| 19 Years on Departure of Islamic Republic Founder | ||
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04/06/2008 Imam Ruhullah Al-Musawi Al-Khomeini was born on September 24, 1902 into a family of strong religious traditions in Khomein, a small town some hundred kilometers southwest of Tehran. |
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
19 Years on Departure of Islamic Republic Founder
Iran grieves its charismatic Leader's loss
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:50:06
By Hedieh Ghavidel, Press TV, Tehran
 |
The Imam came from a family of religious scholars who had devoted their lives to offering religious guidance to the thirsty-for-knowledge population.
Young Rouhollah lost his father, Seyyed Mustafa, when he was 5 months old. When he lost his mother in 1918, his brother Seyyed Morteza became his guardian.
He began his education by memorizing the holy Qur'an and was later sent to Arak (1920-21), and finally Qom (1923) to complete his religious education.
 Young Rouhollah Khomeini |
When Ayatollah Haeri passed away and Ayatollah Boroujerdi became the prominent religious figure in Qom, Imam Khomeini dedicated most of his time to teaching Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), gathering around him students like Ayatollahs Mutahhari and Hashimi-Rafsanjani and Hojatolislam Bahonar, who would later become important figures in the movement which led to the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty.
In 1961, following the passing of Ayatollah Boroujerdi and after becoming a source of emulation, Imam Khomeini gradually entered the political arena.
In 1962, the government enforced new election laws which negated the former requirement for newly elected officials to be sworn into office on the holy Qur'an.
The Imam warned the Shah and the prime minister of the day that violating the law of Islam and the Iranian Constitution of 1907 would lead to a protest campaign headed by religious scholars.
In January 1963, the Shah announced his White Revolution, an American-inspired package designed to give his regime a liberal and progressive facade.
On January 22, 1963, Imam Khomeini issued a strongly worded statement against the Shah and his plans and the senior 'ulama' of Qom headed by the Imam boycotted the referendum.
 Ayatollah Khomeini going to exile |
He also decreed that in protest to the policies pursued by the government, the Persian New Year celebrations, which fell on March 21, 1963, would be canceled that year.
On June 3rd 1963, coinciding with Ashura, in a speech at the Feyziyeh School of Islamic studies, Ayatollah Khomeini drew parallels between Yazid I, the man behind the massacre in Karbala, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In his historical speech Imam Khomeini criticized the Shah's regime for its dependence on foreign powers and its support of Israel.
He warned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that should he continue in his tyrannical ways there would come a day when the nation would celebrate his departure from the country.
The Shah's secret service arrested the Imam two days after this speech and transferred him to a prison in Tehran. On June 5, when the news of Imam Khomeini's arrest became known, Iranians took to the streets in Qom, Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Varamin.
 Ayatollah Khomeini and his son Mostafa |
The Shah was advised against killing Imam Khomeini as harming him would spark a public outcry and would have irreversible outcomes. Imam Khomeini returned to Qom after his release on April 7, 1964.
The Shah's regime, which continued its pro-American policies, granted capitulation rights to all American citizens in Iran in the autumn of 1964.
In a fiery speech Imam Khomeini announced that the agreement sold Iran's independence for a $200 million loan which would only benefit the Shah. He declared that all those who had voted for this agreement were traitors and that the government had lost its legitimacy.
 Ayatollah Khomeini arrives in Tehran |
On September 5, 1965, Ayatollah Khomeini left Turkey for Najaf in Iraq, where he remained for thirteen years and continued to guide the course of the revolution.
On January 7, 1978 when an insulting article about the Imam was published in one of the local newspapers, heavy protests broke out all over the country.
The demonstrations, which continued throughout 1978, eventually turned into a widespread revolutionary movement demanding the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the establishment of an Islamic government.
On October 3, Imam Khomeini left Iraq for Paris residing in Neauphle-le-Chateau until January 16, 1979 when the Shah left Iran. The Imam finally returned to the country on January 31.
 Imam Khomeini's shrine |
A nationwide referendum on March 30 and 31, resulted in a massive vote in favor of the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Imam Khomeini announced April 1, 1979, as the official birthday of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, spent the remaining years of his life in a modest house in Jamaran, Tehran.
On June 3, 1989, after eleven days in hospital Imam Khomeini passed away leaving the nation he had guided through the hardships of a long battle against injustice to mourn his loss for years to come.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Peacekeepers 'abusing children'
Peacekeepers 'abusing children'
 UN peacekeepers stand accused of abusing those they are sent to protect |
Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.
Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.
After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity proposed an international watchdog be set up.
Save the Children said it had sacked three workers for breaching its codes, and called on others to do the same.
The three men were all dismissed in the past year for having had sex with girls aged 17 - which the charity said was a sackable offence even though not illegal.
 |  The victims are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence  Heather Kerr Save the Children |
The UN has said it welcomes the charity's report, which it will study closely.
Save the Children says the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.
No support
A 13-year-old girl described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home.
One child on the abuse she suffered
"They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing," she said.
"I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding."
No action has been taken against the soldiers.
The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.
"In recent years, some important commitments have been made by the UN, the wider international community and by humanitarian and aid agencies to act on this problem," said Save the Children UK chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.
"However, all humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on."
| UN SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS 2003 - Nepalese troops accused of sexual abuse while serving in DR Congo. Six are later jailed 2004 - Two UN peacekeepers repatriated after being accused of abuse in Burundi 2005 - UN troops accused of rape and sexual abuse in Sudan 2006 - UN personnel accused of rape and exploitation on missions in Haiti and Liberia 2007 - UN launches probe into sexual abuse claims in Ivory Coast |
After research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.
It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems.
Heather Kerr, Save the Children's Ivory Coast country director, says little is being done to support the victims.
"It's a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that don't have the voice to report about this.
| READ THE REPORT Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. |
"They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."
Save the Children says the international community has promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.
A UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.
"What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he told the BBC.
source http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7420798.stmThursday, May 22, 2008
FBI files indict Bush, Cheney and Co. as war criminals
By Bill Van Auken
23 May 2008
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The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department Inspector General’s report released this week was that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a “War Crimes” file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the Guantánamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by the administration to stop writing their reports.
The World Socialist Web Site, together with human rights groups and other opponents of US militarism and repression, has long insisted that the actions of the Bush administration—the launching of wars of aggression, assassinations, the abduction and detention of civilians without trial and, most repugnant of all, torture—constitute war crimes under any legitimate interpretation of longstanding international statutes and treaties.
To have this assessment confirmed, however, by the IG of the Justice Department, the only senior official there not answerable directly to the White House, and by agents of the FBI, an agency not known for its sensitivity to questions of democratic rights, is an indication of the rampant character of these crimes as well as the crisis they have engendered within the US government and America’s ruling elite as a whole.
The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government—including the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic grounds by individuals within the government were systematically suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House on these new revelations. Responses from other agencies directly implicated in the crimes at Guantánamo were indicative of the general atmosphere of impunity in which the torture detailed in the IG’s report continues to this day.
“There’s nothing new here,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. A State Department spokesman, meanwhile, described the charges contained in the report as “pretty vague.”
Pretty vague? One can’t help but wonder what the spokesman would consider explicit. The report contains page after page of testimony by FBI agents on the sadistic and sickening practices carried out at Guantánamo.
In one section, the report states: “[An FBI Agent] recalled that, at some point during the interrogation, the military officer ‘put water down’ a seated detainee’s throat. He said he guessed that the purpose of the water was to give the detainee the sensation that he was drowning, so that he would provide the information that the interrogator wanted. [The agent] stated that the detainee was gagging and spitting out water. He said that the detainee appeared to be uncomfortable, and assumed that he had trouble breathing.”
Consider the account of the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who was arrested by his own government, turned over to US forces and brought to Guantánamo in 2002:
“He was left alone in a cold room known as ‘the freezer,’ where guards would prevent him from sleeping by putting ice or cold water on him...
“He was subjected to sleep deprivation for a period of 70 days by means of prolonged interrogations, strobe lights, threatening music, forced intake of water, and forced standing.
“He was deprived of clothing by a female interrogator;
“Two female interrogators touched him sexually and made sexual statements to him;
“Prior to and during the boat ride incident, he was severely beaten.”
In addition, the document says, he was “led to believe he was going to be executed, and urinated on himself,” and was told that his mother and family would be detained and harmed.
Similar episodes were described, according to the IG report, by literally hundreds of FBI agents, who witnessed CIA, military and private contractor interrogators carry out illegal acts of torture and abuse against detainees.
In addition, the report cites: several agents who reported instances of beatings, 30 agents who reported witnessing prolonged shackling of detainees in stress positions, 70 agents who reported detainees being subjected to sleep deprivation, 29 agents who had information on the use of extreme temperatures in order to “break the detainees’ resolve to resist cooperating” and 50 agents reporting the use of extended isolation to “wear down a detainee’s resistance.”
In addition, four agents reported the kicking and beating to death of two detainees in Afghanistan who had been subjected to prolonged shackling in a standing position.
The episodes of torture detailed in this report are the tip of the iceberg.
They do not include the treatment of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany, who was arrested during a trip to Pakistan in the fall of 2001 and was handed over to US officials for a $3,000 bounty. First taken to the US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, he was then transferred to Guantánamo. While by 2002 the US authorities concluded that Kurnaz had nothing to do with terrorism, he was imprisoned until the middle of 2006 and released only because of pressure from the German government.
Barred from entry to the US, he testified via video link to a sparsely attended hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week.
“I did nothing wrong and I was treated like a monster,” he said. He told how he was subjected to electric shocks, being suspended by his wrists for hours and subjected to the ‘water treatment,’ in which his head was stuck into a bucket of water and he was punched in the stomach, forcing him to inhale the liquid. (The Justice Department Inspector General’s report, it bears noting, affirmed that this last form of torture did not constitute “waterboarding,” but did represent “an effort to intimidate the detainees and increase their feelings of helplessness.”)
“I know others have died from this kind of treatment,” said Kurnaz. “I suffered from sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, religious and sexual humiliations. I was beaten multiple times.”
“There was no law in Guantánamo,” Kurnaz concluded. “I didn’t think this could happen in the 21st century.... I could never have imagined that this place was created by the United States.”
The inmates held at Guantánamo represent barely 1 percent of those detained at US prison camps and secret jails run by the military and the CIA in Iraq, Afghanistan and other points around the world. An estimated 27,000 people are being held without charges, much less trials, many of them simply having disappeared into Washington’s global gulag. Some are held on prison ships, others in secret dungeons run jointly by the CIA and regimes to which it “outsources” detainees, like Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, where other, cruder forms of torture—being buried alive, given electric shocks or slashed with scalpels—are employed.
The report also reconfirms that the revolting scenes captured in the photographs taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that came to light four years ago—naked and hooded men being subjected to torture and sexual humiliation by US guards—were no aberration. The methods described in the report—forced nudity, the use of attack dogs in interrogations, chaining detainees in “stress” positions, leading them around on dog leashes, draping them in women’s underwear—were identical to those officially blamed on a “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib.
The uniformity of abuse at these widely separated facilities is evidence that the psychopathic and criminal sadism inflicted upon those detained by US forces was planned and orchestrated from the top.
Indeed, as ABC News revealed last month, top administration officials on the so-called Principals’ Committee—Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and National Security Council Adviser Condoleezza Rice—conducted detailed discussions on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which, according to ABC, “were almost choreographed—down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.”
Bush subsequently told ABC that he was “aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
The report establishes that FBI and Justice Department officials advised the White House National Security Council of their concern that the practices witnessed by the agents were “gravely damaging ... the rule of law” at Guantánamo.
In the end, however, they were told to back off, and they complied, thereby becoming accomplices in this criminality and its cover-up.
The revelations in the FBI report have provoked no significant protests or demands for action from the Democrats in Congress, or for that matter from the party’s presidential contenders, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, neither of whom have made torture an issue in their campaigns.
The New York Times Tuesday carried a lead editorial titled, “What the FBI agents saw,” which laid out the details of the report and stated that it “shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners.”
The paper’s conclusion: “The Democrats must press for full disclosure” through hearings to uncover “the extent of President Bush’s disregard for the law and the Geneva Conventions.” This, they tell their readers, “is the only way to get this country back to being a defender, not a violator, of human rights.”
Such is the impotence of erstwhile American establishment liberalism. The extent of the Bush administration’s outright criminality has been thoroughly exposed over the course of several years.
The wholesale and deliberate violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture are, under international law, war crimes—just as the FBI recognized they were. What is demanded is not another toothless congressional hearing, but rather the constitution of a war crimes tribunal. Those responsible must be held accountable.
Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet and Ashcroft should be placed on trial. Those like former White House counsel and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington and Justice Department deputy assistant secretary John Yoo, who crafted the pseudo-legal arguments legitimizing torture, should be prosecuted as well, together with those military and intelligence officials who directed the criminal practices at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other CIA and military camps and prisons.
The Democratic leadership has no desire or intention to fight for such a reckoning. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders have repeatedly insisted that impeachment of the president and vice president is “off the table.” They have no interest in pursuing the administration on the issue of torture because they themselves are complicit, with Pelosi and other senior congressional Democrats having been briefed extensively on the criminal methods employed at Guantánamo, which they approved and concealed from the American people.
On a more fundamental level, the Democrats have been complicit in a policy of global militarism and aggression—carried out under the mantle of a “global war on terrorism”—which is directed at using armed force to further the interests of America’s ruling oligarchy. It is this criminal strategy—resulting in the loss of over 1 million Iraqi lives—that has given rise to the crime of torture itself.
Nonetheless, the deepening crisis of American capitalism is creating the conditions for profound shocks and changes in political and social relations that may well result in Bush, Cheney and Co. standing in the dock as war criminals.
Such a trial is vitally necessary from the standpoint of halting these ongoing crimes, preventing the use of similar methods against political opposition within the US itself and politically educating the American people.
See Also:
FBI agents created “war crimes file” documenting US torture
[22 May 2008]
2003 Justice Department memo justifies torture, presidential dictatorship
[4 April 2008]
Bush defends torture
[16 February 2008]
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
An animated documentary about a massacre in the Middle East
Animation tipped for Cannes glory
Entertainment reporter, BBC News, in Cannes
An animated documentary about a massacre in the Middle East is the current frontrunner to win the coveted Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
 Waltz with Bashir uses animation to portray fragmented memories |
The invasion of Lebanon, codenamed Operation Peace for Galilee, was an attempt to occupy the country as far as the capital Beirut.
It ended in what many think of as the worst atrocity of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, when at least 800 Palestinian civilians were massacred at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel's invasion.
They were murdered by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel while the Israeli forces encircled the camps.
Folman was among them. His film is a personal journey with his own narration accompanied, unusually, by animated images.
The director says he had blanked the massacre from his memory until he started making the film.
"I think more than ever that I was used. We were all used - cynically used," he says.
'Rage and anger'
"You are 18 years old, they send you there, you go there on a plane. You land at the international airport in Beirut and you see people get killed for nothing.
"When you look at it now, the rage and the anger is even stronger than it used to be before I made the film.
 The documentary includes a number of surreal dream sequences |
"This film is one of the things in order to persuade them not to take part in any violence whatsoever."
Using classic animation combined with 3D, the film has a surreal quality - not least in its several dream sequences.
It has struck a chord with critics at Cannes, where it has been described as "vivid", "politically combustible" and "peculiarly potent".
While making the movie, Folman interviewed many fellow soldiers who, like him, had repressed memories of their time in Lebanon.
Their responses are heard in full, with illustrators crafting images to accompany their fragmented memories.
In what could be considered a controversial element in the year Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, a psychiatrist in the film draws parallels between the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the Holocaust.
'Machinery of killing'
"What I was interested in was the chronology of the massacre," says Folman.
"I come from a Holocaust survivors' family. As a child I couldn't figure out how the machinery of killing would go on.
 Director Ari Folman served in the Israeli army in the early 1980s |
Using music from the early 1980s, the film has a pace and texture that Folman hopes will attract young people.
It is a demographic, he says, that is instinctively anti-war but still needs to be guided.
"A lot of anti-war movies, if you look at them through the eyes of teenagers, they get it all wrong.
"Yes, they see war is useless. But they think: 'It's terrible but I want to be out there - I want to go through that experience.'
"And I hope that when young people watch this film they will think: 'No, I don't want to be part of this. It has nothing to do with my life.'"source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7412088.stm
Sunday, May 18, 2008
US plan for Lebanon attack revealed
Sun, 18 May 2008 18:13:12
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=56297§ionid=351020203
The White House had given the green light to Israel to attack Lebanon's Hezbollah on May 11th, Israeli intelligence sources have revealed.
They said that, on May 10, the US government urged the Israeli army to launch a fierce military strike on Southern and Western Beirut as well as other Lebanese regions, DEBKA website which is close to Israeli intelligence agency reported.
May eleven was the day when Hezbollah forces were engaged in street battles with opposition militiamen in Beirut and other Lebanese regions.
Two controversial decsions made by the pro-US ruling majority against Hezbollah's telecommunication network and Beirut Airport's Security Chief mounted tensions in Lebanon.
"Israel failed to grasp a historic opportunity to get rid of one of its four enemies (Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas). This would certainly lead to the destruction of Hezbollah," DEBKA quoted a senior US military source as saying.
The report said US president George W. Bush had promised not to postpone his May 14 visit to Israel even if the Israeli army was still fighting in Lebanon and Hezbollah struck back against Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport.
American intelligence estimated that Hezbollah could retaliate by firing only 600 missiles into northern Israel.
Israeli premier Ehud Olmert, war minister Ehud Barak, foreign minister Tzipi Livni were the only officials who were informed about the US secret plan, the report added.
Olmert, Barak and Livni decided not to intervene and cancelled the operation at the last moment. The decision outraged hawkish echelons in the Bush administration.
On May 11, Olmert called Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his allies, majority leader Saad Hariri, Druze politician Walid Jumblatt and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and informed them there would be no Israeli strike against Hezbollah.
According to the plan Israeli Air force were to bombard Hezbollah's positions.
This would provide the pro-government forces with an opportunity to attack Hezbollah forces. Israeli tanks would simultaneously drive into the South and head towards Beirut, the report said.
Israel and its staunch ally, the US, have long been seeking to destroy Hezbollah's military capabilities particularly after the Arab resistance group inflicted a humiliating defeat upon the Zionist regime in the 33-day war in 2006.
Pundits say Israel failed to go ahead with the plan because of the military deterrence of Hezbollah.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Marad: Untold Story Of An RSS "Liberated Area"
| Written by Mukundan C Menon | |
| Thursday, 25 September 2003 |
What had happened at Marad in Kozhikode district of Kerala on May 2nd? Rajeev Srinivasan, the Rediff columnist, termed it as "Second Moplah Rebellion". The columnist - whom Rediff itself describes as one who "works in sales and marketing in software industry and spends time in US and India - quoted on May 9 the "reported" facts about Marad as:
1) A group of Hindu fishermen sitting on the beach near a temple is attacked suddenly, without provocation or warning, by a mob of Muslims armed with swords (and) after a chaotic ten minutes, nine people are dead;
2) A cache of swords and other sharp weapons, including blood-stained ones, as well as powerful country bombs is recovered from a mosque in the vicinity;
3) Various politicians make soothing noises, 66 persons have been arrested in connection with the crime. A judicial inquiry has been instituted; and
4) The dead are: Gopalan, Chandran, Santosh, Madhavan, Asghar, Dasan, Pushparaj, Krishnan, and Prajeesh. One of them had been married for just five days.
Admitting that he based his analysis on reports in Malayalam media like Keralakaumudi.com, Srinivasan found the "local media to be far more accurate and less prejudiced than the English language media in most cases". He never said that "Kerala Kaumudi" is the new catch for Sangh Parivar propaganda in Kerala due to its management’s close ties with SNDP leader Vellappally Natesan’s new slogan of "Hindu Unity". (Did not local Gujarati media like "Gujarat Samachar" and "Sandesh" present "accurate and unprejudiced" version on post-Godhra Gujarat pogroms than the English media!)
Look at the way the orchestrated Sangh Parivar propaganda on Marad started from day one:
One of the first VIP to reach Marad was Union Minister of State for Home, I. D. Swamy, within three days of the killings, on May 5. The announcement on the previous day came from the BJP State HQ quoting information received by them from Union Home Ministry in New Delhi. And, on his arrival, Swamy did not rule out the possibility of "Pak ISI" behind Marad. But, the disagreement came from the US based Rajeev Srinivasan to buttress his "Second Moplah Rebellion" theory: "After all, the Moplahs of Malabar did not need any Pakistani inspiration when they launched into the terrible riots of 1921 (the Moplah Rebellion) when they, without provocation, murdered, raped, and forcibly converted thousands of Hindus, just because distant Turkey had abolished the Caliphate."
This was in tune with the well-orchestrated Sangh Parivar chorus unleashed on Marad both at national and state level: Seeking Central intervention, instituting a CBI probe, invoking of POTA, allegations of wiping out Hindus from Kerala’s coastal zone by "Pak-backed" Muslim terrorists a la Kashmir.
BJP Spokesperson Vijay Kumar Malhotra said in New Delhi that the Kerala Minister belonging to Muslim League, P. K. Kunjalikutty, had secured the release of PDP Chairperson Abdul Nazar Madani from Coimbatore jail after he was arrested on conspiracy charge in Coimbatore serial bomb blast of 1998 to kill L. K. Advani. Malhotra ate humble pie since both PDP and Muslim League are not only at loggerheads in Kerala politics, but Madani still remains in Coimbatore jail for more than five years now - without conviction and without bail or parole.
It was the turn of Union Minister of State for Defence, O. Rajagopal, to come to Kerala and declare Kunjalikutty’s "hand" behind Marad. It met with stout opposition from all quarters. Even Chief minister AK Antony suggested he give his evidence to the investigating agencies. Rajagopal quickly retracted saying that what he said was what he "only heard" from several quarters. Since it crossed the parameters of a federal system of governance, Rajagopal talked with AK Antony at New Delhi and telephoned to Kunjalikutty "explaining" what he said. Even thereafter, Rajagopal demanded that a CBI probe was appropriate, instead of the judicial inquiry and Crime Branch probe already ordered by the State Government, because of the alleged involvement of a State Minister in the Marad carnage.
Rajagopal — who never won an election but faced repeated electoral defeats in Kerala, and became Central Minister by virtue of winning a Rajya Sabha seat from Madhya Pradesh - misused his position as a Central Minister on earlier occasions, too. On December 30, 1999, the penultimate day of Indian Airlines hijacking to Kandahar, when then Foreign Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh was flying to Kandahar, Rajagopal was addressing a press meet at Alappuzha Press Club to "reveal" that the Kandahar hijackers had demanded Abdul Nazar Madani’s release from Coimbatore prison in lieu of the aircraft and the hostages. He was rebuked by Jaswant Singh himself who said the next day that the hijackers’ list contained no prisoner outside Kashmir. Rajagopal never expressed regret, leave alone giving an apology.
When the Sangh Parivar scheme of holding a saffron conclave at Changanassery NSS College, with Rajagopal as Chief Guest, was thwarted by the College management recently, the Union Minister dragged the name of Prime Minister’s office saying that the PMO was inquiring into it. The PMO kept silent over the issue apparently because they have more serious topics to handle than a college issue within a Municipality in Kerala. Here, too, Rajagopal never expressed regret nor retracted the statement. Spending more in Kerala than in Delhi, the latest from Rajagopal on Marad was his apprehension of threat perceptions in Kerala coastal area where, as Defence Minister, he wants to establish a chain of Coast Guard units including one at Marad! However, the Kerala Industries Ministry (controlled by the same Kunjalikutty) had raised objections to it, Rajagopal complained after Marad.
In January 2002 Marad witnessed a sudden bout of communal violence, arson and looting in which 5 persons (three Muslims and two Hindus) were killed. "What was the objective this time", asks Rajeev Srinivasan before quickly presenting the world his answer: "Possibly to create a communal riot along the lines of what happened in Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra massacre. Perhaps to emphasise that in Muslim-dominated Malabar, as in Bangladesh and Kashmir, it is just fine to murder Hindus. The perpetrators — whoever they are — are confident that there will be no consequences." Also, he throws a question: "What is likely to happen?", and presents his prediction : "Frightened Hindus will move some place safer, and one more piece of real estate will become dar-ul Islam, land of Muslims. This has been happening in other parts of Malabar, for example Muslim-majority Malappuram district, where Hindus are leaving for less dangerous places. Yes, the famed Nehruvian Stalinist ‘secularism’ in action, yet again."
Amidst this Sangh Parivar orchestrated campaign, none noticed a few precious notes. The very next day of the Marad killings, Director General of Police KJ Joseph said that the "violence were not a riot but murder, pure and simple, with a communal background". Although this statement came under sharp criticism of many, it proved correct later when it was identified that the kith and kin of the Muslims killed at Marad in January 2002 were the kingpins behind Marad 2003. And, those who got killed now at Marad were the killers of January 2002 and belonging to the Sangh Parivar. This is especially true with Pushparaj, the local RSS leader, who was accused in the murder of Aboobecker in January 2002. Incidentally, Aboobecker was killed when he was digging the grave at the local Mosque to bury the two Muslims who were killed on the previous day. According to police, his son and brother, working in Gulf, came back recently to mastermind the present revenge killing. Both of them, as main accused, apart from seven others, were promptly arrested on May 19.
Marad can never be equated with Gujarat. For, no Muslim body or individual openly acclaimed it with Newton’s "reaction to action" theory, as was simultaneously justified by Narendra Modi and O. Rajagopal on March 2, 2002, amidst the ongoing Gujarat carnage. On the other hand, all Muslim bodies in Kerala stoutly condemned the Marad 2003 killings. The same night, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) state president Panakkad Muhammedali Shihab Thangal urged members of all communities to strive to regain peace and harmony in Marad. "Like the children of one mother, we all should come out to end this brutality," he said. Terming the violence as cruel and diabolic, Thangal observed that no religion can justify a massacre of this magnitude. "All those who are left with an iota of conscience should isolate the miscreants behind this. We had erased the bloodstains of last year’s violence in Marad. It is really crookedness to take back the village to those days of hatred," he said.
And, despite this, Union Minister Rajagopal, and the whole Sangh Parivar, still hammers for CBI probe into IUML Minister Kunjalikutty’s hand behind Marad! Rajeev Srinivasan’s fond prediction also failed to materialize. In fact, instead of a Hindu exodus after the "second Moplah rebellion" from Marad, what happened was the Muslim exodus within hours of the May 2 killing. All the 500-odd Muslim families of Marad moved away. The Muslim-free Marad is now an "RSS liberated zone". And, Gujarat was repeated in the form of arson and looting on the emptied Muslim houses. Incidentally, all those arms recovery started only after the Muslims fled Marad. "Deshabhimani", the CPI-M daily organ, reported that the police were seizing arms from places pointed out by RSS cadres. CPM State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said on May 15 "The RSS had taken over the control of Marad. The police force was dancing to the tune of the RSS by not protecting the Muslim population that had deserted the area. The Muslims in Marad remain as refugees in their homeland and these innocents are paying the price for the misdeeds of a handful of fundamentalist elements. The deserted Muslim houses are being looted with the tacit approval of the police. The police were searching for weapons only in the houses pointed out by the RSS."
When Vijayan and other CPM leaders visited Marad, they made a hasty retreat since the RSS cadres objected to their presence. When Vijayan said that they came to visit the houses of those killed, and not an RSS "Shakha", the local leader Ramesh retorted : "Each Hindu household in Marad is an RSS ‘Shakha’"! On the same day, Antony also visited Marad only after "getting the permission" of Sangh Parivar leaders who insisted that other Ministers of his Cabinet present at Kozhikode, including Kunjalikutty, local MLAs or MP, should not accompany him. He obeyed and went alone with, of course, strong police protection. Next day, when Antony went to Kozhikode Medical College to visit those injured, a local BJP woman leader, threatened to close the doors unless he promise to release the Sangh Parivar cadres taken into custody. In front of senior police officers and TV camera, she said : "Or else, Gujarat will be repeated". And, that was the lone Newton’s theory emerged from Marad so far.
Apart from Minister Kunjalikutty, the Sangh Parivar ire was also on Kozhikode District Collector TO Sooraj. In fact, many in Kerala, including this correspondent, learnt that the Collector is a Muslim only from the blatant communal criticism heaped on him by the Sangh Parivar, including in the editorial of RSS daily organ "Janmabhoomi". At the same time, praises were showered on selective police personnel.
Astonishingly, even Antony came to know only from Marad 2003 that the chargesheets against the accused involved in Marad 2002 violence were still not filed. A total of 392 persons figured as accused in 102 cases registered in 2002, of whom many in more than one case. Among these accused, the party-wise affiliation are: 213 belonging to RSS/BJP; 78 CPI(M); 68 IUML; 06 of Indian National League (INL) ; and one of Congress. Eventually, the FIRs in all these 102 cases of Marad 2002 were filed on May 15.
Making yet another startling disclosure on May 16, Antony said there were 182 cases connected to communal disturbances in the state registered since 1992, for which chargesheets have not been submitted in courts till date. "I gave instructions to speed up the proceedings and submit chargesheet in all these cases, as early as possible." Admitting that he faced lot of flak over failure in not submitting chargesheet on 2002 Marad cases, he explained : "That gave me an opportunity to study the records and I found that another 182 cases were also pending due to the same reason. These cases include those registered during the LDF rule also. I will take up all these cases within an year."
It was this type of governance and rule of law that always give scope for revenge killings. The lapses of LDF and UDF dispensations in Kerala had given enough scope for the Sangh Parivar to influence senior police officials, especially after they occupied Central Governance in 1998. It was on this count that the 2002 Marad cases were totally neglected since the largest accused segment belonged to RSS/BJP. It was also due to the belated filing of the FIRs now that the Sangh Parivar had launched an orchestrated campaign on 2003 Marad revenge killings - by leveling wild charges against all those who are Muslim - from Minister Kunjalikutty to District Collector Sooraj.
And, AK Antony always maintains a posture of being apologetic towards Sangh Parivar so as to compensate the "sin" of IUML being the second largest ruling UDF partner. According to Pinarayi Vijayan, it was a shame that Antony chose not to take Industry Minister Kunhalikutty while visiting the Marad victims’ families solely because the Minister belonged to a different community. ‘’Kunhalikutty has been left to remain at the guest house in Kozhikode. It is clear that Antony is responsible for the Sangh Parivar allegations against Kunhalikutty," he said.
Marad presented another shock to Rajeev Srinivasan: "I wonder what the world’s reaction would have been if the situation were reversed and a Hindu mob had killed nine Muslims in front of a mosque. Surely Kuldip Nayar and Praful Bidwai would not have been thunderously silent: they would have badgered the National Human Rights Commission. The Washington Post and The New York Times, not to mention The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Indian Express and The Hindu, would have indulged in en masse breastbeating about the end of civilisation in India. But I bet, gentle reader, that this is the first time you have heard of the Maraad massacre. This I call blatant prejudice and double-standards on the part of the media. Where is the outrage? Where are the cries for justice? Furthermore, if by some miracle, Muslim perpetrators in Maraad are brought to book, Nayar and Bidwai will bestir themselves to defend them, along with SAHMAT, Teesta Setalvad, and Shabana Azmi. I wonder why it isn’t clear to them that the human rights of the outlaw and the terrorist are not greater than the human rights of the ordinary citizen."
This was echoed by all Sangh Parivar leaders of Kerala, including their supreme theoretician P. Parameswaran, Director of "Bharateeya Vichara Kendram". True, there was no outcry from the so-called socio-cultural leaders on the expected lines of Sangh Parivar. Because, everyone knew that what had happened at Marad now was revenge killing. And, only communal mind-set can identify communalism in such despicable act of revenge killings. For example, two years ago at Malappuram, 12-year-old Krishna Priya was raped and killed. The accused, a Muslim, came out of jail on bail, when he was killed by Krishna Priya’s father, who is in jail now. None termed these twin incidents either as "communal rape-killing" or "killing by a Hindu communalist". At Thaickal Beach, Alappuzha district, clashes between RSS-led Hindu fishermen and Christian fishermen left five people on both sides dead last year. It was a communal attack carried out by RSS goons came from outside.
At a Sangh Parivar conclave at Kozhikode on May 20 P Parameswaran even said that Marad incident took place due to the failure of IUML to hold talks with RSS as was done by a section from among the Christians. He said: "The IUML, which claims to be a secular party, does not want communal amity in Kerala. Had they been sincere, they would not have spurned the initiative of the National Minority Commission member John Joseph six months ago to bring the RSS and the Muslim League to a discussion.
An IUML leader and Member of Parliament said a firm ‘no’ to the talks. Had the party shown some tolerance and wisdom, the atmosphere prevailing now could have avoided. The dialogue between the RSS and the Christian organisations has created an atmosphere of consensus," he said. Thus, the Marad agenda of the Sangh Parivar was clear. If at all an atmosphere of consensus was created due to the selective Christian individuals talks with RSS at Palai in Kottayam district, Parameswaran owes an explanation as to how the RSS made a dastardly attack on Bishop Cooper and other at Thiruvananthapuram later.
Notably, one of the resolution at the Hindu meet demanded invocation of POTA against the accused of Marad killings. The motive was too clear. Kerala is one of the few states that refused to invoke POTA nor used the earlier TADA.
The Sangh Parivar mounted its campaign with the sole intention that the Muslims fled from Marad did not return. And, the Mosque did not reopen. The Hindu meet at Kozhikode demanded the rehabilitation of "a large number of Hindus" who were forced to flee after the 1921 "Moplah rebellion" in lieu of the return of Muslims to Marad. After visiting Marad and meeting the local "Araya Samajam" leaders, the "Amir" of Kerala chapter of Jamaat-e-Islami Hindi, KA Siddique Hassan, said such demands of Hindu organisations "would only serve to reopen old wounds and further vitiate the atmosphere of communal harmony in the State, which had already been disturbed by the Marad killings".
The Hindu leaders’ convention had made such a demand only to counter a similar demand made by Muslim organisations to create the right conditions to enable Muslim families, which had fled Marad after the massacre of May 2, to return home, he added. The Muslim bodies’ demand to hand over the Marad mosque to Wakf Board found support from AICC General Secretary Vylar Ravi, MP. Terming the Marad incident as "shameful" and which deserves "condemnation" Ravi criticized the BJP for trying to use Marad violence as an excuse to brand Kerala a terrorist State. "BJP’s effort to brand Kerala in this manner tantamount to "abusing the whole Keralites", he said.
In an attempt to keep up the Hindutva tempo of Marad, the Kozhikode Hindu meet decided to observe May 31 as Marad Day at different places of the State by keeping the urns containing the ashes of those killed at Marad. On June 1, the urns would be taken to different holy places throughout the State to be immersed at Thiruvallam, Thirumullavaram, Aranmula, Thrukkunnapuzha, Nagambadam, Nedungandam, Aluva, Thruprayar, Kalpathi, Thirunavaya, Varakkal, Thirunelli and Payyambalam Besides, BJP National General Secretary, B. P. Acharya, declared on May 22 that a team of NDA MPs would soon be visiting Marad "to take stock of the situation".
Meanwhile, late reports say that all the Muslim shop-keepers in and around Marad were forced to close down their establishments under threat from RSS. A large number of RSS and VHP cadres are still pouring into Marad to make it a liberated fortress of Sangh Parivar - totally free from the Muslim menace!