Terataii newsletter, July-September 2009

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Guest Column: Hong Kong Vigil for Tiananmen Anniversary

By N. Jayaram

Hong Kong-based journalist and human rights reporter N. Jayaram wrote this on June 4, which marked the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown against protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Hong Kong, June 4.

I got back a while ago from Victoria Park, the sprawling open air space in the midst of one of the prime shopping areas of Hong Kong, where more than 150,000 people gathered for a candlelight vigil to commemorate those killed on the night of June 3-4, 1989 in Beijing in the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

The turnout was amazing. This was the second time that the Hong Kong people have made me sit up and take notice of their political attitude and their firm support for democratisation and for basic freedoms. The first occasion was on July 1, 2003, when more than half a million people, perhaps more than 600,000, marched to oppose the government's attempt to adopte an anti-sedition bill that would have choked off dissent.

It is said that the numbers were boosted this time, not only because it was to mark 20 years after Tianananmen but also because Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, Donald Tsang, recently angered the city's residents by saying critics have to take into account the progress China has made and that his views represented those of the general public.

Whatever the reasons behind the huge numbers who attended today's vigil in none too salubrious conditions following a blisteringly hot and muggy day, the commemoration represents Hong Kong people's aspirations for a greater level of freedom for their 1.4 billion compatriots on the mainland and a profound regret that a great opportunity was missed because of the 1989 massacre.

In many parts of the world, blood has been shed on perhaps more massive scales than on June 4, 1989. But few have been the occasions when the full force of an army that labels itself "The People's" mowed down so many of the people from among whom its ranks were recruited, in order to preserve in power a small elite fattening on capitalist policies while invoking dead communist icons.

Quotable Thursday No 7 at Terataii

Quotable Thursday again over at Terataii Reiki and Counselling

Please do join in with your favourite quotation - anything, from anyone/anywhere, that inspires or amuses you. Come share it will us.
Go over to Terataii to see how it works.


Meanwhile, here's my choice for this week:

All that glisters is not gold.
-- Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice)


This line is often misquoted as:
All that glitters is not gold.
Oh well, it remains as meaningful either way.

Art Exhibition - Vinita Karim

Vinita Karim's exhibition in Makati, May 29-31

Some wonderful oils on canvas. Exhibition May 29-31 in Makati. Reception May 28.

I love her work. You might love it too. If you live in Metro-Manila, come check it out.

Details on poster (click for larger image).

Indian voters reject divisive politics

The voters have spoken again - and "spoken with great clarity," to quote Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Congress party has won the greatest number of seats in the just-ended parliamentary elections, and the alliance it leads is only a few votes short of an absolute majority. This is good news for India, the South Asian region, and the world. We can expect a stable government in an increasingly unstable region - with Pakistan under threat from the Taliban, Sri Lanka's successful but controversial campain against the LTTE, and political crisis in Nepal.

Most importantly for India, we can hope for a strong and stable government that brings people together rather than dividing them on the basis of religious or other narrowly-focused group identities. With a respected economist in charge, we can also hope for a government that guides the country through the current global recession with minimum damage and - with any luck - one which even manages to promote continued economic reform and (some) development.

As important as the Congress victory is the defeat of the Hindu fundamentalist BJP and its allies, some of them even more extreme than the BJP. Parties that divide Indians along caste lines have not done well either.

In a surprise outcome, the Communists - who were leading a challenge to the Congress-led alliance - fared badly as well, even in their traditional strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala.

Despite the many ills that have crept into the Congress culture over the decades since it led India to independence in 1947, the party ideology has remained one that celebrates the diversity of India and supports the idea of common development. It has remained a "centrist" party without the idealogical rigidity of the left or the much more dangerous rigidity-cum-divisiveness of the BJP and its allies in the "Sangh parivar" on the right.

(The Wall Street Journal, 18 May 2009 - shows Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Youth Congress leader Rahul Gandhi)

Most analysts agree that the people of India have voted for common economic development, and against cultural, ethnic, religious or caste divisiveness. India is nothing without its long history - and present mix - of diverse influences, ideas, ethnicities and cultures. Most Indians, it would seem, are very comfortable with this sense of shared history in a richly diverse land. This election is a celebration of this shared Indian identity as well as an expression of aspirations on the economic front.

Join Quotable Thursday at Terataii

Share an inspiring quotation or one that's just fun... Be inspired, amused or motivated by what other bloggers share...

Please join Quotable Thursday over at Terataii with a favourite quotation of your own - either by posting on your own blog and linking to Terataii or by leaving a comment there. Click here to get the details. (You can also link on the heading to this post.)

And now, here's my quote for this week:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pakistan: Will the military stand up to the Taliban?

It is good to read -- on the Net adn in teh international papers -- that the Pakistani government is finally taking on the Taliban inside Pakistan. Not only because of what that means for the rest of the world -- as the US administration has asserted -- but also because of what it might mean for Pakistan itself.

It has been sad to see that country slowly – and then quite quickly – succumb to the Taliban in certain areas. It has been sad also to talk to Pakistani friends who feel angry but helpless to stop the Talibs or to shake their own government into action.

In the past few days, we have seen the government finally make the decision to stand and fight the Taliban in Swat and perhaps in its neighbouring districts as well. However, one central question remains: how sincere is the Pakistani military in taking on the Taliban?

It dithered for 2 years while the Taliban consolidated gains inside Pakistan. It practically handed over Swat to the Taliban in February. It failed to fight for Buner in April. When the government finally decided to confront the Taliban, first reports said it had sent in paramilitary troops rather than the regular army, which remained massed along the frontier with India – even though there is no war or threat of war there.

In some recent statements, US President Barack Obama has appeared to show more respect for Pakistan’s military than its government. True, the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has shown itself to be a thoroughly ineffectual government. Perhaps worse – Zardari himself was known as Mr. Ten Percent when his late wife, Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minsiter of Pakistan.

However, I hope Mr. Obama has not forgotten recent history:

(i) The Taliban are very largely the creation of the Pakistani military, in particular of its intelligency agency, the ISI. The Taliban were created with US and Saudi money, but with Pakistani training and day-to-day guidance, to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Many of them were indoctrinated in madrassas and refugee camps inside Pakistan under the military rule of Pakistani President General Zia ul-Haq.

(ii) It is true that Zardari’s government more or less handed over Swat to the Taliban on a platter in February, allowing them to take control of the district and impose Sharia (Islamic law). But let us not forget that it was under General Musharraf that the Pakistani government did its first deal in which it ceded government control (though not, ostensibly at least, to the Taliban).

Inside Pakistan, the military is still viewed with suspiscion. In a front page story on Pakistan this morning, the International Herald Tribune (Asia edition) includes this revealing passage:

Still, some of the refugees milling about the tuberculosis hospital [serving as a refugee camp in the city of Mardan] raised doubts about the agenda of the Pakistani Army. Some even echoed the widespread view, commonplace in Washington, that the Pakistani Army, or at least elements of it, had not merely failed to combat the militants but had also colluded to make them stronger.

“In some places the Taliban and the army are a stone’s throw away,” said Mohammed Javed, who fled his job as an armed guard for the aid organization Médecins sans Frontière [Doctors without Borders] in Mingora [town]. “They are just looking at each other, not doing anything. We are ordinary people, and we do not understand.”

“It’s a game,” a man shouted over Mr. Javed. “The Taliban are never killed. Only civilians are.”
Elsewhere in the camp, 50-year-old Mughdi Khan told the IHT correspondent: “We are Muslims; we don’t have much problem with people trying to enforce the religion – it’s when they cut the throats of the policement that people become angry. Yes, they are doing that.”

The police enjoy a better reputation than the army and are seen to be closer to the people. Until recently, it was the police and paramilitary forces that attempted to protect the local people from the atrocities of the Taliban in Swat and the neighbouring district of Buner. The citizens of Buner, with support from the police, themselves fought off the Taliban last year (without any support from the military).

In February this year, the government handed over Swat to the Taliban in a deal that allowed the Taliban to close girls’ schools, impose Sharia (Islamic) law, and publicly flog a 17-year-old woman for going out of her house without a male escort. In April, the Taliban once again attacked the neighbouring district of Buner. This time the people felt unable to resist. The military did not help. And Buner, 110 km from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, fell to the Taliban on April 5.

The Taliban appear to be deeply unpopular with the citizens of Pakistan. Last year’s citizen’s resistance to the Taliban was a stark demonstration of this opposition. In April, literally between terrorist attacks, about 1,000 people took to the streets in Lahore to protests against terrorism, the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalist rule (which they called “Mullah rule”), and the oppression of women. They shouted slogans calling the Taliban “killers of mothers, sisters, and daughters.”

Pakistan is a of course a Muslim-majority nation and in fact a Muslim nation (not always the same thing) – Islam is the state religion and the reason for the creation of Pakistan. But Pakistan is not the Middle East. It is a country located physically in South Asia, with its own history and culture. Pakistani Islam is not the Wahhabi Islam of Saudi Arabia.

In recent weeks, some Pakistani journalists and bloggers have also spoken out against the Taliban and their fundamentalist understanding of Islamic society. (See links to some of these stories in the right column of this blog.)

However. I come back to the central question: what of the Pakistani military, which has been probably the most potent force in Pakistan since its earliest years as a nation? Where does the miliatry stand on the question of the Talibanization – or not – of Pakistan?