Many people are cynical about the rampant corruption in India. But there are those that have exposed corruption and some have paid with their lives for doing so. Even after independence, it took 64 years for Indian Parliament to ensure human right to security by drafting the Whistleblower Bill which is supposed to protect those who expose the crooks. Yet, the draft bill is insipid and has clauses that could kill the very essence of protecting the whistle blowers and exposing the corrupt. Explains BANSI MEHTA.

 

Considering that there is probably no organized horror in the world today that matches this, it's striking how little is written about it [1].

 

Sadly, in today's world, the term 'horror' could be applied to any number of humanitarian crises going on across the globe. Natural disasters, inter-state wars and civil conflicts continue to claim the lives of thousands whilst homelands are decimated and whole populations are left destitute and hopeless. The above quotation, however, refers to a very different situation. In the country referred to, the people are not the victims of an indiscriminate natural disaster or civilians caught up in conflict; this horror is organized, systematic and deliberate, and it is going on right now, in North Korea.

 

The Deng Yujiao case of May 2009 in China came to national prominence. It was also widely reported in western media. Beneath the surface of what seems to be a victory of public opinion and social justice lie structural problems of China's democratic reforms: weak concepts of rule-of-law and human rights, and a sensational public opinion. For China to move forward, a healthy civil society must develop to spread democratic values. It is the responsibility of intellectuals and elites, as well as every Chinese citizen. Even though the Chinese government has shown little will to reform, every Chinese has the responsibility to act – before it is too late.

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet,
They belong not to you."-Khalil Gibran

 
Dr. Sanjay Chugh, senior consultant psychiatrist, Delhi, says, "There are various definitions given to explain incestuous rape. However, incest is usually defined as sexual contact between persons who are so closely related that their marriage is illegal (e.g., parents and children, uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews). An incestuous rape would be when such a sexual relationship is carried out by force, without the consent of one person. Child sexual abuse often comes to light when childhood histories are explored and in most cases the perpetrator is a known person who is close to the family or inside the family."

Parents can be tyrants. The word ‘tyrant' is used in the sense of being totally in control of a situation, in the laying down of dictums and regulations and making sure an individual strictly adheres to them. Such manifestations happen when someone has absolute power over someone else. Parents have this power over their children. Since human beings are helpless at birth, they depend on their parents who brought them in the world, for every physical and emotional need, for protection from danger and death. Parents decide behavioural rules in a politico-social, pyramid-like structure, where parents are rulers and children, their subjects. For most parents, the initial euphoria of authority and power is so intoxicating that they find it difficult to give it up. Time, for them, stands frozen at the moment when the child was an infant. They refuse to let it take wings, test its strength against opposition, establish an identity of its own.

Democracy is a perception rather than an accomplished ideal. In India, where democratic principles find place in civics textbooks, they gradually sublime at the operational level from society to an individual. The expression of protecting the human right to live freely and fairly finds its relevance more often in the skyscrapers in the urban limits than it does at the grass root level. The guardians of the fundamental human rights have turned into criminals who abuse power for their vested interests.

Democracy is a more a form of government and less of an ideology that a country practices. However, there are several instances where Indians were deprived of their fundamental rights. One of the classic examples is the Emergency declared in 1975 by the Indira Gandhi government. It was termed as the black period, as it changed the very dynamics of the democratic institutions across the nation. It was then that the police force was given undue power resulting in a wholesale violation of human rights. The presently ubiquitous belief among Indians that the police or the defense system in the country is above the law owes its existence to that period. If we were to consider more recent examples, the Shopian case is still vividly imprinted on our minds.

Some of you may not be aware of Ireland's changes in legislation, outlawing blasphemy. As part of a revision to defamation legislation, the Dail passed legislation creating a new crime of blasphemy. This attack on free speech has gone largely unnoticed.

In short:

• Atheists can be prosecuted for saying that God is imaginary. That causes outrage.
• Pagans can be prosecuted for saying they left Christianity because God is violent and bloodthirsty, promotes genocide, and permits slavery.
• Christians can be prosecuted for saying that Allah is a moon god, or for drawing a picture of Mohammed, or for saying that Islam is a violent religion which breeds terrorists.
• Jews can be prosecuted for saying Jesus isn’t the Messiah.

Is it really THAT big a deal?

Ireland’s Blasphemy Bill not only criminalizes free speech, it also gives the police the authority to confiscate anything deemed “blasphemous”. They may enter and search any premises, with force if needed, upon “reasonable suspicion” that such materials are present.

We would like to direct our attention towards one of our members,  Shelley Seale,  who will publish her book “The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India” ton the 5th of June.  25 million children of India who have been orphaned, abandoned or trafficked  and her  book follow her journey into the slums of India and her involvement with these children. Below you will find the synopsis and more information about Shelley.

 

 

Synopsis by Shelley Seale: By now, everyone had either seen, or at least heard of, the movie Slumdog Millionaire, about the lives of two brothers who come from the slums of Mumbai – made even more desperate after they are orphaned. What many don’t know, however, is that for 25 million children in India, the harsh world depicted in the movie is their everyday reality. Yes, that’s 25 million kids. My book, The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India, follows my journey over the past four years into the streets, orphanages and slums of India where these children live without families or homes of their own. I became immersed in their world, a witness to their struggles – but also their joys, their incredible hope and resilience that amazed me time and time again. The ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired me. My sole purpose in writing this book was to give these millions of children a voice that could be heard by others in the world who, I was convinced, would be as moved by their plights as I was.

On Sunday the 19th of April 2009, three Mandaean jewellers were massacred by gunmen in their jewellery shops in the Altobechi area in Baghdad Iraq. This occurred during the mid-morning hours. The assailants used pistols with silencers. Three others were badly injured in this attack and are still in serious condition. This is a continuation of ongoing attacks against Mandaeans, including the killing of three Mandaeans in their family’s store in a busy market in the Al-Sha'ab district of Baghdad. In this incident, which occurred on the 8th of September 2008, an 8 year old boy, along with his father and uncle were slaughtered together; each had several bullets in his head. Many children have been kidnapped and many women raped with inadequate response from the police and Iraqi government.

Including the above noted crimes, the recorded incidents against Mandaeans since 2003 stand at 167 killings, 275 kidnappings, and 298 assaults and forced conversion to Islam. Some include more than one member of a family.

October 14th 2008, 6.50am, on a gutted road in the valley of Kashmir, a group of six Kashmiri girls armed with cameras was traveling in a jeep.  They pressed the trigger of their cameras pointing at everything that took their fancy. Every now and then, they screamed for the driver to stop the jeep, sprang out from all sides and shot photos to their heart’s content. The workshop was conducted by photographer Nitin Upadhye. Joy Dutta, Ritesh Menon, Saloni Gadgil and Hetal Bhavsar lent their expensive cameras for the workshop. The people of Kashmir enjoyed being captured on camera by these little ones who held cameras in their hands for the first time. It was a photography workshop of Basera-e-Tabassum (Abode of Smiles), an NGO formed under the larger umbrella of Borderless World Foundation.

These girl victims of J & K are looked after by Borderless World Foundation (BWF) in three different places in the valley. In 1998, a group of young persons headed by Gh. Mohiuddin Mir, a resident of Beerwah, decided to work for the uplift of socially ignored and under privileged. Alongwith like-minded people from Pune, the Borderless World Foundation (BWF) was born in 2002 . The project for J&K was named Basera-e-Tabassum (BeT). Its aim was to provide food, shelter and education to orphan girl children between 4 and 10 years in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The main emphasis is on the education of the girl children. In 2003, two Pune activists, Bharati Mamani and Adhik Kadam came to the valley to found an orphanage for girl children in  the border district of Kupwara at Salkote Haihama, which had 24000 children just holding on to the edges of life.

Reminds me of what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century

“Thousands have lived without love-no one without water”, W.H.Auden

With these words starts the film “Flow-for love of water” from 2008 by Irena Salina. The background for the film is the fact that today one billion people are without access to clean water. This leads to diseases and death for millions of people, but also conflicts and war. The issue of water is now at the very core of peace work. The amount of water is limited, and this raises demands to humanity that we distribute what we have more evenly.

In several part of the world, child protection laws have been undergoing review, as societies approach to terms with the area of the problem of child abuse, and the need to perk up the capability of public responses to abused and deserted children. Children may be particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation given their dependency on others and their limited ability to protect themselves. Sexual abuse and exploitation can take a range of forms including rape, commercial sexual exploitation and domestic abuse. Sexual exploitation has far-reaching effects for the physical and mental health of a child. It is estimated that one million children (mainly adolescent girls but also a significant number of adolescent boys) enter the multi-billion dollar sex trade each year (Asmita Naik).  We must not forget that the children’s are the ultimate goal for development. Our efforts for a progress in the human condition must start as early as possible begging with the child and mother well before the child is born. So that human right which belongs to an individual as a consequence of being a human can be protected in the changing world. Emphasis must be on the need for children to have security( Parkinson Patrick) and protecting the health and education of today’s children is the first and foremost right of these children but it is also the most basic and wisest of all investment in social and economic development of society.( Proff. Karl- Eric Kuntsson’s)

On November 8, 2008, the Beijing Declaration was announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Beijing, China, to promote the utilization of traditional medicine globally, especially in poor countries such as those in Asia and Africa.

Unfortunately, China is the only country that suggests employ traditional medicine for the poor’s primary health care, which is otherwise done by conventional medicine throughout the rest of the world. When I unveiled this fact, the people in China began suspecting their government. The people asked that if traditional Chinese medicine is compatible with conventional medicine, how come other countries refuse to recognize it?

Over the past sixty years, the Chinese government has been making the mistake of dual endorsement of conventional and traditional medicine. Now, in an attempt to cover up, the government calls for traditional Chinese medicine to join the rest of the world. With the help of the head of the WHO, Mrs. Chen, a Hong Kong native, the WHO announced the Beijing Declaration after a conference in Beijing in November 2008, which subscribed to the backwards situation in China.