A Victory for ‘S Durga’ but ‘Nude’ Still in the Dark

November 25, 2017

Nude was meant to be the opening film of the Indian Panorama section.

Image Courtesy: First Post

In yet another incident of curbing of the freedom of speech, this time by a ministry of the government itself, two films were removed from the list of screenings at the ongoing 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry, in an unprecedented move, decided to drop two films—a Malayalam film, S Durga, by Sanal Sasidharan; and a Marathi film, Nude, by the national award winning director Ravi Jadhav—which were scheduled to be screened at this year’s IFFI in Goa. In fact, Nude was meant to be the opening film of the Indian Panorama section. Neither of the directors was given prior notice or intimation of any kind before the decision. The films had already been cleared by a 13-member jury of the Indian Panorama section of IFFI.

S Durga has been screened in several international film festivals, has garnered critical appreciation, and also won the Hivos Tiger Award at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. However, this isn’t the first time that the film has run into trouble in the country. The Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival refused to give censor exemption to the film. Then, the film was only given a U/A certification by the regional office of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), despite 21 audio mutes and a change of the title from Sexy Durga to S Durga.

Sujoy Ghosh, head of jury of the Indian Panorama section, which had cleared the two films according to the Indian Panorama Regulations, tendered his resignation on 14 November 2017, ostensibly to protest against the I&B Ministry’s decision. Following this, another jury member, scriptwriter Apurva Asrani, also resigned.

Six members of the jury also wrote a letter expressing their “[distress] that the two films were removed without any intimation, discussion or recourse to the jury which has the final say, according to the Indian Panorama Regulations.” The letter was sent to Smriti Irani, the I&B Minister, with a copy also sent to the Secretary of the I&B Ministry. They stated that the films were “relevant in terms of a larger conversation on gender, as well as on women’s empowerment.” The six jury members who signed the letter were Hari Vishwanath, Satarupa Sanyal, Ruchi Narain, Suresh Heblikar, Sachin Chatte, and Gopi Desai.

Sanal Sasidharan responded to the I&B Ministry’s decision by filing a writ petition in the Kerala High Court, which over-ruled the I&B Ministry’s decision on Tuesday, 21 November 2017. The Ministry argued that the movie “was objectionable and offensive to religious sentiments.” Justice K Vinod Chandran, who gave the Order directing the I&B Ministry and the Directorate of Film Festivals to screen the certified version of the movie at the ongoing 48th International Film Festival of India, noted that “The jury has included the film for screening in the festival after viewing the un-censored version itself. When even the un-censored version was found to be worthy by the jury for presentation, there can be no objection raised as to the certified version being screened.”

Sasidharan welcomed the decision, saying in a statement to The Hindu, “It’s not my victory or the victory of S Durga but in these dark times it’s a victory for cinema, for freedom of speech and for democracy.” However, it is still too early to celebrate, because even after two days of the Kerala HC’s Order, there is still confusion over the screening of S Durga at IFFI.

For director Ravi Jadhav, however, there has been no such good news. As of now, his film, Nude, will not be screened this year at IFFI.

Kerala Salafists: Peaceniks in Words, Violent in Deed

November 25, 2017

Radical Salafi activists from God’s Own Country proclaim, ‘Islam is a religion of Peace’, even while they attack Sufi shrines

On September 8, this year, we were just shocked to read the news emanating from Kerala. In the night of 7th September, two young activists of a radical Salafist outfit demolished the tomb of Sufi Sayyed Muhammed Turab of Nadukani, a remote village in the Malappuram district in Kerala. Now we have learnt that Anees, one of the two Salafi shrine-destroyers, has been arrested by the Kerala Police, while the other violence perpetrator, Shajahan is to be arrested soon, according to the Malayalam media outlet, Dool News It reports that these two young extremists are the active members of Mujahid Global, one of the Salafi outfits in Kerala. Tragically, the same Sufi tomb has faced three attempts of demolition by the very Salafist outfit throughout the year.

Times of India reports that the 37-year-old Aneesh the accused in connection with the demolition of the Swalih Makham Shareef Jaram is sympathizer of Mujahid Wisdom (Jinn) group, as the inspector of Edakkara police circle, P Abdul Basheer has stated. The centuries old jaram (tomb) of Muhammed Swalih situated on Vazhikkadavu-Gudallur state highway near the Tamil Nadu border was targeted three times on September 7, 19 and 29 by a section of Mujahids. It triggered a war of words between the Sunnis (Sufi followers) and Mujahids (Salafis). The same tomb had also been attacked in April 2009 by those following the Mujahid ideology. But no Muslim media outlet or the so-called Islamic political party in Kerala viewed it as a matter of concern. Therefore, it is about time Islam is discerned from the false Islamic schools of thought which are trying to further the ulterior foreign motives in India. Only moderate Muslims in India can win this war within Islam. At the moment, we must concern ourselves with the rise of overt religious fanaticism in Kerala.

Though the issue has attracted the national attention, it also raises a crucial question to the Keralite Muslim society: Why the Keralite Salafist activists systematically target the Sufi shrines, while they seem ‘peaceniks’ loudly talking about Islam as ‘religion of peace’? But when it comes to show peace and toleration within Islam itself, they find no room for other schools of thought! Literally, there is no diametric difference between the ISIS onslaught on tombs of the Prophet’s companions and the demolition of the Sufi tomb by the Salafis at Nadukani in Kerala. Worst of all, the deafening silence by the ‘popular’ Muslim fronts, Islamic media outlets and political parties particularly those formed in the name of Islam and Muslims in Kerala is appalling. This situation should have forced the Keralite Muslims to think of who they are and where their state is headed to. But execrably, the larger section of the community is still in denial.

Undeniably, the political Islamist outfits in Kerala pledging an allegiance to Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood) are antithetical to the south Indian history of Islamic pluralism. Islam emerged in India through two different groups— Muslim traders and Arab invaders. In sharp contrast to the other parts of India, Kerala witnessed Islam’s advent through completely peaceful means—trade and travel. While north India’s ‘first encounter’ with the Muslims through the Arab invaders has not gone down well in history, Kerala had the bliss of mystical Islam in the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) through his direct companions (Sahabis). As evidenced in historical records, Islam blossomed in south India with the Prophet’s noble companions reaching the coastal areas of Malabar for their trade.

But over the past few years Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological project has been massively funded and supported in south India’s Salafist circles particularly in Kerala and the Malabar coastline. This has systematically been pursued in a bid to indoctrinate the Keralite Muslims into the theocracy of the two political Islamist ideologues: (1) Syed Qutub, the Egyptian theologian and the leading member of the Ikhwan who conceptualised other insurgent Islamist outfits in Egypt and (2) Maulana Maudoodi whose writings politicized the Islamic doctrines and practices to an extent that he viewed every spiritual belief and act of Islam with a political outlook.

Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt. But it actually gained ideological momentum with the theoretical framework of Syed Qutub who propounded the doctrine of ‘Hakimiyyah’ (God’s sovereignty on earth). For instance, in his commentary on the Qur’an, ‘Fi Dilalil Qur’an (In the Shade of the Qur’an), he misinterpreted the 44th verse of Surah al-Maida to buttress his own argument that every modern, liberal and democratic form of governance is “infidelity”.

Such an exclusivist interpretation which turned Islam from being a faith of spiritual salvation into a religion of political dominion has created chaos in West Asia. But deplorably for Indian Muslims, it appears to be at play in India too—more so in south India now.

It was during the early 19th century when Kerala first witnessed the self-styled Islamist doctrine of Hakimiyah with the establishment of an Islamist outfit, ‘Muslim Aikya Sangham’ by Vakkam Abdul Qadar, popularly known as Maulvi Vakkom.

Maulvi Vakkom championed the pan-Islamism for the Muslims of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar regions. He was instrumental in creating an ‘Islamist renaissance’ in Kerala through the Arabic and Malayalam literature like The Muslim (1906), Al-Islam (1918) and Deepika (1931). Through these publications, he tried to preach the ‘puritanical’ Salafi Islam purging the Keralite Muslims of the local festivals like the Nerchas and Urus. For instance, Malik Deenar Urus was one of the major local festivals for the Keralite Muslims who celebrated Malik’s advent in South India. It was a mix of various socio-cultural rites such as the shrine visitation (ziyarat) flag hosting (pataka uyarthal) and Annadanam (Malabari tradition offering of food). But the Salafist proselytes have now deviated from the pluralistic postulates reflecting an ancient Muslim heritage in Kerala.

The advent of Islam in Kerala is attributed to the early Sufi saints—Tabi‘in—who reached the coastal areas of Malabar. Hazrat Malik bin Dinar, a mystically-inclined companion (Sahabi or Tabi’i) of the Prophet was the earliest Muslim preacher in South India. One of the first mosques in Kerala is known as Malik Dinar Masjid, which is located in Kasaragod with an adjacent graveyard and is embellished with the grave-stones known as Mizan-stones. This historic mosque built in the typical Keralaite architectural style is believed to have been established by Malik Ibn Deenar himself. According to a historical account, Malik and his trade associates landed in Kerala in 624 AD and erected the mosque in 642 A.D. (13th Rajab, 22 Hijrah).

Remarkably, this foremost Muslim in Kerala greatly inspired the noted mystics of Islam in Arabia like Hasan al-Basri and Rabia al-Adawiya. In fact, he coined the Sufi term of ‘jihad bin-Nafs’—inner jihad against one’s baser instincts— in contrast to the offensive jihad. He also showed wide embrace for all faith traditions in India. Imbued with the spiritual ideals of Jesus Christ (pbuh), Malik bin Dinar memorized various chapters and commentaries of the Bible along with the Qur’an. Thus, he was an epitome of the peaceful coexistence with the Christians and other faith-based communities in the Indian subcontinent.

Now, let’s discern between Malik bin Dinar’s Islam which meted out a magnanimous treatment to the Christians and the self-styled Islamists chopping off a Christian professor’s hand in Kerala’s Idukki. Thus, ironically, the Salafist preachers of Islam in Kerala are catapulting the Keralite Islam from inclusivism to the brutal religious exclusivism. There is a continued wave of radicalisation in Kerala and the Malabar region, thanks to the extremist outfits which camouflage political Islam in the name of ‘fight for Muslim rights’.

The Kerala-based political Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) is a substantial case in point. PFI cannot be understood without grasping this broader ideological dynamic. It claims to be an NGO, but pledges an allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin). It has also alleged links with terror activities like chopping of a Christian professor’s hand in Kerala’s Idukki and running the ‘Islamic State Al-Hindi Module’. A case was busted in which PFI planned to target prominent people and places in South India by involving the outfit Islamic State Al-Hindi, as the NIA report on government table revealed.
(Source indianexpress.com/article/news-archive/nia-report-on-popular-front-of-indias-terror-links-on-government-table-4839296/

What we have learnt, so far, from various media outlets, is that PFI may soon be banned by the union government. A dossier of the Ministry of Home Affairs has claimed that the PFI is indulging in actions detrimental to the overall national security of India. Investigators have accused PFI of pursuing secret agenda inspired by radical Islam in India. But the question is: will merely banning the radical Islamist outfits serve the purpose? Has the government’s crackdown on the radical Salafist preacher, Zakir Naik and his outfit Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) brought any tangible developments on counter-extremism?

Merely mulling the crackdown on the radical institutions is pointless. India would do better if it strengthens the spiritual Muslim centres like Khanqahs and Sufi shrines situated in South India as quality education centres in order to rescue the young and impressionable Muslim minds from going astray.

Today, there are two major groups of Keralite Muslims diametrically different in thought and action: Sunni Muslims and Mujahid Muslims. While the Keralite Sunni Muslims are believed to be pluralistic, peaceful, and Sufi-oriented shrine-visitors, the ‘Mujahid Muslims’ in Kerala constitute the ‘puritanical’ Salafis often indulged in communal and sectarian clashes. Recently, they razed the tomb of a Sunni spiritual leader Muhammad Swalih at Vazhikkadavu on the Nilambur-Otty road on September 6. A piece of paper scuffled inside a bottle was recovered from the vicinity. The words written on it in Malayalam were: “I am going to the Arabian Sea”. In their protests, the Sunni-Sufi leaders came down heavily on the Salafis. K P Jamal Karulayi, district leader of the Sunni Yuvajana Sangham said: “Wahhabism should be thrown into the Arabian sea”.

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a regular columnist with www.newageislam.com, scholar of classical Arabic and Islamic Sciences, cultural analyst and researcher in Media and Communication Studies at Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia.

Missionary school in UP bans Hijab, asks Muslim student to go to madrasa

November 25, 2017

The principal of a missionary school in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh has asked a Muslim student of the school to either remove her scarf or ‘hijab’ or take admission in a madrasa.The incident was reported from Anand Bhawan, a Christian missionary school based in Nagar Kotwali area of Barabanki.

Image: Creative Commons

After the controversial statement or order, the school officials are being probed by the local authorities.

When the concerned girl’s father Mohammad Raza Rizvi wrote to school authorities, he too was asked to get her daughter admitted to an Islamic school.

“The school does not run on religious beliefs,” said school principal Archana Thomas in the letter issued on the same matter. Principal Thomas reportedly tried to remove the scarf of the girl student by herself after succeeding in removing the scarf of another girl.

“It is to clarify to you that this is a minority school, but there are many communities in minority category, and one community cannot impose its rules on other communities,” Thomas reportedly replied to Rizvi, telling him that school will not entertain any exemption from its rules.

“My daughter was asked not to wear a headscarf to school, another girl was made to remove it. I argued that our Sikh brothers are allowed to wear turbans, even though the same is not part of the dress code,” Rizvi informed the media.

When we asked the principal about the situation, she replied that she did not ask the girl to leave the school. She said, “If they have a problem with our rules, they can take their wards in any school if they want.”

PN Singh, the Basic Education Officer at the state, has issued a notice to the school but apparently, the school has not replied to the letter yet. “We have asked the officer to make an on-spot inquiry,” Singh informed the media.

Courtesy: Two Circles

Most LGBT arrests in Egypt result from ‘sexting’ by morality police

November 24, 2017

Egyptian morality police are systematically using fake social media accounts to target LGBT people, according to a report published yesterday.

Representational image

Out of 232 prosecutions for “non-normative” sexual behaviour over the last four years, 129 – more than half – were the result of entrapment through dating websites of mobile phone apps, research by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has found. Transgender women are a particular target for entrapment by this method, it says.

Egypt’s recent moral panic over rainbow flags at a pop concert, which resulted in the arrests of at least 75 people, attracted international attention but the report shows this was only one part of a broader pattern. Since the Sisi regime seized power in 2013, prosecutions have been averaging almost five times the level of previous years, EIPR says.

Egypt has no specific law against homosexuality but prosecutions of people suspected of being gay or transgender are usually brought under a law against “habitual debauchery”.

The report also criticises sensationalist coverage of such cases in Egyptian media in which “individuals are demonised, defamed and represented as subhuman”. They are presented as a threat to the moral fabric of society and a danger to citizens – especially any who are living with HIV/AIDS.

Entrapment work is carried out by a branch of the interior ministry known as the General Directorate for Protecting Public Morality. Officers often correspond with their targets in English or Gulf Arabic in order to allay suspicion and engage in sexually explicit conversations which may last for months before a meeting is set up.

They also try to persuade their targets to accept money in exchange for sex – which makes conviction easier. An article in Middle East Eye last month described one example:

As the chat continued, the morality police agent repeatedly asked the man if he would accept money in exchange for anal sex.
“I’m not a business,” the man responded but after repeated insistence on the part of the officer, posing as a wealthy man, the man eventually agreed to accepting $50.

Another entrapment case, in 2015, involved a man called Firas who went to a square in the Dokki district of Cairo to meet someone he had been talking with online. Firas told a researcher from EIPR:

“He had asked me to buy condoms and some supplies for the evening. I went there with these things — which were later confiscated as evidence for the case — and I waited.
“He was late, so I sent him a message saying that he’s late and that I have the right to leave, and he replied apologising and blaming the traffic.
“Later, a black car with a driver stopped. I could see a driver as well as a passenger in the backseat. He asked me to sit next to him and said that we would go to his place.”

As the car set off it was stopped by police and Firas was arrested. He was initially sentenced to a year in jail but was eventually acquitted on appeal.

Treating possession of condoms as evidence – as happened in Firas’s case – is especially alarming. EIPR’s report comments: “This practice presents a major threat to the health of gay and transgender women and men who have sex with men.”

Possession of cosmetics and women’s clothing has also been treated as evidence in trials, even though there is no law against it.

The Egyptian authorities have long been criticised for making use of anal examinations by doctors in “debauchery” cases. Such tests are not scientifically valid and are widely regarded as medically unethical.

EIPR gives more details of what is involved, citing the medical reports from several cases. In one case in 2015, prosecutors made five requests to the Forensic Medicine Authority:

1. Carrying out a medical examination to check for habitual practice of debauchery through repeated anal penetration and if they were repeatedly used and the manifestations of this on them …
2. Examining the anus of both defendants for any traces of seminal fluid and testing whether they match the seminal fluids of other defendants.
3. Examining the evidence for seminal fluid and determining whether they match with either defendants.
4. Examining the evidence and determining how it may have been used in sexual activity.
5. Taking urine and blood samples from defendants to test for the presence of drugs, sleeping pills, alcohol or any mind-altering substances or not, and if affirmed, what is the nature of said substance.

In the same case, defendants were also sent to be tested for sexually transmitted infections. EIPR comments:

The increasing involvement of the medical sector and specifically the Forensic Medicine Authority in the cases of habitual debauchery is an alarming indicator as to how implicated the medical establishment is in such egregious violations. Forced anal examinations are now considered by the UN Committee against Torture as a method of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which may constitute torture.
The doctors carrying out the examinations are in clear violation of the Constitution, which guarantees the right of all citizens to dignity. They are also in violation of the oath doctors take to preserve patients’ dignity, and to article 35 and article 28 of the Medical Code of Ethics, which prohibits doctors from carrying out any medical examination without informed consent.

In what appears to be a recent development, the authorities are now also using medical tests to determine the “guilt” or otherwise of transgender people.

In another case in 2015 the judge ordered tests to determine whether the accused had “taken medication to help alter the shape of their bodies and their masculinity”.

On examination, a doctor found that the external reproductive organs were “in their normal masculine, adult shape and size”. According to the medical report, blood tests also showed “the hormones percentage in the blood is normal and acquits [sic] any defendant from the charge of consuming medication that alter physical or masculine attributes”.

This story was first published on al-Bab.

Window to Real Gujarat #4: How Modi’s ‘Model’ State Govt. Dealt With Gujarat’s Shocking Child Sex Ratio

November 24, 2017

Gujarat has only 883 girls for every 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group compared to an average of 927 for the country, according to Census 2011.

Photo credit: Nesclick

Gujarat has only 883 girls for every 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group compared to an average of 927 for the country, according to Census 2011. This makes Gujarat the state/UT with sixth worst child sex ratio in the country. And, it has been like that for decades. Clearly, something is drastically wrong.

So, what did Modi do in Gujarat when he was chief minister there for 13 years? Remember: these were the years when the so-called ‘Gujarat Model’ of governance and development was being put in place, to be held up later as an ‘example’ for the rest of the country.

A glimpse of the unpardonable mess the Gujarat govt. made of implementing the PCPNDT Act in the state is provided by a 2014 report of India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for the years 2009-2014. This is the key law that prohibits sex selection and regulates diagnostic techniques like ultrasound, commonly used to determine sex of fetuses and terminate female ones. It regulates and monitors ultrasound makers and buyers, clinics and doctors that use them, abortion facilities and even authorizes decoy or sting operations to identify who is doing sex determination and for whom.

One of the measures initiated by the state govt. and supported by the Gujarat High Court was to register all pregnant women and track their deliveries. Between 2009-10 and 2013-14 nearly 71 lakh pregnant women were registered. But the govt. had records for only 58 lakh deliveries. Legal abortions were recorded at just over 1 lakh. So, what happened to the remaining 12 lakh women who were pregnant? When CAG asked about this discrepancy, state govt. officials agreed that the missing 12 lakh cases could be unrecorded abortions. In all probability, these were cases of female feticide kept off the books. It was a pointer of what was going on, yet the state machinery did nothing, as we shall see below.

Under the law, all manufacturers of ultrasound machines need to be registered with the govt., they can sell the machines only to registered clinics and they have to give a list of buyers to the govt. every three months. CAG found that of the 33 registered manufacturers, only 2 had submitted such lists. The state govt. made no effort to get these lists – thus allowing free operation of sex determination tests.

In every district, an ‘Appropriate Authority’ (AA) was designated to oversee strict implementation of the law. These AAs were to inspect registered centres or clinics that had ultrasound machines. CAG found that most of the clinics were not being inspected, with shortfall ranging from 73% in 2013-14 to as much as 90% in 2009-10. All clinics were required to submit their records online to the govt. CAG found that 27% of the clinics had never submitted records and the govt. had done nothing about it.

Despite the large number of female fetus abortions, in five years, just 181 cases were filed against clinics carrying out illegal sex determination and just six cases had led to conviction by March 2014. That’s a conviction rate of a mere 12%. Despite the Supreme Court’s directive that the Gujarat govt. quickly finalise the cases within six months, as of September 2014, 132 cases were still pending, some for over 12 years.

The law empowers the AA to conduct a sting operation to verify whether a clinic is carrying out sex determination tests. Although all 26 districts were to carry out at least one such sting operations every month, CAG observed that in seven test checked districts only 14 such operations had been done.

After becoming the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced with great fanfare the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign in 2015, with the laudable objectives of curbing female feticide and ensuring education for the girl child. With typical penchant for gimmickry, his govt. appointed ‘ambassadors’, advocated taking photos with daughters (#SelfieWith Daughter) and so on. But the fate of Gujarat’s girl children as revealed by the model govt.’s inaction casts a dark shadow over these intentions.

Courtesy: Newsclick.

Two Kashmiri youth to represent team India at US Snow Sculpture Championship-2018

November 24, 2017

New Delhi: A snow sculpting team from India led by a young Kashmiri artist Zahoor Din Lone has been selected for the second consecutive year for Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championship 2018 to be held in the United States.

The snow sculpting team ‘Callisto’ was selected from India for the first time in 2017 for the international snow sculpture championship which is being held annually in the US. The team consisting of four artists Zahoor Din Lone, Sunil Kushwaha, Ravi Prakash, Mridul Kumar Upadhyay won spirit award last year.

This year the team led by Kashmir Artist Zahoor Din Lone has been selected again. However, this year the team has replaced Mridul Kumar Upadhyay with another Kashmiri artist Irfan Lateef Mir for the championship.

Irfan Lateef Mir a resident of Lolab area of Kupwara district, another young sculpture artist from valley has been included in the team by Zahoor for this year’s championship. Mir is an Artist who explores different mediums and does most of his works with metal wire.

The championship is being organised by the International Snow Sculpture Organizing Committee (ISSCOC) for the last 28 years in Breckenridge, Colorado, US. This is the first ever snow sculpting team from India to represent team India in any International snow sculpture championship.

Zahoor Din Lone who hails from a small village of Pattan Singhpora in north Kashmir has pursued Masters in Fine arts from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi after completing his Bachelors in Fine arts from the University of Kashmir.

Zahoor will be leading an Indian four-member team to the United States for this Snow Sculpture Championship. Before participating in the US-based championship in 2017, Zahoor has earlier participated and gained experience of snow sculpture from ‘Snow Fiesta-2014’, organized by the Eplanner event management and J&K Tourism in Gulmarg.

“It was due to the ‘Snow Fiesta’ camp that I got an international opportunity and an opportunity to lead team India at the international platform in the United States,” he said while thanking Eplanner.
“I submitted work samples of the sculpture camp in which I participated in 2014. That camp really helped me to grab this opportunity. And we were selected for US championship in 2017. This year we again applied and got selected. In the valley we have enough talent but the lack of the platform to explore,” he said.

However, due to the callous attitude of state government last year, he said, “We didn’t receive any support or logistic help. We managed out tools, uniform and other miscellaneous expenditures ourselves.”

The ISSCOC receives hundreds of submissions across the world to the event and sixteen teams are chosen to participate in the championship.

Snow artists from around the world will compete January 22-28, 2018 in Breckenridge at the International Snow Sculpture Championships. Sculptures, which remain on display through February start as 12-foot-tall, 20+ ton blocks of snow.

This story was first published on Two Circles.

Investigate Death Of Judge Handling Amit Shah Case, Says Justice AP Shah: NDTV report

November 24, 2017

Justice AP Shah said head of judiciary or Chief Justice of Bombay High Court should look into the matter

New Delhi: How a judge deciding whether BJP chief Amit Shah should be tried for murder died in December 2014 must be investigated, says one of the most respected judicial voices in the country, Justice AP Shah.

In an interview to NDTV, Justice AP Shah, who retired as the most senior judge of the Delhi High Court and headed the Law Commission said, “His family feels very strongly that there was some foul play in his death. Now there was a long list of circumstances starting from the fact that there was blood on his clothes, and somebody signed the postmortem report as it is. They feel that there is something wrong with the conclusion that he died of cardiac arrest.”

His comments are based on a report by Caravan, a news magazine, in which family said that they are not convinced that his death was a natural one. Justice BH Loya died five months after taking over Amit Shah’s case.

“I feel that it is very necessary that the head of judiciary – either CJI (chief Justice of India) or Chief Justice of Bombay High Court should look into it,” said Justice AP Shah.

Activists and journalists have also demanded a thorough probe into the death under highly suspicious circumstances of judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya.

Watch: Justice Shah talks to NDTV.

Also Read: A Family Breaks Its Silence: Shocking Details Emerge in Death of Judge Presiding Over Sohrabuddin Trial.
Journalists and activists demand judicial enquiry into Judge Loya’s mysterious death, ask for security for the family.
Chief Justice Mohit Shah Made an Offer of Rs 100 Crore to My Brother for a Favourable Judgment in the Sohrabuddin Case: Late Judge Loya’s Sister

‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladić’s conviction and why the evidence of mass graves still matters

November 23, 2017

The former Bosnian Serb army general has been convicted of genocide and persecution, extermination, murder and the inhumane act of forcible transfer in the area of Srebrenica in 1995.

Former general Mladić during proceedings in January. UN ICTY, CC BY

Ratko Mladić has been convicted of genocide and persecution, extermination, murder and the inhumane act of forcible transfer in the area of Srebrenica in 1995. He was also found guilty of persecution, extermination, murder, deportation and inhumane act of forcible transfer in municipalities throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and of murder, terror and unlawful attacks on civilians in Sarajevo.

In addition, the former Bosnian Serb army general was convicted for the hostage-taking of UN personnel. But he was acquitted of the charge of genocide in several municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

The events that occurred in and around the Srebrenica enclave between July 10-19 1995, where an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly men and boys, lost their lives, are well documented. These atrocities, culminating in the “biggest single mass murder in Europe” since World War II, not only resulted in a tremendous loss of life and emotionally scarred survivors, it also left behind a landscape filled with human remains and mass graves.

Forensic investigations into the Srebrenica massacre assisted in convicting Mladić, who stood accused for his involvement in implementing and orchestrating the forcible transfer and eventual elimination of the Bosnian Muslim population from Srebrenica. For the Srebrenica investigations, between 1996 and 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) conducted exhumations at 23 sites, while a further 20 mass graves were probed to confirm that they contained human remains.

Srebrenica. Martijn.Munneke/ Flickr, CC BY-SA

The investigative objectives for these investigations were to: * Corroborate victim and witness accounts of the massacres; * Determine an accurate count of victims; * Determine cause and time of death; * Determine the sex of victims; * Determine the identity of victims (a process that is ongoing with the help of DNA analysis); and * Identify links to the perpetrators.

The task of locating and exhuming mass graves in Bosnia continues, as does the general quest of locating the missing in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. And this evidence still matters for the ICTY. Evidence on hundreds of bodies exhumed from the Tomašica mass grave near Prijedor in the north-west of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was presented in the Mladić trial.

The summary judgment read out in the court room in The Hague made this very clear:

During several weeks in September and early October 1995, senior members of the VRS [Army of the Bosnian-Serb Republic] and the MUP [Ministry of the Interior] attempted to conceal their crimes by exhuming their victims’ remains from several mass graves, and then reburying those remains in more remote areas in Zvornik and Bratunac municipalities. Their attempt to cover up the Srebrenica massacres ultimately failed.

Such attempts at hiding crimes by digging up mass graves only to dispose of the bodies in so called “secondary mass graves” results in commingled and mutilated body parts rendering identification and repatriation of human remains all the more difficult. This causes further and prolonged distress to the survivor population and can be seen as intent to cause suffering.

Properly investigated forensic evidence from mass graves, the presentation of such physical evidence, the testing of expertise, independence and impartiality of the accounts in court, is likely to result in more reliable findings. In the case of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić forensic evidence helped confirm the crimes committed – it can be assumed that the same is the case for Mladić; at the time of writing the judgment in its entirety is not available yet.

It is well worth remembering that the information from forensic mass grave investigations has another purpose and does not only speak to a court of law. The work on the ground through organisations such as the International Commission on Missing Persons will continue as there are “too many people who are still searching for their children’s bones to bury”. Those forensic findings will have a value and meaning for family members and survivors that judgments such as the Mladić one cannot have. It offers them information on their lost loved ones and, hopefully, the return of their human remains.

Melanie Klinkner is Senior Lecturer In Law, Bournemouth University.

This story was first published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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Nude was meant to be the opening film of the Indian Panorama section.

Radical Salafi activists from God’s Own Country proclaim, ‘Islam is a religion of Peace’, even while they attack Sufi shrines

Egyptian morality police are systematically using fake social media accounts to target LGBT people, according to a report published yesterday.

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Justice AP Shah said head of judiciary or Chief Justice of Bombay High Court should look into the matter

The former Bosnian Serb army general has been convicted of genocide and persecution, extermination, murder and the inhumane act of forcible transfer in the area of Srebrenica in 1995. Former general Mladić during proceedings in January. UN ICTY, CC BY

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The former Bosnian Serb army general has been convicted of genocide and persecution, extermination, murder and the inhumane act of forcible transfer in the area of Srebrenica in 1995.

Former general Mladić during proceedings in January. UN ICTY, CC BY