Littte and Dravid Destiny Tryst as Indonesia 'might expel' refugees and India Denies Tami Refugees CITIZENSHIP. We Bengalies Know Nothing about OUR Kith and KIN.My Niece was in Love with Australia and Now My Son Dotes for Phillipines as GENERATION Next Refugees land in BLACK Hole Infinite!
Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time- One Hundred Ninety Two
Palash Biswas
Littte and Dravid Destiny Tryst as Indonesia 'might expel' refugees and India Denies Tami Refugees CITIZENSHIP. We Bengalies Know Nothing about OUR Kith and KIN.My Niece was in Love with Australia and Now My Son Dotes for Phillipines as GENERATION Next Refugees land in BLACK Hole Infinite!
We Bengali Scheduled caste Refugees exiled and scattered worldwide, the Original Aboriginal Black Untouchable negroid Clan since Indian Holocaust, are so engaged in the day to day Near Impossible sustenance, that we happen quite unaware of our kith and clan. Tamil refugees from srilanka are Rehabilitated in DANDAKARANYA and AndamanNicobar Islands side by side, but we have no interaction as we have with the Sikh Refugees in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh!Nevertheless,the Ruling Indian, specialy Bengali Hegemony has launched an Intense Hate Campaign targeted to both kinds of Refugees and Maoists do follow suit.I have encountered Maoists in Karnataka alleging that Srilankan and Bangladeshi Illegal Immigrants have Captured everything in Dandakaranya. As we hear in Uttarakhand Hills nowadays that only Sikh and Bengali Immigrants have caused all the Calamities endangering the Hill people. Even after Six decades and ruled by East Bengal rooted Bengali Zamindars like Jyoti Basu and Clan, the West Bengal GHOTI People do continue to calim that only the East Bengal Refugees have destroyed Bengal whereas Bengal has VIRTUALLY Banished us out of Bngla Geopolitics. Bengali largest Circulated Daily ANANDA Bazar Patrika, the mouthpiece of Ruling Manusmriti Apartheid Hegemony and War Economy, justifies in all possible ways the Infinite Persecution of the Bengali as well as Tamil Refugees, though they dare not to club Tibetan and SIKH Refugees with wretched us. The daily Campaigns for National Deportation Drive and writes EDIT supporting DENIAL of Citizenship and Domicile status for us , Bengali as well as Tamil Refugees. We succeeded to have a Joint Front with the SIKHS but we Never joined the Tamil refugees due to the LITTE HYpe!
My father Pulin Babu had an EXTENDED Family and without any Academia base, he had the Vision to understand our ownversion of the TRYST with DESTINY. He was always Live in touch with his kith and clan. I acompanied him, my poor committed father with unbelievable liabilities across the sub Continent until I succeeded to have a Separate ACADEMIA and professional Identity. I visited the Clan Map with him until Isettled in URBAN Hill Station Nainital andengaged myself in Nationality and environment movements with little bit of Journalism and literature on my part. And thus, I had hardly any time to help my father. My Father`s Cousins expired and the DESCENDENTS reside in Bengal and elsewhere , I Never know.It is the same EXPERIENCE with most of us. Since Indian Holocaust, we are SEPARATED.
A resourceful and committed man like Shankar Chakraborti Visisted ANDAMAN with his family spending Rs. 75 Thousand per head in package and he would get REIMBURSEMENT from hisBank. he visited every site in ANDAMAN avoiding the REFUGEE areas. Bengaliesfrom Wset Bengal including Politiciansdo avoid REFUGEE Settlement as the Tamils replicate the same.What if they practice some EXCURSIONS also seeking new and latest VOTE Bank Equations and bases as Ms MAMATA Banerjee pushing very hard to gain mileage in Uttarakhand, UP and all over DANDAKARANYA eying at our solid carrible mobile Vote bank scattered and unrecognised countrywide and she is CONVERTED in Matua without any sympathy or stance for our people.
Normally, we know nothing about our people the Dravid Nationality as whole in NORTH India! Though Aboriginal Indigenous History and legacy lie with the DRAVID population. We have no interest.
I had some interactions with LITTE and Northeast Extremist groups while I was shooting with Joshy Joseph in Manipur, Imaginary lines! They repent that China NEVER supports their Cause aginst the Popular Hype about Proactive Chinese Interest in India. It wasexposed alsoduring Thundering Spring days in SEVENTIES as CHINA did virtually Nothing to oppose the REPRESSION! Just because the Lackof Chinese Help, North east remains as an integral part of Indian Geopolitics despite so intense Multi Dimensional INSURGENCY. They have to live with us and they know it very well.We are PREDESTINED to livetogether in PLURAL India just because of msot neglected and persecuted HIMALAYAN reality and Relationship!
I talked with GONU who is indulged in the HYPE of Shining Sensex India and have very sweet Dreams as an IIT student should have. he bothers not about the Economy and Privatisation of Knowledge and jobloss as well as Unemployment as far as his Parenst are capable to pay for him.My son TUSSU lives in the same landscape.It is consoling that I was able to talk to the young man landed in Youngistan, but I find myself quite Helpless to locate my only son Partho pratim Tussu now identifying himself as EXcalibur Stevens!
My niece KRISHNA,just passed her Plus Two exams from New delhi was in love with Oceanology as well as AUSTRALIA and I could Convince her the AUSSIE Realities.Now, Tussus has decided for thetime being to settle in PHILLIPINES though depending on VIRTUAL Reality and Online Contact. i may not tell him about the FREE market democracy all over south East Asia and Minority CHINESE Hegemony!
Rather My father was Lucky despite we had very serious IDEOLOGICAL Differences. The problem is the GENERATION NEXT is so ROBOTIC that it has no feeling for anything, personal relations, society, history, art and literature, cultural roots, mother tongue, culture, heritage, legacy, nationality, identity. The CITIZENS of Global Village have no IDEOLOGYat all!
The woman refuses to give her name but says she landed in Manila in 2002 from the southern city of Shishi with her son and his wife, who were escaping China's one-child policy. The couple had a second child in the Philippines and plan to eventually return to Fujian, where the husband runs a clothing factory. Another son and his wife followed for the same reason and are awaiting the birth of their second child. The clothes store was set up to generate an income while they prepare their return to China.
The family are part of a wave of immigrants leaving China even as rapid economic growth is transforming the world's most populous nation. Most head to the US, Canada and other rich western countries, often as illegal aliens. But each year thousands also seek to make their fortunes in a middle-income country growing only half as fast as China.
The trend has created an immigration paradox. The Philippines, perhaps best-known in recent years for its outgoing migrants, has become a destination for immigrants in its own right.
The new Chinese arrivals are drawn by a combination of weak law enforcement and huge fortunes to be made selling cheap Chinese goods to a swelling Filipino middle class. Feeding the growth of that middle class is the one in 10 of the country's 86m people who are working abroad and their remittances, which reached $12.8bn (€9.25bn, £6.2bn) last year and have helped to drive consumer spending and economic growth.
According to Teresita Ang-See, an expert on Chinese in the Philippines, there are 80,000-100,000 illegal or overstaying Chinese nationals in the country, roughly a tenth of the million or so ethnic Chinese living in the Philippines. The latest influx has come in part because of Manila's move in 2005 to liberalise entry procedures for Chinese tourists and investors, a move that helped triple the number of Chinese visitors to 133,000 last year.
But their growing presence in the Philippines is resented by many Chinese-Filipinos who have worked hard to assimilate. Many local Chinese consider the recent arrivals unfair competitors in business and fret that they could stir up resentment of the existing Chinese minority.
The Chinese-language press in Manila is full of bitter exchanges between the new and old immigrants. "Although the new immigrants appear to be better educated, they are considered more uncivilised, uncouth and ill-mannered," says Go Bon Juan, director for research at Kaisa (Unity), a group promoting links between the local Chinese and Filipinos. "Even young students in Chinese-language schools tend to dissociate themselves from classmates who are newcomers."
The resentment is even more pronounced among businessmen, in part because the new arrivals have a "tendency to be brash and pushy in their business transactions", says Mr Go.
Many are drawn to illicit activities such as smuggling and drugs, he says. But they also stand accused of violating the law in more benign ways. Filipino law prohibits non-citizens from retailing but the rules are openly violated by new Chinese immigrants, whereas previous generations would often simply register businesses in the name of Filipino spouses or associates.
There are also questions about how long the new migrants want to stay. Immigration officials say some recent arrivals from China are using the Philippines as a transit point for entry to western countries using fake documents. According to the Bureau of Immigration, eight in 10 of the foreign nationals now caught attempting to enter the US illegally on flights from Manila are mainland Chinese.
"The Chinese come here as legitimate tourists or investors but try to leave for the US or Canada using forged passports or visas," says Danilo Almeda, an immigration spokesman. But "the illegal scheme hurts the Philippines' image and makes life harder for overseas Filipinos who have to face extra scrutiny from immigration officials all over the world", he adds.
http://waketrex.i.ph/blogs/waketrex/2007/07/26/paradox-for-philippines-as-chinese-set-up-shop/
TAMIL EELAM STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM
Tamil Refugees & Asylum Seekers
"Exile is not primarily a geographical location, it is a state of mind through which one becomes what one has left behind. In the Tamil case many actually become what they have fled from. Between the extremes of the warrior and the victim the refugee must carry out his 'bricolage', assemble the pieces and carry on. For many this life project takes the form of internalised martyrdom, the fight for Eelam being replaced by a longing for Eelam which grows into a constant part of the personality and becomes a counterweight, the counterweight, to the vicissitudes of exile..." Oivind Fuglerud in Life on the Outside : The Tamil Diaspora and Long-Distance Nationalism
"Exile, it is often said, is the nursery of nationalism. If so, then the yearning for a homeland has a long history.." Anthony D.Smith in*Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, 2004
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Genocide'83 led thousands of Tamils from the island of Sri Lanka to seek political asylum in Tamil Nadu, Europe, North America and Australasia. During the succeeding years, as the conflict in the island increased in intensity, this outflow continued. Article 1A(2) of the International Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as a person who
".......as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it."
Except for seven states (Brazil, Italy, Madagascar, Malta, Monaco, Paraguay and Turkey), all other parties to the Convention apply the refugee definition without geographical or time limitation.
Additionally, the Convention relating to the status of Stateless Persons, the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees , the Declaration on Territorial Asylum , and the Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals Who are not Nationals of the Country in which They Live provide the international legal frame work relating to refugees and asylum seekers.
During 1984 and 1985, Amnesty International opposed the refoulement of Tamils. On 9 January 1985 Amnesty announced that it believes that, if returned against their will, all members of the Tamil minority have reasonable grounds to fear:
1. that they may fall victim to arbitrary killings by members of the security forces
2. that they may be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention
But, more often not, the efforts of Charter '87 and Amnesty International notwithstanding, the implementation of the law relating to refugees and asylum seekers has been largely influenced by policy considerations and real politick (both in the West and in India).
"Refugee claimants are among the most wretched people in Canada. They have fled countries where they have been imprisoned for their beliefs, they may have been tortured, their lives may have been threatened. They know no one or almost no one in Canada. They normally cannot speak either French or English. A refugee claim can take years to process before a final determination is reached. Until a person is recognised as a refugee, he is not recognised as a resident, even though he may be here for years. Despite his lengthy stay, he is treated as if he will be leaving in a week or two."
Nirmala Chandrahasan in her well researched 'Study of the Reception of Tamil Asylum Seekers into Europe, North America and India' during the four year period 1983 to 1987 (published in the Harvard Human Rights Yearbook, Spring 1989), commented:
"During this period the greatest number of Tamils - approximately 130,000 - sought asylum in India, separated from the northern start of Sri Lanka by a narrow stretch of sea, the Palk Straits. Approximately 70,000 Tamil asylum seekers went to Europe and North America."
She concluded:
"The treatment of Tamil asylum claims in different jurisdictions highlights two important points about recent developments in the handling of refugees. First, the reception of Tamils in North America, Europe and India indicates the extent to which national policy perspectives have shaped the respective refugee determination processes. .. A second development observed in the practice of Tamil-receiving states is the categorisation of the refugees allowed to stay into subgroups, such as "B status" (in the Netherlands) or "exceptional leave to remain" (in the United Kingdom) or with no designated legal status at all (in India). ..The question remains to what extent the fate of large groups of persons such as the Tamils can be left to the discretion of governments, rather than firmly based within a framework of binding legal norms."
Since 1987, the numbers of Tamil asylum seekers have continued to increase together with a growing determination of Western governments to stem the flow.
"Tamil refugees have a special place in British immigration law and practice over the last few years. Their arrival has provoked restrictive new laws and practices which have tightened British immigration control and made it harsher and less humane for other non-European settlers and refugees as well as Tamils." (Closed Doors: New Restrictions on the Rights of Asylum Seekers - Anne Owers - 1988)
Tamil Asylum Seekers Protesting at London Heathrow, February 1987
Even after the Indo Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, Amnesty International continued to emphasise that there was considerable uncertainty about the safety of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
In 1990, the Minority Rights Group in London, profiled the case of Seenithamby Javanarajah, an asylum seeker, who was deported to Sri Lanka by the British authorities and was tortured on his return to the island.
"During his forced return to Sri Lanka Javanarajah travelled to Jaffna where the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) was responsible for security. A month after his arrival he was detained by the IPKF and made to appear before three hooded informants' one of whom nodded his head when Javanarajah appeared. He was then taken to an IPKF camp, where he was detained, interrogated, kicked and beaten with pipes. He was severely beaten three more times over the next seven days and it was only aver 10 weeks of detention that this family managed to secure his release by bribery."
The presence of Tamil asylum seekers in Germany and Switzerland, brought with it overt racist attacks. In 1991, one Tamil woman asylum seeker was killed in Germany. Widespread protest meetings were held by Tamil associations.
In early 1994 ( in a well documented appeal ), the Swiss Federation of Tamil Associations called upon the Swiss authorities to reconsider their decision to forcibly repatriate Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka and pointed out:
"On 6 October 1993, an European Parliamentary delegation which visited Sri Lanka told the Colombo Press that ''the current situation in Sri Lanka was not conducive for Western governments to return asylum seekers''. These views give the lie direct to the claims sometimes made on behalf of the Sri Lanka government that '' the widespread human rights abuses of the last few years have sharply declined and that the Sri Lanka Government have taken measures to protect the human rights of all its citizens as a result of pressure from bodies such as Amnesty International and donor governments."
The Appeal added:
"May we respectfully say that instead of sending back Tamil asylum seekers to face detention, torture and death in Sri Lanka, the Swiss authorities and others with a liberal conscience should use their not inconsiderable influence and power, to persuade the Sri Lanka government to address the underlying causes of the conflict and recognise the right of the Tamil people to live in their own home land, free from the oppressive rule of a Sinhala dominated Sri Lanka government. "
Again, perhaps not surprisingly, the United States has adopted a particularly restrictive approach to Tamil refugee applicants. ( United States Court Rejects Tamil Asylum Claim - 1995 ). However, the case of Balaranjini Ratnam was an exception to the general approach.
The plight faced by some Tamil asylum seekers was brought to public attention by a 36 year old Tamil asylum seeker in Sweden setting himself on fire on 2 March 1994. The action of the Tamil asylum seeker in Sweden in preferring death, even by fire, to a forced deportation to Sri Lanka shows in stark terms the oppressive ground reality in Colombo and elsewhere in the island of Sri Lanka. ( Tamil Asylum Seeker sets himself on fire in Sweden - March 1994)
On 10 August 1996, the BBC reported an interview with Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar:
"There is no discrimination against Tamils in the country nor is there any danger to their lives, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar told foreign media personnel recently... (In response to a) question as to the exact truth of the claims made by the Tamil youths overseas who complain that they were discriminated against due to fact that they were Tamils and their lives were in danger, Minister Kadirgamar in his reply said that they make these complaints so that they could seek political asylum in foreign lands. They are, in actual fact, economic refugees..."
Whilst the British Refugee Council publication Sri Lanka Monitor has taken pains to report fairly on the Tamil refugee situation, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has played an increasingly controversial role in relation to Tamil asylum seekers and has been criticised for being influenced more by real politick than by humanitarian considerations. The British Refugee Council Sri Lanka Monitor reported in September 1997:
"UNHCR declares in a March Information Note that orderly and safe return of rejected asylum-seekers to their country of origin could safeguard the principle of asylum for those who genuinely need protection. UNHCR further says that rejected asylum-seekers are not singled out at Colombo airport or later and people are treated fairly and humanely during Army security checks.
Human rights agencies say that Colombo conditions for Tamils have hardly changed since the British Refugee Council mission in December last year and its report in February. The situation remains precarious for Tamils with the continuing LTTE threat to the capital. President Chandrika Kumaratunge herself said in August that she was aware of innocent Tamils being detained by security forces for ransom. London-based human rights agency Amnesty International, during its August visit, uncovered evidence of widespread torture, including in Colombo.
Observers say UNHCR's position is prompted by considerations other than the real situation in Colombo. They point to a recently leaked December 1993 internal UNHCR memo from the agency's Sri Lankan Resident Representative to its Geneva headquarters acknowledging that the security situation for Tamils in Colombo had been deteriorating as evidenced by increased arrests.
The memo advises against freezing UNHCR guidelines, which permit Western governments to repatriate Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, on the grounds that frozen guidelines would be difficult to reinstate. Freezing the guidelines would upset the Sri Lankan authorities and in order to reinstate the guidelines the burden of proof that the situation had improved would fall on UNHCR.
The recommendation to continue the guidelines had been taken, according to the memo, on the request of the then Sri Lankan Presidential Advisor Bradman Weerakoon who had pointed out that the human rights implications of a UNHCR statement would far outweigh the consequences of deportations. The memo also says that political implications vis a vis the Sri Lankan government of any UNHCR statement need to be carefully weighed, particularly since it would be used in courts in asylum countries."
The UNHCR stand paved the way for further deportations of Tamil asylum seekers from Europe.
"The governments of Sri Lanka and the Netherlands signed an agreement on 10 September for the forcible repatriation of rejected asylum-seekers deepening insecurity among 350,000 Tamil refugees across the world.
Some 350 asylum-seekers will be returned to Sri Lanka in the next twelve months and the pact is due for review in September next year. Sri Lankan authorities have agreed to issue identity documents to refugees who do not have any travel papers.
The agreement for the return of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers is the second in Europe. Under a January 1994 pact between the Swiss and the Sri Lankan governments 696 rejected refugees have been repatriated in the last 33 months.
In the first eight months of 1997 Netherlands received 14,145 refugees, an increase of 28% compared to 1996, some 1,300 of them from Sri Lanka. A plane carrying 173 Sri Lankan refugees arrived in Amsterdam's Schipol airport in February from the Turkmenistan capital of Ashkhabad causing a furore and allegations of abuse of the asylum system.
Over 15,000 Sri Lankans have sought refuge in the Netherlands since 1984. The Dutch Foreign Affairs minister has concluded that the situation in Colombo is safe for Tamils and quoting international refugee agency UNHCR, claims that those repatriated from other European nations in 1996 and 1997 have had no problem in the Sri Lankan capital.
Refugees are concerned that other European nations may follow suit. Introduction of stricter asylum laws and procedures continue and less than 5% of Sri Lankans are granted UN Convention refugee status in European countries. Several nations, including Denmark and Norway, are deporting Sri Lankans even without formal agreements.
The Danish police have listed 154 Tamils who are in hiding after Denmark began deportations late last year. Sweden introduced a new type of air ticket visa in September for citizens of twelve countries, including Sri Lanka." (British Refugee Council, Sri Lanka Monitor, September 1997)
Tamil asylum-seekers in custody for some ten months in detention centres in Australia staged a hunger strike on 12 October 1997 against prolonged detention.
"Tamil asylum-seekers in custody for some ten months in detention centres in Australia staged a hunger strike on 12 October against prolonged detention. Their asylum applications were denied by the Refugee Review Tribunal. They have appealed to the Federal Court and are likely to remain in detention until their cases are heard. Tamil refugee organisations say such detention is a violation of human rights and have appealed to Immigration and Multicultural minister Philip Ruddock. Australian press reports say new legislation is currently being considered to deny appeals to refused asylum-seekers. In July the Immigration Department introduced a charge of $1,000 on unsuccessful applications before leave to appeal was granted. Some 640 applications from Tamils are said to be pending. In July 17 Tamils were found stranded at Coral Bay, 700 miles north of Perth.
There is increasing concern over the plight of Sri Lankans who are stranded in other countries. The Tamil Refugee International Network (TRIN) estimates that over 20,000 Sri Lankans are stranded in over 12 countries in South-East Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, including 5,000 in Russia and 5,000 in Thailand. According to reports, around 1,500 foreigners including 234 Sri Lankans are held in a Lithuanian Army camp. A young couple who returned to Sri Lanka blame their travel agent for the harrowing journey through Moscow and Minsk in Belorussia. They were transported in a container and locked-up in a barn for nine days with meagre food. They walked many miles in the bitter cold before reaching Poland through Lithuania but were arrested and returned to the Army camp in the Baltic state. After receiving some money from relatives in Denmark they were returned to Sri Lanka through Moscow.In the meantime, the Sri Lanka government has continued to persist in its denial that Tamils have a well founded fear of persecution if they return to the island. (British Refugee Council, Sri Lanka Monitor, October 1997)
On 18 August 1998, Denmark signed a repatriation agreement with Sri Lanka. The British Refugee Council, Sri Lanka Monitor, reported in September 1998:
"Despite increasing signs of tension in the capital, and warnings from human rights organisations, the Danish government has signed a repatriation pact with Sri Lanka. Denmark became the third European country on 18 August to sign an agreement with Sri Lanka for the repatriation of rejected asylum-seekers, following the examples of Switzerland and Netherlands. A number of Sri Lankans had been returned before the agreement was signed.
The repatriation will be phased and the accord envisages the return of 350 asylum-seekers in the first year. ... Two weeks earlier, Emergency rule was extended to the whole of Sri Lanka. NGOs have highlighted the unsafe conditions in Colombo and other parts of the island for Tamils and the continuing violations of human rights."
The Colombo based Human Rights Action Committee ( huract@slt.lk ) in a Press Release on 8 April 1999 declared:
"Veluppillai Balachandran, a 39 year old Tamil refugee, killed himself on the 23rd March 1999, rather than be deported to Sri Lanka. He had previously staged a hunger strike to attract attention to his plight while he was held in the deportation prison (in Moers - NRW) and he had given several warnings to the courts and to the authorities in the deportation prison that he would kill himself rather than be deported to be tortured by the racist Sri Lankan military. Mr. Balachandran's suicide is a tragic indictment of the asylum process in Ger-many where a Tamil who clearly had a „well founded fear of persecution" was rejected as a genuine refugee and thereby left with no option but to kill himself."
The British Refugee Council Sri Lanka Monitor commenting on the plight of Tamil asylum seekers in Germany said:
"Sources say at least 50 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers have been deported from Germany in the last six months. The UK-based National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns says asylum-seeker V Balachandran, 39, committed suicide in a German prison on 23 March, before deportation to Sri Lanka.
The German Foreign Ministry claims that the 700 people disappeared in Jaffna in 1996 were LTTE cadre who had infiltrated the peninsula after its capture by the Army. The Ministry further claims that the Sri Lankan authorities implement the Emergency regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act in a pragmatic way and regarding torture, have taken steps to improve the situation.
But the US State Department reports that security forces continue to torture and mistreat detainees and the government has not made regulations under torture law to prosecute security personnel. In a March Background Paper, UNHCR, quoting sources, reports on torture, disappearances, extra-judicial executions and mass arrests of Tamils in Colombo.
UNHCR continues its "passive" or indirect monitoring of rejected Sri Lankan asylum-seekers from Switzerland and informally assists Denmark and Netherlands to check on returned refugees. UNHCR also receives information regarding refugee returns from Norway. UNHCR reiterates its view that Sri Lankan asylum-seekers whose claims have been processed through full and fair procedures and found not to fulfil the refugee criteria may be returned safely to Sri Lanka. This, UNHCR adds, does not obviate other reasons for non-return such as is contemplated under the UN Convention on Torture."
http://www.tamilnation.org/refugees/index.htm
Arts and Culture The challenge of China
HINDSIGHT By F Sionil Jose (The Philippine Star) Updated October 19, 2009 12:00 AM
I was a senior in college in 1949 when Mao Tse Tung defeated Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist Army that ended a long and bloody civil war and united a fractured country. The Hukbalahap rebellion had started, the Cold War had reached the Philippines and the Huks and the communists were demonized. Many of us who were matured by World War II recognized the imperative for agrarian reform like China's, for revolution even, and we cheered Chairman Mao's triumph.
To this very day, I continue to admire Chairman Mao and what he had achieved in spite of the calumny heaped upon him, and the excesses of his Cultural Revolution. Knowing a bit of China's history, how this great nation was exploited and humiliated by the European powers and Japan, I share with them their jubilation when, this month, they celebrated the 60th anniversary of their liberation.
I have always desired to visit China to see what Chairman Mao had done. A generation ago, it was near impossible for us to go there. I tried everything, including flattery, but was unable to get there until 1979, when as a consultant to then Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella, I was a member of the 12-member team officially invited by our giant neighbor.
My earliest memories of the Chinese amongst us were my childhood classmates in grade school, sons of a rice trader. It is in childhood, after all, where such friendships are bonded. I was often invited to their house. They had an altar in their living room with lighted candles, a tray of fruits in season and colorful images of their gods. I took these for granted; after all, many Filipino homes also had similar altars.
Then, in Manila in 1938, there was the street corner Chinese sari-sari store near our accesoria from where one can get for free a pinch of salt, a kernel of garlic. The taho vendor in the mornings, and the junk man buying old newspapers and empty bottles were Chinese. And there was the Chinese panciteria, and siopao, and Gandara in Binondo where shoes were cheaper than in those Florsheim and Walkover shops at the Escolta.
When we lived in Hong Kong in the early Sixties, that was where I really got to appreciate Chinese food. Our Chinese amah from Canton showed my wife her resourcefulness; she cleaned chicken intestines and cooked them.
In 1979 China was different, Deng Xiaoping who inspired China's economic emergence had not yet surfaced from the shadows, the Gang of Four was being blamed for the country's backwardness and the communes still thrived.
This was the stock question I asked the cadres everywhere: If you had a choice, where would you like to live and work? Always, the reply was: I will go wherever the Party would send me.
There was this Party official, however, who sought me afterwards and in broken English said he would like to work in the kitchen because food was always there.
Here now is an official statistic: 30 years ago, with 963 million, 30 percent of the Chinese were hungry. Today, with 1.3 billion people, 97 percent of the Chinese have full stomachs.
It is not just a full stomach which should gladden the Chinese — now they have the atomic bomb, and sent a man into space. Only recently, they touted the Olympics and stunned the world. And China today has trillions of dollars, a hoard that can alter the global economy.
How does this magnificent achievement by a people once demeaned and poor relate to us? Today, China wears a smiling face and claims harmony with the world.
But China is expansionist — not because of Tibet, its claim on the Spratleys and Taiwan. It is expansionist for this is the iron law of nations — when they are strong, they expand and covet raw materials; when they are weak, they contract and look for markets.
China's expansionism could afford us opportunities, but there is one niggling doubt in my mind engendered not by this iron law, but by the fact that we have a Chinese minority, people in our midst — a small but powerful minority whose loyalty to this country is in doubt, to whom I now pose this question, if there is ever a war with the Chinese, on whose side will you be?
This doubt, which had cankered me for so long, is assuaged somewhat by two individuals I knew.
Her real name is April. We met in Hong Kong when we lived there in the early Sixties.
She was born in Binondo, in one of those crowded streets alive with the odors of Chinese cooking, chatter and commerce. She was then in her early twenties, fair-skinned like all Chinese, and she spoke Tagalog without any accent. Her family, she told me, was still in Binondo and she was in touch with them. She had gone to one of the Chinese schools, finished high school, then went on to college.
She spoke Fukien and was fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, having lived in Hong Kong at the time that we got there for almost 10 years.
Why was she in Hong Kong?
When the communists took control of China in 1949, she was so enamored with them she decided to go to the mainland to help in the reconstruction of that crippled country. She said she was welcome and was soon involved with the cadres.
She was assigned to different communes where she lived as harshly as the others. She did not mind that. But as time went on, the rigid strictures and the doublethink and doublespeak of the communists started bothering her. The final blow to her sense of dignity came when she was not even permitted to cry, and that was when she decided to flee to Hong Kong.
It was easy for her to find work but not meaning to her life. She pined for the warmth, the smells of Binondo but she knew that if she returned, she would be arrested for being a communist. She was so homesick, came a time when she bought a ticket for Manila on one of the President liners. When the ship docked at the Manila pier, she went to the bridge — the highest she could reach — to gaze at the distant skyline of Binondo beyond the rooftops of Intramuros. Then back to Hong Kong.
I lost touch with April when we left Hong Kong two years later and if ever she reads this piece and is back in Manila, I hope she will reach me.
Then, there is the late Wong Lin Ken, former ambassador of Singapore to the United States and Home Minister of that government. I met him in Hong Kong at one of those beautiful seminars sponsored by the Quakers in the mid-Sixties. There were just four of us at that Kowloon seminar, a Japanese scholar and a Malaysian politician. It was Lin Ken with whom I forged the closest relationship. We all spoke with great frankness. I told him of the latent anti-Chinese feeling of Filipinos, of our apprehension of China, that in the Philippines there is a small but powerful Chinese minority whose loyalty was in doubt.
He tried to allay that apprehension. He was born in Penang in Malaysia, and China was important to him but his feelings for that country were inchoate and not strong at all, for when he was homesick, he longed for Penang, for its beaches, the palm trees the food, satay babi (pork barbecue).
He occupied the distinguished Raffles Chair at the University of Singapore and one afternoon we went around the antique shops looking for a Raffles chair for me to bring to Manila. He said there really was one which was used by Singapore's British founder.
Lin Ken told me his father was so enamored with Abraham Lincoln, he named him after the great American president. He was a perspicacious teacher and innovative thinker who challenged barnacled orthodoxies. We even had a very spirited argument because he maintained that the countries in the region were better off when they were colonized for they had good governments. There is some truth to what he said, particularly when we think of those days when we were an American colony. I reminded him of the logic of colonialism. He said yes — these countries were exploited—but now, they are exploited by their own elites.
Lin Ken was very sensitive — he could not take the stigma when Lee Kwan Yew dismissed him for incompetence as Home Secretary. Shortly after, he committed suicide.
April and Lin Ken touched my life and gave me a precious insight about how some Chinese feel about their roots and their adopted homeland.
But there are Chinese and then there are Chinese, so that this anti-Chinese feeling in Southeast Asia persists in so many forms and is, perhaps, the most vicious in Indonesia where in the recent past, ethnic Chinese were killed.
Still, our region will certainly be dominated by China which will soon be the world's second richest country, ousting that position from Japan which is just as conscious and apprehensive of a resurgent China.
The American hegemony is now challenged; the dollar as the international currency is being questioned not just by China but even by lesser economies which have suffered with the near collapse of Wall Street the other year. Globalization which the United States had promoted is, of course, unstoppable not because the United States desires it but because the economies of different countries are now interlinked. The creation of regional groups is imperative, and such groupings have spurred growth, to wit the European Union, and ASEAN as well. But as Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew insists, Asia needs a continued and strong American presence to give stability to this vast region.
How well can we manage our affairs in these rapidly changing times is doubtful because the Philippine state is weak and political bickering has stymied so much of our potential. Our leaders can do much, but only if they are Filipinos, and not Chinese, Spanish or recalcitrant Indios. In this light I would ask our taipans who wield vast influence what, if at all, they can do to make this unhappy country secure.
Loyalty to Chinese culture should not, must not translate into loyalty to the Chinese state. Those born of Chinese ancestry in this country should not be beholden to the Mainland although their relatives may still be there — this is where they live, where they made their wealth. They must not abandon their culture, which, after all, gives them their truest identity, which after all is respected in this country assuring as it does the diversity that is enshrined in the Philippine Constitution.
Moreover, Filipinos as a whole have so much to gain from the strengths and virtues of the world's oldest civilization.
It is for this reason why many Chinese Filipinos then and now have given so much of themselves, to this country.
It is for this reason why we should appreciate the persistent striving of our ethnic Chinese like Teresita Ang See.
The truth is we are fast becoming, genetically, a mestizo nation.
Way back when I visited Tanauan, in Leyte to meet my wife's aunts and uncles, I saw a photograph of her grandfather who had come to the Philippines at the turn of the last century from Fujian.
He had pigtails.
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[Research Day Paper June 2009]
A Decade of War Veterans-led Occupations
Wilbert Sadomba
Part 2
(to return to Part 1 click here)
The Fast Track Land Reform Programme
The FLRP was an immediate strategy formulated by government and ruling ZANU PF to deal with the land movement. At this time the state shifted its role from one of the actors of the movement to that of a power above the movement exercising the authority of 'legalizing and regulating the occupations' (Haar van der G. 2005:5) . However, latently its objective was to usurp control of the land movement from the war veterans' leadership and sway it from its original objective of land redistribution to the land hungry. Through FTLRP the state regained legitimacy and assumed authority to take charge of and structure the land occupations. However, state support favoured the rising petty bourgeoisie (Moyo S. 1995; Kinsey B.H. 1999a; 1999; Sholtz D. 2004) , enhanced during ESAP in the 1990s. Implementation focused on attacking and weakening the land movement leadership. Organisationally the FLRP had a national task force to study the movement, create structures and re-establishing state control. Provincial committees were created and similar structures were set at district level. District committees and lower tier structures called Committees of 7, were frontline structures of FLRP, to negate war veteran leadership of the movement.
The first manifest clash between the state and the land movement was based on the new structures imposed by the state. At national level there was neither representation of war veterans nor any actors of the movement. At provincial levels war veterans employed by government were used to represent land occupiers despite the fact that these might have had nothing to do with the occupations. At district level the DA and the committee sidelined the actual war veterans who were leaders of the land movement, and replaced them by some hand-picked individuals that they preferred to represent the land movement constituency. Many such tactics were used but the land movement actors resisted, resulting into serious clashes which at times, degenerated into physical assaults (Sadomba 2008).
FTLRP involved land assessment to determine carrying capacity, demarcation into plots, settler selection and followed placement. Three tier tenure systems resulted where A1 plots were based on a communitarian policy and A2 was for commercial farming; communal lands remained unchanged. The objective of the land movement was in line with the A1 model where as many peasant farmers as possible would be resettled through the scheme. It turned out that the A2 model became very controversial as it was distributed for patrimonial reasons, handled directly by the Minister of Lands and Agriculture.
Moyo (2001) illustrated the fluctuations of the land movement over a period of time which other scholars fail to do (Hammar A. and Raftopolous B. 2003) thereby failing to note different phases of development of the land movement in the post independence period. However no analysis has been made to distinguish different phases of the war veterans-led occupations from 1997. This is erroneous in that failure to distinguish the various phases conceals many factors that help us understand the dynamics of the movement in space and time. The land occupations differed markedly between the nature, approach, objective and motive of war veterans-led occupations and state and ZANU PF led occupations during the fast track period. These occupations were mainly carried on occupied land, dispossessing occupiers in order to give it to ZANU PF elites, civil servants or relatives of those in the system. War veterans dubbed this wave of occupations jambanja 15 on jambanja meaning that they were occupations of occupied land. The fast track was not about bringing order to a disorderly operation but the contrary, it started to introduce disorder and new waves of occupations.
The process of the FTLRP was summarised in a document presented to the Provincial Stakeholder Dialogue held from 23 to 24 August 2004, organised by African Institute of Agrarian Studies. War veterans wrote:
Arrests of land occupiers has been orchestrated and well planned so much that strategies are made to create crimes where war veterans [are] fast-tracked to cells, court and jail. It's a well organized syndicate of officials from the mass that is used ... police details who arrest, magistrate and his public prosecutor who make sure you [go] to jail. When others [occupiers] realize this humiliation, they … go back to [their] towns of origin, and the so-called politicians become happy and celebrate. But can we say they will have solved the problem? No! … Already there is political discontent and distortion in the Agrarian Revolution. (Mashonaland West War Veterans Association 2004) .
As soon as the fast track took root, it started to weed out war veterans and other land occupiers, opening for commercial farms for the elite. These were mainly government officials, party loyalists and the ruling oligarchy who were given whole farms to themselves as opposed to subdivision applying to A2 farmers. They chose prime land with good infrastructure and farm houses, chasing away the land movement actors. Moreover the government input scheme favoured these large scale farmers than the small A1 farmers. For example A1 farmers, occupying 98 percent of the resettled land, got at most one eighth of the funds, with the balance going to commercial farmers on A2 farms. In the 2006 Government budgeted about ZW $1 trillion for '2005-6 season crop input finance to support A1 and communal farmers' forming more than a million farmers, to be conservative. A2 farmers got, through the Central Bank programme called Agricultural Sector Productivity Enhancement Fund (ASPEF), 'ZW $7 trillion and other private financing schemes' (World Bank 2006: 59 Gono 2008).
Many no longer had the energy to fight and they simply returned to their houses in towns or their rural homes. The fast track was marked by many violent clashes between the state and the land movement. Moreover many of those who were given the land, for large scale A2 commercial farming wherefrom land movement actors had been removed, were not capitalist farmers and were accused of assert stripping (14) (War veterans Grievance document 2004) .
Murambatsvina (15) Period
This paper argues that the decade of war veterans land movement is a tale of class conflict within the liberation movement and without. Class antagonisms reached their climax during the Murambatsvina phase. In this section we examine the position of the land movement in the Murambatsvina period from mid 2004 to 2008. Many scholars and analysts have looked at Murambatsvina in partisan terms arguing that it was retribution on MDC supporters. This paper disagrees with this analysis and it argues that Murambatsvina was an attack on the land movement. It further argues that Murambatsvina occurred both in rural as well as urban areas and it started before 2005. Murambatsvina was imbedded in an overall strategy to deal systematically with the land movement that had been developed by the state from the rupture in 2000.
The state designed a strategy comprised of three options for formal intervention into the land movement. The first option was simple cooptation of the movement through ZNLWVA leadership structures aimed to diffuse the movement's autonomy and to subdue it. This option was embarked on soon after the February referendum in 2000, when Mugabe invited Hunzvi to spearhead electoral campaign at the ZANU PF Politburo post-mortem meeting that was held a week after the referendum. The second option was to create parallel state structures that would antagonise those of the land movement in the hope that the later would succumb. The third and last option was to smash the movement violently and dissipate it. The fast track was a process of executing these three options in that order and Operation Murambatsvina was a culmination of that long term strategy. During execution the options overlapped although they remain distinguishable and severable.
The attempt to co-opt the land movement failed for a number of reasons including but not limited to, complex horizontality of movement organisation, localisation, divisions within state organs (16) and effective negation of land movement structures that continuously made war veterans suspicious about the actual agenda of the state and ZANU PF elites. Although parallel structures were created in the form of Task Force Committees, land committees, village committees of seven and rejuvenation of traditional leadership, the land movement under war veterans leadership did not succumb. This left the state with no option but to implement the third alternative, then code-named Murabatsvina.
Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order began much earlier than 2005, as continuation of clashes between state organs and the land movement, particularly war veteran leaders. In Mashonaland west and Central for example there were continuous brutal evictions of occupiers by the state in Zvimba, Mazowe and Shamva Districts. Tactically, government postponed widespread violent onslaught on the land movement until the general elections of 2005 (17). It is notable that ZANU PF won the elections overwhelmingly, reflecting the effect of land movement both in rural and urban areas (Masuko L. 2008; Sadomba W.Z. 2008) . It is illustrative that ZANU PF regained the only seat in the traditional stronghold city of Harare both in 2005 and 2008 parliamentary elections and that seat was won by a war veteran candidate Nyanhongo, who rose from being councillor.
As a long term strategy to consolidate the land movement, War veterans decided to take over the political leadership of ZANU PF by mobilising support through the land movement. Their first step was to strengthen ZNLWVA. To do so they had to identify a courageous leader for the association, after the death of Dr. Hunzvi. Jabulani Sibanda, then chairman of Matebeleland Province, had emerged as a fearless leader when he publicly denounced the 'old guard' politicians of Matebeleland. The state and ZANU PF ruling elite backed Joseph Chinotimba. The Joint Operations Command tried to influence (18) the choice of war veterans but to no avail and Sibanda became the new Chairman (personal observation ZNLWVA meeting, 2004, Mutare). However he also was later coopted, foiling the plans of the association and the movement.
The second step of war veterans was to get into Parliament in massive numbers. Many registered for ZANU PF primary elections but were removed from the list by the party elite and were replaced by other individuals. Ironically, war veterans campaigned for these imposed candidates in the general elections. The vision of war veterans and their political tactics are in this sense, baffling. However this reflects the complexity of the situation where a movement has to confront catalysing neo-colonial tendencies (displayed by MDC), nationalist bourgeois tendencies of ZANU PF elites, settler and international capital. Determining the priority enemy at any given time might be tricky and debatable. Why did they not insist on getting into Parliament when ZANU PF was at its weakest point and they (war veterans) were powerful? Indeed this weakened the land movement. This is where Moyo and Yeros (2005) criticism is relevant. War veterans, despite ideological clarity and long term-strategies, were tactically sterile. A retreat at this point was tantamount to bolstering the position of ZANU PF elites giving them the tactical advantage which they were quick to exploit and swiftly smashed the movement by Murambatsvina. This tactical error grossly and dearly cost the land movement.
Soon after the general elections in 2005 the postponed 'violent retribution by the state,' to borrow Jun Borras' (2001:548) words, was commenced on the land movement (19). The operation started by demolishing houses of cooperatives in the urban areas. (20)The demolition was done by local authority operatives using earth-moving equipment accompanied by the police and army. Illegal structures in high density properties were also razed to the ground as were the established informal sector production sites and workshops. As there was no warning property was lost, and worse still means of urban livelihood were destroyed as tools and equipment for the small scale manufacturers were destroyed in the process. Above all the operation was life threatening as it left many families without housing and the effect on the urban land movement was clear as Masuko (2008:204) writes, '... in doing so (government) dashed the hopes of the low income urban homeless and of one of the most radical housing developments ever initiated in Zimbabwe. However ... the occupiers remained on the occupied farms minus all the structures that they had built ...'
The most intriguing question that scholars have glossed over or totally ignored is, what was the motive of the regime in carrying out the operation? ZANU PF had clearly started to regain popularity throught the land movement, winning more than two thirds majority in the 2005 general elections (Masuku 2008). Why did Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF forge genuine unity with war veterans and the land movement? The answer seems to lie in the intrinsic class contradictions and class struggle. War veterans feel that Operation Murambatsvina was targeted on them specifically and the land movement generally. Operation Murambatsvina was not the only operation of this period. There another one was Operation Chikorokoza Chapera that was carried in 2006. This was a rural operation that focused on specific occupied farms and mineral exploitation that had become the new source of livelihoods for dispersed Murambatsvina victims. Although Chikorokoza Chapera was countrywide, the most severe attacks were in Chimanimani gold mines and Chiadzwa diamond mines, both in Manicaland, where the state killed people to remove victims of Murambatsvina according to various accusations.
Structural reconfigurations also occurred during the Murambatsvina period. The state, ZANU PF and Mugabe, realising the cruel attacks they had made on the land movement and war veterans, it decided to forge a new alliance. This time it chose the traditional leaders to replace the mobilisation role of the land movement actors. The countryside was not being democratised by going back to traditional authority. Rather, this structure was, like in the case of the Phillines, being elevated and entrenched into an elite 'to dominate rural polity' and with state resources and delegated powers could 'use extensive patronage networks that combine (partial) provision of daily subsistence needs of rural poor households with the threat and/or actual use of violence' (Borras S.M. 2001:550) . In addition the executive of ZNLWVA was co-opted through material benefits including houses, double cab vehicles and money, as had been done to traditional leaders.
First, chiefs were allocated prime land with good farm houses and infrastructure. In addition they were given grants of seed and chemical fertilisers. They were also given double cab vehicles for personal transport and administrative personnel including secretaries and messengers. Powers of traditional leaders were also increased and they were given more functions as commissioners of oaths. In 2006 new agricultural programmes were initiated by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. These were: Productive Sector Finance Facility (PSF) in 2003 and Agricultural Sector Productivity Enhancement Facility (ASPEF) (Gono G. 2008:148-150) . The farm mechanisation programme under ASPEF included many schemes for drought relief food, seed, fuel, livestock, liquid money, farm equipment like tractors and combine harvesters. This was a bourgeois class under formation rising from the ashes of the destroyed small scale industrial producers. Chiefs were not only direct beneficiaries of this project but also distributors, giving them extra advantage of consolidating their social networks. Basic Commodity Supply Side Intervention Facility (BACOSSI) "under which primary secondary and tertiary producers and suppliers in targeted key sectors of the economy were afforded concessional production-linked financial support for working capital requirements" (Gono G. 2008:151) . However this caused high inflationary pressures on the economy as it distorted prices and as some of the inputs were abused, and were not channelled into production (21).
Much has been written and debated (22) about the evil nature with which Operation Murambatsvina was carried out by the state (Tabaijuka A.K. 2005; Toriro P. 2005; Mahoso T. 2008; Masuko L. 2008; Mhiripiri N. 2008; Mlambo A. 2008; Moore D. 2008; Vambe M. 2008; Vambe M. 2008) but little or no analysis has been offered on the class nature of the state operation. As a result the analysis is at best shallow and at worst confused. For example simple empirical facts are contested, like who was targeted by Murambatsvina. Vembe (2008:3) argues that 'both rural and urban areas; ZANU PF supporters and MDC supporters and non-aligned, were targeted'. However others see the operation as partisan, attacking MDC city strongholds as 'punishment' for 'voting for MDC' and desire of the ruling party to unwind time of the urbanites to 'year zero' rural homelands' ( Moore 2008:28). In desperate defence of state action, Mahoso (2008:160) tried to separate Murambatsvina from the land movement itself saying 'the African land reclamation movement [was] rural and [had] little to do with urban slum clearance'. Vembe's view is correct and supported by empirical evidence. Scholars failed to grasp the class conflict in Murambatsvina and its linkage to the overall land occupation movement. Moore's argument can be challenged on grounds of lack of imperical data to based on fieldwork which such a controversial study demands. It sounds more reasonable that urbanites who voted ZANU PF in 2005 were influenced mainly by the land movement and it this signified a shift from MDC considering that the party's land policy and alliance with white commercial farmers were seen as negating the land movement. Moreover, utterances by Morgan Tsvangirai that land occupiers were sprouting in a disorderly fashion like mushroom, warning a disaster of hunger, enhanced this perception about the MDC.
This paper argues that the land movement of Zimbabwe for the past ten years has seen the climax of especially class but also racial conflict. Politics of power at this juncture transcended partisan interests as the real bone of contention was protection of class interests and class domination by ZANU PF elites and petty bourgeoisie against peasants, rural and urban working classes. Political power was under formidable threat from the land movement that had now mobilised both urban workers and peasants. At no point in Zimbabwe's liberation struggle had such a powerful alliance of urban working class and rural peasants been forged. ZANU PF ruling elite, petty and rising national bourgeoisie were worried of the imminent power shifts threatening to take place in favour of the lower classes comprising the land movement and war veterans.
The myth that war veterans were incapable of leading the Zimbabwean society had been utterly dispelled and a revolutionary climate had developed. "The situation had presented itself" (Interview DTM, a war veteran leader of occupations in Mazowe District, 2000). Leadership capabilities of war veterans had been demonstrated by organising the land hungry, homeless, informal sector producers and farm workers, sending unequivocal signals that it was only a matter of time the movement was to take over state power. This of course sent shivers to the ruling elite who immediately took the third option - the real 'hidden dimension of operation Murambatsvina' – a violent retributive class attack of the urban and rural poor in the land movement. The impact of the housing cooperatives and Unions are illustrative of this new and rising power of the peasants and workers with marginalised war veterans as vanguard, against both capital and elitism.
A question that has been debated is whether or not the land movement dissipated and disintegrated after Murambatsvina. What became of the land movement and what is its status today? This question can be answered by viewing the agency of the land movement actors from 2005. Many war veterans that were interviewed in connection with Operation Murambatsvina, were bitter. More than 10 000 properties at different stages of development were destroyed including and especially those of the war veterans (23). Members of the land occupation movement were scattered across the country as a result of operation Murambatsvina and Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (24). Counter strategies by war veterans included ousting ZANU PF elites in 2008 elections (interview Muchaneta 2006). Dispersal of the land movement actors – Murambatsvina victims - effectively spread widely mobilising agents against the ruling ZANU PF elite, Mugabe and their bourgeois counterparts.
Strategically war veterans mobilised the ZANU PF electorate to be elected towards Parliamentary elections of 2008. However, the politburo sought ways of weeding out war veterans by applying unconstitutional qualifications, outlining that a ZANU PF Parliamentary candidate had to have been in the provincial executive for at least five years. In 1980, at Zimbabwe's independence ZANU PF had issued a directive barring war veterans from participating in the leadership of the party at any level, which condition was only lifted during the occupation period, by default. It was impossible that under normal circumstances one would have risen through the ranks to occupy a provincial level post, so this was clearly to exclude war veterans (25).
Many war veterans lost their meagre income campaigning to be parliamentarians, only to be weeded out (26). Similar to Das' observation, sheer numbers of the land movement 'constitute[d] a political threat to [the] regime overlooking their interests, either through elections or through non-electoral agency' (Das R.J. 2007) . Jabulani Sibanda, who tried to silence war veterans sidelined in the primary elections, was viciously snapped at in meeting of war veterans (January 2008, Fourth Street Offices, personal observation) . The angry crowd threatened the doom of the party in the 2008 elections. Some of the war veterans candidates, for example in a Marondera constituency and Mutasa, refused to step down with disastrous consequences to the ruling party. Others took the primary elections irregularities to the High Court but many others simply withdraw like war veterans in Goromonzi, Zvimba and Harare (personal observation, 2008).
The ballot became the new "weapon of the weak", now mobilised by the Murambatsvina victim scatterings comprising of urban informal sector producers, urban homeless and some dispossessed A1 settlers and marginalised war veterans. War veterans and land movement actors were disgruntled by the process and the sidelining of land movement candidates. This anger, disillusionment and mobilisation by Murabatsvina victims changed the traditional voting behaviour in the rural areas leading to ZANU PF defeat generally. Mugabe was also defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai in the March 29 elections. With panic, the state reacted by unleashing retributive violence on both the rural and urban electorate in a military operation code named Operation Mavhotera Papi? (Operation whom did you vote for?). The army was engaged to 'mobilise' or is it to 'coerce' voters. A shift in use of the army instead of war veterans clearly explains that the state had terminated its alliance with the later. A re-run of the presidential elections was marred by organised state violence resulting in Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the race and seeking refuge with the Dutch embassy in Zimbabwe. Murambatsvina had pushed partisan but especially class contradictions to their zenith.
War veterans heavily criticised regimentation, threats and violence against the electorate in the run up to the presidential run-off (27). The elections, that put Mugabe back into power, have been widely considered scandalous and were widely condemned regionally and internationally. This forced ZANU PF to concede to a power-sharing deal, forming a Government of National Unity with the two MDC parties (28). Omission of the land movement and particularly war veterans, in this GNU is conspicuous, raising questions of future of both the GNU and the land movement.
Conclusion
From the time veterans led the land movement localised and isolated peasant actions were transformed into a national land movement transcending urban and rural divide and partisan dichotomies of ZANU PF and MDC. This had wide political ramifications threatening seizure of power by the marginalised classes of peasants, farm and urban workers, under the leadership of war veterans. War veterans changed the land movement in terms of tactics and long term strategies and ideological depth. War veterans started to mobilise an alliance of workers and peasants and form decentralised structures (housing co-operatives and unions, and committees in the occupied farms). The political base of both ZANU PF and MDC was at threat and the later was losing its grip on the state.
The class conflicts necessitated the inception of fast track land reform programme that aimed at negating the land movement objectives and thwarting it in the end. The state failed neither to co-opt nor to thwart the movement through imposition of parallel structures and technocratic planning and land allocation that favoured the elite. Its last resort to deal with the surging movement, was violence epitomised by three national operations of military style: Operation Murambatsvina, Operation Chikorokoza Chapera and Operation Mavhotera papi? All three were rooted in state reaction to land occupation movement which threatened political power in the hands of ZANU PF elites and black bourgeoisie.
However current academic analysis has ignored the issue of class in the land occupation movement, tied as they are to partisan views. This has made the debate shallow and confusing. Grounded research reveals that the war veterans-led land occupation movement in Zimbabwe has much wider ideological as well as political consequences which scholars have yet to grapple with in their quest to unravel the unfolding social phenomenon. It is worthwhile to bear in mind that at the core of it is class contest for state power, under neoliberal socio-economic order as Das (2007:4) observed elsewhere:
Just as the neoliberal society is a class society, so the neoliberal state is a class state. In short, neoliberalism had made no difference to the fact that the state must protect capitalist property relations. Indeed, government policy is much rather about the restoration of class power, and increasing capitalist control over society's material resources (Das R.J. 2007:4)
The onslaught on the land movement (urban and rural) through the three national operations, the land tenure policy entrenching capitalist farming, elite protection and economic support from state resources all bears testimony to this class struggle and domination of the poor. The new Government of National Unity (GNU) provides little hope for the working classes as it reflects another alliance of the elites and a significant return of the White Rhodesians in active politics of the country. The question therefore is whether the land movement will be able to sustain its struggle against the elite. This depends on the ideological clarity of the war veterans or any other force that will emerge as vanguard of this land revolution.
Footnotes
13. "Jambanja" is a colloquial Shona word which connotes simultaneous expropriation and suspension of the law.
14. For example these new A2 farmers started to remove parts like plumbing materials, fancy lamp sheds etc. from the farm houses and sell or replace similar parts of their houses in town.
15. Murambatsvina is a Shona word which literally means "one who rejects dirt or garbage". It was coined on environmental health technicians because of their message of refraining from dirt. Mu is class one noun prefix ramb is a verb root meaning "refuse" or "refrain from" tsvina is noun meaning dirt or garbage. However tsvina is also euphemistically used to mean human excrement, but in this context excrement, as Judith Todd (2007:102) interprets, is a misnomer.
16. Dumiso Dabengwa, former Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) intelligence supremo, then Minister of Home Affairs, sent police to evict occupiers in March and April 2000. Joseph Musika, acting as President while Mugabe was out of the country, did the same later. In August 2000, Minister of Lands, John Nkomo, announced that occupations had to stop. War veterans actually clarified their position telling prospective members of parliaments that "… if government was saying 'land to the people' as a political gimmick, we were on our part, serious." (interview DM, 2000). Around March 2000 war veterans locked ZANU PF Provincial Offices and demanded audience with Mugabe, complaining that the ruling party and government were not pushing government and ZANU PF to unequivocally support their land occupation initative who sent Didymus Mutasa and Joseph Musika for negotiations (interview DM, 2000).
17. Government is always tactical the closer to elections the timing is; e.g. they only intensely executed fast track after 2002 presidential elections.
18. A day before the congress the outgoing executive and provincial leaders were addressed by the Joint Operations Command (commanders of the uniformned forces and the Central Intelligence Organisation) at King George VI (KG VI) Barracks. According to a report back by one of the attendants, C, the meeting had two objectives. One was to advice the leadership not to wash their dirty linen in public, meaning that their contradictions had to be shelved in the light of the focus by the international community on the events taking place in the country. The second was trying to impress upon the organisation to elect members who would be acceptable to the political leaders. It is possible that C wanted to use the report back to gain mileage as he was clearly a candidate sponsored by the politicians. He was heavily de-campaigned in Mutare and he could not become the Chairman of ZNLWVA a post that went to Jabulani Sibanda. Sibanda was preferred by war veterans for demonstrating courage against ZANU PF old guard in Matebeleland but was however later coopted and became an ally of Mugabe in the campaign for ZANU PF congress in 2007.
19. The main characteristic feature that distinguishes Murambatsvina period are is retributive violence, epitomised by state coined operations, namely: Operation Murambatsvina, Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (mainly rural) and Operation Mavhotera Papi?
20. One of the most widely publicized cases of Murambatsvina was the destruction by a bulldozer of Chinx Chingaira's house. Chingaira, a prominent singer, was a war veteran and had acquired a stand through the housing cooperatives. He tried to stop destruction of his house by standing on top of it but was pulled down and severely beaten by the police, warning the rest that the state meant business.
21. In many cases fuel was resold on the parallel market and production vehicles like tractors were converted into taxis for desperate commuters (personal observation 2005-2008).
22. Research in Zimbabwe has largely mimicked the political polarity thereby clouded with non-academic pursuits by scholars.
23. Destruction of war veterans' houses like that of Chinx Chingaira, a popular singer since the liberation, was very conspicuous. Chingaira climbed on the roof of pleading with for his house to be spared but he was brought down, beaten thoroughly as the house was razed to the ground by a bulldozer. Another war veteran leader of a housing cooperative in Malborough collapsed and died at the news of destruction of the houses.
24. The whereabouts of Murambatsvina victims and their impact wherever they went is yet to be studied. I carried out some research in 2006 in Zvimba, in 2007 in Marange (Chiadzwa diamonds mines) and 2008 in Uzumba, assessing Murambatsvina outcomes. It showed that Murambatsvina victims are spread in all social groups of the country and in all areas. In some cases the victims were allocated land by local leaders, establishing whole communities (personal observation Nyabira 2006, personal communication with victims Uzumba 2008, interview war veterans and traditional leaders of Marange and Chiadzwa 2007)
25. However, noting that there were other elites who had to be included but did not satisfy the condition, an exemption clause was put for such members as those who had been on diplomatic missions.
26. Personal observation (Goromonzi, Chinhamora, Mutasa and Harare South constituency, 2008).
27. Personal observation Concession (April-May, 2008). At a meeting organised by the Zimbabwe National army war veterans challenged them diffusing the violent plots in the area.
28. MDC split into two with one led by Arthur Mutambara and the other by Morgan Tzvangirai. The Mutambara party is known as MDC while the Tsvangirai party is referred to as MDC-T.
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