The Agonist - Asia: South-West

Sri Lanka Tamil refugee camps 'to be opened next month'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:17:17 -0800

Nov 21

BBC - The Sri Lankan government says people living in camps since the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels will have freedom of movement as of next month.

The camps were set up to house Tamils fleeing the final stages of the 25-year civil war which ended in May.

The special adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa also confirmed an earlier promise to close the camps, which still house 130,000 people.

He said all the residents would be resettled by the end of January.

12 men to die for killing Bangladesh's founder

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:52:32 -0800

Dhaka | Nov 19

DPA - Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the appeals of five men convicted in the assassination of the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, upholding a previous death verdict against 12 former soldiers convicted for the murder.

A five-judge panel headed by Justice Tafazzul Islam delivered the verdict Thursday, after 29 days of hearings, in a crowded court amid heightened security, state attorney Anisul Haq said.

Five of those convicted are on death row in Dhaka Central Jail while the rest have absconded abroad.

Mujibur, one of Bangladesh's independence heroes, was killed along with most of his family on August 15, 1975 by a group of disgruntled army officers in a military putsch which overthrew the South Asian country's elected government.

The verdict of death by hanging will be carried out in a month unless the convicts file a review petition to the court and seek presidential pardon for their convictions, Haq said.

Rise and fall of the Indian rope trick

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:51:35 -0800

Andrew Buncombe | Nov 19

The Independent - The magician who mesmerised the world has been reduced to performing in a fast-food joint as his country embraces the ways of the West

20 of 50 Greatest Magic Tricks - Indian Rope Trick (Amazing)

Download @ Punjabi Lok Virsa Media Center
By any standard, Ishamuddin Khan is a man of remarkable talents. Back in 1995, this traditional Indian magician or madari, completed the first successful outdoor performance of a trick that had been whispered about for centuries but that no one before had mastered. When, before an amazed audience on the southern edge of Delhi, Ishamuddin managed a convincing rendition of the legendary Indian rope trick, it made headlines around the world that ought to have secured his place in the history of magic and won him lasting recognition at home.

Yet that has not happened. Almost 15 years after he performed a trick that many experts believed to be impossible – in 1934 the Magic Circle in London offered a prize of 500 guineas to anyone who could do it – Ishamuddin is struggling, not only for recognition but simply to get by. While he has toured Britain, Europe and Japan to display his mesmerising skills, he says that India is increasingly turning its back on traditional performers such as himself in its race to become all things modern. To supplement his job devising magic tricks to encourage school children to learn science, he sometimes works as a conjurer at McDonald's.

"Every capital city around the world that I have been in has an area for street performers," said the 42-year-old, who lives in a crowded cluster of tiny homes in west Delhi known as the Kathputli – or puppeteers' – colony: an area rich with the skills of performers, musicians and craftsmen but sorely lacking in facilities. "But rich people in India are offended if you talk about street performing. They are only interested in computers or software. I am poor but I am suffering not so much from poverty as I am from the attitude of the Indian government. I am happy in my poverty but I would like people to respect me as I am. I would like recognition."

For centuries, stories have been told in India and beyond about a magic trick in which an ordinary rope is made to rise upwards before a young boy climbs up and disappears into the sky. The spellbinding story may have been partly inspired by the fairy tales of King Bhoja, who throws a thread into the sky and then ascends. Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan explorer and scholar, also wrote of seeing such a trick performed in China, while mention of the deed in India was made by the 17th-century Indian emperor Jahangir, whose memoirs were first translated in 1829.

A Bonapartist in the Indian Ocean

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:52:05 -0800

M K Bhadrakumar | Nov 17

Asia Times - When a tea sapling was brought into Ceylon - present-day Sri Lanka - in 1824 from China and planted in the Royal Botanical Gardens, the British had no commercial interests in mind. It took another 40 years before a plucky Scotsman planted the first seedling, which blossomed into the famous Ceylon Tea and became today's unshakeable pillar of Sri Lanka's economy.

The "Emerald Island" has obscure tales to tell. That is why when a swashbuckling army chief by the improbable name of Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka abruptly discards his uniform and plunges into the country's steamy politics, it becomes no simple matter. Sri Lankan democracy may never be the same again.

Bonapartism isn't altogether new to the region. Pakistan's Ayub Khan showed the way, back in the 1950s. Bangladesh followed 20 years later. Now Sri Lanka, an entrenched democracy, seems fatally attracted to it. The presidential election is not due until November 2011, but there are signs it may be held as early as January.

There is nothing necessarily fatal if a soldier develops a passion for politics. An Indian commentator pointed out that, after all, there is the precedent of US president Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general. But then, the nagging worry remains whether in the South Asian clime, like the sapling brought in from distant China, Fonseka, a US Green Card holder, may blossom and outgrow the botanical garden that Sri Lankan democracy used to be.

India's third gender gets own identity in voter rolls

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:20:45 -0800

Harmeet Shah Singh | New Delhi | Nov 12

CNN - Indian election authorities Thursday granted what they called an independent identity to intersex and transsexuals in the country's voter lists.Before, members of these groups -- loosely called eunuchs in Indian English -- were referred to as male or female in the voter rolls.

But now, they will have the choice to tick "O" -- for others -- when indicating their gender in voter forms, the Indian election commission said in a statement. "Enumerators and booth-level officers (BLOs) shall be instructed to indicate the sex of eunuchs/transsexuals etc as 'O' if they so desire, while undertaking any house-to-house enumeration/verification of any application," a statement from election authorities said.

Myanmar will no longer dictate ASEAN ties: White House

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:40 -0800

Washington | Nov 10

AFP - The United States said on Monday it would no longer allow its row with Myanmar to hold its ties with Southeast Asia hostage, as President Barack Obama geared up for his debut official visit to the region.

Obama is due to hold the first-ever meeting between a US president and leaders of all 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, including Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein, on Sunday in Singapore.

"One of the frustrations that we've had with policy toward Burma over recent years has been that the inability to have interaction with Burma has prevented certain kinds of interaction with ASEAN as a whole," said Obama's top Asia policy aide Jeffrey Bader.

"The statement we're trying to make here is that we're not going to let the Burmese tail wag the ASEAN dog."

Cambodia appoints Thailand's Thaksin as economic adviser

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:24:01 -0800

Phnom Penh | Nov 4

AFP - Cambodia said on Wednesday it had appointed fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra economic adviser to premier Hun Sen in a move that adds to tensions between the countries.

The appointment was announced on state television almost two weeks after Hun Sen first riled Thailand by offering safe haven to Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption.

"Thaksin has already been appointed by royal decree... as personal adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the adviser to the Cambodian government in charge of economy," said a government statement read on television.

"Allowing Thaksin to stay in Cambodia is virtuous behaviour...good friends need to help each other in difficult circumstances," it added.

The statement went on to call charges against Thaksin "politically motivated" and vowed not to extradite him if he "decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia in order to fulfill his duties".

WOW

A Little More On That India Meme, Or The Not-So-Miraculous Indian Economic Miracle

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:34:58 -0800

It's obvious by what I've written in the past (here and here as well.) that I don't think highly of India's economic prowess, writ large and I don't believe any of the hype when it comes to India's economic miracle. But Quax makes a point about Kerala that deserves further comment.

Quax brings up the point about the matrifocal ethnicity in Southern India, namely the state of Kerala. And he's right: Kerala is different from the rest of India. I'm not sure what makes Kerala different: the prevalence of Christianity, the relative freedom of women in the state, years of Communist rule, and the forward looking and commercial character of Muslims there? Perhaps it's a combination of all four. Needless to say, Kerala was the cleanest, least intimidating and most upwardly mobile of Indian states, even more so than the miracle city of Bangalore. And I found the Muslims in Calicut to be the most forward looking of any Muslims I've ever encountered, outside of pockets in Turkey and those in North Tehran.

Their daughters were educated, free to pursue a love match--not an arranged marriage and not relegated to a very real purdah extant in many places in India. It's the sort of place where a young Indian woman can have lunch with a strange foreign man and no one raises an eyebrow. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that the area around Calicut has been integral to the global economy for two thousand years--ships have plied the monsoons from East Africa to the Malabar Coast since very early Roman times, bringing pepper an other spices to the West in exchange for gold, or how much of it is due to the tolerance between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There is much more history to this area than meets the eye.

More after the jump.

The Communist party has also run the state off and on since the fifties. Literacy rates are the highest in India. And basic health services deliverables are the highest in India, as well. When the state assumes the risk of healthcare and provides a very good basic education people are free to pursue other productive endeavors instead of grinding away in subsistence poverty and farming. The Dalits in the state, as well, have it better than anywhere in India. This makes a huge difference in upward mobility.

But even Kerala is beset by all the huge problems that India has. The infrastructure is crumbling. The rail system is overwhelmed, although the trains in Kerala were the best in India outside of the Delhi-Agra tourist trains. And the pollution wasn't nearly as pervasive as the rest of India. Overpopulation is a serious issue and so is gendercide. And as impressive as the quality of life is for women in the state is, it's still a man's state, run by men, for men. All that being said, were I ever to return to India--which is doubtful--the only place I would visit is Kerala.

Yes, I was a tourist in India. I've never claimed to be anything other than that. But the eyes don't lie. What I saw was a very poor, under-devoloped and socially backwards country--moreso than even Cambodia and in many places as backwards as Africa. What makes it worse is this: it's a horribly underdeveloped country with a very well-educated elite. An elite that sits atop a millenia old social structure. An elite that literally lives off the backs of those below it. And it's the elite that buys the very minimal goods and services that India imports. One of the reasons India weathered the most recent economic crisis is that it's imports are negligible. It relies on an internal market that deals in goods and services at a level of quality from the 50s, if not earlier in some cases.

If that's a choice the Indians want to make, I'm all for it. I'm all about tEh noninterference. There is a queer element of genius to India's social structure--institutionalizing as deviance any form of societal innovation. But let's not build up a fantasy around the country. India has some emergent technology. But it's at the elite level. There are few things that resemble a mall in India, something we Westerners take for granted. And the malls have security guards that prevent lower classes from entering. Seriously, I've seen it with my own eyes. That's not economic freedom for the masses.

India has a problem-set of gargantuan proportions and is one of the most militarized countries I've ever seen--all the Gandhiesque posturing notwithstanding. That's just reality.

If the rest of India could learn from Kerala it would be a vastly more impressive country than it now is. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

India As Rising Power Meme, Needs To Be Squashed

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:46:52 -0800

People love to talk about how India is a rising power in Asia:

Upshot: America is done. Our once-great empire is cooked. Not only is China (and India, fast behind) about to stomp all over everyone in economic power and resource abuse, they already own a huge chunk of our debt, manufacture most of our holidays and build almost everything we like to buy. And that includes the device you are reading this on right now. Oh well. We'll always have football.

I'd submit to any writer who just looks at the raw statistics on Indian growth rates to actually visit the place. Take a look at the crumbling infrastructure. Reality looks a lot different on the ground.

Yes, I realize it is only a throwaway sentence by the writer, but still, it's propagating a meme that doesn't represent reality.

Now, there is a case to be made about China. I've seen a great deal of the country and there is a very real energy to succeed and get ahead there. And while many Chinese are mired in poverty, it isn't the kind of nasty, pervasive, grinding poverty to be found in India. In India if you are born poor there is virtually no chance you can rise in society. Not so in China. (Not to idealize the life of the poor in China, mind you. It's still extremely difficult to find real upward mobility in China. In India on the other? For all intents and purposes, such a concept doesn't even exist.)

Furthermore, culturally speaking the Chinese are much better when it comes to cultural or societal innovations than India is. For example: arranged marriages are still the norm in India. And the place of woman is rotten. In China? Not likely. Especially as the idea of romantic love spreads among young female factory workers with a disposable income. (Again, not to idealize often gruesome working conditions for these young women, and yet.)

India when it comes to culture, is probably the most extremely conservative place I have ever visited. Indians like to think they can compete with the Chinese, but they cannot. And we shouldn't buy the tripe that India is an emerging economic power. The only reason we do business with India is wage-arbitrage. It's cheaper to pay an Indian twenty five cents an hour for something a well-educated American would ask fifteen dollars or more for.

And yes, I realize I am a white, post-Colonial man of European descent making cultural judgments. Having visited both countries multiple times I am quite comfortable doing so.

Maoist Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:57 -0700

Jim Yardley | Barsur, India | October 31

NYT - At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

“That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh.

Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.

Sri Lanka behind closed doors

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:11:41 -0700

Pierre Salignon | Oct 26

Humanitarian Practice Network - In early July 2009, following on from the closing weeks of fighting between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE), a Times journalist raised the alarm on the mortality rate in the internment camps, opened by the Sri Lankan government. The article reported 1,400 deaths a week in Manik Farm camp, which then held around 280,000 people. Presenting no methodology or basis for this figure, and without naming any names, the journalist cited “a humanitarian source” [1]. This was a serious accusation, corresponding to a rate of 7 deaths per 10,000 persons per day. The emergency threshold applied in crises stands at 1 per 10,000 per day. In other words, according to The Times’ survey the internally displaced in Manik Farm were dying en masse, “mainly due to the sanitary conditions", deprivations and a lack of assistance.

Unsurprisingly, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health’s version of events differed from the British journalist’report. According to a bulletin covering the period 15th June to 15th July 2009, an average of 5 to 6 people died every day in Manik Farm camp - a mortality rate of under 0.25 deaths per 10,000 per day (the official national average in Sri Lanka stands at 0.15 per 10,000 per day)[2]. Despite the ferocity of the fighting during the conflict’s final weeks, the Sri Lankan authorities found no cause for concern in the camps in June and July – when the Times was concluding the opposite.

How can such troubling and contradictory estimates be explained? Given the lack of access to more specific data, we should turn to other sources. What do NGOs and others present in the field have to say?

read the rest at link

Pierre Salignon - former Project director of the Health and Nutrition Tracking Service (2008-2009) and former Director of MSF France (2003-2007)

Maoist take control of Indian train, battle police

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:33:23 -0700

Kolkata | Oct 27

Reuters - Hundreds of Maoist guerrillas stormed a high-speed train in eastern India on Tuesday and were battling security forces, police said.

The Rajdhani Express, one of the country's most prestigious passenger trains, was stopped by the guerrillas in eastern West Bengal state.

"About 300 Maoists have stopped the Rajdhani Express and have pulled out the driver," Dilip Mitra, a police officer, told Reuters in state capital Kolkata.

The Maoists, who have stepped up violence across eastern and central India, had asked passengers to get off the train, local TV channels said.

"One policemen has been injured and we are currently engaged in a battle with the rebels," Mitra said.

Maoist rebels regularly attack goods trains and have in the past even hijacked a few local passenger trains in remote districts of India before fleeing.

The Maoist rebellion began four decades ago championing the cause of poor peasants in the east, but has now spread to about 20 of India's 29 states, with the rebels targeting police and government property in hit-and-run attacks.

Japanese official says Myanmar could ease Suu Kyi detention

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:51:00 -0700

Hua Hin, Thailand | Oct 24

AFP - Myanmar's prime minister told Asian counterparts on Saturday that the ruling military government could relax the conditions of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's detention, a Japanese official said.

The Nobel Peace laureate had "softened" her attitude towards the military regime since her house arrest was extended in August for a further 18 months, the official quoted Myanmar premier Thein Sein as saying.

But while Thein Sein announced at a regional summit in Thailand that Myanmar also wants elections next year to be "inclusive", he would not say if Suu Kyi would be allowed to participate, the official said.

"(Myanmar's government) believes that Aung San Suu Kyi seems to have softened her attitude towards the authorities," Japanese delegation spokesman Kazuo Kodama quoted Thein Sein as telling leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, Japan and South Korea.

Kodama said that the Myanmar regime "thinks if Aung San Suu Kyi maintains a good attitude it is possible that the Myanmar authorities will relax the current measures.

"The Myanmar government is... making preparations to make (next year's) election (an) inclusive election. The Myanmar government would like to ensure all the stakeholders will take part in such a process."

U.S. urges probe of Sri Lanka war

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:46:29 -0700

Colum Lynch | New York | October 23

WaPo - The State Department's top war crimes official called on Sri Lanka on Thursday to conduct a "genuine" investigation into alleged war crimes by Sri Lankan troops and Tamil rebels during the bloody final months of the country's 25-year-long civil war.

The appeal by Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, came hours after his office presented Congress with a detailed account of alleged atrocities during the conflict that suggests both sides may have violated international law and committed crimes against humanity.

The 68-page document, which relies on internal reports from the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, satellite imagery and accounts from international relief agencies and news organizations, paints a grim portrait of the conditions endured by hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians caught between two ruthless adversaries. Between 7,000 and 20,000 civilians were allegedly killed in the country's northeast from January to May, when the Tamil Tigers were defeated, according to U.N. and independent estimates.

"We are certainly calling on the government, as part of the reconciliation process, to develop an accountability process that respects the interests of all," Rapp said in an interview. Noting that Sri Lankan authorities have insisted they can conduct a credible internal investigation into alleged abuses, he said, "We are going to take them at their word and follow that process."

China opens a new front in Kashmir

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:22:07 -0700

Oct 20

Asia Times - China, by issuing residents from Indian-administered Kashmir visas different from those given to Indians from other parts of the country, is treating the disputed area as a sovereign entity. This is a surprising departure from Beijing's traditional policy of leaving the Kashmir issue to India and Pakistan to resolve. Delhi suspects a hidden agenda.