By Huma Yusuf

Last Sunday, as the Long March heated up and tear-gas shells and stones littered the entrance to the Lahore High Court, news broke of Mukhtar Mai’s marriage to Nasir Abbas Gabol, a police constable who was assigned to protect her. The news unleashed a media firestorm that says more about international perceptions of Pakistan and the fallacy of objective journalism than it does about Mai’s matrimonial circumstances.
Many quirks about the way Mai’s wedding was reported are worth noting. Local and international papers alike continue to identify Mai as a ‘gang-rape victim’ even while celebrating her successes as a women’s rights activist who fought her rapists in court and established the first girls’ school in Meerwala as well as several women’s centres. The Urdu-language press in Pakistan emphasized the fact that Mai had married a police constable in headlines and photo captions. Given the tainted reputations of low-level police officers in this country, dwelling on his profession can be read as a way to suggest that rape victims get what they deserve.
Meanwhile, the international press largely twisted coverage of Mai’s marriage to make it seem like the ultimate good news story. Indeed, as civilian-police clashes erupted in Lahore, Mai’s news made for the perfect ‘happy ending’ narrative that no one at that time thought the Long March would deliver. Juxtaposed with the ‘failed state’ doom and gloom being prompted by the showdown between the government and protestors, Mai’s wedding delivered foreign desk editors the positivity needed to balance their coverage of Pakistan. As a result, the internet is now brimming with reports of Mai’s nuptials that are contradictory and confused.
The New York Times tried to keep things upbeat by describing Mai as a stigma-shattering crusader who had become a giggling bundle of joy on the occasion of her wedding. This is the first quote from her in the story:
“He says he madly fell in love with me,” Ms. Mukhtar said with a big laugh when asked what finally persuaded her to say yes.

But the cracks appear to those who keep reading, only to discover that Mai did not marry Gabol for love, but rather to save his first wife from the fate of a divorcee.

Four months ago, he tried to kill himself by taking sleeping pills. “The morning after he attempted suicide, his wife and parents met my parents but I still refused,” Ms. Mukhtar said.
Mr. Gabol then threatened to divorce his first wife, Shumaila.
Ms. Shumaila, along with Mr. Gabol’s parents and sisters, tried to talk Ms. Mukhtar into marrying him, taking on the status of second wife. In Pakistan, a man can legally have up to four wives.
It was her concern about Ms. Shumaila, Ms. Mukhtar said, that moved her to relent.
“I am a woman and can understand the pain and difficulties faced by another woman,” Ms. Mukhtar said. “She is a good woman.”

Although the run-up to Mai’s marriage is more grim than glamorous – she had vowed never to marry, but relented when Gabol attempted to commit suicide and then threatened to divorce his first wife – the British daily, The Independent, spun it as another one of her admirable victories.

By marrying, she has defeated another stigma for rape victims in Pakistani society. Ms Mai, named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2005, met Mr Gabol in 2002 when he was posted to the police station in her village after the rape. His parents approached her 18 months ago with the offer of marriage but she declined. Having threatened to kill himself, the officer said he’d divorce his first wife if she did not agree. Eventually, his first wife’s family met Ms Mai and persuaded her to accede to his request.

For their part, Pakistani bloggers were grateful for the distraction from depressing Long March news and took it upon themselves to shower Mai with blessings and felicitations. Changing Up Pakistan (CHUP), for example, recasts Gabol – who should be maligned for mistreating his first wife by threatening her with divorce – as “lovestruck” and reframes the marriage as Mai’s attempt to crush female oppression.

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By Rafia Zakaria

Marriages are routinely and unapologetically arranged to solidify business interests, land disputes and old vendettas. The woman, then, with the maligning spectre of divorce hanging over her, is left to endure whatever abuse her husband or in-laws may heap on her

Recently, Mukhtar Mai’s married Nasir Abbas Gabol in her low-key hometown of Meerwala. The publicity and the debate generated by the event, however, resonated across the globe, garnering attention from international newspapers and television channels.

Yet, unlike the coverage of the brutal events and awe-inspiring heroism that initially catapulted Mukhtar Mai into the public eye, many of the stories published in the Western media betrayed the confusion of attempts to process the somewhat unlikely union.

Indeed, Mukhtar’s marriage presents a conundrum even to Pakistani feminists. Should the fact that Mukhtar chose to get married after having vowed never to do so be celebrated or condemned? How should one evaluate the fact that she was to be a second wife? Even further, is the act of marrying a man who threatens to kill himself and destroy his own family if she refused him an act of resistance or coercion? Should the fact that she set the conditions for the marriage be touted as an example for other women? Finally, was there possibly a romantic spin to be put on the story, where a constable entrusted with guarding his charge falls in love with her and ultimately marries her despite the social stigmas attached to her?

A cornucopia of questions thus surrounds this very Pakistani marriage while raising issues that rarely make their way into public discourse regarding the nature of marital relationships.

Let us first consider the most controversial of the facts, that Mukhtar is Constable Gabol’s second wife. Many narratives of victimhood and religious piety surround polygamous unions in Pakistani society. Religious scholars routinely skirt around the contextual reality that the Quranic revelation that allowed polygamy was revealed when the entire Muslim community numbered 770 and many of the men had been massacred in the Battle of Uhud. Accosted with the imprimatur of religious sanctity, polygamy is presented not as a provisional allowance made under specific circumstances but rather as an entitlement, any abridgement of which is an attack on the rights of a Muslim man.

Religious discussions aside, however, Mukhtar’s acquiescence shows the complexity of polygamous unions from both a socio-cultural and personal perspective. In her statement following the solemnisation of the nikah, Mukhtar clearly stated that her decision to marry was heavily influenced by the fact that she was saving three marriages. The seemingly unstable constable had threatened not only to divorce his previous wife, but this would have led to the ensuing divorce of Gabol’s own sisters that were married to his wife’s relatives.

Thrust however unceremoniously into the midst of these marital dramas and having the futures of three other women riding on her decision, it is little surprise that Mukhtar did ultimately agree to marry Abbas Gabol. A woman who had committed her life to saving women thus did, not what would ultimately have made the boldest feminist statement and demand that he relinquish his wife and substantiate the equality of man and woman. Instead she did what she could to save who she could, given the status quo.

It is this status quo that merits the most attention in the discussion surrounding Mukhtar’s marriage. It forces one to consider whether the most pragmatic approach to female survival in a male-dominated society is figuring out a way to save those that you can or choose to make grand statements of resistance.

Perceived in this way, Mukhtar’s decision is an avowal of the realities of feudal Pakistan where women cannot live alone without male protectors and where marriage is a calculation in survival than an exercise in romance. In Mukhtar’s case, the situation was even more egregious, given the fact that the man wanting to marry her was none other than the person entrusted by the government to be her protector.

In a patriarchal system where unprotected women are fair game for all manner of abuse, the petulance and immature threats of Constable Gabol were bolstered as entitlements. By preying on Mukhtar’s compassion and the reality that three women would be abandoned and stigmatised if she did not relent, Mukhtar relented and Constable Gabol succeeded in his aim.

The interpretation of circumstances presented is but an interpretation substantiated only by the few facts available in the public domain. Yet despite its speculative dimensions, the dynamics of Mukhtar Mai’s marriage is representative of many unions that take place within Pakistan. Women who have faced divorce or any other form of social stigma are left in the uncomfortable position of choosing to live as unwanted and often maligned guests in their fathers’ or brothers’ homes or acquiesce to being second wives.

In other cases, marriages are routinely and unapologetically arranged to solidify business interests, land disputes and old vendettas. The woman, then, with the maligning spectre of divorce hanging over her, is left to endure whatever abuse her husband or in-laws may heap on her in an effort to salvage her marriage and avoid bringing shame on her family.

With the arrival of children, the seal of dependency is complete and many women are left forever dependent on the man whose identity legitimates their existence in the world.

Mukhtar Mai came into the spotlight to demand justice against the perpetrators who committed a horrific crime against her. Her position in the limelight, given her poverty and the unwillingness of many to acknowledge the existence of such brutality in our society, raised a public outcry. Her marriage, in this larger sense, is representative of similar realities that are also worthy of discussion.

Will it ever be possible for Pakistani women to live independently without a male protector? Will Pakistani marriages ever be more than arrangements that are made for men and by men? If these questions are deemed worthy of introspection and public debate in Pakistan, then Mukhtar Mai may have saved a lot more than just three marriages.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

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Exactly what can we car drivers do to help save the environment and preserve a most important resource?
Today marks another United Nations World Day for Water or simply, World Water Day.

I am not writing to ask you to help the 1.1 billion people around the world living without a reliable water source, nor the 2.4 billion without adequate sanitation.
I am trying to tell you why a car (yes, that includes mine and yours) is a leading contributor to water shortages, contamination and, worst of all, poisoning.
CAR WASH
You’ve read it all before, about how a hose-down car wash wastes anywhere from 200 to 500 litres of filtered and treated water.
Even using a high-pressure water spray (like at your local car wash) it would still waste some 60 to 150 litres.
The more often you wash your car, the more water you waste that could be put to more productive use like washing your clothes, gardening or cooking.
I recently asked a car wash operator in Bangkok how often his customers visit, and he told me that most of the regular customers turn up once a week or more, often during the rainy season.
Now, if I use a median figure of 105 litre per wash – that’s 5,406 litres or about 5.4 cubic metres or tonnes of water a year for one car!
If all 8.8 million cars and pick-ups in Thailand did the same, that would be more than 48 billion litres, or 48 million tonnes of water – that’s the same as all the people living in Phuket and Phetchaburi provinces use at home in one year!
By contrast, a survey found drivers in the UK wash their cars on average only seven times per year.
If you live where tap water always flows, try visiting a drought-hit area anywhere this hot season and stay there for a week and you’ll appreciate what a blessing it is to have running tap water.
If a clean car is a must for your image and self-esteem, can you please scale down the water usage to a bucket or two of water and wipe the car with a wet cloth instead?
It would only use four to 10 litres of water – a saving of 90%.
Another concern about car washes is that the detergent and grime that’s washed away with the water will eventually affect the environment.
You can see for yourself – at any car wash in Thailand – how the water is disposed of. It is simply discharged into a public drain, which goes straight into a khlongs or rivers and ends up in the Gulf of Thailand.
…

DRINKING WATER
Bottled water needs up to six times as much water to produce as is in the bottle – so, for example, a 0.5 litre bottle needs as much as three litres of water.
That’s an awful waste.
So, I tried a little experimenting at home and found that it takes no more than 1.5 litres of tap water to thoroughly wash a 0.5 litre plastic bottle.
After topping it up with home-filtered water, this bottle used up two litres of water in total.
Therefore, I could actually be saving one litre of water for every 0.5 litres of drinking water if I prepare myself.
I drink, on average, 2.5 litres of water inside my car every week – that’s 130 litres a year.
This means if I were to use my own bottle I could be saving 260 litres of water per year – more than enough to fill a bath or clean my car with a bucket every week for the whole year.
Moreover, I would not be throwing away between 217 and 260 empty plastic bottles a year – amounting to 6.5kg of almost completely unrecyclable PET plastic.
The only issue is having to thoroughly clean your bottle, especially the mouth-piece, every day or two to prevent germs from accumulating and giving you tummy trouble.

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ISTANBUL – A global ministerial meeting was putting the final touches here Saturday to resolutions for tackling the world’s water crisis but activists attacked the process as a corporate-driven fraud.

Demonstrators, protesting against the privatization of water resources clash with riot police in front of the venue of the World Water Forum in Istanbul March 16, 2009. Turkish police fired teargas to disperse a group of hundreds gathered at the start of the global water forum in Istanbul on Monday and detained 17, state-run news agency Anatolian reported.

The communique to be issued by more than 100 countries on World Water Day on Sunday climaxes a seven-day gathering on how to provide clean water and sanitation for billions and resolve worsening water stress and pollution.
“The world is facing rapid and unprecedented global changes, including population growth, migration, urbanization, climate change, desertification, drought, degradation and land use, economic and diet changes,” according to a draft seen by AFP.
The document, which is non-binding, spells out a consensus for boosting cooperation to ease trans-boundary disputes over water, preventing pollution and tackling drought and floods.
It also describes access to safe drinking water and sanitation as “a basic human need.” France, Spain and several Latin American countries were striving to beef up this reference, from “need” to “right,” a change that could have legal ramifications.
But campaigners representing the rural poor, the environment and organized labor blasted the communique as a sideshow, stage-managed for corporations who are major contributors to the World Water Council, which organizes the Forum.
Maude Barlow, senior adviser to the president of the UN General Assembly, said the Forum promoted privatization of resources by “the lords of water” and excluded dissident voices.
She called for the meeting to be placed under the UN flag.
“We demand that the allocation of water be decided in an open, transparent and democratic forum rather than in a trade show for the world’s large corporations,” Barlow told a press conference.
David Boys, with an NGO called Public Services International, said “transparency, accountability and participation” were absent from the Forum, and dismissed the ministerial statement as “vapid.”
Around 880 million people do not have access to decent sources of drinking water, while 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a report on Tuesday.
By 2030, the number of people living under severe water stress is expected to rise to 3.9 billion, a tally that does not include the impacts of global warming, according to the OECD.
The World Water Council, based in the southern French city of Marseille, holds the World Water Forum every three years. The Istanbul conference, the fifth in the series, drew a record more than 25,000 participants, and registrations from at least 27,000.
The Council’s website says it is funded by more than 300 member organizations from 60 countries, including water utilities, governments, hydrological institutions and associations involved in research, environment and education.
Its president, Loic Fauchon, rejected charges of elitism and exclusion.
“Everyone is invited, and in any case, everyone comes these days,” he told AFP.
He added: “If it (the Forum) were organized by the United Nations, it would lose its characteristic of being open to all. In a UN conference, not everyone who wants to come can participate. In the World Water Forum, anyone can take part.”
The Istanbul Forum has focused overwhelmingly on issues of policymaking and includes a big trade fair by water utilities and engineering firms.
It has also staged side events on issues of civil society, but to a far smaller degree than in other big environmental meetings.
Grassroots campaigners have complained of high registration fees, of geographical separation from the main conference events and of overbearing security.
© 2009 Agence France Presse

via http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/21-3

(This post was originally published on June 30, 2008, and recently appeared on The New York Times’s list of most-viewed stories for 2008.)

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

1. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.

2. Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.

3. Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.

4. Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
5. Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
How to eat: Just drink it.

6. Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.

7. Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.

How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
8. Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.” They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.

9. Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,” it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.

10. Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.

11. Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year.

In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping cart?

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(Submitted by Reader)

http://www.livescience.com/

Are you listening to me? Didn’t I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It’s cold out there…

So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that’s not how it works.

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.

“I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings,” said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they’re just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different.”

Munakata and colleagues used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine the mental effort of the child to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds.

The game involved teaching children simple rules about two cartoon characters – Blue from Blue’s Clues and SpongeBob SquarePants – and their preferences for different objects. The children were told that Blue likes watermelon, so they were to press the happy face on the computer screen only when they saw Blue followed by a watermelon. When SpongeBob appeared, they were to press the sad face on the screen.

“The older kids found this sequence easy, because they can anticipate the answer before the object appears,” said doctoral student Christopher Chatham, who participated in the study. “But preschoolers fail to anticipate in this way. Instead, they slow down and exert mental effort after being presented with the watermelon, as if they’re thinking back to the character they had seen only after the fact.”

The pupil measurements showed that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present. Instead, they call up the past as they need it.

“For example, let’s say it’s cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,” Chatham explained. “You might expect the child to plan for the future, think ‘OK it’s cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm.’ But what we suggest is that this isn’t what goes on in a 3-year-old’s brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.”

The findings are detailed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Munakata figures the results might help with real situations.

“If you just repeat something again and again that requires your young child to prepare for something in advance, that is not likely to be effective,” Munakata said. “What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don’t do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like ‘I know you don’t want to take your coat now, but when you’re standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom.”

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(Submitted by Reader)

Survival International, an international movement in defense of tribal people is accusing the makers of a controversial film of inciting racial hatred against Brazilian Indians. The charges are being made to mark the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21.

The film, “Hakani”, has been watched by more than 350,000 people on YouTube and claims to be the true story of a Brazilian Indian child buried alive by her tribe. Survival argues the film is faked, that the earth covering the children’s faces is “actually chocolate cake”, and that the film’s claim that infanticide among Brazilian Indians is widespread is false.

“People are being taught to hate Indians, even wish them dead,” says Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, in an interview about “Hakani”. “Look at the comments on the YouTube site, things like, “So get rid of these native tribes. They suck”, and, “Those amazon mother f***ers burying (sic) little kids, kill them all.”

“The film focuses on what they claim happens routinely in Indian communities, but it doesn’t,” Corry says. “Amazonian infanticide is rare. When it does happen… it is the mother’s decision and isn’t taken lightly. It’s made privately and secretly and is often thought shameful, certainly tragic.”

“Hakani” was directed by David Cunningham, the son of the founder of an American fundamentalist missionary organization called “Youth with a Mission”, which has a branch in Brazil known as Jocum. Corry argues that the missionaries try to downplay their involvement in the film.
“You’re invited to give money to UNKF, but you aren’t told what the initials mean (it’s part of the mission),” Corry says. “The evangelical involvement is not mentioned at all. Even if you download the full film, the credits are unreadable, so you can’t tell who is behind it.”

Corry says the film is part of the missionaries’ campaign to pressure Brazil’s government to pass a controversial bill, known as “Muwaji’s law”. This would force Brazilian citizens to report to the authorities anything they think is a “harmful traditional practice” – a law which would “foster witch-hunts”, “roll Brazil back centuries” and “could bring catastrophic social breakdown”.

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‘Hakani’ is a film produced by the American fundamentalist missionary organisation Youth With a Mission.

It claims to be the “true story” of a Brazilian Indian child called Hakani who was supposedly buried alive by her tribe, the Suruwaha.
In fact, the film was faked – and even the missionaries who produced it ‘admit there is no way to verify what they say happened‘.

Hakani – paving a road to hell
In this Q&A, Survival’s director Stephen Corry explains why Survival is against Hakani.

Extracts:

You object to the film ‘Hakani’. Why?
Stephen Corry: It’s faked. It puts together footage from many different Indian tribes and uses trick photography to make its point. It wasn’t filmed in an Indian community, the earth covering the children’s faces is actually chocolate cake, and the Indians in the film were paid as actors.

The filmmakers say it’s a re-enactment, not a fake. How do you respond?
Stephen Corry: It’s presented as entirely real. The opening title of the complete film reads, ‘A true story’, and only at the very end is the viewer told it’s a re-enactment. The trailer, which has been seen by far more people, doesn’t mention it at all. If it were broadcast here, that would be mandatory.
If [the infanticide] happened as portrayed, it’s an extraordinary isolated case. After decades of working in Amazonia, we know of no Indian peoples where parents are told to kill their children. It just doesn’t happen.

Why oppose the film if it’s just trying to stop infanticide?
Stephen Corry: The film and its message are harmful. They focus on what they claim happens routinely in Indian communities, but it doesn’t. It incites feelings of hatred against Indians. Look at the comments on the YouTube site, things like, ‘So get rid of these native tribes. They suck’, and, ‘Those amazon mother f—-ers burrying (sic) little kids, kill them all’. The filmmakers should be ashamed of all the harm this film is doing to the people they are trying to help.
It’s propaganda to bolster the evangelical campaign for a very dangerous principle, the so-called Muwaji law, which has been presented to the Brazilian Congress.

What’s that?
The Muwaji law focuses on what it calls ‘traditional practices’ and says what the state and citizens must do about them. It says that if anyone thinks there is a risk of ‘harmful traditional practices’, they must report it. If they don’t, they are liable to imprisonment. The authorities must intervene and remove the children and/or their parents. All this because someone, anyone, a missionary for example, claims there is some risk.

http://www.survival-international.org/about/hakani

Read the full interview here

By Jagmohan Singh

India celebrated the International Women’s Day in an unparalleled way. The gritty activist Irom Chanu Sharmila who was released on 7th March was re-arrested on the afternoon of 8th March –International Women’s day, after spending barely 20 hours with her family and friends. She is again in the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital from where she was released.

Despite her failing health and young age, the never-say-die Sharmila continues to taunt the Indian state for abrogation of the provisions of the draconian anti-people provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur and other parts of the North-east in India.
Though released intermittently for few days and weeks during her 8 long years in prison, she has continued her struggle while being incarcerated under charges of attempted suicide. As was expected, even though there is no ground for the government to continue with her detention, but as she continues to be on fast, for repeal of the AFSPA Act, 1958 she has been imprisoned again for attempted suicide because the government of India seems to be in no mood to relent.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, which has been in force in the North east for more than five decades, is a breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The sweeping powers under the law, including the power to shoot to kill on mere suspicion and the blanket impunity granted to the armed forces has resulted in heinous human rights violations including rape and extrajudicial murders. According to estimates by human rights bodies thousands of innocent Manipuris have been killed over the years and many are still under illegal detention of the armed forces.
It does not shame India –‘the largest democracy of the world’ that the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the UN Committee on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Committee on the Right of the Child have condemned AFSPA and urged India on many occasions to remove it from the statute.

It is sad but not surprising that the mainstream Indian media not omitted news of her arrest and her re-arrest. Much of civil society was silent leaving only the Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) to condemn her re-arrest by the Manipur police as they were unwilling to allow her to address a meeting of the Apunba Manipur Kanba Ima Lup (Mothers Union to Save Manipur) to observe International Women’s Day.

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(Submitted by Michelle Cook)