Indian Elections – Congress Wave or Rejection of the Left?

By Soma Marik

The following is the final result of the parliamentary elections of 2009.

	2009 Won	2004 Won	Change
Indian National Congress	206	145	61
**Bharatiya Janata Party	116	138	-22
Samajwadi Party	23	36	-13
Bahujan Samaj Party	21	19	2
All India Trinamool Party	19	2	2
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam	18	16	2
Communist Party of India (Marxist)	16	43	-27
Biju Janata Dal	14	11	3
Shiv Sena	11	12	-1
All India Anna DMK	9	0	9
Independents	9	5	4
National Congress Party	9	9	0
Others	8	7	1
Telugu Desam Party	6	5	1
Rashtriya Lok Dal	5	3	2
Shiromani Akali Dal	4	8	-4
J& K National Conference	3	2	1
Janata Dal (Secular)	3	3	0
All India Forward Bloc	2	3	-1
Jharkhand Mukti Morcha	2	5	-3
Muslim league	2	1	1
Revolutionary Socialist Party	2	3	-1
Telangana Rastra Samithi	2	5	-3
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimen	1	1	0
Asom Gana Parishad	1	2	-1
Haryana Janhith Party	1	0	1
Kerala Congress	1	1	0
Marumalarchi DMK	1	4	-3
Indian National Lok Dal	0	0	0
J & K People’s Democratic Party	0	1	-1
Lok Jan Shakti Party	0	4	-4
Pattali Makkal Katchi	0	6	-6
Republican Party of India (A)	0	1	-1

• The first thing the foregoing table reveals is that there was no great wave in favour of the Congress. True, it significantly increased its tally by 61 seats. But that was from an extremely low base. Even now, it is a minority party, and the UPA (its pre-poll alliance) has less than the required 272 seats, though it now has enough assurances from others who were not its pre-poll allies to ensure the survival of its government. The second thing we can find is that a huge number of small parties are represented, indicating that much of the election was fought over regional issues.
• The Left parties have certainly suffered a big defeat. Their own seats have come down from 59 in 2004 to 24 in 2009. The CPI is in danger of losing its National Party status, while the CPI(M) tally has come down from 43 to 16. The Left has also suffered a strategic defeat. Its goal of building a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative received a huge jolt. The “Third Front” that it had put together got about 77 seats. And this front started unraveling even before the elections ended, with one partner bolting to the BJP-led NDA.
• However, it is necessary to question the general arguments being made. Biman Bose, West Bengal CPI(M) State Secretary, argued that the correct policy at the national level would have been beneficial, and that it was not Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamul Congress, but a Congress Wave that resulted in the defeat of the CPI(M). This reference to a “correct national policy” is a dig at Prakash Karat, who was instrumental in the Left Front withdrawing support from the UPA. The unstated argument goes: had the Left Front supported the UPA at the centre, the Trinamul Congress and the Congress would not have forged an alliance at the state level, but fought separately, thereby splitting the anti-Left Front votes. In that case, the left might have lost a couple more seats, but would have held on to a substantial majority. This outlook stops at mere number crunching, it sees people, human beings, as dumb cattle, and does not look at class aspirations and how they were brutally rejected over the years by the Left Front, notably the CPI(M), in West Bengal. In assessing their defeat, all these “leftists” can see are election mechanisms, not looking at policies. For them, their policies are correct by definition, and real consultation with the people is irrelevant. The promise of 1977, that the “Left Front government is an instrument of struggle”, has disappeared. In addition, this argument is utterly asinine. It does not explain why, if indeed it was a “Congress Wave”, the Congress got exactly six seats, the same number it had last time, whereas the Trinamul Congress seats went up from one to 19.
• The best way of establishing the foregoing argument is to start, not with West Bengal but with Tripura. If indeed the Left was knocked out due to a Congress Wave, why did this wave fade out in Tripura? There, the Left won both the parliamentary seats. In Tripura East, the CPI(M) candidate had a lead of about 2,96,000 votes, and in Tripura West the lead was about 2,48,000. In both cases the nearest rival was a member of the Congress.
• If we are to accept the claim that people voted for a Congress wave, what does it mean? Did the people of India vote for neo-liberalism? This is what the big capitalists, and the mainstream media, are claiming. In truth, if one looks at the Congress campaigns, the issues were livelihood issues of common people. The Congress claimed full credit for the NREGP (the scheme to give 100 days employment to one member of every rural poor family). Since the Congress was in power, the claim was accepted by sizeable chunks of voters, who had indeed benefited, to whatever extent, from this scheme. Unlike the BJP’s 2004 India Shining Campaign, the Congress campaign of 2009 focused on the “aam-admi” (common people). If the Congress turned around significantly in UP after nearly two decades, that was based on a campaign about poor women, about Dalits (challenging Mayavati on her own turf). Accordingly, the argument that the decline of seats for the Left is a mandate for selling off the ****s and insurance to private capital, for further destroying India’s already bad labour laws, and for further privatizations and the building of Special Economic Zones, cannot be accepted.
• Keeping these two points in mind, we now need to look at the performance of the Left in its two major bases, West Bengal and Kerala. In West Bengal, out of 42 seats, the Left got 15 (against 35 in 2004), with the CPI(M) getting 9, and the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc getting 2 each. In Kerala the CPI(M) got 4 seats while the rest drew a blank (against 19 out of 20 in 2004 for the LDF). But the reasons in the two cases are very different.
• In West Bengal, the LF, and notably the CPI(M), has over the years become an object of bitter popular hatred. On one hand, it has adopted an increasingly neoliberal economic policy. It welcomed SEZs with open arms, and sought to start SEZs in West Bengal, if necessary by forcibly taking away fertile land from peasants. A virtual civil war raged in Nandigram for much of 2007, before the party and the state, acting in tandem, used massive force to smash the resistance of the peasants. But the cost had been high enough for the party to be forced into abandoning the plan to take land from the peasants. It did not, however, agree to pay compensation for those murdered, raped, molested, or those who had their homes destroyed. Nor even was it willing to apologise, or to punish party cadres who had come in disguised as police. In Singur, in 2006, land had been forcibly taken away from peasants, even though many of them resisted, and refused even to take any compensation. Two years of sustained agitations ended with the Tatas pulling out their Nano factory from West Bengal and moving to Guajrat. Even then, the government in its arrogance refused to hand back the land to that considerable section of peasants who had even refused to accept the compensation cheques. Moreover, the land-grab had not only affected peasants, but share croppers, agricultural labourers, transporters, and a range of other producers and service providers, who were not even offered any compensation. One dimension of handling resistance was the brutal murder of a young woman activist, Tapasi Malik. Two CPI(M) members have been convicted of her murder in a trial court, though they have appealed in a higher court. Apart from Singur and Nandigram, and the tall promise of plenty of jobs through industrialization, the other reality of West Bengal was the closure of industries, of tea gardens, and growing economic hardship of many sections of workers.
• On the other hand there was the politics of three decades of Left Front rule. To sum it up, we can say that this involved a set of practices: a) Party control by the CPI(M) over police and bureaucracy, to the extent that rules and regulations could be flouted at will; along with an increasing recourse to state violence as a routine method of enforcing policies and stamping out dissent; b) Establishing party domination, where party offices at appropriate levels decided everything, from who among the rural poor would be selected for grants, or the receipt of Below Poverty Line cards, to which intellectual lackey would be selected the next Vice Chancellor of prestigious Universities; c) Imposing party control on people and forcing people to pay donations to the party or its mass fronts, forcing trade union and white collar union members to pay for party projects, forcing people to buy the party paper.
• In other words, party control, state and party led violence, coupled with support to neoliberalism when in power, was what turned people hostile to the CPI(M) in West Bengal. In Kerala, the picture was different. There have been two blocs, one led by the Congress and the other by the CPI(M), contesting elections and coming to power alternately. In recent years the BJP has been able to get some votes (a little over 6 per cent in 2009). But basically, a slight swing from one bloc to the other can cause a big slide in seats. In 2004, the LDF, led by the CPI(M) got 19 seats. Since then, factional conflicts in the CPI(M) have come out in the open, discrediting the party. Party Secretary Vijayan has been accused of corruption, and that too has tarnished the party’s image. In a bid to cut into the Muslim League votes, the CPI(M) this time decided to form an alliance with a rank Muslim communal organization, the People’s Democratic Party, something that did not go down well with the voters. On top of that, the huge mandate of 2004 clearly went to the head of the party, and it started ignoring its partners and taking decisions on its own, with the result that the cohesion of the Front was far less evident in 2009. These were the factors, all very local, that led to the Kerala debacle.
• If the Left Front in West Bengal was perceived as an oppressive power, does it mean that we should look upon the Trinamul Congress as a progressive force? Many former leftists, or dissident leftists, or Maoists of diverse hues, seem to have concluded that. The reality is different. The Trinamul Congress is a rightwing populist party. It has of course supported the peasants of Singur and Nandigram. But in doing so, it has sought to co-opt their autonomous struggles, and also to dilute its content. Thus, in Singur, the Trinamul Congress focus was purely on the peasant owners, and not on the other categories of people displaced. In an earlier period, this party as an ally of the BJP had endorsed the initiation of SEZs. Finally, it is now allied to the Congress, and committed to the UPA government. So it will swallow its opposition to the SEZs all over India, even though its own manifesto opposes SEZs and puts forward radical sounding rhetoric. A second feature is that this is a party with a record of violence. And this feature has resurfaced in recent times, with Left Front supporters being attacked, and even children of such people not being spared. The Manifesto of the TC reads like a wonderfully progressive text, promising everything to everyone. Land to the landless, job security, environmental protection, reform of the police, rights of women. Yet, just two instances show how fraudulent these claims are. When Taslima Nasreen was hounded out of West Bengal by Muslim communalists and with the government accepting their blackmail, the TC was silent. This suggests that like the Left Front, the TC is not really concerned with the rights of women, and further that just like the CPI(M), it is willing to cut a deal with minority communalists in the name of minority protection. And when polluting auto-rickshaws were sought to be replaced, the TC and its unions blocked the effort. We do not call for throwing out the auto drivers without providing them alternatives. But the answer has to be state assistance for conversion to less polluting cars, rather than simply halting the process.
• The lessons of recent elections are clear. Stalinist reformism will repeatedly claim working class and peasant votes, pointing to the fascist threat and to neoliberalism. But it will neither fight fascism on the streets nor fight neoliberalism if it is in power. And its opposition as of now is in all cases bourgeois oppositions, whether the Congress in Kerala or Tripura, or the Trinamul Congress in West Bengal. Only by relying on the independent power of workers and peasants, only by building a revolutionary proletarian alternative, can the working people of India get out of this dead end.

Sri Lanka The way forward –

THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY, JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY IN SRI LANKA

By Rohini Hensman

This year marks the twentieth death anniversary of Rajini Thiranagama, doctor, lecturer, feminist and human rights defender, and the first death anniversary of human rights lawyer and political activist Maheshwari Velauthan. The former was shot dead by the LTTE as she cycled home to her children after presiding over an Anatomy examination, the latter shot dead by the LTTE as she cared for her sick mother. They were among thousands of Tamils killed by the LTTE simply because they did not agree with it. For Tamil progressives like them, the defeat of the LTTE mitigates one source of terror.

The LTTE’s claim to be the sole representative of Sri Lanka’s Tamils could be sustained only by the physical liquidation of all those who disagreed with, criticised, or simply posed a challenge to its leadership, even from within the organisation. This meant that all Tamils with a different vision of the struggle for equality, justice and democracy had to choose between risking their lives (and, like Kethesh Loganathan and T. Subathiran, all too often losing them), accepting security cover from the government of Sri Lanka (which obviously crippled their capacity to criticise that government), and exile. Any Tamil who believed in the possibility of Tamils living alongside people of other communities in a united Sri Lanka was considered a traitor and sentenced to death. Probably the first of such ‘traitors’ to be executed by Prabakaran was Alfred Duraiappah, the popular Mayor of Jaffna, who was killed in 1975; Neelan Thiruchelvam and Lakshman Kadirgamar came later. Standing up for freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to vote in free and fair elections were all aberrations punishable by death. Parents who resisted the forcible conscription of their children received violent punishment. Indeed, questioning the decisions of the Supreme Leader in any way was an act of treachery. In fascist Tamil Eelam, internal terror was all-pervasive.

Could an organisation which destroyed the freedom of Tamils fight for their liberation from oppression? Clearly not. Could an entity which stood for an exclusively Tamil nation, in which Muslims and Sinhalese would be massacred or ethnically cleansed, pose an ideological challenge to exclusivist Sinhala nationalism? Hardly. The LTTE was simply a Tamil translation of the most reactionary Sinhala fascist politics. Where Sinhala nationalists stereotyped all Tamils, Tamil nationalists stereotyped all Sinhalese. Where the former claimed exclusive ownership of the whole of Sri Lanka, the latter claimed exclusive ownership of a third of the island. The politics of both harked back to the days of absolutist monarchies. Far from helping Tamils in their struggle for democracy, the LTTE created a further obstacle to be overcome. From this perspective, although its demise has occurred in the most horrific circumstances, prospects for the struggle for democracy in Sri Lanka have improved.

Conditions for a Successful Struggle

However, the success of this struggle would depend on several factors. The reactionary mirage of a totalitarian, exclusively Tamil state needs to be laid to rest once and for all. Such an agenda does not acknowledge the reality in Sri Lanka, where diverse communities are represented in all parts of the island – indeed, the most oppressed of the Tamil-speaking communities, the Hill-country plantation workers, did not fall within the proposed Eelam at all – and diverse peoples and cultures are inextricably intertwined. The incredible violence required to tear us apart cannot be allowed to go on. Whether we like it or not, we sink together or swim together.

Instead, Tamil progressives would need to fight for a vision of a democratic Sri Lanka which is a homeland for all its diverse peoples. They would need to fight for this in alliance with other minority communities as well as Sinhalese progressives. And they would need to win over a majority of Tamils to this vision: not so difficult within Sri Lanka, harder in the diaspora, much of which is disconnected from the reality in Sri Lanka in many ways. This effort would need support from Tamil and Muslim political parties and other formations which have hitherto tended to remain in the government fold out of fear of reprisals by the LTTE. Now that this threat no longer looms over them, they need to come out and present their demands to the Rajapaksa regime and ruling party, threatening to withdraw their support if the demands are not met.

The same is true of Sinhalese progressives in Left parties and other formations. While some have consistently supported the struggle of Tamils for justice, others have veered to one side or the other. We do not need to go as far back as the 1960s and 1970s, when Left parties which had previously stood up for minority rights when Upcountry Tamils were disenfranchised and the Sinhala Only Act was passed joined the Sinhala nationalist bandwagon. As recently as January 2008, Tissa Vitharana of the LSSP – who had earlier laboured conscientiously to produce a viable political solution based largely on the excellent proposal presented by a multi-ethnic majority of the Panel of Experts to the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) – lost his nerve, and instead of presenting the real APRC proposals to President Rajapaksa, presented him with a mutilated version of the 13th Amendment (introduced as a result of the Indo-Lanka Accord) which had just been given to him by the president! This bizarre farce was yet another instance of Sinhalese Leftists aligning themselves with a government dominated by Sinhalese fascists. If these Leftists wish to redeem themselves, they too must threaten to withdraw their support to the government unless it accepts and implements far-reaching political reforms that redress the genuine grievances of minorities.

On the other side, some Sinhalese Leftists, who had split away when their parties embraced Sinhala nationalism, subsequently provided implicit support to the LTTE’s fascism in the name of supporting ‘the right of Tamils to national self-determination’, ignoring Rosa Luxemburg’s pertinent question: who determines the will of the ‘nation’? In this case, the answer, clearly, was the Supreme Leader, Prabakaran, who took it upon himself to determine the lives – and deaths – of all Sri Lankan Tamils. Was this a worthy cause for socialists to support? Surely not, given that it involved slaughtering Tamil socialists! Paradoxically, their implicit support for the Tamil fascist agenda indicated unconscious Sinhala chauvinism (or, in the case of their European comrades, racism): the belief that Tamils are inferior beings, not yet ready for democracy. Furthermore, even Lenin did not argue for the ‘right to national self-determination’ in circumstances where an oppressed community was dispersed among a national population. Creating ethnically ‘pure’ enclaves, as the LTTE attempted to do in 1990, involved massacres and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, defined in international law as crimes against humanity. A genuine liberation movement, which is supported by the people, cannot be defeated militarily. The military defeat of the LTTE occurred because it and its agenda were rejected by the Tamil people in Sri Lanka whom it claimed to represent.

These Leftists, along with Sinhalese liberals who followed a similar path, have to redefine ‘self-determination’ to mean real control over their own lives for all Tamils – and other minorities – in all parts of Sri Lanka. They could then play a much more useful role, persuading the Sinhalese masses to support this cause too. There is certainly a minority of rabid Sinhala chauvinists, but the majority of Sinhalese do not hate Tamils. Celebrations of the government victory over the LTTE have been interpreted as an expression of Sinhala chauvinism, and some of them have certainly been orchestrated by chauvinist elements. But Nirupama Subramanian pointed out that there were similar celebrations when the Cease-Fire Agreement was signed in 2002 – indeed, celebrations began in December 2001, when the UNP was elected and promised to bring peace – and Chandrika Kumaratunga swept to victory in 1994 on a promise of bringing peace through negotiations. What the war-weary people (including Sinhalese people) of Sri Lanka wanted, and still want, is peace. At that time, they thought that negotiations with the LTTE would bring peace, but they were disappointed. Now they think that a military victory over the LTTE will bring peace, but are likely to be disappointed again, unless Sinhalese progressives can convince them that only equality, justice and democracy can bring a lasting peace.

A precondition for this is that they must be made to understand that there is a problem which has not been solved by the military victory, since recognition of a problem is a necessary step for its solution. Many Sinhalese – including members of the English-educated diaspora – are astonishingly ignorant about what has been happening in Sri Lanka since Independence, taking the position that the only problem has been one of terrorism. Educating them about the persistent discrimination and violence against Tamils, which led to and fuelled the conflict, would be a vital contribution for Sinhalese progressives to make. It is also worth reminding Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka that equality is the bedrock of democracy, and that they allow democracy to be undermined at their own peril. The last time they allowed state security forces to torture and kill Tamils on a large scale, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this was followed by the same security forces torturing and killing an estimated 40,000-60,000 Sinhalese between 1987 and 1990. The Rajapaksa regime shows disturbing signs of sliding into the same totalitarianism unless it is halted by the public. The struggle for justice and democracy is a programme which can unite working people of all communities, rather than dividing Tamils from Tamils, Sinhalese from Tamils, and Tamils from Muslims.

Immediate Programme for Progressives of All Communities

 The most urgent priority is to ensure the survival and fundamental rights of all the civilians displaced by the war. Failing this, the death toll will mount catastrophically, and this time, the government alone will be to blame. Food and water, medicines and doctors, clothing, shelter and so on must be procured from all agencies which are offering to provide it, and distributed in a rational manner which does not simply ensure the survival of the strongest, as some women in the camps have complained. The government itself has appealed for help, making it clear that it cannot cope with the task, so international agencies should be involved in the relief effort. Unless they and independent reporters are allowed in the camps, sickening stories of rapes, killings (especially of women and girls), abduction of children, and starvation deaths cannot be discounted. After all, senior citizens were released from the camps only after the District Magistrate in Vavuniya determined that 30 of them had died of starvation and malnutrition, and more were dying on a daily basis, so there is official confirmation of this particular story.

This is not just a matter of humanitarian concern. These people are citizens of Sri Lanka, and incarcerating them in prison camps, as has been done so far, is a violation of their fundamental rights. If the government fears that terrorists are hidden among the civilians, they need to screen them rapidly, move LTTE fighters into prisoner-of-war camps, register both civilians and fighters, provide civilians with identity cards and freedom of movement, and provide fighters with humane conditions and rehabilitation. All this needs to be monitored by the UN and ICRC. Unfortunately, we cannot trust the government, given several high-profile killings (like the killing of five students in Trincomalee in 2006, the massacre of 17 ACF workers, and the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge) and thousands of less-publicised ones, all of which bear the mark of state-linked death squads. Unless some agency other than the state monitors the screening and the camps, and keeps lists of both civilians and LTTE cadres, there is every possibility that thousands of camp residents will be abducted and killed.

Keeping a register of people in the camps and giving them freedom of movement is also vitally important for families that have been separated, and people desperately trying to locate loved ones. The President, in his address to parliament, referred to mettha (loving kindness) and karuna (compassion), but there is little evidence of these Buddhist values in the way that these traumatised civilians have been treated by the state. Running the camps by a civilian administration, access to them for international and local aid workers, and freedom of movement for the inmates would be preconditions before we can talk of mettha or karuna.

In the slightly longer term, all the displaced should be assisted to resettle back in their original towns and villages by the end of the year. Now that the war is over and terrorism, according to the president, has been vanquished, there is no need for High Security Zones, and industrial zones and the Indian-built power station also should not be located on the land of displaced people, neither in the North nor in the East. It is important to emphasise that the displaced include tens of thousands of Muslims, some of whom have been languishing in camps since 1990, and any resettlement programme must cater to those Muslims who wish to return to their original habitats.

The end of the war and defeat of the LTTE also demolishes the excuses for various other ‘special measures’, among them: carrying of arms by cadres of other Tamil groups, supposedly in order to defend themselves from the LTTE: all these cadres should be disarmed; the emergency provisions and anti-terrorism legislation which have destroyed the rule of law in our country and allowed the state to act in a dictatorial, brutal and corrupt fashion: all these should be withdrawn forthwith; and the silencing of the press and imprisonment of journalists, which should be replaced by the immediate release of journalists like J.S.Tissainayagam and the restoration of freedom of expression. All these special measures promote state terrorism, and what is the point of eliminating LTTE terrorism only to fall prey to a different band of terrorists?

In the longer term, it is crucially important to introduce and implement a new, democratic constitution, without which the cycle of violence will simply begin again. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s speech indicates that he has no intention of introducing a political solution to the conflict; his reference to respect for ‘the principle of the unitary state that has been established in our Constitution’ shows that he has failed to learn from history, and is therefore quite capable of repeating the mistakes that led to the war in the first place. When Sri Lanka was first defined as a ‘unitary state’ in 1972, there was no separatist movement, no militant groups; soon there were both. The same Constitution confirmed Sinhala as the only official language, gave a special place to Buddhism, and removed protection from discrimination for minorities: in other words, it was clear that a ‘unitary state’ was synonymous with a ‘Sinhala-Buddhist state’. The 1978 Constitution, which introduced the all-powerful Executive Presidency, turned this into a totalitarian Sinhala-Buddhist state.

Since 1995, there have been several attempts to formulate and put in place a new, democratic Constitution, yet the President seems to be ignorant of all these efforts, including his own creation of the APRC, when he talks about the necessity to ‘find a solution that is our very own’. Where was he when the APRC crafted an excellent political solution well over two years ago? Or was that not a ‘solution that is our very own’ because it was based on the proposals of a multi-ethnic panel of experts? Does ‘our very own’ mean ‘Sinhala-Buddhist’?

A credible political solution would need to abolish the Executive Presidency and special place for Buddhism in the Constitution; ensure real parity for Sinhala and Tamil; put in place a Bill of Rights that rules out discrimination on any grounds whatsover in all parts of the island, and guarantees other rights like freedom of expression and association; includes the right to life, which is missing from the existing Constitution; devolves power to the Provincial Councils to a much greater degree than the 13th Amendment; and ensures greater representation of minority communities at the centre through a bicameral legislature.

The minority and Left parties that are currently part of the government must give Mahinda Rajapaksa and the SLFP notice that they will quit unless he implements the measures outlined above, and thus force him to choose between them and the Sinhala Right. In the event that he chooses the latter, they should form a third front – since the UNP is as compromised as the SLFP – and start campaigning for this programme as soon as possible. Whether they win or lose the next elections is less important than demonstrating to the people of Sri Lanka – and especially the minorities, who have suffered so much – that there are political leaders in Sri Lanka willing to stand up for equality, justice and democracy.

The Prolonged And Unjustified Imprisonment Of Dr Binayak Sen

Special Article (from The Statesman, 19 May, 2009)

Democracy at stake 

The Prolonged And Unjustified Imprisonment Of Dr Binayak Sen 

By Bharat Dogra

There is much in Indian democracy that we can justifiably be proud of. Yet on occasion, the authorities betray an obstinate tendency towards ruthless and revengeful injustice against social activists and movements. This undermines, even stigmatises, democracy. Quite often this is the outcome of intense prejudice, poor investigation and failure of governance. The crisis gets prolonged as justice is denied because the government refuses to acknowledge that its initial decision was distorted. That initial blunder is compounded when the administration makes it an issue of false prestige. This intensifies the agony of the victims, and makes a mockery of the basic tenets of democracy. There ought to be a system of checks and balances before it is too late. 
It is this intrinsic ability of democracy that is at stake in the case of the prolonged and unjustified imprisonment of Dr Binayak Sen, a highly accomplished doctor devoted to serving the poor, and one who doubled as a fearless human rights activist. Accused of such flimsy charges as carrying letters from an alleged Naxalite prisoner, Dr. Sen has been in jail for two years despite relentless protests by civil society and organisations as well as appeals for his release by eminent personalities the world over. 
As many as 22 Nobel prize winners have signed a public statement describing Dr. Sen as a ‘professional colleague’ and asked for his release. A satyagraha was organised in Raipur , the place of his incarceration, where many citizens, including eminent social activists and professionals, have offered arrest. 
Worked for the poor
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, dated April 17, 2009, a former Supreme Court judge, V.R. Krishna Iyer, has examined the nature of the injustice this accomplished paediatrician has been suffering. Justice Krishna Iyer wrote: “The trial of Dr. Sen, which began in a Raipur Sessions Court in late April 2008 has, however, not thrown up even a shred of evidence to justify any of these charges against him. By March 2009, of the 83 witnesses listed for deposition by the prosecution as part of the original charge-sheet, 16 were dropped by the prosecutors themselves and six declared ‘hostile’ while 61 others have deposed without corroborating any of the accusations against Dr. Sen. Irrespective of the merits of the case against Dr. Sen, there are very disturbing aspects to the way the trial process has been carried out so far.” The former CJI has described it as “a case of grave injustice which is a cause of much shame to Indian democracy.” 
At a more personal level, I had the good fortune of seeing Dr. Sen in action. He has worked for the weaker sections for nearly three decades. In 1980, a health programme for Chhattisgarh’s iron ore miners was launched under the leadership of the legendary trade union leader, Shankar Guha Niyogi.  Dr. Sen and other highly qualified doctors had come to this part of undivided Madhya Pradesh. They had given up their lucrative careers in medicine to provide health care to iron ore miners and villagers in general. It was a challenging period to work in. The miners had started donating from their meagre salaries to build a ‘Shaheed hospital’ which would serve villagers who were poorer still. While awaiting its construction, Dr. Sen and other doctors had started providing their services from the union office. 
I recall seeing a long queue of patients. During subsequent visits, I noticed how conscientiously the medical team and the volunteers had worked to make the “Shaheed hospital” one of the better healthcare centres in the region. It was a hospital built by workers; it functioned so well that patients came from places hundreds of kilometres away. They avoided the government and private hospitals, located much nearer their homes. The hospital was a dream come true, a wonder of sorts that drew health activists from all over the country. 
The medical team had to attend to a large number of patients each day. Yet there was time to join the relief effort in the event of a flood or earthquake. Yet there was time to help the victims of the Bhopal gas leak tragedy – the world’s worst environmental disaster (December 1984). 
Subsequently, Dr. Binayak Sen and his wife, Ilina, started a voluntary organisation, called ‘Rupantar’. It was based in Raipur . Dr Sen would regularly visit the remote tribal villages to work in the public health segment. One major challenge was to set up village-based laboratory facilities so that serious cases of malaria could promptly be diagnosed. Dr. Sen’s success in this venture as well as his other initiatives were widely applauded in health circles. Besides, he provided healthcare services free of charge in the workers’ bastis of Raipur . 
I was struck no less by Dr. Sen’s deep interest in several other areas of development, notably the promotion of traditional varieties of seeds. In the context of his future activities, he once mentioned his interest in an altogether different subject – solid waste management. 
Uncompromising stand
It wasn’t surprising that a person of such diverse interests and deep commitment became so closely involved with the human rights movement as well. He took an uncompromising and highly critical position towards certain aspects of the functioning of the government. This obviously antagonised the powerful lobbies within the state government. The climax was reached when the situation in the predominantly Maoist tribal belt deteriorated rapidly. Dr. Sen emerged as a firm critic of the government’s controversial strategy. 
The truth of the matter is that the increasing distress of the people was caused partly by the Naxalites, partly by the government’s policies and partly by the projects which were resulting in large-scale displacement and destruction of sustainable livelihood. 
Even if the government completely disagreed with Dr. Sen’s position, it could well have challenged his views and asserted its own position in a far more forceful manner. Far from it. Instead, the state took recourse to the thoroughly unjustified step – the doctor was arrested. 
This decision to arrest Dr Binayak Sen was taken in the face of widespread opposition. The government has been equally obstinate in refusing to admit its original mistake. This has deepened the agony of a distinguished doctor and his family. It is high time the government responded to the demand for his release. And over the past two years, that demand has become more and more strident both in India and abroad.

International Finance Appeal

Help fight against Taliban and military operations Donations urgently needed by Pakistan’s Labor Relief Campaign

Tariq Ali, Farooq Tariq

This is a formal appeal by the Labor Relief Campaign to help in the fight against Taliban and military operations. The purpose is to provide immediate help to some of the more than 1.5 million internally displaced people from the Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan.

 

 

 

Mazdoor Jeddojuhd This displacement has resulted from the fight between the Taliban and the Pakistani government. We also aim to publish Mazdoor Jeddojuhd in the Pushto language more frequently. At present it is published weekly in Urdu and monthly in Pushto. We want to counter the ideas both of religious fanatics and state repression.

We aim to aid the labour and social movements in the province by publishing their activities and views, bringing them together to form new networks.

 

The Situation

The Taliban have taken over parts of Pakistan. They have threatened to occupy other parts as well. To pacify them, the government went into an accord with the Taliban this April, imposing a so-called Nizam Adl (system of justice) in Malakanad. The Taliban then imposed medieval laws in the areas under their control, targeting women and minorities.

This accord also provided the Taliban with the opportunity to move into other areas.

 

Then the government went to another the opposite extreme and launched a military operation. This then resulted in an unprecedented influx of refugees into different part of the country. The army says that the operation is meant to wipe out religious fanatics and it will take time. But the religious fanatics are holding on and in fact are spreading all over Pakistan.

 

A military solution cannot eliminate the fanatics. On the contrary, it will help them to spread their ideas. The Taliban lost power in Afghanistan after NATO forces occupied in 2001. However, with a few years they re-emerged in Pakistan and later re-emerged in Afghanistan.

The situation is very complex.

 

The military operation in Swat covers up the reality that the Pakistan military considers the Taliban an asset and is not willing to sacrifice that asset to please the USA. While army is flushing the Taliban out of Swat, the Jihadi-infrastructure (training camps, seminaries, newspapers, charities; the fronts for the Taliban) remain intact in other parts of the country.

 

The scale of the insurgency is exacerbated by the 1.5 million people now living and festering in underfunded refugee camps or inadequate and temporary housing, devoid of gainful employment. This displacement does not engender confidence in the capacity of the Pakistani state to solve their problems.

 

Another major problem is the U.S. drone attacks. Over 700 people have been killed since 2006, with 164 killed in 14 attacks under Obama’s watch. These drone attacks are further fueling anti-U.S. sentiments.

The US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan is detrimental to the overall stability of the NWFP.

 

Our Perspective & Strategy

The fight against religious extremism can only be successful when the basic problems of the working class in social, political and economic fields are solved. In addition to developing a system of free education with a secular syllabus for all, this means an end to feudalism, implementation of land reform and an end to the U.S.

occupation of Afghanistan. Our strategy is to fight the fanatics with local defense committees.

 

The Alternatives

Both the Taliban and the military are destructive. We must support neither military action nor the Taliban. Our position is more radical than simply working for humanitarian help for the internally displaced persons (IDPs), although this work is absolutely essential. It is more than condemning, on the basis of sovereignty, the drone attacks and the civilian casualties that result from them. We are unequivocally opposed to the war because a military campaign like this will guarantee the violation of human rights for generations to come.

 

One of the main aspects of our campaign is to intensify the ideological campaign against the growing influence of Taliban. Our strategy is to build and strengthen the labour and social organization in the areas dominated by the Taliban. Since 2004 we have been able to build significant forces of labour, women and peasants in progressive organizations. A proper office, set up in 2004 in Murdan, has played a pivotal role in organizing progressive activities, primarily of women, in different parts of NWFP. Several new trade unions and peasant organizations have been set up and many more were brought together to help each other and unite around one common platform.

 

In the beginning the most significant development was the printing of Mazdoor Jeddojuhd in Pushto, the local language in the NWFP. The paper began on a voluntary basis with over 200 poets, writers, trade union, social and women activists lending their support. This is the first progressive Pushto paper of the trade unions and progressive writers.

Five editions have been printed and are available on line (www.jeddojuhud.com ). This is one concrete way to counter the religious fanatics in the language the majority of the Pukhtoon working class can read. It is imperative to increase the number of Pushto editions.

 

The Taliban has become a great danger to our existence and must be opposed. Although some progressive currents have called them anti-imperialists, they are like neo-fascists. Now the general public is turning against the Taliban. The swing in the public’s perception was catalyzed by a video showing the Taliban whipping a girl, shocking Pakistanis. However Taliban spokesperson Muslim Khan defended the punishment and asserted that the girl should have been stoned.

 

What is Labor Relief Campaign (LRC)?

After the devastating earthquake in Kashmir and other areas in October 2005, five organizations including Women Workers Help Line, Labour Education Foundation, Labour Party Pakistan, National Trade Union Federation and Progressive Youth Front took up an initiative to deal with the emergency that left over 100,000 dead and many more injured and displaced. Within two months, the LRC raised over half a million U.S. dollars from inside and outside Pakistan. This money provided immediate relief to the affected people.

 

Immediately after the military operation began in the first week of May 2009, once again the LRC initiated a campaign to help the internally displaced. LRC relief camps have been set up and volunteers raised a significant amount of money. The LRC bought and distributed goods from 16-18 May 2009 at different refugee camps in the NWFP.

 

LRC position:

 

We believe it is essential to develop a short-term, as well as a long-term, radical plan to confront religious fundamentalism. The following are a few points we are promoting through our literature:

 

· The LRC demands separation of the state from religion.

 

· We believe that at least 10 percent of national budget needs to be allocated to education. We must end state subsidies to the madrassas and nationalize all the major private /religious educational institutions, integrating them into a revamped public education system open to all.

 

· The LRC demands a radical land reform program, effective immediately.

 

· There should be a radical reduction in the army budget, an end to the nuclear program, and a redistribution of army lands.

 

· The LRC stands for a comprehensive legal and constitutional reform package that includes the decolonization of FATA, protection of minorities/ women, the convening of a committee (comprised particularly of minorities and women) to draft new educational curriculum, and the convening of an assembly to write a new, minority-friendly, secular constitution.

 

· The LRC demands the announcement of a living wage policy.

 

· The LRC demands an end to the occupation of Afghanistan by NATO and American forces and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and other areas of the world.

 

Please Donate

The Labour Relief Campaign requests that social organizations, individuals, trade unions and political activists and parties come forward to help this important campaign. Please donate to the campaign by affiliating with LRC. To affiliate, a minimum donation of US $300 is recommended.

 

Below are details of the account for sending money to the LRC. We will update you with all the relevant information on the campaign as well as on subsequent political developments.

 

A/C Title: Labour Education Foundation A/C Number: 01801876

 

Route:

 

Please advise and pay to Citi ****, New York, USA Swift CITI US 33 for onward transfer to **** ALFALAH LTD., KARACHI, PAKISTAN A/C No.

36087144 and for final transfer to **** ALFALAH LTD., LDA PLAZA, KASHMIR ROAD, LAHORE, PAKISTAN Swift: ALFHPKKALDA for A/C No. 01801876 OF LABOUR EDUCATION FOUNDATION.

 

Member organizations

1- Women Workers Help Line wwhlpk@yahoo.com www.wwhl.org.pk

 

2- Labour Party Pakistan Labour_party@yahoo.com www.laborpakistan.org

 

3- Labour Education Foundation lef@lef.org.pk www.lef.org.pk

 

4- National Trade Union Federation Pakistan ntufpak@gmail.com

 

5- Progressive Youth Front pyf_pakistan@yahoo.com

 

Endorsed by: Tariq Ali

 

Tariq Ali is a socialist writer and broadcaster who has been particularly active in anti-imperialist campaigns, from Vietnam to Iraq. Born and brought up in Pakistan, he now lives in London.

Farooq Tariq is the general secretary of Labour Party of Pakistan

John Pilger on Sri-Lanka

John Pilger
16 May 2009

In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at
night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of
discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the
violence began?

Bengalis from what was then East Pakistan did much the same. Their
urgent whispers described terrible state crimes that the news ignored,
and they implored us reporters to “let the world know”.

Palestinians speaking above the din of crowded rooms in Bethlehem and
Beirut asked no more.

For me, the most tenacious distant voices have been the Tamils of Sri
Lanka, to whom we ought to have listened a very long time ago.

It is only now, as they take to the streets of Western cities, and the
persecution of their compatriots reaches a crescendo, that we listen,
though not intently enough to understand and act.

The Sri Lankan government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a
modern master: Israel. In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the
pornography is unseen, illicit at best.

You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like
Mu’l'li-vaaykkaal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan
army, and you lie that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown
up quite wilfully by a Tamil suicide bomber.

You then give reporters a ride into the jungle, providing what in the
news business is called a dateline, which suggests an eyewitness
account, and you encourage the gullible to disseminate only your
version and its lies.

Gaza is the model.

From the same masterclass you learn to manipulate the definition of
terrorism as a universal menace, thus ingratiating yourself with the
“international community” (Washington) as a noble sovereign state
blighted by an “insurgency” of mindless fanaticism.

The truth and lessons of the past are irrelevant.

And having succeeded in persuading the US and Britain to proscribe
your insurgents as terrorists, you affirm you are on the right side of
history, regardless of the fact that your government has one of the
world’s worst human rights records and practises terrorism by another
name.

Such is Sri Lanka.

This is not to suggest that those who resist attempts to obliterate
them culturally, if not actually, are innocent in their methods. The
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have spilt their share of
blood and perpetrated their own atrocities.

But they are the product, not the cause, of an injustice and a war
that long predate them.

Neither is Sri Lanka’s civil strife as unfathomable as it is often
presented: an ancient religious-ethnic rivalry between the Hindu
Tamils and the Buddhist Sinhalese government, who have both lived on
the island for thousands of years.

Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic
divide-and-rule. The British brought Tamils from India as virtual
slave labour while building an educated Tamil middle class to run the
colony.

At independence in 1948, the new political elite, in its rush for
power, cultivated ethnic support in a society whose real imperative
should have been the eradication of poverty.

Language became the spark. The election of a government pledging to
replace English, the lingua franca, with Sinhalese (the language of
Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhala majority) was a declaration of war on the
Tamils.

The new law meant that Tamils almost disappeared from the civil
service by 1970; and as “nationalism” seduced parties of both the left
and right, discrimination and anti-Tamil riots followed.

The formation of a Tamil resistance, notably the LTTE (the Tamil
Tigers), included a demand for a state in the north of the country.
The response of the government was judicial killing, torture,
disappearances, and more recently, the reported use of cluster bombs
and chemical weapons.

The Tigers responded with their own crimes, including suicide bombing
and kidnapping.

In 2002, a ceasefire was agreed, and was held until last year, when
the government decided to finish off the Tigers.

Tamil civilians were urged to flee to military-run “welfare camps”,
which have become the symbol of an entire people under vicious
detention, and worse, with nowhere to escape the army’s fury. This is
Gaza again, although the historical parallel is the British treatment
of Boer women and children in South Africa more than a century ago,
who “died like flies”, as a witness wrote.

Foreign aid workers have been banned from Sri Lanka’s camps, except
the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has described a
catastrophe in the making. The United Nations says that 60 Tamils a
day are being killed in the shelling of a government-declared “no-fire
zone”.

In 2003, the Tigers proposed a devolved Interim Self-Governing
Authority that included real possibilities for negotiation. Today, the
government gives the impression it will use its imminent “victory” to
“permanently solve” the “Tamil minority problem”, as many of its more
rabid supporters threaten.

The army commander says all of Sri Lanka “belongs” to the Sinhalese
majority. The word “genocide” is used by Tamil ex-patriots – perhaps
loosely; but the fear is true.

India could play a critical part. The south Indian state of Tamil Nadu
has a Tamil-speaking population with centuries of ties with the Tamils
of Sri Lanka. In the current Indian election campaign, anger over the
siege of Tamils in Sri Lanka has brought hundreds of thousands to
rallies.

Having initially helped to arm the Tigers, Indian governments sent
“peacekeeping” troops to disarm them. Delhi now appears to be allowing
the Sinhalese supremacists in Colombo to “stabilise” its troubled
neighbour.

In a responsible regional role, India could stop the killing and begin
to broker a solution.

The great moral citadels in London and Washington offer merely silent
approval of the violence and tragedy. No appeals are heard in the
United Nations from them.

British foreign secretary David Miliband has called for a “ceasefire”,
as he tends to do in places where British “interests” are served, such
as the 14 impoverished countries racked by armed conflict where the
British government licenses arms shipments.

In 2005, British arms exports to Sri Lanka rose by 60%.

The distant voices from there should be heard, urgently.

[John Pilger is a renowned Australian-born journalist, author and
filmmaker. This article is reprinted from www.johnpilger. com/a>.]

 

Faiz Peace Festival

Our Struggle for Peace

I thank the organisers for giving me the opportunity to speak here at the Faiz Peace Festival. While South Asia has had many great poets, the choice of Faiz as the symbol of South Asian Peoples’ Unity, can only be applauded. Often considered the greatest poet of the subcontinent for an entire era, Faiz was born in undivided India, a communist and internationalist, a Pakistani who fought for democratic rights, against India-Pakistan war, and against Pakistan’s violence connected to the Bangladesh freedom struggle. He is particularly relevant today when our mornings start with the fear of terror attacks, war and ‘war on terror’ and our evenings shatter our dreams to live in a world free of violence and hunger, in a greener earth where social justice and pluralities are not things of the past. The recent terror attacks in Mumbai and Lahore, along with the Sri Lankan government’s murderous war on the Tamils, have destabilised our conscience and shaken our confidence and faith in human dignity.

Ever since Pokhran and Chaghai (1998), we have lived under the shadow, no longer merely of war, but of India-Pakistan nuclear conflict. On one hand, we have the Pakistani regime, where enormous funds of US imperialism helped it to develop a bloated military apparatus to oppose forces that threaten US interests, like the Soviet-backed Afghan regime earlier, or “fundamentalists” now. But naturally, Pakistan also used this for its own interests like building its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan also intervened systematically in Kashmir, not really for the independence of Kashmir, but hoping to annex Kashmir to Pakistan. On the other hand we have India, a country that never signed the NPT, a country that was an initiator of the CTBT but backed out at a convenient moment, the first country in the sub-continent to test nuclear weapons, now being rewarded through the Indo-US nuclear deal, a deal that on one hand strengthens India’s subservience to US foreign policy, and on the other hand shows how hollow is the US claim about eliminating weapons of mass destruction. India is of course, also the country which seeks to establish regional domination over Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal alike, while using its military powers to also violate civil liberties inside the country, from Kashmir to the North-East. In recent times, it has been getting a good deal of US support, whether over so-called anti-terrorism, or Kashmir. The struggle for peace must therefore be a peoples’ struggle, and it must also encompass anti-imperialism, anti-fundamentalism/anti-communalism.

I want to share our experiences of struggle, particularly the experiences of Maitree, the West Bengal based women’s network, as well as of other women struggles for peace, communal harmony, and the struggle for an end to nuclearisation of the sub-continent. Maitree came into existence in 1996, within two decades after the Left Front regime’s rule. This was significant, as our constituents were mostly leftists, and we had begun with much greater expectations from the Left Front, but were forced to move away from it as it used large scale violence despite its claims about democratisation and as there is very little space for plurality and dissent. While distancing ourselves from the provincial ruling party, we also looked at issues of national importance, including violence unleashed by war, militarization, neo-liberal development agenda, as well as the growth of fascistic formations. We campaigned over the mega dams (Narmada Dam), SEZs, over nuclear weaponisation and nuclear power development in West Bengal.

The first major campaign that we conducted for peace was the long campaign over the nuclear weapons tests. Our anti-nuke tests demonstration on 16^th May culminated in a major initiative to coordinate a meeting of all the anti-war and anti-nuke groups of West Bengal, a campaign committee entitled Paramanu Astra Birodhi Abhiyan (Campaign against Nuclear Weapons) was formed and eventually we took a leading role in organizing a united demonstration on August 6, 1998, Hiroshima Day, through this Committee. It was endorsed by over 110 organizations and a large number or prominent intellectuals, including Sujoy Basu, a leading engineer working on alternative energy, Arun Mitra, a well known poet from the 1940s, and Gautam Chattopadhyay, a communist historian. We did fail to convince the CPI(M) that a mass rally should permit every participant to bring her or his own poster or banner, instead of dictating a uniform and rigid set of slogans. We called for ‘A Nuclear Weapon-Free World’ ‘NO to Nuclear Weapons – Neither in India nor in Pakistan’. Our demonstration mobilized over 25,000 people, bringing together a diversity of voices on that occasion, from Gandhians to revolutionary Marxists, from science movement activists to feminists along with sex workers, and with songs, tableaux, and colourful posters. The CANW would later play some role also in setting up the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace at an all India level.

 We felt that the oppressed including most certainly women bear the brunt of violence and authoritarianism legitimised by war. The NDA government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, was whipping up aggressive nationalism by emphasizing anti-Pakistan militarization. Indeed, building India’s nuclear weapons capacity had been the stated Jan Sangh/BJP policy since 1951. Our political focus was on the need to oppose jingoistic nationalism, which is used as a flag to attack the struggles of the exploited, and the oppressed for any sort of social justice and which is also used for Hindutva mobilisation. Soon after, at the time of the Kargil war, L. K. Advani (then Home Minister, now the BJP’s Prime Minister in the waiting) and George Fernandes (then the Minister of Defence) were both in favour of deepening the war.

We were therefore deeply concerned that two irresponsible and reactionary regimes were willing to play havoc with the lives of millions of people by their willingness to go to war. Many of the constituents of the CANW, along with the Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy, came together to call for an anti-war demonstration on July 15, 1999. Our slogans included, Stop War Hysteria, Build a lasting peace; Oppose imperialist intervention in Indo-Pakistan debates; Stop Spreading Communal Hysteria under the Plea of War; The Kashmir Problem Must be Solved only through respecting the aspirations of the entire people of Kashmir.

But the Kargil war brought out the crucial weakness within the left. No left party in India is hawkish, no left party calls for war on Pakistan, but the mainstream left is weak on the nationality question and the right to self determination. As a result, much of the left is absolutely committed to the territorial integrity of India, and top down contribution of some financial benefits for Kashmiris are about the only support to Kashmir they can think of. Even the CPI(ML) Liberation did not see fit to include the people of Kashmir as a separate category in dialogues between the peoples of India and Pakistan. Within Maitree, we had the same debates appearing. So the Kargil war stirred up a powerful debate. But if it did not lead to a firm position being taken by the entire network, it did compel the left wing of Maitree to come out in defence of the democratic rights of the people of Kashmir.

Nor did we ignore wars elsewhere. A major initiative was taken during the Kosova crisis and NATO’s invasion of Yugoslavia. Our leaflet of June 1999 declared, sarcastically, Congratulations Humanitarianism! The central slogan of our demonstration of 10 June was NATO/US aggressors hands off Yugoslavia.

An intense agitation was organised against West Bengal Government’s attempts to set up a nuclear power station in the Sunderbans in 2000. We argued that nuclear power stations were sought, not primarily to generate power, but to develop weapons grade fuels. Secondly, we argued that nuclear power is neither clean, nor cheap; and that locating a power station of this kind in the worlds’ largest mangrove forest would be an environmental disaster. On 9 August 2000, Nagasaki Day, our demonstration raised the slogan of a Nuclear Free World, and opposed aggressive patriarchal values of militaristic nationalism. We were confronted by police, who beat us up, tore our posters, took away microphones, and arrested 47 people. Male police arrested a number of women.

Some of our campaigns have been solidarity campaigns with women elsewhere, as after the Nude protest, when, on July 15, 2004, a number of women protested the arrest, rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama by the Assam Rifles in Manipur. This crime, committed with impunity, is the result of half a century of army rule in much of North East India, through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958). Such militarization and state action to eliminate terrorism in fact contribute to concentration of power in the hands of the state and especially its armed wings. This leads to violence on women. We took out a leaflet and campaigned extensively, including by organizing mass signatures and by also campaigning in support of Irom Sharmila. We expressed our admiration for this Manipuri woman who has been on hunger strike since 2001, kept alive by repeated force feeding by the army, which tantamounts to continuous state violence.

Throughout 2005, especially during the International Fortnight Against Violence on Women, we campaigned against the US occupation of Iraq, and against Indian collaboration with the USA in military exercises. We were also vocal against so-called peacekeeping forces in India using large-scale violence on common people, including taking away their property, sexually harassing women and occasionally even killing people, like the case of Kiranbala, when a BSF jawan, Pravin Kumar, tried to rape her, and shot and killed her as she attempted to escape, in North 24 Parganas in May 2005. Women in the border districts feel unsafe because of continuous harassment by BSF personnel.

The struggle for peace, in the case of India, has to include the struggle against oppression of minorities. Their bodies often become the core site of fascist Hindutva communal attacks. This was what happened in Gujarat, in 2002. For six months women had to live through slaughter and sexual violence, mass rapes, gang rapes, rape followed by murder in most cruel ways, and eventually, not less than 2000 Muslims had been killed and over 100,000 being forced into involuntary exile or dwelling in camps. We campaigned against this right from the start, with our first demonstration coming out on March 5. We carried out a several month-long anti-fascist, anti-communal campaign, calling for peace and saying at the same time that peace did not mean lying down and accepting fascist violence. At one point, our public rally on May 1 was accosted by right wing forces, who accused us of being in the pay of the ISI (the Pakistani secret service) for circulating a leaflet with the title, Who Wants to Fool Us in the names of Ram and Rahim? We had consciously chosen May 1, saying that communal violence was being used to assert the supremacy of community identity over class. We had also argued, that a slogan like Hindus and Muslims unite, was inappropriate, as it seemed to suggest that Hindus and Muslims were both committing more or less the same kind of violence and should desist from it. This was followed by a special bulletin, with a section entitled Ten Ways to Combat Hate, along with campaigns aimed at school children. We also organized the launch of the Peoples’ Union of Civil Liberty’s report on the Gujarat violence through a mass meeting. Two of us edited a number of reports on the Gujarat events, provided two introductions, and published a Bengali book (Garbhaghati Gujarat —  Gujarat: Slayer of Wombs) that ran into two editions of about 6000 copies in all. Our campaigns against Hindu communalism and its politics of hate and violence also led us to a campaign over the violence in Kandhamal, Orissa, where masses of Christians are under threat. We demonstrated in front of Utkal Bhavan (the office of the Orissa Government in Calcutta). Our aim is to hit back wherever the Hindutva forces campaign, whether it is in Bangalore or in coastal Karnataka, attacking people for beef eating or imposing very gendered moral codes on women. It is not just by voting against them every five years, but by resisting them actively, that we can get our autonomy. Even today, in the 21st century, we are told what to wear (no jeans!), where to go (not to a pub).

One thing is clear to us. The struggle for sub-continental peace has to be international in scope, and has to be linked to the struggle for communal harmony. Communal violence is routinely linked to cross country conflicts. And certainly, elite political forces in all the countries are involved in promoting such conflicts. The hounding of Taslima Nasreen, for example, has been a sub-continental affair. Muslim communalists forced her out of Bangladesh. Her shelter in India became increasingly precarious as Muslim communalist groups started offering money for her head, and finally, after a small but determined group, the All India Minority Forum, held up half of Calcutta in November 2007, the Left Front government did not hesitate for a moment to throw her out in the name security. Why did the government fail to provide her security? Just because she does not a have a single vote while Muslim fundamentalists will fetch it a lots of votes? Is this government really concerned about the rights of minorities or allows itself to appease the community patriarchs? She was eventually forced to leave India in March, 2008, after being kept almost as a high security prisoner rather than a seeker of political asylum. It is a travesty of justice, democracy and human rights. And the one group that hypocritically jumped up for her was the Hindutva brigade who grabbed the opportunity of Muslim bashing. Maitree has consistently stood by her on the issues of freedom of speech and women’s rights as human rights. We rejected the claims that she was anti-Islamic, saying that she was championing women’s equality. We have taken out demonstrations before the Bangladesh High Commission in Calcutta earlier. In the IFVAW, 2007 we formed a human chain in a busy junction of South Calcutta in support of Taslima.

            The Mumbai incident tragically reminded us yet again, there is no uniform Muslim sentiment. One can have Muslim communalists provoking extreme violence, including the murder of around 162 people. One can also have Muslims being typecast and arrested just because they are Muslims. All you need to see are some of comments of hate and pro-military rule in Indian sms, or in the media. Against such calls for war on Pakistan, we organised a silent candlelight demonstration on December 10, Human Rights Day, condemning the killings in Mumbai, but opposing any war drive or any call for a military dictatorship in India.

If Indians and Pakistanis cannot work together for peace, if Indians and Bangladeshis cannot fight together for communal harmony and freedom of speech, then communal forces will gain ground in every country. Without belittling in any way the danger from the Hindutva forces, therefore, I want to emphasize that peace in South Asia cannot be durable unless we have a clear agenda, calling for

• A South Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
• A more open border.  Turn SAARC into a real South Asian cooperation and allow free movement of people. Allow freedom of movement across Kashmir.
• A forthright opposition to militarization in all the countries
• Oppose all shades of communalism, and stand up for minority rights.
• Oppose imperialist intervention in the sub-continent, whether dressed as peacekeeping or as war on terror.
• A people to people approach.

Let me end by quoting the 8^th March slogan prepared by women’s groups in Vadodara, Gujarat, this year

“Silence is the language of complicity…

Speaking out is the language of change”

Raise your voice and lend your hand

to make this society free from violence

Fourth International on Sri Lanka

A merciless war that has brought no political solution 

A statement by Bureau of the Fourth International 18th May 2009

On Sunday 7th May the weapons of the Tamil Eeelam Tigers were silenced and they heard of the death of their leader Vilupillai Prabhakaran. This was the end of a brutal and merciless military offensive by the chauvinistic nationalist Sinhalese government led by Mahinda Rajapaksa.   

For several months the regime had unremittingly bombarded Tamil rebels and civilians in its so-called “war against terrorism”. Hospitals, schools, homes were bombarded, causing more than 7000 deaths and 15000 wounded, Tamils who were forcibly moved and placed in detention camps that they weren’t allowed to leave. They are all innocent civilians, but suspected of terrorism simply because their belong to the Tamil minority of the North and East of the island. This military victory will not nevertheless put the end to a military conflict that has lasted for several decades.

Since 1948, when Sri Lanka became independent, the minority in Sri Lanka have suffered systematic linguistic, cultural and economic discrimination. Up to the 1970s the Tamils of the North East repeatedly and unsuccessfully demanded the respect of their rights and culture by peaceful means. This led to a political radicalisation of Tamil youth and to the emergence of an armed struggle that lasted for almost 30 years.

While we can only condemn the suicide attacks and the violence of the Tamil Tigers, the struggle for the respect for Tamil rights and culture are still pertinent. This war against the Tamil Tigers has served as a pretext for the authoritarian Rajapaksa regime to limit democratic freedoms not only for the ethnic minorities in the country but for all citizens.

The government has sent its death squadrons against independent journalists and critics of its war policy. No lasting policy will be possible without recognition of the right to self-determination of the Tamil people.

Autonomy must be granted to the regions with a non-Sinhala majority and equality between citizens must be granted as the only guarantee of peace and democracy in a multiracial and multi-cultural state. A real democracy cannot exist without respect for the rights of ethnic minorities.

Bureau of the Fourth International 18th May 2009

London Protest in support of Binayak Sen

Over one hundred demonstrators gathered on Thursday outside the Indian High Commission in London to call for the release of the Bengali doctor and human rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen. Sen, who was arrested in Chhattisgarh two Demonstrators demanding Binayak Sen's release years back, has been languishing in jail without proper medical attention. Carrying placards calling for the release of Sen, the demonstrators — academics from London School of Economics, The School of Oriental and African Studies, theatre and film personalities, doctors and activists — marked the second year of Sen’s incarceration in a Chhattisgarh jail with slogans and songs of protest. “The position has not changed at all. Dr Sen is being denied medical treatment. He should be released immediately on bail pending a fair and prompt trial,” said Amrit Wilson, co-ordinator of the UK branch of the Release Binayak Sen Now campaign. There were similar protests in Calcutta demanding the Binayak Sen’s immediate release.   Read more in the Indian Telegraph by clicking here Other links London Protest for Binayak Sen reported in the Hindu Binayak Sen Protest in London On NDTV

Military operation in Swat

According to UN, 2.2 million Pashtuns have been displaced from Swat, Buner, Dir, Bajaur and Waziristan by the so-called war between Pakistan Army and Islamic militants in the north-west Pakistan and many have been killed. Some of them have been given shelter in the camps established by UN and the Pakhunkhwa  government in settled districts and a lot have been accommodated by common people of Sawabi, Mardan, Nowshehra, Charsada, Peshawar in their houses and hujras (guest houses) according to Pashtun tradition of hospitality and filial responsibility. A lot of them are still trapped in the war-zone and are facing immense difficulties including curfews, scarcity of food, and threat to their life both from indiscriminate military bombardment and brutality of Taleban. 

Women, children, and elderly  people have particularly been affected by the war. They are staying in camps in cramped conditions and have limited access to clean drinking water and electricity.  The sweltering heat of Pakistan’s summer is further adding to their agonies.  According to UN, the situation is precarious and may lead to greater humanitarian crisis if adequate aid could not reach these IDPs.

In these circumstances, some Pashtun families in distress tried to flee to the relative security of other provinces. These families that included mostly women and children were stopped at the Sindh-Punjab border by the Sindh police on orders from Sindh government and forced to wait in scorching heat for hours. They were ultimately asked to return to Pukhthunkhwa (NWFP). MQM and Sindhi political groups are already agitating against the entry of Pashtun IDPs into Sindh. And Punjab government has decided not to allow IDPs of Pukhtunkhwa (NWFP) in Punjab. Besides, Pashtun families are being harassed by Punjab police in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The collation of Canadian Pashtun organizations and all Pashtuns condemn these cruel acts of the Punjab and Sindh governments and consider it against the basic human feelings and ethics of empathy towards fellow humans in distress. It is also against the tenets of Islam, which emphasize help to needy people and civic principles of modern statehood that give equal rights to all citizens within state. 

We believe that the acts above have disproved the claims that Pakistan is a home-land of all living within its boundaries. It is increasingly becoming evident that the so-called Pakistani and Muslim brotherhood were the tools in the hands of the industrial and bureaucratic classes from Karachi and Central Punjab to exploit the rest of the people for their benefit.

These events should awaken Pashtuns and liberal and secular forces to the gravity of situation and to the need for finding ways for ending their predicament. We appeal you all independent of political affiliation and place of residence to sit together and think about Pashtuns  status and future in Pakistan and the broader region. The sooner we do this, the more secure our future will be.  Otherwise Balkanization of Pakistan is inevitable.

Jahan Zeb

Pashtun Peace Forum Canada

South Asian Peoples Unity Conference

The South Asian Peoples Forum (SAPF) has successfully concluded a South Asian Peoples Unity Conference in conjunction with the 2nd annual Faiz Peace Festival, Toronto. The Conference was held on the premises of the University of Toronto, Canada, between April 23-26th, 2009. The delegates came from Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Islamabad, California, New York, Birmingham,  London-UK, Ottawa, Waterloo and Toronto. 

Abid Hasan Minto, and Sharene Razack opened the conference. Presently you can view Sharene Razack’s contribution here 

Click To Play

The participants discussed the crises in Sri Lanka, Imperialism in South Asia, State Repression in South Asian countries and Britain, the history and dilemmas of the Left in South Asian countries, and current struggles against Neoliberalism in South Asia and in the diaspora.  Sections of the conference can be viewed at  Panel on Imperialism  and at Panel on Sri-Lanka The film Amu (Dir: Sonali Bose) was screened during the conference, and raised a discussion about the state’s pogroms against minorities, focusing on the events of November, 1984, New Delhi.

Recognizing the current crises in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, in particular, the delegates to the conference passed the following Resolutions at the close of the conference:

The  Conference on the Unity of the Peoples of South Asia

           i.          condemns all foreign intervention in the region and demands the immediate withdrawal of US, NATO, ISAF and other foreign troops from the region;

         ii.          opposes militarization and war preparations by our individual governments, and stands against nuclearization;

       iii.          condemns all acts of state terror and repression against our peoples and against all social and political movements under any pretext such as the war on terror, democracy, development, secularism, national unity and territorial integrity and others;

       iv.          condemns political violence and acts of terror by non-state actors against civilians in the name of religion, ethnicity and nationalism;

         v.          holds that neo-liberal offensives have weakened the security of all ordinary people of South Asia and other parts of the world, and supports all struggles in defence of livelihood, economic rights, well-being and social security; and

    vi.            resolves to disseminate the proceedings of the conference and to organize similar conferences in future.