US to India: Back the war and share the loot [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- US offering carrots to India on Iraq AUNOHITA MOJUMDAR TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2003 10:55:52 PM ] Times of India NEW DELHI: In an attempt to ensure the Vajpayee government holds its counsel when Iraq is attacked, the US is holding out to India the carrot of a major role in the post-war reconstruction of that country. In an interview with The Times of India, US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill said, We hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels. At pains to address New Delhi's fears that the planned invasion of Iraq would not disadvantage India economically and politically, President Bush has phoned Prime Minister Vajpayee, Secretary of State Powell has spoken to external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha and US National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice has called up her counterpart, Brajesh Mishra. Blackwill has also met Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, Defence Minister George Fernandes and also Mishra in recent days. Blackwill said India with its very well developed successful norms in civil society had a role to play in the construction of civil society in Iraq and economic reconstruction. India, he said, had a comparative advantage over many countries because of three factors: Its vital civil society, its long term ties with Iraq and the fact that India would be welcomed in that situation where not every country would be welcomed. So for all those reasons, we hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels, he said. The ambassador, however, added that detailed discussions on this aspect had not yet been held with the Indian government because the US did not want to give the impression that it was planning in detail for a situation which has not yet happenned. The US now had a very clear perception of India's substantive and serious equities in the region unlike during the 1991 Gulf war, Blackwill said, claiming that India itself had also been able to influence US policy to some degree. Before September, in the summer, India was urging the Bush administration to take the UN route and to try and deal with Saddam Hussein peacefully... and it was one of the nations in the world that the United States listened most closely to and we took the UN route. I would just note the confluence between the president's speech at the UN on the 12th of September when he announced we would seek a UNSC resolution and the fact that he met the Indian PM on the same day. So India certainly had influence, no doubt, on our decision to go to the UNSC. _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bdn7KI.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^
Iraq: We have no intention of attacking anyone [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- October 17, 2002, New York Times Iraq States Its Case By MOHAMMED ALDOURI After so many years of fear from war, the threat of war and suffering, the people of Iraq and their government in Baghdad are eager for peace. We have no intention of attacking anyone, now or in the future, with weapons of any kind. If we are attacked, we will surely defend ourselves with all means possible. But bear in mind that we have no nuclear or biological or chemical weapons, and we have no intention of acquiring them. We are not asking the people of the United States or of any member state of the United Nations to trust in our word, but to send the weapons inspectors to our country to look wherever they wish unconditionally. This means unconditional access anywhere, including presidential sites in accordance with a 1998 signed agreement between Iraq and the United Nations an agreement that ensures respect for Iraq's sovereignty and allows for transparency in the work of the inspectors. We could never make this claim with such openness if we did not ourselves know there is nothing to be found. Still, we continue to read statements by officials of the United States and the United Kingdom that it is not enough that Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and his team of inspectors have unconditional access. They say this is because the Iraqi government may be hiding weapons that will not be found, or is moving weapons from place to place, or is developing new weapons in roving vans or in underground locations. The United Nations officials with whom our government has worked on these matters know that these concerns have no foundation. In December 1998, when the United Nations weapons inspection team left Iraq on the orders of Richard Butler, the chief United Nations arms inspector at the time, it had exhausted all possibilities after seven years of repeatedly examining all possible sites; only small discrepancies existed. It is now widely conceded that Iraq possesses no nuclear weapons and that we could not develop them without building facilities that could be spotted by satellite. Since 1999, we have allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit Iraq. If it wishes, it can inspect any building anywhere. The agency's inspectors will find nothing untoward. Scott Ritter, who led many United Nations inspections, has said that he questions whether Iraq possesses biological weapons. Mr. Ritter also has been on CNN in recent months explaining that his inspection team destroyed plants that could produce chemical weapons. If these plants were reconstructed, Mr. Blix and his team would quickly find them out. Building such weapons costs billions of dollars and requires enormous facilities and huge power sources. The idea that such projects could be moved around in trucks or stashed away in presidential palaces stretches the bounds of imagination. It is my belief that the American people are not aware of this history because, in my opinion and the opinion of my government, no American political figure has been seriously interested in discussing these matters with our government. The United Nations was created in 1945 to provide a forum for nations in conflict to come together to work out their disagreements. It was designed expressly for the purpose of making the use of force an absolute last resort. For more than 11 years, the people of Iraq have suffered under United Nations economic sanctions, which have been kept in place largely by American influence. According to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, these sanctions have caused the death of more than 1.7 million of our citizens. The embargo has been so severe that we have been prevented from importing chemicals needed for our sewage, water and sanitation facilities. At the same time, the last three American presidents have stated that these sanctions could not be lifted as long as our president, Saddam Hussein, remains the nation's leader. Iraq is not a threat to its neighbors. It certainly is not a threat to the United States or any of its interests in the Middle East. Once the United Nations inspection team comes back into my country and gets up to speed, I am confident that it will certify that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction be they chemical, biological or nuclear. Such certification, we hope, will remove the shadow of war and help restore peace between our nations. Mohammed Aldouri is the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations. _ Unlimited Internet access -- and 2 months free! Try MSN. http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/2monthsfree.asp --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here:
RE: War on Iraq: Who Needs It? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I am not a history student, but some of the arguement made in this article can be easily proved to be misleading: in the second case, there was -- arguably -- a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert. [Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- War on Iraq: Who Needs It? By Robert Skidelsky The United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power; its main allies would be content with his disarmament. The United States, therefore, wants to keep the United Nations weapons inspectors out of Iraq; its allies want to get them back in. To reconcile these aims -- at least formally -- is the point of the intense jockeying now going on at the UN. The United States wants a new Security Council resolution so drawn up as to make legal the early use of force. France and Russia, while not opposed to the use of force as a last resort, want to use existing Security Council resolutions to give disarmament a last chance. Britain finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It is co-sponsor with the United States of a resolution whose not-so-hidden aim is to force out Saddam, while being openly committed to nothing more than his regime's disarmament. In one sense the maneuvers at the United Nations are a side show. The United States will go ahead with regime change whatever the UN decides. So the unenviable choice for America's allies is either to accede to the U.S. demand for a new UN resolution that brings about regime change in Iraq -- probably by war -- or to acquiesce in unilateral U.S. action to remove Saddam. No other choice is open, because there is no force capable of stopping the United States. This is the reality of a world with only one superpower. The U.S. draft resolution -- at the time of writing -- makes eight demands on Iraq. Under extreme pressure Iraq might be expected to accept seven of them, but not the one which gives the inspection teams the right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces, i.e. which allows U.S. forces to enter Iraq where and when they want. The technique of demands drawn up to be rejected rather than accepted is not new. On July 23, 1914, Austro-Hungary presented a 10-point ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, giving it 48 hours to reply. Serbia accepted nine points, but not unexpectedly rejected the 10th, which would have allowed Austrian officials to conduct the murder investigation on Serbian territory unhindered. The Austrian invasion of Serbia followed a few days later, and led to World War I. A more recent example, also involving Serbia, was the so-called Rambouillet accord of March 20, 1999. In order to enforce peace and self-government in Kosovo, NATO forces were to enjoy free and ... unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. U.S. bombing started four days after Serbia's rejection of this implementing provision. Monstrous though Saddam Hussein's regime is, there is much less justification for forcing a war on Iraq today than there was for going to war in 1914 or 1999. In the first case, the existence of Serbia did pose a threat to the survival of Austro-Hungary; in the second case, there was -- arguably -- a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert. Today, there exists no legal or security case for a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iraq. Saddam is not a threat to the United States, though he may be a menace to some of his neighbors. He is not an Islamic fundamentalist, and no evidence has been adduced of Iraqi involvement in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. In any case, effective disarmament of the Saddam regime -- a legitimate peace aim following Iraq's expulsion from Kuwait -- can be secured by a toughened inspection regime: Even the much-evaded inspectorate system in place between 1991 and 1998 succeeded in liquidating most of its external military capacity. There is a moral argument for removing any regime which oppresses its own people, whatever international law says. But it is rather late in the day to come up with this in Saddam's case, and in any event, why stop with Iraq? The newly-proclaimed moral argument is simply a pretext for a war desired for other reasons. Why then is the United States so keen on a war against Iraq? Put to one side President George W. Bush's personal motive for finishing Dad's business and vague talk of oil interests. These may play some part in the thinking of the Bush administration but they are not of its essence. The fundamental reasons seem to be three. The first lies in the area of psychological reassurance. The American people
RE: War on Iraq: Who Needs It? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The fact is that NATO caused a humanitarian disaster of hugh proportions when it bombed Yugoslavia in order to dislodge Milosevic. Sandeep -Original Message- From: putnik1915 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 11 October 2002 16:40 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: War on Iraq: Who Needs It? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Dear Sandeep, I certainly hope you are not suggesting that there is even a grain of truth in the statement: ...in the second case, there was -- arguably -- a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert. [Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)] A more accurate statement would be: It is unarguably true that to lessen or minimize the death and destruction in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia, HATO (lead by the brutish US) must be EXCLUDED from Kosovo. Cossack - Original Message - From: Sandeep Vaidya (LMI) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 11:19 Subject: RE: War on Iraq: Who Needs It? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I am not a history student, but some of the arguement made in this article can be easily proved to be misleading: in the second case, there was -- arguably -- a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert. [Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- War on Iraq: Who Needs It? By Robert Skidelsky The United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power; its main allies would be content with his disarmament. The United States, therefore, wants to keep the United Nations weapons inspectors out of Iraq; its allies want to get them back in. To reconcile these aims -- at least formally -- is the point of the intense jockeying now going on at the UN. The United States wants a new Security Council resolution so drawn up as to make legal the early use of force. France and Russia, while not opposed to the use of force as a last resort, want to use existing Security Council resolutions to give disarmament a last chance. Britain finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It is co-sponsor with the United States of a resolution whose not-so-hidden aim is to force out Saddam, while being openly committed to nothing more than his regime's disarmament. In one sense the maneuvers at the United Nations are a side show. The United States will go ahead with regime change whatever the UN decides. So the unenviable choice for America's allies is either to accede to the U.S. demand for a new UN resolution that brings about regime change in Iraq -- probably by war -- or to acquiesce in unilateral U.S. action to remove Saddam. No other choice is open, because there is no force capable of stopping the United States. This is the reality of a world with only one superpower. The U.S. draft resolution -- at the time of writing -- makes eight demands on Iraq. Under extreme pressure Iraq might be expected to accept seven of them, but not the one which gives the inspection teams the right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces, i.e. which allows U.S. forces to enter Iraq where and when they want. The technique of demands drawn up to be rejected rather than accepted is not new. On July 23, 1914, Austro-Hungary presented a 10-point ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, giving it 48 hours to reply. Serbia accepted nine points, but not unexpectedly rejected the 10th, which would have allowed Austrian officials to conduct the murder investigation on Serbian territory unhindered. The Austrian invasion of Serbia followed a few days later, and led to World War I. A more recent example, also involving Serbia, was the so-called Rambouillet accord of March 20, 1999. In order to enforce peace and self-government in Kosovo, NATO forces were to enjoy free and ... unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. U.S. bombing started four days after Serbia's rejection of this implementing provision. Monstrous though Saddam Hussein's regime is, there is much less justification for forcing a war on Iraq today than there was for going to war in 1914 or 1999. In the first case, the existence of Serbia did pose a threat to the survival of Austro-Hungary; in the second case, there was -- arguably -- a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert. Today, there exists no legal or security case for a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iraq. Saddam is not a threat to the United States, though he may be a menace to some of his neighbors. He is not an Islamic fundamentalist, and no evidence has been
Rambouillet -- Part II [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- US hardline on Iraq leaves full-scale invasion a 'hair-trigger' away Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill, and Ian Black in Brussels Thursday October 3, 2002 The Guardian Washington last night revealed its intention to use UN weapons inspections as a possible first step towards a military occupation of Iraq by sending in troops, sealing off exclusion zones and creating secure corridors throughout the country. In a leaked proposal for a UN resolution drafted by the US with help from British officials, the Bush administration is seeking to transform the inspections process into a coercive operation. The resolution would place a full-scale invasion of Iraq on a hair trigger, authorising UN member states to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security if Iraq does so much as make an omission in the weapons inventories it presents to the security council. Weapons inspectors would operate out of bases inside Iraq, where they would be under the protection of UN troops. UN forces or the forces of a member state would enforce no-fly and no-drive zones around a suspected weapons site, preventing anything being removed before inspection. Diplomats at the UN said there was no doubt that US troops would play a leading role in any such enforcement, allowing the Pentagon to deploy forces inside Iraq even before hostilities got under way. The release of the draft helped Washington regain momentum in security council talks a day after Iraq took the initiative by agreeing to inspections under existing UN guidelines. That agreement was welcomed by France and Russia, but dismissed as empty by the US and Britain. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, called the existing guidelines defective. The resolution will be debated over the next few days among the permanent five security council members. President George Bush's negotiating position was bolstered yesterday when the House of Representatives agreed to a war powers resolution handing him open-ended authority to take military action against Iraq. The Senate, where there was tougher opposition to such a blanket authorisation, was reported to be moving towards support of the White House line. Under the US draft, security council member states could send their own inspectors into Iraq to operate alongside the official UN teams and these extra inspectors would have the same rights and protections accorded other members of the team. Member states could also recommend to the UN teams which sites to search and how to do it. Iraqi officials could be taken out of the country, along with their families, for questioning, in order to remove the fear of Iraqi government reprisals. The Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, said there was no need for a new resolution and that the existing resolutions were good enough for inspectors to do their job. John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington military thinktank, said the resolution was worded in such a way that Iraq was almost certain to reject it, even if the alternative was invasion. I could never imagine Iraq agreeing to this. If you're going to be invaded you might as well make the invading force shoot their way in. It's the sort of proposal meant to be rejected, Mr Pike said. British officials said the draft represented more of a discussion paper for the five permanent members than a formal document to be circulated within the full security council. British experts worked alongside their US counterparts at the state department in the early stages of its drafting, but it was then handed to the White House and the Pentagon, who added some of its tougher elements. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: We are not going to comment until final resolutions are published. But it was clear that London was uneasy with some items in the draft, particularly the use of troops to quarantine suspect sites and to guard the inspectors' routes to the sites. One British official pointed out that it was put within square brackets and could be jettisoned later. The intention behind the clause, the official said, was to avoid the situation under earlier inspection regimes whereby inspectors were coming in the front door and kit was moving out the back. Further anxiety about the US position came from Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for external relations. In a speech in Chicago today hewill say: If the US were to fall prey to the temptation to act alone and outside the framework of international order, even for the best of motives, it would be setting off down a very dangerous path. Diplomats in New York and Washington said it was clear there was a split between the state department and the Bush administration's hawks over how far the US should compromise, particularly over the threat of force. The French have proposed an alternative resolution, which would make inspections tougher, but
None will be allowed to challenge us: Ric [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- None will be allowed to challenge us: Rice The Hindu, 27 Sept. 2002 Washington Sept 26. The United States intends to keep its military superiority in the world and will not allow another Soviet Union to rise to challenge that power, a top U.S. administration official has said. ``The U.S. is a very special country in that when we maintain this position of military strength that we have now, we do it in support of a balance of power that favours freedom and indeed we don't want to do it alone,'' said the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice. ``We welcome and hope that there will be military contributions from other likeminded states to maintain that balance of power that favours freedom,'' she said. ``But if it comes to allowing another adversary to reach military parity with the U.S. in the way that the Soviet Union did, no, the U.S. does not intend to allow that to happen, because it happens, there will not be a balance of power that favours freedom,'' she added. PTI _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
THE WORLD MUST STAND BY IRAQ - SAY NO TO BUSH [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The Times of India Online Printed from timesofindia.indiatimes.com Editorial Sep 19, 2002 LEADER ARTICLE Say No To Bush SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2002 12:00:44 AM ] THE WORLD MUST STAND BY IRAQ SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN Heres a simple quiz to mark the anniversary of 9/11. (a) Who is threatening to use aeroplanes to attack civilians and civilian installations like water treatment plants and power stations? (b) Who is refusing to rule out using nuclear weapons in his holy war? (c) Who is using television for a messianic propaganda campaign justifying this plan-ned terrorism? (d) Who is saying his fatwas count for more than international law? The correct answer to all these questions is not Osama bin Laden but George W Bush and the US administration. One year after terrorists killed more than 3,000 innocent people in New York and Washington, the world is waiting nervously not for another murderous strike by Al-Qaida but for the bombs the US plans to drop on the equally innocent people of Iraq. Regardless of the scripted dissension within, the Bush administrations drive to open the Iraqi front in what is wrongly called the War on Terrorism has crossed the point of no return. Massive US-UK air attacks have already taken place at al-Nukhaib, al-Baghdadi and the H-3 air defences in western Iraq. The war is already on. And if you dont believe the nukes threat, consider the August 27 interview given by the ranking US official on arms control, John Bolton, to Fuji-TV. Question: Is it possible that nuclear weapons will be used against Iraq? Bolton: Since theres no decision on the use of military force, theres no decision on exactly how it would be carried out. Washington says the crisis has been provoked by Saddam Husseins failure to allow UN inspectors to certify Iraq has rid itself of all proscribed weapons. News is leaked to scare the world into believing Iraq has nuclear arms. At the same time, Mr Bush openly talks about regime change as if it were the God-given right of the US to decide how the Iraqi people are to be governed. Even on the weapons issue, the dishonesty of the US stand is self-evident. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 687 mandates Iraqi disarmament, and for more than six years the UN Special Commission (Unscom) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited suspected weapons sites in Iraq to ensure compliance. On April 13, 1998, the IAEA certified that Iraq had compiled a full, final and complete account of its previous nuclear projects and that there was no evidence of any prohibited activity. In December 1998, Unscom volun-tarily pulled out of Iraq on the eve of the US attack codenamed Operation Desert Fox. In its last month of inspections, according to Unscom head Richard Butler, the commission carried out as many as 427 inspections and reported Iraqi non- cooperation in only five of these. The truth is the US has never been interested in an objective, UN-run disarmament programme for Iraq. Washington deliberately pushed the limits of Iraqi tolerance by using Unscom inspections for espionage. Rolf Ekeus, a former head of Unscom, told Swedish Radio in July 2002 that at times, intrusive inspections were deliberately used by the US to create a crisis that could possibly form the basis for military action. Scott Ritter a US marine who was part of Unscom and later admitted the CIA used him to spy against Iraq has written that Iraq no longer has chemical and biological weapons programmes. In all of their inspections, the (Unscom) monitors could find no meaningful evidence of Iraqi circumvention of its commitment not to reconstitute its biological weapons program, he wrote in Arms Control Today in June 2000. Eleven years after Iraq was evicted from Kuwait, the country is subject to the tightest regime of economic sanctions ever imposed on any country. Despite the so-called smart sanctions introduced by UNSC resolution 1409 in May this year, Iraqs capacity to provide clean drinking water, electricity and sanitation is hampered by US objections to machinery imports. If food imports and the public distribution system are disrupted by a full-scale US attack, there will be a massive food shortage in Iraq. Every UN resolution mandating Iraqi compliance with disarmament also explicitly states that Iraqs sovereignty has to be respected. The US flouted these resolutions to establish illegal no-fly zones over Iraqi airspace and has bombed the country hundreds of times in the past dec-ade. In March this year, Iraq submitted a list of 19 questions to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Among these were (i) Can the UN guarantee the elimination of the two no-fly zones? (ii) How do you explain the stance of a permanent member of the Security Council which openly calls for the invasion of
Heart of smugness [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Heart of smugness Unlike Belgium, Britain is still complacently ignoring the gory cruelties of its empire Maria Misra Tuesday July 23, 2002 The Guardian So the Belgians are to return to the Heart of Darkness in an attempt finally to exorcise their imperial demons. Stung by another book cataloguing the violence and misery inflicted by King Leopold's empire on the Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century, the state-funded Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels has commissioned a group of historians to pass authoritative judgment on accusations of genocide: forced labour, systematic rape, torture and murder of the Congolese, around 10 million of whom are thought to have died as a consequence. This is not the first time that the Belgian empire has been singled out for censure. Back in the Edwardian era, British humanitarians spilled much ink over its excesses and Conrad's novella was corralled into service to show Leopold's Congo as a sort of horrific other to Britain's more uplifting colonialism. Complacency about Britain's imperial record lingers on. In the post-September 11 orgy of self-congratulation about the west's superiority, Blair's former foreign policy guru, Robert Cooper, and a host of journalistic flag-wavers were urging us not to be ashamed of empire. Cooper insisted empire was as necessary now as it had been in the 19th century. The British empire was, we were assured, a generally well-intentioned attempt to inculcate notions of good government, civilised behaviour and market rationality into less well-favoured societies. Is such a rosy view of British imperialism justified? Many argue that it is. After all, surely the British have less blood on their hands than the French and the Belgians? Wasn't the British addiction to the free market a prophylactic against the horrors of forced labour? And didn't those peculiar class obsessions make them less racist than the rest - silly snobs, but not vicious yobs? And isn't India not only a democracy, but, thanks to the British, one with great railways? Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in some of this, but there's also much wilful smugness. While the complex consequences of colonial economic policy require extended analysis, it is possible to dispel more swiftly the myth that the British Empire, unlike King Leopold's, was innocent of atrocities. It has become a modern orthodoxy that Europe's 20th century was the bloodiest in history and that atrocities must be recorded and remembered by society as a whole. But while a Black Book of Communism has been compiled and everybody is aware of the horrors of nazism, popular historians have been surprisingly uninterested in the dark side of the British Empire. There are exceptions, such as Mike Davis's powerful Late Victorian Holocausts, but much else still lies buried in the academic literature. Davis and others have estimated that there were between 12 and 33 million avoidable deaths by famine in India between 1876 and 1908, produced by a deadly combination of official callousness and free-market ideology. But these were far from being a purely Victorian phenomenon. As late as 1943 around 4 million died in the Bengal famine, largely because of official policy. No one has even attempted to quantify the casualties caused by state-backed forced labour on British-owned mines and plantations in India, Africa and Malaya. But we do know that tens of thousands of often conscripted Africans, Indians and Malays - men, women and children - were either killed or maimed constructing Britain's imperial railways. Also unquantified are the numbers of civilian deaths caused by British aerial bombing and gassing of villages in Sudan, Iraq and Palestine in the 1920 and 1930s. Nor was the supposedly peaceful decolonisation of the British Empire without its gory cruelties. The hurried partition of the Indian subcontinent brought about a million deaths in the ensuing uncontrolled panic and violence. The brutal suppression of the Mau Mau and the detention of thousands of Kenyan peasants in concentration camps are still dimly remembered, as are the Aden killings of the 1960s. But the massacre of communist insurgents by the Scots Guard in Malaya in the 1950s, the decapitation of so-called bandits by the Royal Marine Commandos in Perak and the secret bombing of Malayan villages during the Emergency remain uninvestigated. One might argue that these were simply the unfortunate consequences of the arrival of economic and political modernity. But does change have to come so brutally? There are plenty of examples of wanton British cruelty to chill the blood even of a hardened Belgian. Who, after all, invented the concentration camp but the British? The scandalous conditions in British camps during the Boer war, where thousands of women and children died of disease and malnutrition, are relatively well known. Who
Italy to return obelisk from Queen of Sheba's city [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Italy to return obelisk from Queen of Sheba's city By Anne Penketh 20 July 2002 The Italian government has caved in to Ethiopia's increasingly urgent demands for the return of a historic obelisk in hopes of ending a dispute that has poisoned relations for decades. The Axum obelisk has graced a square in central Rome ever since it was stolen from Ethiopia in 1937 by Mussolini during Italy's brief occupation before the Second World War. But despite signing bilateral agreements promising to return the 3,000-year old granite monument, the Italian government showed no signs of doing so until the obelisk was badly damaged by lightning in a thunderstorm in May. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's colourful junior culture minister, Vittorio Sgarbi, caused a storm himself last year by saying that the obelisk was now an Italian naturalised citizen and should stay where it was. After the lightning strike, he seemed to change his mind, saying: since it has already been damaged we might as well give it back. The incident enraged Ethiopia, which accused Italy of failing to properly protect the obelisk. The thunderstorm smashed the top of the 82-foot high structure, causing stone pieces to crash to the ground. Mr Sgarbi had, as recently as last January, contended that Italy should not give the obelisk back as it would be returning to a war zone where it risked destruction. He expressed fears that the Ethiopian government would not be able to protect and restore the monument. However Ethiopia was having none of it. It galvanised African opinion behind its position at last week's founding conference of the successor organisation to the Organisation of African Unity, the African Union. Richard Pankhurst, the most prominent expert on Ethiopian archaeology, told the BBC last week that the Italian position was a disgrace. One feels that the European Union has a rogue state in its midst, said Professor Pankhurst, who teaches at Addis Ababa university. Yesterday, the Italian government sought to put an end to the festering dispute by announcing after a cabinet meeting that it had started procedures to return the obelisk - stolen from the ancient holy city of Axum. Detailed plans for the journey have already been worked out, including the transfer of the monument in parts on American transport planes. Axum was once the capital of an empire ruled by the Queen of Sheba. Her successors left grand monuments over their burial sites, and it was the grandest of these that Mussolini stole to give his empire some of the feel of the original Roman Empire. * Pope John Paul added his voice to the growing outrage yesterday over the desecration of at least 50 graves at a Jewish cemetery in Rome. Police admitted they had no clear lead as to who was behind the desecration, which took place in the early hours of Thursday and led to fears of an increase in anti-Semitism. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Why Indian actors won't joke (anymore) [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The Times of India Online Why Indian actors won't joke (anymore) AFP [ MONDAY, JULY 22, 2002 2:49:26 PM ] ...OLE_Obj... CHENNAI: Indian movie stars were told on Monday not to crack jokes, sing aloud or flex their muscles while flying to Malaysia and Singapore this week, following an incident in which an Indian actress sparked a terror alert at a US airport. The South Indian Actors Association advised its 200 film stars, among them celluloid villains, to refrain from resorting to mimicry on their way to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore to give a cultural performance. The villains ... have also been told not to flex their muscles or jokingly push around other members as it can raise the suspicion of airline crew, an official of the association said on condition of anonymity. All the members of the group will have a common dress code also, the official said. He said the behaviour code was drawn up because the association did not want to attract the attention of foreign security agencies who have been on alert following the September 11 attacks. Last week, south Indian actress Samyuktha Verma and seven members of her entourage were questioned by US law enforcement agencies after a passenger on board their American Trans Air flight reported that they were indulging in suspicious activity. The actress and other members of the group, who were on their way to New York from Chicago for a cultural function, were seen passing notes, changing seats and mimicking some actors -- apparently as a rehearsal their roles in the event. The aviation authorities in the United States were alerted and the plane was escorted to the airport by two military F-16s. Later they were released after being questionied. Now movie officials are taking no chances. Initially the plan was to take the whole group in one flight. But now the association has decided to split up the artistes into three or four groups, an official of the association said. The cultural show is set for Kuala Lumpur on Friday and in Singapore the day after. Both cities are home to sizeable Indian populations, especially south Indians. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Banks to shut doors on Saudi royal cash [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Banks to shut doors on Saudi royal cash King Fahd is moving large sums through Liechtenstein David Pallister and Owen Bowcott in Liechtenstein Wednesday July 17, 2002 The Guardian Western banks may refuse deposits from members of the Saudi royal family under guidelines drawn up to identify politically exposed wealthy individuals whose assets could in future be confiscated. The move comes as details emerge of how King Fahd - head of the dynasty and one of the world's richest men - has transferred large sums through anonymous trusts in Liechtenstein where secrecy laws allow the Alpine mini-state to function as a bolt hole for rich clients. The Guardian has found that the banks, notably in Switzerland, are increasingly wary. We do not accept business from politicians in controversial countries, said one banker. Some banks take the view that we will not have anything to do with members of the Saudi royal family, said a source close to the Wolfsberg group, an alliance of 11 major banks - including HSBC, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and the Dutch company ABN Amro - which convened to combat money laundering. The anxiety of the banks follows the embarrassing experience of having to trace and hand back vast fortunes looted by such notorious former dictators as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Joseph Mobutu in Zaire, and General Sani Abacha in Nigeria. All three salted away private funds overseas which were later recovered by successor governments. Marcos reportedly plundered between £3bn and £12.5bn before he was ousted; Mobutu exploited his impoverished state's natural resources to extract some £2.5bn before his death; while Gen Abacha and his associates took up to £2bn from the national finances, says the Nigerian government. Last year the Basel committee on banking supervision, which is an influential international body, defined politically exposed persons (Peps) as those entrusted with prominent public functions, including heads of state or of government. Accepting and managing funds from corrupt Peps will severely damage the bank's own reputation... even if the illegal origin of the assets is difficult to prove, the committee warned. It added: The bank may be subject to costly information requests and seizure orders from law enforcement. If the big banks decide to shun royal Saudi money it would be a huge blow to the House of Saud's prestige, reinforcing fears that the regime is less stable after September 11 and vulnerable to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Although the sums invested abroad by King Fahd may not be the product of corruption under current Saudi law, they may nevertheless be caught by the banks' new policy. Professor Mark Pieth of Basel university, a consultant to the Wolfsberg meeting in Zurich which drew up anti-money laundering guidelines, confirms that a sub-group has been established to consider such politically exposed clients. They're looking at this issue very closely already with the Saudis, he said. It would be down to individual banks to decide whether to refuse new Saudi accounts. Stanley Morris, an expert on money laundering at Interpol who also attended the Wolfsberg meeting, said that guidelines would identify those individuals so politically exposed that they constituted an excessive banking risk. The 6,000 Saudi royals form a privileged caste whose collective overseas funds are thought to amount to £400bn. The ailing King Fahd is believed to have personally acquired at least £20bn. Critics accuse them of greed and corruption on a grand scale but the royal family maintains that its wealth was legally acquired under the laws of the land. Dr Saad Al-Fagih, the London-based head of the non-violent dissident group, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, said: The way the country is run gives the royal family full chance to confiscate as much money as [it wants]. One of the secretive Liechtenstein trusts, the Asturion Foundation, has been used by King Fahd for over 25 years to shelter his money abroad. It constitutes a legal entity that holds bank accounts of which he is the beneficiary; it also owns his worldwide property portfolio. It is not known exactly how much money the foundation holds but among the assets registered in Britain under the foundation's name is Kenstead Hall, a mock Tudor mansion in north London's Billionaire's Row - The Bishop's Avenue in Hampstead. Two years ago, the international Financial Action Task Force blacklisted Liechtenstein for failing to combat money laundering in general. It was taken off the list in June last year after improving its regulatory regime. Earlier this year, however, the principality, along with six other countries, was placed on another blacklist of uncooperative tax havens by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. It now faces penalties from world financial institutions
Al Jazeera reporter expelled [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- ...OLE_Obj... Date:08/07/2002 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2002/07/08/stories/2002070805360102.htm Front Page ../01hdline.htm Scribe asked to leave India New Delhi July 7. Apparently unhappy with his reporting on Kashmir and Gujarat, India has ordered the Al Jazeera correspondent, Nasir M. Shadid, to leave the country within a week, sources said today. Al Jazeera, which won international popularity for its exclusives on the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, in the wake of the September 11 attacks and during the Afghan war, will, however, continue to air its Indian news as another correspondent, Rifat, will take over. The channel was informed by External Affairs Ministry officials that Shadid was not welcome in India. - UNI © Copyright 2000 - 2002 The Hindu --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Concern for safety of Human Rights Activist [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- ASSOCIATION FOR PROTECTION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS 18, Madan Boral Lane,Calcutta, 700 012 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 237 6459 Concern for safety of Human Rights Activist Dear friends, At about 1 AM on Monday, June 24, a large contingent of armed police and paramilitary forces raided the house of Prof. Arup Dasgupta, vice-president of APDR Midnapore branch and head of the department of English, Kharagpur College, in Midnapore town. They could not show any warrant when Dasgupta demanded and forcibly searched his house, claiming that his telephone number had been found in the diary of a CPI(ML) People's War activist. Dasgupta argued that he was well known as a human rights worker and it was not unusual for any political activist to have his phone number. The police, however, refused to listen and reprimanded him for keeping a large amount of Marxist literature in his residence. All these were classical Marxist books and pamphlets and legal publications of various organisations ranging from the CPI(ML) to the SUCI. The police confiscated a few of these and gave a seizure list: 1. A copy of the magazine Biplabi Yug, Vol. II, No. 10, October 2001; 2. A copy of the book Shahid Smarane -- Glimpses of the Lives of the Martyrs of Naxalbari; 3. Eleven issues of a literary magazine, Sanghat, published by Dasgupta; and 4. A copy of the book From Marx to Mao Tse-Tung, by George Thomson. A case number ( Goaltore PS Case No. 62/01) was written on top of the seizure list. The officer-in-charge of Goaltore police station, West Midnapore, who was in the team, told Dasgupta to come to his police station on Tuesday to face an interrogation by the superintendent of police. Only a few hours earlier, around 4:30 PM on June 23, Dasgupta had visited the Goaltore police station as a member of an APDR fact-finding team probing the complaint of a fake encounter in the area, in which an alleged member of the CPI(ML) People's War was killed. The team also toured other parts of the district from where many complaints of human rights abuses were received. The APDR strongly believes that the police raid was an effort by the state agencies to terrorise human rights activists. They wanted to make an example out of Arup Dasgupta. Your are aware that a number of APDR activists are already implicated in false cases and have even faced violent police attacks in various districts. Please voice your concern immediately to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (Fax: 91 33 214 5480) and circulate this message among all concerned. In solidarity, Tapas Chakraborty General secretary APDR --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^ tech.gif Description: GIF image
Fwd: [casi] John Sweeney's latest propaganda pieces [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Correspondent, BBC1, 7:15 PM in Ireland, June 23, Sunday From: Voices uk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CASI discussion list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 09:55:33 +0100 Dear folks, Long time pro-sanctions propagandist - and advocate of military action against Baghdad falling only just short of nuclear attack - John Sweeney has made a programme about Iraq which will be screened in the BBC2 Correspondent slot this Sunday evening (probably sometime between 7pm and 8pm - I don't have a TV schedule to hand). A taster is provided by the following, an edited version of a 5 minute broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. The basic line of the broadcast was that the only Iraqi children who are 'dying because of sanctions' are in the northern governorates. At the same time the North / south disparities were wheeled out to prove that sanctions aren't implicated in the public health crisis. There was also some veiled innuendo suggesting that UNICEF's '99 surveys were somehow manipulated by the Iraqi Government. Much of the rest of the content of the broadcast - eg. the material about GoI human rights abuses - clearly had no bearing on the question 'are economic sanctions a major factor in the humanitarian crisis in south / central Iraq?' In any event Sweeney prefers not to answer this question, preferring to focus on the, questions: 'are Iraqi Government claims that 7000 children are dying every month because of sanctions true?' and 'are the mass child funerals in Iraq faked?', neither of which has any bearing on the anti-sanctions case. There will be a live forum with Mr Sweeney at 1500 BST on Monday 24th June and you can e-mail your questions using the form at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/correspondent/newsid_ 2053000/2053620.stm Sweeney writes for the Observer so I would expect a tie-in piece in Sunday's Observer. Best wishes, Gabriel voices uk ** Friday, 21 June, 2002, 18:06 GMT 19:06 UK The mother of all ironies A few weeks after 11 September Osama Bin Laden justified the attack by saying that western sanctions had killed one million Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein's regime says 7,000 children are dying every month. Labour MP George Galloway says that an Iraqi child has died every six minutes for the last 12 years. John Sweeney has been to the north of Iraq, where he found evidence that Saddam's sums don't add up. Ali, was a thick-set Iraqi who used to work for Saddam's psychopathic son, Uday. Some time after the bungled assassination of Uday, Ali fell under suspicion. So he fled Baghdad - going north, to the Kurdish safe haven policed by western fighter planes,. I've been to Baghdad. Being in Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine. The fear is so omni-present you could almost eat it. No one talks. So listening to Ali speak freely was a revelation. He's not, exactly, a contender to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. He had the heft of an enforcer. He told me that he had tortured for the regime. But I don't think he was lying to us. Ali talked about the paranoid frenzy that rules Baghdad, the tortures, the killings, the corruption, the crazy gangster violence of Saddam and his two sons. And the faking of the mass baby funerals. You may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq. Usefully, the ages of the dead babies - three days old, four days old - are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did that? Ali gave us the inside track on the racket. There aren't enough dead babies around. So the regime stores them for a mass funeral. He said that he was friends with a taxi driver - he gave his name - whose son had a position in the regime. Ali continued: he told me that he had to go to Najaf - a town 100 miles from Baghdad - in order to bring children's bodies from various freezers there, and that the smell was unbearable. They used to collect children's bodies and put them in freezers for two, three or even six or seven months - God knows - till the smell gets so unbearable. Then, they arrange the mass funerals. The logic being, the more dead babies, the better for Saddam. That way, he can weaken public support in the west for sanctions. That means that parents who have lost a baby can't bury it until the regime says so. So how could it be that people would put up with this sickening exploitation of grief? Uday took out a wooden cosh and beat the tennis player's brains out. Ali told another story. He'd seen Uday kill with his own eyes. This was some years ago, before the assassination attempt left Saddam's oldest son half-paralysed and impotent. Uday's lust is famous in Baghdad. He wanted a woman who played tennis at Baghdad's Sports Club, so he and Ali went to the
Fwd: Re: [no-sanctions] Fwd: [casi] John Sweeney's latest propaganda pieces [W
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 4.5 (0410) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 12:47:06 +0100 Subject: Re: [no-sanctions] Fwd: [casi] John Sweeney's latest propaganda pieces From: farbuthnot [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Sandeep Vaidya [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sandeep - here's a question to Sweeney - if I do it they'll blank me. Sweeney says 'I have been in Iraq...' Sweeney was there in February 1998 when Karen Robinson and I were there to cover the bombing (which didn't take place and happened in December instead as we know) he hitched a lift on Kofi Annan's plane 'forgetting' to apply for an Iraq visa (as one does ...!!) and the Iraqis threw him out within about 24 hours (they had had a rash of Mossad operators getting in presenting BBC credentiials etc and were even more paranoid than usual.) Question to Sweeney along lines of: hown many times has he been in south/central Iraq and you understand that he ... as above and was thus deported. Is this true? fxx --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Fwd: [casi] Sweeney piece from today's Observer [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Milan Rai [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CASI Discussion Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 09:56:04 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 Subject: [casi] Sweeney piece from today's Observer Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-BeenThere: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.8 List-Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=help List-Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Subscribe: http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=subscribe List-Id: CASI Discussion List casi-discuss.lists.casi.org.uk List-Unsubscribe: http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe Dear folks, Here's the Sweeney piece from today's Observer. Letters should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (remember to include your address and telephone number). Letters should be sent to the Observer by Tuesday evening at the latest. Four brief comments: a) Sweeney claims that the regime has faked 'mass baby funerals' in Iraq. This may well be true but is clearly totally irrelevant to the questions 'has there been a dramatic increase in child mortality in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War?' and 'if there has been such an increase what are its causes?' Similar remarks apply to Sweeney's allegations regarding human rights abuses in Iraq. b) Again, the Iraqi Government's own figures (as distinct from the UNICEF survey data - see below) *are* almost certainly incorrect. However again this is clearly irrelevant to any of the serious questions that arise about the public health impact of the sanctions. Sweeney's clear intention throughout the piece is to attempt to identify, in the minds of his readers, the anti-sanctions position with the Iraqi Government. In doing so he ignores the views of a wide range of highly credible organisations and individuals (eg. Save the Children, Human Rights Watch and Hans von Sponeck) who have spoken out on the issue. c) Sweeney breezily rubbishes the conclusions of the August '99 joint UNICEF - GoI child mortality survey, writing that it is 'open to question. It was based on data from within a regime which tortures children with impunity. All but one of the researchers used by UNICEF were employees of the Ministry of Health, according to the Lancet.' In reality it is only apologists for the sanctions, such as Mr Sweeney, who 'question' the reliability of these surveys. Indeed, UNICEF were careful to guard themselves against such allegations. The following is the relevant extract from their August '99 document 'Questions and Answers for the Iraq child mortality surveys' (available on the CASI web-site at http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/unicef/000816qa.html ) * Q: How can UNICEF be sure that the results are accurate/reliable? A: The large sample sizes - nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all fifteen governorates in the south and center and 16,000 from the three autonomous northern governorates - helps to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys is low. Another important factor was that in the south and center of Iraq the survey interviewers were all women and all were medical doctors. In the northern governorates 80% of interviewers were female - each team had at least one female interviewer - and all interviewers were trained health workers. UNICEF was also involved in all aspects of both surveys - from survey design through to data analysis. Specifically: UNICEF had direct input to the design of the surveys - which are based on internationally respected household survey format - the DHS (Demographic and Health Survey) format; UNICEF was involved in the training of all survey supervisors; UNICEF conducted field visits to every governorate (major administrative unit in Iraq) while the survey was being conducted; UNICEF oversaw the process of data entry; UNICEF had full access to the hard copies of the interview records and the complete data sets for both surveys at all times. Q: What checks have been made on the data? A: Each questionnaire was first checked at the local level and then at the governorate level by staff of the local statistical offices. This check was primarily to determine whether the randomly sampled households were correctly identified, visited and interviewed. Final editing and checking was done at the central level for completeness and consistency. A number of internal checks normally carried out for Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) were also completed for both surveys. The surveys and findings were also reviewed by a panel of experts in early July. This panel included senior personnel from DHS, Macro International, WHO and senior UNICEF offici als from the Regional Office in Amman and New York Headquarters. Q: Could the Government of Iraq have manipulated the data to give higher mortality
Gujarat violence backed by state, says EU report [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Gujarat violence backed by state, says EU report By Edna Fernandes in New Delhi Published: April 29 2002 18:15 | Last Updated: April 29 2002 18:37 A European Union investigation into India's worst race riots in a decade has concluded that the violence was not spontaneous but a pre-planned policy involving state ministers to purge Muslims and destroy their economy, according to an internal report by EU embassies in Delhi. The report provides one of the most damning indictments yet on the Gujarat riots, which have killed almost 900 people, mostly Muslims, in a matter of weeks. One EU source said the report pointed to ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the state and that there was clear evidence of complicity by state ministers. The report has been submitted to the 15 EU governments who will decide what action to take and how to raise their concerns at next week's EU-India summit in Delhi. Gujarat is one of the items on the summit agenda. I imagine we will express concern about everything in our report, including evidence of a purge, said the EU source. If that fails to yield a dialogue, further measures will have to be considered, he said. The disclosure is sure to put further pressure on India's Hindu nationalist BJP-led government, which faces an opposition censure motion in parliament today over its handling of the riots. On Monday Ram Vilas Paswan, the minister for coal, resigned in protest, marking the first formal split in the fragile coalition over the issue. Mr Paswan's Lok Jan Shakti party has four seats in parliament. Atal Behari Vajpayee, prime minister, hit back at foreign criticism last week, accusing the international community of meddling in India's internal affairs. But that position was becoming harder to justify this week amid mounting evidence that the violence was pre-planned and state-backed. Last week some western diplomats described events in Gujarat as genocide for the first time. While the EU report stopped short of using that word, it clearly implied there was a policy of ethnic cleansing. The pattern of violence suggests the purpose was to purge Muslims from Hindu and mixed Hindu/Muslim areas, said a copy of the final draft seen by the Financial Times. Muslim businesses were systematically targeted and destroyed. On the role of BJP state officials in Gujarat, it said: Ministers took active part in the violence . . . senior police officers were instructed not to intervene in the rioting. Until now, the BJP central government has said the revenge riots were ignited by a fatal arson attack on a train carrying Hindu activists at Godhra. That attack, which killed 59 people, was blamed on Muslims. But the EU report, based on investigations by a number of individual member states that sent staff to the region, - including Germany, Britain and the Netherlands - said Godhra was no more than a pretext for Hindu mob violence, which was planned months before. Diplomatic sources said free swords were being distributed by Hindu activists days before the riots began. The true death toll was put at more than 2,000 and 140,000 people are estimated to be refugees as a result of the attacks. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch published its own verdict on Gujarat which appeared to back the EU's findings. What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising. It was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims, said the group, adding that the state and police were complicit. On Monday, a group of Gujarat victims came to Delhi to tell their stories. Dilawer, a nine-year-old boy, told how his parents were killed. They spread water. A naked wire was there. My mother died of electric shock. They burned my father also. Another victim, Feeroz Bhai, told how he watched a Hindu mob use a sword to cut out his unborn child from his eight-month pregnant wife, killing them both. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Urgent Request for Help from Gujarat [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 28 April 2002 18:09 Subject: Urgent Request for Help from Gujarat Some friends working to provide legal help to victims of violence in Gujarat sent following request. Please do let me know if you have any suggestions / information. Particularly if you know lawyers who are familiar and able to provide us more info on following please do let me know. Thanks in advance, Jagdish * How can victims of Gujarat Carnage use UN mechanisams to get justice? * Contact / Information about possibilities of using U.S. Alien Torts law to bring cases against all those were responsible for violence in Gujarat. * How far it is possible to use universal jurisdiction of European countries and /or using the genocide convention in case of violence in Gujarat. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Fascism's firm footprint [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020506fname=Roy+%28F%29sid=1) OUTLOOK INDIA, Magazine | May 06, 2002 ESSAY Democracy Who's she when she's at home? ARUNDHATI ROY Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved 'OM' on her forehead. Precisely which Hindu scripture preaches this? Our Prime Minister justified this as part of the retaliation by outraged Hindus against Muslim 'terrorists' who burned alive 58 Hindu passengers on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra. Each of those who died that hideous death was someone's brother, someone's mother, someone's child. Of course they were. . (click on the link) --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Fwd: speechless [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 4.5 (0410) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 11:23:22 +0100 Subject: speechless From: farbuthnot [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] , [EMAIL PROTECTED] , [EMAIL PROTECTED] , [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi - On BBC Radio 5 Breakfast this am, the head of Amnesty (whose name I missed) was interviewed, her delegation had just got into Jenin. Pretty pathetic she was, but I put it down to not wanting to be thrown out again, byt the IDF, until she said, the human rights violations they were investigating included: 'not giving enough notice to those whose homes were to be demolished. Could have been 'not giving notice to those whose homes were demolished ... I was so gobsmacked my mental playback deserted me! Scuse me I am 99% certain I didn't mishear, perhaps someone less illiterate than I is smart enought to access the BBC and check! best, f. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS America's big dirty secret (Le Mode diplomatique, March 2002) The United States loudly and proudly boasted this month of its new bomb currently being used against al-Qaida hold-outs in Afghanistan; it sucks the air from underground installations, suffocating those within. The US has also admitted that it has used depleted uranium weaponry over the last decade against bunkers in Iraq, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan. by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS * The immediate concern for medical professionals and employees of aid organisations remains the threat of extensive depleted uranium (DU) contamination in Afghanistan. This is one of the conclusions of a 130-page report, Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan? (1), by Dai Williams, an independent researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of more than a year of research into DU and its effects on those exposed to it. Using internet sites of both NGOs (2) and arms manufacturers, Williams has come up with information that he has cross-checked and compared with weapons that the Pentagon has reported indeed boasted about using during the war. What emerges is a startling and frightening vision of war, both in Afghanistan and in the future. Since 1997 the United States has been modifying and upgrading its missiles and guided (smart) bombs. Prototypes of these bombs were tested in the Kosovo mountains in 1999, but a far greater range has been tested in Afghanistan. The upgrade involves replacing a conventional warhead by a heavy, dense metal one (3). Calculating the volume and the weight of this mystery metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is either tungsten or depleted uranium. Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C) makes it very hard to work; it is expensive; it is produced mostly by China; and it does not burn. DU is pyrophoric, burning on impact or if it is ignited, with a melting point of 1,132°C; it is much easier to process; and as nuclear waste, it is available free to arms manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of weapons significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage problem. This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of reinforced concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped with a detonator controlled by a computer that measures the density of the material passed through and, when the warhead reaches the targeted void or a set depth, detonates the warhead, which then has an explosive and incendiary effect. The DU burns fiercely and rapidly, carbonising everything in the void, while the DU itself is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. Although only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is oxidised, the DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most of the dust particles produced measure less than 1.5 microns, small enough to be breathed in. For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over the use of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got side-tracked. Instead of asking what weapons might have been used against most of the targets
Revulsion grows toward Vajpayee's party [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- ALLEGED BJP TOLERANCE OF BRUTALITY Revulsion grows toward Vajpayee's party By B. GAUTAM Special to The Japan Times NEW DELHI -- India's secularism is in flames. The western Indian state of Gujarat, perhaps the most economically prosperous region in the entire country, has been in the midst of communal carnage for many weeks now. The majority Hindu population there has been systematically butchering members of the minority Muslim group in what is ironically considered the land of peace. It is in Gujarat that Mahatma Gandhi was born, the man who won India its independence from British rule in 1947 through nonviolence, which he chose to describe as ahimsa, a word coined thousands of years ago by Gautama Buddha. Gandhi's ashram pacifist colony stands to this day in Ahmedabad, the city that has been witnessing horrific brutality. Just one incident is enough to highlight this. Last week, a Muslim woman on her eighth month of pregnancy was seized by a Hindu mob, her abdomen ripped open and her fetus scooped out and thrown into a fire. The United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned the Gujarat atrocities, and said that they were as bad as -- if not worse than -- what happened in Nazi Germany, where Hitler and his men killed 6 million Jews in carrying out his Final Solution. Curiously, in what is seen as an abject exercise to tutor the young and the impressionable in the Nazi doctrine of extermination, students of Class 12 in Gujarat appearing for their final examination were asked a question on Hitler's ruthless methodology. As part of an English grammar exercise, the boys and girls were asked to join the following sentences into one: There are two solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you do not like people, kill them, segregate them. Then strut up and down. Proclaim that you are the salt of the Earth. In Gujarat where hundreds of innocent Muslim men and women have been murdered, the perversion of an educational exercise appears to be part of a provocation process, which understandably led to an uproar not just within the nation, but also outside. Finland has made a strong protest over the handling of the Gujarat massacres, ignoring Indian accusation of interference in internal affairs. In Britain, cases have been filed in court calling for the extradition of Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister and a leader of the Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP, which heads the national coalition government in New Delhi, can find itself on a sticky wicket, because the U.K. is in a strong position to pursue the demand, given the fact that a few British citizens are among those dead in Gujarat. The Economist news magazine, in a strong indictment of the Gujarat barbarism, has called the BJP shameless. It adds: The BJP has for several years seemed to treat its Hindu nationalist ideology as a political liability. Now, when that ideology is showing its dangerous and shameful side, the party has suddenly chosen to reaffirm it. The atrocities began as a revenge for an attack by Muslims on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. About 60 of them were burned to death. In retaliation, hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat were slaughtered, and according to independent reports and eyewitness accounts, Hindu mobs were incited and the killings were orchestrated by the Modi administration itself. Yet, the nationalist BJP has been resisting just about every conceivable move to have Modi removed from chief ministership. Supporting him in a shocking display of bad judgment is India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose reputation for misplaced tolerance has until now endeared the BJP, which he heads, to most coalition members. The massacres are condemnable he said, But who lit the fire and how did it spread? Understandably, this has produced a sense of revulsion among the nation's opposition parties, which refused to let Parliament function for days until it was agreed that Gujarat would be on the table for a debate and vote on April 30. The Vajpayee government is bound to face uncomfortable questions that day. With even some of his own coalition partners perturbed and angry over the massacres, Vajpayee could soon well be in hot water. His party's directive to Modi hold early elections in the troubled state, and the national BJP's tryst with the Indian electorate in 2004, when the current term of Parliament ends, seem to point to an uncertain future for the Hindu nationalist party. The Japan Times: April 26, 2002 (C) All rights reserved --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
Muslims trapped by India's apartheid [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Muslims trapped by India's apartheid Gujarat's Hindu nationalist chief minister, Narendar Modi, holds the media responsible for the cycle of communal bloodletting, but the blame lies largely at his doorstep, writes Luke Harding The Guardian, London Tuesday April 23, 2002 When will the violence in Gujarat stop? Judging by the horrific events of this weekend, not yet. Nearly two months after communal rioting first broke out in India's most infamous state, there were more deaths in Gujarat. Some 17 people were killed and at least 100 injured in fresh Hindu-Muslim clashes. The state's main city Ahmedabad continues to burn. A group of Muslims dragged a police constable into a lane and stabbed him to death on Sunday. The police responded by going on a killing spree, shooting dead at least six Muslims in the Gomtipur area of the city. They included an 18-year-old girl, Nazimabanu Mehmood Hussain, and her 42-year-old father. She and the other victims of what is euphemistically known as police firing were shot in the head at point blank range. The depressing cycle of violence follows a now-familiar pattern in which Gujarat's partisan Hindu police force - instead of trying to stop the violence - trains its guns on India's minority community. The response of Gujarat's unrepentant Hindu nationalist chief minister, Narendar Modi, has been to blame the media. In full-page adverts in Sunday's Indian newspapers Mr Modi accuses his critics of malicious propaganda. They have tarnished Gujarat's reputation by spreading untruths, he says. Few people outside India's ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) - of which Mr Modi is a member - share this view. Last week a leaked report compiled by senior diplomats at the British high commission in New Delhi squarely pointed the finger of blame for the violence at Mr Modi and his administration. The report also suggested that the official death toll - 800 - was a gross underestimate. A truer figure was 2,000, with the vast majority of dead Muslims, the report noted. Extremist Hindu organisations began preparing an attack against the state's Muslim community well before the Godhra tragedy, in which a Muslim mob burned to death 56 Hindus on a train, the report added. In a declaration to be made public this week, the European Union compares events in Gujarat since February 27 with the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The carnage in Gujarat was a kind of apartheid ... and has parallels with Germany of the 1930s, the declaration says. While secular Indians have been appalled by the epic scale of the retaliatory destruction in Gujarat, Mr Modi has become a hero among hardliners within the BJP and its Hindu revivalist allies. It is this, perhaps, which explains why India's BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had refused to give in to persistent demands from the opposition to sack the defiant Mr Modi. It seems that many in the BJP and its revanchist sister organisations feel that India's Muslims have finally got the beating they deserve. The Muslims have to be taught a lesson, once and for all, Pravin Togadiya, the secretary general of the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), opined on Sunday. Mr Vajpayee clearly finds the violence embarrassing. India's reputation internationally has suffered badly. New Delhi's previously plausible argument that the problem of extremism was one that only affected its archrival Pakistan now seems hollow. But with the BJP in deep electoral trouble, many within the ruling party believe that continuing Hindu-Muslim unrest is the best way to consolidate its Hindu vote bank and bounce back to victory in a general election scheduled for 2004. India's ultra-nationalist home minister LK Advani - seen by many as a successor to Mr Vajpayee - has defended Mr Modi. The bodies have continued to pile up, but Mr Advani has maintained a sphinx-like silence, which appears to hint at approval. Several of the prime minister's secular coalition partners, meanwhile, have also demanded Mr Modi's dismissal. But they have refrained from pulling the plug on the government, realising that loss of office, which an early general election would bring, means loss of influence, power, and money. With more deaths every day Mr Modi's declaration in yesterday's Indian newspapers that Peace is our collective responsibility seems nothing more than a sick joke. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Long Arm of the Law [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=7711349 Long Arm of the Law [ TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2002 2:32:16 AM ] Editorial: Times of India The news that relatives of the three British citizens killed in the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat last month are going to move the British courts for justice is at once an indictment of the Indian judicial system and a warning to politicians that `national sovereignty' cannot shield them from justice if they commit crimes against humanity. It is by no means certain that the British high court will admit such a case, although lawyers for the three families say they are marshalling compelling evidence. To the extent that world opinion is growing against the Gujarat government and chief minister Narendra Modi - the European Union has reportedly condemned the carnage as apartheid, with parallels to 1930s Germany - a British magistrate could conceivably initiate steps embarrassing to both the Vajpayee and Blair governments. When a Spanish magistrate asked the British courts to extradite the visiting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the matter went all the way up to the Law Lords who finally upheld the legality of sending Pinochet to face trial in Spain. The evidence Judge Baltazar Garzon in Spain had against Pinochet was not much more detailed or precise than what human rights groups have collected on Mr Modi and his government. What saved the day for Pinochet was the political decision taken by then British home secretary Jack Straw, who vetoed the extradition on `health' grounds. In the Gujarat case, Britain is sure to side with the Vajpayee government, saving Mr Modi the trouble of checking into a hospital with `chest pain'. Nevertheless, the thought that he could be questioned by investigators the next time he travels to Britain or Europe will probably weigh heavily on his mind. Whether countries like it or not, an international legal architecture to deal with gross violations has begun to emerge in the aftermath of the mass killing of civilians by all sides in the Bosnian and Croatian civil wars which tore apart the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, the framework is rather ad hoc. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) established by the UN Security Council has proved to be politically biased, indicting former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic for causing civilian deaths, but not the commanders of NATO for deliberately killing civilians as part of their illegal war on Yugoslavia in 1999. The new International Criminal Court (ICC) will come into being in July 2002 despite the objection of the US, which fears its soldiers and leaders might one day be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. India too is opposed to the ICC for largely the same reason. The growing assertiveness of national courts is yet another part of the emerging international legal framework for dealing with serious crimes. In India today, for example, a terrorist crime committed against an Indian citizen in another country is a prosecutable offence in our national courts. If the Vajpayee government finds the idea of a foreign court prosecuting Indian citizens - including BJP and VHP leaders - for the killings which have taken place in Gujarat distasteful, the best way to respond would be to ensure the guilty are prosecuted and punished here. The NHRC has asked for the CBI to probe certain massacre cases in Gujarat and for fast-track courts. At a minimum, the government must act on these demands. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Frantic search for British sons lost in Gujarat riots [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Frantic search for British sons lost in Gujarat riots Fears that 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, have died since unrest began Luke Harding in New Delhi Wednesday April 24, 2002 The Guardian The mothers of British Muslim cousins who disappeared when they were caught up in the communal riots in Gujarat nearly two months ago said last night that they had no intention of leaving India until they knew what had happened to them. Shakheel and Sayed Dawood, who were on holiday in India, were dragged from their Jeep by a Hindu mob 45 miles from the state's main city, Ahmedabad. Their nephew, Imran, escaped but a family friend and the driver were killed. Ayesha and Rabia Dawood, from Batley, West Yorkshire, are camping out in their ancestral village, Lajpore. They have distributed pamphlets and contacted relief camps where those left homeless by the riots are sheltering, but have found no trace of the two men. Shakheel's father, Abdulhai, who has lived in England since 1959, told the Indian Express: My son even showed the rioters his passport, telling them he wasn't an Indian national but they wouldn't listen. Their names on the passport damned them. Their disappearance is a further embarrassment to the Indian government, already much criticised for letting the riots continue. A report by the British high commission in New Delhi, leaked last week, blamed the continuing violence in the state on its chief minister, Narender Modi, and his government, and suggested that the official death toll of 855 was a gross underestimate. A truer figure was 2,000, mainly Muslims, it suggested. The Dawood families are awaiting the result of DNA tests on human remains found at the scene. If the men are confirmed dead, the relatives may sue the Indian government in the British courts. Gujarat continued to smoulder yesterday. Another 17 people were killed at the weekend, and 100 injured. The dead included 10 Muslims shot in the head at point-blank range by police officers, apparently killed in revenge for one of their colleagues who was dragged into an alley and stabbed to death. Three more people died in Ahmedabad yesterday. The Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has so far refused to give in to persistent opposition demands to sack Mr Modi, who belongs to the same Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. While secular Indians have been appalled by the destruction, Mr Modi has become a hero to hardliners in the BJP and its Hindu revivalist allies. The Gujarat state government promised yesterday that the latest police shootings would be investigated. The home secretary, K Nityanandam, said the inquiry would begin once he had learned more. I need to take down full details from the officers of the concerned place, he said. But preliminary reports definitely reveal that most of these victims were shot by the police on their heads. Few outside the BJP have much confidence in his findings. Since the rioting broke out after 59 Hindus were burned to death when a Muslim mob set fire to a train, Mr Modi's government has been accused of deliberately failing to stop Hindu gangs burning, stabbing and raping their Muslim neighbours. About 100,000 Muslims whose homes have been destroyed are living in relief camps and have received little or no help. Mr Modi has accused his critics of spreading malicious propaganda. The row about the violence has paralysed the Indian parliament for more than a week. It has also dented India's reputation internationally. While Britain has maintained a diplomatic silence on the affair, and expressed only concern, other countries have been more damning. The Indian foreign ministry has responded by telling them to mind their own business. Since the September 11 attacks, New Delhi has argued that extremism is an Islamic problem which afflicts only its neighbour and rival, Pakistan: a claim that seems increasingly hollow given the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. But with the BJP in deep electoral trouble, many of its members believe that continuing Hindu-Muslim unrest is the best way to win back wobbling Hindu voters before the next general election in 2004. The leaked British report said that extremist Hindu groups were already planning to attack Gujarat's Muslim community well before the fatal assault on the train at Godhra on February 27. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Modi to be sued for genocide in London [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Modi to be sued for genocide in London http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=7486040 RASHMEE Z AHMED TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002 8:27:32 PM ] LONDON: Britain-based Gujaratis are working alongside the British government to bring three cases in three separate courts across Europe against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The cases, which are to be filed separately in the British High Court, the Belgian courts and, possibly, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, are expected to compliment two other proposed cases against Modi and his administration in India and the US. The charges, ranging from complicity with murder to genocide, could, theoretically, lead to a formal request for Modi's extradition, as seemed likely when Belgian court officials recently held preliminary hearings in a genocide case against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Belgian law, unique and controversially, allows its courts to hear cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity no matter where they are carried out or by whom. Sulaiman Qazi, solicitor and cousin of British national Mohammed Aswat who was killed near Ahmedabad, says that the British government is cooperating fully in the preparation of the case, which could be filed in as little as four or five weeks. Describing the Gujarat violence as a crime against humanity and not against one community, Qazi said he felt the British Foreign Office (FCO) would support them to the hilt. The FCO has said that high-ranking officials were responsible for the massacre of innocents and we know that is a statement of support if it comes to extradition, Qazi told The Sunday Times of India as he worked on a a database consisting of hundreds of eyewitness accounts, with verifiable names, addresses and contact numbers. Sources acknowledged that the FCO's alleged help sits oddly with a government pronouncement on Gujarat in the House of Lords in early March, when junior foreign office minister Baronness Amos appreciated the efforts which have been made by the Indian Government to restore calm and said the Indian authorities are seen to be doing all that they can. The minister had been replying to concerned queries about Aswat's two still-missing companions, Shakil and Saeed Dawood. Qazi admitted that extradition is only one possibility. More likely, he said, is a Henry Kissinger-like situation, in which the former American secretary of state's arrival in the UK will be attended by Spanish investigators seeking to interview him on Cambodia. In other words, if Modi or others named were ever to set foot in the UK or European Union, they will almost certainly be interviewed by investigators. Qazi's search for admissible and irrefragible evidence against Modi, which would prove he had a direct hand in the killing of my cousin, will hinge on the testimony of a fourth British Muslim who was travelling with Aswat and saw his companions lynched, set on fire and brutally murdered. The man, who along with the other three, belongs to a West Yorkshire region made up of 15,000 Indian Gujarati Muslims, returned to the UK on Thursday after being nursed back to health by the British authorities in India. His testimony was also recorded by the British political secretary in Mumbai. The British case, to be filed by all four British families will not only charge the VHP, the RSS and the BJP, but also name specific names. Qazi confirmed that British data-gathering, which took the form of a now-controversial and leaked report, has helped human rights organisations on the ground. London was, apparently, deeply involved in crucial data-gathering and, according to sources, two or three FCO officials flew out from here to join the British fact-finding team in India. Zafar Sareshwala, rich expatriate member of a prominent Ahmedabadi family, lived near the dead British men, knew them well, and is helping to organise the legal challenge. He says the British authorities, particularly the local MP, have been stung into strong support because the Yorkshire Gujarati and Muslim population complained that Indian officials were not helping even to reach the site of Aswat's murder. There are more non-Muslims in the UK, US and India helping in the search for justice against Modi, said Sareshwala, who lectured at Harvard last week and was approached there by a senior professor, Balakrishnan Rajgopal, to help take Modi to the ICJ at The Hague. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Why UK's report worries Delhi [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=7404110 Why UK's report worries Delhi SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002 5:50:01 AM ] NEW DELHI: The Vajpayee government is worried a scathing report on the Gujarat riots prepared by the British High Commission here might form the basis for British courts to indict Chief Minister Narendra Modi for 'complicity' in the killing of three British Muslims near Ahmedabad in early March - and possibly even genocide. ''We presume the British government will fight any such move, just as it opposed the idea of extraditing Pinochet,'' said an official, referring to the year-long legal battle by human rights activists to have the former Chilean dictator sent to Spain to face trial. ''But if the victims' family members move the courts in Britain, there is no telling what might happen''. British law allows for jurisdiction when crimes are committed against citizens overseas. And since a similar provision was explicitly introduced into Indian statute books via the new Prevention of Terrorism Act, India would be hard put to invoke national sovereignty if a British court was to make an extradition request. The Times of India has learned that at least two human rights organisations and several Indian lawyers in the UK are ''actively examining'' the possibility of moving the British courts against Modi and senior Gujarat officials for their alleged ''role'' in the killing. ''Based on all that has emerged'' said one London-based Indian lawyer, ''a strong case can be made out on the complicity of the state's leadership.'' She said reports of senior Gujarat ministers taking over police control rooms and preventing officers from saving lives ''will help establish the chain of command right to the top''. What apparently has the Vajpayee government worried is that the British High Commission report also seems to support the charge that the riots were planned and that the police connived with the killers. Any British court, which takes up the case, is likely to subpoena the report and use it to put pressure on the Blair government. For the moment, the Blair government is handling the case gingerly. Its main concern seems to be securing adequate monetary compensation for its murdered citizens. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Dead British Gujarati case gathers pace [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- (Times of India) Dead British Gujarati case gathers pace RASHMEE Z AHMED TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2002 8:08:40 PM ] LONDON: The family of the British national, Mohammed Aswat, who was killed in the early days of the Gujarat violence, has said it is saddened by the failure of the Indian government to even send a letter of condolence to his wife and five children, the youngest of whom is five years old. Aswat, 42, who was dragged out of his car and killed by a mob at Prantij in Gujarat while en route from Agra to Ahmedabad, is said to have been known to Indian High Commission officials here as a regular helper at their visa surgeries in west Yorkshire. Indian officials confirmed to this paper that they recalled a Mohammed bhai, who used to help control the crowds and settle people at the visa surgeries, but said they would recognise his face better than his full name because surgeries are informal occasions, when each man is called by his home name. Aswat's family and friends, who are preparing to file a murder case here against the Gujarat government, say the body of watertight evidence against the state machinery is building up well. On Monday, a spokeswoman for the British foreign office said: We have not been approached by the families of the British nationals and are not involved at the moment in any legal matter. That is a matter for the families and their lawyers. She added that we are in touch with the families at a humanitarian level, particularly in relation to the missing men. Meanwhile, Vipul Thakker, a senior human rights lawyer who prepares cases for the international courts, told this paper, the wheels are in motion to present a thoroughly-researched document to the British government to take up at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. Pointing out that the indictment of Slobodan Milosovic and his generals did not affect state-to-state relations, Thakker claimed his work had official backing. Essentially they gave us the green light, but the methodology is that we must prepare the document and they must decide to move the ICJ, he said. On Monday, the British government's reluctance to admit its alleged support for West Yorkshire's Gujarati Muslims drew knowing smiles. Prominent West Yorkshireman, Habib Akudi, who claimed the British government was active and engaged and fully supportive of our search for justice, said he was not surprised. They will try and play down their role, but it is upfront and it had to be because we complained that when two Christians were killed in India some years ago and a hut-like church was burnt, they were very active. Now, they were doing nothing despite talking about human rights . Akudi said the local MP, Mike Wood, had got involved and taken his constituents' concerns to senior levels of government and parliament. He said that the same was true of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who tried to wash his hands off the case early in the Gujarat violence by telling angry Muslims that he was not the foreign minister of India. Later, said Akudi, the pressure of his Indian Muslim-dominant constituency of Blackburn, forced Straw to make three strong statements on the Gujarat violence. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Intellectual Genocide. [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Morning Star 20.04¹02 Intellectual Genocide. Felicity Arbuthnot Palestine and Iraq have much in common. The desert slaughter - misnamed a war - of 1991, left Iraq: reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come¹, according to the UN Special Rapporteur, who visited barely a month after the end of hostilities. Palestine too, lies in ruins. In both cases, the silence of those who could exert pressure has been truly deafening. That history will slaughter those responsible¹ - to use the words of Denis Halliday, distinguished UN Diplomat and UN Under Secretary General, who resigned in disgust as UN Co-ordinator in Iraq, citing the destruction of an entire nation¹ - will be of little comfort to the dead, maimed, disposessed, bereaved and dying of both countries. However, as the silent slaughter continues in Iraq, resulting from the world¹s most draconian UN embargo and another continues in Palestine at the hands of Israel - whilst possibly the most pathetic incumbant UN Secretary General ever, bleats apologetically about restraint¹, in an expensive suit and the quiestest of voices. Priorities, however, are not alone food, water, medicines - they are what Halliday¹s successor, Count Hans von Sponeck, an equally distinguished diplomat cited as: intellectual genocide.¹ Palestine and Iraq have the highest number of Ph¹D¹s in the Middle East, women and men educated without discrimination. In both countries the education system has been targetted and dismantled. As the west crows of restoring education in Afganistan, it is silent on decimating it in a part of the world where writing, algebra, mathematics, domestic law and record keeping began. Iraq, prior to the embargo was awarded, two years running, a unique accolade from UNESCO. The education system was globally unparallelled in that a child could be born into abject poverty, of illiterate parents and emerge from this free, high quality system (including University) as anything he or she wished to be. Western Post graduate courses were paid for by the Iraqi government, resulting in rounded east-west expertise. With the onset of the UN embargo on Hiroshima Day 1990, all educational materials to Iraq were halted. Blackboards, pencils, pens, course books, medical journals, computers, even paper. A doctor qualifying today will be twelve years out of date - he or she will still be using 1989 materials, apart from the small amount taken in by occasional sanctions breakers. When the UN Weapons Inspectors (UNSCOM) raided the Science Laboratory at Baghdad¹s famous, formerly resplendantly equipped University (built by the Gulbenkian oil foundation in the 1970¹s as a result of an oil deal, the Inspectors laughed at it¹s sorry state - then threw out the few remaining books. (ED - I HAVE THE UN VIDEO) The language laboratory is silent. Computers and visual aids long dead, denying a western orientated society the ability to perfect western languages - in a society where all university students are taught in english in order to enable them to access overseas post graduate courses. An abiding memory is visiting the University and talking to the Professor of Literature, a passionate, elegant educationalist, who had been a distinguished visiting Professor, to a number of US and UK Universities. He searched for the words to explain the magnitude of the educational decimation under the embargo. Education for him - as in all Iraq and Palestine - was not a profession, it was a burning passion - the learning young, where ever they were, were a country¹s future. The tweed jacketed Professor spoke better english than I and personified passion, pride and dignity. As I thanked him and offered my hand, he clutched it, in both of his and said: I beg you, please, send us paper, send us books, send us pens and pencils ... I beg you, I beg you.¹ Four months later, he was dead. All those who knew him, said he died of a broken heart - he could no longer give his students the wherewithall to equip them for whatever they chose in life. In Palestine, the blockade of the great Beir Zeit University, has been little reported. Roads bulldozed, students and academics, forced to scramble over mountains of rubble and take circuitous routes to reach. Frequently it was impossible. Now, along with lives and homes, all educational infrastructure has been detonated by the Israeli Defence Force. The seven Palestinian Universitites, painstakingly re-opened, community outreaching, in a community where one third of the three million population is under fifteen and education a cornerstone, are under threat. The Ministry of Education in Ramallah - a walled compound - was reportedly attacked by thirty Israeli tanks, despite the employees offers for the building to be inspected. Soldiers destroyed outer and inner doors, safes, filing cabinets, computers, hard disks, files, students records were damaged, or reduced to
Kondapalli Seetharamaiah dead [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Hindu April 13, 2002 Kondapalli Seetharamaiah dead By Our Special Correspondent VIJAYAWADA APRIL 12. Veteran communist leader and founder of the People's War Group of Naxalites, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, 87, died in his grand-daughter's house here today. He was suffering from Parkinson's disease and heart problem. He had lost his memory power and had been spending a vegetative life for the last five years. His condition deteriorated so much in the last five months that he found it difficult to recognise even his kith and kin. The end came when he was being given a bath at 6.15 p.m. He is survived by his wife Koteswaramma and two grand-daughters. The cremation will be held tomorrow. Born in a middle-class farmer's family in Jonnavada village, he was attracted to the Communist movement early in life. He became the secretary of Krishna district unit of the united Communist Party, which played a crucial role in Telangana Armed Struggle. Following a split in the Communist Party of India (CPI), he could not join either group and moved away from politics. He went to Warangal to work as a Hindi teacher in Fatima School where he came in contact with K.G.Satyamurthi. Both of them were attracted to the CPI (ML) and attended the party conclave held at Gottikondabillam in Guntur district which was addressed by Charu Majumdar. He became a state committee member of the CPI (ML) and associated himself with the Srikakulam movement. He founded the People's War Group. He was arrested in the Secunderabad Conspiracy case. After killing the duty constable he escaped from the hospital where he was admitted for treatment in 1982 causing a sensation. He led the PWG for several years when it reigned terror in Andhra Pradesh and some neighbour states. Following differences with the leadership he left the PWG and came away to his native village where police picked him up in 1992. The courts have acquitted him in all the cases filed against him by the police. Hindu April 14, 2002 A few admirers attend Kondapalli's funeral By Our Staff Reporter Vijayawada April 13. It was certainly not a funeral befitting the PWG founder, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, one of the country's most feared revolutionary leader, who died here yesterday. Only a few admirers, friends, and members of his family were present at Karuna Hospital-cum-residence at Siddhardha Nagar here of Gangadhar, the grand son-in-law, where the body was kept for people to pay homage. Plainclothes policemen and intelligence officials were present near the house. The body of the 87-year-old former naxalite leader has been kept at the hospital compound since last night in a makeshift coffin -- the rear side of a water cooler was converted into a coffin. Some of Kondapalli's admirers laid wreaths and flowers on his body, before it was taken out in procession in a flower-decked truck. While no big political or revolutionary leader came to the house, some youths raised slogans... `Johar johar Kondapalli Seetharamaiah,' `We will make every effort to achieve the ideals for which you stood... '. Revolutionary songs were played on the public address system at the residence where Kondapalli lived underground for about 20 years. In keeping with the Communist tradition, there was no ceremony and the body was cremated at the electric crematorium in the evening. The grand sons-in law -- V.S. Krishna and Dr. Gangadhar -- were present. Koteswaramma, the estranged wife of Kondapalli, has come down from Hyderabad to pay her respects. She reportedly broke down after seeing his body. Koteswaramma has been staying at an old-age home in Hyderabad. Conspicuous by her absence was the former naxalite, Anusuyamma, who has been living with Kondapalli in the city. Kondapalli is survived by his two granddaughters - V. Anuradha and Sudha. Death condoled Our Special Correspondent from Hyderabad writes: Left parties and civil rights organisations today paid tributes to Kondapalli. The CPI(M) State secretary, B.V. Raghavulu, said the veteran leader had been with Communist movement till his last. The CPI State secretary, S. Sudhakar Reddy, said Kondapalli was a contemporary of stalwarts of the undivided Communist movement like Chandra Rajeswara Rao and P. Sundarayya, but switched to armed struggle after the party split. M. Omkar, general secretary, MCPI, and B.N. Reddy, former MP, and B. Tharakam, president, Republic Party of India, described him as a great revolutionary who fought for the oppressed and the exploited masses. K.G. Kannabiran, president, People's Union of Civil Liberties, described Kondapalli as a legend and inspiration to the youth of Telangana. Mere invocation of his name struck terror among the exploiters, he recalled. Mr.
Flying of flag at half mast was inappropriate [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Sinn Fein Carraig Mhachaire Rois, 32A Main Street, Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. Fon/ Faics: 042 966 3579 E-Phoist: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PREAS RAITEAS/ PRESS STATEMENT 8ú Aibhrean 2002 - For immediate release Flying of flag at half mast was inappropriate Sinn Féin councillor Matt Carthy has called on the government has slammed Fianna Fáil and the government for issuing a directive stating that the Irish flag had to be flown at half mast above government buildings tomorrow as a mark of respect to the British Queen Mother. Councillor Carthy said: It is incredible that the government called for the Irish flag to be flown at half mast as a mark of respect on the death of a member of the British royal family. British people, including those who share this island with us, are entitled to mourn the death of a member of the British Royal family whom they respected. But the decision to fly the Irish flag at half-mast was inappropriate. It has caused pain to those who have lost loved ones at the hands of British forces, who the British royal family represent daily. This is also a case of double standards when you consider that the Dublin government refused to fly the flag at half mast over state departments on the occasion of the death of Kieran Doherty TD who died on hunger strike in 1981. I am calling on the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and local Fianna Fáil representatives to explain how they can still claim to be a republican party and yet stoop to such patronising acts to appease a royal family that still claims jurisdiction over part of Ireland. Bertie Ahern and President McAleese have both extended their sympathies to the British Royal family on their recent bereavement. That was sufficient. It is ironic that only last week our local Fianna Fáil TD Rory OHanlon was declaring his republican credentials that we are used to hearing from his party in the run up to elections. Actions speak louder than words and the act of placing the Irish tricolour at half mast for the death of a british royal speaks volumes to republicans. ENDS Matt Carthy can be contacted at 087 625 95 87. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Is India going the way of 1930s Germany? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0203indhind.html Foreign Policy in Focus [March 27, 2002] Is India going the way of 1930s Germany? By Arun R Swamy The recent rounds of violence between religious groups in India do more than reveal the fragility of India's secular state. They highlight the inability of Indian democracy to combat what is essentially a fascist onslaught. At first glance what is happening in India appears to be another - if extreme - case of religious passion gone awry. A train carrying Hindu activists from the disputed religious site of Ayodhya was firebombed by a mob, killing 58 of the activists. Several days of revenge attacks by Hindus against Muslims followed in the state of Gujarat, killing more than 700. However, India's Hindu nationalists have always resembled 1930s European fascists more than they do contemporary fundamentalists. Members of the core organization of Hindu nationalism, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in the 1920s, are given paramilitary instruction, not religious, and wear khaki uniforms reminiscent of Mussolini's brownshirts. While the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), founded in the 1960s, is mainly concerned with religion, it still does not prescribe how Hindus should worship or behave - an impossible task given the diversity of Hindu religious practice. Instead, like all Hindu nationalists, it is bent on characterizing Muslims as alien and hostile while seeking to unify Hindus around a romantic nationalism, in which military prowess plays a central role. Hindu nationalists' emphasis on international prestige has won them the support of the Westernized middle class, typically the target of Islamic fundamentalism. Their focus on demonizing Muslims rather than promoting Hinduism is illustrated even by the dispute over Ayodhya, where extremist Hindu groups destroyed a 16th-century Muslim mosque in 1992, sparking nationwide sectarian riots in which more than 2,000 people died. Hindu nationalists claim that a temple on the same site honoring the birthplace of the Hindu deity, Rama, was torn down to make way for the mosque. For Hindu extremist groups, the claim that a temple was torn down to build a mosque - for which there is no concrete evidence - was at least as important as the claim that Rama was born at the site. The destruction of the mosque was commonly spoken of in terms of retaking territory that had been lost to invaders. Hindu nationalists have identified other mosques that they wish to destroy, claiming that these, too, were built on temple sites. For none do they claim the sanctity associated with the birthplace of Rama. Indeed, the purpose of claiming a particular site as Rama's birthplace - for which there is no basis in theology or tradition - was to justify tearing down the existing mosque. It is this fascist ideology, and the fact that a party espousing it is at the head of the national government, that makes the recent anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat so much more disturbing than earlier rounds of riots. As horrific as the recent violence was, more died in 1992. But the political establishment's response this time has been ambivalent and feeble. The paralysis in the political system is emboldening the Hindu extremist organizations responsible for the Gujarat riots to press their agenda more forcefully. There are times when India seems to resemble Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. The analogy to the rise of Hitler is not one that should be made lightly, but there are many parallels. The Gujarat attacks were not spontaneous expressions of mob rage but were highly organized and brutally efficient, probably identifying Muslim homes and businesses through the use of public records. The state government was almost certainly complicit in the wave of violence that affected the entire state and saw no effort by the police to control it. The central government was slow to dispatch the army, and has attempted to put the focus on the train attack, for which they blame Pakistani intelligence. The state government initially sought to limit judicial inquiry to investigating the train attack, to use its emergency powers only against those accused of the train attack, and to offer higher levels of compensation to the (Hindu) victims of the train attack on the grounds that they were victims of terrorism. Even many liberal intellectuals and politicians, whose protests forced the state government to retract some of these measures, have tacitly accepted the idea that several days of targeted anti-Muslim violence can be equated with the attack on the train, and even resulted from it. Worse, there has been no effort by those in power to hold those responsible for the Gujarat attacks accountable. The national government, run by the same party as the state government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has chosen not to use its
RE: A Nazi by Any Other Name [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- A pro-Palestanian demo in Mumbai, India --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^ attachment: modisharon2.jpg
a spectacular miscarriage of justice. [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- BBC News Online Thursday, 14 March, 2002, 17:25 GMT UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement The proceedings were flawed, says Prof Köchler A United Nations observer has described the dismissal of the Lockerbie bomber's appeal as a spectacular miscarriage of justice. Professor Hans Köchler was speaking after five Scottish judges rejected Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's attempt to overturn his conviction for murdering 270 people in the 1988 atrocity. Libya condemned the outcome as a political decision under pressure from Washington and London but it was welcomed by the US Government. Al-Megrahi is now preparing to be flown by helicopter from the special Scottish Court in the Netherlands to Scotland's largest prison in Glasgow to serve his life sentence of at least 20 years. Professor Köchler, 53, who teaches philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, was one of five UN observers who followed the Lockerbie case. They were appointed as part of the deal between the UN and Libya which allowed the extradition of al-Megrahi and a co-accused, who was found not guilty at the trial last year, to face the charges. The observers are not bound to report back formally to the UN but Professor Köchler said that under the circumstances, he felt compelled to do so. He told BBC Radio Scotland's Newsdrive programme: I am sorry to admit that my impression is that justice was not done and that we are dealing here with a rather spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice. Credence issue I am at a loss to explain how this decision of the appeal court can have been passed unanimously in light of some of the questions asked and analysis presented by one or the other of the appeal court judges during the appeal. I see a kind of gap between how the sessions of the appeal court went and the unanaimity of this decision... which did not give any credence at all to any of the grounds of appeal which were presented. I base my observation only on logic and reason. Frankly speaking I am not convinced, I was not convinced when I read the opinion of the court after the trial last year and I was not convinced when I went through the text presented today. I am not convinced at all that the sequence of events that led to this explosion of the plane over Scotland was as described by the court. Everything that is presented is only circumstantial evidence. Asked if he spoke for the entire UN observation team, he said: Based on the informal conversations we had today - you can imagine that we have spoken to each other after the verdict - I have the impression that this concern is shared by the large majority of the observers. Clare Connelly, a member of the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit at Glasgow University, said Professor Köchler's comments displayed a profound misunderstanding of Scotland's adversarial legal system. Judge's comments Al-Megrahi showed no emotion as Scotland's senior judge, Lord Justice General Lord Cullen, announced the decision at a three-minute hearing in the Scottish Court. He said: For the reasons given in the judgement, in which we all concur, we have concluded that none of the grounds of appeal is well founded. The appeal will accordingly be refused. Professor Köchler spoke to al-Megrahi after the hearing and revealed: He is rather composed but of course frustrated and he feels himself to be a victim of international politics. He is in an angry mood but composed. Scotland's most senior law officer, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, said: I believe that these proceedings have demonstrated what the judicial process can achieve when the international community acts together. I hope that this can be the enduring legacy of the Lockerbie trial. It is one that cannot and must not be forgotten. Legal history Al-Megrahi's defence team lodged grounds for his appeal a week after the guilty verdict at the end of his trial in January 2001 at the custom-built court in Camp Zeist. The 14-day appeal hearing made Scottish legal history by being broadcast live on television and the internet. For the Libyan, Bill Taylor QC argued that new evidence presented to the appeal pointed to a miscarriage of justice. He said it raised the possibility that the bomb had been placed on board the aircraft at Heathrow and not in Malta, as the trial judges had concluded. However, Alan Turnbull QC, for the prosecution, said the new evidence was weak and flawed, and did not affect the original case. Commenting on the decision, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: The completion of the appeal does not end U.S. sanctions against Libya, but should spur Libya to take quick action to fully comply with the requirements of the UN Security Council. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called on Libya to honour its obligations in respect of Lockerbie and to co-operate fully with UN Security Council resolutions. The UK Government
Reflections on the Gujarat massacre [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY Reflections on the Gujarat massacre By Harsh Mander Numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujarat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state. My heart is sickened, my soul wearied, my shoulders aching with the burdens of guilt and shame. As you walk through the camps of riot survivors in Ahmadabad, in which an estimated 53,000 women, men, and children are huddled in 29 temporary settlements, displays of overt grief are unusual. People clutch small bundles of relief materials, all that they now own in the world, with dry and glassy eyes. Some talk in low voices, others busy themselves with the tasks of everyday living in these most basic of shelters, looking for food and milk for children, tending the wounds of the injured. But once you sit anywhere in these camps, people begin to speak and their words are like masses of pus released by slitting large festering wounds. The horrors that they speak of are so macabre, that my pen falters in the writing. The pitiless brutality against women and small children by organised bands of armed young men is more savage than anything witnessed in the riots that have shamed this nation from time to time during the past century. I force myself to write a small fraction of all that I heard and saw because it is important that we all know. Or maybe also because I need to share my own burdens. What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared. Her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes. What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity. What can you say? A small boy of six in Juhapara camp described how his mother and six brothers and sisters were battered to death before his eyes. He survived only because he fell unconscious, and was taken for dead. A family escaping from Naroda-Patiya, one of the worst-hit settlements in Ahmedabad, spoke of losing a young woman and her three month old son, because a police constable directed her to `safety' and she found herself instead surrounded by a mob which doused her with kerosene and set her and her baby on fire. I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. There are reports every where of gang-rape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by their murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw driver. Women in the Aman Chowk shelter told appalling stories about how armed men disrobed themselves in front of a group of terrified women to cower them down further. In Ahmedabad, most people I met - social workers, journalists, survivors - agree that what Gujarat witnessed was not a riot, but a terrorist attack followed by a systematic, planned massacre, a pogrom. Everyone spoke of the pillage and plunder, being organised like a military operation against an external armed enemy. An initial truck would arrive broadcasting inflammatory slogans, soon followed by more trucks which disgorged young men, mostly in khaki shorts and saffron sashes. They were armed with sophisticated explosive materials, country weapons, daggers and trishuls. They also carried water bottles, to sustain them in their exertions. The leaders were seen communicating on mobile telephones from the riot venues, receiving instructions from and reporting back to a co-ordinating centre. Some were seen with documents and computer sheets listing Muslim families and their properties. They had detailed precise knowledge about buildings and businesses held by members of the minority community, such as who were partners say in a restaurant business, or which Muslim homes had Hindu spouses were married who should be spared in the violence. This was not a spontaneous upsurge of mass anger. It was a carefully planned pogrom. The trucks carried quantities of gas cylinders. Rich Muslim homes and business establishments were first systematically looted, stripped down of all their valuables, then cooking gas was released from cylinders into the buildings for several minutes. A trained member of the group then lit the flame which efficiently engulfed the building. In some cases, acetylene gas which is used for welding steel, was employed to explode large concrete buildings. Mosques and dargahs were razed, and were replaced by statues of Hanuman and saffron flags. Some dargahs in Ahmedabad city crossings have overnight been demolished and their sites covered with road building material, and bulldozed so efficiently that these spots are indistinguishable from the rest of the road. Traffic now plies over
fascist leaflet [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- From: Hari Sharma [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Recipient List Suppressed:; Subject: VHP leaflet from Gujarat Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 11:58:32 -0800 Dear friends: The following is a communication a SANSAD friend has received from Mallika Sarabhai, the renowned dancer from Ahmedabad. This is for your information, and to convey the extent to which the battle lines are being drawn. hari sharma *** This is a leaflet being distributed in the lakhs around the State. We need you to pass this on to warn people of the ggravity of the situation.Please help to pass it on to the press and to people who will help us fight it fearlessly mallika The creeping fascism in Gujarat: A TRANSLATION OF THE CIRCULAR LETTER IN GUJARATI DISTRIBUTED IN THE STREETS OF AHMEDABAD by the VHP * VISHWA HINDU PARISHAD (Raanip) SATYAM SHIVAM SUNDARAM JAI SHRIRAM WAKE UP! ARISE! THINK! ENFORCE! SAVE THE COUNTRY! SAVE THE RELGIION! Economic boycott is the only solution! The anti-national elements use the money earned from the Hindus to destroy us! They buy arms! They molest our sisters and daughters! The way to break the back-bone of these elements is: An economic non-cooperation movement. Let us resolve - From now on I will not buy anything from a Muslim shopkeeper! I will not sell anything from my shop to such elements! 3. Neither shall I use the hotels of these anti-nationals, nor their garages! 4. I shall give my vehicles only to Hindu garages! From a needle to gold, I shall not buy anything made by Muslims, neither shall we sell them things made by us! 5. Boycott whole-heartedly films in which Muslim hero-heroines act! Throw out films produced by these anti-nationals! 6. Never work in offices of Muslims! Do not hire them! 7. Do not let them buy offices in our business premises, nor sell or hire out houses to them in our housing societies, colonies or communities. 8. I shall certainly vote, but only for him who will protect the Hindu nation. 9. I shall be alert to ensure that our sisters-daughters do not fall into the 'love-trap' of Muslim boys at school-college-workplace. 10. I shall not receive any education or training from a Muslim teacher. Such a strict economic boycott will throttle these elements! It will break their back-bone! Then it will be difficult for them to live in any corner of this country. Friends, begin this economic boycott from today! Then no Muslim will raise his head before us! Did you read this leaflet? Then make ten photocopies of it, and distribute it to our brothers. The curse of Hanumanji be on him who does not implement this, and distribute it to others! The curse of Ramchandraji also be on him! Jai Shriram! A true Hindu patriot. N.B. The kites we use at Uttrayan (Kite flying day) are also made by them. The fire-works are also made by them. We should boycott those too. Jai Shri Ram (Ranip) * --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
It had to be done, VHP leader says of riots [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- It had to be done, VHP leader says of riots Sheela Bhatt in Ahmedabad , rediff.com In a startling revelation, Professor Keshavram Kashiram Shastri, 96-year-old chairman of the Gujarat unit of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, told rediff.com that the list of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad was prepared on the morning of February 28 itself. Shastri was replying to an allegation that shops in Ahmedabad were looted on the basis of a list prepared by the VHP in advance and that the violence was not a spontaneous outburst against the carnage in Godhra ../feb/27train2.htm. A scholar of the Mahabharat and a highly respected literary figure of Gujarat, Shastri said in a tape-recorded interview, In the morning we sat down and prepared the list. We were not prepared in advance. Asked why they did it, he responded, Karvun j pade, karvun j pade (it had to be done, it had to be done). We don't like it, but we were terribly angry. Lust and anger are blind. He said the rioters were kelvayela Hindu chokra (well-bred Hindu boys). He said there were two reasons for the inactivity of the Ahmedabad police during the rioting. They feared death, he said simply. And some of them were Hindus who thought, let the mob do whatever it wants. He agreed that the atmosphere in the city now is so charged that if he were to go to the Muslim-dominated Kalupur area of Ahmedabad, he would not come back alive. He admitted that people had been burnt, mosques razed, and shops looted, but argued that all that had been done in a frenzy. Shastri agreed that violence was not the answer to violence, but remarked, These things [non-violence] look good in the shastras. Our boys were charged because in Godhra women and children were burnt alive. The crowd was spontaneous. All of them were not VHP people. The Waghri community (a scheduled caste) didn't even know the victims of Godhra, but they have done an amazing job! They are not our members. In villages all these people who were angry are not our people. They are angry because Hindutva was attacked. This is an outburst, a tremendous outburst that will be difficult to roll back. He said the situation could get aggravated and bigger riots were possible. There will be a war, he said. So much poison has spread that it's difficult o contain it now. Asked how he, a scholar and a litterateur, could condone innocents being burnt alive, he remarked, The youngsters have done even those things which we don't like. We don't support it. But we can't condemn it because they are our boys. If my daughter does something, will I condemn it? We don't believe that the boys have done something wrong, because this was the result of an outburst. But we do feel that they should not have gone so far. But that's an afterthought. We needed to do something. It's said that snakes that are not poisonous should keep the enemy away by hissing once in a while. He agreed that in Hindu philosophy, such actions are sinful, but it's done! Now we should work for peace. Because India can't afford such disturbances. The Ahmedabad police have so far arrested 977 persons on charges of rioting, looting, burning and killing people in response to first information reports filed by the victims and relatives of the dead. According to the police, the search for looted goods has been quite successful. In many colonies and slums, looted stuff has been found abandoned on the roads by rioters fearful of being caught. According to a police source, a legislator in Ahmedabad has sought police protection because the relatives of those arrested have been nagging him day and night to get them out. A senior police officer told rediff.com that the arrested boys are now blaming local leaders and saffron activists. Our boys did it because the mobs and leaders supported it. Now how can you arrest them? say the relatives of the rioters. According to Shastri , The VHP has formed a panel of 50 lawyers to help release the arrested people accused of rioting and looting. None of the lawyers will charge any fees because they believe in the RSS ideology. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Slaughter in the Name of God [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Slaughter in the Name of God By Salman Rushdie Washington Post Friday, March 8, 2002; Page A33 The defining image of the week, for me, is of a small child's burned and blackened arm, its tiny fingers curled into a fist, protruding from the remains of a human bonfire in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, in India. The murder of children is something of an Indian specialty. The routine daily killings of unwanted girl babies . . . the massacre of innocents in Nellie, Assam, in the 1980s when village turned against neighboring village . . . the massacre of Sikh children in Delhi during the horrifying reprisal murders that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination: They bear witness to our particular gift, always most dazzlingly in evidence at times of religious unrest, for dousing our children in kerosene and setting them alight, or cutting their throats, or smothering them or just clubbing them to death with a good strong length of wood. I say our because I write as an Indian man, born and bred, who loves India deeply and knows that what one of us does today, any of us is potentially capable of doing tomorrow. If I take pride in India's strengths, then India's sins must be mine as well. Do I sound angry? Good. Ashamed and disgusted? I certainly hope so. Because, as India undergoes its worst bout of Hindu-Muslim bloodletting in more than a decade, many people have not been sounding anything like angry, ashamed or disgusted enough. Police chiefs have been excusing their men's unwillingness to defend the citizens of India, without regard to religion, by saying that these men have feelings too and are subject to the same sentiments as the nation in general. Meanwhile, India's political masters have been tut-tutting and offering the usual soothing lies about the situation being brought under control. (It has escaped nobody's notice that the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People's Party, and the Hindu extremists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, are sister organizations and offshoots of the same parent body.) Even some international commentators, such as Britain's Independent newspaper, urge us to beware excess pessimism. The horrible truth about communal slaughter in India is that we're used to it. It happens every so often; then it dies down. That's how life is, folks. Most of the time India is the world's largest secular democracy; and if, once in a while, it lets off a little crazy religious steam, we mustn't let that distort the picture. Of course, there are political explanations. Ever since December 1992, when a VHP mob demolished a 400-year-old Muslim mosque in Ayodhya, which they claim was built on the sacred birthplace of the god Ram, Hindu fanatics have been looking for this fight. The pity of it is that some Muslims were ready to give it to them. Their murderous attack on the train-load of VHP activists at Godhra (with its awful, atavistic echoes of the killings of Hindus and Muslims by the train-load during the partition riots of 1947) played right into the Hindu extremists' hands. The VHP has evidently tired of what it sees as the equivocations and insufficient radicalism of India's BJP government. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is more moderate than his party; he also heads a coalition government and has been obliged to abandon much of the BJP's more extreme Hindu nationalist rhetoric to hold the coalition together. But it isn't working anymore. In state elections across the country, the BJP is being trounced. This may have been the last straw for the VHP firebrands. Why put up with the government's betrayal of their fascistic agenda when that betrayal doesn't even result in electoral success? The electoral failure of the BJP is thus, in all probability, the spark that lit the fire. The VHP is determined to build a Hindu temple on the site of the demolished Ayodhya mosque -- that's where the Godhra dead were coming from -- and there are, reprehensibly, idiotically, tragically, Muslims in India equally determined to resist them. Vajpayee has insisted that the slow Indian courts must decide the rights and wrongs of the Ayodhya issue. The VHP is no longer prepared to wait. The distinguished Indian writer Mahasveta Devi, in a letter to India's president, K. R. Narayanan, blames the Gujarat government (led by a BJP hard-liner) as well as the central government for doing too little too late. She pins the blame firmly on the motivated, well-planned out and provocative actions of the Hindu nationalists. But another writer, the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul, speaking in India just a week before the violence erupted, denounced India's Muslims en masse and praised the nationalist movement. The murderers of Godhra must indeed be denounced, and Mahasveta Devi in her letter demands stern legal action against them. But the VHP is determined to destroy that
Another body bag has arrived [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- There are many similarities between the attack on the New York WTC and the Indian parliament. One of the is the unwillingness to understand the underlying factors that lead to violence. - sandeep (Kashmir Times, Jan 4, 20020 Another Kashmiri 'killed in custody' in Delhi KT NEWS SERVICE SRINAGAR, Jan 4: Another body bag has arrived. One more Kashmiri has allegedly been killed. As a 'sequel' to December 13 attack on Parliament, Zaffar Iqbal, a young Kashmiri student, was allegedly 'killed in custody' by Delhi police. Iqbal, 22, went missing on December 31 and his body was today handed over to his parents. Delhi Police claimed that Iqbal died in a road accident, but his parents maintain that his body bore no accident mark and was killed in custody. There were only torture marks on Iqbal's body. His nails were pulled out. His face was full of torture marks. His hands were twisted. If anyone dies in a road accident, he will have wounds on his body, but it there were none. Above all police played truant with us, said Ghulam Hussain Gazi, uncle of Iqbal. After completing graduation, Iqbal went to New Delhi where he got himself admitted in a computer college at Info Park for studying e-commerce. He was recently appointed as sales executive by a pharmaceutical company in New Delhi. On December 31, his parents say, Iqbal after performing his duties returned to his residence at Jangpora Bogal and dropped his carry-bag there. He immediately left for computer college. In the evening his friend Deepak, who saw him last, dropped him in a bus at Defence colony. But police said his body was found near the stop where he boarded the bus. How is it possible that the body was found at the point where he boarded the bus? And if a bus met with an accident why only Iqbal got wounded?, asked Mir Mustafa, another uncle of Iqbal. Delhi police informed his parents here over telephone two days back about his death. When we reached the police station, we were told that the body has been kept at hospital mortuary. Accompanied by a cop, when we reached the hospital, the authorities said that there were several dead bodies in the mortuary for identification. None of the bodies we saw, was of Iqbal. But later we were told that the body No 44 lying in the morgue is of Iqbal. Probably police brought the body from somewhere and kept it in the morgue, alleges Mir Mustafa. Delhi Police, the parents said, told them that Iqbal was found on foot path in an unconscious state. He was taken to hospital where he was admitted and then breathed his last. We tried to contact doctor who treated him, but he went missing. We tried to locate the prescription copy, but it was not given to us. Police did not disclose the exact details. If Iqbal died in an accident, then police should have no problem to reveal facts, but they are concealing the details, said Ghulam Hussain Gazi. A pall of gloom descended at Drugjan, Dalgate soon after his body arrived from New Delhi today. The shopkeepers of the area immediately downed their shutters and observed bandh against Iqbal's killing. The entire Dalgate area went into state of mourning At his house, the scene was appalling. Womenfolk recited a wanwun (Kashmiri folk lore recited during marriages for a bride or groom) in desperation. Beating chests and crying loudly, the womenfolk showered confetti over Iqbal's coffin as if they are bidding adieu to a groom. Hundreds of people today offered Nimaz-e-Jinaza of Iqbal. He was taken in a procession to the graveyard where he was laid to rest. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Another 100...... [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- US accused of killing over 100 villagers in air strike Rory Carroll in Kabul Tuesday January 1, 2002 The Guardian Fresh controversy over American bombing flared last night after Afghans claimed more than 100 people died in an air strike. US officials hotly denied that any civilians died during the attack against what it said was an al-Qaida compound from which surface-to-air missiles had been fired. Reports from the village of Qalaye Niazi, in Paktia province, which borders Pakistan, yesterday said human remains were scattered among craters. Two days earlier, the Afghan defence minister - a leading Northern Alliance commander who wants minimal foreign military involvement in the country - called for an end to the air strikes. The question of ongoing bombing by American forces pursuing clusters of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who have eluded them, is one of many issues confronting the man named yesterday as Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad. Mr Khalilzad, the national security council's specialist on south-west Asia, the near east and north Africa, is to be President Bush's representative to the Afghan people as they seek to consolidate a new order [and] reconstruct their country, the US announcement of the appointment said. Trying to hold the government together will be a key task, and the US air raids are among many issues threatening to split the interim administration. Paktia, just south-west of the Tora Bora cave complex, is a focus of current bombing because it is a suspected hideout of any fighters, including Osama bin Laden, who may have escaped last month's US pounding. A Qalaye Niazi villager, Janat Gul, told Reuters he was the sole person from his 24-member family to survive Sunday's pre-dawn attack by helicopters and jets. There are no al-Qaida or Taliban people here, he insisted. Haji Saifullah, head of the tribal council, invited US forces to inspect the village, claiming 107 civilians died, including women and children. An ammunition store destroyed in the bombing had been seized from Taliban fighters who retreated from the area nearly six weeks ago, said Mr Saifullah. The US central command at Tampa, Florida, dismissed the reports, saying the attack was early on Saturday, not Sunday, and that two B-1B bombers and a B-52 - not helicopters - hit a known terrorist target. You don't have a village launching surface-to-air missiles at aircraft. You have a known al Qaida-Taliban leadership compound, said a spokesman. The strikes set off secondary explosions consistent with stockpiled arms and ammunition but caused no civilian casualties, he said. Mr Saifullah accused rival ethnic groups of passing wrong information to the US in a successful attempt to provoke an attack. Several four-wheel-drive vehicles with US and Northern Alliance soldiers were spotted yesterday at the Tira Pass heading in the direction of the village. The Pakistani-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said at least 92 died in the attack. Qalaye Niazi is two miles north of the city of Gardez, capital of Paktia. US planes have made several raids in the area in the past fortnight based on intelligence that Taliban and al-Qaida remnants are hiding in the mountains. Two of the earlier raids on eastern Afghanistan were reported to have killed more than 100 people. There are no independent accounts of these incidents, but many Afghans are convined that the dead were civilian victims of intelligence blunders. While the interim government's defence minister, General Mohammed Fahim, wants the bombing to stop, the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, has said that Bin Laden could still be in Afghanistan and the air campaign could continue for as long as it takes to finish the terrorists. The prime minister, Hamid Karzai, owes his position at the head of a stitched-together government of rival factions largely to US sponsorship and is not eager to alienate the backer on which he will almost surely continue to rely. On his inauguration day, December 22, the US bombed what it said was a convoy of enemy fighters, but people from the area later said the group consisted of tribal elders on their way to Kabul for the ceremony. Survivors claimed a rival group had falsely identified them as terrorists - the same claim as in Qalaye Niazi. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
India bans peace group from visiting Pakistan [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- India bans peace group from visiting Pakistan Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan ISLAMABAD, Dec 29: The Indian government on Saturday banned a planned visit to Pakistan by a peace group. The group was due to meet President Pervez Musharraf, rights activists said. The four-member mission, led by retired Indian Navy admiral Ram Das, was scheduled to arrive in Lahore on Saturday. They failed to arrive as the Indian authorities prohibited their visit to Pakistan, a spokesman for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said. The private pressure group, named Soldiers for Peace, was due to see the president on Sunday. The HRCP spokesman said the trip was aimed at promoting peace and easing the current dangerous tensions. HRCP director I.A. Rehman said he was disappointed the group was barred from travelling to Pakistan. I am disappointed that people are not allowed to meet. They have stopped all communications. It is dividing people in the two countries, he said. -AFP ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
We will win nuclear war, says India !!! [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- MONDAY DECEMBER 31 2001 We will win nuclear war, says India BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR AND ZAHID HUSSAIN IN ISLAMABAD The Times, London. INDIA boasted yesterday that it would survive a first strike by a Pakistani atomic weapon, but that its neighbour would be wiped out in a swift nuclear counter-attack. As troop reinforcements continued to pour into the frontier zone, and tens of thousands of people fled border villages, the spectre of all-out war between two nuclear powers prompted America and Britain to intervene directly. President Bush spoke by telephone to India's Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and to President Musharraf of Pakistan, urging them to show restraint. He also discussed the crisis with Tony Blair. The Prime Minister, who issued his own appeal yesterday for both countries to back down, has agreed to launch a diplomatic peace mission when he visits the region early in the new year. A serious intervention from the outside world could not come too soon. India is determined to avenge the attack by Islamic militants on the Delhi parliament that killed 14 people, including five assailants, on December 13. Unless Pakistan arrests and hands over those responsible, India seems determined to act unilaterally. Pakistan says that it has held at least 50 militants and frozen assets and last night Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the head of the group blamed for the attack was arrested for making inflammatory speeches to incite people to violate law and order. But India says that is not enough and wants the suspects handed over. Both countries insisted that they wanted to avoid war. But on the ground they both ordered the biggest military build-up for 15 years in what looked like a prelude to the fourth Indo-Pakistani war since independence in 1947. Mr Vajpayee won the backing of opposition parties yesterday to take whatever action was needed. On the other side of the border Adbul Sattar, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, said that his anxieties were mounting, not only by the day but by the hour. Part of Pakistan's concern is the increasingly bellicose message from Delhi, whose conventional and nuclear forces are roughly double those of Pakistan. In an interview published yesterday George Fernandes, the Indian Defence Minister, said that his military, from the top down, was eager to fight and that thousands of Indian reinforcements would be in place by the middle of this week. Speaking after a visit to frontline positions in Kashmir, he told the Hindustan Times: Everyone is raring to go. In fact, something that actually bothers them is that things might now reach a point where one says there is no war. Of greater concern were his remarks about the possible use of nuclear weapons. He warned Pakistan not to consider the use of a first strike, which he said would be tantamout to national suicide. We could take a strike, survive and then hit back, he said. Pakistan would be finished. I do not really fear that the nuclear issue would figure in a conflict. However, military experts point out that in the event of a conventional war, Indian forces would heavily outnumber the Pakistanis and could score swift victories. In that case Pakistan's weapon of last resort would be its atomic bomb. Certainly General Musharraf suggested yesterday, after meeting most of the country's political leaders, that he would not walk away from a fight with his bigger neighbour. I stand here addressing the
Pak bleeds, India not in the best of health either [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Pak bleeds, India not in the best of health either Paks stock markets have fallen 9% over last week but Indias growth targets have dipped as well SUNIL JAIN, Indian Express Dec 28, 2001 NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 27: LOOK at the macro-fundamentals the ones Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha says are okay for India and the answers obvious, namely that Pakistans Afghan adventure has cost it dearly, and any war with India can only hurt it a lot more. But look at Indias fundamentals, and while theyre very strong compared to Pakistan, just today the NCAER has lowered its growth forecast for India by around 15 percent in August it was looking at a 5.6 percent growth, and now this is down to 4.8 for the current year. Pakistans stock markets have fallen a whopping seven percent over the month 9 percent over just the last week thanks to war fears and its currency has been on a free fall right since the years beginning, stabilising only last month after the US gave it an outright $600 mn for ditching the Taliban and helped renegotiate its other loans. Worse, thanks to the near-collapse of its economy, growth forcasts for the year have been lowered dramatically, from 4 percent earlier to around 3 percent according to the Asian Development Bank. The reason for this is equally clear. Thanks to the huge war fears, Pakistans exports which account for 30 percent of its GDP have been badly hit major international carriers have reduced operations to/from Karachi, and India blocking commercial cargo from Pakistan will force re-routing which will add to costs. Nadeem Maqbool, chairman of the Pakistan textile mills association told Reuters that the textile and garments industry in Pakistan had orders till December, but nothing after that as buyers from Europe and the US had not come in after September 11. Import duty collections till last month were also lower this year they were 135.6 billion Pakistani rupees as compared to 141.6 billion earlier. And according to a Reuters news report, estimates suggest that overall tax collections for the year 2001-02 will be well below targets. A senior finance ministry official told the agency that against the target of Rs 457 billion (Pakistani), the target for the year had been revised to 430. The numbers for India, unfortunately, dont look that great either theyre much better than those for Pakistan, but that hardly means anything. The Business Confidence Index of the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) shows a further fall of 11 percent over the last quarter the index has been falling steadily since January 2000. Total tax collections so far this year have been 6 percent lower than those last year, and its unclear how the government will reach the target of raising collections by around 15 percent for the full year. NCAER, in fact, expects the fiscal deficit to touch a whopping 6.5 percent of GDP for the year against the target of 4.7 percent. And with exports falling in comparison to last year, no growth is expected here this year either. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Bullets, destruction force villagers to desert homes [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Fear grips Baingalad as bullets, mortars rain Bullets, destruction force villagers to desert homes By Firdous Tak The Kashmir times, Dec 26, 2001 BAIN GALAD (SAMBA), Dec 25: People around the world might be busy in the Christmas celebrations' and preparation for the new year, but for the people living at Bain Galad, about 18 Kms from Samba, it is war time as the troops on both sides of the border exchanged heavy fire and mortar shells for the last two days. Leaving behind every thing they have collected throughout their life, about 5000 people including women and children have left their homes in most of the border villages in Samba sector for safer places as Pakistan Rangers have now resorted to mortar shelling and heavy machine gun fire targetting the civilian areas. This correspondent, who was in the village today, had a close shave when Pakistan Rangers fired number of bullets towards the village at about 12:30 PM. Hardly few yards away from the International Border (IB) the village was mostly calm, except the frequent exchange of small arms fire between the BSF and Pakistan Rangers, till December 13 attack on Indian Parliament. The villagers here said that soon after the Parliament attack the intensity of firing suddenly increased. Deserted houses, damaged structures, bullet marks on almost all the houses, people leaving the village on tractors and carts and elderly people discussing the ongoing conflict under the shadows of brick walls was all visible, when we visited the village this morning. Soon after our vehicle stopped at the bus stop of the village, we were told by some youth of the area who were on their way to Samba that Pakistan army can open fire at any time and thus we should take all the precautions while moving in the area. Earlier to this I had seen a young boy in a pool of blood in Samba hospital, who was hit by a mortar shell in an adjoining village. Making our way behind the bushes to a nearby field and taking shelter behind the pacca houses we reached the site where four houses were destroyed due to the mortar shelling, late last night. It was destruction all over, speaking about the worst man can do. I had hardly spent few minutes at the site, when number of bullets were fired from across the border towards the village. I was lucky enough to escape as I was immediately driven by the local residents, accompanying me, behind a brick wall. Fear of death and destruction quite visible on their faces, the villagers here told us that this was first time that they have seen such a situation in the area. On December 23, three Border Security Force (BSF) jawans were killed when a routine patrol party was ambushed by the Pakistan army. The villagers said that since then the situation on the border worsened leading to the use of heavy mortar shells from across the border. Most of the shells exploded in the civilian areas causing severe damage to the civilian population, an old villager said. Although, the central government claimed that the situation on the border is not so tense and the army has been deployed as a precautionary measure, for the people living in this village the situation is worse than a war. For us the war has started. We can not imagine more tension and destruction than this, said Ramesh Kumar Sharma, a villager who has migrated alongwith his family to Samba. Another aggrieved villager, Kewal Krishan said that when the Pakistan troops started targetting the civilian areas all the inmates of the village including women and children fled leaving behind their belongings and cattle at home. They kept firing mortar shells towards the village throughout the intervening night of December 23 and 24 and finding themselves trapped between the armies of both sides the villagers started fleeing the village on foot early yesterday morning, he said. Even yesterday afternoon about four shells exploded in the middle of the village razing four residential structures of Balwant Singh, Lal Chand, Parsu Ram and Bodh Raj to ground. The inmates of the houses had already left for Samba, when the incident took place. I came two days back on leave to spend few days with my family but all of a sudden the village was gripped by the threat of war and we were forced to leave our house, said Lance Naik Janak Singh, whose house was also destroyed in the shelling. He said that he had gone to Samba with his family members and when he returned he saw his house in flames. Our cattle were caught in the fire and were rescued by some youth of the village, he added. For 80 year old Kamal Das the situation is comparatively more tense than the situation
Fwd: FW: PAKISTAN MILITARY WARNS OF NUCLEAR CONFLICT WITH INDIA [WWW.STOPNATO.OR
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 4.5 (0410) Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 12:37:14 + Subject: FW: PAKISTAN MILITARY WARNS OF NUCLEAR CONFLICT WITH INDIA From: farbuthnot [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sandeep, this alarming piece fits with your Kashmir Times one. warmest, felicity. Subj: Pakistan warns of nuclear conflict with India! Date: 12/25/2001 7:08:28 AM Pacific Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent from the Internet (Details) ___ __ / |/ / /___/ / /_ //M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! === To receive MER regularly with our compliments: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/subscribe === a small little incident can result in a chain reaction which nobody will be able to control... [and] become really horrific for the entire world. Brigadier General Mohammad Yaqub MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/25/2001: As in Palestine, the Kashmir conflict originally resulted from Western policies in the last century. Now both conflicts threaten to explode into wars of mass destruction in this century. It is now only a few years since both India and Pakistan first tested their nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Israel and India have a long-time still mostly secret military connection and unsuccessfully attempted in the 1980s and early 1990s to undermine and destroy the Pakistani nuclear program -- the Muslim bomb project. The Israelis -- themselves with a military capability said to be many times greater than that of all the Arab countries combined -- have made no secret of their desire to destroy the advanced weapons programs in Iran, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan; the Syrians are said to be arming with chemical and biological weapons to deter the Israelis; and the Egyptian military is also preparing. Meanwhile Israel has also secretly outfitted three submarines, acquired in recent years from Germany after firm assurances they would not be used in this way, with nuclear weapons in a kind of doomsday nuclear deterrent scenario. Within this vortex of world events, the Americans, continually prodded by the infamous Israeli/Jewish lobby, are themselves now turning the events of 911 and the pursuit of Bin Laden/Al Queida into a worldwide war against all opposition to their imperial new world order. Using the simplistic slogan of a war against terrorism, one who origins and concepts are clearly with the Israelis, covert and military U.S. actions can be expected against many countries in the year ahead. Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation, along with Pakistani opposition to terribly brutal Indian policies in Kashmir, have all been lumped together by the Americans with no sense or concern it appears for the very nature of these complex conflicts. In the new world of you are either with us or against us a few purposefully or mistaken sparks could in fact ignite an entire region, even the entire world. PAKISTAN MILITARY WARNS OF NUCLEAR CONFLICT WITH INDIA By Raja Asghar CHAKOTHI, Pakistan (Reuters - 25 December ) - A senior Pakistani army officer said on Monday continued border clashes with India could spark an uncontrollable flareup involving nuclear weapons. The two neighbours have reinforced positions on either side of their disputed border in Kashmir since a December 13 suicide attack on the Indian parliament which killed 14 people. New Delhi blamed two militant groups based in Muslim Pakistan. Local sources said on Monday that Pakistan's army had deployed anti-aircraft guns and moved most troops from the eastern garrison town of Sialkot to the border with India. Pakistani and Indian troops only watched each other with distrust from bunkers on either side of a broken bridge at Chakothi in the west of disputed Kashmir when a group of journalists visited the Pakistani side of the front line. But both sides reported exchanges of fresh mortar and heavy machinegun fire elsewhere in Kashmir and New Delhi expelled a Pakistani diplomat, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed adversaries ever higher. Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yaqub said the situation was highly explosive. Because in that situation,
Pakistan art show shut down in India [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The Telegraph-India 21 December 2001 SENA SHUTS DOWN PAK ART SHOW FROM CHANDRIMA BHATTACHARYA Mumbai, Dec. 20: An exhibition of paintings by Pakistani artists was taken off from an art gallery on Sunday following protests by the Shiv Sena. The show titled Manoeuvring Miniatures opened at Sakshi Gallery on December 8, three days before the attack on Parliament. The exhibition was of paintings - ironic depictions of current themes - by contemporary artists from Pakistan using miniature techniques. The few visitors who managed to see the paintings spoke of their charm, originality and boldness, but the Sena was not impressed. Sena leaders claimed that there was a painting in the show that depicted Krishna wearing jeans and holding a gun, which led to the protests. This, the Sena felt, could hurt religious sentiments in a tense political climate. We found out about the painting after Saamna carried a report on the painting. After the attack on Parliament, when the atmosphere between the two countries is already tense, it's wrong to put up such a painting, said Sena's Sunil Shinde. Last Sunday, we went to the gallery to stage our protests. But the paintings were already taken off by then because of the Saamna article, Shinde said. Those associated with putting up the exhibition were tight-lipped. The show was taken off because we felt it was necessary, a senior employee of the gallery said. The organisers took it off because of certain unavoidable reasons. She confirmed the Sena protests. There was a painting of Krishna. But it would not be right to comment on the matter, another person associated with the show said. The Manoeuvring Miniatures show came to Mumbai after being put up at Delhi. Artists are shocked at the withdrawal of the paintings. The paintings were charming, with lots of humour. There was even a painting poking fun at Musharraf. The paintings were very skilfully done, weaving in Western art with Mughal miniature techniques. For example, there was a miniaturised Manet set in a traditional Mughal miniature background, said painter Jehangir Sabavala. There was Krishna painting. I don't remember the details. Many artists in the city were disappointed that they could not visit the show. It is unfortunate that it was pulled off, said painter Atul Dodiya. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
The innocent dead in a coward's war [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The innocent dead in a coward's war Estimates suggest US bombs have killed at least 3,767 civilians Seumas Milne Thursday December 20, 2001 The Guardian The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends. The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people it believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan. Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war, spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a casual these cannot be independently confirmed, or sometimes simply denied the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly helpful. Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only felt able to hazard the guess that at least dozens of civilians had been killed. Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11. Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 10 days; nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the bombardment. It does not include military deaths (estimated by some analysts, partly on the basis of previous experience of the effects of carpet-bombing, to be upwards of 10,000), or those prisoners who were slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi, Kandahar airport and elsewhere. Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the US did not intend to kill them. In fact, the moral distinction is far fuzzier, to put it at its most generous. As Herold argues, the high Afghan civilian death rate flows directly from US (and British) tactics and targeting. The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians. Thousands of innocents have died over the past two months, not mainly as an accidental byproduct of the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime, but because of the low value put on Afghan civilian lives by US military planners. Raids on targets such as the Kajakai dam power station, Kabul's telephone exchange, the al-Jazeera TV station office, lorries and buses filled with refugees and civilian fuel trucks were not mistakes. Nor were the deaths that they caused. The same goes for the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs in urban areas. But western public opinion has become increasingly desensitised to what has been done in its name. After US AC-130 gunships strafed the farming village of Chowkar-Karez in October, killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official felt able to remark: the people there are dead because we wanted them dead, while US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld commented: I cannot deal with that particular village. Yesterday, Rumsfeld inadvertently conceded what little impact the Afghan campaign (yet to achieve its primary aim of bringing Bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership to justice) has had on the terrorist threat, by speculating about ever more cataclysmic attacks, including on London. There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. But what has been cruelly demonstrated is that the US and
Just what the world's poorest nations need [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Just what they need - a £28m air defence system Cabinet rift over support for BAe sale to one of world's poorest countries David Hencke and Larry Elliott Tuesday December 18, 2001 The Guardian Tony Blair was at the centre of a Cabinet row last night after it emerged Downing Street was backing plans for the sale of a British-made military air traffic control system to Tanzania, one of the world's poorest countries, despite ferocious opposition from the chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the international development secretary Clare Short. Sources at the Treasury and the Department for International Development said Mr Brown and Ms Short would strongly oppose granting an export licence to the defence firm BAe Systems for the £28m project. The contract has been condemned as a waste of money by the World Bank for a country that has just eight military aircraft and a per capita income of £170 a year. Half of Tanzania's population lacks access to clean water and a quarter of children die before their fifth birthday. The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has now been asked to intervene in the dispute over whether safeguarding 250 BAe jobs on the Isle of Wight should take precedence over Labour's commitment to development goals and an ethical foreign policy. Amid reports that No 10 has been using strong-arm tactics to win over the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry, Mr Prescott will chair a Cabinet committee meeting on the issue today. The whole thing stinks, said one government source last night, adding that a World Bank-commissioned report had concluded Tanzania could buy a new civil air traffic control system for a quarter of the price of the BAe deal. Ms Short and Mr Brown believe Tanzania should use the benefits of a £1.4bn debt relief package announced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last month to boost spending on health, education and basic infrastructure rather than on what one source called unproductive expenditure. The prime minister has proudly talked about his Africa initiative, a government adviser said last night. If he really cares about Africa this is a test case for him. The Cabinet row has been festering since August, but has come to a head since the September 11 attacks, which have led to BAe Systems citing imminent job losses and production cutbacks in an intensification of its lobbying of No 10 for an export licence. Although the previous foreign secretary, Robin Cook, opposed the licence, the present incumbent, Jack Straw is backing the prime minister and the defence secretary Geoff Hoon in their support for the company. Patricia Hewitt, the trade secretary is in neither camp but is said to be anxious not to pick a fight with Tony Blair. The World Bank study is highly critical of the technology of the system, let alone the debt problems it will cause Tanzania. The report says the BAe system is too expensive and not adequate for civil aviation. It said the system's transmitter has already been superseded and will need an expensive maintenance agreement unless this is underwritten by BAe. It adds that to protect the system during wartime will require extremely expensive design specifications. BAe said yesterday it had not seen the report and did not want to comment on it. The company said the order would sustain British jobs and added that Tanzania had passed tests on whether it could afford it. The scheme was condemned yesterday by Oxfam, whose policy director, Justin Forsyth said: The news that the government is thinking about agreeing this deal is deeply disturbing. It exposes a huge flaw in the UK arms export bill, which at the moment puts profits before people. The World Bank have said they won't touch this deal with a bargepole - the government should think very carefully about the impact it could have on the people of Tanzania. The order will cause a parliamentary row today when the Commons new scrutiny committee - composed of the chairs of the defence, foreign affairs, trade and industry and international development committees - meets for the first time. The committee has been banned by Ms Hewitt from seeing details of the contract on the grounds that MPs were recently blocked from prior scrutiny under the government's export control bill for fears of leaks. Her move will anger MPs already furious about government backtracking on the openness promised when it was elected. The ex-minister Tony Worthington, who tried to amend the bill to allow scrutiny, said yesterday: On one hand we are forgiving debt, while on the other we are adding to Tanzania's debt with this order. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL
anti-untouchability campaign makes situation worse [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- GOVT DRIVE FAILS TO LURE DALITS The Telegraph-India, Dec 18, 2001 FROM G.S. RADHAKRISHNA Deverakonda (Nalgonda), Dec. 17: Want to be treated like an equal? Then pay up more. The Andhra Pradesh government's anti-untouchability campaign has only exacerbated the plight of the seven crore Dalits who make up about 15 per cent of the state's population. Upper-caste shop owners now charge them more, while in some villages, angry landlords , upset with the government diktat, refused to hire Dalit labourers, cutting off a major source of their income. The untouchability campaign began from November 1. It ensured that the Dalits were allowed to enter village temples or tea-stalls and draw drinking water from the main source. But the deliverance soon became a scourge. Tea is now served to Dalits in tea stalls for almost double the amount charged earlier. Served in disposable cups, a Dalit ends up paying Rs 1.50 per cup against the 50 or 75 paise he paid for the same quantity when served in earthen pots. This freedom is costing us more and more, says Mangadhaiah, a Dalit of Manikonda village in Mahboobnagar district. The upper castes have a ready reply. We cannot serve him in the same glasses used by other villagers. He has to pay a higher price if he wants to be treated like an upper caste, says Muthayalu, a tea-stall owner in Manikonda. Parameswaraiah, the village sarpanch in Shankarapalli, Rangareddy district, sums up what this freedom means on the ground. As it is a government order, I see to it that no Dalit is turned away from the village temple or tea shops. But he cannot come along with the others. He has to come after all the others have gone and sit far away from the shop, the sarpanch said. Despite the government campaign, in most villages of Warangal and Nalgonda, Dalits are given food wrapped in newspapers - they cannot be served in plates. In some villages in Mahboobnagar, Dalits are also not allowed to buy fine rice, even if they can afford it. We are sold only coarse rice by the local shops, says Venkataiah, a Harijan farmer in Rudraram, in Rangareddy. State home minister T. Devender Gowd denies such discrimination. By law we have made such offences punishable with either six months rigorous imprisonment or a Rs 5,000 fine for the first offence and two years rigorous imprisonment and Rs 20,000 fine for subsequent offences. But Left parties, which conducted a survey in around 2,000 gram panchayats out of a total of 21,000 in the state, contend that the campaign had merely been an official programme. Within days after giving the Dalits entry into village temples in the constituency of state health minister N. Janardhan Reddy, they were barred. In spite of revisits by Telugu Desam Party leaders and the minister to that village, the Dalits continue to be kept away, says CPM state secretary B.V. Raghavulu. Most Dalits in Nalgonda district say the untouchability campaign has brought them more suffering as landlords hired labourers from Guntur district in the last crop-cutting season. The result was nearly 2,000 Dalits went without work. We would be better off remaining as untouchables rather than starve. We don't know whether the village elders will allow our children to go to school next year because of the government action against some of them this year, said Bikshapatamma, of Chandanpur in Rangareddy. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Delhi cops crackdown on Kashmiris [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Delhi cops crackdown on Kashmiris 'Leave town, go back to Valley' The Kashmir Times, Dec 18, 2001 New Delhi, Dec 15 (NNN) : A major, silent, secret crackdown is currently underway in the Union Capital, especially in the heavily-populated area of the Walled City against the people of Kashmiri origin in the wake of Thursday's daring attack on Parliament. During the drive, the helpless Kashmiris, who mostly come to the city during winter to earn their livelihood, have been asked to leave the town. They have been getting mid-night knocks at their rented, dingy houses in the congested houses in the dead of the night a number of times by the area cops to hear the same parody - Leave the town as soon as possible - Reportedly in this a major crackdown, thousands of Kashmiris in the Walled City area have been asked by the Delhi Police to leave the capital and go back to the Valley in the wake of attack on Parliament House. A few Kashmiris left within less than 24 hours of the incident, scared of getting into trouble with the police, who launched the crackdown on all Kashmiris in the city after orders from above. However, a bulk of them are refusing to return. Where will we go? they ask. We are also Indians, they plead, having spent most of their time for the last two days pleading with police officials, shuttling between one police officer's room and another. In fact a large number of them have bluntly told the cops that they will not leave. You can kill us, but we're not going anywhere, many of them have told the local police, pleading that their woollen supplies like shawls and other items are lying in transport godowns or are on their way from Kashmir and Punjab and they'd lose all their money if they leave abruptly like this, and especially when Eid-ul-fitr is just a couple of days is away. By a rough estimate, there are over 3,000 Kashmiris staying in parts of Darya Ganj, Jama Masjid, Chooriwalan, Chandni Mahal, Ganj Mir Khan, Sheesh Mahal, Sui Walan, Chhata Lal Mian, Turkman Gate and some other places in the Walled City. And a large number of them had actually got themselves 'registered' at the local police station the moment they arrived in Delhi to avoid any harassment during their stay here. The 'registration' means they have supplied their full personal details to the police. While this is not the first time the police has cracked down on Kashmiris staying here, it is probably the first time it has ordered them to get out of the city and go back from where they have come. And the cops are not giving them any reasons whatsoever. We have orders from the top, is all that they are prepared to tell the harassed Kashmiris. The current raids began around mid-night on Thursday and have continued almost without a break since then. The crackdown is total and blanket, and has intensified since the government pointed the finger at the Kashmiri militant outfit, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. But most of these Kashmiris say they come here every year during this season to earn some money. And going back without making a few bucks would be suicidal since the money they earn in these two or three months of winter through sale of shawls, jackets and other woollen items is all their income for the whole of the year, on which depends the lives of their families. Ashfaq (name changed) is one of those who has been coming here regularly from Kashmir every winter for the last seven to eight years. Along with a dozen other Kashmiris, he stays in one small room rented in one of those innumerable lanes that form the Walled City of Delhi. Struggling to make both ends meet, he goes around the city selling shawls and jackets. And the money he makes from this is his only income for the rest of the year, till the next winter. I have no work back in Kashmir. If I go back now what will I do for the rest of the year? Do they want me to take up the guns too? he asks angrily, a sentiment echoed by his Kashmiri colleagues smoking 'hoqaah' in their rented room. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Harassment of Kashmiris [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Harassment of Kashmiris (Editorial) Kashmir Times, Dec 17, 2001 Whatever the investigations on the attack in Parliament house on Thursday and whatever the evidence against two Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militant organisations, for the people of Jammu and Kashmir Thursday's attack only means an excuse with the government for increasing and accelerating its repressive measures against them. There are still conflicting versions about the involvement of two Kashmiri youth in the suicide attack. But Kashmiris have begun to be targeted by the government, security forces and its investigating agencies in and outside the state already as if every Kashmiri happens to have a personal involvement with what happened inside the parliament house premises on Thursday. Several arrests have already been made including the arrest of a Delhi University professor, and several others are being harassed. In the recent years, the way people of Jammu and Kashmir are harassed outside the state, particularly the Muslims of the state on trivial pretexts ! defies any democratic norms of a free state. It is known fact how security forces have been picking on Kashmiri youth on the Delhi-Jammu highway and extorting money from them. Though complaints are galore about the same, no action has been taken probably because those at the helm also see the Kashmiris with a suspicion. Now there are reports of Kashmiris, specially Muslims being asked to 'go back to the Valley', as if they have no right to visit Delhi, stay their for their studies or business purposes or settle there. The government is encouraging such a practice irrespective of the fact that this would not only communally create divisive atmosphere in Delhi and elsewhere but would also further accentuate the alienation of the already isolated Kashmiris. Just because a handful of Kashmiri militants are suspected to be involved in Thursday's incident, why should the entire lot of people be branded alike and looked down upon with suspicion, hatred and mistrust. This is no different from the attack on the Asian community particularly the Sikhs in America in the wake of the World Trade Centre attack on September 11, for the pure reason that for the ignorant Americans, the Sikhs and Osama bin Laden looked alike in their turbans. If the government chose to condemn the attacks on the Asian community in America that time, why should it now choose to defend harassment on similar lines of the innocent people, for the only reason that they happen to belong to a militancy infested state or because they happen to be Muslims. Why should the government deny innocent people their democratic rights to reside and live peacefully in any part of the country. If Kashmiris staying in Delhi or visiting the capital city are being harassed, those staying back in their homes are no less harassed either. If the guilt of being a person from the same community and the same land as the suspected terrorist, is enough to make one a suspect in the eyes of the powers that be in a democratic country, why shouldn't everyone start suspecting all Delhi-ites to have some sort of a nexus with the criminals, with the city's growing crime graph, and start believing that all Mumbai-ites have connections with the underworld because Chotta Rajan and Shakeel etc come from there. ...OLE_Obj... ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Pakistan - India Relations May Worsen as increasing war-talk in India [WWW.STO
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- December 14, 2001, NYT Pakistan - India Relations May Worsen By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:21 a.m. ET NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Relations between India and Pakistan were already dismal before the terrorist attack on India's Parliament building. Now they may be in a downward spiral. Though few have publicly blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack that claimed 12 lives Thursday, there is concern it will increase tension between the nuclear rivals. ``It can't get worse, short of war,'' said K.P.S. Gill, one of India's leading anti-terrorism experts. Predictions were just as grim across the border. ``Relations between the two countries will nose-dive further,'' said Riffat Hussain, chairman of defense and strategic studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. ``If they don't accuse Pakistan, they have no one else to blame but themselves.'' Gunmen with explosives stormed the red sandstone complex and began firing in what has been called the worst breach of state security since the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee vowed revenge. ``Now the fight against terrorism has reached its last phase. We will fight a decisive battle to the end,'' Vajpayee told the nation. Vajpayee and India's senior leaders on Thursday were careful not to even whisper blame against Pakistan, with whom India has fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. But by Friday, many other Indians were pointing straight at Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to the al-Qaida terrorism network blamed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. ``For long, we have waited for Pakistan to stop aiding terrorism in this country,'' said Vijay Kumar Malhotra, a senior leader of Vajpayee's party and member of Parliament. ``India should attack and destroy the terrorist camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.'' India has long accused Pakistan, today a key U.S. ally in its global war on terrorism, of fomenting terrorism by training and supporting the Islamic militants who have waged a 12-year insurgency in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. The Islamic separatists are fighting for an independent Kashmir or a merger with Muslim Pakistan. Islamabad insists it offers the ``freedom fighters'' only moral and diplomatic support. India blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack that killed 40 people at the Kashmir state legislature on Oct. 1. A Pakistan-based militant group claimed credit, then later denied involvement. Pakistan's military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was quick to condemn the attacks on Thursday. ``I was shocked to learn about the attack earlier today by armed intruders,'' Musharraf said. ``I have been saddened by the loss of life and the injuries suffered by Indian security personnel in the attack.'' But two words in Musharraf's statement -- calling the attackers ``armed intruders'' instead of ``terrorists'' -- raised eyebrows and suspicion in New Delhi on Friday. Pramod Mahajan, India's parliamentary affairs minister, was asked if the attackers were from Pakistan. ``General Musharraf called them `armed intruders.' He was not even ready to use the word terrorists,'' Mahajan told Star News TV. ``That should be enough to answer your question.'' Kanti Bajpai, a professor of disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said Musharraf made a grave error. ``Musharraf should call them terrorists,'' he said. ``His statement, that's asking for trouble.'' Bajpai noted that India blames Pakistan for having supported the Taliban, which harbored the al-Qaida terrorism network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He expects India to retaliate against Pakistan. ``They may take their time over it, to show the world that they did it with due process, but I think the chances are pretty high,'' he said. J.N. Dixit, a former foreign secretary and high commissioner to Pakistan, said Thursday's strike should be a warning to the United States that its global war on terrorism had failed in India. Washington had called on both India and Pakistan to use restraint when cross-border shelling increased after the Oct. 1 suicide attack on the Kashmir state legislature. ``Despite the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign, terrorists still remain strong and they have devastating reach,'' Dixit said. ``This spectacular incident ... will result in India having to reconsider the American demand to practice restraint.'' Vajpayee told President Bush in a letter that Pakistanis were to blame for the Oct. 1 suicide attack. ``There is a limit to the patience of the people of India,'' he said then. Bush telephoned Vajpayee Thursday night to offer condolences and FBI and State Department counterterrorism teams to help in an investigation. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY
Taliban legacy that broke a proud female judge [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Taliban legacy that broke a proud female judge The Irish Times, NMov 14, 2001 What was it like for a woman before and during the years of the Taliban? One woman told Elaine Lafferty in Kabul about her life, then and now It is difficult to imagine that life was really ever very different for the women of Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban is gone from Kabul city, and yet one does not see a woman on the street without the all-enveloping blue burqa. When I was in Quetta, Pakistan, in October, I bought a burqa for $20 in case I might need it. When I returned to New York, it was passed around and tried on by friends, female and male, who marvelled at the sense of confinement, invisibility and claustrophobia it immediately engendered. It also became quite a party joke, so it is strange to be in Kabul and see this garb as something still taken seriously. This is not a stone-age city intellectually; beneath the burqa, one can make out women wearing sophisticated wool salwar kameez suits and upscale black leather shoes. Some carry urban-style handbags. But to get a more accurate picture of women here, you have to turn back the clock. In 1977, 15 per cent of all legislators were women. Until the 1990s, women accounted for 70 per cent of all teachers, 50 per cent of government workers and fully 40 per cent of doctors. In 1990, there were 14 women members of Afghanistan's judiciary. Shukria was one of them. For five years before that I was an assistant to a judge, she says proudly. We are sitting in the offices of UNICEF, where Shukria's aunt has helped her to apply for a job. Then I became a judge in 1990. I dealt with family law, divorces, property law and also juvenile justice. The Afghanistan juvenile justice system dealt with minors on several levels according to their ages. Her department dealt with with young people between the ages of 15 and 18 years old. Most of the charges against girls were related to sexual matters. The boys were accused of stealing or carrying drugs and weapons, she says. Shukria loved being a judge, mostly, she says, because she could help turn children's lives around. A judge can send them for rehabilitation instead of prison. Afghans are not violent, no matter what people say. Most of the crimes were because of poverty and lack of education. Children would steal because they needed things or needed money. In 1996, Shukria's work life came to an end in an abrupt and brutal manner. The Taliban forbade women to work. I ask Shukria how it happened, how did she learn she was sacked? She is holding a file folder with her CV inside and she suddenly brings it up to cover her face. She cannot control the tears. Minutes pass before she begins to speak slowly. I was in my office. They burst through the door. They were yelling, 'Who do you think you are? Who appointed you?' They did very bad behaviour to me. There was an old man, a guard, and they made him carry my things out. You couldn't talk to them. You couldn't reason with them. They wouldn't listen, she said. It is impossible not to speculate about what she means by bad behaviour but it is very easy not to ask this woman, with dark haunted eyes and tears on her cheeks, any more about it. She was a lawyer, a judge, a proud woman, and today it is clear she is trying just to unbreak her heart. After that I sat in my father's house for three years, sweeping the room. I worked as a volunteer with children, but it was a terrible time. We turn to the present. Shukria has prepared a series of lectures about law in Afghanistan for some NGOs. She met UNICEF director Carol Bellamy last week to offer proposals for the establishment of a new judicial system. She is discussing the revival of the 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan, which granted equal rights to women. If peace will come, if we have a government, then we will have good law as we used to. Judges must sit as judges, qualified people, not policeman or military. We have good law here, it just needs to be implemented. After talking with Shukria I go the football stadium in central Kabul. This is where justice Taliban-style was meted out once a month on Friday afternoons for five years. The accused would be presented to the family of the alleged victim, who could then vote to spare the accused's life. Few did. The judges would present the case over the loud-speakers to the 30,000 or so observers in the stands. Inevitably execution would be called for. Women were stoned to death for adultery, men's throats were slit for murder, hands were chopped off for theft, right there in front of the cheering crowds. Today the stadium is silent, the grass on the field crushed and brown. A lone soldier sits at the entrance peering curiously at some Western woman wandering around an empty field. The last execution there was in September, I am told. A strange graffiti is written on several
Czech paper casts doubt on suicide bomber's meeting with Iraqi agent [WWW.STOP
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 382 Friday December 14 2001 ISM is produced by the Mariam Appeal www.mariamappeal.com ___ Czech paper casts doubt on suicide bomber's meeting with Iraqi agent. Prague, 13 December: The theory about a connection between the terrorists from 11 September in the USA and the Iraqi embassy in Prague, which has served as the chief evidence against Iraq, is crumbling, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes writes today. Egyptian Mohammed Ata, who blew up a New York skyscraper, had only been in the Czech Republic twice. His alleged meeting with an Iraqi diplomat has not been confirmed. All information about his other stays in the Czech Republic checked by the Czech intelligence and police have proved unsubstantiated in the past days... The Prague trace and especially the meeting with the Iraqi spy were the only clue for Americans which suggested a connection of the al-Qa'idah members with Saddam Husayn's regime. I can confirm that documents only prove two stays, police chief Jiri Kolar said last night. Mohammed Ata visited Prague last May, when he landed at the Ruzyne airport. Since he did not have visa, he was not allowed to leave the transit room. This was his first stay. He returned to Germany and a few weeks later he returned to Prague by bus. This was his second stay. He spent here a single night in June and the second day he boarded a plane bound for the USA. Unfortunately, we have not ascertained where he was during the night, an intelligence officer told the daily. According to the original information, Ata had come by plane twice. However, the police now found that the other Mohammed Ata was a man from Pakistan and only had his name in common with the terrorist. His identification number was different, there was a big difference in their age and even nationality. Simply everything was different. It was someone else, an Interior Ministry official told the daily. Without presenting any evidence, Prime Minister Milos Zeman told CNN in mid-November that Ata and Iraqi consul al-Ani had at their meeting planned a terrorist attack on Radio Free Europe, which is based in Prague's centre. Zeman later said that this was just one of the hypotheses. The information was later denied unofficially by the Czech secret service and President Vaclav Havel did so officially last week. Source: CTK news agency, Prague, in English 2306 gmt 13 Dec 01. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
WHAT THEY WON'T LET US SEE: THOUSANDS KILLED BY U.S. BOMBERS [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.U
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- - Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 20, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper - WHAT THEY WON'T LET US SEE: THOUSANDS KILLED BY U.S. BOMBERS By Deirdre Griswold The planned and deliberate brutality of the Pentagon war in Afghanistan is a closely guarded secret. People in the United States are being told practically nothing about the war's effects on the Afghan people. What images are we allowed to see on television? Explosions that produce nothing but clouds of dust. Fuzzy objects in the crosshairs of bombers that are always identified as military targets. Grateful refugees receiving generous handouts from the West. And the smooth-talking boys of the Pentagon who make it all sound like a heroic game that will end when the evil enemy has been taken. But the truth is there have been massive civilian casualties. The military no longer produce a body count at the end of each day as they did during the Vietnam War. However, as of Dec. 10, more than 3,500 civilians had died in the U.S. bombing, according to Prof. Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire. Herold has been keeping tabs on casualty reports since the bombs began falling on Oct. 7. He has done a meticulous job of tabulating, day by day and place by place, all the reports of civilian casualties to be found in the world press. Herold released the results of his study on Dec. 10 in a discussion with Amy Goodman, producer of Democracy Now! An Excel spreadsheet containing the information can be found at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/. I was concerned that there would be significant civilian casualties caused by the bombing, and I was able to find some mention of casualties in the foreign press but almost nothing in the U.S. press, he said. These were poor people to begin with, he added. And, on top of that, they had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 11. Herold lists the date, number of casualties, location, type of weapon used and sources of information for each incident. Here is one such listing for Oct. 11: Two U.S. jets bombed the mountain village of Karam, comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner and evening prayer time, killing 100-160 people. Sources: DAWN (English-language Pakistani daily newspaper), the Guardian of London, the Independent, International Herald Tribune, the Scotsman, the Observer and the BBC News. That was at the beginning of the bombing campaign, when the Taliban were still believed to be strong. But what happened after they began to flee south and eventually abandoned Kabul? BOMBING OF BIBI MAHRU The bombing continued unabated. In an article entitled U.S. Planes Rain Death on the Innocent, Rory McCarthy wrote in the Guardian of Dec. 1 that the village of Bibi Mahru near Kabul had been hit several times by U.S. bombers, even though they destroyed the only military target in the area, a radar and anti-aircraft position on a hill above the town, on the first night. McCarthy saw the damage caused by bombs dropped 10 days after the radar position had been destroyed. The deep craters and pieces of shrapnel indicate that America's weapon of choice in Kabul was the Mark 82 500-lb. bomb, which is designed to be guided to its target by the pilot, a nearby observation plane or a spotter on the ground. But there was nothing accurate about the 500-lb. bomb which fell on Bibi Mahru. It killed Gul Ahmad, 40, a Hazara carpet weaver, his second wife Sima, 35, their five daughters and his son by his first wife. Two children living next door were also killed. ... 'My husband was thinking before this incident that the Americans would bring peace in our country,' said Arafa, who lost eight members of her family. 'Now I am left with my five daughters and two sons and no one to look after them.' McCarthy also visited a neighborhood in Kabul of workers' apartment buildings built by the Soviet Union during the period of the Afghan Revolution, which was overthrown in a war financed by the U.S. CIA. On Nov. 12, wrote McCarthy, the last day the Taliban spent in Kabul, American planes targeted a military garrison close to the densely populated Soviet-built Microrayon housing district. Four 50-lb. bombs hit the area. Only one hit the garrison. One landed at the corner of apartment block 33, where a crowd of children were playing. Nazila, six, was crushed to death by a concrete block. 'She couldn't run away in time,' said her father, Abdul Basir. 'We believed because this was a residential block they wouldn't hit it. We thought they were hitting their targets accurately.' A second landed in the road, a third landed on two houses, killing five people, including a 15-year-old girl. The Pentagon keeps denying civilian casualties in its press briefings. The corporate media here--the newspaper and television bosses who control what gets aired--accept whatever the military says. They kill
Criticize Clinton and land in jail [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Abuse Clinton in Marxist Bengal and land in jail ALOKE BANERJEE TIMES NEWS NETWORK Times of India, Dec 8, 2001 KOLKATA: It is not safe in Marxist West Bengal to criticise former US president Bill Clinton even when the state government has decided on Thursday not to move a bill to enact Prevention of Organised Crimes Act (POCA), a cousin of the much reviled central law the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO). Two girls in their early 20s, Deepa Sarkar and Kakoli Mandi, found this out to their great misfortune. The girls, Naxalites attached to People's War, were arrested from Salboni in Midnapore for carrying a Clinton Go Back placard. Both were charged with sedition and have been languishing in jail since March. The lack of an act on organised crime has not deterred the administration from putting nearly 1,000 political prisoners behind bars for prolonged periods. All of them have been arrested under the existing laws. As many as 686 of them are members of the Kamtapur People's Party which is demanding a separate state in North Bengal. The rest are activists of various Naxalite factions. Ironically, the Left Front and the CPM too had raised similar slogans during Clinton's first visit to India in March 2000, then as the president of the United States. The opponents to the proposed law from within the CPM have insisted that there was no need for a law such as the POCA and existing laws were enough to deal with organised crime. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Local Leaders Ask for End to Raids [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Tim Weiner New York Times Service Tuesday, December 4, 2001 Local Leaders Ask for End to Raids and Tell Foreign Fighters to Leave (extract) . In a signed declaration addressed to the world, the elders of this region said: To those foreigners living in the mountains of Afghanistan, we say to you: Leave our country. Because of you, our innocent countrymen are suffering. Our demand to the United States government and its coalition: Stop the bombing in the name of humanity. Please stop bombing our innocent people. We say to all civilized nations that this bombardment is cruelty. One of the elders, Mohammed Hazrat Faqirbad, said: War is disaster. War is evil. Because war is unholy. There is no holy war. It makes our women widows and beggars. No more. The villagers of Kama Ado, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of here, said they had identified and buried 155 of their dead. Eastern Shura officials said that at least 58 people had died in three other nearby villages. The officials and villagers said that the death toll would climb and that the dead were Afghan civilians, not Qaida fighters. The Pentagon has not acknowledged that any villages were struck, saying it bombed only Qaida military targets between Friday night and early Monday morning. The villages lie within 15 kilometers of the cave complexes of Tora Bora in southern Nangarhar Province. Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Homeless in Srinagar as per POTO [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Homeless in Srinagar as per POTO Father arrested for 'harbouring' militants, family evicted; JK govt approves ordinance MUFTI ISLAH (Indian Express, Nov 30 2001) SRINAGAR, NOVEMBER 29: AT first glance, this scene in downtown Srinagar is nothing unusual: two children, one six, the other four, fighting over a chocolate, the mother by their side being consoled by neighbours. On November 26, her husband Ghulam Muhammad Dar was arrested by the police for allegedly harbouring militants. But there's one difference this time. The police have sealed the door, nailed the windows, the family has been evicted-as per POTO. Jammu and Kashmir became the first state in the country to approve POTO today but for 35-year-old Hasina and her children, Abbas and Fayaz, their grandmother Jana Begum, the Special Operations Group of the JK police came with the Ordinance on November 26 itself. Since then they have been spending the day on a coir carpet outside the house, the night with neighbours who take turns having them over. On her door is pasted a handwritten notice in Urdu: ''The Government of Jammu and Kashmir has seized this house belonging to Ghulam Muhammad Dar under Section 8 and 9 of Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance POTO. Dar has been harbouring militants and a search of the house had yielded a pistol and a wireless set.'' The notice warns that entry into the house by is an offence under the law. Away from TV studios and the seminar circuit, this aspect of POTO-Sections 8 9-has been rarely debated, the focus being on the provisions against the press: the power of the police to seize a property suspected to constitute ''proceeds of terrorism.'' TADA did not have any such provision. And POTO gives virtually unfettered powers on this score. In fact, residents can be evicted for an indefinite period and the property seized even if the person possessing it is not accused of committing any offence. Residents of the Safa Kadal neighbourhood where the house is cannot understand why the police has refused to let the mother and her two children stay. A group of neighbours took the two children, the mother and the grandmother to the police and the local adminstration for help. But nothing has come out of it. Today, it was even worse. Mohammad Ahsan Untoo, who heads the local Human Rights Front, arrived at the house with a group of supporters who tried to break open the lock. Police arrived and fired tear gas at the protesters who were chased away. A team of police personnel was posted at the house. Speaking to The Indian Express, K Rajinder, Inspector General of Police, said Dar's house served as a ''hideout'' for Al Badr militants. ''They used to hide in one of the rooms which opened through a cupboard. It was a scientifically designed hide-out with good ventilation and space for ammunition,'' he said. Police say Dar's address was found in some documents seized on November 23 after an Al-Badr deputy commander Hafiz was killed in an encounter at Zakoora in the city's outskirts. Khalid Najeeb Soharwardhy, Minister of State for Home, said that POTO was applicable in Jammu and Kashmir like in other parts of the country. ''It started the day when the ordinance was passed. If Parliament withdraws or makes amendments in it, it will then cease to be applicable or there will be change in it,'' he said. Until then, the family may have to remain homeless. * The property can be seized even if the person possessing it is not accused of committing any offence under POTO or any other law. * The police can throw out all the residents and seal the property without giving any notice to them. * No judicial supervision. The police do not have to take the court's permission before seizing the property. Nor do they have to report to the court after the seizure. * They can take up the matter only before an executive officer called the Designated Authority and they have 48 hours to do so. * There is no prescribed limit on how long the Designated Authority can take to decide the validity of the seizure. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Sealed house reoccupied by police amid protests [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Sealed house reoccupied by police amid protests Demonstrations lathicharged, teargassed Kashmir Times, 30 Nov 2001 KT NEWS SERVICE SRINAGAR, Nov 29: Amid strong protest demonstration at Safa Kadal which was quelled by lathi-charge and lobbing tear gas shells, police today occupied the house which was earlier sealed under Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance. A big demonstration led by Mohammad Ahsan Untoo, chairman Human Rights Front, a local human rights organisation, today defied POTO by breaking the seal of the particular house. They Ghearoed the house, which was followed by breaking its seal, and then forced their entry into it. The family members also entered the house. But, immediately afterwards police swung into action and started pushing back the demonstrators. Dozens of teargas shells were lobbed and severe lathi-charge resorted to, to disperse the mob. We broke open the outer gate of the house and entered its premises. But a large column of police surfaced on the spot and drove us out, Untoo, who managed to give police a slip, told KTNS. The protesters pelted stones at the police party and the clash continued for some time. They were also chanting slogans against the police action. Police latter occupied the house and took positions from within the structure. Abdul Qayoom, Superintendent of Police, North, when contacted, denied the house has been occupied. He said the authorities have put the security for its protection. Since it is in the interior city double guard comprising 10 cops including a havaldar from district police lines have been put on duty for its protection. This was done to avoid the structure being put on fire, he said. Asked that a large number of police force would be required to man such hide-outs as the number of sealings mount, he said, only such houses would be sealed which have been constructed as militant hide-outs. In the first case of its type in country, a house belonging to Gulam Mohammad Dar, it is recalled, was sealed on November 25 after evicting the inmates. The area is tense since with the people in the locality on protest. Untoo said his organisation is planning to stage a dharna at Lal Chowk tomorrow to protest the implementation of POTO. The family members would also participate in Dharna, he said. The eviction has forced the octogenarian mother of Dar, his wife, sister and two minor children to come on roads. Haseena, ailing mother of Dar said, it took them years to save money for its construction. But within moments we were rendered homeless, she said. She said following the arrest of Dar, the only bread earner of the house, they have no means to run the family. My husband passed away 27 years back, for years I single handed managed affairs of the house. Now, it was he who was running the house, she said. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Enforcement of POTO sends shock waves in Kashmir Valley [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Enforcement of POTO sends shock waves in Valley Kashmir Times, Nov 28, 2001 KT NEWS SERVICE SRINAGAR, Nov 27: The implementation of Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance here has sent shivers down the spine of the people. It was the most hotly debated issue today with people evaluating the colossal sufferings its use and misuse will unleash. The state became the first place in the country where the ordinance is implemented. Police on Sunday, sealed a house of Gulam Mohammad Dar, a resident of Malik Mohalla Safa Kadal and evicted the inmates. The house was allegedly used as a hide-out by militants. Dar was arrested some days back and he has been booked under several sections of POTO. Given the volatile situation prevalent in state, it is widely believed here that the incidents related to the implementation of ordinance will become a routine. Within six months half of valley residents would be on roads, lamented Khurshid Ahmad, an advocate. In every nook and corner today, people were seen discussing the ramifications of implementing such an ordinance. The news of first incident was received with shock. In offices, educational institutions, mosques and residential houses, terrified people were rapt in the discussions over the issue. Every day we hear of dozens of incidents of encounters, arrests, recovery of arms from various places. It means all such places would be sealed, although it is a known fact that nobody invites militants to their houses, said Gulam Rasool Wani, a fruit vendor here. It is considered more devastating than the destruction of houses during encounters. Whenever an encounter takes place from a house, it is razed to ground or in other cases houses were blasted. But the effected person can re-construct it afterwards. Here the entire family is forced to take refuge in the street. Then there is a very thin line between a militant and a civilian, he said. Its misuse is the most worrying aspect of the entire episode. That means we cannot afford to face a cop. For a trivial issue, they can show recovery from our house and seal it. Besides, extortion is an order of the day here and this time if one dares to refuse it, its implications could well be understood, said Mushtaq Ahmad, an employee. Common people are also wondering that ruling party here has offered no opposition to an ordinance, which has been branded by opposition in centre and by civil libertarians as draconian. Even if their opposition had caused least difference, but they should have aired their concern, he said. NC general secretary Shiekh Nazir Ahmad, when contacted, said he is not aware about any sealing of house here. What I know is the ordinance has not been implemented here. And for rest, I cannot comment off hand, he said. ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
POTO is state terrorism [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Pushing the POTO By Kuldip Nayar , The Hindu Nov 28 I THOUGHT we had closed the chapter on the right to stay free. The ousting of the British had registered our determination and the Constitution had enshrined the resolve. The challenge came during the Emergency (1975-77) when one lakh people were detained without trial. Yet, we were able to roll back the misrule by ousting all those who were part of the oppressive machinery. The Congress Government again revived the MISA of Emergency-fame in the shape of the TADA in 1984 in the wake of the happenings in Punjab. But the measure did not stay for long because its misuse had killed thousands of innocent people and put some 75,000 men and women behind bars, only one per cent of whom were convicted. After a lapse of several years, the BJP-led Government has promulgated the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO). The Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, has thrown down the gauntlet. It is for the people to pick it up. They are the ones who will be picked up on mere suspicion. The history of preventive detention is littered with examples of state terrorism. The measure will be used once again against trade unionists, human rights activists and members of minorities rather than against the terrorists. Once again it will be a reign of terror. The National Human Rights Commission's repeated advice has had no effect on the Government. The existing laws are good enough to fight terrorism. Leading jurists have also pointed out that there is no need for special legislation and that the administration has enough powers to deal with any untoward situation. But the Government's purpose is not to challenge the terrorists but to chastise those who oppose saffronisation and are committed to civil liberties and human rights. The craze for power has made the Government go beyond the proposals of the Law Commission which set the ball rolling. The Government did not send the ordinance to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Home Affairs for its opinion. Mr. Advani appears to have made the ordinance a matter of prestige. He has gone to the extent of saying that those who oppose the ordinance are supporting terrorism. In the face of such a statement, what do the safeguards against the misuse of the POTO mean? It is going to be the same old game: them against us, the rulers against the critics. And the police will see to it that the will of their political masters prevails. No one is opposed to the fight against terrorists. People all over the country suffer at their hands. But the suffering at the hands of the police is no less. There is no rule which is not bent and there is no excess which is not committed when word comes from the top to fix someone. What remedy does the common man have against state tyranny? Even the power of law courts has been curtailed. If it is power, the Government has already too much for the liking of civil society. The National Security Act, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Disturbed Area Act, the Special Court Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act - all of them are special laws. Ordinary laws are no less severe. Rajiv Gandhi's killers were sentenced to death under the ordinary law, not the TADA. On top of it, the security forces indulge in encounters. The disappearance of civil liberties activists is common. Till today, the police have not produced human rights activist Khalra of Punjab despite the Supreme Court's order. The POTO will be yet another instrument of oppression. The Government seldom pursues real terrors for political reasons. Those who committed terror and killed thousands in Delhi in 1984 and Mumbai in 1993 have yet to be brought to book. In any case, Mr. Advani is the last person who should be telling us what terrorism is. He has been charge-sheeted in the Babri Masjid demolition case. He is the one who should answer whether such an act amounted to terrorism or not. It is, however, intriguing that the POTO, unlike the TADA, does not say that alienating people or affecting the harmony among different sections is a terrorist act. Never has independent India been subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance. This is the worst kind of attack on an individual's liberty. What differentiates democracy from dictatorship is personal freedom; the first guarantees it and the second fetters it. I recall that the Congress Government once brought a Bill to intercept mail. Parliament passed it. But the then President, Giani Zail Singh, refused to sign it because he considered it interference in a citizen's privacy. When we have fought terrorism for more than a decade without resorting to what America and Great Britain are doing, why should we now introduce such draconian measures which are bound to be misused as has been the experience? Even then there is no provision in the latest U.S. measure to detain
RE: How U.S. destroyed progressive secular forces in Afghanistan [WWW.STOPNATO
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - thanks for posting this on the antinato list. I wanted to do search of the Worker's World web myself for more background information on Afghanistan, but couldn't due to problems with a virus! This article by Deirdre Griswold is perhaps one of the most important contributions to the debate on Afghanistan. Sandeep -Original Message- From: Jim Yarker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 25 September 2001 00:15 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: How U.S. destroyed progressive secular forces in Afghanistan [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.U Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/afghan0927.php http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/afghan0927.php How U.S. destroyed progressive secular forces in Afghanistan By Deirdre Griswold The media are suddenly full of opinions about Afghanistan, now that the Bush administration is accusing Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists of being behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In the 1980s, the reactionary political elements now ruling Afghanistan were working with the CIA to overthrow a progressive Afghani government supported by the Soviet Union. After the spending of an ocean of blood and billions of U.S. dollars, the reactionaries won. Washington was happy and unconcerned as its protégés went on to butcher Afghani progressives, restore landlordism and repress women while fighting among themselves. The eventual triumph of the Taleban faction represented a catastrophe for the Afghani people. Just in the last year thousands of Afghani refugees have died of starvation and exposure and Kabul, the capital, is such a wasteland that the U.S., demanding vengeance, can't even find anything to bomb. On Oct. 10, 1996, Workers World printed the following article about how the U.S. strangled a popular revolution led by the Progressive Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against feudalism and imperialism. Not that long ago, the bourgeoisie could still feel pride in their revolutionary history. They continued to celebrate the 1789 French Revolution and many other great victories in the struggle against feudal oppression. They even spoke approvingly of the 1917 overthrow of the czarist autocracy in Russia. The problem, they said, was that the Bolsheviks had spoiled that struggle for democracy by going too far. But capitalism in this rotten age of U.S. imperialist conquest of the globe has degenerated so far from its revolutionary roots that it is now, to borrow a phrase from Henry Kissinger, to the right of the czar. And it is celebrating the return of absolute feudal rule in Afghanistan. The powerful media engines, their reach multiplied by the most modern technologies, are presenting the world with instant photographic images of a lynching--that's all it was--of the few progressives left in Kabul. . To make the deed more palatable, the media use adjectives like butcher to describe former President Najibullah and his aides. Dragged out of the United Nations compound where they had sought asylum for the last four years, they were beaten to death and then left hanging for all to see. But among themselves, foreign-policy experts for the U.S. establishment know that the Afghani progressives' real crime was that they tried to carry out a social transformation in their country in the direction of socialism. What authority bears witness to this? None other than the U.S. Department of the Army itself. The Pentagon puts out what it calls country study books on almost every country in the world. They are updated every few years. These books contain basic information for the use of U.S. personnel traveling or working abroad. There's nothing classified in them. They're available in most libraries. Afghanistan--a Country Study for 1986 has of course the anti-communist line expected of a Pentagon publication. But it also contains much useful information about the changes instituted by the Afghani Revolution of 1978. Freeing women and peasants Before the revolution, 5 percent of Afghanistan's rural landowners owned more than 45 percent of the arable land. A third of the rural people were landless laborers, sharecroppers or tenants. Debts to the landlords and to money lenders were a regular feature of rural life, says the U.S. Army report. An indebted farmer turned over half his crop each year to the money lender. When the PDPA took power, it quickly moved to remove both landownership inequalities and usury, says the Pentagon report. Decree number six of the revolution canceled mortgage debts of agricultural laborers, tenants and small landowners. The revolutionary regime set up extensive literacy programs, especially for women. It printed textbooks in many languages--Dari,
RE: Those 4000 Israelis? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - According to the the Washington Post that about 113 Israelis are reported to be missing in the WTC. Sandeep -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 21 September 2001 04:19 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Those 4000 Israelis? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - In a message dated 9/20/2001 7:11:10 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For it to be true, those 4000 people would have had to maintaain absolute secrecy. Are you prepared to say that no Israeli's worked in the WTC? - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Say no to war! Join us in a vigil! [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - Say no to war! Join us in a vigil! When: Thursday, 27th Sept. 2001 at 6:30PM Where: The Dail, Dublin All are welcome! Call 672 7803/087 2225742 for more details Please pass on this email to others. http://www.endiraqsanctions.net Statement from the Campaign to End the Iraq Sanctions. Justice not retribution is the only way forward for humanity. The Campaign to End Iraq Sanctions extends our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families and friends of the innocent civilians who were killed in the United Sates on the 11th September in the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and in Pensyliviana. The sudden and arbitrary taking of life by an individual, government or group is immoral and wrong whether it be in America, Iraq, Sudan or Yugoslavia. Since Tuesday the 11th September we have seen images of the carnage and the faces of human misery and loss from America. We have witnessed the magnitude of the waste and destruction. And we have shared their pain, confusion and fear. The coverage was however, in stark contrast to the media's past coverage of the Gulf War, when, instead of real buildings exploding over and over again, we saw only sterile views of concrete targets -- there and then gone. We did not see the destruction and carnage nor the misery on the faces of people whose loved ones were killed and buried under the rubble and whose lives had been changed terribly and unrecognisable in a matter of seconds. Yet, whilst thousands of American families mourned for the dead and injured the Bush administration took advantage of the tragic human toll to strengthen and intensify the Pentagon's war machine. Not two days after this attack, whilst the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre were still burning, President Bush, talked of how America was at War. This was before any group had taken responsibility or before any concrete facts were established who were America at war with? The Middle East was put centre stage backed up by irresponsible media coverage. A whole culture was held accountable and guilty. The backlash of anti- Muslim and Islamic feeling has had consequences for the innocent throughout the World, sadly from America to Ireland. Innocent people are being targeted with hatred and violence as a result of the naked racism expressed, condoned and encouraged by World leaders such as Tony Blair and President Bush. Throughout the week what has been glaringly absent and in fact has been repressed by the media, has been any attempt to explore, discuss or understand possible motives of the terrorists, why would they do it? What was their political agenda? At a time when the World is in shock we have seen Bush calling for retribution, revenge and war. Afghanistan, where an estimated 5.5 million people will be totally dependent on food aid this coming winter as a result of a three year drought, and the ravaging of their country by the repressive Taliban regime, is the prime target of American and NATO's vengeance. Poverty is already so severe that hundreds of thousands can not afford to travel to food distribution centres, and thus face certain starvation. The majority of the population have not even heard about the events in America. Yet, their fragile existence is the target of the most powerful and supposed democratic countries in the world. Pakistan has been handed an ultimatum by President Bush that either they assist in the destruction of Afghanistan or they will also be viewed as an enemy. The Campaign is calling on the Irish government and World leaders to truly live up to the values of humanity and halt the impeding human carnage that now faces our world. The potential destruction and decimation of a poor, oppressed and innocent people will not only result in the escalation of civilian deaths both in the Middle East and in the West, but will also result in the death of the spirit of humanity. It is a time for true democratic leadership based on the values of justice, peace and the equal value of life whether it be an American or Afghani life. It is a time for world reflection and not blind retribution. It is a time to truly invoke the values of peace and justice that reflects the values of humanity as we recognise the vulnerability and the fragility of all human life. No amount of body bags be they Irish, English, American, Afghan or Pakistani will bring the innocent victims of violence back to their grieving families. Justice not retribution is the only way forward for humanity. - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that
Fwd: [no-sanctions] Fwd: UN agencies based in Jordan brace for eventual hits o
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Voices uk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: UN agencies based in Jordan brace for eventual hits on Iraq Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 17:20:58 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UN agencies based in Jordan brace for eventual hits on Iraq AMMAN, Sept 19 (AFP) - United Nations agencies based in Jordan are reviewing contingency plans in the event of strikes on Iraq following the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, officials said Wednesday. We have received 'secret' instructions from our offices in New York to start preparations within our emergency plans in the event of a US strike on Iraq, a UN agency official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Frantic steps to stock up on supplies, namely food, started four days ago, the official said. Meanwhile the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman, Dario Carminati, said his agency has taken precautionary measures in any event of the crisis reaching the region. We are reviewing inventory and our contingency plans, Carminati said. According to the UN official the UNHCR, which has an office in Baghdad, is stocking up on food and water mainly and taking steps to prepare for fallout from an eventual attack on Iraq, including the displacement of civilians. Different scenarios are being envisaged at the (Iraqi international) borders and inside Iraq, Carminati said. Normally in our contingency plan, we expect people to move more to Turkey and Iran, in case of the closing of borders, and less to Jordan, he said. Very few Iraqi refugees come to Jordan, he said, adding however that nationals from other countries living in Iraq moved to Jordan in the wake of the 1991 Gulf war. A US government source said Tuesday that the Central Intelligence Agency was checking reports that a hijacker of one of the airliners that crashed into New York's World Trade Center on September 11 had met a senior Iraqi intelligence official prior to the terror attacks. There is an indication that such a meeting occurred earlier this year in Europe, said the source. But the CIA was not certain the meeting had anything to do with Tuesday's events, the source added. US Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday the United States had no evidence about Baghdad's involvement in the plot. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri denied in an interview published Wednesday that Baghdad had any role near or far in the US terror attacks. -- --- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] CASI's website - www.casi.org.uk - includes an archive of all postings. Campaign to End Iraq Sanctions - Ireland Website: http://www.endiraqsanctions.net; email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
India 2nd largest arms buyer, US biggest seller [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - India 2nd largest arms buyer, US biggest seller ...OLE_Obj... (Times of India, Aug 22) WASHINGTON: The US, Russia and France together cut almost 90 percent of the world's conventional arms sales deals last year, with most of the weapons going to developing nations, according to a US congressional report. The UAE ranked first in the value of arms transfer agreements among all developing nations weapons purchasers, concluding $7.4 billion worth of deals. India ranked second with $4.8 billion and South Korea third with $2.3 billion. The top buyers in 1997-2000 were the UAE, India and Egypt. In 2000, the US ranked first in arms transfer agreements with developing nations at 12.6 billion or 49.7 percent of these agreements, the report said. Russia was second with 7.4 billion or 29.1 percent of such deals, while France ranked third with 2.1 billion, or 8.3 percent of such agreements. According to the report, a close review of Russia's largest value arms agreements in recent years shows they have been with two main clients, China and India. It adds that while some former arms clients in the developing world continue to express interest in obtaining additional Russian weaponry, they have been restricted in doing so by a lack of funds. The total value of US arms transfer agreements with developing nations in 2000 increased by almost four billion dollars last year, from $8.7 billion in 1999 to 12.6 billion in 2000. Out of all arms deliveries made worldwide by all suppliers in 2000, the US, Britain and Russia collectively delivered nearly $22.8 billion worth, or 77.5 percent, with the US taking the lion's share at 48.3 percent -- down slightly from its 49.1 percent share in 1999. As for arms deliveries to developing nations in 2000, the US ranked first at $8.7 billion, or 44.8 percent of all such deliveries. It was the eighth year in a row that the US has led in such deliveries. Britain ranked second at 4.4 billion or 22.7 percent of such deliveries, while Russia ranked third at 2.4 billion or 12.4 percent, according to the report produced by the Congressional Research Service. According to Tamar Gabelnick, arms expert with the Federation of American Scientists, I'm not surprised that the US is still the main supplier since the end of the Cold War. This undercuts the arguments from US defense contractors like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing that Pentagon regulations hamper their efforts to compete, he added. The report, which covers the period 1993-2000, goes on to say that during 1997-2000 developing world nations accounted for 70.2 percent of al deliveries, up from 65.8 percent during the 1993-1996 period. Authored by Richard Grimmett, specialist in national defense, the report points out that a number of weapons exporters continue to focus their efforts on maintaining and expanding arms sales to nations and regions where they have competitive advantages due to prior political/ military ties.' It goes on to say that additional notable arms sales are likely in the Near East, Asia and Latin America as individual nations seek to replace older military equipment. The Near East has generally been the largest arms market in the developing world, the report adds, accounting for 54.6 percent in 1993-1996 of the total value of all developing nations arms transfer agreements. During 1997-2000 the region accounted for 47.2 percent of all such agreements. ( AFP ) © The Times OF India Online. All rights reserved. - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Israel murders Palestinian leaders [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - U.S.-backed terror hits new level Israel murders Palestinian leaders By Richard Becker Josef Goebbels had nothing on the present-day propagandists for the U.S. government and capitalist media. Goebbels, Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, developed the Big Lie technique. His credo was make the lie big enough and repeat it often enough and it will be believed. Goebbels specialized in turning reality upside down, portraying the victim as aggressor and vice-versa--all in the service of Hitler's Nazi war machine. Goebbels created a fantasy of Polish aggression to justify Germany's 1939 invasion of that country, which started World War II in Europe. Today, top U.S. government officials and their bought media portray the Israeli occupiers of Palestine as beleaguered victims and the oppressed Palestinian people as fanatical aggressors, thereby justifying the most ferocious repression by the U.S.-armed Israeli military. Take, for example, the intensifying Israeli campaign of assassination against Palestinian political and military leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. In the first four days of August, at least 10 Palestinians were murdered--most torn to pieces by helicopter-fired missiles, courtesy of the Pentagon. In Nablus, eight people were killed inside a building housing a research center. The most prominent among the dead was Jamil Mansour, the head of the center and a political leader of the Hamas organization. Two young boys were also killed in the missile attack. Other victims lived in the West Bank city of Tulkarem and in Gaza. Marwan Barghouti, the leader of Fatah, the biggest Palestinian party, narrowly escaped death in an attack on the military convoy in which he was traveling. Barghouti is a symbol of resistance and a widely popular figure across the Palestinian political spectrum. The latest assassinations and attempted killings resulted in a sharp upsurge in armed resistance throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Heavy fighting broke out in many areas. In the most dramatic response, Ali Joulani, a Jerusalem housepainter who reportedly was not previously involved politically, attacked the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. He wounded 10 Israeli soldiers before being shot and killed. The Israeli military has reacted by further tightening the blockades of Palestinian cities and villages, creating a severe crisis. The rights group B'Tselem reported on Aug. 6 that 218 Palestinian towns and villages with a population of more than 200,000 lack adequate water supplies in the hottest time of the year as a result of the blockades. U.S. capitalist media support assassinations At least 50 Palestinian organizers have been killed in the assassination campaign since the new Intifada, or uprising, began on Sept. 28 last year. Can anyone imagine the big-business media's panic campaign if the situation were reversed? What if the Palestinians were carrying out an assassination campaign against Israeli political figures? But instead of outrage, the U.S. reaction--official and otherwise--has ranged from the gentlest criticism to outright support for Israel's state policy of murder. Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the Israel assassination campaign overly aggressive, and called for a return to negotiations. But in an interview with Fox News on Aug. 2, Vice President Richard Cheney expressed his sympathy with the Israeli tactic. He said, I think there is some justification in their [the Israelis] trying to protect themselves by pre-empting. On the Sunday network talk shows Aug. 5, most of the pundits expressed support for the assassinations. Several criticized Powell's extremely mild diplomatic reproach. George Will and Cokie Roberts, hosting ABC's This Week morning show Aug. 5, agreed that, after all, it was Israel that is under attack. Never mind that more than four times as many Palestinians as Israelis have died, and 15 times as many Palestinians have been seriously wounded in the Intifida. Never mind that tens of thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed or made uninhabitable. Never mind that the Palestinian standard of living, in the broken-up 5 percent of historic Palestine that they hold today, is less than one-tenth that of the Israelis. And, of course, never mind that Israel--thanks to the U.S. government's generous support--today has the fourth most powerful military in the world, while the Palestinians have no planes, helicopters, tanks or ships. Never mind all that. Israel is depicted as the victim, while the Palestinians are the aggressors. Josef Goebbels would have been proud. Split in the administration? The different positions expressed by Powell and Cheney have raised speculation in the world media about a division over Middle East policy in the Bush administration. But, as an unnamed pro-Israel analyst interviewed by the Chicago Tribune put it, any
OPPRESSORS IN INDIA MURDER A SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - PHOOLAN DEVI: THE BANDIT QUEEN-- OPPRESSORS IN INDIA MURDER A SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE By Sara Flounders Phoolan Devi, a militant leader known as the bandit queen and famous as a symbol of the struggle of lower-caste and oppressed Indians, was assassinated in New Delhi on July 25. She was 44 years old. India was oppressed as a British colony for hundreds of years. Winning independence in 1948, capitalist India had a modest amount of independence maneuvering between the socialist USSR and U.S. imperialism. The new U.S.-ruled world order of unrestrained capitalism has increased the already wide gap between rich and poor within India, where the caste system provides a deeply ingrained form of prejudice akin to racism. This caste system, which Devi fought, is used to justify extreme discrimination and oppression in every area of social and economic life. Leaders of the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party, the party Devi represented in the Indian Parliament, claim that her assassination is a political conspiracy of the elite. It comes at a crucial time when the right-wing nationalist BJP Party faces a close election against the Samajwadi Party in the biggest state in India, Uttar Pradesh. Devi's rallies had been drawing many thousands of angry, oppressed people. Phoolan Devi rose from an illiterate peasant girl to an internationally known bandit to a famous political prisoner freed by a rising mass movement to a representative in the national parliament. Her assassination sparked rebellions and mass demonstrations. As The Times of India wrote on July 28, Phoolan Devi was a phenomenon like no other in Indian politics. Devi is known in the West through a 1994 movie about her life called Bandit Queen. Its graphic portrayal of caste and sexual violence against women created an uproar in India. In India Devi was a legend before the age of 20 as the leader of a gang of dacoits--robbers who preyed on the rich upper castes and shared the spoils with the impoverished lower castes. She made international headlines in 1981 when she was charged with the biggest murder of upper-caste male landowners in modern Indian history. A THREAT TO THE SOCIAL ORDER As described in the biography India's Bandit Queen by Mala Sen and in the movie Bandit Queen, Devi's early life experience was similar to that of millions of Indian women. As a girl in a large, impoverished family of the oppressed mallah caste, she was considered only a burden. She was married off at age 11 to an abusive and brutal man of 33. She escaped at age 12 and traveled alone, hundreds of miles, back to her village. But an unattached young woman who had abandoned her marriage was considered a threat to the whole social order. In an isolated village, she was the prey of other powerful men. Her determination to speak out against the theft of her father's tiny plot of land and her effort to take the matter to court earned further attacks. She wound up in a band of dacoits or bandits, becoming the gang's leader by the age of 16. Many hundreds of bandit gangs lived in the treacherous crags and narrow eroded ravines of rural Uttar Pradesh. Gang life was part of the upheaval in the decaying feudal social order. Even the gangs were divided by caste. Some gangs acted as protectors of the landlord classes and in league with the police worked for payoffs, like paramilitary gangs in Latin America. Others gangs of poor and landless rebels offered a kind of protection for the peasants who were abused by the corrupt and higher caste police. Not that the gangs were revolutionary guerrillas. Their struggle was not aimed at overturning the social order or even at organizing the masses to demand their rights. But they represented class hatred and outrage at the injustice of a rotting, caste-ridden, class society. A SYMBOL OF RESISTANCE Phoolan Devi became famous. Newspapers across India wrote tirelessly of her exploits. A Phoolan Devi doll with a bandoleer of bullets strapped across her chest and a red bandana was one of the hottest- selling toys in India. In 1980 she was captured. Her lover was killed. She was turned over to the upper-caste men of the village of Behmai. There she was held and gang raped for weeks. She was almost dead when friends smuggled her out of the village. After her escape she reorganized a gang and allegedly returned a year later for revenge. Twenty-two men of the elite Thakur caste were gunned down. The act sent shock waves through the elite of India. Many Indian politicians and business owners belong to this caste. The state launched the biggest dragnet ever conducted. Thousands of police were assigned to the case. For three years Phoolan Devi eluded capture. Press coverage was intense. There was enormous political pressure for her capture. The killings were considered an outrageous act for a woman and especially a woman of such a low caste.
US wants a 99 yr lease for bases in Serbia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK - The USA will hire military bases in Serbia Source: www.blic.co.yu http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/redirect?u=http%3A%2F%2Fblic.gates96.com%2F Published: July 30, 2001 Author: Beta news agency Posted on 07/30/2001 03:14:38 PDT by Lemi According to well-informed diplomatic sources of Brussels The USA will hire military bases in Serbia Brussels (Beta)- American administration wants to hire certain military bases and buildings for 99 years, including Bondsteel KFOR base in Kosovo, Yugoslav Army's radar base on Kopaonik Mountain, military airport near Sjenica and additional buildings on Pester plateau, well-informed diplomatic sources of Brussels told Beta agency. According to these sources, American administration informed Belgrade that it wanted close cooperation of American Army and Yugoslav Army, especially in Kosovo and south Serbia. Pentagon and American military leaders suggested, and State Department and White House accepted, that America and Serbia sign a specific military agreement on 99-year use of the American military base Bondsteel in Kosovo. Washington also wants to hire the radar base on Kopaonik Mountain, which the Yugoslav Army equipped with British technology. Yugoslav military airport in Sjenica would be adapted for landing of American and NATO heavy transporters. Diplomats of Brussels claim that Serb deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs Goran Svilanovic, Yugoslav General Ninoslav Krstic and Police General Goran Radosavljevic were informed about the plan on military cooperation during their meeting with the commanders of American forces in Germany. According to the diplomatic sources of Brussels, Americans think that their army should remain in Kosovo and on the Balkans until the situation in the region stabilizes and the entire region starts full cooperation with the European Union. Brussels connects the American initiative with the plans of leading American and European oil companies to build an oil pipeline that would take oil from Caspian Sea, through Bulgaria, south Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania to west Europe. The sources of Brussels say that Americans plan to remove so-called common military troops from the region and keep high-quality military staff and equipment on the Balkans. These are primarily units performing satellite-intelligence duties and logistics for mass air transport. - This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
