الاستفتاء في اليمن ؟

 التغطية على اليمن

Source: 23 Avril, 2022 Le Monde

أعلاه، من اليسار إلى اليمين، منطقة كريتر من قلعة صيرة، في عدن، اليمن، في 24 فبراير.

Si les chefs de milices yéménites se paient  sur la bete, c'est en partie parce que la coalition arabe menée par Riyad n'est pas généreuse.

إذا كان قادة الميليشيات اليمنية يدفعون لأنفسهم الكثير، فذلك يرجع جزئياً إلى أن التحالف العربي بقيادة الرياض ليس سخياً.

Ces islamistes sont puissants depuis dex decennies a Crater, mais dans les esprits, ils restent associes aux exactions de l'ancien regime Saleh et a la mise a sac d'Aden par l'armee du nord et ses miliciens islamistes, durant la guerre civile de 1994.

Le retour des combats, en 2015, a fait d'Al-nubi un heroes local, il contribue alors a chasser les houthistes de son quartier, en s'emparant d'une base militarie--le camp 20-- dont le gouvernment lui confie le charge.

لقد كان هؤلاء الإسلاميون أقوياء لعقود من الزمن في كريتر، لكن في أذهان الناس، ظلوا مرتبطين بانتهاكات نظام صالح السابق ونهب عدن من قبل جيش الشمال وميليشياته الإسلامية، خلال الحرب الأهلية منذ عام 1994.

عودة القتال، في عام 2015، جعلت من النوبي بطلاً محلياً، ثم ساعد في طرد الحوثيين من حيه، من خلال الاستيلاء على قاعدة عسكرية - المعسكر 20 - التي منحته إياها الحكومة، وكلفته بالمسؤولية.

En 2017, il rejoint les rangs des séparatistes du CTS, au sein desquels son frère, Moukhtar, est un officier influent. Mais l'homme s'avere incontrôlable.

وفي عام 2017، انضم إلى صفوف الانفصاليين في جهاز مكافحة الإرهاب، الذي يعتبر شقيقه مختار ضابطا مؤثرا. لكن الرجل يثبت أنه لا يمكن السيطرة عليه.

وفي العام التالي، أطلق رجال ميليشياتها النار أمام مكاتب البنك المركزي. إنهم يطالبون بحصتهم من قافلة الأوراق النقدية المطبوعة حديثًا والمرسلة من روسيا.

Les autorités passent l'éponge.

السلطات تستسلم.

يقول حسام ردمان عضو مركز صنعاء:

النوبي الانتهازي “باع خدماته للطرفين، في المعارك التي سمحت لجهاز مكافحة الإرهاب بإطاحة الحكومة من عدن، في عامي 2018 و2019”.

Opportunist al-Nubi a «vendu ses services aux deux parties, dans les combats qui ont permis au CTS de chasse le gouvernment d'Aden, en 2018 et 2019».

ثم يقوم الإماراتيون والسعوديون بإثناء الانفصاليين عن إعلان الاستقلال.

فمن دون المؤسسات والقدرات، لم يكن من الممكن أن يتم الاعتراف بهم من قبل أي دولة، كما أن رعاتهم ليس لديهم الرغبة في تمويل المغامرة. عدن راكدة بين مياهين.

Emiratis et Saoudiens dissuadent alors les separatistes de proclamer l'indépendance.

Sans institution ni capacite, ils n'auraient ete reconnus par aucun pays, et leurs parrains n'ont nul desir de financer l'aventure. Aden stagne entre deux eaux.

ويستفيد من الفوضى رجال مثل النوبي "غير المستقر والعنيف والمسؤول عن الاختفاء القسري للناشطين على أراضيه".

  ويضيف حسام، الذي تم اعتقاله وتعذيبه بالكهرباء

في عام 2017

عدن 2004

Est-ce l'attaque d'un commissariat de police ou une affaire d'argent qui a fini par provoquer la chute du chef de guerrre? Ou ses liens supposes avec Riyad? Nul ne sait ce qui à pousse le CTS a le chasser en octobre 2021. Mais apres deux jours de combats, il est parti au Caire, emportant une partie de son trésor de guerre, dans l'attente de jours meilleurs. 

هل كان الهجوم على مركز للشرطة أم قضية مالية هي التي أدت في النهاية إلى سقوط زعيم الحرب؟ أم صلاتها المفترضة بالرياض؟ ولا أحد يعرف ما الذي دفع جهاز مكافحة الإرهاب لمطاردته في أكتوبر/تشرين الأول 2021. لكن بعد يومين من القتال، غادر إلى القاهرة، آخذاً جزءاً من كنزه الحربي، في انتظار أيام أفضل.

لا تستطيع مدام السقاف أن تقول متى توقفت عن البكاء على  مدينتها . منذ الحرب الأهلية عام 1994، لوحت فقط بالعلم الجنوبي. وتتنهد قائلة: "لكنني اليوم لم أعد أصرخ من أجل الاستقلال". لقد خيب قادة جهاز مكافحة الإرهاب عدن.

عندما فاز المنتخب اليمني لكرة القدم على السعودية، تستذكر حدث ديسمبر 2021

"خرج الجميع إلى الشوارع بشكل عفوي، رافعين علم اليمن الموحد. وهتف الناس 'عاش اليمن!'" هذا هو أقرب شيء لدينا إلى الحكم، ولم يتمكن جهاز مكافحة الإرهاب من القيام بذلك. توقف: لقد أصيبوا بالجنون "، وما زالت تضحك.

الاستفتاء؟

CTS ليست حريصة على هذا.

أحمد حامد لملس

On the East India Company’s Attitude Toward Slavery in the 1700s

As far as Eurocentric accounts of slavery are concerned, malaria played a key role in the use and abuse of sub-saharan African people in agricultural plantation contexts. Up to the twentieth century, geneticists including those from Turkey, Britain and Arabic-speaking countries, debated on the biological factors that demarcated the “boundaries between white and African, Arab and Turk.”[1] Many of them attributed African ancestry to the “problem” of sickle cell related diseases, which has also been a widely cited the reason for justifying the usage of African slave labor in the Americas. Following the arrival of falciparum malaria in the 1680s, “the colonies where conditions were more favorable to endemic malaria also showed the greatest rise in slavery… In all, the introduction of falciparum malaria explains about 75% of the dramatic rise in the proportion of African slaves in the US south after 1690.”[2] White Europeans as well as wadi Arabs suffered from malaria and certain social groupings that segregated them from sub-saharan Africans were partly the result of this phenotypic difference.[3]

The situation was very different in Asia around the same time. Similar to the socioeconomic situation in Tang Dynasty China (the 7th to 9th century), the phenotype of slaves did not form the main concern for those who sold and controlled them in the subcontinent or Southeast Asia in the 18th century.[4] Religious manuals offer some insights to the attitudes towards slavery in Asia. “Al Hidayah fi Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadi,” also known as The Hedeya, was a 12th century Islamic legal manual by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani. Translated from Arabic into Persian in 1760 by Indian scholars upon invitation of an East India Company scholar, it was later edited by the same Company scholar—Charles Hamilton—into an abbreviated English version. There are sections devoted to explaining how to manage one’s slaves within the Central Asian Hanafi madhhab framework. In the opening dedication to Warren Hastings, the Company boss, in the translated English version, Hamilton does not comment on the explicit acceptance of what his later generations fervently opposed—the evil of slavery—within the text. He focused on the functional purpose of the text: to govern the subcontinent’s Muslim subjects within an Anglo-Muhammadan framework. Slavery did exist in various forms prior to the arrival of the British, as documented in Slavery in South Asia. The reasons differed greatly from problems of the malaria-infested plantations of the Americas. Kinship patterns of slaves in South Asia adapted to local customs and identities. Arakan slave expeditions into the Bengal region temporarily abated during various strong rulers as well, which deterred slave raids. However, tantra orders and practices suffered ignominy as a result of the Islamic rulers' understanding and boundary demarcation of normative humanhood and sexuality through their new religious outlook. (See Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal . )

Tarikh-i-Assam (History of Assam) was written by court historian Ibn Muhammad Wali Ahmad during the Mughal period and provided a description of these raids. In a quote of this text by British administrator Maurice Collis (1889 - 1973), the historian better known as Shihabuddin Talish recorded: "The Arakan pirates, who were both Portuguese and natives, used constantly to come by water and plunder Bengal. They carried off such Hindus and Muslims as they could seize, pierced the palms of their hands, passed thin slips of cane through the holes and shut them huddled together under the decks of their ships. Every morning they flung down some uncooked rice, as we do for fowl…Many noblemen and women of family had to undergo the disgrace of slavery and concubinage. Not a house eventually was left inhabited on either side of the rivers leading from Chittagong to Dacca.” 

Maurice Collis continued to write on the curious connections between slavery and religion:

“The pirates, the slavers, who were [the friar's] countrymen and co-religionists, helped the Mission in a curious way. When a captain returned to Dianga after a rain, with the holds of his galleys full of Hindu and Moslem peasants, these unfortunates were visited by the friar before they were sold into slavery and, he claims, he was able to convert a very large number of them to the religion of the cruel men who had pierced their hands, and fed them like fowl. The ironic comedy of such a proceeding did not strike him or, if it did, he justified it in this way: the Portuguese in defending the frontier of Arakan against the Mughal were, in effect, continuing the agelong crusade against the Moslem infidel, which had been the glory of Portugal for so many centuries and had inspired da Gama in his voyages eastward.” Among the 5400 captured annually, the Portuguese friar Manrique managed to convert 2000.

Yet it is interesting that barely one century after the emergence of Enlightenment thought, the East India Company accepted the lack of human equality in the region where they traded and co-opted these texts. The conflict between what officials noted as “Islam” and “modernity” was also a conflict between colonialism and modernity, which centered on the control of labor and its surplus within designated spaces. The empire’s interest in capital accumulation gave rise to other polities, such as the Gulf States, in the twentieth century. As scholar Adam Hanieh wrote, Arab workers in the Gulf was replaced by a non-Arab, mostly South Asian male, disposable class. He termed it as the “spatial fix” in which the Gulf states managed the capital-labor contradiction.[5] Scholar Neha Vora also documented in her anthropological work the emergence of being identified as South Asian or “Indian” in the Gulf as linked with their marginalized working class occupations. 

After the formal abolition of slavery, historian Eric Williams published his seminal book Capitalism and Slavery. He argued that the British Empire abolished slavery due to material interests such as the waning profits in the slave labor. I will research into the British archives to explore the tenuous balance the East India Company struck between Enlightenment values of equality and conditions of inequality for the purpose of revenue extraction in the 1700s, such as Charles Hamilton’s compilation The Hedeya. While many scholars wrote on this type of Orientalist knowledge industry of India,[6] my project will show that the divergences from the “ground” was possibly a conscious one, especially in areas such as slavery. If knowledge about humans through empirical methods à la Kant was not the Company’s goal, perhaps it is not a surprise that the empire projected itself as both the beacon of equality and the protector of bonded labor regimes.[7]

Endnotes

[1] Burton, Elise. 2019. “Red Crescents: Race, Genetics, and Sickle Cell Disease in the Middle East.” Isis. Volume 110, Number 2 June.

[2] Mosquitoes, malaria and the spread of slavery in the US.  https://wp.unil.ch/hecimpact/mosquitoes-malaria-and-the-spread-of-slavery-in-the-us/

[3] Reilly, Benjamin. 2014. "Mutawalladeen and Malaria: African Slavery in Arabian Wadis." Journal of Social History 47, no. 4: 878-96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43308820.

[4] New historical works on supra-local connections emerged in places under French colonial control as well as Dutch-controlled Indonesia. Filliot’s study of the Mascarenes showed that slaves from various Asian and African societies converging in one slave system.

 Titas Chakraborty, Matthias van Rossum, Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia—New Perspectives, Journal of Social History, Volume 54, Issue 1, Fall 2020, Pages 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shaa004 

[5] Hanieh. Adam. 2011. Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

[6] See works by C. A. Bayly and Bernard Cohn.

[7] Kant, Immanuel. 1798. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.

Tourist in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh notes

 In 2017 I completed a tour of South India (Tamil Nadu) and traveled to Lucknow and Nepal up north. This was an entry from back then which I dug up for Nepali visa application purporses:

-----------------
 

I stayed in Lucknow for about 6 days, which is longer than the average tourist. Many tourists do not stop by here because it is not very well-known. Overall the stay was more pleasant than I expected, but I also had some issues with the food. It is due to my own high ambition to find cheap and high quality vegetarian meals. Most people in the part of town I lived in do not eat out on a daily basis. Even if they do, they tend to stick to certain places. In hindsight, I should have stuck to the restaurants that were already tested and good. During the second half of the time I was in Lucknow, I experienced lack of new options for meals as well as food poisoning. I did not have a good day and I felt sick; still, I tried to just stomach it. I threw up three times, once in the bucket, once on the bathroom floor, and once on the street. During the last time, a stray dog ran across me before I threw up in the public parking lot. The good thing is that excretion is so common that no one bats an eyelid if you throw up in public. I also threw up on the floor once while sitting in a Paris airport and luckily no one saw me. Once I arrived in Germany, an elderly couple changed their seats after seeing me throw up in the regional train. I am proud to say that I am skilled at throwing up in public.

 

Raj was a kind rickshaw driver who delivered me from home after the third time I threw up. He also helped me look for a medicine shop. He used to drive a car for foreigners and picked up English that way. He only studied till the second class (grade). I asked about his kids, who had Muslims names. I was wondering about whether or not I heard wrong, and then he explained that he is Hindu, his wife is Muslim. “Love marriage,” he used the English phrase. I felt very privileged to know him. He was very nice to me. The only sad thing was that each time I gave him his due, he always felt it was less than he expected. That is a balance I am trying to find: while I am becoming more desi in my habits and planning living costs, others still see me as a foreigner and charge me. I have become more accepting of the foreigner tax and I rarely fight it anymore. Two kind women charged 100 rs for 12 bananas and a bag of strange fruit. I smiled as I gave them the money because I rarely get the chance to give the "foreigner tax" to women. Still, the extent to which Raj expected me was a bit higher than my acceptance level. So we would both be disappointed by the end of the transaction despite the heartfelt chats we would share. In Chinese we say in jest, speaking of money hurts the feelings, so why speak about it? ("谈钱伤感情") while all the while we know that money matters a lot even in relationships.

 

When I threw up in the bathroom, I tried to clean up myself. But the rice and saag (spinach cooked with butter) were thicker than I expected and would not go down the drain. So I enlisted the help of the cleaning boys of the hotel. They were clearly from a lower caste. I felt pained and embarrassed by the knowledge of their caste status, even though they seemed to not exhibited the same level of consciousness in the way they work and probably feel somewhat higher because they at least clean in a hotel rather than a public street. I am not sure because I was too shy to ask.

Being in India means to some extent inhabiting or condoning the caste system implicitly. Opinions may differ but the social practice of it is almost inevitable. At the end of our trip, Matt suggested to find flip flops at the general shop. I explained to him that only specialized shops sell shoes and leather goods, because the production or service of the product is considered polluting. Still, both despair and hope are most intensely experienced within India. As I know from observing activists of different nationalities, one is still more tuned to social issues when one stays in or closer to the homeland than in exile in some farther country. So one should still live in India, even if that means living within a caste system, in order to be more aware of it and gather knowledge to combat it.

 

I sat sheepishly on the bed as one of the boys cleaned up the bathroom. He used a cardboard to scrap away the goo accumulated at the drain. He asks with genuine concern about my health and if I need medicine. I understand but he feels the need to use the English word “tablet.” I am grateful and said let’s see. He said if you need it please call the front desk.

 

On the last day I was tired of trying to reach my desi potential alone. I found several people on Couchsurfing and messaged them. Siddharth replied quickly and we met up the next day. He manages a branch of a career training chain that teaches Indians how to score the Indian GMAT, which is called CAT. He lives with his business partner who shares the same name as he does. He likes traveling and has been to more countries in Europe than I have. He is from a Jain family but does not follow the religion and considers himself to be an atheist. I recommend him the film Ship of Theseus. He asks me why Buddhism is no longer existing in India. I gave him some equivalent of “there was a lot of Buddhist activity in the South and still is” and later also admitted that I was not quite sure why. He bought me lunch and we had dinner at his place, in a “gated community,” something which he considers a good thing to have in India. When we part, he requests me to write a good review of him on Couchsurfing.

 

 

Gorakhpur

The bus is gradually filled. Some election commissioners for Uttar Pradesh board the train. Jitendra is excited to talk to me and I offer him chocolate. Later it appeared that he is the second election commissioner on this trip who is interested in me beyond friendship. The first one met me on the train from Delhi to Lucknow who implored me to visit his hometown in Mathura. I found on this trip many people are curious about my plans and proceed to proscribe advice after learning about it. It adds both knowledge and stress at the same time. Jitendra asks if he can come to Lumbini with me. I said I will be living in a temple and I will be meeting friends. He realizes that his chances are slim and parts with me when we arrive.

I arrive at 6am. The ticketer of the bus assures that the cycle rickshaw guy who transports my luggage and I to the station does not cheat me. He is short with distinct features (e.g., large eyes, my favorite), has a very high energy level in his speech as well as a good “fight” in him whenever he argues with the complaining passengers.

Weird sadhus at the station. I give one of them 7 rs because he was very patient in his begging and chanting and looked very scholarly. This place is famous for the Gita Press. The wifi is great and I listened to some Arabic songs and watched videos on Nepal. I meet Subhash at 8AM. He leads me to his friend Kishor, who studies Hindu matters such as astrology in Rishikesh. They provided great company and helped me a lot in crossing the border, e.g. looking after my stuff as I ran around to get the visa. The visa line was shorter than expected since most people who cross are Indians and Nepalis who don’t need a visa. More on them later.

P.S.

Pablo was a Spanish friend and fellow Masters student who joined our tour of Tamil Nadu. 

"和Pablo抱怨我们和南印度其他人会面形式很精英 总是有个format然后照相 仿佛我们官方交流很高大上。Pablo指出，其实因为选项有限 采取了精英形式会面才能听到他们想传达的信息 并不会彻底抵消其积极激进意义。我当时很受鼓舞。和婆罗门同学打交道似乎也是，我们都是用年轻人 开玩笑轻松活泼的形式交流 很难得见到等级制度和突出的群体身份。"

Dharamsala / mcleod ganj 2022

Dharamsala / mcleod ganj

Sep 1, 2022

Day 1 of His Holiness' DaLaiLaMa's arrival

A man lies on the board of an empty street stall and shouts in Tibetan. His pants were dragged below his underwear and fortunately the gray underwear was in the right place. I asked if he wants laphing (a type of rish dish)and he just repeats laphing. He banged the board twice with both hands and seemed to want me to sit with him. I sighed with relief when I see that the laphing maker is not there and proceeded forward with less guilt that I did not have the means to help him. Plus, a monkey already came into my room through the balcony and took all three apples I had left so I was in no mood for more shenanigans.

He looked around 40 years old with shaggy long hair that reached below his ears and seemed to be handsome in his youth.

Update from summer 2023:

According to Sonam, the beggar has died recently.  The man was sponsored by someone who pitied him to sell Momos (dumplings) for some time. Unfortunately he did not manage to remain sober.  He fell off the Stairs of Yongling one day and died due to this drunken accident. Om Mani Padme Hum. 

Sep 2, 2022

Day 2 of HH DLLMs arrival

I went to a Cafe for breakfast because the kitchen was not accessible at the time when I woke up.

Cafe owner: "Yesterday I got a text from her, she was very anxious."

Guest, southeast asian (han) woman around her 50s. "Do you have *** phone number?"

"No, he does not have a phone."

"It is very nice that you employ both of them so they can take care of the baby."

"They are so young. She is so young."

"She went to Mumbai. She is now in Delhi."

Mumbai is so dangerous. Did she go to MT? (manju ka tila a bordered city within a city. )

No. She met some kind people so fortunately nothing bad happened. Her phone is not reachable.

Maybe she does not have a charger and that is why it is off?

No she turns it off all the time, her father told me.

Does she have money?

I guess she does.

Most tibetans stay in MT when they go to delhi. The big cities are very dangerous. Especially if you don't know anyone."

"Yes, very dangerous."

"How did she make it to Mumbai. It's so far away.

"We all want to ask her that. How did she get to Mumbai?"

"You know after giving birth most women suffer from anxiety."

"She had some history of issues. She used to stay in the mountains when she was 13 or 14. Now, she lost all her documents. She lost her baby's documents. Her family is working on obtaining documents to go to France."

"Many tibetans want to go to France. Then they can go to other European countries As well. But I don't know why they want to go. Do you have a passport?"

"No. I have the identity card. The yellow book."

"The yellow book (chuckles at the casual phrasing)."

"I can apply to become an Indian citizen but I don't want to. Sometimes even when one becomes indian one cannot own property here."

...

Guest: "I hope *** rinpoche can visit tibet again

Nowadays it is very difficult. Most people cannot visit.

I heard the peopme who work for the office of DLLM cannot visit Tibet. 

.

"I was a monk in ***, tibet."

"Which Temple?"

"Sera. Back in 1984."

"Could you do sadhana and othe retreats?"

"Yes but we had to apply for permission. We also could not attain higher levels of study."

"Did she (refering to his wife)see what this place was like?"

No. She has never been to tibet. She was born here.

Some invest hope in xijinping because his father and mother were Buddhists. But we don't know.

"No matter how much compromise you give the Chinese government does not respond. The middle way approach is preferable. The situation is worse now. They just make a show of compromise to ease th western pressure on the tibet issue."

"30 years ago i could do long periods of meditation in **** monastery. Nowadays we can only see the place for 2 hours. And it costs 120 dollars."

"120 dollars!! That's a lot of money."

Then the political discussion was interrupted by the start of rain. The mom went to check on their baby who turned to also be a girl. She was crying so the dad, the Cafe owner, also went upstairs. The guest checked on her smart phone and continued her studies in Tibetan. She has short hair and wore a yellow peanuts themed t shirt. 

Later I heard my host, a pahari from Himachal Pradesh. call the monk staying at our inn "panditji." Then I realized this is their new found identity in India: "Pandey." A title which i thought was reserved for the Brahmin caste, now given to the learned men from Tibet as well. Even after they left the monastery, they can continue to enjoy this prestige. This is a small point of comfort despite all the clashes between formal religions nowadays. The old "lax" standard of Hinduism for Brahmins (the fact that they can get married and have children) provide the refugees with some social position with the caste conscious Indian society. 

Sep 4, 2022

More from day 2:"Her whole family went and tried to find her. They spent almost 1 lakh rupees trying to find her!!"

 "She ran away once when her baby was only 5 months! Now she's gone again!"

Day 6:

I went to the same Cafe again. At first the same monk was there conversing with a Canadian girl who were also there last time after the gossip intervention session was over. They discussed attachments to money and problems of technology. The monk tried to convey his sense of worry over "society" which he thought was a problem. Then later he realized the right word he wanted to use was suicide. He said it is a lot in Japan. The girl said there is also a lot among the "natives" of Canada. She tried to explain the history bit unfortunately she used the word "government gave land to the indigenous" which is probably concerning in itself. But their conversation was overall pleasant. A beggar who was blind came in with his guide. I have seen him around. this time his guide was a child. The monk who was studying next to the two conversationalist gave them some money. The girl also gave them some money. He Continued to stand there a while but I did not reach for my bag. They left after the owner shooed them a couple of times. The beggar was repeating some religious expressions to make his situation seem dire. 

The protagonist (male) of the missing wife was also serving customers today. He looked like what westerners mostly think of as a a smiling buddha. The southeast asian woman joined the Cafe later and stood near the espresso machine asking if he needed money. She also suggested him to contact their mutual friends in Delhi to check on the wife. He was not very audible but also seemed to be used to this level of concern. He carried on with his work and the woman sat down. She was wearing a t-shirt with Tibetan text on the back today. 

A mutual friend of Sonam and I whom I met yesterday for the first time joined the Cafe as well with another friend. He was white and had a big beard. We shared some more food and my attention left the Asian intervention. 

اليمني أحمد صالح العيسي في القاهرة - Le Monde

عشرات الأشخاص ممن لديهم طلبات ينتظرون مع رجل الأعمال اليمني أحمد صالح العيسي في القاهرة.

يتحدثون مع حراسه الشخصيين ، في هذه الشقة التي ينجذب حولها مواطنوهم الذين لجأوا إلى العاصمة المصرية - فر ما يقرب من مليون شخص من اليمن منذ بداية الحرب في عام 2014. يستقبلهم السيد العيسي في خزانة مزينة بـ مناظر ريفية فرنسية من القرن الثامن عشر على ورق حائط ، مؤطرة بقوالب مذهبة. أولاً ، يمول العلاج في المستشفى. ومن جهة أخرى يدفع منحة دراسية للدراسات الجامعية دون أن يقلق على الأصول الاجتماعية أو الآراء السياسية لزواره. يصرف انتباهه.

Une dizaine d'avocats attendent avec l'homme d'affaires yéménite Ahmed Saleh Al-essi au Caire.

Ils discutent avec ses gardes du corps, dans cet appartement autour duquel gravitent leurs compatriotes réfugiés dans la capitale égyptienne - près d'un million ont fui le Yémen depuis le début de la guerre en 2014. M. Al-Essi les reçoit dans un cabinet décoré de Paysages de la campagne française du XVIIIe siècle sur papier peint, encadrés de moulures dorées. Pour l'un, il finance des soins hospitaliers. De l'autre, il verse une bourse pour des études universitaires, sans se soucier des origines sociales ou des opinions politiques de ses visiteurs. Cela le distrait.

الشيخ العيسي ، البالغ من العمر 54 عاما ، رجل قلق. قبل عام تقريبًا ، كان لا يزال يعتقد أنه ملك النفط اليمني. حارب من أجل السيطرة على ميناء عدن ، حيث تنقل سفنه الذهب الأسود. لقد رأى نفسه أكبر من الدولة التي كان يساعد في تقسيمها ، مع الحرص على عدم قتل الوحش.

A 54 ans, Cheikh Al-Essi -- dit "les requins" est un homme soucieux. Il y a un an a peine, il se croyait encore le roi du pétrole yéménite. Il luttait pour le contrôle du port d'Aden, ou ses navires convoyaient l'or noir. Il se voyait plus grand que l'État qu'il contribuait à dépecer, tout en prenant soin de ne pas tuer la bête.

كان يحلم بنفسه كرئيس لليمن ، بدلاً من حليفه الرئيس السابق عبد ربه منصور هادي (2010-2022) ، الذي ساهم في ثروته أكثر من أي شخص آخر. عمل السيد العيسي كمصرفي خاص لحكومته. يدعي أنه تجنب الإفلاس في عامي 2015 و 2016. وسد الثغرات في الميزانية حتى عام 2019.

Il se revait president du Yemen, a la place de son allie, l'ancien president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi (2010-2022), qui, plus que tout autre, a contribue a sa fortune. M. Al-Essi a fait office de banque privée pour son gouvernement. Il a confirmé qu'il avait évité la faillite en 2015 et en 2016. Il comble les trous du budget jusqu'en 2019.

سادة جدد

 عدن ، المستاءة من قبضته ،

 انتهى بها الأمر بطردها. لم يعد بإمكانه الذهاب إلى أكبر ميناء في البلاد ، والذي رآه من مواليد 1967

والذي تولى دور "العاصمة المؤقتة" لليمن ، منذ 2014 ، عندما سيطر المتمردون الحوثيون ، هذه الميليشيات الشيعية المتحالفة مع إيران كانوا يسيطرون على صنعاء.

NOUVEAUX MAITRES

Las! Aden, exaspérée par son emprise, a fini par la chasser. Il ne peut plus se rendre dans le plus grand port du pays, qui l'a vu naitre en 1967 et qui assume le rôle de "capitale temporaire" du Yémen, depuis 2014, lorsque les rebelles houthistes, ces milices chiites alliées de l'Iran.

السيد العيسي ، بطيء الحركة ، بارد ، ذكي ، قادر على التأدب الرائع ، يتحدث عن نفسه بضمير الغائب: "قلت إن العيسي يتحكم في

 الهواء والأرض والبحر .. ولكن أين هم؟ الآن؟"

M. Al-essi, aux gestes lents, froid, plein d'esprit, capable d'une politesse exquise, parle de lui meme a la troisieme personne : "Vous disiez qu'Al-Essi controlat les airs, la terre et la mer ... Mais ou en sont-ils maintenant ?"

مقالات ذات صلة

Le Monde - Ahmed Saleh Al-Essi, portrait d'un profiteur de guerre au Yémen

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2018/12/12/ahmed-saleh-al-essi-un-profiteur-dans-la-guerre-au-yemen_5396360_3210.html

أحمد صالح العيسي ، صورة لأحد المستغلين من حرب اليمن

مستشار الرئيس رجل الأعمال أحمد صالح العيسي يحتكر شحنات البنزين إلى ميناء عدن.

بقلم لويس إمبرت (القدس ، مراسل القدس)

نُشر في 12 ديسمبر 2018 الساعة 12:01 مساءً ، محدث في 12 ديسمبر 2018 الساعة 12:16 مساءً.

بالنسبة لمنتقديه ، فهو "التمساح" أو "القرش". يحتل أحمد صالح العيسي مكانة يحسد عليها في اقتصاد الحرب المتأصل في اليمن. منذ مارس 2015 ، أنفق تحالف عسكري بقيادة السعودية عشرات المليارات من اليورو هناك ، في قتاله اللامتناهي ضد تمرد الحوثيين.

انهارت الدولة ، واستغل المستفيدون من الحرب. إنهم عقبة في طريق السلام ، حيث بدأ الحوار بين المتمردين والحكومة في 6 ديسمبر بالقرب من ستوكهولم ، السويد. والسيد العيسي من أبرز هؤلاء المفسدين بحسب منتقديه.

مستشار الرئيس اليمني عبد ربه منصور هادي ، ينتمي إلى الدائرة الضيقة الأولى لقصر الضيوف ، حيث يعيش السيد هادي في الرياض ، حيث قضى معظم وقته في المنفى منذ عام 2015. سلة السرطانات هذه لها تأثير غير متناسب: "كل شيء يمر به .. كل شيء ما عدا الهواء" ، يلخص في الرياض ، عضو في الحكومة يرغب في عدم الكشف عن هويته.

هذا الرجل المهذب اللطيف البالغ من العمر 51 عامًا هو أحد المستوردين الرئيسيين للمنتجات البترولية في اليمن ، والذي انخفض إنتاجه المحلي بشكل كبير خلال الحرب. وهي تحتكر بحكم الأمر الواقع شحنات البنزين إلى ميناء عدن الرئيسي (جنوب) ، والتي تدفع لها الحكومة ، وفقًا لتقديراتها الخاصة ، ما بين 30 إلى 40 مليون دولار شهريًا (26 إلى 35 مليون يورو).

رجل أعمال قليل الغموض من الحديدة

في سميراميس ، وهو قصر في القاهرة حيث حدد لنا موعدًا في سبتمبر ، جعل السيد العيسي نفوذه نسبيًا: "أنا أساعد الحكومة وليس هادي شخصيًا. أعطيهم الفضل: أحيانًا يدفعون لي متأخرًا ستة أشهر. إنه ليس سياسيًا ، أنا أفعل هذا من أجل البلد. جنى السيد العيسي ثروته بفضل ميناء الحديدة ، على البحر الأحمر ، عند منفذ خط أنابيب ينقل إنتاج النفط الخام من المناطق الصحراوية في شرق اليمن.

 

themes in the art and drag performances of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto / Faluda Islam

 Artist and memory activist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr. created a drag persona to address issues of Islamophobia and homophobia in the world. Drag is ​​a performance

of gender that parody gender norms could shatter the illusion that there are only two genders – man and woman – and lead to a proliferation of genders; or rather to a recognition of, and ability to speak about, the already existing great diversity of genders, sexualities, bodies and pleasures (Evans and Williams, 2013).

 

In an interview, Zulfikar, also known as Zulfi, discussed his drag persona “Faluda Islam”: “She is a zombie, she was resurrected through Wi-Fi technology and the way she died was in the future queer revolution,” Zulfi explained. “She’s sort of an oracle… she’s able to give an insight into [the] past, present and future” (Burke, 2018). Faluda disrupts the binaries of organic-machine, male-female, even life-death with each performance as a queer Muslim icon.

Zulfikar Jr. is named after his late ancestor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was a prominent politician and leader of the People’s Party in Pakistan. In a way that subverts heteronormative expectations of Zulfi, he bravely entered the international art world with pieces that address his cultural background and extended the limits of the name in creating a drag persona. Zulfi recalled his father, Murtaza Bhutto’s assasination, when discussing this persona, and the themes he wishes to explore: “I talk about injustice, who gets the right to live or die, who is the decider of that,” says Zulfi. “War comes up, aspects of martyrdom come up, Islamophobia comes up.” (Burke, 2018) In my understanding, he is addressing the existential weight of being born a male in a Shi’a family and the expectations of martyrdom of such a gender identity. This responsibility was heightened during the Iran-Iraq war that started in the late 1980s when mostly Shi’a men as well as children in Iran fought their enemy combatants in Iraq.

Zulfi explained his ideas in an interview with Reconstructed Mag in May, 2020:

Why are we forced to make our children and families martyrs? What are the forces against us that make us go into these spaces that end in death? The drag character Faluda Islam questions this. The character is my attempt to look at revolution through a high femme lens (Bhutto, 2020).

 

Digitisation allows for “humans to mobilise memories that cut across the individual and the collective, the institutional and the corporate, the local and the global in ways that disrupt conventional binaries of the public and private, of the body and other” (Reading, 2016). Faluda exists digitally and in performances, disrupting the idea that a “man” protects “his women.” Faluda’s martyrdom and reincarnation as a Zombie may have been for all queer individuals, rather than for prolonging a heterosexual mode of reprdocution. Faluda as a Zombie, in Zulfi’s intention, also remembers the anti-imperialist slave rebellions in Haiti, where Zombies were an esoteric instrument to defeat the white settler-enslavers.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Zulfi’s other conventional artworks likewise explore the Shi’a Muslim’s conundrum of remembering assaults in Islamic history through lamenting the past, while other events celebrate masculinity as strength. As an artist, Zulfi highlights the inherent queerness of such an identity, despite the state’s priority to limit the identity as straight and one-dimensional. In critiquing the national imagery of a strong man, Zulfi said in an interview, in the context of his textile artwork series “Mussalman Muscleman”: “What for me is masculinity? It's softness” (Bhutto, 2017). In his works of a fictitious queer rebellion, he uses imageries of “brown and black body by creating glamorous queered future guerrilla fighters who do not fit neatly into categories of gender, race, faith, threat or desirable subject.” The works sought “to challenge the shifting borders between terrorist and freedom fighter as seen and named by the Anglo-Saxon world” (Bhutto, 2019). Memory, gender and technology are the themes explored by Bhutto’s works and the tools which allow him to express his ideas to a largely heteronormative public.

 

 

 

One of his exhibits

In “Future Faithful: Islamic Experiments in Space Exploration and Posthumanism” in 2021 at the Bass & Reiner gallery in San Francisco, U.S., Zulfi's artworks incorporate imagery of the calf as a reference to the second chapter in the Holy Quran, “The Heifer.”

 

 

“mustaq-bel 2,” 2019. By Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Zulfi’s artworks reference traditional architecture and mythology. The calf has appeared prior as a sacrificial motif in Abrahamic traditions. This metaphoric practice has been substituted by the sheep or lamb in some ritual instances out of respect for others who found the sacrifice of the cow offensive, such as in India and Pakistan. In Sher Shah, Pakistan, a Shi’a saint’s shrine has been used by pious locals both as a shrine for fulfilling human prayers and a cow sanctuary, which demonstrates the power of cultural syncretism in the subcontinent (Khalid, 2016).  The popular press and general population in South Asia interpret spaces like shrines (dargah) as examples of tolerance, since both Hindus and Muslims participate in worship and place requests to the saint of the shrine. They burn incense (loban) and consequently experience therapeutic convulsions against evil spirits that possess them (haziri) (Bellamy, 2011). Sometimes they are places of refuge and sources of cures to illnesses and evil spirits, while other times they are Gedächtnisraum (memory spaces). The usages of these spaces have been altered by modernity, as witnessed by the declining numbers of cows at the Sher Shah shrine.

The textile works by Zulfi were “created to honor real and imagined queer guerrilla fighters from Shiite Muslim traditions of martyr and saint veneration” (Bass & Reiner, 2021). More than just remembering a scar from a millennium-old feud, Muharram rituals as well as Zulfi’s artworks both symbolize a rejection of illegitimate state authority, which many Shi‘as also regard as a key feature of their faith (Freitag, 1989). In Zulfi’s praxis, he is directly addressing wealth inequality of the present.

The evolution of Muharram rituals in South Asia from a religious ritual to an “urban ritual” can be observed from the level of urban negotiation among the multi religious participants (Nejad, 2015). The processions are not limited to one sect or codified in one practice and often have multiple meanings. Different communities establish their own tazia, (also spelled as ta‘ziyah and ta‘ziyeh) which symbolically represents martyrs’ tombs, and carry it to the area that symbolizes the battlefield of Karbala. Zulfi’s work of “Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸” paid tribute to such a practice; his symbolic Karbala was the art gallery of his exhibition.

 

 

 

Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸. by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Screen print on muslin, chiffon and raw silk, inkjet print on silk, various trimming and plastic sequins. 2020, 148 x 28 in

 

In conclusion, this essay has explored the drag persona Faluda Islam, along with other works by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to demonstrate the potency of memory in his artwork. As an activist addressing Islamophobia and homophobia, Zulfi uses both embodied performances, audiovisual recordings, as well as hand sewn textiles in his ongoing works. Memory both informs the work and energizes the viewers who share part of the knowledge systems and geographies as Zulfikar’s upbringing. The drag zombie Faluda Islam interrogated on the idea that gender is a learned memory that is hard to alter or evolve; rather, the gender practices may or may not survive a future apocalypse. Memory is both the medium and the message.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bass & Reiner. 2021. Future Faithful — Bass & Reiner. [online] Available at: <https://bassandreiner.com/zulfi> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Bellamy, C., 2011. The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place. University of California Press. 33.

 

Bhutto, Z., 2020. Live Interview with Reconstructed Mag.

 

—----------., 2019. [online] Praxis Center. Available at: <https://kzoo.edu/praxis/artists/zulfikar-ali-bhutto/> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

—----------. 2017. [online] The Tumeric Project. Available at: <youtube.com/watch?v=bc8VtrHA8QE> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Burke, S., 2018. Meet Faluda Islam, the Muslim Drag Queen From the Future. [online] Vice.com. Available at: <https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xjbgb/muslim-drag-queen-faluda-islam-zulfikar-ali-bhutto-queerly-beloved> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Evans, M. and Williams, C., 2013. Gender. Routledge.

 

Freitag, S., 1989. Collective Action and Community. Berkeley: University of California Press. 251.

 

Khalid, H., 2016. The changing fate of a Muslim shrine where cows are sacred. [online] The Caravan. Available at: <https://caravanmagazine.in/lede/thinning-the-herd> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Nejad, R. M. 2015. "Urban Margins, A Refuge For Muharram Processions In Bombay: Towards An Idea Of Cultural Resilience". Südasien-Chronik 5. 341.

 

Reading, A. 2016. Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. Palgrave MacMillan.

News on Bombay Sweepers Strike, 1948

Transcribed from the The Bombay Chronicle, located at the Maharashtra State Archives

 

1948 July 1^st 

The Central Strike Commitee met at the Union Office at Arthur Road, reviewed the situation in light of the Labour Minister’s assurance, but after an hour long debate came to the conclusion that it could not reverse the decision already taken by the General Body. On the other hand, the Committee immediately set about the work of the initiation and conduct of the strike. Leaflets printed in Marathi and Gujarati, were dispatched to the various colonies where conservancy workers dwell. Union circles felt that the strike would be more or less complete as far as the city was concerned while they said that the notices may not reach all the workers living in the suburbs.

The sweepers’ strike is likely to put the citizens as well as the Municipality in a tight corner. It will be remebered that Bombay sweepers precipitated a strike in April 1946, a day after the Congress Ministry assumed office. The strike lasted a week and brought substantial benefits to the workers.

WHAT DEMANDS COST

A spokesman of the Municipality said it would be financially impossible for the Municipality to bear the cost of the demands (put forward by the annual conference of the Presidency Sweepers’ Union). Namely,

A) basic bay of Rs. 40 rising by 1 rupee increments to Rs. 50.

B) Dearness allowance of the same scale as for industrial workers, and

C) increase in house allowance from Rs. 6 to Rs. 15 would involve the Municipality in an additional expenditure of half a crore or rupees.

 

LABOUR COMISSIONERS APPEAL

Fervent appeal of the Labour Commissioner to the Bombay Government on Wednesday night:

“The Union representatives and advisers fully consented to the offer of adjudication made by the Government. The assurance of speedy disposal of adjudication proceedings has also been given.

...

It is necessary to remind you that the city’s conservancy services are essential services involving the health and well-being of millions of people. The strike, if it is staged, would be illegal under the Industrial Disputes Act. It is besides covered by the provisions of the Public Security Measures Act and other Acts and the persons participating in the strike would be liable to the penalty of imprisonment prescribed in the law.

...

The workers are bound, moreover, to forfeit public sympathy as the public would be the victims of the consequences of dislocation of the public utility service that has such direct bearing on the health and freedom from disease of the city’s population. You would therefore be well-advised not to take resort to the extreme step of strike.”

 

1948 July 2^nd

New Turn in City Sweepers’ Strike

This was the climax to a day of hectic activity both on the part of the strikers as well as the Government and Municipal Authorities.

Nearly 6000 workers mostly from the Conservancy Department joined in the strike. A few workers from the other departments also threw in their lot with the strikers.

Mr. B. R. Patel, Municipal Commissioner informed a representative of this paper that notices would be issued on the strikers calling upon them to join duty by 1-30 p.m. (Bombay Time) today (Friday). If they fail to do so their salary for the month of May will be withheld.

STRIKE TO END TODAY

There appears to be a distinct possibility of the strike terminating today, because the Central Strike Committee of the Bombay Presidency Sweepers’ Union which met in the evening passed a lengthy resolution in which they expressed their ‘resolve’ not to oppose the adjudication machinery set up by the Government.

...

The Committee further asserted that it had no political affiliations whatsoever, that the scavengers were fighting for a purely economic issue and requested the Government not to exercise force to make the workers accept the adjudication.

...

 

SEARCH FOR SUBSTITUTES

Possibility of recruiting sweepers from the refugee population --residing in Kalyan, Powai, Mulund and other places...

“The city has to do its own scavenging and not look on idly, until conditions become intolerable.” said Mr. Guzarilal Nanda in an interview on the strike situation.

“I am prepared to take the lead, if sufficient response is forthcoming from the public to form volunteer squads to meet the situation.” said Mr. B. R. Patel, Municipal Commissioner, as he emerged from a conference with the Ministers of Labour and Local Self-Government at the Secretariat.

Arrests and Processions

Following the arrest of 18 workers by the Delisle road Police, nearly 400 women marched in a procession from Arthur Road, where they went on a sit down strike demanding the release of their arrested comrades. Later in the day, however, they dispersed.

400 workers of the Kurla Municipality also joined the strike.

All the drivers of the 116 Municipal lorries took out their vehicles but nothing could be done as the “loaders” were absent. In certain cases the loaders utilised the occasion for a joy ride, got into the lorries and were seen holidaying gleefully in the trundling lorries.

Although the strike was initially sponsored by the Bombay Presideny Sweepers’ Union, large groups from the Municipal Kamgar Sangh also joined the strike. The Municipal Muzdoor and Municipal Workers’ Union and three other minor unions of their sympathy and support to the strikers.

Volunteers of various Unions went about on cycles in the localities inhabited by sweepers and distributed handbills calling them to stand together.

OTHERS JOIN

Mr. Danjbhai Jogadia, told a reporter of this paper: “Workers are very peaceful but police lorries are going about in the city accompanied by Municipal Head Supervisers, supervisers and the Labour officer. When the supervisers point out any person as a striker, he is arrested by the police.”

Mr. S. H. Jhabwala, adviser to the union said that the police were catching strikers by the scruff of the neck and dragging them to work. Government, he said, was unnecessarily interfering between the workers and the Municipality. He asserted that there was no intimidation but only a voluntary suspension of work.

 

FIGHTING FOR BREAD

He said that he did not object to the police intervening if there is violence, but when the workers were fighting for their bread, the police should keep off.

Early in the day the Municipal Commissioner went to the Secretariat for a series of conferences. After an hour and half’s discussion with Mr. Nanda the Labour Minister, he said that it was the duty of every citizen to organise volunteer corps in the various localities to keep the homes and streets clean. Otherwise a serious threat to the health of the city would develop.

 

NANDA MEETS PRESSMEN

Mr. Nanda told pressmen that the Government had left no stone unturned to avert the strike. He was even willing to appoint a special adjudicator to go into the demands of the workers immediately. It was unfortunate that the workers ignored the written assurances given to this effect by him. He assured that the Government will give all possible assistance to the Corporation. He also promised full protection to those workers who choose to come to work.

 

GARBAGE PILES UP

Meanwhile a rapid tour of the city discloses, that while the main streets are comparatively free from dirty thanks to the downpour of last night, the garbage heaps inside compounds have begun to accumulate. Similarly in the markets and by-lanes garbage has begun to pile up.

Bhuleshwar, Fanaswadi, Dongri and Kamatipura are the most affected areas.

 

85 ARRESTED

The total number of persons arrested on various charges of intimidation and violence till evening was 85.

The largest number of arrests were made by the Dongri police being as many as 45. It was to protest against the arrest of these persons and to demand their release that nearly a thousand persons staged a demonstration in front of the Dongri police station. It is stated that demonstration seen because violent and the crowd began to pelt stones at the police. A Deputy Inspector, a sub-Inspector and a constable were injured before the police decided to open fire and disperse the crowd. Ten rounds were fired in all. Five persons were injured and one of them--a woman--died on the way to hospital.

The Police Commissioner has banned all meetings for a period of a week.

 

GOVERNMENT PRESS NOTE

A Press Note issued in connection with the sweepers’ demonstrations says:

At 3-45 p.m. today (Thursday), a crowd of 500 to 1000 sweepers, including women, approached the Dongri police station from the direction of Noorbaug with the obvious intention of storming the police station and releasing 45 persons who had been arrested earlier in the day. Two officers outside the police station met the crowd at the gate and dispersed it with a ‘lathi’ charge. The crowd was chased back as far as Noorbaug, but there it reformed itself and started stoning the police.

... The situation is now quiet.

 

Saturday, JULY 3^rd

SWEEPERS’ STRIKE CALLED OFF

Union Decision Follows Minister’s assurance.

ARRESTED WORKERS TO BE SET FREE: ARBITRATION WILL BE HONOURED

Bombay, Friday: The Bombay sweepers’ strike was called off at 7 p.m. this evening after the Sweepers’ Union and the Corporation-sponsored “Informal Committee” reached an understanding on the main points at issue.

All the arrived strikers are to be set free on Saturday according to an assurance given by Mr. Gulzarilal Nanda, Labour Minister, to Mr. S. H. Jhabwalla, adviser to the Sweepers’ Union, both of whom conferred informally as the crucial talks between the Union and the Corporation Committee were going on in the Municipal building.

All items in which the 12-point demand of the Union which involves Municipal finance are to be referred to adjudication which will start on July 7, while a definite understanding favouring the sweepers was arrived at on the other issues of privilege leave, provident fund, medical aid and the re-employment of hitherto age-barred sweepers.

UNION GENERAL BODY MEETS

The General Body meeting of the Sweepers’ Union, which was given up due to a police ban, was enabled to be held when certain members of the Corporation “Informal Committee”, which met at 3-30 p.m., asked the Municipal Commissioner to contact the Police Commissioner to grant a special permit for the Union meeting. Agreement was reached that no strings should be attached to the permit, though previously it was stated police were willing to allow the sweepers to meet, if they could give an assurance they would go back to work. Mr. K. N. Kajrolkar, a member of the Bombay Leg. Assembly, who was in the police headquarters, hastened to the Arthur Road Office of the Sweepers’ Union with the permit, followed soon by members of the “Informal Committee” and Mr. Jhabwalla. About 700 strikers attended the meeting which surprisingly enough registered even initially an atmosphere of great cordiality and calm.

 The meeting was addressed by Mr. Ganapati Shankar Desai, chairman of the Municipal Standing Committee, Messrs. M. Harris, G. G. Mehta, Naushir Bharucha, Jhabwallam and Dhanjibhai Jogadia, General Secretary of the Union, all of whom counselled the strikers to accept adjudication and resume work.  ....

CALL TO END STRIKE

Declaring that the “strike has slackened and the situation is delicate,” Mr. Jogodia said that it was best in the interests of the strikers that they should accept adjudication and call off the strike with honor and dignity. He explained the meaning of the agreement reached between the Union and the Corporation Committee.

ARRESTED STRIKERS TO BE RELEASED

Mr. S. H. Jhabwalla informed the meeting that Mr. Gulzarlal Nanda, Labour Minister, had assured him that all the arrested strikers would be release on Saturday after they resumed work. ...

VOTING

It was decided to take a vote and when the 700 strikers present were asked by Mr.  Jhabwalla to demonstrate by a show of hands their attitude, only 12 persons were found to be in favour of continuing the strike. The vast majority supported the call to resume from tomorrow and expressed willingness to have the dispute referred to adjudication.

AWARD WILL BE HONOURED

Mr. Naushir C. Bharucha, Independent member of the corporation, said that the Municipality would without fail implement the adjudicator’s award and “prevent injustice being done to the sweepers”.

...

“If the Corporation has no money, we will go and beg if necessary. But under all circumstances the right thing will be done by the sweepers,” said Mr. Ganapathi Shankar Desai, Chairman of the Municipal Standing Committee, while Mr. M. Harris and Mr. G. G. Mehta, of the Socialist Party, called on the sweepers to close up their ranks.

 

Armed Police Guard Coroner’s Court

BOMBAY Friday, June 17, 2022

Sten-gun-bearing police constables guarded the Coroner’s Court as scores of Municipal sweepers, dwelling in Walpakhadi chawls, poured into the Court premises to see the body of Bhani Jethi, the 70-year-old woman who was hit by a stray bullet and killed as a result of firing.

After formal identification and recording of medical evidence as to the cause of death, the body was taken in a police lorry to the cremation ground at Worli. Mr. H. P. Patel, advocate, appearing on behalf of the relatives of the deceased objected to the police plea that the body be taken in a police lorry. He asked that it should be handed over to the grandson of the deceased to be cremated according to Hindu custom after being taken in a procession.

The Coroner ordered that the body should be handed over to the grandson who was present in court, but said that he had no jurisdiction to decide the the question of how it should be carried to the cremation ground.

It was later arranged that the body should be taken in a police lorry accompanied by the relatives of the deceased.

It is stated that the woman was hit by a stray bullet in the corridor of her chawl. It seems she was coming down from her room on the first floor to the ground floor for a bath. She heard a gun shot and found Sonabai Jiwa, a 13 year old girl, shot in the arm. She moved towards the spot when another bullet hit her and she collapsed. She died on the way to hospital. The other girl, 8-year-old Kallu Kala was also hit by a bullet was a resident of the chawl. The fourth injured person, Natu Govind (17), who was wounded in the thigh, was a loyal worker who happened to be in the road standing away from the main body of procession.

“SHE WAS DEMONSTRATING VIOLENTLY”

A press note issued by the director of Publicity, Bombay, says: “A report has appeared in the Press quoting the General Secretary of the Girni Camgar Union as saying that the woman who died as a result of the police firing on a violent mob of sweepers on Thursday, was hit by a bullet when she was standing on the verandah of a building nearby. This report is baseless, as a matter of fact the woman was one of the mob whuch moved on to the police station, and she was demonstrating violently before the police station all day till the firing took place.”

 

 

 

JULY 5^th Monday

Enquiry Into Shooting  of Sweeper Woman Demanded

Mr. M. R. Dandavate, Secretary of the Socialist Party says in course of statement: -- The Police firing on the Municipal sweepers on strike on 1^st July, 1948, as a result of which one old woman was killed and three others were injured is most deplorable. The Government version of the incident given in the Press Note is not at all convincing. The incident needs to an independent investigation and the Socialist Party demands ,that an     independent judicial inquiry should be held.

 

JULY 6^th Tuesday

Sweepers’ Union Hurls “Bombshell”

Bombay, Monday

The Bombay Presidency Sweepers Union was hurled a “bombshell” at what was regarded by many as an informal agreement between the Bombay Municipality and that body, by which the Union would press only five items for adjudication, leaving the rest to amicable mutual settlement. The statement presented to the Industrial Tribunal Government of Bombay, by the Union this morning, does not comprise only five demands entailing additional finances, but all the 13 original demands put forth by the Union.

The 13 demands which now form the subject matter are:

1) Basic pay at 40-1-50.

2) Dearness Allowance at the rates paid to Textile Workers,

3) House Rent at Rs. 15 per person,

4) Retirement on only physical ground

5) 15 percent additional staff

6) Sunday and Public Holidays to be half holidays

7) Leave accumulation for three months,

8) Provident Funds and Gratuity,

9) Cheap Grain Shops,

10) Medical Dispensaries in Sweeper localities

11) Increase of about 20,000 staff commensurate with increased population,

12) Opportunities for defence when charged with any offence or breach, and

13) The total abolishment of fines.

 

...

 

JULY 7^th 

City Harijan Leader passes away

Bombay July 6, (U. P. I.):

Mr. Khodidas Somehand, a Harijan leader and ex-President of Bhangi Kamgar Mahajan died tonight in the Nair Hospital due to some severe stomach trouble.

E. Bengal M. L. A. resigns

Calcutta July 6, (API): Mr. P. R. Thakur has resigned his membership of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly as he considers it “useless to continue to be a member of this legislature under present circumstances”.