Over the top

Last week, one heard about the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) decision to impose a partial ban on The Baloch Hal, the first and only online newspaper that tells the story of Balochistan to the rest of Pakistan and the world-at-large. The reason for the ban, according to the PTA, was that The Baloch Hal published ‘anti-Pakistan material’. As expected, this vague claim remains unsubstantiated.
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By Nandini Ramachandran

Numbers are a notoriously relative factor within Indian politics, existing only to be massaged at every corner. The distinctive semantics of numbers is nowhere clearer than in the convenient slippage between lakhs and millions in the media’s perpetual quest for the more glamorous statistic. 5 million is, after all, a far more imposing figure than 50 lakhs, unless one has cultivated the esoteric skill of fluently flitting back and forth between numerical systems. In a country where “crorepati” and “millionaire” are practically synonymous, it’s safe to assume such literacy remains an elite skill even among the educated. Add to that the inevitable and instinctive association between millions and dollars, and a million is virtually guaranteed more eyeballs than a paltry 10 lakhs.

Conversely, when an effort is being made to downplay the magnitude of a certain value,  the ingenious “hundreds of lakhs” are trotted out in defiance of mathematical logic. Corporate accounts, for instance, enumerate in the hundreds and even thousands of lakhs by default. But the big money still talks in crores, the Indian billion, seamlessly transiting between the hoi polloi and the haute. By this marker, the recent sale of 3G spectrum to telecom majors within India was almost too haute to touch.

The Government of India laughed its way to the Reserve Bank this past week, even as the Pakistani Government was busy ejecting its country out of the internet revolution. 3G spectrum, which enables the further diffusion of the web across India, sold for twice its estimated revenue, at a whopping 67,700-odd crores (677 billion rupees or 15 billion dollars, for those who prefer an alternate gloss).  I should reiterate, before my compatriots get smug about our relative freedoms, that this diffusion is strictly an elite phenomenon, as anything that assumes more than barely-there literacy is bound to be. Besides, it’s easy to forget that internet access is expensive in the subcontinent, a reality that posher phones are not likely to address. The average internet monthly plan can (and does) feed entire families for weeks, if one neglects the attendant requirement of a computer/smart phone. My internet bill is half the (optimal) monthly minimum wage. Despite our burgeoning cyber-cafe culture, this disparity is not easily resolved. The web has been a home to many of us while remaining a myth to many more.

Sermons aside, when news of the final 3G deal broke on 19th May, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was asked how the windfall was to be spent “for social interest” by a zealous (if naive) television journalist. The minister acted coy, if only because he realises the bounty is hardly about to reach those who most need it: India’s budget allocates a paltry 900 crores towards agricultural production, indisputably India’s poorest profession (after, possibly, day-labour, but that is not even considered a profession within India’s three pronged system of manufacturing, agriculture, and services). We are, they tell us, a perennially poor country. So poor we can’t afford to offset an obscene 16% inflation rate on basic food grains and commodities.

Well, anyway. Woe betide the less fortunate. It is, after all, what they are there for: to be used as lightning rods for all the squalor and misery we live amidst. To most of my peers, the sale of 3G spectrum deserves attention because it marks a transition in our paradigm for mobile information (the pun is intended, but forced: I am using mobile as an adjective, not a noun). It’s a shift embodied by the iPhone: once 3G settles down, the iPhone will go from being a bewildering and largely useless gizmo to another splendid toy for the social climber’s stable. We are a young, voracious nation unwilling to be left out of the gadget wars, a fact telecom companies obviously respect enough to cough up such astonishing amounts. That is, I suppose, all for the better, if it ensures that I will never be bereft of wikipedia. And I can’t wait to be able to stream movies while I read, rock, surf, skype, and play video games on the train to heaven.

It has been leaked to General Public that the Nepali Dada Party was preparing to mobilize its elite youth force, the Fundamentally Upset Commoners  Klan of Energetic Revolutionaries, whose acronym cannot be spelled out   for fear of censorship by the Chinese authorities who continue to classify the Nepali Dada Party as Tibetan Nationalistic Unitary Communists.

The Nepali Dada Party firmly denies this claim. Our Revolutionaries are Upset at this unwanted accusation. It demands that General Public make his sources public immediately on all national daily and weekly newspapers so that General Public can rest assured that we as a party are a responsible bunch of bloks. We play cricket and sip tea in Nepal’s Tribhuvan. Honest!

Those broken windows were because our Fundamentally Upset Commoners  Klan of Energetic Revolutionaries are working hard to produce the next Sackin Tenderkarke. Then the imperlialistic and capitalistic powers of South Asian cricket and the IPL beware! The true legends of cricket like Bratman, War-ni, and Potluck.

Viva la Revolution!

- Dada without title, Central Committee Member of the Nepali Dada Party

photo credit: SFTHQ

“For more than a year and a half”, Himal noted in September 2009, the Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen “has languished in prison … awaiting trial on charges of ‘inciting separatism’.” Now, that wrong has been ‘righted’.

Wangchen fell afoul of the Chinese authorities in March 2008. He had shot some 35 hours of frank interviews with ethnic Tibetans across the high plateau, in which they discussed their feelings regarding the continued Chinese presence in Tibet and well as the then-upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, slated for the following August. Although Wangchen and his collaborator, Jigme Gyatso, were subsequently arrested, the tapes themselves were shipped out to Wangchen’s cousin, who was living in exile in Switzerland; the material was eventually made into a 25-minute film, Jigdrel (Leaving Fear Behind). It is unclear whether the subsequent international acclaim that the film received – having been filmed in more than 30 countries over the past two years, including at a secret showing in Beijing during the Olympics – helped or hindered Wangchen’s subsequent fate. Either way, in late December, the Chinese authorities put an end to their dithering over how to deal with the 36-year-old filmmaker, and sentenced him to six years of imprisonment for ‘subversion’. (Jigme Gyatso, meanwhile, was released after being held for seven months, during which time he was allegedly tortured.)

It is also unclear whether the international outcry that had continued to rise in recent months over Wangchen’s imprisonment helped or hurt that court ruling. While six years is clearly an unacceptable prison sentence for having been involved in producing what is by any standard a laudably even-handed, un-sensationalistic bit of filmmaking (particularly for such a notoriously explosive subject), it is also clear that far more draconian means were available to the Chinese authorities, should they have wished to use them. Wangchen’s chosen court representation was officially disallowed from involvement, after all, and observers had long been clear that there was no reason to assume that the eventual court action would be either transparent or fair. In the event, Wangchen’s family – including those in Xining, Qinghai, where the case was heard – were not even alerted to the fact that the hearing was finally going forward.

In this context, a six-year sentence might strike some as better than many of the alternatives. Almost simultaneous with Wangchen’s ruling, after all, the Chinese authorities sentenced five more ethnic Uyghurs to death for their involvement in the July 2009 demonstrations in Urumqi, in Xinjiang; that brought the total number of death sentences for the Xinjiang violence to 22 since September alone, while at least a dozen more have been given life sentences for their participation in the separatism-inspired violence. Yet given the continued rumours of Wangchen’s ill health – he is reported to have contracted Hepatitis B while in prison, and not to be receiving adequate medical care – it is possible to read the ruling as a relatively ‘lenient’ reaction arrived at in response to the international spotlight that has been shone on the case – but one that will nonetheless put Wangchen permanently out of commission.

The work, meanwhile, remains for all to see. “It is those who agreed to speak boldly on camera who have left their fear behind,” Himal wrote in September. “As can be seen from the aftermath, it is perhaps the Chinese authorities who have not.” Unfortunately, this most recent action again underscores the fact that fear-based reactions are oftentimes the most dangerous of all. Yet at this point, it is important to recall that Wangchen, despite his relative inexperience as a filmmaker, did not stumble blindly into his current situation. Prior to beginning his interviewing, he moved his wife and children out of Tibet, to India, where they remain today. Indeed, that type of courage is imbued in each of the more than 100 Tibetans who agreed to speak with Wangchen (around 20 are featured), particularly those whose faces remained notably uncovered. “They were willing to be filmed,” Wangchen explains in the film. “I also asked clearly about filming and explained that they didn’t have to show their faces. Some said that we absolutely had to show their faces, otherwise it wasn’t worth speaking to them.” Read a full transcript of what they had to say here. For more info http://www.leavingfearbehind.com/

– Carey L Biron

Stills from 'Jigdrel, Leaving Fear Behind'

Burma watchers get used to hearing about the grizzly punishments meted out upon the countries dissenting voices. This week however the military junta returned to worrying ways when it sentenced two of its own to death. Others were sentenced under Burma’s seemingly ludite ‘electronics act’. Which is a surprisingly broad act that can be applied to anyone who uses anything ‘tech’.

Majors Win Naing Kyaw and Thura Kyaw were given the death sentence for leaking a report about a weapons shopping trip that a senior junta member made to North Korea and of details of a bizarre tunnel network that Pyongyang is apparently helping to build in Burma, whilst the electronics act was applied to 3 others presumably for having some part in the act of transmitting the data.

It comes only days after a journalist, Hla Hla Win, was jailed for 20 years simply for working for my own organisation, the Democratic Voice of Burma. He was convicted on new year’s eve, a day before the country’s promised election year on its ‘road map to democracy’.

Which is what is so troubling about such sensitivity towards information, the horrible truth, not unlike discovering that, as suspected, one’s wife is having an affair, is that the junta probably have no intention of delivering anything resembling accountable governance or freedom of expression and association.There has, as yet been no official date for an election, with speculation and rumour variously suggesting March or October. With most opposition groups refusing to take part, largely due to the last mass exercise in polling, a referendum on a 2008 constitution, that was roundly dismissed.

Indeed in keeping with Burma’s dictatorial traditions it was illegal to campaign against the constitution and passed with over 98% of the supposed vote, indeed people I have met say that shortly after they were battered by cyclone Nargis survivors names were taken and simply marked as yes votes by the village head, at the behest of the millitary. The document is deeply ‘undemocratic’ insuring that military personnel cannot be prosecuted by civilian courts and guaranteeing that at least 25% of parliamentary seats be assigned to the military amongst other such legal offenses to the notion of democracy.

The serious millitary projects such as the tunnels and the other Korean acquisitions also betray an insincerity towards civilian government. Ever since the pivotal protests of the late 80’s and early 90’s when Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as the leader of the democratic opposition the military has drastically increased numbers of men and expenditure on foreign hardware. The relationship with North Korea has predictably lead to fears that the generals want to join the nuclear club. All have ultimately been to perpetuate the institution of military rule.

People wait eagerly for the ‘elections’, whether with genuine hope or just for any sense of change, anything to break the monotony of military rule, but as two men wait to meet their end for leaking a document, what is probably best, as Robert Mugabe used to say about himself; ‘Watch what I do, not what I say’.

Joseph Allchin