By Gian Singh Sandhu
Gian Singh Sandu President WSO International strongly refutes remarks and arguments of Krishnan Chittapur on opinion page of India Abroad dated May 12.
Why is it that most statements that are critical of India are labeled as “anti-Indian”? The Bill (H.R. 1067) in the US. Congress signed by both Republicans and Democrats is not an antiIndian Bill, but a pro Human Rights Bill. The concerns of that bill focus entirely on the simply but crucial issue of human nights violations, This is a fundamental issue. Trade agreements, exports and the lack of cheap Basmati rice for Indians in the U.S. are not the major issues as suggested in your opinion article on the so called anti India bill. Human rights are more important than all those put together. That is why nations of the world have boycotted goods from South Africa, removed investments and ordered trade embargoes.
Human Rights violations by Israelis against the Palestinians brought world outcries and independent international commissions to investigate. When major violations were taking place in the Philippines under Marcos, even he gave access and facilities for independent outside human rights investigations. Indeed, even the Soviet Union has admitted teams of U.S. physicians and human rights persons to investigate alleged Soviet violations of human rights in mental hospitals.
India alone chants a litany that brutal human rights violations cannot be investigated by outside impartial agencies because that would somehow violate “principles of sovereignty.” Let’s face it. That argument is nothing more than vested interest rhetoric and cliches wrapped up in 19th century sovereignty concepts which have never applied in India. If India’s argument about outside investigations of human rights being a violations of sovereignty were accepted, there could never be outside investigations in any country. Fortunately many countries are interested in clearing their good names, establishing credibility, or for other reasons assist international outside commissions in their investigations. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund regularly carry out investigations of Indian government performances and demand changes if India is to get more funds. By the Indian government’s logic, that should be a violation of sovereignty. Opinion article in India Abroad states, “While the Amnesty International report is a matter of concern, Indian intellectuals and civil rights leaders are fully capable of rectifying legitimate errors.” That’s nonsense. Firstly, the Amnesty International Report is more than merely a matter of concern. It is an international indictment by the most reputable human rights agency in the world that the human rights of Sikhs especially have been are being systematically violated by the government of India. The Amnesty report is a declaration to the world that all the treaties and covenants on Human Rights signed by India show a signature that is worthless and without integrity as far as human nights are concerned. The author does not seem to understand that the intellectuals and civil rights leaders to whom he entrusts remedies for these violations have, as in the case of Justice Tarkunde, themselves been beaten by the police and others jailed. He speaks of freedom of the press in India when all of us know about the unrelenting campaign by the government against the Indian Express newspapers after they published exposes of high officials including the Prime Minister. The Statesman is now being threatened for similar reasons. I do not discuss here the government’s sole control of all the radio and television in the entire subcontinent. Some freedom! Only widespread national and international protest halted the Indian government last year from imposing draconian censorship and gagging the restricted freedom that still exists.
“Insulting” is what the author calls the “question raised about fairness of trials accorded to criminals in India,” Is he serious.? Look at the central government legislation which says the police can arrest a person without informing them of the charges and then jail them for years without ever having been convicted of any crime. Does he think that’s justice? Does he think it’s ok that hundreds of thousands of persons including children are languishing in Indian prisons never having been tried for any crime but simply labeled as “under trials?” It seems a lot more “insulting” that these violations of human rights continue on a daily basis in India. If he thinks its “insulting” to question the integrity of the Indian judicial system, let him read the official reports of the India Law Commissions which are scathing. Let him recall that it is not unusual for cases to take as long as ten years before coming to trial as a result of backlog and delays. Let him remember that even the former Chief Justice of India, Justice Bhagavati, described the Indian judicial system as on “the verge of collapse.” What other country has ever come to the courts of the United States and asked them to adjudicate on the grounds, according to the Government of India position that the courts and judicial system of India was not capable of handling the Bhopal disaster? What other country has had a Supreme Court make a “full and final” decision only to bring derision on themselves a few weeks later by saying that didn’t really mean it? Anyone who has been very much through the Indian judicial system. It must be questioned and criticized and attacked day after day until these injustices are no longer endemic and systematic as they are today. These statements are not anti Indian, they are projective
We have a situation where Sikhs are regularly murdered by the police, legitimized as “encounters.” Some two thousand Sikhs were bumed and murdered en masse while police and government officials stood by an in some cases encouraged and abetted the massacre known as the Delhi riots in 1984. The thousands of victims and their grieving families endure injustice to this day as all the assailants go scot free and the government refuses to bring them to a trial. These and other ongoing brutalities are compared in the article to “last year’s free for all by the N.Y. Police or the Transit Police’s false arrests.” Surely no sane person can even conceive as being roughly equal, human rights violations torture and killings of Sikhs with police false arrests on the New York transit system! That is to trivialize, demean and falsify a major historical brutality suffered by the Sikhs, a
major national and now international community.
The article against the congressional bill complains that India should not be singled out and “what makes this bill particularly offensive is that historically the U.S. has supported autocrats all over the world as long as US. economics interests were served.” In other words, why all the fuss about one country more or less which autocratically suppresses human rights? There are countries, it is pointed out that are more brutal than India. What kind of argument and morality is it that says the standard we apply to India in Justice and Human Rights is the lowest minimum? Some other countries are worse!
The Congressional Bill sponsored by Wally Herger and Robert Torriceli and supported by influential members of both parties is a moral calling to account for human rights violations, It says that members who sign international Human Rights covenants and U.N. Declarations are expected to sincerely honor those solemn guarantees. That the international community has a responsibility to insist on some meaningful standard of human rights behavior by all countries. The greater hypocrisy is to bleat in outraged unison about human rights violations in South Africa while committing in many respects atrocities just as great against Sikhs in Punjab. Men and women of high conscience have never been very popular and it is to be expected that this bill will be attacked because it affects the vested commercial interests of those who profit through government repression. A bill which seeks to investigate the validity of serious human rights violations and suggestions steps for ensuring those basic rights ought always to be welcomed in the name of justice.
The moral and correct thing for India to do is to invite impartial international organizations such as Amnesty International, Asia Watch or international commissions to investigate fully and fairly the allegations of violations of human rights, given the evasive responses, lack of meaningful independent enquiries, consistent refusal by the government of India to bring any torturers or violators to trial and the general behavior of concealment there are strong reasons to believe many of the accusations. The government of India ought to welcome and assist to the fullest an international enquiry. That will be the best and most honor answer. That would be the real test whether the government honestly believes in its national motto —”Satyam eva Jayate” —“Truth alone is victorious.” The answer thus for is, that it doesn’t. Sat Sri Akal.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 2, 1989
