Asean Advisor in KASHMIR
Dr M. Rajaretnam who is currently the Special Advisor to the ASEAN Secretary General on Community Building and Outreach programme would be in valley on a private visit for a four days. He would be speaking to the students of International Relations at Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora. Mr Rajaretnam, who is currently “Special Advisor to the Secretary General of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations)” would be delivering a lecture on May 28, 2012 at the university on the “Conflict and Cooperation in South East Asia” He is also expected to meet some political, social and religious leaders in Valley.
A Singapore citizen Mr Rajaertnam until recently was the Executive Director of the Information & Resource Center, Singapore. He was educated in Singapore and the United States and started his career in 1971 as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore).
In 1985 he established the Information & Resource Center as a private think tank and consultancy focused on Asian-Pacific affairs.
He was concurrently Executive Director of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Coordinator of the Singapore Institute of Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Secretary of Singapore-CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific).
In 1994, he was appointed advisor to the Institute for Policy Research, a policy think tank in Malaysia and helped design and coordinate the Institute’s Asian Renaissance Project. In 2003 he convened a “fellowship” of “friends and citizens of Asia”, informally called the Asian Dialogue Society, committed to the pan-Asian idea of “building a better Asia”.
Over To Geneva
India will face more questions than it would want to, at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. India’s human rights record will be examined at the second round of the Universal Periodic Review at UN for three and a half hours.
In the first round, in 2008, the UN had identified caste as a form of racism, causing much angst in New Delhi. However, caste may not feature in the grilling that India will face. Indian representatives will be answering questions filed in advance by nine countries, probing various issues. A majority of the questions don’t have easy answers and are ‘live-wire’ issues in India.
Norway wants to know if India would consider repealing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. But Question Two is a bit harder: The 2011 census showed a decline in sex ratio for children aged 0-6 years (914 girls/1000 boys). How will the government of India work to arrest the slide? The UNICEF had highlighted the problem last year but the government has not been able to respond except by assuring better policing of ultrasound clinics.
Sweden would be asking: How does the government guarantee that freedom of expression on the internet is not unduly restricted under the information technology rules? There can’t be any easy answers either as New Delhi is obviously arrogating the power to suppress critical comment and cartooning directed at political leaders.
Denmark and Slovenia want to know what effective steps the government proposes to take to end manual scavenging. The practice is unknown in the metros but elsewhere, it persists. This is the only question filed in advance concerning a patently shocking effect of the caste system.
The other questions include queries over the award of the death penalty, discrimination against minorities, action taken against bonded labour and urban poor.
Human Rights Council itself, to review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years. All countries from Liechtenstein to the US are subject to the review.
