SACW | 10-11 August 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 10-11 August,  2005

[1]  Nepal's Human Rights Record Threatens Military Aid
[2]  The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation (Salman Rushdie)
[3]  Dark clouds on the Indo-Pakistani horizon (M B Naqvi)
[4]  Fast for visa-free borders: Activists from Pakistan and Nepal 
join hands to demand peace
[5]  India: Punjab - The Vanished: From 1984 to 1994, the Punjab 
Police was at its brutal best (Rajesh Ramachandran)
[6] India: The 'missing' link (Vrinda Grover)
[7] India: Online petition seeking withdrawal of Gujarat State Board 
of School Textbook
[8] India: 'For Hindu rashtra democracy is a hurdle' (VHP's Giriraj Kishore)
[9] Resources:
- Who Are the Guilty? report on 1984 riots in Delhi by PUCL -PUDR 
[From SACW archives]
- Exploring Religious Conflict [ A report from RAND, the right wing 
think tank in the US]
[10] Public Discussion: Implications of the Supreme Court Judgment on 
Parliament Attack Case (New Delhi, 11 August 2005)

______


[1]

August 9, 2005

Nepal's Human Rights Record Threatens Military Aid

KATMANDU, Nepal, Aug. 5 - When a firebrand student leader went to 
visit his friends in jail here last week, he, too, found himself 
arrested by the police and locked up on a charge of sedition.

When a political prisoner was freed by a court order in the town of 
Nepalganj in June, plainclothes police officers immediately plucked 
him from the courthouse steps.

And after two Nepalese newspaper journalists wrote last month about 
the army's deploying children as informers against suspected Maoist 
guerrillas, they were summoned to the army barracks for questioning.

Such incidents are not only measures of life and law in a country 
squeezed between its all-powerful Hindu king and the nine-year-long 
Maoist insurgency he has failed to quell. They are also of creeping 
importance to American lawmakers.

Before a new round of American military aid can start flowing to this 
troubled Himalayan kingdom, Congress has said it must be convinced 
that Nepal's ruler, King Gyanendra, can guarantee basic human rights. 
The Bush administration can override that condition if it determines 
that there is a national security imperative for Nepal to get the aid.

An administration decision is expected in the coming weeks, and 
whichever way the president goes is likely to be read throughout this 
region as an important barometer of White House priorities.

Nepal has functioned as an absolute monarchy since October 2002, when 
King Gyanendra dismissed the elected government on the ground that it 
had proved ineffective and corrupt. Last Feb. 1, he ratcheted his 
control up another notch, imposing emergency rule, arresting hundreds 
of political party members and suspending press and civil liberties.

Emergency rule has since been lifted, but many restrictions remain. 
This week, for instance, the government demanded to know why news 
broadcasts had resumed on a private FM radio station, in 
contravention of the Feb. 1 order.

The measures have proved increasingly unpopular. In Katmandu, the 
capital, what began as mild protests against the Feb. 1 royal decree 
have become more violent and outspoken. In recent weeks 
stone-throwing student demonstrators who call openly for the 
overthrow of the monarchy have tussled regularly with police officers 
wearing blue fatigues and carrying riot shields.

Chants during the protests have turned strikingly audacious. "Gyanay 
Chor, Desh Chhod," goes one popular cry. Using a diminutive form of 
his name, it calls the king a thief and urges him to leave.

Despite the Feb. 1 order, journalists frequently defy the curbs 
against independent reporting on the conflict. Political cartoons 
take pot shots at the king.

"People hoped and believed he had a plan," Kanak Mani Dixit, one of 
the country's most respected journalists, said in an interview here. 
"I said he has made a major mistake, but he will be forgiven if he 
has a plan. But nothing has happened." The king's latest steps were 
controversial even beyond Nepal and have been accompanied by what his 
critics see as a steady deterioration of civil liberties as the king 
struggles to turn back a widening insurgency that has fed off this 
country's poverty and caste divisions.

The American law threatening the loss of military aid, passed by the 
United States Congress last year, was prompted by Nepal's unenviable 
human rights distinction: during the past two years, the largest 
number of new cases of disappeared persons reported to the United 
Nations came from here.

Some of the missing reappear after courts take up habeas corpus 
petitions; those who are suspected of being Maoists or their 
sympathizers can be locked away without charges for up to a year 
under Nepal's antiterror laws.

The conditions for restoring full American military aid range from 
whether law enforcement authorities obey court orders on prisoner 
releases, to whether steps are taken to end torture by security 
forces, to whether the government allows the National Human Rights 
Commission to function freely.

Neither the United States Embassy here in Katmandu nor officials at 
the State Department in Washington agreed to comment on the record 
about whether Nepal had sufficiently complied with those conditions. 
In the past, American officials have urged the king to reconcile his 
differences with the political parties and take steps to return to 
democracy.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont and the author of the 
amendments that set conditions on military assistance to Nepal, 
however, has said that Nepal has so far failed the test. 
"Unfortunately, not only have those conditions not been met, the 
situation was made significantly worse on Feb. 1," he told Congress 
on July 28.

"The king has made a tragic blunder," he added, "and the Nepalese 
people are paying a heavy price."

Since Feb. 1, the Bush administration has continued providing some 
military training and supplies, but held off on others. Now, $2.5 
million in aid is at stake, the big-ticket item being a consignment 
of roughly 3,500 M-16 rifles.

Discussions are continuing, meanwhile, over the possibility of 
Nepal's sending troops to the United States-led coalition forces in 
Afghanistan.

Local and international human rights monitors have reported what the 
United Nations' top human rights envoy in Nepal, Ian Martin, called 
"serious and recent" allegations of torture.

Meanwhile, the rule of law plays out in a bizarre tableau.

One afternoon in June, in the office of the National Human Rights 
Commission in the midwestern town of Nepalganj, a 19-year-old man 
named Buddhiman Karki sat on a sofa in a Spiderman T-shirt. The judge 
had ordered him released that afternoon after an unspecified time in 
Army and police custody. He said he had been beaten in custody. There 
was never an attempt, apparently, to try him in a court of law.

No sooner had Mr. Karki stepped out of the courthouse than two 
plainclothes officers grabbed him from one side. Immediately, two 
Human Rights Commission workers, Mohan Dev Joshi and Yasuda Banjade, 
grabbed him from the other side. "Rule of law, you can't do this," is 
what Ms. Banjade recalls saying to the officers. "There was a little 
bit of shouting," she said.

Eventually, the judge stepped out of the courthouse, and the police 
let go. Mr. Karki, a Maoist who said he was corralled into the 
movement eight years ago, at age 11, said he would slip across the 
border and into India as soon as he could.

______


[2]


The Washington post
Sunday, August 7, 2005; Page B07

THE RIGHT TIME FOR AN ISLAMIC REFORMATION

By Salman Rushdie

When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, 
admitted that "our own children" had perpetrated the July 7 London 
bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim 
had accepted his community's responsibility for outrages committed by 
its members. Instead of blaming U.S. foreign policy or 
"Islamophobia," Sacranie described the bombings as a "profound 
challenge" for the Muslim community. However, this is the same 
Sacranie who, in 1989, said that "Death is perhaps too easy" for the 
author of "The Satanic Verses." Tony Blair's decision to knight him 
and treat him as the acceptable face of "moderate," "traditional" 
Islam is either a sign of his government's penchant for religious 
appeasement or a demonstration of how limited Blair's options really 
are.
Sacranie is a strong advocate of Blair's much-criticized new 
religious-hatred bill, which will make it harder to criticize 
religion, and he actually expects the new law to outlaw references to 
Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as Jan. 13, "There is no such 
thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying 
Muslims are terrorists would be covered [i.e., banned] by this 
provision." Two weeks later his organization boycotted a Holocaust 
remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the liberation of 
Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can 
offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.
The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Blair government's 
strategy of relying on traditional, essentially orthodox Muslims to 
help eradicate Islamist radicalism. Traditional Islam is a broad 
church that certainly includes millions of tolerant, civilized men 
and women but also encompasses many whose views on women's rights are 
antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little 
time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express 
anti-Semitic views and who, in the case of the Muslim diaspora, are 
-- it has to be said -- in many ways at odds with the Christian, 
Hindu, non-believing or Jewish cultures among which they live.
In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many 
traditional Muslims lead inward-turned lives of near-segregation from 
the wider population. From such defensive, separated worlds some 
youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up 
their lethal rucksacks.
The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in 
these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the 
closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in 
which young men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a 
move beyond tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring 
the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation 
to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, 
stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows 
to let in much-needed fresh air.
It would be good to see governments and community leaders inside the 
Muslim world as well as outside it throwing their weight behind this 
idea, because creating and sustaining such a reform movement will 
require above all a new educational impetus whose results may take a 
generation to be felt, a new scholarship to replace the literalist 
diktats and narrow dogmatisms that plague present-day Muslim 
thinking. It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to 
study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, 
not supernaturally above it.
It should be a matter of intense interest to all Muslims that Islam 
is the only religion whose origins were recorded historically and 
thus are grounded not in legend but in fact. The Koran was revealed 
at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century 
shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal 
system. Muhammad, as an orphan, personally suffered the difficulties 
of this transformation, and it is possible to read the Koran as a 
plea for the old matriarchal values in the new patriarchal world, a 
conservative plea that became revolutionary because of its appeal to 
all those whom the new system disenfranchised, the poor, the 
powerless and, yes, the orphans.
Muhammad was also a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, 
the Nestorian Christians' desert versions of Bible stories that the 
Koran mirrors closely (Christ, in the Koran, is born in an oasis, 
under a palm tree). It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere 
to see how deeply their beloved book is a product of its place and 
time, and in how many ways it reflects the Prophet's own experiences.
However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious 
book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the 
infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly 
discourse all but impossible. Why would God be influenced by the 
socioeconomics of seventh-century Arabia, after all? Why would the 
Messenger's personal circumstances have anything to do with the 
Message?
The traditionalists' refusal of history plays right into the hands of 
the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in 
their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the 
Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate 
to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. 
Laws made in the seventh century could finally give way to the needs 
of the 21st. The Islamic Reformation has to begin here, with an 
acceptance of the concept that all ideas, even sacred ones, must 
adapt to altered realities.
Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the 
sibling of peace. This is how to take up the "profound challenge" of 
the bombers. Will Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his ilk agree that Islam 
must be modernized? That would make them part of the solution. 
Otherwise, they're just the "traditional" part of the problem.
The writer is a novelist and essayist whose works include "The Satanic Verses."

______


[3]

The News International
August 10, 2005

DARK CLOUDS ON THE INDO-PAKISTANI HORIZON

M B Naqvi

The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist.

Pakistani and Indian officials met in Delhi to discuss and arrive at 
agreed Confidence Building Measures in pursuit of what is called a 
Nuclear Restraint Regime. The result was formalisation of previously 
agreed pre-informing of the test flights of missiles. Just that and 
nothing more substantial. These meetings virtually coincided with the 
60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. The world 
has, instead of turning away from the evil weapons, become more 
nuclearised. There are at least nine nuclear powers and more may be 
on the way. They pose unacceptable threats to not only the stated 
enemies of each nuclear power but also to the people and controllers 
of atomic weapons in each state. India and Pakistan are prone to 
nuclear conflict, as well as being vulnerable to letting wrong 
fingers reach the button. This has to be avoided at all costs.

The background has to be noted. Right now, there is a veritable 
maelstrom of geopolitical struggles in Asia. There is, on the one 
hand, the US with its drive to supposedly promote democracy, 
stability and gain control of strategic raw material to underpin its 
domination of the world economy despite its economic weaknesses. On 
the other side, are the Security Cooperation Organization that brings 
Central Asian Republics in an alliance with China and Russia that 
have had their own rapprochement a decade ago. This SCO has already 
served notice to the US that it should wind up its bases in Asia and 
stop dreaming about dominating Asia. They want a more "democratic" 
relationship among states. That is, lines are being drawn among Asian 
nations.

Closer to home we have seen India in a close embrace with the US in 
recent weeks. India and America will closely cooperate in the Indian 
Ocean and Arabian Sea in various tasks that America thinks is its 
duty to perform. The Indians will assist them. The Americans have 
promised to make India a global military power and new technologies 
will be inducted into India from the US. Co-production of aircrafts 
and other sensitive technologies is on the cards. India's cooperation 
in nuclear control measures has been sought by America and promised 
by India. America will provide nuclear reactors for civilian power 
generation. America is already treating India as a virtually declared 
nuclear power and a close friend of America like Britain and France 
have been. Which is why it is lifting the various sanctions that were 
imposed on India after the May 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran -- if 
its legislature agrees.

Pakistan's reaction was predictable. It was one of consternation: 
Pakistan had hitched its wagon to the American star and American 
support for its security is the basic assurance that Islamabad had. 
That is now under question. Doubtless, the Americans promise, and are 
sure to provide, Pakistan with some war material as and when they 
adjudge is needed. But Pakistanis will try to get what the Indians 
are trying to obtain. The Indo-Pakistan nuclear arms race is sure to 
become even more intense. The competition in acquiring conventional 
armaments too shall increase. Pakistan will try and obtain everything 
from guns and tanks to nuclear reactors from no matter where. Either 
the Americans shall be forced to supply more equipment to Pakistan at 
the risk of annoying India, or Pakistan will seek even closer 
military and other cooperation with China. Pakistan thinks it has a 
strong China card in hand. Pakistan might buy from Russia too.

One result of all this may be that the Peace Process, still underway, 
will probably stumble and break down. It may even die. Why? Because 
intensification of the nuclear arms race and missiles will actually 
produce a radical mistrust. This is because each addition in India's 
nuclear arsenal means further weakening of Pakistan's defences. And 
vice versa; each increase in Pakistan's nuclear arsenals equals 
India's increased vulnerability. For, there is absolutely no defence 
against a nuclear attack, all talk of ABMs and missile defence 
systems notwithstanding.

The main problem between India and Pakistan needs to be clearly 
formulated. Differences originate in their adversarial attitudes and 
purposes. History has created these. These issues need to be sorted 
out and agreements have to be arrived at. Among the issues, eight 
have been recognised. It is a good working elaboration. But one 
thinks that while even Kashmir -- historically the most intractable 
-- seems now amenable to some solution as things were evolving up to 
last year. Others were thought to be easier and amenable to solve. No 
doubt, difficulties in finding solutions are increasing rapidly, 
particularly of disputes over water. After all is said and done about 
the seven disputes being discussed, one consequential issue stands 
out: it is the existence of two rival Nuclear Deterrents confronting 
each other eyeball to eyeball.

This is a problem that defies solution, other than that both 
countries agree to disarm their nuclear weapons and the missiles that 
are supposed to carry them. Doubtless both have invested heavily and 
the money that could have improved the lives of millions has been 
thrown down this drain. These two nuclear deterrents have created 
vested interests: local versions of industrial-military complexes, 
albeit mostly bureaucratic. The influence and incomes of these vested 
interests depend on the continuation of the nuclear arms race between 
India and Pakistan. In both countries, these groups are powerful and 
possess ample resources. Their ability to ensure an unending flow of 
resources into nuclear programmes is certain. And yet the goal needs 
to be kept in mind. It is de-nuclearisation of South Asia and making 
it a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.

The Americans have done a grievous disservice by popularising the 
suggestion that India and Pakistan need not destroy their nuclear 
weapons and missiles. They should keep them despite the consequent 
compulsion of an unending arms race between them. So long as an 
Indian deterrent is being updated and proliferated, vertically and 
horizontally, Pakistan too would act likewise. This nuclear arms race 
-- and with that goes the number and quality of missiles -- is a 
compulsion in South Asia because of adversarial assumptions and 
attitudes. They have in fact intensified all arms races and America's 
own war industries have made profits at a time when the outlook for 
them was becoming clouded.

The two countries are chasing a solution of the problem of two sets 
of inimical Deterrents sitting close to each other. The logic of this 
situation increases mistrust exponentially, resulting in the arms' 
races that multiply mistrust. CBMs are fair weather birds; they work 
while the relationship is normal. As tensions grow over the 
aggravation of one or more disputes, CBMs are forgotten and generals 
on either side rush to prepare for action. Hasn't the world seen 
1999's half war and 2002's very real threat of a general war? The 
situation was saved by America and not by the CBMs already in place. 
Who remembered them in either Islamabad or New Delhi? No, CBMs are 
not even half a solution. The Subcontinent needs a full solution.

The question is what should India and Pakistan do? India needs to 
have a long-term Pakistan policy, even if it wants to be a great 
military power with enough political influence, with or without a 
permanent seat in the UNSC. Pakistan does not need to be congenitally 
programmed to oppose India in all things. Pakistanis should let India 
go its way and let Indians fare as well as they can. Let us not have 
a similar ambition. Let Pakistan be content with economic development 
and actually reducing poverty of the masses.

______

[4]

The Hindu
August 10, 2005

FAST FOR VISA-FREE BORDERS
Staff Reporter

Activists from Pakistan and Nepal join hands to demand peace 

NEW DELHI: It was a bit of history in the making. A date that has
been part of memory of the world over for various reasons, it
became "special" for more than just what is written in books on
Tuesday.

On a symbolic fast for visa-free borders in South Asia, activists
from Pakistan, India and even Nepal came together to demand peace -
his way. Blurring boundaries in a way that he would have approved,
the Apostle of Peace finally ended the divide that he fought so hard
against.

Gandhi might not really be part of their history books, but for a few
young Pakistanis sitting in the sweltering heat on fast opposite his
samadhi at Raj Ghat his methods to peace are. With both sides
glorifying their own heroes in the common struggle for Independence,
for once it was about `real' history.

"The history we study in school like the books in India are
prejudiced even in good private schools. Our books concentrate mainly
on Jinnah. It is only if you look beyond the text-books and look at
other books, you find out more about other leaders,'' said 21-year-
old Maryam Arif, part of a delegation from Pakistan that is in the
country to attend a "Convention on Visa-free and Peaceful South
Asia''.

Starting where books stops, Rizwan Khan, a political science teacher
from Pakistan, also a part of the delegation, has decided to finally
take `politics' out.

"The curriculum has been revised recently in Pakistan. I will take
back history books from here so that I can study and tell my
students. There are differences in the versions of history. But
whenever we talk about history we should look at real history. And
real history is that Gandhi was a great leader, Jinnah was a great
leader and they were both peace-lovers,'' he said.

Political point

Making a political point to make visa-free borders a reality in an
old-fashioned way, the symbolic fast is as important for its purpose
as it for those made it.

The beginning of the peace process growing to include new recruits,
it is about expanding the base to find new friends.

"The process must move out from the hands of non-government
organisations to include other people. It must be decentralised. For
the past ten years, the process has been concentrated in the hands of
a few non-government organisations and elite families, it must grow
to include the common man and the youth as they are the future,''
asserted activist Sayeeda Diep.


______


[5]

Outlook Magazine | Aug 15, 2005

PUNJAB
The Vanished
 From 1984 to 1994, the Punjab Police was at its brutal best. A decade 
later, NHRC is still to administer justice.
Rajesh Ramachandran

*	2,097 bodies cremated in three crematoriums in Amritsar 
district. All confirmed by the CBI.
*	Police admit custody of only 99 'militants.'
*	Compensation awarded to 109 families by NHRC. Even after 10 
years, 2,000 families still await justice.
September 6 is an unpleasant milestone in the story of death by 
disappearance in Punjab. On that day, 10 years ago, Akali Dal leader 
Jaswant Singh Khalra, who told the world the shocking story of young 
men in Punjab disappearing and being illegally cremated, was himself 
made to disappear. The trial into Khalra's alleged abduction and 
murder by the Punjab Police, then the fiefdom of supercop K.
In January 2005, Akali leader Khalra revealed thousands of 
extra-judicial killings and illegal cremations that had happened 
since 1984. He was later abducted and never heard from.
P.S. Gill, is still going on in a Patiala court. And the trials and 
tribulations of the families of those who disappeared in the 
murderous days of militancy seem to be endless, their search for 
justice almost a lost cause.
The allegations of police brutality in Punjab between 1984 and 1994 
is more chilling than any horror film. Human rights activists allege 
the police picked up thousands
of young men-some confirmed militants, some sympathisers and many 
innocents-from across the state, killed them in cold blood and 
despatched them as unidentified corpses to various crematoriums 
across the state. There were more weighed down in canals and rivers. 
No one knows how many disappeared in this manner. However, 2,097 
illegal cremations, pertaining to just three crematoriums in Amritsar 
district-Durgyana Mandir, Municipal Committee and Tarn Taran-have 
been confirmed by a CBI investigation.
The NHRC, inquiring into the entire case for the last eight years 
now, has tended to concentrate on the illegality of the cremations 
rather than the allegations of rights violation and cold-blooded 
murders. It has also been slow in awarding compensation to families 
of those cremated. In fact, last November, the NHRC awarded a 
compensation of Rs 2.5 lakh each to only 109 families. As many as 
1,886 families have got no relief.
Of the 109 cases where compensation has been paid, the Punjab Police 
has admitted that it had custody of 99 persons before they were 
killed. The police claims that all of them were killed in encounters 
and they could not safeguard the lives of terrorists. In almost all 
the cases, the police's story is the same: the man in custody was 
being taken, usually in the dead of night, to recover arms when other 
militants attacked the police party and killed the terrorist in 
custody. But not a single policeman was recorded as killed in these 
encounters where automatic weapons were often used. But the NHRC did 
not question why only those in custody were killed during such 
encounters. This despite the NHRC noting in its findings that "the 
state of Punjab is, therefore, accountable and vicariously 
responsible for the infringement of the indefeasible right to life of 
those 109 deceased persons as it failed to safe-guard their lives and 
persons against the risk of avoidable harm".
The NHRC refused to respond to Outlook's questionnaire or comment on 
the various contentious issues since it could prejudice the process 
of inquiry. Human rights activists allege the NHRC has been softer on 
the police than the victims. They say the police should have been put 
through more stringent probing, especially their claim of having had 
only 99 victims in custody. One of the key petitioners, the Committee 
for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP), says on the basis of 
its documentation that the police had custody of 146 people before 
they were killed and illegally cremated. Then the NHRC arrived at the 
figure of 109 through its own "independent analysis". According to 
the petitioners, the police have admitted custody in certain cases 
because the families got these arrests documented by writing 
petitions or sending telegrams to public functionaries.

  The Punjab Police has always claimed a degree of immunity on the 
grounds that this was a 'war against terror' and its officers should 
not be held guilty for custodial deaths and cremations. In a recent 
hearing, the police counsel even argued that the Indian state (and 
its security forces) had behaved in a far more humane fashion in 
Punjab than the US forces in Iraq. Altaf Ahmed, the counsel who drew 
this analogy, was not available for comment. It is another issue that 
even in war, custodial deaths are illegal under the Geneva 
Conventions.

The NHRC, on its part, has virtually limited the scope of its inquiry 
to illegal cremations in the three crematoriums of Amritsar. The CIIP 
had documented hundreds of similar illegal cremations in other 
districts of Punjab, like Faridkot, Kapurthala, Ludhiana and Mansa. 
But the Commission has refused to look into these.
Also, the NHRC is yet to question the snail's pace at which the CBI 
is prosecuting the Punjab Police officers. Only about 30 cases are 
being tried in Patiala and even Khalra's case has not reached its 
conclusion. This despite a special police officer, Kuldip Singh, 
testifying recently in the Patiala court that he had seen former 
Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill going into the room where Khalra was 
kept a week before he was killed. According to rights activists, too 
many high-profile officers are involved in the case, which explains 
why the case is making slow progress.
The Khalra case had its beginnings in a press conference held by the 
Akali leader in January 1995. In it, he revealed that thousands of 
extra-judicial killings had happened in Punjab since 1984 and that 
these bodies were illegally cremated all over the state. He had the 
records of three crematoriums in Amritsar, which he made public. But 
the Punjab and Haryana High Court didn't entertain his petition. Soon 
after, he was abducted. A telegram on Khalra's abduction, sent by the 
then Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee president Gurcharan 
Singh Tohra, was treated as a petition by the Supreme Court, which 
asked the CBI to investigate the case as also the illegal cremations.
The CBI came up with the figure of 2,097 illegal cremations in the 
three crematoriums. Among these, the CBI identified 582 bodies, 
provisionally identified another 278 and listed 1,237 as 
unidentified. The Supreme Court referred the matter to the NHRC in 
December 1996, giving the latter all authority to deal with the 
issue. Even when the Centre challenged the NHRC's authority, the 
Supreme Court held in September 1998 that, "in deciding the matters 
referred by this court, the NHRC is given a free hand and is not 
circumscribed by any conditions". That is, the CBI would look into 
the culpability of the police officers in killing/cremating people 
and the NHRC would probe the remaining issues, particularly those 
related to human rights violations. Of course, the Supreme Court 
expected a "quick conclusion" from the NHRC. That was seven years ago.
After the CBI identified 582 bodies, the Punjab Police admitted they 
knew the identity of 376 bodies. According to its affidavit, 321 were 
identified on the spot. This means that 65 per cent of the bodies 
were identified before cremation, yet the police did not hand over 
the bodies to the families. The CIIP's Ashok Agrwaal claims that his 
organisation could place an additional 175 corpses, taking the count 
of fully identified bodies to 757. He says: "There was no 
justification for the cremation of identified bodies terming them 
unidentified/unclaimed, unless it was a matter of policy at the 
highest level of the Punjab Police. If cremation was a matter of 
policy, then it indicates that the murder of these persons could have 
been a matter of policy too".
Despite a decade of delay and apathy, the families of the 'missing 
and cremated' are waiting for justice. As for the CIIP, it sees its 
10-year-long fight as not one just about Punjab. Says Agrwaal: "The 
issue is about the impunity with which the institutions of the state 
trampled on the most basic of fundamental rights-the right to life."



______


[6]

Seminar
July 2005

THE 'MISSING' LINK

THE Right to Information in Indian jurisprudence has largely evolved 
as a concomitant of the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed 
by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Remarking on the 
significance of the right to information the Supreme Court observed: 
'One-sided information, disinformation, misinformation, and 
non-information all equally create an uninformed citizenry which 
makes democracy a farce where the medium of information is 
monopolised either by a partisan central authority, by private 
individuals or by oligarchic organisations...'1 In recent years the 
initiative for the right to information has come from groups and 
communities demanding from the government, its agencies and 
departments, disclosure about their activities and more specifically 
the allocation and utilisation of public funds and public goods. The 
right to information was thus closely linked to issues of good 
governance and transparency, essential components for a vibrant 
democracy. As the Supreme Court has held, in modern constitutional 
democracies, it is axiomatic that the citizens have a right to know 
about the affairs of the government which, having been elected by 
them, seeks to formulate sound policies of governance aimed at their 
welfare.2

However, the sine qua non of a vibrant democracy is the assurance of 
security of the life and liberty of all its citizens. Since 
independence, the Indian nation state has been challenged by 
political movements for identity, autonomy, secession, dignity and 
justice. These struggles have been waged in the northeastern states 
of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram; in Kashmir since 1989, Punjab 
in the mid-eighties and Andhra Pradesh. The Indian state has 
responded by introducing harsh measures, curtailing basic rights and 
fundamental freedoms of citizens. Rights and freedoms are placed in 
abeyance as the army, para-military, police or any other security 
force armed with arbitrary and excessive powers unleash the might of 
the state. In this context the right to information is inextricably 
linked with the fundamental right to life and liberty guaranteed by 
Article 21 of the Constitution.

All these regions have reported a high incidence of 'enforced 
disappearance' of human rights activists, journalists, farmers, 
workers and other ordinary men, women and even children. The 
'disappeared', in international law, are people who have been taken 
into custody by agents of the state, yet whose whereabouts and fate 
are concealed, and whose custody is denied. These disappearances are 
the starting point of illegal detention, torture and custodial 
killings. According to the Report of the UN Working Group on Enforced 
Disappearances, this practice has expanded to 63 countries across the 
world ranging from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, 
South Africa, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, former Yugoslavia, Mexico 
and India.

'Some men arrive. They force their way into a family's home, rich or 
poor, house, hovel or hut, in a city or in a village, anywhere. They 
come at any time of the day or night, usually in plain clothes, 
sometimes in uniform, always carrying weapons. Giving no reasons, 
producing no arrest warrant, frequently without saying who they are 
or on whose authority they are acting, they drag off one or more 
members of the family towards a car, using violence in the process if 
necessary.'3 This is often the first act in the drama of an enforced 
or involuntary disappearance that is today acknowledged as a crime 
against humanity.

These disappearances shatter and disrupt entire families leaving them 
interminably in despair and suffering and often economically 
destitute. Family members run from pillar to post, for years scouring 
for any crumb of information about their loved ones. The victims are 
cut off from the world and placed outside the protection of the law, 
often subjected to torture, and many are never seen again, missing. 
Their relatives are kept in the dark about their whereabouts or 
condition, driven to ask, 'if they are dead, tell us.'4

The security forces employ the mechanism of disappearances for a 
range of reasons: some are arbitrarily detained in crackdowns to 
frighten and terrorize communities, others are picked up for alleged 
links with insurgents, as a punitive measure, as a means to extort 
money from families for the life and security of the abducted. 
Disappearances is a potent tool of intimidation, as months and years 
of enduring hope and despair may render families ready 'to do 
anything if only he comes back alive', as some mothers have said.5

There is a complete blackout of all information relating to the 
well-being and whereabouts of the disappeared person. All attempts to 
obtain any information through personal or official, legal channels 
are obstructed and systematically stonewalled. Families spend time, 
money, energy and emotion seeking rudimentary information about place 
and cause of detention. Impeded by lack of knowledge about law and 
legal procedures, economic disabilities, threats from security forces 
and equipped only with sketchy, insufficient, vague and at times 
inaccurate information, families spend lifetimes searching for sons, 
daughters, fathers and brothers. Perhaps in no other circumstance can 
the phrase, 'no news is good news' be more cruel and injurious. In 
this circumstance, availability and access to information may well 
make the difference between life and death, both of the person who 
has disappeared as well as the family left behind.

During Operation Rakshak, spearheaded by former DGP K.P.S. Gill, 
Punjab witnessed a sharp increase in disappearances. Jaswant Singh 
Khalra, Chairman of the Human Rights Wing of the Akali Dal, uncovered 
and placed before the Supreme Court the incident of 2097 illegal mass 
cremations by the Punjab Police in Amritsar district 
between1984-1994. Thousands of families groping in the dark for clues 
about their abducted family members, were misinformed by the police 
that these young men had left for foreign countries. These families 
were unable to secure any information about their missing relatives, 
either during their lifetime or even upon their death, as their loved 
ones were cremated as 'unidentified and unclaimed.'6 Even as families 
of the 'disappeared' in Punjab, through the Committee for 
Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab continued their arduous 
journey for the discovery of truth and justice before the NHRC, J.S. 
Khalra was himself abducted from in front of his house in September 
1995. After investigation, the police has been charged for his 
'disappearance'.

The phenomenon of enforced disappearances in the North East is 
closely linked to the imposition of a repressive military regime that 
has systematically eroded all institutions of civil society. In the 
counter-insurgency operations conducted by the security forces, 
abduction and disappearances occur in conjunction with other human 
rights violations, including arbitrary detention, custodial torture 
and killings. Most cases of disappearance occur when the armed forces 
arrest and torture alleged suspects or sympathisers to extract 
information. Many never return from these interrogations. They simply 
'disappear'.

In 1983, the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment, Sebastian M. 
Hongray vs. Union of India,7 in a habeas corpus petition filed for 
the production of two Nagas who had disappeared after being taken to 
a camp by the army, concluded that the two missing persons must have 
met an unnatural death, which prima facie would amount to murder. The 
Supreme Court stated, '... that further adjourning the matter to 
enable the respondents (army) to trace or locate the two missing 
persons is to shut the eyes to the reality and pursue a mirage.' The 
court also ordered the state to pay a one lakh rupee compensation to 
each of the wives of the missing persons.

Since the emergence of armed resistance in Kashmir in 1989, 
disappearances have been reported, and have been acknowledged by 
almost every chief minister in Srinagar.

'I went from pillar to post to get any trace of my son but to no 
avail. I lodged a report in the police station... but the officer in 
charge refused to register a case. I approached the Inspector General 
of Police... and at first he assured me that my son's whereabouts 
would be made known to me but when I approached him again after some 
days I was chased away. Finally I filed a petition in the High Court 
and pursued it for some time but could not continue for lack of money 
as I am very poor. ... My son had nothing to do with militancy... His 
"disappearance" is unbearable for me. Neither his person is shown to 
me nor his dead body is shown. This is a horrifying experience for me 
and other members of the family... I am right now helpless. It is 
very difficult for me to manage the household affairs. His 
disappearance has virtually brought us to the level of begging. God 
knows what will happen to us.' (Haleema Begum about the 
'disappearance' of her son Bilal Ahmad Bhat on 3 December 1992.)8

This narrative echoes the trauma of over 2000 families in Kashmir. 
Bound by the common thread of grief, suffering and uncertainty, the 
relatives of the disappeared in 1994 formed the Association of 
Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) led by Parveena Ahanger, whose 
18 year old son disappeared after being arrested by the NSG in 1990. 
Strenuous efforts to seek legal redress through habeas corpus 
petitions in the J&K High Court, and petitions before the State and 
National Human Rights Commission have all failed. APDP has been 
pursuing the demand for information about what happened to their 
loved ones, a need for official acknowledgment, and a quest for 
justice in respect of those responsible. Even the reporting of 
disappearances entails grave risks and activists like Jalil Andrabi 
and H.N. Wanchoo were killed for making these facts public.

Disappearances are emboldened by laws that give security forces 
sweeping powers of arrest and detention, broad powers to deploy 
lethal force and kill. Security forces operating under these laws 
enjoy virtual impunity, as they are provided immunity from 
prosecution. The high-pitched rhetoric of national security and 
territorial integrity overwhelms public opinion and at times even the 
judiciary falters in enforcing rights and exacting accountability. 
Current laws providing legal cover for the disappearances include the 
Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958; Disturbed Areas Act; Jammu 
and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978; Assam Maintenance of Public 
Order (Autonomous District) Act, 1952; Nagaland Security Regulation, 
1962, and Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code. They are 
further fortified by executive and administrative orders allocating 
'unplanned' funds, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions.

The surfeit of powers enjoyed by the armed and paramilitary forces 
flowing from the special laws and the apparent impunity provided by 
the Union government by refusing sanction to prosecute, has enabled 
the security forces to perpetrate human rights violations, including 
'disappearances', over the years. The practice of enforced 
disappearance of persons infringes upon an entire range of human 
rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as 
set out in major international human rights instruments as well as 
the Indian Constitution. The Declaration on the Protection of all 
Persons from Enforced Disappearance9 and the Draft International 
Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Forced 
Disappearance, require the Indian government to promptly provide 
accurate information about detained persons to their family members.

For the right to information to gain ground in these circumstances, 
certain preconditions must be fulfilled. It is imperative that 
draconian laws and provisions legitimizing impunity, enumerated 
above, particularly the AFSPA, are repealed and accountability 
exacted. It would be facetious to talk of the right to information 
without granting to people in these regions access to information 
that impacts upon their life, liberty, human security and their very 
survival. Significantly both the Right to Information Bill, 2004 and 
Jammu and Kashmir Right to Information Act, 2004, on grounds of 
sovereignty and integrity of India, place beyond the reach of the 
people all information sought from intelligence and security 
organizations.10

It is critical that these are amended and information relating to the 
life and liberty of people made available, even qua security forces 
of all hues. In this respect a worthwhile 'confidence building 
measure' of the United Progressive Alliance government would be to 
constitute an independent judicial commission to investigate into all 
complaints of disappearances in Kashmir, Punjab and the North East.11 
Contingent upon the enjoyment of the right to information is not just 
the efficacy of Indian democracy but the liberty, security and 
dignity of its citizens and communities.

Vrinda Grover

Footnotes:

1. Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of 
India vs. Cricket Association of Bengal, (1995) 2 SCC 161.
2. Dinesh Trivedi vs. Union of India, (1997) 4 SCC 306.
3. 'Disappeared: Technique of Terror'. Report prepared by the 
Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, London, 
1986.
4. Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons, Kashmir.
5. Amnesty International, India: 'Disappearances' in Jammu and 
Kashmir, AI Index: ASA 20/2/99.
6. Reduced to Ashes, R.N. Kumar with Ashok Agrwaal and Jaskaran Kaur, May 2003.
7. AIR 1983 SC 1086.
8. Haleema Begum was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in 1998.
9. General Assembly resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992.
10. Section 8 and 21 of the Right to Information Bill, 2004; Sec. 6&8 
of the J&K Right to Information Act, 2004.
11. Resolution passed at the National Convention on the Right to 
Information, Delhi, 2004.


______


[7]

Dear Friend,

Greetings !

The Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks has done it 
again........the latest Social Science Textbook published in June 
2005  for Std. IX is full of historical distotions (including serious 
omissions), factual inaccuracies, value judgments and biasis against 
minorities and women.

There is practically not a single page in the book which is free from 
error or from absolutely atrocious language.

We urge you to sign this petition and pass it on to individuals and 
groups so that we can ensure that the Gujarat Government withdraws 
this substandard book immediately.

The petition can be read and signed online at :

<http://www.PetitionOnline.com/cedpra51/petition.html>http://www.PetitionOnline.com/cedpra51/petition.html

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

Fr. Cedric Prakash
Director
PRASHANT
(A Centre for Human Rights Justice and Peace)
Ahmedabad
Gujarat, India

______


[8]

The Indian Express

'For Hindu rashtra democracy is a hurdle'
PressTrust of India
August 10, 2005 at 0951 hours IST

Bhopal, August 10: Terming democracy in India as the `major hurdle' 
in formation of `Hindu rashtra' and `root cause of all problems', VHP 
senior vice-president Giriraj Kishore last night proposed an 
alternative system - like `guildism' in France - where every section 
selects their most suitable member to help form the government.

"Democracy is now demagogy. It is a hurdle (in formation of Hindu 
rashtra).., " Giriraj Kishore said at a discussion meet on "Why is it 
necessary to make India a Hindu rashtra?"

"Democracy is the root cause of all problems due to which we have to 
suffer," he said alleging politicians have become worshippers of 
votes.

"The best alternative to democracy is guildism wherein people from 
all sections choose their suitable member. There will be no grudge as 
the most acceptable people will form the government", the VHP leader 
later told reporters.
[...]
"Democracy is territorial now. It can be changed and a system can be 
developed like the guild system in France," he said, soon after 
speaking at the function.

[. . .] .


_____


[9]   RESOURCES

(i) From SACW Archives:

Who are the Guilty ? - Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and 
impact of the riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984
by PUDR - PUCL
http://www.sacw.net/i_aii/WhoaretheGuilty.html


(ii)

Exploring Religious Conflict

Gregory F. Treverton, Heather S. Gregg, Daniel Gibran and Charles Yost

$18.00 (Paperback, 82 pp.)
ISBN: 0-8330-3804-4
RAND Corporation
http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/2005/RAND_CF211.pdf

_____


[10]

Committee for Inquiry on December 13
5B Imperial Avenue, Delhi 110 007
Phone: 27667209, 27666253, 9810169360

PRESS CONFERENCE

Dear NewsEditor,
We are pleased to invite you to a discussion on

"Implications of the Supreme Court Judgment on Parliament Attack Case"

On

Thursday, 11 August, 2005

4.00 PM

At

Press Club of India [New Delhi]

The meeting will be addressed by
Nirmala Deshpande, Prabhat Patnaik, Prashant Bushan, and
Nirmalangshu Mukherji

  We are looking forward to share our views on this important topic 
with you. Kindly attend.

Sd/-
Nirmala Deshpande

Chairperson


Chairperson
Nirmala Deshpande

Convenors
Tripta Wahi
Ali Javed

Treasurer
Neeraj Malik

Other Members
Mahasweta Devi
Rajni Kothari
Prabhat Patnaik
Ashish Nandy
Prashant Bhusan
Mihir Desai
Gautam Navlakha
Hiranmay Dhar
Sumanta Bannerjee
Ashim Roy
Indra Munshi
Rita Panicker
Vasanthi Raman
Vijay Singh
Nandita Narain
Nirmalangshu Mukherji

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace 
and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & 
non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia 
Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at:  bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.