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| << July15, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net] CHRO hot news updates (July 15th nos 4-9) |
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[1] From: "River Basin Friends\(NE\)" <riverbasinfriends@yahoo.co.in> Date: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:55am Subject: Women rebels in Tripura being sexually abused Dear friends ,can any one suggest what kind of solidarity and support can be extended /thought off in the given situation. regards ravi Women rebels in Tripura being sexually abused Agartala: Meenaxi Debbarma and Rajlakshmi Debbarma, both in their early 20s, joined a rebel force in Tripura four years ago with the dream of carving out a tribal homeland through armed struggle. The two tribal girls underwent three months of arms training and were all ready to join action with the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF). But they were in for a shock. "We found our male commanders taking turns to visit our residential camps in the jungles and abusing us sexually," Meenaxi told police interrogators. The two picked up the courage to flee their camps located in Bangladesh and surrendered before the Tripura police on Wednesday. Tribal separatists in Tripura are using women cadres as consorts, forcing many to flee their camps alleging sexual abuse, police said. A police spokesman said several woman cadres of the outlawed ATTF and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) have fled their jungle hideouts after being subjected to frequent sexual abuse by senior leaders. "We have reports of at least a dozen female cadres of the ATTF and the NLFT deserting their camps on similar grounds of sexual abuse and harassment by male members of the outfits," the police spokesman told IANS requesting anonymity. Both the NLFT and the ATTF are separatist groups fighting for independent tribal homelands in Tripura. "All the 17 woman cadres staying in our camp were subjected to frequent sexual assault by the leaders," Rajlaxmi said. "Instead of allowing us to go for action, our commanders made us to cook food and do other chores of the camp during the past four years." The NLFT had faced a crisis recently with many male cadres deserting their camps feeling lonely in the jungles. "To stem the exodus, the NLFT leadership decided to raise a women's army by recruiting 100 cadres into rebel ranks to keep the male cadres in good humour," the police spokesman said. "The militants generally lead a very lonely and hard life in the jungles and once you have women there, it is anybody's guess as to what could happen." But the move to recruit woman cadres by the NLFT backfired with couples falling in love and deserting camps to marry. "During the past year or so, a number of young militant couples have married secretly and have either fled the camps or simply surrendered to security forces," the official said. Overwhelmed by desertions, the NLFT leadership has reportedly read the riot act to its members. "During investigations of some cadres, it was learned the NLFT leadership has ordered its male ranks not to fall in love and strictly forbidden physical relationships with woman cadres," a senior intelligence official said. http://www.theshillongtimes.com River Basin Friends AKAJAN District-Dhemaji.787059. Assam. India E mail.assamravi@... ----------------------------------------------------- [2] From: Parvez Jamasji <parvez1942@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 17, 2005 Subject: SECULAR ? > Re: New file uploaded to makeindiasuperpower Very pertinent ! Very Correct ! However, I do not subscribe to your views on Mahatma & Italy. Togodias shrill screaming goes against him. Rome has a mosque Can one even dream of ANY OTHER place of worship in 'arbustan' Similar zeal should be shown & effort made to rid India of the obnoxious Sati, Devdasi - paedophiles, & the practice of millions shitting on the roads in Bombay & thousands of HUMANS cleaning it up. " Appeasement spoils Brats " Never worked ! Never works ! Thanks for your time Best Wishes Parvez Jamasji http://www.geocities.com/siafdu/vc81.html ---------------------------------------------------- [3] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 17, 2005 Subject: Of School Safety and 'National Security' http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071605D.shtml Of School Safety and 'National Security' By J. Sri Raman t r u t h o u t | Perspective Saturday 16 July 2005 India is observing the anniversary of one of its cruelest tragedies. Last July 16, about a hundred very young children perished in a school fire in the temple town of Kumbakonam in the southern state of Tamilnadu. From July 9, the country has been recalling the gruesome spectacle that traumatized millions on television a year ago. The anniversary has come as a reminder - if ever one was needed - of the pathetic state of primary education in India, indeed in South Asia. It, however, has yet to remind the people and the policymakers of the distorted priorities of development that made the calamity possible. Lost upon the analysts is the large and obvious fact that a developing society of extravagant and disproportionate obsession with 'national security' cannot just afford safe schools for its children. The fire that singed those tender skins, and charred 20 of the children beyond recognition, came from a makeshift kitchen for making a mid-day meal for the students. The fire spread rapidly to a thatched roof of dry palm fronds over the first to third classes. The children, in the five-to-eight age group, could not escape in time through an extraordinarily narrow exit in a concrete building. The mid-day meal had been introduced two decades ago as a way to persuade poverty-stricken parents to send their wards to school rather than to fields and factories. And schools preferred thatched roofs not for environmental reasons, but just because they cost less than concrete structures. Tons of newsprint and reels of footage have been used to heave a collective sigh over the avoidable calamity. What now deserves note is the fact that the schools in Tamilnadu are a model of safety compared to their counterparts in several other states, especially the Hindi-speaking north. An conservative estimate done the day after the tragedy put the number of similarly ill-equipped schools across the country at 8,000. Any one to have glimpsed even parts of India would know this for a gross underestimate. The unspeakably sorry situation was brought home five years ago in a People's Report on Basic Education (PROBE), the product of pooled non-governmental efforts. To mention only a few of the findings in the voluminous report (available on amazon.com): over half of the schools inspected had leaking roofs, 89 per cent lacked functioning toilets, and half of them had no drinking water. Some schools did duty as cattle sheds, police camps, teacher residences or places for drying cow-dung cakes, while sham schooling was provided to children in extremely unsafe and unhygienic spaces. There is nothing to suggest any change in this depressing scene over the past five years. There is much evidence, in fact, that non-existent school facilities are the national norm - unless one notices only the urban public schools catering to the offspring of the privileged alone. Over the past week, enterprising reporters attempting a reality check have discovered yet more illustrations of the educational wasteland into which the elite has turned India. Among the pictures from the candid cameras were entirely roofless classrooms in the state of Uttar Pradesh, scorched under a median temperature of over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). With parents preferring not to let their children be fried alive, the classrooms remain empty through the hot season. Another bizarre spectacle was of naked children carrying books and school uniforms on their heads and wading through waist-deep waters of rivers in the state of Bihar. If covered classrooms are a dim and distant dream, it would be absurd to think of such luxuries as benches, blackboards, maps and globes for the children of the poor who constitute the country's largest community. Only a minuscule minority of the primary schools have such a thing as a playground. Little wonder that most of the schools in the countryside and the less affluent urban areas turn out school graduates almost without teachers. Even in the capital city of New Delhi, an estimated 170,000 students in schools run by the municipal corporation have no teachers. And, if there are teachers, there is generally only one to about 60 students. Even less wonder, then, that over 35 per cent of India's one billion people remain illiterate. That India occupies the 105th place in UNESCO's educational ranking, in a list of 127 countries. That Pakistan occupies the 123rd place in the same list, a poor consolation. This piece of statistics only illustrates the insecurity of all of South Asia under the rule of competitive militarism. For, the same India threatens to emerge as the third largest importer of military goods in the world. It became the fifth during 1997-2002, when it became a nuclear-weapon state. Its allocation for defense (over $19 billion) in its latest annual budget is arguably ten times higher than that for education at all levels - and, remember, much more is spent on higher education than on basic schooling for India's barefoot boys and girls. There is no way to prevent Kumbakonams until and unless the people compel the elite to abandon militarism, with a nuclear dimension, as the mantra of national development. A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t. ------------------------------------- [4] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 17, 2005 Subject: Tap water versus bottled water For people interested in knowing the difference between tap and bottled water, take a look at this article. Be aware though that this information applies only to the Canadian context. In India, as far as I am aware, bottled water does not necessarily come from a spring, and I am not sure as to how it is treated before being packaged and sold. I would be grateful if anyone here could provide that information. Is bottled water better? It's considered purer but may not be healthier mahazareen" <mahazareen@ By JOHN MENTEK -- The Spectator (see http://www.canoe.ca/HealthNews/981013_water.html) --------------------------------------------------------- [5] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 17, 2005 Subject: The Way Ahead for a Safer World [On 19 07 05, Tuesday, at 18 00 hrs. a meeting has been called at Shramik (behind Swami Narayan temple), Dadar, Mumbai to discuss the programme for observance in Mumbai of the sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), a national coalition of two hundred plus organisations has given the call for observing August 6-12 as the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Week, on the sixtieth anniversary of the bombings, in memory of the countless innocent victims and also to remind ourselves of the terrible danger that still obtains in the form of estimated thirty thousand nuclear warheads all the world over, stockpiled or deployed - sufficient to snuff out life in all its forms many times over from the face of the Earth, and the consequent dire necessity to fight for a nuclear weapons free world with all the strength at our command. The CNDP has also given a call for keeping one-minute nationwide silence at 11 00 AM sharp on both August 6 and 9.] http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/07/16/stories/2005071607181100.htm The way ahead for a safer world L. Ramdas Whilst the ultimate goal must remain to eliminate nuclear weapons, even partial success like achieving a consensus on `de-alerting' will be a great step forward. ---------------------------------- |
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| << July15, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net] CHRO hot news updates (July 15th nos 4-9) |
July17, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Women ,Coke news updates >> |
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