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Bahrain Sentences Activist to 3 Years in Prison for \'Inciting\' Protests

By ROBERT MACKEY and KAREEM FAHIM

An interview with Nabeel Rajab, a Bahraini rights activist, conducted at his home on July 9, shortly before he was arrested for criticizing the country's prime minister on Twitter.

Bahrain sentenced a leading rights activist to three years in prison on Thursday for “inciting” anti-government protests in speeches and Twitter updates, the state news agency reports.

The activist, Nabeel Rajab, is the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He has been an outspoken supporter of demonstrations that began last year, calling on the country's ruling monarchy to introduce democratic reforms. Mr. Rajab was jailed last month for posting a critical jibe about the country's prime minister on Twitter.

Mr. Rajab's lawyer, Mohamed Al-Jishi, said that his client was given year-long sentences on three separate charges of “participati ng in illegal rallies and gatherings.” Mr. Jishi said that at most, he was expecting Mr. Rajab to receive a few months on each count. “The military courts gave a maximum of six months,” he said. “This is too much.” Mr. Jishi said he had appealed the sentences.

Mona Kareem, an activist blogger from Kuwait, reported on Twitter that Mr. Rajab's son said that his father reacted with defiance to the verdict.

Mr. Rajab's wife Sumaya, who was with him in court, told The Associated Press: “What happened today in the court room shows clearly there is no justice or independent judiciary.” She added: “My husband is not a criminal but a hostage of a government which can't stand freedom of expression and fre edom of assembly.”

Mr. Jishi said that a verdict in Mr. Rajab's appeal of his prior conviction for insulting the country's prime minister on Twitter had been delayed until August 23.

Mr. Jishi noted that representatives of several foreign governments, including the United States, were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. “They are sending a message,” Mr. Jishi said of the government, adding that a speech given by the country's king earlier in the week - in which the monarch spoke of a duty to “protect peaceful, good-natured citizens who do not seek to usurp power” - reinforced the message.

Last week, 17 members of Congress and two senators sent a letter to Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, urging him “to order Mr. Rajab's release under the universal principle that that all citizens should have the right to peacefully express disagreement with their government.”

In his address to the nation two days ago, the king again sugg ested that the protests in Bahrain were part of a foreign plot. “The Kingdom of Bahrain has always remained throughout the ages a coveted place for the greedy, however, our people knew how to persistently tackle the enemy and to unite their ranks, consolidate their discourse and allegiance to the ruler and crush the ambitions of foes,” he said.

The monarch added: “We have had to endure this year through challenging conditions due to hostile ambitions and foreign intervention which are yet to cease. We stood as united front in the face of strife mongers. We faced them with determination and persistent willpower as our duty and responsibility makes it imperative to defend this homeland, we will maintain our national unity and protect Bahraini people.”

In a video interview shortly before his arrest last month, Mr. Rajab told the Irish human rights group Front Line Defenders that the presence of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, made the struggle against the monarchy more difficult. “Because they have the support of the United States, they have the support, or the silence, of the international community, that is seen here as a green signal, that's why they are proceeding - more repression, more attacks against human rights defenders.”

Mr. Rajab pledged to continue calling for democracy despite the personal cost, adding: “I think we have to pay a much higher price than what normally people pay for freedom and democracy because you will not hear much about what's going on here, as much as you will hear things happening in different countries.”

According to the state-run Bahrain News Agency, the prosecutor, Mohamed Hazza, claimed that Mr. Rajab had, in one case, “called in public speeches for a demonstration to confront public security personnel, inciting violence and escalation against law enforcement officers, resulting in deaths during those confrontations. Following his speec h, a demonstration raged through Manama, turning into an illegal assembly intending to undermine law and order, block roads and assault public security personnel.”

The Lower Criminal Court in the capital, Manama, also found Mr. Rajab guilty of “inciting illegal assemblies and organizing unlicensed demonstrations through social media websites,” in two other cases.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, condemned the decision to jail Mr. Rajab “solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly.” She added: “this latest verdict marks the end of the facade of reform in Bahrain. The international community can no longer be under the illusion that Bahrain is on the path of reform when confronted with such blatant and ruthless tactics of suppressing dissenting voices. Bahrain's international partners need to make this loud and clear to the Bahraini authorities.”

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch expressed his dismay over the verdict in similar terms.

The verdict came a day after one of Mr. Rajab's colleagues at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Said Yousif al-Muhafdah, said he was beaten and briefly detained at a security checkpoint. Mr. Muhafdah posted an account of his treatment by the police on Twitter after he was released.

Bahrain has jailed several other prominent rights activists recently. Mr. Rajab's predecessor as president of the human rights center, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, was sentenced to life in prison by a military court for his role in last year's protests. That verdict was voided in April and Mr. Khawaja and several other activists are now waiting for a court to rule following a retrial.

Mr. Khawaja's daughter, Zainab, who has charted the protest movement in Bahrain on her @AngryArabiya Twitter feed, was also jailed last month.



Video of Miners Shot by South African Police

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

As our colleague, Lydia Polgreen reports, at least 18 striking miners were shot dead on Thursday by South African police who opened fire as a crowd approached, carrying machetes and sticks at Lonmin's platinum mine in Marikana.

News camera crews were at the mine covering the labor unrest when the shooting began. A camera crew from eNewsChannel in South Africa captured this video, which shows graphic images of police firing into the crowd.

Graphic images from a platinum mine where South African police opened fire on striking miners, carrying machetes and sticks. Courtesy of eNews Channel Africa



Russia Assigns Bodyguards to Judge Ahead of Verdict in Pussy Riot Trial

By ANDREW ROTH and ROBERT MACKEY

MOSCOW â€" Russian authorities announced on Thursday that bodyguards have been assigned to protect the judge presiding over the trial of three members of the all-female protest band Pussy Riot, after unspecified threats. The authorities did not describe the threats to the judge, Marina Syrova, who is expected to announce a verdict and possible jail terms for the women on Friday.

The women have been in jail since March, shortly after the band staged an audacious protest against Russian leader Vladimir Putin inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The group posted a recording of that performance on YouTube, showing five women wearing brightly colored balaclavas, staging an impromptu performance before the alter of the cathedral, punctuated with three cries of, “Holy Mother, send Putin packing!”

A copy of video originally posted on YouTube by members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot shows the group's “punk prayer service” in a Moscow cathedral in February.

The reported threats against the judge underlined the growing prominence of the case, which has attracted international attention, in part because a host of musicians - from Franz Ferdinand to Madonna to Peaches - have denounced the trial as an unwarranted assault on freedom of speech and expression.

Close observers of the Russian political and legal system say that despite the international pressure, there is little chance that the three women - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30 - will walk free on Friday. “Imagine some 500 people and journalists are gathered near the courthouse and then they walk out triumphantly like victors,” said Zoya Svetova, a reporter who covers the courts for The New Times, an independent Moscow weekly. “That would b e impossible for Putin's system.”

As The New Times reports, Paul McCartney added his name on Thursday to the list of Pussy Riot supporters, publishing a letter to the three women on his Web site. “Dear Nadya, Katya & Masha,” the former Beatle wrote. His letter continued:

I'm writing to show my support for you at this difficult time. I would like you to know that I very much hope the Russian authorities would support the principle of free speech for all their citizens and not feel that they have to punish you for your protest. Many people in the civilized world are allowed to voice their opinions and as long as they do not hurt anyone in doing so I believe this is the best way forward for all societies. I hope you can stay strong and believe that I and many others like me who believe in free speech will do everything in our power to support you and the idea of artistic freedom.

While there is no sign that the Russian president is a fan of the American riot grrrl movement that inspired the members of Pussy Riot, Mr. Putin is known to be a lover of rock music from an earlier era. In 2009, his spokesman wrote to The Times of London to deny a report that Mr. Putin had imported an Abba tribute band for a command performance. In the letter, the spokesman wrote: “Mr. Putin is more of a Beatles fan than an Abba one.” A year earlier, Mr. Putin had expressed his admiration for the Beatles in an interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber. “Several generations of Russians were brought up on and had a special feeling for The Beatles,” the Russian leader told the composer. “Some years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul McCartney. Their songs are still at the summit.”

Regular readers of The Lede might recall that Mr. Putin gave another clue to his musical tastes in late 2009, when he took to the stage during a benefit concert for children with cancer in St. Petersburg to sing “Blueberry Hill.”

Video of Vladimir Putin's rendition of “Blueberry Hill,” at a benefit concert in St. Petersburg in 2009.

It is not surprising that many consider the Pussy Riot verdict a foregone conclusion. The Moscow city court system had only a 0.7 percent acquittal rate in criminal trials in 2011, handing down not-guilty verdicts in just 239 of the 35,626 cases tried in court that year. Instead, most are waiting to see whether the judge will grant a prosecutor's request to deliver sentences of three years in a prison colony.

The authorities have sent mixed signals. Mr. Putin set the odds for a spin when he told journalists this month in London that the young women should “not be judged too harshly.” In the same interview, however, he said that there was nothing good about their stunt in the church and that the decision was up to the court. Some supporters of the women interpreted the president's remarks as pa rt of a ruse to make the prosecution seem independent of political considerations.

Russians, meanwhile, are divided over the trial. While a mere 5 percent of respondents polled last month by the Levada Center said that the women should be let off without punishment, only 15 percent supported a jail term of more than two years. Most, called for a lighter punishment, and 29 percent said the women should be sentenced to community service.

Anastasia Volochkova, a former prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet known for her sharp, often unprintable comments, wrote on her blog that the trial was damaging the Church's public image. “The Church should call on them to publicly repent, and let them fight for truth, cleaning public toilets until they shine!!!”

She was not the only one to suggest an unorthodox punishment. As our colleague David Herszenhorn reported, the case has driven a wedge between members of the Russian Orthodox Church as well.

The Rev. Ale ksandr L. Ptitsyn, of Moscow's Church of the Exultation of the Cross, told The Times this month that the women would probably have been given “a slap” on the behind if they had performed in his Church without stirring up huge publicity, but because they made efforts to publicly offend the church he said a two-year suspended sentence was more appropriate.

In his defense of the women in March, the protest leader Aleksei Navalny, a Christian, called on the Russian Orthodox Church to “display mercy and forgive the silly girls, ask for their immediate release before trial, and hold an educative conversation with them when they are released.”

Under Russian law, the charges against the women - hooliganism motivated by religious hatred - carry a maximum penalty of seven years in jail. Ms. Svetova, the New Times reporter, said that the requested three-year sentence was more likely â€" but that anything was possible. The judge “could give four years â€" it has ha ppened before. But my prognosis is that it will be less,” she said.

The trial has also raised concerns about the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the state. The Russian news site Gazeta.ru reports on Thursday that the city of Omsk “banned a Zombie Walk at the request of local diocese, Interfax reports, citing walk organizer Mikhail Yakovlev.” Mr. Yakovelev connected the banned walk to the prosecution of the musicians, noting: “both in the Pussy Riot case and in ours we see that the church is interfering not only with the matters of state, but also in criminal cases and cultural issues.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos Oil and once Russia's richest man, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on tax charges in 2005 and then had his prison sentence extended to 2017, offered little in the way of a prediction. In an open letter to the three women on trial, he wrote: “I want to hope that your prison experience will end s oon.”

In his statement, Mr. Khodorkovsky also noted that the women are being prosecuted in the same courtroom, and seated behind the same glass enclosure, used in his trial.

It is painful to watch what is taking place in the Khamovnichesky Court of the city of Moscow, where Masha, Nadya, and Katya are on trial. The word “trial” is applicable here only in the sense in which it was used by the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages.

I know this aquarium in courtroom number 7 well â€" they made it especially for me and Platon, “just for us”, after the ECHR had declared that keeping defendants behind bars is degrading and violates the Convention on Human Rights.



Police Video on Handcuffed Man\'s Death Does Little to Calm Doubts

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

This police video was intended to show how a handcuffed man could shoot himself in the head.

The police in Jonesboro, Ark., have released a video that they say shows how a 21-year old man, Chavis Carter, could have been able to shoot himself in the head while handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car. But the video appeared to do little to calm the skepticism that continues to swell on social media networks after Mr. Carter was fatally shot on July 29.

The police are preparing to release, possibly later on Thursday, another video extracted from a dashboard camera in the patrol car where Mr. Carter was placed after his arrest, Sgt. Lyle Waterworth, with the Jonesboro Police Department, said.

Protests and petitions have been circulated online and calls for the resignation of the Jonesboro police chief, Michael Yates, and for the records of the officers involv ed in Mr. Carter's arrest to be made public have accelerated in the wake of Mr. Carter's death. Some have compared the case of Mr. Carter, who is black and from Tennessee, to that of Trayvon Martin, the black youth shot and killed by a crime watch volunteer in Florida earlier this year.

Early on Thursday, a Federal Bureau of Investigation regional spokeswoman, Kimberly Brunell, said the agency was “monitoring” developments related to the death but it has not announced the start of an official investigation.

The video, which is just over two minutes and was released on Wednesday, was not intended to serve as evidence that Mr. Carter shot himself in the head, but instead to show that it was possible, according to a statement broadcast in the initial frames of the footage. It then shows several officers demonstrating, one after another, by twisting around and putting a gun to their heads, with their right hands, while handcuffed.

A Memphis television channel, WREG, showed the video to Mr. Carter's mother, who made it apparent that the demonstration did little to convince her.

In an earlier interview with the channel soon after his death, she said her son was left-handed and that she believed the police killed him

Mr. Carter was arrested on a street in Jonesboro at about 9:50 p.m. after the vehicle he was in was stopped by the police. A Jonesboro police statement said that a small amount of marijuana and bags “commonly used to package drugs” were discovered in his pocket. After officers learned Mr. Carter had a warrant active in Mississippi, he was searched again and handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car.

Officers “noted the smell of something burning” and then “noticed Carter unresponsive with a quantity of blood on him,” the statement said. A .380 caliber Cobra semiautomatic firearm was “discovered,” and a “projectile” was found in the back seat, it said.

Sgt. Waterworth added in a telephone call that the two officers involved in the man's arrest were put on paid administrative leave.

Mr. Carter's death inspired inquiries into the past records of the officers in the department. A local Arkansas n ews outlet, KAIT8.com and Region 8 News, published the records of the policemen involved in arresting Mr. Carter. The Arkansas Times blog also dredged up the records of the police chief and the controversy that has surrounded his previous police work in Georgia.

A Facebook page called Justice for Chavis Carter, which had nearly 2,000 members, circulated online petitions calling for a full investigation into the death.

The finalcall.com newspaper and Web site also interviewed Mr. Carter's mother, who said:

“I'm just heartbroken. I just want to know what really happened. … My child was never suicidal. He would never kill himself. My son was full of joy, full of life, full of ambition.”



Videos of Top Teachers Explaining Their Craft

By MOTOKO RICH

Victoria Tyson, a top performing 10th-grade world history teacher at School Without Walls in Washington, D.C., shares her teaching tips.

Teachers are human, after all, and they don't like to be bored any more than the rest of us.

As we report, teachers in the Washington, D.C., public schools can now watch their best performing colleagues at work in the classroom.

Instead of setting up a camera at the back of the room and film a whole class, C-Span style, the district teamed up with a reality television company. The result is a collection that showcases a range of teachers, subjects and grade levels. In interviews filmed in a style familiar to anyone who's watched “Survivor” or “The Bachelor,” the teachers explain a little about what they are trying to get their students to learn, and then quick jump cuts land on snippets from the classroom.

Most of the videos will be available only to Washington teachers who have access to a password protected portal. Jill Nyhus, senior director of technology in Washington, said that the district wanted to show parents and teaching recruits, though, a few samples of what happens in D.C. classrooms. So, the district has made a few available on its Web site and YouTube.

There is Aika Aggarwal, a fourth-grade teacher at Turner Green Elementary, delivering a lesson on decimals.

As much as showing the content of the classes, the videos help teachers identify techniques for organizing a lesson or eliciting sophisticated questions from students.

In this video, the preschool teacher Scott Harding demonstrates how he explains “content clearly” to his young students at Maury Elementary School.

The District of Columbia is not the only public school district or educational organization that is using video for the professional develop ment of teachers. Teaching Channel, a nonprofit, has amassed more than 500 videos of teachers who are recommended by school districts, teaching organizations and a panel of advisers.

On one of its videos on YouTube, Loredana Wicketts has multiple objectives in her fourth-grade history lesson about Harriet Tubman.

And several charter management organizations, which have tried to anatomize some teaching technique into a science as much as an art, rely heavily on video to help train new recruits.

Uncommon Schools, which runs 32 schools, mostly in Brooklyn and Newark, show videos like these during teacher training.

A YouTube video shows Juliana Worrell, a first-grade teacher, with her students at North Star Academy Vailsburg Elementary School.

KIPP, one of the most well-known charter school chains, last year filmed 10 of its exemplary teachers from around the country and is in the process of building a library for all KIPP teachers.



Image of the Day: August 16

August 16, 2012, 11:12 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Does Your College Treat You Like a Child?

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

After a recent post on Jodhpur's emergence as an education hub, India Ink received comments describing unreasonable restrictions on college campuses. We scoured the Internet and found many rules in college dormitories, known as hostels in India, that imposed curfews and bans on certain activities even though most of the students are adults. Moreover, the rules for women were often more restrictive. Here's a selection:

MCM DAV College for Women

The resident should positively return to the hostel by 5 p.m.; otherwise she will not be allowed to enter without the permission of the principal.

Outings will be allowed to the resident every weekend. They can avail of only two days out and two nights out in a month.

Evening assembly is compulsory for all residents.

Residents must observe study hours strictly from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. [college's emphasis]

White uniform is compulsory on Monday.

Other rules are listed here.

 Loyola College

On all the days excepting Saturdays, the FIRST BELL for silence is rung at 8:25 p.m. And the SECOND BELL is rung at 8:30 p.m. At the stroke of the first bell, all are to move towards their respective rooms and at the stroke of the second bell the GRAND SILENCE begins and the hostellers are to be in their rooms. A short prayer after the second bell marks the beginning of the Grand Silence. This GRAND SILENCE lasts till the start of the time for breakfast of the following day. Avoid roaming around the hostel premises during the Grand Silence. Use of mobile phones during the silence hours is strictly prohibited and will be confiscated if found using. No one should be found in another's room during Grand Silence. [sic]

Camera cell-phones are totally banned from the college campus and hence also from the hostel premises. Possession of camera cell-phones will lead to confiscation by the authorities.

Moving about in lungi (kailee) in public places such as mess halls, Sauliere Hall and during public worship is to be avoided.

Read the other rules here.

V.I.T. University

Parents should not encourage students to go to picnics/tours outside Vellore [the city, where the main campus is located].

Perfect silence is to be maintained in the hostel premises including rooms, bathrooms, dining halls, corridors, common areas etc.

Use of abusive, vulgar and unparliamentarily [sic] language against the hostel/mess staff is strictly forbidden.

Day scholars are not allowed in the hostel. Hostellers should not encourage entry of day scholars.

Celebrating birthday parties inside the hostel rooms is strictly prohibited.

Collection of donation for any purpose (religious/ otherwise) is also strictly prohibited.

Students are not allowed to play skating rollers and o ther outdoor games inside the hostel to prevent breakages and accidents. Sliding along the hand rails/rest of stairs and fast running/ climbing down should be totally avoided to prevent accidents.

Absentees/latecomers (without prior permission from the Warden) will be suitably punished.

In case of any quarrel between or among room-mates, it should be reported to the Warden for appropriate action.

Students are not allowed to keep any power-driven two-wheeler vehicles in the hostel.

The hostellers are not allowed to keep air coolers, musical instruments, cassette record players, and computers, TV, electric irons or any electrical equipment without written permission of the Chief Warden. Unauthorized possession will lead to confiscation of the goods.

The usage of computer is for academic purpose only.

The University/ Hostel authorities will conduct surprise checks periodically, and if anyone is found violating the above rule [on computer usag e], disciplinary action will be taken against him/her.

You can read the other rules here.

Global Group of Institutions

Hostelites are not permitted to allow visitors of the opposite sex into rooms at any time for whatever reason. Any hostelites found violating this rule will be evicted from the hostel.

Possessions, distribution and use of firearms, lethal weapons including air gun, contraband drugs, alcohol, toxic and hazardous material are strictly prohibited in the hostel. Keeping electric appliances such as T.V., VCR, heater, iron, oven etc. in the rooms is also prohibited.

Other rules are listed here.

 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi:

For girls: All residents should be normally back in the hostel by 8:30 p.m. In the pursuit of their academic work, they may stay in their laboratories, computer center or library till 11 p.m. but be back in the hostel latest by 11 p.m.

I.I.T. Delhi lists no such rule for the “boys.” All rules specific to “boys” have to do with outsiders' visits. Those for “girls” are related to keeping them in the hostel and monitoring their whereabouts if they stay out late.
You can see the rules here.

“Women need more protection,” Professor S.K. Gupta, dean of student affairs at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, told India Ink. “If they go out at 2 a.m. and something happens, who'll be responsible? Boys - no one says anything.”

Students from various colleges say that not all rules are rigorously followed. Sometimes they are bent, and wardens turn a blind eye.

In other cases, the authorities have been criticized for creating arbitrary rules as a short-term solution to a problem.

Noopur Raval, 21, who did her master's program in Jawaharlal Nehru University, or J.N.U., in Delhi, said that after a fire in the room opposite hers in the dormitory in January, h eaters were banned. Since there's no central heating in the building, the heaters had provided the only source of warmth at a time when the temperature dipped as low as 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The wardens did rounds and confiscated kettles and heaters, slapped fines and so on claiming they had all the right to, flashing the J.N.U. hostel manual copy,” said Ms. Raval. But she said after students called for a meeting and decided that wardens should educate students about precautions they need to take and that alternate arrangements should be made for heating, the wardens “nodded vigorously and forgot about it.”

“I suspect students have started using appliances again,” said Ms. Raval, who recently graduated. “I am not blaming wardens, but it's really stupid if extremely educated professors in a premier university who preach stuff in classes resort to stupid, quick solutions just to evade the matter.”

A senior warden of Ms. R aval's dormitory declined to comment, saying it's a controversial topic.

Do you think these rules are justified? Should there be different rules for women and men in college dorms? Feel free to write to us about specific rules that your college mandates, in the comments section below.



Rumors Lead People from Northeast to Flee Bangalore

By HARI KUMAR

Wild rumors of pending attacks led several thousand people to flee Bangalore on Wednesday night because of fears that violence in India's northeastern region would somehow spread south.

Those fleeing were primarily from the state of Assam, where rioting between tribal and Muslim communities has led to more than 75 deaths, the complete destruction of many villages and the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Panicked students, workers and families thronged Bangalore's main railway station and took every spot available on trains headed toward Assam.

Two special trains were arranged to handle the demand, but they were not enough to clear the station of all those seeking to leave. Television news programs showed video footage of a sea of passengers pushing their way onto trains and dumping their luggage through windows.

R. Ashoka, the deputy chief minister and home minister of Karnataka St ate, went to the railway station and tried to assure those present that the rumors were false and that they would be protected. “Up until now, no incident has happened. All are rumors. Bangalore is safe. Karnataka is safe,” Mr. Ashoka said. “I assure the students of Assam and the northeast full safety and security.”

Normally, 300 to 400 passengers board trains to the northeast on a daily basis from Bangalore. “Yesterday, 6,832 unreserved tickets to Guwahati were sold,” A. K. Agarwal, the deputy regional railway manager in Bangalore, was quoted as saying in media reports.

The Assam violence and the media coverage it has engendered have rippled throughout India's vast Muslim community. Representatives of the Hindu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party have blamed illegal immigrants from Bangladesh for the violence, although there is little evidence that such immigration has played any role.

A Muslim group in Mumbai held a protest last week that soon beca me violent, leading to at least two deaths, scores of injuries and severe property damage. Other minor incidents broke out in Pune, Maharashtra, and Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

A group of students from the northeast was invited to visit Jagadish Shivappa Shettar, Karnataka's chief minister, on Thursday morning to get still more reassurances. “We are with you,” he said. “There is nothing to worry about. Don't believe in rumors.”



Floundering Foes Help Indian Lawmakers

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“There are times when the quality of the people who hate you is the most generous compliment you can receive,” Manu Joseph wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “The Indian National Congress, which heads the government in Delhi, is a beneficiary of its foes.”

In early 2011, “mired in the fallout of major political scandals, the Congress party appeared doomed,” Mr. Joseph wrote. But after a wave of festive, “sometimes farcical, anti-corruption demonstrations against it heralded by rustic revolutionaries, the Congress has ended up looking better than before,” he wrote, “while the anti-corruption movement has emerged as a traffic hazard.”

The “epilogue” of the anti-corruption movement unfolded on Tuesday in Delhi, he wrote. As the saffron-clad yoga teacher Baba Ramdev, who presides over an alternative-medicine empire worth hundreds of millions of rupees demanded that the government “bri ng back” the billions of rupees of “illicit money that wealthy Indians are alleged to have stashed away in overseas tax havens,” Mr. Joseph wrote.

Mr. Ramdev's own companies are under investigation for tax evasion, a charge Mr. Ramdev has consistently denied.

What Mr. Ramdev has done is irreversibly presented the anti-corruption movement exactly the way the Congress party wants - the secular and liberal Congress versus the Hindu right wing. So, what Indians at first thought was a new struggle has become an old, tired contest between two familiar ideologies.

Anna Hazare's movement, at its peak, did threaten to draw away the constituency of the Congress party. But after Mr. Hazare became the face of the anti-corruption movement in April last year, he floundered. In December, when he attempted yet another fast, this time in Mumbai, and asked Indians to “fill the jails” in protest against political corruption, he discovered that his clout had waned. People still liked him and his cause, but they were getting bored with him.

A few weeks ago, when he arrived in Delhi for what he claimed was an “indefinite fast,” he found that the public and news media support for him had diminished further. He called off his fast midway, saying that fasts were “a waste of time.”

Read the full article.



Indian Art Exhibition Makes a Rare Stop in China

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“It is said that two thousand years ago, two priests brought the first Buddhist scriptures from India to China on the back of a pure white horse,” Clare Pennington wrote in The New York Times.

As with those Buddhist scriptures millennia ago, Ms.Pennington wrote, “paintings covered in bindis, sculptures crafted in the furniture markets of Mumbai and miniature cities bent from the metal of India's scrap heaps,” have traveled into the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a prominent contemporary art museums in China for the show “Indian Highway.”

Produced in conjunction with London's Serpentine Gallery the show features 29 artists and 130 individual pieces, she wrote. And it is “the largest show of art from India to ever make it to China, where any display of culture from India is rare.”

In an article about this exhibit, the state-run Beijing News asked : “Will Indian art overtake China's?” One Chinese Internet user wrote on a microblog that the exhibit showed that “between our countries, there is underlying but fierce competition.”

Some in China worried that Guy and Myriam Ullens, the founders of the art center here and owners of an important collection of Chinese art, were shifting their interests from Chinese to Indian art. Last year they put 105 Chinese pieces up for auction, while several of the works on show in Beijing are Indian additions to their collection.

Read the full article.



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