Over the top

Had he lived, he would turn 85 today. To his virtues, let me quote Sartre:

Fanon is the first since Engels to bring the process of history to the clear light of day… [he constitutes] step by step, the dialectic which liberal hypocrisy hides from you and which is as much responsible for our existence as for his.

There are many empires, uncountable hundreds, vying for the patriotic mind. (more…)

Meher Ali on Jairam Ramesh’s apology for the government’s role, 23 years ago, in the clandestine transportation of toxic waste from the Union Carbide plant to a TSD.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s Union minister of state for environment, apologised on Sunday. ‘Whoops!’ he said. The Madhya Pradesh government secretly transported 40 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal to a Treatment, Storage and Disposal (TSD) facility in Indore in 2008, at a time when the curfew was imposed on the riot-affected city, the Times of India reported.

What do you say to that? ‘Go Ramesh!’ ‘Champion of transparency!’ ‘Of course you are not to be blamed. We agree, you were not the environment minister at that time, so environment was probably not one of your concerns.’

So what if 23 years ago, the country shook from the impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy. So what if the government that you work for has treated the victims of the tragedy with little more than contempt. So what that the state and central governments have both tried, with all their might, to brush Union Carbide’s role in the environment disaster, under the carpet?

You probably knew about it though didn’t you? For how long?

What happens now? Another Bhopal in the making, because we know it’ll probably take you another 20 years to shift the waste (clandestinely) to some other obscure place, or maybe you’ll wait for a riot to do the trick.

The UPA-II, it seems, is getting more arrogant by the day. Instead of chalking out a clear plan of action for disposing of toxic waste which has been in the country since 1984; instead of holding those responsible for the disaster accountable; instead of using this environmental disaster as a lesson in how to avoid similar tragedies, the government says, ‘Sorry! Whoops!’

Would it have been too much to expect the environment minister to have a plan of action on how he plans to now get rid of the toxic waste in Pithampur accompany his apology? Would it have been too much to ask him to explain how exactly he came to know of this and when? (Of course he would have to tell us the truth, which may be a stretch).

We want to know why the central and state government were working so hard to cover this up, not just in the 1980s but until 2008. We want to know how many Indian citizens’ lives equal that of Warren Anderson? We want to know if the government will take environmental hazards seriously or if it is waiting for another one to happen. When will it chalk out a clear plan of action with regard to compensation for victims of environmental disasters, protocols for cleaning up and emergency responses to such disasters?

We want to know if the government is serious about governance and if it values people over profits. The last point is important, because if it does not, as we have seen in the past; if the government is callous and irresponsible towards its people, if it treats corporations as kings and the people as ‘collateral damage’ in its quest to become a ’superpower,’ then the people may not accept. Whoops!

— The writer is the Assistant Editor (print) at Himal Southasian.

An Allegory for Niyamgiri and the Dongria Kondh.

Green Ants is a movie that can be interpreted at various levels- it can be constructed as a classic tale of the human and environmental costs of human greed, as a study of the encroaching tides of western rationality upon profoundly different ways of thought or as an indictment of a civilisation that respects no other. At its heart is a question: can you really consider yourself civilised if you cannot understand another person’s perspective, or at the very least respect it?

The story of green ants is a tale about corporate profit clashing with aboriginal beliefs. It is, in some ways, the story of advancing capitalism. Capitalism has always laid waste what came before it- whether it was the “red” Indian or the brown one, the yellow man or the black one. The white man, they say, was blind to his own history and imported his blindness to the colonies. This was done by subordinating, undermining and dividing cultures with the ruthlessness only the religion of profiteering can muster. How can it be otherwise? If all is fair where money is to be made, how easy it must be to poison societies where wealth is respected but not worshipped. Historically, imperial ambitions have always mixed well with religious fervour: the only difference in the modern world is that money is the new false god.

In Herzog’s movie, a mining company wants to excavate the holy ground of a group of Australian aborigines: they believe that the land that is to be mined is where the green ants, upon whom existence depends, dream; and upon that dream rests reality. On the face of it, it is irrational and absurd, but really is it any more absurd that ordering existence for the benefit of the unqualified zeal for profit? Than unrestrainedly exploiting resources, when the finiteness of them is beyond question? The “American dream” is today what constructs reality- and it is no more tangible (and some would argue possible) than the green ants’ dream. This film, to some extent, exposes it for the myth it is by deconstructing other myths that have sustained other cultures in their fight for survival.

The sharpest voice protesting capitalism today says that it steals from the poor to reward the rich. The latest recession, for instance, will hit aid to dependant Africa and the sundry poor of the world worse than anyone else, because they are the most expendable. It was caused because of the recklessness of big business and banks; yet they received a trillion dollars in stimulus packages. This is a story about how stealing from the poor, the unrepresented, the helpless, is the easiest and quickest crime in history and one that has always borne rich dividends. It is made easy by dismissing their qualms and their claims as irrational, backward, irrelevant and placing them against “real” truths, like the fact that the world needs to mine constantly to support a wasteful and extravagant system. It is made easy by the fact that the privileged of the world- economically, culturally, socially privileged- are so few and yet so powerful, and the only ones that have the resources to be able to stick together. And the fact that they disguise their minority so effectively by forcing the majority to fight between themselves for scraps. In fights for survival, metaphysical questions about the “system” and its validity are a luxury. It is only when one’s basic beliefs about existence are questioned that one begins to consider actually fighting, and by then it is often too late.

Sunil Pant is a member of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly and the founder and executive director of the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), a grassroots organization working for gender and sexuality minorities in Kathmandu, Nepal. The work of BDS covers many issues of political representation, non-discrimination, health, community building, and human rights. In December 2007 the Supreme Court of Nepal made a historic ruling in favor of Mr. Pant and three other petitioners on behalf of the gender identity and sexual orientation minority community, mandating a revision of all laws concerning fundamental rights so as to apply to third gender citizens and ensure no discrimination against LGBTI citizens, granting a third gender option for citizenship and identity documents, and ordering the formation of a government committee to examine the question of same-sex marriage (See Himal March 2008, ‘The state of homosexuality‘). As a member of the Constituent Assembly (whose tenure was just extended until May 2011), Pant has worked tirelessly from this position to help incorporate LGBTI rights into the new Nepali constitution. He spoke to Kaveri Rajaraman on May 19, 2010 about his personal journey, his organising and activism (Part 1), the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling, and the progress of the CA in writing a historic constitution with explicit provisions for the recognition and protection of the LGBTI community (Part 2).

PART 1

I wanted to start by asking you about the history and trajectory of Blue Diamond Society, and how you personally got increasingly involved in both the LGBTI rights issue work as well as activist work in other areas.

I grew up in Gorkha district and finished my schooling there, and I didn’t have any question about my sexuality. It was not a debate, nobody was asking questions. In fact, still, largely, in the countryside of Nepal – and you can see this even in the cities – socialization is very gender segregated. It’s very gendered, men playing together, girls playing together, so I thought everyone was like me! So, you know, it was not a problem.

Then I came here [to Kathmandu], did my college, and then went to Belarus for higher studies, where we did a one-year language course. As a student you have to go through a thorough medical examination every year. The first year we didn’t realize much because we couldn’t read the language, but in our second year we could see a board hanging there saying ‘Beware of gays’, or something like that. So that was the point at which questions arose – ‘What is it?’ and ‘People have different sexualities…’. I also could read later on about a lot of police raids on the underground gay scene there, people being charged and arrested and imprisoned. But I couldn’t ask anybody and there was no way that I could get any information. It was very difficult then. I couldn’t read any books about sexuality, I couldn’t talk to anybody, so I started pretending like I was a straight guy. Then I finished my Master’s degree there and then went to Japan to do volunteer work in the environmental area, and I did some volunteer work for 15 days. But I had another two and a half months there, so I thought maybe I’d do some odd jobs to make some pocket money and bring gifts back home. So I was looking for a job in Tokyo. I didn’t know much Japanese, but I was asking for any shops or restaurants where I could get a job. I saw a bookshop, and bookshops usually attract me, so I went there and picked up a book and found it to be very different. I left that book and picked up another one that had semi-nudity and gay elements, so I looked around, feeling like everyone was watching me. I looked around at the calendars, all those things, and it was a little bit odd for me. I was scared and ran away from there. But that made me do a lot of thinking and I couldn’t sleep, and after three days I went back, thinking maybe this was the place where I would find more information. So I went back there, talked to the shop owner and he explained that this is a gay bookshop and this whole area is a gay neighborhood. And he explained that these are the sections: gay history, Stonewall history, you can find books on Hinduism and homosexuality, or Buddhism and homosexuality, the Japanese tradition in homosexuality, Chinese homosexuality, everything. So I stopped looking for a job, started learning more about myself, more about gay, lesbian and transgender history and science.

So the days wore on, and then on the last day of my visa I just flew back to Nepal. I didn’t know what to do, as there were not many jobs in computers here in those days. It was 1997. So I thought I’d need to do further studies. So I applied and got a scholarship to Hong Kong Science and Technology University and went there for an M. Phil. in computer science. It was fine, the gay scene there was much smaller compared to Tokyo, but I didn’t like it, because it was just one-night stands, there were no relationships. It made me think – is this the gay life? Also, Valentine’s Day was approaching and the students asked me who was my valentine. I said, ‘I’m new to the city, and I’m gay’. I thought it would be perfectly fine, and that the people of Hong Kong would be open. But then silent prejudice and exclusion started from the next day. People started not sitting at the same bench I was sitting. The teachers started talking more in Cantonese. Probably people were gossiping, and so, it was hard. So I didn’t continue, and I left Hong Kong, came back, and went to Orissa, in India, because the super cyclone had hit at that time, 1999, and a lot of people had been killed. I thought, Oh, I should go to help people, and I thought I would go for a week or two weeks. But I ended up staying for ten months because the need was great. I learned Buddhism there. I met a lot of good people in the remote countryside of Orissa.

And then after ten months I came back to Nepal.  I worked with single women, widows, basically, from Gorkha district. We opened a handicraft center and made a connection with the New York designers. They would send samples, the women copied and produced them, and then we sent them the production. They would send a salary to the women. In between I had to come back and forth to Kathmandu. I had always wondered and been very curious as to whether there were other gays and lesbians in the country, what was the culture, what was the situation, etc. but I didn’t have much clue as to how to recognize other gays and how to meet them. But I’d read that in Tokyo, where homosexuality is illegal, people meet usually in public places. So, hoping to meet other people, I started going to Ratna Park, which is a tiny park in the center of Kathmandu, and started talking to people. I met more than 500 people in just two weeks. There were so many gays, just dying to talk and get new information. So I was telling them all about the history of Stonewall, about gay culture in Egypt, homosexuality and Hinduism, about Japanese gay culture in the past, and also about how there are cross-gender or genderfluid roles even in Nepal, like the Maruni dance, or the Gaijatra, and made a link between all of these things. I told them about the South African constitution, about the European countries legalizing gay marriage, all of those things. In three months, I met so many – over 5000 people.

On the fourth month, I met a transgender who was dancing at a restaurant, because in those days, you couldn’t find girls working as dancers. She was dancing as a woman. She was a regular visitor to Ratna Park, and after 7-8 o’clock, she’d go to the dance bar, dance until late night, and then go home. One day her brother came to the same restaurant as he used to dance with his friends, for beer, and he recognized her. So he abused her, beat her up, and she committed suicide on the third day. It was a very big turning point.  It was very difficult. Then another two weeks later, another gay man from Gorkha district, who was renting a place near Baudhanath was found. Police found his body, naked, lying under the bed. His stomach was slit, his throat was slit, he was cut all over, he was raped, he was naked. It was murder, after rape. I heard that news and talked to my friends, saying ‘Let’s go, we should probably document this and then bring out the facts’. But a lot of other friends suggested otherwise, ‘No no no, we shouldn’t link to these things. We will be outed and we will be blacklisted.’ That was a big turning point, learning how difficult it is for people. You couldn’t even talk about these human rights violations, at the level at which they were going on. But I couldn’t stop. Then the idea came, that we must organize. I told them that’s how the transgenders fought, during Stonewall. I told people that without standing, without organizing, without demanding, nobody would give us our rights. There are a lot of prejudicial myths against us. We must demystify and clarify that we are natural people and capable people. We are not in any way less than that.

So then the organization meeting process started. I organized a training session. The best way to do this was around HIV, since we also were concerned about health issues, because none of the government programs and other NGO programs were talking about HIV-risk among men and transgenders. So I organized a three-day training. Two days were about HIV and sexually transmitted infection. The other day was about understanding gender, sexuality and human rights. So I trained eighteen people and then from the next day six people were volunteering with me, and I had already contacted a New York-based organization which was sending condoms and lubricant. So we were distributing condoms and lubricant, us seven people from the next day.

Then in early 2001 we started drafting the constitution for the new NGO. I drafted it and then went to the Patan local government office to register it. They refused it, saying ‘We cannot allow an organization for homosexuals. It would be illegal’. I didn’t know the law then, that there’s no law that prevents this in Nepal. We didn’t even have Article 377 [an article of law criminalizing ‘unnatural sex’, a colonial hangover in many South Asian countries]. But we didn’t know the law. And then I remember the officer asking us, ‘You should change the goal, if you want to work on homosexuals, making them heterosexual, then we will allow this.’ But that was not the purpose. So we changed some terminology, took out the words homosexuals and homosexuality, and just put in ‘organization for general human rights and health’. So they agreed. Then I needed at least nine IDs, photocopy, and passport-sized photographs and so I talked to the community members I knew. They said ‘Oh oh yes, yes, we will give you these. We will bring them tomorrow.’ But in three weeks they never did bring them. I can understand. They were afraid. So I asked my family, friends, and relatives about them sitting on the board and they agreed. So we registered. Then we organized another bigger training session. We still didn’t have an office, we were still meeting in small tea shops, or the corner of the park, next to the Pashupati temple, or Darbar Square, wherever. Then in late 2001 we got a small amount of funding for four months. That’s when we were able to rent a three-room office, put up a signboard and start working, with a drop-in center, regular trainings, counseling, and outreach work. So it was going very well, a lot of people, especially the transgenders, enjoyed the safe space. They came here, heard everyone’s problems, started writing stories and documenting the violence, but they were also allowed to change their getup and make up and dance, and express themselves fully. So the next renewal came, and then I asked them ‘Now, we were not raided with this office, we are fine, and nobody has been arrested, so you can come sit on the board now’, and they said ‘OK we will.’ So they brought their IDs and photocopy and photographs, and I asked my relatives and families to resign and replaced them by community members.

Then in mid-2002, we were talking and saying, ‘We should go to the media. We should slowly bring these matters out, let the people know, and the media is the best tool.’ I said ‘We will talk to the media, but we will ask a journalist who is sensitive, who will not take photographs, will not reveal anyone’s true identity, etc.’ So on that condition people agreed. So we had about 20 people here, but when the journalist came, there was nobody. People were jumping outside from the back door, people were hiding in the toilets. I looked so stupid. I said, ‘Look, there were twenty people just half a minute ago. And they are hiding’. So she understood and then she interviewed me and took my photograph and it came into English newspapers. So that’s the first time I came out. But it was in English, so not many people read it. My family, none of them read it. I was still not out to my family.

Then in 2003, a state of emergency had been declared and security forces were everywhere. Two transgenders were arrested in front of Bir Hospital, next to Ratna Park, at 8 o’clock in the evening. Their hands were tied, their faces were covered and they were beaten up brutally by twelve policemen. They were taken to an isolated place and then raped by these twelve policemen. They were thrown out into the bush and presumed dead. They regained sense in the morning and then came to the Blue Diamond Society office. There were bruises all over, bleeding, and their hair was chopped off and clothes were torn up, so it was pretty horrible. So that’s when, for the first time, I called up the media and documented it in a proper way and then circulated the information because we thought that human rights activists or the UN or the rest of society should know what’s going on in Nepal. The media didn’t understand about homosexuality, but they didn’t understand why the police was committing that kind of atrocity, rape and murder of people. There was no crime that these two transgenders had committed. So the media disliked the police treatment – if homosexuality was wrong, the police supposed to take them through a proper legal procedure, not beat them, rape them and murder them. So then we started a thorough proper documentation, circulation, and reporting mechanism. Until 2006 it was a very hard time for us. There was not a single week that I wasn’t going to the police station. I was going to the police station – usually the police make arrests in the evenings, and so anytime from 9 o’clock to 1 o’clock – whenever I heard that somebody was arrested, I’d go and visit, just to make sure that they wouldn’t get abused in detention. When the police know that somebody educated who knows the law is coming, they commit less violence. Just for that reason, I would go every week, every day, whenever. Then we were able to create a lot of attention. I remember those activists in India suggesting otherwise. ‘Oh, you’re being too public, that’s why you got this backlash. You should just remain under the radar of HIV, or just health issues, but not take on human rights’. I was telling them, ‘No. You must respond to human rights abuses. OK, you can wait and start 20 years later, but when you start raising human rights issues and being public, you will always face some backlash. We’d rather get over this sooner and then get our rights early’. We were right.

So after the king’s direct ruling, the populous movement was picking up and I remember the king was introducing a code of conduct for civil society, for how we should function. It pretty much paralyzed civil society functioning. So we were the first organization to oppose this. There were big organizations that couldn’t do it by themselves but when they heard that we were doing it they came to us. So we also went to the street, training the public wherever we could. The people’s movement was successful and we thought the leaders would hear many marginalized voices. They heard a few, but not everyone’s. Our activism, our movement has always been peaceful. So we couldn’t organize blockades, or strikes, or vandalize anything. The only way remaining was to take the government to court.

 So we took the government to the court in early 2007. It was April 18 when we filed a writ petition against the government, and in December already we had a decision – a fantastic decision – from the Supreme Court. The court gave 100% of what we asked for, recognizing third gender people and gays, in a beautiful statement – saying we were natural persons, deserving equal rights.  They ordered the government to issue citizenship IDs to the third gender according to their gender identity, to amend or scrap discriminatory law policies against LGBTIs and also to form a same-sex marriage committee. It also issued a legal note to the Constituent Assembly (CA) to recognize LGBTI rights while drafting or making the new constitution. So it was a fantastic decision for us, a big victory. That was a major, major turning point for the larger political parties and civil society – the Supreme Court, very decisively saying it’s a perfectly natural thing to be gay and lesbian and transgender and ordering the government to ensure pretty basic rights! So they thought there must be something good about Blue Diamond Society. So they started meeting and speaking to us, and we were also very rapidly growing. I think that one of the approaches we took was creating visibility, not in an arrogant manner, but not getting shy or being afraid of being out. After all we thought that if we were honest to ourselves – and we must become honest to our families and society and to the country – that means that we have got to say that we are here, and we are citizens, and we have a lot of credibility, talents, and capacity to contribute back. We just need respect and opportunity. We don’t want to remain a burden, because if the state marginalizes us, then we cannot be productive.  And a lot of people said, ‘OK, but people do not come out as heterosexual’. And I said ‘They don’t need to, because nobody questions them. There is no problem. Heterosexuals have all their rights, the whole system ensures that they don’t need to say it’, and that’s the way I think we need to get to that point. Maybe we won’t need Blue Diamond Society in 20 years and we won’t need to raise these issues, because we will be accepted, as heterosexuals are. But since we don’t have similar attitudes, similar responses and similar acceptance from the state and from society, we should speak up about who we are.

The interview continues in Part 2 where Pant discusses the constitutional-writing process and inclusion of the rights of minorities.

Kaveri Rajaraman is a biologist and activist based in India, working on issues of class, heteropatriarchy and ecology. You may contact her at kaveri.rajaraman@gmail.com.

This week an international meeting on trafficking of people has been occurring in the Burmese town of Bagan. It is rare to hear a UN staffer congratulate the Burmese government. It is not so much their violent nature but their incompetence which seems often to hold them back.

But one Mr. Parajuli was found to be congratulating the Burmese government of six good years of fighting human trafficking in what is known as the COMMIT process, a grouping dedicated to combatting this trade amongst the six nations of the greater Mekong sub region.

Mr. Parajuli stated a number of measures that the junta had taken to fight trafficking all of them punitive or legal. He did however briefly mention the phrase ‘route causes’. A term which is almost always followed or preceded by ‘tackle’ and is usually as hollow as the greetings at the beginning of such speeches.

But in Burma this is a big question, why is trafficking in persons such a big issue?

I have met quite a few people who have been ‘trafficked’ they are as you’d imagine are usually poor, hard working individuals but on the whole they had not a bad word about the ‘trafficker’ or any more of a bad word than you or I would have for an over priced travel agent. And that’s exactly how I was shot down last time I was quizzing someone on ‘trafficking’ in Malaysia (a big destination), “to you they are traffickers, to us they are travel agents.”

The route causes are however undoubtedly years of economic mismanagement. In Burma cars, phones or pretty much anything useful including gas for cooking is expensive. The only things that are cheap are cigarettes, alcohol, illegal drugs and people’s labour. The irony with the gas is that Burma is a massive exporter of the stuff, with pipelines going, or being built to all of her rapidly developing neighbours.  Burma has been labelled by Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz as suffering from the ‘mineral curse’. A curse more commonly associated with African nations than those at the apex of the future powerhouses of the world. But it seems that trafficking in  Burma will only increase as the economy in Burma shows no sign of shaking its dubious status as ‘failed’.

Corruption is endemic in Burma in a manner which makes most other south Asian nations seem relatively uncorrupted or the corrupters petty criminals. Some of the most shocking corruption is very much government orchestrated for in Burma everything with value has some pay off for the army; the most remarkable scam is the way in  which the gas is sold, where by the government accounts show the gas being sold on the ‘offiicial’ exchange rate which puts the ‘kyat’ at around 6 to the dollar whilst the ‘unofficial’ rate is closer to a thousand. So while they give 6 ‘kyat’ for every dollar they earn selling gas into the nations coffers, roughly 990 ‘kyat’ is ferreted away into a Singaporean bank account for the junta and their own ends.

I could go on, but the sad fact is that people will continue to be exported along with the minerals for as long as Burma is kept in a state of under development and backwardness by the ‘route cause’ in chief; the military government.

Joseph Allchin