News published at Anandabazar Patrika, 28 July 2010

Click here to read the news in Bengali.

———————

Abhijit Chakraborty from Karkata, Ramgarh.
Anandabazar Patrika, 28 July, 2010

The “fight” of his son is all over. The fight, however, isn’t over as yet. Bhuto Baskey (more than 60 years old) alias Jamadar Baskey, the father of Sidhu Soren, is determined to take up bow and arrow himself and keep on the battle of his son.

On Tuesday (26/7/2010) morning, sitting on the dusty foreyard of his hut in the Karkata village of Ramgarh, this old man thunders…” Police killed my son when he was sleeping”. He even declines to collect the corpse of his son.

A day back, he heard through a neighbor’s radio about the news of six encounter deaths by the joint forces in Metala’s forest. One of those six killed was his second son Bhuta, also known by the name Bhogan in his family. The message to his house was routed through the police-“It is presumed that your son is amongst those killed in Metla. Come over to Midnapur and do the identification.” On Tuesday, a similar request was again made from the police. Jamadar however, remains adamant on his stand and refuses to comply.

“The government never did any good work in the Jangalmahal area. Instead, we have to face inexorable torture by the police and CPI (M) for mere survival. My son was fighting for the well-being of all of us. He didn’t do anything unfair. He used to stay elsewhere under the apprehension of getting killed by the police and CPI (M) workers. His such fear turned true and he was exterminated by the police and that too when he was asleep. Now, they want to hand me over his corpse. Why should I accept it?” questions the robust elderly man. He admits to have consumed some local liquor (haria) to absorb the news of his son’s death. His grief however can’t cover the rage, that’s so clear and glaring through his eyes. Laxmimani Baskey, the mother of Sidhu Soren, too can’t control her tears. There had been no cooking at their house since Monday. She explodes the moment someone comments that her son has killed many. “We don’t believe our son was into any wrong doings. He fought for the people of Jangalmahal.” Nostalgia grips Jamadar…”This second of mine was different right from his childhood. He always received more attention than my other children. I used to carry him on my shoulders and feed him with local oysters from the canal…visit the Goaltore market lugging him on the back. He managed to study till Class IX. He left the house since then…right from his early days, he was rebellious and protested against anything unjust.”

In the year 2003, Bhuta left his house and got associated with the Maoist rebels. He wasn’t in contact since then. Again, during the Lalgarh movement in the later period of 2008, he was seen in rallies organized by the Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA). It was in one of such rallies that the father met his son again. By that time, his son was no more Bhuto Baskey. He was then Sidhu Soren. His such change of name was essential to conceal his Maoist identity. He didn’t agree to return home in spite of recurring persuasion by all his family members. But he did gift a saree to his mother and a lighter to his father.

To reach the house of Sidhu, one has to move from Kadashol of Goaltore towards Ramgarh. After crossing Mahultala, a right turn is needed. Then comes a broken, soiled road, canal and field. Walking through the field takes one to Kadashore, and that is where Sidhu’s house is located. The road in front of his house is cut off. Though in possession of four bigha land, they can harvest only once during the monsoon. The poverty is painstaking. Jamadar, even at this age, works as a daily paid laborer. Same is with Laxmimani, who too helps her family doing odd jobs. Out of four brothers, Podo still studies in school. Another brother named Lilu, works in Jhargram as an electrical mechanic. Other brothers, named Gopi and Sagen are involved in agriculture. Sagen is afraid even to speak, for fear of getting arrested and heckled by the police.

Jamadar, however, gives a damn to such fear. “The government never did any good work for us. We can’t even harvest twice in a year for lack of irrigation facility. Did anyone ever try to find out how we actually sustain? My son fought for all of us. CPI (M) cadres had bullied me many a times that they will slaughter my son, the moment they find him. Now, he had been killed, the cadres of CPI (M) will again enter the village and bang us”, says Jamadar.

“To survive, now I will resort to bow & arrow”…rumbles gritty Jamadar with a tight jaw.

Courtesy: Anandabazar Patrika

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Srinagar, July 2010

Our army chief of staff is obviously head over heels in love with the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. He has his own reasons to be.

The act, a Central legislation, was put in the statute book more than 50 years ago in the wake of large-scale insurgency in the north-eastern parts of the country, particularly in areas where the Naga community predominated. While the state government — at that time the entire region was a part of Assam — was formally responsible for maintaining law and order, it found it difficult to cope with the situation. The Union government hurried through Parliament the AFSPA, vetting deployment of armed forces in a state — or parts of it — to restore law and order if conditions so warranted, but subject to the approval of the state government. Once a state comes under the purview of the legislation, the lives and limbs of its residents are putty-clay in the hands of the army. Rights granted to citizens by the Constitution are suspended. Military personnel have total discretion to decide how to tackle disturbances taking place in this or that segment of the state. They can search premises at will and take anybody into custody for interrogation. These interrogations are not necessarily gentlemanly affairs; those taken in are often victims of third-degree methods, which sometimes lead to the breaking of bones or even maiming for life. Complaints of arbitrary killings of innocent people by the military have been innumerable. Reports of fake encounters involving deaths have streamed in from areas wherever the act has been enforced, especially from the Kashmir valley. Resentment against tyranny under the cloak of the act is both deep and widespread.

In Manipur, which came within the ambit of the AFSPA a couple of decades ago, the waywardness of the army personnel has provoked massive social resistance. Numerous stories of the violation of helpless women and indiscriminate assaults and arrests are the staple of everyday talk. The state has been more or less in a state of siege for years on end, with protest rallies and blockage of highways choking normal life. Protests against army excesses might have assumed, observers suggest, an even more virulent form had not inter-ethnic feuds affected cohesion among protesting groups.

In the light of these developments, New Delhi was persuaded to set up a committee under the aegis of a retired Supreme Court judge to review the problems that have arisen in implementing the provisions of the AFSPA. The findings of the reviewing judge were severely critical of the behaviour and activities of army people while they strut about enjoying the protection of the act. The judge went on to suggest a number of amendments in the statute to ensure its mutation into a more humane, and less arbitrary, piece of legislation. His recommendations evidently did not suit the authorities and have been allowed to rest in peace.

That did not put a lid on the expression of public misgivings. The country’s Constitution does not intend defence forces to be responsible for maintaining internal security; that charge belongs to state administrations. The AFSPA was passed by Parliament to circumvent that roadblock. How the country will be administered within the four corners of the Constitution is for politicians sitting in Parliament — and state legislatures — to decide. They, it follows, have the prerogative to review from time to time provisions of such statutes as the AFSPA, which they themselves had legislated. Given continuing reports of people’s unhappiness with the functioning of the act, it is only natural for politicians to wish to take another look at it. Some of them are possibly happy with the act as it is and would like to leave it in an unamended form. Some others, for example, the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, will perhaps not mind the continuation of the act, but only after the introduction of amendments which address public concerns over the seeming absence of accountability in the act. There might yet be other politicians who would rather scrap the act in its entirety, since in their view it goes ill with the mores of a free democratic society.

In sum, there is scope for a public debate on aspects of the AFSPA. The army chief of staff — who no doubt had the benefit of the advice of his service colleagues — looks with disfavour on such a debate. He would like the act to continue in its present form, which allows military personnel a free hand while dealing with elements suspected of waging war against the State. He is actually in some fury, and has gone to the length of questioning the motives of politicians who want to either do away with or drastically amend the act.

Is not the army boss forgetting his station? India is no Thailand, it is no Pakistan either, surely not the Pakistan people and politicians over there are currently trying to extricate themselves from. The armed forces in India are, the Constitution lays down, servants of an elected government. The government is elected by politicians who are members of parliament. The status of politicians who are elected as representatives of the people is way superior to that of the army chief. It is, of course, within the range of the army chief’s responsibilities to speak — or send a note — to the defence secretary and, through the secretary, to the defence minister, in case he feels apprehensive about proposals to amend or abolish the AFSPA. But that is all. To presume that he can publicly dress down politicians who hold views different from his on the merits of the act is a bit too much; somebody needs to advise him where to draw the line.

For the ground reality in regions of the country where military or paramilitary forces have been — or are being considered to be — deployed is often excruciatingly complex. Leave aside at-this-moment-once-more-a-boiling-cauldron Kashmir, where factors such as religion and national identity further cloud the picture. Even in the other regions afflicted by insurgency — whether the north-eastern belt or states like Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal — stark issues of ethnicity render enforcement of law and order bewilderingly difficult. It would be foolhardy to delegate this to the discretion of military or paramilitary personnel.

Two recent incidents in West Bengal, where the Central Reserve Police Force is engaged jointly with the state police in tracking down Maoists, are worth mentioning in this context. In the first incident, the CRPF shot down in a forest encounter eight suspected Maoists, three of them women. The bodies of those killed were brought back from the forest to the nearest subdivisional town as trophy: the hands and feet of each were separately bound and then hung, upside down, with the help of a strong rope, from a bamboo pole, precisely the manner in which a carcass is brought back when villagers return from a successful hunt of wild boar or of any other predatory animal.

In the other episode, in a supposedly Maoist-infested village, the CRPF accosted a schoolboy, the fingers of whose right hand were smeared with red ink. He must have been, it was instantly concluded, writing posters extolling the Maoist cause. Suspicion was reckoned as proof; the boy was set upon and beaten black and blue.

In both incidents, Maoists are the target, but the victims happen to be adivasis, and this is true in almost every part of the country where conditions of rebellion prevail. The incidents are bound to be grist for the Maoist propaganda mill: the system does not consider you, adivasis, as human beings, they treat you as beasts, even your children are not spared, you therefore have every right to rise in revolt against the system.

Awesome consequences can follow if counter-insurgency operations are not supervised with finesse and imagination, a responsibility too risky to be left to the whims of the CRPF or the armed forces. There is therefore enough logic in seeking a review of the AFSPA. This matter does not fall in the domain of the chief of staff or his colleagues.

Courtesy: The Telegraph

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Click here to read the news.

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Editorial of Anandabazar Patrika, 8 July 2010

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The body of Pandey, identified earlier as Sahdev by police

July 3: The man killed with Maoist leader Azad in an encounter yesterday was a freelance Hindi journalist who was interviewing him, Andhra Pradesh police have said a day after wrongly identifying the second victim as a guerrilla named Sahdev.

The family of Maoist sympathiser and Uttarakhand-based journalist Hemachandra Pandey, 35, had earlier got in touch with rights activists such as poet Varavara Rao in Andhra after seeing his pictures in newspapers, captioned “Sahdev”.

In the 1990s, the police had shot dead an Urdu journalist, Gulam Rasool, along with a Maoist whom he was interviewing on Hyderabad’s outskirts.

Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, the Maoist No. 3, was camping with 20-25 guerrillas on a hillock in the Wankhidi forests of Adilabad to be interviewed by Pandey, a senior district police officer said.

Police patrols, tipped off about a Maoist leader’s visit, surrounded the hideout after noticing movements through their night-vision binoculars, he said. “When the guerrillas refused to surrender and began shooting, the police retaliated. The rest of the Maoists ran away after they found their leader shot along with the interviewer.”

Uttarakhand police, who have carried out a probe on a request from their Andhra counterparts, said Pandey had left his home in Pithoragarh, Kumaon, for Nagpur in Maharashtra on June 30 to do the interview. He apparently boarded a train from Haldiwani station, travelled to Delhi and then on to Nagpur.

Some of his friends and a brother, who is also a journalist, knew he was going on an assignment for a newspaper and a news channel, says the Uttarakhand police report that has been handed to the state government in Dehra Dun. The newspaper and the channel have denied commissioning any such interview.

Azad’s mother Karuna and the Maoists have alleged that Azad was arrested with another person on Thursday at Bitaburdi in Nagpur — where he had gone to take political classes for cadres — brought to Adilabad and shot in a fake encounter.

“My husband had informed me about his visit to Nagpur for a scoop but did not tell us about the interview with Azad,” Pandey’s wife Babita, who reached Hyderabad this evening to receive the body, said. “We were aghast to see his photo in the newspapers this morning.”

An officer in Adilabad said Pandey was identified as a freelance journalist from the visiting cards found in his pocket. “He did not have any accreditation card from any state government.”

Andhra home minister Sabita Indra Reddy said: “How can one identify a journalist in pitch darkness on a remote hillock without any ID card?”

Pandey, a resident of Deventhal village, 23km from Pithoragarh town, had dabbled in Left politics as a college student. He later developed contacts among the rebels who would often sneak into Pithoragarh from across the Nepal border, an officer in Pithoragarh said. “He wrote articles on the rebels’ activities for various newspapers and periodicals.”

A journalist in Pithoragarh said: “Pandey has been in the profession for seven years. He was never afraid to express his ideology.”

The Pithoragarh SP later told a TV channel that Pandey was not a journalist any more because he had not written anything recently for any publication. Local sources, however, said Pandey had got articles published recently in minor journals. They said Pandey did not have official accreditation as a journalist but carried out assignments for media houses.

Courtesy: The Telegraph

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Rogues in uniform shielded by the Indian Government
The allegation of murder by the army in Kashmir is nothing new. There had been huge uproar to book the delinquents with charges of murder. But as it seems this very idea is stone-walled by the Government of this largest “democratic” nation. No wonder, not a single member of the armed forces deployed in Kashmir had been tried in court in the last three years for misuse of power.

In April, three from Nadihal village in Baramulla district went missing…
No, they are no more missing. Their bodies had been “discovered” near the Line of Control (LoC), which separates Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
It was revealed during investigations by the Police that the men had been killed in a staged gun battle, where, a Major of the Indian army had the three men abducted by offering them jobs as porters. According to police investigations, the army major had done it to get “a promotion and/or a cash reward”.
The army however claimed to have killed three militants who possessed Pakistani currency and arms and ammunition.
Is this another instance of innumerable ‘fake encounter’/ extrajudicial killings executed by the Indian Security forces in Kashmir? At least political leaders across the spectrum whether pro or anti Indian, believe so.
“There had been several proven cases of fake encounters in the past 20 years” says Kashmir’s law minister, Ali Mohammad Sagar.
Amidst denial by the army, reports of such “fake encounters” keep on surfacing from time to time in Kashmir.
As for example, some years ago five bodies were dug up in Ganderbal district as part of an investigation into claim that police were manufacturing clashes with militants as a pretext to carry out extrajudicial killings.
Those bodies, buried as foreign militants, later turned out to be civilians. Also, nearly 3,000 unnamed graves in the Baramulla and Kupwara districts were discovered by human rights group a couple of years ago.
According to Khurram Pervez, a human rights activist out of 50 bodies that were exhumed, 47 were identified of which, all but one were those of civilians.

The “trigger-happy” army sparking off mass dissent

With three more deaths on 30th June this year in Anantnag, 11 civilian deaths have taken place at the hands of the Indian security forces this month in Indian-administered Kashmir. The result is Kashmir is witnessing some of the biggest mass upheaval in two years which has renewed Kashmiri calls for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
The locals and also the state government have unequivocally blamed most of those deaths on the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), who they say to have fired on unarmed protesters who were demonstrating against the killings of civilians by the police and paramilitaries in the Kashmir valley.
“Firing like this was totally unwarranted…” said Ali Mohammad Sagar, the state law Minister to NDTV, a private cable news channel.

NGOs express concern over the state high handedness & absolute apathy displayed by the UPA-led Central government

Groups like ANHAD (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy) have expressed deep apprehension and anguish over the killing of nine young boys in the last two weeks.
According to that group, there had been a sharp increase of “police and paramilitary atrocities, leading to many deaths and injuries.”
The Delhi based group believes that such shameless acts of brutality by the Indian State, in absolute contravention of the law of the land and constitutional rights of the people, have given birth to mass outrage and hostility of large sections of the civilian population in Kashmir. According to a statement given by Tanveer Hussain Khan, Shabnam Hashmi, Mansi Sharma and Seema Duhan on behalf of ANHAD,“These are unarmed, non-violent citizens, who are being treated with such blatant and indiscriminate use of military force — why? Is there no other way to negotiate with civil unrest? And what is the root cause of this civil unrest if not the basic premise of police and paramilitary brutality? And what about cases of atrocities committed on people who are not even protesting?… They should learn some lessons from history. People cannot be won over or suppressed at gunpoint. Certainly, the people of Jammu and Kashmir deserve a more rational, humane, visionary and sensitive response from the Indian state”

“Yeah, you can kill them…just out of a notion”, says the law

Yes, and such license of killing has been conferred by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act’ 1958 (AFSPA), one of the draconian legislations of the Indian Parliament. Promulgated in Jammu and Kashmir in July 1990, the AFSPA gives sweeping powers to the Indian security forces, of which half a million is currently posted in the valley, to kill any civilian merely out of suspicion.
Almost all Kashmiris believe such inhuman act must be scrapped to curtail “fake killings” by the army. The law immune the army who may kill a civilian merely out of suspicion and guards them against prosecution unless the Indian government accords prior sanction for such.
As Mian Abdul Qayoom, an eminent lawyer says, the law has been “misused to kill innocent civilians”. He further mentions that the Indian government has withdrawn permission to act against a soldier even when it is known that he killed civilians without rhyme or reason. We can’t blame him of “blowing things out of proportion”, when he asserts that such fake “encounters” are not stray occurrences or aberrations of some individual soldiers, but this has become a policy of the Indian Government.

There had been repeated demands by the political parties, including ruling National Conference for the withdrawal of the law to make soldiers liable.
On 25th February, this year, Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, assured the state assembly that he will revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and Disturbed Areas Act, if the situation improves and that his government will not endure the killing of innocent persons, at any cost, whoever the killers might be. The statement of the Chief Minister can also be watched in this video

According to Mehbooba Mufti, a committee set up by the Prime Minister has also suggested for withdrawal of AFSPA.
The demand to repeal AFSPA is also echoed in the voice of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Supremo of the Hurriyat Conference. Like many, he too thinks that the Indian government has lost its connect with the Kashmiri people

But there is still no hint of its withdrawal.
So, as most in Kashmir believe, such “fake encounters” will continue to happen.

Facts that can’t be ignored

• In a poll recently made available by think-tank Chatham House, 75-95 % of the inhabitants of Kashmir support independence from both India and Pakistan.
• Owing to a rise in a rise in killings allegedly by the Indian security forces, anti-India protests are mostly unprompted; at least the locals believe so.
• It was the teenagers who had been killed in fresh protests by the security personnel and many who participate in daily protests are young.

A naive inquisitiveness

Was that killing had a hidden agenda? The killing will result into inevitable protests, and the state will remain “disturbed” in the book of the government…definitely a “sound” pretext to continue with AFSPA!!!

News Source:

BBC News
New York Times
Rediff News
Asian News India
World news network
Reuters
The Hindu

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লিখেছেন জয়া মিত্র।
পুরো লেখাটি পড়ার জন্য লেখাটির উপর Click করুন।

Courtesy: I-Core Akdin

Dated on: 22/06/2010

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An appeal to bring Anderson and increase compensation for effected people of Bhopal.

এই লেখাটি ২২ জুন ২০১০ বাংলা আইকোর একদিন পত্রিকা তে বেরিয়েছিল। লেখাটিতে ভোপাল গ্যাস দূর্ঘটনা্র পরবর্তী সময়ে সরকার এর অবস্থান সম্পর্কে কিছু তথ্য থাকায় লেখাটি এখানে তুলে দিলাম। পুরো লেখাটি পড়ার জন্য লেখাটির উপর Click করুন।

Courtesy: I-Core Akdin
Dated on: 22/06/2010

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