It takes more than visa power to stop a terrorist

How Headley got his Indian visa is the wrong question. What we should be asking is why his travel profile into and out of the country did not trigger alarm bells...




30 December 2009
The Hindu

It takes more than visa power to stop a terrorist

Siddharth Varadarajan

The denial of a visa to a potential terrorist may be a country’s first line of defence against terrorism but the effectiveness of this weapon is inversely related to the length and porosity of its land border and coast line.

The discovery that David Headley - the alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba operative now arraigned in Chicago for his involvement in multiple terror plots against India - had travelled to Mumbai as many as eight times sent shock waves through the security establishment not so much because he had visited but because he had done so on a valid visa. What has most alarmed our sleepy sleuths is the fact that Headley usually combined his visits to India with onward trips to Pakistan, where he is said to have received instructions from his handlers. That he stayed at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels in Mumbai, presumably as part of the reconnaissance team for the LeT’s November 2008 attack on the city, is of course the cherry atop this unwholesome confection.

In response, the Ministry of Home Affairs has decreed that no foreign tourist with a long-term, multiple-entry visa should be allowed to re-enter India within two months of his or her departure. When a number of countries protested and threatened reciprocal restrictions on Indians holding long-term multiple-entry visas, this rule was relaxed, but by introducing an element of subjectivity. “Bona fide tourists” who, after initial entry into India, plan to visit another country and re-enter India before finally exiting, the Ministry of External Affairs said last week, may now be permitted “two or three entries” by Indian missions and immigration check posts “subject to their submission of a detailed itinerary and supporting documentation.”

If the two-month rule was absurd to begin with, this proposed relaxation is even more comical. Have the babus in the MHA and MEA not heard of e-tickets and laser printers? Most terrorists don’t come to India with visas. And ‘tourists’ or ‘businessmen’ like Headley with mala fide intentions can easily procure fake or genuine “supporting documentation” to get past the new rule. But scores of bona fide visitors are likely to be deterred by the lack of predictability such rules engender. How many foreign visitors planning a combined trip to India and Nepal or India, Sri Lanka and Maldives would want to risk being denied re-entry? And since it is the responsibility of the airline to fly out passengers denied entry, one can imagine the confusion and uncertainty that will prevail at foreign airport counters when a tourist who has been to India within the previous 60 days arrives to check in with his “supporting documentation.” As for those on business visas, many of whom make dozens of trips into and out of India annually, the two-month rule would prove disastrous were it ever to be made applicable to them. And if the rule is not going to be applied to business visas, how would it help in a repeat of the Headley case considering that the U.S.-based alleged LeT operative had a long-term business visa?

Like so many other “tough” steps India takes to fight terrorism, the new visa rule is really quite useless. Worse, by shifting the burden of prevention to the consular end of the travel chain rather than to border management, the MHA’s move is fundamentally misplaced. Consider the Headley case. If an individual lies on his visa application about his parents’ names and nationalities, there is no way an Indian consulate abroad can catch him short of demanding an enormous amount of supporting documents from every applicant (and sending it on to the MHA). But immigration officers are trained to flip through the passport of an incoming visitor to see where else he’s been travelling and whether his wider itinerary fits in with the line of work he claims to be in. Even if an immigration officer saw no reason to detain Headley or deny him entry, the fact that he had made multiple visits between India and Pakistan in less than a year should have led to his file being discreetly referred to the intelligence agencies for a background check. Had the same agencies run through the names of all those who had stayed at the Taj and Trident hotels in the two years before 26/11 and cross-referenced that list to a list of those making frequent trips between India and Pakistan, Headley might have been arrested soon after the Mumbai attacks rather than nine months later.

Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor may have been indiscreet in publicly questioning the utility of the new visa rules but there is no denying the need for a wider debate on the subject. Asking how Headley got his Indian visa is surely the wrong question. What we should be asking is why his frequent shuttling between Pakistan and India did not trigger alarm bells within the Bureau of Immigration.

In other words, the key to spotting and tracking potential terrorists lies in properly training our immigration officers, providing them with networked, state-of-the-art computers and generally improving the system of data storage and retrieval. Today, most immigration counters in India are staffed by policemen whose unfamiliarity with modern technology is apparent from the way they gingerly handle a mouse and keyboard.

Last month, North Block sources gleefully leaked the news about the MEA having ‘lost’ Headley’s visa papers. The charge turned out to be false, though that didn’t prevent the media from working itself into a frenzy for 48 hours. One wonders if the Bureau of Immigration has been able to locate all eight entry and exit immigration forms that Headley filled up and surrendered during his trips to India, as well as those tiny Customs declaration forms inbound passengers must hand in before they leave the airport? Since Headley would have been required to fill out local addresses each time, it would be interesting to see what he wrote and whether that could provide further clues about the extent of his travel and activity. CCTV footage in the arrival hall and passenger reception area on the dates he arrived might have captured a local associate saying goodbye or hello to Headley. Serious policing means doing this sort of tedious work rather than trying to limit the number of trips a foreign visitor makes to India.

Why sledgehammer approach?

Instead of looking inward at the manner in which it guards our frontiers and ports of entry and making urgent improvements, the Home Ministry is keen to fix what ain’t broken elsewhere. North Block ‘sources’ have made much of the fact that a Goa-based American national known to Headley has been living in India for nine years on 180-day tourist visas that he renewed by flying to Nepal just before the expiry date. But this kind of abuse of the system can be fixed by making a small change in the registration rules applied by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO). Currently, only foreigners holding visas valid for longer than six months are required to register themselves. But the FRRO can just as easily declare that foreigners staying in India for more than 180 accumulated days must register themselves. Promulgating and enforcing such a rule would be a much better way of catching those like the Goa man who abuse Indian visa provisions. Why use a sledgehammer approach of banning re-entry to all tourists for two months when a scalpel would do the job so much more neatly?

Manmohan signals return to Vajpayee line on CTBT

Tells Yukio Hatoyama that U.S., Chinese accession will create ‘new situation’ ...

30 December 2009
The Hindu

Manmohan signals return to Vajpayee line on CTBT

Siddharth Varadarajan and K.V. Prasad

New Delhi: While reiterating India’s commitment to its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his visiting Japanese counterpart that any Indian accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would have to await American and Chinese ratification.

The Prime Minister’s remarks signal a subtle return to the CTBT line adopted by the erstwhile Vajpayee government, which declared soon after the 1998 nuclear tests that India “would not stand in the way” of the treaty entering into force.

Dr. Singh told Yukio Hatoyama during their discussions on Tuesday morning that there was as yet no national consensus on India acceding to the CTBT. But if the U.S. and China were to complete their ratification process, this would likely generate momentum within the country in favour of accession, senior officials told The Hindu.

Giving an account of his talks on the matter with Dr. Singh at the joint press conference later, Mr. Hatoyama told reporters that he had conveyed Tokyo’s desire that India sign and ratify the CTBT. “Globally there is a rising momentum of [the CTBT] entering into force. I expressed my hope that along with China and the USA, India will sign and ratify CTBT,” the Japanese leader said, adding: “The [Indian] Prime Minister said with regard to the CTBT [that] should the U.S. and China sign, it will create a new situation.”

Since the CTBT cannot enter into force without the ratification of the U.S., China, India, Pakistan and a handful of other states, the Vajpayee-era formulation was seen throughout the world as an assurance that once Washington and Beijing became parties, New Delhi would follow, on the expectation that Islamabad and the other stragglers were quickly brought on board then.

The Prime Minister’s latest message to Japan is significant because the UPA government has until now avoided directly or indirectly endorsing the Vajpayee line. Indeed, Dr. Singh and other senior officials had linked India’s refusal to sign the CTBT to the fact that the treaty does not promote the cause of disarmament.

In a meeting with Indian Foreign Service probationers in June 2008 during the height of the domestic political controversy over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, the Prime Minister had said India would not sign the CTBT “if … it came into being.”

By reverting to the earlier position, India hopes to remind Japan and other countries concerned about the test ban that the real obstacle to the CTBT’s entry-into-force is the U.S. and that is where any diplomatic pressure ought to be applied.

Unlike the CTBT, India and Japan presented a unified position on the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, with the two Prime Ministers supporting the immediate commencement of negotiations and the FMCT’s early conclusion.

But cooperation in the field of civil nuclear energy is still some distance away. “We discussed civil nuclear cooperation. This would become a very important agenda in the future.”

Japan’s new focus on Asia is good for India

Time to take relationship beyond narrow focus on China, ‘balance of power’...




28 December 2009
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
Japan’s new focus on Asia is good for India
Time to take relationship beyond narrow focus on China, ‘balance of power’

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Yukio Hatoyama, who is on his first visit to New Delhi as Prime Minister of Japan, is unlike any other Japanese leader that the Indian side has dealt with in the past decade.

After the bilateral chill that set in with the 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran, political relations steadily improved from 2001 onwards, during the tenures of Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and finally Taro Aso. Defence cooperation, including high-level visits and joint exercises began. Despite the immense sensitivity of the nuclear question, Japan finally went along with the Nuclear Suppliers Group consensus decision to lift sanctions on India. And in October 2008, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Tokyo for the annual summit, the two countries signed a potentially far-reaching security declaration that seemed to suggest Japan looked at India as a potential strategic partner in the long-term game of hedging against the rise of Chinese power in Asia. As foreign minister during Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Abe’s tenures, Taro Aso was the strongest advocate of the short-lived and ill-fated ‘quadrilateral’ concept that saw India joining Japan, Australia and the United States in joint political consultations and even war games in the Bay of Bengal. Mr. Aso also spoke openly of the need to build an ‘arc of democracy and prosperity’ across Asia, a geopolitical construct clearly designed to exclude China, though business and pragmatic considerations within Japan helped to staunch any serious deterioration in relations with the Chinese side.

With the victory of the Democratic Party in parliamentary elections this September and the arrival of Mr. Hatoyama in the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo, the entire conception of Japan’s relations with China and the rest of Asia has undergone a radical change.

Looked at superficially, his eagerness to mend Tokyo’s fences with Beijing and break free from Washington’s vice-like grip on Japanese foreign and security policy may not augur well for bilateral relations with an India accustomed to looking at Japan as a hedge against a rising China and an extension of American power in Asia.

But Mr. Hatoyama’s vision of an East Asian Community and his desire to work with China provides India and Japan with an opportunity to build their bilateral relations on ground firmer than the quicksand of ‘balance of power.’ Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada has spoken of India and Australia as part of the proposed EAC, a formulation that is in line with the East Asia Summit process run on the basis of Asean+6 rather than the more limited Asean+3 (i.e. China, Japan, South Korea) concept that would exclude India.

There is also no reason why triangular relations between India, Japan and China should be zero-sum: all lines of the triangle can and should be strengthened without adversely affecting each other. Indeed, now that the Japanese government is less paranoid about China, an excellent opportunity exists for Indo-Japanese political and strategic relations to be strengthened as something desirable for cooperative security in Asia as a whole. And the first test will be the concrete steps the two sides take to implement the 2008 Security Declaration.

The Hatoyama-Okada approach to nuclear disarmament also offers India the prospect of starting a serious dialogue with Japan on how best global efforts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction can be pursued. In the past, India’s refusal to accede to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been a major irritant. But on other fronts – the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, for example – there is no reason why India and Japan cannot work together. As for the CTBT, the Indian side should have no problem reiterating its test moratorium. Most importantly, the new Japanese government has begun to debate an issue close to the India’s global disarmament initiative – the policy of no-first use (NFU).

Today, among all declared nuclear weapon states, only India and China adhere to an NFU posture. Japan, which is shielded by the American nuclear umbrella, has traditionally argued that extended deterrence is credible only with the threat of a U.S. first strike on any nuclear-armed adversary. Mr. Okada has spoken of the desirability of NFU but there is, at present, within the Pentagon, no appetite for this. The U.S. focus is on ‘non-proliferation,’ with the elimination of nuclear weapons a long-term goal that President Barack Obama has said will not be reached in his lifetime. The DPJ’s views on disarmament open a door for India and Japan to begin a constructive dialogue on intermediate steps like NFU that serve to delegitimise the role of nuclear weapons in military planning.

Ten reasons why criminals in khaki get away

Behind every man like S.P.S. Rathore who abuses his authority stand the generals and footsoldiers who help and support him. We need to take them all down...







26 December 2009
The Hindu

Ten reasons why criminals in khaki get away

Siddharth Varadarajan

S.P.S. Rathore, the criminal former top cop of Haryana, may appear alone today but we must never forget that he was able to get away with the sexual molestation of a young child and the illegal harassment of her family for 19 years because he had hundreds of men who supported him in his effort to evade justice.

The fact that these men – fellow police officers, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, judges, school administrators – were willing to bend the system to accommodate a man accused of molesting a minor speaks volumes for the moral impoverishment of our establishment and country. Decent societies shun those involved in sexual offences against children. Even criminals jailed for ‘ordinary’ crimes like murder treat those serving time for molesting children as beyond the pale. But in India, men like Rathore have their uses for their masters, so the system circles its wagons and protects them.

The CBI’s appeal may lead to the enhancement of Rathore’s sentence and perhaps even the slapping of abetment to suicide charges, since his young victim killed herself to put an end to the criminal intimidation her family was being subjected to by Rathore and his men. But the systemic rot which the case has exposed will not be remedied unless sustained public pressure is put on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, two men who have it in their power to push for simple remedies in the way the Indian law enforcement and justice delivery system works.

First, abolish the need for official, i.e. political sanction to prosecute bureaucrats, policemen and security forces personnel when they are accused of committing crimes. The original intent behind this built-in stay-out-of-jail card was to protect state functionaries from acts done in the course of discharging their duties in good faith. Somewhere along the line, this has come to mean protecting our custodians of law and order when they murder innocent civilians (eg. the infamous Panchalthan case in Kashmir where the trial of army men indicted by the CBI for murdering five villagers in 2000 still cannot take place because the Central government will not grant permission), or assault or molest women and children. No civilised, democratic society grants such impunity. It is disgusting to see former officials and bureaucrats from Haryana saying how they had wanted Rathore prosecuted but were prevented from doing so because of pressure. Such officials should either be made formally to testify in a criminal case against the politicians who so pressured them or they should themselves be hauled up for perverting the course of justice.

Second, stop talking about how making the police and army answerable to the law will somehow demoralise their morale. Does anybody care about the morale of ordinary citizens any more? Or the morale of upright police and army officers, who do not think it is right for their colleagues to be able to get away with criminal acts?

Third, bring an end to the cosy relationship between the police and politicians. Rathore was protected by four chief ministers of Haryana. He served them and they served him by ensuring his unfettered rise. It is absurd that the Indian Police is still governed by a colonial-era Act dating back to 1861. A number of commissions have made recommendations for reforming the police over the years; but no government or political party wants to give up its ability to use and misuse the police for their own benefit.

Fourth, ensure that police officers who abuse their authority and engage in mala fide prosecutions are dismissed from service and sentenced to jail for a long period of time. Mr. Chidambaram should use the considerable resources at his command to find out who were the policemen involved in filing 11 bogus cases against the teenaged brother of the young girl Rathore molested. He should then make sure criminal proceedings are initiated against all of them. The message must go out to every policeman in the country: If you abuse the law at the behest of a superior, you will suffer legal consequences.

Fifth, ensure that criminal charges against law enforcement personnel are fast-tracked as a matter of routine so that a powerful defendant is not able to use his position to delay proceedings the way Rathore did for years on end. The destruction or disappearance of material evidence in such cases must be treated as a grave offence with strict criminal liability imposed on the individual responsible for breaking the chain of custody.

Sixth, empower the National Human Rights Commission with teeth so that police departments and state governments cannot brush aside their orders as happened in the Rathore case. This would also require appointing to the NHRC women and men who have a proven record of defending human rights in their professional life, something that is done today only in the breach. The attitude of the Manmohan Singh government to this commission and others like the National Commission for Women (NCW) and National Commission for Minorities is shocking. Vacancies are not filled for months on end.

Seventh, ensure the early enactment of pending legislation broadening the ambit of sexual crimes, including sexual crimes against children. Between rape, defined as forced penetrative sex, and the vague, Victorian-era crime of ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’, the Indian Penal Code recognises no other form of sexual violence. As a result, all forms of sexual molestation and assault short of rape attract fairly lenient punishment, of the kind Rathore got. In his case, the judge did not even hand down the maximum sentence, citing concerns for the criminal’s age. Sadly, he did not take into account the age of the victim and neither does the IPC, which fails to distinguish between ‘outraging the modesty’ of an adult woman and a young child.

A draft law changing these provisions and bringing India into line with the rest of the modern world has been pending with the NCW and Law Ministry for years. Perhaps the government may now be shamed into pushing it through Parliament at the earliest.

Eighth, take steps to introduce a system of protection of witnesses and complainants. The fate that the family of Rathore’s young victim had to endure is testament to the fact that people who seek justice in India do so at their own peril.

Ninth, ensure that robust interrogation techniques like narco-analysis, which are routinely used against other alleged criminals, are also employed against police officers accused of crimes.

Tenth, the media and the higher judiciary must also turn the light inward and ask themselves whether they were also derelict in their duty. The Rathore case did not attract the kind of constant media attention it deserved, nor do other cases involving serving police officers accused of crimes against women, workers, peasants and minorities. As for the upper courts, their record is too patchy to inspire confidence. It was, after all, the high court which chose to disregard the CBI’s request for including abetment to suicide charges.

Worst possible outcome at Copenhagen?

So says the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, quite persuasively, in my opinion ...

19 December 2009
CSE

Worst possible outcome at Copenhagen, says CSE. Climate meet is a failure.

From the CSE team at Copenhagen, December 19, 2009: The Copenhagen Accord that India plans to sign here [PDF text] will instantly forgive industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for climate change, eliminate the distinction between developed and developing countries, prevent effective action to curb global warming, and fatally undermine efforts to renew the Kyoto Protocol. This will be disastrous for the climate, and for India’s most vulnerable communities, says Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

• India buckles under pressure in Copenhagen
• The Copenhagen Accord (which has not been adopted by the Conference of Parties) agrees to weak and non-legally commitments from developed world. The agreement will be disastrous for the world, particularly the poor and the most vulnerable, as it will allow emissions to increase in the rich world.
• The Copenhagen Accord agrees to a process, which will ultimately kill the Kyoto Protocol and undermine the legitimacy of the UNFCCC. It changes the framework based on equity and historical emissions
• It agrees that developing country action, which are not supported through international finance and technology also be open “international consultation and analysis”, which could become a backhand way of bringing in international commitments on these countries. This is euphemistic language for international monitoring, reporting and verification
• “The Accord will not only be disastrous for the climate, it will freeze the inequity in the world for perpetuity,” said Sunita Narain, director, CSE.
  

The Copenhagen Accord will not curb global greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to avoid a climate catastrophe; the world’s and India’s most vulnerable populations will pay the price.

The accord uses weak and inconsequential language on the matter of cutting emissions from industrialized countries. In fact, it sets up a framework for cutting future emissions, which is bound to take the world to climate catastrophe. It must be noted that as yet, there has been an agreement that industrialized countries must cut emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord destroys this agreement through the following provisions.

It does not set time-bound targets for emission reduction from industrialized countries. Instead it simply says that these countries commit to implement individually or jointly the emission reduction targets that they will themselves submit to the secretariat.

In other words, these countries will be allowed to set their own domestic targets, whatever these may be. The targets will not be based on internationally agreed burden sharing arrangements – how much industrialized countries must cut to keep the world within the 2C temperature increase (which itself is too high) by when. In the climate agreements, the targets are currently set based on the historical and current emissions of countries. This provision will be disastrous for the world and set up a framework based on inequity and unfair burden sharing. It must be rejected. This virtually guarantees that the world will not be able to prevent runaway global warming. An analysis by the UNFCCC, leaked yesterday, shows that current pledges by industrialised countries will put the planet on track to an average temperature increase of 3°C.

The Accord does not set a firm peaking year for Annex 1 countries. It is well known that these countries should have already peaked in their emissions. The Accord in fact gives them a cop-out as it will allow them to use their domestic pledges to actually increase and not decrease emissions fast. The US pledge in fact allows it to increase it emissions for the next 10 years or more. This will be disastrous for all.

The Accord proposes a pledge-and-review model for emissions reduction, which means that developed countries are only asked to take voluntary, domestic actions. This is a step backwards from the current Kyoto Protocol, which legally requires industrialised countries to make modest emissions cuts between 2008 and 2012.

In May 2009, India, China and 35 other developing nations had submitted an ambitious proposal to the UNFCCC to strengthen Kyoto by requiring nations to cut their emissions by 45 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. This is what scientists say is needed in order to avoid dangerous temperature rises of 2°C or more.

By agreeing to a pledge-and-review deal today, India has done an extraordinary about-face. The UN has estimated that current pledges by developing countries would sentence the world to temperature increases of at least 3°C. There is nothing in the Copenhagen Accord that can compel industrialised countries to take stronger near-term targets in order to avoid dangerous global warming.

A typical Chhattisgarh story

I just received this open letter by email. it is written by Alban Toppo, a young lawyer working in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, a no-rights zone in the world's largest democracy ...




AN OPEN LETTER & APPEAL

I am a fresh lawyer coming from a tribal family of Jashpur, Chhattishgarh. I finished my law graduation in year 2008, got enrolled with Chhattisgarh Bar Council and started working for poor and underprivileged. For which I had a commitment since my college days. I started learning basics of human rights litigation at Delhi office of Human Rights Law Network and very recently had come to Chhattisgarh to do research for right to food case which is going on in Hon’ble Supreme Court of India and for this. I went to Dantewada, and met Mr. Himanshu Kumar, Director of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, who has done some study on this issue and taking information, his advice and guidance. I was also providing some legal assistance to him during my stay in Dantewada.

On 10 December, 2009 at about 2:30 P.M. the Thana Incharge (TI) of Bhairamgarh Police Station Mr. K.S. Nand in civil uniform came to the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) situated at Katiyarraas accompanied by approximately more than 25 SPO’s in 5 cars. Director of VCA, Shri Himanshu Kumar and few other volunteers of VCA were present. I was also present there. TI spoke to Himanshu Kumar about taking Kopa Kunjam, s/o Lacchu Kunjam, resident of village Alnaar, Block – Geedam, P.S. Dantewada, who is a volunteer of VCA stating that they need him for some interrogation by the Superintendent of Police. He said, “SP Sahab ne bulaya hai, kuch puch tach karni hai”. No notice was served for this. However on being asked by Himanshu Kumar to give some written notice about it, the TI Bhairamgarh immediately wrote on a piece of paper that, “Prati, Kopa Kunjam ! Apse thana Dantewada me kuch poonch thanch karna chahta hoon. Kripya ap mere sath sadar P.S. kotwali chalein.” (I want to do some investigation with you at Dantewada Police Station. Please come with me to P.S. Kotwali). Being an Advocate present at the spot, I thought it to be my duty to accompany VCA Volunteer Kopa Kunjam to Dantewada police station. With the consent of Himanshu Kumar, Director-VCA I went alongwith Kopa Kunjam.

At Dantewada police station we were asked to sit down. After making both of us wait for about half an hour, we were asked to come and sit in a vehicle . Thinking that we were being taken to the S.P. Office, we sat in the vehicle. As vehicle proceeded, I introduced myself to the IT Bhairamgadh saying that I am an advocate, having done my law course from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur and am associated with Human Rights Law Network. When the vehicle crossed Dantewada, we became suspicious and asked as to where we were being taken now, to which TI, Bhairamgarh, replied, “Kopa Kunjam is now being taken to Beejapur District”. Kopa Kunjam refused to go further as he was not informed about being taken to Beejapur earlier. I also objected to it, stating that the police should follow necessary procedures under the law and should act as per guidelines of the Supreme Court and that they cannot take Mr.Kopa to Beejapur without giving any notice in this regard.

By this time, Kopa Kunjam came out from the Bolero vehicle and I also got out of the vehicle. The TI along with 2 others got hold of Mr.Kopa and with the help of around 15 S.P.O’s bundled Mr. Kopa into another vehicle which was also coming along with them. When I again resisted to such behavior saying that it was illegal to behave in this manner, two S.P.O.’s started abusing and slapping me and bundled me also inside the car. Before being bundled into car, I somehow managed inform my senior Lawyer, colleagues and friends in Delhi about this incident. Noticing this two SPOs, started slapping and beating me and tried to snatch my mobile and, but I didn’t give my mobile, but after this they force me inside the car and did not allow me use the mobile phone.

At about 5 P.M., we reached Bhairamgarh police station. The IT, Bhairamgadh asked me to give my mobile phone and also asked to switch it off and we were asked to sit there inside the police station. We were kept at a place inside police station with two S.P.O. keeping an eye on us. At about 8 p.m. we were taken for dinner in a nearby Hotel, from where we came in 15-20 minutes. At about 8:45 P.M. the officials of Bhairamgarh police station called me inside a room and tried to ask about the reason of me deciding to accompany Mr.Kopa. About three minutes later TI of Bhairamgarh started addressing me in an extremely rude and disrespectful manner and soon became violent and abusive. He started abusing me with slur and offensive language, which was followed by beatings with a thick bamboo stick and with a hard rubber cane, continuously slapping me while pulling my hair and kicking severely. After sometime he went out and started beating Kopa Kunjam. Kopa Kunjum was brought into the same room and both of us were beaten severely for 30 minutes by the TI Mr. Nand and an assistant constable Banjara, while some 15 other police staff & S.P.Os surrounded both of us. TI Mr. Nand also said that “ No Advocate in Bastar dares to speak in my presence and you talk a lot. Now show me how much you can talk! Show me how much law you know?” Later I was taken to a separate room and was questioned about the purpose of my stay in Dantewada and association with VCA. At around 10 PM, I listened someone saying that , “Sala Bada Admi hai , Delhi se Sahab ka phone aya hai.” Soon after this I was asked to write in a paper that I was brought to Bhairamgadh and as it has become late evening and there is no mode of transport and since the area is a very sensitive and unsafe, I decided to spend the night at Bhairamgarh station, where I am safe. In Bhairamgadh Police Station, they said that that Himanshu is a Naxalite and whoever is working with Himanshu is a naxalite and who stays with Himanshu it a Naxal supporter.

Mr. Kopa was very badly beaten and had received serious injuries on his chest, back and leg, due to which he was even unable to walk and sleep properly. I have got injuries on front portion of elbow of right hand, biceps and back causing severe pain and swelling. I was even not able to move my hands and back due to severe pain. I spend whole of night shivering and in pain, speculating what next is to happen.

On 11 December, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. I was sent to Dantewada police station accompanied by 4 S.P.O.’s in a vehicle and one head constable of Bhairamgarh police station, while Mr. Kopa was kept detained. When they reached Dantewada Police Station, two volunteers of VCA were called and I was handed over to them.

After being released, next date day, I went to Ambedkar Hospital, Raipur to get a medical examination done, however I was asked make a compliant before the police and I was informed that the police will come after I make the complaint and then MLC will be conducted in the presence of police. I thought of going back to Dantewada to lodge the F.I.R. but because I was scared of being implicated in any false case this time, I did not go there.

However, being very much concerned about the trend of even lawyers not being allowed to function freely and being beaten up like this, I have no other option except to write this open letter-cum-appeal addressed to every body so that the issue could be taken up by the society itself. I have been subjected this kind of brutality for working for poor and powerless. It is against law, against democracy and even against morality to do this to an advocate. If such kind of treatment is given to young lawyers who want to work towards a better society, young generation will loose hope.

Kindly take appropriate step against those who have abused power vested in them to beat and insult me in this gruesome manner and help restoring the faith of young people in the democracy and rule of law.

Yours Sincerely

Alban Toppo

Advocate

Mamata, G8 ban cast shadow on Indo-Russian nuclear deal

Indians did not get their way on ENR, Russians unhappy with Haripur as site for reactors...



18 December 2009
The Hindu

Mamata, G8 ban cast shadow on Indo-Russian nuclear deal

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Indian officials put on a brave face earlier this year when the G8 decided to ban the sale of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology to countries that had not signed the NPT, insisting the resolution was not binding and that members of the rich nations club remained free to sell sensitive nuclear items to India.

But when negotiations to finalise a broad-based nuclear compact with Russia were held in Delhi earlier this month, all attempts by the Indian side to include ENR items and technology in the areas of cooperation envisaged by the new agreement drew a firm nyet from the visiting delegation. “Russia’s hands are tied because of the G8 decision,” they told the Indian negotiators.

The matter was eventually resolved by introducing permissive language on ENR in Article 6(3) of the India-Russia inter-governmental agreement, allowing for the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology and facilities and components of such facilities pursuant to a subsequent agreement. The language is roughly similar to what Article 5(2) of the India-U.S. ‘123 agreement’ says except for using the imperative ‘shall be transferred’ instead of ‘may be transferred’ when referring to ENR items.

In separate interviews to The Hindu, Russian and Indian officials said the negotiations were complicated by the assurance Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin gave National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan in Delhi early November that Moscow had no objection to including ENR within the ambit of cooperation. Mr. Sobyanin was not familiar with Russia’s policy on the matter and was unaware of the implications of the G8 commitment, Russian officials said. When the Indian side raised this assurance during the negotiations, Nikolai Spassky, deputy head of Rosatom, said the Russian Foreign Ministry insisted ENR transfers were not possible under Moscow’s new commitments.

Though the text was frozen late on December 2, Mr. Spassky sent a fax to Delhi two days later — less than 48 hours before Prime Minister Singh was to fly to Moscow — requesting, at the instance of the Russian foreign office, that the word “shall” be changed to “may” in the sentence dealing with future ENR transfers. The Russian Ministry also had last minute objections to the IGA’s ‘non-hindrance’ clause — which, it felt, granted legitimacy to India’s military nuclear sector. That is why there was uncertainty on the Indian side over whether the agreement would be initialled during Dr. Singh’s visit, with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao striking a guarded tone at her departure-eve briefing. In the event, the Russian side backed off, but only after the Prime Minister raised the matter with President Dmitry Medvedev, Indian officials said.

Asked whether India might have had better luck on the ENR front with Russia had the agreement been concluded before the G8 summit at L’Aquilla this July, Russian and Indian officials said it was difficult to say. In fact, work on the IGA draft began this January. But with the Ministry of External Affairs blissfully unaware of the contents of the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s November 2008 ‘clean text’ banning ENR sales to non-NPT states, New Delhi did not accord the proposed agreement the sort of priority it deserved given persistent American attempts to restrict sensitive nuclear technology sales to India.

Russian officials said that if Delhi could not get everything it wanted out of the new agreement, Moscow too was disappointed by one aspect: the choice of Haripur in West Bengal as the site for the four additional Russian reactors India has committed to buy.

With Mamata Banerjee opposing land acquisition there, Rosatom feels poorly done by. “The best sites have been earmarked for American companies,” a Russian official said. He added that Haripur is on India’s east coast and could be vulnerable to tsunamis. According to him, when Mr. Spassky expressed a desire to visit the site earlier this year, the Department of Atomic Energy advised against it, saying it would “not be safe” because of local opposition. “As you can imagine, that did not make the Russian side feel very reassured about the choice of Haripur.”

Ghost of Tarapur haunts reprocessing agreement with U.S.

With the fate of spent fuel fromn 10,000 MWe of American reactors riding on the agreement, India cannot afford any ambiguity about the permanence of reprocessing consent rights...


16 December 2009
The Hindu

Ghost of Tarapur haunts reprocessing agreement with U.S.

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: An attempt by American negotiators to re-open parts of the ‘123’ agreement governing nuclear commerce with India has emerged as the main obstacle, as the two countries seek to finalise a deal on the conditions under which U.S.-origin spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed in Indian facilities.

After five rounds of talks, the last of which was held on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last month, Indian and American negotiators remain stuck on two issues, one minor and one major, Indian officials say. And though National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan told reporters on November 29 that the agreement would be finalised in “10-12 days,” U.S. and Indian officials say the next round of talks is yet to be scheduled.

The biggest sticking point remains the conditions under which the U.S. can suspend reprocessing consent rights.

These rights will be “brought into effect” by the construction of an Indian reprocessing facility and the conclusion of an agreement on “arrangements and procedures” under which reprocessing will take place in the new facility. The question of suspension is addressed in Article 14(9) of the 123 agreement, which vaguely states that “the arrangements and procedures … shall be subject to suspension by either Party in exceptional circumstances, as defined by the Parties…”

In the negotiations, India has taken the stand that these “exceptional circumstances” have to be linked to the obligations it undertakes with respect to reprocessing — such as the implementation of safeguards, physical security and safety — and not to circumstances extrinsic to reprocessing. The Indian side noted that the 123 agreement already provides for fairly open-ended conditions under which bilateral cooperation can be terminated, and that Article 6(3) granting reprocessing consent has been explicitly included in the list of Articles which “shall continue in effect” even after termination.

India’s agreements with France and Russia both provide for safeguarded reprocessing and have no provision for suspension or termination of consent.

Indian officials believe the stand being taken by the U.S. is tantamount to rewriting the 123 agreement, a charge, they say, their American interlocutors readily own up to. Members of the U.S. negotiating team recalled how the reprocessing consent which they did not want to grant India was included in the 123 text only after President George W. Bush and his national security adviser Stephen Hadley overruled them. New Delhi’s assessment today is that by reopening some of these clauses, State Department officials hope the Obama administration will be less accommodating of India.

In written answers provided to Congressman Howard Berman in 2008, the Bush administration in fact clarified that it did not wish to grant India “permanent” reprocessing consent, that consent rights can be terminated by the U.S. and that a provision to this effect would be incorporated in the yet-to-be negotiated arrangements and procedures.

India is committed to the full implementation of IAEA safeguards at facilities where U.S. spent fuel may be reprocessed and is willing to pay the price if it ever violates those undertakings, say Indian officials. But the country is unable to accept any ambiguity about the permanency of reprocessing consent, especially when the scale of U.S.-supplied reactor operations is expected ultimately to reach 10,000 MWe and the amount of spent fuel that would be generated would be enormous. With the ghost of Tarapur, where vast acres of spent fuel have accumulated since the 1960s, still haunting them, Indian officials say any uncertainty on consent would be a deal breaker and would make the purchase of U.S. reactors next to impossible.

The second issue holding up the reprocessing agreement is a dispute over whether it will apply to a single new safeguarded reprocessing facility or all safeguarded reprocessing facilities India may choose to establish. Article 6(3) uses the singular when it says that “to bring [the reprocessing consent] rights into effect, India will establish a new national reprocessing facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards…”. But later in the same paragraph, the 123 agreement states: “The parties agree on the application of IAEA safeguards to ALL facilities concerned with the above [i.e. reprocessing] activities” [emphasis added].

According to Indian officials, there is no contradiction here. The reference to “all facilities” makes it clear that there could be more than one plant reprocessing U.S.-origin spent fuel and that the arrangements and procedures would apply to all. But to bring the consent rights into effect, all that India is required to do is to establish one plant and not all the reprocessing plants it may eventually wish to build.

Hard line diplomacy is not homeland security

With terrorist incidents tearing Pakistan apart city by city, India needs to realise that the continuing suspension of bilateral engagement is not making itself or the region any safer.....




15 December 2009
The Hindu

Hard line diplomacy is not homeland security

Siddharth Varadarajan

As a victim of terrorism, much of which has emanated from across the border in Pakistan, it is hardly surprising that India should confuse diplomatic strategy with counter-terrorism strategy and believe that “toughness” on the external front hardens the country internally and insulates us from terrorist attacks.

For the better part of a decade, India’s politicians and pundits have bought into the fallacy that diplomacy and security policy are one and the same thing, effectively handing the terrorists who would harm us a double bonus. Our complacency-induced vulnerability allows them to strike fairly easily; and our predictable tendency to suspend diplomatic engagement with Pakistan and rattle our sabres every time there is a major incident gives them an added incentive to target us.

When the Parliament complex in New Delhi was attacked by terrorists in December 2001, the erstwhile government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee responded by mobilising the army and downgrading diplomatic, commercial and people-to-people relations with Pakistan. This coercive diplomacy initially yielded results, as Pervez Musharraf banned the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba and placed their leaders under house arrest. But the longer India persisted with its hard line diplomatic tack, the more meagre were the returns. And eventually they became negative. The prospect of triggering an Indo-Pakistan war encouraged the terrorists to up the ante with an attack on the army cantonment at Kaluchak. Western chanceries began to issue travel advisories urging their citizens to steer clear of India because of the danger of conflict with Pakistan. Eventually, the international pressure that ought to have been applied on Islamabad ended up being redirected towards Delhi. The situation only began to change when Mr. Vajpayee recognised the limits of coercion and turned towards engagement. The Siachen and Line of Control ceasefires of 2003 were concrete achievements of this period that have stood the test of time. And then came the Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting of January 2004, which led to the resumption of the composite dialogue.

While there is no denying the political significance of General Musharraf’s commitment of not allowing terrorists to use the Pakistani territory to stage attacks against India, the Indian strategic community erred in believing that what was an obvious diplomatic achievement was also a gain on the counter-terrorism front. As far as homeland security was concerned, in fact, such an assurance was meaningless because the measures India needed to take to protect itself ought to have been based on the worst case scenario of Pakistan not delivering on its promises. In the event, no special measures were taken.

If the government’s hard line diplomacy allowed a sense of complacency to creep in on the counter-terrorism front from 2001 to 2004, our belief in Gen. Musharraf’s good intentions from 2004 to 2006 further strengthened that tendency. Most importantly, our policymakers did not foresee the consequences that the metastasis of terrorism in Pakistan from 2006 onwards would have as groups once nurtured by the Inter-Services Intelligence started targeting Pakistani cities and institutions, including the army. The fact that the territorial United States has not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11 has led some analysts to conclude that this is because America struck back militarily, taking the war to the terrorists, as it were, rather than allowing them to retain the initiative. Israel’s tendency to lash out at the Gaza strip or Lebanon also finds favour with some armchair Indian strategists who dream of “surgical strikes” against terrorists based in Pakistan. While U.S. military action has certainly disrupted the al-Qaeda’s ability to mount the kind of operation it did in 2001, American territory has remained protected because of geography and a professional, well-functioning police force and intelligence gathering system. India, unfortunately, has none of these advantages.

If the country continued to remain vulnerable to Pakistan-based terrorists even after the December 2001 attack on Parliament, it was because none of the systemic improvements needed to ensure better intelligence gathering, border and coastal security, investigative and forensic skills was even considered, let alone implemented. Armed with the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the traditional permissiveness towards third-degree methods, effective counter-terrorism came to mean rounding up the usual suspects, getting them to confess to crimes they may or may not have committed, planting stories in the media about how major incidents were averted in the nick of time by our clever intelligence “sleuths,” and organising the odd fake encounter for that added touch of authenticity. Needless to say, none of this actually strengthened our national capacity to deal with the threat of terrorism, native or foreign.

India’s vulnerability to terrorism was proved once again last November in Mumbai, when 10 terrorists arrived in rubber dinghies and staged a devastating series of attacks at a railway station, hospital, café, Jewish cultural centre and two five-star hotels. We now know this particular operation was at least two years in the making and involved numerous reconnaissance trips to the city and its harbour by Lashkar operatives. One of these alleged operatives, David Headley, is now in the custody of the American police and has been formally charged with being a part of the terrorist conspiracy.

There is nothing surprising or extraordinary about the fact that the Mumbai police and the Intelligence Bureau were unaware of Headley’s movements and agenda. What is shocking is the fact that no one bothered to examine the registers of not just the Taj Mahal and the Trident hotels going back a few years but also other hotels that might have been potential targets in order to try and discover whether the LeT had sent operatives on a recce mission. Prima facie, any guest who provided a false name or address ought to have been treated as an accomplice. But this kind of basic police work wasn’t done. Here, again our investigative efforts fell into a depressingly familiar pattern. With Ajmal ‘Kasab’ being apprehended and the Pakistani origins of the attackers and conspirators firmly established, the powers that be presumably saw little sense in using the police and the IB to see whether the Mumbai plot involved a wider set of conspirators. Our counter-terrorism strategy boiled down to a single-point agenda: demanding that Pakistan act against the LeT and its odious chief, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

That demand is a valid one and there is no harm in India pressing it. Similarly, no one can fault the Indian government for demanding that Pakistan swiftly prosecute and convict those LeT men whom it has already indicted for their involvement in the Mumbai attacks. Even if the big fish have not been caught there, the prosecution of small fry can also affect the ability of LeT and its backers to mount operations. Where the Indian strategy has gone wrong, tragically wrong, is in treating diplomacy as a sign of weakness and assuming that any form of engagement would be tantamount to making concessions to the Pakistani military establishment. Despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly emphasising the need for remaining engaged, there has been no visible progress on the bilateral front. Earlier, Indian officials let it be known that they were waiting for the trial in Pakistan to begin; now some are saying, on background, that India will wait for the LeT men to be convicted before considering the resumption of any form of dialogue. Next, we may insist that any appeals the convicted men are dismissed, or that they all be hanged before we are ready to talk.

At the time of the Sharm el-Shaikh summit in July, there was hardly any international sympathy for India’s position that dialogue had to await meaningful action by Pakistan on the terrorism front. Today, when some of the suspects are on trial and jihadi terrorists are massacring innocent people in Lahore, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and other cities and towns almost daily, the world and Pakistani civil society are asking themselves what kind of a callous place India is for not trying to help its neighbour deal with a common enemy. This diplomatic vacuum also provides excellent fodder for the deranged conspiracy theorists in Pakistan, who say India is behind the series of bomb blasts there.

As India examines its options, it must take as a given that the Pakistani military continues to harbour hostile intentions. And of course the ISI continues to have links with the LeT, the Afghan Taliban and other groups. The correct Indian response should be a better counter-terrorist strategy. Not talking to Pakistan’s civilian government is hardly effective counter-terrorism. Nor is it effective diplomacy.

Little men re-enact Ayodhya chaos inside Parliament

Challenge for Chidambaram will be to go from jaw-jaw to law-law ...







9 December 2009
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
Little men re-enact Ayodhya chaos inside Parliament
Challenge for Chidambaram will be to go from jaw-jaw to law-law

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: After having its say on the Liberhan Commission report in Parliament on Monday and Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party showed its fear of a proper debate on the demolition of the Babri Masjid by trying to prevent Home Minister P. Chidambaram from replying to the points it had made.

Throughout the Minister’s hour-long speech, BJP MPs screamed and shouted at the top of their voices and later even resorted to throwing paper. The Speaker, for some reason, chose not to intervene and have them evicted from the House, thus depriving all those citizens who had tuned in to the live telecast on Lok Sabha TV from hearing what the government had to say.

In a curious way, the orchestrated chaos inside the House was like a farcical reprise of the tragic drama that played out in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

Seventeen years ago, according to Justice Liberhan, activists of the BJP, RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Shiv Sena demolished an ancient mosque while the party’s top leaders either celebrated, smiled quietly or expressed “feeble protests.” On Tuesday, Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar, the senior most BJP leaders present at the conclusion of the debate, did nothing to rein in backbench MPs who went about demolishing parliamentary tradition and the public’s right to information with lusty abandon.

On Monday BJP president Rajnath Singh sounded angry and hurt at Mr. Liberhan’s reference to party leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi as “little men.” But on Tuesday, his party handed itself over to little men with oversized, bullying voices. Mr. Chidamabaram refused to yield but he could barely be heard above the din.

Unfortunately for Indian democracy, this was not the first time the BJP has behaved like this in Parliament. Last August, the party refused to allow Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reply to the confidence motion moved against him. His speech was entered into the records without actually being delivered. Indeed, during the term of the last Lok Sabha, the BJP continuously sought to disrupt proceedings under one pretext or another.

On Tuesday, the pretext was a reference Congress MP Beni Prasad Verma made to Messrs. Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi that the BJP said was offensive. Even though Mr. Chidambaram apologised and the reference was expunged from the record, BJP MPs refused to take their seats. And when the Home Minister began speaking after a brief adjournment, the shouting resumed.

Mr. Chidamabaram was combative, insisting that the only issue the House was debating was who demolished the “Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid structure” and not the historicity of the mosque or temple. He placed on record the government’s concurrence with Justice Liberhan’s principal finding — that the demolition was the result of a “joint common enterprise” by the BJP, RSS, VHP and Shiv Sena and their leadership. And their crime did not end there. More than 2,000 innocent people died as a result of the violence that the sangh parivar’s calculated act of vandalism unleashed across the country.

Having thus described the crime and identified the criminals, the Home Minister must now find a way of turning debate into action, jaw-jaw into law-law. The UPA government won the war of words in the Lok Sabha by default because the other side kept shouting. But winning the battle for justice will require a stronger display of political will than anything we have seen the Congress put up so far.