indexby Justin Raimondo
It's amazing, really, when you think about it: no sooner had the
Pakistan-India conflict reared up as a consequence of America's "new
war," then Israel's amen corner in the US had already taken up the
cudgels on New Delhi's behalf. Gee, these guys are fast. That
always-reliable barometer of elite opinion, Andrew Sullivan
[http://www.andrewsullivan.com] , succinctly summarized the party
line in a weblog item entitled "Israel and India":
"After September 11 and the president's speech to Congress in which
he laid out a clear doctrine of zero tolerance for terrorism, it
seems to me our foreign policy is clear. Both Israel and India - at
either ends of the Islamic Middle East - must be unequivocally
supported in their struggles against Islamo-fascism. Both are
democracies; both allow freedom of religion; both have enemies who
are friendly with the perpetrators of the WTC massacre."
IS HE KIDDING?
Whoa! Hold it, dude - freedom of religion? Sullivan, the big
Catholic, surely must know about the widespread persecution of
Christians, particularly Catholics, since the Hindu nationalists came
to power in 1996. That year, the United Christian Forum for Human
Rights documented over 120 attacks on Christians by Hindu-fascists.
The wave of murders, church-burnings, and other outrages has
increased exponentially ever since Interior Minister L. K. Advani, a
Hindu hardliner, took his "chariot journey" from a Hindu temple in
Gujarat province to Ayodhya, alleged to be the birthplace of the
Hindu deity Rama. Like Mussolini's march on Rome, Advani's journey
was the signal for the beginning of a new era in the politics of the
subcontinent, marking the rise of militant Hindu-fascism as the
dominant political force. The Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janatha
Party (BJP) quickly grew from a fringe group, with 2 seats in
Parliament, to the biggest party on the Indian scene. Advani's march
on Ayodhya culminated in the demolition of a mosque there, and
coincided with the launching of a program dedicated to "saffronizing"
Indian society.
UNHOLY SACRIFICE
You might think that the term "Hindu-fascism" is as much an
overstatement as its antipode, "Islamo-fascism," which we have heard
so much about lately from Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, and the
pro-war crowd. Yet what else are we to make of the BJP's official
slogan, "One Nation, One People, One Culture" - eerily similar to
that of the German Nazis? In this context, should we be surprised by
the news that a Hindu priest recently sacrificed an 8-year-old boy to
the god Shiva, known as "the Destroyer," by chopping off his head?
INDIA'S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY
The US State Department's 1999 human rights report slammed New Delhi
for encouraging "increasing societal violence against Christians."
The report also singled out the BJP and allied Hindu-fascist groups
for instigating mob attacks on priests, missionaries, and Christian
pilgrims. And things aren't getting any better: the recent
declaration by Bajrang Dal, a Hindu group associated with the BJP,
announced that "Christians [are] now bigger enemies than Muslims."
Dharmendra Sharma, the Bajrang Dal's fuehrer, "declared that his
organization was ready to fight wherever church institutions were
active," according to the Times of India. "We are prepared to use
violence," said Mr. Sharma. "There is no limit."
The Indian government itself acknowledges the problem, although not
it's severity - indeed, the BJP and its allies in the governing
coalition downplay the increasingly numerous attacks, although that
is getting harder to do. According to Vijayesha Lal, who monitors
human rights abuses against Christians in India:
"In some areas, it's out in the open - sometimes it's very subtle.
Persecution in India is at different levels. Sometimes, it's direct
persecution, mob violence, breaking of churches, burning of Bibles,
physical violence, even murders. On the other hand there is
persecution by the official machinery. Using laws, regulations that
are against Christians."
APOLOGIST FOR EVIL
Violence and rhetorical hate directed at Christians, and against
Catholics in particular, is on the upswing in India: oddly, this
doesn't seem to bother Sullivan, who only needs to know that India,
like Israel, "must be unequivocally supported." If this was a wave of
gay-bashing, the openly gay Sullivan - who manages to find a gay
rights angle in practically everything, even the present war - might
find it harder to overlook. The Indians are doing everything but
nailing priests to crosses, and yet the supposedly Catholic Sullivan
has the gall to praise them for "allowing" religious freedom. Not
since the days of Walter Duranty, the infamous pro-Communist New York
Times journalist who reported that Stalin's gulag was a workers'
paradise, has such intellectual dishonesty flaunted itself so boldly.
THE ISRAEL CONNECTION
But the real question is: why the blatant hypocrisy? The answer is
contained in the rest of Sullivan's screed:
"To play footsie with either country now, to do anything but provide
extremely clear public support, would deeply undermine the integrity
of our own struggle against this destabilizing evil. I see no
evidence that the administration has done anything but back both
countries - but for a while there, I had real worries that the same
kind of moral equivalence that we falsely ascribe to Israel and the
PLOHamasHizbollah was one we were beginning to apply to India and
Pakistani-sponsored terrorist groups. I'm with India on this one, and
am glad they pushed this principle to the brink of warfare to get
their message across."
A LIAR'S STYLE
Liars and frauds are always betrayed by their style, which invariably
gives them away, and Sullivan demonstrates that principle here in
spades. "PLOHamasHizbollah" - that he runs all these separate words
together should give the perceptive reader a clue that important
lines are being deliberately blurred. Particularly invidious is
Sullivan's equation of Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf with the
PLO and Palestinian groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.
Unlike Arafat, Musharraf is a head of state, one who has cooperated
fully with Washington in the hope that this would be, in his phrase,
a war that is "short and sweet." This was done, and is still being
done, at considerable risk of destabilizing Musharraf's own
precarious position. Furthermore, Musharraf came to power with covert
US support, in order to prevent Pakistan from sliding into chaos and
creating the conditions for the triumph of a Taliban-like regime. So
Sullivan is not merely lying, here, but standing the truth on its
head.
THE AXIS POWERS
Aside from the rhetorical sleight-of-hand Sullivan tries to pull off
here, what's interesting is that his pairing of India with Israel is
no mere rhetorical flourish. Jane's Defense Weekly has reported some
details of the Indo-Israeli axis, including cooperation on a wide
range of projects: the erection of electronic fencing around the
disputed Kashmir region, the provision of nuclear-armed submarines
with advanced Barak missiles. Israel's recent sale of an Israeli
Phalcon airborne warning and control system (AWACS) to India is an
important addition to the arsenal of Hindu-fascism, and not only
militarily.
The AWACS deal formalizes an increasingly intimate Indo-Israeli
military and economic alliance, one that has lately grown to include
Taiwan. As I pointed out in my New Year's column, India and Israel
have a lot in common: not only a mutual hatred of Islam, but also an
expressed willingness to use nuclear weapons.
SOME KIND OF DUMMY
The stilted tone of Sullivan's pro-India pronouncement, which bears
all the earmarks of the worst sort of political writing, is so much
unlike his other writing that it stands out as oddly inexplicable.
Sullivan, a big fan of George Orwell, is surely aware of Orwell's
classic essay on "Politics and the English Language," in which the
author of 1984 describes the degeneration of political writing in his
day:
"In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad
writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the
writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not
a 'party line.'
"Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative
style. The political dialects Š are all alike in that one almost
never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one
watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the
familiar phrases - bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained
tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder - one
often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human
being but some kind of dummy."
'AMEN, BROTHER!'
So the imposition of a "party line" destroys what makes a writer
convincing: it puts blinders on someone whose job it is to see and
describe what he is seeing. But what "party" are we talking about
here? Surely not the Democrats or Republicans, nor any third party
with a place on the ballot, but one, rather, that wields a powerful
and often decisive influence in both major parties: the Israel lobby,
or, as Pat Buchanan unforgettably dubbed it, Israel's "amen corner"
in the US. Sullivan makes sure he always shouts "Amen!" the loudest.
In his view, Israel can do no wrong.
Indeed, along with the Christian fundamentalists whom he despises,
that nation's government has no more loyal advocate than Sullivan: he
even beats out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in his willingness to
suspend all critical thinking when it comes to Israel. That is why
his writings on the subject are so dully unconvincing, and so unlike
his usually thoughtful style. It's also why he is perfectly willing
to overlook the ongoing persecution of his Catholic and Christian
brothers at India's hands - and even to praise them for their alleged
religious tolerance!
SPARE ME THE EMAILS
The example of Andrew Sullivan will, I hope, shut up the crazed
anti-Semites who continually send emails berating me for not
specifically denouncing a "Jewish conspiracy." According to their
perfervid epiphanies - typed, it seems, in nearly all CAPITAL LETTERS
and cluttered! with! exclamation! points! - Jews control the media,
and indeed are the media. As a British gay Catholic with an
upper-crusty accent, Sullivan is about as far from being an Elder of
Zion as you can get, and yet his is an influential voice which, added
to the others, amounts to a sort of chorus. When Israel's government
announces a new policy initiative, they all shout "Amen, brother!"
without a thought as to what effect it will have on their own country.
THE LETTER 'I'
As to precisely which country the cosmopolitan Sullivan owes his real
loyalties - he's an expatriate Brit who's now taken up residence in
America - I wouldn't venture a guess. But from his comments not only
in this instance but consistently down through the years, I would say
that the first letter quite possibly begins with an 'I' - and I don't
mean India.
TUNKU'S TWO CENTS
It's nice, of course, when one's extraterritorial loyalties coincide,
and so no one is exactly surprised that one Tunku Varadarajan, of the
Wall Street Journal, should aver that, while Pakistan's alliance with
the US is "mercurial," India, on the other hand, is a "truer kind of
ally, one whose support for any war on Islamic terror is not
opportunistic, but instinctive and philosophical." This, of course,
is the same "philosophy" that drives howling mobs of Hindus to wreck
Christian churches, burn mosques, and purge the land of anyone or
anything that has not been sufficiently "saffronized." As India's
rulers hold a nuclear sword of Damocles over Pakistan, their missiles
within range of where thousands of US troops are stationed, fellow
travelers of Hindu-fascism are to be found in the highest circles of
elite opinion - an Amen Corner whose motives and methods are
dishonest, and downright sinister.
FIFTH COLUMNISTS
The irony is that the activities of this Indo-Israeli alliance and
their US fifth column conflict with announced US war aims, forcing
Pakistan to withdraw troops from the Afghan border in order to meet
the threat from India's massive troop mobilization. It's funny, but
these same people - Sullivan and Varadarajan - are always so quick to
point out how critics of US policy are "undermining the war effort,"
yet in this case they are the ones subverting a decisive American
victory. But, then again, if Osama slips through the US-Pakistani net
the war will not only continue indefinitely but will immediately
escalate - which is just what the Amen Corner wants. For that would
pit the US and Israel, allied with India, in a war against the entire
Middle East, a conflagration in which we can only lose - and only our
ostensible "allies" have anything to gain.
[...].
Antiwar.com
520 S. Murphy Avenue, #202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
by Marisa Handler, Chronicle Foreign Service
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/01/04/MN197222.DTL
'On one level, it would suit both sides to have a small war. But who
could guarantee a small war?'
05 January 2002
Despite pleas of the new pro-Western regime, Afghanistan is still
being bombed. Innocent people die every day. Osama bin Laden is still
at large, but attention has already shifted to Pakistan. The
destabilising effects of the war in Afghanistan were always likely to
be felt here first. The reasons are obvious.
The Pashtun population in Pakistan's North-Western Frontier Province
shares linguistic and ethnic ties with the region that formed the
principal base of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The same brand of
Deobandi Islam is strong on both sides of the border. It is worth
stressing that there was less actual fighting on the ground in the
last three months than there has been over the last quarter century.
The bearded ones chose not to fight. A sizeable section of the
Taliban forces simply came back home to Pakistan. Some of them are
undoubtedly demoralised and happy to be alive, but there is probably
a large minority that is angered by Islamabad's betrayal and is eager
to link up with the armed fundamentalist groups already in the
country.
The leaders of the most virulent jihadi sects have been arrested, but
who will disarm their militants? Until late last year some of the
Islamist leaders were boasting that they had chosen 20 cities on
which Islamic laws would be imposed. The unstated threat was clear.
If any authority attempted to interfere, they would unleash a civil
war. When the latest Afghan war began, Washington made no secret of
its fear that a massive Western intervention in Afghanistan that
overtly used Pakistan as a launching-pad might trigger major unrest
or even a coup against a collaborationist regime. The US did
everything to maintain decorous appearances for General Musharraf,
Pakistan's ruler, while making sure of the practical compliance of
Islamabad. In return for this, sanctions were lifted and money and
the latest weaponry began to flow into Pakistan once again.
But now that the Taliban have been defeated, can anyone be sure that
the various fig-leaves will really insulate Pakistan from the
indignation of the faithful? Everything depends on the unity of the
officer corps. To some degree, if one difficult to gauge, Sunni
fundamentalism has also penetrated the ranks of the armed forces.
Across the country, radical Islamism of one kind or another is a
vocal, if minority, force. General Musharraf's military regime itself
is, moreover, a very recent and none-too-strong creation, with little
positive civilian support.
The abandonment of its own creation in Afghanistan will be a bitter
pill for many in the army, especially at junior levels of command,
where religious influence is strongest. However, even more
secular-minded officers are not pleased at the outcome. The Taliban
takeover in Kabul was the Pakistan army's only victory. Privately the
ruling elite - officers, bureaucrats and politicians - congratulated
each other for having gained a new province. It almost made up for
the 1971 defection of Bangladesh. As if to rub salt into the wounds,
the Northern Alliance and its Washington-selected Prime Minister,
Hamid Karzai, have just declared their intention of forging close
relations with India, as was the case from 1947-89. This has further
weakened the position of the general ruling Pakistan.
It is true that, at more senior levels, the American crusade against
the Taliban has been seen as a godsend. For at a stroke it has
allowed the Pakistani generals to recover their traditional regional
priority for Washington, assured them of credits they desperately
need and lifted opposition to their nuclear arsenal. Unlike its Arab
counterparts, the Pakistani army has never seen a coup mounted by
captains, majors or colonels - when it has seized power, as so often,
it has always done so without splits, at the initiative and under the
control of its generals (a tradition of discipline inherited from the
Raj).
At all events, short of a break in this long-established pattern, it
seems unlikely that the top-brass of the Pakistani regime will suffer
much from the pieces of silver with which they have been showered.
However, the scale of the Pakistani defeat is such that, once the
flow of money and weapons ceases, General Musharraf might well be
toppled from within. Power-hungry generals have never been a rare
commodity in Pakistan.
This is what makes the tension with India potentially dangerous. The
irony is that Pakistan is led by a secular general and India by a
fundamentalist Hindu politician: an ideal combination to make peace.
Yet on one level it would suit both sides to have a small war.
General Musharraf could prove that he was not a total pawn. And Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, India's Prime Minster, could win an election. The
Kashmiris would continue to suffer. But who could guarantee a small
war?
The fact is that Pakistan's infiltration of jihadi groups, such as
the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, into Indian-occupied
Kashmir has created an alternative military apparatus that Islamabad
funds and supplies but can't fully control - just like the Taliban.
It's obvious that the attack on the Indian Parliament was carried out
by one of these groups to provoke a more serious conflict. Some of
the jihadis don't much care for Pakistan as an entity. Their aim is
to restore Muslim rule in India. Crazy? Yes, but armed and capable of
wreaking havoc in both countries. If General Musharraf won't deal
with the menace, Mr Vajpayee will.
If Washington can wage its "war on terrorism", why can't Delhi? Just
because it can't get retrospective sanction from the UN? But as any
Second World politician will tell you, for UN read US. The threat of
an Indo-Pak war has concentrated minds in Washington: how to give the
Indians their pound of flesh without destabilising Pakistan? Perhaps
the time is coming when General Musharraf can be sacrificed in the
name of a return to democracy in Pakistan. The problem is that no
civilian politician in Pakistan is strong enough to challenge the
army, which has ruled the country longer than any political party.
The real solution lies in Kashmir, the cause of a dispute that could
lead to nuclear conflict. Kashmiris have suffered long enough. The
brutality of the Indian occupation made many of them turn to
Pakistan, but the behaviour of the jihadi infiltrators has shocked
most Kashmiris. The very thought of Talibanisation has led many
educated professionals, male and female, to flee. They would like to
be rid of both sides.
An autonomous Kashmir, which shares sovereignty with both India and
Pakistan, and even China, could become a haven of peace in the
region. Sooner or later the situation will require some such
solution, but do we have to wait for a war to bring politicians to
their senses?
Verso will publish the writer's 'Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades,
Jihads and Modernity' in April.
In October 2001, Sufi Mohammad after taking over parts of Swat, Dir
and Korakoram Highway, led his 5000 strong army of Tehrik Nifaz
Shariat-I-Mohammadi to attack the US forces operating in Afghanistan,
with weapons ranging from world war 1 antiques to mortars used by
modern day armies. The fact that most of these illiterate and
misguided soldiers lost their lives to unfriendly daisy cutters, and
Sufi, who had himself never seen either an American or an aeroplane,
deserted the battle field, ran for his life, and ended up in a
Pakistani jail, with a cosmetic three year sentence, perhaps for not
possessing valid travel documents.
In December 2000, Maulana Akram Awan marching with his private army
of ten thousand misguided zealots, camped at Chakwal, and threatened
to capture Islamabad, the capital of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, if
the laws considered Islamic in the medieval mind of Maulana were not
promulgated throughout the country. The government was so unnerved
that it sent a delegation consisting of the Home Secretary, Inspector
General Police and the minister for religious affairs to please,
pamper and compensate the Maulana and convince him to return with his
army to where ever he came from. Having never met an official beyond
the rank of SHO, the Moulana was so moved at the top officials of the
nuclear state obsequiously falling to his feet, that he withdrew
without a battle, and declared to come back next year to implement
his promised mission.
For ten long years the JUI Madrassahs of Balochistan retained the
dubious distinction of operating as the world's largest nursery for
producing teenage soldiers who had only two missions in life. To
secure an entry into paradise by their rhythmic pendulum like
reproduction of memorised portions from the Holy Book, and to
participate in a global jihad with ignorance and Klashnikovs as their
only two assets. In the last ten years any thing between 10 to 20
thousand of these innocent children were killed as fodder in the
proxy war that ultimately reduced Afghanistan to rubble, and Pakistan
to an embarrassing but much needed voltafaccia. Those responsible for
this mass genocide however still wear royal robes and go around
freely to restart if possible, from where they last left.
Till a few days back travelling between Lahore and Peshawar by road,
one could see dozens of sign boards offering short cuts to paradise
to those who sought recruitment in one of the many private armies
operating under names such as Jaish-e- Mohammad, Lashkar-e- Tayuba or
Harkat ul Majahideen. The proliferating religious fervour of these
private armies has resulted in creation of downstream sectarian
militant organisations whose strong sense of loyalty to their own
brand of ideology requires killing of every one else who does not
subscribe to their point of view. The ignorant Mullah has often
joined this chorus of madness by condoning this barbarism from his
unchallenged pulpit, and even suggesting that such acts could in fact
guarantee the reservation of suitable seats in paradise. Karachi
alone bore the sorrow and pain of hundreds of its outstanding
citizens mercilessly killed by these sectarian fanatics. The brother
of the interior minister is shot to death two days after the minister
articulates his much belated intention of curbing the religious
extremists. The private armies thus freely rule and till recently
even collected "bhatta" (compulsory donations) in the land of the
pure, making a mockery of the writ of the state. This phenomenon
often generically referred to as "Talibanisation" of society remained
unchecked till recently when its excessive export drew an angry
response from the world at large as well as the already fed up
neighbours.
Pakistan's primary think tanks remain pathologically addicted to a
frozen world view based on a dogmatic and bigoted understanding of
religion, emphasis on rituals instead of spirit, hatred instead of
tolerance, ideological slogans instead of service to people, state
agencies instead of participative institutions, abhorrence to science
and technology, deep disinclination to reason and rationality,
obsession with female behaviour and dress, and the megalomaniac self
image as the flag bearer and champion of the cause of Ummah, (not one
of the Ummah countries offered even lip service of support at the
time of India Pakistan stand off.) It is around this irrelevancy that
the state has coined its signature for the past fifty years. While
the large majority of Pakistanis are as moderate, tenacious, vibrant
and enterprising as people of any other country, their rightful place
amongst the developed and civilised nations of the world has been a
hostage to the tribal traditions, private armies and religious
fanatics who forcibly dictate the social order of the country. Only a
week back the Orakzai tribes got together to declare photography as
an offence punishable by demolition of the offenders' house and a
fine of one million rupees.
The events of nine-eleven in many ways provide a miraculous
opportunity and impetus for Pakistan to re-evaluate its direction and
make a conscious decision to make a departure from the past. It can
choose to follow the path that has enabled other nations to pursue
progress, prosperity and enlightenment. Alternately it can remain
glued to its ancient and obsolete mindset, and gradually acquire the
status of an irrelevant and failed state. Many would argue that it
has already reached that point. A more factual assessment would be
that while Pakistan does have the necessary capacity and desire to
enter the 21st century, it is restrained by its own medieval mindset
that is frozen in an imaginary past and not open to the reality and
ideas of the modern times.
Any nation must first address issues that are vital to itself and its
own citizens. For Pakistan these are issues of creating a just and
civil governance mechanism, education, industry, addressing poverty,
and providing host of basic amenities and services to its burgeoning
population. For too long the voluntarily adopted culture of
obscurantism has come in direct conflict with the scientific and
rational methods that could be applied towards solving these issues.
The bigoted clergy, the Lashkars, the Sipahs , the Jaishes the
agencies and the increasingly bureaucratic and incompetent state
machinery are either completely reluctant to change for better or
desire a change in the reverse direction only.
The first step is to realise that there can possibly be no sanity,
peace or progress in Pakistan, as long as it retains a multitude of
fully loaded private armies, each in pursuit of its own brand of
intolerance and bigotry. It is time for Pakistan to realise that the
private armies representing the feudal and tribal thinking of the
medieval times are simply not compatible with how the progressive
modern nations pursue their interests and conduct their business in
the 21st century. There can be no serious investment or development
interest by any outsider (for that matter even insiders) in a
writ-less state ruled by private armies eternally at war within and
without. The first step towards peace and progress must therefore
begin by firmly disbanding and disarming all militant religious,
political and tribal organisations in Pakistan. This needs to be done
as a national challenge and not like the lame, half hearted,
incompetently managed and half way aborted earlier de-weaponisation
campaign. It is also time to extend the rule law to areas and tribes
that hitherto made their own laws. The days of private armies and the
wild west must come to an end if a new beginning is to be
contemplated. While this may also be a high profile international
demand, it is essentially for its own good that Pakistan needs to
clean up its militant backyard. It is only through creating a law
abiding, pluralistic and tolerant society that Pakistan can hope for
peace, progress and dignity in the years to come.
HYDERABAD, Jan 3: A large number of human rights and political
activists and representatives of NGOs staged a peace walk under the
banner of Joint Peace Action Forum Sindh against the war hysteria in
India and Pakistan and violence by law enforcement agencies against
the participants of the peace walk at Wagah border, Lahore.
The walk started from local press club and after marching on main
city roads it culminated at the club.
The participants released pigeons as symbol of peace and carried
white flags inscribed with slogans of "we want peace not war" and
"dialogue not tension".
They raised slogans against Maj Faisal Ghori of rangers who had
subjected Asma Jehangir to violence.
Speaking to the participants of the peace walk, the coordinator, HRCP
Sindh core groups, Akhtar Baloch, said that the participation of such
a large number of people belonging to different schools of thought in
the peace march had proved that the people of the country wanted
peace not war.
He said that history was witness to the fact that the wars had
created disasters and given only corpses. He said that the violence
committed on the participants of the peace walk at Wagah border was
aimed at sabotaging attempt for peace. He demanded a judicial inquiry
by a High Court judge into the incident.
Prominent among those who attended the peace march were HRCP
coordinators, Nasreen Shakeel Pathan and Aftab Ahmed, PPP leaders,
Comrade Jam Saqi and Nuzhat Pathan, president Sindh Hari Committee,
Azhar Jatoi, Prof Khalid Wahab, Prof Eijaz Qureshi, Parveen Magsi, M.
Parkash advocate, Akbar Clinton and others.
OCCUPATION: The residents of Goth Yar Mohammad Nandwani near Kapri
Mori, taluka Matli, district Badin, have accused the an influential
person of illegally occupying the village land with the connivance of
police and harassing the villagers.
Speaking at a news conference at the Hyderabad press club here on
Thursday, they said that one Jameel and his accomplices had occupied
a portion of the vacant land in the village on the pretext that they
had taken the land on lease. They added that when the villagers asked
Jameel to show the relevant papers, they were threatened with dire
consequences.
They said that they made inquires from the Mukhtiarkar (estate)
Hyderabad who informed them that the village land had never been
allotted to any body. They said that on Dec 3 last year, they
approached the EDO (revenue) Badin and requested him to get the
occupied village land vacated.
They said that the EDO issued necessary instructions to the
Mukhtiarkar Matli who held inquiries on Dec 22 which rejected Jamil's
claim and fixed the next date of hearing for Jan 5 2002.
They said they again approached the Mukhtiarkar (estate) Hyderabad
and obtained the relevant form which disclosed that the opponent
party had been allotted some other land and they had nothing to do
with Nandwani Goth.
They, however, said that the Mukhtiarkar declined to give anything in
writing as he was under tremendous pressure.
They alleged that on last Thursday night, police in half a dozen
mobiles raided the village, harassed the residents including women
and children and arrested an elder of the village, Mohammad Saleh
Nandwani, Habibullah and Maqbool. They added that later the police
chaargesheeted five villagers who were released on bail.
They said that the police had established a check post at the village
and no one was allowed to enter it. They appealed the authorities and
human rights organizations to take notice of the plight of the
villagers and restore justice.
Those who spoke at the news conference included Yar Mohammad
Nandwani, Shahid Khaskheli, Hashim Nandwani, Mohammad Hussain
Nandwani, Mohammad Yaqoob Khaskheli and others.
Earlier, about 40 villagers staged a protest demonstration outside
the Hyderabad press club and SSP office against the alleged high
handedness of police.
Kathmandu, January 3: INDIA ON Thursday made public all the
evidence it had shared with Islamabad over the past decade on
Pakistan's support for terrorism, which, however, had not been
heeded all these years. At a packed press conference here,
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh responded Islamabad's
repeated demand that New Delhi show evidence its involvement in
cross-border terrorism by saying that Pakistan had consistently
refused take cognisance of evidence presented in reams of
document including several demarches and notes verbale, going
back to the 1993 Mumbai blasts.
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Landelijke India Werkgroep - 17 januari 2002