If the Manmohan Singh government has its way, India will soon adopt a law against torture that will make a mockery of our obligations as a democracy, a civilised society, and a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). India signed CAT in 1997 and is meant to pass standalone domestic legislation outlawing this barbaric crime. Unfortunately, the Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010 falls far, far short in this regard. Indeed the draft law, if passed unchanged by the Rajya Sabha, will make the elimination of torture and the punishment of its practitioners more difficult than it is under existing law. To begin with, the Bill’s definition of torture makes two unwarranted departures from international norms. Where CAT speaks of torture and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and builds its definition around the inflicting of severe pain or suffering, the proposed law raises the bar of what constitutes unacceptable treatment much higher. Only acts that cause grievous hurt — defined in the Indian Penal Code in relation to damage to limbs and organs — or which endanger the life, limb, or health of a person will be considered torture. Excluded thus are torture techniques that cause intense pain and suffering but no permanent damage to the victim. Secondly, only torture inflicted in the course of an interrogation will attract the sanctions of the new law — but not torture inflicted to punish, coerce, or intimidate an individual, which CAT covers.
Her Excellency Sheikh Hasina,
Hon. Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s Office
Old Sangsad Bhaban
Tejgaon, Dhaka-1215
The People’s Republic of Bangladesh
27th August 2010
Madam,
SAHR appeals to Release the Garment Leaders
Ms. Kalpona Akter and Mr. Babul Ahkter
South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) would like to urge the Government for a proper investigation to the cases filed on the charges that Ms. Kalpona Akter and Mr. Babul Ahkter provoked the street protests that occurred in early August,2010.
On 14 August Ms. Kalpona Akter and Mr. Babul Ahkter, the leaders of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), were arrested at 2:00 am by twenty armed policemen. BCWS is a prominent organisation working on worker rights. It conducts worker rights training and legal and public advocacy to improve labour practices. Kalpona Akter, the Executive Director, is a former child labourer herself. Babul Ahkter is the Executive Director of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation. The leaders were arrested on unsubstantiated charges of fomenting worker unrest. At 20 cents per hour, Bangladesh has by far the lowest wages of any major apparel producing country. Also, more arrest warrants have been issued against hundreds of workers and several labour rights leaders in the recent past.
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Siddharth Varadarajan
You know you’ve hit rockbottom when an intelligence operative in the Indian mission in Kathmandu calls up a member of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly and threatens to have his daughter’s provisional admission in the embassy-run Kendriya Vidyalaya revoked if he dœsn’t vote a particular way.
Welcome to the diplomatic brilliance of a rising India, a country which is bedevilled with intractable political problems in Kashmir, its forested heartland and the North-East but which dœsn’t think twice about plunging headlong into the cesspit of day-to-day politics in a neighbouring nation. The threatening phone call was made by the Indian embassy official on the eve of the fourth round of voting in the CA earlier this month between the Maoist candidate for prime minister, Prachanda, and the Nepali Congress (NC) candidate, Ram Chandra Poudel. Given the prospect of fence-sitting Madhesi political parties moving over en masse to the Maoist camp, the Indian effort was aimed at ensuring this didn’t happen and that the stalemate between the two candidates continued.
For the record, Indian officials deny the allegation made by the CA member, Ram Kumar Sharma, but there is hardly anyone in Nepal who dœsn’t believe it is true. Even by the interventionist standards of the past, the threat marks a new low. Leaving aside the moral and diplomatic implications raised by this unpleasant episode, the threat of punitive action against a young girl suggests a wider, even catastrophic, failure of Indian policy. In the past, India always had the ability to work behind the scenes with a wide cross-section of players in order to produce a political outcome that broadly benefited both Nepal and itself. Today, that is no longer the case. Even when they play their hands in the open, our men in Kathmandu are unable to ensure a stable outcome.
Last week, I followed the lead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy to Nepal, Shyam Saran, who had just been in Kathmandu, and met senior leaders cutting across all major political trends: from the Maoists, who are the biggest party with 40 per cent of the seats in the CA, the NC, the Unified Marxists-Leninists and the different Madhesi factions. Even though their views on the current political crisis varied sharply, virtually all the politicians I met agreed that Indian interference in the politics of the country had reached a new high. Many blamed this interference for the failure of these parties to establish some sort of modus vivendi among themselves.
BARUN PANERU
DADELDHURA, Aug 15: He was taken from his home in Bagarkot-5 on charge of espionage and left for dead after being shot in the waist by the Maoists following 11 days of detention during the armed insurgency.
Bam Bahadur Thapa fortunately survived to fight another day, but the second life has not been exactly kind to the wheelchair bound conflict victim who has lost all his property in treatment. Neglected by the state, Thapa now struggles to make ends meet with the sole income of his wife Shanta who works as a peon.
Thapa was abducted on June 13, 2004, from his home on charge of spying for the army. “They detained me for 11 days and left me for dead in a jungle after shooting me in the waist,” Thapa recalls.
He was first taken to Dadeldhura by Nepal Red Cross Society on the initiative of locals who found him at the jungle. He remained at the TEAM Hospital in Dadeldhura for seven days and then taken to Nepalgunj and Kathmandu for further treatment. He has since been limited to a wheelchair with paralysis from waist down.
The Women’s Commission in the Indian state of West Bengal has announced an inquiry into allegations that a tribal woman was forced to parade naked.
Officials say she was forced to walk without her clothes for nearly 10km (6 miles) through three villages and was filmed on a mobile phone.
They say that she was also molested and jeered by a large crowd.
Locals say she was being “punished” because of an illicit love affair with a man from a different community.
A similar thing happened to another woman three years ago in the neighbouring state of Assam.
A cycle of violence has erupted again in India’s troubled Kashmir valley since 11th June 2010 with the shooting to death of a schoolboy by Indian troops. Until 29th June 2010, eleven Kashmiri youths have been killed by the…