The Amazing Indian Army

Area 14/8

Though western media have a soft corner for India,as they consider it a largest democracy of the world and a secular state,reports abound that India’s security forces use torture and rape as a weapon to punish,intimidate,humiliate and degrade the victims in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. The pattern of Army’s misconduct is also glaringly observed when contingent of Indian army performs duties as UN peacekeeping mission abroad. In Congo, army personnel raped women that resulted in unlawful pregnancies. Twelve officers and thirty-nine soldiers were probed in Meerut,Uttar Pradesh,India,for sexually abusing the local women and for having fathered children while on UN peacekeeping mission in Congo in 2008. UN Commission found DNA evidence of children born to Congo women,having distinct Indian features. UN authorities are putting pressure on Indian Government to investigate the issue. Unfortunately Indian media insinuated Pakistani spy agency “ISI” to protect a career officer of Indian Army employed as Instructor in Bangladesh Staff College who was caught with his pants down with a Bangladeshi woman by some vigilant eye of camera.

The Indian soldiers had exploited the war torn women of Congo,and sexual abuse cases reached into hundreds. These girls and women were raped either through coercion or under deceit of food items and Indian-made cosmetics. Indian brigade commander in Congo accused Pakistani soldiers of such violations to avert the blame. UN authorities ordered DNA tests. UN authorities informed Indian government and asked for legal proceeding against these officers and soldiers. Indian efforts of accusing Pakistani soldiers were refuted due to DNA test. Following the allegations,the regiment in which the officers and soldiers were serving was recalled from the Congo and attached to the Western Command headquarters. Earlier too,there have been allegations of sexual abuse and graft against Indian Army officers and soldiers serving in UN missions in the Congo. In March 2008,three officers were charged with sexual abuse of a local woman while on a holiday in South Africa. In 2007,there were allegations that some of the Indian peacekeepers had exchanged food and information with the locals for obtaining gold from rebels in North Kivu in the Congo.

However,there is no parallel to the atrocities perpetrated on Kashmiris in Indian Held Kashmir where Indian soldiers’ stories of rape and murder abound. In order to suppress the freedom movement in IOK Indian Army used religious prejudice and hatred against Muslims while using rape as a weapon against Kashmiri women,whereas the Indian authorities turned a blind to their heinous crimes. Hence,the habitual criminals not only got away with their crime against Muslim women in IOK but also got promotions and postings of their choices. Rape by Army officers/soldiers was taken as part of accepted military norm/culture. On 29th May,2009,two girls Aasiya and Neelofar were reportedly raped and murdered by Indian soldiers in Shopian. The government almost shelved the case after the concocted inquiry report stated that Aasiya slipped and fell in the ravine and Neelofar tried to save her,but both drowned in the ravine. On 29th May 2011,a complete shutdown was observed in Shopian town in Indian occupied Kashmir to mark the second anniversary of rape and murder of two Kashmiri women,Aasiya and Neelofar by Indian soldiers.

With the release of its 2009 country report on India,the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had placed India on its “Watch List” in August 2009. USCIRF said India earned the Watch List designation due to the disturbing increase in communal violence against religious minorities – specifically Christians in Orissa in 2008 and Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 – and the largely inadequate response from the Indian government to protect the rights of religious minorities. “It is extremely disappointing that India,which has a multitude of religious communities,has done so little to protect and bring justice to its religious minorities” said Leonard Leo,USCIRF chair. “USCIRF’s India chapter was released in August 2009 to mark the first anniversary of the anti-Christian violence in Orissa.” In 2008 in Orissa,the murder of Swami Saraswati by Maoist rebels in Kandhamal sparked a prolonged and destructive campaign targeting Christians in Orissa,resulting in attacks against churches and individuals. But the West rather played down the gory incident.

Nevertheless,some human rights organizations have been exposing Indian soldiers and officers involved in sex scandals and rapes. Since the Indian government crackdown against Kashmiris in the disputed territory of Kashmir began in earnest in January 1990,after Kashmiris had started struggle in 1989. Rape by Indian security forces most often occurs during crackdowns,cordon-and-search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In these situations,the security forces frequently engage in collective punishment against the civilian population by assaulting residents and burning their homes. Rape has also occurred frequently during reprisal attacks on civilians. Women who are the victims of rape are often stigmatised,and their testimony and integrity impugned. Social attitudes which cast the woman and not her attacker,as the guilty party often enjoys clout with the judiciary,making rape cases difficult to prosecute and leaving women unwilling to press charges.

According to a 1994 United Nations publication from 1990 to 1996,882 women were reportedly gang-raped by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. A study done by Medecins Sans Frontieres in mid-2005 revealed that Kashmiri women we among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. It further mentioned at since the beginning of the armed struggle in Kashmir in 1989,sexual violence was routinely perpetrated on Kashmiri women,with 11.6 per cent of respondents saying they were victims of sexual abuse. Interestingly,the figure is much higher than that of Sierra Leone,Sri Lanka and Chechnya. UNO had accused Indian army in writing of rape of Congolese women by its officers and soldiers. Previously such accusations were raised by Kashmiri and Indian minorities but were never listened to. Nobody sympathized with innocent women of Kashmir and minorities whose honor was targeted deliberately by Indian army personnel. International media withheld such news of rape and murder because the West has interest in the market of plus one-billion population.

In Sri Lanka

The IPKF was soon to earn the acronym – Innocent People Killing Force and a series of encounters will remind Jaffna Tamils how wonderful India had treated the Tamil people. Indian reply by Brig Kahlon for rape charges were “the Indian army are not angels….rape happens even in the West”. These are just a few of the examples of IPKF’s war crimes in Sri Lanka against the Tamil people India is now so concerned about.

• 12 October 1987 – IPKF attacks village of Kokuvil killing over 40 civilians’ in retaliation for loosing 29 Indian commandoes at the Jaffna University raid.
• 21 October 1987 – Deepavali,68 innocent Tamils shot and killed by IPKF inside Jaffna Hospital including hospital doctors,nurses,staff and patients. Dr. Sivapathasuntharan who entered the hospital the next day was also killed by the IPKF.
• 21 November 1987 – Trincomalee,a IPKF soldier kills 7 civilians and injures 4 by indiscriminate firing.
• August 1989 – Velvettiturai,64 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians killed by the IPKF.
• More than a 100 Tamil civilian bodies were found in Chunnakam,Mallakam,Uduvil,Manipay,Maruthanamadam and Inuvil – all deaths attributed to the IPKF.
• Amnesty International Report 1988 (Jan-Dec 1987) quotes local magistrate in North Sri Lanka finding seven cases of rape by IPKF. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA37/030/1990/en/1520f8d1-17d4-…
• A book on India’s war crimes against Tamil civilians was released in April 2011 in New Delhi titled “In the Name of Peace:IPKF Massacres of Tamils in Sri Lanka” documented by the Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) and published by the Delhi Tamil Students Union. The book covers 12 massacres committed by the IPKF.

We do not deny the cultural affinities shared between India and Sri Lanka,we do not deny the close ties that have existed over centuries but inspite of such ties India has gone on to commit the unthinkable upon a nation that has done India no harm.

Indian atrocities in Kashmir

“As the conflict in Kashmir enters its fourth year,central and state authorities have done little to stop the widespread practice of rape by Indian security forces in Kashmir. Indeed,when confronted with the evidence of rape,time and again the authorities have attempted to impugn the integrity of the witnesses,discredit the testimony of physicians or simply deny the charges everything except order a full inquiry and prosecute those responsible for rape”.
(Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights,May 09,1993)

“Since January 1990,rape by Indian occupation forces has become more frequent. Rape most often occurs during crackdowns,cordon and search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In raping them,the security forces are attempting to punish and humiliate the entire community.”
(‘Pain in Kashmir:A Crime of War’issued jointly by Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights,May 09,1993)

“By beginning TV cameras and prohibiting the presence in Kashmir of the International Red Cross and of human rights organization,the Indian authorities have tried to keep Kashmir out of the news.”
(`Kashmiri crisis at the flash point’,The Washington Times,by columnist Cord Meyer,April 23,1993)

“(On February 23,1991),at least 23 women were reportedly raped in their homes at gunpoint (at Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir). Some are said to have been gang-raped,others to have been raped in front of their children …The youngest victim was a girl of 13 named Misra,the oldest victim,name Jana,was aged 80″.
(Amnesty International,March 1992)

“The most common torture methods are severe beatings,sometimes while the victim is hung upside down,and electric shocks. People have also been crushed with heavy rollers,burned,stabbed with sharp instruments,and had objects such as chilies or thick sticks forced into their rectums. Sexual mutilation has been reported”.
(Amnesty International,March 1992)

“The worst outrages by the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) have been frequent gang rapes of all women in Muslim villages,followed by the execution of the men”.
(Eric Margolis,The Ottawa Citizen,December 8,1991)

“While army troops dragged men from their homes for questioning in the border town of Kunan Pushpura,scores of women say they were raped by soldiers….a pregnant Kashmiri woman,who was raped and kicked,gave birth to a son with a broken arm.”
(Melinda Liuin,Newsweek,June 24,1991)
[Anthony Wood and Ron MaCullagh of the Sundav Observer (June 02,1992) estimated that over 500 Indian army men were involved in this orgy of rape and plunder in Kunan Pushpura.]

“The security forces have entered hospitals,beaten patients,hit doctors,entered operating theaters,smashed instruments. Ambulances have been attacked,curfew passes are confiscated.”
(Asia Watch,May 1991)

“Subjugated,humiliated,tortured and killed by the 650,000-strong Indian army,the people of Kashmir have been living through sheer hell for more than a year,the result of an increasingly brutal campaign of state repression. India hides behind its carefully-crafted image of “non-violence”and presents itself in international forums as a model of democracy and Pluralism. Yet,it is unable to stand up the scrutiny of even its admirers. All journalists,especially television crews,were expelled from the Valley. With no intrusive cameras to record the brutalities of the Indian forces,the world has been kept largely in the dark.” (The Toronto Star,January 25,1991)

“Young girls were now being raped systematically by entire (Indian) army units rather than by a single soldier as before. Girls are taken to soldier’s camps and held naked in their tents for days on end. Many never return home….Women are strung up naked from trees and their breast lacerated with knives,as the (Indian) soldiers tell them that their breast will never give milk again to a newborn militant. Women are raped in front of their husbands and children,or paraded naked through villages and beaten on the breasts.”
(The Independent,September 18,1990)

Atrocities will further fuel Naxalism

Praful Bidwai

The killing of 20 civilians by the Central Reserve Police Force in Bijapur in Central India’s Chhattisgarh will go down as a black mark in the history of Indian counter -insurgency. All evidence suggests that the CRPF gravely mistook a village meeting to plan a seed festival for a Maoist gathering and indiscriminately fired on it.

Among the victims were two 15-year-old boys,a 12-year-old girl,and a professional drum player -hardly fit to be confused for armed Naxalites. Although the CRPF troops’bullet injuries remain unexplained,and four of those killed allegedly had police records,nothing suggests that Maoists ambushed the troops,who then fired in self-defence.

Even firing in self-defence cannot be indiscriminate. Besides,there’s evidence of sexual assault and mutilation of dead bodies. This suggests collective punishment -which is categorically unacceptable.

Equally deplorable is the butchery’s rationalisation that the CRPF has no “system of segregating”guerrillas from civilians during gunfights,and Chief Minister Raman Singh’s argument that Maoists use civilians as human shields,and are responsible for their deaths.

However,the present case appears less an instance of unintended damage than deliberate targeting. The attacking party followed the “fire-first-and-ask-questions-later”approach.

The incident emphasises the growing disconnect between the people and counterinsurgency troops,who have no comprehension of their language,culture and sensitivities,and whom they often consider inferior

In Chhattisgarh,Adivasi identities,rooted in an ancient civilisation,remain strong. It is only since the 1980s that they have been exposed to large-scale intrusion by external predatory interests like forest contractors and the mining mafia. The tribals have over the years lost land and access to forests.

The state fails to comprehend this as it pushes destructive mining and industrial projects,thus increasing the Adivasis’alienation. It hasn’t even invested a fraction of what it spends on the paramilitary forces in addressing Adivasi grievances or helping its counterinsurgency troops understand the roots of tribal alienation amidst which Maoism thrives.

E.N. Rammohan -a distinguished former Border Security Force chief with much counterinsurgency experience -puts his finger on the nub:”Give land to the tiller and forests back to the tribals. Plus,bring down the vast gap between the rich and the poor� and the Maoists would be on the wane.”

In Bijapur,the CRPF was in the first place wrong to open fire. The proper objective of a counterinsurgency operation is not to kill rebels,but to bring them to justice by establishing their culpability for specific crimes,and to isolate them politically from the population.

This civilian butchery has created fear and insecurity among the people. Many are planning to move out of their villages into neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. It will take generations for their scars to heal.

Politically,the incident is a huge victory for the Maoist argument that the Indian state is irredeemably anti-people and brutal. Democracy is a mere fa�ade. It must be overthrown through an armed revolution.

The only way to redeem this situation is to award exemplary punishment to those responsible for the killings. India has paid a heavy price for not bringing the culprits of past counterinsurgency excesses to book.

Take the Chittisingpura massacre of 2000,in which 36 Sikhs were killed. Indian military forces killed five innocent locals at Pathribal in Anantnag district,claiming they were the culprits. Their bodies were dressed up in military uniforms and set on fire in an extraordinarily shoddy cover-up attempt. Officers were decorated and monetarily rewarded for this heinous crime. They compounded their offence by substituting the victims’DNA samples with fake ones.

The incident still rankles in Kashmir. Yet,nobody has been put on trial for it -although the Supreme Court has strongly refuted the army’s misguided invocation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to reject that demand.

The latest Chhattisgarh killings raise serious questions about the anti-Maoist campaign underway in nine states. It has come in for scathing criticism from an Expert Group of the Planning Commission.

The Group holds:”The methods chosen by the government to deal with the Maoist phenomenon [have] increased the people’s distrust of the police and consequent unrest. Protest against police harassment is itself a major instance of unrest frequently leading to further violence by the police� which in effect triggers a second round of the spiral.”

In many parts of India,the state has been captured by the rich or become dysfunctional and predatory upon the people. Notes the Expert Group:”One of the attractions of the Naxalite movement is that it does provide protection to the weak against the powerful.. One doesn’t have to romanticise the Maoists to recognise this.

Green Hunt only pays lip service to the official “two-pronged”approach of “development”and “law-and-order,”or simultaneously redressing popular grievances and using force. In practice,it overwhelmingly relies on brute force without recognising that the insurgency feeds on Adivasi dispossession and brutalisation.

The official premise that Maoism is India’s “greatest internal security threat”is profoundly mistaken. The Maoists aren’t about to capture power or destroy India’s unity. They pose a civil law-and-order problem,which should be tackled by normal police methods -good intelligence-gathering,crime control,painstaking evidence collection,and prosecution of those instigating or practising violence.

By contrast,social cohesion is gravely threatened by the communal Right,including the Bharatiya Janata Party and its associates,some of whom have embraced terrorism,but against whom the Indian state doesn’t act.

The state must heed the counsel of counterinsurgency experts like Robert Thompson. “Hardly,if ever,has a counter-insurgency campaign been won strictly by waging war. Military action has an important role in overcoming guerrillas,but the philosophy espoused by the guerrillas must also be defeated and this requires a well-reasoned combination of political reform,civic action and education of the population.”

As Mr. Rammohan puts it,a counterinsurgency operation must be “scrupulously legal.”This is a precondition for its popular acceptance,and also for the state’s legitimacy. When will India’s rulers learn this?

Atrocities on Sikh Women in Punjab

“If any action occurs in this village,every single male is going to be taken out and shot. Then we’re going to take all the women to our camp and there we’re going to create a new breed for Punjab.”

Brig. RP Sinha addressing assembled Sikh villagers on March 8,1991,International Women’s Day

And this was the way International Women’s Day was celebrated in Punjab. The untold story of the Sikh Resistance Movement is the story of Sikh women. It is a feature of Punjabi culture that atrocities on women are rarely reported and remain hidden. Families feel ashamed to speak of the treatment women received at the hands of Indian Security Forces,but this story must be told.

Role of Sikh Women in the Movement

Many Sikh women participated in the Sikh resistance movement as fighters. Like their sisters from past ages,Sikh women joined their brothers in the fight for freedom. Many brave Singhnees fought side by side with their Singhs and attained Shaheedee. The examples of Shaheeds Bhai Harvinderjit Singh Taini Babbar and Bibi Manjeet Kaur Babbar (their story will be posted later),Bhai Pritpal Singh and Bibi Harjeet Kaur,etc,are notable.

Sikh women often worked as messengers for Sikh Resistance groups as well as preparing hideouts and serving tired Sikh fighters.

But unfortunately,many Sikh women were also the target of the bloody thirsty Indian Security forces. Sikh women were ruthlessly tortured,not only physically but also mentally. They were used as tools to force the surrender of Sikh fighters who were their relatives and also as a means of humiliating families. When Sikh women were arrested with their husbands,the husbands were often forced to watch the rape of their wives. Rape was used as an interrogation tool.

Humiliation:A common form of torture used on Sikhs

The Indian Forces also began a program of “shudhee karan”,which was a code name for the rape of Sikh women. They joked that the offspring of their rapes would change the genetic makeup of the Sikh community and they would kill the Resistance in this way. Many rape victims took their own lives,unable to live with the ongoing humiliation at the hands of the Indian police.

The first example of the atrocities heaped upon Sikh women is that of Bibi Amandeep Kaur.

Shaheed Bibi Amandeep Kaur

Bibi Amandeep Kaur

Bibi Amandeep Kaur was the sister of Bhai Harpinder Singh Goldy aka. Pamma of the Khalistan Commando Force. She was only twenty when she was arrested,tortured,raped and then killed by the Punjab Police.

Bibi Amandeep Kaur,before her Shaheedee was on the run but had the courage to tell her story to human rights workers.

Here is her story in her own words,shortly before she was murdered [I have divided the sections for easier reading]:

Marriage &Arrest

“Jaswinder Singh Sraa son of Surjeet Singh of Jassowal village Ludhiana dst. Was born and brought up on the UK. He presently lives in Mississauga Canada.

He came to India on October 12,1991 for marriage on October 24th. We along with my father Jaswant Sngh,village Headman Bhag Singh and Member of Panchyaat Meet Singh went to the office of the sub-registrar,Rampura Phul,for registration of the marriage. As we came out of the courtroom,the SHO of Phul,picked up three of us,me,my husband and my father. We were taken to Phul Police Station where SSP Kahlon,SP Mohkam Singh,DSP Aulah and SP of Operations were present.

Inhuman Torture

The SSP on seeing us,promptly ordered that my two male relations be stripped naked in my presence. He then took out the picture of his slain son and addressing them remarked that he had taken the revenge for the murder (by dishonouring me,the sister of an underground Sikh activist).

Kahlon then started abusing my husband and father. He took hold of a lathi to beat the two. It was then the turn of his subordinates who beat us with their leather belts. The SSP ordered that my husband and father slap each other.

After this cruel exercise,we were blindfolded. I was relieved of my two wedding rings,a pair of ear-rings and one golden chain. From my husband,the SSP snatched $500 and a bracelet of 3.5 tolas and his wedding ring. My father was similarly robbed of Rs. 2500. I and my husband were put into our van PCL-8433. We heard the SSP directing his staff to set our house on fire and bring the wife and younger daughter of Jaswant Singh (my mother and sister) to the police station for similar treatment.

After Kahlon left,we were brought back to the police station. While my husband and father were put in the lock-up,I was kept out for maltreatment [i.e. for sexual assault].

Early next morning we three were taken to Sardulgarh by our van. On October 27,my mother Surjeet Kaur was brought to us. She told us her story of dishonour [rape],torture and maltreatment. She was kept in a Rampura police station and at the head office of CIA Bathinda.

In our absence,the police from Rampura Phul ransacked our house and removed all our belongings. The village panchayat was not let anywhere near the house. No seizure report was prepared and handed over to the panchayat or anyone else.

12 Days of Terror

I,my mother and father were kept in Sardulgarh police station for 12 days. But my husband was moved to Phul police station on October 29. The SSP was present there. He ordered my husband’s release on October 30,telling him to forget about his marriage to me and leave India immediately,which he did the next day. In the meantime,the village panchayat came to know of our detention at Sardulgarh and they came there to rescue us but we were removed stealthily to Boha police station.

At Boha,I was not given even water for washing under SSP’s order. We were maltreated there [the woman was reluctant to give details of the mistreatment].

After eight days,the three of us were removed from Boha to CIA Bathinda. My mother and I were released from three weeks of illegal detention. My father was kept in CIA Bathinda and at Phul and was produced in a court on November 30. A case was registered against him.

KP Gill ‘Helpless’

While we were in custody,Jaswinder Singh,who happens to be brother of my father,telephoned DGP KP Gill at telephone No. 753-546840 requesting him to intervene but Gill told him that Kahlon did not listen to his advice.

We have learnt that the SSP had picked us up because on October 23,1991,some millitants had abducted six traders of Phul and the police suspected my 16-year-old brother Harpinder Singh Goldy aka. Pamma’s hand in the abduction. My brother had gone underground in the wake of police harassment in August 1991 when he was studying in class 10 + 1 .

I have gone underground to escape further humiliation and torture because the SSP Harkishan Kahlon is after me,for unknown reasons. Because of the “treatment”given to my husband,he has left me and does not wish to keep me as his wife any longer.”

Shaheedee

Bibi Amandeep Kaur stayed in hiding until January 21 1992. The police then played a sinister game. They asked he to return to her house,returning all her property and insisted they would not harass her any more. They also bailed her father the day before. Jaswant Singh did not trust the police so he did not return home. Amandeep Kaur did. When her mother was out,two gun men with masked faces came on behalf of SSP Bathinda,Kahlon,and shot Bibi Amandeep Kaur dead on January 21st at 7:30pm.

Bhai Harpinder Singh Gold,brother of Bibi Amandeep Kaur,at age 18,also later sacrificed his life for the cause of Sikh freedom.

The Story of Bibi Gurmeet Kaur

Bibi Gurmeet Kaur was a student of the 10 grade at village Lehrkaa near Kathoo Nangal. Bibi Gurmeet Kaur and her older sister Bibi Parmjeet Kaur had gone to visit their father Swarn Singh and brother Satnam Singh who were in prison for giving shelter to Sikh Resistance fighters. They had returned home on April 21,1989 when the Indian police raided their home and arrested Bibi Parmjeet Kaur. The police told villagers that the Deputy Commissioner wanted to record her statement. Parmjeet Kaur was kept in custody one night and then returned home. Next Gurmeet Kaur was arrested and kept for two nights. She too was released but threatened with dire circumstances if she told what had happened to her. Gurmeet Kaur did not remain silent and recounted what had happened to her.

When Gurmeet Kaur was brought to the police station,she was stripped naked and tortured in the verandah of the police station in plain view of all the police officers. That night,the police blindfolded her and locked her in a room. In that room,drunken Indian Police officers took turns raping her. Gurmeet Kaur fell unconscious and when she woke the next morning,she found herself covered in blood and stark naked.

The next day,Gurmeet Kaur was tortured again. The perverse and twisted police officers went so far as to put salt and chili peppers into Gurmeet Kaur’s private parts.

On April 24,when Gurmeet Kaur was released,she could not walk. She was taken to hospital for treatment by the villagers.

Other Cases

These cases are not unique. Gang Rapes and humiliation were common in Punjab. 19 year old Baljeet Kaur,sister of Sikh fighter Bhai Gurjeet Singh was also gang raped. Bibi Rachhpal Kaur was arrested for no reason but for having caught the eye of the police party and On September 5,1989 was gang raped by the Kali Das Sharma and other police officers.

The story of the treatment of Sikh women at the hands of Indian Security Forces is a long and sad one. I don’t know which cases to highlight and which to leave. Should I write about Sarbjit Kaur (14) and Salwinder Kaur (13) who were abducted while collecting clay for a school project and then gang raped and killed by Indian Police? Or should I write about the seven-year-old daughter of a Singh who was molested and then dismembered by the Police’s Poohla Nang? The list is endless.

The abuse of Sikh women was and is widespread in Punjab. Mothers,wives and children of Sikh fighters were considered legitimate targets. The butchers who were responsible for these tragedies are still in the police force today. They are now high ranking officers. And the abuse continues…

“Now Get Your Khalistan…”

Victim of Police Torture

Bhai Nirvair Singh was the Granthi of Gurdwara Shaheedaa(n),Amritsar. Bhai Nirvair Singh’s younger brother,Bhai Kulwant Singh was a Sikh Resistance Fighter and the police constantly raided their home in search of him. Finally,unable to locate Kulwant Singh,SSP Azhar Alam and his “Black Cats” shot Bhai Nirvair Singh to death. Bhai Nirvair Singh’s wife,Bibi Manjit Kaur,was with him at the time and ran to save herself. The police caught Bibi Manjit Kaur and badly beat her with their rifle butts. They let her live,but her ordeal was far from over.

On May 5,1988,the police again raided the house. Bhai Nirvair Singh’s youngest brother,Bhai Dilbagh Singh,a Granthi at Gurdwara Baba Bakala,was home but hid himself,fearing for his life. The police spotted him and without any warning,shot him dead. Bibi Manjit Kaur was still in the house when the police entered and they immediately began to beat her. They grabbed her by her hair and dragged her to the fields where the Indian Police tortured her for an hour and a half. When Bibi Manjit Kaur was almost senseless,they threw her on top of Bhai Dilbagh Singh’s dead body and laughed,”Now get your Khalistan…”. Bibi Manjit Kaur’s feet were so swollen from the torture that she could not walk for days. Her scalp also oozed blood from the repeated blows. Villagers who were witness to this scene were also beaten and told to keep their mouths shut. Harassment of their family and relatives continued.

Azhar Alam

Today,Azhar Alam is a high ranking official in the Vigilance Bureau of the Punjab Police. The man responsible for the brutal torture of thousands of innocent Sikh men and women has not been charged with any crime.

Bibi Gurdev Kaur &Bibi Gurmeet Kaur

Perhaps the most brutal of all Indian Police officials in Punjab was Batala’s Gobind Ram. Gobind Ram took sadistic pleasure in personally torturing Sikh prisoners and kept a vat filled with feces and urine that he force-fed to amritdhari Sikhs while saying,”You have drunk the amrit of Gobind Singh,now drink the amrit of Gobind Ram.”

Gobind Ram’s atrocities came to light nationwide when he ordered the arrest of Bibi Gurdev Kaur (wife of Bhai Kulwant Singh Babbar) and Bibi Gurmeet Kaur (wife of Bhai Mehal Singh). Both Singhs were underground at the time.

On August 21,1989,a van with tinted windows came and parked in front of the Parbhat Finance Company,Amritsar,where both Singhnees worked. Six armed men got out of the van and approached Bibi Gurmeet Kaur and Bibi Gurdev Kaur,ordering them to get in the van. When the Bibis demanded to know who they were,one man identified himself as Lakhwinder Lakha,ASI. He said that the police party had come from Batala Sadr police station and they would have to come with him. When the Singhnees began to make a scene,the police threw them into the van. Bibi Gurmeet Kaur and Bibi Gurdev Kaur’s dastaars were ripped off and used to tie their arms and their kirpans were also taken off.

The van arrived at the notorious Beco Torture Centre in Batala at 7pm. When the Singhnees went inside,they saw SSP Gobind Ram beating a Sikh youth with a rod. When he saw the two women enter,he immediately came towards them and hit Gurdev Kaur in the stomach with his rod. Bibi Gurdev Kaur collapsed onto the ground and began to bleed from her private parts. The bleeding did not stop for several days. Gobind Ram kept hitting Bibi Gurdev Kaur in the stomach without saying a word for five minutes. He then gave the rod to another Inspector whom he ordered to hit Bibi Gurdev Kaur in the joints.

Gobind Ram next moved to Bibi Gurmeet Kaur whom he threw to the ground and began to kick in the chest. The next torture to begin was the “ghotna” where a heavy log is rolled on the thighs with men standing on top,which results in ripped muscles. In Bibi Gurdev Kaur’s own words,”Then they put a heavy roller on my thighs and made a few policemen stand on it,while others rotated it. I kept on screaming but they hit me with belts and kept on asking me the whereabouts of my husband Kulwant Singh.”

Both women were severely tortured for two days. Gobind Ram kept demanding to know where Bhai Kulwant Singh and Bhai Mehal Singh were. The Bibis kept repeating that they did not know,but Gobind Ram was not satisfied. They were tortured until they fell unconscious. They were then revived and tortured again.

When Bibi Gurdev Kaur was nearing her death,the police secretly took her to the government hospital and left her there. Gurmeet Kaur’s right leg was paralysed and both Singhnees had been kept awake since their arrest. Someone was called from the outside to massage their limbs so they could regain some sensation again. Both women could not walk but were forced to do so. In the hospital,a merciful lady doctor took care of Gurdev Kaur and also informed her family.

News of all this reached the media and all political religious and social organizations condemned Gobind Ram’s actions. When finally Gurmeet Kaur refused to hand over any Singh,she was threatened with being killed. By now though,because the press had gotten wind of the arrest,she was indicted in a false case and sent to jail. After some time,she too was released.

Because Bibi Gurdev Kaur received the best care possible,she was saved from death,but for the rest of her life she would face health problems.

Human Rights organizations condemned Gobind Ram for his brutal treatment of these two women. He claimed that no torture had occurred and both were kept in a “Guest House”. KP Gill,the Director General of Punjab Police announced,”the reports against SSP Batala,Gobind Ram by members of Panchyats and Sarpanches (community leaders) were false. There is no truth in them. This was propoganda against the police officers. This was verified after investigations. There were such reports against other honest and hardworking police officers [as well]“

When no action was taken against Gobind Ram,and he continued to torture and maim at will,the Singhs took it upon themselves to finish this rabid dog. Gobind Ram was killed on January 10,1990 in a massive bombing.

KP Gill:Super Cop or Sexual Predator?

KP Gill

KP Gill,ex-Director General of Punjab Police,is thought to have single handedly crushed the Khalistan movement in Punjab. He has been given the title of “Super Cop” by Indian media despite having unleashed a wave of terror on the Sikhs that was not even seen in the days of the Mughals. Torture methods were so grotesque and brutal that they cannot be described.

Gill was known to the Sikhs of Punjab as a drunk who also preyed on helpless women. Although Gill is proclaimed “Super Cop” in India and considered a great hero,the fact that he has been convicted for sexual assault is usually ignored.

In 1988,KP Gill was attending a party to celebrate Operation Black Thunder (an assault on Sree Darbaar Sahib Amrtisar). At this party,in plain view of all attendees,KP Gill sexually assaulted Indian Administrative Service officer Rupen Deol Bajaj. Bajaj was not helpless like most victims and instead of forgetting the incident,filed a police report.

Other officals spoke with Bajaj and asked her to withdraw the case since Gill was a hero in the fight against the Sikh Resistance but despite all this,she persisted. According to one report,”The government immediately took sides and tried to squelch or delay the court case. It also took petty action against Ms. Bajaj by making her a low-ranking official,stopping her mail,taking her off of mailing lists,removing her from government telephone books,etc”

Finally,in 1996,the butcher of Punjab,KP Gill was convicted of sexual assault. Though he was initially sentenced to three months in prison,the sentence was reduced to three years supervised probation (later further reduced to one year,un-supervised probation). He was also ordered to pay Rupen Deol Bajaj Rs. 2 lakh and pay Rs. 50 000 in legal expenses.

If a high ranking officer could not escape being a victim of Gill’s lust,what to say of the thousands of poor Sikh women kept in dark cells without any charges and without any rights? This is the character of India’s hero,KP Gill,”Super Cop”

And The Abuse Continues Today…

Some argue that in the turmoil of Punjab,perhaps some excesses were committed but times have changed. The Police have reformed and India now treats Sikhs fairly. A glance at the newspapers is enough to dispel that belief. The following story appeared in the Chandigarh Tribune on September 27,2003 http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030927/chd.htm

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Woman alleges inhuman torture by police

Our Correspondent

Karamjit Kaur shows injury marks on her leg. – Tribune photo by Pankaj Sharma

Chandigarh,September 26

An another incident of brutal torture came to light when a 20-year-old girl,Karamjit Kaur,who was rescued by the Warrant Officer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court,today alleged that she was subjected to inhuman treatment and was asked to remove her clothes by the Punjab Police personnel at a press conference organised by the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights International here today.

“Five persons including two women,who had been allegedly subjected to third degree torture for several days by the Punjab Police were rescued by the Warrant Officer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court yesterday. These five persons were suspected to be involved in a murder case by the police. The five persons who were released included – Karamjit Kaur,Tirath Kaur,Sahib Singh,Gurdev Singh and Gurmit Singh,” informed Mr Arunjeev Singh Walia,Press Secretary.

Showing torture marks on her body,the victim while addressing scribes,said she was detained at Nabha police station for several days and been tortured. She was even ordered to remove her clothes by police constables,the victim alleged.

Narrating her tale of woe,she said police constables,after taking liquor usually interrogated her in the midnight. Even if a woman constable was called most of the time she stayed outside the room during her interrogation. The victim further added that:”I can not reveal the details whatever happened to me was worse than a hell.”

She further added that “she was subjected to inhuman third degree torture twice by pulling her legs apart in 180 degree and also beaten up with an iron rod in between her legs and two police men putting pressure on that rod.

“I was also threatened of liquidation if I did not disclose the truth and was also molested by the policemen”,the victim further said. Similarly,her mother said:”It was difficult to see my husband,son and daughter to be subjected to third degree torture by the police.”

When contacted the SHO of the police station concerned denied that they were subjected to third degrees torture. He said that all five of them were called at police station only for a day. Thereafter they were not traceable.
The General Secretary of the NGO,Mr Navkiran Singh,who had moved a petition in the high court for the release of victims said a Warrant Officer had secured the release five victims from the illegal custody of police station Kotwali,Nabha,Patiala district on September 25. He also informed that the high court had also ordered the medical examination of the victims. The Chairman of the NGO,Mr Amar Singh Chahal,demanded a CBI inquiry into the case.

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How many cases continue to go unreported?

The Khalsa once saved thousands of abducted Hindu women from being molested and sold by the Afghans. Why can’t we even save our own now? Our sisters continue to suffer in Punjab. And the Panth continues its long slumber…

A discussion on the atrocities Sikh women suffered in Punjab would not be complete without a discussion on what Sikh widows and their children continue to endure today. They have been forgotten by most in the Panth. Those Singhs that sacrificed their lives for the Sikh Cause must have thought that the Panth would take care of their families after they had been martyred. Sadly,this has not happened. And now,many say that no future generation will be willing to make the same sacrifices seeing the way families that were left behind in this chapter of the Sikh struggle continue to be neglected and live in poverty.

15-Year-Old Harpreet Kaur

By mid-1992,the Indian Police in Punjab had lost all sense of morality and considered human rights to be a joke. On June 25,1992,15-year-old Harpreet Kaur RaNo was stopped while riding her bicycle in Amritsar’s Ghio Mandi.

Harpreet Kaur was very interested in the Sikh struggle and used to consider the Sikh fighters her brothers. When the newspaper would print a notice about the Shahidi and bhog of a Sikh fighter,she would cut out their picture and keep it in her purse.

The police decided to search her purse. When the pictures were found,the excuse to arrest this young Sikh girl was found and she was taken directly to the famous torture center at BR Model School in Amritsar. She was put in the custody of Thanedar Darshan Lal who punished Harpreet Kaur for her “crime”. In that dark torture center,only Vahiguru knows what suffering and brutality Harpreet Kaur faced.

Despite her family’s best efforts to free her,the newspapers reported that Harpreet Kaur along with 3 other “terrorists” had been killed on June 27,1992 near Sultanvind. Her body was not given to the family. The family went to the cremation grounds at Durgiana Mandir and in one pile of ashes,Harpreet Kaur’s sister recognized a kaRa. The two sisters used to wear identical KaRas and the ashes were recognized as Harpreet Kaur’s. No justice was ever expected or delivered for this cold-blooded murder.

Final Wish…

Bibi Kulbir Kaur Dhami

Bibi Kulbir Kaur Dhami was kept in illegal custody by the Tarn Taran CIA staff for many months from 1993 to 1994. Miraculously,she survived. During that time she saw countless Singhs and Singhnees be tortured and then killed in fake encounters. In her own words,Bibi Kulbir Kaur recounts the final wish of one Bibi who was being taken to her death:

“Surinder Kaur was the principal of a Model School in Tarn Taran. Her school had approximately 400 children enrolled. Her husband was a former soldier and worked in a bank in Amritsar. It was perhaps July 1993 when he was arrested along with his wife and children and brought to the jail for having given shelter [to Sikh fighters]. With her was the son of a Pandit,Ramesh,who had become a Singh and had been arrested with his group [of fighters]. This group was tortured in front of us. They endured this cruelty for about a week and most of the group confessed to having participated in some actions,but this couple,[Bibi Surinder Kaur and her husband] were accused of having given the group shelter only.

Surinder Kaur kept begging that her body not be touched by any male police officer. She was kept with me for eight days in the women’s lockup. In front of me,she was interrogated four times a day. The male police officers would beat her with sticks and use the ghotna. Three or four policemen would stand on the ghotna. I myself saw them drag her around by the chest. This entire interrogation was conducted by SP Operation Khoobi Ram,DSP Gurmit Singh,Inspetor Ram Nath,and SI Tarlochan Singh. They are completely responsible for torturing and killing her (it’s another story that their orders were all coming from the top).

Four members of this group,along with Surinder Kaur’s husband were tortured for a week and then killed in a fake encounter which was reported to then newspapers. One of those was a police officer,Dalbir Singh,who had abandoned his job,but he was apparently spared. All this [the encounter] happened in front of him and he could be a witness.

At around 8pm,the police took Surinder Kaur away from me while beating her. Surinder Kaur was dragged away as she wept and called out my name. They threw her in a car. She was sobbing and screaming her final wish to me,”You have to take care of my child now…look after him…this is your responsibility now.” Surinder Kaur was killed that night. The police officials told me that she cried the entire time in the car and they told her to do paath after which they shot her. When she died,Surinder Kaur was wearing my suit and the police officials teased me that because my suit had gone in my place,I had been spared.”

Bibi Kulbir Kaur Dhami now runs the Gur Asra Trust for Sikh orphans in Mohali.

Widow of a “Terrorist”

The widows of Sikh “terrorists” have suffered terribly in the years since 1993. Widows like 18-year old Jasvir Kaur,who had been married to Sukhdev Singh Sukha of Babbar Khalsa International were forced by their poverty to marry much older men. Many began to do menial work to make ends meet.

The following interview appeared in “The Week”,a well known Indian Magazine on April 19,1998. Bibi Jasmeet Kaur is a Sikh hero. She was married to Bhai Satnam Singh Chheena of the Bhindranvala Tiger Force and was involved in the punishing of Comrade Hardev,a depraved police tout who was known to rape and kill with impunity.

Bhai Satnam Singh Chheena

INTERVIEW:JASMEET KAUR,WIDOW OF A TERRORIST

‘We feel abandoned by the community’

Jasmeet Kaur was widowed two years after she married Satnam Singh Chheena of the Bhindranwale Tigers Force of Khalistan in 1991. She lived underground for years,bore his two children while in hiding and is being tried in murder case. She is active in the Gur Aasra project. Excerpts from an interview:

How have people treated the families of militants after terrorism ended?

People started looking at us with suspicion and hatred. They blamed the terrorists and their families for the harassment by the police. They felt we women could have corrected our husbands. The behaviour of the in-laws was the worst. My parents cooperated with me. So I didn’t have many problems. Yes,I had financial difficulties,and worked for the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. I did feel orphaned,worried and insecure.

Do you wish the bloody years had not happened?

I cannot regret those years. What has happened cannot be wished away. Today,I have two sons,six and five years. It is difficult to raise them alone. I would prefer not to discuss their whereabouts.

Does being the sons of Chheena affect them?

I have not told them anything. When they ask me,I tell them their father is in the village. How do I explain things to them? My children don’t know that their father was a militant though they know his real name. I don’t want them to know about him now. I just want them to become responsible citizens and that the society gives them the same respect and dignity as others get.

Any Akali faction with you?

No one is with us now,not even (Simranjeet Singh) Mann. He probably feels that if he speaks up for us,he will never win an election. It is a matter of politics. We do feel abandoned by the community.

How was the scene when your husband was around?

When the movement was on,we were all respected,especially if our intentions were clear. I was a proclaimed offender (PO) even before I got married. While in Khalsa College,Amritsar,I was annoyed at the attack on the Golden Temple. My links with the militant movement grew as did my desire for revenge. I was in the AISSF and then with the BTFK. I was involved in the murder of Comrade Hardev Singh,and was in jail for a year,in Amritsar. After marriage I became PO again and was arrested and later bailed out. In 1995,I was arrested in Gurdaspur,where there was a case against me. The police would have hounded every family I stayed with. So till January 1996 I was in jail and when I was released,I decided not to be a PO because I had children to raise. I decided to attend the court hearings and to work. I can’t say I returned to the mainstream,but can’t even say I have given up the movement…that is in my blood by now. It is another matter that I have decided not to lift a gun,but will fight politically. Now this itself is a fight to collect all these people under one roof. People ask us why we are here,and we tell them. That is also part of the fight.

What problems did you face in raising your sons?

It was very difficult to get birth certificates for my children. All of us women underground used to get admitted under fake names in hospitals. But I arranged it somehow. I cannot count how many children were born underground,but many were. Kulbir Kaur Dhami’s child was born in the jail. We also did not not tell the schools that the child’s father was a terrorist?

Any emotional disturbances among the children?

Plenty. Call any child and discuss it,and we will have a tough time consoling them. These kids have seen their fathers being dragged away by the hair. They often get up in the middle of their sleep,screaming “hai mere pappa ko maar diya”. They are all small kids who have seen raw violence. So we try not to remind them of it. Most of the small children have not been told that their fathers are dead. Now some of the older ones are learning from their elders. We cannot hide it for all times. They miss their fathers,but they are not old enough to realise that. They don’t know of terrorists. The elder ones have some idea,which they don’t want to talk about. Even if we want to talk to them,explain and correct the picture,they say that we are wrong…that they have seen their fathers fighting for dharam. Why then should we create a bad picture of our husbands in their minds?

Do the children know about Khalistan,what it was all about?

No. We will tell them clearly what it was all about when they grow up. If we tell them now,we don’t know how it will affect them. We want them to be involved in constructive work so that they forget their old trauma. We want them to study,play and be happy.

What Can You Do?

The Sikh widows and children left behind need us. The Singhs that died did their part and it’s now up to us to do ours. We must make sure that those left behind are not suffering and living in poverty.

The best thing we can do is to visit these families and help them in the way they need it most. Establishing contact with them directly.

If you don’t know of any way to do this,helping institutions that support these families is also a good option. Two institutions that are doing this are the Dharam Singh Khalsa Trust and GurAsra Trust. Their links are http://www.khalsatrust.com/ and http://www.guraasra.com or http://www.guraasra.org/ . Please support them in their mission.

Our Brothers and sisters need us now. We have let them down for much too long as it is.

BREAKING:New proof shows that High Ranking Sikh Army Officers were killed in 1984 Sikh Genocide

Chandigarh:December 17,2012

All India Sikhs Students Federation (AISSF) and “Sikhs for Justice” (SFJ) has unearthed the “Murder Fields” at Tughlakabad and Nangloi where dozens of Sikhs belonging to Armed Forces were butchered to death during November 1984. The high Ranking officers &junior Ranks those who fell victims to the mayhem unleashed against serving Sikh defence personnel at Tughlakabad and Nangloi Railways Stations is a National Shame say the organizations.

AISSF,SFJ And All India Defence Brotherhood (Punjab) released the services particulars and other relevant details of the armed forces personnel killed in November 1984 at death traps laid at Tughlakabad and Nangloi. The documents obtained by AISSF reveals a single FIR Number 355 dated November 1,1984 lodged under sections 147,148,201,302,and 295 of the IPC lodged with Government Railway Police (GRP) Delhi. The Railway Protection Force (RPF) responsible for law and order at the Railway property not only failed to protect these Sikh Army Officers,but rather it is believed their weapons were instead used to kill the Sikh victims at Tughlakabad and Nangloi Railway Stations.

Pointing to the criminal silence by the Armed Forces for the past 28 years over the murder of its high ranking officers,AISSF President &Brigadier Kahlon have demanded the Ministry of Defence take immediate action in the prosecution of the culprits an leaders which masterminded the planned slaughter of Sikh army men during November 1984.

Brigadier Kahlon while speaking at a Press Conference stated that the Defence community in particular and the country as a whole would like to know from the Chiefs of Army Navy and Air Force what action was taken in response to these killings and what will now be done as a result of the revelation of these brutal killings of its own members,with use of their own weaponry and men.

Brigadier kahlon and other leaders have also demanded an immediate constitution of judicial commission so that the truth may come out and action be taken against the butchers involved in the killing as serving members of the the national army and armed forces.

AISSF has demanded a debate in the Parliament to determine why the slaughters broad day light of the nations defenders were completely ignored and no action has ever been taken against the perpetrators. The ruthless murder of high ranking Sikh Army Officers at Tughlakabad and Nangloi in the presence of Railway Police during November 1984 also proves the connivance of police and entire administration of the country in genocidal attacks on Sikhs stated Peer Mohammad.

Amongst those killed in the Massacres killed:

• Lt. Col. A.S. Anand (74 ArmouredRegiment),
• Major Sukhwinder Singh (150 Field Regiment),
• Captain IPS Bindra (63 Cavalry),
• Captain UPSJassal (9 Assam Battalion),
• Captain Partap Singh (Ordinance Corps),
• Lieutenant SS Gill (89 ArmouredRegiment)
• Flight Lieutenant Harinder Singh,

The press conference held by SFJ and AISSF was attended

• Lef.. J. Kartar Singh Gill,
• Brigadier HarwantSingh National President AIDB ,
• Brigadier Navab Singh,Major S.S. Dhillon,
• Major Karnail Singh ,
• Suba Singh Hony F/O Harcharan Singh Gill ,
• Hony F/O Mamohan Singh All Retd.

Extreme Human Rights Abuses by Indian Army

By S.O.S Kashmir

The rape in Delhi has shocked India. Has it really? Or was it the sight of thousands of young students, male and female, demonstrating on the streets and being assaulted by the police for daring to demonstrate that made some Indian citizens think seriously about the problem? As for the Congress government that has, like most of the opposition parties, tolerated this for decades, it was the bad publicity abroad that finally did the trick, but only as far as this case is concerned.

Rape takes place in police stations, in military barracks, in the streets and occasionally in some provincial parliaments. The feminist Communist parliamentarian Brinda Karat, who has long campaigned on the issue, pointed to the assault of a member of the Trinamool assembly by a male oppositionist on 11 December last year. ‘Women were not safe even inside the assembly,’ she said.

Legal activists in Kashmir and Manipur, occupied by the Indian Army, have produced report after report highlighting cases of women raped by soldiers. Response from the top brass: nil. In a country where the culture of rape is so embedded, only a determined effort on every level can change things. This will not happen if this case and others are forgotten.

In 2004, a group of middle-aged mothers were so enraged by the military raping their daughters and sisters that they organised a protest unique in the annals of the women’s movement. They gathered outside the Indian Army barracks, stripped, and held up a banner that read ‘Indian Army Rape Us.’ That image, too, shocked India, but nothing changed. Only a few weeks later another rape scandal erupted in Manipur. If the Indian state is incapable of defending its women, perhaps the world’s largest democracy should seriously consider a change of name. Rapeistan comes to mind.

Manipur District Map

I. Summary

It takes us a long time to raise our children. Then, when they grow up, they are shot. This cannot go on. We no longer want to look for our children in the morgue.

-Yumlembam Mema, women’s rights activist in Manipur

A woman is arrested at her home at night. The authorities provide her family a signed document acknowledging her arrest. The next morning, villagers find her bullet-ridden corpse some four kilometers away from her home. There are widespread protests following the woman’s death. Promises are made by the highest authorities of the country, and yet, after four years, justice remains undone. No one is punished for this crime.

This is the story of Thangjam Manorama Devi, a 32-year-old resident of India’s Manipur state. The paramilitary Assam Rifles suspected her of links to an underground separatist group and detained her on July 11, 2004. The soldiers raided her home in Bamon Kampu village a little after midnight, asking the family to wait outside while they questioned her. They then signed an “arrest memo,” an official acknowledgement of detention put in place to prevent “disappearances” and took her away. Her body was found outside a nearby village. She had been shot through the lower half of her body, raising suspicion that bullets had been used to hide evidence of rape.

Human rights violations by security forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Manipur state have occurred with depressing regularity over the last five decades. Separatist militants have also committed widespread human rights abuses. According to the police, nearly 3,000 civilians have died in the conflict since 1990. At least 1,300 militants and nearly 1,000 members of the security forces have also been killed. According to unofficial sources, at least 20,000 people may have died due to violence since the conflict began in the 1950s. But Manipur, a small state of two million people, is tucked away in the country’s remote northeastern region. Not much that happens there makes the national news-unless it is a particularly brutal attack by militants.

However, the security forces’ clear role in Manaroma’s killing captured widespread media attention. Protests erupted in Manipur, while domestic and international human rights groups demanded an immediate investigation and the prosecution of those responsible. Concerned that the government would fail to hold soldiers accountable for the killing, as had repeatedly been the case in the past, for several weeks Manipuris took to the streets. Students, lawyers, traders, mothers, journalists, and human rights activists marched every day, demanding justice. One man committed self-immolation in protest, several others attempted suicide.

The paramilitary Assam Rifles claimed that Manorama was shot dead while trying to escape. In later affidavits, the soldiers implicated said that she was helping the army locate another militant when she instead tried to escape. It is a difficult account to accept: an unarmed, handcuffed woman, wearing the tightly-bound Manipuri sarong that does not lend itself to big strides, supposedly managed to escape the custody of an armed escort. And if she did, it does not explain why the soldiers were unable to catch her and had to shoot to kill. There has also been no explanation why Manorama had not been handed over to police custody by the arresting officials of the Assam Rifles, as the law requires. Or why no female official had been brought in at the time of this night arrest, as is the rule.

Soldiers were able to arrest Manorama because they are empowered to do so under India’s Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), the 1958 emergency law under which the armed forces are deployed in internal conflicts and enjoy broad powers to arrest, search, and shoot to kill. This 50-year-old law also provides security forces immunity from prosecution and has thus protected members of the Assam Rifles-as well as soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir, and other states in India’s northeast-responsible for killings such as Manorama’s from being brought before a civilian judge to be prosecuted for murder and other offenses.

Manipuris have long campaigned for the repeal of the AFSPA. Demanding that the act be scrapped, human rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike for nearly eight years. Her protest began after Assam Rifles gunned down ten civilians on November 2, 2000. She remains in judicially ordered custody, force-fed through a nasal tube.

Sharmila has been on hunger strike to demand a repeal of the AFSPA since November 2000. © 2007 AFP/Getty Images

After Manorama’s killing, 32 organizations formed a network called Apunba Lup in a campaign to repeal the AFSPA. The most heart-wrenching protest was by a group of Manipuri women, members of the Meira Paibi (“torch bearers”), who on July 15, 2004 stripped naked in front of the Assam Rifles camp in the state capital, Imphal, wrapped in a banner that said, “Indian Army Rape Us.”

Forced to respond, the state government of Manipur ordered a judicial enquiry by retired district judge C. Upendra Singh. Judge Upendra Singh submitted his report in November 2004. Almost four years later, the report is yet to be made public. As court proceedings continue, no action has been taken.

Women protest the killing and alleged rape of Thangjam Manorama Devi with a banner reading “Indian Army Rape Us” at the army headquarters in Imphal in July 2004. © 2004 AFP/Getty Images

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meanwhile promised justice in the Manorama case and a review of the AFSPA. In November 2004, he set up a committee headed by B.P. Jeevan Reddy, a retired judge of the Supreme Court. The report was submitted in June 2005. While the Jeevan Reddy committee report has also not been made public, the contents were leaked, and it is now known that the committee recommended repeal of the AFSPA. The report however remains with the cabinet in New Delhi for consideration, and no action has been taken.

In the Manorama case, Assam Rifles said that it ordered an internal inquiry. The army and paramilitaries never reveal the findings of internal inquiries, and thus it remains unknown if any member of the Assam Rifles was found responsible for Manorama’s killing and whether they were appropriately punished. Making a concession to public outrage, the defense ministry did release a statement on July 28, 2004 saying only that the court of inquiry had found some “lapses” by Assam Rifles personnel. In an interview with Human Rights Watch, a spokesman for the Assam Rifles said he could not say what action was taken by the court of inquiry “because the concerned officials from that time are no longer in Manipur and the records are not available.”

Meanwhile, Manorama’s family is still waiting for justice to be done. It may be a long wait. Political leaders and government officials may privately agree that Manorama’s killing was unlawful, but the Indian state has failed, yet again, to hold soldiers responsible for a serious human rights violation accountable.

Shrine in memory of Thangjam Manorama Devi outside her house. © 2008 Human Rights Watch

Continuing Security Force Abuses

After Manorama’s death, the security forces appeared to curtail their human rights violations. This did not last long. Since 2006, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other abuses have once again become common practice. According to Human Rights Alert, an Imphal-based voluntary group, in 2006 there were 17 cases in which security forces allegedly extrajudicially executed civilians; in 2007, 12 cases were documented by the group; and as of July 2008, at least 23 such cases had been listed.

For this report, Human Rights Watch investigated several cases of alleged extrajudicial killings committed by the security forces since 2006. In one case, Mohammad Ayub Khan and six others, traveling in a van, were stopped during a routine check by the 19th Assam Rifles on August 26, 2007 at Gwaltabi in Ukhrul district. The soldiers found that Ayub Khan, a mason, was carrying a large sum of money. He explained that this was cash to pay his workers. The soldiers insisted that the van, with all its passengers, be driven to the Assam Rifles camp at Litan. At the camp, Ayub Khan was separated from his co-passengers, who were released. When Ayub Khan’s family heard of the detention, they went to the camp but were not allowed to enter. His brother filed a missing person complaint at the Litan police station, saying that Ayub Khan was last seen in the custody of the 19th Assam Rifles.

On August 30, 2007, the Litan police contacted the family. They said that the Assam Rifles had informed the police that a person had been killed in an armed encounter. They suggested that the family check to see if the unidentified person was their missing relative. The family identified the person as Ayub Khan. The Assam Rifles issued a statement claiming that a suspected militant had been shot in an armed exchange and weapons had been recovered from him. Ayub Khan’s father, Mohammad Karimuddin, told Human Rights Watch that the Assam Rifles are lying:

How can there be an armed encounter with someone who is already in custody? There are witnesses who saw my son being detained. If they [Assam Rifles] thought my son was a militant, they could have arrested him. But they only wanted his money and did not want the truth to come out. So they killed him. They know that no one questions the army in Manipur.

Police Abuses

The behavior of the army appears to have encouraged the Manipur state police to act similarly. The culture of violence has become so deep-rooted that the police have in recent years committed the same abuses as the army and paramilitary forces. In several of the recent cases documented by Human Rights Watch, the alleged perpetrators belonged to the Manipur police. The Manipur state police chief, Yumnam Joykumar Singh, told Human Rights Watch: “My people have been told not to commit human rights abuses and none has occurred.” However, in the same conversation claiming that many of the militants were not political fighters but petty extortionists, he also said, “I have told my people. These fellows must be eliminated. Nothing else can cure us of this disease.”

The message to eliminate militants seems to have resonated with the police. Human Rights Watch was repeatedly told that police commandos were among the worst human rights violators in Manipur. Leitanthem Premananda was picked up on January 30, 2006 and, according to relatives, executed later that same day. Together with their neighbors and friends, the relatives formed an action committee to protest the killing; the police threatened retribution. On February 10, 2006, two leaders of the protest committee, Pechimayum Yaima Singh and Leikapokpam Bisashini, were arrested by the Manipur police. Pechimayum Yaima Singh remained in custody for two months. “My family was very worried,” he said. “Finally, we were released. But we had to promise that we stop the protests, and were threatened that we would be arrested again if we followed up on this case.”

Abujam Shidam, a well-known member of the opposition Manipur People’s Party, was arrested on January 7, 2008. While in custody, he says he was tortured by police commandos claiming to be members of a joint interrogation cell.

I was blindfolded. They started beating and kicking me, saying that I must admit I was a member of the PLA [militant group called People's Liberation Army]. They filled buckets of water and poured it on my face. They pressed on my joints with their boots. I kept shouting that I was not a militant, but they would not stop.

While the legal impunity under the AFSPA does not formally extend to the state police, police commandos now routinely get away with serious crimes including torture, and fake “encounter killings.” As one activist described it to Human Rights Watch, “The long-term pernicious influence of the AFSPA on Manipur society is its trickle-down effect. One can argue that the rampant corruption in civil administration is a fallout of the climate of impunity generated for many decades by AFSPA in Manipur.”

Armed Groups

Indian officials and many Manipuris point out that the armed groups, commonly called “UGs” (short for “underground”), also commit serious human rights abuses. Some of these groups have a tremendous hold over Manipuri society, with ordinary citizens forced to build alliances with one group to ensure protection from the rest. Many impose a variety of diktats, including a ban on some television channels, on women wearing western clothes, the use of drugs, tobacco, or alcohol and implement such orders with force. Some groups have been responsible for attacks on ethnic minorities. For example, in March 2008, militants killed 14 migrant laborers from other Indian states and left behind a note warning others to leave Manipur. In January 2006, armed cadres belonging to United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and Kangleipak Community Party (KCP) allegedly raped 21 Hmar tribal girls in Manipur’s Churachandpur district. Militants have also been responsible for the indiscriminate use of landmines, bombs, political killings, and attacks upon those they consider to be informers or traitors.

Manipuris complain most about militant groups’ culture of extortion. The state is unable to provide protection from these extortion demands-in fact, many government officials pay themselves. Recently, there has been a spate of abductions by militant groups to recruit children into armed groups involved in fighting. At least 24 school children were reported missing in June and July 2008, leading to widespread protests. One faction of the militant group People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) admitted that that they had recruited some of the missing children.

Protest against attack by militants in Imphal, the capital of Manipur. © 2008 Human Rights Watch

Impunity

Manipuri activists do not dispute the need for strong law enforcement to end the violence perpetrated by militants. Some want the army to remain deployed to combat the UGs, while others want the army withdrawn. But all want the AFSPA to be repealed because of the open license it provides for abuses.

More fundamentally, Manipuris want the culture of impunity to end. Not only has the failure to punish Manorama’s killers shattered any existing faith in the justice system, many Manipuris feel it has also emboldened security officials to take the law into their own hands and to believe they can get away with murder. As one government official admitted to Human Rights Watch, “Known criminals are sometimes killed, but it never happens to innocents.” In this way the security forces have become judge, jury, and executioner-and have become comfortable in adopting this role.

The more or less free rein given to government forces for decades in Manipur and other parts of the northeast has had a significant impact on the country generally. Similar polcies have since been adopted to stamp out armed separatist movements in various other parts of India. Some argue that this is the only way to ensure that separatists who they “know” are guilty do not evade justice. But in the world’s largest democracy, many in the security forces appear to believe it is easier to kill suspects than to gather evidence to secure convictions, while others kill for money or promotions, as they are often rewarded for their actions.

The Indian government, while claiming a firm commitment to the protection of human rights, has consistently ignored violations by its security forces, at best attributing such acts to a few “bad apples.” As this report demonstrates, however, the problems are systemic and require systemic changes in law, policy, and practice. And even assuming the problem is “bad apples,” they are rarely investigated, let alone tried and convicted. This culture of impunity, fostered both by a lack of political will and by laws shielding the perpetrators, has led to an atmosphere where security forces believe they can get away with the most serious crimes without the threat of punishment.

Not only has the Indian government disregarded the demands of Manipuris and the findings of its own government-appointed committees, it has ignored concerns and recommendations by United Nations human rights bodies. For example, in 1997 the UN Human Rights Committee said that the continued use of the AFSPA in Manipur was tantamount to using emergency powers and recommended that the application of these powers be monitored to ensure compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, reported to the UN Human Rights Council in 2007 that despite the government of Manipur ordering “numerous inquiries into the alleged extrajudicial executions, none of them ultimately reached any meaningful conclusions.” In 2007 the Committee on the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination called for India to repeal the AFSPA and to replace it “by a more humane Act” in accordance with the recommendation contained in the leaked Jeevan Reddy committee report. The Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in February 2007 urged India to provide information on the steps being taken to abolish or reform the AFSPA and to ensure serious investigations and prosecutions of acts of violence against women by the military in so-called disturbed areas.

Key Recommendations

• The government of India, the state government of Manipur, and all militant groups should place human rights protection mechanisms at the center of any attempt to resolve the conflict and ensure compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law.
• The government of India should repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 as recommended by the government-appointed Jeevan Reddy committee.
• The government of India and the state government of Manipur should investigate and prosecute government officials, including members of the armed forces, police, and paramilitary, responsible for human rights violations.
• The government of India should arrest and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those found responsible for the 2004 murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi.
• Armed groups should publicly denounce abuses committed by any militant group and ensure that there is appropriate accountability for such abuses.
• Armed groups should immediately stop the abduction and recruitment of children into their forces.

Methodology

In early 2008, Human Rights Watch travelled to Manipur to investigate the human rights situation. With the assistance of human rights activists and lawyers, we investigated 18 cases of torture and extrajudicial killing since 2006. We interviewed government officials, army officers, police officials, politicians, lawyers, journalists, and human rights defenders. We conducted over 60 interviews in Manipur and supplemented with follow-up research through August 2008.

For Manorama’s case, we met with Manorama’s family, the lawyers who are pursuing her case, and Judge Upendra Singh, who conducted an investigation into the incident.

Most interviews with victims or their families were conducted privately. In some cases we used local NGO partners as translators. We also held group discussions with some activists, such as the members of the Meira Paibi.

Since there is an ongoing dialogue between the government and some of the groups operating in the hill districts of Manipur, counter-insurgency operations have reduced in scale. Most of the operations are in the Manipur valley to contain the Meitei and Muslim groups. Our investigations were thus limited to the valley areas.

In order to protect victims and others who might face reprisals by either side for speaking about them, names and any information that might identify them, such as places where interviews were held or specific dates of those meetings, have in certain cases been withheld.

KASHMIR: TIME TO MOVE FORWARD

By Air Commodore (R) Khalid Iqbal
Spearhead Research

Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid’s recent wish that: ‘it is high time India and Pakistan move forward together hand-in-hand’, is rather captivating. Recent overtures from both sides clearly indicate that two neighbouring countries want prosperity in the region and for that they agree that resolution of all disputes, including Kashmir, is a priority.

Pakistan has all along been pursuing this objective. It is unfortunate that some of very meaningful peace processes between the two countries went astray on one reason or the other. As Pakistan is likely to be a beneficiary in case of equitable resolution of most of territory related disputes, Pakistan is always keen to see the conclusive phase of the efforts aimed at resolving these issues. Unfortunately, the two countries have not been able to achieve anything worthwhile in territory related disputes.

Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has recently said that India wants to resolve all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan through dialogue. Indian Independence Act had laid down clear terms of reference for the rulers of princely states. They were given the choice to freely accede to either India or Pakistan, or to remain independent, while doing so they were to take into account the aspirations of their people. Ruler of Kashmir failed to do so, and while under duress, he invited the Indian armed forces to invade his own state.

Kashmir is certainly at the pinnacle of India-Pakistan disputes – an issue recognized by the UN, and on which settlement framework has also been specified in the relevant UN resolutions. To remind the world about the continuation of the conflict, UN Observers mission continues to be stationed in the region. The first group of United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) arrived in Jammu and Kashmir on 24 January of 1949 to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. The UNSC resolutions remain arguably the best and judicious way out for settling this dispute. While addressing the 67 ^thsession of the General Assembly, President Zardari had rightly attributed the non-resolution of Kashmir dispute to the failure of the UN system.

Therefore, to succeed, any durable peace initiative between Pakistan and India must cater to break the stalemate on this important issue. It would have been in the fitness of thing had the Indian foreign minister put forward any fresh proposals on the Kashmir issue as well. Without demonstration of political will to tackle the Kashmir depute, even fairy tale wishes remain, at best, just noble desires; devoid of implementation tools.

Spells of Kashmir intifada, in their scope and scale, visibly get out of India’s control despite Indian army’s heavy presence. There is now considerable resistance from the Indian mainland as well, where conscientious members of the civil society have started to censure the central government for continued occupation of Kashmir. World watches with dismay that even by stationing of around 600,000 combatants for over a decade, India has not been able to subdue the spirit of Kashmir’s of the IHK.

IHK has the unenviable distinction of being the most militarised zone in the world. The hardest hit victim of the conflict has been the socio-economic fabric of the Kashmir. Agriculture which forms about 48 percent of the state domestic product is witnessing a negative growth. Tourism involving the livelihood of thousands of people has also been badly hit by the conflict. During October 2012, two reports were released pertaining human rights situation in the IHK. Reports by Amnesty International (AI) and Citizen’s Council for Justice (CCJ) were released in a quick succession. Both dossiers have adequately exposed the deplorable Human Rights (HR) conditions in IHK.

To make the people of Kashmir feel secure, it is necessary to scrap all the draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Public Safety Act, Disturbed Areas Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act etc. Moreover, as confidence building measure, it is essential to retrieve the armed forces to their barracks and let the police take care of the law and order. IHK government should also release all prisoners of conscience.

Pakistan has consistently maintained its stance on Kashmir. It wants the resolution of Kashmir issue in line with the wishes of Kashmiri people, as ordained by a number of UN resolutions and as envisaged by universally accepted democratic principles of the right of self determination. Pakistan will continue diplomatic and political support of Kashmiri people in their struggle to achieve their right to decide their future.

In this backdrop, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister has extended an invitation to 8 members of the executive council of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), to visit Pakistan from 15 to 22 December 2012. The initiative has been taken to begin a consultative process between the political leadership of Pakistan, AJK and pro-movement leaders of IHK. This initiative is expected to jump-start the process for peaceful resolution of Kashmir issue. Kashmir experts believe that such visits by the Hurriyat leadership suit both sides. Pakistan envisages that APHC could act as a catalyst in bridging the gap between the respective government’s standpoint and public aspirations of the people of Kashmir.

From Kashmiri perspective, leaders of both side of Kashmir should be facilitated to meet each other frequently to narrow down their perceptional gaps. And at the same time, India and Pakistan should continue with their good-will initiatives kick-started during President of Pakistan’s non-state visit to India, because this could enable both the countries to discover common grounds for conflict resolution. Pakistan feels that the Kashmiris of both sides should take advantage of the current improvement of relations between India and Pakistan, and it is in this context that APHC leadership has been invited.

Rumours have it that under pressure from India’s hawkish politicians and media elements, hurdles could be created to disrupt the process. Some elements of Indian media have started a negative campaign against the visit of APHC leaders branding them as ‘Separatists’. Understandably, some elements from India are not sincere towards resolution of Kashmir issue through consultative process. They do not want Kashmiri leadership to visit Pakistan and interact with Pakistani and Kashmiri political leadership. Their motive is to jeopardize the consultative process initiated by Pakistan. These disruptive elements are focusing at creating divide within the pro-movement camp by allowing only a few leaders to visit Pakistan. It would be unfortunate if India lets this opportunity slip by through administrative manipulation to deny right of travel to all the invitees. This will indeed be the first test of the new foreign minister of India.

Evolution to Revolution in Kashmir: Not if, but When!

By: Ghullam N. Mir

Some tyrannies in Middle East have crumbled; others are in the process of crumbling. Egyptian Mubarak bit dust, and Tunisian tyrant, Ben Ali took to his heels, Libyan mad man, Gaddafi is losing it and Yemeni strong man, Saleh is gasping for fresh air. The era of impugned oppression and subjugation by tyrants has run its ugly course. Three to four decades of suffering was much too much and much too long for the people to endure. They could take it no more, and they are ready for a respite and may be for a permanent riddance from that scourge.

It took decades for the spirit of revulsion and revolution to brew and breed, but it hardly took a few days for the uprising to gain momentum. The final episodes in Tunisia and Egypt that wrote the epitaph for the tyrants were fast and furious. There was no stopping them. Only a few months ago most could not believe even in their wildest imagination that something of this magnitude could take place in Muslim Arab dictatorships. But, it did happen and we are witness to it.

Ironically, many in the world who supported freedoms for some did not wish the Arabs or Muslims to overthrow their oppressive regimes. They were in the opposite camp, some actively arming and abetting state oppression. They were achieving double whammies-vilifying Muslims as violent antidemocratic forces undeserving of freedoms, while in the same breath supporting the tyrants. But, Arab Muslims are losing fear and regaining hope. Many in the West and some in the east, such as India have started squirming with discomfort at the wave of freedom sweeping across the Muslim lands. They sense a looming threat to their hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia, such as Kashmir.

And speaking about Kashmir, there naturally is much deeper and much more intense sense of revulsion and rejection against their oppressors. For one, the Indians have not only tortured, maimed, murdered and gang raped their subjects, they also have repeatedly desecrated their religious symbols. Arab dictators did not have to do some of those vile things to their subjects because they shared the same religious sanctities. They shared the same culture and the same language; they did not have to force a hostile culture down the throats of their subjects to efface their local culture. On the contrary, the Indians are seen by the Kashmiris for what they truly are-foreign invaders, occupiers and tyrants who stand for nothing the Kashmiris stand for. Indian is anathema to Kashmiri. India is the aggressor and occupier. Kashmir is the aggressed and occupied. Kashmiris demand decolonization; Indians insist on continued colonization. To the Kashmiris, Indians might as well be from a different planet, for all they care. The truth of the matter is that, no matter what the Indians do, they will never have acceptability in Kashmir. They will never blend in to the Kashmiri society. They will always remain separate and apart–loathed as aggressive foreign invaders, geographical proximity notwithstanding.

Arab world had mighty Western powers countenancing their tyranny. Those tyrants took comfort in that. But, that in the final analysis did not prevent collapse of the tyrants. Popular revolutions toppled them like house of cards. This same fate is awaiting Indian regime in Kashmir. Democracy within is India’s business and it is welcome. But dictatorship in Kashmir is Kashmiri’s business. Kashmiris abhor it and they will continue to wage an incessant struggle to seek an end to occupation, regardless of the sacrifices it will take.

We hope that Kashmir will not be the last of the nations to see the blessings of freedom, but if that be the will of the Lord, we pray that Kashmir have the distinction and the honor to be the steeple of the house of freedom of all nations and the minaret of the sacred house in which all men and women may worship no man and no nation, but only the Creator of all men and women of the world-a world in which all men and women will have equal access to life, limb and liberty. That is the revolution that 13 million Kashmiris are striving and aspiring for; and that is the revolution thousands of our loved ones have died for. Paradise is meant to be peaceful and no blood is to be spilled in it, but Indian regime has sought to desecrate it by promoting tumult and spilling blood in the paradise.

Our martyrs have prewritten their epitaphs with their sacred blood all over the lush green valleys and snowcapped mountaintops as a testimony to their sacred struggle for liberation. We salute their sacrifices and pledge to honor them by rededicating our generations to that same cause.

India’s Orwellian drift

Jawed Naqvi

DURING the early rule of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, someone in his government placed two evidently unusable anti-aircraft guns of Second World War vintage on a visually prominent rampart of Delhi’s 16th-century fort, the Purana Qila.

The idea apparently was to deter airborne terrorists from attacking an approaching national day ceremony, but the subtext was not too hidden either. It became the first step towards a national campaign to instil fear – not unlike what had happened in America – of unknown and eventually unidentifiable terrorists. It was also a way for the government to farm out its growing list of phobias among the people, making them unwitting participants in a series of misadventures under the sobriquet of fight against terror.

Only this week, a Gujarat court controversially sentenced 11 Muslims to death and handed life sentences to another 20 for their alleged role in the death of 58 Hindus in a train inferno blamed on Muslims. Some 60 of the Muslims of Godhra, where the train tragedy occurred on Feb 27, 2002, were discharged last month as conspirators by the same court. They included men the prosecution called the masterminds.

The episode was of a piece with India’s prevailing ‘a-jaw-for-a-tooth’ mindset. A key parliamentary committee this week advocated death penalty for hijackers. What seemed odd was that a communist deputy headed the group. And Sitaram Yechury is no ordinary partisan. He is a politburo member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the country’s largest leftist group.

Several questions arose from the committee’s decision. Take Mr Yechury’s assumption that hijackers fear death, that capital punishment would deter them. In an era of suicide bombers what could be the significance of any decision to flaunt the gallows as retribution for ideologically-driven crimes, leave alone hijacking?

Hitherto the standard test of communist partisans in India was their readiness to listen to reason, their willingness to look for deeper causes of a given malaise, their fabled scientific diligence and a keen eye for humane remedies. There was a time in India when even its bourgeois political class displayed greater sensitivity to commonplace crimes that would be bracketed after a fashion (or expediency?) as acts of terror.

Before Mr Yechury’s advent as a parliamentarian, India was handling its problems with hijackers in a uniquely Indian way – with compassion, even humour.

Dalit Buddhists, Kashmiri Muslims, Sikhs and Brahmins had all hijacked planes in India. Their motives ranged from separatist politics to a laughable quest, if hijacking allows for humour, of seeking the postponement of college exams!

Two hijackers became Congress party leaders, one of them even a minister. Both men in the 1978 incident were Brahmins. In fact, they were brothers. Armed with toy guns they told the pilot they wanted Indira Gandhi freed from prison where she languished briefly after her opponents defeated her in 1977. Should they have been hanged?

A 1993 hijacker, Satish Chandra Pandey, was an admirer of Mr Vajpayee. A stated motive for his hijacking a plane on a cold January morning was to be urged by his hero, Mr Vajpayee, to surrender, which he did. The same year, four students claiming to be armed with explosives took charge of a domestic airliner to demand postponement of their annual university exams. Other passengers overpowered them. It was India’s second hijacking in two weeks and the third that year.

The students demanded that the government allocate Rs50m ($1.6m) to their college to begin a new Master’s programme. Would Mr Yechury want them dead?

On March 27 that year, a former trucker claiming to be a member of India’s governing Congress party took over another domestic airliner with 203 people on board to voice his frustration over the state of affairs in the country. The 37-year-old unemployed hijacker, who called India’s politicians “crooks”, surrendered to the police in Amritsar after failing to get permission for the plane to land in Lahore. Put him before a firing squad?

In January 1994, a lone hijacker, claiming to be a neo-Buddhist Dalit , commandeered an Indian Airlines Bangalore-Madras A-320 Airbus. The hijacker wanted Marathwada University to be renamed after Dr B.R. Ambedkar. Try tinkering with that, Mr Yechury.

I met one officially pampered hijacker in a Srinagar jail, where he was distributing copies of his memoirs to visiting journalists while armed guards at the high security jail offered generous rounds of Pepsi Cola with freshly baked pastries to the guests.

With a little bit of luck and more help from Indian intelligence agencies that are believed to be helping him vis-à-vis one of their mysterious agendas, Hashim Qureshi harbours ambitions to become chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

It would be tempting to look for comparison in Mr Yechury’s approach to any more recent hijacking with the more rightwards-leaning parties of India. The surprising fact is that during the Vajpayee era, which was as right as India has been as yet, there were three occasions when the Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to prefer the standard Indian middle course. It freed seven Sikh hijackers that Indira Gandhi had extradited from Dubai. It chose to save scores of precious lives rather than to allow insane criminals to blow them up, and it welcomed back Hashim Qureshi, a mastermind of the Ganga hijack episode of 1971, from Holland. Which of these would Mr Yechury have sent to the gallows?

The fact is that the near total silence of the parliamentary Left on the increasing militarisation of the Indian state – as also its growing participation in its self-defeating prescriptions on terror – seems akin to the last scene from George Orwell’s satire on communist Russia. The pigs in Animal Farm – depicting the ruling classes in Stalin’s Moscow – were beginning to walk on their hind legs, an act of hero-worshipping those they had sworn never to imitate.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

India’s Major Bulbul arrested in US

The Daily Mail

Former Indian Army Major accused of Kashmir HR activist’s murder

JAMMU(IOK) – A former Indian Army Major accused of the extrajudicial killing of a noted Kashmir human rights activist has been arrested in the US and would be handed over to the state police within a fortnight, Indian occupied Kashmir police said on Monday.

According to reports, fomer Major Avtar singh was arrested by the California police after his wife accused him of beating her. “It was the victim (wife) who informed the police in the US that he was also wanted in the murder case of one of the human right activists in Indian Occupied part of Kashmir ” the reports said.

On March 8, 1996, Major Avtar Singh, known as “Bulbul” (nightingale), of the 35th Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army arrested Jaleel Andrabi, a human right activist near Barazulla on airport road when the activist was driving home along with his wife. The Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association filed a habeas corpus petition in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir High Court on March 9, and the court ordered the army to produce Andrabi. However, the Indian army denied that Andrabi was in custody. Over the next two weeks, the court continued to grant the government extensions for replying to the petition.

The trussed-up body of Jalil Andrabi, a prominent human rights lawyer was found in the Kursuraj Bagh area of Srinagar on the banks of the Jhelum river on the morning of March 27, 1996. Andrabi, who was forty-two, had been shot in the head and his eyes had been gouged out. An autopsy showed that he had been killed days after his arrest. As a result, the case for murder against the accused officer was pending adjudication in a Srinagar court.

Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Srinagar, Mohammed Ibrahim Wani on Febuaray 6, 2010 issued interpol red corner notice against Major Avtar singh. The CJM directed the Ministry of Home affairs to forward the arrest warrant to Interpol through its office in New Delhi. The accused army officer, it is now learnt, has been hiding in Calfornia, US. “Yes we located the accused former Major. The US police informed the interpol and in turn they communicated us,” said Raja Ajaz Ali Inspector General of Crime wing in occupied Jammu and Kashmir police. Raja Ajaz , who is also laison officer of interpol in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, said that the accused was in the preventive custody of the US police in California and would shifted to Srinagar in fifteen days.

“We were asked by the interpol and the US police to furnish fresh warrants against the accused and we have acquired the same from sessions court in Srinagar,” IG crime branch said. According to IG Raja Ajaz Ali, the ministry of home affairs has also been informed about the intimation by the interpol.

Courage has a face in Kunan-Poshpora

TABISH NASEER

Kunan-Poshpora (Kupwara): If courage had a face, it would resemble 50-year-old Bhakti’s. In the North Kashmir hamlet of Kunan-Poshpora, where agony and adversity to women was forced upon, on the intervening night of 23rd and 24th February, 1991, through the “weapon of rape”, she stood stoically against the perpetrators of the crime very few are capable of.

A grab from a video taken few days after the incident shows desolate Kunan village

The incident that is perhaps written as the night of “oppression and brutality” may also be inked as a night when a mother of six daughters showed unrelenting courage and braved “terror leashing men even when gods turned their shoulders and watched silently”.

In Bhakti’s words, the wintry silence was broken by the trampling noises as she was attending her ailing husband who had suffered a heart attack few days back. Then there were cries that cut through the heart of the dead night.

“I first thought there was some quarrel between neighbours and went out to see where the noise was coming from,” she says.

It wasn’t a duel between neighbours. Army’s 4 Raj Rifles of 68 Brigade C/o 56 APO had launched a search operation in the two villages situated about five kilometers from the Kupwara Township. A section of troopers, who the locals claim were in an inebriated state, had gone on a rampage.

“Men held at gun points, women fleeing homes, open air interrogations” – all this happened away from the media glare on that cold wintry night. Women ran about as if chased by “wild animals”, she exclaims.

A video grab shows villagers listening to heads during a meeting

Suddenly tentacles of fear gripped, for moments she remained unmoved. “None of my daughters were married then, they were young and when I discovered what had befallen Kunan, I became numb … my daughters were sitting around their father’s bed,” she says.

Her numbness was broken by a loud knock. A woman who was fleeing from the troopers stood at the gate shouting for help. “I could not sit and listen to her cries. Somehow I overcame fear and ran towards the door,” she recalls.

Taja (name changed) stood at the door, breathless; she lived over a hundred yards away. “They (troopers) had barged into our house and caught hold of my sister-in-law and I managed to give them a slip through the door that leads to our kitchen garden,” says Taja.

Sensing trouble Bhakhti dragged her in and bolted the door quickly. “I asked one of my daughters to get water for her and then she narrated the story. Instead of making me worried I somehow lost fear,” Bhakti exclaims.

With fear written all over her face, Taja sobbed. She was restless till a thunderous bang at the main door made her stop. “She crouched in my arms as if she was dead,” says one of Bhakti’s daughter (name withheld).

The troopers had barged into the house compound. “My mother went to the door opened it and straight away asked for the officer heading the party of troopers, we could hear it from the room we were sitting in,” says her daughter.

She stood at the door and “refused to move till she saw the officer”. A call was made on the wireless. “He came and asked me why I wasn’t allowing his men to conduct search and I sternly replied that I had six daughters and I doubted his men,” says Bhakti.

Village heads during a meeting few days after the incident

An awkward silence followed and the officer asked his men to move away. Her courage grew and she ventured out to see if she could help more women. Her neighbour, Fahmida (name changed) recalls, “Many women were fleeing from the troopers and she dared to go out and give these women shelter,” adding “she stood guard at the gate of her house and forced back the troopers while her daughters looked after their ailing father and women who successfully fled from the clutches of the troopers.”

Her confrontation with the troopers ended only when they left at dawn. The night had passed witnessing the battle between “oppressor and oppressed”. However, the day saw a battle between “courage and cowardice”. “When the army left that morning, I went to a clinic to fetch a doctor. On my way, I noticed that the troopers had installed a video camera and were forcing men to record statements in their favour,” she vividly remembers. The sight perturbed her and she yelled at the group of men who were giving out statements. “If I had a gun I would kill all of you right here and would hand your widows to the army, do you people have a slightest idea of what has happened to your wives and daughters in your homes,” she recalls shouting angrily.

Ducking their chins in their cloaks in shame, the group of men grew uneasy. Her reminder prompted them to cut loose. Perhaps this was the moment that instigated the people to seek action. Rhate, her neighbour confirms, “People started to gather immediately after Bhakti shouted at them and they started to think of police action against the army.”

It was noon, the village heads were in serious consultation thinking about the course of action. A senior official from the army walked into the village demanding clean chit. Speaking in front of the gathering, the official vouched for his men. While villagers listened carefully, Bhakti, who stood in the crowd shouted at the official, “You had 10,000 army men with you?” He nodded. She asked, “Where were they all night? You yourself were standing outside the village where our men were interrogated. How do you know what was your army doing in the village?”

Video grab shows a victim holding her baby

She gently moved an 80-year-old woman who was also a rape victim (The woman has passed away). “I bought her in front of the major and asked him, tell me isn’t she your mother… look at her torn clothes…what explanation would you offer now? All of them put their heads down in shame,” she recalls.

A few days later, the official came again, this time asking specifically for Bhakti, but she refused. Abdul Ahad Dar, the Sarpanch of Kunan while acknowledging says, “The officer came a few times probably to strike a deal and wanted to speak to Bhakti in person as she was at the forefront of the protest against the army.”

She refused bluntly, but the officer persisted upon a meeting. “It was only after some village elders convinced her to meet the officer, she relented,” Dar adds.

Bhakti says, “The officer had said to her that they had made an appeal which was granted and they were ready to pay compensation, provided villagers say that army has not done anything here.”

“Even if you give me money equaling the length and breadth of this house even then I won’t change my word. Till the judgment day the blood will ooze from our wounds,” was Bhakti’s reply.

Why The Valley Blooms

A LIFETIME OF DEATH AND LOSS IS DRIVING THOUSANDS OF YOUNG KASHMIRIS TO DRUG ABUSE. PARVAIZ BUKHARI REPORTS ON A DISTURBING NEW EPIDEMIC

High yield A Narcotics Control Bureau worker destroys poppy crops in Pulwama district (below); an addict receives counselling at a Srinagar de-addiction centre (right)

UNTIL RECENTLY, Akhtar, 29, a resident of Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, could not start his day until he popped eight tablets of Spasmo Proxyvon, a painkiller, into his empty stomach before hitting the road with his auto-rickshaw.

Like him, Bashir, 54, a businessman in the saffron-rich town of Pampore outside Srinagar, would not eat for as long as six days in a row. Till he enrolled himself in a rehabilitation programme recently, Bashir would down half-a-litre of whisky every morning. A widow in the south Kashmir town of Pulwama still gives her teenage son money every day to buy cannabis, fearing he might otherwise become a militant.

The three drug abusers (names changed) reveal the tip of an iceberg. Two decades of conflict have ravaged the Kashmir valley, taking a huge toll on the mental health of its people. Indeed, the increasing consumption of medicinal opiates in Kashmir is emerging as a worrying trend. As more and more land comes under the cultivation of poppy and cannabis every year, a burgeoning number of people are falling to drug abuse in myriad ways.

Across Kashmir, tens of thousands of young men and women who have failed to cope with the cumulative effects of trauma in their daily lives are escaping to drug abuse and alcoholism. The student community that has come about amid the continuing socio-political disturbance and violence in Kashmir is the worst hit. De-addiction counsellors estimate that 40 percent of school and college students in the Valley have taken to drug abuse as a way to cope with distress.

“There could be at least 60,000 substance abusers (drug addicts) in Srinagar alone,” says Saiba Verma, a doctoral student from Cornell University in the US researching the emerging scenario in Kashmir. The population of Srinagar is about 14 lakh. Drug abuse is evenly spreading across the rural and urban areas in the Valley.

‘WE ARE ABOUT TO LOSE A GENERATION TO DRUG ABUSE,’ SAYS DR MUZAFFAR KHAN. ‘THE YOUTH ARE VULNERABLE’

Predictably, the government, as well as society, brush the catastrophe under the carpet. No comprehensive survey has been undertaken to deal with it. Most doctors and psychiatrists say 70 to 80 percent of the addicts who report for help use easily available prescription drugs and substances like alcoholbased cough syrup, painkillers, eraser fluid, nail polish and even shoe polish. The rest are alcoholics or use locallygrown cannabis mixed with tobacco.

“We are about to lose an entire generation to drug abuse,” says Dr Muzaffar Khan, a psychiatrist who operates a de-addiction centre run by the state police inside the premises of its control room in Srinagar. “The socio-political disturbance is the main reason that has made the youth most vulnerable.” Most addicts are in the 18 to 35 age group.

Driving an auto-rickshaw, Akhtar would often find himself caught in traumatic situations ranging from harsh cordon and search operations by Indian security forces to grenade attacks by militants. By 1998, he was suffering from continual headaches and was increasingly taking painkillers.

“Then another driver suggested I take something stronger,” he says. “I started taking a pill strong enough.” Akhtar did not know he had become an addict till he found himself “misbehaving” with his family. And he would not eat.

The state health department has virtually no de-addiction and rehabilitation services. In distress, Akhtar started looking for help and found Raahat, a 12-bed de-addiction centre run by an NGO, All J&K Youth Welfare. “On the very first day they chained me up as if I was a prisoner,” Akhtar says. Akhtar somehow fled Raahat, but volunteers from the centre came with the police and dragged him back. He left Raahat 40 days later, after spending Rs 30,000. Akhtar took to drugs again.

Ironically, the NGO is not even aware of the basic rules running a rehabilitation centre. “We have to be very strict with the addicts,” its general secretary, S Shabir, told TEHELKA. “Patients in psychiatric condition sometimes need to be tied to chains with the consent of a relative. Sometimes we do ask for the police to come with us to handle an unwilling patient.” Raahat has only a part-time technical staff of five: two doctors and nurses each, and one counsellor.

AKHTAR IS now recovering in the police de-addiction centre, which the police opened in 2008 from their welfare fund. So far it has counselled more the 3,500 addicts and treated 185 from across Kashmir. But there are thousands like Akhtar who do not have anywhere to go for help.

People with drug dependency problems dread going to the only and extremely overburdened psychiatric hospital in Srinagar. “They lodge us with mentally deranged and mad people there,” says a patient at the police deaddiction centre. The only other de-addiction centre is a two-bed facility inte – grated in the district hospital at Baramulla in north Kashmir.

Dr Marghoob, a leading psychiatrist, says counselling and rehabilitation clinics are needed in every nook and corner of Kashmir. According to him, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the main reason driving people to drugs.

ONE REHAB CENTRE CHAINED A PATIENT, THREATENED HIM, AND HAD THE POLICE DRAG HIM BACK AFTER HE ESCAPED

“I have seen many patients who have not been able to sleep because of trauma and they resort to easily available drugs in the market and then become dependent on them,” says Marghoob. This is a dominant pattern with people across socio-economic classes who have seen violent deaths from close or lost family members to the armed conflict.

Medicinal opiates like codeine, Corex and Rexcof and prescription drugs like Alprax and Spasmo Proxyvon are available across the counter in medical shops that have mushroomed over 15 years. Despite being banned elsewhere in the country, variants of these drugs are sold in “huge quantities” in Kashmir.

Weed killers Measures to curb the illegal narcotics trade in Kashmir have proven largely ineffective in the past

“The young prefer these drugs because they don’t smell like charas or opium do,” says Yasir Zehgir, a volunteer with the police de-addiction centre who took up this work after his friend became an addict.

But prescription drugs are not the only worry. Poppy and cannabis cultivation has been steadily growing since the mid-1990s, after the law enforcement agencies completely withdrew because of the militancy. But the trend continued even after the militancy waned in 2004. Experts say that large-scale unemployment and poverty contributed to the growth in the cultivation of these lucrative crops in the south Kashmir belt from Pulwama to Anantnag.

Between 1995 and 2000, the area witnessed alternating floods and drought making normal agriculture almost impossible in vast and inaccessible areas. In the absence of government help, farmers switched to cannabis, further spreading its abuse. “People took to charas after their crops failed every year after 1995,” said Fayaz Ahmed, a lawyer who helps addicts in police cases against them.

The police have now launched a poppy destruction drive which has been successful in Pulwama, where this year land under its cultivation has been brought down to less than 25 acres compared to 750 in 2009. But in the adjacent districts of Shopian and Anantnag, cannabis cultivation remains unabated.

Jammu & Kashmir police Chief Farooq Ahmed admits that more and more land is still coming under poppy and cannabis cultivation every year. “One day we keep peace in a particular area, another day we are busy attending to law and order situations and most of the time the police force is dealing with counterinsurgency,” he says.

However, the key reason for government’s failure to check proliferating drug abuse is that the revenue authorities and the narcotics control department are largely comatose in preforming their role to curb drug cultivation. Section 133A in the Revenue Act empowers the authorities to seize any land under illegal cultivation. A one-time fine of Rs 5,000 can be imposed on the owner along with Rs 500 every day till the land is restored to its original crop. “This provision has never been invoked in Kashmir, even before the present scenario emerged,” says Farooq.

While poppy is sold to markets outside, mainly through truck drivers who come from outside the state, in raw forms like the powdered fukki, a substantial portion of charas extracted from the cannabis crop is consumed locally. Police say most of it goes to Punjab and Delhi while a tiny proportion of the refined drugs are sold in Mumbai at very high prices. “Fortunately, growers in Kashmir do not extract opium from their poppy crop, otherwise it will be uncontrollable,” says a senior police official who wishes to remain anonymous.

In the summer of 2006, businessman Bashir was inside a mosque near his house when men of a pro-government counter-insurgent militia led by the dreaded militant Papa Kashtawari barged in and dragged his neighbour and friend out. Bashir witnessed his friend being shot dead in the mosque compound. He rushed to get a vehicle to take his friend to hospital.

The militants he knew dragged another person from his house nearby and shot him dead too. Witnessing the violent incident, Bashir trembled and collapsed. “I took to alcohol and could not live without it until four months back,” he says. He sought help after Kashtawari’s arrest in 2008 and finally enrolled in the police de-addiction centre in Srinagar. It took Bashir over a year to end his alcohol addiction. Bashir says he knows at least 30 other men in his neighbourhood in a similar condition.

A 2006 STUDY by a team of experts from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) operating in Kashmir undertook a sample study about the mental health conditions in the region. It concluded that the suicide rate in Kashmir had risen a whopping 400 times in 15 years due to the armed conflict. That rate is now nearly twice India’s average of 20 per 100,000 population.

“[The] mental and physical health needs are high, while the coping mechanisms of individuals are predominantly dysfunctional,” the report said. “Even with a definitive end to violence, it could be expected that a substantial number of people would need support to overcome their problems. This assumption is confirmed by our findings of high mental health needs despite the decrease of violence since 2004.”

In south Kashmir, youths in entire villages have taken to drug abuse. On an average day, police stations are locking up groups of drug peddlers and addicts in their attempts to curb the phenomenon. These youth are becoming a social menace and the village elders have started reporting them to the army, on the pretext of having connections to militancy, after they failed to intervene socially. “But this is driving distress levels among the youth further up and renders them more susceptible to exploitation by vested interests from all sides,” says a top police official. Like the unending cycle of militancy in the Valley, drug abuse is now becoming a vicious cycle.

WRITER’S EMAIL
parvaiz@tehelka.com

Muslim future in India

Khaled Ahmed

It has become a part of our nationalism to highlight communal trouble in India. We don’t realise that this kind of thinking is not good for the Muslims there. Scholars think that if India and Pakistan proceed on their hostile course and threaten each other with nuclear weapons, Muslims in India will face the possibility of subordination, expulsion and genocide.

This is gleaned from the history of what happened to such minorities elsewhere in the world. But if things remain normal, the Muslims of India will face the following four options: assimilation, pluralism, secession and dominance. This is the thesis of the volume Living with Secularism: The Destiny of India’s Muslims: Edited by Mushirul Hasan; (Manohar, India, 2007).

The following Indian states have Muslim minorities, as indicated by percentages: Assam (28 per cent), Kerala (23 per cent) West Bengal (23 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (17.3 per cent), Bihar (16 per cent) and Karnataka (16 per cent). Needless to say the largest number live in UP, where the total population is more than that of Pakistan.

Indian scholar Mushirul Hasan wrote, Will secular India survive? (2004) and challenged the doctrine of Hindutva spread around by the BJP. After 2004, Hindutva has not gone away. It threatens the Muslims more than the other communities because: 1) Muslims are the largest religious minority in India and the latter has the second largest Muslim population in the world; 2) Muslims are erstwhile rulers of India and the memory presents them as a threat to the Hindu majority; 3) Muslims are considered as members of a settler colony by Sangh Pariwar; 4) Muslims get excluded because of majoritarian nationalism with Pakistan as the ‘other’, and because Indian Muslims are seen as a separatist population; 5) Muslims are targets of all communal riots; 6) Muslims serve as instruments of Hindu unity under Hindutva because India is presented as being under threat from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir; 7) Muslims spoil the Indian monolithic identity as a Hindu Rashtra and are an obstacle in India’s unification.

What will happen to the Muslims of India? Muslim threat is expressed by the fact that their population, although only 13 per cent of the total, has grown to this number in fifty years, more quickly as compared to the Hindus. Is this fear comparable to the Christian fear of ethnic supersession by Muslims through birth rate, aroused in Lebanon after 1943, ending in the civil war of 1975-88? There is a Muslim majority in Kashmir and large Muslim minorities in West Bengal and Assam near the border of an adjoining Muslim state that equally arouses fear and loathing.

Southern and coastal India don’t hate the Muslims as much as the Indian north and northwest, but may begin to have communal riots as the BJP and its friends spread their influence there. It is possible that the Muslims may actually be squeezed into the coastal areas in the South to join the non-threatening ‘middlemen Muslims’: Memons, Khojas, Bohras, Navayats, Marakayyars, Lebais, Rawthors and Mapillas. They pose no threat to the majority dominance.

Muslims in Hyderabad, Bhopal and Junagadh are humorously equated to past elite but they are, in fact, local poor Hindu converts who can never challenge Hindus unless they step out of poverty and acquire education.

But the final solution lies in Indo-Pakistan relations. Conceptual solutions don’t appeal in South Asia because the social sciences have been neglected here. Indirect solutions, like free trade that brings prosperity to the masses, and getting rid of the paranoia of the state – read dominance of intelligence agencies – could normalise relations and remove the fear of war and save the Muslims of India from being persecuted.

The writer is a director at the South Asia Free Media Association, Lahore khaled.ahmed@tribune.com.pk

India using terror as a propaganda ploy, says Pakistan

ANITA JOSHUA

Hopes Britain, France and Germany “will understand the true perspective of issues in the region”

Pakistan on Thursday accused India of using terrorism as a “propaganda ploy” and sought to convey to Britain, France and Germany – which after high-level interactions with New Delhi urged Islamabad to do more to counter terror – that “indulging in blame game just for commercial and political expediencies serves no useful purpose.”

Stating that Pakistan had conveyed its concerns to the three countries on their statements, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit added: “We hope these countries with which we have very good relations will understand the true perspective of issues in this region. Terrorism is a global phenomenon and all countries need to cooperate with each other to address this issue effectively.”

“Unacceptable” references

Meanwhile, in a release issued by the Foreign Office, Pakistan described references to it in the India-Russia Joint Statement as “unwarranted and unacceptable”; adding that Islamabad’s views had been conveyed to Moscow.

Asked about statements from the Indian leadership on terrorism originating in Pakistan, Mr. Basit said India had a habit of raising a hue and cry while ignoring its own responsibilities. He pointed out that even four years after the Samjhautha Express blast, India had not shared the findings of its investigations or put perpetrators of the crime on trial. “India’s continued reticence raises many questions. It’s time India takes us into confidence and stop beating about the bush. The families of the 42 Pakistani victims are desperately waiting for answers and we cannot ride roughshod over their deep pain.”

No talks sans Kashmir

As for India blaming Pakistan for failure of July’s Foreign Minister-level talks, he said New Delhi was cherry-picking and avoiding resumption of dialogue on all issues. Stating that India was upset with Pakistan for raising Kashmir at the United Nations General Assembly, he noted: “How can Pakistan look the other way when innocent Kashmiris are brutalised and killed by Indian security forces. Pakistan is ready to resume the dialogue process but not to the exclusion of Jammu and Kashmir dispute or other important issues.”

Had the Kashmir issue been resolved 60 years ago, Pakistan-India relations would have been on a different trajectory, Mr. Basit asserted. “But since this is a core issue, Pakistan obviously cannot agree to negotiations which do not include this dispute on the agenda.”

Germany, EU closely monitoring developments in Kashmir

Kashmir Watch

Toronto Dec 24: Germany supports a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue and welcomes recent initiative to revive the political dialogue between India and Pakistan, says Deputy Head of Division at German Foreign Office.

Mr. Stefan Graf, Deputy Head of Division at German Foreign Office, in a letter thanks Mr. Mushtaq A. Jeelani, Executive Director of Peace and Justice Forum (PJF), for his letter to Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and for his “comprehensive information about the situation in Kashmir.”

The letter underlines, “Germany, together with its partners in the European Union, is following very closely and with great concern the developments in Kashmir.”

He underscores: “We share the assessment that a lasting political solution can be achieved only through political negotiations and confidence building measures.” Adding: “Therefore we welcome the recent initiative to revive the political dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

The Foreign Office letter further emphasises: “Germany, which has consistently supported a sustainable political solution to the conflict in Kashmir, will continue to encourage both sides to look creatively at all potential options for a bilaterally negotiated solution to the Kashmir issue.”

“This is also very important for the stability in the region,” concludes Mr. Graf.

Omer says Pak has role to resolve Kashmir issue

SANA News

JAMMU: Chief Minister of Indian Held Kashmir Omar Abdullah reiterated that Pakistan has a very important role in the solution of Jammu and Kashmir and if it does so it would be a great achievement for both the nations.

“Pakistan has an important role to play in resolving the Kashmir issue. But, it should play its role in right perspective and if Pakistan does this, it would be a big achievement for both the nations,” Omar told reporters on the sidelines of a function in Jammu, adding that he saw a role for Pakistan in Kashmir.

He, however, suggested that the neighboring country should play its role in right perspective.

Omar said; “When our interlocutors talk about role of Pakistan, media gets worried that why they discussed Pakistan, but when Obama makes a reference to it, you say he does the right thing.” “This dual policy is wrong,” he remarked.

Kashmir to be part of Pakistan: AJK PM

By: Ashraf Mumtaz

LAHORE – AJK Prime Minister Sardar Attiq Ahmed Khan on Tuesday expressed his firm belief that the day was not far off when Kashmir would become part of Pakistan.

Addressing a ceremony on the 133rd birth anniversary of Allama Iqbal at the Alhamra Art Centre, he said the ruling Muslim conference had passed several resolutions that Kashmir was the jugular vein of Pakistan and would accede to the Islamic republic after liberation from India.

The ceremony had been organised jointly by Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust and Tehrik-I-Pakistan Workers Trust.

NPT Chairman Majid Nizami was also present at the ceremony.

Sardar Attiq paid tributes to Allama Iqbal for conceiving the idea of Pakistan. He said although the poet-philosopher was an asset for the Islamic Ummah, he had very special status in the eyes of the Kashmiris. The AJK prime minister said there was a need for a more visionary leadership to meet the challenges of the present era. In his opinion the leadership must be able to unite the nation.

In his opinion the president, the prime minister and politicians alone were not sufficient to meet the requirements of leadership. He said the writers also had an important role to play in provide leadership to the nation. The foremost duty of the leadership in the present situation was to steer the nation out of despondency. He said a capable leadership always emerges from crises.

Former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz said it was regrettable that the West was linking Islam to terrorism

He said when even mosques and shrines were being targeted in Pakistan, combating terrorists was becoming increasingly difficult.

He said Islam was the only religion that could provide guidance to the entire world.

JI former amir Qazi Husain Ahmed said the wrong policies of the government had created a situation that skilled people were leaving the country along with their capital. As a result, he said, the state institutions stood destroyed and factories were getting closed down. He alleged that drone attacks were being carried out with the consent of the government and they had reduced tribal areas to ruins.

Qazi warned that enemies wanted to create a civil war-like situation in the region after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He said the Islamic countries should frustrate the conspiracy through concerted efforts.

CPNE chief Khushnood Ali Khan was critical of the Punjab government and said it had confined its favours to a few newspapers.

NPT Vice-chairman Dr Rafiq Ahmed said Allama Iqbal wanted such leaders as were incorruptible, selfless, self-confident, visionary, patriotic and true lovers of Islam.

He said Allama Iqbal had selected Quaid-i-Azam for the Muslims as a leader, who was the most honest, capable and an ideal personality in all respects.

Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Ali said the Two-Nation theory was applicable across the globe, with Muslims on one side and imperialist forces on the other.

He said since hundreds of the Kashmiris had laid down their lives for liberation from India, there was no need for a separate referendum to decide their fate.

However, he believed the Kashmir dispute would not be settled easily and Pakistan could have to think of some other unspecified measures.

He said it was deplorable that Pakistan, which had got resolutions on Kashmir passed from the United Nations Security Council, was not being given as much importance by the world community as was being attached to India, that had flouted those resolutions.

International Community should help themselves by helping Pakistan

by UMAIRJ

What should the international community do to assist Pakistan?

That’s a mouthful. Really, it is, considering there are a number of significant problems that Pakistan is simultaneously dealing with.

My main premise for even writing on why the international community should assist Pakistan is a rebuttal to a recent article on the AFPak Channel. As an undergraduate Political Science student, it is better to leave such topics to the experts, but after reading said article, I had to interject.

The article discusses the problems that Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, is facing and though I do agree that the Taliban are undoubtably present in Pakistan (mainly because the ISI allows them to be), they are not why Karachi is burning to the ground. What the author does in this piece is not only add to the American paranoia that Pakistan is slowly being taken over by Islamic extremists, but it also silently promotes the MQM’s xenophobic policies against refugee Pathans. The MQM is not fighting against the ‘Talibanization’ of Karachi and the Taliban are not the biggest problem in Karachi. If you read my last article, you would have noticed that it is the ‘lyari’ gangsters who have been taking part in targeted killings; targeted killings by organized crime lords are a huge problem in Karachi. These drug lords are connected to the political parties running in Karachi, albeit silently, such as the PPP and the MQM which makes it harder for the police to crackdown on them.

The author also states three justifications for international assistance in the country: NATO troops, Afghanistan’s economy and Pakistan’s economy. I disagree simply because the international community’s concern should go beyond the economy and the well being of NATO troops, primarily American troops in the region.

The international community first needs to understand the history of Pakistan’s relations to militia groups and the Taliban if it really wishes to assist the region. Trouble within the region does not start with 9/11 for Pakistan. It began in 1948 to tackle the Indian influence in Jammu and Kashmir. Since 1989, the Islamic Republic has been funding militia groups and terrorist organizations to destabilize Jammu and Kashmir and force India’s hand in pushing for a peace resolution. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the United States through Pakistan began to funnel money so that militia groups could fight against the Russians.

One such group was, of course, the Taliban and after the defeat of the Soviet Union and once the civil war broke out in Afghanistan, which the United States did not care for whatsoever, Pakistan could not afford to turn the other check. This was of course as a result of the fact that they shared a border with the country and hence decided to keep funding the Taliban to ensure a friendly neighbour to the west. Pakistan did not want to be surrounded by enemies and assisting the Taliban to power, in order to counter India’s influence in the East, was a pragmatic decision.

Hence, the international community must realize that if Pakistan is to become the strategic partner it wants to be, it is necessary that it first makes up its mind on the role that the Taliban and any other militia group will play in the Afghan government before it tries to assist Pakistan or ask it to apply pressure in Waziristan. The United States also needs to realize that the main factor for using militias by Pakistan’s military is the insecurity they feel vis-à-vis India. It believes that instead of facing head on with the country, it can use insurgents to fight small battles. Since the introduction of Nuclear weapons into the equation, Pakistan is more likely to use militias in its proxy war against India than ever before since a full fledge war can have irreversible consequences.

Aside from these two issues, Pakistan’s economy is also taking a batting. This is a domestic issue, however, in which the government must impose an income tax system so all citizens, regardless of social, political or economic status can assist in upholding the system. In the past, Pakistan survived on US funding but this will obviously not continue for long, especially since it must create a source of revenue for the redevelopment of the flooded areas. There are many areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that are cut off from the rest of the world because the government has been unable to fund the building of bridges and roads. This is just one of many areas affected by the lack of funding by the federal government.

Getting back on topic, essentially what the international community can do for Pakistan is to decide whether the Haqqani group and the Taliban are to be integrated within the new government, or if they are to be considered enemies. If reports coming from NATO are true, and the Taliban (the Haqqani network, not the Quetta shura) are in discussions with the Afghan government, then Pakistan after all is in the right. This means that the ISI should be praised for keeping ties with the Haqqani network in Peshawer and Mullah Omar in Quetta. Pakistan, however, cannot increase the pressure in Waziristan since this is the territory from where the Haqqani network primarily operates from. This creates a paradox for Pakistan who, unlike NATO, are not at war with the group and will not apply pressure on them. Particularly since, after NATO’s withdrawal, Pakistan may have to put up with a Haqqani included government from whom they would have now severed ties. Pakistan does not want to lose its locus standing with Afghanistan, especially with the growing Indian power to the east. Regardless of the actors within the Afghan government, the United States must ensure that their relations with Pakistan are first and foremost, if they truly want Pakistan to be comfortable with divorcing from ‘Jihadist’.

The United States also seems to be keen on including regional neighbours to assist in the stabilization of Afghanistan. Both Iran and India may play some part, as well as China and Russia. Russia most recently has been in the news since it will assist NATO forces in the region. Karzai has also admitted that Iran has been financially aiding the government for many years, an issue with which the United States has no problem. This is most likely because it is another method to counter Taliban influence. However, Iranian influence in Afghanistan is again countering the Quetta and Peshawar shuras with whome the Afghanistan government is negotiating. This, again, confuses Pakistan as to which stance the United States wishes to take with the Taliban. India’s role in Afghanistan and within the region is Pakistan’s main priority and therefore the United States must realize that the Kashmir question is at the heart of Pakistan’s security concerns via India. If the United States can at least attempt to garner a solution, it will go a long way in the eyes of Pakistanis.

India, of course, will not allow that to happen; it has always regretted international involvement in the Kashmir question. As Christine Fair so eloquently explains, there lies a fundamental difference between India and Pakistan’s approach to the issue. She states:

India seeks to engage Pakistan to legitimize the territorial status quo by finding some means to formalize the LOC as the legal international border. Thus for India, the status quo is a basis for a solution to the ongoing dispute over the disposition of Kashmir.

Where as the absolute opposite works for Pakistan:

Pakistan seeks to engage India to find some means of altering, in various ways, the status quo and publicly rejects the possibility of transforming the LOC into the international border as a viable means of dispute resolution. For Pakistan the status quo is the problem, not the solution to the problem.

(India and Pakistan Engagement: Prospects for Breakthrough or Breakdown?- January 2005)

India wants the status quo to remain; they have no problem with the Kashmir issue being just that, an ‘issue’. As long as they are in control of Kashmir, they have no problems. It is Pakistan that wants borders to change and the status quo to absolve. Yet, because India is stronger, Pakistan’s military cannot go to war with them and India will never voluntarily give up Kashmir.

Consequently, what the United States needs to do, and this is not at all an easy job, is bring the Kashmir issue to the forefront. If they can come to some sort of conclusion concerning Kashmir, Pakistan will have no use for terrorist cells and hence create a more stable Subcontinent. Pakistan will be able to focus more on their economic welfare and the wellbeing of their citizens.

In my opinion, since Pakistan controls the Quetta shura headed by Mullah Omar, if Pakistan feels that negotiations are beneficial, it will allow him to negotiate with the Afghan government. However, the main problem, as mentioned, lies in Kashmir unless the United States puts a concentrated effort into creating a solution for the disputed territory, nothing will change. If this does not happen, Pakistan will not divorce itself from terrorists, especially Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The odds, so far, do not look promising. In a recent report brought out by CNAS, written by Richard Armitage and Richard Fontaine, called Natural Allies: A Blueprint for the Future of US-India Relations, there was no mention of Kashmir whatsoever; though that is where the main problem lies. Kashmir can no longer be an issue only concerning Pakistani-American relations, but must also push over to Indian-American relations.

Until this takes place, Pakistan will continue to rely on militia groups and push the international community away.

Shaky start on Kashmir

Praful Bidwai

When the Indian government announced “a new political initiative” on Jammu and Kashmir on September 25, lofty expectations were raised that high-level interlocutors would soon begin a dialogue with the state’s parties and civil society. This was considered the only novel, and most important, feature of the 8-point plan of action, which otherwise recycles the shop-worn “package” approach to Kashmir. It was also the logical follow-up to the all-parties delegation’s September 20-21 visit to J&K.

However, the announcement of three panelists – journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, conflict resolution academic Radha Kumar, and Information Commissioner M M Ansari – has disappointed most people and attracted anger and ridicule. To many, it represents a desperate anxiety to pretend – just before President Obama’s visit to India – that the government is sincerely grappling with the Kashmir issue. The Valley’s moderates as well as extremists have declared the panel a non-starter. Indian parties, from the Left to the Right, have attacked its exclusion of politicians, who they feel should lead it. Their unanimous opinion is that the Centre is not serious about finding a Kashmir solution. There is no support for the panel from political, civil society or intellectual opinion, not even the ruling Congress.

Apparently, the government first approached Congress leaders Digvijay Singh (a heavyweight who mentors Rahul Gandhi), Prithviraj Chavan (close to the prime minister) and Salman Khurshid to join/head the panel. They refused. Hence the present “Team B” panel, without a proper chair of Cabinet rank. Given this hostile reception, it will be extremely difficult to persuade a senior politician to head the panel. His/her authority would already be dented by the absence of a chance to choose the other members.

How did the hope of September dissipate into the disappointment of October? None of the three nominees knows much about Kashmir, carries much political weight in general, or a positive profile in the Valley, in particular. Padgaonkar and Kumar have only had limited exposure to the Valley. Kumar recently coordinated a European Union-delegation visit there and also held conflict-resolution seminars. But she neither conveys gravitas nor an incisive grasp of Kashmir’s complex situation. Ansari is a non-entity, without a nodding acquaintance with J&K.

Kumar ventured in 2006 into “Frameworks for a Kashmir Settlement”, co-authored with ultra-hawkish Pakistan-bashing former diplomat G Parthasarathy. This contains some interesting suggestions for building governance structures from the bottom-up. But they are all based on the obviously unrealised presumption that India and Pakistan have already agreed to “soft borders”. Kumar carries ideological baggage from her involvement in the former Yugoslavia and the Council on Foreign Relations (US). The baggage, and her conservative pro-Western reputation, further weaken her acceptability. She’s regarded a political lightweight who wouldn’t bother with getting to know the nitty-gritty of Kashmiri society and politics. Nor is Padgaonkar distinguished for his grasp of Kashmir, or imaginative out-of-the-box solutions.

Several candidates, with superior understanding, experience, acceptability and reach, come to mind, including Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, an Indian Administrative Service officer of the J&K cadre. He’s so highly regarded in the Valley that when he had a near-fatal accident some years ago, thousands prayed for him. There are also eminent individuals from J&K, including educationist Agha Ashraf Ali, economist Haseeb Drabu and vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology Siddiq Wahid (originally from Ladakh).

Among the politicians from the all-parties team who visited Kashmir, two made a particularly favourable public impression: the Communist Party (Marxist)’s Sitaram Yechury and Ram Bilas Paswan. Yechury grasped the nettle by knocking on hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s door. Paswan visited the grieving family of Tufail Ahmad Mattoo, the 17-year-old, whose killing in June sparked a wave of protests.

As for the Valley’s politicians, it would have been eminently wise to associate people like Yasin Malik and CPM MLA Yusuf Tarigami with the panel. None of this was done. But let’s not focus solely on individuals and ignore the content of their mandate. A democratic government wrestling with a thorny dispute should have initiated the broadest possible consultation to generate the contours of a feasible solution. This alone can adequately clarify the interlocutors’ task and enable them to prepare for conciliation. Yet, the government, in its usual imperial style, consulted nobody – not even those involved for years in the Track-II and civil society dialogue with Kashmiris, nor the key individuals engaged in back-channel diplomacy with Pakistan, which by all accounts had almost yielded fruit by 2007.

Instead, it thoughtlessly nominated three panelists and entrusted them with “the responsibility of undertaking a sustained dialogue with the people of J&K to understand their problems and chart a course for the future”. Nothing suggests that the panel will “understand” the “problems” through a few desultory visits to Kashmir and that it’s better placed to suggest a way forward than dozens of recent civil society initiatives. It’s not easy to instil confidence among Kashmir’s widely divergent actors and produce worthy, consensual and practical solutions. In all probability, key groups in the Valley will boycott the panel. Kashmir is indeed the burial ground of countless attempts at mediation.

In constituting the interlocutors’ panel the way it did, the government is making two blunders. First, the present team patently lacks New Delhi’s confidence and a mandate to negotiate a deal – unlike the few past instances of successful reconciliation in Kashmir, like the defusing of the Hazratbal crisis of 1963 (caused by the alleged theft of a relic of the Holy Prophet) or the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975. Second, there’s no indication that the Centre intends to treat the Kashmir issue qualitatively differently from other separatist/insurgency problems like those associated with the Nagas, Mizos, Bodos and other Northeastern ethnic groups, to whom it has been talking.

So far only the Mizo problem has been “solved”- mainly through financial inducements and lucrative offers of office. But this manipulative strategy hasn’t worked with the other ethnic groups. Dragging out talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah), while playing off various ethnic factions against one another, hasn’t produced a lasting truce or agreement on a contiguous state of the Nagas. The Kashmiris won’t be fobbed off with such manipulative negotiations or with flimsy half-solutions. The Kashmir problem is unlike any other because of its international dimensions and a long history of alienation of the Valley’s population from the Indian state, which has violated Article 370 of its own constitution. Military repression of the azaadi movement further aggravated matters after 1989. Pakistan cynically fished in the troubled waters.

Although the 2006 Assembly elections and the 2009 parliamentary elections restored a degree of normality in J&K, the Centre failed to use it to promote conciliation. The outbreak of the stone-pelters’ protest this past June was another ominous warning against New Delhi’s complacency – and an injunction to correct course. But the state substituted the all-party delegation visit – and now, the interlocutors’ team – for strategy.

The interlocutors could spread yet more despair, cynicism and anger in the Valley, obstructing a real solution. The Centre should go back to basics: wide consultation, formulation of a broad-framework solution, exploration of areas of agreement, and a clear mandate for a newly constituted interlocutors’ team which carries authority and political credibility.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in