Tavener's homage to Allah angers Catholics

By Jerome Taylor
Published: The Independent, 16 June 2007

The eclectic religiosity of John Tavener and the beautiful sacred music it has inspired have made him one of Britain's foremost and best-loved composers. But for some of the country's more vocal Roman Catholics, his latest work appears to constitute an ecumenical step too far.
"The Beautiful Names", which sets the 99 sacred names Muslims give to Allah, was commissioned by Prince Charles and has been well-received throughout the Islamic world. Next week Tavener flies off to Istanbul to become only the second non-Turk to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Istanbul International Music Festival.
But the decision to premiere the piece inside Westminster Cathedral has incurred the wrath of some Roman Catholics who are outraged that a Christian place of worship could be used to glorify Islam. Having failed in their bid to have the concert cancelled, some have threatened to protest outside the cathedral on the night of the performance.
The idea behind the piece, which the BBC Symphony Orchestra will play in public for the first time on Tuesday evening, is to bring the names of Allah to a wider audience and help increase inter-faith dialogue and understanding. The one-and- a-half hour piece will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and will feature a horn section, a double choir and a host of somewhat less common symphony instruments (a Tibetan temple bells, a powwow drum).
In the introduction to his score, the 63 year-old Tavener writes, "Perhaps, by doing this in the language of music, one may contribute to an inward healing of the strife that permeates the modern world."
The anger of his fellow Christians appears to have upset Tavener, who has been composing pieces for decades and gained prominence after one of his pieces was played at the close of Princess Diana's funeral.
"This is the most important work that I have ever written," he said. "It is a kind of 'summation' of all that I have tried to do over the past 60 years. If the work contributes towards healing a shattered world, then this is of great importance."
A deeply devout Christian, John Tavener has never shied away from using the world's religions both for personal and musical inspiration. Born a Presbyterian, he converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977: he felt eastern Christian faiths were closer to their original roots. Since then he has openly expressed interest in Islam, Sufism and Hinduism and regards himself a follower of the mystic philosopher Frithjof Schuon who preached the unity of all religions. A new piece he is writing, "The Flood of Beauty", draws inspiration from a 9th century Sanskrit text and "shows God in the feminine aspect, as beauty".
Such interests in the world's non-Christian religions have made the composer firm friends with Prince Charles, who has also stated he would like to improve inter-faith dialogue.
To Muslims, the 99 names of Allah are some of the most important and sacred words in existence, the very essence of everything that is perfect about their one true god, Allah.
So crucial are they to the faith that all except one of the chapters of the Quran begin with a phrase that incorporates two of the most well known, Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim, which means "in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate". Muslims are encouraged to memorise as many as possible, as the attributes act as guidelines for living.
In the Muslim community itself, Sir John's new work was widely welcomed.
"I have yet to hear the piece but the Quran encourages all Muslims to remember these beautiful attributes," said Sheikh Imam Ibrahim Mogra, a Leicester-based Imam. "They are often put to music because they are so wonderfully emotive. When you hear the words sung it creates a sense of ecstasy, a buzz."
He was delighted that non-Muslims could draw inspiration from the various names of Allah. "Muslims don't have a monopoly on God's name," he said. "God is for everyone."

http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/news/article2663202.ece

Imran Khan to take Pakistani political rival to court in UK

(Photo: BBC)

By Jerome Taylor
Published The Independent: 02 June 2007

Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricketer, is planning to use the British courts to sue a prominent political opponent who, he claims, was responsible for the violence in Karachi last month that left more than 40 people dead and scores wounded.

Mr Khan, who heads his own political party, Tehreek-i-Insaaf, is flying to the UK today and intends to bring either criminal or civil proceedings against Altaf Hussein, the leader of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), a party which has the backing of the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Hussein holds British citizenship and runs the MQM from an office on Edgware Road, London. Although one of Pakistan's most prominent politicians, he refuses to lead the party from his home country, arguing that he is at risk of assassination by political rivals if he returns home.
Last night Mr Khan called the MQM "a mafia". "Put simply it is a terrorist organisation. How Mr Blair can allow such terrorist organisations to exist in London while supposedly fighting the war on terror I have no idea."

MQM opponents and human rights groups have accused the MQM of deliberately stirring up the rioting in Karachi last month, which constituted some of the worst and most brutal political violence to hit Pakistan in recent years. MQM has vehemently denied those charges.

If Mr Khan is successful in his bid to launch legal proceedings against a political rival it would be a remarkable twist in the already turbulent world of Pakistani politics. Speaking from his home in Islamabad, Mr Khan said: "I have huge numbers of people who are willing to testify against [Mr Hussein] in a British court."

Last night a spokesman for the MQM dismissed Mr Khan's threats as little more than political grandstanding and vowed to fight any legal proceedings.

"Unfortunately this is dirty Pakistani politics," Tariq Mir, who heads up the MQM's legal team in Britain, said.

"Mr Imran Khan is a one-man band creating an issue for political gain. It's just slinging mud. Our leader Mr Hussein has done nothing against either UK or Pakistani law. If he issues a legal threat we would strongly contest it in court. Short of that we won't take any notice of him."

Over the past 12 months political assassinations and disappearances have become an increasingly grim feature of Pakistani politics and most of the country's political parties have accused each other of carrying them out.

Pakistan is in the midst of a judiciary crisis sparked by President Musharraf's sacking of the country's Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhury. The riots in Karachi began when Mr Chaudhury was banned from holding a rally there on 12 May.

Mr Khan said he was spurred into taking legal action against the MQM after a number of his supporters were fired at during the riots. "Ten of my party members received bullet wounds in Karachi," he said. "That's when I thought I have to take the fight to the UK.

"There is no point going to a court in Pakistan as there is no justice there, as can be seen from the current crisis with the judiciary. That's why I'm having to pursue this in the British courts because [Mr Hussein] is a British citizen."

Mr Khan's supporters plan to hold a rally outside Downing Street tomorrow.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2606394.ece

'Battling begums' warn Bangladesh won't wait for polls

(PHOTO: Jerome Taylor)

Published The Independent: 27 April 2007
By Jerome Taylor

Wearing her familiar rimless spectacles and sipping tea from a china cup, Sheikh Hasina Wazed doesn't immediately live up to her billing as one of Bangladesh's two "battling Begums".
But the fiery, populist leader has the ability to call millions of supporters on to the streets of Dhaka, and it is her bitter hatred of her political rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, that has paralysed her country and allowed the military to step in.
Now those rivalries will have to be put aside for, according to Sheikh Hasina, the army is shutting down democracy in their country and risks turning the world's third largest Muslim nation into a dictatorship similar to Pakistan's.
Speaking during a temporary exile in London, she warned that unless the military-backed caretaker government holds fair elections soon, the patience of the Bangladeshi people could run out.
"At the moment, there is no democracy in Bangladesh at all," she said. "They have gagged the press and have yet to hold elections. I don't know what will happen but the people will not wait forever. Once the people come out on to the street, I don't know how long their patience will last."
Her remarks came as the military-backed government was forced this week to make an embarrassing climb-down and abandon its plans to exile Sheikh Hasina and her rival, Ms Zia.
Last weekend, Sheikh Hasina, who ran Bangladesh as prime minister between 1996-2001, found herself marooned in London after the caretaker government issued a note to all airlines forbidding them from allowing her onto any flights to Dhaka.
Ms Zia, who stepped down as prime minister last year, was placed under house arrest and many said she would be forced to go into exile in Saudi Arabia.
The military-backed government, which took power in January and suspended the coming elections, argued the measures were needed to clean up Bangladeshi politics, after months of violent protests between supporters of Sheikh Hasina and Ms Zia's parties left more than 45 dead and brought the country to a standstill.
But suggestions the military were hoping to completely remove the two leaders from Bangladeshi politics met strong domestic and international criticism, and yesterday restrictions against Sheikh Hasina and Ms Zia were lifted.
Many remain concerned the stifling of popular mainstream parties could turning Bangladesh into something resembling Pakistan, which is still waiting for democracy eight years after the military took control.
Sheikh Hasina warned the military against any such move: "I think some quarters [of the army] were encouraged by the Pakistani model, but Bangladesh is totally different, our society and people won't let it happen," she said.
Sheikh Hasina's relationship with the military has been a turbulent one. Her father, the founder of modern Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated with her mother and three brothers in 1975 after army officers took power in a coup. Democratic forces eventually overthrew the military in 1991 but, since then, politics has been dominated by the rivalry between Sheikh Hasina and Ms Zia, a rivalry which rarely brings peaceful elections and has turned Bangladesh into one of the world's most corrupt countries.
And when she returns to Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina faces murder charges over the deaths of five opposition activists during violent protests last year.
"I am ready to face them, even if they arrest me," she said. "I have faith that the law will take its own course. I have been in jail before but I learnt from my father to face any situation."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2488805.ece

India's star marriage: Bollywood's golden wedding

(Photo taken from the film Umrao Jaan)

Today's lavish wedding of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan has generated levels of excitement in India the likes of Liz Hurley can only dream of. By Jerome Taylor

Published 20 April 2007, The Independent.

The couple themselves would make the ultimate Hollywood love story. One is a beautiful, green-eyed starlet who conquered hearts across the world with her stunning silver-screen looks, the other is a muscled, gritty heartthrob and heir to one of the most popular acting dynasties in the world. And today they finally tie the knot after finding love on a movie set.
But this is not the story of Brangelina or the latest Hollywood duet. This the story of "Abhiash", Bollywood's hottest couple, and the wedding that India has been waiting for with a level of excitement that could, perhaps, only be rivalled by a cricket World Cup final pitting India against Pakistan.
When Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan announced their engagement in January after months of speculation, it was clear that their wedding was only going to be one thing: the Wedding of the Century.
Rai, a former Miss World and one of the few Indian film stars to have successfully crossed over into Western cinema (thanks to the British director Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice), is Bollywood's leading lady. Her husband-to-be is the son of Amitabh Bachchan, the godfather of Bollywood who has been known to churn out more than 60 films a year and is quite possibly India's most popular film star of all time.
When Britain's paparazzi descended in their droves last month on the western desert city of Jodhpur for the second wedding ceremony of Elizabeth Hurley and her textile mogul husband, Arun Nayar, India looked on somewhat bemused.
As one Indian journalist put it: "Ultimately very few people in India had ever heard of Liz Hurley let alone cared that she was getting married. Many Western journalists were asking locals in Jodhpur, 'What do you think of Liz Hurley?' and most of them replied 'Who's Liz Hurley?'. As far as Indians are concerned there is only one wedding this year, that of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan."
That would be putting it mildly. Both actors have remained two of the most popular Bollywood stars in recent years; an impressive feat in the highly fickle world of Bollywood where a single bad film or politically careless remark can result in this month's hottest star being replaced by the latest beautiful hopefuls who arrive in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, in their thousands each year.
Born into a devout Hindu family in the southern port town of Mangalore, Rai first made headlines after winning the Miss World contest in 1994. Her vibrant jade-green eyes were an unusual asset for someone from a southern Indian state and she soon began turning heads in Tamil-language films before being snapped up by Bollywood.
Unusually for a Bollywood actress, many of whom remain unknown outside India, Rai managed to make an impact on Western cinema after winning over international critics in the lavishly produced epic Devdas, which was given a special screening at Cannes in 2005. Her starring role in the British film Bride and Prejudice, Chadha's popular interpretation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, made her a household name and her latest Western film, Provoked, which tells the tale of a battered British Asian housewife forced to kill her abusive husband, has received handsome reviews.
Her groom, who, despite his family heritage, initially found it difficult breaking into Bollywood, is now one of the highest-paid male stars in India, feted by both the press and hordes of screaming female fans. It was perhaps inevitable therefore that Bollywood's two hottest stars would meet on a film set and fall in love.
A marriage between two Bollywood stars is big news in India at the best of time but the number of column inches dedicated to "Abhiash's" wedding preparations has been remarkable even by the standards of film star-obsessed India.
Over the past three months, the country's numerous movie magazines, gossip columns, celebrity websites and chat forums have been talking about little else. Publicists have found it difficult to garner interest in their forthcoming releases, tantrum-prone starlets have been sidelined by the celebrity reporters who are determined above all to get the ultimate scoop on just one thing: "Abhiash" and their marriage. No detail of the wedding preparations - be it the colour of the tablecloths or the truth of a rumour that the groom will wear a golden crown once favoured by Bengali princes - has been too small for the magazines to detail in all its lurid glory. No snippet of information is too irrelevant to be billed as an exclusive scoop. Rumours of upset mother-in-laws, jilted ex-lovers and wedding day jitters fill the celebrity pages, usually with little evidence to back them up.
But such overwhelming press attention has resulted in the Rai and Bachchan families going to extraordinary lengths to keep the details about their wedding as secret as possible and the Bachchan family residence has been turned into a veritable fortress. All around the string of bungalows which are situated on a prime spot of the exclusive Juhu Beach area of Mumbai, constructors have erected a giant wooden wall to keep fans and, more importantly, the long lenses of the paparazzi out.
Guests have reportedly been asked to keep completely silent about the arrangements and more than 500 police officers are on duty to keep fans at bay.
Not that the incredible security around the Bachchan family bungalow will deter the most hardened fans. Throughout the week, stories of die-hard fans desperate to do something that will get them the must-have invite have peppered the Indian newspapers.
Prakash Pandey, a small-time confectioner from Kanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, whose shop briefly appeared in one of Abhishek Bachchan's films two years ago, recently announced he would travel to Mumbai and personally deliver an enormous tray of wedding sweets.
"When Abhishek came two years ago to Kanpur for a film shoot, he came to my shop and called me uncle," Pandey told reporters before boarding a train. "He is my nephew. I will be allowed into the Bachchan house as I have been there before."
A 17-year-old girl from the state of Bihar, meanwhile, has been working day and night for more than a month to finish a red embroidered sari that she wants to present to her idol, Rai, as a gift. Asked whether she thought she could get round security, Joyti Kumari simply replied: "I will try my best."
The contrast between the lives of these two fans and the idols they adore could hardly be greater - Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are two of the poorest states of India while Rai and Bachchan live the life of Mumbai royalty far removed from the slums and poverty around them - but they sum up how seriously India takes its film stars and how loved they are by their fans.
To the Indian population, the vast majority of whom live in the countryside, the cinema is often the one major source of entertainment and Bollywood stars, particularly those who play heroic roles, are given a virtually god-like status. Such popularity brings great political potential and many of Bollywood's greatest actors, including both Bachchan's parents, have dabbled to varying degrees of success in India's political system.
But unlike many Indian weddings, which often involve noisy and colourful street processions that bring the whole town out onto the streets in celebration, the wedding of Aishwarya and Abhishek is set to be a decidedly private affair. Abhishek's octogenarian grandmother is seriously ill and the family have reportedly toned down the celebrations so that she can attend.
Nonetheless, no expense has been spared for the three-day ceremony which kicked off on Wednesday with a pre-marriage party featuring songs, dances and skits performed by close friends and will climax today in the actual Hindu ceremony that binds the couple together as man and wife.
"There are seven types of Hindu weddings, ranging from very simple ceremonies where the man and woman simply exchange rings to weddings involving extremely complicated religious rituals. This wedding is the latter," said Ramesh Kallidai, head of the Hindu Forum of Britain.
Both the bride and groom come from devout Hindu families. In the months leading to their official engagement, both the couple and their families were seen visiting a number of important Hindu temples and the relatives have reportedly visited numerous Vedic astrologers and soothsayers to find an auspicious date for the wedding ceremony. According to Mr Kallidai, they could hardly have picked a more suitable date.
"Starting from last night, the next few days are considered particularly auspicious days for making a new beginning so, naturally, there will be many weddings this weekend," he said.
"The reason for this is because, on this lunar day, the holy Ganges river descended from the heavenly planets to the earthly realm. Any activity begun today, be it a marriage, job or journey, will grow and prosper."

Fire and light: the Hindu wedding
Hindu weddings vary from the opulent ceremonies favoured by India's elite to village ceremonies for more than one couple, to cut down on costs.
Clothing, style and practices depend on caste and region, but the wedding itself has set rituals dating back 6,000 years.
Blessings are performed in the weeks leading up to the marriage. The day itself starts with the bridegroom and his family marching, accompanied by musicians and priests, to a covered canopy where the bride and her family awaits.
The father gives his daughter to the bridegroom, who is showered with petals by his bride while she circles him four times. The couple exchange garlands and sit down together under a wedding canopy.
Usually the bride's hands and feet are ornately decorated with henna. Aishwarya Rai has had the finest henna flown from the state of Rajasthan.
A Hindu wedding is essentially a fire sacrifice and under Indian law no Hindu marriage is complete without the presence of the sacred fire, Agni.
Sitting before the sacred fire, the bridegroom places red kumkum powder on his bride's forehead, ties a sacred thread to her and accepts her hands in a ritual known as Pani Grahanam. The marriage is completed by a ritual known as Saptapdi, where the newlyweds take seven holy steps around the fire, making sacred vows to each other with each step.
Those vows made in front of Agni are considered unbreakable and emphasise the importance of creating a loving and peaceful environment for the new couple and their children.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2465941.ece

The ultimate North-South divide: Fore! Welcome to the world's most dangerous golf course

(South Korean soldier looks out over North Korea. Photo: Jerome Taylor)

Situated on a strip of land two and a half miles wide, the fairway at Panmunjom is not the only strange thing you'll find in the Korean Demilitarised Zone. Jerome Taylor reports

Published the Independent: 04 April 2007

When he's not on duty, Sgt Corbin likes to relax with a quick round of golf. It has to be quick, though, because the only golf course on his base is a single hole, par 3. And it's no place for a stroll in the rough. The fairway is ringed by landmines.

The course is a well-driven tee shot from the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the most heavily fortified border in the world. This strip of land - two and a half miles wide - divides the two Koreas.

And Camp Bonifas is the closest military base to North Korea. If war were ever to break out on the Korean peninsula, the camp and its 400 or so United Nations soldiers expect to bear the full brunt of a military assault from a million-strong army.

Sgt Corbin's rather exclusive, 192-yard hole was dubbed "The World's Most Dangerous Golf Course" at the height of the Cold War. The name stuck and the troops stationed there, most of whom are from the US and South Korea, are fiercely proud of it.

"Damn right it's dangerous," smiles Sgt Corbin, a giant of a man with cropped hair and the kind of square-cut jaw ideal for shaving commercials and the US Army. "It's completely surrounded by minefields. If you hook your ball into the rough, I can tell you, you're not getting it back."

A few weeks ago, he even managed to lose a golf club. "I headed down to the course and tried out a brand new club," he said. "If I'm honest I might have had a few beers to drink so I wasn't exactly on my finest form. Anyway I took a swing and the club flew straight out of my hand. A $400 golf club lying in the rough and I can't go get it!"

The 155-mile DMZ runs across the Korean peninsula like a gruesome scar, cleaving it in two. It has separated family, friends and sworn enemies for more than 50 years.
Barbed wire fences, tank traps, artillery guns and minefields line both sides, creating a powerful physical obstacle between the two countries. Europe's Iron Curtain would have paled in comparison with its east Asian counterpart. And whereas people power brought down Europe's ideological and physical barriers, the sheer scale of the DMZ makes its removal, at present, a distant thought.

As you leave the heavily fortified UN base (passing under the camp's welcome sign that ominously reads "In Front of Them All") and head deep into the no-man's-land of the DMZ, it's easy to imagine that Camp Bonifas is the start of some bizarre theme park where danger is the feature attraction and where reality verges on the absurd.

Although only 40km from South Korea's capital, Seoul, the DMZ is virtually a world away. Driving out of Seoul's densely packed northern suburbs and on to the so-called Freedom Highway (a four-lane expressway which, incidentally, boasts a number of collapsible concrete tank traps to block an invading army), the arrival at the DMZ's first barbed-wire checkpoint is a grim reminder of last century's political brinkmanship. Here, in an isolated corner of east Asia, the Cold War still rages in a place where only metal and guns can keep two foes apart.

No place better illustrates quite how surreal the DMZ is than the truce village of Panmunjom, the home of the UN's Joint Security Area (JSA), where soldiers from both Koreas stand just metres from each other at the only place where North and South meet without fences and razor wire.

A few minutes drive north of Camp Bonifas, Panmunjom is the place where the Korean War was finally brought to a close on 27 July 1953, after the death of at least three million people. It was the first "hot" war of the Cold War era and, despite three years of bitter fighting, neither the Communist armies of North Korea, Russia and their Chinese "volunteers" on one side, nor South Korea and her US-led UN force had advanced beyond their original starting positions on the 38th parallel. The ceasefire signed on that day was simply an armistice agreement and, to this day, the two Koreas remain technically at war.

When favourable relations permit, Panmunjom is also the only place where the militaries of the two Koreas can meet face to face. In a claustrophobic, egg-shell blue UN hut, placed squarely over the border, the two sides sit across from each other at a single wooden table. The microphones that run down the table constitute the border and the division is relaxed solely for the obligatory handshakes.

The only other visitors to the hut are the 200,000 or so tourists that come to Panmunjom every year to view this ageing but very real relic of the Cold War. Part of the draw of the truce village is the chance to see a bizarre world where the two adversaries can still eyeball each other face to face. Dressed in American aviator sunglasses and standing motionless in their famous tae kwon do stance, South Korean troops silently face down their khaki-clad northern counterparts 24 hours a day.

But the eerie calm that hangs over the village should not be taken for granted. It is a place held hostage by the fickle relations between Seoul and Pyongyang and, when tensions flare up, it has become as much a place of death and violence as it is a testament to reconciliation.
Over the past half century, at least 50 Americans, 1,000 South Koreans and many more North Koreans have died in skirmishes along the DMZ. In 1984, in the space of just a few minutes, three North Korean soldiers and one South Korean soldier were killed in Panmunjom after a gunfight broke out when a Russian diplomat took the opportunity to defect to the south while on a visit. With no actual physical barrier to stop him, the diplomat simply ran past the guards and nearly started the third world war.

Eight years earlier, in what is described in the tourist literatures as simply "The Tree Chopping Incident", two American soldiers were hacked to death by an axe-wielding North Korean soldier as they tried to trim the branches of a poplar tree which was obscuring their view. One of those men was called Capt Arthur Bonifas and the UN camp was renamed in his honour.

And yet the DMZ may well be the one thing that could bring the Korean people together again. Despite its long history of foreign occupation, Korea has been a single nation made up of one ethnicity for more than 2,000 years and Koreans on both sides of the border are painfully aware of their recent divide.

"All Koreans, regardless of where they live, dream one day of unification," says Park Chan-bong, a senior official in South Korea's Ministry of Unification, the ministry charged with engaging their neighbours in the north. "I really don't think any politician, either in the north or the south, will have difficulty finding support for unification."

Thanks to the deal signed in February this year, whereby North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear programme in exchange for aid, the relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang has improved dramatically. Aid shipments from the South to the poverty stricken North have begun again and, last week, 102-year-old Choe Byeong-ok became the first South Korean to be linked up via video with his son in the North after family reunions were resumed following a suspension last summer over Pyongyang's long-range missile tests.

Some newspapers south of the DMZ have even begun suggesting that a peace treaty between the two Koreas might be on the cards, which would formally end five decades of war.
For veteran negotiators like Mr Park, who have seen many a ground-breaking proposal in Korean peace negotiations rebuffed by Pyongyang's often erratic behaviour, unification would be impossible without North Korea giving up its nuclear ambitions.

"Without de-nuclearisation I can't see any peace treaty," Mr Park said. "But unification within my lifetime? We've taken the first steps so why not?"

Perhaps the only downside to unification would be the demise of the "World's Most Dangerous Golf Course". But then again, Sgt Corbin could get his club back.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2418431.ece

Sikh faces jail in India for 'singing about human rights'

Paramjeet Singh's wife, Balvinder Kaur. Photos: Jerome Taylor

By Jerome Taylor

Published The Independent: 12 March 2007

To the police in India, Paramjeet Singh is a "Sikh terrorist" recently arrested with two others for supposedly carrying explosives and handguns with the intention of disrupting the local elections that took place last month.
But to his family and numerous supporters, he is just a musician who happens to sing about human rights abuses in the Punjab and is now paying a high price for speaking out in a region of India where human rights groups are often refused access.
There are suspicions that Mr Singh, a British national and retired foundry worker from Wolverhampton, has been caught up in a miscarriage of justice. Because of the delays built in to the Indian judicial system, he could be imprisoned for up to three years before getting a chance to prove his innocence.
Today he faces a hearing in a Punjab court charged with a string of offences.
Staring at a television screen in their suburban home in Wolverhampton, Mr Singh's wife, Balvinder Kaur, watches a recording of her husband, shackled in chains, from the news report last December that announced her husband's arrest. "This is so hard to watch," she says, wiping away a tear with her pink headscarf. "I can't forget that day, I can't believe what he's going through."
On 23 December, police in the Punjab claimed they had uncovered a major terrorist plot aimed at disrupting the elections. They called a press conference and displayed a vast array of weapons, including RDX explosives, grenades and hand guns, which they alleged were found in the boot of a Sikh nationalist's car. Three suspected terrorists had been arrested.
One of the three arrested was Mr Singh, who was in India with his wife and baby granddaughter buying supplies for a holiday home he was building in his ancestral village. The weapons, police claimed, were found in his car. The next day Mr Singh and his co-accused, Amolek and Jaswinder Singh, appeared in court charged with terrorist-related crimes. Despite police protestations, they were permitted to speak briefly to the media. All three of them claimed they had been tortured overnight by policemen who wanted them to sign a written confession.
"He was in such a state," remembers Ms Kaur. "His legs were painful and he could barely walk. He said they kept standing on his back and legs to try and force him into signing a confession."
Within 24 hours Indian reporters had unearthed discrepancies in the evidence against the three men, and soon the police began changing their story.
Not only did the police repeatedly alter exactly where they had arrested the three men, but during a second press conference held by the authorities the next day, they said they had in fact not found the explosives in Mr Singh's car but in a haystack on land near his farm in the village of Gakhal.
Doubts were soon cast on those accusations when local reporters went to Mr Singh's village immediately after the press conference and could not find a single villager that had seen a policeman for more than a week. Protests soon erupted outside the prison nearby demanding the three men's release.
Further suspicions about the police evidence were then published after a woman claimed two days later that she had seen police digging a hole in the haystack near Mr Singh's farm, trying to make it look like they had found the weapons cache.
Mr Singh's daughter Ravi Gakhal, a lawyer based in Birmingham, believes her father's arrest was politically motivated.
She is concerned by the fact that the evidence against her father is similar to that in the case of another British Sikh activist who spent three years in an Indian jail before being cleared of all charges.
Balbir Singh Bains was arrested in 1999 by Delhi police who said they had found a consignment of RDX explosives. When Mr Bains finally had his day in court, the judge threw out the charges, calling them a "balloon of falsehoods" after it emerged the RDX in question had come from a police warehouse.
A spokesperson from the Foreign Office said that consular officials have visited Mr Singh in prison.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2350050.ece

Café society: The rise of consumers with a conscience

(Photo: Jerome Taylor)

For most Westerners, the notion of fair trade was born with bags of coffee from Nicaragua. Jerome Taylor sees how the ethical pound is transforming a nation

Published: 12 February 2007, The Independent

Fourteen years ago a small group of buyers from a little-known British coffee company arrived in the dusty Nicaraguan market town of Esteli. The veterans of the solidarity campaigns that supported the left-wing Sandinista government in their fight against United States-backed Contra rebels during the Eighties were going to see old friends at a farmer's co-operative. While they were there they bought a single container of coffee.

Those beans, sold in the UK under Café Direct's Fairtrade label, were part of a new movement that aimed to revolutionise the way the world did business. It hoped to transform the lives of coffee farmers from a powerless pool of labour for the multinationals to viable small-holders and experts in their own trade.

Their simple idea has become a mainstay for ethical shoppers in countries such as Britain. But it is an idea under attack and free-trade bibles such as The Economist have recently dismissed the scheme as little more than inefficient Western aid in disguise.

This is an argument lost on Alaides Vilchez Zamora. High up in the Nuevo Segovia mountains, in the same coffee-growing region where Café Direct bought its first container, Alaides has been working 15 hours a day harvesting a crop that is the world's second-most traded commodity after oil.

Under the flat, waxy leaves of the shoulder-height bushes lie bright red coffee cherries that need to be picked at just the right time. He places the ripest ones into a wicker basket tied to his waist before returning to his village where they are dried and then sent to the plains below to be washed and processed.

"I started with just one hectare that my father gave me but over the years I've been able to buy a few more small plots of land," says the wiry 28-year-old with an infectious grin that reveals a number of shiny gold teeth. "Even during the coffee crisis we were able to keep going."

There are about 25 million coffee farmers around the world and all remember the second coffee crisis of seven years ago. Almost overnight, international prices crashed. Hundreds of thousands of farmers from the cloud forests of Peru to the steep slopes of Kilimanjaro were forced out of business. It was yet another grim reminder of just how vulnerable coffee farmers are to the volatile international market and its wildly fluctuating prices.

Nicaragua, the second poorest country in Central America after Haiti, was hit hard. Unable to pay their debts, many farmers were forced to sell up and head to the city to join the burgeoning slums that are appearing across much of Latin America. Many more headed to neighbouring countries looking for cheap labour. They joined the one million Nicaraguans already living in exile, one-fifth of the country's entire population. But Alaides and thousands of his fellow farmers came through the crisis relatively unscathed thanks to a remarkable marriage over the past two decades between conscientious Western consumers and commercially astute farmers in the developing world.

Over the past 16 years Nicaragua has been undergoing a silent revolution, led by one of the most impoverished sections of society, the peasant farmers, or campesinos. It is a revolution that fundamentally challenges the traditional free market and its neo-liberal economics, which favours paying farmers the lowest price possible, leaving them powerless to do anything but sell direct to the multinationals at prices they dictate. It is a revolution that has allowed a group of people to produce, market and sell their produce on their own terms and in so doing challenge the multinationals that still dominate the trade.

On the plains below the Segovias, at the back of a processing plant built by the farmers using the extra money gained through Fairtrade, two young Nicaraguans are playing what, at first glance, looks like a game. Fatima Lopez and Alex Medina are sitting round a table full of steaming cups trying to guess which farm the coffee they are tasting comes from. Sucking the hot liquid off silver soup spoons they swirl it around their mouths before spitting it into a bowl. They fall about laughing each time the other gets a tasting wrong and holler triumphantly when they guess correctly.

But coffee tasting is not a game. It is a deadly serious business, one that can make the difference between making a profit for the farmers and a catastrophic loss. Not long ago, all taste testing was done by professional middlemen, the farmers were not trained in the art of knowing what western shoppers consider to be a good cup of coffee. But Fatima and Alex are not university graduates or profit-taking middlemen, they are the son and daughter of farmers who have become experts through training programmes run by the co-ops.

"Now we know what we are actually producing," says Fatima, who left school at 15 to work on the farm. "We never even knew what our coffee tasted like. Now we can tell farmers when they produce an amazing coffee." The farmers have come a long way from the days when coffee in the UK was sold through the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, where the joke was that you might be doing a good deed in buying Nicaraguan coffee but the price for that deed was a terrible-tasting brew. Yet despite two coffee price crashes, regular droughts, two devastating hurricanes and 16 years of a government that ignored the country's stricken agricultural industry in favour of a small urban elite, the coffee industry is not only surviving, it is thriving.

Campesinos earning little more than $2 (£1) a day have, collectively, been able to build multi-million dollar co-ops that can directly compete with the multinationals. The quality of Nicaraguan coffee has risen dramatically and farmers are increasingly beating Costa Rica, traditionally the best-quality producer in the region, in international tasting competitions.
What makes the success of Nicaragua's farmers so remarkable is that it is the ethically minded consumer in Western countries who has ensured the survival of Nicaragua's co-op revolution. Nicaragua now accounts for 8 per cent of the global Fairtrade market and most of the successful co-operatives that survived the coffee crisis say they were only able to do so because they could sell their crop at a guaranteed minimum price.

"Had Fairtrade not come along when it did, I don't think we would have survived," says Blanca Torrez, a former Sandinista who manages Cecocafen, one of the most successful co-operatives. "Before, all we were doing was selling our coffee locally at whatever price we could get, without any idea of the quality. We had no idea our coffee was any good." The arrival of Fairtrade in the early Nineties changed that.

"We started with nothing, just 35 farmers with no money and nowhere to meet," says Edmundo Hunoz (above), a farmer from the village of San Juan, when asked to recollect what it was like to return to coffee farming after years of civil war. "We desperately needed access to credit because coffee farmers only get paid once a year. That's when we realised we needed to form a co-operative."

The co-operative movement is a quintessentially Nicaraguan creation, heavily tied to the country's recent violent history. Born during the civil war as a way for farmers to continue growing crops and defend their land during the guerrilla war against the US-backed Contra rebels, it is perhaps not surprising that coffee farmers still look to co-ops to fight their current battle with the international markets and corporations.

Villages such as San Juan, where the black and red flags of the Nicaraguan revolution fly from every house, are Sandinista to a man. Much of the coffee producing regions were the front lines during Nicaragua's civil war, a war that claimed more than 60,000 lives in a country of little more than 5.5 million, and most farmers over 40 fought in the ranks of the Sandinista army.

By the end of the 1980s a truce had been signed between Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas and the Contra rebels who were determined to overthrow him. Nicaraguans slowly began to rebuild their country and the coffee farmers returned to their ravaged and land-mined farms. The one thing that helped them to return to making a living were relatively buoyant coffee prices.

But in 1991 the international coffee markets were liberalised, triggering the first worldwide price crash. The next year Nicaragua's campesinos were hit by another disaster, Ortega's government fell to be replaced by a coalition of right-wing parties who promptly cut all access to credit for coffee farmers, reversed much of the rural social reforms that had won international praise for the Sandinistas and began handing back farms to the landowners.

"The previous government completely abandoned the agricultural classes," says Cecocafen's president, Pedro Haslam, a former Sandinista guerrilla who was elected to parliament in November with the new Ortega coalition that finally ended 16 years of right-wing rule. "Poverty, illiteracy and inequality all increased. We may have had 5 per cent growth year on year but nowhere in the countryside has seen any improvements."

Driving north from Managua, the capital, into the coffee growing regions it is not difficult to see the shocking lack of infrastructure that has blighted the country's rural workers. Within minutes of turning off the smooth Pan American highway that leads away from Managua's fancy restaurants and international airport the roads soon give way to a pot-holed ribbon where progress of a even a few kilometres can be measured in hours.

Blanca Torrez argues that one of the co-ops greatest successes is the way the movement was able provide social services for its members when the government abandoned them. "During the 1990s we had to do what the government was not doing," she says. "We hired teachers, built schools and roads and saved up for health care. Why? Because the government totally abandoned the rural areas. I think the revolution taught us a lot of things but most importantly it taught us to get on and do things and not wait for outside assistance. You can't achieve things individually, you have to work together."

In San Juan, the villagers say they were only able to send their children to school in the neighbouring villages because financial support from the co-operative and the money earned through Fairtrade meant they could bus their children to the neighbouring village where the school is located.

"Look at the house you're in," says Edmundo Hunoz, as he sits on the wooden porch of his neighbour's house, eating a simple chicken stew with rice. "All 10 children here have been able to go to school and one has even gone to university. This would never have been possible without Fairtrade ensuring the success of our co-operative."

It is a success that is being replicated in many of Nicaragua's agricultural industries, including the sesame, nut, milk and cattle trades. Meanwhile, President Ortega has even suggested that the co-op model could be replicated nationally, something that will send the shivers down the spines of the old Cold War warriors in the Bush administration.

Nicaragua is now a powerful example of how Fairtrade has truly begun to challenge the free marketeers who have dominated countries in central and South America for decades and is a potent rebuttal to those neo-liberal economists who argue that Fairtrade is not working.

As the mid-afternoon sun begins its descent behind the crown of mountains that ring San Juan, Alaides starts preparing to take his latest patch of dried coffee beans down the hair-raising mountain road to the plains below. "We've been able to get through the bad years, we've survived," he says. "We are the lucky ones, we've been given the opportunity to think about and plan for the future, for our children's future."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2261560.ece