SRI LANKA: Peace Isn't That Different From War

By Anuj Chopra

JAFFNA, SRI LANKA — It's only an hour's airtime from Sri Lanka's capital city, Colombo, to the Jaffna peninsula at the northern tip of the island, but getting there is a miserable ordeal that can kill nearly half a day. Suitcases in hand, heaving and sweating for hours under the blazing sun, passengers endure a gauntlet of checkpoints, where they are repeatedly stopped, questioned, frisked and hassled. Most of the travelers are ethnic Tamils, a minority on the island, although they're the overwhelming majority in the battle-scarred north. Some, without the necessary paperwork, are turned back. No one dares to protest. The slightest disruption can halt air service at any time. After five sweltering hours of queuing up, a Tamil passenger elbows me in the ribs and mutters: "This is how you're treated when you're taken to a prison camp."...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/164219

Krishnan Chinnapayan, a rat catcher from India's impoverished Irula community. Photo by Anuj Chopra

A better rat trap improves the lot of low Hindu caste

By Anuj Chopra

SIRIGUMI, INDIA -- The sun was blazing down on Krishnan Chinnapayan as he wiped the sweat from his chalky brow and stood on an arid patch of farmland, preparing for what seemed to be a military mission. "They can sense us," he said, pointing at a nearby burrow. "They are very clever creatures."

Through a hand-operated air pump attached to a cylindrical device, a torrent of smoke then entered the burrow. Seconds later, Chinnapayan pulled out a huge brown rat from a gray blanket of smoke, holding it by its tail before killing it.

In this impoverished tribal belt in southern Tamil Nadu state, catching rats has been a primary job for members of Chinnapayan's Irula tribe - an impoverished community of 3 million people at the bottom rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy who have often found themselves teetering on the brink of starvation.

But the introduction of innovative rat traps has remarkably reversed the Irulas' plight. By curbing the amount of rodents that have long menaced Indian farmers, the tribe has seen its income triple in the past three years, while bringing them new respect. The Irulas, who were once jeered by many locals as "rodent assassins," are now being touted as saviors by many farmers...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/06/MN32TVLQQ.DTL

Guna Ponraj, an autorickshaw driver, who sold one of his kidneys in exchange for a mound of cash . Photo by Anuj Chopra

India's Black Market Racket in Human Kidneys

By Anuj Chopra

CHENNAI, INDIA— Tears well up in Guna Ponraj's rheumy eyes as he stares at the hideous scar running down his side. A year ago, he consented to a practice he assumed would be the swiftest way to escape his mounting debts: swapping a kidney for cash.
An organ procurer promised Ponraj, 38, an auto rickshaw driver with a fourth-grade education, $2,500 for one of his kidneys. "Humans don't need two kidneys, I was made to believe," he says, now lamenting his decision. "I can sell my extra kidney and become rich, I thought." But he was swindled and received only half that much. And since the operation, Ponraj often misses work because of excruciating pain around his hip, pushing him more deeply into debt.Many Indian cities, such as Chennai in southern India, are becoming hubs for the illicit kidney business, despite a 1994 ban on such trade in human organs. Organized rings of hustlers, working in cooperation with some doctors, prowl slum neighborhoods for vulnerable donors like Ponraj to supply a growing number of mainly foreign patients seeking kidney transplants...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/02/01/indias-black-market-racket-in-human-kidneys.html

BURMA: VOICES OF DISSENT

By Anuj Chopra

I came to Burma in late August to investigate the growing protests sparked by government fuel price hikes -- just weeks before smaller protests swelled to massive demonstrations led by tens of thousands of monks. In a religiously devout country where nearly 80 percent of the population is Buddhist, the monks hold tremendous sway over the Burmese people.

A few days after I arrived, walking down Rangoon's busy Shwe Gon Daing street, I encountered a small but angry group of about 35 protesters chanting slogans against the government's decision to raise fuel prices. Security officials in plain clothes emerged on the scene quickly. Shops in the area rolled down their shutters. Journalists were ordered to stay on the other side of the road and refrain from taking pictures, and a waiting crowd watched in nervous anticipation. The protesters were roughed up -- some of them punched in the face -- and then tossed into a waiting police truck. The small demonstration was crushed in a matter of minutes. It's not the army in uniforms beating up people, I noticed, but thugs probably hired by the junta. I wondered if the military regime feels it has less direct culpability that way. I was watching from a distance like a curious bystander and didn't risk taking out my camera. But the junta's photographers were busy clicking pictures of the crowd. I was told they keep track of who is attending these protest rallies. If the same people are seen in more than two protest rallies, they fall under the government's radar of suspicion. In these early weeks of the protest public participation is still conspicuously low. For days the government paper, The New Light of Myanmar, has been carrying ominous articles warning protesters that if they didn't cease and desist, they could be in jail for up to 20 years. Even the air coughs fear...

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/10/burma_voices_of.html

SCENES FROM THE STREETS OF RANGOON...
Nearly 90% of Burmese live close to or at the poverty line; the per capita income is a meager $175, even below neighboring Bangladesh and Chad; Burma's military dictatorship spends 40% of the budget on the upkeep of its 450,000-strong army - the largest in South East Asia; only a sliver of the budget goes to health care and education.

BURMA: BLOOD ON BURGUNDY

By Anuj Chopra

We've been inundated with Myanmar for the last few days. As the people of this tiny nation turn out in force to protest their lack of democratic rights, Myanmar’s Orwellian dictatorship, which has ruled the country for 45 years, has clamped down with an iron fist.

The world is outraged at the use of force on peaceful demonstrators. However, just next door, Indians watch with serene detachment. The MEA has its own prosaic reasons for its insipid response to the “internal matters” of a restive neighbour: India needs to “safeguard its strategic interests”, we’re told. India has a lot to lose if it supports a weak democratic movement that is bound to be crushed — Myanmar can, after all, slake India’s unquenchable thirst for gas. It can also help vanquish ULFA, India’s nemesis in the Northeast. And India needs to mollycoddle Myanmar to create a buffer for China, our rival Asian behemoth.

So India’s okay doing business with an odious regime that wages war on its own people, dragoons them into forced labour, pauperises a once-thriving nation and muzzles all dissent. There is no national outrage as India sells weapons to a brutal regime, rendering toothless a decade-old EU arms embargo meant to pressure the junta to restore democracy.

I found the indifference even more disconcerting after I travelled to Myanmar in August. The recent protests have been glossed over with a patina of democratic yearnings, but they, just like Myanmar’s 1988 uprising for democracy, were triggered by the worsening economic hardships of ordinary Myanmarese...
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ne131007BLOOD.asp

RAVAGED BY WAR

Scenes of destruction in 2006 from Trincomalee district, Sri Lanka. Relentless fighting between the Tamil Tigers (L.T.T.E) and the Sri Lankan Army had forced residents of Thoppur village to flee their homes. After many agonizing weeks in relief camps, when fighting finally ceased, they returned to their village, only to find devastation where their houses once stood. (Photos by Anuj Chopra)




While passing through Thoppur village, I met S. Thangaratnam, a Tamil man, lugging a semi-exploded shell on his shoulder, and another one in his hand. Heavy shelling had destroyed most houses in Thoppur. These shells had fallen on Thangaratnam's house. An unemployed man, he planned to sell them for their iron value.