The Communist Party (Marxist) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet is in the habit of staying at the center stage of all political developments. His latest pronouncements on Kashmir while he was in London last week confirm his propensity. He claimed that the Indian army was not committing any human rights violations in Kashmir. The India security forces were faced with terrorism and proxy war and those human nights critics did not know in what difficult situation the forces were operating in Kashmir, Surjeet also claimed that the ground situation in the Kashmir valley had changed and that the people there were fed up with militancy. The C.P. (M) leader’s statements have a ring of familiarity. Do not the leaders of the fascist BJP say something along these lines? The fact is that the wily Communist leader always seeks to pander to the fundamentalist Hindu lobby in India to seek the mainstream acceptability and to remain afloat in politics without having any roots in Punjab or elsewhere. Not long ago, he claimed that he was responsible for the appointment of KP.S. Gill as chief of Punjab police. The latter stands exposed as a criminal responsible for the worst genocide in Punjab. Obviously, Surjeet has shared the booty collected by Gill. For, the Communist leader has promoted a trust at Chandigarh to run a multi crore rupees building and a newspaper ever after Gill took over. The Communist leader one day will have to account for the mysterious sources of his vast financial empire. Surjeet also claimed that the Indian government would grant maximum autonomy to Kashmir after the September elections to the state Assembly, Any talk of autonomy for Kashmir has no relevance to the reality, so long as the Indian occupation army remained stationed there. The only good Indian politician V.P. Singh rightly observed some time ago that the people of Kashmir had been left at the mercy of Indian army. How true! But Surjeet has the guts to tell lies to the world that the ground reality in Kashmir had changed and that no human rights violations were taking place in Kashmir.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1996
