Sri Lanka’s President Declared Victor by Wide Margin

Image via Wikipedia

By LYDIA POLGREEN

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, was re-elected by a wide margin, election officials here said Wednesday, defeating the newly retired army general who had tried to lay claim to Mr. Rajapaksa’s biggest political victory, the defeat of the Tamil Tiger insurgency.

Official results gave Mr. Rajapaksa an 18-point advantage over his nearest opponent, Sarath Fonseka, the general who carried out the successful military operation against the Tigers. Mr. Fonseka rejected the result, saying that campaign had been marred by violence and irregularities in the vote counting.

“The enthusiasm of the people we noticed in the campaign is not reflected in the result,” Mr. Fonseka said at a news conference.

Independent Sri Lankan election monitors said that there was no evidence of major fraud in the voting, but left open the possibility of problems in the counting.

More broadly, election observers and advocacy groups have questioned the fundamental fairness of the campaign, accusing Mr. Rajapaksa of using state resources to run his campaign. State-owned news media all but shut out opposition candidates.

The election results illustrate the still-yawning ethnic and religious divides that plunged Sri Lanka into civil war in the first place, and underscore the difficulties Mr. Rajapaksa will face in trying to reconcile the country after 26 years of conflict.

Mr. Fonseka spent the day secluded in a five-star hotel, which the government surrounded with commandos, saying they had been placed there for security reasons. He said that he feared for his safety.

“They are trying to make me a prisoner,” Mr. Fonseka said, addressing a conference room packed with journalists. “They have made things very clear today.”

Lucien Rajakarunanyake, a government spokesman, rejected the suggestion that Mr. Fonseka was in danger, saying that the troops outside the hotel were merely for safety. “He is free to leave at any time,” the spokesman said.

The Tamil Tiger insurgency fought to create a Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka, separate from the Sinhalese majority. But over the years the group became little more than a criminal enterprise famous for its cruel tactics, human rights groups say, like holding civilians as human shields as well as using child soldiers and female suicide bombers.

While Mr. Rajapaksa won a large majority, Tamil and Muslim voters largely rejected him.

Mr. Rajapaksa pledged to be a president for all Sri Lankans, not just those who voted for him, an apparent effort to reach out to Tamil voters who shunned him in large numbers.

“Six million people voted for me,” Mr. Rajapaksa said at a news conference at his office late Wednesday evening. “Even the people who voted for other candidates, I have to look after their interests.”

It had been an ugly and sometimes violent campaign between two men who had once been close allies. The evidently exasperated elections commissioner, Dayananda Dissanayake, described numerous transgressions by the government during the campaign, concluding that “state institutions operated in a manner not befitting state organizations.”

Guidelines for the state media to behave fairly toward both candidates were ignored, he said, adding that the stress of overseeing the election had taken a toll on his health.

A long night of counting ballots confirmed that turnout in northern Tamil areas was very low, in the single digits in some war-hit areas, while voters had flocked to the polls in Mr. Rajapaksa’s southern stronghold.

Dayan Jayatilleka, a political analyst who was Sri Lanka’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva until the government fired him last year, said that the Tamil political parties had lost touch with the electorate during the long years of war.

“They have been engaging in the politics of exile,” Mr. Jayatilleka said. “They have not done the hard yards of rebuilding their political network.”

But election observers said that explosions and other disturbances, along with the heavy militarization of the northern and eastern Tamil areas, also suppressed the vote.

The other political parties in Mr. Fonseka’s coalition also struggled to bring in voters. The center-right United National Party failed to deliver the capital, Colombo — its stronghold — for Mr. Fonseka. And the Marxist party known as the J.V.P., the Sinhalese acronym for People’s Freedom Party, seemed to make little headway against the president in its southern Sinhalese bastions.

Mr. Fonseka, who ran on his record of winning the war against the Tamil Tigers, had counted on support from Tamil voters, who he hoped would choose him over Mr. Rajapaksa as the more palatable of the two options. Though Mr. Fonseka led the military campaign that may have killed thousands of Tamil civilians, he portrayed himself as committed to healing ethnic divisions and allowing communities a greater measure of self-rule.

He also sought to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Mr. Rajapaksa in some quarters of the Sinhalese majority. Voters expressed concern about the concentration of state power within Mr. Rajapaksa’s family. One of his brothers is the powerful secretary of defense, another is a senior adviser and many members of his extended family work in senior government positions.

But Mr. Rajapaksa emerges from the election in many ways stronger than ever. He ran on his war record, arguing that if he delivered on his pledge to win the war he could also bring a peace dividend and heal the nation’s ethnic rifts.

“The president keeps his promises,” said Gamage Banduwathie, a voter who left the United National Party to support Mr. Rajapaksa in the election. “I hope that he will be a savior for Sri Lanka.”

Take Myanmar's Military Ambition Seriously: BIPSS

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Bangladesh needs to seriously take the issue of Myanmar's reinforced military presence along the border to safeguard its national security, a Dhaka-based think-tank says.

The Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), a think-tank that deals with security issues in South and Southeast Asia, in a publication has suggested that there are many contentious issues with neighbour Myanmar and those need to be resolved for the national interest.

The issues such as Rohiynga and dispute over maritime boundary have daunted the relations between the two neighbours in recent times, says an article of its publication, BIPSS FOCUS.

It says Myanmar's recent strengthening of military presence in the Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, is a big concern.

"Bangladesh needs to take Myanmar's recent military ambition seriously," the publication says in an article, titled "Bangladesh –Myanmar Relations: The Security Dimension".

It says Myanmar has increased movement of troops while construction of concrete pillars and barbed-wire fences along the border has been sped up.

The military junta in Myanmar has also extended the runway of Sitwee Airport enabling it for operation of MiG-29 multi-role combat aircraft and all 12 MiG-29 aircraft of Myanmar Air Force are presently deployed at Sitwee, the article says. Land has also been acquired for construction of airport at Buthidaung, it adds.

The article says massive repair and reconstruction of road, bridges and culverts are going on in Western Command area while regular disembarkation of tanks, artillery guns, Recoilles Rifles, mortars in Buthidaung river jetty is going on.

Saying that such developments are "alarming" for Bangladesh, the article further says that Myanmar has commenced barbed-wire fencing along the border with Bangladesh since March 2009, and so far approximately 38 kilometer fencing is completed till end of July this year.

Considering all these issues, the article says: "It is observed that Bangladesh-Myanmar relations have developed through phases of cooperation and conflict."

"Conflict in this case is not meant in the sense of confrontation, but only in the sense of conflict of interests and resultant diplomatic face-off," it says.

The article warns that "unfriendly relations with Myanmar can benefit small insurgent groups living in the hilly jungle areas of the southern portion of the Chittagong Hill Tract, which can cause some degree of instability in the area and become a serious concern for national security."

The article also suggests that Bangladesh can benefit in ways by maintaining a good relation with Myanmar, which has a good friendship with China.

"It (Myanmar) is the potential gateway for an alternative land route opening towards China and Southeast Asia other than the sea," it says. "Such road link has the potentiality for a greater communication network between Bangladesh and Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore."

Moreover, the article says, with a rich natural resource base, Myanmar is a country with considerable potential.

"Myanmar's forests and other natural resources like gas, oil, stones are enormous from which Bangladesh can be benefited enormously," it says.

The article suggests the policymakers review the existing defence priorities to suit the magnitude of threat being faced by the nation.

"The policy regarding Myanmar needs to be a careful combination of effective diplomacy while safeguarding our security interests," it says.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Big Oil fills the coffers of Myanmar junta (americablog.com)

A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum

By KETAKI GOKHALE

RAMANAGARAM, India -- A credit crisis is brewing in "microfinance," the business of making the tiniest loans in the world.

Microlending fights poverty by helping poor people finance small businesses -- snack stalls, fruit trees, milk-producing buffaloes -- in slums and other places where it's tough to get a normal loan. But what began as a social experiment to aid the world's poorest has also shown it can turn a profit.

That has attracted private-equity funds and other foreign investors, who've poured billions of dollars over the past few years into microfinance world-wide.

As WSJ's Ketaki Gokhale reports, India's booming micro-loan industry could be headed for trouble as more people seek the loans just to pay the bills -- not start businesses.

The result: Today in India, some poor neighborhoods are being "carpet-bombed" with loans, says Rajalaxmi Kamath, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore who studies the issue. In India, microloans outstanding grew 72% in the year ended March 31, 2008, totaling $1.24 billion, according to Sa-Dhan, an industry association in New Delhi.

"We fear a bubble," says Jacques Grivel of the Luxembourg-based Finethic, a $100 million investment fund that focuses on Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, though it has no exposure to India. "Too much money is chasing too few good candidates."

Here in Ramanagaram, a silk-making city in southern India, Zahreen Taj noticed the change. Suddenly, in the shantytown where she lives, lots of people wanted to loan her money. She borrowed $125 to invest in her husband's vegetable cart. Then she borrowed more.

"I took from one bank to pay the previous one. And I did it again," says Ms. Taj, 46 years old. In four years, she took a total of four loans from two microlenders in progressively larger amounts -- two for $209, another for $293, and then $356.

Related Articles

• For Global Investors, 'Microfinance' Funds Pay Off -- So Far
  Investing in funds that make small loans to third-world borrowers has been lucrative the past 12 months. But the weak global economy has some investors worried about trouble ahead.
• Group Borrowing Leads to Pressure
  Hasina Bano, a silk reeling factory worker, says the most worrisome aspect of microfinance is that a woman's debts are public knowledge.

Journal Community

• Vote: What is the overall effect of microfinance loans on people in developing nations?

At the height of her borrowing binge, she says, she bought a television set. The arrival of microfinance "increased our desires for things we didn't have," Ms. Taj says. "We all have dreams."

Today her house is bare except for a floor mat and a pile of kitchen utensils. By selling her TV, appliances and jewelry, she cut her debt to $94. That's equal to about a fourth of her annual income.

Around Ramanagaram, the silk-making city where Ms. Taj lives, the debt overload is stirring up social tension. Many borrowers complain that the loans' effective interest rates -- which can vary from 24% to 39% annually -- fuel a cycle of indebtedness.

In July, town authorities asked India's central bank to either cap those rates or revoke lenders' licenses. "Otherwise, the present situation may lead to a law-and-order problem in the district," wrote K.G. Jagdeesh, deputy commissioner for the city of Ramanagaram, in a letter to the central bank.

Alpana Killawala, a spokeswoman for the Reserve Bank of India, said in an email that the central bank doesn't as a practice cap interest rates for microlenders but does press them not to charge "excessive" rates.

Meanwhile, local mosque leaders have started telling people in the predominantly Muslim community to stop paying their loans. Borrowers have complied en masse.

The mosque leaders are also demanding that lenders give them an accounting of their finances. The lenders say they're not about to comply with that.

The repayment revolt has spread to other communities, including the nearby city of Channapatna, and could reach further across India, observers say.

"We are very worried about this," says Vijayalakshmi Das of FWWB India, a company that connects microlenders with financing from mainstream banks. "Risk management is not a strong point for the majority" of local microfinance providers, she adds. "Microfinance needs to learn a lesson."

Nationwide, average Indian household debt from microfinance lenders almost quintupled between 2004 and 2009, to about $135 from $27 or so, according to a survey by Sa-Dhan, the industry association. These sums are obviously tiny by global standards. But in rural India, the poorest often subsist on just a few dollars a week.

Some observers blame a fundamental shift in the microfinance business for feeding the problem. Traditionally, microlenders were nonprofits focused on community service. In recent years, however, many of the larger microlending firms have registered with the Indian central bank as a type of for-profit finance company. That places them under greater regulatory scrutiny, but also gives them wider access to funding.

This change opened the door to more private-equity money. Of the 54 private-equity deals (totaling $1.19 billion) in India's banking and finance sector in the past 18 months, microfinance accounted for 16 deals worth at least $245 million, according to Venture Intelligence, a Chennai-based private-equity research service.

The influx of private-equity cash is the latest sign of the global rise of microfinance, pioneered by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus decades ago. On Wednesday, Mr. Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was one of 16 people honored by President Barack Obama with the Medal of Freedom.

"We've seen a major mission drift in microfinance, from being a social agency first," says Arnab Mukherji, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, to being "primarily a lending agency that wants to maximize its profit."

Making loans in poorest India sounds inherently risky. But investors argue that the rural developing world has remained largely insulated from the global economic slump.

International private-equity funds started taking notice of Indian microfinance in March 2007. That's when Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm in Silicon Valley, participated in a $11.5 million share offering by SKS Microfinance Ltd. of Hyderabad, India, one of the world's largest microlenders.

"SKS showed the industry how to tap private equity to scale up," said Arun Natarajan of Venture Intelligence.

Numerous deals followed with investors including Boston-based Sandstone Capital, San Francisco-based Valiant Capital, and SVB India Capital Partners, an affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank.

As of last December, there were over 100 microfinance-investment funds globally with total estimated assets under management of $6.5 billion, according to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, or CGAP, a research institute hosted at the World Bank.

Over the past year, investors have poured more than $1 billion into the largest microfinance funds managed by companies, a 30% increase. The extra financing will allow the industry to loan out 20% more this year than last, much of it to countries such as the Ukraine, Cambodia and Bosnia, CGAP says.

Here in Ramanagaram, Lalitha Sharma recalls when the first microfinance firm arrived seven years ago. Those were heady times for her fellow slum-dwellers: Money flowed freely. Field agents offered loans to people earning as little as $9 a month.

Ketaki Gokhale/The Wall Street Journal

Ketaki Gokhale/The Wall Street Journal

Lalitha Sharma, top, racked up 10 loans from the many microlenders who have set up shop in her slum over the past few years. Here she helps with her husband's snack stand. Like many of her neighbors in Ramanagaram, India, she can earn about $8 a week, on average, working in the city's silk factories, one of which is shown above.

They came to Ms. Sharma's door, too. She borrowed $126. Under the loan's terms, she said she would use it to finance a small business -- a snack stand she runs with her husband. Many microfinance providers require loans to be used to fund a business.

But Ms. Sharma, a 29-year-old mother of three, acknowledges she lied. "You have to mention a business to get a loan," she says. "There was no other way to get the money." She used it to pay overdue bills and to buy food for her family. Ms. Sharma earns $8 a week, on average, in a factory where she extracts silk thread from cocoons.

Over the next four years, she took nine more loans from three different lenders, in progressively larger sums of $209, $272, $335 and $390, according to lending records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A spokesman for BSS Microfinance Private Ltd. of Bangalore, another of her lenders, declined to comment on her borrowing history, citing central-bank privacy rules.

This year, she took another $314 loan to pay for her brother-in-law's wedding, again saying the money would be used for business purposes. She also juggled loans from two other microlenders -- $115, $167 and $251 from the Bangalore lender Ujjivan, and $230 from Asmitha Microfin Ltd.

Ujjivan confirmed it issued three loans. An Asmitha official said he had a record of a loan to a Ramanagaram resident named Lalitha, but at a different address.

"I understand that it is credit, that you have to pay interest, and your debt grows," Ms. Sharma says. "But sometimes the problems we have seem like they can only be solved by taking another loan. One problem solved, another created."

Many of the problems in Indian microlending might sound familiar to students of the U.S. mortgage crisis, which was worsened by so-called "no-documentation" loans and by commission-paid brokers. Similarly in India, microlenders' field officers are often paid on commission, giving them financial incentive to issue more loans, according to Ms. Kamath.

Lenders are aware that applicants often lie on their paperwork, says Ujjivan's founder, Samit Ghosh. In fact, he says, Ujjivan's field staffers often know the real story. But his organization maintained a policy of "relying on the information from the customer, rather than our own market intelligence."

He says that policy will now change because of the trouble in Ramanagaram. The lender will "learn from the situation, so it won't happen again," he says.

It's tough to monitor how borrowers spend their money. Ujjivan used to perform regular "loan utilization checks," but stopped because it was so costly. Now it only checks in with people borrowing more than $310, Mr. Ghosh says.

BSS checks how loans are being spent a week after disbursing the money, and makes random house visits, according to S. Panchakshari, its operations manager. The company doesn't have the power to insist that borrowers not take loans from multiple lenders, he said in an email.

Lenders also tend to set up shop where others have already paved the way, causing saturation. There is a "follow-the-herd mentality," says Mr. Ghosh at Ujjivan. Microlenders "often go into towns where they see one or two others operating. That leaves vast chunks of India underserved, "and then a huge concentration of microfinance in a few areas."

In Ramanagaram district, seven microfinance lenders serve 22,500 women (most microloans go to women because lenders consider them less likely to default than men). Loans outstanding here total $4.4 million, according to the Association of Karnataka Microfinance Institutions, a group of lenders.

Lenders in Ramanagaram say the loan-repayment revolt was instigated in part by Muslim clerics who oppose the empowerment of women through microfinance. Most lenders are still servicing loans to Hindu borrowers, but have stopped issuing fresh loans to Muslims. "We can't do business with Muslims there right now," says Mr. Ghosh. "Nobody wants to take that kind of risk."

The irony is that, for years, Indian microlenders have touted themselves as bankers to the nation's impoverished minority Muslim community, which has long been excluded from the formal banking sector.

A 2006 report commissioned by India's prime minister found that while Muslims represented 13% of India's population, they accounted for only 4.6% of total loans outstanding from public-sector banks.

Islam prohibits the paying of interest, but mosque officials don't cite that as the reason for the loan-payment strike. They stressed the overindebtedness of the community, and the strains it's putting on family life.

Ramanagaram's period of wild borrowing irks some residents, both Hindu and Muslim. Alamelamma, a 28-year-old vegetable seller, says that she has benefited from microfinancing and that the profligate borrowers "have ruined it for the rest of us."

One gully away, Ms. Sharma, the heavy debtor, has a different view: She would like to see the microlenders kicked out of the community entirely. "Not just for now, but forever," she says.

—Rob Copeland contributed to this article.

Corrupt Democracy in India

By Barbara Crossette

August 7, 2009

For decades, American leaders and opinion makers have chosen to ignore the dark side of democratic India. Now new reports documenting the pervasive abuses committed by the Indian police are providing firsthand evidence not only of warrantless arrests, illegal detentions, torture and the deaths of thousands of citizens but also the complicity of parties and political leaders who have turned police and paramilitary forces in a number of states into bodyguard agencies and private armies.

The title of the latest report from Human Rights Watch, Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police, leaves no doubt about its conclusions. But Human Rights Watch, which has been the most diligent of American organizations in monitoring and reporting on India in recent decades, is not alone. Another report, on the state of police reform in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, is soon to be published by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, based in New Delhi. A former Indian police official who has seen it says it will make many of the same observations.

The United States State Department has also been cataloging Indian rights abuses. Its latest survey of India, a chapter in the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on February 25, 2009, summarized pages of evidence this way:

Major problems included extrajudicial killings of persons in custody, disappearances, and torture and rape by police and other security forces. Investigations into individual abuses and legal punishment for perpetrators occurred, but for the majority of abuses, the lack of accountability created an atmosphere of impunity. Poor prison conditions and lengthy detentions during both pretrial and trial proceedings remained significant problems. Officials used special antiterrorism legislation to justify the excessive use of force. Corruption existed at all levels of government and police.... Increasing attacks against religious minorities and the promulgation of antireligious conversion laws were concerns. Violence associated with caste-based discrimination occurred. Domestic violence, child marriage, dowry-related deaths, honor crimes, female infanticide and feticide remain serious problems. Trafficking in persons and exploitation of indentured, bonded and child labor were continuing problems.

The killing of Sikhs, a largely prosperous religious minority in India, has been exhaustively documented by Ensaaf (Justice), a US-based shoestring human rights group founded by Americans of Indian descent. Its findings have not been significantly challenged by leading judges and government investigators in India, who are nonetheless powerless to force an end to extralegal behavior. About as many innocent Sikhs were murdered in the week following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh bodyguards in 1984 as all the Chileans who were killed or disappeared in seventeen years of Augusto Pinochet's regime. The Sikh killings, and illegal cremations of bodies, without documentation or notification to families, continued into the 1990s.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative operates on the principle that "democratic nations need democratic policing." Ironically, the Congress Party, dominant for most of India's sixty-two years of independence and recently re-elected to power at the head of a coalition, would have the political clout necessary to see that multiple commissions and court rulings on police abuses were enforced. It has not done this; nor has the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, whose chief minister in Gujarat state has been widely reported to have been behind the massacre of up to 2,000 Muslims in 2002.

The Indian media have often been the most effective virtual enforcers of prescribed conduct, reporting ceaselessly on the kind of dubious police actions and too-quick findings of guilt that have created wide questioning and disbelief in many official investigations among the public.

"While India rightly touts itself as an emerging economic powerhouse that is also the world's largest democracy, its police forces--the most visible arm of the Indian state--are widely regarded within India as lawless, abusive and ineffective," Human Rights Watch concludes.

Human Rights Watch has studied in depth the weaknesses in police departments, especially in rural areas, where underpaid, overworked constables are kept on 24/7 call and often expected to do VIP escort duty as well as their regular jobs. Police stations are often without phones, electricity or vehicles. In a barracks in the holy city of Varanasi, four policemen had to share one bed, and there was no extra living space. It is a recipe for brutality and corruption, with lowly constables who have no chance of advancement taking out their frustration and lack of human rights training on people even lower in society than they, the ethnic and religious minorities and Dalits, or "untouchables."

Middle-class Indians, and certainly the rich, inoculate themselves against the pervasive disease of impunity by paying bribes to the police, as well as to other public service agencies. Perhaps that is why, despite the hard work of many Indian nongovernmental organizations, a truly national movement against both police brutality and police deprivation never seems to get traction. In the US, a strong Indian lobby made up of professionals and business people--working with profit-hungry American corporations--plays down or rejects reports of endemic abuses. Indian political leaders escape censure by their American counterparts with the excuse that Indian democracy is self-correcting.

When American reporters comb the annual State Department human rights reports, they are looking for the usual suspects: China, Cuba, Burma, Pakistan and lately Sri Lanka, which has lost its UN Human Rights Council seat under a barrage of criticism from human rights campaigners. A closer reading of the chapter on India, with its almost 1.2 billion people, soon to be the world's most populous nation, might be in order.

About Barbara Crossette

Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.

She is the author of So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996, and a collection of travel essays about colonial resort towns that are still attracting visitors more than a century after their creation, The Great Hill Stations of Asia, published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999. In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York. She is also the author of India Facing the 21st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993.

India: Overhaul Abusive, Failing Police System

August 4, 2009

Mumbai police officers stand on a roughly made watchtower near the Gateway of India monument on New Year’s Eve, 2008.

Broken System

Related videos:

• To Protect & Serve: Police Brutality in India

India is modernizing rapidly, but the police continue to use their old methods: abuse and threats. It’s time for the government to stop talking about reform and fix the system.

Brad Adams, Asia director

(Bangalore) - The Indian government should take major steps to overhaul a policing system that facilitates and even encourages human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. For decades, successive governments have failed to deliver on promises to hold the police accountable for abuses and to build professional, rights-respecting police forces.

The 118-page report, "Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police," documents a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings. The report is based on interviews with more than 80 police officers of varying ranks, 60 victims of police abuses, and numerous discussions with experts and civil society activists. It documents the failings of state police forces that operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements, and unable to cope with increasing demands and public expectations. Field research was conducted in 19 police stations in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and the capital, Delhi.

"India is modernizing rapidly, but the police continue to use their old methods: abuse and threats," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "It's time for the government to stop talking about reform and fix the system."

A fruit vendor in Varanasi described how police tortured him to extract confessions to multiple, unrelated false charges:

"[M]y hands and legs were tied; a wooden stick was passed through my legs. They started beating me badly on the legs with lathis (batons) and kicking me. They were saying, ‘You must name all the members of the 13-person gang.' They beat me until I was crying and shouting for help. When I was almost fainting, they stopped the beating. A constable said, ‘With this kind of a beating, a ghost would run away. Why won't you tell me what I want to know?' Then they turned me upside down... They poured water from a plastic jug into my mouth and nose, and I fainted."

Read additional accounts from victims of police abuse.

Several police officers admitted to Human Rights Watch that they routinely committed abuses. One officer said that he had been ordered to commit an "encounter killing," as the practice of taking into custody and extra-judicially executing an individual is commonly known. "I am looking for my target," the officer said. "I will eliminate him. ... I fear being put in jail, but if I don't do it, I'll lose my position."

Almost every police officer interviewed by Human Rights Watch was aware of the boundaries of the law, but many believed that unlawful methods, including illegal detention and torture, were necessary tactics of crime investigation and law enforcement.

The Indian government elected in May has promised to pursue police reforms actively. Human Rights Watch said that a critical step is to ensure that police officers who commit human rights violations, regardless of rank, will face appropriate punishment.

"Police who commit or order torture and other abuses need to be treated as the criminals they are," said Adams. "There shouldn't be one standard for police who violate the law and another for average citizens."

Human Rights Watch also said that while not excusing abuses, abysmal conditions for police officers contribute to violations. Low-ranking officers often work in difficult conditions. They are required to be on-call 24 hours a day, every day. Instead of shifts, many work long hours, sometimes living in tents or filthy barracks at the police station. Many are separated from their families for long stretches of time. They often lack necessary equipment, including vehicles, mobile phones, investigative tools and even paper on which to record complaints and make notes.

Police officers told Human Rights Watch that they used "short-cuts" to cope with overwhelming workloads and insufficient resources. For instance, they described how they or others cut caseloads by refusing to register crime complaints. Many officers described facing unrealistic pressure from their superiors to solve cases quickly. Receiving little or no encouragement to collect forensic evidence and witness statements, tactics considered time-consuming, they instead held suspects illegally and coerced them to confess, frequently using torture and ill-treatment.

"Conditions and incentives for police officers need to change," Adams said. "Officers should not be put into a position where they think they have to turn to abuse to meet superiors' demands, or obey orders to abuse. Instead they should be given the resources, training, equipment, and encouragement to act professionally and ethically."

"Broken System" also documents the particular vulnerability to police abuse of traditionally marginalized groups in India. They include the poor, women, Dalits (so-called "untouchables"), and religious and sexual minorities. Police often fail to investigate crimes against them because of discrimination, the victims' inability to pay bribes, or their lack of social status or political connections. Members of these groups are also more vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and torture, especially meted out by police as punishment for alleged crimes.

Colonial-era police laws enable state and local politicians to interfere routinely in police operations, sometimes directing police officers to drop investigations against people with political connections, including known criminals, and to harass or file false charges against political opponents. These practices corrode public confidence.

In 2006, a landmark Supreme Court judgment mandated reform of police laws. But the central government and most state governments have either significantly or completely failed to implement the court's order, suggesting that officials have yet to accept the urgency of comprehensive police reform, including the need to hold police accountable for human rights violations.

"India's status as the world's largest democracy is undermined by a police force that thinks it is above the law," said Adams. "It's a vicious cycle. Indians avoid contact with the police out of fear. So crimes go unreported and unpunished, and the police can't get the cooperation they need from the public to prevent and solve crimes."

"Broken System" sets out detailed recommendations for police reform drawn from studies by government commissions, former Indian police, and Indian groups. Among the major recommendations are:

• Require the police to read suspects their rights upon arrest or any detention, which will increase institutional acceptance of these safeguards;
• Exclude from court any evidence police obtain by using torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in suspect interrogations;
• Bolster independent investigations into complaints of police abuse and misconduct through national and state human rights commissions and police complaints authorities; and
• Improve training and equipment, including strengthening the crime-investigation curriculum at police academies, training low-ranking officers to assist in crime investigations, and providing basic forensic equipment to every police officer.

Selected Accounts from ‘Broken System'

"She was kept in the police station all night. In the morning, when we went to meet her, they said she had killed herself. They showed us her body, where she was hanging from a tree inside the police station. The branch was so low, it is impossible that she hanged herself from it. Her feet were clean, although there was wet mud all around and she would have walked through it to reach the tree. It is obvious that the police killed her and then pretended she had committed suicide."

- Brother-in-law of Gita Pasi, describing her death in police custody in Uttar Pradesh in August 2006

"We have no time to think, no time to sleep. I tell my men that a victim will only come to the police station because we can give him justice, so we should not beat him with a stick. But often the men are tired and irritable and mistakes take place."

- Gangaram Azad, a sub-inspector who heads a rural police station in Uttar Pradesh state

"They say, ‘investigate within 24 hours,' but they never care about how I will do [that]; what are the resources. ... There is use of force in sensational cases because we are not equipped with scientific methods. What remains with us? A sense of panic surrounds our mind that if we don't come to a conclusion we will be suspended or face punishment. We are bound to fulfill the case, we must cover the facts in any way."

- Subinspector working near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh

"Often, it is our superiors who ask us to do wrong things. It is hard for us to resist. I remember, one time, my officer had asked me to beat up someone. I said that the man would be refused bail and would rot in jail and that was enough punishment. But that made my officer angry."

- Constable in Uttar Pradesh

"With all the mental stress, the 24-hour law-and-order duty, the political pressure, a person may turn to violence. How much can a person take? ... We have to keep watch on an accused person, their human rights, but what about us? Living like this 24 hours. We are not claiming that our power makes us born to work all the times. Sometimes we beat or detain illegally, because our working conditions, our facilities are bad. So we are contributing to creating criminals, militants."

- Inspector in charge of a police station in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh

India-Pak Statement Rocks Parliament, BJP Walks Out

New Delhi (IANS): A two-day debate in parliament on a controversial India-Pakistan joint statement that sought to delink terrorism from dialogue ended on Thursday with the government reiterating that there was no dilution in its stand on countering cross-border terror and a hostile Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) staging a walk-out over the Balochistan issue.

The intense and bitterly partisan Lok Sabha debate that lasted for nearly seven hours spread over two days concluded with a formal reply by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna asserting that there was no deviation from the basic principles of foreign policy except for a shift in nuances and emphases here and there.

But an aggressive BJP remained unconvinced and sought to pin down the government on the inclusion of a reference to Balochistan - shorthand for India's alleged meddling in Pakistan's southwestern province - in the July 16 India-Pakistan joint statement agreed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm el-Sheikh.

In the end, a belligerent BJP decided to walk out when Mr. Krishna reiterated the government's position on Balochistan, saying "we have nothing to hide". BJP leader L.K. Advani said the prime minister's intervention Wednesday and the external affairs minister's reply had failed to address the party's chief objections to the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement.

"There was no satisfactory response. There is no point in this discussion," an exasperated Advani said while leading the walk-out by his party MPs from the Lok Sabha.

Mr. Krishna focused his reply on India's continuing pursuit of an independent foreign policy, but chose to brush off the opposition's objections to the terror-dialogue delink and a reference to Balochistan in the India-Pakistan joint statement.

"Certain doubts have been expressed," Mr. Krishna admitted, adding that much of them had been "cleared by the effective intervention" of Dr. Manmohan Singh and of former foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee Thursday.

Mr. Krishna's reply was interrupted by vociferous accusations from BJP members questioning the Balochistan reference.

In his spirited 45-minute intervention in the debate Wednesday, Dr. Manmohan Singh asserted that while there was no dilution or rupture of national consensus on countering terrorism emanating from Pakistan, there was no alternative except to continue the engagement with Islamabad.

Seeking to allay apprehensions over the India-Pakistan joint statement, the prime minister, however, stressed that bilateral engagement or dialogue process can't move forward if terrorist attacks continue from across the border. The prime minister also responded to concerns on India's end-user defence pact with the US and New Delhi's position on climate change, saying that there was no compromise of national interests.

With the prime minister's reply as a backdrop, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who held the external affairs portfolio in the previous Dr. Manmohan Singh dispensation, Thursday eloquently defended the government's latest Pakistan diplomacy and reiterated that there was no surrender on the issue of countering cross-border terrorism.

"Neither have we succumbed to terrorism nor will we stop talking," Mr. Mukherjee maintained.

"The NDA did it. The UPA did it. This is the way the world of diplomacy moves," Mr. Mukherjee said while reminding parliament that over the last 10 years governments across the political spectrum in India kept talking to Pakistan despite brief disruptions after terrorist attacks.

"We can't erase Pakistan. It's going to exist. War is no solution," Mr. Mukherjee said while underlining the importance of keeping talks going with Pakistan.

Mr. Mukherjee, during whose tenure as external affairs minister the 26/11 Mumbai attacks had taken place, clarified that talking did not mean the resumption of a full-fledged dialogue.

"Keeping channels open does not mean surrendering our position on terrorism," Mr. Mukherjee stressed, adding that action against terrorism was independent of the composite dialogue.

"Pakistan must act credibly and verifiably to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure operating from its soil," Mr. Mukherjee maintained.

Mr. Mukherjee also vehemently defended the Balochistan reference, echoing what the prime minister had said. "It's a unilateral reference. The perception of Pakistan is not shared by us," he pointed out.

Mr. Mukherjee also repudiated any suggestion of India's involvement in fomenting insurgency in Balochistan. "We are victims of terrorism. We have no intention of exporting terrorism to any other country," he maintained.

This defence, however, did not cut ice with the BJP, with member after member asking why Balochistan was included for the first time in a bilateral document between India and Pakistan.

The two-day debate had started with BJP leader Yashwant Sinha Wednesday shredding apart the joint statement, saying it showed the government had broken the national consensus on Pakistan. "All the waters of the seven seas will not be able to wash the shame at Sharm el-Sheikh," Sinha had said.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Janata Dal-United chief Sharad Yadav also questioned the government's Pakistan diplomacy. But the treasury benches rallied around the prime minister with MPs thumping their desks in appreciation when he intervened in the debate, indicating that the much-speculated rift between the government and the party over the joint statement was a thing of the past.

Mumbai Gunman Enters Plea Of Guilty

By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

NEW DELHI, July 20 -- The lone surviving gunman in last year's Mumbai attacks stunned a courtroom audience Monday by confessing his involvement in the deadly carnage that killed more than 170 people.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, one of the 10 gunmen who laid siege to India's financial capital for three days last November, stood as he narrated chilling details of his training in Pakistan, named the individuals who conceived the plan and outlined the journey the gunmen undertook by sea.

Upon reaching Mumbai, the gunmen attacked several sites, including two five-star hotels, a train station and a Jewish outreach center.

Kasab, 22, was captured in a police ambush on the night of the attacks while he was trying to escape in a stolen car. He confessed his involvement while being interrogated but then retracted his statement when the trial began April 1, alleging that police had coerced and tortured him to extract an admission of guilt.

In Mumbai on Monday, the prosecution in Kasab's case was calling a witness when the defendant announced that he wanted to make a confession.

Kasab, who for months had professed his innocence, said the outlawed, Pakistan-based group Lashkar-i-Taiba was behind the attacks, and he revealed the names of the leaders from the group who trained him.

He said one of the suspects who has been arrested, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, was the mastermind behind the attack, along with others who engineered it and dispatched the gunmen to travel by ship from Karachi, Pakistan, through the Arabian Sea to Mumbai. The attackers had to change boats four times to reach their destination.

Kasab did not accuse Hafiz Sayeed, the founder of Lashkar-i-Taiba, of involvement.

"We were surprised when he abruptly took the stand and pleaded guilty," Ujjwal Nikam, the prosecuting lawyer in the high-profile trial, said in an interview. "The cat is now out of the bag."

Kasab's attorney, Abbas Kazmi, said he was unaware of his client's plans to plead guilty. "It was shocking for everybody, including me," Kazmi told reporters outside the court.

Noting that Kasab was formally charged in a Pakistani court last week with participating in the attack, Kazmi said his client might have decided to confess after concluding he had no real chance of avoiding conviction. In addition to accusing Kasab, Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency charged Lakhvi and several others and said they would be tried in a court in Rawalpindi.

"It is obvious that someone has told Kasab of this," Kazmi said. "Some of his guards who were manning him in jail must have leaked the information to him."

In court Monday, Kasab recounted the start of the siege the night of Nov. 26, saying that he and an accomplice, Abu Ismail, went to a train station restroom and assembled a bomb by installing a timer in it.

"I have confessed. The trial should end now. Sentence me soon," Kasab is reported to have told the judge, according to the Press Trust of India.

A transcript of his courtroom statement is to be sent to the prosecution for review on Tuesday, after which the judge will decide whether to accept the confession and how to proceed.

Kasab's case has moved through India's court system with unusual speed. The daily trial sessions are being held in a fortress-like, makeshift courtroom inside the Mumbai jail compound where Kasab has been held in solitary confinement since November.

Nikam, the prosecutor, said Kasab has "confessed, but also very intelligently."

"He disclosed some information and hid a lot of other crucial information," he said. "Why did he do this and why all of a sudden? Perhaps the events in Pakistan left him feeling that he has no other option anymore."

The prosecutor recalled that Kasab initially told authorities he was underage when he was arrested, apparently hoping for leniency. "He had been trying different tactics all this while to wriggle out of the case," Nikam said. "I feel this is another trick that he is playing to get a lesser sentence."