South Asia Citizens Wire | 9-12 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2271
[1] India: Bombay Blasts of 11 July - A Press
statement (Citizens for Justice and Peace)
[2] Pakistan: Commercial marriages of girls (Nafisa Shah)
[3] India: Back To Emergency? "Broadcasting
Services Regulation Bill 2006" (Prashant Bhushan)
[4] India: Don't block information (Shekhar Singh)
[5] India: Remote control (Barkha Dutt)
[6] India: Report on the Brutal State Violence Against Farmers in Dadri, U.P
___
[1]
Citizens for Justice and Peace
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai - 400 049
India
July 12, 2006
Statement of Condemnation
Acts of Terror are acts of cowardice. Terror of
the kind unleashed by eight bomb blasts in
Mumbai's western railway line killing over 175
innocent victims need to be condemned
unequivocally. Citizens for Justice and Peace
condemns these acts and pledges itself to the
campaign against violence of any kind. We pledge
whatever support we can give to the families of
the victims and for the brave Mumbaikar who
chipped in all night to save the soul of the city.
Mumbai has already responded and will continue to
respond with strong condemnation and resolve to
fight the terror and empathy and compassion for
the victims.
Terror, especially in the name of faith, defiles
faiths and creates deep divides among people.
This is the greatest challenge for us. Not to
fall for the deep design of the terrorists and
maintain peace and harmony at all costs. Do join
CJP's campaign for calm, harmony, solidarity and
hope. Against Violence.
Appeal
CJP is against the politics of violence and
terror. Action after yesterday's terror is vital
and critical. Help to find unidentified bodies,
empathy for the victims, salutes to the
courageous men and women who saved, yet again,
the soul of this great city.
Give and Share Generously.
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary
Vijay Tendulkar, President
IM Kadri, Vice-President
Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer
Javed Akhtar Shabana Azmi
Javed Anand Cyrus Guzder
Alyque Padamsee Anil Dharker
Titoo Ahluwalia Ghulam Peshimam
Rahul Bose Dolphy De Souza
____
[2]
The News International
July 9, 2006
COMMERCIAL MARRIAGES OF GIRLS
by Nafisa Shah
The recent apex court's judicial activism on
exchange of girls to settle disputes is rather
dramatic. Perhaps for another few months, the
chiefs, and the tribal elders will think before
mediating marriage disputes. But very soon, life
will normalise, and exchanging girls for an odd
buffalo, or an acre of land, or even a house, or
using girls to settle disputes over a buffalo, or
land, or a house will go on, as if nothing ever
happened.
A political economy of trading and trafficking
girls through marriage has strengthened and
increased as the rights of Pakistani citizens
become vague with disintegration of state
institutions, like the police and the judiciary,
that protect and enforce these rights.
A vast and intense trafficking of girls is taking
place across the length and breath of the country
with complicity of the family, tribe, and
implicitly by the state. A girl child sees her
life pledged, negotiated, bartered, sold, long
before she knows who she is, and sometimes years
before she is born.
In Upper Sindh, in times of scarcity and in times
of plenty, Balochis sell their little girls.
Herders come from far away lands, loaded with
sheep and buy girls and leave some sheep behind,
and go back into the hills. Nomadic Pathans come
down buy girls, or leave them behind, and vanish
into the hills. Girls from rural Punjab flee
southwards, to Sindh to escape from the vicious
contracts through which their lives are pledged.
Local Sindhis exchange women and girls across and
through generations, pledging even future girls
which will be born. Women build their houses, and
repair their fallen roofs, after selling their
girls. Vast trading networks of girls take place
everyday and all the time. Girls are trafficked
across provinces and borders, sometimes taken as
far out as Quetta, Loralai, Kandahar, or brought
from here to there.
The old doddering men are the best bidders of the
girls; they offer the best rates, rich with their
properties, their buffaloes, and their houses.
Sometimes since they have plenty of girls to
offer, they simply offer their granddaughters or
grandnieces in exchange for girls who would be
their wives.
In Upper Sindh girls are regularly sold for a
price averaging sixty thousand rupees, for some
market factor I cannot figure out. Sometimes a
pregnancy, is pledged as part of the contract --
the first girl to be born is to be returned to
the mother's brothers, or the middlemen in
marriage to be given in marriage to anyone they
choose. However, such exchanges take place
through active participation of mothers, and
fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, and
uncles and aunts of the girls.
Mothers, too, are complicit. A young woman,
Janvri Baloch, about 30, came to me, weeping
about her girl child who was only 16 but pregnant
with a second child, and in a serious ante-natal
condition. "I am poor, my husband is old and
infirm, I gave my girl for sixty thousand rupees,
as I did not have a house, and I built my house,"
she confesses sadly. And now the little child is
producing her second child and is very sick.
Another woman, a Lolai Baloch, repaired the roof
of her house from the sixty thousand she got when
she gave away her daughter to a man from the Pal
community in the neighbouring village. The little
girl soon ran away from the old man who wed her
after paying for the little bride. The woman came
to me, to ask me to help with the divorce. I
asked her to go to the court.
Some women do take a stand against the
trafficking of girls. A Pitafi woman, a widow
with four girls came to me, asking for help, when
her second daughter, Rukhsana, only 10 had
already been pledged in marriage by her
brothers-in-law Maula Bux and Mehar, to Qasim for
Rs30,000. A deposit had been given for this
pledge by the bridegroom to be. Qasim, who is
about fifty-years-old, already married and
childless, killed his father's sister as kari and
took a fine of Rs200,000 from a neighbouring Rind
he accused of being karo with his dead father's
sister. Rukhsana's mother's brother-in-law now
calls him ghairatmand because of this act and
thinks he will be an appropriate husband for the
ten-year-old niece.
Rukhsana's mother would like to have her
brothers-in-law arrested to deter them from
carrying out the contract. However, there is no
guarantee, that tomorrow Rukhsana's mother does
not negotiate marriage of the same daughter by
getting the money for it from her own kin. As it
is, Rukhsana's elder sister was sold by her
father, when he was alive, to the Burriro
community, also for sixty thousand rupees. At
that time, Rukhsana's mother did not resist. Most
of the money from the first daughter's marriage
was gambled away. About ten thousand was loaned
to his brother Maula Bux, who, by the way, has
still not returned this money to his brother.
The fate of these girls is tragic. Many who are
very young, and wed to old men, often run away,
in search of a better life. They endanger their
own lives, and also become vulnerable to further
trafficking. Those who mediate between these
run-away girls or support them in running away,
often resell them to another man, or marry them
themselves. Sometimes these middle(men) are
fathers and mothers themselves.
A very young girl came on a bus and a train all
the way from Okara. She was running away from her
old and sterile husband, that her father had wed
her to, after taking Rs30,000 from the old man.
She would run to her family to escape from the
old man, but her father would tie her to a
charpai, and take her back to her husband, every
time she would run away from him. This happened
regularly for three years. Now that her father
broke his neck and died, after falling from a
tree, this girl, who roams the land, a lost
child, is free but yet in danger of being
trafficked again.
Several laws indirectly deter commercial
exploitation of girls, or their forced
transactions in marriages, but none do so
directly. Under the Muslim Family Law Ordinance,
a girl must have attained the age of 16 and a boy
must have attained the age of 18, and both need
to consent before the marriage can take place.
Pakistan has also ratified the UN Convention on
the Rights of Child, which prohibits child
marriages.
A recent law, 'The Prevention and Control of
Human Trafficking Ordinance' (promulgated in
October 2002), applies to all children aged less
than 18 years and defines human trafficking to
include recruiting, buying or selling a person,
with or without consent, by use of coercion,
abduction, or by giving payment or share for such
person's transportation, for exploitative
entertainment. The ordinance prescribes a
punishment of 7-14 years' imprisonment and also
includes parents if they are guilty of the crime
involving their own children therefore they are
liable to the same punishment.
However, this law seldom applies to parents who
sell their girls in marriage, as marriage is a
sacred formal legal family rite, and therefore
masks trafficking, even when it is a commercial
transaction.
In 2002, the chief justice of Pakistan declared
the Pukhtoon custom of swara, giving women in
marriage to settle disputes, as un-Islamic and
expressed concern over the rising number of these
cases. The Chief Justices of the high courts were
all given instructions to ensure that trial
courts do not allow for a woman to be given as
compensation. The recent criminal law amendment
2004 also disallows giving women as compensation
for disputes or murders and therefore a complaint
can easily be registered under the amended law to
punish those who give girls in compensation for
settling disputes.
However the laws are silent on the specific issue
of selling girls in and through marriage when no
dispute is involved. And by default, as the
multiple laws and their interpretations stand
today, the rights of girls are filtered through
the family. The Pakistan Penal Code, after
incorporating the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance,
empowers the legal and biological heir, the wali
with powers to compound the offence or killing,
with powers of life over his children and minors.
The family is entrusted with law and with power
to regulate individual rights. When the wali's
close kin kill women, these walis are given
sanction to forgive them. On the other hand, the
state does not offer any effective institutions
to uphold individual rights of men, women or
children when these are violated by the
proverbial walis. Hence, the family when it is
the source of strength is also the subject of
vulnerability.
The courts are right to show anger when tribal
elders negotiate such marriages on the stage of
the jirga. Hazar Khan Bijirani will probably not
do it anymore. Or the Pir of Barchoondi Sharif
will think twice before exchanging girls for
settling disputes after the wrath of the courts.
But how will the courts show anger when countless
fathers and mothers, grandfathers and
grandmothers, and uncles and aunts, willingly,
and happily negotiate or pledge their little
daughters, granddaughters and nieces, taking them
by their hand, or in their laps on any ordinary
day, and leaving them behind to strangers for
some everyday expense like cash for cigarettes,
for money owed in gambling, or for repairing
fallen rooftops?
The writer is a former journalist and district
nazim of Khairpur. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_____
[3]
Outlook
July 06, 2006
BACK TO EMERGENCY?
Crisis for content in media? Sure. But
"Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2006",
prepared by the I&B ministry, gives sweeping
draconian powers to the government to effectively
pre-censor and cripple media organizations.
Prashant Bhushan
There is little doubt that there is a serious
problem with the content of the print and
broadcast media in India today. Apart from the
fact that more and more time and space of the
media is devoted to carrying commercial
advertisements, much of the remaining content too
has become trivial, inane, and debasing,
essentially containing violence, sex and gossip
meant to titillate and serve the baser instincts
of the audience. Even most news channels and
newspapers have been reduced essentially to
purveyors of salacious gossip with meaningful
news being carried only in snippets and sound
bytes. Though the media says that it is merely
catering to public taste, the fact is that this
kind of content is debasing public taste and
values, dulling intelligence and making people
more amenable to propaganda. And when this
debasement of taste and values is coupled with
media consolidation and monopolies, as in the
U.S. where just five media companies control more
than 90% of all television, newspapers,
publishing houses and even movie companies, you
have a situation where, as Chomsky says, it is
easy to "manufacture consent" and reduce
democracy to a farce.
The big question however is: How do you regulate
content of the media to prevent such debasement
of taste and values? The I&B Ministry has
prepared a "Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill
2006" which ostensibly seeks to do that. In
seeking to do so, it gives sweeping draconian
powers to the government and various executive
officers to effectively pre-censor and cripple
media organizations. It authorizes the government
to "prescribe guidelines and norms to evaluate
and certify broadcasting content and the terms
and conditions of broadcasting different
categories of content by service providers". It
also empowers District Magistrates, Sub
Divisional Magistrates and other officers to
prevent any broadcasts and even seize equipment
of broadcasters for violation of the content code
or for non certification of broadcast requiring
certification. It authorizes the government to
take over the control of any broadcasting service
during a war or national calamity.
These provisions, if enacted, will make the cure
worse than the disease. It will effectively bring
back the emergency days, when newspapers had to
submit their entire content for pre-censorship
and using these powers, the government was
effectively able to muzzle the entire media. It
has been the universal experience of nations that
it is far too dangerous to entrust such sweeping
powers of controlling content to the government.
Such powers are bound to be misused by the
government, which will eventually completely
compromise the freedom of the media and reduce
them to instruments of the government. These
provisions will also violate of the fundamental
right of free speech, which includes a free
press, and should be struck down as being
unconstitutional.
How then does one regulate the content of the
media to prevent the debasement of public taste
and values and to prevent broadcast of
inflammatory content? The penal code has
sufficient provisions to allow punishment of
persons who publish or broadcast inflammatory
content. Those provisions are however rarely
invoked to prosecute offenders such as many
Gujarati newspapers who fanned the genocide there
in 2002 - because they were doing so with the
full support and complicity of the Modi
administration which controlled the prosecuting
agencies. That is why we need to free the
prosecuting agencies from the control of the
government.
However, regulating prurient, inane and debasing
content is a more difficult problem. Authorising
the government to do so is certainly not the
solution. In order to deal with this, one must
understand what is driving such content.
One major reason, in my view, is the total
commercialisation of the media where it has come
to be driven only by the profit motive and
therefore by the advertisers. It is really the
advertisement industry which finances and
controls the media today. This industry demands
content which will easily and quickly grab a
greater share of readership and viewership, which
can be most easily accomplished by purveying
sensational and gossipy content catering to the
baser instincts of the viewers. The resultant
debasement of taste and dulling of intelligence
also suits the advertising industry well, since
it makes the people more amenable to propaganda,
which is what advertising essentially aims to do.
One solution worth considering would obviously be
to empower an independent and fully autonomous
regulator/media council, chosen in a transparent
manner, to lay down guidelines to regulate
content and give it teeth to enforce the
guidelines. A more radical solution worth
considering would be to provide by law that media
organizations cannot be run for profit and cannot
carry commercial advertisements. That will
ensure that they run only on subscriptions by
readers and viewers. That may result in the
closure of many media organisations which may
not be such a bad thing. But it may also make
even those which survive, quite expensive for the
viewers/readers and therefore inaccessible to
many. Or we could end up having only a few
channels and newspapers on the lines of the
Public Broadcasting Service in the U.S. But such
a scenarip has the obvious need to worry about
the media being controlled by Trusts set up by
large business houses or media organisations
trying to circumvent the ban on advertising by
using advertorials and surreptitiously selling
news space. These are menaces that confront us
even today which we have to deal with.
There are a few salutary provisions in the
Broadcast bill however. The provisions to prevent
media monopolies by restricting the control of
channels and viewership by single organizations
and conglomerates is welcome. Though the details
of how this should be done can be debated, but
there can be no doubt that media monopolies are
even more dangerous than government control over
the media, and this must be regulated by law. The
provisions in the bill to ensure that private
channels carrying national sporting events must
be obliged to share the feed (without
advertisements) with the public service
broadcasters is also salutary. This will prevent
a situation as we had recently where Doordarshan
had to carry the advertising of the private
channel in order to show cricket matches. The
obligation proposed by the bill to carry 10-15%
public interest content is more problematic, for
who is to judge what is public interest content.
That is bound to lead to unending disputes and
corruption in certification of public interest
content.
Though government control of content is not the
answer to the serious problem of the crisis of
content of the media, the time has come to think
of a solution to this menace which is slowly
devouring the heart and soul of our society.
Prashant Bhushan is a senior Supreme Court lawyer and rights activist.
_____
[4]
The Times of India
July 8, 2006
DON'T BLOCK INFORMATION
by Shekhar Singh
One would think that a report on the right to
information by the Administrative Reforms
Commission (ARC), coming out about a year after
the Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed,
would make recommendations to streng-then the Act.
However, a close look at the report recently
submitted to the government reveals that at least
three of the recommendations threaten to
fundamentally undermine the RTI Act.
The first of these is the recommendation that a
public information officer (PIO) should be
allowed to refuse a request for information if
that is manifestly frivolous or vexatious.
The ARC states that certain instances have been
brought to their notice of requests that are mala
fide and intimidate, harass and even humiliate
officials.
However, the ARC neither gives any specific
examples, nor does it go on to explain how the
truth can be used for mala fide purposes
(what-ever that might mean), or for intimidating,
harassing or humiliating an officer.
The ARC lays down no criteria for determining
what is manifestly frivolous and/or vexatious,
perhaps because these terms are essentially
subjective.
For instance, an officer who deals with millions
of rupees, might find a dispute over Rs 10 of
wages to be frivolous, but to a poor, daily-wage
labourer these Rs 10 could represent two
kilograms of wheat and the difference between her
child living or dying.
The same is true of the term 'vexatious'. Any
request questioning the judgment, the efficiency,
the impartiality, the commitment or the integrity
of a bureaucrat could be considered vexa-tious.
The right to ask vexatious questions is the
essence of the RTI Act, and flows from the
fundamental right of the public to question the
public servant. If accepted, this recommended
clause would lead to most applications being
rejected as frivolous or vexatious.
The recommended automatic appeal to the
information commission is no solution, for it
would just add to the growing backlog of appeals
pending before these commissions.
In the absence of penalties, there would be
little incentive for PIOs to act responsibly.
Besides, even if information commissions
decentralise, as recommended by the ARC, the poor
and the illiterate would find it difficult to
attend hearings or send written submissions to
support their applications.
The ARC also recommends that information can be
denied if the work involved in processing the
request would substantially and unreasonably
divert the resources of the public body.
As justification, ARC states that there may be
cases where the efforts in compiling information
may not be commensurate with the results
achieved. Nowhere in the RTI Act is there any
obligation on a public authority to compile
information, or collect primary information.
The obligation is simply to provide information
that is collected, or should have been collected.
In fact, Section 7(9) of the RTI Act further
clarifies that "An information shall ordinarily
be provided in the form in which it is sought
unless it would disproportionately divert the
resources of the public authority".
ARC surprisingly recommends that armed forces
should be excluded from the purview of the RTI
Act, because most of their functioning is already
exempt on security grounds.
However, this is no reason why the rest of their
functioning should not be brought under public
scrutiny. Security agencies have many employees;
they make decisions which impact the lives of
people, affect the environment, spend public
money, award contracts and make purchases.
Why should citizens be denied access to
information about these matters? In fact, the
blanket exemptions for all agencies currently
listed under Schedule II should be withdrawn.
The exemptions provided in the RTI Act are
adequate to safeguard national interest. Perhaps
these faulty recommendations might never have
been made if the ARC had functioned in a
participatory and consultative manner.
Interestingly, the recommendations of the one
consultation that the ARC reportedly orga-nised
at Bhopal in December 2005 have been totally
ignored.
The Bhopal meet recommended that the RTI Act
should not be amended, and exemptions do not need
rationalisation. Nevertheless, the ARC went ahead
and did the contrary.
The writer is convenor, National Campaign for People's Right to Information.
_____
[5]
HindustanTimes.com
July 8, 2006
Remote control
THIRD EYE | Barkha Dutt
As politicians go, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi is an
affable man. His ego is not enormous; he doesn't
bristle at criticism; he's the sort of chap you
can share a joke or two with and sometimes he
will even laugh at himself. He's fired by
football as much as he's driven by politics and
his geniality is germane to his dexterity as
Parliamentary Affairs Minister.
So what is he doing defending what could turn out
to be the most absurd and autocratic legislation
- if it is allowed to go through?
The Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006,
is not just preposterous; it is dangerous.
If you think that the draft Bill is technical
mumbo-jumbo that only big media barons and
self-important journalists need to be worried
about, junk that thought.
This is about you and me, and our fundamental freedoms.
The Bill aims to dismantle - or at the very
least, challenge - media monopolies by
restricting cross-ownership. But frankly, while
this may have got business houses very agitated,
it's not the part that worries me. In fact, you
could even argue that the tyranny of the
so-called free market is just as antithetical to
independent journalism, as overweening government
control can be. So the jury is out on that one.
It's the attempt to annihilate editorial autonomy
that there can be no two views on.
Here's the part of the draft Bill that would have
been funny were it not so frightening. Next time
there is a "war or a natural calamity of national
magnitude", the government may have the right to
"take over the control and management of any of
the broadcasting services"; even suspend
operations if the channel is found to be harming
"public interest".
So far, India has seen only one televised war. I
reported from the frontline during the Kargil
conflict of 1999. It was an age before instant
connectivity and portable satellites, and still
unused to television, the army was, quite
frankly, alarmed by our presence. No one knew
what to do with us, and so, by sheer accident, we
were set free in the battle zone.
Every day, scores of journalists walked the thin
line between life and death. We braved bullets,
ducked shells and learnt to sleep under an open
sky or behind a boulder - without food, water or
bathrooms. But at the end of it, the ordinary
soldier was no longer nameless or faceless; the
war finally had a human face. The battle was not
just about gun positions and recaptured peaks; it
was about people; the tears and tribulations; the
conflict and courage of young men sent out to die.
There were no rules then to 'manage the media',
and yet, I cannot recall a single instance where
national interest was compromised. Instead, an
initially sceptical army conceded that we had
been "force multipliers", and the debate suddenly
shifted. The politically correct lobby then began
attacking us for 'glamourising' the war.
Ironic then that the government is worried about
controlling us during a hypothetical next war. Or
is it the questions we raised after Kargil that
make politicians and bureaucrats nervous -
debates over intelligence lapses and what drove
India to a bloody war to begin with?
The natural calamity clause is even more
bewildering. During every recent disaster, from
earthquakes to the tsunami, it is the immediacy
of television that has pushed people out of their
indifference. It is the evocative nature of
television stories that has propelled ordinary
citizens into donating funds, and sometimes, even
rolling up their sleeves to volunteer for relief
and rehabilitation. During the tsunami,
television journalists waded through water and
rotting flesh to reach the worst-hit interiors
much before district officials could. Or is that
the real problem?
The 24-hour news channel may be a monster, but
it's also a relentless beast that lets no detail
escape its gaze.
In my view, many lives may have been saved had
the 1984 Delhi riots taken place in the age of
private television; the scrutiny would have been
just too intense and constant. Just as it was in
Gujarat.
But look at what the draft Bill empowers the
government to do. "Authorised officials" can
actually shut down transmission if it promotes
"disharmony, enmity, hatred or ill will" between
communities. This was exactly the excuse Narendra
Modi used in 2002 when he briefly blocked
television channels that had exposed the
complicity of his administration in the riots. Of
course, at that time, the Congress was on the
other side of the political divide and was as
outraged as we are now.
And just who are these 'authorised officials'?
They include district magistrates and senior
police officers, making it impossible for
television to uncover the role of the bureaucracy
and the police during a riot. Under the Bill,
these officials even have the power to "inspect,
search and seize equipment".
So will television journalists constantly be
waiting for that knock on their door?
Speaking on NDTV, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi sounded
vaguely embarrassed about many of these
provisions. He insisted that the Bill was not
targeted at "established national networks" and
the aim was only to rein in cable operators and
the hundreds of local channels the industry has
spawned in the last decade, often in regions of
conflict and communal strife. Besides, he
insisted, this was only a draft Bill - a mere
starting point for discussion, not necessarily
the Bill that would make it to Parliament.
But in a democracy, how in the world can we allow
such dictatorial notions to shape the contours of
any debate?
Does private television, still only a decade old
in India, need some sort of regulation?
Yes.
Is it the government's job to play gatekeeper?
Absolutely not.
Admittedly, the ever-proliferating world of
television often slides into sleaze and banality
and, on the odd occasion, can even be
inflammatory.
The answer is for the television industry to
build consensus and create guidelines of its own;
perhaps even a media council that would play
ombudsman and have the final word on a code of
content. But we cannot allow politicians and
bureaucrats to set that agenda for us.
A few months ago, when the Centre was struggling
to defend its role in the office-of-profit
controversy, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi was in our
studio passionately defending his party.
"Bullshit," he said, on national television,
denying that any ordinance had ever been planned.
That's exactly the word I would use for this
outrageous and undemocratic draft Bill.
But if this Bill does go through, that's the sort
of language that the bureaucrats in the I&B
Ministry would find obscene. And then, the
Minister and I would both be in trouble.
(The writer is Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7 [EMAIL PROTECTED])
_____
[6]
Report on the Brutal State Violence Against Farmers in Dadri, U.P.:
The Government of U.P. Protects Interests of Reliance, Not Farmers
To,
Justice (retd) Anand,
The Chairman,
National Human Rights Commission
New Delhi.
The farmers and farm labourers of the rural
hinterland surrounding Delhi are fighting for
their survival, amidst the growing vulcanization
and expanding megalopolis at their cost. Their
struggle seems to be with their basic right to
live with their agrarian economy and rural
natural environs on one hand and to demand fair,
just and humane treatment granting democratic
rights and civil liberties even when the State
decides to acquire their resource base and evict
them for transferring the same to the corporate
sector in the name of development. When thousands
of acres of land, where populated villages and
prime agriculture have thrived for generations,
is being handed over to the giant companies,
Indian multinationals, whose money, muscle and
market power is well known, around the ever
expanding Delhi, in the adjacent districts such
as Ghaziabad in U.P. the struggling farmers have
questioned the deals that the companies or the
states on their behalf are engaged in. The State
is forcing them to give away their livelihoods
and lifestyles by compelling them to sell the
land and everything attached; houses, civic
amenities, cultural monuments, communities, and
common property resources.
It is this struggle that has witnessed the worst
of the attacks by the State Government of U.P.
(most probably, as per the peoplesí narration,
hired goons) on July 7th and 8th on which we have
conducted an urgent enquiry and report to you
herewith. We request and demand that the NHRC
undertake an in-depth investigation at the
earliest and ensure that the guilty are punished
and the farmers, villagers receive compensation
for their losses and justice in the deal related
to their lands and properties. With the violence
unleashed by the state and the corporates, their
lives are under threat and hence they need full
protection not just physical, but of their right
to life and livelihood. The above incidence
being only a part of the large-scale trampling
upon the agrarian life around the mega-cities all
over the country, including Mumbai, Delhi, and
Kolkata, we would expect the NHRC to take a
position on the issue of urban development and
its impact on the hinterlands. We would also
like to remind you of our petitioning on the
issue of development-induced displacement where
neither public interest nor just and timely
rehabilitation with alternative livelihood is
ensured. Maybe expect an immediate action on
these issues.
Sincerely,
Justice Rajendra Sachar (Retd.), Peopleís Union for Civil Liberties
Kuldeep Nayyar
Medha Patkar, National Alliance of Peopleís Movements
Thomas Kocherry, National Fishworkers Forum
Kamal Mitra Chenoy, JNU
Pradipto Roy, CSD
Vimalbhai, Matu Jan Sangathan
Rajendra Ravi, Lokayan
Denzil Fernandes, Indian Social INstitute
Madhuresh Kumar, CACIM
Bhupendra Rawat, Jan Sangharsh Vahini
Faisal Khan, NAPM, Asha Parivar
Bedoshruti Sadhukhan, Human Rights Law Network
Joyson Mazamo, NPMHR
REPORT ON THE VIOLENCE
Dehat Morcha, Jan Morcha, Rana Sangram Singh
Sangharsh Samiti, and other organizations under
the leadership of Shri V.P. Singh, the former
Prime Minister of India, Shri Raj Babbar, M.P.,
and supported by various political organisations,
have been demanding a fair deal for the farmers
of 7 villages in Gaziabad district whose lands
have been grabbed for the Reliance power plant in
Dadri. To cut short the long history of their
2-3 year struggle, they were being compelled to
surrender 2,500 acres acquired at a price much
lower than the market price in the area. This is
also a known story for other companies who too
have taken over large chunks of land
(30,000-35,000 acres each) at a very low price,
which is a small percentage of the price that
companies are reselling land for (the instance of
Uppal and Chadha company, one of those in the
ìHigh-Tech Cityî in Gaziabad, selling hundreds of
acres of land in some villages at the rate of Rs.
14,000 per square yard, without purchasing or
legally acquiring it through ìpre-launchingî as
it is called, is shocking). This is done
obviously in connivance with the State using the
ìlawsî but violating the constitution and
fundamental rights.
The farmers, laborers, traders and others in the
villages affected by Reliance power project
received a very low cash compensation of Rs. 150
per square yard but were compelled to accept the
same under the age-old Land Acquisition Act
(1894) still in practice, and using intimidation
tactics, about 3 years ago. Soon after a few
were compelled to accept it, they realized the
loot and began the agitation. It was in February
2004, at the time of the inauguration, that Mr.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, CM of U.P., publicly
announced that they would be given a better
price, up to Rs. 310 per square yard, even when
the market price is at least Rs. 500 per square
yard and in the High-Tech city a few kilometers
away, it is many times higher. There was no
fulfillment of the promise and the farmers had to
resort to a number of protest actions and started
a peaceful sit-in since November 2005. Later,
Shri. V.P. Singhji intervened and compelled the
Chief Minister of UP, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, to
promise them a rate of Rs. 310 per square yard by
June 30th.
However, this did not materialize and the
Reliance Company with a huge subsidy granted in
various forms, kept the 2,500 acres of land
unused during these years. It was their attempt
to establish the plant now that led to the
villagers feeling compelled to intensify their
agitation against the betrayal beyond the
ten-month long dharna in village Bajeda. The
peaceful nature of the movement is obvious from
the fact that they never resorted to violence
even during such a long agitation. Later, they
planned a program of symbolic ploughing of their
own land only to assert their rights on July 8th,
which was an open declared form of protest, under
the leadership of Shri. V.P. Singh, the former
Prime Minister of India, Sri. Raj Babbar, MP, and
supported by various political organizations.
The events related to the program, which indicate
brutal violence and show the inhuman face of the
state, are described below.
1. On July 6, late night around 11pm, a few
policemen came to the village and began asking
the people sitting in the square to get
dispersed. When the villagers refused, the
police returned back.
2. On July 7, the police tried to locate the
leaders of Dehat Morcha, probably to arrest them,
but could not. It was just before midnight that
a contingent of PAC arrived at the main square of
village Bajeda in tens of vehicles along with
senior most officials, including D.M., SSP and
others. In the late night, the villagers could
not identify but there were a number of cars with
red and blue light as reported. There were only
about a hundred villagers sleeping at the dharna
site (i.e. main square), and 10-20 were awake.
On seeing the vehicles from a long distance, they
shouted and called the villagers. When men and
women gathered, they protested peacefully, asking
the police not to enter the village and
expressing determination that they would not
move. The police instead threatened them of
using force and without a formal warning, started
firing. During 4-5 rounds of firing, three
youths named Prempal, Vinod, and Naresh got
wounded. We could meet them in the jail hospital
where the wounds were bandaged and the case
papers recorded ìwounded with blunt objects.î
3. After the firing, there was a sudden
stone-pelting and the village leaders could see
and conclude that the same was started by some
plainclothesmen who accompanied the police in
uniforms. The villagers identified them as the
goons brought along by the police. After about
an hour-long confrontation, the police returned
back.
4. On July 8th, it was in the early morning
at six a.m. that a large contingent of police in
the vehicles arrived again. Parking the vehicles
a little away, they all marched into the village
when there were not more than 100 villages
sitting at the square. A number of officials
were accompanying them and when they started
approaching, one of the leading villagers, Former
Major Himanshu, requested the villagers not to
protest or stop them, but to allow them to come
in and be prepared for a dialogue. The villagers
did so, but the police entered and without even a
warning resorted to lathi charge, brutal and
severe.
5. Shri. V.P. Singh, Shri. Raj Babber and
others were stopped from entering the district
Gaziabad with barricades and an order of
preventing their entry for one month under
Section 151 IPC was clamped upon them. They and
others squatted on the roads in protest, were
arrested and then released. This stern action is
obviously unjustified considering the nature of
the agitation planned. It also seems to be the
Stateís weapon to weaken and break the peopleís
organization. We might also remark on the
strangeness of the state resorting to such
tactics against a former Prime Minister of India,
showing the lengths to which it will go to serve
corporate interests.
6. There was apparently a court order
obtained by Reliance Energy against the action
program of July 8th, which we were told happened
after midnight. However, instead of merely
serving the orders or informing the villages
about the same, the state attacked the community
with the police force. It was totally
unjustifiable and inhuman, violating the human
rights and encroaching upon the civil liberties.
7. The police fired tear gas and then,
wasting no time, resorted to brutal, unlimited
lathi charge, breaking the heads and hands,
causing fractures as well as injuries.
8. We met Subhash Zamadar, Monu, Manoj, and
others, who had fractures. There were others
like Charan Singh and Dinesh who had serious head
injuries due to beating with sticks. Both of
them were in Gaziabad Jail, amongst 80 others who
were arrested on the 8th morning, but shifted to
jail around 11pm at night.
9. The police also entered the houses and
broke the wooden doors, brick walls of a few
houses, chulhas (cooking stoves of mud), material
such as radios and glass windows, and scattered
grains. A few shops, such as those of Suresh
Sukhbir Singh, and Satish Chandra Garg (both
arrested and in jail), in the village were fully
destroyed along with the materials and stored
money was taken away.
10. We met in Bajeda village a boy of
ten-twelve years whose whole body had the burns
due to the tear gas shell. Sunil Giri had his
eye seriously wounded. Sheilaben, a widow living
with her daughter and child, was beaten up by the
police who entered her house and beat her on the
head, injuring her eye too. She was found
bedridden and, as others, was not capable of
reaching the hospital on her own. Many women,
including Biroben, Parvati Birpal, and Seema
Gopal showed the marks on their thighs, backs,
and hands, which proved a serious beating. Even
the small infants of a few months were thrown
away from their mothers by the police who pulled
the women by hair and broke many things and
furniture inside their houses.
11. Almost all the beaten up villagers
confirmed that they were not in any action when
the police attacked them. It was early morning
and they were engaged in their household chores.
Some were eating, while others were with their
children or cattle. The police loosened the
cattle and let them go in order to get the men
out of the house to be beaten up and then entered
the house to take care of the women.
12. The worst part of the operation was the
beating and abuse unleashed on women, who were
pulled by their hair and pushed against the wall.
The women also complained of molestation since
their saris were torn and they were pushed and
pulled by the men police. A number of women lost
their earrings, many of gold, since policemen
pulled them out forcibly. The pain and wounds
were unlimited. They also described how the men
officials were laughing and passing sarcastic
comments and policemen abusing them in filthy
language.
13. Amongst the beaten up and arrested were
villagers who had nothing to do with the
agitation, including an old landless laborer,
Tuki Chhidda, Shishupal Jagdish of Dhamdoj
village (District Gurgaon), who had come to take
his wife back from Bajeda, the three young men
operating the microphone system at the village
square, and young students such as Manu in the
9th standard who were all in jail.
14. It was against this we were shocked to
know that out of 80 persons arrested, most (who
were beaten up and pulled from their houses) were
charged under Section 307. Many other sections,
we were told, are also applied against them.
Seven or eight of them have three cases of Sec
307 and two have four cases as if they tried many
times to commit murder. Eight children below 21
years were amongst those in jail. Obviously all
the cases filed are false and are merely a
strategy to justify the beating and firing by the
police.
15. On visiting the Gaziabad Jail in the
afternoon of July 9th with Raj Babbar, Kunvar
Sareraj Singh, MP, and others, we found that
about 20 persons were hospitalized and almost all
sixty men sitting outside the hospital also had
marks of severe beating. They had pains in the
bodies and many could not even sit or speak
properly. There were aged farmers about 70 years
in age, and some children below 16 years who were
also beaten up above the waist, and on their
backs, hands, and heads.
16. We found that the single doctor in jail
was unable to take care of so many patients with
so many wounds and full treatment had not been
provided until we met them, but the minimum was
taken care of. We saw a number of patients with
their shirts full of blood, indicating the
bleeding they had undergone. They were all
extremely worried about the women and children at
home who were beaten up and some also left
unconscious in front of their eyes.
17. It should also be noted that a press
reporter (Dainik Jagran) and media persons (of
NDTV) were beaten and their equipment damaged,
mainly to suppress information as repeated in the
village.
All this and much more was narrated to us and
observed by us during our full-day investigation
on July 9th. We expect the NHRC to take the
severest action possible against this incidence
of forcible possession and occupation of the land
and everything attached to land, using the
British-days act, from the farmers and others
villagers. Such a war against the farming
communities that are already indebted due to the
unequal price and wage policy, is resulting in
nothing less than killing the living communities.
Development-induced displacement as it may be
called is to be seriously reviewed since affected
people rarely get their due in rehabilitation and
their resources are diverted to fulfill more the
private interests than the public. NHRC must
therefore take a broader view of what is
happening in the name of development that is
pushed by the corporate and political powers
jointly using the money, market and mafia forces.
The state violence against the non-violent
agitations may seem to be bringing the results to
those who are all out to suppress the agitating
farmers but, we would like to warn, can create a
worse problem of land and order unless the
constitutional authorities and the NHRC intervene
with the right spirit to protect the peopleís
rights.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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