| May 8, 2006 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 9, 1427 |
A season of blackouts
A new human rights club for the macho
SIXTY-FIVE UN member states, including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from our region, will be in the fray for the May 9 maiden election to the newly established 47-member Human Rights Council.
A member would need a minimum of 96 votes in the 191-strong General Assembly to be elected, and there could be more than one round of polling if all seats are not filled in the first round.
The outcome will be watched closely by UN supporters and critics alike. There are fears that compromises in establishing the body will undercut efforts to restore credibility lost in the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
The elections would be held by secret ballot just as would be the case when the assembly decides on new permanent members. So far, 18 member states have entered the arena for 13 seats from the Asian region, 14 for 13 seats from African region, 13 for six from East European group, 11 for eight seats from Latin American and the Caribbean region and nine for seven from Western European and others group.
The members can announce their candidatures till before the polling starts and more could join the fray.
The US, dissatisfied with the way it would be constituted, has announced its decision not to join the council, but other permanent members of the Security Council are contesting from their respective regions — China from Asia, Russia from East Europe and France and Britain from Western Europe group.
Western fears are typically focused on the near certainty that Cuba, China and Russia will easily win seats. The Financial Times says their imminent presence in the apex human rights body have prompted questions about how committed the new body will be to protecting people from oppression, torture and other abuses.
There is less focus on our own embarrassing candidates from South Asia. Pakistan with its hudood laws and a parliament that some people think exists at the pleasure of the army chief is an aspirant to the human rights body. Sri Lanka with its perennial temptations to impose military censorship on the press and its raging ethnic violence, often stoked by Sinhalese chauvinists who dominate parliament, is another candidate.
India flaunts itself as the world’s largest democracy (by sheer dint of a population it tried hard to thwart from growing) and says its governance is rooted in the will of its one billion plus people.
India has avoided signing key human rights related covenants that aim to govern the world’s adherence to sound principles of international standards of justice.
In December 2002, India and the United States signed a pact under which they agreed not to send each other’s nationals to a world tribunal. This was seen as a victory for Washington’s efforts to scuttle the International Criminal Court.
More than a dozen countries had already signed such agreements with the United States, but India was significant as it wore the big tag of democracy. Moreover, most of the others were small or closely identified as US allies.
The agreement states there will be ‘non-extradition of nationals of either country to any international tribunal without the other country’s express consent’.
US ambassador to India at the time, Robert Blackwill, was unabashed about the galling injustice of the pact. Simply put it meant this: You can pillory Saddam Hussein for war crimes in a kangaroo court supervised by the occupation forces in Iraq, but you cannot bring American soldiers, and others who signed the anti-ICC pact with Washington, before an international human rights jury to be similarly tried for crimes perpetrated in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay prison or in Fallujah.
“India and the United States share the strongest possible commitment to bringing to justice those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” claimed Blackwill, whose reputation in the realm of human rights was tested by his studious silence over the Gujarat massacre. It was no small coincidence that the anti-ICC pact came within months of the Gujarat mass murders, where the state government itself stood accused of crimes against humanity.
“We are concerned about the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty with respect to the adequacy of checks and balances, the impact of the treaty on national sovereignty and the potential for conflict with the UN Charter,” Blackwill tried to explain. So much for double standards.
India has neither signed nor ratified the ICC. That’s nothing new. Just as it refuses to sign the NPT, it has carefully avoided ratifying the international covenant on refugees. Is this the kind of raw material that makes it an eligible member of the proposed human rights council?
Human rights bodies say South Asian refugees who have fled to India face serious problems in their daily lives. From forcible repatriation to starvation, refugees find themselves on the edge, clawing for mere survival. India has provided shelter to these refugees for centuries for both geopolitical and socioeconomic reasons. In recent years India has arrested and repatriated suspected Maoist activists to face certain torture in Nepal, which was run by a dictatorial king!
The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) says it is monitoring India’s candidacy to the United Nations Human Rights Council with interest.
“India ranks low amongst the international community in terms of the ratification of international conventions and covenants,” said AHRC in a report last week. “India has thus shielded itself from scrutiny, for example by the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women or the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.”
Even though India pledges that it will ‘maintain the independence, autonomy as well as genuine powers of investigation of the national human rights bodies, including the National Human Rights Commission’, the lack of independence of domestic human rights institutions in India is of serious concern. The National as well as State Human Rights Commissions do not have independent mechanisms for investigating cases. The Human Rights Act does not provide for it.
“Custodial torture is rampant in India and the police are regarded as being criminals in the eyes of many in the country,” observes the AHRC report. India, although it has signed the UN Convention against Torture, resisted ratifying it on the pretext that domestic mechanisms within the country are capable of addressing the issue. The request by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit India is yet to be met with an invitation by the government, despite its having been pending for years. Will election to a recast human rights council nudge India to mend its ways on some or all of these issues? Time will tell.
A message on an Indian journalist’s blog went thus last week: “The soothing tones of Naushad’s music playing out on every news channel came as a much-needed relief from the usual humdrum of the newsroom...a mesmerising spell broken only by the realisation that the veteran octogenarian was no more.
“Then began the usual running around, and the momentary musical bliss got overshadowed by hysterical, not-so-musical yells of ‘break the news’ and ‘write an obit’ — something my ears get auto adjusted to.
“In this day and age where nasal renditions top music charts and crass remixes sell more than their original counterparts, Naushad’s music stands out.”
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
IT hasn’t been as hot as it has appeared to be — thanks to the power blackouts that have hit Karachi.
Harried people sweated as they feverishly punched the telephone numbers of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation’s complaint centres. It was often an exercise in futility as there was no response from the other end — either the numbers were busy or nobody responded to incessant rings.
When electricity went off at night, some people preferred to seek relief under the open skies. Last year a couple had died in Malir in their car from leaking chlorofluorocarbons in the air-conditioning system during a long power breakdown. Generators and uninterrupted power supply units have registered brisk sales, but they are no solution to the problem since the prices are beyond the reach of a majority of the citizens.
As people suffered, the KESC and Wapda were engaged in heaping blame on each other. The former said Wapda had reduced its supply to the KESC from its Jamshoro circuits from the agreed 550 megawatts to 220 megawatts. Wapda retaliated with the assertion that it had provides 570 megawatts, more than the agreed quantity. There was no end to the bickering between the two utilities. And no end in sight to the suffering of the city’s residents.
Reports also suggested that a fresh reshuffle of key posts in the KESC’s engineering, networking and custom service departments might have had something to do with the power crisis. Some army personnel have been replaced with civilians as heads of section and some officials have been removed from their slots. People also point a finger at lower grade employees who were opposed to the KESC’s privatisation.
A positive aspect of the privatisation was that it had raised hopes that the KESC would be performing better than before. But so far there have been few signs of improvement. By the end of the week a slight easing of the situation was felt — but there are many hot months to go.
Meanwhile, the blackouts prompted an innovative parent to come to the help of his schoolgoing children. The children complained of not being able to study for their exams due to the power breakdowns. So the parent began taking them out in his car with inside lights switched on for them to study as he drove up and down Beach Avenue.
This is how it began. Now many parents in the building with schoolgoing children, who have examinations coming up, are taking the kids out for long drives to give them a chance to study in the open air where there is some light. Also are available treats like roasted corn on the cob, peanuts, pop corn, icecream, cold drinks, etc. Studying for exams was never this much fun.
Anti-pollution drive
Traffic police have launched a campaign against smoke-emitting vehicles. Banners have been put up at several intersections warning the drivers of such vehicles of action and urging the public to cooperate with police.
Vehicles emitting smoke are the worst polluters of the city’s atmosphere. Some of them, particularly old and ill-maintained buses using diesel and taxis running on LPG, spew out volumes of smoke making it difficult for people around to breathe. The fumes aggravate the suffering of people with respiratory ailments, besides adding to the number of patients.
The campaign should be welcomed, but assigning a task like this to police, particularly those in white uniforms, raises suspicions. They have launched such campaigns in the past as well. For instance, what happened to their campaign launched to force motorcyclists to use helmets. And what came out of a drive to persuade motorists to stay in their lane? The police turned it into a campaign to harass motorists to mint extra money. The government has hinted at pushing buses of old models off the road. But it is highly unlikely that the plan will succeed. Drivers of such buses would now have to pay more than the usual ‘charge’ to escape. Traffic police are seen engaged in this routine virtually on all intersections, roundabouts, kerbs, bridges and ramps, where it is illegal to stop vehicles for any reason.
Just on Saturday, the Sindh chief minister declared that auto-rickshaws would be removed from the roads within two years.
Over the years, the sputtering rickshaws seem to have grown less noisier. Or, maybe, their din has drowned in the noise produced by the everyday increasing number of vehicles of other denominations. But they are still the biggest single contributors to the noise and air pollution. Their elimination is indeed desirable for clean environment. But they have their utility too. Many people feel comfortable when their women and children travel in rickshaws, rather than in taxis.
So, before driving the rickshaws out, some benign alternatives should be considered, particularly for families travelling unaccompanied by male members.
Ancient graves
The builders of the flyover at Gulbai have spared a small graveyard, even if by inches. It houses the graves of six brothers and the graves are said to be centuries old. It is said there is a legend attached to them which has been mentioned by Shah Latif.
The legend has it that some fishing families lived at the place when Karachi would have been nothing but a small settlement.
They lived peacefully until a sea monster — some called it a crocodile, others a shark — appeared and began to kill the fisher folk.
The six brothers whose graves exist at Gulbai were reputedly killed one by one. The seventh and youngest of the brothers was physically handicapped. However, he resolved to avenge his brothers’ death and rid his community of the sea monster.
It is believed that he made a huge iron cage and sat in it at dusk, the time when the monster struck. As the animal attacked the cage, it couldn’t harm the brother, who finally speared him. The man naturally earned the veneration of the community and when he died a natural death, he was respected as a holy man. His shrine is a couple of kilometres from the six graves.
In the late 70s, Sultan Niazi, a bodybuilder from Lyari, had produced a film in Sindhi ‘Ghatu ghar na aaya’ about the legend.
The graves need to be preserved in a better way and the legend should be investigated.
— Karachian
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