Sunday, August 30, 2009

India, Sundays Featured Country, Lets Blog

As you know I have been paying quite a bit of "attention" to the great India this month so I thought I might as well conclude with a bit more relevant human rights information. I do not want to leave you hanging uninformed. I am going to re-add the five links to remind you of the previous posts and then proceed with my topic for this one: 1. http://wwwhumanwrites.blogspot.com/2009/08/indiaarrest-of-11-year-old-girl-latest.html 2. http://wwwhumanwrites.blogspot.com/2009/08/cape-argus-india-police-in-human-rights.html 3. http://wwwhumanwrites.blogspot.com/2009/08/subir-bhowmik-column-north-east-india.html 4. http://wwwhumanwrites.blogspot.com/2009/08/global-voices-online-india-violation-of.html 5. http://wwwhumanwrites.blogspot.com/2009/08/solomonia-human-rights-watch-board.html OK, so as you can see, like I said, India seemed to be coming up quite a bit in human rights discussion this month and its not going to get any better with this post. I am simply going to give you some information I feel is relevant. Anyways we had been talking quite a bit about police brutality. Amnesty International had mentioned a law on the books that had given the Indian police authority to deal with "militia" which also seems to include civilians, in such harsh manners, because of this law. However, these are just the "tip" of the iceberg to state mildly what I found out after further researching the human rights abuses, that have been alleged to be occurring in India. Before I go there, I want to share with you what this country of over 1 billion people does to survive economically and who they do business with. The reason for this is because this can have implications as to how the rest of the world views the way in which they best "deal" with human rights abuses there. I know it sounds like, what is he trying to say? Just take it like I have stated it. India's main sources of exports are petroleum products, textile goods, gems, jewelry, engineering goods, chemicals, and leather manufacturers. In turn there main source of imports are crude oil, machinery, gems, fertilizer, and chemicals. The countries they do business with by percentage are Exports: US 15%, China 8.7%, UAE 8.7%, UK4.4% (2007) Imports: China 10.6%, US 7.8%, Germany 4.4%, Singapore 4.4%. So you are scratching your head and saying so how is this relevant to human rights abuse? What does this all mean? India is doing business, BIG business with the US, China, and The United Arab Emirates. These are major "world players" from a global political and economic perspective. So, what, if anything, is being done about these Indian human rights issues? Furthermore, China's human rights record is horrendous as most people already know correct? We have not even discussed the UAE as of yet. But, your about to find out that India's human rights record is not so good either. According to the CIA World Fact-book:
current situation: India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation; internal forced labor may constitute India's largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labor working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories; women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage; children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups; India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation; Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation; men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East. Of course the Middle East is implicated right? Interesting..Where???
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html Accessed 30 Aug 2009 This, is not a pretty picture. If you glance over to your right and scroll down a bit, you will see a new post regarding the National Human Rights Commission for India. Scroll through the pages. You will be amazed at how much information you will find about the human rights abuse(s) that occur in the vast land and second largest populated country in the world. Remember; Global Human Rights Are For Everyone Get It? William