[sacw] SACW | 9 August 02
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex@mnet.fr
Fri, 9 Aug 2002 02:15:04 +0100
South Asia Citizens Wire | 9 August 2002
__________________________
#1. Press Statement - Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace &
Democracy (PIPFPD)
#2. India: A pall-bearer's poll? (Praful Bidwai)
#3. Pakistani NGOs fear curb on funds (Muddassir Rizvi )
#4. India: Meeting on "Impact of The Gujarat Genocide on Women:
Challenges and Strategies",
(10th August 2002. New Delhi)
__________________________
#1.
Press Statement
8th August 2002
Prominent peace activists belonging to Pakistan India Peoples Forum
for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD) from both Pakistan and India met at
Delhi on Wed. Aug 7, 2002 to discuss the current stalemate in the
relations between the two neighbors. It included Mr. I.A. Rehman
(Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan) and Dr. Mubashir Hasan
(founding chairperson of the Forum) of Pakistan Chapter, and Adm.
Ramdas Retd (chairperson, India Chapter) and Prof. Sushil Khanna,
General Secretary of India Chapter.
They noted with concern the hardships inflicted on common citizen-
with relatives and friends across the border- due to suspension of
road, rail and air links as well as the wastage of precious resources
due to deployment of a million strong armed personal on the border.
Though both the governments claim to be advocating the cause of
democracy through elections, attacks on civil and democratic rights
of common citizens have increased. Brutal carnage of Muslims in
Gujarat and attack on Christians in Pakistan are a direct result of
patronage provided to such extremist elements by the ruling elites in
both the countries. The repressive impact of miltarisation and
communalisation of society due to the current stand-off is most
prominent in attacks and repression of women, where socially
sanctioned gang rapes and barbaric practices like Sati have increased.
The PIPFPD leaders demand from the government of Pakistan and India:
(1) Immediate pullback of troops to peace stations, end to threats
to attack each other and resumption of contacts between area
commanders and Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs).
(2) Restoration of full diplomatic relations by allowing the High
Commissioners to return to their posts and resumption of talks to
settle all outstanding issues including Kashmir.
(3) Immediate restoration of rail, road and air links between the
two countries and an end to all obstacles to people-to-people
contacts, including liberalising of the visa regime.
(4) Take positive steps to promote contact between civil society
groups, artists, journalists, etc. and an end to the policy that
demonises each other through the media and other channels.
(5) Launch sincere efforts to put an end to medieval and barbaric
social practices and meet out exemplary punishment through special
courts to those targeting women, children and political and
religious minorities.
I. A. Rehman
Dr Mubashir Hasan
Pakistan Chapter - PIPFPD
Adm. L. Ramdas
Prof. Sushil Khanna
India Chapter PIPFPD
_____
#2.
The Hindustan Times
Friday, August 9, 2002
A pall-bearer's poll?
Praful Bidwai
We have been witnessing something surreal. According to Deputy Prime
Minister LK Advani, there never was a constitutional breakdown in
Gujarat; Narendra Milosevic Modi needs 'no certificate' for his
impeccably secular conduct; the well-established State-sponsorship of
the pogrom in Gujarat is merely 'a baseless allegation' levelled by
the political opposition.
Going by at least 12 reports by non-party investigators, including
two by the National Human Rights Commission, several civil liberties
groups, a former foreign secretary, the Ahmedabad-based Citizens'
Initiative and Jansangharsh Manch, and numerous women's
organisations, the constitutional breakdown occurred as early as the
evening of February 27, the day of the terrible Godhra killing, when
Modi instructed his officials to ensure the 'success' of the imminent
VHP-BJP-sponsored protest bandh - that is, to become complicit in,
and an agency of, independent India's worst communal butchery.
The next day, two of Modi's ministers personally directed anti-Muslim
operations from police control rooms, over 500 people were killed,
and Gujarat was firmly in communal terror's grip. During the
following 100 hours, Modi rationalised the utterly repugnant notion
of 'collective punishment' of innocent citizens for the misdeeds of a
handful of people. Murder and mayhem prevailed. The Centre gave Modi
its unstinting support.
It bears recapitulating this only to underscore one plain truth: at
the Constitution's core are fundamental rights, above all, the
citizen's right to life and liberty. The Modi government, wilfully,
consciously, pro-actively violated that right, through its collusion
in the massacre of over 2,000 innocent citizens, razing of tens of
thousands of homes, rape of countless women, and even the spearing of
foetuses.
When Hindutva's organised fury sent even high court judges and senior
police officials of Muslim extraction scurrying for cover, and as
millions of citizens were terror-struck, the Modi government
forfeited its right to rule. There has never been a fitter case for
invoking Article 356: Gujarat's constitutional breakdown was
manifestly self-evident. That is the express purpose for which the
article was drafted.
For the last five months, Nathuram Godse has ruled Gujarat through
Modi - without constitutional sanction or moral authority. Gujarat's
public has borne the cost of this grotesque misrule. Today, terror,
intimidation and extreme insecurity rule Gujarat. Even mainstream
charitable NGOs cannot function. Sane elements among the majority
community have been bludgeoned into silence.
Gujarat's communal polarisation remains complete. Over one lakh
people are without shelter. Many, many more have been forced to go
back to their bustees and villages - only to be further brutalised
and humiliated. Yet, the State is hell-bent on closing down relief
camps and terrorising their inmates.
Crucially important, not one person among the thousands culpable for
the pogrom is being seriously prosecuted - no minister, no MLA, no
VHP activist, no RSS pracharak, no BJP leader, no policeman. Modi's
police first ensured that only vague, non-specific, 'rolling' FIRs
(first information reports) would be registered, without naming
incidents, places, the accused, the victims.
Now it is busy filing chargesheets which begin with a
self-exculpating epilogue even before they list the culprits and
their alleged crimes. No wonder, the courts are discharging case
after case. This country has seen plenty of police inaction or
sloppiness and State complicity in communal riots - witness Ahmedabad
1969, Delhi 1984, and Bombay 1992-93. But never before has it
witnessed such organised, planned, high-level manipulation of
criminal prosecution to guarantee that the guilty would be exonerated.
Modi has sewn it up all for the communalists. The unbelievably shoddy
single-page Godhra charge- sheet bears testimony to this.
It is in this climate that Gujarat's public is being called upon to
vote. This would be laughable as a sick joke if it did not bear close
resemblance to the idea of a 'democratic' election after the
Reichstag fire. It takes little analysis - and no elaborate logical
dissection of the BJP's specious 'legal' claim about the six-month
interval between two sessions of the assembly - to see that it is
ludicrous to expect the voter to exercise a rational choice in these
abnormal, intimidating and communally-charged circumstances.
Democracy is not just about elections. It is about free and fair
elections in which people can coolly evaluate parties and candidates
for their respective agendas and programmes and the contestants too
canvass support, not any which way - e.g. by appealing to
religious-communal sentiments or symbols - but on a secular basis and
within the constraints defined by the Election Commission and
well-established political norms.
Such elections are impossible in Gujarat today. That state needs a
good, long spell of president's rule under a credible, impartial
governor before it is ready for minimally democratic elections. Given
the Centre's confrontationist posture, even president's rule could
prove ineffectual unless it is enforced through outstanding advisers
to the governor. Only persons of impeccable administrative integrity
and commitment to secularism, chosen in consultation with the
opposition, can restore normalcy, rule of law and peace.
There can be no real peace without justice. And in Gujarat, there can
be no justice until the victims are fully rehabilitated - physically,
psychologically, economically, and in civic communities, not ghettos
and refugee camps - and, above all, until the guilty begin to be
prosecuted and punished exemplarily.
Here lies the rub. For the BJP and its ideological founders,
democracy has always been an instrumentalist notion - not related to
people's participation and empowerment, but a mere procedure to
validate majoritarianism, the despotic rule of a permanent majority
defined in ethnic-religious terms, which all minorities must meekly
accept.
For Savarkar, democracy was the 'dictatorship of the majority'. There
is a deep continuity between Golwalkar's demand that religious
minorities, or 'foreigners' (which they are not), may be allowed to
live in India only if they subordinate themselves to, declare loyalty
to, and sing the praises of, the Hindus, on the one hand, and on the
other, the VHP-Advani rath yatra slogan, now relentlessly reiterated
in Hindutva's hate speech with impunity: Hindustan mein rehna hoga to
Hindu banke rehna hoga (If you want to live in India, you must
Hinduise yourself), and Musalman ke do hi sthan - Pakistan ya
kabristan (Muslims have only two options: Pakistan or the graveyard).
A party that has descended to demanding the actualisation of the
slogan of its criminalised, lumpen, extremist Sangh parivar cousin
isn't showing signs of 'moderation', 'normalisation' or
'Congressisation'. As this column argued (April 19), the BJP has
reinvented itself as the Jan Sangh. Indeed, it has organised the
NDA's takeover by its own hardline Right-wing, led by Advani, with
ABVP-RSS pracharak-activists in key positions.
Parties like the BJP belong to that grey, hazy space between formal
democracy - democracy as procedure and system of power, and
authoritarian politics, driven by a majoritarian agenda of
retrogressive social change promoted through darkly secretive,
publicly unaccountable, fundamentally neo-fascist organisations like
the RSS. They might appear to hover between the two poles. But their
fundamental, instinctive loyalty is to the second pole. That is their
cadres' ideological-political inspiration.
Authoritarianism is utterly repugnant. And democracy is meaningless
even as a system of power unless its content is defined by rights,
norms and conventions like the freedom of expression, separation of
powers between the organs of the State, and detachment of religion
from politics.
Only thus can democracy be prevented from degenerating into crude,
winner-takes-all majoritarianism. The BJP threatens to bring about
just such degeneration. It must be stopped.
_____
#3.
Asia Times
9 August 2002
Pakistani NGOs fear curb on funds
By Muddassir Rizvi
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's military rulers are putting the finishing
touches to a government bill that they say will streamline how
thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operate in the
country, making them accountable to the state, particularly in their
financial affairs.
But while the government says that the process is aimed at reforming
the working of public interest organizations and maximizing benefits
for the people, most NGOs fear the legislative proposals will take
away their independence and freedom to work.
""It appears to be an attempt to bring NGOs under government
control," commented Shafqat Munir, who heads the Islamabad-based
Journalist for Democracy and Human Rights.
According to a government estimate, more than 45,000 people work in
areas as diverse as advocacy, human rights, service delivery and
relief in a country marred by rampant poverty (around 50 million from
a population of 138 million live below the poverty line), with a
majority of people lacking basic needs.
Many NGOs and their networks have already expressed serious
reservations at the proposed Non-Profit Organizations (Governance and
Support) Ordinance 2002, which the government made public in the
second week of July for consultations and comments.
"Such laws should not be promulgated in a hurry," said Khawar Mumtaz,
coordinator of the Pakistan NGO Forum, an alliance that brings
together leading organizations from across Pakistan. "There should be
consensus after having more discussion and debate on the draft as the
proposed law will have serious consequences for the development work
being carried out by the not-for-profit sector in the country," said
Khawar.
The forum's main concern, however, is the proposed establishment of a
powerful National Non-Profit Organizations Commission, which is to be
headed by a minister and comprises members from the government as
well as the non-government sector. The 15-member commission would
operate as a public registry of NGOs that would be accessible to all
citizens.
The draft law stipulates compulsory registration, with the
commission, for all public interest organizations that apply for or
receive any government or foreign funds in excess of 300,000 rupees
(US$5,000) in a single financial year. The bill also requires that
registered organizations file with the commission at the end of each
fiscal year details of foreign funds received in excess of 100,000
rupees ($1,650).
The proposed ordinance would make it obligatory for NGOs to provide
the commission with details, including the identity of donors and the
purposes for which funds are received. The bill empowers the
commission to initiate audits against any office-bearer or member of
any organization suspected of involvement in financial
irregularities. Such audits could result in civil or criminal
proceedings that could in turn lead to the liquidation of the
organization if evidence of misappropriation is found.
But NGOs argue that such sweeping powers will jeopardize their work,
leaving important projects exposed to the approval or disapproval of
the commission. "Like selective implementation of many other laws in
the country, the proposed law has all the potential of being used to
victimize NGOs that may be dissenting the government's anti-people
policies," the Joint Action Committee (JAC), an umbrella group of
public interest groups in the north-western city of Peshawar, said.
The JAC says that the government should concentrate on consolidating
existing laws under which NGOs operate, rather than creating a new
body in the form of a commission.
This is not the first time that a government in Pakistan has tried to
regulate the working of NGOs. The governments of Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif proposed similar measures in the past. On both occasions
though the NGOs were able to create enough resistance to force the
government of the day to do an about-turn on its proposals.
However, the government this time seems adamant on pushing ahead with
the contemplated reforms. Officials say that the government's
initiative is well rooted in reports and public perceptions that most
NGOs - thriving on money coming mostly from Western backers - have
become highly consumptive institutions and transferring little to the
benefit of the people.
According to one estimate, Pakistan-based NGOs get more than $50
million from foreign sources every year. "Initially driven by some
progressive minded persons who were driven into political isolation
by [military dictator] Zia ul-Haq's Islamization drive in the
eighties, the NGO movement like all other good ideas had to suffer
opportunists who saw it as the easiest way to money and popularity,"
said a hard-hitting editorial published in the English-language daily
The News last month.
"Plush offices, shiny limousines, expensive jeeps, creatively printed
annual reports, workshops and seminars became tools for activists who
were handsomely paid for mobilizing people," the editorial said. The
criticism against some NGOs ranges from financial bungling, wasteful
expenditures and ineffective development projects that have no real
impact.
But most prominent NGOs - which have multiplied at great speed,
coinciding with increasing donor interest over the past 15 years or
so - are being accused by the public and the press as being the
implements of Western agendas.
"The policies of these NGOs should be Pakistan-driven rather than
donor-driven," said Pakistan's Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz at a
government-sponsored consultation over the proposed ordinance last
week in Islamabad that was attended by representatives from various
NGOs and community-based organizations from all over the country.
The proposed law is based on the recommendations of a recent research
report conducted by the Pakistan Center for Philanthropy (PCP) that
studied local and foreign funding and its usage in the country. The
PCP said that transparently run NGOs would encourage local
philanthropists to invest in tangible development projects through
these outfits. Currently, it said, local backers channel most of
their funds to relief-based interventions that do not bring about a
long-term change.
Against this backdrop, and having support from some big name
development organizations, the government says that the draft law
once enacted will enhance the resources for NGOs. "We are not
interested in exercising undue control or formulating adverse
legislation," said Pareveen Qadir Aga, secretary of the Ministry of
Social Welfare and Women Development. "We are only interested in the
growth and development of civil society, particularly in the context
of devolution of power and poverty alleviation," she added.
(Inter Press Service)
_____
#4.
MEETING ON: "IMPACT OF THE GUJARAT GENOCIDE ON WOMEN: CHALLENGES AND
STRATEGIES", ORGANISED BY SAHELI
ON SATURDAY, 10TH AUGUST 2002, NEW
DELHI
On 9th August, Saheli completes twenty-one years of its existence. We
take this opportunity to stand firm and reiterate our commitment to
resisting forces of fundamentalism and patriarchal control. We hope
this meeting will give all of us the opportunity to talk about the
horrors of Gujarat, to grapple with the overwhelming scale of the
violence and to move forward together.
The Programme is as follows:
SESSION I: 9.30 a.m.-1.30 p.m.
1. Women Bear the Brunt of Communal Violence: Issues and Challenges
Sheba George, Sophia Khan-Citizen's Initiative, Ahmedabad
Trupti Shah, Jahan Ara Rangrej-PUCL-Shanti Abhiyan, Baroda
2. Scope of Legal Intervention
Sandhya, Apporva-Forum Against Oppression of Women,
Mumbai Veena-Majlis (expected), Mumbai Indira Jaisingh-Lawyers
Collective, Delhi
3. Strategising for Justice Open Session
SESSION II: 02.00 p.m.-06.00 p.m.
1. Rise of Religious Fundamentalism: Impact on Women
Roop Rekha Verma-Lucknow University
2. Combating Right-Wing Mobilisation
(a) Experiences from Rajasthan Kavita Srivastava-PUCL, Rajasthan
Indira Pancholi-Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti, Ajmer
(b) Muslim Women's Identity in the Present Context
Yasmeen-Awaaz-e-Niswan, Mumbai
(c) Dalit Women's Movement: Can it Pose a Challenge?
Rajni Tilak-CADAM, Delhi
3. Campaign Strategies
Open Session
The persons mentioned above will initiate discussions, but we hope
the meeting will be as participative as possible so that effective
campaign strategies can be evolved.
DATE & TIME: Saturday, August 10, 2002, 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
VENUE: Miranda House College, Student's Common Room, Chhatra Marg,
Delhi University.
Lunch and Tea will be provided. Do join us and confirm your
participation as soon as possible. Looking forward to your active
involvement.In solidarity, All of us in Saheli Saheli Women's
Resource Centre, Above Shop Nos. 105-108, Defence Colony Flyover
Market (South Side), New Delhi 110 024, Tel.: 461 6485
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