Delhi slams UN rights chief Al Hussein for `ignorance'

[beijingwalker]

Delhi slams UN rights chief Al Hussein for `ignorance'
TNN | Updated: Sep 13, 2017, 06:26 IST
India hit back at UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Husseinon Tuesday , a day after he criticised the government on alleged human rights violations vis-a-vis Rohingyas, murder of journalists and cow vigilantism.

India's envoy to the UN Rajeev Chander said, "There appears to be inadequate appreciation of the freedoms and rights that are guaranteed and practised daily in a vibrant democracy that has been built under challenging conditions. Tendentious judgments made on the basis of selective and even inaccurate reports do not further the understanding of human rights in any society ."

This is not the first time India has had a run-in with Al Hussein. In 2016, he slammed India for denying his team access to visit Jammu & Kashmir. The Pakistani government allowed them access, so his wrath was reserved for India. "I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides," he had said.

Earlier this year, India's universal periodic review (UPR) became a battleground, with New Delhi being pilloried for everything from LGBT rights to Hindu nationalism, J&K, NGO financing etc. This prompted the then Indian envoy Ajit Kumar to take a more aggressive stand. He accused Al Hussein of being "silent" on Pakistan's sponsorship of terror."The central problem in Jammu & Kashmir is crossborder terrorism, and hence, we are a little surprised that the high commissioner was silent regarding Pakistan that uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy ," Kumar had said.

On Tuesday , Rajeev Chander accused the UN human rights chief of ignorance and said, "It is also surprising that individual incidents are being extrapolated to suggest a broader societal situation.India is proud of its independent judiciary , freedom of press, vibrant civil society and respect for rule of law and human rights. A more informed view would have not only recognised this but also noted, for example, that the Prime Minister himself publicly condemned violence in the name of cow protection."

Chander pointed out that Al Hussein had continued to fail to address the central issue of terrorism in J&K. "Assessments of human rights should not be a matter of political convenience," he said.


On Monday, referring to the Rohingya crisis, Al Hussein had said, "The minister of state for home affairs has reportedly said that because India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the country can dispense with international law on the matter, together with basic human compassion."


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ussein-for-ignorance/articleshow/60488348.cms

 

[Joe Shearer]

Delhi slams UN rights chief Al Hussein for `ignorance'
TNN | Updated: Sep 13, 2017, 06:26 IST
India hit back at UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Husseinon Tuesday , a day after he criticised the government on alleged human rights violations vis-a-vis Rohingyas, murder of journalists and cow vigilantism.

India's envoy to the UN Rajeev Chander said, "There appears to be inadequate appreciation of the freedoms and rights that are guaranteed and practised daily in a vibrant democracy that has been built under challenging conditions. Tendentious judgments made on the basis of selective and even inaccurate reports do not further the understanding of human rights in any society ."

This is not the first time India has had a run-in with Al Hussein. In 2016, he slammed India for denying his team access to visit Jammu & Kashmir. The Pakistani government allowed them access, so his wrath was reserved for India. "I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides," he had said.

Earlier this year, India's universal periodic review (UPR) became a battleground, with New Delhi being pilloried for everything from LGBT rights to Hindu nationalism, J&K, NGO financing etc. This prompted the then Indian envoy Ajit Kumar to take a more aggressive stand. He accused Al Hussein of being "silent" on Pakistan's sponsorship of terror."The central problem in Jammu & Kashmir is crossborder terrorism, and hence, we are a little surprised that the high commissioner was silent regarding Pakistan that uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy ," Kumar had said.

On Tuesday , Rajeev Chander accused the UN human rights chief of ignorance and said, "It is also surprising that individual incidents are being extrapolated to suggest a broader societal situation.India is proud of its independent judiciary , freedom of press, vibrant civil society and respect for rule of law and human rights. A more informed view would have not only recognised this but also noted, for example, that the Prime Minister himself publicly condemned violence in the name of cow protection."

Chander pointed out that Al Hussein had continued to fail to address the central issue of terrorism in J&K. "Assessments of human rights should not be a matter of political convenience," he said.


On Monday, referring to the Rohingya crisis, Al Hussein had said, "The minister of state for home affairs has reportedly said that because India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the country can dispense with international law on the matter, together with basic human compassion."


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ussein-for-ignorance/articleshow/60488348.cms

My mail wasn't working this morning.

On whose side are we today?

 

[Max]

"The central problem in Jammu & Kashmir is crossborder terrorism,

There is nothing called terrorism, few freedom fighters taking revenge of bharati brutalities on Kashmiri people. allow UN mission to visit Kashmir if you ganga dravidians are innocent..

More Indians die cleaning sewers than fighting terrorists in Kashmir

He's doing your dirty job. (Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri)
SHARE
WRITTEN BY
Ajaz Ashraf, Scroll.in
September 12, 2017 Quartz India


It is almost as risky for a person to step into a manhole to unclog sewer lines in urban India as it is for security personnel fighting insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Over the last eight years at least, the death toll among sewer workers has started to converge with that of security forces deployed in the beleaguered state.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which keeps tabs on terrorism-related casualties, 411 security personnel died in J&K between 2010 and Aug. 27, 2017. This means that since 2010, the insurgency in Kashmir has claimed, on average, 51 men in uniform every year.

Magsaysay award-winner Bezwada Wilson’s Safai Karmachari Andolan has been collecting data on those who dive into putrid sewer lines only to be tragically fished out as corpses. Since 2010, there have been 356 such deaths, or about 44 every year.

This annual average has already been outstripped in 2017—India’s sewage system has killed 90 people so far. By contrast, 54 security personnel died combating militants.

Then again, former defence minister Manohar Parrikar, in his reply to a parliamentary question in 2015, said that a total of 171 army personnel were “martyred” fighting terrorists between 2012 and 2014 countrywide. In the same period, a total of 142 sewer workers died.

The Safai Karmachari Andolan’s data on deaths in the sewage system is palpably underestimated. For one, it covers just 21 states and union territories, not all 36. For another, the Andolan was hamstrung because it began to collect data retrospectively from 2014.

That year, the supreme court passed strictures against the governments, both at the centre and in states, for sending people into manholes without even protective gear, and ordered Rs10 lakh to be paid to the survivors of each of those who died in the line of duty—that is, cleaning the underground gutters.

Since then, the Andolan has catalogued deaths in sewer lines. Because its mission mainly was to ensure the payment of Rs10 lakh to the survivors of sanitation workers, the Andolan’s volunteers entered a death into the datasheet only after securing a death certificate and postmortem report of the deceased. Anecdotal accounts, obviously, did not pass muster. The database records deaths since 1987.

This is precisely why there has been a sharp spike in the death toll among sewer workers in recent years. As the Andolan found out, the families of the deceased had either misplaced death certificates and post-mortem reports, or the families themselves could not be located, having moved out from their areas of residence after their bread-winners asphyxiated in the gutters.

Fatal occupation
Statistically then, it is safer to be a soldier serving in Kashmir than a sewer worker in India.

An intricate network of terrorists targets Indian soldiers. This network is often primed by Pakistan, which also fires and kills across the border. A network of sewer lines suffocates workers whose task is to keep the sewage flowing and urban India ticking.

As a nation, though, we privilege the death of the soldier. He is hailed as a martyr, his coffin swathed in the Tricolour, and given gun salutes before he is cremated or buried. He is deserving of it. After all, he died to protect us all. It is safer to be a soldier serving in Kashmir than a sewer worker in India.

Whoever thinks of the man who died cleaning the gutter? He merits just a few paragraphs in the city pages of newspapers unless his death has a horrendous novelty, like in two recent cases in Delhi. He certainly cannot aspire to be a walking-talking symbol of Indian nationalism, lest that very idea begins to stink with the noxious odour of the gutter. This is perhaps why the sewer worker is missing from the campaign photos of Swachh Bharat.

It is not just about death, readers would say, pointing out that the army is stationed in inhospitable terrain—for instance, two soldiers die every month at the Siachen Glacier. Living in relative isolation, far away from their families, they live on the edge. Nearly 100 soldiers are said to commit suicide every year. Accidents during routine troop movements claimed nearly 300 lives in both 2012 and 2013.

But even serving at the Siachen Glacier cannot be as difficult as diving into a manhole and removing blocks from sewer lines, in nothing more than a loincloth, breathing poisonous gases—such as methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide—and wading through the sludge of human waste.

No bunny suites, no masks, no oxygen cylinders, and, worse, nobody even thinking of mechanising the periodic cleaning of gutters. The only way to survive these inhuman working conditions is to drink liquor to numb the senses. As Wilson said, “There is no proper study done, but 90% of the workers are hooked to liquor. Many die young and there are few among those employed with municipalities who live to the retirement age.”

In contrast to the monthly salary of Rs25,000 that an Indian soldier gets, apart from allowances and perks, Wilson said those employed with municipalities get between Rs10,000 and Rs15,000. Their jobs are now increasingly being parceled out to private contractors, who pay anywhere between Rs4,000 to Rs6,000 a month.

Ultimately, who’s work and death is privileged depends on the narrative that the nation’s dominant classes create.

Misguided nationalism?
Indeed, those who wish to park tanks on university campuses to teach the young to admire the army are advised to demonstrate a modicum of gratitude to the hapless sewer worker in these years of Swachh Bharat. In case they think India can survive without these workers’ sacrifices, often demanded of them with a callousness that is criminal, here is a story from the Partition era to disabuse them of their notion.

As the Radcliff line was announced on Aug. 17, 1947, the Dalits in Pakistan began to move to India in the hope of better job prospects. As Urvashi Butalia writes in The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, “India tried to lure them away with offers of relief, housing, loans, jobs, while Pakistan tried to prevent them from going with stories of how difficult things were in India…”

The cheapest and most convenient mode of travel for the Dalits living in Pakistan’s Sindh province was by sea. But there was a shortage of ships and carriers, prompting the Pakistan government to introduce a permit system, which allowed only a limited number of people daily to board ships in Karachi for India. So, a large number of the Dalits wanting to move to India were lodged in Karachi’s transit camps. The only way to survive is to drink liquor to numb the senses.

Their understandable failure to report to work collapsed Karachi’s sewage and sanitation system. The city was fast turning into a stinking garbage heap, prompting the Sindh government to pass the Essential Services Maintenance Act, which disallowed the Dalits from leaving Pakistan. The Indian political class frothed and fumed but to no avail.

About this event, BR Ambedkar reminisced on an election tour of Punjab in 1952, “Immediately after Partition, the Pakistan government issued orders prohibiting the scheduled caste people from leaving Pakistan for India. Pakistan did not bother so much if the Hindus left, but who would do the dirty work of the scavengers, sweepers, the Bhangis, and other despised castes if the untouchables left Pakistan.”

Ambedkar said he requested Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, to take action. “He slept over this issue and did not even casually mention it during the course of various discussions with the Pakistanis,” Ambedkar complained. “None of the Congress Harijans raised a finger at this persecution of their brethren in Pakistan.”

Seventy years later, it is still people from the erstwhile untouchable community who choke to death in urban India’s sewers. Those who wish to place tanks in universities, fly the Tricolour high, and mistakenly believe Swachh Bharat is a veritable revolution should build, for starters, a model of underground sewers that no one has to enter to clean, let alone die.

This post first appeared on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments atideas.india@qz.com.

 

[third eye]

There is nothing called terrorism, few freedom fighters taking revenge of bharati brutalities on Kashmiri people. allow UN mission to visit Kashmir if you ganga dravidians are innocent..

More Indians die cleaning sewers than fighting terrorists in Kashmir

He's doing your dirty job. (Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri)
SHARE
WRITTEN BY
Ajaz Ashraf, Scroll.in
September 12, 2017 Quartz India


It is almost as risky for a person to step into a manhole to unclog sewer lines in urban India as it is for security personnel fighting insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Over the last eight years at least, the death toll among sewer workers has started to converge with that of security forces deployed in the beleaguered state.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which keeps tabs on terrorism-related casualties, 411 security personnel died in J&K between 2010 and Aug. 27, 2017. This means that since 2010, the insurgency in Kashmir has claimed, on average, 51 men in uniform every year.

Magsaysay award-winner Bezwada Wilson’s Safai Karmachari Andolan has been collecting data on those who dive into putrid sewer lines only to be tragically fished out as corpses. Since 2010, there have been 356 such deaths, or about 44 every year.

This annual average has already been outstripped in 2017—India’s sewage system has killed 90 people so far. By contrast, 54 security personnel died combating militants.

Then again, former defence minister Manohar Parrikar, in his reply to a parliamentary question in 2015, said that a total of 171 army personnel were “martyred” fighting terrorists between 2012 and 2014 countrywide. In the same period, a total of 142 sewer workers died.

The Safai Karmachari Andolan’s data on deaths in the sewage system is palpably underestimated. For one, it covers just 21 states and union territories, not all 36. For another, the Andolan was hamstrung because it began to collect data retrospectively from 2014.

That year, the supreme court passed strictures against the governments, both at the centre and in states, for sending people into manholes without even protective gear, and ordered Rs10 lakh to be paid to the survivors of each of those who died in the line of duty—that is, cleaning the underground gutters.

Since then, the Andolan has catalogued deaths in sewer lines. Because its mission mainly was to ensure the payment of Rs10 lakh to the survivors of sanitation workers, the Andolan’s volunteers entered a death into the datasheet only after securing a death certificate and postmortem report of the deceased. Anecdotal accounts, obviously, did not pass muster. The database records deaths since 1987.

This is precisely why there has been a sharp spike in the death toll among sewer workers in recent years. As the Andolan found out, the families of the deceased had either misplaced death certificates and post-mortem reports, or the families themselves could not be located, having moved out from their areas of residence after their bread-winners asphyxiated in the gutters.

Fatal occupation
Statistically then, it is safer to be a soldier serving in Kashmir than a sewer worker in India.

An intricate network of terrorists targets Indian soldiers. This network is often primed by Pakistan, which also fires and kills across the border. A network of sewer lines suffocates workers whose task is to keep the sewage flowing and urban India ticking.

As a nation, though, we privilege the death of the soldier. He is hailed as a martyr, his coffin swathed in the Tricolour, and given gun salutes before he is cremated or buried. He is deserving of it. After all, he died to protect us all. It is safer to be a soldier serving in Kashmir than a sewer worker in India.

Whoever thinks of the man who died cleaning the gutter? He merits just a few paragraphs in the city pages of newspapers unless his death has a horrendous novelty, like in two recent cases in Delhi. He certainly cannot aspire to be a walking-talking symbol of Indian nationalism, lest that very idea begins to stink with the noxious odour of the gutter. This is perhaps why the sewer worker is missing from the campaign photos of Swachh Bharat.

It is not just about death, readers would say, pointing out that the army is stationed in inhospitable terrain—for instance, two soldiers die every month at the Siachen Glacier. Living in relative isolation, far away from their families, they live on the edge. Nearly 100 soldiers are said to commit suicide every year. Accidents during routine troop movements claimed nearly 300 lives in both 2012 and 2013.

But even serving at the Siachen Glacier cannot be as difficult as diving into a manhole and removing blocks from sewer lines, in nothing more than a loincloth, breathing poisonous gases—such as methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide—and wading through the sludge of human waste.

No bunny suites, no masks, no oxygen cylinders, and, worse, nobody even thinking of mechanising the periodic cleaning of gutters. The only way to survive these inhuman working conditions is to drink liquor to numb the senses. As Wilson said, “There is no proper study done, but 90% of the workers are hooked to liquor. Many die young and there are few among those employed with municipalities who live to the retirement age.”

In contrast to the monthly salary of Rs25,000 that an Indian soldier gets, apart from allowances and perks, Wilson said those employed with municipalities get between Rs10,000 and Rs15,000. Their jobs are now increasingly being parceled out to private contractors, who pay anywhere between Rs4,000 to Rs6,000 a month.

Ultimately, who’s work and death is privileged depends on the narrative that the nation’s dominant classes create.

Misguided nationalism?
Indeed, those who wish to park tanks on university campuses to teach the young to admire the army are advised to demonstrate a modicum of gratitude to the hapless sewer worker in these years of Swachh Bharat. In case they think India can survive without these workers’ sacrifices, often demanded of them with a callousness that is criminal, here is a story from the Partition era to disabuse them of their notion.

As the Radcliff line was announced on Aug. 17, 1947, the Dalits in Pakistan began to move to India in the hope of better job prospects. As Urvashi Butalia writes in The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, “India tried to lure them away with offers of relief, housing, loans, jobs, while Pakistan tried to prevent them from going with stories of how difficult things were in India…”

The cheapest and most convenient mode of travel for the Dalits living in Pakistan’s Sindh province was by sea. But there was a shortage of ships and carriers, prompting the Pakistan government to introduce a permit system, which allowed only a limited number of people daily to board ships in Karachi for India. So, a large number of the Dalits wanting to move to India were lodged in Karachi’s transit camps. The only way to survive is to drink liquor to numb the senses.

Their understandable failure to report to work collapsed Karachi’s sewage and sanitation system. The city was fast turning into a stinking garbage heap, prompting the Sindh government to pass the Essential Services Maintenance Act, which disallowed the Dalits from leaving Pakistan. The Indian political class frothed and fumed but to no avail.

About this event, BR Ambedkar reminisced on an election tour of Punjab in 1952, “Immediately after Partition, the Pakistan government issued orders prohibiting the scheduled caste people from leaving Pakistan for India. Pakistan did not bother so much if the Hindus left, but who would do the dirty work of the scavengers, sweepers, the Bhangis, and other despised castes if the untouchables left Pakistan.”

Ambedkar said he requested Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, to take action. “He slept over this issue and did not even casually mention it during the course of various discussions with the Pakistanis,” Ambedkar complained. “None of the Congress Harijans raised a finger at this persecution of their brethren in Pakistan.”

Seventy years later, it is still people from the erstwhile untouchable community who choke to death in urban India’s sewers. Those who wish to place tanks in universities, fly the Tricolour high, and mistakenly believe Swachh Bharat is a veritable revolution should build, for starters, a model of underground sewers that no one has to enter to clean, let alone die.

This post first appeared on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments atideas.india@qz.com.

The subject here is Rohingiyas & the Indian response to the UN and you have gone into ' Default' mode.

 

[Max]

The subject here is Rohingiyas & the Indian response to the UN and you have gone into ' Default' mode.

are you blind? read the part i quoted. and then read the whole article to find out whether article is about bharati human rights violation or Rohingya.

 

[Srinivas]

This guys should go an cry infront of rohingyas, Myanmar Govt. and major powers who are responsible for this situation. Al Hussein seems an arabic name. Do these guys even have a basic rights in their own countries so that they can come and rant on others?

Delhi slams UN rights chief Al Hussein for `ignorance'
TNN | Updated: Sep 13, 2017, 06:26 IST
India hit back at UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Husseinon Tuesday , a day after he criticised the government on alleged human rights violations vis-a-vis Rohingyas, murder of journalists and cow vigilantism.

India's envoy to the UN Rajeev Chander said, "There appears to be inadequate appreciation of the freedoms and rights that are guaranteed and practised daily in a vibrant democracy that has been built under challenging conditions. Tendentious judgments made on the basis of selective and even inaccurate reports do not further the understanding of human rights in any society ."

This is not the first time India has had a run-in with Al Hussein. In 2016, he slammed India for denying his team access to visit Jammu & Kashmir. The Pakistani government allowed them access, so his wrath was reserved for India. "I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides," he had said.

Earlier this year, India's universal periodic review (UPR) became a battleground, with New Delhi being pilloried for everything from LGBT rights to Hindu nationalism, J&K, NGO financing etc. This prompted the then Indian envoy Ajit Kumar to take a more aggressive stand. He accused Al Hussein of being "silent" on Pakistan's sponsorship of terror."The central problem in Jammu & Kashmir is crossborder terrorism, and hence, we are a little surprised that the high commissioner was silent regarding Pakistan that uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy ," Kumar had said.

On Tuesday , Rajeev Chander accused the UN human rights chief of ignorance and said, "It is also surprising that individual incidents are being extrapolated to suggest a broader societal situation.India is proud of its independent judiciary , freedom of press, vibrant civil society and respect for rule of law and human rights. A more informed view would have not only recognised this but also noted, for example, that the Prime Minister himself publicly condemned violence in the name of cow protection."

Chander pointed out that Al Hussein had continued to fail to address the central issue of terrorism in J&K. "Assessments of human rights should not be a matter of political convenience," he said.


On Monday, referring to the Rohingya crisis, Al Hussein had said, "The minister of state for home affairs has reportedly said that because India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the country can dispense with international law on the matter, together with basic human compassion."


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ussein-for-ignorance/articleshow/60488348.cms

 

[INDIAISM]

This guys should go an cry infront of rohingyas, Myanmar Govt. and major powers who are responsible for this situation. Al Hussein seems an arabic name. Do these guys even have a basic rights in their own countries so that they can come and rant on others?

He is the prince of Jordan....

 

[ito]

Arabs teaching India about human Rights What is the world coming to.

He is the prince of Jordan....

He should not act like he is prince of India. This was not the first time this Arab was poking India.