Political India: Engaging America

A group of 250 legal experts including a former professor of United States President Barack Obama has written a letter condemning the U.S.' treatment of Bradley Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst held responsible for leaking government documents to Wikileaks.

Mr. Manning, who was charged with giving the whistleblower website documents pertaining to the U.S. military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and also a controversial cache of State Department cables, has been in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, for the last nine months.

Describing his conditions of confinement as “illegal and immoral,” Mr. Obama's former teacher at Harvard University, Laurence Tribe, joined numerous peers to argue that if Mr. Manning's harsh treatment was continued by the Pentagon, it may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, “the administration or application…of… procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”

Mr. Manning's routine in the Quantico military facility confines him to his cell for 23 hours a day, the legal specialists wrote. They said during the remaining hour, he was only permitted to walk in circles in another room, with no contact with any person whatsoever.

Mr. Manning was also banned from dozing or relaxing during the day, subjected to constant monitoring, and during the past week he was said to have been “forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a “smock” under claims of risk to himself that he disputes”.

The letter said the Obama administration had supplied no evidence that Mr. Manning's treatment reflected any concern for his own safety or that of other inmates, and “Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.”

Numerous other groups and prominent individuals have called on the Pentagon to end it, some controversially. Last month, the former U.S. State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, resigned after calling the Pentagon's actions “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.

Mr. Crowley, highest-profile casualty over the Manning affair thus far, however went on to say in media interviews that he had “no regrets” about his comments and argued that the manner of Mr. Manning's detention had “undermined the investigation into his role as the alleged source for Wikileaks”.

From The Hindu

Revelations in The Hindu on the Dow Chemical Company — acquirer of Union Carbide (UC), associated with the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 — are consistent with the lack of response from the Government of India thus far, despite numerous information requests, according to Somasundaram Kumaresamuthusamy of the Association for India's Development (AID), an NGO.

Commenting on the report “Sops for Chemicals?” (The Hindu, April 1) relating to the India cables from WikiLeaks, Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy said that since June 2010 he had been pursuing the Indian embassy in Washington to revert to him regarding a second Right to Information application that he filed.

In that application, he sought a copy of all communication between the Ministry of External affairs and the Indian embassy on the Bhopal tragedy starting 1984 to date. The Hindu is in possession of all the emails between him and the Indian embassy.

Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy also requested, in the RTI application, further clarity on whether there was a request from the Government of India to the U.S. government for extradition of UC head Warren Anderson and if yes, what the U.S. government's response was.

Despite numerous follow-up emails and requests for action, two months passed before Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy received the following response from the Indian embassy. “The matter raised in your RTI application is sub judice. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India has received similar RTI applications, which are presently being examined by the Ministry. Any additional response would be based on outcome of that examination.”

As per emails shared with The Hindu, it was evident that Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy then attempted to appeal the decision by the MEA not to share further details on the extradition of Mr. Anderson and other interactions between the Government of India and Dow Chemical officials.

In particular, he also quoted to embassy officials an order passed, in September 2010, by Information Commissioner Annapurna Dixit of the Central Information Commission, directing the MEA to “provide information” on the issue whether safe passage was promised to Mr. Anderson.

Yet the only response Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy got from the embassy was a statement that said: “This is to inform you that the reply that the Embassy had sent you vide email dated August 19, 2010 was based on the advice of the Ministry of External Affairs. Any further response from the Embassy would also be based on the Ministry's instructions.”

“Shows the clout”

Commenting on the lack of substantive response from the MEA to his RTI application, Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy said: “I see this as a pattern of stone-walling information by government officials regarding Dow investments and action against them to the citizens while having a free-flowing communication with Dow Chemicals. The Dow CEO's conversation with [Vilasrao] Deshmukh [reported in The Hindu expose published last Friday] shows how much clout this company has in our political structure.”