Remote Indian state struggles for identity

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

http://images.thenews.com.pk/17-04-2012/ethenews/e-103488.htm

Promoted in official tourist brochures as the "jewel of India," the tiny state of Manipur seems closer to an ignored family heirloom than a proudly coveted gem.
Backwards, marginalised, isolated, insurgency-wracked: the adjectives that most frequently precede any mention of Manipur -- for all its stunning natural beauty -- are overwhelmingly negative.

And for many Manipuris, the concept of being of India in any meaningful sense is one they find difficult to entertain. "Why should I care about India when India does not care about me," says Jiangam Kamei, a 22-year-old history student in the state capital Imphal.

Such expressions of alienation are common in a number of the "Seven Sisters" -- the group of north-eastern states encircled by five other countries and connected to the rest of India by a sliver of land that arches over Bangladesh. Their relative isolation is not just geographical, but also ethnic, linguistic, economic and political.

"We look so different to start with," said Kshetrimayum Onil, who works for a local human rights group in Manipur and also runs a youth network called ReachOut. "We are often mistaken for Chinese or Koreans because of our Mongol roots,"

 Onil said. One of India's smallest states with a population of just 2.7 million inhabitants, Manipur borders Myanmar and its people have always tended to look eastwards in their search for cultural links.

"We are virtually cut off from mainland India," said Shyam Singh, a history professor in Imphal. "Culturally and socially, we identify ourselves more with the countries of South-east Asia as they are closer to home."

One striking example is the massive popularity in Manipur of Korean movies, soap operas and pop music, which have filled the vacuum caused by a separatist-led boycott of Bollywood films.

Separatist violence has been part of daily life in Manipur for decades, as it has been in most of the north-eastern states that have spawned more than 100 militant groups whose demands range from autonomy to secession.

Manipur was incorporated into the Indian Union on October 15, 1949, two years after the country won independence from British rule.

 
According to political analyst Sharat Chandra, the enormous problems India faced after partition meant its leaders neglected remote states like Manipur which were never properly integrated into the socio-political mainstream.

The central government's "step-motherly treatment" fuelled separatist sentiment from the outset and rebel outfits sprang up each vying for political supremacy and promising secession from India to its people, Chandra said.

 
The perception of New Delhi as a quasi-colonial power was reinforced by the huge deployment of security forces armed with sweeping anti-insurgency powers to counter the separatist violence that peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.

"The government exists only in name here," said Inder Laishram, who runs a shop in Imphal's main Burma Bazaar, where heavily armed commandos are a constant presence. "The real power is in the hands of the army and the underground outfits. Both run the show with the power of the gun. We have nowhere to turn to," the 35-year-old said.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the myriad rebel groups are largely formed on tribal or ethnic lines with rival agendas that regularly erupt into bloody internecine disputes.

Manipur has a strong ethnic mix, and the state's Meitei, Naga, Kuki and Pangal communities are all deeply committed to preserving their own cultural autonomy. Laishram belongs to the Hindu Meiteis who dominate the Manipuri plains, and it is that community which provides his primary identity, as he makes clear when asked whether he voted in recent elections.

"Why should I? We are Meiteis. We are not Indians," he said. The disconnect with the rest of the country extends to sport. In the streets of the bazaar, young boys play a game of sepak takraw, or kick volleyball, a sport native to the Malay-Thai Peninsula, as opposed to cricket.

Many goods come through the border town of Moreh from China, Thailand and Myanmar. Moreh boomed after it was declared a Free Trade Zone by the Indian government in 1995, but plans for it to become a key transit point on the future Trans-Asia Railway have been stymied by the threat from rebels.

The charge that Manipur has been neglected and marginalised by the Indian government has found a powerful symbol in the person of Irom Sharmila -- a 40-year-old activist who has been labelled the world's longest hunger striker. For more than 11 years, Sharmila has refused food and water to back her demand for the withdrawal of the special powers wielded by -- and according to critics widely abused by -- the security forces. "I have no other option but to continue my protest as long as rights of innocent people continue to be violated," said Sharmila who began her fast in 2000 after the killing of 10 people by the army at a bus stop near her home.

She was arrested shortly after beginning her protest -- on charges of attempted suicide -- and was sent to a prison hospital where she is force-fed via a nasal drip several times a day. "I don't want to be glorified. I just want that the government should accept my only demand instead of spending huge amounts of money for keeping me alive," said the frail and extremely pale 40-year-old.

General VK Singh visits Maoist heartland

Sunday, April 15, 2012

http://zeenews.india.com/news/chhattisgarh/general-vk-singh-visits-maoist-heartland_770043.html

Raipur: Army chief General VK Singh travelled to leftist insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh's Bastar region Saturday where the Army has a training camp in a jungle stretch, official sources said.

General Singh spent a few hours at Kondagaon area, some 220 km of from capital Raipur, and held discussions with jawans regarding the training facilities available to them in the region that has witnessed a string of deadly attacks by Maoists mainly since 2005.

Officials said that in his maiden visit as Army chief to the sprawling 40,000 sq km Bastar region where army has been conducting training since May-June last year, Singh expressed satisfaction over a series of civic training programmes that were being undertaken by the army in the region to establish direct rapport with the local population.

The army has made it clear repeatedly that it has stepped into Maoist (Naxal) territory in Chhattisgarh only for "jungle warfare training, not for anti-Maoist operation".

General Singh also paid a courtesy visit to Chief Minister Raman Singh here during his daylong visit to the state and held a detailed discussion on several issues, including the Leftist insurgency issue.

Sources at the chief minister's office said that Raman Singh briefed the army chief about the history of Maoist insurgency in Bastar region and also gave him details about the steps the state government had taken in recent years to restore peace in the troubled region.

General Singh also called on Governor Shekhar Dutt.

Slight rise in US mly sex assault cases

Sunday, April 15, 2012

http://images.thenews.com.pk/15-04-2012/ethenews/e-103185.htm

WASHINGTON: The number of sexual assault cases reported to US military authorities edged up last year, with most involving a member of the armed forces attacking another, the Pentagon said in an annual report released on Friday. The 3,192 cases in 2011 amounted to a 1 percent increase over the 3,158 reported in 2010.

Some 56 percent of the cases involved one service member attacking another, 26 percent a member of the military attacking a civilian, 6 percent a civilian attacking a service member and12 percent an unidentified person attacking a service member, the report said.

Despite an increased effort by authorities to address the problem and highlight the issue with the annual report, figures on sexual assaults in the military have remained largely unchanged.

US Representative Jackie Speier, an outspoken critic of the military's handling of sexual assault cases, said the report showed "regrettably, more of the same," with cases up and prosecutions and punishments down.

"All of the important numbers are going in the wrong direction," said Speier, who advocates taking sexual assault cases out of the hands of the military's chain of command and putting them under the jurisdiction of a special office made up of military and civilian experts.

"This report shows that prevention classes and sensitivity training are not enough to solve the problem of rape and sexual assault in the military," she said.

Reporting of sexual assaults in the military is divided into two groups: restricted cases, which remain confidential and about which little information is available, and unrestricted cases, which are investigated and prosecuted through normal military channels.

Of the 2,439 unrestricted reports of sexual assault, 31 per cent were charges of rape, 30 per cent charges of aggravated sexual assault and 25 per cent allegations of wrongful sexual contact. The remaining allegations involved a range of other sexual crimes.

The war on terror is corrupting all it touches

April 14, 2012

Simon Jenkins

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3311975.ece?homepage=true

On Monday (April 9, 2012), the BBC Panorama programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into a legal abyss. The claim was that MI6, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service, rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Qadhafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Qadhafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were “rendered” via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four-and-a-half months, at the tender mercies of Qadhafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa. Belhaj's pregnant wife was taped like a mummy on a stretcher, and he was systematically tortured. Koussa himself denies any involvement in torture.

With this gift came a covering letter from MI6's Mark Allen, offering Koussa congratulations on the “safe arrival” of the “air cargo [Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years.” Within two weeks, Qadhafi was welcoming a fawning Blair in his famous desert tent, and announcing that he would abjure terrorism and set aside his “planned” weapons of mass destruction. The plans were spurious, but the deal allowed Blair to walk tall in Washington at a time when the Iraq invasion was turning sour.

Less spurious were other elements in the strange relationship. It was claimed Britain would not just deliver Belhaj but lift sanctions. Qadhafi would greet British Petroleum's Lord Browne, accompanied by Allen, who switched with full ministerial approval from being an MI6 officer to a £200,000 special adviser to BP. When, three years later, the £15-billion deal with BP seemed to falter, it's claimed Allen pressed his old boss, Jack Straw, the former Home Affairs and Justice Minister, to release Libya's Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Allen was a senior adviser to Monitor consultancy, which helped boost Qadhafi's world image, and assisted the London School of Economics (LSE), on whose advisory board Allen sat and where Qadhafi's son Saif was receiving a much-heralded PhD. The new chairman of BP was none other than Sir Peter Sutherland, also chairman of the LSE.

When, in 2011, Qadhafi's regime was visibly tottering, Britain coolly deserted him. Sanctions were re-imposed, but no one thought to tell Nato special forces, present at the fall of Tripoli, to find and secure the building in which the incriminating documents lay. Presumably to the horror of MI6, Human Rights Watch got there first and found Allen's letter, which was handed to journalists. To make things worse, Belhaj was now out of jail and head of Tripoli's military council. Worse still, his old nemesis, Koussa, had shrewdly defected as Qadhafi crumbled and was able to confirm Belhaj's suspicions of British complicity in his fate.

Belhaj is not a man to hide a grievance and is now suing Allen and the British government for “complicity in torture” and “misfeasance in public office”. He has reportedly been offered and refused £1 million from the British government to shut up. It is a tale of panic and cock-up.

MI6 puts out the usual line that it only follows “ministerially authorised government policy”. The relevant Ministers at the time were Straw and Blair, who should have been fully briefed in 2004 on Qadhafi's apparent u-turn and the reasons behind it. Both men have denied knowledge of Belhaj's rendition and torture, or the suggestion that it and Megrahi's release were a quid pro quo for oil. Both have plaintively remarked that Ministers may be responsible, yet, cannot know everything.

In Allen's defence, it can be said that he was doing exactly what his masters so badly wanted. Blair in 2004 was craven to Washington, desperate to win a spur in George Bush's crusade against militant Islamism. At the time, CIA rendition flights were criss-crossing the world with Muslims bolted to the floor. A couple more as a gift to a kindly dictator seemed small beer. As for whether Allen mentioned it to Straw, known to be supporting his bid to head MI6, neither he nor Straw is telling.

On Monday, Foreign Minister William Hague grasped at the straw of Belhaj's lawsuit in declining to comment. He said, with a broad smile, that the whole matter was “sub judice”. The implication, that his remarks might prejudice a trial, was that this would be held in public. But these are precisely the cases that the Cabinet now wants to ensure are conducted in secret.

The morass now thickens. On 22 February, the court of appeal in London showed itself equally mesmerised by the “war on terror”. It upheld the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating “terrorism” over the internet. Not content with imprisoning the pathetic and repentant Gul for five years, their lordships felt an urge to political theory. They declared that the war on terror embraced not just Gul but “acts by insurgents against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes”. Under legislation, terrorism included not just acts of violence but any threat made for “the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. These threats might include nothing more than a “serious risk to public health and safety” or “seriously to disrupt an electronic system”.

From this catch-all lexicography, dissidents and insurgents under any regime were not excluded. Their lordships noted that it seemed there was nothing that would exempt those engaged in attacks on the military during the course of insurgency from the definition of terrorism. It was hard luck for all Kurds, Kosovans, Benghazians, Tibetans and Iranian exiles — and today's Syrian rebels. They are all terrorists.

This is ridiculous. Gul's Bin Laden fantasies were not remotely in the same boat as Belhaj's opposition to Qadhafi. Yet, both were seized as terrorists and imprisoned by agents of British government. They are joined in judicial calumny with millions round the world who are struggling against dictatorial regimes and willing harm to their “armed forces”. Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader. The war on terror is corrupting all it touches, while parliament meekly passes each twist of the ratchet of repression. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012

Domestic Violence Statistics

http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/

• Every 9 seconds in the US a woman is assaulted or beaten.

• Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.

• Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually.

• Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a breakup.

• Everyday in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.

• Ninety-two percent of women surveyed listed reducing domestic violence and sexual assault as their top concern.

• Domestic violence victims lose nearly 8 million days of paid work per year in the US alone—the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs.

• Based on reports from 10 countries, between 55 percent and 95 percent of women who had been physically abused by their partners had never contacted non-governmental organizations, shelters, or the police for help.

• The costs of intimate partner violence in the US alone exceed $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion.

• Men who as children witnessed their parents’ domestic violence were twice as likely to abuse their own wives than sons of nonviolent parents

Civilian deaths in US wars

English.news.cn 2012-03-22 09:42:34
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-03/22/c_131481529.htm

BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhuanet) -- The mounting civilian death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq is a stigma on the way the United States has waged war in the two countries.

The vulnerability of civilians was brutally demonstrated on the morning of March 11, when 16 civilians, including women and children, were murdered in their homes in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

A lone US soldier, Sergeant Robert Bales, has been accused of the lethal rampage, which has understandably infuriated Afghan people and strained the already tense Afghan-US relations.

Washington owes the Afghan people an honest explanation of how their homes became killing zones.

As Washington is poised to gradually withdraw its troops in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that the transition period leading up to the withdrawal will be a smooth one.

There is also no guarantee that the US will not leave Afghanistan in as big a mess as it did Iraq. The US pulled its troops out of Iraq in December, leaving the Gulf country in a quagmire of political instability and sectarian strife.

Tensions among political rivals have been on the rise, while bombings and killings happen on a daily basis. On March 20, which marked the ninth anniversary of the Iraq war, a torrent of violence and bombings ravaged 13 Iraqi cities and killed 44 people.

The US has unshirkable responsibilities to protect civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it should be held accountable for the loss of civilian life in the two countries, as those who have lost their lives are victims of the US strategy in the two countries.

The soaring civilian death count in Afghanistan and in Iraq has aroused widespread concern among the international community over US strategy in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Conservative estimates put the number of civilians who have lost their lives in Iraq at more than 100,000 since the US invasion in 2003. There is no single figure for the overall number of civilians killed by the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, but according to the latest report from the United Nations, 12,793 had been killed in the past six years.

Certainly people around the world are sickened by the ever-growing number of civilians who have been killed since the US launched its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of anti-terrorism.

One cannot help asking when will it end?

(Source: China Daily)

Atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in recent years - 5

www.chinaview.cn 2008-02-12 21:33:19

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/12/content_7594123.htm

U.S. Marine's raping of Okinawan girl arouses anger among local people

TOKYO, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. Marine's alleged raping of an Okinawan minor girl on Sunday aroused anger and condemnation of local residents in the southern Japanese island in the past two days.

   

The assembly of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, unanimously passed a resolution of protest on Tuesday, demanding that U.S. army officials, U.S. ambassador to Japan and Japanese prime minister find out the fact, apologize to the victim and her family members, and take action to prevent U.S. soldiers from committing crimes.

   

The assembly also called on the Japanese government to rethink its relationship with the United States and cut down the number of U.S. bases and servicemen on the island.

   

Okinawa city Mayor Mitsuko Tomon and other officials handed in person a letter of protest to the U.S. consulate general in Okinawa, demanding that the U.S. army enhance its moral education and reinforce its discipline.

   

The letter asked the U.S. side to publish as early as possible its measures to prevent a recurrence of such crime.

   

According to Japanese media, a women's group of Okinawa sent an open letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, demanding the evacuation U.S. forces from Okinawa.

   

A peace movement group waged a demonstration in front of a U.S. military base in Okinawa city, calling on the U.S. forces to launch a full-scale probe into the case.

   

Tyrone Hadnott, a 38-year-old staff sergeant belonging to the Camp Courtney base, was arrested Monday on suspicion of raping a 14-year-old local girl on Sunday night.

   

Hadnott was sent to prosecutors earlier Tuesday. He said he only touched the girl's body, denying the charge of raping.

   

Okinawa hosts about 75 percent of U.S. forces in Japan in terms of land occupied. In the past more than ten years, about 100 U.S. soldiers in Okinawa were sued on suspicion of raping local women. Such incidents strained the relationship between the U.S. army and local residents, and often led to anti-U.S. rallies.