The New Nation - Internet Edition

For better business competitiveness

THE lower position of Bangladesh in the latest Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) on the business environment in 134 countries does not signify much change either way about doing business in this country. What the latest position in the index tells about Bangladesh is stagnancy notwithstanding that some purposive steps were taken by the government to change things for the better. These efforts on the part of the government were noted in the GCR. But the same in no way changes facts that still big delays are encountered in Bangladesh on average to get construction permits, in paying taxes, in exporting and importing and in just registering property.

The indicators of business conditions are nowhere so impressive as to attract significantly stepped up investment operations. The same need to improve substantially for creating a major stimulus among the investors.

Two initiatives by the present government - the Better Business Forum (BBF) and the Regulatory Reforms Commission (RRC) were launched last year with the aims of bringing together government functionaries at the highest level and business leaders under a consultative and institutional framework to facilitate businesses and of doing away with obsolete business hazarding laws. But both these entities have remained rather limited in their activities so far.

As the government's tenure is fast coming to an end, it needs to give a last big push to at least create conditions for the next elected government to ensure that the latter can go to work for the taking off of major projects in the energy sector. It should do the same in paving the way for major infrastructure building in support of investment operations under the next government. Good energy supply and infrastructures are considered too vital for business expansion in Bangladesh.

Donors' role in CHT criticised

AS appeared in media recently, an independent international commission opined that multilateral and bilateral donors have given rise to 'some controversies' while carrying out development work in the Chittagong Hill Tracts after the 1997 peace treaty. The Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission co-chair Lord Eric Avebury, a member of the Upper House of the British Parliament, expressed his critical views to newsmen about the donors raising the question 'why should they focus only on indigenous people and do they pay equal amount of attention to the Bengali community living in the CHT?' During its four-day tour of the three hill tract districts, the commission had talks with the donors at work in the hill region where Lord Eric was rather surprised to hear that their 'primary concern' was to raise living standard of the indigenous people. That is a source of controversy as he considers raising level of living standard of the people irrespective of their identity should be the priority of all.

The visit was aimed at designing a programme to help attain major objectives of the peace accord signed in 1997 by the then Awami League government. In this regard, the commission attributed some of the problems prevailing in the hill region to the non-settlement of lands and disputes over possession of lands. Presence of security forces, particularly of the army troops, in the hill tract region from defence point of view is vital for checking infiltration of terrorists and insurgency elements through the long forest range in the region. In fact, the commission mentions about the disproportionate attention of some donors to the tribal people ignoring others who live in abject poverty mainly for resource constraints of a poor country like Bangladesh.

Leadership crisis in Japan

Md. Masum Billah

Japan has seen a new Prime Minster on September 4 Taro Aso by name. He is the third prime Minster in one year. Aso, an outspoken nationalist, has said he wants to put priority to bolster Japan's faltering economy but has made clear an election is his sights. A lower house poll must be held by next September. Flamboyant conservative Taro Aso took charge as Japan's new Prime Minster pledging to work to build a cheerful nation' by reviving an economy which is in the doldrums now.

Aso replaced Yasuo Fukuda, a mild centrist whose ratings dived after he raised medical costs for the elderly. Aso was picked by Liberal Democratic Party by an overwhelming majority. Aso is the comic book-loving who started the job with an unusually sobre tone. He said he would push for emergency measures to revive. Japan, Asian's largest economy, contracted in the last quarter. He took charge as Japan's new prime minister lining up his cabinet with like-minded conservatives to help his mission to revive the economy and win upcoming elections. "To make Japan a cheerful and strong nation -that is my mission." I fully feel the heavy responsibility of being Prime Minister about the economy. These are the reactions Aso expressed after his assuming the office.

Aso has already made it clear about his foreign policy particularly Japan's stance in the 'war on terror'. He told in his first news conference that helping the war on terror was not for the sake of Afghanistan or the United States or Pakistan. "This is the responsibility of Japan as a member of the international community which is battling terror". The mission provides fuel and other logistical support to US-led forces operating in Afghanistan. Japan's opposition which controls the upper house of parliament, forced temporary halt last year to the operation arguing the officially pacifist country should not take part in American wars. The naval mission is set to expire in January. It could become even more controversial as Aso is widely expected to call early elections in the next two months. Outgoing prime minister Yasuo Fududa agreed to end a separate military mission flying goods and personnel into Iraq as another showdown loomed with the opposition. Japan was forced to renounce the right to wage war after its defeat in World War II.

Analysts expect Taro Aso to call a general election as early as late October in a bid to hold off gains by the rising opposition which has pounded away at the LDF's traditional strongholds in the countryside. But Taro Aso has debuted in the job with voter support of just 50% a survey showed on September 25 clouding the out look for an early general election. Aso's cabinet won support from 48.6% of votes polled by Kyodo news agency about double the rating of his predecessor, Yasuo Fukuda enjoyed when he took office.

The new prime minister has been expected to call a snap election for parliament's powerful lower house to take advantage of a traditional bounce in support ratings when a new government is formed but analysts said the figures could give him a pause. They have been talking about a November 2 election. " I thought of support was 50% or above he would call an election and if it were under 50% he couldn't " Yasunori Sone, Political Science Professor at Keio University commented. He continued, "But if he waits, things are not going to improve. They will just get worse. He will probably try to do some skillful performance and go ahead with a snap election but the question is can they win?" Alo, 68, scored much higher in a one-on-one comparison with Democratic Party Leader Ichiro Ozawa, rating 53.9% to opposition Chief 29.4%.But voters were evenly split over which party they planned to cast this ballots for at the next election with 34..89% opting for Aso's Liberal Democratic Party and 34.8% picking the Democrats.

The divided parliament voted along party lines to install the flamboyant foreign minister who appointed a cabinet filled with fellow conservatives. "The final battle has begun . the autumn of elections-the autumn to change the government -is coming ' said opposition chief Ichrio Ozawa whose bloc controls one house of parliament. Liberal Democratic Party has been in power for all but ten months since 1955 but Aso will be its fourth prime minister in the past two years as the party struggles over a raft of scandals and more recently a faltering economy. Aso said his first priority would be to pump stimulate spending into the economy, the worlds second largest but teetering on the brink of recession, clashing with LDP free-market reformists who in recent years have pushed to tame a ballooning public debt. He would make full use of all sorts of policies to invigorate the economy.

"This is the line up aimed at avoiding any political scandals ahead of the imminent general elections" -- Shjiro Kato, professor of politics at Toyo University said. The foreign ministry has been given to Hirofumi Nakasone, the sun of one of Japan's best -known premiers, Yasuhiro Naksaone, who led Japan in the 1980s and was close ally in US president Ronal Reagan's anti- communist campaign. Also in a bid to ensure party unity kept in place Fiscal and Economic Policy Minster Kaoru Yosano who had challenged him for the top job arguing that Aso's economic policies were irresponsible. Another rival Shigeru Ishiba, was made farm minister , a position that has frequently been hit by scandal . Ishiba survived resignation calls as he managed crises as Fukuda's defense minister. Japan, the largest economy in Asia and the second largest in the world, poses a very important player in the world field. Its change influences the global economy. She is one of the largest donors to Bangladesh. Necessarily our interest focuses on any change of Japan. Its economic doldrums means whole Asia's bleak economy. We want to see Japan always as the land of 'rising sun' in respect of economy and politics. It would go ahead with its economic leadership under Taro Aso.

Terrorising Muslims in the name of countering terrorism

Yoginder Sikand

In the face of a seemingly unending wave of fake encounters, killings and arrests of innocent Muslims across the country falsely accused by the police of being 'terrorists', a three-day Peoples' Tribunal was recently held in Hyderabad on 'Atrocities Committed Against Minorities in the Name of Fighting Terrorism'.

Organised by three noted Delhi-based human rights organisations, ANHAD, Peace and the Human Rights Law Network, it brought together eminent journalists, retired judges and social activists who listened to the testimonies of over 40 Muslims from different parts of India who have been victimised or whose relatives have been brutally terrorised by the police and the state machinery in the name of combating 'terrorism'.

Introducing the purpose of the Public Tribunal, Apoorvanand, a Delhi-based social activist, critiqued the so-called 'mainstream' media for its obsession with what it terms as 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' terrorism while maintaining a studied silence on the terrorism unleashed on a far more menacing scale by the state and by right-wing Hindu organisations, in which, over the years, tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, have lost their lives, with their culprits having faced no punishment whatsoever. He remarked that now, in addition to working-class Muslims who earlier bore the brunt of police brutalities, Muslim professionals, such as doctors, computer scientists and engineers, are being arbitrarily arrested by the police, tortured in jails and branded as 'terrorists' for crimes for which no confirmed evidence of their involvement has been produced.

'Earlier, poor Muslims were arrested, branded as ignorant lumpen elements by the police and, hence, as terrorists. Now, they are catching well-educated Muslims and accusing them of being terrorists, claiming that they have access to sophisticated technology,' he remarked. Literally hundreds of Muslims have, in recent years, been picked up by the police or even killed on such fake charges, he added. The mass media simply parrots the police line, thus playing a major role in fanning anti-Muslim hatred. At the same time, he went on, the police, the so-called 'mainstream' media and the state machinery turn a completely blind eye to the terror being openly engaged in by Hindutva outfits.

On a similar note, Colin Gonsalves, Supreme Court advocate and convenor of the Human Rights Law Network, noted what he called the 'fear psychosis' that had spread throughout the Muslim community in the face of police and state terror. Several Muslim victims from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh who wanted to testify at the Public Tribunal were intimidated by the police not to do so, being threatened with further trouble if they refused to comply with their orders, he said. He bitterly castigated the state for refusing to ban Hindu terror outfits and for not taking any action against the killers of literally thousands of Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.

He pointed out that the police was rounding up large numbers of innocent Muslims and, through brutal torture, was forcing them to confess to terror crimes which they did not commit. For their part, the courts, too, were dragging their feet on a whole host of cases involving massacres and unwarranted arrests of religious minorities across the country.

Suresh Khairnar, an intrepid human rights activist from Nagpur, rebutted the police's claim about the alleged role of Muslim militants in the attack on the RSS headquarters in Nagpur and in several other such bomb blasts in recent years. He claimed that the Nagpur attack was a stage-managed incident, and that the three Muslim men who were killed by the police, whom the police claimed were behind the attack, were actually done to death in a fake encounter. Khairnar also raised the case of the Nanded blasts, in which some Bajrang Dal activists who were making bombs in order to attack mosques were killed. Scores of Hindutva activists were also involved in the conspiracy, but, Khairnar said, no action was taken against them. Nor did the media give this, as well as other proven cases of Hindutva groups being engaged in fomenting terror, much coverage.

'This is the last battle for survival for India's Muslims. I cannot even dare imagine how dreadful must be the insecurity of ordinary Muslims in this country,' Khairnar opined, adding that the state, rapidly hurtling towards full-blown fascism, was hell-bent on quashing all dissent.

'While Muslims demanding justice are branded as Islamic terrorists, those of us, like myself, who have Hindu names, are being targeted as Naxalites,' he said. No political party was seriously taking up the cause of the Muslims who are being thus unfairly targeted, he pointed out, and in large parts of the country pro-Hindutva lawyers have made it impossible for anyone to take up their cases. The situation was grim not just in BJP-ruled states but also in states ruled by the Congress and the CPI(M), he added, where the attitude of the police towards Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis was, with a few exceptions, equally hostile. 'They are fiercely anti-Muslim despite not having gone to RSS shakhas and despite being paid by a so-called secular state. They are doing the work of the Bajrang Dal', he remarked.

Zakia Jowher of Action Aid , who has been closely involved in the struggle for justice for Muslims in Gujarat, spoke about the continued harassment of Muslims in the state, of police forcing innocent Muslims through torture to confess to bomb blasts crimes that they did not commit, even going to the extent of threatening to kill them in fake encounters if they refused. Yet, in the face of all this, the state remains a mute spectator. Even sections of the judiciary are complicit in this gross denial of justice and there is little or no transparency in the investigations. ' We are paying the price for being Muslims.

This is a total subversion of the Indian Constitution. Gujarat was an exception', but now, she added, 'it is rapidly becoming the norm', with witch-hunts against Muslims in the name of countering terrorism spreading to the rest of the country. 'There's no difference between the Congress and the BJP on this score,' she commented.

Ram Puniyani, noted Mumbai-based human rights activist, argued that there now appear to be 'two separate judicial systems in this country-a separate one for oppressed communities like Dalits and Muslims and another for the elites. There seems to be no scope for justice for oppressed groups. Investigations into charges and atrocities against them are being dictated by oppression, deceit and lies.' This sentiment was echoed by the well-known scholar-activist Asghar Ali Engineer, who remarked that 'the governmental apparatus has become monstrous'. He questioned the police's claims about the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as being behind a recent chain of deadly bomb blasts in the country, on the basis of which hundreds of hapless Muslims have been arrested and tortured in prisons.

'SIMI has been banned for several years now, so how can it suddenly become so powerful? SIMI activists have been carefully watched, so how come these attacks have happened?' , he asked. Numerous other blasts attributed to Muslims by the police, the state authorities and the media, he said, were probably engineered by other elements. The media, however, only accepts the police version of the story, and no action is ever taken against highly communal Hindu newspapers, which spread vitriol against Muslims, he pointed out.

Former Vice-Chancellor of Lucknow University Roop Rekha called these chains of dastardly events as 'signs of fascism, an attack not just on Muslims but also on democracy, indicating a total collapse of the Constitutional system'. She mentioned how Hindu fascist organisations regularly organise training camps for instructing their volunteers in the use of arms and also carry weapons in processions in the streets but are not stopped by the state machinery. 'Yet, if Muslims just raise some religious slogan like Allahu Akbar they can be branded as terrorists ', she said. 'I thought the judiciary was the safest institution for protecting the rights of minorities but this is not so. Several unfair judgments have been delivered and if we protest against them we run the risk of being accused of contempt of court', she decried.

After listening to the heart-wrenching narratives of hapless Muslim victims of police and state terror who had assembled from various parts of India, members of the jury of the People's Tribunal announced their 'verdict'. Jury-member and noted human rights activist from Hyderabad K.G.Kannabiran accused the government of 'an assault on Muslims and subjecting them to tremendous repression'. 'Such mis-governance and such blatant denial of justice', he said, 'can only produce terrorism, not stop it.' Likewise, Justice (Retd.) Sardar Ali accused powerful elements in the police and the state apparatus of seeking to 'destroy the fundamental character of the Indian Constitution' and even claimed that 'an undeclared emergency has been declared against the Muslims of the country'.

This, in turn, he remarked, 'poses a grave danger to the very concept of India.' And, voicing the same concern, Justice (Retd.) S.N.Bhargava gave a similar verdict, stating that Muslims in large parts of India were 'living in fear' and were being effectively denied their right to live with honour and dignity

(Dr Yoginder S. Sikand is a well-known intellectual and activist who has written extensively on religion,culture and politics in the Indian sub-continent)