INDIAN INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH INTO TRUE HISTORY

Newsletter No 34 of 16 October 1998

1 News and current affairs

1.1 Mr Godbole has passed the examination for the Membership of the Chartered Institute of Transport.

1.2 The Aryan Problem

This book contains papers read at a seminar held in Bangalore, South India in July 1991. The papers expose the falsity of the concept of Aryan race and the Indo-European language they were supposed to have spoken.

Prof. Bharadwaj, President of Arya Samaj, West Ealing, London. was anxious to send copies of this book to various scholars. Mr Godbole, accordingly sent copies to the following :-

Library of De Montford University, Leicester

Royal Asiatic Society, London

1.3 Rationalism of Veer Savarkar

Mr Godbole has checked the typing of the first 100 pages of this book ( in Marathi ). Hopefully the book will be printed early next year. .

Mr Godbole has translated into English, the Preface and Part 1 of this book. These have been sent by Internet to friends & well wishers.

ISBN number for the Marathi book is 81-900976-8-7

1.4 Around London Tour of places associated with Indian freedom fighters

*

One such tour took place on 15 August 1998. There were four people. Three from India, and Sudesh Sangray from Luton University. Mr Sahasrabuddhe, a BJP scholar was expected to join in. Unfortunately he was delayed in Germany. He has gone to America on a scholarship awarded by Rotary Club International to study how democracy functions in USA. He is likely to join in a tour when he travels back to India via London.

* A Gujarathi leaflet on the tour is being typed.

* A slide show on the tour took place at Hounslow branch of RSS on

7 October 1998. Twenty five people attended.

* Dadabhai Naoroji used to live at 8 Percival Street, near Farringdon tube station. We gathered this information from his election leaflet. Unfortunately this house does not exist any longer. All the houses on this street have been pulled down and flats erected in their place.

* Some useful information for the tour

(a) Transport in the days of Veer Savarkar.

Tottenham Court Road - Euston - Archway section of the underground was not open till 22 June 1907. So, for the first year Savarkar must have travelled by trams or buses between 65 Cromwell Avenue, Highgate and Grays Inn.

Highgate station of the underground was not opened till 1941.

(b) Statue of Sir Arthur Harris.

Stand along Aldwych facing the Indian High Commission. Turn left, if you walk for about 5 minutes you come across two statues, one on the left is of Sir Arthur Harris, Commander in Chief, Bomber Command, one on the right is that of Lord Dowding, Air Chief Marshall, during second world war. Further lie the church called St Martin in Field. It is a RAF church.

When the statue of Sir Arthur Harris was unveiled by Queen Mother ( i.e. mother of present queen ) in 1993, there was an outcry in Germany. Why ? Because he ordered bombing of Dresden and Hamburg, which had no military installations. Both places were full of women and children. It was bombing for the hell of it. Germans never forgot that. Churchill was shown aerial photographs of the bombing. He exclaimed, ' Are we cannibals ? '

(c) Public toilets are available at Notting Hill Gate station

(d) The tour could start from either Euston Square or Warren Street tube station.

1.5 Taj Mahal and the Great British Conspiracy

* Dr Patnaik of Bhagyanagar ( Hyderabad ) wrote a review of this book of Mr Godbole, in the 1998 Annual Report of the Institute for Rewriting Indian History.

* ISBN number for the book is 81-900976-5-2

1.6 British Justice today

On 4 June 1998 Times & Citizen of Bedford reported : A frail motorist has told how he was blinded and handcuffed in a terrifying ordeal at the hands of 6 ft 2 inches tall traffic policeman who fired CS gas in his eye.

Kenneth Whitaker, 67, told Luton Crown Court, PC Andrew Taylor sprayed the gas after the pensioner had parked on a double yellow line. Mr Whitaker, of Rosamond Road, Bedford, had parked his Vauxhall Vectra outside Holders Haircare in High Street, Kempston, so that his disabled wife Phyllis could visit the hairdressers.

When the policeman approached, a row broke out, and Mr Whitaker had CS gas sprayed in his face.

The pensioner was pulled out of the car, handcuffed and driven off in a police car with flashing blue lights.

...Mr Whitaker, who appeared in court with a stick, told the jury he always parked on double yellow line for 10-15 seconds when he took his wife to the hairdressers. The retired insurance salesman told the jury the police car pulled up alongside him and one officer shouted at him :' You are causing an obstruction.'

Mr Whitaker told the officer, ' you are causing even worse double parking there like that. No-one can get by. Go away you little man '

PC Taylor and his colleague screeched away and stopped suddenly 15 yards down the road.

Mr Whitaker said the policeman started shouting at him when he refused to get out of his car. ...... I suddenly felt a blow to my face. I wasn't aware what it was, only an excruciating pain in my right eye he said.

' He dragged me out and put a cuff on my wrist.' Mrs Whitaker, who had left her orange disabled sticker at home, told the jury that, when PC Taylor confronted her husband, she told him : ' For Christ's sake don't hurt him.' She was told she would get the same treatment and was told to take her f***ing hand off the door

The barrister told the jury there was no need for PC Taylor to arrest Mr Whitaker. He said ' the pensioner could only have been arrested under Section 25 of the Criminal Justice Act if the name and address of a person involved in a minor offence is unknown and cannot be reasonably be ascertained.

A short radio call would have ascertained the keeper's details. The defendant used unjustified and unlawful use of CS spray. ' Mr Whitaker, who suffers from sciatica, said he suffered cuts to the nose and head, and that his body was in terrible pain. He said he could not see out of his right eye for some days. Dr Roland Morris, who examined him at Greyfriars just after the incident, said : ' He was agitated, distressed and tearful, with a red eye and tenderness to his right wrist which was swollen, and pain in his back.'

....PC Taylor told the court he thought Mr Whitaker was going to bite him - and that using CS gas would be the best way of dealing with him. He said his colleague had been told to p***off right at the start of the incident. He said his intention was to diffuse the situation, but when Mr Whitaker put his hand on the gearstick, he thought he was going to drive off.[ so, how was the P.C in danger ? ] I leaned in and turned the ignition off and withdrew the keys. He lunged forward towards my arm with his mouth open and his teeth showing. I heard his teeth clenched together. He was being aggressive and from his body language I thought he was going to strike. If I had used manual force there was danger I might have been bitten

On 11 June 1998 the paper reported :-

........The jury of eight women and four men ruled the traffic policeman had acted within the law when he blinded Mr Whitaker. But they were rebuked by Judge Daniel Rodwell QC, after their deliberations of four and a half hours. He told them, ' You will perhaps consider in future if any old age pensioner are gassed or assaulted by police officers they will have this particular case in mind. This was a disturbing and upsetting case and I believe the reaction in the civil court would be quite different and cost Bedfordshire Police Authority quite a lot of money.

Judge Rodwell firmly rejected a defence plea for PC Taylor's costs to be paid out of public funds, saying it would be totally inappropriate..........Meanwhile it has been revealed Bedfordshire Police has already paid £7,500 to Mr Whitaker

Bedford & Kempston MP Patrick Hall had urgent meeting with Home Office Minister Alun Michael. He said, ' The jury decision was inexplicable. It seems it is acceptable for the police to gas a person who is sitting in his car with his seat belt on.'

Points to ponder :-

(1) Both the police and his victim were white. How would a white policeman treat a black person ?.

(2) What would have happened if the policeman was black ?

(3) Was the pensioner carrying a firearm ? NO. A knife ? NO. A baseball bat? NO. So, how was the policeman threatened ? Just because he felt so!!

(4) Imagine the life in England 30 years ago - when the notorious 'sus law ' operated. You were guilty if a policeman felt that you were acting suspiciously

Oh yes. That was the " law " And many black people did suffer.

2. History today

2.1 Plight of the gypsies in Europe

2.1.1 No Refuge in England

Gypsies from the Czech Republic and Slovakia sought refuge in England in November 1997. How were they treated ?

On 13 November 1997 Paul Waugh reported for the Evening Standard. He says :-

GIRO CZECHS HIT LONDON ( as if London is hit by plague )

" A Coachload of 60 refugees arrived in London today demanding political asylum and free food, housing and health care - the vanguard of an invasion that could be hundreds strong. The Tory council is furious that the refugees were let into the country and has asked the Home Office to explain how its Dover passport checks are operating. "

On 14 November 1997 David Taylor and Patrick Sawer reported for the Evening Standard. They say :-

Gypsy refugees return in fear to face Dover race march.

" A coachload of gypsy refugees who turned up in London demanding to be housed were back in Dover today fearing for their safety as Right wing extremists prepared to march on the coastal town. The National Front will march through Dover demonstrating against Czech and Slovak asylum seekers who claim they have fled similar nationalist race hatred in their own country.... It was after nightfall and long arguments through an interpreter that they reluctantly accepted Westminster social services would not rehouse them and climbed on a bus to Dover. "

"....... In an emotional outburst inside the Westminster housing assessment and advice centre on Harrow Road, one father-of three said he would rather take his wife and children and jump off the Tower of London than return .... ".

We found only one dissenting voice. Edie Friedman, Director of Jewish Council for Racial Equality wrote to the Times on 28 October 1997. He says, " As an organisation which is both Jewish and concerned with racial discrimination, we are appalled at the hysteria which is being whipped up by some politicians and newspapers surrounding the arrival of 800 Gypsy asylum-seekers in Kent. One basic fact seems to have escaped their attention : some of these asylum-seekers may have a valid claim to be refugees. It is widely acknowledged that

Gypsies are a persecuted and a scapegoat minority in many countries. Those vitriolic critics would have us send people back without waiting to find out if they would be in danger if returned. Have we as a society learnt nothing from the history of the last 100 years ?

2.1.2

Cook closes the door on gypsies

Katherine Butler reported from Prague for The Independent on 28 November 1997. She says :- Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, pledged yesterday to throw open the doors of the European Union to the Czech republic. The warmth of his embrace however was not immediately felt among the country's 300,000 gypsies, who were warned to expect no welcome in Britain. Mr Cook's tough words appeared aimed at demonstrating to a home audience the Government's ruthless approach to immigrants or benefit scroungers ....... We have a very clear message to anyone contemplating travelling to Britain, Britain does not have an open door policy to those who allege persecution and cannot prove it.

( In the Czech Republic ) ... Violence is common: a Romany man was beaten to death in front of his children by skinheads in one recent incidence. ........ . One of the complaints is that Romany children are systematically placed in schools for the retarded because Czech is not their mother tongue. Illiteracy, unemployment and criminality are all extremely high and the Czech government's insistence that many gypsies are ethnically Slovak means that they have difficulty establishing citizenship rights.

As expected there was only one TV programme, but no gruelling of Czech and Slovak Ministers or Officials on TV. No monitoring of any progress of any improvements in conditions of gypsies. No threat that unless the lot of gypsies improves the Czech Republic and Slovakia will face trade sanctions from EU countries, not to speak of any obstructions for admission to EU.

2.1.3 NEO-NAZI GANGS WAGE WAR ON CZECH GYPSIES

On 22 March 1998 Francis Harris reported from Prague for the Daily Telegraph -

Neo-Nazi violence is reaching epidemic proportions in the Czech Republic, raising fears of a race war between skinhead gangs and their victims in the gypsy minority. Human rights groups say that at least 30 gypsies and foreigners have been murdered and thousands attacked by well-organised and brazen skinhead gangs. A leaked government report has warned that the violence will probably spread to other groups the skinheads consider inferior. This is causing growing alarm among European Union governments and could affect the country's bid for EU membership. Negotiations with Czechs and other central European applicants open in Britain next week.

A lot of EU people are going to be worried about the issue of free movement within the EU. They won't want hordes of people turning up as refugees in Vienna, or Berlin, or Birmingham, said one Western diplomat. If the violence in the Czech Republic goes on, member states are going to defend themselves. He predicted a rough ride for Czech negotiators.

The European Commission has told the Czechs to step up action. The main EU report on the Czech Republic said : [ Romanies ] are the target of numerous forms of discrimination and suffer particular violence from skinheads, without adequate protection from the police or the authorities.

An EU spokesman in Brussels said the issue was raised with Prague. ......

But last week, Cyril Svoboda, the interior minister, said the problem was negligible, despite contradictory evidence from the government's own agencies, which say racial attacks are massively under-reported.

The government's Council on Nationalities even publicly condemned one judge who said an attack on a gypsy had no racial motive because the skinheads were not screaming racial abuse during the assault. Instead, Mr Svoboda blamed the problem on charities and human rights groups painting a false impression abroad..

There have been two exoduses of Romanies, both last year when hundreds arrived in Britain and Canada seeking asylum. Gypsy leaders last week threatened a third mass migration, this time to the United States, unless the government took action.

Ministers seem bewildered by the threat and uneasy about the casual and almost universal racism of the white population. One opinion poll suggested that more than 20% of the Czechs sympathise with the aims of the skinheads, and 50% would like gypsies to leave the country.

Meanwhile, police have done little. They say they are observing the skinhead movement, which is based around a hard core of 5,000 activists in 30 gangs. The skinheads receive inspiration and assistance from neo-Nazi groups in Germany, where scores of foreigners have died in street violence and firebomb attacks.

Gangs with names such as Blood and Honour, Hammer Skins and the European National Socialist Movement roam the streets of northern Czech towns where many of the country's 300,000 strong gypsies live. In a series of horrific incidents, one young Czech gypsy mother drowned after skinheads beat her unconscious and tossed her into a river, and a six-year-old gypsy boy was tortured to death by a 22-year-old racist. Street brawls between Romanies and skinheads have become common as gypsies fight back, causing widespread fears of what one mainstream newspaper termed the risk of racial war .........

With gypsy ghettos now cracking with tension, young men have armed themselves. The result has been a wave of attacks on policemen, regarded as skinhead sympathisers. Critics say that skinhead gangs are indeed unmolested by often supportive policemen, some of whom are alleged to be gang members themselves.

Judges often acquit skinheads in the courts. There were 653 prosecutions for racial crimes in 1996, but 271 convictions. The courts also have been accused of sympathising with skinhead defendants. They cite examples such as the two skinheads acquitted for threatening to throw a Romany child from a moving train. Protests from the justice minister resulted in a re-trial and convictions.

The minister also forced a retrial for four skinheads who chased a gypsy into a river where he drowned. They had been sentenced to less than three years each.

Human rights groups say there are at least 50 racist publications in the Czech Republic, none of which has been prosecuted or closed by police, who never raid neo-Nazi bases. The country's reputation for lax policing has attracted neo-Nazis from neighbouring countries, particularly Germany and Austria. Two Austrians are known to be publishing racist material. German neo-Nazis have used record plants to manufacture racist records and CDs.

2.1.4 Czech cities plan apartheid wall around gypsy ghettos.

On 27 May 1998 Adam LeBor reported for the Independent. He says :-

The wall, symbol of a divided Eastern Europe, is back. Not in east Berlin, but in two cities in the Czech Republic, where local officials are planning to construct barriers to segregate gypsies, or Roma, as they prefer to be known, from the rest of the population. Municipal leaders in Usti Nad Labem, an industrial city on the Elba, and in Pilsen, the country's brewing capital, plan the apartheid-style measures which human rights activists and Roma leaders say are reminiscent of the Nazi era when Roma, along with Jews, were separated from the rest of the population. Usti Nad Laben officials plan to build a wall around two apartment buildings that house over three dozen Roma families ....... Milan Knotek, spokesman for the Utsi city council said

' The fence will separate this problematic community from those people who have private houses on the road.' The plans for Pilsen are more elaborate, and look set to infringe human rights even more. Municipal officials there plan to construct a compound on the city's outskirts composed of portable cabins surrounded by a fence with its own police station that will stay open 24 hours a day.

Roma are regularly attacked by neo-Nazis who have links to organised far-right groups in Germany and Austria. Harassment by police is routine, as is discrimination by housing and welfare officials. Early this month a Czech Roma man died after skinheads beat him unconscious and left him in the street where he was run over by a truck and killed.

Comments :- Why is the Pope silent on plight of the gypsies ?

What are the church leaders doing to help the gypsies ?

Why don't they flock to the Czech Republic and Slovakia ?

Why are they so much interested in India alone ?

2.1.5 Gypsy rights go down the Tube

On 1 December 1997 Vitali Vitaliev wrote for The Guardian. .

He refers to an Asian couple dancing on a platform of a Northern Line station of London Underground. He says :-

.... To the majority of Englishmen, foreigners are dirty foreigners wrote Stephen Greham in his book The Gentle Art of Tramping, published in 1992. Or take the appalling treatment of the so-called enemy aliens during the second world war, or the post-war outbursts of anti-Semitic and so on .....

I was shocked by the recent deportation of several hundred Czech and Slovakian gypsies ( or Romanies, as they prefer to call themselves), mostly young couples with children, who had come to these shores in search of freedom. Having visited former Czechoslovakia several times in recent years, I can testify to the sad fact that the Romany population there remains one of the most ruthlessly persecuted minorities in Europe. Travelling around Slovakia and the Czech Republic, I often had to pass through derelict, vermin-infested shanty towns, where the gypsies lived in terrifying poverty and filth. In the cities, I saw them aimlessly hanging around street corners; the unemployment among Romanies was close to 90 per cent. They were meticulously oppressed, abused and humiliated.

In 1993, the so-called Romany Clause passed by the Czech parliament, stripped 100,000 gypsies of citizenship rights - the first case of mass disenfranchisement in post-war Europe. ( Did America or Britain or any western country impose sanctions against the Czech Republic ? Of course not. The BBC did not even announce this news ).

Echoing Hitler's genocide of 500,000 Romanies, some modern Czech politicians have publicly called for sending gypsies to the gas chamber and for buying them one way tickets to Canada.

In October 1996 the Prague Post ran a poignant letter, written by an American female computer technician of Indian descent who lived and worked in Prague. Because of her dark skin, she was often mistaken for a Romany. '' I was asked to leave the first youth hostel I stayed in. The staff ladies used to spit whenever they saw me .... I've been stared at, glared at, spat upon by teenagers, cursed, ordered out of the buildings where my friends live .... All because I look like a Romany. I have seen a Czech store owner set dogs on the Romany kids who entered his store. ...I am scared ... A Czech friend tried to comfort me by saying Oh, not you. You are Indian not Romany, that makes you equal I am not comforted. Could I respect if I were? Still I am pretty lucky. When I get off the plane at JFK Airport in New York, I am suddenly a white girl again.

Wish those British officials who took the decision to deport the Romany families could hear this harrowing cry of despair. "

2.1.6

It's payback time on gypsy gold

On 28 November 1997 the Guardian published a letter by Francesca Ball of Peace Studies, Bradford University. She says :-

Robin Cook is to open the International Conference of the Tripartite Commission next week which deals with questions about the origins and dispersal of Nazi gold. Your report

( Greece finally lifts its veil on its forgotten Jews, November 25 ) fuel this complex debate. There is the cynical news that Belgium bought tons of Nazi gold stolen from Austria and Czechoslovakia for up to one month before they were invaded. Then the German government has been overwhelmingly condemned because an estimated 10,000 Jewish holocaust survivors in East Europe have no compensation, while alleged Nazi war criminals received war pensions. Incomprehensibly, gypsies are not mentioned even though their racial categorisation for extinction was twice as strict as that for Jews.

Thirdly, Greek Jews had a 43-year struggle against state sanctioned suspicion of minorities to erect a monument in memory of the 56,000 Jews who were deported to Germany. Only 10,000 returned. Again there was no mention of gypsies even though it is well known that Greece had a large gypsy population.

The Swiss Pro Juventute Foundation was, until 1973, still removing children from Romani families without their consent and putting them in foster homes, where their names were changed. This was not made public until 1980s. They still refuse access to records which would help parents to locate their children. Surely they should now undertake this as a minimal gesture, since there is no doubt that the Swiss banks made a profit from an unknown quantity of gold stolen from gypsies ?

2.1 7 HOLOCAUST'S FORGOTTEN VICTIMS SEEK ADDRESS

Kate Connolly reported for the Guardian on 6 April 1998

Bozena Ruzickova traces the outlines of faces on the photographs of her Romany wedding. She and her husband Antonin are surrounded by 13 family members. She points gently at each of them in turn, recounting their names and the concentration camps in which they died. She is the only one to have survived. At the age of 74 she is still fighting for recognition as a victim of the Holocaust.

Today Mrs Ruzickova makes ends meet with the odd cleaning job as well as selling hand-made linen from door to door in her neighbourhood in Liberec, a town 100 miles north-east of Prague.

She is one of the 100 or so survivors from Lety Gypsy concentration camp in south Bohemia who is still alive. Most have received nothing in spite of the Czech government's 1994 compensation law, because camp records were either missing or falsified. .........

Mrs Ruzickova says despite countless promises she does not believe she will see just recompense, although she lost her two children, her mother and seven brothers and sisters in the camp. Her husband was guillotined in Prague after escaping from Lety.

I have to bribe the authorities to look at my documents, and they say to me,

' You can't have anything. you were not a political prisoner.' she says. Her spotless flat is almost empty. I have had to sell most of my furniture to keep up the rent payments she says.

.....Future Fund was launched under a declaration by the Czech Republic and Germany in January. Czech victims of Nazism are entitled to compensation of up to £1,000 plus medical help - if they can prove persecution.

................

So far there has been no one to represent the Gypsies, and they are not very good at this themselves. Many cannot read or write, there is very little documentation and the Holocaust is still very much a taboo subject for them. They are the forgotten Holocaust victims.

An estimated 39,500 Czech Romanies perished in the Holocaust - 98 per cent of their population. The American writer and historian Paul Polansky, who lives in Prague, has produced the first detailed account of Czech Romany Holocaust survivors in his book Black Silence, to be published in September. He fears that the Romanies will not live to see their compensation.

Since the news of the fund was announced, half of the survivors have died. Mr Polansky said, The authorities seem to be deliberately dragging their heels. It seems hardly anyone can stomach helping Gypsies. If you go into most pubs people will say, They shouldn't be compensated for their time in the camps. The camps should be reopened and the Gypsies put back in them.

Romanies were not given Czech citizenship until the 1950s under communism, despite having settled in the country almost 600 years before. But the ultimate insult for Mrs Ruzickova and the rest of the Romany community lies not in the tardiness of payments but in the present state of Lety camp. In the 1970s, the graveyard was covered over and has been used for almost 30 years, as a pig farm and meat-processing plant.

Mrs Ruzickova, who is to return there in May for a reunion of survivors, angrily wave her arms, and her voice broke as she says, The pig farm is the national monument

to Romany Holocaust.

2.2 How West cages Asian tigers in IMF trap

On 24 December 1997 Janet Bush reported for The Times. She says :-

The fire sale of Asia has begun. Goldman Sachs is today reported to be preparing to spend $4 billion ( £ 2.4 billion ) on buying up bundles of asset-backed loans from stricken Japanese banks, the equivalent of one eighth of all Japan's bad loans. Other American investment banks, who learnt the art of buying and repackaging bad loans during the Latin American debts crisis of the 1980s, will surely follow. These forays are the very early signs of an American takeover of Asia's financial and banking sectors, aided and abetted by the International Monetary Fund.

It is too easy to accuse the IMF of incompetence in its handling of the Asian crisis. Its critics charge that the IMF's imposition of a monetary squeeze on Asian economies is inappropriate for what is essentially a crisis of bad debt. High interest rates virtually ensure that a large proportion of Asia's financial institutions will go to the wall, they wail. Surely the IMF must see that identikit austerity packages imposed on the fiscally profligate in the developing world are not appropriate for Asia ? These charges are perfectly valid but miss the point. Even the IMF could not get its diagnosis and treatment this badly wrong by mistake.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that its region open to takeover by foreign interests.

The IMF knows very well that the American banking system was saved and nursed back to health after the 1987 stock market crash because the US federal Reserve pumped masses of liquidity into the economy and kept interest rates low for a long time. It is no mistake that the very opposite is being imposed on Asia. At the same time as the IMF is ensuring a brutal shake-out of Asian financial institutions, it is demanding that Asian governments open their financial markets to foreign investment at their point of maximum vulnerability and when assets are cheapest.

Lest anyone dismiss this is a silly conspiracy theory, just remember the speech that Mickey Kantor, former US Commerce Secretary, made to the Confederation of British Industry this month. He told his audience that the troubles of the tiger economies should be seized as a golden opportunity for the West to reassert its commercial interests. When countries seek help from the IMF, he said, America and Europe should use the IMF as a battering ram to gain advantage.

The pact that Asian governments have made with IMF is positively Faustian. They get billions of dollars in the short-term but lose control of their destinies. The tigers will emerge from the current crisis declawed and owned by the West.

The IMF may genuinely believe that West is best and that Japan and South Korea will end up with a sound financial system much more quickly if their banks are run by Goldman Sachs or Citicorp. But there is still something faintly obscene in the way that western commercial interests always appear to profit from others misfortunes ( and avoid paying for their own mistakes in the case of US banks who leant so widely in Latin America.)

What is happening to Asia is verily reminiscent of what happened to East Germany when the Berlin wall came down. An entirely inappropriate macroeconomics policy - monetary union between the deutsch mark and ostmark - ensured that every East German firm was rendered instantly uncompetitive and went bankrupt. The Treuhand was set up, took over East Germany's assets and sold them off cheap. East Germany was bought and sold in little more that two years. The price of agreeing to the hostile takeover, which came to be known as the second anschluss, was an influx of MacDonalds drive-ins and Volkswagen dealerships.

Perhaps the saddest group in East Berlin after unification was an association of entrepreneurs. Many of them had been imprisoned by the Communist regime for daring to embrace capitalism and, when the wall came down, they thought that their day had come. Many of them set up small businesses, only to find themselves the takeover targets of west German companies. One entrepreneur was literally driven out of business by a west German firm that wanted to buy him out; his delivery trucks kept being shunted off the road by his white knight. Many members of his association committed suicide.

East Germany's roads became notorious for road rage incidents. There was an astonishing explosion in car crash statistics, explained largely by the fury of west German drivers of fast Mercedes and Audis at being held up by dawdling Trabants.

East Germans were dismissed as country bumpkins by their rich cousins. The peoples of Asia are similarly being written off by triumphalist voices in the West. The Asian model of economic development may be undergoing reassessment but the western model of capitalism is distastefully arrogant and sneering. The Asian economies may come to regret taking the IMF billions.

2.3 US in the dock for prison cruelty.

On 6 October 1998 Nick Hopkins reviewed for the Guardian recent Amnesty International Report on America. He says :-

Torture and sexual violence against prisoners is widespread in jails across the United States, according to a report published today, which also accuses the country of wholesale human rights abuses.

The two-year study by Amnesty International, its first comprehensive analysis of north America, accuses the US of failing in its duty to provide a moral lead to the rest of the free world.

Across the USA, thousands are victims of human rights violations said Pierre Sane, Amnesty International secretary general.

Too often, human rights in the USA are a tale of two nations, Rich and poor, white and black, male and female.

In particular, Amnesty concentrated on the penal system, where it claims, the breakdown in basic human rights has led to atrocities more commonly associated with authoritarian third world regimes.

The massive increase in the prison population -- it has trebled to 1.7 million in the past 18 years- has put the system under tremendous strain, resulting in a shift away from rehabilitation towards --- incapacitation and punishment.

Overcrowding and a lack of central control have also provided prison staff with opportunities to exploit inmates, especially women.

The report cites two recent examples : the Department of Justice sued Arizona and Michigan states for failing to protect women from sexual assaults and prurient viewing during dressing, showering and use of toilet facilities.

And earlier this year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons paid £30,000 to settle a law-suit brought by three women who claimed they had been beaten, raped and sold by guards for sex with male inmates at a federal prison in California.

The indiscriminate use of leg irons, restraint poles, restraining chairs and electro-shock weapons, including stun belts, stun shields and stun guns, is also alleged to be common.

There were two other major areas where Amnesty said it found persistent abuses, brutality by the police and the arbitrary, unfair and racist use of the death penalty.

The report, Rights for All, claims it has evidence that police officers regularly beat and shoot suspects who are not resisting arrest, and that there is widespread misuse of batons and chemical sprays.

The victims are mostly from ethnic minority backgrounds and the officers, who are encouraged to be aggressive, nearly always seem to get away without punishment, even when charges are brought against them.

At a briefing in London, Piers Bannister, one of the researchers who compiled the 153 page report, said that racial discrimination within the police was virulent.

It makes a mockery of the slogan which many of them use ' To Protect and Serve ' he said.

Mr Bannister described how an unarmed African American William J Whitfield, was shot dead in a New York supermarket on Christmas Day last year when an officer mistook the keys he was carrying for a gun.

After the policeman was cleared, it emerged that he had been involved with eight prior shootings, yet had not been placed on a monitoring programme.

Amnesty says that black officers have complained of institutionalised discrimination, pointing out that 23 black undercover detectives have been shot by their colleagues after being mistaken for suspects.

Though Amnesty has long railed against America's use of death penalty, it claims that there has been another worrying development.

The US has started to execute juvenile offenders, in clear breach of article six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. America was one of only two countries to opt out of signing this provision of the treaty, which covers the execution of minors.

Two men were killed by lethal injection in Texas this year, even though they were 17 when they committed their offences, and another 65 juveniles are on death row across the country.

Such executions are rare worldwide, the report says. Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only other countries known to have executed juvenile offenders since 1990.

Amnesty makes a series of recommendations. These include provision of extra funding for the Justice Department so that it can properly implement the Police Accountability Act and provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

The USA has little room for complacency in terms of human rights, both in terms of some sectors of US society and of the country's role in the international arena. said Mr Sane.

[ The article is accompanied by a photograph of women on a chain gang in Phoenix, Arizona ]

Cut in crime blinds Americans to unfair system.

On the same day Mark Tran reported from New York for the Guardian. He says :-

Jessie Jackson and other civil rights leaders have tried to make an issue of the disproportionate number of African- Americans in prison, highlighted in the Amnesty International's report, as a sign of unfairness of the justice system. But they are fighting an uphill battle.

Most Americans see the growing prison population as the inevitable flipside of a more welcome development - the steep drop in crime rates.

President Clinton hopped on the law and order bandwagon when running for president. He established his credentials by allowing the execution of a prisoner in Arkansas even though the man was mentally handicapped. Once in the White House, he robbed the Republicans of a favourite theme when he backed the three strikes and you are out initiative - legislation that made it easier to put criminals away for life if they had committed three serious crimes.

Americans have responded favourably.

The most telling sign that public sentiment has hardened is the steady erosion of the ability of prisoners to use the courts to redress grievances.

Amnesty says that over 60 per cent of prisoners in the US are from racial minorities. One reason has been the disproportionate impact of drug sentencing policies on back Americans. Between 1985 and 1995, drug offences accounted for 42 per cent of the increase in the number of blacks jailed, compared with 26 per cent for whites.

There has also been a higher rate of increase in women prisoners than men. Women now comprise over 10 per cent of the jail population, again largely because of drugs offences.

...... Some of the most serious abuses in recent years have involved a steel-framed restraint chair securing both arms and legs, and with straps which can be tightened across the arms and chest. In June 1996 a man died in an Arizona jail of asphyxia after being placed in a restraint chair with a towel wrapped over his face.

AND AMERICA LECTURES THE WORLD ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS !!

2.4 United Europe must stand up to US bullying

On 13 October 1997 William Davis wrote for the Evening Standard. He says -

Talks are due to resume in Brussels this week about America's attempt to legislate for the world. If the new Labour Government really means business about playing a leading role in Europe it should join forces with our EU partners in standing up to Washington. Strenuous efforts have been made, behind the scene, to ensure that the dispute does not get out of hand. But there is no doubt about the strength of feeling on both sides of the Atlantic.

The issue is whether the United States has the right to prevent other countries from doing business with regimes it doesn't like.

There was a row when the US threatened to punish foreign companies that treaded with Cuba and, more recently, there has been another confrontation over the contract signed by TOTAL, the French energy group, to develop an Iranian gas field. A six-month truce over Cuba is due to end on Thursday. The US will have to say whether it is serious about enforcing its laws, and what it intends to do. Europe will have to spell out the consequences.

Sir Leon Brittan, the EU trade commissioner, has asked for sanctions to be waived. Failure to do so, he says, could unleash " a chain of events which would seriously damage the wider relationship which is of such importance to both of us." Another spokesman for the European Commision has said that any US action over the TOTAL investment would be ' illegal and unacceptable'

The dispute has much wider implications. During President Clinton's first term alone, the US has imposed unilateral sanctions, or threatened to do so, no fewer than 60 times on 35 countries. Congress, which passed most of these laws in election years, is determined to do more and the Clinton administration appears to be willing to go along. It has vowed to " take whatever action is appropriate under the law."

The European view, shared by others, is that the US is entitled to say which countries its own companies should be allowed to deal with and to ask for support from its friends. It is not entitled to dictate international behaviour by way of US legislation.

James Schlesinger, a former US Secretary of Defence and Energy, has warned that " the tolerance of our allies, and of others whom we would have followed us, is not inexhaustible." That is a diplomatic way of saying that there are likely to be repercussions.

The European Union has threatened to take its case to the World Trade Organisation, but the Americans have said that they will not accept any WTO ruling. In theory, the Commission could tell them Europe will hit back by making life more difficult for the many US companies that have big interests on this side of the Atlantic. In practice, such threats would have little credibility unless member states declared themselves willing to co-operate in such a drastic step, which seems unlikely.

It may well be possible for the EU and the US to settle their differences this week. I certainly hope so. A breakdown in relations is no-one's interest.

We all have our own options about countries like Cuba and Iran, but that does not mean we should allow the US to bully everyone else. This is one transatlantic argument that Washington does not deserve to win.

COMMENTS

If the European Union is scared of US bullying in 1997, what must be the pitiable position of other countries ?

2.5 Mute Mexican slaves spark US shouting match

On 29 July 1997 Mary Dejevsky reported from Washington for The Independent. She says :-

When a police raid 10 days ago turned up a group of deaf-mute Mexicans held as virtual slaves in a New York suburb, there was universal shock and disgust that such conditions should exist in the Land of the Free. Since then, however, scarcely a day has gone by without concerned members of the public or media sleuths reporting new groups of exploited immigrants, including several more groups of deaf-mute Mexicans, and the first righteous indignation is giving way to a lively public debate.

The proliferation of reports indicates that deaf Mexican street pedlars of New York were not unique. Last Friday, immigration officials, discovered a dozen deaf Mexican after raiding houses in the small town of Sanford, North Carolina. Another seven were found in a northern suburb of Chicago, while reports from Los Angeles said that deaf immigrants had long been a common sight on the streets of Californian cities where - like their New York counterparts - they sold key-rings and other trinkets.

Both in North Carolina and Chicago, the authorities say they are trying to establish whether the Mexicans were subject to the same coercion and deprivation as they appear to have been in New York, This is a crucial question.

It was, after all, less the fact that deaf-mute Mexicans were selling knick-knacks on the street that unleashed the initial public outrage than that they appeared to have been recruited on false pretences, held against their will in appalling conditions and deprived of what money they earned.

As these cases have come to light, some commentators - not just on the political right - have started to ask whether the deaf Mexicans were really so badly off after all and whether slavery was really the appropriate description for their condition. Their point is not whether the Mexicans were exploited, but whether - given the extent of poverty in Mexico and the position of deaf people in that country - they would not have been worse off if they had stayed at home ........

Liberals find themselves divided. Their initial response was to decry the conditions in which the Mexicans were held and ask why the local authorities had appeared to ignore the situation for so long ( despite, in the case of New York, complaints from neighbours ).

Now, though, some are asking which is better for a deaf Mexican : a future without hope and precious few rights at home, or the possibility of lodging and work, however inadequate and menial, in the United States ?

Comment :- But the same argument also holds good for child labour in many poor countries. Why did the whites raise such a hue and cry about them ? True, there were instances of exploitations, but many children did help their parents to make a living. WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD ?

2.6 Dangers from the British again !

East India Company was founded in 1600, in London. Until recently, its head office stood on Leadenhall Street near Aldgate tube station in London. The company gained control of India over the period from 1757 to 1848. It took a struggle of 100 years to get rid of the British Rule.

Our friend Mr Ramakrishnayya pointed out a news in Asian Age of 4 July 1998. It read :-

Nearly 400 years after first opening shop, the East India Company is mustering up courage to return to where it all began. Kanika Gahlaut takes a look at the new, improved version before it arrives in India

Dave Hutton is the new founder chairman of the new East India Company. Antony Wild, a specialist in the tea and coffee industry joined Hutton in 1991

... The company has dealings with tea in the U.K and the USA. It has tied up with Mitsubishi for coffee in Japan and has representatives in China. [ what trade it wants to have in India is not clear ] The company's efforts to enter the Indian market - first attempted four years ago - have not yielded much results.

Wild is publishing a 180 page book. It will document the achievements and failures of the East India Company, the contributions it made and the legacy it left behind,.....

Comments :- The book will be mischievous, and we must guard against it. As for trade, one cannot imagine what it can sell to India, today. It may be nothing more than nostalgia. But we must be on guard all the time.

2.7 Islamic world disowns embarrassing Taleban

On 29 September 1998 Christopher Thomas reported for The Times. He says

As Taleban consolidates its brutal regime and continues to deploy troops along the border with Iran, almost the whole Islamic world is turning against it, The extremist religious militia now controlling most of Afghanistan is regarded by other Muslim states as primitive, cruel and an embarrassment to Islam.

Saudi Arabia, which once provided financial backing for Taleban, has recalled its envoy from Kabul and asked for Taleban's representative in Riyadh to leave. The militia has failed in its attempt to be recognised internationally as a government. Now, with the Islamic world against it, Taleban must now know it has no hope of recognition. Its fanaticism is increasingly worrying for neighbouring Pakistan, which helped to create the force that it would bring peace to Afghanistan -- a forlorn hope as battles continue in two remaining pockets of resistance.

One of these involves a fight for survival by a Shia enclave in the centre of the country.

Defeat of the Shias could lead to mass slaughter of the kind that has happened in the north, where ethnic Hazaras, who are Shias, have been massacred. Other ethnic groups are believed also to have been persecuted by Taleban, whose members are Pashtuns.

Saudi Arabia appears to have decided that Taleban is an unreliable partner. Iran and most of the Central Asian republics also oppose the militia. The loss of Saudi funding and political support is a measure of how isolated Taleban is -- the more so because Saudi Arabia is one of only three countries that recognised the militia as a government. The others are Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Taleban's sheltering of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi -born terrorist linked to many atrocities around the world, has disgusted Riyadh, which had hoped the organisation would bring peace, that it could claim a stake in tapping and piping the vast oil and gas reserves in Central Asia, which could be sent by way of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.

With Saudi Arabia and Iran - the world's two most influential Islamic states - opposed to Taleban, the long-term prospects for the militia are in doubt. Pakistan cannot isolate itself from the shift of alliances towards a more moderate form of Islam, making its continued backing for Taleban problematic.

Iran has announced more military manoeuvres this week by 200,000 troops on its border. This amounts to a fresh warning to Taleban, which has deployed up to 30,000 armed men. Taleban's build-up came after a decision in Kabul last week by 2,000 Islamic clerics, who declared after a four-day session that all Afghans must be prepared to fight if Iran invaded.

Any further mass slaughter of Shias could elicit a military response by Iran, which is predominantly Shia.

Ali Shamkhani, the Iranian Defence Minister, said Teheran preferred to resolve its differences with Taleban diplomatically.

Afghanistan is too ethnically diverse to come under the rule of one group - Pashtuns are the single largest group.

Taleban zealots bewildered by US hostility

On 6 October 1998 Christopher Thomas wrote from Kabul for The Times. He says :-

The reclusive Taleban leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Mohammed Omar is demanding international recognition for what he describes, somewhat excessively, as his Government. He will never get it. His incomprehension of world diplomacy is as total as the world's incomprehension of him.

He is fast losing his few international friends. Saudi Arabia, his biggest financial backer, has severed diplomatic relations and presumably, its largesse. Pakistan, his main sponsor, has quietly removed all but one junior diplomat from its embassy in Kabul, signalling its intention to abandon him. Taleban must crack under such pressure. Some analysts say it will take six months; others two years.

The West's view that Taleban is a fearsome army of brutish zealots is not shared by most Afghans, for whom it has been in the main a welcome arrival. People remember the savagery of the warlords that Taleban disarmed and raping, looting and anarchy it ended. Life is better for most, though deplorable for those worst affected by its rules.

The militia has all but quelled a rioting nation and with remarkable little fighting. It has less blood on its hands than any of its enemies. It is demonised in the West not for what it has done to change life in the countryside, which is nothing at all, but for what it has done in the cities, essentially Kabul, the capital, and Mazar-i-Sharif, the main city in the north. These were liberal towns by Afghan standards. Mazar had liquor shops until Taleban captured it and women went out to work. It took Taleban to halt such things absolutely, and often brutally.

The educated women of Kabul, who are not many, are desperate to break out of the prison imposed by Taleban. So are the city's 28,000 war widows, in the main uneducated, who are not allowed to work for pay and must scavenge or beg. They and their 160,000 children are the real tragedy of Kabul, not the handful of professional women who capture most world attention.

The widows are everywhere, despite the fear of being beaten with a rubber truncheon by the ever-watchful religious police for degrading themselves. They are often taunted with an order to go find a husband

Western outrage towards these cruelties confuses Taleban because nobod said a word when similar rules were enforced in urban centres elsewhere. Indeed, there was nothing but praise in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Kabul in September 1996. Taleban fitted into American strategic planning then; it no longer does so.

The US Administration was so enthusiastic about Taleban it talked about, and may have sanctioned, clandestine aid. Two years later, the militia has metamorphosed in American strategic thinking into the embodiment of the international Islamic extremist threat.

Mullah Omah, the Commander of the Faithful, this week described the denial of international recognition as unfair. He has no idea why Washington has turned him from a peacemaker to a pariah.

However, his confusion cannot be greater than America's Afghan policy.

Comments --

(1) We saw many interviews with Taleban leaders on TV, but NOT one reporter asked the Talebans, ' You forbid women to come out on the streets, but how are the widows and their children going to feed themselves ? Is it not your duty to feed them? '

(2) Muslims have never protested at the inhuman treatment of these widows. We must therefore assume that they approve the treatment.

3. Behaviour of Christians and Muslims today.

3.1 Czech gangs kidnap women as sex slaves

Francis Harris reported for the Sunday Telegraph on 8 March 1998. He wrote :- Police say Prague is ‘Central Europe’s Bangkok ‘ and 70 per cent of missing girls have been sold into prostitution.

The last time any of her friends saw Daniela Kyrova, the 18 year old student and beauty contestant was laughing with friends as they crossed Charles Bridge in Prague. Minutes later she disappeared, apparently bundled away by slave traders who had followed her into a lavatory. All that Daniela left behind was a handbag, mystified friends and a broken-hearted father. He has devoted much of the past two years to tracking Daniela down, criss-crossing the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries in a gruelling and futile search. It is becoming a familiar story in the new gulag of greed, as many law enforcement officers regard the post-communist Czech Republic.

Czech police estimate that 70 per cent of the thousands of missing women aged between 10 and 40 have been abducted and sold into prostitution. Major Petr Vosolsobe, head of the Prague police vice squad, said some were lured into the business by boyfriends and others were simply plucked from the streets by packs of pimps.

For many of the 50 million tourists who visit each year, Prague is a city of picturesque winding alleys, unrivalled architectural masterpieces and romantic dissident politicians. But it is scarred by a thriving sex trade. Police say the city has more than 300 brothels employing 15,000 prostitutes serving mainly foreign clients. “ It’s turning into Central Europe’s Bangkok.” said Major Vosolsobe. Those working with women who have survived the harrowing ordeal say the Czech sex industry is a fertile recruiting ground for western European and Middle Eastern pimps. They say the chances of finding girls such as Daniela Kyrova depend on where they were taken.“ If it’s the Czech Republic or Germany, women sometimes make their way home. If it is Turkey or Middle East, they are rarely heard of again.” say Eva Tomanova, a researcher who has spent weeks working with women who have escaped. Her findings offer a rare glimpse into eastern Europe’s sex slavery, a business whose workings are hidden even to most policemen. The Czech call it the white meat trade.

Women earn from £20 for half an hour on a road verge to £5,000 for those considered beautiful enough to be sold to Middle Eastern brothels. Pimps’ preferred look is blue or green-eyed blondes. Preferred victims are girls with few friends, living far from home and with a history of sexual abuse. Sex slaves say the “type” is instantly recognisable. That may have been why two Ukrainians hauled 19 year old Lenka off a quiet Czech road. The daughter of an alcoholic who threw her out of the family home, she had been homeless for a week when the occupants of a blue Nissan manhandled her into the car and stuffed a rag in her mouth. Hours later she was shoved into the cellar of a house in Chomutov, near the German border, and made the subject of an impromptu auction. The Ukrainian kidnappers finally sold her to a gang for £300. After the deal was done the new owners turned on Lenka and repeatedly raped her. “ They said they’d kill me if I resisted. They beat me, and it wasn’t just slaps, it was real punches. " Lenka is able to expose the horrors of the sex slave traffic after she escaped from her abductors, and is living with her family on the outskirts of Prague. ...........“

Monika 18 was sold by a man who had befriended her. She was bought by middlemen who forced her into humiliating ‘job interviews’ with pimps in the northern city of Teplice.“ At first, no one wanted to buy me and my owners said I should try harder or they’d shoot me. Finally a pimp bought me for £110 “ Monica escaped and now lives with vagrants at Prague’s main railway station. Others such as Misha 17, were lured into the business by men offering lucrative work. By the time they realised what it meant, it was too late. Misha tried to hide some of her £17 takings to create an escape fund. ‘ But they searched me every time and every time they found my tips. " I got one meal a day and the only dress I had was the one I was wearing the day I left home. My pimps thought it was enough to buy me underwear. "

Major Vosolsobe blames politicians who legalised street prostitution after the revolution.“ Before 1989, prostitutes and pimps were scared of us. Prostitutes who had sex with foreigners were sent to venereal clinics for several weeks, whether they were ill or not.“ Now, we’re just the place with the prettiest and cheapest girls any German could wish for "

Side by side the Sunday Telegraph published a column :- Timetable of shame Recent arrests show the scale of the white slave trade in Europe

• Sept 1997 : German police arrest a 36 year old Czech who allegedly sold four young female compatriots to an East German for £1,900 each

• Oct 1997 Czech police raid brothels run by alleged Bulgarians mobsters. The men were said to have ‘disciplined ‘ 45 girls by branding them with irons. Police said the gang’s income was about £350,000 a month

• Nov 1997 German police arrest two Slovaks accused of luring six young women to Germany after promising them shop and bar work. Instead, they were forced into prostitution.

• Dec 1997 A 17 year old Czech girl escaped from two women who forced her into prostitution in Italy.

• Feb 1998 French police arrest eight people accused of running a sex network composed of 15 east European sex slaves on the Cote D’Azur.

OUR COMMENTS Did it require a genius to forecast that this would happen after the collapse of Communism ?

3.2 Barbaric practice of Female Circumcision among Muslims

On 7 October 1997 Sally Morgan reported for the Evening Standard . She describes the experience of one Zenab Barud. she says :- Nobody described the extent of the agony I would suffer.

I was seven years old when I was told that the time had come for me to be circumcised. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done anything to stop it, but this form of mutilation was the tradition, the custom of my culture. It sounds strange but I was actually looking forward to it. My mother and the woman in my family told me that circumcision would turn me into a full woman. I thought this meant that I'd reached maturity and I felt proud.

Nobody described the extent of the agony I would suffer. My mother just explained that there are three pains of womanhood : circumcision, marriage and childbirth.

When you are seven years old, you don't really understand. On the specified day, a woman who circumcised all the girls in the city came to my house. I had to sit on a stool while two of my mother's friends held my legs apart and my mother held me from behind. I felt embarrassed because I was naked but there was nothing I could do about it.

Then the woman cut my clitoris and the lips of my vagina with something sharp - I think it was a pair of scissors. I was screaming and writhing in pain because I had not been given an anaesthetic. She glued my bleeding wound. leaving only a tiny hole, and bandaged my legs tightly together with a strip of material. Afterwards, I wasn't allowed to move for seven days.

When I have children, I will have to have an operation to open me up again. It was only when I came to live in Britain 11 years ago that I began to wonder why it was considered necessary. Even my religion as Muslim does not justify the practice. According to the Koran, circumcision is compulsory for a man, but the female equivalent is not.

Although female circumcision is decreasing slightly in Somalia, it's still rife in Britain. I've tried reasoning with some mothers, and telling them that it's illegal and barbaric, but they still want to have their daughters circumcised. I would never put a daughter of mine through that pain.

Channel 4 carried a programme on the subject on 7 October 1997 at 2000 hrs entitled - Cutting The Rose

Comment :-

Muslims complain about Islam-phobia, when such programmes are shown, but they never demonstrate against such barbaric acts, or denounce them publicly. They never show their anger at such practices. When did Ayatollah Khomini condemn female circumcision ??

4 Truth

4.1 Did you hear ?

On 20 August 1997 at 0600 hrs BBC World Service reported :-

Sweden practised compulsory sterilisation until 1976.

On Sunday 24 August 1997 BBC Radio 4 reported at 0850 hrs :-

People of Sweden are asking for compensation for compulsory sterilisation.

On Monday 25 August 1997 BBC World Service reported at 0630 hrs :-

Compulsory sterilisation also took place in Norway

4.2 Did you see ?

On Wednesday 3 June 1998 BBC2 showed a programme entitled " Crossing the Line "

International Committee of the Red Cross, in their archives had proof that after the Second World War, Americans starved to death 50,000 German Prisoners of War. The producer showed some photographs and had eye witness accounts to that fact.

American Government, of course, kept quiet about the allegations.

4.3 Hitler's Forgotten victims

On 2 October 1997 Channel 4 showed above programme between 2300 to 2400 hrs.

It depicted The harrowing fate of black people in Nazi Germany. These black people came to Germany for various reasons. Some came from former German colonies in Africa - some of them even fought for Germany during the First World War. Some came from France ( through French colonies and as occupying French soldiers ). Some were working in the Circus industry.

Why did it take so long for this truth to come out ?

German government never apologised to these Black people.

4.4 The Swiss and the Nazis

Recent revelations has shattered the myth of Swiss benevolence towards the Jews and their neutrality during the Second World War.

On 18 June 1997, BBC1 broadcast a programme at 22.25 hrs, entitled : Inside Story - Nazi Gold

Times commented, If you ever thought, with Orson Welles, that Switzerland was a friendly country of chocolate and cuckoo clocks, prepare to be disturbed. Chris Olgiatt's documentary not only highlights the Holocaust survivors trying to recover their money from Swiss banks, but also includes charges that are equally damning.

Edgar Bronfman and Israel Singer, of the World Jewish Congress, allege that gold looted by the Nazis from occupied countries was transferred to Switzerland and helped to pay for the German war effort, and that gold fillings ripped from the teeth of concentration camp victims also found their way to Switzerland. One witness says that, without Swiss banks, the German war machine would have collapsed. Switzerland's wartime neutrality is challenged by stories from Jewish refugees of being turned back at the frontier. It is a formidable indictment, though it would have been instructive to hear from the defence.

Yes, indeed. But Swiss Authorities never refuted these allegations

4.5 Did you read ?

4.5.1 Letters to the Editor

Jewish debt is fully repaid

The visit to Israel by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, was controversial.

On 26 March 1998 the Evening Standard published a letter by W M Leaf, of Wembley, Middx. He says :-' Israel's debt to us for the 1917 Balfour Declaration ( Letters, 23 March ) is hardly undischarged. In 1922 we removed three-quarters of the Jewish National Home to create Jew-free Transjordan. Later we slashed Jewish immigration to the remainder. During the Second World War, Palestinian Jews fought alongside our eighth Army and elsewhere; meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs, under their Mufti, supported Hitler. When the UN created Israel, the ( Trans) Jordanian Arab Legion that we armed and trained, led by our Brigadier John Glubb, invaded the newly-born country. They seized Judea and Samaria ( re-named the West Bank ) and eastern Jerusalem, expelled the Jews and destroyed all synagogues. Hence Jewish sensitivity over the term Arab east Jerusalem, since the reunification of the ancient Jewish capital during the Six-Day War. But sensitivity did not bother our Foreign Secretary. He snubbed the memorial to the six million in favour of an excursion to a disputed building site in Arab east Jerusalem, briefed by a Palestinian Arab agitator. What diplomacy, what debt.

Comment :- Would we Hindus ever feel so strongly for our cause ?

4.5.2 How the FBI spied on singer Lennon parrot -fashion

On 26 September 1997 George Gordon reported from New York for the

Daily Mail. He says :-

Almost 17 years after John Lennon's death, the FBI is refusing to reveal full details of an investigation into his anti-war activities. According to history professor Jon Weiner all the ex-Beatle wanted to do was give peace a chance, but the paranoid chief of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, saw him as a threat and ordered him to be trailed night and day as a subversive.

The file is the result of surveillance from 1971 to 1972, with background information supplied by British Intelligence. The FBI agents also paid informers to infiltrate Lennon's anti-war circle. Buried among the pages of trivia is the disclosure that a woman friend called Linda had a parrot which interjected right on during conversations. A man named Tom then taught it to swear.

When the investigation was finally called off because there was nothing much to report, the agency retreated behind a wall of confidentiality and classified the files.

It is withholding ten pages of a 300 page dossier saying it is a matter of national security under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

Mr Wiener, author of a 1984 book on Lennon, had requested the dossier more than 15 years ago. In a settlement, the FBI agreed to pay his legal costs of nearly £150,000.

The 53-year old academic said : This is an example of FBI harassment, the purpose of which was to silence Lennon as the voice of the peace movement.

A justice Department spokesman said the FBI started the investigation after it received information that Lennon planned to contribute almost £50,000 to a group intending to disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention.

The Beatle later found his efforts for permanent residential status opposed by the US immigration service.

No wonder the FBI does not want to tell the truth!!

5 Research findings

Dr Anandi Gopal Joshee

This remarkable lady was born in Pune, Maharashtra, India on 31 March 1865. She sailed to America on board the ship City of Calcutta , on 7 April 1883 to study medicine. ( Veer Savarkar was born on 28 May 1883 ). On 11 March 1886 she obtained the degree of M.D from Pennsylvania University. Her Thesis was entitled Obstetrics among the Aryan Hindoos . She returned to India on 16 November 1886, but was infected with T.B and tragically died in Pune on 26 February 1887.

According to her wishes her ashes were sent to America and are buried in the Carpenter family lot named : Eighmie Lot No. 216A, Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery, 342 South Avenue, Poughkeepsie.

Mrs T E Carpenter, helped Mrs Joshee a great deal, and became so intimate as to become her Aunt.

Mrs Joshee could speak eight languages fluently, Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Gujrathi, Kannad and English.

We are glad to inform our readers that our friends Viraj Sardesai, and Dr Ashok Gore discovered the place where ashes of Mrs Joshee were buried. They collected funds and re-erected the memorial to her.

Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti, Maharashtra have recently published a book compiling unpublished letters of Dr Joshee. It is quite clear that she remained a staunch Hindu and had no intention to embrace Christianity.

Marathi biography of Dr Joshee by Mr S J Joshi was published in 1962. It was translated into English by Asha Damle in 1992 and published by Mahindra Sen for Stree, an imprint of Bhatkal & Sen, 16 Southern Avenue, Calcutta 700,026. ISBN is 81-85604-00-2

6. We Hindus are treated badly, but do we deserve any better ?

6.1 While tidying his study room Mr Godbole noticed that one of his Hindu friends has named his home as 'Bleinhem' the birthplace of Churchill

7 Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the following for their help :-

For arranging a slide show on Around London Tour of places associated

with Indian Freedom Fighters

Subodh Thakar, of Hounslow, Middx

For transmitting our newsletter 33 on the Internet

Sudesh Sangray of Luton

For taking to India and posting there, copies of our newsletters No. 33

Mrs Anjali Patel of Milton Keynes

Mrs Bharati Kulkarni of Farnham, Surrey.

For delivering a parcel of newspaper cuttings, to Dr Bedekar, India

Mr Gulave of Wembley, Middx

For making copies of our newsletter and distributing them to friends :-

Dina Nath Behl of London, Dr Godbole of Rochdale.

Dr A P Valvade and a anonymous friend from Pune, India

For donating money for publication of Mr Godbole's book - Rationalism of

Veer Savarkar.

Mr Dadarkar of Ickenham, Middx £20

For translating the leaflet on Around London Tour, from English into Gujrathi

Mrs Bhanu Patel of London