying so much shock and outrage with banner headlines like Commonwealth Games, India's Shame as if something extraordinary had happened in India. Was it because they had earlier swallowed the pompous claims made by the Government that Delhi would host the most spectacular games ever, that the CWG preparations would transform it into a world class city and showcase India as an emerging global power, a top notch tourist destination? The media played along till such time as it became obvious that despite having spent thousands of crores, we had a disaster on our hands. 

Until a few months ago, many in the media made common cause with Sports Minister M S Gill and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, both of whom tirelessly sermonised us that all of us must put in their bit to make the Commonwealth games a success and celebrate it as a big festival, since making the event work well was a matter of "national honour and pride". The Art of Living guru was roped in to make a huge song and dance about mobilising citizens to pick up garbage in their respective neighborhoods and clean up the stinking filth choking banks of Yamuna - with the slogan Meri Dilli, Meri Shaan -(My Delhi, My Pride). 

History is replete with examples of how the most venal and corrupt among politicians tend to wrap themselves in the national flag in order to cover their misdeeds. If we were to do an honest cost-benefit analysis and audit, we would discover that for our politicians and bureaucrats every infrastructure project, every poverty alleviation program, every hydro electric project, every mining lease is mainly about loot of public resources. That is why no power project, no development or welfare program delivers more than a small fraction of what it promises. The Games were no different - their main purpose had been served. Money had reached safely in the accounts of those it was meant to. The rest was incidental. Those in charge of organising knew very well . Games ho gayein to thheek, nahin to na sahi! (If the Games take place fine, if not, so be it.). 

Ordinary citizens, however, were not surprised or shocked by collapsing bridges, roofs falling off, leaking stadia, filthy toilets, stagnant water pools for breeding mosquitoes around the Games Village because we knew that our Government would deliver its "best performance". What are the arts our politicians and bureaucrats 'best' at? Corruption, mismanagement, working at cross purposes to mess up whatever they undertake, shameless delays, callousness, and the ability to remain unruffled even when people are angry enough to want to publicly lynch them! 

 History is replete with examples of how the most venal and corrupt among politicians tend to wrap themselves in the national flag in order to cover their misdeeds. ( Workers get into a manhole to clean blocked sewage in Delhi, without even the most basic protective equipment.)









Why this phoney outrage at Lalit Bhanot brazenly admitting on TV that our sense of hygiene and sanitation is different from that of the First World or even Second World countries? It is evident anywhere you look. Even those of us who buy expensive properties in elite neighborhoods live surrounded by garbage piles, filthy and open sewage drains flowing in the middle of our colonies, broken down or non-existent footpaths and sewage water routinely getting mixed with drinking water supply because of rusty, leaky pipes. Our tolerance level for filth, squalor and disease is so magnanimous that far from matching First World standards, even in comparison to Third World countries, India qualifies as the dirtiest and filthiest in terms of its public hygiene.

Why were we ashamed at leaking roofs, shoddy construction and squalor around the Games village? All our ministerial buildings, government offices, government-built housing complexes are witness to the sarkari genius of creating slummy conditions even after spending crores. Think of the wretched flats we all queue up to buy from DDA. Why should DDA feel obliged to behave very differently for a two-week tamasha? 

National pride or bruised vanity?

The corruption and mismanagement of CWG had only recently and temporarily become a cause célèbre with the media and a section of the urban elite because they had developed delusions of grandeur and learned to mistake their own growing prosperity, wealth and clout with 'national progress.' They felt let down because their new found and fragile 'national pride' was being given a massive drubbing in front of foreigners, the only ones they wished to impress, but didn't really know how to. 

Their 'national pride' was not wounded when the jhuggis of lakhs of urban self-employed poor who provide us valuable services as masons, carpenters, rickshaw pullers, mechanics, road side barbers, cooks, maalis, cleaners, garbage pickers, tailors and a host of poorly paid craftsmen were demolished with vengeance in order to "beautify" Delhi for the Games. We dare not show the world the subhuman conditions in which the hard working poor of India are condemned to live. So better remove them from sight. This could happen only because the urban elite applaud every time slums are demolished and urban poor face clearance operations. 

Their 'national pride' was not wounded when lakhs of poor street vendors from whom we buy our vegetables, fruits and other daily necessities were hounded out of Delhi through brute police action just so that Delhi could look "world class". This despite the fact that the National Policy for Street Vendors adopted by the Central Cabinet way back in 2004 mandates that street vendors should not be evicted under the guise of beautification. Instead, hawking zones should be included in the city's rejuvenation plans. The modest gains made by Manushi in the last 15 years seeking policy reform for street vendors, including legalizing their status, went down the drain as we witnessed lakhs of vendors forced out of Delhi and their stalls razed to the ground, their goods confiscated through the most illegal means. The MCD and Delhi Police did not spare even those who had valid licenses. 

Their 'national pride' was not hurt to see the miserable conditions under which men, women and children who were brought in from impoverished villages to work for constructing the CWG infrastructure were forced to work and live. They too will be seen as unwanted nuisance and in all probability beaten out of Delhi once their purpose is served. 

Their 'national pride' was not hit when we saw the city government install view-cutter walls to hide from view large parts of Delhi, including middle and lower middle class neighborhoods, lest the delegates witness the dilapidated civic infrastructure and piles of garbage that characterize Indian cities, including the national capital. 

Their 'national pride' was not touched when large tracts of the Yamuna flood plains were illegally taken over by the powerful political mafia of Delhi to build the Games Village, in clear violation of environmental laws. The Delhi High Court had ruled that the construction of the Games Village on the flood plains of Yamuna was ecologically unsound and violated all possible environmental laws of the country. However, the kingpins behind the CWG bonanza bulldozed their way through and got a Supreme Court bench to give a go ahead.

The hoopla of 'national pride' and the jingoism surrounding the Games gave them a grand opportunity for a massive land grab operation by converting the flood plains of the Yamuna into prime real estate. They don.t care if the Games Village is ready in time for the sportspersons for whom it was ostensibly built. They are just waiting for end of October so that these flats can be sold for several crores each or gifted to their patrons. 

Nor was all this just about the CWG and Delhi. The 'national pride' of the urban elite is routinely unhurt when thousands of poor people and their children die every year from a host of easily preventable diseases like malaria, diarrhea and jaundice. All due to the appalling insanitary conditions prevailing in the country. We invoke national pride only when dengue threatens to mar the games because mosquitoes cannot tell the difference between Indians and foreigners. We squirm only when foreign governments issue advisories to their citizens warning them against health hazards in Delhi and recommend that they keep their mouths tightly sealed when taking a shower lest they swallow a couple of drops of polluted, disease ridden water supplied by our municipal agencies. 

Their 'national pride' remains intact despite our rivers, including those like the Ganga and the Yamuna believed to be sacred symbols of our ancient culture and civilization, are converted into filthy disgusting sewers with municipalities pouring all our domestic and industrial sewage into them. Our pride is hurt only when we realise belatedly that foreign participants will witness the filth-laden river, its banks overflowing with garbage providing a happy breeding ground for mosquitoes and other disease bugs. 

A few months ago, when the Sports Minister saw how much foul smell emanated from the Yamuna and how wretched it looked, he had suggested in all seriousness that the government should considering covering up the river in order to hide it from public view! 

 Glitzy signage touting the Games was actually a view cutter, shielding the eyes of tourists and athletes from the harsh reality of Delhi's jhuggis.

Safety and well-being

The Australian discus champion said it all when she said she has decided to withdraw her participation because the CWG represented a potential threat to her safety, health and well being. The bald truth is, our ruling establishment and governance machinery represent the most lethal threat to the collective well being, safety and health of all Indians. No wonder people are today seriously proposing that we outsource governance. It is time we asked ourselves:

• Can a country become tourism friendly if it is hostile to its own citizens?
• Can a country become a global power if its ruling elite and its governance machinery are at constant war with its own people?
• Can a country provide safety to foreign tourists if its own police have become the biggest threat to safety and well being of its own people?
• Can a country become world class if its government awakens to the need for basic civic amenities like usable motorable roads, footpaths and street lights only for impressing foreign visitors and that too only in those parts of the city which lead to select stadia?
• Can a country provide a safe and healthy environment for tourists if it does not do so for its own citizens?
• Can the municipal sweepers deliver world class cleanliness and hygiene at the Games Village if they have never been properly trained nor given the requisite equipment for routine cleaning of the City?
• Can a country be attractive to tourists if the Government needs to hide the living conditions of the vast majority of its people from international gaze?
• Can a country be tourism worthy, if its rivers are so foul that they deserve to be hidden from public view? 
  
  
  
   Instead of indulging in pious harangues against the publicly visible faces of this scam, the all important lesson to be learnt from the CWG disaster was that health, wellbeing and safety are indivisible. ( A child asleep at a squalid construction site, as office-goers walk by on the road.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  These Games were destined to be a disaster because its organisers invited upon themselves the curses of the lakhs of uprooted people who were hounded out of the city. The vengeance with which the rain god, Indra Dev, exposed the corruption and fraud in the CWG infrastructure indicated that the curses of the hapless victims of these Games had been heard by the powers above. 
  
  
  Instead of indulging in pious harangues against the publicly visible faces of this scam, the all important lesson to be learnt from the CWG disaster was that health, wellbeing and safety are indivisible. Those who think they can create islands of prosperity and safety for themselves or for videshi tourists better realise that mosquitoes and disease bugs cannot be kept out of our lives by building gated communities. Those who believe the 'image' of India can change without a marked improvement in the lived reality of its impoverished and brutalised citizens only end up making us a laughing stock of the world.
  
  
  Let us not confuse pride with vanity. Let us learn to be proud of the right things. That will happen only when we have the courage to be ashamed of the callousness with which our government treats its own people, and the imperial indifference of the social elites to the wretched plight of most Indians. 
  
  

The truth about Encounters

The unstated policy of murdering unwanted elements is wrong at every possible level, and it leads to a crisis of legitimacy of the state, while claiming to be a patriotic act.

30 July 2010 - People are as much attuned to fairness as they are to individual self-interest. Therefore, any institution regulating human behavior will have to ensure that the compromises between individual self-interest, collective interest and fairness are all within tolerable limits. These trade-offs are as important for larger institutions, including the largest of them all, i.e., the state, as they are for the smallest ones like the family. Just as parents should not repeatedly favour one child over another, the state cannot repeatedly favour one community or class over another. 

Behavioural economists often like to talk about the ultimatum game. Suppose two strangers are sitting at a table and a man comes up to them and says: "I have a hundred rupees here; I will give the money to one of you (let us call him A) and ask him to offer a portion of the total to the other (let us call him B). If B accepts the offer, both of you get to keep their portions. If B refuses, both of you get nothing." 

Suppose A offers B one rupee, keeping ninety nine for himself. A purely rational B might say to himself - I am richer by one rupee without doing any work, let me take whatever I can get. After all, if I found one rupee on the street and you found a hundred on the street, I wouldn't resent your luck. As it turns out, people will not accept such small amounts from another person, even when they didn't have to do any work for it. Anything less than a thirty percent cut is refused by most people. The judgment of fairness is ingrained in our psyches.

Since human beings often grab what they can, we need institutions to ensure fair outcomes. Of these institutions, the state is the most important, since it is designed to ensure that basic human needs are ensured with minimal standards of fairness. A state incapable of or uninterested in ensuring equity in security, education, food, health and shelter is a state whose legitimacy will be questioned. 

Further, the legitimacy of the state is dependent on its being as close to a neutral umpire as possible. When the state appears partisan, its legitimacy can be questioned. When the state sheds the umpire's clothes and becomes one of the players, the rules of fair play are so badly broken that we can only call such an event intolerable injustice. In this article, I would like to talk about an extreme form of intolerable injustice, which goes under the euphemistic title of 'encounter' killings. 

The home minister of Gujarat has been arrested and is being questioned by the CBI in connection with the encounter killing of two people, who were initially labelled as terrorists and are now known to be a small time gangster and his innocent wife. One cannot even begin to catalogue the ways in which things have gone wrong in this instance, starting with the fact that the man entrusted with ensuring law and order is accused of doing the exact opposite. While we should withhold judgment until the facts are made public and verified by independent sources - after all, this very same agency has cleared a prominent Congress leader of involvement in the 1984 riots, a fact that I find somewhat unbelievable - it will not surprise anyone if the current Gujarat government is proven to have murdered its citizens.

 Encounter killings are mostly lies, that they are staged events; a death sentence without a trial. 









Let us then call 'encounter' by its real name: murder. The central point of this article is that 'encounter' is grossly inappropriate to the actual event, which is nothing but the state sanctioned murder of people. After all, we do not accept the terrorists or Maoists version of events, we are not willing to admit or publish a report which says "76 class enemies were eliminated by revolutionary forces," for we rightly condemn these acts as acts of murder. Why are we so complacent when it comes to encounter killings? Is it that the killing of policemen by Maoists justifies the killing of Maoists by policemen? 

The unstated policy of encountering unwanted elements is wrong at every possible level - moral, political, strategic and informational - and it leads to a crisis of legitimacy of the state, while claiming to be a patriotic act. 

We all know that encounter killings are mostly lies, that they are staged events; a death sentence without a trial. Here, the media carries a large burden on its shoulders, for media outlets accept the official version of events despite knowing that the official version is false. After all, how can militants, mafia dons and Maoists all be encountered so frequently? It beggars belief to think that throughout India, insurgents and criminals are engaging in gun battles with the police or the army only to get killed. How come policemen rarely die in encounters, when these insurgents are typically shown to be much better armed than our police? 

Not too long ago, on 2nd July, our newspapers published photographs of the Maoist leader Azad's body splayed out on the ground with what looks like an AK-47 next to it. It seems he was killed after a three hour long encounter. How can a three hour encounter with men armed with AK-47's not even injure a single policeman? I find these photographs grotesque, they make a ritualised spectacle of an extremely serious affair; after all, here is the dead body of a man who was wanted in connection with several offences, but now we can no longer have a public account of his crimes. How come he wasn't arrested and brought to justice? Instead, the state has turned criminal and eliminated him. 

A typical defence of state violence given by otherwise liberal minded people is that one needs unorthodox ways to tackle terrorism, crime and insurgency, that Maoists will not listen to anything other than reciprocal violence. I disagree with these analyses. 

A culture of impunity only leads to more disaffection. If there is any doubt, just look across the border where US drones are murdering people in the hundreds; these are nothing but an advanced form of encounter killings. We know that the drone attacks are immensely unpopular and only emboldening the Taliban. The Americans might be able to kill of Al-Qaeda leadership in this manner, but as far as the Pakistani government is concerned, it only leads to more trouble. 

Banning encounter killings is not a high-minded moral act espoused by progressive intellectuals or critics of the government. One doesn't need to be an Arundhati Roy to condemn encounter killings. If we take the lessons of the ultimatum game seriously, we should realise that fairness is as much part of human nature as selfishness. Institutions that consistently reward selfishness over fairness are illegitimate institutions - Wall Street of the last few years being a case in point. 

In Kashmir, in Maoist controlled areas and in many other parts of India, the Indian state is being questioned because it appears to be a player in the game, rather than the umpire it is supposed to be. Ending the culture of impunity is not just the right thing, it is also the smart thing; it is the first step in creating trust in the institutions that are ostensibly designed to ensure fair outcomes. 

Police and army officers should be told that encounters will not bring them any rewards, that they are being paid to bring offenders to justice, not to kill them. It is no excuse to say that soldiers or policemen are likely to react violently against people who have killed their fellows; uniformed units should be trained to be patient. A policeman is not a mafia hit man; he is there as a representative of the state, not a private party out for revenge. Reciprocal violence is not the right behaviour for an entity that desires monopoly over violence - why would I give up arms, when I know that I can be encountered any day? 

Policemen and military personnel proven to be 'encounter' specialists should be treated as what they are, criminals, instead of being labelled as heroes. In addition, the media should simply stop accepting news stories that report encounters; publicity for these acts is part of the incentive structure for the police and the army. No democratic state should accept or allow murder as a legitimate response to violence by private parties. 

KASHMIR - The human rights challenge

For civil society, the task of addressing human rights concerns in a situation where security forces act with impunity is immensely challenging. Still, there are those who are trying.

21 November 2010 - On 28 July this year, Farrakh Bukhari, an 18-year-old student of mass communication was watching a televised cricket match in his home in Kreri, Baramulla district of North Kashmir, when his father mentioned there was some kind of protest going on in the market. Farrakh stepped out to investigate. That was the last his family saw of him. 

Fourteen days later, his body was found dumped outside the Chaura police station - no flesh on the face, one hand amputated. Hospital sources at the Kreri block hospital where the post-mortem was conducted told , they could not make an official statement because the report for viscera examination was awaited but the body did bear signs of torture. 

Two Kashmir-based journalists visited Palhalan and Bukhari's house immediately after the 35-day-long curfew in the area was lifted. On a day when winter seemed to be nudging closer with pastoral scenes of avenues of willows, people gathering apples and the occasional horse-drawn carts, all of which belied the turmoil and violence the region has witnessed. 

Bukhari's father, an Imam, chronicled the sequence of events. "We learnt that a protest rally of boys from some 22 villages went through Kreri unhindered but at Chaura the police opened fire. Some boys were injured and we were told 40 had been arrested. Later the figure was given out as 39." When his son's name did not figure on the list of those arrested, Basheer Ahmed Bukhari, approached the DSP of Pattan who asked him to check the hospitals. Rounds of all the hospitals did not yield any information even as the police kept insisting his son was among the injured. 

The family then learnt that a woman in Uri had discovered a body in the graveyard that appeared to have been hastily buried. The Bukhari family was denied permission to view it, and police claimed it was that of a foreign militant. However a boy, who saw the body, told Bukhari that the face was unrecognisable but the clothes matched those of young Farrakh. On 11 August, the same body was found dumped outside the Chaura police station, the family identified it and it was taken for post-mortem. The police have promised an inquiry, but the Bukhari family shrugs its shoulders in helplessness when asked what the next step is. 

"What can we do?" asked an uncle. "He was our hope, the one we saw as the breadwinner," he added as he pulled out a recently purchased book on mass communications that the aspiring teenager had bought, and opened a cupboard to display his clothes. 

One family's grief in a small village in Kashmir. One more number in the interminable list of custodial deaths, disappearances and torture. But this microcosm of tragedy exemplifies the rights abuse in a state where the Public Safety Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act have enabled the police and security forces to act with impunity and total lack of accountability. Their "licence" to operate extends from picking up youth to beatings to rape and killings. 

The most recent turmoil in the valley has raised these transgressions of human rights to a new crescendo. At least 110 people have been killed since 11th June. There are at least 1500 cases of firearm/teargas shell and pellet injuries and at least 500 cases of assault and beatings. Pellet injuries are sustained when a gun is operated through a hydraulic mechanism and is ejected in scores. It poses a particular challenge to the medical fraternity because it affects large parts of the body necessitating the presence of several doctors in attendance for a single patient. Another difficulty is that the entry wounds are not clearly visible. 

  A protestor is taken away by security forces 

Significantly many of the injuries sustained by patients admitted to the hospital were in the head, abdomen and chest. Another matter of serious concern was the number of injured people who suffered serious eye injuries and blindness because the CRPF reportedly used slingshots and marbles. Most victims were in their 20's and 30's. According to a hospital source there was one case of assault involving a boy who was only 12 years old. There is also the bizarre case of 10-year-old Danish Nabi, nicknamed Brett Lee for his passion for cricket, who has been listed as a most wanted stone-pelter and who, according to his parents, has been forced to go underground because he fears being arrested. 

The intimidatory tactics by security forces have spared no one. Not even doctors and hospital staff who found their curfew passes being dishonoured as they tried to go to work. Ambulances were stopped and drivers beaten up by security personnel. A senior resident at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences revealed that his curfew pass was on two occasions not honoured by CRPF personnel and that he narrowly escaped being beaten by CRPF personnel near Saura as he attempted to come to work in his own car.

He says he has heard of an incident in which a senior police officer denied doctors the right to board a special vehicle bound for the hospital with the remark, "Bas meri marzee" (Because that's how I wish it). He also corroborates the incident in which security personnel barged into the emergency room of a hospital. 

Yunus (name changed), a youth from Palhalan says he was forced to hide when security personnel stormed into a North Kashmir hospital and severely beat up his other friends who had brought in two injured persons. Rameez and Fayaz (names changed) say they are routinely harassed and risk beatings whenever they venture out on the roads. "We show them our identity cards. We are forced to address them as 'Sir', but even that is not enough." 

In the rural areas, there is far greater repression - the CRPF has reportedly gone on a rampage breaking and vandalising homes. A doctor from SKIMS said that two of his sisters living in different villages had experiences of CRPF personnel storming into homes using crowbars to break the doors and windows. There was no question of filing any FIR, he added. The fear of retaliation is very strong. Moreover, the AFSPA provides that the state government cannot prosecute law enforcement agencies without sanction from the Federal Home Ministry. 

For civil society, the task of addressing human rights concerns is immensely challenging, but one young man who has begun taking steps in the direction is civil engineer Umar Qadri. He grew up in what he describes as an environment of "crackdowns, disappearances and arrests," and believes there cannot be any kind of development as long as one has not resolved concerns of the Kashmiri people and their history of suffering. Qadri has begun documenting human rights violations at the Centre for Law and Development. 

One particularly brutal episode he has documented concerns three men who were picked up in Islamabad (Anantnag) district after an incident in which the army had been fired upon by militants. All three were innocent but were put through rigorous interrogation. The service personnel burned one of the men alive. A second man was then told to pick up the dead body and throw it into a raging mountain stream, but as he attempted to do so he was gunned down. The third man, who was also told to get rid of the bodies similarly, managed to escape by jumping into the stream and swimming away. He then sought refuge in a village cowshed and then went back home. 

Thereafter, says Qadri, the third victim tried unsuccessfully to register an FIR against the concerned army officials. Chillingly, the man added that such incidents were not exceptional in his district, but in fact happened regularly. 

Another case yielded some small recompense. A woman who was raped by a constable in Nowshera in 2008 was given Rs.1 lakh as compensation by the State Human Rights Commission. However, although the National Human Rights Commission asked for dismissal of the constable, no action was taken against him. 

For Qadri, perseverance in the face of such odds is necessary. He feels a huge sense of responsibility in his endeavours, and quotes what the late human rights activist Ram Narayan Kumar once said. "It is shocking that Kashmir could produce one lakh militants but could not produce 100 human rights activists to record the abuses." He hopes civil society will take the initiative to change this, and that one can be "hopeful amid a state of desperation." 

Scandal: Nira Radia, Barkha Dutt Taped Conversations

http://chicagoindiepress.com/443/national/scandal-nira-radia-barkha-dutt-taped-conversations/

Journalist Barkha Dutt is in some hot water thanks to a taped conversation between her and corporate lobbyist Nira Radia that was obtained by Open Magazine.

Barkha Dutt has emerged as a lobbyist for the Congress government.

Hindustan Times Advisory editorial director Vir Sanghvi has also emerged as political lobbyist taking sides with petty political parties.

Barkha Dutt is one of India’s most popular journalists and a winner of the Padma Bhushan Awards. Many of her fans are shocked to see her stoop so low. Will Barkha Dutt bounce back from this crisis ?

When Radia killed the media star
http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/post.php?postid=318

The complete blackout of the Niira Radia tapes by the entire broadcast media and most of the major English newspapers paints a truer picture of corruption in the country than the talk shows in the various news channels and the breast-beating in all the newspapers about the 2G, CWG, Adarsh, and other scams.

The website, NewspostIndia.com has this to say about this phenomenon, "The self anointed flag bearers of the third pillar were caught red handed as the Nira Radia tapes were leaked online by Open and Outlook Magazine. These tapes show the corruption nexus between top journalists such as Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Prabhu Chawla and Vir Sanghvi and political parties and corporate lobbyists. Some print media outlets, such as Mail Today, and foreign media giants carried these revelations. However our very own prime time television news channels NDTV, CNN-IBN, TimesNow, Headlines Today etc. launched a cover up of the news from the public in order to protect their own."

It is quite possible that Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi never lobbied for Raja or for anyone else. But it is quite clear from the tapes that they were by no means practising journalism in their conversations with Radia. What they were doing, is acting as liaison officers for political parties and business houses. In fact, if all those conversations were merely in the course of 'journalistic duty', why this strange black-out?

But what is really scary is that, despite living in a 'democracy' that boasts of a 'free press', if you were dependant only on TV and the big newspapers for the biggest news developments of the day, you would never have known about the Niira Radia tapes, and the murky role of mediapersons as political power brokers. Indeed, the main source of information on this scandal has been online media, such as newspostindia.com, various bloggers, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and of course, the websites of Outlook and Open magazines.

The question that the Barkha Dutts and the Rajdeep Sardesais of the world have to answer is: How can you purport to be a news channel and ignore completely the biggest news break of the day for two days running (Nov 18 and 19)? Sure, say that those tapes are rubbish. Defend your journalists all you want. Do whatever, but how can you pretend to your audience — many of whom anyway have been listening to the tapes from the Open and Outlook and YouTube websites — that they never happened? I mean, how daft is that?

And even if those tapes, reportedly recorded by the IT department, were not authentic, the very fact that the entire broadcast media (bitter rivals for TRPs and ad revenues on normal days) ganged up to black it out shows that they have something to hide. Just as politicians bail each other out in scam-time, it appears journalists do the same.

Outlook prefaces its tape transcripts with the comments, "Radia's conversations show how even cabinet berths can be decided by this select oligarchy. Her interface with discredited (now former) telecom minister A. Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and Ranjan Bhattacharya, the foster son-in-law of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, shows how she successfully lobbied for several cabinet berths. The transcripts suggest that journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt also lobbied for Raja with the Congress party. However, both journalists, in separate statements, decried the use of the label 'lobbyist' and termed their conversation with Radia as part of their normal journalistic duties."
 
At the same time, it is worth noting that neither Barkha nor any of the other journalists whose names have come up have denied that those conversations took place. So why not let the reader or TV viewer read or listen to the transcripts and decide whether Dutt and Sanghvi's conversations with Radia are a part of "normal journalistic duties" or amount to pimping for politicians and business houses? Or perhaps they were doing social service for the Congress? Play the tapes on your show, na, Ms Dutt, instead of tweeting about them? Why not let 'We, The People' decide, instead of you deciding for us all?

Newspostindia.com observes, "The media in the free world prides itself on impartiality. In India, they're in bed with the ruling elites. If these individuals or the companies they represent had any ethics or standards, we would have seen resignations by now."

Earlier this week, the former Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) N Vittal spoke at length about the vicious cycle of the neta-babu-lala-jhola-dada who have "scientifically perfected" corruption. But Vittal left out one vital link in the chain — the media professional.

Bottomline : Let us be clear on one thing; Money stinks and power corrupts. Now the neo rich population likes to hold on to the neo status they have obtained at all costs.

We had corruption till 90's only in the 3 wings of the consitution; the parliamant, judiciary and the executive; now add the fourth the media. Except Arnab Goswami all the others happened to be aligned to some segment or the other.

We do not know many Arun Shourie's now. I doubt if he happened to be a journalist now; even he could have been enticed. I beleive and hope he is not and does not succumb.

We all live in a world of castor oil. Easy to prescribe to others.