Naxal deputy commander killed in police firing in C”garh

A so-called deputy commander of a Naxal outfit was killed in an encounter with the police in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh today, police said. Inspector General of Police of Bijapur district B P S Rajbhanu said deputy commander of Bhopalpatnam Guerrilla Squad, Ramesh, was killed in an encounter at village Dampaya. He said policemen of Madded police station who were going around in the forest area were fired upon by the outlaws at Dampaya village today.
 
The police returned fire and exchanges with a group of Naxals went on for over an hour before the Naxals managed to escape from the spot. However, when the police visited the spot of firing, they came across the body of Ramesh, deputy commander of a Naxal outfit. Police have also recovered a rifle and 25 live cartridges from the spot, Rajbhanu said.
 
(http://ibnlive.in.com/generalnewsfeed/news/naxal-deputy-commander-killed-in-police-firing-in-cgarh/715184.html  05/06/11, IBN Live)

Rebels’ ceasefire call with prod to Mamata

Maoists in Bengal have decided to declare a ceasefire in the state to give Mamata Banerjee “time to fulfil her promises to Jungle Mahal”, including withdrawal of the joint forces, and also said they were ready for talks.
 
Maoist sources today said the outfit would not launch attacks on the security forces for the time being. “We want her (Mamata) to fulfil all the promises she had made in last year’s Lalgarh rally. We will not place any fresh demands to the chief minister for now,” Bikram, a state committee member of the CPI (Maoist), said in a statement today. “We are even ready for talks with the state government,” the statement says. On several occasions, Mamata had requested the Maoists to come to the talks table.
 
Bikram said the chief minister should “play a proactive role in withdrawing the joint forces from Jungle Mahal. “This has been our demand for a long time. Mamata too has said she wants the forces to be withdrawn. Now, she should fulfil her commitment,” the statement says.
 
The Maoists, however, have not specified how long they planned to continue with the ceasefire. The statement merely says that the “soft” stance will not be maintained for an indefinite period. “The reaction of the people of Jungle Mahal will remain positive as long as Mamata shows a positive attitude towards development of the region,” the statement says.
 
Maoist sources, however, said they “would not stop killing corrupt CPM leaders and cadres” because of the ceasefire. “The ceasefire does not mean that we will not wipe out the CPM’s corrupt leaders and cadres in our stronghold. Our operation to drive out the CPM from Jungle Mahal will continue. CPM leaders, including Sushanta Ghosh, Dipak Sarkar, Anuj Pandey and Dahareshwar Sen, will have to face punishment. We want Mamata to start criminal cases against them,” a rebel source said.
 
Sources in the state intelligence branch said the Maoists’ decision to declare a ceasefire was “actually aimed at regrouping themselves”. “The Maoists are on the back foot in Jungle Mahal because of prolonged and extensive operations by the joint forces in the recent past. Most rebel leaders, including military wing chief Kishan, have fled Lalgarh. Now, they have adopted a wait-and-watch strategy. The Maoists are trying to regroup themselves and motivate their foot soldiers,” an intelligence branch officer said.
 
The intelligence sources said Maoists, like villagers and Trinamul workers, were “informing” the police about “illegal arms stocked in the houses of CPM leaders”. “We have received information that the rebels too have joined the arms hunt. But we suspect that not all arms that are being seized are reaching the police. The Maoists are taking away a portion of it,” an intelligence officer said.
 
Political prisoners
 
A 13-member panel led by retired Justice Moloy Sengupta will review the cases of all political prisoners in the state, Mamata announced today. “We had taken the decision that political prisoners would be released. For that purpose, we have set up a committee that will examine each case and give its opinion. The committee will submit its report within three months,” the chief minister said. “Many people are languishing in jails without trial. This cannot go on,” Mamata added.
 
The committee has been tasked with “identifying politically motivated FIRs, undertrials arrested for offences related to political movements and those who have been convicted”. The panel will also probe the nature of the offences and what led the prisoners to commit them. The conduct of the prisoners in jail and the chances of them committing crimes again will also be probed.
 
(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110605/jsp/bengal/story_14073491.jsp  04/06/11, The Telegraph)

119 militants active in Kashmir, lowest in 20 years

A latest census conducted by the Jammu and Kashmir Police shows 325 militants are currently present across Kashmir. And of them, 119 are active — the lowest figure ever since militancy erupted in the state in 1990.
 
The data, compiled by the J&K Police and Criminal Investigation Department (CID), shows majority of the militants are operating in north Kashmir. Of the total 325, there are 168 local militants and 134 foreign nationals while the identity of the rest is yet to be ascertained. A chunk of the foreign militants are associated with the Lashkar.
 
Sources say the number of active militants, categorized as ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’, respectively — as per “strategic and tactical importance” — is 119. Despite setbacks, Hizbul Mujahideen is the largest militant outfit operating in Kashmir with 143 active cadres, including 15 foreign militants. The Hizb is followed by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba with 92 militants in the Valley. The Hizb and Lashkar together share 72 per cent of the militant base in the Valley. No Harkat-ul-Ansar militant is present in Kashmir.
 
According to the report, there are 200 militants — both active and passive — in the three districts of Kupwara, Baramulla and Bandipore. Kupwara has the highest number of militants at 87, including 56 foreign nationals. Kupwara is seen a launch pad for militants because of its proximity to the Line of Control. Kupwara is followed by Baramulla where the number of militants, both “active” as well as “passive”, is 73.
 
In Baramulla district, majority of the militants are stationed in Sopore — a militant stronghold. There are 40 militants present in Bandipore. Central Kashmir — comprising Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal districts — has the lowest presence of militants in any police range. Though the police have declared Srinagar city as free of militants, 14 militants are present in the periphery.
 
Ten militants are active in Budgam district while 16 are roaming around in Ganderbal. In the four districts of south Kashmir, 85 militants, including 16 foreign nationals, are active. Only 13 militants are present in Shopian, once a militant hotbed.
 
In the South, 36 militants are present in Pulwama while 23 are active in Anantag. There are 13 militants each in Kulgam and Shopian districts, the document says. No senior police officer was available for comments.
 
(http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/119-militants-active-in-Kashmir-lowest-in-20-years/799806/  06/06/11, Express India)

Geelani calls for state-wide shutdown on June 11

Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani Sunday called for a state-wide shutdown on June 11 to commemorate the killing of youths who lost their lives during peaceful agitations in the past three years in Jammu and Kashmir. “Prayers should be held for all the martyrs and to pay tribute, people should go to the graveyards where these national heroes are buried,” he said in a statement. He said the shutdown is also to press for a trial of those responsible for the killing of 118 people in 2010 agitation in Kashmir and release of political prisoners.

The shutdown will coincide with the first death anniversary of Tufail Ahmad Mattoo who was killed by a teargas shell on June 11 last year. Hurriyat (G), the statement said, has decided that June 11 would be commemorated as “Remembrance Day.” The statement was issued after the meeting of its Majlis-e- Shura chaired by Geelani. Geelani said 2010 mass movement was a natural reaction to the Machil fake encounter and killings of Wamiq Farooq, Zahid Farooq, Inyat and Tufail Matto.

The conglomerate alleged that New Delhi tried to portray the struggle in “negative sense by creating impression that it was a law and order problem and Kashmiris want to vitiate the peaceful atmosphere.” “Kashmir is a human and political issue having international status and we want its peaceful resolution,” the party statement said. “Sometime they term it insurgency at the behest of Pakistan while at other occasions they try to give it communal colour and portray it as law and order problem.”

NON-BIALABLE WARRANT AGAINST GEELANI

Meanwhile, Hurriyat (G) said the District and Sessions Court Kupwara has issued a non-bailable warrant against Syed Ali Shah Geelani in a 26-year-old case.
 
(http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Jun/6/geelani-calls-for-state-wide-shutdown-on-june-11-30.asp  05/06/11, Greater Kashmir)

Ulfa gives oil firm 45 days to quit Assam

The anti-talks faction of the proscribed Ulfa today served a quit notice to a private service provider oil company, currently engaged in operations in collaboration with petroleum giants Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGCL) and Oil India Limited (OIL), in Upper Assam’s Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts.
 
The outfit’s threat came in the form of a press release signed and issued by self-styled lieutenant Arunudoy Dahotia, controller of the central publicity wing of the outfit. In the statement, it has asked the company, M/s. Shiv-vani Oil and Gas Services Private Limited, to leave Assam within 45 days, starting today.
 
Dahotia alleged that the company had always adopted an anti-Assam and anti-Assamese role for several years now. “The company was solely focussed on exploiting the rich natural resources of our motherland and never cared to give anything in return. Therefore, we ask the company to wind up all its activities in Assam within 45 days and leave,” the press release stated.
 
The outfit also threatened that if the officials did not follow the diktat issued by the outfit, it would have to face armed resistance from them, along with the people of Assam. “If the company tries to disobey the diktat and collaborate with the Indian occupational forces to carry out military operations against the outfit, the officials and employees of the company will be targeted,” the statement said.
 
Shiv-vani has four oil rigs in collaboration with ONGCL in various locations of Sivasagar district and five others in collaboration with OIL in various locations in Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts. The company has a project office in Duliajan and base office in Tinsukia and around 1,000 officials, employees and workers for its operations in Assam. Repeated attempts to contact Manish Shetty, the company’s base manager at the Tinsukia office, failed as the official had switched off his cellphone. Attempts to contact Moloy Mullick, the project manager, also did not materialise.
 
A close aide of the company in Duliajan said Shetty had called him around noon today during which he confirmed the receipt of threat from the outfit. Deputy inspector-general (eastern range) Anurag Tankha said attempts were being made to contact the company officials. “Earlier, too, we had information about the outfit serving extortion notes to the company, but serving a quit notice is something new. We are trying to verify the facts,” Tankha said.
 
(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110604/jsp/frontpage/story_14069476.jsp  03/06/11, the Telegraph)

Path to healing

HARSH MANDER

We need structured modes of reconciliation for victims of communal violence to get a sense of closure and pick up the threads of life again…
 
People of diverse faiths and cultures have lived together with peace and goodwill for millennia in India. However, when India won freedom in 1947, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were embroiled in a feverish bloodbath. This left the country torn into two; a million people were killed, and 10 times that number permanently uprooted from the land of their birth.
 
The people of free India adopted a Constitution which guaranteed to its minorities religious freedom, and equal protection under the law. The experience in six decades of freedom has been of a flawed, continuously contested but still authentic and enduring secular democracy. However, since Independence there also have been thousands of ‘communal riots’, or episodes of mass clashes between people of Hindu and Muslim faith, and pogroms, resulting in the recorded loss, according to one painstaking estimate, of at least 25,628 lives (including 1,005 in police firings).
 
In my interviews with hundreds of survivors of communal violence of the minority Muslim faith, I learnt that the families of most had not suffered for the first time. Each had many agonising tales of losing loved ones, and the looting and torching of their homes in several successive riots. In fact, the saga of their lives seemed like the spaces between various communal riots, often starting with the cataclysmic upheavals of 1947. These spaces were almost stolen, tragically fragile, insecure interludes during which they struggled to lead full and happy lives before being overtaken and destroyed once again by the politics of hate.
 
Only certainty
 
Whenever they reflect on and talk of their futures, riots continue to dominate their mindscape. They speak repeatedly of their plans of what they would do for the protection of their families, not if a communal riot breaks out again, but when it does. (Their plans were usually of finding safety by shifting to Muslim ghettoes and sometimes by arming themselves and very occasionally in fantasies of bloody retributive violence.) On such tragic and hopeless certainties of recurrence of the trauma of periodically repeated profound loss and suffering in violent communal upheavals, no enduring peaceful future can be built. The ideas of forgiveness and reconciliation that I will explore in this and a subsequent column are a response to these sporadic but repeated hostilities. But most of all, to this heart-breaking perceived certainty of recurrence.
 
It is remarkable that despite this recurring communal bloodletting during and after the traumatic Partition of the country, there has been no systematic structured official (or even significant non-official) processes of ‘truth and reconciliation’, to help perpetrators and survivors of hate violence come together; to see and speak to each other; acknowledge their crimes and failings, their hate and fear, their grievances and suspicions; to seek and offer forgiveness, trust and goodwill; and ultimately help bring closure and eventual healing.
 
Part of the problem is that the threats and grave peril, both of on-going communal violence and of subversion of justice to minorities, are not sufficiently acknowledged by the State, political parties and civil society organisations. Even where relations between communities deteriorate, and States are partisan on communal lines — and soft on organisations that are committed to destroy the secular democratic foundations of the nation — many continue to live in dogged denial. Secondly, much of the violence and injustice is not overt, it rages unseen in the hearts and minds of people. We attend to it only when violence actually spills on to the streets, when the dust and dirt of our pavements are soaked in human blood, when the bodies of girls and women are violated, and when the smoke of fires of homes and shops rises to the skies, leaving behind the burned rubble of vandalised hopes and dreams. We deliberately overlook the covert violence of the everyday. Thirdly, governments, political parties and social organisations in India are today most frequently equivocal, unsteady and reluctant in dealing with the intensely sensitive and potentially divisive issues raised by communalism. They no longer are prepared to stand up to be counted.
 
However, the Indian people have arguably had more experience than most through centuries of living with diversity, therefore even without organised processes of reconciliation, there are usually natural spontaneous processes of reaching out and healing that follow bouts of sectarian violence. In many communal conflagrations that I have witnessed and handled (as a former District Collector), I have observed that within days of such mass sectarian upheavals, persons of goodwill and compassion reach out from each community and others grasp their outstretched hands gratefully. There are spontaneous individual and collective expressions of remorse and grief at the loss suffered by the other community, and of compassion, through which processes of social and personal healing set in.
 
Need for closure
 
But without structured modes of facilitating reconciliation for survivors of the Partition violence of 1947, there has not been adequate closure for families that experienced the agony and permanent uprootment from and the loss of their loved ones and homeland. My own parents and their extended families lost their homes amidst hate, slaughter and arson in a region of the country that became a part of Pakistan in 1947, and their grief of loss remains dormant more than 60 years later, just below the surface. Perhaps we needed much earlier to bring together people who lived with the violence from both sides of the border, to share truth, discover their common burdens of suffering and privation, and thereby find the spaces for individual and collective forgiveness.
 
The paramount humanitarian and political challenge is of finding a path that leads to authentic reconciliation between the Hindu and Muslim people of India when they are estranged by violence or memory. The responsibilities for preventing and controlling communal violence and ensuring reparation almost exclusively vest with the State. The duties for organising processes of reconciliation are somewhat more broad-based: these obligations also vest primarily with the State, but people on both sides of the conflict and their own organisations also can contribute a great deal to both the success and the arrest of processes of reconciliation. The role of human rights and the social organisations committed to secular democracy and peace is optional, but if equipped with compatible values and skills, they can vastly facilitate the process.
 
There are no universal solutions to heal hurt, anger, betrayal and hostilities that have accumulated and been transmitted through generations in different societies and people. The content of reconciliation — as both process and goal — will inevitably vary in different cultural, historical and political contexts. The historical context of Hindu-Muslim conflicts in India is that these and other diverse communities lived together in relative peace through centuries, and it is largely after 1857 (when Hindu and Muslim soldiers and kings and queens fought the colonial rulers unitedly shoulder to shoulder, and together chose the last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar as the symbol of the insurrection against the British East India Company), that the rifts between the two communities were engineered at least in part as an element of colonial policy.
 
Shared trust
 
The greatest hope is that among ordinary people in both communities, there are everyday lived ways of giving and receiving trust and respect. There is the courage and resilience of the survivors, and many acts of compassion by people of the majority community. In the daily lives of affected communities, as they struggle with the timeless challenges of finding food, work and dignity, hatred and fear are manufactured and sustained by organisations and the State, but also simultaneously these are resisted and overcome by ordinary people in the ways that they lead their lives. As Howard Zinn affirms, ‘Human history is not just a history of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasise in this complex history will define our lives…’ There are indeed the glimmerings of individual resistance, of courage and compassion, of love amidst slaughter.
 
(http://www.hindu.com/mag/2011/06/05/stories/2011060550150300.htm  05/06/11, The Hindu)

Kill the anti-Hindu Bill – NAC’S draft is rabidly communal

By Shyam Khosla

THE obnoxious Prevention of Communal Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill 2011 drafted by the extra-constitutional “National Advisory Council” Chaired by Sonia Gandhi is based on the horrendous presumption that communal trouble is created only by the majority community and never by the minority community. Can a drafting committee be so biased and contemptuous of rationality and facts of life? How can a Bill to deal with a hugely sensitive issue like communal riots discriminate on religious and caste considerations? Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, famous for his legal and political acumen, has torn the Bill to shreds by his incisive analysis of the Bill’s several vicious provisions and questioned the very premise of the draft that implies that only majority community is responsible for all communal riots.
 
The proposed law, he points out, will incentivise some communities to commit heinous offences encouraged by the fact that they would never be charged under the law and will encourage terrorist groups to incite communal riots knowing fully well that they too wouldn’t be covered under this pernicious piece of legislation. Church supported terrorist outfits operating in north-eastern states will be amongst the greatest beneficiaries as they too are outside the purview of the proposed law. They can indulge in crimes against the majority community with impunity. The Bill, if it is enacted as law by the Parliament, would keep jehadies who conspired and indulged in the Godhra carnage outside its purview. The NAC Bill would neither cover Shia-Sunni riots nor the heinous crime of chopping off the hand of a Christian professor by a Muslim radical group in Kerala as both the victim and the offender belong to the minority communities.

Hate propaganda against minorities is punishable under this stringent law. The law is likely to be abused in cases in which one were to make legitimate criticism of certain practices like discrimination against Muslim women under the Muslim Personal Law. However members and groups belonging to minority communities would not be liable to be booked under the law for spreading hatred against Hindus and their religious faiths and icons. Foreign funded Christian missionaries who indulge in fraudulent conversion of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other deprived sections of the Hindu society though a systematic hate campaign against Hindu beliefs and practices can gleefully continue to do so as they too would not be covered by the law on communal violence. Minority community groups would be free to spread hatred against Hindus by calling them kafirs and heathens without any fear of being hauled up under the law.

Yet another fundamental infirmity form which the draft suffers is that it equates communal conflicts with terrorism. Communal flare ups may be triggered by minor incidents and rumours spread by mischief mongers. Instead of curbing communal divisions and identity politics, the Bill is bound to widen the gulf between communities and would lead to communal tensions. That is perhaps the hidden agenda of the drafters of the Bill most of whom are guilty of promoting vote bank politics. Congress party’s untenable defence of the draft is that there is no point in discussing each and every provision at this stage and that these objections could be taken up when the Bill goes to the Parliamentary Standing Committees. Why publicise such an atrocious piece of legislation full of infirmities, if the purpose is not to illicit public opinion on its concepts and premises. Or is it meant to send a strong message to communal-minded Muslims and Christians that UPA II is out to appease them even at the cost of hurting national interests? The other argument that is equally bogus is that the draft is based on the experience that most riots are initiated by the majority community and it is the minorities that are always at the receiving end.

One of the provisions in the draft is that it would be enforced by a seven-member national authority of which at least four members, including the chairman and the vice chairman, must be from a minority community, It has raised the hackles of all right thinking citizens who believe in the principle that law must have a level-playing field. It is a dangerous and mischievous move. The authors are so biased and contemptuous of Hindus that they presume that an enforcement authority with a Hindu majority would not ensure fair play. The Bill is so irrational and biased that even the pro-Congress English language daily Hindustan Times has editorially condemned the NAC draft saying, “Its biggest flaw is that it makes provisions for punishment only for violence against minorities. Surely, if communal violence were visited on members of the majority community, the law can’t ignore this fact. This could mean that subversive elements in the minority community could indulge in communal violence without any fear of the law”. It goes on to point out that the most disturbing aspect of this Bill is the underlying presumption that it is only the majority community which is responsible for communal violence. No law should have different yardsticks for wrong doers on the basis of religion, ethnicity, language or gender. Further it negates the federal structure of the Union as it infringes on the powers of the State governments that are bound to resist Centre’s attempt to interfere in matters pertaining to law and order that is the domain of the states.

Critics have rightly raised serious objections to the very source of the draft – the National Advisory Council comprising of NGO types unelected and unelectable so-called representatives of the civil society. All of them have been hand-picked by Sonia Gandhi who enjoys enormous power without accountability. NAC is an extra constitutional authority that has been mandated to provide policy and legislative inputs to the Government. It is accountable to none but Sonia Gandhi. Its functioning has never been subjected to any review by Parliament. Its policy announcements and legislative initiatives exert coercive pressure on the Government. The very concept on which NAC was constituted is undemocratic and totally unacceptable in a parliamentary democracy.
 
(http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=401&page=7  06/06/11, Organiser)