Clashes in India among Ten' most underreported humanitarian stories of 2006 : MSF Report

New York - The staggering human toll taken by tuberculosis (TB) and malnutrition as well as the devastation caused by conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya and various parts of India, Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are among the "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006, according to the year-end list released today by the international humanitarian medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

Clashes in central India

Ongoing conflict in several parts of India - including northeastern Assam and Manipur states highlighted in last year's Top 10 Underreported Humanitarian Stories list - Report says that it has gone virtually unnoticed by the outside world for years. In central India's Chhattisgarh state, clashes between Maoist insurgents, Indian security forces and Hindutva sponsored militias, also known as Salwa Judum, has been occurring for more than 25 years, resulting in the displacement, sometimes reportedly forced, of more than 50,000 civilians.

Others flee into neighboring states while thousands of people have lost their livelihoods and have little access to their land, food, essential healthcare or emergency medical services. MSF provides medical treatment in camps for displaced people in Dantewada district, located in south Chhattisgarh. Medical teams also provide mobile health services and nutritional support to those in need in remote rural areas.

Surprisingly, the situation in Chhatisgarh is only one of several armed conflicts occurring throughout India for years, with civilians caught between various belligerent parties. As a consequence, many people continue to live in an atmosphere of fear and violence with little or no access to health care.

"We know that media coverage does not generate improvements on its own," said MSF (USA) Executive Director Nicolas de Torrente. "However, it is often a precondition for increased assistance and political attention. There is perhaps nothing worse than being completely neglected and forgotten." Many conflicts worldwide are profoundly affecting millions of people, yet they are almost completely invisible," said MSF (USA) Executive Director Nicolas de Torrente. "Haiti, for example, is just 50 miles from the United States and the plight of the population enduring relentless violence in its volatile capital Port-au-Prince received only half a minute of network coverage in an entire year."

According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal The Tyndall Report, the ten countries and contexts highlighted by MSF accounted for just 7.2 minutes of the 14,512 minutes on the three major U.S. television networks' nightly newscasts for 2006. Treating malnutrition, TB, and Chechnya were mentioned, but only briefly in other stories. Five of the countries highlighted by MSF were never mentioned at all.

The 2006 "Top 10" list also focused on the devastation caused by TB and malnutrition.

The frightening situation of worldwide TB became even worse in 2006 with the detection of extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), a strain that is resistant to both first-line antibiotics and to two classes of second-line drugs. At the same time, none of the TB drugs currently in development, however promising, will be able to drastically improve TB treatment in the near future.

"TB destroys millions of lives around the world every year, but we're not seeing the necessary urgency to tackle the disease," said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines.

Hope is on the horizon, though, for malnutrition, with new strategies based on outpatient treatment that relies on ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF), like Plumpy'nut, showing tremendous promise. Unfortunately, these strategies are not implemented as widely as they could be.

"Acute malnutrition contributes to the deaths of millions of children every year," said de Torrente. "New strategies in treatment of moderate and severe acute malnutrition have helped MSF treat more than 150,000 children in Niger over the past two years. Millions more children throughout the world could benefit if such strategies were more widely implemented."

While the conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan and in eastern Chad garnered significant media attention in 2006, the steady focus did not translate into improved conditions for people caught up in the conflict.

"Even though there was more reporting about Darfur than about other crises, the situation continued to deteriorate to the point where MSF and other aid groups had to scale back their programs," said de Torrente. "We know that media coverage does not generate improvements on its own. However, it is often a precondition for increased assistance and political attention. There is perhaps nothing worse than being completely neglected and forgotten."

Read the complete Report at MSF website

HRW Report blames UAE

Monday, 13 November 2006

Human Rights Watch recommendations

* Establish a commission to investigate and publicly report on the situation of migrant workers.
* Prohibit companies from doing business with recruitment agencies in the UAE and abroad, that charge workers fees for travel, visas, employment contracts. Prosecute and penalise employers and recruiting agencies that violate the law.
* Aggressively investigate and prosecute employers who violate the labour law.
* Provide quantitative and qualitative data on labour disputes, deaths and injuries at constructions sites and government actions to address these issues.
* Increase the number of inspectors. Ensure that they are carrying out their duties.
* Inform and educate foreign construction workers of their rights.
* Abide by the obligation to implement a minimum wage.
* Allow establishment of genuine and independent human rights and workers rights organisations.
* Ratify International Labour Organisation conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining.
* Ratify ILO convention on occupational safety and health.
* Ratify ILO convention on protection of rights of migrant workers and members of their kin.

Unskilled workers to be limited to six-year stay in UAE

A draft of the modified labour law includes an article that stipulates a maximum six-year stay for unskilled workers, according to an UAE official.

"The six-year maximum stay for expatriates in the GCC countries was shelved at GCC level but the UAE will go ahead with it, having an article in the new Labour Law to this effect," the official told Gulf News yesterday at the sidelines of the GCC undersecretaries meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Under the rule, unskilled foreign workers and domestic help will be allowed a maximum stay of six years in the country. It will be applicable to a total of two million unskilled workers.

"The UAE received an official document from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) recognising the change of the workers' position from being immigrants to temporary contractual workers.

"This will allow the country to proceed with rules making the maximum stay of workers six years - an initial stay of three years to be renewed only once for a similar period," the official said.

The source explained that workers who complete six years in the country will have to leave but may return after two years on the same conditions.

Dr Ali Bin Abdullah Al Ka'abi, Minister of Labour, told Gulf News yesterday that a draft of the modified law had been finalised. Other amendments to the law include increasing maternity leave from 45 days to 60 days and an article authorising the Labour Minister to approve the setting up of trade unions. Also included is reducing the unpaid Haj (pilgrimage) leave from one month to three weeks and authorisation for introducing a two-day weekend for private sector workers.

The largest mass migration in history is unfolding in India

Suman Guha Mozumder in New York, Rediff.COM

October 19, 2006

Wellknown journalist P Sainath told an audience in New York on Wednesday that while food courts are springing up almost everywhere in India's big city malls catering to the palates of well-off Indians, an average family in the country's rural areas has less to eat today than it had six years ago.

"The average rural family today is eating nearly 100 grams less of foodgrains than six or seven years ago and the average per capita availability of food grains has declined sharply. In 1991, when reforms began, availability of food per person was 510 grams, today it has fallen to 437 grams," Sainath said.

"At a time when people of our class are eating foods like we never had in our lives before, India's agriculture sector is in the midst of a collapse," Sainath said while speaking on 'India's Brave New World: The Agrarian Crisis, Farm Suicides and the Wages Of Inequality,' hosted by the South Asian Journalists Association in New York.

Giving snapshots of what he described was the spectacular inequality that has been growing faster in the past 15 years in India than at any time since the country was colonised by the British, Sainath said while India has eight billionaires and hundreds of millionaires, the country ranks 127th in the Human Development Report Index. Labour productivity has been 84 per cent in a period of reform during which real wages dropped to 24 per cent.

"So, on the one hand we have this incredible emerging tiger economy. . . (on the other hand) it should be remembered that the incredible tiger economy produces a very shameful kind of human development indicators," Sainath said.

"The life expectancy of average Indians is lower than people in Mongolia or Tajikistan. Per capita GDP might be booming at a growth rate which is astonishing but our per capita GDP is lower than that of Nicaragua, Vanuatu or Indonesia and the farm sector is in the midst of most incredible crisis that you can imagine," he said.

He said the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra has seen 968 suicides by farmers, including 120 on an average every month in the last three months. In March, Parliament was told by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that in the last ten years over 120,000 farmers have committed suicide in India.

"Suicides by farmers today are actually a symptom of a much wider crisis in India's farm and agricultural sector," Sainath said, adding that this was the result not of a natural calamity or some accident but a systematic and structured move to shift to corporate farming from small family farming practices as well as mindless deregulation that has ruined the farming community. "You get a picture of India in Vidarbha."

Without saying so in as many words, Sainath ripped apart the claims of the present and the previous governments that the country as a whole is making progress and reaping the benefits of development for all sections of the people.

Reeling out figures and statistics from the National Sample Survey Organisation as well as other government outfits, he said, "The claims that India is shining are true. I believe it, although it is happening for just the ten percent of the population."

"If you talk about the top section of the population, the benchmark today are the US, Western Europe, Japan and Australia, but if you look at the bottom part of the population, the benchmark is sub-Saharan Africa, even there some of the countries provide a better level of nutrition to their people than India does," he said.

Sainath -- the first reporter in the world to win Amnesty International's Global Human Rights Journalism Award in its inaugural year, 2000, and who was awarded the Judge's Prize in the Harry Chapin Media Awards in the newspaper category in 2006 -- said that for any real solution of the farmers' problems, the long-term land-related issues need to be solved.

"It is an explosive situation in India today as far as agriculture is concerned and the farmers are concerned with the employment rates in rural areas being the lowest since the late 1990s. We keep hearing about huge displacements due to dam-building or canal-digging, but let me tell you the biggest displacement is in agriculture where the largest mass migration in the history is beginning to unfold following displacement of people from their land," he said.

Persecution of Minorities in India , a Letter from a Christian Migrant

Let me introduce myself, I am an Indian living in Canada. I immigrated here 2 years ago to get married to my girlfriend who moved here 8 years ago.

For 25 years, I lived in India, a democratic multi-religious nation. Although there is no state religion, Hindus make up the largest population group numbering over 80.5% of the total population followed by the Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (Jews, Zorastrians etc). As a child growing up in Mumbai (Bombay), I had friends from different religions and was unaware of any form of religious persecution. We did study about the British policy of 'Divide and Rule' which led to partition and the formation of the countries of India and Pakistan (Islamic nation run on Islamic laws), but we were taught that as a nation we had learnt not to repeat mistakes from the past.

The first persecution that I can recall, during my life time, was the Babri Masjid issue (December 6 1992); where radical Hindus led by certain politicians tore down the Babri Masjid. Babri Masjid was a mosque built on the site where some hindus believe Ram (Hindu Deity) was born. What followed were the most gruesome riots across the whole country. I was 13 at the time and Bombay was in the grip of a religious violence with Hindus killing Muslims and vice versa. At the time there was a city wide self imposed curfew. Self imposed only by fear that if you stepped out of the house you would probably not come home alive. This went on for a while and the repercussions of that event can still be felt in India even today. From that day onwards, minority religious groups became very aware of their position in a Hinduized society and for the first time we felt the weight of being a minority and what it meant to be a religious minority.

The second experience with persecution was much closer to home as it affected the Christian community directly not in Mumbai, but in Gujarat. The history of this is complex but I shall try to summarize it.

India is a largely agrarian economy with three fifths of the population involved in agriculture. India also has a social system based on Hinduism called the Caste system which promotes untouchability. A small percentage though significant ( 14.9%) in Gujarat are tribals who do not fit into the Hindu caste system. Gujarat has some fertile land in the southern part of the state which is owned by rich landlords. To run this land, these landlords need a cheap supply of labour which they could exploit by paying less than minimum wages.

The Dalits (untouchables in the caste system) and tribals make up the perfect cheap work force as they do not have any rights (though they are granted all rights by the constitution). The reason they don't have rights is because politicians are in collusion with the rich land lords. To remain in power the politicians need the rich landlords for monetary support and the landlords use their power to coerce the dalits and tribals to vote for the politicians.

Christian missionaries run schools in tribal areas for the tribal and dalit population and over time, some dalits have begun to speak up against the oppression. Many of the tribal and dalit children no longer work in fields (child labour) but go to school. The missionaries also provided health care and other services for the tribals and dalits.

This is a thorn in the side of the landlords and the politicians, as now the educated tribals and dalits make their voices heard and could no longer be oppressed so easily. Hence the landlords and politicians raise the bogey of forced conversions saying that Christian missionaries forcibly convert tribals and dalits away from Hinduism (the first group are non-Hindus and the second group are treated as outcasts in Hinduism). A fringe group amongst the Hindus who also happen to support, and in turn get support from a major political party proceeded to conduct many attacks on Christians and Christian missionaries in Gujarat including the killings of priests, raping of nuns and destruction of Christian schools and institutions in 1998.

An example from the Human Rights News Website:

Jamuna Bhen, a thirty-year-old agricultural laborer in Dangs district, told Human Rights Watch, "The Hindus removed the ornamentation from our church on December 25 [1998]. They threatened us by saying that they will set the church house on fire. Then they started taking down the roof tiles…. There were one hundred to 200 people who came from other villages. They said, 'We will burn everything.' We begged them not to. We said, 'Don't do this,' and said we will become Hindu."

In January 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were trapped in their car and burned alive in the state of Orissa, reportedly by Dara Singh, a local leader of the extremist group Bajrang Dal. On the eve of India's national parliamentary elections in September and October 1999, the situation for minorities in the state deteriorated significantly. In August 1999, Singh struck again, chopping off the arms of a Muslim trader before setting him on fire. One week later, Rev. Arul Doss was shot in the chest with an arrow and beaten to death by a group of unidentified assailants.

Muslims in India similarly face a lot of persecution as can be seen from the Babri Masjid issue and the Best Bakery Case in which 14 people were burnt alive during the 2002 riots. Following an attack on a train in Godhra, Gujarat, on 27 February 2002 in which 59 Hindus were killed, violence of unprecedented brutality targeting the Muslim community spread in the state and continued in the next three months, leaving more than 2000 people dead. The state government, administration and police took insufficient action to protect civilians and widespread reports at the time implicated police officers and members of Hindu nationalist groups, including the ruling BJP, in violence against Muslims.

Besides this, there have been various other acts to make the lives of religious minorities difficult in India. The Indian Constitution grants to all its citizens, the right to practice and follow any religion of choice and the freedom to change ones religion. Yet some states are trying to pass laws which will make religious conversions illegal, these laws are aimed especially at Christians to prevent religious conversions. These laws if passed will also violate the freedoms of Dalits and Tribals and any Indian who may want to convert to a religion of choice. The underlying aim of such legislation is to prevent dalits, tribals and other backward castes from converting to Islam or Christianity and thereby lifting the shackles of a caste based religion.

Besides these glaring forms of persecution, there have been other forms of persecution against Christians. Which are too numerous to go through but can be found at the All India Christian Web site (www.aiccindia.org) under the press releases and resources section.

To avoid this kind of religious persecution, despite constitutional protections, some Indians migrate to other countries like Canada and the USA. These people seek a better life for themselves and their families, both monetary as well as spiritually. However, in India, the persecution against Christians and religious minorities are visible and can be protested.

Untouchability’ does not spare IAS officer

Wednesday, 15 March 2006

From Anand V Yamnur DH News Service Gulbarga:

Even when the news of Dalits being denied water from a community tank in a village of Koppal district looms in the minds of the people, a similar case has come to light in a village of Surpur taluk of Gulbarga district.

Even when the news of Dalits being denied water from a community tank in a village of Koppal district looms in the minds of the people, a similar case has come to light in a village of Surpur taluk of Gulbarga district.

A Dalit IAS officer has been denied permission by the forward castes to conduct the marriage of his kin in the community hall of a temple.

Amidst complaints that Dalits are still facing untouchability in their own villages, the latest victim of this practice is none other than Pre-University Examination Board Director Gonal Bheemappa.

Untouchability is apparently still in vogue in Devar Gonal village in Surpur taluk of the district, the native of Mr Gonal Bheemappa. The Mouneshwar temple in the village is a symbol of communal amity with both Hindus and Muslims converging to pray.

However, the managing committee of the temple denied permission to Mr Bheemappa to hold the marriage of his younger brother’s son in the community hall attached to the temple, just because he is a Dalit.

Common practice

When Mr Bheemappa's younger brother Kenchappa Gonal sought his help for conducting his son Hanumantha’s wedding in the temple community hall, the former telephoned temple managing committee members Basavalingayya and Basavanthrai, both teachers by profession, for permission.

It is a common practice in the village to hold marriages in the temple and the feast in the community hall.

However, permission was flatly refused and the marriage was held at Gopalaswami temple at Surpur.

This in spite of Mr Gonal Bheemappa being a donor of the temple, said his brother Kenchappa. Bheemappa is even denied entry into the temple and has to be content praying from outside.

Apart from Dalits being denied entry inside the Mouneshwar temple, separate cups and utensils are kept for Dalits at hotels in the village.

The same practice prevails in about 40 other villages in Surpur taluk.

Kenchappa told Deccan Herald that as he did not wish to make an issue, he did not repeat his request to the temple management or complain to Surpur Tahsildar, who is the Chairman of the temple managing committee. The temple comes under Muzrai department.

India's "supercops" in firing line over mob links

24 Feb 2006 Source: Reuters, By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI, India, Feb 24 (Reuters) - For eight years, Daya Nayak killed with impunity -- sometimes with his pistol but often with an AK-47 automatic rifle -- as he bumped off people suspected to be gangsters or involved in acts of terrorism in Mumbai.
These days, the policeman just kills time.

Once the poster boy of Mumbai's police force and eulogised by Bollywood filmmakers, Nayak helped to dramatically curb organised crime in India's financial capital, breaking the back of violent gangs and sending mobsters on the run.

But after years of tormenting crime dons, the past has returned to haunt him.

The tall, moustachioed Nayak, 34, has been arrested and ordered held until early March as anti-corruption officers probe allegations he had amassed wealth, including real estate worth millions of rupees, far beyond what his salary could pay for.

Nayak is not alone in his fall from grace. More than half a dozen officers of a crack force, formed over a decade ago, have been accused of corruption and links with the underworld.

Known in the Indian media as "encounter specialists" for shooting down criminals in raids, the men have either been dismissed or suspended until an investigation into their financial assets is completed.

Nayak's critics claim that as well as taking mob money, the so-called "supercops" have been routinely killing gangsters in stage-managed shootouts and in custody. Human rights workers have branded the deaths nothing more than extra-judicial executions.

"I've done nothing wrong. These charges are false," the sub-inspector, who says he killed over 80 criminals in shootouts, said recently after appearing in a Mumbai court.

In the late 1990s, Mumbai, then known as Bombay, faced a tide of mafia killings, abductions and extortion demands.

Poor migrants from villages and small towns were drafted into gangs, taking up the gun for cash, earning relatively small amounts but more than they could hope to make honestly.

The underworld was remote-controlled by bosses based in Dubai, Malaysia and Karachi who had fled India to avoid arrest, leaving behind associates to carry out their orders.

ROUGH JUSTICE

Mumbai's authorities hit back, giving a free hand to officers like Nayak who worked informers and wielded their guns to administer justice.

In a decade of violent confrontations, the officers busted hideouts and shot dead at least 350 suspected gangsters, drawing cheers from businessmen and the Bollywood set, prime mob targets.

Newspapers splashed photographs of the officers across their front pages, while film directors explored Nayak's climb from abject poverty.

Many people supported the "supercops" because snuffing out the bad guys, most felt, was better than putting them through a failing justice system where witnesses could be manipulated and cases drag on for years.

Human rights activists say police routinely killed criminals in cold blood after taking them to a lonely spot and telling them to run. When they did so, or even if they did not, they were shot, usually in the back.

"They kill them (criminals) somewhere and then take their bodies to hospital and put it down as a shootout death," P.A. Sebastian, a human rights activist, told Reuters.

Sometimes, rights activists allege, officers blaze away as they compete with each other for media headlines.

But police say they open fire only in self-defence.

"Does a policeman enjoy killing? Those killed are trying to get us. They aren't saints," said officer Pradeep Sharma, who police records say has shot dead 104 criminals.

Sharma is facing an inquiry in the disappearance of an accused in a 2002 bomb blast in Mumbai. Human rights activists say the man, Khwaja Yunus, was killed in custody while police say he simply escaped.

"Many of these encounters are fake and killings by police extrajudicial," said criminal lawyer Majeed Memon.

Sharma's boss says the controversial tactics have yielded results.

"It's for all to see that stern police activity has curbed crimes," Mumbai police commissioner A.N. Roy said.

India "Boom" an Environmental Disaster, Arundhati Roy says

Tuesday, 31 January 2006

Prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy says during an interview with Reuters in New Delhi that India’s economic boom is driven by policies which are causing unsustainable environmental damage and blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor.
NEW DELHI - India's economic boom is causing unsustainable environmental damage and is blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor, prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy said.

"Even if you know what is going on, you can't help thinking India is this cool place now, Bollywood is 'in' and all of us have mobile phones," Roy told Reuters in an interview.

"But it is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness," she said. "There is no understanding whatsoever of what price is being paid by the rivers and mountains and irrigation and ground water, there is no questioning of that because we are on a roll."

"India shining" was the campaign motto of the Bharatiya Janata Party which lost last year's election, unable to capitalise on the fast-growing economy and failing to convince the rural poor that economic reforms were benefitting them.

Roy won the 1997 Booker prize for her first novel "The God of Small Things". Since then, she has become a leading environmental activist and opponent of big dams, which have displaced millions.

She said India's environment faced a major crisis, caused by industrial pollution, by big dams, and in particular by unsustainable use of ground water to irrigate thirsty cash crops such as soyabeans, peanuts and sugarcane.

"When the only logic is the market, when there is no respect for ecosystems, for the amount of water available... then we are in for a lot of trouble," she said. "You have to have a system where people have access to some amount of water to grow whatever is sustainable for them to survive."

Falling water tables in states such as Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have forced millions of farmers to the brink of ruin. Buried under unpayable loans, thousands have committed suicide.

Roy said the poor were being sold a dream of consumerism which was impossible to deliver economically or environmentally.

"The idea of turning one billion people into consumers is terrifying," she said.

"Are you going to starve to death dreaming of a mobile phone or you going to have control of the resources that are available to you and have been for generations, but have been taken away so that someone else can have a mobile phone?"

Since the BJP was replaced by a coalition led by the center-left Congress party, Roy said she felt less targetted for speaking out, and some of the "vulgar and vicious" facets of BJP-rule had gone.

"But in terms of what is happening on the ground economically, I don't think anything has changed at all."

Choosing between parties was increasingly like choosing between brands of washing powder made by the same manufacturer, she said.

"It was so clear that the mandate for the Indian elections given by millions of people who came out to vote ... was one against the so-called neo-con liberal reforms," she said.

"But the minute that mandate was given to Congress, it is almost like the cameras shifted from the electoral field in India to outside the stock market, where stocks were plummeting, including the media's own stocks. And people were forced to come out and say they were not against privatisation."

Recent court decisions in favour of dams and slum clearances had tipped the playing field further against the poor. "It is so easy for people who are on this side of the line to climb the ladder. The middle class has expanded and is having a good time, but for people who are on the other side it is becoming impossible to survive," Roy said. "There are no jobs, there is just nowhere to go, no way out of it at all."

Simon Denyer, Reuters in New Delhi June 9, 2005

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0610-04.htm