E-Bangladesh

Ships are living creatures. Ask any sailor and he will agree and he will further say that ships are feminine. That combination of steel, paint, oil, blood, sweat, tears, sand, sea, wind and waves can be nothing but feminine. But unlike ladies, when ships reach the end of their lives, they are treated rather brutally. They are driven up dirty, oily beaches, and then are ripped apart unceremoniously till the only sign that a living breathing ship ever existed would be some oil stained patches of sand and a heap of unidentifiable steel pieces. The process of recycling a ship in countries such as India, Bangladesh, China etc. has been highlighted in the western media. For us poor innocents, who saw those videos and photographs, that entire process looks horrifyingly like the personification of Dante’s hell. So I went poking around.

First of all, do you think I am exaggerating? I am not. Here, take a look at some of these links on this ship breaking industry.

1. Ship breaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
2. The science behind the complaints
3. Two photo essays  here and here.
4. A video essay here.

Video: Derek Hess in Bangladesh : Shipbreaking Yard Chittagong.

See what I mean by Dante’s hell? Naked feet treading over hot oily sand, breathing in noxious fumes without any safety equipment, clearly devastated ships, fires and sparks around the place, dark eyes and mud, earnings in the bottom layers and garbage pickers. It is indeed a hell on earth. But, according to some estimates, there are more than a million people across the world directly engaged in ship breaking, almost 200,000 in Bangladesh itself.

For very underprivileged people in poor countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc., the fact that they have any kind of employment is important. It will make the difference between starvation and existence. But this thought seems to have passed people by. When people get shocked at the sight, think about why ships are not being broken up in the USA, UK, Japan, Greece or on the shores of Italy? Well, we in the west have put in so many rules, regulations, laws, notifications and ordinances, that recycling equipment is simply not cost effective to break up ships here, especially when you have lower cost locations available. You have to wear special shoes, wear a gas mask, worry about decontamination of the ground and so on and so forth. And if you lose your job, you will always have a welfare cheque or you can move to another job.

But there are no such human health, safety or environmental requirements in Alang in Gujarat in India or in Chittagong in Bangladesh. And still people are glad to have those jobs. If you put in requirements for gas masks and decontamination in Chittagong, then what will happen? The ships will go to Sierra Leone to be broken up there instead. The 200,000 people in Bangladesh will starve because as you know, jobs or welfare cheques are not really readily available there. So while you blanch at the nightmarish conditions, do look at the smiles on the faces as well, they are doing honest jobs which the west have made uneconomic to be done in their own lands. But look at the Greenpeace site, quite an interesting site to read. The judgment call on employment versus environment protection is very difficult to make. Not an easy one at all.

There is an international convention which bars the transfer of hazardous waste between countries, namely the “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal”. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? It was drawn up in 1992 and almost 170 countries have signed up to this declaration, but it does not seem to be stopping the trade very much. An example of a successful usage of this convention to stop a dirty ship from landing on the shores of Pakistan or India was the case of the scrapping of the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 2006.

After a huge global protest campaign by Greenpeace, who protested against the French violating the Basel Convention, the French decided not to send the ship to India to be broken up and the poor ship is currently tied up at the Naval port of Brest, gently rusting away. Quite a big victory, no? It would have been so, if at exactly the same time, several other ships loaded with asbestos would not have been in the process of being broken up in Alang, India, and if no more French ships loaded with asbestos had landed in India. Or if Greenpeace had continued to campaign to make sure no more asbestos laden ships landed in Alang. But life goes on. An indication of the importance of this subject to Greenpeace can be seen at their main site for ship breaking. Notice the last date of update? It is early 2006. I suppose the cameras and reporters have gone away, but the labourers who are breaking up the ships are still there.

The other main reason for scrapping in these countries is that they provide good quality steel at rock bottom prices. Bangladesh is notoriously lacking in raw commodity materials and by some estimates, this ship breaking industry provides up to 90% of the iron and steel usage in the country. Similarly, other countries utilise scrap steel in their domestic iron and steel industry. Have you seen the prices of steel recently? They have gone up through the roof. The Global Carbon Steel Composite Index has gone from 138.3 in February 2006 to 217 in March 2008. So for the poor countries that have to purchase steel, it makes more sense for them to get it in this way.

The European Union and the International Maritime Organisation seem to be working up the courage to implement a convention on doing pre-cleaning of the hazardous materials on the ships before they end up on the breakers beach and ship breaking in general. These hazardous materials are really bad, such as asbestos, dioxins, oil, chemicals, you name it. Now this is a very tricky area and will be very difficult to implement. Who pays for the clean-up? Does the last owner of the ship pay for it? Does the owner of the last cargo on that ship pay for it? Who will enforce the ruling? Do you enforce the ruling where the ship has been tied up at the last port of call? Or where the ship has been registered? (Can you imagine a country like Liberia or Sierra Leone taking this action?). Or do you make sure that every cargo owner pays some element of the cargo fees aside for eventual cleanup?

And if the fees are not paid, then where is the money to clean it up going to come from? General taxation And if so which general taxation? Do you wish this to be paid out of EU funds or national funds? If so, why would say Luxembourg have to pay for clean up of ships while it is totally landlocked? Do you change the penalties by size of the ship or by the cargo capacity of the ship? There are quite a lot of questions to be answered, but it seems like some form of a convention will emerge very slowly, with loads of holes and exclusions. Then countries will sign up slowly, the industry will shift its patterns, and over many decades or so, get to a stage where a global standard has been agreed, implemented, operationalised and policed. Long way to go yet! If you think I am joking, head over to the International Labour Organisation website and see the conventions they have written, the number of parties who have signed up and then look around to see if that has made much of a difference, these things take time.

I love ships, I adore their shapes and I love their behaviour. They are definitely human to me and that could be the inner sailor in me speaking. They are definitely contrary, need to be handled very gently and carefully and are very expensive to run. So much so, that Admiral Chester Nimitz said, “A ship is always referred to as ’she’ because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.” Ships talk and murmur. Seriously, they do. Listen to them and you can hear them talking, murmuring, creaking, screeching and whining. Not on those cruise ships, they are not ships, they are gaudy ornaments, sound-proofed and carpeted all over. But a warship, a tanker, a container ship, a cargo vessel, any serious vessel, who treat the sea warily and with respect, they talk to you.

Docks talk about ships taking birth in yards, joy you feel when the ship hits the water in the rush. It is very much like a human birth. Signing of the contract, the bringing together of men, materials and money in a womb like yard and the final birth as the ship rushes down and splashes into the water to be finally born. When a ship sinks and dies, it cries. Submariners who have torpedoed ships frequently talk about the sadness they feel when the ship dies. They talk about the haunting ship’s death groans when they hear the crumpling of the ships hull as it sinks down to the ocean depths.

But perhaps that is indeed the right grave for ships, the ocean depths. To be driven up a beach and then stripped naked, all the hull and steel cut away with flame torches, all the furniture and fittings unscrewed and unbolted, the oil drained away, till nothing is left but a patch of oil stained sand is somehow very distressing. But perhaps the fact that in the ship’s death, she has given back something to the humans who built and rode her while she was alive, makes the manner of her death worthwhile.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

I have spoken about Islamophobia before and have been warning about its prevalence for some time now. And regretfully, the situation is far from improving; instead it is getting worse. One can see that just looking at the rise in terrorist attacks and hate crimes, lurid headlines, anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in retaliation, etc. And the more this happens; the less the space becomes for moderates on both sides.

As I warned before, the world knows about the demonisation of a minority and knows what happens if that monster is let loose. We have seen that behaviour against Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, Hindus, Irish, English, Tutsi, you name it, it has happened. If there is a minority, the chances are that phobias, discrimination, genocide etc. against them have been in play.

So if you look at the report, the worry is clear. Muslims around the world are definitely in the cross-hairs of a variety of people. And you can very well see that in the pronouncements of some of the wilder variety of some politicians across the world; the subtle demonisation of Muslims in the mainstream, tabloid, and online media; and the increase in attacks on Muslims (or even Sikhs who these attackers thought that they looked like Muslims).

So yes, that definitely needs to be sorted out. From what I understand, the OIC asked for an annual report on Islamophobia to be tabled at the annual sessions of the OIC. The authors of this report are not clear nor are the terms of reference of this report.

But first the good points in the document. Yes, there are some good points in there. For example, the authors have collected a good selection of Islamophobia research sources. A reasonably good selection of political Islamophobic statements has also been collected in Section 2.1 and they have also done a good survey on what people have done to combat Islamophobia from a governmental, NGO and individual perspectives in section 1.6.

They also talk about how inter-faith initiatives have been established, which can at best improve inter-faith relations and at worst, not do any harm. The majority of the recommendations in the conclusion of Part I that they made to combat Islamophobia are quite bang on target and make pretty good sense. They should be read by anybody who is interested in this rather dreadful phenomenon. Section 1.5 specially is a very good overview of the situation of Muslims in Europe and USA, although some inconsistencies should have been addressed in a better way, such as praising Pope Benedict XVI in Section 3.5, but fulminating against him on page 3.

Looking at the document, I would conclude that this was done by some under-graduates from a 3^rd grade university hidden in a country-side somewhere, who have no idea about modern life and have suddenly stumbled upon the internet with their first lesson being Google search. As a result, this document starts off with the best of intentions and ends up rather fanning Islamophobia instead of helping to reduce it. It suffers from the following major defects:

• Total misunderstanding of the basic principle of Freedom of Speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to irritate and upset others. Freedom of speech does not include the right to discriminate against others though. For example, I can take the mickey out of suicide bombers wanting virgins and ending up with raisins. Or you can call me an infidel and say your religion is better than mine. These are completely acceptable, I have no issues. But you cannot tell others to kill me nor can I tell others to kill you. That is incitement to violence. The author seems to have deep intellectual issues in understanding this basic matter.
• Confusing racism with Islamophobia. Race belongs to a genetic category generally exhibited on the basis of a physical appearance. Islamophobia is a fear of Islam. Two totally different things. While in certain cases (such as black Muslims), they might blow over into being the same, but to confuse both of them as one shows muddled thinking. Muslims are not a race, and they do include a variety of different races and ethnic groups.
• Methodological and terminological confusion, which emerges from seriously flawed selection of incidents and coverage of incidents. Almost 50% of the incidents noted in the Appendix are not Islamophobic in nature, but belong to the category of freedom of speech or simple crime category. Islamophobia exists already without trying to add to it.
• A totally wrong emphasis on legal protections. They try to go deep into legal aspects of various conventions and institutions. But you see, those are already established, anti-discrimination laws exist, anti-violence laws exist anti-incitement laws exist and they are sufficient. For example, they are talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and completely forget that they themselves have repudiated it and have come up with a Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Here’s an idea! How about the OIC signing up to and transcribing to domestic law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as most of the rest of the world has done?
• Be very careful about complaining about being a victim, because it only stands up when you yourself have not victimised someone else. Now if you look at the OIC minorities, one can come up with many examples of victimisation that they themselves have done. And we are talking about Muslims victimising Muslims here, forget about non-Muslims. Ranging from Shia, Sunni, Ahmadi, Baha’i, Ismaili, Darfurians and then all the way to the other side like Jews, Christians, Hindus Buddhists, etc. have been victimised in OIC countries. Now, consider the reaction if such a report on anti-Baha’i or anti-Shia or anti-Semitic discrimination is presented at the OIC? How about considering the fact that many if not most current anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are carried out by European Muslims?
• A totally imbalanced view of history. This entire report was so imbalanced in terms of its historical coverage that one does not even know where to start. What about the entry of Islam into the Caucasian world? Or the Chinese area? How about how it managed the entry and existence in South Asia and Africa? Islam has perhaps victimised more in many countries and regions than had been victimised against. Perhaps this is why their geographical scope of the report is so muddled (to avoid any facts which destroy their argument?)
• Significant challenges in the identification of the causes of Islamophobia. First of all, there is not one form of Islam; it is not a single view, sect or a monolith. More importantly it is not the role of the state to define it. So if you are an Ahmadi or a Shia or a Sunni or what have you, we simply do not care! If you have religious differences, then by all means, discuss them, but do not kill for those differences. For example, the list of seven points raised by the Runnymede Trust defining Islamophobia can, unfortunately be equally applied to anti-Semitism, Anti-Hinduism, Anti-Shia… in OIC countries, where they will be totally applicable. Consequently, ALL root causes of Islamophobia as identified in section 1.4.1 are completely wrong and misallocated.
• A clear misunderstanding of the role of the media and the level of control people can actually exert over them. Most - if not all - of the OIC have no or very little press freedom. On top of that, the Arab League, a subset of the OIC, has decided to take fuller control over their TV Media since February 2008. That is not how the media works in other countries. Do check out independent organisations such as Reporters without Borders.
• Israel – Palestine conflict. This is something that I can never understand. Curiously, more than 3/4^th of all dead Palestinians have been killed by their fellow Arabs compared to the numbers killed by Israelis, but besides that breathtaking hypocrisy, I still cannot understand why they would include it in here. Or exclude say something like Bangladesh and Sudan? Pretty bizarre and intellectually vacuous.

Islamophobia exists, hate crimes have seriously stated happening in many countries and that is something to be worried about. All parts of civil society have to take part in ensuring that this canker of Islamophobia does not emerge from the dark evil corners of our souls. This includes you and me, the media, NGOs, churches and mosques, the government and international organisations, etc. But this has to happen for the right reasons, not for the spectacularly wrong and intellectually vapid reasons as stated in this report. All this will end up doing (and has already done) is to provide ammunition to the right wing that the OIC, as the premier Islamic organisation, takes decisions based upon policy papers which a zoned out undergraduate would hesitate to submit. And by the way, try to understand the concept of free speech. People who are out there trying to control free speech are basically engaging in Neanderthal behaviour and should not be upset if their speech is ignored, unheard or even mis-understood.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

[Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta, UK]

I have already written about refugees before but this time  I want to look at what do the Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Refugees in India, Kosovo Albanian Refugees, Palestinian Refugees in various Arab countries, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, Hutu refugees in Zaire, Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Cuban refugees in USA and all the other refugees all over the world have in common? Well, they have all been used by “other people” for their own needs and agendas. And these “other people” use these refugees as part of an explicit strategy, not for purely humanitarian objectives. I was quite surprised when I worked through the argument.

Using refugees for strategic purposes seems to have a very long history, especially in the post World War II period. And generally, if managed properly, it works. See the examples which we have? While the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war is considered by many as perhaps the best example of the “Just War” theory, the fact remains that India did use the Bangladeshi refugees as a reason to poke Pakistan in the eye. As a matter of fact, that entire episode of Partition with millions and millions of refugees is still being played out by strategic use of the refugees in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

The Mohajirs in Pakistan are used as a strategic bloc by their own leaders, as well as so many other political and religious leaders in Pakistan. The ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Pundits are used in the greater strategic Hindutva discourse and are ignored strategically by the Indian government for the overall secular discourse. The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were used strategically by the Indian central and State governments, as well as political parties to push their varied agendas just like the Singhalese and Sri Lankan Muslim refugees were themselves used by Singhalese politicians to push for a nationalist objective.

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[Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta, UK.]

The House of Al Saud is built on land which is criss-crossed with tectonic fault lines which are almost constantly moving. And the al Saud way of handling these fault lines is not to improve the house by making it flexible, open and earthquake proof but to try to pour concrete down the fault line chasms. The concrete is radical Islam, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, sectarianism, oil money, corruption etc. with predictably sad results. And that is just now, what will happen in 10 years time? One way of finding out is to take a detailed look at the Saudi education system sausage machine to see what will come out on the other end. The answer is that the supply of ideology, money and people from Saudi Arabia to fuel global jihad will actually increase.

Saudi Arabia (like Pakistan), is one of the artesian wells of global Islamist terrorism and the rulers are frankly what can be politely described as robbers. To cover their thuggery, they draw on the cloak of Islam. I came across a very interesting factoid (from Juan Cole and Mai Yamani’s academic work). In 1801/02, a big bunch of Saudi robbers from the Second Saudi Kingdom, supposedly operating under a fatwa which allowed them to rob and steal from the accursed infidel Shias, attacked Karbala and ransacked it. Karbala at that time and even now, was a place of pilgrimage and is a very big shrine. Given the nature of shrines, it was a very rich town.

As it so happens, a huge amount of Indian money (Lucknow) went to Shia Iraqi shrines to make canals, repair shrines and for general upkeep. So here we are, the fruit of the oppressed Indian farmer being collected by Shia rulers of Lucknow and they live up the high life with that money. Then, feeling guilty about their sins and to express their piety, they give the money to Iraqi Shrines (don’t you worry, this also happened with the Sunni Rulers in India, like the Begums of Bhopal who got hostels constructed in Mecca).

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[Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta, UK.]

There is this issue which I keep on stumbling over and which seems to be agitating so many people who are in the publishing business. There seem to be two camps, the first camp is the journalist camp and the second seems to be the bloggers camp. And boyo, do these two camps fight or do they? They fight over who is right and who is wrong, who is going to survive and who is going to die. But for what it’s worth, here is my take on this rather interesting debate in one corner of the world.

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