VK Shashikumar

Counting Muslim votes in Modi’s Gujarat

2007-12-29T11:34:00.000+05:30

HIMAL/JANUARY 2008

ANALYSIS

Counting Muslim votes in Modi’s Gujarat

Gujarat’s Muslim communities tried to send a strong message to the incumbent administration by organising against Narendra Modi. He swept the state, but will he temper his style? Unlikely.

By V K Shashikumar

Narendra Modi’s triumphant return to power in Gujarat, by a huge margin, is as much a victory of Moditva – the brand of rightwing exclusionary politics espoused by Modi over and above Hindutva – as it is an endorsement of the chief minister himself. With the Bharatiya Janata Party’s tally, at 117 out of 182 seats, being just short of the 127 it won in 2002, the Modi phenomenon surpassed even the upper ceiling of exit polls. This win was partly the result of a well-orchestrated media campaign, funded in large part by Gujaratis abroad, through well-timed newspaper advertisements bearing reminders of the Godhra train-burning. There was also a widespread distribution of masks bearing smiling Modi faces.
Yet Modi masks do not the complete picture make. For those who care to notice, Modi lost out in central Gujarat, one of the areas most severely affected by the 2002 anti-Muslim carnage. As results rolled in, it was clear that in central Gujarat alone, the BJP was down 19 seats from 2002, though he later made up for that deficit elsewhere. Here at least, the law of diminishing returns seemed to have worked, after the emotional appeal to communalism went beyond certain limits. These limits evidently included Modi’s last-minute implication that the Muslims of Gujarat could well meet the same fate as Sohrabuddin Sheikh, the small-time criminal killed in 2005 in a fake encounter. But part of the reason that the chief minister gave up his ‘development plank’ and swung back to his time-tested communal rhetoric was because, in the run-up to the elections, the satta, or illegal betting market, had showed an edge for the Congress party.
Despite the whipping up of communal colour in the last few days of campaigning, the state’s Muslim community, which had been backed into a corner in previous assembly polls, had presented a modicum of opposition to the saffron sweep. And yet, the Modi juggernaut was so overwhelming, Gujarat-wide, that Muslim and other activists who campaigned against Modi can for now do nothing more than recall how they tried to stem the Modi tide from tearing through the state for the third time.
In Godhra, the epicentre of the 2002 carnage, Mohammed Hussain Kalota’s family turned out in full strength to cast their votes on 16 December. For the Kalotas, the act of voting was an act of defiance against what they perceived as injustice perpetrated on them by the country’s law-enforcement agencies. Kalota, the former president of the Godhra Municipality, had been at home when the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express went up in flames on 28 February 2002. Although the truth of the train-burning has yet to be ascertained, the police foisted a case on Kalota, accusing him of being part of the conspiracy. Kalota, like many others accused in the case, is currently in jail, but the court case against him is at a standstill. Despite the fact that the chargesheets filed by the police do not have any conclusive evidence, bail has been denied to all.
Kalota’s family got up early to participate in the December elections. For them, the day held more significance than the mere assertion of their democratic right to vote. This was a day when they wanted their individual votes to count, a day when they wanted to ensure that their home state passed the litmus test of inclusiveness. For the Kalotas, this was a day that they hoped would prove that Gujarat does not stand only for Hindus and their development, but rather could be a state where Hindus could live with Muslims and other minorities without fear, a state where access to development and progress would be equitable across all communities. Modi’s victory does seem to have dashed that hope for now, given the fact that the chief minister has not shown remorse for the 2002 incidents, nor has he reconstructed himself.
deshgujarat.com
A plea for moderationA short distance away from the Kalota home, in another locality of Godhra, Ahmed Kalota was busy passing out instructions to groups of errand boys. At each of the seven booths that he was monitoring, there were 30 members of the local Muslim community, each carrying lists of the Muslim electorate eligible to vote. More than just monitoring, the idea behind the exercise was to ensure that the community leaders played an important role in convincing the voters to step out and cast their votes. “Fifteen days prior to the polling date, we visited each and every house in all the seven polling booth areas that have been allotted to me, to ensure everyone from the community votes,” says Kalota. “On the polling day, those who were reluctant to step out, we went to their house and convinced them to queue. And the result is showing, because the polling in all the seven booths that I managed was 73 percent.”
The areas in Gujarat with significant Muslim populations went to the polls on 16 December. Days before the polling date, local-level Muslim leaders, backed by the Congress party, met in each constituency and finalised a plan to ensure a healthy turnout during the polling day. “Generally, the very act of casting one’s vote is a celebratory exercise,” says Kalota. “But in these elections, we were voting to protect our freedom. It was as if we were preparing for a sombre ritual to assert our identity, to assure ourselves that we are equal citizens of a democratic and secular country.”
For the Muslim minority in Gujarat, this election was about attempting to protect a multitude of freedoms – from fear of discrimination, from rabid communal hatred and propaganda, from fear of riots and of denial of justice.
Local-level planning by Gujarat’s Muslim communities over the past year went almost completely unreported in the Indian media. Even the Gujarati press has not been able to capture the rigorous groundwork that was undertaken by local anti-BJP political activists and community leaders, with an eye to both the Muslim and Hindu communities. Even given the final results, as announced on 23 December, many say that this work has paid certain dividends. “By coming out in large numbers and ensuring that our vote counts, we have succeeded in sending out a message to Modi,” explains Kalota. “We want to tell Modi: Please become moderate.” Despite Modi’s win, many Muslim community leaders are convinced that the chief minister cannot continue to play the communal card. This was certainly true in Godhra, where Congress candidate C K Raulji was announced the winner.
Few are under any illusions as to what the election results mean, however. “This is not a defeat of the Congress party, but a victory for communalism,” says Saiyyed Ummarji, the son of a Godhra cleric who is currently a prime accused in the train-burning case. “Modi successfully polarised the electorate in Gujarat, even in areas where there was discontent against him. That is why discontent against Modi could not be crystalised into votes for Congress. Where Congress went wrong was that it went soft on Modi, and failed to take him on headlong.”
The outcome notwithstanding, Kalota emphasises that the Muslim community in Gujarat is for looking forward, not backward. “Like the Hindus, we also want peace,” he says. “Like the Hindus, we also want development. Like the Hindus, we also want to leave the traumatic events of the Godhra train fire and the communal riots that followed behind us. And Modi knows that whenever he talks of Godhra, others will talk about the riots, and there will be tension whenever that happens. So … we are certain we will see a new, moderate Modi as the chief minister.”
For the sake of Gujarat’s minorities, many are now certainly hoping that Kalota is right in his prognostication. On the other hand, Chief Minister Modi might well take his victory as a green light to a forward march to the Centre, and the elevation of Moditva to the national stage. In that case, Muslims not just in Gujarat, but throughout India, will need to beware.

Simulated Encounters, Real Murder

2007-07-04T12:36:00.000+05:30

HIMAL/July 2007

http://www.himalmag.com/2007/july/fake_encounter.htm

Simulated encounters, real murder

The recent spate of reports on fabricated ‘encounter killings’ by the paramilitary and police in India points to a systemic rot. Fortunately, a tenuous check on this impunity is coming from within the ranks themselves.

By : V K Shashikumar

Reports of the cold-blooded killing of civilians by security forces in Jammu & Kashmir, the Northeast and Chhattisgarh, in the name of combat operations against insurgents or Maoist guerrillas, grabbed headlines in India during the first half of this year. Despite the public hubbub, the top brass in the Indian Army, police and paramilitary forces have kept quiet about the allegations, and seem to be in favour of standing behind their men whatever their crimes may be.

In January this year, the infamous Ganderbal killings, in which the murder of three civilians was covered up and attributed to an ‘encounter’, came to light after a probe by a special investigations team (SIT) headed by the deputy inspector-general (DIG) of the J & K police. The victims were villagers ‘disappeared’ from south Kashmir: carpenter Abdul Rehman Padroo and street vendors Nazir Ahmad Deka and Ghulam Nabi Wani.

The investigations in Ganderbal uncovered yet another case of police complicity – in the killing of Maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Kataria of Banihal in Doda District, who ‘disappeared’ last October from the local mosque where he was the imam. A SIT found that the photograph of a “slain Pakistani militant’’ – identified by the Ganderbal police as Abu Hafiz, of Karachi – was actually a picture of the missing imam. In line with the prevalent police practice, weapons had been placed on the body to implicate the deceased. In this instance, the weapons were found to have come from a cache of arms seized from militants in genuine operations, which the police had kept out of the records with the intention of using them to provide clinching ‘evidence’ in simulated encounters.

Bringing the guilty to book in the Kashmir encounters case has been particularly difficult due to the conflicting interests of the security agencies involved. In early May, the army filed an application in a lower court in Srinagar, challenging the SIT’s chargesheet – which names, in addition to five policemen, five personnel of the paramilitary Rashtriya Rifles, including a colonel and a major, implicated in the killing of Maulvi Shaukat. The army claimed that the J & K police should have sought permission from the Home Ministry before filing the chargesheet, because security forces deployed in J & K were protected under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the AFSPA. The J & K police, however, maintained that the army personnel were not “acting in the line of duty”, and therefore should not enjoy impunity under the AFSPA.

In April, the public uproar regarding the Ganderbal killings led the J & K government to set up a commission of inquiry, which is expected to submit a report by the end of July. The attention being given to these fake encounters has also enabled whistleblowers from within the ranks of the security forces themselves to gather the courage to reopen older cases of disappeared persons. What is revealed is a sordid saga of murder and high-level cover-ups.

BSF cover-up
A case in point is linked to the incident that occurred on the night of 7 September 2003, in the J & K district of Pulwama. That evening, a Border Security Force (BSF) commander with the 42nd Battalion, Narender Singh Dangawas, claimed to have killed Ismail Bhai, supposedly a Jaish-e-Mohammad militant from Karachi, during a counter-insurgency operation. But Ghulam Nabi, the stationhouse officer at the Rajpura police station, where the body was brought for identification, told this writer that the body had never been positively identified. The implication was that the report was falsified.

Despite the dubious nature of the Pulwama operation, Dangawas was recommended for a President’s Police Medal. Before he could be awarded, though, an insider blew the whistle. Constable Subhash Rathod testified against his commanding officer, telling BSF authorities that an officer of the intelligence wing of the BSF had handed over an innocent Kashmiri to Dangawas, who later killed him and faked the encounter. Yet, Dangawas continues to be shielded by the BSF: all of the five inquiries that the BSF has conducted of the matter over the past four years have exonerated the commander.

The J & K police remain suspicious, and an investigation into Dangawas’s actions remains open. But investigations have stalled, supposedly because no one has come forward to identify the victim’s body. Evidence unearthed by this writer, however, suggests an elaborate cover-up. For instance, while Dangawas claimed that 66 of his soldiers had taken part in the encounter, 47 of them have subsequently testified for an internal, confidential BSF enquiry that they had not in fact been involved. Similarly, the situation report prepared by Dangawas claims that Constable Bashir Ahmed fired 68 rounds during the encounter, but Bashir himself says that he was nowhere near the scene.

A BSF informant who wishes to remain anonymous clandestinely recorded phone conversations with 16 BSF personnel supposedly associated with the fake encounter of December 2005. The recordings were made between December 2005 and February 2006, with the aim of bypassing the formal process by which internal reports continue to remain confidential. They were subsequently submitted to the Delhi High Court in 2006 as evidence that the BSF was indeed covering up a fake encounter. Below are some excerpts from the tapes.

Paresh Sahu, Constable, 42nd Battalion, BSF
Sahu: I have made it absolutely clear in all enquiries that I was not part of the operation.
Informant: When the encounter was on, what were you doing?
Sahu: I was on patrol duty.

Shashi Jogi, Constable, 42nd Battalion, BSF
Informant: That means Narender Singh Dangawas fraudulently included your name in the list of those who were part of the operation.

Jogi: Yes, that’s what he did. So when I was called in for the deposition, I told the senior BSF officers conducting the enquiry that I was just not part of the operation, and so I could not have been part of the team that carried out the fake encounter.

A BSF deputy inspector general, K C Padhi, conducted the first inquiry on the alleged encounter in 2004. In phone conversations recorded by the BSF informant, Padhi admitted that Dangawas played foul.

Informant: But sir, you are aware that many names have been fraudulently added to the roster of those who took part in the operation?
Padhi: I have mentioned it [in my report].

Yet Padhi later cleared Dangawas of all charges. This procedure was repeated with Deputy Inspector General V R Bahl, who sat on yet another inquiry commission. Bahl confirmed to the informant that the evidence against Dangawas was damning, but he nevertheless gave him a clean chit.

There is hardly any tangible evidence to back up Dangawas’s version of events. For instance, all Indian security units engaged in counter-insurgency operations make it a point to keep photographs of their operations, but in the case of the Pulwama encounter, Dangawas claimed that all photos had gone missing. His colleagues, however, are more forthcoming. “Commandant Dangawas deleted all the photos from the hard disk of the computers in our unit,” alleges Vinay Gehlote, an inspector with the 42nd Battalion, in a taped conversation with the BSF informant.

The process of cover-up, however, required extensive in-house collusion. In Dangawas’s first report to his superiors, he claimed to have killed a Bangladeshi Jaish-e-Mohammed militant. But in a subsequent FIR report, the man’s nationality had changed and he was said to be with the Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed. Then, in 2004, BSF chief J B Negi, replying to an internal enquiry letter, wrote an order giving permission for a Summary Court of Inquiry against Dangawas. In this order, Negi described the victim as a “Bangladeshi terrorist”.

Either way, according to official records, a Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed militant named Ismail Bhai is now buried adjacent to the Kellar police station in Pulwama District. But is he really a Pakistani, or even a militant? The Delhi High Court is now hearing Constable Subhash Rathod’s petition, but Dangawas remains a free man, shielded by the BSF on the basis of a diluted chargesheet. The General Security Force Court that dismissed the charges against Dangawas this past February had only heard evidence against the defendant for the following three charges: first, for an act prejudicial to good order and discipline, in which he was accused of confiscating a civilian’s car; second, for ill-treating a subordinate; and third, for committing a civil offence by wrongful confinement and harassment of civilians.

Triple murder in Gujarat
The situation surrounding Dangawas and the Pulwama encounter would have passed undetected if it had not been for the anguished conscience of a member of the BSF’s 42nd Battalion. Subhash Rathod’s courage in pursuing a court case against his superior seems nothing short of extraordinary, but the collapse of institutional mechanisms of accountability – whereby illegal acts are covered up with impunity – merits closer examination. With five internal BSF inquiries having exonerated Dangawas despite the fact that his superiors knew the encounter in question was dubious, it is clear that internal structures of accountability alone are not enough to ensure justice. This is a particularly crucial disconnect in situations in which human rights come a distant second to concerns of ‘national security’.

Even as the public was trying to come to terms with the unfolding situation in Kashmir this spring, events in Gujarat underlined the precarious position of whistleblowers in the system, further raising questions on their effectiveness in exposing internal rot – particularly when up against collusion at the highest levels. The case in question was the killing of a man named Sohrabuddin Sheikh.

Starting in late 2005, a man by the name of Rubabuddin Sheikh began appealing to the Gujarat authorities to initiate a CBI inquiry into the death of his brother, Sohrabuddin, and to produce his missing sister-in-law, Kauserbi. He finally approached the Supreme Court, which ordered that an investigation be conducted by the state’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The case was then handled by an agent named Geetha Johri. Her team’s first report, released in September 2006, presented evidence to attribute three separate murders to the Gujarat state police’s Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS). Johri had also stumbled upon an elaborate nexus of corruption that furthered a political-communal agenda. The investigation stunned India, particularly because it detailed how the police forces from three different states – Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh – had all colluded in the operation and cover-up. For her pains, however, Johri was removed from the investigation in early 2007. It was only after the Supreme Court intervened in March that the officer was reinstated and allowed to continue the investigation.

According to the ATS’s internal records, at about five in the morning of 26 November 2005, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, a team comprised of members of the squad and a few Rajasthani policemen saw the headlight of an approaching motorbike. As the bike came closer, the policemen claimed they recognised Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a gangster alleged to have links to Pakistani militant groups. They claim that they leapt to stop the bike, that the biker lost control and that he fired a gun as he fell. The policemen then returned fire, killing the suspect. The story as given was full of holes. To begin with, how could the policemen have recognised Sohrabuddin in the darkness of a November morning against the headlight of the oncoming motorcycle?

Geetha Johri’s investigation provides a picture of how the preparations for the ‘encounter’ had proceeded. The CID team traced Sohrabuddin, his wife and a third person to a bus traveling from Hyderabad to Sangli, in Maharashtra. At around one in the morning on 23 November, a team consisting of ATS personnel, assisted by the Andhra Pradesh police, halted the bus in Karnataka, and dragged the three people out of the vehicle.

It was more than a thousand kilometres away and three days later that Sohrabuddin was shot dead. But the police were not yet finished. On 27 November 2005, the day after Sohrabuddin was killed, his wife, Kauserbi, was brought to a bungalow in Koba, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. There, she is said to have become hysterical upon being told that her husband was dead. The ATS’s original plan had evidently not included Kauserbi’s murder, but when she vowed to expose her husband’s killing, she was poisoned by a police doctor. According to the CID report, her body was carried away in a police jeep and burned.

Even Kauserbi’s murder was not the end of the Sohrabuddin cover-up, however. Along with his team, then-ATS chief D G Vanzara (now a deputy inspector general) launched another operation, targeting Tulsiram Prajapati, an associate of Sohrabuddin. As one of the last people to see Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi alive on 24 November, Prajapati was a key witness in the fake-encounter case, and Vanzara did not want him spilling the beans. So, Prajapati was arrested in November 2005 for the 2004 murder of gangster Hamid Lala, a rival of Sohrabuddin’s. Fearing for his life, Prajapati wrote to the local court in Udaipur, warning that “the police say they will kill me and spread the story that I escaped from police custody.” A year later, in December 2006, his fears turned out to be well-founded. According to the FIR registered in Ahmedabad, Prajapati purportedly escaped from police custody on 27 December. A day later, Vanzara’s team was said to have located him at Ambaji, on the Rajasthan-Gujarat border, and shot him dead. Just 10 days earlier, the Gujarat CID had listed Prajapati as a witness in the Sohrabuddin case.

The marble dole
Why did this triple murder take place? Who was Sohrabuddin, and who wanted him dead? To uncover the story, this writer tracked the last decade of Sohrabuddin’s life from Rajasthan to Madhya Pradesh. Thirty-three years old when he was killed, Sohrabuddin began his working life as a truck driver. He gradually took to crime, and eventually became the main accused in a high-level arms-transport case in 1995. Sohrabuddin’s mentor at the time was Abid Khan, better known as Chhota Dawood, the local front man for Bombay’s notorious underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim, who is purported to have links to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence. It was this connection that, a decade later, allowed Indian police to label Sohrabuddin a ‘terrorist’.

Sohrabuddin rose quickly in the underworld, his criminal activities eventually spanning four states. According to the Rajasthan police, Sohrabuddin began extorting traders in Rajasthan’s lucrative marble industry, which had an annual turnover of INR 50 billion. The marble traders eventually approached M N Dinesh, the Udaipur police superintendent, who it is presumed contacted then-ATS chief Vanzara. The last straw came in 2005, when Sohrabuddin is said to have made an extortion demand to Rajasthan’s biggest marble trader (who, with the CID investigation ongoing, needs to remain anonymous). According to the Gujarat CID, Vanzara’s phone records showed that, immediately before and after Sohrabuddin’s death, he had been in regular contact with this trader’s family.

Questions regarding Sohrabuddin’s killing cropped up almost immediately after the alleged encounter. Although any incident including an encounter is supposed to be investigated by the local police station, in Sohrabuddin’s case Vanzara’s team acted as defendant, judge and jury by investigating its own encounter. Vanzara and two other officers of the Indian Police Service have since been suspended and arrested for murder, and several additional policemen face prosecution in the Sohrabuddin case, but the question of impunity remains.

Hit-men in khaki
The term encounter killing has now become synonymous with murder, often involving high-profile cops who are generally assured of future impunity. Veteran police officers blame the rise in encounter killings on a failing justice system. They suggest that policemen frustrated with the slow pace of adjudication and acquittals, evidently due to lack of sufficient evidence, take the law into their own hands. Yet despite the increase in simulated encounters, there are no organised, updated or accurate statistics on encounter or extrajudicial killings, and those involved are forced to rely on their own experience. “The criminal-justice system has to come back on the rails,” says Julio Ribeiro, a well-regarded former police commissioner of Bombay. “Twenty-five years ago, this number of encounters was not taking place. It is coming up now more and more. You must understand why the judicial system has become so weak: it is because of corruption. Corruption is the main cause of all this.”

In the case of Gujarat, at least, this corruption goes all the way to the pinnacles of the police and political establishments. Three years ago, the Gujarat police evolved a plan of action for a state that had, in their assessment, “become a haven for terrorists”. Top police sources who served in the state at the time of the Godhra incident and the riots that followed confirm that there was a clear political directive to eliminate some Muslim criminals, in order to send a message to any who may be planning attacks in retaliation for the 2002 communal riots.

The connection between organised crime and the hit-men in khaki has subsequently come to wield a vice-like grip over many police forces, particularly in Gujarat. “I was asked by high-level bureaucrats to plan the elimination of people,” recalled R B Sreekumar, former Additional Director General of Police in Gujarat. “I said it is illegal.” At the moment, the justice system of India is heavily dependent on the consciences of people such as Sreekumar, as well as those who led to the breakthroughs in the cases of the Kashmir and Gujarat fake encounters. The health of the system overall, however, is far too important to continue placing it in the hands of a few high-minded individuals.

The recent exposés of extrajudicial killings in India, coupled with the inability of the country’s criminal-justice system to address a spate of fake encounters, have brought the spotlight squarely onto India’s archaic Police Act of 1861. One solution could be found in a legislative proposal currently being vetted by the Ministry of Home Affairs for a Model Police Act (Himal December 2006, “Reforming Indian policing”). The Supreme Court in September 2006 directed the state and Centre to implement the Act, which aims to ensure transparency in police functioning – including through the creation of state security councils, which would take on the responsibility from the state governments for overseeing the police forces. Several states have refused to accept the new legislation, however. The Gujarat government, for one, has publicly stated that it does not want to let go of control over the state police.

The question therefore remains: Is there enough political will to put in place the reforms directed by the Supreme Court? Former police commissioner Ribeiro says that regardless of the current political climate, the necessary momentum will eventually build up. He notes, “It is not the job of the police to kill people. It is not the job of the police to be judge and executioner.”

Tsunami: After the Deluge

2007-03-07T00:16:00.000+05:30

AFTER THE DELUGE

Tehelka
January 22, 2005

Despite losing everything to the sea, fishermen in Tamil Nadu are once again ready to conquer the new fears of the sea

VK Shashikumar

The sea is safe. Whatever you are, whatever you have, the sea has given you. The sea is your saviour, chants Kavitha, a child counsellor from Siddha Samadhi Yoga.

This is how the day begins for some orphans of Nagapattinam. They sit cross-legged, eyes mockingly shut, pretending to meditate in an orphanage in Sikkal. A girl in faded yellow shorts and a bright top, anxious to know what’s happening around her, can’t stop playing hooky.

This is 10-year-old Jessinda. When the tsunami roared into Vedenayakkan Street she was playing hopscotch outside a neighbour’s house. She heard people screaming that everyone should move to the terrace. She did not have time to run to higher ground, so she latched onto a chair. She was buffeted around the room by the waves, but she did not let go of the chair. Her last memories are those of her mother’s panic-stricken wails. Jessinda lost her father, mother and two brothers.

Jessinda knows that her family has been washed away, but she still does not comprehend that her family will not come back. She consolidates and fuses familiar memories with new realities. Perhaps, it’s her way of dealing with her sense of loss.

It’s Not the End: for some orphans of Nagapattinam, life goes on PHOTO BY VK SHASHIKUMAR
“I am waiting for my school to reopen. Will the aunty (warden) allow me to go to school?” asks the fifth grader. We ask her why she is keen on school? “I want to be a collector,” Jessinda says.

But David has no such ambitions. He wants to go to school so that he can play cricket, something he was at when the tsunami disrupted the game. The Nambiar Nagar children had gathered on the beach for the final match of their local league — Centre Street vs North Street. David was striding down towards the wicket when he heard a loud sound.

Everyone turned towards the sea and in a split second began running. “I noticed a lamp post and I just climbed up,” says David, unaware of what happened to his team.

More than two weeks after the tragedy, no one is sure how many children are dead and how many are missing. “We will only know when schools reopen,” says Sushma Iyengar of the Kutch Mahila Vikas Mandal, who set up the NGO coordination centre at the Nagapattinam Collectorate.

Each child, who is either orphaned or has lost a parent in the disaster will be given Rs 5 lakh which will be put in a fixed deposit that can only be withdrawn when the child turns 18. “There is a danger of child trafficking. A disaster invites sharks of all kinds. Indonesia and Sri Lanka has banned adoption and the unicef has begun work to register orphans in these countries,” says Iyengar.

A day after Christmas,
coastal communities here faced new realities — an altered geography, a
hostile sea and total loss of their unique art of living built over centuries

“The focus should be on community-based adoption, where a close relative becomes the guardian of an orphan. But many NGOs and individuals have come forward to either adopt children or set up orphanages. Some of them might be eyeing the Rs 5 lakh fixed deposit in the name of a child,” says Mari Marcel Thekaekara of Accord.

As a result, the Central government has announced that special care will be taken to ensure that orphans are taken care of by state-run agencies. The government has also quietly put in place a policy that has ensured that there will be no emergency sidestepping of adoption laws.

But the government must also take responsibility of counselling traumatised children. Take for instance, 10-year-old Navabharat, preparing to attend school when we stopped by at his home in Pudupettai, a small fishing hamlet on the Nagapattinam coast.

“Schools are reopening today,” he said. It didn’t matter that schools across Tamil Nadu’s coast are yet to open. In his own self-assuring manner, he wanted to tell himself that things are as they were before. He had quietly begun marking an imaginary calendar a day after his family found themselves in a terrifying water world. The days he missed school, the moments away from friends “Water came up to my neck within seconds. Our house had become part of the sea,” he recalled.

He knows, of course, that his world has been ripped apart. His parents and grandparents still live in fear, reluctant to sleep at night. Everybody huddles up on the terrace at night, with their meagre blankets under the dew-laden sky.

A day after Christmas, coastal communities here were faced with staggering new realities — an altered geography, an unfriendly sea and the complete loss of their unique art of living built over centuries. The Army engineers say that the beach has moved in by 500 metres along the Nagapattinam coast.

But for Lokanathan, the village headman, the immediate goal is to regain his family’s way of life. He senses that his house is now closer to the waterline. “People are scared that it will happen again. But we have to carry on living,” Lokanathan said.

Pick and Move: armymen clear a boat that was blocking a road in Akkaraipettai PHOTO BY VK SHASHIKUMAR
Lokanathan was away on a pilgrimage to Sabarimala when the tsunami came in. When he reached Pudupettai the next day, he saw boats lying on the village road, in paddy fields, in the backyards of houses. He told us that of the 1,450 people in his village, 33 died.

Many survivors owe it to 42-year-old Selvam. But this veteran fisherman, who has been caught in cyclonic storms, was busy repairing his fishing net. He encourages others to join him. Soon it becomes a collective endeavour. “We must prepare ourselves to face the sea again,” he tells others.

Like others Selvam, too, was caught unaware. Struggling against the wave, he latched on to a vallam (catamaran). He first rescued Sasikala, 20, who was feeding her six-month-old child when the 33-foot wall of water slammed into her hut.

“The waves snatched my baby away from me. I was tossing around in the raging sea,” she said. Her husband, Mahesh, 24, who was cleaning his fishing net outside, did not have the time to warn her. “Who would have thought that the sea could kill us in our homes?” he asks.

But Selvam has no such qualms. “I am not afraid of the sea. We have to overcome the fear of the sea. If we don’t fish, how will we live? What will we do?”
Fishermen in Tharangambadi have announced that they will resume fishing on January 15, traditionally the beginning of the fishing season a day after the Pongal festival. The Tharangambadi boatyard was hit and the tsunami flung the boats a kilometre inland.

“It will take six months for fishing operations to become normal. First, we want temporary shelters where our families can stay till the government helps us rebuild our houses. Now we will build houses in safe locations at least a kilometre from the sea. We need gas and stoves so that our womenfolk can start cooking at home instead of eating in community kitchens. We want boats and nets and other fishing equipment to enable us to regain our livelihood,” says Selvam.

In Nagapattinam, Vivekanandan, president, South India Federation of Fishermen Societies, told Tehelka that a window of opportunity had opened up for the government to implement the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms. “The CRZ makes it mandatory for habitations to be 500 metres away from the shoreline. The fishermen were against CRZ, but now they are not keen to live close to the coastline,” he says.

The reason why fishermen want to relocate to safe habitats a kilometre away lies in the macabre remains of the sea’s fury in Keechankuppam village along the Nagapattinam harbour. Trawlers were piled up one against the other, their masts flying the Indian flag bunched in some sort of morbid solidarity.

The engineers and jawans of the Madras Sappers have been busy clearing debris, repairing outboard motors, building a causeway and constructing bridges. But more than anything else their presence in the worst disaster-hit areas is helping to restore confidence and settle frayed nerves.

‘I am not afraid of the sea. We have to overcome the fear of the sea. If we don’t fish, how will we live?’

At the last count, the Madras Sappers had repaired 10 small fishing boats with outboard motors and made them seaworthy. It is an insignificant number when compared to the thousands of boats awaiting repair or replacement. “It’s the message that is more important than the work we are doing. We told the fishermen community that they must go back to the sea and they have understood,” says Brigadier Jose Manavalan.

But it’s the fishermen from Akkaraipettai, the worst-hit village in Tamil Nadu, who are sending out a message to the rest of the country. The village was flattened by the tsunami and accounted for the largest number of casualties in Nagapattinam. Its name no longer carries a symbolic resonance for the fishermen — Akkarai refers to shore and pettai is a habitat — a habitat close to the shore.

The tsunami did make Akkaraipettai’s identity irrelevant, but it could not break the spirit of the people who lived here. Within eight days, this village put out three boats. Some fishermen went out for a joyride, braving the rough seas, their infectious self-belief conquering their new fears of the sea.

Beware of the Dragon

2007-03-07T00:06:00.000+05:30

Beware of the dragon

Tehelka
December 18, 2004

Are the Chinese spying on India’s Tri-Service Command that is coming up in the Andaman and Nicobar islands?
VK Shashikumar
New Delhi

The Indian intelligence agencies have woken up to the increasing threat of Chinese espionage in Andaman and Nicobar. For the first time in a decade, a “fishing vessel” registered in Taipei as Yu Man Shing 20 with a mixed crew of Taiwanese and Chinese citizens infiltrated into Indian waters near Andaman. It was detected by the Coast Guard on October 28. While the Chinese embassy officials in New Delhi have declined to comment, Taiwan’s representative office has denied their citizens were involved in a spying mission.

Police in Andamans say that “it is difficult to say whether these fishermen were on a spying mission”. The deputy superintendent of police, Daya Shankar, said, “We have been getting reports of increasing foreign fishing activities in our exclusive economic zone. Their intention is to plunder our valuable maritime wealth. We recently seized two foreign trawlers and we have completed our investigation and the matter is now in the court.”

According to intelligence reports, more than 40 Chinese fishermen with suspicious identification papers have been arrested in the last couple of months. These fishermen have claimed that they had unknowingly entered India’s territory. The Chinese embassy has refused to meet its citizens and arrange the needed legal help.

The increasing presence of Chinese fishermen in Indian waters is a worrying sign because it is quite easy to carry surveillance equipment on fishing trawlers. With India’s Far Eastern Naval Command coming up in one of the islands near Andaman it is likely that the Chinese naval intelligence would attempt to mount magnetic resonance survey of the seabed in the region. Such a survey would indicate how friendly the sea waters are to submarines, the chemical composition of the seabed and other such strategic data.

According to Shankar, there were navigation instruments on Yu Man Shing. “These boats are long distance fishing trawlers and it’s natural for them to have navigation equipment. We have seized whatever equipment was on board and the naval authorities have made an inventory and handed it over to the court,” he said.

The Taipei authorities in New Delhi deny their citizens’ involvement in spying. “Do you think Taiwanese fishermen will spy on fishing vessels,” asks Simon Hsieh, spokesperson of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). There is no official confirmation of how many days the fishing boat had stayed in Indian waters before being detected by the Coast Guard. The boat had 10 crew members — three Taiwanese and seven Chinese. Interestingly, though the boat was registered in Taiwan, it had more Chinese on board than Taiwanese.

In fact, the Taiwanese officials, who rushed to Port Blair on receiving information about the arrests, exposed the Chinese who were posing as Taiwanese. Given the hostile relations between Taipei and China, it is surprising how a Taiwanese boat had Chinese citizens on board. “The Chinese may have been smuggled out of mainland China,” Hsieh said. “The Chinese have a naval facility in Coco Islands and they may be more interested in spying than us. Our citizens were just ordinary fishermen,” he added.

WHY IS ANDAMAN KEY TO THE NAVY?
• China has claimed ownership of the whole of South China Sea. The western entry to South China Sea is from Nicobar
• It has increased naval presence in Myanmar’s waters
• India’s south-eastern trade routes border Myanmar’s territorial waters
• Andaman and Nicobar islands are closer to Myanmar shores than to mainland India
• A heightened naval presence will help India monitor shipping activity between the Far East and South Asia
• Pakistan has been smuggling guns to Bangladesh and Myanmar to arm Northeast militants through this route
The Taiwanese authorities have arranged lawyers to represent their citizens. “We respect the Indian judicial system and are awaiting the local court’s order. At the moment all the three Taiwanese citizens are out on bail and are staying in a hotel in Port Blair. Their families have also reached Port Blair and are with them. One of the officials from our office is also there to help them with legal formalities,” Hsieh said. The Taiwanese have paid Rs 50,000 bail surety for each of the three Taiwanese citizens. The chief representative of Taipei, Andrew Kao, has also intervened to secure his countrymen’s release.

However, the Chinese embassy has refused to claim their citizens. “There is nothing to be informed and nothing to be reported. This incident happened during the end of October and none of our citizens were involved. They are from Taiwan and not mainland China. The issue has been resolved,” Yang Shiying, first secretary (press), Chinese embassy, told Tehelka.

The Coco Islands of Myanmar that house a large Chinese naval facility is just 100 km from the northernmost point of the Land Fall Island, a part of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. In fact, the Myanmar mainland is barely 300 km from Andaman. The Coco Channel that separates the Land Fall Island from the Coco Islands has seen a rise in Chinese naval presence over the last few years.

China has claimed ownership of the whole of South China Sea. The eastern entry to South China Sea is from the Strait of Malacca and in the west, it is from Nicobar. The Chinese control the eastern islands along the Myanmar coast from Saint Mathew’s Island off Thailand, through Mergui, Coco Islands, Hyungi, Bassien right up to Ramree Islands. Clearly, the Chinese threat to Indian maritime interests is real and immediate.

The seizure of a Taiwanese vessel with Chinese crew on board from Indian waters has got the intelligence agencies worried
It was only after the discovery of Chinese naval facilities on the Myanmar coast in the 1990s that the Chinese threat was recognised. In fact, India is setting up the Tri-Service Command in Andaman. India already has some navy and air force facilities in the region.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands are strategic for India because these islands are closer to Myanmar than to mainland India. Moreover, India’s maritime south-eastern trade routes border Myanmar’s territorial waters, which have heavy Chinese naval presence. The linear geographical spread of these islands naturally creates a series of choke points. Therefore, a strong deployment of the navy would enable India to monitor shipping activity on the western entry to Singapore and track any activity between the Far East and Myanmar. The navy would also be able to track movement between Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The Chinese have been exploiting the maritime resources of this region by taking advantage of Indian Navy’s absence. In fact, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence has mastered the art of smuggling guns to Bangladesh and Myanmar to arm Northeast militant groups. Under these circumstances if Chinese “fishermen” transgress into Indian waters, 2,000 miles from the East China Sea and South China Sea, it cannot be merely seen as an act of “illegal fishing”.

The Sunderbans: KILLER ASSAULT

2007-03-07T00:01:00.000+05:30

The Sunderbans: KILLER ASSAULT

Tehelka
October 23, 2004

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main7.asp?filename=Ne102304KILLER_ASSAULT.asp&id=1

Over 10,000 Sunderbans fishermen were evicted from Jambudwip Island by the West Bengal government. Why is the CPM annoying its own people to accommodate Sahara India’s tourism project? A report by VK Shashikumar. Photographs by Rana Chakravarty

The fishermen of Jambudwip Island in the sylvan Sunderbans have braved nature’s fury for decades but now their traditional behundi jal nets are caught in an epic battle with the corporate world. The 10,000-strong transient fishing community, hailing from the Jalia Kaibartha community of Chittagong Hills, migrated to the Indian side of the Sunderbans after Partition. For the last 50 years, these fishermen bring their catch from the high seas between October and February to Jambudwip Island in mechanised boats. The 1,950-hectare island lies eight km south west of Fraserganj.

The fishermen travel 30-40 km from Jambudwip to their fishing ground and bring home the catch. The island has a creek, which in high tide, has 10 feet of water, enough for the boats to enter the island’s natural harbour twice a day.

Apart from providing easy access to the boats, the creek is a vital shelter for fishermen caught in cyclones. Along the creek, a non-forest area spread over 100 hectares serves as the fish drying beds. As soon as the tide starts ebbing within half-an-hour of filling the creek, the catch is quickly unloaded here to dry. Then a group of transient fish workers dry and process the fish in a unique manner. (See ‘Officials don’t see fishermen here’)

Along with the receding tide, around 4,000 fishermen return to sea. In the drying beds, the fish workers dry the fish and process it as fishmeal and poultry feed. They live in temporary bamboo and reed shelters on the island.

On the other hand is leading corporate group Sahara India Pariwar which has entered into a joint venture with the Government of West Bengal to develop the Sunderbans. It defines the project thus:

“Sahara India Pariwar in a joint venture with the government of West Bengal is firm on developing the Sunderbans region into an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable destination through implementation of the Sunderbans (tourism) project, which is part of the Integrated Sahara Tourism Circuit in India.”

At first sight, everything looks hunky-dory. Sahara officials say that all land-based and floating facilities will be built in thickly populated areas. These facilities will be outside the Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve (sbr) Zone. According to a Sahara document on the tourism project, “the visitation to the restricted zone of SBR will be limited to day-time only and will be on prior permission and guided by personnel of the forest department…Further all locations and facilities are being developed in strict adherence to forest/wildlife conservation norms, coastal regulation zone norms and environmental pollution control norms.”

HOME AGAIN: on their return to Jambudwip after two years, fishermen offer their prayers
But the two storylines converge at Haribhanga Dwip (island). Though Sahara wants to develop this island as a “beach festival” resort, its partner, the government of West Bengal, would like to relocate fishermen from Jambudwip to this sandy island. More than 10,000 fishermen were evicted in 2002. But Haribhanga could not have been an alternative site because it’s not suitable. Two years later, the government wants to restore the fishing rights of the transient fishermen of Jambudwip. But it can’t because the entire controversy has landed up in the Supreme Court and, therefore, is sub-judice.

The grand tourism plan aims to bring well-heeled tourists from Kolkata to the Sunderbans in catamarans. There are three packages on offer: Pilgrimage, beach tourism and wild life tours and treks. The idea is to “enable tourists to experience the ambience of Sunderbans,” says Romi Dutta, head of Sahara’s Sunderbans Project. Another part of the plan is to “buy a ship and park it in a sheltered area of a small channel,” he added.

According to Dutta, the Rs 900-crore Sunderbans Project will spend two percent of the total project cost on socio-economic development of the region. “We will teach the fishermen canal fishery and methods to make proper nets,” he said.

“We are dealing with people and nature and so it’s sensitive. We want to teach people how to protect the environment,” said Dutta.

But why would Sahara want to teach these traditional and transient fishermen the fine art of fishing? The transient fishermen have an innate sense of prey-predator relationship. They have an intricate understanding of the tides and know how to track a shoal of fish. They know how to make nets that are biodegradable. They fish in the most ecologically sustainable manner without damaging the seabed or the marine ecology. At their transient fishing camps, they build a seasonal praying area—a reed temple dedicated to Ganga Ma and a dargah for Pir Badar, their patron saint.

What else will Sahara teach them?

The transient fishermen of Jambudwip believe that their eviction is deeply linked to Sahara’s proposed project. Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda affirms that he has received many representations from various fishermen’s associations that make this allegation.
Like the tide, the two storylines—of Sahara and the fishermen—have ebbed and eddied.

May 3, 2002: The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) wrote to all states and union territories to evict all forest encroachments that have taken place after 1980. The evictions were to be completed by September 30, 2002. This directive was issued in pursuance of Supreme Court’s order in 1996 in TN Godavarman Thirumalpad Vs Union of India. This order read with its directive of November 23, 2001 essentially means that any diversion of forestland for non-forest use is strictly prohibited unless approved by the MoEF. The Court also constituted a Central Empowered Committee (cec) to hear the grievances of those affected.

July-August 2002: The West Bengal Forest Department orders that the transient fishermen can’t use Jambudwip. Police swoop down on the fishermen and burn their boats, fishing gear and temporary shelters. Concrete pillars are put up at the mouth of the creek. This was a severe violation of the traditional fishing rights because the creek is the lifeblood of the behundi jal fishermen.

October 30, 2002: A memorandum of understanding between Sahara India Pariwar and WB government signed for a tourism project in the Sunderbans.

November 12, 2002: Hundreds of transient fishermen caught in a cyclone are denied entry to Jambudwip by armed forest guards and police personnel. Twelve fishermen died as two boats sank.

November 2002: Fishermen, galvanised by the National Fish Worker’s Forum, launch a protest on the sea. Thousands of fishermen in their boats congregate at the mouth of the creek. The Fisheries Ministry concedes that these fishermen have been using Jambudwip for more than 50 years and the seasonal use to the island cannot be construed as encroachment after 1980. In effect, the Fisheries Ministry of the WB government itself signals that the eviction of the fishermen from Jambudwip is illegal. A clear and deep rift emerges within the Government of West Bengal. Chief Secretary Ashok Gupta writes to the cec with a plea that it accept the wb government’s proposal to allow the fishermen to resume fish drying activities as an interim measure.

The West Bengal Forest Department takes a diametrically opposite stance: “Jambudwip Island including waterways is a reserved forest notified on May 29, 1943. Since there were no inhabitants, there are no recorded rights.” The Forest Department’s claim is untrue because the officials in the department did not bother to crosscheck the fact that the department had issued seasonal fishing permits for the last three decades. Moreover, fish-drying activities are permitted under the 1991 Coastal Regulation Zone Notification issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. The environment laws, including the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, also permit them the right of passage and recognises customary rights of the fishermen.

December 3, 2002: A cec team headed by P.V. Jayakrishnan, Mahendra Vyas, Siddharth Chowdhury (the last mentioned is an advocate and represented Harish Salve who is the Supreme Court’s amicus curiae for all forest related cases) visits Jambudwip. It concludes that the fish-drying activities of the transient fishermen in Jambudwip is a seasonal “occupation” of the island. Therefore, these activities are prohibited under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. It directed the WB government to crack down on any “encroachment.”

The cec’s report was intriguing because it admits that the fishermen have been using Jambudwip since 1960s for fish drying activities. “The use of the island gradually increased from a small number of fishermen in the ’60s to presently about 4,000 as per some estimates and 10,000 according to the representatives of the fishermen,” the report states. Technically, therefore, this activity does not fall under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. According to the cec, satellite imagery of the island from 1981 to 1991 shows deforestation and destruction of mangroves. The Forest Department, whose primary responsibility is to protect the forest, claims that the island is remote and difficult to reach. Besides, of the sanctioned strength of 57 forest guards nearly 55 percent posts are vacant, which has hampered protection of the reserved forest from encroachment.

So the easy way out was to blame the depletion of forests on the fishermen, who in fact are its saviours.

Satellite images of Jambudwip from 1981 to 2001 from the National Remote Sensing Agency (nrsa) have been furnished by the Forest Department as irrefutable proof of mangrove destruction to the Central Empowered Committee (cec). It is said that these images show dense mangrove cover except in areas that were allegedly cleared by the fishermen.

But the National Fish Workers’ Forum (nff) wants these images “to be independently and scientifically verified to be accepted as irrefutable proof of encroachment and deforestation, given that satellite imageries capable of showing deforestation to the extent of 200 hectares are possible only with liss III maps, which the nrsa has been producing only from 1998”. It should be recalled here that the fish workers use about 100 hectares out of the total area of 1,950 hectares.

It is also important to note that the fishermen are aware of the symbiotic relationship between the mangroves and fish catch.

The cec also suggests the implementation of the Forest Department’s recommendation that “Haribhanga Dwip (Lower Long Sand), a 500 hectare sandy outcrop, and Amravati char near Bakkhali be used for fish drying”.

But Haribhanga falls within the Marine Estuary Zone of the Sagar Marine Park (See Map). The island is part of the Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve. Here is an extract from the WB government’s Coastal Zone Management Plan drafted in 1996:

“These rich mangrove gene pools and their exported nutrient based offshore portage are fragile but highly productive ecosystems. They should be protected as a global resource from adverse impact such as excessive exploitation or degradation of marine resources, and pollution caused by indiscriminate discharge of dangerous chemicals and other industrial waste. This can be achieved through setting up of Protected Areas (pa) as Marine National Parks or Sanctuaries under the legal strength of Wildlife Protection Acts where monitoring the habitat also forms a part of the programme.”

The plan also specifies the exact nature of tourism in the Sunderbans. “Tourism will be organised in the proposed PA with an underlying intention for interpretation of marine ecosystem in this non-coralline marine PA.” One of the important steps that the government intended to take way back in 1996 when this plan was drafted was to declare “Lower Long Sand Island as a sanctuary to protect marine fauna”. In fact, no tourism activities like “beach festivals” as proposed by Sahara were envisaged because that would destroy the marine fauna. What was visualised was: “Lower Long Sand, Upper Long Sand, Lothian Island and Bhagabatpur crocodile farm will form tourist attractions.”

The island that cec suggested for relocating the seasonal activities of the transient fishermen is actually a sanctuary where only a limited number of day tourists would be given permits to visit. What has added to the murkiness of the cec directive is that wb government has agreed to Sahara’s tourism plans visualising Haribhanga or Lower Long Sand as a “beach festival” zone for affluent tourists.

Strangely, ngo representatives from World Wildlife Fund (India), Nature Environment and Wildlife Society and Project Lifeline met the cec in Kolkata and endorsed the use of Haribhanga as an alternative site for fish-drying activities. They knew very well that it is a reserved marine estuary zone, according to the Coastal Zone Management Plan of the Environment Department, where river dolphins are frequently spotted.

But the dolphins don’t seem to matter. Atanu Kumar Raha, Chief Conservator of Forests and director of the Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve says: “In July 2002, we cleared all the encroachments and told them to go to Haribhanga. It is outside the reserve forest and has long sandy beaches. It also has sweet water. It has some creeks where they can keep their trawlers and boats.”

But the cec report counters Raha’s claim on “sweet water” and says: “The Government of West Bengal should develop infrastructure facility such as construction of jetties and fresh water supply to promote Haribhanga Island as an alternative site to Jambudwip.”

Raha’s glib talk should be of serious concern to wildlife enthusiasts: “Lower Long Sand (Haribhanga Island) does not come within the biosphere reserve. There may be Irrawady River Dolphins in the vicinity, but there is other wildlife in the sea as well which is out of the Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve’s purview.”
But what queered the pitch was the cec’s formulation that Jambudwip is “the unofficial gateway to India”. According to the cec, the fishermen must obtain permission from the Union Ministries of Home and External Affairs for their activities.

Here’s the cec’s formulation:

“Being remotely located and not far from the Bangladesh border, the area is prone to incursions by aliens, illegal migrants from Bangladesh, smuggling of drugs and arms and other contraband items, reports of illegal fishing by trawlers from countries such as Thailand and other countries through what is aptly described as “Unofficial Gateway to India”. The problem is compounded by remoteness of the island where District Administration and the Forest Department due to resource constraints and shortage of staff have not been able to check of people’s movement in this area.”

Look at the map of the Sunderbans Delta once again. The land border is more porous and Jambudwip is 96 km from Bangladesh. One wonders how the island suddenly gets to be the unofficial gateway to India?

Jambudwip, with its mangrove cover and creek, is well suited to the needs of fishermen.

The mangrove cover is essential for refuge against cyclones. It needs to be stressed that the fishing season, from October to February, coincides with the period of maximum cyclones. It needs to be stressed that Haribhanga has no mangrove cover or, for that matter, any tree cover. It is mainly sand as its name suggests. It is, for that reason, highly exposed and vulnerable to cyclonic activity— the cyclone that hit Haribhanga in November 1973 killed all the 500-odd people present. Equally, important, navigability around the island is poor. There is no creek that can be used to land the catch. It is evident that it is completely unsuitable as an alternative location for fishermen.

It takes two years for the state government to admit that “the main reason for not choosing Haribhanga or other islands for fishermen is the lack of navigability and shelter for fishermen in those islands. In cyclonic storms, fishermen have no natural shelter facility in islands other than Jambudwip”. This admission comes in the form of an affidavit submitted by the wb government in the Supreme Court on March 8, 2004.

April 2003: The nff filed an interlocutory application in the SC challenging the cec’s report. The Court asked the wb government and the Government of India to file their responses to the nff application. The wb government responded in the most interesting manner possible. The Forest Department and the Fisheries Ministry filed affidavits that in effect challenged each other’s position. The Forest Department supported the cec order to evict fishermen and the Fisheries Ministry stated “it is the constitutional obligation of the State to protect the traditional transient fish drying rights of these fishermen”. Later the wb government recalled both affidavits and filed a revised one in support of the nff application.

August 25, 2003: Meanwhile, the Court issued a directive that “no trawler or mechanised boat shall enter the water adjoining Jambudwip Island until further orders”.
At this point in time another player entered this drama—the Home Department of the wb government. It issued a note that “in view of the aforesaid order of the Supreme Court there is no scope for fishing at all in the Jambudwip area…no trawler or mechanised boat shall enter the waters adjoining Jambudwip Island”. This order enraged Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda. He wrote a stinging note to the CM that the Home Department is “defective”.

He said: “In fact, in the order of the Supreme Court, operation of mechanised boats/trawlers has been banned until further order, but there is no restriction for traditional fishing by country boat or fish drying. Therefore, there cannot be any ban on fishing.”

October 15, 2003: Finally, with the approval of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the government issued an order banning all fishing activities in the sea contiguous to Jambudwip. The next day, the police again cracked down on fishermen who had reached Jambudwip in their country boats to set up dry fish servicing operations. For the first time in more than five decades, the community of transient fishermen lost an entire season.

“There was an interim order of the Supreme Court that trawlers will not be allowed. But our fishermen went in country boats. Yet, the police destroyed everything. Even utensils were thrown into the sea. And temporary dwellings and boats were burnt. But the court had not banned fish drying activities,” said Nirmalendu Das, a veteran campaigner for fish workers’ rights in Kakdwip.

The fishermen claim that the Court’s order did not take into account the fact that mechanised boats are used only for transporting the catch to Jambudwip.

The behundi jal fishing is not trawling. Mechanised boats without winches and other fishing equipment are merely anchored in the high seas. Fish caught in the behundi jal is then hauled manually and then transported to Jambudwip Island. Coincidentally, Sahara’s tourism season overlaps the fishing season. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sahara officials like Rahul Verma, who are liaising with the government of West Bengal, claim that “at the moment we have no such plans (to enter the fishing sector), but it is a possibility at a later stage”. Is the government privatising traditional fishing in Sunderbans?

According to Romi Dutta, “the plan involves setting up a Marine Interpretation Centre and a Mangrove Interpretation Centre that will help fishermen with modern methods of fishing. It can also be a tourist attraction.” Dutta says that the project will also try to improve and modernise the Bhagabatpur crocodile centre and bring it to international standards.

November 28, 2003: Sahara India Tourism Development Corporation Limited (sitdcl) was formed through a memorandum of agreement. This is the joint venture of Sahara and wb government.

January 28, 2004: Sahara claims that a public hearing was held at Ramganga for getting ‘No Objection’ from locals.
March 2004: Sahara receives a ‘No Objection Certificate-Consent to Establish’ (noc-cte) received from West Bengal State Pollution Control Board.
July 30, 2004: According to an internal Sahara note, it received the environmental clearance from the Department of Environment, WB government. The company claims “this clearance came only after stringent evaluation of the Comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment by an eia (environment impact assessment) Appraisal Committee”.

September 14, 2004: In an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, the MoEF has demanded from the wb government “to clarify the point that what alternate sites were used and whether they are available for fish drying activities”.

For the last two years, the behundi jal fishermen have been unable to fish because of the ban. Therefore, even fish drying activities have come to a complete halt. The government has claimed these activities are going on in alternative sites. But where are these sites?

Fishermen’s eviction will finish Jambudwip forests’

The forests of Jambudwip remain intact despite illegal felling of trees because of the vigil mounted by the fishermen, says West Bengal Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda in an interview to VK Shashikumar.

West Bengal’s fishing community is one of the Left Front’s core support bases in the state and the community feels let down by your government…
In this state the entire inland water body has been entrusted to the fishermen community. While inland fishing is under our jurisdiction, marine fishing does not fall within the territory of the state. The control of any fishing activity beyond 12 nautical miles from the territory of the state is vested with the Government of India.

But there are specific issues with regard to the alienation of fishing rights from the fishermen’s community…
Our policy is that fishing rights should be vested with the fishermen. All the states’ rivers and water bodies have been entrusted with the fishing community. Even though the Centre handles marine fishing rights, the fact is that more than 2 lakh people in the state are working in the marine fishing sector.

If the rights of the fishermen are a top priority for the state government why were fishermen debarred from using Jambudwip for fish-drying?
I have been the fisheries minister since 1982 and I know for sure that the fishermen have traditional rights to use a part of the non-forest land in Jambudwip for a variety of activities related to fishing. They have been using this island seasonally for the last 51 years. All of a sudden this dispute arose. I don’t know the reason behind it.

There seems to be some discord within the state government because the chief conservator of forests, who is also director, Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve, claims that the fishermen have been cutting down trees in the island…
The fishermen operate in a well-defined area of 100 hectares because the area they have chosen is outside the reserve forest. Not a single tree has ever grown in this patch of land on Jambudwip. Let me be categorical in stating that the forests of Jambudwip remain protected despite illegal felling of trees because of the vigil mounted by the transient fishermen community. It is because of them that whatever forest remains on the island is intact. Let me also make it clear that no other forest in Sunderbans could be saved from the poachers who have been destroying the forests and, thereby, the ecology of this great biosphere reserve. But in Jambudwip, out of the 1,950 hectares, 1,800 hectares are still forests.

So the credit for saving the forest cover in Jambudwip goes to the transient fishermen community…
Certainly. No other forest in Sunderbans has been saved like that of Jambudwip and the credit goes to the fishermen community. They are the main protectors of Jambudwip and the reason is simple. This island plays the role of a lifesaver during depressions in the Bay of Bengal. The transient fishermen do not return to the mainland even once during the fishing season from October to February. They are out on the high seas during the entire season, catching fish and transporting it to Jambudwip for drying and processing. In the eventuality of a cyclone, they head straight for Jambudwip and the forest cover in the island protects them. Jambudwip is their lifesaver and how can anybody say that they are cutting down its forests? Anthropologists have documented their ways of life and one important ritual they follow is the worship of trees. They pray before setting out to fish. The fishermen worship the trees of Jambudwip like God.

And yet they are blamed for illegal felling of trees?
Sometimes bands of poachers illegally cut trees. There have been instances when the fishermen community caught and handed over poachers to forest guards. There are not enough personnel to monitor illegal felling of trees in Sunderbans, including the island of Jambudwip. As a result, the fishermen are blamed. We must not forget that they are the main protectors of the forests.

But the fishermen have been evicted from Jambudwip…
Their eviction means that the character of the island’s forests will be finished very soon like other islands. For this reason, the state government has decided to give 100 hectares of land to the fishermen and restore their fishing rights. The government has recommended it and the proposal has been sent to the forest department, which will in turn send a formal proposal to the Government of India. At the same time, the chief secretary has submitted an affidavit in favour of the fishermen to the Supreme Court. We are awaiting the court’s decision.

Meanwhile, 10,000 fishermen and their families are struggling to eke out a living…
Yes, Jambudwip’s seasonal use generated employment for more than 10,000 fishermen, which is their only livelihood. I think nowhere in India have poor people been evicted from one place in accordance with the directions of the Central Empowered Committee attached to the Union ministry of environment and forests.

Is the state government willing to relocate the fish-drying activities in Jambudwip to the inaccessible sandy island called Haribhanga?
We don’t want to shift the fishermen to Haribhanga. But their right to fish in the high seas and their traditional use of Jambudwip for fish processing activities depend on the final verdict of the Supreme Court.

Is the Sahara tourism project in any way connected with the troubles of the fishermen?
I can’t talk about the Sahara project. But according to media reports, it seems the project has been dropped. But what I can tell you clearly is that nobody consulted my department when the Sahara tourism project report was made.

So Sahara officials did not contact you despite the fact that fisheries constitute the primary livelihood of the people living in Sunderbans?
Nobody contacted or consulted my department or me. I would also like to tell you that I have been visited by delegations from many fishermen’s associations. They have all submitted memorandums against the Sahara project. But since I have not seen the detailed project report, I am not in a position to evaluate whether the Sahara tourism project will adversely affect the poor fishing community. So I shall refrain from making comments on the issue.

So what’s your final take on the Jambudwip controversy?
Fishing rights are the birthright of the fishermen community and one should not interfere with well-defined traditional fishing rights. For more than half a century, the transient fishermen of Jambudwip have fished in the high seas and dried the catch on the island. They have established their rights for livelihood by consistently engaging in a well-defined fishing activity. This activity has been studied and documented by the Anthropological Survey of India. Therefore, their rights should not be encroached. They should not be driven out. If that happens it will be an act of injustice. It will indeed be a gross violation of human rights.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
In the eye of a cyclone
VK Shashikumar

The flickering lantern lit up parts of Shishu Ranjan Das’s face. The faint flame spread to frame a group of fishermen, sitting around him. He sat cross-legged and remarkably still, occasionally taking a deep bidi puff, as he narrated a tragic story.

“It was a normal day right in the middle of the fishing season. November 12, 2002. There was no warning. air weather reports had predicted a clear day. Suddenly, the weather turned rough.

We knew that we had been caught unawares by a cyclone.”

“Some boats headed to Jambudwip to escape the cylcone. When we neared the creek, we were turned away by armed policemen and forest guards. They just pointed their guns at us. The government had erected pillars on the creek and iron chains were drawn from one pillar to another.”

Lakhikanta Das, ‘master’ of one of the boats that drowned, recounted his harrowing story. “The storm was raging and the sea was a monster. Two boats went down that day and twelve of our people died.”

I was baffled. Why weren’t the fishermen allowed to enter Jambudwip? Had the West Bengal government offered any explanations to the families? Why had Jambudwip become out of bounds? “Ask him,” Shishu Ranjan, who also heads the Jambudwip Dryfish Fishermen Association, said as he pointed at the man sitting next to him.
Sukh Lal, another veteran association member, took over the narration. “We have been traditionally using the Jambudwip Island for fish drying. In fact, we recall the elderly men in our community talking about Dr. Bikash Raychaudhuri (a well-known anthropologist) who stayed at Jambudwip during the 1967-68 fishing season and recorded their unique fishing and fish drying methods. There are two components of this transient fishing community—those who spend the entire six months on the high seas and others who stay here to dry fish.”

“But suddenly in 2002, government officials told us that we can no longer use the island. For two years, we have been suffering.” Those who used to eat twice a day now eat just once. Schoolchildren have dropped out and are now working. Even girls in the community have found their marriage prospects diminishing.

At the sub-divisional magistrate’s office in Kakdwip I witnessed an angry demonstration led by Sankari Mistry. “Fishermen are now working as head load workers, their wives as household help in the city. How will we live without Jambudwip?” asked Mistry.

I did not know what to tell her, so I headed to the SDM’s office. There I met Nirmalendu Das, a retired schoolteacher and a veteran activist. He was submitting a memorandum to sdm Santanu Saha: “We are here as representatives of Jambudwip’s transient fishermen and our representation to you is ‘please allow us dry fish at Jambudwip’. We want the Chief Minister to hear our voice through you.” Saha said that he was bound by the government’s orders and he would try his best.

“We are fighting a losing battle,” Sukh Lal said angrily. “The cpi (m) cadre and local leaders told us so,” added Shishu Ranjan Das. “They cpi (m)…the party men told us that Sahara is coming to Sunderbans with a big tourism project and that’s why Jambudwip has been closed for dry fish activities,” Das continued. Suddenly the eviction, protests, uncaring bureaucracy, everything took a different perspective. I rushed back to Saha and asked him, “What is the Sahara tourism project all about?”

“Sunderbans has a rich tourism potential. The sky is the limit. But the economy will get a boost and in the long term it will be for the betterment of the people living in this region,” he said, adding, “They (Sahara) have acquired around 800 acres over three regions of Sunderbans.” Later I crosschecked this information with the land acquisition department. I met Baidyanath Mandal, additional district magistrate, South 24 Parganas. “No, the land acquisition process is not complete. The notification has not yet been issued and in any case land acquisition takes one year.” But other sources said Sahara has been granted environmental clearance and permissions for land acquisition.

I was told that Sahara plans to organise a boat cruise for high-spending tourists from Kolkata to the Sunderbans through the Ganga river channel. “The cruise would go past dense reserve forest like the Lothian Island,” said Saha. This 38 sq km-island is covered by thick mangroves and is home to estuarine crocodiles. Olive Ridley turtles, spotted deer, wild boar and rhesus macaque are some of the other species here.

Strangely, there is consternation in the wb government’s Fisheries Department. A representative of the National Fish Workers Forum assures me that the “the anxiety is not driven by the proposed Sahara golf course in Lothian island, but the timing of the tourist season”. The best time to visit the Sunderbans reserve is September to March, which overlaps with the fishing season. But there are other coincidences as well. Sahara’s boats cruises are close to Jambudwip. “It only takes 35 minutes on modern boats to reach Jambudwip from Frasergunj (see map). The island is close to the Sahara project and the navigation route that will connect the various islands,” revealed sources in the Forest Department. In fact, someone pulled out a diagrammatic representation of the Sahara Project from the detailed project report (dpr) and gave it to me for substantiation (see diagram).

But there is another direct connection of the eviction of 10,000 fishermen from Jambudwip to the Sahara tourism project—Lower Long Sand or Haribhanga. This sand flat invariably finds itself in the eye of cyclonic storms.

Lakhikanta Das, who lost two of his crew, is upset. He says: “We want the government to line us up and order a firing squad to execute us. But please don’t ask us to give up our lives to cyclones. We can’t risk taking it to Haribhanga to dry it. We will all die.” On November 10, 1973 a cyclonic storm had washed away an entire community of fisherfolk; 500 perished that day.

I decided that I had to visit Jambudwip and Haribhanga to complete the loop in this tale of misery and violation of human rights.

But this was easier said than done. As no fishermen had been to Jambudwip for over two years, the navigators had no clue whether the navigation channels were the same as they were earlier. Unless one is sure of the channel, a boat could be run aground by the heavy currents in the bay.

After a lot of coaxing, I hired a boat and we set off to Jambudwip at a steady 10 km per hour. On board were Shishu Ranjan Das, Sukh Lal and many other fishermen. Suddenly, there were shouts as Jambudwip came into view.

A small speck of green loomed in the distance. The excitement faded as they saw the bald patches. “The government told us that one of the reasons for our eviction is that we have indulged in illegal felling. We told them that their allegation is untrue. We actually protect the forest. We haven’t been to this island for two years and look how it has been stripped of trees,” says Shishu Ranjan.

We clamber into a smaller boat with an outboard motor. As the “phut phutti” beaches on the clayey soil of the island, the fishermen jump out and start praying. “Before the fishing season starts, we offer a puja at Jambudwip. Even that right has been snatched from us. This is the first time we have dared to come here. If we are caught, we will all be jailed,” explained Babul Das, a fisherman.

I saw the creek barred with concrete pillars. There was just one family, which had been there for the last 70 days. It was the temple pujari who had sneaked in to offer prayers on behalf of the fishermen.

It was time to move on to Haribhanga. The lovely sandy island is the perfect getaway for those who can afford it. I could see why Sahara wanted to stage beach festivals here. “We will create a festive atmosphere here,” confirmed Rahul Verma, senior project manager, Sahara India Tourism Development Corporation Limited.

Youth from the fishing community come to this island to make the transition from boys to men. As I walked around the tiny island, I came across Tapas Sinha from Midnapore district. “I have come here to become a man because staying in this island means that one must be ready to face death at all times,” he said. He had come with two months’ stock of water and provisions.

As we headed back, the enormity of the subterfuge came crashing down on me. For years, the fishermen brought their catch for processing. Suddenly, the government barred access to the island and relocated them to Haribhanga—an island completely unsuitable.

But the government gave Sahara the green signal to use the island as a day tourism beach resort. This made the relocation plan redundant in the long run. So why did the government relocate them to Haribhanga?

The net result: 10,000 fishermen out of work, their families hungry and poor.

India: West’s Dustbin

2007-03-06T23:37:00.000+05:30

India: West’s Dustbin

Tehelka/September 18, 2004

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main6.asp?filename=ts091804india_west.asp

European countries are shipping tonnes of hazardous garbage to India in the guise of paper waste. VK Shashikumar reports

European countries are exporting ‘garbage’ to India in the guise of paper waste. This was discovered in December 2003 when an official of the Netherlands Inspectorate for the Environment based in Rotterdam, Louis van der Ploeg, contacted the Ministry of Environment and Forests (moef) and filed a sensitive piece of information. He informed the moef that he had intercepted approximately 40 containers of what appeared to be garbage en route to India from Ireland.
The dumping ground: household waste from Ireland found in a container at a Mumbai port Tehelka possesses documents revealing that the invoices with the containers indicated the materials were “paper waste” but the Dutch Inspectorate discovered that the commodity was not paper waste but smelly garbage: paper/cardboard, pet bottles, plastics, beer cans, food cans, milk cartons (tetrapack), textile and food rests. It smelt like household waste and also had black flies.
The garbage packed in 40 containers was destined for the Nhava Sheva Port, Mumbai. It was exported by Barna Waste Recycling, a waste disposal firm in Ireland. The final destination in the consignments is Well Pack Papers & Containers Limited, Block Number 2023, Kalol-Vamaj Road, Gandhi- nagar, Gujarat.
Paper waste is imported into India on a fairly large scale. In Gujarat, there are at least 40 units in the Vapi industrial estate alone processing waste paper for manufacture into cartons and corrugated sheets, 95 percent of these units imported their raw material (waste paper) from the developed countries. The import of paper waste into India is not banned under any law as yet.
However, the Basel Convention covers such wastes under the category ‘household wastes and other wastes’. In the late 1980s, a tightening of environmental regulations in industrialised countries led to a rise in the cost of hazardous waste disposal. Searching for cheaper ways to get rid of the wastes, ‘toxic traders’ began shipping hazardous waste to developing countries and to Eastern Europe. When this activity was revealed, international outrage led to the drafting and adoption of the Basel Convention.
Six countries of the European Union (eu) have set up a project called the Seaport Project for the express purpose of implementing the provisions of the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous and Other Wastes and parallel eu legislation. One outpost of this project is the Netherlands Inspectorate for the Environment, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
The moef, promptly responded to the Dutch communication and informed the Inspectorate that it had not approved the import of garbage from any country. It indicated the containers should be sent back to the country of origin.
The Inspectorate acted on these instructions and the 40 containers were sent back to Ireland. On their return, Barna Waste filed an application with moef, seeking approval for exporting the same waste to India. In the application, the Irish company enclosed a copy of a certificate of approval issued by the Kalol Municipality in Gujarat stating they had no objection to the import and that the importer had a facility to recycle the wastes.
According to the Dutch official, Ploeg, who tipped off the moef about the garbage export to India, the Netherlands Inspectorate had received from Barna Waste Recycling a notification in March 2004 with a letter of the Galway County Council Ireland that they have “no objection to the transport of household waste from Ireland to India.” Attached was a signed declaration with permission of Kalol Municipality’s Solid Waste Management Authority, Gujarat.
“The Dutch environmental authority forbid this transit shipment but this will not solve anything as the shipments may continue via other ports into Europe. We are very concerned about the fact that the household waste will be dumped in India,” wrote Ploeg to the moef.

THE TOXIC TRADERS List of importers involved in the import of garbage from European countries: Haria Exports Pvt. Ltd., 42 Deliwala Building, 3rd floor, 51 Dariyasthan Street, Vadgai, Mumbai One-Up International, 3 Kapurwala Building, Ground Floor, 218/220, Samuel Street, Vadgadi, Mumbai Nathani Paper Mills Ltd., B-201, Angelina Apartments, Sarojini Road, Vile Parle (W), Mumbai-400056 Daman Ganga Papers Ltd., Survey 1525 GIDC Ambheti, via Vapi-Koparli road, Gujarat-396191 M/s Gautam Enterprises, C7/57-59, Mrigasir Complex, Opposite Advance Complex NH#8, GIDC, Vapi-396195 M/s Shah Pulp and Paper Mills Ltd., Plot No. 97 Silvassa Road, GIDC, Vapi- 396195 Gujarat Radhe Global Trade Associates, 1/B Motinagar Society, Kalol, 382721 Gujarat Murli Agro Products Ltd., Jai Bhawani Society CA, 101, Nagpur Source: Report of Supreme Court Hazardous Wastes Monitoring Committee, June 6, 2004

Over in Ireland, Barna Waste, the facility that made the formal application to the moef, has an agreement (disclosed on their website) with the local municipal body it was servicing that it will process/recycle all the wastes it collects from the municipal area and whatever minimal cannot be recycled, will be sent to a secured landfill. In actual fact, the facility was busy exporting wastes to countries like India.
On January 13 this year, another 11 containers of household waste materials were discovered by customs officers and employees of the Inspectorate for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in Rotterdam. The consignment consisted of domestic waste materials originating from Ireland.
The Inspectorate found that the company, cvb Ecologistics bv, Netherlands, had brought the waste materials with the intention of shipping them to India. This consignment of waste materials was transported in violation of ‘Regulation 259/93’ of the European Regulation on the supervision and control of shipments of waste within, into and out of the European Community.
Three days later the Dutch Inspectorate requested the company to return the waste materials to Ireland. The company complied and returned 10 containers to Ireland but one container, gatu-8112325, by error was loaded onto the MS Safmarine Hymalaya and arrived at Nhava Sheva Port, Mumbai. The shipping company, Maersk Sealand, promised to return this container to Rotterdam.

Informed by the Dutch again, the Nhava Sheva Customs blocked the container, sent the papers through the routine adjudication process and fined the company Rs 10,000 for bringing the container to India. On instructions from the Supreme Court’s Monitoring Committee (scmc) Hazardous Wastes, the container’s re-transport to Rotterdam was held over for a few days so that pictures could be taken of the consignment.
The scmc on Hazardous Wastes is examining the implementation of directions issued by the Indian Supreme Court in connection with indigenously generated hazardous wastes and wastes covered by the Basel Convention. On June 4, 2004 the container was sealed and early next day was loaded on a ship back to Rotterdam. Given the large scale import of garbage as ‘paper waste’ the scmc members have conveyed to the customs officials the need to ensure that “henceforth every container of ‘paper waste’ imported is physically opened and inspected to ensure that it contained only paper and no other material.”
The moef is still engaged in finding out the extent of garbage dumping in India. It is apparent that Nhava Sheva is an entry point of garbage exported from European countries. The moef has been receiving applications from European countries seeking permission to export waste, which contains 97 percent paper.
For instance, in January 2004, m&b Haulage and Waste Paper Co. Ltd, Low Mills, Ravensthrope Dewsbury wf 13, 3 lx, filed an application with the moef seeking permission to export waste to India. That application, however, did not mention which company in India was importing the waste. According to the ministry’s own assessment the company must be seeking its permission because the uk authorities after discovering these illegal practices of sending garbage to India are cracking down on the waste management companies.
In fact, on February 20, 2003 the moef received a notification from Matt Williamson, Notification officer, Essex, Environmental Agency, Suffolk. The letter says that the officials had intercepted 19 containers carrying mixed waste on November 21, 2002 on its way to Rama Newsprint, Surat. The waste originated in England/Wales. The company exporting the waste was not named but the containers were not allowed to be shipped to India.
The moef, after receiving the letter, asked Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) to take action against Rama Newsprint. The company was issued a notice by gpcb after discovery of imported waste, which must have come earlier. The company was closed, but neither moef nor gpcb know what happened to the waste after its closure.

Paedophilia: Crackdown Begins In Goa; Sin in Paradise--II

2007-03-06T20:55:00.000+05:30

ACTION AT LAST

Tehelka
August 21, 2004

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main5.asp?filename=Ne082104ACTION.asp

After the initial stonewalling, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has woken up and announced a slew of measures to check paedophilia in the state. The police have launched a crackdown on pederasts. Known child abusers have gone into hiding. Local bodies, including the Church and colleges, are launching awareness campaigns to educate the local population about child abuse by foreigners. VK Shashikumar and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar report

TIME UP: Jorg Harry Ringelmann avoids reporters after being served deportation orders
The Tehelka exposé on tourism-related paedophilia caught Manohar Parrikar’s BJP-led government in Goa off-guard. Leading TV news channel Aaj Tak broadcast the exposé on August 5 and, around the same time, the full 40-minute film was screened for a select gathering of top Goan police officers. The next day the Tehelka investigative film, The Nexus of Silence, was screened for the public in Caritas Holiday Home, Panjim. It was also telecast on a local cable channel. Finally, Parrikar had to bow to public pressure and announce a series of measures to check child sex tourism in Goa. The cm also said that he would release the Ric Wood report on child sex tourism in Goa this week. This is the first substantive move on Parrikar’s part after his bizarre reaction at a press conference where he implied that the Tehelka sting was carried out at the behest of pederasts. “The Ric Wood report mentions that ‘such’ broadcasts by the news channels is just the kind of modus that have been used by paedophiles to popularise child sex tourism destinations,” Parrikar had claimed. “More paedophiles would now flock to Goa’s shores,” he added.

A day after the screening, Deputy Inspector General Narinder Singh Randhawa claimed that Jorg Harry Ringelmann, a suspected paedophile, had fled to Mumbai. Suddenly Ringelmann returned on Monday, claiming that he had gone on a tour to Mumbai and Pune. The moment he arrived he was escorted to the North Goa district police headquarters, where Additional Superintendent of Police AK Gawas served a deportation order on him. He was asked to report again the following day with his residential permit and a confirmed ticket to his native country, Germany.

Television channels caught Ringelmann hiding behind his file of documents. He had a tough time as he tried to avoid the local press that had gathered at the Porvorim police station. While the police authorities were not willing to speak officially on the issue, sources informed that Ringelmann would be deported, as he was an “undesirable element” with incomplete documentation to support his claims on both the girls he was living with.

Interestingly, Ringelmann’s lawyer, Vilas Thaly, is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member and the state’s former additional advocate general, with a penchant for controversies. Thaly told a private news channel that he would challenge the deportation order issued by the police. One of the points Ringelmann emphatically made during his meeting with sp Gawas was that his ‘wife’ Dimple was six months pregnant and that he planned to start a restaurant in Chopdem. Police sources claim that the deportation order is only a consequence of some malpractices committed by the German in his business and has nothing to do with paedophilia.

There is another question that needs an answer. What happens to his ‘adopted’ daughter Mallika? Speaking off-the-record to a reporter from Goa 365, a cable news bulletin, she expressed her desire to come out of Ringelmann’s clutches and requested the reporter to rescue her. She also said she was uncertain about her future. The local cable channel immediately made a representation to dig Randhawa. Its editor, Rajesh Singh, wrote a letter to the police, requesting them to look into the matter. The very fact that Ringelmann is being deported means he is not being charged here for paedophilia. This despite dig Randhawa’s admission that the police had received information in April 2003 that “one foreign national by name of Ringelmann ‘John’ Harry, German national, holder of passport No. 5041803573 is suspected to be involved in paedophile activities.” If the police can’t even get the name of a suspected paedophile right how can they be expected to enforce the law. Therefore, Ringelmann’s illegal adoption of Mallika and his paedophilic activities in India will go unrecorded. In fact, Mallika was picked up by the police late on Tuesday night and put in a government-run shelter home for children.

And what of Dimple? Will the fraudulent marriage documents enable her to travel abroad with Ringelmann? Or will she stay with her parents? Police authorities have refused to speak to Tehelka on record vis-a-vis the Ringelmann affair.

The D’Mellos — Lucy and James — who harboured French paedophile Bernard’s victim were the first to be picked up by the Crime Branch. Sanju was the victim of Dreyfus Bernard Jean Paul. After claiming initially that Bernard was in Rajasthan, the police have now concluded otherwise. “The French national had arrived in India in October 2003 and had stayed in a flat in Goa for a month and reportedly left Goa in December 2003. He was reportedly moving with a boy during his stay. Police, despite making efforts, could not locate the minor boy,” says dig Randhawa.

Despite police questioning, no arrests have been made yet in the D’Mellos case. The police have raised a wall of secrecy around the D’Mello family episode. There is no word as to whether efforts have been made to deny a visa for Bernard the next time he plans to travel to India. After being hauled up for questioning a couple of times, Lucy and D’Mello were let off. Tehelka reporters had tracked down the D’Mellos, who had for small amounts of money, harboured the French paedophile Bernard’s victim Sanju.

An hour after midnight last Sunday, the police raided the house of another suspected paedophile, Theodore Wilhem Anema, profiled in the Tehelka exposé. Theo claimed that he had already written to the Directorate of Women and Children Welfare officially informing them about the two children he was moving around with. The two children who were being fostered by Theo have been withdrawn from his custody and sheltered at Bal Niketan. Members of the Crime Branch questioned Theo, before he was allowed to go following his disclosure that his ‘adoption deed’ had been registered with the Directorate of Women and Children Welfare. Why hadn’t the directorate verified Theo’s antecedents? Why wasn’t the ‘adoption deed’ scrutinised when the law unambiguously states that for any adoption to be legal there must be a court order signed by the magistrate?

Theo had picked up two boys from the streets of Mumbai and had brought them to Goa. The boys had been kept at a residence in Sangolda. The Calangute police had conducted a ramshackle inquiry, which had proved that “Theo was taking fatherly care of the children”. The victims had been brought to the Calangute police station and interrogated. All these go against the very tenets of investigations into child sex crimes.

Another paedophile profiled by Tehelka, David Meredith Vagg, has shut out the world from his life for an entire week. He has not stepped out of his house and is not taking phone calls. This elderly British national and a long running paedophile suspect on the Crime Branch list is just hoping that the storm passes by. His Fiat Peugeot with a Maharashtra registration was parked outside in the compound. When a Tehelka reporter went to meet him, Vagg refused to open the door of his residence despite repeated requests. Vagg is clearly shown as a suspected paedophile in a Goa police document, which is in Tehelka’s possession.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Parrikar claimed that the exposé had been carried at the behest of a rival tourist destination, seeking to divert Goa’s tourist traffic towards its shores. He also argued that since Tehelka could list only a few tourism-related paedophilia cases in its five-month-long investigation, it was proved that the issue was not grave in the state.

After spinning face-saving tales, the chief minister cautiously began a process of backtracking on his off-the-cuff reactions. It remains to be seen whether he will actually release the full version of the Ric Wood report or make only certain portions of the report public. In 2001, Ric Wood, a former Scotland Yard police officer, had been commissioned by the British authorities to track down paedophiles in Goa. Within two weeks Wood had compiled a dossier on 37 international paedophiles operating in Goa, more than half of who were British. The report had been put on the backburner by the Parrikar regime, fearing that disclosure of its findings would have an adverse impact on the tourism revenue earned by Goa.

Among the first measures that the Parrikar government announced was a decision to ask the Central government to put in place a system whereby police authorities can track the arrival of a suspected paedophile in India. Earlier, in his immediate reaction to the exposé, he had admitted the government’s inability to keep a proper tab on foreigners entering the state from other states. He spoke about the need for an interlinking of passport checking systems at airports all over the country for easy verification of the antecedents of visiting foreigners.

TEHELKA IMPACT
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar announces he will release Ric Wood report
Any child living with foreigners will be kept at Bal Niketan.
Government asks Department of Women and Child Development to compile a comprehensive list of orphanages and shelter homes in the state
Parrikar moots interlinked passport checking systems all over the country.
l He sets a deadline for setting up of children’s courts
Government orders deportation of Jorg Harry Ringelmann
Police rescue Ringelmann’s illegally adopted daughter Mallika and place her in a state-run shelter home
Authorities interrogate victim Sanju’s harbourers Lucy and James D’Mello
Statewide search for Sanju launched
Police question another paedophile Theo Anema
Two children fostered by Theo Anema taken to Bal Niketan

He also said that all children living with foreigners would be sheltered in Bal Niketan, a children’s home run by the state government. But the government has not announced a follow-up plan. Will these children be looked after by the state? Who will fund their education and livelihood expenses? So much for his gung ho statements earlier, claiming there was no evidence of organised and widespread paedophiles in the state.

Parrikar has also instructed the Directorate of Women and Child Welfare to compile a comprehensive list of orphanages and shelter homes, clearly implying that the department did not have such a list in its possession. The chief minister also announced Diwali as the deadline for setting up a children’s court to try crimes registered under the Goa Children’s Act, 2003.

Finally, the cm admitted that the police force in Goa needed to be sensitised to deal with child abuse. According to him, so far policemen have been insensitive in dealing with such crimes. He also said that local communities should be sensitive to paedophilia cases and report instances of child abuse to the police.

The chief minister’s admissions after an initial bout of stonewalling shows that Tehelka exposé has stirred the local administration to crack down on pederasts who have turned Goa into a haven for child sex tourism.

The Archdiocese of Goa has decided to screen the film in all its 156 parishes throughout the state, starting with coastal Goa first. Father Valeriano Vaz, director of Caritas, has chalked out a plan of action that involves energising the social action groups of each parish by first screening the film and then holding a discussion on the issue of tourism-related paedophilia. By the end of this year, the Tehelka film, The Nexus of Silence, will be screened in 50 parishes in coastal Goa and then will move on to the other parishes. With the main tourism season scheduled to start in Goa next month, this community initiative will mobilise the local people to help the local authorities to crack down on sex abuse of children by visiting foreigners.

Another instance of a community movement as a result of the Tehelka exposé is the screening of the film across colleges in Goa. A film club in Goa run by concerned citizens and teachers is organising it. The first screening of the film is on Thursday, August 12.

Voices
We plan to screen the documentary in all the 156 parishes in Goa and spread awareness about paedophilia. This film was an eye opener for me. The apathy of the society towards this issue is appalling. There is no judicial or political will to tackle this evil. If people wake up and take this issue seriously, even the government, however reluctant it may be, will have to rise to the ccasion.
Father Valerian Vaz
Director,
Caritas Goa

‘Disseminate information on paedophilia’

Roland Martins
The Tehelka expose has revealed a gaping hole in the way non-governmental organizations function in Goa. The ngos need to participate in various forums that the government provides, like village children’s committees, which is an integral part of the Goa Children’s Act (as required under Section 13, Sub section 8). There are around 190 village panchayats in Goa, and participation in these committees can be crucial.

Along Goa’s coastal belt, we have been asking for setting up of tourism and beach management committees. We also demand that citizens volunteers to be part of these committees and that they be trained on the various aspects of the problem. Like, the type of crimes committed on children, profiles of paedophiles and the various laws and treaties under which action can be taken locally, nationally and internationally.

There are various guilds involved in tourism trade, but there is no forum for them at the village level. Information on paedophilia needs to be disseminated at every possible level through such committees for effective action. Take, for example, the All Goa Shack Owners Association. Similar trade bodies can be used to channelise dissemination of information all the way down to the villages.

The tourism department, as well as the police, needs to be attuned to the needs of tackling such a crime. While setting up of a child protection unit is of acute importance for a proper concerted movement, the tourism department needs a senior nodal officer to tackle drug abuse and paedophilia. The manner in which former tourism director Suryanarayana was caught by Tehelka’s sting shows how the government merely talks about the problem but has no action plan to
trouble-shoot it.

At the community level, only few locals are aware of implications of trafficking. Ground level bureaucracy like the mamledar, magistrates etc need to be sensitized. Since eco tourism is being widely propagated as the next frontier for tourism, paedophiles will now find an easier way to move in, as eco tourism takes foreigner directly
into villages where the economic conditions of villagers is worse than their counterparts on the coast. The concept of an active village level committee will be very important as a counter measure. That’s where awareness must start from.

The author is the Co-ordinator, Goa Civic and Consumer Action Network

Bombay to Goa: the paedophile path

Mumbai is the paedophiles’ gateway to India, report VK Shashikumar, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar and Sanjukta Sharma

SIN SHOP: this is where the paedophiles meet their potential victims
Café Mondegar is choc-a-bloc with white tourists on any evening. It is the heart of Colaba Causeway, south Mumbai’s notorious hub of cheap beer, cheap hotel rooms and discreet drug peddlers. Every now and then, middle-aged, hippie-looking men drink at this pub, accompanied by young boys from the pavements of Colaba. Often, they are children of daily-wage labourers from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Those who make it to the Mondegar tables with white men are the chosen ones — the boys who are lured by the gifts, the drinks. Middle-aged white paedophiles stalk Colaba streets. Or other numerous streets and suburbs of Mumbai where child sex tourists thrive with blissful anonymity before they move on to even safer destinations.

On December 16, 2000, Swiss nationals Wilheim Marty, 61, and Loshiar Marty, 58 were caught red-handed filming two girls inside a room in Hotel Resort at Madh Island. Hundreds of photographs of nude children were found on Marti’s laptop. A list of nearly 40 children the couple was planning to film was also found.

Police probe revealed Wilheim Marty worked as a general manager in a Swiss company. His wife was a trained nurse. The couple had a 35-year-old adopted daughter. The Martys had been visiting Mumbai for nearly 10 years. The police established contact with the Swiss police through Interpol and raided Marty’s properties, leading to further evidence of pornographic material and the arrest of Wilheim Marty’s nephew, who helped the couple sell the photographs on the Internet.

The modus operandi of the Marty couple was to pose as tourists and convince poor families that since Indian laws did not allow them to adopt, they would be happy to spend time with street children. The Forum Against Child Sexual (facse), a Mumbai-based ngo, got to know from a child that the Martys had taken two children to a hotel and alerted the police.

The police arrested the Martys under 11 sections of the Indian Penal Code and Section (4) (6) of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986. The Mumbai sessions court judge, Justice MR Bhatkar, sentenced them to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment in March 2003.

But a month later, the Bombay High Court shortened the sentence of the couple to the period they had already served in jail — 39 months — and allowed them to go if they paid a compensation of Rs 1 lakh each to their six victims.

Children’s rights activists demanded the Supreme Court’s intervention. Chief Justice VN Khare of the Supreme Court stayed the release of the couple in April 2004, but granted them conditional bail with directions that the Martys’ passports be withheld.

The police and the government are clueless about the current whereabouts of the Martys. Their passports are with the court and their victims are probably back on the streets of Mumbai.

C Inamdar, Additional Commissioner of Police, who handled the case, saya, “During the period of a jail sentence, nobody can be granted bail. They are still in the Pune prison.” But, the office of Prabhat Ranjan, Inspector General, Prisons, Pune, confirms that they were out in May 2004. Says Preeti Chandar of facse, “If they can get out of jail despite such strong evidence against them, others can get away with worse.”

Back in Colaba, the spectre of Duncan Grant, a British paedophile, who lived here for 12 years, haunts the Anchorage Shelter Home.

A few crusty flights of stairs lead to the entrance of the Home, set up by Grant in 1995. The door opens to a large, sparse room with two beds, clothes and many pairs of shoes strewn on the floor. Two boys sit glued to an old TV. Clad in shorts and T-shirts, they have the typically scrubbed-clean look. Dhanraj, a 15-year-old inmate, speaks English with a cultivated British twang. He sports an expensive cell phone that constantly buzzes with calls and sms.
Eight years after the Home was set up, Grant was accused of abusing the boys living in his shelter. He is absconding. Allen Johan Water, a co-accused, was arrested in New York in November 2003, and is soon going to be extradited from the us. Dhanraj speaks of Grant with fondness. “Duncan doesn’t come here anymore. He hasn’t called for the last three years. The police think he’s a dirty man and don’t let him come to India. It’s a lie that he is a dirty man. Someone is taking revenge on him,” he says.

Grant was not in India when 15-year-old Kranti Lodha, a frequent visitor to the home, filed a complaint of sexual abuse against him. He has not returned to Mumbai thereafter. Grant is a well-connected man in Britain. He served the Royal Naval Reserve in the uk for 30 years before he came to India. Soon after the allegations were levelled, Diana Hawkins, organiser and fund-raiser at the uk office of the Anchorage Shelter was quoted as saying, “If innocent, well-meaning people like Grant are accused of such false crimes, people from Britain will stop doing charity work in India.” Some influential people in India, such as Adi Dubhash of Concern India Foundation, also defended Grant.

After the allegations came into light, ngos and activists followed up the case. A breakthrough came when journalist Mehr Pestonji got an account from Rasool, a boy at the Home, on tape in which he admitted having been abused by Grant and Water. The catalyst in the breakthrough was, surprisingly, Alan Denning, another British national and a suspected paedophile who had lived in Goa. Sources reveal that Denning was seen in Goa with Rasool and Zakir, both young boys. Zakir was also seen with another paedophile, Theodor Willem Anema.

Denning was close to Grant, but later exposed him with the help of Sridhar Naik, a close associate of Denning, who, according to police sources, posed as Zakir and Rasool’s guardian. When contacted in Mumbai, Naik said that he was no longer involved with the Home and that he knew nothing about the whereabouts of Den- ning or Grant.

Tehelka’s investigation reveals that Naik who passes off as a social worker is a procurer for paedophiles operating in Goa. Incidentally, Naik helped two suspected paedophiles Anema and Denning to get children from the Home. Naik just made an affidavit which simply stated, “I say that I am guardian of Master Jakir Hasan (Zakir is spelt as Jakir). I say that he was born on 13.12.1988 at Kolkata…I further declare that the said child is not aware of his parents at present
he has no parents as he was found to me in helpless condition seeking shelter.”

Then he proceeded to declare an undertaking in a stamped paper: “I say that I am the guardian of Master Jakir Hasan…As such I have sent him to Goa under further guardianship of Mr Theodoor Willem Anema…I say I am a social worker and devoted my entire life for nourishment and welfare of the orphan children who are parentless and seeking help for their maintenance and livelihood.”

Grant’s connection with Anema and Denning points to a network that facilitates child-sex tourism in India. Says Sangeeta Punekar, an ex-member of facse, “I have seen Grant for the last 12 years. He was always with street boys. He had given expensive gifts to the boys and sponsored many of them. Each child in Home is sponsored by a foreigner.”

Grant’s association with Goa was revealed by the testimony of an adolescent boy, Mangesh, during the trial of a German national Helmut Brinkmann in the court of assistant sessions judge in Panjim, Goa (State v/s Helmut Brinkmann, dated February 6, 1999).

Brinkmann, 57, was found living with minor boys, including Mangesh who was a shoe-polish boy near the Gateway of India. In his testimony, he said that a “guy named Duncan from London” offered Rs 40,000 to him in exchange of oral and anal sex near the Gateway of India. Later Duncan took Mangesh to the Home where he met Helmut.

Assistant Sessions Judge Nutan Sardessai found Brinkmann guilty of hiring a minor for illicit and immoral purposes and for committing unnatural sexual offences. He was awarded six-years’ imprisonment. However, on September 24, 2000, he was acquitted of the charges by Additional Sessions Judge D R Kenkre.

Judge Kenkre expressed doubts whether the sperm found was ‘human spermatozoa’. He concluded that the sperm found in Brinkmann’s anus was indeed his own. The same held true for the victim, he added. The judge then went on to say that the child was an accomplice in the commission of the crime and, therefore, his evidence could not stand without corroboration.

Mumbai’s anonymity facilitated John Ringelmann to traffic two girls—Dimple and Mallika—out of the city to Goa. Ringelmann claims to have legally married one of them and ‘adopted’ the other. Before settling in Goa, Ringelmann lived in Mumbai for three years with his ‘adopted’ daughter. “Mumbai is a very good city. Not like Goa which is very small and everybody is concerned about other peoples’ business. In Mumbai nobody asks you anything. The people respect privacy,” he says.
The address mentioned on the joint declaration of marriage of Ringelmann and Dimple (Sheru) is Ringelmann, Balaji Apartments, B/block, Plot no 201, Kopar Khairane, Navi Mumbai – 400705.

Khopar Khairane is a developed, densely populated suburb of Navi Mumbai. There is only one building with the name of Balaji Apartments there. And that too, not in the plot mentioned in the address. Jagannath Mhatre, the owner of Balaji Apartments says Ringelmann has never stayed in this building.

“We’ve never had any white man as our tenant. This building is just three years old,” Mhatre says. He added that this was the only building in the area with that name. Many tenants of Balaji Apartments also confirmed that Ringelmann never stayed in their building.

The fake address in Ringelmann’s document drives home the point very forcefully that foreigners easily get away with false documents in India.

See the evil: dealing with a disease

paedophilia is not a problem unique to goa. neither is it an exclusively male domain. There is an urgent need for a national plan to deal with the problem, say Dr Nishtha Desai and Fiona Dias-Saxena

Nishtha Desai
A tourist in Goa enjoys a sense of anonymity and freedom. A paedophile can come, hang around with children on the beach and not be questions. For him, the setting is just perfect.

At any given time, during the six-month tourist season (October to March), there could easily be around 100 paedophiles operating in the state. No, do not underestimate the figure, for a paedophile generally exploits more than one child, at times up to 20 children, during a stay of 15 days to five months.

Fiona Dias-Saxena
The Goan community tends to view the problem as one not affecting Goans – an outsider’s problem – ‘so why should we be concerned?’ They believe that only children of migrants are abused by paedophiles. It is true that a majority of the children paedophiles prey on come from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

But, it is a myth that Goan children are not sexually abused by paedophiles. In the case of Freddy Peats, Goa’s most notorious paedophile, all the children staying at Peats’ gurukul were Goans. In our day-to-day campaign work, we have come across some cases involving Goan children.

The stakes are high. So much so, that in some cases parents traffic their own children. For an entire year’s rent, paid in advance by a foreigner paedophile, the parents may allow their 13-year-old daughter to ‘go out’ with the family’s benefactor. But, there are also parents who have no idea about the involvement of their offspring with paedophiles.

There is a popular perception that paedophilia is exclusively a male domain. While few in number, there are female paedophiles as well. In one particular case, a European woman wanted to ‘adopt’ a 12-year-old boy and take him abroad. The woman’s feelings did not seem maternal. In fact, her behaviour towards other young boys also suggested that she was sexually interested in them.

It is difficult to convince policemen, officials or judges that these elderly, avuncular men/women take pleasure in sexually abusing young boys/girls. Often, our activists are accused of being ‘pervert’ for suggesting that a man/woman could want to have sex with a child.

Investigation techniques are often clumsy and the culprits are alerted long before any evidence is gathered. The investigation techniques need to be improved if paedophiles are to be successfully prosecuted. This, in part, explains why apart from Peats only one other paedophile — Eoghan McBride, an associate of Peats — has so far been convicted.

One judge, in his order, acquitted a paedophile on the ground that the spermatozoa found in the victim’s anus could be the victim’s own, and the spermatozoa in the suspected paedophile’s anus could be his own. A biological wonder indeed!

Another lacuna in the law is the application of Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code for paedophilia-related cases involving boys. This is a law which was originally intended to punish homosexuality and bestiality; both ‘unnatural offences’ under Indian law. When applied to paedophilia cases, this law treats the victim as an ‘accomplice’ in the crime. So, the boy child is not treated as a victim of rape, as is statutorily done in the case of a girl. There is no law protecting the boy child against paedophiles. It’s time the society stands up and protects its children.

Take, for instance, the case of a minor boy from Karnataka living with a greying Swiss national in Goa.

First, the child cannot speak English, French or German. He learns the language almost overnight and within months starts using an overtly sexualised language that an Indian child will not use.

Second, why is this child not attending school? Is the Swiss illegally detaining the child? Where are the court-ordained adoption papers?

Third, where did the Swiss bring this child from? Did he buy the child from his poor parents or guardians?

Do you need a stronger note of caution than this? Society at large should learn to discern such critical red flags, the tell-tale signs of tourism-related paedophilia.
We have dealt with many such cases. The questions still remain. The police cannot answer them. They are incapable. The courts cannot find answers in laws that it is supposed to interpret. The government will not answer because that’s pretty much the accepted code.

Let’s focus on some more pertinent questions.

Why would a child seek treatment for a vaginal infection or pelvic inflammatory disease? Why would children have a throat thrush, which is not indicative of cold? This happens when an adult forces a child to engage in oral sex. This is caused due to an infection by an outside body.

And what about the trauma? Depression, social isolation, lack of child-like spontaneity or a sudden maturity — these are after effects in children, who have been sexually abused by paedophiles.

Why should the onus of proving the innocence or guilt be dumped on the child? Why is the child questioned like a criminal? Asking inconsequential and humiliating questions like ‘what was the colour of your underwear?’ is insane.

How will the child know that he/she is secure? A systemic change is required, especially while tackling sexual crimes against children. More importantly the mindset has to change. Child sex abuse is a crime that is different from the crimes we know — murder, assault and so on.

Take, for example, oral sex with boys. This is a routine sexual abuse perpetrated by a paedophile. No medical evidence can conclusively say that a child has been forced to have oral sex, unless the offender has an infection, which could trigger a throat thrush or sores or ulcers in the child’s mouth. But they do not amount to conclusive evidence.

A paedophile is a chronic abuser who will go to lengths to ensure there are no external bruises. He will use gel. He will be gentle during sex. He will prefer oral sex and fondling. All these things leave very little scope for medical evidence.

That is why paedophiles are so obsessed with ‘grooming’. Oral hygiene is of singular importance for paedophiles because of their physical intimacy with children. The unfailing dental check-ups of their victims is one such example.

One more question. How can anyone prove destruction of an innocent mind through continuous exposure to pornography? The judiciary and the law enforcement agencies should consider circumstantial evidence if the child admits to sexual assault. Say, a foreigner and an unrelated minor are found in a hotel room — the former in his underpants and the latter in her lingerie — in the dead of the night, does she still have to go ahead and admit that he was sleeping with her?
To make matters more complicated, children are very good at masking their trauma. The more the child’s vulnerability, the stronger is the child’s defence mechanism while handling such trauma. But ‘blocking’, does not mean that there is no scar.

Our legislators, judges, police and bureaucrats need to know that sexual abuse never starts with the genitals. That is the climax. It comes slowly. All the while, the child is unsure about the reality. A child tries to reason: “My father was/is a poor man. He (paedophile) gave me what I do not have. And he treated me well.”
Initially, a paedophile makes contact with a child’s father, say a beggar. Then he supports the child’s siblings. He gives them a better place to stay and starts sending them money. He takes the child for holidays and starts travelling with her/him. By the time the abuse actually takes place, the child cannot believe what has been done to him. His world is shattered. In fact, he does not want to believe it. And, then he masks it.

Will someone believe him/her? Will somebody understand the child? Will the judge or the police understand the child?

According to the Goa Children’s Act, 2003, if an adult wants to stay with a child not related to him, he will have to seek the permission of the Director of Women and Child Development. If they do not inform the department, they can be fined up to Rs 1 lakh and imprisoned for a year. But, the Act is yet to be implemented, although it was passed a year ago.

There is a need for the state to identify paedophiles staying in the state for extended periods, as they are involved in the organised sexual abuse of children. They run beach shacks, travel agencies, ‘shelters’ for underprivileged children and various other establishments in Goa to facilitate their operations.

We believe that it is wrong to think of paedophilia as a problem unique to Goa. As the arrest of the Swiss paedophile couple in Mumbai has shown, the problem is not restricted to Goa. Paedophilia is a national problem and every tourist destination in India needs to put some checks on it. There is an urgent need for some kind of a national plan by the Centre to deal with the problem and to incorporate it in its tourism-related policies.

(The authors are Goa-based child rights activists)

Nothing wonderful about this club

Paedophiles have a global, secretive society. Mayabhushan Nagvenkar unravels the Wonderland Club that exchanges information on children and prowls the Net in search of children who can be sexually abused

NO CHILD PLAY: it took Interpol years to break the paedophilia ring
More than 2,000 hours of digitised footage of children being sexually abused 7,50,000 child porn images, each exceeding the other in absurd stages of vulgarity. Many pictures were that of Indian children. More than 1,200 abused children worldwide. This more or less sums up ‘The Wonderland Club’ (twc) – a reclusive, secret, global worldwide ring of paedophiles spread over 49 countries, which was busted by Interpol and other national police agencies. From the 180-member cartel of child sex perverts, 107 were arrested, 50 convicted. Eight of them committed suicide.

Several Indian Net-prowling paedophiles managed to evade arrest, merely because Interpol did not consider India a worthy partner for its Operation Cathedral — the name given for the crackdown on paedophilia — because “it lacked the technical capability to participate”.

Operation Cathedral started in California in April 1996 and ended in 2001. It turned out to be the largest operation in the history of international policing. Only 13 out of the 49 countries where the twc had spread its tentacles participated in Operation Cathedral.

The Indian paedophiles in question could surely heave a sigh of relief, as no visible efforts were made by national law enforcement agencies to nab them. They later transmitted their pornographic images to other members of the twc.

The busting of the twc was actually a climax of sorts. The seeds of this operation were sown in 1996, during an overnight party for toddlers in California.
A 10-year-old girl visiting a friend for a sleep-over party in California was sexually abused by her friend’s father Roland Riva. The act was recorded by a webcam which transmitted live video images of his sexual act to his friends in Finland, Australia and Canada and other American states. Riva and his transcontinental friends were part of an online paedophile ring called The Orchid Club.

Some months later, Riva was arrested on suspicion of molesting another child. His interrogation revealed his encounter with the 10-year-old child. When Riva’s computer was seized and searched, they found digital footage of several minors being sexually abused. After transmitting the perverse videos to his colleagues in the Orchid Club, Riva would then sell the explicit footage to clients in a particular internet chatroom.

Riva was sentenced with three other Orchid Club members. But the trail did not end there. American investigators found a link to three other persons in the uk while examining Riva’s computer, one of whom was Ian Baldock, a Sussex-based computer consultant.

Voices
People should know the extent of paedophilia in Goa. Most of the students in north Goan colleges come from the tourist belt. So students should be involved actively. They should know whom to contact and what to do if they identify a
paedophile. We plan to screen this film in various colleges and follow it up with discussions on child rights
Anita Haladi,
Lecturer, Bandekar College, Mapusa, Goa

Inspection of Baldock’s computer led to the discovery of the twc. With 180 members in 49 countries, this was a set-up much more widespread, organised and professional.

The twc had a set hierarchy. A chairman at the helm, secretary and management committee with fixed tenures, along with a set procedure for selection and vetting of its members.

The investigators soon realised that cracking this outfit was no child’s play.

Getting through to data, routinely accessed by the twc’s members was extremely exasperating. One had to work his way through more than five levels of security. The encryption codes used by the twc were extremely difficult to crack. They had been originally developed by the Russian intelligence agencies for their web-related operations.

Entry to this club was also far from easy. A prospective member had to submit 10,000 child porn images. To climb rungs in twc, one had to consistently find new children to abuse, as well as produce images showing abuse as proof.

After more than five months of investigations, Interpol along with the British National Crime Squad co-ordinated a synchronised swoop by police forces from 12 countries, including France, England, Australia, Germany, Sweden and us, on their targets.

The results were stunning.

In the uk, David Hines, whose profile name was ‘Mutt’s Nuts’ was found possessing a cache of 12,000 paedophile images. Gavin Seagers, 29, a Sea Cadets youth leader, whose identity in the twc was ‘Hopeful’ had 46,000 encrypted images stored on his computer system. Antoni Skinner, who called himself ‘Uhura’ or ‘Satan’, managed his encryptions so well that only about 400 images could be detected on his computer. Another member Ahmet Ali alias ‘Caesar’, a taxi driver by profession, was found possessing 13,000 images.

The raids in other countries also rolled out similar bizarre details. Investigators also learnt that Germans download more child pornography than any other country in the world, followed by Australians.

Scores of members of the twc, belonging to those 37 countries (including India) which were not part of Operation Cathedral, continue to prowl the Net, and perhaps have crafted yet another sordid wonderland.

Tehelka’s Charter of Demands

Paedophiles get away with their crimes as our laws lack enough teeth to prosecute them. We demand that:
The police arrest and prosecute all the offenders who have been exposed in Tehelka’s tapes.
The Union government direct the Goa government to release the Ric Wood Report.
The government direct the cbi to launch a massive manhunt to track down paedophiles operating in the country’s various tourism destinations
The Department of Women and Child Welfare come out with a comprehensive policy on child rights.
The Central government should ratify its adherence to the 1989 un Convention on the Rights of the Child international by legislating a national law on protection of child rights.
India should take urgent and immediate steps to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
A National Child Rights Commission should be set up that will act as a watchdog and regulatory authority to prevent sexual, labour and all other forms of exploitation of children.
The Right to Education be made a fundamental right so that children like Sanju can fulfil their dream to go to schools and not be vulnerable to sexual and labour exploitation.
The government debar all suspected paedophiles from entering the country.
The Central government, through the cbi, interact actively with Interpol and continuously track the movement of suspected paedophiles and take preventive action to ensure that they don’t enter India.
The Centre publicly promote a well-crafted anti-paedophilia policy in all tourist destinations in India and through its tourism offices abroad that is intended to send a strong warning that stringent action will be taken against paedophiles visiting India to sexually abuse children.
The full implementation of the Goa Children’s Act, 2003 and demand that Parliament also pass an omnibus Child Rights Act that essentially prevents and prohibits all forms of exploitation of children, including sale and trafficking and exploitation for pornographic purposes.
All states, especially those who attract sizeable foreign tourists, enact a child protection legislation on the lines of the Goa Children’s Act
Police forces in states that attract foreign tourists be trained and sensitised to deal with crimes against children.
The judiciary expand the interpretation of existing laws to ensure that the courts take into account incontrovertible circumstantial evidence to prosecute offenders involved in exploitation of children.
The judiciary and the law enforcement agencies punish those who enable foreign paedophiles from illegally adopting children through fraudulent means.
Legal and police action be taken against those who enabled the German paedophile, Jorg Harry Ringlemann, to procure illegal affidavits.
The judiciary apply the existing laws and issue directives to the state and Central governments to take immediate executive measures to protect child rights as an interim step till appropriate legislation is enacted.
The judiciary and police stop applying and interpreting Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to book paedophiles and interrogate their victims in police stations. The judicial-police structure should stop equating paedophilia and sexual abuse of children to homosexuality.
The government order a cbi investigation to determine the manner in which foreigners are taking children out of the country.
The government ensure that unaccompanied and unrelated minors are not allowed to leave the country with foreigners.
The government should institute an inquiry to find out how passport offices are making passports for minors belonging to poor families and on what basis immigration officials at the airport allow the children to depart with the foreign sponsors.
The government find out why proper police verification measures are not applied at the time of making the passports for minors.

Pakistan still occupies four kargil peaks

2007-03-06T20:43:00.001+05:30

Pakistan still occupies four kargil peaks

Tehelka
July 17, 2004

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main4.asp?filename=Ne071704pakistan_still.asp&id=1

On July 26, the country celebrates Vijay Diwas to commemorate India’s victory in the Kargil war. But five years since the war, four strategic Indian posts in Kargil are still under Pakistani control and the government is not ready to spell out the truth, reports VK Shashikumar

Point 5353, Bunker Ridge, Saddle Ridge, Dalu Nag. These are posts in the Kargil sector that the soldiers of the Indian army knew incontrovertibly to be their own. They form a sort of memory map of disjointed emplacements along the treacherous mountains in the Kargil sector. Features that are joined in various military maps of the area by dotted lines.

Army sources confirmed to Tehelka that at least two of these features are under Pakistani control, thanks to botched up military operations and a government that wanted to hide the truth. The fate of the other two features, Dalu Nag and Bunker Ridge, is still shrouded in mystery.

“Dalu Nag is certainly in the Kargil sector, but it has a history of its own since the 1980s. It has nothing to do with Kargil operations. Some parts of Dalu Nag may have been occupied by them at that time,” former army chief Ved Prakash Malik told Tehelka. “I do not know what exact locations are being referred to by these names,” he added referring to Saddle Ridge and Bunker Ridge.

For the officers and jawans ordered to engage the intruders in a near-impossible battle, this is more humiliating than the government’s negation of the gains made by the army in the 1965 war. But then, Kargil would probably have never happened if the Tashkent Agreement was not signed in 1965. Even in 1999, India gave Pakistan a walkover and enabled it to retain territory that was always under Indian control. And then, the government misled the nation that Kargil had been cleared of all Pakistani intruders.

Former defence minister George Fernandes, argued that the LoC runs over Pt 5353 and, therefore, was unoccupied by either countries till Kargil happened. A point which is not true.

Ironically, though it was the bjp-led government that hid the truth, the Congress-led upa government is also reluctant to clarify. Tehelka sent a questionnaire to Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee asking him to spell out the truth about the four posts. But at the time of going to print, he had not replied.

Meanwhile, within the army at the level of middle and junior level officers and the brave jawans, there is discontent. Any army unit that has done its tour of duty in Kargil after the war in the summer of 1999 has heard about the secrets locked up in the forbidding heights.

Perhaps it is painful for the army top brass to admit that Operation Vijay was not really an unalloyed victory.

Pt 5353 is the highest mountaintop in the Dras sector. It offers a vantage point to observe movement on the Srinagar-Leh highway (National Highway 1). Pakistani forces occupied Pt 5353 after senior commanders of 56 Mountain Brigade failed in a mission to recapture the peak. Just as the mission to capture Pt 5353 was botched, another Indian post, called Saddle Ridge, came under Pakistani occupation after senior commanders of 56 Mountain Brigade in Dras bungled a military operation to recapture another strategic mountain post on Pt 5000 close to the LoC.

The Dras sector was the western-most of the intruder’s positions and many posts on the mountaintops overlook nh 1. With Pt 5353 under Pakistani control, traffic moving on the highway is vulnerable to interdiction by Pakistani artillery fire.
In addition to the Pakistani ability to interdict highway traffic in the Dras sector, Tehelka’s investigation reveals that Pakistani occupation of three other Indian posts can put tremendous pressure on other Indian positions in the Tiger Hill and Tololing complexes (see map). Pt 5000 is north-west of Pt 5100 and the latter is an important Indian post 12-13 km north-west of 56 Mountain Brigade in Dras.

The significance of Pakistani occupation of Saddle Ridge in the general area of Pt 5000 is as follows (see map):
Pt 5100, located close to the LoC, was a major supply route for enemy forces. The capture of this on July 1, 1999 was instrumental in the recapture of Tiger Hill.

The truth about 5353
The attempt to re-occupy Pt 5353 began on May 17, 1999. The 1 Naga Regiment launched the offensive to secure a firm base on the ridgeline West of Pt 5100, and extend it toward Pt 5353.
When ceasefire was announced on July 11, 1999, the Indian troops had not made any headway towards Pt 5353. They had only secured two positions, Charlie 6 and Charlie 7. Pakistani troops were entrenched at another Indian post, Pt 5240.
Brig Amarnath Aul ordered his troops to cross the LoC and occupy Pts 4875 and 4251 on the Pakistani side. Aul’s strategy was to use Indian occupation of Pakistani positions as a bargaining chip — vacate Pt 5353 and Pt 5240 and India would let go of Pt 4251 and Pt 4875.
The strategy worked, but in mid-August that local-level tactical understanding with Pakistani forces collapsed. The Gurkha Rifles attempt to take Pt 5353 failed, and the post was lost again.

The Pakistani occupation of Saddle Ridge near Pt 5000 gives its forces the ability to act as a pressure point on Pt 5100. If the current India-Pakistan ceasefire breaks down, Indian troops will have to keep their heads down, literally, in fear of enemy fire. It also gives Pakistan the ability to threaten Pt 5140, close to the LoC The attack on Pt 5000 was launched on July 24, 1999 at 10.30 pm with two officers, two junior commissioned officers (jcos) and 60 jawans of the 16 Grenadiers. It was way below the technically specified strength of a company. This ad hoc company was split into three platoons to attack the feature from both the flanks with the punch coming right through the middle. And a reserve platoon was also organised at the rear. Within four and half hours, the post was under Indian control.

A little after mid-day on July 25, 1999 the Pakistani forces launched a massive counter attack. Two prominent features on this strategic height, the right and left pimples, came under a volley of Pakistani artillery and small arms fire. The company commander radioed the jco on the left flank to send 10 soldiers to the right flank.

But the jco and the troops under him were under heavy attack. The jco expressed his inability to send extra men. His platoon itself was short of troops and ammunition. The reserve platoon of four jawans under another jco was also facing a barrage of Pakistani artillery fire. It was incommunicado because it did not have a wireless set.

By 6.30 pm, the Indian troops repulsed the attack. Five jawans were killed and 14 injured. The situation report (sitrep) initiated by 16 Grenadiers to the headquarters 56 Mountain Brigade mentioned that “Coy.Ex 16 Grenadiers captured Point 5000 in square 5363 by 25th July ’99 by 0300 Hrs…enemy counter attack on Saddle Ridge from North and North-east on 25th July ’99 at 1400 Hrs…(and) repulsed both the enemy attacks on Saddle Ridge.

Once the Pakistani counter attack was beaten back, the evacuation of the dead and injured commenced. But there was no sign of the reinforcement company. Brigadier Amarnath Aul, the then commander of the 56 Mountain Brigade, had ordered the 1/3 Gurkha Regiment (gr) company to reach Pt 5000 as reinforcement. Strangely, 1/3 GR reached the objective next day at 9.00 am.
Official operational record of the combat mission on Pt 5000 clearly shows that 1/3 Gurkhas began their march to Pt 5000 at 9.00 pm on July 25, 1999. At that time, they were 5-6 km away from the objective. The reinforcement company finally reached the area of Pt 5000 ten hours after the counter attack was repulsed.

Despite the existence of such detailed official record of the battle for Pt 5000, Brigadier Aul authorized a sitrep dated August 10, 1999 that it was company of 1/3 gr that had withstood and beaten back the Pakistani counter attack on July 25, 1999. This was done despite the dispatch of a sitrep on July 26, 1999 that 16 Grenadiers had secured Pt 5000. Brigadier Aul recommended a gallantry award, the Mahavir Chakra, for the company commander of 1/3 GR. Brigadier Aul is from 3 Gurkha Regiment.
According to the official statement of the company commander of 1/3 Gurkhas, his troops reached the location at around “0430 Hrs on 26th July 1999…I moved up to the top…I then moved further south to fetch the balance of the (16 Grenadiers) company. However, when it was completely daylight intense and accurate enemy shelling made further movement of personnel difficult.”

This combat operation also brought to fore the failure of senior commanders of the 56 Mountain Brigade in planning the attack on Pt 5000. The 16 Grenadiers company were not supplied with adequate ammunition and wireless sets. The company was not provided with an artillery officer and, therefore, Pakistani shelling could not be retaliated. Five jawans lost their lives and 14 were injured because of this oversight. Besides, there were no medical cover or stretcher-bearers to lift and help the maimed and injured soldiers. Also, as a rule, the strength of the attacking company should be 3:1. Since the Pakistani forces numbered around 80 at Pt 5000 so the attacking 16 Grenadiers technically should have comprised of 240 men.

Though the Pakistani counter attack on Pt 5000 was beaten back the Indian forces failed to regain control of a strategic feature in the area of Pt 5000 called Saddle Ridge. That was because they were weighed down by lack of communication systems, adequate ammunition and battlefield causalities. Had the reinforcement of 1/3 Gurkhas reached in time, Saddle Ridge would have been under Indian control.

Brig Aul’s ignorance about what really happened at Pt 5000 is reflected in his observation on official documentation. According to him the “enemy” counter attacked “on the night of 25/26 July 1999”. But official records show that the counter attack started building from 2.30 pm on July 25, 1999.

The failure to grasp the small details of a combat operation is striking because 56 Mountain Brigade in Dras was keeping tabs on the progress of the battle through a system of wireless relay. In mountain terrain wireless communication breaks down frequently or is interrupted by a noisy static known as ‘screening’. The Brigade hq, therefore, had to relay information and receive information by first radioing the Indian post on Pt 5100, which in turn transmitted messages to the combat company on Pt 5000 .
So far there is no official explanation for the loss of Saddle Bridge. Five years after the war, even the new government is completely silent on these four Indian posts.

Goa’s megacrore film fantasy

2007-03-06T20:33:00.000+05:30

Heading for a Flop

Tehelka

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main1.asp?filename=Ne042404goa.asp

May 1, 2004

Directed and scripted by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, the dream project of bringing Cannes to the sun and beach resort is mired in controversy and charges of serious bungling, reports VK Shashikumar

Water gently lapping at seductively illuminated promenades. Landscaped waterfronts. Magnificent movies and stars at newly constructed multiplexes. Glitter and glamour. Cameras and the incessant glow of flashlights. This is all part of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s fantasy, as he prepares to host the International Film Festival of India (iffi), à la Cannes, in November this year. But the blockbuster may well blow up in the government’s face. Because laws have been bent and broken. Tenders for beautifying the city have not followed basic guidelines. Buildings have been demolished and trees arbitrarily cut. Goans are now beginning to agitate

Like all Indian government fantasies, this too has a dubious financial angle. Parrikar can afford the luxury of spending Rs 1 crore everyday, Rs 150 crore in the next five months and Rs 350 crore over the next two years. Opposition parties are now complaining to the Election Commission (ec) that the model code of conduct is being violated. ngos in Goa too are raising the flag about the blatant disregard for rules and the environmental damage that is likely to ensue. But Parrikar is undeterred. He has had his eyes set on the controversial project ever since the government of India confirmed that Goa would be the permanent film festival venue.

Parrikar entrusted the task of building the infrastructure to the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (gsidc) headed by him but little moved for over seven months. Strangely, full-scale work for building the infrastructure commenced only in mid-March and Parrikar, in the words of an insider, ran amok. One day before Parliament was dissolved on February 6, the Goa government issued a notice in local newspapers. The notice was described as an ‘expression of interest for development of entertainment facility including multiplexes for the permanent venue of international film festival of India’. Strangely again, the government did not call for a full-fledged tender-oriented process to decide on who would build the multiplexes. “Some of the tenders and work orders were issued two months ago. We’re still issuing some of them. The work on the multiplexes was assigned through expression of interest, not tenders,” Rajib Sen, gsidc managing director, admitted.

Ask no Questions
Tenders, in fact, are being issued now at break-neck speed and with scant regard for procedures. There is no process of consultation with the residents of Panaji. When ngos like the Nitol Jinn Trust (njt) and the People’s Movement for Civic Action (pmca) protested and asked the government to take the people into confidence, they were rebuffed. “I will not share information with you. What can you do?” Parrikar apparently told them. This from a chief minister who went to town when his government legislated the state’s Right to Information Act.

“The issue here is not whether the film festival should be held in Goa or not. The issues here are lack of transparency and planning. We want to know whether the government is following the law. We want to know whether the haste to put up the infrastructure will cause irreversible damage to our city,” says Patricia Pinto, municipal councillor of Campal, Panaji.
Why is Parrikar reluctant to part with information? Why too is the ec not taking note of projects worth crores being commissioned after the code of conduct has come into place? More importantly, why did the bjp government in Goa wait till the elections were announced to commence work?

Bend it Like Parrikar
Parrikar’s attempts at keeping information under wraps has only led to motives being imputed. There are reasons why the chief minister is being guarded. A group of architects who are closely associated with the project told Tehelka that some tenders were issued before the plans were ready. For instance, the tenders for ‘improvement and beautification at Donapaula Jetty to Miramar Circle inclusive of beautifying the promenade in this stretch’ and ‘improvement and upgradation of the road from Betim ferry to Patto ridge bus stand circle’ were floated by the gsidc on December 29, 2003 and opened on January 15, 2004. But the plans for these projects were placed before the standing committee of the corporation of the city of Panaji only on Febraury 2, 2004. According to government rules, any infrastructure development project or intervention in the city must first be approved by the corporation and the Panjim Development Authority before it is forwarded to the gsidc (See graphic).

Never Mind the Environment
Tehelka has in its possession the plan for the film festival complex and details about the various projects to “beautify” Panaji. The cost has been nominally fixed at Rs 50 crore. The sum was supposed to have been spent over nine months but four months have just been washed away by the high tide of inaction. The beautification includes improved parking facilities, jogging tracks, landscaped waterfronts along the Mandovi River, a footpath along the river, toilet facilities, a new bridge in place of Patto Bridge to ease traffic to and from Panjim, subways for pedestrians and expansion of the road to make way for a four-lane boulevard. Cutting of trees is to be avoided wherever and whenever possible, but the widening of roads “requires acquisition of land and cutting of trees”. The government’s plans also call for the beautification of the seafront “by providing a landscaped promenade all along with beautiful, illuminated walkways”.

But here again, it is the fine print that is worrying. The brief is that “water should lap the road” along the riverfront and seafront promenades and for this, major dredging of river Mandovi is being carried out. The government is now trying to pass this off as ‘desilting’.

“Basically, what we’re doing is desilting and there’s no environmental impact of that as such,” says Sen. But that is far from the truth.

Any construction activity on the riverfront or seafront requires clearance from the Goa Coastal Regulatory Zone Management Authority. The tender that was floated by the gsidc clearly mentioned the activity along the riverfront as follows: “River dredging work on the Panjim bank of the River Mandovi from Patto Bridge upto Miramar and dredging sand bars at the mouth of the River Chapora in Goa.” The government wants this work to be undertaken at the cost of Rs 6 crore. The fact is that no mention is made of ‘desilting’.

Technically, under government of India laws, no construction work can commence at the waterfront without the submission of the environment impact assessment study. The state government has overlooked this aspect. Parrikar has justified the dredging on Mandovi River as a ‘desilting’ exercise. But the Goa Action Group (gag), a conglomorate of ngos, says that whether it’s dredging, desilting or dumping of mud into the river along Patto Bridge, it would still require clearances from different government agencies.

The gag alleges that Parrikar is trying to hoodwink people by claiming that the government has ordered desilting of river Mandovi because sewage from the Panjim city has blocked the sewage line dumping effluents into the river. In fact, the controversy over whether it is dredging or desilting forced the government to ask the National Institute of Oceanography
(nio) to undertake an environment impact assessment study.

Despite the nio’s official statement that it will take a month to make an assessment, the dredging on the Mandovi continues. In the process, the government is only endangering the future of the city and its residents by deliberately ignoring the mandatory environment safety approvals.

Nandkumar Kamat, a renowned Goan ecologist, says, “There’s a lot of flooding in the interior areas of Panjim that is yet to be addressed by the government. All rivers change their courses unpredictably over a period of time. We don’t know when and how the Mandovi would do that. So it is dangerous to disturb the river bed.”

The Tiswadi island, on which the city of Panaji is located, has its own unique ecosystem. Water seeks its own level and a change in one area is transmitted by tide to another. A decade ago, two bridges built across the Mandovi resulted in the alteration of the riverbank across Panjim, along the Reis Magos coastline. “A strip of the beach was submerged after the construction of the two bridges. And now, to prevent the land from caving in, they have dumped concrete blocks along the bank,” says the owner of a marine salvaging firm.

A letter written by Claude Alvares, founder of the Goa Foundation, to the chairman of the authority, DS Negi, on April 13 is also revealing. “At the last meeting of the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority, we were asked to approve (though it was not on the agenda) a proposal of the Goa government for development along the Mandovi river...We cleared all those sections of the proposed development (that) did not involve any work within the river. Sections that proposed development work within the river were held over for an environment impact assessment to be submitted to the authority by the nio...I was flabbergasted to discover a huge excavation of the riverbed opposite Neelam Restaurant. Two excavators were in fact within the riverbed dredging the area. They were doing this indiscriminately...Further up, by the side of the existing Patto Bridge, I found that extensive dumping of mud within the riverine area had been carried out. When approving this section, we had clearly stipulated that we were approving it because it did not require any dumping or work within the river...The excavation of the river bed, particularly in that part of the river’s estuary, is indeed a gross coastal regulatory zone (crz) violation and so is the dumping of the mud to reclaim portions of the river adjoining the bridge...The activity of dredging is bound to affect the ecology and stability of the river. We are quite aware that minor intrusions in the past have had negative impacts on the estuary closer to the sea...I am extremely distressed to discover that the permission given by the authority has been misused in this manner...The Supreme Court of India has given clear directions that the crz notification should not be violated. The authority must, therefore, come down hard on such violators.”

In this case, the violator is clear. It is the Parrikar-led bjp government in Goa.

The reclamation of the river is in full steam to build a new alternate Patto Bridge. Mud has been heaped along the riverbank for the expansion of the road to make a four-lane boulevard along the film festival site. The gsidc claims that this is just an embankment for driving piles for the four-lane stilt bridge and would be removed once the bridge is built.

Incidentally, the tender advertised by the government on March 23 for the “design and construction of the new bridge at Patto in Panaji including approach roads” is for Rs 10 crore. Since the tender was advertised at the time the model code of conduct was enforced by the ec, it was a clear violation of guidelines.

I am the Law
Perhaps aware that it would be violating law after law, the government foresaw resistance from various quarters and issued an ordinance as a safeguard. The Goa (Issue of Single Point Clearance for International Film Festival) Ordinance, 2004, promulgated in early April, gives the government the “powers to change the zone of any area for the purpose of implementation of various projects connected to International Film Festival of India which otherwise is vested in the Planning and Development Authority or Department of Town and Country Planning Act 1975.” Under this Ordinance, the government will have the “power to inspect, visit, review and monitor any project and its implementation, execution, operation, and management through its official or officials and the persons in charge of project shall be bound to give full cooperation.”

This single window clearance enables the government to ride roughshod over all legitimate concerns of the people of Panaji. It allows the gsidc to bypass all legal and mandatory procedures. Obviously, the haste to approve massive infrastructure plans without public scrutiny has led to questions being asked about how the government is spending the money. Incidentally, the state annual budget for this year shows only a Rs 5-crore allocation for iffi infrastructure. But rules obviously don’t matter. Take this, for example. The Central Public Works Department manual clearly states that for major works, especially those estimated to cost more than Rs 5 crore, tenders should be invited by following the two-cover system, the technical bid cover and the financial bid cover. The price-bid cover of only those bidders will be opened and compared, who have been pre-qualified after opening up the technical bid. The gsidc on 29th March published a tender notice inviting bids only in one cover, where both the technical information and price quotations were to be enclosed. “I have never seen such a flagrant violation of government guidelines by a public sector corporation especially when the chief minister himself is the chairman of that corporation,” says Aravind Bhatikar, who retired as the chairman of Mormugao Port Trust in 1996.

The njt, that Bhatikar heads, alleges that the government has subverted the tendering process. The njt, along with other ngos like pmca, Goa Desk and Bailancho Saad plan to launch a vigorous people’s movement against the waste of public money under the guise of iffi. In fact, a public interest litigation (pil) is being drafted, accusing the government of having committed public money under a cloud of secrecy.

Multiplexes, Not Development
A controversy is also brewing over the planning of the iffi infrastructure itself. “More than Rs 50 crore will be spent on cinema-viewing facilities in a city which has a population of less than a lakh. The facilities are going to be used for 10 days in a year. The government has planned to build a new multiplex, reconstruct a nearly 75-year-old cinema hall, National, for Rs 9.5 crore. It also plans to modify two existing cinema halls, Ashok and Samrat, at a price tag of Rs 7 crore and build a temporary festival theatre to be pulled down after two years for Rs 20 crore. “This criminal waste of resources could be redirected to Goa’s primary needs — sewerage systems, drinking water, solid waste management, improvement in roads and electricity, and upgradation of health services,” says Bhatikar.

Build Now, Scrap Later
The jewel in the crown of Parrikar’s dream project is the main festival theatre that is coming up in the area where Panaji’s famed Campal Football Stadium once stood. The stadium, the brainchild of Goa’s first chief minister late Dayanand Bandodkar, has been demolished to make way for the festival theatre. “Next to the Kala academy, there’s an old football stadium where a temporary festival theatre with a capacity of 1,500 is being built. It will be a prefabricated steel and glass structure,” says Sanjit Rodrigues, Panjim municipal commissioner and nodal officer for iffi.

When citizens’ groups protested the demolition of the football stadium, Parrikar assured them that this Rs 20-crore festival theatre would be “temporary” and that after two years the football stadium would be rebuilt.

The chief minister’s promise is being questioned because the tender issued for this project stated clearly that the work involved “reinforced concrete, structural steel, civil and architectural works …”

Parrikar has gone on record saying that 90 percent of the material used for building this temporary structure can be used later while building a permanent structure.

“Technically, what Parrikar says is feasibile. Of course, it can be dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere,” says Bruno Dias Souza, former director of the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. “But then there must be an overall plan in which this dismantled structure could again be reassembled. The problem is that we only know that the temporary structure will cost Rs 20 crore. But in reality it will cost more because of its re-usability. It is like buying a Maruti 800 and then trying to retro-fit it. So the cost incurred is not only in buying the car but also in redesigning it. And here the government is not telling people how much more it will cost,” says Souza.

According to Rodrigues, the government of India has designated Goa as one of the five convention centre destinations in the country. When the convention centre comes up, this temporary theatre is supposed to be fitted in at that location as a multi-purpose auditorium. But when is the convention centre going to come up? “That is not certain right now,” Rodrigues says.

The convention centre in Goa has been officially projected by the gsidc as a Rs 1,500-crore project. In any case it can’t come up in the next two years and Rodrigues says that the temporary structure “can’t last more than two years”. So if Goa is to be the permanent venue for iffi and if the convention centre does not come up in the next two years, will the government dismantle the proposed “temporary festival theatre” and rebuild another temporary venue for Rs 20 crore at some other site?

In the name of tourism
Worse is the state’s attempt to link the film festival with tourism. “We will get more infrastructure in the form of convention halls and theatres and this will generate interest throughout the year. The government wants to attract big meetings, seminars and conventions in Goa and pack its tourist calendar,” says state tourism secretary Suryanaryanan.

The government’s strategy seems to be to capture upmarket tourism. But it is misplaced because, as the government itself admits, “only backpackers are coming to Goa”. According to Suryanarayan, “slowly with the iffi, where over 1,000 top vips and approximately 10,000 people will come to watch the movies, interest will be generated”.

But citizens’ groups have other concerns on these grandiose plans to boost tourism. “A representative of the Cannes film festival organising committee suggested that Goa required a partying atmosphere and floating casinos. She said that it needed to be a ‘fun place’ for the festival to be successful. We are opposed to that kind of attitude,” says Martins of Bailancho Saad. “Alcoholism and prostitution are a part of the casino culture which the government is trying to promote through iffi. We consider that a threat,” says Martins.

Clearly, the government’s strategy is based on assumptions and not hardboiled thinking. The assumption is that staging the iffi will bring big spenders to Goa and “slowly the income can be doubled and tripled in three to four years in the form of high taxes on high spenders”. Goa generates Rs 500 crore from tourism — one third of its gdp. And instead of improving its services infrastructure — that might actually attract more tourists — it is spending Rs 350 crore over two years on beautifying Panaji and building eight large cinema viewing facilities where the existing three dilapidated theatres play mostly soft porn movies.

“In my opinion, the iffi is going to be a non-event since it is not expected to be a hi-fi glittering event like Cannes. The government is misleading the people by creating hype. The festival in Delhi did not attract more than 20-30 foreign delegates. The chief minister has publicly announced that 1,500 foreign delegates would attend the iffi. All this is nothing but grandstanding. The manner in which the projects for the iffi have been conceived and the manner in which it is being executed, it is widely seen as an unabashed attempt at collecting funds for the bjp,” Bhatikar says.

Suryanarayan, however, is convinced that tourism will get a 40 percent fillip. “We can go for two to three hours of cultural shows which can be priced and packaged with the hotels and tour operators so that sound and light shows can be held throughout the year like in Bangkok and Hongkong.” Long running shows in theatres is what the government thinks will bring in droves of tourists. There were 17 lakh domestic tourists in the last season and 130 charter flights from Russia that disgorged tourists onto the beach paradise. According to the tourism secretary, tourists are complaining that “there are no places left where they can spend a good amount of money”. He is also sure that the vips will turn up. His argument: “Cannes did not happen in a year. It took decades. So, we have to make it happen with proper advertisements and publicity here and abroad.”

But Who’s Paying?
What is worrying the Goans is whether they will they will have to pay for Parrikar’s Rs 350-crore fantasy. The chief minister has gone on record having said that he would try and get Rs 50 crore from the Centre. But where will the remaining Rs 300 crore come from? “That is not decided yet. The Centre will probably pay a part of it, but how much and in what form, I don’t know,” says Sen, adding, “The film festival per se will not bring the money back. But it will have huge spin-off effects as far as high-end tourism is concerned. We are confident of the chain effect of the festival to recover the money spent.”

But as Souza (see column) points out, the plans for the film festival complex cannot exist in isolation. They have to be in context with plans for the city. That’s exactly what the government has not done. Souza says any plan that is piecemeal could have disastrous consequences for the city of the size of Panjim. But Sen affirms the piecemeal nature of gsidc’s plans saying they are moving on a case-to-case basis.

It is the Parrikar government’s fantasy after all. So what if this means disregarding environmental concerns, building laws and fundamental precepts of urban design. In a few days, a ministerial delegation headed by Goa’s Power Minister Digambar Kamat will go to Cannes. The effort to bring Cannes to Goa is on track. The bjp’s dream project is on a roll.

With inputs from Sanjukta Sharma and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar

The Bank of Rajasthan Scam

2007-03-06T19:44:00.001+05:30

Can’t bank on the finance ministers

Tehelka
March 27, 2004

Bank of Rajasthan’s management manipulates hard-earned small savings that constitute the backbone of the economy as successive finance ministers, the RBI and other regulatory agencies look the other way, reports VK Shashikumar

The Bank of Rajasthan is the state’s oldest private sector bank
Between 1996-98, the Bangurs of Kolkata acquired control of the bank.
According to a CBI report, part-time chairman and the promoter of the bank, Keshav Bangur, defrauded the bank of Rs 300 crore. He was arrested and released on bail few months ago
Despite their rivalry, Keshav Bangur invited Praveen Kumar Tayal to be the bank’s joint promoter in 1998
Tayal who began a small hosiery business in Karnal 20 years ago now heads the Tayal Group of Companies with a
published annual turnover of Rs 2,500 crore
The Central Economic Intelligence Bureau has severely indicted Tayal for transferring money to various fictitious
companies which then bought BOR shares that gave proxies in favour of Tayal
This way, Tayal managed to acquire control of BOR. Despite Tayal’s dubious track record the RBI approved his ascension as the new promoter of BOR
In May 2002, Tayal was arrested and later released on bail
Bank unions and associations had consistently alerted the ministry of finance and the Reserve Bank of India about the affairs of the bank. The RBI admitted that the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau had misgivings about Tayal’s
antecedents
Many BJP MPs including Giridhari Lal Bhargava and BP Singhal raised the matter with the government. The former wrote to minister of state for finance, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil and later to the then CBI director, PC Sharma. The RBI glossed over the irregularities being committed by the bank management
The banking trade unions affiliated to the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh approached the finance minister. Delegations met both Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh. Both marked the evidence to RBI for necessary action. But there were no investigations to get to the bottom of things

A multi-crore bank scam has tumbled out of the BJP-led NDA’s ‘India Shining’ cupboard. Both finance ministers of the NDA government, Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, repeatedly took cognisance of the misuse of public funds of the Bank of Rajasthan (BOR) but failed to initiate follow-up action. Over the past five years, the ministry of finance just marked the evidence of bungling in BOR to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which in turn, showed remarkable slackness in taking appropriate action.

As public deposits worth hundreds of crores with the Bank of Rajasthan were being misused, the finance ministry contented itself by passing on the files to the RBI, which in turn, sat it out while the looting went on.

The man behind the scam is Praveen Kumar Tayal and he is now out on bail having been arrested in May 2003 by a police team from Kota on the basis of a criminal complaint filed by Overseas Capital Limited, a financial company.

Established in 1943, the state’s oldest private sector bank began getting enmeshed in controversies in the 1990s. At the time, BOR promoter Keshav Bangur asked Tayal to join him as a joint-promoter of the bank in 1998 when the bank was in the red. In January 2003, however, based on a writ petition filed by bank employees, Bangur was arrested for defrauding BOR of Rs 300 crore. The case is still being heard in the Rajasthan High Court and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is yet to submit its final report. In its interim report, the CBI has shown the close relationship between the two.

The report says that Bangur had enabled Tayal to take a loan of Rs 25 crore from the BOR. Tayal used Rs 7.50 crore from this to buy BOR shares and within few months, Tayal had ousted Bangur and taken control of the bank. He was appointed non-executive chairman of the bank.

This was a phenomenal achievement for a man who was now the owner of the Tayal Group of Companies with a published turnover of Rs 2,500 but who was, twenty years ago struggling with a capital of just Rs 50,000.

This story, however, goes deeper to show the callous and cavalier functioning of India’s investigative and regulatory agencies.

At the time, the finance ministry’s Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEBI), located within the department of revenue, ministry of finance, found prima facie evidence of dubious transfers from the Tayal Group of Companies to various fictitious companies that were owned by Tayal himself.

According to CEIB, Rs 300 crore were transferred to Shree Krishan Polyster Ltd, Shree Krishna Petroyarns Ltd, Shree Krishna Texport Industries Ltd and Shree Krishna Knitwear. This amount was raised by “siphoning-off funds from banks, financial institutions and public money raised through public issues”.

The funds transferred to these companies were then lent to other fraudulent firms that existed only on paper. According to CEIB, Rs 210 crore was transferred in this manner. The intent of this second transfer was to enable these firms to purchase shares of BOR. These firms then gave proxies in favour of Tayal. In this manipulative and strategic manner - misusing public funds - Tayal ousted another white-collar criminal from the post of part-time chairmanship of BOR. But the Tayal group of companies in a faxed statement to Tehelka said that “all shares (of BOR) were purchased out of free reserves and not from borrowings of any banks or institutions at all.”

There were other problems as well. Under normal circumstances, the RBI receives applications for Board level appointments recommended by the concerned bank’s board of directors and then checks the antecedents of the appointee. The RBI had stipulated in its letters to the BOR that as part of the procedure to appoint Tayal as the new promoter of BOR he would have to deposit at least Rs 20 crore in an Escrow Account (special security deposit to be used only with RBI approval). While doing this, he had to disclose the source of the funds. The RBI also stipulated that the Escrow Account could be withdrawn only with its approval in writing. The other condition laid down by the RBI was as follows: “The shares of the Tayal family and his associates/ group concerns in your Bank (BOR — existing and proposed acquisition) should not be alienated for a period of five year without the approval of RBI to ensure continued commitment of this group in improving the bank.”

Tayal, accordingly should have kept the RBI informed regarding the compliance with the above requirements. But Tayal ignored the RBI strictures regarding the deposit of Rs 20 crore in BOR. Surprisingly, the RBI did not show any interest in finding out the source of the Rs 20 crore. The source of funds was Krishna Texport Industries Ltd, a Tayal-owned company. However, according to All India Bank of Rajasthan Officers’ Association the RBI has failed to take note of the fact that contrary to its stipulations, the interest accruing from the deposit is being transferred to the personal account of Tayal every quarter.

This is a blatant violation of the RBI norms. Further, the Escrow Account of Rs 20 crores was utilised for issuance of benami shares in rights issue of the bank. But the Tayal group of companies say that they have fulfilled all the RBI conditionalities. “As per pre condition of RBI, promoters put in Rs 20 croere in the Escrow account so that any shortfall in the Rights issue can be taken care of and the interest was paid with the prior permission of RBI.”

Clearly, if Tayal has not informed the RBI in writing about its compliance of the stipulations, then the RBI’s interest in renewing the position of Tayal as its part-time chairman is extraordinary and suspect. On the flip side, if the RBI is fully aware of Tayal’s actions, then it has wilfully breached its own well-established procedures.

The ministry of finance, however, does acknowledge that there are “complaints about irregularities committed by Tayal through BOR.” The ministry’s department of economic affairs, banking division, in a faxed statement to Tehelka stated the following: “The allegations related to acquisition of shares of the Bank by the Tayal group by having benami transactions, delay in remittance of allotment money by the Tayal group, as a result of which the bank lost an amount of Rs 28.80 lakhs towards interest, irregularities in the issue of right shares, forged proxies and carrying out transactions using forged stock invest.”

Curiously, apart from mentioning the loss of Rs 28.80 lakhs the ministry is silent on the total volume of the scam with regard to “irregularities in the issue of rights shares, forged proxies and carrying out transactions using forged stock invest.” What is more astounding is the ministry’s refusal to acknowledge that if Tayal’s misuse of the bank is not stopped, then millions of depositors with small savings might suffer grieviously.

BOR has millions of depositors banking with them in their over 350 branches. Sources in the bank say that the “intrinsic strength of the bank is being depleted by the manner in which the management is running the bank. They make advances to their group companies. They have securities which carry a high rate of interest which they sell in the market and buy securities that have low interest rates. It is through these kind of treasury operations that the Tayal group earns profits through the bank,” bank officers who wish to remain anonymous told Tehelka.

BOR’s employees have also complained about Tayal’s harassment of those who have stood up against him. They have serious complaints about his terror tactics like the filing of a defamation suit in the Rajasthan High Court which will be heard on April 5. But Sanjay Kumar Tayal, one of the board of directors of BOR and younger brother of P.K. Tayal told Tehelka that “the management treats its employees as its family members. It is only against some ex-employees who are trying to malign the image of the bank.”
On June 5, 2002, BJP MP BP Singhal alerted the then CBI chief PC Sharma and drew his attention to the misdemeanours of Tayal and Bangur. In a letter he said the “loot that went on in the Bank of Rajasthan during the tenure of previous promoter Bangur, against whom limited investigations had been launched by the CBI on the orders of the high court…and the successor promoter PK Tayal has been showing signs of highly suspicious transactions giving an impression that...the loot is continuing”. (See letter)

To have allowed a man with such a past to become the new promoter of BOR is a staggering oversight on the part of the Reserve Bank of India. While the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) refused a loan to Tayal’s company on the grounds of his past record in 2001, the RBI did not even review its decision.

The IDBI in a letter on April 9, 2001 to one of the Tayal group of companies, refused to sanction its application for a term loan of Rs 500 million and a direct subscription to equity of Rs 300 million for part financing its expansion scheme.

The letter categorically stated that “during the process of due diligence, we learnt that certain government agencies have initiated or propose to initiate action for violation of various statutes by the company and its directors…Under the circumstances, the IDBI would not be in a position to consider financial assistance to the company at this state. It has, therefore, been decided that the company’s application for financial assistance might be treated as closed.”

If IDBI could decide that it was not prudent to support Tayal’s business plans because of his dubious nature of business, what prompted the RBI to grant him approval to gain control over a bank whose deposits mostly comprised small savings?

Evidently, this was a matter of concern to the present chief minister of Rajasthan Vijayaraje Scindia. When she was the Union minister of state, independent charge, small scale industries, she directed her private secretary to write to Yashwant’s Sinha’s private secretary directing him to apprise the then finance minister.

On April 12, 2002, the then deputy governor of RBI GP Muniappan also wrote to secretary, economic affairs, ministry of finance CM Vasudev, admitting that the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB), department of revenue, ministry of finance had cast aspersions on RBI’s approval of Bangur’s ouster by Tayal.

One month later, the then finance minister Yashwant Sinha, through his secretary Deepak Kumar, requested the RBI to hear out the representatives of the bank officers’ union of BOR. Tehelka has a copy of the letter which says, “As the allegations are very serious in nature, as desired by the finance minister, it is requested that the complaints of the representatives of the National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) be invited be heard for further necessary action.”

Muniappan’s wrote to Vasudev asking for “the advice of the ministry of finance whether RBI can deal with application for renewal of Tayal’s chairmanship as per normal procedures.”

The very fact that Muniappan wrote this completely unnecessary letter shows that there were problems about dealing with Tayal.

Paradoxically, Bank officers’ associations and unions consistently conveyed Tayal’s non-compliance of RBI stipulations to the former finance minister Yashwant Sinha and then to current finance minister Jaswant Singh. But they did not initiate any effective action.

The All India Bank of Rajasthan Officers Association and National Organisation of Bank Officers have, over the last five years, also apprised the RBI about Tayal’s misuse of BOR for personal pecuniary gains. However, neither the former RBI governor Bimal Jalan, nor the present incumbent Dr YK Reddy ordered a comprehensive investigation into the affairs of BOR.

A confidential note issued by the RBI regarding the role of directors and part-time chairmen of private banks clearly states that “part-time chairman as well as directors should distance themselves from activities which are inconsistent with their role…the objective in allowing the appointment of part-time non-executive chairman in a banking company is to enable it to have the benefit of association of eminent persons of valued experience.”

Tayal’s record is certainly not “eminent”. Besides he has wilfully ignored the RBI’s directive that there should be an “arm’s length” relationship organisationally and operationally between the Bank and its promoter. In this case, the promoter is Tayal. By ignoring its own directives, the RBI is in the breach of committing an oversight that could have serious consequences for the banking sector.

A confidential letter dated November 23, 2002, despatched by a bank officers’ association, affiliated to Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, to the former RBI governor, Bimal Jalan highlighted the irregularities committed by the management of the BOR.

The letter highlight incredibly dubious incidents such as him shifting the regional office of the bank in Mumbai from Grant Road Mumbai to his own premises at Raghuvanshi Mills Compound, Lower Parel Mumbai immediately after his induction on the Board.

Using public deposits, Tayal made sure the bank acquired on lease basis for the purpose of a guest house. He got the house from his brother-in-law’s son. He acquired a second house as well from the same person.

Also, a flat in Church Gate, Mumbai belonging to Saurabh Tayal, son of Tayal, was hired by the bank at a monthly rent of Rs 1.50 lakh per month.

Tayal acquired 90 lakh shares in a completely illegal manner by making a payment of Rs 2 per share instead of Rs 10 per share.

On January 29, 2004, a delegation of bank officers’ affiliated to the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh met finance minister Jaswant Singh. This was the second time that the ministry of finance was apprised of the misdemeanours of Tayal. Earlier in April 2002 a senior official of BOR’s bank officers’ union and the BJP MP from Ajmer Rasa Singh Rawat had met the finance minister at the time, Yashwant Sinha.

In fact, a month after this meeting, another BJP MP from Jaipur, Girdhari Lal Bhargava, wrote to the minister of state for finance, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil highlighting the misuse of BOR’s funds. “I have been informed that misuse and siphoning of funds have started at mass level by the promoter PK Tayal. The trade unions working in the Bank asked him to stop such practices. The detailed memorandum is already submitted to you in this regard by me earlier.”

The delegation requested Singh to initiate an investigation of the bank’s functioning. The request to the finance minister was short and crisp: “We request you to kindly investigate the affairs of this bank under section 36D(IV) of the Banking Regulations Act 1949 without delay and take such other steps as may be necessary in helping improvement in the position of this bank.”

A similar request was also made during Yashwant Sinha’s tenure as the finance minister. “The minister (Singh) assured us that he will direct the finance secretary to take up the matter with the Reserve Bank of India,” sources in BOR told Tehelka. The delegation also met NS Sisodia, secretary, financial sector, ministry of finance.

However, Sisodia says that he “cannot recall meeting any delegation of bank officers from the Bank of Rajasthan”. What the ministry, however, admits is that

“a representation was received from one Shri Ram Prasad Somani of Bhilwara, a shareholder of the Bank of Rajasthan in September 2003. In his complaint Shri Somani had levelled allegations about the connivance of the officers of the Reserve Bank of India in helping Shri PK Tayal in the malfunctioning of the affairs of the Bank of Rajasthan.”

The government’s official stance is preposterous because it has ignored numerous representations and correspondence sent to the ministry of finance by various trade unions. Surprisingly, the ministry has also failed to acknowledge that BJP MPs from Rajasthan demanded an investigation into the affairs of BOR. Despite the levelling of serious white collar offences against the management of BOR the ministry has made light of the allegations.

“The Bank of Rajasthan is a private bank and, therefore, does not come under the purview of the ministry of finance. Hundreds of complainants come to the ministry and the ministry directs the complaints to the concerned agencies. In case of private banks, it is the Reserve Bank of India that is charged with the responsibilities of inspecting and monitoring their functioning,” Sisodia told Tehelka.

Technically, it is true that the ministry of finance has no supervisory control over the private banks. But there is no doubt that the ministry of finance does have powers to intervene in cases where promoters of a private bank are misusing public deposits.

The April 2002 letter of the then deputy governor GP Muniappan’s letter to CM Vasudev, secretary economic affairs, ministry of finance is an eloquent
testimony of the ministry’s powers. “If, however, for whatever reason, the Government advises the RBI that Tayal’s chairmanship should not be renewed, then RBI would follow Government’s advice in the matter,” Muniappan wrote.

It is inexplicaable that while the RBI and Ministry of Finance exchange notes on whether to extend Tayal’s chairmanship, they did not think it fit to debate whether it was ethical to allow Tayal to be the promoter of the bank. This lapse is grave in the context of the fact the RBI had informed the ministry that “in the matter of acquisition of shares of Bank of Rajasthan by Tayal group, SEBI had observed violation of its Regulations 3(4) and 7 and the same was referred for adjudication.”

If there is anything to prove that the white-collar criminals can commit crime and then throw crumbs at the regulators to get away, then there could not be a better illustration than the ministry of finance’s lame response: “The adjudication proceedings regarding the violation of Regulation 3(4) were completed and a penalty of Rs 1 lakh was imposed by SEBI on the acquirer, which the acquirer paid.” So all that Tayal had to shell out for strategically manipulating to gain control of the BOR’s crores of public fund was a mere penalty of Rs 1 lakh!

And here is the shocking part. For Tayal group of companies who claim a turnover of Rs 2500 crores a penalty of Rs 1 lakh enabled them to acquire control of the bank. The RBI gave its stamp of approval.

Yet, the fact remains that serious offences committed by Tayal are still under investigation. So even as the investigations drag Tayal continues to rampantly misuse the public funds of BOR.

At least the ministry of finance admits that investigations against are not complete: “The adjudication proceedings regarding the violation of Regulation 7 are still in progress by SEBI. Apart from SEBI, the role of Shri Tayal in the malfunctioning of the BOR is also being enquired into by various other agencies like RBI, CBI etc.”

Needless to say that public deposits (small hard earned savings) constitute the lifeblood of banking industry. These deposits are the backbone of the Indian economy. Therefore, it is highly inappropriate for the ministry of finance to feign ignorance about the misappropriation of funds in BOR.
BJP MP BP Singhal voiced the apprehension of the depositors fittingly in his letter to the then CBI director, PC Sharma: “With the scams in the Bank, we, the members of the public, feel extremely uncomfortable and apprehensive as to where we should deposit our money. The CBI, thus, has a very very decisive role to play…and take effective action by way of arrests and chargesheets...You thus have a very onerous duty in the interest of the people.”

Five years have lapsed and the country is on the verge of electing a new government. The least Jaswant Singh can do is to acknowledge that it’s about time that the government orders a comprehensive investigation of the affairs of Bank of Rajasthan.

The Farmer isn’t Feeling Good

2007-03-06T19:30:00.000+05:30

You are Right, Mr. Advani, The Farmer isn’t Feeling Good

Tehelka
February 28, 2004

Meeting a group of farmers last week, the Deputy Prime Minister said the rural sector had reason not to feel good. Tehelka correspondents fanned out to figure the truth about the condition of our farmers. A report from India’s crisis-ridden rural heartlands put together by VK Shashikumar

To the passing eye, Harikishenpura in Bhatinda is like any other Punjab village. But linger a moment and you will find something unsettling here, something almost surreal. And soon enough you know why. The village of 125 families has put itself up for sale. “We have asked Raja sahib (referring to chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh) to buy whatever remains of our village,” says farmer Jarnail Singh, defeat and resignation writ on his face.

The farmers of Harikishenpura once owned 1,170 acres of fertile agricultural land; they are now saddled with just 500 acres of broken, fallow earth. Banks and moneylenders have confiscated the rest.

“The banks, cooperative societies and other lending agencies would come to our doorsteps and cajole us to take loans. Everything was there for the asking when the times were good. Now they only come to hound us,” says Roop Singh who owes the State Bank of Patiala Rs 4,00,000; he does not know how he will pay that back.

Their death knell was sounded fourteen years ago when they took to cotton as their primary crop. The first two years fetched them bumper dividends producing as much as 1,000 kg per acre. However, the initial euphoria died down when bollworm pests began destroying the crop year after year.

“Initially we need just three or four sprays of pesticide to kill the insect, but gradually the number of sprays increased and now even 30 sprays are not enough to kill the insect,” says Lal Singh the nambardar (village record keeper) of Harkishenpura.

Today the productivity per acre has reduced by more than 60 percent and the farmer considers himself lucky if his field yields 350 to 400 kgs of cotton per acre. With little productivity and burgeoning costs of pesticides, the farmers resorted to loans. Now, they stand indebted for life; so indebted they have had to resort to the bizarre remedies like putting their village up for sale.

Harkishenpura’s collective debt stands at over Rs 4 crores. The village panchayat is serious about selling the village. The villagers in one of India’s richest agrarian states, meanwhile, wait to live, die or become insane. More than 20 farmers from Harikishenpura travel to nearby towns, Rampura and Balawali. They work as daily labourers in the vegetable markets and bring home around Rs 60 every day. The once prosperous cotton farmers of Punjab now struggle to eke out a living for their families and themselves.

A grey shroud has fallen over Punjab’s green revolution. There couldn’t be a more torturous irony than this. The farmers of Punjab who played a stellar role in making India self-sufficient in food grain production now despair for a turnaround. But many have given up already. In the last couple of years eight Harikishenpura farmers have killed themselves, unable to bear their crop failures. Five have gone insane in trying to figure out their reversal of fortunes. The once fertile and prosperous rural outback of Punjab has turned into a remorseless killing field.

“I lost both my brother Shabia Singh and sister-in-law Nazeem Kaur, because they lost all their pride after being under debt for nearly five years and did not know how to return the money,” says Kunda Singh a farmer of the village.

The burden of paying back the Rs 7 lakh loan has now shifted to Kunda who has inherited the four acres of land after his brother death. He, too, has this vacant look in his eyes. Is he thinking about hope or about the future? Maybe, future because ever so often he breaks down and cries the silent the cry. “Even if I sell all of the land the maximum it will fetch me is four lakhs,” he says in a matter-of-fact manner. Its almost like the last line of a suicide.

If such is the shape of the farmer in Punjab, the cradle of the Green Revolution, it’s probably no surprise he is much worse off in other parts of the country. The farmer isn’t feeling good, his India isn’t shining. And that’s bad news for all of us because this remains a country whose majority lives in and off the village.

In India’s north eastern states, however, banks and cooperative societies are wary of giving loans. In Assam the farmers complain of being unable to avail of the facilities provided by government schemes.

Batuwa and Golap Boro, farmers in Sonapur village, barely 25 km from Guwahati are preparing to sow their second crop of the year but do not know where the money to buy the seeds is going to come from. “Whatever rice we produced last year was consumed by the entire family over the past six months. There is no cash in hand for purchasing seeds,” Golap at 50, the elder of the two brothers says.

Hasn’t he heard of governments and banks giving out loans? “Those schemes are all on paper Sir. Despite several attempts for the last so many years, we have not been able to understand the system of getting loans. Every visit to the block office is futile and time consuming,” says Batuwa.

Across the breadth of the gangetic plain farmers share a unique, albeit, tragic kinship. Take, for instance, the 52 farmer families of Paramanandapur village in Orissa’s Bargarh district. They once earned their livelihood from agriculture. The lush green fields have now become dust bowls.

Nothing grows here anymore except for rising gusts of dust storms. Five years ago a severe drought hit this village. Ever since the women, children and men in this nondescript village have lived in hunger and penury.

For five months in a year, after monsoon rains fill up the dry katas (ponds) these villagers cultivate paddy in their small patches of land. “We earn some money but it is difficult to survive in the other seven months of the year,” says Ranjit Bibhar.

Bibhar, like most others, is a marginal subsistence farmer with a small patch of land. Years of unremunerative agriculture have forced many of his fellow farmers to sell their land. “We have become landless wage workers,” says Bibhar. “At least 15 people of our village have migrated to Andhra Pradesh and Raipur, capital of Chhattisgarh, to work in brick kilns as daily wage labourers,” says Dhruba Chechama, another farmer.

Thousands of farmers across the country find themselves helplessly trapped in a downward spiral of mounting debt and diminishing returns. Their quest for survival is swelling the ranks of daily wage workers in the country.

And all this while, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre has covered up the dark truth about the inexorable impoverishment of the Indian farmer; it has lied about the desperate straits he is in. On the Punjab issue, the government officially announced in the Lok Sabha that “an NGO documented alleged cases of suicide by farmers” and then took refuge in technicalities, stating that “the issue is sub judice before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.”

Clearly, ‘all lies on deck’ is the rallying cry of a government hell bent on making India feel good about itself. Take, for instance, another murderous lie: “No report has been received from any state regarding suicides by farmers during July 2002 to June 2003.” This was stated on the floor of the Lok Sabha on July 21, 2003. However, the government’s own records show 191 farmers committed suicide in 2002 in Andhra Pradesh.

In neighbouring Karnataka, 850 farmers have committed suicide in the last 10 months. In Kerala thirteen farmers, mainly from the plantation-rich Wynad district, have committed suicide in the last three years. Most of them had pledged their properties to the local co-operative banks. The recovery procedures from the banks, including confiscation of their houses, led to their suicides.

Paddy fields are dry and uncultivated in most parts of Kerala today. The once famous Palakkad and Kuttanad fields wear a deserted look. Not only labourers and farmers with small holdings, even those with larger acreage are thinking twice before seeding their patches because agriculture has become unproductive and their debts are mounting.

For the rubber farmer in Kerala ,there is a slight recovery in the last year. But he knows very well that the price fell earlier due to entry of foreign rubber into the Indian market due to policy dilution.The increased competition led to the present recovery.`` This can end anyday and I am planning to sell my small estate and set up a shop or something or go to the Gulf’’. says newly wedded Aravindan off Pathanamthitta. Aravindan’s had been a family of traditional rubber farmers.His father had to sell nearly 50 percent of the holding before passing away, and passing the burden down.

This is a far cry from a situation ten years back when most of the `rubber kids’ went to schools and colleges in newly bought Marutis.

The plantation sector, coffee or tea, suffers equally.With the market hit badly, the plantation owners have cut down the wages .Unheard in the history of Kerala.Not resisted by the weak labourers.

Traditional sectors like coir or cashew are merely surviving.The subsidies extended by the Kerala Government make no difference. Globalisation has hit them badly. A few heavyweights survive.

It would be a shock for outsiders, especially Malayalis living outside Kerala without a recent visit home ,to learn that a nut in the market costs Rs 8. Kerala,named after ‘Kera’, or coconut, today is a seller’s market in coconuts.And who are the sellers? From the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.The diseases which have afflicted the coconut trees in the state have made coconuts a dear commodity.Nobody even bothers to climb the trees in many houses to pluck the dirty nuts.The offshoot industries like toddy are doing as badly.

Death is no longer a metaphor in the lush green lands of western UP. It’s a hard and sad reality. It’s been stalking the farmers of one of the most fertile regions in the country. Travelling through the once-prosperous western UP belt – Mathura, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Bulandshahar – you may not get an instant taste of the terrible living conditions. But look deeper and you will find people trapped in poverty and bondage. People do not venture out after dark. As the sun sets, gangs of bandits take over the highways and kuchcha roads. People are being killed for as little as Rs 50.

No major river, except the Yamuna, runs through this region. But despite that, this dustbowl turned into the country’s sugar bowl in the late 1960s. The agricultural pattern of the area changed dramatically with the farmers growing mostly cash crops – sugarcane, potato and vegetables. It brought success and money initially; then cash-cropping boomeranged on them.

Four years ago, a drive through Karnataka’s sugar bowl, Mandya, was a visual treat. Lush green fields of sugarcane, paddy and ragi reflected the resurgence of the farming community. Not any more. Drought has parched this otherwise irrigated land of its water and forced farmers to fall into debt and death traps.

Take the case of Doddabanasvadi, a village about 12 kilometres from Mandya. It has feeder canals from the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) dam for irrigation. But in the last three years, these canals have run dry. A trip to the village poses more questions than offering answers.

All its villagers depend on agriculture for livelihood. But debts and drought have made land owners become landless labourers over years. Sixty per cent of Doddabanasvadi’s villagers are agricultural labourers. Their numbers are rising. It’s soil has lost fertility with extensive use of chemicals, say farmers. Canals going dry has forced farmers to either switch crops or dig borewells. Despair pervades Doddabanasvadi.

Thanks to crop failure with scarce rains in the past three years, the only farmers who manage a good crop are those who can afford to dig borewells. Even here, farmers end up in debt to dig a borewell. Digging borewells and fixing pumpsets has even led to family feuds as the ground water table depletes. The region that earlier never needed ground water finds itself in a water crisis now.

Mandya reported 22 of the over 275 debt-driven farmers’ suicides in the State last year between April and September alone. Consider this: Mallaiah, 50, has a hut and a one-acre plot to call his own. To marry his elder daughter, he took a Rs one lakh loan, and spent Rs 1.35 lakh. This was four years ago. It took them all these years to repay the loan. The income from his last crop was minimal, with the sugarcane crushing factory in Mandya not paying him on time. For the last season’s crop, he borrowed another Rs 10,000. He is planning to take another loan of Rs one lakh for his younger daughter’s marriage. Despair has driven him to alcohol and his wife bears the brunt. He beats her up often after a bout of drinks.

Has the government not helped with loans? “They are lying if they say they help,’’ he says. “Whether he places that flower before God’s picture in the morning or not, he needs that drink,’’ says his wife Sarojamma of her husband’s desperation.

Mandya’s social workers say that online lottery promoted by the State government has been an added bane. The temptation of easy money has made farmers take to gambling and losing their meager earnings. That has only compounded their crisis.

In western UP, farmers not used to poverty do not know how to handle it. Their average incomes are down to Rs 400 a month. But they don’t admit that. They take out their anger and frustration within their domestic walls. Women are actually facing the brunt of it. Unable to cope with the crisis, some of them think of suicide all the time. “There is a crisis in all homes. People are on the verge of breaking down,” says Inderpal Singh, a farmer in Shamli.

All marriages in the area in the past one year have been plain and simple; they can’t afford grand shows. They are so glum, they don’t feel like celebrating anything anyway. “In these conditions, we are only concerned about surviving, nothing else. We haven’t seen days as bad as these,” says Rauf Ahmed, who runs a jaggery plant in Bharaut.

Everyone – the old, the young and children are getting caught in the ripple-effect of the crisis in the countryside. The elderly are getting increasingly worried about the youth. Half-educated and not interested in agriculture, they watch television all day and by night they drink. Then, some of them disappear into the dark. In the morning, people hear about a robbery on the road or a murder near the canal. But no one talks about it.

Rural communities in India are on the verge of collapsing into chaos. If appearances are deceptive, it’s here that one has to look.

Farmers in western UP have also resorted to massive agitations in the last two years. It’s just that Shining India has not heard or seen them. The farmers have staged rallies, blocked roads and faced police bullets to demand better prices for their crops.

This is western UP’s paradox – rich agricultural land, bumper crops but not good enough prices and fewer buyers. The government fixes the price of their crops. They can’t sell it for more than that. In most cases, the rate is too low. And in many cases, they even don’t get that much. Result: unsold crop stands in their fields. They burn it as the season gets over. “Until the farmers get the right to decide the rate they want to sell their crops at, this problem cannot be solved,” says Ishwar Singh of Baghpat. Is someone listening?

Reported by Nitin A Gokhale (Assam), Shobhan Saxena (Uttar Pradesh), Arnab P Dutta (Punjab), M Radhika (Karnataka), TN Gopakumar (Kerala) and Sudarshan Chhotoray (Orissa)

SIN IN PARADISE

2007-03-06T18:59:00.000+05:30

SEX TOURISM EXPOSED

August 14, 2004

Tehelka

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main5.asp?filename=Ne080714Sin_in_Paradise.asp&id=1

Sin in Paradise

A five-month undercover investigation conducted by Tehelka has revealed that hundreds of Europeans — British, Germans, Dutch, French, Swiss and Swedish — visit Goa to seek children for sexual gratification. They come to Goa because it is easy, and cheap, to sexually abuse a child here. On the run after crackdowns on cheap child-sex tourism in Thailand and Sri Lanka, the paedophile bus has rolled into Goa. And turned the picture-postcard tourism destination into an arena of perversity and of horrors. Goa has made an alarming transition from being a laid-back resort to a paedophile’s paradise. And the government, despite knowledge of this debased crime, despite alerts from international agencies, chooses to look the other way. A report by VK Shashikumar

European paedophiles have virtually kick started a cottage industry of child sex abuse in Goa wherein poor parents, an uncaring society, a callous bureaucracy, a corrupt police and an insensitive government look the other way to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children. Goa beckons preferential child sex abusers, otherwise known as paedophiles, who travel in order to sexually abuse children because such crimes are tolerated in India and hardly ever lead to conviction.

One estimate by Child Relief and You (cry) indicates that over 10,000 paedophiles visit Goa every year. Another assessment by Children’s Rights in Goa (crg) says that at any given point there are at least 100 paedophiles on the prowl in Goa. According to field data collected by national and international child rights organisations, a paedophile in Goa sexually exploits at least 20 children during his or her visit.

This exposé is a startling revelation of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s passive connivance in turning Goa into a sex tourism destination. As paedophiles roam the streets of Goa, the state government has looked the other way in its quest for more tourism revenues.

And Parrikar has been sitting tight on an explosive report on child-related sex crimes perpetrated by foreigners since 2001. He has buried the report because he does not want the report to affect the state’s tourism revenues. The latest government statistics show that 3,21,399 foreign tourists visited Goa between April 2003 to March 2004 and the state earned Rs 3,000 crore in foreign exchange.

Goa is a popular destination among Europeans. Of the 1,20,653 foreign tourists that visited Goa by chartered flights last year, the British comprised 78,000, which is almost 65 percent of the total. The Russians were second highest with 18,987, Swedes 7,732, Germans 5,439 and Finns 4,032. According to Goa’s Tourism Minister, Mathany Saldanha, “The government is trying its best to attract high-spending tourists by participating in different marts, organising road shows, etc. abroad”.

In 2001, the uk government commissioned a top-notch former police investigator, Ric Wood, to map the extent of tourism-related paedophilia in Goa. Wood, an expert on obtaining information from witnesses to serious crimes, has worked closely with police in Italy, Ireland, Turkey and India to develop their witness interviewing skills.

Wood regularly visits India to train police officers. He is the international training and development manager of Individual and Organisation Development Assessment (ioda), London. Jeff Wilson, First Secretary, Press and Public Affairs, uk High Commission in New Delhi confirmed that the Wood report has been lying with the Goa government. “We commissioned a report for the office of the Chief Minister of Goa when they requested our assistance to look into the problem of paedophilia. As this issue is of real concern to the British government we were of course pleased to do so. The report helped to identify the nature of the threat to the children of the area, and looked at ways of tackling these issues. The report is now with the chief minister’s office, and is not in the pubic domain. For details of it, you would have to speak to them. We remain prepared to engage in future cooperation on action against paedophilia with the Indian authorities as appropriate,” Wilson said.

The uk government has been working on countering sexual abuse of children by British nationals in other countries. “The government is committed to tackling the problem of paedophilia. In India, we arranged the report for the government of Goa. Ultimately, it is for the authorities in India to tackle criminal problems in India,” Wilson told Tehelka.

This exposé reveals Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s connivance in turning Goa into a sex tourism destination. He has been sitting tight on an explosive international report on child related sex crimes in the state
Over a two-week period in October 2001, Wood compiled 37 case histories showing the extent of paedophilia. Nearly half of these cases related to British men. The Wood report categorically states that “it must also be noted the comparative ease with which the information was gained. It is implied that had this information been actively pursued, by a team of trained investigators, considerably more cases would have been established.”

The report suggests that it is virtually impossible to quantify how many paedophiles visit Goa every year. Also, the sheer number of cases that were unearthed in just a two-week probe reveals that Goa attracts high preferential paedophilia traffic. That means that pederasts travel to Goa for the specific purpose of exploiting children sexually. According to Wood, the paedophiles, specially British paedophiles, target boys “between the ages of 8 and 13.”

The report goes on to reveal that “it is apparent that there are large numbers of children entering Goa from other states. The nomadic Lamani tribe from Karnataka has a large floating population which enters Goa during the tourist season. Numbers vary but the tourist industry generally agrees that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 in the season. A large proportion of this group consists of children under the age of 14. They are easy targets for paedophiles since they are, emotionally needy and materially deprived.” Goa’s Tourism Director N. Suryanarayana, in the course of Tehelka’s undercover operation, affirmed Wood’s assessment. He told a Tehelka reporter, who posed as a social science researcher from an American university, that the government estimates that 40,000 migrant children are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Superintendent of Police Inder Dev Shukla also revealed that the police knows that migrant children are exploited by pederasts.

Wood’s investigation reveals an interesting trafficking dimension to Goa’s sex tourism. “Disturbingly, there is a huge increase in the amount of young girls travelling into Goa from Andhra Pradesh (ap). There are two trains per week arriving in Vasco (Goa’s main railhead) from ap. At the beginning of the tourist season, there are approximately 50 girls (aged between 13 and 17), arriving on these trains each week,” Wood states.

It is apparent that there is a large trade in trafficking children to Goa. Wood’s prescription to the government is that “the only way of truly establishing this is to acknowledge the problem and to investigate.”
Goa is no longer a place where the world comes to relax. It’s become a destination for pederasts. Ronald Martins, who runs a documentation centre in Goa, says that “unlike Sri Lanka and Thailand, in Goa, the abuse (sexual exploitation of children) is more dangerous because it is covert”.

However, the chief minister’s obsession with promoting tourism at any cost has backfired. Tourism-related paedophilia is disturbing because information is “readily available to anyone who takes the time to look,” says Wood whose report comes down heavily on the government: “A paedophile looking for a place to commit his or her crime will be steered towards Goa.”

Of course, a diplomatic tone is maintained. Instead of directly attributing the reason for Goa’s transition to a sex tourism destination the report actually alludes to a number of articles that refer to the degeneration of tourism in the state: “These articles are inter-dispersed with headlines indicating Goa is overtaking Bangkok as a paedophile paradise. This will cause two things to occur. More paedophiles will be destined for Goa with less Western tourists prepared to make the journey.”
Among the recommendations made by Wood is the formation of a Strategic Policy Group, a Police Co-ordination Team, and a Child Protection Unit. He suggests that once these structures are in place “the other policy, procedural and training needs can be implemented…The response must be measured to maintain the integrity of Goa as a popular tourist destination. It must be achieved in such a way that paedophiles are deterred from arriving in Goa, but the genuine tourist seeking a family holiday continues to be encouraged.”

Throughout the 1990s there were enough warning signs, but successive governments ignored them. It’s been almost a decade since Interpol declared Goa as the upcoming paedophile destination. In fact, six years ago the then British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook had warned at the second Asia-Europe (aesem ii) meeting in London that Goa is one of three areas in the world “worst hit by the evils of child sex tourism.”

Yet, the government of India slipped into deep slumber as Goa turned into one of the hot spots for paedophiles. The latest End Child Prostitution Child Pornography And Trafficking Of Children For Sexual Purposes (ecpat) report, 2003, sponsored by the European Union, admits Goa’s transition to a haven for child sex tourists. “A growing number of paedophiles have discovered Goa to be a safe haven. They form a part of a wider syndicate operating globally within a well defined network operating with the use of modern communication systems like the internet,” the report says.

Tehelka’s investigation also exposes the deep linkages between institutionalised forms of paedophilia and trafficking of children. (See ‘The Beach Walkers’). The convergence of child sex tourism and trafficking of children is a national security threat not only to India but to other European countries as well. Unregulated and illegal trafficking of India children to European countries is a matter of mutual concern.

This year’s annual ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’ of the us State Department categorically asserts that India is a source and destination for children trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation. The report also says “India is a growing destination for sex tourists from Europe, the us and other Western countries.”

Many pederasts hunt for their victims in Goa during the tourist season. Besides, there are many who reside for longer durations and some who have stayed on for years. Child sex abuse by tourists is not restricted to Goa but has spread along the tourist circuits and is rampant in Kerala and Rajasthan. Many paedophiles have captive children or take kids along with them when they travel.

Tehelka’s investigation reveals the brazen manner in which paedophiles subvert the legal system. (See ‘Six Most Wanted’) If Goa is becoming Thailand then the government of India is faced with a massive problem that threatens to tear the social fabric across India’s high-profile tourist destinations.

This exposé is finally about failures of governance. According to the Goa Children’s Act, 2003, “The state shall ensure that the children and the young are protected against exploitation and that they are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. Childhood and youth shall be protected against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment.”

But the Goan government has failed to protect the children. It is also a failure of governance and administration at the federal level. It’s a national issue and must be dealt with seriously. All it takes for a foreigner to declare himself an ‘Indian inhabitant’ is a sworn affidavit on a Rs 20 stamp paper.

This exposé is about the nexus of silence — of the fleet footed machinations that bind the police, the judicial officers and the immigration officials in one encompassing web of corruption. The government has only to launch a full-scale investigation and protect children from being exploited.

Six Most Wanted

VK Shashikumar, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar and Sanjukta Sharma compile the crime file of dreaded paedophiles

During its investigations Tehelka uncovered details on six paedophiles. Three Tehelka reporters criss-crossed the 105 km coastline of Goa posing as event managers, film-makers and researchers. They interviewed hundreds of villagers and virtually all kinds of people associated with the tourism industry, policemen and bureaucrats. Eventually, they were able to track down two paedophiles, who figure in the Crime Branch’s intelligence alert of 2003.

The Tehelka reporters also unearthed a serial child abuser of French nationality. He has been visiting Goa every tourist season for the last 20 years. According to the intelligence report on Child Sex Tourism submitted to the Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar, funded and initiated by the British government, a paedophile usually abuses 20 children during his or her stay. That means that this French pederast, Bernard, has sexually exploited at least 400 children so far.

And yet, he does not figure in the Crime Branch’s paedophile alert list!

Here’s the crime file of six paedophiles put together by information gathered during Tehelka’s investigation and exclusive access to classified police records.

1. JÖRG HARRY RINGELMANN

Jörg Harry Ringelmann speaks halting English. It takes a while before you grasp what he is trying to say. You need to carefully mend and resurrect each word mauled by his strong German accent. That’s a struggle in itself… after that, you need to work your way through his web of deceit. Luckily, we were more than prepared for Ringelmann when we dropped in at his place at Chopdem where he stays with his two victims, Dimple and Mallika. We had managed to acquire an exhaustive set of documents, which he had submitted to the police to justify their stay in Goa.

He introduced Dimple to us as his wife and Mallika as his daughter, who more or less would have looked like like-aged friends, had they not been venomously hostile towards each other. He claims he has picked Dimple from an acrobat family residing in the slum quarter in Juhu, Andheri. His meticulous documentation had already got us charged up about the case. The thicker the paper trail the more are the chances of treading onto a paedophile’s toes. Their documents told one story, their oral accounts, another.

For example, Mallika and Dimple both fumbled when asked questions about their respective ages. Dimple claims her age is around 25, but also maintains, that if you went by her birth certificate, three years ago she would have been 16. Mallika had to ask her father for her date of birth, which Ringelmann claimed was 1989. This means Mallika is 15 and according to the Goa Children’s Act, any adoption of a minor has to be registered with the Directorate of Women and Child Welfare.

According to Superintendent of Police, Bosco George, Mallika was sent for an ossification test in order to determine her age. The test revealed that she was indeed a minor but despite that the police did not take its investigations further when it could have straight away arrested him for ‘illegal detention’ of a minor girl, under the provisions of Goa Children’s Act 2003.

George, in fact, admitted on camera, “Both mother and daughter, don’t look like mother and daughter, but look like young girls.” Even for a moment, if we assume his adoption deed to be legal – which it is not – he is still required to further register with the Directorate of Women and Child Welfare. Not doing so, should have attracted a penalty of Rs 1 lakh but Ringlemann continues to stay with them since 1998.

The issue of Mallika’s adoption reeks of the untruth. Mallika claims, that her father had ‘given’ her away to Ringelmann when she was a child and that she does not remember her family now. How come then, the adoption deed carries the thumb imprint of a widow Laxmi Idger?

The adoption deed in its present form is suspect. No one can simply pick up a child and adopt him or her. It is not a court order as specified by law, but on a Rs 100 stamp paper. It is as bogus as Ringelmann’s joint declaration of marriage.

Here is an excerpt quoted in a report prepared for the International Organisation for Migration for the European Union’s stop programme dealing with ‘Trafficking in Unaccompanied Minors in the eu’.

“The first signs of an increase in the level of trafficking in minors, mainly in very young children and infants from Asia and Africa to Germany, appeared as early as the 1980s with illegal adoptions,” the report states.

Research conducted by a leading Cologne-based research institute Zartbitter, which has also been mentioned in the report states, “A new method practiced by the traffickers and/or paedophiles is the adoption of children… They (Germans) have married the women, adopted the children and begun using them sexually.”

The report categorically says that, “In Germany, children are trafficked almost exclusively for the purpose of sexual exploitation.” The marriage declaration on a Rs 20 affidavit carries a string of categorical lies sworn in as the truth. Ringelmann here claims he is an Indian inhabitant, when in reality he is a German citizen holding passport number 5041803573. The Vashi address on his marriage declaration does not exist.

Villagers in Morjim like Dayanand Mandrekar, headmaster of the local Peter Alvares High School, have been seeing Ringelmann for over a decade now. And not just Ringelmann… “The lady wearing the mangalsutra is staying for the last 12 to 15 years with him. What was her condition twelve years back. Now she is matured. Now she is grown up.”

The most amazing aspect of Ringelmann’s documentation is that these very papers seem to have found favour with the authorities. When we asked Deputy Inspector General of Police, JS Randhawa, about Ringelmann, he said, “That was an inquiry and a very elaborate inquiry has been conducted. But er… nothing substantial again. No case is made out.”

If ‘no case is made out’, then this invariably means the documents submitted by Ringelmann have actually passed muster. The fraudulent documents which are riddled with inconsistencies and fibs have managed to quell police doubts.

Villagers know something is amiss with Ringelmann’s family. Credible voices like that of the village school headmaster, Dayanand Mandrekar, and sarpanch, Maya Poke, are both aware and at the same time feel helpless.

“First of all the landlord should inquire, whether he has a relation with the girl he is staying with. When we go to him (the landlord) asking him why are you keeping him here, he says, ‘this is my house, I am keeping him here. If you have a problem I will handle it. I have filled the police form. There seems to be no problem.’ …we have to keep quiet. Everyone thinks like this. What is it to us? She is not our daughter. She is not from our village,” laments Maya Poke.

As we probed further, suspicions on Ringelmann’s activities deepened.

“…people have suspected that they must be doing some video filming… Till late night err… people do something in the house no. They remain awake till one o’clock, two o’clock. …people can make out that something is going on,” claims Mandrekar.

Another villager Dominic concurs. “Voh mask ghalta (He wears a mask) …and takes pictures,” Dominic alleges.

So, what is Ringelmann really doing here? He has set up a business front, and is desperate to obtain a business visa solely because he wants to stay in India for extended periods. His brazenness is astounding.

JHR: Because now I have my company all everything… Otherwise
Tehelka: You have a company in Goa?
JHR: Yeah. Otherwise he (the government) won’t give me my business visa or my tourist visa. Big problem.

It is just this sheer confidence of ‘subverting the systems and institutions’ expressed by paedophiles that is shocking. It does not seem to bother Ringelmann, that his name is the first fixture on the Goa police suspect paedophile list.

He has nothing to worry. He has reams of illegal documents concocted on legal tender, which he will fling in your face. Perhaps, it will only sting your cheek. But no case will be made out.

2. JOHN COLLIN MIDDLETON ALIAS STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER KING ALIAS STEVE

It was a bizarre tale which a retired deputy superintendent of police supervising a case involving paedophile John Colin Middleton alias Stephen Christopher King alias Steve told Tehelka. “Middleton was let off, as he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. How could he indulge in intercourse with that kind of an illness?” the former cop reasoned.

Boys as young as six are bribed with clothes, cash and their first pair of shoes to perform depraved sexual acts and pose for porn pictures
The accused had been arrested in 2001 with three minor Nepali boys at the Maria guest house in Benaulim, South Goa where another foreigner Avison Paul was also present. A year prior to that, Middleton had been seen with minor boys of Tamil origin. Months of sloppy and sluggish investigations later, the police shelved his case, due to lack of evidence.

Contradicting information like Middleton’s possession of a passport in the name of John Colin Middleton and a bank account in the name of Stephen Kings was overlooked. The police do not even have Middleton’s photograph.

When Middleton was arrested by the Colva police the local community actually stood up in his defence. The young Goans in Colva were upset that the man who would shower them with gifts was behind bars. They were angry with the ngos who had filed the complaint.

Importantly, Middleton—in his mid-seventies—who was arrested in New Zealand for sodomy, is a frequent traveller on the infamous child-sex trail, hopping from Kerala
to Goa onto Nepal. Middleton’s travel chart is too conspicuous for a man afflicted from Parkinson’s.

Middleton was back in Goa in March this year. Tehelka got scent of it and reached where he had put up. We were late by a few days. Middleton had already left for Nepal. Nothing could describe the grave state of affairs vis-a-vis paedophilia in Goa more effectively than the Middleton case.

He had set up base in Benaulim, where Freddy Peats had flourished and was later exposed a few years ago. And yet Middleton’s penchant for boys was construed as ‘good samaritanship’. “He used to take children to the beach. He was a very nice man,” lauds Maria Rebello, who runs the Maria guest house. Tehelka has copies of statements of eyewitnesses submitted to the police, stating that Middleton was masturbating a minor boy on the Benaulim beach in public view. He was also thrown out of a shack located near Taj Exotica, Benaulim, for publicly kissing and fondling a child.

Maria’s husband claims, “There used to be boys roaming around with him. All those boys have gone abroad now.” Middleton is a sinister reminder of the Freddy Peats case, where boys from the Peats’ orphanage were trafficked abroad by Peats’ paedophile friends. Peats may have been the past. But Middleton is the present. He is on the loose and lurking.

3. DAVID MEREDITH VAGG

Barely five years after the Freddy Peats case, two researchers Dr Julia O’Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor of the Department of Sociology, University of Leicester, uk, presented a paper on ‘Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in Goa’ at the World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in which they revealed the case of David Meredith Vagg.

Their paper mentioned the case of a British expatriate — who runs a travel agency — who surrounded himself with young boys offering them shelter and employment. They said he closely conformed to the psychological profile of a paedophile.

Beach boy: David Meredith Vagg has been in Candolim for the past 17 years
The British expatriate is David Meredith Vagg who runs DavidAir, an international travel agency that specialises in bringing charter flight tourists to Goa. It was around this time, in 1996, when a British journalist, Roger Insall of News of the World, in an undercover operation exposed Vagg’s “preference for pre-pubescent boys.”

Insall posed as a paedophile and caught Vagg allegedly admitting his sexual preference for young boys. He wrote that boys as young as six are bribed with clothes, cash and their first pair of shoes to perform depraved sexual acts and pose for porn pictures.

Eight years later, a secret memo signed by Deputy Superintendent of Police (Crime Branch), LS Mamledar, dated May 18, 2004 cannot but help reiterate this strong suspicion. The memo reads, “Refer note No. SP/CID/826/04 dated 04/02/04 requiring to watch over suspected paedophile listed therein… You are therefore required to maintain discreet watch over his activities and submit a monthly report thereon for perusal of superiors”.

Sadly, the meticulous drafting of this note in triplicate, is just about where the story of police efficiency ends. Vagg now approximately 84, has been around in Goa since 1987. First as a representative of European tour operators, Inspirations East Limited, and then with his travel agency. The police note incorrectly reads that Vagg arrived in Goa on April 17, 2004 and that he would be staying in Goa for a year. This, when Vagg has been staying in Candolim for the last 17 years.

Interestingly, Vagg worked as a night editor of the now defunct Goa-based newspaper West Coast Times in the late 70s. A report compiled in December 2003 by (End Child Prostitution Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) ecpat a Bangkok-based ngo, allegedly claims that Vagg runs child sex tours for his foreign clients through his travel agency, which specialises in handling charter traffic from uk to Goa. More than 65 percent of the charter tourist arrivals are from England. Residents of Candolim are aware of Vagg’s activities.

We met Christopher D’Souza, owner of a popular restaurant, Stone House. Christopher has known Vagg since the time the former was a kid. “Everybody knew and now nobody will want to talk about it, especially if they were victims… they would not want to talk about it, because it happened so many years ago,” D’Souza explains. “It became a big scandal. Everybody knew about it and now everybody is doing their own thing. I mean the boys who used to hang around with this guy (Vagg) have got their own businesses and have got married and have got their own children,” he adds.

Christopher also recollects the superbly modified cars and motorcycles which Vagg used to attract boys. Vagg’s secrets tumbled out in the British newspapers, when a local news magazine wrote about how Vagg would participate in the annual Carnival parade with his jeep laden with boys. Vagg’s house was also raided, but the police could find nothing incriminating.

Tehelka also met Pramila Mehta, a former business associate of Vagg’s. “We got a shock. Immediately I told my husband to take off the board (a DavidAir billboard) we have no connections with this person... The very fact that we are dealing with a person, is also encouraging… because apparently he has been sending photographs across the internet up and down,” she claims, explaining the reasons behind her conscientious decision. “…He asked, ‘Why don’t you want to do business? We just said no. We don’t want to do it.’ And I don’t think he came back to ask us why’,” she adds.

She also recalls a small, but telling incident, which had happened before she learnt about Vagg’s secrets. “There was a small incident. One of my maid’s little boy, good looking light-eyed fellow come to do mother’s chores… He (David) said, ‘What a good looking lad!’ It wouldn’t strike you. It wouldn’t strike you that way,” she recalls. She regrets at the same time that it is difficult to pin this kind of a crime down. “Who is there to stop him? Its not been shown in the open.”

Her husband, Mehta, recalls Vagg as a popular and successful businessman. “As a businessman he is perfect. He is popular amongst foreigners, he himself being a foreigner.” In fact, a few months ago, when the police searched a computer owned by another paedophile suspect Theodore Anema, they found some emails addressed to Vagg, expressing solidarity over aspects of boy love.

4&5. THEODORE WILHEM ANEMA ALIAS THEO ANEMA AND ALAN JOHN DENING

The reason we have bunched these two together is the striking similarity in their modus operandi. Paper trails. Both Anema and Dening have left paper trails so dense that the authorities are completely baffled.

Take Theodore Wilhem Anema alias Theo Anema — a Dutch national residing in Herefordshire, England – for example. He arrived in Goa with three boys Bachalal Amritlal from Allahabad (up), Zakir Hassan from Kolkata (wb) and Amit Chourasiya from Satna (mp). In his statement submitted to police, Anema claims that in 2001 he picked up the boys from Victoria Terminus in Mumbai after pitying them and then took them under his wing promising them a good future.

Legally you cannot account for an adoption on a Rs 10 affidavit. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, a single male
foreigner cannot adopt a child. Adoptions have to be certified through a court order
He brought them over to Goa and admitted them to one of the expanding chains of orphanages in Saligao. After a while, he got them out of there and placed them under the care of one Mrs Luisa Fernandes paying her Rs 2,600 for taking care of the boys. This is a textbook manoeuvre followed by paedophiles. And this is how a surveillance report (Tehelka possesses a copy) submitted by the local police station officials to their superiors, interprets the situation.

“Mr Theodore Willem Anema found these boys on the street at Mumbai. He felt pity on them. He therefore brought them in Goa after taking permission from their parents/guardians, to give them better future. All these boys have been interrogated, however they have no complaint against Mr Theodore Anema. They also state that the said foreigner is treating them as his own children and looking after their being,” claims the Calangute police station in-charge in the report submitted to his superior in May 2003.

These are the affidavits on the basis of which Bachalal (14) and Amit (14) were taken by Theo in his custody. Both the mothers here state that they are handing over their child to Anema on account of their poverty. How do these documents pass muster with the police authorities? Legally you cannot account for an adoption on a Rs 10 affidavit. According to Central Adoption Resource Agency (cara) guidelines drafted by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, a single male foreigner cannot adopt a child to start with. In any case, adoptions have to be certified through a court order.

The law enforcers, then are either unaware of the legalities or are not interested in the fine print. Imagine this. A 50-year-old Dutch national residing in England has been charged for possession of child porn. He feels pangs of philanthropy when he lands in India. So what does he do?

He picks up three boys from the streets in Mumbai and brings them to Goa after making the parents sign affidavits affirming himself as the guardian. These absurdities are difficult to fathom. The report also brazenly states that the victims were brought to the police station and interrogated. What is the logic behind interrogating a minor victim at a police station, when ideally you would need him on your side in case they confess to sexual harassment?

The story of Alan Dening, a British national, and its acceptance by authorities at face value is even worse. Dening actually has the nerve to confess that he picked up a boy from the infamous Anchorage Shelter located at Colaba, Mumbai.

Anchorage Shelter Trust was run by a paedophile, Duncan Grant, of British origin and was busted by the police after complaints of sexual abuse in 2001. It was from here that Dening, a regular visitor, picked up a boy called Rasool, who later joined him in Goa with two other boys, whom he later placed at a guest house in Calangute.

6. BERNARD

Bernard… Unfortunately, that’s all we know about him… his first name. And the name is more than enough to trigger an emphatic withdrawal from 11-year-old Raju.
“I don’t like Bernard. I forget anything. I don’t like that is bhonkiss (sodomiser). I don’t like. I want study first. I want study, then I work… But I want forget anything Bernard. …but I forget anybody. Bernard anything forget I. I don’t like Bernard.”
This is Bernard’s victim Raju’s voice. He does not look into the eye when he says this. In fact, he grits them shut. This is what Bernard has reduced this boy to.

Bernard has been travelling to Goa for the last 20 years on paedophilic binges. Raju is his latest victim. Bernard had picked him when Raju was a shoeshine boy on Calangute beach. He had placed Raju in the care of the D’Mellos — Lucy and James. The D’Mellos’ job was to ensure that Raju was available to Bernard during his annual Goa sojourns.

“Now he just…applying oil like this, massaging, polishing. Polishing… after becoming like me then starting like this become homo in France. Maybe he take in Rajasthan. He told me next year I take him to Rajasthan,” Lucy brazenly, aware of the implications of harbouring Raju for sexual exploitation.

Lucy, who knows Bernard over the last 20 years has no qualms being explicit.

“He wants only boys…This boy very good boy. But Bernard like him, no. Cha, Bernard like him. Bernard is a homosexual. Bomkis… He likes boys...He don’t want young ladies, young girls... Many many small boys…Ummm many many small boys. Now he is small no. When he becomes big its ok. Now he’s small.”

These are excerpts from Lucy’s conversation with Tehelka. After a while her brazenness sinks to a new low when she discusses the terms on which she had agreed to preserve Raju for Bernard and why she later ran him out of the house.

“Yeah…But then he (Bernard) gave me one tv to look after this one, Raju. Forget tv, black and white. Ok no problem huh. He gave tv, he gave me money two times 5000, 5000, 10,000…whatever he needs I give, pant shirt and this that,” Lucy informs.

Effectively it took Bernard a black and white television set to induce Lucy to harbour Raju for him. Bernard, who is currently either in France or Rajasthan, plays the role of a benevolent white skinned foreigner to the hilt.

“See many foreigners find in Goa…they help poor people you know…they help… They bring clothes… he (Bernard) is good for us. He help,” certifies James D’Mello Lucy’s husband.

Community members are aware of what’s happening in the D’Mello household. Anita, who gives private tuitions, also taught Raju for a couple of months. She is aware that it was Bernard who was paying for Raju’s education. “I have heard like he is ok with the boys only something like that. Young-sters…he is more attracted towards the youngsters,” she says cautiously.

Raju relates one of his experiences in an externalised manner, as most sexual abuse victims normally do. Here are excerpts from Tehelka’s undercover operation:

Tehelka: But how did you see it?
Sanju: I saw it from outside.
Tehelka: From another house?
Sanju:No. There is a window no… There is window outside, from there I saw.
Tehelka: How many boys did you see?
Sanju: One boy and him
Tehelka: One boy and Bernard? What were they doing?
Sanju: They were both naked at that moment
Tehelka: Was he taking a photograph?
Sanju: No, both were naked.
Tehelka: Both?
Sanju: (Nods his head in affirmation) I do not know where the boy is from.
Tehelka: Why was the boy naked?
Sanju: I told you know, they were doing something.

There’s more to Bernard than just Raju in Goa. Bernard has sex with a boy from Rajasthan, whose family he financially maintains. He either shuttles to and from the state or gets them over to Goa. “Every year he take one, two, three photo. This man is helping for other people, other Rajasthan people. Family. That boy also small one (in) Rajasthan,” squeals Lucy.

How many more do you have stashed away Mr Bernard?

The Beach Walkers

Poor children are picked up from villages in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and dumped in Goa’s shelter homes which are havens for paedophiles. A report by VK Shashikumar, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar and Sanjukta Sharma

While the adult members of the migrant families work on construction sites and other tourism-related industries, their children sell trinkets, eatables and gift articles to tourists. These children are the “beach walkers”. Many children are also picked by agents from poor families in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and put to work on the beaches of Goa. Many children work in shacks on the beach. The main activity of the beach walkers is to approach tourists, especially foreigners, engage them in friendly conversation and sell their wares. Or attract them to shacks for food, beer or drinks. This is the first interface — the first contact point for traffickers of children.

The 2004 Trafficking in Persons report released by the us State Department points out that India is a source and destination of trafficking of women and children. This report comes on the heels of recent research work originating from Europe that suggests that there is a deep connection between trafficking of children and paedophilia. For instance, a recent compilation by Zarbitter, a German counselling centre based in Cologne, shows that German paedophiles marry young girls in Asian countries and then adopt children in order to sexually abuse them. In fact, as early as 1980s, German authorities noticed that trafficking of minors was increasing as a result of illegal adoptions. Tehelka’S cameras caught Jorg Harry Ringlemann’s admission that he was planning to take both the girls living with him to Germany.

Ringelmann’s case only helped in putting the linkage of trafficking of children and paedophilia in perspective. In order to check how deep this linkage was Tehelka’S reporters armed themselves with a fake brochure of a dummy event management company called Red Satin. They carried with them a proposal for staging events at shacks on the beach. The proposal was outrageous: “Each client has different requirements… Sometimes the requirement is for foreign escorts (women and men), or foreign hostesses or young boys and girls… We also require support for police permissions and other such logistical requirements. For special requirement like under-18 escorts (boys and girls) we will have to work a separate channel of operation.”

Yet, nobody raised an eyebrow. Joseph, the well-connected owner of Planet Goa, the largest and the most popular shack on Calangute Beach, said, “We have to pay off the police because you know they don’t earn so much money and we are earning so much. So it’s unfair.” Joseph’s definition of a child is anyone who is below 8 years. “You know this ‘pedrophilia’ thing you know these British guys, old men, they touch the bums of children, you know these 6-7-8 year old kids, very bad,” said Joseph, who also owns a restaurant called Buccama in Baga.

Posing as event managers, we negotiated the possibility of staging a party at Buccama, adjacent to the box-bridge in Baga. Joseph agreed to supply young boys and girls for a monsoon rain dance party. “Ah! Don’t worry about police permissions. I will get it. You do what you want. I will give them some money. OK?” he boasted.
We then made our way to Coco Beach. It took a month to set up a meeting with Vishwas Kandolkar, owner of Vivek shack. Kandolkar intently listened to our proposal. His greed for money made it easy for us to ask straight away whether he would supply young girls and boys for parties. He said he had a stock of outsiders, boys and girls from Karnataka, and that he would charge Rs 500 per child per day.

Meanwhile, a similar strategy had been adopted to target Pramod Kerkar who runs the Spliff shack on Baga Beach. Local ngos had earlier shared their field intelligence that Spliff shack is a pick up point for paedophiles. Like Kandolkar, the fluent-English speaking Kerkar fell for the Red Satin proposal. He offered to hire out his shack and another place to us. He said that the boys who work with him are mostly from Karnataka and know how to deal with foreigners. He said that his boys are paid money by foreigners — an average of Rs 1,000 a day. He even introduced us to Praveen, a 17-year-old Karnataka boy who has been working in Spliff shack for the past seven years. Kerkar added that foreigners preferred Karnataka boys because they had good bodies. “I mean I can handle that easily. We have been doing this for the past 15 years. Even if I get the boys, like nice and young boys, good looking and I can train them also,” Kerkar gushed.

The astounding ease with which children could be procured points at the criminal nexus between child trafficking and paedophilia. Tehelka met many children who had travelled with foreigners to other parts of the country. They always returned with money and gifts. The thatched shanty home of Pankaj, one such child, had no chair to sit on, but in the sand outside lay a pair of expensive roller skates. He had just returned from Switzerland. His father, a fisherman, told us that Pankaj was taken to Switzerland for three months on a picnic by a Swiss couple who they know as Klausers. His mother has an album full of photographs her son Pankaj has brought along. Strangely, she did not have her son’s passport. The Klausers had retained it.

Why is Pankaj’s passport being held back? How could an unaccompanied minor go abroad? Pankaj’s mother showed us an affidavit on the basis of which Pankaj’s passport was issued by the Panjim passport office. And Pankaj was earlier employed at Spliff shack and it was here that he met the Klausers.
Meanwhile, not far away from where Pankaj stays, Kamla is preparing to leave for Australia. She has heard about Pankaj’s trip to Switzerland and is confident that her sponsor Dr Margaret will take her to Australia during the forthcoming tourist season.

The first time Tehelka reporters visited Kamla’s house, she was away at a convent learning English. This was sponsored by Dr Margaret. So were the expenses incurred on Kamla’s passport. Margaret has a polio-stricken daughter. Local ngos suspect that she is planning to take Kamla to exploit her as a help. In return, Dr Margaret has promised to build a house for Kamla’s family. Her family is a travelling ‘circus family’ and have never had a house. They are in the process of trafficking their daughter in return for one.

Goa’s degeneration into a child sex tourism spot is complete. Child sex abusers and traffickers violate Indian law at will. They understand that money can buy them anything including fake Indian citizenship.

Tehelka reporters met a victim’s teacher. In this case, the paedophile paid money to the family to fund the victim’s tuition for two months. The victim, Sanju, and his abuser, a Frenchman called Bernard, are both known to the local community.

The teacher, whose identity is concealed for her safety, revealed that many children have been trafficked to Europe by foreigners. “They (foreigners) adopt poor migrant children and then send them abroad,” she said.

Despite all this, the government has virtually facilitated easy access to children by pederasts by allowing unregulated growth of shelter homes. Ever since the submission of the Ric Wood report on criminal sexual exploitation of children by foreign paedophiles, the government has actually enabled many unmonitored shelter homes to proliferate. In fact, the government has criminally violated its own enactment, the Goa Children’s Act by doing so.

Even shelter homes are perfect settings for abuse. It is unmonitored, unregulated and nobody actually knows what is going on. The Director of Women and Child Welfare, Ashok Kumar Wasnik, does not even have a list of shelter homes in Goa, mandatory under the Goa Children’s Act, 2003.

Tehelka met many children from Karnataka lodged in a shelter home in Saligao, near Anjuna Beach. One such shelter home, Victory House, is run by El Shaddai, which runs several shelter homes in Goa. An insider, Alexius Thomas, who himself is in the process of setting up a shelter home for children and other unwanted people, says that “the Goans know it is a scam and yet they don’t do anything.”

These shelter homes are run by an Indian who calls himself Pastor Matthews. Incidentally, the staff at these shelter homes told the Tehelka reporters that all the children in these shelter homes are sponsored by foreigners and that they are brought to the shelter homes during the tourists seasons and then sent back home after the season is over. This raises lots of questions. Primarily, if these boys are from poor broken families where do they go back to after the tourist season is over?
We infiltrated Victory House as researchers and were introduced to Rajappa, a child from Karnataka. Rajappa showed his brand new watch gifted to him by his sponsors Paul and Simone. He told us that the sponsors take children out to the beach and often treat them to lunch or dinner.

Clearly, the government does not bother to monitor the functioning of shelter homes. Even a basic background check of those wanting to open shelter homes is not done. One can walk in and walk out with a kid by throwing money. In Goa, which has emerged as a sex tourism spot, this is nothing short of a crime itself.

The original sinner in paradise

VK Shashikumar, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar and Sanjukta Sharma

He was perhaps the world’s most popular paedophile with a public image. He started it all in Goa

Freddy Peats set the course for Goa’s emergence as a hot international destination for European paedophiles. For 20 odd years, the now 79-year-old Freddy Peats, an Indian passport holder of Anglo-German descent, ran a bustling shelter home, Gurukul Orphamily, in south Goa. He started out in Colva and then, in the mid-1980s, he moved to Fatorda, near Madgaon, Goa’s commercial capital.

For nearly two decades, he lived as a philanthropist, revered as Dr Freddy Peats. His benign and benevolent act as Father Christmas every winter won him an amazing fan following among poor children. Over time, Peats acquired cult-figure status in Goa.

He was perhaps the world’s most popular paedophile with a public image. Parents would actually call him over to put their children to sleep. His touch was magical, they said. Magical indeed. He abused thousands of children. An entire state, blinded by his largesse, realised much too late that he was child sex abuser.

Peats’ guardian angel facade dropped when a little boy who had frequented his home complained of pain in his groin and told his father that Peats had injected something into his testicles. The father complained to the police. A raid at Peats’ residence in April 1991 unearthed a horrific, international sex racket that had been running for over two decades. The police found 2,305 photographs — porn photos of minor boys engaged in sexual acts with elderly white men, 135 strips of negative film, syringes and narcotics. The injection that he gave to boys was for the purpose of inflating the testicles for sexual activities.

Freddy developed an international network of paedophiles and supplied them with children and child porn. Hundreds of children were spirited away from India by his associates, all of whom are right on top of the Most Wanted List of cbi. One of them, Dominique Sebire, was arrested by the cbi at Delhi airport in September 1998. He was released by a local court in Goa on the condition that he should report to the cbi office in Panjim. But in early 2000, Sebire escaped.

Despite all the evidence and his confession to the cops that he indulged in unnatural sex with children, the police initially did not file a chargesheet against Peats. Finally, a tireless and pioneering campaign by Sheela Barse, a child rights activist from Bombay, led to Peats being chargesheeted in December 1991. Till the end, Peats claimed to be a victim of a fabricated case by the police. What’s more, he maintained that there was nothing wrong in sleeping naked with boys. He called it “body-joy”.

In a landmark judgement, Peats was convicted for unnatural sexual offences, wrongful confinement, using drugs to facilitate sex, circulation of obscene material among young persons and adults and immoral trafficking. But the government and the police still consider it an isolated case, and many still think that Peats was a benevolent man. His victims are silent, in denial. Guilt and trauma stalk their lives. Meanwhile, Peats is serving out his life sentence in Goa’s Central Jail. His associates, all of them child sex abusers, are still free. Thanks to the cbi and the Centre.

Tehelka managed to track down Roy Fernandes, one of Peats’ early victims who later moved on to become one of his associates. Roy met Peats when the former was sitting dejected on a football field. Roy wasn’t aware then that a sinister game had begun for him — a rough game, whose scars he would carry for the rest of his life.
Peats took Roy under his wing in 1975 and flushed him with money. Pocket money to the tune of Rs 100 a week in the mid-Seventies was unheard of. Roy’s largesse with money made him the focus of attention among the village youth. In a way, Roy unwittingly played the Pied Piper, peddling dreams of good food and good living to the impoverished youngsters.

“I was with (Peats) from the end of ‘75 till ‘84, nine years. In 1984, I split because there were more boys coming. More, more, more… Every day, boys used to come. Every day, boys used to go… Some people took notice, saying these boys must be, what they are doing must be homos like — you know. And during that time we didn’t know the meaning of homo,” he recalls.

There are other quirks to Peats’ operation. He ensured to the last detail that the health risks to any of his boys were kept at a minimum. His idea was to keep them healthy and free of any sexually transmitted diseases. He banned all kinds of meats, except for fish. Water to the ashram was tapped from a chlorinated course some 7 km away, while the rest of the villagers used well water.

Several other quirks were nauseating.

“And the sleeping was only naked. No night suits, no shorts, nothing. We were all young boys, no? All like… so f***, who cares? We are getting everything… food and this and that. Sleeping naked, what is the problem?” Roy says excitedly.

He recalls more: “Lotion. He had lotion, cream, cream (applied lotion with his hands). We didn’t know what it was. He would put it here and there.”

This done, Peats would photograph them nude and sell the prints on the child porn market for money. Roy confirms this. “Then he used to send photos to his friends. To Holland, to Germany, to France, wherever he had. In that, … they used to send him money.”

Peats not only traded in porn but also opened another front, where his friends would traffic children away to other paedophiles abroad. “Foreigners used to come here. Then we used to be friends like. Foreigner used to support our boy. They took him, some of them, to abroad also,” claims Roy.

It was only after a decade or so that differences started cropping up between Peats and Roy. “I told him, you spoilt me. You give me money and I did not have control. You spoilt kids. You are spoiling them, everybody, I told him. This is not good — sleeping naked, homo system. I told him this is not good,” Roy recalls.
When the Freddy Peats scandal blew up, Roy was also arrested as a co-accused in 1995 and put in judicial custody. Later, he was released.
This is the first ever testimony of a Freddy Peats victim to be journalistically recorded.

"The Taliban do not accept women as a part of society"

2007-03-06T17:42:00.000+05:30

'The Taliban do not accept women as a part of society'

The members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) are struggling against vast odds, often risking their own lives for a democratic, non-fundamentalist and women-friendly regime in Afghanistan. In an exclusive interview with V K Shashikumar, Mehmooda of RAWA talks about the almost pathological misogyny of the Taliban, and of RAWA's struggle to survive

Tehelka.com
New Delhi
March 20, 2001

Women's rights have moved rapidly backwards into the unknown in Afghanistan under the Taliban militia's horrifically stringent rule. The ravages of three decades of continuous conflict, drought and disease has turned this hardy land into a nation of refugees, single mothers and orphans. Together, they make up a large portion of the country's considerable refugee population.

Women and children comprise a large percentage of the estimated 170,000 refugees who have poured into the poorly-equipped and overcrowded refugee camps in neighbouring Pakistan, since September last year. RAWA, based in Quetta, has been in the forefront of the women's movement in Afghanistan. It calls itself the only feminist anti-fundamentalist organisation of Afghan women".

Mehmooda outlines the reasons behind the almost pathological misogyny that underlies much of the Taliban's actions. "Most of the Taliban (cadres) have experienced sexual abuses by their seniors during their youth in the religious schools (madrasas). It may have created a kind of complex in them, which has made them so bestial towards women. It must be clear that these vale “Champions of Islam” are accustomed to raping young boys to satisfy their criminal lust."

What are the living conditions of women and children in Afghanistan today?

Life for women under fundamentalist regimes like the Taliban is terrible. The fundamentalists do not accept women as a part of society. Afghanistan is now a ghost country, and due to the heavy fighting and rising crime rates, women in the country are little more than zombies. They are not allowed to go for treatment, get education, or enjoy any entertainment. They are lashed on the streets for the strangest reasons and their hands and feet are cut off if they were to steal a loaf of bread.

The extremists have formed a state were women are seen as subhuman creatures, whose role is to satisfy men's sexual needs, procreate, and handle domestic affairs. Women are altogether deprived of an education, the right to work, and cannot leave the house without a male escort (usually a close relative). No woman can be treated or operated on by a male physician. They are forced to wear shapeless bags called burqas, in pale colours only, to completely cover their bodies. Not even their ankles or wrists may show. No make-up, heels that make a clicking sound, singing or laughing aloud is tolerated. These restrictions are imposed, because anything female is seen as tempting a man to depart from his duties to God. In their extreme dishonouring of Islam, even the windows of all homes have been painted, so that women cannot be seen from the outside. Women are not allowed to be photographed or filmed or printed in newspapers. These are just a rundown of their despotic limitations.

Women and female children are being killed in the name of honour, sold as cattle, forced into marriage, dying because of lack of basic healthcare, and doomed to a life of humiliation, servitude, ignorance and misery. Their potential is withering away in this dismal state. Quite frankly, instead of creating a pure, religious state, the Taliban is turning the people of Afghanistan into beggars.

How different were the lives of Afghan women before Taliban came to power?

In our opinion, there is not a big difference between the living conditions of women before and after the Taliban rule, and this is because of the fanatic and misogynistic nature of both the jihadis and the Taliban. All of them are enemies of women, democracy, education and progress. After the tragedy of April 28,1992, when the jihadi beasts perpetrated their aggression on Kabul and other cities, their depravity focused on raping women, girls and children. Leaders of different warring factions appear to treat the rape of women from vanquished populace as reward for their own "Islamic" soldiers. Some armed guards target women from ethnic minorities they regard as enemies. Several Afghan women have committed suicide to avoid being raped. Scores of Afghan women have been abducted and detained by Mujahideen groups and commanders and then used for sexual purposes or sold into prostitution. Young girls have suffered the same fate. Women and girls were not safe.

Why does the Taliban want to suppress and oppress women?

They think that by brutal treatment and intimidation, they can get rid of half our population. The Taliban are mostly illiterate. They are not taught social and natural sciences in religious schools. They only know how to exploit the verses of the Koran to justify their terrible atrocities. They are awfully backward, uncultured, uncivilised and completely alien to the good norms, values and achievements of the present era.

Most of the Taliban have experienced sexual abuses by their seniors during their youth in the religious schools. It may have created a kind of complex in them, which have made them so bestial towards women. It should be added that homosexuality is very much common among these "champions of Islam".

If religion is the cover for their suppression and oppression, then does Islam really sanction this?

The criminal Taliban and jihadis have their own interpretation of the tenets of Islam and, therefore, they could simply cover their brutalities by their desirable propagation of religion, which may not be sanctioned in Islam.

If Islam does not sanction Taliban's brutal behaviour, could you please highlight the progressive ideas on women and their emancipation in Islam?

Religion should be regarded as a private and personal issue. Those who try to seek the resolution of everything, especially complicated social problems, through religion, are, in fact, misusing religion for their political end.

No doubt, there are many issues in Islam, particularly in connection with women, that are quite controversial. This may not make ordinary Muslims convert from Islam to any other religion. But when fundamentalists want to make laws on those points and then impose the laws through force and sword, people will resist it. It should be said here that in no time in their history have the Afghans been so disillusioned of religion since the coming to power of the criminal jihadis and Taliban.

The Taliban venomously attacks the image of modern woman. Just to disprove their point, name 10 highly successful women of Afghanistan, who have left a mark on your nation's contemporary history.

Meena, the founding leader of RAWA is the first conscious woman of Afghanistan who laid down her life for her ideals. Obviously, she is our inspiring heroine. Apart from some schoolgirls who were killed by the pro-Soviet puppet regime, there are many women in our ranks, who despite hardships have not given up and are staunchly fighting against all types of fundamentalists, for democracy…in my opinion, there are many who have left a mark, though not very visible, on our contemporary history. However, they are busy with anti-fundamentalist politics and it would not be safe to name them.

After all, men across all religions and in all countries and communities use scriptures, sacred texts and traditions to suppress women's empowerment. Why are the Talibs afraid of allowing women their rights? Do you think that the Talib are afraid that the women will be able to bring about a consciousness in the society to fight the evils of fundamentalism, which might then affect their rule?

That is right. The Taliban know that by suppressing and silencing women, they will get rid of half our population. Yes, the Taliban are afraid that our women will make miraculous initiatives if they are unchained.

We can also easily gauge the fundamentalists' fear of women's struggle from their cheap, vulgar and ridiculous attacks on RAWA. They cannot come up with any other ''reasoning'' towards us except reiterating that "RAWA is Maoist", "a group of prostitutes", "anti-Islam" and so on.

They have declared all RAWA members as enemies of the "Islamic emirate" and to be arrested wherever found out. Anybody found with (a copy of) Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message, a publication of RAWA) is enough for the conviction of the person, and she or he will be severely persecuted and will undergo torture

How has RAWA helped organise women in Afghanistan?

As an underground organisation struggling under the most barbaric fundamentalist regime in the world, RAWA is forced to further all its activities to raise political awareness of the women and get them organised, secretly. Even our social work is not open in Afghanistan. But as most of our women have experienced the bloody oppression of the jihadis and the Taliban, they understand our message easily; and despite harsh conditions, they are willing to resist. However, one of the greatest obstacles in their way is their terrible economic situation, which diminishes their burning will to fight.

The Taliban have drawn lessons from the fascist and criminal experiences of the KHAD (the Afghan secret service under the Soviet puppet regime), as well as jihadis, regarding suppression and controlling people. Therefore, fighting them is not an easy task, especially for the women.

Nevertheless, we are proud to be the only women's organisation that has not given up its engagement in organising our bereaved women.

What are the activities of RAWA inside and outside Afghanistan?

During the Soviet occupation, we were distributing anti-Soviet and anti-puppets leaflets, staging demonstrations and strikes in schools and universities, instigating the women to contribute in resistance war in any possible way, despite opposition from fundamentalists, running schools, a hospital, etcetera, for refugees, publishing and distributing Payam-e-Zan and so on.

It was in the course of such activities that a number of our activists were arrested in Kabul and underwent horrible tortures and some of them languished for about eight years in notorious prisons. Our founding leader, Meena, and her two aides were murdered at the hands of the KHAD agents and their fundamentalist accomplices in 1987.

After the fall of the puppet government and the invasion of the fundamentalist bands into Kabul, RAWA's focus has increasingly been on women's rights, human rights and exposition of the fundamentalists barbaric actions. (see RAWA activities: anti-fundamentalist defiance)

How is RAWA funded? Do expatriate Afghans help by giving donations?

The membership fee of our members, and donations from supporters in and outside Afghanistan is a major source of finance. We also generate some funds through selling carpets and other traditional handicrafts. The income from our publications, cassettes etc is also a source of income. In short, as an organisation deprived of any help from any government or non-governmental organisations (NGOs), RAWA is in a critical financial situation. The donation we have so far received is nothing in comparison to the great need for funds in and outside Afghanistan to run our projects in education, healthcare and income-generation fields.

How does RAWA generate public opinion in influential countries in the West?

Thanks to the Internet, we have succeeded to build a rather vast network in many Western countries and are very proud of our supporters in North America, Europe, and Australia, who are making a wonderful contribution to our cause.

We have also made trips to the USA, some European and South Asian countries to spread the word and talk about the crimes committed by the jihadis and Taliban.

What has the role of Pakistan been in helping Taliban?

It is an open secret that Taliban are a creation of Pakistan and the US, just as the jihadis are dependent on Russia, Central Asian Republics (CAR), Iran and India. However, we have always concentrated on exposing the real nature of all these fundamentalist bands that, in fact, have invited foreign powers to interfere and keep them alive. When there is a government based on democratic values in Kabul, no country will dare interfere.

What do the Pakistani women think of the Pakistani government's covert and overt help to Pakistan?

As far as our limited contacts show, almost all women are very critical of the Pakistani government's help to the fundamentalists in Afghanistan.

How do you involve Pakistani women in your programmes and activities, in order to pressurise the government of Pakistan?

We have been trying our best to keep in touch with Pakistani women's organisations, invite them to our events and participate in theirs. But, unfortunately, they are not in a position to pressurise the government of Pakistan to change its policies. They have their own colossal problems. They are victims of "honour killing", as the women of India are suffering from being killed for dowry. We understand their difficulties.

Are there any prominent Pakistani personalities who support your endeavours?

Fortunately, there are several Pakistani personalities, who support our endeavours among them: Asma Jehangir, Hina Jelani, Professor Mubarak Ali, Ahmed Bashir, Afrasiab Khattak, Marshal Asghar Khan, Syeda Abida Hussain, Mariana Babar, Neghat Said Khan, Mahnaz Rafi, to name some.

Despite the Taliban restrictions, RAWA still manages to run schools and bakeries and help in the upliftment of women. How do you manage to do that?

As an organisation with over 20 years of experience of underground work, RAWA is quite able to run its numerous home-based classes, literacy courses, some mobile teams, income generation projects, etc, in Afghanistan. The fascist conditions prevailing, especially in the recent two decades, have educated us to live and continue the hard struggle, even under a theocratic rule more criminal than, say, the terrorist regime of Iran.

How can Indian women's groups help RAWA's activities?

First and foremost, their uncompromising fight against their own fundamentalist forces would be a great help to RAWA. But specifically, they should create and strengthen their relationships with us, invite our representatives for speaking tours, cover our activities, write about the horrible situation in our country, collect funds and supplies for us. More importantly, they should try to pressurise the Indian government to withdraw its shameful recognition of the Rabbani-Masood and Co "government".

Any country claiming to be democratic should by no means support a handful of criminals, who were the starters of the religious fascist domination after the fall of the puppet regime.

Do you envisage at any point in time, the return of democracy and a unified government in Afghanistan?

It'll be difficult to predict something exactly. However, we have no doubt that Taliban's days are numbered. And if their foreign masters do not install their jihadi brothers, Afghanistan will have no option but to resort to democracy.

How have the women of Afghanistan ensured that the Taliban gets the message that there are pockets of courageous women who are resisting their efforts to reduce women to a status "worse than that of animals"?

I think they get the message through our voice in Pakistan and the world printing and electronic media, Payam-e-Zan and other publications, as well as our awareness efforts among the women. Also as mentioned, when we see wild and childish attacks on RAWA in the Taliban's newspapers (The Shariat and others), we know that they have heard RAWA's message.

What can the world community do to lighten the suffering of Afghan women?

They can help us in many ways:

Stage protests, marches, demonstrations in support of RAWA and in solidarity with Afghan women
Organise gatherings, meetings, seminars, etc to highlight the situation of Afghan women under fundamentalists
Introduce RAWA and RAWA activities to individuals, groups, schools, organisations, and other congregations in your community
Invite RAWA members to speak on its activities, situation of Afghan women, etc
Give coverage to reports on Afghanistan and Jihadi and Taliban crimes in your publications, or somehow make people in your community aware of them
Sell our publications in your community against advance payment of price and postage costs to us to raise awareness on the plight of Afghan women
Organise a fundraising campaign with the help of friends or collect medicine, stationary, clothes, footwear, medical equipment, computers, fax machines etc and send them to us for our social activities. This is the more meaningful way to help us
You also can write letters to your government, which should cover the following points:
Do not recognise the fascist and anti-woman regime of the Taliban
Work towards stopping the intervention of neighbouring countries and the United States in the internal affairs of Afghanistan
Impose sanctions on those counties who provide financial and military support to Taliban and other fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan
Start a campaign to establish a real peace, and prepare the ground for a free election in Afghanistan
Show support for democratic, national and revolutionary organisations and individuals
Expose the Taliban's crimes in international organisations

WAR IS OVER OIL

2007-03-06T15:51:00.000+05:30

New book claims war is over oil
November 21, 2001
Tehelka

Intelligence analysts Charles Brisard
and Guillaume Dasquie have released an explosive book that claims the US' primary interest in the Afghan War might be oil, not terrorism; the US president, they claim, had obstructed investigation into the Taliban's terrorist activities, says V K Shashikumar

New Delhi, November 21

A book written by two French intelligence analysts is certain to embarrass President George W Bush and his administration. The book, Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth), released recently, claims that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over Bush's obstruction of an investigation into Taliban's terrorist activities. The authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that Bush resorted to this obstruction under the influence of the United States' oil companies.

Bush stymied the intelligence agency's investigations on terrorism, even as it bargained with the Taliban on handing over of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid. "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it," O'Neill reportedly told the authors. According to the Brisard and Dasquie, the main objective of the US government in Afghanistan prior to Black Tuesday was aimed at consolidating the Taliban regime, in order to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

Prior to September 11, the US government had an extremely benevolent understanding of the Taliban regime. The Taliban was perceived "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia" from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. This would have secured for the US another huge captive and alternate oil resource centre. "The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all thatthis rationale of energy security changed into a military one," the authors claim.

"At one moment during the negotiations, US representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs'," Brisard said in an interview in Paris. On Saturday, representatives of the Northern Alliance (NA), former King Zahir Shah's confidantes, and possibly, non-Taliban Pashtun leaders, will meet in Berlin under the aegis of the US-led coalition to discuss a broad-based government in Afghanistan. It might be a coincidence that the US and Taliban diplomatic representatives met in Berlin early this year.

According to the book, the Bush administration began a series of negotiations with the Taliban early in 2001. Washington and Islamabad were also venues for some of the meetings. The authors claim that before the September 11 attacks, Christina Rocca, in charge of Asian Affairs in the US State Department, met Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef in Islamabad on August 2, 2001. Interestingly, Rocca is a veteran of US involvement in Afghanistan. She was previously in charge of contacts with Islamist guerrilla groups at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where she oversaw the delivery of Stinger missiles to Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s.

Brisard and Dasquie also reveal that the Taliban were not really ultra-orthodox in their diplomatic approach, because they actually hired an American public relations' expert for an image-making campaign in the US. It is, of course, not known whether the Pakistanis helped the Taliban secure the services of a professional image-maker. What is, however, revealed in the book is that Laila Helms, a public relations professional, who also doubles up as an authority on the way the US intelligence agencies work, was employed by the Taliban. Her task was to get the US recognise the Taliban regime. Prior to September 11, only three countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE - recognised the Taliban regime. Helms' familiarity with the ways of US intelligence organisations comes through her association with Richard Helms, who is her uncle a former director of the CIA and former US ambassador to Tehran.

Helms is described as the Mata Hari of US-Taliban negotiations. The authors claim that she brought Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, an advisor to Mullah Omar, to Washington for five days in March 2001 - after the Taliban had destroyed the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan. Hashimi met the Directorate of Central Intelligence at the CIA, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department.

The Frenchmen have indeed produced a controversial book, which is undoubtedly explosive, because of the interesting nuggets of information they have dug up. Besides, they have an impressive record in intelligence analysis, and this perhaps is the reason why the book is being talked about in hushed tones in Paris and other European capitals. Till the late 1990s, Brisard was the director of economic analysis and strategy for Vivendi, a French company. He also worked for French secret services (DST), and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous Al Qaeda network, headed by bin Laden. Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy.

On November 19, The Irish Times said in a report, "O'Neill investigated the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, a US base in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam in 1998, and the USS Cole last year."

"Jean-Charles Brisard, who wrote a report on bin Laden's finances for the French intelligence agency DST, and is co-author of Hidden Truth, met O'Neill several times last summer. He complained bitterly that the US State Department - and behind it the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage - blocked attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt."

"The US ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, forbade O'Neill and his team of so- called Rambos (as the Yemeni authorities called them) from entering Yemen. In August 2001, O'Neill resigned in frustration, and took up a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He died in the September 11 attack."

O'Neill, an Irish-American, reportedly told Brisard that all the answers, and everything needed to dismantle bin Laden's Al Qaeda, can be found in Saudi Arabia. Fearing that the Saudi royal family would be offended, US diplomats quietly buried the leads developed by O'Neill. So much so that even when the FBI wanted to talk to the suspects accused of bombing a US military installation in Dhahran in June 1996, in which 19 US servicemen were killed, the US State Department refused to make much noise about it. The Saudi officials, however, interrogated the suspects, declared them guilty and executed them. O'Neill actually went to Saudi with his team, but according to the report in The Irish Times quoting Brisard, "they were reduced to the role of forensic scientists, collecting material evidence on the bomb site".

The US' hedging on investigating Taliban's terrorist activities and its links with bin Laden were premised on the belief that a quid pro quo deal could be arranged with Taliban. The deal, apparently, was oil for diplomatic and international recognition. One important reason for Operation Enduring Freedom could well be securing American oil interests in the region. It would not be surprising if the pipeline project is put back on track soon. Even a cursory look at the oil potential of the Central Asian region is enough to understand the American interest in this region. The Caspian Sea basin encompassing countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are believed to possess some 200 billion barrels of oil, which is about one-third the amount found in the Persian Gulf area.

The greater Gulf area, encompassing Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other adjacent countries, has been a centre of international oil politics. First, the British fought to gain control over the area's petroleum wealth, followed by the French. But in the post-World War II scenario, the US emerged as the dominant power in the region, because its energy security and economic prosperity depended on the uninterrupted oil supply from this region. In March 1945, President Franklin D Roosevelt and King Addel Aziz ibn Saud signed a secret agreement, which forged a long-lasting strategic partnership. Though the details of the agreement remains secret till date, the deal ensured privileged US access to Saudi oil, in return for US protection of the royal family from internal and external threats.

However, the US dependence on Middle Eastern oil is not a secret. The US national energy policy, released by the Bush administration earlier this year, stated, "The Gulf will be a primary focus of US international energy policy." According to Michael T Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, and author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, by launching Operation Enduring Freedom, the US want to achieve two sets of objectives: "First, to capture and punish those responsible for the September 11 attacks, and to prevent further acts of terrorism; and two, to consolidate US power in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea area, and to ensure continued flow of oil. And while the second set may get far less public attention than the first, this does not mean that is any less important."

With many senior members of the Bush administration linked to major oil business interests, it more than a matter of coincidence that the US is involved in a war in Afghanistan. Vice-President Dick Cheney was, until the end of last year, president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry. US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was, between 1991 and 2000, manager for Chevron; secretaries of commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant.

There is, therefore, more to the War against terrorism than the Bush administration is willing to admit. So, Operation Enduring Freedom wants to do the following:

- Destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda;
- Counter and destroy the threat to Central Asian countries from Islamic extremists supported by bin Laden and Taliban. The Americans have conducted joint military exercises with forces of some Central Asian countries, and prior to start of the military operations in Afghanistan, signed agreements of cooperation with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzhstan;
- Negate the Taliban and Al Qaeda objective of replacing the existing Central Asian governments with militant Islamic regimes.

By achieving all these objectives, Operation Enduring Freedom will also secure the US' oil interests in the Caspian Sea area.

Saving Lives, Harvesting Souls

2007-03-06T15:36:00.001+05:30

Saving lives, Harvesting Souls

February, 2004

Tehelka

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts010704lives.asp

Backed by the religious right in America, associations in India see the HIV/AIDS pandemic as an opportunity to evangelise. VK Shashikumar and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar explore how faith based organisations bring the infected into their fold

Prashant Reddy (name changed) contracted AIDS through unsafe sex while working as a trucker ferrying goods between Hyderabad and Mumbai. Today he is on Anti Retro-Viral (ARV) therapy in a care and support home in Andhra Pradesh that is funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The ARV treatment may prolong his life, but he is aware that he will succumb to this deadly disease. Reddy sleeps with a Bible next to him and attends church regularly.

Reddy’s change of faith gives him hope in the face of rejection by his community. A counselor at a care and support organisation (name withheld) for AIDS sufferers, told Tehelka, that “most of the patients who come to know they are HIV positive come to Christ”. This is because most of the Christian faith based organisations (FBOs) in India that are involved in HIV/AIDS activities, like World Vision and Seventh Day Adventists, also have the reputation of being aggressively evangelical organisations (See Tehelka issue February 7, 2003).

The US administration is pushing the model of close FBO-government partnership in fighting HIV/AIDS in India. Bush’s ideas have found grateful resonance within Indian Christian mission agencies and associations. “We are working on nearly 45 projects in India. Our experience shows that HIV/AIDS has definitely opened up windows to reach out to the “unreached” (non-Christians). Specifically, we can get people to accept Christ in their lives, so that their lives can be changed,” Sukant Singh, head of department, community health, Christian Medical Association of India, told Tehelka. (See Interview)

The Bush administration has praised the Christian FBOs for reversing the HIV/AIDS disease prevention and treatment in some African countries, especially Uganda. Bush has repeatedly highlighted prevention programmes in Uganda that emphasise “abstinence and marital fidelity to prevent HIV transmission”. He insists that Uganda should be the “model” for programmes that receive US funding.

In developing countries like India, the United States Agency for International Development has plugged the line that FBOs have inherent capabilities to intervene in HIV/AIDS prevention related activities. “USAID is one of our major partners in resources,” David Solomon, Andhra Pradesh representative of US based Catholic Relief Services told Tehelka. According to India’s National AIDS Control Organisation, USAID is projected to spend Rs 166 crores between 1999-2005 on HIV/AIDS prevention activities. In India, American FBOs like World Vision and Catholic Relief Services fund HIV/AIDS prevention activities. Most of the development programmes of Christian organisations that promote evangelical activities have an HIV/AIDS component.

World Vision (WV), the world’s largest Christian ministry organisation has an HIV/AIDS component in its development programmes. “All the development work WV does, whether it is literacy or education or health or any value system, anything that you do would be wiped off because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This is what has happened in Africa. Development agencies have done a lot of work, but you find orphans; you find families losing their caregivers and suddenly all development just goes away. Therefore, every project in WV has a component of HIV/AIDS in that,” John Mathai, former national director of World Vision India, told Tehelka.

Mathai heads CANA, an Indian network of over 500 Christian organisations, set up in 1998, in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The Christian AIDS National Alliance (CANA) brings together Christian organisations and churches across the country and voices their opinion. CANA is essentially a network of Christian organisations and churches that work together on HIV/AIDS issues. It is involved with an international network, ACET Intern-ational Alliance (AIDS Care Education and Training) that has advocated the fusion of evangelism with the provision of HIV/AIDS services. HIV/AIDS pandemic is a “great opportunity for the Christian community to be able to share Christian values of faithfulness,” says John Mathai, executive director, CANA. “We are talking of sharing our Christian values of what it means to be faithful,” he said.

There are two broad spectrums of HIV/AIDS related activities – prevention, and the care and support part. Preventive activities focus on high-risk groups like migrant workers, truckers and commercial sex workers. The key element of prevention campaigns is the advocacy of the use of condoms. The acronym that sums up the entire gamut of HIV/AIDS prevention activities is ABC—Abstinence, Behaviour Change and Condoms.

Christian FBOs are against condom promotion as a viable mechanism to control the spread of AIDS. They favour other means for prevention like awareness generation and giving the right message on condoms instead of distributing them. But for Christian FBOs in India, ABC expands into Abstinence, Behaviour Change and Christ.

“Christian missionaries have a negative outlook towards people of sexual minorities/alternative sexuality. They wish to change/reform such people. Most faith- based groups look at rehabilitation of sex workers simply as turning to god and atoning for their sins,” Sunil Menon, project director, Sahodaran, told Tehelka.

It is not surprising that Christian FBOs are involved in care and support activities, than in preventive programmes. Many evangelical organisations in India, like the Friends Missionary Prayer Band and the Emmanuel Hospital Assoc-iation run care and support institutions. In India, these FBOs look at HIV/AIDS as leprosy of the twenty-first century. “It’s an opportunity for us to be able to share God’s love to accept, to make them part of us, to avoid stigma and discrimination against them,” Mathai told Tehelka.
Hindu society in India is as incapable of dealing with the stigma of HIV/AIDS as it was with leprosy. In a society that saw leprosy as the sign of sinners cursed by god, the Christian missionaries overturned the notion of illness as punishment, and treated lepers as no different from anyone else. “Acceptance is the biggest problem they face because they are rejected. Rejected by the communities. Thrown out of the villages. Asked to go out of their homes. They need care and help. Therefore, I think the first step that the Church needs to do and is doing is to get into care and support,” Richard Howell, secretary general, Evangelical Fellowship of India told Tehelka. (See interview)

The Church in India expects increasing number of HIV/AIDS outcasts in India in the coming years. So it considers rising numbers of HIV infected as a “good field” for evangelisation. “To serve and give them the gospel so that they (people living with AIDS) don’t have to feel hopeless. They do have hope in Christ. That needs to be mentioned. I would say yes (it’s a good field),” said Howell.

Dr Alexander Abraham, who runs the North India Harvest Network (NIHN) and a US funded conversion programme, Operation Agape, revealed to Tehelka that Christian FBOs in India emphasise the evangelical aspects during the provision of its health care services: “Only the gospel can offer them (the HIV infected), true salvation. Jesus Christ is the only person who can offer any hope.” In fact, organisations like NIHN spread canards about faith-based healing of HIV infection in order to attract potential converts. “We have had AIDS patients who have become Christians, who are even healed of AIDS now. There are several stories of people who have been healed. In Punjab, there was one patient who was considered an outcast. Our people fasted and prayed for him for three days and as far as I know he has not tested HIV positive since,” says Dr Abraham.

According to Howell, evangelisation during the provision of HIV/AIDS related help by Christian FBOs in India is “like right to information” and that “in Jesus Christ there is hope for them”. The gospel “needs to be shared as it gives them hope,” says Howell. HIV/AIDS in India has opened new avenues for Indian and foreign missionaries for evangelical opportunities. “Certainly. HIV/AIDS has opened the doors for evangelism to reach the unreached in India,” claims Doctor Sukant Singh.

The US government has advocated that funds for HIV/AIDS prevention should be primarily distributed through the network of FBOs. In one of his public remarks last year, Bush said: “We must ensure that the legislation provides the greatest opportunity for faith-based and community organisations to fully participate in helping a neighbour in need.” He has pushed through policy initiatives that have helped missionaries in Africa fuse the provision of HIV/AIDS related services with proselytising. “We have departed from the Colonial-era habit of proselytising and instead evangelise by action…President Bush has recognized the central role faith-based institutions play in this effort,” wrote Reverend Angelo D’Agostino, founder of Nyumbani Orphanage, Nairobi, Kenya, in a signed article for the conservative American journal The National Review in its August 19, 2003 issue.

President Bush has aggressively pushed for sexual “abstinence” programmes instead of promoting a scientific programme based on condom use among other HIV/AIDS prevention strategies. Christian FBOs in the US have aggressively pushed the Bush administration to officially adopt “abstinence” based programmes as the core of HIV/AIDS prevention strategies. In India, CANA has advocated the Bush view on HIV/AIDS by arguing for “holistic” transformation or behaviour change in individuals to stem the spread of HIV infection.

Mathai explains CANA’s position on holistic transformation: “When we are talking about this holistic change in a person, we are not dealing with one element. A person who is poor, you try to make him less poor. A person who is illiterate, you make him more literate. A person who is lost, get him closer to the kingdom of god. This change that we, as Christians, need to do together to usher the kingdom of god here on earth, that’s what I mean by holistic change. There are many who deal with all the material aspects. There are some who deal only with spiritual aspects. It is the total that is important if you want to make a change in the individual. I mean there is a beggar who needs food; you need to provide that for a person to be able to share the gospel.”

Clearly ideas flowing out of the White House have had an impact on Christian organisations all over the world, including India. Bush’s global AIDS policies have been supported and closely monitored by religious groups, especially conservatives who want less money spent on condoms and more on abstinence programmes. In April 2003, at a White House function on HIV/AIDS prevention, the prominent guests were evangelical Christian leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and evangelists Franklin Graham and Anne Graham Lotz, children of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, who converted Bush to a born-again Christian. “When we see the wounded traveller on the road to Jericho, we will not, America will not, pass to the other side of the road,” Bush told the White House gathering of about 200 religious, community and government leaders.

The appointment of Randall Tobias, ex-Eli Lilly CEO as the head of the US Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is a reflection of Bush’s commitment to faith-based policies. US-based AIDS groups have vehemently opposed Bush’s appointment of Tobias because of his stance on global AIDS funding and abstinence policies. Tobias, who spearheads the US AIDS initiatives overseas, including the president’s $15 billion five-year emergency plan for AIDS relief, has attributed the decline in the rate of HIV infections in Uganda to campaigns focused primarily on abstinence.

But AIDS groups in the US have castigated the “abstinence only” approach of the Bush administration. “Promotion of abstinence has been, at best, only one aspect of a much broader campaign to reduce HIV in Uganda,” notes Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHGE). “One that has included frank talk about sex at all levels of public discourse and widespread promotion of effective condom use, among other strategies,” he clarifies. The Administration efforts, says Jacobson, “to portray Uganda’s approach as a one-dimensional strategy serves a narrow ideological agenda, in which public health and scientific evidence are virtually irrelevant.”

The Bush Administration’s plan to make abstinence-only strategies the core of its global prevention agenda “will unquestionably lead to more illness and death,” said Jacobson. The CHGE is one of the many organisations that have banded together under the umbrella of Health Gap, which campaigns in the US against policies of “neglect and avarice that deny treatment to millions and fuel the spread of HIV.”

Under the Bush administration, Christian FBOs have amassed significant policy-influencing clout in the White House. The FBOs, in turn, aware of their policy influencing status, have leveraged their power in other countries. For instance, in Africa the Bush Administration supports FBO’s intervention in HIV/AIDS related activities. But such interventions also mingle with aggressive evangelical activities.

“The Bush Administration is clearly afraid to tackle AIDS in Africa in a serious way. The administration worries that a policy that stresses the use of condoms and acknowledges the reality of human sexual behaviour will offend the religious right in America.

Thus, much of the AIDS prevention work has been turned over to evangelical groups that spread misinformation and try to
proselytise.

This policy is not compassionate. It will only result in more suffering and death in poor nations,” Rob Boston, assistant director of communications,Americans United (AU), told Tehelka. AU, founded in 1947, is a watchdog organisation that keeps a hawk-eyed watch on the separation of the church and the State in the US.

American conservative groups have castigated HIV/AIDS prevention programmes that rely on condoms to stop the spread of AIDS on the grounds that they have failed. “I disagree with this assertion. Some of the so-called faith-based groups have allowed religious dogma to colour their efforts,” Boston told Tehelka.

“Traditionalist Catholic groups and some fundamentalist Protestant organisations oppose the distribution of condoms. Other groups seem more interested in saving souls than saving lives. The response to the AIDS epidemic in Africa should be led by medical and scientific organisations, not religious groups,” he said.

The FBOs have championed “abstinence first” and “marital fidelity” strategies and have attributed the falling infection rates in some African countries like Uganda to the adoption of these strategies. Nearly all mainline Protestant churches and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in the US have strongly supported the Bush policy on Global AIDS prevention. “George Bush’s initiative gives international focus to the AIDS issue and is very important as a credibility factor in spawning evangelism efforts,” Richard Hubbard, co-director of Links International, a UK based ministry organisation, told Tehelka.

Conservative groups have found an ally in the Bush administration. According to a report, 2003 Year in Review; HIV/AIDS US Policy Prepared by Health Gap, “the Administration is exporting harmful AIDS policies, such as a mandate that 33 percent of all prevention funds in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (EPAR) be spent on abstinence-only-until-marriage programmes and banning the funding of organisations working to secure the rights of sex workers to be free from violence and harassment.”

Trans-national missionary organisations and Indian Christian evangelist groups see the HIV/AIDS crisis as an opportunity to evangelise. The strategy followed by the American FBOs in Africa is inspiring similar strategies in India. But US-based NGOs, like AU, have sounded the warning bell for India.

“The fight against AIDS in India, African nations or in any other part of the world must be seen as a medical problem, not a religious, spiritual or moral problem. Organisations bent on proselytising should not be included in the government funding mix,” Boston told Tehelka. But the evangelists in India are pushing on and their emphasis clearly is on saving souls.

Preparing for the harvest
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts010704harvest.asp

Last week, Tehelka ran an exhaustive investigation into the US government’s disturbing support to evangelical organisations engaged in church-planting, intelligence gathering and conversions across India.

The story focused on how evangelists, backed by immense financial and technological resources that the right-wing Bush establishment has put at their command, are aggressively targeting the so-called “unreached masses” on the margins of Indian society. Their reach is India-wide but their area of focus is north India. The evangelists also have links with the CIA which poses a great threat to India.

The Bush administration has encouraged Christian faith-based organisations like no other administration before; their conversion campaign runs worldwide but India is a major laboratory —- they are using everything from classical conversion techniques to state-of- the-art technology in their efforts.

Over the years, evangelists have collected detailed ethnographic data from extensive field research in India; it is a data bank that’s more detailed than anything the government of India has. And it is at the disposal of American intelligence agencies.

Among the smartest moves of neo- evangelists was to use the Indian PIN code system to gather and disseminate information. The PIN system also became a handy tool for them to locate clusters of focus and marshal manpower resources.

Over the past decade, foreign missionaries have repeatedly violated the law banning their entry by coming in on tourist visas and carrying on with conversions and church planting.

Movements like AD2000 and Beyond, the Joshua Project and Joshua Project II, have proceeded on detailed blueprints to proselytise and plant churches. And converts have now become zealous converters, prodded on by their American masters. In some areas of north India such as Punjab, entire villages have been converted.

We reassert that Tehelka opposes all religious fundamentalism – Hindu, Islamic or Christianity. Faith is a private matter;

“HIV/AIDS has opened windows”

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts010704hiv.asp

Dr Sukant Singh heads the HIV/AIDS programme at the Christian Medical

Does HIV/AIDS represent a ‘harvest field’ in India?
Certainly. We do not take sin very seriously. We just like to compromise. I believe that AIDS is a result of the human race disobeying God. It’s a visitation from God reminding us to come back to Him again. And God is going to save us. Condoms only promote promiscuity. And this is not God’s purpose. God’s purpose is one wife and one husband, isn’t it? So the Church has a very big role to play.

How do we get non-Christian HIV/AIDS victims to Christ?
The Church should approach them with compassion and tell them that nothing is impossible in God’s sight. HIV positive people can become HIV negative. It is not difficult to convey the Gospel to non-Christians. Our Daund (Maharashtra) experience is a case in point. We have a support group in Daund for HIV positive people at the Ashram Memorial Hospital. A local pastor is also involved. Every month the AIDS patients who are all non-Christian locals come for ‘fellowship’. The pastor acts as counsellor, sharing his love, compassion and telling them about Jesus. The locals are now willing to come once a week. They are demanding it. Many locals asked if they could come to Christ and they have.

So Christ can be a medium for HIV/AIDS victims?
Absolutely. Certainly. HIV/AIDS has opened the doors for evangelism to reach the unreached in India. That is a statement I can make strongly. HIV/AIDS is a door, a window to reach out to the unreached in India.

Can Christ really change a person from HIV positive to HIV negative?
As far as Christ is concerned, nothing is impossible. If he can make water into wine, if he can cure leprosy, he can also transform HIV positive to HIV negative.

Some Christian organisations are already diverting funds allocated for AIDS, towards evangelical purposes?
Not in all places. You see, AIDS is a problem, but evangelism is not. Evangelism is a process in which God works, through men, so people come to Christ. So now we are looking at AIDS as opening an oppportunity to reach out to people. To tell them that salvation is at hand. You can be saved, you can live and you can also be cured. How you use opportunities to reach out to people is a part of evangelism.

“The church is where the need is”
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts010704church.asp

As general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India Rev Richard Howell holds a very significant position within the Christian leadership in India. With forty-seven Protestant denominations, other related congregations, eighty-eight church related organisations and thousands of individual members on its rolls it works as a major national alliance of evangelical Christians. He also serves on the board of directors of several Christian NGOs. Rev Howell was crucial in the ‘inter-linking’ of HIV/AIDS and evangelism.

Reverend, after Africa, India is now in the eye of the AIDS storm. Is HIV/AIDS an emerging harvest field for India?

Yeah. The church is where the need is. Be it the economically poor, socially backward or the AIDS victims rejected by their communities. The church is among people who are suffering from AIDS. The church is against stigma and discrimination against AIDS patients. We need to show the love of Christ, especially to these people.

Could you explain the church’s efforts in this sphere in India?

I think the church and the Christian NGOs are involved in a very big way among AIDS patients. Our involvement is at the grass-root level. We may not have big hospitals, but we have care centres. The church is holding consultations on how to mobilise its people towards this. The church is being made aware of their calling to serve and accept the marginalised, especially those with AIDS.

How does the church propose to reach out to the non-Christians? Say, you are a pastor in a Hindu dominated village and it has a sizeable section of HIV/AIDS infected people who are Hindus?

I would go just to spend time with them. At times, I may not have the means, but I can accept a person suffering from AIDS. Acceptance is the biggest problem. They are thrown out of the villages, asked to leave their homes. Therefore the church accepts them. They need care and help. Why condemn them? Jesus never condemned people. He forgave them. I think the church should also be there to accept them, forgive them and find ways to help them. There are certain cases where infected people were not attended to in hospitals. I think the church has an obligation to show them the love of Christ. The church is doing this. Our Christian NGOs are doing it. We even have an alliance called CANA who works among them. HIV/AIDS patients are being brought in for church services and if they accept Christ, it is good. They know their days are numbered. The Gospel gives them hope. Hope not only for this life, but hope of eternity.

Considering numbers, would you call it a very “good (harvest) field”?

Yes. They don’t have to feel hopeless. They have hope in Christ. That’s their right to know. That in Jesus, there is hope, that needs to be shared with everyone. Then, why not with people facing particularly life and death issues.

Some Christians organisations getting foreign funds have already found a way to work around the FCRA rules, which monitor such funds. Funds given for rehabilitation of AIDS victims are being used for evangelical purposes.

The little information I have is money that comes, comes as a package and the package involves service as well. But, an NGO will not do evangelism. Service is verbal for which you do not need money. Verbally you have to share the gospel with them. Evangelism is basically verbal. So you don’t need any funds for evangelisation. Therefore, the money that is being used for serving the AIDS patients is being used properly and in the process you share the Gospel. When you are there you can talk about Christ. We should share what Christians believe. The Hindutva people share it everyday. So why should we be scared talking about the place where you get hope.

What more needs to be done to save souls victimised by HIV/AIDS.

I think we need more literature, that would specifically cater to their needs. Not just spiritual, even their social needs, psychological needs, emotional needs and of course the spiritual dimension of life. There is very
little literature. There is also a need for more aggressive campaigns.

Do churches get funds for AIDS work?

The National Council of Churches, a council of churches, would have access to foreign funding. They say so much of funding is available for such purpose. If you are doing it put in an application.

So HIV/AIDS does give faith-based organisations a chance for evangelisation?

It does. It is up to us to present it intelligently. You should not come under attack unnecessarily. The BJP’s propaganda statement is conversion. Now they will say that we are converting even AIDS victims. We need to tell AIDS people there is hope for you, but in a way we do not become a suspect. We should do it intelligentl y. So at least let them (HIV/AIDS victims) have hope.

Jesus Comes to Karala
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004jesus.asp

A project hatched in Texas and Indiana, US, spawns Christian converts in rural Punjab, reports Mayabhushan Nagvenkar

When George W Bush was the governor of Texas and revealing his Christian fundamentalist streak, another Texas-based organisation, Gospel For Asia (GFA), was putting in place strategies for evangelisation in India. GFA had deployed an Indian missionary to convert the villagers of Karala. What was more remarkable about the Punjab village was the networking. A missionary, Pastor Prabhat Nayak of the Believers Church (supported by GFA) was in turn deployed by another Indian church planting agency, North India Christian Mission, aligned to the Eastview Christian Church, Indiana.
The ability to network from the level of behemoth transnational missionary organisations to a village-level operation shows the fantastic marshalling of resources and personnel.

Perhaps, Pastor Prabhat is unaware that he is just a cog in the wheel. So are his converts. Take John Singh for example.
"Ever since my family turned to Christ, we have not had any dikkat (trouble)," claims John Singh Masih. Masih is a popular surname adopted by neo-converts in north India. It is a corruption of the word messiah. His refrain, 'koi dikkat nahin', is the most commonly repeated phrase used by all villagers who have converted to Christianity.
Masih, like many others in this village, claims to have been blessed. "What is the secret of your trouble-free life?" I ask him. "Pehle ghar mein bimaariyan hoti thi, ab vaise kuch nahin hai (earlier my family was afflicted with illness and disease and now there is none)." Yet, despite John Singh's strong faith, he lost one of his siblings in a road accident a couple of years ago.

When I visited Karala village on January 6, it was the eve of his son Parminder Singh Masih's wedding. A colourful pandal was up on an open patch next to his house. Parminder, a strapping lad stepping out of his teens, was on the threshold of conjugal bliss. He had no difficulty at all finding a suitable bride. She was from a Christian family in Chandigarh. And Parminder, a qualified pastor, fresh out of a Bible training school close to Karala. Indeed, he is the village's first home-grown pastor, who dreams big, of taking Christianity to the rest of the village. Being a local, he fancies his chances.
Karala is like many other hamlets in rural Punjab. Smoke spirals from terraced homes, while robust, shawl-clad villagers walk briskly down brick-paved lanes that lead off the highway. There was no sign-board on the Chandigarh-Patiala road to announce that you had arrived at Karala. The village boasts of three 'hotels', which serve tea and not much else. A couple of general stores, one a great favourite with children. It sells battasa (sugar wafer), the arguably highest grade of sweetmeat available in Karala. It also has two schools: a primary school and a government-run secondary school.

Within the boundaries of the village is a small white-washed temple, of the Valmiki sect. The Valmikis, who account for a significant section of the village, are Scheduled Caste, at the bottom rung of the social hierarchy. For generations, they have been farm-hands and reared cattle. The Valmiki temple had been the community's rallying point. However, over the last few years, there has been an alteration in Karala's script. The catalyst is a very unassuming man. Pastor Prabhat. An Oriya, he was introduced to Karala as a Bible college student, doing a two-year theology course at Believers Bible College, Patiala. That was eight years ago.

Now he has Pastor Parminder to give him a helping hand. "Maine kaafi logon ko prabhu ke paas laya (I have brought several people to the Lord)," says a proud Parminder. "Maine kaafi logon ko shubh samachar sunaya. Takreeban matlab meri vajah se 15
- 20 baptisma paaye log hain (I have taken the Good Word to several people. I have been responsible for about 15 - 20 persons being baptised)," he states.

Parminder's converts are from Karala and neighbouring villages like Kurdi and Bassi. He retells with relish how recently he had been to Kalka in Harayana, to distribute religious pamphlets, and had a run-in with the Bajrang Dal. "Some Bajrang Dal members tried threatening me, asking me not to preach Christianity. I told them I would continue and that the Lord would protect me."

Now he has Pastor Parminder to give him a helping hand. "Maine kaafi logon ko prabhu ke paas laya (I have brought several people to the Lord)," says a proud Parminder. "Maine kaafi logon ko shubh samachar sunaya. Takreeban matlab meri vajah se 15 - 20 baptisma paaye log hain (I have taken the Good Word to several people. I have been responsible for about 15 - 20 persons being baptised)," he states.
Parminder's converts are from Karala and neighbouring villages like Kurdi and Bassi. He retells with relish how recently he had been to Kalka in Harayana, to distribute religious pamphlets, and had a run-in with the Bajrang Dal. "Some Bajrang Dal members tried threatening me, asking me not to preach Christianity. I told them I would continue and that the Lord would protect me."

Parminder's uncle Jarnail Singh Masih, from the same village, has also converted to Christianity. His daughter, painfully shy when it comes to meeting with a stranger, is loquacious talking about her new religion. She says she wasn't aware about Christ, until a few years ago when Pastor Prabhat stepped into her government school.
"Pastor ne 'Parmeshwar Se Mile' kitaab free di," she claims excitedly. Later the pastor came to her home, to talk to her family about the Lord. "Ever since then I have been going to the church at the training centre. Ab ghar mein shanti hai. Kisi cheez ki kami ghati nahin (now there is peace at home. We do not lack anything)," she repeats the phrase that has become proverbial in Karala.

That Pastor Prabhat walks in and out of the government school is confirmed by another student, Gurpal Singh Masih. The perky 9-year-old, who helps his grandfather run one of Karala's tea shops, insists that Jesus has 'changed his life'. "Saal mein ek baar Pastor Prabhat school mein aake Bible dete hain (Pastor Prabhat comes to school once a year and gives a copy of the Bible)," claims the lad. The boy has the enthusiasm of recent converts. He says he advises his classmates to "come to Christ". "Hum bolte hain ki aap masih mein aao. Aapka jeevan badlega (I tell them, you all come to Christ. Your life will change.)"

Gurpal is among the 30-odd children from Karala and two neighbouring villages who attend Pastor Prabhat's Sunday School. Held in a hall adjacent to the primary school, a metallic cross on top of the building is the only thing that reveals its religious purpose. The children are not all from Christian families, but that does not stop the pastor from telling them about Christ "Hanh ek chance hamen mil jaata hain ke hum bachchon ko bata sake school ke dwaara hi. Unke maa baap tak pohonche (yes, we get a chance to tell the children (about Christ) through school. We can also get to their parents)," he says.
In addition, Pastor Prabhat run a small 'Believers English School' out of his house in Banur, 6 kms from Karala. Medical camps are another of the avenues he has perfected to introduce evangelism in villages. In nine years, he has made 163 conversions. "Medical camp se ek to davai denge. Davai dekar unko batayenge, ki aap davai se to theek ho jayenge, lekin Prabhu Yesu Masih hi aapko theek kar sakta hai (at medical camps we give medicines. Afterwards we tell them that medicines can only cure you, but only Lord Jesus Christ can heal you)," is his pitch to patients.

He also hosts tea parties-giving money sometimes to a prominent family in a village to organise it. "At these meetings I ask them to call their neighbours, so that people come over to have the refreshments and I can inform them about the Gospel." From every 10 such meetings, the pastor claims, he wins over at least four persons into the Christian fold.

Pastor Prabhat is not aware of the internet. Neither does he know that his work in Karala has been noted in cyberspace-on a website hosted by the North Indian Christian Mission (NICM) run by an Indian missionary Deepak Dhingra.
"The Christian church in Karala has committed to plant another church in the nearby town of Chatbir. One of our very capable evangelist Brother Prabhat desires to assist both churches in personal evangelism and discipleship."
Dhingra, who has employed Prabhat in NICM, is effusive in his praise; he is riding on the work done in the field, by a modestly-financed team of 19 pastors, to claim a bigger share of funds flowing in for evangelisation in North India.

Dhingra's wish-list is hardly modest. He is seeking $650 to buy a scooter for a pastor, $8000 for a church building, $100 for a missionary church planter … The list goes on.He is not the end of the grub-line. Dhingra owes his allegiance to the Eastview Christian Church in Indiana, USA, from where a senior minister Rick Miller pulls ministerial strings.

Back in Karala, Pastor Prabhat is not competing for dollars for faith.

Photo caption: Clockwise from TOP: Pastor Prabhat in the process of baptising a villager; the pastor supervises rehearsals at a Sunday school; Steve Pottorf, an American, converting a Punjabi girl at a water trough in Sainik Colony near Karala.

US Mission agencies working in India

by Mayabhushan Nagvenkar

The American Leprosy Missions

BCM International, Inc.

Baptist Bible Fellowship International

Baptist International Missions

Baptist Mid-Missions

Baptist World Mission

Bethany Fellowship Missions

Conservative Baptists International

Child Evangelism Fellowship Inc.

Childcare International

Christian Broadcasting Network

Christian Church of North America Missions

Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, c/o Mission Services Association

Christian and Missionary Alliance

Church World Service and Witness Unit of the NCCUSA

Church of God in Christ, Mennonite General Mission

Church of the Nazarene, World Mission Division Info

Compassion International, Inc.

Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross Generalate

Elim Fellowship World Missions Department

Evangelical Free Church of America, Board of Overseas Missions

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Division for Global Mission

Foursquare Missions International

Free Methodist World Missions

General Conference Mennonite Church Overseas Mission

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Global Outreach Mission

Globe Missionary Evangelism

Gospel for Asia, Inc.

Grace Ministries International, Inc.

Holt International Children's Services, Inc.

Holy Cross Mission Center for Cross-Cultural Ministries

International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention

International Missions, Inc.

International Pentecostal Holiness Church World Missions Ministries

La Salette Missionaries, Province of Mary, Queen of Peace

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Board for Mission Services

Lutheran World Relief

MAP International, Inc.

Men for Missions International

Mennonite Central Committee

New Tribes Mission

OMS International, Inc.

Oblates of Mary Immaculate, U.S. Consulate

Operation Mobilization

Partners International

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Worldwide Ministries Division

Reformed Church in America, General Synod Council, Mission Services

SIM (Society for International Ministries) USA

Salesian Missions

Salvation Army, U.S.A.

Society of Mary, Province of New York, Marianist Provincial House

Society of the Divine Word, Chicago Province

Society of the Divine Word, Southern Province of St. Augustine

Teen Missions International, Inc.

The Bible League

The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, U.S. Province

Trans World Radio

United Methodist Church General Board of Global Ministries

United Methodist Committee on Relief

United World Mission, Inc.

WEC International

Wesleyan World Missions

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Bd for World Missions

World Mission Prayer League

World Partners of the Missionary Church

World Vision

Divided They Stand
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004stand.asp

Catholics and Protestants in India stand bitterly divided, and not just over the Bible, discovers Mayabhushan Nagvenkar

The When Father Amaro Martin, a Roman Catholic parish priest at Bakshi Nagar church in Jammu, told me that his flock in a slum nearby was in danger, I listened in earnest. He confided that the threat to his Roman Catholics followers was from a Protestant pastor. I thought he was joking, and waited for a cue from him to laugh at the quip.

"They are poaching on our people in the Christian colony," Father Martins continued. The colony comprises of a cluster of 100-odd irregular houses. Several years ago, labourers had migrated from Gurdaspur and Pathankot in Punjab in search of employment and settled in Bakshi Nagar. These 300-odd Christians form the turf that the Protestant pastor and the Roman Catholic parish priest are fighting to keep.

The worldwide rift between the Catholic and the Protestant sects stems from a few beliefs, on which both sects have irrevocable differences, the most important of which is whether the Bible must be interpreted in the light of the Bible itself or must be based on interpretations of the Pope. While the Roman Catholics believe that the Pope is the representative of Jesus Christ on earth, Protestants claim that the Holy Spirit represents Jesus.

Roman Catholic priests are empowered to forgive sins. Protestants maintain that only God can forgive sin. Protestants solely believe in only two sources of Christian doctrine, i.e., the Old Testament and the New Testament, while the sources of doctrine for Roman Catholics include several others, including an appendage to the Bible called the Apocyrpha and certain papal declarations.

Father Amaro admits that he is trying his best to "sanitise" his flock from the "bad influence" of the evangelising pastor. Later, he confesses that he still has 'one ace in the hole' with which he can call the shots.

"We Catholics run a diocese school nearby. To get admission in school they (Catholics converted to Protestants and non-Christians) need a certificate from the local parish priest. So either they pay stipulated fees or come to me for the certificate," claims Father Martin, who is from Goa, a state dominated by Roman Catholics. "There have been instances when they start coming to our church a couple of months before school begins, pretending that they want to come back to my church. We always have to be very alert for such tricks," he says.

He has devised another method to plug the loophole-by weeding out elements that are only interested in 'seasonal' conversion for petty gains. Those interested in converting have to now undergo a year's catechism, or Bible study, classes. This is done in order to gauge the seriousness of the candidates.

But, for the Roman Catholic priest, things appear to be slipping. His assistant parish priest, John Fernandes, also from Goa, walks in and informs him that he's heard that a pastor from the Believers sect has been visiting the slum.
Believers are a rapidly growing sect, and are whittling away a noticeable fraction from Roman Christians and non-Christians with planned and persistent evangelising methods, which includes passionate and charismatic preaching, virtually uncommon amongst Catholics.

In the evangelisation operations synchronised by global movements like AD2000 and the Joshua project, it is the unconventional and fast growing networks like Believers, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists or Methodists who form the blistering spearhead of this entire movement.

Evangelists, Christian thinkers and field workers who have been interviewed consistently claim that Roman Catholicism has been losing its charm to other mushrooming Christian sects.

Roman Catholics, perhaps the most organised Christian sect in India, find it difficult to match the scorching pace set by evangelist outfits, who thrive on innovation, unabashedness, and more often than not deep pockets, which are the hallmarks of any classic evangelist operation.

The best the Catholics appear to be doing is fighting their way back on their own strengths. The comparatively conservative Catholics have long-standing investments in the education sector, which holds them in good stead, at least for the time being.

THOSE THAT SHALL DELIVER...
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004qaeda.asp&id=1

The Al Qaeda has "benefitted from a network structure that allows passionate and committed individuals and groups to contribute to a wider purpose (whether for good or ill) with a minimum of co-ordination and administration. Widely seen as an effective antidote to bureaucracy (the corporate equivalent of arthritis), the network has arrived as the organisational structure for a globalising, post-modern world… The persistence of the Al Qaeda network in the face of unrelenting pressure is a case in point."
- Richard Tiplady, a church-planting strategist, in a paper presented at a conference organised by All Nations Christian College (September 2003) on 'Survive or Thrive? Is there a future for the mission agency?'

The irony is inescapable. Taking a leaf out of what Tiplady calls "Al Qaeda's operational mobility", American missionary organisations are, methodically and very scientifically, planting the Church and recruiting disciples, pincer-style. With George W Bush, a "born again" Christian as the President of United States, the missionary enterprise is in full gear, trying to "save (Indian) souls" and "reach the unreached".
The modus operandi for evangelical activities is simple, even if scary: Channel exorbitant funds through the eager Bush administration; circumvent the Indian law banning registration of new missionaries by sending "men of God" on tourist visas; use Indians already converted to convert fresh faithfuls. And yes, the underlying message: work relentlessly and patiently.

Indian missionaries now do 90 percent of the work in founding churches. All these missionaries are from the new age churches, most of whom owe allegiance to the Protestant sect. The fast springing new age churches are not only making inroads into memberships of other religions, but are also threatening the very existence of the mainline congregations, e.g. the Roman Catholic church.

Operation Worldwide

Local Indian missionaries are effective conversion weapons because they understand the language, the customs and the culture. Besides, the recently converted are often more zealous about adding to the ranks. A voluminous book title Operation World-published by the Christian missionaries' UK-based publishing house, Operation Mission-reveals the rapid strides made by the US-funded evangelical missions in India. The references to India can be found from page 273 onwards. Of the many shocking revelations in the book is the claim that Arunachal Pradesh is on its way to becoming the third Christian majority state in India, after Nagaland and Mizoram. In 1971 the Christian population totalled 0.8 percent of its population, and within a decade, it increased to 10 percent. In fact, the author of this book, well-known evangelical strategist Patrick Johnstone, says, "thirty percent of India's Dalits are considering a change of religion, and a growing number are finding Jesus."

So how do the converts find Jesus? In India, one of the most successful church planting networks is Operation Agape ('unconditional love' in Greek), which began in 1995 in central India as an "experiment" devised by Germany-based church strategist Wolfgang Simson and his Indian collaborator, Dr Alexander Abraham, professor of neurology and head of community heath department, Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. Its predecessor was the project of Prince of Peace, launched on January 1, 1989.

By the mid-1990s, when "spying missions" were despatched to India by US-based transnational missionary organisations (TMOs), it was part of the larger conversion mission, AD2000 and Joshua Project. Abraham's commentary in a film produced by Agape reveals that "by the mid-1990s, a growing realisation for the need for a systematic church planting effort covering the entire state was gaining momentum. We held a systematic grassroots level harvest force research in 1998 and the results were an eye-opener for us. There were 262 pin code areas in Punjab without any churches in 1998. In the next three years, however, all the 491 postal code areas in the state gained entry into the church map." This was possible due to the research and survey conducted by Brother Issac Dutta, research coordinator, Punjab, Operation Agape. "God gave me the burden of Punjab in 1997. I started my research in 1997. My team and I visited 1,100 Christian workers in the whole of Punjab, collecting data from them on who was working in different villages, blocks and districts," Dutta explained.

The North India Harvest Network, also started by Abraham, used the 'Pin Code survey' conducted by the Indian Missions Association, Chennai, to generate ethno-graphic data in the North Indian states. The data has armed the US intelligence agencies for they now have unparalleled access to the remotest corners of India and are-again, pincer like-bringing areas into "the fold" by secretly unleashing pastors in different blocks and districts.

Operation Agape has, for example, been instrumental in producing over 3,000 'house-churches' in Madhya Pradesh in the last six years. Their conversion figure stands at a record number of "60,000 to 70,000" converts. "Our methods have become a model for churches all across India," says Abraham. "The house-church movement does not strive for buildings. We do not believe in buildings. Traditional churches are dying. The Anglican church in England is dying. The house-church movement is the spirit of God. Ludhiana is a city where the church has done really well. Now we are dreaming of a church in every colony. Fifty percent colonies in Ludhiana and 60 percent villages in Punjab have churches now," he told Tehelka.

Planting churches in India

Operation Agape is supported by Christian Aid, a US-based conversion-funding agency, run by Rev Bob Finley, a loyal supporter of President Bush. The mission headquarters of this operation is Agape Bhawan, located within the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana. Abraham was extremely evasive about answering questions on Operation Agape, but a video CD produced by AGAPE foundation, which is in Tehelka's possession, is explicit about the movement.

The film on Operation Agape interviews Rev C George, who claims to have begun the church planting movement in Punjab: "I had great concern for Punjab…Then the Lord very definitely, specifically asked me to go to the state of Punjab and do whatever possible so that the people will come to know that Operation Blue Star or Operation Black Thunder did not help, but operation of God's love will be the solution to the problem of Punjab."

Simply put, the strategy is to plant a church in every village and urban colony and notch up a figure of 100,000 churches in the state by 2010. "We cannot say we have any challenge here because Punjab is open. All religions are respected and we can go freely to everybody. The most difficult states to evangalise are Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh because extremist Hindus are there," says Simon P George, manager, Punjab Bible College, Hiran (near Ludhiana).

According to Alexander's own admission, the church planting movement is making rapid strides in Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttaranachal. The North India Harvest Network has launched Operation Rose of Sharon in J&K. Pastor training centres have been opened in Jammu and Srinagar. "The Lord has given J&K good workers and we know that He will lead the way," says Timothy, who is Operation Agape's J&K coordinator.

However, unlike in J&K, where Operation Agape has deployed 60 "good workers", in the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh, the slogan of "a church for every district, a church for every block, a church for every village people group by the year 2010" is still a slogan. Sam Abraham, a research coordinator with Operation Agape, says that in 1996, detailed research was carried out at the behest of US TMOs, but Himachal remains the "darkest state of India with the least percentage of Christians."
The only success story from HP is from Kinnaur district. Till 1994, there were neither believers nor any churches in this district. "Today there are 180 churches in this district alone with more than 6,000 believers. It has been very successful because of the tools and training they provide for church planters," says Randeep Mathew, Operation Agape's Himachal coordinator.

"They" are Operation Agape's American benefactors. There is another US-based organisation that is heavily involved in Himachal and other north Indian states. Gospel for Asia has planted a network of churches in North India called the Believers Church. Like true believers, they plod along, introducing new tools when necessary. Like Pastor Prakash Abraham of Believers Church told Tehelka: "We now have a Kangri radio programme broadcast at 6:15 on Saturday and Sunday mornings on 49Mhz (short wave). The use of modern media, like film projectors, e-mails and websites have tremendously increased our capacity to carry out evangelical activities."

Reaching all pockets

What is shocking is Pastor Prakash's admission that "some of the organisers (of Gospel For Asia) have set up their own radio broadcasting networks to reach the 'unreached' in different Himachali dialects. Operation Agape, too, has an evangelical radio programme that reaches areas difficult for pastors to access. If there are two organisations-Agape and Believers Church-working in the same state, it is not by accident. Territories have been neatly divided and the American TMOs are ensuring through their Indian outfits that there is no duplication of efforts in the task of the Great Commission. If Agape is working on conversions in Kinnuar, Believers Church is expanding in Solan. Both these organisations have access to top of the line research information. There is an extra-ordinary level of networking and coordination.

Pastor Abraham, a Malayalee in his early 40s (appointed as the overseer for Himachal Pradesh by Believers Church) came to Solan five years ago and has kept a strict eye on figures. "If we keep the same pace, in 10 years we may even see the Christian population rise to around 25 percent." he says. This would be quite an achievement for- like Haryana-Himachal is what they would call "tough territory." The reasons, in the words of Jagan Mohan Rao, principal of Believers Church, Solan: "Many places are still steeped in traditional tribal ethos and the tribals are animists. But Hinduism has a hold on them. They practice popular Hinduism."

Pastor Abraham is upbeat as well. "Four years ago, the Christian populace in HP was 0.9 percent in a population of 60 lakh. Now, unofficial estimates tell us that about 2 percent have accepted Christian faith. This is a significant increase. But most of them are not openly saying they are Christian," Pastor Abraham admitted to Tehelka. What they are working together to ensure are the numbers.

Richard Howell, general secretary, Evangelical Fellowship, describes this networked activity: "It's like making tea. Somebody brings in the water, another gets the milk and the third brings in tea leaves. The fourth brings in sugar and the fifth brews it." Emboldened by Bush's faith-based presidency, the TMOs running for network partnerships have acquired an urgency. There is a statement doing the rounds: "If we don't hang together, we will be hanged separately. Therefore, lets hang together," says Howell.

The US TMOs have adopted this approach because of two reasons: the ability to deploy local missionaries easily and in large numbers. The second: partnerships reduce overhead expenses. Jagan Mohan Rao, Principal of Believers Bible College, Solan-which is also the nerve centre of the Believers Church in Himachal-says that Bible colleges across North India are churning out well-educated church planters who then join the burgeoning ranks of US TMOs operating in India. "We run the biggest bible school in HP," he told Tehelka.

The demand for church planters is increasing, as is the pressure to meet conversion targets set by the US TMOs. Despite, the sluggishness of the conversion activities in Himachal, Rao says that "approximately a few thousand" have been converted. "Two years ago we had only five missionaries, but within two years their number increased to twenty-two. Coming year [referring to 2004] a new batch will graduate from our college. In addition, 20 new students will enrol this year." The Believers Church Bible college in Solan churns out 20 well-trained church planters every year, all locals. Across India, the Believers Church runs 200 Bible colleges. "Our main motto is evangelisation. After training, we send out the students to different parts of north India, especially to Punjab and Himachal Pradesh," says Simon George, manager, Punjab Bible College, Hiran.

The best way to reach Indians is to show them an Indian preaching the Gospel. So, the converted have become the converters. The flexibility that new missionary strategies offer has enabled missionaries from India and the US to team up. The volatile expansion of Indian missionaries not only adds numbers to the effort; it also cuts costs drastically. According to Christian Aid, a foreign missionary costs at least $66,000 or Rs 30.4 lakh a year to support. Native missionaries cost approximately $600 or Rs 27,600 a year. The running expenses for Believers Church Bible college in Solan is Rs 2 lakh a month. The Believers Church pays Rs 5,000 a month to an Indian missionary with a family in Himachal Pradesh. The North Indian Christian Mission-which carries out conversions in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and J&K-pays its missionaries Rs 10,000 a month.

Fund collectors in the US-like Rev Jim Rutz, founder of Open Church Ministries, Colorado Springs-solicit funds through vigorous writing campaigns. In his article, 'Where Should Your Offerings Go Now?' he writes: "House-church planters are ridiculously under funded, often walking long distances just because they don't have bicycles or mopeds. What a waste of trained talent!" The Open Church Ministries is one such missionary organisation that works in tandem with Christian Aid, Charlottesville, Virginia, to collect funds for evangelical operations in India. "The bottom line: mopeds are $700-900. Bicycles are $40. Gospel literature is very cheap. Every dollar works overtime in India. Will you consider the work in Madhya Pradesh as part of your new pattern of giving?" This is the message that goes out to American churchgoers. In the US, contributors can directly fund evangelical operations in India through Christian Aid Mission by marking their cheque for "Operation Agape, Madhya Pradesh". All such contributions are tax-free.

Foreign funding

Though foreign funding to missionary organisations should technically be reported to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act), it is likely that such funds are under-reported. "Every organisation is receiving foreign funds," says Rao. "Lots of foreign funds are coming in right now. Approximately 75 percent of our activity is foreign funded. If foreign funding stops, the movement can also stop.

According to MHA figures, the funding for Christian mission agencies have shown a regular increase. Also, over 80 percent of the voluntary organisations receiving foreign funds are Christian Mission agencies. (see Table-Religious Organisations registered under FCRA)

What should have by now been picked up by the government is the fact that only a fraction of the total money flowing into the country is reported. (see www.tehelka.com for a detailed funding list). "They (funds) do not come here directly. There are many different offices in South India. The funds come directly to those offices and from there it is distributed. For example, funds meant for Himachal Pradesh pastors are forwarded from offices in AP, Tamil Nadu and Kerala," Rao told Tehelka. Apart from TMOs, Christian NGOs are also part of this network. For instance, World Vision, the world's largest Christian NGO ministry, fuses evangelical activities with development work. "World Vision is mainly focusing on social work. Through social work, they are doing an excellent job. Through social work they are able to share the Gospel," says Rao.

Sharing the Gospel is a sunrise industry in India. It has attracted Christian professionals from all walks of life. Some are short-term missionaries and many have given up on their professional lives to engage in evangelism. These missionaries are called the 'tentmakers'.

Joseph Vijayam, a tentmaker and CEO of Olive Technology in Hyderabad, believes that a secular Christian missionary worker is important because he helps the Gospel transcend "socio-cultural or political barriers. He also helps take the Gospel across what may be called the poverty barrier." In an article titled 'Kingdom Business', he cites Mahatma Gandhi: "Recall Gandhi's famous saying, 'To the hungry man, bread is God'."

If bread is God, can his call go unanswered? The former director of Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, Dr Victor Choudhrie, gave up his prestigious job along with his wife Bindu Choudhrie, also a doctor, to take up the reins of the Operation Agape ministry in Central India. Choudhrie is considered to be the pioneer of house-church movement in India. "New house-churches are coming up. Prayer groups are being formed and Bible society groups are being set up. India needs to be bathed in Holy Spirit. So the eyes and ears are open, so people can hear the gospel and their hearts can be changed," Choudrie says.

His special focus is Uttar Pradesh. The goal of the Agape movement in UP is the same as in Punjab: one million house-churches and 100,000 church leaders by 2010. With a population of over 174 million people, UP has a miniscule population of Christians: 0.1 percent. "I look at the UP mission simply as a model for what can be done… together we can start such a powerful movement inspired by the Holy Spirit to take this nation within our generation," says brother Mohan Phillip of AGAPE UP mission.

Exposing the church planters

Tehelka's undercover operation resulted in the unearthing of many church planters. Rev Don Scribner of the US-based Joshua Project revealed that Dr Raju Abraham coordinates the North India Harvest Network from Delhi and is also in charge of Operation Agape's Uttar Pradesh mission. He strategised the evangelical operations in UP by dividing the whole state into 83 districts, 1,000 administrative blocks each with 100,000 to 150,000 people and 100 to 150 villages. "A team of two persons adopt each block. The state is witnessing an unprecedented woo of God and thousands of churches are being planted." The goal, of course, is the same as has been outlined for all the North Indian states.

Muthu Govendar, a missionary from South Africa, affirms that thousands of grass roots level leaders are being trained at Bible schools across the North Indian states. "I have been here from 1999 and I really went to every corner of Punjab. I met the people, I met all the pastors, I met the churches and I saw the Believers. I ministered in every corner of Punjab." Govendar must consider himself lucky because foreign missionaries are not given visas by the Indian government. In response to an unstarred question (Number 969) in the Lok Sabha on February 27, 2001, the minister of state (Home) Vidyasagar Rao, responded that according to the data available as on December 31, 1999, the "total number of foreign missionaries registered in India are 1,375. He said "no new missionaries are allowed after 1984. However, short term visas are being issued to foreigners who are coming only in administrative capacity, to review working of their organisations etcetera."

Nityanandan, a Sri Lankan missionary who has been active in India since 1998, admitted to Tehelka that foreign missionaries do come to India on tourist visas. He even volunteered information about the arrest of a US missionary, Joseph W Cooper, in Kerala for evangelical activities. Not too worried about meeting the same fate, he was candid, saying: "We need to usher Jesus into the scene. We know this country … it is oppressed by Satanic powers and spirits. Demonincally… people are being bound. Many are demonically possessed. It is so hard to penetrate to the Gospel. Our plan is to teach and build every believer to be an intercessor."
Like Nityananda, many foreign missionaries have criss-crossed Indian states in the last three years. Tehelka's investigation has revealed that visiting US missionaries have personally ministered conversion rituals in various parts of the country. In the course of its undercover operation, Tehelka came across conversions being carried out by the North Indian Christian Mission (NICM) in rural Punjab. Pastor Deepak Dhingra, a Punjabi pastor, has 20 evangelists in the field and runs the NICM through them. He admits that every y ear foreign missionaries meet him and visit the places where NICM is active.

Clad in a blue T-shirt, track pants and a baseball cap on his head, Dhingra was sprawled in the expansive living room of his bungalow in Panchkula near Chandigarh. Five servants hovered around him as he recounted his story to Tehelka. Twenty-six years ago, Dhingra converted to Christianity. He claims that his father, an IAS officer, asked him to leave home and died without seeing his son's first child, a daughter. Dhingra, of course, had other plans: "I moved to Australia, Canada, US, New Zealand… thinking that now I am a Christian, I should go and live in Christian countries. When I lived in USA, my wife and I decided that those countries are not for us. We returned to India six years ago from America. Then we started preaching amongst all kinds of people." Dhingra, has three kids and his wife, Simmi, is from a Sikh family.

Dhingra's journey back to India, however, was not the result of an innocuous decision. He and his family returned in 1997 along with a juicy partnership with a benevolent patron, the US (Indiana) based Eastview Christian Church. He runs the North Indian Christian Mission (NICM), which has an aggressive church planting strategy to build its church in every district over the next few years. But he knows it's a tough ask. NICM is active in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Conversion is risky business, and Dhingra has survived murderous assaults. The last one was eight months ago in Rajpura, Punjab, during a conversion convention. But the faithful are not deterred. It is not easy business, and while some states are slow in yielding results, there are others that are far more responsive. Abraham told Tehelka categorically and it's on tape: "In Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of Muslims are coming to the Lord. Islam does not appeal to their mind, especially after September 11." Operation Agape's estimate is that across India, "150 million Dalits and around 150 million from the other backward castes (OBC) are coming to the Lord."

The Dalit angle

According to Abraham, the social oppression institutionalised in the Hindu society is the main reason why Dalits converts. "Now they are becoming educated. They are becoming conscious of their rights mainly because of the Christian influence. These people have now started questioning the hierarchical system in Hinduism and are actually literally rejecting it. The high castes have been treating them as slaves. They [the higher castes] don't want them to be educated. They do not want them [Dalits] to come up in society. There are so many atrocities against Dalits in India. There is a revolt and there are quite a number of Dalits who have mentally rejected Hinduism," Abraham told Tehelka. But the Dalits are part of the conspiracy to keep silent. "They [Dalits] know if they all suddenly become Christian, there were would be a backlash," says Alexander.

However, Christian missionaries are deeply conscious of playing the numbers game. Richard Howell, general secretary, Evangelical Fellowship of India told Tehelka that the church growth has been substantial in North India. "I am against the number game. Giving projections in terms of numbers in dangerous," he says. "But the reality is that the numbers are increasing," says Howell.

According to him, the rich and the educated are also converting to Christianity. "It is a change of heart. We are not here to change culture. We have to change the heart. I am a Hindu. I was born a Hindu. No one can change my Hindutva, but I am a Christ follower. I am a Christian, but I cannot change my religion, you know. I am not here to change religion. I have changed my heart. Before I had Wahe Guru in my heart, now it is Jesus guru. I am preaching Jesus to others. I am not preaching culture. I am not building churches," explains Pastor Dhingra. "We need to reach out to the top people of this country. The day Chandigarh's governor or SSP or DSP come to know the Lord, thousands will become Christians. In my satsang, we have a doctor, a police inspector, an IAS officer," he adds.

But it is not the rich that the Indian evangelicals are targeting. The conversion of the rich to Christianity is a bonus. The colonial model that once served Christian missionaries from Europe and the United States has disappeared, replaced by an attitude of cultural sensitivity. The world of missionaries is not as easily divided as it once was into those who spend their time proclaiming the Gospel and those who are involved in social work, disseminating their beliefs more by deeds than by words.

According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), "the 300 million Dalits in India are considered to be less than human through the Hindu caste system. They have been oppressed, marginalised, and persecuted by the caste Hindus. The Dalit leadership has called the people to reject Hinduism. As Christians, we support the movement [to convert] as a human rights issue," Howell states. "People have the freedom to choose. We are in solidarity with them because this is an issue of justice and of resisting oppression. As God's people we stand with the issues of equality of justice, human dignity, identity, and the right to be treated with respect and equality. Therefore the church is involved."

The EFI says that the Dalit leadership has invited its member churches to become "agents of change and transformation in the communities. They've asked for education needs to be met, for medical help and for income generation projects to enable gainful employment to begin. Therefore, as evangelicals, we have mobilised our member bodies. As believers who belong to the Evangelical Fellowship of India we are involved heavily in this moment." The EFI is a member of US-based World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF). Through its network of 115 national and regional evangelical fellowships, WEF represents 160 million evangelicals worldwide and spearheads the global conversion campaign.

Missionaries are also finding that some of the traditional mindsets need to change if they are to meet the challenges of a new millennium. Most Christian missionaries no longer go out into the world as Christian soldiers, but as "brothers and sisters in Christ." Many modern missionaries feel a sense of guilt about the heavy-handed tactics employed for centuries by missionaries from Europe and the United States. Indian evangelists have played a crucial role in influencing a rethinking about "the words, metaphors and images evangelicals use to communicate about the missionary mandate and endeavour-within our own circles and to the world at large."

Biblical metaphors

Howell was one of the participants at the US Consultation on Mission Language and Metaphors at the School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, held from June 1 to 3, 2000. At this consultation, leading US evangelicals who head missionary transnational corporations, decided that they must try to refrain from using militaristic words to avoid adversarial confrontation. The statement that emerged out of this consultation was an admission of the kind of communication that missionaries have used and still use to denigrate other religions. The question that was debated by Howell and others was: "Are we willing not to use language behind the back of unbelievers concerning their culture and location that we would not use face to face in sharing the message and love of Christ?"

Three months after this meeting, a statement was issued by Howell and Dr Augustine Pagolu, Honorary Secretary of the Theological Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, at a national consultation on Mission Language and Biblical Metaphor at South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, Bangalore. Representatives of all the evangelical organisations in India attended it.
Yet, Tehelka came across an excessive use of warfare terminologies during its undercover field investigations and in the documents in its possession. Words such as 'soldier', 'advance', 'mobilise', 'campaign', 'conquer' and so on are commonly used. In fact, the literature of the American TMOs use descriptions that could be considered incendiary by people of other faiths. For instance, Bush's closest ally, Pat Robertson, has described Hinduism and Islam as Satanic religions and the worship of these religions is akin to 'devil worship'. Others have described Varanasi as the "seat of Satan." In fact, Varanasi is considered an important 'beachhead' by US evangelical organisations because it is "India's holiest cities".

Eventually, the EFI hopes that Indian and foreign missionaries will come up with a less offensive language as it takes the cross to the remotest corners in India. What gives dynamism to this movement is the constant effort to rethink strategies.
The US-funded evangelical missions have succeeded in putting in place a loosely tied network of Indian and international evangelical missions that operate with their blessings and support, but which cannot be easily traced directly back to them. Probably, it is this loose structure that has enabled the US-funded evangelical missions to operate in India, without attracting attention of the intelligence and police agencies.

It is the setting up of this network that facilitated the launch of the Great Commission in India, nearly 2000 years after Jesus challenged His church to make disciples of all nations. The inspiration was more akin to the times-Coca Cola's well-publicised goal to place "a Coke in the hand of every person on the earth by the year 2000." If a mere corporation could reach the entire world with a soft drink, why couldn't Christ's own church?

Census figures show that the total Christian population in the country is still a miniscule percentage of its total population: around 2.46 percent. That, legitimately, raises the questions about the efficacy of the pernicious and enormously well-funded missions to proselytise the marginalised sections of Indians. It raises a far important question: is the heat and dust raised by the issue of conversions a bogey after all? The answer is provided by People India Research and Training Institute in Ayanavaram, Chennai. "There are approximately 5,000 Indian people coming to Christ everyday. However, 55,000 Indians are born everyday." This assertion by People India is made on the basis of its continuous streaming in of field research information from all over India.
The massive evangelisation operations, which started in the early 1990s has, in fact, not breached this equation; the ever-increasing Indian population has ensured that the total Christian population remains more or less stagnant. But statistics have a way of being duplicitous. It can be twisted to suit any perspective.

Low-profile campaigns

But Mission agencies working in the Dalit pockets of India have been instructed not to tom-tom numbers. Simply because number crunching could result in retaliatory violence by the Hindu fundamentalists. This realisation came after the brutal murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines in the late 1990s.

Even as Indian missionaries play down numbers, People India produces books and generates crucial intelligence evangelists working in India. People India is a registered "Christian, trans-denominational research group serving Indian missions and churches in publishing current data on the Indian mission field." It is the resource base for Indian and foreign churches, transna-tional evangelical missions and intercessors. Its mandate is to do the following: "To systematically collect information on the Indian harvest field, harvest force and people groups; to make this information available to Indian missions and churches in a useable form; to share this information with individual and prayer groups (an euphemism for evangelical groups) inside and outside India; to make India visible to all."

Tehelka has copies of the Harvest Field Handbooks written by Tony Hilton, director of People India and a well-known evangelical strategist. The information in these books is sourced from various government of India publications and is updated regularly. By breaking down publicly available information (like the Census of India and The Gazetteer of India and many other sources), these books guide evangelists on where to focus their work. It has ready-to-use-information at the levels of village, block and district for all the states in the country. Here is an extract on 'Strategy' from a Harvest Field Series handbook for Himachal Pradesh:"A Western support team must never pre-determine the needs of the People Group and create a plan or programme based on those perceived needs. After doing the necessary research, it will always be most effective to work with the national leader, or a team of leaders from within that People Group to set a plan or programme they approve and can participate in." (Here, 'national leader' refers to a Dalit community leader or tribal leader, in other words, the headman of a community).

The crucial point here is that People India is guided and funded by US based Christian Missionary organisations. For instance, by Bob Waymire, president of Light International; John DeVries, president of Mission 21 India and founder of Pray India; and Dr Gene Davis, President of Foreign Mission Foundation. Davis is popular with the Banjara nomadic tribe of India. The Banjaras call him Gene Naik. He has 'adopted' the 'Banjara people group' for many years. In other words, he is spearheading a campaign to convert the Banjaras to Christianity. Tehelka has a document that vividly highlights the evangelical strategy to convert the Banjaras. Sri Lankan missionary Nityanandan of the Insititute of Church Growth, Chennai, corroborates: "Last year in the Banjara community 11,000, baptisms took place in Nalagonda, Kamam and Krishna districts in Andhra Pradesh."

Intelligence gathering network

In fact, according to the documents in Tehelka's possession, foreign missionaries have played a stellar role in organising the intelligence gathering missions. Vander Berg, co-director of Pray India and Mission analyst with Mission 21 India, has wide "missionary experience" in India and has worked as a pastor in many places. Another notable Christian scholar, an Australian who has married an Indian, is credited with having turned around two US-based evangelical mission agencies-Frontier Mission Center and Youth With A Mission-into formidable research organisations. Hackworth is considered within the international and Indian Christian evangelical circles as the "only man who knows all the Peoples Groups of India at the district level."

After setting up such an elaborate network, church groups in India are understandably disappointed over a recent Supreme Court ruling (September 1, 2003) that there was "no fundamental right to convert" someone from one religion to another, and that the government could impose restrictions on conversions. This was in response to the petition by the All India Christian Council (AICC), challenging the validity of the controversial Freedom of Religion Act that became law in Orissa in 1999.

The law now mandates that a person wanting to change faiths has to declare to the district magistrate that this decision was made "of his own will". The magistrate then forwards the declaration to the police to see if there is any objection before permission for the conversion is granted. Any religious leader intending to perform a conversion has to indicate the time and place of the ceremony to the magistrate in advance, and violating any of the regulations could lead to imprisonment and a fine. In fact, last year Sister Ekka was convicted for converting 96 people without following the procedure laid down by law. Most missionaries, however, simply proceed without informing the district authorities.

"I think that this is curbing the liberties of an individual, the natural rights, the unalienable as they are called. The government or the state cannot control my convictions. That's a matter of personal choice, which should never be taken away. So I would also say, the freedom of religion Bills, the focus is against the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes. In the Gujarat Bill and also in the Tamil Nadu Bill they have used the word. So the target is again the marginalised and the poor for them to stay there," says Howell.

Conversion is a highly sensitive issue in some parts of India, including Orissa, where in recent years Christians have been victims of violence, including arson attacks, and two missionaries have been slain. Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in January 1999. Later, the Rev Arul Doss, a Roman Catholic priest in the Balasore diocese, was killed in a remote region. Howell explains that the violence against Christians is because the "the church is empowering the poor."

The reality is that India's marginalised communities are indeed powerless. Independent India has failed to empower Dalits and tribals. The church has stepped in to provide them development services, which really fall within the government of India's ambit.
But conversions in India, as they are happening today, are not merely about empowering the poor. It is about a sinister and subversive strategy, hatched in the US, backed by the Bush administration over the years.

The question is: does the Indian establishment know or is it pretending not to?

The Little Crusaders

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004crusader.asp

US-based Christian evangelical organisations that have a significant presence in India:

India Campus Crusade For Christ
It is an Indian associate of Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc, that is based in Orlando. In 1998-99, it raised around Rs 1,600 crore through several affiliated organisations. Being an evangelistic organisation, it promotes Christianity in various ways, including through sports (Athletes in Action). In India, it works in tandem with World Vision and Indian Evangelistic Mission. It ranks in the top 25 FCRA list, and evangelists told Tehelka during its field investigation that it is involved in conversion activities. Its annual growth rate is 29 percent.

Seventh Day Adventists
It is registered in Tamil Nadu as a company called Services Association of Seventh Day Adventists Pvt. Ltd. It consciously guards its plans and nature of activities. It received Rs 19.6 crore and Rs 27.5 crore in 1996-97 and 1998-99, respectively. Figures for the other years were unavailable. However, the available figures reveal that between 1996 and 1999, the Seventh Day Adventists in India grew by a whopping rate of 18.5 percent. The church has reported a "real hunger for Christianity" in India. It has constructed more than 230 new churches in Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, and Rajasthan and claims more than 65,000 new followers.

Gospel For Asia
Funded by its parent organisation in the US, Gospel for Asia, is registered in Kerala. It received 26.1 crore and 14.4 crore in 1996-97 and 1997-98. Gospel for Asia, founded in 1979, is a US-based Christian missionary organisation. It aims to spread the teachings of Christ. It also trains and supports missionaries and sets up churches. In 1999, it raised Rs 70 crore. Of this, about Rs 52 crore was spent on direct programme. The Indian branch receives around ¼ of the total budget.

Watchtower Bible And Tract Society
It is an Indian associate of Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, and a part of Jehovah's Witnesses (JW). Located in Lonavala and registered in Maharashtra, it received Rs 14.6 crore in 1997-98. It provides free Bible courses. Since 1926, JW have printed 10 crore copies of the Bible in 34 languages.

Dubya's White House Team

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004christ.asp

George W Bush: by virtue of being President of the United States, HE is probably the most resourceful and influential Christian missionary ever. The White House under him is not too unlike a bastion of Christian fundamentalism

In early November last year Bush told a cheering crowd at the Dallas Christian Youth Centre: "'If you change their heart, then they change their behaviour. I know." An indefatigable crusader for Christianity, Bush often holds forth on his own conversion, which led him to give up alcohol. At forum after forum, he has coaxed fellow Americans to follow his personal example.

No surprise, then, that his personal beliefs find expression in the official support that his administration gives to Christian faith-based organisations. His foreign policy decisions, especially those that involve funding decisions related to development and humanitarian issues, are imbued with covert help to Christian NGOs and evangelist groups.

No surprise either that he appointed Lt General William Boykin to head the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Boykin, a regular speaker at evangelical Christian meetings, once said the war on terror was a fight against Satan. That's the battle Bush probably sees himself waging -the battle for faith.

A recently published book, The Faith of George W Bush by Stephen Mansfield, has detailed instances to show how Bush's faith influences his political thinking. The book revealed his belief that his presidency was pre-ordained. In the run-up to the presidency he told a Texan evangelist, James Robinson, about a premonition he had: "I feel like god wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but god wants me to do it."

Born-again Bush

Once a binge-drinker and hardcore party animal, Bush changed after an encounter with evangelist Billy Graham. Reams and reams have been written on the conversion of George Bush Junior.

But perhaps the goodbye-Jack Daniels-hello Jesus move was one of the smartest he has made in his career. He found 'new strength' through his belief in Jesus; he gave up drinking in the summer of 1986. During Bush Senior's campaign Bush Junior became the liaison-man to the religious right, a powerful lobby that he assiduously cultivated from 1987 to the time he became governor of Texas in 1994. A year before he became the governor he created a flutter in Austin, Texas, when he told a reporter that only believers in Jesus go to heaven. But the Southern right-wingers loved him for that. They have been with him with all their power since. Their role in Bush's ascendancy to presidency is not insignificant. It is not surprising that the White House and the Bush administration are choc-a-bloc with Christian right wingers -key officials and advisers, top bureaucrats, backroom players, all come from the same Christian right-wing pool.

A list of US administration officials from the Christian right, many of them evangelists themselves:

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor:
Her name was inspired by a musical notation 'con dolcezz'. But Condoleezza Rice's inspiration stems from the Lord above. A committed Christian, she is the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor and is arguably the 'world's most powerful woman'. Rice, 47, daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, makes no bones about her strong Christian leanings and often turns to the Bible for inspiration when waddling through rough patches. Romans 5 is her favourite read from the scripture, when in need of strength and guidance. Romans 5 implies: "God is also in tribulation. Because tribulation breeds perseverance and perseverance patience and with patience comes hope. And hope is never disappointed, because of faith in glory of God." "When I am concerned about something I figure out a plan of action and then I give it to God. I just ask it to be carried through it. God's never failed me yet," she said to Essence magazine in 2002.

Her religious moorings were also on evidence during the war on Iraq. She told Business Week last year: "This campaign (against terror) has put a certain moral clarity back in international politics… (The aim is) to leave the world not just safer… but better." A Wall Street Journal reporter in his book George W Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill summed up the mood inside the White House one evening during the war:

"A two-day crisis meeting of Mr Bush's senior advisers had finally wound up. The president had gone to bed. Across the room, the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was singing hymns, accompanied on the piano by the Christian fundamentalist Attorney-General, John Ashcroft…"

John Ashcroft, Attorney General: He is considered the architect of Bush's 'charitable choice' policy. Ashcroft amassed a solid right-wing record in his years in the US Senate and as Governor and Attorney General of Missouri. Ashcroft was a key proponent of such right-wing issues as government-funded religion and anti-abortionism. Before Ashcroft announced he would not seek nomination, many religious right leaders considered him to be their top Republican pick for the presidency in 2000. Lines from a speech he delivered at the Bob Jones University: "…Unique among the nations, America recognised the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus…"

Theodore Olson, Solicitor General: One of the most prominent ultra-conservative lawyers in Washington. Olson came to Washington in 1981 to work in president Reagan's Justice Department and later represented the former President during the Iran-Contra scandal. He has served on the boards of various right-wing foundations and think tanks.Olson was also the head of the DC chapter of the right-wing Federalist Society.

Michael J Gerson, Director of Presidential Speechwriting:
Worked for Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministry. He also worked as a senior policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation. An alumnus of Wheaton College, Gerson is also a former student of theology. Gerson is a born again Christian and has an evangelical outlook.

Asa Hutchinson, Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration: This former Senator is a long-time favourite of the religious right. He has spoken repeatedly at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual conference attended by the nation's staunchest right-wing political activists.

Amid din, Kashmiri voice lost

2007-03-06T15:28:00.000+05:30

Amid din, Kashmiri voice lost
Heavy mortar shelling continued yesterday as India and Pakistan continued war rhetoric.

By V.K. Shashikumar Special to The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 07, 2002 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0607/p06s01-wosc.html

SRINAGAR – A black funeral shroud hangs lightly over the grave of Abdul Ghani Lone, the slain separatist leader who has turned into a cult hero here.
Mr. Lone was a moderate member of the 23-party Kashmiri Muslim separatist alliance, The All Party Hurriyet Conference (APHC). But his assassination on May 21 has elevated him, like many others, to a martyr's status.

Some here believe he was killed because he criticized jihadi terrorist groups in Kashmir. Ironically, he now lies buried among those who would have wanted him dead. Spiritual leaders, moderate separatists, die-hard pro-Pakistan separatists, and militants from groups like Harkat-ul-Ansar and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen are all buried here. The "Kashmir cause," it seems, attains unification in death.

But those still alive and championing it are as different as chalk from cheese. There are those who want autonomy within the framework of a genuinely federal Indian Union; while others promote the cause of azadi, or independence. Still others want to be united with Pakistan or India.

A simmering political angst nurtures Kashmiri Muslims' alienation from India. The distance between New Delhi and Srinagar has grown over the past five months, and Kashmiris say they feel that they are pawns in the India–Pakistan hostility.

"We want peace," says a Kashmiri youth sitting on the steps leading to the graveyard. "Nobody wants war, deaths, and violence. The only way out is for India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris to look for a permanent solution."

The mood on the street is a mix of suspicion, distrust, and anger at the political situation.

During the last 13 years, Kashmiris say, they have learned to be cynically dismissive of New Delhi while harboring a deep distrust toward the Indian security forces, who they say have consistently harassed them.

India officially admits that 33,000 have died in the Kashmir conflict, while Kashmiris claim it's twice that number. A number of human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Commission of India, report widespread violations by Indian security forces, including hundreds of custodial deaths and the rape of young girls and women.

The human-rights violations by Indian forces have hardened the anti-India sentiment in the Kashmir valley.

"Resolving the Kashmir tragedy cannot just mean that New Delhi transfers power to the state of Jammu and Kashmir," says a prominent pro-autonomy leader, Mehbooba Mufti. Ms. Mufti, president of People's Democratic Party, says New Delhi will have to leave the political process to the will of the people here. "New Delhi cannot dictate terms in Jammu and Kashmir. It will have to give the people the democratic right to vote in a free and fair elections."

The common refrain in the Kashmir valley is that the Indian government will never organize "free and fair" elections. They point to the 1987 elections here – widely seen to be rigged for the National Conference Party – which were generally believed to have sparked a violent rebellion against Indian rule.

This confidence, however, is not shared by a majority of Kashmiri Muslims, who call for holding elections under the watchful eyes of independent monitors.

The mood here flies in the face of a recent opinion poll commissioned by the Kashmir Friends Society, which is active in nongovernmental conflict resolution initiatives in Kashmir. The results showed that 61 percent of Kashmiris (in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir) want to remain with India. The Muslims in the Kashmir valley have rejected the results of the opinion poll as "contrived," while others questioned the methodology used.

Regardless of the poll's findings, many in Kashmir demand that New Delhi has the right to tackle the problem of terrorism in Indian Kashmir, but they say it's unacceptable that Kashmiri Muslims continue to be threatened by the Indian security forces.

"We look at the Kashmir problem in two dimensions – external and internal," says Mufti. "The external dimension that relates to Pakistan's support to cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and India is something that has actively engaged New Delhi. But what is more important is the internal dimension of the Kashmir tragedy. How can New Delhi ignore the trauma, pain, and suffering of the Kashmiri people? How can the daily killings, custodial deaths, and rapes be ignored?"

Social workers in Indian Kashmir say New Delhi's first priority should be helping Kashmiri people. "The human tragedy in Kashmir is often forgotten by New Delhi," says Zahoor Ahmed Tak, chairman of an orphanage. Mr. Tak says the Jammu and Kashmir state government's own estimates reveal that there are more than 100,000 orphans here.

"Violence in Kashmir has ripped apart the Kashmiri society – crime rates have gone up, cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome have shot up dramatically, drug addiction is on the rise, the suicide graph is increasing every year, and family life has been disrupted," says Bashir Dabla, a leading sociologist at Kashmir University.

It is, therefore, not surprising that many here have challenged the Indian government to hold a referendum or plebiscite. The 1948 United Nations Security Council resolution called on India to hold a plebiscite in the region. It also required Pakistan withdraw its troops from the area of Kashmir it controlled, which it has not done.

The ruling National Conference, headed by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah, has rejected this contention. He says the separatists (grouped under the umbrella organization APHC) should give up their ideal goal of a separate Kashmir and instead run for office under the current Indian Constitution.

"Let [the separatists] prove their representative character in the elections," says Omar Abdullah, India's Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister.

Mr. Abdullah admits that some sections of the Kashmiri society are disillusioned with various processes of governance and democracy and it is the responsibility of the political parties and the state government to reverse this.

Mufti says that the conflict in Kashmir has mostly affected the Muslims in the Kashmir Valley.

"It is understandable that the Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu and the Kashmiri Buddhists in Ladakh would want to remain part of India," says Mufti, whose party stands for an autonomous status for Indian administered Kashmir.

"But the fear psychosis in the valley is tremendous because the Kashmiri Muslims have been the worst affected by militancy and counter-militancy operations," she says.

For further information:
• Kashmir Information Network (anti-Pakistan)
• Kashmir Home Page (anti-India)
• Kashmiri.com - The Kashmiri Perspective of the Kashmir Problem
• JammuKashmir.net
• Rediff
• Dawn
Please Note: The Monitor does not endorse the sites behind these links. We offer them for your additional research. Following these links will open a new browser window.