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Human rights violation highest in NE, J&K: Dr Sandeep Pandey
| Human rights violation highest in NE, J&K: Dr Sandeep Pandey | | Luit Neil Don | | 13 September 2007, Thursday |
"The human rights violation in North East and Jammu & Kashmir is worst in the country. These areas have suffered a lot from time immemorial and people of these areas are facing an identity issues. It is a pity that after the 60 years of democracy, Assam cannot become a part of true democratic set-up in the largest democracy in the world," said Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Dr Sandeep Pandey, in Guwahati, on Wednesday. For his years of dedicated service and leadership Dr Pandey was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2002, often considered the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. He was selected in the Emergent Leadership Category, and is among five others to have won the coveted award. At 37, he is also the youngest Indian to have been conferred the award. Dr Pandey, who was in Guwahati, on way to Imphal, the capital of Manipur, to take part at a three-day solidarity fast to support Irom Sharmila's campaign against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur, said: "It is not only the Northeast region but the human rights violations are going on in almost every place of India. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of encounter killings in the country, but there is no draconian law like the AFSPA there. The Government of India is biased against Northeast and J&K in this issue." Talking about the separatist movement in the northeastern region, Dr Pandey said: "Continuous presence of military in this region will have a severe impact on the people. If this process goes on, the Northeast will soon become militarized state. Whatever form of Naxalism, separatism and terrorism exists, the only way to solve is by political solution." When asked about the armed conflict in Northeast, he said: "It is up to the people of the region to find out an amicable solution. What the local people want, should be respected. The Government will facilitate talks. I think dialogue is the only way to solve the insurgency. Militarisation will never solve the issue." Coming down heavily against the uranium mining in Meghalaya, Dr Pandey said: "Uranium is radioactive and creates health hazards. Till now world has not find out any solution to the radioactive effects. At a time when many countries have given up the nuclear programmes, it is really shocking to see the Indian Government is planning uranium mining in Meghalaya." Mentionably, hundreds of human rights activists from all over the country as well as from neighbouring Asian nations will assemble in Imphal today (13 September). Sharmila had gone on hunger strike on November 2, 2000 demanding the repeal of the AFSPA, after soldiers of the Assam Rifles allegedly killed ten young Meitei men in Malom. Three days later, police arrested Sharmila on charges of 'attempted suicide', because suicide or attempted suicide is a criminal offence under Indian law. She was later remanded to judicial custody. To keep her alive, she was forcefully fed a cocktail of vitamins, minerals, laxatives, protein supplements and lentil soup through the nose with a rubber pipe.
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Atrocity in India's tribal heartland
Atrocity in India's tribal heartland
By Praful Bidwai http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=57628The detention of noted human rights activist Binayak Sen under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005 (PSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has attracted nationwide condemnation. Sen, general secretary of the Chhattisgarh People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), and the union's national vice-president, was arrested for his alleged links with banned Maoist groups. The critical allegation is that Sen met senior Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal more than 30 times in recent months in the Raipur central jail. On the very face of it, the charge is preposterous. Sen met Sanyal with the authorities' knowledge and consent and always in the presence of a jailer. As a civil liberties activist, it is his legitimate function to meet detainees and ensure that their fundamental rights are respected. Whether he met Sanyal 35 times or 100 times is totally irrelevant. It speaks poorly of the Chhattisgarh government that it cavalierly levelled defamatory and scandalous charges against an activist-intellectual of Sen's standing, who has an illustrious record as a public-spirited paediatrician connected with the people's health movement. Sen was involved with the setting up of the Shaheed Hospital, an initiative of the great trade unionist Shankar Guha Niyogi who was murdered at the behest of rapacious industrialists. The hospital, owned and operated by a workers' organisation, remains unmatched anywhere in India for helping the population of a backward tribal area callously neglected by the state. Sen was on the official advisory committee that drew up one of India's most successful community-based primary healthcare programmes. It's nobody's case that Sen is a Naxalite, or a Maoist sympathiser. Everyone who knows him, as this writer has done for many years, will testify to his commitment to a peaceful struggle for a compassionate, humane society. Yet, the Chhattisgarh government arrested him under the draconian PSA. This extraordinarily repressive law allows for detention of a person on the vaguest of charges. The charges include committing acts with a "tendency to pose an obstacle to the administration of law� and actions which "encourage(s) the disobedience of the established law". This law criminalises even non-violent protests, including Gandhian civil disobedience. It's a disgrace that the PSA remains on India's statute books. Sen was detained even before the police had obtained a shred of evidence against him. Since then, they have searched his house and claim to have collected "hundreds of incriminating documents", which include compact disks, pamphlets and other papers. Now, most of the documents are in the public domain. The list includes newspaper clippings, CDs on "fake encounters", and letters from victims of state repression, since published in newspapers. Much of the impounded material pertains to Sen's work as a health and civil liberties activist. Clearly, these malicious police allegations are of the same variety as the charges filed in 2002 against The Kashmir Times Delhi bureau chief, Syed Iftikhar Geelani. He too was accused of possessing "classified" documents, suggesting links with terrorists. The police were forced to retract all such charges when it was established that Geelani's "secret" documents were obtained from public-domain sources, none of them remotely connected with terrorism. Geelani was detained for eight months -- and released without apology or explanation -- because he is a Kashmiri and related to separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Sen is being harassed because he's a civil liberties activist who has courageously exposed a number of police atrocities. These, remarkably, include 155 "fake encounters" in Chhattisgarh in two years. The latest was the cold-blooded murder of 12 Adivasis on March 31 -- which made the headlines even as the public was absorbing the shock from revelations about the "encounter" killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Kausar-Bi by DIG Vanzara in Gujarat. It would be an even greater injustice if Sen has to languish for months in jail before the charges against him are disproved. Surely, Indian courts have a duty to prevent such miscarriage of justice. Surely, top politicians and bureaucrats have learned some lessons from the sordid stories of abduction and outright killings committed by trigger-happy policemen. Surely, it has not escaped the attention even of India's creaking justice delivery system that draconian laws, which allow preventive detention and forced confessions, are liable to be -- and usually are -- misused. They create a climate of impunity, in which no official is held accountable for his/her gross misconduct. It bears recalling that the rate of conviction under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act was less than two per cent. This speaks of gross abuse of the law. The police didn't bother to collect evidence, which would help their case stand up. They used TADA (and later POTA) to bung people into jail and extract confessions from them under duress, including threats of "encounters". Such laws became excuses not to conduct diligent investigation, while raising alarmist fears about extremism, terrorism and threats to "national security". The PSA was used in Chhattisgarh four times earlier -- for instance, to arrest a petty shopkeeper for selling groceries to Maoist sympathisers (of whose identity he probably wasn't aware), and to harass a Class XII student who was in love with a suspected Naxalite. The Chhattisgarh police are now planting stories about a "close relative" of Dr Sen's, who is subversive by virtue of having studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University! Only a warped khaki brain can think in such philistine, irrational ways. Yet, it's precisely this way of thinking that led the Chhattisgarh government to set up Salwa Judum, a viciously right-wing band of thugs who target and kill Maoists. They have razed villages, raped women and looted what little the poor possess -- with police collusion. Salwa Judum has ignited a civil war and done incalculable harm to ordinary Advasis. No fewer than 47,000 people have become homeless owing to its depredations. However, the Chhattisgarh government's anti-Naxalite juggernaut continues to roll on, setting Advasi against Adivasi, village against village, and bankrupting the state of all its legitimacy. The government now plans to use helicopter gunships to intimidate villagers, cut down prime forests, and repeat the "Strategic Hamlets" strategy of the United States during the Vietnam War by creating "Naxalite-free" villages. And yes, they plan to use grenades, not just bullets, in skirmishes with Maoists. There's a larger purpose behind the anti-Naxal operations apart from trying to liquidate Maoists. It is to make Chhattisgarh safe for huge mining and industrial projects, which dispossess people. Chhattisgarh is selling its precious mineral wealth cheap to promote neoliberal capitalism. It has signed more than 30 memoranda of understanding with business houses, including multinationals with a terrible human rights record. The human consequences of such a strategy have become obvious -- especially in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa. In Orissa, there's growing popular resistance to the South Korean company POSCO's steel plant and the Tatas' steel mill. 2006 began with the gunning down of 13 Adivasis at Kalinganagar. And last fortnight saw attacks upon peaceful protestors by goons hired by POSCO. This insanity must stop. The monstrous mining and steel projects, in which the people have no stake, must not be granted clearance by bypassing environmental and rehabilitation scrutiny. Or else, the state will lose all its popular legitimacy. Then, the Maoists will have achieved their purpose. The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in
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Sharmila, Ebadi and Human Rights
Sharmila, Ebadi and Human Rights
By: David Buhril
Irom Sharmila Chanu's resort to fasting for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA) is raising more attention and concern after her six year's fasting. On May 11, 2007 Sharmila came to Delhi with the Manipur jail authorities, her doctor and nurses to appear in the court of Ms. Kamini Lau, ACMM at Patiala House Court Complex on the charge of intending to commit suicide. What about the Satyagraha's instrument, is the question. But some truth has strange interpretation and version. Although the interpretation and version has no strength to negate the cause of her movement, it questions and contests the noble struggle. Sharmila honestly told the court, "It is my only instrument. I have no other means", when she was asked why she wanted to end her life by fasting. Meanwhile, Sharmila was recently awarded the Gwangju prize for Human Rights, 2007.
Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human-rights activist, spoke strongly in support of Sharmila when she visited Delhi in November 2006. Ebadi spoke through her interpreter and talked about the discriminatory nature of AFSPA, which she called "a strange thing" in Indian democracy. Ebadi was more serious than she sounded as she talked about Sharmila's struggle.
Fifty eight years old Ebadi who was a judge dismissed from the bench after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran is now a lawyer who works to promote freedom, spotlight gender inequity and child abuse, and defends dissidents against Iran's theocratic regime. Ebadi visited Sharmila at New Delhi AIIMS hospital when the latter was continuing her fast for the repeal of AFSPA. Ebadi was moved by the dogged will and struggle of Sharmila. Ebadi expressed concern about Sharmila's deteriorating health conditions and said, "If Sharmila dies, the courts and judiciary are responsible, Parliament is directly responsible as the Parliament passed the laws. If Sharmila dies, the military is responsible because they created conditions for her to go on hunger strike. If Sharmila dies, the executive, the Prime Minister and the President are responsible." Ebadi also said, "If Sharmila dies, each one of you journalists are responsible because you did not do your duty. You never write about the innocent people dying in Kashmir and the North East."
Ebadi called Sharmila "women with the will" and talked at length about the unbending strength of Sharmila and said, "Women are the one who can carry the message across the globe." Ebadi felt that to disregard women and bar them from active participation in political, social, economic and cultural life would in fact be tantamount to depriving the entire population of every society of half its capability. Ebadi is very much concerned about Sharmila as she felt that the entire system, civil society and the authorities have created a condition where her voices are contained. She charged everyone saying: "You never say anything. You never speak out." Ebadi actually begged the journalists to present the struggle of Sharmila and the discriminating AFSPA so that the world knows that things such as these are taking place in India. She also requested the journalists to go to the North-East of India and Kashmir to witness the violations of human rights.
Referring to the six year long hunger strike of Sharmila, Ebadi said, " I have worked in the areas of human rights for more than thirty years and my speciality is rights of prisoners. I have seen many people going on hunger strike. But what I saw here was a woman with an amazing will." Ebadi showed deep anguish and anger on taking a serious note of the AFSPA. Ebadi said that she reserved the right to criticise the human rights violations in India, as human rights is universal. Ebadi said, "human rights should function as a guarantor of freedom, justice and peace. If human rights fail to be manifested in codified laws or put into effect by states, then, as rendered in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human beings will be left with no choice other than staging a "rebellion against tyranny and oppression." A human being divested of all dignity, a human being deprived of human rights, a human being gripped by starvation, a human being beaten by famine, war and illness, a humiliated human being and a plundered human being is not in any position or state to recover the rights he or she has lost." Ebadi also said that improving human rights conditions in any country is the responsible of the people of that country and that every country has the duty to make its opinion known on the human rights of another country. Ebadi said, "If the 21st century wishes to free itself from the cycle of violence, acts of terror and war, and avoid repetition of the experience of the 20th century, that most disaster ridden century of humankind, there is no other way except by understanding and putting into practice every human right for all mankind irrespective of race, gender, faith, nationality or social status." Ebadi also said, "Sharmila has a little demand. She is demanding for a just tribunal. Help her not to die." On May 11,2007 Sharmila had to furnish a personal bond to the tune of Rs. 10,000/ for regular bail. She then returned to Imphal's JN Hospital to her security ward where the routine of nasal feeding and fortnight court appearance would continue. Not only that, Sharmila would also continue her struggle for the repeal of AFSPA. She is too certain when she said, "I will continue my fast."
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Army apologises for atrocities - - -
Army apologises for atrocities on Arunachal villagers
ITANAGAR, May 7 – The Army has apologised to the Arunachal Pradesh Government following complaints of atrocities on Namgo villagers in the State's Lohit district in the wake of operations carried out after an IED blast by suspected ULFA militants on April 25.
The apology was conveyed to the Governor S K Singh last night when he called up the commander of the second mountain division Maj Gen N C Marwah.
Arunachal Rural Development Minister Chowna Mein had briefed the Governor about the alleged army atrocities on the villagers after the blast in which two army personnel were killed and four others were injured.
The briefing followed an interaction Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu had with his Cabinet colleagues.
After the briefing, the Governor spoke to Maj. Gen Marwah, based at Dinjan in Assam, and told him that such incidents should not be repeated in future.
Mein, who visited the village, said the villagers were made to clear the jungles and used for searching the bodies. The armymen, he claimed, had confined the villagers without food and water for some time immediately after the blast. – PTI
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UN panel urges India to repeal Armed Forces Act
UN panel urges India to repeal Armed Forces Act
From Our Correspondent
IMPHAL, May 7 – The United Nations Committee on Racial Discrimination under the International Convention on Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination has urged the Government of India to repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act within a year and replace it "by a more humane Act" in accordance with the recommendation contained in the 2005 report of the Review Committee set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs. It also requested the Government of India to release the report.
U Nobokishore, convenor of Dialogue Forum, conveyed the United Nations' move during an interaction with the reporters here on Sunday. He said, "The Armed Forces Act was designed in 1958 by Government of India specially for the North Eastern States of India, therefore the Act is discriminatory to the people in this part of the world".
North Eastern states, particularly Manipur have been witnessing widespread public outcry now and then in view of the unwanted atrocities by the security forces in the name of Counter-Insurgency operations.
Considering the sentiment of the people,Government of India constituted a five-member review committee and the report has been submitted to the concerned authority two years back. But till date the authority is neither releasing the report nor implementing it's recommendations.
Acknowledging the move, UN's International Convention on Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination seriously discussed the periodic reports of India at Geneva on February 23 and 26 last, says the Convenor.
According to the observations of the Convention, the Committee noted with concern that the state party has not implemented the recommendations of the committee to review the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to repeal the Act under which members of the armed forces may not be prosecuted unless such prosecution is authorised by the Central Government and have wide powers to search and arrest suspects without a warrant or to use force against persons or property in Manipur and other North-eastern States which are inhabited by tribal people.
The authority should seek the prior informed consent of communities affected by the construction of dams in the North East or similar projects on their traditional lands in any decision making processes related to such projects and provide adequate compensation and alternative land and housing to those communities.
The UN's observations were made in connection with Government's move to construct mega dams like Lower Subansiri at border between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur's Churachandpur district.
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Panel urges India to scrap Armed Forces Special Powers Act
Panel urges India to scrap Armed Forces Special Powers Act By Iftikhar Gilani http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C03%5C04%5Cstory_4-3-2007_pg7_34
NEW DELHI: The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) on Saturday concluded two days of public hearings in India by calling on New Delhi to scrap a draconian law that affords the military sweeping powers to curb insurgencies.
The hearings represented part of the ongoing fact finding mission conducted by the Panel, comprising eight independent legal experts appointed by the Geneva-based Commission in 2005, on the experience of terrorism and counter-terrorism measures in South Asia, within its broader mandate of researching the global impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism measures on the rule of law, human rights and humanitarian law.
Chairing the Panel was South Africa's Arthur Chaskalson, the country's former chief justice and first president of the country's Constitutional Court. Also representing the Panel was Thailand's Vitit Muntarbhorn, a professor of law at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University and United Nations expert on human rights in North Korea. The Panel confirmed that its members had held private meetings with senior Indian government officials, including Home Minister Shivraj Patil and National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, to pres for a repeal of the 1958 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).
Addressing a press conference, Chaskalson said: "We informed the Indian government that there was a broad consensus that recommendations of the review committee to repeal" the AFSPA should be given effect. The AFSPA was originally designed to stem strife in India's remote northeast by permitting the military to arrest without warrant and shoot-to-kill known militants. However, the Act was later extended to Indian-held Kashmir to fight the Islamist separatist insurgency that has, since 1989, been fighting New Delhi's rule of the disputed state.
A government forum last year also called for the scrapping of the law, while Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had promised a review of the Act following the widespread protests after Indian soldiers allegedly raped and murdered a 32-year-old rights activist last July in the country's troubled Manipur state.
Chaskalson also said that the Panel had discussed human rights violations committed during the Gujarat communal riots that left 2,00 people, mostly Muslims, dead.
"We specifically asked the government officials about the reports of human rights violations in the Gujarat riots." While recognising important safeguards in India's anti-terror laws, he went on to say that the Panel had found that legal frameworks, such as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), had led to serious human rights violations throughout the country.
Civil society groups from Jammu and Kashmir, Chattisgarh, Manipur and Jharkhand had earlier told the Panel hearing that Indian authorities routinely misused and abused counter-terrorism measures. They charged New Delhi with engaging in excessive application of these laws in states not affected by terrorism and with using them in a discriminatory manner to target minority communities and those belonging to lower castes.
Thus the Panel concluded that the existence of too many anti-terror laws often proved counter-productive, leading many communities, especially within the South Asian context, to feel alienated and persecuted. "Instead of isolating terrorist suspects, it (the abuse of anti-terror laws) exacerbates rather than reduces tensions and violence," said Chaskalson.
He went on to say: "The Panel is of the view that counter-terrorism measures in South Asia (in order to be effective) should go in conformity with the international human rights standards." Stressing that the Panel had concluded that adequate intelligence provided the key to improved security, which was only possible when the public had complete faith in the state apparatus, Chaskalson concluded by saying: "We are not here to pronounce judgment on how terror laws are being applied on the ground but to understand if there are checks and balances and if they can be tested against international standards." The Panel has also toured other parts of South Asia, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Nepal. It has now left India for Pakistan to conduct public hearings in Islamabad.
It will issue its global report on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights towards the end of 2007. Meanwhile, AFP quoted a political analyst from Delhi University, AS Ojha, as welcoming the Panel's calls for India to repeal AFSPA, which he said had been borrowed heavily from laws passed during the British colonial era and represented a "dark legacy". "It's not only the ICJ but many global forums which have said its repeal will solve half of the region's problems," he added.
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