Mission & Justice

Randeep Ramesh; 26/4/08

The Indian Government has signalled that it would be imposing tougher sentences on doctors who illegally abort female foetuses — a tacit admission that the law was not working. Experts estimate India has lost 10 million girls in the past 20 years. Yet in the 14 years since selective abortion was outlawed, only two doctors has been convicted of the crime — and officials admit one of those is back in business. The reason, says the Government, is that under the existing act doctors are only suspended, face a fine of 50,000 rupees ($A1317) and a jail term of three months.

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Bruce Loudon; 24/4/08

Using uncharacteristically strong language, India last night told the US to butt out and mind its own business after Washington attempted to tell the country how to deal with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visits New Delhi next week. Ahead of the visit, the first to India by the Iranian leader, a State Department official offered gratuitous advice to India on how to handle him, suggesting that it should take a tough line in pressuring Tehran on the nuclear issue to “become a more responsible actor on the world stage”. New Delhi officials made their displeasure clear in a statement issued last night. “India and Iran are ancient civilisations whose relations span centuries,” it said. “Both nations are perfectly capable of managing all aspects of their relationship with the appropriate degree of care and attention. “Neither country needs any guidance on the future conduct of bilateral relations.”

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11/4/08

The head of the Catholic Church in Orissa state has welcomed the Supreme Court’s overruling a lower court ban on religious institutions helping victims of sectarian violence in the eastern state. “The Supreme Court has finally recognized the right to life” as superceding the Orissa High Court’s order as well as the “inconveniences and the difficulties” the order caused, said Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar. Calling the Supreme Court’s April 8 order “a blessing from God,” the Divine Word prelate told UCA News the Church would be able “to comfort and console its people, who have been suffering for the past four months.” About 3,500 homeless Christians, mostly tribal people, live in government-run relief camps in Kandhamal district.

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11/4/08

Police have formally closed their probe into the activities of a popular Catholic retreat center in Kerala state, southern India. “We have wound up the investigation. Our job is over,” Vinson M. Paul, a senior police official who headed a special investigation team, told UCA News on April 9. He had submitted his team’s report to the Kerala High Court two days earlier. On March 11, the Indian Supreme Court directed the team to end its probe into activities of the Vincentian-run Divine Retreat Centre in Muringoor, a village near Trichur in Kerala, 2,565 kilometers south of New Delhi. The investigation team began the probe a year earlier under direction from the Kerala High Court, the state’s top judicial authority.

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12/4/08

The state invites holidaymakers to its shores to watch dolphins popping up. But for the aquatic mammal, Kerala is fast turning into hell. Recently, several instances of fishermen killing dolphins and selling them in the markets have come to light in places like Poonthura near here, Beypore in Kozhikode and Cherai near Kochi — the south, central and northern Kerala. “We have taken up the issue with the authorities many times but no action has been taken. The humpbacked sea dancers are being hunted mainly because the anglers are ignorant of the law and they face an uncertain future in Kerala,” conservation campaigner Professor Kunhikkannan said. Dolphin species like bottle noses and spinners are mostly present in the Kerala waters.

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Bruce Loudon; 7/4/08

In a judgment that goes to the heart of India’s preoccupation with skin colour, the Supreme Court has sent a husband to jail for taunting his wife so much over her “dark complexion” she committed suicide. Syed Fathima got so distressed that, two months after her marriage to Farook Batcha, she drenched herself in kerosene and set herself alight, the court wastold. In a dying declaration as doctors fought to save her, she said that because of her dark complexion her husband did not like her and there were frequent fights over the issue. The court, in its historic ruling, held that ridiculing a wife by calling her “black” amounted to severe mental torture, and said such derogatory remarks in a marriage were worse than physical torture.

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4/4/08

India has agreed to build a $120m seaport and transportation system in Myanmar. Representatives of both sides sealed the deal in New Delhi on Wednesday, an Indian foreign ministry statement said. Senior General Maung Aye, second-in-command of Myanmar’s military government, and Mohammad Hamid Ansari, India’s vice president, signed the accord. India also called for Myanmar to push forward with plans for national reconciliation, saying the country’s rulers should engage Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s detained pro-democracy leader, the statement said.

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Akhel Mathew; 26/3/08

Alarmed by an increase in housebreaks and thefts, police in the southern state of Kerala will launch a community policing scheme today.The trial runs of the scheme wll be held within the limits of three police stations each in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode city corporations and within the limits of one police station each in 11 municipalities across the state.The municipalities identified for the project are Kasaragod, Payyannur, Kalpetta, Perinthalmanna, Ottappalam, Irinjalakuda, Cherthala, Paravur, Vaikom, Thodupuzha, and Adoor.

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Joan Chittister 19/3/08

Fortunately, I’ve been reading newspapers. Otherwise, I may have missed the major story of the 21st century: The woman’s movement is over, I hear. And from a reputable source: young women in this country who consider their mother’s concerns for the role and status of women to be “so passé” as one young woman on a recent CNN International interview put it in regard to the present election season in the USA. But, just back from India, I find myself having to deal with another dimension of the question called “When is a problem not a problem?” And one part of the answer, at least, may be, “When it’s not yours.”Never discount the role of distance in the valuation of the human enterprise, however. There is a point at which simply being “human” together is not enough to bridge the distinctions of life. Every place has its own “culture” - it’s own pace and food, customs and social expectations, filters and ideals. And culture is no small part of what it means to be human. To rate our own circumstances as the norm, then, can be a very chancy exercise, indeed. If I ever saw culture in tension with ideals, for instance, it was in India where the Global Peace Initiative of Women launched an international conference titled “Making Way for the Feminine for the Good of the World.” Here was a culture that both embodied and contradicted the very concept of the role of the feminine in society at one and the same time. Here was tension enough between the ideal and the actual to make a person question the humanity of the human race.

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Chris Buckley & Benjamin Kang Lim; 16/3/08

The Tibetan capital, Lhasa, has been rocked by the fiercest pro-independence protests in two decades, scarring China’s image months before the Olympics. Chinese armoured vehicles patrolled the city yesterday as protests continued after at least 30 people were killed when anti-Chinese protests turned violent. Tibet’s Government-in-exile said it had confirmed that 30 people had died.

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