Gay Pride Parade Delhi 2010

Under Delhi's beautiful November afternoon sun, nearly two thousand young men and women marched on Sunday to mark the city's third Queer Pride parade.
This year's colourful and celebratory parade starting at the end of Barakhamba Road near Connaught Place and ending next to Jantar Mantar -- was the first march after last year's Delhi high court verdict that struck down the antiquated Article 377 of Indian Penal Code.

"I am always reminded of my school days in the 1960s," said 57-year-old artist Sunil Gupta as he observed the marchers gather at Barakhamba Road. Gupta has attended all the three Delhi parades.
"It seemed it would never happen in my lifetime. What's surprising is that the rate of change has accelerated. The first year there were fewer people wearing more masks, and today there are more people in fewer masks," he observed.

There were many masks, but a lot of people wore them more to add colour to their looks, and less to hide their faces. As a lot of people observed, this year's parade, with over 2,000 boisterous marchers, included many youngsters - gays, lesbians, transgenders, but also straight people.
"There is a real change this year," said Gautam Bhan, an activist and one of the organisers of the parade.

"At the first pride parade there were four of us who gave interviews to the media. The numbers of supporting crowds have increased. There are new faces and new people talking to the press and that's fantastic," he said.

In the pride parades of the West, everything appears more orderly, and marchers are represented by ethnic, national, and other political and social groups. But here it was one big party along Delhi's Tolstoy Marg, with many people dancing to the beats of drums. And the cooler weather made it easier for people to break into dance.

The first pride parade in Delhi had about 800 marchers. Last year's parade, held a few days before the high court judgment, had nearly 1,500 marchers. The number was far higher this year.

Gay and lesbian pride parades around the world are held in the month of June -- marking the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City.
But after last year's Delhi parade, held on a very hot afternoon in June, the organisers decided to shift the march to November, said activist and organiser Mohnish Kabir Malhotra.

Apart from the masks and the colourful costumes, the marchers carried a number of placards. Some read: 'Closets are for Clothes', 'Queer Right are Human Right', 'No Need for Homophobia, Lesbian Suicides, Forced Marriages', 'Jab Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kaya', and 'Out of the Closets and Into the Streets'.
And perhaps the most touching placards were carried by the mother and grandmother of a young gay man.

The mother's placard read: 'God Blessed Me with 2 Sons. 1 of Dem is Gay and I Love Both of Dem Equally!' The grandmother's placard read: 'I Am Proud to Say My Grandson is Gay!'.

There were many foreigners among the marchers -- including a white couple with a biological son and what appeared to be a South Asian adopted daughter. An African American man wore a T-shirt that read in Hindi: 'Aadmi Hoon, Aadmi Say Pyaar Karta Hoon (I am a man, I love a man)'.
Many marchers holding a giant rainbow coloured flag were heard shouting: 'Hum Sab Ka Yeh Naara Hai, Homo Hoona Pyaara Hai'!.

The rainbow colours, an internationally recognised symbol of gay and lesbian identity, were also seen on the scarves, smaller flags and also a few umbrellas carried by the marchers.

Along the way there were many passersby, car and bus drivers who watched the parade with a smile and did not seem to mind that the event was causing a massive traffic jam on Sunday afternoon. Delhi policemen and women also watched the parade, often with smiles on their faces.

"The cops have been really nice," said Rahul Sharma, one of the organisers.

Unlike in the West, there were no counter protests against the march. "The few passersby seem curious," Gupta said as he walked in the parade.

"Actually, this part of Delhi is very quiet on a Sunday so you will have to be dedicated to come to protest. But that kind of opposition in an organised manner happens in the US a lot, because of the lobbying groups," he said.

"One thing is that India doesn't have is homophobia, because Indians do not discuss sex," he added.
"Even the casual homophobia doesn't happen here. If more such parades happen, then a few years down the line, there might be protests," said Gupta.
 

WikiLeaks reveals how US snoops on friends and foes

Nearly 250,000 classified United States documents procured by WikiLeaks give detail about a wide variety of secret diplomatic episodes and incidences of backroom bargaining, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The confidential cache of US cables released to the paper by the whistleblower website was described by the Times as the one that unlocks the secrets of American diplomacy. The newspaper made public the details contained in the documents on Sunday, some time after WikiLeaks said its website was under a cyber attack.

"A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats," The Times said in its lead story. 


US-Pak stand-off over nuclear fuel

More eminent newspapers across the globe are expected to follow suit, even as WikiLeaks on its Twitter account said that it is "currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack". It added that even if its website goes down, a number of newspapers will go ahead and publish the documents.

These documents, according to NYT, reveal a dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel. Since 2007, the US has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.

In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he argued".

China on a hacking spree

Besides, they also provide an insight into a global computer hacking effort initiated by the Chinese government. China's politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems, a Chinese contact told the American embassy in Beijing in January, according to one cable.

The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.

They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, the cables said.

The White House immediately condemned the release strongly, saying it risked the lives of thousands of diplomats and officials and endangered its relationship with friends and allies.

 WikiLeaks exposed rights abuse in Iraq

Top officials of the Obama administration called up several countries including India and warned them about the imminent release of such classified US documents.

The Pentagon condemned what it called a 'reckless' act, and said it has initiated measures to prevent such leaks in the future ahead of the imminent release. The State Department asked it to return the 'illegally obtained' papers, insisting that their leak would "endanger the lives of countless individuals."

The Twitter message by WikiLeaks earlier said that El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian and New York Times newspapers will publish many US embassy cables on Sunday night, even if WikiLeaks goes down.

The website has earlier released thousands of documents on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In October, WikiLeaks released four lakh secret US files on Iraq war detailing abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US custody, rights violations and civilian deaths.
Earlier in July, the website had published tens of thousands of secret documents on the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday said the soon-to-be released classified US documents will cover 'every major issue' in the world.

Late on Saturday, Washington rejected talks with WikiLeaks, saying the website was holding the cables in violation of US law. However, Assange has rejected the claim that the release would put to harm many lives.

The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked 'top secret', the government's most secure communications status.

 China hacks Google, US spies on allies 
The NYT reported that details contained in the released documents include plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse and bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The cables also detail fresh suspicions about corruption in Afghanistan and Saudi donors financing Al Qaeda. Many more cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: 'Please protect' or 'Strictly protect'.

The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world.

They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the US Consulate, the daily said.

"They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal," it said. 

In Haryana, get a bride for Rs 1,000 from Bihar

CHANDIGARH: Haryana, reeling under a skewed sex ratio, is faced with yet another startling fact – an NGO has found that girls are being "bought" and brought to Haryana from 20 states across the country. The state's sex ratio stands at 837 in the 0-6 years age group, its lowest in the last five years and second only to Punjab.

In one case, the family of a girl from Bihar was paid just Rs 1,000.

In its report released in Pune on Saturday, the NGO, Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra, has found that most of the girls were brought from West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Assam. It's findings also indicate that girls were bought within the state too.

The NGO surveyed 10,190 households in Haryana and found 318 women who were bought and married off to men in Haryana. The NGO has shared the findings with the Haryana government.



Among these 318 women, 145 are from different parts of Haryana, followed by West Bengal (43), Bihar (27), Andhra Pradesh (17), Assam (15), Uttar Pradesh (14), Himachal Pradesh (11) and Rajasthan (10). Women have been brought from other states too, including even prosperous states like Gujarat.

The NGO has covered a population of 56,520 in 92 villages of five districts -- Sonipat, Karnal, Mahendragarh, Sirsa and Mewat. The study was conducted to ascertain whether the brides came from other states and if a price was paid to get them to Haryana.

The NGO found that in number of cases, men had to buy their wives despite the fact that dowry system is prevalent in Jatland.

The report says whenever respondents were asked about money being paid for brides, the women chose to be silent. Only 15 women out of 318 reported that money was paid to their families. The amount varied between Rs 10,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh.

"This may not be a big amount but these girls come from poor families and this could be luring parents to give away their daughters, despite the girls going to faraway lands and having to adjust into alien culture," the report said.