Banner Advertiser

Sunday, January 9, 2011

[ALOCHONA] Killing thy neighbour: India, and its Border Security Force



Killing thy neighbour: India, and its Border Security Force
 
 
image
 
by Rahnuma Ahmed

Felani's clothes got entangled in the barbed wire when she was crossing the Anantapur border in Kurigram. It was 6 in the morning, Friday, 7th January 2011. Felani was 15, she worked in Delhi and was returning home with her father after ten years. To get married. She screamed. The BSF shot her dead. They took away her body.

THE fence is made of steel and concrete. Packed with razor wire, double-walled and 8-foot high, it is being built by the government of India on its border with Bangladesh. When completed, it promises to be larger than the United States-Mexico fence, Israel's apartheid wall with Palestine, and the Berlin wall put together. It has been dubbed the Great Wall of India.

The fence is being constructed, with floodlighting in parts, to secure India's borders against interests hostile to the country. To put in place systems that are able to 'interdict' these hostile elements. They will include a suitable mix and class of various types of hi-tech electronic surveillance equipment such as night vision devices, handheld thermal imagers, battlefield surveillance radars, direction finders, unattended ground sensors, high-powered telescopes to act as a 'force multiplier' for 'effective' border management. According to its rulers, this is 'vitally important for national security.'

Seventy per cent of fencing along the Bangladesh border has been completed. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on November 10, 2010, the Indian state minister for home affairs said, fencing will be completed by March 2012. One estimate puts the project's cost at ?600 million.

The colonial boundary division between East Pakistan/Bangladesh and India, notes Willem van Schendel, had little to do with modern concepts of spatial rationality. It was anything but a straight line, snaking 'through the countryside in a wacky zigzag pattern' showing no respect for history, cutting through innumerable geographical entities, for example, the ancient capital of Gaur. It was reflective of someone with an 'excessively baroque mind' (The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, 2005)

The fence divides and separates. Villages. Agricultural lands. Markets. Families. Communities. It cuts across mangrove-swamps in the southwest, forests and mountains in the northeast (Delwar Hussain, March 2, 2009). It divides villages. Everyday village-life must now submit to a tangle of bureaucracy as Indian Muslim law clerk, Maznu Rahman Mandal and his wife Ahmeda Khatun, a Bangladeshi, discovered after Ahmeda's father died. To attend the latter's funeral in the same village, Bhira, they would now have to get passports from Delhi, visas from Kolkata (Bidisha Bannerjee, December 20, 2010). It split up Fazlur Rehman's family too, the fence snaked into their Panidhar village homestead, his younger brother who lived right next door, is now in another country (Time, February 5, 2009). Other border residents have had their homes split in two, the kitchen in one country, the bedroom in another.

To access one's field, or markets, residents must now line up at long queues at the BSF border outposts, surrender their identity cards. They must submit to the BSF's regimen, which often means disregarding what the crop needs. As Mithoo Sheikh of Murshidabad says, 'The BSF does not understand cultivation problems.' By the time we get to the field it is noon. Sometimes we get water only at night. But we have to stop working at 4pm, because they will not let us remain in the field. If we disobey, they beat us, they file false charges. ('Trigger Happy'. Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border, Human Rights Watch, December 2010).

This lack of 'understanding' percolates to the topmost levels of both border forces. During an official visit to Bangladesh and talks between the BSF and the BDR (Bangladesh Rifles, recently renamed Border Guard Bangladesh) in September 2010, Raman Srivastava, director general of the BSF, in response to allegations that BSF troopers were killing innocent and unarmed Bangladeshi civilians said: 'The deaths have occurred in Indian territory and mostly during night, so how can they be innocent?' Ideas reciprocated by the BDR chief Major General Mainul Islam in March 2010, who, while explaining that there was a history of 'people and cattle trafficking during darkness', said, 'We should not be worried about such incidents [killings]…. We have discussed the matter and will ensure that no innocent people will be killed.'

Abdur Rakib was catching fish in Dohalkhari lake, inside Bangladeshi territory. It was March 13, 2009. A witness saw a BSF soldier standing at the border, talking loudly. 'It seemed that he wanted the boy to give him some free fish.' Heated argument, verbal abuse. 'The BSF pointed a gun at the boy. The boy ran and the soldier started to shoot.' Two were injured. Rakib was shot in the chest. He died instantly. He was 13.

Smuggling, cattle rustling and human trafficking has increased in the border areas as poor farmers and landless people faced by population increases, poor irrigation, flooding, and continuous river erosion struggle to make ends meet. While both the BSF and the BGB accuse each other of corruption, the reality, says the recent Human Rights Watch report, is that some officials, border guards, and politicians on both sides are almost certainly involved in smuggling. It quotes a senior BSF official, 'There are a lot of people involved, including our chaps. That is why only these farmers, with one or two cows are caught, not groups that ferry large consignments of cattle or drugs.'

A culture of impunity prevails, says Kirity Roy, head of Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (Masum), a Kolkata-based human rights organisation. We have repeatedly approached the courts, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the National Minorities Commission, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. But none of the cases raised have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. In some cases, family members appeared before the BSF court of inquiry but we, as the de facto complainant, were never summoned to appear or depose before any inquiry conducted by BSF. No verdicts have been made public.

Neither has the BSF provided any details to Bangladeshi authorities of any BSF personnel having been prosecuted for human rights violation. Impunity is legally sanctioned as the BSF is exempt from criminal prosecution unless specific approval is granted by the Indian government. A new bill to prohibit torture is being considered by the Indian parliament, it includes legal impunity.

On April 22, 2009, when Rabindranath Mandal and his wife were returning to Bangladesh after having illegally gone to India for Rabindranath's treatment, a BSF patrol team from Ghojadanga camp detained them. She was raped. Rabindranath tried to save her, they killed him. The following morning, the BSF jawans left her and her husband's dead body at the Zero Line at Lakkhidari.

The reason for building the fence, said an Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, is the same as the United States' Mexico fence. As Israel's fence on the West Bank. To prevent illegal migration and terrorist infiltration.

But Rizwana Shamshad points out that the hysteria generated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party during the 1980s and 1990s—Bangladeshi Muslim 'infiltration' by the millions constitutes a serious strain on the national economy, it poses a threat to India's stability and security, it represents a challenge to Indian sovereignty, demographic changes will soon lead to Bangladeshi citizens demanding a separate state from India—did not withstand investigation. A study carried out by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in 1995 revealed that the BJP-Shiv Sena allegations were not only an exaggeration, but a complete fabrication. Fears and insecurities had been deliberately whipped up to consolidate Hindutva ideology; migrants, it seemed, were more preoccupied with struggling to make a living. While the BJP-Shiv Sena had alleged that there were 300,000 illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Mumbai, they were able to detect and deport only 10,000 Bangladeshi migrants, when in power (1998-2004).

The numbers vary with each media or official report, writes Rizwana. A BJP National Executive meeting declared over 15 million (April 1992). Nearly 10 million, said former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta (May 6, 1997). The group of cabinet ministers (home, defence, external affairs, finance) set up by prime minister Vajpayee post Kargil, reported 15 million (2000). The definitions, she adds, are prejudiced: Muslim migrants are described as 'infiltrators'. Hindu migrants as 'refugees'. Neither is there any mention of the Indian economy having benefited from cheap labour.

The HRW report notes, few killed by the BSF have ever been shown to have been involved in terrorism. In the cases investigated, alleged criminals were armed with nothing but sickles, sticks and knives, implements commonly carried by villagers. Nor do the dead bodies bear out the BSF's justification that they had fired in self-defence. Shots in the back indicate that the victims had been shot running away. Shots at close range signal they were probably killed in custody.

The BSF kills Indian nationals too. In Indian territory. Basirun Bibi and her 6-month old grandson Ashique, May 2010. Atiur Rahman, March 2010. Shahjahan Gazi, November 2009. Noor Hossain, September 2009. Shyamsundar Mondal, August 2009. Sushanta Mondal, July 2009. Abdus Samad, May 2009. The imposition of informal curfews on both sides of the border at night, reportedly to prevent the accidental shooting of villagers, has not lessened the number of innocent people killed.

Beatings, torture, rape, killings. What could be the reason for such compulsively violent behaviour? According to the HRW report, it could have been caused by previous deployment in the Indo-Pakistan border in Kashmir, by 'difficult and tense periods of duty.'

However, checkpoints, curfews, hi-tech electronic surveillance equipment, harassment, intimidation, beatings, torture and sniper fire remind me of Gaza. Not surprising, given that once finished, the fence will 'all but encircle Bangladesh' (Time, February 5, 2009).

The 1947 colonial border division was reflective of someone with an 'excessively baroque mind.' Its brutal enforcement through fencing, through the deployment of trigger-happy BSF soldiers speak of a Nazi-state mentality.

Not too far-fetched given Israel and India's 'limitless relationship' (Military ties unlimited: India and Israel, New Age, January 18, 2010). This includes Israeli training of Indian commandos in urban warfare and counter-insurgency operations (in Kashmir), and proposals for offering the Border Security Forces specialised training. Given Israel's behaviour, which Auschwitz survivor, Hajo Meyer, likens to the Nazis. 'I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel.'

Israel's inability to learn to live with its neighbours is increasingly turning it into a 'pariah state' (British MP). Its 'paranoia' has been noted by Israelis themselves (Gideon Levy). That a similar future awaits India is increasingly clear.

http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/4482.html


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] TV channels couldn’t telecast Khaleda’s speech live



TV channels couldn't telecast Khaleda's speech live



None of the private satellite television channels could broadcast the speech of opposition leader and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia live at the eleventh hour, even though some of them had made the necessary preparations on Sunday.(The New Age BD)

At least five television channels — Ekushey Television, Banglavision, Islamic TV, NTv and Channel i — were seen making preparations to air the speech of the opposition leader live at her Gulshan office where she met members of press to deliver the speech.

Khaleda Zia delivered her address to the nation through reporters from her Gulshan office, two days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressed the nation on Thursday.

Officials of some of the TV channels attributed their failure to broadcast Khaleda's speech live to technical problems, while some of them blamed certain quarters for pressuring them not to air it live.Mostafa Firoz, the head of news in Banglavision, admitted that they had taken all the measures to broadcast the speech live but could not do so because they were 'forbidden by the management'.

'As the other TV channels did not telecast the speech live, we also did not do so. There might have been threats from unknown quarters that stopped the TV channels from telecasting the speech live,' Firoz said. 'The management told us that they are under pressure to not telecast Khaleda's speech live.'

Islamic TV's head of news Benazir Ahmed said, 'As we were making preparations for airing the speech live, we suddenly lost link for unknown reasons.'  'The link might have been snapped by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission,' he added.

A senior newsman of the NTv, Talat Mamun, also said they had lost the link all of a sudden.He, however, denied that they had faced pressure not to broadcast the speech live.'It was just due to a technical glitch,' he added.

The joint assignment editor of Channel i, Tariqul Islam Masoom, said they also had prepared to telecast the speech live. 'But we lost the link just before doing so,' he added.

 http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/national/4567.html



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Ershad did not do any wrong ?



"Leader of the House, vulture brother and 7th amendment"
 
by Mizanur Rahaman Khan
 
 
 
 
 
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina waves at a public meeting in Rangpur,
Jatiya Party Chairman and local lawmaker HM Ershad is also present
 
 
 


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Where are Abul Barkat,Atiur Rahman and others poverty writers ?



Where are Abul Barkat,Atiur Rahman and others poverty writers ?
 
 


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Low and disorder !



Low and disorder !
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Worth a read - Aatish and Sherbano Taseer on their father's assasination



 

'The killer of my father, Salman Taseer, was showered with rose petals by fanatics. How could they do this?'

Aatish Taseer

Daily Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8248162/The-killer-of-my-father-Salman-Taseer-was-showered-with-rose-petals-by-fanatics.-How-could-they-do-this.html

 

Thousands of Pakistanis showered rose petals on the assassin of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who sought clemency for a Christian woman sentenced to death. Here his eldest son, Aatish Taseer, who lives in Delhi, mourns his death - and the nihilism of a country that could not tolerate a patriot who was humanitarian to his core.

 

I have recently flown home from North America. In airport after international airport, the world's papers carried front page images of my father's assassin.

 

A 26-year-old boy, with a beard, a forehead calloused from prayer, and the serene expression of a man assured of some higher reward. Last Tuesday, this boy, hardly older than my youngest brother whose 25th birthday it was that day, shot to death my father, the governor of Punjab, in a market in Islamabad.

 

My father had always taken pleasure in eluding his security, sometimes appearing without any at all in open-air restaurants with his family, but in this last instance it would not have mattered, for the boy who killed him was a member of his security detail.

 

It appears now that the plan to kill my father had been in his assassin's mind, even revealed to a few confidants, for many days before he carried the act to its fruition. And it is a great source of pain to me, among other things, that my father, always brazen and confident, had spent those last few hours in the company of men who kept a plan to kill him in their breasts.

 

But perhaps it could have been no other way, for my father would not only have not recognised his assassins, he would not have recognised the country that produced a boy like that. Pakistan was part of his faith, and one of the reasons for the differences that arose between us in the last years of his life–and there were many–was that this faith never allowed him to accept what had become of the country his forefathers had fought for.

 

And it would have been no less an act of faith for him to defend his country from the men who would see it become a medieval theocracy than it was for his assassin to take his life.

 

The last time I met or spoke to my father was – it seems hard to believe now – the night three years ago that Benazir Bhutto was killed. We had been estranged for most of my life, and just before he died we were estranged for a second time. I was the son of my Indian mother, with whom my father had a year-long relationship in 1980. In my childhood and adolescence, when he was fighting General Zia's dictatorship alongside Bhutto, and was in and out of jail, I had not known him.

 

I met him for the first time in my adult life at the age of 21, when I went to Lahore to seek him out. For some time, a promising, but awkward relationship, which included many trips to Lahore and family holidays with his young wife and six other children, developed between us.

 

The cause for that first estrangement, my father had always explained, was that it would have been impossible for him to be in politics in Pakistan with an Indian wife and a half-Indian son. And, in the end, as much as Pakistan had been the cause of our first estrangement, it was also the cause of our second, which began soon after the London bombings, when my father wrote me an angry letter about a story I had written for Prospect magazine in which I described the British second-generation Pakistani as the genus of Islamic terrorism in Britain.

 

My father was angry as a Muslim, though he was not a practising man of faith, and as a Pakistani; he accused me of blackening the Taseer name by bringing disrepute to a family of patriots. The letter and the new silence that arose between us prompted a book, Stranger to History, in which I discussed openly many things about my father's religion, Pakistan and my parents' relationship. Its publication freakishly coincided –though he might well have been offended even as a private citizen by what I wrote – with my father's return to politics, after a hiatus of nearly 15 years.

 

The book made final the distance between us; and a great part of the oblique pain I now feel has to do with mourning a man who was present for most of my life as an absence.

 

And yet I do mourn him, for whatever the trouble between us, there were things I never doubted about him: his courage, which, truly, was like an incapacity for fear, and his love of Pakistan. I said earlier that Pakistan was part of his faith, but that he himself was not a man of faith. His Islam, though it could inform his political ideas, now giving him a special feeling for the cause of the Palestinians and the Kashmiris, now a pride in the history of Muslims from Andalusia to Mughal India, was not total; it was not a complete vision of a society founded in faith.

 

He was a man in whom various and competing ideas of sanctity could function. His wish for his country was not that of the totality of Islam, but of a society built on the achievements of men, on science, on rationality, on modernity.

 

But, to look hard at the face of my father's assassin is to see that in those last moments of his life my father faced the gun of a man whose vision of the world, nihilistic as it is, could admit no other.

 

And where my father and I would have parted ways in the past was that I believe Pakistan and its founding in faith, that first throb of a nation made for religion by people who thought naively that they would restrict its role exclusively to the country's founding, was responsible for producing my father's killer.

 

For if it is science and rationality whose fruit you wish to see appear in your country, then it is those things that you must enshrine at its heart; otherwise, for as long as it is faith, the men who say that Pakistan was made for Islam, and that more Islam is the solution, will always have the force of an ugly logic on their side. And better men, men like my father, will be reduced to picking their way around the bearded men, the men with one vision that can admit no other, the men who look to the sanctities of only one Book.

 

In the days before his death, these same men had issued religious edicts against my father, burned him in effigy and threatened his life. Why? Because he defended the cause of a poor Christian woman who had been accused – and sentenced to die – for blasphemy.

 

My father, because his country was founded in faith, and blood – a million people had died so that it could be made–could not say that the sentence was wrong; the sentence stood; all he sought for Aasia Bibi was clemency on humanitarian grounds. But it was enough to demand his head.

 

What my father could never say was what I suspect he really felt: "The very idea of a blasphemy law is primitive; no woman, in any humane society, should die for what she says and thinks."

 

And when finally my father sought the repeal of the laws that had condemned her, the laws that had become an instrument of oppression in the hands of a majority against its minority, he could not say that the source of the laws, the faith, had no place in a modern society; he had to find a way to make people believe that the religion had been distorted, even though the religion – in the way that only these Books can be – was clear as day about what was meant.

 

Already, even before his body is cold, those same men of faith in Pakistan have banned good Muslims from mourning my father; clerics refused to perform his last rites; and the armoured vehicle conveying his assassin to the courthouse was mobbed with cheering crowds and showered with rose petals.

 

I should say too that on Friday every mosque in the country condoned the killer's actions; 2,500 lawyers came forward to take on his defence for free; and the Chief Minister of Punjab, who did not attend the funeral, is yet to offer his condolences in person to my family who sit besieged in their house in Lahore.

 

And so, though I believe, as deeply as I have ever believed anything, that my father joins that sad procession of martyrs – every day a thinner line – standing between him and his country's descent into fear and nihilism, I also know that unless Pakistan finds a way to turn its back on Islam in the public sphere, the memory of the late governor of Punjab will fade.

 

And where one day there might have been a street named after him, there will be one named after Malik Mumtaz Qadir, my father's boy-assassin.

 

Aatish Taseer's The Temple-Goers was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.

 

January 8, 2011

My Father Died for Pakistan

By SHEHRBANO TASEER

Lahore, Pakistan

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/opinion/09taseer.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

 

TWENTY-SEVEN. That's the number of bullets a police guard fired into my father before surrendering himself with a sinister smile to the policemen around him. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, was assassinated on Tuesday — my brother Shehryar's 25th birthday — outside a market near our family home in Islamabad.

 

The guard accused of the killing, Mumtaz Qadri, was assigned that morning to protect my father while he was in the federal capital. According to officials, around 4:15 p.m., as my father was about to step into his car after lunch, Mr. Qadri opened fire.

 

Mr. Qadri and his supporters may have felled a great oak that day, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they have succeeded in silencing my father's voice or the voices of millions like him who believe in the secular vision of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

 

My father's life was one of struggle. He was a self-made man, who made and lost and remade his fortune. He was among the first members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party when it was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s. He was an intellectual, a newspaper publisher and a writer; he was jailed and tortured for his belief in democracy and freedom. The vile dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq did not take kindly to his pamphleteering for the restoration of democracy.

 

One particularly brutal imprisonment was in a dungeon at Lahore Fort, this city's Mughal-era citadel. My father was held in solitary confinement for months and was slipped a single meal of half a plate of stewed lentils each day. They told my mother, in her early 20s at the time, that he was dead. She never believed that.

 

Determined, she made friends with the kind man who used to sweep my father's cell and asked him to pass a note to her husband. My father later told me he swallowed the note, fearing for the sweeper's life. He scribbled back a reassuring message to my mother: "I'm not made from a wood that burns easily." That is the kind of man my father was. He could not be broken.

 

He often quoted verse by his uncle Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of Urdu's greatest poets. "Even if you've got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred," wrote Faiz. Especially as governor, my father was the first to speak up and stand beside those who had suffered, from the thousands of people displaced by the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 to the family of two teenage brothers who were lynched by a mob last August in Sialkot after a dispute at a cricket match.

 

After 86 members of the Ahmadi sect, considered blasphemous by fundamentalists, were murdered in attacks on two of their mosques in Lahore last May, to the great displeasure of the religious right my father visited the survivors in the hospital. When the floods devastated Pakistan last summer, he was on the go, rallying businessmen for aid, consoling the homeless and building shelters.

 

My father believed that the strict blasphemy laws instituted by General Zia have been frequently misused and ought to be changed. His views were widely misrepresented to give the false impression that he had spoken against Prophet Mohammad. This was untrue, and a criminal abdication of responsibility by his critics, who must now think about what they have caused to happen. According to the authorities, my father's stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him.

 

There are those who say my father's death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan's liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others. This week two leading conservative politicians — former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan — have taken the same position my father held on the blasphemy laws: they want amendments to prevent misuse.

 

To say that there was a security lapse on Tuesday is an understatement. My father was brutally gunned down by a man hired to protect him. Juvenal once asked, "Who will guard the guards themselves?" It is a question all Pakistanis should ask themselves today: If the extremists could get to the governor of the largest province, is anyone safe?

 

It may sound odd, but I can't imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country's potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan's future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

 

 

Shehrbano Taseer is a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan.

 



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] FW: PRESS CONFERENCE: Meet the First Ever Indian Activists to Enter Gaza (Palestine)




 


From: news-service@milligazette.biglist.com
Subject: PRESS CONFERENCE: Meet the First Ever Indian Activists to Enter Gaza (Palestine)
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2011 08:00:05 -0500

Asia to GazaASIAN PEOPLE'S SOLIDARITY FOR PALESTINE
 
invites you to a PRESS CONFERENCE

ASIAN PEOPLE'S SOLIDARITY FOR PALESTINE -- INDIA LIFELINE TO GAZA

MEET THE FIRST EVER INDIAN ACTIVISTS TO ENTER  GAZA

Venue: Press Club of India, Raisina Road, New Delhi (Near Metro Station Central Secretariat)

Time: 2.45 pm    Date: Monday, January 10, 2011

Participants in the Caravan were from: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malayasia, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, UK

Chased by Israeli warships and warplanes in the Mediterranean Sea... held hostage in a cargo ship off Egypt without passports.. the amazing story of grit and determination of more than a 120 activists from 17 Asian countries, over 50 of them from India alone, who entered Gaza (Palestine) last week after a historic month-long 8,000-km bus-ride through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

With them, they took life-saving medical equipment, food items, clothes and other aid worth $1 million, weighing 170 tons, for the people of Gaza who continue to suffer unspeakable hardship for nearly five years under the illegal blockade imposed by the Israeli-US regimes.

Through its journey, the caravan was greeted by tens of thousands of people and their leaders that included, among others, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmednijad in Tehran, Hamas chief Khalid Mishal in Damascus and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya in Gaza.

You are cordially invited to meet the delegates at the press conference and share their experience through personal testimonies, as well as their rich collection of videos and photographs that documented the historic journey.

The activists included a diverse range of representation from the civil society -- Magsaysay Award-winner social activist Sandeep Pandey, West Asian expert and peace activist Feroze Mithiborwala, Gandhian activist Suresh Khairnar, trade union leader Ashim Roy, noted journalist Ajit Sahi, student activists from Vidyarthi Bharati in Mumbai, and students from JNU and Jamia Millia. The Indian delegates hailed from UP, Punjab, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jharkhand, among others.

Dr SQR ILYAS, Spokesperson, All India Muslim Personal Law Board
Dr ZAFARUL ISLAM KHAN, Editor, The Milli Gazette
FEROZE MITHIBORWALA, President, Awami Bharat
ANIL CHAUDHARY, President, Insaaf
KISHOR JAGTAP, Vice-President, Awami Bharat
GAUHAR IQBAL, President, Palestine Solidarity Forum
BIRAJ PATNAIK, Right to Food Activist with Supreme Court commission
Dr TASLEEM RAHMANI, President, Muslim Political Council of India
ASLAM KHAN, Vice-President, AISA
SHEHEEN, Solidarity Youth Movement
BISHRUDDEN SHARQI, ex-President, Students Islamic Organisation
BADAR KHAN, Student, Jamia Millia Islamia
KHUSHBOO KUMARI, Student, JNU
MOHAMMAD IRFAN, Gen. Secy., Subjects Assoc., Nelson M. Centre, JMI
SALEEL CHEMBAYIL, Student, Jamia Millia Islamia
POOJA BADEKAR, President, Vidyarthi Bharati
ARIF KAPADIA, President, Marathi Bharati

gandhi india free gaza caravan

palestine occupation blockage seige human rights flotilla caravan israeli zionist zionism torture freedom siege war settlements hamas fatah israeli palestinian aid relief freegaza

------------------------------------------------------

From:

FEROZE MITHIBORWALA

National President, BHARAT BACHAO ANDOLAN (Mumbai) Mobile: 98208-97517 ; email: feroze.moses777##gmail.com



Read also:

 
 
 
You are subscribed as farida_majid@hotmail.com
BIGLIST e-Newsletter delivery. Over 8 years for Milli Gazette. Ready for you. Contact Us.



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Roses for a killer.



A Pakistani governor has been assassinated by his own body guard. The killer surrendered immediately after the killing by raising his hands dropping the gun. He bragged to his fellow body guards that he has killed an enemy of Islam because the late governor Mr.Salmaan Taseer was an outspoken critic of Pakistan's infamous blasphemy laws. This behavior of the killer shows the extent of his fundamentalist indoctrination. The culture of political and common assassinations in Pakistan in the name of peaceful Islam is nothing new. Pakistan in fact is facing genocide in the name of Islam. The nation was created in the name of Islam and sustained in the name of Islam and the consequences of such an absurd philosophy based on faith are in front of the world today. But this killing is a meaningful one in many ways. The poison of religious extremism has extended its tentacles every where in the country, even the most trusted ones are not trustworthy anymore. Nobody is safe now in Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the entire world. Pakistan has become the global terrorist churning factory, a mortal danger to the entire world. The situation in Pakistan is not a matter of sudden development. Since 1947 the vested interests drugged people with religious fanaticism to solidify their power and position. Whenever their interests were challenged they cried foul' Islam khatrey mein hain'.

 

The Pakistani ruling cliques from day one to this day nurtured, encouraged, cultivated and nourished religious fanaticism in such a calculative way that it has now become a Frankenstein for them. The danger and proliferation of Islamic extremism has dwarfed Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Yemen. The extremists are determined to capture Pakistan to start a global war in the name of Islam.

The draconian and barbaric blasphemy laws are the most inhuman form of medieval edicts to crush liberty and human dignity. These Islamic fools will never understand that they can't force others to respect their faith. Any law that shows disrespect to life and honor are not sustainable in the modern times. But unfortunately Pakistan will not be able to repeal these so called laws because the extremists will not allow this to happen.

 

The killer of the Punjab governor Salman Taseer was greeted with roses when he came out of a court in Islamabad. For many in the Islamic world the age of enlightenment has come to an end. They are now trying ignorance. This is disgusting to see that a killer gets flowers and the law shows its inability to do anything. The government of Pakistan is nothing but a helpless spectator of the entire medieval drama unfolding before its eyes because the extremists is keeping the administration a hostage by their diabolic practice of annihilating anyone who goes against them. This gathering of darkness is an ominous sign of degeneration which will lead to catastrophic consequences and will destroy all the modern achievements mankind has made so far. This is a reign of terror unparalleled in our times when reason and law seems to be ineffective, helpless and useless.

But the silver lining is that if man can come out from their primitive caves to build skyscrapers, from stone throwing to satellite launching, this era of darkness will also eventually evaporate. The inherent human spirit will defeat this power of evil and a new era of success beyond the cages of religious dogmatism will usher. The only need is that a few shall stand tall against these dark forces with hope and determination to defeat them.


Akbar Hussain







__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Confidence in PM about her promises



78.42 %  Prothom Alo  readers do not have confidence in the PM about her promises



http://www.eprothomalo.com/contents/2011/2011_01_09/content_zoom/2011_01_09_1_5_b.jpg


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] An Untold Story of 1971 War



The Courageous Pakistan Army Stand on the Eastern Front: An Untold Story of 1971 Indo-Pak War


By SARMILA BOSE

 

THERE is much for Pakistan to come to terms with what happened in 1971. But the answers don't lie in unthinking vilification of the fighting men who performed so well in the war against such heavy odds in defense of the national policy. Rather, in failing to honour them, the nation dishonours itself.

 

My introduction to international politics was 1971, as a schoolgirl in Calcutta. Many images from that year are still etched in my mind, but the culminating one was the photo on Ramna racecourse of two men sitting at a table — the smart, turbaned Sikh, 'our' war-hero, Jagjit Singh Aurora, and the large man in a beret, A A K Niazi, commander of the other side, signing the instrument of surrender. Nearly a generation later, a chance interview for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) with Lt Gen. Aurora took me back to 1971. The interview was not about 1971, but about injustices suffered by Sikhs at the hands of the state General Aurora had served. I thought he was a bigger hero for what he had to say then. That view was reinforced as I read — with incredulity — the disparaging remarks by other Indian officers about him, and each other, in their books. If this is what happened to the winning commander, I wondered what had happened to the other man in the photo.

The result was a revelation.

 

It turns out that General Niazi has been my 'enemy' since the Second World War. As Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army fought on the Burma front in 1943-45 in their quest for India's freedom, Niazi was fighting on the other side, for the British Indian Army, under the overall command of General (later Field Marshal) William Joseph Slim. Slim and his 14th Army halted the advance of the INA and the Japanese at the Imphal campaign and turned the course of the war.

 

In the process of inflicting military defeat upon my ancestor, Niazi's performance was so exceptional that the British awarded him an on-the-spot Military Cross for action on the Assam-Burma front in June 1944. On another occasion they wanted to award a DSO, but he was too junior, so a Mention in Despatches was recorded. In the original record of his MC signed by his commanding officers all the way up to Slim, which I obtained from the British Ministry of Defence, the British commanders describe Niazi's gallantry in detail: "He organized the attack with such skill that his leading platoon succeeded in achieving complete surprise over the enemy." They speak of how he personally led his men, the 'great skill and coolness' under fire with which he changed tactics with changing circumstances, created diversionary attacks, extricated his wounded, defeated the enemy and withdrew his men by section, remaining personally at the rear in every case.

 

The British honoured Niazi for "personal leadership, bravery and complete disregard for his own personal safety." On 15 December 1944 the Viceroy Lord Wavell flew to Imphal and in the presence of Lord Mountbatten knighted Slim and his corps commanders Stopford, Scoones and Christison. Only two 'Indian' officers were chosen to be decorated by the Viceroy at that ceremony — 'Tiger' Niazi was one of them.

 

In 1971 Niazi was a highly decorated Pakistani general, twice receiving the Hilal-e-Jurat. He was sent to East Pakistan in April 1971 — part of a sorry tradition in South Asia of political rulers attempting to find military solutions to political problems. By then Tikka Khan had already launched the crackdown of 25 March for which he has been known to Bengalis as the 'butcher of Bengal' ever since. The population of East Bengal was completely hostile and Pakistan condemned around the world.

 

Authoritative scholarly analyses of 1971 are rare. The best work is Richard Sisson and Leo Rose's War and Secession.

Robert Jackson, fellow of All Soul's College, Oxford, wrote an account shortly after the events. Most of the principal participants did not write about it, a notable exception being Gen. Niazi's recent memoirs (1998).Some Indian officers have written books of uneven quality — they make for an embarrassing read for what the Indians have to say about one another.

 

However, a consistent picture emerges from the more objective accounts of the war. Sisson and Rose describe how India started assisting Bengali rebels since April, but "the Mukti Bahini had not been able to prevent the Pakistani army from regaining control over all the major urban centers on the East Pakistani-Indian border and even establishing a tenuous authority in most of the rural areas." From July to October there was direct involvement of Indian military personnel. "...mid-October to 20 November... Indian artillery was used much more extensively in support ...and Indian military forces, including tanks and air power on a few occasions, were also used...Indian units were withdrawn to Indian territory once their objectives had been brought under the control of the Mukti Bahini — though at times this was only for short periods, as, to the irritation of the Indians, the Mukti Bahini forces rarely held their ground when the Pakistani army launched a counterattack."

 

Clearly, the Pakistani army regained East Pakistan for their masters in Islamabad by April-May, creating an opportunity for a political settlement, and held off both Bengali guerrillas and their Indian supporters till November, buying more time — time and opportunity that Pakistan's rulers and politicians failed to utilise.

 

Contrary to Indian reports, full-scale war between India and Pakistan started in East Bengal on 21 November, making it a four-week war rather than a 'lightning campaign'. Sisson and Rose state bluntly: "After the night of 21 November...Indian forces did not withdraw. From 21 to 25 November several Indian army divisions...launched simultaneous military actions on all of the key border regions of East Pakistan, and from all directions, with both armored and air support." Indian officers like Sukhwant Singh and Lachhman Singh write quite openly in their books about India invading East Pakistani territory in November, which they knew was 'an act of war'.

 

None of the outside scholars expected the Eastern garrison to withstand a full Indian invasion. On the contrary, Pakistan's longstanding strategy was "the defense of the east is in the west". Jackson writes, "Pakistani forces had largely withdrawn from scattered border-protection duties into cleverly fortified defensive positions at the major centres inside the frontiers, where they held all the major 'place names' against Mukti Bahini attacks, and blocked the routes of entry from India..."

 

Sisson and Rose point out the incongruity of Islamabad tolerating India's invasion of East Pakistani territory in November. On 30 November Niazi received a message from General Hamid stating, "The whole nation is proud of you and you have their full support." The same day Islamabad decided to launch an attack in the West on 2 December, later postponed to 3 December, after a two-week wait, but did not inform the Eastern command about it. According to Jackson, the Western offensive was frustrated by 10 December.

 

Though futile, the Western offensive allowed India to openly invade the East, with overwhelming advantages. " ...despite all these advantages, the war did not go as smoothly and easily for the Indian army...", but Sisson and Rose come to the balanced judgment that "The Pakistanis fought hard and well; the Indian army won an impressive victory." Even Indian officers concede the personal bravery of Niazi and the spirited fight put up by the Pakistanis in the East. That the troops fought so well against such overwhelming odds is a credit both to them, and to their commanders, for an army does not fight well in the absence of good leadership.

 

However, as Jackson put it, "...India's success was inevitable from the moment the general war broke out — unless diplomatic intervention could frustrate it." As is well known, Pakistan failed to secure military or diplomatic intervention. Sisson and Rose also say, "The outcome of the conflict on the eastern front after 6 December was not in doubt, as the Indian military had all the advantages." On 14 December Niazi received the following message from Yahya Khan: "You have fought a heroic battle against overwhelming odds. The nation is proud of you ...You have now reached a stage where further resistance is no longer humanly possible nor will it serve any useful purpose... You should now take all necessary measures to stop the fighting and preserve the lives of armed forces personnel, all those from West Pakistan and all loyal elements..." Sisson and Rose naturally describe this message as "implying that the armed forces in East Pakistan should surrender".

 

No matter how traumatic the outcome of 1971 for Pakistan, the Eastern command did not create the conflict, nor were they responsible for the failure of the political and diplomatic process. Sent to do the dirty work of the political manoeuvrers, the fighting men seem to have performed remarkably well against overwhelming odds. It is shocking therefore to discover that they were not received with honour by their nation on their return. Their commander, Niazi, appears to have been singled out, along with one aide, to be punished arbitrarily with dismissal and denial of pension, without being given the basic right to defend himself through a court-martial, which he asked for.

 

The commission set up allegedly to examine what had happened in 1971 was too flawed in its terms of reference and report to have any international credibility. However, even its recommendations of holding public trials and courtmartials were ignored. There is much for Pakistan to come to terms with what happened in 1971. But the answers don't lie in unthinking vilification of the fighting men who performed so well in the war against such heavy odds in defence of the national policy. Rather, in failing to honour them, the nation dishonours itself.

Sarmila Bose is the niece of Subhas Chandra Bose or Netaji of Indian National Army fame who fought against the British supporting the Japanese. He is considered as a great hero in Bengal and India.Sarmila Bose is Assistant Editor, Ananda Bazar Patrika, India & Visiting Scholar, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

 

 

__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___