Immediately after British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Friday last week that she had approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, the publisher and journalist was stripped naked and placed in a bare cell of London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.
This latest abuse of Assange’s democratic and human rights was reported by his father John Shipton to a rally in Berlin last Tuesday and at other speaking engagements in Europe. The brutal treatment was meted out on the grounds of preventing Assange from taking his own life.
In reality, it is a continuation of what outgoing United Nations Rapporteur Nils Melzer has branded as the state torture of Assange by the British and US authorities.
The persecution of the journalist is proceeding along two tracks. On the one hand, there is the pseudo-legal extradition process, aimed at dispatching Assange to the US where he would face 18 Espionage Act charges and 175 years imprisonment for publishing true documents which exposed American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the other is the ongoing brutalisation of Assange, who has been subjected to different forms of arbitrary detention for more than a decade. This includes over three years imprisonment in Belmarsh Prison, a facility dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay,” the vast majority of that time without conviction.
On Twitter, Assange’s wife Stella Moris also reported that Assange had been denied visitors the entire weekend after Patel’s announcement. The extradition order will be subject to a further appeal through the British courts. But under conditions of a momentous decision, which has vast and potentially dire consequences for his life, Assange was deliberately isolated and left entirely alone.
The clear aim of the British authorities was not to prevent Assange’s suicide, but to intensify his suffering as much as possible. The implications of such treatment being meted out to a man with intense psychological issues, stemming from the protracted US-led persecution, are clear. The British state wants Assange dead.
A similar abuse was inflicted on Assange during the initial British court hearings for his extradition in January, 2020. After the first day of proceedings, he was inexplicably handcuffed eleven times and stripped twice, while guards confiscated his legal papers without justification.
In other words, there is a clear pattern of the Belmarsh authorities seeking to humiliate and degrade Assange, and to heighten his feelings of powerlessness, at key moments of the US-British extradition operation.
The report that Assange was placed on suicide watch is also a damning indictment of the court rulings allowing his extradition to the US. After the initial District Court proceedings, Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked extradition, on the narrow grounds that Assange’s poor health and the brutal conditions in American prisons meant he would die if sent to the US.
That ruling was overturned by the High Court last December, on the basis of bogus and self-contradictory assurances from the US government that Assange’s treatment would not be as bad as claimed by his defence lawyers. The assurances were accepted, despite a Yahoo! News report in September alleging that the Trump administration and the CIA had discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange In 2017.
But while the High Court has ruled that Assange’s extradition would not be oppressive, or a risk to his life, Belmarsh Prison, if its actions are taken on face value, acknowledges that there is an imminent risk of Assange’s death.
The British authorities will make no attempt to square the contradiction. They have ignored warnings from hundreds of doctors of Assange’s deteriorating health and the need for his immediate release, for the past three years.
Meanwhile, Patel’s announcement has been met with a massive wave of opposition, from press freedom groups, legal experts and prominent public figures. These condemnations of the US-led pursuit of Assange reflect a groundswell of support for the WikiLeaks founder among workers and young people, millions of whom regard him as an heroic figure whose only “crime” is to have exposed the illegal wars and diplomatic conspiracies of American imperialism.
On Wednesday, fifteen journalists’ and publishers’ associations from six different countries met in Geneva, Switzerland. They condemned Patel’s decision and demanded Assange’s immediate freedom.
Dominique Pradalie, president of the International Federation of Journalists, which represents 600,000 media workers in 140 countries, said: “Julian Assange is a journalist, a political prisoner who is facing a death sentence. We are demanding that Julian Assange be freed, he returned to his family, and finally permitted to live a normal life.”
Pierre Ruetschi, head of the Swiss Press Club, pointed to the broader implications of the US attempt to prosecute a journalist for his publishing activities. Ruetschi warned that “democracy is being taken hostage. This attempt at criminalizing journalism is a serious threat.”
Patel’s announcement has also been denounced by several governments. On Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador convened a press conference, where he played excerpts from the Collateral Murder video released by Assange and WikiLeaks in 2010. It shows US soldiers in an Apache helicopter gunning down unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists in Baghdad.
“He is the best journalist of our time in the world and has been very unfairly treated, worse than a criminal,” López Obrador stated, branding the persecution of Assange as “an embarrassment to the world.” The Mexican president said he would demand that Biden end the attempted prosecution, when they meet next Tuesday, and said that his country would “open its doors” to the WikiLeaks publisher.
López Obrador is a capitalist politician, whose government has imposed austerity measures and other right-wing policies. His statements nevertheless provide a glimpse of the real public opinion concerning the US persecution of Assange, which is persistently buried by the corporate media. It is widely viewed as an illegitimate operation, aimed at covering up war crimes and attacking fundamental democratic rights.
The Mexican statements are also an indictment of Australia’s new Labor government. It has rejected calls, including from his family, to intervene in defence of Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to demand that Biden end the prosecution.
Senior Labor ministers have stated that they will not exercise their legal and diplomatic powers to free the WikiLeaks founder, as Australian governments have when citizens have been subjected to persecution in other countries.
The most significant development of the past week has been the outpouring of support for Assange from working people, expressed in hundreds of thousands or even millions of posts on social media.
This is occurring under conditions of a major upsurge of the class struggle, directed against austerity, the soaring cost of living and wage suppression. In Britain, some 50,000 rail workers have taken powerful strike action this week, against the very government that holds the key to Assange’s cell door. There is also widespread hostility to the eruption of militarism, expressed most sharply in the US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the working class is the constituency for the fight to free Assange, defend democratic rights and end imperialist war. We urge workers and young people to take up this struggle, including by sharing information on Assange’s persecution and passing resolutions at your schools and workplaces opposing it and calling for a mass fight for his freedom.
Originally published by WSWS.org
A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in a remote area of Afghanistan has killed at least 1,000 people and injured at least 1,500. While the worst affected area is the mountainous Paktika province, deaths have also been reported in the eastern provinces of Khost and Nangarhar. Many more bodies are thought to be buried in mud as heavy rain hampers rescue efforts.
The quake is the deadliest since 2002, when a 6.1 magnitude tremor killed about 1,000 people in the north of the country. It struck early Wednesday morning about 30 miles southwest of Khost, southeast of the capital Kabul, according to the United States Geological Survey. Its relatively shallow depth of six miles worsened its impact, with “strong and long jolts” felt in Kabul and tremors felt as far away as Lahore in Pakistan, 300 miles from the epicentre.
Thousands have been forced to sleep outside in unseasonable, near-freezing temperatures, as entire villages, largely built from clay and straw, have collapsed. The severely limited infrastructure in the country is making it very difficult to provide relief. Afghanistan’s skeleton health care system is unable to cope under normal circumstances, let alone handle the natural disasters that plague the country. With few airworthy planes and helicopters, the government had to call off the emergency search and rescue after 24 hours and issue an urgent appeal for international aid.
These appalling conditions are the result of the catastrophic encounter of Afghanistan with American imperialism. This began in 1979 with the intervention of the Carter administration and the CIA to finance and arm Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, in a proxy war against the Soviet-backed government.
US imperialism believed it could use the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an opportunity to overcome its economic decline abroad and its social conflicts at home, using its military might to oversee a “New World Order” in the interests of its corporate and financial elite.
In October 2001, following the attacks of September 11, the United States launched a war and occupation, undertaken in pursuit of economic interests concealed from the public under the guise of the “war on terrorism” against a government it claimed was harbouring bin Laden.
The human and social costs of the war in Afghanistan have been catastrophic and are ongoing today. According to official figures that undoubtedly understate the casualties, 164,436 Afghans were killed during the war, together with 2,448 US soldiers, 3,846 US military contractors and 1,144 soldiers from other NATO countries. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and tens of thousands of NATO personnel were wounded. The war and occupation have cost the American public some $2 trillion, with a further $6.5 trillion to be paid out in interest payments over the years.
The war has produced one of the largest refugee populations in the world. As of the beginning of this year, before the war in Ukraine, about 1 in 10 Afghans—that is, 3 million people—are refugees, mostly living in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Three in four Afghans have suffered internal or external displacement in their lifetime.
According to the World Bank, Afghanistan is the sixth poorest country in the world, with a gross national income per capita of only $500. The United Nations estimates that 23 million Afghans, or more than half of the population, suffer from acute hunger. An estimated 8.7 million are at risk of famine, while 5 million children are on the brink of starvation. And this is before the surge in the prices of basic commodities over the past several months.
The Afghan war, bizarrely named Operation Enduring Freedom, spawned a whole new lexicon of criminal activities: extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, drone warfare and waterboarding, to mention but a few.
It was WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange, who, by publishing the Afghan war logs in 2010, a vast trove of leaked US military documents, brought to the world’s attention evidence of the criminality of the war. The Afghan war logs exposed the myth that the occupation of Afghanistan was a “good war,” supposedly waged to defeat terrorism, extend democracy, and protect women’s rights.
They revealed the mass killings of civilians by both US and UK forces, the underreporting and cover-up of civilian deaths and war crimes, including numerous occasions when US and British troops opened fire on civilians. But not one of the criminals responsible for the war has been prosecuted, much less punished. Instead, it is Assange who has languished in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison for the last three years, awaiting extradition to the US on charges under the Espionage Act that carry 175 years in prison.
Afghanistan’s plight has been further exacerbated by Washington’s theft of Afghanistan’s financial assets and imposition on the country of an economic blockade—tantamount to starving the country to death—after the Taliban took control last summer amid the US military’s humiliating withdrawal from its longest-ever war.
The White House left the country in ruins and facing an enormous humanitarian catastrophe. Throughout the 20 years of occupation, the US and its allies did nothing to develop Afghanistan. Instead, its economy was shattered, its agriculture undermined by so-called aid. This, along with the insecurity, drought and natural disasters, played into the hands of Afghanistan’s warlords and drug dealers, as impoverished farmers turned to poppy cultivation and the opium trade.
The disastrous state of Afghanistan underscores the devastating impact of US imperialism’s four decades of covert operations, war, and occupation on what was already one of the poorest countries on the planet. It must serve as a warning to workers throughout the world about what the US and NATO have in store for Ukraine.
In her last piece for the New York Times, published on February 23, the late Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state under President Bill Clinton from 1997 until 2001, warned—as did several other commentators—that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “It would be far from a repeat of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014; it would be a scenario reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s ill-fated occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.”
She was referring to the US’s use of proxy forces during the 1980s, supported, hosted, and trained by Pakistan and funded by the US and Saudi Arabia, to unseat the Soviet Union-aligned Afghan government and undermine Moscow’s influence in the Caspian basin and the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan itself is a treasure trove of untapped minerals, variously estimated at $1 to $3 trillion.
In the conflicts and mass destruction that followed the collapse of the pro-Soviet regime, the Taliban was nurtured and brought to power with Washington’s blessing in the belief that the Taliban would help stabilize Afghanistan after 15 years of war, while at the same time exert increasing pressure on China and Russia.
Albright’s words should be taken seriously. In 1996, when she was US ambassador to the United Nations, she was asked by the “60 Minutes” news show whether she thought about the price to the Iraqi people of the devastating sanctions imposed by the US on Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War, which had starved Iraq of medicines and food and killed at least 500,000 Iraqi children at that time. Albright replied, without disputing the figure, “We think the price is worth it.”
After two decades of US-backed proxy wars and military occupation, Afghanistan has been brutalized and impoverished. Its fate is a warning for what US imperialism holds in store for everything it touches, whether its nominal “allies” or the targets of US regime-change operations.
With the ever-expanding US war against Russia, the US is preparing to bring the type of devastation wrought upon Afghanistan and Iraq to Europe, at an even greater cost in lives and treasure.
Originally published in WSWS.org
UK trade union RMT members have once again taken to picket lines, in a show of industrial strength, on the second day of national rail strike action.
Over 40,000 members are on strike over a multiyear pay freeze and a lack of job security, with Network Rail and the train operating companies threatening thousands of compulsory redundancies.
For All Working People
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Our members are leading the way in standing up for all working people trying to get a pay rise and some job security.
“In a modern economy, workers need to be properly rewarded for their work, enjoy good conditions and have the peace of mind that their job will not be taken away from them.
“[Transport Secretary] Grant Shapps needs to get in the room or get out of the way, so we can negotiate with these companies who we have successfully struck dozens of deals with previously.
“What we cannot accept is thousands of railway workers being thrown on the scrapheap after being praised as heroes during Covid.
“RMT will continue its industrial campaign until a negotiated settlement is reached.”
Talks continue with Network Rail and the train operating companies, and strike action scheduled for Saturday remains on.
Important railway stations including London Euston, London Paddington, Edinburgh Waverley and Liverpool Lime Street saw fewer travelers amid the disruption today.
Strikes Terrible Idea, Says Boris Johnson
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed that there is a need for reforms of the rail system, calling the strikes “unnecessary” and a “terrible idea.”
His “reforms” involve withdrawing billions in funding and axing thousands of staff.
The government has been accused of putting obstacles in the way of a deal, which it has denied, and has been criticized for not meeting with rail workers’ leaders for three months ahead of the strikes to avoid the industrial action.
RMT pointed to Shapps “wrecking” negotiations by preventing Network Rail from withdrawing a letter which threatens redundancy for 2,900 members of the union.
Shapps has called the claim from RMT a “lie.”
Labour MP Joins Workers In Leeds
In Leeds, strikers were joined by Leeds East Labour MP Richard Burgon as more Labour MPs showed solidarity with striking rail workers despite an order by party leader Sir Keir Starmer not to support striking workers on picket lines.
Sir Keir said MPs could face punishment if they do.
Mr Burgon said he was proud to attend the picket line to show support for railway staff.
He told the Morning Star: “The government is treating RMT and railway workers appallingly.
“People are living through a cost-of-living emergency. Prices are soaring and people’s wages are losing their value.
“The reason for inflation is not [that] people have money in their pockets. They do not.
“Railway workers and workers more widely in private and public sectors do not only deserve a pay rise.
“They need a pay rise. We cannot carry on allowing wages to go down so that profits can go up.”
More Support
Also supporting the Leeds pickets were members of Unite Community union, and the city’s Acorn tenants’ union.
More Strike Likely
More strike action is likely on the northern rail network as TSSA announced a ballot of its members working at Trans Pennine Express.
The union is demanding a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies for 2022, no unagreed changes to terms and conditions, and a pay increase which reflects the rising cost of living.
General secretary Manuel Cortes said: “It’s time the government changed course.
“Instead of making cuts across our railway the DfT should either give Trans Pennine and other companies the signal to make us a reasonable offer, or ministers should come to the negotiating table and speak to us directly.
“The alternative is a fast-approaching summer of discontent across our rail network.”
Voting begins on June 29 and closes on July 13.
British Airways Workers At Heathrow Vote Overwhelmingly For Strike Action
British Airways (BA) workers at Heathrow airport overwhelmingly voted to strike in a dispute over pay today.
Members of the GMB and Unite, including check-in staff, will now decide on strike dates, which the unions said were likely to be held during the peak summer holiday period.
GMB national officer Nadine Houghton said: “With grim predictability, holidaymakers face massive disruption thanks to the pig-headedness of BA.
“BA has tried to offer our members crumbs from the table in the form of a 10 per cent one-off bonus payment, but this does not cut the mustard.
“Our members need to be reinstated the 10 per cent they had stolen from them last year with full back pay and the 10 per cent bonus which other colleagues have been paid.”
With union members at the airport suffering “untold abuse” as they deal with the travel chaos while having their pay slashed due to a fire and rehire policy, Ms Houghton questioned what the airline thought would happen.
“It is not too late to save the summer holidays – other BA workers have had their pay cuts reversed,” she said.
“Do the same for ground and check-in staff and this industrial action can be nipped in the bud.”
Unite officer Russ Ball blamed BA for the strike after the company brutally cut jobs and pay during the pandemic despite receiving government support.
He said BA has insulted its workforce, who are being treated as “second-class citizens.
“The company has a short window of opportunity to reinstate our members’ pay before strikes are called,” Mr Ball said.
“I urge BA not to squander that opportunity.”
In a statement, BA said it was “extremely disappointed” in the decision and that it is fully committed to finding a solution.
It is mandatory for every President of India to take the following oath prescribed under Article 49 of the Indian Constitution before occupying the august office:
“I, [Name] do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of President (or discharge the functions of the President) of India and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law and that I will devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of India.”
There is no ambiguity on the character of India polity which is explained in the Preamble of the Constitution. It is a democratic Republic, formed to secure for all its citizens, justice, liberty, equality, fraternity and dignity. Surely, the present President of India, His Highness Ram Nath Kovind has not been exempted from this constitutional obligation. However, sadly discarding totally this commitment he graced and addressed the centenary celebrations of Gita Press at Gorakhpur on June 4, 2022 in the presence of Uttar Pradesh Governor and chief minister. According to the Press Information Bureau press release,
“Speaking on the occasion, the President said that Gita Press has played a very important role in taking the spiritual and cultural knowledge of India to the masses through its publications…The President noted that apart from the Bhagavad Gita, Gita Press publishes books like Ramayana, Puranas, Upanishads, Bhakt-charitra etc. It has made a record by publishing more than 70 crore books till now and has the distinction of being the world’s largest publisher of Hindu religious books. He praised the Gita Press for providing religious books to the public at cheap prices even despite financial constraints.”
Continuing with his praise of Gita Press he told the gathering,
“‘Kalyan’ magazine of Gita Press has a prestigious place as collectible literature from the spiritual point of view. It is probably one of the most famous publications of Gita Press and most widely read religious magazine in India. The President noted that of the 1850 current publications of Gita Press, about 760 publications are in Sanskrit and Hindi but the remaining publications are in other languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Assamese, Malayalam, Nepali, Urdu, Punjabi and English. He said that this reflects the unity in diversity of our Indian culture. The religious and spiritual base in Indian culture is the same from east to west and from north to south.”
He also referred to Gita Press’s,
“plan for setting up its branches abroad, the President expressed hope that through this expansion, the whole world would benefit from the culture and philosophy of India. He urged Gita Press to enhance its relations with the Indians diaspora living abroad, as they are the messengers of Indian culture, who connect the world with our country.” [https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1831175]
This address of the President of the Indian Republic regarded as the largest democracy in the world made it clear that President was convinced of ideological contribution of Gita Press as transmitter of “spiritual and cultural knowledge of India”. For him India meant Hindu India only as he also underlined the fact that it was “the world’s largest publisher of Hindu religious books”. He even went on to share the exact count of the publications of Gita Press which numbered 1850 and printed more than 70 crore copies of its publications.
It was a sad day for the Indian Republic as His Highness the President of India, Guardian of democratic-secular Indian Republic not only glorified but also idolized Gita Press which publishes ‘Hindu’ literature which propagates Sati and beating of women. It publishes mass popular religious ‘Hindu’ literature which opposes remarriage of widowed/divorced/discarded, seeking employment by them and even reporting rape as we will find by the perusal of some of its publications. According to this literature it is the way for Hindu women to end in swarg or paradise.
It is the largest publication house in India which publishes literature espousing the ‘‘Hindu’’ way of life for Hindu women on a very large scale. The low-priced publications are available throughout the country, especially in the Hindi belt, and are even sold through government allotted stalls at railway stations and government roadways stands.
Geeta Press has published more than a dozen titles on the subject, the most prominent of which are: Nari Shiksha (Education of Women) by Hanuman Prasad Poddar, Grahsth Mein Kaise Rahen [How to Lead a Household Life] by Swami Ramsukhdas, Striyon ke Liye Kartawya Shiksha (Education of Duties for Women) and Nari Dharm (Religion of Woman) by Jai Dayal Goindka and a special issue of magazine Kalyan on women. These are available in English and other Indian languages. The English titles are popular with the non-resident Indians.
The authors extensively quote from ancient texts like Shiva Purana and Manusmriti. They borrow heavily from these and other ‘holy‘ texts, upholding a subservient woman/wife as the ideal Hindu woman. For instance in the book titled How to Lead a Household Life which is in question-answer format, when a question is posed,
‘What should the wife do if her husband beats her and troubles her?” Swami Ramsukhdas offers the following sagely advice to the battered wife and her parents:
“The wife should think that she is paying her debt of her previous life and thus her sins are being destroyed and she is becoming pure. When her parents come to know this, they can take her to their own house because they have not given their daughter to face this sort of bad behaviour.”
And if her parents do not take her back to their house, learned Swamiji‘s pious advice is:
“Under such circumstances…she should reap the fruit of her past actions. She should patiently bear the beatings of her husband with patience. By bearing them she will be free from her sins and it is possible that her husband may start loving her.”
Swamiji who has no qualms about thrashing of wives by the husbands and claims it to be Heavenly ordained is quite compassionate towards animals. While responding to the question:
“What dealings should a person have with rats, lizards, mosquitoes and bugs etc., which live in the house?”
His sagely advice is to be merciful towards these creatures and Swamiji wants no harm done to them. He decrees:
“A man should regard these creatures as the members of the family because they live in it by making their home. So they are entitled to live in it. It means that they should be nourished as far as possible…It is not proper on the part of the people to kill them as some people do.”
And there is another piece of heavenly advice for a rape victim and her husband.
“As far as possible, it is better for woman (rape victim) to keep mum. If her husband also comes to know of it, he too should keep mum. It is profitable for both of them to keep quiet.”
Can a woman remarry? The answer is very straight forward,
“When once a girl is given away in marriage as charity by her parents, she does not remain virgin any more. So how can she be offered as charity to anyone else? It is beastliness to remarry her.”
But can a man remarry? No problem,
“A man can have a second wife for an issue in order to be free from the debt which he owes to manes (pitr-rin) according to the ordinances of the scriptures, if there is no issue from the first wife.”
But this is not the only reason for which a man is allowed re- marriage. A man,
“whose desire for pleasure has not been wiped out, can get remarried because if he does not get remarried, he will indulge in adultery and go to prostitutes and will incur a badly sin. Therefore, in order to escape the sin and maintain the decorum he should get remarried according to the ordinance of scriptures.”
Of course, no widow is allowed to remarry. However, she may be allowed to choose to be some male’s concubine.
“If she cannot maintain her character, instead of indulging in adultery here and there, she should accept her affinity for a person and live under his protection.”
Is it proper for woman to demand equal rights? The sagely answer is quite unambiguous:
“No, it is not proper. In fact, a woman has not the right of equality with man…in fact it is ignorance or folly which impels a woman to have desire for the right of equality with man. A wise person is he/she who is satisfied with less rights and more duties.”
This literature about Hindu women openly preaches and glorifies the ghastly practice of Sati. To the question:
“Is ‘Sati Pratha‘(viz., the tradition of the wife being cremated with the dead body of the husband on the funeral pyre) proper or improper?”
The sagely answer is:
“A wife’s cremation with the dead body of her husband on the funeral pyre is not a tradition. She, in whose mind truth and enthusiasm come, burns even without fire and she does not suffer any pain while she burns. This is not a tradition that she should do so, but this is her truth, righteousness and faith in scriptural decorum…It means that it is not a tradition. It is her own religious enthusiasm. On this topic Prabhudatta Brahmachariji has written a book whose title is Cremation of a Wife with her Husband’s Dead Body is the Backbone of Hindu Religion, it should be studied.
Swamis in this series of literature while demanding the restoration of practice of Sati go on to tell us that
“There is absolutely no doubt that a woman who happily follows her dead husband to the cremation ground receives on every step benefits of Ashawmedh Yagya [Ashvamedha means horse in Sanskrit and Ashawmedh Yagya was a sacrifice of a horse in the Vedic tradition used by the ancient Indian kings to prove their imperial sovereignty]…It is a Sati woman who snatches her husband from the hands of yamdoots (angels of death) and takes him to swarglok (Paradise). After seeing this pativrata lady the yamdoots themselves run away.”
It is not only Nari Shiksha which starts with a chapter captioned Sati Mahatmmey or ‘greatness of Sati‘ but Gita Press also published a special issue of its Hindi journal Kalyan glorifying Sati which was idolized by the Indian President in his address.
Apart from glorifying Sati, the Gita Press publication like Nari Dharm produces dozens of shlokas from ‘Hindu’ scriptures to establish that women are not capable of enjoying independence. This book begins with the chapter swatantarta ke liye striyon ki ayogeta (incapability of women for independence). Another notable facet of this literature is that long a list of rituals is laid down to be practiced by pregnant women so that ‘bright, talented, brave and religious inclined son’ is born.
Gita Press is allowed open circulation of such anti-women literature through book stalls provided by the Indian Railways. Minister of State Manoj Sinha replying to a question in Rajya Sabha on 08-08-2014 informed that Gita Press was allotted 45 stalls out of 165 allotted to social/religious organizations for putting on sale their publications at railway stations. Surprisingly, as per the details provided by minister the allotment seemed to be restricted to Hindu and the Gandhian organizations. It will be interesting to know that this allotment was ordered by Kamalapati Tripathi in 1980 when he was minister of railways in Indira Gandhi ministry
Moreover, major bus stands like ISBT (Kashmiri Gate Bus Terminus, Delhi) have Gita Press stall. The mobile vans of Gita Press often sell such obnoxious anti-women literature even in the premises of the Supreme Court and Central Secretariat in New Delhi from where the Democratic India is governed. These Gita Press publications are available at Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh run book shops also.
Indian President by praising such publications, in fact, contradicts and violates Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code which are frequently invoked to ban rationalist or progressive writings. Sadly, the Indian judiciary which is very fond of intervening into issues of public interests finds nothing objectionable in this dehumanizing propaganda under the garb of religious literature.
Kovind whose appointment as President in 2017 was welcomed as a proof of demolition of Casteism and restoration of the honour of Dalits of India by idolizing Gita Press has hugely disappointed so far as the fight against male chauvinist Hindutva world-view which has been the foremost enemy of an egalitarian Indian polity is concerned. Sadly, a Dalit President of India has not only failed the persecuted Dalits and women but also the Preamble of the Constitution of India!
Shamsul Islam is a retired professor of Delhi University
Link for some of S. Islam’s writings in English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and video interviews/debates:
http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam
Facebook: https://facebook.com/shamsul.islam.332
Twitter: @shamsforjustice
http://shamsforpeace.blogspot.com/
Email: notoinjustice@gmail.com
The opening statements of Human Rights Commissioner and Core Members (UK, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Malawi) sum up Sri Lanka’s hollow and dismal performance and the disappointing compliance of Human Right Council’s Resolutions and Recommendations issued against Sri Lanka since October 2015.
The Commissioner of Human Rights “called on Sri Lanka to focus on deeper institutional reforms to ensure greater transparency and accountability in governance, reduce inequalities and advance reconciliation and justice for all communities”.
Her statement has confirmed and buttressed the failings of Sri Lanka to ensure discernible accountability, justice and reconciliation due to bad governance affecting all communities.
These frank and forthright allegations expose Sri Lankas’ total contemptuous disregard and cavalier attitude and humiliating respect to the noble UN Human Rights Council and its reputed High Commissioner.
This article analyzes the performances of Sri Lanka briefly since the Human Rights Resolution 30/2015 and its Recommendations along with others.
The statement of Core Group members also “Expresses concerns about Government Politicians and their supporters launching attacks on protesters at Galle Face on May 9th 2022 when they were exercising their right of freedom of expression and the perpetrators must be brought and held responsible.
“Democratic human rights, rule of law, independence to protest, impunity and corruption must be ended and solved including continuing humiliation and harassment of civil activists, groups and institutions including necessity to allow proper environment for civil societies and organizations.”
This forthright and frank statement of Core Group has without any reservations exposed Sri Lanka’ s abject failure of commitments to comply with and implement the Recommendations of UNHRC. Instead, Sri Lanka has been launching flagrant acts of human rights violations and exhibiting its obduracy and defiance of UNHRC and its Recommendations. The truth and reality is that Sri Lankas’ compliances of the UNHRC’S Resolutions and Recommendations are executed with defiant beaches of same nullifying the purposes and objectives of the Recommendations including their values.
Only two Recommendations out of more than twenty five have been carried out by Sri Lanka, one being the establishment of the Office of the Missing Persons [OMP] and the other being the passing of the Enforced Disappearances Act in 2016. However, Sri Lanka’s compliance of these recommendations as usual has ended in a fiasco as these two offices have failed miserably to serve the victims of the disappeared as one victim recently remarked that not even the whereabouts of one person has been discovered and identified so far. It appears that currently these two offices are in a state of coma without any revival.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s entrenched culture of impunity is also still in full swing. Instead of prosecuting and punishing the alleged war criminals, most of them being security personnel, promotions and decorations are being showered on them as punishments for the alleged commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity etc.. The recent promotions of Savendra de Silva as Chief of Staff, an accused war criminal as General and Lieutenant General Chandra Wickremasinghe as Major General and Vikum Liyanage being promoted as the new Army Commander who is also alleged to have committed war crimes when commanding the 14th and 8th Divisions of Army as Major General show the low depths of criminal and judicial system in Sri Lanka.
As stated earlier on many occasions by human rights activist and human rights Commissioners accountability and justice is simply an anathema in Sri Lankas’ political system and history which is only aiming to make Sri Lanka as a country belonging to Sinhalese and Buddhists as claimed by many south politicians including some Buddhist Priests.
To state briefly, Sri Lanka has failed to implement the majority of the Recommendations including the Core ones. For example
- No independent, internal mechanism has been set up so far as this is a dead promise from the very beginning.
- The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 will not be repealed as promised and it continues to be vigerously applied mostly targeting the Tamils, Muslims, Political and Human Rights Acovists and those who raise their voices against the present government.
In this respect, foreign minister G. L. Peris as usual and habitual unfolded a tissue of lies at Geneva on June 13, 2022. The most diabolical lies are when he said:
“We have made significant progress in some key areas like the releasing of 92% of civilian lands seized and occupied by the military”.
The truth is that the military is still occupying about 28,990 Acres of forcibly seized private lands. Adding insult to injury, Buddhist Maha Sangha has requested the Army to start cultivating those seized lands, dealing a body blow to the livelihood of the owners of those private lands.
The Minister also said that the “Office of Missing Persons has met 83% of persons invited by them”. Assuming this is true, the hidden truths are that so far not a single person captured and or surrenderd to the security forces has been identified and produced alive as the mother of a disappeared victim recently lamented her grief regarding her son who surrendered to the security forces. The other truth is that not one single case has been resolved so far.
The recent statement of US Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirms the sorry state of Human Rights in Sri Lanka when it “When it called on Quad countries(Australia, India, Japan and USA) to stand together this year at the Human Rights Council when the Body receives “HR Commissioner’s report on war crimes committed during “Sri Lanka’s civil war”. Diplomatic unity would help demonstrate the Quad’s commitment to Accountability and respect for International Humanitarian Laws.” ( Tamil Guardian of June 16, 2022).
There is no doubt that the UN Human Rights Commissioner is fully cognizant of the persistent and continuous failings and breaches of Sri Lanka of its commitments to comply with the HRC recommendations and the blatant lies poured out by the Foreign Minister will neither hold water nor be bought by any country which upholds Accountability, Justice, Human Rights and Rule of Law.
It is hoped that the Human Rights Council while living up to its standing, status and reputation will unreservedly and unhesitatingly initiate whatever steps available and necessary to mete out justice to the war victims and rein in Sri Lanka to ensure the respect and the application of Human Rights to every citizen in Sri Lanka by defeating the dilly- dallying, procrastinating and dismissive deceptive tactics of Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s much touted Reconciliation among all sections of communities was once again breached with impunity when on June 16, 2022, despite Court’s ban on erection of any statues, several Buddist Monks accompanied by the Army with the participation of Archeological Commissioner attempted to consecrate a Buddha’s Statue at an ancient Hindu Temple site at Mullaitivu Kurunthur Malai area on June 11, 2022 which is an act of cultural genocide. However, this attempt to kill the reconciliation was thwarted by the public and Tamil politicians and some Tamil members of parliament.
In this respect, the letter of the Head of US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Quad countries rightly and correctly highlights the important roles of these countries when the Committee requested them to “Take a more proactive role in addressing Sri Lanka’s political and economic crisis”.(Tamil Guardian June 16, 2022).
Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [London] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. & President, Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights Organization.
