Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Hindutva Terror Network Targets Christians in Indian State

FILLING IN AN INFORMATION GAP


The Hindutva terror groups linked with a series of bomb blasts in Muslim shrines and other places Rajasthan and Maharashtra terror have also killed Christian activists and targeted evangelistic work in the tribal belt of India.

Police investigators have traced the murder of Malwa Christian leader Pyar Singh Ninama to hit men of the terror gangs responsible for bombing the world famous Ajmer Sharif shrine.

According to news reports this morning in the New Delhi edition of Mail Today and Rediff, the Malwa region in western Madhya Pradesh is a focal point and recruiting ground of this terror group which also has as its members retired and serving officers of the Indian Army, who may have sourced the explosives used by the group.

This is the first time official information has come about the network which so far was presumed to be working against Muslims alone.

The following is the text of the Rediff illuminating report: published July 12, 2010:

Most names figuring in the investigations of the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer, at Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid, and in Malegaon hail from Madhya Pradesh's Malwa region. Rediff.com's Krishnakumar Padmanabhan traces the common thread that could have brought these men together.

What started as minor skirmishes between two groups vying for power seven years ago in a small Madhya Pradesh cantonment town was the beginning of the phenomenon that is now spoken about as Hindu terrorism.

Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Rajasthan Anti-Terror Squad made a string of arrests from in and around Indore and established that the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer and Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid were the handiwork of the same group of people.

At least three of the accused in the bomb blast case were charged with the murder of a tribal leader from the Congress party in 2003.

As like-minded men began coming together and plotting heinous attacks, the Madhya Pradesh establishment turned a blind eye. Investigators now say the perpetrators found haven in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, as they wreaked havoc in other parts of the country.

In 2003, towards the end of Digvijay Singh's tenure as chief minister in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress party had strengthened its hold in its traditional areas — the party base, the minorities, and the Adivasis.

In Malwa's tribal belt, Pyar Singh Ninama, a local tribal strongman, was the party's face among the Adivasi population. Around that time, accusations began to trickle that Christian missionaries were stepping up efforts to get more Adivasis into their fold. Around that time a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Sunil Joshi, was 'sent' as the Mhow pracharak from Gujarat, where it was said the heat was on him following the 2002 riots.

In Mhow -- an acronym for Military Headquarters of War -- the Sangh Parivar was virtually a family. The most active among them were Lokesh Sharma, his cousin Jitender Sharma -- from the RSS and Bajrang Dal respectively -- and Devendra Pandya, who were working to spread Hinduism in adjoining tribal areas.

On the other hand, Ninama, a converted Christian, was seen as nudging his fellow tribals towards Christianity. The two groups were soon at loggerheads and in one of the ensuing clashes, Pandey's choti (tuft) was allegedly cut off. In apparent revenge, three people including Ninama and his son, were brutally killed.

Cases were filed against Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi, Ramesh Sharma, a businessman from neighbouring Pithampur, and 10 others. While most of them are still in jail and the case is before the court, Lokesh Sharma and Joshi were never caught. Here is where the seeds of what is now seen as Hindu terror were sown.

Investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Anti-Terror Squads of Rajasthan and Maharashtra have revealed that the lynchpin was Sunil Joshi, who was murdered in December 2007. Lokesh Sharma is accused of planting the bomb in Ajmer.

Locals say soon after the Ninama murder case, Joshi's stock rose among hotheaded youngsters.

In the assembly election that followed a couple of months after Ninama's murder, the Congress party was voted out, and the Bharatiya Janata Party [ ] came to power.

Around this time, some local residents claim Joshi and Lokesh Sharma began to be seen in public quite often.

"Digvijay Singh had often spoken about how the violent activities of the Hindu groups was fast turning to 'terrorism'. He said he had evidence that they were gaining bomb-making capabilities. But then he was voted out at a crucial juncture," says Manohar Limbodia, a veteran journalist.

With what was seen as a friendly BJP government, Joshi began to operate quite openly, mobilising support.

"Joshiji was someone who would say one death from our side should be avenged with five from the other side. The youngsters liked him and his approach a lot," a Bajrang Dal activist in Mhow recalls, speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.

As it was becoming evident that Joshi was going down an aggressive path, the RSS publicly distanced itself from him.

"Though the RSS distanced itself from the likes of Joshi, we could see that he had the support from within the organisation and also local BJP leaders. Joshi and his group could not have operated without strong support," a businessman, familiar with the Sangh Parivar in Dewas, where Joshi was murdered, says, again speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.

Soon after the Ninama murder case, the police defused a bomb at the venue of a Muslim congregation in Ghansipura, Bhopal, which they now allege was planted by the same group behind the terror attacks.

It was an improvised device with explosive material stuffed in metal pipes, connected to a mobile phone. The bomb was set to explode when the mobile rang, but the police defused it in time.

Had that bomb exploded it would have been the first attack of Hindu terror in the country.

How did those who came together in Mhow establish contact with foot soldiers like Ramji Kalasangra (who allegedly made the bombs used in the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid attacks) and Sandeep Dange (who is alleged to have 'facilitated' the others in executing the blasts) on the one hand and alleged masterminds like Colonel Prasad Purohit and sadhvi Pragya Thakur on the other hand?

"The RSS has many organisations," says Deepak Joshi, son of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kailash Joshi and the BJP legislator from Hatpipliya, Dewas. "There are also different kinds of people. First, there are the RSS members. Then there are people who might be involved in the RSS's activities without being members. Then, there are people from sister organisations like the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), Bajrang Dal, etc. Finally, there are people who believe in the ideology but are not associated in any way with any organisation. There are about five or six RSS events in a year where all the four kinds of people come together. Since they are all from the region and had extremist leanings, that is how these people must have met."

Explaining how various people could have gotten to know each other, he says he had met Pragya Thakur about 10 times. "She has sat in the exact place where you are sitting. The connection between her and me is that we are both from the ABVP. She was very aggressive from those days, and I did not make any efforts to know her better," he adds.

But he shies away from dubbing the phenomenon as Hindu terrorism.

"It is not organised to begin with," he says, "And it does not have the sanction or approval of an organisation like the RSS."

He accepts that the likes of Sunil Joshi did have support at the local level.

"When the police said Sunil Joshi was in hiding, I had met him at an event. He told me he was being framed," says the BJP MLA. "In small places, it is not difficult to meet and get to know people. In Madhya Pradesh, a lot of BJP politicians owe their career to the RSS. And some of them may have shared beliefs with people like Sunil Joshi. In the end, such politicians end up using these people for their personal gains."

How did the Malwa region become the hotbed for Hindu terror?

The Malwa region is predominantly tribal. Indore, which is the biggest city in the region, does not have much of an Adivasi presence. But Dhar is 75 percent Adivasi, Jhabua is nearly 100 percent Adivasi. Balwani, Khargon and Khandwa are 50 percent Adivasi.

The Hindus form the second biggest community. They comprise Malis from Rajasthan, Jats, Thakurs, Baniyas and Brahmins.

"More than the composition, the reason the region has been the hotbed of radical Hinduism is because of the leaders," says Limbodia. "Nagpur may be the seat of power for the RSS, but Malwa is the front. RSS stalwarts like Khushabhau Thakre, Pyarelal Khandelwal and Suresh Soni hailed from the Malwa region and shaped the RSS philosophy. That way, this region is the cradle of the RSS."

"It is not just Hindu terror," says Kamil Seher, a hotel owner in Pithampur, an industrial area. "The Pithampur-Dhar region was the base for SIMI [ ]. They used to train there. Before that, the Dawood Ibrahim gang used to be active here. Now the Maoists are also entering this region. Why, some time ago, even an LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) soldier was arrested from a Pithampur factory, where he was working as a gunman for the owner."

"If you are working in a factory, and you bring in someone from your village to stay with you, how would we know if he is a criminal or not?" asks Seher.

He alleges that though the likes of SIMI leader Safdar Nagori were arrested, those who were pumping money and were the brains of the outlawed organisation got away.

"If with an organisation like SIMI, money power and clout could work, how will anyone be able to get close to the top of the Hindu terror hierarchy, if it exists?" he asks.

While the official RSS line is that those arrested are not part of the organisation, it is reported to be helping the accused's families and has arranged for lawyers to fight their cases.

"The RSS arranged for lawyers in Ajmer and Hyderabad to take up my brother's case," confirms Jitender Sharma, Lokesh Sharma's cousin. "I am thankful to the organisation. But at the same time I understand why they want to distance themselves in public. There is a Congress government at the Centre, and all the three states where the terror charges have been filed are also ruled by the Congress, which wants to link the RSS with terrorism. For the Congress, the RSS is the biggest enemy, not the BJP. They want to finish off the RSS."

Jitender's version of what happened is different.

"I was with the Bajrang Dal and Lokesh was with the RSS. Under Digvijay Singh, Hinduism was under attack. So we tried to get a case filed against him. But it is not easy to get the police to file a first information report against the state's chief minister. So we indulged in chakka jams (blockades), and jail bharo protests on a small scale. The state police had marked us from that time. There were a lot of small cases (filed) against us. But we are not people who will get into hardcore criminal activities. At the most we would have stoned a few shops during bandhs," he says.

Though he does not criticise the RSS, Jitender does not have the same feelings about the BJP and its local leaders.

"Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is the BJP MLA for Mhow, has done nothing. He used Lokesh during elections and after that has turned a blind eye," he alleges.

Jitender is now fighting a lone battle to save his cousin.

"First he was implicated in the Ninama murder case. He lost five years of his life hiding from the police. Only last year he got married and his son was born this year. But he hasn't been able to see his son. We are poor people and now his family is struggling to make ends meet and also spend on the legal proceedings."

Though others do not buy the witch hunt theory, they agreed that the Congress party being in power at the Centre and the three states involved is the prime reason the case is moving at this pace.

"These people first surfaced in 2003," says journalist Manohar Limbodia. "After a few failed attempts, they executed their first attack in 2007. Wasn't four years enough for the state police to act? In fact, had any party but the BJP been in power in Madhya Pradesh, you might not be talking about a phenomenon called Hindu terror today."

"Even before the Ajmer blasts, they all met in a temple in Bhopal. What did the police do? After the blasts too, the Vasundhara Raje government (in Rajasthan) did not do anything," says Naveen Mali, a businessman and community leader in Mhow. "Only after (Congress Chief Minister) Ashok Gehlot [ ] took over did things start moving. True, it smacks of politics, but then something happened and something had to be done."

The Dewas-Indore belt was home for those accused in the terror cases.

"They thought they would be safe as long as they could strike in other states and hide here. They thought they were untouchable. They never expected the police from other states to come looking for them," says Limbodia.

Though Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare blew the lid off the Hindu terror phenomenon when he cracked the Malegaon blast case, it is the Rajasthan ATS, with its sweeps into border towns and midnight arrests, that has struck terror in the hearts of those hiding in the region.

"The Rajasthan ATS comes and picks up people for questioning and drops them back whenever it wants to. The local police is clueless. They come to know only when the Rajasthan ATS informs them as a formality about who they are taking away with them. Sometimes they don't even do that," says Seher about the arrests that the neighbouring state's police have made in Pithampur.

"The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government (in Madhya Pradesh) is not very strong," says Jitender Sharma. "In Gujarat, (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi ] doesn't allow the ATS to touch anyone. But here, the ATS from other states walk in freely and pick up whoever they want to whenever they want."

Saturday, July 10, 2010

WWW integral to Democracy, and vice versa

10 July 2010

John Dayal

Poland is a young people, and a younger nation in terms of centuries. Slav tribes came together not more than a millennium ago. They became Christian as recently as in 966 AD – remember, St Thomas made his first converts in Kerala and Madras circa 54 AD, the first century after Christ – and made its first international show with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. And at various times, it defeated the Teutonic German knights, but was brutally conquered by Hitler, freed by Marshal Stalin, but held ideologically captive by the Soviet Union, freed once again by a combination mass movement led long distance from Rome by home boy Pope John Paul II and by ship builder Lech Walesa of Gdansk. That was about thirty years ago, just. It is home to Auschwitz where a million Jews were incinerated, but is also where Chopin was born, and Copernicus and Madame Curie. Let us say, Poland knows a bit about democracy, and the lack of it, and the difference between the two. Not surprisingly, when in the middle of its Presidential Elections this month, it held the Tenth anniversary meeting High Level Meeting of the Community of Democracies, the event was alternately dominated by events showcasing Polish culture and ethos on the one hand, and US arrogance on the other, specially as displayed by the very vocal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors Madeline Alright. Between the two, they put up the US as the global underwriter of democracy, and financier of pro democracy movements in third world countries, Clinton announcing a support fund with an initial Dollar donation of Five Million.

But as part of the observances was an interesting sub-conference on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions said “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.”

The issues would have interested India, but alas, of the three civilians and one diplomat at the conference from home, only one attended this session. Egyptians and Latin Americans spoke of the use they had made of the Internet in globalising their struggles. Others spoke of Internet censorship, by China and Pakistan, for instance. And a representative of an international Search engine-turned portal tried to forecast the future where the Internet in an advanced version would be an important tool for “equality, fraternity and the pursuit of happiness,” or words to that affect.
For NGOs in India, there was much to reflect upon. We boast the second largest number of Internet users in the world, but poverty, still prehistoric infrastructure maintenance, low penetration where it matters among the rural, the forested tribal communities and the religious minorities -- the huge victim group in other words – it remains a moot question if Indians can pin their democratic hopes on the World Wide Web, yet. The blame cannot be put on Airtel , Idea, Reliance, BSNL, Aircel, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, MTNL, and Loop Mobile, though they too care tuppence for the 600 million consumers, almost half of the total national population connected by wire or wireless. Another demon is the cost. India still rates as one of the most expensive in communication and Net access.
The ghost culprit is the Government of India. It is, I admit, no monster compared to China’s regime, but let us not forget that Kashmiris cannot often still carry hand mobiles every so often, villagers lose touch for want of electricity, and above all, things are not clear about shadow organizations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team ("CERT-IN") are meant to ensure Internet security. Officially, the Ministry of Home Affairs, all courts, the military and civil intelligence bureaus can use it, as they say in officialese, to enhance the security of India's Communications and Information Infrastructure through proactive action and effective collaboration.
Nothing legal yet about website censorship, but news reports on a weekly basis speak of interest groups fingering some site or the other, foreign or national. Records show, and I should be I suppose indebted to CIA portals for this information, not just pornographic but also anti-establishment political websites have been blocked. In 2001, the Bombay High Court appointed a committee to oversee issues relating to online pornography and Cybercrime. A court panel called for licensing of cyber cafés, putative identity cards for cyber cafe visitors, and long books for internet service providers. Good for internal security and since the Indian State and its police defines what is national good, bad news for a free society. Not that in India we need India to scare us. Self Censorship in India ensures that most of us, the Media included, quietly toe the government line where it matters, afraid we may be branded Maoist supporters, if not Maoists of Jaish operatives. Our hard disks remain squeaky clean, our ‘Net signatures absolutely innocent of real democratic shouts. Time for some debate on Internet freedom, and its importance for Civil Society – without drawing on the 5 Million Dollar American fund.
[An editorial in FNB news for the soul]

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Poland Diary 3

8 July 2010

Poland drowns murmurs of anti Semitism in festivals of Jewish Culture, and a Museum to Schindler’s List

From John Dayal
Krakow, Poland

The fat lady sang her heart out, and then collapsed on stage. But Kurdish-Jewish singer Ilana Eliya, singing with Jabalayo Ensamble, was made of sterner stuff. After ministrations from a concerned audience in the historic Temple Synagogue, now alas just a tourist attraction and packed to the rafters, she had a sip of water, got on her feet, and completed her song of love and patriotism. She got a standing ovation with what seemed most of Krakow’s remaining Jewish population and the rest strapping young Poles with their girl friends.

There was much that was familiar in her song and music to anyone from west or south Asia. Her voice shifted the octaves between Pakistani singer Reshma and our own Shobha Mudgal singing Sufi song, and the music, part Turkish and with the Kashmiri looking Saaz, seemed nostalgically familiar to the solitary Indian in the audience – this correspondent.

Elia, a child prodigy was on her first visit to Poland, her explanatory speeches interspersing her ballads reminding audiences of what her people had to bear when Iraqi dictators bombed them with poison gas. She had the audience hanging by her lips, for many of the tourists had earlier in the day been to there see the poison gas chambers at Auschwitz in the town nearby, where a million Jews, and thousands of Poles, were industrially murdered by Hitler in World War II.

Ilya’s was one of a series of performances during a weeklong Festival of Jewish Culture, now in its 20th year, which Poland has used artfully to apply some salve to a guilty conscience. The annual festival, together with a massive conservation of the three concentration camps, gas chambers and cremation factories at Auschwitz, and a brand new museum in what was the factory of former Nazi businessman, Oskar Schindler – remember the film Schindler’s List which played in India some years ago -- are but thee of the many social-psychological instruments that the government uses to caution its youth against anti Semitism. An underground current of anti-Semitism, and the occasional crop of neo Nazi and skin head groups rising in an otherwise prosperous Poland is cause of grave worry to the authorities, the intelligentsia, and the people at large.

Not that Poland is alone in Europe in this. Germany itself, and many of the countries it conquered seventy years ago showed repeated signs of anti Semitism, the worse five years ago, but some as recent as late last year and early this year. So much so that when some thieves in December last year stole the sign at the concentration camp, the ironical slogan “Work will make you Free”, there was a national sensation which sent ripples from Moscow in the East to London in the West. There was a collective sigh of relief when police said the thieves were not Nazis, just young men out for a lark. But the controversy has by no means ended.

Former Canadian minister and long-time member of Parliament David Kilgour, who was with us in Krakow and who had also visited the camps, noted that the two large camps, about four kilometres apart and preserved by the Polish Parliament in 1947 as monuments to the Holocaust - Shoah, are “undoubtedly the most inhuman scenes we visitors from around the world have ever seen,” and last year alone about 1.2 million visited the place. Russian soldiers on Jan. 27, 1945, who freed approximately 7000 surviving inmates, including 400 children-many of them barely alive from starvation, said the “perfectly organized” facilities were “the most shocking thing seen and filmed”.

Prisoners came in train cattle cars at Birkenau after 1942, the year Hitler ordered the ‘Final Solution’ for Europe’s Jewry. Healthy men were separated from the others to work in the fields and factories, the rest, including 230,000 children and babies, were taken immediately for “showers”, of cyanide gas in concrete bunkers. A million and more were murdered at these two facilities alone. The rooms of the barracks in the concentration camp now house exhibits which include 800,000 women’s, dresses, 348,000 men’s suits, millions of pairs of shoes, pots and pans, which the victims brought with them because they had been told they were being relocated. The guide told me these grim reminders were carefully preserved. “Care was taken to ensure that anti Jew lobbies could not say the camps had been constructed later to stigmatise Hitler.”

This is required.. As an official of the foreign ministry told me, current Europe politics even has parties which openly call for anti Semitism among their members and supporters as they seek votes to the European Parliament.

The Museum in Schindler's factory, opened just a few weeks ago, carries the education into the Nazi phenomenon further. Only the office block remains of the WWII enamel products factory. But this has been lovingly preserved, its interiors converted into a multi media exposition with a chilling display of Nazi flags, uniforms and guns, the lives of the ordinary people under a world war. With intent, the huge Swastika flags loom over flooring made of Swastika flags on which the visitors have to walk, something which would have been impossible in real life of the times.

The museum also reopens the debate on this German businessman who was a top Nazi but eventually helped save more than one thousand Jews by telling the government they were needed in the war effort, and then helping many of them escape. A grateful Jewish community ensured that his body was buried in Jerusalem., the only non Jew with a Nazi past to be so honoured in death. And yet, many say he was a mere opportunist who played both sides to prosper himself. The Museum does not make him out to be a hero – just tells us in multi media what it meant to be living under murderous and racist military regimes.

Poland, like Germany, has made it a crime to display Swastikas or Nazi flags in public, but it is no crime to buy a copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, in German or a Polish translation. And it does sell, it seems.

Poland Diary 2

7th July 2010

Hillary sets up new US fund for NGOs fighting for democratic rights; Cuban Padre awarded for questioning Castro brothers


FROM John Dayal
Krakow, Poland:

The Holy Roman Catholic Church and the current Pope may be on the receiving end of public and media criticism in Europe and the United States, but Washington and its European allies have used a Catholic priest from a small Cuban parish, and the memory of Pope John Paul II. to focus on human rights violations and demand early democratisation in Havana, Iran and Burma.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors, Madeline Albright, “named and shamed’ Cuban President Raul Castro, the Islamic leaders in Teheran and the Yangon junta as they watched Father Jose Conrado Rodriguez receive the second Bronislav Geremek democracy promotion award in the key function of the High Level Democracy Meeting in Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland, earlier this week.

Nelson Mandela was the first recipient of the award founded ten years ago by Albright and Geremek, the then Polish Foreign minister, to “support legitimacy and authority of people form around the world working in promoting democracy and human liberty.” To add substance to the award, Hillary Clinton in her speech announced the formation of an international fund with a seed capital donation of US Dollars Five Million to assist NGOs and groups engaged in freedoms struggles. She did not name any particular country which would be the target of this effort.

Fr Rodriguez, of the Friars Minor Order, is from the province of Santiago de Cuba and has earned acclaim in the Americas for his sharply worded reprimands to President Fidel Castro. The Pastor wrote a letter again to Fidel’s brother and successor General Raul Castro, protesting that police had beaten up his parishioners inside his church. The letter went on to say “We have spent our lives blaming the enemy, and even our friends, for our situation. The collapse of the bloc of communist countries and the US trade embargo has become the scapegoat that bears all our sins. It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly serious and urgent, of food, and of the homes that so many of our countrymen – “with their meagre belongings: fears, sorrows” - have just lost in the recent hurricanes. We are at such a critical moment that we must undertake a thorough examination of our beliefs and our practices, of our aspirations and our objectives. As the great Jose Marti said, You do not found a nation, General, the way you run a military camp.”

Fr Rodriguez, who got a thunderous ovation in the Krakow Opera House together with his statuette, does have an indirect connection with Krakow – when Krakow’s favourite son and former Cardinal, Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in a history-making tour in 1998, among those receiving him was the fiery Parish priest from Santa Teresita del Nino Jesus. Joining him on stage this time was the current Cardinal of Krakow and ministers from Indonesia, the European parliament, Lithuania, South Korea, Canada, and Kenya. India had a low key presence 2-4 July meeting, its delegation headed by an additional secretary from the External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi. Polish foreign minister Radoslav Sikorski played the host.

Though called the Community of Democracies and held in Poland, the show piece of democratic transition from the Soviet era, the Krakow meet was dominated by the US presence, the speeches of the former and present Secretaries of State remaining the dominant voices. Mrs. Clinton was particularly sharp after her concurrent tour of Eastern European countries. In Krakow and in the neighbouring countries Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, she questioned Moscow, decried the Caucasian habit of coveting other’s lands and the still continuing restrictions on civil rights in some countries. “We seek a community of nations working together to strengthen democracy, and transparency of government processes, sound electoral systems, respect for human rights and the rule of law, active civic education, prevention of official corruption and related core values basic to democratic governance.”

Stressing the importance of democracy both as a central organizing principle of official government foreign policy and as the basis of international alliances of NGOs, she said “We are convinced the time has arrived for the democracies of the world to build upon the experience of the UN and NATO, a new institutional framework for global cooperation among democratic nations.”

She focussed on the "crisis" of governments “around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit." She named Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Congo, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea and China.

As she announced a US fund to assist NGOs and civil society, presumably working in threes and other countries, Mrs Clinton said the United Nations Human Rights Council needs to do more to protect civil society. “Freedom of association is the only freedom defined in the United Nations declaration of human rights that does not enjoy specific attention from the UN human rights machinery. That must change. She spoke of US pressure on organizations, such as the OAS, the EU, the OIC, the African Union, and the Arab League, others, to do more to defend the freedom of association. “We need to make sure words are matched by actions,” said, calling for coordinated diplomatic pressure by allied governments.

An interesting aspect of the meeting was a series of side discussions on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions spoke of “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.” At present time, there is a need to give priority to economic and social development and to fight unemployment; both of those have implications for democratic governance,” the documents said.

Poland Diary 1

Polish president Komorowski wins vote, walks tight rope between Russia and US

From John Dayal

Warsaw, 6 July 2010

Ignoring sentiment and a subtle pressure from the Catholic Church, a highly polarized Poland electorate last night voted acting president Bronislaw Komorowski to power with his agenda for rapid privatization and a balance between Russia and nuclear ally United States, with whom his government two days ago signed a missile defence pact.

“Pragmatic” Komorowski won 53 per cent of the votes against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who fought passionately on the memory of his twin brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski who died with 96 others on 10 April while flying to a memorial meeting in Katyn in Russia where Stalin’s Russian army had allegedly shot dead over 20,000 polish soldiers during the World War II.

The Church patently sided with Kaczynski and his Law and Justice Party, as did a large chunk of the traditional and rural poor in the highly Catholic post-communist Poland. But Komorowski’s poll managers in the Civic Platform party, a right of the centre group, marshalled a last minute turnout of the younger voters and the emerging middle class to beat back the tough but controversial leader of the Law and Justice party. Kaczynski received 46.99 per cent of the vote in a 55.31 per cent turnout, which was a huge change from the apathy shown by voters in the first round.

Komorowski, a former defence minister, was Marshal of the Sejm -- Speaker of the Lower house of the Polish Parliament – at the time of the air crash and was automatically elevated President under the country’s constitution. He managed a high profile support base when he decided to fight the elections, preponed from their scheduled date in autumn this year. Poland’s modern-age hero Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity movement, backed him, as did men of the caliber of film maestro Andrei Wajda who told this correspondent at Komorowski’s victory headquarters, aptly in a building housing Coca Cola and many bank headquarters; “He is the man for the future, the man who will make Poland a major in the European Union.’ Wajda also praised the new president as a man who supported free speech and the arts – an abiding virtue in the land of music immortal Chopin.

The media here has noticed that Komorowski has had to dilute many of his policies to win over the Poles. Among his talking points was his party’s alliance with the UK’s ruling Tories, speaking of a larger alliance in the European Union which Poland will head in the second half of next year.

Despite a powerful Opposition, and a church looking over his shoulders, Komorowski hopes to have an easier time in his newly won term because his Civic Platform party now controls both the Presidency and the Parliament. “Polish democracy has won,” Komorowski told widely cheering, but visibly well off, supporters in his headquarters as he and his wife made an appearance last Sunday night in a US-inspired made for television event late Sunday night after polling officially ended.
Komorowski has been Minister of National Defence from 2000 to 2001 and Deputy Speaker from 2005 to 2007. His party backs church positions against abortion and gay marriages, but strongly calls for privatization of the remaining public sectors of Polish economy, direct elections to local body chiefs such as mayors and other electoral reforms,. labour law reform, and a 15% flat tax.

Symbolic possibly of modern Poland, a country which has repeatedly seen its nobility and intelligentsia murdered en masse by invading armies over the last several centuries, Komorowski traces his origins to an old and noble family which was active against the communist regime, many relatives ending up in prison.

International observers here noted that the elections coincided with a high profile trip to Poland and Eastern Europe by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She participated in ceremonies marking ten years of Council for Democracy – for which international media had been invited – but took time off to supervise the signing of a deal with Poland last Saturday allowing a revised missile-shield program to defend against potential threats from Iran or elsewhere. It has been reported that Poland also received a Patriot missile battery, manned by American soldiers and situated at the military base at Morag, some 250 kilometers north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometers from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory.