Request for cancellation of events; and theSecond listŠ

Friday, March 24, 2006

Dear Irfan Sahab, Karamat, Tazeen, and other friends at the Karachi Social Forum Secretariat

Request for cancellation of events

Yesterday, we wrote to cancel one of the four meetings that we at CACIM had registered at the Karachi Social Forum. Now, we are writing to request you to cancel the remaining three events that we registered – because we have been denied visas to come to Pakistan.

We are also writing however, to raise some broader issues with respect to our whole experience of applying for and being denied visas, the enormous waste of time and emotional energy that has taken place, and some rather unclear and contradictory aspects of just what has happened and why it happened.

Since we are being forced to cancel very late in the day and it will be difficult for you to inform all those who are in Karachi for the Forum and who may be expecting to attend our sessions, and since we know that many others have also undergone somewhat similar experiences, and therefore this is a wider and common issue, we are copying this letter on many listserves so that the information reaches out as widely as possible.

First, the events to be cancelled. They are as follows, all registered in the name of CACIM :

Day 1, March 25, 2:00 to 5:00 pm, Theme H, Room D-303 : Explorations in Open Spaces Day 2, March 26, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm, Theme H, Room E-307 : Workshop on ‘Building Bridges : Environmental movements and Labour movements’ Day 3, March 27, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Theme A, Room C-301 : Book launch and Panel discussion : Book in Hindi Nayi Rajniti

Thanks. Please kindly post and circulate this information as widely as possible within the Forum.

The second list... Our experience with respect to visas, and being denied participation in the Karachi Social Forum

This is not the place to go into intense detail. (For those interested however, we have been posting regular reports over the past days some on the WSFDiscuss listserve, and for those interested to access them, please log onto OpenSpaceForum? (www.openspaceforum.net <http://www.openspaceforum.net> ) and/or go straight to http://openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum.net/.) But to raise our issues, we need to explain the background.

We from CACIM registered four events at the Karachi Forum. We also wrote to you to register the names of 16 people who would be coming as a part of a CACIM team (letter from Madhuresh Kumar to Irfan Mufti and others of March 3 2006).

Though information regarding location and time details of the events was only available very late (we learned of it only when I spoke with you over the phone on March 22), we basically had no problems with the registration of the events. Our problem has been with getting visas.

A week or so back, we learned from you that the process by which visas were being issued to Indians was that all the information had been submitted to the Interior Ministry, and that it had issued a ‘first list’ of 813 people whose names had been approved by the Ministry. A list of this number was then circulated by WSF India, including with respect to those wanting to cross the border by foot. This same list is also up on the WSF India website (significantly, titled as a ‘First List’, implying surely that there is or might be a second list).

When we went to the Pakistan High Commission last Friday (the 17th) to collect our visas, we were informed by the visa counter that they had received only one list of names; and of the 16 names we had submitted, only one (Madhuresh Kumar) was there. Madhuresh, as our coordinator, then phoned you, and you informed him that there was also a ‘second list’ that the Ministry was still working on, of some 70 odd people, and that this would be through by Monday. Crucially, Madhuresh asked you whether the names of some of our team was on the second list, and asked you about specific people (Sebastian Rodrigues, Jai Pradeep Sen, etc) and you confirmed this.

This ‘second list’ however did not come through to the High Commission on Monday, and as you know, we have been chasing and speaking with you ever since; and you have been telling us that the Ministry was “still working on” a “second list” and that it “would reach” / “was being forwarded to” the High Commission in Delhi. By Wednesday, it had still not come through, and Thursday was a national holiday; and you then informed us that the High Commissioner had said that the HC was even going to open on the holiday, in order to service WSF delegates. As we have reported on listserves, our team members went to the HC on Thursday on the basis of this information (we did not get any information from you to the contrary), and only left after we learned from you midday on Thursday that the High Commissioner’s order had been reversed and that the visa counter would instead open at 7 am today, Friday, to compensate for the closure, and that visas for those on the second list would definitely be issued today, Friday, on a on-the-spot basis.

Until this morning, we did not ask you to send us a copy of this ‘second list’, as we went by your information that there was such a list and that the list was, as per what you said, being approved. And since you had confirmed our team members were on that list, we have all along been working on the basis of this information, going to the High Commission repeatedly (even at 6 am this morning), and so on. We cannot tell you how much emotional and physical energy has gone into this.

Today, however, we were at first told by the visa counter that they have received a second list, and that some 13 names were there. But then, after taking our passports and checking, they said that since the passports we had submitted for visas were of people whose names were not on the one list they have, they were rejecting our applications.

We have been asking you since the morning to send us the second list. But despite phoning you about this several times, and your offering to fax it to us several times, it has not arrived all day.

Amit Chakraborty, from WSF India, was at the HC this morning, confirmed that he had the second list at the office, and even told one of our members (Sebastian Rodrigues) that he had seen his name on the list. But when we phoned and asked him for it, he said that he did not have the list with him; it was at the WSF India office, and he was already at the airport, on his way to Karachi.

The consequence of our not having the list, and of WSF not circulating or posting the second list, is that we had nothing to prove that we were on any list – and so we had no way of preventing our applications forms from being rejected. We tried until 4 pm, and then finally gave up, after trying to get our visas for three hard days, from 6 and 7 in the morning till late in the afternoon.

The material consequence of this is that we have had to cancel all four of our events. But far more important is that emotional and political loss involved. Many of our team were young students, just completing their Masters. They are highly disillusioned with the whole experience – and with it, with the World Social Forum as an idea and experience. We have all lost the opportunity of meeting the many people we are in touch with and who were coming to our events (including you, Irfan ji) and we to theirs; and of deepening our experience and understanding.

Issues and questions

4-5 issues and questions come out of this, which we would like to request you to address :

1. Everything has been done and predicated on the basis of the ‘second list’. All our hopes have been raised by the existence of such a list, and we have lost everything because of the absence of this list. And the visa counter also first said that there was such a list (of 13 names) and then denied it, saying that they had ‘only one list’. We would now like to request you to definitely please both send us a copy of this ‘second list’, and also that it be posted on the WSF Karachi website (and a request be made to WSF India that it also circulate and post this list); and along with this, that WSF Pakistan also post its position on what has happened. The one member of our team who has got through, Madhuresh Kumar, will come and see you. Please kindly also make available a hard copy of the second list to him.

We deeply appreciate how busy you all at the Secretariat must be today, just as the Forum opens, but we do hope that you also appreciate our disappointment, frustration, and anger at what has happened, and that you will now definitely make sure that we can see this ‘second list’. Aside from posting it on your website, please also email it to the email address this is coming from, and we will make sure it is circulated among all those in our team who were denied entry.

2. This morning, for the first time in all the exchanges you and I have had during this week, I distinctly heard you say that “only 109” (or some such figure) of the 813 people on the first list had been approved. This was a complete surprise to me, since all of us had understood all along that all 813 names on the ‘first list’ had been approved. Can you please confirm this, or clarify – or did I hear you wrongly ? Because this means that only 12% of those listed in the first list were approved. Is this correct ? I also ask this because the visa counter also said something very similar this afternoon (briefly, before then appearing to deny this) - that only 11 names were on the second list – against the 70 or whatever that you have said told us were on it. So does this mean that the Pakistan government has in fact only approved some 120 names in all, representing only some 12-13 per cent of the total on the two lists ?

3. Can you please help us to understand on what basis the list/s of Indians who applied to go to Pakistan has / have been screened and names approved ? And can you please tell us what steps WSF Pakistan has taken with respect to so many Indians being denied visas; whether you have ever asked the government of Pakistan for information on what basis the screening was being done’ and what steps and positions it has taken publicly on this issue, if any ? Could you also share with us all documents in this regard ?

4. As you can understand from the above, there are a number of internal contradictions and inconsistencies with respect to information we have got, which is worrying us a bit. There is also a certain lack of transparency about what has happened. We would appreciate it very much if you would please take steps to clear all this up, and explain to us precisely what has happened.

Please understand that we write all this to all of you at the Karachi secretariat with the greatest respect for the odds you are working against, and in solidarity with your efforts to mount the Forum in a society such as Pakistan at this juncture. We also recognise that some, if not all, of what has happened is a function of how the state works. And yet, we hope you will appreciate that we been left deeply disappointed and upset at how we have been treated, and not only by the High Commission here.

Please also note that we are, almost certainly, not only speaking on behalf of ourselves. If the above figures are correct, then may people, maybe hundreds, have been denied visas, and therefore participation in the Forum. We hope that this letter will also reach them, one way or another, and that they will also speak out on what they feel about what has happened.

We would be deeply obliged for your early attention to this, despite the fact that the Forum starts tomorrow.

With greetings –

Jai Sen, Sebastian Rodrigues, Milind Wani, Manju Menon, Bonojit Hussain, Vineet Kumar, Alberuni Mohammad, Bhagwati Prasad, Jaby Mathew

Copy : All members of the CACIM WSF Karachi team, for information and in case those not listed would also like to join this letter : Various listserves

CACIM – India Institute for Critical Action : Centre in Movement A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India www.cacim.net T 91-11-4155 1521 and 2433 2451

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