| Issue 21 Vol I, August 15, 2006 | Archive |
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Buttar’s Verse Questionnaire – A New
Experiment
The poet asserts that coming into being and going out of it is a process though which one has to go through while fighting one’s battle of life irrespective of whether one becomes a victor or a victim in the battle. He says, “Labhan gian di/Pairh labhda/Gua aunda han…. Pairh/Hassian de shagufe vechda/Khat liamda… hadse/Pahlian/Marhe dina lai bachae/Athru churae… & smundar ne/Pher change dine de hasil/Hasse khoh lae… malahan ne.” (I lost my feet as I went in search of the footprints of those gone before me. Selling peals of laughter, I earned loads of mishaps. The tears saved for the bad days have been stolen by the sea. And then the gains and gaiety of the good days have been robbed by the sailors). The poet believes that if the words emanate from the heart nothing is more truthful, purer and greater than those. As votary of virtue he prays,”Har chulle lai….agg/Har agg lai…. Disha/Har vehrhe lai… jhanjar/Har jhanjar lai… cha”. (I pray for fire in every hearth and wisdom to use it properly. I pray for jingling anklets in every anklet.) Buttar uses the metaphor of “journey” as an exploration into the unknown or as an arduous adventure through the rough terrains of life. In a poem titled “Yatra Naad” he avers,”Amber te aahlana paun di/Koshish tan kar/Tilian da sirnawan/Mai dasda han…/Jithe vi/Raat paindi/Apne aap nu/Uppar taan ke son janda han/Jadon vi/Din charda/Apne aap nu/Pairan pehan ke… tur painda han.” (Try to build a nest in the sky; I’ll let you know the whereabouts of the bit of straw. Step across the searing heat of the village, I’ll lend you the wooden sandals. As the night falls I sleep, using my own body as a bed sheet and as the day breaks I set out with my body put on my feet.) In another poem titled “Mitha Hadsa” (Sweet Tragedy) the poet presents an entirely new dimension of the phenomenon of nature. He states that the flight of birds disturbed the peace of the heavens and the rippling sound of the stream disrupted the deep meditation of the mountains. In another poem he uses the metaphor of stream in a different manner. He puts it like this,”Kallh mai/Tehai nadi vich/Dol aia san… bharain palkan/Ajj/Bujhadi hi nahin… meri pias/Puuri nadi pi ke vi”. (Yesterday I had spilt the eyeful of tears in the parched stream and today, I’m still thirsty even after having guzzled the full stream.) Bird is another symbol that occurs in various poems in various garbs. In one of the poems “bird” appears as a symbol of freedom. The poet says that birds never seek the permission of the tree before they weave their nest on it nor do they seek heavens permission before taking a flight. There are other evocative symbols like sun, tree, flower, mountain, desert, well, virgin, rainbow, boats, sky, wind, night, travellers and so on. All poems are short, crisp and pointed. Their force lies in the semantic load that they carry. Unlike other Punjabi writers, Darshan Buttar concentrates only on poetry. He has never tried other forms of literature like short story, novel or play. His poetic treatment is innovative and meditative which makes his poems different and yet evocative. |
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Broken Chains of Guantanamo Bay: Journalists tell a Tale of Torture
Two Afghan journalists, who spent three harrowing years in the infamous United States military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have released their chronicle on life in the now famed iron cages. According to a veteran Afghan journalist, Ashfaq Yusufzai this 453-page volume in Pashto language is “more graphic than the one released recently by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan who was handed over to the U.S. military, shortly after it invaded Afghanistan and ousted the fundamentalist regime in 2001.” Titled ‘Da Guantanamo Maatai Zawlanai' (Broken Chains of Guantanamo), the volume describes the extreme physical and mental torture to which the inmates -- mostly suspected Taliban and their allies who were picked up from Afghanistan or Pakistan -- were subjected to. To be translated into English soon, ‘Broken Chains of Guantanamo' is priced at 3.3 dollars and has 64 pictures showing some of the trauma the prisoners were subjected to. The brothers said a French journalist has offered to translate their book into French. ''But we intend to translate it into English, Urdu and Arabic first.'' Muslim Dost, 45, and his co-author and brother Badar-uz-Zaman, 37y saw evidence of female inmates in Guantanamo. ''We saw forms filled in by female inmates at the office of the investigators.'' One of the forms, left lying around carelessly on a table by U.S. military investigators, had apparently been filled in by a woman from Lahore from Pakistani Punjab. She was pregnant, they said. Dost and Zaman, both journalists, were exonerated by a military tribunal at Guantanamo and released on Apr. 22, 2005. They were originally picked up by Pakistan's military Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) on Nov. 17, 2001 from the Speena Warai village on the outskirts of Peshawar and were taken to a detention centre in Bagaram Air Base, before being flown to Guantanamo. "We used to publish Arabic, Pashto and Urdu monthlies. Some of the articles in them had angered the ISI, which handed us over to the U.S. forces, handcuffed and blindfolded. We didn't have any connection with the Taliban, but the ISI wanted to settle scores with us,” claimed Dost, who migrated to Pakistan with his entire family 24 years ago from his native Kot district in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. According to Yusufzai, “Like Mullah Zaeef, the brothers lay blame for many unjustifiable detentions at Guantanamo on the shadowy ISI, which, they said, went about picking up innocent citizens to show cooperation with the U.S. military and also to claim large bounties.” He quotes from the book saying, ''A father was taking his ailing son to hospital in Quetta, Balochistan, when he was caught by police and asked to pay a bribe for his release. He refused to pay and ended up at Guantanamo with his son. After two years, the son had so transformed that he was talking in English and was unable to recognize his father.'' Only ten of those ever held at Guatanamo, since its establishment in January 2002, have been formally charged. An investigation conducted, earlier this year by the Seton Hall University in New Jersey showed that 55 percent of prisoners are not alleged to have committed any hostile acts against the U.S., and 40 percent had no affiliation with al-Qaeda. Military documents, cited by the university, suggested that only eight percent of prisoners were alleged to have been fighting on behalf of any Islamist group, and that 86 percent were captured and handed over to the U.S. military by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan that opposed the Taliban or by Pakistani authorities. Recently In a 5-3 decision, American Supreme Court has ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the special military tribunals created by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists are illegal. Specifically, the court found that the tribunals "were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949." Broadly viewed, Hamdan was a "democracy-forcing" decision, reining in the Bush administration's expansive and unconstitutional interpretation of executive power and reasserting the role of Congress in fashioning national security policy. Somehow, this constitutional system works even in wartime and even under an administration with demonstrable contempt for the rule of law. ''Among the prisoners were real brothers, fathers and sons, who were kept in 180 sq cm iron cages. Sometimes, the cages would be placed close enough to enable conversation, ''Dost narrated. Ashfaq Yusufzai says that their testimony corroborates what former envoy Zaeef recorded in his 156-page ‘Da Guantanamo Anzoor' (The Picture of Guantanamo). "So harsh was the torture and treatment that prisoners even prayed for death rather than be in detention. Their oppression can never be forgiven," Zaeef, wrote. |
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A
THE
patently illegal prison without the sanctions of any American or
international law where hundreds of detainees, young and old have suffered
years of torture and humiliation forcing some to commit to suicides is still
an untold story. US court has held it as an illegal detention center, yet
the Bush administration is obdurate in keeping it along with other secret
such detention centers in Europe. There has been world condemnation and
demand to release the prisoners or try them under international law and
conventions. There are no human rights or civil liberty organisation within
America or outside that has not exposed the torturous and inhuman
conditions. Yet the super power, with avowed aim of establishing democratic
values in the third world is determined to teach lessons through daily
lashing, abuses and most unheard suffering and pain inflicted on the
inmates. They were captured from Afghanistan, Pakistan and from several
other countries after America invaded Afghanistan in 2001.