India’s Continued Demonization of Rape Victims

This article originally appeared in The Independent.

How should a country respond when its police force is found wanting? That is the question Indians face after a sting-operation carried out by a leading magazine last week exposed widespread rape-denial among a senior stratum of India’s police force. If the media reaction is an index, all that this revelation could muster was a nationwide raised eyebrow. In the embattled history for social justice in India the police dismissal of rape victims and the failure to respond marks one of the lowest points.

The sting carried out by Tehelka involved secretly filmed interviews with 30 Station Holders (SHOs), the policemen in charge of investigating rape claims, in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). Delhi happens to be India’s “rape capital” and 17 of the 30 SHO’s in this area repeatedly insisted that the majority of rape claims they received were false. The approximations varied. “It’s consensual most of the time” was the insistence of one policeman. When asked to put a figure on the number of genuine rape complaints, another suggested 10%. Manoj Rawat, a sub-inspector in a nearby precinct, was less generous: “My personal view is that there are one or two per cent rape cases in [the] NCR”.

There is a tragic chain of causation that this attitude fails to break: without adequate investigations and in the absence of convictions, rapists go undeterred and more women come forward simply to reinforce police perceptions of false victimhood. The policemen can also be heard perpetuating all the retrograde myths about victim complicity. “No rape happens in Delhi without a woman’s provocation”: drinking, “indecent” clothing, flirtatious behaviour and, most absurdly, working with men are all things done by women to “induce” men into violating them.

If not inducement, women are busy profiting from the “rape industry”. According to one policeman, it is the women who come forward as victims that are to blame for turning rape into a profitable enterprise. Those that lodge complaints must be extortionists or short-changed escorts because “real” victims would be too constrained by their modesty to report a rape. By this absurd logic, it’s better to suffer in silence than face the indignity of seeking justice. Caste and class prejudices are also at play. One policeman is adamant that for poorer women, alleging rape is a  “source of income”. Another is certain that all victims from Nepal or Darjeeling are “sex-workers”.

The alarming disregard for the seriousness of rape was made clear last month during theNoida scandal, in which policemen responsible for investigating a complaint made public the identity and the address of a gang-rape victim. In a press conference the policemen went further, accusing the victim’s mother, as a divorcee cohabiting with a younger man, of setting a “wayward” example. The Indian penal code stipulates a two-year sentence for the illegal release of the personal details of rape victims and yet no police officer has been dismissed or charged. Apathy characterises the police’s rape prevention methods: following the Noida scandal, women in the NCR were told to stay indoors after 8pm and a curfew was duly imposed.

And yet, the most disheartening aspect of the exposé is the knowledge that these comments are the products of a much wider and much bleaker cultural attitude. In India, the suggestion that there is such a thing as marital rape is laughed at, and the high incidence of the rape of minors and the failure to report custodial rape all point to an institutional rape-denial complex. The immediate question is to ask, if this is the attitude of policemen in Delhi, a relatively progressive enclave, what is the experience of rape victims in India’s hinterland?

The stigmatisation of rape victims has a grave chilling effect on the number of reported incidents. Some figures suggest that 1 in every 50 rape case in India is reported. Of those, Delhi and the NCR have a conviction rate of just 30%. This problem is one compounded by the gaping disjuncture between law and order. Indian lawyers and activists complain that the problem is one of enforcement and the fact that rape-denial is a front-line issue is perhaps its most pernicious aspect: without the ability to adequately report rapes, women are denied recourse at the first instance.

The issue of rape-denial among India’s police force is also symptomatic of a structural problem: India’s police have long been a sort of vigilante force. Corruption is rife, custodial violence is common and policemen are rarely held to account. In this context, the dismissal of rape-victims becomes but one aspect of the police force’s indiscriminate hostility towards victims. The muted national response to the Tehelka investigation is therefore easily explained. Few, if any, retain faith in India’s police and with their reputation as a rogue force, pervasive rape denial becomes a relatively minor transgression.

Kiran Bedi, India’s Judge Judy and a celebrity policewoman, has come out insisting that a lack of training is the problem. She proposes “brainwashing” the police into taking rape seriously. Other senior figures have offered less risible solutions: have female police officers lead rape investigations or introduce quotas to encourage women to join the force. There are also those that argue that the police must not only be just, but be seen to be just and so dismissals are what are required to rebuild trust.

But each of these proposals falls far short. Just how much training is needed to purge these men of their age-old personal and professional prejudice? Critics are right to complain that training offers nothing by way of a guarantee that these policemen will have changed. Equally, India has an almost catastrophically low police to population ratio. Expunging a senior layer of police officials would only perpetuate the legal void in which rapists already act. And to argue that diversification is needed is to kick the issue into the long grass. Not only does rape-denial need to be addressed immediately, but, there is no reason to hope that the presence of policewomen will change anything: the one female police officer interviewed during the investigation parroted the same misogynistic views.

So how should a country respond when its police force is found wanting? Indians may have failed to react to the news of rape denial, but the pressing need for a viable solution is their cue to finally do something about it.

Ram Mashru

Listen to women in times of war

This article originally appeared in Prospect Magazine.

Earlier this week, the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) held an event at which speakers debated the motion: “Women’s empowerment and sustainable development—have we failed?”

Leymah Gbowee, the 2011 Nobel peace prize co-laureate and Liberian peace activist, spoke illuminatingly about the crucial role women play in times of conflict. She highlighted the unique ways in which women facilitate peace in times of war.

Firstly it is women who provide basic services, in the form of food and shelter, to those internally displaced by civil war. It is also women who negotiate and secure safe passage through checkpoints set up by rival factions. And, thirdly, women negotiate peace on behalf of their communities by identifying and validating those that are members of the community. Women carry out these roles in the face of the constant threats of kidnapping, rape and murder.

The paradox of war is that women find themselves empowered during times of conflict to the same degree that they are disempowered in times of peace. When conflicts end, Gbowee explained, women are dismissed as underqualified and so excluded from formal peace negotiations. She has called for recognition of the valuable experience of women during times of conflict. Her efforts as an activist involve encouraging female participation in elections.

The fact that conflict affects men and women differently has only recently begun to influence the peacekeeping and development efforts of foreign governments and NGOs. The constant threat of rape directly inhibits the ability of women to carry out their peace-facilitating roles. Gry Larsen, the Norwegian state secretary for Foreign Affairs, spoke at the debate of the importance of gender-appropriate post-conflict strategies.

Making development and aid projects gender-appropriate often involve simple considerations of logistics, management and communication. Placing food stores, medical tents and toilets, for example, closer to communities, along well-travelled routes or in open spaces significantly reduces the risk of rape. And information relating to when and where fresh aid supplies will be delivered allow women, who most often collect the aid, to arrange safe travel.

Ram Mashru

‘It’s a girl: the three deadliest words in the world’

This article has been republished in The Independent. 

It’s a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.

The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are ‘missing’. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.

Gendercide in South Asia takes many forms: baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. Girls that are not killed often suffer malnutrition and medical neglect as sons are favoured when shelter, medicine and food are scarce. Trafficking, dowry deaths, honour killings and deaths resulting from domestic violence are all further evils perpetrated against women. This femicide has led the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces to report in ‘Women in an Insecure World’ that a secret genocide is being carried out against women at a time when deaths resulting from armed conflicts have decreased.

The brutal irony of femicide is that it is an evil perpetrated against girls by women. The most insidious force is often the mother in law, the domestic matriarch, under whose authority the daughter in law lives. Policy efforts to halt infanticide have been directed at mothers, who are often victims themselves. The trailer shows tragic scenes of women having to decide between killing their daughters and their own well-being. In India women who fail to produce sons are beaten, raped or killed so that men can remarry in the hope of procuring a more productive wife.

It is an oft-made argument that parental discrimination between children would end if families across south Asia were rescued from poverty. But two factors particularly suggest that femicide is a cultural phenomenon and that development and economic policy are only a partial solution: Firstly, there is no evidence of concerted female infanticide among poverty-stricken societies in Africa or the Caribbean. Secondly, it is the affluent and urban middle classes, who are aware of prenatal screenings, who have access to clinics and who can afford abortions that commit foeticide. Activists fear 8 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the last decade.

The Chinese cultural bias towards male children is one exacerbated by the birth control policy. India, however, poses a more complex problem where the primary cause is a cultural one.

Activists attribute a culture of valuing children by their economic potential to South Asia’s patriarchal social model in which men are the sole breadwinners. Sons both carry the family name and work from a young age. Daughter, on the other hand, impose the burden of a dowry before leaving the home upon marriage. Strict moral codes, onerous cultural expectations and demanding domestic responsibilities are all forces that further subjugate women.

Dr Saleem ur Rehman, director of health services for the Kashmiri Valley, has conceded that a healthy male to female infant ratio in Kashmir in 2001 led him and his team to become complacent. Since 2001, the ratio has dropped from 94.1 to 85.9 girls per 100 boys. The solution, however, lies beyond merely holding officials to account.

The cultural root of the problem partially explains why an effective solution has eluded authorities. Legal prohibitions have proved ineffective. In India, dowries were outlawed 1961 and in 1994 the Prenatal Determination Act outlawed gender selective abortions. Yet dowries remain a condition of marriage and action against unregistered or non-compliant clinics fail to intercept registered medical professionals performing illegal operations.

A crude supply and demand distinction can be drawn. Activists argue the demand for eliminating female fetuses is independent of the supply of illegal services. Only those that can afford to abort will do so. Others simply kill or abandon female infants after birth. This foeticide/infanticide equation will only skew towards the latter if the problem of illegal clinics and criminal doctors were solved.

In the New Statesmen, Laurie Penny explained that South Korea improved its infant gender ratio through a programme of education. But is increasing the awareness of contraception, abortion laws and women’s rights a panacea? No. Educational efforts insufficiently target the core cultural canker. Similarly, economic policed designed to encourage development are necessary but insufficient. Any improvement in living conditions is unlikely to offset the financial burden of raising a child and a dowry.

A solution therefore must be three-fold. Policy efforts combatting poverty must be supplemented by legal prohibitions. There must be an educational programme informing women of their rights. Finally and most importantly, there must be a social and religions campaign aimed at destroying ossified cultural attitudes.

The distinction between, on the one hand a programme of economics and education and on the other a cultural campaign is not qualitative but quantitative. The latter warrants a greater level of official engagement, allowing governments to actively discourage femicide rather than passively encouraging change.

A ‘secret genocide’ is a malaise in response to which government paternalism must surely be justified. In Kashmir, officials have enlisted the help of social and religious leaders. It is religious and social leaders that must reinforce legal prohibitions on dowries with campaigns attacking the social pressures of producing one. And they must supplement information of women’s rights by persuading mothers to educate their daughters and to allow their daughters to work. These cultural channels are best placed to begin to erode sexist cultural monoliths.

Ram Mashru

[Guest contribution] Occupy Wall Street and the Left: a cautious embrace

In the shadow of what should have been the World Trade Centre, anarchists, punks, the unsatisfied and the disenfranchised gathered on September 17^th to protest against the disproportionate power of the US corporate elite. One month on, the Occupy Wall Street movement has its own Wikipedia page. But political parties have failed to realise the potential currency and potential implications of these protests; this is an opportunity to gain traction with voters at a time of widespread political malaise.

Hari Simran, a protester in Washington interviewed for Time magazine, put his finger on it; ‘the exact concrete solutions may not have materialised yet, but the wonderful thing about it is [that] we’re open to change and ready for some paradigm shift’. In fact, the greatest strength of the movement will be its ability to unite those who never imagined they’d be in agreement. Its capacity to pull in those who have a feeling of social disenfranchisement, those who can’t quite articulate exactly what’s wrong, and don’t profess to know the answers, means that the influence of the protests will be far deeper than its physical size suggests.

The unifying idea is bold and simple without being precise. How can the recent Tory conference tagline ‘Leadership for a Better Future’ hope to stand up against ‘Occupy Everything’? The movement undermined its critics when banners began to appear explaining ‘we are not disorganised, America just has too many issues’. Similarly, the London branch of the protests has seen participation by traveller groups, young intellectuals and old hand social activists. The combination of its inability to be pinned to any one group or issue means the protests’ appeal remains open to all. We only need look at the fact that since mid-September sign-ups for the Occupy Facebook page have doubled every three days to see the movement is rapidly growing .

This type of movement is not unprecedented. The Tea party movement began life on Twitter, and before long Ed Goeas, later a consultant for Michelle Bachman, was advising clients to avoid taking ownership of the message and instead to exploit the ‘consensus’. From gatherings of 120 people in Seattle, in 2010 the Tea Party was instrumental in delivering Republicans control of Congress. And, of course, the Arab Spring sentiment was broad enough to cover the political discontents of populations from Casablanca to Cairo. Without predicting the future of the movement, its predecessors suggest big things.

It’s high time the political Left learnt to use this type of protest to its advantage, embracing the fact that its traditional voting base has come out in droves in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A big advantage for the Left is the fact that the political Right are alienated by events like this. They marginalise their own core voters by supporting something which looks too close to anarchism for comfort, and appear out of touch if they don’t acknowledge its significance. What is David Cameron to do when his own political jingo of the ‘Big Society’ is repackaged and sent back with teeth? Labour need to jump on the bandwagon just as the Democrats have been with Obama admitting ‘we got sold out’. Just as Obama won in 2008 by picking up the ideological strands of young undecided voters and weaving them back into Democrat support, the liberal Left have an opportunity to reinvigorate their message with recent events.

The issues and opinions illustrated in Ed Milliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference are not out of tune with those expressed by the protesters. Whilst some have argued that his liberal stance left the party unelectable, the Occupy protests have proven them wrong. There are evident areas of overlap, and Labour should identify and build on these.

The methods, however, are key. Labour needs to show support for the movement and its sentiments, without promising to be the political solution to their grievances. To align too closely is dangerous; no-one knows the direction the protests will take. Moreover, there is a large majority in Britain for whom the protests are the summer riots by another name. Simon Jenkins has even written in The Guardian that the protests need ‘the threat of violence’ to be effective. Ed Milliband cannot afford to alienate those within the party positioned closer to the centre-ground. But these are reasons to be cautious, not to ignore the political potential of such a connection altogether.

A potentially troublesome issue could be the reluctance of the protesters to accept political ties. Many within the movement are stridently anti-establishment. However, one way to counter those who suggest that the protests have no answers would be for the leaders of the Occupy campaign to engage in policy discussions. To assuage any concerns about allying with a particular partisan agenda, the Left should get involved simply to set up a dialogue. No hard and fast link, but a strong message that if there is to be a political solution, the Labour party should be facilitating it. There are advantages for the protesters too in legitimising their cause.

This is a golden opportunity and one which Labour strategists need urgently to grab hold of. Ed’s message will be infinitely stronger if he can match his rhetoric to real activism. After all, which political party wouldn’t want to have the support of the strongest political protest movement in years, the 99%?

Katie Young is an undergraduate in History at Cambridge University. She writes on issues including American and UK politics and East Asian affairs.

[Guest contribution] The resources race: Chinese encroachment and western procrastination

The international community’s eye remains fixed on North Africa with the frantic search for fugitive Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi yet to reach its inevitable conclusion. As a result a significant event in Sub-Saharan Africa, one particularly pertinent for the global economy, has gone unnoticed. The event that occurred in Zambia was a presidential election. The election campaign drew to light an expanding phenomenon on the continent: China’s encroachment.

Incumbent Zambian president Rupiah Banda received considerable financial backing from a number of Chinese multinationals in the run-up to polling day, an unsurprising fact given Banda’s openness to Chinese investment over the past few years. What is surprising is that Banda lost, beaten by Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front, whose campaign questioned the increasing intrusion of scrupulous Chinese businessmen into the daily lives of ordinary Zambians.

This was a rare setback for Chinese interests on the continent, an area the People’s Republic has targeted as crucial for foreign direct investment. China have invested millions of dollars in Zambian projects in recent years and what remains to be seen is whether Sata can, or wants to, restrict Chinese influence in the country. China has taken a systematic approach to expropriating the natural wealth of Africa, taking advantage of Western procrastination on a continent the Europeans once dominated.

Today, Africa’s riches remain a well-known secret. Copper; cobalt; uranium; platinum and many other metal ores can be found in Africa’s bountiful soils. Yet it appears only the Chinese have recognised the true value of directly investing in the extraction of such riches on the continent.

Chinese Encroachment

The West is in direct competition with China for the world’s remaining untapped natural resources and, by extension, international reach and influence. Whilst the West has become mired in economic woe the Chinese economic engine has driven on relentlessly, experiencing only the smallest of sputters along the way. It is unsurprising therefore that Chinese companies have been more active in seeking out new places of investment, from the copper fields of Chile to the uranium mines of Sudan.

Chinese interest in Africa is not simply a moment of opportunism. Whilst Western countries are preoccupied with internal rumblings and international conflicts China has, since the turn of the twenty-first century, been investing in Africa, providing cheap resources for the People’s Republic and a plethora of new jobs and infrastructural improvements for several African nations. The West, on the other hand, has failed to react to such a promising premise, ensuring that for the foreseeable future it will be unable to wield the same influence that its Chinese rivals do on the continent.

Western Procrastination

Take Great Britain as an example. The British government and its companies are the third largest providers of foreign development investment in the world, investing millions more dollars each year than their Chinese counterparts overall. Furthermore, British foreign development investment stocks in Africa (over $10bn) amount to a greater sum than the Chinese equivalent, which in 2005 stood at around $1.6bn. However, whilst British investment remains narrowly focused on the oil industry and manufacturing enterprises, Chinese investment has been more diverse, targeting the more profitable mining industry. Additionally, Chinese investment in Africa is growing in percentage terms whilst British investment is declining.

Despite the volatile nature of Britain’s overseas resources, as highlighted by the Arab Spring and the unpredictability of the Middle East as a region, there has been no urgency to look for alternative sources. If Britain wants to remain a world power, its economic and political leaders need to take a more pragmatic approach to resource acquisition. Resources will continue to power the global economy in the near future. Even if Britain is no longer a world-leading manufacturer, which is no doubt a significant cause of its current economic troubles, possession of resources may well shape the British future by providing the necessary supplies to power a modern society.

A Question of Morality?

One argument against British investment in Africa is that foreign money is often used to prop up morally bankrupt regimes. There is truth in this assertion. The Chinese government has overlooked the human rights records of some of its key trading partners. Most notorious perhaps is Sudan, where Chinese money is believed to have been used by President Omar Al-Bashir to wage war in the troubled Darfur region. Questionable governments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and Algeria can also be said to have benefited from the influx of Chinese foreign development investment.

But whilst British human rights activists would be quick to decry such investment, a degree of self-examination is needed. Any country in the world can be seen as “morally bankrupt” depending on the viewer and the accepted values of their culture. It is very easy to pass judgement on others without looking at one’s own trading partners. The ties between Britain and Gadaffi’s Libya should offer a dose of reality.

In an ideal world we would be dictated by moral considerations. However during such trying times, the Western world, and Britain especially, needs to take a more ruthless approach in securing its future. The Chinese have taken such an attitude and look set to soon become the world’s greatest economic power.

Once again, Africa offers a case study for world geopolitics. As with the great Victorian explorers of the nineteenth century, Britain should once more penetrate the heart of darkness although this time without the guns.

Stefan Lang holds an undergraduate and masters degree in History & Politics from Birmingham University. He writes on issues including East Asian politics, African society and economic development.

India’s democracy: beginning to ask the right questions

Intelligence Squared is soon going to hold a debate with the motion ‘Democracy is India’s Achilles heel’. A sentence in the blurb reveals the debate’s facile focus: ‘A country that is striving to be an economic powerhouse is being pulled down by its political system’.

The debate is typical of the enquiries ‘the West’ make of India and the efficacy of her political system. But such narrow discussions contain glaring omissions.  If we want to take measure of India’s democratic failings we must look at domestic and not economic policy.

Whenever domestic policies are discussed, the discussions are more often than not shamefully complacent. A recent parliamentary debate on ‘Human rights in the Indian-subcontinent’ serves as but one example. In the debate Barry Gardiner, the MP and chair of The Labour Friends of India, set out to remind ‘the world’ that India continues to be a ‘beacon of tolerance, peace and democracy’ in the face of ‘some of the most serious security threats faced by any country in the world’. It’s true that India suffers regular and devastating attacks on its soil from terrorist groups that fly under many banners but it’s laughable to describe India’s response to these threats as ‘tolerant’. How could Parliament not know of the allegations of torture, arbitrary arrest and extra-judicial imprisonment leveled against India’s government?

The debate was a waste of parliamentary time for another reason. It set out to celebrate India’s commitment to human rights whilst condemning India’s ‘unstable’ and ‘dangerous’ neighbours. To praise India whilst criticizing Burma and Pakistan, among others, not only defies the facts but betrays a prejudice. The UK and India share a great trade and defense relationship, one highlighted by the very successful corporate delegation Cameron led to India last year. Who are The Labour Friends of India to complicate this lucrative dialogue with talk of India’s rights violations?

The complacency of ‘the West’ is matched by the apathy of India’s politicians. Sonia Gandhi, a pariah figure among India’s political classes, has defied the currents of the nation’s political and corporate mood by warning that the cost of India’s ruthless economic drive is the ‘shrinking’ of the country’s ‘moral universe’. Sonia Gandhi’s words, powerful as they may be, will only be met with a cynical reception. It is a shame that there is not a more popular or respected voice speaking out about the harm caused by India’s economic pursuits.

The greatest failings of India’s policy efforts are domestic. Internal security, poverty and health and human rights are all areas in which India’s democracy has proved to be a greater Achilles heel.

Security

India is a nation fighting a war on two fronts. She is subject to regular attacks by foreign terrorists and home-grown militants; a combined threat posed by Islamist extremists, Maoist insurgents and Kashmiri separatists. Dr Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, has described the Maoist insurgency as the greatest internal security threat to face India since the country gained independence in 1947.

The Maoists who occupy the ‘Maoist corridor’, a region spanning central India, have a single aim: the overthrow of the Indian government by 2025. Arundhati Roy, the novelist turned polemicist who documents her stay with the Maoists in ‘Broken Republic’, concedes that no government can negotiate effectively with a group intent on their destruction. But she argues that better governance would extinguish many of the flames around which the Maoists rally. Instead, the government has chosen to fight fire with fire. In Chhattisgarh, the state most affected by the Maoist insurgency, the local government has formed a vigilante army of teenagers to fight the Maoist’s child soldiers.

The silent but persistent threat of the guerrilla war is contrasted by the inconsistent and tragic acts of terrorism by religious fundamentalists. Mumbai suffered yet another terrorist attack in July of this year but the emotion that characterised Mumbai’s response was not grief or revenge but anger. And this anger was directed in equally against the fanatic murderers and the city’s administration, who many felt had failed to take effective steps to secure the city since the attacks on the Taj Hotel in 2008. A day after the Mumbai attacks Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi political dynasty, remarked flippantly that it is ‘very difficult to stop every attack’ and that ‘one or two…will get through’. This sort of political misjudgment has reinforced public accusations of the ineptness and apathy of India’s government. Many felt that political corruption and lack of concern were to blame for the lack of intelligence and for the failure to mount an effective security response. The disaffection entrenched by persistent security failings was encapsulated by the Times of India who reported on their front page, ‘Our politicians fiddle as innocents die’.

Health and Poverty

The plight of most Indians is ignored by discussions of India’s unrealised economic potential. Manmohan Singh described malnutrition in India as the country’s ‘blackest mark’ whilst Syeda Hameed, a member of India’s Planning Commission, conceded that India is worse than Bangladesh and Pakistan in terms of a failure to provide basic nourishment. India’s Family Health Survey reported that just under 46% of children under three, amounting to roughly 80 million, are undernourished. This number is made more shocking by the fact that the current percentage represents a mere 1% improvement after seven years. UNICEF reports that 2.1 million children die annually in India before the age of 5 primarily as a result of malnutrition. But this risk of death is increased by the lack of health facilities and proper hygiene.

The stark failure of the government to act effectively is highlighted further by the country’s poverty figures. In times when India’s economy is growing by around 8%, more than 800 million Indians continue live on under $2 a day.

Human rights violations

The torture scenes of Slumdog Millionaire were not a fiction and the practice of ‘reclaiming’ the lands of subsistence farmers for infrastructure projects without compensation is widely documented. Yet the international community seem both blind and deaf to allegations of torture and land theft perpetrated by the Indian government.

WikiLeaks revealed that in 2005 the Red Cross briefed US diplomats in Delhi about the use of electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation against hundreds of military detainees. One cable reports that the US embassy in Delhi heard from the Red Cross that the Indian government had not acted to halt the ‘continued ill-treatment of detainees’. The Red Cross are said to have concluded that the Indian government ‘condones torture’ and that the victims of torture were routinely killed.

The ‘reclamation’ of land is a programme of rights infringement, which the government seem to be less, concerned about hiding. As demands for iron ore and coal increase, so has the rate of displacement. Ramachandra Guha, a historian, has compared the treatment by India of its tribal groups to the persecution of Australia’s aboriginal population. The sole distinction he draws is that in India, things appear to be getting worse.

The sentiment that India’s ruthless economic progress victimizes the poor was expressed by India’s, normally conservative Supreme Court, which remarked that ‘every step [taken] seems to give rise to insurgency and political extremism’. The Supreme Court went further to observe that ‘development’ has become, for millions of Indians, ‘a dreadful and hated word’. The Court made these remarks in a case concerning the acquisition of land by a company that had failed to compensate its tribal owner for 23 years.

Conclusion

A recent article in the FT described India as a ‘land of paradox’. It cited an 8% growth rate and a growing, consumerist middle class and compared it with figures that in some Indian states, the number of those living in poverty or suffering from malnutrition exceed the numbers in sub-Saharan Africa. This ‘central contradiction’ seems to reflect John Galbraith’s economic model that ‘”if you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the sparrows”. But this is a political and policy strategy that is, evidently, failing.

The inadvertent success of the recent resurgence in the anti-graft campaign and Anna Hazare’s hunger strike was the exposure of the extent of corruption in India’s political system. A necessary outcome of this exposure must be that the international community take a more critical stance towards India’s political and domestic failings. A discussion on India’s democracy without any consideration of India’s domestic policy failings is frankly a debate not worth having.

Ram Mashru

Related articles

• Anger rises in India over redrawn poverty line (cnn.com)
• You: Maoists fanning into Indian cities (nation.com.pk)

The Nuclear Distraction: why we must not cast a blind eye on Iran’s violations of fundamental rights

Western preoccupation with Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has distracted the international focus away from the other key issue: that of the government’s human rights violations. International groups have called for a UN led effort to hold Iran to account for its violation of international treaty obligations, and for the contempt it shows for both the international community and its own citizens. If the UN is to be effective, the international community must apply more consistent pressure.

Voluntary human rights obligations

Iran has ratified numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and conventions on issues such as racial discrimination and children’s rights. Such obligations have been frequently violated. Thus UN reports highlight government persecution of minority groups, imprisonment of political activists, torture and the executions of its most ardent opponents.

Iran’s response to criticism over its human rights record, that foreign governments shouldn’t interfere in its internal political matters, is difficult to justify. Voluntarily undertaken human rights obligations are not internal political matters but legal norms defined and substantiated by international law.

UN inefficacy

Maziar Bahari, an Iranian journalist imprisoned in Iran for 119 days, has argued that the UN must lead the effort to hold Iran to account. He argues that the UN is one of the few international institutions recognised by Iran as legitimate and so has urged the UN to mandate an official investigator in Iran.

But the UN is not the solution. Propositions involving the UN both overestimate the persuasive force of UN demands and fail to recognise the contempt Iran has shown to this institution. The Universal Period Review carried out in February by the UN Office of Human Rights is an example of both the impotence of UN efforts and the lip service paid to this organization by Iran.

The UPR has made recommendations to improve human rights protection in line with Iran’s treaty obligations. Iran claims to be willing to cooperate with the UNHRC but its response to the recommendations has been described as ‘cynical’ by Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International has led the criticism of the inconsistency with which the Iranian government responded, condemning in particular Iran’s acceptance of the recommendation to respect religious freedom but rejection of the request to end discrimination of Baha’is, a religious minority. The government further rejected recommendations to end juvenile executions, rejected guarantees to uphold fair trials, refused to investigate torture and rape allegations and refused to release people detained for peacefully exercising their human rights. Hassiba Sahraoui, the Middle East Deputy Director at Amnesty International, has argued that the rejection of certain recommendations and acceptance of others similar, casts doubt on the prospect of proper implementation.

Other UN attempts to address the rights’ abuses have been restrained and UN General Assembly Resolution 64/176 is timid. In it the General Assembly express their ‘deep concern’ at extra-judicial executions, floggings and amputations as punishments and of the persistent failure to provide due process of law rights. They also express their ‘concern’ over the worsening of human rights violations after the 2009 Presidential election. And yet the resolution ends by a mere ‘call’ for cooperation, a ‘request’ for the Secretary General to submit another report and commits the UN to continue examining human rights in Iran. A General Assembly resolution is a demand without a sanction.

Missed opportunities

The disputed 2009 elections are emblematic of the gross human rights violations in Iran. Critics of the government were arbitrarily arrested, harassed, detained, imprisoned and tortured. The government claimed to be carrying out investigations into the torture and killings but no one appears to have been brought to justice. Iran continues to mislead the Human Rights Council by making claims that it will implement recommendations made by Governments to conduct transparent and independent investigations. But according to Amnesty International, Iranian security forces continue to arrest, detain or convict those alleged to be involved in the post-election unrest. Political and civil society activists remain in prison and, according to the Iranian judiciary, 250 people have been prosecuted in relation to the post-election unrest and at least six of those accused of taking part are at risk of execution after their death sentences were confirmed by appellate courts.

The flagrant human rights abuses committed during the 2009 election were an opportunity for the international community to unite behind the UN and demand reform. The reluctance of the international community to mount an effective challenge at the time has cost the complete loss of political momentum. With the dust having settled on the election, the international community remains once again singularly focussed on the nuclear threat.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN Summit last year represented another opportunity lost by the international community to engage directly with Iran over its human rights record. When Obama condemned Mr Ahmadinejad’s ‘hateful’ speech, he was predictably light handed on the issue of human rights. The White House transcript of an interview with Obama after the Summit is embarrassing evidence of just how little political space and time was dedicated to the issue of Iran’s human rights abuses. Obama claimed to ‘stand by’ the Iranian people but not once called on Iran to reform and Obama was quick to say he had ‘no interest’ in ‘meddling’ with the rights of people to choose their own government. But what is needed is not a claim to stand by the Iranian people but an effort to speak for the Iranian political and civil activists silenced by imprisonment and torture.

The case for political pressure

Political pressure mounted by the international community is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, the UN is the only international institution that is legally empowered and therefore justified in holding Iran to account. Any action taken by the international community that would circumvent UN machinery would be illegitimate. Instead, UN member states must support this body because is it clear that Iran has no intention of taking the Human Rights Council and, by extension, the UN, seriously.

Secondly, political pressure is necessary because the international community is obliged to speak on behalf of silenced Iranian activists. For Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize Winning Iranian human rights activist, of paramount importance is the release of civil and political detainees in Iran. Like so many others working to restore human rights in Iran, Mrs Ebadi recognises that the Iranian people must be allowed the opportunity to hold their own government to account. So long as civil and political activists are suppressed, the Iranian people are denied the ability to demand their human rights for themselves. The lack of a political voice of the Iranian people is why the international community must speak on their behalf. The international community must not ‘meddle’ with their rights, must not impose its own understanding of human rights, but simply need do as Obama claims, and stand by the Iranian people by voicing their complaints.

The question that will be asked is whether political pressure will be effective when legal measures have proved futile. But the question should not be one of efficacy but one of necessity. The international community must transform their silent signatures on UN Resolutions into insistent political criticism because the Iranian people, for fear of intimidation, imprisonment and torture, are unable to criticise the government for themselves. The international community must condemn Iran’s human rights violations in the same way it has condemned Iran’s uranium enrichment. The Iranian government may be blind to the human rights abuses it perpetrates but it cannot be deaf to international political condemnation.

 Conclusions

A parliamentary report published in 2009 described the human rights abuses in Iran as systematic, yet little parliamentary time has been spent discussing the government response to these abuses. Occasional political statements and a few early day Parliamentary motions do not amount to political pressure. The British government need to do more and should lead the international community in holding Mr Ahmadinejad’s administration to account.

It is widely felt that ‘the West’ is hesitant to complicate the dialogue with Iran over the nuclear programme by discussing human rights or regional peace. Mrs Ebadi argues that non-democratic, non-liberal states like Iran pose a greater threat to peace in the Middle East than nuclear weapons. She goes further to accuse Western governments of forgetting about the subrogation of human rights in Iran since the beginning of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The nuclear programme has ensured that Iran remains central to western foreign policy concerns.  The argument made is one of political reemphasis, not of political refocus: concern about the nuclear threat is self-evidently important, but the threatened nuclear capability should not dominate political discussion to the exclusion of gross human rights violations. As a signatory to human rights treaties, Iran is in violation of international law as a result of its abuses of fundamental rights and governments must hold Iran to account for this. The West is obliged to give the issue of rights violations the space it deserves in political discourse because we have a legal and moral duty to hold the Iranian government to account for the violations of voluntarily undertaken human rights obligations.

Ram Mashru