01 -15 October 2020 The Asian Independent

24 01-10-2020 to 15-10-2020 WORLD
www.theasianindependent.co.uk
Chinese espionage case : Delhi
court denies bail to journalist
New Delhi : A Delhi court on
Tuesday dismissed the bail application
filed by freelance journalist
Rajeev Sharma, who was arrested for
allegedly working for Chinese intelligence.
Denying him bail, Chief
Metropolitan Magistrate Pawan Singh
Rajawat noted that if a journalist, who
is an important brick in the fourth pillar
of democracy, decides to act with
the intention to destabilise and negatively
impact the sustainability and
survival of democracy, it would be
darkest day in the free press movement.
"The preliminary electronic evidence
collected by the investigating
agency points towards involvement of
the accused in commission of offence
under the Officials Secrets Act. I am
satisfied that if accused Rajeev
Sharma is released on bail at this
stage, he may attempt to hamper the
investigation. Accordingly, bail application
stands dismissed," the court
order said.
On September 14, Delhi Police's
Special Cell had arrested Sharma, 61,
for allegedly working for Chinese
intelligence. During the search of his
house, a laptop, some confidential
documents related to Indian defence
and incriminating papers were seized.
He is currently in judicial custody.
Sharma had moved the court seeking
bail on the grounds that he is suffering
from various ailments, which include
acute sinus problems, has undergone
two surgeries for sinus and is at a high
risk of Covid-19. The prosecution had
vehemently opposed his bail plea,
claiming that the accused received
huge sums of money from some companies
and cash was collected on
behalf of the accused from such companies.
The Additional Public Prosecutor
further submitted that the source of
secret documents found in the possession
of the accused is yet to be established,
and his alleged foreign handlers
are also to be traced.
The present case was registered on
the basis of secret inputs received
from Indian intelligence agencies
about links of Sharma with foreign
intelligence officers and that he was
receiving funds, through hawala and
Western Union monet transfer, from
his foreign handlers for conveying
sensitive information on national
security and foreign relations.
A case under Sections 3 (possession
of any sketch, plan, model, article,
note, document or information,
which relates to munitions of war), 4
(Communications with foreign
agents) and 5 (Wrongful communication
of information) of the Official
Secrets Act was registered on
September 13 and Sharma arrested the
next day.
On interrogation, Sharma allegedly
disclosed his involvement in the procurement
of secret and sensitive information
and conveying the same to his
Chinese handlers Michael and
George, based in Kunming, China,
through different digital channels. He
is also said to have further disclosed
that he was about to send these recovered
secret documents to his handlers.
After Sharma's arrest, Chinese
woman Qing Shi and her Nepalese
partner Sher Singh alias Raj Bohra
were also arrested as they were found
supplying Sharma with huge amounts
of money, routed through hawala
channels, for conveying sensitive
information to Chinese intelligence.
We used to collect dry cow dung to
make fire, although at that time cows
were kept far away from the village, and
owners would deny us access, but we
were fortunate because my grandmother
owned livestock.
My parents were both migrant workers
in Johannesburg, my mother was a
live-in domestic worker and my father
was a petrol attendant. My father was
originally from Lichtenburg,
Botshabelo near Lichtenburg and my
mother were from Goedgevonden near
Ventersdorp. Their communities where
forcefully removed, my father’s family
was removed to Ramatlabama near
Botswana and my mother’s family was
removed to Vrischgewaagd near
Delareyville where I was schooled until
Grade 8and went to my father’s village
to do my High School in Batloung.
I am very thankful for my childhood
because I became a resilient young
mother, who acquired survival strategies
from both of my grandmothers. I
know how to use little water and recycle
it for other uses, I save my own seed for
next planting, I preserve summer vegetables
for winter consumption, I know
how to manage livestock and have
inherited livestock from my grandmother,
I bring valuable advice to other subsistence
farmers but I also gained a lot
of knowledge from framer activist in
other parts of the world.
Did you ever face racism? If yes,
what was it about?
Everyday, in one way or another. I
never wanted to narrate many stories
because they open healed wounds, but
also make me seem like I am looking
for pity. Landlessness is equal to racism,
the fact that it is only black people who
are still denied their rights to land is
racism. But perhaps that could be too
general. It is not only racism, but class
segregation and gender. I felt it more
when I moved to Johannesburg, working
as a head of the black owned movement
called Land Access Movement of
South Africa. Discrimination as black
commuting girl: It was difficult for me
as a rural undergraduate girl and having
to prove my ability to manage and run
the movement effectively as a black
woman with a rural background and
having no social class or standard in the
city. I stayed in my aunt’s house in
Soweto commuting to work by taxis,
having to wait in the queue as early as
5.30 to be able to reach my office at 8
Continue Page 23
In Conversation with Constance Galeo ...
am. The taxis in Soweto operate from
4.30 am to 8 pm and after hours, you
need a private shuttle to go home. It
meant that I could not attend most meetings
outside the vicinity of the city centre
and could not participate in important
decision-making spaces attended by
other fellow white directors, yet I sat in
the board of Directors of the former
National Land Committee who were
80% white and I was the only black
South African woman in the board.
The salary survey showed that I was
less-paid Director, which to me was
okay because I knew that I am in a
deficit of Educational qualifications.
With the salary I received I had to build
a home for my parents and my siblings,
who acquired a site in Dobsonville, and
we lived in a shack at that time. I also
happened to have 3 children whose
father abandoned me, so after the building
of my Parents house, I had to prioritise
their education and take them to
school, that meant surplus money that I
could have saved for my own education
went to their education. I managed to
build my own house, and now I graduated
in 2018 and have applied to do my
master’s degree.
I believe that white privilege must
deal with it in the same way that I had to
deal with my circumstances of rurality
and blackness. I am not complaining,
rather I am counting myself one of the
few fortunate ones, because some are
still trapped in these Poverty circles,
caused by various reasons and without
some saints giving them a break through
it means their coming generations will
still find themselves in the same situation.
When you get a decent income, but
you have to support your siblings, you
have to build a home, you have to carry
the cost for funerals and orphans in your
family etc, when are you getting a break
through?
Has racism finished from South
Africa or it still exists?
Unfortunately, yes! Racism still
exists in South Africa, as it is so visible
that it is in our faces and we must gather
courage to speak out about it, because
keeping silent means we perpetuate it
and we lose our own voices. Policies
still favours the rich, there are clear
cracks of divide between white and
blacks in terms of redistribution of
wealth and capital, by both the state and
the financial sector. The income disparities
between black and white and the
resilience in times of disasters by white
led companies versus black led companies.
It is a fact that white people inherited
generational wealth of capital and experience,
therefore they are mostly debt
resilient, but also if you look at the
financial systems such as insurance
companies, banks and the mortgage
companies have always treated black
people with contempt and trapping them
into debt by making them pay premiums
that they can never sustain.
Black farmworkers and domestic
workers who work in private homes are
enduring racism attacks and falsely
accused every day. It is so bad in a way
that the media has chosen to report these
cases in isolation and selectively, as if
black lives do not matter.
We all talk a lot about the land
reforms but when Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe wanted to
legally acquire land from the powerful
white farmers, there was a hue
and cry. I am sure there are similar
situations in your country. Is there a
resistance from the Western governments
and organisations about radical
land reforms in your country? I
mean how long can we have this
unequal order where some people
have thousands of hectares of land
while many others do not even have
space for their livelihood.
Regarding the Zimbabwe Fast Track
Land Reform, the outcry was coming
from the exempted blacks who signed
up for western methods of politics, as
South African we still regard Mugabe as
the best African leader ever, especially
when coming to decisiveness and clarity
on matters of land reform and
Zimbabwe systems of education. Robert
Mugabe, like U Tata Nelson Mandela
was never a saint, but for lack of better
role models they were the best.
Our current Governments are continuing
to reverse the gains made on land
reform and transformation, they could
not distribute the land and now they
have discovered mineral wealth in the
over-populated communal land. They
are making laws that will empower the
apartheid appointed traditional leaders
to make decisions around mining on
behalf of people, no Prior and Informed
consent. In recent years, there has been
an unexpected onslaught against the
land rights of rural people in South
Africa. This threat comes from new
government policies and laws that set
the apartheid-era homelands or
Bantustans apart from the rest of South
Africa as zones of chiefly sovereignty
and undermine the citizenship rights of
the people living within them. Urgent
interventions are necessary to stave off
imminent and irreversible dispossession.
New laws and policies betray this
promise, however, and further dispossess
the very people who bore the brunt
of the Land Acts and the brutal forced
removals that culminated in the consolidation
of the Bantustans. These laws
and policies seek to separate the former
Bantustans from the rest of South Africa
as zones of autocratic chiefly power, in
the process transferring ownership and
control of land that ordinary people
have inherited over generations to traditional
leaders. President Zuma sees traditional
leaders as important strategic
partners who can deliver the rural vote
at a time when support for the ANC is
declining in the major cities, including
Johannesburg.
Driving these laws and policies is the
irony that some of the former
Bantustans, once assumed to be the least
valuable land, have been found to hold
massive reserves of valuable minerals –
platinum in North West and Limpopo,
coal and iron in Mpumalanga and
KwaZulu-Natal and titanium along the
Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. The
poorest South Africans live on some of
the richest land, but for many this has
proved to be a curse, rather than an
opportunity.
The primary beneficiaries of South
Africa’s new mining rush are not the
people, but mining companies and politically
connected elites, including traditional
leaders. Recent law specifies that
the state will grant mining rights only to
companies with black economic
empowerment partners. It is an open
secret that officials often dictate who
such partners should be. The scale and
spread of mining investments by senior
politicians and their close associates is
no secret, and we continue to mobilise
rural citizens to defend their land rights
against these big giants.
How powerful are the religious
groups in your country in the social
movements. Is it good or bad?
Sometimes, people feel that radical
religious groups dilute the revolutionary
spirit. What is there in your country?
Religious groups are still powerful in
terms of numbers and influence.
However, because most of the formally
recognised churches that survived
apartheid have been intellectually weak
because the South African Council of
churches is in alliance with elite unions
such as COSATU and Government. We
have seen stalwarts joining Government
as Ministers, and these churches have
enjoyed foreign funding at the favour of
Governments. That paralysed their
objective voice, but we have also experienced
activist voices of stalwarts like
Bishop Tutu, Barbara Hogan, Moletji
Mbeki, and others.
We have heard you speaking so
powerfully about Food sovereignty
issues which were resisted at the
Global Land Forum in Antigua by the
international organisations. Why are
you so passionate about Food
Sovereignty and what is its difference
with Food security?
So, the terminology and language
used in big forums and especially where
the world bank and IMF are participating
shapes narratives in a way that
defeats the indigenous ways of survival.
To me Sovereignty means autonomy but
interdependence of systems to survive
without depending on a system that is
designed to exclude the majority from
their own production spaces.
The fundamental difference between
Food Security and Food Sovereignty is
that Food Security seeks to address the
issue of food and hunger through the
current dominant food regime, whereas
Food Sovereignty challenges this paradigm
and seeks to build alternatives,
and attempts to address the root causes
through a bottom-up approach.
Food Security could mean adequate,
but does not address access and control,
it monopolises access, through big
supermarket led redistribution where
those who have no income stands to
lose. whereas food sovereignty means
people are in control and can choose
what they eat, their access depends on
the amount of work and labour they provide.
This is very powerful.
In conclusion, the most worrying
factor is the minimal role played by the
state, which should be a referee in the
fight between big companies and the
communities. They are fence sitting and
thus giving institutions such as banks
and bank companies a leeway to abuse
power and repossess land if people
struggle to pay. On the other hand, small
scale farmers inability to manage their
group dynamics contribute to their
inability to use the land productively.
There is no Institutional support on
Governance and Management for
groups, Lack of farming skills on the
part of black farmers, Inability of the
poor people to raise “own contribution ”
money and thus lost the opportunity to
benefit from the programme.