Monday, April 06, 2015

DailyTimes

* Civil society demands that Pakistan must refrain from any military involvement in Saudi-led coalition forces

Press Release

April 06, 2015

Image Caption

The Government of Pakistan reiterates its intention to “protect the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)”. However, the sole purpose of the current Saudi-led Arab military coalition is aggression against Yemen. KSA has formally asked Pakistan for ‘boots on the ground’, ‘fighter jets in the air’ and ‘naval ships on the water’ to protect its royal family.

Still grievously suffering from its wounds of past mercenary services, eg the bombing of Palestinian refugees in Jordan (Black September 1970), Pakistan has learned no lessons. Killing Yemenis is inhuman, immoral, and a plainly visible disaster in the offing, which will push back Pakistan and the entire region by hundreds of years.

Why is the government becoming so reckless on the Yemen issue, which it should not touch with a bargepole? Pakistan is bending over backwards to comply with the self-seeking desires of the House of Saud. The government is also fabricating false narratives that easily outdo those in George Orwell’s 1984. There are at least six falsehoods being used to mislead the people of Pakistan.

First: Pakistan must aid KSA because it is a ‘brotherly Muslim country’. Why do we deliberately remain silent on the fact that Yemen is also a Muslim country? If ‘brotherhood’ is based on being Muslim, then all Muslim countries should be our ‘brothers’. Why is Pakistan agreeing to kill one group of our Muslim ‘brothers’ (Yemenis) by taking money from the other (House of Saud)?

Second: Propagating the impression that Yemen is attacking KSA. The truth is the opposite. KSA and its Arab allies are attacking and bombing Yemen, not vice versa.

Third: Intentionally creating wrong perceptions about three completely different entities: KSA, House of Saud (Royal Clan) and the Muslim holy sites: Mecca and Madina. The fact is: there is absolutely no danger to the holy sites, except from KSA itself.

Fourth: Advocating that it is in Pakistan’s ‘national interest to support KSA’. The fact is that Pakistan’s national interest, and international standing as a UN member, will be irreversibly compromised by becoming an ally of the KSA-led Arab coalition, which has blatantly violated the UN Charter by its unprovoked and illegal act of aggression against Yemen, without a UN mandate.

Fifth: Emphasising KSA’s friendship and favours to Pakistan. The fact is that KSA heavily funds violent extremist jihadi groups and fights its proxy wars with Iran in Pakistan. Yemen does not. Does any Pakistani need to be convinced that how Saudis contemptuously and disrespectfully treat Pakistanis in KSA?

Sixth: Stating that ‘Pakistan’s international prestige and status will go up because of its involvement in the Saudi-led war’. The fact is that Pakistan will be further ridiculed as an insane country that is willing to rent out its armed forces when its own house is on fire. There is no doubt that Pak involvement will generate a new set of enemies, including Iran (another ‘brotherly’ Muslim country).

Our government thinks that Pakistani citizens have no say on this vital issue. But we do. We demand that Pakistan need not compromise its armed forces by turning them into a mercenary force up for rent; that we deal with our own problems rather than seeking new conflicts in distant lands and taking sides in a complex situation. We believe that “the strength of a country must not be measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them”.

DailyTimes

Alal O Dulal

IF ALAL GOES RIGHT, DULAL GOES LEFT.

Zonayed Saki’s Candidacy

Posted on April 2,  2015 by Humayun Kabir

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Left-leaning, progressive, middle class intellectuals and political activists have long bemoaned the lack of political alternative and the unwillingness of the leftist and bhaddarlok activists to enter the cauldron of electoral politics.

Could Zonayed Saki’s Candidacy Be A Democratic Moment For Us?
by Humayun Kabir

Hegel had once remarked, “Reading the morning newspaper is the realist’s morning prayer. One orients one’s attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands.”[1] Leaving aside the questions about the newspaper’s ability or willingness to report “what the world is” and fact that Facebook is fast replacing the newspaper as the mechanism for orienting “one’s attitude towards the world”, I am happy to report that my attitude towards the world took a positive leap today after reading in a newspaper that Zonayed Saki will be contesting in the upcoming Dhaka mayoral election.[2] In the passages that will follow I will explain the roots of these emotions. In addition, I will try to sketch out how these positive feelings can be translated into programs of positive action.

Reading the newspapers in Bangladesh over the last three months has been a harrowing experience – strikes, blockades, petrol bombs, charred lives, crossfires, disappearances, and police harassments have seemed to become permanent fixtures on newspaper pages and public consciousness. Yet, there has been very little reaction to all of these, as if, they have become the “new normal.” We have accepted these atrocious conditions in silence much the way we have accepted the dysfunctional politics of Bangladesh of the last two decades. The energy and optimism of anti-Ershad movement of the late 80s evaporated soon after the establishment of democracy in 1991. Over the last twenty-four years, adoption of neoliberal policies, militarization of the state, failure to provide basic security and welfare to citizens, systematic denial of civil liberties and protection of law, and oppression of minority groups have been carried out by all the democratic governments. The political parties have failed to work out a stable compromise on even the basic minimum of democracy – free and open election and working parliamentary procedure. Under democratic governance Bangladesh has achieved the status of one of the most corrupt countries of the world and Dhaka has become the second least livable city in the world. But the worst of all is the fact that we, the people of Bangladesh, have come to accept all of these in silence.

The suffocating silence of Bangladeshi people about their dysfunctional democracy can be explained by few factors. First, despite the dysfunctional politics the countries economy has grown by six to seven percent annually. The beneficiaries of this remarkable economic growth have apparently adopted the stance of “pete khaile pithe shoy” [getting beat-up is quite acceptable, if the belly is full] and have chosen not to stir the pot. Second, and more plausibly in my opinion, Bangladeshis have been silent because there hasn’t been any alternative political force around which people can gravitate and challenge the status quo. The old left parties like the Communist Party, the Workers Party, and the JSD have failed the people of Bangladesh through organizational weakness. They have been bogged down by their dogmas and sectarian infighting, have failed to reach the masses or instill any hope. Dr. Yunus’s ill-planned foray into politics and even more ill-conceived decision to drop out suddenly have poured cold water on the hopes of any civil society inspired version of a political party. Organizations like the Ain O Shalish Kendra or the National Committee to Protect Oil Gas Mineral Resources Power and Ports have fought commendably on behalf of Bangladeshi people but they have little political aspirations beyond carrying out watchdog functions. All in all, the lack of alternative political forces left Bangladeshi people to endure a dysfunctional democracy in silence.

Left-leaning, progressive, middle class intellectuals and political activists have long bemoaned the lack of political alternative and the unwillingness of the leftist and bhaddarlok activists to enter the cauldron of electoral politics. But the decision by Zonayed Saki to contest in the Dhaka City Corporation election is a welcome break. Those of us who know Saki and his party Gonosonhoti Andolon can vouch for the vision and dedication of the party members. I hope in the coming days we are going to learn more about Saki and particulars of his election platform. We can then decide based on policies and programs whether we want to vote for him. This is surely a welcomed change in Bangladesh’s politics. Electoral decisions based on policies, debates, and ideas.

Facing nationally funded candidates with huge infrastructure, Saki’s candidacy will face many challenges. However, it is more significant than just providing us with a left candidate that we can vote for. Saki is important not only because who he is or what his campaign is but also because what he can become or what we can make of his campaign. If we simply wait for the election-day to vote for Saki, his candidacy will not matter much. However, if we all get involved in debating his campaign and unleash our pent-up political energies, we will surely help to bring a small incremental transformation in the political landscape of Bangladesh regardless of the election results.

Democratic theorist Sheldon Wolin had argued that democracy cannot be institutionalized and routine elections are not democratic all. Rather, democracy exists only in fugitive democratic moments, when disparate individuals come together as democratic masses and make political demands upon the existing political structure.[3] Democratic moments are fugitive or temporary because the democratic mass does not sustain long as a collective body as individuals sooner or later go back to their private lives and interests. Nevertheless, the democratic moments often produce radical or even revolutionary changes in political discourses, structures, and consciousness. These democratic moments determine the parameters of future institutionalized politics of the professional politicians. These democratic moments determine what the politicians must do and what they can’t do.

Can we make Saki’s electoral campaign one such democratic moment for Bangladesh’s politics? Surely we can. Saki has done the first part by stepping up to the political arena and opening up the opportunity for us to join. Now, it is our time to wake up from our cynicism and petty self-interest. Now, it is the time to join Mr. Saki’s campaign and make it ours. Now, it is up to us unleash our energies, desires, and imagination to make Mr. Saki’s campaign a vibrant, popular, and effective election campaign in Bangladesh’s history. It is time to make this opportunity count and make an effort to shake the established political system. If the Greeks can do it (think of Syriza), if the people of Seattle can do it (think of Kshama Sawant), and if the Delhiaties can do it (think of Aam Aadmi Party), why can’t we?

Yes, we can change the course of Bangladesh’s politics. We can at least try. What a remarkable change of my orientation towards the world as compared to yesterday, when I was wallowing in despair about Bangladesh’s future and our misfortune. Thank you, the newspaper that brought the news of Saki’s inspiring decision to fight in the ring of electoral politics– a space that has been object of much agitation but very little participation in recent years.

Humayun Kabir is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Graduate Center of City University of New York.

[1] Miscellaneous writings of G.W.F. Hegel, translation by Jon Bartley Stewart, Northwestern University Press, 2002, page 247.

[2] http://www.dhakatribune.com/politics/2015/mar/29/zonayed-saki-collects-nomination-form

[3] Wolin, Sheldon S. 1994. “”Fugitive Democracy”.” Constellations 1 (1): 11–25.

From The Hindu

March 21, 2015

‘Don’t call me Muslim, I am an atheist’

Suvojit Bagchi

Writer-in-exile Taslima Nasreen calls for reining in religious fundamentalism, saying that criticism of religion is not the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals alone

Writer Taslima Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 when extremists threatened to kill her for criticising Islam, and has been living in exile since. Her country has, in recent times, seen many intellectuals expelled or killed. Ahmed Rajib Haider, an atheist blogger who wrote under the name Thaba Baba, was hacked to death after the Shahbag protests in 2013. In February this year, atheist blogger Avijit Roy was killed in Dhaka by extremist groups for his writings on the Bangla blog Mukto-Mona (Free Thinker) that he founded. Feminist and secular humanist Ms Nasreen now lives in New Delhi. In an interview with Suvojit Bagchi, she spoke about the shrinking space for free thinkers in Bangladesh and says that Islam cannot be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions go through.

Tell us a little bit about Avijit Roy.

I knew Avijit for a long time. He started Mukto-Mona to accommodate writings of atheists and humanists, as newspapers do not publish their work. Avijit was a science blogger and a free thinker, an atheist and a rationalist, who wanted to secure a space to dissect and debate issues. Later, he turned his blogs into books. Mukto-Mona became a window through which people could look at each other and raise questions about all religions, including Islam. In Bangladesh, over a period, the space for free thinkers has been disappearing. Avijit brought it back using a new platform… precisely why his contribution is outstanding.

When and how exactly did this space for free thinkers start shrinking?

The change was noticed at the time of General Hussain Ershad in the mid-1980s. A secular Constitution was given away to make Islam the state religion. I have witnessed the mass movement of 1969, the newly independent country of the 70s… the situations then were different. People could voice their opinion and women hardly wore the hijab or the burqa. But society slowly changed. For instance, whatever I wrote in the 1980s, early 90s — criticising Islam and women’s condition in Islamic societies — was published in newspapers with a wide circulation. But that cannot be imagined now. Freedom of expression is an alien term now.

Why has this change taken place?

The progressive community is partly responsible. When I was expelled in 1994, the whole of society went silent. If this community had objected then, Bangladesh would not have had a society in which an Avijit is hacked to death, a Humayun Azad targeted or an Ahmed Rajib Haider killed for criticising Islam. Perhaps the conflict in Bangladesh is whether to have a country on the basis of language or on the basis of religion.

How can this be resolved?

Bangladesh was born on the idea of a secular Bengali nation. Since 1952, Bengali Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have wanted their state language to be Bengali, not Urdu. The people who opposed our independence, along with the Pakistani army, killed three million Bengalis in 1971 and are now involved in the Islamisation of Bangladesh. They are killing free thinkers and intellectuals. Pakistan is a country which is based on religion. But the Bangladesh constitution must remain secular, and separate state from religion. We must have secular education rather than education through madrassas. The government must not let the country become a safe haven for religious extremists.

People say your criticism of religion is rather excessive and provocative.

I said religion oppresses women. Laws should be based on equality, not on religion; women should have equal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. I said we must stop stoning women to death in the name of religion. Is that provocation? Every civilised state has questioned the relationship of the state with religion, eventually disentangling and distancing the two. Islam should not be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions have gone through. My opinion is based on my belief in secular humanism. If that is provocative, then it is absolutely necessary to provoke.

But it’s often said that your writings strengthen fundamentalism.

Governments are strengthening fundamentalism, not me. When religious fanatics set a price on my head, instead of taking action against them, the government targeted me. The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party joined hands with these forces and so did the caretaker government. Even in West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led government expelled me; the Imam Barkati of the Tipu Sultan Mosque, who set a price on my head, was adored by the Marxists. Interestingly, Mamata Banerjee befriended the Imam as soon as she came to power.

Another allegation is that by making statements against Islam, you strengthen the right wing in India.

Absolute nonsense. I criticise all religions, including Hinduism. I opposed Hindu godmen, rituals such as karva chauth and shivaratri, and condemned the oppression of Muslims in Gujarat. I donated Rs.10,000 to poet Shankha Ghosh, who was collecting funds for rehabilitating Gujarat riot victims.I objected to the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh, Jews in Nazi Germany, Muslims in Bosnia, Palestine and Christians in Pakistan. I also wrote in favour of films such as PK, Water and The Last Temptation of Christ. Please don’t call me a Muslim, I am an atheist.

When Indian rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and CPI leader Govind Pansare were killed, you were silent.

Who told you? You need to check my Twitter account to find out about my reactions and how the Hindu right-wing elements abused me for that. However, it is true that I consider Islamic fundamentalism a bigger threat.

As do many western countries…

Only the western world thinks that Islamic fundamentalism is dangerous? Rather, it’s the opposite — the West is keen to side with Islamists.

As a Muslim writer, your work often reflects the West’s paranoia about Islam. Is the West forcing you to say what it wants?

Are you saying Muslims cannot have a mind of their own to criticise their religion? Is criticism of religion the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals? That is an anti-Muslim remark, seriously.

What could be Bangladesh’s future?

The country will be heading for a complete disaster if Islamic terrorists are not brought to justice. However, given the past record, nothing will happen and such incidents will increase in the coming months, as they are intrinsically connected with politics.

suvojit.bagchi@thehindu.co.in

March, 08 2015

From  dawn.com

SONIA FALEIRO 

Leslee Edwin meets the mother of convicted rapist Mukesh Sngh.

INDIA’S Daughter is director Leslee Udwin’s stirring documentation of a crime that triggered what she has described as “an Arab Spring for gender equality” in India.

The December 2012 Delhi bus gang rape resulted in the death of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh at the hands of six men. The men threw Jyoti and her male friend out of the bus before gleefully divvying up the pair’s belongings. One rapist got a pair of shoes, another scored a jacket. There was, however, an item that Jyoti had left behind which the men didn’t want. So they wrapped the innards they had wrenched out of her in their frenzy of violence in a piece of cloth, and pitched it through the window. “They had no fear,” Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus and one of four men to be convicted for Jyoti’s rape and murder, tells Udwin.

The interview with Mukesh, whose death sentence is currently in appeal, is a coup for Udwin, who is the first journalist ever allowed to talk to him, or any of the men. She will likely be the last. Yesterday the authorities banned the film in India after claiming that Udwin had failed to get the requisite permissions. Shortly afterwards the parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu described the film as “an international conspiracy”.

Naidu’s allegation is bewildering, given that the film reveals little that is new either about the crime, or the mindset of the man convicted of it.

Journalists have reported on the rape in detail. And surely it comes as no surprise that someone who participated in a gang-rape and is now on death row will place blame just about anywhere it might stick in the hope of a reprieve — the grinding poverty that he was born into, the overbearing nature of his older brother, who is believed to have masterminded the assault, even his victim.

A whining Mukesh comes off as genuinely unconvinced that he should be in jail. “She should just be silent and allow the rape,” says Mukesh, implying that if Jyoti had only done the right thing and let the men take from her what was theirs — her body — she would still be alive today.

In fact audiences, in India at least, are unlikely to flinch at anything Udwin has to show them. If she thinks that she is holding up a mirror, she should know that Indians have been looking into it for some time now and are as eager for reform as those outside India demanding it on their behalf.

Even the statements of the two lawyers for the men, in which they describe women in terms as disparate as diamonds, food, and flowers — objects all, of course — before finally admitting that “in our culture there is no place for women” will sound familiar.

But it is the dismaying familiarity of the views expressed by Mukesh and his lawyers — which are now mainstream in India, echoed by everyone from politicians to high school students — that makes this essential viewing. Some will argue that the unapologetic misogyny revealed in these interviews is a skewed representation of the Indian male mindset. But it is, in fact, widespread.

Mukesh’s interview also confirms that Indian jails restrain; they do not rehabilitate. It is obvious, given the views he expresses to Udwin, that were he to be released today he would walk the streets of Delhi still convinced of the lopsided inevitability of relationships between men and women: what men want, women must promptly give, even at the pain of death.

Udwin has opted for a tight focus, but some viewers may wish that she had embraced a broader view of the rape crisis in India. The country’s history of anti-rape agitation, for example.

The protests that followed the death of Jyoti may have been the largest against rape, but they were certainly not the first. Earlier high-profile crimes such as the 1972 Mathura custodial rape case also led to legal reform, and laid the groundwork for the development of the protest constituency that filled Delhi’s political corridor from Rashtrapati Bhawan to India Gate that December, in what ultimately turned into a war zone of tear gas, lathi strikes, and police violence.

But Udwin, like any good field reporter, doggedly pursues this one case from start to present, unable to tear herself away even for a minute. Her intimate focus allows for a more affecting narrative.

Jyoti’s parents emerge as superheroes, radiating courage and strength. Her father Badri Singh, then an airport loader, comes across as exactly the sort of modern, forward-thinking, male feminist that India would be so lucky to have many millions more of. And her mother, Asha Singh, who says of Jyoti’s birth “we celebrated like she was a boy”, was surely the propeller that allowed her daughter’s soaring ambitions to take flight.

Udwin skilfully contrasts the light in Jyoti’s young life with the darkness that engulfed the lives of her rapists.

The Singhs were poor, but they cared for their children fiercely. Jyoti, their only daughter, grew up well-adjusted and focused, but also deeply empathetic. One of her friend’s recalls that after the police picked up a street urchin for snatching her purse, Jyoti, rather than berating the boy, took him aside and asked him what made him do it. Because I want what you have, he said — shoes, jeans, a hamburger. Jyoti, recalled her friend, promptly took the boy shopping and bought him everything on his wish list. Her only stipulation was that he not steal again.

The word “happy” repeatedly comes up in reference to Jyoti. She was happy, said Asha. She had only six months of her internship left, recalled Badri. “Happiness was a few steps ahead.”

In contrast, the six men who would take Jyoti’s life appear never to have encountered happiness. The juvenile left his home in a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh when he was just 11 years old and didn’t return. His mother thought him dead. The others were familiar with poverty and violence. In turn, they were violent towards others. “There is nothing good about him,” Mukesh says of one his co-conspirators. Of another he admits: “He was capable of anything.”

A psychiatrist in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, where Mukesh is lodged, tells Udwin that he knows of rapists who have committed as many as 200 rapes before they are ever caught. Two hundred rapes that they remember, that is.

Given Mukesh’s own statements it isn’t a stretch to say that had the men got away with raping and killing Jyoti, they would have raped and killed again. Or, that neither Mukesh’s mindset nor even the manner of the rape, during which an iron rod was inserted into Jyoti, was, as the court declared in its judgement, truly “the rarest of the rare”. As recently as February this year, a woman was gang-raped by nine men in Rohtak, Haryana for over three hours. The men violated her with bricks and asbestos sheets. Sticks, stones and condoms were found stuffed in her private parts .

India’s Daughter doesn’t malign India, but Naidu’s statement about a “conspiracy” does demonstrate, with an acute lack of self-awareness, what lies at the heart of the nation’s rape crisis.

Naidu isn’t implying that rape is shameful; but that talking about rape is shameful because it draws attention to the fact that it happens at all. This fear is exactly what prevents rape victims from filing police complaints, and, as a result, emboldens rapists to strike again and again. In fact, Udwin has done what India’s politicians should rightfully be doing: investigating rape cases thoroughly and discussing them openly.

While eloquently expressing his love for his daughter, Badri tells Udwin: “I wish that whatever darkness there is in the world should be dispelled by this light.”

The Indian government has thwarted his wishes. By banning this documentary it has deprived the Singhs of the opportunity to share the story of their daughter widely within India. In attempting to push a conversation about rape back into the closet, it has stigmatised the subject further. It has done more damage to India’s reputation, and, far worse, the fight against rape, than any film ever could.

By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn March 7th , 2015