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| December 30, 2006 | Saturday | Zilhaj 08, 1427 |
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Mogadishu’s fall
Bird flu threat again
Scraping the sky in Shanghai
A bigot in Congress
THERE was a time when every second person in China was called either Wong or Chang. Today, almost every second person one encounters wears the name tag: ‘Trainee’, as if the next generation has been given another common surname. It is the ubiquitous symbol of China’s determination to learn everything about everything, to gain experience quickly so that it cannot only compete with the rest of the world, but in time overtake it.
A DELICATE sense of propriety and high professional standards have never been the hallmarks of the Pakistan police. Not without reason, many in the country view the police force with much the same contempt and dread as they would an organised and powerful mafia. Even then the image of a young man being publicly stripped and thrashed by the Rawalpindi police on Thursday, as seen in national newspapers the following morning, evoked feelings of both shock and disgust. The man’s crime, it seems, was to exercise his constitutional right to peaceful protest. By doing so in the company of a hundred or so other demonstrators, he may have technically fallen foul of the law as it currently stands in Punjab, where public rallies are banned. Exceptions can be made by the authorities, and often are for favoured ones. In this particular case, permission was probably neither sought nor granted. Still, there can be no excuse for the brutal and shameful manner in which the police chose to disperse non-violent protestors, including women and children, who were demanding to know the whereabouts of ‘missing’ relatives allegedly in the custody of intelligence agencies. The policemen who carried out this attack were not constables or ASIs acting on their own — they were part of a party headed by at least two superintendents of police and a DSP who is to be conferred the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz on March 23. Under section 355 of the Pakistan Penal Code, [sic] “Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person, intending thereby to dishonour that person, otherwise than on grave and sudden provocation” is liable to punishment extending up to two years in prison. Are the policemen involved in Thursday’s incident — and their commanding officers — culpable under the law?
Most of the protestors in Rawalpindi, including the young man who was publicly humiliated, are believed to be relatives of ‘missing’ persons who allegedly have links with religious or militant organisations. It is this connection, real or otherwise, that gives them the support of religio-political parties and, perhaps, the wherewithal to be able to congregate within a few hundred yards of GHQ and make their voices heard where it counts most. Not so fortunate or organised are the family members of those who have disappeared without a trace in Balochistan and Sindh, ostensibly on account of their ties with nationalist political parties. Among those picked up are many low-level activists and others whose ideological bent is unacceptable to the establishment. Irrespective of their crime, the rule of law demands that charges be framed and the accused be produced before a court. Instead, they have joined the growing ranks of the ‘disappeared’.
The personal liberty of every citizen may be recognised by the Constitution, but the reality on the ground is strikingly at odds with the law. The phenomenon of prolonged ‘enforced disappearances’ — usually associated with brutal dictatorship, not democracy — came to the fore shortly after Pakistan’s enlistment in the war on terror and picked up pace following the insurgency in Balochistan. The HRCP has verified 170 such cases of involuntary detention in the last two years, and there is no knowing how many others have gone undocumented. Forced into action by the Supreme Court, the government has owned up to the detention of a few persons of whose whereabouts it previously claimed to have no knowledge. Some in Pakistan clearly consider themselves to be above the law.
WITH the fall of Mogadishu to government forces backed by Ethiopian troops, the way appears clear for the transitional Somali administration to take charge of the capital that had been under the control of the Union of Islamic Courts since last June. But, as things stand, it is difficult to predict what sort of dispensation will eventually emerge from the political rubble created by the absence of a national government since 1991. It is not clear how acceptable the internationally-recognised transitional set-up will be to the Somalis, and how effectively it can govern without the Ethiopian military — an idea distasteful to many Somalis because of the long history of bitter relations with their western neighbour. On the other hand, the Islamists, though fuelling uneasiness among the people because of their obscurantist outlook, had restored some semblance of peace and order to Mogadishu by weakening the power of the warlords and thus allowing normal life to resume. But the possibility of rule by the Islamists is also fraught with risks, for they have a tendency to suppress progressive norms, and they too are being propped up by foreign governments.
For peace to prevail, the only option at the moment appears to be talks between the Islamists and the interim government so as to pave the way for elections and the creation of a government truly representing the people. In fact, negotiations had begun between the two sides soon after the Islamists’ June victory in Mogadishu but quickly floundered. Somalia is among states with the worst human development indicators in the world. Without political stability, matters will only worsen, with the spectre of famine and displaced persons creating a humanitarian disaster. Besides, continued chaos can lead to further fragmentation. In 1991, the north-western part of the country, Somaliland, declared independence, while in 1998 the Puntland region declared itself autonomous. Further fighting between the antagonists will only result in greater hardship for the people the factions claim to represent.
ALTHOUGH fears over bird flu had subsided worldwide in the second half of this year, fresh concerns are being expressed as human cases of the deadly infection appear to be on the rise again. Recently, three members of an extended family in Egypt died after being infected with the H5N1 virus, contracted presumably from sick ducks. In recent weeks, South Korea and Vietnam have confirmed outbreaks of infection in poultry. Pakistan (where the virus was first detected in poultry farms in the north-west of the country last March) is fortunate that no human cases of avian flu have been reported so far. But all this could change rapidly considering the contagious nature of the infection and the fact that Pakistan lies on one of the major global migration routes of wild birds that carry the virus. What has aggravated the situation is the absence of proper monitoring of poultry farms in areas where an outbreak of avian flu is possible.
That the relevant departments have once again lapsed into complacency is evident from the fact that authorities in Sindh have failed to set up a permanent surveillance cell to monitor avian flu, although the decision to do so was taken last year. Such laxity cannot be condoned given the high-risk factors that make another outbreak a distinct possibility. The worst fear is that of the virus mutating to the extent where human-to-human transmission becomes possible and boosts the spread of infection to a scale that could raise fatalities to catastrophic levels — especially as there is as yet no treatment or preventive vaccine to combat the infection. The government should get its act together and improve its monitoring system as well as laboratory facilities so that the threat of avian flu turning into an epidemic is warded off.
That fervour manifests itself in unlikely settings. A seven-year-old only child in Shanghai recites his English homework ‘Mother’/ ‘Father’ to himself in the internet cafe managed by his mother from her front parlour.
“How much for the internet?”
The boy responds by pencilling laboriously: “Sixty hours for 10 yuan.”
His mother immediately corrects him: “No. Sixty hours for five yuan.”
It is this spirit of commercial savvy and swift decision-making that has always distinguished China’s commercial capital — Shanghai — from its mandarin rival Beijing. For centuries, Shanghai has been China’s front parlour, the portal through which it received and traded goods and services on behalf of the mainland. However, it was never able to rise above being provincial and downtrodden, a despondent imperial after-thought, while its rival Hong Kong — Britain’s Gibraltar in the Far East — flaunted itself as a showpiece of high-rise capitalism.
The Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith visited Shanghai in the 1970s and driving along its river-front Bund commented on its appearance: ‘The great, solid Victorian buildings, denuded of their signs, have a vacant, heavy forlorn look. We’ve heard that the upper floors of some of the old imperial skyscrapers are unused. Feudal palaces are visited by the masses but not the one-time offices of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.’
Since then, the transformation of these buildings has been more than cosmetic. For one, they have been re-named: the Russo-Chinese Bank building has become the China Foreign Exchange Trade Centre, the Palace Hotel has become the South Building of Peace Hotel, and the Jardine Matheson Building is now the Foreign Trade Building. By day, they function as integral elements of Shanghai’s present; by night, they moonlight as floodlit reminders of Shanghai’s colonial past.
On the opposite side of the Huangpu river lies the Lujiazui finance and trade zone — a pointed peninsula dominated by an almost fairy-tale Oriental Pearl TV tower and skyscrapers along the Lujiazui Green Belt that would make a New Yorker homesick for Central Park and a Chinese resident in Hong Kong homesick for Shanghai.
While Hong Kong may spend the next decade fretting about the skyscraping costs of the Hong Kong Disneyland (it needs $3.5 billion to recoup its investment), Shanghai has better things to do with its time and its money. The Shanghai Municipal Development & Reform Commission has already articulated its intentions in its Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). It is to convert the city and surrounding district into ‘an international economic, financial, trading and shipping centre and a socialist modern international metropolis.’
Is that too tall an order? Certainly not — not to a city that has 14 continuous years of double digit GDP growth (it has sustained an annual average of 11.9 per cent) and has reached a GDP of RMB 915 billion yuan ($118 bn) in the year 2005. The growth in the per capita disposable income of urban households has remained slightly above or below 12 per cent since 2002, but, more importantly, the gap between the disposable income of Shanghai’s urban and rural households has been narrowed dramatically. In 2000, the ratio was 5:1. By 2005, it was slightly less than 1.1:1.
In 2005 alone, Shanghai doubled its rapid transit mileage, tripled its international container throughput, and quintupled its expressway mileage. Shanghai’s goals are deceptively simple. First, focus on the financial sector, i.e. achieve a total market transaction volume of 10,000 billion yuan and let its financial institutions accumulate assets that will be the equivalent of 10 per cent of China’s entire wealth. Second, concentrate on the logistics sector: improve infrastructural facilities such as the deep water port, Pudong international airport and the container terminal facilities. Third, in consonance with Deng Xiaoping’s feline advice, develop the MICE industry: create facilities to foster meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions. Fourth, through a system of clusters establish an international automotive town, a refined steel base, a chemical industrial zone, a micro-electronic industrial base. Fifth, construct Lingang new city equipment industry and Shanghai ship-building bases. The list of projects is endless, the energy unstoppable, and Shanghai’s commitment to them irreversible.
The main indices of Shanghai’s 11th five year plan might have read like a bureaucrat’s wish list, had someone not included an additional column in the goals for 2010. He or she had an eye on completion certificates rather than on foundation stones or even milestones. Most of the targets are marked ‘anticipative’, and then suddenly one encounters something sharp and ‘binding’. The proportion of government investment in education will be (not is anticipated to be) 4 per cent of GDP. Reduction of gross energy consumption per unit of GDP will be (not might be) 20 per cent of the level in the year 2000. Renovation of second-class old type alleys in the inner city will be completed by the year 2010.
Everything that is being done in Shanghai today is a prelude to the world expo that will be (not may be) held there in 2010. The international bazaar with participants from 200 countries will last 184 days, from May 1 to October 31. During these six months Shanghai expects to host 70 million visitors. That is six times the population of Karachi — a city Shanghai twinned with after a delegation from Shanghai visited Karachi in the 1960s and came away astounded by its modernity and high-rise office blocks of the National Bank and Habib Bank Plaza.
Not surprisingly, while digging foundations for the buildings of the future Shanghai uncovers it own past. Many of the earliest exhibits dating from 3,000 BC in the Shanghai Museum, for instance, have been unearthed in the last 20 years or so. Precious artefacts were either looted by western pillagers during the Boxer rebellion or secreted out by Chiang Kai-shek when defeated he fled to Taiwan in 1949.
If you want to admire the best of Chinese red lacquer furniture or mutton fat jade, you have to visit the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum in London. If you want to study the craft of Chinese snuff bottles, a significant collection is in private possession in Baltimore in the United States. And if you want to examine Chinese imperial robes with their distinctive yellow silk (a colour only emperors could wear), you will have to travel to the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. This library incidentally also contains a priceless collection of 15 books etched or engraved in gold letters on green jade slabs. Ten of these manuscripts are inscribed with texts by the 18th century scholar-emperor Ch’ien Lung.
As generations of Chinese and later Indian craftsmen learned — usually at the cost of their patron — jade is a notoriously difficult stone to carve. Like most stones, it is difficult because you cannot add to it. You can only subtract from it. China’s modern craftsmen no longer take pride in subtraction, only in addition. Their achievements are incremental, not reductive.
One has only to visit the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre in the central People’s Square to see the Shanghai its ageing city-fathers envisioned. Spread at one’s feet is an extensive scale model showing the roads, the expressways, the skyscrapers, the industrial estates, the new airport, the deep-water port — both by day and at the flick of a switch, by night.
Civilisations like China carry post-dated cheques drawn on their future. The time has come for China to redeem its own. If it is able to build modern skyscrapers, it can do so securely because of the foundations laid down by a previous leadership. ‘Not a day’s rest do I ever have from the burden of my vast people. Their welfare is constantly at my heart.’ Those words are from a poem composed in his old age by the emperor Ch’ien Lung. They could as easily have been penned by Deng Xiaoping who showed Shanghai the sky.
BIGOTRY comes in various guises — some coded, some closeted, some colossally stupid. The bigotry displayed recently by Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., a Republican from Virginia, falls squarely in the third category.
Mr. Goode, evidently in a state of xenophobic delirium, went on a tirade against the corrupting threat posed by Muslim immigration to the United States. “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the USA,” he wrote in a letter to constituents.
The inspiration for Mr. Goode’s rant is Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who last month became the first Muslim elected to Congress. Mr. Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam in college, has decided to use the Quran during a ceremonial swearing-in, as is his constitutional right.
This does not sit well with Mr. Goode. He warned ominously that current immigration policy would lead to an outbreak of elected Muslims in this country and unfettered use of the Quran.
America’s history is rife with instances of uncivil, hateful and violent behaviour toward newcomers, be they Jewish, Irish, Italian or others. Mr. Goode’s dimwitted outburst of nativism is nothing new.
— The Washington Post