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01/16/2010: "Haven Going Inferno Our co-warrior against terror, Bangladesh must ferret out marked men Outlook India"

Haven Going Inferno Our co-warrior against terror, Bangladesh must ferret out marked men Outlook India


The one signal that came loud and clear from Sheikh Hasina’s visit was: Bangladesh is no longer a safe haven for Indian insurgents. For years, secessionist groups would slip through the porous borders to launch attacks in the Northeast and north Bengal, and then slink back to their Bangladesh hideouts. Assisting them with logistic support were successive regimes in Dhaka and sections in the Bangladesh security establishment. Worse, Dhaka denied the presence of insurgents on its soil.
All this seems to be a thing of the past. The Sheikh Hasina government has put its money where its mouth is. Beginning November last, it handed over Chitrobon Hazarika and Sashadhar Choudhury, two central committee members of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which is waging a bloody battle to liberate Assam. A month later, it handed over ULFA founder Aurobindo Rajkhowa and the outfit’s deputy military commander, Raju Barua.
The list of insurgents nabbed and handed over to India is likely to grow, courtesy a spate of agreements signed between New Delhi and Dhaka. These agreements facilitate handing over fugitives still in Bangladesh, especially those in custody. “The question is not how many other insurgent leaders are still in Bangladesh. The question is now whether they will still see Bangladesh as a safe haven,” says an Indian official confidently.
Here are six important insurgent leaders who are said to be in Bangladesh:
Anup Chetia: Currently in the Bangladesh government’s custody, the ULFA general secretary is even said to have had a 90-minute meeting with then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf in 2002 in Dhaka.
Paresh Baruah: He’s the commander-in-chief of the armed wing of ULFA, and responsible for much of the mayhem in Assam. A keen soccer player, he was once a star of the Dibrugarh Railway team.
Ranjan Daimary: He allegedly masterminded the serial bomb blasts in Assam on October 30, 2008, which killed around 100 people. Two months later, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland went into peace talks with the Centre and removed Daimary from the post of president. He heads his own faction now.
Biswa Mohan Deb Barman: He’s the supremo of the National Liberation Front of Tripura, which wants to carve a separate homeland for tribals who have become a minority because of migration into the state. Biswa was reportedly arrested in Bangladesh last year.
Jibon Singha: He heads the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, which is fighting for a separate state comprising six districts of West Bengal and four districts of Assam. ULFA is said to finance it.
Anthony Shimray: He’s the chief arms procurer of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah group), which is involved in talks with the government. Jane’s Intelligence Review named him among the possible target recipients of the $4.5-5.7 million worth of arms seized from Chittagong in 2004.
Not just news SEVANTI NINAN The Hindu
In a close-knit society like Nagaland, journalism can get personal and is like a village diary…
Photo: V. Sudershan

A different ethos:Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, who owns the
If you want a break from sensational media you need to go to Nagaland. While everywhere else newspapers shriek about conflict, here they urge peace, and in Biblical terms, at that. In a region that has had conflict since the 1950s and a peace process currently in the works, the rules the newspapers here live by are rather different from the rest of the country. Far from probing scandals or corruption, or proactively interviewing all concerned on Naga issues, those who run newspapers here say that they have to constantly tiptoe around sensitivities in a close-knit society. Nor is there any shrieking from competitive TV reporters because the only television produced here is out of a headless Doordarshan Kendra. Cable or satellite TV does not exist.
There are four English dailies, all published from Dimapur. In sharp contrast to the rest of the country, as much as 50 per cent of the newspaper readership in urban Nagaland is in English.
Scrutinise the reporting here and you find that the reporter carefully gives one side of the story, and then the other. Inverted marks open and close, with nary a sentence in between. The correspondent's voice never surfaces. Is that because he is not skilled or because of self censorship because of the UG (Underground) you ask Geoffrey Yaden, editor of the highest circulated daily The Nagaland Post. Both, he replies.
Starting out
Journalism is young in Nagaland. It did not have a seven-days-a-week daily ( Nagaland Page) till 1999. For several years before the Postcame in 1991 there were only political party affiliated periodicals. Nagas have an oral tradition, Nagamese has no script, so newspaper narratives are still an underdeveloped skill. The regional language press uses the Roman script. And from decades before the 1997 ceasefire there has been a powerful censor around — the Underground, or UG. The fact that reporters are inexperienced and unskilled also accounts for the timid reporting.
Today the more effective determinant of what should constitute journalism is Naga society, replete with its own tribal etiquette. Clan, range — all the social institutions come into play. It's not just about news, editors tell you. Here the way people perceive a newspaper is like a village diary. After every function the organiser sends a note saying we appreciate his coming (about the chief guest.). Or we congratulate so and so. He has brought good name to our village. Village communities are quick to take offence if you do not print their handouts. “There are 30 to 40 a day and if you don't use one the village will send its representatives to ask, are you angry with our village?” says Akum Longchar who founded the Morung Express.
He also describes why you cannot risk experimenting with exposes. “We carried a news item related to an officer. Accusations against him. A few days later the village representatives came and said you have insulted our village. ‘When you write about him you write about the village.' There is a very fine line between the individual and the collective here. And once it's out in print you cannot retract. You have to solve it culturally.” So in this case Longchar and his bureau chief, accompanied by their respective fathers and an intermediary, had to negotiate with the village's representatives to make peace.
Similarly Monalisa Changkija, the feisty editor of the Nagaland Page has had tribal elders approach her father-in-law in an effort to get her to reveal the name of an anonymous writer in her newspaper. Reporters and sub-editors in the papers have their own take on what inhibits journalism here. “We cannot write anything against anybody, Dimapur is a small world. And Kohima is a very small world,” says N. Jagoi who works at the Eastern Mirror, owned by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio.
Naga newspapers have several distinctive features, one of which is the space they give to Naga society. From Naga students at distant Jawaharlal Nehru University, to members of the underground, retired bureaucrats and church pastors, everybody sends their views to the press, and every paper carries them. We are giving the space for people to tell their stories,” says Longchar. “A special feature of Naga papers is these articles by people,” says Yaden. “They think it is their right to have this space. But Naga society has to get over this business of being proud of being Naga, etc,” he adds in a reference to the agonising over Naga identity that appears almost daily in the press.
Changkija says this space was created in the days when different factions of the underground wanted their versions carried. “We call it your page, the space created where people's statements are carried. Specially those of different groups. It is safe, it is convenient, it is a protective measure for us. Whoever wants to read it reads it.” The same piece is often carried by all the newspapers.
Distinct flavour
Part of Nagaland's rather original approach to journalism is that people who “give” news also urge its early and frequent use. Says Changkija, they ring up and say, I kindly request you to publish it on page one, and three or four times, okay. This man was a doctor. So I said, will you repeat an operation three or four times on a person?”
And finally there is the Christian framing of issues in a state where the church is a powerful social institution. About the ongoing Naga Reconciliation movement attempting to bring together factions of the NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) an editorial in the Nagaland Postdeclares that the first step towards reconciliation is repentance before God, seeking forgiveness from those who have been wronged and willingness to forgive by those who have been wronged. “There is a Biblical requisite for reconciliation with God and therefore, the willingness of all factions to meet and talk with each other inspires hope,” it adds.