[sacw] sacw dispatch #2 (21 Dec 99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #2
21 December 1999
_________________
#1. Pakistan Peace Coalition Website
#2. Indo Pak cab
#3. India-Pak Jazz Coalition (USA)
#4. Human chains formed in Delhi to campaign for peace
#5. Pakistan rights group wants fairness for detainees
#6. Silence on Srikrishna report in India
#7. Citizens Report indicts police for role in Nandurbar riots in India
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#1.
The Pakistan Peace Coalition Website
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/PPC
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#2.
The Times of India
21 December 1999

INDO PAK CAB
Breakfast at Kamath's: Vivek Kamath

* Rakesh Sharma, Director, Lighthouse Films and Avinash Shankar, head of
Horizons Advertising have a touching tale to tell. They have just
returned from Australia after shooting three tech commercials for an
Internet client. More about the commercials when they air shortly. For
now, hear this. One evening, Avinash and Rakesh took a cab and the
driver looked Indian. Turned out he was Pakistani. Conversation flowed.

Music, movies, cricket, war, peace. Quite a range for a 30 minute cab
ride. At the end of it, the cabbie thanked them for riding in the cab
and refused to charge. Avinash insisted. The cabbie said he was doing
his bit for friendly relations between the two countries. First, our PM
takes a friendship bus to Pakistan. Then Wasimbhai Akram stands up for
Sachin and says he wasn't out to McGrath last week. Now, this cabbie.
The Indo-Pak friendship club, it would seem, has a million members.
[...] .
Email: vivek@t...
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#2.
India Abroad
21 December 1999

HUMAN CHAINS FORMED TO CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE

Human chains were formed by men, women and children across the country [Indi=
a]
on Sunday in a campaign by women for peace that organizers said was the
most compelling agenda for the next century. The action "Peace for
empowerment and empowerment for peace," was organized by the National
Commission for Women and the Guild of Service, which said women all over
the world suffered the worst consequences of war. At noon,
eight-year-old Medha Khanna, a student of Delhi Public School,
administered a peace pledge for legal, political and economical
empowerment to the gathering of activists at India Gate, a World War I
memorial.

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#3.
INDO PAK JAZZ COALITION
[Check out the members of the Indo Pak Jazz Coalition]

Rudresh Mahanthappa: http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~hesperus/rudresh.html
=46areed Haque: http://www.fareed.com
Samir Chatterjee: http://www.tabla.org/samir.html

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#4.
http://cnn.com/ASIANOW

PAKISTAN RIGHTS GROUP WANTS FAIRNESS FOR DETAINEES
=20
December 17, 1999
Web posted at: 12:30 p.m. HKT (0430 GMT)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Pakistan's main human rights group
Thursday asked the country's military government to provide information
about people detained after the Oct. 12 coup and allow them their basic
rights.

"The government should have begun demonstrating its claim of
transparency and fair play by being open about the persons it has
detained and the charges on which they have been detained," the Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said.

But it said in a statement there was "for the large part a blanket of
silence" about the number and names of detainees from political,
business and other communities, access to lawyers and families,
treatment given them and their families and allegations against them.
MESSAGE BOARDPakistan today
=20
Pakistan's newly created National Accountability Bureau (NAB) detained
more than 25 people at the start of a crackdown on state bank loan
defaults and corruption in mid-November but none of them has yet been
brought to court.

Several other detainees held for unspecified reasons include close
associates and male relatives of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who
himself is in jail awaiting trial for an alleged plane hijack attempt,
which can bring a death sentence.

"We assume that there is rule of law in the country and that, despite
everything, the assurances given about the fundamental rights guaranteed
under the constitution were seriously meant," said the HRCP statement.

"If so, we would urge the authorities in their own interest to end the
prevailing uncertainties, which are only exaggerating the doubts and
fears," it said.

Army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution and
parliament after taking power in the Oct. 12 coup but declared that
fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution would remain available
to citizens.

A decree issued by the military government last month empowers the NAB
to detain people for up to 75 days for investigation and to bar courts
from granting bail.

Musharraf, who assumed the title of Chief Executive after the coup, said
Wednesday there had been delays in accountability because of a shortage
of expert investigators of white collar crimes and qualified
prosecutors.

But he said that "with the passage of time, the accountability net will
keep widening."

Copyright 1999 Reuters.
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#5.
The Hindustan Times
21 December 1999
Opinion=20

SILENCE ON SRIKRISHNA REPORT
by Teesta Setalvad

Seven years after December 1992 Mumbai has turned full circle. The
in-between years, racked by bitterness, disillusion and turmoil saw the
"guilty" in power.

Those who rule today held the reins seven years ago. As the criminals
had gone about identifying the targets in 1992-93, those who rule us
again now had pronounced their impotency to the public. All of us were
witness to the collapse of the administration in that year.

=46rom February 1995 to September 1999, it was the rule of the guilty.
They fortunately proved themselves so inept and so greedy that the
ballot was the means used to set right the wrongs of the past. In those
four years, it was the citizens not politicians who raised their voices
demanding action against the guilty. It was the citizens who kept the
issue of the Justice Srikrishna Commission alive.

The political game began days after the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance admitted
their guilt by denigrating the judge's report and rejecting it on August
6, 1998. Political fortunes have now turned and those who rule us in
Maharashtra today had watched the city burn seven years ago.

The voice of the opposition Congress rang shrill in demanding the
report's implementation while the Shiv Sena-BJP ruled. Were these
demands a sincere reflection of remorse at their own failure as the
party in power to protect lives of citizens in 1992-1993? Or were they
just one of those cynical games that politicians play so well? Will the
demands from the major national opposition parties echo in the current
session of Parliament or will they be silenced now that power has been
obtained, albeit shakily, in Maharashtra?

On September 6, the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee had collected over
10,000 signatures to pressurise the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party
government in Maharashtra to implement the report. On September 30, even
the CPI (Marxist) asked the Centre to set up a panel to act on the
Srikrishna report. In the context of Maharashtra, the demand for the
implementation of the report dominated the opposition's campaign against
the Shiv Sena-BJP combine.

The Congress leadership had for one year now been highlighting this
demand. Since August 1998, when the Shiv Sena-BJP government rejected
the Srikrishna report stating that it was "anti-Hindu", the Congress had
demanded the resignation of both Union Home Minister L. K. Advani and
the then Maharashtra Chief Minister, Mr Manohar Joshi. The party had
stated that the Union Home Minister, indicted by the judge in his
investigation, had "forfeited the moral, political and constitutional
authority to continue as the country's Home Minister." The charges stand
further validated today. Will the party press its demand or lapse into
yet another suspicious silence?

Sharad Pawar, defence minister in the days that Bombay burned and leader
of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had, on August 8, 1998 in the
last Lok Sabha, and several times later in the run-up to the recent
polls, stated that if his party returned to power in Maharashtra, it
would act on the recommendations of the Srikrishna report. While his
party has changed (the NCP was born after he parted ways with the
Congress), every Mumbaikar would like to know if his resolve on the
issue is as firm as it then appeared.

Opposition parties like the Congress, the CPI-M, the SP, the RJD, the
National Conference, the Muslim League, the RPI and others had joined
hands against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government using the
Srikrishna report to hit out at the Centre. Senior Akali leader
Gurucharan Sing Tohra and senior Samata Party leader Abdul Gaffoor urged
action on the basis of the report on August 18, 1998, even upsetting the
BJP's central leadership with their publicly-voiced demands at the time.
The game for the ballot is now over.

A political dispensation committed to action against the guilty holds
the reins in Maharashtra now. All the politicians' voices that spoke
vociferously on the implementation of the Srikrishna Commission report
need to be heard now. Their silence is suspicious.
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#6.
The Times of India
21 December 1999

REPORT INDICTS POLICE FOR ROLE IN NANDURBAR RIOTS

MUMBAI: Fundamentalist political elements were responsible for
escalating relatively trivial incidents into the small riots that took
place in Ravar and Nandurbar towns in north Maharashtra last month,
stated a citizens report on the communal riots that took place on Diwali
eve.

The report indicts the police for their alleged inability to control the
riot in Nandurbar and their ``biased'' attitudes in Ravar. It has
demanded a judicial enquiry into the incidents with a scrutiny of the
role of the police.

The report is compiled by a fact-finding team representing Samarthan,
Centre for study of society and secularism, Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana,
Bahujana Navjavaan Sabha and the Muslim Intellectual Forum, and is based
on their visits to the area.

While the report concludes that the incidents that led to the riot were
quite trivial and spontaneous, the riots themselves were escalated by
certain political elements, specially in Nadurbar. The report states
that the incident in this town was a small one that was actually settled
amicably between two families. ``But some elements converted the
individual fight into a communal one,'' the reports says.

``There are systematic efforts in the region to instigate tension,''
says the report, and suggests that fundamentalists manipulate existing
misunderstanding between communities about religious festivals, rituals
and traditions.

The report suggests that the police need to equipped with sufficient
riot control technology. It also suggests that the gap between the
police and community needs to be bridged.
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SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.