Fifteen young Sikhs were murdered in cold blood by the Indian ‘Security Forces. They were picked up from their homes and taken in police vans to the Pakistan border and shot dead. The fact that they ‘were unarmed is confirmed by the highest civilian authority of the district. Killing of unarmed civilians is a crime that no extenuating circumstances sanction or justify. It is a crime even when two nations are engaged in violent hostilities. Yet no protests are heard. No eyebrows are raised. Amnesty International feigns helplessness. U.N. Human Rights Commission closes the file in anticipation of government of India’s familiar version. Margaret Thatcher is so preoccupied with selling helicopters to Rajiv that she dismisses all talk of his state terrorism as irrelevant. For Ronald Reagan there is no state terrorism so long it is not directed against Americans.
New York Times is silent. Washington Post offers no comment. Peter Jennings suddenly decides to hear no evil. Ted Kopple has no ears for such discordant notes especially during a long weekend.
Will the free world never awake to the ugliest form of Nazism being practiced by the Indian rulers? Will it never realize that for minorities and particularly for Sikhs, jungle law in its worst form obtains in India? Will lovers of liberty never see-through Indian ruler’s cunningly contrived façade of democracy and secularism? ‘Will no country or organization that professes to uphold human dignity compel the Indian government to allow impartial observers in Punjab? Where have gone the champions of justice and truth? Perhaps reason has fled to the forests and men have become beasts.
Article extracted from this publication >>September 5, 1986
