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AGD

During the visit to India, Chinese premier Li Kequiang and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed a commitment to find a solution to border disputes, between the two countries. The two Asian giants, in the third week of May 2013, set targets to increase two-way trade of 47% in two years : from $68 billion in 2012-13 to $100 billion by 2015. A new set of measures is expected to settle the border issue. A relaxed visa regime has been established to ensure businessmen from both sides, could travel to either countries, without having to go through a long process. India is being granted greater access to the Chinese market. Eight agreements have been signed on service trade promotion, sharing of hydro-logical information of Brahmaputra River, creating linkages between Indian and Chinese cities, among other issues. The memos of understanding include buffalo meat, fishery products and agreement on feed and feed ingredients between agricultural and processed food products; co-operation in the field of sewerage treatment; co-operation in mutual translation and publication of 25 classic and contemporary works; and provision of information on the Yaluzangbu/Brahmaputra river, in flood season, by China to India. Though, China is India’s fourth largest trading partner, India’s bilateral trade deficit is $40.8 billion in 2012-13.

Tribal standoffs
30,000 Bru refugees are living in despicable conditions, in various makeshift camps in Tripura, after fleeing Mizoram in October 1997, as a consequence of ethnic violence. The Mizoram government has adopted a policy of self-repatriation of Bru-Reang refugees, but stipulating that in the first phase only those refugees who are genuine Mizoram citizens, with documentary evidence, will be received back. Only 15,000 refugees are defined as Mizoram citizens, and the Mizoram government feels no responsibility for the rest, being described as ‘‘infiltrators’’. The Mizoram Bru Displaced Persons Forum insists repatriation for all, or none at all.

In the 1990s, the Union Government of India had created a non lapsable funds pool for India’s north-east, to which central ministries contributed 10% of their budgets. A non lapsable Rs 1712 crore North-east Railway Development fund was created in 2008, to speed up work on the ongoing Jiribam Tupul-Imphal Railway line, projects in Tripura, the completion of the Lumding-Silchar metre gauge conversion, and the Bogibeel Road-cum-Railway bridge across the Brahmaputra (East Assam). Presently lack of funds is again delaying numerous road and railway projects in the North-east, by several years. There are no conditions of achieving sustainable development and ending geo-political isolation in the next seven years.

Unauthorised colonies
Whether in slums, middle class areas, or even a few illegally constructed enclaves of the rich, across New Delhi, approximately 5 million of the city’s 17 million residents live in unauthorised colonies. An estimated 200,000 residents live in ‘‘unauthorised colony’’, New Ashok Nagar, despite lack of government approvals or full city services. In a state assembly election year, Ms Sheila Dixit, the Chief Minister of Delhi has recently announced an urban amnesty programme. She has pledged that scores of unauthorised colonies will be granted legal status, leading to new and improved sewer lines, electrical and water connections, and better roads. Under a 2007 national law, layout plans of an unauthorised colony, are required for official approval. There are several loopholes to navigate, such as every land and building fulfilling city specifications. With migrants pouring into Delhi and other Indian cities in search of work and opportunity, illegal settlements, often slums, spring up in the absence of available, affordable low-income or even middle class housing. For construction of road projects, frequently government bull dozers flatten small slums in New Delhi.

Genocide in Guatemala
The population of Guatemala is 40% indigenous Indians. About 200,000 people died during the 36-year-old civil war, which ended in 1996. Evidence has surfaced that atrocities were committed, and there was a strategy by the Ex-Director General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, now aged 86 years, and his Former Intelligence Chief Jose Rodriguez Sanchel, to destroy the Ixil ethnic group. At the genocide trial there was harrowing testimony by Mayan Indians describing measures, rapes and mutilations by soldiers during General Rios Montt’s rule in 1982 and 1983. Just as the trial was ending, the Constitutional Court removed the trial judge for failing to allow a piece of defence evidence. The trial may have to start again, annulling what has been achieved so far. At least 1771 Ixils, including children, were killed during the rule of General Rios Montt. In the cold war context of the 1980s, USA backed right wing militias against community insurgents. President Otto Perez has argued that there were no grounds for genocide charges, in the guerrilla war. Human Rights groups warn that anything short of a genocide conviction would be proof of impunity.

Syria’s Nerve Gas War
Artillery shells containing the Nerve Gas agent Sarin have been fired by Syrian President Assad’s forces into rebel-held bunkers in Aleppo. Victims struggle to breathe, and froths comes from their mouths. Even as over 70,000 people have been killed by conventional weapons in Syria’s civil war, the Syrian regime prefers to gas its opposition in small-scale ways, avoiding large-scale massacres. This allows USA and the western counties to prevaricate over the issue of intervention. In May 2013, the airstrkes that Israeli war planes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran, that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organisation. The Fateh-110 missiles were sent to Syria by Iran, and were stored at an airport in Damascus, when they were struck in the attack. It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an attack in foreign territory, aimed at disrupting the pipeline of weapons, from Iran to Hezbollah. The Assad government is running low on missiles in its bloody civil war with Syrian rebels, now in its third year. Earlier Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have used Fateh-110 missiles against the Syrian opposition. Russia continues its powerful opposition to any intervention in Syria. Continued Israeli aerial assaults have been targeting a military facility, a nearby weapons depot, and an anti-aircraft unit in Sabura, west of Syria’s capital. Syria’s state media report casualties. To carve out a Sunni-free heartland, the pro-Assad ‘‘Syrian Resistance’’ militia has been massacring Sunia residents in Banias and Bagda of Syria’s coastal region. The lifting of the crude oil embargo on Syria by the European Union implies that EU mill now be able to buy oil from areas held by the rebel groups that are ranged against Assad. The oil may have to be transported by tanker to Turkey and Iraq.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 52, Jul 7- 13, 2013

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