Saturday, August 23, 2008

Land and Freedom


Kashmir is in crisis: the region's Muslims are mounting huge non-violent protests against the Indian government's rule. But, asks Arundhati Roy, what would independence for the territory mean for its people.
By Arundhati Roy
-- - For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarised zone in the world.
After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government's worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage. This one is nourished by people's memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been killed, thousands have been "disappeared", hundreds of thousands tortured, injured, and humiliated. That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot easily be tamed, rebottled and sent back to where it came from.

A sudden twist of fate, an ill-conceived move over the transfer of 100 acres of state forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board (which manages the annual Hindu pilgrimage to a cave deep in the Kashmir Himalayas) suddenly became the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a barrel of petrol. Until 1989 the Amarnath pilgrimage used to attract about 20,000 people who travelled to the Amarnath cave over a period of about two weeks. In 1990, when the overtly Islamist militant uprising in the valley coincided with the spread of virulent Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in the Indian plains, the number of pilgrims began to increase exponentially. By 2008 more than 500,000 pilgrims visited the Amarnath cave, in large groups, their passage often sponsored by Indian business houses. To many people in the valley this dramatic increase in numbers was seen as an aggressive political statement by an increasingly Hindu-fundamentalist Indian state. Rightly or wrongly, the land transfer was viewed as the thin edge of the wedge. It triggered an apprehension that it was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements, and change the demography of the valley.

Days of massive protest forced the valley to shut down completely. Within hours the protests spread from the cities to villages. Young stone pelters took to the streets and faced armed police who fired straight at them, killing several. For people as well as the government, it resurrected memories of the uprising in the early 90s. Throughout the weeks of protest, hartal (strikes) and police firing, while the Hindutva publicity machine charged Kashmiris with committing every kind of communal excess, the 500,000 Amarnath pilgrims completed their pilgrimage, not just unhurt, but touched by the hospitality they had been shown by local people.

Eventually, taken completely by surprise at the ferocity of the response, the government revoked the land transfer. But by then the land-transfer had become what Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most senior and also the most overtly Islamist separatist leader, called a "non-issue".

Massive protests against the revocation erupted in Jammu. There, too, the issue snowballed into something much bigger. Hindus began to raise issues of neglect and discrimination by the Indian state. (For some odd reason they blamed Kashmiris for that neglect.) The protests led to the blockading of the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road-link between Kashmir and India. Truckloads of perishable fresh fruit and valley produce began to rot.

The blockade demonstrated in no uncertain terms to people in Kashmir that they lived on sufferance, and that if they didn't behave themselves they could be put under siege, starved, deprived of essential commodities and medical supplies.

To expect matters to end there was of course absurd. Hadn't anybody noticed that in Kashmir even minor protests about civic issues like water and electricity inevitably turned into demands for azadi, freedom? To threaten them with mass starvation amounted to committing political suicide.

Not surprisingly, the voice that the government of India has tried so hard to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar. Raised in a playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. Not even the fear of death seems to hold them back. And once that fear has gone, of what use is the largest or second largest army in the world?

There have been mass rallies in the past, but none in recent memory that have been so sustained and widespread. The mainstream political parties of Kashmir - National Conference and People's Democratic party - appear dutifully for debates in New Delhi's TV studios, but can't muster the courage to appear on the streets of Kashmir. The armed militants who, through the worst years of repression were seen as the only ones carrying the torch of azadi forward, if they are around at all, seem content to take a back seat and let people do the fighting for a change.

The separatist leaders who do appear and speak at the rallies are not leaders so much as followers, being guided by the phenomenal spontaneous energy of a caged, enraged people that has exploded on Kashmir's streets. Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm around places that hold terrible memories for them. They demolish bunkers, break through cordons of concertina wire and stare straight down the barrels of soldiers' machine guns, saying what very few in India want to hear. Hum Kya Chahtey? Azadi! (We want freedom.) And, it has to be said, in equal numbers and with equal intensity: Jeevey jeevey Pakistan. (Long live Pakistan.)

That sound reverberates through the valley like the drumbeat of steady rain on a tin roof, like the roll of thunder during an electric storm.

On August 15, India's independence day, Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of Srinagar, was taken over by thousands of people who hoisted the Pakistani flag and wished each other "happy belated independence day" (Pakistan celebrates independence on August 14) and "happy slavery day". Humour obviously, has survived India's many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in Kashmir.

On August 16 more than 300,000 people marched to Pampore, to the village of the Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was shot down in cold blood five days earlier.

On the night of August 17 the police sealed the city. Streets were barricaded, thousands of armed police manned the barriers. The roads leading into Srinagar were blocked. On the morning of August 18, people began pouring into Srinagar from villages and towns across the valley. In trucks, tempos, jeeps, buses and on foot. Once again, barriers were broken and people reclaimed their city. The police were faced with a choice of either stepping aside or executing a massacre. They stepped aside. Not a single bullet was fired.

The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone had a banner; houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One said: "We are all prisoners, set us free." Another said: "Democracy without freedom is demon-crazy." Demon-crazy. That was a good one. Perhaps he was referring to the insanity that permits the world's largest democracy to administer the world's largest military occupation and continue to call itself a democracy.

There was a green flag on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop and on the top of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio building. Road signs were painted over. Rawalpindi they said. Or simply Pakistan. It would be a mistake to assume that the public expression of affection for Pakistan automatically translates into a desire to accede to Pakistan. Some of it has to do with gratitude for the support - cynical or otherwise - for what Kashmiris see as their freedom struggle, and the Indian state sees as a terrorist campaign. It also has to do with mischief. With saying and doing what galls India most of all. (It's easy to scoff at the idea of a "freedom struggle" that wishes to distance itself from a country that is supposed to be a democracy and align itself with another that has, for the most part been ruled by military dictators. A country whose army has committed genocide in what is now Bangladesh. A country that is even now being torn apart by its own ethnic war. These are important questions, but right now perhaps it's more useful to wonder what this so-called democracy did in Kashmir to make people hate it so?)

Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry Pakistan se rishta kya? La illaha illallah. (What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no god but Allah.) Azadi ka matlab kya? La illaha illallah. (What does freedom mean? There is no god but Allah.)

For somebody like myself, who is not Muslim, that interpretation of freedom is hard - if not impossible - to understand. I asked a young woman whether freedom for Kashmir would not mean less freedom for her, as a woman. She shrugged and said "What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers?" Her reply silenced me.

Surrounded by a sea of green flags, it was impossible to doubt or ignore the deeply Islamic fervour of the uprising taking place around me. It was equally impossible to label it a vicious, terrorist jihad. For Kashmiris it was a catharsis. A historical moment in a long and complicated struggle for freedom with all the imperfections, cruelties and confusions that freedom struggles have. This one cannot by any means call itself pristine, and will always be stigmatised by, and will some day, I hope, have to account for, among other things, the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the early years of the uprising, culminating in the exodus of almost the entire Hindu community from the Kashmir valley.

As the crowd continued to swell I listened carefully to the slogans, because rhetoric often holds the key to all kinds of understanding. There were plenty of insults and humiliation for India: Ay jabiron ay zalimon, Kashmir hamara chhod do (Oh oppressors, Oh wicked ones, Get out of our Kashmir.) The slogan that cut through me like a knife and clean broke my heart was this one: Nanga bhookha Hindustan, jaan se pyaara Pakistan. (Naked, starving India, More precious than life itself - Pakistan.)

Why was it so galling, so painful to listen to this? I tried to work it out and settled on three reasons. First, because we all know that the first part of the slogan is the embarrassing and unadorned truth about India, the emerging superpower. Second, because all Indians who are not nanga or bhooka are and have been complicit in complex and historical ways with the elaborate cultural and economic systems that make Indian society so cruel, so vulgarly unequal. And third, because it was painful to listen to people who have suffered so much themselves mock others who suffer, in different ways, but no less intensely, under the same oppressor. In that slogan I saw the seeds of how easily victims can become perpetrators.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani began his address with a recitation from the Qur'an. He then said what he has said before, on hundreds of occasions. The only way for the struggle to succeed, he said, was to turn to the Qur'an for guidance. He said Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir, Kashmir belonged to Pakistan. He said minority communities would have full rights and their places of worship would be safe. Each point he made was applauded.

I imagined myself standing in the heart of a Hindu nationalist rally being addressed by the Bharatiya Janata party's (BJP) LK Advani. Replace the word Islam with the word Hindutva, replace the word Pakistan with Hindustan, replace the green flags with saffron ones and we would have the BJP's nightmare vision of an ideal India.

Is that what we should accept as our future? Monolithic religious states handing down a complete social and moral code, "a complete way of life"? Millions of us in India reject the Hindutva project. Our rejection springs from love, from passion, from a kind of idealism, from having enormous emotional stakes in the society in which we live. What our neighbours do, how they choose to handle their affairs does not affect our argument, it only strengthens it.

Arguments that spring from love are also fraught with danger. It is for the people of Kashmir to agree or disagree with the Islamist project (which is as contested, in equally complex ways, all over the world by Muslims, as Hindutva is contested by Hindus). Perhaps now that the threat of violence has receded and there is some space in which to debate views and air ideas, it is time for those who are part of the struggle to outline a vision for what kind of society they are fighting for. Perhaps it is time to offer people something more than martyrs, slogans and vague generalisations. Those who wish to turn to the Qur'an for guidance will no doubt find guidance there. But what of those who do not wish to do that, or for whom the Qur'an does not make place? Do the Hindus of Jammu and other minorities also have the right to self-determination? Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to return? Will they be paid reparations for the terrible losses they have suffered? Or will a free Kashmir do to its minorities what India has done to Kashmiris for 61 years? What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and blasphemers? What of thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with the "complete social and moral code"? Will we be put to death as we are in Saudi Arabia? Will the cycle of death, repression and bloodshed continue? History offers many models for Kashmir's thinkers and intellectuals and politicians to study. What will the Kashmir of their dreams look like? Algeria? Iran? South Africa? Switzerland? Pakistan?

At a crucial time like this, few things are more important than dreams. A lazy utopia and a flawed sense of justice will have consequences that do not bear thinking about. This is not the time for intellectual sloth or a reluctance to assess a situation clearly and honestly.

Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Hindutva networks are alive with rumours about Hindus in the valley being attacked and forced to flee. In response, phone calls from Jammu reported that an armed Hindu militia was threatening a massacre and that Muslims from the two Hindu majority districts were preparing to flee. Memories of the bloodbath that ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back. That nightmare will haunt all of us forever.

However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project.

Of course there are many ways for the Indian state to continue to hold on to Kashmir. It could do what it does best. Wait. And hope the people's energy will dissipate in the absence of a concrete plan. It could try and fracture the fragile coalition that is emerging. It could extinguish this non-violent uprising and re-invite armed militancy. It could increase the number of troops from half a million to a whole million. A few strategic massacres, a couple of targeted assassinations, some disappearances and a massive round of arrests should do the trick for a few more years.

The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?

The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.

India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much as - if not more than - Kashmir needs azadi from India.
courtesy-" The Guardian"22/08/08
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Pentagon Releases Propaganda Documents -- Will the Media Pay Attention?


With 8,000 pages of documents online for the world to see, will the networks continue their media blackout?
By: John Stauber
Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated U.S. law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers — most of them with financial ties to war contractors — into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process."

Here is the official Pentagon website with the 8,000 pages of documents, the most interesting and revealing of them previously secret and only available to the Pentagon and the New York Times: click here to read


More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — have still not mentioned the report at all."

The Pew Excellence in Journalism project has a chart showing that " there was virtually no mainstream media follow up to The Times' expose" with the only national TV coverage being the introduction segment and live debate featuring CMD's John Stauber on the PBS NewsHour.

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and three dozen colleagues have sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General calling for an investigation of this "propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the American public."


See more stories tagged with: tv networks, new york times, iraq war, propaganda, penatagon

John Stauber is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/84693

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Stunning upset, Maoists head for power in Nepal


Yubaraj Ghimire , Kathmandu

Prachanda leads victory charge, Koirala clan rejected by voters

Stunning opponents with an electoral performance that may also make the international community uncomfortable, Nepal's Maoists seem headed for a majority in the Constituent Assembly with chief Pushpa Kumar Dahal, better known as Prachanda and chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M), as the new government's chief executive.

The party which led an insurgency for 11 years from February 1995 to establish "republicanism in Nepal" is still on the US government's terrorist list. By all indications, neighbouring India did not foresee the Maoists securing a majority on their own in the April 10 election which, according to preliminary reports of international observers, was largely free and fair. In their election manifesto, the Maoists had called for scrapping all major treaties, including the 1950 treaty of peace and friendship with India, stopping the recruitment of Gurkhas in British and Indian armies and review of major water and irrigation agreements.

The results so far indicate that if at all the Maoists agree to form a coalition government, the Nepali Congress and UML will be the junior partners. The Maoists have already won 15 seats, including Prachanda's constituency in Kathmandu, and were leading in at least 69 constituencies.

Other parties like the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) were way behind, leading in 32 and 22 seats respectively. Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of the UML which had hoped to emerge as the single largest party, resigned from his post, owning responsibility for the debacle.

Election Commission sources said that counting for 160 of the 239 constituencies under the first-past-the-post system was on. It will take more than two weeks for declaration of results under the proportional representation system.

The Constituent Assembly will have a total of 601 members, comprising 240 elected directly, 335 under the proportional representation system and 26 nominated by the Cabinet.

Soon after Prachanda's victory was announced in Kathmandu, he declared that his party would "not fail the people who had reposed so much faith."

"We will implement our pledge to make Nepal a federal republic," Prachanda said as he was cheered outside the Birendra International Convention Hall.

While the results indicated overwhelming support for the Maoists, the Koirala clan, one of the leading families in Nepal politics, took a severe knocking — all eight close relatives of Prime Minister G P Koirala had either been defeated or were trailing badly.

As Maoist supporters swarmed the streets of Kathmandu, armed police were deployed around the Narayanhity royal palace where King Gyanendra lives with his family. The Constituent Assembly will in all likelihood hasten the end of the monarchy.

But the Maoist victory also confused the business community and the diplomatic corps. They were very guarded in their reaction. "The Maoists have to give a clear message that they will not do something foolish that will result in the flight of capital and discourage investors," a newly-elected executive of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries told The SundayExpress.

What this means for India

• India was instrumental in forging an understanding with Maoists to avoid delay in polls

• While US was leaning more towards Centrist parties (Maoists are banned on its terror list), China developed stronger ties with UML

• India reads the vote as one against monarchy, corrupt politicians and the UML

• India will have to readjust its relationship and is banking on "close contacts" with Maoists

• But it will have to contend with stronger anti-India rhetoric as Maoists swept polls on the plank of building a "truly independent" republic

• Nepal, under Maoists, will strongly demand revising the 1950 peace and friendship treaty. While India has been considering this, it will have to take an early decision on starting consultations.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Tibet: Will the USA Launch a New Secret War “Under the Roof of the World”?


By Andrei ARESHEV
The current unrest in the Tibetan autonomy of the Chinese People’s Republic (seemingly unexpected) has continued for over a week. Manifestations organised by Buddhist monks on the occasion of an anniversary of Tibet’s annexation by China led to mass clashes with police, violence, fires and robbery. The tragic events coincided with the regular session of the All-China Assembly of People’s Representatives, acquiring a dramatic scale and have already led to deaths, forcing Beijing to use active army to crack down on the riots.

Western sources report the spread of unrest in the provinces neighbouring with Tibet (in particular Sichuan) and mass repressions by the Chinese authorities, holding them up in an utterly negative aspect. And here we have an evident parallel with the way western media covered the activities of the Yugoslav army and police in Kosovo in 1998, immediately before the NATO aggression. Primary sources of information whose precision is hard to verify, are chiefly Tibetan émigrés in the neighbouring countries and western human rights NGOs. For example, according to Thubten Sampkhel, a representative of the Tibetan “government–in-exile” 80 protestors were killed and 72 wounded. He says eyewitnesses in Tibet who did the actual counting verified the figures. Official Chinese sources say that 10 people died. Some pro-Tibetan reports are deliberately over dramatising the situation. For example there are reports about the involvement of Chinese troops in mass killings of Tibetans; others say the “Tibetans in Amdo province have no intention of surrendering and are resolute to continues protests till the start of this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing”1.

The current developments can indeed do great harm to China taking place shortly before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Demonstrators in Lhasa have become the gravest challenge to the Chinese rule in Tibet over the past two decades, raising a worldwide wave of protests, and holding China up in an unfavourable light on the eve of the Olympics,” – the Associated Press puts it flatly. However the current events in that mountainous district have also an even greater geopolitical significance.

Experts on events in different continents and nations including Africa, Latin America, Myanmar, the Central Asia, the Middle East or Pakistan constantly stress the presence of elements of Chinese and American confrontation that is not always evident but nevertheless not less tense. In particular, one of the causes of the intervention in Iraq and the incessant threats to Iran can be accounted for by the striving to give China very poor energy rationing2.

It can be confidently argued that the present-day troubles faced by Washington’s chief geopolitical rival would be completely taken advantage of with an eye to pushing their development in a favourable direction. U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice has already called on China to exert “moderation” in order to overcome the current political crisis in the Tibetan autonomy. Having said she was sad over the unrest in the Tibetan administrative centre, Lhasa that followed protests and caused deaths, Condozleezza Rice said she was worried over reports about the growing police and army presence in Lhasa, calling on both sides to refrain from violence. Mrs. State Secretary preferred not to say that setting shops and buildings on fire and robbery did not fit well in the picture of peaceful protesting. She rather recalled that president Gorge W.Bush “has consistently called on China’s government to have a constructive dialogue” with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists both directly or negotiating with his representatives…” On behalf of the U.S. administration Mrs. Rice called on Beijing to modify those aspects of its Tibetan policies that “have led to tension caused by their impact on the local religion, culture and sources of subsistence.”

It can be assumed that over the past several years the Tibetan national movement has become significantly more radical, so Beijing would find it hard to see eye to eye with it. In the oblique way this is evidenced by the scope and the skill of organisation of protests, as well as the wave of anti-China manifestations simultaneously sweeping over many countries from the United States and France to Nepal and Australia. The Kosovo independence issue could not fail to inspire supporters of complete Tibet’s independence from China either. Washington realises this and for the time being continues to make a stake of the Dalai Lama, the champion of “peaceful non-violent forms of protest”, some sort of the “Tibetan Ibrahim Rugova.” The Tibetan spiritual leader enjoys a wide public support in the West, suffice it to recall his meeting with G.Bush, Sr. at the ceremony of awarding the Dalai Lama with the Gold Medal of U.S. Congress in October of 2007.

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists has already called for an international inquiry into China’s crackdown. His statement in Dharamsala3 says: ”The relevant international organisations should look into the Tibetan situation to clarify its causes.” The Dalai Lama has called the activities of Chinese authorities as “cultural genocide.”4

The Dalai Lama – willingly or not – is effectively preparing starting grounds for more radical forces that are about to launch an attack, enjoying political, propaganda and other sorts of support primarily from forces across the Atlantic.

The U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of Tibet and its relations with China have developed for several decades. After China annexed Tibet in 1949 and after the annexation of Hamand and Amdo provinces in 1956, on the initiative of the U.S. government the CIA started its “secret war” in the mountains of Tibet. In October of 1957, an aeroplane with no identification marks took off from a field aerodrome near Dakka carrying the first two Tibetans the CIA had trained for a month. Landing in the designated location close to Lhasa they soon established contacts with the leader of local insurgents. The Lhasa uprising started soon after, and the Dalai Lama fled. In 1958, in total secrecy, over 30 Tibetans began their training at the Camp Hale base in Colorado. Overall, more than 300 Tibetans were trained there. Starting from July, 1958 the CIA began flying C-130 aircraft from its secret base in Thailand, delivering weapons, ordnance and trained militants. More than 400 tonnes of cargo were delivered in 1957 through 1960. In one of the sabotage operations by Tibetans Chief of the Western Tibetan military district was killed, having on him vitally important documents of the Chinese Communist party. Langley obtained priceless information about China’s domestic situation, the state of its army, the PRC nuclear programmes and the rifts between Peking and Moscow that began to take place. By the early 1960s U.S. secret services spent an annual $1.7 million a year in Tibet with about $500,000 allocated for the support of 2,100 guerrillas (including 800 armed militants), mainly based in Nepal, and some $180,000 for the Dalai Lama’s personal needs. When later relations between Washington and Beijing improved, the activities of Tibetan agents were temporarily suspended. Tibetans paid a death toll of 87,000 in crackdowns of uprisings and armed clashes only…

It is to be noted that the then role of China and its economy in world affairs was not very big, but Washington was adamantly pursuing its policies of interference in Chinese internal affairs in one of its “problem outskirts.” This has become even more evident in modern times when the global struggle for influence and resources has become fiercer than ever. With the Dalai Lama completing his mission one day, he will be replaced by other people who, with the support of external forces would attempt to challenge China’s national unity as a state. There will also appear other points of “application of force” aside from Tibet, for example Xiangyang-Uigur autonomy and Inner Mongolia… External policy complications would not take long to arrive. It can be assumed that the current situation would dramatically affect relations between China and India, whom Washington is aggressively trying to draw into its orbit, and more than that.

Unrest in Tibet can unforeseeably echo in Russia, especially in the territories with a sizeable number of Buddhist population. Shows of support of Tibetan manifestators can happen in Kalmykia, Buriatia and Tuva. Ch. Budaev, Chairman of “Lamrim” Buddhist community and the Central Spiritual Buddhist Authority has already expressed hope that the developments in Tibet would lead the way for democratic changes in the Chinese society. According to him, democracy in Russia was consolidated after the well-known events of the 1990s that were given broad international coverage.

“I’d like to believe,” – Ch.Budaev said, “that the alarming developments in Tibet we are now witnessing would in the long run lead to democratisation of the Chinese society.”5

Thus, attempts of the external forces to propose a Gorbachev-Yeltsin scenario of China’s “democratisation” directly bring the developments in Tibet into the realm of Russia’s foreign and domestic policies.

The article uses excerpts from Melinda Lou’s “CIA Under the «Roof of the World». (Newsweek, July 1999)

___

1 Eight dead bodies were brought into the Tibetan monastery of Ngaba Kirti (Amdo, Tibet) // http://savetibet.ru/2008/03/16/people_killed_in_tibet.html

2 Details in: K.Simonov. Global Energy War. M. Algorithm, 2007. p.130, and others

3 By the way, Levon Ter-Petroisan also called for an international inquiry into the tragic events in Armenia March 1 and 2, provoked by his own supporters. Similarities in the character of these claims as well as the tactics of “peaceful manifestators” in both cases give reasons to suggest a similarity of tools with which some people attempt to arrange a “controlled chaos” in regions as different as the southern Caucasus and Eastern Asia.

4 To recall the propaganda campaign in the wake of the destruction by the Taliban of Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan in 2001 that ushered in a NATO military operation in that country.

5 http://savetibet.ru/2008/03/16/buryatia_and_tibet.html

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=1289

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Comrade Chandrashekhar: Representative of the Spirit of the Student Movement


(On the occasion of 31 March, Chandrashekhar’s 11th martyrdom anniversary, Kavita Krishnan situates Chandrashekhar’s legacy in the context of contemporary debates and assessments of the Indian student movement. – Ed/)

“In our freedom struggle we have seen how students came out of the universities in large numbers. They should come out because in certain ways we are privileged. We come to universities, educate ourselves, gain knowledge, get to know the world, are better equipped to understand and analyse our realities. So it is our responsibility to disseminate this knowledge. Whatever we have taken from society, we must give it back.”
- Comrade Chandrashekhar, in an interview

Chandrashekhar was both a product and an architect of the student movement of his times. The richness of the insights and experiences he imparted to the student movement of the 90s was generated by the heritage of past generations of revolutionary student movements. Chandrashekhar saw a living link between the student movement of the 90s and the AISF of the freedom struggle. For Chandrashekhar, Bhagat Singh was no icon for worship; he was a challenge calling to be fulfilled. And it is not difficult to trace the running thread that linked Bhagat Singh martyred at the hands of the British; the hundreds of students and youth inspired by Naxalbari, gunned down on the streets of West Bengal in the early 70s; and Chandrashekhar who was shot dead in Siwan.


And yet, the decade of the 90s, to begin with, seemed very far away from the mood of the high-points of the Left and democratic student movements of the past. It was heralded as a decade of triumph by the neo-liberal intelligentsia, media and ruling class. Triumph over communism (in the wake of the Soviet collapse and discrediting of communist China among youth after the Tiananmen massacre); the triumph of all-out ‘globalisation’ as dictated by the IMF-World Bank. In the early years of the 90s, most commentators in the media completely discounted the Left as a force with any appeal among students. The only two trends of student stirrings, according to such opinions, were either the anti-Mandal frenzy, or the fanaticism of the Hindutva variety. The dominant left mood itself was one of capitulation; of demoralisation over the Soviet collapse; of suppressing its own identity in order to back the so-called ‘social justice’ ruling class formations in North India. This mood was hardly one that could ignite any appeal in the minds of students. Chandrashekhar is an enduring symbol of a creative radical student movement that disproved all those myths and struck strong roots in the hearts and minds of students of the Hindi heartland at precisely that time.

Chandrashekhar, already an activist and a Bihar state leader of the AISF, was dissatisfied with the AISF’s defeatism and its surrender to the ruling class options as the only alternative, in the name of secularism and social justice. He sought a platform that would directly evolve a creative Left language with which to confront and challenge the discourse and forces of right-wing economics and politics. Like many others of his generation, he found AISA as an answer to that quest.

AISA was boldly willing to confront communal forces both ideologically and politically, quite directly. Challenging the ruling classes who were consigning youth to the flames of anti-reservation passions, AISA from its very birth defended the Mandal recommendations of reservations for OBCs in education and jobs. At the same time, AISA mobilised students to demand education and employment as against job cuts and privatisation of education. The latter policies were not only undermining the potential of the Mandal recommendations; the extreme insecurity caused by shrinking educational and job opportunities were creating fertile ground for anti-quota prejudices to be sown.

The CPI(ML) in Bihar and UP was not willing to hand over the task of defending secularism and social justice to the likes of Laloo and Mulayam, and AISA was determined to emerge as a Left student force with a strong mass following among students. AISA, in contrast to many of the ML or Left-of-CPI(M) groups, did not accept cliquishness and sectarianism as the inevitable fate of radicalism in student politics. Rather, AISA was determined to reach out to every democratic impulse, every fighting voice in society.

It was these qualities in AISA which drew Chandrashekhar along with many others towards it. And it was this character that Chandrashekhar himself enhanced immensely through his own initiatives. Like Bhagat Singh, like the student martyrs of the Naxalbari, who left prestigious colleges to join the revolutionary struggles of poor peasantry, Chandu, in his life, as well as his death, broke the barriers between academics, student activism and peoples’ struggles beyond the campus: the struggles of the people of Bhojpur, the resistance of the tribals of the Narmada valley, the blood spilt by the police in the Uttarakhand movement at Muzaffarnagar, the lives of the people of Siwan… He forged bonds of solidarity, life and death with all these struggles.

AISA’s successful victory in the campuses of BHU, Allahabad University, Kumaon University and JNU, defeating the ABVP head-on, was precisely because it was able to light the spark of Left radicalism in students, offering a bold ray of hope in those testing times. The ‘official’ Left groups - CPI(M)-affiliated SFI in particular - could not grasp the reasons for the appeal of AISA in the Hindi belt where SFI could make no headway, neither for AISA’s appeal in SFI’s bastion in JNU. In fact, a National President of the SFI, writing in the PD just after Chandrashekhar’s tenure as JNUSU President and prior to his martyrdom, had derided and dismissed Chandrashekhar’s “so-called revolutionary activities in the grassroots”.

Comrade Shyam Narain Yadav, martyred along with Chandrashekhar, had been an SFI leader and had joined the CPI(ML) along with 30 other SFI members. What led young revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar and Shyam Narain to look beyond the confines of the ‘official’ communist parties? What accounts for the appeal of AISA in the 90s and for its renewed appeal in the present phase? These are questions that the CPI(M) is unable to answer.

Contrast the living, inspiring reality of Chandrashekhar’s legacy with the text of a recent CPI(M) document on the student movement. This document, titled ‘Student Front: Policy And Tasks’ and adopted at the March 31 to April 02, 2007 meeting of the CPI(M) Central Committee, is full of distortions and silences regarding important chapters and questions of the Indian student movement.

Writing of the 1960s and 70s, the document says, “In the seventies, the dominant trend in the student movement was against corruption and authoritarian political tendencies, which culminated in the emergency….During this period, since the mid-sixties various shades of ultra Left tendencies also arose amongst the students. Seeking to divorce the student movement from the general democratic movement, advancing the slogan of “student power”, such forces strengthened anarchic trends disrupting and weakening the united student movement.”

The Naxalbari movement of 1967 unleashed a wave of revolt amongst students. The timing coincided with the ‘New Left’-type trends of the late 60s in the West; but the pro-Naxalbari trend amongst students was very distinct and different from any romanticised slogan of ‘student power’. Far from being a bid for ‘student power’, the Naxalbari movement was marked by masses of students leaving prestigious campuses to join the peasants’ struggle in the countryside. It was the peasants’ revolutionary bid for power, betrayed by the CPI(M), that students all over the country came out to support. It was these students who bore the brunt of the ‘white terror’ of the early 70s, and were the heroic martyrs killed in cold blood on the streets and police stations of Kolkata. Rather than being out of tune with the mood for democracy, they were at the forefront of the struggle against the authoritarianism of the early 70s that was a rehearsal for the emergency. Gorakh Pandey’s lines from Khooni Panja about the Congress’ regime of repression captures this reality: “Sattar mein kasa kalkatte par, kuch jawan umangon ke natey/Kas gaya mulk ke gardan par, pachhattar ke atey atey…” (The bloody hand gripped Calcutta in 1970, to crush some young dreams/Its grip tightened on the nation’s neck by 1975).

The CPI(M) document also fails to locate the roots of the phenomenon of anarchy and violence in North Indian campuses. It says, “The outside environment of criminalisation of politics and antisocial activities impacts on the campuses. This violence also affects the democratic rights of the students and in most of the campuses, students union elections are not being held for a very long period.” Elsewhere it says, “The legitimacy of the demand for holding students union election also stands questioned due to the growing violence which takes place around them.” The CPI(M) thus blames the bans on student union polls on anarchy, lawlessness and violence, and tacitly legitimizes the ruling class justification for such bans. This is because the CPI(M) is unwilling to confront the fact that ‘anarchy’ and ‘lawlessness’ is not something restricted to student politics; rather it is enmeshed in the commercialized and corrupt culture of college and university administrations and their political masters. The bans on student politics are not so much a response to campus violence but are intended to crush the potential for student movements against fee hikes, privatization and other anti-student policies; and the bans on student politics in turn foster anarchy. The CPI(M) document, like SFI’s practice in North India, completely fails to recognize this and therefore depoliticises the issue of bans on student unions. It is AISA which, in the campuses of Bihar and UP, has posed a challenge to anarchy and lawlessness by offering a popular platform of a student movement demanding campus democracy.

The CPI(M) document mentions “a new challenge” in today’s times: “The blind opposition to the state is acting as a complement to neo-liberal offensive against the state. This is leading to broad anti-Left umbrella platforms emerging where they extreme Left and the extreme Right cohabit. This also compounds the problem of depoliticisation.” This theorization, on the face of it, appears strange. Where on earth does the CPI(M) find extreme right student groups displaying any ‘blind opposition to the state’?! Don’t all right-wing groups like NSUI and ABVP create consent for the state? But the accusation that ‘extreme right and extreme left cohabit’ gives us a clue to what the CPI(M) is implying. The accusation of ‘a ultra-left and right mahajot’ is a familiar one leveled by the CPI(M) both in West Bengal and in JNU too, where the CPI(M) policies are increasingly discredited in the wake of Singur and Nandigram and the SFI has suffered electoral reverses, and in the case of JNU, total rout in the Central Panel. All those on the Left who oppose the CPI(M)’s support for corporate land grab are branded as ‘blind opponents’ of the state, of development and progress; as ‘anarchists’; as promoters of ‘depoliticisation’.

The real live political impulses of students - be it their response to the call of Naxalbari or their rallying with the protesting peasants of Singur and Nandigram, Kalinganagar and Khammam, the same impulses that Chandrashekhar best represented - are a direct refutation of the CPI(M)’s feeble attempts to wash the enduring and continuing legacy of Naxalbari out of the history of the Indian student movement.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

End the siege of Gaza!


International Solidarity Action

31 March - 1 April

End the world complicity to the Israeli occupation and crimes against the
Palestinian people!

A group of international participants decided to act against our
countries' complicity to the inhumane and devastating siege of the Gaza
Strip.

A delegation including participants from the Basque country, Austria,
Scotland, Norway, Italy, Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey,
Palestine, Jordan and India intend to reach the Egyptian side of the
border with Gaza in order to deliver a truckload of food and medicine and
in protest against the inhuman siege imposed on the people of Gaza, with
the complicity of our own governments.

We protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people and condemn the
hypocrisy of European and other governments who blatantly violate the
democratic will of the Palestinian people and have taken positions in the
interest of the Israeli and US agenda of occupation and domination.

We strongly condemn the European Union for backtracking on their
responsibility, as stipulated in past agreements, to facilitate and
oversee the flow of people through the Rafah border crossing.
The European governments are therefore directly complicit in the
Israeli-imposed siege of the Palestinian population of Gaza, their
confinement to an open air prison and denial of access to the most basic
goods and services, resulting in massive suffering and a humanitarian
disaster.

Our protest must also be seen in the light of the 60th anniversary of the
1948 Nakba -the massive expulsion and forced flight of the Palestinian
people as a result of the Zionist aggression which paved the way for the
creation of the state of Israel- as well as the on-going Nakba and Israeli
occupation, marked by expansion policies, expropriation and bloodshed.

We emphasize the urgent need to enforce and broaden the global campaign
for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli Apartheid
State and its policies of occupation and oppression.

Solidarity with the people of Palestine!!!
We call on everyone wishing to participate to join the delegation to Rafah!!!

* Departure from Cairo: Monday morning 31/03 at 5:00am from the Egyptian
Bar Association

* Return to Cairo: Monday night 31/03

* Information: +20 - 1 - 63 78 95 94

"European Campaign Against the Siege"
Anti-imperialist Camp
www.antiimperialista.org
camp@antiimperialista.org
************************************

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation by Some Chinese

Below is the text of their open letter to Chinese government.

1. At present the one-sided propaganda of the official Chinese media is
having the effect of stirring up inter-ethnic animosity and aggravating an
already tense situation. This is extremely detrimental to the long-term goal
of safeguarding national unity. We call for such propaganda to be stopped.

2. We support the Dalai Lama’s appeal for peace, and hope that the ethnic
conflict can be dealt with according to the principles of goodwill, peace,
and non-violence. We condemn any violent act against innocent people,
strongly urge the Chinese government to stop the violent suppression, and
appeal to the Tibetan people likewise not to engage in violent activities.

3. The Chinese government claims that “there is sufficient evidence to prove
this incident was organized, premeditated, and meticulously orchestrated by
the Dalai clique.” We hope that the government will show proof of this. In
order to change the international community’s negative view and distrustful
attitude, we also suggest that the government invite the United Nation’s
Commission on Human Rights to carry out an independent investigation of the
evidence, the course of the incident, the number of casualties, etc.

4. In our opinion, such Cultural-Revolution-like language as “the Dalai Lama
is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes and an evil spirit with a human face
and the heart of a beast” used by the Chinese Communist Party leadership in
the Tibet Autonomous Region is of no help in easing the situation, nor is it
beneficial to the Chinese government’s image. As the Chinese government is
committed to integrating into the international community, we maintain that
it should display a style of governing that conforms to the standards of
modern civilization.

5. We note that on the very day when the violence erupted in Lhasa (March
14), the leaders of the Tibet Autonomous Region declared that “there is
sufficient evidence to prove this incident was organized, premeditated, and
meticulously orchestrated by the Dalai clique.” This shows that the
authorities in Tibet knew in advance that the riot would occur, yet did
nothing effective to prevent the incident from happening or escalating. If
there was a dereliction of duty, a serious investigation must be carried out
to determine this and deal with it accordingly.

6. If in the end it cannot be proved that this was an organized,
premeditated, and meticulously orchestrated event but was instead a ‘popular
revolt’ triggered by events, then the authorities should pursue those
responsible for inciting the popular revolt and concocting false information
to deceive the Central Government and the people; they should also seriously
reflect on what can be learned from this event so as to avoid taking the
same course in the future.

7. We strongly demand that the authorities not subject every Tibetan to
political investigation or revenge. The trials of those who have been
arrested must be carried out according to judicial procedures that are open,
just, and transparent so as to ensure that all parties are satisfied.

8. We urge the Chinese government to allow credible national and
international media to go into Tibetan areas to conduct independent
interviews and news reports. In our view, the current news blockade cannot
gain credit with the Chinese people or the international community, and is
harmful to the credibility of the Chinese government. If the government
grasps the true situation, it need not fear challenges. Only by adopting an
open attitude can we turn around the international community‚s distrust of
our government.

9. We appeal to the Chinese people and overseas Chinese to be calm and
tolerant, and to reflect deeply on what is happening. Adopting a posture of
aggressive nationalism will only invite antipathy from the international
community and harm China’s international image.

10. The disturbances in Tibet in the 1980s were limited to Lhasa, whereas
this time they have spread to many Tibetan areas. This deterioration
indicates that there are serious mistakes in the work that has been done
with regard to Tibet. The relevant government departments must
conscientiously reflect upon this matter, examine their failures, and
fundamentally change the failed nationality policies.

11. In order to prevent similar incidents from happening in future, the
government must abide by the freedom of religious belief and the freedom of
speech explicitly enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, thereby allowing
the Tibetan people fully to express their grievances and hopes, and
permitting citizens of all nationalities freely to criticize and make
suggestions regarding the government’s nationality policies.

12. We hold that we must eliminate animosity and bring about national
reconciliation, not continue to increase divisions between nationalities. A
country that wishes to avoid the partition of its territory must first avoid
divisions among its nationalities. Therefore, we appeal to the leaders of
our country to hold direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama. We hope that the
Chinese and Tibetan people will do away with the misunderstandings between
them, develop their interactions with each other, and achieve unity.
Government departments as much as popular organizations and religious
figures should make great efforts toward this goal.

Signatures:

Wang Lixiong (Beijing, Writer)
Liu Xiaobo (Beijing, Freelance Writer)
Zhang Zuhua (Beijing, scholar of constitutionalism)
Sha Yexin (Shanghai, writer, Chinese Muslim)
Yu Haocheng (Beijing, jurist)
Ding Zilin (Beijing, professor)
Jiang peikun (Beijing, professor)
Yu Jie (Beijing, writer)
Sun Wenguang (Shangdong, professor)
Ran Yunfei (Sichuan, editor, Tujia nationality)
Pu Zhiqiang (Beijing, lawyer)
Teng Biao (Beijing, Layer and scholar)
Liao Yiwu ()Sichuan, writer)
Wang Qisheng (Beijing, scholar)
Zhang Xianling (Beijing, engineer)
Xu Jue (Beijing, research fellow)
Li Jun (Gansu, photographer)
Gao Yu (Beijing, journalist)
Wang Debang (Beijing, freelance writer)
Zhao Dagong (Shenzhen, freelance writer)
Jiang Danwen (Shanghai, writer)
Liu Yi (Gansu, painter)
Xu Hui (Beijing, writer)
Wang Tiancheng (Beijing, scholar)
Wen kejian (Hangzhou, freelance)
Li Hai (Beijing, freelance writer)
Tian Yongde (Inner Mongolia, folk human rights activists)
Zan Aizong (Hangzhou, journalist)
Liu Yiming (Hubei, freelance writer)
Liu Di (Beijing, freelance writer)