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	170 million Dalit people are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system by Peter Tatchell The Guardian India   Sept 2008   The segregation and abuse of the low-caste Dalit people is a stain on India"s reputation.   Eight people were convicted on Monday of the murder of four members of a lower-caste Dalit family in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.   A Dalit farmer"s wife, daughter and two sons were lynched and beaten to death by an upper-caste mob in a land dispute in 2006. The women were also raped.   What is unusual about this case is that the perpetrators were successfully prosecuted. Normally, the killers of Dalits walk free.   One reason why the murderers have been bought to justice is the rising tide of Dalit militancy. There has been a wave of mass demonstrations by Dalit people demanding justice and equal treatment. Newly confident and organised, the Dalits are fighting back with strikes and boycotts.   Shaken by this burgeoning protest movement, some Indian authorities are finally being pushed and pressured into action, albeit slowly and exceptionally.   About time too. India"s 170 million Dalit people, formerly known as "untouchables," are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. They are victims of the most extreme form of caste discrimination. It is, in many ways, analogous to racism. By virtue of their birth into a Dalit family and community, they are condemned forever to a life of social stigma, exclusion and victimisation.   Human Rights Watch has condemned India"s abuse of its Dalit people as a "hidden apartheid," comparable to the institutional discrimination of pre-democratic South Africa.   According to a major Human Rights Watch report, Dalit people are still today seen by many Indians as sub-human and undeserving of basic rights. Shunned as inferiors and social outcasts, they suffer insults, violence, rape, discrimination and impoverishment. Often forced into de facto slave labour, they are made to eat, sleep and pray separately, and denied equal education and healthcare. In some schools, Dalit children are required to sit separately, at the back of the classroom.   Similar segregation happens in housing, temples, hospitals and in relief camps after natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Many Dalits are refused use of land and water wells. Others are pressed into degrading jobs, ranging from prostitution to the manual clearing of human waste. Payment is often in food, not money. Of those who get paid cash, many earn the equivalent of less than 50p for an eight-hour day.   The plight of the Dalits is well-known to the Indian government. In 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first serving Indian prime minister to acknowledge a parallel between the practice of "untouchability" and the abuses of apartheid.   He condemned anti-Dalit casteism as a "blot on humanity", adding: "Even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country."   This failure by successive Indian governments to adequately address the subhuman mistreatment of the Dalit people was exposed in 1999 by Human Rights Watch.   Similar criticisms were voiced in a 2007 report by the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination. It reiterated that laws protecting Dalits were not strong enough and that existing laws were often not enforced. No surprise there. Anti-Dalit casteism is also deeply entrenched among law enforcement agencies, including government officials, police officers, judges and lawyers. Even many of the people who are employed to ensure the protection of Dalit human rights are either hostile, indifferent or fearful of a backlash if they do their job with any effectiveness.   Over 100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson and other abuses against Dalits are reported in India each year.   Some states record conviction rates as low as 2-3%. Moreover, the police themselves are sometimes the perpetrators of abuses against Dalit people. Human Rights Watch confirms that police officers have been guilty of detaining, torturing and extorting money from Dalits.   These abuses are not happening in apartheid-era South Africa. They are occurring, with virtual impunity, in modern-day India – the world"s largest democracy and an emerging economic superpower.   If India wants to be an internationally respected world player, as it has every right to be, it needs to eradicate this blight on its national character. As long as the feudal caste system exists, India will never fulfil its potential, economically or ethically.
	Jakarta to appeal over Suharto funds by Transparency International & news agencies Indonesia   Sept 2008   The Indonesian government plans to appeal against a Supreme Court decision granting the youngest son of former President Suharto access to over $US127 million of frozen funds.   Hutomo Mandala Putra Suharto, also known as Tommy Suharto, is under investigation over various deals, as the government tries to recover funds allegedly stolen by his family.   Transparency International estimates the Suharto family assets are worth up to $35 billion, and include interests in cars, airlines and property.   Last month Jakarta seized funds from Tommy Suharto"s car company and put the money in a government account. But the Supreme Court overturned an earlier High Court decision which had endorsed the government"s actions.   Greg Barton, Indonesian specialist at Monash University in Australia, told reporters it is not clear why the Supreme Court overturned the decision.   "There are two possibilities. It may simply be that in straight forward legal terms the government wasn"t on strong grounds to [seize the money]," Dr Barton said.   "The second possibility is that, although Indonesia has made good progress the last decade and has stabilised democracy, the legal system has a long way to catch up and the court systems are notoriously corrupt and judgements can be bought for money."   He says the amount of money that the Suharto family command is "tremendous" so "their capacity to subvert justice is almost unlimited."   "Tommy should still be in jail on a murder charge - he only served five years of that sentence and is out so that gives you an indication of the sort of power he has over the legal process."   Indonesia"s judiciary ranked lowest in a recent survey of foreign business executives by Hong Kong consulting firm, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.   Dr Barton says the latest court decision on Suharto money could reinforce that negative perception of Indonesia"s legal system.   "We have to allow for that first possibility that this may be just one of those legal cases that in any jurisdiction would be hard to argue for reasons of technicalities or reasons of lack of justification," he said.   "But there is no getting away from the fact that although Indonesia"s made fantastic progress towards implementing democracy and many forms of accountability in government, the institutional side of reform lags badly and this is really seen in the legal system.   "It"ll be decades really before the Indonesian legal system can be seen as reasonably accountable."   Successive governments since the fall of Suharto in 1998 have attempted to recover tens of billions of dollars from the Suharto family.   Dr Barton says the attempts have been a disaster, with little of the stolen assets recovered. However, he says despite the respect Suharto was given up until his death earlier this year, his family do not have the same immunity.   Dr Barton says despite the Supreme Court decision in the Tommy Suharto case, Indonesia is doing things better.   "There is some hope - if nothing else, having this saga played out in public is good," he said. "It"s good that people can see that the government of this day is standing up against the Suharto family and is doing its best, so that"s very important whatever the outcome."
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