Category Archive for ‘human rights’ at Asian Window

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Irom and the iron in India’s soul

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on February 28, 2010

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Irom Sharmila Chanu is a civil rights activist in the Indian state of Manipur. Since November 4, 2000, she’s been on a fast demanding that the Government of India should withdraw the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, from Manipur and other areas of India’s north east.

Her story, says Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka, should be part of universal folklore:

For young Irom Sharmila, things came to a head on November 2, 2000. A day earlier, an insurgent group had bombed an Assam Rifles column. The enraged battalion retaliated by gunning down 10 innocent civilians at a bus-stand in Malom. The local papers published brutal pictures of the bodies the next day, including one of a 62-year old woman, Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. Extraordinarily stirred, on November 4, Sharmila, then only 28, began her fast.

Sprawled in an icy white hospital corridor that cold November evening in Delhi three years ago, Singhajit, Sharmila’s 48-year-old elder brother, had said half-laughing, “How we reach here?” In the echo chamber of that plangent question had lain the incredible story of Sharmila and her journey. Much of that story needed to be intuited. Its tensile strength, its intense, almost preternatural act of imagination were not on easy display. The faraway hut in Imphal where it began. The capital city now and the might of the State ranged against them. The sister jailed inside her tiny hospital room, the brother outside with nothing but the clothes on his back, neither versed in English or Hindi. The posse of policemen at the door. More:

Salman Rushdie: Amnesty International is morally bankrupt

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on February 22, 2010

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From The Sunday Times:

The Booker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie has accused Amnesty International of “moral bankruptcy” for working with a former terror suspect from Britain.

Rushdie, whose plight was championed by Amnesty when he was placed under a fatwa by the Iranian regime for his novel The Satanic Verses, said the charity had done “incalculable damage” to its reputation by collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay, and his organisation Cageprisoners.

His accusation follows the suspension this month of Gita Sahgal, a senior Amnesty official, who raised concerns about the organisation’s links to Begg and Islamists. More:

And below, from The Times, London:

The conscience stifled by Amnesty

When Gita Sahgal questioned the human rights group’s links to Islamic radicals, it suspended her. Now she fears for her safety

Amnesty International has made its name as a champion of free speech, campaigning on behalf of prisoners who have spoken out against oppressive regimes around the world. But when it comes to speaking up about the organisation itself … well, that seems to be a different story.

Last week Gita Sahgal, a highly respected lifelong human rights activist and head of Amnesty’s gender unit, told The Sunday Times of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee.

Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied the organisation to a meeting at Downing Street last month. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succour to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders following the Downing Street visit. More:

Wife’s fears for general imprisoned in Sri Lanka

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on February 11, 2010

in Sri Lanka and human rights

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Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

General Fonseka’s wife, Anoma, broke down in tears as she revealed how the authorities had still not informed her where her husband was being held, after military police bundled him away on Monday evening. She said she feared for his safety and called on the international community to work to free him.

Speaking by phone from Colombo, she said: “They have not told me where he is. I have tried to find out but could not. There are a lot of rumours: some say he is being held at the naval headquarters, some say he is at the army headquarters. Some say he is at an army camp. I cannot find out; nobody can go there.” More:

Inside Tibet

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on February 9, 2010

in Tibet and human rights

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The Economist correspondent travels to Tibet on a “rare authorised trip by a foreign journalist”:

Day four

On the plane out of Lhasa, I sit next to a Nepali businessman who frequently visits Lhasa to buy shoes. He puts them in containers to be taken by lorry to Nepal, where most of them are re-exported to India. He has his complaints: about the duties he has to pay at the border, and the snow that sometimes blocks traffic. But of the road from Lhasa to Nepal, he is full of praise. It once took three days by lorry, he says. Now it is a day and a half. “China is so developed,” he says wistfully, looking out of the window at the ribbons of light marking highways and city streets below. He has little positive to say about Nepal and its roads.

China has been pouring money into its infrastructure in the past few years, and—from a business perspective at any rate—Tibet has been a big beneficiary. On my last visit to Lhasa, in 2008, I went by train. The railway line, Tibet’s first such link with the Chinese interior, had been opened just two years earlier and is one of the country’s most spectacular engineering accomplishments. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet condemn its impact on the environment and the encouragement it gives to a flood of immigrants from the rest of China. But as a feat, it amazes: the $4.2 billion line crosses higher terrain than any other in the world, including permafrost—which requires elaborate ground-cooling measures to protect the rails from changes in temperature. More:

Media crackdown in Sri Lanka

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on February 1, 2010

in Media, Politics, Sri Lanka and human rights

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Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

In what campaigners claimed was a “settling of scores”, around half-a-dozen websites has been blocked and the offices of one of them sealed. A foreign journalist who had been ordered from the country after asking a question about the president’s brother was subsequently told she could stay after her case received international attention.

“Now that the president has been re-elected, there appears to be a settling of scores with critics of the government,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Just days after the election, some officials seem to be on a campaign to abuse their power.” More:

Savita Bhabhi: A (sex) symbol of free speech?

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on January 14, 2010

in Business, India, Media, Technology and human rights

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S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:

A 2008 image of an online cartoon of Savita Bhabhi.

What does Savita Bhabhi—the sari-clad Internet porn star—have to do with Google’s threat to leave China?

For Indian companies, potentially a lot.

Savita, of course, is the voluptuous cartoon character who looks like a cross between reality television star Rakhi Sawant and Veronica Lodge of the Archie Comic book series. There’s nothing subtle about Savita—although she certainly tries.

“I’m going to take a shower! You should also change out of those wet clothes,” she greeted a neighbor in a November episode, for example. As expected, the two end up together in the shower. The illustrations are explicit, the dialogue laughably simple: “Oh that feels so…” or “Oh I’m going to…”

In June, the Indian government banned her. Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the ministry of communications and technology, says the decision was driven by a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra. He did not know which one. More:

Click here to read India’s tech minister’s take on Google, China

Previously at AW:

Rapping at the Burmese Junta

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on January 7, 2010

in Burma, People and human rights

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From Asia Sentinel:

The chain-link gate slides open to reveal a group of young shaven-headed Burmese men and two girls sitting outside a house in Mae Sot, a scruffy town on the Thai side of the Thai-Burmese border.

All are members of Generation Wave, an underground group dedicated to overthrowing the repressive military junta that has ruled Burma since 1962. The odds are against them, as they have been against a long series of movements harboring in Mae Sot and Chiang Mai in Thailand. Nonetheless, Generation Wave has a certain amount of panache, attempting to reach Burma’s youth by using rap and hip hop music and graffiti to inspire others to stand up to authority

“We’ve cut our hair Saffron style,” said Aung Min, one of GW’s founders, referring to the failed Saffron Uprising in 2007, in which tens of thousands took to the streets, led by Buddhist monks, only to have at least 135 people and possibly more shot down by the military. “If something happens in Burma we can go in there quickly and mingle with the monks.” More:

The biggest pain in Asia isn’t the country you’d think

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on January 4, 2010

in India, Politics and human rights

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How India gives global governance the biggest headache. Barbara Crossette in Foreign Policy:

India happily attacks individuals, as well as institutions and treaty talks. As ex-World Bank staffers have revealed in interviews with Indian media, India worked behind the scenes to help push Paul Wolfowitz out of the World Bank presidency, not because his relationship with a female official caused a public furor, but because he had turned his attention to Indian corruption and fraud in the diversion of bank funds.

By the time a broad investigation had ended — and Robert Zoellick had become the new World Bank president — a whopping $600 million had been diverted, as the Wall Street Journal reported, from projects that would have served the Indian poor through malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and drug-quality improvement programs. Calling the level of fraud “unacceptable,” Zoellick later sent a flock of officials to New Delhi to work with the Indian government in investigating the accounts. In a 2009 interview with the weekly India Abroad, former bank employee Steve Berkman said the level of corruption among Indian officials was “no different than what I’ve seen in Africa and other places.”

India certainly affords its citizens more freedoms than China, but it is hardly a liberal democratic paradise. India limits outside assistance to nongovernmental organizations and most educational institutions. It restricts the work of foreign scholars (and sometimes journalists) and bans books. Last fall, India refused to allow Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan journalists to attend a workshop on environmental journalism. More:

The mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui

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on November 24, 2009

in Afghanistan, Crime, Pakistan, Terrorism and human rights

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Dr Aafia Siddiqui is an MIT-educated, Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. Once dubbed “the most wanted woman,” she is to stand trial in New York for attempted murder and alleged links to al-Qaida. Declan Walsh in the Guradian:

On a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.

Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”.

At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.

The woman was standing there, pointing the officer’s gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting “Get the fuck out of here!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Nobody was hit. As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted “to kill Americans”. Then she passed out. More:

Also read All Things Pakistan:

And it was on July 6, 2008, when a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her. This would never happen to a Western Woman,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

The Shopian botch-up

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on October 4, 2009

in India and human rights

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On May 29, 2009, two women disappeared in Shopian district of Kashmir. A day later their bodies were found. They were allegedly raped, and murdered. Muzamil Jameel looks at the shocking case in The Sunday Express:

On the evening of May 29, Neelofar, 22, and her sister-in-law Aasiya, 17, left for their apple orchard across the Rambiyar stream at Nagabal Dehgam, which their family had bought recently. Hoping to return before sundown, Neelofar didn’t take her two-year-old son Suzaine with her. But she never returned.

Neelofar’s husband Shakeel Ahangar launched a desperate search for his wife and sister but drew blank. The wife of one of the neighbours, Ghulam Qadir, had seen the girls leave the orchard but couldn’t say where they went. As the shadows grew darker, Shakeel decided to go to the local police station. A police party accompanied him and started a search across the Rambiyar stream. They looked till 2.30 in the morning before calling off the search till morning.

The following day, when the police along with Shakeel returned to the Rambiyar stream, they found Neelofar’s body. Aasiya’s body was recovered a km downstream. According to the Justice Jan Commission report-the commission was set up by the government to probe the case and was led by a retired High Court judge-the police flouted the procedure they were required to follow, right from the time the bodies were found to when they were identified.

The local police’s initial report suggested that the two women had died by drowning. They didn’t bother to collect the evidence-both circumstantial and forensic-at the spots where the bodies were found. The spots were not scanned for evidence, the clothes of the victims were not secured and, in fact, it was villagers and not the police who brought Aasiya’s body to her home in Bonpore in Shopian. More:

The British woman caught in Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war

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on September 16, 2009

in Sri Lanka and human rights

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Gethin Chamberlain in the Guardian:

The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead.

Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.

“The mother couldn’t bring the dead body and she doesn’t want to leave it as well. She was standing … holding the baby. She didn’t know what to do … At the end, because of the shell bombing and people rushing – there were thousands and thousands of people, they were rushing in and pushing everyone – she just had to leave the baby at the side of the road, she had to leave the body there and come, she had no choice. And I was thinking in my mind ‘What have the people done wrong? Why are they going through this, why is the international government not speaking up for them? I’m still asking.”

Four months later and Gnanakumar is sitting on a cream leather sofa in the living room of the family home in Chingford, Essex, reliving the final days of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war.

For most of those four months, the 25-year-old British graduate was imprisoned behind razor wire inside the country’s grim internment camps, home to nearly 300,000 people. She was released last week, partly as a result of pressure from this newspaper, and flew back into London on Sunday. More:

Sri Lanka jails journalist who criticised war policy

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on September 1, 2009

in Media, Politics, Sri Lanka and human rights

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Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:

A Sri Lankan reporter, recently named by US President Barack Obama as an example of the way journalists are persecuted around the world, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for writing articles critical of the government’s military operations.

In a case that campaigners say highlights a campaign of intimidation against the country’s independent media, JS Tissainayagam was jailed after a court decided he had breached harsh anti-terror laws. He is the first journalist to be convicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Mr Tissainayagam, an experienced columnist who wrote for several publications including the now defunct Northeastern Monthly magazine, had written several articles in 2006 and 2007 in which he accused the government of withholding food and other essentials from Tamil-majority areas as a weapon of war. The court decided that his articles broke the law because they were designed to create agitation between the Tamil minority and the Sinhala majority. “The constitution guarantees media freedom, but no one has a right to deliberately publish false reports that would lead to communal violence,” said the government prosecutor Sudarshana de Silva. More:

Also from the Independent:

Totalitarian leader

mahinda_rajapakse1

Mahinda Rajapaksa

The year was 1989. A violent youth insurrection that had terrorised the Sri Lankan populace was being brutally quelled by the state establishment. Bodies were burned on rubber tyres and the charred remains were left on every street corner. Hundreds of corpses were polluting the major rivers of the island’s south-west. Disappearances, arbitrary detention and revenge killings were the order of the day. With a government at the zenith of its power determined to crush the insurgency through force, leaving a trail of innocent victims in its wake, a young Sri Lankan opposition parliamentarian from the rural south decided to take a stand against the country’s deteriorating human rights situation and the state terror being unleashed upon his fellow citizens.

Travelling to Switzerland without a penny in his pocket and on an air ticket purchased for him by a friend, the young politician entered the building of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva and parked himself in the lobby. Over several days, he waylaid every delegation passing through those halls, using each opportunity to tell members of the world community about the tragedy that was unfolding in Sri Lanka. So eager and relentless was the young man that he was finally given a special meeting at the UNCHR to present his case. Back in Sri Lanka he organised anti-government campaigns and founded organisations that looked into disappearances. He was, if anything, the face of the agitation campaign against the regime of the day, the street fighter determined to secure the rights of the oppressed and release them from the brutal grip of state terror.

That man is now Sri Lanka’s fifth executive President, elected to office in 2005 and credited with having achieved the impossible by defeating the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation that was fighting for a separate homeland in the island’s north-east. With his government being accused of gross human rights violations and heavy-handed tactics in the name of quashing terrorism, the President calls rights campaigners ‘traitors’ if they are Sri Lankans and ‘terrorists’ or ‘terrorist agents’ if they happen to be foreigners. And so, beyond the signature moustache and the shawl he still wears around his neck, there is no resemblance between the starry-eyed Mahinda Rajapaksa from Hambantota, fighting for the rights of his citizens in Geneva and the corpulent, shrewd politician occupying the premier seat of power in Sri Lanka today. More:

Video that reveals truth of Sri Lankan ‘war crimes’

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on August 27, 2009

in Sri Lanka and human rights

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Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:

The naked man, his hands bound behind his back, is pushed to the ground. Then a man in military uniform delivers a forceful kick to the back of the prisoner’s head with the heel of his boot. As the prisoner slumps forward, another soldier points his automatic weapon and fires a single shot. The man’s body jolts. “It’s like he jumped,” laughs one of the giggling soldiers.

As gunfire rattles, the camera pans left to reveal a further seven bloodstained bodies, all handcuffed and bound, and – with one exception – similarly naked, strewn on the ground. The camera then pans right again, as another naked man is forced to the ground and shot in the back of the head. This time the body falls backwards.

These scenes, captured on video, allegedly show extra-judicial killings of Tamils by Sri Lankan troops earlier this year in the bitter and bloody endgame of the country’s civil war. As government forces made a decisive thrust into the stronghold of rebel forces to end the decades-long conflict, a Sri Lankan soldier apparently took this footage, which was then smuggled out of the country by activists. It may constitute the first hard evidence for those who believe war crimes were committed in the effort to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The significance of this footage – particularly shocking for the seemingly casual way in which the killings were carried out – is even greater given the way that journalists and independent observers were prevented by the government from reaching the war zone. The UN has estimated that 10,000 civilians were killed in what was, in effect, a war with no outside witnesses. More:

Law will let Afghan husbands starve wives who withhold sex

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on July 10, 2009

in Afghanistan, Culture, Society and human rights

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Jerome Starkey from Bamiyan in the Independent:

An Afghan law which legalised rape has been sent back to parliament with a clause letting husbands starve their wives if they refuse to have sex.

President Hamid Karzai ordered a review of the legislation after The Independent revealed that it negated the need for consent within marriage.

President Barack Obama described it as “abhorrent”, Gordon Brown said Britain would “not tolerate” it, and other Nato countries threatened to withdraw their troops unless the legislation was drastically re-written.

The amendments were passed to the cabinet this week and signed by Mr Karzai on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said last night.

The women’s rights activist Wazhma Frough, who was involved in the review, said that conservative religious leaders had pressured the Justice Ministry to keep many of the most controversial clauses. More:

Click here for Human Rights Watch.

Kashmir’s girls learn how to fight back

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on July 6, 2009

in India, Politics, Women and human rights

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From the National:

Humaira Saima feels a grasping hand on her shoulder and springs into action without a second’s hesitation.

Spinning around, the 18-year-old delivers a swift punch to the face of her hapless assailant, then sends him reeling with a high kick.

Luckily for her would-be attacker, Ms Saima’s self-defence manoeuvres take place in the safety of a class where she is honing her skills amid fears of a real assault.

For the teenager is one of a growing number of girls in trouble-stricken Kashmir who have decided to take drastic action to protect themselves in the face of all-too-frequent attacks on young women.

A month ago, Nelofar Jan, 22 and her 17-year-old sister-in-law, Aasiya, were allegedly gang-raped and murdered by Indian security forces.

The discovery of their bodies in a shallow stream in Shopian, 52km from Srinagar, the summer capital of India-administered Kashmir, has sparked ongoing riots and protests. Many of those who took to the streets and were subsequently arrested were women. More:

Aung San Suu Kyi: 5,000 days in captivity

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on July 5, 2009

in Burma and human rights

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To commemorate Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday on June 19, The Irrawaddy invited its readers to submit their artwork featuring the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The sketch above is by the artist Ko Khaing.

To commemorate Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday on June 19, The Irrawaddy invited its readers to submit their artwork featuring the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The sketch above is by the artist Ko Khaing.

Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:

Today, like most days, Aung San Suu Kyi will sit and wait. She will spend the day with the two women she has been detained with since 2003. That she is being held in a “guesthouse” in the grounds of Rangoon’s Insein jail, as opposed to her lakeside house where she has spent the past six years, makes little difference; she has no television, radio or phone. But today is special, and for the most dismal of reasons. It is the 5,000th day of her incarceration.

Ms Suu Kyi is being held at the prison, having been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after a mysterious American swam to her home and spent the night there. In truth, the only crime committed by the graceful opposition leader was to win an election two decades ago. Even now, the junta is terrified that this slight 64-year-old widow has the power to do something they have never been able to do: lead and unite the people of Burma without the threat of force. That is why she is kept a prisoner, out of sight but never out of mind.

Yesterday, in a move that underlined the regime’s fear about Ms Suu Kyi’s latent power, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was refused permission to speak with her. On a controversial visit to Burma to try to convince Senior General Than Shwe to release more than 2,000 political prisoners and restart dialogue with the opposition, Mr Ban said his request for a meeting with Ms Suu Kyi had been turned down. “I pressed as hard as I could. I had hoped that he would agree to my request, but it is regrettable that he did not,” he told reporters. “I am deeply disappointed that they have missed a very important opportunity.” More:

377: Accept it and move on

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on July 4, 2009

in India, Society and human rights

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In The Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta applauds a brave new Delhi High Court judgment for upholding our Constitutional values of liberty, equality, privacy and a check on state power.

The white and the red rose: Currier & Ives, 1860s, from the Library of Congress

The white and the red rose: Currier & Ives, 1860s, from the Library of Congress

There come moments in the life of a nation when it has to confront its deepest prejudices and fears in the mirror of its constitutional morality. The Delhi high court’s judgment in Naz Foundation vs Union of India, decriminalising private, adult, consensual homosexual acts, does just that. The judgment is a powerful example of judicial craftsmanship. It is, unusually amongst recent judgments that are constitutionally significant, clear and precise. It embodies the right combination of technical rigour in thinking about the law, with a persuasive vision of the deepest values those laws embody.

There will be an appropriate time for a detailed legal analysis of the judgment. Many will, doubtless, latch on to the judgment as offending something called our tradition or our values. But to interpret it this way would be a mistake. What the court says is this. Under our constitutional scheme, no person ought to be targeted or discriminated against for simply being who they are. If we give up this value, we give up everything all of us cherish: both our liberty and our right to be treated equally. This judgment is defending our values. Simply put, the judgment says that the state has no presumptive right to regulate private acts between consenting adults. It protects privacy. That is our value. The judgment says that individuals should not feel so stigmatised that they are unable to seek medical help. That is our value. more

[pic: cc, Bobster]

India’s ‘Gay Day’

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on July 3, 2009

in India, Society and human rights

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The Hindustan Times

The Hindustan Times

The Asian Age

The Asian Age

The Indian Express

The Indian Express

The Delhi High Court on Thursday legalised homosexual intercourse between consenting adults by overturning a 149-year-old law which describes a same-sex relationship as an “unnatural offence”. Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence. The Indian media has hailed the ruling. More here, here, here, here.

Designer Wendell Rodricks, who celebrated his silver jubilee with his French partner last year, on why the court verdict isn’t just about gays. In the Indian Express:

I never ever thought of myself as a criminal. In fact quite frankly, I do not think about myself at all. I go about my work, enjoy traveling, mingle with friends who are from all walks of life and embrace life as a huge learning curve. Along the way, I learnt that I could be a criminal in the eyes of the law. A certain section in the Indian Penal Code was a dragon that could awaken from its slumber and put me in trouble.

People who talk against amending Section 377 have not even read the law. They call it a gay law which it isn’t. It pertains to all Indians, clubbing together paedophiles, rapists, gays and ordinary couples who indulge in “sex against the law of Nature”. That means that married couples who have oral sex, or anything other than what the missionaries ordained, are criminals. Even if they do this in the privacy of their bedrooms. More:

Do not forget Burma

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on June 28, 2009

in Burma and human rights

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Laura Bush — yes, former First Lady and wife of poor, reviled Dubya — emerges a champion of an unlikely cause in The Washington Post

For two weeks, the world has been transfixed by images of Iranians taking to the streets to demand the most basic human freedoms and rights. Watching these courageous men and women, I am reminded of a similar scene nearly two years ago in Burma, when tens of thousands of Buddhist monks peacefully marched through their nation’s streets. They, too, sought to reclaim basic human dignity for all Burmese citizens, but they were beaten back by that nation’s harsh regime.

Since those brutal days in September 2007, Burma’s suffering has intensified. In the past 21 months, the number of political prisoners incarcerated by the junta has doubled. Within the past 10 days, two Burmese citizens were sentenced to 18 months in prison. Their offense: praying in a Buddhist pagoda for the release of the jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. That is only the tip of the regime’s brutality. Inside Burma, more than 3,000 villages have been “forcibly displaced” — a number exceeding the mass relocations in genocide-racked Darfur. The military junta has forced tens of thousands of child soldiers into its army and routinely uses civilians as mine-sweepers and slave laborers. It has closed churches and mosques; it has imprisoned comedians for joking about the government and bloggers for writing about it. Human trafficking, where women and children are snatched and sold, is pervasive. Summary executions pass for justice, while lawyers are arrested for the “crime” of defending the persecuted.

[Pic: Jurablog's photostream under creative commons]

The world in refugees

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on June 17, 2009

in human rights

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From the Guardian: Figures out on Wednesday show that the number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42m. And that’s NOT including the thousands displaced by violent conflicts in Sri Lanka and the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

Enemy of the state

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on May 30, 2009

in India and human rights

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What makes men like Binayak Sen pose such a threat to the state that he has to be jailed for over two years until the Supreme Court is forced to intervene? In Tehelka, Shoma Chaudhury travels to Raigad and Dantewada in Chhatisgarh where the state is waging war against it own people, to find out.

ONE YEAR ago, before the campaign on his behalf had gained m o m e n t u m , TEHELKA did a cover story on Binayak Sen – doctor and human rights activist, jailed on false charges under the draconian Chhattisgarh (People’s) Public Security Act (See TEHELKA: No Country for Good Men). On May 25, when Supreme Court judges Markandeya Katju and Deepak Verma took just sixty seconds to undo an injustice that had been wilfully perpetuated by the State for two long years, it should have been an occasion for another cover story, more celebratory, documenting among other things, Binayak’s wife, Ilina’s Herculean legal struggle for his release. But Binayak and Ilina’s story is merely symbolic of a much bigger, on-going and faceless struggle. And so, even as the human rights community exploded in joy with the May 25 victory, 400 kilometers from Raipur, another big battlefront was being opened.

It is two days after 59-year-old Binayak Sen got to go home. May 28, scalding, red dust everywhere, a hot loo blowing. A man in a white lungi and kurta sits under a leafy tree, listening to ten Gond tribals tell their story of how two nights earlier their village was looted. Every ration burnt. Every goat taken, every hen kidnapped. Not even a little chick left behind. The tribals have trekked from faraway Kamanar village in the hope that this man in white will help them access the ear of the State. It is a difficult proposition because it is the State that has looted the village: How do you lodge an FIR with the police when it is the police that have stolen your chickens?

Previously on AW:

Sentence first, verdict afterwards

Chhatisgarh loses the plot

The silent horror in Sri Lanka

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on March 30, 2009

in Sri Lanka and human rights

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The Sri Lanka government is carrying out a genocide against its Tamil minority citizens and the world’s media is silent, writes Arundhati Roy in The Times of India

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
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Sonali Samarasinghe: A widow on the run

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on February 9, 2009

in Sri Lanka and human rights

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Her husband predicted the authorities would murder him. Now in hiding, she is on a mission to bring justice to Sri Lanka. Andrew Buncombe reports from Colombo in The Independent:

Sonali Samarasinghe bids farewell to her husband.

Sonali Samarasinghe bids farewell to her husband.

There had been previous incidents, threats and warnings scrawled in red paint. And on that very morning, when they had driven before work to the chemist’s shop, two sinister-looking men on a large black motorbike raced past their car. Lasantha Wickrematunga, a newspaper editor, and his wife, Sonali Samarasinghe, were convinced they were being tailed.

Back in their home, Mrs Wickrematunga, who is also a journalist, pleaded with her husband to stay at home. But it was a Thursday – a vital production day at her husband’s Sunday newspaper – and he had to go. “See you in the office,” she said as he left. Thirty minutes later she received a phone call telling her he had been fatally shot as he made his way to the office on the outskirts of Colombo. She rushed to the hospital and found her husband on a trolley, blood seeping from his mouth and ears. Doctors struggled to save him, but there was nothing they could do.

If you write you’ll be killed

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on January 17, 2009

in Media, Sri Lanka and human rights

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In the aftermath of the assassination of Sri Lankan newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, his family and friends remember a man who died challenging his government’s account of the civil war. Amelia Gentleman from Colombo in The Guardian:

Lasantha Wickrematunge thought and talked a lot about his own death. He had known for a decade that his career as Sri Lanka’s most provocative independent journalist would ultimately prove fatal. He made precise preparations for the end.

In public, he appeared sanguine. When Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, called him in a fury last year, screaming that he would be killed if he continued to speak out, he laughed it off. When a funeral wreath was delivered to his door, colleagues at the Sunday Leader, the virulently anti-establishment paper he edited, said he got a “kick out of it”. Earlier this month, when he received a page of his own newspaper daubed in red paint with the words “If you write you will be killed”, he appeared to pay no attention.

Privately, however, he sat down in his office and composed a powerful, valedictory column, accusing the government of his still-to-be-committed murder. “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me,” he wrote in this obituary, which he left for publication after the expected assassination. He predicted that the president – who was, despite their differences, a longstanding friend – would be “anguished” by his death, but would have “no choice” but to protect his killers; addressing the president directly, he anticipated a police cover-up: “You will see to it that the guilty one is never convicted.”

Previously on AW: And then they came for me

Where a baby girl is a mother’s awful shame

Published

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on November 24, 2008

in India, Women and human rights

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Over the past 20 years in India, 10 million female babies have been aborted. The pressure to have sons is terrifying – mothers who bear daughters are beaten or cast aside by husbands and in-laws desperate to escape the financial burden of a girl’s dowry. Now mothers are being urged to ’save the girl child’ as the country tries to end decades of tragic abuse. Gethin Chamberlain travelled around Delhi earlier this month and met some of the growing number of women who have been affected by the practice of aborting female foetuses. Her report in the Observer:

The birth of Rekha’s second daughter should have been one of the happiest days of her life. Instead, she lay on the bed of her home on the outskirts of Delhi, the newborn child on the floor, screaming in terror as her mother-in-law poured paraffin over her.

This was her punishment, the older woman said, preparing to strike a match: Rekha had failed again to deliver a son and it would be better for everyone if she were dead. Suddenly the door burst open and her neighbours rushed in, roused by the frantic screaming. They bundled Rekha and her daughter out of the house, never to return.

Murder in the snow

Published

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on November 10, 2008

in China and human rights

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In September 2006 two groups of people crossed paths in the snow-capped Himalayas, one seeking freedom and the other adventure. A brutal shooting threw them together, changing their lives forever. BBC will be broadcasting a documentary on the shooting and its aftermath on Monday, November 10 at 1900 GMT. Sally Ingleton tells the story

Each year an estimated 2,500 Tibetans make the dangerous and illegal crossing through the Himalayas into India.

Many are young teenagers seeking freedom both in religious practice and in their education. A big incentive is the prospect of meeting their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

In 2006 the plight of these refugees came to international attention when a group of mountain climbers witnessed and recorded Chinese border police opening fire on one group of pilgrims as they made their way across the Nangpa pass in the Himalayas, 18,000 feet (5,500m) above sea level.

A video of Chinese army soldiers shooting Tibetan refugees as they tried to escape over the Himalayas in September 2006 can be viewed on YouTube here

Hunger in Indian states ‘alarming’

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on October 15, 2008

in India and human rights

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Believe it or not, India has worse hunger levels than Sudan, Nigeria or Cameroon. Twelve Indian states have “alarming” levels of hunger while the situation is “extremely alarming” in the state of Madhya Pradesh, says a report released as part of the 2008 Global Hunger Index. It ranks India at 66 out 88 countries.

More here and here:

Mystery of Siddiqui disappearance

Published

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on August 6, 2008

in Pakistan and human rights

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From BBC:

Aafia Siddiqui

Aafia Siddiqui

Aafia Siddiqui, whom the US accuses of al-Qaeda links, vanished in Karachi with her three children on 30 March 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that a woman had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

Initially, confirmation came from a Pakistan interior ministry spokesman. But a couple of days later, both the Pakistan government and the FBI publicly denied having anything to do with her disappearance.

Two days after Aafia Siddiqui went missing, “a man wearing a motor-bike helmet” arrived at the Siddiqui home in Karachi, her mother told the BBC. “He did not take off the helmet, but told me that if I ever wanted to see my daughter and grandchildren again, I should keep quiet,” Ms Siddiqui’s mother told me over the phone in 2003.

Anger in Pakistan as ‘missing’ scientist resurfaces in US court on terror charges

From The Independent:

Aafia Siddiqui reappeared five years later in US custody in Afghanistan

Aafia Siddiqui reappeared five years later in US custody in Afghanistan

A US-trained neuroscientist’s appearance in a New York court charged with the attempted murder of American soldiers and FBI agents has sparked angry protests in her homeland of Pakistan.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is under suspicion of having links to the al-Qa’ida terror network of Osama bin Laden, and is the first woman ever sought by the US in connection with the group, which was behind the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

According to US officials, Ms Siddiqui, who reportedly studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, was arrested in Afghanistan on 17 July in possession of recipes for explosives and chemical weapons, as well as details of landmarks in the United States, including in New York.

Sentence first, verdict afterwards

Published

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on June 2, 2008

in human rights

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Dr Binayak Sen, a public health specialist and human rights activist, has now spent a year in an Indian prison. He is accused of links with Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh, one of India’s poorest states where the rebels have a strong presence. The doctor denies the charge.

The latest issue of The Economist carries a piece on how India’s anti-Maoist laws have become an international embarrassment:

Dr Sen worked in the remote reaches of Chhattisgarh, one of several places where India’s Maoists (known as Naxalites) hold sway, raiding police stations, sabotaging telecom towers and intimidating villagers. He helped set up a hospital for miners and trained community health-workers. He is also an official of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which campaigns against human-rights abuses. He became a vocal critic of the government’s strategy of arming and mobilising villagers against the Naxalites, thereby relying on vigilantes to quell an insurgency which the state itself has failed to end.

Dr Sen was charged under both the national penal code and a sweeping state law. The Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act criminalises a broad array of dealings with unlawful organisations, including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the main Naxalite party.

The doctor, the state, and a sinister case

From Tehelka:

The story of Binayak Sen is the story of the dangerously thin ice India’s democratic rights skim on. The story of every dangerous schism in India today: State versus people. Urban versus rural. Unbridled development versus human need. Blind law versus natural justice. It is the story of an India unraveling at the seams. The story of unjust things that happen – unreported – to thousands of innocent people, the story of unjust things waiting to happen to you and me, if we ever step off the rails of shining India to investigate what’s happening in the rest of the country. Most of all, it is the story of what can be done to ordinary individuals when the State dons the garb of being under siege.

Previously on AW:

Losing the plot

Time runs out for islanders on global warming’s front line

Published

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on March 30, 2008

in Bangladesh, environment and human rights

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Rising sea levels threaten to flood the Ganges delta, leading to an environmental disaster and a refugee crisis for India and Bangladesh. In The Observer, UK, Douglas McDougall reports from the Sundarbans:

Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest delta.

Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island, the women dressed in purple, orange and green saris, do the same, trying to hold back the tide.

For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans, the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years; here global warming is a reality, not a prediction.