Missing in the Valley - By Muzamil Jaleel - THE INDIAN EXPRESS, Mumbai

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/missing-in-the-valley/838112/0

Sun, 28 Aug 2011

Missing in the Valley

Muzamil Jaleel

Tags : Jammu and Kashmir, Missing persons, Ghulam Hassan Dar, Baramulla district, Javaid Ahmad Dar, CRPF

Posted: Sun Aug 28 2011, 00:49 hrs

Javaid Ahmad Dar

Missing since 1990
 
In the Valley’s tragic club of parents of disappeared sons, this story witnessed the saddest twist. Ghulam Hassan Dar and Suraya’s son Javaid Ahmad Dar was eight when he went missing on his way to a playground in Srinagar’s Rajbagh neighbourhood. It was on October 3, 1990 and Javaid had come from his home in Ladoora village in Baramulla district to stay with his maternal grandparents in Srinagar.


“We were told that a CRPF vehicle picked him up. We looked everywhere,’’ says Suraya. Her father, Abdul Aziz Bhat, made it his life’s mission to trace his grandson. Bhat died eight years ago. Ghulam too stopped working to look for his son.


“Once the years started passing by and my father died, I started feeling numb with this separation and uncertainty,’’ says Suraya.

Last year marked 20 years of Javaid’s disappearance and his parents had started to accept the “verdict of fate’’ when there was a knock at their door. “I was home alone. I have two daughters and a son who were born after Javaid. They were out so was their father,’’ remembers Suraya. “It was March 2, 2010. A lot of people had gathered outside our house. And there was this man who told me he was my son Javaid. He was brought to our house by a driver,’’ she says. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I took him in but something inside me told me he was not my missing son.”

He wasn’t. The man was an imposter whose real name was Abdul Majid. He was from a village in Pattan and his parents had asked him to leave home because of his wayward ways. Married with children, Majid had been wandering in a bus stand in Srinagar where he met a driver from Ladoora who ostensibly took him to be Suraya’s missing son and brought him home.

“We don’t believe the driver’s story either. We have no doubt it was a conspiracy,’’ says Suraya’s daughter Shazia. “I didn’t believe his (imposter’s) story. But there was such public pressure—people were celebrating outside our home.’’

Majid stayed at their house for the night. “I looked at him again and again. He wouldn’t call me mother. He would only say I am your son. He didn’t know that you can’t fool a mother for long,’’ says Suraya.

Shazia recalls her mother would insist they do a test (DNA profiling) of him before accepting him as Javaid. “My maternal uncle too believed he was genuine but when we asked him how and where he had spent all these years, he had no convincing answer. We had also informed the police who asked us to bring him to the police station every day for investigation.’’

After a few days, Majid broke down and admitted his real identity. The police arrested him for cheating but he had opened the family’s old wounds once again. “He turned our world upside down,’’ says Suraya.

While her health doesn’t allow Suraya to follow the case, her husband has lost hope. But 23-year-old Shazia, who takes tailoring classes for girls, has joined the campaign initiated by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons to find her brother. “I don’t want to give up hope. My mother is unwell, she can’t go to Srinagar to join the protests. But I will. I will search for him till I am alive.’’

Mohammad Ashraf & Shawkat Ahmad
 
Missing since 2003

Their only bond was a question: where is my son? On June 28, 2003, two fathers who were waiting for their turn to meet a senior police officer in Srinagar, struck up a conversation and found out how similar their stories were.

Abdul Rehman Paul and Noor Mohammad Bhat were searching for their sons who had disappeared after being picked up by security forces. Paul and Bhat became friends in grief and soon got together to search for their sons.

In June 2003, a police party accompanied by a surrendered militant had come looking for Bhat’s son Mohammad Ashraf, a stringer for a Srinagar daily, to their home in Pattan (north Kashmir). Ashraf was not home and they asked the family to bring him to Srinagar. When he returned home, his mother took him to the police in Srinagar. The police assured her they would let Ashraf off in a few hours. That was on June 21, 2003. He never returned.

Meanwhile in Srinagar city, a tragedy was unfolding in Paul’s family as well. His son, Shawkat Ahmad, had left for college and was picked up near Tulsibagh neighbourhood and never returned.

In their search for their sons over the last few years, the paths of Paul and Bhat crossed frequently. They became friends and started making their rounds of police and security force camps together.
In 2004, Bhat’s son Sharief got married to Paul’s daughter Maryam.

The friends in grief were now relatives. Though their struggle to find their sons continues, now they have another bond: their five-year-old granddaughter Tayyaba.

Fayaz Ahmad
 
Missing since 1997

In a 45-page booklet, Custodial Disappearance and an Unconcerned Government, Abdul Rasheed Beig, a retired excise inspector, has chronicled his search for his missing son.

On September 9, 1997, Beig’s 28-year-old son Fayaz Ahmad was picked up by Senior Superintendent of Police Hansraj Parihar (while he was SP, Awantipora) from Kashmir University where he worked as a photographer in the Central Asian Studies department.

“Parihar accepted that he had picked up my son. I kept visiting his office...He kept our hope alive saying Fayaz will be released soon.” After two years, Beig says, he approached the State Human Rights Commission.

“In April 2000, they issued an order asking the government to file a case of abduction and murder against Parihar and his team. Nothing happened. Then I approached the High Court. It upheld the panel’s order on October, 9, 2003. Still nothing happened.”

Parihar was arrested in 2007 along with his deputy and 11 other policemen after a police probe indicted him in a series of fake encounters in Ganderbal. Since the police investigators limited their probe to the Ganderbal fake encounters, Fayaz’s whereabouts remain a mystery.

Maqsood Ahmad Bader
 
Missing since 2007

When 24-year-old Maqsood Ahmad Bader went missing, his parents didn’t rely only on the police to look for him. They turned to saints for a clue about their missing son.

Maqsood, who is deaf and partially blind, left his rented house in Rajbagh in Srinagar on May 9, 2007 for his village Zalangam in Kokernag. But he didn’t board the bus to Kokernag, instead he took the bus to Kulgam to meet his aunt and left for his village the next morning. He never reached home.

The first hurdle the family faced in the search for their son came early. The police in Srinagar asked them to file an FIR at Kokernag but the Kokernag police asked them to file it in Kulgam. The police in Kulgam too refused to file the FIR. It took the family six days before the Rajbagh police station in Srinagar agreed to file an FIR. Maqsood’s father Bader has now lost all hope and has turned to saints instead, seeking divine help to trace his missing son. His prayers are yet to be answered.

Other parts of the missing story
 
The lawyer

Human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz brought the parents of the missing together

In April 1994, a man with a Kalashnikov rifle tried to stop the car of Parvez Imroz, then a lawyer practising in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. When Imroz didn’t stop, the gunman fired at his car. A single bullet punctured his left lung. Seventeen years later, this Srinagar-based human rights campaigner says it is his commitment to a cause that keeps him going.

Every morning, Imroz walks into the office of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies—he is one of the founding members and meets the families of missing people and leads a team to document human rights abuses in the region.

A graduate with a law degree from Aligarh Muslim University, his first brush with activism was in 1982 when he filed a PIL against trafficking of women from Bengal to Kashmir. For many years, he remained the Kashmir convener of People’s Union for Civil Liberties. From 1990, as Kashmir’s story changed, so did Imroz’s.

“There were families in every part of Jammu and Kashmir whose members disappeared. It was a strange phenomenon then—boys and young men were picked up by the police, CRPF, BSF and the Army. No one ever heard of them,’’ he says.

As the families of the disappeared struggled to find their relatives, Imroz guided them to form an association. “He introduced the idea of a collective struggle,” says Khurram Parvez, Imroz’s long-time colleague and a human rights activist.

Imroz, along with others whose relatives had gone missing, formed the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in 1994. Imroz became the Patron of the Association. Imroz, whose group first reported the existence of mass and unmarked graves in Kashmir Valley, said it all began in 2005 when a massive earthquake struck the region.

“When the earthquake came, north Kashmir suffered heavily. They kept the area accessible for relief and we went there with a relief convoy. It was during this time that we came to know through locals that there are lots of places in the area where the Army and police had killed boys and buried them,” he says. In 2008, the APDP came up with a report called Buried Evidence.

Soon, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir ordered a rigorous three-year investigation to track the mass graves in the region. “Whenever there are disappearances, there are mass graves,” he says.

The mother

Parveena Ahangar, whose son is missing, helped found the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons

It was in the first year of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir that a teenage boy was woken up in Srinagar’s Batamaloo neighbourhood. Sixteen-year-old Javaid Ahmad Ahangar, a commerce student, was staying at his uncle’s place for the night when he was picked up by security forces and bundled into a vehicle.

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” says his mother Parveena Ahangar. According to her, the security forces had come to arrest a JKLF militant who was in the neighbourhood but instead picked up her son.

Every month, Parveena sits in a park in Srinagar with others like her whose relatives are missing. She’s more than a mother—she’s also the first president of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. When in 2005, Ahangar laid the foundation of the first memorial for Kashmir’s missing, she made clear what the fight was all about. ‘‘We shall never allow the past to be forgotten. We shall never allow this crime to happen to our future generations.’’

The Chronicler

Zaheer-ud-Din was the first to chronicle the tragedy of the Valley’s missing

In the early 90s, when militancy was at its peak, a young man left his dream of becoming a lawyer to join Kashmir University’s Journalism department. Zaheer-ud-Din’s aim was to chronicle the tragedy that was unfolding around him. A native of Srinagar’s Magarmal Bagh, Zaheer came from an elite Kashmiri family.

“I had heard about young men who disappeared. It was tragic for the families. There was no closure,’’ says Zaheer. With donations from friends, he started gathering stories of the missing from across Kashmir. “In 1996, I published the first edition of Did they vanish into thin air?, the story of 55 cases of enforced disappearance,’’ he says. In 2003, he published the second edition of his book and is now working on a third edition. Zaheer is also involved with the International People’s Tribunal on Peace and Justice in Kashmir, whose three-year long research led to the unearthing of unmarked graves in Kashmir.

The Gravedigger

The testimony of Ata Mohammad Khan, a gravedigger in Uri, is pivotal to the probe into unmarked graves

Ata Mohammad Khan has buried 236 people in rows of unmarked graves at Bimbyar, Uri, in north Kashmir. The police would get the bodies and he would dig graves for them. Beyond this, Khan knew little. “There were many of them,” recalls Khan. “The faces of some had been disfigured beyond recognition.”

For the first time in Jammu and Kashmir, an official inquiry has said that it is “beyond doubt” that there are scores of unidentified bodies in unmarked graves in the Valley—as many as 2,156 bodies buried at 38 sites since militancy began in 1990.

The first time Khan buried an “unidentified body” was years ago when a policeman in civvies approached him. “I was working in the fields when he called me and said there is a body of a Muslim youth that needs to be buried,” Khan says. “I reluctantly agreed and this is how I began my work.”

When bodies began to arrive from different parts of the Valley and the police told him they were of youths killed in anti-militancy operations, he feared he would find the body of his nephew who had joined militancy and gone underground. “He was my dead sister’s only child. I brought him up till he was 16. Then his father took him back. Later, he went missing and was believed to have gone across the border for arms training,” Khan says.

“The body never arrived. Then one day, I missed the burial and that day, eight bodies arrived. Someone told me my nephew was among them.”

Khan didn’t only bury the bodies. He also had to exhume some of them. “I disinterred some of the bodies when their parents arrived with orders from the district magistrate,” Khan says.

The work has taken its toll on Khan but he says these days he doesn’t have much work. “Bodies stopped coming after everybody came to know about the graveyard. Maybe some new graveyards have come up in other parts of the Valley. Who knows?”

Why are mass graves in Kashmir so passé? By SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR - Sunday Times of India

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2011/08/28&PageLabel=24&EntityId=Ar02401&ViewMode=HTML

SWAMINOMICS

Why are mass graves in Kashmir so passé?

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

The Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission says 2,730 bodies have been found in unmarked graves in Kashmir. This officially confirms earlier accusations by human rights groups. Security forces once claimed any such graves were those of unidentified militants killed in military encounters. But the commission says 574 bodies have already been identified as those of local villagers, and DNA tests will expose many more. This was mass murder.

    Most countries would have treated this as major news, but our media barely noticed. Bored with unending tales of human rights violations in Kashmir, our media saw Anna Hazare’s fast and even Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s pregnancy as more newsworthy.

    Two decades of insurrection in Kashmir have eroded our ability to feel horror, to be nauseated by mass murder. Yes it’s terrible, most people say with a shrug, but it’s all Pakistan’s fault and we can’t surrender to jihadis.

    As a libertarian, i dislike ruling people by force, and am dismayed by the parallels between India’s independence struggle and the Kashmiri azaadi struggle. Basharat Peer’s “Curfewed Nights” and a new collection of writings from Kashmir “Until My Freedom Has Come”, highlight Kashmiri humiliation and anger against what they call Indian colonial oppression.

    Actually, India has not colonized Kashmir. Rather, it has tried to integrate Kashmir with itself. Nation building is a difficult task that, across the world, has required a mixture of persuasion and firmness. Using this mixture, India succeeded in integrating some regions with secessionist movements — Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Punjab. But 64 years of this approach have manifestly failed in Kashmir. Using ever more force begins to look like colonial oppression more than attempted integration.

    Kashmiri alienation flows from Muslim revolts against the erstwhile Dogra ruler, rigged elections after 1947, and security forces guilty of torture, killing and rape in the name of national security. The Kashmiri insurrection has taken 70,000 lives of civilians, armed forces and militants. Some are due to terrorism, some to genuine defence against jihadis and armed infiltrators. But the mass graves bear testimony to horrors against innocent Kashmiris too.

    Secular Indians feel outraged by 900 Muslim deaths in Gujarat’s 2002 riots. They are outraged by the killing of 3,000 people by Chilean dictator Pinochet. But they are mostly bored by 2,730 Kashmiri bodies in unmarked graves.

    It’s all the fault of Pakistan and jihadi terrorists, say some. True, Pakistan trained many jihadis. But many of these were Kashmiri youngsters angered by Indian outrages. They were killed in droves by Indian security forces, and their flow to Pakistan greatly diminished. There was no Pakistani training or inspiration behind the thousands of youngsters who took to the streets during the Srinagar intifada last year. They did not seek union with Pakistan. They simply wanted Indian “killers” off their soil.

    Many analysts emphasize the legalisms of Kashmiri accession to India. But hundreds of Indian princes had legal treaties with the British Raj, which our independence movement declared irrelevant after the rise of Indian nationalism. Liberal values cannot be based on legalisms alone.

    Let us forget legalisms and hold a plebiscite, which we promised anyway in 1947. Probably the valley will vote for azaadi, with Jammu and Ladakh opting for India. We should see this not as a loss of territory but a gain of moral stature, and return to the liberal values that drove our independence movement.

    Most Indians say a plebiscite will wreck Indian secularism and let loose another round of partition killings. Really? If India was so wedded to secularism, it should never have accepted partition along communal lines in 1947. Having agreed to communal partition, it was hypocritical to violate this norm in Kashmir.

    In Junagadh in 1947, a Muslim Nawab ruling over a Hindu majority, acceded to Pakistan. India refused to accept this, ousted the Nawab forcibly, and justified this by holding a plebiscite that went overwhelmingly in India’s way. If this was a secular tactic, why call a similar plebiscite in Kashmir a danger to secularism?

    Critics of a plebiscite claim that a vote for azaadi will trigger fresh partition riots, targeting Muslims throughout India. Really? Is supposedly secular India actually so communal that Hindus will slaughter Muslim innocents galore, with the state a helpless bystander? I have a better opinion of India than that.

    Forget what Kashmiris demand. Let us allow self-determination in Kashmir to cleanse our own hands and hearts. This will not mean surrender to militants or Pakistan. It will mean returning to the liberal values of our independence movement, which are getting tainted beyond recognition by the mass graves in Kashmir. We need to regain our capacity to feel horror.

Ahmadinejad's economic savvy - By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

'He's giving back half of the 60 billion dollars in savings directly to the people in monthly deposits. So every Iranian, man woman and child, is eligible to receive the equivalent of 40 dollars a month.'

vhttp://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/20/irans-economic-reforms/

Ahmadinejad's economic savvy

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

From the White House to London's House of Commons and beyond...few Westerners have anything nice to say about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But there's one group that has glowing words of praise for Iran's President - and it's based not in Tehran, but in Washington.

The International Monetary Fund's latest report paints a pretty picture of Iran's economy.

It says growth has hit 3.2%, and will accelerate still further. Inflation has dropped from 25% to 12% in just two years.

And Tehran has managed to do what every major oil exporter can only dream of accomplishing: It's slashed subsidies on gas to recoup 60 billion dollars in annual revenue. That one-sixth of Iran's entire GDP.

Why is this happening? And how can it be despite years of economic sanctions?

What in the world is going on?

Some say the IMF's numbers can't be right.

But we have no reason to doubt their work. The fund reasserted this week that its projections were independent of the government.
The real story here is that Iran has actually begun implementing some economic reforms. For decades now, Iranian leaders have tried to wean its people off cheap oil - oil that is subsidized by the government.

Cheap oil that has no connection to real market prices is not sustainable. Iran knows it, and so does every country from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela. But in the same way that any talk of tax increases here in America is considered heresy, people in oil-rich countries believe as an article of faith that they deserve cheap oil.
So how did Iran finally cut out the freebies?

The backstory is a complex game of chess between Ahmadinejad and someone much more powerful - the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

One theory goes like this: The Ayatollah thought cutting subsidies would make Ahmadinejad deeply unpopular. An ensuing revolt would then remove the one man who's come to challenge the Supreme Leader's power.

Another theory is that Ahmadinejad felt confident enough to go ahead with the reforms because he's crushed the opposition Green Movement.

Either way, he's played a smart hand. He's giving back half of the 60 billion dollars in savings directly to the people in monthly deposits. So every Iranian, man woman and child, is eligible to receive the equivalent of 40 dollars a month.

That kind of money won't make any difference to Tehran's upper classes. But that's not Ahmadinejad's constituency.

On the other hand if you're poor, if you have many children, and if you make sure the whole family signs up for the deposits, you'll probably be saying "Thanks, Mr. President".

The key thing to note here is that President Ahmadinejad had no choice, and neither did the Ayatollah.

Iran could not afford the subsidies anymore. Its economy is highly dysfunctional with many massive distortions and subsidies. And Washington's recent targeted sanctions are beginning to bite.

It is now harder than ever before for Iran to do business with the world. Most of the major international traders of refined petroleum have stopped dealing with Iran. Tehran now has to rely on much costlier overland shipments for its exports.

And it is now almost impossible to conduct dollar-denominated transactions with Iran. So we were left with the bizarre case last month of China resorting to the barter system to pay Iran for 20 billion dollars worth of oil.
The IMF has a point. Iran is implementing some needed reforms and as a result its economy is doing better. The irony is that it's happening - in some part - because of our sanctions. Talk about unintended consequences.

Seema Chisti's take on Muslim reservations over Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal campaign

The entire Anti-corruption campaign by Team Anna is centered on who is Anna Hazare. He is not born yesterday. He did arrive at Jantar Mantar recently. But he does have a long career in Maharashtra State, where he is known for his self-less struggle against corrupt politicians -- without any partiality for one or other of political parties. He had targeted Congress, BJP, Sena --- whereever he came across corruption and misappropriation of public funds.

It is correct that the way, RSS and Hindutva elements gathered around him when he first held forth at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. However, he is a tough idealist and does not harbor any weakness for any religious ideology.

I am writing all these details, as I am from Mumbai, Maharashtra and had been aware of Anna Hazare's long career in public life that had remained confined to the state of Maharashtra. This is first time ever, that he had ventured on national scene; mainly after the huge scams like 2G and Common Wealth Game were exposed. It would appear that he was enlisted by the Magsaysay winner group like Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi to lead the campaign for Jan Lokpal bill. That is another linkage that too has come in questioning. However, Anna is a hard-headed single goal idealist. If any of his supporters harbour the thought, that they can hijack and exploit him for their own agenda, they would eventually fall on their faces. Even at this stage of his Ramlila campaign, he is not fully relying on his immediate group members, like Arvind Kejriwal and others. He wants to deal direct with the top brass in Congress. And he knows his ways around corridors of power to get what he wants.

I would request all major Muslim organisations, who are traditionally based in the north and especially in New Delhi, to discuss his persona and any danger of his turning political and harming minorities and Dalits with their contacts in Maharashtra.

For me, as long as he is fighting corruption that is now running into thousands of crores of public money, while millions of Indians are suffering below poverty line, Anna is a person one can rely on for sincerity and probity and single-minded dedication to the mission.

Congress is fully aware of the threat that Anna poses to its corruption laden governance. It will procrastinate and dither using all the ruses in its arsenal to thwart getting Jan Lokpal any headway. And while common people are gathered around Anna, Congress is gathering all politicians around its agenda to fight for the status quo. The issue of undermining parliament or democracy raised by Congress is bogus, in as much as Congress is expert in getting its own bill passed even at the eleventh hour, through all the trickery at its command. Has Salman Khurshid not rushed Awqaf bill through Lok Sabha, on a Friday, when there was no Muslim presence in the house to register its objections? They are past masters of the legislative games and cannot be trusted to play fair as per the wishes of the lakhs of people protesting across the nation. After all it is the corruption money that sustains them. Let them come out with full disclosure of their own party finances.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

----
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-the-ramlila-surge-worries-minorities-and-those-on-margins/836750/0

Thu, 25 Aug 2011

Why Ramlila surge worries minorities and those on margins

Seema Chishti

Tags : Team Anna, Ramlila Surge, Ramlila Maidan, Anna Hazare, corruption, Jan Lokpal Bill

Posted: Thu Aug 25 2011, 02:16 hrs New Delhi:

 
In the unseen and unheard margins of Team Anna’s Ramlila Surge, there’s a growing sense of disquiet —especially among minority and marginalised groups.

Despite carefully choreographed images of Muslim children publicly breaking their Ramzaan fast with Anna Hazare, prominent Dalit, Muslim and Christian leaders are deeply suspicious of the faces on display and the voices emanating from the crowds.



They argue that Anna’s ends — fighting corruption — is undoubtedly justified, they condemn his arrest and the decision to send him to Tihar Jail. But behind his cause, they see a clear disdain for the very institutions crucial in safeguarding democratic freedom and rights. In Team Anna’s contemptuous indictment of Parliament, they see a tarring of representative politics and, in effect, an indictment of the vital safeguards of minorities.


In fact, so strong is the suspicion that even Prashant Bhushan’s left-liberal credentials as one who played a proactive role in the Gujarat riots cases isn’t dispelling these fears. Varun Gandhi’s much-hyped appearance at Ramlila today only reinforced these — in his hate-Muslim election speech in 2009, he had threatened to “cut the hand” of anyone who “raises a finger at the Hindus.”

Says Akhtar-ul Wasey, Director, Institute of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia: “The issue of corruption is such that there’s tremendous pressure to join the crowd. Because if we oppose this particular movement, they will say we are corrupt. Price rise, corruption and unemployment have given a fillip to such forces. Corruption ki aarh mein, (in the garb of corruption) they want to push all kinds of defeated and empty slogans and agendas. Now the government’s timidity in the face of a crowd is fanning this instability. Muslims, of course, want corruption to end but don’t want to make common cause with elements that want to rock the system, the only preserve of our rights and freedoms.”

No wonder that Deoband’s new Mohtamim, Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani, has said that they have not supported this movement: “The movement is basically suspect. The security and protection of Parliament and (to honour the) glory of democracy is the duty of every citizen.”

Mahmud Madani, MP and a leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, the only prominent Muslim face among the 20 founders of India Against Corruption — Team Anna’s virtual platform — is now in Saharanpur and practically in communicado. Zafaryab Jilani, member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, has made it clear that the Board has nothing to do with this agitation. Says Maulana Ahmed Khizar Shah Kashmiri of the Tanzeem Ulema-e-Hind: “The idea behind this campaign is to weaken Parliamentary system and democracy and this is a blow to secular India.”

Maulana Umer Ilyasi of the India Imam Organisation has called the campaign a “political conspiracy” saying: “There is no question of any one person being above the country’s Constitution and Parliament. There is no question of Muslims being part and parcel of this.”

This chorus is heard the Urdu press as well. The Mumbai, Kanpur, Bareilly, Lucknow and Delhi-based Inquilab on August 17 interviewed several prominent community leaders, including chief of the Jamat-e-Islami, Maulana Jalaluddin Umri. Their refrain: We agree with the need for a strong Lokpal but not with the method of pushing it through.

Critics are also wary of those who have clambered aboard the Anna bandwagon. Ramdev may have stepped back but there are questions about the more urbane Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living and youth factions who shared the stage with the anti-reservation Youth for Equality. Less than 10 days ago, they took part in the Hindu Unity Day, in Texas. Also present was Subramaniam Swamy, most recently in the news for writing that Muslims should be denied voting rights if they do not accept their “Hindu legacy.”

Indeed, reflecting this unease, Dalit activists and writers including Udit Raj, Kancha Ilaiah, John Dayal and Joseph D’Souza, have argued for reservation in the Lokpal set-up for SC/STs, OBCs and minorities “to ensure that there is no injustice done to the backward and marginalised.”

The politics of Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi may be fuzzy but their association with certain “causes” has raised questions, too. Last year, Kejriwal and Bedi herself led the drive to target the Chief Information Commissioner and insist that Bedi be made the CIC. In fact, when then CIC Wajahat Habibullah resigned last year and there was a chance that M M Ansari (now Kashmir interlocutor) would take over, Kejriwal lobbied with Leader of Opposition L K Advani keen to ensure that his name not be accepted.

Kejriwal and Bedi have also shared platforms put up by Youth for Equality and Art of Living. On March 1 in 2009, for example, Kejriwal and Bedi addressed the Youth for Equality and talked of both terrorism and corruption. Youth for Equality has blamed reservation for shrinking opportunities.

Archbishop of Delhi Father Vincent Concessao, a founder-member of the IAC, is nowhere to be seen. Contacted, he told The Indian Express: “This is pressure and a fast unto death is suicidal...there is no way we will allow for our established Parliamentary practices to be bypassed. We are with the issue but not with the means. How can they say only one particular version of the Bill is to be followed?”

World's #9 Most Powerful Person Now Accused of Corruption -- Will She Fall? - Cleo Pascal - Huffingtonpost.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cleo-paskal/worlds-9-most-powerful-pe_b_853132.html

Cleo Paskal

Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs

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World's #9 Most Powerful Person Now Accused of Corruption -- Will She Fall?

Posted: 04/25/11 07:17 AM ET

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New Delhi. Some of India's biggest fish are getting caught up in the country's fast-growing wave of anti-corruption activity. In what could be India's equivalent of a judicial jasmine revolution, previously invulnerable politicians, business icons, and pillars of the community are all nervously keeping their lawyers on speed-dial.

The anti-corruption push is an unprecedented coming together of myriad facets of Indian society. Religious leaders are concerned about the effects on morality and spiritual growth. NGOs speak of the effects on the poor. The middle class is angry about its future being stifled by a smothering blanket of day-to-day corruption. The intelligence services see corruption a clear threat to national security. And the business community, thanks to globalization, has seen how efficiently things can operate without having to constantly pay bribes or be tangled in red tape, and they want the same thing at home.

Even the Supreme Court is fed up, with Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy saying about the vast sums of Indian money being illegally hidden away in Liechtenstein Bank:

We are talking about the huge money. It is a plunder of the nation. It is a pure and simple theft of the national money. We are talking about mind-boggling crime.

The scandals are bursting on to the front pages fast and thick. Suresh Kalmadi, a Congress Party politician and the former head of the corruption-plagued Commonwealth Games, was arrested April 25. 

According to a report by the Indian Comptroller and Auditor General, the 2G spectrum scam alone, in which 2G licenses were sold off in a manner that was, to say the least, less than transparent, cost close to $40 billion in lost revenue.

All across India, people are saying enough is enough. And suddenly the unthinkable is starting to happen. People considered above reproach, or at least untouchable, are coming under the judicial cross-hairs. 2G alone has seen charges laid against one former government minister and several captains of industry.

And the latest high profile target is one of the biggest fish of all, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, currently #9 on Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People.

Sonia Gandhi has one of the most remarkable life stories in international politics. Born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino into a family of modest means in rural Italy, she didn't even get a chance to complete high school before heading to the UK for work. There she met Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She eventually married him and the young family moved in to Indira Gandhi's New Delhi's home, putting her literally in the heart of Indian politics.

After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, Sonia's husband Rajiv became Prime Minister. Following Rajiv's 1991 assassination by Tamil terrorists, there were rumors that Sonia was going to put herself forward as Prime Minister.
As she herself later said, she "could not walk past the portraits of my husband, my mother-in-law and her father and not feel that I had some responsibility to try and save the party they had given their lives to."

Given her focus on the party, it was fitting that instead of becoming Prime Minister, she ended up as President of the powerful Congress Party. Politically, it proved to be a smart move as it gave her power without direct responsibility -- while she is #9 on Forbes list of power people, the actual Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is only #18. According to Forbes, "Gandhi remains the real power behind the nuclear-tipped throne [...] she has cemented her status as true heiress to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty."
Her image is of a dutiful, submissive Indian wife, now widow. When her husband was alive, she would walk behind him. In public she wears saris. Although a devout Catholic, she is often photographed at Hindu Temples. And like a good Indian mother, though she has decorously pulled herself out of the race for Prime Minister, she is happy to encourage her son, Rahul, to take the job.
However there have been growing, persistent murmurs about questionable business deals and inexplicable exponential jumps in the personal wealth of her and her family.
The allegations came out in the open in 1995 when M. D. Nalapat, then Resident Editor (Delhi) of the world's largest English language newspaper, the Times of India, began a groundbreaking series of articles about Sonia.
The articles made the controversial (at the time) claim that the public docility was just a ploy, and that Sonia actually had serious political ambitions (later confirmed by her role in Congress). Also, crucially, the series said that her desire for power wasn't simply altruistic and that the wealth not only of her, but of her Italian relatives, rose stratospherically after Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1984.
Nalapat's articles could not be ignored as he was one of India's most respected journalists and had, throughout his career, taken on corrupt politicians, social inequity and institutionalized discrimination.
This however was a 'topic too far'. While the facts in the article were never refuted, Nalapat was forced out of journalism in 1998 and moved into academics.
Next came public questions from another highly reputed source, Sten Lindstrom, Sweden's special prosecutor investigating the pay-offs associated with the sale of weapons by Bofors to the government of India. His investigation showed that a close friend of Sonia's, Ottavio Quattrocchi, has received kickbacks in the millions.
In 1998 Lindstrom gave an interview in which he said:

the Gandhis, particularly now Sonia, should explain how Quattrocchi-owned companies got such fat sums as payoffs from the Bofors deal. After all, what is the connection of Sonia and the Gandhi family to Quattrocchi? Who introduced Quattrocchi and his AE Services to Bofors? At least one thing is certainly known now. A part of the payoffs definitely went to Quattrocchi. [...] the papers all pointed to the Gandhi family.

Not only have the questions not been answered by Sonia, but in spite of substantial evidence against him, Quattrocchi has managed to evade prosecution in India, and has even had his kickback funds unfrozen from overseas accounts.
Part of the genius of Sonia Gandhi is her ability to present herself as a helpless victim, convincing even her political rivals not to fear her as she is fatally flawed. In 1998, India was being led by BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee. When Nalapat spoke with him about Sonia, he was bluntly told to lay off, as, "so long as a white Christian lady is head of the Congress Party, I [Vajpayee] and my party will always be in power". Vajpayee and his party lost power to Sonia's Congress in 2004.
But the most serious threat to Sonia -- and, as she is at the apex of the Congress Party, and so to Congress itself -- is now lying on the desk of #18, the Prime Minister of India.
On April 15, former Law and Justice Minister and Harvard Professor Dr. Subramanian Swamy asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for leave to lay corruption charges against Sonia Gandhi. In a meticulously researched 200+ page submission Dr Swamy alleges Sonia Gandhi has been involved in corruption in India since 1972 and personally benefited from the Bofors scam (1986), has held billions in non-Indian bank accounts since at least 1991, illegally profited from the Iraqi oil-for-food deals (2002), and even accessed KGB payoffs during the Cold War.
The Prime Minister has three months to decide whether or not to grant sanction to prosecute. If he doesn't, Dr. Swamy can take the case directly to the Supreme Court, which under Chief Justice Kapadia is showing a definite proclivity towards facilitating corruption cases.
While, so far, the corruption cases in India have caught up some pretty big fish, if charges are laid against Sonia Gandhi, it won't just be part of a wave, it will be a sea change.
Sonia Gandhi is not just an individual, she is the steely core of a pillar of Indian politics. If she crumbles, it will shake the foundations of the venerable Congress Party, and possibly leave a gaping hole in the political scene. Meanwhile, a range of polarizing and regional parties are ready to rush in and stake their claim. Given the growing importance of India in our heavily globalized world, this is not just an Indian story, this is one all should be following very closely indeed.

Follow Cleo Paskal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cleopaskal

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds: The New York Times | ‘Where is the body, the remains? I want to know. I want to see’ -Indian Express

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/world/asia/23kashmir.html

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds

By LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: August 22, 2011

NEW DELHI — Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in the brutal insurgency in the troubled region.

The inquiry, the result of three years of investigative work by senior police officers working for the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, brings the first official acknowledgement that civilians may have been buried in mass graves in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan where insurgents waged a bloody battle for independence in the early 1990s.

The report sheds new light on a grim chapter in the history of the troubled province and confirms a 2008 report by a Kashmiri human rights organization that found hundreds of bodies buried in the Kashmir Valley.

Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by training, weapons and cash from Pakistan.

According to the report, hundreds of dead bodies of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents.

“There is every probability that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,” the report said.

The report catalogs 2,156 bodies found in graves in four districts of Kashmir that had been at the heart of the insurgency. It called for a thorough inquiry and collection of DNA evidence to identify the dead, and urged that anyone killed by security forces in Kashmir in the future be properly identified to avoid abuse of special laws shielding the military. from prosecution there.

Thousands of people, mostly young men, have gone missing in Kashmir. Some went to be trained as militants in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir and were killed in fighting. Many others were detained by Indian security forces. The wives they left behind are known as half widows, because the fate of their husbands is unknown. Parents keep vigil for sons who were arrested two decades ago.

Parveena Ahanger’s son Javed was taken away by the police on Aug. 18, 1990, and never seen again. A subsequent investigation found that he had been killed by security forces, but they have not been prosecuted, she said.

“I never got any response from the government,” she said. “I never got his dead body.”

After years of fighting in the courts to find out what happened to Javed, Mrs. Ahanger was skeptical that the human rights report would get her son’s body back, or bring her justice.

“If the high court doesn’t give any justice on this issue, what will the state human rights commission do?” she said.

Zahoor Wani, an activist who works with the families of people who disappeared during the insurgency, said that the report was a welcome first step but that the government must identify the dead and allow families to bury their relatives.

“It is a very good thing that they acknowledge it,” Mr. Wani said. “These families have been living in a hope to see these people again.
“They are neither dead nor alive. We need to move them to one pole or the other.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/where-is-the-body-the-remains-i-want-to-know.-i-want-to-see/835155/0

Mon, 22 Aug 2011

‘Where is the body, the remains? I want to know. I want to see’

Muzamil Jaleel 

 

Tags : J&K State Human Rights Commission, DNA test, Bilquees Manzoor, Ali Mohammad Mir  

 

Posted: Mon Aug 22 2011, 02:36 hrs
Srinagar:

 

The report by the J&K State Human Rights Commission establishing the presence of unmarked graves in Kashmir holding 2,156 unidentified bodies has given a glimmer of hope to hundreds who have been grieving for their spouses, siblings, children and friends who have gone missing over the past two decades, without any news.
As their wait for a closure, one way or the other, may now be just a DNA test away, here are stories of some of them:

A knock on the door one cold night

It has been nine years but Bilquees Manzoor hasn’t forgotten that knock on the door of their house at Rawalpora on the cold night of January 18. “When we opened the door, we found soldiers waiting outside,” says the 26-year-old. “They pushed us aside and started searching the house. When they finally left, they took my father along.” Manzoor Ahmad Dar had returned from his chemist shop just hours before. Bilquees says she and her family tried to resist but were pushed aside. Then only 17, she began searching for her father, starting from the Army camp where the raiding party of soldiers was stationed. “He (Major Malhotra) told us that he has been picked up for questioning and would be released soon,” she says. Bilquees says it was Major Malhotra who led the soldiers who picked up her father.

Some time later, a probe was initiated into the custodial disappearance of Dar. On the basis of the inquiry, the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Srinagar, directed the Sadar Police Station to register a case against Major Malhotra and his men of 35 Rashtriya Rifles. But when they still got no news of Dar, the family approached the J&K High Court. On its directions, the DGP constituted a special team to investigate the case. The police sent several written communications to the Army and asked them to produce Major Malhotra and other accused soldiers before the inquiry officer. However, police say, there was no response from the Army. The accused Army officer was meanwhile shifted to Assam and promoted as Colonel with the Assam Regiment.

Hoping that the government acts on the SHRC report, Bilquees says: “All these years, we were living with the hope that he would return one day. But today we want to know whether he is dead or alive.” She will fight till she gets justice, she adds, “till the culprits are punished”.

A costly trip to the market

Ali Mohammad Mir, 50, hasn’t stopped blaming himself for that small task he gave his son. Mir’s father was ailing and he sent out Rajab to buy medicines near their residence in Brein Nishat. That was a bright sunny day in June 1996. Rajab hasn’t been seen since. He was picked up by counter-insurgents working with the Army who initially demanded money for his release and then one day just stopped calling. “He was picked up by Papa Kishtwari (a notorious counter-insurgent) and his associates,” says Rajab’s son Zahoor Ahmad Mir.

The police initiated an inquiry, and on September 15, 1999, the Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Nehru Park wrote a letter (CR/99/NP/22-94-94) to the Senior Superintended of Police, Srinagar:

“...seen the missing person entering the camp of Papa Kishtwari. The said Ali Mohammad (Rajab) later disappeared.” The letter goes on to add that they suspect Rajab was tortured and his corpse disposed of.

While the police did arrest Kishtwari’s men who had picked up Rajab from the market, they were released after some time. “If the police are certain about their involvement, as the letter suggests, why were they released? Why is Papa Kishtwari still moving scotfree?”

Hopeful after the SHRC report of at least getting Rajab’s body, Zahoor says: “We only want to know the fate of our father. We don’t need any compensation... We know they have killed him. But where is the body? Where are his remains? I want to know. I want to see.”

A plate that always goes untouched

Whenever there is a celebration in the family, the Khans set out food on a plate and put it aside. She is 70 now but Sarwa Begum hasn’t stopped that practice, in the hope that one day there would be a knock on the door and her son who went missing 16 years ago would walk in, and demand his food. Jaleel Ahmad Khan, then 27, had left home at Shahkote in Uri for work that day in 1995. When he didn’t return, they went to every jail and security camp in the Valley. “But despite our all efforts, we couldn’t trace him,” says the distraught mother.

Sarwa isn’t even sure who picked up her son. One day in 1999, they got the news that Jaleel had been killed. They rushed there, but it turned out to be a false alarm. Then someone told them he had been spotted in a jail in central Kashmir’s Budgam district. Their hopes rekindled, “we started to look for him again”, says the mother. Since then, tragedy has struck the family again, with youngest son, Fayaz, 20, having an accident and becoming disabled. The earthquake in October 2005 destroyed their house.

About the SHRC report, Sarwa says she wants the government to tell them whether their children are dead or alive. “If they are dead, we want to see their graves where we can go and shed our tears,” says Sarwa.

Then there are the good days, when she and her 75-year-old husband Nawab Khan still believe Jaleel will return. “I am sure he can’t leave us like that.”

She has no answers for her son

Every winter, Tahira’s husband Tariq Ahmad would leave their home at Boniyar for Delhi for work. In 2002, he left and went missing, not reaching Delhi and not returning home. For nine years now 42-year-old Tahira has been asking everyone in authority just one question: whether she is a widow or not, and if her sons (16, 14 and 11 years’ old) are fatherless. The toughest is when her youngest son Sahil asks her about his father. “He was less than two years old then,” Tahira says. “He studies in Class VI now. Whenever he asks me questions about his father, I have no answers.”

Tahira has looked everywhere — in Kashmir and outside, in jails, security camps and interrogation centres. “It is not easy for me to think about the death of my husband,” she says. “But if the DNA test proves it, at least it will bring closure. It will at least end my uncertainty... I die every day. The hopes are slowly fading.”

2156 unidentified bodies in 38 graves in Kashmir: state human rights panel inquiry - The Sunday Indian Express

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/2156-unidentified-bodies-in-38-graves-in.../834890/

Sun, 21 Aug 2011

.

2156 unidentified bodies in 38 graves in Kashmir: state human rights panel inquiry

By Muzamil Jaleel

Tags : Jammu and Kashmir, J&K State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), DNA profiling, unidentified bodies

Posted: Sun Aug 21 2011, 02:42 hrs Srinagar:

A Srinagar father looks at a photo of his missing son. Express file

For the first time in Jammu and Kashmir, an official inquiry has said that it is “beyond doubt” that there are scores of unidentified bodies in unmarked graves in the Valley — as many as 2156 bodies buried at 38 sites since militancy began in 1990.

All these bodies, according to an inquiry by the investigative wing of the J&K State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), were handed over by the police to the local population for burial with bullet injuries and were classified as “unidentified militants.” Strongly contesting this in the absence of any profiling done by the police, the probe has called for a thorough investigation across the state, FIRs, exhumation and prompt DNA profiling of the bodies and comparison of samples with those taken from residents who have been campaigning against the disappearance of their relatives.

It quotes former British Prime Minister William Gladstone to make a telling point: “Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness, the tender mercy of its people, their respect for the law of the land and their loyalty to high ideals”.

The report says that of the bodies, a few were defaced, 20 were charred, five only have skulls remaining and there are at least 18 graves with more than one body each.

This startling conclusion comes after a three-year-long inquiry by an 11-member team led by Bashir Ahmad Yatoo, the Senior Superintendent of Police of the investigative wing of the J&K SHRC.

The team scoured police records to count the number of “unidentified bodies” sent for burial, cross-checked this against testimonies from police officials, eyewitnesses, village committees, village heads, elders, mosque committees, gravediggers and records prepared by caretakers of the graveyards. Many witnesses spoke on the condition that they not be named — the testimonies of 62 who didn’t seek anonymity have been made part of the report.

There were 21 unmarked graves in Baramulla, three each in Bandipore and Handwara and 11 in Kupwara. The probe said it established 851 unidentified bodies in Baramulla, 14 in Bandipore, 14 in Handwara and 1277 in Kupwara.
The report of the investigation, obtained by The Sunday Express and handed over to the SHRC last month.

“It is beyond doubt that unmarked graves containing unidentified dead bodies do exist at various places in north Kashmir. The local police while handing over the unidentified dead bodies to locals for burial, was claiming them to be the dead bodies of unidentified militants but later on, out of 2730 unidentified dead bodies, 574 were identified as the dead bodies of locals by their next of kin at these 38 places visited by the investigating team,” says the report.

In fact, the SHRC investigation was the response to a campaign by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) which in March, 2008, released a report, “Facts Underground” and alleged the presence of unmarked graves. The next month, the SHRC issued notices to then Congress-PDP government and set up the probe committee. In December 2009, another human rights group, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights, released a report claiming that unmarked graveyards “entomb bodies of those murdered in encounter, fake encounters and extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions.”

The SHRC team included Inspectors Mohammad Yousuf, Baghwant Singh, Ashiq Hussain and Veer Singh; Sub Inspector Khalid Mehraj, Assistant Sub Inspector Farooq Ahmad, Head Constables Ghulam Mohammad and Aijaz Ahmad besides Special Grade Constables Ghulam Qadir and Nazir Ahmad.

“The scope of DNA extraction from remains of these unidentified bodies buried in unmarked graves of north Kashmir is still very bright. As the time will go on to elapse, chances will be more and more reduced,” the report says. “Thus the Commission should pass an order with directions to do the needful as soon as possible so that the identity of the disappeared persons and those unidentified bodies buried in nameless graves may be established or negated. The DNA sampling techniques can be supplemented by other techniques like dental examination, distinctive medical characteristics, finger prints and physical description etc”.

The report also suggests that “to stop the misuse of powers under AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) and Disturbed Areas Act,” it is necessary that wherever anybody is killed — whether he is a militant or an innocent civilian — his or her identification profile including DNA profile should be maintained properly.”