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Human Rights activists tear apart
India's shameful record
WSN Bureau
CHANDIGARH: One
of the oft-repeated grouses of historians is that Sikhs have made
far more history than they have written, and that was because of the
peculiar circumstances through which the community passed. But in
twentieth century and in the 21st, the luxury of weak documentation
does not exist. Human Rights activists from across the globe who
gathered in
Chandigarh
this month stress this aspect and the significance of scientific
documentation of victims of state repression.
The two-day
symposium organized by the Hong Kong-based South Asia Forum for
Human Rights (SAFHR) in collaboration with the Indian Council of
Social Science Research (ICSSR) titled ‘Understanding Impunity:
Failures & Possibilities of Rights to Truth, Justice and Reparation’
said if such documentation had been better, many top Punjab Police
officials today would have been in jail.
Recalling the
dark days of militancy in the state, Jasmine Marwaha, a Law Graduate
from
Harvard Law School and a researcher, said in incidents like enforced
disappearances and mass cremations in Punjab, scientific and
methodical documentation was extremely necessary to nail the state
actors responsible for repression and rights violations.
“Though the
deceased human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra had put in a lot
of hard work to assess that there were nearly 6,000 people in Punjab
who went missing and were later cremated illegally by the Punjab
Police during the days of terrorism, the Committee for Information
and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP) could trace only 2,059 such cases.
Of which, with the help of proper documentation, we have been able
to identify only 1,402 victims,” said Marwaha.
Many rued the
fact that the entire nation knows fully the guilt of KPS Gill but he
is free because of the activists' inability to nail him.
Sukhman Singh
Dhami, Post-graduate in International Human Rights Law from
Washington,
said the state was always ready to deny the human rights violations
and would not accept so unless the cases were supported by
authenticated documentation.
Shafat N. Ahmed,
Centre for Law and Development and Regional Research Associate,
SAHFR, spoke about how the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) had
failed to take note of rights violations due to inadequate staff,
infrastructure and finances.
Johanna Lokhande
evaluated the criminal justice system and counter terrorism measures
and the issues of sexual violence in post–2002
Gujarat. She
said that minority communities were still being targeted
systematically.
Babloo
Loingtongbam, Executive Director, Human Rights Alert, Imphal, and
Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, Associate Fellow from Centre for the Study
of Developing Societies, Delhi spoke on the non-state actors and the
issue of accountability and how the Armed Forces Special Powers Act
was draconian in nature and despite many agitations and report
submitted by the Reddy Commission, it has still not been repealed.
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What kind of
mother is Bharat Mata?
When a young
Catholic nun was being raped in Orissa’s Kandhmal district and
paraded naked by men shouting “Bharat Mata ki jai”, one only
wondered what kind of a mother can allow this to happen to her
children? The violence led by Hindutva agents in Jammu for the
shrine board land also featured Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogans while
setting fire to Muslims’ homes.
The great “Bharat Mata” army —
going by the name of Bajrang Dal and similar fundamentalist
groups — is bragging before cameras about the fear it has
unleashed.
At times like these, a Zen master asks the Indian
state to try listening to its children. The ones who are being
killed, made to disappear, raped or being forced to retreat into
jungles, not the ones demanding that laws be made more
draconian, someone be hanged rather quickly and rights activists
be jailed.
This edition is dedicated to the cause of human
rights, one of the biggest lessons from our guru, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, a lesson that all Sikhs must live and die for.
Rest may chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai. It now denotes something
different than motherhood. Monsters can’t have motherly
instincts. |
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Moulana Suleman
Kashimi, a Nellie massacre survivor, Nitul Kochari, survivor of a
family of an ULFA activist and Nemcha Leima, mother of Uttam Kumar,
who was arbitrarily killed by police commandos in Imphal in the
courtyard of her house, narrated their tales of woes.
Mental agony
leads to trauma
The
California
based Physicians For Human Rights (PHR) and New York University of
Medicine Programme for Survivors of Torture brought out in a joint
study how families of the victims of enforced disappearances are
experiencing traumatic disorders and mental depression. The study
focussed on the
Amritsar,
Patti and Tarn Taran belt.
The world is
little aware of the extra-ordinarily large number of Sikhs who were
tortured, made to “disappear”, extra-judiciously executed and
illegally cremated during the late 1980s and early 1990s, often
following arrest.
The PHR assessed
a detailed account of abuse of the deceased and his or her family
members, the psychological and physical and financial impact on
them.
Satnam Singh,
44, of
Amritsar said he had witnessed the torture of his brother.
“They (police)
did everything to my brother before my eyes. He was stripped naked,
given electric shocks on his genitals. He was beaten with sticks and
rollers were put on his thighs. Then they took him to a nearby room
from where I could hear his shrieks. I did not see my brother after
that. They did not even give us the body ,” said Singh.
A 70-year-old,
Pritam Kaur of Tarn Taran, described the abuse of her deceased
husband and son. “During their detention, they cut their thighs and
put salt and chilli on their wounds. Their legs were stretched and
they were given electric shocks. They were badly beaten up and
suspended upside down. My son’s fingernails were pulled out with
some instrument. The hands were tied behind his back and shocks were
given to his shoulders and temples. They forcibly took away his
religious symbols. I never saw them again,” said Kaur.
KPS Gill remains
under lens
Most activists
from all over the globe felt rage about Indian nation state's
continued patronage of KPS Gill. Sunita Akoijam, a research
associate, speaking on “understanding impunity”, said though after a
long struggle the NHRC had announced compensation for the families
of people who were first made to “disappear” and then cremated
illegally, till date it had failed to fix responsibility or hold any
Punjab
police official accountable for the inhuman acts.
Actvists brought
out the sham that exists in the name of
India's Human
Rights Commission. After a petition by the CIIP, the Supreme Court
asked the NHRC in 1996 to address all issues arising from the mass
cremations. In over 13 years of proceedings, the NHRC refused to
independently investigate a single abuse or take the testimony of
any victim’s family. Instead, the commission based its findings on
information provided by the Punjab Police, the perpetrators of the
cremations.
Even the CBI,
after 13 years of investigations, failed to fix criminal culpability
on former DGP Gill. Despite eyewitness testimony implicating Gill in
Khalra’s illegal detention and murder, the CBI had still not brought
charges against him.
Dhami,
highlighting the sluggishness of the probes, compared the work of
the Argentina National Commission, which investigated 7,000
disappearance cases in just nine months,
Chile’s National
Commission on Truth and Reconciliation that investigated 2,920 cases
in nine months, South Africa’s commission’s 21,000 cases in two and
a half years, and El Salvador’s 34,000 cases in eight months.
Pritam Singh, a
senior lecturer and human rights scholar, said it seemed that in the
eyes of the State, Khalra was a suspect while Gill fought for the
State.
Navkiran,
Khalra’s daughter, said by not punishing DGP Gill the state had
exhibited its double standards.
Satish K. Jain,
Professor at JNU,
New Delhi, spoke
on problems faced in claiming compensation for human rights
violations. He also wondered if mere compensation was sufficient to
assuage the hurt.
Patrick Hoeing,
former political of ficer in the UN, pointed out how com pensations
were often arbitrary, and not conforming to any legal reasoning.
Abdulrahim P.
Vijapur, a Professor in Aligarh Muslim University, noted how it took
years for victims to get justice in courts. “Besides, Indian courts
charge the highest fee in the world,” he said.
(With considerable inputs from some excellent coverage in the
Hindustan Times. Most of the media seemingly ignored this
seminar.--Editor)
8 October 2008
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