Special Report – Thailand secretly dumps Myanmar refugees into trafficking rings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 OF 21. Bozor Mohammed from the Rakhine state in Myanmar stands near a wall after an interview at his house in Kuala Lumpur November 8, 2013. Picture taken November 8.

CREDIT: REUTERS/SAMSUL SAID

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(Reuters) – One afternoon in October, in the watery no-man’s land between Thailand and Myanmar, Muhammad Ismail vanished.

Thai immigration officials said he was being deported to Myanmar. In fact, they sold Ismail, 23, and hundreds of other Rohingya Muslims to human traffickers, who then spirited them into brutal jungle camps.

As thousands of Rohingya flee Myanmar to escape religious persecution, a Reuters investigation in three countries has uncovered a clandestine policy to remove Rohingya refugees from Thailand’s immigration detention centers and deliver them to human traffickers waiting at sea.

The Rohingya are then transported across southern Thailand and held hostage in a series of camps hidden near the border with Malaysia until relatives pay thousands of dollars to release them. Reporters located three such camps – two based on the testimony of Rohingya held there, and a third by trekking to the site, heavily guarded, near a village called Baan Klong Tor.

Thousands of Rohingya have passed through this tropical gulag. An untold number have died there. Some have been murdered by camp guards or have perished from dehydration or disease, survivors said in interviews.

The Thai authorities say the movement of Rohingya through their country doesn’t amount to human trafficking. But in interviews for this story, the Thai Royal Police acknowledged, for the first time, a covert policy called “option two” that relies upon established human-smuggling networks to rid Thailand of Rohingya detainees.

Ismail was one of five Rohingya who said that Thai immigration officials had sold him outright or aided in their sale to human traffickers. “It seemed so official at first,” said Ismail, a wiry farmer with a long narrow face and tight curly hair. “They took our photographs. They took our fingerprints. And then once in the boats, about 20 minutes out at sea, we were told we had been sold.”

Ismail said he ended up in a camp in southern Thailand. So did Bozor Mohamed, a Rohingya whose frail body makes him seem younger than his 21 years. The camp was guarded by men with guns and clubs, said Mohamed, and at least one person died every day due to dehydration or disease.

“I used to be a strong man,” the former rice farmer said in an interview, as he massaged his withered legs.

Mohamed and others say they endured hunger, filth and multiple beatings. Mohamed’s elbow and back are scarred from what he said were beatings administered by his captors in Thailand while he telephoned his brother-in-law in Malaysia, begging him to pay the $2,000 (1,220.93 pounds) ransom they demanded. Some men failed to find a benefactor in Malaysia to pay their ransom. The camp became their home. “They had long beards and their hair was so long, down to the middle of their backs, that they looked liked women,” said Mohamed.

“HOLDING BAYS”

What ultimately happens to Rohingya who can’t buy their freedom remains unclear. A Thai-based smuggler said some are sold to shipping companies and farms as manual laborers for 5,000 to 50,000 baht each, or $155 to $1,550.

“Prices vary according to their skills,” said the smuggler, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group based in Thailand, says it has interviewed scores of Rohingya who have passed through the Thai camps and into Malaysia. Many Rohingya who can’t pay end up as cooks or guards at the camps, said Chris Lewa, Arakan Project’s director.

Presented with the findings of this report, Thailand’s second-highest-ranking policeman made some startling admissions. Thai officials might have profited from Rohingya smuggling in the past, said Police Maj-Gen Chatchawal Suksomjit, Deputy Commissioner General of the Royal Thai Police. He also confirmed the existence of illegal camps in southern Thailand, which he called “holding bays”.

Tarit Pengdith, chief of the Department of Special Investigation, Thailand’s equivalent of the U.S. FBI, was also asked about the camps Reuters discovered. “We have heard about these camps in southern Thailand,” he said, “but we are not investigating this issue.”

Besieged by a political crisis and violent street protests this week, Thailand faces difficult questions about its future and global status. Among those is whether it will join North Korea, the Central African Republic and Iran among the world’s worst offenders in fighting human trafficking.

The signs are not good.

The U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report ranks countries on their record for combating the crime. For the past four years, Thailand has sat on the TIP Report’s so-called Tier 2 Watch List, the second-lowest rank. It will be automatically downgraded to Tier 3 next year unless it makes what the State Department calls “significant efforts” to eliminate human trafficking.

Dropping to Tier 3 status theoretically carries the threat of U.S. sanctions. In practice, the United States is unlikely to sanction Thailand, one of its oldest treaty allies in Asia. But to be downgraded would be a major embarrassment to Thailand, which is now lobbying hard for a non-permanent position on the United Nations Security Council.

THE ROHINGYA EXODUS

Rohingya are Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh, where they are usually stateless and despised as illegal immigrants. In 2012, two eruptions of violence between Rohingyas and majority Buddhists in Rakhine State in western Myanmar killed at least 192 people and made 140,000 homeless. Most were Rohingya, who live in wretched camps or under apartheid-like segregation with little access to healthcare, schools or jobs.

And so they have fled Myanmar by sea in unprecedented numbers over the past year. Ismail and Mohamed joined tens of thousands of Rohingya in one of the biggest movements of boat people since the end of the Vietnam War.

Widespread bias against the Rohingya in the region, however, makes it difficult for them to find safe haven – and easy to fall into the hands of traffickers. “No one is there to speak for them,” says Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch. “They are a lost people.”

Rohingya men, women and children squeeze aboard overloaded fishing boats and cargo ships to cross the Bay of Bengal. Their desired destination is Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country where at least 31,000 Rohingya already live. As Reuters reported in July, many of these refugees were waylaid in Thailand, where the Thai navy and marine police worked with smugglers to extract money for their onward trip to Malaysia.

Hundreds of Rohingyas were arrested in two headline-grabbing raids by the Thai authorities on January 9 in the towns of Padang Besar and Sadao, both near the Malaysia border. At the time, Colonel Krissakorn Paleetunyawong, deputy commander of police in the area, declared the Rohingya would be deported back to Myanmar. That never happened.

Ismail and Mohamed were among the 393 Rohingya that Thai police say were arrested that day in Padang Besar. So was Ismail’s friend Ediris, 22. The three young men all hailed from Buthedaung, a poor township in northern Rakhine State.

Their story reveals how Thailand, a rapidly developing country in the heart of Southeast Asia, shifted from cracking down on human trafficking camps to facilitating them.

A SECRET POLICY

After their arrest, Ediris and Ismail were brought to an immigration detention center (IDC) in Sadao, where they joined another 300 Rohingya rounded up from a nearby smuggler’s house. The two-story IDC, designed for a few dozen inmates, was overflowing. Women and children were moved to sheltered housing, while some men were sent to other IDCs across Thailand.

With about 1,700 Rohingya locked up nationwide, the Thai government set a July deadline to deport them all and opened talks with Myanmar on how to do it. The talks went nowhere, because the Myanmar government refused to take responsibility for what it regards as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Men and teenage boys languished for months in cramped, cage-like cells, often with barely enough room to sit or stand, much less walk. In June, Reuters journalists visited an IDC in Phang Nga, near the tourist Mecca of Phuket. There were 269 men and boys crammed into a space built for no more than 100. It reeked of urine and sweat. Some detainees used crutches because their muscles had atrophied.

A doctor who inspected Sadao’s IDC in July said he found five emaciated Rohingya clinging to life. Two died on their way to hospital, said the doctor, Anatachai Thaipratan, an advisor of the Thai Islamic Medical Association.

As the plight of Rohingya detainees made world headlines, pressure mounted on Thailand. But Myanmar wouldn’t take them, nor would Malaysia. With thousands more arriving, the U.N.’s refugee agency issued an urgent appeal for alternative housing. The government proposed building a “mega camp” in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, another province in southern Thailand. It was rejected after an outcry from local people.

In early August, 270 Rohingya rioted at the IDC in Phang Nga. Men tore off doors separating cells, demanding to be let outside to pray at the close of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Over the last three weeks of August, more than 300 Rohingya fled from five detention centers.

By this time, Mohamed, the 21-year-old refugee, could no longer walk, let alone escape. His leg muscles had wasted away from months in detention in a cell shared by 95 Rohingya men. Ismail and Ediris were shuttled between various IDCs, ending up in Nong Khai, a city on Thailand’s northern border with Laos.

Thailand saw its options rapidly dwindling, a senior government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It couldn’t protest to Myanmar’s government to improve the lives of Rohingya and stem the exodus, the official said. That could ruffle diplomatic feathers and even jeopardize the access of Thai companies hoping to invest in Myanmar, one of the world’s hottest frontier markets.

Nor could Thailand arrest, prosecute and jail the Rohingya for breaking Thai immigration law – there were simply too many of them. “There would be no room in our prison cells,” Police Maj-Gen Chatchawal said.

That growing problem gave birth to “option two” in October, a secret policy to deport the refugees back to Myanmar that led to Rohingyas being sold to human trafficking networks.

A hint of the policy shift came weeks earlier, on September 13, when Police Lt. Gen. Panu Kerdlarppol, chief of the Immigration Bureau, met with officials from other agencies on the resort island of Koh Samui to decide what to do with the Rohingya. Afterwards, Kerdlarppol announced that immigration authorities would take statements from the Rohingya “to arrange their deportation” and see if any want to go home. Arrangements would be made for those who did.

By early October, 2,058 Rohingya were held in 14 IDCs across Thailand, according to the Internal Security Operations Command, a national security agency run by the Thai military. A month later, that number stood at about 600, according to non-governmental organizations and Muslim aid workers. By the first week of December, it was 154, Thailand’s immigration department said.

Rohingya were fast disappearing from Thailand’s IDCs, and nobody knew where they were going.

“WE NOW BELONGED TO THEM”

Central to the policy was Ranong, a sparsely populated Thai province whose geography has always made it a smugglers’ paradise. Ranong shares a long, ill-policed land and sea border with Myanmar. Its coastline is blanketed in dense mangrove forest and dotted with small, often uninhabited islands.

The provincial capital, also called Ranong, was built on tin mining but now lives off fishingand tourism. Rust-streaked trawlers from Thailand and Burma ply the same waters as dive boats and yachts. So do wooden “long-tail” boats, named after their extended drive-shafts, which ferry Burmese migrant workers to the Myanmar port of Kawthaung, only a 30-minute voyage away.

By late October, hundreds of Rohingya were being packed onto immigration trucks and driven to Ranong for processing and deportation. Among them were Ismail and Ediris, who arrived in the port city after a grueling, standing room-only journey of 1,200 km (746 miles) from Nong Khai.

At Ranong’s IDC, they were photographed and told by Thai immigration officers they were being sent back to Myanmar. “They said no other countries were accepting Rohingya, and Myanmar had become peaceful,” said Ismail.

Then they were driven to a Ranong pier and herded onto four long-tail boats, each with a three-man crew of Thais and Burmese. Once at sea, the Rohingya asked the boat driver to help them. The Burmese-speaking driver shook his head and told the Rohingya they had been sold by Thai immigration officials for 11,000 baht ($350) each.

“They told us we now belonged to them,” said Ismail.

After about 30 minutes at sea, the boats stopped. It was early afternoon on October 23. The vessels waited until about 6 p.m., when a large fishing boat arrived. They were loaded aboard and sailed through the night until they reached a jungle island, separated from the mainland by a narrow river. It was about 4 a.m.

Ismail said he saw about 200 other Rohingya in that camp, mostly sleeping and guarded by men with guns. The guards shoved Ismail and the others into a muddy clearing. There was no water or food. He was told he must pay 60,000 Thai baht ($1,850). Did he have family who could send the money? If he did, he could go wherever he wanted, Ismail said he was told. “If you don’t, we’ll use this,” one guard said, showing an iron rod.

Ismail had some cash but not enough. “We need to escape,” he whispered to Ediris. After an hour at the camp, just before dawn, the two men made their move. A guard fired shots in the air as they ran through the jungle and waded through a river to reach the mainland. For the next 24 hours, they survived by drinking stream-water and eating the bark of banana trees. They emerged onto a rubber plantation, their feet lacerated from the bare-foot jungle trek, and met a Burmese man who promised to spirit them into Malaysia for 8,000 baht, or $250, each.

They agreed and were driven to a house in southern Thailand, where Reuters interviewed them hours before they were smuggled by pick-up across the Malaysian border.

THE JUNGLE CAMPS

Bozor Mohamed, the third young Rohingya from Buthedaung, said he was held for 10 days at a jungle camp in Padang Besar.

He, too, said he had been delivered by Thai officials to trafficking boats along the maritime border with Myanmar. Afterwards, in torrential rain and under cover of darkness, along with perhaps 200 other Rohingya, Mohamed said he was ferried back across the strait to Thailand, where a new ordeal began.

The men were taken on a two-day journey by van, motor-bike, and foot to a smuggler’s camp on the border with Malaysia. On the final hike, men with canes beat the young Rohingya and the others, many of them hobbled by months of detention. They stumbled and dragged themselves up steep forested hills.

Making the same trek was Mohamed Hassan, a fourth Rohingya to escape Thailand’s trafficking network. Hassan is a baby-faced 19-year-old from the Rakhine capital of Sittwe.

He said he arrived at the camp in September after an overnight journey in a pick-up truck, followed by a two-hour walk into the hills with dozens of other Rohingya. Their captors ordered them to carry supplies, he said. Already giddy with fatigue and hunger after eight days at sea, the 19-year-old shouldered a sack of rice. “If we stopped, the men beat us with sticks,” he said.

The camp was partially skirted by a barbed-wire fence, he said, and guarded by about 25 men with guns, knives and clubs. Hassan reckoned it held about 300 Rohingya. They slept on plastic sheets, unprotected from the sun and rain, and were allowed only one meal a day, of rice and dried fish. He said he was constantly hungry.

One night, two Rohingya men tried to escape. The guards tracked them down, bound their hands and dragged them back to camp. Then, the guards beat the two men with clubs, rods and lengths of rubber. “Everybody watched,” said Hassan. “We said nothing. Some people were crying.”

The beating lasted some 30 minutes, he said. Then a guard drew a small knife and slit the throat of one of the fugitives.

The prisoners were ordered to dispose of his corpse in the forest. The other victim was dumped in a stream. Afterwards, Hassan vomited with fear and exhaustion, but tried not to cry. “When I cried they beat me. I had already decided that I would die there.”

His only hope of release was his older brother, 42, a long-time resident of Thailand. Hassan said he had his brother’s telephone number with him, but at first his captors wouldn’t let him call it. (Traffickers are reluctant to deal with relatives in Thailand, in case they have contacts with the Thai authorities that could jeopardize operations.)

Eventually, Hassan reached his brother, who said he sold his motorbike to help raise the equivalent of about $3,000 to secure Hassan’s freedom, after 20 days in the camp.

Reporters were able to trace the location of three trafficking camps, based on the testimony of Rohingya who previously were held in them.

Three journalists traveled on motor-bikes and then hiked through rubber plantations and dense jungle to directly confirm the existence of a major camp near Baan Klong Tor.

Concealed by a blue tarpaulin tent, the Rohingya were split into groups of men and women. Some prayed. The encampment was patrolled by armed guards and protected by villagers and police. The reporters didn’t attempt to enter. Villagers who have visited the camp said the number of people held inside ranged from an estimated 500 to a thousand or more, depending on the number of people arriving, departing or escaping.

Interviews with about a dozen villagers also confirmed two other large camps: one less than a mile away, and another in Padang Besar, near the Malaysia border.

“THAT RED LINE IN THE SEA”

Major General Chatchawal of the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok admitted there was an unofficial policy to deport the Rohingya to Myanmar. He called this “a natural way or option two.” But he said the Rohingya went voluntarily.

“Some Rohingya in our IDCs can’t stand being in limbo, so they ask to return to where they came from,” said Chatchawal. “This means going back to Myanmar.” Rohingya at the IDCs, for instance, sign statements in the presence of a local Islamic leader, in which they agree they want to return to Myanmar.

These statements, however, were at times produced in the absence of a Rohingya language translator. When reporters visited the Sadao IDC for this story, the translator was a Muslim from Myanmar who spoke only Thai and Burmese, and thus unable to explain what the detainees were signing.

Chatchawal was also presented with recent testimony from Rohingya who said they weren’t taken to back to Myanmar. Instead, they were put in boats by Thai immigration officials, told they had been sold and taken under duress to Thailand’s camps. Reporters interviewed four Rohingya for this story who said they fell prey to trafficking with official complicity.

At the house where Ediris and Ismail were interviewed were two other survivors of the trafficking camps: Abdul Basser, 24, and Fir Mohamed, 28. They told similar stories. Both were arrested after arriving in Thailand on January 25, and held at the overcrowded Phang Nga IDC for about eight months. On October 17, the two men, along with dozens of other Rohingya, were driven overnight to Ranong.

“We were told we could go back to Myanmar,” said Mohamed.

That day, 48 Rohingya and five Buddhist Burmese were loaded into trucks and driven to a pier. The five Burmese were put on one boat; the Rohingya were put on another. After about a half hour at sea, the captain cut the engine. “We thought the engine had stalled or broke down,” said Basser. “The captain told us we could not go back to Myanmar, that we had been sold by the immigration and police,” he added.

Mohamed and Basser, too, escaped after being brought to an island near mainland Thailand.

Until now, the Thai government has denied official complicity in the smuggling or trafficking of Rohingya. But in a break with that position, Chatchawal said Thai officials might have received money previously in exchange for Rohingya, but not anymore. “In the past, and I stress in the past, there may have been cases of officials taking payments for handing over migrants to boats,” he said. “I am not ruling it out, but I don’t know of any specific cases recently.”

He said it was possible the Rohingya were intercepted by brokers and never made it to Myanmar. “Once they’ve crossed that border, that red line in the sea, they are Myanmar’s responsibility,” he said.

He also admitted the camps uncovered by Reuters exist in breach of Thai laws. He referred to them as “temporary shelters” for a people who ultimately want to reach Malaysia. The smugglers who run the camps “extort money from Rohingya” but police don’t accept bribes from them, he said.

As for the trafficking way stations in Padang Besar and Sadao, Chatchawal said: “I do believe there could be more camps like these. They could be hidden deep in the jungle.”

(Additional reporting by Jutaret Skulpichetrat and Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Bangkok, andStuart Grudgings in Kuala Lumpur.)

A few gems of “Prime Minister Material” Modi

• The Gujarat chief minister’s response on widespread malnutrition being the result of a predominantly vegetarian middle class that is “more beauty conscious than health conscious” is a classic of the foot-in-mouth genre. (About 52 per cent of children under five in his state are victims; 70 per cent of children between six and 59 months are anaemic; so are 55 per cent of Gujarati women.)
•  He made the claim, some time back, that under the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, India had achieved eight per cent economic growth. It was pointed out that the correct figure was six per cent. But Mr Modi did not have the courtesy to admit his error.
• His most recent clutch of incorrect statements is enough to make any educated Indian blush. In a valiant attempt to whip up popular support among the people of Bihar, Mr Modi declared that Taxila was located in Bihar.
• Alexander had been defeated by the people of Bihar on the banks of the Ganges. These howlers have now been in the public domain for five days but there is no sign that Mr Modi is ashamed of them. This only reveals his lack of intellectual honesty just as his persistently shrill attacks on his rivals exhibit his lack of dignity.
• Narendra Modi courted controversy when he alleged at a rally in Jesar that the UPA-II government had spent Rs 1,180 crore on the personal foreign tours of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
• In comparing his feelings to the occupant of a car involved in an accident, Modi thus contributed to political folklore his controversial “puppy” analogy: “Even If I am in the back seat of a car and a puppy comes under the wheels, isn’t it painful? It is. Whether I am a chief minister or not, I am a human being   I will be sad if something bad happens anywhere.” 
• To leave the misogyny aside for a moment, there was also something rather comical about Narendra Modi ‘s ” Rs.50 crore girlfriend” jibe at Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor and the war of words it sparked. Firstly there is the sight of the seemingly invincible Gujarat chief minister, who regressed from quoting Vivekananda to spouting such rubbish barely a week into the heat and dust of the election campaign.
• Sardar Patel who opposed RSS as the assassins of Gandhiji, is now Modi’s hero.
• After his “puppy” metaphor in the context of the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 in an interview to a foreign news agency ‘Reuters’, he has now lambasted the Congress party saying that “whenever they are faced with a crisis they wear the burqa of secularism and hide in a bunker”; this was at a public rally in Pune on July 14th.

Narendra Modi without doubt has become a sensation in many sections of society. A phenomenon fuelled by a section of news media. After nine years of Manmohan Singh’s meek rule, Modi’s impassioned speeches, skillful use of rhetoric, assertiveness and showmanship make him look like a rock star. To some extent, his style and language can be compared to that of Raj Thackeray’s. But Modi is more than that. His promises on the development front have led a sizeable population of our country to believe he can get us out of the mess we are in – and must therefore become Prime Minister of India. Does Modi have the ability and intent of taking India forward, away from the many crises we face today? I think not.

Modi has been selling the idea that attracting investment to a state amounts to “development”. By providing low interest rates, cheap rentals and waiving stamp duty, his government claims to persuade big corporates to invest in Gujarat. For instance, to lure the Tatas to set up their Nano plant in Sanand, the Gujarat government waived stamp duty on the land sale and gave other concessions to the tune of over Rs 30,000 crore.

Why did the government give these sops to Tata? Some say it was for “employment generation”. However, the state government policy of ensuring 85 per cent recruitment for locals was waived for this project. There was no gain in terms of revenue and very little employment generation. The tax waivers mean that the people of Gujarat are directly or indirectly subsidising each Nano sold by the Tatas – this is a criminal misuse of authority by the government. The people of Sanand voted the Bharatiya Janata Party out in the 2012 Assembly elections – perhaps a sign of disenchantment with Modi’s policies? The corporates get a sweet deal and, in return, endorse Modi for the Prime Minister’s job. You scratch my back, I scratch yours? Something like the model Manmohan Singh followed in the early years of UPA 1.

The fact that Modi’s policies bring investment into Gujarat cannot be denied. The important question that needs to be asked is – who are the beneficiaries of this investment? A state that has seen high growth rates for the last 20 years is expected to have generated revenue to work for the human development of the people of that state. According to the Planning Commission, Gujarat’s rank in poverty alleviation is extremely poor. In fact, the tribal population (17 per cent of the total) in the state has actually seen an increase in poverty over the last decade and malnutrition is very severe among Gujarat’s children and women. It is no surprise that in a recent study by United Nation’s Development Programme, Gujarat ranked 8th among major Indian states in human development. This suggests that the economic growth that Gujarat has seen is concentrated within a small percentage of the state’s population. Edward Abbey had once said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell”.

If the growth is not reaching the poor majority, what good is the growth? India is a country suffering from widespread poverty, hunger and malnourishment. A widening economic chasm is hardly an achievement in such an environment. With such a backdrop, is this the kind of development model we need today?

Modi is often described as a non-corrupt and incorruptible leader. In this limited definition of honesty one can draw parallels with Dr Manmohan Singh. So he may be clean himself, but he turns a blind eye to his Ministers’ plundering resources. Sitting at the top, overseeing, even if not participating in corrupt practices. Babu Bokhariya, a Cabinet minister of the Gujarat government, was convicted in an illegal mining case earlier this year and has been on trial since 2006, but Modi refused to act against his Minister. Then in 2011, while the nation stood up and demanded a strong Lokpal bill, Modi was occupied in delaying a Lokayukta in his own state. Finally, in 2013, we find his government has enacted a law which is more toothless than the UPA government’s Lokpal.

After a CAG report indicting the Modi government for corruption was leaked recently, Times of India reported the following (April 3, 2013):

With all but four Congress MLAs suspended from the House, there could be no debate on the damning CAG reports. As soon as the house began functioning on Friday, MLAs Rajendrasinh Parmar, Paranjayadityasinhji Parmar, Jodhaji Thakore and Amit Chavda sought discussion on CAG report, which the speaker Ganpar Vasava disallowed.

The quartet rushed to the well carrying banners on CAG. They were suspended, quite predictably, and escorted out by the security staff.

A clear sign that opposition is not tolerated in Modi’s Gujarat. In many ways, he reminds one of the Emergency-period Indira Gandhi. It is interesting to note that Modi rarely attends the Gujarat Assembly proceedings, let alone make statements on the floor. On the one hand, he can address massive rallies with great charisma. On the other, he has a habit of walking away from interviews when cornered with tough questions.

A Prime Minister is the voice of the nation. He must engage the people of his country in a dialogue. How can Modi not be accountable to the media or the legislative body, and still flash his “democratic” credentials? Does democracy have no meaning beyond elections? In this day and age, it is impossible to overturn democracy as brazenly as Indira Gandhi did in the 1970s, but does Modi have those tendencies? Absolutely.

Modi is trapped in an environment in which he cannot make a difference even if he wants to, owing to the kind of politics he represents. If he does become Prime Minister, the MPs who will support Modi for the job will in all likelihood have won the Lok Sabha elections after investing crores of rupees of black money (as Gopinath Munde recently admitted). If he becomes Prime Minister, will he stop his MPs from seeking returns on those investments? And will they continue to support him if he does? The current political system of “money through power and power through money” is such that neither Modi nor Rahul Gandhi (his closest competitor) can possibly make our lives better. If corruption funds these political parties, who will be their priority: the aam aadmi or the donors?

When Modi addresses a rally at Hyderabad, giving the clarion call for a “Congress-mukt Bharat”, he shares the stage with former President of the BJP, Bangaru Laxman, who has been convicted in a corruption case. By identifying the Congress party as the “problem”, Modi is misleading voters. There is no difference today, between the Congress and the BJP. Modi had the opportunity to show that he does not represent the “mai-baap” culture of the political class of this country in the Vitthal Radadiya drama. He failed. Radadiya, a Congress MP from Porbandar was caught last year on camera, pointing a gun at a tollbooth attendant because he was asked to pay toll. However, instead of taking action against Radadiya, Modi offered him protection and lured him into the BJP – welcoming him with a grand ceremony.

Great orators have often swayed India’s electorate. We need to understand that oratory and machismo can never work when the politics is criminal.

And I haven’t even mentioned 2002.

 

RAJESH RAMACHANDRAN

Kollam became a cashew processing hub, thanks to Thangal Kunju Musaliar.

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An entrepreneur from Kollam, strikingly different from his self-serving brethren.

 

 

Not so long ago, Kerala witnessed a debate on the right of a certain investor over developing a large chunk of public land in Kochi. Spectrum, coal mines or port trust land are all public property; the government as their custodian is expected to see they are put to use to derive the best possible public good.

But the much-feted business tycoons of Kerala today, like their counterparts elsewhere, expect the government to hand over public land — an island here or an old palace there — even if it is to build hotels, shops, convention centres and other ventures of dubious public utility. And the State’s political class is always a willing accomplice.

It is in this context that the story of one of Kerala’s greatest entrepreneurs – Thangal Kunju Musaliar (1897-1966)– is worth telling. Far from wanting anything from the government, he was one who gave back more to the society than what he took. Something that today’s self-seeking businessmen wouldn’t even think of. Musaliar’s family recollects the Fortune in the 1940s magazine naming him as the single biggest individual, as opposed to a corporate, employer in the world. There are many versions of his rags-to-riches story. The most romantic one is about a bullock cart driver becoming one of the world’s biggest cashew nut exporters.

At the peak of his career in the 1940s, Musaliar is believed to have employed at least 30,000 people directly at his 26 cashew units. The number would have been over a lakh if those finding indirect employment linked to his units were added.

He turned Kollam, a small town in south Kerala, into a cashew processing hub, employing thousands of women who broke open the kernel, peeled and roasted the nuts. Musaliar also had a tin factory, a tile unit and a tugs-and-barges company.

Besides, he built Kerala’s first ever modern shopping complex with two movie halls in it, a multiplex of sorts. Though in need of a facelift, the ship-shaped structure called the Musaliar Building is still the landmark of Kollam. In today’s description, it would well have qualified as a ‘mall’. And, of course, he didn’t seek government land or concessions to build all these!

VISIONARY CONTRIBUTION

But it is not for all these feats that Musaliar, the unlettered business maverick, is known today. He is and will always be remembered in Kerala for setting up the first ever engineering college in the private sector.

At a time when Kerala had just a couple of professional colleges, India’s first President, Rajendra Prasad, went down to Kollam in 1956 to lay the foundation stone for the college. The Thangal Kunju Musaliar College of Engineering remains one of the best in the State – and not a teaching shop.

He followed it up in 1965 with an arts and sciences college, apart from spending an unknown amount of money in experimenting with hydro-power on the Periyar river with the help of a few foreign engineers. Much before all this Musaliar started a newspaper in Kollam, Prabhatham. Knowingly or unknowingly, he let two young but potentially ‘dangerous’ Communists into his newsroom. The founding publisher and editor of the undivided Communist Party of India’s Malayalam newspaper, Janayugam, R Gopinathan Nair and N Gopinathan Nair, cut their teeth in journalism at the newsdesk of Musaliar’s paper.

GRAB-ALL MENTALITY

In contrast to such an original industrialist-philanthropist, Kerala’s new generation capitalists have few pretentions of creating public good. Forget buying land at market rate to gift schools and colleges to society, they want government land even for their private business.

Many of Kerala’s new entrepreneurs are big non-resident Malayali businessmen, who made their money in the booming construction industry in the Gulf. Some were labour contractors, who shipped men out of Kerala and other states to various work sites in West Asia. Some others operate shops and super markets in these Gulf States selling stuff to the same Malayali or Indian labourers or professionals employed in the Gulf.

Sure, they employ Malayalis, but they are merely partaking of the wealth created by Malayalis. Now, they claim government land as some sort of a compensation for creating wealth for themselves.

They need to take a leaf out of the Musaliar book of business: give back instead of taking doles.

(This article was published on November 22, 2013)

Keywords: Kerala, business tycoons, Thangal Kunju Musaliar

Israel’s policy of erasure

A path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires not simply dealing with settlements but with the whole complex of displacement, suffocation and erasure.

A Palestinian man sits by the remains of his house destroyed last month in Aqraba village near the West Bank city of Nablus. The Israeli military said it demolished four structures that had been built illegally in the village. (Nasser Ishtayeh / Associated Press)

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• Rethinking the two-state solution
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By Saree Makdisi

November 18, 2013

The revelation last week that Israel wanted to plan for 20,000 new settlement housing units received the usual outraged responses from around the world. Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu, mindful of a backlash in the midst of the Iran nuclear negotiations, walked the revelation back, but not very far.

Just a few days earlier, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in Israel trying to keep peace talks afloat, reiterated the U.S. view in an interview: “We do not believe the settlements are legitimate. We think they’re illegitimate.”

Settlement expansion, we are constantly told, is the stumbling block to the fragile negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The settlements are eating up the territory that is supposed to provide the basis for the creation of an independent Palestinian state. If only there were a settlement freeze, some say, one last chance for peace might be salvaged.

All of that may be true enough as far as it goes. But in fact,Israeli settlement expansion is meaningless when it’s considered in isolation. And that is how it is usually considered, given how much media attention the word “settlement” garners every time it comes up.

There are, however, other, individually quieter, smaller, less visible — but collectively far more significant — events taking place on a daily basis.

Indeed, the settlement program is only one component of a broad complex of Israeli policies that has come to define the rhythm and tempo of life for Palestinians, not only in the occupied territories but inside Israel itself. These policies express Israel’s longstanding wish to erase the Palestinian presence on land it considers its own.

Consider, for example, this stunning statistic from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA: On average, every week so far this year, Israel has demolished about 13 Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied territories (up from a weekly average of about 12 last year). The structures include water cisterns, barns and family homes that Israel claims violate the draconian rules it imposes on Palestinian life.

Sometimes these demolitions effectively obliterate entire communities at once.

On Aug. 19, according to OCHA, Israel destroyed all the structures in the East Jerusalem Palestinian community of Tel al-Adassa. The same week, Israel re-demolished the Palestinian village of Araqib, in southern Israel, as it has done more than 50 times since 2010. On Sept. 11, Israel bulldozed almost all the structures in the West Bank herding community of Az Zayyim, rendering dozens of people homeless. Days later, Israel demolished all the homes of the village of Mak-hul in the Jordan Valley, and declared its ruins a closed military area, preventing the villagers’ return.

And so it goes — a litany of catastrophes occurring on a small scale, in communities you have never heard of, all the year round.

These acts of eradication are a matter of routine practice, so routine that they rarely attract international media attention. Neither does the regular vandalizing, bulldozing or burning of Palestinian-owned olive trees , either by Jewish settlers — who generally act with legal impunity — or by the Israeli army.

According to the U.N., settlers cut down 100 trees Nov. 9; they damaged 400 trees from Oct. 29 – Nov. 4, and 30 the week before that. And, again, so it goes—week in, week out. More than 38,000 trees have been destroyed in the last four years , a devastating loss for Palestinian farmers.

Individually, these acts of violence affect only a dozen people or a single tiny community. But they add up. If I may borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens, it is like being stung to death by single bees. Slowly, methodically, deliberately, Israel is attempting to grind an entire people into the dust.

The expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories is part of Israel’s project to gradually suffocate the Palestinians. But it’s only one indicator, and a misleading one at that. Because even if no new settlements are built, Palestinian homes will still be bulldozed and Palestinian olive orchards will still be uprooted; Palestinian water wells will run dry and Palestinian fields will brown and crack for lack of irrigation (Israel denies Palestinians access to water from the Jordan River and makes it almost impossible for them to dig new wells, even as it uses, according to a World Bank estimate, more than 80% of the West Bank’s groundwater).

Palestinians will still be held up at Israeli army checkpoints and harassed or arrested by Israeli soldiers; they will still be prevented from tending their crops or getting to their schools and clinics, or even to the ruins of their bulldozed homes.

Finding a path to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians, such that both peoples truly live side by side rather than one living at the expense of the other, requires not simply dealing with the settlements but with the whole complex of displacement, suffocation and erasure. And the first step is noticing its very existence.

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, is the author of “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation.”

ഭാരതത്തിന്റെ കരങ്ങൾ

– By Dileep Senapathy

 

Hemambika Temple at Palakkad, Kerala

 

‘രക്തം പുരണ്ട കൈ’ എന്ന മോഡിയുടെ പ്രസംഗത്തിലെ പരാമർശം സ്വന്തം കൈ ഉയർത്തിപ്പിടിച്ച്‌ ആവേശപൂർവം പറഞ്ഞതോ അതോ അണികളെ ഹരം കൊള്ളിക്കാനുള്ള സ്ഥിരം ശൈലിയാണോ? വംശീയ കലാപത്തിന്റെ രക്തക്കറയിൽ ഹൃദയം തുടിക്കുന്ന മദമിളകിയ മോഡി ഓരോ റാലികളിലും ഓരോന്നിനെക്കുറിച്ച് അലറുമ്പോൾ ഫാസിസ്റ്റ് വർഗീയ രാഷ്ട്രീയം ജ്വലിപ്പിക്കുന്ന ബി ജെ പി യുടെ പഴയ അദ്വാനി – ആർ എസ് എസ് – സംഘപരിവാർ ഗർജനത്തിന്റെ അതെ പതിപ്പ് നാം വീണ്ടും കാണുകയാണ്. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ മതേതര മുഖം പിച്ചി ചീന്തിയ രക്തക്കറയിലൂടെയുള്ള രഥമുരുട്ടലും വർഗീയ ദ്രുവീകരണത്തിന്റെ തിരയിളക്കം സൃഷ്ടിച്ച വംശഹത്യയും ഒക്കെ അധികാര കസേരകൾ പിടിച്ചെടുക്കാനും നിലനിർത്താനുമുള്ള രാസ സമവാക്യങ്ങൾ ആയിരുന്നു എന്ന് ഈ രാജ്യത്ത് ആർക്കാണ്‌ അറിയാത്തത്. പാവപ്പെട്ടവരെ വെട്ടി വീഴ്ത്തി തനിക്കുള്ള വഴി സ്വയം തുറന്നു  ഞാൻ രാജ്യം ഭരിച്ചോളാം എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞു ശ്രീരാമന്റെയും കൃഷ്ണന്റെയും ക്ഷേത്രത്തിന്റെയും  ഒക്കെ മുഖം മൂടികൾ പലതു വെച്ച്  കേന്ദ്ര ഭരണ കക്ഷിയുടെ അകത്തളങ്ങളെ വരെ  വിമർശനങ്ങളും ആരോപണങ്ങളും കൊണ്ട് നേരിട്ട് കയ്യടി വാങ്ങാം എന്ന് ചിന്തിക്കുന്ന മോഡി മറ്റു ‘കൈ’ കളുടെ  മാഹാത്മ്യത്തെ മറക്കരുത്.

മഞ്ഞപ്പിത്തം ബാധിച്ചവന്  എല്ലാം മഞ്ഞയായി തോന്നും.ചോര കൊണ്ട് കളിച്ച മോഡിയുടെ കയ്യിൽ പാപക്കറ ഉണ്ടെങ്കിൽ അതല്ലല്ലോ ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ‘കൈ’ ഇന്ത്യാക്കാരന്റെ ‘കൈ’ ഇന്ത്യൻ നാഷണൽ കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിന്റെ ‘കൈ’.

 

അമ്പലങ്ങളെയും ആചാരങ്ങളെയും അന്ധവിശ്വാസങ്ങളെയും വരെ പാടുകയും പുകഴ്ത്തുകയും ചെയ്യുന്ന മോഡിയും കൂട്ടരും കേരളത്തിലെ പാലക്കാട് ജില്ലയിലെ ഹെമബികാ ക്ഷേത്രത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് അറിയണം.

 

ദേവിയുടെ കരങ്ങൾ പ്രതിഷ്ഠയായിട്ടുള്ള നമ്മുടെ മാതൃ രാജ്യത്തെ ഒരു ക്ഷേത്രമാണിത്. 1978ൽ  കേരളാ സന്ദർശന വേളയിൽ ഇന്ത്യയുടെ അമ്മ ഇന്ദിരാ പ്രിയദർശിനിയെ കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിന്റെ ലീഡർ കരുണാകരൻ ക്ഷേത്ര ദർശനത്തിന് ഈ ക്ഷേത്രത്തിൽ കൂട്ടി കൊണ്ടുവരികയും ക്ഷേത്രത്തിലെ പ്രതിഷ്ഠയായ കൈപ്പത്തിയെക്കുറിച്ചും ഐതീഹ്യത്തെക്കുറിച്ചും വിവരിച്ചു കേട്ട ഇന്ദിരാജി സർവ ഐശ്വര്യ മംഗളങ്ങളും അനുഗ്രഹവും ചൊരിയുന്ന ദേവിയുടെ കൈ കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിനും അതുവഴി രാജ്യത്തിനും നല്കി. ഇന്ത്യൻ നാഷണൽ കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിന്റെ ഭാഗ്യ ചിഹ്നമായ കൈപ്പത്തി 1980ലെ തെരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പു മുതൽ ഇന്നേ വരെ ജനമനസുകളുടെ അംഗീകാരങ്ങൾ ഏറ്റുവാങ്ങി ജൈത്രയാത്ര തുടരുകയാണ്.മുൻപ് പല ചിഹ്നങ്ങൾ ഉപയോഗിച്ച കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിന് 1978 ഫെബ്രുവരി രണ്ടിനാണ് തെരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ് ചിഹ്നമായി കൈപ്പത്തി അനുവദിക്കുന്നത്.

ഏറ്റവും ശുദ്ധി അഗ്നി ശുദ്ധി. ആ ദീപം ഇനി നമുക്ക് വേണ്ട എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞു ദീപത്തിൽ നിന്ന് താമരയിലേക്ക് ബി ജെ പി ചുവടു മാറ്റിയത് ഇനി അല്പം അശുദ്ധിയൊക്കെ ആകാം എന്ന് തീരുമാനിച്ചു ഉറപ്പിച്ചിട്ടു തന്നെയാണ്. ആ ചുവടു വയ്പുകളാണ് മതേതര ഭാരതത്തിൽ വിള്ളലുകൾ വീഴ്ത്തി അദ്വാനിയും മോഡിയും പങ്കിട്ടെടുക്കുന്നത്.

 

മോഡിയും കൂട്ടരും ചരിത്രങ്ങൾ ചികഞ്ഞ് അതിലെ അക്ഷര പിശകുകൾ എടുത്ത് അട്ടഹസിക്കുമ്പോൾ ഓർമ്മ വരുന്നത് വേദിയിൽ പ്രസംഗിക്കുന്ന കുട്ടി പറയാൻ ഒന്നുമില്ലാതെ ആശയ ദാരിദ്ര്യം നേരിട്ട് എന്തെങ്കിലും വിളിച്ചു പറയുന്ന പോലെയാണ്. സമ്പന്നമായ പൈതൃകത്താലും സംസ്കാരത്താലും രാജ്യത്ത് അടിയുറച്ച കോണ്‍ഗ്രസിന്റെ ഇതളുകൾ മോഡി മോഹിക്കുന്നതിൽ ‘ഇല്ലാത്തത് അവർ  കൊതിക്കില്ലേ’   എന്ന് നമുക്ക് സഹതപിക്കാം.

http://www.withcongress.com/blog/india/%E0%B4%AD%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%86-%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%BE-%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%88%E0%B4%B5/

 

Vatican offers Islamic finance system to Western Banks
The Vatican says Islamic finance system may help Western banks in crisis as alternative to capitalistm.
Friday, 06 March 2009 15:10

World Bulletin / News Desk

The Vatican offered Islamic finance principles to Western banks as a solution for worldwide economic crisis.

Daily Vatican newspaper, ‘L’Osservatore Romano, reported that Islamic banking system may help to overcome global crisis, Turkish media reported.
The Vatican said banks should look at the ethical rules of Islamic finance to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of global economic crisis.

“The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service,” the Vatican’s official newspaper Osservatore Romano said in an article in its latest issue late yesterday.

Author Loretta Napoleoni and Abaxbank Spa fixed income strategist, Claudia Segre, say in the article that “Western banks could use tools such as the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, as collateral”. Sukuk may be used to fund the “‘car industry or the next Olympic Games in London,” they said.

They also said that profit share, gained from sukuk, may be an alternative to the interest. They underlined that sukuk system could help automotive sector and support investments in infrastructure area.

Islamic sukuk system is similar to bonos of capitalist system. But in sukuk, money is invested concrete projects and profit share is distributed to clients instead of interest earned.

Pope Benedict XVI in an Oct. 7 speech reflected on crashing financial markets saying that “money vanishes, it is nothing” and concluded that “the only solid reality is the word of God.” The Vatican has been paying attention to the global financial meltdown and ran articles in its official newspaper that criticize the free-market model for having “grown too much and badly in the past two decades.”

The Osservatore’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, said that “the great religions have always had a common attention to the human dimension of the economy,” Corriere della Sera reported today

Internet ripoffs cause 265mn loss Indians fifth largest victims

Internet rip-offs cause $265mn loss, Indians fifth largest victims

Internet-based rip-offs jumped 33 percent last year over the previous year, causing a loss of $265 million to the victims, with the fifth largest number of complaints coming from India, according to a new report.

Internet-based rip-offs jumped 33 percent last year over the previous year, causing a loss of $265 million to the victims, with the fifth largest number of complaints coming from India, according to a new report.

Americans filed 275,284 reports (92.4 percent), claiming to be ripped off on the Internet, the highest number reported since the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, a partnership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Centre, began keeping statistics in 2000.

Canada came a distant second with 1.77 percent complaints followed by Britain (0.95 percent), Australia (0.57 percent) and India 0.36 percent.

“This report illustrates that sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish as financial data migrates to the Internet,” said Shawn Henry, the FBI’s assistant director of the cyber division.

At $265 million the total dollar loss from such crimes was $26 million more than the price tag in 2007, the Centre said. For individual victims, the average amount lost was $931.

The dollar loss has been on a steady increase since 2004, while the number of cases referred to law enforcement has decreased steadily since that same year.

Henry said the figures show the need for computer users, in businesses and in homes, to be wary and use sound security practices while using the Internet.

The centre said the top three most frequent complaints were about merchandise that wasn’t delivered or payment that wasn’t received, Internet auction fraud and credit/debit card fraud. Other scams include confidence frauds such as Ponzi schemes, cheque fraud, the Nigerian letter fraud and identity fraud.

One popular identity fraud scam used during 2008 involved sending e-mails crafted to appear as if they had been sent by the FBI. Sometimes the scammers went so far as to say the mailings were from FBI Director Robert Mueller himself, according to the centre.

The e-mails would ask the recipient for personal information, such as a bank account numbers, claiming the FBI wanted the information to look into an impending financial transaction.

One variation of the scheme, according to the centre, was to send an e-mail saying the recipient is entitled to lottery money or an inheritance and the funds can be moved as soon as bank account information is supplied.

The FBI has issued warnings about such scams in the past and Monday’s report included a new one: “The FBI does not contact US citizens regarding personal financial matters through unsolicited e-mails.”