Liberation is not Achieved at the Negotiation Table: Leila Khaled

Madaar | 18 Jan 2024

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Madaar interviewed the celebrated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant about the ongoing resistance to Zionism in Gaza and around the world

Leila Khaled speaks ash the Third Dilemmas of Humanity Conference organized by the International People's Assembly, hosted in Johannesburg (Photo: Rafa Stedile)

Leila Khaled, the celebrated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant who continues to be a source of inspiration for revolutionary movements across the globe, spoke to Madaar in early December about the current revolutionary movement taking place in Palestine and across the West Asian region, Israel’s genocidal response, and the world’s epic show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In over 100 days of war, Israeli has killed over 24,000 Gazans, nearly 10,000 of them children. The scale of Israeli killing of innocent Palestinian civilians has caused widespread grief in the Arab region with nearly 97% of the respondents expressing some kind of distress and over 84% claiming it to be “great psychological stress.” Since October 7, the scale of the war has only grown. On Friday, January 12, in retribution for the solidarity Yemen’s Ansar Allah has shown to the Palestinian people, the US and UK launched several airstrikes inside of Yemen.

Below is a part of Khaled’s dialogue, in which she discusses the implications of the Palestinian resistance:

Madaar: In your opinion, what are the major implications of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle?

Leila Khaled: All peoples rose up with this overwhelming attack, and the most affected was Israel. This entity was shaken, and the first attack was carried out on a military squad, something their intelligence did not expect. 

Israel relies on its military strength… and until this moment it has not achieved any form of victory, but its ugly face, the face of murderers and war criminals, has appeared. This has become the image of the Zionist entity. The Palestinian narrative has risen, defeating the narrative that the Zionist movement has worked on for a hundred years…

The West was also shaken by the demonstrations in various European countries, which it shares with Israel. We all noticed how heads of state came, the first of whom was Biden, who came to announce that he supports Israel, and came with battleships and all kinds of weapons to support this entity.

This entity is considered a cat’s claw in the Arab region, and in fact it was a cat’s claw, but on the land of Palestine it was always faced with resistance. The resistance has not stopped since the occupation of the country, the establishment of this entity on our land, and the displacement of our people and the masses of refugees in different countries. Yes, Palestinian society was destroyed in 1948, but this people restores itself every time.

But this time is completely different, so the entity did not have a plan for confrontation, and it resorted to one method, which was to kill the people in a complete extermination process, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and this is what it wanted, because they bombed the homes in the presence of its residents, including children, women, men, the elderly, and the youth. This is what actually happened up to this moment. They said that their goal in this war, in response to the attack, is to root out and eliminate Hamas. It is a country that has 200 nuclear warheads and is facing an organization, as it did in 2006 when it faced an organization called Hezbollah… 

It does not attack armies, so where will it strike? It does not see the place of Hamas in Gaza, so it was surprised that the resistance, along with Hamas of course, fought battles for more than 60 days. It was the one that asked for the fighting to stop. Note that this was the first time in the history of the Zionist entity to request protection from America and the West, so they came with their weapons and their support… Blinken, the American Secretary of State came to Israel and said, “I came as a Jew, not as a foreign minister.” But later the US Secretary of State became part of the war council prepared by Israel. 

All of these repercussions are still continuing until this moment, until America asked Israel to stop the fighting, because they feared that the army that entered Gaza would collapse, and continued to enter and exit due to the resistance.

As for the ceasefire, the resistance benefited from it by bringing in aid, and set conditions to replace its detainees with our detainees in the prisons, including children and women. The Zionist society is now divided. The army used to go to fight, whether in Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank… it would unite behind it, and it would be forbidden to criticize it or criticize the government. However, we heard the criticism, and we heard many soldiers left the front and returned. Two battalions whose soldiers returned and said: We could no longer fight in the face of the ferocity with which the resistance faced them. 

So we are talking about this being the beginning of the liberation battles. Liberation battles begin with strikes on all places in this body called the Zionist entity, and this will not be the last time. Our people will also fight other battles, and liberation means withdrawal from Palestinian land, and now we are witnessing that. After the first strike, Ben Gurion Airport was crowded with thousands of people leaving.

Their press even criticizes the army and the methods it uses, meaning killing children and women and demolishing homes on top of their owners. The world no longer accepts this, and therefore there is no unified discourse for them… each one speaks differently, and contradicts the other. The whole goal is to eliminate Hamas, but they are unable to do so. They were unable to release the prisoners, and so they returned to strike again in Gaza. 

All our people in Gaza say we are with the resistance, we are protecting it. We hear from inside Gaza those standing on the rubble of houses chanting: We are with the resistance and we will remain with it.

We are reassured because this battle has also united other arenas, as the West Bank is also rising up.

M: It is being promoted that the battle is the battle to eliminate Hamas. How do you view this? How do you see the resistance’s management of the battle in the field?

LK: Let me say, let us wait for what will happen in the field. Now there are no more secrets. Everything is exposed, both audio and video, and no matter how much the Western media tries to spread misinformation and illusions, it will not be able to cover the image. The Internet is working and the social networking sites are working, and everyone communicates and receives images. Consequently, the world did not believe Israel with all its nonsense, and on this basis I said that it was the beginning of the liberation battle because there were political achievements achieved through October 7. I will not call it an operation, because it is an epic, a true epic in our history, just as we were talking about the armed struggle, the first intifada, and the Children of the Stones as epics. It is an expression of the position of the entire people, and not of a group here or there. 

The people united with the resistance, and in the field everyone is united, except for those who talk about losses and what we won… We won freedom…

We are continuing. If they do not want to exchange, we still have their soldiers. If they do not want them, let them bomb them. They are free if they do not want to release their prisoners. But if the enemy believes that under the constant bombardment they will displace people, our people said that we will not be displaced after ’48. 

This is a unified word: we will not be displaced, we will die on our land with honor and we will not leave, this is what everyone repeats. Although they cut off water, electricity, food, and everything else from Gaza, to put pressure on its people until they are displaced, they will not immigrate, and do not accept immigration to any destination. 

Everyone says that even if our homes are destroyed, we will rebuild them. This is the people’s position. Some may leave, but the displacement process will not take place as Israel was planning outside the Gaza Strip… They will not emigrate while their children are still under the rubble. How will they emigrate when they have not taken their women out from under the rubble? How will they migrate? Not possible. These people learned the lesson in 48, generation after generation… They are not the same generation that left, about which Golda said: “The old die and the young forget.” This fourth generation is stubborn and carries the idea and is moving towards achieving it.

Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table. The negotiations carried out by the leaders of the [Palestinian] Liberation Organization were tried for 30 years, during which arrests increased, settlement increased, land confiscation increased, the demolition of homes increased, uprooting of trees, and people were prevented from moving between cities through the checkpoints erected in the West Bank. Sharon left Gaza because he considered it like a hornet’s nest. He said, we will leave Gaza and we will besiege it. Indeed, it was besieged, but did our people surrender? Did the resistance surrender? No, so what comes next holds surprises, including political surprises.

There was a meeting in Doha, where the head of the CIA and the head of Mossad met to search for a solution. What solution are they talking about? Some of them talk about a Palestinian state, and this was rejected by Israel a long time ago, even if America said, as Biden said: We support the two-state solution, but the Palestinian state is difficult to achieve! Why did he say this? Because they want to create an administration for Gaza after Hamas. I assure you that Hamas and the resistance exist and will not end. One person is martyred and others leave, ten, twenty, and a thousand…

Iraq strikes American bases, and Israel raises the flags of other countries on the basis of covering up its ships, but its matter is easy to detect, as any ship can know through Google where it is coming from and what it is carrying. They will close this door on them, and this will affect the economy, trade, and the oil they bring from the Arabs. This is in Yemen, where today millions are taking to the streets in support and launching ballistic missiles.

And Hezbollah, from the second day, said, we have entered the battle on the northern border of Palestine, and they are still fighting to this moment, and this is in agreement and in full coordination with the Palestinian resistance and Hamas.

So we are faced with two scenes: a scene of resistance with all the wounds and pain and the execution of people in their homes… although it is difficult. On the other hand, there is another scene, which is the collapse of their economy. Despite the unlimited support that America and the West provide to Israel, the economy is at a standstill. Regarding the settlements, will the settlers return? They will not return because they were not protected, despite all the allegations. They were not protected, so they left and never returned. All this affects the course of the battle. They know they are losing.

In London, every Saturday, half a million take to the streets. They could turn against the Prime Minister. America is having a crisis now. Millions are going out in more than forty out of fifty states in demonstrations. They gathered in Washington for a million-man demonstration… and are still demonstrating, questioning the human rights, democracy, and justice their countries claim. Later we will see how many problems will occur in Europe and in America itself. In Canada, what is happening now? They want to put their president on trial!!

This article was translated and adapted from an interview originally published in Arabic on Madaar.

Courtesy: peoples dispatch

The Teardrop Explodes "Like Leila Khaled Said"

DALITS

Delhi: Sanitation Workers in Burari Hospital on Indefinite Strike, Serious Allegations of Salary Delay, Sexual Harassment

Sonia Yadav | 18 Jan 2024

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The Safai Kamgar Union has also demanded the removal of the contract company Global Venture, suspension of all the accused officials, and ensuring the rights and interests of the staff.

Image by Special arrangement

New Delhi: Delhi's Burari Government Hospital is once again in the headlines. Recently, outsourced female employees of the hospital had made serious allegations of sexual harassment against some officials. After this, an investigation committee was formed in this matter under the chairmanship of the Health Secretary.

Now, expressing their displeasure over the non-payment of salaries, the contractual sanitation workers of this hospital  stopped work from Tuesday, January 16, and started protesting. The employees allege that the administration is not only delaying the payment of salaries but their salaries are also being cut.

Recall that during the pandemic, in 2020, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had inaugurated this new 450-bed hospital in Burari, which was later expanded by 700 beds. At present, all the cleaning staff of this hospital are working on contract under “Global Venture” company and allege that they have not received their salary for the last one-and-a-half months.

Dalit Women Mostly Employed 

The workers sitting on strike told NewsClick that there were more than 100 sanitation workers  in the hospital. Most of the women are from the dalit community. Their earning here is the only means of livelihood and running their household. In such a situation, if the salary is not received on time, the financial condition of the house collapses, and even two meals a day are difficult. On top of that, they are harassed in different ways by the administration by actions like transfer, not giving them working days, etc.

The Safai Kamgar Union, an organisation that has been strongly raising the voice of these sanitation workers, has also, in its statement, accused the Burari administration and the contract company Global Venture of 'nexus' and said that they have been continuously ignoring the problems of these sanitation workers. The organisation has demanded the removal of Global Venture, suspension of all accused officials, and ensuring the rights and interests of the employees.

Harish Gautam, member of the executive committee of Safai Kamgar Union, told NewsClick that despite the cognisance of Delhi Government Health Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, no positive action had been taken in this matter yet. The allegation of misbehaviour with the female contract workers working in the hospital is serious, but no concrete action is seen in this matter either. The condition of their houses is not good, and that is why, despite all the difficulties, they are forced to work here. In such a situation, it is the job of the government and administration to create favourable conditions for them, he said.

Salary Delays and Cuts Too

Many employees sitting on strike say that despite working in this hospital for a long time, they are still not even informed about their basic salary. Sometimes Rs 9,000 and sometimes Rs 10,000 were available in the initial days. Apart from this, the salary is currently around Rs 14,000, but they say that it is less than in other places and is not justified according to today's inflation.

Many employees are upset about being "harassed" by their supervisor. They allege they are always made to work by intimidation. "Even if someone raises his voice, he is threatened with transfer,' said a worker. There are many other problems for these employees, like holidays, working days and other facilities, but till now no one is paying attention to them because these employees have been struggling for a long time, sometimes due to delays in payment and sometimes due to misbehaviour with women employees.

It is worth noting that a First Information Report (FIR) has already been registered in the case of alleged sexual harassment in this hospital, but the female employees claim that the officers against whom the cases were registered  are "roaming free", while these women are forced to do their work in fear. "It is ironic that so much is happening in a government hospital in the capital, Delhi, and the administration remains a mute spectator. And this is why these employees are now forced to go on indefinite strike," said a worker.

 

Indian Freedom Fighters and Lenin's Enduring Legacy

Vasudev Chakravarti | 21 Jan 2024

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Through the work of Dr. Leonid Mitrokhin titled "Lenin and Indian Freedom Fighters", we can see that Lenin and the Soviet Union had a direct connection to the Indian freedom struggle.

Image credit: Hindustan Times

As part of their politics of appropriation, the Sangh Parivar is carrying forth an all-out attempt to appropriate India’s freedom struggle which, in reality, they did not participate in and to the contrary, opposed. As a part of this appropriation, they are repeatedly trying to spread canards about the communists and their role in the freedom struggle and rewrite history to erase it. This can be seen in the past attempts to remove communist martyrs such as the martyrs from Punnapra-Vayalar, Kayyur, Karivelloor, and Kavumbayi from the list of freedom fighters.

Another method of doing so has been to allege that since the most prominent figures of communism such as Lenin are not Indian, hence communism and Marxism are alien to India. This argument is completely baseless as the communist movement in India has grown so many of its own inspirational leaders and has adapted Marxism to the Indian landscape and further, has drawn from the legacy of various social reformers and movements. However, through the work of Dr. Leonid Mitrokhin titled Lenin and Indian Freedom Fighters, we can also see that Lenin and the Soviet Union had a direct connection to the Indian freedom struggle.

Dr. Mitrokhin was a prominent Soviet journalist and Indologist whose PhD work was on the “Influence of Great October Revolution on India’s Freedom Struggle.” He spent many years travelling across India, meeting many freedom fighters and gathering texts from the length and breadth of the country and has written many works on Indo-Soviet relations and allied themes.

He begins his book with the history of Professor Mohammad Barkatallah, an Indian freedom fighter and revolutionary democrat who served as the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Free India in Kabul. Barkatallah was in exile in Kabul when Amir Amanullah Khan came to power in February 1919 and declared the British Empire his enemy and called on representatives of all peoples of the East who were ready to fight against colonial domination and for independence to come to Afghanistan. Barkatallah met Lenin on May 7, 1919, and he was incredibly impressed by his meeting and his reading of the programme of the Communist Party. He witnessed revolutionary changes and the unprecedented enthusiasm of the working people of Soviet Russia. After this, Barkatallah became an ardent supporter of Lenin and the communists, despite not identifying himself as one. He said at the time of the meeting: “I am neither a communist nor a socialist. The goal of my life is to drive the British out of Asia. I am an uncompromising enemy of European capitalism in Asia, which is represented primarily by the British. In this, I am united with the communists and in this, we are natural allies.”

However, this sympathy for and the alliance with the communists was only to strengthen later. He later wrote in 1920: “Comrade Lenin has raised the banner of genuine freedom, equality and brotherhood. Let us join our ranks in the fight under that banner for the liberation of the entire human race. Follow the example of Lenin, who took the initiative to gain the hearts of the peoples of the East, and succeeded beyond any expectation.”

The book mentions several other revolutionaries such as Raja Mahendra Pratap, Moulana Obeidullah, Akbar Khan who was tried in the “Moscow- Tashkent Conspiracy” or the very first political trial held against anti-colonial fighters, Prithvi Singh Azad among others. All of them tell tales of the wonder of revolutionaries in exile who were welcomed into a country which had just had a successful revolution and was struggling against imperialist powers who wished the end of the first workers' state. All of them recount the affection and solidarity given to them by the Soviet state and the people and above all else, the understanding that Lenin had of the people of the East and the importance he placed upon the anti-colonial struggles.

No story exemplifies this more than Bhagat Singh’s. A young man was hanged by the British rulers at the young age of twenty-four. A man, who unlike the others mentioned above, had not stepped beyond the borders of then-British India. And yet, Lenin reached him or he reached Lenin through the medium of literature. In the last moments of their life, people turn to what is most dear to them. When Bhagat Singh was called to be hung, he told his executioners: “Wait a while. A revolutionary is talking to another revolutionary.” Bhagat Singh was reading Clara Zetkin’s Reminiscences of Lenin, and through the book, was in conversation with Lenin.

Leonid Mitrokhin’s perhaps forgotten book has many more details and interesting and inspiring stories which cannot be covered in a small review article such as this one. However, the most important enduring message of this book which cannot be wiped out is that Lenin was passionately concerned with the struggles for national liberation by the colonially oppressed. The state he was at the head of carried this concern in material terms as well. Lenin himself after his death turned into an ideological force representing the irresistible desire of peoples across the world for liberation from imperialism.

As the poet Langston Hughes wrote in his poem Lenin:

Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.

In the second decade of the 21st century, Lenin has still not stopped his walk. His walk continues across the world as in India, in the struggles of farmers against big corporations and MNCs, of workers against pro-business labour codes and in the struggles of all downtrodden peoples for a better life.

The author is a PhD student at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The views expressed are personal.

 

Europe Struggles With Health Workers Shortage But Fails to Address Demands for Decent Salaries

Peoples Health Dispatch 

| 23 Jan 2024

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Worries surrounding the health workforce shortage in Europe continues to grow, yet plans largely fail to include pay rises for workers in the sector.

Nurses’ protest at the Christiansborg Castle Square, Copenhagen in 2021 demanding pay rises. The strike was one of several which have occurred across Europe in recent years to protest conditions in the sector. (Photo: via Danish Nurses' Organization)

Europe is running short of health workers – this seems to be the consensus of the day among various members and bodies of the EU, as well as health researchers. The European Commission and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies both agree that if the issue is not urgently addressed, problems like medical deserts and burnout in the health workforce will only grow.

The significance of this topic is so profound that Belgium, currently presiding over the Council of the EU, has included developing a common EU health workforce strategy among its presidency priorities.

Consensus also seems to exist on the main obstacles hindering the expansion of the health workforce. An aging population, a skills mismatch, and uneven geographical distribution of health workers are all identified challenges. What is curiously missing or is, at best, under-addressed is the chronic dissatisfaction of health workers with their working conditions, including salaries.

Over the past two years, the EU and its high-income neighbors have witnessed a massive wave of industrial action by nurses, doctors, lab technicians, and others, all demanding fair pay and recognition. These demands are referred to as “frictions” in reports, rather than being prioritized at the top of Europe’s agenda.

Not surprisingly, the persistent disregard for improving working standards in the health sector by health ministries has led to intense migration of health workers. Looking at the region alone, the substantial brain drain from South and East Europe towards the western and northern EU members cannot be ignored.

Romania, for example, trains an above-average number of nurses and physicians, but most move abroad as soon as they are cleared to work, leaving behind a struggling health system. In many non-core EU countries, the average age of physicians exceeds 55, posing a looming crisis as they approach retirement. In 2021, one-third of all doctors in the Czech Republic were older than 55, and in Slovakia, the average age of general practitioners was 57.

A crucial priority missing from the list, therefore, is the need to strengthen solidarity among EU members to prevent depletion of each other’s health systems.

The global perspective of this is even more significant, as high-income European countries increasingly rely on recruiting from other regions. While governments claim their international recruitment practices are “fair and ethical,” as German minister of health Karl Lauterbach put it, the practical implications often suggest otherwise.

Corinne Hinlopen, a global health advocate working at Dutch NGO Wemos, notes that European policy officers tend to downplay the impact of international health workers’ recruitment. “What they usually seem to mean [when they say that European countries’ recruitment has minimal impact on health systems in countries of origin] is that their own country’s recruitment is minimal compared to the total global health workforce size – but they do not seem to acknowledge that when you add it all up, it is indeed substantial.”

Another argument often cited by European officials is that some low and middle-income countries have a surplus of health workers, implying that international recruitment comes as a double win: the high-income country gets nurses at a fraction of the price that would take to train and employ them locally; the low or middle income country gets remittances.

But the situation is far more complex than that. In many cases, low and middle income countries simultaneously face health worker shortages and are unable to provide decent working conditions and salaries due to budget constraints and debt conditionalities.

“Low and middle-income countries will say that they are also investing in their health workforce – by which they normally mean: investing in training and education, but not in decent working conditions and salaries, so the push factor for health workers to seek their futures abroad is still immense,” Hinlopen says.

Is there a way for Europe to change course and staff its health systems without causing further harm to others? According to Hinlopen, yes. The first step would be acknowledging that the health workforce shortage is a shared challenge among EU member states, but also that it is a challenge on which the EU can act.

“We need to move from an international competition for skilled health workforce in crisis-ridden health systems towards a united effort to create working conditions for our health and care workers that enable them to deliver high-quality health care in Europe,” Hinlopen says, drawing upon a set of recommendations that will be published soon by the coalition Pillars of Health.

Of course, the trick there is that such a recommendation can only be implemented if there is a EU-wide decision to allocate more resources to health systems strengthening, including through existing mechanisms. “The thing is, these investments should not be so non-committal,” according to Hinlopen.

Instead, the investments in public health systems should be mandatory, obligating the governments to fulfill their responsibilities towards people’s health.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

The Making of ‘Ram Ke Naam’: A Hinduism That’s Mirror Opposite of Hindutva

22 Jan 2024

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The acclaimed director revisits his creative journey while making documentary films on rising communalism in India in the 1990s.

First Published on: December 5, 2015

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The making of “Ram Ke Naam”

In 1984 after her Sikh bodyguards assassinated Indira Gandhi, a revenge pogrom took the lives of over 3000 Sikhs on the streets of Delhi. Many killer mobs were led by Congress Party members, but some were led by the RSS and BJP as well. This is a fact forgotten by history but recorded in newspaper headlines of the day.  It was this massacre that set me on the to road to fight Communalism with my camera. For the next decade I recorded different examples of the rise of the religious right, as seen in diverse movements from the Khalistani upsurge in Punjab to the glorification of Sati in Rajasthan and the movement to replace the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya with a temple to Lord Ram.

The material I filmed was very complex and if I had tried to encompass it all into a single film, it would have been too long and confusing. Eventually three distinct films emerged from the footage shot between 1984 and 1994, all broadly describing the rise of religious fundamentalism and the resistance offered by secular forces in the country. “Una Mitran Di Yaad Pyaari/ In Memory of Friends”, the first film to get completed, spoke of the situation in the Punjab of the 1980’s where Khalistanis as well as the Indian government were claiming Bhagat Singh as their hero, but only people from the Left remembered the Bhagat Singh who from his death cell wrote the booklet, “Why I am an Atheist”.

The second film was “Ram Ke Naam/In the Name of God” on the rise of Hindu fundamentalism as witnessed in the temple-mosque controversy in Ayodhya. The third was “Pitra, Putra aur Dharmayuddha/Father, Son and Holy War” on the connection between religious violence and the male psyche. All three films tackled Communalism, but each used a different prism to analyse what was happening. “In Memory of Friends” highlighted the writings of Bhagat Singh suggesting that class solidarity was the antidote to religious division. “Father, Son and Holy War” looked at the issue from the prism of gender.

For this article, I will concentrate on “Ram Ke Naam”, the middle film of what became a trilogy on Communalism. While the film covers a two year span from 1990 onwards, the back story begins in the mid-1980’s when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and sister organizations of the Hindutva family (the Sangh Parivar) was searching for a way to capture the imagination of the Hindus of India who at 83%, constitute the real vote bank of this country.  A Dharam Sansad (Parliament of Priests) in 1984 (the year Indira Gandhi was killed and the Congress rode to power on a sympathy wave) identified 3000 sites of potential conflict between Hindus and Muslims that could mobilize the sentiments of Hindus and polarize the nation. The top three sites chosen were at Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura. The Dharam Sansad decided to start with the Ram temple/Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. Soon a nationwide village to village campaign to collects bricks and money to build a grand Ram temple in place of the Babri mosque began. The campaign went international as NRI’s chipped in from distant lands. By design or by remarkable coincidence, India’s state controlled TV channel, Doordarshan started to run a never-ending serial on the Hindu epic – The Ramayana (The story of Lord Ram). In those days there were few other TV channels and the whole nation was hooked onto mythology. These were the ingredients already at play when BJP stalwart L. K. Advani set out on his chariot of fire.

“Ram Ke Naam” follows the Rath Yatra of L.K. Advani who in 1990 traversed the Indian countryside in an air-conditioned Toyota dressed up by a Bollywood set-designer to look like a mythological war chariot. The stated objective was to gather Hindu volunteers, or “kar sevaks” to demolish a 16th century mosque built by the Mughal emperor Babar in Ayodhya and build a temple to Lord Ram in its exact location. The rationale for this act of destruction and construction was that Babar had supposedly built this mosque after demolishing a temple to Lord Ram that had marked the exact location of Lord Ram’s birth. This was justified as an act of historic redress for the many wrongs inflicted by Muslim invaders and rulers on their native Hindu subjects, a theme that runs through all Hindutva discourse like a flaming torch.

I started the film instinctively, shooting the Rath Yatra when it arrived in Bombay in 1990 and then following it through various segments of its journey. At many places the Rath passed through, it left a trail of blood as kar sevaks attacked local Muslims either for not showing due respect or just to display their might. By the end of its journey over 60 people had been killed and many more injured in the wake of the Rath.

Most of our shoot was done with a two-person crew consisting of myself with an old 16 mm camera and colleagues who accompanied me on different legs of the shoot. For the leg that eventually reached Ayodhya, Pervez Merwanji recorded sound on our portable Nagra. Pervez was a dear friend and a filmmaker in his own right, having just made his brilliant debut feature “Percy” which went on to win a major award at the Mannhein International Film Festival. Despite this he was not too proud to don the mantle of sound recordist on an unheralded independent documentary project like ours. It turned out to be the last film he would ever work on. Pervez contracted jaundice, probably during our shoot, seemed to recover, but then his liver failed him and he passed away never having seen the final edit of our film.

Our actual filming was staggered over a year and a half, and we were able to research as well as shoot in this period.  We learned that contrary to the theory that votaries of Hindutva were propagating that claimed that there was a temple underneath the mosque, the artefacts that archaeologists had originally found in digs in the vicinity had nothing to do with any temple. According to historians, in the 7th century at the location of present day Ayodhya, probably stood the Buddhist city of Saket.  We learned that the proliferation of Akhadas (military wings attached to temples) in Ayodhya had nothing to do with the long war to liberate the birthplace of Lord Ram as was being claimed by Hindutva ideologues, but owed their origin to the ongoing rivalry between armed Shaivite and Vaishnavite sects in the middle ages. Most importantly we learned that in the 16th century, the poet Tulsidas visited Ayodhya many times as he composed his famous Ram Charitra Manas, a text which converted the relatively obscure Sanskrit Ramayana into khadi boli, a form of Hindi, that popularized the story of Lord Ram for the ordinary folk of North India. Not only does Tulsidas never mention that a temple marking the birthplace of Lord Ram was just demolished by Babar, there is another telling fact. Until the 16th century the Rama legend was largely restricted to the few Brahmins who knew Sanskrit. It is only after Tulsidas’s Hindi version had spread that Ram became a popular god for the masses and Ram temples sprouted across the country. In other words in the middle of the 16th century when the Babri Mosque was built, it is highly unlikely that there were any Ram temples at all. Today Ayodhya is full of Ram temples and at least twenty of them claim to be built at the birthplace of Ram. The reason is obvious. Any temple that establishes itself as the birthplace of Ram gets huge donations from its devotees.

Some of this research is hinted at in the finished film but rarely made explicit as I felt that it would be more powerful for our film to rely on the logic of events unfolding before the camera in 1990-91 rather than become a theoretical and didactic treatise. Ideally I, or someone else should have made an accompanying booklet to point out the many footnotes and annotations that such a film really needs.

30th October 1990 had been declared by L.K. Advani as the target date for “Kar Seva” at the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Mosque site in Ayodhya. Pervez and I headed to Uttar Pradesh. We were trying to catch up with the Rath at some of its scheduled stops. The trains were already jam full. We squeezed into a Third Class compartment where we could barely sit on top of our luggage. We had got on a wrong train and it was impossible to get out! It turned out to be a stroke of luck as the train took us to Patna, Bihar where the Left front along with Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav were holding a huge anti-Rath rally at the Gandhi Maidan. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7XRvjYQOaI)

A.B. Bardhan of the CPI made a brilliant appeal to preserve India’s syncretic culture and Lalu Prasad Yadav gave a stern warning telling Advani to turn back from the brink. A few days later he kept his promise. Advani was arrested and the Rath Yatra finally came to a halt in Bihar.  Not so the kar sevaks who used all modes of transport to continue to head towards Ayodhya.

We caught a train back to Lucknow. There we spent almost 10 days trying to get permission to enter Ayodhya. Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had vowed to protect the Babri Mosque and claimed that he had turned Ayodhya into an impenetrable fortress where not just kar sevaks but “parinda par na kar payega” (not a bird could fly cross). As it turned out in the end the only people who had difficulty getting into Ayodhya were journalists and documentarians like us.

We finally reached Ayodhya on the 28th of October, two days before the planned assault on the mosque. Here we met Shastriji, an old Mahant  (temple priest) who in 1949 had been part of the group that had broken into the Babri Mosque at night and installed a Ram idol in the sanctum sanctorum. From that day on, the site had become disputed territory as District Magistarate K.K. Nair refused to have the idols removed.  As “Ram Ke Naam” points out, K.K. Nair after retiring from government service went on to join the Jan Sangh Party (precursor of the BJP) and became a Member of Parliament.

Shastriji, the Mahant, was proud of installing the idols and a little miffed that everyone had forgotten his role. Hindutva videos, audios and literature had proclaimed that what happened in 1949 was a “miracle” where the god Lord Ram appeared at his birthplace.  Shastri was arrested and released on bail by the District Magistrate, K.K.Nair. Till the day we met him 41 years later, he had remained free.

We went across the Saryu bridge to Ayodhya’s twin city, Faizabad. Here we met the old Imam of the Babri Mosque and his carpenter son who recounted the 1949 story from their perspective. The District Magistrate had told them after the break-in that order would soon be restored, and that by next Friday they could re-enter their mosque for prayers. As the Imam’s son put it “We are still waiting for that Friday”.

As 30th October dawned and we made our way on foot to the Saryu bridge at Ayodhya, we could see that CM Mulayam Singh’s promise that no one would get through to Ayodhya was proving false. Already several thousands had gathered by the bridge, despite the curfew. There had been a small lathi charge while shoes and footwear were scattered all over the bridge. Busloads of arrested karsevaks were being driven away after arrest. What we did not notice at the time was that many of these buses would stop at a short distance and the kar sevaks would disembark to rejoin the fray. By the side of the bridge thousands were chanting at the police “Hindu, hindu bhai bhai, beech mein vardi kahan se aayee? (All Hindus are brothers. why let a uniform get between us?)”.

As the day progressed it was heartbreaking to those of us who knew that any attack on the mosque would rent apart the delicate communal fabric of the nation.. We had believed Mulayam Singh’s strong rhetoric that he would stop karsevaks long before they reached the mosque. What we saw on the ground was bewildering. Not only were thousands pouring in despite the curfew but at many places there was active connivance from the police and paramilitary forces. There was utter confusion. In the end some karsevaks did break through to attack the mosque but at the very last instance, the police opened fire. Some karsevaks reached the top of the mosque’s dome and tied their orange Hindutva flag. Others broke into the sanctum sanctorum where the idols were kept but police firing prevented the larger crowd from demolishing the mosque. In all 29 people, young and old, lost their lives.  Later BJP and VHP propaganda claimed that over a thousand had been killed and thrown into the Saryu river. The think-tank of Hindutva then initiated another Rath Yatra across the country carrying the ashes of their Ayodhya “martyrs”.

On the night of the 30th, in the sombre mood that the attack had spawned, we met Pujari Laldas, the court-appointed head priest of the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Mosque site. Laldas was an outspoken critic of Hindutva despite being a Hindu priest and had received death threats. The UP government had provided him with two bodyguards. It is this wonderful interview of one of independent India’s unsung heroes that gives “Ram Ke Naam” its real poignancy. Laldas spoke out against the VHP pointing out that they had never even prayed at the site but were using it for political and financial gain. He spoke of the syncretic past of Ayodhya and expressed anguish that Hindu-Muslim unity in the country was being sacrificed by people who were cynically using religion. He predicted a storm of mayhem that would follow but expressed confidence that
this storm too would pass and sanity would return.

For “In Memory of Friends”, I had used a prism of class as seen through the writings of Bhagat Singh to speak of the Punjab of today. In reality, by the late 1980’s classical Marxist analysis and class solidarity were no longer exclusively effective tools in an India and a world where the ideas of the Left were losing out to consumer capitalism. The Soviet Union was collapsing and China was embracing state capitalism. The USA was the only super power left in the world, which itself was fragmenting into its religious and ethnic sub-parts. Yugoslavia disintegrated into internecine warfare. The USA with its ally, Saudi Arabia, stoked Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight Communism which in turn helped Kashmiri militants take up the gun. In Punjab, Sikh militants were rising and in Northern India, Hindu militants came into their own. For “Ram Ke Naam” the sane voice of the Hindu priest Pujari Laldas played the role that Bhagat Singh’s writings had done in my previous film. The Left antidote to Communalism was still present through the Patna speech of CPI’s AB Bardhan. But it was now joined by a liberation theologist in the form of Pujari Laldas. The violent reaction of upper caste Hindus to the attempt by Prime Minister V.P. Singh to implement a Mandal Commision report granting reservations to ‘backward’ castes, had led to upper caste Hindus embracing Hindutva and the Mandir (Ram temple) movement. This had not yet trickled down the Caste order. Wherever we went in UP, Dalits and “Backward Castes” spoke out against the Ram temple movement. This became the third spoke in the anti-Communal wheel.

The film was complete by late 1991. We had some hiccoughs and delays from the censors but finally cleared this hurdle without cuts. The film went on to win a national award for Best Investigative Documentary as well as a Filmfare Award for Best documentary. At the 1992 Bombay International Documentary Film Festival, Jaya Bacchan was head of the jury. “Ram Ke Naam” did not get a mention. Several critics commented that the film was raking up a dead issue as the Babri Mosque was intact and the film would unnecessarily give the country a bad name abroad. Later that month I attended the Berlin Film Festival with “Ram Ke Naam”. I learned to my horror that Amitabh and Jaya Bacchan, who were also guests at this festival, had told the Festival authorities that should not have selected such an “anti-India” film.

On the strength of our national award I submitted it for telecast on Doordarshan. Any government that actually believed in a secular India, would have shown such a film many times over so that our public could realize how religious hatred is manufactured for narrow political and financial gains. Widespread exposure may have undermined the movement to demolish the mosque. The BJP was not yet in power. Yet Doordarshan refused to telecast the film and I took them to court. 5 years later we won our case and the film was telecast, but the damage had long been done.

After the October 30 attack in 1990 and the death of 29 karsevaks, the BJP, which had been in coalition with VP Singh’s Janata Dal Party government at the centre, pulled out its support. Chandra Shekhar briefly came to power at the centre but quickly lost to Narsimha Rao’s Congress in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. In UP Mulayam Singh’s government gave way to a BJP government. One of its first steps was to have Pujari Laldas removed as head priest of the Ram Janmaboomi/Babri Masjid, and then to remove his bodyguards. Conditions were now ripe for the major assault.

On December 6, 1992 with the BJP in power in UP, and a strangely acquiescent Narsimha Rao led Congress government at the centre, the Hindutva brigade finally succeeded in demolishing the Babri Mosque. Pujari Laldas’s predictions of large scale violence in the region came true. The old Imam and his son from Faizabad I had interviewed were put to death on 7th December 1992. While Muslims were slaughtered across India, in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hindu minority was targeted and temples destroyed. In March 1993, bomb blasts in Mumbai organized by Muslim members of the mafia killed over 300 people. The chain reaction set into motion since those days has still to abate.

Back in 1991 our première had been held in Lucknow, capital of UP. Pujari Laldas came for the screening and asked for several cassettes of the film. When I asked about his own safety, he laughed and said he was happy that now his views would circulate more widely. As he put it, if he had been afraid, he would not have spoken out in the first place.

A year later, a tiny item on the inside pages of the Times of India noted-“Controversial priest found murdered.” Pujari Laldas had been killed with a country-made revolver. The newspaper article never told us that the real “controversy” was the fact that this brave priest believed in a Hinduism that is the mirror opposite of Hindutva.

PAKISTAN 

Localising cellphone production

Nasir Jamal 

DAWN

Published January 22, 2024 

Mobile technology is at the heart of the digital transformation underway in the country. With government and private sector organisations using digital platforms to increase engagement and improve service delivery to citizens, mobile broadband networks now cover 80 per cent of the population, and 97pc of internet connections are based on mobile connectivity.

Mobile technology also enables the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) across areas, including agriculture, clean energy and safe water solutions, as the government plans to roll out 5G technology by summer.

While mobile technology is playing an increasingly important role in economic growth through direct contribution to the GDP and driving productivity and efficiency gains across different sectors of the economy, the mobile ecosystem continues to generate jobs in other sectors.

Pakistan is considered one of the fastest-growing countries in the telecommunication market. There is an increasing demand for mobile handsets. In order to maintain consistent growth in future, the government has recognised the potential of digital transformation by devising a well-defined mobile policy to encourage local assembly and manufacturing of mobile devices.

The number of domestic players has reduced to 30 from the initial 46 companies because of the pandemic and import restrictions

According to Ali Raza, the marketing manager for Tecno Mobile Pakistan, the initiation of the Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) in 2019 by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has proved vastly useful in curbing illegal import channels for mobile phone devices into the country. “This paved the way for the Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy of 2020 import substitution, production and exports.”

The policy had set a 49pc localisation target, including 10pc localisation of parts of the motherboard and 10pc localisation of batteries. In light of the policy, the PTA issued Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Regulations in 2021, enabling local and global mobile phone companies to assemble and manufacture mobile devices in Pakistan.

The PTA data shows that local assemblers produced 19.2 million units between July and November last year compared to 1.4m commercially imported handsets. In 2020, Pakistan imported 24.5m mobile handsets as compared to 13m locally assembled units, showing that local assemblers have successfully displaced commercial imports since the launch of the policy.

“The government’s mobile manufacturing policy to attract major mobile brands to establish their plants in Pakistan has proved to be the first step towards the establishment of a competitive local manufacturing market. Though the localisation remains low, the industry has benefited the economy in terms of import substitution, job creation, technology transfer and affordability for consumers,” Mr Raza argues.

A sector report by the Pakistan Credit Rating Agency points out that the market was largely import-driven between FY17 and FY21, which grew at an average annual rate of 3pc. “However, a sudden shift was observed in FY22, when commercial imports of mobile devices declined by a whopping 58pc from 25m units to 10m units. Simultaneously, local manufacturing during the same period increased from 13m units to 25m units. This mainly resulted from supporting government policies.”

“Ever since the introduction of the mobile phone assembly/manufacturing policy, the industry has rapidly grown and increased capacity and production volume to meet the domestic demand for both feature and smartphones. For instance, we are producing 500,000-800,000 units per month. After the policy was announced, 46 companies had set up their assembly plants. Some have closed down because of the pandemic and later restrictions on the import of components due to dollar liquidity issues. The number of active players in this industry has now reduced to 30 from the initial 46 companies,” Mr Raza says.

“We are not only producing feature phones and cheaper smartphones but have also ventured into premium, high-end segments. Now, we are going to locally assemble 5G-enabled handsets as well. We are not just a mobile phone manufacturer but a tech company working for the betterment of Pakistan. We would like to bring change in Pakistan and make it one of the largest tech players globally.”

He says there are several advantages of the mobile manufacturing policy. “It has helped the country bring foreign investment by major brands, transfer technology, create jobs for skilled labour and technicians and make handsets affordable for consumers due to lower taxes on locally assembled sets. We are also exploring the opportunity for exports.”

Mr Raza takes exception to criticism that the industry has not made any significant strides towards the localisation of components like most carmakers. “It is unfair to compare this nascent industry with the 40-year-old car industry. After introducing the policy, our journey was interrupted by the pandemic and later by import restrictions due to dollar shortages and balance of payment troubles. So the two sectors cannot be compared,” he contends.

“Now that restrictions on imports have eased, we will move to the second stage of local manufacturing of accessories and exports. The key to the success of the policy is the support of the mobile ecosystem. The most important part of this ecosystem is policy consistency.”

He goes on: “We don’t have the capacity to manufacture motherboard chips or heavy metal components like batteries and sensors. But we can locally produce other less precision components and accessories. We will build the whole ecosystem if the policies remain consistent and the government supports them for the longer term.

“We are looking at the possibilities of localisation of whatever components we can make in Pakistan and then move into exports. At the moment, Tecno, a Chinese brand, has very small exports. The industry is pushing the government for incentives for developing an export ecosystem.”

Tecno Pakistan is part of China’s Transsion Holding, which is operating in 70 countries across the globe. “We are a global company with a local approach. We are the top brand in Africa and among the top three mobile brands in the Indian subcontinent. We cater to all market segments, from affordable handsets to expensive ones,” Mr Raza explains.

He repeatedly argues for policy consistency for the creation of a favourable ecosystem for localisation and exports. “Telenor’s decision to exit Pakistan and sell its local operations for $400m, at which it had acquired spectrum many years ago, says a lot about the country’s business landscape. It underscores that political instability, policy inconsistencies, and weak business culture and conditions don’t allow companies to realise their full potential in spite of heavy investments. Adherence to policies is crucial to achieve the objectives set by the government.”

The local assemblers, according to the PTA, have produced over 7m smartphones in the first five months of the present financial year compared to 8.8m in 2022. But, he adds, despite government policies to curb the grey mobile phone market, the size of the illegally imported or smuggled handsets remains pretty big.

“Pakistan’s growth potential for smart handset producers is immense. We have 110m unique mobile SIM owners, 60pc of which use feature phones. So the growth possibilities are great. But we need an ecosystem to not only meet domestic demand but also to export,” he adds.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, January 22nd, 2024

What Davos tells us

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar 

DAWN

Published January 20, 2024





PAKISTAN’S ethnic peripheries continue to burn. Working class households in peripheries and metropolitan areas alike continue to be strangulated by weekly inflation rates that top 40 per cent,and our militarised ruling class continues to loot, devastating already ravaged ecosystems, even as its members engage in palace intrigues in the lead-up to (s)elections.

Pakistan is not alone — more and more countries in our neighbourhood and world are increasingly militarised, inegalitarian and violent. But this is conveniently ignored when those who lead (and profit from) us gather for their annual shindig at the World Economic Forum in the dreamy Swiss resort town of Davos.

Our current caretaker prime minister, who is unlikely to enjoy another stint, has just returned from Davos. He and the rest of the delegation he headed enjoyed their time in the sun, while waxing lyrical (in Imran Khan-type fashion) about unparalleled media freedom in Pakistan and also signing some high-profile business deals with the Gulf monarchs.

All manner of business consultations and deals take place in Davos, featuring even those countries and corporations that are otherwise adversaries. Indeed, the caretaker PM and (newly minted enemy) Iran’s foreign minister had a meeting there. Meanwhile, a host of Muslim-majority and other country leaders hobnobbed with the Israeli president. And American corporate executives disclosed that they expect Donald Trump to be back in the White House by the end of the year and that capitalism would not be any worse off.

And therein lies the rub. Global capitalism continues to remain the game in town, and pretty much everyone who is rich and powerful continues to reinforce it. Yes, there are innumerable geopolitical conflicts, including genocidal wars, that litter the globe; but when push comes to shove, the world’s political and business leaders agree that the profiteering must continue unhindered, while making the occasional policy tweak here and there

Do the world’s richest and most powerful people care?

Look at Palestine. Gaza has been reduced to rubble, but it is yesterday’s news. Business between the Israelis, neighbouring Arab countries, the Turks, and, of course, Western and Chinese superpowers, must carry on. Pakistan and Iran have been making headlines for their missile strikes, but by all accounts, the border remains open for the contraband that crosses both ways on a daily basis.

Beyond the everyday imperatives of keeping the compound growth cycle going, do the world’s richest and most powerful people who get together in Davos care about the medium- and long-term spectres of ecological breakdown and the prospect of mass upheaval due to ever intensifying class, ethnic and other forms of conflict? The answer, quite clearly, is no.

In case we forget, many of these same usual suspects gathered in the UAE for COP28 a few weeks ago. Almost laughingly, the climate summit was chaired by the head of the UAE’s state oil company. A vague agreement to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 toe-ended the event, but not before the said chair challenged scientists who link fossil fuel energy to climate change.

To put it bluntly, global summits like Davos and COP28 feature a whole lot of development-speak while essentially representing an opportunity for the rich and powerful to get together and plan how to split up the booty for the next 12-month cycle. This is not a cynical take. A cynical take is offered by those who believe the world will change because military-industrial establishments, propertied classes and corporate behemoths will develop an ‘elite consensus’ to do things differently.

To return to Pakistan, there is no evidence that any such ‘elite consensus’ is on the cards here except for the musical chairs, that is our khaki-coloured, patronage-based structure of power, to plod along, all players agreed on suppressing any fundamental challenge from below.

Let us not forget that Baloch women continue to sit in front of the Press Club in Islamabad waiting for anyone — including the mainstream parties who are currently in the establishment’s good books and are running campaigns to be (s)elected — to show up and at least acknowledge their existence.

The same could be said for the thousands who are on the streets of all major towns in Gilgit-Baltistan, or the hapless masses in Pakhtun tribal districts who face yet another wave of religious militancy. Or the ordinary working mass of people in cities and villages alike that are living through IMF-imposed austerity.

But the ruling class couldn’t care less. Just like respective ruling classes all over the world couldn’t care less about their respective populations. When legitimacy wanes, all of them know how to drum up jingoistic nationalism to fan the flames of hate. And then they all gather again in Davos to grease the wheels of profit.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2024

PAKISTAN / BALOCHISTAN

Justice and politics

Muhammad Amir Rana 

DAWN

Published January 21, 2024 

AFTER a lengthy trial in an anti-terrorism court, followed by the rejection of appeals from superior courts, the killers of Sarfraz Shah, who was shot by paramilitary forces in 2011, finally appealed to the president of Pakistan for a pardon under Article 45 of the Constitution. When the President’s House denied their appeal in 2018, it was a significant step towards restoring the confidence of ordinary citizens in the existing justice system. In a similar incident in 2020, the arrest of a Frontier Corps soldier for the killing of a university student in Turbat, Balochistan, proved to be a significant confidence-building measure between the local populace and the security forces. However, such examples remain rare in Pakistan’s legal and judicial landscape.

Last year, on Jan 23, a dark day unfolded when Rao Anwar, a police officer accused of killing over 400 people in fake encounters, was acquitted in the high-profile Naqibullah murder case. This case had significantly impacted the political landscape of Pakhtun-dominated regions, and the army chief at that time had personally assured justice for the victim’s family. Adding to the irony, the Sitara-i-Shujaat was awarded to a police officer from Punjab who was implicated in the Sahiwal tragedy. This tragedy occurred in January 2019, when the Counter Terrorism Department mistakenly killed a family travelling to a wedding ceremony, suspecting them of being terrorists. The court eventually acquitted all the accused officials.

A lot has been written on these four cases from the legal and human rights perspective, but academic curiosity has no limits. These cases expose the power dynamics of how power corrupts officials in law-enforcement agencies (LEAs), how low-ranking and high-ranking officials alike misuse their authority, and how the system protects them.

Sarfraz Shah’s case is a rare example of justice done. Perhaps the reason was that the culprits had little defence. Sarfaraz, a 22-year-old man who went out for a walk in a public park in Karachi, was killed by Rangers, and a camera captured the entire scene. This began an era of social media activism and vigilant citizenry. Civil society played a vital role in bringing justice to the victim’s family.

Rights movements can evolve into political forces when justice is denied or delayed.

The killing of university student Hayat Baloch in Turbat, amidst volatile security and rising political grievances in Makran, sparked the birth of the Haq Do Tehreek in Gwadar. Security forces took a different approach in this case, arresting a Frontier Corps soldier. A wise move, this arrest proved a major confidence-building measure and prompted a dialogue between security leaders and communities, particularly youth. This led to administrative changes, including relaxed security checks and expanded border markets along the Iran border. However, the initiative faltered as local grievances resurfaced, fuelled by the provincial counterterrorism department’s excessive resort to extrajudicial practices. This further accentuates the ongoing sit-in camp for missing persons in Islamabad, led by courageous Baloch women.

The lower ranks are often scapegoats in police brutality cases, and are sacrificed by LEAs to appease public anger while maintaining their impunity. This pattern persists despite high-profile incidents such as the killings of Sarfraz Shah and Hayat Baloch, demonstrating the lack of accountability within law enforcement.

Across Pakistan, reports of LEAs indiscriminately killing innocent civilians surface regularly — from Karachi to Islamabad and from Gwa­­dar to Quetta. This entrenched culture of violence is enabled by the flawed political, social and justice systems, which continue to support figures like Rao Anwar and the late Chaudhry Aslam, notorious for their extrajudicial practices.

Ironically, LEAs justify such unlawful actions and demand both immunity and rewards. Even when caught, legal loopholes and judicial leniency, as seen in the Sahiwal tragedy, often shield them from consequences. The anti-terrorism narrative conveniently allows LEAs to sweep these incidents under the rug, with no real accountability within the civilian, security and judicial systems. An audit of recent ‘police encounters’ would likely expose a staggering number of injustices, a fact the system is unwilling to confront.

If the state institutions had been vigilant enough, they would have recognised the advantage of engaging with the families of missing persons from Balochistan who are protesting in Islamabad. A dialogue with them would have been more effective, but the institutions fear that the issue of the missing persons is complicated and could damage their reputation. Apparently, not only the state institutions but also political parties are convinced that publicly sympathising with these families will come at a cost, and they are deliberately trying to distance themselves from the protesters. The mainstream parties, betting on the establishment’s support in the upcoming election, and even Baloch nationalist parties, are reluctant to extend their full support to the victims’ families.

State institutions’ reluctance to engage with Baloch families and their counterproductive tactic of establishing ‘victims of terrorism’ camps nearby are backfiring. Though the Baloch missing persons’ movement initially focused solely on the rule of law, state institutions, political parties, and their media allies have framed it as a potential PTM-like threat in Balochistan. This narrative threatens not only the status quo, but also Baloch nationalist parties who have not adapted to the changing aspirations of Baloch society.

The Haq Do Tehreek’s political foothold in Gwadar demonstrates that rights movements can evolve into political forces when justice is denied or delayed. This transformation is not a choice but a necessity; they recognise that power responds to power, and political participation becomes the path to achieving their goals.

The rights movements challenging the status quo and demanding transparency in actions of state institutions have often faced a harsh response. Instead of engaging in dialogue and addressing concerns, state institutions have opted for coercive measures, pushing the movements towards more confrontational tactics. A charged protest atmosphere can create the perfect environment for law enforcement to abuse their power. The judiciary alone can prevent LEAs from exploiting the ambiguity inherent in such confrontational situations.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2024

Beyond headlines

Muna Khan 

DAWN

Published January 21, 2024 





YOU can’t get all your news from headlines. I was reminded of this last month in the US, when reading stories about Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation following allegations of plagiarism. In reality, her resignation was the result of a well-coordinated campaign which had to do more with race and misogyny than upholding academic principles. But you wouldn’t think so reading the headlines.

This campaign to oust the first Black president at Harvard was led by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who is against DEI (diversity equity inclusion initiatives) and Bill Ackman, Harvard alum and hedge fund billionaire. They were then joined by donors and Republican Elise Stefanik, who headed a Congressional committee looking into accusations of antisemitism on elite campuses. Essentially, they were enraged by Gay’s “failure” to condemn antisemitism; ie, pro-Palestinian student demonstrations on Harvard.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” asked Stefanik, who herself is a Harvard alum and was removed from an advisory board after she said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

“The rules around bullying and harassment are quite specific,” replied Gay, “and if the context in which that language is used amounts to bullying and harassment, then we take — we take action against it.”


Innocuous thinking can be framed as antisemitic in the US.

The backlash to Gay’s response was swift and calls for her to be removed were amplified. (Incidentally all three universities called to the hearing were headed by women, and only the MIT president still has her job.)

However, there was little mention of how, in those hearings, Stefanik was framing protest to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land as genocide. At one point, Stefanik described the “call for intifada as a call to commit genocide against the Jewish people”. Even a basic internet search will show that intifadas have not called for eliminating Jewish people. But it was clear no one in the press wanted to make this distinction, perhaps fearing it would be seen as antisemitic. Unfortunately, the most innocuous or seemingly obvious thinking can be framed as antisemitic in the US.

Gay didn’t stand a chance.

When the hearings weren’t able to produce the desired results, her detractors amplified the accusations of plagiarism. An investigation by Harvard into those claims found “few incidents of inadequate citations” but no wrongdoing. In reality, the right-wing (read rich men) cannot tolerate a Black woman in charge of an institute whose history is rooted in protecting white interests.

Gay resigned on Jan 2, but the trifecta of Ackman, Rufo and Stefanik — as MSNBC’s Ali Velshi called them — has vowed to pursue probes into “deep institutional rot” at Harvard. I read this as protecting elite interests, one of which they say is freedom of speech on campuses. But whose speech do they want to protect?

US colleges have never been bastions of free speech because Palestinians, and other marginalised voices, have struggled to tell their stories. However, this is changing as DEI initiatives have allowed new perspectives, and younger generations no longer accept mainstream media narratives, especially about genocide. The establishment continues to bully them into silence, but I don’t know how much longer for.

Advocates of free speech are often the ones who suppress the most marginalised voices. These are usually the same people against DEI initiatives which, they claim, is the only reason Gay got the job. Men like Ackman, with access to formidable resources, are now trying to equate DEI initiatives as racist and/ or antisemitic. On the other side are Palestinians and their supporters with far fewer resources but with truth on their side.

The media’s focus on Gay’s ‘plagiarism’ should remind us how easy it is to distract from coverage on Palestine. I’m not here to say that Gay’s story isn’t important, but surely there’s space in newspapers about Israel’s war that is now starving Palestinians. It is also a reminder of how elitist the media is — more keen to talk about palace intrigues at Harvard than starvation in Gaza because that’s what its audience wants. This serves politicians like Stefanik well because they don’t have to answer questions about their Israel policies. The media aids them in this.

The interest in Gay’s future or Harvard’s policies will wane when journalists, editors and media owners realise they can’t just serve elite interests. The tide is turning, albeit slowly, and the resistance to this change is immense. The Israel lobby has upped the ante on keeping its narrative alive, but a new audience is emerging that isn’t buying their Kool Aid anymore. This number will grow and won’t rely on the media for information. They’re already on TikTok; how long before everyone else is too?

The writer is an instructor in journalism.
X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2024